Number 2 Pencil

chuting themsevez in the fut

Massachusetts public school officials don't want new charter schools in their state, and they allegedly put their students up to a letter-writing campaign. Unfortunately, these "educators" either didn't bother to spell-check the letters, or didn't know how to spell themselves:

All the proof state Board of Education member Roberta Schaefer needed to OK controversial new charter schools were the letters before her from public school students. Schaefer ridiculed the letters against a proposed school in Marlboro for their missing punctuation and sloppy spelling - including a misspelling of the word "school'' in one missive.

"If I didn't think a charter school was necessary, these letters have convinced me the high school was not doing an adequate job in teaching English language arts,'' Schaefer said.

So these are letters from high school students who can't even spell "school"? Who helped devise their language arts curriculum, Gayle Cowley? And could there be a more effective refutation of Ms. Cowley's insistence that spelling is not a "critical skill?"

Despite the letter-writing campaign, which Schaefer said was orchestrated by school officials, the Marlboro-based Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School as well as new charter schools in Cambridge, Lynn and Barnstable were approved yesterday.

Opponents vowed a renewed campaign against the controversial public schools, which compete with traditional districts for state education dollars.

"We're going to pursue this legally and through the Legislature,'' said Kathleen Kelley, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers.

Ms. Kelley, please put that time and energy into teaching kids to spell. We'll all be better off. Kids who can't spell turn into lawyers who can't spell, and that makes everybody crazy.

(Found via Best of the Web.)

Elementary schools that teach history

Adorable columnist James Lileks is choosing schools for his adorable toddler. Lileks is a history-and-architecture buff, so his standards for choosing a preschool are rather unique:

Visited two pre-schools today, looking for New Educational Frontiers for Gnat. The first one made me slightly weak in the knees when I entered: a 1922 office building rehabbed for tots. Most of it had been gutted and done over, but the lobby had been restored to its original glory...

The building’s maintenance man drifted by, and my guide introduced us. I was looking at the rehab of the ground floor, trying to see where the original hallway had been...I pointed to a light-colored rectangle on the stone wall – tenant directory? “Nope – the mail box,” he said. Then he said the magic words. “I got it upstairs. Want to see it?”

Went back to the room where wife and child were enjoying a sample of the school’s program. “She has to go here,” I whispered. "It’s a history-drenched 1920s office building with some original fixtures!”

Hee hee hee. I remember when I first transferred to Lexington Elementary School (SC), in the 3rd grade. My mother, most definitely not an old-building nut, cried the first time she saw the place. It was a teacher's college, circa 1880, that was being used in the 1970's as a school for 1st- through 4th-graders. I don't think they renovated it, or even did any maintenance, other than to lash wire fencing across the second-story balconies so we wouldn't all plummet to the concrete below (we could still spit on people, though).

The pillars out front were massive, changing classrooms involved a dash across many buildings, and the staircase banisters were huge slabs of ornately-carved wood, where you could see the wear from many hands (and probably butts) that slid across the ends of them every day. And the bathrooms were modern - for the 1910's, I think. No stalls, few sinks, just toilets attached to the walls. Creaky, no AC, probably no central heat, etc.

I loved the place. Eventually they tore it down. The campus was so humongous that the new, large, modern elementary school they built fit entirely into what had been the bi-level playground for the old school. Lexington had to have lost a few kids out on that massive playing field each year. If you were way on the outer edge of the playground grabbing at honeysuckle plants when the warning bell rang after recess, God help you. You'd never make it back to the classroom on time.

Shocking Chicago

The Chicago school board plans to "shock" some schools into realizing their shortcomings:

The school board has adopted a strict new accountability plan that would place nearly half the city's 600 public schools on academic probation, a move decried by critics as extreme but embraced by officials as necessary to shock the system into higher performance...

The new rules, passed late Wednesday, require elementary schools to have at least 40 percent of students meeting state and national testing norms, up from 25 percent; the standard for high schools increases to 25 percent from 15 percent. Under those rules, 293 of the system's 602 schools face probation, up from 82 now. A school can get off probation by reaching the 40 percent or 25 percent cutoff on tests given in the spring, or showing substantial progress -- 10 percentage points -- on the tests.

Duncan said that over the past 10 years, the number of students scoring in the bottom quartile on standardized tests has been halved, from 48 percent in 1993 to 24 percent now. The problem is that too many students are now stuck in the mid-range...

Critics, of course, say that these increased standards aren't fair because they're accompanied by no extra funding. But recent score increases have happened despite greater fiscal restraint, so it doesn't follow that test scores only rise when more money is pumped into the system:

...Duncan said there is plenty of evidence that the system continues to move away from where it was when Bennett embarrassed the city with an insult that is still raw for many Chicago educators.

The impact was immediate and Daley, and his new management team, structured like a corporation, quickly became darlings of the education world. They achieved labor peace, balanced the budget, eliminated millions in waste, and instituted more after-school and preschool programs, while dramatically expanding summer school and ending the practice of advancing students simply because of their age.

And scores have improved, although they also seem to have plateaud. Hence the tighter standards.

I checked out the website of the PURE folks, who were mentioned in the article as being critics of these new tougher standards. They sound like devoted parents who supposedly support tougher standards and true school reform. But they can't get over their testaphobia. This is what they want for accountability measures:

Sound, high quality methods of determining student academic progress which include true multiple measures such as classroom-based assessment, grades, and other student work products created over time, and which use standardized tests as a secondary factor in the overall assessment.

I read this and I think: What happens when standardized test results wildly deviate from class grades, which has been happening all over the country lately? Doesn't this compound the issue of grade inflation? Does PURE know how difficult it is to develop "high quality" student work products that measure longitudinal development? Does PURE know how much more that costs than regular standardized tests, and how much more classroom time is involved? Just how secondary are standardized tests supposed to be?

Another conundrum is that PURE wants "High quality performance standards for teachers beyond administrative certification which support capable teachers and allow effective remediation of poor-performing teachers," but they also want students to suffer no sanction if taught by unqualified teachers. If that's the case, what motive is there to become qualified? And where are the demands to get rid of poor teachers who fail to respond to remediation?

PURE also regurgitates the standard anti-testing lines:

[NCLB flaws are that it is] misusing standardized tests resulting in increased student push-outs and drop-outs, more students denied promotion or graduation status due to test errors, and a narrowing of the curriculum to focus on tested subjects...

1. There is no solid evidence that standardized tests cause higher dropout rates (or push-outs). There is research to suggest that higher dropout rates correlate with exit exam use, but correlation is not causation. States with large numbers of poorly-performing high schools, that most likely have high dropout rates, are probably the states that were most likely to implement early exit exams, in order to identify and support struggling students.

2. While recent test scoring errors have been lavishly described in the media, there is no evidence that tests are routinely miscored.

3. Schools that already teach basic skills in an effective manner won't find themselves narrowing the curriculum. Schools that can't teach third-graders to read English will find themselves with less time to teach art, music, and self-esteem. No one has yet demonstrated that narrowing a school's curriculum to include solid reading and math instruction for all students is damaging to education.

What's really on trial here?

I'm trying to figure out why this article about a San Mateo (CA) county's mock trial program includes so much anti-testing sentiment:

A dramatic trial that unfolded in a Redwood City court room last night determined the fate of dozens of students across San Mateo County and sent a powerful mock trial team to a statewide competition.

“One of the tragedies of this whole testing movement is that it tends to eliminate some of the most valuable learning experiences students can have,” said Hillsdale High teacher Greg Jouriles. “We don’t want to deprive kids of those deep learning experiences.”

Um, you aren't. Your school's students have won this competition 11 years running. I would not be surprised to see that your school's students also do well on standardized exams.

Participating in the intensive mock trial competition hones skills like public speaking, improvisation and critical thinking, Jouriles said. “Those are the type of things that aren’t necessarily going to be on a test,” he said.

No, but then the goal of testing is not to measure every single thing taught in school. It's to measure basic skills that schools must teach. If a kid can't read or write, how good of a "critical thinker" will they be?

High schools in the county have been participating in the event by the Constitutional Rights Foundation for more than 20 years. Preparation for the trial is intense...Presiding judges from San Mateo County oversee the competition and two attorneys serve as the jury pool...It’s definitely a different type of classroom than the ones students are now accustomed to.

“Academics are one thing,” Mehl said. “Education is something much larger that encompasses developing the social and emotional aspects of a child. These are the kinds of experiences that frankly we’ve lost over the years.”

Guess what? You've lost the ability to teach them to read, write, and do math as well, or there wouldn't be such a need for standards. It's ludicrous to assume that schools have been excelling at teaching academic skills while letting "social and emotional" aspects slide. This kind of comment reflects the typical educrat reaction to the fact that we're trying to put more importance on those academic skills now.

Ongoing budget troubles in recent times have slowly worn away at the “extra” instruction like music and the arts in many county schools, Mehl said.

And this is related to a criticism of standards-based instruction how? Is the assumption here that money should always be reserved for art class, even if kids are reading three grades behind?

Hooray for the kids who participate in mock trials - it sounds like a great experience. But it's bothersome to see that the educrats involved can't compliment this system without insulting tests.

Spelling bees on the way out

Florida's teachers insist they just don't have time to do spelling bees anymore, because every second is needed for FCAT preparation:

In Orange County, more than half of public elementary and middle schools did not participate in the county bee last week, about 10 fewer schools than last year. Interest also has fallen off in nearby Volusia County, where 43 percent of schools chose not to send students to show their skills at spelling sometimes-complicated words.

"We just can't afford the time -- that's really it," said Jody Adkins, a fourth-grade teacher at George W. Marks Elementary in DeLand. The school hasn't signed up for the county bee in years. "It really is unbelievable how little time during the day we have. We try to use every single second."

I've no doubt they try to use every second, but I wonder how efficiently they're using it. What's more, these kind of comments make me very suspicious:

Despite the state's argument that bees can help children prepare for the FCAT, and after decades of holding the contests, school officials are saying they don't think the bees are worth the time.

"Spelling is one of those skills that is not as critical as it used to be because of all the aids we have for spelling," Cowley said. "But even more than that, the focus has moved from those kind of automatic memorization skills to critical thinking and analysis skills, which I think most of us believe should be the focus of our instruction."

The head of a Language Arts council believes that because Word has a spellchecker on it, kids don't need to practice their spelling. And they've moved beyond "automatic memorization skills" to teaching kids to "think critically." Think critically about what, I don't know, because the kids haven't memorized any facts.

This is part of the standard, asinine pedagogical ideology that states that basic skills are inherently bad, and "higher-level thinking" is inherently good. Since Word has a grammar checker as well, doesn't this mean the rules of grammar are also "less critical than they used to be"?

Attitudes like this make me discount the cries of teachers who claim that FCAT preparation time is all that's holding them back from teaching kids the joys of learning how to spell words. What they're hearing from educators in positions of power is that these little "memorization" skills aren't worth the time.

NYC's wiggling third-graders

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is offering "wiggle room" for NYC's third-graders who flunk the state's standardized reading test:

The new promotion requirements, announced last month by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, would force any child scoring at the lowest level on the annual citywide reading or math tests to repeat the third grade. But at a public forum on the new policy, held yesterday evening by the Manhattan borough president, C. Virginia Fields, the chancellor said that parents would be given a chance to plead for their child's promotion...

Numerous studies of such policies around the country have found no benefit in forcing students to repeat a grade and instead show that those held back are far more likely to drop out before graduating high school.

Again, the chicken-and-egg problem. This doesn't mean retaining causes them to drop out later; what it most likely means is that kids who are struggling enough with early grades to be retained are more likely to drop out later.

Students who still scored at Level 1, the lowest of four rankings on the standardized tests, would be able to enroll in an intensive summer-school program and to retake the test. Those still at Level 1 would be forced to repeat the third grade. Under the city's policy, children scoring at Level 2, which is still considered failing to meet academic standards, could be promoted.

"We're talking Level 1 - which is far below standard," Mr. Klein said. "So even with the fallibility of testing, there is a wide margin in there. But as I said, that being so, we will have a process whereby students through their teachers - if their teachers think it's warranted - can make an appropriate appeal."

I'd like to hear more about the standard error of the test, and to know how far below proficient the ranking of Level 1 is. If it's very far - say two standard deviations or so - below what would be considered proficient, then Mr. Klein has a point here. Students scoring at Level 1 are unlikely to have true abilities at or above the proficient level.

On a related note, Jay P. Greene, writing in the New York Post, praises Klein:

The reforms being championed by Chancellor Joel Klein could finally lead to significant improvement of the city's schools after many frustrating years of spending increases and academic stagnation...

Klein's proposed addition of 50 charter schools should be music to reformers' ears. Not only would it expand education options in the city, but it gives the chancellor leverage in his union contract negotiations...

Followup on the Potty War

An update to the potty parity war in Lawrence, NJ:

A policy limiting students at a middle school to 15 bathroom breaks a month has gone down the toilet. Administrators at the Lawrence Middle School revised the rule Wednesday to allow kids to make up to 30 visits a month to the restroom, according to Saturday's editions of the Times of Trenton...

Under the new policy, students may use all 30 passes each month. With about 20 school days a month, that is about 1 1/2 visits each day. Students with health problems or with an emergency must see the school nurse.

School Principal Nancy Pitcher said the policy was not changed in response to parents' complaints, but after a review by administrators.

And that's a good thing why? Why wouldn't parental complaint have had an effect, when this idea of discipline was essentially a public health issue?

"I think the revised policy is baloney," resident Lisa Everson told the newspaper. "Administrators still haven't changed their overall philosophy with dealing with students."

Devoted Reader Regin sent along an example of an alternate philosophy that sounds more effective. This is cut and pasted from alt.tasteless on Usenet (identifying information and profanity deleted; also edited for length):

As the story goes, the school had a severe problem last fall with bomb threats scrawled on the bathroom walls in marker, most likely by a single student. True to military-style discipline, the school board elected to punish all the students in the hopes that the students themselves would ferret out the artist and and correct his behavior.

THAT, my friends is MANAGEMENT. That's how you motivate and/or de-motivate, whatever the case may be. I will never forget that little precursor to boot camp and I'm a reasonably thoughtful adult because of it. This namby-pamby "suspension" crap and all this "zero-tolerance" policy is just a mask for managerial laziness and a lack of vision.

Amusing. I remember in our high school most infractions were punished with the dreaded "lunchroom duty" - having to go around and clean the lunch tables, empty trays, and so on. It was humiliating, messy, and cut into the free time at lunch; hence, it was a very useful punishment.

Locking every kid out of the bathroom - not a useful punishment.

WASL going to happen now?

Someone on the editorial staff of the Seattle Times is aggravated with a state senator's proposals for the Washington exit exam:

State Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Kent, should stop messing around with a well-crafted House bill that clarifies state high-school-graduation requirements, and work instead to pass it without major changes.

Johnson would limit students to two retakes of the WASL. Those who fail both times could take what's known as a norm-referenced standardized achievement test. Both changes would undermine the intent of the state's ongoing standards-based education reform.

I see no point in switching to an alternate assessment after two retakes, most especially not to a norm-referenced assessment. Not only does that, as the author points out, defeat the purpose of setting objective standards, but if only those who fail the WASL twice take the alternate test, how are the norms going to be set? If the norms are set by the general population, kids who fail the WASL will fail the alternate test, because they've already been defined as being below all the other students. If norms are set by the population who takes only the alternate test, then the message being sent to students is, if you can prove you're the smartest of all the dodos who failed the WASL twice, you get a diploma. Ridiculous.

As for how many retakes, yes, one could argue that more than two retakes should be allowed. But schools should also be prepared to set a limit on retakes, or give unlimited retakes but insist that a student doesn't graduate until they pass the test, whether it takes one administration or ten.

Slightly more than one-third of the state's 10th-graders passed the reading, writing and math portions of the WASL last year...

Johnson questions the reliability and validity of the WASL.

I have a feeling these two sentences are not unrelated. The assumption that a test that gives politically-incorrect results must be unreliable or invalid is often made by those who fear (or are ignorant of) tests. This doesn't mean the WASL is reliable or valid, of course, but a third of the 10th-graders flunking doesn't mean it isn't, either.

I also think Johnson's comments are not independent of what was said in this meeting:

Superintendent Dolores Gibbons, Marcie Maxwell, Board Member and Legislative Representative and Dimmitt Middle School principal Kathleen Heaton-Bailey hosted a meeting today with state legislators to discuss the state and federal government’s reform efforts including the WASL...

Kowalis explained that although the goal to fully educate every student is laudable, the reality is children are individuals with very individual needs and cannot all be expected to perform at the same level.

Fine. But if you admit that some 17-year-olds cannot be expected, ever, to perform on the same level as most others, you also have to be prepared to deny diplomas to those students. There's a difference between saying, "Kids may perform at different levels," which is absolutely true, and "No matter what level a kid is at at age 17, they should get a diploma if they stayed in school," which is highly debatable.

“We’ve built an entire education system on a ‘no cookie cutter’ model,” Kowalis said. “Now we present this one test [WASL] as a way to measure their competence.”

Hedeen asked if an alternative test or other form of assessment could be considered for students who could not pass the WASL. In 2008 high school students will be required to pass the WASL before graduating. Hedeen noted that, for students who do not pass the test in the 10th grade, teachers in 11th- and 12th-grade classrooms would have to spend all their time helping them meet that goal. That, said Hedeen, could cause districts to restructure curriculum and possibly exclude subjects important to those students who did pass the test.

All their time? Really? Wouldn't ability tracking negate a lot of this? This wouldn't affect those kids in AP classes, I'm sure. And can anyone explain to me why the material normally be taught in an 11th- or 12th-grade classroom would not help a kid on a 10th-grade exam? The implication here is that teachers will have to "dumb down" 11th- and 12th grade material for everyone, but if that's the case, why are these 10th-graders being promoted to the higher grades? If they're so clueless that teachers will have to spend all their time helping them, why promote them?

These teachers and administrators want it both ways. They want agreement with their declaration that all kids are different, but they want diplomas to be "one-size-fits-all" - awarded to kids regardless of their achievements. They want to focus on those 11th- and 12th-graders that pass the WASL by not dumbing down the material, but they want to promote into those grades kids who can't pass a 10th-grade test. No wonder the idea of an exit exam aggravates them.

The cause of Marin's high test scores

The Marin Independent Journal celebrates the test scores of local children, but misstates the relationship between test scores and SES:

Marin students performed better in standardized tests than students in other Bay Area counties and were more likely to take Scholastic Aptitude Tests than their peers, according to a report to be released today...

In the past, national studies have shown that high test scores are, more than anything else, the product of socio-economic status of families, with students from the high end of a continuum consistently scoring higher on standardized academic achievement test than those from the low end. This is borne out in Marin, where a high percentage of parents of students tested are educationally and economically on the high end of the scale, compared to the rest of the state, as well as the nation.

Correlation does not imply causation. Simply because, overall, students who come from wealthier families may do better on tests, that doesn't mean that, as stated above test scores are caused by the wealth of the parents.

It is logical to draw that conclusion in our society, because kids from wealthier families have more opportunities and tend to go to better schools. But their parents might be wealthy because IQ and income tend to be correlated in our society as well, and it might be that intelligence - and learned traits like self-discipline and competitiveness - account for both parental income and child test scores. How many parents in Marin County had to work long hours at hard jobs to earn the money to live there? Who's to say their kids didn't inherit or learn those traits from them?

This might seem like a nitpicky point, but it's not. One of the most important concepts taught in Stats 101, is that correlation between A and B does not imply that A causes B or B causes A, because a third factor C might cause both to occur. This concept is essential for research because missing that third factor can lead to totally erroneous conclusions like "Poor kids have no chance of making good test scores" or "Tests don't measure anything other than parental income," both of which assume that money in and of itself is the most important factor affecting test scores.

At least the article avoids the truly boneheaded statements, and it doesn't go into the nonsense about how it's not "fair" for some kids to have more money than others, but the author still gets it wrong by assuming that correlation implies causation. Congrats to Marin's students, though (who I bet would be rather offended if you told them they only scored well on tests because of Mommy and Daddy's money).

Update: As Devoted Reader Jeff W. points out, I missed the real story:

Marin is the wealthiest county in California. Kids there enjoy advantages that most kids in this country can only dream of.

Yet only 45% were proficient in English and algebra. That's the real story.

According to Wikipedia:

The median income for a household in the county is $71,306, and the median income for a family is $88,934. Males have a median income of $61,282 versus $45,448 for females. The per capita income for the county is $44,962. 6.60% of the population and 3.70% of families are below the poverty line.

Can't blame poverty for poor school performance, can they? Here is the county's STAR score report for 2002. According to this, the scores for Language Arts breaks down as follows:

Grade ----- % scoring Proficient or Advanced
2 ---------- 56
3 ---------- 61
4 ---------- 67
5 ---------- 61
6 ---------- 60
7 ---------- 66
8 ---------- 63
9 ---------- 58
10 --------- 55
11 --------- 52

For each grade, the percentage scoring only Proficient (not advanced) is anywhere from 24% to 43%. So I'm a little confused. Is the 45% for 2003 reported in the article above for only the Proficient category (which would reflect a small increase) or for both Proficient and Advanced together (which would reflect a large decrease)?

Either way, Jeff is right. I missed the real story, which is (a) that in 2002, with the data I'm reporting here, only 52% of 11th-graders in a very wealthy county scored at or above Proficient in Reading, and (b) sad as that is, they're still doing better than the country at large, because 57% of Marin's 11th-graders scored above the national 50th percentile mark.

California's adjustments to NCLB

California's doing some retooling to the NCLB regulations:

California education officials took a screwdriver Wednesday to some rigid rules regarding the controversial federal No Child Left Behind Act, saying the policies are potentially unfair to thousands of schools.

One of the changes proposed Wednesday would allow schools to count students who opt out of testing as "not proficient" instead of as a non-test taker. By doing so, schools would still have incentive to encourage students to take the test, but they wouldn't be punished in the head count if the parents decide to opt out.

If the state law allows parents to oppose testing by keeping their kids home, I agree that schools shouldn't be punished for this. There should be some way to distinguish between schools that fail to test kids and parents that refuse to have their kids tested.

At first, I thought the schools would still suffer thanks to those not-proficient scores for the opt-outers. But it's possible that, if the kids whose parents keep them home are kids who would have scored non-proficient anyway, the school's average remains where it would have been with those kids testing, and the school doesn't get punished for not testing enough kids.

A new kind of accountability needed in Philly

Even in a city like Philly, where political connections are paramount and it's who you know that matters, this is ridiculous:

Members of a recently formed school-safety task force have learned that the process of assigning crossing guards isn't based on any objective criteria. Instead, guards are assigned based on pressure from politicians.

"No one seems to know" how guards are assigned, Dougherty said. "I'm amazed."

Eleven million dollars to assign crossing guards, yet there are none near some Philly schools on busy streets, and more than one in areas where schools have long been closed. And a horrific number of students have been hit by cars since the beginning of the 2003-04 school year.

So far this school year, 56 public-school children across the city have been hit by cars around schools, according to school district records. Most of those accidents have occurred right outside schools. Two recent accidents injuring students outside school occurred at corners where the guard was absent, and in May 2001, a 5-year-old boy was killed at an intersection where the crossing guard was absent.

No one could explain why two crossing guards are assigned to corners near a school that has been closed for 21 years...

When no one can explain why a system works the way it does, even after children have been killed, heads should roll. I hope the Daily News repeated coverage of this problem prompts investigations and reassignments.

The battle over NYC's third-graders continues

A top New York education official has squared off against NYC Mayor Bloomberg and his plan to retain third-graders based on test scores:

Board of Regents Vice Chancellor Adelaide Sanford said the state Education Department's guidelines advise against basing promotional decisions on a single test for elementary and middle-school students.

"Test scores should not be used in isolation because low test scores can often result from low motivation and other factors that are independent of a student's knowledge," Sanford said during a hearing sponsored by Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields.

If the test is that high-stakes, I'm not sure if motivation is an issue. However, one can certainly argue that the test is not a good enough measure of reading ability to judge whether a child should be promoted, and one can also argue against ever using a single test score to make such a decision. All test scores contain error, and while they may contain less error than subjective grades, that doesn't mean that supplemental information shouldn't be used in conjunction with scores.

Sanford argued the policy punishes students who lag academically because they have inexperienced or incompetent teachers.

Well, but if students are lagging behind academically, then it's reasonable to argue that they should be held back to retake the grade with a different teacher. After all, if no students of an incompetent teacher get retained, when will we discover the incompetency?

Such a policy doesn't take into account if children are struggling because of undetected health problems, including those that affect vision or hearing, she said.

Students with visual or hearing handicaps would, I assume, be struggling with all the grade-level material. There's no reason not to provide test accommodations for kids who already receive such help in the classroom, but if a kid hasn't learned the material (whether due to the handicap or not), I don't see where it follows that promotion to the next grade is required.

And she stressed that all the data she's seen shows that children who are held back are more likely to drop out. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein staunchly defended the tougher policy, arguing that troubled kids are worse off later in life if they're passed along.

Chicken-and-egg problem. Smart kids aren't likely to be held back. If kids who are retained one year in the lower grades then go on to drop out later on, where's the proof that it's the retention itself, rather than the lack of intelligence/motivation/discipline that led to the retention, that is the cause of that? I have no doubt that retention is correlated with dropping out, but that doesn't mean that retentions cause later dropouts. Correlation doesn't imply causation.

The chancellor stressed he's talked to numerous teachers who say their students are lost because they're years behind. And he said half the city's kids leave the schools without basic skills.

I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to be a sixth-grader teacher who realizes that her class is at the fourth-grade level. I agree with Bloomberg that social retention can do much more harm than good, especially if it's done in great numbers. But I disagree with using one test to decide whether a child should progress or not. Perhaps the test scores and grades could be combined, where test scores are weighted so that grade inflation won't help a kid pass.

The "sponges" in their schools

In an amusing and acerbic article about "Britain's laziest women," Mark Steyn puts the blame on the British school system for its tendency to produce "sponges" instead of disciplined and motivated competitors:

The other day the Sun bestowed the title of "Britain's Laziest Woman" on Susan Moore of Burythorpe, North Yorkshire...as Alastair Taylor explained: "Super-sponger Susan, 34, has not done a day's work since dropping out of college in 1988."

Despite receiving "Jobseeker's Allowance" for 16 years, she does not seek jobs, and never has.."I just haven't been given a chance," says Susan. But when the space on your CV for the period from adolescence to early middle-age is one big blank, no one's ever going to give you a chance. It's hard to think of anything capitalism red in tooth and claw could have done to Susan Moore that would have left her worse off than the great sapping nullity in which Her Majesty's Government has maintained her for her entire adult life.

Primary schools have given up on the egg-and-spoon and sack race because, under the great Cult of Self-Esteem, it's too much to ask a child to endure the sting of defeat. A third of London schools play no competitive sports. Teachers are uncomfortable with the notion of an "opposing side" one must strive to "beat" - just as, in the war on terror, many grown-ups are uncomfortable with the notion of "the enemy": to the progressive mind, there are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet fully acknowledged.

Where did this idea that children are irreparably harmed by any competition whatsoever come from? And why didn't anyone foresee that instilling a fear of competition into children is much more likely to produce a gaggle of Susan Moores than a country full of productive citizens?

The responses to the story on Ms. Moore, by the way, are heartening. The following is a typical example:

THERE is never an excuse for not working except in recognised cases, such as for health reasons. So it makes my blood boil to see people like Susan Moore.

If you are not employed but are employable, surely stacking shelves in a supermarket or something similar shouldn’t be beneath you?

When kittens attack

Why I'm not blogging from home as much anymore...

9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney

Bomb threats and potty parity

One of the changes I've made lately to improve my health (which IS much improved, thanks) is to drink between 8 and 10 glasses of water a day. My face is clearer. My itchy dry skin is resolving itself. My system feels nice and clean and, well, flushed.

And if I had a kid at this school, I'd be outside with a picket sign reading, "Potty Rights for All!"

Under a new policy at the Lawrence Middle School (NJ), seventh- and eighth-graders are allowed to leave class for the bathroom a maximum of 15 times a month. As a result, some are afraid to use up their bathroom passes too quickly and end up with a full bladder and nowhere to go.

The pass system went into effect last month as a way to monitor the school restrooms and stop students from skipping class. It is the latest in a series of disciplinary measures school administrators have taken in response to behavioral problems that have included bomb threats.

I got news for that school. The way my bladder is now, I don't think I'd hesitate to call in a bomb threat if that cleared the way to the bathroom for me. And what on earth does regulating bathroom usage have to do with halting sociopathic behavior? It's unhealthy, and it's insulting to those students who aren't acting out.

"When my son Matthew used all his passes, he was then told he couldn't go to the bathroom," parent Susan Gregory told The Times of Trenton. "We called the school and were told the bathroom is a privilege, not a right. Then we were told if a child has to go to the bathroom more than three times a day, we need (to bring them) a doctor's note...

"Common sense tells you the policy doesn't make any sense," said Dr. Christopher S. Cooper, an associate professor of urology at the University of Iowa who specializes in pediatric urology.

The good doctor mentioned "common sense." Get the feeling he hasn't had much contact with public school systems lately?

"I see lots of junior high kids every day who have problems with urinary tract infections from not voiding frequently enough," he said. "There is also an epidemic of constipation because kids are not consuming enough fluids."

While Cooper acknowledges teachers need uninterrupted time to teach, and that some students ask for a bathroom pass to skip class, he says a student who sits in class trying to restrain the desire to urinate will be distracted and won't be able to pay attention to the lesson.

No kidding. Let's see, they've already locked up the bathrooms between clas periods and are limiting to kids to gym, lunch, and those 15 passes per month. What are they going to do next - take out all the water fountains so that kids don't try to do anything disruptive like replenish themselves between classes?

Principal Nancy Pitcher thinks the policy offers students ample opportunities to use the bathroom. She said it was a necessary step to guarantee the safety of her students and encourage learning. The high school implemented a similar system the previous year.

Does Ms. Pitcher follow the same constraints? No? Then it's not ample. Schools can control discipline without draconian control over this most personal of needs. There are ways to control bathroom misbehavior without making the restrooms off-limits.

Ms. Pitcher claims some kids just don't want to follow "rules." Parents are countering that locking kids out of bathrooms would be illegal in other public places (not to mention something that Child Services would investigate in a home), so why should it be allowable in a public school?

Devoted Reader Regin sent this my way; Joanne Jacobs posted on it as well. The comments on her site are great. This one from "Jon" was my favorite:

It is abusive to not allow someone to use a bathroom. The authorities should be ashamed of themselves. Justifying their cruel actions as necessary to combat the actions of a few jerks is just the kind of zero-tolerance nonsense that will probably result in Ziploc bags of urine being left on their automobiles during the next school board meeting.

I wonder if it was the thought of this kind of retaliation that prompted this followup letter from Principal Pitcher at the Lawrence Township Schools website:

Our main goal at Lawrence Middle School is to provide the best possible education for your child during their middle school years. As you may know, we had a problem the first part of this year with constant interruptions to student learning because of bomb threats which necessitated evacuating the building for as long as 2.5 hours at a time. These bomb threats were usually written on bathroom walls...

Although this pass system has virtually eliminated bomb threats and kept students in classes in our building, it has not been popular with some of our students and their parents...

To say the least. And can I ask a question? Sure, there are no more bathroom walls on which to write threats, but the kids who wrote those threats are still walking the halls. Was anything done to find out who they were? Wouldn't that have been more productive than closing the bathrooms? What's to stop these kids from writing a threat on a wall during class hours? My kid would be no "safer" just because you removed the element on which a little jerk could write his threats...

On Tuesday of this week Mrs. Biggs and I met with interested parents and staff members, talked about issues at the school and listened to their concerns. As a result of that meeting, we are making revisions to the hall pass system. The pass will no longer specify the number of trips to the bathroom but, instead, will allow the student to determine how he or she uses the 30 slots on the pass during the 20 days in a given month. Of course, we will also continue to allow any student to make additional trips to the bathroom if it is an emergency...

There will be a meeting for all Lawrence Middle School parents next Tuesday, February 24 at 7:30 PM in our school library to hear your ideas, discuss our shared vision for Lawrence Middle School and talk about next steps. We hope you will attend.

Principal Pitcher is patting herself on the back for reducing the number of bomb threats. But if I were a parent there, in a small NJ town like Lawrenceville that is most definitely NOT a deprived community, I'd still be worried. What else is being done to find the kids who would do such things?

Calling a foul on SAT rankings

Based on the raw numbers, the state of Georgia ranks 50th - last - when it comes to SAT scores. But ranking states by SAT scores is not a wise thing to do:

Mark Musick, the president of the Southern Regional Education Association, agreed. “Georgia has a problem, it’s just not that we’re 50th.”

In North Dakota and about half the states, the ACT is the dominant test for college-bound students. Colleges can convert ACT scores to SAT scores, and once converted, according to a Southern Regional Education Association list, Georgia ranks higher than 11 other states.

Psychometricians know this, but the general population doesn't hear it enough in the media. In many southern states, all 10th- and 11th-graders are encouraged to take the SAT, whether or not they plan to go to college. This practice helps fulfill the original purpose of the SAT - to identify those kids who might not otherwise know they're college-material - but it's guaranteed to drag the averages down.

The important question is not, "What is a state's mean SAT score?" The important questions are who takes the SAT in that state, how many take the SAT, and what the plans are of those who take the SAT. That doesn't guarantee an apples-to-apples comparison, but it does prevent the comparison of Georgia's general population with the kids from North Dakota who plan to go to Harvard.

(Thanks to Devoted Reader Jim P.)

Pot-planting principal should be a perp

When a principal shows up on The Smoking Gun, it's never pretty. I just can't improve on their summary of the hapless pot-planting principal:

Here's a bit of advice for high school administrators everywhere: If a drug-sniffing police dog somehow misses the pot you planted in a troublemaker's locker, just let it go. Patrick Conroy, however, felt the need to tell Michigan cops about his harebrained attempt to frame a student he believed was selling drugs at L.C. Mohr High School.

The dog, named Herbie, did not cooperate, however, failing to detect the weed. For his part, Conroy repeatedly steered the K-9 team past the bank of lockers, to no avail. Conroy is now the subject of a criminal probe.

Conroy's local newspaper, the Herald-Palladium, has more juicy details, and has been bombarding Conroy with phone calls, to no avail:

Conroy told police he had been collecting the drugs, which he said had been confiscated from students, ever since he came to the high school as assistant principal in August 1999. He claimed he kept the drugs in his office so he could bring them to school board student expulsion hearings to show as evidence if necessary.

Herald-Palladium attempts to telephone Conroy at home on Wednesday and Thursday were unsuccessful.

I'll bet. Not only did he try to frame a student, but he's been illegally hoarding drugs in his office for five years. That police dog needs to be retired; his nose should have exploded when he came anywhere near Conroy.

As Best of the Web notes, there's a hilariously-supportive letter by one Abby N. , on the website of an nearby highschool newspaper:

Many students have taken notice that Mr. Conroy is not at school. Rumors of drugs, sex, and violence have been flung through the air all week long. Many students have been questioning what’s happened. According to Mr. Hadden, he is on leave with pay, and the reason has nothing to do with sex, drugs or violence. The press release that was given to teachers stated the reason is procedural, administrative...

He admits to having drugs on campus and then using them to frame a student and he gets put on leave with pay?!?

Many students have made wild accusations; saying that Mr. Conroy was arrested and even some parents claimed the he was in jail. Mr. Conroy has not been arrested and he has not done anything illegal.

Bullspit, honey. It was illegal for him not to call officials and surrender any drugs that he confiscated from students. As the Herald-Palladium noted:

South Haven Police Chief Rod Somerlott said earlier that when drugs are confiscated from a student, by law police must be contacted immediately to pick up and dispose of the illegal substances.

Mr. Conroy has been a great help to this school over the years...

Mr. Conroy was gold in a school full of nickel and his absence has left a void in both the school and in the hearts of many students...

I can't improve on BotW's rejoinder - "He was gold, all right--Acapulco gold."

And what does that say about the rest of the school administrators and teachers, if they are "nickel" to Conroy's "gold"? Do you think they should feel good about Abby's comment?

The punishment doesn't fit, but the bathing suits sure do

Sixth-grader Justin Reyes is on a three-day suspension for bringing the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition to school. The alternative punishment was two days at an "alternative school" full of miscreants; Justin's mother rejected that punishment.

Any administrator with any sense would have just confiscated the silly magazine, which is inappropriate for a sixth-grader but hardly worthy of punishment. (Except for, maybe, being locked in a classroom for an hour with a teacher who minored in Women's Studies in college; the resulting lecture on objectification would be punishment enough.)

Then again, any administrator with any sense would not, as Superintendent Tim Swarr did, admit to not ever having seen the swimsuit issue that SI publishes each year. That makes him sound awfully naive.

(Found via Sharkblog).

Philly's Avenging Angel

Philly's a tough city with a soft (and strange) heart. In the last week, two schoolkids have been killed by gunfire. Eleventh-grader Raymond Dawson was shot to death during a robbery attempt while walking home from helping his family sell flowers. And Faheem Thomas-Childs, a third-grader, was caught in the middle of a drug war while walking to school.

In response, a "hard-boiled businessman," a Sicilian named Joe Mammana, is putting a $10,000 bounty on the heads of the “cowards and thugs” responsible for each of these killings, which raises the reward money to over $100K:

“These losers can kill each other and it would be a public service, a thinning of the herd,” said hard-boiled businessman Joe Mammana, putting a $10,000 “bounty” on “the heads” of the “cowards and thugs” who killed Faheem Thomas-Childs, 10, in a crossfire outside T.M. Peirce Elementary School...

“I’m Sicilian,” he said. “My children are half Spanish. I don’t see color. I don’t see race. We’re all human beings. And we’re all subject to the streets. These bums who shoot children — I want them off the streets forever.”

One charter school's existence hangs in the balance

What happens when a "good" school has "bad" test scores?

It's a Friday like any other here [at the John A. Reisenbach Charter School] - a weekly "Color Day," when students celebrate school spirit by wearing the hues of their floor - orange, green, and blue - rather than their usual oxford shirts and gray pinafores or slacks.

The threatened closure has parents and experts both raising questions about a school's less tangible aspects - qualities no standardized test can measure. How, for instance, do you quantify the environment here - the safe, carefully monitored hallways, or the eager confidence of the students?

Well, those things can indeed be quantified. Safe environments will have fewer incidents of violence, disruption, bullying, and the like. There are assessment to measure self-confidence. But the question in my mind is, if the school is safe and kids are confident, why are test scores still low?

Both Craig Cobb and his daughter, Brittan who is a third grader, have fallen in love with Reisenbach.

Like other parents with children at Reisenbach, Mr. Cobb is smitten with the high level of parental involvement. Others rave about the safe, courteous atmosphere, an eighth-grade curriculum that includes reading Shakespeare and newspapers, and extras like drama class and a choir as reasons to keep the school open.

Shakespeare is good, courtesy is good, but I think it's strange that reading newspapers in eighth-grade is considered to be an outstanding part of the curriculum.

There is no doubt that the school has not delivered on its promise to raise test scores...Last year, however, only 13 percent of Reisenbach's eighth-grade class met state standards in English; only 7 percent in math.

Yeah, that's pretty low. How are those eighth-graders reading Shakespeare yet not demonstrating knowledge of the current form of the English language?

...[to some] hard numbers protect a school and should be relied upon. Benjamin Chavis, principal of the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, Calif., is a firm believer in scores, and skeptical of "feel good or other less quantifiable" measures of success.

In 2000, its fourth year, his school nearly had its charter revoked. But by 2001, a year after Dr. Chavis arrived, he'd turned the school around. Now, its scores are among the best in the state. "You can't win by saying, 'This is a safe school,' " he says. "That's a ridiculous argument."

However, the argument that some kids had been at the school only five months before being tested isn't ridiculous. And the school's administrators have offered to resign in order to keep the school open. Parental support is high. Perhaps the school just hasn't had enough time to prove how well it can educate its students:

Some argue schools with low test scores but high community support deserve more time to prove themselves.

In 1998, California's Oakland Charter Academy was in a position similar to Reisenbach's. One of the first charter schools in its district, it squeaked through its first renewal. Test scores were bleak, faculty turnover high. But parents rallied to support the Latino educators who understood their Spanish-speaking children and their community's values. Since then, the school has made modest gains in scores - and received its third renewal.

Update: Fellow blogger, teacher, and all-around tough guy Charles does some investigating. Conclusion? A conditional renewal, perhaps - and no more excuses about those eighth-graders:

It's quite possible a good portion of the 8th grade class in question had been at that school for years, as we shall explain.

The "transient students are pulling our scores down" appeal is largely a myth, but makes for a handy excuse.

I should bribe Charles' to catch this kind of stuff (and, you know, do the online research that I skipped) before I post. (I hear he works cheap - for buffalo-chicken sandwiches.)

Also don't miss his post on Diane Ravitch's Left Back, which he gifted me with recently. I'll get to it soon, Charles, I swear...

Sarasota's dropouts

Students in danger of dropping out of school in Sarasota (FL) will soon be routed to a new school:

A special school will open this fall for 240 students in eighth through 10th grades at risk of dropping out because of poor standardized test scores. Plans call for small classes, individualized instruction, and counselors to work with community organizations and students on non-academic issues.

"We'll build a relationship between adults and the students," said Peggy Wiggins, the district's director of academic intervention. "We'll give the students services and support, and if outside help is needed, a social services worker is there to make the connection."

Apparently, all the existing in-school dropout prevention programs are not useful. But Sarasota's dropout rate is between 3.1% and 3.6% for students 16 and over. This seems, well, low (although it's higher than the state's reported 3.1%). It's hard for me to understand why this justifies $3 million dollars for a new school, when Florida is allegedly doing a good job of preparing students who stay in school for college. And the plan is to identify younger students, put them in the special school - then transfer them back to the regular high school after they complete 10th grade. If there are still problems at the regular high school, won't the incentive to drop out remain?

Success and failure in NYC

New York's elementary school students seem to be thriving - but the results haven't yet translated to middle-school success:

Nearly half of [New York City's] elementary schools made Albany's honor roll of "most improved" schools - but most of its middle schools flunked, according to new state Education Department statistics.

Statewide, about one-third of New York's 2,500 elementary schools made the state's honor roll as most improved in math and reading. That's more than 800 elementary schools - 322 in the city - showing dramatic improvement on the fourth-grade English and math exams since 1999...

By comparison, when it came to the middle schools, only six of the city's 390 sites made the list for English. Even more stunning, only nine other middle schools in the rest of the state improved enough to make the list.

The middle schools in NYC also "bombed" the math tests as well. City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is disappointed with the scores, which I assume are the result of more intensive reforms at the elementary school level. If these students are being tracked over time, hopefully we'll continue to see gains as they progress through the school system.

One NYC middle school has done well by discovering the obvious:

One city middle school bucking the trend was MS 340/North Star Academy in Brooklyn, which made both the English and math honor rolls...

All instructors at the Park Slope school are trained to be "reading teachers" regardless of the subject they teach. The philosophy is that students can't master any subject unless they can read and write - and that has paid off, Principal Gloria Dupree said.

And this philosophy isn't in place in every NYC middle school because...?

Defining terrorism down

I'm no fan of teachers' unions, but this is just ridiculous:

Education Secretary Rod Paige called the nation's largest teachers union a "terrorist organization" Monday, taking on the 2.7-million-member National Education Association early in the presidential election year.

The education secretary's words were "pathetic and they are not a laughing matter," said Weaver, whose union has said it plans to sue the Bush administration over lack of funding for demands included in the "No Child Left Behind" schools law.

Allegedly it was a joke, but it was a pretty poor one (though not "hate speech"). As Joanne Jacobs puts it:

I fear that "terrorist" is joining "Nazi" as an all-purpose word meaning "someone of whom I disapprove." There are real terrorists out there.

Update: Joanne is more right than she knows. Drudge notes that presidential hopeful Kerry has lobbed the terms at Republicans in the past:

As Democrats express outrage over comments made by Education Secretary Rod Paige [he called the the nation's largest teachers union 'a terrorist organization'] a DRUDGE REPORT flashback can reveal Democrat presidential frontrunner John Kerry Has Called Republicans 'legislative terrorists'... MORE... In Jan. 1996, commenting on the federal government shutdown, Kerry called the House Republicans 'legislative terrorists,' who used federal workers as pawns and disrespected them. Asked about his terrorist comment, Kerry explained, 'Terrorists hold hostages, and the Republicans are holding the government hostage'...

That was pre-September-11th, but still. There should be a moratorium on anyone using the word "terrorist" so lightly.

Who is to blame when kindergarteners bite?

Fark.com labeled this story, "Cincinnati Public Schools expels kindergartners for stabbing classmates in face, bringing weapons to school. "Experts" blame everything under the sun except terrible parents."

Fark is exaggerating, though; "fractured families" are on this list of causes - after TV and video games:

A student at Quebec Heights School in Price Hill strikes his classmates and kicks a teacher. A student at Princeton's Woodlawn Elementary stabs another kid in the face with a plastic fork. A student at New Burlington Elementary in Springfield Township urinates in a garbage can.

Experts blame many factors: Sex and violence on television and in video games, undiagnosed mental illness, poverty, fractured families and zero-tolerance for trouble at school. Kids are stressed out. And many kindergartens did away with naptime a decade or more ago.

Hard to believe that removal of naptime alone is responsible for an upswing in violence in the ABC's set. And if five-year-olds are watching violent videos, um, whose fault is that?

And the violent kindergarteners do have some defenders - their parents:

But others, including some parents and child advocates, say biting, kicking and temper tantrums are normal behavior for 5- and 6-year-olds. This group says that expelling or suspending kindergartners just sets children up for failure - at a far too tender age.

"If a child does something extreme, you have to look at why," says Rochelle Morton, former vice president of education and youth development at the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati. "Putting a child out of school is not going to help."

Yes, but is a school permitted to say, "We looked at why this child is biting everyone withing teething range, and we decided it's the parent's fault?" If schools don't have the power to say that anymore - and I bet that power is diminishing every day - why should they look for root causes instead of applying discipline?

Pass the test in order to teach

In Texas, they're debating whether to allow uncertified teachers to enter the classroom based on test scores:

The State Board of Education is scheduled to vote Wednesday and Friday on the proposal, which would make it easier for uncertified college graduates to take up teaching.

According to the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, there's no research that supports taking untrained college graduates, testing them and placing them in classrooms...

Unfortunately for the NCATE, there's also little research to suggest that education degrees, or classes in education, are useful:

The Department of Education argues that the research linking traditional education programs to teacher quality is thin, according to Michael Petrilli, a senior aide at the department. Instead, he said, studies show that teachers' cognitive ability and content knowledge matter most.

Based on that, the department backs proposals like Texas' that eliminate formal programs from the certification process.

Okay, all you teachers out there - what do you think?

Mamma mia, so that's what a spicy meatball is

Teachers in Florida are using field trips to help their students on the FCAT:

Some Martin County schools place such importance on field trips that they've secured thousands of dollars in grant money to pay for impoverished students to visit places they normally would not see.

"They're fluent at a third-grade level, but their comprehension is maybe at a first-grade level because they don't have the cultural background," he said. "Things unique to America they just don't see. Something I've become a lot better with over the years is not to assume anything."

When tests reveal bad news

The Heartland Institute wonders why exit exams are so unpopular in some circles, when the test scores seem to be of direct use to students:

The advent of high-stakes testing is revealing more than just information on what American high school students know and are capable of doing; it is also revealing a significant shortfall between that assessment of actual skills and what schools have been telling students about their achievement and ability.

For some students, the failure to pass a high school exit exam is the first warning signal they may be sorely unprepared for the demands of college.

A group named the Mass Insight Education and Research Institute, along with the UMass Donahue Institute, completed a study last October entitled, "Seizing the Day." It's a longitudinal study of kids on the "front line" of education reform, and some of the study's conclusions are very interesting; namely, that the high-stakes exit exam (in this case, the MCAS) is what forced many students to work harder and improve their academic performance:

The researchers found most of the 32 percent of students in Boston, Springfield, and Worcester who failed the state’s Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) exam on their first try--in 10th grade--were more than a little surprised: Almost 90 percent of them had a C average or better at the time.

By their senior year, 94 percent of these students from the class of 2003--the first required to pass the MCAS to graduate--received a diploma. The study found 82 percent of students who need extra help are now taking steps to get it; juniors are committing earlier to passing MCAS; and at-risk students are putting more effort into their school work because of MCAS.

Sounds great. Who could oppose this?

But the increased effort and success may occur almost in spite of the students’ teachers, who, in addition to inflating grades, are sending mixed signals to the students about the test. Seventy-one percent of the students surveyed perceived negative attitudes towards the MCAS on the part of their teachers...

It makes sense that any teacher who inflates grades will mistrust the test, either because they genuinely believe every kid deserves an "A," or because they believe their classroom grades capture something ineffable that the basic-skills exam misses. Other teachers might oppose the tests because they were taught standardized tests were uniformly bad, or biased; some teachers may resent the time taken away from classwork for testing.

But when grades alone are used to determine which students are ready for college, the results are decidedly mixed:

For example, in Georgia, 40 percent of high school graduates who receive that state’s Hope Scholarship are losing it after about a year because they can’t keep up their good GPAs in college.

A recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics found the number of students taking at least one remedial course upon reaching college has risen to 35 percent from 28 percent five years ago. At the same time, the percentage of college-bound students carrying an A average has grown from 28 percent 15 years ago to 42 percent now, according to the College Board.

The Nevada report is particularly blunt (not surprising considering Fred Phelps, an acquaintance of mine, is on the author list):

The problem of poorly prepared students entering college is growing, as far more students are now going to college. In recent years, approximately half of Nevada's high school graduates entered college. Last year nearly 10,000 of them were enrolled in remedial courses. In too many cases, they needed help with knowledge and skills that should have been learned in the third or fourth grade...

At the heart of Nevada's problem is the issue of teaching philosophy. Generally, teachers - especially elementary teachers - are taught to think of teaching and learning as a process that follows student interests and inclinations - whether or not it leads to the achievement of curricular objectives. These teachers are trained to design learning experiences that optimize student interest and enthusiasm, not particular learning results. The consequence is that many students simply acquire a patchwork of knowledge and skills - often with significant gaps and weaknesses. Similarly, many never learn that dabbling in schoolwork is not enough - that success requires meeting challenges and overcoming them.

Oh, and that cult of self-esteem so valued by some teachers? Nevada's college professors were fairly dismissive of the value of training in "cooperative study activities, self-esteem enhancement and work with diverse students" in a college classroom. What was considered to be important? "Ability to focus in class," "Effective study habits," "Ability to complete work on time," "Patience and persistence in completing course," and "Understanding "work ethic" related to education." The professors tended to be in favor of stronger standards (although unconvinced that testing could help reveal the effects of them).

The report concludes:

...our professors found their students to be weak in both the basics and higher-order skills, and currently they see no trend toward improvement. Thus, it seems fair to conclude that the critics' apprehensions are, at the least, misplaced. Apparently there is little danger that the imposition of standards and accountability will make matters worse.

In other words, things are so bad for college freshmen that it's hard to argue that adding new standards and accountability measures will make them even more ill-prepared for college.

"Getting the buggers to behave"

Middle-school teacher David Huber is completely in agreement with an article about the decline of discipline in British schools and the reaction of the educational establishment in abdicating authority.

The original article is by Dave Perks, who teaches physics at a British school:

A quick look at Sue Cowley's Getting the Buggers to Behave, a recent popular survival guide for teachers in the classroom, gives us a few clues as to which side is in the ascendancy. She begins with good clear advice that before children can learn they need to 'concentrate' and 'behave themselves'...

But read on and something else is implied in the book. In tackling the first lesson with a new class, Sue Cowley stresses the need to avoid confrontation. She suggests that allowing the student to win 'will end the confrontation and save you undue stress', and adds 'they only think they have won' because 'you know you are really in the right'...

There is a contradiction built into the advice given in this book and other popular guidelines on behaviour management. It is assumed that, as a teacher, you have no authority over the pupil other than your position as an adult in the classroom - an adult who is in any case severely constrained by the expectation that the pupil's rights come first.

In one sense, all that books like Sue Cowley's do is recognise that teachers, like all adults, are hampered in their relationships with young people and children by a failure to discipline children in society at large. Society increasingly seems to be losing respect for all adults and authority figures...

Mr. Perks links the lack-of-respect crisis to a deeper one:

Academic standards have become so devalued that students are allowed into schools to study A-levels with such low grades they are nearly guaranteed to fail, which has the effect of packing A-level classes with unmotivated and poor achieving pupils...

The consequent decline in discipline results in a behavioural focus - for instance insisting on the wearing of student ID cards, with students sent home from lessons if they fail to do so....[but evidence]...makes it clear that having large numbers of disenchanted and unsuitable A-level students does much to encourage fights and vandalism within schools.

A focus on high academic standards, even if it means allowing weaker students to fail, would give teachers a much easier way of explaining the need for discipline...

And here's US teacher David Huber's response to the article, where he places the blame squarely on education programs:

One of the "core" classes for my education masters degree -- titled "Behavior and Classroom Management" -- emphasized such "tactics" as third party mediators for teacher-student disputes. One was a thoroughly humiliating video series titled "Discipline with Dignity" which essentially put the teacher on the same authoritative plane as the student. In a response paper to these "classroom strategies," I was excoriated by my professor for my "visceral attitudes" and "controlling personality"...

And as for the "you can't touch me" line so common among students, again, I'd be rich if I had a nickel for each time I've heard that. Whenever I'm confronted with an intransigent student...I offer "Don't believe the myth that I cannot touch you if you refuse to comply with a reasonable request, which I just offered you three times. I will take your arm and escort you from this room if you refuse to leave this time." This doesn't mean that I may not be sued if I end up having to take such action, but Delaware law is very clear on the matter -- I'd be in the right.

The US Dave agrees with the British Dave that decreasing academic standards accompany a decreasing amount of respect for the teacher's judgment:

More and more, year after year, I see "honors students" in my classes who are clearly not such. "Honors" means more than just intellectual ability -- it means superb work ethic. This ethic is clearly decreasing...

This year alone I've either had conferences with "honors" parents or heard news of such where these "honors" parents have complained about "too much homework," "the teachers are not doing enough to 'help' their child," and "you're 'picking on my child' by constantly asking him/her to be quiet in class."

"Overindulged child syndrome"

Love this New York Observer article (that Joanne found way before I did) on the immense self-esteem suffered by upper-middle-class kids who have been coddled all their lives:

[Too Much Positive Reinforcement] has now officially reached epidemic proportions...After decades of upper-middle-class parenting designed to shield Junior from all possible failure, and from any honest judgement of his talents, it’s no wonder we need television shows like American Idol and its fellow showcase for TMPR victims, The Apprentice. These shows are delivering the spanking—sorry, the time-out—that our culture of bloated self-evaluation is subconsciously craving...

"Kids will come in wanting to be a staff writer at Esquire right out of college," said Eliot Kaplan, editorial talent director for Hearst Magazines. "I had this girl come in from this failed dot-com one day—that was her only experience. I interviewed her and asked her how much money she wanted, and she said $300,000. I couldn’t help it—I laughed in her face." Mr. Kaplan added: "We’re happy to bring them back to earth."

I'm sure they are. But those "down-to-earth" experiences for spoiled kids used to come when they started school and learned the world didn't revolve around their needs. Now, even colleges are trying to protect pampered students from the real world:

"When I was at Andover in the 1940’s, one in every third kid would not make it," said Dr. Paul McHugh, head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. "Now in a school like that and even colleges, it’s really hard to fail out. They pick you up, prep you, dust you off."

It’s the work world that increasingly functions as the personal reality-check service for TMPR victims...

The psychologists have a word for it: "overindulged child syndrome":

"One of my pet peeves is to hear parents praising a child’s accomplishments as if they’re professionals," he said. "A child who draws very well is a great artist, a child who dances very well is a great dancer. That implies that they are able to replicate every good performance. Instead, I’d like to hear parents praise the event, what they did. That’s a very different compliment; it doesn’t fill the child with expectations of being a great artist," he added. "You’ve built up the popinjay to the point where they don’t have the credentials and skill to prove it"...

Not surprisingly, the cult of self-esteem clashes with the cult of accountability and "back-to-basics" in schools:

If the teacher doesn’t give you an A, have Daddy pay! If you can’t get into Yale, put a check in the mail! "The extreme obnoxious example is the child who has a fit when she doesn’t get an A, and the parents go to the school and raise hell about the teacher’s unfairness and the grade gets changed," Ms. Murphy said. "You’ve done that child a huge disservice." Mr. Flamenbaum added...

Joanne also linked to an Education Next article about the dangers of the "Gentleman's A":

Our results indicate that students benefit academically from higher grading standards. However, these results were not uniform: high-ability students appear to benefit more than low-ability students from high grading standards. Moreover, initially low-performing students appear to benefit more from high grading standards when they are placed in high-achieving classrooms. Likewise, high-performing students appear to react best to high grading standards when placed in low-achieving classrooms.

And grade inflation benefits no one, especially now that so many standardized yardsticks exist for comparison:

It turns out that the grades teachers assign are highly correlated with students’ ITBS and FCAT scores. But teachers also tend to grade far less stringently than the state standards indicate they should (see Figure 1). For instance, just 9 percent of students who were awarded A’s by their teachers attained a score of 5 on the FCAT. In fact, just 50 percent attained even a 4.

Even those students whose talents coincide with their inflated self-esteem might not do well in adulthood. This 2002 research report correlates childhood overindulgence with adult temperament. The results aren't pretty, because, as the authors note, overindulgence of children is done not for the child's benefit, but for the parental ego, and lack of responsibility due to parental pathologies can also translate to overindulgence:

Overindulgent parents inundate their children with family resources such as material wealth, time, attention, experiences, or lack of responsibility at developmentally inappropriate times (Bredehoft, Mennicke, Potter, and Clarke, 1998). Overindulged children grow up in an unrealistic world and as a result they fail to learn skills such as perseverance, coping with failure in effective ways, and getting along with others. Parents overindulge to meet their own needs, not the needs of their children (Bredehoft et al., 1998)...

In this first study (Bredehoft et al., 1998)...the findings...paint a less than happy picture for adults who were overindulged as children. A high percentage of ACO’s [adult children of overindulgence] came from violent homes and homes in which parents were addicted to alcohol, drugs, work, or food. ACO’s reported the following life problems which they associated with their overindulgence: not knowing what is enough, overeating and gaining weight, money management problems, parenting and childrearing conflicts, conflicts with interpersonal boundaries, difficulty in decision-making, poor self-esteem, poor health, and being involved in excessive activities. As a result of being overindulged ACO’s reported mostly negative feelings: confused, embarrassed, guilty, and ignored.

Sadly, the problems tend to repeat themselves across generations:

...dysfunctional attitudes are closely associated with a variety of negative attributes ranging from the need for approval, being self-critical, perfectionism, poor social adjustment and depression. Parents who were overindulged as children subsequently believed in fate, that their child controlled their life, thought that they were less effective parents, had little control over their child’s behavior and have a more chaotic family system.

All the more reason for firmer discipline in schools, both in terms of classroom discipline and effectiveness of teaching. Why should students have to wait until they're faced with the working world to get a valid assessment of their capabilities?

One teacher's response to the SOLs

A Virginia teacher blames the SOLs (Standards of Learning) exams for his decision to leave the public school system:

Standards of Learning were introduced to make education better. But in my experience, they had the opposite effect. The intense pressure to raise test scores eventually squeezed the life out of school, both for my kids and for me...

From the start, the get-tough tests rubbed me the wrong way. Implicit in the notion of "accountability" are the assumptions that: (a) education is a product, the input and output of which can be standardized and measured; and (b) it's high time for teachers and schools to quit slacking and get to work.

It's very hard for me to imagine what education is if there's no observable change in the student. Just because a test is standardized doesn't mean that something other than reading and math can be measured with it. And some teachers have been spending an awful lot of time slacking, though they call it "child-centered education" while others call it "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

I can see why good teachers don't like the tests. But there are an awful lot of bad teachers out there.

In my experience, teaching is more alchemy than science. Its fundamental elements -- connecting with kids and sparking their love of learning -- can't always be measured by a test.

Yes, but what the kid learns can be. What good is a "love of learning" if the students don't learn anything? And what kid is better off - one who is in love with learning and knows few facts, or one who considers some classes to be drudgery but has a solid grounding in factual knowledge nonetheless?

This is why it pained me deeply to find myself in a situation where I felt compelled to give a rarely engaged student a practice bubble test instead of letting him read a book he had discovered he loved. My teaching directly to the high-stakes test would better serve him in the short term. He had to pass to graduate, and it was my job to make sure he did. Engaging him with books and instilling the habits of mind that might make him a lifelong reader would have better served him in the long run. I didn't have time to do both.

Can anyone out there enlighten me as to why there isn't time to do both? I'm serious. High-stakes tests aren't given every day. I don't work in the classroom, so I don't see this first-hand. But I find it hard to believe that the SOL alone kept this one kid from reading this one book.

This teacher, by the way, wants a return to this version of a lunchtime "coffeehouse" in school:

I remembered past years' versions of the coffeehouse: desks draped with tapestries, espresso maker bubbling in the background. Kids recited poetry into a microphone or played confessional songs on guitar. All these changes in the way we taught were hard to swallow, I thought, as I finished my sandwich and headed back to class.

Could he be a little more obvious about being attached to the 1960's? I can't think of anything more annoying at lunchtime than poetry recitations or "confessional songs." And again, why does the SOL mean there's literally no time left to have students read entire books?

The principal, Cathy Crocker, stepped to the dais, a Midwesterner whose indefatigable cheer belied the pressure she was under to raise our school's test scores. She thanked us for our efforts, describing her joy at seeing such caring, dedicated professionals working so hard with students. My spider sense started tingling...We had to raise our scores, she told us.

One way to do that, she said, was "bell-to-bell teaching": Every child's fanny in a seat from the moment the bell rings until the end of class 90 minutes later. I wondered if the controlled chaos of the writers' workshop in my room qualified as bell-to-bell teaching.

I wonder if any teaching at all happens in some classrooms where teachers aren't taught how to control chaos. And why isn't learning to sit still for 90 minutes considered legitimate character development?

The teacher, Emmet Rosenfeld, sounds like a genuinely nice guy, so I don't want to sound like I'm picking on him. He's probably a great teacher. But is the public school system in Virginia one that would really benefit, right now, from lunchtime poetry readings? Is all the instruction that teachers must take to craft lessons that relate to tests an indication of too much testing, or too little instruction about testing in education programs? And if there's so little time available to actually teach in the classroom, is that because teachers haven't been taught to impart information in an efficient fashion? If the tendency is to let children "discover information" all the time, I can see why there would be little time left to teach them all the facts they should know.

Making new psychometricians

A fellow psychometrician and Devoted Reader sent along a link to an RFP at the Department of Education. As he put it, it's an attempt to "ramp up" the currently-small pool of scientific education researchers and psychometricians, and to do so, if necessary, by means of an end run around colleges of education.

Here's the purpose of the programs:

The Institute’s objectives in creating the Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Program in the Education Sciences are to support the development of innovative interdisciplinary training programs for doctoral students interested in conducting applied education research, and to establish a network of training programs that collectively produce a cadre of education researchers willing and able to conduct a new generation of methodologically rigorous and educationally relevant scientific research that will provide solutions to pressing problems and challenges facing American education.

Within the field of Education, only 7% of Ph.D. candidates report that they hope to focus on research and development in education. What's more:

Perhaps even more worrisome is the fact that the number of Education doctorate recipients in the subfields of Education Statistics/Research Methods and Educational Assessment, Testing and Measures is extremely low compared to other subfields. This imbalance has remained consistent over the course of the
past ten years (Hoffer, et.al., 2003; APA Research Office, in press). The situation is no better in closely-related disciplines. For instance, the number of doctoral degrees in educational psychology has declined from 144 in 1978 to 48 in 2001 (Hoffer et al., 2003). Compounding this decline is the fact that of the 48 doctoral degree recipients in 2001, only 16 reported being involved in research within one year of the receipt of their degree (APA Research Office, in press).

Virtually no one wants to do educational research or become a psychometrician, but NCLB has resulted in an explosion in the need for good test developers and researchers able to understand testing data. I've posted about this before:

One reason for this shortage is that, despite the recent explosion of tests testing, the requirements for being a psychometrician haven't been modified, and large-scale high-stakes testing requires lots of psychometricians (and research assistants who are studying to be psychometricians). A psychometrician must possess a Ph.D. (a Masters isn't enough), and it's almost always in Quantitative Psychology or Educational Measurement (or, something very similar with a different name).

Yup, that's sure to keep up with the rising tide of testing. Meanwhile, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) alone has 35 research-related position postings - and that's just the positions that are officially listed by an organization that's willing to do a nationwide search.

Anyway, the RFP makes the stunningly-obvious statements, "Many schools of education are not providing rigorous research training for doctoral students," and, "there seems to be a mismatch between what education decision makers want from the education research community and what the education research community is providing." I'll say.

The upshot is to expand educational research training so that education and psychology programs are not the sole contributors to the field:

In order to increase the supply of scientists and researchers in education who are prepared to conduct rigorous evaluation studies, develop new products and approaches that are grounded in a science of learning, design valid tests and measures, and explore data with sophisticated statistical methods, this initiative will fund the creation of innovative interdisciplinary research training programs in the education sciences. Grants will be awarded to institutions that can put together a program across disciplines such as psychology, political science, economics, statistics, sociology, education, and epidemiology that will provide intensive training in education research and statistics. Predoctoral students will graduate within a traditional discipline, e.g., economics, but will receive a certificate in education sciences, and will be expected to conduct dissertations on education topics.

Emphasis mine. As far as I'm concerned, this is way overdue.

Ripping Michael Winerip

Dr. Jay P. Greene has a smashing article online at National Review in which he browbeats NYTimes education columnist Michael Winerip for regularly tugging at the heartstrings of readers, and for assuming that emotional situations should drive education policy:

The New York Times' weekly education column is perhaps the most widely read and influential newspaper space for education policy. The column, which for the last year has been under the pen of Michael Winerip, could be used for a rational discussion of the facts about education. Unfortunately, Winerip uses his weekly space in the Grey Lady to muddy our thinking with tear-jerking anecdotes. The column is perhaps the most dangerous newspaper space in the nation for those interested in education reform.

Hard evidence has no home in Winerip's column. Each week Winerip, a former education reporter for the Times, deploys human-interest stories meant to reduce even the most hardened education reformer to weeping; then, having blinded the reader with tears, he leaps to his favored conclusion — especially when it comes to his pet subject, high-stakes testing.

Winerip wrote about a kindergarten teacher who left the field because she doesn't approve of Florida's high-stakes tests. According to Dr. Greene, there's no evidence presented in the article to show that the students have been harmed by the test; just that the test makes the teacher cry. Literally.

Take Winerip's recent column about a kindergarten teacher in Orlando, Florida. The first half of the story is a heartwarming description of this gentle teacher nurturing her students. "Precious darlings, we have a day that's bigger than big," she tells them. "You are the b-e-s-t — kiss your brains for being so smart." Watching a video of her students, she cries "pink tears" — that is, the happy kind. She's irresistible.

Then, halfway through the article, Winerip lowers the boom. The teacher is quitting because she doesn't approve of Florida's new high-stakes test and thinks it will force her to change her teaching style. Since Winerip devotes virtually the whole article to describing how sad it is that this teacher is leaving, he doesn't provide any real discussion of the merits of her complaint against high-stakes testing. But he does provide a painstaking description of the teacher's last day at school, when she sheds "blue" (sad) tears.

Actually, the column is from March of last year, but it's as unbalanced as Dr. Greene suggests:

...it is easy to imagine all the broken hearts this spring when Ms. MacLeish, 53, sent a letter home saying this would be her last year teaching kindergarten. It was no ordinary goodbye letter. Ms. MacLeish was m-a-d. Her tears were not pink. She fears that the kindergarten world she knows and has raised to a fine art is being destroyed. "A single high-stakes test score is now measuring Florida's children, leaving little time to devote to their character or potential or talents or depth of knowledge," she wrote. "Kindergarten teachers throughout the state have replaced valued learning centers (home center, art center, blocks, dramatic play) with paper and pencil tasks, dittos, coloring sheets, scripted lessons, workbook pages."

Let's see, what's being assumed here? That everyone's heart would be broken when one kindergarten teacher resigns. That high-stakes testing means even good teachers can find no time to help their students develop talents or knowledge; that testing in fact negates such development. That kindergarten is a place where "coloring sheets" are an atrocity and workbook pages are to be feared.

Are we given much information, in this article, about the test that's being opposed? Nope. We're told Ms. MacLeish is quitting because Florida's third-graders take high-stakes tests, and now kindergarteners take no-stakes tests to establish a baseline. Winerip spends so much time describing her tears; too bad he can't use a line or two to note that the baseline testing is being done because nearly a quarter of Florida's third-graders are failing reading, and the goal is to identify the laggers as early as possible.

Of course, Michael Winerip is no stranger to N2P. On May 27th of last year, I pointed out that his anti-testing bias prevented him from doing the most basic of research for his readers:

Let me be the last (probably) to congratulate Joanne Jacobs on her excellent criticism of the anti-testing New York Times - and the apparently inability of its reporters to do basic research. As she notes, a May 21st NYT article claims that children who flunk the third-grade FCAT must repeat the grade. A simple web search, however, turns up an Orlando Sentinel article which clearly states that children may be promoted with flunking FCAT scores if the student's teacher, principal and superintendent all verify that the child is reading at grade level. This judgment may be based on the child's work on a portfolio, in summer school, or on an alternative test. This is the law, and it's very easy to find information about this online.

Is this "loophole" subject to abuse? Are portfolios notoriously unreliable measurement instruments? Yes, and yes. But that's not the point. The NYT author, Michael Winerip, believes that holding children back a grade has no academic benefits. I believe the NYT should insist that their journalists know how to use Google.

And on July 23rd of last year, I tore apart an FCAT-related article by Winerip in which he went for the tear-jerking and completely bypassed solid information, thoughtful questions, or accurate statistical information:

Those of you who read my comments section will notice that many of my readers have recently made logical statements about why third-graders should not be tested under stakes as high as this. I tend to agree with them. However, given that we currently have a culture (at least in Florida) in which third-graders are being held to these standards, it behooves us to examine the data accurately and see what it's telling us.

Most profoundly, I find it astonishing that the article, which is about the reading portion of the FCAT, highlights the fact that many more third-graders will be held back this year, but doesn't invite its readers to wonder what reading skills the test might be measuring that teachers didn't catch in the past.

Nice to see that Dr. Greene, who has read many more articles by Winerip than I, has reached the same conclusions about the quality of his "reporting."

Putting the little ones to the test

Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute for Public Polic has an article on the OC Register online that asks the question, which do we value more in elementary students - self-esteem, or learning?

Remember when Pinocchio was led astray by the fast-talking fox who promised him fun instead of the hard work of school? By the end of the story he turned into a donkey. Some modern-day foxes in Sacramento want to raise student self-esteem by eliminating state testing of second-graders, which could result in an education for our children better suited to donkeys.

Legislation authored by Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, and sponsored by the powerful California Teachers Association, however, would exclude second-graders from the testing requirement.

Why? Because of the belief that testing is too stressful for second graders. I must note that this attitude is not inconsistent with the "conventional wisdom" I learned in graduate school. We assumed that testing below the third grade would not be useful because the test takers wouldn't understand the stakes and wouldn't necessarily be able to focus on the test in order to give useful results.

Our concern wasn't so much that we thought second-graders would irreparably harmed by a high-stakes test, but that they would goof around and be unfocused and not really get the point of it all.

Mr. Izumi doesn't agree with the stress argument:

Poor performance by a child on the state test isn't the end of the educational process, but the beginning. Test results allow teachers, administrators and parents to see student weaknesses and target remedial help.

...if testing were conducted beginning in the third grade with results not coming in until the start of grade four, a student would be halfway through elementary school before this valuable information became available.

Assemblywoman Loni Hancock's suggestion of using textbook end-of-chapter tests as in-class assessment fails the standardized requirement. Students could not easily be compared to one another, or tracked over time. I tend to agree with Mr. Izumi that early testing might reveal early problems in enough time to get students back on the right track, but thanks to what I learned in graduate school, I believe that it's not necessarily a simple matter to get good, solid, reliable data from kids that young.

There's definitely a dearth of research on testing children below the third grade, and it might be the case that the type of test would have to be qualitatively different in order to validly and reliably assess such skills as reading in children who are just beginning to learn what testing is all about.

"Did you say the best, or the worst?"

Forbes.com's recent list of "the best education in the biggest cities" has New Orleans at number 5. No one seems more surprised about this than educators in New Orleans:

"I'm sorry, did you say the best or the worst?" school spokeswoman Tia Alexander responded when a reporter notified her of the recently released rankings.

To guide executives pondering a possible relocation, Forbes.com, an adjunct of the biweekly business magazine, looked at average home prices, high school graduation rates and the accessibility of colleges, cultural events and libraries in the nation's 40 largest cities. New Orleans came in at fifth place, trailing Boston, Salt Lake City, Raleigh and Baltimore and topping Philadelphia, Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte and San Diego.

Standardized test scores (including the SAT), teacher certification, and school building quality didn't enter into the list. And Forbes qualified their list with the following statement:

"Clearly, nobody really aspires to send their kids to public schools in a large city, so in a way, the list is more of a way to assess which cities are less awful than others," Forbes.com reporter Betsy Schiffman wrote in an e-mail message explaining the list's methodology.

Kinda takes the shine off the award, doesn't it? The list makes it clear that indeed, these big-city schools are being celebrated not so much for being great but for being better than the worst:

Public schools in many big cities have a reputation for sucking up tax dollars and churning out barely literate graduates. The Cleveland City School District, for example, has an abysmal 28% high school graduation rate, according to a 2001 study conducted by the Manhattan Institute, a New York-based conservative think tank. Still, some public school systems in urban areas manage to beat the odds and deliver high school graduates who have received a genuine education.

New Orleans has the cheapest median home price of all the districts in the top-ten, and a 70% high-school graduation rate (that is from the pre-exit-exam days; current figures put the rate at closer to 50%).

Regardless, New Orleans seems happy about "beating the odds":

"Yes, good news can come from New Orleans public schools," she said. "Despite the ongoing bad publicity written about the district, we are obviously doing something right given the size and challenges of the city!"

Easing the pressure on schools

The rules have been changed yet again; this week, the federal government announced that test scores of recent immigrant students (who don't speak English) would no longer be a factor in the determination of whether a school is meeting the academic progress yearly targets:

Federal education officials said the changes reflect a willingness to respond to protests from states and school districts that the rules for English learners are unreasonable. There are 5.5 million English learners in U.S. schools...

"We are listening to their issues and ideas for improvement as the law continues to be implemented," Education Secretary Rod Paige said in Washington. "Our goal is to provide the maximum flexibility while remaining faithful to the spirit of the law."

Not surprisingly, the change is welcomed by many:

In the Coachella Valley, more than 24,200 students are learning to speak English in the valley’s three school districts, according to the California Department of Education’s most recent survey.

Critics of the program say the law essentially has forced failure on schools with large immigrant populations.

The NYTimes has more:

The change is expected to relieve pressure on public schools with immigrant populations. Until now, those schools had been required to test newcomers in reading and math during their first year in this country, before many of them have had a chance to learn English...

Under the changes...students who do not speak English will have a year — during which they will presumably learn the language — before they must take the standardized tests in reading and math. Schools may administer English proficiency, language arts and math exams to immigrant students.

This information isn't yet up on the NCLB/Education Reform page at Whitehouse.gov, but I assume some official press release will be up soon. The Republicans are already rushing to praise the changes, though:

U.S. House Education & the Workforce Committee Chairman John Boehner (R-OH) and Education Reform Subcommittee Chairman Mike Castle (R-DE) today praised the U.S. Department of Education for a new policy that will give states and local schools flexibility in assessing limited English proficient (LEP) students without compromising on the rights of such students to learn English under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)...

"This policy comes two months after the Education Department finalized a similar rule on students with special needs that will also help to ensure good schools are not wrongly identified by states as needing improvement," said Boehner. "Many of the law's skeptics ought to stop and take a look at these rules and policies, and recognize they provide significant flexibility to states and schools without compromising the ability of disadvantaged children to access a quality education. They are reasonable and fair, particularly in light of the billions in federal education funds states are receiving to implement the law's requirements."

Update: As I mentioned above, the change is seen as a good thing by many educators, but Reform K12, hardass that he is, disagrees:

A valid issue is the whole matter of federal regulations in education, and whether they are "fair" to schools, and this can be discussed elsewhere.

Exempting these English Language Learners won't speed up this process any.

When AA hits close to home

Lydia Brodeur is a sophomore at Michigan State University. The State News - the "independent voice" of MSU - recently published a letter of hers:

I would like to applaud Jim Lala's column in the Tuesday edition of The State News ("Diversity doesn't promote better education, system flawed"). I have two younger brothers. One is white, related to me by blood, and the other is Guatemalan, related to me by adoption. Both were raised in the same house, by the same parents, taught the same morals and values, and both are exceptionally bright. They have always been treated equally.

My two little brothers have always and will always be equal in my eyes. Why shouldn't they be equal in your eyes, too?

The letter is short, sweet, and to the point, and probably didn't take Ms. Brodeur very long to write. But oh, what a reaction it's gotten.

Andrew Sullivan linked to the report on the State News Blues which congratulated Lydia for making her voice heard. The first comment is from the woman herself:

Thanks, Steve.

I'll be taking a DIFFERENT class for my ISS 300-level credit next semester. That guy gets none of MY money.

This would be bad even if ISS didn't stand for "Integrative Studies in the Social Sciences," where students are supposed to learn to think critically, integrate information, and expand their ideas. Obviously, her professor has not yet mastered the part about separating his personal biases from his critical thinking.

Lydia's mom got involved, and the professor has apologized. The list of comments to this post make for great reading. One commenter insists that, despite being reared in the same house, Lydia's Guatamalan brother has by definition suffered more discrimination in the US and thus deserves AA. This commenter never quite explains to the satisfaction of other commenters why MSU should assume a Guatamalan has suffered discrimination, or why extra help is due such a person. Nor does he explain why suffering discrimination should, in and of itself, make an applicant more attractive to colleges or more qualified to do the work if admitted. That commenter thought the others should discuss how much someone who was teased in school "should be 'upped' in the college admissions process to compensate for the latent skin-color discrimination" in our society and was disappointed that Lydia didn't address this in her letter.

The other commenters, unsurprisingly, disagree:

If Nils assumes that race will definitely factor in the brothers' life in a negative, racist way (which IS the penitent, hand-wringing, deep-thinking socialist perspective) then so might their weight, height, and any number of other factors that shouldn't, but may, come into play when a boss chooses dinner guests or whatever other situation the brothers may encounter in their lives. Hypothetically, if the caucasian brother is obese, the Guatemalan brother athletic, and the boss is a fitness fanatic, might not weight discrimation come into play? What if the boss thinks tall people are better to have in negotiations and the Guatemalan brother is significantly taller? Should MSU give the Guatemalan brother 200 points on his SAT for being dark skinned, then minus 50 for being tall, and the white brother get 160 for being white but overweight? They may even encounter a boss who dislikes caucasian men from Michigan! What then? This is the slippery slope of affirmative action. And it's why it should not be the role of a publicly funded institution of higher learning to attempt to pre-guage the level of future discrimation that will be met by a particular applicant becuase of his appearance. The only real answer is to assess people on the content of their character, but the MSU policy and the policy on which its admissions department would assess the merits of Lydia's brothers does not seem to be a shining example of this.

Other comments address double standards in a more general fashion; this post by Heather almost curled my hair:

Here's an irony for you: The College Board awards Merit Finalist Awards to American students with the highest scores. It also has a separate award for an Hispanic-American student with the highest scores. Both of these awards were handed out at my daughter's school here in Madrid. It is a private American school with perhaps 40% Spanish students, 30% other nationality and 30% American. My daughter won the regular award. An American girl with an Hispanic last name won the Hispanic award. The standard for the Hispanic award is much lower than for the regular award. None of the Spanish kids are entitled to be included, since they are not American citizens. These kids are doing a difficult curriculum in a second language. How do you think it makes them feel, that the Hispanic standard is so much lower? Many of the Spanish kids had very high scores. Affirmative action is a slap in the face to intelligent people of all races and, in this case, even makes America look condescending.

Emphasis mine. Giving Merit Finalist Awards by ethnic group, with different standards by ethnic group, seems to be a very racist action. How could the message be any more clear that non-white students are not expected to compete with white students on an equal basis?

The National Merit website doesn't mention the awards by race. The page for the National Merit Award Scholarship program doesn't mention race at all, but there is a separate program, the National Achievement Scholarship program is open only to Black American high school students. Unlike students of all other races, black students have the option of competing both for this and for the National Merit Scholarships as well (although, if they win both, they can accept only one).

However, no mention of the standards is made on either website, so while the idea of having separate competitions is slightly disturbing, there's no indication on here that black students are winning awards with lower qualifications than other students, and I have no way of verifying if the comment quoted above is true or not. One can only hope that black students do choose to compete in both competitions, and that the competition for the blacks-only award is as tough as for the other award. Otherwise, what's there to stop them from assuming that they aren't qualified to compete for awards unless they're only for blacks?

Regardless, Lydia's letter should not have provoked such close-minded and insulting statements from her professor. Perhaps he'll learn to "expand" his thinking more in the future.

UN influence on US schools

Dissecting Leftism points the way to a WorldNetDaily article which suggests that the UN-sponsored efforts to teach middle-schoolers about "global citizenship, peace studies and equality of world cultures" is not a benevolent enterprise, nor one friendly to the idea of US students being well-schooled in US civics, law, and history:

The U.N.'s global education program took a major step in 1968, when UNESCO provided the funding to create the International Baccalaureate Organization, a non-government organization, in Geneva, Switzerland. The IBO is now providing the curriculum for 33,000 teachers in nearly 1,500 schools around the world, 55 of which are middle schools in the Washington D.C. area.

Instead, they are being taught that with less than 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. uses 25 percent of the world's resources and produces 25 percent of the world's pollution. They are being taught that the U.S. is the No. 1 terrorist nation. They are being taught that the rest of the world is mired in poverty because of the greedy capitalists in the United States.

I admit I know little about the specifics of IB programs, but I do wonder why, at a time when so many American students have trouble with basic reading and writing skills, that the U.S. Department of Education issued a $1.2 million grant to help this kind of "education" reach middle-schoolers. Some parents disagree with the IB program as well:

Critics of the International Baccalaureate program at Reston's Langston Hughes Middle School and South Lakes High School have focused on the program's promotion of cultural egalitarianism, pacifism and what they say is its anti-Western bias.

Such concerns don't seem important to IB supporters:

Rena J. Berlin, Fairfax County's IB coordinator at Langston Hughes Middle School, said she knows Mrs. Geiger and other critics "very well," but believes "that all students who learn how to think globally, how to make connections between subjects, and how to 'learn how to learn' will be better prepared to be IB diploma students when they get to 11th grade."

Appalling, ignorant, and in need of remediation

Economics professor Larry J. Sechrest of Sul Ross State University is in hot water for his contention that "the students at Sul Ross, and more generally, the long-term residents of the entire area, are appallingly ignorant, irrational, anti-intellectual, and, well, . . . just plain stupid":

In the fall of 2002, his article said, "42 percent of our freshmen had to take remedial classes in reading, writing, or math just to meet the state's ridiculously low standard of 'competence'...The taxpayers of Texas have already paid for these kids to learn English and math in middle school, then again in high school, much of which is a review of what they were supposed to have absorbed in previous years"...

The article, copied and passed around by the hundreds, led to two anonymous death threats on Dr. Sechrest's office phone, scores of obscene phone calls in the middle of the night, eggs tossed at his home and windows smashed on a car parked outside his house.

Hmm. Given that all the hysterical reaction seems to be either verbal or violent, can I conclude from the lack of well-written, correctly-spelled death-threat letters that Dr. Sechrest might be correct? His detractors really can't write properly.

Dr. Sechrest, 57, a burly, gray-bearded man, said: "I did not go one step out of my way to throw this in people's faces. Am I going to apologize for it? No. But I never intended to insult them."

"We're not achieving very much in the way of education," said Dr. Sechrest, a tenured professor who has taught at the university for 13 years. "Half the teachers in my department don't give final tests, so that means they just take an extra week off. Sul Ross does not have top-flight people. There's always pressure on to let kids slide."

Interestingly, some positve reactions to Dr. Sechrest's statements have begun to surface:

Last week Dr. Sechrest said he had begun to receive more positive e-mail and phone calls. He noted in particular an e-mail message from a former student.

"As I read your article I found myself laughing out loud and saying things like 'amen' and 'true,' " the former student wrote. "At the same time I felt somewhat guilty because it really did offend people I really care about. There's no denying these are legitimate concerns. The lack of interest in anything beyond Brewster County lines also baffled me."

Dissecting Leftism, who provided the link to this story, notes that even Harvard is in the business of remedial classes:

Harvard gets the cream of U.S. High School graduates so at least those students should be 100% as educated as you can get -- right? Wrong! One of my readers writes that the reality is much, much worse than that:

Can anyone now deny that vouchers are the only hope for the U.S. school system?

Child-centered and destined to fail

Reform K12 has a hilarious take on the ultimate "child-centered" school:

Regular readers of ReformK12 know that we spare no effort in criticizing Progressive educators and the whole child-centered mindset. A few months ago we posted a comparison of what would happen if you took the Progressive model and the Traditional model to their respective extremes. At the time, we felt that Summerhill exemplified the Progressive approach.

By way of Joanne Jacobs we find a story both shocking and sobering, of one truly child-centered school. Published at Strike The Root, a market anarchist site, Bernard Chapin writes of his life at a school run by a marvelous caricature called Princess Sparkle.

By the way, if Strike the Root sounds familiar to you guys, it might be because I blogged in May 2002 about a StR article in which the writer criticized testing and fell into the common argumentative trap of disdaining tests while using test scores to support anti-testing arguments. In that article, a student called for the abolition of standardized tests, while supporting homeschooling because "All reports show that those students who are home schooled...score consistently higher on the SAT." Mm-hmm.

Anyway, back to Reform K12. His comments are in bold; the article he is citing is in italics:

----------------------

It is my role to academically assess, on an annual basis, all of the children at our alternative school. This is due to our kids being exempted from district wide testing based on what I call “The Spicoli Effect.” This refers to their habit of drawing rocket ships on evaluation protocols if left unsupervised in auditoriums.

Rocket ships? Where's a psychometrician when you need one? Oh, and The Spicoli Effect is named for Jeff Spicoli of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, who talks like this.

Darn it Charles, you know where a psychometrician is when you need one. :)

One day Mr. Chapin was administering a timed math test to a student when there was an announcement for everyone to go to the gym for a tug-of-war. Mid-problem the kid stops, because naturally the event is more important.

What occasion were we celebrating on that day in October? The fall harvest? No, it was yet another in a long line of contrived events, and this one happened to be titled “Wacky Wednesdays.” Bizarre holidays from curriculum have become the rule rather than the exception since our school hired a new principal in 2001.

That would be Princess Sparkle.

It is a most appropriate nickname for our leader as it surgically captures her vapidity, lust for attention, lack of seriousness, and ever-present sense of entitlement.

The child's abandonment of his math assessment was the straw that broke Mr. Chapin's back, and he requested a meeting with the principal and her supervisor.

I began slowly and pointed out that our students are schooled only from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day, and that those six hours already included breaks, lunch, gym, and movies on Friday afternoons [in fact, one teacher I know refers to another’s classroom as “the Cineplex” because his VHS player is rarely off].

This sounds familiar.

I stressed that there was altogether too much “play” and not enough “work” at our facility. I reasoned that these children had more play in their lives than any of those present had ever experienced (other than Sparkle) over the course of the last 30 years.

Progressive educators criticize Traditionalists for "taking the joy out of childhood" (as if school were the only place for joy), and this school takes that message to heart (and to foot, and hand, and earlobe . . . ).

Mr. Chapin criticizes the permissive nature of the students' homelives, concluding:

Home is one big MTV video. Their schooling should not be a continuation of the party. That is why I concluded my argumentation with the statement, “School should be a sober place, but ours is not.”

So, how did Princess Sparkle's supervisor react to these charges?

Every point I made he responded to with complete denial. He even informed me that Sparkle was doing an excellent job following his “community model” and that our children needed positive interactions more than they needed books or lectures.

That's the Progressive vision in a nutshell. All children need are positive interactions and all will be well in the world. The supervisor then said, in effect that "our students never tested well and that assessing their education was useless because they never improved"...

We challenge anyone to explain to us how this isn't a racist or classist way of running a school.

If we abandoned the pretense of imparting knowledge, then there would be no way to evaluate the entire venture (analyzing future incarceration rates would not help our cause). Accountability was no longer possible, which may have been their goal in the first place.

So here we have a school, which for some reason has a special exemption from standardized testing, and accountability seems to be the scarlet letter A, which no one wants to wear.

What will follow will be more of the same, as the public invests millions in a school that has been deliberately engineered to fail.

"No, he gets it all wrong," Progressives protest, "that school was deliberately engineered to be child-centered." Enough said.

----------------------

Kudos to Charles of Reform K12 for his comments.

Kitty love

Still being distracted by the Unbearable Cuteness of Pippin. He is still trying to keep me from blogging. And like his older sister (who is pissy about his existence), he loves his view of the graveyard.

The point of public schooling and the problem with "tolerance"

Frederick Hess, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, has produced a document that asks the very important question, "What Is A 'Public School'?" Included is a discussion on the purposes of public schooling, and an admission that those in charge of educating the educators often seem to be at odds with what the general public see as the purpose of a public school:

Schooling entails both public and private purposes, though we often fail to note the degree to which the private benefits may serve the public interest. In particular, academic learning serves the individual and also the needs of the state. Successful democratic communities require a high level of literacy and numeracy and are anchored by the knowledge and the good sense of the population. Citizens who lack these skills are less likely to contribute effectively to the well-being of their communities and more likely to be a drain on public resources. Therefore, in a real sense, any school that helps children master reading, writing, mathematics, and other essential content is already advancing some significant public purposes.7 It is troubling that prominent educational thinkers, including Frank Smith, Susan Ohanian, Deborah Meier, and Alfie Kohn, have rejected this fundamental premise and encouraged “public schools” to promote preferred social values even at the expense of basic academic mastery.8

Nice to see Master Crackpot Alfie Kohn singled out for opprobium here. Deborah Meier I've discussed before, but at least she argues against testing with reason and experience, rather than hysterical hypobole (a more recent article about her is here). Susan Ohanian is a Bush-hater who apparently considers urban vouchers plans to be "atrocities." Frank Smith writes books about how the "drill and kill" method is destructive to children (I find it interesting that one of his books was published in 1998 but has only one review on Amazon.com).

Anyway, back to Mr. Hess's writing:

More fundamentally, there are two distinct ways to comprehend the larger public purposes of education. One suggests that schools serve a public interest that transcends the needs of individuals. This line of thought, understood by Rousseau as the “general will,” can be traced to Plato’s conviction that nations need a far-sighted leader to determine their true interests, despite the shortsighted preferences of the mob. A second way of thinking about the public purposes of education accepts the classically “liberal” understanding of the public interest as the sum of the interests of individual citizens and rejects the idea of a transcendent general will. This pragmatic stance helped shape American public institutions that protect citizens from tyrannical majorities and overreaching public officials.

Isn't "overreaching public officials" a redundant statement?

While neither perspective is necessarily “correct”, our government of limited powers and separate branches leans heavily toward the more modest dictates of liberalism. Despite our tendency to suffuse education with the sweeping rhetoric of a disembodied national interest, our freedoms are secured by a system designed to resist such imperial visions.

The “public” components of schooling include the responsibility for teaching the principles, habits, and obligations of citizenship. While schools of education typically interpret this to mean that educators should preach “tolerance” or affirm “diversity,” a firmer foundation for citizenship education would focus on respect for law, process, and individual rights. The problem with phrases like “tolerance” and “diversity” is that they are umbrella terms with multiple interpretations. When we try to define them more precisely — in policy or practice — it becomes clear that we must privilege some values at the expense of others. For instance, one can plausibly argue that tolerant citizens should respectfully hear out a radical Muslim calling for jihad against the U.S. or that tolerance extends only to legalistic protection and leaves one free to express social opprobrium. If educators promote the former, as their professional community generally advises, they have adopted a particular normative view that is at odds with that held by a large segment of the public.

Amen to that. If there's anything that PC-addled educrats loathe, it's a student population well-educated about their constitutional rights and unafraid to express "social opprobrium." In fact, there's one appalling case related to freedom of speech conflicting with "diversity" demands going on at the University of North Carolina right now (Hess is mainly referring to public K12 education but I think his comments are equally applicable to public university education).

A white male student at UNC discussed his religious aversion to homosexuality in class. His teacher became completely unhinged and sent a hysterical, improperly-capitalized email to make sure that all the other students in the class understood that this was HATE SPEECH (an excerpt of her email follows):

1. let me start off my (sic) saying that i apologize to all of you for not having made clear the first day of classes what i will make clear here and now: that i will not tolerate any racist, sexist, and/or heterosexist comments in my class.

3. for those of you who want to respond to and discuss further thursday's class and the comments that tim made, or anything else about this class, about yourselves, about the world, i will open the discussion board/forum made available to us on blackboard. the ground rules are: no anonymous posts are allowed; folks will be unable to delete or edit their messages after they have been posted; NO HATE SPEECH will be tolerated.

UNC Professor Mike Adams notes that the professor has apologized but he believes there's a lesson to be drawn from this:

I think that what has just taken place illustrates a fundamental flaw in our approach to diversity in the UNC system and in higher education around the country. This flaw seems to stem from the pursuit of two mutually incompatible goals. First, we want to emphasize diversity by bringing people with different perspectives together. Second, we want to make sure that no one is ever offended.

Make no mistake about it; if we bring people together who have different ideas and perspectives, some will be offended. There is simply no constitutional right to “freedom from offense.” And there is certainly no compatibility between the real provisions of the First Amendment and the “speech codes” that universities such as UNC-Chapel Hill are beginning to employ, presumably to thwart the inevitable tension between the two incompatible goals of the diversity movement.

As Hess noted, educrats often preach the goals of "diversity" and "tolerance," but they haven't noted, as Prof. Adams has, that the two might be incompatible, nor have they noticed that the American public might not consider "diversity" to be the most important aspect of public education:

Promoting one particular conception of tolerance does not make schools more “public.” In a liberal society, uniformly teaching students to accept teen pregnancy or homosexuality as normal and morally unobjectionable represents a jarring absolutism amidst profound moral disagreement.

Public schools should teach children the essential skills and knowledge that make for productive citizens, teach them to respect our constitutional order, and instruct them in the framework of rights and obligations that secure our democracy and protect our liberty. Any school that does so should be regarded as serving public purposes.

The fight over schools in Charlotte

Federal desegregation is no longer mandated in Charlotte, NC, and some are fretting over the possible return to segregated schools, even though the new color makeup is determined by parental choice:

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district, free from a federal desegregation order, adopted a colorblind plan for student assignment in 2002 that is producing more racially isolated schools...and more schools enrolling high concentrations of poor children.

"Charlotte is stumbling and it's falling," laments Roslyn Arlin Mickelson, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. "In a couple of years, in terms of racial composition of the schools, the district is going to be back where it was prior to Swann."

The "problem" with the new plan is that parents now have a choice of schools and their children are guaranteed spots in neighborhood schools. Parents are choosing those local schools, and the result is that schools are gradually becoming as segregated as their neighborhoods. The district is 43% black and 42% white, and some fear that the black schools are destined to go downhill.

Superintendent James L. Pughsley acknowledges that the system faces a crossroads: "Are we going to be one of those large, urban districts that allowed themselves to slip behind? We don't have to be. We have a chance to define our destiny."

"The Charlotte-Mecklenburg system may be allowing individual choice by parents to take such a predominant role, without doing the social math and looking at the communitywide impact of those decisions," says Jack Boger, the deputy director of the University of North Carolina's center for civil rights in Chapel Hill. "The system will become terribly segregated—with no single person having done a wicked thing."

Do I hear a complete disregard for individual choice and parental involvement in that statement? Are parents supposed to do the "social math" before they decide where to enroll their children? For that matter, before they move to the safer suburbs where the tax base is stronger and the schools presumably better?

This suggestion seems appalling, and there's evidence to suggest that forced desegregation didn't fix the achievement gap anyway:

Eric J. Smith, who served as the superintendent here from 1996 to 2002, says that after more than 20 years of busing, disparities among Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools persisted, from the condition of facilities to the quality of teachers. Smith, now the superintendent of the Anne Arundel County, Md., schools, says most black students—whether they attended desegregated schools or not—were not making the grade.

What does seem to work is infusing money into high-poverty school to improve teacher pay and reduce class sizes. The money situation remains contentious, though; suburban schools are overcrowded and suburban parents want that money for new schools for their kids.

In fact, the school officials quoted in the article seem to hold suburban parents responsible for just about every problem. They didn't do the "social math." They want more schools for their kids. They didn't help balance racial diversity when given a choice of schools. They used the "home-school guarantee" to send their kids to - gasp! - schools close to home. Their high-paying jobs guarantee that the money will "follow the white children." And so on.

But the soccer moms and white collar dads are fighting back:

A vocal and well- organized crop of suburban parents insists that school feeder patterns remain stable. Parent activists backed two newly elected school board members who are staunch supporters of the neighborhood-school guarantee, creating a majority on the nine-member board.

Hermanson, a white stay-at-home mother with traces of a Long Island, N.Y., accent, organized Parents for Education in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools last year. The group advocates high-quality schools and a consistent pupil- assignment plan that addresses the growing student population—issues that she says transcend race.

Social engineering vs. parental power. Which idea will triumph?

Putting in a full day

Kindergarteners in Los Angeles will now spend a full day in class:

Full-day kindergarten classes in many schools in the 728,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest, are likely to begin next fall...

...the four-year plan depends largely on whether LAUSD voters on March 2 pass Measure R—a $3.8 billion school construction bond that includes $100 million to help build additional classrooms for full-day kindergarten...
Why spend the money to move to a full-day system?

Early-childhood experts say that kindergarten-age children are capable of adjusting to a full school day, and that many already move from their half-day kindergarten classrooms to child-care programs to finish the day while their parents are working. They point out that full-day programs minimize the number of transitions that children need to make during the day.

There are also studies to suggest that middle-class who benefit from preschool outperform their disadvantaged peers in kindergarten; the full-day system is an attempt to close that gap. For example, Maryland officials claim that full-day kindergarten has indeed helped narrow the gaps and raise math scores for second-graders.

Following in Georgia's footsteps

A discussion of whether North Carolina should use lottery profits to emulate Georgia's HOPE scholarships, in The Technician Online (NC State's student newspaper):

For 10 years now, Georgia students have been living that dream through the HOPE Scholarship. This scholarship funded by the state lottery gives students who graduate high school with a B average a free ride to any state supported college. For 10 years, it has worked and has funded the education of more than 700,000 students. Now, Georgia faces a $434 million shortfall...

North Carolina should definitely require a standardized B average and use standardized test scores in the lottery-funded scholarship. SAT scores should not, however, be considered. Studies have shown that minority groups score lower on the SAT than their peers and such a requirement would eliminate them from consideration.

Um, okay. I suppose it's rude to ask just why those students score lower on the SAT? Why we should expect students with low SAT scores to do well in college, even when they're not paying their own tuition? And what standardized tests don't show an achievement gap between at least two subgroups? Should NC reject any test that does? Does this mean a test should be devised and tinkered with until NC has equal ethnic subgroup means?

This was most likely written by a student, but it's still appalling to see the mindless parroting of the "minority score gap = bad test" meme here.

What comes between me and my computer

Hopefully I'll be back to my regular blogging schedule tomorrow. I managed to get a few posts up tonight, but I didn't have a lot of time to spend on them. This is what I have to deal with (in case you can't tell what that last one is, he's biting and tugging on the charm on my Tiffany's bracelet).

(Here's the big sister, looking mighty annoyed.)

When is tough "too tough" in Philly?

Vuong G. Thuy is the 66-year-old head of the Multi-Cultural Academy Charter School in low-income North Philadelphia. Is this headmaster too harsh of a taskmaster?

When told that students accused him of regularly chasing them from corner stores after school, Vuong G. Thuy did what they said he would do. He denied it.

That's all according to the parents and students who support him. Even those parents who want to oust him agree the school Thuy founded six years ago is educating their children.

Unfortunately for Thuy, civil rights are more important to these parents than solid education, although I missed the day that owning a cell phone, and being able to use in school, was officially designated a civil right. Apparently a lot of the current trouble is because Thuy is refusing to return a cell phone to a student who "mistakenly" brought it to campus, but it's in the student handbook that a $50 is required for the return of the gadget.

Thuy is refreshingly unrepentant:

Thuy says the school district should mind its own business and run its own crime-ridden, failing high schools because his school is safe and successful. A parent survey conducted by the school last month, he says, indicated that 95 percent were satisfied with the school...

Things like expelling students for chewing gun and charging students for textbooks and activities.

Ah. Chewing gum. Another civil right.

Thuy, in his cluttered, second-floor office, breathes heavily when speaking of the allegations against him.

Thuy, a native of Vietnam and a former Temple University education professor who holds a Ph.D. in linguistics, says the district is jealous that his was the only charter high school in the city last year that met new federal rules for making adequate yearly progress. The district, he said, should not attack such a school to side with disgruntled parents and their unruly children.

Thuy's students are 98.3% non-white. He has 18 years of teaching non-English-speaking students under his belt. Teachers say that working for him "is a dream." No cops are needed on campus because there's so little violence. And in 2001 and 2002, 100% of the school's seniors graduated and went on to college.

Here is a partial list of his rules. Would you consider these to be violations of your child's civil rights?

Failure to meet the school requirements for correction of academic deficiency or behavior may deprive a student of the privilege to be re-enrolled for the new school year.

Students absent on the day the required IOWA standardized test is given must pay a $25 service charge to take the test if they do not have a doctor's note.

Update: Philadelphia Daily News reporter Ronnie Polaneczky says Headmaster Thuy "rocks":

I think the guy rocks. And if more principals in this city felt permitted to do what Thuy does - enforce his school's rules like they actually mean something - our kids would be better for it. Instead, the subject of Thuy's leadership was called into question at yesterday's meeting of the School Reform Commission, which is investigating charges that Thuy runs a too-tight ship.

If you ask me, we shouldn't be calling Thuy on the carpet. We should be rolling one out for him.

When a standardized test isn't enough

Anyone who's ever labored under an unintelligible TA will appreciate this article from the Arizona Daily Wildcat (U of A):

Calculus and chemistry can be difficult to understand, and for some students, having an international teaching assistant can make it even harder...While it is a university requirement that all international graduate students pass the Test of English as a Foreign Language, each department on campus hires TAs through its own screening processes.

“Though it is the best test of this nature we have, as with any standardized test, the TOEFL is subjective,” she said.

A certain TOEFL score is required to get that student visa; thus, the TOEFL is very high-stakes, and very attractive to cheaters. In 2002, international students from 13 states were arrested on charges of fraudulent TOEFL behavior; they hired others to take the TOEFL for them, and risked deportation when caught.

One U of A lab supervisor requires additional speaking tests and presentation of international students, which I believe is absolutely necessary in addition to the other standardized assessments. Of course, part of the problem is the sheer volume of international students that must learn to speak English in a way that American students can follow:

Of the 50 general chemistry TAs, 40 percent are international students. Thirty-two percent of the general biology TAs and approximately 33 percent of the math TAs are also international students.

Last year, 24 percent of the approximately 7,400 graduate students at the UA were international students, according to the 2002-2003 UA Fact Book.

Taking another look at "The Gap"

In Montclair, NJ, a meeting to discuss ways of closing the achievement gap:

Recently released district statistics have shown an approximate 35-point spread between African-American and white students in standardized test scores, with math scores showing an even greater gap.

“Parent availability has been found to be critical,” she said. “In this district, we have youngsters who are dropped off at school at 7:30 in the morning and not picked up till six in the evening.” Under such circumstances, Trigg-Scales said “before and beyond school” programs have become highly important to students’ progress. Likewise, parent classes like the districtwide Mega Skills program, which teach parents how to support their children’s academic achievement, serve to bolster parent/child interaction.

Not a bad thing, but where's the discussion of what schools do have control over? Why shouldn't time and money go to changing class sizes, tightening school discipline so that students feel safe, and removing bad teachers so that good ones can be hired? Why weren't those mentioned in this article?

Before the exit exam, a pre-exit exam

Freehold Regional High School District in New Jersey is concerned that some students won't pass the High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) in the 11th grade (the test is required for graduation). So they want another test, for ninth- and tenth-graders, to identify those kids who are in danger of not passing the HSPA later on. Even for me, that's too much testing:

With March drawing closer, Freehold Regional High School District administrators are taking a look at HSPA testing. The district’s principals put their heads together at a recent brainstorming session and asked administrators to find a standardized measure in order to help identify students in the ninth and 10th grades who will be at risk for not passing the High School Proficiency Assessment when they reach the 11th grade...

...the test can profile each student in order to de­termine if there are areas of weakness, while the student is in grade nine and 10. Instructional improvements can then be deter­mined for individual students.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to have 100% of the districts 11th-graders pass the HSPA. There are a few problems with this plan; here's a partial list.

* There doesn't seem to already be some sort of natural classroom-level assessment that gives administrators a good idea of the potential flunkers. Nor does there appear to be any existing preparation for the exam, because administrators are talking about 11th-graders who are walking in "completely unprepared" for this exit exam. Both of these are issues that should have been resolved before an exit exam was implemented.

* I worry that the 100% goal will lead to a dumbing-down of the exam, more pre-exit exam tests, or both.

* The 9th- and 10th-graders will be taking the tests under low stakes. Thus, the numbers are likely to look much worse than they will for the 11th-graders performing under high stakes. It's possible that the lower-grade scores will be so poor as to be useless for predictive or diagnostic purposes.

This is the HSPA, by the way. The Language Arts section contains a great many open-ended items, with assessment in "speaking, listening, writing, reading, and viewing experiences." That differs enough from your average MCQ-based exit exam that it's hard to understand why a solid preparatory curriculum was not put into place parallel with the exam.

Working with Text (ESPA) - Interpreting Text (GEPA and HSPA)
Working with Text refers to those activities in which students use strategies to interpret or reformulate meaning from the text. Questions and tasks with this focus will ask students to identify main ideas, supporting details, directions, paraphrasing, text organization, and purposes for reading, listening, or viewing.

Extending Understanding of the Text
Extending Understanding of the Text refers to those activities in which students use text already generated, that is, informational and everyday texts, as a springboard for generating their own work and ideas. It is a self-contained component for which students will read a passage containing detailed information and use the information from the passage to make decisions, solve a problem, and create original work through a writing project that is designed to extend their understanding of the text...

The Math section looks equally ambitious:

New Jersey's...eleventh-grade mathematics tests assess knowledge and skills in four content areas or clusters:

Number Sense, Concepts, and Applications
Spatial Sense and Geometry
Data Analysis, Probability, Statistics, and Discrete Mathematics
Patterns, Functions, and Algebra

Here are the "content clusters" in more detail.

It's not that wanting to pretest the younger students is a bad thing, necessarily, but, to use the math portion as an example, a NJ 11th-grader isn't going to have much chance of passing unless they've taken classes that give them a solid foundation in algebra, geometry, statistics. So the logical thing to me seems to be...require NJ students to take those classes, and align the class content to the test content, or revise the test content. Giving another test isn't going to do much good unless what NJ needs even more evidence to support tying classroom requirements to the test content.

Any NJ residents, feel free to contact me with additional information about this...

Stimulating those linear functions

Devoted Reader Mike McKeown might run a website called Mathematically Correct, but he has a fine appreciation for the politically-incorrect teaching methods that just might get teenage boys interested in math, as evidenced by this cartoon he sent my way:

Testing in Milwaukee's voucher schools

There is a number in Milwaukee, and that number is 92:

As the debate over accountability in Milwaukee's choice program rages, a new Public Policy Forum report shows that nearly all of the schools say they administer some form of standardized test.

But the forum's report also advises that school administrators and policy makers develop a means to publicly report test results, which are often used solely for internal use by the schools.

Something's fishy in Florida

How did I miss this?

When students at a Fort Lauderdale charter school for Haitians took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in spring 2002, the stakes were high. The students' poor performance the previous year had put the school in jeopardy of failing under the state's A+ plan.

When scores were released, the school had aced the Sunshine State Standards portion of the test. In math, its fourth-graders outscored those in 97 percent of Florida schools.

Some would call this "scrubbing" or "review," I'm sure, but I call it cheating. By the way, the previous year the students from this school had outscored on seven percent of Florida's youth. Quite an impressive gain, wouldn't you say?

There is construct validity evidence to suggest that more schools are cheating, but Florida officials are dragging their feet:

Although the state has rules for test security, Florida officials have not examined results that experts say are red flags. Orr said that in light of The Herald's findings, the state will now likely investigate some of those schools.

At various times in the past three years, at the Charter School Institute Training Center and other schools, that rule didn't hold up. Classes with high SSS scores and dramatic improvement scored average or below on the NRT, with little improvement.

The Manhattan Institute has gotten involved and uncovered some very interesting phenomena:

A parent at Miami-Dade's Scott Lake Elementary e-mailed the school district that her child said ''teachers were giving answers'' during the 2002 FCAT. After a school-based investigation, teachers signed a statement that they didn't cheat. The principal believes the student confused a practice test with the real exam.

The school took the test in 2003 under close supervision. Park Ridge received an F.

And so on. Expect the "blame-the-test" brigade to be in out in full force to explain that teachers, administrators, and students have no choice but to cheat, because that's all we can expect of education in Florida under the high-stakes microscope.

Money for the white kids

To make their point about affirmative action, the College Republicans of Roger Williams College have raised money to award a $250 scholarship - to a white student only.

The link provides a lot of reactions to this action. Some people say "Kudos!" and claim that this highlights the absurdity of giving students money based on skin color. Other people say the CR's shouldn't stoop to the level of this absurdity to make their point. And yet a few others claim that AA and race-based scholarships are necessary because even poor, uneducated white students don't face the barriers and social hostility that black students do.

What do you think?

(The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler's rather, er, unrestrained take on the topic is here.)

Short hiatus

Thanks, all you Devoted Readers, for bombarding me with story ideas and links. However, due to work and home constraints, a mini-blog-vacation is necessary right now. Hopefully by Thursday I'll be back to blogging things that are, by that point, out-of-date, but what can you do.

I might be able to put up more Pippin photos later. For now, two readers have suggested:

Ripley the Cat Blog

and

My Cat Hates You

To these, I can add Meankitty.com, Goth Cat Rescue online (to get around the rules of many shelters against adopting black cats in October), and ShopCat.com, "the complete guide to working cats."

Also, here's an archived link of mine where I linked to a Japanese shop that sells hats for kitties. Click here for a view of the hats. My favorite one is still the bandanna-and-curls look.

Adjusting to the new one

Off work and still spending time with the new baby (who sits on my lap when I type, and stares at the screen, and tries to leap for the keyboard...)

Pippin fascinated by my friend Jenn's hair

Pippin, bored by my lack of hair

Pippin, relaxing. Look at the size of those PAWS. He's only four months old! He's going to be HUGE!

Okay, it's really hard to type with a kitten on your lap chewing on your charm bracelet and trying to walk on the keyboards. Will blog more later.

Ow - claws - OW!

Happy Valentine's Day

I'll be taking most of this long weekend off, so I'm not sure how much bloggage will happen. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to be picking up my Valentine's Day gift to myself - a five-month-old bicolored kitten named Pippin. I fell in love with him at PALS, the shelter at which I volunteer. He'll be sequestered in the room where my computer is, so I'll be in that room a lot, but I don't know if I'll be able to squeeze in any typing...

Update: This is too cute for words. Pippin is currently on my lap, purring like a fiend, and he's staring as hard as he can at the cursor moving across the screen. And he's already figured out how to use the space bar.

Blogging while he's in the room (this week) is going to be tough...more photos to come later...

The Internet: Making the world safe for teenagers

News stories are rife with lurid tales of the dangers of the Internet for unsupervised kids (and naive women). Cathy Seipp, on the other hand, has observed first-hand the power of the Internet to free independent teenagers from the bonds of PC-addled teachers.

Backstory: Cathy's teenage daughter is blogging under the name of Cecile DuBois, and used one post to vent about a particularly idiotarian teacher of hers. It seems Cecile suffered some humiliation after writing a paper in which she theorized that women have achieved the rights that suffragists fought for so many decades ago, and that these suffragists would have been appalled by separate Women's Studies programs. The teacher disagreed; using the classic hostile argumentative mode of bait-and-switch, she did her damndest to make Cecile seem like a KKK member:

And yes I did, I poured it all out, given the opportunity because the discussion was on womens rights and for some reason my teacher asked me if I agreed with affirmative action. Does affirmative action relate to womens rights? Not in my world it does. I guess in her world where being against illegal immigration and calling African-Americans "black" are racist, it does. Well, if asked a question, I am compelled to answer honestly. My mother suggested I could have asked her what it had to with Mary Wollstonecraft, but I was so flustered by her laughter at me, I replied. I said "No". And did that cause commotion!...

After periods of my teacher talking all about me, I heard from a friend most of the English class hated me for being racist and someone thought I was in the KKK...

Instapundit wasn't any more impressed with the teacher's comments than Cecile was:

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT, this time involving Cecile Dubois, whose teachers are stigmatizing her for being an individual, and trying to get her to adopt their rigid middle-class code of denial and conformity.

The "Instalanche" resulted in an outpouring of support for Cecile, and today Cathy Seipp is celebrating the blogosphere's power to give her daughter a much more open view of the world:

Blogging is essentially an unregulated, free-agent activity, and that can drive people who prefer rules and regulations and decision-by-committee crazy. From its earliest days, I noticed a tone of disapproval towards bloggers that reminded me of school, what with all the carping from magazines like The Nation and The American Prospect about the blogging world's sorry lack of supervision. The tongue-clucking made me think of the teacher's pet constantly raising a hand to protest: "Miss Jones! Miss Jones! Johnny's reading ahead again! Unsupervised!"...

...even if she hadn't received such an outpouring of support, I think Cecile's regular stops in the blogosphere would have served as an antidote to what happened at school this past Friday. Certainly if a teacher implies a student is a racist idiot one day, and by the next some 200 smart and articulate adults have said she's not and here's why, that rather counteracts the original lesson plan. Now that so many teens have blogs, concerns about doctrinaire teachers may be passé. Our sons and our daughters are beyond their control.

Amen.

You're not alone

Just in case all you Devoted Readers were wondering if there were enough of you to fill a minivan, or even a small restaurant, I thought I'd give you a look at my readership stats.

Average number of unique hits per day in Feb. 2004 - 1517
Average number of total hits per day in Feb. 2004 - 5442
Total hits overall for the month - 59,867

Unique hits ranged from a low of 897 on Sunday Feb 1st (I'm amazed anyone at all reads me on Sundays) to a high of 4980 on Tuesday February 10th (Instapundit link!). There were 24,389 total hits in January, so I'm on the way to beating that total. None of you are early birds; I get relatively few hits before 9 am (though I don't know for sure if that's Eastern Time or not) and a lot of readers show up at lunchtime and 4 pm.

After the US, the most hits are coming from the Netherlands (which has a very strong testing industry and multitudes of psychometricians), the US government, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom. At some point this month, I also got hits from Singapore, Brazil, and Switzerland, among others.

Joanne Jacobs is my most common referrer (thanks, dear). People find this site by typing "pencil" and "number 2 pencil" into search engines (but also by typing "naked teacher" and "naked cheerleader" - eeew).

Unfortunately, about 1000 people this month tried to find archived files that were originally on Homestead. If you try to follow a link to a story with that URL, it isn't there, but if you enter the terms of interest into my search engine on this front page, you'll find it. They're all here, but the Homestead URL's don't work anymore.

All in all, not bad for a blog that, a little over two years ago, I figured no one other than myself and other testing wonks would ever read.

New blog!

Everyone go check out the new blog by Matt Rosenberg, Rosenblog. I discovered Matt last October when I linked to his Seattle Times review of the book No Excuses — Closing the Racial Gap in Learning. Now he's going to fill us in regularly on "Left Coast bulletins, politics, global democracy, education, culture and blogosphere musings." And he beat me to this story about upcoming shakeups in San Francisco's public education system. Matt comments:

San Francisco public schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman wants to make her system a lot better for under-achieving minority students - and that's got the teachers union in a dither.

Oh, and this, which has the union spitting nails: principals, teachers and teachers aides will have to re-apply for their jobs because Ackerman wants only the best, most committed educators at the Dream Schools.

He's not kidding about the nail-spitting:

...it wasn't until earlier this week that union leaders learned Ackerman wants all principals, teachers and classroom aides currently working at the schools to reapply for their jobs. Those who aren't selected would be employed elsewhere in the district.

"The teachers are not the problem, and that's the implication of this -- just get rid of the lousy teachers," said Linda Plack, vice president of United Educators of San Francisco. "It's such a slap in the face to all the dedicated people who go to those schools day in and day out and do a wonderful job."

Hey, if they're dedicated and good teachers, they'll get rehired. If they're dedicated idiots who do more harm than good, they'll have to make sure to not let the door hit them on the butt on the way out. No one can deny the importance of teacher quality when it comes to good education; the flip side of that is that teachers should be prepared to shoulder some of the responsibility for a school system that has gone downhill as much as San Francisco's has.

As Ackerman says:

"A teacher is not threatened by this if they focus on the fact that this is about young people, about improving achievemen...It's about putting children first and not the adults."

Another teacher gets it right, too:

Eric Walker, a seventh and eighth grade social studies teacher at Twenty-First Century, said he will gladly reapply for his job. He said he hopes the rigorous academics envisioned by Ackerman convince his students -- who are largely African American -- to dedicate themselves to school.

"It's beaten into them that the only way the can make it in life is to be able to carry a football or rap some verse. Academics haven't been emphasized, " Walker said. "My job isn't secure, but that isn't important to me now ... . The children come first."

Cornell defends the SAT

Another rarer-than-a-dog-bites-man story: Defending the SAT, in the Cornell Daily Sun.

The SAT periodically appears on the national radar. Recently, the film The Perfect Scorereminded us to what lengths high school students will go to get that elusive 1600...

Embellishments aside, the film shows just how skewed and misguided the prevailing wisdom on standardized testing is. Brian Robbins, the director of the movie, was quoted in a recent Sun article as saying: "I've often questioned the ethics of standardized testing, and I feel that the importance placed on SAT scores has too much of an effect on a kid's future." What special insight Robbins -- who specializes in teen sports movies -- has into the SAT is unclear.

Ah, I'm lovin' this article already. Not only for its pro-SAT stance, but also because it's willing to poke at people who pretend to be experts in subjects about which they know very little.

Were college admissions offices to actually stop requiring SAT scores...increased emphasis would fall on more biased measures instead. The other main components of a college application -- GPA, admissions essays and recommendations -- are all highly subjective methods of evaluation...Relying more on these tests than on the original SAT puts students in lower-performing schools at an even higher disadvantage.

...sadly, the public debate over the SAT is largely based on fantasy and fabrication as well. As painful as it may be, the SAT is the only way to keep college admissions fair.

It may seem like a cliche when SAT-supporters turn the focus back around to the quality of public education, but that's where the true crux of the matter lies. The SAT is but a measuring stick, and removing the SAT does nothing to make students more prepared for college, even if the lack of a standardized test is more likely to result in the admission of some students to college. Testing critics almost always confuse the message with the messenger.

(Reform K12 has more.)

How volunteers help raise test scores

In Baltimore, community volunteers help students with low test scores read more quickly and memorize their multiplication tables:

The program involves community volunteers meeting with pupils three to five times a week for about 15 minutes to practice reading "sight words" - words that pupils should be able to read without sounding them out. They also help pupils improve reading fluency - the accuracy and speed at which a child reads - and memorize multiplication tables.

The second technique, Repeated Reading, entails having children read passages from books that are familiar and unfamiliar. Volunteers count the number of words read correctly and use a graph to chart progress.

As for the math? Oh, they used flash cards. Some "progressive" types might hate "drill-and-kill", but a kid who hasn't developed an automatic understanding of the basic math skills simply won't be able to progress any further.

The value of a high school diploma

Are high school diplomas really meaningless these days? And does that amount to a promise broken by the public school system?

Once considered a springboard to success, the high school diploma now has little meaning in determining whether students are ready for college or work, a coalition of education groups contends.

Only comprehensive change, including more rigorous English and math requirements for all students, would restore the significance of a high school graduation, according to a nearly two-year review by the American Diploma Project.

The project conclusions recommend strengthening exit requirements, including the addition of rigorous English and math courses even for those non-college-prep students; using high school exit exams in addition to grades; encouraging colleges and prospective employers to use high school exit exam scores in admissions and hiring decisions; and, requiring all states to participate in federal 12th-grade reading and math tests.

Depite the mention of employment, many supporters of this type of research believe that high schools should now be geared towards prepare every kid for college:

"We haven't believed that the purpose of high school was to ensure every kid who graduated was ready to do college-level work. That is the big sea change that we're signaling here," said Michael Cohen, the former Clinton adviser and current president of Achieve, a nonprofit dedicated to helping states raise academic standards.

That means all students should learn geometry, data analysis, statistics and advanced algebra, the report says. They also should show strong written and oral communication skills, plus analytic and reasoning ability typically linked with honors courses, it says.

Even if one wanted to argue that not every child should attend college, it's hard to argue against setting high standards for every high school student, in the hopes that even those who don't attend college will not be at a disadvantage in the work force. But there are those who claim that the value of a diploma is not in what students learn, but how hard they work:

David Bloome, past president of the National Council of Teachers of English, said the report is not "smacking of reality."

"For a group to come out and say that a high school diploma has lost its meaning strikes me as a difficult position to maintain given how hard so many students work to obtain one," said Bloome, a professor in the College of Education at Ohio State University and a former public school teacher. As examples, he cited students who earn diplomas despite being new to the country, or those who graduate with vocational skills that fully prepare them for work.

That's compassionate, but I'm not sure it's right. Simply because many more less-well-prepared students are flooding the schools doesn't mean (a) that high school diplomas haven't become dumbed down, or (b) that schools should be judging students by how hard they work rather than how much they learn. Ultimately, those students will be judged by the standards of the real world. Shouldn't their high school prepare them for that by raising the standards right off the bat?

Too often higher education institutions and K-12 schools have been silos next to each other, working independent of each other.

That's not enough today, as employers and community colleges demand greater skills of students...

Indeed, we often see evidence that students in college-prep courses are not necessarily being prepared for college. The high school diploma has indeed become devalued, in no small part by those who who abhor the idea that any student, even a 17-year-old, should be held to objective standards.

He should be grateful she didn't use Elmer's Glue

Aw, c'mon - what teacher hasn't wanted to do this to a chatterbox in class?

Ben Deacy was silenced by teacher Annie Sturrock because he made too much noise, said the headteacher at the boy's school. Miss Sturrock - described by her boss as "inexperienced" - then wrote in Ben's school report: "Excellent work - once I taped up his mouth!"

He told the South Wales Echo: "What seems to have happened is an inexperienced member of teaching staff has made a grave error. "The pupil was talking a lot during the lesson and a piece of masking tape, a very small piece, was put on his lips."

Don Barnfield needs to learn what "symbolic" means. When a teacher holds her fingers to her lips to indicate that a student should be quiet, that's symbolic. When a teacher wants to tape a kid's mouth shut and then actually tapes the kid's mouth shut, it's no longer symbolic, although I doubt it's an act that would bring the weight of Social Services down on a parent.

Controversy over New York's third-graders

New York's grand plan to end social promotion of third-graders isn't going over too well with some parents:

Parents' groups are speaking out against a plan barring third-graders in public schools from advancing to the next grade unless they pass standardized tests.

"Our position is 'no' on retention. It's punitive and unfair," Robin Brown, president of the group, told the New York Post for Wednesday editions. She said parents were angry that Bloomberg had adopted the plan without first soliciting their comments...

An NYTimes Op/Ed has this to say:

...the administration risks frittering away its political capital by reinventing the wheel and rediscovering educational policies that failed miserably in the past. This seemed clearly the case in the mayor's State of the City address, which unveiled strict new promotion standards that would cause as many as 15,000 children each year to repeat third grade — or roughly four times the number that are held back today.

Mr. Bloomberg has told New Yorkers time and again that he wants them to judge him on how well he does with the schools. He stands a much better chance of doing well if he listens more closely to his critics and takes a less combative attitude toward the union.

How to gross out eighth-graders

A sign of the apocalypse - or of a failing presidential campaign:

It's a reliable sign that all is not well with a presidential campaign when the candidate finds himself grossing out eighth-graders with a spontaneous discourse on the relative merits of drinking toilet water or dog urine.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean prompted squeals of "Eeeew!" when he dropped in to teach a science class yesterday at Longfellow Middle School in La Crosse, Wis., reports The Post's John F. Harris. Though pundits have pronounced Dean's campaign in the toilet, his lecture actually had nothing to do with politics: The class has been conducting experiments on microscopic particles found in everyday fluids.

Before leaving, Dean pleaded with his pupils not to tell their parents that "Howard Dean came to my classroom and advised us to drink water from toilets."

Great headline on the article, by the way - I didn't catch that on my first reading.

When educrats undermine education

A teacher from NYC's Junior High School #189 lets loose with a barrage of complaints about the ridiculous rules set by New York's "progressive" educrats:

A superintendent from Joel Klein's Education Department recently sat in on one of my seventh-grade classes. He conceded that my students, among the least academically oriented in the Western world, were fascinated by the college-level words I insisted they could handle. But then I got hit with a revelation: My lesson was fatally flawed, because vocabulary words were written in chalk on a traditional blackboard!

The Education Department calls its actions progressive when they are the opposite. The department discredits any educational practice that has worked in the past. For example, spelling tests are disallowed because they supposedly strike fear, do not relate to experience and produce a distaste for language.

Hmmm, "strike fear", "do not relate to experience" and "produce a distaste for language" - sounds like the definition of an educrat to me. Hopefully, spelling bees will be here long after educrats are gone.

Teachers are warned not to correct errors with red ink because that color is "aggressive." Grammar is not taught because it is "dull." Children are encouraged to invent their own spelling so that they can discover the delights of creativity. Dictionaries are frowned on. They have been replaced by mandatory word walls where random but relevant-sounding terms are taped...

The ideologues at the Education Department are assassinating our once-proud public school system. They have brought winds of change that should provoke a storm of protest.

Grammar is not dull, but educrats and their non-challenging school programs certainly can be. And children can be counted on to be creative, but not to be educated, knowledgeable, disciplined, or logical. If the Education Department is ppreventing teachers from actually educating children (or from giving them worthwhile feedback, even in red ink), isn't it about time they changed their name?

To be, or not to be? That is the (standardized test) question

The SAT writing component comes in for a bit of bashing, good-natured and otherwise, from testing critics:

Shakespeare's heralded writings wouldn't be sufficient to get him into Dartmouth or any other Ivy League institution -- at least not according to the Princeton Review. The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, on the other hand, would have his pick of the Ancient Eight.

"What fools these College Board people be," said John Katzman, co-author of the article, and CEO of the Princeton Review. "They simply tacked the essay from the old SAT II Writing test onto the new SAT in order to appease its largest client, the state university system of California, which was threatening to stop requiring the outmoded SAT and find a more relevant test."

So let schools stop using an assembly-line procedure to admit students, and applicants can write more sophisticated essays specifically for each university. The point here seems to be that the College Board is deliberately producing a superficial assessment of writing, but with two millions examinees a year, it's hard to see how they could administer and score anything else.

The claim that the SAT would give poor grades to Shakespeare and Hemingway is amusing, yet irrelevant. The SAT writing assessment measures mastery of basic skills; while a student who writes like Hemingway might perhaps fail it, I'm willing to bet that most of the failures are students who don't have Papa's grasp of the English language. If the new SAT Writing section does a good job of snagging those students who slept through four years of English in high schools, colleges will find it useful. If the assessment doesn't work, schools will stop using it.

And the part about the Unabomber is pure sensationalism. Theodore Kaczynski was admitted to Harvard at the age of 16 and did his graduate work at the University of Michigan. He may be crazy as a bedbug, but he wasn't dumb, so it doesn't surprise me that his writing was lucid (even his most threatening letters are now part of a scholarly collection at the University of Michigan).

Are California's juniors ready for college?

Rarer than a dog-bites-man story: A call for more testing of high school students in The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, CA).

Coachella Valley educators have the right idea but don’t go far enough in planning to give high school juniors a mini-college competency exam. The intent of the test is to raise red flags, to help students determine whether they need additional preparation in meeting the college-level English and math requirements.

An annual student proficiency report for first-year freshmen entering California State University in fall 2003 showed that about 58 percent needed to take remedial courses to meet college standards in math or English or both. Algebra and reading comprehension are among the key skills on which students need to work.

The tests are apparently called the Early Assessment Program, and they're designed to assess whether students are up to college-level English and math requirements. This document has more information about the test that is a joint effort of public schools, the State Board of Education and Department of Education, and California State University. The webpage about the project is here. This article says the test will be available for juniors in the spring of 2004.

No information online about item types yet, though. If anyone has any further information, let me know.

"No test can measure the kind of learning we do"

The debate over the "college FCAT" goes on:

While education leaders throughout Florida voice opposition to a proposal that could bring standardized testing to Florida universities, the man who will bring the proposal before Florida's Board of Governors next month said he feels like he is misunderstood.

"I have never advocated standardized testing like a lot of people seem to think I have. In fact, I think there are too many standardized tests out there," Uhlfelder said. "What I am investigating is the possibility of implementing a written exam to make sure our college graduates know how to write at the level they should be capable of. I am tired of students and university presidents distorting what I say when they know (accountability measures) are something we have to do. We will not do anything without the universities' input, though, and they know that."

USF officials, in particular, oppose the measure, and standardized testing in general. The student government president says no student supports the test (not surprising) and makes the erroneous-but-politically-correct claim that any standardized test would be detrimental to "academic freedom."

Uhlfelder, on the other hand, wonders what all the fuss over standardized tests is about, considering the importance of tests such as the SAT in college admissions. The issue here, really, is whether the schools are doing (as they claim) a bang-up job of accountability already. I agree that it makes more sense to put funding into education rather than testing, but unless there's some form of accountability that clearly shows where the problems are, where do the improvements begin?

Finding those missing students

The first step in improving education? Getting students to actually show up for it. Officials in Nogales, AZ, are increasing their efforts to combat truancy:

Almost half of Nogales High School students who miss 30 or more classes per semester will have one or more referrals to juvenile court. Statistics compiled by the Santa Cruz County Probation department reveal an issue that officials are working to address: children who don't attend school are more likely to be involved in crime...

It is hoped that grant funding received through the Weed and Seed program will pay for truancy prevention and other programs. Operation Weed and Seed is administered by the United States Department of Justice. To participate, communities are required to come up with a strategic plan aimed at reducing crime and bringing human services to people who need them.

The article points out that lower attendance rates not only result in lower average test scores, but also in decreased government funding. One Nogales elementary school was missing 20% of its kids for 10 or more days out of one semester. If changes are going to be effective, I think they need to target children this age (and their parents).

Non-zero tolerance for teacher assault

Remember my post on the politics of suspending students? That post described events in Kentucky, but it looks like the same conflicting desires - to reduce school violence, while also reducing suspensions - are in play in Minneapolis, MN.

The result? One injured teacher, one lightly-punished student, and a whole lot of debate:

The 13-year-old boy was running in the hall at the south Minneapolis public school. The teacher told him to stop. He kept running. She put her hand on the lad. Next thing she knew, she was on the floor.

Two days' suspension for what looks like an assault? Thompson Graham doesn't know whether to laugh, scream or hire a lawyer.

The light punishment is the result of a mandate from the school district to reduce the number of suspensions. The idea is to use alternative forms of punishment for these children that are coming from "troubled backgrounds" and who have "unmet needs." But it sounds like teachers in Minneapolis have some "unmet needs" for a safe teaching environment:

The order from district headquarters is to reduce the number of suspensions. The result, [Ms. Thompson Graham] said, is a disintegrating educational environment. Hallways are chaotic. Students frequently are directing obscene language at teachers with no fear of consequences.

State law calls for zero tolerance of harassment in our schools. There's no subsection in the law about teachers bouncing off floors being considered a teachable moment.

(Thanks to Devoted Reader and fellow blogger Jim P. for the link.)

"Admit, Deny, Done"

One of the charges I commonly hear against tests like the SAT is that the scores aren't useful for today's college admissions officers, who consider "the whole student" and the unique qualities that each applicant can bring to the college environment. But some say that the concept of spending a lot of time considering applications is a "Hollywood" fiction:

Anthony Dudley thinks he has a good shot at getting into Florida State University this fall. His application lists a number of extracurricular activities, including membership in the National Honor Society and the NAACP Youth Council. He wrote a moving essay about caring for his terminally ill aunt. And he has three letters of recommendation.

One reason is volume: Florida universities are among the largest in the nation...
And since most Florida schools aren't overly selective, most admission decisions are based on grades and test scores. When evaluators look at essays or letters of reference, it's usually because an applicant is right on the edge of qualifying...

Ironic, isn't it? People who oppose standardized testing tend to be the same people who believe every kid should go to college, but when every kid tries to go to college, the swamped universities are forced to drastically cut down on the time spent per applicant. The result: Test scores become more important.

Even by Florida standards, FSU has an assembly-line approach to admissions.

A sliding scale wrapped in plastic on Nerona-Balog's desk tells her what combination of grade point average and SAT score is acceptable at FSU. The school also has a 20-point checklist that provides additional scores for each applicant.

The kids on the borderline merit further inspection, but at Florida's largest universities, it appears that great students don't need to spend much time on the essay, and poor students needn't bother sending videos or lists of extracurriculars. At some universities, only one person makes the decision, which adds to the mystery surrounding the process:

Nicolas Vilaret, 17, was stunned when UF turned him down for early decision this year. So were his parents and his guidance counselor.

"Was it a whole group of people or just one person making the decision? I couldn't tell you why I didn't get in," says Nicolas, who applied again to UF, this time for regular admission.

Update: Pandagon says I missed the point, because smaller or more elite colleges don't use this assembly-line process.

Can we put him in Gucci prison scrubs?

Do you parents out there wonder if you're rearing your children properly? Here's some consolation: It's a given that you're doing a better job than this parent did:

A TEENAGER nicked his father’s credit card — and blew £12,000 in a FOUR-DAY splurge.

And after blowing a fortune on designer gear by forging his dad’s signature, he whined: “If Dad had got me these things in the first place I wouldn’t have had to steal his card.”

His dad, after cursing him a bit, has forgiven him, and has hired a (presumably high-priced) lawyer. Just how absent a parent do you have to be to produce a kid this shallow? A kid who considers Gucci and Prada to be his God-given right and is willing to steal over 22 grand (in American money) from his dad to get it? I doubt this is the kid's first larcenous act, and probably not his last.

The brutal truth in Aussie schools

The Fark tag for this story of changes in Australian public schools: "Schools to reintroduce policies that allow teachers to fail children who can't pass their tests. In other news, common sense is off life support, but still not expected to survive."

SCHOOLS will have to reintroduce policies to let teachers fail students and make them repeat years if they cannot pass benchmark standards, under new Federal Government funding rules.

Dr Nelson said many employers had also complained saying they were sick of interviewing young adults who thought "two plus three equals six."

Does Valentine's Day make you sick? Or is it just when you eat too many candy hearts?

From writer, father, and Bleater extraordinaire James Lileks comes this request for information:

BACKFENCE ALERT! I need your help for Thursday’s column. Subject: childhood nightmare Valentine’s Day moments. Grade school tales preferred, but not necessary. Send it to fence@startribune.com, so I can fill up Thursday’s column with tales of sweet childhood woe & forsakenness.

I'd help him out, but I really don't think I have any such tales. Seriously. I think we all had to exchange valentines in grade school, I don't remember much from middle school (because I did nothing but read comic books the entire time), and in high school I was one of those sickeningly sentimental girls who always celebrated Valentine's Day with candy and carnations and homemade cards with sweet, hand-drawn unicorn scenes on them (if I recall correctly, the recipient of that particular mush reads this blog). I think I was dating someone each Valentine's Day, too, so I'm sure I got a free meal out of it.

I can babble on about horrific dates and jealous ex-husbands with the best of 'em, but I don't have bad V-day memories. If you do, be sure to share 'em with us as well as James.

Teaching to the test in Philly

Philadelphia's response to lower test scores? More Kaplan-designed test prep:

The school district told its 11th-grade English and math teachers that they must spend 20 minutes a day for the next 10 weeks using a test-preparation program developed by the New York City-based Kaplan - an educational-services company perhaps best known for its test-preparation programs.

The district's new program is designed to prepare students for the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, to be given in late March. Test prep is common in suburban districts, and school officials more frequently are using software programs to help students prepare.

Needless to say, some are unhappy with this idea:

But some teachers are questioning the way the program is being rolled out; they worry that it is sapping the creativity from their teaching and interrupting their traditional course work. They say it is interfering with term papers and the study of literary works. One English teacher described it as "practically reading from a script."

Some schools use block scheduling with 90-minute periods; the test prep accounts for less than a quarter of their class. But other schools have 45-minute periods, which means nearly half of the class is spent on the Kaplan program.

In response, one principal says that in these days of high-stakes exams, teachers must be comfortable with "teaching to the test." Not only is that a not-very-sympathetic response, it also shouldn't always be the case. "Nearly half the class" is a big chunk of time to spend on test prep.

I like the idea of having practice tests available, and I think teachers should use that feedback to tinker with teaching plans (although, why aren't they doing something similar already?). I can understand why teachers don't want to surrender their lesson plans to Kaplan, though.

Reform K12, not surprisingly, has more:

One of the direct side-effects of high stakes testing is that the act of testing is becoming so important, it's starting to cause folks to forget that that teaching and learning are what schools are for, not test-prepping.

In our view, standardized tests are intended to measure learning, not test-prepping. Thus the Philly program, while it may well boost scores, will simply serve to mask the real problem.

Elementary, my dear, elementary

Chicago enterprenuer Chitunda Tillman Sr, who climbed out of povety to become a successful businessman, is giving back to the community with a new CD to help kids learn math:

Despite formidable obstacles and family tragedies, Tillman chose to avoid the pitfalls -- drugs, crime, dropping out of school -- that are all over the West Englewood neighborhood where he grew up. He decided he wanted a better life and went after it...

Later, they take lightning-fast challenges of multiplication problems -- first with flash cards and then teachers verbally quizzing them. They do this sort of like a spelling bee, continuing until one student is left. When it comes to standardized test time, the students not only have to know these math facts, they need to know them quickly.

Emphasis mine. So much for the current philosophy that memorization tasks crush creativity and spirit. Here's the website for Tillman's CD series, Mathematics & Me, on which it's claimed that these CD's "merge the hip-hop/ and educational genres together." Hey, if it works, I'm all for it. If the songs drive these kids' parents crazy, well, so did Schoolhouse Rock.

Duck season! Wabbit season! FCAT season!

The standardized testing times in Florida have begun anew:

Ready or not, it's FCAT time again. The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test begins Tuesday with the writing portion, which fourth-, eighth- and 10th-graders take each year. FCAT reading and math tests are less than a month away.

I'm wondering if this principal is working miracles, or if she's going to end up with a whole bunch of kids who write like Irvine Welsh:

Allison Kalbfleish, principal at Stambaugh Middle in Auburndale, said her whole school works on writing. She said the children learn to form a traditional five-paragraph essay with an introduction, body and conclusion. She said they are encouraged to use colorful language and vary their sentence patterns and word choices.

She doesn't think that the rigidity of the five-paragraph essay stifles creativity.

Well, no, it doesn't, but let's hope she and her middle-schoolers both have the same definitions of "colorful" language.

After writing comes the math and reading tests taken by students in grades three through 10. Those scores, along with the FCAT writing scores, are the primary factors that determine what grade a school receives from the state.

"They can actually write on the test," she said. "That's one of the big challenges. They're not used to writing on their materials in class or inside their books."

Good point.

Elementary schools make sure children know how to properly bubble in an answer sheet. But they also have to deal with the anxiety and even fear that seizes some children. Teachers say they really try to encourage their students.

"I always tell them it's not worth tears and tummy aches," said Kittleson, the Cleveland Court teacher.

Also a good point. Encouragement, along with the most effective instruction, is probably the only way to reduce test anxiety.

Of course, when kids don't pass, the parents become anxious too:

Jay Bowen has a son who did everything he needed to do to graduate from high school last year, except pass the 10th-grade FCAT. He dislikes the highstakes nature of the FCAT.

"Why should my son have to go get a GED when he met all of the requirements to get a diploma?" he asked.

Emphasis mine. He's right, but not in the way he thinks he is. Why should his son have to go get a GED? In 12 years, his son couldn't manage to master 10th-grade material. His son might have met all the other requirements, but he performing at a level well below what the school says he should be at. And Mr. Bowen should be asking questions about that.

It's not that I don't sympathize with Mr. Bowen, but when his son completes twelve years of a schooling and then fails the reading portion of a 10th-grade exam six times, he should asking for more than copies of the test to help him pinpoint where his son's weaknesses are.

Anti-testing hyperbole of the day

I think I'll have to create a new category for journalists and other authors who are so beside themselves with anti-testing hysteria that they choose egregious, insulting, and ultimately completely incorrect language to describe testing and testing scenarios:

Today's winner of the "Anti-testing hyperbole of the day" is David Marshak of the Seattle Times. During a long article in which he beats his breast over the fact that President Bush considers reading and math to be more necessary educational skills than self-expression and personal relationships, he delivers this doozy:

No Child Left Behind puts a standardized test gun to the head of every child, educator and parent in the nation.

In an age in which school shootings are not unheard of and school violence is no joke, Marshak's comment is in extremely bad taste. Why Marshak thought any parent would read past this point - especially any parent whose child has been the target of real school violence - I don't know.

When smartass students and standardized tests collide

What happens when a high-performing senior makes a point of not taking a standardized test very seriously?

Jake Bogdanovich's performance on a recent standardized test has earned the high school honor student some recognition he didn't bargain for. Bogdanovich, who has a 3.8 grade point average, admits he had no interest in the test designed to measure the success of an academic program at Garfield High School...

So Bogdanovich did something out of character for an "A" student: On the bubble answer sheet, he made a tic-tac-toe pattern; he drew characters from the television show South Park in the short answer section; and he took part in a coughing fit that became contagious for other students.

Now he is paying the price. Beginning on Monday, he will serve a three-day, in-school suspension. His status with the National Honor Society is in jeopardy and he lost his position working in the school office.

Emphasis mine. I think Jake's in trouble not just because of his artistic attempts on the test, but because he disrupted the testing environment. It's one thing to just turf on your own test; it's another thing to bother students who perhaps didn't appreciate the little "contagious" coughing fit.

The test at Garfield, as well as Akron's other high schools, is designed to study whether seniors at each school are performing better than the class before them. Bogdanovich was one of 100 Garfield seniors randomly picked to take the test...

After taking three minutes to fill out the last section -- which was supposed to take 25 minutes -- a teacher reported both students to Decapua's office after both said they did not try.

I think Jake's also being punished for his attitude; he apparently thinks it's smart to state that he only makes an effort when there's something in it for him. I don't think the school is going overboard with the suspension, although officials should make the punishment for goofing off clear beforehand.

Can students ever move forward after being held back?

What's wrong with mandatory retention of New York City third-graders? Lots, says Principal Leonard Golubchick, and it sounds like he knows what he's talking about:

...when Dr. Golubchick read of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's new mandatory retention policy to hold back every child who failed the city's third-grade reading test, two words raced through the veteran principal's mind: "Big mistake."

Dr. House and Dr, Golubchick say the money is better spent on creating classes of 20 in kindergarten through third grade, more individualized tutoring and high-quality summer school. "Why flunk them to give them the services they need?" Dr. House said. "Why not just give them the services?"

New York insists that this time, mandatory retention will work, because students will recieve a "rigorous curriculum" meant to help them improve. Dr. Golubchick disagrees:

Each year after consulting with teachers, counselors and parents, Dr. Golubchick does hold back about 20, in a school of 885. He retained Samantha Tsi in third grade. Says Dr. Golubchick, "She is an only child, Chinese was spoken at home, we felt she was young for her age and needed a year to grow."

Samantha did grow, from [a test score of] 1 to 4. "You have to make the decision based on best interest of the child," he says. "Not best interest of the bureaucracy."

Hawkeye-ing the teachers' test scores

Iowa is the only state that does not require its newly-minted teachers to pass competency exams in order to teach. It's probably no coincidence, then, that recent graduates of Iowa's teaching programs are not doing well on the competency exam required in the other 49 states:

A pilot study showed a surprising share of graduates from Iowa's teaching colleges did not score high enough on national standardized tests to meet requirements set by other states, a finding that disappointed state education officials.

...21.6 percent of Iowa graduates did not meet Ohio standards to obtain a teaching license, although all of them would be eligible for Iowa licenses.

Rep. Cecil Dolecheck, R-Mount Ayr, said the test scores are a cause for concern, especially if those graduates end up taking teaching jobs in Iowa schools. He said a certain percentage of students would be expected to score below average, but if those graduates are being hired in Iowa and not in other states, the state might want to reassess its screening process.

The reaction seems to be that Iowa shouldn't test just because other states do, and that knowledge is not necessarily the most important thing in the classroom:

Bob Sunderbruch, human resources director for the Muscatine Community School District, said he's hired teachers from 10 states, including Iowa, during his 18 years with the District and doesn't see a difference in quality between teachers who test and those who don't...

"In Iowa, we teach a standard curriculum that we believe is the best in nation," he said. "It's one thing to be able to know what the correct answer is and it's quite another thing to be able to do that on a classroom day to day with 25 eager little faces."

Yes, but is there any reason that any education program wouldn't teach both correct answers and student management skills? It's certainly a valid point to claim that teachers who test well and teachers who don't perform the same in Iowa classrooms, although I'd be interested to know how "performance" is being measured. I can also understand why the more intangible aspects, such as "pedagogy," may not fit into a standardized testing routine, but I see no reason why teachers should not be expected to pass a test of basic core skills. You want to teach science? Then you pass a science test, because being good with kids isn't enough.

I believe that what teachers teach is as important as how they teach. Interestingly, this article claims that Iowa does test its teachers, only with multiple assessments instead of a standardized test. This article also makes the valid point that pilot study data results often worse than operational data would, simply because the participants are not under high stakes.

To whom do good test scores belong?

The Wall Street Journal reports on an odd phenomenon, although it's perhaps not so odd, given the heavy focus on test scores. In Ohio, the scores of gifted children are being credited to their neighborhood schools - regardless of whether the little geniuses actually attend those schools (thanks to Devoted Reader Michael for the link):

Matthew Benton, a self-possessed sixth-grader with an "A" average and an I.Q. of 132, is likely to pass the Ohio Proficiency Tests next month with ease. But his prowess on the tests, which are used to assess schools' performance, won't help Bennett Elementary, where Matthew is in a citywide program for academically gifted students.

Hoping to boost their overall results, schools are squabbling over who gets to claim the test scores of gifted students. In Ohio, the scores of gifted children are credited to their neighborhood schools -- even if they actually attend other schools...

This plan is being considered in other states, by the way. In at least one California district, schools without gifted-student programs complained, and the scores from all schools are now reported as belonging to the district as a whole. Why would this odd situation have come about?

Educators contend that some of America's brightest young minds, including minority and low-income students, are being discouraged from gifted-education programs...

The importance of the scores of gifted children to the survival of schools and the jobs of principals and teachers can lead to statistical finagling that distorts school performance. Ohio's policy, for instance, inflates rankings of neighborhood schools at the expense of schools that house district-wide gifted-education programs.

Ironic, considering that test scores are much of what help classify children as gifted in the first place. Schools want kids to do well on tests, but when students who do really well are identified, they could hurt the school by leaving for another that has a program better tailored to them. So the increased emphasis on test scores for schools as a whole have made schools more protective of their gifted youngsters.

Marjorie Fox, president of an independent foundation that helps the San Diego district attract bright second-graders from low-income families to gifted-education classrooms at different schools, says half a dozen principals have asked its recruiters to stay away from their students...

Principals argue that even gifted kids would do better to stay in their neighborhood schools, but parents counter that kids deserve the chance to move to a school where they are challenged. So Ohio's compromise was to assign test scores to neighborhood schools, even after the gifted child has moved to another target school with special programs. The low scores of special education students are distributed in the same fashion.

Like many compromises, this one seems to satisfy no one. Schools that house many gifted kids appear to be performing poorly, and schools that have never educated the gifted appear to get credit for doing so. And while kids will benefit by being more likely to be recommended for gifted programs, they are understandably bewildered as to why a school they don't attend gets the "credit" for their performance.

Putting the exam to the test

The entire sophomore classes at Vintage High School and Napa High School (CA) were among those who took the California High School Exit Exam this week. The test, which is at a 10th-grade level, will be required for graduation for these students in 2006:

Following a decision by the state assembly last year, the state board of education voted to postpone the exam for two years because of concerns that students weren't prepared for it. A report found that about 20 percent of the class of 2004 would fail the test's math portion and not graduate.

This is the third time the schools have given the test to the entire sophomore class, but it's the first time it actually counts toward graduation under the new rules.

Stranded students grumpy about exams

Students who were racing on ski teams found themselves stranded the day before their exit exams. Sounds like they didn't get a good night's sleep in preparation:

Cots and wrestling mats at South Tahoe Middle School provided the bedding for roughly 90 West Slope students and teachers who were stranded when their buses broke down in a winter snow storm. The students belonged to ski teams that raced at Kirkwood Mountain Resort on Monday and found themselves without the use of two of their four buses...

"For the record, we have to take the high school exit exam today and we had three hours sleep," Jacob Fine said.

Just think of what an amusing story it will make later, Jacob.

A meeting of the minds

The First Annual Philadelphia Edubloggers Gathering (tm) took place last night at the Cosi on the UPenn campus.

Okay, well, actually, it was just Charles of Reform K12 and I meeting for coffee and soda (and much animated discussion). And we don't have any photos to show you. Still, I think this could be the starting point for some larger gatherings.

You can learn more about Charles here. Great guy, fast talker, and I bet he can do more situps than I can. Of course, that's not saying much.

The "benefits" of cheating

The Kansas-City Star piles on The Perfect Score with yet another negative review (free subscrip required):

Yet another another depressing sign of the times, cheating in American high schools and colleges has become as common as pep rallies...

Their impetus: money, first love and, of course, slave-driver parents who live vicariously through them. Their all-purpose excuse: The test is racist and unfair, and knowing the answers will level the field. "They tell us to be unique, then give us a standardized test," reasons one of the team. "They are not playing fair," pouts someone else.

This review reveals a plot point that is most interesting:

The worldly, wisecracking Francesca (Johansson, losing ground gained with "Lost in Translation") is the inside person: Her father holds the keys and passwords to SAT Central....

Nice to know that the screenwriters thought it made sense for Francesca to use the alleged unfairness of the SAT as justification for doing something that could get her father fired. Or do they believe that relatives of ETS employees misbehave like this on a regular basis?

Robbins' ending combines a twist and a moral, and lets the teen conspirators off the hook with less than a rap across the knuckles. The lesson for anyone contemplating a similar "victimless" caper: Pick your confederates carefully, and just don't get caught. You'll benefit in the end.

Sad.

The politics of suspending students

Two interesting articles on school discipline have been posted on the Education Week mailing list. First up, Kentucky schools are allegedly suspending "disproportionate" numbers of African American students:

Although 10.4 percent of students across the state are African-American, they constituted 22.3 percent of the youngsters suspended during the 2002-2003 school year.

Akers said the growing inequity should be a call to action for school officials.

What exactly should school officials be expected to do? Set a cap on the number of suspensions per ethnic group? The data don't indicate whether the suspensions are all different students, or a core group of malcontents who are repeatedly suspended. I mean, I'm all for examining root causes, but I wanted to see something in this article suggesting that there is support for school officials who have taken a hard line with discipline and are willing to suspend anyone who is a problem, regardless of how the numbers shake out.

And speaking of hard lines with discipline, a "bullying ban" is now under consideration in Kentucky, and that ban is pretty broadly defined:

It used to be called teasing, razzing that every child went through at one time or another...[but]...the issue of bullying has taken on different dimensions for parents and educators. Two state senators now want to require Kentucky school districts to establish official policies to identify, punish, and prevent the practice.

The legislation, tied to major school safety efforts started in 1998, would require schools to make bullying a punishable problem that students or others could report anonymously. Districts would have to provide yearly training on bullying to employees, and report instances to the Center for School Safety.

On the one hand, Kentucky doesn't like the numbers of African American students being suspended, and wants to find "alternative" ways of dealing with the problem to make the numbers go down. On the other hand, Kentucky wants to make bullying a more easily-punishable offense, and I assume that punishment could include suspension. What if Kentucky looks closer at the school disclipine data, which indicates that the vast majority of school suspensions are due to violations of school board policies (and not violations of criminal laws), and discovers that African American are disproportionately suspended for...bullying?

What's more important to Kentucky, reducing the number of students who are suspended, or expanding the definition of punishable offenses? Certainly, both things could be done simultaneously, but I think it's more likely that these two ideas will turn out to be incompatible.

You're not going outside like that, young man

Sounds like some kids are confusing "cool" with "frostbitten:"

It's a winter-morning drama playing all over town: "The Young and the Coatless."

"Colds are not caused by cold, but by viruses," she says. As for frostbite and other conditions that can arise from prolonged exposure to bitter cold, "The amount of time they're out in the cold is miniscule, usually. There is that chance the bus will break down, but that is an unusual scenario."

I have a hunch that what bothers parents most is not the relatively-unlikely scenario of hypothermia, but the idea that their teenagers are giving the ease of "accessorizing" a higher priority than staying warm or following their parents' advice.

When "scrubbing" doesn't make things cleaner

Common Sense and Wonder, which is finally off of Blogspot (yay!), reports on the disturbing practice of test score "scrubbing." The original NY Post article is here:

Some of the city's public high schools have a dirty little secret: They're inflating Regents exam scores to give more students a passing grade, insiders told The Post. Educators even have a name for the unwritten rule: "scrubbing."

"The students of the school benefit because they pass. The school benefits because the pass rate is up," said a Staten Island high-school staffer, who, like others, requested anonymity.

As CS&W puts it:

A Win-Win! Everyone benefits, except for the student who can't get a job or make it through college because they haven't been properly prepared. If passing without proper mastery of the subjects is a benefit to the students why don't we just eliminate grades, let the kids watch movies and play in the gym for four years and then give them diplomas? Oh, sorry, that's what we're already doing.

Amen. Not only is this cheating, but it's cheating that would be hard to prove, and here's why.

Two teachers review each exam, and those scores are averaged. The use of two raters gives the scores a higher reliability if the teachers are well-trained and would be expected to give the same test similar scores. But the training is left up to the schools, and a third rater is required only if the two raters differ by more than one point (but how the third rater's score figures in isn't specified, which is surprising). That means if both teachers are wrong in the same way, a third rater doesn't enter the picture.

Now, the state apparently reviews 10% of all exams, but if a state rater gives an exam a failing score, while both teachers gave it a barely passing score, the school can argue that the teachers were just improperly trained, and not actively cheating. My guess is that the averaged teacher-assigned score can be more than one point away from the official Regents score before alarm bells go off, because the training procedure, while standardized, is done within schools, and more error in the process is to be expected.

An exam that is clearly shoddy that nonetheless receives a passing average would be strong evidence of tampering (or very bad training) - but not exams on the borderline, I'm betting. Catching students who cheat is hard enough; catching raters who cheat would be even more difficult.

The NYPost published three letters in response to the article.

Letter writer #1:

Carl Campanile's exclusive on teachers cheating was a bit comical ("Teachers Cheat; Inflating Regents Scores To Pass Kids," Jan. 26). I have been involved in grading social studies Regents exams at two New York City public high schools, and what is described goes on exactly as recounted. The "scrubbing" — I'd never heard it called that — can occur in the same room where the exams are being graded.

But the scrubbing only occurs for those who have missed the minimum passing grade by one to three points. The two essays are reviewed to make sure that the pair of teachers who originally graded them were fair.

Funny, but the Regents grading rules that I link to above don't mention any acceptable "review" to be done only for students on the borderline. Pass is pass, and fail is fail. Who decides what is "fair" for students who failed? That third rater? The same two raters who failed the student the first time around? Someone who has a vested interest in making the school's pass rate look good?

Letter writer #2:

Once again, the headline shouts scandal, while the final paragraphs of the article whisper no evidence of impropriety. "Scrubbing" is a term that's been around for decades and ensures that borderline papers, and those with widely disparate ratings between the two graders, are scrutinized by third parties to ensure the highest degree of accuracy.

As anyone who has failed the bar exam by a hair knows, an appeal can sometimes result in a passing score.

Now, this person claims that the third rater's decision is what's being called "scrubbing." That's not how it was described in the original NY Post article, which indicated that no third reviewer was involved. If a third rater reviews a failing exam and decides to pass it, that may be legitimate, as long as it's established in advance that the third rater's grade is the "gold standard." The NY Post article clearly says that the original raters are setting aside borderline exams for the purpose of re-grading them and passing them. That's not an "appeal;" that's cheating.

Letter writer #3:

Scrubbing is nothing new. When a student has a grade of 60 to 65, exam markers always reexamine the test to see if any answer was overlooked or marked incorrectly.

The students are only given one true chance to complete the exam successfully.

Again, no "review" for borderline scores is mentioned in the Regents scoring key and rating guide. If the schools have permission to do this, you wouldn't know it from viewing this key, and that makes me suspicious. The third rater is mentioned only as means to resolve two original discrepant scores, not two original borderline-failing scores. What's more, those admittedly-anonymous sources quoted in the article called it grade inflation, and the Regents spokesperson called it inappropriate.

As for that comment about "professional exams," yes, any good testing organization would make sure that the margin of error around a cutpoint was as small as possible, and there might be, for some tests, a routine re-scoring of exams close to the borderline. An acceptable policy of reviewing borderline exams might be something like the following:

1. "Borderline" would be defined in terms of area around the cutpoint in standard errors of measurement, e.g., all students within 1/2 SEM of the cutpoint are automatically rescored. Note that this includes failers and passers, and the definition of "borderline" is empirically based. An exam is only reviewed if it's close enough to the cutpoint that, given the error in the exam, the student could have scored on the other side of the cutpoint on a retake.

2. The reviewer would have to qualify as a "gold standard" through some kind of experience or training, and they would have the freedom to change scores in either direction. The reviewer would also need to be an objective, disinterested party with no connection to the two original raters (and, ideally, no information about the original score).

The situation as described by the three letter writers above is one in which reviewers are not objective, there's no indication of how the "borderline" definition was chosen, and there's no indication that borderline-passing students are ever marked down. Teachers who have every reason to want a high pass rate are being allowed to review borderline exams in order to see if a failing student can somehow be passed. That's not an objective, valid, or fair review process, and if the Regents scoring guide doesn't allow for it, it's cheating.

(If anyone has seen a copy of the Information Booklet for Administering and Scoring the Regents Examinations, for any subject, let me know. That might help clear up some of the confusion.)

Update: Devoted Reader Scott discovered that the Regents Math scoring guide does mention a review process, as follows:

All student answer papers that receive a scaled score of 60 through 64 must be scored a second time. For the second scoring, a different committee of teachers may score the student’s paper or the original committee may score the paper, except that no teacher may score the same open-ended questions that he/she scored in the first rating of the paper. The school principal is responsible for assuring that the student’s final examination score is based on a fair, accurate, and reliable scoring of the student’s answer paper.

In other words, all borderline exams get rescored, but the same teacher can't rescore the open-ended items. However, while this process is "fair" in the sense that borderline-failers get a second chance, it isn't psychometrically fair, because borderline-passers don't get reviewed as well.

What's more, because this is explicitly mentioned in the math scoring guide, the fact that it is not mentioned in the scoring guides for the English or History exams leads me to conclude that no review is in fact allowable on those exams. All three letter writers, above, define their "scrubbing" processes slightly differently, which suggests to me that schools have assumed they can "review" the English and History exams any way they see fit, simply because they are required to review the math exams as well.

Shining a light on college admissions

Some influential Democrats are calling for universities that receive federal funding to release information on "the economic status and race" of legacy admits. Stuart Taylor Jr. believes that federally-funded universities should do this for all preferential-admissions programs:

This would shed light on who benefits and who does not, on the nature and magnitude of the preferences, and on how much they compromise academic standards. The questionnaire could go something like the following.

For each preferred category and each racial group of admitted applicants: the percentage receiving financial aid, median amount received, and median family income, to the extent available; the numbers of Caucasians, Asians, Hispanics, African-Americans, and Native Americans; the median high school GPA and median SAT (or ACT) score; the median college GPA of enrolled students; and the percentage who graduate within six years.

Problem is, this would allow us to compare the "legacy" issue to the "racial preference" issue directly - and Mr. Taylor is certain that universities do not want the public to know that information:

It would also expose the stunning magnitude of the racial preferences -- which are far greater than the legacy preferences -- used by all (or almost all) selective institutions, and who benefits from them...

Most Americans don't realize that the racial preferences at the University of Michigan Law School, upheld by the Supreme Court last June in Grutter v. Bollinger, are worth more than 1 full point of college GPA -- catapulting black and Hispanic applicants with just-below-B averages over otherwise similar whites and Asians with straight A's. Or that the average SAT scores of the preferentially admitted black students at most elite colleges are 150 to 200 points below the average white and Asian scores. Or that this SAT gap understates the academic gap, because black students do less well in college, on average, than do white and Asian classmates with the same SAT scores. Or that most recipients of racial preferences, unlike most legacies, end up in the bottom third of their classes and have far higher dropout rates than other groups. Or that, according to a study of 28 highly selective colleges by two leading supporters of preferences, some 85 percent of preferentially admitted minorities are from middle- and upper-class families.

In other words, not only are the achievement gaps between those admitted for "diversity" and the general student body larger than generally perceived, but those quotas don't help working-class kids of any race.

Andrew Sullivan linked to this article, and received this email:

"Have spent many years in the elite environs of higher ed and can tell you that whatever you think you know about admissions, it's tens time [sic] worse. The 'minority' admissions rarely graduate and few even get to be sophs.
All the administration wants is to meet their quota of freshman accepted for admission.

The reaction is to act up and act tough further alienating themselves. It's an awful system."

I'll say. I agreen entirely with one of Mr. Taylor's suggested benefits of making this system public:

A second benefit might be to focus attention on the real crisis in minority education: The average black 17-year-old is academically less prepared for college than the average white or Asian 8th-grader.

Of course John of Discriminations had something to say about this as well. Oh, and don't miss his discussion of an interesting racial preferences conundrum, and his exposure of a William & Mary Sociology professor for the overly-"sensitive" twit that she is. God help any student who takes a class from her; if they're not professional victims when they enter, they will be by the time they leave.

Leave No Aussie Behind

An interesting article about changes to come in Australian public schools:

A flying squad of talent-spotters will work through West Australian high schools identifying and helping students who have the potential to get to university, under a landmark plan announced yesterday. State Education Minister Alan Carpenter said the scheme, the first of its kind in Australia, was set up in response to recent criticism of the state schools.

What sort of recent criticism was that? Parents are apparently criticizing with their feet by beating a path away from public schools, which have been labeled too "values-neutral" and politically correct. Australian Prime Minister John Howard wants ranking of public schools by performance, and has singled out the teachers union in particular as a bad influence.

Is a NCLB-type act in Australia's future? And what's this talent-spotting squad supposed to do?

Six professionals, not necessarily from an education background, would be hired to tour schools, meeting teachers and students and providing services such as target-setting and coaching. Mr Carpenter said he believed many state high schools matched or bettered private schools in the quality of their teaching, but the increasing competition for university places had forced the Government to focus on academic results...

The minister indicated it was time to put high school students under greater pressure to succeed. "Nobody should fall for this idea we should let children go through at their own speed. What does that mean? Speed them up, increase their potential, raise their expectations. Don't settle for coasting. Not every child will want to go to university, but for those who do, I want to give them the best possible opportunity."

I found this comment amusing:

Australian Education Union national president Pat Byrne said she she agreed students could benefit from extra assistance, but questioned the value of help from outsiders. "I don't know what six people across the state can do that isn't already being done in the schools," she said.

Yes, but what's the harm in seeing what they do? Unless the goal is to avoid any sort of outside influence in public schools?

More on what Australian parents supposedly want, here.

Mysterious death in Miami

OK, this is a little scary...

A student was found dead Tuesday at a middle school, which has been locked down, officials said. Miami-Dade County police said the death at Southwood Middle School appeared to be "unnatural," but refused to release further details.

Students have been locked in their classes, county schools spokesman John Schuster said. He had no other information.

Anyone know any more about this?

MyDoom and my inbox

If you've sent me email in the last week or so and not gotten a reply, I apologize. My email account has been completely slammed by this MyDoom virus and I've been spending all my time deleting infected emails that have been spammed to me (I also think that account was infected, but it's a web account, so there's nothing that I can do to protect it). I've probably deleted some real emails along with the infected ones (tip: Do not send me an email with "Hi" in the subject any time soon).

Hopefully, this will all calm down and I will have time to answer emails within a week or so.

New tests for Montana

Montana students will soon be taking a standardized test that is half performance assessment:

In the usual fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests, students don't have to draw a graph tracking global warming, or write an essay about how a hurricane is formed. When a new kind of standardized test hits the desks of Havre fourth-, eighth- and 10th-graders this spring, nearly half the possible points will come from questions like those, to be answered in the students' own handwriting.

Will students be exposed to material suggesting that the global warming controversy is overhyped? Can they write essays that cite Bjorn Lomborg and still get high scores? And wouldn't learning about tornados be more useful for Montana residents than hurricanes? Could an acceptable essay about hurricanes begin with, "Well, we don't get many hurricanes in Montana, but..."

Okay, I'll be serious now.

The new tests require a specific level of mastery in each subject area. The standardized tests students take now, the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Iowa Test of Education Development, score students by comparing their scores with those of students across the country in a given year.

That is, they're moving from a norm-referenced test to a criterion-referenced test. And with the addition of open-ended questions, there's certainly more face validity, but the issues of reliability and scoring get trickier (and more expensive).

In constructed-response reading questions, students read short passages and write short essays on them. A sample fourth-grade question asks students to read a two-page passage about a debate over school dress codes and uniforms. They are then asked to "describe how school clothes can create problems for students. Use information from the article to support your answer."

In a sample math test, fourth-graders were asked to make two different patterns of numbers based on rules they make up, and to tell how many 1-inch cubes would fit inside a box with given dimensions.

The reading section sounds fine, but I'm leery of mathematics assessments that involved a lot of writing, simply because writing ability becomes confounded with math ability on these types of tests. When the math assessment is primarily "story questions" and the results depend on writing and labeling as much as on addition and subtraction, kids who are good at math, but not at English, are going to be at a disadvantage.

The education wars invade the science classroom

Hand-on? Or Back-To-Basics? Which is best for science instruction?

First came the wars over how to teach reading and math to young students. Now the fighting has spilled into science. The battleground: California, vanguard of educational trends, a state with so much clout that its selection of textbooks influences editions sold across the country.

The major players: the California Curriculum Commission, which advises the state Board of Education and has recommended new criteria for K-8 textbooks that allow for a maximum of 20 to 25 percent of hands-on material. In opposition are many classroom teachers and scientists -- including leaders of the National Academy of Sciences and the California Science Teachers Association -- who say the recommendation makes no sense in a field that is all about discovery.

Well, yes, once kids have mastered the facts that will allow them to make use of their discoveries. The hand-ons method is invaluable for demonstrating scientific principles; there's no doubt of that. But too much lab time can mean busy work that leaves kids reinventing the wheel.

Thomas Adams, executive director of the curriculum commission, said critics are misrepresenting the panel's views. He said commission members are trying to balance the need for a comprehensive science curriculum with the limited science background of many K-8 teachers. Twenty to 25 percent of hands-on instruction seemed like "the most reasonable amount of time for someone faced with the challenges of limited facilities and limited time," he said.

Interesting. So the commission is trying to regulate the instruction into the back-to-basics format under the assumption that most K-8 teachers don't really have the knowledge to make a primarily hands-on curriculum useful.

At the heart of the dispute is a disagreement about how students learn best...

Critics of this approach say research shows that students learn best when they are allowed to discover material themselves and that back-to-basics programs leave no room for higher-level thinking.

That's ridiculous. Back-to-basics programs do not preclude "higher-level thinking," whatever that is (I've yet to see it defined in a newspaper article). There has to be some factual foundation to structure the hands-on experiences in science; it's silly to classify scientific experiments as pure "discovery," with no memorization or "book learning" required.

Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, said the California curriculum commission's recommendation, if approved, would be harmful to students. "They are pushing very hard the dogmatic position of the 'direct instruction' crowd and emphasize what students know, not what they are able to do or understand," he said. "I strongly believe that they will turn even more students off of science and that they will work directly against the vital interests of California business and industry, who need a workforce of high school graduates who are able to solve problems using logic and evidence."

As a scientist myself, I've never noticed that what I know and what I understand are mutually exclusive. Why is direct instruction by definition "dogmatic?" Why is there an assumption that students who "know" science will not be able to understand it? And why the assumption that "hands-on" instruction is the only way California's kids can learn to use logic?

When asked about the debate unfolding in California, teachers and students in the Washington area said they could not understand any attempt to restrict hands-on learning.

"I've never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life," said Peter Petrossian, a science teacher at Pyle Middle School in Bethesda. Petrossian, who uses numerous innovative hands-on activities to engage his students, said: "It flies against all the current thought in educational psychology and, well, common sense. I think one of the things science has going for it is the fact that we can use so many modalities to reach our students -- even the old adage of 'tell a man how to fish versus show a man how to fish.' Yikes!"

Mr. Petrossian sounds like he knows his stuff, but I believe what's going on here is an attempt to structure the science curriculum for teachers who don't know their stuff, and who might be assigning lots of empty busywork in the lab. It sounds like California's teachers are over-reacting to the commissions' recommendations.

How to be a "stellar" applicant

Useful advice for college applicants who want to stand out from the crowd:

The number of applicants for the summer and fall semesters at Texas public universities has increased 29.8 percent...according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. With application deadlines fast approaching for fall 2004 -- and some already passed -- counselors are encouraging students to get their letters of recommendation and finish essays soon...

Counselors from local high schools said developing well-rounded applications will increase a student's chances of getting into the college of their choice...Students should be "absolutely comprehensive" on the application. Include everything, including extracurricular activities, athletics, work experience, community service and a résumé...

Not surprisingly, one key theme here is that SAT scores aren't everything, which contradicts the oft-heard cry from testing critics that the test reduces applicants to a number, or that admissions officer rely solely on that score:

Cathedral senior Jesse Carrillo applied to 18 colleges, but he hopes his application will have enough of the right elements to get him into his first choice. "My dream school is Notre Dame."

"The colleges are interested in the whole person. They're not just interested in a (standardized test) score or a class rank. That's why the schools want essays," he said.

Reaching out to Miami's parents

A trilingual guide to Miami-Dade's public school and the FCAT system has just been released. I would have correctly named two of the three languages as English and Spanish - but I wouldn't have guessed Haitian Creole to be the third:

...A new trilingual parent guide to Miami-Dade County Public Schools, which includes a wide range of program information and more than 100 phone numbers and Internet sites for additional help, will be delivered Friday to nearly every home in the county.

...Parents, especially those who cannot read English, routinely complain that they are unfamiliar with the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, the high-stakes standardized test given in grades three through 10. Low scores on that test can prevent a third-grader from advancing to fourth grade and block a high school senior from receiving a diploma. The guide lists every test given at every grade level, explains the FCAT grade reports and gives suggestions for improving test scores.

Flashin' those cards

NOW we're talkin' math. It is from such humble beginnings that great Spades, Hearts, and Bridge players grow, and it's nice of the school to provide this service for all those deprived children who don't have card-shark Grandmas. Growing up, I seemed to be the only kid I knew whose granny didn't teach 'em to be cutthroat at Poker, or Gin Rummy, or even Go Fish.

I bet they spent the whole two hours laughing

I felt a little bit ashamed about giggling at this man last week.

Now I don't feel ashamed at all:

It took a jury little more than two hours of deliberation Friday to reject a claim from a man that the city of Escondido violated his civil rights when a cat living in a city library attacked his assistance dog more than three years ago.

"I am disappointed, I am not surprised," said Espinosa, who represented himself during the trial and appeared shaken after the verdict.

Espinosa had already reduced his demand of compensation from $1.5 mill to $15,000; not that it mattered. Best of the Web sums it up thusly:

Richard "Rik" Espinosa, the San Diego-area man who sued because a cat scratched his dog, has been awarded a big fat goose egg...Espinosa got laughed out of court. First a judge ruled that the city hadn't violated federal law, and the plaintiff "agreed to cap his potential award at $15,000"--1% of what he'd originally demanded. Then the jury rejected his case in its entirety. "He did not even receive the $335 the parties had stipulated as his damages for his vet bill ($47), one trip to the chiropractor ($48), or his lost wages ($240)," Steve Nelson, a lawyer for the city, tells us in an e-mail. The city had offered to settle for $1,000...

Although Espinosa lost the lawsuit, he still managed to impose major costs on Escondido taxpayers. "Nelson was unable to estimate how much the city spent defending itself against Espinosa's allegations, but he said it was a considerable sum," the Times reports. Then again, there's some rough justice here, for Espinosa has lost not only has lawsuit but any shred of dignity he might once have had.

The groundhog lets us down

Isn't he a beauty?

No, not really. And neither was his prediction.

And they're calling for freezing rain tomorrow. To heck with this. I'm moving to Florida.

Update: Omaha will apparently have better weather than us - but their groundhog is scarier.

Who's in charge here?

When kids access controversial websites at school, some parents get mad. But who's really to blame?

A local mother is furious after her sixth-grade son stumbled upon a Web site in school describing Russian plans to rehearse nuclear strikes against the United States.

LeBlanc said Joshua and his classmates, while doing research in social studies class, accessed an article reporting Russia was practicing for nuclear strikes against the United States. Joshua brought home a copy of the article and told his mother other students in class were accessing pornographic Web sites.

Filters are already on Sky View's computers, but Ms. LeBlanc thinks it's time for stronger software. The school's staying mum on exactly what gets filtered out now, and teachers have been told to keep a closer eye on surfing students.

Ms. LeBlanc does sound a bit strict, but understandably so. For example, she doesn't have internet service at home, because she can't monitor the use it for all four of her kids. But her son was given a social studies lab project - he had to creat a "travel brochure" for Russia - that practically required Web surfing, because that sort of project relies more on up-to-the-minute information than the facts contained in textbooks. If he'd been asked to write a history of the Russian government, he wouldn't have necessarily had to do any Web research.

I find it hard to believe the teacher was "surprised" to discover that there was unsettling information about Russia on the Web. I mean, we're talking Russia here. I'd think there's probably a lot of stuff about Russian politics that would unsettle adults, much less kids. When kids are assigned research projects that require them to use only the books available in the library, their scope is limited, but there's less reason to think they'll come across something unexpected. If teachers are going to assign projects that require a lot of web surfing, they should do their own homework first so they know what to expect.

And that "Internet use policy" used by the school should be amended to say that some classes might require a lot of searching through internet sites. Every parent knows that the internet contains objectionable material, but they might not know just how much time their kids are expected to spend on the Web at school.

Charles Murray speaks out

It's no surprise to see that the co-author of a book as controversial as The Bell Curve:Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life is unafraid to speak plainly. It's also no surprise to see that Charles Murray holds statistical understanding in high regard:

BC: I'd really like to know what your opinion is of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. Do you think his critique is legitimate? Don't the factors he sites all weigh on g (general intelligence) anyway?

CM: Privatize every school in the country. And if we can't do that, my second choice is to require that no one graduate from high school without having taken a solid, year- long course on statistical reasoning. Half the stupid arguments extant, whether about the environment or the 2000 presidential election or FCC regulations, are stupid primarily because people don't understand probability and statistical distributions.

I'd say that more than half of the stupid arguments about testing are because people don't understand statistical distributions (or standard errors of measurement, or validity). And I'd love to teach that high school course.

Good scores, bad surroundings?

Students at East Greenwich High School in Rhode Island consistently score high on standardized tests, but they claim the high school itself needs an overhaul:

A group of about 10 students, all juniors and seniors, will present their case tonight before a joint meeting of the Town Council and the School Committee...The students, who joined forces last month after discussing the issue in an English class, met with a Providence Journal reporter on Friday to give a preview of their presentation.

Among the most pressing issues is the number of computers in the school library. It currently houses 11 computers -- not nearly enough to serve all who wish to do research there, the students said. They said that similar space issues face the school's locker rooms and administrative offices: The former are too small to host more than two sports teams, while the latter are so cramped they hamper student access.

The Perfect Score, but less-than-perfect reviews

The Perfect Score has finally opened, to less-than-rave reviews (some links via Joanne Jacobs). Here's a review by James Bowman:

Here are just some of the important questions asked by The Perfect Score. Is the SAT exam fair? Does it discriminate against women or minorities? Is there a bias built in by the assumptions of the mainly white male questioners? What kind of test is it really? Since it is now officially just the SAT and not the "Scholastic Aptitude Test," as it used to be, does that mean that it no longer tests aptitude? Is the meritocracy of which the SAT exam is the principal screening tool legitimate or humane? Why are people so desperate to go to a "good" college, or to college at all? Does the excessive demand for a credential justify those subject to that demand in taking any means necessary to get it?

But Brian Robbins’s film answers none of these questions. Instead it turns into a typical teen-movie designed to produce that familiar warm and fuzzy glow as all the supposedly bad kids who try to steal the answers to the the SAT from the fortress-like headquarters of the Educational Testing Service (or are they just the ETS now?) in Princeton, New Jersey, turn good in the end, and all the awkward and difficult moral issues raised by their cheating are conveniently forgotten...

Bowman isn't a fan of the test, but I'm surprised that he thinks that Hollywood, of all places, would be able to come up with an insightful review of the problems with high-stakes admission testing. Hey, that's what this blog is for.

One of my favorite reviewers, James Berardinelli, gives it a 1.5 out of 4:

I was hoping for "What if John Hughes directed a caper movie?" But if Hughes had seen this script (in which one of his films is referenced), he would have cringed. The characters are underdeveloped types, the plot is nonsensical, the caper is ludicrous, and the preachy ending is worthy of an Afterschool Special...

I was offended by the ending, which is so abysmally moralistic as to be sickening. The messages come down hard and heavy: Don't do drugs! Don't steal! Be yourself! Have confidence in your own abilities!...Next time, director Robbins and his screenwriters should spend a few hours inside a real high school rather than re-hashing stock stereotypes from bad '80s movies. Give The Perfect Score a failing grade.

What was a "Just Say No To Drugs" message doing in a movie about the SAT?

The NYT review points out that if anything is being stereotyped here, it's every movie set in an American high school. Slant Magazine was hoping for an anti-authority SAT-busting flick, but was disappointed:

The Perfect Score purports to be an anti-establishment heist flick wherein a group of desperate high school students steal the answers to the S.A.T. But in truth this is an MTV film that extreme right-wing moralists can be proud of, as it posits a quintessentially American world of racial, intellectual, and sexual conformity.

From the trailer and reviews alone, I've noticed some real boners. Such as the fact that, even though everyone loves to hate ETS, the College Board is almost never mentioned. ETS develops the SAT and scores the test items, but the SAT is actually owned by the College Board, which is in New York City, not Princeton. That's why press releases about the SAT don't come from ETS.

From the trailer, too, it looks like the students are breaking into ETS, only the building doesn't look like anything I've ever seen on ETS's campus, or anywhere in Princeton, for that matter. And how would the students know the exact location where the tests are being published (as opposed to developed)? And I wonder what made the screenwriters so sure that, on each testing date, only one SAT form is administered? Just curious.

Unsurprisingly, some news articles are using the movie as an excuse to repeat statements about the test's mythological "bias":

If anything, the MTV-produced film validates how crucial the test has become now that most college-bound students have no choice but to whip out No. 2 pencils and fill in tiny ovals for three hours.

At what magical time in the past, oh, thirty years or so, was the SAT not crucial? If anything, with affirmative action policies and universities that gun for "diversity," it's less crucial now.

And it spotlights the lengths to which some students will go to beat the system and the efforts the ETS takes to keep that from happening. "The Perfect Score" centers on that very temptation: cheating.

Critics have denounced the test over the years as biased against women, the poor and minorities, for allegedly not showing the true worth of a person, for reducing everyone to a number.

The comments about bias against women, poor, and minorities are relatively unsupported, and the comments about the "true worth" of a person are just ridiculous. The SAT has never claimed to measure true worth, and the instructions for valid use of the SAT have never included using that score, and only that score, to determine whether a particular applicant is suitable for a particular college.

As I've pointed out before, there are mean score differences, and, depending on the weight the SAT score is given in admissions, there can be differential impact on different groups. But this is not the same things as bias; in fact, it's neither necessary nor sufficient evidence of bias.

The test is worthless and "discriminates against a lot of people," declares Aileen Loli, 18, a Chamblee High School senior who came to Atlanta from Peru four years ago and has struggled with the verbal portion of the test.

The one quote this reporter was able to dig up was from a test-taker? And this proves what, again?

So cheating happens. The ETS acknowledges it. About 300 tests a year are thrown out for suspected cheating, the company says.

Wonder why the article doesn't mention that almost 2 million SATs are administered each year? Why, that means a whopping .015% of test takers have their tests discarded.

To fight back, the ETS has a tipster hotline and uses proctors to ferret out scammers. It will also flag any score that rises at least 350 points (out of a possible 1600) above a preceding score. The company then looks for a pattern of similar answers where the student took the test.

With college application deadlines tight (most of them have now passed for seniors), many students will simply cancel the disputed score and retake the test to prove that the score was legitimate. An option seldom used by the ETS is sending the score to colleges with a note about the alleged cheating attached and letting the colleges themselves decide the merits of the case.

Unfortunately, yes, the burden is on the test taker. But that score change of 350 points wasn't chosen at random. That's a deviation that reflects a change in true underlying ability that is extremely rare in the population of test takers (especially if seen in adjacent administrations). Doesn't mean it's impossible; just means it's highly unlikely.

Another high school student sums the whole thing up pretty well:

Taylor Barnes, 17, a junior at Fayette County High, says the film's premise makes her blanch.

"It looks really lame," she says. "They think teens will want to watch that? Movies are for entertainment. SATs are not for entertainment."

Update: Now the ACT folks are weighing in on the movie:

Representatives from another standardized test — the ACTs — voiced concerns earlier in the week about improper messages sent by the movie. "We think the movie implies these tests are designed to keep students out of school, and that is not the case at all," said ACT spokesman Ken Gullette...

Fellow ESU freshman Mike Brostowski put it in terms any parent can relate to: "It's like winning the lottery — we all dream about it but who does it actually happen to?"

NCLB debate in PA

Tony Doylestown, PA - the county seat of posh Bucks County - held a forum on the No Child Left Behind Act. The consensus among the Doylestown parents seems to be, "Tests for thee, but not for me":

Undaunted by the year's first snowfall and temperatures hovering slightly above negative digits, approximately 150 concerned parents, students and educators attended a forum on the controversial No Child Left Behind program January 15 at Central Bucks West High School.

O'Neill clamored for the Pa. Department of Education to set up different tests for different students. "One shoe doesn't fit all," he said.

Emphasis mine. I can understand why a special education teacher is frustrated with NCLB. That's why recent modifications were made, and I expect more changes to come. But why the comment about Bucks County kids having to pay thanks to the crappy state of schools in Philadelphia? They're not being penalized. They're taking tests, and doing well on them (in general).

Doubts rise as test scores fall

Now a school in Southeast Washington, DCm is under suspicion of cheating, thanks to roller-coaster Stanford 9 scores:

Less than two years ago, Moten Elementary in Southeast Washington celebrated a sharp rise in standardized test scores that placed its students among the most accomplished in the school system.

Twelve months later, the scores plunged. Now, Moten's results on the Stanford 9 Achievement Test are among the lowest of the more than 100 public elementary schools in the District...

In the spring of 2002, only 3.3 percent of Moten's students tested in math scored "below basic" -- the Stanford 9's lowest category of scoring -- and 2.4 percent tested below basic in reading. But results from the spring test in 2003, which were released in the fall, showed 69 percent of its students scoring below basic in math and 55 percent scoring below basic in reading. The steep declines occurred in grades 4 through 6.

Something's not right here. The Stanford 9 didn't move the goalposts, or we would have seen these results everywhere. Did the type of student (i.e., special education or not) change from 2002 to 2003? Even that wouldn't necessarily explain this. But cheating - as in, changing answer sheets, or giving students the answers - would.

What's the school district going to do about it? Nothing.

Caritj said the school system is not planning to investigate further -- or to interview school staff members who were present at the exam -- because nobody has come forward to claim that cheating occurred. The principal who presided over the 2002 testing has retired; and the 2003 data appear legitimate and can be used to guide instruction...

One of those teachers, Kelly Knepper, said that in the 1999-2000 school year, the first 10 students on her class's alphabetical roster scored in the top percentiles on the Stanford 9, yet her other 10 students scored poorly. One student was having trouble subtracting 3 from 5 just two days before the test, yet scored in the 99th percentile in math, the former fifth-grade teacher said.

Yep, sounds like somebody cooked the books that year, and it seems the guilty parties will go unpunished. The kids, however, are now suffering, because the new and presumably correct test results indicate that the school is doing a lousy job of educating its students. A fifth-grade teacher claims that one of her students couldn't subtract 3 from 5? A first-grader should be able to do that - on his fingers, perhaps, but still.

Cheating expert, fellow psychometrician, and all-around nice guy Greg Cizek is on the spot with a comment:

Gregory J. Cizek, who teaches educational measurement and evaluation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he suspects that answer sheets were changed. "My hunch is there's some point in the handling of these documents that they've been altered," said Cizek, who is the author of the book "Cheating on Tests: How to Do It, Detect It and Prevent It."

"I'm trying to think of any other plausible explanation, but I'm just not able to come up with one," he said.

Read more about Dr. Cizek's work here.