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31 October, 2006




Los Angelenos fleeing unionized schools

Los Angeles Unified opened 20 charter schools this fall - roughly one-third the total launched statewide - with most of them modeled after existing programs, the California Charter Schools Association announced Thursday. The opening this fall of 65 public charters in California brings the total to more than 600 campuses, with some 220,000 students enrolled. With that surge, one in 15 public schools statewide is a charter.

More significant, association officials noted, is that most of the new charters are modeled after existing programs. "We've created great schools and now we're building on those successes," said Caprice Young, president and CEO of the association. "In the past we had a lot of brand-new schools that were based on the ideas of individually great educators and parents," Young said. "For the first time we've seen a concerted effort to replicate great ideas and great schools, and that's an exciting thing."

LAUSD has 103 of the independent public schools, the most of any district in the nation. It has opened 40 charters since 2005. Young projects that the LAUSD will continue to add 20 to 30 charters a year. Statewide, more than 300 charter schools are in development.

Half the charters that opened this fall are in the Los Angeles, San Diego and Oakland unified school districts, underscoring the trend that charters are more popular in urban communities with high concentrations of underserved students. "It means the district and charter schools are going to be partners forever, and we're eager to have a closer relationship with the district to make the educational system great for all students," Young said.

But the explosion of charters concerns the Los Angeles Unified board. The growth in the number of charter schools has caused enrollment to drop in the nation's second-largest school district, which has to compete with the independent campuses for students - and funds. District officials, as well as the president of the teachers union, bristle at assertions by the Charter Schools Association that middle and high school charters are significantly outperforming their district counterparts.

A fairer comparison would be with the district's magnet schools, which outperform charters, school board member Jon Lauritzen said. "I think it's basically unfair to compare an entity that is able to take their entire budget and focus it entirely on their own schools," he said. "They have some real advantages over our schools in the flexibility of actually providing the type of education that a particular community wants, whereas we are trying to provide a curriculum that works for everyone all across the school district."

Earlier this year, Lauritzen was unsuccessful in his bid to place a moratorium on approving additional charters. Other board members have indicated they may support legislation that would make it easier for school boards to deny charters that would have a negative fiscal impact on the district. Contrary to Young's prediction that the charter movement will continue to grow, Lauritzen believes it will slow as enrollment in the district drops. "Initially, there were a lot of schools where there was overcrowding, where a charter fit well into the program, but as we continue the declining enrollment, there's going to be less and less room for charters and less demand for the services charters offer," Lauritzen said.

Among the 20 charters that opened in Los Angeles this year was Excel Academy, modeled after Community Charter Middle School in San Fernando, which was founded in 1999 by Jacqueline Elliot. "It was a natural progression to replicate Community Charter when there's a great demand," said Elliot, whose initial campus has blossomed into PUC Schools, which has a waiting list of more than 1,000 students.

Source



Australia: Low income students do well at university

Research has exploded some myths about university entry and performance - including the notion that richer children and students from private schools get better marks. They do not, sometimes by a wide margin. One study, based on research that examined the performance of 26,000 children, found that less well-off students often performed better at university than their richer or privately educated peers. But the truth of some perceptions was reinforced: the research shows that far fewer students from less privileged backgrounds ever make it to tertiary study, and fall dramatically behind their richer peers in the final years of high school even if they have the same measured ability in year 9.

Economists at La Trobe University and the Australian National University examined the students - 13,000 starting year 9 in 1995, and 13,000 who started it in 1998 - to shed light on why students of high ability from disadvantaged backgrounds remain badly underrepresented at university. The results of their research, which was funded by the Australian Research Council's Discovery Project, could force policymakers to reconsider how to improve access to tertiary education.

The researchers found no evidence that fear of large HECS debts discourages poorer students from proceeding to university - contrary to Labor Party rhetoric. The authors say HECS appears to have solved the problem of funding constraints for poorer students.

And the findings imply the Federal Government is wasting its money on scholarships designed to increase university participation among rural, indigenous and other disadvantaged groups. If they achieve the same entry score, students from disadvantaged backgrounds are just as likely as rich students to enter university - and they are more likely to go on and do well. "We're failing to find any evidence that money is an issue once they've finished high school," said one of the researchers, Buly Cardak, of La Trobe University. Dr Cardak and Chris Ryan, of the Australian National University, present their findings in Why are high ability individuals from poor backgrounds underrepresented at university?

A separate study, to be published by the University of Western Australia's Professor Paul Miller and Dr Elisa Rose Birch, shows students from less-privileged backgrounds get first-year university results that are more than 3 percentage points higher than rich children, for any given university entry score. Their paper, The Influence of Type of High School Attended on University Performance, shows the private school students were significantly more likely to fail.

Both studies imply that disadvantaged children smart or motivated enough to get to university may not need help from there. "But something is going on before then," Dr Cardak said. "They're not able to convert their talent into the same entry score as more advantaged kids." Dr Cardak and Dr Ryan found two out of three students from privileged backgrounds went to university; fewer than one in five disadvantaged students did so.

Having a disadvantaged background was found to weigh hugely on performance in the final years of school. If a rich student and poor student had the median level of literacy and numeracy in year 9, the rich one was likely to go on to achieve a university admission index (or ENTER) score of 77. But the poorer student was likely to have a score of just 63 - and probably miss out on university . The gap was even greater at lower levels of year 9 aptitude. "Disadvantaged students are unable to capitalise on their ability in the same way as their advantaged counterparts in terms of ENTER scores," they write.

The results were broadly unchanged even when the sample was limited to students who stated an intention to go to university in year 9 - which seems to rule out student motivation as the difference. Dr Cardak and Dr Ryan argue that "policy needs to address the schooling decisions and outcomes of these students . well before the beginning" of their final year at school.

Source

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

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"

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

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30 October, 2006

Bureaucratized Georgia public schools show typical bureaucratic rigidity and stupidity

They can only work an on/off switch once a year!

Students and teachers at one DeKalb County school say the freezing temperatures we saw overnight made it awful chilly inside their classrooms. They can’t understand why the school system wouldn’t turn on the heat. The school system says no matter how cold it gets, it’s their practice to turn the heat on in all schools on October 30. Students and teachers say when the temperatures dip into the 30’s, like it did overnight and this morning, it is hard to study without heat.

“It was freezing. We were doing testing today and I couldn’t even concentrate,” said Briar Vista Elementary School student Beleyou Leulesged. “It was like you were covered in snow,” said student Kaylah Edwards. If you thought it was cold outside overnight and at daybreak, students at Briar Vista say it was even colder inside their school most of the day. When students and teachers complained about the frigid conditions and asked for the heat to be turned on, they say they were told they were not going to turn on the heat until Thanksgiving.

A DeKalb County Schools spokesperson told Channel 2 that’s not entirely true. We found out the school district doesn’t turn on the heat system-wide until October 30. And once the heat is on for all schools – it stays on. “But I mean, what’s the problem if you turn it on now and for the rest of the months,” asked Leulesged.

The school system did tell us that principals can petition to have their heat turned on before October 30. But if it warms up, the heat won’t be turned off – so many principals choose to wait.

Kayla Edwards told us it was tough for students to take their tests because of the chill factor. “Some people only had on sweaters and they were still complaining about how cold it was,” said Edwards. Teachers say classrooms that were facing the sun were okay, but the others felt like the North Pole

Source



More Christianity coming to Australian Schools

Chaplains will be posted in schools across Australia under a federal Government plan to provide students with greater spiritual guidance. Prime Minister John Howard will today unveil details of the $90 million national chaplaincy program, which also aims to give support to students during times of grief. The initiative, which was immediately criticised for discriminating in favour of Christians, was approved by Cabinet earlier this month.

Today's announcement follows last weekend's fatal car crash near Byron Bay which killed four teenagers from Kadina High School. It also follows the tragic death of a Sydney high school student who was found dead the night before her first HSC exam.

Under the plan, government and non-government schools will be able to apply for a grant of up to $20,000 a year to employ a chaplain. The federal Government wants to encourage schools to spend more time developing the ethical and spiritual health of students. While not necessarily requiring to have a religious background, the chaplains will be expected to provide religious support. The chaplains will also be required to work with existing schools counsellors in supporting students dealing with issues such as a family break-up or the death of a fellow student. The program will leave it up to individual schools to decide on whether to employ a chaplain on a part-time or full-time basis.

Andrew Macintosh, of political think tank The Australia Institute, condemned the proposal as "ridiculous". "The money would be far better spent on teaching resources," he said. "And it is overtly discriminatory if you are only talking about Christian chaplains." It would be more appropriate to appoint professional counsellors without religious affiliations to provide support to students in times of grief, he said.

Source

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

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"

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

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29 October, 2006

Bored of education flap

The poor performance of America’s schools is front and center on just about every politician’s agenda. And whenever there are politicians involved, there is always demagoguery. The solution for almost all of them is throwing more government money at it. Of course, all money comes with strings attached and with government, you can be sure that the strings will result in accomplishing precisely the opposite of what it’s supposed to.

I’m from a generation that had the highest average SAT scores on record. I went to Catholic grammar school, public high school and private college. I’ve concluded that most, if not all, social and economic problems stem from either an obstruction to freedom or an abrogation of responsibility, at some point. You have to look back to the beginning of the process to and trace it forward to find it out but if you look long and hard enough, you will find it. The results are like an error in astronomy. A mistake of even a fraction of a degree will result in missing the target by light years. Education is no exception. So let’s look at it from the beginning.

A man and a woman get together and have a child (Now, don’t any wise guys out there bring up test tube babies and surrogate mothers, etc. Children still are overwhelmingly born through sexual actions between two people, a man and a woman). They have taken the action to bring a child into the world. They are the responsible parties. That responsibility includes the feeding, housing, clothing, health care and education of that child.

Education is one of the first functions that a family delegates to others. Throughout history, this has usually been entrusted to religious authorities. In biblical times, a man was not considered educated unless he knew the scriptures. Indeed, the gospels tell the story of how Jesus impressed the elders at the temple with his knowledge of the scriptures. This continued until very recently when education became the province of government. There is no doubt that had it not been for the tedious work of thousands of monks after the fall of the Roman Empire, much of the great works of antiquity would have been lost.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, governments began to dabble in the arenas that were traditionally the province of the religious bodies. This was part and parcel of the age of a human centered secularism, secular humanism, if you will. One of those arenas was education. The first experiment in The United States in government-sponsored education was in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Even as public education spread, though, it retained a quasi-religious atmosphere complete with prayers and even bible studies. Various civil liberties organizations, most notably The American Civil Liberties Union, have succeeded in eliminating anything religious from public education. The Supreme Court took it upon itself to outlaw school prayer in the 1962 Engel vs. Vitale decision. Interestingly, it was in 1963 that average SAT scores hit their highest point and began their long slide to where they are today. It may not be coincidental.

Of course, once government gets into anything, politics follows. Education has been no exception. Schools have become flashpoints for all types of social experiments, including integration, sex education, tolerance (whatever that means) and myriad others. This, that or the other group decides that it wants its agenda pushed in the schools. Squabbles result and are resolved either in the courts or through political pressure. In either case, a school committee administers the decisions. The pitiful results we have today confirm the old barb that the camel was a horse designed by committee.

Consequently, we have had the expenditure of, at this point, billions of dollars to enforce various agendas, some admirable, others less so. These are precious resources that should have been spent on educating our youth rather than in pointless squabbles but that’s always the way when government and politics get involved.

And all the education in the world doesn’t help society much if it produces students without some type of moral compass. Suppose we educated a generation of Charles Mansons? Now it might be possible to have a moral society without the concept of God or some higher authority to whom we are all obligated but history has not been especially encouraging in this regard. Man and state centered societies have given us the Germany of National Socialism, the Italy of Fascism and the Soviet Union, Red China and Cuba of International Revolutionary Socialism. That’s not an especially sanguine omen.

There are those who will argue that we must set standards for performance in the schools. In fact, that is the position of this Bush administration. But, whose standards? That is the exact argument that many blacks and other minorities have had over the years. They claim that the performance tests are culturally biased and maybe they are. And how do you inculcate values? And, once again, whose values do we inculcate? Yours, mine, his, society’s? Who’s to say that one set of values or one orientation is better than any other?

How about a market solution? I’m Catholic. For years, it was the policy of the Church that Catholic children should be educated in a Catholic system. The Church authorities acquiesced under the onslaught of secular education, only continuing to require that Catholic children obtain doctrinal training as a condition for the sacrament of Confirmation. As it turns out, it was a mistake for the Church to cave in. These are forces that you cannot compromise with. What is wrong with a child being educated with a Catholic understanding as a foundation for learning? It was done for centuries. For that matter, what is wrong with having children learn from a Jewish, Baptist, Episcopal or any other perspective? Who’s to say that one is right and another wrong?

Certainly, there are people who might not want their children to learn from a religious perspective. That would be fine too. Let them get together with others of their persuasion and organize secular schools accordingly. And if some blacks desire that their children be steeped in an Afro-centric tradition, then amen. It’s their responsibility.

The answer to the question of which system is the most valid will be answered when the children go out into the world and seek jobs. Would some get left behind? Undoubtedly, but many are being left behind now. Could the results be much worse than they are now? And even if some improvement in the current system occurs, as seems to be happening, there’s no doubt that the politicians will decide to intervene again and mess it up. Political systems have political results.

The first mistake, the Original Sin if you will, is the assumption by the state of parental responsibility. It’s like the error at the source that misses its target by light years. It is also the very first skirmish in the battle to replace family, God and religion with state, Man, and government.

Private and religious education have produced some awesome results over history. Even today, Catholic colleges like Notre Dame, Georgetown and Providence have acquired formidable academic reputations, rivaling the very best secular institutions (PLEASE forgive us results like Bill Clinton. Any system will have its disasters.) There are thousands of religious colleges and schools across the country that are competing successfully, on minimal budgets, because of the huge siphon that government education represents. There can be no doubt that the reservoir of resources that would become available to the private sphere would unleash a creative explosion in approaches to education that would boggle the imagination.

Source



Literacy tests dumbed down too

Grammar and spelling mistakes? No problem! Now the literacy tests are "a measure of students' ability to participate in the community". I guess even an armed robber "participates in the community", though

The international OECD test cited as proof that Australian students have one of the highest literacy rates in the world does not test spelling and grammar. The Program for International Student Assessment of 15-year-old students in more than 40 countries assesses their ability to understand written texts and apply that knowledge but fails to examine correct use of language.

"The concept of literacy used in PISA is much broader than the historical notion of the ability to read and write," the report says. "It is measured on a continuum, not as something that an individual either does or does not have. A literate person has a range of competencies and there is no precise dividing line between a person who is fully literate and one who is not." Head of the Australian Council for Educational Research Professor Geoff Masters, which leads the consortium that runs PISA, said the test was a measure of students' reading, not writing.

But reader in English and head of humanities at the Australian National University Simon Haines said a solid foundation in reading implied "a foundation of knowledge of what words and sentences are". "Spelling and grammar are part of this knowledge of what a word fundamentally is, what written construction fundamentally is," he said. "Relatively trivial one-off spelling and grammatical errors probably shouldn't be marked down, but repeated errors of the same type, or errors indicating more fundamental misunderstandings, probably should be. "This is part of teaching students how to use language."

The PISA reading literacy test is conducted every three years, with the first held in 2000. In that test, the best of Australian students scored second to Finland. The study defines reading literacy as "understanding, using and reflecting on written texts in order to achieve one's goals, to develop one's knowledge and potential and to participate in society". In its analysis of students' answers, the report says that spelling mistakes were very common but incorrect spelling had no bearing on the marking. "Answers with mistakes in grammar and/or spelling were not penalised as long as the correct point was made," it says.

Professor Masters said the definition of literacy had changed over time and once meant an inability to write one's name. But PISA took a broader attitude, saying literacy was a skill developed over a lifetime and a measure of students' ability to participate in the community.

The study also found that Australian students performed relatively poorly in their comprehension of continuous texts, such as narratives, and coped better with non-continuous texts, such as diagrams and maps. Boys in particular struggled with continuous texts, and were generally outperformed by girls. Professor Masters said the results indicated that teachers should make sure students read continuous texts such as books.

Literacy expert Bill Louden, head of the graduate school of education at the University of Western Australia, said PISA tested reading comprehension and was not a writing task, so "spelling and grammar errors don't come into it". "It wouldn't do in an English classroom, where you have continuous long works that needs to score kids on their capacity to write grammatically, write coherently and spell correctly," Professor Louden said.

Source

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

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"

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

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28 October, 2006

Germany drags homeschool kids to class

Authorities haul crying children away to avoid 'danger' from parental teachings

A Nazi-era law requiring all children to attend public school, to avoid "the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions" that could be taught by parents at home, apparently is triggering a Nazi-like response from police.

The word comes from Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit, or Network for Freedom in Education, which confirmed that children in a family in Bissingen, in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, have been forcibly hauled to a public school. "On Friday 20 October 2006 at around 7:30 a.m. the children of a home educating family ... were brought under duress to school by police," the organization, which describes itself as politically and religiously neutral, confirmed.

A separate weblog in the United States noted the same tragedy. Homeschoolblogger.com noted that the "three children were picked up by the police and escorted to school in Baden-Wurttemberg, with the 'promise' that it would happen again this week." The Network for Freedom in Education, through spokesman Joerg Grosseluemern, said the Remeike family has been "home educating their children since the start of the school year, something which is legal in practically the whole of the (European Union)." "However, on this morning, they were confronted by police officials, who, in an incredibly inconsiderate manner, forced their crying children into a police car and drove them to the school. The police stated that they had been instructed to continue this measure in the coming week," the network statement said.

The network noted that the previous Minister of Education, Annette Schavan, had said such actions were not needed, because "... the children are generally not lacking in any other respects." Officials at that time, in 2002, confirmed that "forcible methods" generally are "not in the long-term interests of either the children or the police."

However, the network noted the priorities of current officials obviously are different. "The family involved emphasizes that their children are neither truant nor school deniers, which are the cases for which such measures were intended," said the network's statement, a translation from the original German. "The Remeike family is fulfilling their children's right to an education by educating them at home, with the support of teachers from a distance learning academy, which also supplies the necessary material." School arguments that homeschooling endangers the welfare of the children "lacks any factual foundation," the network statement said. "Tearing the children from the bosom of their family by forcing certainly does not contribute to their welfare. The result is more likely to be traumatisation and the development of an aversion to instruments of state authority," the statement said.

No comment could be obtained immediately from school or police officials. "The Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit strongly empathises with the Romeike family, whom many of us know personally to be an intact and conscience-driven family. We condemn the degrading act carried out by the police as a blatant breach of the personal rights of individual family members and call for the Mayor of Bissingen, as well as the Office for Education of the District Authorities of Esslingen, to end these sanctions."

The American blog noted that several other homeschooling parents recently have been fined or imprisoned for brief jail terms for teaching their children at home. The blog reported that one mother spending a few days in jail for providing homeschooling for her child "ended up leading a Bible study for women who have begged her to come back." It reported another family was fined $2,250 and members were being attacked emotionally so that the father handed a nervous breakdown that landed him in a hospital. The family put their two children in a public school "but it was so awful, they pulled them out again . and put them in a public Catholic school."

It also contained reports that Waldemar Block, the father of nine, was arrested at his work earlier this month and jailed for 13 days, while Olga Block, his sister-in-law, was jailed for 10 days for not paying fines after she sent her children to a Christian school in Heidelberg. The Home School Legal Defense Association, the largest homeschooling group in the U.S. with more than 80,000 families, also has been working to raise attention in the international community to the plight of German homeschoolers, including several families in the Baden-Wurttemberg region. The group suggested contacting the German embassy, which had an answering machine attached to the telephone line when WND left a request for comment yesterday. The HSLDA said that contact is:

Wolfgang Ischinger Ambassador German Embassy 4645 Reservoir Road NW Washington, DC, 20007-1998 (202) 298-4000 or it can be e-mailed from its its website.

The U.S. organization also noted that homeschooling has been illegal in Germany probably since 1938 when Hitler banned it. It recently announced a campaign to address the persecution Christians in Germany are facing from education authorities. Ian Slatter, a spokesman for the HSLDA, said it was launched after a mother was arrested and jailed on criminal homeschooling counts. In that case, according to a report in the Brussels Journal, Katharina Plett was arrested and ordered to jail while her husband fled to Austria with the family's 12 children.

The latest police-state actions follow by only weeks a recent ruling from the European Human Rights Court that affirmed the German nation's ban on homeschooling. The Strasburg-based court addressed the issue on appeal from a Christian family whose members alleged their human rights to educate their own children according to their own religious beliefs are being violated by the ban. The specific case addressed in the opinion involved Fritz and Marianna Konrad, who filed the complaint in 2003 and argued that Germany's compulsory school attendance endangered their children's religious upbringing and promotes teaching inconsistent with the family's Christian faith. The court said the Konrads belong to a "Christian community which is strongly attached to the Bible" and rejected public schooling because of the explicit sexual indoctrination programs that the courses there include.

The German court already had ruled that the parental "wish" to have their children grow up in a home without such influences "could not take priority over compulsory school attendance." The decision also said the parents do not have an "exclusive" right to lead their children's education. The family had appealed under the European Convention on Human Rights statement that: "No person shall be denied the right to education. In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions." But the court's ruling said, instead, that schools represent society, and "it was in the children's interest to become part of that society. "The parents' right to education did not go as far as to deprive their children of that experience," the ruling said.

Source



GRADE-SCHOOL FAILURE IN ENGLAND

Nearly a fifth of five-year-olds cannot write their own name and fewer than half have reached their expected level of learning, official figures show. An assessment of 535,000 five-year-olds in England found that, after a year of schooling, 91,000 could not write simple words such as “mum” or “cat” or hold a pencil correctly. The number of children who had mastered basic literacy and numeracy was much lower than last year, as was the number of children who reached expected levels of physical development. Boys proved worst at completing writing tasks, with 21 per cent unable to write key words compared with 11 per cent of girls.

About 21,420 children could not count to ten and 39 per cent could not hear or pronounce the short vowel sounds in words such as “pen”, “hat” and “dog”, while 17 per cent could not recognise or name all the letters of the alphabet. Overall, 44.6 per cent of five-year-olds reached the expected level of improvement after their first year of primary school, a drop of 3.2 percentage points on 2005.

The Department for Education and Skills has defined a “good level of development” as children achieving six or more points across 13 scales in areas such as personal, social and emotional development, reading, writing and maths. However, the figures suggest that the Government will fall short of its target of 53 per cent of five-year-olds in England reaching this level by 2008. Ministers blamed the fall in attainment on tougher marking while teachers said that comparisons between years were spurious.

Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: “Last year’s assessments were riddled with difficulties as teachers came to terms with the new scheme. “The assessments are qualitative judgments on such issues as a child’s personal development and cannot be presented as simple numerical results or in league table form.”

Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, said in April that the new targets would mean that 30,000 more children would reach expected levels. She said that the Government would like to see “faster gains in our most deprived communities” in England, but figures for local authorities were unavailable yesterday. The Education Department said that the public reaction to its curriculum for toddlers, the Early Years Foundation Stage, had been enthusiastic. The framework has a play-based approach that is designed to integrate quality learning and care. Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister, said that the framework would improve the learning abilities of five-year-olds and enable “them to reach their full potential, just as any good parent would seek to do at home”.

Source

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

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"

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

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27 October, 2006

HUGE RISE IN BRITISH PUBLIC SCHOOL SPENDING HAS SEEN STANDARDS DECLINE

So proposals for vast new spending on State education are greeted with skepticism even on the Left. They rightly fear that it would discredit all government spending

Gordon Brown's pledge to raise state school funding to the same level as that enjoyed by private schools has been criticised by a committee of MPs. The Education Select Committee's investigation of public expenditure in education also condemned a lack of transparency and cautioned that taxpayers might not wish to pay for state schools in future unless ministers can demonstrate that the resources are being used wisely. This lack of information, the Labour-dominated committee said, would not only be bad for taxpayers but could also "undermine the electorate's willingness to fund public services".

But the MPs reserved their harshest criticism for the Chancellor's commitment in this year's Budget to raise the level of funding per pupil in state schools from 5,000 to 8,000 pounds, the average spending per head in independent schools. Although Mr Brown was widely praised for his pledge in March, The Times quickly established from Treasury sources that this was only an aspiration. After questioning Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, and David Bell, his top official, the MPs said that it remained to be seen how the aspiration would be backed up with funding.

The select committee said that it was hard to judge when this pledge could ever be met. "Without a timescale it is hard to be certain when the target would be met," the report stated. "The debate on what is the appropriate level of per-pupil funding is important. Future policy announcements should have a more substantial basis."

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has since estimated that it would cost 17 billion to close the gap between the public and private sectors and that this would not be achieved until at least 2014.

The MPs also warned that there was no way to demonstrate whether the Government's increased funding for schools had been effective and had succeeded in providing better education or more highly qualified students. Since Labour came into office, public spending on education has risen from 21.43 billion in 1997-08 to 34.35 billion in 2005-06. But recent figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that only 41 per cent of pupils achieved five grades A* to C in English, maths and science and only 26 per cent of pupils got good grades in English, maths, science and a language - a fall of 4 percentage points from 2002.

Last night a spokesman said that the Government had invested record amounts in education, and "as a result we are seeing more schools with more teachers and better results". "Investment in education is a key priority for the Government. As the Chancellor said in his Budget speech, the Government's long-term aim is that we raise average investment per pupil to today's private school level. That position remains unchanged."

Source



Deconstructive criticism

The evidence upholds the belief that the teaching of English has fallen victim to political correctness, writes Australia's Kevin Donnelly

Geoff Masters, head of the Australian Council for Educational Research and the person in charge of the commonwealth-funded inquiry into state and territory Year 12 subjects, argues concerns about school curriculums being politically correct are without foundation. In relation to senior school English -- in particular, the NSW Higher School Certificate course -- Masters concludes there is no left-wing bias and that federal Education Minister Julie Bishop's concerns about the cultural Left taking the long march through the education system are misplaced.

Masters is wrong. As those who have followed the articles in these pages about the effect of critical literacy on English teaching and the way the theory approach of teaching has destroyed the moral and aesthetic quality of the literary canon know, there is ample evidence of how English has been politicised.

In NSW, students are made to deconstruct texts such as Shakespeare's Othello and Tim Winton's Cloudstreet from a Marxist, feminist, postmodern and post-colonial perspective. The Board of Studies English stage 6 annotated professional readings support document, designed to tell teachers how English should be taught, is awash with the kind of gobbledygook associated with theory.

In opposition to the more traditional approach to literature, NSW teachers are urged to adopt what is termed "critical-postmodernist pedagogy'', described as: "This involves drawing on and seeking to integrate into a dynamic, strategic synthesis the currently evolving and ever mutating discourses of critical pedagogy, cultural studies and postmodernism, within which notions of popular culture, textuality, rhetoric and the politics and pleasures of representation become the primary focus of attention in both 'creative' and 'critical' terms.''

As argued by writer Sophie Masson, the result is that good students jump through the hoops as they know what has to be done, while less able students drown in the arcane and turgid jargon associated with the new English.

The Victorian and Queensland English studies are also prime examples of the impact of the cultural Left on the classroom. The Victorian study asks students to analyse texts from a range of perspectives. These include: "Marxist, feminist, psychoanalytical, reader-response, deconstructionist (and) postmodern''. In a similar vein, the Queensland literature syllabus favours an approach that argues that all texts are inherently political as "texts play their part in upholding or challenging prevailing world views and compete with one another to persuade readers to accept versions on offer''.

Western Australia, not to be outdone, in addition to making students respond to texts "using different theoretical frameworks [for example, Marxist, post-colonial, feminist, psychoanalytic]'' and checking "for consistency, contradiction and the privileging of some ideas over others'', argues that there is nothing universal or profound about classic literature.

The basis for this is that "the concept of the literary is socially and historically constructed rather than objective or self-evident'' and "texts and reading practices enact particular ideologies, playing an important role in the production and maintenance of social identities and reinforcing or contesting dominant ideological understandings''.

Within the new English, as a result of theory, William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is criticised for its emphasis on stereotypical heterosexual love and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for being inherently racist. Even worse, students' appreciation of literature is destroyed as they spend time analysing mobile-phone messages, graffiti and Australian Idol.

Evidence that senior school English courses have fallen victim to politically correct theory is easy to find. The reasons the cultural Left has targeted English are also clear. Professional associations such as the Australian Association for the Teaching of English are staunch advocates of critical literacy and theory. Both the AATE and sympathetic teacher academics such as Allan Luke, Wayne Sawyer and Bill Green argue English teaching must be used to transform society.

Says Luke: "We would argue that text analysis and critical reading activities should lead on to action with and against the text. That is, there is a need to translate text analysis into cultural action, into institutional intervention and community projects.''

Source

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

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"

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

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26 October, 2006

U.S. LIMITS ON SAME-SEX SCHOOLS TO EASE

The Bush administration is giving public schools wider latitude to teach boys and girls separately in what is considered the biggest change to coed classrooms in more than three decades.

After a two-year wait, the Education Department issued final rules Tuesday detailing how it will enforce the Title IX landmark anti-discrimination law: Under the change taking effect Nov. 24, local school leaders will have discretion to create same-sex classes for subjects such as math, a grade level or even an entire school.

Education officials initially proposed the rules in early 2004, pointing in part to some U.S. research suggesting better student achievement and fewer discipline problems in single-sex classes including math and foreign languages. After receiving 5,600 public comments, education officials said they were moving forward with the plan with some wording tweaks and assurances from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that it was legally sound. Since current rules began in 1975, single-sex classes have been allowed only in limited cases, such as sex education courses or gym classes involving contact sports:

Under the new rules, schools could separate genders for a variety of subjects if they believed it offered educational benefits, such as promoting greater student comfort or higher attendance. In all cases, enrollment in a single-sex class would be voluntary.

If a school creates a single-sex class, it would not be required to offer the other gender its own similar class, but it would have to offer a coed version of it.

The rules also make it easier to create single-sex schools, as long as the district can demonstrate that it also provides coed schools with "substantially equal" benefits to the excluded sex.

Source



British pupils 'cannot locate UK'



One in five British children cannot find the UK on a map of the world, a magazine's research suggests. National Geographic Kids said it also found fewer than two thirds of children were able to correctly locate the US. The magazine, which questioned more than 1,000 six to 14-year-olds, said it found several London children did not know they lived in England's capital.

Teachers' union the NASUWT said the findings were "nonsense" and did not reflect staff and pupils' hard work.

National Geographic Kids also discovered 86% of the children interviewed failed to identify Iraq and one in 10 could not name a single continent. Boys seemed to show a slightly better geographical knowledge than girls, with 65% able to locate a number of countries around the world compared with 63% of girls.

Scottish children appeared to be the most geographically aware with 67% able to point out the most countries, out of England, the US, France, China and Iraq, on a world map.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said the findings were "rather frightening". "These results underline the need for education to concentrate on the essentials. "How are children going to be able to get as much out of their life if they fail to have an understanding of the shape of the world?"

The Department for Education and Skills said geography was a compulsory subject on the National Curriculum for five to 14-year-olds. A spokesman said all 14-year-olds should be taught to use atlases and globes, as well as learning about places and environments in the world.

Chris Keates, general secretary of the NASUWT, said: "The constant desire for groups to produce statistics to do down the English education system is quite appalling and does nothing to recognise the excellent work of children and staff."

The magazine carried out the study to mark its UK launch and highlight "gaps in children's geographical knowledge". Environmentalist David Bellamy said the world was still an undiscovered place for many children. "Making geography fun and exciting is so important because it makes children aware of the importance of caring for the environment and, by learning about the world, it helps bring other people's worlds and cultures closer to their own."

Source



Bishop attacks British faith schools plan

Plans for new faith schools in England to admit up to 25% of pupils from other religions "must be resisted", the Archbishop of Birmingham has said. The most Rev Vincent Nichols described the plans as "insulting" and "divisive" and has urged the head teachers of Catholic schools to voice their fears.

The plans were introduced in an amendment to the Education and Inspections Bill last week. The government has said schools are in a position to prevent social division.

Education Secretary Alan Johnson met with representatives from the UK's major religious groups on Monday for a so-called "inclusion summit" to discuss the role faith schools can play in improving relations between the faiths. The Department for Education and Skills said the meeting had been productive and Mr Johnson had made it clear that the amendment would only apply to new faith schools. He also explained that where there is local opposition, a local authority will need the consent of the education secretary to approve a new faith school with fewer than 25% of non-faith admissions.

The Church of England has said its new schools will admit up to 25% of pupils from outside the faith - but said other religions should not be expected to offer the same commitment. But the amendment has met with opposition from Muslim, Jewish and Catholic groups.

Writing in the Telegraph newspaper, the archbishop said coercive measures by the government would not win co-operation and branded them "ill-thought out, unworkable and contradictory of empirical evidence". He said Catholic schools on average welcome 30% of pupils from other faiths or none, and they were likely to have better academic records and less likely to encounter bullying or racism. He added that the government appears to hold the view that, left to themselves, Catholic schools would be divisive. "Since the evidence suggests the opposite, I can only assume that this view rises from muddled thinking or prejudice," he wrote. He warned: "The introduction of 'admissions requirements' is a Trojan horse, bringing into Catholic schools those who may not only reject its central vision but soon seek to oppose it." The way forward, he said, was a "mutually respectful co-operation" between faith groups and authorities. But this amendment, he warned "seems to signal an alternative and deeply divisive step. It has to be resisted."

Last week, he wrote to the head teachers of 2,075 secondary and primary Roman Catholic schools urging them to write to their MPs to voice their concerns. He has also called for talks between the government and the Catholic church.

Rabbi James Kennard, head teacher at King Solomon High School in Ilford, Essex, shared his view, saying Jewish schools had not been able to explain their position. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, he said: "The Jewish school is the traditional institution where a youngster's Jewish identity is shaped, through an all-embracing ethos that runs alongside, and integrates with, the educational requirements of the country where Jews are living. "The Jewish community is small, needs to maintain its distinct identity and ethos and has no interest in spreading its message to others." He added that when people have a good grounding in their religion, they tend to be able to participate in wider society.

The Department for Education said it welcomed the steps faith groups have already taken to improve community cohesion and said they were talking to them about how to build on this

Source

***************************

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"

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

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25 October, 2006

Teachers who raise scores may get bonuses

This may do some good but not much. It won't make dumb teachers smart or undisciplined kids better behaved

The Bush administration is handing out money for teachers who raise student test scores, the first federal effort to reward classroom performance with bonuses. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings planned to announce the first of 16 grants, worth $42 million, including $5.5 million for Ohio, on Monday. The government has not announced the other grant winners. Using the old-fashioned incentive of cash, President Bush's program encourages schools to set up pay scales that reward some teachers and principals more than others. Those rewards are to be based mainly on test scores, but also on classroom evaluations during the year. The grants are also aimed at luring teachers into math, science and other core fields.

Teachers normally are paid based on their years in class and their education. Yet more school districts are experimenting with merit pay, and now the federal government is, too. It is not always popular. Teachers' unions generally oppose pay-for-performance plans, saying they do not fairly measure quality and do nothing to raise base teacher pay. Spellings, though, says the money will be a good recruiting tool. The most qualified teachers tend to opt for affluent schools, she told The Associated Press. "These grants will work to fix this by encouraging and rewarding teachers for taking the tough jobs in the schools and classrooms where our children need them the most," she said.

One of the first grants is $5.5 million to the Ohio Department of Education, to be shared among schools in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo. The rest of the grants will go out over the next two weeks to three weeks - falling right before the Nov. 7 elections in which a reeling Republican Party is eager for good news. The Education Department says the election had no bearing on the timing. The grant application process began in May, and the review was done in the early fall, officials said. The grants will range from about $1 million to $30 million. That is small time for the federal government, but can be enough to offer a meaningful pay bump at the local level.

Yet done in isolation, performance pay "have very little chance of having impact," said Rob Weil, deputy director of educational issues for the American Federation of Teachers. "You have to prepare teachers properly," Weil said. "You have to have mentoring and professional development and professional standards. If you don't have those things, it doesn't matter what you do with compensation." The average teacher salary was paid $47,800 in 2005.

Bush has been promoting the "Teacher Incentive Fund" in his recent speeches. "It's an interesting concept, isn't it?" he said during a school visit in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 5. "If your measurement system shows that you're providing excellence for your children, it seems to make sense that there ought to be a little extra incentive." In the Ohio districts, for example, school leaders plan to pay between $1,800 to $2,000 to hundreds of teachers. Bush, seeking $500 million from Congress, got $99 million for the program this year. More than half of that money will be carried over until next year, though, because most of the applications did not qualify. The department expects to accept applications again soon.

The agency looked for pay plans that outline how schools will get support from teachers and the broader community. That is considered essential to keeping any merit plan afloat. Schools with higher numbers of poor children get priority consideration. Joel Packer, a lobbyist for the National Education Association, said no teacher-pay plan should be best based just on the test scores of students. A one-time exam does not measure teacher effectiveness, he said, and teachers in subjects such as math may not even have testing. As for the timing, Packer said: "It's always a little suspicious when you have these things come out just before the election, allowing members of Congress in tight races to get some money for their district."

Source



Australia: History teaching replaced by lying propaganda

A federal Government senator is demanding the withdrawal of a school library book which paints his political hero and Australia's longest-serving prime minister as a tyrant. Sir Robert Menzies is listed alongside the likes of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, Cambodian ruler Pol Pot and the deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the children's reference book 100 Greatest Tyrants, which is used by students at a Mount Isa high school. Senator George Brandis has slammed the book, by British author Andrew Langley, describing it as offensive and inappropriate for history studies in any Australian school.

"Of course it's absurd," Senator Brandis said. "It introduces students to the notion that there is a kind of moral equivalence between some of the most evil men in the history of the world and an Australian political leader who has been a beacon of liberal democracy."

The book, published a decade ago, lists Menzies among 100 so-called tyrants, right after the notorious Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong. Also listed are ruthless conqueror Genghis Khan, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and Chilean ruler Augusto Pinochet. The 110-page volume is part of the library collection at Mount Isa's Good Shepherd Catholic College, where even the school's principal Bernard Durie has admitted the book is flawed. "Obviously it's twaddle to suggest Menzies was a tyrant in the same class as Attila the Hun and that crowd," Mr Durie said. But he has refused to remove the book from the library, describing it as a useful resource for generating debate and critical thinking skills among students.

The Queensland Teachers' Union has backed the school's decision, accusing Senator Brandis of stepping over the line by calling for the book to be withdrawn. "I think that what he's on about is a dangerous censorship practice," said Lesley McFarlane, the union's assistant secretary for research. "I thought the days of burning books were gone."

Source

***************************

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"

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

***************************



24 October, 2006

DELIBERATE EROSION OF ACADEMIC STANDARDS PLANNED IN BRITAIN

Universities should drop entry requirements by up to two A level grades for students from "disadvantaged" backgrounds in order to widen participation, according to a government-commissioned study. Admissions tutors should lower the bar for pupils in care, those attending poorly-performing schools, those who suffer from long-term disability or sickness and those who have to look after sick relatives, it said. The tutors should also collaborate with each other to ensure that more deprived children enter the top universities.

Academics at Leeds University found that while most universities had a programme to encourage more applications from working-class backgrounds, systems varied and only a few hundred were recruited annually by this route.

The study, published tomorrow, follows the release of Ucas figures last week that showed that 5,400 fewer students from "lower-income backgrounds" had started university this year, amid fears of increasing debt over higher fees. The authors of the study praised those universities that chose pupils on the basis of their potential, even if their grades were lower than the entry requirements. "We know of heavily oversubscribed courses where admissions tutors have made offers of an A and two Bs to impressive applicants in disadvantaged circumstances who have demonstrated appropriate personal qualities, while rejecting other applicants with three predicted As," they wrote. "Admissions tutors prepared to do this have our strong support."

The researchers acknowledged fears that students being turned away with higher grades could mount legal challenges, but pointed out that most disadvantaged students admitted on this basis showed "no significant differences in their referral and withdrawal rates as compared with the university average".

Paul Sharp, co-author of Opportunity and Equity: Developing a Framework for Good Practice in Compact Schemes, said that universities put a lot of effort into widening participation, but needed to publicise it more and share good practice. He refused to endorse a compulsory scheme of lowering grades.

In 2003, the Government's White Paper on Higher Education pointed out that young people from the professional classes were "over five times more likely to enter higher education than those from unskilled backgrounds".

The next year, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the proportion of state students decreased in 14 of the 19 leading Russell Group universities, with only 53.4 per cent of Oxford admissions coming from state schools. Geoff Parks, director of admissions at Cambridge, said that the report set out good principles but threw up several "potential minefields". Although he supported sharing good practice, there also came a point when colleges competed for the best students, he said. Under the Cambridge Special Access scheme, the university already accepted students with lower grades, he said. "But at the moment there needs to be a very large disadvantage to make it a B rather than an A," he said. "Unless we move to a system where the offers could be more finely graduated, it would be very difficult to make those adjustments."

An aide to Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, said that he favoured the idea of universities assessing an applicant's potential and awaited the report with interest.

Source



British schools as Orwell's "Big Brother"

No matter where you are, your school will see you and punish you for deviance

Three pupils were expelled last week from St George's School Harpenden, a prestigious state boarding school in Hertfordshire, for smoking cannabis during the summer holidays. But should schools be disciplining children for what goes on beyond the school gate?

Harpenden is an affluent commuter town. Its leafy roads and traditional high street do not point to an endemic drugs problem bought on by social exclusion, especially not involving St George's pupils where `there is a sense of real purpose and harmony based on Christian principles and our traditions,' according to the headmaster, Norman Hoare.

Rumours of drug abuse surfaced this autumn and an investigation was launched by the school. The subsequent expulsions were based on interviews held by St George's. Whilst cannabis use is illegal, the police told me that they would not be taking any action after concluding that there was too little evidence to pursue the matter.

Norman Hoare told BBC News: `The school has a duty to uphold the law and protect all students but none of our investigations showed that the drugs had been on our premises. The activities took place after school or at weekends and some of it started in July. That's one of the reasons we acted very quickly.'

Hoare's ideas on the boundaries of school authority are not shared by everyone. One angry parent contacted spiked, even though his children were not involved: `At what point does the school's jurisdiction end? I am completely opposed to the control of my children outside of school hours.' When I asked Norman Hoare why he had expelled students on the basis of drug use outside of school term, he replied that `the pupils who join the school are aware of our drugs policy'. However, his actions seem to go beyond the policy stated on the school's website: `A period of fixed term exclusion [ie, suspension] from school would normally be the penalty for involvement in purchase, possession, or consumption of illegal drugs or substance of abuse while under school jurisdiction.'

Events at St George's contrast with a case heard by the High Court in September. A school in Birmingham had its decision to expel two pupils for cannabis use overturned because their expulsion contravened government guidelines on exclusion for minor drug offences. These pupils were caught smoking on school grounds and some kind of punishment by the school was to be expected. But the St George's pupils were not caught by the police or anyone from the school; they were allegedly using cannabis outside of school term and were not dealing drugs.

St George's sees the alleged minor drug use of a few of its pupils outside school hours as its responsibility - parents are not to be trusted. In doing so, the headmaster was only following the lead of the New Labour government; it does not trust private individuals. The Anti-Social Behaviour Act of 2003 gives head teachers the authority to fine parents and issue parenting orders forcing them to attend counselling. Where once schools stood for moral guidance, they are now expected to play a much more interventionist and authoritarian role. As David Perks has noted elsewhere on spiked: `the government sees schools as a blunt weapon in a war against what it sees as feckless parents and feral children. Education policy has become part of a wider attempt to control people's behaviour.'

So how should we deal with children who experiment with drugs and why do they do it? I asked Patrick Turner, writer, lecturer and former drugs worker: `The same as we have traditionally done with alcohol. A degree of indulgence towards the desire to experiment and enjoy adult pleasures seasoned with a sensitivity to the circumstances and motives of the individuals concerned. Put simply, the risk associated with a stable, self-aware young person who has lots of support messing around with dope is not the same as that posed to the young person, say, in local authority care with a history of poor mental health.'

In fact, government guidelines on expulsion seem to fit well with Turner's statement: `Exclusion should only be considered for serious breaches of the school's behaviour policy, and should not be imposed without a thorough investigation unless there is an immediate threat to the safety of others in the school or the pupil concerned. It should not be used if alternative solutions have the potential to achieve a change in the pupil's behaviour and are not detrimental to the whole school community.' So, why has this school gone further? Norman Hoare had not heard about the Birmingham case in which the High Court ruled these guidelines took precedence over school decisions. I suspect when the St George's board of governers examines the expulsion they may well overturn it in light of the Birmingham case.

This episode is indicative of the mixed messages from government about drugs, and the contradictory positions they adopt. The government's downgrading of cannabis to a class `C' drug has added to the mess since the law itself is a combination of `hard' and `soft' signals. So while the maximum sentence for possession will fall from five years to two, penalties for adults supplying cannabis will remain at a maximum of 14 years compared to the five years for other class `C' drugs.

There is no right for children to experiment with cannabis, but it would be better to have childhood experimentation dealt with in a constructive manner. That means schools should not overstep the boundaries of their authority, and government should not politicise and proceduralise matters that are best dealt with informally.

Source

***************************

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"

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

***************************



23 October, 2006

Charter school growth after success in California?

Charter schools outperformed their traditional public school counterparts on standardized tests in 2006, and educators in charter and traditional schools are hoping they can use the results to improve education everywhere. Not only did charter schools outperform traditional schools, according to a report released earlier this month by the California Charter Schools Association, test scores among charter schools that have been in existence for five years or longer tend toward the top.

All such the "mature" charters in the county scored 800 or better out of a possible 1,000. "It's important to recognize which charter schools are mature, because we always say that it takes four or five years for a charter school to maximize its potential," said Caprice Young, California Charter Schools Association president. "And if you look at the data, you'll see that the mature charter schools are doing their job."

For San Joaquin County's 13 charter schools, the median score was 729, with nearly half of them scoring 800 or better. The goal for all California schools is 800, according to the California Department of Education. University Public School in Stockton, run by Aspire Charter Schools, scored 868 to lead the pack. San Joaquin's traditional public schools in 16 districts scored a median of 721, or eight points lower then the median of the charters, according to the Department of Education. Lodi Unified's Elkhorn Elementary School in north Stockton stood head and shoulders above charters and noncharters, with an API score of 989. Elkhorn is a Gifted and Talented Education program campus, however, where students must apply for acceptance.

Young attributes charter schools' higher test scores to their ability to be more innovative in teaching methods, she said, while traditional schools are mandated by state education officials to spend money only on state-approved curriculum and materials. Unlike private schools, charter schools must accept any interested student. If enrollment becomes competitive because of a limited number of seats, a public lottery must be conducted to fill them. "A charter does have flexibility, and it's held accountable for the results," Young said. "It's accountable, because there's always the threat that the charter can be shut down if you don't perform. The threat of closure leads to an increase of focus and accountability." Teachers at charter schools often are compensated based on their performance or their schools' performance. That trend is a stark contrast from traditional public schools, where tenure, experience and training are normal requirements for pay raises and job security.

Young suggests the success of charters has caught the eye of state education officials, and in San Joaquin County, many school superintendents agree. "Competition isn't always a bad thing," Lodi Unified School District Superintendent Bill Huyett said. "We could learn from each other. Some good, friendly competition can be good for the system." For Huyett and Lodi Unified, the relationship with several Aspire Charter Schools in north Stockton has created that feeling of friendly competition. Huyett has complimented Aspire consistently and has been a proponent of introducing some of the educational methods used by the charters in the traditional schools. "I think it would be good for the state to learn from charter schools," Huyett said of charter schools' freedom from many state regulations that strap traditional schools over curriculum and materials. "There could be some deregulation. The state can see that it's working for the charters, so why not make it available for everybody?"

Lodi Unified, for example, has started a process it calls the "cycle of inquiry." The cycle helps administrators and teachers identify students who are struggling in the classroom and in which areas of learning they are struggling. "We learned that from Aspire," Huyett said. "And we're also looking at going with smaller high school models, the way some charters do. We think they're onto something there."

Source



Researchers Say Texas Inflates Graduation Rate

Texas grossly inflates its high school graduation numbers, masking critical dropout figures, according to studies to be presented Friday at a Rice University conference. Academicians from institutions including Rice, Harvard, Stanford and Johns Hopkins, as well as other experts in the field, say their goal is to bring clarity to the problem, explain the implications for the state and nation, and lay the groundwork for progress. Linda McNeil with Rice's Center for Education told KTRH News that problems can be seen in the numbers. "We starting noticing that the ninth grade population would be, very often, half of the student population — maybe 1,000 kids. And yet, these schools are graduating just 200 to 300 kids," McNeil said.

Many factors are responsible for the crisis, McNeil said, including an over-emphasis in the importance of test scores and rigid attendance policies, "which were meant to sort of create a more stable structure for their education ... really works against our poorest kids … who have, sort of, the most complicated responsibilities in their families." McNeil said the university is bringing education experts, superintendents, lawmakers and minority activists together at Rice to address the wide gap between the dropout numbers they've found and what the Texas Education Agency reports. The state's official graduation rate hovers around 85 percent, but the researchers note less than three in five black and Hispanic students achieve diplomas in Texas.

Chris Swanson, director of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, was part of the four-year research project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The research found Texas' graduation rate to be 66.8 percent — much lower than the 84.2 percent the state reports — and Swanson said, “The graduation crisis is much more urgent than we might understand just based on what the TEA presents.” He noted that the Lone Star state isn't the only one that exaggerates its numbers. Swanson's numbers are almost identical to what other independent researchers have found using various methodologies, the speakers said. Swanson used enrollment-based estimates; others have looked at individual student records and unduplicated data from the state. Further, Swanson pointed out that the inflation increases in larger districts. Dallas has a 46 percent graduation rate, his study found, not the state's figure of 81 percent. The inflation was also more prominent when looking at minority and poor students.

Part of the disparity lies in the differing definitions for a "dropout." The state figures mentioned, from the 2002-2003 school year, do not count as dropouts students who have enrolled in a GED program, who have passed coursework but not the required state test, who transferred to another Texas public school but never showed up for class, or who are missing.

The state will begin including the first three of those categories in its calculations, starting this school year — but not because it found fault with its previous method, a spokesperson said, but rather to align it with the definitions used by the federal No Child Left Behind law and National Center for Education Statistics.

Texas is one of the few states to have a system that tracks individual students, a resource many other states want to emulate. “The lesson for Texas is that it doesn't matter how good the data collection is. If you're not reporting in an accurate, transparent way, you wind up with very misleading information,'' said Dan Losen, a senior education law and policy associate with Harvard's Civil Rights Project.

Source

***************************

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"

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

***************************



22 October, 2006

BRITISH SCHOOL INCAPABLE OF DISCIPLINING A 5 -YEAR OLD GIRL

She's black, you see, so just touching her would be a huge crime

A girl aged 5 has been permanently excluded from her school for attacking a teacher and a classmate. Tamara Howard's mother has been told that her daughter cannot return to the 300-pupil Old Moat School, in Withington, Manchester, because her presence is too disruptive.

The decision to expel the child was taken after she was excluded for 15 days for an alleged attack on a teacher and classmate on September 20. The school said that she hit the teacher on the arm, leaving cuts and bruises, after she was asked to clear away some toy bricks. On an earlier occasion she was said to have assaulted six members of staff.

The education authority said that it had offered intensive help to the pupil, who joined the infants from the school's nursery in January. Angela Howard, 41, a single mother who has two grown-up children, is hoping that the decision will be reversed. She said that the school had not given her enough time to address her child's behaviour and that she was excluded before there was a chance to get any help.

Source



The long march back to honesty in Australia's schools

No ideological agenda? Just who are the education unions kidding

[Federal] Education Minister Julie Bishop's call for a national curriculum and her criticism of ideologues in the education bureaucracies met a predictable wave of outrage. "How dare she", cried the teachers unions and their friends. Concerns about curriculum being politically correct, the argument goes, are simply a ploy used by conservative governments to maintain power. Pat Byrne, the head of the Australian Education Union, reflected this view when she argued last year: "The challenge for us is to frame our position in a way that can successfully counter the culture war that is currently being fought ... This is not a good time to be progressive in Australia; or for that matter anywhere else in the world!"

Never mind students being made to deconstruct the classics in terms of "theory". Never mind Australian history being taught from a black-armband view. And never mind geography being redefined in terms of deep environmentalism and multiculturalism. The late 1960s and early '70s was not only about Woodstock and moratoriums. That period was also about the Left's decision, drawing on the works of Marxists Antonio Gramsci and Pierre Bourdieu, to take control of society by taking "the long march through the institutions".

Bourdieu argues that education is a powerful tool used by those more privileged in society to consolidate their position. Based on the concept of cultural capital, the argument is that there is nothing inherently worthwhile about academic studies or the Western tradition. The Left's belief that the education system is simply a tool used by the capitalist class to reproduce itself explains much of what has happened since the early '70s. The much-criticised Victorian Certificate of Education developed during the '80s was based on premier Joan Kirner's belief that schools must be transformed as "part of the socialist struggle for equality, participation and social change, rather than an instrument of the capitalist system".

Meanwhile, teacher education became controlled by activists such as Doug White, Bill Hannan, Bob Connell, Dean Ashenden, Simon Marginson and Allan Luke. In a textbook widely set for education courses entitled Making the Difference, the argument is put: "In the most basic sense, the process of education and the process of liberation are the same. At the beginning of the 1980s it is plain that the forces opposed to that growth (have) become increasingly militant. In such circumstances, education becomes a risky enterprise. Teachers, too, have to decide whose side they are on."

Many of those students radicalised during the '60s and '70s went on to become teachers and bureaucrats and they identify education as a key instrument in overturning the status quo. For many, such as the AEU, the Australian Association for the Teaching of English and the Australian Curriculum Studies Association, education was, and continues to be, a key instrument to change society. In 1998, ACSA published Going Public: Education Policy and Public Education in Australia, described by Alan Reid as a manifesto outlining the "political strategies that might be employed to protect and enhance the social democratic values that lie at the heart of progressive aspirations about public education".

The impact of the cultural Left on education has been profound. Competition and failure are banned. Feminists attack traditional texts such as Romeo and Juliet as enforcing gender stereotypes. In history teaching, instead of focusing on significant historical events and figures and celebrating past milestones, the focus is on victim groups, such as women, migrants and Aborigines. Over the past 30 or so years schools have been pressured to adopt a leftist stance on issues as diverse as multiculturalism, the environment, the class war, peace studies, feminism and gender studies. Worse, the idea that education can be disinterested and that teachers should be impartial has given way to the argument that everything is ideological. Meanwhile, the teachers unions deny any agenda.

Source



Suddenly, vocational training back in vogue : Christian Science Monitor "Six years ago, as his 11th-grade classmates struggled with the college-application ritual, Toby Hughes tried to envision his future. A Georgia honors student with a 1350 SAT score, he knew he wanted to go into computer science, so he went to local computer companies and asked what they wanted in an employee. 'They told me I would be more marketable if I had practical technical training as opposed to theoretical academic training,' says Mr. Hughes. He began taking specialized computer-networking classes while still in high school, landed a $52,000 job after graduating, and now, at 24, makes well past that. Similar scenarios are repeating so often that the world of career technical training -- once known somewhat disparagingly as 'vocational training' -- is experiencing a renaissance in America. Enrollment in technical education soared by 57 percent -- from 9.6 million students in 1999 to 15.1 million in 2004, the US Department of Education reported to Congress."



Strange new love for "The Blob" : "In the eighties, Republicans talked of abolishing the federal Department of Education. In the nineties, they blocked President Clinton's quest for national education standards. Former Reagan education secretary William Bennett even dubbed America's bloated school monopolies 'the Blob.' But with the election of George W. Bush and the passage of his No Child Left Behind law in 2002, the 'party of limited government' apparently decided to stop worrying and love the Blob. And its appetite for federal control over the classroom continues to grow. A chorus of Republicans -- including Bennett himself, in a recent Washington Post op/ed -- is now calling for a national system of education standards and testing."

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

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"

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

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21 October, 2006

"Quality child care" unmasked in Wyoming!

Proponents of HB-92, The Quality Child Care bill will tell you that its goal is to create a "quality rating" system to allow childcare facilities to receive "incentive" payments from the Wyoming State Government. This sounds very innocent and worthy of the Wyoming Citizens' support until you truly see this program for what it is, universal preschool. The first time I read this bill, it became apparent that this was a tactic being used by the "It takes a village to raise a child" crowd, in a stealth effort to introduce universal preschool into Wyoming through deception and masking it as "Quality Child Care."

A web search on "universal preschools" yielded numerous similarities between universal preschools implemented in other states and Wyoming's HB92. A number of "battles" are currently taking place in other states over similar programs. These fellow anti-universal preschool soldiers have agreed that HB92 is universal preschool in disguise and have stated that HB92 is nothing more than an expansion of the Wyoming public schools into the preschool level. The proponents of this bill are masking their agenda of "universal preschool" because they know that the good people of this state would never stand for a Vermont/California-like universal preschool bill. Therefore their strategy is to hood-wink well intentioned legislators into believing their only concern is for the "quality" of childcare in Wyoming.

An article entitled "Universal Preschool," dated July 20, 2006 appearing on the Democratic Leadership Council web site lists the qualifications in detail for the Georgia and Oklahoma universal preschool programs. These qualifications are extremely similar to those of the Wyoming Quality Child Care Program. Both require teachers to work toward a CDA or Associates Degree in Childhood Development. Higher level "teachers" must acquire a Bachelors Degree in Education with Birth through eight year-old w/ early childhood endorsement or a Bachelors Degree in Family and Consumer Sciences w/ Childhood Development option. These CDA, Associate Degrees, and Bachelor Degrees are similar qualifications for Universal Preschool programs. This information draws only one conclusion, which is that Wyoming's "Quality Child Care" bill is indeed a masked version of Universal Preschool.

The most noteworthy member of the Democratic Leadership Council is former first lady and now Senator Hillary Clinton. Remember, she is behind the notion that "It takes a village (the government) to raise the children". The Democratic Leadership Council would have us to believe that Georgia's and Oklahoma's universal preschool programs are thriving. Yet numerous studies refute such a claim. Current studies show this type of program has not helped children gain anything beyond the third grade. Georgia and Oklahoma have had 4 year old preschools in place since 1993 and 1998 respectively. To their detriment, Quebec has also implemented universal preschool.

Georgia: Georgia's universal preschool program started out being funded by the state lottery. A Goldwater Institute report states that, after 10 years, Georgia's universal preschool program has served over 300,000 children at a cost of $1.15 billion, and children's test scores are unchanged according to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), which is considered the nation's report card.

Oklahoma: The NAEP also found that since Oklahoma implemented their Universal preschool Kindergarten that Oklahoma's test scores have not only not improved, but they have actually lost 4 percentage points and become the worst performer of all states at the fourth grade reading level between 1992 and 2005.

Quebec: According to the Reason Foundation Report, Quebec's attempt at a universal preschool program was originally supposed to cost $230 million over five years, but now gobbles $1.7 billion every year. Pierre Lefebvre, an economics professor at Universite du Quebec, has just completed a study comparing 4- to 5-year-olds in Quebec with kids elsewhere in Canada and found that Quebec kids have no better scores on the Peabody vocabulary test -- the most widely used indicator of school readiness.

The proponents of this bill are trying to implement and fund a program that has already been proven to be a failure elsewhere. Texas looked into a similar bill and requested The Texas Public Policy Foundation to do a feasibility study. This study, titled "The Early Bird Misses the Worm," January, 2006 concluded the following: "Commonly cited cost-benefit calculations result from flawed experiments that included only the most disadvantaged children, have never been replicated, and would be impractical for large-scale implementation. Positive `investment returns,' while questionable even for disadvantaged children, would be even less positive for children as a whole."

"Existing universal preschool programs have failed to demonstrate significant benefits, and some even exhibit adverse consequences." "An expanded government role would force many private providers out of the market, thereby limiting choices for consumers."

The Wyoming Quality Child Care Task Force is also basing its advocacy of their masked universal preschool program on a study prepared by the Rand Corporation. Recently the "Reason Foundation" did an analysis of the Rand Corporation's study and identified some major flaws. Quoting the Reason Foundation, "Using RAND's own data and alternative assumptions based on the studies they reference, it is easy to demonstrate that universal preschool generates losses of 25 to 30 cents for every dollar spent. And these losses are calculated before including any of the additional universal preschool program costs that RAND ignored in its analysis."

So now we have the evidence from previous attempts in other parts of the nation that implementing universal preschools or expanding public schools to 4 year olds or younger is not only not cost efficient, but is also not progressive or helpful enough beyond the third grade.

The proponents of Quality Child Care in Wyoming want the citizens to believe that their program will benefit our children well beyond the fourth grade and into their adult lives. This assumption is also based on faulty data used in the Rand Corporation's report. The Wyoming proponents fail to report that the reason the Rand's study seemed to offer such a positive result is because it was done in Chicago's inner city and included basic parenting classes. Therefore, the study does not give enough credit to the children doing well as a result of parental involvement, which in turn is due to the parenting classes provided to them. Rural Wyoming and inner city Chicago have very little in common. It is highly suspicious to use such data as validation for Wyoming's "Quality Child Care" program.

As a result of liberal social activism, the Universal Preschool trend is moving across the nation. In June of 2006 the people of California voted down Rob Reiner's Proposition 82, which was an attempt at just such a program. Recently, Massachusetts' Governor Mitt Romney vetoed a universal preschool program. And in 2002 the District of Columbia attempted to pass a mandatory pre-school bill for all three year-olds. The bill failed.

The costs of Universal Preschool are consistently and significantly underestimated, and the long-term saving "estimates" are based on irrelevant studies and purposefully refuse to take into account offsetting increased costs to the economy. It is safe to say that Wyoming should not expect to benefit at all from implementing such a program. In fact, this program for universal preschool, masked as "Quality Child Care" represents a potentially crushing, rapid expansion of the state's financial liability.

Source



HUGE BRITISH HIGH-SCHOOL FAILURE

Only a quarter of pupils obtained good GCSEs in the core subjects that many employers now regard as essential, according to figures released yesterday. The proportion of pupils achieving five GCSEs at grades A* to C this summer jumped by 1.8 percentage points to 58.1 per cent, the second biggest rise since 1997, the Department for Education said. But the figures also show that, after 11 years of compulsory schooling, just 45.1 per cent of pupils obtained five good GCSEs when English and mathematics were included, a rise of less than one percentage point on last year's figures. Only 41 per cent of pupils achieved grades A* to C in English, maths and science and just 26 per cent got good grades in English, maths, science and a language - a fall of four percentage points from 2002.

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, conceded that more needs to be done to boost attainment. "One child not reaching their full potential in one school is one too many," he said. Mr Knight also expressed "deep frustration" that the gap in performance between boys and girls had hardly narrowed. Although exam results for both sexes had continued to improve, "boys are now where girls were in 1999", he said.

The results, published yesterday by the Office for National Statistics, show that 53 per cent of pupils failed to get good grades in maths and English at GCSE. This rises to nearly 57 per cent among boys. However, Mr Knight added that the number of schools failing to equip at least a quarter of their pupils with five good passes in any subject had been cut to about one tenth of the rate of 1997. He also said that entries for a single science were now rising, with rises of 7 per cent each in chemistry and physics.

Nick Gibb, the Conservative schools spokesman, welcomed the increase in the headline figure for five or more good GCSEs, but expressed concern that the rise was being fuelled by schools entering more pupils for easier, or "softer", subjects such as sociology. "Because they want to reach the target of getting pupils through five or more GCSEs, some schools appear to be manipulating the results by focusing less on the essential subjects such as English and maths and putting more emphasis on softer subjects, where they think they can get higher grades," he said. "Most concerning of all is the drop in the proportion achieving good GCSEs in English, maths, science and a modern foreign language for the fifth year running, a proportion which has now reached a record low of just 26 per cent."

Anthony Thompson, head of skills at the employers' organisation CBI, said that employers remained frustrated by the lack of progress at GCSE level. "The recent action to try and increase take-up of foreign languages is a positive step, but the Government must ensure the science curriculum encourages further study," he said

Source



Australian teachers to get even dumber

A bare High School pass will soon make you eligible for training as a teacher

OP entry scores for teaching courses are set to fall further with a 10 per cent drop in applications for teaching courses at universities in the past year. Interest in nursing is up, however, with a 27 per cent increase in first preference applications for tertiary places in 2007.

The Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre announced yesterday that applications were stable. Almost 44,000 people had applied for 2007 places to date, similar to last year. QTAC Public Relations and Information Services manager Pat Smith said health courses were in strong demand. First preference applications were up 8.9 per cent in professions such as physiotherapy, optometry, speech pathology, occupational therapy and pharmacy.

The message about a skills crisis in engineering also appears to be getting through, with applications up more than 8 percent. Business and architecture applications were also slightly higher, up 2 per cent and 1.8 per cent.

"The biggest downward trends so far this year, following on a fall in interest last year, has come from food and hospitality, down 20 per cent, creative industries down 15.6 per cent, information technology down 14.1 per cent, and education down 10.5 per cent," Ms Smith said. People can apply well into December, but late fees apply.

Source

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

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"

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

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20 October, 2006

Business school ethics confusion

Over the past few years, and in reaction to high-profile corporate scandals, many MBA programs have added additional courses on business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR). But for people outside of the universities, the content of these courses remains obscure. What are future corporate managers being taught under the heading of `business ethics'? In what context are students instructed on their "social responsibilities" as businessmen and women? Is a good dose of Milton Friedman all that is required or is there a need for something more?

Consider Harvard Business School. The main CSR course at HBS, "Business Leadership and Strategic Corporate Citizenship" is an optional course offered during the 2nd year of the MBA program. The syllabus for this year's version is instructive. The professor introduces CSR by explaining the three reasons why corporate leaders ought to act in a socially responsible manner: (i) it helps the world and is simply the right thing to do; (ii) corporations have an obligation to "give back" to society because it is society that has given business the license to operate and to make profits in the first place; and (iii) it increases profits in the long run. "We endorse all three reasons for corporate social responsibility," says the professor, "but we will largely ignore the first two" because, well, because this is a university, not a high school debating club.

Now consider London Business School. The United Kingdom is arguably "ahead" of the U.S. in terms of adopting CSR policies (they have their own government website and minister responsible for CSR). So how does the UK's pre-eminent business school compare to Harvard in this regard? First, the LBS course, "Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility", is a required course that one takes at the very beginning of the MBA program. Second, as the title indicates, this course combines CSR with business ethics. As outlined in a 2004 syllabus, `business ethics' focuses more on the decisions of an individual manager with respect to the corporation, whereas CSR focuses more on the relationship between the corporation as a whole and the rest of society.

Like the Harvard course, the London course asks students to examine cases in recent business history in which CSR has been front and center, such as Nike and the sweatshop debate, or Shell oil and human rights in Africa. And while the readings generally support the `doing good is good business' view of CSR, students, at both institutions, are also exposed to the Milton Friedman view, as well as the conflict between being responsible to shareholders vs. being responsible to all of "society". So what's missing?

One problem is that this type of MBA course - and there are many others out there - attempts to deal with a political subject in a non-political way. For instance, the corporate campaigns waged by non-government organizations are a key reason why corporations come to embrace CSR in the first place: think McDonald's or Wal-Mart. Yet the technocratic point of view favored by business schools does not equip students with the ideological perspective that is necessary to understanding either CSR's supporters or its opponents.

In the case of the Harvard course, the professor endorsed an ideological position - I believe CSR is good because it helps the world - but would not allow that position to be examined. Instead, a student is to assume its validity from the start, and focus on how a business leader can most effectively manage its various "stakeholders", that is, shareholders, employees, suppliers and NGOs. The usual response, then, is that the professor should offer the Friedman position - the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits - as an alternative and to stress the role of the manager as agent of the owners of the corporation (the shareholders). But this, too, is insufficient. Under the Friedman view, a corporation can use every means within the law to increase profits for its shareholders, such as lobbying the government for special favors or to support new industry regulations that will fall most heavily on the competition.

Perhaps what is needed is to rethink the way `business ethics' is taught; such that an ethical businessman is one who is responsible not to shareholders or stakeholders, but to the free market system and its components, including private property rights, voluntary exchange and competition. Generally, this is the Friedman view, but broader. It suggests that the role of business is not only to follow the rules of the game, but to not use the law to alter the rules of the game in ways that impede the functioning of the market. Isn't this the true social responsibility of business?

Source



Is diversity enough?

An interesting Marxist article below. The argument is that preoccupation with affirmative action distracts from pursuit of economic equality and that affirmative action for the poor, not blacks, is needed:

The University of Illinois at Chicago, a struggling but ambitious public university in the heart of the city, celebrates its ethnically diverse student body as a great achievement. But Walter Benn Michaels, chairman of the university's English department, is unimpressed. The commitment of universities, corporations and other institutions to such diversity is "at best a distraction and at worst an essentially reactionary position," he argues in his new book, The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality.

Right-wing academics and pundits have built careers taking potshots at affirmative action, multiculturalism and identity politics-pursuits that some postmodern leftists see as the heart of radical politics. Michaels criticizes diversity politics from the left. His argument represents a fundamental and constructive challenge to conventional thinking about the most important issues facing our society. But it is also easily misunderstood. "I've been called a liberal racist more often than anything else in my life," he says, sitting in his office at the university's one towering office building, stylishly dressed in black jeans and t-shirt under a black window-pane jacket. He argues that the pursuit of diversity is based on a flawed understanding of humanity and stands as a roadblock to confrontation with the most basic injustices in society: "The trouble with diversity . is not just that it won't solve the problem of economic inequality; it's that it makes it hard for us to even see the problem."

Race, as virtually all modern anthropologists and geneticists agree, is not a scientifically valid concept. Obvious physical differences exist among humans, but the genetic variation within conventionally defined races is often greater than the variation among those races. Still, "race" is a concept that people use all the time with profound consequences, even if they can't define it. Race gets defined in ways that vary by time, geography and situation. Why, except for the peculiar American notion of blackness as being determined by one drop of "blood" of African ancestry, would a person of half African and half European genetic heritage, like Sen. Barack Obama, be called "black" rather than "white"-the latter a supposedly racial category that has grown more inclusive over many years?

People may talk instead about belonging to different ethnic cultures, borrowing the notion that anthropologists developed to describe the shared symbols and understanding of a distinct group of people, like the Navajo or Mbuti. But as valuable, if elusive, as this idea may be in studying tribal societies, Michaels contends that in our society it is another way to create biological categories that don't exist and thereby perpetuate an inaccurate and racist view of the world. In his zeal, however, Michaels unnecessarily jettisons entirely, rather than reformulates, the notion of culture.

As Michaels sees it, the social focus on achieving diversity diverts attention from the most fundamental injustice in our society-economic inequality. Moreover, the pursuit of diversity, especially in universities, gives legitimacy to the growing economic inequality of American society, because it protects the inheritance of economic privilege and does little to create opportunity for the poor, whether black or white.

Michaels, author of Our America and a writer about both literary theory and American literature, became interested in contemporary ideas of race and identity when studying American novels of the '20s. During that era, many public figures argued for the supremacy of what was seen as America's Anglo-Saxon or Nordic character. But by the '80s, Michaels notes, it was no longer publicly acceptable to advocate racial supremacy. Today, at a time when liberals and conservatives alike profess to abhor racism and prejudice, a new free-market fundamentalism-dubbed neo-liberalism-also claims that racism inefficiently interferes with the workings of a free labor market.

"The question is," Michaels says, "once we've given up the racism, and once we've given up to some degree the idea that races are a biological reality, why are we so attached to races? The first answer is that American society as a whole loves race. What I mean by that is that generally both right and left are-in neo-liberal terms-conservatives. The fundamental precepts of neoliberalism-the sense that in American society, effort and hard work are rewarded, that there's a rough justice in the distribution of wealth, and that inherited inequality is not a fundamental problem-are widely held views in American society. The two sets of ideas go together because one supports the other. "The vision that the primary problems of America are intolerance-sexism, racism-is completely compatible with the view that if we could just get rid of that intolerance and hatred and fear of the other, we'd be living in a fundamentally just society."

That has not happened. Economic inequality, increasing for decades, has accelerated in recent years. As a new edition of the Economic Policy Institute's The State of Working America points out, productivity has grown for the past four years but the median American family income has fallen. According to recent Commerce Department figures, wages and salaries (which include soaring executive paychecks) took the smallest share of national income since records started in 1929, and corporate profits took the largest share since 1950.

Blacks still fare worse on average than whites, but Michaels argues that the central problem here is exploitation of workers, not discrimination against blacks. And diversity is not the solution. He writes, "If you're worried about the growing economic inequality in American life, if you suspect that there may be something unjust as well as unpleasant in the spectacle of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, no cause is less worth supporting, no battle is less worth fighting than the ones we fight for diversity."

The obligation of diversity is to be nice to each other, Michaels writes, but the obligation of equality is to give up some money. Given the choice, diversity has the advantage of appearing to be morally righteous while at the same time preserving economic self-interest.

The notion of diversity took off after 1978 when the Supreme Court ruled in Bakke v. Board of Regents that the University of California could, as part of its legitimate interest in maintaining a diverse student body, take race into account when admitting students. According to Michaels, the response to the decision fostered the idea that universities should encourage students to appreciate the differences among races (or other identities more or less modeled on race). But it did not address the issue of economic inequality, which retards achievement for blacks proportionally more than for whites. Economic inequality makes it harder for poor (including poor black) students to be able to afford to go to college. What's more, inequality-in education or family social capital-also makes it harder for poor students, once they reach college age, to compete academically with students from affluent families.

Michaels asserts that diversity gives legitimacy to higher education as a supposed meritocracy, which is important in an era when everyone is told that a college education is the key to success. Admitting a diverse student body, especially for the most elite schools, helps to create the impression that upper middle-class and rich students have won this educational ticket to higher incomes fairly, not because they come from families that are well off.

"The problem with affirmative action is not (as is often said) that it violates the principles of meritocracy," he writes; "the problem is that it produces the illusion that we actually have a meritocracy. . Race-based affirmative action . is a kind of collective bribe rich people pay themselves for ignoring economic inequality." If class-based affirmative action replaced racial affirmative action at Harvard, and its student body reflected the country's income distribution, he calculates that more than half the students would be gone, most of them rich and white.

More here



More politicized "history" teaching

A group that believes the Howard Government could have prevented the deaths of 353 asylum-seekers in the sinking of the Siev X in 2001 is on the verge of selling a case study to schools for use in modern history classes. Year 11 students would be asked to answer whether the drownings were the result of the federal Government's policies as part of the case study, prompting allegations that students were being steered towards a "politically correct" conclusion.

Modern History students would study a number of disputed claims, including whether or not the Australian navy sabotaged the boat before it left Indonesia, if the Siev X Secondary School's Case Study Committee does sell the case study to schools.

The principal of St Aloysius College in Sydney, Father Chris Middleton, told The Australian yesterday the school was considering using the program, to be launched in federal parliament today by child psychologist Steve Biddulph.

Students at schools that decide to use the case study will view primary source documents and be asked: "Was the sinking of the Siev X and subsequent loss of life preventable?" Students would also be asked to describe how statements by a former immigration officer and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer about whether the government officials sabotaged boats "contradict each other". The case study relies heavily on the documentary film Punished not Protected and two books - A Certain Maritime Incident and Dark Victory - which are highly critical of the Government, prompting criticism that the proposal is biased.

Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said the material was "an outrageous attempt to disguise a political agenda as school curriculum". "It is a bizarre mix of unfounded allegations and rumour presented as fact, and is clearly intended to influence the opinions of school children rather than educate them with a factual version of events," Ms Bishop said. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said students should be "presented with the facts as we know them rather than any biased presentation".

Siev X Case Study spokesman Don Maclurcan, who is studying for his PhD in nanotechnology, said the case had polarised people and so would sharpen students' analytical skills. "I hope that students would come out of this with a greater knowledge of how government works, what our policies are in terms of immigration and refugees, and a knowledge of things that have happened in relation to our borders in the last five years," Mr Maclurcan said. He said the organising committee had "made every effort to set aside our own conclusions in order to assemble a balanced set of reading materials that present the many viewpoints offered". He said the material was developed "in consultation with the NSW Boards of Studies" but the board denied this yesterday.

The director of the National Centre for History Education at Monash University, associate professor Tony Taylor, said recent events were difficult to tackle in the classroom. "These debates can become more emotional than rational. Skilled teachers can deal with this successfully but it does take a lot of experience," he said. "As for conspiracy theories, it's always difficult to prove a negative; that is, to prove that there isn't a conspiracy."

Education critic Kevin Donnelly slammed the case study, saying it implied a "predetermined answer" about the tragedy. "Students are being directed towards a politically correct response that it could have been prevented and that the Government is responsible," he said. "This is just another attempt at an issues or theme approach to history which quite rightly has been condemned as failing to give students a comprehensive understanding of the background and overall narrative."

But Nick Ewbank, president of the History Teachers Association, backed the case study. [He would] "All history is about the weighing of evidence and the interpretation that can be placed on the given facts. Obviously, this particular case is fairly controversial but we shouldn't be shying away from controversial issues," he said.

Source

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

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"

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

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19 October, 2006

A skeptical report on charter schools

A year ago I resigned from teaching in a local high school to accept a position at a new charter school. Charter schools seemed to promise the greatest chance of fostering market reform within public education. I believed that if given the power, a few very dedicated and talented teachers and a small administrative staff could bring about innovative educational changes and create an outstanding school.

Though I have never worked with a more dedicated group of well-intentioned people, I have become skeptical that charter schools can bring systemic change to public education. While I do not claim the ability to predict the outcome of any particular charter school, I now realize that at best only marginal change within public education is possible through charter schools.

A charter school is defined as a semi-autonomous, publicly funded school operated by a group of parents, teachers, and/or community members under a charter with a local school district board of education and/or an outside group, such as a university. At present, 12 states have passed many variations of charter-school legislation, some granting more autonomy than others. Each charter sets forth the school's goals and philosophy, the basic curricular structure, governance, and operational procedure, and is intended to ensure less bureaucratic tethering to state and federal regulations.

Proponents of charter schools claim that the power base of schools must shift from government to parents as consumers of their children's education. Comparing charter schools to private schools as examples of consumer choice, advocates hope that democratically administered, site-based charter schools can offer greater choice in learning environments with little outside interference. Voluntary enrollment should be designed to attract "customers," thus introducing competition into the system.

On the surface, then, the vocabulary of the market (customers, autonomy, competition, choice) draws those who view state education as needing reform and who favor market allocation of educational resources. But just because a list of market vocabulary words can be applied to charter schools doesn't mean that the grammar and syntax of the market are present and operational. I have discovered in my short charter-school career that many of the basic limitations of regular public schools are also inherent in charter schools.

The Attitude of Compliance

Most people can't imagine what "school" would be like if it weren't public. Acceptance of "the way things are" reflects a pervasive attitude of compliance in our state-run educational system. Just as this attitude has plagued market-reform efforts in former Communist countries, so it hampers educational reform efforts in the United States. Dismantling our bureaucratic system of education will be difficult because the power structure has been in place for so long.

The attitude of compliance, subtle and covert, has created passivity among parents in the way they view their role in change. The gradual evolution of bureaucratized educational practices in the United States has fostered the abdication of the family's sense of responsibility to educate its own and has led to the general dependence on the state as the primary educational care-giver.

In a recent conversation with a fifth-grade parent at my school, I discovered that her daughter's teacher was reluctant to allow the girl to be moved into a higher math class because she had missed too much school. Even though the youngster had an "A" recorded in math, and even though the parent and the student wanted a more challenging math curriculum, the parent hadn't considered that she could question an "educational expert." When I asked what she thought her role in the situation was, she paused and stumbled over the words, "I hadn't realized I had a role."

Nuances of this submissive stance appear in one of the major admission requirements of our charter school. Parents must show that they are ready for already defined responsibility by signing an agreement supporting homework policies of all teachers, a minimum 18-hour school volunteer service, and other school-determined policies. In other words, if parents want their students in our school, they are expected to sign an agreement of compliance. Being forced into this position ultimately leaves parents resistant or defensive. What's equally devastating is that parents next year will be expected to "police their own" by deciding on a "policy of consequence" for parents who do not live up to their agreements.

Teacher Knows Best

Just as the attitude of compliance has created passivity in the way parents view change, so it has created a certain arrogance on the part of teachers (and administrators), especially in their expectations of parents. In a discussion at a faculty meeting, several of the teachers were confused by the apparent lack of interest by parents to serve the 18 pledged volunteer hours. Two teachers wondered if we could "force them to do what they are supposed to do for us."

A few weeks ago, I spoke with one of our elementary teachers who had just finished coordinating the school's book fair. I asked her if parents had been involved. She said that she had phoned almost all of the parents in her class, but that they had either already contributed their mandatory service hours or they were too busy to do so now. She convinced one parent to work for part of a day, but that parent said that she preferred to volunteer for her other child's Head Start school (a federally funded preschool) because she earned "volunteer bucks," redeemable at a local home supplies warehouse. If she were compelled to volunteer, she preferred tangible reward. Like many parents, this mother saw no relationship between doing mandatory volunteer work and taking an active role in her child's education. The teacher involved was disgusted that, once again, parents were letting the school down. I realized that no one has seriously challenged the paradigm that those who "know best" for parents, children, and for schools are the members of the educational bureaucracy.

The pervasive but subtle attitudes regarding role expectations permeate almost everyone's assumptions about reform. These attitudes play out in predictable ways in my charter school, just as they do in regular public schools; parents and students get what they get and teachers are surprised that they aren't happier about it than they are.

Often unrecognized, these attitudes mask their causes, which are the constraints that hold charter schools firmly in the government-controlled education bureaucracy. These constraints involve (1) the source of charter school funding, (2) regulations inherent in government control, and (3) the lack of market accountability.

Funding

The first bureaucratic constraint pertains to the funding of public and charter schools. Through taxes, parents and non-parents alike pour money into government coffers, and that money is pooled into funds not specifically earmarked for education. No one can say how much education costs any given taxpayer, but generally the taxpayer knows that her dollars will not count as votes in the way her child is educated. State funding perpetuates the compliant parental attitude. Not surprisingly, parents aren't as closely involved in their children's education as they most likely would be if their dollars went directly into a specific school of choice rather than into taxes, and if, because of that direct payment, they could assume more responsibility as customers. Surely, as responsible customers and parents, they would be more than homework monitors, overseers of their children's attendance, or school volunteers.

Even if a family knew what it was paying for education, it is too costly at the margin to protest a policy or philosophy of a school. If one family or a small group of parents came into my school claiming that they didn't want their children to be a part of, nor did they want to pay for, "multi-age," "interdisciplinary," and "untracked" classes, they would be pacified and sent away with a promise that a multi-age, interdisciplinary, and untracked curriculum is beneficial to their children. Parents do not demand nor expect customer sovereignty, and ultimately leave the major decisions to the educational bureaucracy.

Regulations

The second major constraint of public/charter schools relates to these funding-source problems. Because funding comes from the state, all public and charter schools are regulated by various levels of government, though charter schools may apply for waivers from certain types of regulations. For example, non-certified people are allowed to teach some classes in my charter school. But the heavy-handed state regulations remain. For example, in Colorado all public schools are required to apply the state curriculum standards, and soon will need to meet specified requirements in the assessment of those standards.

Probably the most binding regulation is that of universal mandatory education for all students aged 16 and under. This is the ultimate sanction for government knowing what is best. It means that parents have little say in what "school" is going to mean, nor do they get to decide how much or what kind is enough or appropriate for their own children. In practical terms, what compulsory education means is that many kids are in school who do not want to be. This necessarily affects educational programs negatively because those forced to go to school obstruct the learning of those students who do want to perform.

These two limitations have severely hindered teachers in the upper grades at our school who held high expectations and grand plans to deliver our seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade students a quality education. Many parents brought children who previously had performed poorly to our school with the hope that they would be cured of their non-performance. Those very students have demonstrated clearly that they can continue their non-performance in their new setting, and can interfere with the education of those who want to be there. Bound to the idea that school as we know it must be administered to students in measured doses makes parents, teachers, and students unable to imagine what a true market in education could be like.

Not only do a myriad of other types of regulations still bind charter schools tightly to the category of "public schools," but also local micromanagement by school boards create even more discretionary power for those boards as public education trustees. In another city in Colorado, a new charter school was warned by the school board that its start-up problems had to be corrected in specific ways within 30 days or its charter would be revoked. Rather than allowing parental or even school discretion in determining the seriousness of the problems (one of which was that no textbooks were being used), the particular school board intervened and imposed an arbitrary solution in the matter. Efforts to create market incentives through deregulation could only be successful if sources of funding were private rather than public.

Accountability

The third constraint of public/charter schools is that of the lack of accountability. All tenured teachers and the dean at my school are guaranteed same-salaried jobs back in the regular system should any of us decide to return. No job security risk is involved, nor do we have to compete to retain a certain income. Though we all face pressure to be innovative, our jobs do not depend on whether the charter school succeeds or fails. Other than being scolded for "being too much in the box of the old ways," no real penalty exists if results are not produced. The risks associated with failure are present only in the marketplace.

Also, because merit pay is viewed by teachers as disharmonious, monetary incentives offered for innovative behavior are deemed inappropriate. Not only did the majority of the faculty at my charter school vote to make our professional evaluations as "threat free" as possible, they also plan to implement self-designed, personalized evaluations to "equalize" faculty, hoping to promote an environment of trust and respect. Ironically, though we are not tied to a union contract at the charter school and most teachers have given up union membership, the tendency to protect our own interests is just as strong as it is in those who protect their interests by being union members. Teachers who are having obvious difficulty performing are protected by lengthy procedures for dismissal. We tend to see ourselves, rather than parents and students, as the rightful decision-makers in employment decisions.

A second accountability issue relates to the unlikely possibility that school district administration will allow charter schools to fail if these schools have been publicly endorsed. Because our school district and the university (our charter holder) have forged an official "alliance," pledging support for K-16 education, both benefit by any claim to success we make. Thus, it is in both the university's and the district's interests to prevent failure, or the public admission of it.

However, assuming that parents decide to "vote with their feet" and leave a charter school, the effects will be different than if education were bought and sold in the marketplace. In the market, failure is necessary for resource allocation. But if it occurs in the public education arena, resources will be rechanneled right back into the bureaucracy from which it was intended to break free. To make matters worse, teachers' unions will politicize the failure as a vote in favor of "regular" public schools.

A third accountability problem stems from the belief in teacher empowerment. In our school, teachers are jacks-of-all-trades, all with consensual say, taking on such administrative tasks as scheduling, writing curriculum, and designing all policies. Empowerment has been the goal of all of us for years. "Just free us from the administrative stranglehold and we will be able to make a school run right!" But I have learned that the empowerment philosophy assumes that well-meaning teachers can manage a school resourcefully, and at the same time teach effectively. It assumes that teacher creativity should be unharnessed without administrative restraint. Because public educators don't face the real world threat of possible failure and loss of employment, their creative and entrepreneurial efforts are not bound to the rules of the marketplace. When teachers are empowered, what can stop a bad idea?

Charter schools, like their sister public schools, will not break education open to market forces. But as more and more private groups find ways to crack open the educational monopoly to offer educational substitutes, a new group of schools will enter the scene. Schools that operate for profit will begin to offer new products and services that may differ dramatically from those of public and non-profit schools. In other words, as new schools for profit enter the picture, with some failing and some succeeding, new methods of educating children will emerge. The successful schools may or may not be multi-aged, interdisciplinary, standards-based, or whatever present educational fad dominates. The faculty may or may not be consensually involved in site-based decision-making, and may or may not be restricted to classroom teaching only. It all will depend-on the market.

For the time being, many charter schools will emerge, vowing to make great improvements in public education. And just as pockets of program success and outstanding individual teachers can be found within many public schools, so they will be found in many charter schools. Time will tell whether the charter school in which I teach will make marginal improvements in our educational community; certainly I hope that it does. Charter schools will temporarily cast the appearance of consumer choice, but it must be remembered that they are publicly financed, which guarantees burdensome regulation. This prevents market feedback, including reward for entrepreneurial achievement, or failure and loss for unworkable ideas and poor management. Real competition with public education is yet to come, but in the meantime, the cosmetic change currently on display at charter schools will be passed off as systemic change

Source



Universities see sharp drop in computer science majors

Computer science majors make some of the highest starting salaries for college graduates in the country, at about $50,000 a year. Computer science and computer engineering jobs are some of the fastest-growing occupations in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. So why are university computer science departments watching their enrollments slide?

This fall, Vanderbilt University's computer science department is less than half the size it was in 2001. This year, enrollment fell again, to 61 students from 78 a year ago. Computer engineering has dropped as well. At universities across the country, the picture has been similar. Fewer and fewer people are enrolling in university computer science programs, just at a time when employers say they can't find enough qualified employees. "We're going crazy trying to find candidates,'' said Sridevi Movva, the managing partner of Nashville IT consulting firm Optimum Technologies Solutions.

This is a change from the peak of the dot-com era from roughly 1997 to 2001, when tech companies with big plans, wild ideas and investors willing to take a big risk flooded the marketplace. Students showed up for jam-packed computer classes with dollar signs flashing in their eyeballs. Then, the bottom fell out of the boom and a national recession entered the picture.

Some university professors feel students and their parents are still scared off from computer science because of the dot-com bust, combined with a fear that an increasing number of jobs, especially programming jobs, are being sent offshore to places such as India. Others think universities haven't done a good job offering the latest skills and that students are turning to technical schools and career colleges as an alternative. Career college enrollment almost doubled between 1998 and 2003, according to data compiled by the Career College Association.

"It's not one university that's doing a bad job, they're all doing a bad job,'' said Andy Orr, a recruiting manager at employment agency Robert Half Technology in Nashville. There is a perception that you don't need a four-year degree to get an IT job, said Beth Hunter, the branch manager of the Robert Half office. Many students can bypass universities and pick up certifications, perhaps in the latest programming language or as a database administrator, she said.

One of the exceptions to the general downward trend among universities is Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, which didn't see a spike during the dot-com era and has simply been growing steadily over the past few years. Computer science department chairman Doug Talbert speculated his department never saw the boom and bust in enrollment because students who pick Tennessee Tech already know they want technology careers. Plus, the school added a popular information technology major this year. Tennessee Tech has seen a high demand for graduating computer science majors. "We have companies who call us and say, 'Do you have any graduates who haven't found work?' '' he said. "And we say, no."

But employers continue to send technical jobs to other countries, which professors worry is scaring students away from computer science programs. Beth Hunter, the Nashville branch manager for Robert Half, said she lost an account last week because a local employer was outsourcing 13 jobs to India. She wouldn't name the employer. "We're losing some of our positions to offshore staffing,'' she said. "We just are. But there are jobs out there, and the market is growing." ....

Vanderbilt professors are worried about the perception that jobs aren't out there. The department's Web site includes a plea from the chairman to prospective students that says: "Contrary to what you may be reading in some publications, there are jobs. . "The jobs are out there, but the perception is that they're not,'' said Richard Detmer, the chairman of the computer science department at Middle Tennessee State University.

Jonathan Waite graduated with a bachelor's degree from Vanderbilt in May. But he says the job market is saturated with computer scientists. He feels that way even though he got three job offers in three months of looking for a job. The 22-year-old is a programmer for health-care technology company Pathfinder Therapeutics, creating a program to help surgeons use laser images to perform liver surgery. Waite said some fellow programming grads had a tough time finding work and decided to go to graduate school. The prospect of computer science jobs being sent overseas is something he thinks about, too. "I feel as long as I work hard, and I'm willing to learn new things, I'll be able to find work,'' he added.

Source



BRITAIN: ANOTHER OF THE ENDLESS LEFTIST ATTEMPTS AT SOCIAL ENGINEERING

Measures to make all faith schools open their doors to children from other religions are to be considered in an attempt to break down barriers between communities. Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, will announce today that he plans to look at the intakes of existing religious schools as part of a review of the admissions code for schools. He will tell a conference that plans to require new faith schools to admit a quarter of pupils from a non-faith background are "a start". The next step by the Government will be to apply the principle behind this move to the much larger number of existing church and other faith schools, he will say.

In remarks likely to alarm supporters of faith schools, Mr Johnson will say in his speech: "Young minds are free from prejudice and discrimination, so schools are in a unique position to prevent social division. Schools should cross ethnic and religious boundaries, and certainly not increase them, or exacerbate difficulties in sensitive areas."

Last night the Government confirmed its intention to require new faith schools to ensure that 25 per cent of their intake is made up of pupils from a different religious denomination or none, where there is local demand for this.

Mr Johnson will go farther today in a speech to the National Children and Adult Services Conference at Brighton, according to advance extracts of his speech released by a government source. Mr Johnson will refer to the 25 per cent target for all new faith schools. But he will then add: "This important principle is a start. Through the consultation on the new admissions code, we should explore whether there is more we can do by encouraging existing faith schools to further promote community cohesion, as I know they themselves are keen to do." Ideas he will propose are exchange programmes for teachers, under which they would go into schools of different denominations, to expose teachers and children to the "ethos and approach of different faiths".

A review of citizenship classes as part of the national curriculum, which is due to report in December, will also form part of this process. But Mr Johnson will indicate that he expects independent schools, too, to do more to co-operate with non-faith schools in their area as a condition of charitable status.

His remarks come amid signs of growing opposition to the Government's approach among faith schools, which account for about one third of state schools in Britain, with the great majority, 6,400 out of 7,000, in the primary sector. The Church of England, whose schools teach 940,000 children, has already announced plans to give priority to non-Anglican children for a quarter of places in any new schools, but it said that government action on existing schools was unnecessary. "Church of England schools are already deliberately inclusive, as well as distinctive," a spokesman said. "The provision of church schools across the country is fairly patchy. The local conditions and communities they serve can be quite different from one part of the country to the next. A one-size-fits-all solution would not be appropriate."

Archbishop Vincent Nichols, chairman of the Catholic Education Services, said: "We are vehemently opposed to the imposition of quotas on Catholic schools. It will mean turning away Catholics and could well lead to more division." The Board of Deputies of British Jews has expressed similar concerns that a quota could prevent Jewish children from attending Jewish schools

Source

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

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"

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

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18 October, 2006

THAT EVIL CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS



After an hour of hearing fifth-grade teacher Erin Rygielski teach about Christopher Columbus and his crew enslaving Arawak Indians, burning them and lopping off limbs, Shyanne Horner said she was shocked. "The Indians had their own opinions and Columbus had his; why couldn't he just go back (to Europe)?" said Horner, 10, of Norwich, a student at John B. Stanton Elementary School. "Columbus changed everything."

Across the country, some teachers are shifting away from the notion Columbus discovered America and are teaching about the explorer as a pioneer of imperialism, according to local educators, scholars and American Indians. But the shift has been slow and sporadic, educators say, since new interpretations of Columbus are mired in controversy between historical evidence and ethnic pride. "Many Italian people today consider Columbus Day as the antidote to 'The Godfather' and 'The Sopranos,' " said Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University professor and pop culture expert. "The traditional Columbus story is a natural, easy way to organize history, but history is really one big complicated mess."

These days, some children's teachers say Columbus brutally tortured Indians at what today is the Bahamas Islands and Haiti with a violent, disease-filled gold expedition that wiped out the native populations. "Columbus was the first Western imperialist and to celebrate that imperialism is to prepare us to celebrate subsequent imperialism," said Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States," which has sold more than 500,000 copies. "Society does not want to recognize the crimes of people who, for a long time, have been looked upon as heroes," Zinn added. "To face the truth about ourselves and begin to re-examine Columbus means maybe some of our other heroes should be re-examined."

Schoolchildren throughout the country, meanwhile, have a holiday today for Columbus Day, thanks to a 1934 joint resolution by Congress, marking the second Monday of October to honor Columbus' purported discovery of America in October 1492.

"How do you think it feels to be 'discovered'?" said American Indian Trudie Richmond, director of public programs at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Mashantucket. "How can you discover a place when people are already there?"

At the Stanton School, Rygielski, 24, of Norwich, is among a new wave of educators who use the latest sources, including American Indian accounts of Columbus' visit, in an effort not to sugarcoat the explorer. "One of my college teachers said (being a teacher) is about just presenting the facts to the kids and letting them form their own opinions," said Rygielski, who was influenced by the book "Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years." "Once kids get older, like by the fifth grade, it's easier to do that."

Frank Demicco is offended by the kind of Columbus lessons taught by teachers such as Rygielski. The 78-year-old Norwich resident is a former trustee of the United Italian Society of Norwich and an organizer of local festivities to honor Columbus annually. "I hate revisionists that rewrite history, because we have no more facts about Columbus than the facts that have been used for the last 500 years," Demicco said. "Every immigrant family should have pride in their heritage. Italians have done an awful lot of good for the community and brought over a lot of culture and arts, not just pizza and pasta."

But not all teachers address Columbus' purported brutality. Colchester Elementary School teacher Kim Waltmire said many of her colleagues just teach simple songs about Columbus' voyage. Waltmire said teaching about Columbus "is a very difficult bridge to walk." But as a second grade teacher she doesn't have to delve into the debates surrounding Columbus. Norwich Free Academy Social Studies Department Chairman Bruce Donahue said high school teaching on Columbus varies widely and depends partly on the age of the teacher. "Younger teachers teach what they've been taught in college, which is the point of view widely held now that Columbus was the first agent of imperialism," Donahue said.

Sociologist James Loewen, who spent two years examining 12 leading high school textbooks of American history to write "Lies My Teacher Told Me," said accounts of Columbus as a barbaric conqueror are more accurate. "I think we're still dealing with a white supremacist view when it comes to Native Americans," Loewen said. "The truth about Columbus is not such a pretty picture when you get to the details, which include the complete annihilation of the native population of Haiti within 60 years of his arrival." [But did Columbuis do that? NO!]

Source



CRAP BRITISH SCHOOLS

Almost a million children in England are being let down by poor teaching and inadequate leadership in hundreds of under-performing schools, according to an influential committee of MPs. In spite of the Government spending almost 900 million pounds on schemes to raise achievement levels, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) estimates that last year as many as 1,557 schools, including one in six secondaries, were failing to provide a decent education.

The report comes as Ofsted figures reveal today that the number of schools judged to be failing or requiring "significant improvement" had risen by more than 11 per cent in the past year, from 587 schools in August 2005 to 654 schools this year. At the same time, double the number of inadequate schools were closed in August compared with last. Head teachers and teaching unions reacted angrily to the "misleading and damaging" report, which they said did not give a true reflection of education in today's schools.

With almost one in seven schoolchildren being denied a quality education, Edward Leigh, chairman of the PAC, said that the long-term consequences for Britain's future were severe. "Nearly one million children in England attend schools that, according to government definitions, are providing a poor standard of education," he said. "To waste so much potential in this way is a tragedy." The Tory MP insisted that the "signs of decline" needed to be picked up early and dealt with swiftly. He voiced concern, too, over the lack of data by which to judge primary schools, amid fears that poor performers were slipping through the net.

Having examined trends in poorly performing schools over 2004-05, the 59th PAC report identified strong leadership, honest self-evaluation and collaboration with successful schools as key to raising standards. While accepting that fewer schools are weak or failing than were six years ago, the committee noted that more schools are missing the Government's baseline GCSE targets.

In 2004, the Government denoted "low-attaining" secondary schools as those where less than a fifth of children achieved five A*-C GCSEs. In 2005 40 schools failed this GCSE benchmark. While the MPs agree that poor-performing schools should receive more attention than high-performers, they give warning that weak heads often fail to give an honest assessment of their performance. "Of the schools inspected during the autumn 2005 term, only three judged their leadership and management to be `inadequate'. However, 85 schools were placed in special measures, indicating that Ofsted judged leadership and management to be weak in a much higher number," the report said. While leadership is clearly key to raising morale and the ethos of a school, the MPs also note that in spite of offering salaries of up to 100,000 pounds, schools are finding it increasingly difficult to replace them.

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister said the report had exaggerated the number of failing schools. "A significant proportion of these schools are not failing. In some, 60 to 70 per cent of pupils get five good GCSEs and many others are improving very quickly," he said. John Dunford, general-secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders denounced the report as "misleading and damaging". He said: "Let us be clear about the current situation. Even though Ofsted has raised the bar for inspections, only 54 secondary schools out of 3,500 are in special measures. "Of the other schools cited as `low attaining', many have good value-added scores for very weak intakes. They are certainly not failing."

Source



West Australia education chief quits over sex 'cover-up'

A far-Left organization show its non-existent principles

The head of Western Australia's Eductation department has resigned after a damning report that found sexual misconduct is not being properly handled in the state's schools. In a scathing report, the state's Corruption and Crime Commission said the Department of Education and Training repeatedly covered up allegations of sexual abuse of children by teachers, and was more concerned with protecting the welfare of staff than students. Department of Education and Training (DET) director general Paul Albert has agreed to leave the job after a meeting overnight with Premier Alan Carpenter.

Mr Carpenter has said that while he accepts the CCC did not make any specific adverse findings against Mr Albert, "we both agreed that public confidence in our education system was paramount". "It is with regret that, during our discussion, we came to an agreement that it was in the best interests of all parties for Mr Albert to leave the public service under a Management Initiated Retirement."

The state Opposition has called for Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich to resign. After the release of the report, CCC spokesman Roger Watson said the department had resisted the efforts of the CCC to get it improve procedures. He indicated the report had been released publicly in a bid to force change, saying the commission had thought hard before taking that action. The CCC revealed that in one case where a teacher was convicted of indecently dealing with a child under 13, the department had responded by transferring him to another school. The department believed the facts that the child was not one of his students and the conduct did not occur in school hours were mitigating factors.

In another case, a school principal and deputy principal were found to have covered up a relationship between a teacher and student after the teacher agreed to resign. The CCC said the deputy principal was aware the teacher had been investigated for inappropriate conduct with an under-age girl at another school five years earlier but he was allowed to resign before an investigation was conducted into the latest allegation.

The department also failed to investigate repeated allegations about a teacher engaging in sexual contact with female students at school camps over a number of years, and decided not to investigate allegations against a school gardener. It also allowed a teacher with a history of sexual contact with students while on overseas excursions to attend another overseas trip where he was seen engaging in inappropriate conduct.

Ms Ravlich said yesterday she had no knowledge of the explosive allegations until she was briefed by the CCC on Thursday night and received the report on Friday. Yesterday, she labelled it "extremely serious" and that she was extremely angry. "There's no doubt about it, the department has got it wrong," she said. "I think it would be fair to say that the department probably does need a shake-up." But Ms Ravlich had said she was "very disappointed" in Mr Albert. She said she could not act against other staff exposed by the CCC because she had no capacity to do so under the Public Sector Management Act.

Mr Albert claimed he was unable to keep the minister informed because the CCC had instructed him not to disclose any information. Under pressure from the media, he later indicated the actions of staff involved in the incidents would be reviewed. This included the decision by human resources executive director Alby Huts to return a convicted child abuser to the classroom.

Mr Watson said the cases were not isolated examples of the department's handling of sexual misconduct matters. Ms Ravlich said all six recommendations of the CCC would be implemented immediately. The state Opposition has said the report highlights the latest in a series of crises for the minister who has come under fire over Western Australia's controversial "outcomes-based" education system.

Source

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

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"

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

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17 October, 2006

Counting down to a colorblind Constitution

Three-and-a-half months ago, as U.S. Supreme Court justices were wrapping up their first term together as the Roberts Court, we noted that the next term would present "Another Chance for a Colorblind Constitution." The justices had just agreed to hear two cases challenging the practice of some public school districts to use race in deciding whether students can choose to attend the elementary or high school of their choice. And, we predicted that "[m]aybe America's next generation of students will get to see a colorblind Constitution after all -- at least through their high school graduation."

Our unstated reference, of course, was to the High Court's decision three terms ago allowing the University of Michigan to prefer certain students for admission to law school based on their skin color. The justices decided to uphold race-based affirmative action by the barest of majorities, 5-4, with perennial swing voter Justice Sandra Day O'Connor being the margin of victory.

In fact, the highest court in the land -- and by that we mean Justice O'Connor -- had come exceptionally close to ending racial preferences once and for all back then. After all, there were two University of Michigan cases decided that day, and Justice O'Connor had split her votes, upholding the law school's "individualized" affirmative action program while striking down the undergraduate college's rigid racial formula. But, just as in so many other areas of law, Justice O'Connor was either unwilling or incapable of painting a clear line on the constitutional canvas when presented with the opportunity to clarify the blurry Equal Protection picture.

The same is not likely to be true this term. Indeed, if we had waited just a few more weeks before publishing our thoughts last June, we would have had some hard evidence to bolster our prediction that the Roberts Court will reverse course when it comes to affirmative action this term. That is because the two new justices -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito -- gave us a crystal clear indication of what their legal thinking is on the issue of government-mandated racial distinctions in a contentious and fractious voting rights case decided at the end of the last term.

Specifically, in an opinion that only Justice Alito joined, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, "It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race." It is true the comment from the two new justices was penned as an objection to five justices' willingness to engage in racial balancing of an electoral district. But, despite the opportunity to limit the rhetoric to that arcane and narrow area of the law, Chief Justice Roberts chose not to do so, and Justice Alito decided to sign on.

In other words, by our count, there are now five votes to do what Justice O'Connor never could -- shut the door on state-sponsored racial discrimination regardless of whether it comes in the form of the past (forced segregation) or the present (affirmative action). We already knew about the first three votes, since Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas had voted consistently in both University of Michigan cases to reject any consideration of a student's race in the admissions decision. Now there is every reason to believe that two more votes, those of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, will be just as principled in ensuring the "equal protection of the laws" for everyone. If we are correct, it might have taken more than two centuries too long, but the colorblind Constitution will still be better late than never.

Source



A Higher Education Lesson from the Nobels

This year, in all but literature and peace, United States researchers took home the Nobel. From economics, to physics, to medicine, to chemistry, US researchers are bar none the best in the world. This is on top of the Times Higher Education Supplement that ranks US universities as the best in the world. Why then, do conservatives complain of liberal indoctrination?

A key thing to notice is that the only "soft" academic field in the Nobels is for literature, a prize an American hasn't won since 1993 (Toni Morrison). This should hardly come as a surprise as American "culture" is saturated with insipid nudity and mindless entertainment.

However, something deeper is also true. While academics may be left-ward tilting in academia, in the "practical" fields those biases rarely come into play (if they exist). Is there a conservative or liberal way of looking at cosmic background radiation? The bias is prevalent in the "soft" sciences and liberal arts. No economist worth his salt seriously debates that socialism works, they all on some level or another accept the free market. The conservatives have all but won the fight in economics.

In engineering and business schools, the students are cultured into achieving results. It is in the liberal arts schools where a majority of students end up where the curriculum can be bent and tilted any which way. The entire field of sociology has bought into the liberal agenda leaving students without exposure to any other trains of thought. Thus all our sociological experts, whom we turn to for advice on sociological issues, have a narrow-minded view of the world.

It is in these soft sciences where liberal bias is most damaging, particularly when it shuts down any dissent. Instead of presenting all points of view and engaging in a "war of ideas", students are indoctrinated into one train of thought without any ability to engage in any serious debate. The same can be said of philosophy departments, some political science departments, some history departments, and the myriad of "culture-based" departments.

The result is a political culture that is unable to look at the world around itself and pigeon-holes itself into firmly held doctrines and unquestioned ideas. Bias here is the most damaging to society.

Source



South Australia's public schools in deep doo doo

Private schools with problems like these would have the pants sued off them

Dilapidated South Australian schools are turning to the Federal Government for financial help, with students having been forced to use "disgusting" toilets, 90-year-old chairs and unsafe play equipment. Two schools said they had waited 15 years for outdated chairs to be replaced, another said it had been concerned about dangerous play equipment since 1995 and yet another had been raising concerns about decrepit carpet since 1998. The number of federal funding applications from South Australia's 605 public primary and secondary schools has tripled in the past 12 months, with almost 1000 requests for help this year.

Parents are also being increasingly called upon to raise their own repair funds, with primary school principals saying this was now "essential" to maintain schools. Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop yesterday blamed the State Government for the maintenance backlog.

The Advertiser applied to the Education Department, under Freedom of Information laws, for the reasons behind South Australian schools' applications for funding, but this was denied on the grounds that providing that information would cost $20,904. However, The Advertiser is aware that SA schools requesting financial assistance include:

A NORTHERN suburbs primary school where students said the toilets were so "disgusting" and hard to keep clean they avoided using them;

A HIGH school in Adelaide's northwest with 90-year-old chairs in its school hall;

AN inner-city school where junior primary students were "too frightened" to use the toilets;

A SOUTHERN suburbs primary school where an uneven surface on the school's hard court was causing student accidents;

A COUNTRY school where a playground audit found the equipment was "largely non-compliant and unsafe", leaving junior primary students with no equipment;

A WESTERN suburbs primary school where the outdated air conditioning was so noisy that teachers could not speak to students unless it was turned off; and

A PRIMARY school in Adelaide's north-east where the smell of toilets was "unbearable" and pervaded classrooms in the same corridor.

The Investing in Our Schools program provides grants of up to $150,000 to government and non-government schools for infrastructure projects. SA schools made 339 grant applications in round one and 492 grant applications in round two last year. However, the demand for financial assistance has increased significantly this year, with the number of grant applications for round three this year climbing to 984.

Ms Bishop said the poor standards shown in some of the state's public schools were due to State Government neglect of maintenance problems. She said the $26.5 million that had been provided to SA schools by the Federal Government under its Investing in Our Schools program should have come from the state. "It is a disgrace that state Labor governments are not supporting their schools," Ms Bishop said.

However, state Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith said the Federal Government's $26.5 million contribution was a "drop in the ocean" compared to the $550 million the state had spent in public school building improvements in the past five years. This included a $300 million school building program in this year's Budget to fund six new schools, as well as many capital projects and school facility improvements. "The Rann Government has instigated Education Works, the biggest school building reform program in three decades, and we would be delighted if the Federal Government backed it with funding," Dr Lomax-Smith said.

SA Primary Principals Association president Glyn O'Brien said yesterday fundraising by governing councils was "essential" as "schools have never got enough money".

Source

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

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"

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

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16 October, 2006

Pay More, Learn Less

Whatever the Ivy League is good for, it is not good for civic awareness

Many parents believe that where their children attend college is the most important decision a family will make. So where would you rather send your child: Rhodes College in Memphis, or Johns Hopkins in Baltimore? Colorado State, or Cal-Berkeley? Before you answer, you may want to read a new report titled "The Coming Crisis in Citizenship" from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. (Full disclosure: I serve on ISI's board of trustees.)

The report, conducted by the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy, is the first to ask whether our institutions of higher education are preparing students for lives as educated and involved citizens of a republic. Researchers asked some 14,000 randomly selected college freshmen and seniors multiple-choice questions about America's history, government, foreign relations and economy.

The report paints a bleak picture. It found that many of our best-known colleges are failing their students. On average, seniors scored just 1.5 percent better than freshmen did. And had the survey been graded as a test, seniors would have failed; they averaged 53.2 percent. Even worse, "at many schools, seniors know less than freshman about America's history, government, foreign affairs and economy," the study found. Many students are actually regressing while on campus.

Plus, in higher education you don't necessarily get what you pay for. "Students at relatively inexpensive colleges often learn more, on average, than their counterparts at expensive colleges," the report says. ISI found that Rhodes College does the best job teaching about American citizenship. Seniors there answered 11.6 percent more questions correctly than freshmen did. Colorado State was number two, with a 10.9 percent gain. Meanwhile, students at many supposedly top-flight schools seem to lose knowledge while on campus. At Berkeley (49th on the list) seniors scored 5.6 percent worse than freshmen, and at Johns Hopkins (dead last) they were 7.3 percent worse.

Unfortunately, those last two weren't the only leading schools that failed their students. "Our analysis shows that institutional prestige and selectivity are strongly related to lower civic learning," the study says. In fact, "colleges that rank high in the U.S. News and World Report 2006 ranking were ranked low in the ISI ranking."

Overall, of 50 schools surveyed, students regressed at 16 of them. Seniors there "apparently either forgot what is known by their freshman peers or -- more ominously -- were mistaught by their professors." All of this matters because the study also found that young adults who understand American history and institutions are more likely to vote, volunteer for community service and join political campaigns. Thus, if we want the young people of today to become the leaders of tomorrow, we'll need to change our approach to civic education.

ISI's report suggests some simple ways to do that. Universities, it recommends, should increase the number of history, political science and economics classes students must take. Not surprisingly, students don't learn what they're not taught, and at too many schools students slide through without really studying our history and politics. At the same time, students, parents and alumni need to be more involved. If those who pay the bills demand more and better classes, schools will provide them.

Finally, universities should create departments dedicated to teaching our history and institutions. For years the buzzword on campus has been "multiculturalism." Schools have emphasized, among other things, women's studies, gay and lesbian studies and African-American studies. With universities failing to teach old-fashioned "American studies," though, it's time to insist they build academic centers to do so.

Those who don't know history, it's said, are doomed to repeat it. We need to make sure today's young adults learn about America's great history, so they can not only avoid its mistakes, but more importantly, continue and emulate its successes -- and make the history to come even better than our past.

Source



Why More Class-Size Reduction is a Bad Idea

There's no more popular education program among politicians and teachers than reducing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade. No other program, however, has spent more tax dollars for less result. Now [California] lawmakers are pushing a bill that would fund class-size reduction (CSR) for additional grades.

SB 1133 would spend nearly $3 billion over seven years to decrease class size in fourth through eighth grade down to 25 students. California's current CSR law has spent around $16 billion over the last 10 years reducing class size to 20 students per K-3 classroom. The ultimate goal of the program, says the state Department of Education, is to "increase student achievement, particularly in reading and mathematics." Under this criterion, CSR comes up short.

A state-sponsored consortium of top research organizations analyzed the program and found no association between the total number of years a student had been in reduced size classes and differences in academic achievement. Further, there's no evidence that CSR helps at upper grade levels. Stanford education professor Michael Kirst says that research has focused on elementary grades, not middle-school levels, as SB 1133 would do. Also, that research has examined reducing class sizes to 20 students or fewer, not to 25 students as the bill would require. Says Kirst, "This is really a dark continent in terms of any research."

In spite of this lack of evidence, some top state education officials believe that SB 1133's minor provisions aimed at improving teacher quality in low-performing schools make the bill worthwhile. Unfortunately, teacher-quality problems in California plunge to a much deeper level. Consider the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) given to prospective teachers in California.

The CBEST was designed, "to test basic reading, mathematics, and writing skills found to be important for the job of an educator," according to the official CBEST website. While teachers should be proficient in these areas, the CBEST sets such low standards that it proves nothing.

One Bay Area teacher who took the test in 2003 described the experience as "a joke" and said: "Compared with other standardized tests like the SAT and GRE, the CBEST is laughable. The math section tests maybe for a fourth-grade skill level, and the verbal sections are hardly better."

As an example, one question from the math section of the online practice test asks: "Which of the following is the most appropriate unit for expressing the weight of a pencil?" Possible multiple-choice answers are: pounds, ounces, quarts, pints, and tons.

Easy test questions are only part of the problem. Low passing standards mean that teachers do not even have to master simple questions like the one above. Scaled scores range from 20 to 80 points for each section, and a paltry score of 41 or higher is considered passing.

Further, the test can be taken repeatedly until a passing score is achieved, and test takers can take one, two, or three sections at any given test administration. Since each session is four hours long, potential teachers have twelve hours to complete the test. And then, of course, if they still fail, they can always take it again. And again. And again.

Good teachers are an essential element of good education. With a smart and effective teacher, students will learn regardless of class size. With an ignorant or incompetent teacher, students won't learn even if there are only five in a classroom. Teachers can't teach what they themselves don't know.

Rather than class-size reduction, Californians should focus on how we educate and produce our teachers. There are plenty of careers available to people who want to weigh pencils in tons or quarts. Teaching should not be one of them.

Source



Australian school passes 'illiterate' boy

A schoolboy will soon start Grade 11 despite failing almost every test he has sat for the past four years. The father of "Anthony", 15, who struggles with basic literacy and numeracy, says education officials have ignored repeated pleas to keep his son back. He said it was an indictment of Queensland's state education system that his son was elevated each year despite his failing grades. Anthony would finish senior school at Albany Creek State High with little or no understanding of what he had been taught. "He should have been held back in Grade Seven. He was not ready for high school. I pleaded with the school . . . but they pushed him up," the father of four said. "It has been the same every year since. He does not understand what he has been taught in 8, 9 and 10, yet the school is happy he is going to 11 next year." Anthony recently sat the Grade 10 literacy and numeracy benchmark exams and scored five out of 40 in each.

The school contacted his father but the news was not what he expected. "I thought they might be telling me it was best he repeats Grade 10. But, no, they said he would be going up to Grade 11 next year. I could not believe it," the father said. "He doesn't know his times tables. His spelling is shocking. He is totally lost." The boy's father said he had asked school officials for remedial help but was told to get private tuition. "I am a single dad bringing up four teenagers. I can't afford private tuition. The school says it doesn't have the funds to help me," he said.

Anthony told The Sunday Mail he enjoyed being at school with his mates and would like to get higher marks than his usual D, E, and F scores. "I have a problem with school work. I just find it difficult," he said. "I like school, it's better than sitting around at home. I just wish I was better at it. "It's going to be tough next year. I don't know what subjects I am going to do."

His father said Anthony wanted to work with cars when he finished Grade 12. "But I don't know if he will ever get the chance. I don't blame the school. I know they are under a lot of pressure, their hands are tied. "I blame Education Queensland. The system has failed Anthony. "In my day, we learned everything by repetition. Today, they tell me repetition is bullying. I think they need to get back to basics."

Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan said the school had made every effort to help Anthony. Mr Ryan said that while Anthony was in Grade 10, he was doing a modified program that included work from a much lower grade. "The school has quite a specific amount of work in terms of supporting this student . . . the school has done the caring thing in providing a modified program," he said. Mr Ryan said parents could insist on their child being held back a year, but there were other factors taken into consideration, including a student's age, size and maturity.

An Education Queensland spokeswoman said the school would work closely with the father and son to help Anthony through his final years, including the possibility of a school-based apprenticeship. "Given the parent's strong views, the school will arrange to meet with the parent to further discuss his concerns and options for the future," the spokeswoman said. "The school is committed to ensuring the best possible outcome for this student." She said Anthony had been part of a learning support program since Year 8, with particular focus on literacy. "The school strongly believes he has made progress through the years and they have faith in his abilities to continue."

Opposition education spokesman Stuart Copeland attacked the State Government for failing students. "We are seeing far too many people come out of school barely able to read or write. We are hearing about university students who have to take remedial English courses," Mr Copeland said. Education commentator Christopher Bantick said schools were promoting students beyond their ability. "Students are promoted, regardless of results because schools are number crunching," Mr Bantick said. "A student who fails year after year is not benefiting from this promotional policy. The problem is compounded." He said parents had every right to ask for their child to be held back - although it sometimes led to peer pressure and ostracism.

Source

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

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"

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

***************************



15 October, 2006

Choosing education

America's system of public education has earned an extraordinary distinction in comparison to the public schools of our international competitors. Only in America do we commit such egregious malpractice against our children that they actually get dumber every year they remain trapped in the public school monopoly. Public schools suffer the same defense as members of Congress: "They're all terrible except for mine." As I am a candidate for Congress and a product of American public schools, I feel I have an obligation to speak truth to power. Your public school and your Congressional representative are - statistically speaking - probably both dismal failures, and for the same reason: neither is truly accountable to constituents. The similarities are striking, if not terrifying:

* Political forces largely outside the control of citizens and voters establish districts that rarely have anything to do with serving the public, but frequently have everything to do with maintaining monopoly power.

* In Congress, members gerrymander their districts to insulate themselves from competitive elections.

* In public schools, bureaucrats set neighborhood school boundaries that prevent competition among schools.

* We measure inputs rather than results.

* In Congress, increasing budgets are the most important measure of a program's power and success, regardless of whether the program accomplishes anything, whether it's necessary, or even if the program is counterproductive.

* In public schools, supporters equate greater quality with increased funding, despite the absence of any statistical correlation between increased budgets and improved outcomes.

* Failure results in more funding.

* In Congress, failed programs are never the result of bad ideas, implementation, or employees. They are always the result of too little funding.

* In public schools, illiteracy, dropouts, declining test scores, and the inability to match wits with our international peers are never the result of bad curricula, bad teachers, or bad instruction methods. They are always the result of bad parents, unreasonable expectations, and too little funding.

* The leaders follow fads without any evidence that their path will take them where they want to go.

* In Congress, legislators and committees use the rule of magpies - they find something bright and then they land on it. This is why Congress holds endless hearings about issues that belong on "Entertainment Tonight" and "Dateline" rather than about issues that really matter to citizens.

* In public schools, the curriculum is so dedicated to political correctness, new math, and whole language learning that it has escaped the attention of professional educators that our children do not know whether the phrase, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," comes from Thomas Jefferson or Karl Marx; how to read a food label, make change, or balance a checkbook; and, how to read, spell, and write.

* Our best and brightest flee with alarming speed and regularity.

* In Congress, voters commonly complain that they rarely have the opportunity to choose among candidates that excite or enthuse them.

* In public schools, teachers with the highest ratings for generating positive educational outcomes among their students rarely work more than five years before leaving the field entirely.

* When we are unsatisfied with the outcomes, we have few alternatives and very little recourse.

* In Congress, because of gerrymandered voting districts, earmarking, and the financial and promotional advantages of incumbency, lawmakers are virtually guaranteed re-election.

* In public schools, our only option is to move our children to private schools, at our own expense, because parents have virtually no influence over institutions that serve bureaucrats, politicians, and unions rather than students. To add insult to injury, even if we can afford private school tuition, we still have to pay property taxes for a service we found so dissatisfying that we abandoned it.

I believe that universal public education is essential. Universal public education is essential for developing engaged citizens, critical thinkers, and an advanced economy. It's an investment in our children, our country, and our future. But, like any investment, we can make wise or poor decisions about where to allocate our resources. Today, and for a generation or more, we make very poor decisions.

This is not unusual in a socialized system - a system in which public servants allocate investments on behalf of a public they supposedly represent. In reality, the central planners who control education investments respond to politics rather than the needs of our children. The reason is simple and understandable: the public education system survives on the largesse of a political system, rather than on the dollars and needs of its customers.

The bureaucrats in the federal and state departments of education are as hopelessly out of touch as the bureaucrats who tried to centrally plan the economies of the failed communist countries. Without any information about which outcomes are actually relevant, they rely on the only information they have - how much money they spend. The Federal government made an effort at remedying this bizarre situation with mandatory testing in the tragic "No Child Left Behind" law. Unfortunately, NCLB allows each state to decide how to conduct that testing. The result is entirely predictable: state political and education leaders manipulate the tests and their definition of "passing grades" to comply with the Federal mandates and secure the Federal funding. So, rather than finding out whether our children are learning anything, we find out how bureaucrats have to adjust the "passing grade" each year to make sure that it reflects "adequate yearly progress."

The solution to this Kafkaesque comedy of manners is simple, radical, and painfully controversial: allow parents and children to decide which school they want to attend. Only by allowing this kind of choice - using the public funds we already allocate to universal education to permit families to choose the right school, the right teachers, the right instruction method, and the right curriculum - will we be able to convey to schools the infinite range of variables necessary to make wise investments. In the same way that entrepreneurs strive to build better mousetraps, to deliver better products at lower costs, to respond to the unique demands of 300 million Americans - entrepreneurs will respond to educational choice with a veritable mall of choices that meet the needs of the real consumers of universal public education.

Putting more money into a system that doesn't work will not make the system work. The incentives to perform in today's public education system are set by people who have an interest in securing more power and more money, and the people responding to those incentives are accountable to the politicians and bureaucrats who set them. Only educational choice will make schools accountable to the constituents who matter - our children.

Source



REISMAN ON EDUCATIONAL DECLINE:

In my book "Capitalism", I explain a root cause of the collapse of contemporary education in terms of its essential, guiding philosophy. Here is my explanation. It begins with a quotation from W. T. Jones, a leading historian of philosophy. The quotation describes the philosophy of Romanticism, which appeared as a hostile reaction to the Enlightenment:

To the Romantic mind, the distinctions that reason makes are artificial, imposed, and man-made; they divide, and in dividing destroy, the living whole of reality-"We murder to dissect." How, then, are we to get in touch with the real? By divesting ourselves, insofar as we can, of the whole apparatus of learning and scholarship and by becoming like children or simple, uneducated men; by attending to nature rather than to the works of man; by becoming passive and letting nature work upon us; by contemplation and communion, rather than by ratiocination and scientific method. (W. T. Jones, Kant to Wittgenstein and Sartre, vol. 4 of A History of Western Philosophy, 2d ed. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1969), p. 102.

The Romantics held that "we are nearer to the truth about the universe when we dream than when we are awake" and "nearer to it as children than as adults." (Ibid., p. 104.) The clear implication of the philosophy of Romanticism is that the valuable portion of our mental life has no essential connection with our ability to reason and with the deliberate, controlled use of our conscious mind: we allegedly possess it in our sleep and as children.

In its essentials, the philosophy of Romanticism is the guiding principle of contemporary education. Exactly like Romanticism, contemporary education holds that the valuable portion of our mental life has no essential connection with our ability to reason and with the deliberate, controlled use of our conscious mind-that we possess this portion of our mental life if not in our sleep, then nevertheless as small children.

This doctrine is clearly present in the avowed conviction of contemporary education that creativity is a phenomenon that is separate from and independent of such conscious mental processes as memorization and the use of logic. Indeed, it is an almost universally accepted proposition of contemporary pseudoscience that one-half of the human brain is responsible for such conscious processes as the use of logic, while the other half is responsible for "creativity," as though, when examined, the halves of the brain revealed this information all by themselves, perhaps in the form of bearing little labels respectively marked "Logic Unit, Made in Hong Kong" and "Creativity Unit, Made in Woodstock, New York." Obviously, the view of the brain as functioning in this way is a conclusion, which is based on the philosophy and thus interpretative framework of the doctrine's supporters.

Now, properly, education is a process by means of which students internalize knowledge: they mentally absorb it through observation and proof, and repeated application. Memorization, deduction, and problem solving must constantly be involved. The purpose is to develop the student's mind-to provide him with an instantaneously available storehouse of knowledge and thus an increasingly powerful mental apparatus that he will be able to use and further expand throughout his life. Such education, of course, requires hard work from the student. Seen from a physiological perspective, it may be that what the process of education requires of the student through his exercises is an actual imprinting of his brain.

Yet, under the influence of the philosophy of Romanticism, contemporary education is fundamentally opposed to these essentials of education. It draws a distinction between "problem solving," which it views as "creative" and claims to favor, and "memorization," which it appears to regard as an imposition on the students, whose valuable, executive-level time, it claims, can be better spent in "problem solving." Contemporary education thus proceeds on the assumption that the ability to solve problems is innate, or at least fully developed before the child begins school. It perceives its job as allowing the student to exercise his native problem-solving abilities, while imposing on him as little as possible of the allegedly unnecessary and distracting task of memorization.

In the elementary grades, this approach is expressed in such attitudes as that it is not really necessary for students to go to the trouble of memorizing the multiplication tables if the availability of pocket calculators can be taken for granted which they know how to use; or go to the trouble of memorizing facts of history and geography, if the ready availability of books and atlases containing the facts can be taken for granted, which facts the students know how to look up when the need arises. In college and graduate courses, this approach is expressed in the phenomenon of the "open-book examination," in which satisfactory performance is supposedly demonstrated by the ability to use a book as a source of information, proving once again that the student knows how to find the information when he needs it.

With little exaggeration, the whole of contemporary education can be described as a process of encumbering the student's mind with as little knowledge as possible. The place for knowledge, it seems to believe, is in external sources-books and libraries-which the student knows how to use when necessary. Its job, its proponents believe, is not to teach the students knowledge but "how to acquire knowledge"-not to teach them facts and principles, which it holds quickly become "obsolete," but to teach them "how to learn." Its job, its proponents openly declare, is not to teach geography, history, mathematics, science, or any other subject, including reading and writing, but to teach "Johnny"-to teach Johnny how he can allegedly go about learning the facts and principles it declares are not important enough to teach and which it thus gives no incentive to learn and provides the student with no means of learning.

The results of this type of education are visible in the hordes of students who, despite years of schooling, have learned virtually nothing, and who are least of all capable of thinking critically and solving problems. When such students read a newspaper, for example, they cannot read it in the light of a knowledge of history or economics- they do not know history or economics; history and economics are out there in the history and economics books, which, they were taught, they can "look up, if they need to." They cannot even read it in the light of elementary arithmetic, for they have little or no internally automated habits of doing arithmetic. Having little or no knowledge of the elementary facts of history and geography, they have no way even of relating one event to another in terms of time and place.

Such students, and, of course, the adults such students become, are chronically in the position in which to be able to use the knowledge they need to use, they would first have to go out and acquire it. Not only would they have to look up relevant facts, which they already should know, and now may have no way even of knowing they need to know, but they would first have to read and understand books dealing with abstract principles, and to understand those books, they would first have to read other such books, and so on. In short, they would first have to acquire the education they already should have had.

Properly, by the time a student has completed a college education, his brain should hold the essential content of well over a hundred major books on mathematics, science, history, literature, and philosophy, and do so in a form that is well organized and integrated, so that he can apply this internalized body of knowledge to his perception of everything in the world around him. He should be in a position to enlarge his knowledge of any subject and to express his thoughts on any subject clearly and logically, both verbally and in writing. Yet, as the result of the miseducation provided today, it is now much more often the case that college graduates fulfill the Romantic ideal of being "simple, uneducated men."

Source



Educating illegal aliens drains money from American kids

PTA parents: welcome to America 2006. Your child wants to play football or play in the school band or on the soccer team. Well you already know you have to dig a little deeper into your wallet due to school budget cuts. While the cost to parents handling out cash in order to keep their children in these extra curricular activities keeps going up, another part of state educational budget is actually exploding because those dollars are being diverted to educating illegal alien children because of an ill-conceived and little known 1982 U.S. Supreme Court Case called Plyer v. Doe.

What would a poll of parents in small towns, urban or rural elementary schools, middle schools or high school meeting rooms across America's Heartland find? What do you think they would answer if asked about having to pay out of pocket for more school programs for their kids while normal tax dollars go toward skyrocketing educational opportunities for illegal aliens? Illegal aliens - people who are in this country ILLEGALLY but whose children our tax dollars are supporting.

Until the U.S. Supreme Court decision is overturned it may not even matter. The Supreme Court Plyer v. Doe decision created a U.S. Constitutional Equal Protection right for illegal aliens that is not found in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. By fabricating a right for illegal aliens - the court's own language eliminated - a right of our own children's equal protection which is now being obliterated. The U.S. Supreme Court held "The deprivation of public education is not like the deprivation of some other governmental benefit. Public education has a pivotal role in maintaining the fabric of our society and in sustaining our political and cultural heritage; the deprivation of education takes an inestimable toll on the social, economic, intellectual, and psychological well-being of the individual, and poses an obstacle to individual achievement"

Does it not stand to reason that the Plyer v. Doe decision has caused grievous harm to American children in what the U.S. Supreme Court said would be the exact result if public education dollars were withheld from illegal alien children? After 24 years with illegal aliens and their children (whose numbers are growing exponentially) crushing our state and local education budgets we must correct this misdirected and misapplied constitutional decision by the U.S. Supreme Court by going to the heart of the Plyer v. Doe decision. It seems clear that a new call to arms should be blaring loudly in PTA meetings everywhere that are dotting the landscape of our nation.

America, it must happen now because the economic impact of this decision is staggering! Billions of educational dollars from local school programs are stealing opportunity from American kids and their families and it is simply not just. According to the Federation for Immigration Reform, "The total K-12 school expenditure for illegal immigrants costs states nearly $12 billion annually, and when the children born here to illegal aliens are added, the costs more than doubles to $28.6 billion." For example, children of illegal immigrants in California - who represent nearly 15% of the kindergarten through 12th grade public school students - are costing PTA parents and other taxpayers $2.2 billion annually to educate illegal immigrant students in those grades. That's enough to pay the salaries of 41,764 teachers or 14% of California's teachers!

Our American educational budget is not simply on a slippery slope it is in an avalanche from the crush of paying for illegal alien children. The educational budget deficit free fall has to stop and the knee jerk budget give-away bonanza has to cease. That is not the American way nor is it the American Dream that our children should be forced to accept. True, we are a nation built upon immigrants - people who came here legally and are proud to have sacrificed much to do so. They abided by the rules so that the nectar of the American Dream would be that much sweeter, that much more meaningful, and that much more satisfying. The legal immigrant followed the rules and proudly swore allegiance to his or her new nation. Many legal immigrants fought against all odds in many ways, came to this country to escape crushing poverty, and to make a better life for themselves and their families. And they did it legally.

The noble concept of the American Dream has been hijacked in plain view of every American who takes the time to see that our laws that protect legal citizens should be stretched and compromised to fit the illegal alien who boldly crosses the border with his pregnant wife and children in tow who does not understand - or care - that there is a double standard in play. This double standard allows the illegal alien from Mexico to be fed, clothed, educated, employed and even defended because our nation of laws and rules don't apply to him and his fellow Mexican illegals. The exception, of course, is if the immigrant has the misfortune to be originating illegally from countries like Haiti, China, Africa, India, Italy, or any other nation.

But this protected class of illegals gladly expects our nation to use its city budgets to take money away from our kids' classrooms, take housing dollars away from our own poor. This double standard is not fair to our own hard-working single-parent households who live from paycheck to paycheck and who also have a dream, yes, a legitimate American Dream backed by the Constitution and guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. American citizens understand that if their American-born or legally naturalized son or daughter studies hard enough, works hard enough, and keeps his or her grades high that he may have the opportunity to go to college or to a trade school or own and build a small business. The protection of this dream is why we have immigration laws designed to accommodate only a certain number of immigrants from other countries.

The solution is in Section One of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment, which states: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." It must be fully litigated now. In addition the U.S. Supreme Court must overturn the 1982 U.S. Plyer v. Doe decision. The outcome will allow for the renewed preservation of America's educational integrity. The new result in Plyer v. Doe would erase the Burger Court surrender of the U.S. Constitution to political correctness at the expense of American children's educational future.

Source

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

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"

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

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14 October, 2006

"Old" Mathematics is back

A pity the arrogant Leftist "educators" had to experiment on kids with rubbish methods for so long

We Americans used to understand the concept of educational progression -- of instilling fundamental skills early and completely so that they became natural extensions of children's lives, thus equipping them for moving into higher realms of learning and reasoning. But somewhere and somehow, we lost our way and began embracing panaceas that promised educational gain without pain.

Educational concepts that had stood generations of Americans in good stead -- phonics-based reading, memorizing multiplication tables, basic rules of grammar -- were cast aside in the 1970s and 1980s in favor of "reforms" that reflected the moral relativism of the age and would, their advocates insisted, make learning more fun and less work.

A 1989 decree by the National Council of Mathematics Teachers typified the trend, casting aside such concepts as multiplication tables in favor of what came to be known as "fuzzy math" that favored estimates over exactitude and assumed that everyone would always use a calculator, rendering paper and pencil figuring obsolete. Innumeracy -- a chronic inability to understand and apply mathematics to work and daily life -- is rampant, and the abysmally poor performance of American children in international mathematics test comparisons is graphic proof that "fuzzy math" is an abject failure. For nearly two decades, "math wars" have raged in academic and political circles over what children should learn. California, as the most populous and diverse state, has been a major front.

Hostilities erupted in California during the mid-1990s when then-Gov. Pete Wilson and legislators prodded the state Board of Education to adopt new standards. Marion Joseph, a one-time top state education official, came out of retirement to take a seat on the state board and lead the charge for change. An advisory panel recommended standards that moved toward more mathematical fundamentals, but the state board put even more emphasis on basics and adopted them after a battle with Delaine Eastin, then the state schools superintendent.

Some states followed California's model and others continued a fuzzier version of math. But Joseph and the other back-to-basics advocates appear to be having the last laugh. With the nation moving toward national academic standards, but with huge differences in approaches among the states, the National Council of Mathematics Teachers has revisited the issue and in a new encyclical has figuratively abandoned the fuzzy approach and recommended grade-by-grade guidelines that move substantially back to fundamentals.

You have to wade through reams of jargon to find the changes. The guidelines don't use the term "multiplication tables," for example, but say that kids in elementary school should become proficient in "multiplication facts." Leaders of the math teachers' council are reluctant to say that there is a major change, instead describing the new guidelines as building on previous suggestions. But a side-by-side comparison indicates that what the council is proposing and what California adopted a decade ago are quite similar.

Source



BRITAIN: A PATHETIC AND EXTREMELY ARBITRARY SUBSTITUTE FOR IQ AND ACHIEVEMENT TESTS

At what point is a person dead? And how does a perm work? You may need to talk your way out of questions like these to get into Britain's elite universities, a survey of applicants has revealed. They were some of the more curious questions recently pitched by interviewers at Oxford and Cambridge looking to find the very best among the thousands of students trying to get on courses at the prestige institutions. The survey of around 1200 students by Oxbridge Applications, which advises applicants, showed the interview process was living up to its reputation for being notoriously tough. The questions reported by students included:

Here is a piece of bark, please talk about it. (Biological Sciences, Oxford)

Are you cool? (Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford)

At what point is a person "dead"? (Medicine, Cambridge)

Put a monetary value on this teapot. (Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Cambridge)

Other questions, though it was not clear who asked them, included: What percentage of the world's water is contained in a cow; of all 19th-century politicians, who was most like Tony Blair?

Jessica Elsom, of Oxbridge Applications, said the interview process was "notoriously eccentric" as the universities try to recruit the sharpest-witted among youngsters with flawless British school-leaving exam results. "With the increase in the numbers of students excelling at A-level, the Oxbridge interviews are one way of finding out who really cuts the mustard," she said.

Source



Classics a rediscovered pillar of education in Australia



Two ancient languages are sparking an unexpected revival in the increasingly lost arts of punctuation and grammar in the nation's schools. A revival in the popularity of classical Greek and Latin and ancient history is teaching high school students something that many are failing to grasp in modern day English classrooms. "I have a greater grasp of grammar because I learn (classical languages)," said Year 12 student Samantha Taylor, one of about 200 students who will sit Latin for the HSC in NSW this year. "I understand verbs, clauses and nouns."

Ancient history, Latin, philosophy and classical Greek dominate the suiteof HSC subjects Ms Taylor is studying at the Sydney Church of England Co-educational Grammar School (Redlands). Ancient history is a popular pathway into classical languages and for the past two years enrolments in this subject - now the seventh-most popular for the HSC in NSW - have overtaken those in modern history in that state.

There is little doubt that the study of classics is no pushover: it is intellectually demanding and requires the reading of texts in Latin and ancient Greek. Experts argue that is why the skills it engenders in students - analysis, argument, presentation - are so useful in the workplace. And employers know it. But that is probably not why students are drawn to classics.

Lecturer Alastair Blanshard said the exoticism and colour of the ancient world appealed to students and offered an escape from the mundane. "It's a world where all the things that you would want to happen are happening," he said. "There's a lot of appeal about the politics. When you see current politics and you see the endless senatorial inquiries and the things drowning in red tape, it's quite nice to imagine a world where it's all sorted out by daggers on the senate floor." In a classical world, things were much clearer; leaders could conquer a world that was less constrained by Christian morality. There was more sense of adventure, more sense of play.

The Australian National University's classics convener, Elizabeth Minchin, said the increase in popularity of the classics was creating stronger demand for those subjects in universities. She said 16 universities now taught classics to some degree. Some such as Monash, had reintroduced it after closing courses in the wake of 1996 budget cuts. Sydney University is among those institutions experiencing rapid growth in the classics. Its undergraduate enrolments in ancient history and the classics now stand at 1417, a 22 per cent increase on 2004.

Source



No place for politics in Australia's national narrative

If Julie Bishop wins a national curriculum, there's plenty that needs fixing, writes Kevin Donnelly

Compared with the rest of the world, Australia's curriculum is second rate. Not only are we in the second 11 when it comes to the results in international maths and science tests, as measured by the Trends in International Maths and Science Studies, but, as documented in Why Our Schools are Failing, our curriculum is dumbed down and politically correct.

The solution? One answer is to have a national curriculum based on the methodology being advocated in the US. After dumping the outcomes-based education model, the US approach to curriculum is firmly based on the academic disciplines, politically impartial, succinct and teacher friendly and benchmarked against international best practice.

While a national approach to curriculum has much to endorse it, judged by the attempt already under way, represented by the Australian Statements of Learning in maths, English and civics, there are dangers in imposing a national approach. Take the national Statements of Learning for Civics and Citizenship, endorsed by Australia's education ministers at their August ministerial meeting, as an example. First, the good news. The proposed civics and citizenship curriculum does ask students to develop "an understanding of, and commitment to, Australia's democratic system of government, law and civic life" and "the capacity to clarify and critically examine values and principles that underpin Australia's democracy". There is even an attempt to illustrate what such principles refer to when the documents suggest students learn about "the common good, separation of powers, government accountability" and "equality before the law, presumption of innocence". Unfortunately, such details prove the exception and the bad news outweighs the good.

Overall, the document fails to make explicit the values, principles, historical events and people central to Australia's development as one of the world's oldest continuous democracies. Under Historical Perspectives, Year 5 students are asked to "investigate the influence of significant individuals and events on the development of democracy in Australia", Year 7 students are asked to "explore the impact of people, events and movements of the past on Australian identities and democracy" and Year 9 students are asked to "reflect on the influence of past international events on governments in Australia".

In line with the present inability or unwillingness of those in charge of Australian curriculums to make explicit judgments about what all students have the right to learn, such statements give no direction as to what individuals and which events should be given priority. The danger is that many schools across Australia will ask students in history and social studies classes to do projects on Peter Brock or Steve Irwin on the assumption that learning should be immediately relevant and contemporary. While good teachers can make figures such as Arthur Phillip, Caroline Chisholm, Edmund Barton, Henry Bournes Higgins and Robert Menzies accessible and lively, many teachers will take the easier option.

Given the left-leaning nature of Australia's education establishment, it should not surprise anyone that the Statements of Learning for Civics and Citizenship present a politically correct approach to issues. Students are told to value the "heritage of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples" and, when arguing the need to teach narratives, the example refers to "Dreaming stories". Students are also asked to learn about the "uniqueness and diversity of Australia as a multicultural society", to "explore Australia's cultural diversity" and asked to "contribute to environmental sustainability in local to global contexts".

In line with the cultural Left's belief that education must be used to create "mini-me" social activists, Year 3 students are told to "participate in positive civic and social action" and Year 5 students are told to "participate in appropriate actions as environmental stewards or participate in other civic action to effect positive change".

Unlike the US, with its proud record of teaching civic values and founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, Australia has a history of failing to teach the values and the narrative on which our democracy depends. With the exception of NSW, the way history and politics is taught reflects a dumbed-down and politically correct approach. Instead of celebrating what we have achieved as a nation, students are taught to feel guilty about the sins of the past and that Australian society is riven with inequality and social injustice.

Instead of students being taught the grand narrative associated with the rise of Western civilisation and Australia's foundation and growth as a nation, they are told that doing history is more important than learning history, and studying the local community and PC issues such as the environment, multiculturalism, gender, futures and world peace take priority.

On these pages in the past year or two there have been repeated examples of how subjects such as history, mathematics, science, geography and music have been subverted by the cultural Left and dumbed down by an adherence to outcomes-based education. Sadly, the recently endorsed Statements of Learning for Civics and Citizenship proves that little has changed and that the devil is always in the detail when it comes to developing a national approach.

Source

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

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"

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

***************************



13 October, 2006

SOUTHERN CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY GOES ILLEGAL

One of their professors summarizes below why affirmative action is unwise and unjust

The new academic year has ushered in a barrage of affirmative-action initiatives at Southern Connecticut State University. One of these is achieving racial and ethnic diversity in the SCSU faculty. The rationale for this is that a diverse faculty is a more competent faculty, better able to teach Black, Hispanic, and female students who would otherwise be taught by white males. They assume that each minority groups has its own viewpoint and that minorities are victimized and being deliberately excluded from specialties dominated by white males. For that reason SCSU faculty must make racial and ethnic diversity a top hiring priority; they should ``borrow'' minorities from other departments for their search committees; and should also consider ``candidates of opportunity'' who are unqualified but possess ``other exceptional qualities.''

Additional requirements imposed by the university include the need to record the race and gender of every candidate we wish to interview. But hiring faculty in the name of ``diversity'' does not help faculty hiring committees bring better scholar-teachers to SCSU. Instead it institutionalizes discrimination against worthy candidates who happen to be white, male, heterosexual or politically conservative while lowering teaching and scholarship standards. Indeed it causes universities to break the laws of the land, including the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and all federal and Connecticut statutes that prohibit discrimination. An article in a recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education notes that diversity preferences in faculty hiring are very difficult to defend; diversity policies could make Southern far more vulnerable to lawsuits than the supposed unfair hiring standards now in place.

Besides being illegal, such practices hurt minorities by reinforcing prejudice and misconstrue the needs of the most important university population - the students. They know the difference between a member of a preferred group who meets our "minimal qualifications" and the high-quality professors of all backgrounds that SCSU has successfully attracted in the past. These students also know that this affects the quality of the education they receive, the value of their degrees, and their future employment prospects. Hospitals do not hire ``minimally qualified'' doctors for the sake of diversity; don't our students deserve the best professors we can hire?

What motivates all the new rules? The new policy statements suggest a vision of social justice to make faculty resemble the inhabitants of the urban center of New Haven, as it assumes do our students. But the idea that in a just world faculty demographics would necessarily match those of the New Haven community is absurd. A sizable percentage of our students do not even come from the urban center, they are from small, provincial towns in the region. Southern Connecticut admirably helps New Haven address its many social pathologies but any attempt to reflect these realities would help no one. If SCSU were to follow a real policy of non-discrimination, faculty demographics would represent those of the applicants for faculty positions, not those of the community they are teaching in. These are dictated by individual preferences, not race-driven quotas.

Perhaps the worst thing about this obsession with ``diversity'' on college campuses is that its objective is really a political one. Most diversity proponents are pursuing a political agenda that seeks to homogenize not diversify perspectives. It is one designed to attract liberal Democrats who have almost identical political positions despite their racial and ethnic diversity. There is nothing in these policies that promotes one of the most important kinds of diversity in academia - intellectual diversity. The list of recruitment sources we were given does not include a single conservative organization. Discriminating on the basis of race and gender does not guarantee different perspectives. Rather, it is far more likely to produce a group of faculty having similar values, views of human nature, and perceptions of a just society. It is dangerous for any institution, but particularly for an educational institution, to seek a monopoly over the truth.

While academic departments at SCSU may only be encouraged to achieve diversity, institutional pressure to conform will discourage "infidels" on search committees from listing white males as finalists for positions even if they are by far the best candidates. Instead of selecting faculty on the basis of merit, faculty hiring committees in specialties dominated by white males will be looking not for the best-qualified candidates for members of ethnic minorities who are "minimally qualified.''

In the alternative, many departments will start to hire in specialties with a political agenda that have a higher proportion of minorities - feminist and ethnic studies, for example. In time, we will only be able to interview one or two of our best candidates and the rest will have to be minimally qualified or from highly politicized specialties in an effort to meet these unjust and discriminatory diversity goals.

This is not justice, it is injustice. And the result is universities where the students it purports to teach receive an inferior education. If Southern Connecticut would limit its focus to the pursuit of excellence, listed as its primary value, and had a little more faith in minorities and white males, everybody would be better off, especially our students. And diversity would likely be one of the results.

Source



Australia: Ideologues hijack High School physics education

Comment by Dr Peter Ridd, a professor of physics at James Cook University

The moguls controlling the education syllabuses in the Queensland Studies Authority should be fearful of the plans of Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop to scrap the state boards of study and introduce a national curriculum. The message to them is simple - fix up the school syllabuses or face extinction.

The Queensland education system, and the QSA in particular, has been hijacked by ideologues applying theories dreamt up by the education faculties of our universities. They have become out of touch with the expectations of the parents. In addition, they have made little effort to address the concerns regarding their syllabuses of academics at universities in disciplines such as English, geography, maths, physics and engineering. In short, they have some of the world's silliest syllabus documents while at the same time claiming that Queensland is at the cutting edge of modern education practice.

Like most people who are concerned with education, but who have left the classroom, they have lost touch with reality. My favourite example of a typical Queensland syllabus is the new physics syllabus presently being introduced. A syllabus is the document that a teacher uses for guidance on what to teach and how to assess. Incredibly, the physics syllabus gives almost no guidance to the teacher of what content is to be taught. Nowhere, for example, does it say that the laws of electricity or gravity should be covered by the teacher.

The statements in the syllabus on copyright, equity and safety are each longer than the section on content. The reason is that according to modern education theory, content and facts are not necessary. In fact, in the world of education relativism, facts do not even exist; they are merely constructs that may vary according to your cultural background and general philosophy. Perhaps in some culture gravity goes upwards?

With the omission of any facts from the syllabus, one might have expected that it would be a short document, but you would be wrong. There is page after page of gory education jargon describing the overcomplicated assessment scheme that forbids the use of marks. Instead, it uses a highly questionable subjective system of "holistic judgments" to come up with a final grade.

Also, in the new syllabus, teachers are now at liberty to remove almost all mathematics from their physics courses. Mathematics is the primary language of physics and removing the maths effectively cripples the subject.

The miserable mess of the new physics syllabus is but one example of a multitude of crazy aspects about our education system imposed by the QSA. We have an English syllabus where the children learn more about gender equity and culture than about writing. We have a junior science syllabus that has removed almost all calculations, causing the subject to be pointlessly descriptive.

Students fail to realise how mathematics is a key aspect in most modern science, engineering and technology. Our mathematics syllabus document has not a single equation in it and introduces key techniques such as algebra far too late. Streaming of students in junior maths is officially frowned upon but most schools do it on the sly because the teachers at least do not have their heads in the clouds.

The junior SOSE (Studies of Science and Environment) syllabus has, in the words of Bishop, become a course that could have been written by Chairman Mao. It is a never-ending morass of trendy left-wing mantra on subjects such as multiculturalism, Aboriginal culture and history, diversity, minority groups and why Western civilisation is the cause of all the evil in the world. They learn little geography or history, and the environmental section suffers from the minor problem that they are not taught enough biology, chemistry, physics or geography to understand the environmental problems about which they learn.

Our assessment systems are dominated by assignments. Exams have been eliminated in many subjects. This is great if you are a child from a comfortable middle-class background with well-educated parents. Parents can either help you with your assignments or hire you a tutor. It is not exactly cheating, but pity the children from lower socio-economic groups who do not get access to this extra help. Continuous assignments do not achieve the aim of improving writing because teachers don't have the time to help the poor writers on an individual basis. Because teachers can never be sure who has actually done an assignment they must not be overused and certainly not become the dominant assessment type.

For the past decade or two, the QSA, backed up by their mates in the university faculties of education, have been going on a rampage through our education system. Finally, in Bishop, we have a person who is willing to take them to task. A national curriculum has the minor advantage that it reduces duplication. The major advantage is that we can start again and purge the country of our present boards of study.

Source



Australia: Study sounds mathematics teaching alarm

Mathematics is a subject in crisis, with high school maths teachers increasingly underqualified, unhappy and in short supply. A national study, to be released today, reveals one in five maths teachers did not study maths beyond first year at university and one in 12 did no tertiary maths at all. Half are teaching subjects other than maths at school and more than a third are aged over 50, raising the problem of an ageing workforce.

Commissioned by the influential Australian Council of Deans of Science, the report calls for national accreditation of maths and science teachers to ensure minimum qualifications across all states and territories. As Education Minister Julie Bishop fights for a national schools curriculum, the 38 science deans have stressed "the urgent need to prepare more people for mathematics teaching in schools". "Three in four schools currently experience difficulty recruiting suitably qualified teachers for mathematics classes, and the impending retirement of the baby boomers is set to exacerbate this situation," the study says. The call comes as some universities introduce remedial maths courses for first-year students to help them cope with their degrees.

Overall, 8 per cent of mathematics teachers had studied no maths at university at all. One in five had not studied the subject beyond first year, including 23 per cent of junior school teachers. Teachers younger than 30 were significantly less likely than older colleagues to hold a maths major or to have studied maths teaching methods. "This data, along with the changing face of modern mathematics, explains why 40 per cent of those teaching at the moment were dissatisfied with their mathematics preparation as mathematics teachers," the deans say in a foreword to the study. "Fewer than half of the teachers were confident that they would be teaching mathematics in five years' time."

The research highlights the fact almost every Australian student will do maths at some stage during their schooling. And many fields - such as engineering, agriculture, economics, medicine and business - require a sophisticated understanding of maths and statistics. But many school students are not receiving the high level of maths education required for these fields because just 64 per cent of schools now teach advanced maths, a situation brought about by fewer students wanting to take it up.

Titled "The Preparation of Mathematics Teachers in Australia", the study was conducted by Melbourne University's Centre for the Study of Higher Education and is based on a survey of 3500 teachers and heads of maths departments across 841 secondary schools. It stresses the need for state and territory governments to upgrade the skills of the current crop of maths teachers to keep pace with advances in knowledge. "There's a really urgent task for government if they are going to back a new (national) curriculum to put in place upskilling programs in content for teachers that are currently teaching," said the president of the deans council and dean of science at the Australian National University, Tim Brown. "Students need teachers who have sufficient confidence in their subject knowledge to admit when they don't know the answer and help the students to find out what it is, or what the problem is."

The report reveals considerable disparity between the states: NSW has fewer maths teachers per school while Queensland and Victoria have the most. Queensland finds it hardest to recruit maths teachers. While in Western Australia, curriculum changes were causing widespread "dissatisfaction and concern". It says there is no single way to measure teacher quality, in part because teacher registration is a state issue and graduates can enter the profession by many pathways.

The deputy principal of Catholic girls' school Loreto, in Melbourne's Toorak, and a mathematics teacher for more than 20 years, Elizabeth Burns believes the job must be made more lucrative to attract the next generation of qualified teachers. "Teaching is not a profession that is highly esteemed and there are far more lucrative areas that students who are good at mathematics can go into," she said. "They have to look at better career paths for teachers and higher returns. "It's also about recruiting from other industries. I know people are moving into teaching now from other areas like engineering. Recruitment doesn't only have to come from school leavers or university leavers."

Source

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

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"

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

***************************



12 October, 2006

School vouchers can be a solution to segregation, analysis finds

Private schools participating in voucher programs in the Milwaukee, Cleveland and Washington, D.C., districts are much less segregated than public schools, according to an eye-opening new analysis that also finds that segregation levels in private schools generally are not substantially different from those in public schools.

With one of the goals of the U.S. education system to increase integration in public schools, the report provides powerful ammunition against attacks by opponents of school choice who maintain that voucher programs are camouflaged attempts to promote segregation in education. "Private schools have more potential to desegregate students because they break down geographic barriers, drawing students together across neighborhood boundaries," according to the report's author, Dr. Greg Forster, director of research at the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation. "But this potential for desegregation in private schools is hindered because many students can't afford private school. School vouchers overcome the monetary barrier, enabling private schools to make desegregation a reality."

The Friedman Foundation, declared "the nation's leading voucher advocates" by the Wall Street Journal, was founded in 1996 on the belief that the best way to improve the quality of education is to give all parents the freedom to choose the schools that their children attend. This report follows two recent, original studies released by the Foundation, which found private schools participating in the Cleveland and Milwaukee voucher programs to be 18 and 13 points less segregated than their public school counterparts. Forster analysed the results of all available studies using valid empirical methods to compare segregation in public and private schools, both in general and in the context of school voucher programs.

The best way to measure segregation is by a "segregation index" comparing schools to the racial composition of the larger metropolitan area in which they are located, rather than looking at a particular unit such as a school district, Forster says. The "second-best way" employed by some studies is measuring racial homogeneity, such as measuring the percentage of schools that are more than 90 percent white or more than 90 percent minority. "The public's primary concern regarding school segregation is the continued existence of large numbers of schools that are very heavily white or very heavily non-white," Forster noted. "To test for the presence of these schools, measuring percent white versus percent minority is appropriate."

Forster reports that all seven valid empirical studies that have been conducted on voucher programs in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Washington find that participating private schools are much less segregated than public schools. Three valid empirical studies have also compared public and private schools in general; they show that private schools are actually less segregated than public schools when examined at the classroom level, and that segregation levels in private schools are not substantially different from those in public schools when examined at the school level.

For example, two studies by Marquette University researchers looked at the Milwaukee voucher program. One compared public elementary schools to Catholic elementary schools participating in the voucher program, and found that 58 percent of public elementary students and 38 percent of Catholic elementary students attended schools that were racially homogeneous (more than 90 percent white or 90 percent minority.)

Another compared public schools to all private schools participating in the voucher program and found that 54 percent of public elementary students and 37 percent of public secondary students attended racially homogenous schools. Of the private schools participating in the voucher program, 50 percent of elementary students and 16 percent of secondary students were in racially homogeneous schools.

When Forster calculated the "segregation index" of Milwaukee, he found that voucher-participating private schools were 13 points less segregated than public schools - equal to the difference between a school being 60 percent and a school being 73 percent white in a city that was 50 percent white.

"Private schools have a much greater potential to desegregate students because they break down geographic barriers, drawing students together across neighborhood boundaries in a way the government school monopoly cannot match even when it tries to do so," Forster concludes. "The evidence shows that vouchers are in fact moving children from more segregated public schools into less segregated private schools."

Source



CRAP "SCIENCE" TEACHING IN BRITAIN

A new science GCSE [junior High School course] that replaces traditional physics, chemistry and biology with discussions about topical issues such as GM crops and the MMR vaccine is attacked today by leading academics as "more suitable to the pub than the schoolroom". The reformed curriculum will not inspire more children to study science at a higher level, while also failing in its main goal of breeding a more scientifically literate public, senior researchers, educationists and ethicists said. The critics, who include Baroness Warnock, the philosopher who framed the embryo research laws, and Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial College London and a former chairman of GlaxoSmithKline, say that the new course teaches too little about basic concepts to be of much use either to the next generation of scientists, doctors and engineers, or to those who will drop science at 16.

The "Twenty-First Century Science" GCSE, introduced nationally last month, is being taken by pupils at a third of England's secondary schools. Experts say that its replacement of practical experiments and understanding of fundamental principles with debate about the "impact of science and technology on modern life" will leave students poorly prepared to pursue all sciences at A level and university. They argue that it will also encourage pupils to develop opinions before they understand the underlying research, potentially undermining the scientific literacy that the course seeks to build.

The new syllabus is designed to make science more relevant to teenagers by engaging them with issues of public concern, such as nuclear power or bird flu, rather than teaching traditional physics, chemistry and biology. Pupils also have the option to take a second GCSE that teaches the basics required if they wish to pursue one of these subjects in the sixth form. It is one of two new GCSEs that are replacing the double science award, which used to be taken by most state school pupils. Another alternative is a multiple-choice-based option that has also been severely criticsed for failing to stretch students. Fears have been raised that many hundreds of schools will be attracted to the new exams, after it emerged that from next year their success at GCSE level in the national league tables would also be measured on the percentage of pupils achieving two or more passes in science.

Sir Richard said that it was impossible to have meaningful and informed debate about science and society without first understanding how science works, which is best learnt by practical experiment and mastering fundamental principles. "A science curriculum based on encouraging pupils to debate science in the news is taking a back-to-front approach," he said. "Science should inform the news agenda, not the other way around. "Before we can engage the public in an informed debate we need the scientists to do the science. And before the future citizen can contribute to the decision-making process, they need to have a good grounding in the fundamentals of science and technology, rather than the soundbite science that state school curriculums are increasingly moving towards."

Lady Warnock said: "The present policy has two incompatible aims: to give all pupils some understanding of the subject matter of the sciences, and to so fire the imagination of a substantial minority of them that they want to pursue their interest into the sixth form and beyond. "The new syllabus encourages a postmodern view that science is just one of many ways of finding out about the world, and that its claims are as open to challenge as those of any interested pressure group," she said. The agenda is set by the press, creating debates that are "more suitable for the pub than the school room".

Their criticisms are voiced in What is Science Education For?, published today by the Institute of Ideas, an independent think-tank. In its lead essay, David Perks, head of physics at Graveney School in Wandsworth, southwest London, said that a better way of improving science education would be to return to teaching physics, chemistry and biology as separate disciplines.

Maths and physics A levels will no longer be mandatory for students wishing to study physics at the University of East Anglia, London South Bank University, University of Leicester and University of Surrey. The new "integrated sciences" degree follows the University of Reading's decision to close its physics department last week.

Source



Australia: Curriculum choice would force reform

A middle way between continued State government negligence and a Federal takeover of education

If a high quality, teachable curriculum were drafted by Australia's best minds and most outstanding teachers, it would no doubt be highly attractive to most Australian parents. Julie Bishop is leading a crucial national debate about curriculum standards. Her determination to improve curriculum is to be applauded, and hopefully the federal Government will oversee the development of new high quality curriculum available for adoption around Australia.

The Australian Government is probably the only government that can bring together the necessary elements to achieve this. Its greatest challenge, however, will be to have such a curriculum actually taught in schools run by the states. The temptation, which brought former education minister John Dawkins unstuck in the early 1990s, is to negotiate the curriculum with the same people used by the states. This would sink the enterprise from the start. There will be no high quality national curriculum if it has to be negotiated with the states and territories, and there will be no purpose in developing such a curriculum unless schools are allowed to offer it.

The answer is to end each state's insistence on a monopolistic position in its schools for its own curriculum. The concept of one curriculum imposed on every school is outdated. Bishop is right to say a national interest in curriculum is not a matter of replacing the states' monopoly with a national monopoly. This will prove to be the key policy point. In developing its curriculum the Australian Government may well need to use its power to require the states and territories to permit schools to choose any accredited curriculum, including one developed by the national government. In doing so, Canberra will gain the freedom to develop the curriculum it wants, using its own preferred people and processes, the best it can find, and avoiding reliance on the states being willing to have the national curriculum replace their own.

By requiring the states to abolish the privileged position of their own curriculums - developed by people the community has never heard of - the federal Government will be free to develop the curriculum it believes will gain the respect of most parents (and teachers) and have that curriculum adopted by schools. Giving schools the choice will also sidestep the risk that a future national government will simply replace one national curriculum with another, perhaps with one that shares the flaws evident in present state offerings. If schools have the right to choose the curriculum they will offer, the choices of parents will determine the issue, not the decisions of one political level or one bureaucracy.

More important still, allowing schools to choose their curriculum will end the capacity of any fad or ideology to gain control of the mechanisms for developing curriculum, thereby imposing itself on every school and student. The prospect of having a monopoly over the school curriculum is surely one of the great motivating forces that attracts the faddists and the ideologues.

Ending the monopoly of state curriculums will establish accountability by schools to parents for the curriculum they teach, an accountability parents would welcome, and one very much in harmony with the federal Government's philosophy of choice in education. Schools will no longer be able to blame a curriculum imposed on them for student and parent dissatisfaction.

Enabling schools to choose a national curriculum if they wish also goes a considerable way to solving the problem, identified by the Prime Minister, of families moving interstate and finding a substantial lack of continuity in what their children are being taught. If schools in each state are free to choose the national curriculum, parents moving interstate will be able to choose a national curriculum school whose curriculum will be the same as that of many schools in other states. Ending the monopolistic position of state curriculums is not quite as radical as may appear. The principle of parent choice of curriculum has already been accepted.

Instead of the state curriculum, schools can now use the International Baccalaureate, and that curriculum has not been negotiated with the unions or the states. It is an internationally accepted curriculum with high academic standards that some students prefer to do because its assessment is recognised internationally. It is not a big jump to allow schools to choose a national curriculum as well. The states would resist giving parents the option of a high quality national curriculum at their peril, and the Australian Government would doubtless welcome a political battle on the point.

The case of the IB is instructive, because it shows it is possible for schools to offer more than one curriculum. It also shows that schools can use curriculum to attract parents and establish a reputation for quality. Choice of curriculum by schools does not mean that we have to accept lack of comparability across the country. The issue here is not curriculum, but standards and assessment. The other element in the package of reform in this area needs to be national standards and national assessment. We already have national literacy and numeracy standards. National assessments can provide key mechanisms of accountability, and can be designed to cope with curriculum diversity. There are good international examples that make the point.

For decades, Australian students wanting to study in the US have sat something called the Graduate Record Examination that has tested their general abilities and their learning in areas such as maths and science and the humanities. The tests have had enough credibility to be significant in admission to the best universities in the world. These are assessments. They are not curriculums, and they assume that students have not studied the same curriculum. They are designed to find out what students have learned against common standards from the enormous variety of curriculums they have actually studied.

We could have national assessments of that kind in Australia, and the same assessment could be administered in every state and territory. Curriculum choice is therefore entirely compatible with assessment systems that enable parents and the community to determine what and how well students have learned, and to compare the performances of schools and school systems.

There are real possibilities for the production of new high quality curriculums outside the historic institutional battles between school systems, teacher unions and universities, drawing on the best minds in each subject area, and the best evidence-based teaching experience. In principle this can be done by private think tanks and organisations as well as (or better than) by government authorities. It is most likely to happen if the principle of choice is further extended in relation to curriculum.

Source

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

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"

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

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11 October, 2006

Politics As Usual for Los Angeles Teachers Union

From anti-Israel rallies to incoherence on school reform, the union places politics above helping students

United teachers Los Angeles is misnamed. Last week's events show that the teachers union is hardly united - and that its focus too often strays far from education and Los Angeles. By being overly political and acting against reform, the union has let down both its members and the district's students.

The teachers finally rose up against their union leadership last week, voting by a convincing margin to oppose the legislation that gives Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa a measure of influence over the schools. Union leaders at first opposed mayoral control of the schools; then, without consulting their members or even their governing body, they worked out a deal to get behind a half-baked bill that fragments responsibility rather than centralizing it and blurs accountability rather than clarifying it. The leaders defended themselves by saying Villaraigosa wouldn't wait for them to consult its policymaking body.

The union suffered another embarrassment when it backed off from plans to co-host an anti-Israel rally at its headquarters. The reason for its hasty retreat is obvious - outcry from both the public and within its own ranks. Less clear is what the union was thinking in the first place, getting involved in a sensitive international issue and hosting a rally certain to offend many teachers, students and parents.

But then, building student achievement often comes in a distant second to politics as UTLA priorities. Last week, union President A.J. Duffy told The Times that even though scripted teaching methods raise scores, "test scores are a phony gauge of whether public education is successful or not." He's entitled to his opinion, but like them or not, tests are one of the measures by which the district tracks the progress of its students. And their progress is the job of every teacher. The union leadership's resistance to the reforms that improve scores is an obstacle to the improvement of L.A. schools.

Fortunately, there are many teachers who disagree with Duffy, who put student achievement first, who believe in trying new things that might help. These are the teachers who think more about the classroom than the union. Unfortunately, they don't tend to vote in union elections. Slightly more than a quarter of the union's members voted in the election that made Duffy president. Maybe if those teachers were more active in UTLA, the L.A. schools would have the kind of union they deserve.

Source



BRITISH BUREAUCRACY HURTS THE GIFTED

There have always been a few bright sparks who made it to university before their eighteenth birthdays. I knew some 17-year-olds when I was at college: they had been so far ahead of their class that their teachers let them skip a year. They didn't get any special treatment at university. Though not legally adults, they were entering an adult institution and were treated pretty much the same as everybody else.

Now with all the paranoia about child protection, universities have changed their view of 17-year-olds. Seventeen-year olds are officially children, and so a whole morass of bureaucracy is developing to protect them from the potentially abusive adults on campus. One admissions tutor at University College London (UCL) says he must now check the criminal records of any staff involved with students under the age of 18. Given that tutors are already over-burdened by bureaucracy, it's likely that they just won't bother: `The practice will be that they won't admit 17-year-olds. They will read this advice and turn down those applicants.' The tutor - who was 17 himself when he started university - argues that this `denies students the opportunity of an education when they are ready for it'.

Those under-age students who do make it through the door will find themselves subject to a distinct system of protection, with a whole special layer of restrictions and protective measures. The University of Glamorgan sends students a letter informing them of their special status. `The university is also required to offer you special protection against sexual harassment, and this responsibility we take very seriously', it says. Even though over-16s can give consent for medical treatment, the university `follows good practice and seeks to involve those people with parental responsibility', asking students to get their parents to fill out a form about medical treatment.

The University of Kent reads both 17-year-olds and their tutors their rights and responsibilities on matriculation day. University advice states: `The Head of Student Guidance and Welfare will contact all U18 students at the start of term to ensure that they are aware of the university regulations and any restrictions placed upon them as a result of their age. `One member of academic staff should be put forward to act as personal tutor for all students who are under 18 and this information provided to the Director of Student Guidance and Welfare Services. That person must undertake a Criminal Records Bureau [CRB] check.... That person should be reminded of the special duty of care owed to underage students and in particular of the offence of abuse of trust under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000.'

As for accepting students younger than 17, Oxford is turning around its traditional habit of accepting child prodigies. At the start of term last year, university authorities said they just couldn't cope with the need to monitor and vet everybody with whom the child came into contact. Ruth Collier, a spokesperson for admissions, said: `Suddenly we can't offer one-to-one tutorials, while the people who do administration in our colleges have to spend a great deal of time making absolutely sure they are not inadvertently placing a child in a potentially dangerous situation with anyone who hasn't had a criminal records check.'

Interviews and university open days have become a minefield. The University of Essex requires that student mentors and helpers undergo a CRB check. It also insists on the presence of two `designated child protection officers' for school visits where students are not accompanied by a teacher or parent, and these officers' `names and contact details must be communicated to the young people involved in the activity, their parents, and staff members'.

Behind all of this lies a changing definition of adulthood and childhood. When adult meant `mature', the existence of 17-year-olds on campus wasn't such a big deal. They couldn't vote or drink legally, but it was only a question of a few months. Since becoming adult was a about becoming gradually more mature, the grey area of 16 to 18 could be fudged. Now, `adult' and `child' have come to mean potential abuser and potential abuse victim. This sets them apart as two completely separate groups, with completely different interests. Children are not in the process of being assimilated into the adult world, but instead need to be protected and defended from it. When this is the view, there is a legalistic obsession with age. A person flips, on their eighteenth birthday, from being abused to abuser, from being protected to regulated. So a person aged 17 years and 11 months would need their tutor to be CRB-checked; if the following month they were to help out at a university open day, they themselves would need to be CRB-checked.

UCL recently changed its regulations from covering students under 17, to covering students `under 17 years and 3 months' - presumably those who would not turn 18 in the course of the year. Somebody's months and years are counted precisely, to decide which side of the abuser-abused line they fall down on. Challenging this ridiculous treatment of 17-year-old university students would be one way to take on this poisonous view of adult-child relationships that is widespread today

Source



Australia: Teachers' union sets up Communist Cuba as an example

They can't help wearing their hearts on their sleeves

A South Australian teachers' union journal has praised the achievements of Cuba's education system, saying class sizes are small, schools are free and teachers well-trained. The Australian Education Union has defended the publication, just days after federal Education Minister Julie Bishop claimed school curriculums had been distorted by "Chairman Mao" type ideologies of state bureaucrats.

Former union organiser and journal editor Dan Murphy said the communist island under the regime of Fidel Castro had a 100per cent literacy rate, higher than Australia's. "For a poor, underdeveloped country, they've achieved quite well and nobody can deny that," said Mr Murphy. "It (the article) doesn't shirk away from other issues like requiring teachers to reinforce communist values. But it's not a piece of propaganda out of Miami; it covers other facts you don't strictly get." AEU state president Andrew Gohl yesterday endorsed the South Australian teachers union article, saying: "The fact that (Cuban) education is free, compulsory and funded significantly by the Government is something all governments should aspire to".

The chief source of information for Mr Murphy's August feature was Havana-based Gilda Chacon, a trade union official from the Cuban Federation of Workers. She visited Adelaide in July and was partly sponsored by the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, for which Mr Murphy previously worked. "I think it's a balanced investigation into the available evidence on Cuba," he said.

The AEU also published a letter to the editor from student teacher and Communist Party of Australia member Craig Greer in its latest issue. Mr Greer wrote that the federal Government "still can't find enough money to mirror a fraction of what the Cuban Government has achieved". "If Cuba is a dictatorship, then I'm ready to be dictated to."

The debate follows claims last year by senior NSW education adviser Wayne Sawyer that the education profession was to blame for the re-election of the Howard Government. Students had voted for John Howard because English teachers had failed to teach them critical thought, he argued.

After calling last week for a national curriculum, Ms Bishop said yesterday that parents wanted ideology to be taken out of the classroom. "We need to focus on a commonsense curriculum with high, nationally consistent standards that reflect the values of the community," she said.

The US State Department, in a report on Cuba last year, said all elementary and secondary school students received "obligatory ideological indoctrination".

Cuban-born journalist and author Luis Garcia said Cuba's education system was "heavily politicised" and not an example Australia should follow. "The purpose of education (in Cuba) is not just to teach how to read and write and understand complex issues but essentially it has become a defender of the Castro regime," Garcia said.

Source



Australian university makes students re-study High School mathematics

James Cook University has forced more than half its first-year science and engineering students to sit a high-school-level maths course. The Queensland university revealed yesterday it had become so frustrated by falling standards among high school graduates, and confused by a lack of parity between states, that it joined Wollongong University and the Australian Defence Force Academy in conducting a maths exam of its own design on first-year science and engineering students.

James Cook head of maths, physics and information technology Wayne Read said less than half the Queensland students passed. He said the university this year allowed 190 students to proceed with advanced mathematics but forced 250 to complete a "lookalike" high school Maths B course run by the university. Of the 250 compelled to do the "lookalike" course, an estimated 20 per cent had already done Maths B at high school. "There has certainly been a decline in the (mathematical) abilities of students when they enter university," said Professor Read, who has been an academic since 1987. "That decline started in the early 1990s."

The revelation came as a senior defence force lecturer backed federal Education Minister Julie Bishop's call for a national curriculum, and teachers in Western Australia bemoaned a continuing decline in the mathematical abilities of high school entrants. The debate about falling maths standards and inconsistencies between states comes as a federal parliamentary committee prepares to release its findings on the nation's education and training standards.

The West Australian Curriculum Council yesterday denied that the state's maths curriculum had slipped behind other states, despite a comparison published in The Weekend Australian showing the mathematical abilities required of students in Western Australia were well below national standards. "The WA maths curriculum is consistent with curricula set in other states across Australia. It has not slipped behind any other states," a spokeswoman for the Curriculum Council said.

But pressure group People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes said the abilities of first-year high school students in Western Australia had declined. PLATO spokesman Greg Williams said many Year 8 students did not have a grasp of basics such as fractions, multiplication and percentages.

Australian Defence Force Academy lecturer Steve Barry, who teaches high school graduates from across the nation at the academy's School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences, called for a national curriculum. "It is my opinion that the absence of a uniform Australian mathematics curriculum at high school is detrimental to students from some states, particularly those who then travel interstate to enter university," he said.

Source

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

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"

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

***************************



10 October, 2006

How to fire an incompetent teacher

Joel Klein led the Justice Department's attack on Microsoft for its alleged efforts to monopolize the software market. But Microsoft is a hotbed of competition compared to the organization Klein runs now. Klein is chancellor of New York City's public school system, a monopoly so heavily regulated that sometimes it's unable to fire even dangerous teachers. The series of steps a principal must take to dismiss an instructor is Byzantine. "It's almost impossible," Klein complains.

The rules were well-intended. The union was worried that principals would play favorites, hiring friends and family members while firing good teachers. If public education were subject to the competition of the free market, those bureaucratic rules would be unnecessary, because parents would hold a bad principal accountable by sending their kids to a different school the next year. But government schools never go out of business, and parents' ability to change schools is sharply curtailed. So the education monopoly adopts paralyzing rules instead.

The regulations are so onerous that principals rarely even try to fire a teacher. Most just put the bad ones in pretend-work jobs, or sucker another school into taking them. (They call that the "dance of the lemons.") The city payrolls include hundreds of teachers who have been deemed incompetent, violent, or guilty of sexual misconduct. Since the schools are afraid to let them teach, they put them in so-called "rubber rooms" instead. There they read magazines, play cards, and chat, at a cost to New York taxpayers of $20 million a year.

Once, Klein reports, the school system discovered that a teacher was sending sexual e-mails to a 16-year-old student. "This was the most unbelievable case to me," he says, "because the e-mail was there, he admitted to it. It was so thoroughly offensive." Even with the teacher's confession, it took six years of expensive litigation before the school could fire him. He didn't teach during those six years, but he still got paid-more than $350,000 total. What did it take to finally get rid of him? What does it take to get rid of any teacher whose offenses are so egregious that administrators are willing to tackle the red tape?

More here



CRAP UK HISTORY TEACHING

History teaching at A level [Senior High School] is so fragmented that pupils are left with no understanding of the order in which important events occurred and little idea of what went before or after them, one of Britain's leading academics said yesterday. David Starkey, the television historian and a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, said that A levels were too often taught as if they were miniature degrees, with so much analysis crammed in that the periods they covered had to be cut short into "tiny gobbets of chewed-up material".

He said: "There is no point in doing merely a fragment in time with no sense of what might have led up to events and what consequences flowed from them. At the moment, pupils study a bit of American history and a bit of Hitler. That's almost useless." Dr Starkey said that it was absurd that the main history syllabus covering Hitler stopped in 1939. "There is no Second World War and no Holocaust. This approach does a lot of damage. It glamorises Hitler. You have to ask yourself, what is the point of studying it at all?"

He was equally critical of how syllabuses tackled Henry VIII and the Reformation, his own specialist period. "With Henry VIII, the syllabus covers 1502 to 1529. It stops when things get interesting. The other part of the syllabus covers 1529 to 1547 - the interesting bit. This is an absurd fragmentation. It leaves no space to take a step back and discuss what came before or after. "History, if properly taught, should give people a sense of time and a map of time. You should be able to place yourself in time," he said.

Dr Starkey said that teaching also placed far too much emphasis on the science of gathering evidence for historical events, an approach known as the discovery method. "Teachers use the discovery method to teach when the Norman Conquest was. We know when it was. What's the point in having a teacher if not to tell the students what the facts are?" He added that the study of original documents and the search for evidence should not come until university level. Dr Starkey also despaired of the way his own works and those of other historians were used in schools, with teachers focusing increasingly on historiography - the study of the way history is written - rather than history itself. "A-level students would not be able to tell you what happened at the beginning of the Civil War, but they would be able to tell you what (the historian) Conrad Russell thought about the Civil War," he said.

Dr Starkey was speaking before the premiere this week of the film version of Alan Bennett's successful play The History Boys. It depicts the clash between two teachers, one who values learning for its own sake and one who sees teaching as a series of artificially selected exam techniques. It is a debate that Dr Starkey believes is worth having, not least because he fears that the current system of exams, targets and league tables is destroying Britain's education system.

He fears that highly prescriptive curriculums, combined with a fear in schools of failing in the league tables had produced "nothing but elaborately polished mediocrity" among students, who were coached to pass exams, but not to understand their subjects. He believes that among teachers it has bred an "encompassing cynicism" and destroyed their autonomy, self-confidence and sense of risk

Source



Australia: "Conservatives" seize the education reform initiative

The 19,834th demonstration that Conservatives do NOT oppose change

The Howard Government seeks to transform the politics of education with its campaign to reform school curriculums and achieve more uniform national standards. The initiative by Education Minister Julie Bishop yesterday unveils a bold new agenda replete with risk and opportunity. It invests the Coalition with the initiative in education policy, and is anchored in the deep professional and parental alarm about the values and quality of school curriculums.

Bishop's speech reveals much about the nature of the Government in its fourth term. This initiative involves a willing resort to use central government powers against the states. It constitutes a new cultural assault on the ideological Left and the teacher unions. And it will divide Labor between the choice of popular "back to basics" reforms and its powerful supporters in the educational and teacher union lobbies, who will insist on a showdown with the Howard Government. While the Labor states will protest and threaten resistance, they recognise the need to make some concessions on curriculums. This process is under way.

The critical line in Bishop's speech was her claim that the politics of education was moving from staff and student ratios to a "new frontier" of teacher quality and curriculums. This is a shift from a Labor to a Liberal agenda. A shift in the ideas that dominate education policy in Australia. And it is an ominous warning to Labor that in a policy area long deemed to be Labor's political domain, the Government intends to set the future agenda. The new ideas outlined by Bishop are raising school standards, a greater national curriculum consistency and a new system of accountability for what happens in schools. She invoked the recent declaration in this newspaper by Professor Ken Wiltshire that the states had failed to maintain the quality of school education.

The problem for state governments is their subjugation to education theory that undermines traditional disciplines and politicises curriculums. The states cannot win this argument at the bar of public opinion. Asking 15-year-olds to write about Shakespeare from a Marxist perspective or deconstructing Big Brother won't fly with the public. The litany of examples is exhaustive.

The states may fight Bishop's pledge to "take school curriculum out of the hands of ideologues" by campaigning on state rights. Given his cautious instincts, John Howard will not want a confrontation with the states. But Howard has prepared the ground for this cultural battle. Pivotal to Bishop's reform agenda is her ability to persuade the teachers. Hence her commitment to performance-based pay and compulsory professional development. Her strategy will be to entice individual teachers but penalise the union. It will be a difficult task.

Source



Leftist Australian State government jolted into education reform

The Queensland Government is considering plans to overhaul Years 11 and 12 amid growing debate over national education standards. State Education Minister Rod Welford yesterday welcomed plans by the Queensland Studies Authority to review the senior syllabus. The proposals include introduction of a technical English subject and extension level subjects for advanced students. The QSA also suggests a review of assessment levels in term 3 of Year 12, when students are expected to complete a core skills test, major assignment work and subject tests.

"I think it's a pretty good report and offers us a way forward but there's a lot more work to be done," Mr Welford said. The comments came as Premier Peter Beattie yesterday weighed into the education debate by responding to a Sunday Mail report that a Year 9 student at Windaroo Valley State High School, south of Brisbane, was failed when she refused to write about life in a gay community. Mr Beattie said he did not believe the assignment was appropriate for a 13-year-old.

He said the assignment was not part of the curriculum but one of several topics suggested by the independent Queensland Studies Authority and he called for it to be withdrawn. "I would hope that obviously we educate young Queenslanders to live in a global world, we have to be realistic about what happens in the world," he said. "(But) I don't think it's appropriate for a 13-year-old to be doing an assignment like this and I think the authority should withdraw it."

Mr Beattie also defended the curriculum taught in Queensland schools and said he would not support a national system that could "lower the standards". Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop last week said all Australian students should study a national curriculum, claiming state systems were being run by left-wing ideologues.

But in an apparent softening of the Commonwealth's position, Ms Bishop said yesterday she wanted to work with the states to develop a national curriculum. "I'm not talking about a Commonwealth takeover," she said. Nevertheless, Ms Bishop said the states had to "get their act together". "We are on the money on this issue," she said. "Parents are sick of left-wing ideology curriculum." Ms Bishop also questioned the benefit of union representatives sitting on state curriculum councils.

Opposition education spokeswoman Jenny Macklin said the key was to work with the states, not threaten them. "Labor wants to see nationally consistent high standards of education in all our schools right around Australia," she said. "What Labor doesn't want is (Prime Minister) John Howard and his Education Minister playing politics with our children's education, threatening the states."

Source

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

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"

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

***************************



9 October, 2006

When All Else Fails, Claim Racism

It is no secret that the campus environment has been reformed into an institution for political inculcation. At some point, many professors exchanged a solid liberal arts and classical education for the petty advancement of political objectives. That's why it is no surprise that recent studies found that student both have a lacking understanding of civics and history as well as businesses finding most graduates wholly unsuited for professional work. This can be seen in how many undergraduates attempt to engage the issues of the day, particularly those of left-wing persuasion. As an example, a fellow Daily Illini columnist wrote a recent column on the Federal Election Integrity Act which required photo identification for prospective voters.

No one can intelligently debate the need to positively identify voters before allowing them to cast ballots. It's just common sense. So what does this columnist, and many like-minded commentators do, claim racism. Racism used to be an invidious crime against people of color, now it is little more than a club to shut down intelligent discussion and beat opposing points of view into oblivion. The bill would require identification for free for voters, however, that doesn't matter or get mentioned. In order to gain employment, one has to have valid ID. According to recent unemployment statistics, about 96% of the US population has valid ID. That doesn't matter. This columnist, like many undergrads, is trained to claim racism despite any and all facts to the contrary.

The problem with this line of education is that it makes effective participation in the legislative process impossible. If the general public cannot come to the table with effective ideas or effective ways to debate and discuss those ideas, they are incapable of participating in the process at all. In this way, our universities have failed our democratic republic.

The other problem with claiming racism with frivolous abandon is that it drowns out legitimate claims of racism. Most of the public isn't stupid and realizes that requiring identification isn't a matter of race; it's a matter of common sense. Trying to claim racism where it does not exist diminishes the efficacy of any legitimate charge of racism. It harms people of color in a fundamental way and plays directly into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.

The dangers of a politically charged yet intellectually deficient education are a clear problem to our ability to remain a free nation. A people who cannot have at least some measure of reasonable discussion about the issues of the day will eventually find themselves at the mercy of the "elites" who tell them what to think.

Source



WASTEFUL CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITIES

State Senator Tom McClintock met recently with CalNews.com to discuss this year's legislative session, his campaign for Lt. Governor and California's future. Sitting down to converse with McClintock, one quickly finds out that he's not the extremist that John Garamendi and the far-left would have you believe. McClintock is about straight talk and common sense. During our hour-long interview with him, McClintock described the role of the Lt. Governor and how he would use the office to raise the public's awareness on important policy issues. He would bring increased accountability to the office, and continue to fight wasteful government spending.

One responsibility of the Lt. Governor is to serve as an ex officio member of the University of California Regents and as a trustee at the California State University system. According to McClintock this is one area that needs more accountability and more sunshine. "For many years, I have warned about the rapid growth in the cost of those two University systems - far, far in excess of inflation or enrollment growth. And the recent revelations of millions of dollars of perks and bonuses paid to already highly paid university officials - nearly a billion dollars a year at the University of California according to the San Francisco Chronicle - is painting a very clear picture of corrupt management and incompetent oversight," he said. "The leadership of our universities themselves must avoid becoming the focal point of wasteful spending," the senator said.

McClintock said he was "concerned that recent published accounts of outrageous abuses don't tell the full story." "The State Auditor should not be the only watchdog in California," McClintock said. "That is a responsibility of the Regents and Trustees." We agree. McClintock suggested that a Web site offering students, parents and university workers the ability to send an anonymous email might be the mechanism that could bring greater scrutiny to the UC and CSU systems. "Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said that sunlight is the best of disinfectants," McClintock said. "The purpose of a Web site with anonymous email is to make it a little easier for sunlight to shine into the use of public resources at the University of California and the California State University."

McClintock was making plans to unveil his own Web site or ask the Bureau of State Audits to enhance its' Web site. CalNews.com has offered to make this a joint project with the senator. "I'm very grateful to CalNews.com to act as a reception point for these stories and to host a continuing report of these abuses on its Web site." "If students, parents and rank and file employees and faculty had a mechanism to anonymously and efficiently tell their stories, I believe we would get a comprehensive picture of what's going on behind the veil of secrecy in which the university operates. Such information would then provide some guidance for both the Legislature and the press to investigate and confirm or deny these stories," McClintock said.

The university systems have whistleblower policies and procedures in place that address rank and file employees, but there is not a clear mechanism for people to report wasteful spending by the presidents, chancellors and even the regents and trustees, except through the state's auditor. And, earlier this year, newspapers reported that whistleblowers were not receiving protection for revealing fraudulent activities or wasteful spending. McClintock said it might help if it were done anonymously.

The Los Angeles Times reported on July 21, 2006 that the UC Board of Regents approved the creation and hiring of three high-ranking jobs to supervise finances in an effort to tighten controls over executive benefits and restore public confidence. Two of the new jobs will be executive vice president positions, one for business operations and one as chief financial officer. The third will be a vice president who will act as chief compliance and audit officer, reporting directly to the regents. Salaries for the new positions were not set. "Hiring more high paid people to sit and watch inside the hen house is not the answer. That's the responsibility of the Regents and Trustees. And, people need a mechanism to report cases of abuse. Whistleblowers can file complaints by calling the Bureau of State Audits or reporting it to people inside the university systems. But what about those actually charged with guarding the hen house?"

During his 25-year public career, McClintock has been a voice of reason and frankness that is often ignored or forgotten in Sacramento. He is quite vocal about reducing the tax burden on hardworking Californians, reducing the regulations that destroy the state's economy, or reining in the bureaucracies that waste taxpayer money. The fact McClintock is now calling for increased scrutiny of higher education systems like UC and CSU isn't all that surprising. What is surprising, is that so few of his colleagues have joined him.

Source



Students left behind: Politics-obsessed unions must not control curricula

An editorial from "The Australian"

Speaking at a conference of the History Teachers' Association of Australia in Fremantle yesterday, federal Education Minister Julie Bishop asked a vital question. "How is it", she wondered, "that we have gone from teaching Latin in Year 12 to teaching remedial English in first-year university?"

It is a vital question, and one that more and more parents, fed up with their children's inability to write a grammatically coherent sentence with correct spelling or perform basic mathematics, want answered. The reasons behind the decline in educational quality are manifold. A shift in emphasis away from traditional knowledge and skills-based learning towards the jargon-based and accountability-free ethic of outcomes-based education is largely responsible. Traditionally, federal governments of all complexions have sought to keep school retention rates up as a way to lower unemployment, dumbing down curriculums in the process. The results have not been pretty. Ms Bishop pointed to "English courses without books, history courses without dates and music courses without instruments", echoing a campaign mounted by The Australian to expose the depredations of outcomes-based education and politically correct curriculums in our schools.

The solution, according to Ms Bishop, is to take control of primary and high school curriculums away, not from the states - whose Labor governments have long since abdicated any real responsibility for what is taught in classrooms - but from the teachers' unions and other associated bodies. These groups appear to see their primary goal not as one of educating young people but of creating generations of left-wing social activists in their own image. Recall the lament of NSW English Teachers Association president Wayne Sawyer, who complained last year that teachers were not doing enough to prevent their students from growing up to vote Liberal. A national curriculum would be a big step, and would act as a circuit-breaker against such attitudes.

Ms Bishop's comments must also be seen in the context of Labor backbencher Craig Emerson's call for school to remain compulsory until Year 12 to prevent young people from being lured into a booming economy before their time. While well-intentioned, keeping all young people in school until they are almost 19 is impractical and unfair - both to those who wish to leave early and those who wish to stay. The Australian economy is straining under the demands of the Chinese-led resources boom. In an era when the economy is hurting for lack of workers, far better to follow a European approach where students are able to pursue technical degrees in their teenage years. In Germany, it is a matter of pride to have graduated from a technical college; that same ethic needs to be promoted here.

Properly educating children is one of the most important things a nation can do to ensure its continued survival and success. The crisis in education is thus an existential one for Australia, and one that requires national solutions. The excesses of teachers' unions must be curbed, by the federal government if need be, to allow rank-and-file teachers to do their jobs properly.

Source

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

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"

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

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8 October, 2006

Britain bows to reality

Crackdown on High School cheating

Sweeping cuts to GCSE coursework were announced yesterday in response to widespread fears that it has allowed students to copy from the internet or to get their teachers and parents to complete projects for them. Coursework completed by pupils at home will be scrapped in English literature, foreign languages, history, geography, classical subjects, religious studies, social sciences, business studies and economics for courses starting in 2009. Instead, the examinations watchdog, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), said that there would be more external exams and controlled assessments carried out in the classroom under strict supervision and marked by teachers. Coursework will continue in art, music, design and technology, PE and home economics. No final decision about English language and information technology has yet been made.

The details followed an announcement last week by Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, that coursework would be cut from GCSE maths from next September. The announcement was accompanied by new research findings showing that the majority of teachers were not overwhelmingly worried about the use of the internet for coursework. Four in five (82 per cent) of the 100 subject heads surveyed for the QCA disagreed that their students made too much use of the internet for their GCSE coursework. English and music teachers were most likely to view coursework positively; religious studies teachers were the most sceptical about its value.

A far bigger problem with coursework, as far as the teachers were concerned, centred on the burden or marking coursework and the extra work it generated for students who have to meet project deadlines for a large number of different subjects all at the same time. While most teachers agreed they would like to retain an element of coursework, there was disagreement over how much and how it should be assessed.

In response, the QCA recommended that new ways be found to make written examinations more "challenging and fresh" and to improve the assessment of coursework. The recommendations follow a review of coursework ordered by Ruth Kelly, the former Education Secretary - instigated because a two-year review by the examinations watchdog had found evidence of widespread cheating. Revelations about pupils copying or buying coursework from the internet or getting someone else to do the work for them cast doubt on continually rising grades and raised questions about the credibility of vocational qualifications.

Mr Johnson accepted yesterday that more needed to be done to assure parents that coursework assessed pupils' work in a fair and robust way. "The changes will toughen up the way in which coursework is assessed so that the hard work of the vast majority of students is not undermined by questions of validity," he said. However, he added that coursework still had a place in the modern classroom. Done properly it helped young people to develop research and presentation skills and demonstrate a practical knowledge of a subject. "It is important that coursework retains its place within teaching and learning but we must ensure it remains a reliable and effectiveform of assessment," he said.

Ken Boston, the chief executive of the QCA, insisted that the current system of GCSE exams and coursework was robust. "QCA has provided both teachers and parents with further information on the help that they can provide and how best to authenticate a candidate's coursework." GCSEs replaced GCE O level and CSE exams in 1988. The element of coursework was introduced with GCSEs to test "skills not easily tested in timed, written examinations" and because the three-hour times written examination was seen as narrow and off-putting to many candidates

Source



The Education Grind: Why is high school the new college?

When school officials in the ritzy suburb of Scarsdale, N.Y., announced last week a proposal to drop Advanced Placement courses from the high-school curriculum, parents throughout the land breathed a sigh of relief. At last, they must have thought, the rat race is coming to an end.

"Rat race," of course, is a phrase that used to describe the daily grind of corporate lawyers and investment bankers. It is now shorthand for the pressure-filled lives of their children--and the children of all professionals, from Beacon Hill to Beverly Hills. Parents, teachers and students have been observing this frenzy of activity for some time and have now joined their voices in a chorus of complaint: students take too many classes; they participate in too many extra-curricular activities; they suffer nervous breakdowns from the stress and back problems from the overloaded schoolbags.

The experts are worried too. The past few months have brought us books like "Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child" "The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids" and "The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids."

With such tomes piled high on their nightstands, it's no surprise that Scarsdale's grown-ups are wondering whether to let AP courses go. These courses were once intended to earn high-school students college credit by offering "advanced" (e.g., college-level) instruction in everything from calculus to German literature. Now they are mostly used as a learning credential: An AP course on a resume means that a student actually knows something in a particular subject area.

The "rat race" complaint is that AP courses put a strain on students--too many facts to memorize, too much reading. And teachers complain, too. They say that AP courses force them to "teach to the test." In this case, though, the test is a pretty good one. Conceived in the early 1950s by educators from three prep schools (Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville) and three universities (Harvard, Princeton, Yale), the AP curricula demands that students acquire real knowledge. Unlike the SAT's, which measure mental aptitude, the AP tests ask students hard questions about content. Even the essay questions on the history exam require students to place quotations and documents in their correct context and to identify events, dates, historical figures and ideas.

This is exactly the sort of knowledge that is often said to be in short supply among college graduates these days, and not without reason. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, conducting a survey of college students over the course of the past year, has just issued a report on college learning. One major conclusion: Four years in college classrooms don't seem to make much of a difference. When students were asked a series of questions--like what is the source of the sentence "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,"--seniors scored an average of 53.2 and freshmen earned a 51.7. But it's worse than that. The report concludes that "at many schools"--in U.S. history, foreign affairs and the economy--"seniors know less than freshmen."

Why? Because college increasingly offers a crazed social experience at the expense of rigorous study. But high school does better: It is often the last time that students are forced to learn something. Parents make their kids show up at school. More than a few teachers convey basic skills and knowledge. After-school life centers on burnishing a college application, not binge drinking. AP courses, where they exist, exploit these structured years for maximum learning.

Critics will say that "rat race" kids no longer play soccer for the joy of the game or master the violin for the beauty of the music or study history for the love of learning. Maybe. But who cares? At least something worthwhile is going on. These kids have four years of college ahead of them during which they may take as few classes as they like in subjects that require no difficult exams. They can spend their time outside the classroom drinking and "dating." They can opt out of the rat race, and they do. And there is no penalty. College-admissions officers go over high-school lives with a fine-tooth comb--Why didn't she play a sport junior year? Why didn't he continue in Spanish? But most employers don't scrutinize a college courseload or a college GPA. The degree is all that matters. So before the good people of Scarsdale move to end the rat race, they should reflect on its value. High school is the new college. Once those college-admissions letters arrive, their kids will stop learning and start living on easy street.

Source



Australia's most Leftist education system produces kids who cannot do basic math

Incoming national mathematics standards expect 10-year-olds to be able to add and subtract numbers in their thousands and deal with fractions in their hundredths. But in Western Australia, the curriculum demands much less, requiring students only to recognise simple fractions such as halves and quarters. A comparison of the West Australian maths course with the national standards reveals a huge variation in the knowledge expected of students, reinforcing the call yesterday by federal Education Minister Julie Bishop for a national curriculum.

The mathematical abilities required of students in Western Australia is well below national standards, with the state slipping even further behind in the past two years. Under the outcomes-based education system in Western Australia, students are graded at eight levels of achievement, which span all years of school. Two years ago, students were expected to have reached level four by the end of Year 5, which in maths would mean being able to rewrite 0.35 as 35/100 and knowing that 3/4 is less than 7/8. But revised targets mean today's Year 5 students are expected to reach between levels two and three. Students at level two can divide into equal thirds, recognise and write 1/3, 1/5 and 1/7 but cannot consistently write 2/3.

The national standards expected are still more demanding, requiring the 10-year-olds to add one-quarter to one-half and describe 2.12 as two and twelve hundredths. Ms Bishop said the differing expectations clearly demonstrated the inconsistency and falling standards that had prompted her call for a national curriculum. "It's even more reason for us to focus on raising standards and making curriculum accountable," she said.

Ms Bishop said the states and territories had come a long way towards a national curriculum with an agreement in August on National Statements of Learning that set out the core and essential elements in five subjects. The statements of learning for students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 were approved by all state and territory education ministers and must be incorporated into their individual curriculums by 2008 as a condition of federal funding. In addition, a common national literacy and numeracy test will be introduced from 2008, replacing the individual tests the states and territories now set

Source

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

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"

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

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7 October, 2006

CALIFORNIA COMMUNITY COLLEGES PICK UP THE PIECES



The state's community college system, which has long positioned itself as a port of entry for unconventional students, is bracing for an enrollment boom, and building a stronger academic safety net of tutoring and counseling services for those students. State researchers say community colleges will serve more than 2.1 million students in California by 2014, a 27 percent increase from today. The surge is not from more kids coming out of high school -- that population is expected to remain flat over the next decade. Instead, the two-year colleges are ramping up for what's become known as the "hidden tidal wave" of students who find that they are simply not ready for the work force.

"How can you be a nurse if you can't compute a dose? In today's world, you can't be a welder if you can't read a safety manual," said George Caplan, president of the statewide community college board. "You don't need political science, you don't need history or economics. But you have to be able to read analytically; you have to write cogently."

A proposed systemwide budget for the 2007-2008 school year includes an extra $47 million to hire more tutors and counselors to better guide students through a traditionally hands-off college system. The Legislature will be asked to sign off on the plan next year. Education leaders involved in the effort say it's a "cultural awakening" to the fact that many community college students are having trouble with college-level classes and need help before transferring to a California State University or University of California campus. Most students have to take remedial classes when they get to community college, according to statewide figures. Of incoming students, only about 12 percent make it into math classes rigorous enough for the state university systems to accept as transfer credit. It's slightly better for English -- 25 percent.

"We're not looking to blame the high school; we're not looking to blame the students; we're looking to the job at hand," said Laura Hope, an English professor at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga. Hope coordinates the Southern California college's "success centers," or tutoring clinics that are required attendance in some courses -- and a model program for the state community college system. Since the centers opened in 1999, transfer rates from Chaffey to four-year colleges have jumped to 25 percent from 7 percent, she said. "It was never that those students were incapable of the work," she said. "We just weren't helping them achieve the skills to help them move through the system."

Community colleges accept anyone over 18, with a high school diploma or not. It's too early to tell whether California's new exit exam for high school seniors is sending droves of high schoolers without diplomas to community colleges. The Los Rios Community College District in Sacramento, the state's second-largest with 76,000 students, has counted only 66 first-time college students this fall who enrolled without a high school diploma. That's only 11 more students than last year, before the exit exam was implemented. The exit exam requires students to meet eighth-grade-level math and algebra and 10th-grade-level English. Students need to get a little over half of the questions right on the test to pass it, which has community college leaders stressing that even those who pass may not be college-ready.

More here



Payoff for phonics revival in England

Primary school children today are 12 to 18 months ahead in spelling compared with children of the same age 30 years ago, new research suggests. In tests completed by 4,000 children last year, pupils of all ages at primary school did better than their peers who took the same test in 1975. A score of 26 or more out of 40 was achieved last year by the top 50 per cent of children aged eight to eight years, two months. In 1975 the same percentage success was not achieved until pupils were aged nine to nine years, two months. In 1975, only the top 25 per cent aged eight to eight years, two months achieved 26 or more.

The findings suggest that the introduction of key stage testing and the National Literacy Strategy has helped more children to focus on spelling. Colin McCarty, of the Test & Evaluation Consortium, who compared the results of tests completed by 4,000 pupils in England in 1975 and 2005, said that a return to the teaching of phonics might also be responsible for the change by providing the tools to build words. That children now started school earlier had also probably helped, Dr McCarty said. “Children are now starting school in the reception year as the norm and this is likely to have increased the exposure to spelling and reading.”

The Graded Word Spelling Test, which was devised by the educationist Professor P. E. Vernon in 1975, uses 80 words that are a close match with the vocabulary and phonic structures in the National Literacy Strategy. The test has been revised by Dr McCarty and his colleague Mary Crumpler and is reissued this week by the publisher Hodder Murray. The spellings get increasingly difficult, starting with “in”, “am” and “see” and ending with “erroneous”, “abscess” and “menagerie”.

Source



Australia's Feds to seize syllabus from states



A national board of studies with control of a uniform school curriculum is being proposed by the Howard Government in an attempt to wrest back control of schools from "ideologues" in state and territory education departments. Education Minister Julie Bishop will attack state education bureaucrats and accuse them of hijacking school curriculums, distorting them with "Chairman Mao" type ideologies in a speech to the History Teachers Association of Australia today. "Some of the themes emerging in school curriculum are straight from Chairman Mao. We are talking serious ideology here," she will say. "Ideologues ... have hijacked school curriculum and are experimenting with the education of our young people from a comfortable position of unaccountability. "We need to take school curriculum out of the hands of the ideologues in the state and territory education bureaucracies and give it to a national board of studies, comprising the sensible centre of educators."

Ms Bishop is calling for a national debate on the need for a common national school curriculum, saying there is widespread community concern about the content being taught in schools. In her speech today, she will say that the commonwealth has to take the lead in fighting for a "back-to-basics approach" across curriculums and that parents are rightly concerned by educational standards. "How is that we have gone from teaching Latin in Year 12 to teaching remedial English in first-year university?" she says. "The community is demanding an end to fads and wants a return to a commonsense curriculum, with agreed core subjects, like Australian history, and a renewed focus on literacy and numeracy. "The curriculum must be challenging, aiming for high standards, and not accepting the lowest common denominator. "It seems we are lowering the educational bar to make sure everyone gets over it, not raising it to aspire to excellence."

Ms Bishop's attack comes after The Australian highlighted education bureaucrats who have failed to monitor effectively curriculums and the quality of education and who have become captive to teachers' unions. Last month, The Australian published the views of professor Ken Wiltshire, Australia's representative on the executive of the UN education body UNESCO and the architect of the Queensland curriculum under the Goss Labor government. Professor Wiltshire argued that state Labor governments had relinquished control of any system that effectively measured the standard of what was taught in schools and teacher performance.

"Our school curriculums have strayed far from being knowledge-based," he said. "Indeed, knowledge has been replaced by information. It is little wonder that the Howard Government's attempted reforms of schooling have gained traction with the Australian public."

In April, The Australian reported how literary study in Australia had been declared "dead" by Harold Bloom, one of the world's leading authorities on the works of William Shakespeare. After learning that a prestigious Sydney girls school had asked students to apply Marxist, feminist and racial analysis to the play Othello, the internationally renowned critic said: "I find the question sublimely stupid. "It is another indication that literary study has died in Australia," the Sterling professor of humanities at Yale and Berg professor of English at New York University told The Australian.

A spokesman for Labor education spokeswoman Jenny Macklin accused Ms Bishop of contradicting John Howard and others in her party. "Julie Bishop has contradicted both the Prime Minister and the former education minister Brendan Nelson in her attempt to impose mediocrity on our school system," the spokesman said.

Ms Bishop says a national curriculum would be subject to greater public scrutiny and so would be more accountable to the community. This would also remove the duplication of effort and resources currently spent by states developing individual curriculums. She says the states and territories collectively spend more than $180 million running their boards of studies and curriculum councils to develop very similar curriculums in identical subjects. "There are currently nine different year 12 certificates across Australia, each backed by separate curriculum developed by eight different education authorities," she says. "Is it necessary for each state to develop a separate curriculum? "Do we need to have a physics curriculum developed for Queensland, and another, almost identical physics curriculum for Western Australia? "My comments are not directed at teachers. Our teachers are a precious national resource. "Rather, I am critical of the social engineers working away in state government education authorities."

Source



Even the basics seem beyond present-day Australian teachers

A South Australian mother despairs at the lousy state of school education -- and the illiteracy of teachers

It is the last week of term three and the first written assessment of my youngest child's schoolwork for this year has come home. She is in a years 3-4 class with children ranging from eight to 10. Her entire assessment is based on one piece of work, a modest project on Greek mythology. It includes a "critical question: is Greek mythology still relevant today?" and a "rich task: create a poster that shows the roles that Greek gods, heroes and creatures would be seen doing today".

The work is assessed with a rubric that, among other things, is said to examine my child's ability to "analyse history ... and relate this to present possibilities" and "write texts ... which show awareness of different audiences and purposes". The rubric is defined as a scoring guide, but my dictionary does not provide this definition.

Apparently this form of assessment "compliments" the teaching strategies the school uses and encourages the students to "explore a topic deeper". It also leads a parent to despair. I know that I am supposed to work out that Greek mythology is only a "vehicle" for assessing areas of competence, but within minutes of receiving this assessment (and choosing to ignore the numerous inconsistencies therein) I concluded that it was nonsense. There is no mention of maths, reading and spelling, which are my main concerns.

My other child's assessment (sorry, rubric) considers a series of "strands" and came home with a CD-ROM that had to be viewed to work out what the rubric was assessing. Well, I can do that, but what are people without computers supposed to do?

I am one of an army of bewildered and frustrated parents who do not understand how teachers, or the ex-teachers who produce school curriculums, think. How can they produce this form of assessment and believe it is useful and valid? Unfortunately, I suspect that the increasingly bizarre forms of student assessment are not designed to reveal achievement but to disguise the lack of it. Parents are aware of their children's learning deficiencies and vague methods of assessment will not conceal them.

Most parents are clear about what they want their children taught - the basics - and they've been screaming about it for years. The failure of schools to deliver the basics is seen, increasingly, as bloody-mindedness on the part of education departments. But is it? Perhaps all the waffle, political correctness and esoteric rhetoric are used to hide the fact many teachers are no longer capable of teaching the basics.

It is not unusual to wander into a classroom and find spelling or grammatical errors on the whiteboard. (Correct them at your peril.) One of my children was taught by a teacher who never used apostrophes. I have seen a teacher with 30 years' teaching experience misspell nineteen (ninteen) and, when I assumed she'd made a simple mistake, she assured me that she'd checked it in the dictionary and it was correct.

Many children in my eldest child's Year 6 class cannot hold a pencil correctly, do not start sentences with capital letters or use full stops and do not read at their chronological age. When I discussed this with the teacher I was told: "Hardly any of them are reading at their correct reading age: we may have to do something about the tests."

If children are not taught the basics, they cannot perform well in tests on them. Poor test results do not look good for any school, ergo don't test or report on the basics. Give us a rubric about Greek mythology instead. Entrance requirements for teaching courses have always been low and continue to decline. I don't know how this decline can be arrested but I do know that teachers, however well meaning, are often unaware of their own limitations and never blame themselves for children's failure to learn.

From a parent's perspective, there are solutions: change the curriculum to emphasise basic skills; eliminate all-day sports clinics, visits from TV, radio or football personalities and so on; allow principals to sack underperforming teachers or insist that they attend courses to improve their skills; give good teachers large bonuses (with good teachers being determined by the parents, not their peers); and provide a simple, graded reporting system. Is this really too hard?

Meanwhile, there may be some hope at my children's school because "next term their will be opportunities to provide feedback on the new reporting format in various different formats". Parents will spend the holidays formatting various forms of complete rubbish.

Source

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

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"

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

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6 October, 2006





MORE ON THE WUSSIFICATION OF AMERICA -- THE OSCODA MIGHTY OWLS

Comment by Neal Boortz

OK .. now think back on the lessons you learned from your parents and those you admired when you were young. Just what would you do when you got knocked on your keister? Would you give up? Would you just grab your ball and go home? Well ... I'm not so sure about you, but I learned differently. I was taught that you built character by getting up, dusting yourself off, repairing the damage, and wading right back into the fight.

How many times was Abraham Lincoln defeated in his quest for public office? As I remember, Lincoln lost at least four elections before he finally was elected President of the United States. But you don't have to look as far as Abe Lincoln to understand the value of perseverance. Your own parents, especially if they were part of the World War II generation, could also give you a lesson or two; and hopefully they did.

Well .. that brings us to the Oscoda, Michigan high school football team. The Oscoda Area High School is, according to Rexford Hart, the principal, the "home of the mighty Owls." Mighty? If you will look at the athletics page on the Mighty Owls website you will see that there is no mention of football. And just why would that be? Well, that would be because the school officials have decided to cancel the football season. The Owls, it would seem, weren't so mighty on the playing field.

The Oscoda Owls played four games, lost badly, didn't score a point, and then gave up. That's it ... they just gave up. Well ---- to be fair --- they were TOLD to give up. After the first four games the Oscoda School Board decided to cancel the remainder of the football season. They forced these young guys to quit. The football players didn't like it, and either did their parents, but the school board decided that they just weren't going to win, so they needed to quit. Forfeit the remainder of the games. Besides, they might get hurt.

Maybe they could just get the football players to play soccer! That's the ticket! Soccer is the athletic refuge for mommies and daddies who don't want their precious little children to play a sport where they might get hurt! That ought to satisfy these disappointed football players.

So .. what is the lesson learned by the members of the Oscoda Owls football team? In fact, what is the lesson learned by virtually all of the members of the Oscoda Area High School student body? This is one of the easiest lesson plans in history. So simple. One word. QUIT. Don't' get up. Don't come back fighting. Don't dust yourself off and wade back in. When the going gets tough, quit. When the road gets rough ... forfeit! No more sucking it up around here! We're the not-so-mighty Owls! Beat us and we'll stick our tails between our legs and slink off.. High school is a learning experience. The students at Oscoda high school have just learned to give up.

Source



Geography: Another school subject is hijacked by politics and fads

(An editorial from "The Australian" newspaper below)

It's been decades since borders, bays and capes were the sole questions covered in geography class. Which is as it should be. When properly taught, the subject should, as the world's first geography professor, James Fairgrieve put it, "train future citizens to imagine accurately the condition of the great world stage and so help them to think sanely about political and social problems of the world". Yet far from reaching this lofty ideal, in geography classrooms around Australia the subject has become little more than a stalking horse for hard-green ideology. And with the exception of NSW, which has always treated geography as a separate subject, and Victoria, which has recently reinstated it as such, geography has been folded into the same broad umbrella of Studies of Society and the Environment that has ripped the teaching of other disciplines such as history from its moorings. This shift opened the door to faddish politics and greatly reduced the chances that a trained geography teacher would actually teach the subject. Even in NSW, where geography is a separate required subject, students are taught to view mining, development and land clearing in an entirely negative light. (A more balanced approach would note that such activities generate wealth for Australia, give a growing population places to live and provide food for domestic and foreign markets.) Human rights and reconciliation are also taught in NSW's geography classrooms.

It is bad enough that Australia's geography curriculums have been so blatantly politicised and that students are encouraged to translate their lesson plans into political activism. Inaccuracies abound as well. Water is described as a "finite resource" in a draft curriculum for Year 11 and 12 students in South Australia - despite there being a more-or-less stable amount of the stuff on the planet. And as in history and English classrooms, a warmed-over Marxism, with its stultifying obsession with power relationships, dominates. In Queensland, the curriculum is charged with educating students about social justice, sustainability, peace and "environmental justice". Education Minister Julie Bishop is concerned that geography "does not fall victim to the same fate as that of history teaching, (which) has become an exercise in political indoctrination". Unfortunately, in much of the country this has already happened.

The decline in geography teaching mirrors a similar descent into the standard-free swamps of postmodernism and political correctness that has already devastated the teaching of English and history. Rather than grounding students in the basics of the discipline and giving them a foundation from which to explore more advanced theories later in their academic careers, teachers leapfrog the essentials and indoctrinate students with theories that will very likely be out of favour by the time their charges enter university. Which is a shame. A solid grounding in the location and behaviour of the world's rivers and resources goes a long way towards helping one grasp the history of human conflict. True understanding of the science of natural processes allows students to evaluate urban sprawl and climate change for themselves and come to their own conclusions - not just be spoon-fed them. And answers to timeless questions, such as why some societies succeed while others fail, can be found within geography. Polluting the discipline with such nebulous concepts as "social justice" and "ecological sustainability" encourages students to turn their brains off and instead parrot the approved, politically correct answers demanded by the curriculum. As with history and English, geography teaching desperately needs to be returned to its roots.

Source



Court victory for gifted student



The mother of a child genius who was denied the opportunity to start high school at age nine - three years ahead of her peers - has beaten the Queensland Government in the Supreme Court. Up against the state's top legal minds, including Crown Solicitor Conrad Lohe, mother of four Robyn Malaxetxebarria - an "amateur" to the law - convinced Queensland's Supreme Court the Government might have discriminated against her daughter on the basis of her age.

Twelve-year-old Gracia Malaxetxebarria, who is on track to enrol in a university medicine degree by the time she is 14 after finishing Year 10 this year, welcomed the finding yesterday. "If you are able to do the grades, then you should be able to sit the grades," Gracia said, citing maths as her favourite subject.

In 2004, the then nine-year-old told her mother she was bored with primary school subjects and asked to advance to Year 8. Despite Gracia having an IQ of 147 -- the average score is 100 -- the Department of Education refused her request, saying she needed more time to develop socially. Her mother then removed Gracia from the public system, enrolled her in Year 8 at a private school 70km from their home and took her case to the anti-discrimination tribunal. She asked for a new home, a car and $500,000 in compensation for age discrimination, but lost in a decision in April. But Supreme Court judge John Helman yesterday quashed the tribunal's decision and ordered that the case be reheard.

Justice Helman found the tribunal had failed to consider a further request to the Department of Education by the family, in June 2004, to allow Gracia unconditional acceleration as a gifted child. This was despite a school report from the private Brisbane Adventist College that showed Gracia had performed well during the first semester of Year 8, receiving As and Bs for all her subjects. Justice Helman found the report, which said Gracia should go directly into a state high school, should have been given "careful consideration and analysis".

State Education Minister Rod Welford refused to comment on the ruling. "It is not appropriate for us to comment -- we have to be very careful when the matter is still before the courts," a spokesman for the minister said.

Ms Malaxetxebarria denied she had been a pushy mother to Gracia. "This was her need," she said. "I am trying to be a bit of an Atticus Finch here to see her human rights are looked after." University of Queensland professor of clinical psychology Matt Sanders said the public school system needed to be more attentive to gifted students' needs. Gracia said she had adjusted well to high school, despite her age, and was proud of her mother for having supported her through the courts. "It's good in Year 10," she said. "I've got my friends and everything, and I seem to be doing well."

Source

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

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"

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

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5 October, 2006

Howard Zinn and Dennis Prager

Post lifted from Betsy Newmark

Dennis Prager is using his column to publish a dialogue with Howard Zinn, the socialist and activist historian. It's an illuminating discussion because it gets at the heart of Zinn's beliefs that the United States has been a force for ill throughout history. From the first part of the discussion, here is a taste,

Dennis Prager: I think a good part of your view is summarized when you say, "If people knew history, they would scoff at that, they would laugh at that" -- the idea that the United States is a force for the betterment of humanity. I believe that we are the country that has done more good for humanity than any other in history. What would you say . . . we have done more bad than good, we're in the middle, or what?

Howard Zinn: Probably more bad than good. We've done some good, of course; there's no doubt about that. But we have done too many bad things in the world. You know, if you look at the way we have used our armed forces throughout our history: first destroying the Indian communities of this continent and annihilating Indian tribes, then going into the Caribbean in the Spanish-American War, going to the Philippines, taking over other countries, not establishing democracy but in many cases establishing dictatorship, holding up dictatorships in Latin America and giving them arms, and you know, Vietnam, killing several million people for no good reason at all, certainly not for democracy or liberty, and continuing down to the present day with the war in Iraq . . . .

I know that many, many history teachers, particularly Advanced Placement U.S. history teachers use Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States, as a supplementary text for their classes. Often they assign the entire book as summer reading (My students read Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis, a much different text). Just that paragraph gives you a sense of what so many advanced students are being given to read. I've used a paragraph or two from Zinn as part of a general historiography lesson to show them what kind of views of history there have been and how they've changed over the years. His views are very prevalent in the hate-America first crowd. Matt Damon even thought he was being erudite by throwing Zinn's name into his movie, Good Will Hunting. Colleges across the country assign his book and there's a whole series of books by other authors to look at a "A People's History of..." more specific events from American History, It's a whole industry.

If you want a more balanced view of Howard Zinn's book, try this article from Dan Flynn.

. For readers who prefer their history to be an accurate retelling of the past rather than marching orders for the present, Zinn's writings disappoint. While every historian has his biases, Zinn makes no effort to overcome his. What is considered vice by most historians-politically motivated inaccuracies, long-winded rants, convenient omissions, substituting partisanship for objectivity-is transformed into virtue by Zinn.

"Objectivity is impossible," pop historian Howard Zinn once remarked, "and it is also undesirable. That is, if it were possible it would be undesirable, because if you have any kind of a social aim, if you think history should serve society in some way; should serve the progress of the human race; should serve justice in some way, then it requires that you make your selection on the basis of what you think will advance causes of humanity."

In fact, if you see your child being assigned Zinn's book, you could print out Flynn's essay and go in and meet with the teacher. At the very least, find out if a contrasting more conservative historian is being assigned. Most times, Zinn is used as the supplement to the textbook as if his views will enrich what they're getting. I think his influence on the teaching of American history has been pernicious and I wouldn't want my own daughters or students being assigned his reading for their first in depth exposure to American history.



"ENLIGHTENED" COLLEGE ADMISSION CRITERIA JUST HELP THE SMARTIES AND WELL-HEELED

How much simpler, fairer and more useful it would be to rely on SAT scores alone!

When Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Virginia announced the elimination of their early decision programs last month, it marked the most recent chapter in the growing frenzy surrounding the college admissions process (see BusinessWeek.com, 9/27/06, "Early Admissions: On Its Way Out?").

It's a frenzy that has been starting earlier and lasting longer as competition continues to build. Today, families are increasingly turning to admissions consultants who specialize in counseling students on all aspects of choosing and getting into colleges. "It's insane what's happening. The anxiety about college admissions is ratcheted up every single year as it gets harder to get in. Parents are getting desperate. They're seeing this need to get real information from someone who knows," says Rachel Toor, an independent admissions consultant in Spokane, Wash.

Mark Sklarow, the executive director of the Independent Educational Consultants Assn. (IECA), a nonprofit association for experienced consultants, estimates that there about 3,000 firms in the admissions consulting business nationwide.

A NEW YOU? He says a few of them continue to feed the college frenzy instead of working to cure it, often broadcasting their staff's experience working on Ivy League admissions committees. It's not uncommon for these high-profile consultants to charge more than $30,000 for help on everything from choosing a student's summer activities to how to spin those experiences in an essay to help him or her stand out (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/19/06, "What Price College Admission?").

But high-priced consultants who promise to repackage a kid for the Ivies are not the norm. In fact, the majority of consultants charge relatively moderate fees and are trying to help students by finding them the right fit in a school, not changing them or rewriting their essays.

NOT JUST ANYONE. Most IECA members charge closer to $3,000 than $30,000 and their businesses are booming. The number of consultants registered with the IECA, established in 1976, has doubled in the past two years, from 300 to 600, and the requests keep pouring in. "We now get 100 inquiries per month, but we accept a very small percentage," says Sklarow.

IECA accepts such a small percentage in order to encourage best practices in an industry that has the potential for abuse. To earn the nonprofit's seal of approval requires three years of experience, 100 campus visits, a master's degree in a related field, reference checks with three admissions directors, and a review of the Web site and marketing materials.

The association estimates 22% of the freshmen at private, four-year colleges this year-or between 95,000 and 100,000 students-have used some kind of consulting services. "Two years ago, it would have been less than half that," says Sklarow. "There's been incredible growth in our field," he says.

PLENTY OF DEMAND. Adding to the growth is the epidemic of overworked guidance counselors. According to research from the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC), an advocacy group for counselors, admissions officers, and private consultants, the average student-to-counselor ratio at U.S. high schools is 315:1. At public schools, counselors only spend an average of 28% of their time on college searches, applications, and paperwork, compared with 60% at private schools.

Despite the increased number of consultants vying for students, demand continues to more than keep pace. Independents often compete with large companies such as Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, and they've been holding their own. "They're certainly not taking business from us, but there is enough demand out there in the market that we certainly welcome competition," says Brandon Jones, the director of college-prep programs for Kaplan.

Some of the demand comes from parents who are starting the admissions process earlier. "When I started doing this 11 years ago, it was most usual for parents to think about it in the spring of junior year; now I'm finding increasing numbers of sophomore parents and even occasionally freshman parents, who want guidance through the whole process," says Robin Abedon, a counselor in Wellington, Fla.

SLIDING SCALES. Many independent consultants are also dedicated to spreading their services to clients of all socioeconomic backgrounds. "Most of us are looking to assist families that wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it," says Virginia Vogel, a counselor in Washington, D.C. who works with several clients for free per year. Others will work out alternative pay strategies for families in need.

"Most small, independent consultants have a strong commitment to serving students, and that often includes sliding scales, occasional pro bono work, and a general acknowledgement that they'll help in any way they can," says David Hawkins, director of public policy at NACAC. Responses to last year's survey of IECA members showed that 92% had performed pro bono work.

Though they perform much the same role as a high school guidance counselor, independent consultants bill themselves as a more specialized expert who can simplify the process, decrease stress, and introduce students to schools they never even knew existed.

NO SLACKING OFF. "The guidance counselor is a student of students; they're someone who really knows kids well. My focus, as a student of colleges, is on learning about colleges. So, when you get to the front of the line, you have to ask if the person has the expertise that you need and want," says Steven Antonoff, an independent consultant based in Denver.

Antonoff says growth has been steady for the past 21 years his firm has been in business but recently he has been unable to meet all the demand. Tim Lee, a consultant with 24 years experience based in Sudbury, Mass., says his small firm has experienced the most growth in the past three to five years. They both expect more substantial growth as long as the admissions process keeps getting tougher.

Source



Backdown: Australian university to put qualifications before Leftist bigotry

Adelaide University has been embarrassed into changing how it selects medical students and will focus more on brains rather than its institutional dislike of private education

The university will try to enrol more locals and reduce the emphasis on interviews, after being stung by the disclosure that interviewers had blackballed students from private schools and the children of doctors. Executive dean of health sciences Justin Beilby told The Australian the university would equally balance the Tertiary Entrance Ranking with interview results, placing a lesser importance on the university's medical admissions test results. "Previously the key determinant of getting into medicine was the interview and what we've done now is balance the Tertiary Entrance Ranking with the interview," Professor Beilby said. "The principal changes are not because of political pressure but on the review of the analysis. But you can't ignore the criticism."

Highly regarded Adelaide obstetrician Christopher Verco - whose daughter Lucy scored a TER of 99.3, but was rejected after her interview - said it was "gratifying" the university had listened to repeated concerns. "They have taken note of the concerns expressed by a large number of the public and the profession and one hopes that there will be processes in place toassess the equity and the utility of theassessment process," Dr Verco said.

The school will also reintroduce biology in the first year and add extra science subjects in the second and third years from 2008 as a result of the review. The university has received an extra 40 federally-funded places for the 2007 intake and the Rann Government last week announced it would fund five annual scholarships for local students. Country students will also be awarded bonus entry points.

Professor Beilby said the university would financially support the department to decrease its international student intake and enrol more local students. Australian Medical Association state president Christopher Cain supported extra weighting being placed on tertiary scores. "We still have some concerns on the UMAT as being a determinant in whether you get an interview," Dr Cain said. "If you don't perform well you don't get an interview."

Source

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

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"

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

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4 October, 2006

More Anti-Christian bias

Last Friday, the University of Wisconsin at Madison notified the University of Wisconsin Roman Catholic Foundation that it would be denied recognition and student fee eligibility for the current school year. The reason? The Foundation allegedly does not meet the university’s requirements for “student leadership” (even though its student programs are run by students and its student fee awards are managed by students). The Foundation now joins the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Wisconsin-Superior(derecognized because its leaders must be Christian), the Knights of Columbus at Madison (derecognized because its members must be male Catholics), the Christian Legal Society (derecognized because its voting members and leaders must be Christians), and the Calvary Chapel, a Lutheran group (derecognized because of alleged lack of “student leadership” and its exclusively Lutheran membership), in the ranks of banished student organizations. Interestingly, the student leadership issue applied to Calvary Chapel in spite of the fact that students are a majority of its governing board.

In addition, the Alliance Defense Fund is receiving word from multiple sources that the university has a “hit list” that includes several other Christian groups and that university officials are calling and asking Christian members of those groups some quite intrusive questions about their faith practices. These actions — as egregious as they are on their own merits — are made even more outrageous by the fact that they come mere weeks after the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (which governs Wisconsin) ruled that a university cannot use its religious nondiscrimination rules to prevent Christian organizations from limiting leadership and membership to Christians. It appears that the university is choosing to intentionally defy the law.

If an entire university system was defying controlling precedent to systematically eliminate African-American or Hispanic organizations from campus, there would not only be demonstrations in the streets but also hearings in the halls of Congress. But the university world supports systematic discrimination against religiously orthodox Christians (both Protestant and Catholic), and too many political leaders simply shrug at the violations of fundamental liberty committed by institutions that they fund and (allegedly) ultimately control. Individual lawsuits can address individual injustices, but faced with systematic abuse and universities that choose to ignore governing legal decisions, there may very well need to be a comprehensive legislative response. Should federal dollars subsidize religious persecution? Should the nation’s taxpayers continue to fund discrimination and exclusion? Our nation’s public universities belong to all of us — not just the radical, secular left.

Source



Leftist educators care about "correctness", not knowledge

Is the campaign against political correctness in education and the destructive influence of critical literacy and postmodern theory on subjects such as history, literature and science justified? In the past two years, The Australian has provided example after example of the way the cultural Left has taken the long march through the education system in its attempt to change society by overthrowing the traditional academic curriculum. As revealed early last year, Wayne Sawyer, then editor of the national English teachers journal English in Australia, argued the re-election of the Howard Government was evidence that teachers had failed to properly teach students how to think, since many young people, according to Sawyer, made the wrong decision by voting for John Howard.

The solution? Sawyer argued that English teachers must redouble their efforts to teach critical literacy, an approach to reading that analyses texts in terms of power relationships, especially through the politically correct prism of sex, ethnicity and class. As a result, instead of valuing the moral and aesthetic quality of literary greats, students are instructed, in the words of the Queensland curriculum, to deconstruct Wordsworth's poetry from an "eco-critical" perspective and Shakespeare's Macbeth in terms of "patriarchal concerns with order and gender".

With history, students are told that interpretation is subjective and relative to one's cultural and social position, and the subject is reduced to studying issues or themes. No wonder many students leave school with a fragmented and disjointed understanding, knowing more about feminism, peace studies and multi- culturalism than they do about the narrative associated with Australia's birth as a nation.

Even the hard sciences have fallen victim to postmodern claptrap. Advocates of outcomes-based education say that Western science cannot be privileged, as science - you guessed it - is a socio-cultural product, putting faith healing and astrology on the same footing as Euclidean geometry and Pythagoras's theorem.

Given the public's right to know and the billions invested in education, one may think the debate about curriculum is one we have to have. Not so, according to the cultural Left brigade controlling Australian education. Marxist-inspired Melbourne-based historian Stuart Macintyre describes The Australian's criticism of post- modernism and moral relativism as pernicious and recently attacked the newspaper for what he sees as its "denigration of teachers".

The Australian Association for the Teaching of English, in a book entitled "Only Connect. English Teaching, Schooling and Community" bemoans what is described as "one of the most motivated by a neo-conservative agenda and are interested only in creating a crisis where there is none. A recent edition of "English in Australia" contains a paper written by David Freesmith entitled The Politics of the English Curriculum: Ideology in the Campaign against Critical Literacy in The Australian. Freesmith defends Sawyer's argument that critical literacy equals a healthy democracy equals not voting for the Howard Government and condemns The Australian for promoting a cultural heritage view of literature, one that prefers Shakespeare to Australian Idol. He also condemns writers such as Luke Slattery and me and editorial comment in support of the literary canon as advancing arguments that are disguised as neutral when they are ideologically driven and based on a world view that is - the worst of sins - "conservative, Eurocentric and nationalistic".

Post Bali bombings and 9/11, one may be forgiven for thinking that being conservative, valuing continuity as well as change, being Eurocentric, valuing the Western tradition with its commitment to a free and open society, and being nationalistic would be seen as good things. Not so, according to the cultural Left.

The AATE and Macintyre are not alone in their attacks on conservative education warriors. Alan Reid, co-author of the proposed outcomes-based South Australian senior school certificate, argues that Brendan Nelson, when education minister, was guilty of creating a manufactured crisis. Geoff Masters. head of the Australian Council for Educational Research and given the job to carry out the Howard Government's review of Year 12 subjects across Australia, also says Australia's education system is at world's best standard. Not only is Masters an advocate of outcomes-based education, he also argues the crisis is manufactured.

So concerned are the educrats about the bad press education is getting that the Australian Curriculum Studies Association convened a conference earlier this year to address what was termed the "black media debate". Given those attending, bureaucrats from various boards of studies responsible for Australia's outcomes-based education and like-minded teacher academics and union officials, it should be no surprise that the consensus was that standards are high and all is well. At the conference, Masters' contribution was summarised as: "The simple point for Geoff Masters, in his response, was the need as a profession to ensure our voice is being heard in relation to curriculum issues; because at the moment it is not. Our voice is not heard above those who seek to manufacture a feeling of crisis in education."

The first stage in remedying a problem is to admit there is something wrong. Not only are the so-called experts in control of Australia's education system in denial but - given many are responsible for the mess - without further public scrutiny and action there appears little likelihood that anything will change.

The above article by Kevin Donnelly appeared in "The Australian" on 23 September, 2006



Top Australian research students can't write

Elite students at one of Australia's best science research institutes have rushed to sign up for remedial English classes. It follows concerns by world-leading researchers at the poor English contained in some Australian-born and educated students' PhD theses and articles for scientific journals. The problem is so bad that the Queensland Institute of Medical Research has hired a lecturer to teach remedial English to its PhD students. One QIMR professor has even declared that he had "students from countries like Portugal and Holland whose written English is better than that of our own students".

So popular is the course to be run next week by University of Queensland English lecturer Dr Joan Leach that it has had to be moved to a larger venue. The program includes two 90 minute lectures and individual clinic-style workshops will cover basic issues including grammar, clear expression and sentence construction. QIMR Director Professor Michael Good, who is one of the world's leading immunologists and malaria researchers, initiated the move after senior staff became concerned at the level of English expression students were displaying in their written work. The QIMR has 700 scientists and support staff and about 120 PhD candidates researching in fields including cancer, malaria, genetic influences on illness, asthma and epidemiology. As one of Australia's leading research institutes it selects only the best first-class honours science students. Only about one in 10 of those who approach QIMR are taken on.

Acting director Professor Adele Green said excellence in English was paramount for scientists, who published their findings in prestigious international journals and had to write long, detailed scientific papers which could run to tens of thousands of words. Professor Nicholas Martin, head of QIMR's Genetic Epidemiology Group has strongly supported Professor Good in establishing the program. He said PhD students who came to the institute from all over Australia after at least 16 years of formal education recognised the deficiencies in the way they had been taught English at school and were keen to improve their writing. "I regularly recruit European PhD students from countries like Portugal and Holland whose written English is better than that of our own students," Professor Martin said.

He said the aim of the course was not to cover the finer points of English but the basics, such as correct punctuation, including a verb in every sentence, varying sentence length and construction and clear expression. "At the clinics the researchers will be able to bring along their written work and discuss it with Dr Leach," he said.

Leading Queensland educationalist Professor Kenneth Wiltshire said remedial English for Australian-born and educated students was common at universities all over Australia and was one sign that school English programs were not catering for the top third of students. "There are not enough challenges and not enough literature and not enough emphasis on good writing," Professor Wiltshire said.

Education Minister Rod Welford said teachers should not neglect the importance of well-structured written communication, while at the same time striving to ensure students were competent with newer means of communication such as digital media and video

Source

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

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"

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

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3 October, 2006

Parents Right; Math "Experts" Wrong

It took parents 17 years to overturn the tragic 1989 curriculum mistake made by the so-called education experts who demanded that schools abandon traditional mathematics in favor of unproven approaches. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics finally reversed course on September 12 and admitted that elementary schools really should teach arithmetic, after all.

The new report called "Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten Through Grade 8 Mathematics" is a back-to-basics victory that rejects the type of math curricula that parents had derided as "fuzzy math" or "rainforest math." The experts preferred such hoity-toity titles as "New New Math," "Connected Math," "Chicago Math," "Core-Plus Math," "Whole Math," "Interactive Math," or "Integrated Math." Whatever the title, these curricula imbedded the notion that estimates are acceptable in lieu of accurate answers to math problems so long as students feel good about what they are doing and can think up a reason for doing it. Fuzzy curricula were big on discussion, coloring, playing games, and early use of calculators.

The 1989 report (which gives the word "standards" a bad name) flatly opposed drilling students in basic math facts, taught that memorization of math facts was bad, and failed to systematically build from one math concept to another. Children were encouraged to "discover" math on their own, construct their own math language, and flounder around with their own approaches to solving problems. This silliness is based on the false notion that children can develop a deeper understanding of mathematics when they invent their own methods for performing basic arithmetic calculations.

Despite widespread parental opposition, in October 1999 Bill Clinton's Department of Education officially endorsed ten new math courses, based on the 1989 "standards," for grades K-12, calling them "exemplary" or "promising." Local school districts were urged to adopt one of them, and were baited with federal money inducements. One of these department-approved "exemplary" courses, "MathLand," directed the children to meet in small groups and invent their own ways to add, subtract, multiply and divide. It's too bad the kids weren't told that wiser adults have already discovered how to do all those basic computations rapidly and accurately.

It wasn't only parents who quickly sized up fuzzy math curricula as subtracting rather than adding to the skills of schoolchildren. On November 18, 1999, more than 200 prestigious mathematicians and scholars, including four Nobel Laureates and two winners of the Fields Medal (the highest math honor), published a full-page ad in the Washington Post criticizing the "exemplary" curricula. But Clinton's Education Secretary Richard Riley refused to back away from the Department's endorsements and the 1989 "standards" adopted by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. With such vague parameters for courses in math, trendy instructors began advancing their political agenda by injecting ethnic studies into math textbooks. Some taught what Diane Ravitch calls "ethnomathematics," the far-out notion that traditional math is too Western-civ and therefore students should be taught in ways that relate to their ancestral culture. The diversion of math into the teaching of political correctness was illustrated by the "anti-racist multicultural math" curriculum adopted by Newton, Massachusetts. It's no wonder that test scores dropped after this "math" curriculum's top priority became "Respect for Human Differences."

Fortunately, during the Fuzzy Math era, a few students were fortunate enough to have teachers who dared to be heretical. Some 300 public schools adopted Singapore Math and those students are turning in good scores. Homeschoolers are very successful with Singapore Math, too.

The new National Council report tries to finesse its dramatic switch back to memorization by recommending that the curriculum focus on "quick recall" of multiplication and division, the area of two-dimensional shapes, and an understanding of decimals. It takes a pompous expert to avoid admitting that memorization of multiplication tables is the best way to have "quick recall."

Before the 1989 mistake, U.S. students ranked number-one in international mathematics tests. Since then, U.S. students have dropped to fifteenth, far behind the consistently high performance of Singapore and Japan and behind most industrialized countries. Added to the humiliation of international tests is the appalling percentage of college students who must take remedial math before they can enroll in college courses. That means the taxpayers have been paying twice to teach students the same material.

Another dirty little secret that has finally emerged as front-page news is the small number of college students who graduate even after six years. Graduation rates at 50 four-year public universities are below 20 percent, and below 50 percent at many more universities. Since it's likely that nearly all these students attended college using financial aid, the obvious conclusion is that the taxpayers are being ripped off by the racket of colleges pretending to teach and students pretending to learn

Source



AN IGNORANT ELITE

Seniors at UC Berkeley, the nation's premier public university, got an F in their basic knowledge of American history, government and politics in a new national survey, and students at Stanford University didn't do much better, getting a D. Out of 50 schools surveyed, Cal ranked 49th and Stanford 31st in how well they are increasing student knowledge about American history and civics between the freshman and senior years. And they're not alone among major universities in being fitted for a civics dunce cap. Other poor performers in the study were Yale, Duke, Brown and Cornell universities. Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore was the tail-ender behind Cal, ranking 50th. The No. 1 ranking went to unpretentious Rhodes College in Memphis.

The study was conducted by the University of Connecticut's department of public policy and the nonprofit education organization Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Researchers sampled 14,000 students at 50 schools, large and small. The aim was to determine how well the colleges are teaching their students the basics of government, politics and history -- the bedrocks of good citizenship. Beyond the rankings, the study found that across the board -- from elite universities to less-selective colleges -- the typical senior did poorly on the civics literacy exam, scoring below 70 percent. This would be a D or F on a basic test using a conventional grading scale. That shows, the researchers said, that the students don't have -- and the universities generally aren't teaching -- the basic understanding of America's history and founding principles that they need to be good citizens. It is a crisis, the report warns.

"It is at a point in history in this country where it has probably never been more important," said Eugene Hickok, a former U.S. deputy secretary of education and a member of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. "The study tells us we have a rising generation of bright, intelligent citizens that won't have the knowledge they need to be informed citizens. We are really only a generation or two away from a republic in pretty big trouble."

The study was conducted in 2005 by asking freshmen and seniors to answer 60 multiple-choice questions in the subject areas of American history, government, America and the world, and the market economy. It then compared the averages from the two classes at each school to determine how much more seniors knew than freshmen -- indicating how well the university was doing in increasing student knowledge. The survey found that more than half of students could not correctly identify the century (the 17th) when the first American colony was established at Jamestown. A majority of students also could not identify the Baath party as the main source of Saddam Hussein's political support in Iraq.

At UC Berkeley, the results showed freshmen knew more than soon-to-graduate seniors. Freshmen scored an average of 60.4, and seniors scored an average of 54.8. That earned Cal a failing grade, the researchers said. At Stanford, freshmen scored an average of 62.2 percent, and seniors scored an average of 63.1 percent. The difference between the freshmen and seniors was minimal, which the study's authors say shows they are not being taught the content during college. In comparison, at Rhodes College, the freshman average was 50.6 percent and the senior average 62.2 percent. Even though the Rhodes seniors scored lower than Stanford's, the researchers concluded Rhodes was doing a better job because of the percentage of improvement shown. "This is something that if the colleges and universities teach it, the students will learn," said Professor Christopher Barnes, director of project development for the University of Connecticut's department of public policy.

Barnes said that one encouraging finding of the study was that knowledge of civics was closely tied to voting and community engagement. But that is also alarming, he said, if the nation's students do not learn more about history and politics. History and political science leaders at UC Berkeley and Stanford took issue with the methodology of the study and its rankings but agreed that students weren't learning enough of the important basic historical and civics lessons. "There may be real issues here about how universities should organize their curriculum, but there is a scandal-mongering aspect to the way this survey has been presented," said Professor David Hollinger, chairman of the UC Berkeley history department. "I would not assume that this is a credible survey without more scrutiny." Still, he said, UC Berkeley -- like most large universities -- has relatively few requirements for undergraduates, even within the College of Letters and Science. He believes that should change. "I do not doubt that Americans would be better off knowing more history than they do,'' Hollinger said. "And I do not doubt that Berkeley would be wise to consider requiring more history than it does."

The study found that civics learning was greater at colleges and universities that required students to take courses in American history, political science and economics. For example, seniors at the institutions ranked the highest for increase in knowledge -- Rhodes College and Colorado State University -- took an average of 4.2 history and political science courses, while seniors at the bottom two, UC Berkeley and Johns Hopkins, took an average of 2.9 such courses.

Professor Terry Moe, chairman of the political science department at Stanford, also questioned the study's methodology, saying that many factors can affect the outcomes, including the fact that many students at schools like Stanford specialize in areas such as science, engineering and math. In addition, he said, less-selective schools lose a lot of students after their freshmen year, leaving a pool of higher-quality students who make it through all four years and thus may score better than the more diverse pool of freshmen. But he said, it is true that Stanford focuses more on teaching theory and critical-thinking skills than facts. The teaching of facts and historical dates is considered "old-fashioned" in academe, he said. "There is a basic knowledge that students should learn, and I think that universities don't think that way,'' he said. "My view is that they should."

Among the key recommendations in the report are that colleges and universities increase the number of required history, political science and economics courses, improve their assessments of what students are learning, and build academic centers on campus to encourage and support the "restoration" of teaching American history and civics.

Source



More on Australia's geography wars

As a former High School geography teacher who was employed to teach geography despite having NO tertiary qualifications in the subject, I can attest to the reality of the "de-skilling" of geograpphy teaching described below

As part of a geography assignment studying the effects of pollution on the environment, a group of primary schoolchildren from Brisbane headed off to photograph the damage to Moreton Bay. But when they arrived, the waters of the bay were relatively pristine and there was no pollution to be seen. Undeterred, the children carefully set about creating their own polluted part of Moreton Bay, photographed it and just as carefully cleaned up the mess they had made. "Those kids knew what answer they were supposed to come up with," says geographer John Lidstone, associate professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. "And when kids know what answers they're supposed to reach, they stop thinking."

Students in geography classrooms across the nation are being asked to devise strategies to manage scarce water resources, for sustainable use of resources, to minimise the degradation of our coastline or environment from farming, mining or other human activities. Often, the answer is in the politicisation of the topic or with the data they are provided, and time pressure precludes them making their own investigations.

Geographers are concerned that missing in the examination of some of society's most intractable issues is fundamental teaching of the basic processes behind these problems: the rainfall cycle, the theory of longshore drift of sand along the coastline, the formation of physical landforms and resources. Also missing is the breadth of the discipline, the wider look at human society, its relationship with the Earth it inhabits and interaction within itself. "If you look at issues like environmental sustainability, it's essentially about how societies come to terms with managing and living in their environment," says Clive Forster, associate professor at Flinders University school of geography, population and environmental management in Adelaide.

"If you want to understand what we may need to do to live more sustainably in the future, you don't need to know solely about environmental issues. You also need to have an understanding of how societies operate and to be able to put together the economic, social and environmental perspectives. Traditionally, that was the strength of geography; it produced people who had an appreciation of the three perspectives and how they needed to be seen in relation to one."

Geography teacher Sue van Zuylen, from Tara Anglican School for Girls in northwest Sydney, agrees the lack of specialist geography teachers is critical. "The biggest impact in the classroom is the way the curriculum is delivered by the teacher and it's going to be delivered with greater passion and interest and enthusiasm by somebody expert in the subject than someone (for whom) it isn't their first love," she says.

In the first half of the 20th century, school students were taught "capes and bays" geography, with its emphasis on naming the world; being able to draw maps of countries, knowing the names of capital cities, river systems, the highest mountains. During the 1960s came a rise in regional geography, with students writing profiles of countries based on subheadings such as population, climate, land use and vegetation, or writing about the industrialisation of particular countries.

Geography teachers critical of merging the subject into the new-vogue "studies of society and environment" argue that it undermines the integrity of geography and does not serve the interests of social studies, either. SOSE becomes a mish-mash and makes it harder for syllabus consistency between states. The SOSE syllabus encourages state parochialism instead of encouraging understanding of global trends. Underplaying physical geography robs children of interesting inquiry into how volcanoes, mountains, rivers and glaciers are formed.

Teachers lose confidence when teaching SOSE because they studied to specialise. The mish-mash of SOSE is less likely to inspire enthusiasm in teachers, a key to passing on passion to students.

The argument is whether the focus should be on developing a disciplinary understanding or whether it should be an integrated studies approach based on contemporary issues. Eventually, the rise of SOSE in schools will remove teaching expertise in geography. Geography is fundamental to understanding the society in which we live and issues from water usage and environmental sustainability to population trends, migration and Australia's links with the world.

Since the late '80s, geography has been dominated by environmental studies, a trend sparked by the rise in the green movement and entrenched with the move in the '90s to teach geography as part of an integrated social studies course. The model originated in the US and was adopted in school systems across the world, including Australia, predicated on the idea that as no single discipline had all the answers, it was better to teach children skills and knowledge in the integrated way they would need to apply them in the real world.

In Australia, the integrated social studies movement occurred at the beginning of the push for a national curriculum, which created a key learning area called studies of society and environment. Adding to the pressure to integrate geography into one colossal course with history, economics, civics and citizenship and legal studies were timetabling pressures. School curriculums are overcrowded, forced to include an ever-expanding list of topics from sex education to vocational subjects. So teaching a little bit of geography, with a little bit of this and that, seemed a good compromise, as well as providing a way of trying to make the curriculum more relevant to students.

And so the phenomenon of what high school geography teacher Steve Cranby, a member of the Australian Academy of Science's national committee on geography, calls SOSE-ification of geography. Only NSW stood alone, continuing to teach geography and history as separate, compulsory subjects in years 7 to 10. Victoria in recent years reintroduced an identifiable geography course, with a new one taught this year under its humanities umbrella.

Lidstone, who was secretary for 10 years of the International Geographical Union's education commission, points out that while the US started the trend of integrated social studies, it has recently undergone a resurgence in geography with a bill before Congress to make it compulsory in schools. "An American once said that God invented war to teach Americans geography," he says. But Lidstone prefers the vision outlined by the first man to hold the title professor of geography, James Fairgrieve of the University of London, who said in 1926: "The function of geography in schools is to train future citizens to imagine accurately the condition of the great world stage and so to help them to think sanely about political and social problems of the world around."

Says Lidstone: "The two phrases, 'to imagine accurately' and 'to think sanely' still represent for me the essence of the enterprise." But much of what passes for geography in schools today is what Lidstone describes as "naive environmentalism". Phenomena such as global warming are presented as unquestioned facts, with no real examination of the debate. In part, that's a result of not having geography teachers in charge of teaching geography.

The main consequence of the SOSE-ification of geography was a de-skilling of geography teachers. It's pot luck whether the teacher in a SOSE classroom is trained as a history teacher, economics teacher or geography teacher. Obviously, teachers are most comfortable with their own discipline. A history teacher forced to teach geography is going to struggle with the often complex science behind some geographical ideas, such as climatic cycles.

Before Cranby starts a topic with his students, he spends a couple of weeks teaching the theory underpinning the theme. One of the core topics for his Year 12 class is the Murray-Darling basin and the issues surrounding its use and management. Cranby spends four weeks teaching his students about rivers, their formation and processes, how they work and operate, the definition of a sustainable resource and the theory behind it before embarking on the specific issues of the Murray-Darling.

The problem is that not enough new geographers are being trained. SOSE students don't study anything called geography and the minority who do take on geography into their final years of school, or even university, come out with generalist training or specialising in an environmental study rather than disciplinary skills in geography. "We are not producing our kind," Forster says. "There's not that degree of breadth that people had 25 years ago. They'll go on to become the new generation of academics but they won't be teaching as geographers, they'll be teaching as someone who has done an environmental management degree."

Alaric Maude, secretary of the Institute of Australian Geographers, who was involved in writing the South Australian school syllabus 20 years ago, says the environmental thrust of geography has also splintered the subject. Not only is geography forced to compete with the plethora of subjects offered in schools today, it also has to compete against specialisations of itself: environmental studies, natural resource management, sustainable futures. "Geography seems to have become narrowed down," he says. "It's become very heavily environmental geography with not much emphasis on the core topics of human geography, such as people and cultures, regional development, divisions between regions such as who's wealthy and who's poor or why Western Australia is growing. Somehow the environment has become a major part of what teachers seem to see geography as, but it's only part of our inheritance."

Maude imagines a geography curriculum that sets out questions students can investigate, including indigenous knowledge and use of the environment; land clearing and its consequences; water sources and their management; the coast and its place in Australian life; Australia as a highly urbanised country; and migration, settlement and identity.

Lidstone would like to see students acquainted with some of the "awe and wonder" of the natural environment, how mountains are formed, the population and settlement patterns of communities who live on mountains. "Geography is the study of patterns," he says. "You can have patterns of homosexuality, there's a cultural geography of things like food and wine or the geography of bird flu. "There's a geography of the internet. It's fascinating when you sit on the internet and suddenly notice different countries coming on line. It's connected to the Earth's rotation and as people come to work or go home, the people on chat sites change. "At 8pm in Australia you get a whole different group of people than early in the morning in the US. Internet providers employ geographers to work these things out on the time zones because they target advertising according to who's going to be online at any particular time. "Yet I don't know that many schools teach time zones, despite more of us travelling than ever before. I learned about time zones when I was at school and I didn't expect I would ever be able to go on an aeroplane. Everyone can fly around the world today and we don't teach time zones."

Lidstone says the focus of geography curriculum on issues, to make it relevant and more exciting, is counterproductive. Students can find it depressing to focus on problems so big that adults and governments cannot fix them, and instead of appreciating the wonder of the world are taught only about the Earth's problems. "There's not much room for the geography of laughter, the geography of fun," he says. "Where are people happiest on the Earth? What does it look like? Is it to do with a pristine environment, workloads? "If you want to live a happy life, where would you go to live? These are very nice geography questions."

Taught a discipline and the skills of geographical thinking, Lidstone believes students will find the relevance for themselves. He tells the story of students at a girls school where the "very feminist geography teacher" was appalled to find her students were using computers to identify where in Australia was the greatest concentration of young professional men with high incomes who owned their own home. "That's where they wanted to go to university, so they could find wealthy husbands. The teacher was so appalled that she banned them from the computer room. We might not agree with the topic but these girls were using geography and geographical skills to find the answer to a question that was important to them."

Source

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

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"

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

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2 October, 2006

Battling the education hydra

Research proves that effective reading teachers know how students learn to read (acquisition), how to teach students to read (instruction), how to judge how well students read (assessment), and how to strengthen students' reading skills (remediation). Despite this, only three out of sixteen Reading First Education Network States require their licensed elementary school teachers demonstrate proficient knowledge of the essential components of reading instruction: phonemic awareness; phonics; vocabulary development; reading fluency; and reading comprehension strategies.

While tests specifically designed as reading licensure tests, such as: the California Reading Instruction Competency Assessment (RICA), the Virginia Reading Assessment (VRA), the Massachusetts Foundations of Reading test, and the ETS Praxis 0201: Reading Across the Curriculum: Elementary) are aligned with the five components of effective reading instruction as defined by scientifically based reading research (SBRR), general tests commonly used for initial licensure of elementary teachers, are not aligned with SBRR. States that depend upon these more generic licensure tests do not have a good measure of the knowledge or skills of new teachers in terms of reading instruction. Indeed, state licensure test questions are more often reflective of ideology. The Language Arts standards set by these states do not necessarily specify any or all five components of proven effective reading instruction be utilized in adopted reading curriculum. Although Title II requires teachers pass licensure tests, the content tested in the general tests does not assure "best practice" in teaching.

Certainly, "the data from state licensing tests, the alignment of those tests with standards, and the alignment of specialty professional association standards with knowledge from research and practice-are all significant considerations for accreditation,"1 yet one must question how schools of education, state boards of education, accrediting agencies and test manufacturers are actually being held accountable for what eventually takes place in the classroom? Isn't that part of NCLB? Instead of offering tutoring or restructuring individual schools, shouldn't the "housecleaning" start from the top?

As was explained by Reid Lyon, in Developing an American College of Education, "Colleges of education are not accountable for what their graduates know and how that knowledge affects students in their graduate's classrooms... You only have to look at the billions of dollars that states and districts are spending on professional development for teachers already teaching to understand the gravity of this situation. Why in the world would schools have to re-teach concepts to teachers that they should already know?"

Sadly, my own personal experience has been that classes providing teachers continuing professional development often end up being based on more of the same non scientific ideology. Is it fair, then, to fault an individual teacher, principal, or even an at risk environment for students' failure to make adequate yearly progress in reading when teachers are not required to demonstrate proficiency in "best practice" to begin with?

In a recent report, Educating School Teachers, the National Council for the Accreditation of School teachers (NCATE) is seen as "more a part of the problem than the solution." The author of the report, Arthur Levine writes that, "Teacher education is the Dodge City of the education world.. Like the fabled Wild West town, it is unruly and chaotic.Anything goes and the chaos is increasing." One of his conclusions is that students seem "to be graduating from teacher education programs without the skills and knowledge they need to be effective teachers." His recommendations include changing accreditation standards and making student achievement the primary measure of teacher preparation programs.

An established illustrator/artist and old friend of mine once asked me why I thought so many adults drew the exact same way as when they were kids. She went on to explain that no one had taught them how to "see". Her students were wonderful artists because she used direct teaching strategies. Best practice in reading includes direct teaching, as well.

Recently, the mainstream media reported on a government audit that accused the Reading First program of being "beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement. It suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which curriculum schools must use." The director of Reading First was accused of repeatedly using, "his influence to steer money toward states that used a reading approach he favored, called Direct Instruction, or DI."

Anyone who knows anything about effective reading instruction should understand that a large percentage of students require direct instruction in order to learn how to read. This type of knowledge is.well., elementary. However, judging from the most recent reports about accreditation and licensure, it doesn't appear that very many people in the field of education are aware of or have been made to demonstrate proficient knowledge of the essential components of reading instruction. As for the mainstream media, they need to turn in some extra credit or they receive an "F" for not doing their homework on this subject before defaming some in the education community and trying to sell it to the American people.

Source



They're all federal educators now

For decades, conservatives stood against big-government intrusions into American education. They defended local control of schooling, championed parental choice, and pushed to abolish the federal Department of Education. But then, tragedy struck: Republicans took power in Washington, and conservatives suddenly learned to love big government. Indeed, some are now so enamored of it that they are proposing what was once unthinkable: having the federal government set curricular standards for every public school in America.

A few weeks ago, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a leading conservative education group, launched a major campaign to get this done. In the report they released to kick off their initiative - titled "To Dream the Impossible Dream" - the Fordham folks pointed out that states have proven incapable of imposing high standards on themselves, and that the federal No Child Left Behind Act has precipitated a standards "race to the bottom." Fixing these problems, they argue, will require uniform federal standards.

Thursday, their idea got two huge endorsements. In a Washington Post op-ed, former U.S. secretaries of education William J. Bennett and Rod Paige seconded Fordham's call for national standards and tests, paradoxically arguing, like Fordham, that because current federal policy is broken, we need much more federal control. Unfortunately, perhaps because they are desperate for change, Paige, Bennett, and Fordham are all wearing massive political blinders. Quite simply, national standards - or government-imposed education standards at any level - are at best doomed to mediocrity. The way government shapes policy preordains failure.

For one thing, the compromise demanded by democratic politics will always require that the nation's numerous ethnic, religious, pedagogical, and other groups be accommodated in the creation of standards. This is perhaps as it should be, but it inevitably pushes standards to lowest-common-denominator levels. Education historian Diane Ravitch - another conservative supporter of national standards - shows this brilliantly in her book The Language Police, which demonstrates how textbooks adopted by state governments are hopelessly politicized and, as a consequence, hopelessly banal.

Even more debilitating, however, is that government standards always have to pass through vested interests like teacher unions and education administrators, who have strong incentives-and heaps of political power - to keep standards weak. Indeed, if there's just one lesson that decades of failed big-government education should have taught conservatives, it's that groups like the National Education Association have almost endless time, money, and incentives to get their political way, while parents, children, and conservatives do not. In light of that political reality, greater federal control over schooling is a hopeless solution to our education problems. Bennett and Paige almost admit as much in their Post piece, conceding that they are "painfully aware that national standards and tests are hard to get right-and even harder to get through Congress."

Perhaps that pain needs to become a little more acute, because no matter how much conservatives wish it weren't so, decades of monopolistic public schooling have proven that government will never provide desirable standards. Indeed, the numerous inherent problems of government are among the many reasons that the framers of the Constitution gave Washington no authority over education. They are also good reasons why Paige and Bennett should not simply dismiss the Constitution, as they did in their op-ed, on the grounds that, even though "the Constitution says nothing about education, in a world of fierce competition we can't afford to pretend that the current system is getting us where we need to go."

Of course the current system isn't getting us where we need to go. But government control isn't the solution, it's the problem. Thankfully, we can still get high standards, but to do that conservatives will have to give up on doing good through government, and return to fighting for the principles they once championed. School choice - giving parents the ability to take education money to schools that work, and away from those that don't - is the only hope. Only choice will obviate the need for constant political compromise, avert the gate-keeping power of special interests, and impose real accountability on schools by forcing them to attract and keep customers.

As Congress moves inexorably closer to next year's scheduled reauthorization of NCLB, conservatives must reject calls for federal standards and tests, and remember the principles that they once held dear. Politically compromised, big-government policies will simply never provide the education our children need and deserve. Only pulling government out of education, and empowering parents and families with school choice, will do that.

Source



Decaying public schools in the Australian State of Victoria

Sandringham College is well known for its performing arts program and broad range of VCE subjects. But to some students, it's simply the "pov school". Principal Wayne Perkins says it's disappointing to hear the term, but he is the first to admit facilities on the school's three campuses are not up to scratch. Problems include rotten window frames, a leaking heating system, and worn-out electrical wiring that is a potential fire hazard. At the Beaumaris campus, where buildings are in their 50th year of service, a boys' changeroom has holes in the walls and a staff toilet has no hot water. "We don't need a swimming pool. What we do want are good, modern, safe facilities," Mr Perkins said. "This college has not seen a significant amount of money for a long time. We are operating in a set of facilities which are totally inappropriate and physically run-down, to the point of being dangerous and unhealthy."

In the most recent statewide audit of school maintenance needs, reported by The Age yesterday, the bayside school's total repair bill was recorded at $1.86 million - the second highest in the state behind Bendigo's Flora Hill Secondary College, with $2.54 million. Since the audit in late 2005, Sandringham has received $160,000 in extra maintenance funding for items deemed urgent, and $320,000 for toilet upgrades. But Mr Perkins said more repairs were needed. "If you can't open a window to a building for ventilation because the frame is rotten . . . to me, that's urgent."

The total maintenance bill for Victoria's public schools was $268 million, of which $252 million is the responsibility of the Education Department. The figures prompted former Melbourne University dean of education Brian Caldwell to repeat his call for Victoria to pursue public-private partnerships. "The kind of commitments that the Government has made in recent years . . . (are) nowhere near adequate," Professor Caldwell said. "They are just patching up existing buildings rather than large scale redesign or replacement of schools."

The Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals said Victoria's public schools were the worst in the nation, but Education Services Minister Jacinta Allan rejected the claim. "We are certainly not denying that Victoria's schools do have maintenance needs, but making these sort of comments is not keeping it in perspective and it's really putting down state schools." Ms Allan said some of the highest repair bills were at large, multi-campus schools, schools with excess space, or schools on the planning list for capital works.

Opposition education spokesman Martin Dixon said impending building works should not be seen as an excuse. "They are earmarked for capital works because they have been run down by a lack of maintenance." At Ballarat Secondary College, planning is under way for an upgrade to the East campus. "We are very pleased," said principal Paul Rose. "But the campus should have been rebuilt 30 years ago." Yesterday, the Government announced an increase in the maintenance funding provided as part of annual school budgets, up from $34 million to $41 million, which brings total Government investment on maintenance since the audit to $141 million.

Source

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

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"

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

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1 October, 2006

California bill to let schools land good teachers

A strange idea for California

It can take years to fire a bad teacher. So some principals don't even bother trying. Instead, they make a deal. The principal asks the teacher to look for a job elsewhere in the district. In exchange, the teacher gets a good evaluation. Now here's the rub. Since there's plenty of competition for plum jobs at affluent schools, the bad teacher gets funneled to a struggling school serving a needy population.

School administrators call it the "dance of the lemons," and it's surprisingly common. More than a quarter of the principals surveyed in San Diego Unified School District, for instance, admitted to coaxing an underperforming teacher to transfer elsewhere, according to a national study released last year by the New Teacher Project, a New York-based nonprofit organization. A whopping 47 percent confessed they had hidden vacancies to avoid accepting such teachers. Meanwhile, 65 percent of the district's schools had no choice, or limited choice, in filling at least one position.

New legislation could change that in California. Senate Bill 1655 may be the first in the nation to alter union contracts that protect experienced teachers but don't give low-performing schools enough freedom to hire the people they want. The bill, introduced by state Sen. Jack Scott, D-Pasadena, would help districts snag promising new teachers early in the year. It also would give struggling schools the right to refuse bad teachers whose seniority otherwise might guarantee them a spot on the faculty. "I think this is very, very much a precedent- setter," said Michelle Rhee, chief executive officer of the New Teacher Project. "This could have a positive impact, not only in California, but nationwide."

The bill sailed through the Democrat-dominated Senate and Legislature with enormous majorities, despite opposition from two party allies: the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers. It now awaits Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature. A spokeswoman for the governor said she did not know how likely he is to sign it.

Several groups representing low-income and minority communities supported the bill -- a factor that won over legislators despite union opposition, said Russlynn Ali, director of the advocacy group Education Trust-West. "That's really unprecedented, isn't it?" she said. "You had a group of advocates that represent poor kids and kids of color saying, 'Enough is enough. We've got to make some headway on closing the teacher quality gap.' "

The bill contains the seeds of drastic change. For one, all districts would be allowed to hire new candidates as early as mid-April without considering their seniority. Currently, many urban districts must give their tenured teachers the first crack at vacancies well into the summer. By that point, many of the best novices have received job offers from suburban districts with less restrictive contracts, proponents say.

In a 2003 survey of four urban districts across the nation, The New Teacher Project found aggressive recruitment yielded a glut of job applicants from outside the district -- many of them new teachers who wanted to work with low-income students but "were left hanging in limbo for months." Between 31 percent and 60 percent withdrew their applications and went elsewhere, the majority citing the late hiring cycle as a cause. "The longer you wait, the poorer the quality of the pool is," Scott said. "The suburban schools really are able to pick off better candidates."

The bill also would give principals in very low-performing schools -- schools that are ranked 1, 2 or 3 on the state's 10-point scale -- the ability to turn down teachers who want to transfer from elsewhere in the district. Not all teachers who want to switch schools are lemons, to be sure. "But when you are a school that is low-performing and you are trying everything you can possibly try, you need to be able to build a staff that will work well together," said Vernon Renwanz, principal of Creekside Elementary in north Stockton.

Over the past six years, Creekside, a high-poverty school, has seen a steady rise in test scores. Renwanz credits his teachers' willingness to work together on schoolwide reforms. It's hard, he said, when the union contract forces him to accept a teacher who isn't interested in change. "If you have someone who's uncooperative, it makes everyone uneasy," he said. "It doesn't promote the good teamwork that is essential for good performance."

Not everyone is a fan of the legislation. Barbara Kerr, president of the CTA, called it "premature and unnecessary," saying it would keep veteran teachers out of needy schools that disproportionately lack experienced faculty. "The idea that a school administrator would have the power to block transfers of highly qualified and senior teachers -- that's very troubling, since many of those schools need experienced teachers," she said. Kerr said a CTA-sponsored bill -- Senate Bill 1133 -- would do more to get veterans into those schools by offering incentives such as smaller class sizes.

Even proponents of Scott's bill acknowledge it's no panacea. The legislation deals only with teachers who seek to switch schools. Teachers who lose their jobs involuntarily -- say, because the district closed their school -- could still be given priority in hiring at any time and placed at schools over a principal's objections. As for delays in hiring, the bill wouldn't do anything to speed up districts that are mired in inefficiency. "I can't make bureaucracies more effective," Scott said. "This is not a magic bullet that will solve every problem. ... But this allows students to get the best teacher, not the teacher who has been subtly forced out of another school."

No analysis exists showing how many districts would be affected. But large, urban districts such as San Diego, Los Angeles and Fresno would see changes in some of the hiring policies spelled out in union contracts, Rhee said. Locally, both Sacramento City Unified and San Juan Unified school districts have teacher labor contracts providing schools limited choice in hiring, with some priority given to candidates with experience in the district. The bill would allow those provisions to last only until April each year. The legislation would take effect as existing union contracts expire

Source



California bill to water down academic standards even further vetoed

Governor refuses to lower criteria for complying with No Child Left Behind law. Leftist hatred of standards stymied

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation Wednesday that proposed an instant fix for students failing to meet California's standard for proficiency: redefine proficiency. Schwarzenegger concluded that changing a few words won't solve academic woes. "Redefining the level of academic achievement necessary to designate students as 'proficient' does not make the students proficient," his veto message said.

Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, called the governor's veto of her Assembly Bill 2975 a "missed opportunity" that ultimately will hurt students. "Schools will be labeled as failing schools even if they are making progress and improving their test scores," she said.

AB 2975 argued that California's definition of proficiency was unrealistically high. The federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires every student to be proficient in English and mathematics by 2014, but every state can define proficiency.

Thus the rub: States that set the bar low academically have a distinct advantage. In recent years, fewer than 50 percent of students have met California's standard for proficiency, which basically requires standardized test scores that show grade-level competence and, thus, skills necessary to attend college. "While that's a good goal, it's an unrealistic requirement for all students," Hancock said.

Under NCLB, sanctions are imposed on schools that receive federal funds for disadvantaged children and fail two consecutive years in meeting annual targets for the number of proficient children overall and in ethnic or other subgroups, such as English learners. Penalties increase in severity over a five-year period, from allowing students to transfer at district expense to restructuring the faculty or administration of a targeted school.

AB 2975 proposed a lower standard for proficiency. Students would have met it by acquiring adequate skills, year by year, to pass the California High School Exit Exam. The exit exam measures English-language arts at about the ninth- and 10th-grade levels, and mathematics at about the seventh- and eighth-grade levels, officials said.

The California Teachers Association and the California School Boards Association supported AB 2975, but the bill was opposed by Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of public instruction. "Young people need higher-level skills than ever before to succeed in the competitive global economy," O'Connell said in a prepared statement.

The Republican governor vetoed two other bills Wednesday relating to academic standards:

* Senate Bill 1546 would have allowed community college districts to concurrently award an associate degree and a high school diploma, without passage of the High School Exit Exam.

* Assembly Bill 2937 would have required the state Department of Education to determine what performance levels on a California Standards Test would equate to passage of the exit exam.

"California has made tremendous strides toward achieving world-class academic standards and testing for our students," Schwarzenegger said. "I will continue my vigilance in protecting these high standards."

Source



In Australia too, it's free speech for Leftist professors only

And definitely no free speech for ones who mention racial differences

An extraordinary intervention by a senior federal minister has forced Sydney's Macquarie University to publicly defend the academic freedom of its staff. Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has written to Macquarie vice-chancellor Steven Schwartz after one of his constituents complained of "left-wing" bias in a history subject. A spokesman for Dr Nelson said yesterday that the Defence Minister was just passing on a complaint from a constituent.

But in a copy of the letter, obtained by The Weekend Australian, Dr Nelson has penned a note at the bottom of the letter that says: "I am very concerned about this and would appreciate your personal attention to these issues which I find disturbing." The move comes after another senior minister, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, recently warned a South Australian academic that his research could breach new terrorism laws.

The situation is awkward for Julie Bishop, who, since succeeding Dr Nelson as Education Minister in January, has been outspoken about her desire to ease government intervention in universities. In a veiled swipe at her colleague, Ms Bishop told The Weekend Australian yesterday: "It is not feasible for university courses to be designed to match the personal biases of individual students. "Students should argue all course content and argue alternative points of view."

The complaint came from a postgraduate student, Douglas Brown, enrolled in the Master of Arts subject Rights and theEvolution of Australian Citizenship. He demanded the university rewrite the unit guide and delete half the articles because the readings were so left-wing the course was an attempt at "indoctrination". Senior academics who investigated the complaint rejected the claim. Mr Brown said one of those academics, Tom Hillard, argued that it was hard to find suitable scholarly writings about Australian citizenship from the conservative side. But Mr Brown said articles from Quadrant magazine or from the Centre for Independent Studies would be appropriate. All university courses and degrees are approved independently by the peak academic senate, a self-accrediting status that institutions guard jealously.

Professor Schwartz would not comment on the Nelson incident but moved to quell growing fears in universities about the erosion of academic freedom in the post-September 11 environment. "It's absolutely fundamental ... that we safeguard academic freedom ... if we're going to have a lively and effective university sector and if we're going to have a fair and lively society as well," he said. There were few instances, if any, where "we would want to stifle an academic's freedom to teach whatever they felt was fair".

Last year, the issue of academic freedom came to a head at Macquarie when law lecturer Andrew Fraser created uproar with his comments about African migrants in Australia. [And the university banned him from teaching as a result] Since then, the university's academic senate has scrutinised the issue and devised a statement, which was being finalised yesterday. It says that academics must be able to teach and research without undue interference from government, university administration, the media, private corporations and other organisations.

Source

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

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"

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