Number 2 Pencil

Friday favorites

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the relationship between a man's hand size and the size of some of his other bits, and whether Fox News used an outdated photo of NYC to illustrate a story about the recent blackout.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.

Missing meaps makes michigan mad

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.

Meet the New AA, same as the old AA

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.

The NAACP in Florida: Update

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.

Some good solid reading

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.

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.

When teenagers have too much time on their hands

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.

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.

When crime DOES pay

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.

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.

More ruckus in Florida

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.

Misunderstanding bias at the NYTimes

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.

Small power outage here...

...Human power, that is. Your regularly scheduled bloggage will return tomorrow.

Shades of Blair

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.

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.

Stress therapy for teenagers?

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.

"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.

Some positive testing news

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.

High anxiety in Lodi, California

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?

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.

Failing in his Tar Heel bid

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.

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."

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?

A new definition of "bilingual"

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.

The worst school in Florida

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.

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.

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...

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.

Motivated to learn English

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.

...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.

Light bloggage, again

Posting will be sporadic today; got meetings once again. Sorry for the delay!

Learning to hate America

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...

"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"...

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.

Light bloggage today

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!

Friday favorites roundup

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.

Talking with their mouths full

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.

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.

Harcourt's woes

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.

"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...

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.

Be All That you can be

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.

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.

Archives! (of a sort)

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.

Mr. Perfect SAT, continued

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 flunking valedictorian disappears from view

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.

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...)

While the kids are away, the teacher will play

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.

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.

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?

And a child shall have no one to lead him

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.

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...

Preparing for the test, but not for college

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.

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.

I'm so perfect, I don't need to study

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!!"

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.

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.

Where does the money go?

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.

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.

Caught!

Money, but no smarts:

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 Manhattan District Attorney's office said Shen gave stand-ins fake passports to pose as the students. Another man, Lu Xu, of Manhattan, is accused of taking 150 tests...

Lu is obviously a masochist. If he got a substantial cut of that $2500 to take each test, he's a rich masochist, but still a masochist.

Americans Oppose Vouchers, Would Like to Use Them

Devoted Reader Nick sends along a Yahoo!News link to the poll, which carries the ominous headline, "Most Americans Oppose Vouchers, Poll Says". As Nick said in his email:

It's quite humorous to me how a majority of the people polled oppose vouchers, yet a majority would use them if offered...Here's the actual poll data.

This is actually the same poll that I blogged a couple of days ago. I didn't catch the part about vouchers then, and Nick is right in saying that the headline doesn't quite agree with the real heart of the findings:

Even though a majority [62%] opposed school vouchers, poll respondents divided equally on whether a voucher program would improve student achievement in their community, with 48 percent saying it would and 48 percent saying it wouldn't.

Which means at least some of those who oppose school vouchers (i.e., allowing students to attend private schools on the public dime) still think that it would improve student performance. What's, more the percentage of respondents who believe that vouchers would improve public school performance has risen from 17% to 26% in seven years.

"The public doesn't seem to buy the argument ... that (vouchers) will create a competitive environment and that public schools will strive harder and raise student achievement because of vouchers," said Jack Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy in Washington.

Some 62 percent of respondents said that if they were given a full-tuition voucher they would send their child to a private or religious school. With a half-tuition voucher, that number dropped to 51 percent.

Oh. So "the public" doesn't believe in vouchers; they don't buy that arguments. But if vouchers existed, then a majority of respondents would use them to get their kids out of the public school system. Even with a half-tuition voucher, you still see a large percentage.

This is what the headline should have been:

At the same time, 73 percent of poll respondents believed the existing school system should be reformed — not replaced by an alternative system. The word "voucher" was not mentioned in this question.

Three-quarters of the respondents want change. But the educational establishment seems prepared to offer only change like teacher pay raises (but not based on merit) and refusal of vouchers (so that kids are stuck in failing schools).

Freaking out in Florida

The Smarter Cop lays some tough love on a group of FCAT-bashing Floridians who are so over the top with touchy-feely Concern For The Children that it almost seems like satire:

------------------------------
From the article: "Accountability can be accomplished without fear and intimidation," said Brenda Katz, one of the RATPACK organizers. "When I hear about gifted students getting sick and not being able to sleep the night before the test, something is wrong. And we need to do something about it."

The Smarter Cop: Excuse me, did you say fear and intimidation? Is your child ever going to encounter a challenge in his life? Maybe not while he's in your house, he's not, but once he gets out into that cruel world he's going to encounter tests more substantial and threatening than the FCAT. These students are being taught that challenges and tests are unfair; their fear of failing is coddled and has been imbedded so deeply into their persona that it affects them physically.

The article: "Our schools are getting funded by how well my child performs on a test," Janisch said. "In my book, that's prostituting my child. I can't stand by for that."

TSC: You're darn right, missy. The schools you want to educate your child should be competent and trained enough to teach your child what he/she needs to know to enter the real world. Those tedious, sometimes boring English, math, and science classes actually mean something outside of school. All the FCAT does is verify that your child has a grasp of what's supposed to be taught - the foundations of the grade level they're at...

The article: "We're pitting school against school and teacher against teacher," Corbett said. "What I saw tonight was what I needed to see."

TSC: There's absolutely nothing wrong with competition! It provides motivation, pride, and enthusiasm in the students and teachers - or at least it should, before a group of whiney parents decided it was 'unfair' to have to compete because you might... uh... lose. It's not a race, though; unlike a typical competition, there doesn't have to be a last place if everyone performs at an 'A' level...
------------------------------

You know, I was just reading today an old op-ed about George Orwell's magnificent essay, "Politics and the English Language." Mr. Goldberg writes:

Orwell's essay could have been written today, and if you haven't read it, you should. Indeed, some of his observations are flatly depressing because they reveal how bad things have been for so long. For example, Orwell writes: "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.'" Anybody who's listened to some college kid — or professor — denounce some new on-campus parking policy or a change in financial aid as "fascist," knows exactly what Orwell's talking about.

Yes, just as I know what he's talking about when mothers in Florida claim that "fear and intimidation" are involved in requiring kids to sit still for a while and answer multiple-choice items on a test, or that using the educational achievement of students to assess their schools is "prostitution."

And I feel sorry for this kid, although not for the reasons the mother would wish:

"My daughter is an honors student and has a 4.0 grade point average," Lilly said. "The night before the test, we had to take my younger son to the emergency room. We had to wake my daughter up in the middle of the night and take her to a friend's house.

"She missed passing the reading portion of the FCAT by two points because she was concerned about her brother. She was embarrassed and devastated, and now she suffers from test anxiety."

Well, Mom, that was the point at which you should have told her, "Hey, kid, these things happen. Sometimes life throws you a curveball. You were worried about your brother, and that's good. That was your priority, and it wasn't your fault that you had to miss some sleep. You'll get the test next time around."

However, if the mom was emphasizing the missing-by-two-points thing and carrying on about what a horrible burden this was to place on her child, well, that's not gonna help with test anxiety. The kid's an honors student and has a 4.0 average; have some faith in her abilities to overcome obstacles. She'll get the test next time around, but only if she's motivated, not scared out of her wits and convinced that she's being "prostituted."

I understand the concerns of these parents, but they're not helping anyone with these overprotective exaggerations; not their cause, and definitely not their kids.

Final exam - Visualize world peace

Remember my post about the squishy activism degree that the New College of California is advertising? Sadly, this subversion of education with political activism isn't an isolated incident:

Proponents of [peace] programs say they promote serious academic inquiry into conflict resolution. But critics call them little more than thinly-veiled vehicles designed to promote a specific political ideology...

"If anything, one is really led to question those core values through peace and global studies," Bucks said.

Oh, so the assumption with "peace" studies is that "core values" must be questioned, and presumably revised. Is this accompanied by the learning of any hard facts, or is the entire goal just to learn to think about global issues? And is it acceptable to come out of a "peace" program with the same "core values" that you started with?

...Matthew Spalding, director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation, said the peace studies programs are more ideological than educational.

"Peace studies has a narrow focus -- it has certain premises and it looks for certain outcomes," Spalding said. "One would seriously have to wonder whether these programs are really a form of advocacy that is masquerading in the guide of academic studies."...

Edwin M. Epstein, who happens to be chair of Berkeley's Peace and Conflict Studies Department, is quoted in his belief that the "peace" issue has become more "legitimate in the sense that people are now asking the question, 'What's going on in the world?'" I suppose he assumes that few Americans have ever considered this question before, which is a mighty patronizing attitude. He also fails to elaborate on why a more traditional course of study, such as political science, history, theology, or international government, would fail to help a student understand "what's going on in the world," whereas a degree in "peace" studies would succeed.

Social critic Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, a domestic and international policy think tank, said the programs are based on the flawed assumptions that conflicts conform to objective rules that can be analyzed and differences that can be talked out.

Epstein acknowledged that many peace studies programs have a liberal bent, but said that politicking was not the purpose of the courses. "It's not the function [of peace studies programs] to proselytize or advocate, but to examine and understand how people can resolve conflicts in society at all levels local and global," Epstein said.

Epstein's students have obviously skipped their psychology/sociology classes along with their history and political science classes if they think they can sit in class and figure out innovative ways to "resolve global conflicts" that manage to cancel out the human desire for control and violence. Rolling over and playing dead doesn't work too well with the human monsters that are now causing havoc in the world, and my guess is that sitting in a comfy classroom taking "peace studies" classes isn't going to be much help either.

I'd have respect for a "peace studies" class that pointed out, for example, that dropping nuclear bombs on Japan in 1945 ended not only a brutal war, but also a pattern of violence that had begun years earlier, and has led not to a further "cycle of violence" with that country, but to 60 years of peaceful relations. My hunch is that few "peace" professors are going to allow their students to think in this manner.

Mind-boggling scores in Philadelphia

Students in the Philadelphia area (which includes Philadelphia County and four surrounding counties) have made some impressive improvements in reading and math this year:

Scores of schools across the five-county Philadelphia area made significant strides in the number of students who are proficient in math and reading, an Inquirer analysis shows.

And schools lagging in performance last year posted some of the best gains. In fifth-grade math, for example, 117 of 479 schools in the region that gave the tests improved proficiency scores by 10 percentage points or more. In reading, 94 schools improved proficiency by 10 points or more.

Some improvements are so good they're hard to believe:

The Showalter Junior Academy, a middle school run by Edison Schools Inc. in the troubled Chester-Upland district, made remarkable progress in both reading and math.

Seventy-one percent of the school's eighth graders reached proficiency in math, up from 11 percent the year before. On reading tests, 82 percent reached proficiency, compared with 57 percent in 2002.

This is Edison's first year running schools in Philadelphia, and while not all Edison schools showed this kind of improvement, at least for this one school, something is being done right.

Admiration for these results must be tempered by concern for how far some students in Philly, and elsewhere in Pennsylvania, have to go:

Citywide, students performing at the proficient level or above in math went from 19.6 percent in 2002 to 21.6 percent in 2003. In reading, students reaching proficiency increased from 23.9 percent to 27.5 percent, according to school officials.

The picture statewide was less upbeat. Just more than half the incoming class of 12th graders - 67,800 students out of a total 133,200 - failed to reach proficiency in math, while about 54,300 students fell short on the reading test.

The results suggest that only a little more than one-fifth of Philly's students are proficient in reading or math. That's insane. How did things get that bad in the first place? The students who are really struggling - performing below grade level - are now required to get additional help:

...starting in September, participation in after-school and summer-school programs will no longer be voluntary for struggling students. Those in third, eighth or 12th grade will be required to attend the programs to be promoted to the next grade.

Amy Guerin, a school district spokeswoman, said the district would not know how many students were retained at the end of the 2002-03 school year until it had received the results from the district's summer-school program...

Given those test scores, I'd say it's going to be a large number, and I'll report that on here when the figures are released. Perhaps a massive number of students forced to repeat grades will be yet another wakeup call to Philadelphia parents and educators.

The dangerous consequences of low IQ...

....in penguins, that is.

Personally, I can't think of anything I'd like to see more than a penguin waddling around freely in a zoo, but I suppose it's unsafe and stressful for them. And, bless their hearts, they're still smarter than this kid.

The author here gets bonus points for masterful use of understatement:

"On Aug. 12, a female cheetah climbed up a wall in the River's Edge area and leaped out of her pen. She startled some visitors before Zoo workers herded her back to her enclosure. "

"Startled," you say. To me, "startled" is the sensation you feel when someone appears before you unexpectedly, or when you accidently miss the bottom step going down the basement. A loose cheetah would conjure up sensations more emphatic than "startled," I would imagine.

It's Florida, but it's not the FCAT

Found an interesting editorial on TCPalm online (FL) from back at the beginning of August. John Ray of PC Watch was the blogger who posted about it back then. He merely pointed it out as yet another piece of evidence that some people consider any testing at all to be politically incorrect; I thought I'd take a closer look at it.

So, test-happy Florida wants to have a statewide exam for university juniors. News flash: We already have one. It's called CLAST, the College Level Academic Skills Test.

Eh? A test of which I have not heard (or, at least, don't remember hearing of)? Hrm. Here's the FAQ (love the red buttons). It measures essay-writing skills, English language skills, reading, and mathematics. The rubrics for developing and scoring items seem straightforward, but the passing score is no help if I don't know the highest possible score. The FAQ leaves that out, as does this page. What is it with sites that give us passing scores that give no indication of how much of the material was actually mastered?

I finally found one website with the following information:

On the June 2000 exam's Reading subtest, a raw score of 26/36 was the minimum passing score (scaled 295)-this is 72.2% correct....For the Mathematics subtest, the minimum passing raw score for the June 2000 test was 34/50-68% correct. Typically, students need to answer approximately 73% of the questions correct to pass the Reading and English Language Skills subtests. They need to correctly answer approximately 68% of the questions correctly to pass the Mathematics subtest.

Okay, so that gives us a little more information. It's not a minimum-competency exam according to the standards, but let's go back to the TCPalm article for more information on the items themselves:

In their quixotic quest to re-invent the wheel, politically minded reformers let CLAST slip down the memory hole. Then again, so have a lot of college juniors. Since it debuted in 1982, CLAST has been riddled with so many exemptions, loopholes and waivers that only about 30 percent of students actually have to sit for the test. Why? Because some couldn't pass it.

"The core concepts are the same whether you're in community college or a university," Larry Abele, provost at Florida State University, points out. In support of universal use of CLAST, which tests fluency in those core concepts, Abele says, "We've paid for this benchmark. We have it. Let's use it."

Oh, so this is an exam for college students that is required for the awarding of an AA degree from a community college or for admission to upper-division status of a state university - and the items are at a 10th-grade level? And people are claiming that it's biased? Yes, against smart kids, who might fall asleep while taking it.

So now CLAST is apparently riddled with exemptions and waivers, which include:

(1) the presence of learning disabilities or failing the CLAST subtests (no joke), or
(2) meeting a specified SAT or ACT score (500 per section or 21 total, respectively), or by earning a 2.5 GPA in certain math and composition courses. Isn't a 2.5 a C+? I had to earn a higher GPA than that just to be able to stay in the dorm I chose my sophomore year. And one of the classes that allows students to exempt the CLAST is "Liberal Arts Mathematics I". Erk.

Anyway, now I think about it, I think I have written about the CLAST before - but this editorial is timely because this death by many tiny little cuts is indeed what we're seeing with the FCAT, complete with dumbed-down items and claims of bias. Bad enough that so many of Florida's seniors don't pass the 10th-grade-level FCAT; why are 20% of Florida's college students not passing an exam at that level? With a message this bad, no wonder they want to shoot the test conveying it.

The public's perception of NCLB

The Phi Delta Kappa honors organization, in conjunction with Gallup, recently surveyed "the public" to get their opinion about the No Child Left Behind Act. The poll itself may be found here; a press release summary is presented here.

So, what did "the public" have to say? The fine print at the end reminds us that this poll was composed of only 1011 adults who were chosen as a random-digit residential telephone sample - this allegedly avoids "listedness" bias, but doesn't avoid bias based on who owns telephones, or who is around to answer the telephone in the house. Random numbers were stratified by geographical region, and the person in the house with the most recent birthday was chosen to answer the poll. Calls also varied by time of day and day of week.

They've put some safeguards in place here, but readers should keep in mind that this is still a small sample. What's more, 65% of the sample had no children enrolled in school, and while some of those are people whose kids have graduated, I believe this could certainly introduce error by oversampling people who have no reason to pay attention to the specifics of or the politics surrounding the NCLB Act, nor would they be as likely to be aware of the quality of their local schools.

Anyway, on to the results, with my comments:

"Forty percent say they know very little about NCLB" - not surprising, given that 65% of the sample have no kids enrolled in school.

"Public school parents consider themselves just as uninformed as others" - these folks comprised only 32% of the sample, or just over 300 people.

"Sixty-six percent of the public says judging a schools performance using a single standardized test will cause teachers to "teach to the test." Sixty percent say that is a bad thing." That's 60% of the 66% who think that teachers will be forced to teach to the test. So, 667 adults thought they'd be teaching to the test, and 400 believe this is a bad thing. Another way to put this would have been to say that only 40% of the sample believes that standardized tests force teachers to "teach to the test" in a bad way.

It's also interesting that, while 66% did find the use of a single test for judging school quality to be fair (and I was under the impression that states use other methods for judging school quality as well), 83% believe the tests should be expanded to include subjects other than reading and math. While I believe those two are the most important (hard to appreciate history and science if you can't read), couldn't this number be used to show that those polled support the use of testing? Or that their opposition to the use of a single score was only because of the narrow focus of the test, not because of the test itself?

"...the public attributes the [black-white score] gap to lack of parent involvement (90 percent), home life and upbringing (87 percent), lack of student interest (80 percent), and community environment (66 percent). Only 16 percent attribute it to the quality of schooling received." Interesting. You often hear this from teachers' unions, and some school teachers, who claim that the quality of the school is not as important as the child's background (and this is often given as a reason for why schools fail minority kids from poor homes).

However, another way to look at this is the way that E.D. Hirsch describes it in The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them. In that book, he notes that children from privileged background have a high probability of doing well regardless of their school quality, because what they fail to learn in school, they can often learn at home. But disadvantaged kids are often entirely dependent on the school for their education, and the worse the home situation, the better the school needs to be in order to fairly educate the youngsters in it.

Thus, the score gap is not just related to parental involvement and upbringing, but also to the fact that those with the least amount of schooling at home are also least likely to receive adequate education in school. In those cases, school quality can be the most important factor in closing the gap. A failing K-12 system disproportionately affects the disadvantaged youth, and to blame their home environments for their poor test scores is to miss the whole story.

There's more in the poll, much more; let me know what you find interesting.

Watching the gap close in NC

Moore County (NC) school superintendent Pat Russo believes the black-white test score gap is closing in his district, and his remarks to parents who are also NAACP members sound like the voice of wearied reason:

Russo acknowledged that the No Child Left Behind program, North Carolina’s ABCs of Public Education, and other yardsticks for comparing schools are based on the progress that students make on standardized tests such as the Scholastic Assessment Test and end-of-grade tests. But he sees nothing wrong with the often-criticized technique of “teaching to the test,” he said in response to a question from the audience.

“I’ve had many teachers — in other places; I don’t think I’ll hear it here — tell me, ‘I just didn’t have time to get through the curriculum. Why did 77 percent of my students fall below grade level on my subject?’” Russo pounded his palm against the side of his head, the equivalent of responding “Duh” to these teachers.

His head must be pretty sore by now. His belief in the closing of the gap is based on reports from school principals in his district, but the SAT data that would confirm his belief will not be released until next Tuesday. On that measure, at least, his schools are ahead of the pack:

The average score statewide on SAT tests is 998, he said. The average for the Moore County Schools is 1044. A perfect score is 1600.

The local school district scores will probably be about the same this year, Russo said. The Moore County Schools have already climbed from an average score of 954 in the 1998-1999 school year, when it ranked 70th among the 117 school districts in the state. It now ranks seventh, and will rank “somewhere between fifth and eighth” for last year, he said.

Impressive numbers. Russo's tried a number of methods to improve education, including a few that would give secular left-wingers hissy fits:

“One of the things that have helped our children most is faith-based partnerships, which provide in-class help, tutoring and mentoring to our students. Right now, we have 27 churches involved. But we have more than 200 churches in Moore County, so we’re right at 12 or 13 percent. We need more involvement.”

Children, he said, “need mentors, role models and faith-based core values.”

It's not surprising that this would be an acceptable method of educational reform in the Deep South, and it's also not surprising that it appears to be working. Moore County has fewer than 75,000 inhabitants spread out over less than 700 square miles - but I still bet that the "200 churches" number is an underestimate. Assuming everyone in the county attends church, which wouldn't be unreasonable, that works out to one church per 375 inhabitants.

Another "discriminatory" exam in Delaware

Did you know that the state of Delaware is being accused of racial bias in the hiring of police officers during the 1990's? That's right, they're being sued for this, because in 1981 they had the nerve to implement a reading exam on which black and white applicant groups scored differently. Delaware discontinued the exam in 1998, presumably under pressure from activist groups who see any indication of group differences as proof of "bias":

The federal government contends the discrimination came through a written literacy test given to trooper applicants and the pass-fail cutoff levels Delaware used to measure results. White applicants regularly outscored black applicants on the test, given to screen admittance into the state police program. The state no longer uses it.

U.S. District Judge Kent A. Jordan ruled in May that the test adversely affected black candidates. That shifted the burden of proof to the state, which now is attempting to show the test was used lawfully with pass-fail cutoff rates that were job-related and measured minimum qualifications in reading and writing.

So, if you use a test on which every applicant group doesn't pass with the exact same rate, the pressure is then on you to prove that the test does indeed measure useful skills and is a minimum-competency exam. I believe that test developers should indeed be prepared to defend their exams in this way, but I believe this is a rotten precedent to set for challenging an exam. The test scores in the public school system show that minority students don't score as highly as white students, presumably because of their rotten schools. Why expect the test scores to be different at this level?

[Lt. Ralph H.] Davis testified that at the academy, where trainees are sent after a screening, future officers learn skills such as how to write paperwork requesting and justifying searches and arrests. The documents can be crucial to furthering an investigation and helping jog an officer's memory years later when it is time to testify.

Under cross-examination, Davis said officers recruited by municipal police organizations also attend the academy and sit side-by-side with state police recruits. They live in the same academy dormitory, do the same course work for the same instructors and take the same academy tests, he said.

Lt. Davis is attempting to justify the exams, presumably by showing that (1) reading skills are necessary in police work and (2) all recruits do the same course work and the same test preparation.

So let's find out more about this test. According to this website, written exams are still required for Delaware State Police, although it doesn't say what kind. Here's another article from earlier this year in which the allegations of bias are explained a little more fully:

Federal attorneys submitted test results from 10 recruit classes in court papers to demonstrate their argument. Percentages of passing black applicants dipped as low as 33 percent in one set of test results while white applicants passed at rates in the 80 percent and 90 percent ranges.

"The difference in passing rates is so extreme that it cannot be attributed to chance," federal attorneys wrote in court papers.

What has that got to do with anything? Why would black and white applicants be expected to differ only by chance? Look at the K-12 test scores, people. If black students don't get the reading skills in high school, why expect them to have them by the time they apply for the police force?

Yet another case of shooting the messenger. These results show that black students who earn diplomas or GEDs - the requirement for the trooper position - aren't being taught to read. So we're going to remove the test just so we can put black cops on the job who may not be able to decipher arrest warrants?

But attorneys for Delaware have attacked the federal argument, calling it "folly" bolstered by "invented facts," according to court papers. The federal statistics, they argue, were based on results for everyone who took the test, whether or not the applicants met minimum qualifications to be troopers.

That could certainly skew the results the way the federal government wants them to be. The use of reading scores of applicants with poor education or prior criminal history (who would have been rejected regardless) to claim test bias is despicable. There's an agenda being pushed here, and it's not one that will lead to a better police force.

The defense cited a different study of test results, which measured the performance of applicants who met job eligibility requirements. That study's results "recognized that blacks were fairly represented, or even slightly overrepresented, in the test-passer pool," according to court documents.

Emphasis mine. So, to recap, black applicants who met all eligibility requirements are fairly represented in those who passed the exams - but because blacks are over-represented in the failing group, and an unknown number of them would not have qualified to be a police officer on other grounds, that's evidence that the test is biased.

Give me a break.

(Thanks to Daryl for the tip.)

Settling for less

It looks like Blair Hornstine won't be getting her $2.7 million after all, although she does get to retain her valedictorian status. Oh, well, $15K wouldn't have paid for even one year at Harvard, and, as usual, the real winners here are the lawyers:

Blair Hornstine, whose court battle to be her high school's sole valedictorian ended with her life in turmoil, settled her differences with the Moorestown School District today to the tune of $60,000 - all but $15,000 to pay her lawyers...

In agreeing to the out-of-court settlement, the Moorestown Board of Education admitted no wrongdoing and said it accepted the agreement in part to limit its legal costs.

So, she gets very little money in the settlement, her classmates are looking forward to moving on and forgetting about her, and it's too late for her to be accepted to the schools she rejected for Harvard, including Princeton, Duke, and Stanford. Her future, as she no doubt envisioned it, has been shattered - but I have a feeling that she won't be held back for long.

Her lawyer claims that this was never about money, but about how high schools treat disabled students. Well, she got her wish, but it may not turn out like she expected. Moorestown High will certainly be treating disabled, special education, and home study students differently in the future:

Today, [district superintendent Paul] Kadri said: "I think it's important for everyone to move on now so I don't think it's appropriate to comment on her personally. I do, however, think it's a good thing for both sides."

"We are working on a system that allows us to monitor the kids every step of the way," Kadri said.

This could be read two ways, which should satisfy both Blair and people who thought she worked the system.

There are many, many other links to this story today, including on in the New York Times. Thanks to Devoted Readers Kayt D. and Adam T. for sending the links my way.

Baffled in Beaufort

As far as I can tell, this is NOT a joke:

Beaufort County district limits poor grades

Beaufort schools are the first in the state with this type of policy, state Education Department spokesman Jim Foster said.

The message it sends is that, no matter how little one tries or how little one knows, no grade of less than 62 will be given. This is simply redefining the zero point of the scale, and students who should have gotten less than 62 will be in for a rude surprise when a scale with an real zero on it is used. Students with half a brain will find this technique transparent, and risible. Any school deputy superintendent who believes that faking the numbers, rather than conveying useful educational skills, is what really gives kids "hope" should be demoted to janitor.

Beaufort (pronounced BYEW-fert, not BOH-fert), SC, is ranked as one of the richer counties in South Carolina, and it was the fastest-growing county in SC in 2000. The median income in Beaufort County is $46,992, but that's not the whole story. The use of aggregated data gives one a false impression of the true academic abilities - and earning power - in the county.

For starters, check out this chart of SAT scores for the class of 2002. Hilton Head Island is the relatively wealthy resort area off the coast of Beaufort, and their SAT scores have not only recently increased, but also surpass the SC average (though not the national average). The scores for Beaufort High School look quite different - yet both of these scores go into the Beaufort County ranking. Why pretend that Beaufort High School students aren't scoring less than 62% on their classwork? Their SAT scores are reflecting the truth.

The income data show the same thing. Of the four major cities in Beaufort County - Beaufort, Port Royal, Bluffton, and Hilton Head Island - three of them are below the median (two well below), and only one is above. Guess which one?

Why am I spending so much time on this? Well, I just find it interesting because I'm from SC, and spent a lot of time on HHI growing up. I found that untangling the data gave a much more accurate picture of the area, one that jibes with what I remember, which is the bimodal distribution of income and educational acheivement that is suggested above. This article from 2001 claims that Beaufort's schools are buckling down to improve education. Fudging the numbers scale is not a method of doing so.

Rallying the troops

Baltimore County Superintendent Joe A. Hairston recently gave a speech to school administrators, teachers, and union staff. He urged the powers that be to create in schools "a nurturing, supportive" environment - no, no, not for kids. For teachers. The speech, and the comments during it, are so cheesy as to sound like satire:

Addressing 700 school officials Friday at Loch Raven High School, Hairston emphasized that the school system can't meet federal and Maryland mandates for boosting the achievement of every student without solid classroom instruction by teachers.

Wow. Really? Who'd've thunk it? (Michael, don't correct me on this). Solid classroom instruction, eh? And how are they going to bring this about? Higher standards for teachers? More intensive teacher training? Weeding out bad teachers via standardized exams?

Nope, by touchy-feely management:

"It is all in their hands, really," he said. "Make sure your staff feels encouraged and reassured that you support them. Micromanaging will only stifle creativity. Pointing fingers and blaming others is negative leadership."...

But Bost, who attended the meeting, added: "We still need to improve the contract. Maybe this is the beginning of the realization that teachers are important, and we can continue that thought with higher salaries."

That's right, because we don't want to "crush" teachers with the burden of having to teach basic math and language arts skills, do we? And isn't it shame, how starting teacher salaries in the county of Baltimore compare so miserably to the median household income in that county? Oh, wait, the starting teachers make, on average, almost $5000 more than Baltimore's median household, and almost as much as the median income for a family in Baltimore.

But of course, to a union member, money is the cause of Baltimore's failing schools - the miserable graduation rate, the low percent of students reading satisfactorily in eighth grade - and increasing those teacher salaries will fix it, just like that.

The superintendent's annual speech traditionally opens the school year for the system's leadership. As in previous years, Hairston stressed the need to educate every child, including minorities, whose test scores lag behind those of white children.

"Children of color, immigrants, the poor, children with disabilities have all been written off in the past," he said. "But public education can no longer meet the needs of some children. Our mandate is the educational success of all children."

Given Baltimore's poor scores, I'd say they're moving from writing off only minority students to writing off all students. But then, I'm cynical about these kinds of speechs, which are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The session ended with a chorus of students singing "No Child Behind," as Hairston's recorded voice intoned, "Every child is a gift."

eeeEEEEwww. That sounds like something you'd hear at a Scientology rally. He thinks recording his mantra and playing in public is going to improve Baltimore's schools? Sheesh.

Update: Reader Roger S just shot my thesis about teacher pay all to hell, by pointing out that Baltimore County does not include Baltimore City. Doh! Damn these knowledgable readers.

This link shows that median household income in Baltimore is around $52K, which is much higher than in the city of Baltimore. However, this link shows that women in Baltimore County have a median salary that is below the starting teacher pay for that county, and it's estimated that around three-fourths of all teachers are women, so this is perhaps the more accurate comparison.

These data don't provide evidence that teachers in Baltimore County are grossly underpaid, which is what the union leaders would like you to believe. And even if Baltimore County's teachers have a valid reason to need more money, that doesn't necessarily mean the problems will be solved. While Baltimore County appears to be doing better than the city itself, recent reports show dropping test scores (which are probably the reason behind this pep talk).

And this graph of eighth-grade Reading scores doesn't make Baltimore County's schools, as a whole, look too great either (although the Writing and Mathematics scores are better).

That chanting thing at the end is still really ooky, no matter what geographical area we're talking about.

Failing schools, failing students

Across the US, parents and educators are reacting to the lists of "failing" schools that have recently been released, and some schools are quite upset over the whole mess.

In Pennsylvania:

In Bethlehem, they're appealing the failing ratings of six schools, claiming that "special circumstances" and "calculation errors" skewed the results.

In Lebanon, school superintendent Marion Bartley is defending a school that has twice been flagged as failing. She's urging parents to keep their kids enrolled in Northwest Elementary School, saying that "the educational expertise and tools for a good education are already in place at the school." This seems to contradict the facts that only one-third of Northwest's students are proficient in reading, and only one-fifth are proficient in math.

In California:

At the South Lake Tahoe school district, parents now have the choice to transfer their kids out of two struggling schools. Once again, a chirping school representative seems to be in denial, stating that, "We don't have failing schools in Tahoe...We have schools making huge progress on an ongoing basis. It's just how you measure it and certainly this is one way to measure it but it's not how we measure it." This, in a school district where only 14.6 percent of Latino students received a proficient score in language arts.

In Maryland:

One hundred and thirty-one schools remain on the failing list, and the scores for all schools on the Maryland State Assessment will be released on Friday. The Baltimore school district had the largest number of failing schools - but also the largest number of schools that showed improvement. Were those schools that had hit bottom and nowhere to go but up?

Update: A voice from the wilderness in my comments section, crying, "Don't forget Montana":

Bob Mooneyham, the executive director of the National Rural Education Association, said his group is one of the few organizations brave enough to openly criticize the NCLB. The act "is destined to cause rural schools to fail," Mooneyham said. "The test provisions are unrealistic and unfair."

The testing standards for rural schools are too high and too numerous, Mooneyham said. One or two developmentally disabled students at a school could affect test averages and cause the school to be labeled as failing, he said.

Mr. Mooneyham claims the NCLB requirements had in mind mainly urban schools, and that Washington didn't forsee the problematic effects the requirements would have on small rural schools. He has a point.

The MCAS lawsuit

The Boston Globe has the latest update on the lawsuit against the MCAS for alleged racial bias. The article begins with a sympathetic portrait of a black special education student who was denied a diploma because he did not pass the exit exam:

...sitting at his dining-room table one morning last week, William E. Lowe Jr. had much more immediate concerns than his ongoing lawsuit challenging the use of MCAS as a graduation requirement. The 18-year-old former high school football player was explaining why he has applied for a job at a local Blockbuster Video store instead of getting ready to study digital design.

Both federal and state judges have rejected their requests for preliminary injunctions to block the state from using MCAS to deny diplomas to the class of 2003, the first required to pass the test to graduate...In April, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Margot Botsford denied the state injunction request, commenting in her written opinion: ``[T]he plaintiffs have not shown a likelihood of succeeding in their challenge.''

One attorney believes the plaintiffs have little chance of winning:

"The chances of any court overturning a state test like MCAS are very low,'' said Boston attorney Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, who represents school districts and is author of "Testing Students ... And the Law." "The best they can do is tell the state to tinker with parts of it. But the bottom line is that states are entitled and in fact have a responsibility to establish standards. And the things that go against the students are the high number of passes and the fact that we have remediation'' through tutoring programs."

What's all the fuss about? Well, over 4000 students - 7 percent of the class of 2003 - have not yet passed the required MCAS, which measure English and math skills at the 10th-grade level. While that 7 percent number doesn't seem high to me, the plaintiffs are charging that the exam discriminates "against minorities, special-education students, and limited-English students, whom it says have not been adequately prepared for the exam."

To begin with, a test of English does not discriminate against those with limited English ability. It just identifies those who don't know the English language that well, which is what this test is supposed to do. The school is supposed to teach English, to everyone; those who don't learn it don't get a diploma. That's tough, but if a diploma is supposed to guarantee fluency in English, that's the way it has to be.

The other claims are based on the fact that minority and special education students pass at different rates than other students. This doesn't mean the test discriminates against them unfairly; if they don't know the material, then they don't pass the test. The real question to be asked is: Why haven't they learned the material? It may be that special education students may never learn it, so there should be (and are) options for those students. It's not that I don't understand the plaintiff's frustration if, in fact, students were not taught the material on the exam. But the protestors are wrong to focus their guns on the exam.

What's more, they shouldn't be fighting over high school students at all. Look at these 2003 third-grade MCAS results. Go to page 4. Only 63% of Massachusett's third-graders rate as Proficient based on the overall exam. The rate for "limited English proficiency" youth is, of course, much lower.

Then go to page 5. Seventy-one percent of White students are Proficient, but only 40% of the African-Americans, and 32% of the Hispanics, meet this same standard. If these kids are doing this poorly in the third grade, how can we expect them to learn what they need to learn in high school, exit exam or no exit exam?

Removing the exam doesn't fix the problem. The signs are there from the beginning. It's time to start fighting about, and finding solutions to, what will actually help minority kids learn English and math skills, starting at the beginning, and continuing on through high school. It's time for Massachusetts to start looking at elementary schools that do well, such as those that use Open Court phonics-based instruction or a Core Knowledge curriculum, and start imitating those schools.

Teaming up to improve writing skills

One problem with America's students is their writing skills have declined. One problem with requiring kids to write lots of essays in class is that teachers don't have time to grade the essays, much less provide sufficient feedback for kids to improve their skills. But in Oakland, CA, two women who met working out at the same gym have come up with an innovative solution to this problem:

University of California has lots of partnerships with local high schools, but there's nothing quite like the plan two friends worked up between workouts at the Y. Ellen Switkes, a UC assistant vice president, wanted to help Oakland's public schools...History teacher Patricia Arabia figured she could use some help, especially when it came to reading the dozens of essays she assigned each week to her students at Fremont High School in Oakland.

"I was really pleased with the improvement," she said. "And when students reflected at the end of the year they felt they had improved on their writing."

It's an interesting idea, and it seems to be working. And bonus point to them for taking the initiative and just doing it - rather than going through channels and getting bogged down in red tape over a procedure that doesn't affect the grading of the essays. Teachers who have large classroom sizes and want to assign weekly essays would find this service to be a godsend.

There's an email provided for people who want to start a similar service in their cities. I wonder if Philly could use something like this?

Fighting for the right to be conservative

UNC-Chapel Hill (my alma mater) has a conservative group that is organized, serious, and unstoppable - and they're meeting with Chancellor James Moser today to discuss the undiverse political atmosphere of the campus:

[Conservative] students, who earlier this year formed a group called the Committee for a Better Carolina, have a broader agenda. They say conservative students are uncomfortable and intimidated on a campus that is overwhelmingly liberal, and they want the university to commit to big changes.

"It's like the conservative point of view isn't legitimate. It's not even considered," said Michael McKnight, a senior journalism and mass communications and public policy major from Roanoke Rapids, who is president of the committee.

He's right. I was there for six years. Anyone even remotely conservative was equated with the violent segregationists of the 1960's, and no journalists bothered to contradict this viewpoint. I was fairly protected from most of the lunacy, as a graduate student enrolled in a very un-PC department, but it was crashingly obvious when I went outside my office.

Fighting the brain leakage

Yay! Joanne Jacobs is on her new Moveable Type site! I love MT, and I hope she enjoys it as well.

Today, she's got a link to a hilarious Dave Barry article, in which he ponders the mysteries of standardized tests:

Knowledge is our nation's most precious resource, after agriculture and Ray Charles. Yet study after study shows that American children are not learning as well as children from foreign countries such as Sweden and Hawaii.

Or maybe it's time that we parents stopped passing the buck on education. Maybe instead of pointing the finger at everybody else, we should take a hard look at ourselves in the mirror, and place the blame for our children's lousy test scores where it clearly belongs: on our children. They have a terrible attitude.

Love his conclusion, in which he implores kids to study hard and learn a lot of facts because we, their parents, are getting stupider by the day.

Yeah, but what's on the final exam?

University of Michigan professor David Halperin is under fire for teaching a course entitled, "How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation". Gee, I can't imagine why such a course would spark outrage; can you?

A family-values lobbyist is leading public opposition to the self-proclaimed "uncompromising political militancy" of the professor who teaches "lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender." The lobbyist, Gary Glenn, says professor David M. Halperin and the university "are guilty of perpetrating a fraud against UM students and the people of Michigan [with] propaganda statements...

Mr. Glenn notes that Mr. Halperin has boasted in print about his success in advancing a homosexual agenda. In a 1996 article in an academic journal, Mr. Halperin wrote: "Let there be no mistake about it: lesbian and gay studies, as it is currently practiced in the U.S., expresses an uncompromising political militancy. ... The emergence of lesbian and gay studies has brought about a far-reaching intellectual transformation in the disciplines of the humanities, arts and social sciences as well as in the social life of American universities and in the professional culture of American academe."

Robert M. Owen, associate dean for undergraduate education in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, claims that this course is but one part of the university's "genuine search for intellectually interesting and sometimes provocative subject matters." It's not surprising that Mr. Halperin is both a political activist and is teaching a course that most likely advances a political agenda. Unfortunately, it's also not surprising that a college dean would defend a course about drag queens and gym rats as part of an "intellectual" search for truth on a college campus, all at taxpayer expense.

The Monty Python School of Testing

Apparently Cambridge University admissions officers have broken free of the stultifying multiple-choice exams and predictable student essays of the type that are used in college admissions over here. Ananova has a sampling of the, er, "creative" questions that hopeful Cambridgians and Oxfordians must answer:

A new survey shows a Cambridge University admissions tutor asked a candidate if the moon is made of cheese...The survey of 1,000 Oxbridge candidates also shows would-be Oxford law students had to compare Timotei and Tesco own-brand shampoos.

A spokesman said: "It would just be to see how a student reacts to something they haven't been taught.

Well, yes, I suppose they haven't been taught that - but isn't Oxford interested in what the kids have been taught? And how does one figure out a scoring rubric for this type of item?

Fark.com has a link to pay-subscription-only article about these items. I can't access it, but Fark does note that:

Sample question for Cambridge University applicants: "Plants do not have brains because they cannot walk." Discuss. (Question 5)

Yeah, guess that involves "lateral" thinking. So much for learning trigonometry....

Both Jane Galt and Joanne Jacobs have more on the British system of higher education, which has been steadily lowering its standards so that more kids can attend college. Joanne quotes the following graf:

Where else in the world can students prepare for university without needing to study any of the following: maths, their native language and literature, natural sciences or a foreign language? Where else can students meet college entry requirements while shunning all the difficult subjects and opting instead for an ersatz combination such as media studies, sociology and sport?

With Britain's "pick and mix" curriculum, I suppose the Cambridge officials have to design admission tests to measure things that aren't taught, since there's no guarantee that Cambridge's applicants have any educational knowledge in common.

Roadblocks to education in Atlanta

Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has some scathing commentary on the race-baiting politics that infest K-12 public education, and she holds civil rights activists like Jesse Jackson to blame for "Why Johnny Can't Read":

Just once, I'd like to see black civil rights activists take to the streets to protest schools that miseducate black children...But that's not the typical story line of black protest in matters related to education. The plot, ever so predictable, usually goes like this:

A black teacher or principal is fired. Black activists call a press conference to denounce the alleged racism of white school officials. Or, school officials propose that new teachers be required to pass a standardized test. Black activists immediately declare the requirement racist...

She calls this one right. Virtually any standardized test that is introduced nowadays carries with it the stigma of "racial bias," mostly because the more extreme civil rights activists consider any educational process which can result in inequality of outcome to be "unfair."

In the last decade or so, Clayton County has undergone a rapid demographic transformation from a majority white population to majority black; blacks now hold five of the nine seats on the school board. Given that power, you'd think that black board chairwoman Nedra Ware and her colleagues would devote their time and energy to raising test scores, lowering the drop-out rate or increasing the rate of college attendance.

The politics of black protest too seldom seem aimed at improving the scholarship of black children...the public face of black activism in education is concerned...with jobs and titles, not children. The voices of public protest are more likely to demand an incompetent black teacher be rehired than to insist that no incompetent teachers, black or white, be allowed to cripple black children.

(From Devoted Reader Michael S., who notes that Ms. Tucker is often cast in the "liberal" role on political talk shows. If the black activists in Atlanta are alienating the liberals, that doesn't bode well for them.)

Scaling woes in Maryland

Yet another Washington Post letter, from Devoted Reader Richard. The question here is, should kids in Maryland have to pass an exam to graduate from high school? High school math teacher Julie Greenberg believes the jury's still out on that question, and she does raise some disturbing points:

This month the issue [of the High School Assessment exit exam] goes to the Maryland Board of Education. Regardless of whether the HSA tests are a good idea, it's premature to set passing scores for one reason: The scores don't make sense.

Look at the algebra HSA. First, the test is a combination of multiple choice questions and questions requiring written responses, yet it gives no indication of the weight given to the problems or types of problems, and the written responses are subjectively evaluated.

Actually, the combination of multiple choice and open-ended items is the test construction method most likely to guarantee a highly-reliable test score. Most of the unreliability is likely to come from that subjectively-scored section, but the author here doesn't note whether there are clearly-defined rubrics for scoring the written components, how raters are trained, and how rater scores are combined. Granted, she might not have access to that material, but simply stating that the test contains open-ended items, or a mixture of item types, is not, in and of itself, a valid test criticism. And while it would be nice for examinees to know how different parts of the test are weighted, it's not crucial that they know.

I found some HSA Algebra items here. Some items are open-ended in the sense that item responses are not provided; students must bubble the right number into a grid. As far as scoring goes, though, there's no subjectivity involved there, and so those items aren't necessarily going to negatively impact reliability.

By the time you get to item 10, more subjectivity has been introduced into the scoring scheme - but the rubric for scoring the item is provided on a right-hand menu. To me, the rubric reads like so much educational jargon, but there is a rubric. It's not wholly subjective (more rubric information is here).

If the items are terrible, or unrelated to one another, or testing noise rather than valid constructs, then the test will be unreliable and invalid, but just knowing the items types gives us no information about whether this is the case. Thus, the author is wrong in using HSA item types as evidence that the test is flawed. Let's see what else she has to say:

Whatever raw score is produced from this less-than-straightforward process is then subjected to the statistical alchemy of scaling, which theoretically distributes scores along a range of 200 to 800 points. However, the highest algebra HSA score in the state is apparently about 585, although I can't be sure if this is the case because the state has not given the scaled scores to students or parents, only to the schools.

Hmmm. Interesting. The use of the word "alchemy" here is telling; alchemy is the long-discredited belief that one metal may be transformed into another, while scaling is based on sound mathematical principals. Sure, it might seem magical on the other end, but it's not an "inexplicable" or "mysterious" process.

Scaling and equating are often thought of as one process, probably because both are done with most large-scale standardized tests, but they're not the same thing. Scaling is essentially reassigning the number scale of a set of test items so that something other than the number-right score scale is used. SAT items are scaled to a score of 200-800, and the scaling does take into account difficulty of items. That scaling is done on a norm-referenced curve, so that an examinee's SAT scores carries with a percentile that compares that person's performance to previous SAT examinees. With scaling, test forms that are of differing lengths, and that use different items, can all be placed on the same scale.

Equating, on the other hand, is the tweaking that's done afterward to adjust differing test forms so that examinees who took the forms can be compared to one another. Although a test such as the SAT is assembled to specifications to ensure that each test comes close to being parallel to previous tests, equating is done after the fact to ensure that examinees are not penalized if they receive a test that's slightly more difficult than expected.

So, back to the Maryland test. If the highest score in Maryland was a 585 out of 800, then this could mean several things. One, that the test is very difficult, and is scaled to really spread out the top range of scorers, so that it would be very tough to get one of those high scores. It could also mean that no kid in Maryland learned much about algebra, but this teacher notes that students who managed only the high 500's on this HSA made 800s - perfect scores - on the SAT math section, and that some younger students who took the Math SAT also did much better on it than on the HSA.

That, to me, means the HSA might be more difficult than, or that its algebra content diverges wildly from, the SAT, and neither of these situations is satisfactory for a high school exit exam. The teacher, though, thinks that this exam was quite easy, but that the scaling process devalued the scores. That, to me, seems implausible, and she doesn't provide any evidence to suggest how or why that would be true. Scaling is not normally used to massively readjust scores as compensation for unexpected test ease or difficulty.

There's no logical reason to give a test that's far too easy and then scale the test in such a way that all the score are greatly lowered. However, this teacher is right to be skeptical, beause something here is not adding up (pun intended). She wants information on the scaling process; I'd want more information on the items, the passing score, the test reliability, and the score distributions as well.

So - back to the web. I dug up a very interesting, very recent report on the HSA - "High risk or high time? A critical junction in implementing Maryland's High School Assessment as a graduation requirement." The report is lengthy; I'll report more tomorrow when I've had the chance to peruse it at greater length.

Howeve, I can say that the report concurs with the letter-writer's claim, above, that while students receive percentile rankings, they haven't been given their number-right or percentage-correct scores, and they don't know how their performance compares to the standards. There's little reason for a high school exit exam to be norm-referenced; if 100% of students meet a standard, or criterion, they should pass. Thus, it's not anywhere near as useful to give a percentile ranking on this exam as it is to show a student how they compare to the standards.

The report also notes that Maryland's high school standards, which require only Algebra I and Geometry for graduation, are misaligned to the standards of Maryland's colleges, which require Algebra II and some Trigonometry. And page 43 essentially restates the concerns of the teacher above:

The normative HSA data released to date, however, raises questions: the 2002 HSA percentile and scale score data available on the MSDE website (www.msde.md.us) demands further explanation. While psychometricians and statisticians understand the science of adapting raw scores to scaled scores, and the tenuous quality of firstyear scores, how should the general public interpret the fact that the 99th percentile on the English I assessment equates to a scale score of 473 on a scale of 0 - 800? Does that relatively low score mean that, generally, Maryland students did not fare well as measured by the standards? As it stands, the public has received insufficient information regarding decisions that will profoundly impact its children.

I couldn't get the link in the quote above to work - probably not a good sign. This report suggests that something is indeed wrong with the scaling process of the HSA, because it raises so many questions about how it should be interpreted.

Setting standards in Virginia

Devoted Reader Richard sent along a link to a Washington Post letter by one Susan O'Brien Saccomando, the chair of the science department at Mountain View Alternative High School. It concerns the Virginia Standards of Learning, or SOLs:

In the past few years I have heard complaints from just about everyone about the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOLs) and the accompanying assessment tests...But the complainers are wrong. The (SOLs) are working.

Before the SOLs, to pass a course, a student came to class regularly, participated, turned in class work and homework and took some tests...Effort played a big role in a student's grade.

The benefits of the SOLs are immense. Educated people make better citizens and more productive workers. Businesses can become partners with local schools and have a direct influence upon the workforce of the future.

In other words, states, schools within states, and even classes within schools all differ so much in terms of what is taught, how it's taught, and how it's graded. An A in Algebra II is going to mean something very different from school to school (as can be seen in the recent Fortier High fiasco), and standardized tests are one of the few ways - perhaps the only way - to assess whether all teachers are giving their students the basic preparation needed in courses. The tests are also a reaction to the student-centered, anti-fact, "naturalistic" teaching methods that have infested public schools since the 1960's, and these tests should be considered evidence that such a method, while it might be fun for a student, doesn't do much to prepare them to think critically using solid knowledge in the real world.

No power outages - for now

As you can tell by my uninterrupted bloggage, Philly suffered no power outages (here's why), although train service out of the city was delayed. In fact, I didn't know there were any outages until the TVs in the bar in which I was drinking last night started showing CNN's "Breaking News" flashes and someone said, "Hey, how 'bout those blackouts?" Um, what blackouts? It's a little surreal for me to be on the web all the time, yet not know what's happening just a couple of hours up the road.

Anyway, on Jeff Jarvis's blog, he posted a tale of urban survivalism that I love. One commenter had given his friends in NYC very cheap, very creative, and very useful Christmas gifts that had been completely unappreciated - until now:

I'm an alarmist........and I've been the butt of many jokes since Christmas. I took hat boxes and spray painted them with glow in the dark paint. In them I put lanterns that run on batteries, huge flashlights, walkman radio's, old phones that require no power to work, heavy duty hospital supply face masks, MRE's from the army navy supply on Canal Street, juice boxes, and a large supply of replacement batteries. They all got a keyring laser light. I taped my phone number to the phones and laminated a card for everyone's wallet with my number on it. My friend in Soho, who is an artist, displays my box in an Andy Warhol kind of way with his art. I'd like to say I had the last laugh last night but I am just relieved. My friends and family, when they made it home, had light and a radio telling them it wasn't a terrorist attack. They were able to tell their neighbors what was going on. I spent the night as a check in point reuniting people with their significant others and parents with children. It didn't take more than $40 bucks per box and a little planning to be prepared. If you could have heard the frantic tone in my friends voice when at 11:30 he still had not heard from his girlfriend and the relief when I told him she had called and was planning to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge to get home (she works midtown) and the fact that she had stopped off with a few friends to partake in the free beer pubs were offering, you'd make a box. The only one who talked to all the kids about a plan was me, the alarmist. I'm happy to know I have no MIA's, just a few people sleeping off the free beer, and a big Cheshire cat smile on my face.

That box sounds like a darn good idea, because it could have been me walking home from 38th Street to 69th Street last night, in the heat, only to arrive at a house where no radios, lights, or phones would have been working. Ugh.

TGIF

Once again, it's Friday, Thank God. It's been a hell week at work, but much play awaits me this weekend. Oh, okay, and a lot of housecleaning too, but I enjoy that. Sometimes.

I figure it's time for another list of my favorite things so you don't think I sit huddled in front of a computer crunching numbers 24-7. Someone needs to put a human face on psychometrics; it might as well be me.

1. Pop Will Eat Itself. A semi-obscure (in the US) British band that can only be described as a mixture of hip-hop, pop, funk, dance, and industrial (in their later incarnations). They were active only from 1986 to 1996, so if they're one of your favorite bands too, then you're probably a mid-30's former punk/goth/altchick like me.

One of the cooler things about them was that they spawned a very well-organized online cabal of fans who called themselves PWEINation. There's not much to see there now, unsurprisingly for a band that's been defunct for 7 years, but in their day this was the coolest site/message board/meeting place around. I still have one of the last PWEINation t-shirts ever printed.

Their CD "Amalgamation" has been in my player constantly as of late. And the lead singer, Clint Mansell, has been very active in the world of soundtracks. If you saw Requiem for A Dream and loved the haunting strings and the disturbing techno, well, he was the composer for that. Amazing stuff.

(NB: If you're unfamiliar with the movie, the site is weird because the movie is weird. You'll need Flash, and the "infomercial" at the beginning is there because that was part of the movie's plot. When that page stops loading, click on what looks to be a banner ad at the top. Other pages take a long time to load, and you'll need to wave the mouse around and go through what appear to be other infomercial pages. Things that seem like error messages really aren't. Trust me; it makes sense given the movie).

2. Cross-stitching. Yep, I'm one of those geeks who sits around and pokes tiny needles through even tinier holes in fabric, all the while ruining my vision while staring at the insanely complicated charts. But don't worry, I don't do needlework of teddy bears holding flowers or anything goofy like that. One of my favorite cross-stitch designers is Teresa Wentzler, who designs all sorts of lovely castle and dragon and medieval charts, and I'm getting ready to start on this design of hers for a friend of mine.

3. Vivid Reptiles. This is the breeder from which I order my snakes, and sometimes I just like to go browse their site. They breed for health and beauty, and their snakes are indeed so vivid that the website gives instructions on how to adjust your monitor color settings, the better to view their amazing critters. Their "Nirvana" page changes regularly and always has information on some amazing serpentarial phenomenon. The current Nirvana page charts the wonders of the Variable Kingsnake, and I have one of those. They are indeed calm, hardy, unshy, and in general wonderful snakes to keep.

I've been amazed by the beauty of snakes since I was a little girl, and it's still a wonder to me that the most common and innocuous of these creatures can seem like little gems of ferocity and color. For example, would you have ever guessed that this fierce and exotic-looking little creature is a garter snake? Beautiful. Just beautiful.

4. The Z Gallerie. This store ROCKS. Think Restoration Hardware or the Pottery Barn, but cheaper, funkier, and less pretentious. The stores (which have much more than shown on the site) usually have great sales. I really really wanted these pillows when I was in the store in North Carolina, but I didn't want to pay to have them shipped back. I also want this clock, which I've seen in several stores, but this is a good price for it.

Update:

5. Baby goats. This is me, last winter, on my dad's land in SC, being nuzzled by my stepmom's favorite little kid. 'Nuff said.

(Another previous list of favorites can be found here)

He gets to count them as dependents on his tax return, too

A cute email arrived in my inbox today from Devoted Reader Richard, who thinks that this is all my doing. I believe he thinks it was my blogging about Pennsylvania's unimpressive test scores that inspired the Governor to take this bold step. I don't have that much clout with Rendell - but isn't a grand idea, nonetheless?:

Gov. Rendell Adopts Every Child in Pennsylvania
(2003-08-14) -- Gov. Ed Rendell announced today that his administration will adopt every child in Pennsylvania to make sure each gets a good education.

Education experts agree that poor performance in public schools is due to a combination of low taxes and bad parenting. The adoption measure should address both of these "systemic flaws."

Hee hee hee.

Suing Harvey Milk High School

Remember my previous post on the perils of neo-segregationism, as evidenced by this high school for gay teens in New York City? I, among others, thought that isolating gay teens in their own high school was unnecessarily divisive, would help perpetuate stereotyping, and wouldn't solve the problem of the bullying attitudes in regular public schools. I also thought it odd that public funds would be used to build a public school from which heterosexual kids would be excluded.

Turns out that one NY Senator, Ruben Diaz, Sr., doesn't like the idea of Harvey Milk High, either, and he's filed a lawsuit to challenge "the legitimacy of the nation’s first 'lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth” (LGBTQ) public school.":

A few weeks ago, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the City authorized 3.2 million dollars to establish the Harvey Milk School as the first publicly funded LGBTQ school in America. The money diverted to the School was taken from the capital expansion funds, and thus much needed capital expenditures for needy schools have suffered.

The lawsuit challenges the validity of the public school.

As well it should.

(Thanks to Devoted Reader Nick, who has more on his blog).

Making money the easy way

Okay, Joanne Jacobs and NRO's the Corner have already covered this, but I can't pass it up - a Chicago high school is going to financially reward students just for showing up to class:

Tickets to sporting events and coupons for Walgreens drug stores are among the incentives that will be offered to Chicago public high school students this year to get them to show up for class more often.

Duncan said all high schools in the system will be offered the chance to hold "rallies'' with radio or TV personalities if they improve their attendance. And students in every high school will vie for coupons to shop at Walgreens and compete for tickets to sporting events if they improve their personal attendance.

The Corner folks hated that "incent"-as-a-verb usage, by the way, and I don't blame them.

But seriously. Why should kids get tickets to see the Bulls just because they're going to class? Isn't this method as much as admitting that (a) kids hate to go to class and (b) this is the only sort of reward they're going to get out of it? It's as much as admitting that the classes are worthless to the kids.

Incentives for academic performance/improvement, or for specific tasks, are not unreasonable, if done correctly (I don't think cash or coupons should be involved). But that's not what's being proposed in Chicago. "Improving attendence" does not require the student to actually learn anything. Yes, if the kid is not there, he won't learn, but that fact that he's merely there doesn't guarantee learning.

Joanne's anecdote shows how incentives can work:

I won a trophy for perfect attendance in fourth grade. My teacher had won it in a dance contest at the Hotel Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. I cherished it because it came from Mr. Parker, a brilliant teacher. I would not have shown up every day for a Walgreen's coupon.

Note: perfect (not "improved") attendance, which does require consistent effort; respect for the teacher; a financially-worthless-yet-symbolic incentive. The fourth-grade version of Joanne felt honored by this, not bribed.

Hershey High, where no one is Number One!

The Derry (PA) school district, which includes Hershey High (yup, the town where the chocolate comes from), has eliminated class rankings, and has therefore eliminated the position of valedictorian for the class of 2005. The decision was ostensibly made to protect those whose class rankings might have kept them out of college. (Funny, but I figured doing well enough to qualify for college was the responsibility of the student, not the school.)

Needless to say, those 11th-graders who had a shot at the top spot are taken aback:

The Derry Twp. school board this week eliminated class rankings, starting with the class of 2005. School officials are still reviewing whether to have a valedictorian and salutatorian...The Derry decision has left many parents and students dismayed.

"Having a valedictorian is tradition, sort of like the prom," [Junior Derek] Pae said. His most recent rank is first. Homecoming queens are praised for beauty, and class presidents are honored for popularity, so schools should recognize the academic achievement of students, Pae said.

Don't worry, Derek, I'm sure beauty pageants and elections for class rulers are next on the list to be abolished. Wouldn't want to make those unattractive or unpopular students feel bad about themselves, and we wouldn't want those attractive or outgoing students to receive any external validation for those qualities, either.

Derry school officials said the ranking system may hurt students' chances at getting into college, and that is why it was dropped. "We have kids who were absolutely tremendous students who barely made it to the top one-third of the class. It's a relief to have it not hurt anybody any longer," said Bonnie Goble, a board member.

"Eliminating class ranks forces college admission counselors to take a harder look at our applicants," said Mike Murphy, principal of Hershey High School.

Since when are school board members in charge of making sure no students are "hurt" based on their grades? And how are they "tremendous" students if they're not in the top 30% of the class, unless grades are so inflated that the top 50% or so all get A's? I think that's what's really going on, based on my own (anecdotal) experience.

In high school, I had a B+ average with AP courses - and barely squeaked into the top 5% of the class. Thus, I know for a fact that no more than 21 students at my high school had a GPA of 4.0 for challenging courses. I'm sure some students who were down around the 70th percentile went on to college, but I don't think our guidance counselor would have called them "tremendous", because they either didn't take college prep courses, or didn't have high GPAs.

Interestingly, some college admission counselors disagree with Principal Murphy's statement:

"It's totally not true that students are disadvantaged by class ranks in the admissions process," said Joseph Cretella, dean of graduate and undergraduate admissions at Shippensburg University.

Shippensburg uses rankings to determine scholarship awards, Cretella said. If the rank is not available, the dean calls the high school for an estimated percentage of where the student would be in the class.

There are valid reasons to preserve rankings. As mentioned above, some college scholarships are based on rankings, and presumably students with no rank will be out of the running on those. High rankings can help a student with a low SAT score with the college admission process. And students who are competitive enjoy the honor that comes with distinctive rankings.

Notice a pattern here? In order to protect those "tremendous" students who are in the middle of the grade distribution, the top students are getting shafted, and their accomplishments will go unrewarded.

Class ranks should be celebrated, said Kermit Leitner, principal of Susquehanna Twp. High School.

"You spend four years working hard and if you end up at the top, it's a great honor," [junior Andrew] Fouche said. "I don't think it's fair that my friends may not be recognized for their achievement."

Exit exams are here to stay - but will they work?

More than half the public school students in the US must pass an exit exam to graduate, and despite controversies, it appears the exit exams are here to stay. A study by the Center on Education Policy concludes that the exams have led to more rigorous courses, and have helped identify struggling students - but there are downsides as well:

Diploma-driven tests have been used for years, but the 2002-03 school year was the one in which many students and parents learned why the tests are often called "high stakes." Several states withheld thousands of diplomas, or prepared to do so. In some states, tests got tougher. At times, it got messy.

In many states, 65 percent to 85 percent of students pass on their first try. But in states that provided a breakdown of data, scores were significantly lower among blacks, Hispanics, poor students, children with disabilities and those with limited English ability...

Those with limited English ability should, of course, not be passing at the same rate, not if these tests are supposed to measure mastery of English. Hence, it shouldn't be lumped in here with minority students, but it usually is. Also, the study is correct is stating that the schools can't just focus on test development, but must also focus on teacher training and helping at-risk kids before they flunk the exams. Those sorts of efforts will help reduce score gaps between groups.

Implicit, of course, in the list of requirements for making exit exams effective is that schools must be prepared to hold all students to one meaningful standard, to flunk students who don't meet that standard, to not allow grade inflation to take precedence over test results, and to stand fast against protestors who don't like an objective standard with politically-incorrect results. If schools continue to create massive loopholes, stay silent in the face of organized protest, and back down because certain groups don't perform as well, they'll make the exit exams next to useless, while still inflaming test opponents.

If schools are going to do this, they need to stick to their guns and do it right.

Proving harassment in the classroom

Hmm...Those of you who support webcams or video cameras in classrooms might have a point. Here's a real-life "he-said/she-said" situation where two New Jersey middle school teachers were charged with harassing a disabled student - but the charges were subsequently dropped, after nearly two months, for lack of probably cause. A videotape could have cleared the whole thing up much more quickly:

Municipal Judge Douglas Steinhardt found no probable cause in harassment charges filed June 25 by Jill Sember. Sember claimed Superintendent Dennis Wolf and Wendy Greenwald, a teacher's aide, allegedly belittled and verbally harassed her 14-year-old son, Peter Minchella...According to the complaint Sember filed in municipal court, Greenwald allowed other students to throw pencils and curse at Minchella while supervising a class...

Sember claims the Child Study Team did a "mini-evaluation" of her son in January and said he did not have any problems....Sember said she thinks her son's behavior and nine suspensions during the past school year are directly related to the way he has been treated at school. The suspensions were for behavioral problems and interrupting class, Sember said...

Videotapes showing specific behavioral problems could have helped the school defend itself against harassment charges - or it could have allowed the Ms. Semper to battle the school's claim that her child was not ADHD. Either way, more concrete evidence would have been useful.

Teaching realities

Bernard Chapin explains why he teaches at an alternative school: "There is no such thing as political correctness at an alternative school. Life is real there and reality can't be covered up with lies and euphemisms. That's why I'll never leave."

I had already completed three years of work at a job in the sticks when I interviewed for my current position. My interview was highly unusual. I sat with the principal, who struck me a tough, no nonsense type of administrator...She told me at the end of our chat that she was retiring in a year's time and that, after 35 years in the business, the last thing she wanted to do was physically restrain any more students. She said, "I don't want to wrestle on the floor at this point and I shouldn't have to." Therefore, in her mind, I was an ideal candidate for the job. The school, as is the norm, contained mostly female employees; so she wanted to have as many strong, young males in the building as was possible.

Now I'm not trying to imply that we should not be sympathetic towards an adolescent with a broken limb, but clearly, his own actions were a catalyst for the chaos that followed. Luckily, the investigation was decided in our favor...There has to be an understanding within the system that students have some responsibility over what occurs in their lives. When they attack service personnel, it is irrational to expect us to comport ourselves like clerics.

A public school would probably have been forced to suspend the aide, and not been allowed to expel the student who punched the dean.

Peeking parents in Denver

Keeping tabs on students via the Internet is not just for Biloxi anymore. Denver's (CO) middle and high schools have using the newly-created Internet Student Information System to allow parents to keep a closer eye on their kids' education. Webcams are not involved - we're talking information here, not real-time video - but the purpose is the same: to get parents more involved in their children's classroom experiences.

While the systems differ [across Denver's schools], they share a concern for security with school-issued user IDs and passwords. All allow parents to get timely information that many tight-lipped teens are loath to share....

Jeffco schools spokesman Rick Kaufman said, "Almost on an hourly basis, a parent can find out if their child is in a particular class. Most schools will stick to updating attendance two or three times a day."

Other information to which parents will have access: grade information, discliplinary record, course history, transcripts, and the school calendar. Sounds fairly innocuous. And one thing to note here is that parents have the option to participate. Those who choose to do so will receive passwords that enable to access only their child's information. In a webcam-based system, on the other hand, it would be likely that parents would be unable to keep their kids in un-videotaped room, so opting out wouldn't really be possible (in the sense that even if you choose not to view your kid, other parents would be able to do so).

While the article notes that "No solid documentation exists on whether the programs have boosted attendance," they do provide one bit of anecdotal evidence - a description of "bad kid's" transformation to honor-roll student thanks to his family's online tracking of his school behavior.

Avoiding the alternatives

Governor Jeb Bush has "heard concerns" about the FCAT, according to this article. What a great headline. He has "heard," but did he believe the claims of protestors that the test is inherently unfair? Did he allow protestors to continue their claims that the FCAT alone is holding thousands of kids back? Doesn't sound like it:

...faced with a boisterous crowd outside his office, Bush finally relented, first suggesting that a group of parents and students meet privately with him.

''If the principal and teacher believe that the child has achieved what the expectations are, then that child can be promoted,'' Bush said, suggesting that Wilson, as a school district employee, should be familiar with the regulations...

Heh. Apparently, the protesters who are screaming that the FCAT is holding so many kids back aren't being too forthcoming with the fact that the portfolio option can be used to pass a third-grader who flunks the FCAT. These portfolios provide alternate reading passages and items, along with other test options. But not that many teachers took advantage of this - it tended to be used only with the students with really low FCAT scores who were nonetheless reading well (according to their teachers). Only 256 bypasses were submitted to the Miami-Dade school, and 200 of them were accepted.

The remaining flunkers, we might assume, were judged by their teachers to be unable of passing the alternatives; i.e., not reading at grade level. Thus, their retention in third grade is not the testing-related injustice that the protestors would have you believe.

The valedictorian flunks out

No, despite your high hopes upon seeing the header, this is not a Blair Hornstine story - but it's just about as sad.

There is a young woman named Bridget Green. She was all set to be valedictorian of Fortier High School in New Orleans. But instead, she skipped graduation, because she's likely to be flunked out. Not because of some grading dispute or plagiarism charges, but because she flunked the math portion of the exit exam five times.

Is she just an innocent victim of a flawed standardized test? Well, while the Graduate Exit Exam (GEE) may not be perfect, its conclusion about Ms. Green's true math skills has been externally validated:

Had the GEE been the only test that gave Bridget Green so much trouble, perhaps critics of that test would have a point. But she also did poorly on the ACT, a tool that colleges nationwide use to determine a student's readiness for higher education. Ms. Green's composite score on that test was 11. According to the American College Testing Web site, that places her in the 1st percentile. Of all the 10th-, 11th- and 12th-graders who took the test within the last three years, 99 percent of them did better than Ms. Green.

Emphasis mine. This NOLA op-ed is scathing:

Just this year Ms. Green received an A in Algebra II. In most places, an A in that subject indicates the student has demonstrated mastery in factoring polynomials and dividing them, solving quadratic equations and plotting them and is adept at solving complex word problems. Obviously, Bridget Green hadn't mastered those skills or she would have passed the test...

The teachers and administrators at Fortier High have some explaining to do. If the senior with the best grades can't pass a 10th-grade test, what, if anything, are students being taught?

What, indeed. How on earth can this be? How can a valedictorian place in the lowest percentile of the ACT? That's so low as to believe that she didn't really make an effort, or just filled in the bubbles randomly.

There's a more sympathetic, and informative, article about Ms. Green here:

Green, who failed to pass the 10th-grade level test on five occasions, isn't the only student at Fortier who missed this year's ceremony. Of the 220 students who began the school year as seniors, 125 graduated in May. School officials said at least 30 had the grades to graduate but failed the test...

...Green was feeling confident when she faced the exam for the fifth time this March. Her hopes were fueled by her performance in Algebra II, where she earned an A. When she took Algebra I, she earned a C.

Why on earth did she earn a grade that high if she couldn't pass 10th-grade math items? And math courses are cumulative. Grades tend to go down as one progresses along the math continuum, not up. If Ms. Green didn't have a good grasp of Algebra I concepts, how did she manage an A in Algebra II?

Needless to say, the testing critics are out in force and ready to overlook even this most outrageous example of mis-education:

"I wish our public officials and even (the state Board of Elementary and Sceondary Education) would take a second look at the test," said C.C. Campbell-Rock, a local activist who has long fought to abolish rules that tie student promotion to test performance.

C. C. Campbell-Rock, I think you're a fool. This test is providing a massive wake-up call to a school system that inflates grades and doesn't provide its students with the educational skills they need to go on to college - and you think the tests should be abolished? Not before someone figures how a student could have the highest GPA in her senior class and not understand 10th-grade math.

A middling score on the ACT wouldn't be impossible here - I've known valedictorians and salutatorians who didn't have anywhere near the highest SAT scores in their classes - but the 1st percentile on the ACT for someone who received an A in Algebra II? No. If reality wasn't going to slap Ms. Green in the face here, it was certainly going to slap her later, when colleges refused to admit her despite her valedictorian status. Despite the claim that math is Ms. Green's "only" weak spot, her overall ACT score would have been better if that were the case (she even admits she "eked" out a passing score on the English component). It's hard to believe that she's been cheated out of a real education only in math.

How hard is the GEE? Judge for yourself. A set of 10th-grade sample items is here. Skip to page 5 for the math items. Students are required to "add signed numbers and find the largest sum", interpret graphs, interpret the most basic statistics (mean, median, mode), and use simple geometry for proportional reasoning in the multiple-choice section.

In the constructed response example given, a student is required to find figures with sides of differing lengths that have the same area and write a simple one-variable algebraic expression to find the area of a rectangle with length x.

And the valedictorian couldn't do this? And critics are telling us to take another look at this exam? I'd say we take another look at what Fortier High considers to be Algebra II work. And what about the students who had lower GPA's than Ms. Green? At least 125 of them passed the GEE, meaning they managed to overcome the obstacles of this school's dubious educational tactics.

Do I think Fortier High is unusual among Louisiana's schools? Not after reading this summary from CABL, the Council for A Better Louisiana:

A snapshot of Louisiana's economic and quality of life indicators shows that:

* A significant number of public students score below “basic” levels on academic tests and the although the rate is improving, the state has a significant dropout rate -- with nearly 16,000 high school students leaving in 2002.
* Academically, many of our public middle schools are performing poor or failing levels.
* Academically, many of our high schools are performing at poor or failing levels.
* Four out of 10 college freshmen from our public high schools must take remedial courses.

CABL also notes that the passing rate on the GEE is set at the "Approaching Basic" level, which puts the 75%+ passing rate into perspective. The higher education indicators are much more informative - 39% of Louisiana's college students are enrolled in "Non-credit Developmental Courses", which is a polite way of saying "remedial" - and the 6-year graduation rate is an appalling 39% as well.

None of these facts support the theory that this is an isolated incident - that Ms. Green is merely bad at math or nervous about taking tests - nor do they support the demand that these high-stakes tests should be abolished. Ultimately, I have to agree with this letter writer:

One thing is clear. Standardized tests like the GEE and ACT are a necessary evil. A grade of A or B at some New Orleans high schools does not accurately reflect knowledge or ability.

Wayne L. Johnson
New Orleans

Bush is Hitler, and my thesis proves it!

Is your college too conservative for you? Are those nasty science classes getting in the way of the real mind-broadening that you want to do? Do you want to reject the teachings of learned PhD's so you can open your mind to people with names like "Butterfly" and "Starhawk"? Instead of having to skip boring classes like English Lit and Stats in order to protest the eeeeevil Republican regime, wouldn't you like to receive college credit for making those picket signs and wearing those goofy masks?

Well, now you can, at the New College of California. In fact, you can receive an entire degree in social activism. Telling you the city in which you can do this is, of course, unnecessary, because it's implied in the boneheadedness of this scheme.

Yes, indeedy, a college degree in activism - and at only six grand a semester, it's a bargain! It's "unlikely that conservative instructors" will be present, so you needn't worry about encountering any actual facts or science or judgements or anything like that. Just warm, fuzzy opinion and political activism. Hey, if your "professor" says climbing a tree will save the environment, who are you to contradict her?

Allegedly, the New College isn't looking for "rabble-rousers," but note that community work can take the place of prerequisites such as a high school diploma and college work, and while they say that they aren't looking for someone with a rap sheet, nowhere do they say that they'd reject someone with a rap sheet for trespassing, disturbing the peace, and other activities that leftie activists so prize these days.

In reply to the instructor who claims that, "Admission officials want to see a portfolio of community work, not a rap sheet," Joanne Jacobs replies, "Call me cynical. I think they want to see that $6,000 check." Scholarships are already available for those who don't have parents rich and dumb enough to write a $12,000/year check so their little darlings can study anarchist theory and get a masters in globalization.

I think the "teachers" at New College are not only greedy, they're also completely unaware that most people are capable of watching the news and making judgments about world events without the input of the goofy/annoying antics of your typical "social cause" activists. The anti-war attitude of those quoted in the article is, of course, brazen, and the activists quoted seem completely unaware that there might be reasons for the drop-off in anti-war activity other than that people don't really know "how to change the world." Like, say, perhaps, people noticed that some of the men and women who were genuinely changing the world for good were wearing camouflage outfits with US flag patches on the shoulders?

And why do I have the feeling that the "teachings" from this program will be so completely uninformed, one-sided, and irrational - such pure mindless propaganda, in fact - that the students who study here will ultimately have less impact on the Unwashed Masses that they wish to "enlighten"?

Big Brother In Biloxi

Remember my rant on the British idea of mandatory webcams in the classrooms? Devoted Reader Nick, of Twilight of the Idols, sends along a USA Today story about a school district in Biloxi (Miss.) that has gone ahead and installed "a virtual army of digital cameras" in every classroom:

So far, Biloxi is the only school district in the nation to install Webcams in every classroom -- nearly 500 so far. But school districts in cities nationwide and in England are experimenting with classroom Webcams for security reasons...

...privacy advocates, teachers' groups and others worry about putting classes under an all-day microscope. Some say cameras could be misused and interfere with teaching, and others fear that districts using them could become complacent about security.

All good points, all of which I made in my original article. I find it hard to believe that discipline is SO bad in Biloxi that teachers were willing to give up classroom privacy in order to have verification of bad behavior. I figure the dangers of this trade-off will be driven home the first time a teacher gets disciplined, fired, or sued for something that a parent sees on a webcam.

Both sides of the webcam debate are emphatic about the safety issue:

Though Biloxi's camera system hasn't captured serious crimes, [district Superintendent Larry] Drawdy says it has ''prevented a lot of things from happening'' and helped principals sort out minor offenses such as classroom thefts that could have led to time-consuming, intrusive investigations...

But Curt Lavarello, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, says all those cameras actually could make schools less safe. ''We lose the direct, one-to-one contact that is so critically needed,'' he says. Relying on cameras ''can't become the replacement for the human factor.''

That was the point I made about schools now placing the burden on parents to watch webcam footage. The question is whether the footage will be considered in relation to the human judgement of teachers and administrators, or whether it will replace it. Yes, if a kid walks in the door with a machine gun, a camera is going to catch that (although perhaps not prevent it from happening).

Webcam critics note other problems, including parental interference and the inability of parents to remove their kids from a camera-recorded environment:

That's what worries critics, who say such recordings could be used for other purposes: What if a parent complains that a teacher uses class time to promote birth control or drug use, or even terrorism?

...mention classroom Webcams to privacy advocates and they get the creeps. ''It seems like you can't opt out,'' says Dan Farmer of Elemental Security in San Mateo, Calif., who has advised Congress on Internet privacy and security issues. ''That's troubling.''

I agree. One science teacher who has used webcams in the past is quoted as saying that everyone should "relax" about the issue - but he also notes that he doesn't agree with the idea of webcam footage being used as evidence in a dispute between teachers and students - ''If it gets to the point where my word against students' isn't good, then I go find another job."

What makes him, or any webcam supporter, think that the footage wouldn't be used in this way, and used often? Not only will teachers be under constant surveillance, but if the videotape shows something different than the teacher's version of a dispute, they'll have a hard time standing their ground.

Nick's got a good discussion of it over on his site, too (scroll down). Joanne Jacobs has a take on it too, and she, like me, understands the theory behind it, but finds it a bit creepy anyway.

Learning with Snakes

Homeschool blogger Daryl Cobranchi took his kids to the Summer Science Days Sunday at the Hagley (DE) museum. His four lovely kids got to admire a lovely corn snake, while Daryl's lovely bride stands a lovely ten feet or so away from the snakey. Aw, c'mon over. He won't bite.

And speaking of Daryl, he's got the goods on the report on the performance of Delaware's schools. Conclusion? "The results aren't pretty: the majority of schools in the state, including 25 of the 28 high schools, fell into the "failing" category..." Go read what else he has to say.

Pennsylvania's struggling schools

How well are the schools in my home state, Pennsylvania, meeting national educational goals? Not too well, according to the Philadelphia Enquirer and the Philly Daily News.

More than half of Pennsylvania's schools, including many in high-achieving suburbs, are not making enough progress toward ambitious federal goals for student achievement, according to data released yesterday.

The state Department of Education said that 1,346 schools had made "adequate yearly progress" on many criteria, including reading and math test scores, attendance, and graduation rates. But 1,440 schools are not improving fast enough for all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014, as required by the landmark legislation called No Child Left Behind....

How did Philadelphia's schools, in particular, do?

Philadelphia's overall performance on the state tests improved this year, with fewer schools designated as being in the worst-performing category...

But the overall count is not enough; the same percentage of students in certain subgroups must also meet that standard. The subgroups include black, Hispanic and Asian students, low-income students, English-language learners, and those with learning disabilities.

The subgroup proficiency requirement is a stickler, and it's part of what accounts for the low grades given to some schools. On the other hand, the required percentages are pretty low, and what's the excuse for not teaching 45% of all kids enrolled to read?

The Daily News article focuses more on the Philadelphia schools, with more specifics about the prevalence of low performers:

Of Philadelphia's 262 schools, only 18 met their yearly targets, the state said. (The school district, however, claiming that 43 schools met their targets, is asking the state to include 25 others.) The report placed schools in seven performance categories. The seventh and lowest category contained 139 schools, all in Philadelphia.

Interestingly, charter schools were also included in this report, but didn't come out looking too pretty. Of Philadelphia's 46 charter schools, only two were found to make adequate improvement. And most of the schools that have been taken over by outside operators such as Edison Schools, Inc, are still stuck near the bottom. Only one of Edison's 12 statewide schools made adequate progress.

By the way, Pennsylvania is one of 21 states that have publicized their reports, and the amount of schools meeting requirements vary widely from state to state (Florida is looking like one of the worst).

Celebrating the Band-aid solution

Nat Hentoff rips apart a "pious" and "self-congratulatory" pro-affirmative-action ad in the July 11th edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education. This ad celebrates the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold the concept of AA, although it ignores the Court's ruling that quota systems, like the one at the University of Michigan, are unconstitutional:

No mention was made, in this tribute to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's deciding vote, about the hidden fact that the University of Michigan's law school, whose case was victorious, operates on a clear quota system in defiance of the 14th Amendment's "equal protection of the laws" and the 1964 Civil Rights Act....

Taylor said that reducing these gaps is "an objective far more vital to the futures of tens of millions of black and Hispanic kids than getting affirmative-action tickets to elite universities for a fortunate, fairly affluent few thousand....

Indeed. This is why I refuse to support AA at the college level. Regardless of the original honorable intention of AA, and the well-meaning of many of its supporters, the fact is that reforming K-12 education is far more important than insuring that one minority kid gets into Harvard rather than U Mass. The goal should not be to institutionalize AA, but to reform education beginning with first grade so that minority kids do not need AA in order to attend college.

Mr. Hentoff poses a question that needs no reply:

...in that Chronicle of Higher Education ad, there is a pious section in which these high-minded influential experts pledge to "work in partnership with primary and secondary educators to dramatically improve the quality of educational outcomes for poor children and children of color."

But where is the action?...Have you seen many of these prestigious champions of "diversity" in college admissions getting down to actually working in the political arena on a long-term basis? Have you seen them fight to ensure that racial preferences for the relatively few in college admissions will no longer be needed?...

I don't agree with Mr. Hentoff on everything (re: his comments on high-stakes testing), but he's right on the money here. The college folks praise "diversity" to the heavens, but are blind to the amount of work needed to provide a diverse, yet academically-prepared, student body.

The real "quagmire" - California's educational system

Pundits are nattering on about the "quagmire" in Iraq, but Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy editorial director K. Lloyd Billingsley sees one closer to home:

Data gathered as part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act found that about 70 percent of California schools fail to meet standards for yearly improvement. While shocking enough, that statistic fails to convey the depth of the problem. In California, even the best students read poorly.

The California Education Report Card, a report by the Pacific Research Institute, noted that last year only 36 percent of fourth-grade students scored at or above proficiency on the English portion of the California Standards Test...These results are among the lowest in the nation.

What could help improve the situation in California? Mr. Billingsley thinks ideas such as tougher standards, charter schools, and an exit exam could work - but all of these are opposed by California's "educators":

There is some hope in California's tough academic content standards, which emphasize core knowledge and skills...Standards and accountability, however, are under attack by teacher unions.

Charter schools are another bright spot but also under attack. Teacher unions are fighting to block a charter school for low-income, minority students at the recently closed Sacramento High School, a project backed by former NBA star Kevin Johnson and one with first-rate staffing and strong community support.

Teachers who oppose standards, unions who oppose privately-funded schools for desperate minority youth, exit exams that are dumbed down and then discounted altogether...I'm not sure even the Terminator could handle this crew.

Parents demand FCAT Exam release

A parent-teacher coalition is agitating in Tallahassee for the release of FCAT exam booklets and answer sheets. They feel more scrutiny is warranted due to the high-stakes nature of the exam:

"Any test used to make life-altering decisions about children should be open to scrutiny," coalition president Gloria Pipkin said during a news media conference.

It's not likely he will do so.

And why not? Well, while groups such as "Free the FCAT" in Florida and "WASL Revolt: Rescuing Kids from Corporate Pedophiles" in Washington might have the right intentions (despite their vulgar and exaggerated names), they aren't cognizant of the financial impact of their requests. Private testing companies such as ETS can create new test forms for every administration because they've got the money and the staff to do so. States often don't have these resources, so they're forced to re-use test forms. Releasing those forms essentially makes them invalid for re-use, so the state either has to find the money and time to create and field-test new forms, or give old forms that will most likely produce a gain in test scores.

FCAT representatives make the claim that parents already received detailed enough information about how their children perform on the important constructs. If so, then it's hard to see this information-gathering movement as an attempt to benefit kids. More likely, it's an attempt to discredit the test, or demonize the test developers, in any way possible.

The parents are probably aware that NCS Pearson, who mistakenly denied diplomas to 7,000 Minnesota students, is the same firm responsible for grading the FCAT. I'm not saying that parents shouldn't be aware of these things, but it would be nice to see a journalist spend a bit more time pointing out just how impractical releasing every FCAT test booklet would be, or to see one challenge the assumption that refusal to release the test forms means the state has something to hide.

Of course, the usual blather about how it's impossible to create a standardized test that's not culturally biased is repeated here:

Marion Brady, vice president of FCAR and a former Brevard County school administrator who lives in Cocoa, opposes the FCAT's use as a high-stakes measure of student progress.

"I don't like the use of the test for such high stakes," Brady said. "It's impossible to write a standardized test that's not culturally biased."

What Ms. Brady really means is that it's not acceptable to write a test that requires all students to understand a core set of basic skills, and understand items about them that are written in Standard English. She's right in line with Senator Wilson, who previously said that the FCAT flunks students who can read perfectly well because it isn't "culturally sensitive". The racism inherent in these types of statements is clear if one examines sample third-grade reading items.

Just once I'd like to see a journalist question one of these crusaders as to where specific cultural insensitivity exists in the FCAT. Take for example Item 3, on page 27 of this document. Who does this discriminate against? What kid in Florida is unfamiliar with the idea that some scary creatures live in the ocean? If anything, you'd think a kid from Idaho would have trouble with this one.

The FCAT's final flunkers

School bells will soon be ringing in Florida, but for more than 1,300 students in Palm Beach, those bells will sound especially familiar. Those students flunked the FCAT in the spring - and flunked exams again after their stint at the summer reading academy - so they'll be repeating the third grade this year:

About 2,800 third-graders failed the reading test last spring. But more than 1,000 were able to proceed to fourth grade, thanks to exceptions to the rule that include passing alternative exams, being a native speaker of a foreign language or submitting a portfolio of work that proved they were working on grade level.

So, over a third passed through exceptions alone - something few reporters,and no testing critics, who cover FCAT controversies tend to mention.

Although some schools will have few retained students this year, others face more substantial numbers that require the schools to reorganize. Forest Park Elementary School in Boynton Beach, which will have 42 repeat third-graders, will add a third-grade class and distribute the some students among its other four third-grade classes.

"We have to rethink how we're approaching how they can be successful," Principal Bill Thompson said. "The old model of everyone getting the same amount of attention from the teacher and everyone having the same size class has not worked. Some students will have to get more attention than others."

Um, yes. Students learn at different rates and some will need extra help. If anything, I hope this moves schools away from the idea that students of differing abilities can easily be combined into one grade-level classroom. Tracking helps all students, while combining heterogenous students leaves the smart ones bored and the not-so-smart ones behind.

MC mathematics hits the streets

Here's a cool new way to learn basic mathematics skills - via hip hop music, i.e., "Schoolhouse Rap.":

Wearing baggy pants and cornrows, a group of hip-hop musicians peddles CDs at a downtown street corner. Lyrics blast out of speakers, the 10-inch woofers and 2-inch tweeters that sit in the back of their van. Listen:

OK, so these aren't Eminem lyrics -- and that's the point. David Printis Sr., his son D.J. and his nephews Alonzo Powell and Everett Roundtree are selling not bootleg rap CDs but Multiplication Hip-Hop. It's intended to teach math to a generation already fluent in rhymes...

Karen Kunkel, an elementary school principal, said she began using Multiplication Hip-Hop last year to teach her second-graders, and she believes the CD is at least partly responsible for her school's improvement on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills, a standardized test given to second-graders in Maryland. In the 2001-2002 school year, 23 percent of her second-graders were proficient in math. This past school year, that number was 72 percent. Educators have long used music to dispel the boredom of rote memorization. If you grew up in the 1970s or '80s, you had Schoolhouse Rock. These kids have Schoolhouse Rap.

I think it's a great idea. Heck, I still remember the preamble to the constitution and my 8 times tables thanks to Schoolhouse Rock. And while these tunes might seem like they should be used only outside the classroom, certainly the technique can be used in some form inside the class as well.

One friend of mine who taught middle-school algebra in North Carolina gave an extra credit project where kids had to compose a song around the quadratic equation - and perform the song in front of the class. She got C&W versions, soul versions, rap versions. The kids had a great time doing it, and none of them screwed up that equation on their final exam (although I bet the room was a bit noisy when they were working problems that required it).

Show and Tell at L.A. High

This man put on a show, and someone obviously told - the police. Granted, it was in the middle of the night, so no students were in danger. Gotta love his explanation for his behavior, though.

The Broadening of the American Test

Sunday's Boston Globe has an article on one crusader's attempts to change the SAT into a "broader, more varied" exam. How broad, you ask? Well, the College Board is apparently still stinging over recent criticism that the SAT measures too narrow a range of abilities, not to mention that inconvenient racial score gap, so they've commissioned various test critics to develop new additions to the SAT to measure qualities ''other than cognitive ability,'' according to VP for research Wayne Camara.

Qualities "other than cognitive ability." That phrase sets off warning bells in my head, and after reading the article, I realize the warnings are there for a reason:

Someday, if [APA President] Robert Sternberg has his way, college applicants across America will be judged according to their answers to a set of questions quite different from the ones they are used to.

What would you do if you had already eaten lunch when you realized you didn't have the cash to pay for it? Or: What would you do if you walked into a party where you didn't know anyone? Or: How would you ask a professor you didn't know well to write you a recommendation? Or: Write a story entitled ''The Octopus's Shoes.''

My, these read very much like...IQ test questions. In fact, they're very similar to WAIS-R (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised) Comprehension items. The items aren't widely available online, but cover topics such as 16 questions covering a wide range of problem situations involving such issues as health, social mores, social judgement, common sense, grasp of social conventions, interpersonal relations, and laws (e.g. “Why do people who want a divorce have to go to court?”). It should be noted that this component is but a small part of what makes up the overall IQ score.

While life might be easier for someone who knows what to do when confronted with a party room full of strangers, what in the Sam Hill does that have to do with collegiate academic abilities? Why should someone who can handle that situation (or can describe how they would handle it) be judged competent to take advanced English and calculus courses? Why is "common sense" being added to a test of cognitive abilities? What about when common sense and creativity are contradictory? (There are several things you could do to get a free lunch, but very few things you should do). And why should free-form creative writing be added when a test of writing skills is already scheduled for inclusion on the SAT in 2005?

Why add these squishy, controversial, subjective concepts to college admissions tests at all?

Why, to close the racial score gap, of course:

As for Sternberg, he says it's his job to invent a test that reflects a more nuanced view of intelligence - not, at this point, to sell that view to the American people. ''If we used the Rainbow Project, you'll find the kids at community colleges who do as well or better than the kids at Yale,'' he said...

''There are people who are really good at traditional tests, who may get 800s, and then when they get out of school, that's the end of the story for them,'' Sternberg said. ''They don't get along with people. They don't persuade people to listen to them.''

Funny, I haven't read about many people who make perfect scores on the SAT but lead terrible lives. I haven't read about many brilliant people who consider their post-collegiate lives to be "the end of the story." The urban legends of the brilliant but antisocial geeks tend to be just that - legends.

Does Sternberg have much data to support his theories? There's his work with the Rainbow Project, in which he attempted to measure creative ability by giving a test to 1,000 subjects. The examinees were asked to dictate stories, write stories, and write captions for cartoons. Points were given for "cleverness, humor, and originality." He allegedly found smaller score gaps on this test than on the SAT, and better prediction of college performances, but I'd like more specifics than this article provides.

How were the students recruited? What was their baseline performance on academic measures? Could they make huge spelling and grammatical errors and still get high scores based on creativity? Which colleges did they ultimately attend? How much smaller were the score gaps on this test than on the SAT? How long did it take to train the raters, and how reliable were their ratings (reliability being a measure of generalizability)? Training a few raters to judge "cleverness, humor, and originality" for 1000 examinees is one thing; training raters who can do this consistently for the 1.5 million examinees who take the SAT every year is another.

What's more, if questions like "If Y = 5 and X = 6, what is Y+X?" are accused of being racially biased, how are you going to design a key for the item, "What would you do if you walked into a party where you didn't know anyone?" that is acceptable to everyone? I would argue that, for this item, there are indeed multiple correct answers based on culture - so many, in fact, that I'd be hard put to say what "correct" means in this case. Could that squishiness be the reason for the reduced score gap; i.e., a wide range of responses were considered to be "correct"?

Notice, too, that the BG reporter skips over asking the obvious question, which is that if an SAT score gap exists, why is the focus on creating new tests that avoid that gap, rather than modifying the K-12 education so that the score gap closes naturally? Why does it make more sense to start measuring "creativity" than to make sure that minority kids learn to read earlier? Why is the focus on the ends, and not the means?

Not everyone is buying Sternberg's theories:

...Sternberg's endeavor is fraught with uncertaintly, not least because his questions challenge traditional concepts of intelligence.

Camara said Sternberg's questions read ''almost like a personality test'' and ''will have to pass the smell test'' with parents and educators. College administrators balk at the idea of requiring another test, which could put them at a competitive disadvantage in the race for applicants. And parents might wonder why their children's future was riding on unorthodox measurements such as skill in writing captions for cartoons.

And parents would be right to do so. If their kids attend public schools, they've been exhaustively tested on reading and mathematics basics, not creativity. If they've been attending private schools, they've most likely been enrolled in demanding academic classes and haven't had much time to waste on writing cartoon captions.

...Despite the calls for a more comprehensive test, said the College Board's Camara, it has been difficult to persuade universities to contribute to the massive endeavor of researching a new test. Then, when it's ready, will admissions offices, parents, and high school principals put credence in a test that asks students how they would deal with an unwelcome guest?

''The biggest issue about viability is not whether we think it's viable, it's whether colleges do it,'' he said. ''It honestly takes courage, it takes good science and good results, and even after that it takes one or two institutions which have a lot of courage to say `We're going to use it.'''

Better get to work on that "good science" part of this, Mr. Camera.

Joanne Jacobs sums it up:

The purpose of the SATs is to evaluate students' likelihood of success in college, not whether they'll do well in later life or be fun at parties. If judging the humor of their cartoon captions is a better predictor of college success than asking them to solve math problems, so be it. I can just see the SAT prep courses where students will drill in "tacit knowledge" and creativity.

Her points are good, especially the one about the creativity drills. If a test is high-stakes, then, regardless of its content, the creation of prep courses for it will be a lucrative business. The claim that a creativity- or common-sense-based test reduces the gap between rich and not-so-rich students will then become moot.

Strangling free speech at Cal Poly

Joanne Jacob's got the goods on the latest news about Steve Hinkle, the Cal Poly student who unwittingly caused an uproar while posting flyers for an upcoming talk in his campus's Multicultural Center. Granted, the book that the black speaker would be promoting at the talk had a provocative title, but it seemed that the white male student was quickly being railroaded on charges of racial harassment. Cal Poly's actions towards the young man have been absolutely outrageous; during a seven-hour hearing, it was decided that Hinkle had disrupted a "Bible study session" and would have to issue a formal apology. The educational foundation FIRE had to step in, and they've printed a copy of the disciplinary hearing transcript on their website. Their conclusion is that Hinkle's First Amendment Rights were violated in this case.

Joanne cites a few lines from the transcript that reveal the "disruption" for what it really was:

The offended students admitted they objected to the content of the flyer, which advertised the speaker's book, It's OK to Leave the Plantation. Here's Hinkle questioning Student 6, who called the police.

S6: You’re talking about Steve’s demeanor? Was his demeanor threatening?
RG: M-hmm, or abusive?
S6: No.

So Hinkle basically tried to have a discussion with a student who questioned the flyer he was posting, and when he asked her to explain her views, in a non-abusive manner, she called the police. Right. Cornel Morton, the VP of student affairs, comes across even more shamefully:

CM: Well, it’s clear that we have an identifiably young white male who has been self-identified as a member of the College Republicans group. And although the College Republican group, I’m certain, is not exclusively white or male, there are some implications. And on the other side of this we had a group of students of color, at least identifiably, largely students of color, and the mix, unfortunately, and the collision of experience, that is, the collision of your experience with theirs, on that day at that time was placed inside a larger context, as you recall. And namely these fliers that were posted and the concern that some had about the nature of the speaker’s message and all the rest …. And then to learn later after some investigation that the College Republicans had sponsored the speaker. I think that chemistry, if you will, without question, had racial implications, not reduced solely or purely to a matter of race. But again, I think we would be naïve if we did not acknowledge at least that; we would have to acknowledge that.

What does Hinkle being a member of the College Republicans have to do with anything? Is that illegal at Cal Poly? Is that justification for calling the police? What does his being white have to do with anything? Is that not part of the "multiculture" in the Multicultural center? And why is the "acknowledgement" that race played some part of this justification for prosecuting Hinkle? Regardless of the race of either party, he was posting flyers for a college-approved talk in a public space, and a few observers decided that he didn't have the right to do that. Why did this lead to the decision that Hinkle was somehow at fault?

As Joanne puts it:

It seems like Morton is acknowledging that Hinkle was disruptive by virtue of being a white Republican in the not-so-multi-cultural center. Apparently, Cal Poly officials think that black students have a right to be sheltered from contrary political beliefs or believers. A polite invitation to discuss a conflict is taken as disruption.

Situation normal - all TAKSed up - UPDATE

The debate over the misleading TAKS math item continues. In my previous post on the topic, I cited Bas Braam's explanation for why the item did seem to have two correct answers, and I agreed with him that this item should have not been approved for administration.

Then an email appeared in my inbox (edited for brevity):

Dear Ms. Swygert:

I am writing to you to discuss an item posted on your blog on August 7, 2003 relating to an alleged faulty question on the Texas Grade 10 math TAKS test...

1. The shape is a regular octagon.
2. A triangle is drawn using one of the octagon's sides as its base.
3. The length of the sides of the triangle are defined to be 4.6 centimeters.
4. The altitude of the triangle is defined to be 4.0 cm.
5. The right angle symbol at the intersection of the base and the altitude along with the equal sides establishes that the triangle is an isosceles triangle (I think I have remembered the term correctly).
6. The drawing of the triangle APPEARS to show that the peak of the triangle is NEAR the center of the octagon.

Nowhere does the following fact appear:
1. The peak of the triangle is precisely at the center of the octagon. (Nor do any of the facts in combination allow a conclusion that the peak is the center of the octagon).

The alternate answer is based upon an APPARENT contradiction which in turn is based on a FACT that IS NOT PRESENTED as part of the question...

In other words, because the item doesn't state that the peak of the triangle in question is in fact the center of the octagon, the student shouldn't have assumed that it was. I appreciate that this reader took the time to write in with a lengthy explanation, because it might explain what the test developers were thinking.

I still say, however, that because the peak certainly appears to be near the center, this is a flawed item. These drawings are supposed to be precise, and it would not be surprising for a kid to make this assumption.

I also note that the instructions for the math section do not include any disclaimers such as, "Diagrams of shapes are not drawn to scale, and assumptions of placements of points, angles, etc. should not be made unless stated as fact." I have seen similar instructions for other exams, but I don't see that here.

Bas notes that the item, if read in this way, does indeed have one correct answer (see Addendum):

Please see the figure accompanying question 8 in the exam. The line segments that I described as inner and outer radii are not, in fact, identified as such in the figure or in the question. They meet at a point that certainly appears to be the center of the octagon, but that is not labelled either. There is, therefore, a reading of the question under which it has a single correct answer. Under that reading the given data are all correct, the special point is not meant to be the center of the octagon, and the figure is simply distorted in what happens to be a highly misleading way.

I still say that by including a triangle that appears to be placed at the center, with no qualifying statement as to what assumptions can be made, this is a bad item.

Bas also notes that quality control for TAKS does not seem to be very good:

The TEA (Texas Education Authority) put out an Additional Information Regarding Released Science Items for the spring 2003 testing cycle. Four controversial items are discussed.

Grade 11 Science, Items 11 and 45. Question 11 asks for the force exerted by a jumping frog on a leaf. The force has two components: one due to the weight of the frog and the other due to its acceleration. These are to be added vectorially, but the direction of the jump is not given. The TEA insists that therefore the correct treatment of the question must ignore the weight of the frog. Obviously the question is wrong and the TEA is wrong to insist that it is correct...

And so on. Bas believes "it is too much to ask of the psychometric process that it correct for blunders of this kind," but in fact that's why field-tested items should be examined so closely. If an item is good, and it's related to the topic of the test, then it should have a large positive correlation with the total test score, and the smarter students should be more likely to choose the correct answer than any other. If there are no attractive distractors, then no incorrect answer should be preferred over any other. These methods can help flag some invalid items - not all, of course, but that's no reason not to closely examine the statistics.

Ending Affirmative Action

And speaking of affirmative action (see previous post, below), a new American Bar Association poll supports Den Beste's thesis by showing that 69% of Americans believe the need for AA in college admissions will end within 25 years. The usual grain-of-salt arguments must be made for these results, given that it's a telephone survey of slightly over 1000 respondents, with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.

Other findings:

Seventy percent of respondents said they agree with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who wrote in June that although the Constitution allows race to be a factor in college admissions now, there should be no need for that consideration in a quarter-century.

Supporters of affirmative action say a variety of factors, including inadequate public education in many minority neighborhoods, means that minorities often do not score as well on standardized tests and other measures that colleges use to screen applicants.

This may be true, but such supporters almost never offer an explanation as to how lowering standards for minority college admissions will make up for the inadequate public education that the minority students in question have received. What makes more sense - for an elite college to admit a minority student who is not academically prepared, for the sake of "diversity"; or for a community college to admit that same student and teach them on the level at which they are currently performing, so that they may make genuine improvements?

It continues to amaze me that AA supporters do not see the dangers inherent in admitting students to colleges for which they are not prepared, nor do they see the part that AA plays in allowing inadequate public schools to remain inadequate.

Den Beste on the California Recall

I haven't posted much about the recall for California's governor, despite the humor motherlode that results from both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Arianna Huffington racing for the gold. But I thought this Steven Den Beste article did a good job of summing up what is likely to be one of the more important debate topics in the election:

A few years ago, the voters of the State of California passed an initiative which made it illegal for the University of California to use race as a factor in admissions decisions. Not, mind, that this stopped the regents from doing so anyway. They just

Whatever else it might be, just how can a ballot initiative be considered anti-democratic? Doesn't "democracy" mean "government obeys the will of the voters as expressed in elections"? This is part of the upside-down campus new-speak, where censorship promotes free speech and discrimination promotes equality and color-blind rules are bigotry...

...And objective standardized tests are automatically "culturally" or "racially" biased and somehow less fair than the less-precise, more subjective "performance assessments".

Giving "opportunities" to young criminals

Joanne Jacobs explains just how a Los Angeles school in which students commit 134 school-related felonies during one school year is nonetheless not "persistently dangerous":

[From the article] ....crimes connected to Locke (meaning they were committed against faculty or students at the school, adjacent to the school, at a school event, or in transit to or from the school)...in 2000-2001...were 13 sex offenses, 43 robberies, 2 weapons possessions, 57 batteries, and 19 assaults with a deadly weapon. In 2001-2002, there was 1 sex offense, 10 robberies, 31 property crimes, 19 batteries, and 3 assaults with a deadly weapon.

These numbers weren't aberrant, by the way; one can calculate from the numbers given in the article that Locke averages 113 such incidents a year.

Joanne's explanation?

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, students enrolled in a "persistently dangerous school" have the right to transfer to a safer school in the district. But each state defines dangerous. California says a "persistently dangerous" school must "expel more than 1 percent of its students for any of nine types of crimes in each of three consecutive years."

There are no "persistently dangerous schools" in Arkansas, Georgia, Florida and Illinois either.

To put it another way: What if you bought a house in a neighborhood based on a realtor's recommendation that the area was "not dangerous," only to find out that "dangerous" was defined not as the number of crimes reported to police each year, but the percent of times that someone was incarcerated for one of these crimes? Would you think it fair if you were then trapped in that house and that neighborhood?

In each of these scenarios, the authorities (the school authorities or the real estate agent) benefit through shady statistics. Those who have to live with the crime every day are the real losers.

The "Utopian idea" of non-racism

John of Discriminations covers a discussion on affirmative action that was sponsored by the Associated Press. The participants were a dozen high school students who are attending the University of Maryland’s Young Scholars Program. The discussion was presented in the Washington Post as, "Students Divided on Affirmative Action." John noticed that several of the quotes presented a very one-sided and unenlightening view of AA:

...the students were united in believing that their college experiences will be better if they choose a place with a diverse student body.

Not surprising, if you let each student decide what "diverse" means. Did every student, though, agree that their college experiences would be enhanced through racially-diverse populations? That's the pertinent question.

Chrisheena Hill, a black senior from Niagara Falls, N.Y., said affirmative action can still help minorities get into places that might otherwise be shut off from them.

Yes, AA can help minorities get into places shut off from them; that's the definition of AA. But has Ms. Hill considered that simply being a minority might not be a good reason to gain admission to a college? Colleges, by definition, must shut out some students, presumably on the basis of academic performance. If a minority student has shown poor academic performance, why should a college be advised to admit that student anyway?

"It gives us a chance to get our foot in the door to prove ourselves," [Ms. Hill] said, pointing out that – even with affirmative action – whites far outnumber minorities on American college campuses.

Why should a minority who didn't prove themselves during high school be given preference over anyone, minority or not, who did prove themselves during high school? Why is college now the place where one should begin to prove oneself? If that's true, it's a stinging indictment of the K-12 system - and AA at the college level allows high school students to continue to do bad work, and allows high school teachers to continue with bad teaching.

Also, whites far outnumber blacks, and every other race, in the general population, and that's not unrelated to the fact that whites far outnumber minorities in college populations. In the 2000 Census, 77.1% of respondents checked "White" as their race. Ergo, any campus that has three times as many white students as non-white students is neither "undiverse" nor racist, but are simply reflective of the population statistics.

Another black student in this discussion referred to race-blind admissions policies as "a very Utopian idea," and said that "We live in a world rooted in race and racism..it's always going to be an issue." Why is this an acceptable argument for the reverse racism of AA? Isn't this a pretty pessimistic viewpoint? What if the attitude of civil-rights activists in the 1960's had been, "It's too Utopian to imagine a color-blind world where we'd be judged on the content of our character, not the color of our skin, so let's just give up now"?

As John puts it:

Of course, the fact that race may “always be an issue” (always?) doesn’t mean that the best way to deal with it is to teach young blacks to play the race card whenever it serves their interest and to regard the principle that people should be treated without regard to race as hopelessly utopian.

Catching cheaters on the FCAT

Devoted Reader Nick sent along a followup to the story of the FCAT cheating allegations in Broward County. Don't remember that story? Neither do I, because I missed it when it first broke back in July. FCAT tampering was suspected at several schools because of unusual gains in the state-issued grades, which are dependent on FCAT performances:

Department of Education officials are looking into some results at Jackson Senior High. They have also requested more information from West Little River Elementary after the school's state-issued grade jumped from an F to an A following three years of Ds.

The problem at West Little River [Elementary school] appears most significant in the third grade, where 51 percent of the students were in the top two of five FCAT reading levels -- a highly unusual number for a school with such historically poor grades.

The large-score-gains method isn't the only one available for discovering potential cheaters. As with most high-stakes exams, the seating charts ing classrooms were saved for further analysis, so that aberrant classrooms, or clumps of high-performers all seated next to one another, could be flagged.

What's more, students took a norm-referenced test one week after the FCAT, and those scores are normally correlated. If not, that could indicate cheating on either exam - but the Florida DOE doesn't actually have the software necessary to compare performances on these two exams.

There's one elementary school in particular that has been the focus of investigation:

In Broward, the state is finishing an investigation at Park Ridge Elementary, the only case in that county in which widespread tampering is suspected. The Pompano Beach school had a D grade from 1999 to 2001, and then rocketed to an A in 2002.

The jump was so dramatic that Broward testing officials began reviewing the data, and the state quickly followed. The school's letter grade plummeted to an F this year, when the school was being watched closely. The fallout is still being felt. Grades are based in part on how much students improve, and it's hard to better a high score that wasn't truly earned in the previous year.

So, I missed this when it first happened, but thanks to Nick, I know the followup, which seems to be that no criminal charges will be filed against schools with suspicious scores, but administrators aren't yet off the hook:

No criminal charges will be filed in a case of possible FCAT cheating at Park Ridge Elementary in Pompano Beach, but teachers and administrators could still be disciplined...The Broward state attorney's office said there was statistical evidence of tampering by teachers and possibly administrators during the high-stakes test in 2002. But it was doubtful that a jury could be convinced of their guilt...

However, Hollar wrote ''there is no conclusive supporting testimony to substantiate the claims.''

Hence the decision not to put this in front of a jury. And the check-mark thing - I know from experience that test-takers often mark their booklets as they're working. A check could mean that the test taker was sure of that answer and didn't need to come back to it. However, these are third-graders we're talking about, and the possibility that the students used it as a time-management strategy might be less likely than the possibility that teachers marked the booklets to indicate the correct answers.

The statistical evidence is, to me, damning (which may be why I rarely get chosen for jury duty). Park Ridge went from being in the bottom 200 of over 1700 schools to being in the top 14? That's an impossible jump. One administrator surmised that a combination of compassion and fear might lead teachers to help kids cheat, but teaching kids to cheat on tests is not by any means compassionate. It's immoral, and the only person who truly benefits from it is the teacher, because they will appear to have taught their students well. And fear should be an impetus to improve performance, not to sidestep indicators of performance.

"The Lord shall smite Francis Slay"

I imagine there are quite a few school board members around the country who, at one time or another, get aggravated with the local governments. Perhaps the government wants to cut costs, or close schools, or wipe out jobs. It's understandable that perhaps a member of a school board might want to fire off a letter to a mayor or governor regarding a controversial decision.

However, it's doubtful that this approach would ever be productive. Entertaining for reporters, perhaps, but not productive.

And isn't "you are cursed with a curse" redundant? Who taught her to write?

Situation Normal - All TAKSed Up

Edu-bloggers Daryl Cobranchi and Bas Braams are all over the TAKS, now that a defective item was just recalled on the 10th-grade math portion of the exam. The official Texas Education Agency press release is here.

What went wrong in the Lone Star State? Seems those dadgum octagons were confusing everyone. The incorrect item (number 8 in this document) asks students to find the perimeter (to the nearest centimeter) of the regular octagon shown. If you knew the length of one side, this would be easy, but students were provided only with the inscribed radius (distance center to flat edge) and circumscribed radius (distance center to angle between edges).

Problem is, the data as provided are, as Bas will be happy to explain to you, contradictory. For the inscribed radius of a regular octagon to be 4 cm, the circumscribed radius would have to be 4.33 cm, not 4.6 as shown:

Taking the 4.0cm and 4.6cm at face value a student might reason that the perimeter of the octagon is somewhere between 2*pi*4.0cm and 2*pi*4.6cm, and this leads to the answer 27cm in the multiple choice format. Or the student could apply trigonometry and obtain perimeter 26.5cm by starting from the given inscribed radius or 28.2cm by starting from the given circumscribed radius. A fourth approach is to use Pythagoras's theorem on a right triangle that has hypothenuse 4.6cm and one right side 4.0cm; then one finds that the circumference of the octagon must be 36.3cm. That (or rather, 36cm) was the intended answer.

According to the TEA press release, "item eight on the 10th grade math test could have been read in such a way that the question had more than one correct answer". That is putting a very kind spin on their blunder - there is in fact no reading of the question under which it has just one correct answer.

Bas doesn't miss a trick - he also quotes the portion of the press release which states that, "Each test item goes through a rigorous review process..", including review sessions by "professional educators who have subject-area and grade-level expertise." He's right to say that this reflects badly on the professional educators in question, but if this item was in fact field-tested, the psychometricians should have caught it as well.

One of the nifty things you learn in psychometrics training is that it's quite easy to check statistics that will tell you what the key (correct answer) to an item is, and quite easy to see if an item has been miskeyed or has two correct answers. One way to do this is to see how performance on the item correlates with test performance as a whole, and to see what percentage of the high scorers are choosing which item options. In the field test data, this item should have been flagged, because the smarter kids, instead of choosing just one answer, were probably choosing both correct answers in equal numbers.

It's possible that the smarter kids were the only ones using the Pythagorean theorem method (although the teacher who caught the mistake thought the smarter kids would be using the trigonometry method). But if the answer of "27" wasn't supposed to be an attractive distractor (an incorrect answer that an examinee would reach through incomplete reasoning), then that answer shouldn't have been chosen more than any other of the incorrect options. I wonder if any of the field test item stats looked peculiar, and just weren't caught.

The really scary number here? Almost 4,700 kids who failed will now pass because of this one item.

The heartbreaking story of Philly's Smith Playground

I meant to blog about this a few weeks ago, but a comment today from one reader reminded me. It seems there's this lovely, historic playground in Philadelphia that has been a beloved outing spot for parents and kids for the last 104 years. Now, though, it's closed - because the owners don't have the $1 million needed to bring up it up to safety standards. Daily News reporter Ronnie Polaneczky's description of the playground is hilarious:

If you haven't been to Smith, you probably don't have children. But you don't need them to experience the thrill of wandering among playground equipment that reminds you so viscerally of your own childhood: that resilient world where, when you got hurt, you knew it was your own stupid fault and learned to be more careful next time.

My God, it's a fun place.

Polaneczky also noted that his daughter played more carefully on these swings and rides because she could tell that more care was required - unlike on today's personality-free plastic doodads.

The battle for education in New Mexico

Two amendments to New Mexico's constitution will go before voters this fall, and both are related to improving public education. Interestingly, support for the amendments is not split evenly among political party lines. Alamagordo Daily News writer Michael Shinabery gives this description of the educational debate:

The first constitutional amendment is two-fold. It seeks to “transfer the State Department of Public Education to a cabinet department,” and “create an elected public education commission.”

If successful, [Democratic Gov. Bill] Richardson could appoint a “secretary of public education” as early as Sept. 24... the secretary will only be accountable to the governor...the secretary “shall have administrative and regulatory powers and duties, including all functions relating to the distribution of school funds and financial accounting for the public schools.”

Some claim that this cabinet secretary will reduce accountability to taxpayers, but apparently, in a state where half the budget goes to education, the governor doesn't really know where that money goes[!]. The cabinet secretary would be in charge of that, and would be held accountable.

The second amendment increases distributions from the Land Grant Permanent Fund to, among other things, raise teacher pay...What voters are being asked is to raise the Land Grant Fund’s annual distribution. Currently, it is 4.7 percent, as voters established in 1996. If the amendment is approved on Sept. 23, the payout will rise to 5.8 percent for eight years, Marquardt said, providing an average $72 million per year.

The question is, will having more money available mean that New Mexico's test scores will rise? Shinabery notes that education funding in New Mexico has increased by $800 million over the last eight years, with a statewide budget now at $1.9 billion - but New Mexico's NAEP scores consistently lag well behind national averages.

LEAPing into school grades

Standardized testing opponents who get upset when tests are used to make high-stakes decisions are going to be mighty unhappy with the Jefferson (LA) school parish, now that Jefferson is tying grades to test performance:

One parish school system has added more incentive for students to perform well on the standardized tests used by the state to judge public schools. Now the students who take such tests will see their scores factored into their own grades in subjects including English, mathematics, science and social studies.

"It has grown in majority opinion that this would bring students to really read the test, take the test seriously," Jefferson Parish superintendent Diane Roussel said. "And this would give us a more accurate reflection of what they need to know."

Whoo. Hear that kids? If you didn't take the tests seriously before, you had better do so now. But why do I get the hunch that this is meant to prevent grade inflation, rather than meant to motivate kids to do better?

And the critics are already complaining:

The plan has some critics, however, including C.C. Campbell-Rock, co-founder of the New Orleans-based group Parents for Educational Justice, which opposes the state's use of the LEAP to hold back some students.

"That's just adding more test to the testocracy we already have," Campbell-Rock said. "We now have a system where tests are driving the entire system."

As the president of the East bank Parents Advisory Council points out, the tests in fact will account for only 25 percent of the last-quarter grades, which translates to one-sixteenth of the grades for the entire year. Hardly a situation in which tests are "driving the entire system." And can we call a moratorium on the nonsense term "testocracy"? Testing critics rarely offer support for the claim that tests measure nothing except the ability to take tests, so ranking students by test scores is the same as ranking them by academic achievement or ability, which has always been a large part of our educational system.

On the other hand, though, it remains to be seen if LEAP scores are in fact useful or valid when used in this manner. If the LEAP content is in sync with the classroom content, then this might be useful - but it will be interesting to see any opposition that arises from the teachers who have to use it in this manner.

Lieberman's folly

The Shark Blog has a review of the Democratic presidential candidates' pitches to various labor unions (not surprisingly, given the Shark's views, it's entitled, "Dumb politicians pitching dumb proposals to dumb voters"). The Shark identifies only one candidate, Joe Lieberman, as having "the beytsim to tell the union bosses the truth," and their reaction is revealing:

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who has portrayed himself as the most centrist candidate, sought to stand out tonight as he refrained from offering unabashed endorsements of union positions.

"I'm going to speak the truth," Mr. Lieberman said. "I'm going say what I think is best for America regardless. This is an experiment. Try it for three to four years, limit it to poor children, don't take any money out of public school budgets."

Giving poor children money to go to better schools - that's boo-worthy? Sad.

The other me

Did I ever mention that I was married back when I started graduate school? I had my married name for three years or so, and so my masters degree - and some of the publications on my vita - are in the name of Kimberly Raines. I really liked my married last name, but really disliked my ex-husband, at least once he became the ex, so I went back to Swygert. A lot of my current friends, though, met me as Kimberly Swygert Raines.

Today, a friend of mine who works at ETS obviously has too much on his hands, because he sent me a site that reviews the work of another Kimberly Raines. Let's just say the topic of her writing is a tad more exciting than standardized testing.

Happy, with snakes

I just bought this 1927 photo reprint off eBay, and it arrived today. I'm so happy with it. It's going to go above the python cage - I'm starting a collection of vintage herpetological prints and illustrations. If you see any in an antique or bookstore near you, grab 'em for me, and I'll pay you back.

The Decline and Fall of German Education

Misha, aka the Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, uncovered an interesting tidbit of international education news: The system of public education in Germany seems to be failing. The article envisions German parents "awakening" to the realization that their schools are not performing well, which leads Misha to the question, "[Sniff....] Is that ClueCoffee™ we smell brewing?":

It sounds like every child's dream: only 4 1/2 hours of school a day, no attendance taken, a free day if a teacher is sick, no punishment for playing hooky. But this is no dream, as Germans have suddenly awakened to discover; it's the sorry state of their schools...

Things have gotten so bad that not only parents are complaining. Even some high school students grumble that it's hard to take school seriously...The real wake-up call came last year when an international test of 15-year-olds ranked Germany 21st out of 32 leading industrialized nations in reading, mathematics and science.

What's the solution? Well, , as expected, the politicians are proposing mo' money:

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government has responded by pledging $4 billion over the next five years to create all-day programs for elementary and secondary schools, improve teacher training and revamp classwork to encourage skills instead of rote learning.

Dude, if they're only in class 4 & 1/2 hours a day and attendance isn't taken, what makes you think they're exposed even to rote learning? The first change shouldn't be in the curriculum; it should be in the expectation that students should be prepared to attend school all day, every day.

More typically, German pupils are home by early afternoon - after three hours of classes in elementary school and less than five hours at middle and high schools. German pupils are also tracked after fourth grade into secondary schools that determine whether they will learn a trade or vocation or go on to university.

That sounds a bit like the high-stakes third grade testing that so many people are apoplectic about here in the US. At least here, you can get promoted to fourth-grade in Florida if you fulfill requirements other than the FCAT. Can you imagine the outcry if Florida's fourth-graders were tracked into their secondary schools at that point?

The reasons for the decline are many, but Germany's case is worse, say educators, because it took so long to realize the system was in trouble. "In countries like Britain or the United States there is a tradition of monitoring education that allows them to see what works and what doesn't," said Cordula Artelt, an education expert with the Max Planck Institute in Germany. "We haven't done that. We have almost no indication of how well the system is working."

Can you say, "accountability"? It's been a while since my college German classes, so I can't do the exact translation. One online dictionary gives the German for "to be accountable for" as "verantwortlich sein für." I'm not sure of the correct phrase - and it seems like the German education establishment isn't either.

What's worse is that what accountability there is starts too late and isn't sufficient. While we argue over the feasibility of giving high-stakes test to third-graders, German schools don't even give grades until that point, because they're considered "bad for self-esteem." So assessment begins at grade three, but tracking into college or vocational schools begins at grade four? That seems rather odd. If anything would ruin self-esteem, I think it would be the discovery at age 9 that you can't read, but you're told that at age 10 your life is going to be mapped out for you based on your reading skills.

Also, the public system is, even more so than over here, all that's available. There are few private high schools and almost no private universities. Only around 1/3 of Germany's students earn college degrees, which take on average seven years to obtain. And if kids are tracked into college based on fourth-grade performance, my guess is that homeschooling really isn't an option.

Moriarty, a commenter on the AIR site, had this to say:

No surprises, really. The Germans decided long ago that they could discern your most useful place in society when you turn 10 or so. You're either tracked for the university, business college or a trade school. No arguments and no turning back. Their system has been slowly self-destructing for decades.

The question now is, "What do they plan on doing about it?" My most recent contact with friends and relatives there (one of whom is a teacher) suggests that German teachers are in deep trouble. It seems that if a kid doesn't like you, he can leave your class and go elsewhere. Given a relative oversupply of teachers (due to declining birth rates,) you can quickly find yourself out of a job if you actually expect some work out of your charges.

Eek.

Accountability in the Gem State

Young Idahoians are soon to be jumping through the same exit exam hurdles as kids in California, Florida, and the like. The State Accountability Commission members haven't yet set the year in which graduation exams will be implemented, but they are recommending that this type of exam be put to use:

The State Accountability Commission stopped short of setting the year for implementing the mandatory test for graduation in submitting the proposal to the board for review on Aug. 14. A public hearing was expected to be set for October with final board approval before year's end...

Under the commission proposal, students who fail the test could appeal to the local school board to take a different form of assessment to gain a diploma. But McGee called that provision a "safety net" that she did not expect to be used frequently.

I believe Ms. McGee is being rather naive about the frequency of use for that safety net, given that local educators are already raising a ruckus about the unfairness of holding all of Idaho's students accountable with this one test:

Some school superintendents welcomed the provision for appeals, but Sam Byrd, Idaho Migrant Council director, objected to any high-stakes tests because they put many Hispanic and other minority students at a disadvantage. "We're opposed to any type of test that in and of itself acts as a silver bullet," Byrd said.

Meridian School District Superintendent Christine Donnell expressed the same concern about pinning graduation on a single test..."There are some students that just don't do well on tests," Donnell said. "If we can find an alternate assessment that would measure what they've learned, I think it would be better for all concerned."
In what seems to be part of the same story (but is reported from a different location), the doomsayers have already emerged:

District 25 Curriculum Coordinator Black said she thinks the "high stakes" test will put more pressure on the students. "I don't think it's wise to make any major decisions on a child based on one test and one time," Black said. "There are just some students who don't test well."

Black said she is concerned about Native American and Hispanic students because they traditionally don't test well on standardized tests. "To stop them from graduating is a high penalty," Black said.

No, to give them a high school diploma when they can't demonstrate basic achievement in reading and mathematics is the high penalty. Again, we have here the smoke screen of educrats who want to convince us that the diploma is all that matters, not the work that went into it.

If Native American and Hispanic students are indeed performing worse on these tests, now is the time to ask why, rather than casting about for loopholes. Do they not understand the purpose of the tests? Have they no experience with practicing for exams? Are they buying into the hype that the tests are culturally biased? Or are they stuck in classes with teachers who don't believe in drilling them on basic skills?

McGee said she has been looking at past Idaho Standards Achievement Test scores and only 36 percent of the Hispanic students have passed. She said the percentage is not acceptable and no student should be left behind from getting a minimum education.

No student will be left behind when teachers improve teaching, not when tests are removed. Removing the exit exam only allows bad teaching to continue. And students are expected to have about ten chances to pass the exit exam, with the option to bank the sections they pass for use on subsequent tests. If only 36 percent of Hispanic students pass under those conditions, something is seriously wrong, and it probably isn't with the exam.

Although the date of implementation has not been set, the classic exit exam phenomenon symptoms are already evident in Idaho. The passing requirements have been set to be extremely loose, a safety net is in place for those "test-anxiety" sufferers, and the racially-focused pessimists are already issuing dark predictions about the wholesale failure of certain minority groups to pass even these extremely low requirements. It's all there. Only thing left to come are the lawsuits.

Zero tolerance vs. civil rights

In Florida, the zero-tolerance supporters are locking horns with civil-rights groups. Who will come out on top?

...Indian River County's zero tolerance effort has been successful at curbing school violence without unnecessarily damaging children's scholastic futures with criminal records, said Sheriff's Office spokesman Detective Joe Flescher.

While some Indian River County School District officials agreed with Flescher, a recent study released by a Washington, D.C.-based civil rights group has criticized the effort, calling zero tolerance a miserable failure that has replaced trips to the principal's office with trips to jail...

Florida's zero-tolerance law require the school districts to suspend or expel students for serious crimes only, and law enforcement officers must be contacted as well. The Advancement Project, which is the civil-rights group who did a study entitled "Derailed: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track," contradicts this policy by claiming that most arrests are for minor, not major, offenses.

For example, Palm Beach County last year saw a felony charge of throwing a deadly missile for a 15-year-old carrying an egg in his pocket on Halloween, and trespass charges against a 6-year-old for cutting across school property after hours. Broward County saw automatic expulsion for a student who found a knife in the seat of his school bus and tried to bring it to the driver's attention...

Thank God eggs, cutting across yards, and ratting to authority figures were not considered felonies when I was young - I never would have made it through elementary school.

In Indian River County, a total of 23 juveniles were arrested on school grounds in 2002, including nine weapon-related arrests and three-drug related arrests. Thus far this year, a 17-year-old high-school student was arrested for allegedly intending to deal cocaine and 9-year-old Sebastian resident was charged with felony battery after kicking his teacher in the groin.

Dealing drugs and assualting others is more serious, although I doubt whether anyone too young to understand the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor should be charged with either one.

Indian River County School Board Vice Chairman Herb Bailey hits the nail on the head with this statement:

"If you don't have it, where do you draw the line?" he said. "I don't see any unfair punishments here. I don't want any weapons or dugs on our campuses under any circumstances for the safety of our kids."

Schools don't know where to draw the lines anymore, and it's partially their fault. Dangerous kids have been mainstreamed into regular classes, all in the name of "egalitarianism." Lessons in manners and comportment are decried as elitist and stuffy. Schools back down to parents who sue when their kids are disciplined for shouting, cussing, acting out, or just being rude. For the past several decades, schools have been aiming for more "child-centered" warm and fuzzy ways of teaching, and these zero-tolerance rules are the unavoidable result of discovering that some kids will not choose on their own to behave.

The Blame Game in the Middle East

Are US teachers regularly receiving biased instruction about Israel and the Middle East? That's the claim investigated by Sean Cavanagh in Education Week, where he claims that such taxpayer-supported programs as the National Resource Centers are encouraging "anti- Israel, anti-United States, and decidedly left-leaning biases" in their audiences of middle- and high-school teachers. Teachers attend these NRC sessions in order to gain information about what to teach their students, which is important in our post-9/11 world. Some claim that what teachers learn there is one-sided:

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Capitol Hill lawmakers have shown a hunger for Middle Eastern education programs, for both government workers and average citizens. Three years ago, funding for area studies stood at roughly $21.3 million; by 2003, it had risen to $30 million...

On his Web site, www.martinkramer.org, Mr. Kramer said the speakers at the workshop—which he noted was held on the same day a statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in central Baghdad—offered views exclusively opposed to the U.S. policy in Iraq, or the American-led war in that country.

Some of this controversy is murky, and appears to be a "he-said/she-said" situation. However, I'm automatically suspicious about the comment made by Khalil Jahshan, a Washington consultant on the Middle East, in which he encourages "teachers to avoid playing 'the blame game' in describing why past peace negotiations" in the Mideast have failed.

One could interpret this as a refusal to blame Israel for everything that has gone wrong, which is certainly what some groups have done - but it could also be an instruction to teachers to avoid placing any blame whatsoever on any participants, even on terrorist groups and inhumane actions. I wouldn't want a teacher to present the Holocuast to students in a way that avoids the "blame game," and I think a multicultural, nonjudgmental description of current Mideast events would also be incorrect. We can argue about the "root causes" of suicide bombing, but the question of whether suicide bombing is destructive, immoral, and futile shouldn't be up for discussion.

Walking the walk, talking the talk - updated

Here's more on the story of the hapless school superintendent who failed to pass a literacy test that was required for teachers - Massachusett's education leaders are "lining up" to support him. Sheesh.

Governor Mitt Romney and state education leaders lined up yesterday to defend the Lawrence school superintendent, who is leading one of the state's most troubled school systems despite having failed a state-mandated writing test for educators three times...Romney said it is more important for teachers to pass an English fluency test required under the state's new English immersion law than for superintendents to pass the five-year-old licensing test Laboy failed.

Unbelievable. It's not as important for a school superintendent to be as skilled in English as the teachers. Isn't he in a position of authority over these teachers? And didn't he suspend teachers who didn't pass their literacy test? Just because he doesn't come in direct contact with kids doesn't mean he deserves to earn a six-figure salary with less English proficiency than the teachers in question...

Romney's remarks drew angry responses from leaders of the state's two teachers unions, who blasted him for what they called a double standard. They said it was unfair for state officials to espouse tough accountability rules for teachers to speak English and for students to pass the MCAS exam, but not for Laboy.

''So classroom teachers should have higher standards than the superintendent?'' said Kathleen A. Kelley, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers. ''I think it's totally inconsistent with what the governor has said in the past and somewhat ludicrous to say the chief operating officer of the school system should have less of a standard than classroom teachers.''

Damn straight, Kathleen. I don't often agree with teacher's union representatives, but I certainly do here. The state, and the governor, are wrong to back this horse.

Laboy isn't doing much to help his case, either...

Laboy did not return telephone calls yesterday. In an interview with The Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, which first reported Laboy's problems with the exam, he called the test ''stupid'' and said it is irrelevant to his work. He told the newspaper that he passed the reading section of the communications test the second time, but has failed the writing part three times. The next tests are Sept. 13 and Nov. 22, according to the Department of Education website.

Good to know a school superintendent in the United States considers English literacy to be irrelevant to his work. I suggest moving him to a job where English is truly irrelevant. Anyone got a good suggestion?

Rebooting the system

The good news: Kids are now more likely than ever to have wired classrooms and easy access to computers.

The bad news: Teachers often aren't trained to teach kids how to use the computers.

WHEN KIDS GO back to school next month, odds are good that their classrooms will have computer technology in them. But odds are equally as good that teachers won't be prepared to effectively use that tech...

Tech training [for teachers] requires time and money that is in short supply...

What's more, it's not just a matter of training. Teachers are less eager than their students to put lesson plans and tests on computers - "chalk doesn't crash." Even teachers who are knowledgeable and eager give in when faced with anti-tech administrators.

This is a shame, because if there's any group that keeps harping about making schoolwork more fun and creative, with less effort, it's the public education community, and this is where computers can add so much. They aren't magic wands to solve problems - giving kids computers won't teach them to read any more than giving them calculators teaches them math - but the skills that children can learn in wired classrooms will not only make learning more fun, but better prepare them for the real world outside.

The Neo-Segregationists

Mark Steyn comments on the new segregation in high schools, and marvels at the emphasis placed on self-esteem and the virtual invisibility of true academic standards. And he grasps just why phenomenons such as the segregated high school for gay teenagers are occuring:

[New Yorks Conservative Party Chairman] Mike Long is missing the point. Schools today are not primarily in the history or math business. Instead, they teach ''self-esteem.'' The late Bill Henry, in his wonderfully gloomy book about political correctness, summed it up in the banner fluttering proudly over the entrance to one Midwestern schoolhouse: ''We celebrate ourselves.'' That's the spirit, kids. If you can't get a prize for Latin, give yourself one just for being you!

But, even though to some of us the self-esteem levels of American youth seem alarmingly high, the British system has no chance of catching on. We celebrate ourselves. And, as black history and gay high school and transgendered kindergarten suggest, ultimately the best place to celebrate yourself is without anyone else getting in the way.

The "progressive" educational philosophies of promoting self-esteem without the requirement of genuine academic achievement, and of encouraging self-segregation and victimology as a means to increase self-esteem, are some of the most damaging ideas currently in use in our public schools. And it's not surprising that standardized tests are under such vicious attack from the neo-segregationist self-esteem crowd.

An SAT question doesn't care if you're gay. It doesn't care if you've had a hard life. It doesn't care how you're feeling about yourself at the moment. Either you know the answer, or you don't, and you only get credit if you know the answer. All these other "intangibles," from self-image to sexual identity, don't mean squat when it comes time to do those multiple-choice items. These kinds of tests are truly egalitarian, and that's a concept the fuzzy, subjective, special-rights crowd abhors.

(Oh, yeah, Joanne Jacobs found this first. She also found links related to the literacy test flap, so go read my updates on it. )

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Hey, I feel like I've deluged you guys with testing-related material today. Although that's ostensibly what this blog is about, I like to mix it up sometimes, throw in a little "diversity" (heh). I love lists, so here's a little primer on My Favorite Things Right Now In No Particular Order. Maybe you'll enjoy some of them, too.

1. Standup comedian Mitch Hedberg is one of the funniest guys around. Think of a pathologically shy and somewhat stoned Steven Wright, and you're 75% there. The rest is indescribably nonsequitural goofiness. He wears dark sunglasses on stage and hides behind his curtain of hair, and just rambles this incredibly funny stuff. On his page, scroll down to the Comedy Central Part 4 performance - it contains his signature skit of "Dufraine, party of two."

My favorite line of his - "I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it."

2. Billy Bragg and Wilco's Mermaid Avenue. This is music that they wrote for the lyrics that Woodie Guthrie wrote on his deathbed. Natalie Marchant provides backup vocals. My favorite song is, "Way over yonder in a minor key," which you can listen to on the Amazon site for the CD.

3. My friend Kitty's products at her website, Magickal Essence Candles. She's a very cool chick and that house of hers in the Delaware Valley with "three dogs and five cats" is within walking distance of mine. I know - I've fed those crazy animals many a time. And her patchouli candles smell great!

4. AquaTeen Hunger Force. One of the most bizarre cartoons I've ever seen on Adult Swim (Cartoon Network). One site describes it as, "People-sized food products in the throes of adolescence, solving mysteries and swimming in their neighbor's pool. You'll never look at your french fries the same way, because they might look right back." There's really no other way to put it. You just have to watch the show.

5. Sugar-free Red Bull. It's the reason I'm simultaneously blogging and cleaning my house right now, when normally I'd be draped across the couch, recovering from work.

Bugging Governor Bush

Theyyy're back! Your favorite protestors! Those rootin', tootin', loony FCAT opponents! They've got the kids rounded up and protesting at the Florida Capitol Building, all because they believe the FCAT is unfair and should not be used for grade promotion.

Where do I start? First off, there's that photo. The third-grader in question looks pretty mopey already, although whether that's due to FCAT blues, or to the fact that activists roped him into spending a nice summer day inside a government building, it's hard to tell. And then there's that sign - "I am just nine years old. Please don't break my spirit." Gee, who knew that implementing testing to ensure that Danny gets taught to read in the third grade would be breaking his spirit?

And the inane quotes from FCAT opponents just keep coming:

The noon rally was organized by Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, a former educator who said she has been visiting summer reading programs to document what she considers the harmful and unnecessarily rigid enforcement of FCAT reading requirements..."They can read. They just can't pass a high-stakes test that is not culturally sensitive to them," Wilson said.

Hear that, Danny? Sen, Wilson believes that you do not have the proper culture to learn how to take a standardized test. She does not believe you are capable of understanding this exam, with its questions about a boy named Peter writing letters from a cat named Peaches, unless it can be modified to fit your "culture." If you recognize this for the racism that it is, then I say you're bright enough to be promoted into fourth grade.

Wilson's other comments are more meaningless than stupid. For example, we "must keep in mind that not all children are good test-takers," and that "these children are becoming collateral damage." Not once does she offer a reason for why some kids might be not be good test-takers (other than the wholly-unsupported "cultural" reason), nor does she mention the long list of exemptions that allow students to be promoted to fourth grade despite a failing FCAT score. She'd rather parents and readers assume that the FCAT is an absolute barrier, which it is not.

Oh, and there's her comment that, "You hold students back on the basis of professional-judgment reasons...You don't retain them on the basis of a test that comes out of a computer." What the computer part of it has to do with anything, I don't know, but I assume she means to contrast the cold, unfeeling world of testing and computers with the warm, fuzzy world of teaching. A dangerous comparison, considering that teaching third-graders to mistrust computers is almost as destructive as failing to teach them to read.

Mississippi Delta Blues

The NCLB Act is a measure intended to help children read - but what about those areas of the country where adult illiteracy is the problem? The Arkansas Democrat covers a movement to help adults who are struggling with reading, especially in areas such as the Mississippi Delta, where illiteracy rates approach 40% in some areas:

In some Delta counties, more than 40 percent of the adult population reads at a basic, limited level or can’t read at all. Often parents who read poorly raise children to have the same problem, creating a generational cycle of illiteracy and poverty, say literacy experts. At a time when state lawmakers and educators are struggling to reform Arkansas public schools and improve school performance, a small group of people is working quietly to help the adults.

The term illiteracy has become politically incorrect. It stigmatizes poor readers, keeps them from admitting their problem and from possibly getting help, literacy experts say. Instead, functionally illiterate adults are now "low-level" readers — those who read on an eighth-grade level or lower.

Sigh. Let me guess. These "literacy experts" are the same folks who consider it politically incorrect for schools to identify, through testing, students who can't read. They're dancing around the topic with their euphemisms, a technique which does nothing to help those who are suffering. Applying a new term to this old problem might remove a stigma, but unless those adults are taught to read, the problem is not solved.

In the bygone era of sharecropping, earning a living didn’t require an education. So, many dropped out of school and never learned to read. Some even graduated high school functionally illiterate. "When you’re dealing with 40- to 60-year-olds, back then they didn’t have all the testing they have now," said Sheree Jackson, an administrative assistant at Desha County’s literacy council. "They could [graduate high school] without knowing how to read."

Do I believe my eyes? We have an educator here who admits that testing can help prevent the problem of graduating functionally illiterate students? How wonderful. I wonder if she knows that her philosophy directly contradicts that of many educators today, who believe that testing impedes learning?

Luckily, it looks like people like Ms. Jackson will have an impact on the education of children, if she can help improve adult literacy in her area:

Typically, Delta schools have lower standardized-test scores than in other parts of the state, and most school districts in danger of a state takeover are in the Delta. To succeed in school, children need to be read to, advocates say. And they need help with their homework.

The Disengaged Society

JewishWorldReview pundit Clarence Page introduces us to an intriguing new book that purports to show why affluent black children lag behind equally-affluent white children in academic performance. The book was researched and written by UC-Berkeley's Dr. John Ogbu, who claims expertise in the field of student acheivement. Dr. Ogbu was in fact recruited to write the book by a group of black parents in wealthy Shaker Heights, OH, who were unhappy with the black-white academic acheivement gap that persisted despite the equal economic status.

And now these parents are unhappy with Dr. Ogbu as well. Why? Because his new book, "Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb: A Study of Academic Disengagement", places some of the blame squarely on them:

As Ogbu told a New York Times reporter, there were two parts to the problem; "society and schools on one hand and the black community on the other...What amazed me is that these kids who come from homes of doctors and lawyers are not thinking like their parents. They don't know how their parents made it. They are looking at rappers in ghettos as their role models, they are looking at entertainers. The parents work two jobs, three jobs, to give their children everything, but they are not guiding their children."

This is not Dr. Ogbu's first brush with controversy. In the 1980's, he and a fellow researcher uncovered the phenomenon of black students avoiding academic success due to their fear of "acting white." And Dr. Ogbu isn't the only one to identify the presence of violent gangsta rap and ghetto-idolatry as an obstacle which impedes black children. John McWhorter's description in the City Journal of the negative effects of gangsta rap is compelling, and unnerving.

Mr. Page advises black parents not to allow their kids to accept such self-defeating behavior as rejection of social norms or academic acheivement, and not to use the excuses of racism (or fear of it) to avoid self-improvement:

There is no shame in the mere fact that some groups show different levels of interest and performance in education and other skills. It is only a shame if the low performers don't do something to improve. Asian Americans outperform whites academically, for example, yet no one blames racism for white "underachievement." Similarly, the rest of us should not reject useful insights about our children, either, even when it is a little painful to hear.

By facing obvious realities openly and honestly, we can begin to encourage a self-image among black youths that will help them to value their brains as much as their basketballs or the "bling-bling" and "ching-ching" of rap stars on MTV and BET.

You don't have to be crazy - but it helps

Conservative commentators and pundits have often decried the recent "life challenges" loophole in college admissions. This loophole is one more way that colleges can "diversify" their populations without using race - and without having to enforce strict academic standards. If an applicant doesn't quite make the SAT cutoff but overcame obstacles, then perhaps they should be given points just for trying. That seems to be how the colleges use it, at any rate.

However, Alec Mouhibian of Liberty Magazine, who is very skeptical about the wisdom of judging life's hardships for admissions credit, writes about the topic at length in FrontPage Magazine, where he notes that the "life challenges" category can be defined broadly enough to include mental illness:

...The latest trend in university admissions is rewarding "life challenges"-- a broad criteria that includes mental illness...An article in the July 12, 2002, Wall Street Journal (the source, unless otherwise noted, of all quotations here) reported the adoption of a new admissions system by the University of California, which has been applied in its two elite schools: UCLA and UC Berkeley.

The reason, as served up by Carla Ferri, director of UC undergraduate admissions, is: “You bring in students that can tackle the academic programs with enthusiasm, with strength and with purpose. That’s what we’re looking for.”...

As Mr. Mouhibian rightly wonders how such qualities are going to enable a student who's done poorly in high school to do well in college, the expected flood of "sob stories" on college admission forms has appeared:

...“The new standard has led to a flood of sob stories on college-application essays, in some cases after university staffers have coached minority students on how to identify and present their hardships.” The UC system spends $85 million a year on its outreach program. The outreach workers, “Besides helping college-bound students pick courses…coach them on how to write the essays that are a part of their college applications.” One such outreach worker from UCLA, reports the article, recently gave students at a high school “examples of life challenges that could help the students gain admission, such as having to do homework in the bathroom for lack of any other quiet place to study.”

My mother, who grew up in rural South Carolina, actually didn't live in a house with indoor plumbing until she was 16. Nevertheless, she found places to study (certainly not in the outhouse), and I'm certain that she would have been offended by any college admissions officer who gave more weight to her living conditions than to her good grades and stellar SAT scores. In fact, she would have considered her living situation to be none of the admission officer's damn business, and she would have been right.

Having to study in the bathroom gets you extra credit in admissions? What parent is going to buy their kid a desk and provide them with a well-lit room in which to study after reading that? And what parent is going to be happy knowing that their kid's application is nothing but a laundry list of whining about how life has screwed them over, and that they had to study in horrible places like bathrooms (which the parents are presumably paying for)?

Let's continue:

One need not ponder much about the implications of encouraging and basing admission-criteria on mope over merit, tears over temerity, sob over substance and, most bluntly of all, excuse over excellence. It’s more pernicious than merely acting as a clinic for irresponsibility; it’s a dagger in the heart of those students who hold any degree of dignity or integrity. The article mentions such a person, Ms. Hyejin Jae, who was spurned by both Berkeley and UCLA despite an impressive GPA and a 1410 SAT score, because she didn’t want to shed light on the fact that she’s the daughter of a struggling Korean-immigrant pastor. “I didn’t want too much of a pity party,” she said.

Poor Ms. Jae, so out of touch with the current college situation. She had no idea that her parent's struggles, which were completely out of her control, were more important to UCLA than what she herself accomplished through hard work.

So if Ms. Jae was rejected, who got in?

...Bianca Martinez (daughter of a breast-cancer patient) got admitted to UCLA with an 1110 SAT score, Dania Medina (whose sister has Down syndrome) with an 1100, and Rosaura Novelo and Susana Pena (both daughters of lower-income fathers) with sewer-pit scores of 980 and 940, respectively, while the average accepted SAT score at UCLA is around 1350.

Ms. Martinez complained about her mother's breast cancer on her college application? That's just -- morbid. And inappropriate. It's an illness, not a tool to be used to gain admission. It's right on the edge of using the misfortunes of others for personal gain. I suppose I was reared with too much proper Southern manners and discretion, but I cannot imaging writing about my mother's life-threatening illness on as cold and impersonal a document as a college application - and for some admissions officer to read? For them to know something so personal about me, or about my family members? Absolutely not.

It's not, as Mr. Mouhibian notes, a coincidence that the applicants with sob stories and bottom-feeder SAT scores have Hispanic surnames. The "hardships" loophole appears to be affirmative action under a new name, which means that even if Ms. Jae had outlined her parents' woes on her application, she probably would have been rejected just for being Korean. UCLA's already got too many of those, you see, and admitting another wouldn't be productive for making "the student body as reflective as possible of the state’s population," which is a stated goal for California's schools.

There's more - much more - so go read the whole thing. I just have to quote Mr. Mouhibian's comment on the SAT crusade before I go:

Just look at the latest hysterical crusade to ban the SAT test. Apparently, the SAT is an Anglophile. Why? Because certain minorities don’t do as well on it. Ergo, it’s “culturally-biased.” Such a claim is automatically disproven by the fact that Asians and Caribbean blacks both routinely outperform whites on the aptitude test. But forget the proof—the only way that a math-and-grammar exam is inherently biased against certain races is if an innate characteristic of those races is stupidity!

And, as many affirmative-action proponents would like you not to notice, the assumption that certain minorities are inherently incapable of doing well on standardized tests is indeed the assumption that must be made in order to claim wholescale "bias" of these exams. Such assumptions pass for "progressive" thinking these days, which is a sad thing.

Drawing the line

Interesting discussion in the Marietta Times about the dislike held by the teaching establishment towards the NCLB Act and towards standardized testing. Apparently "top-down" reforms aren't to be trusted, despite the fact that "bottom-up" reforms will help at most a few kids.

These quotes by Judy Wray, a middle school teacher and president of the district's teachers union, are telling:

"It [the NCLB Act] has been so politicized. It obviously shows Bush's priorities are not in education."

And as we all know, teachers' unions are never politicized, and their first priority is always education. Uh-huh.

The heavy testing is preparing many students to fail, said Wray. The standards will exacerbate the rifts between high-performing students and others. The reliance on standardized tests also lowers the quality of education.

I believe what she means here is that setting meaningful standards will require that some kids fall below those standards, and those kids will obviously not be performing as well as kids who score above the standard. Have I got that right? Is anyone other than an anti-standards teacher going to assume that this is a bad thing?

Here's an analogous statement to the one that a standard "exacerbates a rift" between high- and low-performers. Take two people; one is five feet tall and the other is six feet tall. Stand them up against a wall, and draw a line at five-and-a-half feet. Are you "exacerbating the rift" between the two people? No. They're still a foot apart in height - you've just made it more easy to estimate, or to show, how far apart the two people are. Removing the line won't magically make the two people of equal height.

What Ms. Wray doesn't understand is that the poorly-performing kids are going to be at a disadvantage whether the standards are set or not. The standards don't widen the rifts. The tests don't widen the rifts. Poor teaching, and poor administration, widens the rifts, as kids who need effective instruction are allowed to fall further behind, despite being socially promoted to higher grades. The standards are necessary so that we know just how far behind some kids are, and what we can do to help them.

Ms. Wray also opposes the opportunities parents have to remove their kids from failing schools. Why am I not surprised?

Walking the walk, talking the talk

By now, I'm sure you've all heard about the hapless school superintendent in Lawrence, MA, who failed to pass a literacy test that is required of all teachers. Still, I can't help but take a shot at this story myself...

Superintendent of Schools Wilfredo T. Laboy, who recently put two dozen teachers on unpaid leave for failing a basic English proficiency test, has himself flunked a required literacy test three times, The Eagle-Tribune reported Sunday. Laboy, who called his failing scores ''frustrating'' and ''emotional,'' blamed a lack of preparation and concentration, and his lack of English skills. Spanish is his first language.

Interesting, isn't it, how his "lack of English skills" is the last thing listed here as his reasons for flunking? And why are we supposed to be sympathetic to his "frustration" when he's placed teachers on unpaid leave for flunking the thing? He should have been the first to take this test, if only to judge for himself whether or not the test was valid.

State Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll said he is aware of Laboy's troubles with the test, but would not say how many chances Laboy would be given to pass or what the consequences of another failure could be. He commended Laboy on an ''excellent job'' leading the district, but said ''he's going to have to pass.''

Sounds like those teachers who claim that kids are doing "excellent classwork," while also flunking the basic skills exams. However, perhaps I'm being unfair. Perhaps leadership for this district doesn't require much in the way of literacy skills, which is a scary thought indeed.

Since 1998, all educators from teachers to superintendents have had to pass the Communications and Literacy Skills Test, which measures basic reading and writing skills, including vocabulary, punctuation, grammar, spelling and capitalization. Laboy barely passed the reading section on his second attempt, scoring the minimum required grade, he said this week. He also failed the writing portion three times, and a section requiring test-takers to transcribe a passage read over an audiotape, using proper punctuation and spelling.

Ouch! Is this the test from hell, or does Laboy really need to brush up on his English skills? The test objectives are here, so let's see for ourselves.

The subtests are Reading and Writing - that's pretty straightforward. "Determine the meanings of words and phrases." "Understand the main idea and supporting details in written material." "Recognize effective sentences." We're not talking rocket science, or tricky testing mumbo-jumbo here. We're talking figuring out what the main point of a passage is, or recognizing a run-on sentence.

And here's the test information booklet. Scroll down to the bottom for the sample multiple-choice and free-response items. The items aren't all easy - certainly, defining "democracy" is harder than defining "abolish" - but the items still should be within reach of anyone with a college degree, especially someone who is working in a school superintendent position.

''What brought me down was the rules of grammar and punctuation,'' Laboy said. ''English being a second language for me, I didn't do well in writing. If you're not an English teacher, you don't look at the rules on a regular basis.''

However, if you use English on a regular basis, you should be familiar with the rules. This "But-I'm-not-an-English-teacher" excuse sounds familiar. It's what many adults use when they're caught making flagrant errors in English usage. It's obvious that they believe only English teachers should be required to write a coherent sentence and make themselves comprehensible. The excuse doesn't carry much weight with me, as you might have anticipated.

Laboy is in a directorial position in our public school system, and receives a salary of $156,560 a year for doing so. Is it too much to ask that such a person be able to pass a test of English literacy, and also not be allowed to hide behind the twin excuses of not being able to concentrate and not being an English teacher?

Update: Joanne Jacobs has not one but two postings that are peripherally related to this topic. The first is a link to an article by National Review author Rich Lowry, who wonders why these bilingual teachers can't pass English literacy tests. My guess is that superintendent Laboy considered himself "bilingual" as well, but he flunked an English exam. So did 22 out of 25 "bilingual" teachers in his town.

In the second posting, Joanne relates the story of Kiet Tran, a hapless teen-age Vietnamese immigrant who was enrolled in a Madison, WI high school. He was promptly placed in "bilingual" class taught entirely in Spanish - and his English-speaking father was not able to get Kiet transferred into English-speaking classes. The family finally had to move out of the district in order to get English classes for the boy.

Rich Lowry's comment that "...bilingual education is a misnomer. It is really monolingual education, in any language but English." is beginning not to seem like an exaggeration. When immigrants have to fight to be taught English, and teachers who are incompetent in English sue to keep their "bilingual" teaching positions, something is very, very wrong.

Howdy, all

I'm back, and rarin' to go. At least, I will be once the Red Bull kicks in.