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30 September, 2006

BLACK HOMESCHOOLING

Suisun City parents Benjamin and Tanya Marshall are part of a new homeschooling movement led by African American families fed up with the public school system. Nine years ago, the couple put their oldest son, Trevaughn, in kindergarten after discussing teaching him at home. When he had a substitute teacher several times in his first six weeks, they pulled him out. "We felt like it wasn't the right environment, especially for an African American boy," said Tanya Marshall, 36. "The teachers were young and nervous. Black males were not being challenged and ending up in special ed."

Trevaughn, now 14, has been taught at home ever since. The couple also homeschools their two younger sons, 11 and 9, and their daughter, 12. "We wanted to be the main and driving influence in our children's lives," said Benjamin Marshall, 37. "We didn't want them socialized with marijuana smokers and pregnant teens." The Marshalls, who had both worked as teachers' aides, feared public school would contradict their Christian beliefs, and they wanted to avoid having their sons labeled as violent or hyperactive or seeing them pressured by peers to drink, do drugs and have sex.

A desire for more rigorous academics and greater emphasis on black history also has led black families into homeschooling, educators say. Although homeschoolers often are stereotyped as white and evangelical Christians, in 2003 about 9 percent of homeschooled students were black, and 77 percent were white, compared with a total student population nationwide that was 16 percent black and 62 percent white. Homeschoolers numbered 1.1 million in 2003, compared with about 49.5 million students in public and private schools, according to the most recent federal statistics from the U.S. Department of Education.

The numbers of black and white homeschoolers rose about a third from 1999 to 2003 to encompass about 1.3 percent of U.S. black students and 2.7 percent of whites. Researchers say the number of black parents who are homeschooling their children may now be growing even faster. More than half the students who are homeschooled come from families with three or more children, and more than one-quarter from families making less than $25,000 in 2003, when the nation's median family income was $56,500. More than half of homeschooled students came from families making between $25,000 and $75,000. Among black, white and Latino students, Latinos are least likely to be homeschooled, at less than 1 percent in 2003; no other ethnic groups are measured.

The growth among African Americans can be seen in the increasing number of networking groups, blogs and Internet sites directed at black homeschoolers -- and in who is showing up at conventions. "There was a time when the conferences were all white," said Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute in Salem, Ore. "In the '90s, you saw a little more color, and by 2000, a substantial number of black families started showing up. "In some cities, the majority of those attending conferences are African American."

Many say they left public schools because their children weren't expected to learn at an equal pace or being coached on getting into college, the schools were unsafe, or the curriculum lacked black history. "Over the last couple of years, especially in places like D.C. and Cincinnati, there have been a growing number of black homeschooled students," said Michael Apple, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies the issue. "You will find more in areas where the black middle class can afford to do it."

Monica Utsey of Washington, D.C., said she decided to homeschool so she had as much say as possible in 6-year-old son Zion's life. "I didn't want him put on the road to obesity, with junk food, or to be obsessed with commercialized clothing," Utsey said. "I also don't want my son to think that slavery was our only contribution. I want to give him a world view, a cultural perspective, and assure he understands his place and his heritage."

Many black homeschoolers worry that their children will be labeled in a public school. Black public school students are three times as likely as white students to be categorized as needing special education services, a 2002 study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University found. "My son is high-energy, and I didn't want him to end up on Ritalin or feel bad about himself," Utsey said. "There is an assumption that black boys are violent if they are too energetic."

Public schools have been a focus of the civil rights struggle, but many homeschooling parents said they are disillusioned with the system's failure to improve. "Some educators and families think that because blacks fought so hard to get equal access, we shouldn't abandon it," said Jennifer James, a North Carolina mother who in 2003 started the National African-American Homeschoolers Alliance, a 3,000-member, nonreligious group that provides information for homeschoolers. "But times have changed. It was a great step, but we have to think about our kids."

Parents say the most common concern about homeschooling -- that their kids will be socially isolated -- isn't a problem. "My children know how to socialize, especially with adults," Benjamin Marshall said. "In the real world, my children are not always going to be surrounded by people their own age."

The Marshalls not only teach their children math, religion and vocabulary, but also take them on field trips to places like the Lawrence Hall of Science, the state Capitol, the San Francisco Symphony and the Museum of the African Diaspora. "It is kind of rough in the beginning, but as time goes on, you learn," said Benjamin Marshall, who works as a dispatcher on the graveyard shift at the Valero refinery in Benicia and teaches his kids during the day. The Marshalls also have started Seeds of Truth Academy in Suisun City, where parents interested in Christian-based homeschooling can bring their children on Tuesdays and Thursdays for counseling, sports and field trips.

Brianna Marshall, 12, said she likes homeschooling but thinks about other options. "I think homeschooling is better than public school because there are no bullies and you don't have to listen to all the stuff your friends say," she said. "But I am curious about what school is like. I have never been inside a school, and sometimes I get tired of being at home."

Source



BRITISH LEFTIST LEADER FINALLY FACES THE OBVIOUS

Alan Johnson displayed his leadership credentials to the Labour Party conference yesterday when he announced plans to restore confidence in school exams and to help children in care. The Education Secretary unveiled an overhaul of GCSE coursework to combat internet plagiarism by pupils. He said that all coursework for maths would be scrapped and that coursework for other subjects would be supervised in classroom-style conditions. "Technology has changed the way we teach, but can also be used by some students to gain an unfair advantage," Mr Johnson said. "We have one of the most rigorous exam systems in the world [Who does he think he is kidding??] - we cannot have it devalued and undermined by the few who cheat by copying from the internet."

He also announced extra funding for children in care, including a 2,000 pound bursary for those who wanted to go to university. "Every child in our society must have access to the educational opportunities that have always been available to a small elite," he said.

The tone of Mr Johnson's speech was crafted deliberately to dampen speculation about his leadership ambitions and instead concentrated on policy, with a theme of using education as a tool to tackle inequality, poverty and injustice. Received politely rather than enthusiastically, it came amidst a heated row over health policy - a distracting backdrop for Mr Johnson.....

Mr Johnson's decision to halt GCSE maths coursework comes after two reviews by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the examination watchdog, which reported last November that there was widespread evidence of cheating. Maths was the subject that gave rise to the greatest concern. Two thirds of maths teachers questioned said that they suspected students had cheated by using the internet or asking parents or siblings for help. However, the authority also expressed concern about science coursework, which Mr Johnson will let continue, but under tighter supervision. The changes may take two years to introduce and enforce.

More here



European Court Rules German Home School Ban Okay

No first Amendment in Germany

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Sept. 18 ruled that German restrictions on religious-motivated home-schooling do not violate human rights, a decision that American religious rights groups fear could influence U.S. domestic policy.

A German family filed a complaint alleging that their freedoms were violated by a German law requiring attendance in public or state-sanctioned private schools. The family's religious beliefs are opposed to some topics addressed in state-sponsored education, including sex education and mythological fairy tales. Instead, the parents attempted to educate their children at home using a Christian syllabus developed by the "Philadelphia school," a Siegen, Germany, institution that is not recognized by the German government as a legitimate private school.

But the ECHR ruled that the objectives of a state-sanctioned education "cannot be equally met by home education" and that the law didn't violate the family's religious freedoms. The court wrote that it was in the "general interest of society to avoid the emergence of parallel societies based on separate philosophical convictions and the importance of integrating minorities into society." [Sounds straight out of Hegel (Karl Marx's inspiration) but Hegel and Marx were Germans, after all]

It ruled that the parents were allowed to educate their children from a religious perspective "after school and at weekends. Therefore, the parent's right to education in conformity with their religious convictions is not restricted in a disproportionate manner." Some American religious rights groups worry that the decision could influence U.S. policy on religious home schooling by encouraging liberal-minded judges who increasingly rely on international law instead of American law. "The decision by the European Court of Human Rights opens the door to continued prosecution," said Benjamin Bull, a lawyer with the America-based Alliance Defense Fund, "and should highlight to Americans the extreme dangers of allowing international law to be authoritative in our own court systems."

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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29 September, 2006

CIVICS EDUCATION FAILING IN THE U.S.

"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." -- Thomas Jefferson

So how is America's modern education system doing in this regard? Are our citizens enlightened enough to exercise the powers of our democracy? Do our colleges and universities provide their students the American history and constitutional understanding needed to make them strong and responsible citizens? A study released this week by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute--www.americancivicliteracy.org--demonstrates that the answers to both questions are no. The study concludes that "America's colleges and universities fail to increase knowledge about America's history and institutions." In a 60-question multiple-choice quiz ,"college seniors failed the civic literacy exam, with an average score of 53.2 percent, or F, on a traditional grading scale." And at many schools "seniors know less than freshmen about America's history, government, foreign affairs, and economy." (Disclosure: I am a member of the ISI's Civic Literacy Board, though I was not involved in preparing this survey.)

In the fall of 2005 ISI worked with the University of Connecticut's Department of Public Policy to ask "more than 14,000 randomly selected college freshmen and seniors at 50 colleges and universities across the country"--an average of about 140 each of freshman and seniors on each campus--what they knew about America's constitutional and governmental history and policies. The colleges ran from state institutions--the University of New Mexico and the University of California at Berkeley, for example, to Ivy League schools like Yale, Brown and Harvard, and less-well-known institutions like Grove City College and Appalachian State University.

Some colleges did better than others, but few of them added very much to students' knowledge of America's history or government. College freshmen averaged 51.7%, and the seniors averaged 53.2%, so there was a slight gain in knowledge. But the average senior scored only 58.5% on American history questions, slightly above 51% on government and America-and-the-world questions, and 50.5% on market economy questions. By every college's grading system those are failing grades. Among college seniors, less than half--47.9%--correctly concluded that "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal" was from the Declaration of Independence. More than half did not know that the Bill of Rights prohibits the governmental establishment of an official religion, and "55.4 percent could not recognize Yorktown as the battle that brought the American Revolution to an end" (more than one quarter believing that it was the Civil War battle of Gettysburg that had ended the Revolution).

The questions about more recent matters produced more accurate answers. More than 80% of students could identify Franklin D. Roosevelt's programs as the New Deal, 79% knew that Brown v. Board of Education ordered an end to racial segregation, and 69% were aware that GDP was the best measure of output of our economy. But the responses to the survey's 60 questions reflect the students' poor understanding of America's history and our institutions.

As for the 50 colleges that participated in the program, the best-scoring students were not from the institutions one might expect. Rhodes College, Colorado State University and Calvin College were the top three, with senior students averaging between 9.5 and 11.6 percentage points higher than freshmen. At the other end of the scale were 16 schools that showed "negative learning"--that is, seniors scored lower than freshmen. Cornell, UC Berkeley and Johns Hopkins were the worst three, their seniors scoring between 3.3 and 7.3 percentage points worse than their freshmen. And on the negative list were some other very prestigious universities: Williams, Georgetown, Yale, Duke and Brown.

How did these educational failures come to pass? ISI concludes that "students don't learn what colleges don't teach." In other words, in colleges where students must take more courses in American history they do better on the test, outperforming schools where fewer courses were completed. Seniors at the top test-scoring colleges "took an average of 4.2 history and political science courses, while seniors at the two lowest-ranked colleges . . . took an average of 2.9 history and political science courses." Similarly, higher ranked colleges spent more time on homework, 20 hours a week at fourth-ranked Grove City College and 14 or 15 at low-ranked Georgetown and Berkeley.

Parental education and family discussions of current events contribute to better civic learning as well. The study found that "73 percent of seniors' families at Grove City and Harvard [ranking 4th and 25th, respectively] discussed current events or history on a weekly or daily basis," whereas only half did at low ranked Berkeley and Johns Hopkins.

So what should be done about our colleges' failure to offer sound educational courses on America's constitutional republic? Obviously they must improve the quantity and quality of their teaching, and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute recommends building "centers of academic excellence on college and university campuses for the teaching of America's history and institutions."

That would help people become, as Jefferson put it, "enlightened enough to exercise their control" over governmental matters. Many constitutional policy issues are before the Congress, from adding a line-item veto to the president's powers (a proper constitutional question) to regulating how many dollars a candidate for federal office may spend in a campaign or guaranteeing everyone a right to a home (improper ones). Such issues must be understood by our citizens, for as Thomas Paine said after the original constitution was ratified by the states, "Government is only the creature of a Constitution. The Constitution of a country is not the act of its Government, but of the people constituting a Government."

Source



BRITISH TEACHERS BAD AT TEACHING CITIZENSHIP TOO

Compulsory citizenship classes covering subjects such as the law, the electoral system, human rights and economics are unsatisfactory in a quarter of all secondary schools - often because teachers do not know what they are talking about, research suggests. A devastating report from the schools watchdog Ofsted has found that gaps in teachers' subject knowledge and an insecure grasp of what the lessons were supposed to achieve, led to dull or irrelevant classes that were counter-productive. The report called for more training of specialist teachers and gave warning that the subject citizenship often strayed into areas such as immigration or racial, religious and ethnic diversity, "where little knowledge can be a dangerous thing".

In one of the worst classes observed by inspectors, a lesson on the principles of decision-making in society drifted into a discussion of the bodily needs of people stranded on a desert island. A more common failing was for lessons on conflict resolution - which should include discussions of the role of Parliament, the UN, nongovernmental organisations, and pressure groups - to turn into discussions on friendships and relationships. Inspectors were also appalled by the lack of written work, which they attributed not to any failing by the children but to the low expectations of their teachers. "Very good and lively discussion can be followed by dismal written activities," the report said.

Citizenship education has been part of the national curriculum in secondary schools since 2002 and is compulsory for pupils aged 11 to 16, but there have long been concerns that teachers are ill-prepared to teach it. The report found that while a minority of schools teach it well, in most the teaching was found to be merely adequate. Provision in a quarter of schools was inadequate.

Although growing numbers of schools are entering pupils for a short GCSE course, the report concluded that too few schools taught citizenship as a subject in its own right, with many lumping it in with classes in other core subjects, such as history or geography. Some schools merely assumed that the good ethos and behaviour of their pupils meant they were "doing it already". Others were wary of engaging pupils in political discussions.

The findings raise important questions about the purpose of citizenship education, which was introduced amid concerns about political apathy among young people and fears that society faced a "moral crisis". These worries have since been overtaken by public and political concerns about immigration, diversity and multiculturalism, raising questions about what the focus of citizenship lessons should be. Sir Bernard Crick, one of the architects of citizenship teaching in schools, said the subject should educate children in how to be politically literate, using real issues.

The Department for Education said that 1,200 new citizenship teachers were being trained over the next two years. "Citizenship has had a positive impact on the curriculum in the majority of schools and we are confident it will continue to improve as it becomes more embedded," a spokesman said.

More here



Greenie propaganda unpopular in Australian schools

School geography aint what it used to be. Now it is mainly Greenie indoctrination

Teaching geography as part of social studies courses alongside subjects such as history, economics and citizenship has overseen a halving in the past decade of the number of students selecting the discipline in their senior years. Figures gathered by the Australian Geography Teachers Association show the extent of disenchantment with the subject among year 11 and 12 students brought up on a diet of Studies of Society and Environment. Even in NSW, the only state to have maintained geography as a stand-alone and mandatory subject from years 7 to 10, students are eschewing the subject.

Teachers and professional geographers fear high school geography curriculums are failing to attract students, particularly in years 9 and 10. Australian Geography Teachers Association president Nick Hutchinson and Sydney University lecturer Bill Pritchard argue for a re-energising of geography curriculums based on the principles of the International Charter for Geographic Education. Under the charter, students should study among other things locations and places, to enable them to set national and international events in a geographical framework, and the major biophysical systems, such as landforms, soils and climate.

The plethora of subjects from which students can choose and the rise in vocational education are cited by geography teachers as major reasons for the discipline's fall in favour. The proportion of HSC students sitting geography has fallen from 14 per cent in 1997 to 7.5 per cent last year. Victoria is reintroducing geography as a separate subject under its humanities umbrella this year after watching the number of students studying the subject fall from more than 4000 in 1992 to just over 2500 in 2004. In South Australia, the decline - from about 2200 in 1996 to 1500 in 2004 - coincided with a rise in the number studying tourism (837 to 1856).

Mr Hutchinson said some of the fundamentals of geographic learning had been lost, with school curriculums instead focused on solving problems. What should return to the classroom was the basics of physical geography, such things as how soils, glaciers, rivers and coasts were formed and their effects on humanity. "We're no longer teaching a fundamental understanding of people and place and how things work, how cities work, the basis of our post-industrial society," he said.

Queensland University of Technology associate professor John Lidstone believes students should be taught the "awe and wonder" of the natural environment, not just its problems. Dr Lidstone, the former secretary of the International Geographical Union's commission on education, said schools should teach geographic thinking by teaching the subject as patterns, such as patterns of happiness, or of wealth and poverty. Also key were enthusiastic and skilled geography teachers who would incite excitement in students about the subject.

The Institute of Australian Geographers has written to federal Education Minister Julie Bishop calling for a national review of the geography curriculum along the lines of the recent history summit. Ms Bishop yesterday said the push by geography teachers and professional geographers revealed the failure of state governments to develop appropriate curriculums.

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 September, 2006

Protect students from strip searches

Imagine an America in which school officials could strip search every student in their school based on the unsubstantiated tip that one of them might have a joint. Congress is voting on a bill Tuesday or Wednesday that could make these police state tactics more common. We can stop Congress in its tracks, though. Call your representative RIGHT NOW and tell them to vote against this dangerous bill. If you don't know who your House representative is, simply call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and give them your address. They'll connect you directly with your representative's office. When you get a staffer on the phone, politely say something like: "My name is [your name] and I live in [your city]. I'm calling to urge [the congressman/the congresswoman] to vote against the Student and Teacher Safety Act (HR 5295) when it comes to the floor this week. This bill would allow schools and police to invasively search large groups of innocent students based on the mere suspicion that just one of them has drugs. It strips Americans of their 4th Amendment rights. Please let me know how [the congressman/the congresswoman] votes."

MORE INFORMATION

The Student Teacher Safety Act of 2006 (HR 5295) is a sloppily written bill that would require any school receiving federal funding (essentially every public school) to adopt policies allowing teachers and school officials to conduct random, warrantless searches of every student, at any time, for essentially any reason they want. All they would have to do is say they suspect one of their students might be carrying drugs, and then they could conduct a wide scale search of every student in the building. These searches could be pat-downs, bag searches, or strip searches depending on how far school administrators wanted to go. Although courts would have the power to overturn policies that went "too far", it could take years - possibly decades - to safeguard the rights of students in every school.

Disconnecting searches from individualized suspicion is what led to the Goose Creek scandal in 2003. That South Carolina city sent a machine-gun toting SWAT team into a high school because the principal suspected one of the students might be selling marijuana. 150 terrified students were handcuffed and forced to the floor at gunpoint as drug dogs tore through their book bags. No drugs or guns were ever found.

Searching students without individualized suspicion that they have done something wrong fosters mistrust between adolescents and the adults they should feel comfortable turning to when they do have substance abuse problems. Treating groups of students as if they're guilty until proven innocent sends them the wrong message about what it means to be American citizens, and makes them less likely to seek help and guidance when they need it.

The legislation is supported by senior House Republicans and the National Education Association (NEA). It's opposed by the Drug Policy Alliance, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the ACLU, the American Association of School Administrators, and the National School Boards Association. The bill wasn't voted on in committee and is being fast-tracked to the floor under a procedure that requires a 2/3 vote to pass. This means there's a chance we can defeat it on the House floor. The offending text of the legislation (which is not officially public yet) is as follows:

(a) In General- Each local educational agency shall have in effect throughout the jurisdiction of the agency policies that ensure that a search described in subsection (b) is deemed reasonable and permissible.

(b) Searches Covered- A search referred to in subsection (a) is a search by a full-time teacher or school official, acting on any reasonable suspicion based on professional experience and judgment, of any minor student on the grounds of any public school, if the search is conducted to ensure that classrooms, school buildings, school property and students remain free from the threat of all weapons, dangerous materials, or illegal narcotics. The measures used to conduct any search must be reasonably related to the search's objectives, without being excessively intrusive in light of the student's age, sex, and the nature of the offense.

Source. (The bill has now passed the House so the battle moves to the Senate).



NO PROGRESS IN CALIFORNIA HIGH SCHOOLS

California's ambitious effort to better prepare high school students for college hasn't budged test scores yet, but educators say they believe it will eventually cut the percentage of freshmen who arrive at the state's public universities needing remedial classes. Although some studies suggest the closely watched program will work, test scores released Wednesday to California State University trustees show that only 25 percent of California high school students tested as juniors this spring scored ``proficient,'' or ready for college-level English. Just over 55 percent tested ready for college in math. Last year, 24 percent tested proficient in English and 56 percent tested proficient in math.

Yet three years into the biggest college-readiness effort in the nation, CSU educators say they are optimistic that the system's collaboration with California high schools ultimately will ensure that entering college freshmen can move through the university faster, with a higher percentage earning college degrees. The key is getting more school districts to participate. As it stands, about half the entering freshmen need remedial classes, which don't carry college credit.

In Nancy Galindo's English classroom at Yerba Buena High School in San Jose, the veteran teacher sees the initiative is paying off in reaching students before they leave high school. Galindo praises new teaching materials provided free by the CSU to help high school teachers get students ready for college-level reading and academic writing. They come in 14 different modules covering topics of interest to students -- from racial profiling and fast food to the Abercrombie & Fitch ``look.'' The curriculum was developed by college and high school teachers. ``For years and years, we have been teaching kids literature,'' Galindo said, ``but the colleges are telling us we need to focus on teaching kids to analyze expository pieces. Those are the skills they will need for every college course they take.'' Instead of having students analyze only literature, Galindo frequently asks them to read articles and write researched essays.

In the CSU Early Assessment Program, juniors can opt to take a test that will show whether they have college-level math and English skills. The exam is composed of 15 extra questions tacked onto the English and math parts of the California Standards Test, plus an essay. The statewide test is given in the spring. Juniors who test ``proficient'' are freed from having to take math and English placement exams if they attend a CSU campus. Those who don't still have a year in high school to acquire the needed skills. Working with high school English teachers, the university system developed a senior-year expository reading and writing course, the one Galindo is drawing on for her classes at Yerba Buena. It also is offering free math and English Web sites that students can use and special training for teachers.

Only a small number of districts is using the CSU English curriculum for a senior-year course, but CSU educators think that will grow now that the University of California has said the course meets its requirements for a fourth year of high school English. A small study found that students who had at least two of the English modules scored better than students who didn't, said Nancy Brynelson, co-director of CSU's Center for the Advancement of Reading. Another study, which focused on schools where a large number of teachers had received CSU training, showed that students at those schools showed greater growth than the statewide average. CSU will not achieve its goal of cutting the need for remediation to 10 percent of the freshman class by 2007, ``but we do expect to see movement anytime,'' said Beverly Young, assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs. She was not able to provide the cost of running the Early Assessment Program, which includes coordinators at each CSU campus to work closely with local schools.

Young said CSU would like to see UC ``get on board'' and use the early assessment test for placement, and to have the test made mandatory for all juniors. One of the attractions of the CSU English curriculum is that teachers can customize it and use some of the modules, Galindo said. ``I like the fact I didn't have to spend a hundred million hours developing this material on my own,'' she said. Last year, 18 juniors at the school scored proficient in English on the early placement test; 17 were in Galindo's honors English class. The materials and instruction she has received by collaborating with the university ``definitely have been very beneficial to the students,'' she said. ``I have been changing what I teach and how I teach it based on what I hear from the colleges.''

Source



The decline of grammar

Lynne Truss is a professional pedant. Her 2003 book Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation sold 3 million copies worldwide. Truss has now followed up with a picture book for kids: Eats, Shoots and Leaves: Why commas really do make a difference. But should such a book be necessary at all?

Truss is avowedly fed up with poor teaching - or non-teaching - of punctuation, grammar and spelling in English schools. Her message is as relevant here as it is in Britain. Grammar and punctuation need to be taught well. It cannot be absorbed through the act of reading alone. Truss, in an interview in July with The Times Education Supplement, pithily summed up her frustration: "It's similar to music. You don't just pick up how to play the piano. I feel kids are being let down. In a communications age, knowing how to write is a life skill."

Formal grammar is not a usual part of most English courses in Queensland schools. This has been the case since the 1970s when it went out of fashion and creativity at all costs was the preferred approach. The results have been ruinous. Although it is encouraging that Queensland Education Minister Rod Welford indicated in March that state schools would put increased emphasis on reading, grammar and spelling from prep to Year 9, this will take time.

The problem lies with the way teachers are prepared. In one sense, teachers who have gone through training courses since the 1970s are not to blame. They have not been taught grammar during their school days or in teacher training institutions. They enter the classroom not knowing any. It is, however, their unavoidable responsibility to learn how to teach the structure of language.

The consequences of virtually no grammar instruction for three decades are plain to see. In September 2005, a study of 660 Defence Force Academy students - who had achieved a tertiary entrance rank of 80 per cent or better to gain admission - found that students presented with a poor level of expressive technical accuracy. ADFA associate dean of education Stephen Yeomans noted at the time: "What I particularly notice is improper sentence construction, inappropriate or no punctuation, lack of conjunctives, misuse of apostrophes, poor spelling and so on."

In February, 124 businesses polled by the Australian Association of Graduate Employers highlighted poor communication skills in prospective employees. The lack of grammar featured strongly. "The focus is now on the instantaneous. It's all about speed, it's quick responses and short messages and abbreviations and shortcuts. That's leading to people not knowing how to spell a long word, or writing in text message-speak rather than traditional, grammatically correct English," president Bill Reeves observed.

This is mirrored in Queensland. In May, Commerce Queensland president Beatrice Booth drew attention to employer dissatisfaction with the quality of young employees' English skills. "There are no remedial programs for young people at that age, yet we have a plethora of young people who can't spell, comprehend what they're reading or write a proper sentence," Ms Booth said.

Identifying the problem is relatively easy. There is enough research showing that spelling, grammar and punctuation are in decline in Australian children. To attempt to stem this, Premier Peter Beattie recently announced that children who struggled with English skills would be given up to 15 hours, at a cost of $1000 each, of one-on-one instruction. The students concerned are in the bottom 10 per cent of Year 5 and 7 - about 11,200 children.

In February, the Productivity Commission's report into government services found that one in five Queensland Year 5 students was not a competent reader. Knowing about the extent of poor language skills is one thing, knowing how to successfully manage it is more problematical. One thing is clear. Grammar teaching has to undergo a major rethink. Any student who learns a language other than English learns grammar so why is English any different? Because grammar is not a central part of English teaching in a majority of classrooms, children who are not taught it are being disenfranchised in their communicative skills.

Then there is the quality of the graduates who want to become English teachers. This is not uniformly high. The uncomfortable reality is that there are English teachers who are poor spellers, know little grammar and are unclear about punctuation. How can the incompetent teach children well? How did they get there in the first place? Some teachers who are going to enter Queensland classrooms in the next four years are being drawn from the lowest bands of OP scores. Universities are accepting students to become teachers with OP scores as low as 19. When it is remembered that the OP score bottoms at 25, this is cause for concern. The reality is that there is a significant proportion of English teachers who were low-achieving students in the subjects they are now expected to teach.

There is a solution. English teachers without grammar knowledge need to undergo rigorous professional development. This could take place within schools and be led by teachers who are confident in grammar. Experienced English teachers with expertise in technical elements of expression could be redeployed as in-house grammar mentors. It would be their responsibility to pass or fail their colleagues and offer additional support. Teachers nearing retirement could meet this need. This depends on the assumption that grammar, spelling, punctuation and sentence construction still matter. It is clear that for too long grammar has lost its glamour and many children do not know how their own language works. It is, clearly, low-skilled English teaching that is failing 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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27 September, 2006

Big is not best in education

Comment by the guided Messel, an eminent Australian educator -- emeritus professor of physics at the University of Sydney

How many students do you have now?" This is the question that is inevitably asked as soon as one mentions university, with the stress on the word "many". The thrust of the question is usually obvious: only large numbers of students indicate success, while small numbers are equated with failure. The insinuation is that a university that does not have, and never will have, large numbers of students, 10 deputy vice-chancellors and 20 pro-vice-chancellors, lecture halls to hold 1000 disenchanted students and so on, must be a second-rate institution. The opposite is usually the case.

Now, I can understand the above reasoning on the part of torchbearers for egalitarianism, for mass education and its concomitant mass mediocrity. In Australia, Canada, the US and more recently in Britain, they have, over the past 20 years, had one victory after the other, bringing tertiary institutions down to a common low standard not witnessed before. They can feel proud that a first degree from many universities is becoming an almost meaningless piece of paper, that they have managed to dupe the parents and betray the scholars into believing that just going to any university and getting a degree will ensure them a meal ticket. Unfortunately, this is not the case. It matters a great deal which university you go to and the quality of the education provided by that institution.

It is accepted generally that mass education and quality are a contradiction in terms, especially in the tertiary field, and normally mass education and mediocrity appear to be natural bedfellows. Yet we see many educational practitioners arguing vehemently to the contrary, extolling the virtues of almost free mass tertiary education for all, with its lower standards and paying lip-service to excellence. Their motto seems to be equal opportunity for all to be mediocre rather than equal opportunity for all to strive for excellence.

My remarks are based on 54 years' experience in university education in Australia. During this period there have been major transformations in secondary and tertiary education which, unfortunately, have close counterparts in Canada, Britain and in an increasing number of European countries. Thus my remarks often apply with equal force to these countries, which have determined that they have the sovereign right to make similar mistakes to Australia. In all instances we are viewing an essentially nationalised, struggling tertiary education sector as it passes from an elitist system to a system of mass education and, finally, a universal one.

It is evident that tertiary education is undergoing dramatic changes worldwide. One should not be surprised by this. The world is in the midst of an information technology revolution, which is proving to be the most dramatic revolution in its history. Governments appear bewildered and at a loss as to how to respond in the information age. One response has been to encourage secondary and tertiary education for all. This has placed enormous pressure upon educational institutions to provide university entrance for all qualified secondary school students, which almost automatically ensured a significant decrease in standards, while increasing dramatically the number of students completing secondary education. This, too, was often achieved at the expense of quality.

Australia must seriously question whether it should continue to spend a couple of thousand million dollars a year on a school system which appears to be turning out an ever increasing number of undisciplined, irresponsible, greedy, often near-illiterate, lawless individuals who don't give a tinker's curse for the country, their mates or anyone else.

It appears that Australia is on the road to turning its school system into poor-quality child minding as both parents, in thousands of households, have been forced to take up jobs in order to eke out an existence. One outcome is that universities now often have to teach what was formerly taught at the senior school level. The value of a bachelor's degree from many institutions has been devalued and often fails to impress employers. Students who wish to get ahead now require a higher degree or several degrees or to go on to a second university.

Education must be deregulated and strong diversity among institutions encouraged. Students must be provided with a wide choice and at varying levels. As an opener, cut the management staff of universities by 50 per cent or more. This would slow - but not stop - the paper war which is going on at present. It should also put an end to all this nonsense about total quality management, quality assessment and various other time-wasting "processes". Let us get back to what universities are best at doing, namely teaching and research.

Source



Education reform: A clarion call for the sake of Australia's kids

There is a sleeping issue at the next election for a political party with intellectual courage-the corruption of the social sciences curriculum in our schools. The article published in The Weekend Australian by Professor Ken Wiltshire from the University of Queensland (In defence of the true values of learning) should become a clarion call for vigorous intervention by the national government on behalf of the interests of parents and children.

There is a golden lesson from the History Summit held in Canberra several weeks ago-once the truth of what is happening in our schools is documented and tabled on the bar of public opinion, the reform is irresistible. There is no substitute for transparency. Most state governments surrendered this responsibility many years ago. In some cases this retreat assumes epic proportions. As Wiltshire says, Western Australia's experiment in outcomes-based education has failed and Queensland has "absolutely no external assessment in the entire preparatory year to Year 12 spectrum". This means they have "no way of knowing what standards their schools are achieving".

The decision from the History Summit was that history should be re-established in schools as a core academic discipline. This is anathema to progressivist education philosophy and the decision will be fought by the progressive lobby. Yet history should be the start not the end of this cultural conflict, pivotal to the way children are taught. Addressing the impact of the critical literacy movement in the English curriculum, Wiltshire says: "Key aspects of their mantra include deconstructing texts; no longer considering texts to be timeless, universal or unbiased; focusing on the beliefs and values of the composer; and working for social equity and change".

In his assessment of what this movement is providing Australian school students, Wiltshire says: "There is not much of a positive nature in this line-up: it is at best negative and at worst nihilistic. School is for basics and knowledge, certainly accompanied by critical thinking, but not in a milieu where all is relative and there are no absolutes for young people who do not have the intellectual maturity to cope with the somewhat morbid rigour of constant criticism and questioning of motives. If you go on deconstructing for long enough you will become a marshmallow or a jelly".

At heart, critical literacy theory is an ideological construct. It is politics disguised as education. It is rationalised as assisting students to become "active participants in a democratic society". The truth about the critical literacy agenda was exposed 18 months ago when the President of the NSW English Teachers Association, Wayne Sawyer, said the Howard Government's 2004 election win showed that teachers were failing in their mission. The issue here is an ideological disposition that has no place in the schools (nor does any conservative agenda with the same rigidity). The reality is that critical literacy theory survives in the English curriculum only because it is not subject to the transparent analysis valued by a democratic society.

Over the past several years the Federal Government has proposed a series of curriculum changes. It needs to redouble those efforts and propose new mechanisms to review and reform school curriculum. The State Governments are the guilty parties and they know this. The discredited defence mechanisms that this is about Canberra's interference or John Howard trying to impose his own values just won't wash anymore. This is about our kids and it should be treated with urgency and on merit.

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 September, 2006

MALE SPORTING TEAMS ELIMINATED

College students returning to campus find a familiar scene: closet-size dorm rooms, frat parties, and questionable food in the school cafeteria. But on some campuses something is missing this year: men’s sports teams. Students returning to Rutgers University will find that over the summer the university cut six teams: men’s heavyweight and lightweight crew, men’s and women’s fencing, men’s swimming and men’s tennis. Why did men’s athletics take the brunt of what university officials characterize as a necessary cost-cutting exercise? Title IX.

An Associated Press article explained, “Rutgers’ commitment to Title IX guidelines forced it to eliminate more men’s programs. The current female-to-male ratio at the university is 51 to 49 percent, [Rutgers athletic director, Robert] Mulcahy said, adding that the opportunities for women in sports must be within 2 percent of that ratio to comply with Title IX. ‘That means almost all the cuts have to be in men's programs.’”

Title IX was intended to prevent sex discrimination on college campuses, including in athletics. But this well-intentioned law has become a death sentence for many male teams. Colleges and universities see Title IX as a numbers game: The surefire way to avoid costly lawsuits is to have the portion of female athletes mirror female enrollment. Since college women outnumber men, many universities need more female than male athletes. The problem, of course, is that women generally aren’t as interested in sports as men are. This obvious, but somehow controversial, fact is seen in participation in recreational leagues, which are open to all comers, but are predominately male. Men also watch more sports and expressed a greater interest in athletic participation.

Unfortunately, common sense doesn’t cut it for litigation-fearing universities. Last year, in an attempt to stop schools from sacrificing men’s teams at Title IX’s altar, the Department of Education provided guidance on how universities can avoid the numbers game and still comply with Title IX: A thorough survey of student interest can be used to demonstrate that universities are meeting the demand from would-be women athletes. Gender warriors protested the potential use of surveys. They like the numbers game and don’t care about its consequences for male athletes. Universities—perhaps reticent to provoke the ire of the radical feminists that champion Title IX—have hesitated to use surveys and instead try to make the numbers add up.

Universities have two potential strategies: they can try to increase female participation or reduce the number of male athletes. When faced with a tight budget or when unable to turn out more female athletes, universities often eliminate male teams. Rutgers is just the most recent example. Last year, Fresno State eliminated men’s wrestling despite a pledge from alumni to completely fund the team. UCLA cut men’s swimming and gymnastics, teams which had produced more U.S. Olympians in their respective sports than any other school in the country. In recent years, more than ninety universities have eliminated men’s track and field, and more than twenty have cancelled wrestling.

Do men really have such an advantage on campus to justify so many cuts to their programming? A sober review of our educational system reveals that men are struggling. Athletics is one of the few areas in which men are more engaged.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, nearly half of high school senior boys reported participating in an athletic team compared to one in three girls. But twice as many girls contributed to their school’s newspaper or yearbook. Nineteen percent of girls compared to 12 percent of boys participated in an academic club. Thirteen percent of girls compared to 8 percent of boys took part in student council. Nearly one third of senior girls participated in a play or musical performance compared to just two percent of boys.

High school girls are more likely than boys to like school, find their work meaningful, and believe their studies will be useful later in life. Not surprisingly, girls are less likely to drop out and more likely to go to college. As of this fall, women account for 57 percent of undergraduate students.

Canceling another five male sports team won’t make these statistics about men any worse. But certainly it’s a step in the wrong direction, and another sign that university officials are more interested in pacifying the gender police than making higher education appealing to young men

Source



Britain. 'Cool Maths': The sum of all fears

Schoolchildren will never learn to love abstract subjects like maths if teachers are afraid to challenge them

One of the central themes in modern education debates is how to motivate pupils. How do we make learning maths, science, history or English an interesting, enjoyable, and rewarding experience for pupils? It is widely believed that if we fail to convince pupils that studying a particular subject is both relevant to their personal experience and enjoyable they will never learn it properly. This point was emphasised by Charles Clarke three years and two education secretaries ago: `Enjoyment is the birthright of every child. Children learn better when they are excited and engaged ... When there is joy in what they are doing, they learn to love learning.'

One of the subjects that most worries educationalists and policy makers is mathematics. Being the most abstract subject in the curriculum, maths is almost universally considered a hard subject, which is difficult to make relevant to pupils' lives. Minister for Higher Education Bill Rammell notes that `mathematics is too often seen as difficult or boring' and `we have a curriculum that all too often fails to excite and motivate learners'. Educationalist Adrian Smith, author in 2004 of a major inquiry into the state of post-14 mathematics, Making Mathematics Count, states in his report that there has long `been considerable concern about many young people's perception of mathematics as being "boring and irrelevant" and "too difficult", compared with other subjects'.

For the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), maths is worse than boring. It must be truly terrifying, as `the best teachers' build confidence by `enabling [students] to talk through misconceptions in a non-threatening way'. Ofsted cites as an example of a good lesson one where `the teacher valued and used all answers from students, whether correct or not'. As a result, the students were `highly motivated'. Ofsted wants to see lessons with pace, like stand-up comedy, in order to ensure the full attention of the audience. Yet in 2005 it criticised maths teachers for not slowing down the pace of the lesson when necessary: `In many of the less effective lessons, the teaching moves on before pupils have understood the concept; the pressure to cover new content as quickly as possible results in shallow coverage and lack of depth in learning.' Ofsted also implies that there must be a trade off between serious learning and entertainment: `A stimulating session with hairdressing students struck just the right balance between engaging the learners and keeping their mathematics moving forward.' But why should we strike a balance between engaging the learners and learning maths? It seems that we can only sell learning in an underhand way, as something else.

In June 2006, various newspapers reported as `cool maths' a 4 million pound initiative by the secretary of state for education Alan Johnson aimed at `giving teachers new and innovative ways to engage with pupils at Key Stage 3'. Johnson explained that the programme `will make learning engaging and fascinating [as] the problems will be based around things which appeal to pupils, such as fashion, football, or the Olympics'. But Johnson gave away his real views on serious learning when he stated that `the questions will be open, so that the answers will be found through discussion, activity and ingenuity, rather than sitting in a dark room with a wet towel around the head'. Like a self-conscious teenager, Mr Johnson seems so desperate to look cool that he doesn't hesitate to declare his disgust for swots.

However, the prize for coolest educators must go to the chemistry lecturers at Leicester University, who dressed up as Harry Potter characters to motivate primary school children to study their academic discipline. According to the BBC, `Dr Jonny Woodward is putting on a "Gryffindor gown" to become Harry while Dr Paul Jenkins dresses up as the headmaster, Professor Albus Dumbledore, and Mrs Tracy McGhie is transfigured into Professor Minerva McGonagall'.

We should be more honest and tell children what they already know: that maths has very little to do with fashion, football and the Olympics; that chemistry has nothing to do with Harry Potter. Middle-aged educators who try to jump on to every fashionable bandwagon like a bunch of groupies don't even look cool, never mind motivate pupils to study.

The real problem, then, is not that modern pupils are in any way different from previous generations. The problem is the era these children have been born into. Adults no longer believe that education is a worthwhile thing in its own right. It must always be made `relevant'. They have so little faith in pupils that they believe that children are now incapable of grasping abstract concepts, never mind developing a love of books. Learning necessarily involves hard work and individual effort. Teachers are unlikely to convince children that learning a school subject is worth the effort if we believe so little in our discipline and in our pupils' intelligence.

Source



Fundamentalist Christian schools under attack in Australia

Children at taxpayer-funded schools run by the Exclusive Brethren sect are brainwashed and their basic texts are crudely censored, say former teachers. Several teachers have told The Australian they left Brethren schools in disgust at "excessive control" over what children were allowed to read and study. And they said they were paid $10,000 a year less than teachers at comparable non-government schools because the sect did not allow enterprise bargaining.

The claims have prompted calls from teachers, unions and politicians for tighter conditions on taxpayer funding for Brethren schools, which receive $20.7 million a year in federal money.

A fundamentalist Christian sect, the Exclusive Brethren has created controversy in Australia and abroad for smear campaigns against liberal-minded politicians. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark accused the sect of hiring a private detective to gather dirt on her and husband Peter Davis, who was pictured in a magazine being kissed by a "mystery man", who turned out to be a family friend.

The sect has 31 schools in Australia - in NSW, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania - teaching 3823 children until the end of high school. As the Brethren do not believe in tertiary education, they must hire non-members of the sect to teach in their schools. A teacher who recently left one of the sect's three Oakwood schools in Tasmania said he did so in disgust at the "complete control" over the children and their education imposed by the Brethren. "I didn't want to contribute to a system in which the control over the children was so complete," the teacher said. "The children are told what jobs they will do and who they will marry. They were not being equipped to live in the outside world. The Brethren were cutting off the children's pathways." Most modern novels were banned, pages were removed even from permitted 19th-century works and entire chapters were censored from science books. "One science book had all the chapters on reproduction cut out," one teacher said. "Most modern texts were banned."

Teachers reported positives, such as excellent reading skills among the children and an absence of violent or abusive behaviour, but said pupils could be difficult to discipline because they did not believe they needed to heed the word of outsiders.

John Saunders, chief executive of the Brethren's Hobart campus of Oakwood School, rejected the criticisms. "'Our school community, including non-Brethren staff and teachers, has an understanding, respect and a commitment to abide by the school ethos," he said. "This ethos upholds scriptural principles, including the teachings of Christ and the apostles. Our school is a Christian fundamentalist school with a secular curriculum. Many modern-day novels are rejected on the basis they are contrary to the truth of scripture. The parents have set up the Oakwood school to protect their children from the rapid moral decline in today's society."

Independent Education Union federal secretary Lynne Rolley questioned taxpayer funding of Brethren schools, saying it was unfair to other non-government schools with full market pay rates.

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

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



25 September, 2006

SMART STUDENTS DISADVANTAGED IN BRITAIN

Bright pupils are being marked down in their A-level exams for giving "too sophisticated" answers, jeopardising their chances of winning places at their chosen universities. Schools complain that candidates who display originality are being let down by inflexible marking schemes and poorly qualified examiners. In one case a state grammar school was so angry when one of its pupils was given a D grade that it asked Cambridge, where he had an offer of a place, to re-mark the paper. The university judged that it should have been at least two grades higher and awarded him a place.

In another case a teacher at an independent school and a former examiner complained when a pupil was marked down to a D after presenting a carefully argued case that the Vietnam war could be partly explained by decolonisation. The exam board claimed the pupil, who was holding an offer from Oxford that he lost as a result, gave "too much context". When he answered a similar question in a similar way in a re-take, he got an A grade.

The cases underline a growing dissatisfaction among schools that "tick-box" marking schemes are failing to give credit to exceptional work. The number of A-level papers where schools have sought re-marks has risen by 20% in two years. In 2003, schools requested re-marks on 36,000 A-level papers because they judged the grades "unfairly low". By 2005 it had risen to 43,500, with 5,273 resulting in higher grades. At GCSE, re-marks have increased by more than half to 55,400, of which 10,848 were upgraded. Eton College returned 500 A-level papers last year. Exam boards gave higher marks to 299, 113 of them enough to raise grades.

John Bald, an education consultant, said: "Boards are trying to get a grip on the expansion in numbers of pupils getting top grades by using rigid mark systems that do not take account of exceptional intellectual ability."

Adam Bracey, then a pupil at Maidstone grammar in Kent, was awarded a D in one paper, dropping him from an overall A to B in history. He needed three As to take up his offer from Cambridge. "I was devastated," said Bracey, "some of my friends had got into university without the grades they had been asked for, but Cambridge was insistent." The Edexcel board refused to accept the D grade had been mismarked. Neil Turrell, his headmaster, sent the script to Cambridge after two staff concluded the grade was too low. Bracey, 20, got the place after a history don at Homerton College, where he is studying, agreed it was worth a higher grade. Garth Collard, a former history teacher who had been part of the team inspecting Maidstone grammar for Ofsted, also read Bracey's returned script. "I was shocked at the quality of the marking," he said. "The mark scheme was very mechanistic . . . there was no recognition this was a high calibre answer."

Other schools are concerned boards are not employing enough high-quality markers. This year Portsmouth grammar had a number of AS-level papers in English upgraded, including one from D to A. It comes as more than 100 independent schools are planning to ditch A-levels in favour a tougher qualification that places less emphasis on "mechanistic" course work and unlimited resits of exams.

Sophie Garrett, 18, who took A-levels this summer at Tormead, an independent girls' school in Guildford, Surrey, had her music coursework regraded from unclassified to B. Her mother Valerie said: "The original mark meant she failed to get an A. It didn't matter for her place at Surrey University, but she had put hours and hours into it."

Exam boards said their marking schemes did not hold back brighter students. Edexcel said: "Candidates will always receive a fair mark for their work. All examiners must meet certain criteria. Markers are trained and tested to ensure they understand and follow the mark scheme."

Source



ALL EDUCATION INVOLVES BIAS

By Joseph Farah

It's unusual for me to devote an entire column to an otherwise obscure assistant professor with a less-than distinguished writing career - let alone a second column. But Mel Seesholtz of Penn State University, the subject of my musings Wednesday, has responded in a letter to the editor suggesting I ignored the substance of his argument in favor of "bias free" education and dwelled only on his thinly veiled call for my death, along with James Dobson's. Somehow, it had never occurred to me that I should concern myself with the substance of an argument being made by a nutcase calling for my head. Seesholtz's argument is and was, for me, sort of beside the point.

He employs all of the newspeak of the "GLBT community" to defend an indefensible piece of legislation in California audaciously called "the Bias Free Curriculum Act." Vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the law would have mandated sexual indoctrination of kids from kindergarten on up - in private schools as well as public, or, as Seesholtz himself describes the bill, it "would have prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in textbooks, classroom materials and school-sponsored activities."

Give me a break. This is not as education. This is homosexual reproduction. Since homosexuals don't reproduce naturally, they need to recruit - not to be their children, mind you, but to be their prey. That's why they care so much about what happens in schools - where they obviously have few of their own children. But I digress.

What I really wanted to deal with is the notion that there can be such a thing as "bias free curriculum." The very idea is preposterous, and even someone as steeped in the moral confusion of academia as Seesholtz should understand that. Surely, Seesholtz, who has turned the vilification of Christians and the promotion of same-sex marriage into something of a cottage industry, does not favor the California law because he thinks it is about being free of bias. If he had an ounce of honesty in his spirit, he would admit he favors the law because it promotes his pro-homosexual, anti-Christian agenda.

Think about this: Is there any such thing as "bias-free education"? Can there be any such thing? Would it be possible? If possible, would it be a worthy goal? I would say no. And, I've got to believe any thinking person would agree. Values are an inherent part of education. You have to teach someone's values. They can be good values or bad values. But they are values nevertheless. They could be my values or they could be values of California Sen. Sheila Kuehl - Zelda, as she was once known on the "Dobie Gillis" show. There is no such thing as an education absent values. It's just a question of whose values will be taught.

It's scary that California came as close as it did to imposing by force the values of the Mel Seesholtzes of the world on innocent little schoolchildren who have no need to hear about what homosexuals do in the privacy of their bedrooms, in the bathhouses, in the public restrooms and up on Brokeback Mountain. Let's be honest; there's only one reason to teach kindergarteners about sexual perversion - and that is to raise a new generation of pliable sexual victims of that perversion.

You can couch this immorality in creative public-relations language. You can put any shade of lipstick on that pig you choose. But, at the end of the day, you know what is in the heart, minds and souls of those pushing their sick agenda down the throats of the innocent little schoolchildren.

At Penn State University, they teach the values of Mel Seesholtz, the Ward Churchill of the pro-perversion, anti-Christian crowd. The fact that one so intolerant presses so hard for California's so-called "Bias Free Curriculum Act" strongly suggests Schwarzenegger made the right call when he terminated the bill with extreme prejudice.

Source



Leftist State governments failing Australia's schools

State Labor governments have ceded control of curriculum to individual schools and have failed to monitor the quality of teaching because they are captives of the teachers' unions. In a vigorous attack on the state of the nation's education system, Australia's representative on the executive of the UN education body UNESCO, Kenneth Wiltshire, said the states had relinquished any effective system of measuring the standard of what is taught in schools and the performance of teachers.

Professor Wiltshire, the architect of the Queensland school curriculum under the Goss government, said school inspectors were abolished long ago but an alternative way of monitoring schools had not been introduced. "Current Labor state governments are usually under the influence of the teachers' unions so it is no wonder that teachers remain one of the very few professions who do not have external reviews," he said. He said Western Australia "with its failed experiment on outcomes-based education, and Queensland, with absolutely no external assessment in the entire P-12 spectrum, have no real way of knowing what standards their schools are achieving".

Professor Wiltshire also supported The Weekend Australian's stance against teaching school students critical literacy in English, saying deconstruction belonged at honours level in university. "If you go on deconstructing for long enough you will become a marshmallow or a jelly," he said. "School is for basics and knowledge." He said Shakespeare was studied by "just about every other Western country and many eastern ones as well, despite the claims of the critical literacy movement that he goes in and out of fashion and is 'censored' by curriculum authorities". "If Shakespeare is too difficult for most students in an English subject, would we perhaps create an alternative subject so students could study the comedies in the 'easier' subject and the tragedies in another," he writes in an article in The Weekend Australian today. "Should the Diaries of Anne Frank be replaced with the Emails of Tom Cruise or the Text Messages of Shane Warne?"

Professor Wiltshire said school curriculums failed to detail the key knowledge students should learn, instead listing competencies called outcomes. This was largely responsible for the exodus of students out of government schools into the independent system. "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."

While state governments could not agree on a common school leaving certificate - largely because of a squabble "over which minister's signature would appear on the certificate" - the federal Government was talking about greater uniformity, improved accountability and comparing standards.

Professor Wiltshire is the JD Story professor of public administration at the University of Queensland. He recently completed a term as special adviser to the Australian National Training Authority and is a former chairman of the Tertiary Entrance Procedures Authority.

The Weekend Australian's support for neutral, apolitical teaching of English is criticised in the current journal of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English, by high school English teacher David Freesmith. He accuses the newspaper of mounting a "political and ideological" attack on critical literacy and of failing to properly understand it. Mr Freesmith holds a masters in teaching, and has been a teacher for five years, all at Adelaide's Prince Alfred College, where he teaches English in years 8-10, English as a Second Language, French and the International Baccalaureat subject Theory of Knowledge. In his article, Mr Freesmith argues that teaching reading and writing is "inevitably ideological at some level and (has) significant political implications". He refers to writers who argue that "a skills approach to literacy can 'generate failure' among minority and working-class students", can "entrench prejudices" and so is inherently political. He also says formulating a canon of valued literature that includes Shakespeare and Dickens "or any other reading list, is ... an ideological act". "The history of English curricula suggests that the notion of a permanent English canon having been taught across generations is dubious," he says. "For example, Shakespeare, the very centrepiece of the canon, has spent considerable periods of time out of favour, and has even, at times, been heavily censored by curriculum writers. "The notion of the canon is in fact a modern invention, tied to the modern cultural function of defining the nation. Advocacy of the canon in the curriculum may therefore be seen to be tied ... to a nationalistic ideology."

But Professor Wiltshire said the critical literacy movement was "at best negative and at worst nihilistic". "This sort of thinking is a recipe for laziness, indifference and unwillingness to identify standards and common values," he said. "It inevitably leads to a dumbing down of curriculum and therefore the students themselves ... School is for basics and knowledge, certainly accompanied by critical thinking but not in a milieu where all is relative and there are no absolutes."

Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said yesterday the states and territories should listen to the experts and develop "more soundly based" curriculums. She said literacy and numeracy tests revealed an alarming number of students completed their schooling without strong skills in these areas. "There's a need for a greater focus on the fundamentals of subjects like English before students can be expected to deal with more advanced concepts," she said.

Professor Wiltshire said it was not only governments but also the community, including parents and industry, that decided curriculum and the challenge ahead was to define the core knowledge all students should learn. "That's the core curriculum, that's what we should agree upon as core curriculum, certainly the basis of knowledge, what a person needs to function in society, to be a citizen," 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

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



24 September, 2006

No Teacher Left Behind

A new report shows American educators to be woefully unqualified

Schools of education have gotten bad grades before. Yet there are some truly shocking statistics about teacher training in this week's report from the Education Schools Project. According to "Educating School Teachers," three-quarters of the country's 1,206 university-level schools of education don't have the capacity to produce excellent teachers. More than half of teachers are educated in programs with the lowest admission standards (often accepting 100% of applicants) and with "the least accomplished professors." When school principals were asked to rate the skills and preparedness of new teachers, only 40% on average thought education schools were doing even a moderately good job.

The Education Schools Project was begun in 2001, with foundation funding, to analyze how America trains its educators and to offer constructive criticism. Its report card this week is significant for two reasons. First, it is based on four years of broad and methodical research, including surveys of school principals and of the deans, faculty members and graduates of education schools. In addition, researchers studied programs and practices at 28 institutions. No matter how many establishment feathers get ruffled by the results of these inquiries, miffed educators can't easily brush off the basic findings: There are glaring flaws and gaps in our teacher-training system.

The study also comes at a uniquely challenging moment in American education. The final report was written by ESP director Arthur Levine, a former president of Columbia's Teacher's College. Mr. Levine notes that we're currently facing a national shortage of nearly 200,000 teachers--at the same time that, "to compete in a global marketplace and sustain a democratic society, the United States requires the most educated population in history." Society now demands that teaching success be measured no longer by what children have studied but by what they have actually learned. (A copy of "Educating Teachers" is at www.edschools.org.)

The report's most stunning revelation--to outsiders at least--is that nobody knows what makes a good teacher today. Mr. Levine compares the training universe to "Dodge City." There is an "unruly" mix of approaches, chiefly because there is no consensus on how long teachers should study, for instance, or whether they should concentrate on teaching theory or mastering subject matter. Wide variations in curricula, and fads--like the one that produced the now-discredited "fuzzy math"--make things worse. Compare such chaos with the training for professions such as law or medicine, where, Mr. Levine reminds us, nobody is unleashed on the public without meeting a universally acknowledged requisite body of knowledge and set of skills.

Mr. Levine also outlines many recommendations. Some seem obvious: more in-classroom training, for instance. Some are perennial: The report notes that one way to attract the best and the brightest to teaching would be to pay them the same salaries as other professionals--although it more realistically mentions special scholarships and merit pay as alternative incentives. The report also reveals that many failing teacher programs operate as "cash cows" for universities, which encourage their education departments to admit (and graduate) almost anybody for the sake of tuition dollars. It suggests closing some of these schools and directing students toward more rigorous academic institutions. Some critics in the education establishment already have labeled that idea "elitist," saying that it would deprive many people of a chance to become teachers.

Yet there's one idea that seems more important and urgent than the others. That is the recommendation that all states begin collecting information about how much their schoolchildren have learned from kindergarten through high school so it can be correlated with information about how their teachers were trained. Until this fundamental question is explored and answered--what kind of training produces teachers who get the best results from their children--we'll be holding classes in the dark.

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THE TRACKING WARS: AVERAGE KIDS ARE LOSING OUT

One of the biggest concerns of parents for the new school year is this: What kind of kids are in my child's classroom? The answer to this question is particularly difficult for parents of average students, the most forgotten group today.

All parents want their children to be with the nice kids, the bright and well-behaved types who will pull classes up, rather than with kids who will drag them down. In big, economically and ethnically diverse high schools such as mine, T.C. Williams in Alexandria, Va., where there is enormous variation in academic abilities, average kids run the risk of ending up in one of two tracks: in classes full of students with weak skills and lousy attitudes or in so-called advanced courses where they find themselves in over their heads.

A major part of the problem is the anti-tracking movement, which began in the mid-1980s. Since then, tracking has become to education what abortion and gay marriage are to politics - an incendiary topic with fanatics on both sides. So-called progressive teachers and administrators, whose mantra is "every child can learn," want to do away with tracking.

Good teachers, and fancy sounding course labels such as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate, are supposed to raise the level of all students no matter how varied their skills or abilities. In truth, social engineering - mixing of races and ethnic groups in classes - is what many administrators really prize, while giving lip service to academic rigor.

On the other end of the tracking wars are fanatical parents - usually white, in my experience - who think their kids are geniuses, who must be protected from less talented kids and who are entitled to every advantage and resource the school system has to offer. Parents at a school for gifted children on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, for example, have been outraged by Chancellor Joel Klein's decision to have part of their school share facilities with a new charter school intended to help poor kids. They have filed a lawsuit.

T.C. Williams has seen its share of the tracking wars. In the 1970s there were five "tracks" in English, resulting in a type of de facto segregation with the top tracks virtually all white and the lower tracks virtually all black. But while the five-track system was grossly unfair to low-income minority students who populated the lower tracks, today's two-track system shortchanges average students, who have the choice between regular classes, many of which are in fact remedial, or Advanced Placement classes, which they can't handle.

The reasons the needs of average kids are ignored are many. In the first place, most parents are not going to be too eager to acknowledge that they have an average kid. I have heard teachers in neighboring Fairfax County, Va., joke that every middle-class white kid is labeled either gifted and talented or learning disabled. The LD label goes over with parents because it implies that the kid is brighter than his or her work shows.

School systems ignore the average kids for somewhat the same reason: They don't help confer status on the school system. Schools have become so busy worrying about getting their worst students to pass state exams that they have let the average kid who can easily pass those dumbed-down exams fall through the cracks. Raising the test scores of minority students from low-income families is the surest way for administrators to get recognition and win promotions.

What is happening more and more around the country is that average students are being pushed into Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes to make schools appear as though they have high standards. In a sense, average kids have become a pawn of school boards and administrators who want to get good PR for boosting the numbers in supposedly rigorous courses. Administrators here in Northern Virginia boast about the numbers of kids taking AP courses but don't talk much about students' test scores.

What is needed is a middle track for average students - call it college-bound or some other name that will please parents. The fact is that every child can learn, but every child cannot learn as fast as, or learn as much as, every other child. Given the present obsession with raising the test scores of the weakest students, average kids will not get on the radar screens of schools until their parents band together to bring pressure - the same way that parents of the learning disabled and gifted kids have. Until that happens, average students will continue to get a below-average education.

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U.K.: COSMETIC CHANGES DON'T WORK

Not even if you spend millions on them

Ten years after the Ridings gained national infamy as "the school from hell", it is once more in serious trouble. The West Yorkshire secondary hit the headlines in 1996 - a year after it was formed by merging two schools - when staff threatened to strike unless 60 pupils were disciplined or expelled. A supply teacher had allegedly been groped and a brick was said to have been thrown at the new head teacher, who resigned.

By 1997, the school was the pet project of the Labour Government. Anna White was appointed head teacher in 1997. The school received o6 million, became the target of various initiatives, had 14 visits from inspectors in two years and a succession of ministers praised its remarkable turnaround.

By October 1998, the Ridings, where 42 per cent of pupils are eligible for free school meals and 45 per cent have special educational needs, was taken off the list of failing schools. Ofsted praised its "remarkable transformation". Mrs White was appointed a CBE in 2000. Tony Blair visited the next year during the general election campaign. By 2003, 25 per cent of pupils gained five or more A*-C GCSE grades, up from 3 per cent in 1998. But within a year, the GCSE pass rate had fallen to 14 per cent. Mrs White left last year to become an educational consultant.

Ofsted paid a sudden visit last autumn, shortly after a new head teacher had been appointed. The report was damning. The Ridings was given a "notice to improve" and warned that special measures could follow. The school had only recently ended its participation in yet another Labour initiative, the three-year Octet programme under which eight schools joined a research project "to find new and innovative ways to raise standards" in "exceptionally challenging circumstances".

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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23 September, 2006

BRITISH TRUANCY PROBLEM

Parents of truanting children at 1,000 primary schools face “fast-track” legal action and fines of £50 after figures indicated that a rise in absences among children under 12 had helped to push truancy figures to a record high. Statistics published yesterday show that, despite government spending of £900 million since 1998 to reduce the number of unauthorised absences from school, 30,000 children still skip classes regularly. These regular absences account for a third of all truancies at secondary school. The truancy rate in primary schools, measured as a percentage of half-days missed per pupil, rose by 7 per cent last year to 0.46 per cent, while in secondary schools truancy rates fell by less than 1 per cent to 1.22 per cent. Overall, the rate rose from 0.78 to 0.79 per cent in the state sector, while private schools also experienced a rise of 0.14 per cent.

The figures for primary schools will be of particular concern for ministers, just a month after primary test results fell well below government targets. Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said that although the majority of truanting still occurred in secondary schools more effort was needed at primary level to prevent children and parents developing bad habits. Under a new scheme, 1,000 primary schools with poor attendance records will be asked to draw up a list of persistent truants. Their parents will be given 12 weeks to improve their children’s attendance or face automatic prosecution and a 50 pound fine. If this is not paid within 28 days, the fine will rise to 100 pounds.

So far the fast-track scheme has been implemented in only 200 secondary schools, where it has resulted in a 27 per cent fall in persistent truants in a year, with 3,500 of the 13,000 worst offenders returning to class. Mr Knight said that there was no single reason to explain the rise in truancy, although a contributory factor may be the high number of parents taking their children on holiday during the school term to take advantage of off-peak prices. “We have asked schools to be much tougher about authorising holidays during term time,” he said. “There are cultural things going on with truancy. The rate has increased across the board, in independent schools as well as state schools. We have to shift the culture to break the truancy habit, particularly among younger children.” To reach this age range, the Government has set up a £40 million pilot scheme of parent support advisers to help the families of truants aged 8 to 13.

Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT, a union representing teachers and head teachers, said that parents who allowed their children to play truant were denying them access to an education and a decent future. “More work has to be done to discourage those parents who condone truancy by taking their children out of school for holidays, shopping trips or telling them to stay in and wait for the gas man,” she said. Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said that punitive initiatives such as the fast-track scheme could put a strain on the relationship between head teachers and parents. A better solution could be for holiday companies to work with schools to use newsletters to promote affordable holidays.

Nick Gibb, the Conservative schools spokesman, said: “We need to focus on the causes of truancy and disaffection — mixed-ability teaching, poor discipline and low levels of reading ability. That is why the Conservative Party is committed to setting children by ability.”

Source



JAPAN: DOES AN EMPLOYER HAVE A RIGHT TO MANAGE?



Within hours of victory in his party presidential race Shinzo Abe, Japan’s right-wing incoming prime minister, suffered a heavy legal blow to his nationalist agenda when a Tokyo court ruled that it was unconstitutional to force patriotism on school teachers. The ruling will undermine Mr Abe’s plans to revise Japan’s basic education law and was described by one of the teachers’ victorious lawyers as “a blow to government high-handedness” in the sphere of education. ]

In the largest such legal action in Japan’s postwar history, 401 school teachers sued the Tokyo metropolitan education board over its insistence that they should stand, visibly respect the flag and audibly chant the words to Japan’s national anthem, Kimigayo, at school ceremonies. The original idea behind the scheme was that teachers should set a clear example to pupils — a generation that Japan’s political old guard regard as lacking the sort of patriotism that supposedly drove Japan’s economic growth. Teachers who failed to comply were sent to a humiliating series of “re-education” classes.

The teacher plaintiffs, of whom 370 have been reprimanded by their schools and about a dozen sacked over “anthem infractions”, have been fighting the case since 2004 and yesterday, after two years in court, were told that the education board’s behaviour was an infringement of freedom of thought as guaranteed by Japan’s constitution.

Judge Koichi Namba said that the metropolitan government — itself under the control of Tokyo’s strongly nationalist governor Shintaro Ishihara — had been wrong to punish teachers for their failure to sing the anthem. The court ordered the board to pay 30,000 yen (about £150) to each of the teachers. The ruling said that teachers were constitutionally under no obligation to stand, sing or even play the piano as an accompaniment to the anthem.

Yoko Adachi, who has been teaching history for 35 years and was punished for failing to stand for the anthem, said: “The Hinomaru flag and Kimigayo anthem are things you should never be forced to respect. If I simply followed the directive and bowed to pressure from the education board, then I wouldn’t be able to teach real Japanese history in class.” Sawa Kawamura, a teacher in a school for the disabled, said that the education board’s directive had produced a bizarre situation where wheelchair-bound children were not allowed to collect their graduation certificates until they had been pulled up on to the school stage where the national flag was displayed.

The teachers’ court battle has become the cause célèbre of liberal Japanese who regard patriotism drives in schools as a return to dark episodes of the country’s history. Patriotism is the chief strut of the incoming prime minister’s platform. Next week Mr Abe assumes the leadership role being vacated by Junichiro Koizumi. He won the presidency of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on an overtly right-wing ticket — promoting the view that Japan’s problems could be solved by a surge of countrywide nationalism. His core position has been badly damaged by the ruling in favour of the teachers.

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Breaking the Leftist stranglehold on journalism education in Australia

"Journalism courses run by the University of the Sunshine Coast, the University of Western Sydney and the private Brisbane college Jschool have been judged the best by their students"

JSchool? It's a private journalism school run by the excellent Professor John Henningham, who you might recall is the man whose famous survey established what your ears and eyes already suspected - that most journalists are far to the Left of the public they are meant to serve.

The question now is why Henningham's private school is held in higher esteem by its students than are many of the expensively maintained (by taxpayers) journalism schools run by universities such as RMIT and the University of Technology, Sydney (of which more in the next post).

Are private colleges forced to be more responsive to their students? Are they more likely through necessity if nothing else to understand the society from which they draw their students and livelihood? Are they less likely to be the rigid ideological factories that so many media employers now suspect university schools have become?

And do we really need so many taxpayer-funded journalism schools that produce far, far more graduates than will ever get media jobs and aren't much respected by the students they purport to teach?

Bravo Professor Henningham for shining another light on production of groupthink in the mainstream media.

(Comment above by Andrew Bolt)

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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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22 September, 2006

DUMB U.S. HIGH-SCHOOL "HONORS"

During a visit in March to an honors sophomore English class in an impoverished area of Connecticut, Robyn R. Jackson heard the teacher declare proudly that her students were reading difficult texts. But Jackson noticed that their only review of those books was a set of work sheets that required little thought or analysis. Jackson, an educational consultant and former Gaithersburg High School English teacher, sought an explanation from a school district official. He sighed and told her, "We have a lot of work to do to help teachers understand what true rigor is."

In an American education system full of plans for better high schools, more and more courses have impressive labels, such as "honors," "advanced," "college prep" and "Advanced Placement." But many researchers and educators say the teaching often does not match the title. "A company selling an orange-colored beverage under the label 'orange juice' can get in legal trouble if the beverage contains little or no actual juice," said a February report from the National Center for Educational Accountability, based in Austin. "But there are no consequences for giving credit for Algebra 2 to students who have learned little algebra."

Grade inflation is a well-known issue. Many critics of public schools contend that students nowadays get better grades for less achievement than they used to. Experts also worry about courses that promise mastery in a subject but fail to follow through. Call it course-label inflation. The educational accountability center's researchers, Chrys Dougherty, Lynn Mellor and Shuling Jian, found course-label inflation particularly harmful to low-income and minority students. They said 60 percent of low-income students, 65 percent of African American students and 57 percent of Hispanic students who had received course credit for geometry or algebra 2 in Texas failed a state exam covering material from geometry and algebra 1. By contrast, the failure rates for non-low-income and white students were 36 and 32 percent, respectively.

U.S. Education Department senior researcher Clifford Adelman, the government's leading authority on the links between high school programs and college completion, said some high school transcripts apply the label "pre-calculus" to any math course before calculus. Some students who had taken "pre-calculus," according to the transcripts he inspected, had skills so rudimentary that they were forced to take basic algebra in their first year of college. The College Board's Advanced Placement program plans to ask teachers soon to fill out a form confirming that their course materials meet college-level standards. Jackson said one College Board official told her of a school that had started an AP Spanish course but was using seventh-grade workbooks.

AP courses at least have final exams, written and scored by outside experts, that reveal whether students have mastered the material. Wayne Bishop, a math professor at California State University in Los Angeles, examined an AP calculus class in a Pasadena, Calif., high school. All 23 students, Bishop found, got As and Bs from their teacher, but their grades on the AP exam were the college equivalent of 21 Fs and two Ds.

Most high school honors and advanced courses don't have independent benchmarks like the AP tests, so inflated course labels are more difficult to detect. Michael Goldstein, founder of the MATCH Charter Public School in Boston, described the sort of dialogue that often produces courses that don't keep their promises in other schools: "The principal tells the teacher, 'You're teaching algebra 2.' The teacher responds, 'But our tests show these kids haven't mastered one-fourth plus one-half, let alone algebra 1.' The principal responds, 'Well, we need to offer them algebra 2 because it helps on their college transcripts.' "

Many selective colleges defend themselves against course-label inflation by giving admitted students placement tests to see which college courses they are ready to take. A better and more far-reaching solution, many high school educators say, is to prepare students in lower grades for the demanding courses ahead of them and make sure the standards do not slip.

The center for educational accountability's report recommended that high schools help ninth-graders see the worth of taking challenging courses and find ways to build their skills so they are ready for them. Experts cite Wakefield High School in Arlington, which this year won a $25,000 Inspiration Award from the College Board for preparing large numbers of low-income and minority students for AP courses.

Wakefield junior Narciso Chavez, 16, is a product of the school's AP Network, a collection of summer programs, ninth-grade interventions and student clubs operated by teachers who look for potentially strong students who had been overlooked. Chavez's father is a bus driver and his mother a hotel supervisor; both are from El Salvador. Before Chavez arrived at Wakefield, he was told he had a learning disability. But the Wakefield teachers thought he could handle an accelerated program, including geometry and algebra 2 in his sophomore year.

Chavez said he resisted until his friend Marcelo Rejas, already in the courses, suggested that Chavez wasn't up to it. Chavez accepted the challenge, took both courses and received high scores on the state tests in geometry and algebra 2. This year, he is taking AP Spanish, AP English language and AP chemistry. He also has a special AP seminar that gives him extra time at school to confer with teachers and do homework. He does four more hours of homework a night, with an hour-long break at 9 p.m., when he reads the Bible and prays with his family. "I decided I wanted to be successful," said Chavez, who is thinking of a career in engineering, law or chemistry.

Mike Riley, superintendent of a school district in Bellevue, Wash., and a proponent of higher national high school standards, said the solution to course-label inflation was to connect tightly the curriculum of each grade, from kindergarten through high school, to the next, so it is obvious which students need more help. Several educators said external benchmarks are also necessary, pointing to state math tests that Chavez took in the spring. They showed that he had mastered geometry and algebra 2. Without such benchmarks, said Andrew Rotherham, a former White House education adviser and a member of the Virginia Board of Education, "there is too much variance, and that ultimately disadvantages students, in particular poor and minority students. It sounds very romantic to say, 'Leave it all to the schools or the teacher,' but it just doesn't work in a system as heterogeneous, in every way, as ours is."

Source



SCHOOLS THAT THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT CANNOT MAKE WORK

Instead of solving the problems that their failed educational theories have created, they are just running away and hoping someone else can solve them

The worst-performing secondary schools in the country face being taken over by the best or shut down completely, The Times has learnt. Head teachers of schools with trust status, an initiative designed to give them greater independence from local authorities, will be able to act as chief executives overseeing the progress of less successful institutions. The plans come amid concerns that Labour's record investment has failed to improve standards at the bottom of school league tables, with more than one in six secondaries now providing a second-rate education.

A confidential government hitlist has identified 512 secondary schools, from a total of 3,385, that are officially classified as "underperforming" because only 25 per cent or less of pupils attain five good GCSEs. An estimated 400,000 children attend these schools, with many leaving at 16 without the skills to get a job. They include Montgomery School in Canterbury, where just 1 per cent of pupils achieved five A* to C GCSEs, including maths and English, in 2005, against a national average of 44.3 per cent. Also on the list is Ridings School in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, which achieved notoriety in 1996 after pupil behaviour and staff action plunged it into chaos. Despite the help of troubleshooting head teachers, just 5 per cent of pupils managed five A* to C GCSEs, including maths and English, last year.

Under the new plans, such schools would be taken over by high-achieving schools, linked together by a single independent trust. The trusts, set up under the new education Bill, would be run by a chief executive, usually the existing head of the lead school in the partnership. The chief executive would appoint new heads for each of the partner schools and would have the freedom to take whatever other actions were necessary to raise standards, including the removal of up to 20 per cent of staff. Sir Cyril Taylor, head of the Government's specialist schools programme and the architect of the reforms, said that a large number of heads in high- performing schools had already expressed an interest in taking over underperforming schools nearby.

The key in turning round an underperforming school was good leadership and a strong vision. "I believe that the strong should help the weak. Best practice can be replicated with good leadership in even the most challenging schools," he said. Sir Cyril said that the reforms would help to nurture new leaders and address the leadership crisis in schools. At present 1,500 English primary and secondary schools lack a permanent head. "If we are short of 1,500 head teachers, it will clearly be difficult to find sufficient outstanding head teachers for every underperforming school, and this is where collaboration and co-operation between schools can be crucial in raising performance," Sir Cyril added.

High-performing schools can already take over failing schools by forming a federation under existing legislation, but such arrangements cannot be permanent and have limited powers. Under the new education Bill, expected to receive Royal Assent this year, a new breed of independent school trust, free from local authority control, will be possible. In a speech today at the Federations and School Leadership conference in London, Sir Cyril will say that trust status will be key to making school partnerships work. Those underperforming schools that were not taken over by others should either be closed down completely, if their pupil numbers were falling, and their pupils sent to nearby schools, or they should seek private sponsorship to become academy schools, he said.

Teaching unions are generally in favour of the move towards more partnerships between schools, provided that heads and teachers from failing schools who lose their jobs are properly compensated. John Dunford, of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "The principle of a successful school supporting a less successful one in partnership is an excellent one." However, he questioned the idea of classifying as "failing" all schools with 25 per cent or less of pupils attaining five good GCSEs. "It will depend on the ability of the children when they join a school," he said.

Examples of successful take-overs include the Ninestiles Federation in Birmingham. In 2001 the highly successful Ninestiles School took responsibility for the Waverley School, then on the brink of special measures. The partnership finished in 2005, by which time the proportion of Waverley students gaining five good GCSEs had risen from 16 to 75 per cent.

Source



ANOTHER NASTY ATTACK BY OFFICIAL BULLIES ON A HARMLESS LITTLE KID

Treating little kids kindly is obviously an alien concept for them. They might profit by reading Matthew 18:1-6

A mother is angry that her first-grader was suspended from school over a plastic toy gun. "I asked her, 'You're going to suspend my son for 10 days for this? He cannot harm a soul with this,'" said Danielle Womack, whose son, Tawann Caskey, was suspended from Milton Moore Elementary School. KMBC's Natalie Moultrie reported that Tawann was suspended over a 2-inch plastic squirt gun

"She told me it's a weapon, a little girl saw it and reported to a teacher that he had a weapon," Womack said. According to Kansas City, Mo., School District policy, the squirt gun is a simulated weapon and a class IV, which is the most serious school offense. Moultrie reported that principals have no discretion in cases like Tawaan's. It is an automatic 10-day suspension. "We ask our principals for safety of students and staff, and we do follow the code of conduct and do not give exceptions to Class IV offenses. We take it very seriously," the school district's Phyllis Budesheim said.

Moultrie reported that the incident will stay on Tawann's school record. But Womack said her son does not understand why he's not in school. "I think this could have been resolved in a different way. It's wrong to bring it school, but come on, he's 6 years old. This would not hurt a soul," Womack said. The school district said it is all policy -- one that the school told students and parents about at the start of the year. "We regret that this happened. My feeling is that by not giving any exceptions, this young man will not bring a toy gun to school again," Budesheim said.

The school district said that the incident should be a reminder to parents to check their children's backpacks before they go to school. Moultrie reported that Womack is waiting to state her case before a school district hearing Wednesday morning.

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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21 September, 2006

The California Left wants to segregate Latino schoolchildren

For now, the state Legislature's unseemly war on the gutsy, no-nonsense state Board of Education is over, with our unpopular Legislature abandoning Sacramento for its long annual vacation back in the home districts. It would be nice if the public -- left largely in the dark in this debate -- could hurl probing questions at local "progressive" legislators as to why they are waging war on the state Board of Education, why they are trying to turn back the clock on Latino kids and segregate them again, and why they are fudging numbers to make it appear that Latino kids are not improving when in fact they're improving faster than they have in decades.

If you hate politicians, you will really despise them when you find out how low our Legislature went to serve the twisted purposes of adult special-interest groups at the expense of California's poorest kids. The latest effort, Senate Bill 1769 by Southern California Democrats Martha Escutia, Judy Chu and Jackie Goldberg, is likely to be vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, just as it would have been by former Govs. Gray Davis and Pete Wilson before him, and ... well, you get the idea.

Senate Bill 1769 arises from voters' 1998 decision to ban "bilingual" education, which kept immigrant kids stuck in Spanish and stunted in English. But "progressive" and Latino-elected leaders were unanimous in insisting that, under Proposition 227, Latino kids would buckle from the intense pressure of having to perform academically while trying to learn English. Remember that? Didn't happen. Under Wilson, an emboldened state Board of Education had already begun to reform the schools. Prop. 227 was a useful tool. As The Chronicle reported in 1999, "In the past year alone, Wilson's board reinstated phonics instruction, changed how math will be taught, installed a new state achievement test, established grade-by-grade academic standards and refused to consider school district requests to teach in languages other than English."

Davis' Board of Education was just as gutsy, linking textbook content to the tougher standards -- despite pitched opposition. Tests scores are now steadily climbing. Our awful schools are doing something right. But last spring, the Latino and Democratic Caucus declared war on the Board of Education. "Progressive" legislators demand that the board adopt a faddish idea, "Option VI," to help "close the gap" between immigrant and non-immigrant kids. The board refused, so the Democrats cut the board's $1.5 million annual funding.

No serious researcher would embrace "Option VI," the latest Orwellian effort to segregate Latino kids and water down academic standards. The "books and materials" were accurately described by the Los Angeles Times as having "more pictures and simple vocabulary." Dumbed-down. Separate. Arnold, who has temporarily funded the gutsy Board of Education from funds he controls, will likely veto SB1769. When I had lunch with him several weeks ago, we didn't discuss it specifically, but he firmly opposed simpler books and separate materials. "We don't want separate, we want together," he told me.

Even so, this will not be the last we've heard from Sacramento "progressives." So what's really going on? For starters, immigrant children are so quickly becoming literate in English compared to a decade ago, that many California schools now refuse to identify them as fluent. Why? Because California rewards schools for having "English learners." Schools who admit a student has become "proficient" lose that money. That money, in turn, feeds a politicized adult lobby inside the schools whose jobs and power rely on keeping kids in the "English learner" category.

One result: 170,000 children fluent in English are stuck in the "learner" category today. Some 522,000 immigrant kids, reclassified as proficient in English, scored higher on statewide tests than average California students. Their scores strongly suggest that schools are requiring "English learners" to learn it better than average California students before they are classified as proficient.

A tortured analysis in Escutia's bill claims that the "performance gap" between English learners and other California students "has remained virtually constant in most subject[s]" since Prop. 227. How absurd. In truth, California's "English learner" population of about 1.6 million swells weekly from illegal immigration. As fast as kids learn English, their numbers are replenished. The "gap" won't be narrowed anytime soon. Former Govs. Wilson and Davis get it. In July, they wrote an open letter urging Sacramento not to dumb-down standards: "Standards provide a measure of excellence regardless of one's skin color, family income or ZIPcode. ... Not every child will fully meet the challenge, but all will benefit from the effort."

Schwarzenegger will probably do the right thing. But as long as a fervently politicized mini-industry in our schools is rewarded, the progressives' misbegotten war over English immersion, textbooks, curriculum and skills will persist.

Source



NEW BRITISH COMPRESSED DEGREES POPULAR

The new nine-to-five degree, which spells the end to three-month summer vacations, is proving a hit with lawyers, hoteliers and professionals keen to get ahead in the job market. As the first full-time fast-track students embarked on their courses yesterday, universities piloting the revolutionary programmes were already turning away candidates, having filled their quotas. The new degree compresses three years' work into two, as students toil through both summer vacations. They cost 3,000 pounds less than a traditional honours course and ministers hope that this will encourage more people who are put off by top-up fees and student debts to apply.

This year the proportion of state school pupils and those from low-income families at university dropped to its lowest level in three years, despite government pressure to increase numbers. Julie Smith, senior lecturer in law at Staffordshire University, said that the department had been "pleasantly surprised" by the numbers applying. With school-leavers, career-changers, European, African and Canadian students, she says that the degree has a healthy mix. "There will always be more than one tutor for every module, so they will have back-up," she said. "If any student finds it too much, they can slow down along the way and even do the three-year degree." Staffordshire is one of five universities, with Derby, Leeds Metropolitan, Northampton and the Medway partnership, offering fast-track degrees. The Higher Education Funding Council for England is pouring 3 million into the flexible learning programmes and expects about 600 students to enrol in the first year.

Andrew Haldane, who leads the fast-track learning projects in Derby, said that tutors expected to accept a full quota on each of their courses in the joint honours tourism and hospitality sector as well as in business studies. More tutors will be recruited in January. However, he said that he expected few universities to follow suit until they were properly paid for the extra tuition. "We get slightly more than two years' worth (of tuition fees), but it's a good deal less than three," he said. "So if demand is shown for these programmes, the council would need to address that."

Last week Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, suggested that universities could replace three-year residential honours degrees with flexible credit-based systems, part-time courses and programmes delivered over the internet. Cliff Allen, deputy chief executive of the Higher Education Academy, said there was a market for accelerated degrees, but added that, without extra resources, they could be seen as "cut-price". The future, he said, would probably lie in the more flexible vocational degrees centred on workplace learning.

Source



Australia: More on pro-terrorist "Research"

The critics of my opinion piece on terrorism research allege that the status quo is fine. They also defend the ubiquitous "class, sex, race" theoretical template and similar ideological presuppositions that predetermine the outcomes of their research. These defenders of the status quo complacently think their research paradigm is irrefutable and therefore anyone who challenges them must be wrong. They typify the arrogance of the academic elites that dominate the research agenda in Australia. Fortunately, the truly lamentable state of affairs in terrorism studies is becoming clear as other scholars in the field reveal the abuses that are occurring ("Research 'blames West for terror"', The Australian, September 15).

Among the critics defending the status quo are Stuart Koschade and Luke Howie, who are doing PhDs. They claim that "during the next four years the academic community will be inundated with young Australian scholars with a special expertise in studying terrorism".

Apparently Australians are meant to think this is a good thing. On the contrary, we should be very worried about the ideologies that these researchers will be imposing on terrorism studies in the near future. In fact, these ideologies are quite bizarre, as I pointed out in my original article, and as David Martin Jones and Carl Ungerer have also recently revealed ("Delusion reigns in terror studies", The Australian, September 15). Overwhelmingly, these ideologies blame the victim for terrorism and absolve the terrorists.

Koschade and Howie proudly refer to themselves as members of "an ambitious bunch and we all plan to be significant features on the terrorism studies landscape". Let us therefore take them at their word and look at what they have achieved in this field as they have pursued their climb up the academic ladder. Koschade managed a special mention in the Best Paper by an Emerging Researcher prize, Social Change in the 21st Century conference 2005, a conference he promotes in his article. This conference is a one-day affair that appeals to postgraduates and has nothing particularly to do with terrorism. Koschade presented an essay about Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese cult that was active in the early 1990s.

Howie similarly promotes the Safeguarding Australia Summit in Canberra this week, at which he is presenting a paper on Melbourne as a Terrorist Target and the Human Response as part of a session that goes for all of 20 minutes (tomorrow, for those who don't want to miss it). This conference exemplifies the way in which terrorism research has been absorbed into the academic conference industry. Participation in this industry is open to anyone who pays a very high fee: in this case, $1195. In return, participants get the opportunity to present a micro-paper (15-18 minutes) on the subject of their choice, the big pay-off being that they can then include their presentation at an impressive-sounding conference in their CV as they proceed to climb the academic ladder.

A gang of four critics (Alex Bellamy, et al, HES, September 13) also defends the status quo, within which they are apparently doing very well, exploring such areas as the "aesthetics of terrorism", as if there is something sublime about mangled bodies. Fortunately, the ideological bias of their work has been well exposed by others, so I need waste little time on them here, beyond noting their defence of the equally questionable views of Scott Burchill. Unfortunately, they fail to disclose that one of their number, Richard Devetak, is a co-author with Burchill of a textbook on international relations: hardly the basis of an objective defence.

This group also alleges that I have an obligation to disprove Burchill's claims that "Muslim identity in Australia has been increasingly constructed as a problematic Other". Why? If Burchill (or anyone else) says that Muslim identity is constructed by Santa Claus, am I obliged to disprove such a patently absurd claim? Isn't it up to Burchill to prove such assertions in the first place? The group then writes about "the empirical basis" of these arguments about the Other, as if such a basis exists. In fact there is no empirical evidence whatsoever that this "social construction of the Other" model has any basis in reality. This obsession with the Other is simply an item of faith taken up by post-structuralists and postmodernists and inherited from Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida and Edward Said, none of whom proved that it relates to any real aspect of human knowledge. It certainly plays no role in any reputable psychology or epistemology.

Goldie Osuri and Bobby Banerjee (HES, September 13) are explicit: they want me silenced. They also defend the theoretical template, make some observations about the Enlightenment and suggest I take a sabbatical in Kabul, without showing what any of this has to do with terrorism research in Australia. Brett Bowden's article (HES, September 13) is also simplistic and misleading, and he undermines his own credibility by misquoting the title of one of my articles. Bowden refers to What's Wrong with Terrorism? by Robert Goodin of the Australian National University, where Bowden is based. This book is notable for Goodin's claim that "terror is not only the weapon of organisations like al-Qa'ida; it also benefits democratic politicians. Political figures conducting a campaign of fear as part of their war on terrorism may therefore be committing at least one of the same wrongs as terrorists themselves."

This absurd and dangerously irresponsible argument exemplifies the crisis of terrorism studies in Australia. These critics seek to defend the ideological status quo from which they benefit, even if that ideology equates terrorism with the policies of the Australian Government and other democratic governments, and absolves vicious terrorists who have openly declared their intentions of destroying our society.

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 September, 2006

COLLEGE ADMISSION MYTHS

It's hard to get into college these days: Since the baby boomers' kids came of age, the number of students in classrooms and the level of competition have both surged. Luckily, there are still a few ways to guarantee Ivy League admission--high SAT scores, lots of extracurricular activities, alumni in the family and the name of a prestigious private prep school on your transcript. Right?

Wrong. Admissions offices broke the record this year for the greatest number of valedictorian rejections. Today, approximately 41% of America's student population has a grade point average over 3.5. Yale has approximately 21,000 applicants annually and only 1,300 available slots. Ninety-seven percent of Stanford's new freshman class were ranked in the top 20% of their high schools, and 45% ranked in the top 1% or 2%. Harvard has an abundance of candidates with strong credentials, but it now accepts an estimated all-time-low 9% of them.

So what can desperate applicants do to get into the school of their dreams, and what old tricks just won't work? Applicants continually search for a formula to attract the attention of admissions officers, but the only thing that always works is being an all-around student. "We try to understand the student as a whole person, and also to understand how he or she has performed in the context of whatever academic and community opportunities he or she has encountered," says Jeffrey Brenzel, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions. "We seek academic excellence, evidence of leadership and integrity, and evidence of high personal impact on others."

In the past, desperate college applicants would jazz up their applications with a little volunteer work--working in a soup kitchen or cleaning up trash in public parks. But nowadays, you'd be better off tidying up your own bedroom. Colleges are aware that many high schools enforce community service requirements, and they're especially wary of students who volunteer their time for the sake of transcripts. Says Bruce J. Breimer, head of college guidance at the prestigious Collegiate School: "One admissions officer told me, 'If I read another essay about kids building houses in Costa Rica, I'm going to scream.'"

And you can forget about stacking up lots of pointless after-school activities. Among similarly qualified students, strong extracurriculars can give one candidate the edge. But admissions officers would rather see you excel in one club, rather than just show up at ten. "It's most important to do something with enthusiasm, passion and commitment," says James Miller, director of admissions at Brown University.

Maybe your plan is to wow the admissions office with a fantastic essay? Keep dreaming, Shakespeare. A stellar composition can't salvage an underwhelming application, says Harvard's current director of admissions, Dr. Marlyn McGrath Lewis. "We never base our decisions on essays. We read them carefully, but we understand how easily they can be purchased or written by anyone. They can certainly illuminate a case, but we'd be foolish to base our decisions on them."

Even good grades won't keep those thin rejection letters at bay. Admissions officers understand the difference between an A in an easy class and a B in a hard one. And increasingly, top colleges have staff members who become experts on high schools in specific regions. They know which schools engage in grade inflation, and which tough ones issue few high marks.

So what does ring a school dean's bell? Admissions officers don't have specific pre-made profiles for ideal candidates, and they don't rely on any one factor to determine admission. Instead, they aim to compose a diverse student body with a diverse group of individuals. "We define diversity as interests, experiences, values and background," says Christoph Guttentag, Duke University's head of admissions. A proficient glockenspiel player can be just as desirable as a football MVP--it simply depends on what a college is lacking.

Knowing the tricks can only get you so far. In the end, to be an ideal candidate for a college, a student must work hard, develop a sense of passion, yearn for intellectual and personal stimulation, pursue activities outside of the classrooms in a profound way--and remember to breathe in the process. Says the Collegiate School's Breimer: "Be yourself. Don't try to beat the system."

Source



BRITS TO MAKE GOVERNMENT EVEN MORE DOMINANT IN CHILDCARE

Teachers and campaigners clashed yesterday over government plans for schools to offer "wraparound" childcare that would have pupils spending 50 hours a week in school. All schools will have to open from 8am to 6pm within the next four years in an attempt to give state school pupils the same opportunities as those in the private sector. Beverley Hughes, the Children's Minister, told The Times yesterday that the initiative was so popular that 2,500 schools had signed up ahead of target.

But as the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed concern about the growing pressures on children at school, head teachers, staff, unions and campaigners questioned whether it was good for children to spend so long in school. Dr Rowan Williams said that children faced too much "pressure to achieve" and had to take too many tests. Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education,said: "This will destroy childhood and deprive children of the chance to enjoy other people or things outside the school environment." The longer school day is designed to help working parents and to give children access to activities that they might not otherwise have.

But on the day that the Church launched an inquiry into the state of childhood, education campaigners claimed that sending pupils to school for so long would deprive them of the chance to learn from other situations, and deny them the space to think about and absorb the lessons of the day. "In many ways it is an abuse of children to stick them for that many hours of the day in school. Children need to get out and see the world," Mr Seaton said.

The Children's Society inquiry has been set up because of concerns about the rising levels of depression among children, and Dr Williams said that early research had suggested that pressure in school was a factor. He highlighted "relentless testing" as well as advertisements aimed at children and "family-unfriendly" incentives for working mothers. "Allowing families to work more flexibly ought to work for the good of a family. The trouble is that very often it is presented or understood primarily just in terms of getting women back to the workplace."

The Government's Extended Schools programme is designed to offer children a range of extracurricular activities out of normal school hours, It is intended to enable youngsters to develop new skills and talents and discover activities at which children shine. "Independent schools have always done this," Ms Hughes said. "They have given children opportunities to excel by offering them a wide range of activities. "In the long run it helps build children's confidence and self-esteem. Their academic results improve as a result."

Ms Hughes's remarks coincide with the publication of a new report today, led by Alan Dyson, of the University of Manchester, which has found that extending school hours by offering breakfast clubs and after-school activities can help boost academic performance, attendance and behaviour.

But Richard Thornhill, head teacher of Loughborough Primary School in Brixton, South London, one of the government's flagship Extended Schools, gave warning that it would not be good for children to spend 50 hours a week at school. "We strongly encourage parents not to leave any child full-time five days a week," he said. "It removes the opportunity for parents to get really involved with their own children. We cannot replace parents at school. We cannot replace the love and care and nurture they should get from their parents. Giving a child the freedom to have down time does not work very well at school because we have to have rules and regulations."

David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, agreed that children might suffer from being kept at school for so long. "It's bad for children who are unhappy at school to keep them there," he said. Others welcomed the move. Frank Gulley, headteacher of Temple Sutton Primary School in Southend-on-Sea, which provides ten hours of services each day for children aged as young as six weeks, said: "It would be great if all children went home and had a smashing experience and sat down for a meal with their parents, but they don't. Many of them just go to a childminder or are sat down in from of the television. "If we were providing all lessons and no play it would be bad for them. But we provide many opportunities for play, do sport or learn an instrument."

Source



Princeton drops early admissions

They want less sophisticated applicants???

Princeton University on Monday became the second elite university to drop its early admissions program, following Harvard in a move the Ivy League schools say will benefit disadvantaged students and reduce anxiety. Harvard`s announcement last week that it would evaluate all applicants in a single pool prompted speculation about whether other universities would follow suit - a change that could transform the admissions process for high-achieving students.

Such programs - particularly early decision - have been criticized for increasing the anxiety of the application process and informally discriminating against less sophisticated applicants.

Princeton was considered the most likely of the prominent private universities to follow Harvard. Yale, MIT, Dartmouth and the University of Pennsylvania, among others, have all indicated they would likely keep their current systems - at least for now.

Princeton admitted about half of this year`s entering freshman class of 1,230 through early decision. At most universities with early decision, a higher proportion of applicants are admitted in the early round, but the applicant pool itself is also stronger. The decision was discussed by Princeton`s board over the weekend, the university said, and announced to faculty at a meeting late Monday.

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 September, 2006

Math wars end in sight?

It’s a pleasure to welcome the prospect of not just a ceasefire but a peace treaty in some of the major pedagogical hostilities in our time: the math wars. A report from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics could satisfy both the faction that insists on competence in basic arithmetical operations and the faction that insists that understanding is essential and is gained by making the students ‘‘discover’’ important concepts.

The council is not making much of the fact that one of its reports in 1989 stressing the importance of discovery was widely — and perhaps badly — adopted, leading many parents to complain that weeks of graph-paper manipulation ending in the Pythagorean Theorem was ridiculous when their high school kids couldn’t calculate a simple tip in a restaurant or calculate a discount at a hardware store checkout.

The new report, Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics, is a major retreat.It concludes that mastery of basic concepts and operations is best achieved through focusing on those basics.(Funny how long that took to sink in.)

A common and true criticism of analysts who compare American teaching to that of nations whose students always lead the international competitions — nations such as Singapore, Japan and South Korea — is that mathematics in American schools is ‘‘a mile wide and an inch deep.’’ Usually dozens of topics, varying greatly from state to state, are touched on in each grade, leading to much forgetting over the summer and not much mastery of anything.

The council now has chosen three ‘‘focal points’’ for each grade, and shows teachers how each set builds on those that came before and prepares for those to come.For example, in sixth grade students would learn how to multiply and divide fractions and decimals, how ratios and rates are connected to multiplication and division, and what an equation is and how to write a simple one.

Nothing is said about teaching methods, which is probably wise.After all, there are dozens of ways to illustrate ratios.If teachers take the new insights to heart, their students could very well understand math better and yet be more skilled in arithmetic, too.Who knows, maybe fewer remedial classes would be needed in college — and waiters and waitresses might get adequate tips.

Source



SCHOOL REFORM ON THE MOVE AT LAST?

A fine line exists between stability and stagnation. In education policy, we have been content to sail well past that line. For too long our answer to education challenges has been "just spend more money." In 1960, average public school spending per pupil was $375 (around $2300 in inflation adjusted dollars). Today, Arizona spends over $8,000. Spending per pupil has more than tripled since the first baby-boomers attended schools. How many baby-boomers think today's schools are three times better?

Author Andrew Coulson notes that the last great innovation to transform American classroom instruction was the invention of the chalkboard in 1801. Consider this in comparison to the computer industry. Today, you'd be hard pressed to find a PC that is not more powerful and less expensive than the model its manufacturer offered just two years ago. But the school system continues to plod along, always spending more but often producing less.

Fortunately, this status-quo will not endure. Nationwide, nearly a fourth of K-12 students won't attend their neighborhood public schools this fall, choosing instead from an array of public and private options, including magnet, charter, private and home schooling. But for many, especially for low-income children, these options remain far too scarce. The momentum to innovate must accelerate.

In the past, a lack of data enabled stagnation. Armchair observations of real-estate agents were often the most sophisticated opinions regarding the quality of local schools. Today, online services like www.greatschools.net provide a mountain of comparative testing and parental review data in a few short clicks. New technologies and practices, such as self-paced computer-based instruction and data-based merit pay for instructors, hold enormous promise which has only begun to be explored. That said, disadvantaged children in KIPP Academy schools, among others, have achieved phenomenal academic results not with new technologies, but rather with old-fashioned "time on task" hard work and extended school days.

In short, we now have the primordial soup of a market for schools. The biggest winners will be those suffering most under the status-quo. A market system will embrace and replicate reforms which produce results, and discard those that fail. The current top-down, political system cannot perform this function. Where bureaucrats and politicians have failed, a market of parents pursuing the best interests of their children will succeed.

We cannot feel satisfied with a system that watches helplessly as a third of students drop out before graduation each year. We can do much better. ... We have nothing to lose and everything to gain from the coming education renaissance.

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 September, 2006

The right question about school choice

Dishonest polling again

Phi Delta Kappa, a national public school advocacy organization, recently released its annual education poll, claiming once again that American support for school vouchers is low and declining -- from 38 percent last year to 36 percent this year. These results are highly misleading, telling you more about the people asking than answering the question. And the Indiana University Center for Evaluation and Education Policy might be following in PDK's footsteps. In 2003, CEEP asked Indiana residents who had heard of school vouchers whether they supported the idea; 57 percent favored vouchers, with only 24 percent opposed. But CEEP is part of IU's Department of Education, whose main revenue stream is training future public school teachers, so it has a vested interest in finding school choice unpopular. Private school teachers in Indiana need no education degrees, so vouchers could make college education departments obsolete.

After that first year of positive findings, CEEP took a year off -- asking Hoosiers how much they knew about vouchers, but not about their attitudes toward them. The next time it asked about attitudes toward vouchers, it used a different wording. In 2005, CEEP asked only about a targeted voucher program for students in failing schools. Such programs tend to enjoy less public support than universally available ones; sure enough, only 48 percent of respondents favored them with 44 percent opposed.

Support for school choice varies dramatically based on how survey questions are phrased. Between 1970 and 1991, Phi Delta Kappan magazine periodically asked Americans the following: "In some nations, the government allots a certain amount of money for each child for his or her education. The parents can then send the child to any public, parochial or private school they choose. This is called the "voucher system." Would you like to see such an idea adopted in this country?"

The public reacted cautiously at first, but eventually warmed up to the idea. From 1981 on, every time Phi Delta Kappan asked the question, those in favor outnumbered those opposed. By 1991, support had reached 50 percent, and opposition had fallen to 39 percent. That was the last time they asked the question.

But it wasn't the last time the question was asked. The following year, the Gallup polling organization asked it again, and the public's reaction was more positive than ever: Seventy percent of respondents said they supported school vouchers and only 27 percent opposed them. PDK subsequently revised its question as follows: "Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose a private school to attend at public expense?" This new wording, in use since 1993, emphasizes that the program would be financed "at public expense" without drawing respondents' attention to two highly relevant facts: that vouchers are economical and that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld their constitutionality.

A study published in January by the Cato Institute and the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation found that the Washington, D.C., school voucher program saves taxpayers money and would continue to do so if it were expanded to include all children in the District. And when Cleveland's voucher program went before the Supreme Court in 2002, the majority ruled that it permitted "genuine choice among options public and private, secular and religious," and so did not run afoul of the First Amendment.

Not surprisingly, PDK's revised wording elicits considerably lower support than its original question. On this year's survey, 36 percent favored the idea, while 60 percent opposed it. To demonstrate the bias of Phi Delta Kappan's current phrasing, the Friedman Foundation commissioned its own poll in August 2005, asking: "Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parents to choose any school, public or private, to attend using public funds?" A solid 60 percent of Americans surveyed were in favor of such a program, while only 33 percent opposed it. A 2004 Gallup poll found that of those who knew about school vouchers, nearly one-and-a-half times as many supported them as opposed them, but 62 percent of respondents didn't know enough to say.

Phi Delta Kappan and CEEP could do their part to remedy that knowledge gap by using PDK's original question wording when asking about vouchers. In doing so, they would ensure that at least their own survey respondents were informed of established school choice programs. We shouldn't hold our breath. Phi Delta Kappa is a self-described advocacy organization for the public school monopoly, and the Center for Evaluation and Education policy has a vested interest in the status quo. It's unlikely either group would want to remind people that in other places, families enjoy real educational choices, and schools have to compete for the privilege of serving them.

Source



The school choice movement's greatest failure

Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times jumped on the July 15 release of a new study by the National Center for Education Statistics. The WSJ's headline was particularly dramatic: "Long-Delayed Education Study Casts Doubt on Value of Vouchers."

No, it doesn't. And it is a failure on my part, as well as a failure of the school choice movement as a whole, that the media don't understand why. Taking the study entirely at face value, what it says is this: Private school students consistently score better in math and reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) than public school students, but their advantage essentially goes away if you apply a particular set of controls for the differing student characteristics between the two sectors (things such as wealth, race, etc.).

Okay, you say, but if private schools don't significantly outscore public schools, what's the point of school voucher programs or other reforms that would give all parents access to the public or private school of their choice? Why, in other words, is the Journal's headline wrong?

It is wrong because the point of voucher programs is to create a competitive education industry, and the existing population of U.S. private schools does not constitute such an industry. A vigorous, free market in education requires that all families have easy access to the schools of their choice (whether public or private); that schools are not burdened with extensive regulations on what they can teach, whom they can hire, what they can charge, etc.; that consumers directly pay at least some of the cost of the service; that private schools not be discriminated against financially by the state in the distribution of education funding; and that at least a substantial minority of private schools be operated for profit.

This set of conditions does not exist in any state in the nation. Instead, American education is dominated by a 90 percent government monopoly that is funded entirely through taxation. The private sector occupies the remaining 10 percent niche, is almost exclusively operated on a nonprofit basis, and is forced to charge thousands of dollars in tuition in the face of the "free" monopoly schools that spend an average of $10,000 per pupil per year. This is not a market, and no study was necessary to point this out.

Competitive markets are characterized by innovation, inexorable improvements in cost effectiveness and the quality of goods and services, and the rapid growth of the most successful providers. None of this has occurred in the U.S. private education sector, precisely because that sector does not constitute a competitive market.

The last great innovation to transform classroom instruction occurred during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson (the invention of the chalkboard, around 1801). Since that time, the pace of innovation has been so slow that a student from the mid 1800s would immediately recognize a modern classroom setting. The most sought-after private schools enroll only about a thousand more students today than they did a century ago.

This degree of stagnation is unheard of outside of the education sector, because it is only there (at least in liberal democracies) that market activity has been so thoroughly extinguished by government monopoly provision. Hence, the NCES study of our current small, non-market niche of private schools does not allow any generalization to the sort of outcomes to be expected from a truly free market in education--and the creation of such a market is the primary justification for voucher and other school choice policies. That justification extends well beyond academic and cost-effectiveness benefits.

A free market in education allows all families to obtain the sort of education they want for their own children without having to foist their preferences on their neighbors. That, in turn, eliminates the endless cultural conflict that accompanies one-size-fits-all, state-run systems (think school prayer, book selection and censorship, the teaching of human origins, etc.). If I were better at my job, and if the school choice movement as a whole had a more effective media machine, this fact would be widely understood, and we wouldn't see fallacious headlines like the one cited above.

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

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



17 September, 2006

Why students don't value school

This is my first week of teaching as a full-time faculty member and not as an adjunct or TA. While most of the new experiences have been positive, I'm seeing things in a new light. The most intriguing facet of my new "education" experience is confirmation that economists do indeed think and act differently than "normal" folk. Being fresh out of grad school, I often times feel as though I have a unique perspective; able to think like a student and teacher all at the same time. Unfortunately, my experience with current undergrads is proving me wrong.

During my first-day soapbox session, I ranted on and on about the virtues of things such as class participation, studying, group work, taking advantage of extra help, etc. While I am an eternal optimist, I know deep down this message is mostly ignored. However, I continued on with my rant to include the phrase, "Delivering what you've paid for." Now I realize that my salary is not specifically tied to class attendance and actual dollars paid; but indirectly, student's tuition is in fact my main source of income.

My realization came to me at approximately 1:38 PM. At this point in the class, I had spent the previous 38 minutes doing introductions, and explaining every last detail of the syllabus. At this point, approximately 50% of the class started to pack up their material in preparation for an early departure. While it was disappointing, it did provide me my first non soap-box rant opportunity to show students how seriously I considered the value of academic rigor. The first thing I did was shoot the meanest, dirtiest look I could to the offending students. Apparently the "teacher look" is a skill I have yet to master. So I did the next logical thing, I threw my arms in the air yelling, "whoaaaaaaaa." I don't know if it was the volume, tone, or crazy arms, but this seemed to work. They sat back down; I ranted, and then finished my lecture.

Around midnight the realization of the perverse nature of classroom utility hit me: students would be happier if I didn't show up. It wasn't just my class, it's all classes. Nearly all students welcome the absence of their teachers, and subsequent cancellation of class. This is logical in some settings — for instance the day of a hard exam — but for the most part seems quite irrational. Irrational by my values, of course! To that point, I just have to consider the fact that students are not well-informed enough to be disappointed about the cancellation of class. To be clear, this theory does break down. I'm simply referring to sporadic unexpected class dismissals, not constant ones.

I have several explanations for this theory. The first is that college education is not viewed as a privilege; it is often times taken for granted. As with high school, students are no longer worried about graduating. Graduating after four years is simply given, and classes along the way are a necessary evil interfering with an awesome four-year party. Along those same lines is the reasoning for my second explanation: unexpected fun. When students realize they have a free hour, they're overwhelmed with the many opportunities for fun that previously did not exist. This amazing amount of "feel-goodedness," almost always outweighs the cost of attending class.

I attribute a large part of this phenomenon to the climate of the region. In the temperate state of Iowa, kids grow up with the anticipation of the two best words to be uttered upon waking up each winter morning: snow day. The difference is obvious. The result of a snow day is obvious fun: playing in the snow! Unfortunately, snow is only around part of the year, and most 18-22 year olds have made their quota of snowpersons. Still, this feeling of possible unexpected fun lingers, even if students fill the time honing their video game skills.

This leads me to my final explanation: the rising price of college. Because the price of attending a four-year institution has increased so much faster than inflation, nearly all students are unable to afford school on their own. In fact, nearly all students rely on financial aid in the form of scholarships and loans to finance their education. In the case of loans, the actual payment for education is timed accounting style. That is, persons pay for school while they're reaping the benefits of higher education. This total disregard for actual cost skews the current cost-benefit analysis within the minds of students.

Originally, my overall goal for this semester was to foster economic thought, and less negative feelings towards the dismal science. Now I can add one more specific goal for the semester: making students demand the education they've paid for.

Source



Modern technology gives a different education

I nodded gravely at the radio on Tuesday when Michael Morpurgo, the sainted author of children's books,spoke passionately about children needing time to dream. But I was baffled by Baroness Greenfield burbling about "icons replacing ideas". She kept calling for "conceptual frameworks" to offset the evils of technology.

We cannot turn the clock back to the days when the world stopped to Listen With Mother at 1.45. We cannot wish technology back into its Xbox. The internet has brought alive everything from nature to molecules to engineering. It has enabled pupils in some classrooms to learn at their own pace, not feeling they are a drag on the rest or waiting for everyone else to catch up. That is a liberation.

But are other bits of technology - TV shows, videos, computer games - bad for the brain? Michael Shayer, Professor of Applied Psychology at King's College London, claims that 11 and 12-year-olds are now two to three years behind where they were 15 years go in terms of cognitive and conceptual development. In his volume and heaviness test, children are asked to hold a brass block and a Plasticine block of identical size, one in each hand. In 1976, 57 per cent of boys and 27 per cent of girls realised that the Plasticine block would displace the same amount of water, if immersed, as the brass block.

Thirty years later only 17 per cent of either sex get it right. That is a staggering change. But Professor Shayer is reluctant to speculate on the causes. He thinks a decline in hands-on play, more TV and less outside play space may be factors. But he is not sure.

If the screen is a problem, why can't adults just switch it off? You don't need a "conceptual framework" to find the off button. What comes through every discussion on this subject is the extraordinary weakness of parents, who simply can't face the hassle of saying no. And when they try, they face increasingly strong resistance. For the real, hidden danger of many TV channels and video games is that they are designed to feed an anti-authority culture.

Sue Palmer's book Toxic Childhood quotes the psychologist Mark Crispin-Miller: "It's part of the official advertising world view that your parents are creeps, teachers are weirdos and idiots, authority figures laughable and nobody can really understand children except the corporate sponsor." This may sound overblown, unless you've watched Nickelodeon. The Rugrats are pulling the rug from under parents who weren't too sure of their footing anyway. Guess which TV character a recent BBC poll of 5,000 parents found was the "role model" who most influenced their children? Gulp. Bart Simpson.

On CBeebies, the BBC's channel for children, I recently watched two dim, nasty elves mocking a wise old owl who was trying to teach them. It was Elves 1 Owl 0, every time. I switched it off. I don't intend to make my particular perch any more precarious.

Few of us want to admit that we use TV as an anaesthetic, so we gratefully guzzle the line that it is educational. Yet most programming is surely far too hyperactive, rushing from one segment to the next, to be anything of the kind. Blue's Clues, the American series, is the only one I have found that is designed to help children to concentrate rather than lure them with perpetual distraction. Each episode is supposed to be watched on five consecutive days before moving on to the next - so by the end of the week children know the songs and stories and are able to recap with the presenter what they have learnt. Unusually for such series, it has no subplot for parents. Children adore it. Parents are bored stiff. But perhaps that is the point.

I have always believed that boredom is a great stimulator. Not fearful boredom, not the waiting in an empty house for the key to turn in the lock, but the kind of boredom that inspires children to read books, build boats in cupboards, and sail to a make-believe island. Boredom is cheap to create: just switch off the gadgets and limit the plastic toys. Imaginations soar. But parents must be prepared to be bored themselves, to be told what role to play, not to control the game, to endure repetition after repetition after repetition. And many of us, obsessed with using time "productively", are not.

Dreaming is probably easiest when you feel secure. Yet just as they are now assailed by a host of characters on screen, many children also face a constantly shifting cast of characters in real life. I am not talking just about family breakdown. The turnover of staff in schools, at playgroups and crŠches is momentous. Even top-class nannies often move on after a few years. One told me of a four-year-old who said every Monday morning: "See you on Friday, Mummy." We working parents are always nipping in, nipping out. How does that feel from the perspective of the one who stays put?

Children are adaptable. I would imagine that most feel far less threatened by changes in technology than adults. But more so by changes in people they have become attached to. There is no point in getting hysterical about the pace of change. We parents cannot stop it. But we can do more to make children's lives more stable and predictable.

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 September, 2006

UK: Head teachers predict suits on obesity targets

Headteachers yesterday warned that litigious parents could soon sue schools for failing to prevent their children from drinking, smoking or taking drugs. They fear that government plans to set targets for improving young people's health and welfare in England could unleash attacks on their ability to control wider health and social trends.

Families are already taking legal action over schools' alleged failure to tackle bullying and heads say they could soon be held responsible for obesity, pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, drug taking and drinking.

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "We are not clear at all yet who is going to be held to account. You cannot be set targets for things you cannot control: alcohol consumption, for example, among young people." The government is expected to propose a wide range of targets and indicators for local authority children's services. Mr Dunford said: "We really think it is going to be very dangerous and difficult if schools are held to account for all these things."

Some measures and targets which ministers are thought likely to introduce will have a direct educational impact, but others, say heads, could divert attention from the core job of teaching and learning. They argue that litigation could follow if schools became too involved in other areas. The Department for Education and Skills said schools had a role to play in the new programme "but we don't expect them to do it alone".

Source



Teenage boys failing in England

Fewer 14-year-olds reached the expected standard for their age in English this year, national test results revealed yesterday.

Whereas results for maths and science improved, in English the proportion reaching Level 5 in their Key Stage 3 tests dropped by 2 percentage points to 72 per cent and boys in particular were failing to make the grade in the 3Rs. In reading, 59 per cent of 14-year-old boys reached the standards expected in the tests known as Sats, compared with 74 per cent of girls.

In writing, 83 per cent of girls reached Level 5, whereas only 69 per cent of boys matched them.

In maths, 77 per cent of girls achieved the expected level, one percentage point ahead of boys. Overall, maths results rose by three percentage points from 2005 and in science, 72 per cent of pupils reached the expected level for their age - a rise of two percentage points on last year. The tests were taken by 600,000 pupils in England.

Government officials said they hoped that freeing up the curriculum, investing œ1 billion in personalised learning and reintroducing synthetic phonics would reverse the trend. However, the Government highlighted the successes of pupils attending privately run academies.

Passes for teenagers rose 8.8 percentage points in English, more than 10.6 percentage points in maths and 12.9 percentage points in science.

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said: "The results indicate that academies ... are improving at about three times the national rate in maths and about six times the national rate in science. They are also seeing a big improvement in English."

Nick Gibb, the Tory schools spokesman, said that it was unacceptable that one in three children at 14 are not reaching their expected reading level. Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman, said it was unacceptable that so many boys had such poor language skills.

Source



Religion back on school syllabus in Australia

Religion will return to Australia's state school classrooms, with students expected to study beliefs from the Aboriginal Dreamtime to the Koran. A high-powered team of academics working on a chronology of Australian history are united on threading a religious narrative through history teaching, but as an issue rather than a matter of faith.

Federal Education MInister Julie Bishop has now thrown her support behind the move, saying history cannot be properly taught without examining religion's influence. The Catholic-Protestant divide which defined Australian pre-war society looks set to be one area of inquiry, with the bitter conscription referendum of 1916-17 possibly appearing on the chronology.

Aboriginal spiritual beliefs and their impact on mainstream society (as seen in the Olympics opening ceremony) are also believed to be under consideration. Examinations of the Muslim and Jewish religions, the Christian Bible and the Koran may form part of the curriculum. "Religion has played a key role in many aspects of society including the legal system, many charitable organisations, the education sector, government and much more," Ms Bishop said last night. "It would not be possible to explain fully the development of Australian society without including religion in the history curriculum."

Professor Tom Stannage, who attended last month's Canberra History Summit said delegates were united in their desire for students to examine religion's role in shaping society. But educators also recognised a thirst among young Australians for religious education expressed in an historical rather than spiritual context. "The difficult question is the way we go about it, introducing it into the syllabus. "I think as Julie Bishop herself said, the commonsense middle ground can prevail in these matters."

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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15 September, 2006

HARVARD TO BECOME LESS "ELITIST" -- MAYBE

Harvard University is to drop a controversial fast-track admission system for elite students in an attempt to open up America's top colleges to more poor and minority students. In the competition to attract top talent, Harvard's "early admissions" policy enables it to lock in the best students four months before other candidates are allowed to apply - a system that largely benefits well-heeled applicants from good schools. Similar policies have been adopted by most of America's top colleges, but they have been increasingly criticised as excluding poor and minority students.

"Early admission programmes tend to advantage the advantaged," Derek Bok, Harvard's interim president, said. "Students from more sophisticated backgrounds and affluent high schools often apply early to increase their chances of admission, while minority students and students from rural areas, other countries and high schools with fewer resources miss out. "Students needing financial aid are disadvantaged by binding early-decision programmes that prevent them from comparing aid packages."

A recent Century Foundation study estimated that only 3 per cent of new entrants at the nation's 146 most selective colleges came from the bottom socio-economic quarter, compared with 74 per cent from the top quarter. Harvard, which accepts more than a third of its students through "early admissions", will now move to a single application deadline of January 1, with successful applicants being notified by April 1.

The change came a week after publication of a new book, The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges-and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, by Daniel Golden. The book argues that the "preference of privilege" favouring rich whites overshadows the number of minorities benefiting from affirmative action. It relates how top institutions give preference to "legacy" applicants, whose families attended the same college, and "development" cases, whose families have no previous link with the university but are seen as likely to become future donors. The book claims that the sons of Al Gore, the former Vice-President, Michael Ovitz, the former Hollywood power-broker, and Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, leapt ahead of more deserving applicants at Harvard, Brown and Princeton.

Harvard's decision to end early admissions is a risky gambit, because it could lose top students to rival institutions, but experts suggested that Harvard was the university most able to make the switch because its prestige virtually guarantees it will continue to attract the best applicants.

Source



CALIFORNIA'S "LEMON" TEACHER PROBLEM

Another evil of unionism

Imagine a company president being ordered by the board of directors to hire any misfit who knocks on the door. It's a crazy scenario -- but it's exactly the way many California school districts operate when an unsuccessful teacher is quietly edged out of a school. As long as the teacher agrees to leave voluntarily, union rules require the principal of any other school in the district with an opening to hire that teacher.

The practice, common in large and mid-size urban districts, is so reviled by principals that they've given it a derogatory name. "It's called the Dance of the Lemons," said state Sen. Jack Scott, a Pasadena Democrat who wrote a bill to ban the practice in low-scoring schools and to limit it in others. Scott, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, got the Democrat-controlled Legislature to pass his bill despite opposition from two traditional party allies: the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers. The bill was approved 33-1 by the Senate in May and 59-12 by the Assembly last month. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill. If the governor signs it as expected, California will become the first state in the nation to rein in the practice.

"There are a lot of states watching what's happening in California, and I think it'll have significant ramifications nationwide," said Michelle Rhee, chief executive officer of the New Teacher Project, a national nonprofit group that worked on the Scott bill.

Barbara Kerr, president of the California Teachers Association, called the bill "insulting to teachers," because it implies that every teacher who voluntarily leaves a school is a poor one. Some teachers leave a school for reasons unrelated to performance, such as a personality clash with a principal. Disapproval from the teachers unions often can kill a bill. But their opposition was counterbalanced this time by a constituency that proved just as persuasive: advocates for poor and minority students, who most often attend the schools where the lemons land. "Right now, poor kids and kids of color don't have their fair share of the state's experienced, credentialed teachers," said Russlynn Ali, executive director of the Oakland advocacy group Education Trust-West. "By giving a principal in a high-poverty, high-minority school some power to recruit those teachers, we can finally make headway on closing that teacher-quality gap."

Principals also love the idea. "I believe in the teachers union, but some things protect ineffective employees. We've got to put children first," said Principal Patricia Gray of Balboa High in San Francisco. "It's not just about good and bad teachers," Gray said. "Sometimes there's chemistry and a fit -- personalities that work better together. I've got a wonderful staff. I'd like to have some choice in who comes and who's going to be a good fit for the school."

Under the Scott bill, SB1655, existing labor contracts with teachers would be honored, but future agreements would largely disallow the forced hiring. The new law would no longer require principals in low-scoring schools to hire unwanted teachers. Like Balboa, these schools rank 1, 2, or 3 on the state's 10-point Academic Performance Index. Principals in higher-scoring schools would have a window of time each year to hire whom they please -- beginning on April 15 and running through the summer. Under current law, principals don't have that window. They are forced to give unwanted teachers hiring priority throughout the summer, forcing more desirable candidates to look for jobs elsewhere, usually in suburbia.

The so-called Dance of the Lemons is not just a California problem -- it goes on across the country. "It is the students who lose the most," according to a recent study by the New Teacher Project, which found that the forced hiring results in the placement of "hundreds, and sometimes even thousands, of teachers in urban classrooms each year with little regard for the appropriateness of the match, the quality of the teacher, or the overall impact on schools." The New Teacher Project looked at the impact of forced hires in five urban districts across the country. It found:

-- City schools have large numbers of unwanted teachers;

-- Teachers who should be fired are instead passed from school to school;

-- Good teachers are unable to wait all summer for the chance to be considered, so they apply elsewhere, usually by June.

The practice of forced hiring has been a part of labor contracts since the early 1960s, beginning with districts on the East Coast and growing in popularity over the years, according to the New Teacher Project. In San Francisco, Balboa High was one of those schools that could never get ahead. In 1999, Gray was hired as principal and was asked to turn the school around. But it was slow going. Gray wanted to transform the school's chaotic atmosphere by setting clear expectations for students and teachers and aligning the curriculum with the state's expectations for high school students. Though it sounded simple, Gray said it took the cooperation and enthusiasm of every staff member.

Under Gray's new system, all Balboa students could look at the blackboard and know immediately what they were expected to do because every teacher wrote a "Do Now" list for every class. Teachers also wrote the "Aim for the Day," the "Lesson Steps" and the homework assignment on the board for all to see. "You find that in every room," Gray said. The idea was to lessen confusion and help students improve.

One day, a new teacher started at Balboa who had been "consolidated" -- teacher talk for squeezed out -- from another high school. Gray had no choice but to hire her. "I was forced to take a consolidated teacher on more than one occasion," Gray recalled. When this particular teacher arrived at Balboa, Gray said, she refused to follow the school-improvement plan that every other teacher had agreed to do and that students had come to rely on. "She felt it stifled her creativity," Gray said.

Since then, Gray and a few other San Francisco principals trying to turn around low-scoring schools have received a district waiver from forced hiring. "It did make a difference," Gray said. "If you've got a teacher who has had problems in another school because she was ineffective, then of course the children are not getting the instruction they need. So the children absolutely benefited."

Source



ANOTHER BRITISH BACKDOWN

Education Secretary Alan Johnson has signalled an embarrassing U-turn over the downgrading of language learning in secondary schools. He admitted the Government was reconsidering its decision to allow teenagers to opt out of studying foreign languages from the age of 14. The revelation follows a dramatic decline in the numbers choosing to take French and German after ministers made languages optional at GCSE two years ago. Entrants for GCSE French have slumped 26 per cent from 318,095 in 2004 while German has also plummeted 26 per cent, with entries falling below the 100,000 mark this summer.

Youngsters have instead flocked to subjects considered in some quarters to be less academically rigorous such as media studies and physical education. Head teachers' leaders said modern foreign languages were now in "freefall" and warned that British teenagers would be disadvantaged on the job market. The National Union of Teachers described the declining popularity of languages as a "complete disaster".

Mr Johnson has already expressed "disappointment" at the decline in exam entries for languages, although he claimed it was not "wholly unexpected". But yesterday, in an unscripted question-and-answer session after a keynote speech to the Social Market Foundation, he admitted the decision to allow 14-year-olds to drop languages was under review. Mr Johnson said: "We are wondering whether we should have done that now. We are having another rethink about that." He went on to point out that the Government has placed on obligation on primary schools to allow all children aged seven and above to learn a language by 2010. However he admitted the initiative will not translate into increased GCSE entries for many years to come.

Late year ministers took desperate damage limitation measures following an outcry over the decision to make languages non-compulsory for 14-year-olds. They said that schools from this term would be expected to ensure at least half of pupils study a language until they are 16. But now Mr Johnson is signalling a full-scale reversal of the decision to downgrade language study, and has paved the way for the study of at least one foreign language to be compulsory up to GCSEs. It is a remarkable turnaround, for as recently as last month he said he believed 14-year-olds should not be "forced" to learn languages.

Tory schools spokesman Nick Gibb said: "It was a mistake to end the compulsion to study a modern foreign language to the age of 16 in the state sector. "In this globalised world, the ability to communicate with emerging economies such as China and India will be increasingly important, which is why the ability to learn a modern foreign language is a vitally important skill that we need to be teaching in our schools."

In a wide-ranging speech on the theme of tackling poverty, Mr Johnson also admitted a flagship 1 billion pound scheme to raise standards in inner-city schools was failing to help many of the neediest pupils. He said Department for Education research suggested nearly half of youngsters on free school meals due to low family income were "missed out" of the Excellence in Cities scheme. The poorest children also continued to "progress more slowly."

He also attacked independent schools which "breed elitism" and repeated calls for them to share facilities and teaching expertise with state schools and help set up new trust schools and academies. In an echo of Chancellor Gordon Brown's controversial attack six years ago on the "old school tie", he added: "As we know, the 'old boys network' still infiltrates some of Britain's oldest institutions." [Including the Labour government]

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

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



14 September, 2006

HIGH SCHOOL IS THE BIG FILTER IN THE USA

Dropping out of high school has its costs around the globe, but nowhere steeper than in the United States. Adults who don't finish high school in the U.S. earn 65 percent of what people who have high school degrees make, according to a new report comparing industrialized nations. No other country had such a severe income gap. Adults without a high school diploma typically make about 80 percent of the salaries earned by high school graduates in nations across Asia, Europe and elsewhere. Countries such as Finland, Belgium, Germany and Sweden have the smallest gaps in earnings between dropouts and graduates.

The figures come from "Education at a Glance," an annual study by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The report, released Tuesday, aims to help leaders see how their nations stack up. The findings underscore the cost of a persistent dropout problem in the United States. It is rising as a national concern as politicians see the risks for the economy and for millions of kids. Adults in their 20's and 30's have slightly lower high school completion rates than older adults. "We, perhaps as parents, are doing better than our kids. And I have real worries about that," said Betsy Brand, director of the nonprofit American Youth Policy Forum.

The new report says 44 percent of adults without high school degrees in the United States have low incomes - that is, they make half of the country's median income or less. Only Denmark had a higher proportion of dropouts with low incomes. Also, the United States is below the international average when it comes to its employment rate among adults age 25 to 64 who have no high school degree. Even U.S. adult education and job training do little to close gaps, because too few dropouts take part, said Barbara Ischinger, director of education for the OECD. "Those with poor initial qualifications remain disadvantaged throughout their life, because they have fewer opportunities to catch up later on," she said.

About one-third of students in the United States don't finish high school on time - or at all. Estimates on that dropout rate vary, though, and state data are often shaky. Policymakers know how to keep kids in school, Brand said. It takes specialized teaching, relationships with caring adults and coursework that's relevant to career plans. What's missing, she said, is a sustained national effort and more "political will."

The importance of a high school degree on income varies across nations. It depends on the demands for skills, the supply of workers, minimum wage laws and the strength of unions. The disparity is more pronounced in the United States, Ischinger said, partly because the U.S. labor market is more flexible. Other nations protect people with weak education qualifications through regulations or tax systems that favor the low skilled, she said.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, the United States more richly rewards those who go to college. An adult with a university degree in the U.S. earns, on average, 72 percent more than someone with a high school degree. That's a much bigger difference than in most countries.

The study compares the United States to 29 other nations that belong to the economic organization, although not every country reported data on every indicator. In perspective, the U.S. economy remains strong and competitive, the report says. The country has a high proportion of educated adults and greater gender equality than other nations. But a troubling theme of the last couple years continues: The United States is losing ground internationally because other countries are making faster and bigger gains. The high school and college graduation rates of recent U.S. students are now below the international average. For example, among adults age 25 to 34, the U.S. ranks 11th among nations in the share of its population that has finished high school. It used to be first.

The United States remains, by far, the most popular place for international students to study. But there, too, the U.S. is losing its market share of students studying abroad. When it comes to money, the nation remains a big spender. From elementary school through college, the United States spends an average of $12,023 per student. That's higher than in all countries in the comparison except for Switzerland.

Source



ANOTHER RETREAT FROM TOTALLY MEANINGLESS EDUCATION IN CALIFORNIA

The governing board for the California community college system on Monday voted unanimously to raise requirements for a two-year associate's degree, starting in the 2009 fall semester. "We're not trying to train for dead-end, low-wage jobs," said Ian Walton, a math teacher at Mission College in Santa Clara and president of the Academic Senate.

Community college professors have pushed for the tougher standards since 1999. The requirements replace an old graduation standard that critics said was inappropriate and embarrassing for a higher education system that educates 2.5 million students in California. Old requirements for an associate's degree were elementary algebra and an English course one level below freshman composition -- which is what it takes to get a high school diploma. Those classes also weren't rigorous enough to transfer the credits to the state's public universities, California State University and University of California. (The new English standard is, but the new math standard still falls short.)

Board president George Caplan, an attorney from Los Angeles, said the move reflects the national rise in education standards. "It's necessary. It's really necessary, otherwise our work force will be terribly unprepared," Caplan said. Advocates say it puts in place an added degree of difficulty and expertise in community college education. They likened it to learning piano with simple chords and scales using only the white keys, then progressing to a more intermediate level of playing simple tunes.

There was some resistance to the proposal, mostly from counselors, English-language teachers and vocational instructors. Community college students bound for a four-year degree already surpass the associate's degree requirements, so the new requirements could create more obstacles to students already at risk, opponents said. Teresa Aldredge, a counselor at Cosumnes River College, said raising the bar for students who can't even meet the old standards could further discourage them from reaching their educational goals.

However, potential opponents on the board were swayed by delaying the implementation until 2009, giving colleges time to create a safety net for those students, with expanded tutoring, counseling and other intervention services. "I don't want to put up another gate, another barrier for students," said board member Margaret Quinones, dean of counseling at Coastline College in Orange County. She called the new graduation requirements an opportunity to shine a "floodlight" on colleges that need to do a better job preparing students.

Others disagreed. "The system needs to be fixed before they try to do this," said Chris Denney, a student at Merced College. But Francisco Fabian, who studies at San Diego City College, told the board he flunked intermediate algebra twice and was determined to pass it this semester. "It's one of the courses I know I need," he said. "It's one of those foundation courses you need for success."

Source



LATIN REVIVAL

As a very amateur Latinist, I am delighted to hear of this. It should mean that more kids learn how to construct a clear sentence in their own language

Latin appears to be enjoying a quiet revival in Britain's secondary schools. Teachers and classicists across England have noted a dramatic rise in the numbers of children starting secondary school who are expressing an interest in the subject. It is 40 years since it was dropped as a compulsory subject at school, but specialists are hoping that the resurgent enthusiasm will result in more children studying Latin at GCSE and A level, in spite of it being seen as a difficult subject.

In 1988, the first full year of GCSE examinations and the start of the national curriculum, more than 16,000 pupils took GCSE Latin, of whom about half were from state schools. Since then the numbers have fallen, to just 9,743 last year. However, as Latin teachers retired and fewer schools offered the language, the Cambridge School Classics Project (CSCP) embarked on a scheme to teach Latin online. Its package, designed for schools without Latin teachers, consisted of books, a CD-Rom interactive project and "e-tutors" to answer pupils' questions by e-mail and help to mark work.

Now the organisation estimates that about 40,000 children aged 11 and older are learning Latin, and says that more schools want to take it up. It has become so popular that CSCP is employing a full-time tutor to teach Latin at GCSE level via a live video link.

Will Griffiths, director of the CSCP, said that about 1,200 schools were offering Latin. He said that the increase had been caused partly by the number of non-specialist teachers able to offer the subject with the help of computer study aids, and because schools were having to find new ways of keeping bright children interested. "The Gifted and Talented initiative has forced schools to provide for bright children, so schools are perhaps associating Latin with the more able children, and also more money is going into different out-of-hours learning projects," he said.

Jeannie Cohen, founder of the Friends of Classics, a charity that gives money to schools to teach Latin, said that she had also noticed a new keenness. "We are a small charity, but anecdotally we've noticed a three or four-fold increase in schools writing to us for grants to teach Latin to children at that level," she said.

At Saffron Walden High School, in Essex, where pupils have been studying Latin online and via video link in recent years, numbers have steadily increased and the school now employs Ann Dodgson, a part-time GCSE Latin teacher. She credits the revitalisation to computers bringing it to life but also to its exclusivity as a subject. "It has parent appeal, because it's quite an exclusive subject, certainly here in Saffron Walden," she 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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13 September, 2006

CHINESE LIKE BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS

British independent schools are attracting record numbers of Chinese pupils as China's new elite seek the prestige of a traditional English education. More than a thousand Chinese pupils have entered Britain's leading boarding schools this term, double the number five years ago. Many are the offspring of China's new wealthy entrepreneurial classes, who can comfortably afford 20,000 pounds-a-year boarding fees, but there are some from more modest backgrounds. These children cover the fees with pooled donations from their extended families, who regard the expense as a sound investment in the future of the whole clan.

Most of the pupils arrive to do A levels, with the aim of gaining entry to one of Britain's leading universities where they hope to gain professional qualifications, mainly in the sciences, accountancy, business studies and economics. The Independent Schools Council said that there were about 2,500 pupils from mainland China in British independent schools. "The numbers have risen sharply over the past ten years, from a base of zero," the council said. "The Chinese regard British independent schools as the best in the world and the schools, for their part, are actively recruiting in China, just like the universities do. It is a great British export success story."



In Harrogate Ladies' College, which was one of the first schools to recruit from China, half the 120-strong sixth form are Chinese. At Roedean, in Brighton, 80 per cent of the sixth form are Chinese. [Amazing!] David Andrews, the deputy head at Harrogate, said that the North Yorkshire school visited educational fairs in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai once a year to attract pupils. "The girls come here for two years and tend to study non-English-language subjects, such as maths, further maths, science and business studies. Their work ethic is amazing," Mr Andrews said.

Neil Hawkins, principal of Concord College, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, which has 45 Chinese pupils, said that there was now competition for potential pupils. "In the early days, Chinese parents were interested in their children getting an English education, full stop. Now the market has developed and they are becoming more discerning and are relying on personal recommendations for particular schools," he said.

However, Heathfield St Mary's School, in Ascot, Berkshire, is keeping its Chinese intake down. "It's a small school and if you start to over-fill it with a particular type of pupil, it can be too much," Frances King, the headmistress, said. "In China, there is a notion that the teacher is always right, and this can make the girls reluctant to ask questions for fear of exposing the teacher as ignorant. Our emphasis on encouraging the girls to engage in challenging discussion can sometimes take them by surprise."

For Weishi Kong, 18, from Beijing, an A-level student at Harrogate Ladies' College, studying in England has opened up a whole new world - and a whole new way of thinking. "At school in China, there can be up to 60 students in a class. We don't have the chance, or the time, to ask questions. The tradition there is: let the teacher teach. Here we are encouraged to ask questions. I like it," she said. "I get opportunities here to do things, like amateur radio, that I might not do in China." She was able to speak English before arriving in Britain and is studying biology, chemistry and maths at A level.

Angel Sin, 19, a Hong Kong Chinese pupil at the school, is taking A levels in the sciences and further maths and hopes to go on to study at the University of Manchester or the University of Liverpool. "Back home everyone is always in a hurry. Here you are given more time just to be yourself and try your hardest," she said. Although she was initially homesick she has now settled in to the English way of life. "One thing I really like about England is fish and chips. And ketchup. I love ketchup," she added. [An amusing response from someone brought up on one of the world's great cuisines! I share her liking for fish & chips, however]

Source



California needs a 'lemon' law for teachers

California's education officials say they want to lure the best and brightest teachers to the state's poorest and most troubled schools. Too often, they have paid lip service -- or looked the other way -- when these schools became the home of last resort for teachers no one else wanted. Last month, legislators took a small but important step to meet that commitment to low-achieving schools. In doing so, they ignored the opposition of the state teachers' union, which usually gets its way in Sacramento.

These schools in particular face a lot of pressure to raise test scores. Since they are being held accountable for results, principals deserve more power over hiring. With the passage of SB 1655, now awaiting Gov. Schwarzenegger's signature, principals in those schools will no longer be forced to accept veteran teachers who use seniority rights for open positions. These schools will now be able to compete for teachers in the spring, when the best candidates are on the market.

Until now, job openings sometimes remained unfilled through the summer as veteran teachers weighed their options and exercised contractual rights. Sometimes, principals didn't list jobs until the last minute, for fear that teachers they didn't want would claim them. Under the bill, sponsored by Sen. Jack Scott, D-Pasadena, principals in higher achieving schools will also gain more hiring discretion. Until April 15, veteran teachers will have preference for job openings in those schools. But after April 15, they will have to compete equally with other applicants.

Scott's bill could slow down the ``dance of the lemons'' -- the annual migration of a minority of veteran teachers who either were burned out or who didn't get along. They agreed to take voluntary transfers and gravitated to low-performing schools, where principals were desperate and parents less vigilant.

It's hard to know how widespread the problem is. But in a survey by the New Teacher Project, 21 percent of principals reported that a majority of teachers hired through voluntary transfers were unsatisfactory. The New Teacher Project highlighted the problem in ``Unintended Consequences: The Case for Reforming the Staffing Rules in Urban Teachers Union Contracts,'' a national report last fall. California has become the first state to act on one of its key recommendations.

The better alternative to the dance of the lemons is an efficient, fair and impartial evaluation process in which the few worst teachers are more easily fired (without the district spending $100,000-plus in legal fees), and teachers needing improvement are given more opportunities to succeed. SB 1655 could end up encouraging that process. Meanwhile, principals in low-achieving schools will benefit through an even start in competing for new hires.

Source



Australian teachers forced back to school



Teachers will be made to undergo rigorous training on issues from bullying to obesity under a Federal Government plan to dramatically lift classroom standards. To be implemented by the states, the plan entails teachers taking time off from the classroom to undertake professional development courses in technology and teaching techniques. States refusing to adopt the plan would risk losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, while teachers failing to participate would lose their teaching certificates.

Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said the move was part of a drive to improve standards in the classroom. The courses would cover issues such as dealing with schoolyard bullying, helping gifted and talented students, identifying cases of child abuse and promoting healthy lifestyles to prevent childhood obesity. "What I don't want to see is 20th-century teachers teaching 21st-century students," Ms Bishop told The Sunday Telegraph. "As a result, I am currently considering implementing a compulsory professional development program, which will see teachers undertake a minimum amount of professional development each year in order to retain their teacher registration. "A federally mandated professional development program will also be evidence-based to ensure that all teachers across Australia benefit from a broad and comprehensive professional development program."

About 80,000 students move between jurisdictions each year, and Ms Bishop said the parents of those students needed to be assured that teachers in one state or territory were keeping up with teachers from other jurisdictions. "I want to ensure that teaching is treated just like any other profession and that includes requiring professional development that is of a high standard and uniform across the nation," she said. "If it's OK to make lawyers, doctors, dentists, accountants and architects do compulsory professional development then it's only proper that teachers also do compulsory professional development."

Only two states publicly report substantial spending on professional development. Queensland reports $40 million in the past year and NSW $144 million over four years. But the Federal Government is unsure how and where this money is spent.

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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12 September, 2006

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION ON THE SLY AT UCLA

Spurred partly by campus and community concern over dwindling numbers of African American students, UCLA is moving toward a major shift in its admissions process, perhaps as early as this fall. The changes in admissions, pushed by acting Chancellor Norman Abrams and several faculty leaders, would be the most dramatic at UCLA in at least five years. They would move the Westwood campus toward a more "holistic" admissions model - much like UC Berkeley's - in which students' achievements are viewed in the context of their personal experiences.

UCLA officials emphasized, however, that the campus would continue to abide by the restrictions imposed by Proposition 209, the 1996 voter initiative that barred California's public colleges and universities from considering race in admissions or employment.

A key UCLA faculty committee approved the broad framework for the admissions changes last week, with two more faculty panels expected to vote on it this month. Many details remain to be worked out, but officials said the new process, if approved, would take effect for students applying to UCLA in November for 2007. Abrams, a veteran UCLA law professor who became acting chancellor July 1, said the faculty had been studying admissions reforms for some time. Under the University of California's system of shared governance, faculty members set admissions and eligibility standards.

But Abrams said the admissions figures released in June, which showed that only 96 African Americans - or 2% of the freshman class - were likely to enroll at UCLA this fall, spurred many to action, inside and outside the university. Those numbers, the lowest at the campus since at least 1973, prompted calls from black alumni, community leaders and some legislators for an overhaul of UCLA's admissions practices.

The UCLA figures stood in contrast to a trend toward slightly higher numbers of black, Latino and Native American students across the UC system. Those groups, though still considered underrepresented at UC, will make up just under 20% of the anticipated 2006 freshman class, compared with just below 19% for the current class, but they vary by campus.

The enrollment numbers "have been a catalyst for us within the university to look at our processes, and also for many in the community who want to see change," Abrams said in an interview this week.

Abrams and faculty leaders said they believe the shift, if approved, will lead to fairer admissions for all applicants. They said the new process would make UCLA's admissions similar to that used not only by UC Berkeley, but by the Ivy League and other elite private colleges. They also emphasized that although UCLA's low numbers this year for both African American and Latino freshmen helped spark the changes, it was not clear what effect they would have on those figures. And they said the reforms were not geared specifically at raising those levels. "In my view, this should not be done - and under California law, cannot be done - to improve our African American admissions numbers, but because it's desirable to improve our processes overall," Abrams said.

In response, Ward Connerly, the conservative former UC regent who was an architect of Proposition 209, said Wednesday that UCLA had the right to change its procedures, within the boundaries of law and UC guidelines. Yet he scoffed at the idea that UCLA was not making the shift in direct response to the racial numbers, saying it "doesn't pass the giggle test." "It's obvious why they're doing it and what their objective is," Connerly said.

Others praised the steps toward change. "It's hard for big institutions to make 90-degree turns while driving 70 mph, and I'm proud of my alma mater for doing that," said Peter Taylor, a Los Angeles businessman and prominent UCLA alumnus.

Taylor, who is African American, heads a UCLA task force of alumni, community leaders and donors formed in response to the enrollment numbers. That group has endorsed the holistic approach. Darnell Hunt, a UCLA sociologist who heads its Bunche Center for African American Studies, said the new process would be "a good first step," but he also said it could not address all the factors involved, including the socioeconomic and educational inequities that affect many minority students. "Any change that moves UCLA toward a more inclusive, more holistic review, I'm certainly in favor of," said Hunt, who along with several colleagues has been studying admissions as part of a research project on the challenges facing black students in California universities.

The center's most recent report, posted on its website last week, said UCLA's current process "relied too heavily on minute differences in numbers and gross rankings."

Under admissions changes that took effect for the 2002 entering class, all UC campuses accept students under a system called "comprehensive review," in which personal factors, not just grades and test scores, are considered for all applicants. Previously, nonacademic factors, such as unusual talents and overcoming adversity, could be taken into account in admitting no more than half the freshman class at each campus.

But each UC campus, though required to stay within the broad guidelines, also was free to interpret the policy in its own way. UC Berkeley allows individual readers to review all parts of an applicant's file. At that campus, 140 black students, 10 more than in 2005, have said they will enroll this fall, making up 3.3% of the class of about 4,200. The number of Latino students also rose.

At UCLA, in what admissions officials have described as an attempt to increase objectivity, applicants' files have been divided by academic and personal areas, and read by separate reviewers. That is proposed to change. Adrienne Lavine, an engineering professor and the outgoing chairwoman of UCLA's faculty senate, said the new process would allow the campus to better define the kind of student it wants. She and others said that was increasingly important, given the numbers of applications the campus receives. More than 47,000 students applied for the incoming freshman class.

Thomas Lifka, who oversees admissions as UCLA's assistant vice chancellor for student academic services, described the change as one of philosophy and process but said it should not affect how students apply to the campus. "They shouldn't worry about presenting their credentials in a different light or manner," Lifka said. "It has to do with how we capture the concept of merit - and it means that for each applicant, we'll be looking at all the information about them at the same time."

He and others said that although specifics of the changes remain to be decided, admissions officials must start now to shift gears, and they will start with a comprehensive study of UC Berkeley's process.

Source



DO TELL!

The system of higher education in the United States, long seen as the best in the world, is starting to lag behind other countries, a new national report card says. Today's generation of students could end up less-educated than previous ones, the report card warns.

While Illinois compares favorably with other states in the report, the study points to troubling trends in participation rates here and the increasing percentage of income families have to pay toward rising tuition costs. "There is a large reason to be concerned about the young people in this country,'' said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. The center will release the report, "Measuring Up 2006,'' today.

At 39 percent, the United States ranks second among nations in the percentage of working-age adults with college degrees but seventh among just younger adults. "We are in a situation where for the first time in our history, the next generation will be less educated,'' Callan said. The United States also ranks near the top in college participation but at the bottom in college completion, the report found.

Illinois received an "A'' for participation, based on a relatively high number of 18- to 24-year olds -- 35 percent -- and of working-age adults -- 5 percent -- enrolled in college. But the report showed a 15 percent drop in the chance a 19-year-old will go to college: from 49 percent in 1992 to 42 percent today. Only a handful of states had a steeper drop.

Like 43 other states, Illinois flunked on affordability, with the report saying it has become harder for lower- and middle-income students to pay tuition. The bottom 40 percent now must pay more than half their median income for four-year public schools.

Source



Australia: More evidence of failing schools

Apprentices fall short in maths, science

A large workplace training provider has been forced to teach maths and physics to apprentice electricians. The move by Adelaide-based Peer Tec -- which trains hundreds of apprentices -- follows warnings that universities may need to lengthen courses or drop subjects unless the review of the South Australian Certificate of Education produces more maths and science students.

Peer Tec chief executive Michael Boyce said a shortfall in the maths and physics knowledge of students who had left in years 10 and 11 had forced the company to introduce classes for its first-year apprentices. He said the 40 hours of maths and physics classes were essential for apprentices training to be electricians, refrigerator mechanics and data communications technicians. "We have found that the maths taught at Year 10 and Year 11 level is not relevant to what we require in electrotechnology courses," Mr Boyce said. "The high school maths education does not provide them with the skills to work with formulas. Physics is required to be able to handle the concepts underpinning the trades." Peer Tec's parent, Group Training Australia (South Australia), has also hired senior maths teachers to review the "gaps" between senior school courses and the requirements of an electrical apprenticeship.

The Rann Government's review of SACE is in its early stages and includes input from state schools, universities, TAFE colleges, and Catholic and independent schools. Education Minister Jane Lomax Smith said yesterday the leaving age for students would soon be increased to 17 to ensure they had the academic background to enter apprenticeships. The review of SACE would also include recommendations to increase the flexibility for students who left school at Year 11 to enter the workforce but required extra tuition.

University of South Australia pro-vice-chancellor Peter Lee said last month degrees may have to be increased by a year if the SACE review failed to turn around the shortage of students.

Group Training Australia manager Mal Aubrey said the classes were introduced along with "aptitude tests" in maths and physics, made up of the sorts of problems first-year apprentices should be able to answer. Demand for places in apprenticeships was growing in the face of a national skills shortage in trades and heavy industry. Despite the strong demand for apprentices and a key role in finding jobs for school leavers, Mr Aubrey said Group Training Australia held a "peripheral" position in the review of SACE. But high-school education standards concerned the organisation enough to hire a senior maths teacher to conduct a review of the high school maths and physics curriculums. "There appears to be a couple of areas where there are gaps between what we require and what the school system is delivering," Mr Aubrey said. The maths and physics classes at Peer TEC started in January and the review will report to the Group Training Australia annual general meeting in November.

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 September, 2006

U.K.: School sports not quite dead yet

Post lifted from Majority Rights

By and large, there are few more certain ways to make your MP’s eyes glaze over (yes, yes, I know it’s usually the other way round) than to ask him a question in some way connected to school sports. It just isn’t done in polite society, and besides the MP will most probably be under specific instructions not to say a thing about both the Government’s and the Opposition parties’ papable contempt for all physical endeavour. The few old fashioned Tories who once cared about such things are dead, either literally or politically, and if not are either kept on a leash or treated as amusing relics of a distant past.

The result of such neglect has been disastrous. If you read Private Eye (sadly mostly unavailable online), you will know about the sheer number of state school sports fields sold off. Those few that do keep theirs nonetheless keep them simply as mementos of a dying era, all actual exercise having been abandoned in order to prevent anyone’s feelings getting hurt or to engage in whatever latest nonsense has been dreamt up by the Labour meddlers, such as ‘cooperative’ Sports Days. In essence, sport and political correctness (and the therapy culture) simply don’t mix, and as the latter are the modern day religion of our leaders sport just has to go.

In such a climate, even the slightest turn-around is encouraging, and so with that in mind this should be considered:

Children across the UK are to be given the chance to compete in their own version of the Olympics.

The government hopes the UK School Games will help unearth British talent for the London Olympics in 2012.

Granted, this is still just bread and circuses, something to make sure that London’s 2012 Olympics do not end in the embarrassment that we, quite frankly, deserve. There is also every chance that this’ll turn into yet another showcase for how much Africans contribute to the UK. I’ll be convinced otherwise if and when I hear a govenrment employee make full clear why sport is to be encouraged.

First of all, and this shouldn’t be beyond even one of our hollow NuLabour/NuTory types, it should be made clear that a healthy lifestyle must inevitably involve exercise, and that such a lifestyle reduces the burden on the NHS, reduces working days lost to illness, etc, etc, etc. Going further, we might also add that a healthy population is less likely to fall prey to various potentially dangerous fads and enthusiasms. That a healthy mind requires a healthy body was medical orthodoxy until Hitler’s advocacy of this idea discredited it in the minds of certain people (who probably don’t get enough exercise).

Indeed, it is simply obvious why sport is beneficial. Only an organisation utterly incapable of looking beyond the next few years would not encourage its members to participate in it. Step forward egalitarian democracy, the God that Failed.

The question of sport in schools may seem trivial by comparison to others facing us, but it is controlled by the same dynamics which control our heedless immigration, social and economic policies. As such, it is fairly obvious why the impeccably populist Messiah that Failed, Tone Blair, should wish to ignore entirely its long term benefits. He’s still a Keynesian at heart, at least in the sense of believing that ‘in the long run, we’re all dead’, and until that pernicious doctrine is shown up for the destructive agent that it is, no long term future of any sort can be secured for us.



DISCOUNT FOR PREPAID UNIVERSITY FEES ROUTINE IN AUSTRALIA BUT RARE AND CONTROVERSIAL IN BRITAIN

The Government's pledge that top-up fees would not disadvantage those from low-income families was under threat last night after one university announced that it would offer a discount to students who could pay for their entire degree in advance. Students at the University of Gloucestershire will be entitled to a 20 per cent discount on their fees if they can pay the entire 9,000 pounds for their three-year degree when they start.

The offer will not be available to those who need state help. The university said that there were other "generous, means-tested" bursaries on offer to families as part of its "innovative pricing policy". In addition students who did not pay up-front but instructed the Student Loan Company to pay the university o3,000 per year would be entitled to a 10 per cent rebate as they completed each year of study. The university said it had had "a couple of inquiries" about the scheme.

Gemma Tumelty, president of the National Union of Students, said: "It seems ridiculous that somebody who is rich enough will end up paying less for their education."

Source



Leftist propaganda in Australian school textbook

A high school textbook that teaches Victorian VCE students that the United States and Israel have been linked to "state terrorism" has sparked outrage and a demand from the Federal Government that it be immediately withdrawn from classrooms. The book, used by about half of Victoria's 700 politics students, is being criticised for playing down the threat of terrorism and containing flawed thinking and ideology.

A furious federal Education Minister, Julie Bishop, has called on the Victorian Government to withdraw the book. "It is inconceivable that information is being taught in schools which claims Australia is 'reaping the harvest' of our foreign policies and our 'Western imperialism'," she said. "Of greatest concern is the claim in the textbook that the Howard Government is deliberately using the threat of terrorism to keep Australians fearful and thus supportive of Government policies and actions. "The person who wrote this text should talk to the families of those killed in Bali and explain to them that there is no need to be fearful of terrorism."

But the Bracks Government said the book was not a set text or officially endorsed by the Victorian Curriculum Assessment Authority (VCAA) or the Education Department. "You can't withdraw a text that is not compulsory to start with, so the Bishop thing is a furphy," said Tim Mitchell, a spokesman for Education Minister Lynne Kosky. "The decision about the use of textbooks in classrooms, and the treatment of issues in classrooms, is a matter best left to teachers and school principals, not politicians," he said.

The textbook, Power and National Politics, published by the Victorian Association of Social Studies Teachers, is one of two texts being used in schools for the new national politics subject. The author is Northcote High School teacher Paul Gilby, 35, who says he is "very concerned and distressed" at the furore surrounding his work. He said he had written the book quickly last year for a new course, but that he had tried to present all viewpoints in good faith and felt the book was being subjected to "a very decontextualised attack". He rejected the claim he played down terrorism, but acknowledged that the terrorism section was "problematic" and said it was being revised, along with other parts of the book, for the second edition for next year. Mr Gilby, who is not teaching national politics this year, was a member of the VCAA review panel that developed the international politics course.

The 166-page book contains a one-page sub-section headed "Fear of terrorism" in the section dealing with Australian foreign policy. It adopts as its definition of terrorism: "Any action taken with the aim of achieving a political or military purpose through the use of violence against civilians can be considered terrorism." This definition is challenged by the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council's analyst, Ted Lapkin, who says it crucially lacks the element of "intention" to harm civilians. The book says terrorism is not new "and is not necessarily increasing" and that students need a historical perspective "to gain insight into the current media response to the terrorist situation".

The book asserts that "throughout history, most terrorist acts have been carried out by nation states. "The United States itself was accused of committing acts of state terrorism in Nicaragua in the 1980s. "Other examples of state-run terrorist campaigns have taken place in Russia (in Chechnya most recently), Turkey (in Kurdistan), Israel (in Palestine), Indonesia (in Aceh, West Papua and East Timor most recently)."

Seeking to address the context of terrorism, the book acknowledges there is no simple solution. But it then goes on to elaborate only one theory - that the US and its allies are "reaping the harvest" of their foreign policies and Western imperialism. The book directs students' attention to critics of the Howard Government who accuse it of using anti-terrorism policies to keep people in fear of terrorism and therefore supportive of Government actions and policies.

The executive director of the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council, Colin Rubenstein, said the section was "rife with partisan bias and errors of fact". "The claim made about the greater danger of 'state terrorism' is the product of ideology, not scholarship," he said. State Opposition shadow education spokesman Martin Dixon backed calls for the book to be withdrawn.

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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10 September, 2006

THE REAL AMERICAN EDUCATION COMES FROM OUTSIDE THE HIGH SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES

The school system is what most people think of as "education." It consists of 125,000 elementary and high schools and 2,500 four-year colleges and universities. It has strengths (major research universities) and weaknesses -- notably, lax standards. One reason that U.S. students rank low globally is that many don't work hard. In 2002, 56 percent of high school sophomores did less than an hour of homework a night.

The American learning system is more complex. It's mostly post-high school and, aside from traditional colleges and universities, includes the following: community colleges; for-profit institutes and colleges; adult extension courses; online and computer-based courses; formal and informal job training; self-help books. To take a well-known example: The for-profit University of Phoenix started in 1976 to offer workers a chance to finish their college degrees. Now it has about 300,000 students (half taking online courses and half attending classes in 163 U.S. locations). The average starting age: 34. The American learning system has, I think, two big virtues.

First, it provides second chances. It tries to teach people when they're motivated to learn -- which isn't always when they're in high school or starting college. People become motivated later for many reasons, including maturity, marriage, mortgages and crummy jobs. These people aren't shut out. They can mix work, school and training. A third of community college students are over 30. For those going to traditional colleges, there's huge flexibility to change and find a better fit. A fifth of those who start four-year colleges and get degrees finish at a different school, reports Clifford Adelman of the Education Department. Average completion time is five years; many take longer.

Second, it's job-oriented. Community colleges provide training for local firms and offer courses to satisfy market needs. Degrees in geographic information systems (the use of global positioning satellites) are new. There's been an explosion in master's degrees -- most of them work-oriented. From 1971 to 2004, MBAs are up 426 percent, public administration degrees, 262 percent, and health degrees, 743 percent. About a quarter of college graduates now get a master's. Many self-help books are for work -- say, "Excel for Dummies." There are about 150 million copies of the "For Dummies" series in print.

Up to a point, you can complain that this system is hugely wasteful. We're often teaching kids in college what they should have learned in high school -- and in graduate school what they might have learned in college. Some of the enthusiasm for more degrees is crass credentialism. Some trade schools prey cynically on students' hopes and spawn disappointment. But these legitimate objections miss the larger point: The American learning system accommodates people's ambitions and energies -- when they emerge -- and helps compensate for some of the defects of the school system.

In Charlotte, about 70 percent of the recent high school graduates at Central Piedmont Community College need remedial work in English or math. Zeiss thinks his college often succeeds where high schools fail. Why? High school graduates "go out in the world and see they have no skills," he says. "They're more motivated." The mixing of older and younger students also helps; the older students are more serious and focused.

This fragmented and mostly unplanned learning system is a messy mix of government programs and private business. In some ways it compares favorably to other countries' more controlled governmental systems. Of course, that isn't an excuse for not trying to improve our schools. We would certainly be better off if more students performed better. Nor should it inspire complacency. "Other countries are picking up these models of community colleges and online learning," says Chester E. Finn Jr. of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a research group.

But the American learning system partially explains how a society of certified dummies consistently outperforms the test scores. Workers and companies develop new skills as the economy evolves. The knowledge that is favored (specialized and geared to specific jobs) often doesn't show up on international comparisons that involve general reading and math skills. As early as the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that Americans are addicted to practical, not abstract, knowledge. That's still true.

Source



NO PROBLEM FOR "CORRECT" POLITICS AT CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITIES

Steve Frank writes:

A subscriber to the California Political News and Views wrote a letter to the editor after she attended a graduation ceremony (California State University at Monterey Bay) in Monterey. Read it carefully, the speakers spoke in both English and Spanish..not English alone--I just visited Monterey about a week ago and I had the impression that English was the language of the area--and at a college level you would think all the graduates already spoke English, guess I was wrong. Here is the letter to the editor:

"Frightening is what I call the experience at CSUMB at the graduation of 6/20/06.

Amalia Mesa-Baines, Director of Visual and Public Art, spoke at the direction of the President of CSUMB. Luis Valdez, Director of Teatro Campesino, was also a speaker. Ms. Mesa-Bains loudly and proudly proclaimed her membership in MEChA, which many (including Hispanics) consider a racist organization dedicated to the furtherance of the aims of Hispanics (to the exclusion of all other races, in reality). Most of them support the "reconquista" of the southwestern states for Mexico, asserting that this territory was "stolen" from Mexico.

Mr. Valdez mentioned many movers and shakers, including Karl Marx. I gathered he is one of his heroes. Parts of the speeches were in Spanish and it was made unmistakably clear that a "no borders and bilingual (Spanish) America" is one of the main goals of CSUMB. No American flag was visible anywhere.

Several students of other races told me later they wanted to get up and walk out since they were not represented in any way although I could count no more than possibly a third of the graduating class names being Hispanic. I feel as a half-Hispanic woman that the Hispanic people are being hijacked by these radical groups. We must wake up as we may face civil war on down the road. Call CSUMB and voice your displeasure.

More Bible education coming in Australian public schools?

Jesus Christ, Judas, biblical stories and Australia's religious divisions may soon be classroom topics to help students understand our past. Aboriginal history may have caused angst at last month's History Summit in Canberra, but it was the thorny question of religion which had educators most perplexed. Transcripts from the summit obtained last night show delegates struggled with religion in the national curriculum. It was Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Blainey who told delegates much of society could not be explained to students without religion. "Many of the great statements and parliamentary debates, be it about Judas, 13 pieces of silver or touching the hem of government, mean nothing now," he said. "Yet to that (previous) generation they were made powerful because they were metaphors chosen from the Bible." He said he believed the history curriculum needed to include religious knowledge, "irrespective of the vehicle used".

The broad gulf between Australian Catholics and Presbyterians in the first half of this century was a "lively" event which could easily engage youngsters, the summit heard. One unidentified delegate said religion became pivotal to Australian history in 1917 when the nation diverged "spectacularly" over the issue of conscription. "A Catholic archbishop was about to lead the flock against conscription," the delegate said. "Australians broadly of Presbyterian and Anglican background took a different viewpoint. At that point the different belief systems become lively and Australians get engaged. Until that point it is a boring story."

Curtin University of Technology Division of Humanities executive dean Tom Stannage disagreed. Professor Stannage said religion encompassed a far wider issue but was removed from the state curriculum and suppressed for 100 years. He said some students got their religious education from Sunday school and other sources. He said it was "a tough call . . . a major national decision to re-inject, it seems to me, religion back into the state schools in a non-controversial, open, inclusive sort of way." The one-day summit seeking a new path for the national history curriculum has agreed history should be compulsory for Years 9 and 10.

Source

Update

The following comment via email from a reader concerns the leading post above for this day:

"You have this quote: "In 2002, 56 percent of high school sophomores did less than an hour of homework a night."

It caused me to dig up my high-school grade book from 1959-1962. (In Chicago, we had 8 years of grade school and then 4 years of high school)

It stated in bold print, "Daily preparation of lessons at home is expected to take at least an hour and a half of the student's time." In reality I probably spent 3 to 4 hours every night. Looking back though what really stood out was what I studied. There was no time for the "hold hands and sing kumbyya..."courses, we studied.

4 years of English
Algebra and Science as a Freshman
Geometry and Biology as a Sophomore
Algebra, physics and history as a Junior
Solid Geometry, history and chemistry as a Senior.

Now consider this. I was majoring in music! Add to the above full courses in band, orchestra, marching band, instrumental music, harmony etc.

My younger associate at work went back to community college to update from a 2-year tech to a 4-year degree and had to take remedial math. The "remedial" stuff they were teaching him I learned in GRADE SCHOOL.

And finally an anecdotal note: Although I just retired, during my commute I often drove by a bunch of high-school kids queued up to board the bus. I'd estimate half of them had no backpack or tote, implying no homework at all. My own swag is that for many "under an hour" really means "none""

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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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9 September, 2006

Four Million Children Left Behind: Forced to attend failing schools in Los Angeles

This city is the main front in the pitched battle over the No Child Left Behind Act. Like many large urban school districts across the nation--though more brazenly--the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is resisting the law's core command: that no child be forced to attend a failing school. In LAUSD, there are over 300,000 children in schools the state has declared failing under NCLB's requirements for adequate yearly progress. Under the law, such children must be provided opportunities to transfer to better-performing schools within the district. To date, fewer than two out of every 1,000 eligible children have transferred--much lower even than the paltry 1% transfer figure nationwide. In neighboring Compton, whose schools are a disaster, the number of families transferring their children to better schools is a whopping zero.

The question is whether Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings--whose administration has made NCLB the centerpiece of its education agenda--will do anything about it. She has the power to withhold federal funds from districts that fail to comply with NCLB, and has threatened to do just that. Rhetoric, so far, has exceeded action.

In L.A., the district has squelched school choice for children in failing schools by evading deadlines for notifying families of their transfer options; burying information in bureaucratese; and encouraging families to accept after-school supplemental services (often provided by the same district employees who fail to get the job done during the regular school day) rather than transfers. Still, the district insists that the reason for the low transfer numbers is that parents don't want their kids to leave failing schools.

That explanation rings false because, well, it is. The Polling Company surveyed Los Angeles and Compton parents whose children are eligible to transfer their children out of failing schools. Only 11% knew their school was rated as failing, and fewer than one-fifth of those parents (just nine out of 409 surveyed) recalled receiving notice to that effect from the districts--a key NCLB requirement. Once informed of their schools' status and their transfer rights, 82% expressed a desire to move their children to better schools.

The parents were twice as likely to prefer transfers to private schools than to other public schools, but as of yet private school choice is not an option under NCLB. That is a serious defect in the law, because the number of children eligible for transfers in inner-city school districts vastly exceeds the number of seats in better-performing public schools. "We don't have the space," LAUSD Superintendent Roy Romer candidly acknowledged. "Think about it. We're 160,000 seats short. Where do you transfer to?"

In response, Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander and John Ensign and Reps. Buck McKeon and Sam Johnson have proposed adding private options under NCLB for children in chronically failing schools. But for now, the only hope for these kids is for Secretary Spellings to hold the districts' feet to the fire. Last month, Ms. Spellings threatened to withhold federal funds unless the California Department of Education produced a plan by Aug. 15 to facilitate transfers for children in failing schools. That deadline passed with no action.

Meanwhile, Ms. Spellings has granted scores of waivers from NCLB requirements to school districts across the nation. These allow certain districts with failing schools to offer supplemental services to children before offering transfers. This reverses the order Congress stipulated, providing for transfers first and supplemental services only for those children remaining. By bureaucratic fiat, Ms. Spellings has delayed for thousands of children the chance to escape poor schools--and the day of reckoning for districts who are failing their most basic responsibilities.

NCLB can survive the waiver carrots, but only if they are accompanied by a serious stick. Were Ms. Spellings to yank federal funding and make an example of LAUSD, it would be the shot heard round the education world. School districts across the nation finally would have to enlist all possible options--interdistrict transfers, charter schools, private schools--to aid children stuck in failing schools. And, if past experience holds true, those schools finally will have a spur for improvement as their students leave and take funds with them.

But for now, LAUSD is calling Ms. Spellings's rhetoric. The California media seems to agree: Not a single major newspaper has reported on the secretary's threat to withhold federal funds, which if taken seriously ought to constitute front-page news. NCLB is a flawed law in many respects. Still, it may represent the last true hope, at the national level, to ensure that our education system truly leaves no child behind. The establishment is chafing furiously under the tethers of accountability. If these slip away, it is unlikely that any politician will have the courage to buckle them back down again.

For better or worse, the law grants the secretary of education vast discretion in enforcement. But the law itself is clear in command: No child should be forced to endure a failing school for one minute, let alone 12 years. Under this administration's watch, four million children--by the states' own conservative measures--are in schools that have been failing for at least six consecutive years. Ms. Spellings has the power to make sure they are offered a brighter future.

Will she or won't she? Margaret Spellings's actions in the coming days will determine far more than the Bush administration's education legacy. They will determine whether our nation will make good at last on its sacred promise of educational opportunity.

Source



BACK TO BASICS IN ENGLISH GRADE SCHOOLS

Children in England will have to master their times tables by the age of 8, a year earlier than at present, under reforms of the way children are taught "the three Rs" in primary school. Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, said that teachers would also be expected to return to a back-to-basics method of teaching children to read, known as phonics.

The measures, which aim to speed pupils' progress in maths and English, also feature more teaching of mental arithmetic, tighter restrictions on pupils' use of calculators and a new focus on maths as a tool for solving problems encountered in everyday life. There will also be renewed emphasis on improving children's listening and speaking skills. The measures have been produced in response to ministerial concerns that primary pupils' attainment in maths and English, having increased steadily since the introduction of the literacy hour in 1998 and a numeracy framework in 1999, have hit a plateau.

Since 1998 the proportion of children reaching the expected standard, Level 4, has risen from 63 to 79 per cent in English and from 62 to 76 per cent in maths. However, this still leaves more than 20 per cent of children trailing. And figures published two weeks ago showed that the Government had missed its key targets for maths and English results in primary schools. "More needs to be done to address the one in five 11-year-olds still not reaching the standard required of their age in literacy," Mr Johnson said.

There is also a strong feeling among ministers that, in maths, targets are not exacting enough and should be brought forward by a year, to enable children to tackle more complex calculations by the age of 8 rather than 10.

The decision to focus the teaching of reading on synthetic phonics, which involves teaching children individual letter sounds before blending the sounds to form whole words, comes after recommendations early this year from Jim Rose, the former director of inspection at Ofsted. The emphasis now will be on ensuring that children gain basic word-recognition skills by the age of 7, before focusing more fully on comprehension. Children should be able to write their name by the age of 5, compose simple sentences using capital letters and full stops by 6, and write compound sentences and use question marks and commas to separate items on a list by 7. By 8 they should be able to use adjectives, verbs and nouns for precision and impact, and use exclamation and speech marks. At 9 they should be able to use commas to mark clauses and use the possessive apostrophe.

In maths, the emphasis will be on the quick recall of times tables to enable children to move on to more complex mental arithmetic with confidence.

The measures, which will be distributed to schools next month, will be accompanied by an investment of 230 million pounds of professional support for primary head teachers and subject heads in schools. Nick Gibb, the Conservative schools spokesman, welcomed putting synthetic phonics at the heart of teaching reading in the early years of primary school. But Sarah Teather, for the Liberal Democrats, called the reforms too prescriptive.

Source



Quantum leap for physics grads in Australia

Physics students will be in high demand "for the foreseeable future" because of an employee shortfall, according to a leader in the field. Australian Institute of Physics president David Jamieson said prospects were excellent for good graduates and starting salaries reflected this. "The rise of technology shows no sign of ending," said Professor Jamieson, director of the Microanalytical Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. "The number of very big science projects, including the Australian Synchrotron and the new nuclear reactor in Sydney, means that trend will keep on escalating."

Professor Jamieson said demand from universities, industry and government meant there was also a shortage of physics-qualified high school teachers. Starting salaries ranged from about $35,000 in teaching to about $60,000 in research. "But most people aren't in it for the money," he said. "Secondary teaching can be a very rewarding career that has a flexibility that you may not have in research."

Physics graduates commonly completed a BSc, followed by an honours year and a PhD, a process that took 7 1/2 years. s it worth it in the end? "Absolutely," Professor Jamieson said, citing "the excitement of looking at nature at its most fundamental". Physics specialisations came in "different flavours", including nanotechnology, physical chemistry, climate modelling, quantum physics, electromagnetism, thermal physics and astrophysics. "An important point is the diversity of fields where graduates end up," he said.

This year, demand for science professionals increased by 10,139, according to the Department of Education, Science and Training. The department predicts a total demand growth of 55,198 to 2013. AIP Victorian branch secretary Dan O'Keeffe said about 12per cent of Victorian 18-year-olds studied physics in 2005. Participation in the subject peaked in 1992 at about 16per cent, but had fallen steadily since then. In that year, about 22 per cent of male senior secondary students studied physics. Figures for NSW showed a similar profile.

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 September, 2006

Schools need competition now

This week's back-to-school ads offer amazing bargains on lightweight backpacks and nifty school supplies. All those businesses scramble to offer us good stuff at low prices. It's amazing what competition does for consumers. The power to say no to one business and yes to another is awesome.

Too bad we don't apply that idea to schools themselves. Education bureaucrats and teachers unions are against it. They insist they must dictate where kids go to school, what they study, and when. When I went on TV to say that it's a myth that a government monopoly can educate kids effectively, hundreds of union teachers demonstrated outside my office demanding that I apologize and "re-educate" myself by teaching for a week. (I'll show you the demonstration and what happened next this Friday night, when ABC updates my "Stupid in America" TV special.)

The teachers union didn't like my "government monopoly" comment, but even the late Albert Shanker, once president of the American Federation of Teachers, admitted that our schools are virtual monopolies of the state -- run pretty much like Cuban and North Korean schools. He said, "It's time to admit that the public education system operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve. It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."

When a government monopoly limits competition, we can't know what ideas would bloom if competition were allowed. Surveys show that most American parents are satisfied with their kids' public schools, but that's only because they don't know what their kids might have had! As Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek wrote, "[C]ompetition is valuable only because, and so far as, its results are unpredictable and on the whole different from those which anyone has, or could have, deliberately aimed at."

What Hayek means is that no mortal being can imagine what improvements a competitive market would bring. But I'll try anyway: I bet we'd see cheap and efficient Costco-like schools, virtual schools where you learn at home on your computer, sports schools, music schools, schools that go all year, schools with uniforms, schools that open early and keep kids later, and, who knows what?

Every economics textbook says monopolies are bad because they charge high prices for shoddy goods. But it's government that gives us monopolies. So why do we entrust something as important as our children's education to a government monopoly? The monopoly fails so many kids that more than a million parents now make big sacrifices to homeschool their kids. Two percent of school-aged kids are homeschooled now. If parents weren't taxed to pay for lousy government schools, more might teach their kids at home. Some parents choose to homeschool for religious reasons, but homeschooling has been increasing by 10 percent a year because so many parents are just fed up with the government's schools.

Homeschooled students blow past their public-school counterparts in terms of achievement. Brian Ray, who taught in both public and private schools before becoming president of the National Home Education Research Institute, says, "In study after study, children who learn at home consistently score 15-30 percentile points above the national averages," he says. Homeschooled kids also score almost 10 percent higher than the average American high school student on the ACT.

I don't know how these homeschooling parents do it. I couldn't do it. I'd get impatient and fight with my kids too much. But it works for lots of kids and parents. So do private schools. It's time to give parents more options. Instead of pouring more money into the failed government monopoly, let's free parents to control their own education money. Competition is a lot smarter than bureaucrats.

Source



Modern education is anti-majority

We have an interesting situation in a nearby town. A male high school science teacher has begun the process of changing his gender. He informed school officials of his intention last Spring. He has not undergone any of the necessary operations yet. As part of the process, this teacher, who has been at the school for a number of years and is known by the students as a man, will begin dressing as a woman this September when school starts. The district said okay.

The district has now held workshops and meetings for parents and faculty, and will hold one for students the first day of school. So people will understand and accept what is happening.

Parents have the option of requesting that their children not be in this teacher's classroom. A few have. A number of parents have voiced support of the teacher and what he is doing. Those who are not comfortable with the situation have been silent for the most part. But a few who did speak up say they were afraid to say anything because they might be thought prejudiced or be subject to backlash. And they say they know a number of other people who don't like it, but haven't spoken up. But saying that a lot of people oppose it is not the same as those people coming forward. I have no way of telling how many people oppose it. A local columnist, though, did take an informal poll. 71 % of the respondents said the teacher should be fired.

Right, fire a tenured teacher? Obviously they don't know the power of the teacher's unions. (I am a teacher, by the way.) Generally the only way to oust a tenured teacher is if he or she commits a crime. And sometimes even that that is not enough. This does not qualify.

Still, the usual procedure in situations like this - as rare as they are - is for the teacher to transfer to a different school or district where he is not known by his original gender. For his own good and the good of the students. It's not clear why this teacher did not do that. Maybe he just felt more comfortable and supported at the school. Or maybe he is trying to make a statement.

I'm not concerned here with the morality of his decision to change genders. But I have been thinking about his decision to stay in the school and the decision of the district to offer all these workshops and meetings to engender acceptance. And then I remembered an appropriate G. K. Chesterton passage. From "The Outlawed Parent" in What's Wrong with the World:

"Modern education means handing down the customs of the minority, and rooting out the customs of the majority."

Ah. People who switch genders certainly qualify as a minority. And this sure seems like Modern Education at its most typical.

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 September, 2006

FEAR OF REFORM

Los Angeles Mayor Antonia Villaraigosa soon will exercise more control over Los Angeles' deeply troubled school system as result of legislation that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to sign. Similar initiatives in Boston, Chicago and New York City have resulted in some improvement in their school systems. But the real question on the table is why _ given that the future of children is at stake, and hence the future of our country _ do we settle for tepid reform when we need bold and innovative change to make a difference?

Yes, again I am talking about the need for competition in education and for school choice. Freedom, competition and choice are what have produced the world's most powerful economy. Yet the very factors that have made America great, and have distinguished us from the rest of the world, are prohibited from operating in the education marketplace, where we produce our future citizens and workforce. Sure, maybe giving the mayor more control and having more accountability will help in Los Angeles. But does anyone really believe that shifting around bureaucrats in a monopoly controlling 746,000 students and 80,000 employees is really going to make a big difference?

And, perhaps more to the point, will anyone claim this is the best possible answer? And, if not, what does it say about America today if we are allowing interests other than the welfare of children dictate how we manage education? The dropout rate among Latino students in the Los Angeles Unified School District is 60 percent. Among black students it's 57 percent. Average proficiency in English and math is under 30 percent. By the California Department of Education's own Academic Performance Index, 46 percent of elementary schools score 3 or below out of a possible 10, 72 percent of middle schools score 3 or below, and 66 percent of high schools score 3 or below.

As result of a complaint filed by my organization, CURE, along with the Alliance for School Choice, the California Department of Education is investigating compliance of the LAUSD with the school transfer provisions of No Child Left Behind. According to NCLB, students in failing schools must be notified and permitted to transfer to another school. We have found that 250,000, about 30 percent, of the students in the LA system are eligible for such transfers, yet notification is not being given and there have only been only slightly more than 500 transfers.

Given the disaster that is taking place, you would think that the priority in the state would be to consider every possible option to find an optimal solution to educating Los Angeles' children. But this is not the case at all. The measure to give the mayor more authority wound up being watered down as result of pressure from the unions. Plus, in the queue for the governor's signature, along with the bill to give the mayor more power, will be another bill passed by the California State legislature that prohibits teachers, textbooks, instructional materials and all school-sponsored activities from "reflecting adversely" on homosexuals, bisexuals and transsexuals.

This will certainly do wonders for low-income Latino and black students, who can't read, add, subtract and who have a 50 percent likelihood of not graduating. According to data just released by the Census Bureau, the gap in median income between the top 20 percent in the nation and the bottom 60 percent continues to increase. It's about double what it was 30 years ago. The rewards for education and the penalty for lack thereof are becoming increasingly pronounced. The hole into which Latino and black kids are falling in the Los Angeles school system, and other school systems in our nation's large cities, is one they're never going to be able to crawl out of.

During the last week we were reminded of the face of poverty in America that Hurricane Katrina brought to the nation's TV screens. There was a supposed outrage. But how can there be outrage that is not accompanied by bold measures? The path out of poverty is education. To tolerate incremental change of public education in America, knowing full well that large numbers of inner city kids will not be helped, does not shine flattering light on the moral state of the nation.

In the last week, along with the focus on Katrina, there were retrospectives on the 10th anniversary of welfare reform. Courageous and innovative reform of our welfare system in 1996 produced sweeping and historic change, moving millions from government dependence to work. The reform took place in the face of opposition of the guardians of the status quo. We must address our profound problems in education with similar resolve and boldness. Market based innovation and competition must be allowed to come into play, and we must let parents choose where to send their child to school. To not allow this to happen, to not even give it a chance, particularly in a nation that is supposed to be free, is a moral outrage.

Source



CREDENTIALISM TAKES A NOSEDIVE

Being myself a successful but uncredentialled former High School teacher, this surprised me not a bit. I would echo every conclusion and recommendation of the article below

In 2003, New York City fired several thousand uncertified teachers. The city was doing its best to comply with a state law, passed a few years earlier, that said only certified teachers could work in public schools. Professor Jonah Rockoff decided to take a look at the performance of these fired teachers. As it turned out, they weren't any less effective, on average, than the certified teachers who remained on staff.

For the past two years, Rockoff has studied the relationship between certification and teacher effectiveness. With his research partners, Thomas Kane of Harvard University and Douglas Staiger of Dartmouth College, he compared how similar students taught by traditionally certified, uncertified and alternatively certified teachers fared on standardized exams from 1999 to 2005. Because of its size and diversity, New York provided the perfect laboratory. "The good thing about New York City is we have so many data points," Rockoff says. "We can tell whether a result is statistically significant or not, even if it's very small."

Almost every state allows its districts to hire alternatively certified teachers, who account for about one-third of all new teachers hired in the United States each year. Though the rules differ by state, alternatively certified teachers typically must have a bachelor's degree, pass state exams, complete special training and, once they begin teaching, enroll in a teaching master's degree program.

In New York, most alternatively certified teachers come from the Teaching Fellows program, which recruits professionals without any prior teaching experience, puts them through a teaching boot camp and sends them off to the classroom. The city also hires alternatively certified teachers through Teach for America, a nonprofit group that places teachers in school districts across the country, and international recruitment. Under the state's emergency provisions, New York is allowed to hire alternatively certified teachers to cope with its perpetual teacher shortage. The city hired more than 50,000 new teachers during the years covered by the study.

To measure the effectiveness of the city's teachers, Rockoff had to control for factors that might make one group of students perform better than another, such as the students' prior test scores. The study focused on grades four through eight, since all students in those grades must complete standardized city exams.

What they found challenged the conventional wisdom about teacher certification requirements. There were no major differences in performance among students taught by traditionally certified, alternatively certified or uncertified teachers. However, Rockoff found that there were wide disparities in effectiveness within each of the teacher groups.

"We're able to measure pretty accurately at the teacher level how students are performing," he says. "Having a highly effective teacher or having a mediocre teacher makes a large difference in student achievement." The difference between having a highly effective and a highly ineffective teacher is about one-quarter of a standard deviation, or about half of the achievement gap between students who are poor and those who are not.

The next step for Rockoff and his colleagues is predicting whether a teacher will be effective or not before the hiring decision is made. So far, researchers have had little success answering this question. For example, Rockoff examined teachers' college grade point averages and the selectivity of the undergraduate institution they had attended. He found little evidence that either is linked to classroom performance, though these are important factors for being accepted into programs like Teach for America.

Rockoff is now working on a follow-up project with incoming New York teachers that will focus on many nontraditional measures, such as personality types and cognitive ability, that may be linked to effectiveness. He will also test whether it is possible to predict effectiveness by studying videotapes of teacher interviews or by observing teachers give a short lesson to a real class. Currently, candidates for both the Teaching Fellows and Teach for America programs must prepare mock a lesson, but they don't actually deliver the lesson to children.

For now, Rockoff suggests that school administrators and policymakers reassess their thinking on teacher qualifications. "Rather than worry about whether a particular teacher has certification or which program they come from, just be worried about whether they're highly effective or not," he says. "That's what really going to make a big difference in student achievement for a district or a 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 page is here

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6 September, 2006

THE "REFLECTION" CRAZE

Dear teachers and students, dear principals and counselors, as the new school year begins, let us reflect. Let us reflect on our reflections about reflecting. Let us reflect on the triumph of jargon and buzzwords in the education field. Let us reflect on how a common-sense concept gets glorified as if it were brilliant innovation. Let us reflect on how badly educators need their own equivalent of “Dilbert” or “The Office” to puncture certain overly inflated rhetorical and theoretical bubbles.

To back up for the uninitiated, “reflection” as both word and action may be the trendiest trend in all of education. Education students learn how to be reflective teachers in education school. Then, in their own classrooms, they ask their students to write reflections on what they have read. After class, the teachers do reflections on their own lessons. Principals, administrators, other staff members — all are increasingly urged or even required to engage in reflection.

And what, a lay person might well ask, does reflection mean? A reasonable definition would be “thinking about what you’re doing,” as David F. Labaree, a professor of education at Stanford University, puts it with welcome and all-too-rare clarity. It means pausing to take stock in a journal of how you felt about the short story you just read or figuring out why the lesson you just taught faltered halfway through.

Ah, but to express the notion of reflection so directly is to unclothe the emperor, to remove the wrappings of classicism, intellectual depth, even spirituality from it. The exponents of reflection like to trace its lineage to Descartes, Rousseau, Tolstoy and John Dewey. To which Lynn Fendler, an education professor at Michigan State University, has replied in an article in Educational Researcher magazine that these days the term reflection is “treacle” with a “confusing morass of meanings.”

As Professor Fendler points out, Dewey viewed “reflective thinking” in such classic works as “How We Think,” as a “triumph of reason and science over instinct and impulse.” Seventy years later, reflection has largely become the very thing Dewey wanted to rebel against — the consecration of emotion and feeling. By making every teacher and student the unchallenged arbiter of his or her own achievement, reflection dovetails neatly with progressive education’s preference for process over content and with the confessional, therapeutic strain of American culture.

“ ‘Reflection’ is a loosey-goosey term that sounds deep enough to be acceptable for the image that ed schools want to convey,” said Sandra Stotsky, an education consultant who formerly served as deputy education commissioner in Massachusetts. “It’s a substitute for real good, useful, hard words that used to be prevalent in talking about teacher’s work — critique, evaluation, analysis,” she said. “ ‘Evaluation’ sounds like there are actually some criteria involved. Whereas if you ‘reflect,’ it sounds psychologically deep and relativistic.”

Professor Labaree, author of “The Trouble With Ed Schools,” made a similar point: “Reflection has got this scientific side — let’s step back from automatic behavior and apply theory and facts to it — but it also captures this kind of romantic, naturalistic side of progressivism. That if you get in touch with who you really are, deep inside, you’ll become a more effective teacher. Those two things actually don’t go together.”

While the reflection crowd may trace the movement’s roots to the Enlightenment, the bonanza really began much more recently. The credit (or blame) belongs to a professor and management consultant, Donald Schoen. In his 1983 book “The Reflective Practitioner” and the 1987 sequel “Educating the Reflective Practitioner,” Professor Schoen extolled what he called “reflection-in-action” or “knowledge-in-action” as a form of “teaching artistry.” Instead of studying the research on effective instruction and enacting those precepts in the classroom, Professor Schoen argued, teachers should be “thinking about what they’re doing” and “conducting an action experiment on the spot.” As for the students, he said, “They must plunge into the doing and try to educate themselves.”

When Professor Schoen died in 1997, his impact was being broadly felt, and it has only expanded since then. On one Internet search engine, for instance, the terms “reflection” and “teaching” turned up about 600 times in news articles and broadcasts in 1990 and nearly 4,600 times in 2005. When Professor Fendler of Michigan State surveyed the scholarly literature on reflection, 67 of the 84 works she cited had been published since 1990.

The 2006 conventions of the American Educational Research Association and the National Council of Teachers of English include such panels as “Reflections on and Implications of Research on Adolescents’ Explorations With Everyday Texts,” “Reflections on the Work Lives of Administrators,” “Utilizing Collaboration and Reflection to Develop the Compleat Composition Student” and “Promoting Self-Reflective and Effective Student Writers.”

The more lucid advocates of reflection make the case that it helps students face, understand and correct flaws in their writing. In the form of journals or notebooks, reflection also affords students the chance to respond to works they have read and, in the process, to feel some sense of capability as writers. The better education courses have aspiring teachers reflect while watching videos of themselves delivering lessons. But such concrete applications often feel lost amid the numbing invocations of reflection. Martin Kozloff, a professor of education at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and an expert on education jargon, groups “reflection” with such other examples of “fashionable folderol” as “developmentally appropriate practices,” “brain-based instruction,” “higher-order thinking” and “learning styles.”

Deborah Meier, one of the nation’s leading progressive educators, finds reflection’s vogue particularly interesting now, at a time that standardized tests are the dominant measure of academic success. It is a case of lingo as palliative. “Why is the word ‘empowerment’ in proliferation when we’re actually taking more power away from teachers?” she said. “Maybe we’re talking so much about reflection because we have no time to reflect at all.”

Source



Australian university bypasses government exam results

IQ test comeback under another name

Victoria's biggest university is bypassing the VCE and moving to choose some students with aptitude tests. Monash University is running a pilot scheme where up to 500 students from underachieving schools can sit an aptitude test instead of using their ENTER score. Students usually receive a tertiary entrance ranking out of 100 at the end of their VCE and courses require a specific score for entry. But there are concerns ENTER scores do not reflect some students' potential to succeed at university, and students from poorly resourced schools are missing out.

The new exam will be available for undergraduate degrees at Monash's Berwick campus, which include business/commerce, communication and IT. It tests decision making, problem solving, argument analysis and data interpretation. Students from 62 "under represented" schools in the city's southeast, where less than 50 per cent of pupils received a tertiary offer, will be allowed to take the exam. Secondary colleges such as Berwick, Sandringham, Cranbourne, Doveton, Lilydale and Frankston are some of those eligible. Almost 130 students have applied and will sit the exam, known as uniTEST, on September 9. Successful students will be offered places in undergraduate courses before receiving ENTER scores.

Monash admissions manager Kai Jensen said the ENTER score was not always the best measure of future academic success. "We believe in the lower ENTER ranges, aptitude tests may be a better predictor of success at university," Dr Jensen said. He said some deserving students did not get university places because their schools could not compete with wealthier city schools. "There are large inner-city independent and Catholic schools that get a lion's share of the uni places," Dr Jensen said. "We believe that in outlying schools and schools in areas that don't have those resources, there are students that could still do well at university but may not be getting an ENTER score that reflects that."

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor Prof Stephen Parker said the university's aim of the trial was to admit the best students irrespective of means or circumstance. Dr Jensen said the test, developed by Cambridge Assessment in Britain and the Australian Council for Educational Research, had been used successfully at British universities. He said applicants still had to pass relevant VCE subjects to get in and students would be monitored for 12 months as part of the pilot study.

Education Minister Lynne Kosky's spokeswoman said the test was a good idea because it gave students a chance at university when there might be many reasons why their ENTER score was low.

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 September, 2006

MANY U.S. STUDENTS FAILED BY THEIR HIGH SCHOOL "EDUCATION"



At first, Michael Walton, starting at community college here, was sure that there was some mistake. Having done so well in high school in West Virginia that he graduated a year and a half early, how could he need remedial math? Eighteen and temperamental, Mickey, as everyone calls him, hounded the dean, insisting that she take another look at his placement exam. The dean stood firm. Mr. Walton's anger grew. He took the exam a second time. Same result. "I flipped out big time,'' Mr. Walton said. Because he had no trouble balancing his checkbook, he took himself for a math wiz. But he could barely remember the Pythagorean theorem and had trouble applying sine, cosine and tangent to figure out angles on the geometry questions.

Mr. Walton is not unusual. As the new school year begins, the nation's 1,200 community colleges are being deluged with hundreds of thousands of students unprepared for college-level work. Though higher education is now a near-universal aspiration, researchers suggest that close to half the students who enter college need remedial courses. The shortfalls persist despite high-profile efforts by public universities to crack down on ill-prepared students.

Since the City University of New York, the largest urban public university, barred students who need remediation from attending its four-year colleges in 1999, others have followed with similar steps. California State set an ambitious goal to cut the proportion of unprepared freshmen to 10 percent by 2007, largely by testing them as high school juniors and having them make up for deficiencies in the 12th grade. Cal State appears nowhere close to its goal. In reading alone, nearly half the high school juniors appear unprepared for college-level work.

Aside from New York City's higher education system, at least 12 states explicitly bar state universities from providing remedial courses or take other steps like deferred admissions to steer students needing helping toward technical or community colleges. Some students who need to catch up attend two- and four-year institutions simultaneously. The efforts, educators say, have not cut back on the thousands of students who lack basic skills. Instead, the colleges have clustered those students in community colleges, where their chances of succeeding are low and where taxpayers pay a second time to bring them up to college level.

The phenomenon has educators struggling with fundamental questions about access to education, standards and equal opportunity. Michael W. Kirst, a Stanford professor who was a co-author of a report on the gap between aspirations and college attainment, said that 73 percent of students entering community colleges hoped to earn four-year degrees, but that only 22 percent had done so after six years. "You can get into school," Professor Kirst said. "That's not a problem. But you can't succeed.''

Nearly half the 14.7 million undergraduates at two- and four-year institutions never receive degrees. The deficiencies turn up not just in math, science and engineering, areas in which a growing chorus warns of difficulties in the face of global competition, but also in the basics of reading and writing. According to scores on the 2006 ACT college entrance exam, 21 percent of students applying to four-year institutions are ready for college-level work in all four areas tested, reading, writing, math and biology.

For many students, the outlook does not improve after college. The Pew Charitable Trusts recently found that three-quarters of community college graduates were not literate enough to handle everyday tasks like comparing viewpoints in newspaper editorials or calculating the cost of food items per ounce. The unyielding statistics showcase a deep disconnection between what high school teachers think that their students need to know and what professors, even at two-year colleges, expect them to know. At Cal State, the system admits only students with at least a B average in high school. Nevertheless, 37 percent of the incoming class last year needed remedial math, and 45 percent needed remedial English.

More here



Dubious quality of Australian professional childcare

These concerns could easily slide into mindless credentialism. Where is the importance of a kind heart mentioned?

Most childcare workers are trained in a system that lacks rigour and accountability, with no monitoring of the quality of the courses offered. At a time when the federal Government is pushing for a greater educational focus in childcare, early childhood expert Alison Elliott describes the industry as a shambles, with huge variations in the quality of care provided and the quality of carer. Dr Elliott, research director of the early childhood program at the Australian Council for Educational Research and a former early childhood professor, said the links between qualified staff and a good start in life for children were well-established.

Yet only 10 per cent of childcare staff had degree-level qualifications and 30 per cent had no qualification or formal training. Only NSW requires childcare centres to have an early childhood teacher on staff, in centres with more than 29 children, and Queensland requires all staff to have a qualification, which could be as little as a six-month vocational certificate.

Dr Elliott said carers in family daycare were unlikely to have a formal childcare qualification and a three- or four-year-old child in a centre or preschool could be in a group with an untrained person, a worker with a vocational certificate or a teacher. "Imagine if the same inequities existed for five-year-old children in the first year of school, some with qualified teachers and some without," Dr Elliott said. "Imagine in hospitals (where) some three- and four-year-old children have care from qualified medical staff, some don't. "There is a remarkable national silence on the appropriate education, professional preparation and credentials for key education and care staff in childcare, kindergarten and preschool. "Despite recognition of the importance of improving staff qualifications and competence, there is no agreement for a nationally consistent ... framework, no accreditation of early childhood preparation courses, no standards for professional practice and no registration for early childhood educators." In a paper presented recently to a workshop on childcare policy, Dr Elliott said the vocational training was guided by a national approach, but there was no consistency in the way the courses were delivered.

The courses - Certificate III, diplomas and advanced diplomas in children's services - are provided under the auspices of the Australian Qualifications Framework and contain only basic statements of what should be taught, lacking any real detail. The National Training Information Service provides the courses to registered training organisations. But Dr Elliott said no expertise was required to become a registered trainer and hundreds of organisations were registered around the country, with 50 in Queensland alone. Some students had passed the courses without speaking English.

"Gradually, strong, specialist early childhood courses are being eroded," Dr Elliott said. "If recent announcements about universal preschool education are to become a reality, early childhood teacher education capacity in universities will need rebuilding." Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop is pushing for a year of preschool for all children, and given the lack of stand-alone preschools in Australia, experts say most children will have that education in a childcare centre.

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 September, 2006

Parents shell out big bucks for private tutors

That the phenomenon is a comment on the inadequacies of regular schools is glided over below

When Casey Ravitz graduated in June from Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn, she had spent 14 years in three private schools in New York City. For eight of those years, she had kept weekly appointments with $100-an-hour Manhattan tutors. "I had a lot of friends who were being tutored, too," says Miss Ravitz, 18, an investment banker's daughter who moved to Chicago last month to attend DePaul University. "My last tutor wouldn't let me get away with anything. She was the most helpful person I've ever met."

In New York, where tuition at some private schools will top $30,000 this fall, parents are spending thousands of dollars more on one-on-one instruction. Some teens need extra coaching -- which can cost more than $500 an hour -- to get through chemistry or Franz Kafka. Others seek help to nab the A's required for a seat at Harvard or Princeton universities, says Lisa Jacobson, 47, who started Inspirica Ltd. in 1983 in Manhattan and now employs more than 100 tutors.

About 75 percent of private high school graduates in New York have had some tutoring, says Sandy Bass, editor of Private School Insider, a New York newsletter published five times a year. Rising demand for homework help, which is distinct from prepping for the SAT college entrance exam, has led the city's tutoring companies to add teachers and services. Some also are jacking up prices. On Manhattan's Upper West Side, Allison Baer, 32, who has a doctorate in psychology from Columbia University, charges $225 an hour for helping clients as young as 12 with writing skills. Ms. Baer had more business in this year's first half than in all of last year, she says, and will raise her fee by 20 percent next month.

Many parents feel pushed into hiring tutors to offer their children the same advantages as peers, says Boston child psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, whose books include "CrazyBusy" and "The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness." Pressuring children to perform can quash their long-term interest in learning, he says. "It's madness," Dr. Hallowell says. "We are living in an age of incredible anxiety about children maintaining the lifestyle that their parents have achieved."

Ms. Bass says the boom in tutoring is powered in part by Wall Street bonuses, which have been at record levels in the past three years. Bankers at securities firms such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. cashed a record $21.5 billion in bonus checks last year, according to the New York state comptroller's office. Ms. Bass also credits fierce competition for spots in elite high schools and colleges as the baby boom generation's teenagers create their own demographic bulge. From 2000 to 2004, the number of children ages 10 to 19 in Manhattan jumped 18.7 percent to 128,817, according to U.S. Census data.

The city's 87 independent schools, meanwhile, had 42,320 students last year, 11 percent more than in 2000, the New York State Association of Independent Schools says. "Kids are taking harder courses and filling their schedules with things that help them stand out," Ms. Bass says. "The tutor comes in to help them."

When it comes to pressuring students to achieve in school, New York is the epicenter, says Lloyd Thacker, a former admissions officer at the University of Southern California and founder of the Education Conservancy, an advocacy group in Portland, Ore. "Tutoring is the symptom, and the fact there is so much of it says there is a sickness," he says. "If past trends hold up, it's likely to spread."

Miss Ravitz, an only child who grew up on the Upper East Side, was tutored as a 7-year-old at Trevor Day School on West 88th Street. By the time she graduated from Poly Prep, she had had three more tutors. One helped with essay writing; another, called in when Miss Ravitz was struggling in 10th-grade French, steered her to B+'s in the class, she says. "The tutors were able to help her to buckle down," says her mother, Debbie Dunn, 52. Her daughter's final Poly Prep report card, with two A-'s and one B-, hung on Mrs. Dunn's refrigerator as she helped her pack for college.

Many private schools have loaded their curricula with university-level courses that demand hours of homework from students every night. At Horace Mann School in the Bronx, for example, an honors physics class that covers mechanics, thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism focuses on teaching students how to prepare scientific papers. At St. Ann's School in Brooklyn, one 12th-grade English class studies novels by Honore de Balzac, Feodor Dostoevski, Henry Fielding, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon and Virginia Woolf. "The pressure is real," says Edith Spiegel, whose daughter, now 20, was tutored while attending the Dalton School on the Upper East Side.

Individual instruction has ramped up all over the U.S. in the past five years, especially in California, Illinois and Texas, says Sandi Ayaz, executive director of the National Tutoring Association (NTA) in Lakeland, Fla. Her organization is based in a state where home-schooled students are spurring demand for tutors. NTA membership, which includes private tutors, companies and others involved in administering educational services, jumped 62 percent to 4,900 this year and has risen almost sixfold since 2001, Miss Ayaz says. In New York, the price and quantity of tutoring surpass other regions of the country, where services go for about $15 to $25 an hour, she says. "New York is on steroids, as usual."

Source



Australia: Exclusive school expels cyber bullies

While government schools lag behind, of course

Five students at an exclusive Sydney boys' school have been suspended or expelled in the past month for cyber-bullying other students on the internet. Computer technicians were called in to track down the perpetrators. The King's School headmaster, Timothy Hawkes, said police and computer technicians could track down students who bullied their peers anonymously on the internet. "Those who continue to bully, intimidate or harass will be removed from the school," Dr Hawkes said. The internet and text messages were new weapons being used to denigrate victims, he said.

Dr Hawkes also said Internet chat rooms were a particular problem because a victim could be bullied by a whole group. "The school has taken a hard line ... because bullying at schools can spread like cancer."

State Opposition education spokesman Brad Hazzard said principals should have the option of suspending students who bullied others on the internet. "If the problem is damaging to students, then suspension should be an alternative available to principals."

In a newsletter to parents last week, The King's School deputy headmaster, Peter Rainey, said King's students had used cyberspace to harass and bully fellow students. "The school has had quite an occurrence of cyber-bullying this term," he said. "Many students from all schools indulge themselves with unfortunate, unsavoury and inappropriate comments in cyberspace."

Federation of Parents and Citizens Association spokeswoman Sharon Roni-Canty said cyber-bullying was on the rise. "It's happening in all schools," Ms Roni-Canty said. "It's treated as chit-chat outside school hours, but it can be as distressing as face-to-face bullying."

The Department of Education added emailing and SMS to its anti-bullying policy last year, but does not keep figures on the number of students suspended for bullying. "Principals can place students on suspension for up to four days for transmitting abuse electronically by email or SMS text messages," a spokesperson said. "If the short suspension does not end the misbehaviour or if the nature of the behaviour is very serious, the principal can suspend a student for up to 20 days."

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

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



3 September, 2006

SAT Records Biggest Score Dip in 31 Years

The possibility that well-trained older teachers are dropping out and being replaced by dummies isn't mentioned

The first national results from the revamped SAT show the biggest annual drop in reading scores in 31 years and a significant edge for female students over males on the new writing section of the test, the College Board reported yesterday. The report on SAT scores for the high school Class of 2006 illuminated how the introduction of the writing section -- including a much-dreaded essay question -- and revisions to the mathematics and reading sections have changed an assessment tool still used for admissions by most colleges and universities.

The College Board said the average score on the test's critical reading section was down five points and the average math section score was down two points, for a joint score of 1021, the lowest since 2002. The reading decline was the largest since a nine-point drop in 1975 on what was then known as the verbal section.

Average scores for public and private school students in Maryland, Virginia and the District also declined. Maryland had the largest drop, eight points in reading and six in math. As a possible factor, state officials cited a large jump in test participation among Baltimore students who had not completed a rigorous high school curriculum. Officials noted that SAT scores are nearly always higher in more affluent areas, and that participation rates can affect scores.

On the new writing section, the average score nationwide was 497, for a new total average of 1518 out of a possible 2400 points. That benchmark will help students, guidance counselors and college admissions officers nationwide gauge results for a test that previously had a perfect score of 1600 -- 800 for verbal and 800 for math. The average writing score for females was 502, 11 points ahead of males, at 491. Female students generally do worse on math tests but better on writing tests, and the new section helped reduce the usual male lead on the overall average SAT score from 42 points to 26.

College Board officials blamed the national drop in scores on a parallel decline in the number of students taking the test more than once. Repeat test-taking, they said, can boost scores as much as 30 points combined for reading and math. Officials also said they were concerned that students are taking fewer composition and grammar courses. They noted that reading scores have stagnated during the past 30 years. But they rejected the view of many students, counselors and test-prep teachers that lower scores were the result of fatigue from the longer test. At 3 hours and 45 minutes, the SAT can last more than four hours with breaks. "I am not suggesting that students aren't tired after the test," Wayne Camara, College Board vice president for research and analysis, said at a news conference in Washington, "but our data show conclusively that student performance does not trail off at the end of the test."

Anita Kinney, a Catholic University freshman who was one of nearly 1.5 million high school seniors who took the new SAT, said it was ridiculous to discount exhaustion. "The test is four hours long. Enough said," she said. "The members of the College Board obviously have not sat down and taken the new SAT." David Hawkins, director of public policy for the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said many counselors are lobbying for more breaks in the test, or for administering the SAT in smaller chunks over two days. The College Board, a nonprofit based in New York that sponsors the SAT and other tests, said it is studying those requests.

More here



STUPID STUDENT LOSES EVENTUALLY

Isn't the real question why college students were sleeping at noon on a Monday?

"At about noon on Oct. 11, 1999, plaintiff was asleep on the bed when his pager went off," the court ruling reads. "The pager was on the 'desk, or dresser area, below the bed.' Plaintiff did not hear the pager at first, but his roommate, who also had been sleeping, woke up and yelled to plaintiff to 'turn ... off' the pager." Startled, the plaintiff - a 21-year-old senior at Stockton State College in New Jersey - fell off the bed and dislocated his shoulder.

He went to the student healthcare center, wore a sling for a few weeks and started sleeping up against the wall. And he sued the bed company for not warning him about the dangers of falling out of a loft bed 6 feet off the ground.

A New Jersey state appeals court recently threw out the $179,001 jury verdict that the student won. A "reasonably prudent person" wouldn't see a need to "warn users of beds sold for use by college students about the obvious and generally known risks," such as falling off, said the three-judge appellate panel. The judges no doubt could see college students guffawing at such warnings as "don't stick your head in a bucket full of water," "don't surf down dorm hallways on roller chairs" and "don't wear plastic dry-cleaning bags as face masks" - and then ignoring those ... along with the truly helpful ones.

Source



Australia: Reasons for low teacher quality

The teaching profession has been shoved into the spotlight by a disturbing new study that finds the quality of teachers has plummeted in the past 20 years. It also has reignited debate on the mounting pressures teachers face. The Australian Nation University study released this week found that in 1983 teachers were in the top 26 per cent of high school graduates in terms of literacy and numeracy. By 2003, they were only in the top 39 per cent. Even more alarmingly, the number of very high achievers had halved, while the ranks of poor performers had doubled.

Both federal Education Minister Julie Bishop and her Opposition counterpart Jenny Macklin are looking at performance-based pay incentives as a means of halting the decline. During a visit to Brisbane this week, Ms Bishop said that teachers in better-off schools would not benefit at the expense of those in "tough" schools. She said a suitable formula for measuring teacher performance could be found despite the vastly different challenges faced by teachers in a variety of different schools.

Unions and parents' groups are sceptical, however. "Mention that (performance bonuses) to a teacher working with a class of special education students and they'd laugh in your face," Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan said.

The ANU study concluded that falling wages relative to other professions was a key factor behind falling standards. "Compared with non-teachers with a degree, average teacher pay fell by more than 10 per cent during the period 1983 to 2003," it said. But the ANU researchers conceded that attracting the best school leavers was about more than money.

Serving and retired teachers contacted by The Courier-Mail listed student discipline, fears of false sexual harassment claims, workloads and lack of resources as reasons for the difficulty in enticing quality recruits.

Surprisingly, the No.1 complaint was a perceived drop in their status. None of them agreed to speak on the record for fear of upsetting Education Queensland or private employers, but their claims and other evidence suggested verbal abuse and assault by students was a major concern. In the four terms to mid-2004, for example, an average of four students a day were expelled from state schools for breaches of discipline and school rules.

Staffing levels continued to play on their minds despite recent recruitment drives. Despite all those woes, tertiary cut-off scores showed "good" courses still managed to attract quality graduates. Griffith University has managed to buck the trend to lowering entry scores for teaching places, which it puts down to a reputation for quality training. Dean of education Claire Wyatt-Smith said the market voted with its feet. "While the course content is heavily informed by education research, it has a strong practical component," Professor Wyatt-Smith said. "Students spend a day a week in classrooms early in their training."

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

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



2 September, 2006

States "fall short" on educational standards

Having missed one deadline already, states still face an enormous challenge in putting qualified teachers in all major classes, a federal review says. Some states are in much better shape than others, the Education Department said Wednesday. Most meet only some criteria in required new plans. Four fail altogether. Under the No Child Left Behind law, states were supposed to have highly qualified teachers in every core academic class by the end of the last school year. None made it.

So the Education Department demanded new state plans. They were to include details on how states would improve their teaching corps and ensure fairness for poor and minority children. The federal analysis of those plans yields a mixed picture. Most states got credit for showing serious effort. Yet a few were ordered to start over. Every state was given specific recommendations and told to follow them. Overall, most failed to provide all the answers the department asked for. Still, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said she was encouraged. "Many states took this very seriously, recognizing that good teachers make all the difference in whether or not our children succeed in their studies," she said in a statement.

Meanwhile, for parents and students, more patience will be required. The new goal is 100 percent compliance by the end of the 2006-07 school year, but some states may be years away. Most of the states - 37 of them, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico - met only some of the criteria. They must submit new data or plans this fall or risk facing penalties. Four states failed altogether: Hawaii, Missouri, Utah and Wisconsin. They must submit new plans and undergo monthly auditing of their teacher quality data, the department says.

The remaining nine states got favorable reviews for handing in complete plans and creative ideas about how they will improve. Those nine are Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, South Carolina and South Dakota. South Carolina, for example, was praised for paying incentives to teachers in high-need schools. Louisiana was credited for collecting clear, meaningful data on teacher quality.

All the plans were examined by outside review teams, mainly state officials. "We're pretty hopeful that if states seriously implement these plans - and we intend to monitor that - then change will happen," said Rene Islas, chief of staff for the department's elementary and secondary education office.

The promise of better teachers is a huge part of President Bush's education law. Every new development, though, underscores how daunting the mission is. The law defines "highly qualified" teachers as those who have a bachelor's degree, a state license and proven competency in every subject they teach. It is often regarded as a minimum qualification, because it requires teachers to know what they teach. Many teachers find the edict to be well intentioned but poorly defined. It does not measure attributes parents like, such as a teacher's creativity or ability to reach students. The law also orders equity, a point gaining more attention of late. Poor and minority kids are not supposed to have an unfair share of unqualified, inexperienced teachers.

The Education Trust, which advocates for underprivileged children, says states largely ignored the provision in their new plans. The group issued its own analysis last week. It found that most states are doing little to fix inequities in the teaching force. Department officials acknowledged Wednesday that equity was the biggest snag for states. Many states couldn't provide data on the quality of teachers serving poor and minority kids.

The department can withhold money from states that fall short on teacher quality. Based on a separate review earlier this year, seven states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico face the loss of federal aid if they don't improve their compliance. Those states are Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Virginia and Washington.

Source



UK: More As in math as courses dumbed down

The sharp rise in students getting the top grade in maths A-level was welcomed last night in spite of concern among some teachers that the subject had been dumbed down. Yesterday's A-level results revealed that 43.5% of candidates got an A grade - up almost 3% on last year. The subject, traditionally seen as the preserve of the brightest students, also witnessed an increase in the number sitting the exam - up almost 6% for maths and 23% for further maths, although there were still fewer candidates than in 2000.

Ellie Johnson Searle, the director of the Joint Council for Qualifications, welcomed the results, which follow a series of curriculum reforms designed to make the subject "more accessible". "The turnaround in mathematics - both in overall numbers and in achievement - is encouraging in the first year of the new specifications," she said.

However, a report from the government's exam watchdog this year found that the changes had left some teachers "shocked and appalled" at the "unacceptable dumbing down" of the course. Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, said it was a mistake to try to attract more students to maths A-level "by making it more accessible, in other words, easier".

Schools minister Jim Knight said the reforms had not diluted the exam, adding that the changes were made in consultation with teachers and maths experts. Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, welcomed the jump in the number of students taking maths after a slump at the start of the decade. "It was necessary to make changes to A-level maths to encourage greater participation and progression on to higher education and employment, and we hope that trend will continue," he said. "The changes came about after we listened to the views of the mathematics profession by giving students and teachers a more flexible and manageable A-level course." Tony Gardiner, an academic specialising in maths education at Birmingham University, said the rise in A grades was evidence that the exam was now easier than ever.

But Roger Porkess, the chief executive of Mathematics in Education and Industry, rejected the claim that the exam had been dumbed down. "These results are excellent news and a step towards being able to run a competitive economy."

Yesterday's results also revealed that the number of students taking physics dropped by 2.7% this year and around 17% over the past decade. Daniel Sandford Smith, the education manager at the Institute of Physics, said the trend was worrying and would have an impact on a wide range of degree subjects and careers.

Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, said that physics "remains on the critical list" with no sign of improvement. He was more optimistic about the other sciences. "Chemistry is showing some signs of recovery with the highest number of entries since 2000. This is 3.1% higher than last year, but 9.8% lower than in 1991. Biology looks healthy with 1.7% more students taking the subject than last year and 17.8% higher than in 1991."

There was a slight rise in the numbers taking A-level French, and a bigger increase in those taking German and Spanish. However, the number of students taking French and German has dropped by 47% and 42% respectively over the past decade, according to figures published by the University of Buckingham. The number of students taking modern community languages such as Russian, Portuguese, Punjabi and Chinese continued to rise, this by year by around 9%. The number of students taking media, film and television studies increased by 10%.

Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said last night that the "bottoming out" of entries in traditional modern languages was a serious problem. He called on ministers to make them compulsory in secondary schools as part of the education bill going through parliament.

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 September, 2006

School District Claims Individualism is Racism

CEI Responds with Amicus Brief in Supreme Court Affirmative Action Case

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has filed an amicus brief in support of a challenge to a Seattle school district's race-based student assignment plan. In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, the school district argues its decision to use race is entitled to deference, a presumption of correctness before the law. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

"CEI argues that the district isn't entitled to deference, because, among other reasons, the district made false and offensive statements on its website regarding racial matters, statements that also contradict its explanations in court briefs on why it uses race," explained Hans Bader, CEI legal counsel. "For example, on its website, the district has stated that individualism is racism, that only whites can be racists, and that `future time orientation' - planning ahead - is a stereotypically white characteristic that minorities shouldn't be expected to exhibit," Bader said.

In the amicus brief, CEI also points out that since the Supreme Court has said that prisons don't get deference to use race (in spite of a tradition of giving prisons such leeway in almost every other context), then K-12 schools shouldn't get it either. The case is scheduled to be argued before the court by the end of the year, with a decision expected in 2007.

Source



"PROGRESSIVE" SCHOOL FINDS IT NEEDS TO FINGERPRINT KIDS

Wotta laugh!

A pioneering comprehensive known for progressive, liberal policies has upset parents by seeking to fingerprint every one of its 1,500 pupils when they return from their summer holidays next week. Holland Park school wants to build a database so that children turning up late can be identified and their time of arrival recorded in a "live register" by pressing a finger on an electronic pad. The school has spent 4,500 pounds on technology to build the database of pupils' prints.

Parents and local councillors, however, have complained that the system to control truancy may breach the pupils' human rights because the information could be passed to the police. Voluntary fingerprinting has become widespread in schools, especially for taking out library books. Eton college introduced a fingerprint system last year to identify pupils old enough to drink in its Tap bar. Pupils aged 17 can drink one pint of beer if they buy food but they have to register with a fingerprint.

Holland Park school, which opened in 1958, was one of the first comprehensives in Britain and was once dubbed the "Eton of comprehensives". Many of its pupils come from rough council estates, while others are drawn from the liberal elite in the expensive streets of Holland Park and Notting Hill, for whom the school became a magnet in the 1960s. Hilary Benn, the international development secretary, was sent there by his father Tony. Other celebrity parents have included Lady Antonia Fraser, the historian, and the late film director John Huston.

However, the school's latest move is seen as far from progressive. It is believed to be one of the first schools to seek to fingerprint every pupil in an effort to monitor their whereabouts. If late arrivals fail to press a pad at the gates or in a classroom, they will be recorded as absent.

Marianne Alapini, a local Labour councillor, said she had spoken to 15 worried parents. "We cannot understand the rationale behind this," she said. "It raises all sorts of questions about human rights, data protection and child protection." Mohammed Abdul-Saaka, vice-chairman of the borough's police consultative group, who has raised the issue with Liberty, the civil rights organisation, said: "This has been done without any consultation and has opened a Pandora's box of complications."

Renate Stewart, 16, a pupil leaving the school after taking her GCSEs, said: "I think that the school does so many things to try to improve its image but they should be spending this money on things which inspire the students. That might make the students feel better about being at school. "It does make you feel as if you are some kind of criminal."

Conservative-led Kensington and Chelsea council, which runs the school, said pupils would have one finger scanned and this information would be converted into a code number that would be recorded and registered when a pupil placed a finger on the reader. A council spokesman said: "This is not fingerprinting of the type associated with the police. The ability to record student attendance enhances the school's efforts to ensure a safe and secure environment for all students and staff." He said no records would be kept of the scan and the data would not be shared. However, if the police asked if a pupil was in school on a particular day, the school would tell 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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