Number 2 Pencil

Thanksgiving Roundup

Howdy, folks. I'm going to get out of here early today, so I'm going to post just a few entries for you to chew on, then I'll be back sometime on Monday or Tuesday.

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Wendy McElroy's got the roundup on the appalling prevalence of zero-tolerance policies in school, which she believes is related to society's willingness to charge ever-younger kids as adults for crimes such as murder and sexual molestation.

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Stuart Buck, of The Buck Stops Here, takes issue with a chirpy, optimistic statement by a kindergarten teacher at his son's school. The teacher claimed that "today a schoolchild learns more between the freshman and senior years of high school than our grandparents learned in their entire lives." Stuart's response?

That can't possibly be true. For one thing, there is no meaningful way to measure the total sum of the knowledge that our grandparents learned in their entire lives. And just think about it: Do you really think that our grandparents learned less about the world in 70 or 80 years than today's high-schooler does in 4? Have you met any current high-schoolers? Do they really seem more knowledgable than their grandparents about anything beyond computers and cell phones and Eminem?

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The NEA is apparently goading Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski to sue the Bush administration over the "hoax" that is the No Child Left Behind Act.

The National Education Association has been looking since July for a state to sue the Bush administration, arguing that the law requires sweeping changes in schools without paying for them. No state has signed on, despite widespread complaints by educators that the law requires too much of schools.

But some fear that suing the Bush administration could backfire on Oregon.

Any Oregonian readers out there got an opinion about this?

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Sarah Lawrence College will no longer require the SAT. Hey, if it's not right for your school - and your school is willing to spend lots of time on each application - then don't use it. Larger universities, though, will almost certainly continue to retain the test as a way of winnowing down the massive number of applications they receive each year.

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Joan Ryan, in her argument for smaller schools, makes an insightful comment about the balance that is needed between teaching and testing:

I understand and even support the rationale for spending money on standardized testing: We have to measure students' knowledge so we can know which schools are working and which aren't. But with limited resources, the priority ought to be creating small schools and training teachers. If so many of our children are starving academically, doesn't it make more sense to put our money first into feeding them, then into weighing them?

Testing is not the be-all end-all of education, nor should it be. The problem is, it isn't until test scores are produced that some schools can be convinced they need to change.

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Jay Mathews of the Washington Post summarizes a list of "wild ideas" for simplifying the college admissions process. Cliff Sojgren is the author of the ideas, which include requiring high schools to provide enough information so that grades can be compared for students from different schools, eliminating the entrance essay, and only using SAT/ACT scores when they are average or above.

I have to disagree with Sojgren's idea that low SATs should be ignored. Certainly other factors can come into play, but what if, for example, a group of students with high grades but low SAT scores all come from one school? That information could be part of the factors used to judge how inflated the grades are from that school. And Sojgren's plan to rate schools will come under just as much fire from those who cry racism/classism as the SATs do now. If the A's given by teachers with advanced degrees are "worth more" in this new admissions process, you know that any school with a high percentage of teachers without advanced degrees is going to cry racism if those teachers are minorities, or classism if those teachers live in a poor neighborhood.

But it's food for thought, nevertheless. And speaking of food, well, I've got to finish up work so that I can drive 11 hours tomorrow to get some really good food.

Ah, Southern Thanksgivings. I hope yours is as blessed and stuffed with love and calories as mine will be.

More diversity with less exclusion?

The Washington Post reports on the "affirmative reaction" of colleges to the dismantling of race-based AA and quota systems. The article, which describes the methods colleges are using to be more in line with the recent Supreme Court ruling, grabs your attention with the very first line:

As one of only 192 blacks who scored higher than 1450 on the SAT this year, Alice Abrokwa is being wooed by some of the nation's most elite colleges.

Yes, you read that right. Out of the 2 million total examinees, fewer than 200 black examinees had stellar combined scores. It is not surprising that colleges would like to woo Alice with outreach programs and full scholarships. However, while the article says that such efforts might be derailed by the recent ruling, someone with a 1450 is going to be recruited regardless of race. Why not have schools appreciate Alice for a quality over which she had some control?

Roger Clegg, general counsel for the Virginia-based Center for Equal Opportunity, which lodged complaints about the University of Michigan's affirmative-action policies, described the [race-based] Amherst [outreach] program as "flatly illegal" because it is racially exclusive. He said Amherst's decision to open the program to disadvantaged whites next year was "a step in the right direction" but warned that it could still "raise problems" if there were "differing admission requirements based on skin color."

A ban on such programs, say Amherst administrators, would lead to a "resegregation" of U.S. campuses, particularly at small liberal arts colleges. The past two decades have witnessed a doubling in the number of minority students attending college, from 2 million to 4.3 million. Despite these gains, only 40 percent of blacks and 34 percent of Hispanics attend college, compared with 46 percent of whites, according to data collected by the American Council on Education.

Yes, but how many of those minority students go on to graduate? How many are actually better off than they would have been had they chosen less prestigious colleges, or even no college at all immediately after high school? The ACE press release that contained the previous statistic gives college graduation rates for overall, Asian, black, Hispanic, and Native American students, but not white students (if this article is to be believed, the percentage of whites graduating is 20 points higher than the percentage of minority students graduating). The ACE release also notes high school graduation rates (76% for blacks, 59% for Hispanics) which suggest that AA at the college level, even if done right, can only do so much.

So, back to those select minority students:

The competition is particularly ferocious for blacks and Hispanics with SAT scores that put them on par with the most talented white students. According to the College Board, only 1,877 black students (about 1.5 percent of blacks who take the tests) scored higher than 1300 out of a possible 1600 on the SAT in 2003. Only 72 scored higher than 1500.

"Most of these students don't realize that they are being fought over," said Joy St. John, an Amherst admissions officer who specializes in minority outreach, gazing over a room of 70 or so black, Hispanic, Asian and American Indian students whose SAT scores ranged from the low 1100s to above 1500. "They are modest, and they don't know the options that are out there."

Man, they must be living in a bubble. Any kid who has an SAT score of greater than 1300 who doesn't know that he or she is most likely good college material is definitely attending a school with a poor guidance counselor. And again, I ask, why should it be considered inviting for Amherst to tell these kids that their race (which they have no control over) is as important to the college as their SAT score (which they do) in admissions?

One high-scorer remarks at the end of the article, "It's nice to feel wanted." I agree. Hopefully some of these smart kids will learn to distinguish between schools that want bright students of all colors, and schools that want minorities simply to "increase the diversity" of campuses for their oh-so-culturally-deprived white peers.

Oh yeah, John of Discriminations has already covered this ground:

One of the most amusing parts of the article was its subhead: “After Rulings, Recruiters Take a More Inclusive Approach to Diversity.” This head at least seems to recognize what the body does not, which is that pre-ruling “diversity,” i.e., “diversity” left unregulated, had some exclusionary tendencies.

Breaking down barriers to become doctors

The New York Times has a fascinating article on the increasing number of medical students with disabilities:

"The human body fascinates me, but my greatest strength as a doctor is patient contact," said [legally-blind fourth-year med student] Mr. Lawler, who is rarely without his guide dog, Burke. "Yes, my knowledge is good, but I also bring empathy to the bedside. I've been treated by doctors who didn't really listen to me or said things like, `You're not planning on having children are you?' So I take my time with patients and try and really listen and thoroughly explain things."

In the past, students with physical disabilities were rarely accepted to medical school, and they rarely completed it. But now Mr. Lawler joins a growing number of students with disabilities who are thriving in medical school. Though no statistics document how many of these students are attending medical school or how many disabled doctors are practicing, experts in the field note that laws like the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 allowed disabled students access to every level of education and helped propel the current increase in medical students...

At least one doctor believes that it is those in the medical profession itself who are responsible for creating barriers against disabled students who don't exude the "perfect health" image:

"Doctors are the least comfortable and often the least knowledgeable about disability issues," said Dr. Julie Madorsky, 58, who practiced from 1969 to 1995. She had childhood polio and was the prototype for the character Dr. Kerry Weaver, the attending physician who walks with the aid of a crutch on the television series "E.R."

Dr. Madorsky said: "There's a concept that it's `them' and `us.' The idea that someone can enter medicine with a physical disability is counterintuitive. It goes against the notion that doctors are healthy and perfect and able-bodied and patients are not."

Are disabled doctors more likely to be incompetent doctors? The malpractice insurance underwriters don't think so:

The disabilities legislation may have had other influences as well. No studies have looked at malpractice and whether disabled doctors and medical students are at higher risk. But, according to the Physician Insurers Association of America, a trade association of medical malpractice insurance companies, there is no difference in underwriting medical liability policies for doctors who are disabled and those who are not.

You can take it with you....

...All your parents' appliances, to college, that is:

As students take more appliances and gadgets to school, colleges are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade electrical systems. The costs are often recouped by increasing room rates...

Andrew Matthews, of the Association of College and University Housing Officers-International, said many dorms were built in the 1950s and 1960s and don't have the electrical capacity for power-dependent students.

I'm still angry (and sweaty) about the fact that, as late as 1986, there were un-airconditioned dorms at the University of (Sweltering, Humid, Sticky) South Carolina. And yep, I was in one of 'em. In case you were ever wondering what could be worse than a hangover, that would be a hangover when you're stuck in a shoebox of an "historic" dorm room with no AC when it's 105 degrees outside with the humidity index. Bleargh.

(Via the Cranky Professor.)

Thank God for California

It used to be, while I was living in South or North Carolina, that any discussion of the state's test scores was ended with, "Thank God for Mississippi." The southern states are known for being bottom-feeders when it comes to overall test scores, especially when the performance of poor children is examined.

Well, now SC and NC can say, "Thank God for California":

It has often been comforting for education watchers to ascribe such gaps to California's high level of poverty among minority students. But the NAEP data don't support that old saw. Other states have poor children in large numbers, and if NAEP is an indicator, they do much better by them than we do.

It's a sad day when Californians can look at test scores and say, "thank God for Alabama and Mississippi."

(Found via Education Weak.)

Setting the bar for ESL students

While growing numbers of students who learn English as their first language at home are under the gun to pass tests of English/Language Arts/Reading, the bar for English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students may be set so low that "children who are learning English...[in some states]...could leave high school without being taught to read or write the language":

While the No Child Left Behind Act has a detailed formula for bringing students to proficiency on state reading and mathematics tests by the 2013-14 school year, it's much less precise on states' goals for English-language learners.

U.S. Department of Education officials acknowledge that some of the goals states have set are weak, but for the time being, the officials say, they're not rejecting any of the goals because of a lack of rigor.

How weak? Well, the "most ambitious" plan belongs to Michigan, which hopes to bring 95% of students from just-starting-to-learn-English to full proficiency in four years. However, "full proficiency" here is defined as a C student in mainstream classes; e.g., the kid who doesn't need English-language support but is not necessarily a good reader.

Other "less ambitious" programs includes Minnesota's, which aims to have, within 10 years, only 12% of students who have been in English-language programs for six or more years to be fully proficient in English. What's Minnesota doing that they can't teach a kid how to read, write, and speak English in six years? Perhaps I'm unaware of how difficult this is - several states apparently informed the government of "research [showing that] it takes five to seven years for students to learn English." I don't know anything about the research, I'll admit, but that seems like an amazingly long time for kids to learn English as a second language.

Trials and Tribulations on the TAKS

WOAI in Texas reports that more than half of San Antonio's 11th-graders flunked the new TAKS, which replaces the TAAS. They won't be disadvantaged this year, but next year high school students will have to pass this exam to graduate.

WOAI responded by hiring four adults - "a city councilman, a former judge, a DJ and a school board president" - to take the TAKS, so we could all see how well they did. The judge and the school board president had actually taken the TAAS before and declared the TAKS to be noticeably more difficult:

Jamie of Mix 96.1 says she was on the honor roll, in AP classes throughout school and in the National Honors Society. She was a lot of talk before the test, but when she turned down the volume she sounded more like this: "I forgot what these little numbers meant."

This is the second sitting for NISD board president Bobby Blount and former judge Cyndi Krier. They took the TAAS test for news 4 WOAI four years ago, and passed with flying colors.

The results? The DJ flunked the math portion; the councilman flunked both math and English. The school board member passed both sections, while the judge ended up flunking math while making a near-perfect score on English.

How did the DJ interpret her flunking math score?

Jamie says it is. "Kids did you hear me? You don't need to learn math like me. You can still be successful and do bad on math."

WOAI disagrees:

But what you can't do is get a diploma without passing the test. Educators say they saw the same kind of failure rates and complaints when they introduced the TAAS test. By the time it was retired, those teachers say, the TAAS test was considered too easy. The idea is that bigger challenges create brighter students.

Here are the statewide 11th-grade results, in case you're interested.

If I read the table heading correctly, what's listed are students grouped into (1) those who met a standard that was set at two standard errors of measurement (SEMs) below the panel's recommendation, (2) those who met the standard that was 1 SEM lower, (3) those who met the panel recommendation, and (4) those with a "Commended Performance" that is presumably somewhere above the panel recommendation.

Take a look at the first line, for all 11th-grade students on the math portion (ignoring the spring field test results). The numbers are 68%, 55%, 44%, and 6%. Working backwards, this means that:

Only 6% scored in the "Commended" category, whatever that is.

A total of 44% scored at the panel recommendation or above, which means that, had the cutpoint been set there, 53% would have failed.

A total of 68% passed at a cutpoint set two SEMs below the panel marker, which means that a whopping 32% of all examinees are more than two standard errors of measurement below the cutpoint. Those students aren't just failing - they're failing miserably, because they're not within the 95% error range (based on the reliability of the test). Thus, that 32% is far enough away from the panel recommendation that it's highly unlikely they would pass upon retesting (assuming no change in true ability).

The English scores look even more bimodal; when you go from at panel cutpoint to 2 SEMs below, you only get an increase from 61% to 69% of the students. This means, essentially, that around 60% are passing easily, around 30% are failing miserably, and there's relatively few students - only 10% of examinees - in between.

Update: Here's an article from Education Week that criticizes the TAAS in comparison with Texas' NAEP scores. The writer does not seem optimistic about the usefulness of the TAKS, either.

Frosty the Snowperson of An Indistinguishable Gender

Those of you who are parents will appreciate this (if you live in Skokie, IL, you'll really appreciate it). Michele of A Small Victory puts out the word that she's running a contest to see who can best envision a politically-correct holiday season. Right now, commenters are competing to see who can best mangle lyrics to holiday songs (though she apparently did that contest last year).

I kinda like this one:

You don't need to watch out
You can cry all the time
Keep a permanent pout
I'm tellin' you why

Santa Claus is a performance-neutral giver.

And I love how this segment from "Walking Through A Winter Wonderland" is modified for the feminists in the audience:

In the meadow we can build a snowperson,
Then pretend that he or she is a member of the clergy from the religion of your choice or, if you prefer, a justice of the peace.

He or she'll say: Are you married?
We'll say: No person,
Because marriage is a paternalistic construct
Designed to suppress women

Someone just jumped in in the comments to say that his tax dollars shouldn't have to support any religious expression in schools, so I expect the thread to take a more combative tone.

Should professors lower grades for poor attendance?

A defiant student wants to know why some college professors take points off for low attendance:

...my refusal to attend class does not excuse policies that subvert the value of learning and education, emphasizing attendance instead.

When evaluating superior standardized test scores, such as what one might make on the SAT and ACT, admissions officers don’t ask whether students attended prep courses before the exam. Obviously, a high score denotes that a test taker knows the material.

The writer, one Chris Piper of UT-Arlington, then answers his own question:

I truly believe most professors want their students to score well, which is why they implement attendance policies. I am touched by the sentiment. But if missing class leads to poor results by traditional grading methods — tests, quizzes, projects, etc. — then so be it. The student body could use some winnowing out.

I think this is exactly why most professors ask that students come to class. Even the ones who should be "winnowed out" have, like Chris, paid tuition, and so I imagine most professors want to emphasize that their scholarly material will be inadequately understood by those students who skip lectures. So they tell the students, if you want your money's worth, come to class, and then they back it up with attendance policies, pop quizzes, and so on.

Given that pop quizzes would penalize an absent student as much as an attendance policy would, it's hard to see why Chris supports that method, unless he is convinced that his professors don't work hard enough. I give lots of pop quizzes in my statistics courses because they do provide useful feedback, and because I don't take points off for poor attendance. But then, I don't have to; anyone who skips a lot of stats lectures is most likely not going to do well, pop quizzes aside.

Does high stakes testing make teachers cheat?

The Harvard Crimson reports on a new study that concludes that "teachers and school officials cheat in administering standardized tests in a minimum of 4 to 5 percent of elementary school classrooms." Although the headline blares that "High stakes tests lead to cheating," the conclusion is probably not what testing opponents hoped for:

The authors, Kennedy School Assistant Professor of Public Policy Brian A. Jacob and University of Chicago Professor Steven D. Levitt, concluded that local policies attributing more weight to standardized testing made it more likely that teachers would cheat...

“In the future, we hope to try to prevent this kind of behavior by having external monitors, as well as by performing random audits, to discourage these kinds of acts from reoccurring.”

In other words, we notice cheating more now because tests carry more weight, and while the raising of stakes might cause some teachers to cheat, that increased prevalence isn't necessarily an indictment of the tests, or the stakes. This merely suggests that stakes were raised, but the corresponding security controls were not; in any such situation, I'd think you'd see more cheating. Dr. Jacob's conclusion is correct; how do we institute security measures to prevent this from happening in the future?

Here are abstracts for Levitt's recent papers on catching cheating teachers and the prevalence of cheating teachers. Some of you may recognize Levitt's name; that's because he's been mentioned here before, as the Chicago professor who's figured out new ways to detect cheating behavior. Apparently the Chicago public schools provide quite a rich dataset for detecting such behavior.

Saving education from "the breaking point"

I caught the tail-end of this Fox News special, Breaking Point: The Education Crisis in America. I came in at the "Teacher's unions are greedy/ No, they're not!" part of the program, in which pithy quotes from AFT and NEA representatives were interlaced with equally-pithy quotes from pissed-off parents and anti-union activists.

Most of what I saw focused on Rafe Esquith, a truly remarkable educator who has labored in the run-down, recent-immigrant, English-as-a-second-language neighborhoods of Los Angeles for 18 years. He teaches at Hobart Boulevard Elementary School and his efforts at producing well-rounded students, in the classic liberal arts tradition, have been amazingly productive:

Beginning his day at 6:30 a.m., Esquith tutors students in math, history and the classics. Lunches and recesses are devoted to music lessons, for Esquith insists that his students take up an instrument. After school, Esquith coaches volleyball, teaches computer use and offers additional tutoring.

As a result of his work, Esquith’s students consistently score in the top 5 to 10 percent nationally in standardized tests, and his math team has gone undefeated for the past five years. Many have made it past Hobart Boulevard and moved onto college and law school.

The Fox News special revealed a man who absolutely lives for his students, who basically has no life outside of his job (in a good way), and who spurs his current students on with a display of Ivy League college banners on his classroom walls; each Princeton or Yale or Harvard banner has engraved plaques beside it listing each of his former students who have made it through those doors.

Rafe has been feted, awarded, and knighted for his teaching skills. His standards are high, and his slogan is, "There are no shortcuts." His fifth-graders read Steinbeck and Shakespeare and learn to become good readers, and good people. One exercise that Fox showed involved a treasure hunt to parallel the class's study of Treasure Island; the teams had to solve math problems and remember important dates just to figure out what the clues were. Rafe noted that, if at the end of the hunt, the winning team shared their treasures with the losing teams, he'd done his job right.

Of course, he was asked about testing, and his reply was just what I expected. He uses tests as feedback to let him know how his kids are doing, but he doesn't want testing to be the be-all end-all of education. And he's right. He sees each student as an individual, but he also doesn't allow any "individualism" to interfere with education. This moral was conveyed very nicely in the story of one former student, a young Hispanic male (whose name I've unfortunately forgotten). On camera, Rafe admits to telling this kid to shape up or ship out, in a way that clearly favored blunt truth and high expectations over any concern for the student's "cultural expectations" or "self-esteem." The kid got his act together, and is now on a full scholarship at the exclusive Brentwood school, where he was just elected class president.

There may have been no one else in that student's life to set such high standards for him, or to tell him that, at some point, he had to take responsibility for his work and his life. Luckily for that kid, and for many other kids, Rafe gets that point across, every day, in his classroom.

Bright student, dim teacher

Devoted Reader Mike recently sent along an amusing (in a black humor, how-stupid-can-people-be? sort of way) article about a bright seventh-grade student at an Ohio school who supposedly "invented" a new math process. I was going to comment on the story myself, and then I realized that Mike had included in the email his own comments, which said exactly what I was going to say.

So here's the article in italics, with Mike's comments interspersed in regular font:

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Killie Rick found a new solution to subtraction problems involving whole numbers and fractions. She used the concept of negative numbers in a way that has never been done before, as far as her seventh-grade teacher has been able to ascertain.

Emphasis on the "as far as her 7th-grade teacher knows".

This was the problem: 8 2/5 - 5 3/5 = ?

Now all teachers know that you're supposed to do "5 time 8 is 40, plus 2 is 42, write down 42/5, then 5 times 5 ......." and eventually you get to 2 4/5.

Killie Rick realized that the symbol "8 2/5" really means "8 + 2/5", so then she did

8 2/5 - 5 3/5 = 3 -1/5 = 2 + 5/5 - 1/5 = 2 4/5

"I've never seen anybody do this, said Colin McCabe, Killies teacher. It simplifies it by taking out three steps (to find a solution). I went home and tried to find fault with it, but I couldn't. I got online and did research, and I talked to friends of mine from college, and I can't find anybody who's seen this."

Tried to find fault with it? Sheesh. Somebody ought to tell him about:

(a + b) - (c + d) = (a - c) + (b - d).

And that 3 1/2 really means 3 + 1/2.

But there's more. This is the part that makes me want to throw something across the room:

"I think a lot of credit should go to the teacher, said Anne Steck, the schools principal. I know lots of math teachers who would've looked at Killie's work and just said it was wrong."

Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!
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What he said. The realization that neither this seventh-grade math teacher nor any of his college buddies knows about this technique is appalling. But for the principal to give credit to the teacher for not marking a correct answer as wrong is appalling and incredibly insulting to the little girl who figured it out for herself. Not to mention completely egotistical; do they really think that no one has ever used negative numbers in this way?

It is true that, when one looks online, almost every K-12 "dealing with mixed numbers" lesson plan mentions only the least common denominator, convert-to-improper-fractions method. Some of them do so clearly, others do not; this page uses a method so jumbled and jargon-ladled that I have no idea what they're trying to teach. But, this page mentions the borrowing technique the girl used at the end when she converted 3 -1/5 = 2 + 5/5 - 1/5. And this page, at the very end, mentions the method the girl used when she subtracted the two whole numbers and then the two fractions, and then converted them to positive numbers (although the page doesn't summarize it as a concise formula as Mike did, above).

So, at the very least, with only five minutes of Googling, I've manage to disprove the idea that "no one" has ever used negative numbers in this fashion. Guess the teacher above is as bad at web searching as he is at understanding improper fractions.

Update: *Sigh.* In case I did not make it crystal clear above, I found this story appalling because (a) the teacher only knew one way to solve the problem, which is one less than one of his students, (b) a competent math teacher would not have had to do research to validate this method, thus, (c) the student should not have to share any of the credit with the teacher for this. I'm appalled that the school is sharing any of the glory, when (a) this teacher is demonstrably incapable of teaching alternate methods, and (b) the little girl figured it out all by herself.

I thought the little girl should have gotten all the credit, not just some of it. My Google search was not to take credit away from the student, but to point out that her teacher obviously doesn't understand seventh-grade mathematics very well.

Sheesh. My first piece of hate mail, and the writer completely misconstrued what I wrote (and called me a lot of nasty names to boot).

Monday, Monday....

Sorry for the non-bloggage on Friday. My body wasn't discovered until late that day, when my boss noticed that the piles of paperwork, SAS printouts, and committee meeting notes in my office were in fact stacked on top of my seemingly-lifeless form, as I lay on the floor prone, completely enervated by an ongoing battle against a nascent sinus infection. I think it was the sneezing, and the resulting flutter of printer paper in the room, that helped him realize I was still salvageable.

Despite a lot of sleep over the weekend and my arsenal of Tylenol sinus products (I have a friend who works for J&J and can get everything for me discount), the sinus infection is still in the ring. Therefore, although (a) I intend to get some posts up this week and (b) I expect them to be timely/accurate/incisive, I can make no guarantees about any of this. I should probably just aim for writing something that doesn't sound like it comes from a deranged chimpanzee.

A rant about Ritalin and other things

One of the more outspoken bloggers around, Mrs. Du Toit, has a rather lengthy rant on an abusive classroom "point" system for special education students, the dangers of Ritalin, and her dislike for the public school system in general. Agree with her or not, she certainly sparks some interesting debate (so interesting that she disabled the comments after 81 accumulated).

Mrs. Du Toit posts this warning on her front page: "This website contains GRAPHIC language. If you are offended by blunt speech, please leave immediately. Thank you." I advise you to take the warning seriously.

If you do read the post, though, be sure to read the comments, too. One comment in particular, I absolutely love, because it addresses the "lack of socialization" comments that homeschooling parents are often bombarded with:

Great Post Mrs. Dutoit. My wife and I are going to homeschool our daughters, now 3 and 2. Her mother is against it. "Tough shit", I believe is what I said to my mother-in-law. (I actually have a great relationship with her, and can say such things). I cut the debate off when she said "But what about socialization?". My answer: "I smoked my first joint because of "socialization". How bout you?"

Students first, or athletes?

The NCAA has come up with yet another new set of rules (their fourth in two decades) to try to ensure that student athletes have more chances to succeed academically in college (and graduate on time). The problem is, the rules seem to contradict one another, in such a way that poorly-qualified athletes have more a chance to be admitted, and more of a chance to earn degrees in dishonest or laughably-easy ways:

These [new] rules, supporters say, will have teeth: The Division I governing board of school presidents is expected to pass legislation in April to strip scholarships or the chance to play in the postseason from teams whose athletes consistently fail to progress toward a degree. About 44% of Division I men's basketball players earn degrees within six years of entering college...

...the critics say, by raising the stakes for a sports program's academic failings, the changes might increase the likelihood that athletes and their colleges will cut corners academically to keep players eligible. That concern is exacerbated by the NCAA's decision to simultaneously lower academic standards athletes must meet to play as freshmen, so that even athletes with the absolute minimum SAT score can be eligible if their high school grade-point average is high enough...

They're not exaggerating with the "absolute minimum" comment. Since the earlier 1980's, the NCAA has been trying to enforce scholastic requirements for freshmen athletes. The problem is that those requirements always included SAT/ACT scores, for the same reasons that colleges use those tests; i.e., to help compare candidates from diverse high schools. But the race card got played - these tests allegedly "unfairly" discriminate against black and Latino athletes - so, as of October 2002, freshmen with SAT scores as low as 400 cabn play so long as they have a "correspondingly high grade-point average" in a certain number of high school courses.

Yes, that's a combined score of 400 (on the current two-part SAT). In other words, a potential athlete can be allowed to play with the lowest-possible Verbal and Math score on the SAT. This leads to several uncomfortable questions. Why on earth should these kids be admitted to college at all? Why are there even instances - and you know there will be - of kids having acceptably-high GPAs along with SAT scores this low? What does that say about the type of high schools from which these colleges are recruiting? And given that fraud has already occurred, what makes them think that tougher graduation rules but looser SAT requirements won't combine to create even more instances of cheating?

Academic fraud already has surfaced at several well-known NCAA schools. During the latter portion of the 2002-03 basketball season alone, it was revealed that:

• Fresno State players, under the previous coach, had course work done by a team statistician.

And those aren't the only problems:

• By punishing colleges whose athletes fail to progress toward a degree, the new rules might discourage athletes from challenging themselves academically, accelerating the clustering of players in a relative handful of friendly majors that vary from school to school.

• Expansive and expensive new academic-support services and facilities for athletes — expected to increase aggressively as colleges scramble to help athletes navigate the new rules — will raise the cost of big-time sports and might further distance athletes from other students on campus.

At least one athletic director is asking the right question:

...as University of Mississippi athletics director Pete Boone put it: "There seemed to be a rush for public relations purposes to come up with an academic reform package. But what does it really mean if more kids get degrees but they are in basket weaving?"

The fight over school choice in DC

According to Carrie Lucas of the Independent Women's Forum, the soon-to-be-voted-on Washington, DC, "omnibus bill" on education currently contains a bill on a school-choice program, which would offer low-income Washington parents scholarships worth up to $7,500. Problem is, the teachers unions are fighting it tooth-and-nail, and the members of Congress - many of whom don't live in DC - might be willing to let it slip out:

Despite spending $12,000 per pupil — the highest per-child expenditure in the nation — the Washington, D.C., public-school system is in perpetual crisis. The nation's capital boasts the lowest score on the National Assessment of Education Progress, a national standardized test. Many schools are unsafe and crumbling.

...the D.C. school-choice provision should be a slam-dunk in Congress. Unfortunately, the program is in a precarious position because it directly benefits only those families living in the District. Even members of Congress who believe that D.C. parents deserve more options and who support the concept of school choice are being tempted to let this provision slip. These members are understandably anxious to go home to their own families and districts, not stay and fight for a program that doesn't affect their constituents. The teachers' unions — who view all plans that allow students to escape from government-run schools as a threat to their monopoly, and ultimately, to their paychecks — will oppose any omnibus bill that includes D.C. choice.

To be eligible for the scholarships, a four-person household would need to make less than $35,000 a year, which means they're families who can't afford to move where the schools are better. And the waiting lists for charter schools are long.

More about the plan can be seen here.

Teachers and students, behaving badly

Let's see, in the "I-can-behave-outrageously-and-still-keep-my-paycheck" category, we now have, in addition to Goose Creek Principal McCrakin and FDR High Assistant Principal Knoll, North Carolina science teacher Jeff Ferguson, who decided to demonstrate the body's ability to neutralize acids in milk by making his students drink it until they vomited. Sure, participation was voluntary, and only five of the 42 students actually threw up, but still. Joanne Jacobs calls it "an educational experience for all, especially for the teacher, who's been suspended." With pay, I might add.

Of course, students aren't always angels themselves. In New Zealand, one enterprising female bully set up a website that invited and encouraged other students to leave nasty messages about another girl at her school. Allegedly the result of a "schoolyard spat," the website quickly became evidence of some very ugly behavior:

[A newspaper] said the website's home page contained "foul comments" about the victim, and included a guest book filled with similar comments from fellow students as well as threats to "bomb" her computer with viruses.

She said while it was becoming increasingly common for children to abuse each other through mobile texting and email, she had not previously heard of someone devoting a website to such attacks and encouraging others to join in. "I think it's the nastiest kind of thing that you could throw at somebody," she said. "I would call it at the very high end of bullying."

There's yet another entry in the "If-I-fake-a-hate-crime, I-help-validate-real-crimes!" category as well. A Northwestern University student has been charged with felony disorderly conduct after it was determined that he faked racist graffiti and a knife attack (free subscrip required):

Jaime Alexander "Xander" Saide, 19, told his story to hundreds of Northwestern students at a campus rally against discrimination...Saide had told police that on Nov. 4 he found anti-Hispanic slurs including the word "die" written on a wall and a poster near his room in Chapin Residential College. On Nov. 8, he told police, a man grabbed him from behind and put a knife to his throat as he walked to his dormitory after visiting friends. He said the man whispered an anti-Hispanic epithet in his ear before running off...

Alexander Rabbit Magalli, 18, a freshman, said Saide had good intentions, "but it was the wrong way to go about it. ... I hope this doesn't hurt the cause."

Unfortunately for Magalli, every such incident does hurt the cause. The more fake racial crimes that occur, the more willing people will be to dismiss or suspect the real ones.

And then there's this unnamed 15-year-old in North Carolina who, to let his therapist tell it, has just been exploring his fantasies, and is "merely a big talker, with a low chance of hurting himself or others." (Free subscrip required to access the story.) Nevertheless, he's been in juvenile detention since October 22nd, and has just been released to his parent's custody (under what is essentially house arrest). He's also banned from going to his school - indeed, from approaching any school.

Another victim of a draconian zero-tolerance policy? Well, perhaps not:

Last month police said they uncovered a plot to explode homemade napalm at Concord High and on school buses while they were investigating an unrelated and unfounded bomb threat.

Police also said they found what the boy had labeled a "corpse list" naming more than 20 people, including himself, whom police say the boy intended to hurt.

The psychologist saw no problem with this:

"Kids who don't have a lot of confidence sometimes become interested in fringe subjects: war paraphernalia, explosives," Sultan responded. "In a 30-year-old it would strike me as unusual, but not at his age."

What about the "corpse list" and notes about where to plant the bombs at school? Is that also not unusual for a 15-year-old?

High costs, low educational value

One of my favorite writers, Wendy McElroy, has a very informative article up about the high prices of some low-value college curricula.

Before they send their children onto a college campus in North America, parents should read two new reports...

A second report issued by the College Board, a non-profit schools association, Trends in College Pricing 2003, states, "college tuition and fees increased an average of $579 at four-year public institutions, $1,114 at four-year private institutions, and $231 at two-year public institutions" in 2002.

What's more, one researcher estimates that half the money going to public universities comes from taxpayers, and a lot of that money appears to be going into non-academic projects (water slides and indoor batting cages, anyone?).

What does Ms. McElroy suggest? Privatization.

There is an obvious solution: Return to a curriculum in which knowledge is valued more than political correctness.

If clients value political correctness or water parks, then they can pay the cost both in lower academic standards and spiraling tuition. Meanwhile, those who value knowledge and skill can enjoy the comparatively modest, stripped-down tuition it would cost to acquire them.

2 + 2 = No!

Aptos High School in the Pajaro Valley (Santa Cruz, CA) has said bye-bye to an "innovative" math program that left its participants flunking the California standardized assessment in big whopping numbers:

Known as the Interactive Mathematics Program, the nationally recognized curriculum is a sharp departure from conventional math education and has earned the praise of instructors at Aptos High School.

Yet, Pajaro Valley Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Mary Anne Mays said last year's IMP participants at Aptos High scored below the basic level on state standardized tests and has called for the program's end. On Wednesday, she drafted a letter canceling IMP at all schools in the district.

What's the Interactive Mathematics Program? Why, Mathematically Correct already has the scoop on it, in a 2002 literature review which concludes that IMP is best for students who do not plan to attend college or who plan to major in non-math subjects. It "lacks the depth of study for students who will study math in college" and "is not a college prep math curriculum."

Unsurprisingly, though, the supporters of IMP claim that those nasty tests just don't gauge how good a job this allegedly-shallow program does at helping kids understand math:

Many math teachers like Claudia Ayers said that alternative programs like IMP can't be gauged by standardized tests. "Standardized testing pulls in a very narrow curricular direction - just back to the basics and math facts - whereas IMP and the reform programs pull towards conceptual understanding," she said. "Authentic learning pulls in one direction and standardized testing pulls in the opposite."

Because, as we all know, mathematics is a subject in which conceptual understanding has absolutely no relation to the understanding of basic factual information. "Authentic learning" of mathematical concepts can in fact take place in the absence of, or prior to, the learning of basic-level mathematical concepts and functions.

Riiiiight.

Does Ms. Ayers understand the basic mathematical concept of percentages? She must not, if she's so eager and willing to ignore these results:

....According to recently released test results, of the 140 students who participated in IMP in 2003, 95 percent scored below or far below basic. In 2002, 100 percent scored below basic. This year's IMP 2 students did only slightly better with 87 percent scoring far below basic, while 85 percent of the IMP 3 students scored poorly.

Conventional students at Aptos High also did better on the 2003 SAT test, averaging 42 points higher that those who participated in the IMP program.

Apparently, part of IMP's "innovative" technique is that it does away with the old, fuddy-duddy tradition of teaching mathematical concepts in sequence (algebra followed by trigonometry followed by calculus). Instead, students learn "non-linear" segments which "fuse" each curriculum together and are, in their first year, allegedly introduce to all the ideas within the entire mathematical field.

Because, as we all know, mathematic concepts do not build on one another, and calculus concepts can be successfully introduced to students who do not have a firm understanding of algebra.

Riiiiight.

I assume the state standardized test referred to in this article is the California Standards Test; here's the Algebra blueprint. Here's the summary Mathematics Exam. Skip to page 7 of this document for all of the Mathematics standards. The highest possible scaled score is 600. To score below basic, a student must receive a scaled score of less than 299.

It gets worse. Thanks to all this non-linearity, students in IMP don't actually get credit for finishing an algebra course until they've completed four years of IMP. Unfortunately for them, the state's test is set up in a way that assumes tenth-graders have mastered not only algebra but geometry.

But the brave IMP supporters forge on, completely unconcerned by the fact that their program is completely out of alignment with state standards and test content, and by the fact that the tests indicate that IMP students are not mastering basic math content at any level:

Still, teachers like Melville and Ayers remains undeterred. "This is what we're dealing with: 'How do we withstand the pressure of politicians and administrators who don't understand the meaninglessness of the numbers and would rather focus on (test scores) than authentic learning?'" Ayers said. "That is the crux of determining how to deal with people who are not on the same page as we are."

I believe Melville and Ayers are profoundly qualified to speak about the "meaninglessness" of numbers, given the quality of the math instruction they provide.

Voucher concerns and FCAT standards in Florida

Florida Education Commissioner Jim Horne spoke to members of the state Board of Education about the "embarrassing revelations" concerning the state's voucher system:

"There are things I'm not proud of that we've missed," Education Commissioner Jim Horne told members of the state Board of Education. "If you don't believe it's managed real well, the blame is with me," he said. "We will make sure these programs are more effective."...

Horne has proposed a package of changes that would tighten controls over the programs. But board member Bill Proctor said he is concerned the reforms don't go far enough. For instance, Proctor wants students who use vouchers at private schools to take the FCAT so their academic progress can be evaluated.

And speaking of the FCAT, Florida's BOE has decided not to raise FCAT standards this year:

A divided Florida Board of Education decided Tuesday to leave the standards where they are for now, despite a state rule that calls for adjustments this year. The lone dissenting vote was board member Charles Garcia, who called Tuesday's vote "the low point of my tenure on the board."...

The naysayers worried about the effect raising standards could have on morale, and were also concerned that they had not seen enough data showing the effect of using the FCAT as a promotion tool. I completely understand their desire to know more about the effects, but I wonder if they're just waiting to see how many of the 42,000 third-graders who originally flunked the FCAT will have passed it by the spring of next year.

There will be some changes, however:

Next school year, all students - including those with disabilities and limited English skills - will be included in the school grade calculations. Those changes are expected to lower grades for many schools, but a state study shows that 38 percent of Florida's D and F-rated schools would actually benefit from the change. Only 20 percent of A and B-rated schools would benefit.

Also in 2006-07, science will be added to the school grading mix.

Parents in Florida also won't have access to test forms:

Florida's high-stakes exam that determines whether students graduate from high school or are promoted from the third grade will remain confidential, a state appellate court ruled Thursday [November 6th].

State officials said although the test booklets aren't released, parents get diagnostic reports and their children are offered remedial help if they struggle. They also said the FCAT was no different than other scholastic tests, such as the SAT or ACT, where only test scores and not the tests themselves are released...

Actually, the 1980 "Truth-in-Testing" bill gave examinees in New York the right to see SAT test forms; a 1982 study concluded that examinees who saw their test forms and then retook the SAT did not show a significant change in performance. Other organizations also release most or all of their test forms - the LSAC, for example, releases three out of the four LSATs it administers each year.

Nevertheless, releasing FCAT items would indeed drive the costs of the test up, and substantially more time and effort would be required to construct new tests that are properly developed and equated each year.

Effective project-based learning

The Dr. Michael Conti School (aka School 5) in New Jersey offers "a visual assault to the senses, unending in its variety and creativity." It also offers a curriculum in which projects are not just busywork, and basic skills are conveyed in an innovative fashion:

There are the maps made of candy, marshmallows and pebbles. Down the hall, miniature paper lockers are flapping open and shut, the product of a math exercise assigned to a group of seventh-graders.

Perhaps no display is more fetching than the efforts of the pre-kindergarten students to answer the question, "Who are the people in our neighborhood?" On the first floor of this three-story schoolhouse on Merseles Street, the pre-kindergartners have erected a pizzeria complete with a fake, but delicious-looking pizza, and a bodega with shelves stocked with Goya beans, rice and crackers.

From this starting point, students are asked to do research, surveys, draw graphs and maps, write out their conclusions, make a video about their findings - with teachers all the while making sure that core curriculum skills in math and English and other subjects are taught and digested.

Historical offensiveness

Joanne Jacobs reports, via Tongue Tied, that two Florida 11th-graders are in counseling because their teacher read a racial slur aloud from a book entitled, A Land Remembered, described as "a fictional account of Florida’s history as seen through the eyes of one family."

The parents of the traumatized students have hired a civil rights attorney and they may sue the school. According to the AP, the two students (who were in separate classes) were upset when the word was read aloud to them. One student alleges that white students snickered (why didn't the teacher say something to them?), and another student alleges that his teacher sent him to the office after he objected to the term (why didn't the teacher deal with that in a more appropriate fashion?).

Joanne, as always, cuts right to the heart of the issue: "I wondered why an 11th grade teacher is reading aloud in class. Can't the students read for themselves?"

Sharper than a serpent's tooth

Sometimes I revise and revise and revise my posts in the fear that perhaps I am being too unkind to those who make truly dumb statements. It's not a question of avoiding charges of libel; it's that I was reared not to use ugly names, and always to be polite to others, even when I disagree with them. Still, sometimes I feel I am too harsh when writing about those who assume that all tests are biased, that poor children deserve lower standards, or that schools should be designed around faddish educational ideologies instead of actual education.

But then I read Melanie Phillips' Diary and I don't feel I'm being too harsh at all.

For those of you unfamiliar with her, start here. She's a well-known and controversial British journalist and author. She also runs, on her Diary, a series called "Dunce's Corner." Consider her comments on this entry, in which she objects to the lack of foreign language education in British schools:

Our education system is simply disintegrating. The government's plan to drop foreign languages from the compulsory school curriculum at age 14 has already resulted in some 60% of comprehensive schools dropping compulsory language learning. Many bright children are dropping languages, but as ever the main casualties are the poor...

What a betrayal of children. What a condescending, philistine, vandalising government.

No matter how hard I've come down on people, I don't think I've ever used three derogatory adjectives at once. And check out this post on the "depressing vindication" of those, like Phillips, who complain about the dumbed-down nature of British education:

Depressing vindication for people like myself who have argued -- in the teeth of ridicule and outright denial from virtually the entire education establishment -- that education standards have dropped through the floor, that public examinations have been dumbed down and that the universities are having to spend much of their degree courses on remedial work. Lo and behold, now the Chief Inspector of Schools has confirmed that this is indeed all too true.

So now, multiple-choice exam questions are to be replaced by essays, to try to repair the catastophic situation where university students cannot any more sustain an argument...If one is trying to explain why our society now apears so gullible in the face of systematic lies and propaganda, it is because being taught to think has long been out of fashion in what we laughably call our education system.

And a professor of education really comes in for a beating when he seems to be "blaming the victim":

Typical nonsense from Ted Wragg, the education professor, who has been sufficiently moved by the Diane Abbott furore to inflict upon us yet more of his crackpot theories about education. As usual, he says the reason so many inner city schools are so dire is because their children are poor. 'If the fundamental problems of poverty are not addressed, educational initiatives alone will not achieve much', he says.

Pinning the blame for educational underachievement on poverty is tantamount to blaming the poor for their own failure...

Don't miss the comments on this last one. Phillip's Diary is relatively new, but I'll be checking in regularly for her Dunce's Corner segments.

Test scores not adding up in Georgia

Online Athens reports that school officials in Clarke County (GA) are concerned about sagging - and conflicting - math scores among students enrolled in middle and high school:

The Clarke County school board got a snapshot look at district math achievement during its regular monthly meeting Thursday - a chart of standardized test results that showed only 47 percent of eighth-graders met or exceeded the benchmark math score on the state's Criterion-Referenced Competency Test given in the spring. A year earlier, 57 percent had met or exceeded the benchmark as seventh-graders, and 58 percent had done so as sixth-graders in 2001.

In a similar drop, 56 percent of sixth-graders met or exceeded the achievement benchmark on the spring CRCT. Last year, 62 percent of the same class met or exceeded the benchmark as fifth-graders...

Definitely not good news. For some reason, the same cohort that is moving through the county's schools is becoming less likely to meet grade-related benchmarks as they proceed.

Administrators believe the downward trend in test scores through middle school is a symptom of the same lack of math comprehension that leaves many high-school freshmen floundering in algebra class - which they must have to graduate. The struggle for many students has been a concern of some school board members in the past, and Cedar Shoals and Clarke Central high schools have begun offering pre-algebra and Algebra I classes as year-long classes, rather than semester-long, in one attempt to help students.

You mean these high schools were teaching Algebra I within a semester, instead of using an entire year for that? Why the rush, unless what they're calling "pre-algebra" is just part of Algebra I? And move forward three years, and things get more interesting, as passing rates on the high school exit exam rapidly increase:

Math scores skyrocket between eighth-grade CRCTs and the Georgia High School Graduation Test given in the junior year of high school...Superintendent Lewis Holloway told school board members that part of the reason scores jump on the high-school test is because many of the students who have struggled academically have begun dropping out by that point and therefore aren't taking the test. The test also is not very rigorous and is being revamped by the state, school board member Denise Mewborn pointed out.

Well, here are the online content descriptions for every grade for the math CRCTs. Skip to page 69 to peruse the eighth-grade content. The content appears fairly extensive and includes geometric and algebraic concepts. Sample items may be found here; the items seem pretty straightforward.

And here are the content descriptions for the math portion of the Georgia High School Graduation Test. The Geometry and Algebra constructs being measured do not seem to be any more rigorous than those listed for the Grade 8 CRCT.

Here's the student guide from the DOE. Notice that an item which requires a student to calculate the following is listed as having a high cognitive level:

6. "One gallon of paint will cover 800 square feet. How many gallons of paint are needed to cover a wall that is 8 feet high and 200 feet long?"

Why is this considered to be one of the more difficult items on the exam? Because it requires test takers to "know how to find the area of a rectangle and to know when finding the area will help solve a problem."

I think Ms. Mewborn might have a point about the rigors of the exit exam. From my admittedly-cursory examination, it appears that the graduation exam is not much more difficult than the eighth-grade exam, and this could definitely explain the contradictory scores. Students who are failing in math in eighth grade either drop out or have almost three more years to master the eighth-grade material before taking the exit exam.

Reality show format "fizzles" for administrators

I invite you to read, without comment (I'm laughing too hard to write), the tragedy that ensues when college administrators try far, far too hard to be hip:

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) - A creative idea to make meetings between University of Iowa officials and students more fun quickly changed directions when jazzy nicknames chosen for top administrators were found to have undesirable multiple meanings.

Jones, 63, suggested that he and Skorton, 54, "have to do a better job of trying to keep up with the culture of today's youth."

Silly me

Earlier today, I posted about an anti-voucher article that I mistakenly/carelessly/idiotically thought was recent. Turns out that though I disagreed with most of it, the article must have been effective; Prop 38 in California, which would have provided vouchers for private school tuition, was roundly defeated. In 2000. Thanks to the reader who so tactfully pointed this out to me.

I was going to keep up some of my posting, but realized that since I was using post-2000 sources to make some of my points, it was a lost cause, so I removed the entire thing. That's what I get for getting so caught up in the moment that I miss an important point (i.e., that I was beating a dead horse). I don't often post about vouchers, so I should have done my research more thoroughly.

VP stabs self, blames student, keeps paycheck

You know, it's hard to imagine how a school official could do more damage to student morale than the trigger-happy Principal McCrakin of Goose Creek, SC.

But I must admit, a vice principal who stabs himself in a school bathroom, and then allows police to claim that a student was the attacker, sure fits the bill:

An assistant principal who was thought to be the victim of a stabbing allegedly inflicted the wounds on himself, and then lied about it, authorities said. Clinton Knoll, 35, of Ulster County, was arrested Monday, two weeks after he was found bleeding in a bathroom at Franklin D. Roosevelt High School.

At his arraignment, Knoll was ordered by a judge not to make contact with school officials or go to the school grounds. He was suspended with pay from the Hyde Park school district.

Gee, suspension with pay? No zero tolerance for school officials who bring sharp objects onto school property, I see; no zero tolerance for those who lie about self-inflicted wounds as well.

The benefits of West Virginia

Now here's a doozy of an op-ed in the New York Post by well-known education researchers Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster. Despite the well-known stereotypes of New Yorkers as sophisticated and unprejudiced, and West Virginians as uneducated, racist hicks, it seems that black teenagers in WV stand a much better of graduating high school, and of being prepared for college, than do their peers in NY:

First, West Virginia high schools are far more likely than their New York counterparts to keep black students in school all the way through graduation.

By these three criteria, we estimate that only 16 percent of all black students in New York leave high school meeting the bare minimum requirements to apply to four-year colleges...By contrast, 31 percent of all black students leave West Virginia schools ready for college - just about twice as many as in New York.

What do Greene and Forster conclude is the reason behind these differences? They believe the differences are related to the theories listed in Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom's new book, "No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning" (see here and here for previous posts about the book):

The Thernstroms don't look specifically at New York and West Virginia, but it isn't hard to guess how their findings might apply. There are definitely a lot of people in New York always willing to make excuses for black student failure. The data seem to indicate that West Virginia is holding its black students to a higher standard, and with outstanding results.

Hrm. Is this the case? Well, here's Dr. Greene's report on graduation rates across the 50 states. Here's the table with the numbers by state. Note that the numbers for white students are identical for West Virginia and New York, yet there's this discrepancy for black students. That certainly suggests that whatever has gone wrong with the NY system is affecting blac