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30 September, 2011

Justice Department promotes bad English in U.S. schools

“Facing a possible civil-rights lawsuit, Arizona has struck an agreement with federal officials to stop monitoring classrooms for mispronounced words and poor grammar from teachers of students still learning the English language. . .The state’s agreement with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education allows it to avoid further investigation and a possible federal civil-rights lawsuit,” notes the Arizona Republic. As legal commentator Walter Olson notes, this is nutty, but it has the apparent support of the nation’s largest teacher’s union, the National Education Association, which passed a “resolution ‘decrying disparate treatment on the basis of ‘pronunciation’ — quite a switch from the old days when teachers” were sticklers for correct pronunciation.

As I noted earlier, the Justice Department has gone even further in other cases, making the sweepingly overbroad and inaccurate claim that discrimination based on accent, pronunciation, or language is a form of racial or national origin discrimination. That argument ignores two federal appeals court rulings that rejected the idea that an employer’s requirement that employees speak English on the job is illegal discrimination. (See Garcia v. Spun Steak Co. (1993) and Garcia v. Gloor (1980).) (When another federal agency, the EEOC, sues private employers for expecting their employees to speak a language their colleagues and supervisors can understand, it claims that the courts should ignore these prior appellate court rulings, and instead follow its own “national origin” guidelines, which treat English-only rules as a form of “national origin harassment” and racially “disparate impact.” Amazingly, trial courts in Massachusetts and elsewhere have accepted this absurd argument, even though the Supreme Court long ago rejected the idea that EEOC guidelines supersede prior court decisions or have the force of law, as it made clear in rejecting EEOC guidelines in its decisions in EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Co. (1991) and General Electric v. Gilbert (1976).)

The Justice Department has overstepped its authority by promulgating “guidelines” requiring accommodation of non-English speakers under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Justice Department guidelines suggest that recipients of federal funds, such as private health care providers, can be liable for “disparate impact” discrimination if they fail to provide translation services for just a single non-English speaker. Influenced by such guidelines, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest has demanded that drugstores hire bilingual interpreters.

But the Justice Department guidelines are legally flawed in two key respects. First, the Supreme Court cast doubt on whether “disparate impact” claims, which do not require a showing of discriminatory intent, are even valid under Title VI in Alexander v. Sandoval (2001), which barred any damage claims or private lawsuits for “disparate impact” under Title VI. Second, it is blackletter law, under cases like Coe v. Yellow Freight (1981), that a claim of unintentional (or disparate impact) discrimination cannot be based on a practice’s effect on just one minority group member in an establishment: there must be a large class of affected people at that establishment. Yet the Justice Department’s guidelines suggest that a health care provider might be liable for not having a translator to accommodate each and every speaker of an obscure language like Hmong that did not even exist in written form until recently.

Even worse, the Education Department, where I used to work as a civil rights attorney, interprets Title VI to require that school districts translate all notices into every conceivable language spoken by even one student or parent using the school system, such as Hmong, and to ignore the cost of oral translations. That is contrary to basic principles of disparate-impact law, which recognize that high cost can be a defense (not even the Justice Department suggests that costs should be ignored), and that an institutional practice that inadvertently harms just a single minority group member is not illegal discrimination unless it systematically excludes members of that person’s minority group.

It is unlikely that the Justice and Education Departments even care that their interpretation of federal civil-rights law is very suspect. The Justice Department has become more politicized under the Obama administration, as droves of left-wing ideologues have been hired; and the Education Department has recently shown contempt for federal court rulings limiting the reach of liability under civil-rights statutes like Title IX (and also contempt for civil liberties such as free speech, and limits on government power).

SOURCE






British middle-class students face fresh squeeze on university places

Middle-class teenagers face missing out on university places next year after institutions were ordered to admit more disadvantaged students. Currently, universities set their own targets on increasing the number of applicants from ‘under-represented’ groups, such as those from low income families.

From today, universities have been ordered to set ‘at least one target’ on increasing the number of such students they actually admit, instead of simply focusing on attracting applications.

The change, demanded by the Office for Fair Access, the higher education watchdog, is a trade-off for being allowed to charge up to £9,000 a year in student tuition fees. Universities could be stripped of the right to charge the higher fees unless they meet the new demand.

Elite universities will face intense scrutiny from OFFA next year as figures show that only one in seven students at Oxford and one in eight at Cambridge qualify for full maintenance grants – available only to poorer students – from the Government.

This compares to more than 50 per cent at Bedfordshire University. All institutions wishing to charge above the basic current fee of £1,285 a year must have an approved ‘access agreement’ in place with OFFA. This lays out the targets set by the university for improving access among ‘under-represented’ groups.

A report for 2009-2010 published today by OFFA found that one in four universities had not yet met their targets. These included universities such as Cambridge, Bristol and Warwick.

Sir Martin Harris, director of OFFA, said he was ‘concerned’ to understand the reasons why the targets had not been met. He added that from 2012-13, OFFA will ‘require institutions to set themselves at least one target around broadening their entrant pool’. Sir Martin went on: ‘Up to now it has been possible for institutions to restrict their targets to broadening their applicant pool’.

But Dr Tim Hands, headmaster of Magdalen College School, Oxford, said: ‘It’s difficult to see that [this] isn’t social engineering. ‘It’s also difficult to see that it won’t affect subjects like engineering, maths and modern foreign languages which the Government has identified as crucial to the economy.’

SOURCE





British schools will be judged on gay and gipsy pupils' progress

Schools will be penalised if they fail to improve the progress of ‘vulnerable’ groups of pupils such as those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual.

New Ofsted guidelines reveal that heads of primary and secondary schools must show their education ‘meets the needs of the range of pupils’ in their classrooms, including gipsy and traveller children.

Schools could see their teaching being judged ‘inadequate’ if they do not reduce gaps in achievement between different groups who make up a significant proportion of their student population.
New Ofsted guidelines reveal that heads of primary and secondary schools must show their education ¿meets the needs of the range of pupils¿ in their classrooms, including gipsy and traveller children.

New Ofsted guidelines reveal that heads of primary and secondary schools must show their education 'meets the needs of the range of pupils' in their classrooms, including gipsy and traveller children. Picture posed by models

However, critics hit out at the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual pupils in an Ofsted list of groups that could be monitored for signs of progress.

They insist that head teachers will not wish to pry into the private lives of pupils and claim that youngsters should be treated as individuals, not groups.

There are also fears that teachers will feel forced to categorise pupils by their sexuality at a time when they are young and impressionable.

But an Ofsted spokesman insisted last night: ‘It is about schools being aware of the different groups of pupils that might attend their schools and doing all they can to ensure they reach their full potential. ‘These groups could differ depending on the nature and type of school and Ofsted does not have a prescriptive list.’

Today Ofsted unveils a new inspection framework which will make it harder for schools to be ranked ‘outstanding’. From next January, inspectors will concentrate on four key areas: achievement of pupils; quality of teaching and learning; effectiveness of leadership and management, and standards of behaviour and safety.

However, there will be an even greater focus on ‘narrowing gaps in performance’ for different groups of pupils such as ethnic minorities and children in care. Inspectors will evaluate the standards achieved and progress made by these cohorts compared with other pupils in the school and with national trends.

New Ofsted guidance says: ‘It is important to test the school’s response to individual needs by observing how well it helps all pupils to make progress and fulfil their potential, especially those whose needs, dispositions, aptitudes or circumstances require particularly perceptive and expert teaching and/or additional support.

‘In any particular school, such pupils may include disabled pupils; boys; girls; groups of pupils whose prior attainment may be different from that of other groups; those who are academically more able; pupils for whom English is an additional language; minority ethnic pupils; gipsy, Roma and traveller children; pupils known to be eligible for free school meals; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual pupils; young carers, pupils from low income backgrounds and other vulnerable groups.’

Brian Lightman of the Association of School and College Leaders criticised the highlighting of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual pupils. He said: ‘I’m not aware of any way in which such pupils might be identified in a school. It would be inappropriate for any headteacher to pry into the private lives of children.’

Russell Hobby of the National Association of Head Teachers said: ‘It would be simpler to say that every pupil should reach their potential. Each school will have different groups and communities.

‘What an inspector used to do, and should do, is go in and look and what the broad types of pupils are and look at whether there are any groups that are falling behind and home in on those. ‘But if you start getting rigid and start defining all these subcategories at length, the data can become less and less meaningful.’

Professor Alan Smithers of Buckingham University branded the list ‘absurd’. He said: ‘Schools have my sympathy. It’s political correctness that will get in the way of educating every child to his or her potential.’

The new Ofsted framework, which will come into effect in January, applies to all primary and secondary schools in England.

SOURCE



29 September, 2011

More on THAT bake sale

It has attracted worldwide publicity

Despite allegations of being "purposefully offensive," a Republican student group in California held a controversial bake sale on Tuesday in opposition of pending legislation that would allow universities to consider race, gender and ethnicity in the admissions process.

California Senate Bill 185, which was passed by the state Legislature and now awaits Gov. Jerry Brown's signature, would authorize the University of California and the California State University to consider those and "other relevant factors" during the admissions process.

If signed into law, S.B. 185 would be in direct opposition to Proposition 209, also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative, a ballot proposition approved in 1996 that amended the state's constitution to prohibit public institutions from considering race, sex or ethnicity during the admissions process.

Though Proposition 209 bans awarding admissions decisions based on race and ethnicity alone, S.B. 185 would allow admissions officials to view ethnicity as part of the student's background as a whole, Jesse Choper, a UC Berkeley law professor told The Daily Californian.

The bill would only authorize UC and CSU to consider race, gender, ethnicity and other factors in admissions decisions, but will not mandate them to do so, the newspaper reported.

Shawn Lewis, president of the Berkeley College Republicans, which hosted the "Increase Diversity Bake Sale" at a campus plaza, said the event was intended to oppose any policy that treats one racial group different from another.

The bake sale, which was held just yards away from a phone bank event urging people to call Brown's office in support of the S.B. 185, charged all white men $2 for cookies and other baked goods, while Asian men were charged $1.50, Latino men paid $1, black men 75 cents and Native Americans 25 cents. All women received 25 cents off those prices.

"After the UC Berkeley student government endorsed the bill, we decided a response was needed," Lewis wrote on the group's website. "Thus this bake sale was formulated ... If preferences based on skin color are ok [sic] for college admissions, they should be ok [sic] for other aspects of life. We agree that the event is inherently racist, but that is the point."

Lewis said the bake sale, which has led to threats and intimidation, is in direct response to the Associated Students of the University of California's sponsoring of a phone bank with a goal of more than 1,100 calls to Brown's office. It is scheduled to be held until 2 p.m. local time.

According to The Daily Californian's live blog of the event, roughly 300 people participated in a silent protest of the bake sale. Several campus police officers monitored the event, the newspaper reported.

Earlier, political science professor Wendy Brown told the newspaper that she tried to buy all of the group's baked goods but was not allowed to do so. "I thought the Republicans were free enterprise, but they won't let me buy all the cupcakes," she told the newspaper.

Evan Westrup, a spokesman for Gov. Brown, told FoxNews.com that the governor has not taken a stance on the bill and generally does not comment prior to taking action. He has until Oct. 9 to sign or veto the bill, Westrup said.

Meanwhile, University of California Student Association President Claudia Magana said having knowledge of an applicant's racial or ethnic background will allow university officials to make a "more informed" admission decision. "UC students strongly support this bill, and we will be taking action to let the Governor know that we expect him to sign it," Magana said in a statement released on Monday.

S.B. 185 does not mandate quotas nor allows individuals of different ethnic groups to be held to different standards, said Magana, adding that it will also not repeal Proposition 209.

"SB 185 is an important step in the right direction," her statement continued. "In part because of the extensive institutional racism that persists in our state and nation, it is critical that our University is aware of the race of applicants, in order to fully understand and contextualize an individual's background and experiences."

Joey Freeman, external affairs vice president at UC Berkeley, said the bake sale does not further a "productive dialogue" and instead harms the campus climate.

"We welcome all students to participate in dialogue about the best ways for us to increase diversity and ensure that our University is accessible to all Californians," Freeman said in a statement. "Still, we hope that such dialogue can occur without purposefully offensive to specific groups on our campuses."

Neal McCluskey, an education analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington, said a "reasonable reading" of S.B. 185 would find it unconstitutional since the state bans discrimination to any individual or groups on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the "normal operation" of public employment, public education or public contracting.

"It certainly looks like it would be in violation of the state's constitution," McCluskey told FoxNews.com. "That said, I'm familiar enough with affirmative action and you can guess what their argument will be -- that this is part of 'normal and necessary' operations of public colleges and universities."

McCluskey said he's not surprised at the charged reactions on both sides of the issue. "This has been a problem in this country for decades, centuries I should say, where distinctions made by government based on race, sexual orientation, gender and ethnicity, when a government sides one way or another based on one of their group identities, then it is hugely controversial because this is the government choosing winners and losers and not on merit," he said.

"And that completely flies in the face of the idea of the United States where individuals succeed or fail based on their own merits," he continued. "We shouldn't be shocked at all when this leads to constant conflict because nobody wants to end up on the losing side because they weren't born with the characteristics the government decides to favor."

SOURCE







Why I aprove of Berkeley’s “racist” bake sale

by John Stossel

Some College Republicans want to satirize California’s proposed affirmative action law, which would direct California public universities to consider race, gender, ethnicity, and national/geographic origin when admitting students. They need a new law? I assume the schools do that anyway.

Affirmative action may be a good thing—a way to compensate for past discrimination. While that may have been useful when I attended college, I think it’s no longer helpful today. Affirmative action is now part of the minority special privilege machine, a component of which is perpetual victimhood.

Useful or not, affirmative action it is a form of racism, and the bake sale helps make that clear. But I don’t understand the Berkeley students’ price list. Asians, not Whites, should be at the top , since studies show that often, Asian students need significantly higher SAT scores to be admitted.

I once held a similar sale: I stood in midtown Manhattan shouting, “Cupcakes for sale.” My price list read:

Asians -- $1.50
Whites -- $1.00
Blacks/Latinos -- 50 cents

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

I understand why people got angry. But my racist sale led to some interesting discussions. One young woman began by criticizing me, “It’s absolutely wrong.”

But after I raised the parallel with college admissions, she said: “No race of people is worth more than another. Or less.”
But do you believe in affirmative action in colleges? I asked. “I used to,” she replied.

Those are the kind discussions students should have. Berkeley administrators were not happy when they learned of the College Republicans plan, but I’m glad that they will allow today’s bake sale. At Bucknell University, the administration shut a bake sale down. A university is supposed to be a place for open discussion. Satirizing affirmative action shouldn’t be off-limits.

SOURCE




U.K. Schools Ban Witches’ Black Hats for Promoting…Racism Among Children?

It seems nothing — from the traditional dress of age-old children’s storybook characters to the very sheet of paper those stories are written on — is above the scrutiny and condemnation of those seeking to push a politically correct agenda and tie even the most seemingly innocent of things to an assault on racial “equality.”

That’s correct, according to diversity and equality “experts,” the Wicked Witch of the West (or at least witches in general), promotes racism among children simply because she dons a black hat. Likewise, the pale, glistening colors typically worn by “fairies” — those ethereal creatures of middle earth so often portrayed in sweetness and light — are merely calculated, cynical wardrobe choices intended to dupe children into believing that all things light, or white, in color are inherently “good.”

Now, to combat that perceived threat, primary school teachers in Britain are allegedly being encouraged by equality advocates to censor fictional children’s characters, eliminating witches’ black pointed hats in favor of white ones, while dressing fairies in dark colors. Proponents of this technique claim the method will eliminate “racism” in children as young as two.

But that’s not all. Even white writing paper has come under fire. The Telegraph reports:

Another staple of the classroom – white paper – has also been questioned by Anne O’Connor, an early years consultant who advises local authorities on equality and diversity.

Children should be provided with paper other than white to draw on and paints and crayons should come in “the full range of flesh tones”, reflecting the diversity of the human race, according to the former teacher.

These rather drastic-sounding measures to ensure racial equality among children are reportedly outlined in a series of guides in “Nursery World” magazine.

Without providing any scientific proof to support the assertion, the guides posit that young children could possess the inclination to express racist views — and that it is therefore the obligation of nursery school teachers to help the children “unlearn” these undesirable traits.

Eerily, the term “unlearn” conjures images of uninstalling software programs on your laptop — or, perhaps more pointedly — the reconditioning sequence made famous in the movie A Clockwork Orange, in which the protagonist’s mind is wiped “clean” of thoughts deemed socially unacceptable, thereby erasing his free will.

One of the alleged goals of the program is to form positive association with dark colors. The Telegraph reports that this “anti-bias” method was developed in the U.S. as part of special interest group’s multiculturalism agenda.

That method, promising to challenge racism, sexism and ageism, has now traveled across the pond, infiltrating at least a portion of the British school system. O‘Connor has reportedly developed material for Lancashire council’s childcare service:

“This is an incredibly complex subject that can easily become simplified and inaccurately portrayed,” she said.

“There is a tendency in education to say ‘here are normal people and here are different people and we have to be kind to those different people’, whether it’s race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or faith.

“People who are feeling defensive can say ‘well there’s nothing wrong with white paper’, but in reality there could be if you don’t see yourself reflected in the things around you. “As an early years teacher, the minute you start thinking, ‘well actually, if I give everyone green paper, what happens’, you have a teaching potential.

“People might criticise this as political correctness gone mad. But it is because of political correctness we have moved on enormously. If you think that we now take it for granted that our buildings and public highways are adapted so people in wheelchairs and with pushchairs can move around. Years ago if you were in a wheelchair, then tough luck. We have completely moved and we wouldn’t have done that without the equality movement.”

Not everyone is in agreement with color-mania, however. Margaret Morrissey, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Parents Outloud told the Telegraph, “I’m sure these early years experts know their field but they seem to be obsessed about colour and determined to make everyone else obsessed about it too.”

“Not allowing toy witches to wear black seems to me nonsense and in the same vein as those people who have a problem with ‘Bar Bar Black Sheep’ or ‘The Three Little Pigs’. Children just see a sheep in a field, whether it be black, grey, white or beige. I have worked with children for 41 years and I don’t believe I have ever met a two year old who was in any way racist or prejudiced.”

Meanwhile, it might be worth pointing out that, at least in Technicolor, the most infamous witch of all was in fact the color green.

SOURCE



28 September, 2011

How Lazy Is the Professoriat?

I rather agree with Bryan Caplan below. I always considered most of my academic colleagues to be frauds leeching off the taxpayer and in some years I got more papers published than the whole of the rest of my Department put together(a Department with about 20 academics in it). But as Caplan says, their behaviour is largely a reaction to the system in which they work

In my view, low conscientiousness is a major cause of poverty. Laziness and impulsiveness lead to low marginal productivity. Sooner or later the market notices and gives you your just deserts. A smug, self-satisfied view, I know, but I'm only a messenger.

Still, I have to wonder: What would the world say if someone shined a hidden camera in my office? How hard do I really work?

I could just compare myself to other professors. But that begs the question. When I look around academia, I see lazy people everywhere. (My own impeccable department excepted, of course). Many professors virtually retire the day they get tenure. Plenty of others start even earlier. It's fairly common for tenure-track professors to "work" seven years with zero discernible output. By most measures, professors are extremely successful. How do such success and such laziness coexist?

To resolve this paradox, you need to remember that laziness is a preference - and that behavior is the reaction of preference to environment. Before you pronounce a professor "lazy," you should ask yourself, "How would most people act given his situation?"

Imagine taking randomly selected people, putting them in an office, and saying, "In seven years, your peers will decide whether your research is important enough to merit a job for life. See you in seven years." That's only a slight caricature of what it's like to be a tenure-track professor. You have to decide what's worth studying. You have to figure out something original to say. And you have to actually say it despite your peers' presumptions of apathy and negativity.

I submit that, placed in this situation, the vast majority of people would accomplish nothing. Indeed, I bet that many people would voluntarily resign because they wouldn't know what to do with themselves. Even if, by normal standards, you have a very good work ethic, you still need someone to (a) tell you what to do, (b) clearly tell you how well you're doing, and (c) reward you before you forget why you deserve a reward. Professors, in contrast, are supposed to toil day after day on a self-defined goal, bereft of clear-cut feedback, to impress habitually apathetic and negative peers seven years in the future. Bizarre.

On a gut level, professors who don't publish appall me. Untenured professors who don't publish actually baffle me. How can they squander their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity? On reflection, though, the amazing thing about professors isn't that they accomplish so little. The amazing thing about professors is that they accomplish anything at all. They may look lazy to outside observers - and even to each other. But considering their situation, professors are amazingly industrious.

SOURCE





Plan to give poor British pupils extra credit to discriminate against private school classes

Britain's biggest exam board is proposing to rank all A-level students according to the schools they attend. The proposal would allow universities to discriminate against pupils from private schools.

The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance plan means universities could offer places to students from disadvantaged homes who showed potential but had performed less well in exams than their peers at better schools.

Under the proposal, a pupil at a weak school who scored a lower grade than a rival at a good school could get extra credit in the form of university entrance points. Until now, boards have judged pupils only on their exams and not their schooling.

The plan is contained in a paper prepared for discussion by Dr Neil Stringer, senior research associate at the AQA centre for education research and policy, and being circulated at the party conferences for debate this month.

Critics fear candidates will be penalised for achieving good A-level results at a good school. Independent schools are also concerned the approach could discriminate against disadvantaged pupils to whom they have offered scholarships.

Dr Tim Hands, headmaster of Magdalen College, Oxford, and co-chairman of the Independent Schools’ Universities Committee, said last night: ‘It is extraordinary. It takes no account of home background or the amount of tutoring a pupil could have.’

Professor Alan Smithers, head of the Centre for Education and Employment Studies at the University of Buckingham, said: ‘The possibility for errors is enormous. ‘There must be concerns about the ranking the candidates are awarded.’

Dr Stringer gives the example of the medical school St George’s, part of the University of London, in support of his argument. The school offers places to students with lower A-level grades (BBC rather than AAB), providing their performance is 60 per cent better than the average for their school.

In another example, pupil A at a low-performing comprehensive in a disadvantaged area gets an exam score of 36 out of 40. But he is entitled to bonus points as a result of his school’s low ranking.

Pupil B goes to a top independent school with no pupils on free school meals and got 38 for his exam score. However, he faces being penalised on his school’s ranking.

It would be for a university to decide what to do with the information.

SOURCE




The crude social engineering of A-levels insults any child who wants to succeed on merit

Why do some societies succeed while others fail? Why is it that some nations can prosper while others decline? Is it a matter of natural resources, cultural factors or wise public spending? Or some indecipherable ingredient which is a matter of the purest chance?

History teaches us that it is none of the above. Nations succeed when they put talent first: those societies which have guaranteed the highest standards for all their citizens, throughout the ages, have been those which have been the purest meritocracies.

Those who don’t promote on merit, whether crony-ridden sheikhdoms or creaking Euro institutions, find they quickly decline, whatever riches they start out with.

Deciding that jobs, or positions of influence, should be allocated on the basis of where you come from, not what you can do, is the sort of thinking we should leave to defenders of the feudal system and discredited Marxists.

But, sadly, the deluded notion that background matters more than ability is still alive, well and undermining excellence in the cloistered seminar rooms of the Left-wing education establishment.

How else to explain the bizarre idea which has emanated from one of our examination boards that students with weaker A-levels, if they’ve attended a poor school, should be able to automatically leapfrog students who possess stronger A-levels in the race for university places?

Exam boards exist to measure ability, not engage in crude social engineering. And the A-level, as Britain’s most demanding school-level qualification, is the real test of their ability to maintain educational standards.

The point of the A-level is to equip students with the knowledge to flourish at university. A-levels should also help universities select the students best equipped to succeed, by the simple and old-fashioned expedient of giving the most able students the highest grades.

Sadly, in my job as Education Secretary, I’ve been confronted with more and more evidence from universities that A-levels are no longer doing the job they should. Professors tell me they have to provide catch-up classes for bright students who arrive at university with good grades, but who have not been provided with enough knowledge in the A-level syllabus to match the performance of students from other countries, or students who started the same course a generation ago.

The same academics also tell me they are finding it more and more difficult to identify the most able pupils, when so many come with fistfuls of As and A stars.

The delight that hard-working students feel when they get a string of great passes curdles into anger when they find that still doesn’t mark them out from the crowd or guarantee a cherished college place.

The last Government invented the A star because so many were getting As. Now the numbers walking off with a clutch of A stars means we may soon have to introduce a veritable galaxy of A double and triple stars simply to allow the top talent to stand out.

It’s quite wrong to blame pupils for this fiasco. They work harder than ever, what with GCSE modules and AS levels before their final A2 exams.

They deserve better. Exam boards should be working harder to get tests which are truly stretching, and provide marking schemes which are more rigorous. But instead we have the silly idea from one exam board, tellingly launched at the Labour Party conference, that we should further devalue the gold standard.

The education system, it is argued, should inflate the value of lower grades if a candidate comes from what is believed to be a weaker school. All students are to be treated equally, but some will be treated rather more equally than others.

The authors of this scheme, I am sure, imagine they are doing their bit to advance social mobility.

Well, as the beneficiary of old-fashioned ideals which genuinely advanced social mobility, such as hard work, great teaching and academic rigour, let me assure the authors of this modest proposal that they are insulting any child who wants to succeed on their own merits.

No one wants to think they’ve been admitted somewhere on sufferance rather than ability. And this scheme risks tipping the scales against the deserving. A child from a normal home on a scholarship at a private school, as I was, would suffer compared with a child from a wealthier background who goes to a state school, but benefits from expensive private tutoring, as the children of so many distinguished Labour politicians have.

It’s because I came from a modest background — my father was a fish merchant — that I am so passionate about the power of great education to transform people’s lives. I spent my first months in care, before being adopted and brought up by wonderful parents who believed in education, even though they’d both had to leave school before they were 16.

I was fortunate to go to good state schools, before winning a scholarship to a private school. At every point I benefited from excellent teachers who didn’t make excuses about their pupils’ backgrounds. They expected every child to succeed. And they demanded the same level of discipline, application and ambition from every student because they thought we were all capable of excellence if we tried our utmost.

That same attitude permeates our best schools today, including those in our poorest areas: London schools such as Burlington Danes in White City, or Mossbourne in Hackney, which have more than their fair share of students from disadvantaged homes. They do much better in exams than many schools, including private schools, in leafy areas.

Their students win places at Oxbridge on merit. All because their heads, from the moment any child arrives, refuse to accept excuses for under-performance.

Because once you accept that a child is likely to do less well than his contemporaries, you condemn that child to fall further and further behind, to never know the satisfaction of pushing himself beyond his limits, to be a prisoner of others’ prejudice. The victim of the bigotry of low expectations.

That is why, instead of covering up poor performance — or purposefully skewing university entrance procedures — we need to demand more of our education system.

The way to get students from poor homes in weak schools into good universities is not to rig exams, establish quotas or inflate grades. We should improve the state schools in the first place. All the ingenuity that academics devote to lowering the bar to entry to college should instead go into raising standards in the classroom much earlier.

The reason I am giving teachers more powers to impose tougher discipline, replacing heads in schools that are under-performing, reforming school league tables to reward rigour, getting rid of low-value qualifications in soft subjects and paying more to get top maths and science graduates into teaching, is because I want the scandalously high number of children who have been let down by poor schools to be given a proper education at last.

The children in our poorest schools are, overwhelmingly, from our poorest homes. Many of them will have the talent to rise to the very top. To become business leaders, academics, surgeons and head teachers. But they will achieve their full potential only if we ditch, once and for all, the dismally defeatist mindset which believes that, in education, second-best is good enough.

SOURCE



27 September, 2011

No Child Left Behind is leaving all children behind

The federal education program No Child Left Behind is leaving behind the very children it was supposedly designed to help. The law dictates that all elementary and secondary school children in government-run public schools be “proficient” in reading and math by 2014, according to standards set by politicians and federal bureaucrats. According to President Obama’s secretary of education, most of the nation’s schools are on the brink of getting a failing grade. Nearly 80 percent of schools are in danger of losing their federal funding, leaving the children in their classrooms behind for “failing” to meet bureaucratic standards.

President George W. Bush came up with this program and a Republican Congress passed it in 2002. This is apparently one of the few failures President Barack Obama doesn’t blame on his Republican predecessors. The president and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have decided fix the problem by allowing states to do what some have already tried to do – opt out of the federal mandate.

So here you have yet another federal government program that is not only unconstitutional but also an utter and complete failure. Yet rather than admitting it’s a failure and ending the program, politicians and bureaucrats insist on trying to “fix it.” However, the alleged fix is just a subterfuge for imposing standards the administration had already written but couldn’t get Congress to pass. This is another example of the dictatorial style used by modern American presidents from both parties. It is a classic example of the ruling elites trying to conceal failure in a blatant attempt to simply save face and subvert the limits imposed by law and the Constitution to expand their power.

Several states had already tried to resist this latest federal intrusion into education. Utah’s legislature almost passed a law that said the state’s education standards trumped those of No Child Left Behind, but then backed off because the state could have lost $76 million in federal funding. Idaho, South Dakota and Montana said they’d ignore parts of the law. Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky applied for waivers even before they were announced. All of these states were close to being labeled “failing.”

Given this trend, I think it is a good bet that a majority of the states will attempt to opt-out of this federal burden. However, the “waivers” Secretary Duncan will dangle in front of the states will come with the usual strings attached, making it difficult for states to actually obtain these waivers. As a result, it’s very likely that only those states with passing grades will be left subject to the law. This will so skew the grades that federal education apparatchiks will be able to finally declare that No Child Left Behind is a success.

In defending No Child Left Behind, President Obama was right about one thing. He said, “Making a promise to educate every child with an excellent teacher, that’s the right thing to do, that’s the right goal.” The issue is not whether or not we want our children to have excellent teachers and a first-rate education. Of course we do. The question is whether parents can, or should, rely on government to provide it, or rather assume the responsibility themselves. The libertarian answer to that question is clear: nothing as important as educating a child should be left to bumbling bureaucrats.

The No Child Left Behind bungle is another situation where a government-run public education system doesn’t get a passing grade, at any level. One out of every three students entering high school doesn’t graduate. Minority students are twice as likely as whites to drop out. Even students who get their diploma have the reading and math skills expected of middle school students in other nations.

The worst consequence of taking the responsibility for educating young minds from parents and bestowing it on the State is that the task is botched so horribly. Some children are educated quite well in a state-supported system but most barely receive an average level of education. And, far too many fall through the expansive cracks of society that are the floorboards of a bloated bureaucracy grown so large it has become impossible to keep track of everyone.

Government-run education is a twelve-year “cookie-cutter” factory system that treats everyone the same and produces more than its fair share of functional illiterates. Secretary Duncan admitted as much when he said, “”No Child Left Behind treated everybody the same, as interchangeable, and that just doesn’t make any sense to me.” I am glad he thinks so! It never has made any sense to me.

But that is what government programs inherently do. They are intentionally designed that way, to always threat everyone and everything “the same.” They cannot operate any other way. Deciding educational issue by majority vote inevitably results in “dumbing-down” what is taught. Children in government-run public schools are not educated, they are indoctrinated. These children are not trained to take charge of governing themselves; but rather, they are almost programmed to be willing taxpayers who obey a ruling elite.

A child’s first and most important teachers are his or her parents. What a child learns and where he or she learns it is a decision best made by parents, not politicians, bureaucrats or educational experts. The most important thing we can do for the education of our children is to return the responsibility for that education to whom it belongs, to parents.

We should also restore to parents the means to afford the best education possible for their children by eliminating the property taxes that support failing, government-run public schools and repealing the income tax. If parents want their child to pray in school, to learn evolution or creationism, get sex education or learn abstinence, and not be harassed by bullies, they should have the means and ability to choose the school that best meets these needs. They should be able to send their children to a school that conforms to their family values and standards, not the values and standards imposed by distant and detached education “experts.” If we really want to leave no child behind we will eliminate the political experts from the educational equation, because they have already proven they are unable to deliver what they promise.

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Revolution! British High School students to be docked marks over bad spelling and grammar in exams

GCSE candidates face losing as much as 12 per cent of their marks for poor spelling, punctuation and grammar. The writing errors will be punished to inject rigour back into qualifications taken by 600,000 pupils a year.

‘Bite-sized’ modules will also be axed in favour of final exams under the reforms outlined yesterday by regulator Ofqual.

From next September, pupils taking English language GCSEs will be assessed for their grammar, spelling and punctuation.

Twelve per cent of the total marks will be given for demonstrating writing skills in these subjects.

English literature, geography, history, ancient history and religious studies will follow in 2013, with 5 per cent of the marks granted for accurate writing.

Pupils will also be expected to use specialist terms.

For two-year GCSE courses starting next year, all examinations will be sat in summer 2014. Pupils will no longer be able to resit exams in order to boost their marks, except in English and maths.

The consultation sets out plans to allow students who need these qualifications to retake them – from November 2013 onwards – so that they do not have to wait another 12 months for the opportunity. The reforms were announced by Education Secretary Michael Gove last year and included in the Department for Education’s White Paper.

Speaking in the summer, Mr Gove attacked the ‘culture of resits’ that had resulted from allowing students to keep taking modules until they achieved the desired grade.

He told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘The problem that we had is that instead of concentrating on teaching and learning, you had people who were being trained again and again to clear the hurdle of the examination along the way. ‘It’s a mistake and I think the culture of resits is wrong. ‘What we need to do is make sure, certainly at GCSE, that you have a clear two-year run.’

The consultation on the changes will run until November.

This year, nearly one in four exam papers – 23.3 per cent – were awarded a coveted A or A*, up from 22.6 per cent in 2010. While the pass rates were a record high for the 24th consecutive year, the annual increase of 0.8 per cent was small in relation to that seen in previous years. Experts said it signalled the end of relentless grade inflation, with pass rates expected to level out as early as next year.

They claimed the year-on-year increases have been fuelled by a lack of rigour in the exams.

The move effectively scraps the current system, which splits GCSEs into 'bitesize' units, with students assessed on these throughout the course.

Pupils will also no longer be able to re-sit exams in order to boost their marks. The only exceptions would be English and maths.

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Torment of teacher cleared of sex attack claims: Accusations saw him barred from birth of son

Who'd be a male teacher in Britain?

A teacher cleared of sexually assaulting six pupils yesterday told of the agony of being ordered to live away from his wife and baby son.

Peter Wilson suffered the indignity of social workers attending the birth of his first child and making him swear he would not live with his family for the eight months it took to resolve the allegations.

Yesterday a jury took just 20 minutes to acquit him of all the charges, brought after girls at his primary school accused him of kissing them and touching their bottoms.

The 35-year-old said the allegations were ‘probably malicious’ – he had merely been trying to encourage the pupils with a clasp of the shoulder, a hug or a pat on the back.

He remains suspended from his job while the council carries out its own investigation. His 29-year-old wife Clare, a teacher at the same school, has also been barred because of her relationship to him.

After the case, Mr Wilson spoke of their ‘horrible ordeal’ and told of his delight at having his reputation restored. ‘The past 18 months or so have been the most stressful of my life and my wife’s,’ he said.

‘My greatest distress was that as a result of these unfounded allegations, social services were present at the birth of our first child and I was required to sign an agreement to say that I could not live in the same house as my wife and newborn baby.’

Mr Wilson was suspended from the school in Blackpool – which cannot be named for legal reasons – after two pupils reported him to a teacher. Other children gave similar accounts of him rubbing his hand down their backs or leaning close to them cheek to cheek before patting them on the bottom.

Mr Wilson was charged by police and released on bail on condition he had no unsupervised contact with under-16s.

The jury at Preston Crown Court heard he had been considered a well-liked and well-respected member of staff until his suspension.

Giving evidence, Mr Wilson broke down in the witness box as he denied gaining sexual gratification and insisted any touching was part of his job.

His barrister, Mark George QC, had told the jury: ‘Nowadays, it seems as if encouragement, a clasp of the shoulders, or a pat on the shoulders, or pat on the arm can be misunderstood and lead to someone like Mr Wilson becoming the subject of suspicion and a case of this sort.’ The teacher told police four of his accusers were lacking confidence and self-esteem and needed praise.

The jury yesterday cleared him of 11 counts of indecent assault relating to five girls. Earlier in the trial the jury was ordered by the judge to find him not guilty on three further counts in relation to another girl.

Mr Wilson, of Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, cried in the dock as he was cleared. He was supported in the public gallery by members of his family.

Last night Blackpool council said both Mr Wilson and his wife would remain suspended ‘ahead of an internal investigation following the conclusion of the court case’.

A spokesman for Lancashire County Council’s social services department said the authority could not comment on individual cases.

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26 September, 2011

Ga. Middle School: Muslim Polygamy Is Normal, Burkhas Good For Women

By Warner Todd Huston

A middle school in Smyrna, Georgia included in an assignment material that essentially shows 7th grade children that Islamic polygamy is a perfectly legitimate concept and that there is nothing wrong with the strict dress codes used to oppress Muslim women the world over.

The material was presented to the 7th graders at Campbell Middle School as part of a discussion of the school's dress codes, apparently meant to use the ideas of Islamic culture for women's clothing as some sort of example to compare how the school regulates clothing for its students in Georgia.

The concepts were presented in the lesson as a letter from a fictional 20-year-old Muslim woman named "Ahlima." In this letter "Ahlima" tells readers that she wouldn't mind if her husband took a second wife and also extolled the virtues of the burkha. She claims that American women are "horribly immodest" in the way they dress.

As to polygamy, the fictional Ahlima says, "I understand that some Westerners condemn our practice of polygamy, but I also know they are wrong."

A father of one of the students was not very happy with the assignment. He complained that the lesson is "promoting or positively depicting their belief that polygamy" is acceptable. He also felt that there should have been some sort of disclaimer that we Americans don't accept these concepts and he worried that the Muslim ideas were presented as completely acceptable.

Another page of the assignment explained the "seven conditions for women's dress in Islam," presenting all of them without discussion and, in essence, endorsing them as acceptable or normal.

The school told the WSB TV, Channel 2 News that it did not create the lesson plan and that it came from the state. The school pledged to review the material to see if it was appropriate.

But, it is not appropriate. Not at all.

First of all, this lesson plan is built on lies. The burkha, for instance, is not a requirement of Islam. It is a cultural practice that only some Muslim cultures observe. The burkha has nothing at all to do with Islam directly. Not all Muslims practice polygamy, either, so even that isn't necessarily a strict Islamic idea, either.

But, worse, the idea that burkhas should at all be acceptable to an American is a slap against our own ideals and promotes the oppressive ideas of enemies to our culture as perfectly acceptable.

The culturally strict proscriptions against freedom forced on Islamic women are a crime against humanity, yet here we have our own schools presenting to our own children the idea that the oppression of women is a perfectly acceptable cultural choice.

It would be exactly the same if they had a letter from a female slave saying that she was OK with being a slave. That it was perfectly acceptable for her to be owned by someone.

We are teaching our children that our own principles are not the optimal principles. We are teaching our children that our own culture, our own ideals are not supreme. We are teaching our children that the oppressive ideas of Islam are just as good as American ideals.

This is a result of liberals trying to make sure Muslims know that we "like" them in a post 9/11 world. With this weak, kow towing we are also making of ourselves a bigger target because there is another cultural ideal in Islam. Muslims feel that such bending over backwards as this is a weakness to be despised. Such kow towing is looked upon as pitiful. Muslims feel that such groveling is not "nice" or "neighborly" but spurs them to imagine that they can easily attack and dominate such a weak-willed culture.

But, even that aside, it shows how the liberals that wrote these lesson plans despise America. It shows that they do not value our own culture. It shows that these liberals are always in search of ways to further tear down the United States and make of her just another nation with just another set of cultural ideas.

If we want to bring America back from the brink of the destruction liberals have led us to we need to take back our educational system and get back to a time where we are teaching our kids why the United States is the best nation on earth.

Unfortunately, today our schools are filled with lessons like this, lessons that teach our own children that the US is nothing special.

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Insult Obama? Not on this campus!

Insulting the president and other government officials is practically a national pastime in the United States. This is a testament to the freedom of our society; in some parts of the world, insulting those who govern earns you swift punishment, or at least official censorship. That isn’t the case in America — unless you live on a college campus.

Students at Sam Houston State University (SHSU) in Texas found this out the hard way yesterday when they erected a “free speech wall” — a recently popular way for students to highlight the importance of free speech in which students put up a freestanding wall covered in paper, upon which anyone can write anything they want. Students jumped on the chance to participate. To cite a few examples: “Don’t hate against Gays …,” “If you make less than $200,000 Republicans don’t care about you,” “Life’s not a bitch, Life is a beautiful woman …,” “Han Solo Shot First,” “My boyfriend is a liar!,” “Legalize Weed!!!,” and “NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF!!!”

But just hours in, the free speech wall was vandalized by a professor — yes, a professor! — who was offended that someone had written “FUCK OBAMA” on the free speech wall. Students being students, the “F-word” was written on the wall many times about many different topics, but apparently the only expletive that offended this professor enough to take action was the one referring to President Obama.

The professor, whom students identified as Joe Kirk, demanded that the student groups sponsoring the wall — including Republicans, Democrats, libertarians and socialists — cover up only the Obama statement. They refused. He then told them that he would come back with a box cutter and cut it out of the wall himself, which he then did. You can see the before and after pictures at thefire.org.

Shocked that a professor would do this, the student organizers got in touch with the campus police. When the police arrived, they interviewed the students and the vandalizing professor. Then came the surprise: The police told the students that since Prof. Kirk was offended by some profanity on the wall, the students were engaging in “disorderly conduct,” a misdemeanor, and had to cover up all the swear words on the wall or take it down. Realizing that this would make a mockery out of the purpose of a free speech wall, the students simply disassembled the wall. Thus ended SHSU’s several hour-long experiment with free speech.

Profanity has always had a unique power to bring consternation to those who hear it; legendary comedian George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine made him famous precisely because he was willing to use such words. But the landmark Supreme Court case of Cohen v. California (1971) made clear that the First Amendment protects shocking or offensive expression, including the use of expletives in the communication of core political speech. In Cohen, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a man for wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words “Fuck the Draft” in a county courthouse, writing that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.”

Prof. Kirk does not appear to have been offended by the F-word itself, however — only at its use in an insult against the president. That’s the only one he cut out, after all. But the right of Americans to insult their leaders is just as protected as the right to use four-letter words. In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), the Supreme Court made clear that the First Amendment requires that “[d]ebate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and … may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” And in Rankin v. McPherson (1987), the Court found that the First Amendment protected a deputy county constable’s expressed hope that if another attempt were to be made on President Reagan’s life, that it be successful. If that extreme statement constitutes protected speech, there is no question the words “FUCK OBAMA” are as well.

Worse still, the police, by threatening to charge the students with disorderly conduct rather than Prof. Kirk with vandalism, have established a “heckler’s veto” on SHSU’s campus. Institutions grant a “heckler’s veto” over expression when they allow the reactions of those who hear or see the expression to govern what might be said, creating an incentive for people to act disruptively or violently when confronted with speech they don’t like in the expectation that the police will shut it down. That’s precisely what happened in this case: Prof. Kirk’s destructive vandalism and claims of offense led the police to silence the expression of every student who wrote on the Free Speech Wall.

But in our free society, the police can’t censor speech simply because some people don’t like what’s being said. Instead, their job is to protect those with unpopular views from those who wish to silence them. And there are few places where this job is more important than a university campus, where it’s vital that all viewpoints be able to get a hearing if the search for knowledge is to take place.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE, where I work) has written to SHSU President Dana Gibson asking her to restore free speech rights to her campus and allow students to express themselves and protest as the Constitution demands. Insults against President Obama might sound unpleasant to some, but the alternative — a society in which citizens must always meekly respect their leaders — is too unpleasant to contemplate.

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British primary schools are being 'punished' if they stop sex lessons as secondaries are told to hand out contraceptives

Primary schools are being pressured into providing sex education under a scheme to promote ‘healthy’ lifestyles, a report claims today. And secondary schools are being encouraged to hand out contraception and hold condom demonstrations in class to prove they are sending out ‘healthy’ messages, it says.

Campaigners claim the Healthy Schools Programme is being used to impose ‘permissive’ sex education without a national debate.

Launched in 1999, it had its central funding cut this year, but is still being promoted by local authorities.

In a survey of all 152 English councils, the Family Education Trust found one in five told primary schools that decided not to teach sex and relationship education they would not be eligible for ‘Healthy Schools status’.

This is despite the fact that primary schools may decide if they want to teach sex education beyond the requirements of the curriculum.

This month, Schools Minister Nick Gibb ruled out implementing Labour’s commitment to compulsory sex education for those as young as five.

Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, said it was ‘very concerning’ that primary schools were still being leant on to provide it. ‘Primary schools that make a principled decision not to teach sex education should not be stigmatised and denied a sought-after award for that reason,’ he said. ‘There is nothing inherently “unhealthy” about a primary school that decides not to teach sex education.’

To achieve ‘Healthy Schools status’ schools must meet 41 criteria covering personal, social and health education, healthy eating, physical activity and emotional health and well-being.

While there is no direct financial incentive, schools that achieve it can use a special logo on their websites promoting their status. More than 70 per cent of schools have the status and most councils are encouraging the remainder to follow suit.

Head teachers assess themselves against the criteria – which are on the Department for Education website – but local authorities provide a ‘quality assurance function’, checking they are on the right track.

The Family Education Trust found ‘considerable levels of inconsistency’ over how the Healthy Schools guidance is interpreted and applied.

Northamptonshire county council supported giving pupils as young as 12 the opportunity to practise putting a condom on a demonstrator device in the classroom. But it believed ‘it would not be appropriate to supply free condoms’ to pupils for the lessons.

However, this approach was not followed by all councils. South Tyneside, for example, believed it would be ‘good practice’ to give free condoms to pupils older than 14 for such lessons.

Overall, 8 per cent of councils believed pupils as young as 12 and 13 how to use freely supplied condoms would be in line with the guidance. Six per cent of councils said it would not be possible for secondary schools to get Healthy Schools status if they did not wish to refer pupils to contraceptive and sexual health clinics.

Mr Wells said: ‘In some parts, the programme is being used to impose a liberal and permissive type of sex education on schools by the back door

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25 September, 2011

Is the Berkeley College Republicans‘ ’Diversity’ Bake Sale Racist?

The UC Berkeley College Republicans are planning a bake sale — where the price of a cupcake depend on your race.

The “Increase Diversity Bake Sale” is meant to satirize an affirmative action-like bill in California that would let the university system consider ethnicity in student admissions.

“Just like the CA Senate Bills 185 and 387 the phone bank supports, we will be considering race, gender, ethnicity, national/geographic origin and other relevant factors to ensure the equitable distribution of baked goods to our diverse student body,” the College Republicans wrote in a Facebook announcement publicizing the event, set for Tuesday. “Hope to see you all there! If you don’t come, you’re a racist!”

But with a price structure that includes $2 for “White/Caucasian,” $1.50 for “Asian/Asian American” and $.0.75 for “Black/African American,” some aren’t finding it very funny.

“I’m ashamed to know that I go to the same school with people who would say stuff like this,” student Skyler Hogan-Van Sickle wrote Facebook. “I’m really trying to figure out how someone can be this hateful.”

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, more than 200 students responded to the event, mostly in opposition. One threatened to burn the table and set the cupcakes on fire. At least four student groups sent complaints to campus administrators, and a student-only meeting was set for Friday evening to discuss it.

“It’s offensive because of the tactics that they chose,” Joey Freeman, Berkeley’s student government vice president told the Chronicle. “This should be done for constructive dialogue and debate. But not in a way I thought was, frankly, racist.”

In a separate Facebook post, the College Republicans doubled down on their intent to hold the bake sale:

The Berkeley College Republicans firmly believe measuring any admit’s merit based on race is intrinsically racist. Our bake sale will be at the same time and location of a phone bank which will be making calls to urge Gov. Brown to sign the bill. The purpose of the event is to offer another view to this policy of considering race in university admissions. The pricing structure of the baked goods is meant to be satirical, while urging students to think more critically about the implications of this policy.

Gibor Basri, Berkeley’s vice chancellor for equity and inclusion, told the Chronicle the Facebook posting does not violate any campus policy.

“The only policy it violates is the principles of community,” he said, adding that a campus-wide letter will go out Monday. “We can use this as a teaching moment.”

Shawn Lewis, president of the Berkeley College Republicans, said he was surprised by the number of critics and their harshness his organization has received. He said agrees that race-based pricing is discriminatory.

“But it’s discriminatory in the same way that considering race in university admissions is discriminatory,” he said.

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Christian activity no longer avoided like plague by University of Montana work-study program

University prohibited work study at community center only because religious youth activities sometimes occur there; ADF letter prompts UM to reverse course

University of Montana officials agreed to allow students to be employed through a work-study program at a Missoula community center after a letter from the Alliance Defense Fund explained that allowing employment at the center, where religious student activities occur, would not violate federal law.

The letter explained that denying such a request merely because several religious youth activities take place within the massive City Life Community Center complex is unconstitutional.

“University students should not be prohibited from taking part in a work-study program merely because religious activities would take place before or after their shifts in the same building,” said ADF Senior Counsel Gregory S. Baylor. “The university got it right by ending its quarantine and allowing students to work at the community center. They can be confident that the Constitution does not equate nearby religious youth activities with asbestos in the ceiling tiles.”

Last year, the 34,000-square-foot City Life Community Center for teens was used by 43 diverse not-for-profit or youth-based programs. Because some of these were religious in nature, University of Montana officials banned students in their work-study program from seeking employment at the center, fearing that it would violate statutory and regulatory provisions governing federal grants for such programs. The ADF letter explained that the concerns were unwarranted.

“The work-study statute and regulation, properly interpreted, do not require you to forbid work-study students from working at City Life on the ground that religious activities sometimes occur there,” the ADF letter stated. “Indeed, the law likely forbids such an approach.”

City Life facilities are used by numerous community organizations, including Missoula Parks and Recreation, District Youth Court/Drug Court, Missoula County Public Schools, Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, Sentinel Kiwanis Club, Missoula Rotary Club, Missoula City Fire Department, and many religious and athletic organizations. It has a full-service sandwich and coffee bar; a gymnasium equipped for basketball, volleyball, and fencing; a student center; a teen activity center for ping-pong, air hockey, video games, darts, and other recreational/social activities; and a paintball facility.

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Sir Ian Botham: bring in corporal punishment and ban reality TV to save today's youth


Ian Botham is one of Britain's greatest cricketers but has also been very active in charity work. As such he is very well-known so his call for corporal punishment to be reintroduced into the schools might just break the ice on that subject

Sir Ian Botham, the former England cricket captain, believes a combination of cricket, corporal punishment and a ban on reality television can help to prevent the kind of break down in law and order that occured in the riots during the summer.

As the England cricket captain he showed ruthless determination and self-discipline on the pitch.

Now, in the wake of the August riots, Sir Ian Botham wants to see today's youth given the same combination of team sports and tough love which he credits for making him a success.

The former all rounder has set out how he believes parents must be allowed to deploy corporal punishment, the cane should be used to restore order in schools, police given respect - and reality television should be abolished.

And he also launched an attack on the previous Labour administration, saying they had to take some of the blame for the breakdown of law and order in the summer, which he found himself caught up in when looting and street violence affected Birmingham.

Sir Ian who has three grown-up children and four grandchildren aged from 18-months-old to 17-years-old, spoke as he launched his own sports initiative, to get inner-city youngsters and young offenders playing a version of his sport known as cage cricket.

The six-a-side version of the game is designed to be played on concrete in cities and towns.

The brainchild of former Hampshire player Lawrence Prittipaul, it is played in a “cage,” with separate coloured zones for scoring, positioning and refereeing, each game takes 30 overs to complete with just six players.

He said: "We desperately need to create an opportunity for youngsters to mingle, release and discipline themselves, play a game and also, make it national. The youth of today won't get bored with cage cricket either – this is when the problems start and carnage can set in as it did with the riots.

"The government can lie as much as they want, but half the playing fields are being sold off. I want to give these kids the opportunity to keep out of trouble.

"And who knows, we could find ourselves a cricketer, who'd never have had this chance, in the systems of schools where most don't play, unless you go to a private school. That is a fact.

"The same goes for those in prison. We give hard criminals a bat and a ball and they are pleased about playing. It's the best way of engaging the most disengaged of our population."

But he said that more radical measures than his own initative were needed. "Britain is in a mess," he said. "I believe in the cane. It didn't do me any harm as a child at school. Bring it back. Youngsters today, need discipline, and to get off their backsides.

"Parents also have to take greater responsibility too. I am afraid, at the end of the day; most of it is down to them."

Sir Ian told the Sunday Telegraph he believes these measures are the only way of solving Britain's deep-rooted social problems following the recent riots, which he was caught up in.

The 55 year-old was forced to lock himself in his Birmingham city centre hotel when rioting flared on the streets. Extra police were called when vigilantes smashed shop windows, looted stores and tried to hijack a bus.

Sir Ian said the experience has made him more resolute to get youngsters from deprived inner-cities off the streets and out of trouble, as well as engage prisoners with something positive.

He said: "Everyone thought Birmingham was going to go AWOL that night. We all sat there in total silence. No one went out. The hotel doors were locked, its shutters pulled down."

He said the experience had strengthend his resolved to get youngsters off the streets and involved in sport - especially after witnessing the racially tensions which followed the deaths of Asian men Haroon Jahan, 21, Shazad Ali, 30, and his brother, Abdul Musavir, 31, in a hit-and-run allegedly carried out by a young black man at the height of the disorder..

He said: "If it wasn't for the dignity of Tariq Jahan's father, I honestly thought Birmingham city centre could have gone up in flames."

Sir Ian ultimately blames the riots on the previous Labour government, holding them responsible for bankrupting the country. He said: "We have Ed Miliband telling us where the Conservatives are going wrong. But hang on a minute Ed. You are the ones who landed us in this situation, and we are in a perilous situation.

He added: "You guys borrowed ridiculously and sold our gold reserves at the lowest price. Have you forgotten about that dumpy thing called Brown? He's now in hiding. The man who was never elected and never to be re-elected. "Then they leave a note for the new Chancellor, saying, 'By the way, there's nothing left in the box. PS -Have a good time."

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24 September, 2011

Jury Finds Muslim Students Guilty of Disrupting Speech

Jurors found 10 Muslim students guilty Friday of disrupting a lecture by the Israeli ambassador at a California university in a case that stoked a spirited debate about free speech.

Jurors delivered the verdicts in Orange County Superior Court in the case involving a speech by Ambassador Michael Oren in February 2010 at the University of California, Irvine.

The students were also convicted of conspiring to disrupt Oren's speech. The students were charged with misdemeanor counts after standing up, one by one, and shouting prepared statements at Oren such as "propagating murder is not an expression of free speech."

Prosecutors say the students broke the law by interrupting Oren's speech on U.S.-Israel relations and cutting short the program, despite calls to behave from campus officials. Defense attorneys argued the students had a right to protest.

Nearly 200 people packed the courtroom to hear closing arguments at the trial that some community members called a waste of taxpayers' money and an effort to single out the defendants because they are Muslim.

Prosecutor Dan Wagner told jurors the students acted as censors to block the free flow of ideas and infringed upon the rights of 700 people who had gone to the Irvine campus to hear Oren.

Wagner showed video footage of university officials pleading with students to behave but said they kept interrupting the lecture. Wagner also showed emails sent among members of UC Irvine's Muslim Student Union planning the disruption and calculating who was willing to get arrested.

Defense attorneys countered there were no hard rules for the speech, and the students may have been discourteous but didn't break the law. Lawyer Reem Salahi, who represents two of the defendants, said the demonstration was modeled after a series of protests at UC Irvine and elsewhere in which students shouted at lecturers but weren't arrested. She said the students never intended to halt Oren's speech entirely but wanted to express their views on the Israeli government's actions in Gaza.

During the case, attorneys showed dueling pie charts breaking down how much time the students demonstrated, how long their supporters cheered, and how much time Oren spoke. The evidence was intended to show whether the meeting suffered a significant disruption.

Attorneys for the students -- who attended UC Irvine and nearby University of California, Riverside -- argued before the trial that charges should have never been filed and that the issue was already handled on campus. In 2010, the students were cited, released and disciplined at UC Irvine, which revoked the Muslim Student Union's charter for a quarter and placed it on two years of probation.

Earlier this year, District Attorney Tony Rackauckas filed criminal charges against 11 students, prompting an outcry from the American Civil Liberties Union and a host of Jewish, Muslim and campus groups. Charges against one defendant were later dropped.

SOURCE





Standardized Testing Under Attack ... Again

As predictably as fall marks the beginning of the new school year in campuses across the country, so, too, does it usher in new attacks on standardized testing. The 2011 version comes in the form of a new book, "SAT Wars," a collection of essays that purports to be an authoritative account of the controversy over one particular test used by most selective universities in their admissions process. But far from being an unbiased account of the pros and cons of using any standardized test -- much less the SAT, one of the most thoroughly studied, modified, and continuously validated tests in history -- the book is really an attack on standardized testing per se.

Currently, the overwhelming majority of selective schools require that students submit their SAT scores or the alternative ACT, when they apply for admission. The test is used as one measure among several -- usually including high school grades, class rankings, teacher recommendations, extracurricular activities, application essays, and other factors -- to choose among applicants. But a move to make the SAT optional has taken hold at some selective schools. At Bowdoin College in Maine and Mount Holyoke in Massachusetts, those students who choose to do so still submit their scores, but those who don't wish to, do not. Naturally, students who score less well than they had hoped are more likely to opt out of submitting scores.

The movement away from requiring the SAT has picked up steam in the last few years, ostensibly driven by the desire to increase racial and ethnic diversity at colleges. If it's true, this would be troubling enough, since the desire to achieve a predetermined ethnic or racial mix should play no role in determining who gets into college. But, in any event, the real motive behind the SAT-optional movement is more complicated and self-serving.

It is true that, on average, SAT scores for whites and Asians exceed those for blacks and Hispanics. The mean combined SAT score for math and reading for whites in 2010 was 1064; for Asians, 1076; for Hispanics, 914; and for blacks, 857. For years, critics of the test have argued -- without much evidence -- that these score disparities prove that the test is biased. The Education Testing Service, which administers the SAT, as well as other standardized tests used in college and graduate school admissions, has worked strenuously over the years to ensure that no racial or cultural bias creeps into the questions on the test. Moreover, ETS has spent a great deal of time and money recalibrating the tests and validating them to prove that test scores accurately predict academic success in college.

Although some of the essays in "SAT Wars" argue that both racial and gender bias is built into the test, there is little hard evidence to back the claim. Not only do SATs predict first-year college grades reasonably well, but their predictive value also continues throughout students' tenure, according to a carefully done meta-analysis of several studies by M.A. Vey and others in 2003. And rather than underestimating subsequent performance for minority students, SAT scores actually slightly over-predict how well black students will perform once in college.

So why are increasing numbers of selective schools deciding to make the test optional for applicants? The motive may have less to do with promoting diversity than it does with promoting higher college rankings by the schools that have gone SAT-optional.

Since the 1980s, U.S. News & World Report's annual issue announcing the rankings of competitive colleges and universities has become the most popular way to determine the quality and standards of America's colleges. Although SAT scores ostensibly count for only 10 percent of the overall ranking, a study of the correlation between average SAT scores and college ranking showed that there was an almost perfect correlation (.89) between the two. Thus, if lower-scoring students choose not to submit their scores at schools that permit it, the school's ranking may stay artificially high, even as the quality of the students admitted drops.

Standardized testing for college admissions began as way to level the playing field for students of ability to overcome whatever social or economic disadvantages they might have had when applying to elite schools. Traditionally, elite schools relied less on how academically promising the applicants were and more on whether they were well-connected. It is high irony now that those who most want to eliminate standardized testing do so claiming that they are promoting fairness -- when in fact they're still only promoting themselves.

SOURCE




Degrees in "Management" versus "Business administration"

Some British developments


What happens if you are not good at people management

What’s the use of having a first-class degree in law/maths/economics if you don’t have a clue how to get the best out of the people working for you? It is your management skills you need to develop and, increasingly, providers of distance learning courses and other vehicles of executive education are developing products which address that deficit. There is more to business than poring over spreadsheets. The human landscape is far, far more important.

At Ashridge Business School in Hertforshire, the uptake for the new 'virtual’ Masters in Management course, introduced in April 2010, has been so good that the current 70 students are expected to expand eight-fold in the next four years. It is a remarkable rate of growth, but not untypical of the fast-moving business-studies environment of 2011, where good managerial skills are increasingly prized and education providers are falling over themselves to come up with attractive products.

"About a third of our students are from the UK, the rest from overseas," says course director Roger Delwes. "Some are from Australia, where we have a reciprocal arrangement with the Melbourne Business School at Mount Eliza, and others from emerging economies, from Nigeria to Eastern Europe."

Competitively priced at £16,000, less than half what you could expect to pay from an MBA from a good business school, the course comprises a three-term postgraduate certificate, a three-term diploma, a six-month special project and five days of face-to-face teaching at Ashridge. Although there is some flexibility, the full masters qualification is achievable in 2-3 years and would require an estimated 12-15 hours’ work a week over that period.

"Some of our students already have a first degree," says Delwes, "but most already have several years’ working experience, in fields ranging from financial services to sports administration to the hydrocarbon industry."

Although most of their students tend to come from the private sector, Ashridge has identified several public-sector areas of work, notably the health service, where enhanced management skills are likely to be in demand.

"Take GPs," says Delwes. "Ten years ago, they would have spent 99 per cent of their time exercising their clinical skills. With the re-organisation of the health service, they are going to have to learn to be managers as well as clinicians, understanding budgets as well as anatomy. Courses like ours can help them achieve that."

If the MBA is a familiar part of the education landscape, and can involve some quite rarefied theoretical study, masters degrees in management have a more practical relevance. "People doing MBS are typically investing in their intended future, whereas those who enrol for degrees in management are investing for the present," says Delwes. "They may have been frustrated by the day-to-day challenges of creating an effective working environment, and want the tools to improve their performance."

The Masters in Management is the first 'virtual’ course offered by Ashridge and, in terms of content, is learning-driven rather than curriculum-driven – in other words, students need to relate their studies to their own working situations, rather than get bogged down in abstract theory.

"A lot of distance learning courses require long, uninterrupted hours in front of a computer," Delwes explains. "We want to vary the mix and get students to apply what they have learnt to their own workplaces, particularly during the special project with which the course concludes."

If Ashridge has identified a lucrative niche in the market, it is not alone. More and more UK universities now offer masters degrees in management, delivered either on campus, through online courses or through educational models which blend the two.

"The MBA may remain the gold standard in business circles, but the value of strategic management skills is increasingly being acknowledged," says Barry Blackham, head of curriculum and student experience at the Derby Business School, part of the University of Derby. "There are just so many people in different stages of their careers who need to be taught to look at problems in the workplace in the round, not just make things up as they go along."

The Derby Business School has a proven track record of delivering online degrees, adding new courses every year. Its MSc in Strategic Management has proven particularly popular in southern Africa, notably Botswana, where there are 45 students enrolled on the course, and Malawi, where there are 80.

Whereas UK students enrolled on the course study entirely online, students in Botswana and Malawi benefit from what Blackham calls "the flying faculty model". Most of the time students have to work on their own, from textbooks or online materials; but two or three times a year, teachers from Derby will fly out to Africa to field questions and deliver face-to-face classes. In countries where internet usage is not widespread, the human touch is often vital in helping students achieve their full potential.

"They are a very mixed lot, and at very different stages in their career," says Blackham. "One of the students is the Malawi Minister of Transport, one of the most senior members of the government. Another is a chicken farmer. NGOs, we have found, are also prepared to fund key staff in their extra-curricular studies. But, if the students have arrived at us via different routes, they all seem to benefit from the course, mainly because it has direct application to their work."

One of the key modules in the course, which typically takes between two and three years, is Decision Analysis, which focuses on long-term strategic planning, particularly its financial aspects. "You’re not going to turn people who are not mathematically gifted into brilliant statisticians," says Blackham. "But what you can do is help them find their way around statistical reports prepared by others, and give them the intellectual confidence to deal with accountants, economic analysts and the like."

And it is not just individual managers and would-be managers benefiting from the new trends in executive education. Large and medium-sized companies are increasingly turning to business schools to help them resolve organisational and managerial issues that would once have been handled in-house.

'Our clients include some of the top FTSE companies, as well as major companies in the USA, Australia, Canada and other countries,’ says Bill Shedden, director of the Centre for Customised Executive Development at the Cranfield School of Management, part of Cranfield University in Hertfordshire, the UK’s only wholly postgraduate university.

Companies which use Cranfield’s services are typically looking for a strategy for developing a cadre of middle and senior managers or for implementing major organisational change. "They don’t expect us to tell them what they do," says Shedden. "They expect us to work with them to come up with solutions that are tailored to their needs. Those solutions, increasingly, will involve such teaching tools as network learning and 'webinars’, where you can work face-to-face with someone on the other side of the world."

A once leisurely world of residential staff colleges and week-long conferences at five-star hotels has been superseded by a much more concentrated form of executive education"Companies are under pressure to show tangible results quickly,’ says Shedden. 'They have also had to cut down on travel costs and are reluctant to let key staff take time off for study purposes."

It is a fast-changing environment and, as Shedden acknowledges, business schools have to learn from the mistakes of the past. "With the emergence of the net, a lot of schools thought e-learning was the future and put a lot of effort into developing appropriate online material. But that’s where they came unstuck. All they were basically offering was sophisticated books which were readable on a computer. But how many senior bankers or businessmen would have the time or inclination to read such books?"

Flexibility is the new by-word, with increasing emphasis on interactive forms of learning. A company in the United States or Australia which deployed Cranfield’s services might start off with a short immersion period, with managers studying podcasts and online material, but after that the group would be as important as the individual in the learning process.

"We recently did a full-blown business simulation with a company in Miami," says Shedden. "The entire exercise was virtual, with nobody having to move from their desks. But it was a huge success in education terms."

In a complex business world, learning the art of good management has never been harder. The good news is that there have probably never been more diverse or innovative ways to teach managers to manage.

SOURCE



23 September, 2011

Exciting Schools

School spending has doubled over the past 30 years. Yet what do we get? More buildings and more assistant principals -- but student learning? No improvement. If you graph the numbers, the spending line slopes steeply, while the lines for reading, math and science scores are as flat as a dead man's EKG.

Why no improvement? Because K-12 education is a government monopoly, and monopolies don't improve.

And yet I'm happy to announce some good news: Cool things are starting to happen in classrooms.

I was surprised to meet kids who said they like school. What? I found school boring. How can it be that these fourth-graders tell me that they look forward to going to school and that math is "rockin' awesome"?

Those kids attend one of those new charter schools. Charters let them escape the bureaucracy of regular schools, including, often, teachers union rules. These schools compete for kids because parents can always choose another school. That makes them better.

Not every charter school is good, but the beauty of competition is that bad ones go out of business, while good ones expand. Then good schools teach more kids. Choice and competition produce quality. Anyone surprised?

Government schools rarely improve because no matter how bad they are, they still have captive customers.

The Harlem charter schools admit kids that bureaucrats label "at risk of failure." But these kids learn. And they do it at lower cost.

I visited another charter chain, American Indian Public Charter Schools in Oakland, Calif., that gets similar top results, also at lower cost.

"Kids in American Indian Public Charter Schools score so far above the average for the state for public school children that there isn't even a word for it," says Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom.

Those schools use methods different from the charters in Harlem. For example, they pay some kids to tutor other kids.

Both charters do something that regular public schools rarely do: fire teachers. One charter principal calls it "freeing up a person's future." You cannot maintain quality unless you can fire people, said Deborah Kenny, founder of Harlem Village Academies.

While bad teachers might get fired, good teachers are given freedom.

"They can choose their textbooks, teaching methods -- as long as they, every quarter and every year, make sure that the students are learning what they need to learn," Kenny said.

In Harlem, 43 percent of eighth-graders pass state math tests. In Kenny's schools, 100 percent pass. So if charters work, why aren't there more of them? Because teachers unions hate them. The president of the Newark Teachers Union, Joseph Del Grosso, doesn't want charters in what he calls "his schools."

"Over my dead body, they're going to come there," he told me.

Because of that attitude, people who try to start charter schools often find that bureaucrats make it hard. But in one city, most kids now attend charters. How did that happen?

It happened because when Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of New Orleans, it also destroyed the school system. Some school reformers thought that might be a blessing.

"It was probably one of the worst school districts in the country," said Paul Pastorek, former Louisiana state superintendent of education. The state faced a choice: Rebuild the old system or build something new. It built something new. Opening charters became easy. Today, most kids in New Orleans attend charter schools, and test scores are better.

Ben Marcovitz started a charter school called Sci Academy. "We have complete control over the quality of our instruction."

At first, only a third of his students were proficient on state tests. Now, Sci Academy's test results are among the best in the city.

Competition drives schools to try different things in order to succeed. It's similar to what happens with consumer goods -- computers, refrigerators, cars -- that get better every year.

If charter schools do this well, imagine what a really free and competitive system -- one without compulsory tax financing and bureaucratic chartering procedures -- could do.

Our kids deserve a free market in education.

SOURCE






Trendy teachers cheat the poor and lay the groundwork for riots

Katherine Birbalsingh

WHEN I became a teacher some 12 years ago in London, I genuinely believed that the only way one could make a difference to the underprivileged was to work for the state. I believed the state education system stimulated social mobility.

But my time teaching in some of London's inner-city schools has taught me much. I have seen things you would never believe. As every year ticked by, I became more and more frustrated with the lies we teachers were having to tell the public. We had to pretend that our schools were better than they were in order to trick parents into sending us their children. Ninety three per cent of our children in Britain are educated in the state sector and there is a great divide between the private and state sectors.

The state sector is always trying to prove that it is just as good as the private sector, if not better. And because everyone knows, deep down, that this simply isn't true. Let's face it, British children are now rated 16th in the world for science, 25th for reading and 28th for maths, according to the OECD's 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report. The 2000 PISA report ranked British children as fourth for science, seventh for reading and eighth for maths. We now spend more than 80 billion ($123bn) a year (double what we spent in the 1990s) on education and yet British schoolchildren have plummeted in the international league tables.

So I wrote a book, To Miss with Love, with the intention of it being published anonymously because I knew just how dangerous it was to speak to the truth. But then, before publication, I spoke at the Conservative Party conference in October last year about our broken education system, revealing some of my thoughts on what needs fixing. As a British teacher recently told me, there was nothing I said in the speech that teachers don't say everyday in staffrooms across the country. We simply aren't allowed to say it out loud. The state school system literally prevents its teachers from speaking their minds.

The riots in London did not come as a surprise to British teachers. We have not only been predicting that kind of general chaos for years, but we experience it on a daily basis in our schools. We have many Australian travelling teachers who enter our school system as supply teachers. Generally, they are shocked by what they see and experience in our classrooms. It is the same for German, French or Spanish teachers. The only visiting teachers who are used to our behaviour problems and low standards are those who come from the American inner cities. And riots, of course, are not unfamiliar to them. The difference between the American and British school systems is that the international community knows just how bad American schooling can be. But Britain still lives off its old reputation as the Mother Country, leading the Commonwealth and its empire in all that is true and good.

But the real truth is that not only does the state in Britain tie teachers' hands, but it does the same to parents, resulting in a breakdown of authority both in our schools and in our homes. Some parents try desperately to bring their children up properly and struggle. I have spent my career meeting parents who are brought to tears because of their unruly teenagers. Some say that they cannot discipline their children because their children threaten to call the police and cry abuse. Every time their child misbehaves, rather than being able to discipline them appropriately, they remember their neighbour or their friend or their cousin who was handcuffed in their own house and hauled away by the police, their children put into social care for a night, all because of some made-up story.

I remember one Jamaican woman pleading with me in school, desperately wanting to discipline her daughter but the parenting classes she was attending at the council suggested she use more praise. She said to me, "But how can I always be praising her when she gets so much wrong?" The "prizes for all culture" doesn't just exist in our schools. It is endemic in our society to a point where not only do we not question it, but those who have old-school values are forced to conform to the "gold stars for everyone" mantra dictated by the state.

The same thing happens at school. The bad children are constantly receiving prizes simply for remaining quiet or for turning up on time. The teachers, in order to win round the bad children, are taught by their line managers and teacher training institutions that praise is what is needed to motivate children. So we all use it to saturation point, devaluing the worth of the gold star. Meanwhile, the good children, who are left in the dark because no one notices, eventually become bad in an effort to gain some attention.

Eventually, the cool gangster lifestyle that these children have pumped into their minds six to seven hours a day from MTV takes over. Their understanding of "success" is not marriage, a job and a couple of kids. It is cars, women and bling. Our bookshops were not looted, and if you didn't have a sports or mobile phone shop on your High Street, you knew your community was probably safe. Who allows our children to watch so much MTV? The very parents who are exhausted because their children are spiralling out of control and yet are told by the council they should use more praise, or the single parents, encouraged to stay single by the state with promises of free flats and welfare cheques, who can't possibly juggle a full-time job, three or four children, a household and a life.

The schools struggle to keep order, partly because of the low standards of the education system but also because teachers are encouraged to constantly do group work and entertain the children. Children must never be bored, and if they are, or if they disrupt, it is the teacher's fault. Children are never held to account for what they do. Is it any wonder that some of them decided to show the police that they were in charge and went out looting?

State schools ought to promote social mobility. They should not simply perpetuate the class system and ensure that those who go to private schools are taught well, and only those taught in leafy suburb middle-class state schools stand a chance of a half-decent education.

Unfortunately a number of people with power believe that the way to improve education for our children is to ban tradition from our classrooms _ stop being so fuddy duddy and appeal to children by making things more "fun".

We believe it is unfashionable to have desks in rows and so some schools actually ban traditional rows in favour of always having desks in groups. Some schools abandon the more traditional academic subjects altogether and do not teach them at all. In an effort to raise their standing in the league tables, schools will have children take drama, PE, or media studies, abandoning, history, physics or French to do so, and our so-called progressive thinkers rejoice, saying that these subjects are more suited to certain children. It is funny how the children these subjects suit are never their own.

The tradition of competition which we celebrate in the world of sport has become unfashionable in the academic classroom and innovation requires that children never be given grades and are never allowed to know where they stand in comparison to their peers. Tradition in education has become a dirty word and is reserved for the elite while innovation is what is given to the poor.

The irony is that the rejection of all that is traditional comes from people who were themselves beneficiaries of a very traditional education but remembering some of their classes at school as being boring, are now trying to reform the education system for these kids to make it more interesting. So they can be very well meaning people. So, for instance, Richard Branson who famously dropped out of school at 15, thinks schools overeducate children, and stunt the early sparks of entrepreneurship. But what Branson forgets is that he had the most traditional of educations - having been educated at one of Britain's top private schools and yet he is the most extraordinary entrepreneur. And Branson underestimates just how much his education has contributed to his success. What Branson was able to take away at age 15 from school, far outstrips the standard of education that some of our Western youngsters are currently accessing even at university level. Some of our university degrees are the equivalent in standard to what children used to do at age 15 in school in the 1970s. Branson would probably find these degrees ludicrously easy.

General thinking around school being boring makes it possible for us to have reached a stage where teachers are no longer expected to teach and instead they must be facilitators of learning with constant group work going on, where the teacher is rarely standing in front of the class, but instead moves amongst the children who are all busy doing something. The idea here is that "doing" is more interesting than "listening". And that might very well be true. But the problem comes when we think that "doing" needs to happen most of the time. This means that the teacher, a great source of knowledge, almost becomes redundant as a fountain of knowledge and instead becomes a bit of a referee. We don't value the importance of teaching knowledge for the children to then do something with. Innovation is considered to be only "doing" - a complete rejection of all that is traditional.

The problem is that we all underestimate the knowledge that we have and use everyday. Try to read any article in the newspaper and you'll find that there is an assumption of background knowledge. Recently, I read an article about Carla Bruni. To understand just the title and subtitle, one would have had to know who she was, that she is married to Nicholas Sarkozy and you'd have to know that he was the President of France, what being a president means, and, indeed, you would have to know what France is - is it a city? Is it a country? Is it in Europe? You may laugh, but I have, as a teacher had conversations with 14-year-olds in which they simply don't understand the difference between France and Paris. For them, it is all the same! I can't tell you the number of times I've had conversations with kids about Winston Churchill where they think he's "that dog" off the insurance advert.

Ordinary people don't realise just how little some of our kids know. What we also forget is that the very thing that got us to where we are now was the kind of education that we had - our teachers actually teaching us knowledge, so that we know the difference between Paris and France, us sometimes being bored in lessons and learning the discipline to struggle through - how many people in business clinch a deal because they know the soft skills of being polite, know how to sit through a boring lecture, and are able to concentrate enough to still pick up what is necessary to impress the client? It is through the study of tough rigorous academic subjects that soft skills are often acquired. Traditional educations are not bad. And most of the progressives perpetuating this in our schools have benefited from one themselves. In other words they climb the ladder to the top and then unwittingly pull the ladder up from under them.

So in the past 30 years, the concept of teaching knowledge in our classrooms has nearly disappeared altogether. Teaching historical facts or lists of vocab which rely on memory skills is considered old-fashioned. Instead, we think it better to inspire children to be creative through constant group discussion and project work. But background knowledge is absolutely essential to enable children to capture new ideas. For instance, when cars were first invented they were called horseless carriages. So to understand the new concept of a car, one had to have knowledge of horses and carriages, and the idea of something being "less" something else. In fact, modern neuroscience has shown that in order to grasp new concepts, pupils require a great deal of background knowledge.

As background knowledge is provided unequally in different homes, it is our duty in schools to level out the playing field. In some homes children are lucky enough to have tutors employed, conversations over dinner about the day's news events and, as such, they can pick up facts about history, geography as they go. But instead of ensuring that all of our children should have access to that knowledge in school, we turn away from knowledge acquisition which is considered boring and teach skills like being empathetic or forming a point of view through what is a very seductive and seemingly better way of teaching. It seems more "fun" and the progressives like the idea of finally breaking free from the restriction of their own educational backgrounds.

So putting desks in rows in considered archaic, rote-learning is abandoned completely, even the idea of classrooms having walls is rejected _ encouraging chaos all around _ and our children quite literally are leaving school without basic knowledge in subjects such as English, maths and history. A recent study from the University of Sheffield showed that 20 per cent of the children leaving school in Britain are functionally illiterate. Schools, quite simply, need classrooms. And classrooms, in turn, require walls. When I first told my father that we were spending billions of pounds on schools building walless classrooms, he was baffled. You see, he grew up in poverty-stricken Guyana where he went to a school that had no walls because they couldn't afford them. So for us to now spend billions recreating what the developing world is trying to move away from seems like lunacy. But that's exactly what we're doing.

If we want to equip our children with the power to change the world, they must first have knowledge of it and understand it. Unfortunately the "progressives" think that somehow knowledge is right-wing and boring. But this is simply not true. What makes Tony Benn, the well known British socialist who has campaigned against injustice all over the world, such a great speaker, or what gave Ian Flemming such a creative mind that he should create James Bond? What ensured that Churchill would be an inspirational leader, moving back and forth between the Liberal and Conservative parties? What ensured that Obama would be the first black American president? Their very traditional educations! Thomas Jefferson had a classical education but was so forward thinking that he signed the Declaration of Independence and Mark Zuckerberg is obsessed with Classics but is the founder of the transformational and innovative Facebook. What made these people into successes was the traditional educations that they had, the inspirational teachers who taught them, the love of learning that they picked up with their walled classrooms, desks in rows, with the teacher teaching at the front.

Traditional education in Britain these days is reserved only for the rich. Yet tradition is what has given us our most explosive revolutionaries. Stokely Carmichael who led the Black Panthers and was a major player in the civil rights movement in America dropped gang life, so inspired was he at his science specialist school and so busy was he reading Darwin and Marx. Mandela went to an elite Methodist mission school. Revolutions are created with traditional thinking. That doesn't mean you can't ever do any type of group work, or can't ever go on to a computer. But it should not be a fight to have a school system where our poorest children should have access to an education that includes knowledge-acquisition, competition, a non-prizes for all culture, high standards of behaviour, and in an environment where everyone reaches for the very best.

This is where I believe there could be a real role for free schools in our inner cities in Britain. Our Conservative government has brought out these new proposals, copying the free school movement in Sweden and the Charter school movement in America. This month, our first batch of free schools opened - there were 24 of them. As free schools are free to do what is best for their children and do not have their hands tied behind their backs by the state, they are able to reject the cultural pressure that is felt in some of our ordinary state schools, and do something different. They are free to provide children with the tradition that is found in our better private schools.

They can offer an extended day, lessons that are about knowledge acquisition, and competition to drive up standards. They can provide classrooms with desks in rows and they can offer the more traditional subjects - and by this I don't mean Latin necessarily - I simply mean the opportunity to do Spanish or history or the chance to study biology, chemistry and physics as separate subjects. The tradition of benchmarking children can be upheld, standing at assembly and holding high standards for uniform and behaviour can simply become part of the norm. In fact, bringing traditional thinking of this kind is to trail blaze and indeed be innovative. How wonderful it is that the free school movement should allow individuals in any community, to take responsibility, to know what issues face their particular community and to have the freedom to set up a school that can do something positive and new.

So I am trying to set up a free school in the depths of south London to do exactly what I say is needed, and educate these children in such a way so that riots like the ones we witnessed last month will not happen again. The ordinary people of south London - the poor, the single-parent families - are desperate for another choice of school in the area because there aren't enough school places and they know how generally awful the schools are. Yet there are those from the National Union of Teachers and the Socialist Workers Party who oppose us. There are those, and it has to be said, they are the middle classes, who can afford to make up for their state school's issues by employing tutors at home - who want to stop free schools from opening because they hate the idea of individuals taking away responsibilities and power from the state.

The only way our poorest children can succeed is for them to receive the same quality of education as our richest. They need the privilege of a traditional education - the type of education that most of us, it not all of us in this room have been lucky enough to have had. There is a quote that I love which sums up what I am saying: The education that is best for the best is the education that is best for all. Why did the riots happen? Because 20 per cent of our young people are functionally illiterate and do not know the difference between right and wrong. Because the education that is best for the best is kept only for the very few.

I only wish that these problems were confined to Britain. But I believe that in the West, these trends are to be found everywhere, and no doubt in Australia too. Some countries, such as Britain, are simply more advanced in their decline. My advice to all of you is to learn from our mistakes in Britain. Do not go down the trendy and very tempting route of believing that all that glistens is gold. I believe in conservative values precisely because they conserve what is traditional. If Australia learns from the hideous mistakes that Britain has made, I am certain that the old-school values that we have lost in Britain will ensure your country's future success.

SOURCE






First-class? Top-level British degrees up by 34% prompting fresh concerns over grade inflation

The number of students graduating with a first-class degree has risen by a third over the past five years, prompting fresh concerns about grade inflation.

About one in seven graduates now obtains the top qualification, calling into question the worth of some degrees.

Almost 47,000 students gained firsts in 2009-10 compared with 34,825 in 2005-6 – a rise of 34.5 per cent, according to figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency. At the same time, almost half of graduates were awarded a 2.1 in 2009/10. Numbers gaining 2.1s have risen by 14.4 per cent – from 137,235 to 156,950 – over the same period. By contrast, there was only a 2.9 per cent increase in the number of graduates achieving a 2.2.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said degrees have been subjected to ‘extraordinary grade inflation’ since the expansion of higher education in the 1990s.

Calling for a ‘starred first’ degree to identify exceptional students, he said: ‘Grades are inflating to the point that the classes aren’t going to be useful to future employers. They are going to have to take into account the university and the A-level results to distinguish between applicants.’ ‘I suspect what we will have to do is what has already been done in A-levels and GCSEs, which is to have a starred first.’

Universities have been trialling a graduate ‘report card’, aimed at giving a more accurate picture of students’ achievements. But the new Higher Education Achievement Report – a six page document – continues to list graduates’ overall degree classification.

There have been claims some lecturers turn a blind eye to plagiarism in a bid to help institutions climb league tables. University whistleblowers have also alleged external examiners have been ‘leaned on’ to boost grades.

The Commons select committee on innovation, universities, science and skills noted different institutions demanded ‘different levels of effort’ from students to get similar degrees.

SOURCE



22 September, 2011

Huge rejection of government High Schools in Australia

On previous occasions, I have extrapolated from State statistics that about 40% of Australian High School students go to private schools. This compares with about 7% in England and probably reflects at least in part the greater Government financial support for private schools in Australia. But private schooling is still a considerable expense for families so the 40% figure probably represents just about every family that can afford those expenses.

Government schools are clearly on the nose. Discipline has largely been abolished there over the last couple of decades so such schools have a reputation for being chaotic and thus providing a poor learning environment.

Although I attended State schools myself, I sent my son to a local private school. There are so many private schools in Australia that one does not usually have to travel far to find one. At his school my son had (male) teachers who were enthusiastic about mathematics, something rarely found in State schools, I'll warrant. Since my son now has a B.Sc. with honours in mathematics and is working on his Ph.D. in the subject, he is an example of the effect that school choice can have.

Fortunately, my 40% estimate can now be firmed up. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has just released Australia-wide data on schools. See the excerpt below. It turns out that for Australia as a whole I was only one percentage point off. The figure is 39%, not 40%:

In 2010, there were 3.5 million students formally enrolled in all Australian schools (an increase of 7% since 2000). Of these students, seven in ten (66%) were enrolled in government schools, two in ten (20%) in Catholic schools and one in ten (14%) in Independent schools (compared with 69%, 20% and 11% respectively in 2000).

Although government schools continue to educate the majority of students in Australia, the number of students enrolled in non-government schools has been increasing at a faster rate over the last decade. Since 2000, Catholic and Independent schools had the largest proportional increases in the number of students (11% and 37% respectively) while the number of students in government schools increased by only 1.3%.

In 2010, there was little difference between the proportions of male and female students enrolled in government and non-government schools.

In primary and secondary schools

In 2010, around two million students were enrolled in primary schools and around 1.5 million students were enrolled in secondary schools. A higher proportion of students were enrolled in government primary (69%) and secondary (61%) schools than students enrolled in non-government primary and secondary schools. The proportion of students enrolled in Catholic and Independent schools was lower in primary schools (19% and 11% respectively) compared with secondary schools (22% and 17% respectively).

Many students may not remain in one particular type of school (government or non-government) for their entire schooling. For example, some students may attend a government primary school and complete their education in a non-government secondary school.

A media report on some other aspects of the new ABS data here. Private school graduates are much more likely to go on to univerity etc.





Michigan on Brink of Massive Education Reform

On Friday September 9, Michigan State Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville (R-Monroe) announced he would introduce legislation giving teachers in his state right to work protections. The bill already has the support of Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger (R-Marshall.) Richardville’s Freedom to Teach Act would allow teachers in Michigan to choose whether or not to join a union. Currently, Michigan educators are forced to pay union dues simply to keep their jobs.

In his press release Richardville said he wants to “keep more money in the pockets of teachers.” The Majority Leader noted that the money taken in the form of forced dues “belongs to the teacher that earned it [and that] it is up to them to contribute based on personal choice, not because the school district extracts it from paychecks and deposits it in the hands of the union bosses.”

The bill is part of several education reforms giving more choice to teachers, parents, and children. Among other reforms are bills which would allow the expansion of charter schools and allow access to online learning. Last week, the Michigan House passed a bill, which would not go as far as Richarville’s but would bar the state from collecting dues for teachers unions.

Rep. Joe Haveman (R-Holland), the bill's primary sponsor told The Detroit News, "I don't understand how giving people money back in their paycheck is a bad thing … It makes [unions] more accountable.” Yet that may be precisely what the union and its allies don’t want. Leading opposition to the bill is Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing), whom Richardville criticized for wanting to “to continue to see hundreds of dollars removed from teachers pay to support a $200,000-a-year plus salary for union bosses who haven't seen the inside of a class room in years.”

With the backing of the leaders in both houses Freedom to Teach is likely to pass—even without help from Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who recently said during a televised town hall meeting that Richardville’s bill is not on his agenda. This is the same position Governor Snyder holds on more encompassing right to work legislation for the state, but he has said that he would sign a right to work bill if it came to his desk.

The Governor’s reticence on labor reform may be due to his trying to muster support for other priorities, including a controversial publicly financed bridge from Canada to Detroit.

The Senate Minority Leader has warned Snyder that Freedom to Teach could jeopardize cooperation with the bridge project. Whitmer told the Michigan news website Mlive.com, "If they really want to reach across the aisle and try to build support . . . they've got to take some of these issues (Right to Teach) off the table or we're going to get mired in partisan battles and that doesn't help anybody."

Ironically if Democrats oppose the bridge because of Freedom to Teach they will harm other unions. Buried in the pending legislation authorizing the bridge are handouts to organized labor such as hiring set-asides for union members as consultants for the project. The project would also be subject to state prevailing wage laws—which generally set wages closer to inflated union wages rather than market pay rates and can increase costs by up to 22 percent.

Aside from inter-union squabbles caused by pulling support for the bridge as a result of Freedom to Teach, the Michigan Education Association (MEA), the state’s largest teachers union, may have problems if right to work is given to teachers. Tom Garnet of the Mackinac Center reports that John Ellsworth, a former MEA local president, estimates that between 10 percent and 40 percent of MEA’s membership could leave if given the choice, because “some don't think they are getting real value from the $90 per month in union dues” teachers are forced to contribute. This isn’t idle speculation. In Wisconsin, the teacher’s union had to lay off 40 percent of its staff after Governor Scott Walker (R) ended automatic payroll deductions of union dues.

Why would rank-and-file union membership consider paying dues a poor value? Maybe because the MEA has increasingly been more focused on partisan politics than on education. It was one of the chief drivers of recall efforts against Republican lawmakers this past summer. Out of roughly 20 recall efforts, including the Governor and Richardville, the union only managed to gather enough signatures for a recall of the House Education Committee Chairman—after spending a quarter of a million dollars on the signature effort.

A reduction of the MEA’s power would be good news for parents and children. The union has been opposed to reforms that increase choice and accountability. On its website, the union voices its oppositions to one bill because it “allow[s] districts to hire/place teachers with demonstrated effectiveness and qualifications” and because “experience [longevity] will not be a factor if a district is reducing its force. Individual performance will instead be the major factor in staffing decisions.”

Richardville and other Michigan lawmakers who are trying to curb teachers unions’ privileges will face stiff opposition. If they are successful, Michigan could see an education system that puts teacher performance, parental choice, and children’s welfare ahead of union political agendas and forced dues.

SOURCE






Voucher Program in Colorado Would Advance Liberty

In March 2011, the school board in Douglas County, Colo., voted 7-0 to implement a school voucher program. It was designed to provide concerned parents with 75 percent of the education money provided by the state for their children if the parents preferred to send their children to the private school of their choice.

The other 25 percent of the state funds would remain with the government schools even though the student for whom the funds were intended was not in attendance.

Structured this way, the voucher plan seemed like a win-win for both parties – the parents would be empowered to send their children to the school of their choice, and the government schools would still get paid by the state, even in cases where they didn’t have to teach.

But Americans United for Separation of Church and State found something it didn’t like: many took their children out of a government school and placed them in a Christian one. This, in the minds of AU, was no different than imposing special taxes for the targeted support of religion.

Writing for AU, Karen B. Ringen suggests that 21st century school choice programs are no different than 18th century special “assessments” for the particular support of religion, assessments which James Madison opposed. This comparison does not bear much analysis. Neither the state of Colorado nor Douglas County have imposed a tax designed to support one, many, or all religions. Instead, the governments collect income, property, and other taxes to cover the expense of educating Colorado’s school children, among other things. Douglas County then empowers parents to make choices about the education of their children. They can leave their children in the public schools or they can choose a private school that better serves the needs of their children. Parents may choose secular or religious private schools. This is a far cry from the special religious tax that Madison rightly decried.

Douglas County’s school choice program advances rather than undermines religious liberty. Government maximizes religious liberty when it minimizes its influence on religious choices. When parents decide how their children will be educated, they make an inescapably “religious” choice. Education, whether it is labeled “religious” or “secular,” rests upon foundational presuppositions – about the nature of reality, about right and wrong, and about how humans acquire knowledge. These foundations are, broadly speaking, “religious.” A “secular” public school is not neutral about these foundations, even though its presuppositions might be hidden. When the government pressures families to choose secular public education, it undermines their religious freedom. Empowering parents to make real choices about educating their children augments religious freedom. AU may not like the choices some parents are making, but it cannot plausibly contend that facilitating choice minimizes freedom.

In this sense, Madison is very much on the side of Douglas County in this dispute. In Madison’s own words: “The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.”

Douglas County is not forcing AU to support a religion with which it disagrees. Instead, it is enabling parents to educate their children in a manner consistent with their own religious convictions.

SOURCE



21 September, 2011

Conservative policies pay off for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in North Carolina took home the prestigious Broad Prize for Urban Education this year, and with it $550,000 in scholarship money for high school seniors.

In winning this year’s award, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, or CMS, beat out 74 other eligible districts and three other finalists: the Broward County and Miami-Dade school systems in Florida and the Ysleta Independent School District in El Paso, Texas. All four districts have been finalists before.

"Charlotte-Mecklenburg is a model for innovation in urban education," said US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who announced the winner at a ceremony Tuesday in Washington. "It has taken on the tough work of turning around low-performing schools, created a culture of using data to improve classroom instruction, and put a laserlike focus preparing students for college and careers."

The CMS district serves about 135,000 students, 53 percent of whom qualify for free or reduced lunches. About 67 percent of its students are African-American, Hispanic, Asian, or American Indian. Among the achievements that the prize panelists highlighted, Charlotte-Mecklenburg:

* Narrowed the achievement gap between its African-American students and both district and state white students at all levels in reading and math. It also narrowed the gap between Hispanic and white students at all levels in math and for middle and high school students in reading.

* Had the highest SAT participation rate for African-American seniors (62 percent) of all 75 districts who qualified for the Broad Prize.

* Was more successful than at least 70 percent of other North Carolina districts at increasing the percentage of low-income middle and high school students who performed at the highest achievement level in reading and math.

The panelists also highlighted a number of the district’s practices, including a lauded strategic staffing initiative put in place by former superintendent Peter Gorman, who left the district in June. The initiative moves the most effective principals into chronically failing schools and allows them to bring with them top teachers, who are given financial incentives. The panelists also noted changes Mr. Gorman made to how layoffs are conducted – now based on performance as well as seniority – and how teachers are compensated, as well as the district’s openness to alternative sources for teachers and principals, including Teach for America and New Leaders for New Schools.

At the ceremony Tuesday, musician John Legend delivered the keynote address, calling education reform the “civil rights issue of our generation.” A number of members of Congress, including Sen. Lamar Alexander (R) of Tennessee, Sen. Michael Bennet (D) of Colorado, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D) of California, the House minority leader, emphasized both the importance of what the Broad Prize recognizes as well as the bipartisan support for many education reforms.

“We can help create a better environment for schools, but we can’t make them better from here,” said Senator Alexander in his remarks. “That’s why the spotlight Broad places on these four outstanding districts ... is so important.”

The Broad Prize, which is sponsored by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, is the largest award of its type. It was started in hopes of rewarding districts that make big improvements in student achievement, promoting best practices that other districts can follow, and spurring competition and creating incentives for districts to improve. Last year’s winner was the Gwinnett County Public Schools outside Atlanta.

It awards $1 million a year in total scholarship money (reduced from $2 million in the past few years to make the award more sustainable). In addition to the money CMS receives, each of the other three finalists will get $150,000 in scholarship money. The money is designed to go not to top students who probably have other scholarships available to them, but to those students with financial need who have made big improvements over their high school career.

“We started the [Broad Prize] because the public is down on urban education, and we said we’ll find districts that are doing great work and get them to share their best practices with other districts,” said Eli Broad, in an interview after the winner was announced. Still, he says, “there’s a long way to go” in education reform. “We’ve made progress, but we have to make a lot more progress, faster than we’ve done in the last 10 years.”

SOURCE




If it's good enough for Eton: State comprehensive sees grades rocket after headmaster cuts class sizes to 15 pupils

These relatively small gains are entirely consistent with a placebo ("Hawthorne") effect rather than any effect due to class size itself

A comprehensive has seen its pupils’ grades rocket after cutting class sizes in English and maths to levels normally found in private schools. Headmaster Adam Dare slashed the number of 11-year-olds in these lessons from 26 to 15. Pupils studying English GCSEs have equally small classes.

As a result, the number of pupils achieving five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C – including English and maths – has risen from 35 per cent to 43 per cent this year. The A* to C pass rate for English has increased from 41 per cent to 59 per cent.

Mr Dare has employed extra teachers at King Richard School in Paulsgrove, Portsmouth, to enable him to honour the class size pledge.

The secondary school used money it received from government funds for specialist status, deprivation and free school meals.

The head said: ‘If you were at Eton like our Prime Minister you wouldn’t expect to be in a class of 30. If small class sizes are good enough for Mr Cameron, they’re good enough for our kids.’

He added: ‘I am in no doubt that our class size guarantee has contributed to an improvement in grades. ‘The core of good progress is good teaching but it’s hard to provide good teaching in a big class. ‘Children need individual support and to have their voices heard in the classroom. If all you are expecting from students is a C grade, you can afford to have class sizes of 30-odd. ‘But if you want them to achieve their full potential and aim for the As and A*s, less is more.’

This year King Richard School, which has 760 pupils, recorded 120 A* and A grades at GCSE, with 14 students achieving five or more A* and As. Just seven students achieved five or more A*s and As last year.

Mr Dare said that in a perfect world he would apply the small class guarantee to all subjects. He has applied it to Year Seven to give pupils ‘the best possible start’ in the basics and to Year Eleven because of the importance of their exams.

Year Eleven pupil Lily-May McQuilken, 15, said: ‘Last year there were 26 of us in an English lesson and our teacher didn’t have time to come round to everybody. Now that has changed and it feels much more personal. It has also given me extra confidence to speak out in class.’

Figures from the Department for Education show the average class size in state secondary schools is 20.4.

Schools are often criticised for focusing on lifting the D students to a C to improve league table ratings. But Mr Dare said he is aiming for the top grades so his school-leavers can aspire to the best universities. 'We want more of our kids thinking "when I leave here I'm going to go to University College London or Cambridge".'

SOURCE





Lord's Prayer rejected by Australian Grade-School

A WEST Australian government school has banned students from reciting the Lord's Prayer before assembly in response to complaints from parents.

Edgewater Primary School, in Perth's north, ended the 25-year practice after some parents said it contravened the WA Education Act, which stipulates schools cannot favour one religion over another.

Edgewater principal Julie Tombs sent a letter to parents yesterday saying the prayer would no longer be recited before each fortnightly assembly.

She said although most students' parents favoured the tradition, only 36 per cent responded to a survey asking for their views. "We acknowledge that of the parents who did respond to the survey, many wanted to retain the Lord's Prayer and it is right that we continue to recite it at culturally appropriate times such as Christmas and Easter, as part of our educational program," Ms Tombs said in a statement.

"However, at this school we have students from a range of backgrounds and it is important to consider all views and not promote one set of religious beliefs and practices over another."

Ms Tombs said students would continue to recite the school creed, which includes a reference to God.

WA Premier Colin Barnett said although it was "desirable" for students to recite the prayer at assembly, it was ultimately the school's decision. "My own view is that WA is basically a Christian-based community and I think its desirable to have the Lord's Prayer said," Mr Barnett said today.

"(But) that decision rests at the school level. Certainly schools can, and I would encourage them to, have the Lord's Prayer. "I don't think it offends anyone; it just simply reflects the values and backbone of our society."

Mr Barnett said it was part of Australia's "culture, our history and it's reflected in our institutions and laws".

Anglican Dean of Perth John Shepherd said although religious demographics had changed in recent years, there was still a place for the Lord's Prayer to be recited at government schools. "I think there is a place, just as there is a place for exposing children to the full knowledge of other faiths," Dr Shepherd said.

"I do acknowledge that it's not simple, (but) it does embody values to which we all ascribe. "I think it is a valuable addition to the educative process."

SOURCE



20 September, 2011

The federal government doesn’t belong in the education system

In 2008, America spent about $9,000 per student for their education. With that kind of money, you’d expect American students to be ranked at the top academically, but they’re not.

In fact, an article in the Atlantic states, “only 6 percent of U.S. students perform at the advanced-proficiency level in math, a share that lags behind kids in some 30 other countries, from the United Kingdom to Taiwan.”

For this, many states and elected officials have blamed the lack of competition within the education system. And in response, a movement of school choice is leading to the opening of charter schools around the nation.

Charter schools gives parents more options of where to send their child. Also, they have more freedom from the many regulations of public schools by allowing students and teachers more authority to make decisions.

And now, through a series of bills amending and reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, Congress wants to be more involved in the ever-growing school choice movement.

One of these bills, H.R. 2218, the Empowering Parents through Quality Charter Schools Act, reforms and reauthorizes charter school support programs for FY 2012 through FY 2017.

A summary of the bill from the House Republican Study Committee (RSC) states this bill “reauthorizes the Charter School Program’s competitive grants to state educational agencies to support new charter school development and provide technical assistance, but expands the list of eligible applicants for such grants to include governors and a state’s charter school board… and provides financing assistance to charter schools to acquire, construct or renovate facilities.”

Despite the good intentions of this bill, it runs afoul of the basic Constitutional enumeration of powers between the federal and state governments. Constitutionally, the federal government has no role in setting education policy, and any extension of the federal government’s role in any aspect of K-12 education is at best problematic. After all, at a time when the size and scope of the federal government needs to be rolled back, this bill is estimated to cost about $1 billion over the 2012-2016 period, assuming appropriation of the authorized amounts.

“Time and time again we have seen the federal government use tax dollars to gain control over local and state governments,” says ALG’s Wilson. “The fear with this bill, while well intentioned, is that it will take away from the very reason charter schools were started in the first place—independence and freedom from influence.”

In fact, studies show federal government involvement in education does not help students academically. In a Cato Institute report looking at K-12 education subsidies, author Neal McCluskey found:

“The average NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress ] mathematics score rose just two points to 306 in 2008 from 304 in 1973. The average NAEP reading score rose just one point to 286 in 2008 from 285 in 1971. These scores are on a 500-point scale. Other measures show similarly poor achievement, or at least a lack of improvement. For example, the percentage of students who had completed high school within four years of entering ninth grade is 75 percent today, about the same as it was in the mid-1970s.”

Despite increased spending by the Department of Education from $12.5 billion in 1965 to $72.8 billion in 2008, measured in constant 2008 dollars, student improvement has remained stagnant.

If the history of the education system in America proves anything it is that pushing another education bill through Congress and sending states more taxpayer money to encourage a specific agenda will not accomplish the intended results.

Educating America’s youth best belongs in the hands of parents, school districts and local governments. The charter school movement has grown by leaps and bounds by state and local government action. The focus of charter schools is on the students’ academic achievement. Let that focus continue without more involvement from the federal government.

SOURCE





Gov. Jindal To Campaign on Behalf of School Choice Candidates as Part of His Re-Election Effort

Louisiana school board candidates who favor vouchers and oppose tenure are expected to receive a boost from Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is up for re-election this fall, and a new political action committee. Jindal has been an ardent proponent of school choice initiatives, which puts him at odds with the teachers unions.

All eight of the elected seats on the 11 member Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) are open to primary challenges on Oct. 22. The other three seats are appointed by the governor.

Only one incumbent, Linda Johnson, a Plaquemine resident, has announced that she is not running for re-election. Glenny Lee Buquet of Houma, a former BESE president who has served on the board since 1992, recently announced that she would seek another term. Houma had previously indicated that she would step down but reconsidered at the behest of Gov. Jindal. At least six of the elected seats could be highly competitive.

In April, a new statewide group called the Coalition for Louisiana Public Education, which includes teachers unions, local school board officials and local superintendents, came together in an effort to oppose Jindal’s school choice initiatives and to back its own candidates.

The organization includes leaders of the: Louisiana School Boards Association (LSBA); Louisiana Association of School Superintendents (LASS): Louisiana Association of School Executives (LASE): Louisiana Association of Educators (LAE); Louisiana Federation of Teachers (LFT); Louisiana Retired Teachers Association, (LRTA); founder/board chairman and directors of Research on Reform, Inc.; and the creator of the blog “Louisiana Educator.”

“What we see in the state leadership is simple capitalistic ideology, a kind of `Disaster Capitalism,’ not an emphasis on quality education,” Dr. James Taylor, president of the Louisiana Retired Teachers Association, said in a press release.

Charles Hatfield, a coalition member who works as an analyst with Research on Reforms, Inc., described the Jindal Administration position on education as “market‐driven propaganda, a sort of ‘gain’ game with school performance scores perpetuating a myth to the public.”

Joe Potts, President Emeritus and a member of the Jefferson Federation of Teachers, another Coalition member challenged the idea that schools should be run in a more business-like manner. “Why should schools need to be run more like a business, when it is well documented that more than half of all businesses fail?” he asked.

But a new political action committee (PAC) called The Alliance for Better Classrooms (ABC) has also entered the fray. ABC will spend at least $1 million on “reform candidates” who support its policy objectives, Lane Grisby, a Baton Rouge contractor who helped form the PAC, has told members of the press.

The Alliance favors “student-based budgeting,” which gives principals more flexibility in local appropriations, school choice programs and annual teacher evaluations. Gov. Jindal and former Superintendent Paul Pastorek frequently secured 6-5 votes on BESE to advance many of the policy changes that ABC also supports.

The school voucher program known as the Student Scholarships for Education Excellence (SSEE) program has been active for the past four years in New Orleans. Initially, vouchers were limited to the kindergarten through third grade, but they have expanded each year to include a higher-grade level.

Currently 1,697 voucher recipients are enrolled in private schools, less than 5 percent of the 40,000 public school students. But supporters now see an opportunity to expand the use of school vouchers throughout the state given the steady rise in demand for scholarships over the past few years. The Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), for example, has asked that lawmakers consider the use of school vouchers in Baton Rouge and Shreveport.

“The status quo will argue that vouchers will hurt the system, but they’re not going to hurt the system if their schools are competitive,” said Chas Roemer, a board member running for re-election. “But if a school is not the school of choice then we need to ask why. We also need to ask why it’s right to send a child to a school that is not working.”

Roemer has been endorsed by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), which has also lined up behind some of the new challengers including Kira Orange Jones, executive director of Teach for America in Louisiana, a non-profit group aimed at eliminating inequality in education. Orange Jones will face off against incumbent Louella Givens, a New Orleans lawyer and former teacher, who has consistently voted against reforms favored by Jindal and Pastorek.

LABI and ABC are also looking to unseat Dale Bayard of Lake Charles and favor his opponent Holly Boffy of Lafayette. LABI has endorsed Boffy, who was Louisiana’s 2010 teacher of the year. Boffy is also an outspoken opponent of teacher tenure.

SOURCE




Ban teaching creationism at school, say British academics

The teaching of creationism should be outlawed in school science lessons, a group of leading scientists have said.

And the curriculum should be changed to ensure evolution is taught from when children start school, according to academics including Sir David Attenborough and Professor Richard Dawkins

Those behind the call for ‘evolution not creationism’ say teaching that God created the world is dangerous and must be prevented by law.

Drives by creationist groups at schools mean there is a sense of urgency, they add.

Evolution – the idea that we are shaped by advantageous genes being passed through generations over billions of years – does not feature in the national curriculum until the time of GCSEs.

The discussion of creationism and the theory of intelligent design – a view that evolution is fine-tuned by God – is encouraged but not part of the curriculum.

Prof Dawkins, a geneticist and author of the God Delusion, said last night: ‘We need to stop calling evolution a theory. It is as solidly demonstrated as any fact.’

Jack Valero, of Catholic Voices, said evolution should not be used to suggest God does not exist.

Dr Peter Saunders, of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said pupils should be taught to respect all views about how life began.

SOURCE



19 September, 2011

Dinner with Ahmadinejad

Why is a man who represents all that liberals hate being welcomed onto campus?

The Columbia Spectator is the student newspaper at Columbia University, the school I was once proud to call my alma mater. A report in that newspaper raises the following question: Are leading American universities producing moral illiterates?

According to the Spectator, a group of students who are members of a group called CIRCA, the Columbia International Relations Council and Association, has been invited to attend a private dinner with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he travels to New York for the United Nations General Assembly meeting next week. A student spokesman for the group, asked if the invitation provoked controversy within CIRCA, seemed surprised by the question. “Everyone was really enthusiastic,” said Tim Chan. “They’re thrilled to have this opportunity.”

Ahmadinejad represents everything that campus liberals profess to hate. In order of importance, those things would be: (1) persecuting homosexuals; (2) cruel and abusive treatment of women; (3) brutal treatment of minorities; (4) shooting opponents of the regime in the streets; (5) restricting free speech; (6) building nuclear weapons; and (7) sponsoring terror worldwide. Tehran provides material and moral support for Bashar Assad’s murderous regime in Syria, which has mowed down protesters by the thousands in the past few months. The Iranian regime is also guilty of fetid anti-Semitism, and has the blood of many American soldiers who served in Iraq on its hands — though it isn’t clear that the latter two offenses rate very highly with Columbia students.

Even as members of CIRCA were eagerly anticipating dining with one of the world’s true fiends, the Iranian government was refusing to release American hikers Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, who were recently convicted of espionage after a secret trial and sentenced to eight years in prison. Both Bauer and Fattal are graduates of Berkeley, and believers — if you can extrapolate from their backgrounds in “sustainable development” and freelance photography for leftist outlets like Democracy Now! — in liberal causes. Even if members of CIRCA feel no particular solidarity with the hikers as fellow Americans, they might at least feel something for fellow members of the liberal clerisy. But apparently not.

College students are old enough to be responsible for their own moral decision-making, but the faculty and administration of Columbia University certainly provided an appalling example in 2007 when they invited Ahmadinejad to speak. Oh, university president Lee Bollinger tried to quash some of the controversy the invitation sparked by calling Ahmadinejad a “cruel dictator” to his face. But those insults only made Bollinger seem an ungracious host, and did little to mitigate the damage that issuing the invitation in the first place had done to Columbia’s reputation. The invitation, Bollinger insisted, arose out of Columbia’s “almost single-minded commitment to pursue the truth.” Simple-minded might be closer to the mark. As for truth, how exactly does offering the prestigious forum of a famed university to a Holocaust denier advance the search for truth?

There is a world of difference between tolerating and respecting differences of opinion within a university (notably absent when it comes to conservative ideas by the way), and tolerating actual despots with the blood of innocents on their hands. Ahmadinejad’s regime has presided over executions of young homosexuals. Two were hanged in a public square just 24 months before Ahmadinejad stepped to a podium at Columbia. Here is how Human Rights Watch describes the current situation:

Since Iran’s crackdown against anti-government protests following the 2009 presidential election, the human rights crisis in the country has only deepened. Human Rights Watch is particularly concerned about the broad-based targeting of civil society activists, including lawyers, students, women’s rights activists, and journalists, and a sharp increase in the use of the death penalty. Yet the government’s record of cooperation with international institutions, particularly with UN mechanisms, remains extremely poor.

Something is inoculating Ahmadinejad from the total contempt members of the university community would ordinarily feel toward someone with his views and his behavior. It is impossible, for example, to imagine the university inviting fellow Holocaust denier and racist David Duke to speak to the students and faculty. And it’s equally impossible to imagine that students would be “thrilled” by a dinner invitation from Rev. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church.

My suspicion is that the harshly adversarial pose of the university toward American society and culture leads to a misplaced benefit of the doubt toward enemies of this country. It is Ahmadinejad’s very hatred of the U.S. that makes him intriguing to Columbia.

SOURCE








School says American flag is dangerous

And harass an autistic kid. No flexibility or sensitivity in evidence at all

A Dover woman said she's upset that an American flag her son took to school was taken away by school staff. Theresa Stevens said the flag, which is attached to a roughly 24-inch wooden stick with a standard gold spear tip, was given to her seventh-grade son, Shawn, by a family friend, the mother of U.S. Marine Cpl. Gary Fielding, who is about to deploy to Afghanistan. "When he saw how upset the mother of this boy is that's going to Afghanistan, he wanted to do everything in his power to show support for her son," said Stevens.

Stevens said Shawn took the flag to Dover Middle School to be patriotic and to tell his friends about Fielding's service. "He wants to bring patriotism back one person at a time, starting with his peer group and adults that have lost their way," Stevens said.

Stevens said her son, who is autistic, is very patriotic and has a deep interest in U.S. history. "He's amazing," she said. "He's the most unique individual I have ever met. He knows everything about American history. He knows every war we've ever fought. He knows dates, times and places of when bombs were dropped, and why we got involved in wars."

But Wednesday morning, Stevens said she got a call from the school. "I got the phone call at 8:30 yesterday morning," she said. "'This flag needs to be immediately removed from school because it can be considered a weapon.' I don't understand how an American flag can be considered a weapon."

Co-Principal Kimberly Lyndes said the spear point of the flag's stick was the problem. "A student came to school yesterday with a flag that was rather large and didn't fit inside the backpack," she said. "A staff member felt that it could potentially be dangerous because of the pointy end and took the item and let the student know and the parent know that they took the item and could pick it up. "It had nothing to do with patriotism or it being a flag. It was about potential danger and school safety."

Stevens accused the school of being inconsistent. "So can pencils, so can protractors, so can any of the school supplies that they give to these children, and their stance is, 'Well, we don't let them wave them around in class, and your son has autism,'" Stevens said. "Really? That's your stance?"

Lyndes said the boy wasn't disciplined over bringing the flag to school. "This was not a disciplinary issue at all," she said. "The student was spoken to. The situation was explained. I spoke to the parent at length about the situation to make sure that everyone understood that this was a safety concern."

Stevens said she isn't letting Shawn take the flag to school, but she plans to discuss the matter with school officials next week when she meets with them for an individualized education plan meeting about her son. "When somebody shows up with an American flag on American soil at an American school, that's his First Amendment right to do so," Stevens said. "Just because he's 12 doesn't mean he doesn't have constitutional rights." Stevens said she hopes the school will reconsider.

Lyndes said that the issue wasn't one of patriotism or expression, but rather safety. "We have American flags in every classroom," she said. "We do the Pledge of Allegiance every day. Patriotism is definitely embraced at Dover Middle School. This incident had nothing to do with the fact that it was a flag. It was the pointed stick that the flag was on."

SOURCE. Video here.




One in five pupils learns nothing after the age of 11, says former British private school head

One in five British pupils 'learns nothing' at secondary school, according to head of the country's leading private schools' group. He says children in this country are falling behind the rest of the world, with those of all abilities failing to reach their potential.

The chairman of the Independent Schools Council said that the underachievement of the bottom 20 per cent - especially boys - was more exaggerated than in countries such as China, Finland and Japan.

Barnaby Lenon, a former headmaster at Harrow School, also said in a Daily Telegraph interview that the most gifted children were not reaching their full potential. 'The biggest problem that this country faces is the underachievement of the bottom 20 per cent of pupils, particularly boys, who appear to learn nothing at school after the age of 11,' he said.

'That's the biggest challenge. But the research is also pointing to the fact that those at the top end - the top 50 per cent academically - are not reaching the level that the top 50 per cent are reaching in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Finland.'

Mr Lenon waded into the debate after recent revelations that one in five children leaves primary school without having reached the standard reading level for an 11-year-old. 'The contrast in achievement between the best and the worst is greater than in many other countries,' he added.

He said that private schools could help address these problems by holding 'masterclasses' and by sponsoring state academies - but he denied that they were responsible for the problems. The chairman of the ISC, which represents 1,234 schools, said it was 'silly' to blame the private sector when it only accounted for 8 per cent of British schools.

He called for wider reform of the curriculum and exam system in order for the country to raise its standards to a competitive international level. He said: 'When I was headmaster at Harrow, I recruited 15 to 20 boys a year from Hong Kong. In every case, they were two years ahead of English boys at maths. 'You do not get that same sort of tail of underachievement in countries like China, Japan and Finland.'

SOURCE



18 September, 2011

SAT reading scores at all-time low

Scores on the critical reading portion of the SAT college entrance exam fell three points to their lowest level on record last year, and combined reading and math scores reached their lowest point since 1995.

The College Board, which released the scores Wednesday, said the results reflect the record number of students from the high school class of 2011 who took the exam and the growing diversity of the test-taking pool -- particularly Hispanics. As more students aim for college and take the exam, it tends to drag down average scores.

Still, while the three-point decline to 497 may look small in the context of an 800-point test, it was only the second time in the last two decades reading scores have fallen as much in a single year. And reading scores are now notably lower than scores as recently as 2005, when the average was 508.

Average math scores for the class of 2011 fell one point to 514 and scores on the critical reading section fell two points to 489.
Other recent tests of reading skills, such as the National Assessment of Education Progress, have shown reading skills of high-school students holding fairly steady. And the pool of students who take the SAT is tilted toward college-goers and not necessarily representative of all high school students.

But the relatively poor performance on the SATs could raise questions whether reading and writing instruction need even more emphasis to accommodate the country's changing demographics. Roughly 27 percent of the 1.65 million test-takers last year had a first language other than English, up from 19 percent just a decade ago.

Jim Montoya, vice president of relationship development at the College Board, said the expanding Latino population was a factor, as well as greater outreach to get minority students to take the test. But there are others, too.

"It's a lot of little things," he said. For example, he said, the number of black students taking a solid core curriculum -- a strong predictor of success on the test -- has fallen from 69 percent to 66 percent over a decade.

The College Board, a membership organization that owns the exam and promotes college access, also released its first "College and Career Benchmark" report, which it said would eventually be used to help show states and school districts how well prepared their students are. Based on research at 100 colleges, it calculated that scoring 1550 or above on the three sections of the test indicated a 65-percent likelihood of attaining a B-minus or above average in the freshman year of college. Overall, 43 percent of test-takers reached that benchmark.

The SAT and rival ACT exam are taken by roughly the same number of students each year. Most colleges require scores from at least one of the exams but will consider either. In recent years, some colleges have adopted test-optional policies allowing applicants to decline to submit test scores at all.

SOURCE





'Racial Bias' Claims Insult Families of Color

Cherylyn Harley LeBon

It’s September, so it’s back-to-school for American kids and other children around the world. Many families pack away the swimsuits and beach gear, unpack the notebooks, lunch bags, brand new shoes, and look forward to the regular routine.

This fall is also an interesting time of reflection in our country.

Record numbers of Americans are living below the poverty line, the housing foreclosure rate continues to climb, and rising unemployment will, in fact, keep some of these children going back to school on the school lunch program longer than expected. In these desperate times, people resort to desperate measures - engaging in scare tactics and myths so often embraced and perpetuated by the liberal media. Chief among these myths is the controversy surrounding the SAT college admissions test. Disturbingly, the media’s promotion of this myth is creating confusion among students and families considering college options.

Opponents of the SAT test argue that the test determines who gets into college and who does not, and should be, therefore, abolished in favor of “test optional policies.” This argument is largely promoted by the group Fair Test, which advocates an end to standardized testing in college admissions.

Fair Test's roster of supporters includes George Soros, the infamous billionaire who has bankrolled MoveOn.org and several other left-wing groups and politicians. Fair Test touts itself as an educational organization, but it is a special interest group recognized by the mainstream media as a credible source on educational testing issues.

The sad result of this misinformation is the effect on students and families preparing for college, particularly students and families of color. Fair Test continues to argue that the SAT is biased against minority and low income students. In fact, the goal of Fair Test is to play the blame game and portray minority students (or any students who do not perform well on the SAT) as victims in their sandbox game of Limousine Liberal politics.

The racial bias myth was definitively laid to rest several years ago in the peer-reviewed journal American Psychologist. University of Minnesota researchers Paul Sackett, Matthew Borneman and Brian Connelly examined the issue and reported that any inference that group scores are linked to bias is, “unequivocally rejected within mainstream psychology.” The only people still advocating that the SAT is racially biased are patriarchal liberal groups including Fair Test who play the race card when other options fail.

Others have also refuted the claims of racial bias in standardized testing.

In 2008, Jonathan Epstein, a researcher with Maguire Associates, studied the impact of test-optional policies in college admissions. Epstein discovered that test-optional policies at colleges and universities lead to artificially inflated average SAT scores among incoming freshmen. He found this resulted in further confusion for prospective students and families and “is not in the best interest of any institution or higher education in general.”

As parents, we all want our children to grow up and become productive members of society. The college search process is an important step in helping our children make major life decisions. A political group is advocating for the end of standardized testing, and continues to mislead students and families by attempting to influence an academic professional organization overseeing college admissions. The result will be to marginalize successful black students or those who come from other racial, ethnic or socioeconomic groups.

Promoting the racial bias myth also harms students by creating the wrong expectation that the deck is stacked against them. The truth is, every SAT question is exhaustively pre-tested and carefully analyzed for any bias.

Questions are reviewed by panels of K-12 and college educators and questions which indicate any bias are never used in the actual test. Furthermore, more than three-quarters of the nation’s top historically black colleges and universities accept the SAT as an admissions requirement. Score differences may exist among some students in different groups, but they do not indicate bias in the SAT, and are an unfortunate reflection of inequities in K-12 education across thousands of school districts.

The continued claims of racial bias in SAT testing are insulting to all families of color when interest groups portray us as victims incapable of advocating for ourselves. The policies of Fair Test and other liberal interest groups reveal that these groups are more concerned with the politics of race than educating the children of this country.

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Sex education will NOT be taught to children as young as five, after British Coalition ditches plans

Proposals for compulsory sex education for children as young as five have been ditched. Schools Minister Nick Gibb said the Coalition would not implement the controversial plans put forward under Labour and had ‘no plans to change the law on sex education’. This means that teaching sex education will remain optional in primary schools.

Family campaigners feared that statutory sex and relationship education (SRE) could lead to teenage pregnancy being seen as acceptable by impressionable youngsters.

SRE is taught in Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education lessons, although elements such as the facts of reproduction are also contained in biology classes.

Under Labour, the then Schools Secretary Ed Balls planned to make PSHE classes a part of the compulsory national curriculum in primary and secondary schools from this month. This would have seen lessons in relationships and sex starting at five, with prescribed content for each age group.

The Coalition has now launched a review of PSHE but Mr Gibb said ‘the Government has already ruled out making PSHE education as a whole a statutory subject within the curriculum’.

In a letter to Graham Stuart, chair of the education select committee, he added: ‘The Government has no plans to change the law on sex education or parents' right to withdraw their children from sex education.'

Over 2,000 people signed a letter last March calling on Parliament to ‘decisively' oppose the plans contained in the Children, Schools and Families Bill.

Mr Balls was forced to drop the proposals - along with another ten flagship policies - a month later in a bid to push through the Bill in the final days of Parliament - a period known as the ‘wash up'.

At the time, the Tories said the party had agreed to compulsory sex education but wanted parents to be able to choose to ‘opt out' if their children were below 16.

They claimed Mr Balls ‘preferred petulance' by scrapping the plans entirely in the ‘wash out', after disagreements between the two parties over the opt out age.

The Coalition has now launched a review of PSHE, proposing a strengthening in the priority given to teaching about relationships, the importance of positive parenting and teaching about sexual consent.

Primary heads and governors will continue to decide whether or not to provide sex education and what it should involve beyond the compulsory science requirements - such as the biological facts of reproduction - laid down by the national curriculum.

SOURCE



17 September, 2011

Racial Preferences in Wisconsin

The campus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison erupted this week after the release of two studies documenting the heavy use of race in deciding which students to admit to the undergraduate and law schools. The evidence of discrimination is undeniable, and the reaction by critics was undeniably dishonest and thuggish.

The Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO), which I founded in 1995 to expose and challenge misguided race-based public policies, conducted the studies based on an analysis of the university's own admissions data. But the university was none too keen on releasing the data, which CEO obtained through filing Freedom of Information Act requests only after a successful legal challenge went all the way to the state supreme court.

It's no wonder the university wanted to keep the information secret. The studies show that a black or Hispanic undergraduate applicant was more than 500 times likelier to be admitted to Wisconsin-Madison than a similarly qualified white or Asian applicant. The odds ratio favoring black law school applicants over similarly qualified white applicants was 61 to 1.

The median SAT scores of black undergraduates who were admitted were 150 points lower than whites or Asians, while the median Hispanic scores were roughly 100 points lower. And median high school rankings for both blacks and Hispanics were also lower than for either whites or Asians.

CEO has published studies of racial double standards in admissions at scores of public colleges and universities across the country with similar findings, but none has caused such a violent reaction.

Instead of addressing the findings of the study, the university's vice provost for diversity, Damon A. Williams, dishonestly told students that "CEO has one mission and one mission only: dismantle the gains that were achieved by the civil rights movement." In fact, CEO's only mission is to promote color-blind equal opportunity so that, in Martin Luther King's vision, no one will be judged by the color of his or her skin.

Egged on by inflammatory comments by university officials, student groups organized a flashmob via a Facebook page that was filled with propaganda and outright lies about CEO wanting to dismantle their student groups. More than a hundred angry students stormed the press conference at the Doubletree Hotel in Madison, where CEO president Roger Clegg was releasing the study.

The hotel management described what took place in a press statement afterward: "Unfortunately, when escorting meeting attendees out of the hotel through a private entrance, staff were then rushed by a mob of protestors, throwing employees to the ground. The mob became increasingly physically violent when forcing themselves into the meeting room where the press conference had already ended, filling it over fire-code capacity. Madison police arrived on the scene after the protestors had stormed the hotel."

But the outrageous behavior didn't end there -- and it wasn't just students but also faculty who engaged in disgraceful conduct. Later the same day of the press conference, Clegg debated UW law professor Larry Church on campus. The crowd booed, hissed, and shouted insults, continuously interrupting Clegg during the debate.

Having used Facebook to organize the flashmob, students and some faculty extended their use of social media and tweeted the debate live. Even with Twitter's 140-character limit, you'd think participants would be able to come up with something more substantive than the repeated use of the label "racist" to describe Clegg and his arguments against racial double standards, but hundreds of tweets exhibited little more than hysterical rants and personal attacks.

Perhaps the most offensive tweet was posted by Sara Goldrick-Rab, an associate professor of educational policy studies and sociology. After announcing that she was "Getting set to live blog this debate between a racist and a scholar," she tweeted that Clegg sounded "like the whitest white boy I've ever heard." The only racism in evidence came from the defenders of the university's race-based admissions policies, such as Professor Goldrick-Rab.

You'd think that a responsible university would denounce the intimidation and lack of civility by its students and faculty. Instead, Vice Provost Williams told the student newspaper, "I'm most excited about how well the students represented themselves, the passion with which they engaged, the respectful tone in how they did it and the thoughtfulness of their questions and interactions."

It appears that not only are the university's admissions policies deeply discriminatory, but also that university officials applaud name-calling, distortion and outright physical assault.

SOURCE




Bring back the cane, say half of British parents as Cameron pledges to restore order in schools following riots

Almost half of parents would be happy to see the return of the cane to restore discipline in the classroom, a survey suggests today.

It found 49 per cent of parents – and 19 per cent of pupils – believe caning or smacking should be used to punish ‘very bad’ behaviour.

In more general cases of ill discipline, 40 per cent of parents and 14 per cent of children favour corporal punishment.

While 53 per cent of parents and 77 per cent of children are against the cane, the poll found nine out of ten parents – and two thirds of pupils – want teachers to have more power to crack down on bad behaviour.

The survey, conducted by YouGov, comes just a week after David Cameron pledged to restore order and respect in schools in the wake of last month’s riots.

Education Secretary Michael Gove continued the tough line yesterday when he said: ‘Parents and students know we have to give teachers more authority. Strong discipline is vital for effective teaching.

‘In some of our most challenging areas there are profound problems, as the events of last month underlined. That’s why we need to give teachers more power to keep order and emphasise that adult authority should be respected and teachers obeyed.

‘Every child deserves to be taught properly. This right is currently undermined by the twisting of rights by a minority who need to be taught an unambiguous lesson in who is boss.’

Corporal punishment ended in state schools in 1987, and in the fee-paying sector in 1998.

The YouGov researchers, commissioned by the Times Educational Supplement, polled 2,014 parents with children at secondary school and 530 secondary-age pupils between August 19 and August 30.

While significant numbers favoured corporal punishment, sending pupils out of the class was the most popular method of dealing with indiscipline, chosen by 89 per cent of parents and 79 per cent of children.

Other popular ways of cracking down on bad behaviour were lunchtime or after-school detentions and writing lines.

More than four in five parents (84 per cent) and nearly two thirds of children (62 per cent) backed expelling or suspending naughty pupils.

The survey raises parents’ concerns that behaviour in schools is worse now than when they were young.

More than four fifths of parents (85 per cent) said teachers are given less respect by pupils now than when they were at school, with 86 per cent saying teachers need to gain more respect to discipline youngsters properly.

Nine in ten (91 per cent) said they were concerned that teachers have become more fearful of their pupils.

SOURCE





British mother-of-four threatened son's bullies with baseball bat after 'school did nothing to help'

A mother threatened her son's bullies on a school bus with a baseball bat because she felt his school and the police 'did nothing' to help the youngster. Natasha Hayley, 30, resorted to extreme measures after her 11-year-old's tormentors assaulted and robbed him.

A judge said although she had been 'incredibly stupid', he said he was not going to deprive her children of their mother by sending her to prison.

Recorder James Mulholland QC, at Maidstone Crown Court, in Kent, was shown footage of the incident caught on security cameras on the bus.

He heard how Ms Hayley from Dartford, Kent, acted on November 29 last year over her 11-year-old son being bullied at Wilmington Academy.

Michael Smalley, defending, said Hayley's son was the victim of an assault by a group of pupils on the school bus at the beginning of November. He said Ms Hayley had tried contacting the school and the police without any success. Kent police say they did act on the mother's complaints.

Although he was reluctant to return to school, Mr Smalley said the boy's mother made him go and there he was robbed in a classroom and bullied. But after informing the school she thought nothing would be done, which is why Ms Hayley says she took matters into her own hands.

When arrested, she told police she had got onto the bus to stop the bullies and took the bat in case she was 'rushed', after calls to the school and the police had failed to bring any action.

Mr Smalley said Miss Hayley, who admitted affray: 'She accepts she went over the top. She has remorse and regret. She says she was stupid.' Her son had since left Wilmington Academy and has settled at a new school.

Miss Hayley received a six-month sentence suspended for 12 months and ordered to do 150 hours' unpaid work and was handed a curfew. She said her punishment was 'unfair'. Speaking at her home in Dartford, Kent, she said: 'Nothing had been done about my son being bullied. 'If my son was to be robbed in the street that's robbery but because it was in the classroom he did not even get questioned. I am now planning to sue the school for misconduct.

'My son was the victim in the beginning of this - he had barely turned 11. All I wanted to do was to get to their parents.' Speaking about the incident on the bus, the single mother said: 'The people who beat my son up should never have been allowed on the bus. 'I should never have got on the bus with the baseball bat. I should have gone to the parents' house and spoken to them. 'If the school and police had done their work I would never have had to do it.'

The vigilante mother also claims she never intended to use the bat. She added: 'I know you can't touch children - they're children for God's sake. 'Not one parent I know would accept [their son being beaten up]. I do not feel like I am wrong because I feel like I had to do something to stop my son being bullied.

'I would never touch a child. I'd never dream of it in a million years. I hope [what my son went through] never ever happens to any one of my children. 'My son was a victim and all of all of a sudden that was ignored. My son then had to deal with people thinking I was a bully and I'm not a bully. 'I do not send my children to school to be bullied - I cannot believe the school allowed it. I think it's atrocious really.'

Recorder Mulholland said he sympathised over the 'horrific' bullying but Miss Hayley had 'gone off the scale'. He added: 'It is so far removed from what one would hope a parent would do.'

But chief Inspector Mark Arnold said the matter had been resolved: 'Kent Police was contacted in relation to an assault which occurred on 15 November 2010. The matter was fully investigated and regular contact was made with the victim's mother.

'The matter was dealt with by the school and was resolved without further police involvement, at the agreement of those involved and in line with the Kent County Council and Kent Police Schools Policy.

'Advice was provided that should further issues arise or a satisfactory outcome not be achieved, officers should be contacted. No further allegations were made to police by the victim or his family.'

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16 September, 2011

Idaho School Shut Down Over 'Religious Texts'

To school teacher Isaac Moffett, the Bible is not just a religious document. “It’s so much more,” he said. "It’s a primary source of history. It’s a primary teaching source of actually people who lived during the time period.”

Moffett is making his case as he walks across a dirt field in Nampa, Idaho. “This used to be our campus,” he said. “This is where the classrooms were. Everything was right here.”

That was last year. This year it’s all gone, and all because Moffett and his fellow teachers used the Bible and other “religious texts” in their classrooms.

It’s a shocking set of circumstances that has one of the most conservative states in the country defending one of the most liberal views of the Constitutional separation between church and state.

At issue is the Nampa Classical Academy, a charter school, founded by Moffett in 2009. One year later, Idaho’s Board of Education shut the school down, citing its use of “religious texts” inside classrooms. Moffett says he only used the texts to teach history and is now suing the Board in federal court.

His lawyer calls it a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution. “I suspect the Supreme Court is going to eventually write the final book of this case,” David Cortman predicted as he too walked across the abandoned field that was once Nampa Classical.

Cortman is from The Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based group that defends Christian causes. “The Supreme Court of the United States has held for decades now,” he explained, “that it is Constitutionally permissible to objectively teach the Bible in public schools for history or comparative literature.”

And he says that is exactly what Moffett and fellow teachers were doing in Nampa. “This was not a religious school,” he said

No one from the Idaho Board of Education would comment citing the pending litigation. But in a 2009 memorandum, Idaho’s Attorney General’s office explained the state’s position: “...Use of any religious texts within Idaho's classrooms, would likely violate the Idaho State Constitution," it said.

Surprisingly Idaho’s Constitution has one of the most liberal views about Church/state separation. For instance, Title IX reads, "No Sectarian or religious tenants or doctrines shall ever be taught in the public schools."

Cortman said that line was written to prohibit Idaho’s religious groups from spreading their particular doctrines within public schools and not to banish the Bible altogether. “This is a misrepresentation,” he said. In any case, he adds the Federal Constitution always trumps state constitutions. “We feel we are on very firm ground on this one,” he said

SOURCE





British schools go back to basics with return of phonics tests for six-year-olds

Long overdue

Every six-year-old will be tested on their ability to read words such as ‘cat’, ‘zoo’ and ‘pride’ as part of a return to traditional teaching. Schools minister Nick Gibb will today announce that every six year old will be screened with a 10-minute test during one week of June from 2012.

The tests will be based on phonics – where pupils learn the sounds of letters and groups of letters before putting them together. It is a move away from the ‘trendy’ teaching methods which have been blamed on the decline of youngsters’ grasp of the 3Rs.

Around one in six seven-year-olds and one in five 11-year-olds fail to reach the levels expected of their age group in reading, according to official statistics.

Ministers hope the test will enable teachers to pinpoint any child struggling with reading at an early stage – so they can be given extra help.

The announcement follows the successful completion of a pilot scheme in 300 schools this summer. A report, published today, shows almost half of teachers, 43 per cent, discovered pupils with reading problems of which they were not previously aware.

It is therefore hoped that the national tests will flag up the needs of thousands of struggling youngsters each year.

Mr Gibb, said: ‘There is no doubt we need to raise standards of reading. Only last month we learnt that one in 10 boys aged 11 can read no better than a seven-year-old. ‘The new check is based on a method that is internationally proven to get results and the evidence from the pilot is clear – thousands of six-year-olds, who would otherwise slip through the net.’

At present, pupils in England are assessed in Year 2 by their teachers in English, maths and science.

Phonics focuses on sounds rather than, for example, having children try to recognise whole words. In analytic phonics, words are broken down into their beginning and end parts, such as ‘str-’ and ‘eet’, with an emphasis on ‘seeing’ the words and analogy with other words.

In synthetic phonics, children start by sequencing the individual sounds in words – for example, ‘s-t-r-ee-t’, with an emphasis on blending them together. Once they have learned all these, they progress to reading books.

Mr Gove has said he believes that it is impossible for schools to drill pupils to pass the new test. Some teachers are unconvinced by the move, believing reading is best taught using a mixture of methods.

SOURCE




Assistant head who 'shoved' 15-year-old pupil who swore at him is cleared of assault

An assistant head teacher, who was accused of assaulting a 15-year-old pupil, has been cleared. William Stuart, 47, was today found not guilty of assaulting the girl at Graham School in Scarborough following a two-day trial.

After the verdict was read out the court erupted into cheers largely from dozens of Mr Stuart's supporters from the local community. The teacher's wife, Sarah, who had been anxiously sitting in court, burst into tears at the news.

Mr Stuart, who has 23 years of unblemished experience, was charged after the girl, who cannot be named, claimed the science teacher shoved her to the ground and against some coat pegs.

It was alleged that Mr Stuart had become angry and 'out of control' after the pupil ignored his instructions to stay behind when food was smeared on the wall of the school canteen.

But chairman of the bench Paul Osborne said the girl's evidence was inconsistent and did not tally with that of two other pupils who gave evidence for the prosecution.

Ian Glen QC, defending, had earlier told the court 19 incidents were detailed in the school’s bad behaviour log from September 2009 to July 2011 about the girl’s poor attitude in class and on school grounds. The court also heard the girl has already been excluded this term after assaulting another pupil.

Mr Osborne said her terrible school record did nothing for her credibility, especially as she tried to tell the court she was a good pupil.

He said: 'Mr Stuart's evidence was credible and convincing. 'He has a 23-year unblemished teaching record across several schools.'

Speaking after the hearing, Anne Swift, from the National Union of Teachers (NUT), said the strain of the case has had an 'enormous impact' on Mr Stuart's family. She said teachers accused in this way should be granted anonymity until they are convicted by a court. Mrs Swift said: 'He (Mr Stuart) was made to feel a criminal before anything was found.

'It's too easy for youngsters and their families to make false accusations. There should be consequences for those who make false allegations.'

Mrs Swift said both his children went to the school where he teaches and, because of the accusation, he was not able to see his daughter's final concert before she left. Asked how she would describe Mr Stuart, she said: 'An excellent teacher. A man of a good character. A pillar of the community.'

Mrs Swift said she also believed a matter like this should never have involved the police at all and should have been dealt with internally.

Asked whether Mr Stuart would return to his job, she said: 'It would be a great loss to his profession to have an experienced teacher decide they can't face it any more.'

SOURCE



15 September, 2011

Class Warfare, Pandering Dominate Phone Call Between Biden, Teachers Unions

Ridiculously false choices and rhetoric ruled the evening when the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers hosted a closed-media conference call with Vice President Joe Biden to inform their members about the latest government school and teachers’ union bailout.

In a recording obtained exclusively by PublicSchoolSpending.com, Biden explained the administration is seeking to spend $30 billion to create a “Teacher Layoff Prevention Fund.” He also said that many schools today are “deciding whether or not to heat the school or keep a teacher.”

Like school stimuli-past, Biden said schools would not be able to bank the money, but would be required to spend it. “It’s to be able to keep you at work and even rehire teachers,” he told the unions. So the Obama administration – yet again – is setting up a situation where the problem will be the same next year and the administration will have to propose another bailout or the school sky will fall in and even more kids will graduate unable to read.

Obama’s proposal includes $10 billion for the 100 “largest, high need public school districts” to use for renovations. So just prior to the election, the administration is proposing to spend $100 million in communities that traditionally vote for Democrats. Coincidence?

It’s vitally necessary and these jobs (no really, these jobs) truly are “shovel-ready,” Biden contends. In some schools, students “must often dodge falling ceiling tiles and scattering roaches and bathrooms that are missing.” Not just missing doors, but completely gone!

In others, “raw waste spews into the halls after the sewage line burst, 29 kids squeezing into rooms built for 20, etc.” Biden said.

But there is resistance and skewed priorities, according to Biden. (You wouldn’t think a call with the Obama administration and the teachers’ unions wouldn’t be complete without a little class warfare rhetoric, would you?)

“The corporations are fat with money out there” and the reason they aren’t spending it to create jobs is because “they don’t think there are going to be customers to be there to buy because they don’t have jobs or they have stagnant incomes…”

Naturally, it’s the businesses’ fault. The reality is business owners are unsure of the tax, regulatory and ObamaCare liability environment, so they’re sitting tight. Businesses are cautious when there is instability, which the Obama administration has created.

Nevertheless, Biden, like the typical liberal, sets up false choices. “As the president’s said, you know, we have to have priorities. It’s not that we are against people getting tax breaks who are wealthy, I mean, it’s just about being fair.”

“Thirty billion dollars to hire back or keep a total of 280,000 teachers employed. We can either do that, or we can continue to give a $37 billion tax break…to the oil companies, who are doing incredibly well, don’t need our help, said they didn’t, but our Republican colleagues and a few Democrats have said they’re going to continue that tax break – that loophole – for gas and oil. It’s not needed.

“We can spend $37 billion continuing this loophole or $30 billion for 280,000 teachers in the classroom.”

The others on the leftist list of boogeymen didn’t escape unscathed.

“We can modernize our 35,000 schools or we can keep letting hedge fund managers – and they’re not bad guys – but hedge fund managers pay at 15 percent tax. You guys pay at 28 percent or higher. And it’s a $20 billion a year tax break allowing them to avoid ordinary income taxes. … It’s just not fair.

“What do you want to do? Keep that tax loophole that costs $20 billion a year or modernize 35,000 public schools and put people to work?”

Oil companies? Check. Hedge fund managers? Check. Who’s left? Oh yeah, corporate jet owners.

“We can either keep cops and firefighters on the job, which we do in this bill – there’s a total of $5 billion for them combined – or you can give corporate jet owners a special tax break. … That costs $3 billion, that one tax loophole, for corporate jet owners. They’re not bad guys, I don’t care if they have jets, but why in God’s name are we going to spend $3 billion to give them that tax break…?”

Another apparent injustice is the paltry fee for corporate jets to file a flight plan, according to Biden. It’s supposedly much cheaper than for a commercial airline to do the same. Biden contends $12 billion can be raised by increasing the fee to $100.

NEA president Dennis Van Roekel fawned all over Biden. “The NEA, we are proud to stand with this administration. We recognize the unwavering commitment you have made to working families and students,” said in response.

AFT president Ranid Weigarten assured Biden the unions would be there for the Obama administration. “…The president has put together a very granular, very concrete bill…to actually put people back to work.”

“Now it’s for us to try to get this done. Create the pressure we know educators can do to say, look – we can’t, you know – there’s an election in 14 months from now but this is an opportunity to get this done, paid for with shared sacrifice – shared responsibility – of those who happen to be more fortunate than most people on this call and this is that opportunity.

“And speaking for the AFT, Mr. Vice President, then I’ll stop, we will do whatever we can to help create the…advocacy to do this.”

So on behalf of the administration, the NEA and AFT will begin the work of selling yet another bailout for government-run schools. A bailout, of course, which would produce $35.4 million in dues for the NEA and $13.1 million for the AFT.

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'Outstanding' British schools that should only be rated average: Education Secretary wants focus on standard of teaching

More than half of secondary schools and nearly one in four primaries officially rated ‘outstanding’ do not deserve the accolade, the Education Secretary has warned.

Michael Gove highlighted the shame of Ofsted inspections, revealing 410 schools were rated ‘outstanding’ when the quality of their teaching is not.

Disturbingly, they have been given a reprieve from the dreaded inspections unless one is triggered by a dramatic slump in grades – reducing incentives to raise teaching standards.

Inspectors rank schools on 18 factors, some of them woolly and only one of which refers to ‘quality of teaching and learning’.

These include ‘the extent to which pupils adopt healthy lifestyles’, ‘the extent to which pupils feel safe’, and ‘the effectiveness with which school promotes equal opportunity and tackles discrimination’.

Some 150 secondary schools were given the top rating by inspectors last year – even though they failed to score high marks for their teaching. And 260 primaries were similarly trumpeted after inspectors found their teaching was just ‘satisfactory’, or ‘good’.

Under Ofsted, nearly one in ten secondaries, 9 per cent, are ranked outstanding. But Mr Gove has pointed out that the true percentage is just 4 per cent.

And for primaries, Ofsted figures claim 7 per cent are outstanding, while just 5 per cent actually have outstanding teaching. The revelation means 410 schools could be downgraded from ‘outstanding’ to ‘good’.

The stark warning reveals tens of thousands of parents – who fight to ensure they secure the best possible education for their children – are being misled. And it highlights the devastatingly low level of excellent teaching in schools.

Mr Gove’s comments coincide with a report, by exam board Pearson, which shows a resounding 97 per cent of parents believe quality of teaching is the most important factor about a school.

The Education Secretary, in a damning indictment of inspections, has called for an urgent review.

‘It is a worry to me that so many schools that are still judged as “outstanding” overall when they have not achieved an outstanding “teaching and learning”, he told the National College’s Teaching Schools conference in Nottingham. ‘I intend to ask the new Chief Inspector to look at this issue and report back to me with recommendations.’

The method of inspecting schools was introduced by Labour in 2005. They are given an overall ranking by Ofsted following an inspection – outstanding, good, satisfactory or inadequate. It is this ranking that is widely published to parents and plastered over websites.

Last night Rob Bristow, president of exam board Pearson, said inspections must be brought in line with the concerns of parents. ‘When our report asked parents what the most important factors were in choosing their child’s school, an overwhelming 97 per cent told us that their impression of teaching quality was important,’ he said.

‘Parental choices aren’t based solely on exam performance and league tables. ‘They want to be sure that their child receives the very best teaching, to help them reach their potential. This needs to be reflected in the information parents receive.’

The shameful over-inflation of hundreds of schools was also damned by former chief inspector of Ofsted, Christine Gilbert, before she stepped down in June.

The most recent Ofsted annual report highlights the shocking lack of good teaching. It states: ‘The quality of teaching is still too variable.’

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said: ‘It’s concerning that quality of the teaching is hidden beneath the outstanding rating especially as those schools are not due to be re-inspected. ‘I hope the Government will rethink its decision not to inspect outstanding schools to ensure they are achieving the highest possible levels of teaching quality.’

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British teacher on trial for allegedly pushing and hitting 'rude and defiant' pupil who swore at him

An assistant headmaster was put on trial today accused of assaulting a ‘rude and defiant’ teenage girl. Science teacher William Stuart, 47, was angry that the 15-year-old pupil ignored his instructions to stay behind after food was smeared on the wall of the school canteen, a court heard.

He is accused of following her into a corridor where allegedly he grabbed her arm and caused her to fall over before pushing her against coat pegs. She then swore at him. The teenager complained to police five days after the incident at Graham School, Scarborough, in March. Three days later, Stuart was suspended.

He denied a charge of assault at the town’s magistrates court. He has an unblemished career spanning 23 years and five schools, and if convicted he could be forced to quit teaching.

The girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, told the court a friend had smeared icing from a sticky bun on the canteen wall. When the group went to leave, she said she heard Stuart shouting: ‘Get back into the hall you three.’

She told him: ‘No, I’m not coming back because I’m not involved,’ and walked away. The girl claimed the teacher was ‘really angry’ and said: ‘How dare you walk away from me?’ But she said she ignored him and went upstairs.

‘He was coming up behind me quite fast, he was still angry and shouting,’ she added. ‘He came up beside me, put his arm on the banister and wouldn’t let me get past. ‘I turned to get away, but he kept trying to get in front of me to block my path. He was still shouting, “Stop, don’t walk away from me.” ‘I was scared because he wasn’t shouting like a teacher, collected and calm, trying to get the situation under control.’

The teenager said she managed to get up the stairs and into a corridor. ‘He lunged at me with his hand, grabbed my upper right arm and pulled me towards him. I spun round, hit a wall and fell down. ‘I was shocked because I know teachers aren’t supposed to make that sort of contact with a student. I felt scared and wanted to get away. He then grabbed my right arm again and forced me to my feet.’

The teenager claimed Stuart ‘used force and aggression’ to pull her up, adding: ‘We were facing each other and he grabbed my shoulders and pushed me backwards into coat pegs. It really hurt my back when I hit the pegs.’

The girl said she then swore at him and pushed him out of the way. Prosecutor Jessica Strange also told the court the teacher hit the girl ‘again in the back before she ran away down the corridor’.

The pupil went to the school office and reported the incident before being taken home by her mother.She claimed she was left with red marks the size of 50p pieces on her lower and upper back and her right arm.

Ian Glen QC, defending, accused her of telling lies about what happened and ‘exaggerating grossly’. He told the girl: ‘You were out of control that day with anger and defiance weren’t you?’ She replied: ‘No.’

Mr Glen told the court 19 incidents were detailed in the school’s bad behaviour log from September 2009 to July 2011 about the girl’s poor attitude in class and on school grounds. The court also heard the girl has already been excluded this term after assaulting another pupil.

She admitted defying a rule not to wear hoodies at school. She has also been involved in incidents of throwing food and Plasticine and was repeatedly described by different teachers as ‘rude and defiant’.

Colleague David Thompson said of Stuart: ‘He upholds standards in the school and will not tolerate disobedience or misbehaviour, but will work with students to overcome difficulties.’

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14 September, 2011

Too Much Higher Education

Too much of anything is just as much a misallocation of resources as it is too little, and that applies to higher education just as it applies to everything else. A recent study from The Center for College Affordability and Productivity titled "From Wall Street to Wal-Mart," by Richard Vedder, Christopher Denhart, Matthew Denhart, Christopher Matgouranis and Jonathan Robe, explains that college education for many is a waste of time and money. More than one-third of currently working college graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree.

An essay by Vedder that complements the CCAP study reports that there are "one-third of a million waiters and waitresses with college degrees." The study says Vedder -- distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and director of CCAP -- "was startled a year ago when the person he hired to cut down a tree had a master's degree in history, the fellow who fixed his furnace was a mathematics graduate, and, more recently, a TSA airport inspector (whose job it was to ensure that we took our shoes off while going through security) was a recent college graduate."

The nation's college problem is far deeper than the fact that people simply are overqualified for particular jobs. Citing the research of AEI scholar Charles Murray's book "Real Education" (2008), Vedder says: "The number going to college exceeds the number capable of mastering higher levels of intellectual inquiry. This leads colleges to alter their mission, watering down the intellectual content of what they do."

In other words, colleges dumb down courses so that the students they admit can pass them. Murray argues that only a modest proportion of our population has the cognitive skills, work discipline, drive, maturity and integrity to master truly higher education. He says that educated people should be able to read and understand classic works, such as John Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" or William Shakespeare's "King Lear." These works are "insightful in many ways," he says, but a person of average intelligence "typically lacks both the motivation and ability to do so." Mastering complex forms of mathematics is challenging but necessary to develop rigorous thinking and is critical in some areas of science and engineering.

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, authors of "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses" (2011), report on their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at 24 institutions. Forty-five percent of these students demonstrated no significant improvement in a range of skills -- including critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing -- during their first two years of college.

According to an August 2006 issue brief by the Alliance for Excellent Education, student "lack of preparation is also apparent in multiple subject areas; of college freshmen taking remedial courses, 35 percent were enrolled in math, 23 percent in writing, and 20 percent in reading." Declining college admissions standards have contributed to the deterioration of the academic quality of our secondary schools. Colleges show high schools that they do not have to teach much in order for youngsters to be admitted.

According to Education Next, an August Harvard University study titled "Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?" found that only 32 percent of U.S. students achieved proficiency in math, compared with "75 percent of students in Shanghai, 58 percent in Korea, and 56 percent in Finland. Countries in which a majority -- or near majority -- of students performed at or above the proficiency level in math include Switzerland, Japan, Canada, and the Netherlands." Results from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment international test show that U.S. students rank 32nd among industrialized nations in proficiency in math and 17th in reading.

Much of American education is in shambles. Part of a solution is for colleges to refuse to admit students who are unprepared to do real college work. That would help to reveal the shoddy education provided at the primary and secondary school levels. Here I'm whistlin' "Dixie," because college administrators are more interested in numbers of students, which equal more money.

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College May Be Dangerous for Men

College is a dangerous place for men. They are not only a minority, but they are victimized by discriminatory and unconstitutional anti-male rules.

In another striking proof that the Obama administration is totally manipulated by feminists, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights sent out a 19-page "DCL" (Dear Colleague Letter) to colleges and universities that should make men fear attending college at all. The letter adopts the feminist theory that in all sexual controversies or accusations, the man is guilty unless he proves himself innocent.

This DCL carries the force of law, since it purports to be an additional implementation of Title IX, the 1972 federal law that bans sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal assistance. But the DCL was never legislated by Congress, and it was not even launched as a regulation that requires posting for comment in the Federal Register.

The DCL is just a federal order, issued by a feminist bureaucrat named Russlynn Ali, which colleges and universities must obey under threat of losing their funding. Colleges have dutifully fallen in line by spelling it out in their fall orientations under the rubric of making campuses friendly to women and requiring sensitivity about offensive words and ideas.

The most unconstitutional part of Ali's impertinent DCL is that it orders colleges to reject use of the criminal justice standard of proof. The DCL rules that an accused man doesn't have to be judged guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt," or even the intermediate standard of "clear and convincing" proof.

Instead, Ms. Ali instructs colleges that they must judge an accused man based on "a preponderance of the evidence" standard. That means the campus disciplinary board (which may include feminist faculty from the Women's Studies Department) only has to believe that the female accuser is 51 percent likely to be truthful and accurate.

Furthermore, the DCL "strongly discourages" colleges from permitting an accused man "to question or cross-examine the accuser" during the hearing. And appeals must be available to both parties, which subjects the guy to double jeopardy.

The punishment of a man convicted under these DCL rules will far exceed what the campus disciplinary committee may hand out. He will likely be expelled, barred from graduate or professional school and some government jobs, suffer irreparable damage to his reputation, and possibly be exposed to criminal prosecution.

The feminist apparatus is constantly grinding out phony statistics about sexual assault and harassment, accusations that men are naturally batterers, and that women never lie or make errors in sexual allegations. The feminists are unrepentant about the way they and the prosecutors (toadying to the feminists) accepted and publicized lies that destroyed the reputations of the Duke lacrosse men and of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Another monster that hangs over the heads of college students is the increasing evidence that college is a bad financial investment that will saddle students with debt they can never escape. Pro-college ads from organizations like How To E-D-U and KnowHow2Go are seductive: "College graduates can make a million dollars more in their lifetimes than those who don't go to college."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS, 17 million college-educated Americans are now working jobs for which they are overqualified. The BLS reports that hundreds of thousands of college graduates are working as waiters, secretaries, receptionists, laborers or janitors, all respectable occupations but not jobs that will enable them to repay their five- or even six-digit college loans.

The current student loan debt, now $830 billion, is bigger than credit-card debt and growing at the rate of $90 billion a year. Only 40 percent of that debt is actively being repaid, and students are not permitted to escape that debt burden through bankruptcy, so we may be headed for a student-loan bubble like the housing bubble.

The one project that received an increased appropriation in the bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling was more money to subsidize students to go to college. Loaning taxpayers' money to students to go to college makes no sense and is hurtful even to the students who get the money.

If students were working a 48-hour-a-week night job, as I did when I worked my way through college, they wouldn't have time to get into the mischief referenced by the recent DCL or to attend drinking parties, and they wouldn't accumulate the indebtedness that will burden their lives for decades.

For encouragement, they can read Zac Bissonnette's helpful book, "Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding College Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching Off My Parents." Alternatively, students can get a job that doesn't require a college education.

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British schools 'axing traditional science experiements', warn MPs

Children are being forced to study science “second hand” as schools dump traditional experiments in favour of teaching from textbooks, MPs warned today.

The Commons science select committee said that exaggerated fears over health and safety were occasionally used as a “convenient excuse” for avoiding practical work. In a report, it was claimed that this often disguised a lack of confidence among physics, chemistry and biology teachers.

MPs insisted that a decline in experiments and fieldwork was actually down to weak teacher training, a lack of lab technicians, the poor quality of science facilities and crowded timetables.

The conclusions came as a separate international study showed the amount of time children spend in conventional lessons during the school day had a direct bearing on their chances of securing decent grades in science.

Andrew Miller, the committee’s Labour chairman, said: “This is worrying. “If the UK is to be confident of producing the next generation of scientists, then schools - encouraged by the government - must overcome the perceived and real barriers to providing high quality practicals, fieldwork and fieldtrips.”

MPs took evidence from dozens of organisations as part of a review of science experiments and fieldwork in English schools.

The study said high-quality science lessons were needed to enable students to study the subject at college and university. But it was claimed that pupils “cannot and should not do this exclusively second hand, through books without direct practical experience both in and out of the classroom”.

The study found “no credible evidence” to support the claim that health and safety rules got in the way of practical work in the subject. However, the committee was told that it “may be used as a convenient excuse” for avoiding serious science experimentation in some schools.

Teachers may cite health and safety when they are “unsure of their ability to carry out a field trip or believe that the volume and nature of paperwork will outweigh any benefits of taking on the trip”, MPs said.

The committee criticised the poor standard of teacher training, saying that there was “no requirement for student teachers to demonstrate their ability to lead and carry out a field trip” as part of their induction.

Today’s report acknowledged that the Government was attempting to address weaknesses by giving student teachers more on-the-job training in schools and bursaries of up to £20,000 to attract the brightest science and maths graduates into the profession.

But it said schools also needed “fit for purpose facilities” and the support of qualified and experienced technical staff.

MPs heard evidence that some schools were sacking technicians to save money and the design and standard of science labs was “poor”.

“High quality science facilities and qualified and experienced technical support are vital,” said the report. “A career structure for technical staff should be provided and the Government should ensure schools provide science facilities to match its aspirations for science education.”

The conclusions came as a major international report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that a focus on the basics helped boost standards in science.

The study – based on evidence from 37 nations – found that providing one additional science lesson a week was a cheaper and more effective way to raise achievement than extracurricular clubs, homework and visits to museums and galleries.

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13 September, 2011

All the Wrong 9/11 Lessons

Michelle Malkin

Are your kids learning the right lessons about 9/11? Ten years after Osama bin Laden's henchmen murdered thousands of innocents on American soil, too many children have been spoon-fed the thin gruel of progressive political correctness over the stiff antidote of truth.

"Know your enemy, name your enemy" is a 9/11 message that has gone unheeded. Our immigration and homeland security policies refuse to profile jihadi adherents at foreign consular offices and at our borders. Our military leaders refuse to expunge them from uniformed ranks until it's too late (see: Fort Hood massacre). The j-word is discouraged in Obama intelligence circles, and the term "Islamic extremism" was removed from the U.S. national security strategy document last year.

Similarly, too many teachers refuse to show and tell who the perpetrators of 9/11 were and who their heirs are today. My own daughter was one year old when the Twin Towers collapsed, the Pentagon went up in flames and Shanksville, Pa., became hallowed ground for the brave passengers of United Flight 93. In second grade, her teachers read touchy-feely stories about peace and diversity to honor the 9/11 dead. They whitewashed Osama bin Laden, militant Islam and centuries-old jihad out of the curriculum. Apparently, the youngsters weren't ready to learn even the most basic information about the evil masterminds of Islamic terrorism.

Mary Beth Hicks, author of the new book "Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid," points to a recent review of 10 widely used textbooks in which the concepts of jihad and sharia were either watered down or absent. These childhood experts have determined that grade school is too early to delve into the specifics of the homicidal clash of Allah's sharia-avenging soldiers with the freedom-loving Western world.

Yet, many of the same protectors of fragile elementary-school pupils can't wait to teach them all the ins and outs of condoms, cross-dressers and crack addictions.

We pulled our daughter out of a cesspool of academic and moral relativism and found a reality-grounded, rigorous charter school where no-nonsense teachers refuse to sugarcoat inconvenient facts and history. Many of the students are children of soldiers and servicemen and women who -- inspired by the heroes of 9/11 -- have voluntarily deployed time and time again to kill the American Dream destroyers abroad before they kill us over here.

There's no better way to hammer home the message that "freedom is not free" than to have your kids go to school with other kids whose dads and moms are gone for years at a time -- missing births and birthday parties, recitals and soccer practice, Christmas pageants and Independence Day fireworks.

But instead of unfettered pride in our armed forces, social justice educators in high schools and colleges across the country indoctrinate American students into viewing our volunteer armed forces as victims, monsters and pawns in a leftist "social struggle."

A decade after the 9/11 attacks, Blame America-ism still permeates classrooms and the culture. A special 9/11 curriculum distributed in New Jersey schools advises teachers to "avoid graphic details or dramatizing the destruction" wrought by the 9/11 hijackers, and instead focus elementary school students' attention on broadly defined "intolerance" and "hurtful words."

No surprise: Jihadist utterances such as "Kill the Jews," "Allahu Akbar" and "Behead all those who insult Islam" are not among the "hurtful words" studied.

Middle-schoolers are directed to "analyze diversity and prejudice in U.S. history." And high-school students are taught "Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs" - pop-psychology claptrap used to excuse jihadists' behavior based on their purported low self-esteem and oppressed status caused by "European colonialism."

It is no wonder that a new poll released this week showed that Americans today "are generally more willing to believe that U.S. policies in the Middle East might have motivated the 9/11 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon," according to Reuters.

To make matters worse, we have an appeaser-in-chief who wrote shortly after the jihadist attacks a decade ago that the "essence of this tragedy" derives "from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others." A "climate of poverty and ignorance" caused the attacks, then-Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama preached. Never mind the Ivy League and Oxford educations, the oil wealth and the middle-class status of legions of al-Qaida plotters and operatives.

9/11 was a deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged war on the West by Koran-inspired soldiers of Allah around the world. They hated us before George W. Bush was in office. They hated us before Israel existed. And the avengers of the religion of perpetual outrage will keep hating us no matter how much we try to appease them.

The post-9/11 problem isn't whether we'll forget. The problem is: Will we ever learn?

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AZ: Teacher accent scrutiny halted

Facing a possible civil-rights lawsuit, Arizona has struck an agreement with federal officials to stop monitoring classrooms for mispronounced words and poor grammar from teachers of students still learning the English language.

Instead, the task of testing teachers' fluency in English will fall to school districts and charter schools as part of federal and state legal requirements.

The state's agreement with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education allows it to avoid further investigation and a possible federal civil-rights lawsuit.


The investigation began after unnamed parties filed a civil-rights complaint in May 2010 alleging that the state's on-site monitoring reports led to teachers being removed from classrooms based on their accents.

In November, federal officials told Arizona that its fluency monitoring may violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by discriminating against teachers who are Hispanic and others who are not native English speakers.

Under the agreement, the Arizona Department of Education will remove the fluency section from the form used by its monitors who visit classrooms. It also will require schools and districts to file assurances with the state that their teachers are fluent. The state did not admit any wrongdoing.

As a result, federal officials determined there were insufficient facts to establish a civil-rights violation and closed the case.

Despite the agreement to drop fluency from the form, John Huppenthal, Arizona superintendent of public instruction, said his office will continue to instruct state monitors to talk to districts about individual teachers whose English pronunciation or grammar is flawed.

"We still are going to be conscious of these articulation issues," Huppenthal said. "Students should be in a class where teachers can articulate."

State monitoring

Each year, state monitors visit a sampling of classrooms to determine compliance with state and federal laws covering how schools teach children still learning English.

The monitoring of teacher fluency began in 2002 after passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

A concern was the low proportion of English-learning students who pass the state's standardized test in reading, writing and math, called AIMS.

Monitors have reported infractions such as teachers instructing in Spanish, using Spanish-language teaching materials or hanging Spanish-language posters on their classroom walls, which are prohibited by Arizona's English-only law.

Monitors also reported that some teachers did not have proper credentials to teach English learners.

The monitors also noted what they considered unacceptably heavy accents that caused some teachers to mispronounce words and teachers using poor English grammar.

In 2007, The Arizona Republic examined reports from the 32 districts monitored that year. State officials found teachers with unacceptable pronunciation and grammar in nine districts.

Examples of concerns included a teacher who asked her English learners "How do we call it in English?" and teachers who pronounced "levels" as "lebels" and "much" as "mush." Last year, federal officials found monitoring reports that documented teachers who pronounced "the" as "da" and "lives here" as "leeves here."

In recent years, the state has monitored up to 60 districts a year and has notified between five and 10 districts of concerns regarding fluency issues, said Andrew LeFevre, spokesman for the state Department of Education.

After monitors documented the mistakes, the state required districts to develop and implement "corrective-action plans" to improve a teacher's English.

Arizona has never suggested a teacher be removed from a classroom or fired because of improper use of grammar, syntax and punctuation, LeFevre said.

"It was certainly brought up to the district but never in a fashion that this teacher should not be teaching this class," LeFevre said.

Instead, state officials would suggest helping the teacher take additional English-language classes or work with a fluency coach, LeFevre said.

The monitoring did lead to transfers of some teachers.

After a visit from a state monitor in the 2006-07 school year, the Creighton Elementary School District received a list of about 10 teachers who monitors said had problems speaking English fluently, said Susan Lugo, the district's director of human resources. Lugo said the 10 teachers were very skilled at their jobs and their students made academic progress.

"We offered them assistance with classes for grammar and pronunciation," Lugo said. The classes were free. Five of the teachers continued to struggle, and Creighton transferred them out of English-learning classes and into regular classes.

"Nobody lost pay," Lugo said. "Nobody lost a job. Keeping them in the district was a good move for us."

The Arizona Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, investigated several complaints that teachers were removed from classrooms for fluency reasons, union President Andrew Morrill said.

"We followed up on initial complaints that they themselves or someone they knew in their building were being harassed, receiving undue scrutiny and having their fluency called into question because of their accent," Morrill said. No evidence was found that it was widespread.

Morrill said the union never heard of a teacher being fired because of the monitoring reports.

Federal concerns

Federal officials found Arizona's approach to determining fluency was unacceptable because findings were subjective and based only on brief classroom visits. That was the case even when targeted teachers had passed more extensive English-fluency exams administered by districts.

During the 2010-11 school year, the state monitored 1,000 classrooms "and most visits were for at least 15 to 20 minutes," LeFevre said.

Arizona defended its actions, saying the classroom visits were effective and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 required the state to monitor fluency.

The state agreed to change the monitoring form by removing the fluency sections.

The state instead will accept a district's or school's assurance that a teacher tested as fluent on a more complete, objective exam.

But Huppenthal said he will continue to find ways to regain state power over determining the fluency of English-language teachers.

He plans to explore requiring a fluency test when teachers are licensed by the state and seeking direct authority to monitor fluency through the state Legislature.

"We're going to want explicit authority from the Legislature so we can have regulatory power over these issues," Huppenthal said. "That's how we're going to resolve this issue.

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Bring back grammars schools! Selective schools must be set up wherever families demand them, leading Tories tell PM

New grammar schools should be set up to boost academic achievement, senior Tories have told David Cameron.

In the latest in a series of challenges to the Prime Minister ahead of the party conference, a leading backbencher called for an increase in academic selection.

Graham Brady, chairman of the influential 1922 Committee, says: ‘We should end the “Henry Ford” approach to school choice by which we allow parents to have whatever kind of school they want as long as it is a comprehensive. ‘Selective schools should be available in the state sector where there is demand for them.’

The Tory MP made his remarks in a book – being serialised by the Daily Mail – which calls for a return to traditional Conservative policies. Twenty-six MPs and advisers on the centre right of the party have contributed essays that reflect their growing unease at the power and influence of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

John Redwood, a former cabinet minister, calls for lower taxes while others press for more conservative policies on the European Union and law and order.

Mr Cameron’s refusal to back the opening of more grammar-style schools made for one of the most toxic rows of the early years of his leadership and culminated in the resignation of Mr Brady from the Tory frontbench in 2007.

The fact the MP has raised the issue again shows that Tory backbenchers are increasingly confident of trying to steer Mr Cameron down a more traditional path. Although there are no Government plans to add to the country’s 164 grammar schools, Education Secretary Michael Gove is encouraging other types of selective school.

Mr Brady, a former Tory education spokesman, called for fully selective grammar schools or partially selective schools to be set up where parents want them. He says academies should be allowed to select 20 per cent of their pupils on the basis of academic ability – and even more with Government approval.

In the book, called the The Future of Conservatism, Mr Brady says: ‘If we really believe in giving more autonomy to schools and more freedom to parents and communities, it follows that we should allow the creation of selective or partially selective schools where there is local demand for them. ‘These opportunities should be provided wherever parents want them and should be available within the state sector – not just for those who can afford to pay.’

He said one in four families in the London borough of Camden goes private because local schools are so bad. In Bromley, a wealthier borough in the capital’s south, the figure is nearer one in 11.

‘Research shows that academic selection can raise standards in the selective schools and in neighbouring non-selective schools,’ Mr Brady added. ‘We now have 40 years of evidence showing that, while it is possible to achieve good results in comprehensive schools, areas with selective schools as a whole tend to perform better.’

David Davis, who helped plan the book, said the goal was to draw up ‘a distinctively Conservative point of view both as a foundation for fighting the next election and as a basis for debate in formulating policy’.

An internet tool that allows parents to compare their local schools has gone online. Available on the Department for Education website, it draws on a range of previously hidden data, including spending per pupil, staff salaries and school meal budgets. It also carries the more familiar Ofsted ratings and exam results so that schools can be judged against local, regional and national averages. Up to five can be compared against each other through a postcode search.

Education Secretary Michael Gove says the initiative is the ‘educational equivalent of Go Compare’, which helps families shop around for everything from insurance to mortgages.

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12 September, 2011

Public Schools and Online Free Speech: A Status Update

Does the First Amendment cover public school teachers and students on Facebook? The Internet age has brought a new spin to old civil liberties debates.

Three recent cases underscore the complexities. The Missouri State Teachers Association is suing to challenge the “Amy Hestir Student Protection Act,” a state law restricting public teachers and students from interacting on social media. The law, named after a student who was molested by a teacher, is said to violate the teachers’ freedom of speech and association. One practical consideration: teachers can easily abuse their authority over students without the Internet. If Facebook makes the abuse more likely, it probably also makes it easier to detect.

Meanwhile, officials in Lake County, Florida, have reassigned a teacher for airing controversial views on his Facebook. Jerry Buell condemned same-sex marriage, thundering that “God will not be mocked.” District policy penalizes employees for “[p]osting as a citizen about a non-job related matter of public concern . . . and making comments that negatively affect the district’s effectiveness.”

Also this month, a federal judge ruled that an Indiana school was wrong to punish students for posting suggestive photos taken at a slumber party. The school code prohibiting displays that “discredit or dishonor . . . yourself or your school” was too vague and a violation of the First Amendment, the court decided, intoning that “[t]he case poses timely questions about the limits school officials can place on out-of-school speech by students in the information age where Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, texts, and the like rule the day.”

Americans take different sides on these controversies, but each poses distinct questions. Moreover, these issues are politicized not because of social media but because of government-run schools themselves.

A private school can legitimately set standards for behavior outside class. It could forbid teachers and students from being online friends, ban teachers from voicing religious or political opinions online, and penalize students for posting crude images. Its ultimate recourse would be firing the teacher or dismissing the student.

Public schools complicate the picture. Mere association between teachers and students should be legal. But insofar as the Missouri law sets rules for school district policy, there may be no perfect answer on First Amendment grounds. Most parents, who must finance the system, expect some guidelines on school personnel. Any policy is bound to alienate some people.

The Florida case is not a simple free speech issue, either, especially since the teacher does not face criminal penalties. Real censorship involves fines or jail time, not simply losing a job or being reassigned. Civil libertarians could still object to a tax-funded institution enforcing speech codes on Facebook. But is there no limit to what public teachers can spew online, while representing the public? This is only such a difficult issue for a public school. There is no constitutional problem when a private school reassigns a teacher.

Matters are perhaps different concerning students. They and their parents can choose private schools at great expense, but taxes and attendance laws make them captive customers of public schools. One could argue that public schools can legitimately set standards for outside conduct among their employees, but students and their families are forced to patronize the system. Americans were understandably outraged last year to learn that a Pennsylvania school was using laptop cameras to spy on students at home. Whereas public teachers don’t have a “right” to a job without restrictions, students are compelled to attend and should have an expectation of privacy at home. Their parents, not their schools, should determine any discipline over slumber party hijinks.

All these cases pose difficult questions and involve the troubling specter of speech police reaching into students and teachers’ lives. Yet the complications all arise due to public schooling. Similarly, whether schools teach evolution or intelligent design, birth control or abstinence, Keynesian or free-market economics, is impossible always to resolve so long as the general public is taxed and supposedly served by a monopoly school system.

This is an argument for moving away from a school monopoly supported through taxes and forced attendance. In the meantime, all who value civil society should be wary of any speech codes affecting students and teachers in their time off, while recognizing that teachers working under an employment contract’s terms could be reprimanded or fired for their off-site behavior without it necessarily qualifying as outright censorship precluded by the First Amendment.

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Unruly British pupils' parents should be told: Work with school or lose your benefits, says influential think-tank

Parents with unruly children should have their benefits [welfare payments] taken away if they fail to co-operate with schools, according to an influential report published today.

Respected think-tank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has found that schools expel pupils too regularly because parents will not work with them to improve their children’s behaviour. As a result, a staggering 22,000 pupils aged five to 16 are sent to pupil referral units (PRUs) – a doubling since Labour came to power in 1997. And the direct burden to the taxpayer is £308million, as it costs £14,000 a year more to educate a child in a PRU than in normal lessons.

The CSJ will today launch its new publication 'No Excuses: A review of educational exclusion' with a keynote address from Nick Gibb MP, Minister for Schools at the Pimlico Academy in London, close to Westminster.

The report, written by a number of education experts, calls on the Government to embark on ‘radical reform’. It believes schools should be handed stronger sanctions to coerce irresponsible parents to co-operate with their child’s school to tackle their behaviour. These include the axing of benefit and welfare payments to parents who will not accept the help of their school.

At present, schools can fine parents up to £100 or, in extreme cases of truancy, get them jailed. But only a handful of parents have been convicted and jailed, and just 20,000 fines a year are paid.

Meanwhile violence, bad behaviour and truancy are endemic in England’s schools. Children turn up at primaries wearing gang colours and youngsters as young as seven have been found carrying knives, the report found.

Some children stop attending because they fear for their safety, or even their lives.

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Australia: Teacher sued for insult to dad

A choofer is a type of camping stove known to be rather smoky and noisy -- so the word is used as a derogatory term for a marijuana user. It seems unlikely that the teacher made the allegation without knowing it to be true so the case should only hinge on whether truth is a defence. It seems likely however that Victoria's anti-discrimination laws will be dragged into it

A TEACHER who allegedly told a student his father couldn't get a job because he was a "choofer" who smoked drugs is being sued in possibly a Victorian legal first.

An Aboriginal father and son have hired top lawyers to sue the teacher and the State Government for defamation, seeking tens of thousands of dollars.

Legal sources said it was probably the first action of its kind and could set a precedent that could affect any teacher who ridiculed a student in public.

The father and son from Swan Hill are not only seeking damages, but also "aggravated" damages because as Aborigines they suffered extra humiliation.

Queen's Counsel Jeremy Ruskin is appearing on behalf of the boy, with barrister and Williamstown Football Club president Trevor Monti. In a writ lodged in the Supreme Court, the teenager claimed the teacher ridiculed him in front of others in class on June 29, saying the boy's father was "a choofer".

"Does (the boy's) dad have a job? He won't get a job if he keeps doing what he does," the Swan Hill College teacher allegedly said. "(His) dad smokes weed (and) goes into (the boy's) room and gives him weed."

The writ said the teacher's comments could be understood to mean the boy's father was a drug user who could not work because of his addiction and who gave drugs to his son.

It claimed the comments were spoken with a "reckless indifference to the truth", knowing they would cause significant humiliation to the plaintiffs because they were Aboriginal.

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11 September, 2011

The Chicago mess continues

The drumming for a longer school day in Chicago Public Schools grew in volume yesterday with City Council joining Mayor Emanuel and CPS CEO Jean-Claude Brizard in calling for extending the length of classroom time. With many of the aldermen in the Council backed by organized labor, the stand against the Chicago Teachers Union on the subject of a longer school day is seen by some as more than a token gesture intended to curry favor with the mayor.

14th Ward Ald. Ed Burke, one of organized labor's staunchest allies, said he's finding it harder to back CTU and their opposition to a longer school day.

"I’m starting to get embarrassed at the attitude of some leaders of organized labor,” Burke said.

“... The union is not trying to figure out a way to get this accomplished. They seem to be obstructing the end goal that so many people agree needs to happen.”

Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) said extending the school day by 90 minutes isn't enough and called for an even longer day to allow working parents to pick up their children without having to leave their jobs early.

The teachers union responded to City Council's move by formally filing a complaint with the Illinois Education Labor Relations Board, charging the four schools who waived their CPS contracts in exchange for a 2 percent pay raise and 90 more minutes of classroom time amounts to tampering. CTU President Karen Lewis said Emanuel's actions were a "declaration of war."

"This is an attempt to take down and make irrelevant the Chicago Teachers Union because if the CTU goes, they can roll over every union in the city.’’

The complaint calls for canceling the waivers of the contracts at STEM Magnet and Skinner North (Burke has four grandchildren attending Skinner) on the grounds non-CTU members were allowed to vote in "sham elections." A press release from the union sent out after City Council's statements repeated CTU's position they're in favor of a longer school day, but not solely for the sake of having one.

“The Chicago Teachers Union supports a longer school day if it’s also a better school day. Our concern is about quality not quantity. We do not want our teachers and paraprofessionals coerced and bullied into signing away their contractual rights in order to get the resources they sorely need,” the statement continued.

“The longer school day campaign is nothing more than a political gimmick based on lies, misinformation and half-truths,” the statement said.

The piling on CTU didn't stop with City Council. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a former CPS CEO, said the school system deserves a "badge of shame" for having such a short school day and expressed his wishes for extending it when he was in charge. Duncan said he couldn't because the system "couldn't afford it" during his time as CEO.

CTU has been asking all along how CPS can move to extend the school day and give the teachers who break the contract with the school system raises if they can't afford their negotiated pay raises.

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British couple send their kid to school in Albania -- because the local British school discourages learning of basic subjects

A couple have taken the extraordinary step in sending their six-year-old son to study in Albania - 1,321 miles away. Petrit and Juliette Muca are sending their eldest son Aleks to school in Eastern Europe - because he will have a better chance to master maths, science and reading there.

Mr Muca is originally from Albania while his wife is from Northampton where their son was born.

The couple, who now live in Sunderland, had enrolled their son at the nearby Benedict Biscop Primary which was described in an Ofsted report as 'good and improving.' However when their boy returned home from his first year at school, his mother Juliette noted that having initially loved books that he 'went backwards,' and hadn't made any progress in his quest to read.

She revealed: 'My complaint with the system - it's all about being creative. But children need to learn science, maths and reading.'

Britain is trailing in the World Economic rankings, and is now sat in 43rd place, but that comes as no shock to Mrs Muca who insisted: 'It doesn't surprise me. Labour created a system where kids get 10 A stars at GCSE - but what does that mean if everyone gets them.'

And now young Aleks will live with his father Petrit's parents and will study in Tirana where schools follow a more traditional set-up.

The couple who own a shop in the North East will spend £1,500-a-year on school fees as they bid to prevent their son from failing. Juliette added: 'It's a major sacrifice but we have to do what's best,' with Aleks set to return to England during the holidays.

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Dumb Australian teachers: Errors in Queensland Core Skills test highlighted by students themselves

EUROPE is not a country! That's just one of the duh! messages a fed-up student has sent in a letter to the creators of the Queensland Core Skills tests who claim their tests are "world-class".

More than 30,000 Year 12s across the state recently sat the tests, which are used to help calculate overall position (OP) scores.

Infuriated by the "appalling standard" of testing, the student who declined to be named, insisted the Brisbane-based authority take a closer look at how many countries there are in the world. A multiple choice question claims there are 188. Much less than the current widely accepted 196.

One part of the student's complaint to the Queensland Studies Authority reads: "The unit included a graph plotting the 'number of countries' against 'global GHGs (%)'. The graph not only claims that there are 188 countries in the world but classified Europe as a country.

"Europe is a continent. It is widely accepted that there are about 196 countries in the world. Even if the whole of Europe is classified as one country in this graph, Europe has more than eight countries in it. It was frustrating to have to lower myself to the appalling standard of calling Europe a country in order to calculate an appropriate response."

These are just some of gripes in the long letter, which also questions the use of the word quote as a noun and argues the difference between the meaning of the word tone and tonality.

Social blogging site Tumblr was red hot last week with student post mortems on the tests.

A QSA spokesperson said in a statement that the QCS tests were of a world-class standard. He confirmed the graph used was 12 years old. The QSA statement said: "We have not been contacted by any school about perceived errors in the 2011 QCS Test."

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10 September, 2011

Plans to strengthen education in Arizona

Gov. Jan Brewer announced new plans to improve Arizona’s education system in a press conference Thursday at the Arizona Science Center in downtown Phoenix.

The governor unveiled a new initiative that will help the state achieve goals set in her education reform plan released in January.

The “Arizona Ready” initiative aims to increase high school graduation rates, increase the number of third grade reading standards, improve low performing schools and increase the number of eighth graders achieving at or above national assessment standards.

Key strategies of the plan were developed in partnership with educators across the state, Brewer said. “Improving education is why I entered politics in the first place,” Brewer said. “That’s why we created Arizona Ready.”

The governor also said the children who entered kindergarten this year would be the first group to be tested on more rigorous standards when they enter third grade. “In the 2013-14 school year, third graders with AIMS reading scores that fall far below the third grade level will not be promoted,” Brewer said.

Then, in the 2014-15 school year, new assessments for students in grades three to 11 will be introduced, she said. “Third to 11th graders will take their first diagnostic tests in the fall (of 2014) to determine what skills they must master to be on track for college and career readiness,” Brewer said.

Along with the Arizona Ready initiative, the governor said she was excited to launch a website in correlation with the plan — arizonaready.com. “This website provides tools like a timeline of important changes that parents need to know, daily messages about how to help your child succeed, and the opportunity to connect with other parents and teachers to learn from their experiences,” Brewer said.

Additionally, the Arizona Science Center, in partnership with the governor’s office, will be offering one free child general admission for every adult general admission purchased and will provide all credentialed educators with a free educator membership to the center, in order to develop their skills and extend their training, Brewer said.

At Thursday’s press conference, strong emphasis was put on improving students’ skills in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, also referred to as STEM.

“STEM education is an education that truly enables you to do different things in your career … I think the importance of what we are doing today is going to prepare Arizonans for the future,” said Bill Harris, president and CEO of Science Foundation Arizona. “Really, what we’re doing is going back to the old days of the Sputnik era; this was done by a high bar and a high expectation for performance. That’s the foundation for Arizona Ready. That’s the foundation for our future.”

To boost Arizona students’ STEM skills improvement, the governor announced the state’s participation in a national high school competition, The Real World Design Challenge. According to its website, The Real World Design Challenge is an annual competition that provides high school students the opportunity to work on real-world engineering challenges in a team environment.

“By participating in this initiative, teachers and students will have access to millions of dollars in state-of-the-art engineering software, training in the use of this software, and access to professional focusing on the 21st century focusing on STEM skills,” Brewer said.

Rebecca Gau, director of the Governor’s Office of Education Innovation, called Arizona’s participation in the competition “a wonderful opportunity that will bring fun and opportunity to STEM education.”

Shadow Ridge High School senior and architecture program student Darien Harp was invited along with his peers to participate in the competition. “I think we have a fair chance,” he said.

Harp said he hopes to pursue an architecture career one day and he believes the Real World Design Challenge will help him reach his goals.

Opponents to Brewer’s initiative include state Rep. Anna Tovar, D-Tolleson, the House minority whip. In a statement released Thursday, Tovar said the governor continues to “build on empty promises” when it comes to funding education.

She pointed to Proposition 100, a temporary state sales tax increase passed by voters in May 2010. “She created a perception that she would use the sales tax hike for education but this year turned around and made another massive cut to education — $273 million to universities and $180 million to K-12,” Tovar said. “She then handed that money over to bail out, through tax cuts, big corporations and rich CEOs, not middle-class families.”

In the statement, Tovar questioned the governor’s actual support for education. “Gimmicks and websites don’t make up for cuts that increase class sizes, eliminate access to books and technology and limit access to full-day kindergarten,” she said.

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Lessons are too easy, say most pupils at British primary and secondary school

Most children think their school work is easy, research has found.

Academic rigour at both primary and secondary school has been called into question as more than 50 per cent of youngsters admit they are not stretched in their studies.

The proportion of pupils who say they are not pushed has sharply increased during the last three years.

Today's figures follow evidence that England is slipping down the international education league tables and is now lagging behind countries such as Slovenia.

The findings have prompted accusations that Labour's education policies and obsession with targets led to a dumbing-down of standards despite a doubling of spending from an annual œ35.8billion in 2000 to œ71billion in 2009.

Professor Alan Smithers, of Buckingham University, said: `Under Labour, exam results were used to judge schools so it was imperative that children didn't fail. `So the examining boards have tended to make the examinations user-friendly and schools have pre-processed the information.

`The children are drilled and taught to the test, and coursework is given back to them with suggested improvements.

'This takes the fun and the challenge from education and makes it rather dull, as the pupils seem to be saying in response to this research.'

Dr Karina Halstead, who runs private tutor firm, London Home Tutors, has witnessed first-hand a `dramatic slump in standards' that has left pupils needing to do little more than `follow instructions' to pass exams.

She said: 'There has been a remarkable change in the level of difficulty.

'While more people are hiring private tutors today, they use them for far fewer sessions than a decade ago.

'This is because there is less need. Today, we mostly teach strategic exam passing technique, rather than give weekly tutorial so help students develop an in-depth knowledge and understanding of a subject.'

The three-year study of 8,334 children was conducted by the Centre of the Use of Research in Education.

It found that more than half of primary-age pupils, 52 per cent, disagreed or strongly disagreed that lessons were too difficult, as did 57 per cent of secondary pupils.

Amongst the older pupils, maths was considered the hardest subject, but also rated the most useful, after PE, for life outside school.

Religious education was seen as the least useful.

The findings also showed the number of children believing work is not too hard for them rose between the first year of the survey, in 2008, and the final round, in 2010.

Professor Philippa Cordingley, director of the project, said: `These findings seem to us to support the inference that even though the majority of learners report a reasonable level of difficulty, a small but significant proportion of learners are not being challenged sufficiently, and that, in the primary phase particularly, this is more true of higher achieving learners.'

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Rise of the tutor as British parents lose faith in classroom teaching

More parents are hiring private tutors for their children as fears grow about slipping standards in the classroom. Almost a quarter of pupils aged 11 to 16 have received hired help to boost exam results, a sharp rise since 2005, a study has found. In London, this increases to almost four in ten children - a trend which reflects the scramble for places at leading schools in the capital.

In some secondary schools it is thought as many as 65 per cent of pupils will benefit from a tutor at some point.

The findings suggest successful schools are climbing exam league tables thanks partly to the work of private tutors. And with prices for such teaching sessions set at up to œ60 an hour, children from affluent families are more likely to get a boost than those from a disadvantaged background.

In the study, market research company Ipsos MORI polled 2,739 children between the ages of 11 and 16 in England and Welsh state schools and compared findings with a similar poll in 2005. It found the proportion sent to tutors had increased from 18 to 23 per cent.

It is believed the increase in tutoring among 16 to 18-year-olds was prompted by unprecedented competition for scarce university places this year, which is the final year before fees hike to œ9000.

The study follows recent evidence of a surge in the number of children as young as three receiving private tuition.

Asian and black families are the most likely to hire private tutors, with 42 per cent of Asian children and 38 per cent of black children getting extra help, compared to just 20 per cent of white families. And of today's figures, 25 per cent of tutored children are from affluent families, while 18 per cent come from poorer backgrounds.

Yesterday, educational charities warned the trend could widen the educational gap between the `haves and have-nots' with poorer parents unable to afford private tuition.

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: `Private tuition appears to be booming despite the recession. `While it is natural that parents should want to do the best for their children, it does give well off families an advantage, particularly when money to help children from poorer homes is being cut.'

The Sutton Trust has funded a pilot scheme of 100 pupils from poor homes in London who will be given one-to-one tuition in a bid to boost GCSE maths scores.

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9 September, 2011

Homeschooling is easy!

I was reading Lawrence Ludlow’s excellent series on Voluntarist schooling when I came upon this statement: “For many busy parents, home-schooling is not an option – despite the extraordinary success of home-schooled children. Many parents do not have the time, skills, and resources needed by their children to flourish.” I have a bit of perspective to add to this.

I have been a member of the ORSIG homeschooling email list for many years now. This has about a thousand members (mostly moms) in the state of Oregon.

A while back, I had noted that the Old Media constantly harped on this meme: “homeschooling is wonderful, in its way, but homeschooling parents are saints, and most of us are not capable of doing it.” Of course this was apparently a ruse for discouraging people from looking into homeschooling, while acknowledging that they were no longer able to get the homeschooling genie back into the bottle again.

Only problem was, that my experience with homeschooling moms did not jive with this meme. Rather than being saints, they were much like other parents I have known--no better, no worse. They were in fact quite usual, ordinary.

I decided to do a little experiment. I asked a question on the ORSIG homeschooling list, something to this effect: “I want to ask mothers who have had experience both with government schooling and with homeschooling, a very simple question. Which is easier? Please understand, I am not asking which is more uplifting or rewarding or anything of that nature. I simply want to know, which option do you consider the easier?” I did not coach anyone to give an expected “correct” answer; in fact I had no idea what the answer would be.

As I recall, I got about 10 to 15 responses to that question. The near unanimous response was that homeschooling was easier than government schooling. The sole response that differed was that one mom, with one of her children, said it was about a wash between the two options!

Needless to say, this brings into question the meme that only saintly parents can manage homeschooling. If homeschooling is not only better for your kids, but flat-out easier than the government schools, then what is stopping you from homeschooling, really?

This result struck me so strongly that I went out and bought (rented?) the homeschoolingiseasy.info domain name, intending to put together a website that would help remove this meme as an impediment to homeschooling. Alas, I never did anything with it. “The best-laid plans...”

How could it be that homeschooling is easy? A bit of reflection gives the answer, and this answer came out in the responses to my question, too. For one thing, kids are learning machines, if you just get out of their way. A little facilitating is all that is necessary, especially for the “unschooling" crowd.

No need to reproduce “school at home”-- the image that the Ministry of Propaganda wants everyone to have of homeschooling.

All of a sudden, a family does not have to live on the government school schedule. Vacations can be any time of the year (lower costs in the shoulder seasons, no need to fight with others at work for that vacation slot in the schedule, etc.). No need to shuttle kids here and there for school events (shuttling still goes on with homeschoolers, but only what they want to put up with). No need to help with pointless or stupid government school homework, or worry about your kid not fitting in or being drugged with Ritalin. No need to attempt to reverse the indoctrination your kids receive every day in the indoctrination camps. According to actual homeschooling moms with experience in both camps, it’s easier!

The facts are, some variation of homeschooling is available to almost every family. Many families have one parent or a grandparent at home. Of those that don’t, often work schedules for the parents can be juggled. And for the rest, we can simply look back in history to the “dame schools,” just elderly, more cultured ladies in the neighborhood willing to take in a few kids for a few hours for a little money. There are an infinite variety of strategies possible for those willing to escape the government school monopoly. All it takes is will and a bit of imagination.

One amusing aside: since the Ministry of Propaganda has taken this stance of “homeschooling parents are saints,” it has effectively shut off the coercive option of forcing parents back into government schools, or making homeschooling as difficult legally as possible. Saints aren’t to be beaten up, are they? California tried it a while back, failing spectacularly. Whenever a new regulation is imposed on homeschoolers, the response is for more homeschoolers to go “non-compliant”—indeed, Oregon has a large, feisty non-compliant population of homeschoolers. The trend, over the years, has been less regulation of homeschoolers as a result; this goes counter to the usual trend in our budding police state. Homeschooling is one place where many parents first encounter real freedom. It’s a heady feeling!

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British PM: we need elitism in schools

David Cameron will signal a return to “elitism” in schools in an attempt to mend Britain’s “broken” society and secure the economic future.

The Prime Minister will attack the “prizes for all” culture in which competitiveness is frowned upon and winners are shunned.

In a significant speech, he will outline Coalition plans to ensure teaching is based on “excellence”, saying that controversial reforms are needed to “bring back the values of a good education”.

Failure to do so would be “fatal to prosperity”, he will say.

The comments mark the latest in a series of attempts to focus on education in response to the riots that shocked London and other English cities last month.

They follow the announcement by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, of back-to-basics discipline in state schools. He plans to give teachers more freedom to search pupils suspected of carrying banned items and to let them use reasonable force in removing the most disruptive children from the classroom.

Mr Cameron will seek to move the debate on to standards, saying that a rigorous focus on the basics is needed to give young people “the character to live a good life, to be good citizens”.

The Prime Minister will say: “For the future of our economy, and our society, we need a first-class education for every child. Of course, everyone’s agreed on that. “The trouble is that for years we’ve been bogged down in a great debate about how we get there. Standards or structures? Learning by rote or by play? Elitism or all winning prizes?”

Mr Cameron makes it clear that he is in favour of elitism and not prizes for all. He will add: “These debates are over – because it’s clear what works. Discipline works. Rigour works. Freedom for schools works. Having high expectations works. “Now we’ve got to get on with it – and we don’t have any time to lose.”

Ministers have already outlined plans to insist on at least a 2:2 degree before students join teacher training courses, and to hand generous bursaries to the brightest graduates who want to teach key subjects such as science and maths.

The Government has also introduced the English Baccalaureate, a new school leaving certificate that rewards pupils gaining good grades in academic subjects including maths, English, science, languages, history and geography.

In his speech, Mr Cameron will also champion the opening of the first free schools, state-funded institutions run by parents, charities and faith groups, independent of local council control. Some 24 have opened this month.

The measures have provoked fury among teaching unions who claim they smack of elitism and represent an attempt to dismantle the state education system.

But Mr Cameron will say that free schools will “have the power to change lives”. He will also seek to link improvements in education to mending “our broken society.”

“We’ve got to be ambitious if we want to compete in the world,” he will say. “When China is going through an educational renaissance, when India is churning out science graduates, any complacency now would be fatal.

“And we’ve got to be ambitious, too, if we want to mend our broken society. Because education doesn’t just give people the tools to make a good living – it gives them the character to live a good life, to be good citizens.”

The comments come days after Nick Clegg said that parents must take more responsibility. The Deputy Prime Minister insisted that teachers should be left to educate, and not be expected to act as “surrogate mothers and fathers”.

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Britain even worse at maths than Albania as UK schools rank 43rd in the world

Britain is languishing behind Albania in a league table for maths and science education, according to an authoritative international study. A report by the World Economic Forum has ranked UK schools 43rd in the world – behind countries such as Iran, Trinidad and Tobago and Lithuania.

The findings are a damning indictment of Tony Blair’s pledge to prioritise ‘education, education, education’ and come after education spending doubled from £35.8billion to £71billion under Labour.

The WEF findings reveal British pupils are at a disadvantage compared to many others around the world, with the country at risk of developing a core skills shortage.

While the UK languishes in 43rd position in the table, Singapore tops the list, followed by Belgium and Finland.

New Zealand takes seventh place, Canada eighth, France 15th and Bosnia and Herzegovina 41st. Just below the UK sit Jordan and Romania.

And Britons do not only fare poorly when it comes to maths and science, as a recent OECD report showed a fifth of 15-year-olds are ‘functionally illiterate’.

The WEF annual study, carried out between January and July, is based on in-depth surveys of 142 countries and takes into account each nation’s economic and business standing.

Conservative MP Chris Skidmore said: ‘After 13 years in which Labour failed to grasp the importance of maths and science education to our future prosperity, this report shows how much ground we have to make up.’ ‘We should be competing with the likes of Singapore, not Iran and Albania.’

The UK’s ranking in 2008 was 47th, meaning there has been a slight improvement over the last three years. It is thought this is because during the recession, teenagers have heeded calls from employers for more graduates who have core skills in maths and science.

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8 September, 2011

Ohio to Retest Teachers Under New Law

As soon as next year, approximately 7,000 educators in Ohio's poorest-performing public schools may be required to retake teaching exams under a new law passed by the state.

Math and English teachers who work at schools ranked in the lowest 10 percent of the state will be required to retake and pass Ohio's teacher licensure exams. If the teachers pass, they will be exempt from retaking the test for three years. Each district's school board will have the option to fire teachers who don't pass the test.

Patrick Galloway, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education, says the earliest the changes will be implemented is prior to the 2012-2013 school year, and that the criteria for ranking schools is still being developed. Meanwhile, the state's education department is developing a new teacher evaluation system that will be piloted later this school year in certain districts.

Galloway says that by holding schools and teachers accountable for student achievement, underperforming schools will hopefully improve."The whole purpose here is to help our most persistently struggling schools by working to provide the best instructors possible," he says. "We're doing this to lift up those students."

The Ohio law is the most comprehensive state law requiring teacher retesting. The state has aggressively implemented teacher evaluation legislation over the past year, to the chagrin of some teaching groups in the state, who argue that teaching in poorer, urban schools is inherently a tough task.

Galloway says he understands why some educators are pushing back against the law, but that good teachers shouldn't have anything to worry about.

"If you're proud of your performance, you should be able to put it out there and show, 'This is what I'm capable of,'" he says. "We understand there's concern. This is educators' livelihood[s], their passion. But at the same time, we need to make sure we have the best teachers in the classroom."

Teaching advocates say that many of the poorest performing schools are in poverty-stricken areas, which can be the most difficult environments for teachers.

"It's punishing teachers for taking on the toughest job—and will actually discourage good teachers from taking on those jobs in those schools [that] need the best teachers," Mark Hill, president of the Worthington Education Association, a group representing 800 teachers in Ohio, told the Columbus NBC affiliate.

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Britain: Free schools good, profit motive better

I went on the BBC News Channel yesterday afternoon defending free schools against the charge that they would lower standards and lead to social segregation.

First, it is worth re-capping what the ‘free schools agenda’ is all about. Essentially, it has two purposes. The main one is to increase the supply of good school places by letting independent providers set up new schools, and receive state funding on a per pupil basis. The idea is that this allows parents to exercise a meaningful choice over where their child is educated. That drives schools to compete for pupils, which increases accountability and drives up standards. The second purpose of the free schools agenda is to give schools greater freedom from bureaucratic interference: let them innovate, let them focus on teaching the child in front of them, and stop thinking the man in Whitehall always knows best.

School choice may be a radical idea, but it isn’t a new one, and it has worked where it’s been tried – most famously in Sweden, that well-known socialist nirvana. Moreover, it is hard to deny that the British education system is in need of serious reform: despite the fact that spending has practically doubled in real terms over the last decade, Britain has tumbled down the international league tables. Academic research has even suggested that 17 percent of British 16-19 year olds are illiterate, while 22 percent of them are functionally innumerate – a shocking indictment of a failing system.

Moreover, the claims made by the critics of free schools do not hold water. They suggest that free schools will promote inequality, but this has not been the experience in Sweden or the US. In fact, American evidence suggests the opposite: that privately operated schools can be better integrated, since attendance is not as closely linked to where one lives as it is in the state sector. Indeed, it is worth remembering that our current schools system is deeply unequal precisely on these grounds – in many cases it amounts to little more than segregation by house price. Live in a nice area, and chances are you’ll get to attend a fairly decent school; live on a sink estate, and you probably won’t be so lucky. Free schools offer an escape route.

At this stage, however, it is worth making a point about the profit motive – which Nick Clegg today ruled out of bounds vis-ŕ-vis free schools. The trouble with not allowing for-profit companies to run free schools is that it dramatically narrows the pool of potential school operators. Fewer new schools will be set up, and those that are established are more likely to be concentrated in relatively affluent areas, where parents have the time and the ability to push for them. By contrast, if we were to allow profit-making free schools, we would get far more of them, and see more of them being set up in deprived areas – where both the demand and the need for them is greatest. Whatever Nick Clegg says, the profit motive in education could easily be a force for social mobility, not against it.

Finally, a point on standards: there simply isn’t any convincing evidence to suggest that free schools will provide a lower standard of education than state comprehensives, or that standards at those state comprehensives will suffer because of the existence of free schools. True, part of the rationale behind school choice is that irredeemably bad schools should go out of business. But that is surely as it should be: a system where good schools can grow and be replicated, and where bad schools are not kept interminably on life support, will lead to standards being driven up across the board.

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Australia: Seven Queensland teachers still in classrooms despite sex, violence offences

SEVEN teachers who have committed serious offences are currently teaching in Queensland classrooms. Two committed robberies with violence, while the rest faced court for a range of sexual offences.

The teachers are set to be deregistered under proposed laws but because they weren't sentenced to imprisonment they will be able to reapply for registration. Six out of the seven did not have convictions recorded against them.

The State Opposition has questioned the appropriateness of some of the seven teachers potentially being allowed to teach. It follows legislation introduced into State Parliament which proposes a lifetime classroom ban for any teacher convicted of a serious offence and sentenced to jail.

Education Minister Cameron Dick said the proposed amended legislation would allow those convicted of serious offences but who were not sentenced to imprisonment to gain registration under exceptional circumstances. Their registration would be cancelled automatically and they would have to reapply to teach.

Mr Dick said they would be required to go through a two-stage process to reregister, including an eligibility test and a presumption against their registration when reapplying to the Queensland College of Teachers (QCT).

QCT director John Ryan said that of the seven teachers, four had been charged with carnal knowledge-type offences involving girls aged 10 to 16 years. Three of those offences involved 16 or 17-year-old boys dating back to the late 1960s.

Mr Ryan said six of the seven registered teachers did not have a conviction recorded against them and all of the cases had been reviewed by the QCT, with registration granted under exceptional circumstances.

But opposition education spokesman Bruce Flegg raised concerns about those charged with robbery with violence, in particular, still being allowed to teach.

Dr Flegg agreed that if a teacher was not sentenced to jail the case should be decided on its merit. But he said the impressionable nature of children needed to be taken into account and the QCT should err on the side of caution. "I don't think that Queenslanders would be particularly keen to see violent robbers teaching children in a school," he said.

"And I think there is also the potential problem that information, particularly in the modern technological era, is likely to become public information if somebody is holding a position like a teacher, which therefore undermines the authority of that teacher anyway. "Therefore I think (those convicted of) serious violence offences of that nature ... should be looking for careers other than teaching in the classroom."

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7 September, 2011

Shooting the messenger

Education leaders believe the SAT is biased against minority students.

Some colleges have devalued or eliminated the SAT when it comes to their admissions process, saying it discriminates against minority students.

"In some technical sense, it's probably not a biased test," said Fairtest's Monty Neil. Fairtest is dedicated to ensuring fairness in standardized tests.

"The purpose of the SAT, why it got constructed, was to predict college grades, so what happens is that kids of color - black kids, Hispanic kids - are very often left out," Neil said. "They're predicted to not do well when, in fact, they could do well."

Laurence Bunin, from the College Board, the owners of SAT, disagrees. "Fairest is mistaken on this point. The SAT is absolutely predictive of how well students will do in college," Bunin said. "Every single question on the SAT is tested with real students from all races and all walks of life to ensure that every question is fair."

Bunin also believes the test is a fair test that helps mirror what is going on in the country. He also states students and parents should understand that colleges look at a variety of factors, not just the test.

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Uneducated guesses: Reforming education by committee rather than evidence

Statistician Howard Wainer doubts the salvation of public education will come from blue-ribbon commissions, a popular strategy in Georgia in which dense reports on how to fix schools stack higher than the Gold Dome. (As we discussed recently, the state is taking another swipe at funding reform, assembling its sixth commission to tackle the challenge.)

“If you try to change a very complicated system — and a school system is very complicated — the worst way is to appoint a blue-ribbon panel with a name like ‘Education 2030’ and ask them to come up with a plan to improve things,” Wainer said. “That is not going to work because we are not that smart.”

In an interview last week and in his new book “Uneducated Guesses” (Princeton, $24.95), Wainer maintains that education ought to look to manufacturing. Using paper-making as an example, Wainer said, “You might vary temperature a bit or you vary acidity by a little bit to see if it improves the quality of the paper. If it does, vary it some more in the same direction. If it makes things worse, retrace your steps and try something else. You should be in a constant state of experimentation all the time, seeing what makes things better. But you must make incremental changes so if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t kill you.”

Too often, schools blunder into change by mistaking anecdote for evidence, Wainer said. Tired of yelling at the TV when he saw news accounts of policy changes based on flawed evidence, Wainer uses his book to present evidence to help assess 11 such trends, including the entrance-exam-optional policies in many colleges and teacher evaluations based on student performance.

Wainer, who holds a doctorate in psychometrics from Princeton and lives near the university in New Jersey, was principal research scientist at the Educational Testing Service for 21 years and is now Distinguished Research Scientist at the National Board of Medical Examiners and an adjunct professor of statistics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

To test the growing assumption that entrance exams are not a quality predictor of student performance, Wainer reviewed the SAT scores of students who opted not to submit their scores when they applied to Bowdoin, a premier liberal arts college in Maine that has made SAT scores optional.

Wainer found that Bowdoin students who took the SAT but chose not to submit scores posted lower scores than their peers who did submit them. The mean score of students who submitted their scores was 1,323 out of 1,600, while nonsubmitters had a mean of 1,201.

Wainer went a step further to see how well these students fared in college. His finding: Students who didn’t submit SAT scores earned grades 0.2 points lower (on a four-point scale) in their first year than classmates who did submit their scores. Their poorer performance at Bowdoin was well-predicted by their SAT scores.

Wainer understands that most people won’t see grave concern, for instance, in a 3.0 grade-point average vs. a 2.8 (although Georgia students know that it’s a critical distinction for the HOPE scholarship).

But he isn’t arguing that an SAT score ought to trump a high school transcript. “What impresses me is that a two-and-a-half-hour test predicts performance in college about as well as four years of high school grades,” he said.

(Because college rankings incorporate the SAT scores of admitted students, Wainer points out that an optional SAT policy can enable a campus to climb in the rankings because lower-scoring students are less apt to submit their scores.)

While he has played a key role in the testing industry, Wainer said he’s not trying to bolster the College Board, which administers the SAT. In fact, he concludes in another chapter of his book that the national push to get more students enrolled in demanding AP math and science courses, also overseen by the College Board, is misbegotten.

“Someone asked me which side am I on,” he said. “I am on the side of data. What I hope people will do, when confronted with policy, is ask what’s the evidence.”

And Wainer said the evidence isn’t there yet on one of the most controversial new policies in education, basing teacher evaluations and pay on how much “value” they add to student learning as reflected in test scores.

Acknowledging that he goes “deep in the weeds” on the defects of value-added models, Wainer said, “It appears, at least at the moment, that the more you know about value-added models, the less faith you have in the value of inferences drawn from them.” He urges caution in adopting such models.

Wainer applies more than statistical evidence to education policy; he also brings common sense to bear. He dismisses attempts to compare U.S. schools with the idealized country du jour, saying, “You can take a Swedish model but anything works for Sweden because Sweden is full of Swedes. There are very few countries that have our diversity, our serious diversity, not skin color or hair curl, but the diversity of opinion, of background, that is in effect here.”

What Americans have to accept is that education, not to be confused with schooling, is neither cheap nor easy. “Schooling is six hours a day, 30 weeks a year. Education takes places in the home, in the church, in the community, all the time,” he said.

When Wainer served on the Princeton school board, parents asked him how they could help their children do better in school. He told them, “Turn off the television and read with them.”

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Two-thirds of British schools ignore legal requirement to provide daily act of worship

Most schools ignore the legal requirement to hold a daily act of worship for their pupils, a new study has found.

Almost two-thirds of parents told a survey that their children do not attend a daily act of collective worship at school.

And a majority of people thinks that the law on daily worship on schools should be no longer be enforced.

A Church of England spokesman pointed out that the BBC Local Radio poll did not differentiate between primary and secondary schools, and argued that most primary schools do have collective worship or a daily period of reflection.

'The law states that all maintained schools must provide a daily act of collective worship, with the exception of those withdrawn by their parents,' he said.

'The Church of England strongly supports this - although it is not its job to enforce it - as it provides an important chance for the school to focus on promoting the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of its pupils.

'Collective worship is when pupils of all faiths and none come together to reflect - it should not be confused with corporate worship when everyone is of the same belief.'

However, 60 per cent of the public do not support enforcing the law which prescribes a daily act of worship in all state schools, with older people more favourable towards the law than the young.

A small majority (51 per cent) of those aged 65 or over believe it should be enforced, but only 29 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds agree.

Following the release of these findings, National Secular Society executive Keith Porteous Wood called for the law on collective daily worship to be repealed, saying it infringed pupils' human rights.

'As the BBC survey confirms, the law requiring daily collective worship is being widely flouted, and because the law should not be brought into disrepute in this way, it should be repealed,' he said.

'England is the only country in the western world to enforce participation in daily worship in community schools. 'To do so goes beyond the legitimate function of the state and is an abuse of children’s human rights, especially those who are old enough to make decisions for themselves.'

The survey was carried out by telephone in July and interviewed over 1,700 adults, including 500 parents with children at school in England.

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6 September, 2011

Huge police presence needed for British kids to get to and from school safely

As a grade-school kid in the '50s I walked a mile to school in bare feet every day under NO supervision at all. And I never once had trouble. But there were no Muslims or Africans around then

Thousands of children returned to school yesterday under police guard. Scotland Yard is deploying 1,000 officers to stand at school gates and escort pupils on to buses to deter robbers.

The move follows a 20 per cent rise in street robberies in London to 13,254 this year, with a third of the victims aged ten to 19. Youngsters carrying expensive smartphones and MP3 players are increasingly being targeted, even though robbery rates overall are down since 2006. Blood-stained necklaces have been offered to pawnbrokers as jewellery theft has risen, driven by the high price of gold.

Assistant Met Commissioner Ian McPherson said: `Smartphones and media players are becoming must-have items for many people. Young people, especially secondary school-aged children, are targeted - usually after school by other young people.'

Hundreds of police and community support officers are taking part in the crackdown until half-term starts on October 21, a period when thefts from pupils surge.

Figures show 10 per cent of muggings take place around transport hubs and the Met is stationing officers outside schools, Tube stations and on buses.

Met Commander Maxine de Brunner said the end of the school day between 3pm and 6pm was when many thefts take place. She said: `It is a really busy time for us, especially at the start of the school term.

`Ten years ago the figures were much higher. But we have seen a spike in robbery in recent months which is down to the upward trend in the availability of really expensive phones and iPads.

`It is unprecedented to focus this amount of officers on just the journey to and from school and around transport hubs.' But she added: `I think it makes young people feel safe that we are there.'

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Bring back danger: Councils should build old-fashioned playground as British children have been softened up

Old-fashioned playground equipment like climbing frames, sand pits and paddling pools are set to be re-introduced after research found a degree of risk helps children to develop.

For years councils have felt forced to remove older attractions from their sites fearing any potential injuries could result in costly legal battles.

But recent research has shown that children actually benefit from risk when they play as it helps them develop the judgement skills they need in later life.

In an article for the scientific Journal Evolutionary Psychology, Ellen Sandseter a professor at Queen Maud University in Norway said: 'Children must encounter risks and overcome playground fears - monkey bars and tall slides are great. 'They approach thrills and risks in a progressive manner. 'Let them encounter these challenges from an early age and they will master them through play over the years.'

In July, High Court judge Mr Justice Mackay ruled the National Trust could not be held responsible for the death of an 11-year-old boy who was killed when a branch fell from a tree at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk in 2007. He told the court that the Trust's tree inspectors had exercised a reasonable amount of caution saying 'even the most careful risk assessment can be proved wrong by events.'

This landmark ruling is believed to greatly reduce the prospect of legal action in the event of injuries in play areas.

Last year David Cameron commissioned the report Common Sense, Common Safety, to look into the problem of unnecessarily strict health and safety regulations being enforced.

Outlining the problem he wrote: 'A damaging compensation culture has arisen, as if people can absolve themselves from any personal responsibility for their own actions, with the spectre of lawyers only too willing to pounce with a claim for damages on the slightest pretext.'

The report, written by Lord Young concluded: 'There is a widely held belief within the play sector that misinterpretations of the [Health and Safety] Act are leading to the creation of uninspiring play spaces that do not enable children to experience risk.

'Such play is vital for a child's development and should not be sacrificed to the cause of overzealous and disproportionate risk assessments. 'I believe that with regard to children's play we should shift from a system of risk assessment to a system of risk-benefit assessment, where potential positive impacts are weighed against potential risk.'

South Somerset Council has recently spent œ50,000 re-fitting two playgrounds in Chard and Yeovil, building sand pits, climbing equipment stepping logs and net swings.

Playlink, a national advisory body on outdoor activity, helped draw up the plans for the new playgrounds.

Chairman Bernard Spiegal told the Sunday Times he believed Britain had been obsessed with risk assessment which was having a negative effect on children. He said: 'We were crippling their confidence by not letting them learn through experience. 'We don't want children losing fingers in badly designed swings or getting their heads trapped under a roundabout. But there's nothing wrong with a bump, bruise and graze.'

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Parents know best how to fix schools

As moms and dads across America enter the education reform arena by the thousands through parent unions, capitol demonstrations, and expanded school-choice measures, some defenders of the current system have piped up against "parent power."

Take Jay Mathews of the Washington Post. He recently excused the American Federation of Teachers' efforts to block Parent Trigger legislation in Connecticut to allow a majority of parents at a failing school to make the school district do something about the problem.

"Many parents, particularly loudmouths like me, think we know exactly how to fix our schools. In most cases we don't," he wrote. Instead, he recommends parents let experts and "imaginative educators" figure things out for us.

In a Reuters op-ed, author Peg Tyre similarly worries that newly empowered parents "don't have a clue what they are doing" when selecting education for their children.

She points out, correctly, that expanding school choice means a lot to learn for many parents who previously had no choice but to send their children to (often horrible) schools assigned by ZIP code. Yes, some parents may find the new options confusing.

Initial confusion, however, is no reason to avoid -- or to let government purloin -- an exciting and important responsibility. If it were, none of us would ever have children in the first place.

Parenthood, after all, means absolute greenhorns have an entire human being (or several human beings) to raise to maturity, with no previous practice or qualifications and very little preparation.

Certainly, no expert or researcher would design such a risky system, but it has been pushing civilization along at an extremely rapid pace since, well, human beings have existed.

Experts such as Matthews and Tyre have a variety of reasons for the positions they take, and teachers and administrators have varied motivations for remaining in their present positions.

Parents, by contrast, universally maintain a single motivation: their concern for their children. The same visceral concern that prompts Mommy to rise yet again for a squalling baby at 3 a.m. and pumps Dad's adrenaline when he races to lift his spluttering son out of the pool also incites parents to (rightly) demand teachers' heads when they find out Johnny can't read, write or calculate.

It's a positive motivation that's largely blunted in a nation where 90 percent of kids are stuck in a school assigned by geography and government fiat.

Just as parents have for decades found their way around the system by spending extra money to live in districts with what they perceive to be better schools and asking principals to place their child with the better fifth-grade teacher, so, too, can and will their deep motivation inspire them to seek the best possible education in a system of real choice. They will do this for the same reasons they do everything else for their children.

Tyre may not notice, but she's one reason more freedom for parents will be successful: She has written a book teaching parents how to decide wisely among their expanding school choices.

As more and more parents search for these answers, their very need will create the necessary supply of information and advice. It's the same, simple system we all depend on to put milk on supermarket shelves and provide us gas on unknown roads: the consumer-empowering nature of the market.

The best education system puts children first. No one places children first more naturally and effectively than their parents. Freeing parents to do what they know and accomplish best will only strengthen American education.

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5 September, 2011

Australia: Foundation Studies Program "sells" entry to University of Adelaide for able students

All the whining below about money should not obscure the fact that this is probably a good way of getting kids into university who are more suitable for it. Public examinations are not terribly good predictors of success at university.

My son did something similar, though no payment was involved. The University of Qld. offered bright kids in their final High School year the chance of doing a university subject in that same year -- as well as their normal High school studies. Few apply as it sounds very challenging. My son was the only one in his school who took up the offer. But he did well in all his studies at both levels so was therefore of course a shoo-in to his preferred course at the State's most highly esteemed university

STUDENTS who pay $7800 can secure direct entry into all of the University of Adelaide's bachelor degrees based on their Year 11 results.

Students who complete the university's Foundation Studies Program, dubbed "uni without Year 12", offered through Eynesbury College, receive assured direct entry into all of its bachelor degrees.

Parent and student groups have questioned the program's fairness, criticising a system they say effectively allows students to buy their way into university. Entry into the program requires only successful completion of Year 11.

The flyer promoting the program states: "Students offered a place in the FSP will no longer have to compete with thousands of others as they are given a conditional offer of admission to their preferred Bachelor degree at the University. This means no SACE and no SATAC application."

Most South Australian Year 12 students who apply for university must complete their SA Certificate of Education and receive an Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank that provides a comparison to students who have completed different subject combinations.

Using their ATAR, students apply for a place in their preferred undergraduate course through the SA Tertiary Admissions Centre, competing for a place based on merit.

Eynesbury College (International) director and principal Peter Millen said that upon application, students would be assessed on their ability to successfully complete the program, which would include the prerequisite subjects the student needed depending on their chosen degree.

Mr Millen said successful applicants would receive an offer from the University of Adelaide that would specify a mark out of 500 they must achieve to maintain their place. "It's a completely separate program, they are scored out of 500 so, if for example engineering was 380, they would have to complete the program, get 380 and have the right prerequisites," he said.

The university sets the score on a degree-by-degree basis with "similar relativities" as ATAR scores, a spokeswoman said, however, she was not able to provide examples.

University of Adelaide major projects and development director Lynne Broadbridge said offering the foundation program for domestic students was about the need to have flexible pathways and reduce the traditional barriers to university.

"Opening our foundation program offered through Eynesbury College, which has proven successful for international students since 1994, is a logical step to encourage local students to follow the aspirations to higher education," she said.

SA Association of School Parent Clubs president Jenice Zerna said it was not fair that some students would effectively be able to pay for their university place. "We are concerned that students are being provided with a university place based on how much money they or their parents have," she said.

National Union of Students president Jesse Marshall said the program appeared to be a way to get a down payment from students from wealthy backgrounds in return for guaranteed access to its programs. "The Federal Government levelled the playing field when it abolished full-fee paying places," he said.

"This program appears to take us back to the days where if you have more money you can pay your way into university."

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Australian universities judged among world's best

There is a lot of arbitrariness in these rankings but it is encouraging that Australian universities do well in several ranking systems. From what I have seen of overseas universities,I myself think Australia's "sandstone" universities are as good as any -- but I hold degrees from two of them so maybe I am a bit biased. I am pleased to see that where my son is currently studying did very well in the rankings. He himself is pleased with his programme there

FIVE Australian universities have been rated among the world's top 50 but the latest global university rankings show dramatic falls by institutions outside the Group of Eight, prompting concerns over the methodology of the list.

Eight Australian institutions made it into the top 100 - 23 are in the top 500 - in the QS World University Rankings, released today.

The outstanding result has been welcomed by sector leaders, despite the big slumps among universities outside the Go8.

Top of the local league was the Australian National University, ranked 26 in the world, followed by the University of Melbourne at 31. The world league was led by the University of Cambridge, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University and the University of Oxford.

Australia's worst fall was registered by Flinders University, down 48 rankings to 299 globally. The University of Newcastle fell by 35, La Trobe University by 31 and Griffith University and the University of Tasmania by 23.

They were in a group of 13 whose rankings dropped, while nine institutions improved over past year.

The University of South Australia was up 25, Queensland University of Technology was up 22 and Curtin University and the University of Western Australia were both up 16.

Universities Australia chief executive Glenn Withers said: "To have something like 60 per cent of Australian universities in the top 500 shows the strength of our system by world standards, given there are some 16,000 institutions. (But) we need to maintain that strength.

"We are looking for the base funding review and the way the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency are going to operate to help us maintain that strength in the system."

Griffith University's deputy director, research policy, and QS board member Tony Sheil, said the rankings were "capturing more up-and-coming universities, especially from the fast-growing economies like China, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea".

This was in contrast to one of its rivals, the Academic Ranking of World Universities, previously known as the Shanghai Jiao Tong, whose methodology is heavily weighted towards research performance and tends to favour older universities.

"The good news for Australia is that it performs very well on both rankings - our universities conform to what some call the global university model," Mr Sheil said.

"(However) QS does need to have a closer look at the data accuracy contained in several indicators."

He said it was not credible that several middle-ranked Australian universities outdid the California Institute of Technology for employer reputation.

The QS methodology allocates a 40 per cent weighting for academic reputation, gauged via a worldwide questionnaire, 10 per cent for reputation among employers, 20 per cent for student-to-staff ratio, 20 for citations per academic staff member, and 5 per cent each for international staff and international students.

The area of traditional weakness for Australia in the QS rankings is student-to-staff ratios. "Once again, it's disappointing to see Australia falling behind in some of the student-to-staff ratios," executive director of the leading Group of Eight universities, Michael Gallagher said.

QS singled Melbourne out for comment. "In whichever evaluations you refer to in recent times, the QS World University Rankings by Subject, The Excellence in Research for Australia initiative, or the Shanghai rankings, Melbourne keeps getting stronger," QS vice-president John Molony said.

Mr Gallagher agreed that while "there are different perspectives and flaws in all rankings systems, the consistent message is that they reinforce different groupings, especially the top tier".

The field of global rankings for universities is intensely competitive. QS claims to be the most extensive of its kind, evaluating more than 700 universities.

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Zogby Back-to-School Poll: 57% Want National Standard for Advancement

54% Say Test Score Cheating by School Officials Is Widespread

A majority of adults nationwide (57%) say there should be a national standard level of learning in the nation’s public schools before students can move from one grade to another, and, 54% believe test score cheating by school officials to improve standardized test scores is widespread, a new IBOPE Zogby Interactive survey finds

In regard to the best way to evaluate teachers, 64% prefer an even mix of standardized test scores and classroom observation.

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2 September, 2011

Study Finds Day Care Rivaling College In Expenses

Jessica Rivera wants the best for her children. Being a working mom, she has had no choice but to pay for day care so that she could help her husband keep the house up and running.

“A thousand dollars a month for two children so that along with mortgage and everything it was hard.” It became so overwhelming that Rivera sought financial help. Her daughter America was accepted into a program called ChildCareGroup.

But millions of parents are feeling the pinch from child care. A new study released by the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies found that in 36 states the average annual cost of child care was higher than a year’s tuition at a four year public college.

In Texas one year of public college averages $7,743. While one year of child care for a four-year-old is $6,600. But the cost of child care for an infant was greater than a year of college at $7,850.

Susan Hoff is a child care advocate for United Way. She says finding affordable quality child care is a huge problem, but adds educating babies and toddlers requires a significant investment just like higher learning does. “Those first four years of life are the greatest amount of brain development in young children… It’s important to our entire public.”

According to the study New York is the least affordable state for child care, while Louisiana is the most affordable. But that’s based on a two parent income. Its even more difficult for single parents. “A little bit more than half my income goes to paying day care,” says Maria Ruiz, who is raising her three-year-old son Sidney alone.

She just moved her son from one day care because they went up on the tuition, again. “It was hard trying to find something that would meet my budget and at the same time meet my needs for my son.”

And meeting their children’s needs is every parents concern– no matter the cost. “His education means a lot,” says Ruiz.

SOURCE



Only 4 Percent of NEA Dues Dollars Dedicated to Improve Teaching

It looks like the National Education Association is not putting its money where its mouth is.

In its mission statement, the nation’s largest teachers union asserts that “we will focus the energy and resources of our 3.2 million members on improving the quality of teaching, increasing student achievement and making schools safer, better places to learn.”

But a secret union document reveals that the NEA’s commitment to “improv(ing) teaching and learning” works out to a paltry $7.44 per member every year. This is according to a document obtained from an internal source of the Indiana State Teachers Association, one of the NEA’s state affiliates. All dollar amounts refer to the NEA’s 2010-11 budget, and are the most recent numbers available.

While the majority of a teacher’s dues dollars stay with the state union, $166 is sent to the NEA every year, which is the parent union. As already stated, the NEA only spent $7.44 of that amount on efforts to improve teaching and learning.

To put that into perspective, the NEA spent four times as much ($31.05 of the $166) on “legislative and ballot initiatives” and “partnerships and public relations.” The union spent $68.69 of the $166 on administrative support, governance, legal support, and leadership development and constituency support.

That explains why the NEA could afford to pay its top three leaders more than $1 million in salary in 2009, the most recent year those figures were available.

The NEA is clearly more concerned about taking care of its leadership team than it is about improving student learning.

The reason the NEA gives anything at all toward improving teaching and learning practices is so the union can claim to care about students. That piddly amount is only meant to give the union a thin veneer of respectability.

We’ve got a lot of great public school teachers. But it’s a shame that they are being represented by such a self-serving, hyperpartisan group of activists.

SOURCE



AD and BC ruled out of date for national curriculum

This is just going to force kids to learn two systems instead of one. Most reference works use BC and AD so will be incomprehensible to the kids unless they learn both systems

CHRISTIANS are outraged that the birth of Jesus Christ will no longer be cited when recording dates under the new national history curriculum.

High school students will not use the terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) when referencing dates.

Although history dates won't change, with textbooks still using the birth of Christ as the change point, they will use the neutral terms BCE (Before Common Era), BP (Before Present) and CE (Common Era).

Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen said yesterday that removing BC and AD from the curriculum was an "intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of human history".

Do you agree with the changes? Vote in our poll below

"It is absurd because the coming of Christ remains the centre point of dating and because the phrase 'common era' is meaningless and misleading," he told The Daily Telegraph. It was akin to calling Christmas the festive season, he said.

A spokesman for the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, responsible for developing the national curriculum from kindergarten to Year 12, said BCE and CE were to be introduced because this was an increasingly common standard for the representation of dates.

The little known term BP (Before Present) will be used when dealing with "very ancient history and archaeology, and allows for the teaching of more sophisticated understandings of representations of time".

In anticipation of the curriculum change, textbooks for student teachers such as Teaching And Learning In Aboriginal Education, by Neil Harrison, were already using the term BP.

Federal Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne said: "Australia is what it is today because of the foundations of our nation in the Judeo-Christian heritage that we inherited from Western civilisation.

"Kowtowing to political correctness by the embarrassing removal of AD and BC in our national curriculum is of a piece with the fundamental flaw of trying to deny who we are as a people."

The curriculum was to have been introduced next year but has been delayed.

SOURCE



1 September, 2011

Why I'm Getting my PhD From the 'University' of Manitoba

James Delingpole

Hey, everybody, I’ll have none of that disrespectful “Mr Delingpole” from you lot any more. From now on it’s Dr Delingpole, got that? Though I admit I haven’t actually picked up my PhD yet, I can speak with considerable confidence that it’s in the bag. That’s because I’m planning to get my doctorate from the “University” of Manitoba, Canada. And just check out this story about what an enlightened attitude this august seat of learning has to people with “disabilities.”

The University of Manitoba said it is reviewing its policy on how to accommodate students with disabilities despite winning a victory in court this week over a controversial decision to grant a PhD to a student who failed his courses due to “extreme exam anxiety.”

Gábor Lukács, a former child math prodigy who started university at age 12 and was a professor by age 24, sued the university over its decision to grant the student, identified only in court documents as A.Z., a PhD in math although he had twice failed his comprehensive exams and was missing a graduate course.

Thursday, Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Deborah McCawley rejected Mr. Lukács request that the court intervene and rescind the degree, saying he didn’t have standing to take the case to court.

The university had defended its decision, saying it was legally required to accommodate a student’s disability, in this case, exam anxiety.

Mr. Lukács had argued that the university had damaged its credibility and was at risk of turning into a “diploma mill,” a claim the judge said was “unsubstantiated.”

My disability, in case you wondered, is that I’m allergic to countries which are colder than England, which have big, beaver-infested lakes in them and where they pronounce “about” “aboot”. When I explain this to the “University” of Manitoba authorities, I’m sure they’ll grant me the necessary compassionate exemption from doing any work.

Has anyone else noticed the Last Days of the Roman Empire flavour to this story? Here we are living in times so intellectually decadent, so agonisingly in thrall to the suicidal values of the Gramsciite left, that in a toss-up between a substandard, academic inadequate and a gifted professor genuinely committed to maintaining standards, the university choses to take the side of the inadequate.

The case, which dates back to 2009, has bitterly divided the school. Administrators suspended Mr. Lukács, now 29, for three months without pay last year after alleging that he had gone public with the student’s name and revealed private information about his disability.

Supporters of the professor launched an online petition, collecting nearly 200 names of students and academics from as far away as Israel. Another 86 mathematicians from around the world signed a letter of support. The university’s faculty association sided with Mr. Lukács, while the graduate students association applauded the school’s decision to suspend him.

Graduate students of the “University” of Manitoba, eh? What a bunch of intellectual heavyweights they must be.

SOURCE



Britain's "free" schools

Free schools will recruit the staff they want, set their own pay levels and create their own curricula

Next week sees the most innovative education experiment in memory, when 24 new free schools open their doors. Inspired by the charter school programme in the US and the free school movement in Sweden, they represent an important victory for parental rights over the power of the state. The schools, both primary and secondary, are non-selective, non-profit making, and independent within the state sector. They will be able to recruit the staff they want, set their own pay levels and create their own curricula. What they all have in common is that they have been brought into being by concerned parents who were prepared to fight for the kind of local schooling they want – and a Government that has had the good sense to allow it to happen.

The progress of the guinea-pig schools (there are hundreds more applications in the pipeline) will be watched with interest. Many are located in deprived areas where state schools are failing to deliver the excellence all parents have a right to expect. There will be variety in the kind of schooling on offer, but a uniformity of ambition. Free secondary schools expect all their students to achieve good GCSEs in English, maths, science and a foreign language. In the state sector, just a fifth of pupils manage that.

Many on the Left abhor the notion that parents should be allowed to create the kind of schools they want for their children, rather than putting up with what the state sees fit to offer them. Their criticism has been rather undercut by the decision of Peter Hyman, Tony Blair’s former education adviser, to set up a free school next year in Newham, east London, with the simply stated aim of educating its pupils for the top universities and successful careers. It is salutary that he feels impelled to bypass the state system in order to do that.

SOURCE



Australian schools may need to take on underperforming students to ensure funding, report says

The usual Leftist push to reduce everybody to the lowest common denominator

HIGH-performing schools may be put under pressure to take on underperforming students as a condition of funding.

A report commissioned by the Australian Government Review of Funding for Schooling has made the suggestion, adding "we need to question the extent to which public funds should continue to subsidise those already well-resourced selective schools that are not providing 'value' add in terms of student performance".

The independent report - along with three others released by the panel yesterday - has been met with dismay by the private sector but praised by the Australian Education Union.

Comments released by the review panel yesterday state the reports "have made a case for fundamental change in the way we fund schooling at all levels of government".

School Education Minister Peter Garrett said the reports would help the review panel develop its final recommendations, but he distanced the Government from what was in them.

"They do not represent the views of the panel and are not indicative of the Government's intentions," he said.

One report, written by the Allen Consulting Group, recommends school outcome information, including NAPLAN and My School financial data, be used to help decide base funding for all schools.

"Loading" would be provided to schools identified as needing additional resources "to assist students with specific needs to achieve specified outcomes".

Another report, written by a consortium led by The Nous Group, said higher-performing schools should be encouraged to "take on more under-performing students and demonstrate their quality through student performance over and above what would have been expected from past performance. This may mean restructuring some or all of the public subsidies so that they are retrospective and 'reward-based"'.

AEU president Angelo Gavrielatos said the reports confirmed current funding contributed to a "deepening inequality in educational outcomes".

Independent Schools Queensland executive director David Robertson said the review had failed to provide any analysis of its own, leaving private schools still nervous that their funding could be cut in real terms and that top-performing schools might suffer under the new funding model.

SOURCE






Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.


TERMINOLOGY: The British "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".


MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).


There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.


The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed


Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.


Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor


I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.


Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".


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


The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.


Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.


Comments above by John Ray