The server that my hosting service, Verve, was using for this blog has crashed completely, so everything's being migrated to a new server. Until I'm sure everything's cool, I'm not going to assume that I can make a lot of little posts during the day, so I'm going to make one big one now and just hope that I can get that one up.
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An anti-union, anti-monopoly, pro-charter-school essay in FrontPage Magazine by Thomas Bray. His topic is the recent charter school "debacle" in Michigan. It seems Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was planning to support a new bill hammered out by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and GOP legislative leaders that would have put 150 new charter schools into operation over the next 10 years, with $200 million of the cost coming from a private philanthropist. But the Detroit Federation of Teachers protested this free money so loudly that Kilpatrick rescinded his support, despite the fact that his own children attend charter schools. The protest was so vitriolic that the philanthropist then rescinded his offer.
What accomplishments can the DFT claim that would allow them to so vehemently oppose choice and free funding for charter schools? Well, we can assess their effectiveness for ourselves here. We can see, for example, that in 2000, the percentages of eighth-grade students in the Detroit school district passing the Science, Writing, and Social Studies segments of the MEAP were 13.6%, 55%, and 10.8%, respectively. Yeah, that's surely a track record to be proud of.
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A little too much of a good thing - "help," that is. Students in Putnam Valley (NY) will have their fourth-grade math and English test scores removed from the next NY state report card, because a teacher may have given one "too much help in understanding the exams." That "help" here may have extended to giving the kids the answers.
The usual blather about the teacher's inexperience and misguided compassion is here, because we all know that teachers just can't resist cheating when they see kids "struggling." It's their "natural" reaction; one just wonders why no mention is made of the reaction that should be considered equally natural, which is to modify one's teaching method so that kids don't find themselves struggling so hard with basic skills exams.
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Do you have a gifted child on your hands? The Arizona Republic provides a helpful guide for parents who wonder if their little ones are budding Einsteins, and informs them of their rights under the current public school structure:
Arizona law defines a gifted student as one who scores in the 97th percentile on a standardized test in language, non-verbal reasoning, or math. The state requires schools to offer a gifted child accelerated course work, but it leaves the details to individual school districts...Among the ways parents can ensure this happens:
• If you ask, schools must test...Schools are required to test for gifted abilities three times a year and are more likely to depend on experienced teachers and parents to determine who should be tested.
• If your child doesn't do well on standardized tests, you have other options...About 10 percent of the students who are receiving gifted education came to the classes through alternative identification programs that use visual testing, portfolios of schoolwork and other kinds of measurements.
• In kindergarten through second grade, ask your child's teacher to develop extra material for your gifted child.
• Find out if your district offers separate classes for gifted kids.
• In middle school, have your gifted child register for accelerated core courses.
As always, I'm a bit suspicious of that "portfolio assessment" route to a gifted class, but it's possible that those means are feasible and somewhat reliable. I know from personal experience, though, that public schools don't often seek out gifted kids and will not take the initiative to test them or design special curricula, so it is up to the parents to help develop a program.
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The expected battle to keep HOPE scholarships from relying on SAT scores has begun. As I mentioned before, students in Georgia need only obtain a B average in high school to get a HOPE scholarship, which pays their first year of tuition. It has been suggested that an SAT score of 1000 should be required, which is not a rigorous standard, but which may funnel the free money to people more likely to remain in college after the HOPE money runs out.
But this has been recast as a "civil rights issue," as though it is a civil right for any young adult to be admitted to a college when there is not sufficient evidence to suggest that the young adult in question is academically prepared:
...critics argue it would be unfair to African-American students because the test is culturally or racially biased [not true, and not supported by any data]. Test supporters contend the problem lies in an unfair public education system, not in the test. Some experts and education officials argue that scores can be predicted by family income and the educational background of a student's parents: the higher the income and the more educated the parents, the higher the test score, on average.
By this last rationale, the B average required for the HOPE is similarly discriminatory, because kids from better homes also make higher grades. The logical conclusion is that the state of Georgia should throw money at any student who wants to go to college, regardless of their preparedness. At that point, college campuses become an extension of day care centers, and the effect of these students on the academic environment is predictable.
There is a test-score gap on the SAT in Georgia. White students average 1035, black students 852. No one has yet to produce evidence that this gap doesn't reflect a true gap in knowledge and quality of educational background, nor has anyone produced a solid theory for why students with low SAT scores will nonetheless have a good chance of finishing four years of college as long as their first year is paid for.
Posted by kswygert at October 6, 2003 10:53 AM