Umph. Long week. Lots of meetings. Lots of recovering data from a server that was down all last week. A 24-hour bout of Can't-Get-Out-Of-Bed-itis. Time to think about things that I enjoy that don't involve score gaps or standard deviations:
(1) Walter Olson's Overlawyered.com. I cover only the ludicrous lawsuits that involves the educational system; Walter covers 'em all. Some are almost too hard to take - a cop wins over 87K pounds in damages because he was traumatized by watching someone die when his car hit theirs? - but some are funny enough to balance out the maddening ones. Like the story about Riverside, CA, whose citizens want to sue Fox Broadcast Co. for labeling them as "white trash" in a (fictional) TV series. Besides the ludicrousness of wanting to sue over a comment about an entire town by a fictional character in a fictional series, it should be pointed out to Riverside that, at least where I come from, one of the definitions of "white trash" is "people who sue at the drop of a hat, and hope to enrich themselves through lawsuits, rather than working for a living."
(2) Snopes.com. An utterly invaluable research tool for getting the real story behind hoaxes, frauds, scams, urban legends, rumors, real viruses, and any other goofy story making the rounds. Go to "What's New" to get the latest on Sobig.F, the relationship between a man's hand size and the size of some of his other bits, and whether Fox News used an outdated photo of NYC to illustrate a story about the recent blackout.
(3) Movie review sites like the Movie Review Query Engine, Rotten Tomatoes, and The Greatest Films. I'm addicted to film reviews and enjoy reading them even for movies I have no intention of seeing. For movies I do see, I read on average between 10 and 20 reviews for each. I just love knowing what someone else thought of the film experience, and what someone else caught that I did not.
The MRQE allows you to type in any movie name, and it retrieves every online review. Rotten Tomatoes ranks movies by the number of tomatoes thrown at them, so it's fun to root through the movies with the most appalling ratings (Gigli, anyone?). And The Greatest Films site rehashes all the classics, with lengthy reviews and good background information.
Of course, when it comes to review of bad movies, there's always the site for which I proofread, Jabootu.com.
(4) Bill Holbrook's comic strips - Safe Havens, On the FastTrack, and Kevin & Kell. The last one is particularly inventive; a group of anthropomorphic animals recreate a very human environment and address topics like parenting, mixed marriages (herbivores and carnivores - just think of the in-law issues!), adolescence, a real dog-eat-dog corporate world, racism (or, rather, speciesism), and dealing with spam on the internet. The Bradys' job was easy, compared to the effort required to blend a family composed of two wolves, a rabbit, and a porcupine (she was adopted). If you've got serious time to waste, start at the beginning (1995!) and read straight on through.
Oopsie. The Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) scores for students in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who took the test early this year have been lost. More than 1,000 - or one-seventh - of the district's scores have gone AWOL:
The missing Michigan Educational Assessment Program scores appear to be limited to those attained by students tested in January and February at elementary and middle schools...
The state Department of Treasury administers the MEAP program and contracts out the testing to Durham, N.C.-based Measurement Inc. Spokesman Terry Stanton said Treasury staff is working with the company to figure out what went wrong.
The state needs the scores for several reasons, including score grades required under NCLB and determining qualification for Merit Award Scholarships.
"This is getting to the point of ridiculousness that it's almost funny," said Grand Rapids school board Vice President Amy McGlynn. "After all these months, the scores have pretty much lost their meaning anyway. We needed these scores months ago if we were going to do anything productive with them."
Hey, glad to see someone has a sense of humor about the whole thing. But one state representative, Michael Sak (D-Grand Rapids), isn't laughing. He's asked the state to take responsibility for the tests and refuse to work with Measurement, Inc. any more.
Admissions policies are changing for the better in Michigan - or are they?
An affirmative action policy unveiled Thursday for admissions at the University of Michigan eliminates automatic advantages for minorities but still allows the school to consider race. The plan also demands more work of the university and its applicants, who must write more personal essays and provide information about their lives and family backgrounds, including parents' education and income.
"More" personal essays? Why isn't one personal essay enough? And why should they have to provide information about their family backgrounds? What if a student considers that to be none of Michigan's business? I mean, I wrote a personal essay for college, but it didn't have anything to do with my family, or "overcoming hardships."
Two short essays will be added to the current requirement for a long essay. Prospective students will be able to choose from a range of topics, including a few that ask how a student's presence on campus would add to its diversity. It also asks applicants to ''describe an experience that you've had where cultural diversity has made a difference to you.''
Gah! So they've gone from engineering diversity to forcing each student to justify his or her contribution to campus diversity. What a crock. By this line of thinking, I would never have been admitted to the U of South Carolina, because, as a white middle-class female from a rural SC town, I added nothing to the diversity of the campus as far as "group membership" went. On paper, the only way in which I stood out was my academic achievements, and it's sad to think that students will now be forced to downplay their academics and create some contorted essay about how they will contribute to the "diversity" of the campus.
As far as that goes, how is a student supposed to know if they're "diverse" enough, unless it's a given that only minority group membership will count for this? Is Michigan really going to admit any NAAWP members, or hard-core Republican students, on the grounds that Michigan doesn't have enough of those already? Can those students sue on the grounds of diversity if they're rejected?
Applicants have to write how "cultural diversity" has affected their lives. Does this mean that anyone raised in a segregated environment, be it Asian, black, or white, doesn't have a shot at admissions? Or are minorities automatically considered to be "culturally diverse," even if (as is the case in Philly), their neighborhoods and schools were almost completely racially homogenous?
''We're changing things, and they will change more,'' [University Provost Paul] Courant said. But he predicted that the diversity of next fall's freshman class will differ little from this fall's.
If I were an optimist, I'd assume this means that Michigan trusts the students to provide adequate diversity without being assigned points for race. Instead, I believe it means that the new AA is the same as the old AA.
Yesterday, I noted that the NAACP is opposing the use of the FCAT in Florida, in spite of the fact that FCAT performance gives them the evidence they need to urge schools to better educate their minority youth. John Rosenberg of Discriminations comments, and he's noticed an interesting contradiction between that and NAACP action in California:
In Florida the NAACP does not want the state to collect information that would identify poorly performing schools. By contrast, in California, as one of their primary arguments against Prop. 54, the Racial Privacy Initiative, the NAACP and its allies argue that the state must continue to collect racial information in order to monitor compliance with civil rights laws.
He also provides a link to the NAACP brief, which claims that Florida systematically preserves segregated schools, but their evidence is given only as the policies that are in place for standardized testing, AP course placement, graduation requirements, and the like. Unless I'm completely off here, those policies are completely color-blind in Florida's schools. The standardized tests, in particular, are color-blind, but that's not what the NAACP wants. They want some method that produces equality of outcome, not opportunity, and they, like many test critics, believe that banning tests changes the fact that a score gap exists.
Den Beste's theories that I mentioned earlier today provide an explanation that has everything to do with economics, and nothing to do with a racist educational system. The fact that Florida's public schools are highly segregated are more likely due to "white flight" and suburban retreat than to any systematic policy on the part of the Floridia DOE.
If Florida is in fact segregating and mistreating minority youth, then one would think the NAACP would want the FCAT should remain in place as objective evidence of that. Page 25 of the brief deals with the FCAT. Although the writers of the brief do correctly label the results as differential impact, and not bias, they're still wrong in assuming that evidence of differential impact is a de facto criticism of the test, or that it's evidence the test should be removed.
For those of you with time on your hands, go digest Steven Den Beste's treatise on bell curves and the US crime rate. He works his way around to talking about the fact that there will always be a lower end to the curve in terms of socio-economic status, crime - and think about how this applies to educational performance (unitalicized comments are mine):
There will always be people who are less able to succeed. There will always be a tendency for them to become concentrated in a small number of areas. And that means they'll be visible, identifiable [and grouped in the same public schools].
And when the whole curve moves, they'll move with it, but they'll still be on the low end. Kevin points to this page which shows that since 1970 the overall homicide rate in the US has dropped, along with the general trend towards less crime in general. The homicide rate for whites (both as perpetrators and as victims) has dropped, and so have both rates for blacks. But the rate for blacks is still higher than for whites.
Worse, this disguises some realities: some white groups are more likely than others to be involved in homicide than other whites, and some groups of blacks are than other blacks. The majority of black people in the US are no more at risk than I am, but there's a core group which is skewing the average...
Kevin's argument was that we have to face the fact of black crime squarely, which is difficult because so many others are primed to scream Racist! at any hint of such discussion. [Just as there are people primed to scream Racist! at any discussion of the black-white test score gap]...
When "poor" and "ill-educated" and "crime-ridden" are relative terms, then what you're trying to do is to eradicate the low end of the curve. But there will always be a "low end of the curve", unless everything is absolutely identical for everyone, which isn't possible (and in my opinion also isn't desirable).
Which is what people who oppose standardized testing and exit exams often want to deny. Such exams make it perfectly clear that someone will always come out on the low end of the curve, and that produces a responsibility to figure out who is on the low end, and why they're on the low end. Many testing opponents have confused eradicating tests with eradicating differences in academic performances, and believe that if the tests would just go away, there would actually be no gap in performance.
Those who continue to dumb down exit exams are also denying the existence of a low end of the curve; i.e., those students who don't deserve a high school diploma, despite the fact that they may have marked 12 years in school. That wouldn't necessarily be the student's fault - not if it's a bad school - but at some point, those schools who espouse accountability must be prepared to deny diplomas to those on the low end of the academic performance curve. Awarding diplomas regardless of performance merely masks the problems without solving them.
Also, there's an article in Front Page Magazine suggesting that there is a link between culture and test performance - but not in the sense that testing critics believe:
I think it urgent to create a national effort to confront and somehow change a culture, enjoyed by millions of minorities and others, that dismisses serious education, fosters militant anti-intellectualism, and exalts the lowest forms of personal behavior and popular entertainment...
The exaltation of the icons of this rock bottom culture by the media at all levels in recent years is surely harmful to untold millions of young people and to the nation 's future. Walk into a classroom, as I have many times, and begin lecturing to students dressed as clowns and prostitutes, proud of their tattoos and nose clips, eager only to clap on the headphones at the end of the hour and be surrounded by screaming Rock and rap stars. They want no part of what you have to say, and see themselves as prisoners and victims. Where in their entire lives do they see people who are thoughtful, educated, and enthralled with the highest cultural expressions of our civilization?
If educators truly want to raise SAT and ACT scores, they must not only raise their academic standards, as some already have, but speak out and take action against the popular culture that hinders and prohibits their ability to bring knowledge and wisdom to young people.
In other words, there is a cultural bias going on, but those suffering from it are not unwilling victims, but instead have chosen to embrace a culture that devalues educational achievement.
This article also quotes an absolutely astonishing comment from Seppy Basili, the VP for learning and assessment at test prep company Kaplan, Inc., in which he says:
"If the last ten years [of SAT scores] are any indication, affirmative action is going to be even more important" in the future.
If I read this correctly, the head of a test prep company is essentially claiming defeat when it comes to helping minority students prepare for the SAT. You'd think someone who ran a company like Kaplan would be hawking his company's wares and claiming that minority students, above all, would benefit from his services. Instead, that AA comment makes clear that Mr. Basili doesn't believe that minority youth actually can improve their SAT scores - an astonishing (and condescending) comment from someone in his position. I'm sure he believes he's being "compassionate" and "politically correct" in saying this, but what I hear is, "Minority parents, don't waste your money on my company - we can't help your kid. Lowered standards is the best they can hope for."
If you've not read your Joanne Jacobs for the week, it's all summarized here on the Jewish World Review site. Go Joanne!
Finally, there's a lovely Tech Central Station article up on diversity in academia. Author Arnold Kling suggests that academics could benefit from losing the adolescent fantasies about perfect governments and learning some truly diverse ideas in real life.
Some twisted teen showed up on the first day of classes at an elementary school near Boston, complete with "Jason" hockey mask and a bad attitude:
A twisted teen wearing a Jason-like hockey mask hid outside an Orange elementary school yesterday morning, scaring children as they showed up for the first day of school, police said.
A bus driver and parents called the cops to report the disturbing sight of the "Friday the 13th'' character outside the Fisher Hill Elementary School after 8 a.m., officials said.
"Some teen was hiding out wearing a Jason mask near a school trying to scare the kids,'' said Orange police administrative assistant Brenda Anderson.
"He was hanging out on the road to school,'' Anderson said.
Police and a canine dog searched the area but didn't catch the prankster.
Dude, how little of a life do you have to have to spend a summer morning this way? Police, if you want to catch this guy, I'd suggest going online - I bet he doesn't have many friends in real life.
Students in Illinois saw a boost in test scores because their principal gave them a sneak peek at the Prairie State standardized test before it was administered. In other words, he helped them cheat - but he's being suspended with pay:
The scandal started last April, when students were about to take the Prairie State standardized exam. Students were given what they thought was a practice test to prepare for the real thing. But on test day, many students realized that the practice test was the real test.
Illinois state education officials say opening the standardized tests early is a violation of policy, and began an investigation of principal Mark Keller and guidance counselor Carey Knox...
NewsChannel 5's Cordell Whitlock attended the North Greene School Board meeting Wednesday night, and asked the board members about the decision to pay the principal during his suspension. Their response: you'll have to talk with the school's attorney. The superintendent also refused to comment on the situation.
Several students at the board meeting did talk to Cordell. One said he found it ironic that the student athletes at the school are always reminded, "cheaters never win."
Oh, but cheaters who are protected by the NEA do get paid.
Update: Devoted Reader Michael has slapped my knuckles with a ruler and told me to knock off the knee-jerk anti-unionism. I won't stop picking at teachers' unions, because I don't agree with them, but in this case my NEA comment was not only tacky but wrong. Michael says that principals are generally not union members.
Ow. Those rulers hurt.
The NAACP has gotten into the act:
The NAACP filed a federal complaint seeking to stop use of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, to determine graduation and student retention until the achievement gap between minority and white students is eliminated.
Wow. That's quite a requirement. Equality of opportunity is no longer sufficient; now minority and white students must have completely equal distributions of ability for the test to be considered "fair" by the NAACP.
...Education Secretary Jim Horne said that the gap between white and minority achievement is closing. He had not seen the complaint, but said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has a history of agitation.
The NAACP claims that Florida is violating its constitutional duty to provide a quality education to all students, saying schools that are mostly minority are not receiving the same resources and have inferior facilities.
It's not that they don't have a point with this. It's just that, if you remove objective measures such as the FCAT that show minority youngsters are not gaining the skills they need, then you lose critical evidence that some schools are shortchanging their students and do need to change. Why does the NAACP want to get rid of evidence that minority students aren't learning what they need to learn?
Note to NAACP: Quit attacking the test, and go after schools that have the lowest FCAT performances. Demand to know why these schools can't help their kids learn. If the teachers or administrators claim that they cannot overcome the home lives and backgrounds of their students, then you have the cause of the score gap right there - teachers who have abdicated their responsibility to teach, and schools that have abdicated their responsibility to help kids overcome a poor home environment. Fix that, and you'll see the score gap close. Eliminate the FCAT, and nothing will happen to improve education for minority youth.
Devoted Reader Nick sends along an article about the protest against teacher certification exams in New York City. Not surprisingly, the protestors are claiming that the test is biased against those who failed; also not surprisingly, the NYT reporter who covered this story fails, along with the protestors, to grasp the distinction between bias and impact.
The protesters urged the city to reconsider its firing of 10,000 uncertified teachers over the last five years, saying the test was culturally biased against blacks and Hispanics.
Marc Pessin, a co-chairman of a teachers' group called the Progressive Action Caucus, which organized the demonstration, said the passing rate among blacks and Hispanics was about 40 percentage points lower than that among whites.
If the passing rate is different for blacks, whites, and Hispanics, then this means the distribution of scores are different. The black and Hispanic distributions are most likely shifted lower on the score scale continuum, so that a smaller percentage of those members fall above the passing cutscore than in the white distribution.
This is NOT evidence of bias; indeed, bias can exist where group mean differences do not. No reporter seems to understand this, and no testing opponents want to believe it. The differential passing rate means only that the groups differ on the ability scale. There are many explanations for why that would be; wholesale "cultural bias" is one of the least likely, and, as I'll explain in a moment, one of the most distasteful explanations.
There is not any firm evidence of test bias here, but because black and Hispanic teachers are passing at a lower rate, using the test for certification purposes does have a greater negative impact on those test takers. Impact is, in itself, a neutral term, and not a criticism of a test. Here's why.
Example: Group A and Group B take the driver's licensing exam. 90% of Group A passes; 15% of Group B passes. Is the test biased against Group B? No, but the test negatively impacts Group B. Suppose you then discover that Group A has had driving lessons, while the members of Group B have never sat behind the wheel of a car. Is it a bad thing, then, that the exam has a differential impact on the two groups? Not at all; in fact, the results are evidence of the construct validity of the exam, because the results show that the exam prevents people who don't know how to drive from obtaining licenses.
The analogy holds here. Black and Hispanic teachers do not pass the test at the same rate. It is not racist to say that, for some reason, these teachers are less likely to have the skills necessary to pass the exam. Perhaps they were not taught them; perhaps they did not believe they would ever be tested on them.
It is racist to claim, as the representative of the "Progressive Action Caucus" quoted above does, that these teachers are "culturally" unable to pass this exam based solely on their skin color. Saying that black and Hispanic teachers are not capable of answering multiple choice items for reasons that have nothing to do with their skills, and everything to do with their race, is hardly a "progressive" idea. In fact, the Klan would likely agree with the "Progressive Action Caucus" on that point.
(More on bias and impact here, here, and here.)
What does the test look like? See for yourself. Here's the test framework for the Liberal Arts and Sciences section, and sample test questions can be found here. The questions ask about topics such as equilibrium, linear relationships, a basic understanding of experimental design, and understanding mathematical concepts that have been graphed. The English prep guide is here; sample multiple-choice items begin on page 24. The reading load is substantial, but only people who think teachers shouldn't know how to read English very well would think that's a problematic aspect of the test:
Jose Aguasvivas, a former math and Spanish teacher in the bilingual program at Roosevelt High School in the Bronx, said he was typical of teachers who had failed the test because English was not their first language. "I even have a master's degree in bilingual elementary education," he said. "But the test is very confusing. If the test is in Spanish, then I pass it no problem."
Are you teaching in a Spanish-speaking country? Are you supposed to be instructing students only in Spanish, and never in English? If not, then this justification isn't satisfactory.
Another teacher laments the fact that she failed the test after teaching for 19 years and has had to go on welfare as a result. One could conclude the test was unfair; one could also conclude that this teacher was not very skilled to begin with, as evidenced by her failure to pass the exam, and her failure to find another job.
So, how difficult is this exam? This letter claims that most teachers pass on the first attempt. This page gives the passing scores, but not the total scores on each section. Teachers can retake an unlimited number of times, but must pass each section on one attempt to receive certification (they cannot combine passing sections from multiple attempts). This FAQ from a test prep site claims that teachers need answer correctly only 50-55% of the multiple-choice items in order to pass each section of the exam (they must pass the essay sections as well).
I dispute the claim that the test is biased, but do we know for sure that the exam is useful for identifying good teachers? Not necessarily. At least one study failed to find a link between teacher certification and student test scores - but DID find that the strongest effect on student performance was due to "teacher verbal and cognitive ability," which is certainly something that can be incorporated into a certification exam.
How do you think the "Progressive Action Caucus" would react if NYC suggested adding an IQ test to the certification procedure, or incorporating SAT scores? The fireworks would be fun to watch.
...Human power, that is. Your regularly scheduled bloggage will return tomorrow.
So, for all you Blair-watchers out there who have figured how a student can earn a 4.3+ GPA, become a super-volunteer, and write essays for newspapers, all while suffering from a chronic-fatigue-type illness, I have a new question for you:
How does a woman collect almost $200K in disability benefits while giving aerobic performances in beauty pageants?
Denise "Dee" Marie Henderson, 43, was crowned Mrs. Minnesota International in 1999 and competed in the Mrs. U.S. International pageant the same year while receiving the benefits. In both contests she competed in aerobic, evening gown and other events, prosecutors said.
According to the complaint, Henderson falsely claimed she was disabled by a 1995 auto accident that caused headaches and prevented her from sitting for more than 20 minutes, sleeping, reading her daily mail or lifting more than a few pounds. She received Social Security benefits going back to 1996.
So, she can't lift a Victoria's Secret catalogue, nor sit and peruse it for 20 minutes - but she can parade around stage in one of their skimpy bathing suits and high heels, and look good doing it, and even compete in aerobic events (dancing, presumably). Mrs. Henderson is attractive, with four childen, one of them adopted. She even runs a website for her adopted daughter, complete with really cheesy poetry.
Pretty darn active for a woman who can't read her own mail, wouldn't you say? Oh, but she's "innocent until proven guilty," according to the pageant director, despite evidence of her owning two businesses during a time when she claimed she could not work:
When she took the title of Mrs. Minnesota International in March 1999, Denise "Dee" Marie Henderson was either waging a private battle against intense physical pain or defrauding the federal Social Security Disability Insurance Program.
A month before she was crowned, federal officials had granted Henderson's request for disability benefits, awarding them retroactively to June 1996. From then until this month, Henderson received a total of $190,000 in disability payments, according to a federal complaint filed Monday in Minneapolis...
After her reign ended, Henderson became director of three pageants — the Mrs. Iowa International Pageant and Miss Teen International pageants in Iowa and Minnesota. Last year, Henderson and her husband, Kenneth, were named "Rookie Directors of the Year" at the 2002 Mrs. International Pageant.
Federal officials say she also started two businesses: Queen Bears Closet and Crowning Moments. Among other things, the businesses promote the sale of pageant gowns, aerobic wear and nutritional supplements. During this time, Henderson was claiming that she could not work, which is a requirement for Social Security disability, the complaint said.
The Hendersons claim they have many supporting people who will see them through this tough time. But will they see the videotape that insurance companies took of Mrs. Henderson carrying heavy luggage and a 20-minute underwater dive?
I know, I know, this has nothing to do with educational testing. I just find it amusing that someone could claim to be totally disabled, yet own two businesses and be active, as both competitor and organizer, on the very stressful beauty-pageant circuit. Here's a hint, insurance frauds: Don't be so public about the fact that you're lying to the government. Cashing a disability check while still ensconced in a tiara, evening gown, and sash is bound to draw some attention.
Your child wants to get into a competitive college. Would you recommend that (a) your kid cut back on running track, or performing in the high school play, the better to focus on academics; or (b) the school assign less homework, so that your kid has time to "chill"?
If you said (a), boy, are you behind the times:
Lynbrook High School in San Jose will kick off school today with new guidelines that discourage teachers from assigning homework over weekends and holidays. And Palo Alto High School, which welcomes students back Tuesday, is granting its first homework holiday at the end of the semester to give high-gear students some time to chill.
That's right! Because, you know, chilling all weekend is more important than working on substantial research projects, or extensive essays, or anything else that can't be done overnight. This may ease student stress, but what about the stress of teachers who want their kids to do some substantial work in high school, and don't see homework as "busywork" that kids should get mandated time off from?
The gestures acknowledge that the intense competition to win admission into elite universities by cramming teens' schedules with unwieldy amounts of academic classes and extracurricular activities may be taking a toll on students' physical, mental and emotional well-being.
Um, is this change taking place at high schools in the same state where the exit exam, which is at the 10th-grade-level, was recently postponed, because only a little over half of the class of 2003 were passing the math section, and almost 20% were failing the English? Yep, it's the same state.
And, yet, these high schools think the problem is that elite students are working too hard? And they want to set an example for other schools in the state by reducing the workload?
Lynbrook High administrators said they have been working on reducing academic anxiety for a while. Students attend only half of their classes Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and they jump on trampolines and blow soap bubbles during the school's annual stress-free week.
Oh, for crying out loud. How much hand-holding do these kids need? Joanne doesn't believe the figure that these kids are doing an average of 7 to 10 hours of homework a night, and neither do I. The ones who are working probably have to do so; I doubt many are "padding their resumes" with jobs in high school.
Among other things, the guidelines recommend students be given reading and practice problems on topics already covered, instead of homework assignments dealing with material that their teachers have yet to explain in class.
Wow. Teachers had to be told to do this. That explains a lot. I remember well that my worst teacher in high school always gave us homework on what we were to cover the next day, because it was easier for her to make us figure it out, rather than teach us the material. And this was in AP Trigonometry, no less; not exactly a class in which students should be expected to do long problem sets on material they've not yet covered.
Yep, that was 18 years ago, and I still hold a grudge. Back to the story:
Henry Dreyfus, who will be a senior at Palo Alto High, is not looking forward to the homework respite. "There are ways to limit stress, and I don't think a homework holiday is a good one,'' said Henry, 17. "We need the homework for reinforcement. I think as a result, we're going to get behind, and teachers are going to have to go over the same thing in class.''
Henry has his head on straight, and he doesn't sound stressed out by too much homework to me. If anything, I think the thought of falling behind - or not learning enough material - is what would stress out a truly competitive student.
And this part is just priceless:
The science department at Cupertino's Monta Vista High School thought more students would enjoy football games if they didn't have to worry about turning in lab reports the next day. So last year, science teachers attended many sporting events and handed out passes allowing students who stayed for the entire game to turn in any assignment a day late.
But after the first semester, "it just kind of fizzled,'' said biology teacher Lani Giffin. Some students still sat in the library instead of in the bleachers. And others whined about inconsistency because teachers didn't attend junior varsity events.
"We tried to do something nice,'' Giffin said, "and all we got were complaints.''
Where to begin?
(1) Newsflash: You're dealing with teenagers. Of course they're going to complain.
(2) You're science teachers who are giving students leeway in class for - no, not even for participating in sport events, but for being a spectator. Why the heck would I, as a good student in science, want to see people who sit in the bleachers get extra time for homework just for sitting in the bleachers? Why would a good student view a reward for anything other than classroom performance as fair? It's not.
(3) Does anyone other than me find it creepy that science teachers bemoaned the fact that some kids chose the library instead of the bleachers? I thought science geeks weren't supposed to be into sports anyway. Is this social engineering on their part? I'd resent like hell being expected to be at the game rather than hitting the books.
Joanne Jacob notes: "If the homework is busy work, don't assign it at all. But if it's meaningful, then students should make time to do it."
As an addendum, I'd add: And don't give students credit for things that have nothing to do with homework. You might be reducing the stress on the bad students, but you'll be increasing the stress on the good ones. They're the ones who will realize that they're learning less material, and if that they don't go to the football game, they'll actually have to turn their assignments in on time.
The class of 2003's SAT Math and Verbal scores have increased dramatically over the scores of previous classes of students:
The College Board, which owns the nation's most popular college entrance exam, said Tuesday that this year's high school graduates had an average cumulative score of 1,026 points on the SAT, up six points from 2002. Both the average math (519) and verbal (507) scores were up three points from last year.
That may not sound like much, but we're talking mean shifts here. Means don't shift that easily, especially not with sample sizes in the millions. What's more, minority test takers now make up 36% of the sample, as opposed to 30% 10 years ago, which contradicts the argument that the presence of minorities was guaranteed to explain the downward drift in mean scores.
This year's average math scores are the highest the College Board could document since 1967. Scores prior to 1995 were recalculated to reflect changes made that year so that the numbers would be comparable to more recent scores. The board was unable to provide comparable scores prior to 1967. The SAT was first given in 1926.
The College Board said the higher scores were due to increased enrollment in advanced math and science courses such as physics, precalculus, calculus and chemistry.
Right on. Of course, there's some blather about how this is the result of not teaching kids "pure calculation" methods, as though a focus on the basics of calculation was the reason for the Math SAT decline in the first place. The article also notes that young women's Math scores increased "notably" - but racial test score gaps still persist (as will, presumably, the claim that the test is culturally or racially biased).
Let's look at some numbers:
* The means have indeed climbed up - but they're just above where they were in 1972. Too many years of "progressive" and ineffective teaching techniques have taken their toll, but now that accountability is in the picture, we're seeing some positive results.
* Interestingly, almost half of the SAT-takers report having a B average, and 72% are in the bottom 90% of their class.
* The score gap is on page 6. Self-reported White students have the highest Verbal average, while Asians have the highest Math. In fact, the average for Asian females on Math is higher than for White males.
* Note that the "Other" and "No Response" categories aren't doing too shabbily. While the "Other" is only 4% of the sample, the "No Response" group contains over 355,000 kids, which would be almost a quarter of the sample. The "No Response" group has the second-highest overall Verbal mean and the third-highest Math mean. Evidence that kids who refuse to play the "group identity" game are smart? Or just sick and tired of being asked about race?
* More trivia - 2% of SATs are taken under special accommodations. 13% of SAT-takers come from families with incomes less than $20K/year, and 38% of them come from families where the parents did not attend (or complete) college.
* Oh, and there's always the fun part of comparing average combined scores for varying majors. Kids who want to go to college and major in biological sciences have an average of 1096; future philosophers or theologians, 1106; the little engineers that could, 1099. The bottom four averages? Technical and vocational, home economics, education, and agriculture.
* There's an equal or higher percentage of men than women in every score category from 550 on up.
* Size of senior class is almost perfectly correlated with SAT mean scores, except for that group who go to really tiny schools. Students who come from schools where the senior class was composed of a mind-boggling 1000 students or more had the highest mean scores; students from schools where classes were 100-249, the lowest. And check out those mean scores for Independent and Religiously Affiliated schools, vs the public schools.
LodiNews reporter Alejandro Lazo is fretting about the fact that high schoolers in Lodi (CA) will have to pass an exit exam that contains - horrors! - items about algebra in order to graduate:
If a dirt-poor journalist has only $4.10 in nickels, dimes and quarters, and he has four fewer dimes than nickels, and twice as many quarters as dimes, how many of each type of coin does this reporter have?
If you can't answer that question and you're a high school senior at the Lodi Unified School District, you're in trouble.
This new district policy ups the ante of a state law taking effect this school year requiring students to take algebra, but not necessarily pass it. The new policy has some teachers and students in Lodi Unified worried that some seniors might not walk across the graduation stage.
Any senior who can't solve the above problem may not be able to find the stage. That counts as an algebra problem that high school seniors are supposed to be worried about? Come on. If those teachers were really worried about their students, they'd have managed to teach them the math skills necessary for the above problem at some point during their four-year tenure.
The new policy comes at a time when algebra skills are considered more and more an entry-level job skill, said John Coakley, coordinator of math at Lodi Unified...Except for the service industry, most jobs will require "at a minimum, some higher computation skills," he said.
The University of California also requires Algebra I, as will the statewide exit exam due to be implemented in 2006. Cal's DOE states that students should have been exposed to algebraic concepts by eighth grade.
Oh, but teachers are skeptical about this whole "algebra" thing:
Some math teachers and students at Lodi Unified don't think the new policy will be successful. "None of us object to the idea," said Doug Smith, head of the math department at Lodi High School. "The problem is that the students coming in are not adequately prepared to do the job."
What? You have four years to teach them basic algebra, and you're the head of the math department. So what if they didn't have pre-algebra in middle school? You can't pass the buck here, Doug. That dog won't hunt. There's no excuse for letting kids out of high school who don't understand how to use variables and algebraic equations - unless, of course, a future in the "service economy" is all you foresee for them.
For 687 students entering Algebra A, only 33 percent of students had a mastery of simple equations. "The 'mastery' level means the minimum amount of skill necessary to have success in the course," Smith said, pointing at one column of numbers.
Sounds like it's time to change the course - add remedial after-hours instruction, slow down the first six weeks, anything. Passing the buck back to the eighth-grade teachers won't do anything to fix this. At some point, some teacher has to say, THIS is where my students will begin to learn algebra.
He is particularly concerned about his special-education students."They can't graduate," he said. "One of my students is at the second-grade level, and he's in algebra because he's a 12th-grader."
Now, that's a different issue. The question then becomes - why has this kid been mainstreamed, and why should he be issued a high school diploma? He's not going to be able to hold a job; why continue with the fiction that he should be enrolled in a mainstream high school?
Tim Stutz, a science and math teacher at Liberty High School, is also worried about what the new requirements might mean for his students. "It's better to let them earn their high school diploma" without the algebra requirement, he said. "Sticking this extra requirement on them is just going to show them they failed at something again."
AARGH. What do you think is going to happen to these kids when they try to go to college or hold a job with this diploma?! You don't think they're going to be told that they're failures then? When they get rejected from UCal, or flunk out, or can't hold down a basic office job, do you really think they'll look back and say, "Well, even if Mr. Stutz couldn't teach us algebra, he sure was compassionate"?
No. They're going to be compared to other graduates, and they're going to realize that their diploma is worth nothing.
One estimate says that only 33% of California's students "graduate with a successful completion of algebra," and I can only conclude that Mr. Stutz is not interested in getting his students out of the bottom two-thirds of California's graduates.
Our latest littlest litigant won't be attending UNC-CH this fall, not after a judge denied an injunction that would have forced the university to admit him:
A high-school senior who scored a perfect 1,600 on his SAT won't start his freshman year next week at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after a judge denied an injunction that would have forced the school to admit him.
Mark Edmonson was admitted to UNC-Chapel Hill in April, but he lost his spot in the freshman class in July after finishing the school year with a failing grade in one class and earning several C's and at least one D in other courses.
Edmonson, 19, of Greensboro, sued the university last week in Orange County Superior Court for a spot in the freshman class, claiming breach of contract.
What Mark wanted was a temporary injunction so that he could be a proud Tar Heel while his lawsuit against UNC was proceeded. No go, said the judge. This article provides us with more insight as to Mark's senior year woes:
After the first meeting, Mark Edmonson sent an e-mail to Herb Davis, associate director of undergraduate admissions, that described his senior grades as "abysmal."
He said he performed poorly because he had become "disillusioned with the high-school experience."
Edmonson's mother said her son struggled with calculus and had a difficult time adjusting to a change in medications.
Her son did better by the end of his senior year, she said.
Uh-huh. "Disillusioned," you say? Why? Why would a perfect 1600-SATer, early-admitted to the college of his choice, get depressed during senior year? Coasting, I can understand, but "disillusioned" is for the kid who worked hard, yet didn't get what he wanted. That doesn't apply in this case. Mark should have been psyched to get the senior year work done and get the hell out of high school. Instead, it sounds like he barely went to class.
Hope Mark saved the receipts for all those Carolina-blue sweatshirts. His mom can return them all and get her money back, while he "ponders" his future:
...Edmonson, a National Merit finalist who recently incorporated his own Internet computer services firm, has no college plans this fall, his mother Barbara said Friday.
"He can work part-time on his business, he can get a part-time job doing something else, but he will not be starting college as we thought he would," Barbara Edmonson said. "There's no place to go."
Um, other colleges? Surely, there's someplace; even a community college would be better than just sitting around, and he can bring up his GPA.
Edmonson's mother worries the media attention has hurt her son's chances of finding another college choice.
"He's been, honestly, just crucified. The general feeling is just so negative that I'm not sure what he can do or where he can go," she said. "I can't imagine any admissions person in the area, at N.C. State or Duke or anywhere, even looking at him."
Suing a university for refusing to admit you after your grades tank, when you've earned the top score on the SAT, tends to draw media attention, Mom, and that's not what the problem is here, anyway. The other schools aren't going to look at Mark until he (a) buckles down in a less-prestigious educational environment (I'd give up on NC State or Duke, at least for a while) and shakes this "disillusionment," and (b) drops his lawsuit against UNC.
Why would a university want to admit a student who is going to massively underperform AND get litigious on them?
Devoted Reader and homeschooling pundit Daryl sends along more lawsuit news, this time about the angry "bilingual" teachers in Massachusetts who can't speak English very well, and don't see why they should have to:
Fifteen Lawrence bilingual teachers who have been on unpaid leave since failing the state's new English fluency test asked a Superior Court judge yesterday to order the district to reinstate them on grounds that the test is flawed. The teachers' lawyer, Jennifer Rieker, filed a request for an injunction in Essex Superior Court to stop the school district from firing them. She said the test, an oral interview, is too broad to measure any correlation between ability to speak English and teaching effectiveness...
Oh, yeah, I'd expect an oral interview to be completely unrelated to one's ability to speak English, given that it's a real-life test of English oral skills. I'd also expect that to be completely unrelated to one's ability to teach kids English effectively as well. Um-hmm.
If the test had been multiple-choice, the flunking teachers would be complaining that the test was too artificial and not enough likereal-life, I bet.
I don't blame them for being pissed off at Superintendent Laboy, who's named in the lawsuit, since he couldn't pass the test himself, and no one seems to be holding him accountable for it. But they're wrong to be attacking the test itself.
Rieker acknowledged that the petition faces an uphill battle in court. Four Lowell teachers who lost a similar bid two weeks ago. But she said the Lawrence case is different because it will focus on the validity of the fluency test. She said she has retained James Lantolf, a professor of applied linguistics at Penn State University, to give evidence about the test in court.
Noting that the test was originally used to gauge the English-speaking ability of the country's diplomatic corps, Lantolf said the state must do more research to prove that it is the best way to measure the skills of classroom teachers.
Lantolf is all but admitting that we can't expect teachers who are responsible for teaching kids how to speak English to be able to speak English at an advanced level. Hey, all that's necessary is for the teachers to be at least one step ahead of the kids, right? No need for them to be able to speak English like a professional, or educated, adult.
Shameful.
From Nick of Twilight of the Idols comes the depressing story of one year in the school labeled one of the worst in Florida, Shaw Elementary. Nick has commentary on Part I and Part II on his blog, so go check out what he said. I'll just hit a few highlights - or perhaps "lowlights" is the better word:
... Shaw has the worst test scores in the county. The state gave [the] school an F. Vice president of her class at Jefferson High, National Honor Society, finished college in three years. Now, at 54, [Shaw Principal] Mrs. Pedrero gets her first F.
The principals of Hillsborough's four F schools - the county's first - are summoned to their equivalent of the principal's office: a meeting with superintendent Earl Lennard. At a career low point they get to face the cameras.
Lennard tells the assembled reporters: The state changed its grading formula again. Under last year's formula, Lockhart, Oak Park, Robles and Shaw elementaries all would have made passing grades. Lockhart missed passing by only two points.
Nevertheless, they're still very close to failing altogether. What determined the F that Shaw received?
Their collective FCAT performance was dismal: seven out of 10 not on level in reading and math; nearly half not on level in writing.
Regardless of how the state ranked Shaw, it's obvious they aren't teaching the younger kids how to read and write, and it's sad to think that this school could have passed on last year's grading scheme, or even come close to passing on any grading scheme. Given this, I'd say the negative attention given to Shaw is warranted.
One fifth-grader's story is singled out; she's "embarassed" by her school's performance. I'd say she should be more angry at the fact that her parents may have to sacrifice those hair-salon bills for tutoring lessons and some Hooked On Phonics materials.
Another Shaw teacher is livid that the "A" schools claim "hard work" as the secret to their success. This teacher insists that the kids at Shaw work hard, too. Even if they do, they obviously aren't working productively. And if the socio-economic status of the kids explains everything, why does this article feature a fifth-grader who wears designer clothing?
Most F schools may be poor, but not all poor schools are F schools. It takes more than poor kids to create a poor school.
Deputy superintendent Jim Hamilton asks what the schools need to turn F's into A's. We're shooting for the moon here, he says. Don't worry about cost.
They shoot. They want: More computers.
I'll just insert Nick's rant here: "70% of the kids at this school can't read at grade level, and they want computers?! How are the students going to use these computers if they can't even read? Computers don't teach children; teachers teach children."
Ms. Gettel herds her 20 third-, fourth- and fifth-graders in a wobbly line along the sidewalk. They're headed to a class of first- and second-graders, each carrying a book to read to the younger kids. They call it Buddy Reading.
So, we have kids who may not read well teaching the younger kids. Having a reading buddy isn't a bad idea, but the buddy isn't supposed to be the one teaching reading skills. It should surprise no one that the teacher who supervises "buddy" reading "detests" school grading, ostensibly because it hides "how far behind" the students are before they start school. No, what it does is highlight that a school isn't doing anything to bring disadvantaged children up to speed. So what if some of Ms. Gettel's kids - who are third-, fourth- and fifth-graders, remember - can't sound out three-syllable words? It must be their home life, and only their home life, to blame.
The kids in Ms. Gettel's and other classes have taken practice writing tests twice a month since September. Now the tests come every week and add reading...On today's practice test, some kids get the narrative prompt:...Others get the expository...
The practice tests are a royal pain, but they help, that much is clear. On a 1 to 6 scale, two fourth-graders improved from 2s to 4s and two improved from 1s to 3s. Are they better writers? Or better test-takers? That's for the rest of the world to decide.
Um, no. The tests measure how well they can write. They are practicing writing. They are learning how to write, and then they are taking practice exams on which they are performing better. These are not multiple-choice items, but holistically-graded essays that are now better-structured and more likely to be completed within the time limit, which means that the practice of writing is becoming easier. These students are now better writers than before; otherwise, their test scores would still be miserable.
I'm all for journalistic neutrality, people, but this unwillingness to draw a conclusion about the effect that practicing writing has on one's ability to write, and how that also relates to test scores, is ridiculous.
Today on the sidewalk outside the math lab, a handful of the school's "gifted and talented" students are Egyptians assembling the eighth wonder of the world. An architect - a real one - guides their every move. Ms. Angelo recruited him to design the Styrofoam pyramids, complete with blueprints.
Ms. Angelo certainly has good intentions, but despite taking abuse from her small charges, I hear nothing in her statements about rules, about discipline, about high expectations, or about the punishment/negative reinforcement that must accompany bad behavior. When a student comes from a lousy home situation, it doesn't help for the school to feel sorry for that student, rather than setting strict limits. Ms. Angelo needs to do more than "look beyond" their behavior.
There's an extensive pep rally the day before the FCAT. The kids need to be pumped up, not least (I think) because their teachers seem convinced that the FCAT is culturally-biased, and that these kids are ultimately products of their home lives, and not the school. That's how the teachers come across in this article, anyway.
And what happened on the FCAT? Well, the school did indeed improve, although it's still below the state average (and earned a D this time around). Despite the time spent on pep rallying and ego-massaging, I'd say the practice exams and focus on the basic skills are what created the improvement. Nevertheless, the administrators at Shaw want to avoid a poor school grade by use of a portfolio, just like third-graders can bypass the Reading section of the FCAT with a portfolio.
The article spends a fair amount of time describing the outburst of one parent, who isn't buying the "buddy" system of education:
It's parent-teacher conference night and one parent, Rachel DeLeon, is ready to unload...The red flag went up during the first nine weeks when her fifth-grader, Josh, and her third-grader, Carmen, started bringing home the same work. What was that? She learned they were in the same reading class. Multiage classrooms were one of Mrs. Pedrero's reforms.
When progress reports went home, it looked as though Josh and Carmen were flunking. A note said the teachers would meet with her at parent-teacher conferences ... in a month. A month?
Mrs. DeLeon penned a note on each report and sent them back via her children: "Please call me ASAP. Thank you." Nobody called.
Mrs. DeLeon's outburst was fairly obnoxious, but one can understand her disappointment. She might buy the argument that it's fine for a third-grader to be exposed to fifth-grade work, but I would ask:
(1) If the third-grader can't do her own work well, how will exposure to fifth-grade-level material help that?
(2) How is exposing a fifth-grader boy to his sister's third-grade work supposed to help him?
(3) What's the point of multiage classrooms that involve cooperative work?
And there's more, but I'll let Nick take over from here:
Today's update of the journal drives home the fact that even though 70% of the students aren't reading at grade level, Shaw Elementary has a TV studio so that kids can broadcast the morning announcements. I'm well aware of the fact that almost everyone likes to be on TV, but surely the money that went into this studio could have been better spent...
How, exactly, did the principal manage to report that 73 percent of the students were reading at grade level at mid-year when they obviously weren't? How were the students measured at mid-year? There was nearly a twenty percent difference between the school's numbers and the test's numbers; it seems fairly obvious that something was wrong with the way the school determined which students were reading at grade level...
It seems that Mrs. Pedroro - the principal of the school! - was unaware that the highest score in the math section is a 5; she was simply reading "Column 6" on the spreadsheet. Shouldn't the principal be aware of facts as basic as the grading scale on the FCAT?...Forgive my cynicism, but a principal who can't be bothered to know the grading scale on the high-stakes test that her students are legally required to take sure doesn't seem very responsible to me...
Nick is right to question the Reading vs. Writing scores. Shaw's scores on the Writing section (79% at high level) are far higher than on the Reading section (29% at high level), which doesn't seem possible. If the kids can't read, how can they write? This article mentions that writing scores have increased despite the fact that schools tend to spend more time focusing on math and reading. The passing score is a 3, and 88% of Florida's student made that scores last year. Thus, the writing section can't be too difficult.
This page describes the rubrics of or the holistic scoring of the essays. Here's what earns the middle score of "3":
The writing is generally focused on the topic but may include extraneous or loosely related material. An organizational pattern has been attempted, but the paper may lack a sense of completeness or wholeness. Some support is included, but development is erratic. Word choice is adequate but may be limited, predictable, or occasionally vague. There is little, if any, variation in sentence structure. Knowledge of the conventions of mechanics and usage is usually demonstrated, and commonly used words are usually spelled correctly.
According to the state, at this level a student is "meeting expectations" in writing. Is this what Shaw Elementary considered a high passing score? I bet so. Will a student who writes at this level have thorough comprehension of a reading passage that is at a higher level; i.e., the FCAT Reading passages? I think not.
The really sad part to all of this? According to this article, even some Florida schools who earned A's are shortchanging the majority of their students, because the grades are based on improvement, and not absolute standards of accomplishment:
If FCAT scores were based only on achievement and graded like classroom work - 90 to 100 percent for an A, 80 to 89 percent for a B and so on - there would be 77 A schools instead of 1,229.
- Of Florida's nearly 2,600 public schools, 888 relied more on improving test scores than on high test scores to get their grade.
Emphasis mine. Shaw may not be a good elementary school, but chances are that some of the elementary schools with higher grades aren't doing a better job of educating their students.
Out in Las Vegas, casino owners aren't messing around with trendy English instruction like bilingual education, and they aren't at the mercy of school boards who demand "politically-correct" methods. They just want to teach their immigrant workers English in the fastest way possible - immersion - and they've been quite successful at it:
While battles continue to rage in states like Oregon, Texas, Colorado, Illinois and New York, where some language education "experts" still cling to an outmoded construction known as bilingual education, Las Vegas hotel-casinos teach English the way new Americans have been learning it for generations: immersion, sink or swim.
Las Vegas has been quietly succeeding where public schools subscribing to the bilingual model have failed — and it has done so simply by not tampering with an individual's natural predisposition to grasp a new language faster when it is the only tool available...
Like the transitional bilingual ed programs at public schools, where kids are taught all subjects in their native tongue and ESL is just a one-hour period like any other, MGM/Mirage's Bellagio also offers ESL courses to employees. But here is the key to the casino's success, which somewhere along the line got lost on the politically correct forces behind the bilingual industry: The job skills themselves are taught in English — and not in Spanish, Chinese, Ethiopian, French, Russian and everything in between...
Granted, the standards for proficiency may not be quite the same between casino-run ESL programs and those at public schools, but at least the illiteracy rate among the willing isn't increasing at this non-educational facility the way it did for years among the Spanish-speaking bilingual ed school children of California, where teachers would heap praise on third-graders when they managed merely to recite the alphabet.
...A middle-aged Bellagio guest room attendant who wouldn't even pick up a ringing telephone for fear that the caller might speak English became confident enough to pick up the phone by the end of her four-month English course at the casino. Another employee, whose English skills needed some honing through the program for her job as a bus person, a few weeks ago interviewed to become assistant manager at the hotel's buffet restaurant.
Interesting.
Posting will be sporadic today; got meetings once again. Sorry for the delay!
You know, when I hear schools complain that, thanks to all the basic skills testing, curricula have been narrowed and elective classes abolished, I'm always a bit skeptical. Even more so when I hear about elective classes that do get kept on the roster, such as this course about why people hate America, that will feature readings from such reliable sources as Indymedia.org and Progressive.org. Explain to me again why this should be taught for credit in an American high school?
The course is offered to juniors and seniors in the Farmington School District and focuses on America's role in the Middle East (search). But it's not the topic that's angered some students' parents. It's the class readings, many of which come from left-wing Web sites like Alternet.org, Indymedia.org, Progressive.org and War-times.org, that vigorously attack the Bush administration...
"This belief that we have to show that every concept out of that society can be understood and excused is really a problem across the country," said Farmington father Don Cohen...
Farmington superintendent of schools, Robert Maxfield, defended the course, saying high school juniors and seniors should be critical thinkers and should be exposed to many points of view.
"You can never teach kids the facts about everything," Maxfield said. [Emphasis mine] "What you can teach kids is how to recognize points of view, how to understand sources of conflict, how to understand that there are forces that have driven world affairs for hundreds of years"...
"They need to understand that people hate Americans," Maxfield said. "They need to understand that sometimes there are reasons for that."
Oh. Yeah. Right. Can't be bothered to teach facts in a high school classroom; it's much easier for the teacher to dig up websites that offer points of view, often with no facts to support them. Does this mean that if a paper is required in this course, any web site is a legitimate source for quotes, and that students needn't worry about supporting any claims with facts? After all, that's the method of "research" they're learning from a teacher who uses this approach.
Little Green Footballs, who has more on the story here, has been relentless in exposing the insanity (and censorship) of Indymedia; his most recent posting on the topic, which notes that Indymedia allows The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to be displayed, yet deletes all critical posts, is revealing. Oh, and here's how the Indymedia denizens celebrated the Fourth of July.
Google also decided a while back that Indymedia was too biased a site to be used as a source for their news engine. Might have something to do with the site's celebration of a videogame that allows the players to kill Jews.
Most of the parents quoted in this article would be dismayed to learn that their high-school-aged kids were reading this crap at home. I can just imagine how they feel to know their kids have to read it for class. And the superintendent's claim that kids can't be taught all the facts will be very applicable here, because if all they're viewing is these kinds of sites, they won't be exposed to any.
I'll be in meetings today and won't get the chance to post. Thanks to everyone who sent links over the weekend - I'll get to 'em as soon as I can!
Time for my weekly ritual of pulling my head out of Google's search engine, putting the test scores aside, and posting on some of my favorite (non-testing-related) things:
1. The Gothic Miss Manners. She's a scream. I think the site has been discontinued, because there's no entry past December 2002, but I love her anyway. Anyone who's my age who describes her look as "the Gothic Mary Poppins," who gently refers to young goths trying out their looks as "baby bats," and who reminds us all that, "Friends Don't Let Friends Dress Like The Crow" is my kind of woman. My nightclubbing look tends to be gothic Grace Kelly, so I understand her desire to come up with a unique look that is in-your-face, yet polite.
2. VH1's "I Love the 70's". My boyfriend and I have watched every ep this week, and we're just screaming at all the cheesy muttonchops and the seriously ugly people they used in commercials back then - and the products. The really stupid products that became fads and helped their "inventors" make millions back then. Days of the Week panties? Oh, I had those.
One ep featured the movie, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." Willy-freaking-Wonka. Yet another link in the "HR Pufenstuf-Electric Company-Land Of The Lost" chain of evidence that everyone was on drugs in the 70's, even those responsible for children's entertainment. I've never seen the ending, because when I saw this movie as a child, I went into hysterics at the sight of the little girl blowing up like a giant blueberry and couldn't watch any more of it. Gave me nightmares for weeks.
3. The new Soho line of handbags from Coach. I treat myself to a nice new bag each season, and I've already found my fall bag this year. In purple, oh yes.
4. Petfinder.Org. This is how you find out what animal shelters are near you, what their needs and contact information are, and what animals they have available. I work for P.A.L.S. on Thursday evenings, and if you're anywhere near Philly, I can personally recommend a cat or two who needs a good home. Want someone lively who gives licks (and love bites)? Snickers is your girl. Are you willing to take care of an FIV+ cat? You can't do better than this cutie.
Oh, and I named this guy. He came in as a stray off the mean streets of West Philly with a huge wound (on the side you can't see), from some machinery or something. It was amazing he was still alive, given that we could practically see through to his insides. He seemed very tough; hence, "Rocky". We thought he'd be shy, feral, and scarred; instead, he's healed perfectly and is the sweetest loverboy of a cat.
At Willowbrook Elementary School (IA), kids have been instructed to eat lunch in silence, and Joanne Jacobs is not too happy about that:
Lunch period at Willowbrook Elementary School in Altoona was quiet enough Wednesday to hear the crunching of potato chips and the slurping of juice through tiny straws. In the background, classical music played.
The Southeast Polk school district is trying something new this year: silent lunch.
Principal Robin Norris said she and her faculty decided they needed to do something to curb the noise level and to encourage children to eat their entire lunch.
Three days into the school year, Norris said it's working - children are eating more and the staff is not dealing with discipline problems such as students calling names or talking inappropriately.
But parents and at least one education expert said the solution to rowdy lunch hour is extreme.
Joanne agrees: Parents protested, Drudge spread the word and the silent lunch policy was rescinded. These are small children, not Trappist monks.
I agree that this all-or-nothing policy is a bad idea. Kids often can't talk during class, at least not out of turn (in classes where teachers enforce classic discipline), and with many schools abolishing recess, lunch is the only time kids have to socialize.
So the trick is to let them socialize, but also teach them what a proper public noise level is without singling out anyone in particular for punishment. The "silent" method isn't going to do this, because kids are going to notice that people do talk in restaurants and diners, so they need to learn how to do that.
My nephew's elementary school came up with a novel way to do this. They bought a real traffic light (these look tiny hanging in the air, but are huge when you see them up close), installed it in the lunchroom to be within the view of every kid, and put someone in charge of it during lunchtime every day.
When it's green, all's okay. A yellow light is a warning to the kids that the noise level is getting too high. Red means everybody shut up for a moment and take a breather.
This method teaches kids that there IS such a thing as a non-silent proper noise level, and it teaches them the concept of go, slow down, and stop with traffic lights. What's more, it's not teachers singling out certain kids for too much noise, but a warning to all. I thought it was a cool concept, and the kids did too.
Looks like the contractor hired by the state of Nevada to score standardized tests isn't too reliable:
For the second consecutive year, the private contractor hired by the state to calculate the scores on Nevada students' standardized tests didn't make the grade.
In 2002, miscalculations by Harcourt Educational Measurement led 736 Nevada students -- 550 of them from Clark County -- who had actually passed the mandated high school proficiency exam to believe they had failed the test...
This time around, Harcourt overstated the scores of thousands of third- and fifth-graders statewide on the skills test required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. As a consequence, as many as 21,000 youngsters may receive scores that were calculated and reported inaccurately...
"I am very upset and very disappointed," state Board of Education member John Hawk said. Mr. Hawk suggested Harcourt would face additional fines ... or, perhaps, the company's $13.2 million contracts to score elementary and high school tests might finally be terminated.
Harcourt isn't some fly-by-night company experiencing startup problems. They're one of the largest for-profit testing companies in the nation. But this isn't the first state in which they've had problems. This NYT article from 2001 describes Californian fiascos that stretch back to 1998:
Case in point: California. On Oct. 9, 1997, Gov. Pete Wilson signed into law a bill that gave state education officials five weeks to choose and adopt a statewide achievement test, called the Standardized Testing and Reporting program. The law's "unrealistic" deadlines, state auditors said later, contributed to the numerous quality control problems that plagued the test contractor, Harcourt Educational Measurement, for the next two years...
Some test materials were delivered so late that students could not take the tests on schedule. It got worse. Pages in test booklets were duplicated, missing or out of order. One district's test booklets, more than two tons of paper, were dumped on the sidewalk outside the district offices at 5 p.m. on a Friday — in the rain. Test administrators were not adequately trained...
In 1998, nearly 700 of the state's 8,500 schools got inaccurate test results, and more than 750,000 students were not included in the statewide analysis of the test results. Then, in 1999, Harcourt made a mistake entering demographic data into its computer. The resulting scores made it appear that students with a limited command of English were performing better in English than they actually were, a politically charged statistic in a state that had voted a year earlier to eliminate bilingual education in favor of a one-year intensive class in English...
If Harcourt is one of the largest companies, testing the most students, then by the law of averages, it wouldn't be surprising for them to have a lot of errors. The issue is that, given two straight years' worth of problems in Nevada, it doesn't seem like Harcourt has learned from its earlier mistakes, and it doesn't seem like they have a QC process in place to prevent more errors from happening.
Whatever else you might have to say about "military brats," you have to admit, they're doing great on standardized tests:
Students of the military’s educational system continue to outpace the U.S. national average on a standardized test that measures their basic skill levels in reading, math, science, social studies and languages. Defense department students, both overseas and in the States, scored better than their public school counterparts in all areas, at all grade levels, test results indicate... [Emphasis mine.]
“That means we have real good kids, real good teachers, and real good family support and that, in addition to some other things, is why we’ve been able to sustain scores above the national average,” said Janet Rope, the administrator for accountability, accreditation, research and evaluation at DODEA, headquartered in Arlington, Va.
Systemwide, 61,236 DODEA students in grades three through 11 took the nationally administered TerraNova exam, Rope said...
In 37 of the 45 subtests, the military students’ scores were 10 to 20 points above the national average, five subtest scores were 21 to 25 points higher, and the remaining three subtest scores were seven to nine points higher, results indicate. Over the past five years, defense schools have streamlined curriculums. Tests like the TerraNova let teachers fine-tune what they teach. Last year, schools focused on reading, while this year, math was the targeted subject.
[deputy director for DDDSE Candace] Ransing added military parents are one of the big reasons for children’s successes. “We only have the kids for six hours of the day,” she said. “I think one of the unique things we have is that since we’re in a military community, it’s a close community. … We see parents consistently who care about how their kids do, and are in the schools [themselves].”
Military families have higher standards for education, and they want these schools to be as focused and efficient as possible. I figure the same left-wing ed school types who hate testing also hate the military (often using militia terms to describe the "old-fashioned" educational techniques that they they dislike), so these results probably won't get much attention in the NEA world.
Finally, this site now has all the old N2P posts archived. Three caveats:
1. Blogger deleted some of my posts altogether while I was still using that software, ostensibly because they were too "large." So if you read something last year that you liked, it might be gone forever.
2. One of the reasons that I switched off Blogger was because the archiving never worked properly. Now, you won't be able to go to an old link of mine and then go to another older one from a link inside that post, because the archive link will not work. You'll need to do a search on the older link from the front page to find it.
3. Blogger's title labels had always worked weirdly for me, and they imported in a weird fashion even though I followed the directions for importing to Moveable Type. So. If you click on, for example, May 2002 in the right-hand menu, you will pull up every entry from May (which is good), but MT has "titled" each entry not with the original title I used (which is now in the body of the post) but with the title plus initial words from the posting. Sometimes this looks fine; sometimes it looks weird.
However, they're all there (at least, the ones that Blogger didn't torch are there), and if you want to see everything I've ever written on the SAT, you can enter that into the Search engine that's also on my right-hand menu, and you'll get stuff going back to February 2002, including one of my personal favorites, a fisking of a NYT article from April of last year. Sweet.
More updates to the story of Mark Edmonson have been added below. The Volokh Conspiracy has weighed in on the case, but Begging to Differ, well, begs to differ with Volokh's claim that Edmonson can hold UNC to their promise to admit him, while not holding himself to their demand that he continue to do well in school. Best line:
Edmonson's sin was not gaming the system, but being obnoxious about it.
We all know what happens to obnoxious kids who game the system and then sue when they lose, don't we?
And hello, Instapunditers! Keep those comments coming!
The Bridget Green story hasn't really stayed in the news like I thought it would. A valedictorian who flunks an exit exam should be a big wake-up call, and one that gets a lot of press nationwide. Instead, no newspapers other than Louisiana's Times-Picayune has covered it - although a lot of bloggers got into the act, including Joanne Jacobs, Bowl of Gumbo, and An Age Like This (who gets bonus points for doing some extra research on Louisiana's schools.)
I was hoping we'd see some more serious op-eds and calls for actions based on this. Instead, far as I can tell, all that appears to have happened is that my comments section on the original post was infested by trolls, and a bizarre letter to the editor was published on NOLA:
This young woman has suffered enough pain and humiliation from the system. Return to your year book! Not all who were voted most likely to succeed, succeeded. It is usually the B and C students who try the hardest and they're the ones who often make it big. Watch it! You may be looking at your future mayor.
To Bridget Green, keep trying. Someone once told me, persistence beats resistance anytime.
Joyce M.Y. Armstead
New Orleans
Whaaa?? Since when does the possible future success of B and C students justify the miserable current failure of the valedictorian? If the valedictorian did this poorly, what makes us think the B and C students can do anything at all? What's with the "future mayor" comment?
And why is Ms. Green supposed to just "keep trying" in a system that gave her an A for not learning Algebra II? She should persist in her education, I agree, but the real "resistance" here is obviously Fortier High. And if she attends college, she's going to have to overcome the "resistance" of having attended a high school that didn't manage to teach her two year's worth of material in the four years she was there.
Obviously, both this letter writer and Fortier High are much more concerned with Ms. Green's self-esteem than with her academic achievement, and believe that enthusiastic cliches and meaningless "A"s are the way to produce that.
(And speaking of self-esteem...)
Oakland teacher Shannon Williams was caught up a little "misunderstanding" with an Oakland undercover cop this summer:
What did you do during your summer vacation? Police in Oakland charge a teacher is turning tricks while school is out.
Shannon Williams is due in court today on a misdemeanor charge of soliciting prostitution. She was arrested last week after allegedly agreeing to have sex with an undercover officer for $250.
Berkeley school officials confirm Williams is a teacher in the district.
According to police, Williams told them she only works as a hooker during the summer, to earn some extra money.
But Williams says it's all a misunderstanding. She vows to fight the charges in court.
I wonder:
1. Does Ms. Williams understand the contradiction inherent in saying that this was a "misunderstanding," after admitting that prostitution is something she in fact does for extra money?
2. Will local teachers union leaders defend her? And will they use this as proof that Oakland's teacher deserve a pay raise?
3. Did Ms. Williams offer to grade the cop's performance for an extra 50 bucks?
Update: Devoted Reader Richard H. found more on this story!
OAKLAND -- A Berkeley school teacher who was charged Monday with selling sex out of an apartment near the Oakland Rose Garden was supplementing her income, police said. Police said Shannon Marie Williams, 37, was arrested last Wednesday after agreeing to a $250 sex-act filled session with an undercover officer and guaranteeing his "happiness."
Williams, who rented the apartment near the Rose Garden but lives elsewhere, works for the Berkeley Unified School District as a teacher in the district's independent studies program, a school spokesperson confirmed Monday.
Does she guarantee "education" to her kids as well? "Self-esteem"? Don't know 'bout you, but I'd be real icked out if my kid ever did an "independent study" with this woman.
For the record, she still says it's a "misunderstanding" and plans to fight the charge. The details:
[Arresting Officer Mark] Turpin said police were first alerted Aug. 12 by a caller who said two women were possibly working as prostitutes in an apartment in the 600 block of Mariposa Avenue near the Rose Garden. The caller said the women only worked during the day and had a constant stream of men in and out of the apartment.
Turpin said he made contact with awoman at the apartment who later turned out to be Williams. The woman told him she was booked and to call back Wednesday, he said. He called Wednesday morning. He said they arranged to meet that afternoon and set a price of $250 for the hour-long session. She told him that was her basic price for all clients, he said.
When Turpin asked the woman if the encounter would be worth it, she said, "you will be happy," according to police.
Hmmm. She's either a prostitute, or that ed-school training on how to raise self-esteem in students has really gotten out of hand. With no kids around, she's gotta go raise the "self-esteem" of lots of men with money to spend.
At the sparsely furnished apartment, which police said Williams had rented since May 2002 for $1,025 a month, Turpin said he confirmed the price and what sex acts she would perform. He said he then gave her the money -- marked bills -- and signalled for backup officers.
A "misunderstanding". Mmm-hmm. Sure. These kinds of situations happen to women all the time! It's even happened to me, once or twice. Just can't avoid 'em.
Copland said the salary range for teachers in the district is $40,000 to $70,000 yearly. Top pay goes to teachers with extensive teaching experience and advanced degrees, he said.
Does it specify what "skills" they can teach, or where they get their "experience"?
Ok, ok, I'll stop. The woman obviously has enough problems without me making fun of her. She doesn't plan to teach this coming year; a shame, because I was looking forward to seeing if the NEA was going to help her fight for her day job.
But c'mon. A woman who's making at least $40K as a "independent studies" teacher who gets nabbed for offering to sell an undercover cop some "happiness" - who needs fiction when you've got people like this?
The Cranky Professor looks down his nose at a group of flummoxed British universities who have slammed the gates on a 13-year-old genius. Why? Because the teachers there are qualified to teach young adults, not children:
Adam Spencer already has a B-grade in maths and this summer sat a further three A-level exams. Although the child genius is expecting top grades in French, biology and chemistry on Thursday, he cannot secure a place at university because of his age.
...universities say legislation prevents him from studying. If Adam were to attend university, all of his lecturers would have to be screened to allow them to teach children.
At the moment lecturers do not have to undergo this process as they teach students aged 18 and over...
Mmm. What's this screening process, then, that is mandatory for kids but not necessary for young adults? Criminal background? Pedophilic behavior? General neuroticism? I suppose this is supposed to make us feel better about the children's teachers, but it makes me feel worse about the university teachers...
Joanne Jacob uncovered a study about the 1.2 million students who took the ACT this year. The average score was 20.8 (scale of 1 to 36) - but ACT claims that more than half the test takers may not be ready for college-level math or science courses:
This year, the ACT examined test scores to evaluate the skills that students possess for first-year math, science and English courses in college.
Researchers concluded that just 26 percent of test-takers were ready to handle the course work in science and 40 percent in math. In English, 67 percent of students were prepared.
"We've heard a lot of talk recently about the inadequacy of students' writing skills," Ferguson said. "However, it appears that the more critical problems are in science and math."...
The ACT's average composite score for whites was unchanged this year at 21.7, but it improved for all racial and ethnic minorities for the first time since 1997. Broken down by the ACT's race and ethnicity categories, Asian Americans scored 21.8, up from 21.6 last year; Hispanics, 19, up from 18.8; American Indians, 18.7, up from 18.6; Mexican Americans, 18.3, up from 18.2; African Americans, 16.9, up from 16.8.
Ferguson said black students were less likely than others to take tough, college-prep courses and "often don't receive the information and guidance they need to properly plan for college."
Another piece of evidence that kids who make it as far as senior year aren't necessarily given the skills to make it through college, even if they take the ACT in anticipation of attending college.
I have to quote one of Joanne's commenters in full:
I keep telling everybody this (but nobody listens to me)!!!!!!!!!! I teach math at a state university with about 18,000 students. This semester alone we are running twenty-six remedial math sections of forty students apiece. (For those who would probably be taking these classes, that's 1,040 students.) At any given time, 1 out of 18 of our students are *in* remedial math classes, not to mention how many of those not in the class have already completed their remedial math. The waiting list for these classes is lengthy, and they are constantly bombarded by students desperately trying to add the class so that they can finish their degrees in only five years. Unfortunately, we cannot open new sections. Even though we import most of our TA's who teach these courses, we STILL can't get enough funding or staff. The state doesn't fully fund these classes, on the grounds that this stuff is already being taught in high school. (!)
Scary.
The good news? Mark Edmonson, a Guilford County (NC) high school senior, made a perfect score of 1600 on his SATs. Fewer than 1% of students do so each year, so it's an impressive achievement.
The bad news? UNC-Chapel Hill, which is his intended destination, temporarily suspended his admission because his grades dropped precipitously during his senior year. That year, he had C's, D's, and F's on his report card, and his overall GPA dropped from 3.8 to 3.5. Despite allegations of a letter from UNC that listed graduation as the only condition necessary for Mark's acceptance, it seems the university has changed its mind about his academic preparedness.
The worst news? He's suing.
A Guilford County high school graduate who recorded a perfect SAT score is suing UNC Chapel Hill, alleging the school refused to admit him after his grade point average dropped. Mark Edmonson, a National Merit Scholarship finalist, scored a perfect 1,600 on his SAT last year, but his grade point average fell from 3.8 to 3.5 in his senior year at Northwest Guilford High School. He wants a judge to force UNC to admit him as a freshman this year.Edmonson said in an affidavit filed in Orange County that university officials backed out of an April letter promising that as long as Edmonson graduated from Northwest, he would be admitted.
But a follow-up letter from UNC said Edmonson's admission had been temporarily suspended because his grades dropped during his senior year. Thomas Ziko, a special deputy attorney general, said Edmonson's SAT scores are only part of what UNC takes into account in deciding who should be admitted. Other factors, Ziko said, include declining grades. "His senior year grades are C's, D's and F's," Ziko said.
Begging to Differ is there with the smackdown on this senioritis sufferer:
Sigh. Though I feel a twinge of pity for the kid, if I met him I would have no choice but to do my best Sam Kinison impression and scream, "You dumbass! You blew off senior year! You have no one to blame but yourself! Since you aced the SAT, you must know the meaning of HUBRIS!!"
Ahem...
If you believe this article, Edmonson is probably screwed. According to a representative of the Center for Individual Rights, "The Supreme Court has recognized the principal of academic freedom, and one element of that is deciding who gets into the university."
Tough luck, bro, but this could be the best thing that ever happens to you. You're unlikely ever again to pull such a bonehead move as long as you live, and anyway, there's always N.C. State.
Yeah, I'd say Mark's Standard English vocabulary is pretty well developed, but I have the feeling his legal vocabulary is getting ready to expand as well. Did UNC indeed send him a letter stating that the only obstacle standing in the way of admission was graduation? Was there any mention in that letter of his GPA or his senior year grades? If Mark had no idea that those grades would count, well, I don't agree with slackerdom, but who's to say Mark didn't blow off class to work at the Gap to raise money for school?
What isn't mentioned in this article is that, at least in the 1990's, UNC would offer the chance to apply only to students in the certain top n% of their class, at least for certain high-performing public high schools (such as Chapel Hill High). While a 3.5 GPA isn't sucky, it also isn't valedictorian level, and dropping from 3.8 to 3.5 might have seriously affected Mark's class rank. Is this rule still in force, and is it what's driving UNC's decision?
I believe that UNC should have the right to admit whomever they decide is academically prepared, but I think the issue in this lawsuit is going to be whether Mark was misled to believe that his late senior-year grades, or his total GPA, didn't count once he was tentatively accepted. UNC can make the rules, but they can't conceal the rules from applicants, nor can they change them mid-stream.
Of course, as a UNC alumna, I can understand why Mark would want to be a Tarheel rather than part of the Wolfpack, but that's a whole 'nother story.
Update: Ooo! Ooo! Begging to Differ's been doing some research, and this Durham Herald-Sun article has more, much more:
By all accounts, Edmonson was a good prospect for college. A National Merit finalist who recently incorporated his own Internet computer company, the Northwest High School graduate received the highest possible score on the SAT...In an April letter offering Edmonson admission, a UNC official wrote that competition was "keen" and that the scholar was chosen from a "remarkable group of students." But the same letter warned Edmonson not to slack off at all during his senior year[Emphasis mine].
"Because we want you to finish strongly and come to Carolina ready to excel, your enrollment will depend upon your successful completion of your current academic year," wrote Jerry Lucido, UNC's director of undergraduate admissions. "We expect you to continue to achieve at the same level that enabled us to provide this offer of admission; we also expect you to graduate on time." [Again, emphasis mine]
So what's going on? Why did he slack off after being warned? Well, Mark and his family claim that UNC rescinded their offer after a disastrous meeting in July, at which Mark was (allegedly) not given the opportunity to explain his failing grades or his health problems, which related to medication taken for attention-deficit disorder. The family's lawyer claims that Mark's perfect score was "held against him," as though the school wanted to take him down a notch or two.
Let's see: Brilliant student, disability, request for special treatment, complaints of school discrimination, wildly-varying accounts of private meetings, lawsuit, family attorney mouthing off, student unavailable for comment. The parallels are striking, folks.
At UNC, officials are also being tight-lipped, citing pending litigation. Speaking generally, Lucido, the admissions official, said his office, on a regular, if not frequent basis, recalls applicants to review their cases if their grades have dropped during their senior year.
"This sort of thing is a standard and accepted practice among selective colleges and universities," Lucido said Tuesday. "We always tell students that their enrollment will be contingent on their achieving, in their senior year, on the same level that enabled us to admit them."
So, will the lawsuit continue? Do we have "Blair II: The Deep South Version" on our hands? Remains to be seen, folks; remains to be seen.
Update: Commenter Frank Admissions found another news article on this, which makes me wonder about the claim that mistreated ADD was the cause of the bad grades:
...a lawyer from the state attorney general's office argued that forcing the university to admit a student would pose a threat to academic freedom. Thomas Ziko, a special deputy attorney general, said Edmonson's SAT scores are only part of what UNC-CH takes into account in deciding who should be admitted. Other factors, Zwiko said, include declining grades.
"His senior year grades are Cs, Ds and Fs," Ziko said. If his grade point average was based solely on his senior year, Edmonson would have had a grade point average of 1.3, Ziko said.
When asked to explain the drop in grades, Edmonson wrote a letter to UNC-CH admitting his grades were "abysmal" and fell short of what UNC-CH wanted, Ziko said...
Edmonson failed a computer science class and received a D in an American government class. But at Monday's hearing, Edmonson's attorney Marshall Hurley said his client went on to pass advanced placement, or college level, tests in those courses...
Edmonson said his grades suffered during his senior year in part because of an adjustment in medication he was taking for a mild form of attention deficit disorder.
He said he didn't mention that in the letter to UNC-CH explaining his decline in grades because Davis wanted assurances he was sorry it happened, not excuses.
Ok, let me get this straight. A kid smart enough to have a 1600 SAT and a 3.8 GPA gets admitted to UNC. His grades then plummet to a 1.3 GPA, but he passes AP exams in courses that he failed. He writes a letter to UNC omitting ADD as a reason for the decline, but then brings it up in the July appeals meeting. Something's not adding up.
I've tutored college students with ADD. When they're not on their medication, they don't read to the ends of sentences and items, so they miss stuff. They miss it in class, they miss it in textbooks, they miss it (especially) on exams. If Edmonson's ADD was not being correctly treated, to the point that he was bombing class tests despite effort, he would have bombed the AP exams as well.
Senioritis, though, would explain this. The kid is smart. He could have slacked off in class and crammed for the AP exams because he thought that his high school grades didn't count anymore, but he knew he'd get college credit for passing AP tests, so those did count. Tests that counted for college credit, he did well on; tests that were related to high school that he thought UNC wouldn't care about, he didn't.
He gets called on it and apologizes, but doesn't provide a reason. Then he realizes he better produce a reason, and that's when the claim of medications and ADD comes in.
I'm not saying that's what happened. I'm saying that's one explanation for the facts above.
Interesting commentary on The Heritage Foundation website about how things have gotten worse, not better, under federally-set standards and NCLB, and how perhaps locally-set standards would be an improvement. The premise is that schools are receiving the federal funds promised to them by President Bush, but in return are fudging the test results and fiddling with the standards:
Consider the case of Wilfredo Laboy, superintendent of the Lawrence, Mass. school district. For three straight years, Laboy has failed a basic literacy test that the state requires of all educators. He’s the only superintendent in Massachusetts who hasn’t passed, although a number of teachers statewide have also failed...Laboy...said that, as a non-English speaker, the test is especially difficult for him.
But high-school students across the state, even non-English speakers, are now required to pass a standardized test before they can graduate. How can Laboy possibly demand that the students in his charge pass a required test while he consistently fails one? Interestingly, Laboy’s district had the state’s highest number of seniors fail the required Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test last year...
So the state ignores its own testing requirements, and Laboy remains on the job. But at least it hasn’t changed its requirements. That’s what Texas did.
Texas Board of Education members gathered last fall to learn the results of a new statewide achievement test, reported The New York Times. It wasn’t pretty. “Few students did well,” board member Chase Untermeyer said. “Many students got almost no answers right.” So board members opted to lower the standards...
Then there’s Michigan, where standards were once especially stringent. Until last year, a school was listed as “needing improvement” if less than 75 percent of its students passed a standardized English test. Under those standards, more than 1,500 schools were sub par in 2002. How did Michigan solve the problem? By changing its standards...
Education isn’t “one size fits all.” We must set demanding standards, but for those standards to be effective, they have to come from local school boards.
Hmm. I'm not sure if this conclusion follows logically from the facts. The author, Edwin Feulner, is saying that schools will do anything to get federal money except improve education. They'll fudge scores, they'll lower standards, but they won't actually use the money to make changes that will raise test scores.
I agree that demanding standards must be set, but I don't agree that moving the standard-setting back from the federal government to the local school boards will be better for students. The point of the federal control, and federal funding, was to prevent school boards from setting laughably-low standards, so low as to disguise the fact that they weren't educating their youngsters. Mr. Feulner points out that this isn't working in some places, but that doesn't prove that it's an overall failure, nor does this show that returning control to the local level would improve the educational quality in schools.
Five graduate school students have been accused of paying other people to take standardized tests for them in the hopes of getting higher scores, authorities said.
The students, who were arrested on charges of forgery and criminal impersonation, were admitted to schools including New York University's Stern School of Business and the MBA program at Baruch College.
Authorities said they responded to ads in a Chinese-language newspaper offering tutoring for the tests but then paid $2,500 each or more to have someone else take the TOEFL, GRE and GMAT exams in their places.
The adds were allegedly placed by Ping Shen, 47, of Queens, who was arrested last month, authorities said.
The Manhattan District Attorney's office said Shen gave stand-ins fake passports to pose as the stu