Number 2 Pencil

The gifted-vs-remediation tradeoff

From Pennsylvania comes this tale of students who have learned facts but don't really understand the material - or so the teachers claim:

Wolfe, an eighth grade reading teacher at Big Spring Middle School, helped design the Reading Increases Students' Excellence (RISE) class to prepare students for the ninth-grade standardized writing test...

They had memorized the definitions for a test in other classes, but "they didn't actually know that they had to know it for knowledge, for life."

This, of course, is the lead-in for a crop of test criticism. But I see this as a criticism of their former teachers. What did they do in their language arts classes? Say to the kids, 'Okay, just memorize this list, but you'll never use these words again - they aren't important"? How bad do teachers have to be for kids to get the idea that the English language is not knowledge they'll need for their lives? Don't go blaming tests for this, nuh-uh.

Getting the right answers on a state standardized test is a "game," says Donna Benson. It's a game many of her students refuse to play.

Benson teaches gifted students at Cumberland Valley High School, and says highly intelligent students tend to ignore test-taking conventions, especially when writing essays. Instead, many write creatively, and as a result score low on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA).

I hear this a lot, but I've never seen any evidence to back it up. Anecdotal evidence, sure. But there isn't a scoring rubric out there that doesn't give examinees a boost for using correct spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. Is it really true that there are vast numbers of very smart kids whose writing is so creative that, despite proper vocabulary and spelling, their essays recieve very low, or flunking, grades?

"It's done kind of as formula writing," Benson says of how the writing portion of the PSSA is scored. "I want the kids to know what the formula is, but ... I want the kids to go beyond that," she says.

And they can. But they should understand why the formula is there, and why it would be silly to protest the formula on the grounds that it's too "dumb" for them. For a lot of kids, it would be a big step forward just to be able to write well, period, even if the writing came out formulaic.

Highly intelligent students often have trouble with multiple choice and true-or-false questions because they "over-analyze" the question, Benson says. She worries gifted and bright children get left behind when schools emphasize remediation...

"I'm glad my children aren't in school anymore," says Candy Shively, who works for Cumberland Valley School District and used to teach special interest classes. "I think we're really skimping on the enrichment things and the higher level of thinking."

And I can understand her way of thinking. Unfortunately for the bright kids, the act is called Leave No Child Behind, not Push The Smart Ones Ahead. Proficiency isn't enough for a subset of kids, true. But when so many students are failing miserably, schools are often forced to focus on them.

Data Recognition Corp isn't recognizing its errors

Great headline on this testing oopsie - "PSSA report spaced out".

A line-spacing error that threw off the standardized test scores reported last week by the Pennsylvania Department of Education has school officials wondering if they can rely on the numbers. The error prompted the department to remove a school-by-school report on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test scores from its Web site Thursday, less than 24 hours after posting it.

"If they want to hold us accountable, maybe they ought to be a little bit more accountable on how they send out their scores," he said.

Granted, this isn't a true scoring error, but a reporting error. On the other hand, people are touchy, and anxious, about the whole deal. Releasing scores via the web that are wrong is a bad situation, no matter how easily the rectification.

Hey, at least somebody's optimistic about it

Penn State is optimistic and enthusiastic about the new SAT:

“We receive over 40,000 freshman applications each year, and we have more students sending us their SAT scores than any college or university east of Los Angeles,” said John Romano, vice provost and dean of enrollment management and administration at Penn State. “Penn State processes a tremendous amount of student information and, while we applaud the addition of a writing component to the SAT, we need to remind ourselves that the results of the new SAT will be just one of many factors we look at as we make admission decisions.”

“The immediate impact of the writing component,” Romano said, “is the strong signal it sends to students, parents, teachers and administrators in our nation’s secondary schools that writing is important. Eventually, we hope to observe in our university classrooms across all disciplines the results of this added emphasis. For now, we need to assess what role the additional component should play in our decisions.”

Forty thousand applications. Good Lord. What a mountain of paperwork that must be...

Cheaters with blood on their hands (literally)

Becuase I forgot to post last week's Cheating in the News roundup from Caveon, here it is. Apparently, there's a computer virus that can steal test items, though I'll believe that only after Snopes verifies it. Cheating has gotten so bad, though, that even people who you really, really don't want to be faking their knowledge are starting to do so. I don't know which is worse - the knowledge that you can fake your way through an EMT exam, or the idea that some people are happy to do so.

Oh, and on a related topic, blogger CD of Ipse Dixit has discovered that a nine-year-old essay of his on Jane Eyre is for sale online! Now we can all own a little piece of CD, and if our professors aren't too sharp, we can pass it off as our own.

Join me, fellow twinkletoes, on a journey of dreams!

Devoted Reader John L. sends along a candidate for Idiotarian of the Year. Out of - surprise! - Oregon comes the most flowerly, nonsensical paen to progressive "education" that I've ever read, and that's saying something, even for the dean of a school of education:

Follow me on a little imaginative journey: You and I have invented the wondermeter, a device that captures bold ideas and original insights.

Which, like the wondermeter, aren't worth much unless they're patented. But I digress.

Using the wondermeter we are able to measure the daily wonder production of Oregon. As it turns out, every Oregonian has at least three bold ideas and original insights a day. The population of Oregon is almost 3.6 million. According to the wondermeter, at least 11 million bold ideas and original insights erupt in Oregon every day. That's approximately 4 billion bold ideas and original insights a year. Four billion.

Do you find it as amusing as I do that the type of touchy-feeling educators who are always saying that we can't quantify learning have so boldly quantified ideas here? Nope, we can't trust test scores - but we can trust their estimate of 4 billion!

The news that Oregon's middle- and high-schoolers are not doing well on standardized tests is disappointing, but it may also be pointing us in the wrong direction. More scientific discoveries have taken place in the last 10 years than in the previous 600. To reduce learning to the measuring and mismeasuring of antiquated knowledge is a huge strategic error that will result in considerable suffering and a weakened economy.

1. How many scientific discoveries have been made by kids who haven't mastered basic science skills?
2. How many scientific breakthroughs were generated by people who consider scientific facts, and vast stores of scientific knowledge, to be "antiquated knowledge"?

It is said that Oregon loves dreamers. What would an inclusive, high-performance education system look like for Oregon's dreamers?

Four billion ideas a year, bouncing around, with no discipline, factual knowledge, or structure to ground them to anything in reality. That's what it would look like. Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them - and Peter W. Cookson Jr. of the Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education would like all of your children to spend at least 8 hours a day there.

Maybe more:

Coordinate all the state's educational assets. There is a disconnect between higher education and K-12 education, there is a disconnect between the public sector and the private sector, and there is a disconnect between universal education and education for economic productivity. Instead of a competitive model, let's imagine a cooperative model where all the state's assets are used.

Can you say, "cradle-to-grave welfare state?" I knew you could!

...Enable Oregonians to be culturally competent. A just education system ensures that each student, no matter what his or her age or background, is celebrated and supported. Oregon has already made great strides through the state's Department of Education by placing cultural competency at the forefront of the educational agenda. This effort ought to be emphasized and enlarged.

Because, as we all know, scientific breakthroughs, and strong economies, depend on the cultural competency of students. This is why cultural competency - not reading skills, not the ability to compete in a global economy through the use of mathematics and computer science - should be at the forefront of the educational agenda, according to them.

At least they're honest about their priorities.

Accountability is one of the current buzzwords in education, but accountability is too often translated into test scores. I am suggesting an accountability that goes far deeper. We are accountable for the welfare of our citizens. Oregon's dreamers deserve opportunities to make their dreams real. Wonder is our most precious natural resource; we dare not squander it.

We can be the authors of our own miracle.

Five bucks to the first person who can explain just what the heck this means.

Quibbling over the MCAS

A Boston English teacher handles letters about the MCAS in the Globe's "Ask the Teacher" feature:

Q. These days, there is much pressure put on our adolescents to pass the MCAS test. In addition, school personnel often need to address youth's other needs, such as social and emotional growth, career exploration, etc. Is the MCAS exam helping or hindering our youth from achieving and being well-rounded?

A. The MCAS has had its fans and foes well before students began taking the statewide test in 1998. Proponents applaud the exam as a means of creating and measuring statewide educational standards, particularly in math and English. Critics, however, take issue with its too-high stakes (a high school graduation requirement), an apparent preference for memorization over knowledge, and a dismantling effect on teaching (faculty teaching to the test).

"Too-high stakes" - meaning Massachusetts students shouldn't be expected to master 10th-grade material in 12 years. And explain to me again exactly how you don't "know" something once you've "memorized" it, and how you can "know" a concept about which you've "memorized" no facts?

Some school districts have kept their focus on educating the whole person...

Translation: Rock-bottom test scores are okay as long as the student learns to play well in groups of properly-distributed diversity...

...while others have reshuffled course content and academic priorities to prepare students for MCAS exams. Karen Harris, who taught English at Watertown High School for 12 years, then became a teacher at Brookline High, has seen the MCAS effect from two distinct perspectives.

"At Watertown High, the MCAS became an obsession for teachers as well as students," said Harris. "Early on, many students failed the exam. After that, every faculty meeting addressed the issue of how to prepare students to pass this one exam . . . What important issues weren't we discussing as a result of this obsession?

What would Harris consider more important than the fact that Watertown students were in class eight hours a day, yet weren't mastering basic reading and math skills? I for one am delighted that the MCAS scores were the focus of every faculty meeting.

"In Brookline, where there's less anxiety about students passing the exam, you have the opportunity to turn the test into a lesson on conscientious objection, for example. I realize that's not a luxury every school system has.

No, it's most definitely not. Could you be a little more condescending about the fact that smart kids at the better schools get to be "conscientious objectors," while the kids at the poorer schools would be better off if they had teachers dedicated to helping them learn to spell those words?

"If teachers are only teaching the test, the students are receiving a very limited education. Plus, with teachers forced to wear more and more hats these days, it's increasingly difficult for many to help create the sort of capable and curious student we all want to see."

I agree that teachers are spread too thin. I also think bad teachers don't know how to teach basic skills without narrowing curriculum. But I fail to see how any student could be termed "capable" if they don't learn these skills.

Students often fare well on standardized tests when their teachers know their subject and show a passion for it. More importantly, their students appreciate that education's worth can't be quantified.

That last statement is true only in the sense that "Money can't buy happiness" is. We all know that a great education can't be wholly captured by a test, and high test scores do not by definition mean a great education. But just as money can buy everything except happiness (and make misery a whole lot more tolerable), the better the test scores, the better off the students are.

High test scores may not mean everything's going all right, but low test scores always mean that something has gone wrong. And there's not a student on earth who has ever been "hindered" by their high test scores.

Start earlier - or study it more slowly?

At some California schools, Algebra I will now be a two-year process:

Atascadero schools have started a two-year introductory algebra course in hopes of ensuring that all students will meet state requirements and increasing proficiency levels...Atascadero Unified will offer the mathematics course with lessons spread out over two years while still keeping the traditional one-year offering.

State guidelines recommend that students take Algebra I in the eighth grade, though many students enroll later.

The problem with enrolling later is that those who take it later tend to do worse - although that's not proof that taking it earlier will increase comprehension:

Results of Algebra I testing from the California Standards Test showed 94 percent of Atascadero eighth-graders -- 177 students -- scored at the basic level or above, but in higher grades the results weren't as good.

Of 151 ninth-graders who were tested on their Algebra I skills, 36 percent were below the basic level. Of 77 tenth-graders, 56 percent scored below basic, according to the California Standardized Testing and Reporting Web site.

Are two-year classes the answer? I suppose they might be - but I have the feeling most of what will be taught in them is not Algebra, but all the pre-Algebra concepts that the more disadvantaged kids never mastered. Otherwise, I don't see how it's possible to spread introductory Algebra out for two years.

Is August better for vacation - or school?

As some schools are starting earlier and earlier, allegedly to get ready for standardized tests, frustrated parents are writing letters to urge their state governments to set the school start dates later - and make them consistent across schools:

...some Georgia politicians say they've heard from enough frustrated parents to consider stepping in and passing a law that would push back the first day of school and making it the same day for all schools across the state.

"I just don't see any advantage. I have not seen anything - in studies or the results of testing - that shows this is the better way," said Barb Twist, an Athens mother whose 11-year-old daughter has been back in class for weeks.

If early starts don't help with test scores, they may be an unnecessary expense - and it is expensive in the Deep South to keep a public building open in the heat of August. On the other hand, the schools let out in May instead of June, which is more in line with the college schedules. Be interesting to see how much support this gets.

Getting out of the rat race

As someone who used to videotape rats as part of a psychology project, and who admires the self-employed, I found this cartoon particularly amusing (and apt):

Number 2: The Perfect Pencil

No real reason to post this; it's just not every day that the Number 2 Pencil makes the news:

The No. 2 pencil is ideal for computer-graded tests because it contains the perfect combination of lead darkness and hardness and is reflective enough to be picked up by a scanner, said Tim Loomer from Scantron Corp. The No. 2 is in between the No. 1 and the No. 3 in darkness and level of shine, making it the pencil of choice.

"If you did a mark with a 1, 2 and 3 pencil, each one will get progressively darker; as you go from 1 to 3, each one will get progressively shinier; and each one will get progressively softer," Loomer said. "The number 2 is the ideal blend for the technology that optical mark readers use, because it's got the perfect amount of reflective quality from the graphite and it is also really easy to erase."

Must have been a SLOW news day at the Associated Press...but I think I've got my new tagline. "Number 2 Pencil - the ideal amount of reflective quality!"

When effort isn't enough

Before I head off, I have to link to this one article about Benedict College in Columbia, SC (sent by Devoted Reader Greg M.), because (a) it's in my hometown, and (b) it's absolutely appalling:

Benedict College has fired two professors who refused to go along with a policy that says freshmen are awarded 60 percent of their grades based on effort and the rest on their work's academic quality.

Students "have to get an A in effort to guarantee that if they fail the subject matter, they can get the minimum passing grade," Swinton said. "I don't think that's a bad thing."

There are so many things wrong with this, I don't know where to start. How are professors supposed to accurately measure "effort"? How can a professor defend his or her measurement of effort if the student challenges it, given that the student's perception of effort might be vastly different from the professors?

And then there's the most important question of all, which gets to the heart of Benedict's supposed reasons for doing this. Why should we expect a struggling freshman to do better later on in their college career if it takes everything they've got to make a barely passing grade? It's not that effort doesn't matter in college. But ineffective effort doesn't get a student anywhere, and that's what Benedict wants to reward here. Putting in a lot of effort to little avail doesn't move a student along any more than putting in no effort. Put simply, Benedict wants to reward freshmen who work and work and work and still don't master the material.

Why should those students be passed? Why does Benedict think those students will succeed later on? Are there any studies showing that students who work very hard yet fail classes early on do better in their sophomore and junior years, and thus deserve that extra boost? Nothing is cited in this article.

And, of course, there's the part about professors who insisted on higher standards being dismissed:

Science professors Milwood Motley and Larry Williams defied that policy and Swinton dismissed them. Neither had tenure, which could have protected them from firing.

"There comes a time when you have to say this is wrong," he said.

Especially if you're a freakin' SCIENCE professor. My God, I can't believe Motley was even going along with the plan grudgingly. It would have been torture, for any science professor, to be forced to reward students who DO NOT GET THE RIGHT ANSWER, yet make a lot of "effort." That is not how science works. That is not how the real world works. This is not how Benedict College, which is not educating children but young men and women, should work.

Benedict College is an open-admissions, historically black college that was founded in 1870 in order to educate freed slaves. The school sees itself as a "haven" for students who have to overcome a lot of things just to make it to that level, and for that, I admire Benedict. But a college that tries so hard to be a "safe place" that it rewards students less for actual achievement will end up doing a grave disservice to all its students.

College follies roundup

Well, I'll be out of the office tomorrow (Ozzfest! Woo!) and busy on Friday, so let me leave you with a few golden oldies just in case I don't get a chance to blog again until the weekend. Here are a few of my favorite past posts that, in honor of the back-to-school season, represent my favorite provocative or amusing stories that involve college students (NB: no guarantees on link status).

College students falling out of bed in Buffalo (9/24/2003) - be sure to read ALL the comments, which are hilarious.

Bondage in Iowa, of all places (11/6/2003)

An impassioned plea for the First Amendment on campus (11/11/2002)

Harvard and the Nine-Foot-Tall Penis! (2/24/2003)

Where have all the men gone? (5/5/2003)

When students come together to graduate separately (5/19/2003)

and finally,

Big Bird does a great job! (4/26/2004) - read the comments to get the full story.

Also note that posts from before May of 2003, which I switched to MT, do not have comments, but feel free to add 'em now!

Who's in charge?

From the SacBee comes this fascinating tale of the frightening squabbles between California's State Board of Education and Bonnie Reiss, the senior adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger:

The disaffected board members have told friends that Reiss, an entertainment lawyer with Kennedy family connections, knows little about education - or about government - and because she has too much on her plate, she doesn't have time to learn. (The governor's education secretary, ex-Mayor Richard Riordan of Los Angeles, another novice on state education policy, is often out of the loop altogether.)

By itself it's no big deal. But because it opens a loophole in the state's curricular standards and, in the board's view, could easily be the start both of watered-down standards and of curricular resegregation of minority students, it's something that encroaches on its authority and that it very much opposes.

Also on the table is a bill that would place the authority for deciding curriculum standards in the hands of the elected state superintendent of public instruction, instead of the board - and subject to the lobbying of the teachers' unions.

Board members are meeting with the Governator today. This story ought to be interesting.

The UK: Where the men are men and the sheep have long memories

And here I thought that, as a psychometrician, I was doing real, necessary, important, meaningful research.

Who was I kidding? Here's where it's really at:

Lonely sheep, like lonely people, are much happier when they see pictures of friends and family, according to a study published yesterday. A group at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge has found that the sight of a friendly face reduces stress in sheep.

Prof Kendrick has found that sheep, while apparently ruminating mindlessly, could be dwelling on long-absent flock mates, mothers or even shepherds.

Oh, man. The dirty jokes just write themselves.

When A's become unhealthy

Parents in Palm Beach are facing a difficult decision - do they want their kids dumb and thin, or smart and fat?

In the midst of a healthier school-food movement and childhood obesity epidemic, Krispy Kreme is rewarding students with a doughnut for every A on their report cards — up to a half-dozen per grading period. Critics believe the doughnut company's giveaway is full of nutritional holes...

Cathy Probst of The Acreage has campaigned against using sweets as rewards and using sales of junk food to raise money..."I certainly would not want to see posters in classrooms with doughnuts on them as a reminder every day, day in and day out." she said. "When you do well and you reward yourself with food, that is something that will continue to promote obesity."

Then again, parents don't really have a difficult decision. All they need to do is encourage their kids to work hard, and not drive them to Krispy Kreme when the report cards come in.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

Sharkblog tells us about his evil genius toddler:

My son is a genius. You probably already knew that, but here is the latest proof.

My son is also a threat to our nation's automobiles. The other day when he was behind the wheel of the Subaru, he shoved his little plastic bubble wand all the way into the slot of the in-dash CD player. Now the CD player is useless.We're afraid to put any CDs in there lest they jam up or start sounding like Lawrence Welk. But there are serious consequences for toddlers who commit such dastardly deeds. He's not getting the keys to the BMW until he makes me whole for the Subaru.

Moving forward by stepping back

Hopeful news for some seriously struggling Kansas schools:

To help frustrated children...learn to read, the district is embarking on a new reading initiative in the 15 elementary schools with the lowest reading scores. The new program will begin Monday, when classes resume in the district.

“For some kids, this is going to make a dynamic difference,” said Kacy Parker, a school district administrator.

Emphasis mine. So what's this revolutionary new method that's going to make such a dynamic difference? Well, it's....phonics. You know, the straightforward and effective language education method that was used in schools until the "progressives" came up with the "whole-language" program, which some say contributes to the recent rise in reading disabilities?

Apparently, the way to be truly progressive these days is to be...old-fashioned.

Update: Check my comments for a dissenting view, with lots of links, from Liz.

A minute on the lips, forever on the mind?

Given the wide variety of increasingly-dangerous hot sauces that are available these days, I say any parent who wants to try this had best be careful. And for the record, has anyone ever heard of this? I sure hadn't.

The practice of "hot saucing" a child's tongue as a method of discipline may seem cruel to some parents, but those who regularly use the punishment say it teaches their charges valuable and long-lasting lessons.

Lisa Whelchel, who played Blair on the popular 1980s TV series Facts of Life, is an advocate and practitioner of "hot saucing." Whelchel, the author of Creative Correction: Extraordinary Ideas for Everyday Discipline, says the practice worked for her children when other disciplinary actions did not.

"There's no room for pain and humiliation and fear in disciplining healthy children," Kendrick said. "I think it's a rather barbaric practice to say the least."

I can't decide what's weirder about this - the idea that there is no room for any kind of humiliation in child-rearing (embarassment is a useful learning tool for kids and adults), or the fact that this is how Blair from The Facts of Life is getting press again. And don't some kids like spicy foods? I suppose it's unlikely that hot sauce could become positive reinforcement instead of punishment, but with kids, you never know.

And the part about Virginia considering this "an actionable offense" is just ludicrous. Does this mean if an adult leaves a spicy taco lying around so that a kid can eat it and burn his lips, the adult is guilty of criminal negligence? Ridiculous.

Dave Barry wins the gold in Olympic humor

I'm not spending a whole lot of time watching the Olympics (I'm still cursing myself for turning off the TV before I saw Paul Hamm make his comeback, but I had a 6:30 flight the next morning), but I am reading Dave Barry's Olympics columns. And they are good.

On the taxi drivers of Greece:

It's not just that the taxi drivers are aggressive. It's also the Greek Motor Vehicle Code, which, as far as I can tell, consists of a single law: No Stopping. The motorists here do not stop for anything, including other vehicles, stop signs, red lights, pedestrians, buildings and the Acropolis. If you're driving here, and you see something in your path, your sole responsibility, as a Greek motorist, is to honk your horn at it. After that, whatever happens is not your fault; if the Acropolis, having been duly warned, fails to move, that is tough tipiyokti for the Acropolis...

Once you're in the taxi, the real excitement begins. The driver, in addition to honking, is usually very busy talking on the radio and the cell phone, smoking, writing things down, yelling and gesturing at other motorists. I was in one taxi where the driver got off an expressway at the wrong exit, so he reversed and drove the taxi, at perhaps 40 mph, down the ramp backward onto the expressway. Seeing my facial expression (EEEEEEEEEEEEEE), he gave me a big smile, as if to say: "Can you even BELIEVE we are doing this?''

On women's weightlifting:

The weightlifting competition I saw was the women's 63 kg class. I'm not sure whether this means the actual women weighed 63 kg or the weights they lifted weighed 63 kg. Or possibly the temperature in the weightlifting hall was 63 kg. There's no way to know for sure without finding out what a ''kg'' is, and my belief, as an American, is that if I have to start understanding the metric system, then the terrorists have won.

On the US Basketball Team:

But before you get too cynical about the Olympics, let me stress that not all the athletes are taking performance-enhancing drugs. Some of them appear to be taking performance-reducing drugs. I refer here to the U.S. All-Star Billionaire Men's Basketball Team...

Listen: If we let Lithuania beat us in basketball, it's only a matter of time before France does. And if that happens, we basically have no choice but to use nuclear missiles.

Brown-nosers and workaholics welcome!

We keep reading about college presidents and professors who claim their students don't have adequate writing skills and aren't going to do well because of this. It's amusing, then, to read this article in OpinionJournal about one school you might have heard of - Harvard - that definitely isn't selecting the best writers. And maybe that's a good thing.

Part of the ordeal of a meritocracy is constantly having to prove yourself worthy, especially to gatekeepers who stand ready to exclude you from the Next Big Step Up...only a very few will get in. What is the secret of their admissions success?

And yet, the system works. HBS probably did the right thing to admit the guy who wrote that essay and most of the others in the book. The business school isn't looking for stylish and amusing writers; it is looking for good businessmen.

And, perhaps, for those who show an eagerness to kiss up to the boss:

The fine art of sucking up is taken to new heights by one candidate's blatant rephrasing of points from the business school's Web site. She looks forward to studying "multinational businesses in an academic environment with a world-class faculty and state-of-the-art facilities." Now there is an original thinker...

If you are applying to Harvard Business School, then, forget showing your application to your English-major roommate and certainly don't blow 50 bucks an hour on a professional editor. Just be yourself, gambling mother and all.

Does AFT stand for "Alternatively, for testing"?

In regards to the AFT/Charter school brouhaha of last week, I can't believe I failed to pick up on a very salient point that the Education Intelligence Agency noticed right away:

AFT’s single-minded effort to rid us of charter schools also serves to effectively undermine every argument teachers’ union have made – and are still making – for the poor performance of regular public schools. Here are just a few that immediately spring to mind:

* Judging schools by a single standardized test score is now OK. How often have we heard complaints about politicians, reporters, parents and the public misjudging the performance of public schools on the basis of results released from a single standardized test? It is one of the main talking points in NEA’s campaign against the No Child Left Behind Act, and a 2002 AFT resolution specifically condemns the misuse of standardized test scores in such a way. In the last week, AFT has repeatedly referred to NAEP as the “gold standard” of standardized tests. Very well, now we can apply the gold standard to everyone.

I can't believe I missed this, because it's one of my pet peeves. Even the most vocal of testing critics will leap with both feet on a test score if is supports their point of view, which is hypocritical, to say the least. I hope the AFT realizes that they have in fact given their stamp of approval to judging the US public education system by NAEP scores.

Harnessing the power of the web

From Carnegie Mellon comes this advancement in education:

Carnegie Mellon has developed a Web-based computer tutoring system to help middle-school students prepare for standardized mathematics tests like those required under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The "Assistment" system aims to solve a dilemma for teachers: how to prepare students for tests without sacrificing quality instruction time. The system is designed to quickly predict a student's score on a standardized test, provide feedback to teachers about how they can adapt their lessons to address students' problems and provide individualized tutoring to suit each student's needs. The system is being tested in Massachusetts with a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, but it can be easily adapted for use in other states. In developing Assistment, researchers have drawn upon the proven success of Carnegie Mellon's popular Cognitive Tutor®, a comprehensive secondary mathematics curricula and computer-based tutoring program that is in use in 1,500 schools nationwide. Contact: Jonathan Potts at 412-268-6094 or Anne Watzman at 412-268-3830.

I found more info at the Pittsburgh Advanced Cognitive Tutor site. Sounds interesting.

A Catholic school that isn't catholic in the least

FrontPageMagazine has an editorial from someone who recently escaped a horrific Catholic school. No, it wasn't horrific because nuns were roaming the halls swatting kids with rulers; it was horrific because left-wing groupthink was expected - and enforced:

The following are some instances of liberal indoctrination that I experienced at my Catholic high school...

On the first anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, a teacher gave us a rather lengthy handout that argued that whether a culture is “civilized” is relative. The handout was full of statements such as “a terrorist loves his truth just as much as I love mine,” and “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Our teacher went on to say that America imposing its view of what it is to “be civilized” on the Afghan people is bigoted. It would be disgusting to initiate such a discussion on the anniversary of 9/11, even if my school wasn’t located 15 miles from Ground Zero. Many students in our school, including myself, lost family members the day of the attacks. Regardless of one student’s crying in class, the teacher continued to be downright nasty when some of the other students expressed their outrage.

Students at my school endured multi-annual presentations, videos, and lectures on the "forgiveness of world debt." All of the videos attributed footage of Africans living in squalor to the United States’ “selfishness” in not forgiving debts of developing countries. Forgiveness of world debt is a rather complex economic concept, but the general conservative stance regarding debt forgiveness is that doing so would result in little or no improvement of third world living standards. At the end of my Senior year, in a totally unrelated project, I decided to survey the political knowledge of some of the teachers at my school. The teacher who was the biggest proponent of forgiveness of world debt could not even name the governor of our state...

That's so outrageous that I hope this young woman is exaggerating the matter. I fear that she isn't. Her last name is unusual (Inauen) and via Google I found her listed on the debate team at the Catholic University of America, which is presumably where she's now an undergraduate. I hope her undergraduate career offers more freedom than her high school years did.

An F is an F by any other color

Just when I think the cult of self-esteem can't advance any further in our educational system, they prove me wrong:

When it comes to correcting papers and grading tests, purple is emerging as the new red.

That's the cue pen makers and office supply superstores say they have gotten from teachers as the $15 billion back-to-school retail season kicks off. They say focus groups and conversations with teachers have led them to conclude that a growing number of the nation's educators are switching to purple, a color they perceive as "friendlier" than red.

Come ON people! If your students are flunking, do you really think it matters - to them, to their parents, to their lives - what color you use on their papers? My dissertation advisor used nothing but green ink in his pens and at times my dissertation drafts looked like leprechauns had bled to death on them. Do you think I felt better about having to change every word, twice, just because I got the message in green rather than red?

Here's a hint, teachers - if your students' papers are swimming in a sea of red ink, you have many more important things to worry about than the colors of your pens. Trust me on this.

A mix of red and blue, the color purple embodies red's sense of authority but also blue's association with serenity, making it a less negative and more constructive color for correcting student papers, color psychologists said. Purple calls attention to itself without being too aggressive. And because the color is linked to creativity and royalty, it is also more encouraging to students.

"The concept of purple as a replacement for red is a pretty good idea," said Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Color Institute in Carlstadt, N.J., and author of five books on color. "You soften the blow of red. Red is a bit over-the-top in its aggression."

This is why I don't drink while blogging - I'd spit my mead all over my keyboard laughing. It's nice to know that a deep purple pen can make it all better for a student who received a D-minus. Yes indeedy. And now the teacher can feel better about herself, too, because she's not being "over-the-top" in her "aggression", which is what touchy-feely types define as "grading objectively" these days.

"I do not use red," said Robin Slipakoff, who teaches second and third grades at Mirror Lake Elementary School in Plantation, Fla. "Red has a negative connotation, and we want to promote self-confidence. I like purple. I use purple a lot."

Hanley said a growing contingent of her colleagues is using purple. They prefer it to green and yellow because it provides more contrast to the black or blue ink students are asked to write in. And they prefer it to orange, which they think is too similar to red.

Are these the same teachers who are complaining that the testing requirements leave them no time to teach? I can help them save a few hours right here - just use whatever pen is cheapest and mark the darn papers.

But aside from avoiding red, Hanley said she is not sure color matters much. At times, she uses sticky notes rather than writing on a child's paper. What's important, she said, is to focus on how an assignment can be improved rather than on what is wrong with it, she said.

Isn't it sad when the argument that teachers should be wary of pointing out what is wrong with papers is the most sensible thing in an article? No, I take that back, the article actually winds up with a quote from a model of common sense, although we're probably suppose to conclude that she's hopelessly old-fashioned:

Red has other defenders. California high-school teacher Carol Jago, who has been working with students for more than 30 years, said she has no plans to stop using red. She said her students do not seem psychologically scarred by how she wields her pen. And if her students are mixing up "their," "there," and "they're," she wants to shock them into fixing the mistake.

"We need to be honest and forthright with students," Jago said. "Red is honest, direct, and to the point. I'm sending the message, 'I care about you enough to care how you present yourself to the outside world.' "

Note to the Boston Globe - Ms. Jago, and others like her, are not defending the color red. They are defending the right to ignore these silly issues and the cult of self-esteem, and focus instead on teaching their students.

Update: More from Joanne Jacobs, from Tiffany, and from Snooze Button Dreams. Best Quote award goes to Tiffany:

In my opinion, the fear associated with getting an essay back that's been marked up with red ink is the best conditioning a student can get. They'll want to improve to prevent errors and the emotion associated with failure.

What the hell is purple going to connote? "Oh, Jilly, I love you very much, but could you please not use so many comma splices, thank you!"?

Unhappy students, worried legislators

From Devoted Reader Dave H. (his page seems to be down) comes this report of young Delawarians who are unhappy with the proposed tiered diploma system (covered before on N2P, here). If anyone can explain to me why the newspaper chose the graphic they did for this article, please let me know.

Grant Russell, a 16-year-old A.I. du Pont High School junior, is sure he will get a distinguished diploma when he graduates in the spring of 2006, if the three-tiered diploma becomes law.

"Those tests" are the three high-stakes tests 10th-graders must take: math, reading and writing. The rating on the diploma, descending from distinguished to standard to basic, depends on the scores in each of those subjects, weighted in a formula devised by the state Department of Education.

As I argued before, I haven't seen much validity evidence for the tests that Delaware is using for the diplomas. And it's interesting that it's the smart kids who are protesting this. This suggests that, unlike the exit exam situations in which it's the kids who are doing poorly overall who complain, we're seeing kids who are doing quite well who are unhappy with this system:

Russell and some of his friends were part of this year's Delaware Governor's School for Excellence, a one-week program that provides academically outstanding high school juniors intensive instruction. During one of the seminars, conducted by state treasurer Jack Markell, Russell asked about the economics of state testing and the diploma.

"I'm the one who said it was asinine," said Villarreal, of Newark.

It's hard to find fault with kids who know their Roget's so well.

Some students said they don't mind a rated diploma if it is based on more than high-stakes tests taken so early in their high school careers.

Besides, he learned a lot during his junior year, and expects to learn a lot more this year. "There's a lot of knowledge I'll have from my last two years," he said.

I can understand why students believe it should be based on GPA (although that allows for a lot more grade inflation). It sounds like there's a great deal of concern as to whether the test really matches the curriculum, and whether it's really meaningful for this purpose. Given that, it sounds like Delaware's Legislature should stick with the one-tiered (no-tiered, really) system.

Talking out of both sides of his mouth

This description of two candidates for a Washington state Senate race sums up in a nutshell why I'll never vote Democrat:

The high-profile contest to represent the 49th District in the state Senate continues Tuesday with the second of three debates between Republican incumbent Don Carlson and Democratic challenger Craig Pridemore...

Pridemore has said the standardized test enforces conformity on children, instead of letting their own strengths flourish. Carlson said the test sets a standard that makes a high school diploma signify more than simply attending school for 12 years.

Oh, my, isn't it terrible how we force kids to conform to the English language and learn all those rules of mathematics? Why, we should just allow their own illiterate and innumerate "strengths" to flourish, because we all know if a skill is measurable by a test, it must be bad.

The candidates also differ on charter-school legislation passed this year. Pridemore supports a referendum that would repeal the bill, which would authorize a limited number of publicly funded schools operated by nonprofit organizations. The charter schools will fragment society, Pridemore argues. Carlson voted for the legislation, calling it a worthwhile experiment.

Wait, I thought Pridemore wanted our kids to be boldly nonconformist, to go their own way on their own strengths. But now that Washington state has the option to create new schools for every kind of kid, he's worried about "fragmentation" of society.

"Nonfragmentation without conformity!" - is that his battle cry? You tell me.

No more pencils, no more books - oh, wait, school just started again

Virginia schools are cutting the summer vacations short, and that's not because of snow days:

Not so long ago, school districts throughout the country waited until after Labor Day to summon their charges back to class. Not anymore. With standardized test scores increasingly determining a school's success or failure, more districts are starting classes earlier in the summer to give students additional time in the classroom before state exams.

Simone had a different take on it. "It's kind of bad because all my other friends who don't go to my school don't have to go to school for two weeks," she said.

Don't mess with us Testocrats

Devoted Reader Dr. Michael S. (I actually have two of them, so you'll have to guess which one I mean) sends along this masterpiece of anti-testing hyperbole (free sub required):

They're trying to reform the SAT again, which is like trying to turn a pit bull into a toy poodle. What they ought to do is euthanize this mutt.

This time they've added a writing section to the Scholastic Aptitude Test. That's because educators have been saying that writing is critical for success in college. Actually, university professors have been saying this for centuries. You have to wonder why the College Board, which administers the test, has only now caught on...

I guess I should give this guy (one Joe Rodriguez) credit for being original. While everyone else is having hissy fits over the fact that the SAT is changing and adding a writing component, he's kvetching about the fact that there wasn't one all along.

The highest possible SAT score is 1600. I can't remember my exact score, because I don't want to, but it was under 900.

On second thought, I don't think a writing test would have jacked up my score all that much. And it won't make much difference today for students in schools like mine. They don't have as many advanced placement classes or experienced teachers. Nor do they have affluent parents who can pay for expensive SAT preparation courses, as they do at privileged schools. Poor schools that can't teach reading and mathematics aren't going to teach writing any better.

And does Joe use this claim as the basis for supporting school reform? Better SAT preparation at poor schools? More focus on the core skills of readin', writin', and arithmetic?

No. He just brings in the old eugenics argument (which I've addressed before), because he's one of those guys who believes we don't need the achievement gap to disappear, we just need the test to disappear.

Instead of tinkering with the SAT, we should kill it.

A major flaw of today's SAT is that it's vulnerable to coaching and short-term improvements. How can you trust a test that, for the $800 price of a quickie prep course, can produce a gain of 100 points?

How can you trust a columnist who takes the outrageous claims of test prep companies at face value, despite a total lack of independent evidence that score gains this high are routine? But don't worry, Joe, bigger fish than you have been suckered by this worm.

A test isn't much good if it can't predict something, and the SAT hasn't been proven to be a reliable predictor of college success.

A few years ago, plucky little Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania measured the first-semester grades of freshman with SAT scores of about 1000 against freshmen with 1200 scores or better. The results were virtually identical.

Ooh, bonus points for finding the one tiny piece of data (could you find Muhlenberg on a map? and what makes it "plucky"?) that appears to support his arguments, but which can easily be dismantled with the concept of restriction of range, which every first-year stats student learns.

But the absolute, worst assumption of the SAT is that any young person's potential can be reduced to a number. It assumes that, after four years of college, a 900-point student from a poor school cannot catch up to or surpass the 1400-point student from a wealthy school.

No, it doesn't reduce a person to a number, and it doesn't say that person cannot catch up. But college resources are finite. College resources are best spent on those who have the most potential to use them. If that weren't the case, all colleges would have open admission, and the value of a college degree would subsequently plummet (further than it has already). I mean, in a day and age when a decent school has the gall to brag about admitting students with 900 scores on the SAT, this characterization of low scorers as innocent victims whose lives are totally ruined by that one score is ridiculous. Students with scores that low won't get into the Ivy League, but they will get into their local community college, and maybe UGA as well.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm sure glad my boss didn't ask for my SAT score when I applied. Come to think of it, none of my employers have ever asked.

Maybe that's because it's only supposed to predict first-year college grades. How you then do in college is what your employers care about.

Some years ago, former University of California President Richard Atkinson called for dumping the SAT. He wanted to replace it with tests that try to measure achievement in specific subjects, rather than overall aptitude. The testocrats shot him down, but it's still a good idea and much better than a one-size-fits-all test that doesn't live up to its promise.

So, you're in favor of tests that, while they may be more predictive in some cases, also may continue to show a score gap and may be just as susceptible to coaching - as long as they're more specialized? Just checking.

And - "testocrats." I love it. My favorite Disney movie as a kid was The Aristocats, so I need some words here to go to those melodies. I suck at that sort of thing, so I'll leave that to my more creative Devoted Readers.

Oh, and one more thing...

..if you like handmade jewelry, my friend Jenn has finally got a store up on eBay. It's Freya's Fire, and I can personally vouch for the quality of her jewelry and the care that goes into making every piece. She recently made me a great black crystal necklace with this little guy hanging upside-down at the bottom of it. If you buy anything, tell her I sent you!

The truth about exit exams

Here's a devastating indictment of the nation's high school exit exams, as featured in Newsday. I don't think anything in this report, though, will be surprising to some of my more involved Devoted Readers:

From Newsday:

Many high school graduation tests don't measure whether students are ready for college or work, and some states haven't even made clear what the purpose of their test is, a study finds. Of the 25 states that have or plan graduation exams, only one, Georgia, says its test ensures students are prepared for higher education or work. Most of the states gear their tests toward 10th or 11th grade learning, and some gauge pre-9th grade skills, according to a study released Wednesday by the Center on Education Policy, a nonprofit research group.

The center takes no position on the tests, aiming instead to highlight what's working and what's not as state leaders weigh decisions. For its annual report, the center collected data from the states, reviewed research and convened a national panel on the tests' impacts.

I think Newsday's analysis is pertinent, although I disagree with their claim that the debates about exit exams are "quieting somewhat." As they note in the article, the total number of students who failed to earn diplomas because of test scores is hard to track in part because of the number of appeals (and the number of lawsuits, too.)

What's more, we're seeing more and more accommodations, such as those in Alaska that ultimately don't require a student to be able to read before being granted a diploma. Anyone who thinks that allowing students to have test questions read to them, or who are allowed use of a dictionary during an English, is a simple accommodation that doesn't change the nature of what's being tested is fooling themselves. The exit exams are easy enough to begin with, and these accommodations make it possible for virtually anyone to pass.

The report itself is a treasure trove of information, and it's well worth your time. One conclusion startled me:

While several states report conducting studies of the alignment of their exit exams to their standards, fewer report doing studies of the alignment of curriculum and instruction to their exit exam, and almost none report conducting studies on the impacts of their exit exam systems. We recommend that states undertake or encourage others to do studies of alignment between exit exams and curriculum and instruction and studies of the effects of their own exams.

Emphases mine. If schools are doing nothing to ensure that kids are taught what they'll be tested on, and whether the exit exams are holding back only those who truly need more time, no wonder the students and teachers don't like them. Memo to administators: This isn't a touchy-feely project in which you can convince us that there's nothing to measure. The studies are there waiting to be done, and if a diploma hinges on the results, you need to do them. Get over your anti-science bias and collect some data so you can validate the exams.

Everybody's at fault

I feel sorry for this grandmother, but I also think she's fooling herself about the "goodness" of her kid:

Two boys in his 4th grade class kept "messing" with him, the boy said, so when his older brother gave him a stolen 9 mm pellet gun, he stuffed it into a book bag and took it to his Sauk Village elementary school. "They kept saying they wanted to fight me," the 9-year-old said as he sat on his grandmother's couch in a red basketball jersey and black sneakers. "I told the teacher three times, and she didn't do anything."

He is a "good kid," Howard said. "The most trouble he caused--when you asked him to do something, it would take him all day."

Well, he managed to put that gun in his backpack pretty darn quickly, didn't he? I mean, the grandmother should be mad that the teachers didn't do anything, but the kid brought a gun to school - given to him by his older brother, no less - for the purpose of intimidating (at the very least) another kid. Does the grandmother really want to teach the kid that he is the innocent victim in this situation?

I do believe the kid is in some way the victim here, but mainly of his grandmother, who doesn't seem to be worried that he is getting guns from older siblings and is already, at age 9, looking at a gun as a problem-solver.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Behold, the latest round-up of education, testing, and school news that will make us all roll our eyes, if not in horror, then in amusement:

Brits spend more dough on beer than books. My guess is that's not the case here only because college towns tend to serve up lots of low-end beer at very cheap prices (a prize to the first person who can tell me what a "Blue Cup" is!)

If you're planning on moving from the US to the UK and becoming a citizen, best to watch a lot of Eastenders before you go.

Won't you sleep better at night knowing teachers can be "enriched" so easily?

We couldn't make it up. Here's the Los Angeles Times on professional development courses that some California teachers are taking to renew their certification and earn higher salaries: "Sara Telona learned the choreography for Mexican folklore dances, mastered the words to folk songs and took a crash course in marimba and xylophone playing. . . . To complete the course 'Sharks: Myth and Facts,' the teachers must watch a National Geographic video about the great white shark and read three books. Then, they answer several fill-in-the-blank sheets and write an essay on how their lives would be affected if sharks became extinct. . . . [The] 'I'm So Stressed I Could Scream' course taught . . . stress reduction techniques and helped with classroom management. Instead of disciplining her slightly rowdy class after lunch, [one teacher] started reading a book to calm students and herself."

It's always good when I can read the words "furore" and "airy-fairy" in an article that's critical of public schools (in New Zealand).

Finally, it's funny how the same people who oppose the "top-down" regulations of standardized tests don't seem to have a problem with refusing to let kids run and play:

Games where kids chase each other - tag or even cops and robbers - are generally banned in Natomas Unified's elementary schools. No grabbing or pushing is allowed. At Natomas Park, students can only toss and catch a football - tackling or blocking isn't permitted. But the no-contact rule applies beyond the grade-school gridiron.

"One person can be a little stronger than the other," she said as she walked away.

Yes, and recess is when kids are supposed to find this out, and the strong are supposed to learn how to play nice with smaller kids, not avoid them entirely out of any irrational fear of contact.

Cheating news roundup

Since I didn't get the chance to post Caveon Security's Cheating Roundup from the 12th, here you go. Everything from cheating Kiwis to those who insist that camera phones are better "regulated" than banned outright, because we all know kids never cheat with those things:

The cheating scenario is a stretch from the get-go. Cellphones used that way would be too conspicuous in any classroom where the teacher is paying even minimal attention. Besides, the camera function isn't a key to that kind of cheating. Current phone screens display text, and — though it would take a little more stealth — a cheater could message the questions.

Rather than outright cheating, it seems more likely that students might snap a quick photo of the FCAT tests and perhaps post the questions on the Web. I'm not sure that having a ban makes that kind of espionage less likely. In fact, I'll bet it happens soon, if for no other reason than to protest Gov. Bush's refusal to make FCAT tests from previous years public.

So, kids don't cheat with camera-phones, except when they're engaged in this honorable form of civil protest, is that it?

And here's another instance of test score cancellations due to "tampering" (love those euphemisms!):

Eighth-graders who recently graduated from Sunset Ridge School won't be able to compare their math skills to other Illinois students when the state reports standardized test scores this fall. After investigating an incident of test tampering at the Northfield school in April, the Illinois State Board of Education has said it will withhold the tainted math portion of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test for the 80 students believed to have been affected...

Students alerted Bailis to the changes during third period on their second day of math testing. Administrators discovered while questioning students and faculty that changes had also been made to the tests from the second day's first-period eighth-grade math class. When administrators asked Bailis what he was doing during second period, when changes were likely made, Bailis said he was at a grocery store buying Jolly Ranchers candy, according to an 18-page internal investigation released by the district last week. Administrators could not verify Bailis's claim.

That's an...interesting alibi. Note to Bailis: Years of watching true crime shows has taught me that the police tend to be suspicious of anyone who can instantly recall, down to the tiniest detail, exactly what they were doing at a time when a crime occurred. Innocent people tend to forget what they were doing and have to check their calendars; guilty people instantly offer up a detailed alibi. The "Jolly Ranchers" part cinches it for me.

Useful info for CA parents

The Contra Costa Times has an amusing round-up of info for parents whose eyes glaze over when confronted with stacks of percentile-ranking charts:

There's no nip in the air and the leaves are a steadfast green, but the shift of seasons is palpable.

Frankly, there's enough school assessment data flowing from Sacramento this month to make any parent's eyes glaze over. Cucamonga kids performed how well? Inyo County fifth-graders posted what percentages? School assessment data has been available online for some time, but in a format only an education policy wonk or closet statistician could love.

I never knew there were statisticians in the closet. Maybe that's because I'm surrounded by people like myself who are the statistics-geek equivalents of the drag queens parading down 5th Avenue during the Gay Pride parades. We love numbers, and aren't ashamed of it.

What tests don't measure (directly)

A recent national survey aimed to figure out not what kids know, but what conditions lead to learning (or lack thereof). Over 90,000 students from 26 states took the High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE), which was aimed at producing results to complement the test scores that we see nowadays.

And it does complement them, in the sense that the survey results are as depressing as test scores tend to be:

On the survey, for example, 55 percent of the respondents reported spending three hours or less per week on homework, readings, rehearsing or other school assignments. "Students devoted more time to personal reading online than to assigned readings for their classes," said Martha McCarthy, HSSSE director and Chancellor's Professor in the School of Education at IU Bloomington...

* Fifty-one percent of the students indicated they have a voice in making classroom decisions.
* Eighty-four percent said it is important to make good grades, yet only 56 percent indicated that they put forth a great deal of effort in their school work.
* Less than half of the students said they cared about their current school (47percent) and would choose the same school again if given the opportunity (48 percent)...

But if the AFT had its way, these kids wouldn't have a choice, would they?

All the news that's fit to distort

Well, about 4,593 of you emailed me with the original NYT article that bashed charter schools. And about half again as many emailed me with the follow-up articles bashing NYT reporter Diana Schemo and the AFT.

OK, so I exaggerate on the number of emails. Still, it does seem that the most fiskity stuff happens when I'm out of commission.

Sayeth the NYT:

The findings, buried in mountains of data the Education Department released without public announcement, dealt a blow to supporters of the charter school movement, including the Bush administration.

The data shows fourth graders attending charter schools performing about half a year behind students in other public schools in both reading and math. Put another way, only 25 percent of the fourth graders attending charters were proficient in reading and math, against 30 percent who were proficient in reading, and 32 percent in math, at traditional public schools.

Because charter schools are concentrated in cities, often in poor neighborhoods, the researchers also compared urban charters to traditional schools in cities. They looked at low-income children in both settings, and broke down the results by race and ethnicity as well. In virtually all instances, the charter students did worse than their counterparts in regular public schools.

On the other hand, one of the benefits of being out of commission is that everyone's already done the heavy fisking for me:

UnterGeek: What the story doesn’t seem to take into account, however, is the history of the surveyed fourth-graders. Were they in public schools for their third-grade year? Were they significant under-achievers before, and that’s why their parents put them in the charter school? What were the test scores like the previous year? Was there any noticeable improvement over the previous year?

Joanne Jacobs: Most charters are new schools still getting up to speed. Charter teachers often are young and inexperienced, though idealistic. I've seen a lot more troubled than cream-of-the-crop students in charters. But the bottom line is that the charter concept doesn't guarantee that every new school will work; it promises that ineffective schools will improve quickly or shut down. (And here's more linky goodness from her FoxNews column.)

SharkBlog: The national teacher unions are expected to pour millions of dollars (taken out of union dues skimmed from teacher salaries) into Washington state this election to try to defeat our charter school law. Expect to see more anti-charter propaganda from the teacher unions over the next couple of months.

Opinion Journal: It is not unusual for interest groups to issue misleading reports that further their political agenda. And for this reason, newspapers generally ignore them, treat them with great skepticism, or make sure they vet the study with independent observers. Not so in the case of the recently released study of charter schools issued by the American Federation of Teachers, which, after receiving top billing in the right-hand corner of the front page of yesterday's New York Times, was picked up by news media across the country.

The New York Post: The Times claims that the NAEP-based comparison "shows charter school students often doing worse than comparable students in regular public schools." Yet, on key comparisons, especially by students' race, there is no statistically significant difference between the performance of kids in charter schools and traditional public schools. This is especially salient considering how heavily charter schools are patronized by black and Hispanic families. Their kids aren't doing worse in charter schools.

Rod Paige: The New York Times' front-page 'analysis' of charter schools used faulty methodology to come up with a flawed conclusion. In other words, it was wrong. The Times made no distinction between students falling behind and students climbing out of the hole in which they found themselves. The Times grudgingly conceded that 'tracking students over time might present findings more favorable' to charter schools—but that point was buried at the end of the story.

Eduwonk: Most importantly, though, when one controls the grade 4 data for race it turns out there is no statistically significant difference between charter schools and other public schools. But, you'll search in vain in the Times story for that context. In fact, to the contrary, a chart accompanying the story fails to offer readers any significance tests for the numbers they're looking at, inaccurately indicating that there are significant differences by race.

Redline Rants: Simply put, the NYT is wrong. Federal data actually shows no difference between charter schools and traditional schools that serve large populations of disadvantaged and minority students. And studies show students in charter schools often make significant strides in key subjects after transferring out of public schools and attending charter schools for a period of time.

And Jay P. Greene gets the award for best analogy:
The New York Sun: Buried in a new report by the U.S. Department of Education is a comparison claiming to show that charter schools — independently run public schools free from many restrictions — have lower average test scores than regular public schools. A front page New York Times story, put together with the help of America’s second-largest teachers union, recently trumpeted this previously obscure statistic. But the original report buried the finding for a very good reason. Such a broad comparison between charter schools and regular public schools is sheer nonsense. Unlike regular public schools, many charter schools are specifically designed to serve students with low test scores. Denouncing charter schools for having lower-than-average test scores is like denouncing drug rehab clinics for having more drug users than regular hospitals.

Think the Grey Lady will admit they were wrong? Think the Grey Lady will start disclosing what organizations are feeding them data? Think the Grey Lady will start providing links to data so readers can interpret the results for themselves?

I think I'll be grey before that happens...

Hello, again

Sorry to disappear on ya'll for so long. I didn't want you to think I'd forgotten about you. It's just that I had to follow up an emergency trip to SC for the funeral with an emergency trip to the dentist for a root canal. It hasn't been the greatest week, and I'm going to crawl into bed now. Hopefully I'll be refreshed and up for blogging soon.

Away from my desk

I'll be away from blogging for a few days. I have to fly down to Hilton Head Island for the funeral of a family member. Keep an eye on the education news for me while I'm gone, will you?

Oh say can you see

Hiyo, everyone. I'll be posting more later today because I have to work (on a Sunday - ugh). But for now, I just have to say that this is one of the cutest things I've ever read:

Michael Phelps grabbed his head in disbelief, then thrust his left fist in the air. He's an Olympic champion - just like Mark Spitz. Phelps began his quest to overtake Spitz's 1972 record haul of seven gold medals with a dominating performance in the 400-meter individual medley, breaking his own world record Saturday night and claiming the first U.S. gold medal of the Athens Games...

He climbed the podium and leaned over to have a gold medal draped around his neck and an olive wreath placed on his head. During "The Star-Spangled Banner," Phelps removed the wreath and held it over his heart - much like he would a baseball cap - and quietly mouthed the words.

I just think that's adorable. Here's a 19-year-old kid, winning gold medals in the ancient city of Athens, being given the highest honor the Greeks can bestow, and because his momma told him to always take off his cap when the national anthem was played, he put his olive wreath over his heart. I love it.

Meow meow meow meow

In honor of Friday the 13th, I offer you - catblogging! (take that, Instapundit). First up, three beauties from the animal shelter where I volunteer.

Charlie - pudgy body, tiny voice, gets what he wants with his bedroom eyes:

Next, the stripey orange Tanner:

Third, the aloof (but not feral) Russian Blue, Peter:

And what would Friday the 13th be without a black cat? At least, one that's got some black in him. Here's my big galoot of a "kitten" (10 months) going after a fly:

(The photo quality might not seem the greatest, but these photos were all taken with my cell phone camera, which makes them automatically cool.)

Narrow-minded, but "diverse"

What amazes me is that anyone, even in Colorado, thought they could get away with this:

The University of Colorado at Boulder announced yesterday that it no longer would restrict an education course to minority and first-generation college students after receiving complaints that the restrictions violated equal-protection laws. Educators had limited fall enrollment for the Friday section of "School and Society" to "students of color" and first-generation college students, saying the restriction offered "a much safer and open environment" in which to discuss issues of race, class and the sexes.

Now, imagine a situation in which professors decided to limit enrollment in a course to white students only, or men only, with the argument being that it would be much "safer" for students to discuss race relations, or sexism. Can you imagine such a scenario not being immediately followed by protests, marches, activists descending upon the president's office?

Didn't think so. Yet the clueless UC educators, though they've given in, seem amazed that anyone thought to complain:

After three students threatened last week to take the university to court, however, Lorrie Shepard, dean of the School of Education, issued a "clarification" stating that the course would be open to all students, although "underrepresented" students were specifically encouraged to enroll.

"It is the intention of the School of Education to recruit students of color and first-generation college students to participate in a special section of [the course] for the purpose of creating a critical mass of such students," said Lorrie Shepard, dean of the School of Education.

And how wonderful they must feel to know that educators do not expect them to be able to hold their own in a classroom with others of different races; nay, they must be shepherded into this "critical mass" of safe space and protected from those evil, um, non-minorities and legacy students, who are obviously incapable of discussing touchy issues in a respectful way. Doesn't sound like UC thinks much of any of its students.

"School and Society" is mandatory for education majors, but the course is also popular among non-majors because it fulfills the university's general graduation requirement for "culture and gender diversity." In her statement, Miss Shepard continued to stress the importance of creating a classroom environment welcoming to "students of diverse backgrounds."

"Having a critical mass of first-generation and minority students in a class or group helps avoid the sense of isolation described by many students in these groups," she said. "We hope that students of diverse backgrounds who choose this opportunity can engage the intellectual material of this course without distraction."

I suppose it would be wicked to point out the irony in UC's demanding that students take a "culture and gender diversity" class, and then offering a class which is so deliberately undiverse. And wicked, too, to wonder about Ms. Sheperd's theory that the way to help minority students feel less isolated is to, um, isolate them from the rest of the student body.

(Of course, John of Discriminations already covered this, but I figured it was worth ridiculing once again.)

The most wonderful time of the year!

For all of my Devoted Readers who are also Devoted But Weary Parents:

Top ten signs it's time for your spawn - kid(s) - to go back to school:

10. You've cashed in their college fund to rent them an apartment - on the other side of town.
9. The TV picture tube has blown from the continued use.
8. Not only have they forgotten everything from the previous school year, but quite a bit from the year before that.
7. You think it's about time you got to use the computer again.
6. Their chores have been reduced to bring me a beer and go play in the street.
5. The summer camp you shipped them off to sends them home.
4. You now understand why other species eat their young or kick them out at an early age (and wonder how difficult it would be to barbecue them).
3. It's definitely time for them to learn about condoms, environmental activism, masturbation, and the evils of capitalism (obviously, a public school).
2. It been a few months since the last teacher having sex with a student scandal hit the news.
And,
1. That big yellow bus keeps showing up in front of your house each morning
(and it's not The Partridge Family or a prison road gang).

Telling it like it is

Miriam K. Freedman, whose work I've covered in N2P before, has a great website and a new article at the Hoover Digest about the fight for high standards. It's phenomenal, and you should all read the whole thing, but if you don't have time, here are a few of my favorite spots:

High-stakes tests, which affect a student’s ability to earn a high school diploma, are now in place or on the drawing boards in about half the states. Often controversial, they have spawned “test boycotts” and lawsuits...But a strange thing is happening: As we get closer to having the graduation tests “count,” many leaders have blinked, with the result that standards are compromised and test results invalidated...

Blinking at standards fails the public when, as the going gets rough, we quietly alter tests and standards. Such compromises have a crippling ripple effect on education reform, leading to cynicism and loss of faith in the entire venture. Such compromises are not legally warranted. For the sake of our children and for America, we must not blink.

Already a winner

I think this teacher will soon have her kids doing high jumps over the state testing proficiency standards:

It's not hard for the kids in Tisha Waller's third-grade classroom at Ashford Park Elementary School to think their teacher hung the moon.

"Test scores for us is the same as performance on the track," said Waller.

You go, girl.

Panic in Athens

The University of Georgia is officially in a panic over dropping minority enrollment, but their frantic efforts leave one wondering whether or not they're willing to consider the idea that perhaps the nation's best African-American students just aren't interested in UGA:

The number of African-American freshmen enrolling at the University of Georgia this fall is lower than at any time in recent history, despite efforts to increase the number of black students.

Only 202 black students are expected to enroll as first-time freshmen when the flagship university opens next week for the fall semester, according to the UGA admissions office. That's a 26 percent decline from fall 2003, when 273 black students enrolled as freshmen. And it's fewer than in 2001 — the year after a federal judge ruled UGA could not use race as a factor for admissions — when the university enrolled only 207 black freshmen.

That's not a huge shift. Downwards, yes, but is it a trend? The graphs suggest the numbers have never been as high as when UGA was allowed to use race in admissions, but did anyone really expect them to be? It's not as though no African-American freshmen are enrolled.

UGA ranks below Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and nearly all of the Southeastern states' flagship universities in percentage of African-American freshmen.

Black students made up 23 percent of the freshman class enrolled in Georgia's 34 public colleges and universities in fall 2003. This fall, Georgia Tech expects its freshman class to be 6 percent African-American. Georgia State University's black enrollment is expected to top 30 percent. Almost 12 percent of the fall 2003 freshman class at the University of North Carolina were African-Americans. At South Carolina, 10 percent of the 2003 freshmen were black.

Sounds to me like black freshmen are going where they want to go. GSU and USC are located downtown in bigger cities. UNC offers startlingly low tuition for in-state residents. Maybe black students just don't feel like moving to small-town Athens to attend UGA. (Let me say for the record that I've visited Athens, and I loved it. But it wouldn't be for everyone.)

Black enrollment has been affected on a national level by tuition increases at public universities, declining need-based financial aid and abandonment of affirmative action policies, said Robert Atwell, president emeritus of the American Council on Education.

"It is clearly the case that higher education competition on the basis of the test scores of entering students works against low-income and minority students," he wrote in a report released last month. "To determine human potential requires more than testing."

Yes, it does, but as we can see by the other stats presented above, admission based on test scores doesn't seem to be getting in the way of minorities attending schools other than UGA. I've always felt that it was wrong to assume that test standards must be lowered across the board for minorities, and I still think it's wrong. The surreal denial that the SAT score means anything can be seen in the statements below:

[UGA] admissions officials say they also examine applicants individually, weighing their potential benefit to the campus in addition to academic criteria.

"We have kids with better than a 1300 [SAT score] we've said no to, we've had kids with a 4.0 [GPA] we've said no to," McDuff said in an interview last month. "We have kids with an SAT of 900 that we've admitted."

There's nothing wrong with choosing students based on who the school feels would most benefit from UGA's scholarship. But bragging about admitting people with below-average SAT scores is just silly. That doesn't mean the school is more appreciative of the "whole person;" it just means that the school is willing to lower academic standards for applicants of a certain race or background (it's a guarantee that no rich or white student could get in with a 900 on the SAT), who now stand a greater chance of flunking out than if had they gone someplace with less rigorous coursework.

I think UGA should be doing everything it can to attract qualified applicants of all races and backgrounds. Admitting students who are the first in their family to go to college is great. But please, UGA, don't admit them unless you can prove they have a chance in hell of graduating; otherwise, it looks like you're just giving lip service to diversity to keep that tuition money coming in.

When your MD needs soft lighting, and extra time

A recent California court ruling has disability advocates seething and accusations flying in all directions:

An Oakland judge has refused to mandate special accommodations for a pair of attention-deficit students scheduled to take a national medical school exam Saturday.

While it would be logistically simple to provide the San Francisco residents with a private room and proctors, allowing states to independently determine who gets preferential treatment might damage the integrity of the standardized national testing system, the judge decided.

A judge in California decided that maintaining test integrity was more important than placating the disabled. How's that for a "man bites dog" story? And let the carping and kvetching begin!

"This is a pretty remarkable ruling, in that it basically eviscerates any state's right to protect the civil rights of their citizens," attorney Stephen Tollafield of Disability Rights Advocates in Oakland said Tuesday. "Judge Sabraw basically said it is more important for a company to have uniform standards than for Californians to be protected under their own state's laws."

Well, yes, that is what he said. In essence, he said that the AAMC has the right to say that all examinees should be held to the same standards of proof of disability, and that examinees don't get to enjoy relaxed standards on a national exam due to their state of origin. The articles claims that these standards are clear, and that 75% of accommodations requests for the April exam were approved. You can peruse the standards here on the AAMC website for yourself (as well as the AAMC's response to the lawsuit).

Of course, the cut-and-dried language of the standards doesn't stop critics from complaining that that they aren't sure what the standards are. And the comments about how well the plaintiffs did under standard testing conditions muddies the waters:

[Dr. Ellen Julian, director of Medical College Admission Test] pointed out to Sabraw that Cashmore, Lebovitz and a third plaintiff, Andres Turner, took the April test under the standardized conditions. Lebovitz scored higher than 75 percent of his peers. Cashmore's score was higher than 70 percent of the other test takers, and Turner finished ahead of 51 percent of the other aspiring medical school students, according to Julian.

Tollafield contends the case is solid, and California law protecting the rights of those with disabilities should be enforced even though the medical school entrance exam is a national test...

"They decide the person is too smart to be disabled and will decline accommodations on the test," Tollafield said. "Intelligence has nothing to do with disability."

Technically, yes. But this isn't a test of intelligence; it's a test of knowledge related to pre-med concepts. MCAT scores may very well correlate with IQ scores, but this isn't an IQ test.

What's more, I don't think Dr. Julian mentioned the plaintiff's MCAT scores as a way of justifying the fact that they did not grant accommodations to them; after all, the AAMC could hardly have known their scores in advance. If the plaintiffs didn't have evidence at the level the AAMC required (no matter what it might be otherwise in California), the plaintiffs don't get accommodations. The scores were most likely mentioned in order to point out the defendants were not that impeded by the lack of accommodations, which does lend some credence to the AAMC's claim that these students aren't disabled. But unless the plaintiffs could somehow present some evidence that the AAMC was incorrect in refusing their request for accommodations in the first place, they don't have a case, and so I believe the judge's ruling was the correct one.

Laptops are not the answer

For those who may have been hoping that laptops were magic wands when it came to test scores, these results are surely a disappointment:

Middle school students who used laptop computers for two years performed about the same on a standardized test as students in the past who did not have access to computers. Critics of laptops say the scores are the first real evidence the program, which has cost the state more than $15 million, is an expensive fad. Proponents say it is too early to expect dramatic changes in test scores...

Scores for reading, writing, math and science in the Maine Educational Assessment were essentially unchanged in the past school year among eighth grade students compared with the previous two years. But there was a measurable improvement in writing scores among students who took the online version of the test at 60 schools...

Duking it out in SC

An amusing account of a battle between members of the South Carolina PTA and the dashing Republican firebrand who's running for a US Senate seat:

Both Democrat Inez Tenenbaum and Republican Jim DeMint were interrupted during remarks at Saturday’s annual meeting of the S.C. PTA —Tenenbaum by applause, DeMint by questions and murmurs. The reactions were of little surprise for the two major party candidates for U.S. Senate. Tenenbaum, for six years the state education superintendent, was with some of her biggest supporters — parents and teachers at public schools.

The auditorium at the Sheraton Hotel broke into murmurs.

Guess it's easy to see whose side the PTA is on. You'd think they'd be happy to hear that it's not all a matter of money.

Later, Tenenbaum drew sustained applause when she asked, “Aren’t you just tired of people dogging public education in South Carolina?”

I'm from South Carolina, and I love and respect the place. But they've had their issues with education in the past, and they still struggle with high school graduation rates and class sizes. If they're really tired of hearing people people "dog" them, they should stop complaining and do something about it.

The candidates clashed on several major issues: funding for special education, charter schools and vouchers or tax credits for students to attend private school. DeMint said what schools need is not more money, but new ideas. He was careful to say that is not a criticism of public schools.

“But hearing this, (Tenenbaum) is more in tune with the realistic world,” Bralley said. “I think she seems to be approaching it from a realistic, everyday, everyman place.”

With that place being, "Give us more money"?

Too quick to label

Joanne Jacobs points us to a couple of authors who believe that dyslexia is rapidly becoming trivialized by people who don't want to work hard - or who are handicapped only by ineffective educational programs.

First up is James Panton, who insists that our lowered standards for academic excellence and increased tolerance of disability labels go hand-in-hand:

In secondary education and at many universities, we place decreasing emphasis on reading books or writing essays, so perhaps we should not be surprised that a number of even the brightest students display weak literacy skills. But the tendency to label these students 'dyslexic' trivialises the experience of those who really suffer from a serious learning disability, and leads to excessive demands on special recourses.

However, the expansive use of the dyslexic label has a far more serious impact upon the educational climate within the university. Our preparedness to define a broad range of students as having special needs encourages a climate of special pleading, and lowers students' expectations of themselves. The hours spent reading books in the library, and the effort required to organise thoughts and ideas into a written argument, can be difficult, but struggling with these difficulties is an essential part of higher education. By labelling students who find such challenges particularly onerous as 'dyslexic', we encourage them to understand these challenges as beyond them. Rather than learning from their mistakes, and being encouraged to overcome their weaknesses, the label 'dyslexia' provides a readymade excuse for poor work.

This commentary at first upset Liz Ditz, until she reconsidered:

At first I raised my hackles, and then I reconsidered. I think he's on to something. There's something about "special" and "victim" running around both American and British culture that is undefinably there.

And let us not, in the American case, overlook the damage caused by whole language reading instruction. I believe that there are a lot of borderline cases--kids who need explicit, direct, structured instruction in the relationship between sound and symbol--but who are not truly dyslexic and don't need nine yards.

All I know is that the number of examinees (on tests such as the SAT) requesting testing accommodations has skyrocketed lately, and that's not because there's a whole lot more examinees in wheelchairs showing up. The most popular request for accommodations is extra time for a learning disability, and there's evidence to suggest that affluent parents are more likely to push for these "boutique diagnoses."

I don't think I've ever encouraged readers to go back and read everything I've written on a topic, but if you've never read anything of mine that concerns test time, accommodated tests, and bias, I urge you to start with the link above and do so (and don't skip the comments). I think it will be well worth your time.

Do know (a little) somethin' bout history

Florida's students are improving in history, as measured by standardized test scores:

About 86 percent of students taking U.S. history passed a new districtwide standardized test this spring. About 74 percent of world history students passed a similar exam. Two years ago, when the 100-question tests were first implemented, so many students were in danger of failing that passing grades were curved to the extreme — a student needed to answer just 23 percent of the questions correctly.

"It's been met with some resistance," Palm Beach Central High School teacher Don Meyers said. "But you have to adjust. That's the reality of education in the age of accountability."

Yes. Yes, it is. It's a reality in a day where people are starting to acknowledge that it's a travesty when students who have taken US History can't answer 23 questions out of 100 correctly. And the details provided in the rest of the article provides clues as to why things might have gotten so bad.

In American history, teachers have one year to cover from 12,000 years ago, or prehistory, to the current Iraq war. It was easy for teachers to focus on one era they were particularly interested in and gloss over others.

12,000 years? I know they had to cover the Native Americans, but surely no one thought that any substantial percentage (more than 10% or so) of American History class time should be spent on the many, many years before America was America.

School board member Debra Robinson provided the impetus for the standardized history test because of her concerns that African and black history were not being taught. The test allows administrators to see whether teachers are touching on key areas.

For example, in American history, students did the worst on questions on the effect of immigrant groups and questions on political events in contemporary America. They did the best on multicultural questions and black history questions, getting an average of 77 percent and 79 percent, respectively, of those correct.

Well, then now we know what students need to focus on - immigrant groups and contemporary politics.

In world history, students struggled with the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution. They did the best on the Age of Discovery and, again, on African and black studies.

I'd say the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution are fairly important topics.

Still, Robinson said she continues to hear anecdotally that the black curriculum is not being taught in the detail it deserves.

Yes, but the data suggest that's not true. Wasn't the point of this test to see where students need extra help?

She's also concerned about the average scores on the tests. Although 86 percent of students passed the American history exam, the average score was 75, a solid C. In world history, the average score was 67, a D-plus...

"It's sad when you say 70 is good," Robinson said. "I think that shows what a pitiful state of affairs we're dealing with in general. The definition of pass in my house is a B. I won't kill you if you bring home a C, but I'm not happy either."

I agree. They may be passing now, but just barely.

Spinning the scores in New Mexico

Things aren't looking great in New Mexico:

Barely half of New Mexico’s high school juniors were proficient in reading and less than half were proficient in math, according to results of a standardized test released Friday by the state Public Education Department. The first-time assessment test, taken by more than 19,000 students in November, will be used to rate public high schools. Results show 56 percent of students are proficient in reading and 47 percent are proficient in math...

Clovis schools Superintendent Neil Nuttall praised the test as a fair assessment.
“We feel OK. I don’t think we can say we feel good, but what makes us feel more encouraged more than anything is what we have put into place,” Nuttall said. “We have beefed up our curriculum. We have beefed up courses. We have increased the number of requirements for graduation.”

Is there some course that superintendents take in college that teaches them how to put a positive spin on anything, including the news that half their students are not proficient in reading and math? If so, it looks like a few administrators were absent the day that spin was taught in class:

Portales schools Superintendent Jim Holloway did not return phone calls placed to his home and office. Portales High School Principal Melvin Nusser did not return calls placed to his home Saturday.

But one educator is a master of the "spinning by redefinition" technique:

Fort Sumner High School ranked above state average in both subjects. Last month, Superintendent Lecil Richards apologized to state officials for failing to administer a standardized test to fourth and eighth graders in March. He said he will leave it up to the state to decide if Friday’s results vindicate him and prove his schools are excelling.

“Test scores are just one indication and not the only indication of how our children are doing,” he said. “I really look at how they do in life, how they handle themselves and how they do after high school.”

Because, as we all know, students who can't read and don't have mathematical skills are likely to succeed after high school, thanks to how well they "handle themselves."

Clueless cheaters

More updates from the War on Cheating. Poor Blair Hornstine - her name doesn't come up just in articles about litigation-happy students, but also in articles about plagiarists:

Eric Wellington, dean of business and computer information systems at Delaware County Community College in Marple, agrees that plagiarism has long been a plague of the academic community. "I don’t think it is anything new. I think it’s easier to do it because of technology. It’s easy to go to a Web site and copy and paste," said Wellington.

In a similar survey in 2001, 10 percent of students or 28 percent less than in 2003, said they engaged in "cut-and-paste" plagiarism using the Internet. The 2003 survey also showed that 44 percent of the students considered such plagiarism trivial or not cheating at all.

Emphasis mine. I'm glad the universities are doing all they can, but if these kids are reaching college age without ever learning that plagiarism is wrong, something is wrong with the K-12 system, too. Hey, maybe everyone should have to write a book in fourth grade. Once they see the hard work that goes into writing, and once they realize how mad they'd be if someone stole their words, perhaps they'll be less likely to pilfer the works of others.

The "irresponsibility" of showing what works

The Education Intelligence Agency reports that English immersion classes are working in Arizona:

A study released last week by the Arizona Department of Education concludes that students in English immersion classes “outperformed bilingual education students in every grade level between second and eighth grade in reading, language and math, based on Stanford 9 scores.”

Since a 2000 voter-approved law made immersion the state’s primary method for teaching limited-English students, the study was very good news for everyone… almost.

Bet you'll never guess for whom this study is very, very bad news. That's right - the National Association for Bilingual Education, who said the study was "irresponsible" (how dare they collect data to see if an educational program is working!) and who insists that English immersion has no "track record" - that is, if you don't count the many, many millions of immigrants who learned English in US schools back when immersion was the only choice offered.

Budding authors

This is so very cool...

Last year they were fourth-grade students. Today they are published authors. For eight months, with the help of teaching assistant Debbie Fox, a dozen fourth-graders at Pelican Island Elementary School in Sebastian, Fla., wrote and researched a travel guidebook called "Fun in the Sun - a Kid's Guide to Indian River County...and Beyond!"

"Debbie is an incredible talent," says principal Bonnie Swanson. "She's so in tune with young children and the things that interest them."

Nice to see recognition of the fact that kids are willing to work hard and take on new challenges over and above their regular classwork. And it's nice to see recognition for these kids in particular. They've sold only 25 copies of their book, but hey, that's 25 more books than I've ever sold.

No, "Quinlynne" is not a word

I just have to share this with you, not least because I know some of you out there teach in public schools and have most likely run across some, er, inventive names for kids. There's a webpage called Bad Baby Names on which a woman (named Diana) has cut-and-pasted the most hysterical lines from online forums for new parents choosing baby names, and then posts her commentary afterwards. It is utterly hysterical, and yes, you MUST read all 15 parts.

I can't pick a favorite exchange, but here are a few (comment from clueless parent in italics , responses from Diana in bold):

------

We have one daughter, Haley Matisse. We're trying to decide which girl name to use next....
The list we can agree on (at least to consider) follows:

We'd like to use Shaye, Grace, Raine or Catherine as the middle name if possible.

Oh where to start!?

d) Gentry. (sigh.) MyddleKlas? Boodgewassey? (I'd suggest Hegemony but I'm afraid someone will take me up on it.)

------

What do you think of the name Allegra? It is Italian and means cheerful & lively.

Side effects are low in seasonal allergy users and may include headache, cold, or back pain. People with kidney ailments should consult their doctor before taking Allegra. Look, it's just your bad luck when a product or TV character or popular porn star or Rick Santorum ends up having your name, but if they came out with it first....just walk away.

------

Here is a sample from Names Through the Ages by Teresa Norman.
Female names:

Adhelm-noble helmet
Beorn-warrior, brave
Cenwig-brave in battle
Dunstan-hill stone
Eadmund-wealthy protection
Eadulf-wealthy wolf
Godric-Gods ruler
Heahstan-tall stone
Tunric-town ruler
Tunwulf-town wolf

I don't really need to say anything here, do I? I mean, really, we're mostly adults here, we're reasonable people - do I really have to say anything about a name that means "wealthy wolf" and sounds like chronic sinus congestion?

I'll be honest - I have no freakin' clue what these people are trying to accomplish.

------

my hubby got on a kick of the names rhyming, believing we would have no more. lol, we are due in nov! so, i am in a tight place. my dd is kaesyn paige,(jason w/ a "k"), and my son is richard brycin (goes by mn).

i need a name w/ the "sin" sound, not the spelling! lol! i am not fond of jaxon, but my dh likes aryxon (erikson) and i am fond of tycen. ...

New naming rule: If in typing the name out you have to follow it immediately with another version in parentheses, because otherwise no one would have the slightest clue this was supposed to be a name and not Klingon for "Wax my forehead, supple wench," this is a bad, bad, woah bad bad name.

And with that - have a great weekend!

You can't spell "sex" without an 8-point tile

Ah hah hah hah ha!

It wasn't a four-letter word, but it was close enough to cause a stir at the National Scrabble Championship Thursday. In the final round, eventual champion Trey Wright played the word "lez," which was on a list of offensive words not allowed during the tournament.

Normally, no word is off-limits, but because the games were being taped for broadcast on ESPN, certain terms had been deemed inappropriate, including the three-letter slang for lesbian. "There are words you just can't show on television," Scrabble Association Executive Director John Williams said.

ESPN is planning to broadcast Scrabble tournaments?? Okay, that does it. We are officially a nation of slothful sofa lizards. It's embarassing to realize that Americans are willing to treat Scrabble as a spectator sport.

Wright, a 30-year-old concert pianist from Los Angeles, played the word and then drew two replacement tiles so quickly that the referee didn't notice at first. When he did, he said the slang term had to go. ESPN officials told Williams the word could stay, but the issue was that Wright had already selected new tiles.

"The ultimate absurdity is that you can't play the word 'redskins' on ESPN," he said. Williams spoke with Wright and his opponent, David Gibson, then called an emergency meeting of the Scrabble Advisory Board. The board unanimously agreed to remove the word. Wright then returned the two tiles he had selected and played a different word, Williams said.

The "Scrabble Advisory Board"?? Ah hah hah haaaa!

Wright, using more innocent words like feijoa (an evergreen shrub) and zebu (a domesticated ox), won the best-of-five final round in three games and pocketed a $25,000 prize. "Meaning has no consideration when I play," Wright said.

And a brave athlete you are, my man.

OK, maybe I'm not a school choice proponent after all...

Just what the NYC educational system needs....

Madonna is spending $US21.6 million ($A30.81 million) to set up a Kabbalah school in New York, reports Sky News. The school, to be named the Kabbalist Grammar School For Children - The K School for short - will teach primary-age youngsters about the ancient Jewish mysticism.

According to The Sun, parents who want their five-year-olds to attend the K School will have to face several hurdles. They must be Kabbalists before enrolling their child. The strict entry policy will involve an academic test for the child and a probing family interview. Parents will have to pay upwards of $US3,600 ($A5,130) for a term.

And the parents of K School kid won't be able to save money by shopping at Target, either.

Various and sundry

Just what we need - another standardized testing error. This one resulted in a six-month delay in reporting scores, which is pretty substantial.

RightWingDuck - new, funny, and setting themselves up for a lawsuit if they keep that Warner Brothers image on the front page (it's a great drawing, though).

Charter school laws, by state. The Center For Education Reform organizes it all here for you.

Michael Lopez wonders why pre-school teachers should be required to have bachelor's degrees.

Remember when I said earlier that some people would insist that we're already living in a time when kids do nothing except take tests? I didn't have to wait long to see that I was right. This editorial is a masterpiece of absurdity, logical fallacies, and whiny criticism; it's not funny, informative, or worth reading.

Lisa Snell notes that the Palm Beach Post works itself into a lather over the fact that 10 out of 34 schools that accept Florida's Opportunity Scholarship vouchers aren't accredited. The article failed to mention that while only 16% of Florida's opportunity scholarship students attend private schools with no accreditation, a good 60% of Florida's public schools have no accreditation.

Parents in New York are getting it. Joanne Jacobs is pleased.

After having frittered away two weeks on vacation, the slothful (heh) Reform K12 is back with an optimistic take on Philadelphia's "Declaration of Beliefs and Visions" for its students. They sound good to me, too.

See Spot Stay At Home

Red tape and misunderstandings abound as a young epileptic is barred from bringing her service dog to school:

On 7-year-old Cheyenne Gilliam's first day at Mount Vernon Elementary yesterday, her new principal, Leon Davidson, explained to her classmates that the dog she brought to school isn't a pet: It's a working dog trained to respond to Cheyenne's epileptic seizures.

Hammond said in an interview that he wants to find out whether the school is legally obligated to allow Cheyenne to bring Mikki, a 55-pound Weimaraner, into the classroom. The school board's attorney is reviewing the case.

What seems to be giving the bureaucrats fits is that Cheyenne's mom wants Mikki to be around as a service dog, but doesn't want Cheyenne treated any differently than the other students. Given the misconceptions and shameful treatment that epileptics have been subject to in the past, I can understand why. But when Cheyenne's parents have refused to have an Individual Education Program (IEP) drawn up (apparently because it required an assessment of mental and emotional health), the school countered that, without an IEP, it was under no obligation to provide any sort of accommodation.

I'm not sure what's going on here, but reading between the lines, I sense that the Gilliams don't want teachers to treat Cheyenne as though she were mentally disabled, and are insulted that their daughter would need to have an assessment of mental health before she's allowed an accommodation for a physical disability. And the school is aggravated that the Gilliams are not playing by the rules, and is tossing out comments about dog allergies and whatnot to justify keeping the dog away.

Surely, this has come up before in some other school district. It's hard to believe that this is ever the first time a student has tried to attend school with a dog, or that a parent has refused a mental health assessment so that their wheelchair-bound kid can take regular classes.

Overpaying, underqualified, and over here

A lack of ready cash has produced a truly heinous situation at some British universities, or so the Guardian says:

Cash-strapped British universities are awarding degrees to students who should be failed, in return for lucrative fees, The Observer can reveal. The 'degrees-for-sale' scandal stretches from the most prestigious institutions to the former polytechnics and includes undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, foreign and home students. In the most extreme case, The Observer has evidence of a professor ordering staff to mark up students at risk of failing in order to keep the money coming in.

Wynne went on to warn staff of the consequences of failing students. 'I often reduce the problem to one of money. It perhaps brings home the issue at hand when you consider that each student brings an income of approximately £4,500. You can all do the sums as well as me to work out the likely implications for the school.'

If UK universities are really willing to pass shoddy engineering students just because they have the 4500 pounds at hand, it gives new meaning to the nursery rhyme, "London Bridge is falling down/falling down/falling down," doesn't it? It's one thing for Britons to be ignorant of history; it's another thing altogether for them to be creating software and building bridges with just "borderline" knowledge.

Bournemouth University has given Wynne its full backing, claiming that his email simply urges a closer scrutiny of borderline students. 'In fact, he does not ask for a lowering of academic standards. Instead, he advocates - even advises - that colleagues make a learned consideration of each student on merit.'

Why should schools scrutinize borderline students more closely? And why are we being asked to assume that professors had not already been making "a learned consideration of each student on merit"? I doubt that Bournemouth's professors needed Wynne to tell them how to do that.

Colwyn Williamson of the Council for Academic Freedom and Academic Standards (Cafas), who teaches at Swansea University, said a blind eye was turned to practices ranging from direct plagiarism to lecturers doing their students' work for them, or simply passing work that had not been examined properly.

Well, now we understand why today's undergraduates don't understand what's wrong with plagiarism, or cheating in general. And isn't it ironic that tests are often attacked publicly for allegedly allowing only the rich to pass classes, when a situation in which money really does determine who passes isn't given near as much press?

While these shenanigans may be keeping British colleges afloat, it's certainly not doing much for the rich students who pass through them:

This impression has been passed to the students themselves. Gilbert Cervelli, an American theology and history student who spent six months at Oxford this year for a credit towards his American Bachelor of Arts degree said he received all A grades.'For a majority of my time at Oxford, I wondered if I could write an absolute crap essay and still have my tutor tell me it wonderful just because I was a huge investment. To think that the only reason I was admitted to Oxford University was because I had money and came from America is a rather cynical view, one that I hope is not true.'

Fearing the worst

An article about political response to Illinois' recent cutback of standardized tests has some telling comments. Some legislators are horrified about the cuts, and it's worth noting why they fear this will have a negative impact on education:

A decision by state legislators to scrap social science and writing exams in Illinois grammar schools is drawing mixed reactions from local educators.

Norridge District 80 Superintendent Sue Knight is dismayed. "I was absolutely speechless," she said. "I couldn't believe this was happening. It's a blow to all of us who are dedicated to doing the very best for our children."

"Now, our kindergarten students know what a complete sentence is, and our students know how good writing is done."

The teachers were aghast that third-graders would have learn to write paragraphs? How did things get that bad in Illinois? If the teachers weren't expecting third-graders to write in complete paragraphs, I bet you dollars to doughnuts that the teachers didn't expect these kids to read complete paragraphs, either. How on earth did they manage to take three full years of school just to get a kid up to the point of being able to write a complete sentence? No wonder Ms. Knight is afraid that removing the test will have a negative impact.

The standardized supernatural

The fear of standardized tests is apparently so strong that references to testing bugaboos have crept out of news reports - and into the movies:

When Winter Garden novelist Edward Bloor set out to write a chiller for young adults, he decided to include a murderous poltergeist. Then he added a really scary touch. The poltergeist lives in a magnet school where the only thing that the students do, day after day, class after class, is take standardized tests.

It's the spookiest fictional school setting since Carrie made a mess out of the prom.

Hee hee hee. I think it makes for a nice surreal (and frightening) touch.

"I just thought it would be humorous to take things to the nth degree -- but then, I have an extreme sense of humor," [Bloor] says. Perhaps. But he's not alone. The hopes and fears of many students, from grade-schoolers on up, are so intertwined with standardized testing that references to it have crept out of headlines and PTA meetings and into the province of popular culture. Novels, movies and television shows are full of young characters grappling with issues related to test scores...

Not even the reigning prince of young-adult literature is exempt from testing-related tremors: The title character of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix gets the shivers over his upcoming exam, the O.W.L. -- Ordinary Wizarding Level.

Oh, rock on. That's too awesome. Not even the soon-to-be most powerful wizard in the world will be able to escape the horror of --- STANDARDIZED TESTS. Tee hee hee.

I have no problems with testing critics who have a sense of humor, and are willing to show us how absurd testing (like anything) can be when taken too far. Kudos to Bloor. But I bet you some humorless educrat will watch this movie and try to convince the public that some schools, and tests, really ARE this bad.

At least the homeschooled kids could use "cloistered" in a sentence

A recent AP report on the rise of homeschooling notes that parents believe, in increasing numbers, that public schools are not safe or appropriate places for their kids:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Almost 1.1 million students were home-schooled last year, their numbers pushed higher by parents frustrated over school conditions and wanting to include morality and religion with the English and math.

In surveys, parents offered two main reasons for choosing home schooling: 31 percent cited concerns about the environment of regular schools, and 30 percent wanted the flexibility to teach religious or moral lessons. Third, at 16 percent, was dissatisfaction with academic instruction at other schools.

All of these are things parents should be concerned about when it comes to their children. But heaven knows we can't have a "balanced" report on homeschooling without a hysterical critic who insists that all homeschooled kids are kept locked in closets until their 18th birthday:

That sense of anxiety - fueled by terrorism warnings, high-profile school shootings and a desire to keep children out of harm's way - probably has helped home schooling grow, said Ted Feinberg, assistant executive director of the National Association of School Psychologists...Feinberg said, parents must consider whether their children will emerge from home schooling with limited exposure to other children and various cultures...

"At some point, children are going to have to interact with the rest of the world," he said. "If they haven't had the opportunity to build their emotional muscles so they have that capacity to interact, how effective are they going to be outside their cloistered environment?"

Can we please, once and for all, stop with the myth that homeschooled kids never leave the house, never interact socially with other kids their age, and never learn anything about "other cultures"? We all know that's being tossed in here as a sop to the cult of diversity; given that most families are not diverse in ethnicity or SES, no wonder the growing popularity of homeschooling gives the PC educrat types fits.

As Michelle Malkin points out, it's frighteningly easy to compile a list of "invaluable, emotional muscle-building experiences" to use as an argument for why kids shouldn't be allowed near public schools. It's ludicrous, in the age of the Internet, to argue that kids who are educated at home are somehow "cloistered" away from society.

shoeblogging

Oh my Lord, Coach is going to get ALL my money this fall. I was happy enough with their conservative stuff, but now they're getting funky.

Yes, the clogs below are Coach, and I must have them. If just 250 of you could hit the tip jar over on the right (heh)...

The Seven Myths of Diversity in Education

Jay Mathews covers a new book, "Debunking the Middle-Class Myth: Why Diverse Schools Are Good For All Kids," for the Washington Post. The book is written by one Eileen Gale Kugler, who is a communications specialist and has two kids who attended Annandale High School in Fairfax County, described as "one of the most successful diverse schools in the country."

Kugler's main point is that parents needn't flee diverse schools for "whiter" districts, but I found myself wondering about alternate interpretations for some of what she reports:

Myth 1: "The best school for my child is the one with the highest standardized test scores."

A recent Washington Post survey of Montgomery County, virtually a twin of Fairfax County in size and demographics, found that children from middle-class backgrounds consistently scored very high on reading and math tests, even if they went to schools with a high concentration of low-income students. Annandale High's average SAT score is lower than that of schools in homogeneous middle-class communities, but that is just an average.

What's this really saying here? I think it's saying that as long as your kids are middle-class, they'll do okay on tests regardless of where they attend school. Isn't this just a restatement of the old "SES is more important than school programs" criticism of tests? Granted, from Kugler's perspective this statement is a good thing; i.e., if you're middle-class, your kids will do okay even if the school test average is low. But this advice isn't real helpful for those who are struggling to reach the middle class, and it isn't helpful for parents who are middle-class but want to make sure their kids attend a school that is challenging.

Myth 3: "The best teachers prefer homogeneous middle-class schools."

Tom Pratuch, a national board certified chemistry teacher, sought out a job at Annandale High precisely because of the range of backgrounds of its students. He thinks many top-flight teachers share his taste in schools.

Is this myth really that popular? I wasn't aware the best teachers were choosing schools based on diversity, but rather on the quality of the students there. If it's a good, exciting, challenging school, I had assumed that the teacher would be interested, regardless of the diversity involved (and yes, a school can be exciting without being diverse).

Myth 4: "Diverse schools can't provide rigorous classes."

This is an especially irksome canard to me, and easy to discredit. Every year in the Washington area I measure the degree of participation in college-level courses of high schools in the Washington area...Annandale has an International Baccalaureate program that provides the most demanding academic experience available in America at that grade level.

Good for Annandale. But is this a unique school? Should parents assume that rigorous classes are the norm for diverse schools? I believe it's something to watch out for, but parents should no more assume that diverse schools are challenging than assume that they are poor.

Myth 5: "Diverse schools are not safe."

Kugler argues that in many ways they are safer, because educators in such schools are very sensitive to the problems of adolescents from different cultures and much better at dealing with them. There are studies showing that drug- and alcohol-abuse is much higher among non-Hispanic white than minority students, and white males are more likely to bring weapons to school than black males.

Again, I don't think that safety is something that can be presumed or dismissed in a diverse school. Any school can be a safe haven, just like any school can be a place in which administrators sweep problems under the rug and refuse to do what needs to be done to make schools a safe place.

Myth 6: "Family beliefs and values will be threatened if we expose our youth to people with different perspectives."

Perhaps this is a myth, but quite frankly, parents should be perfectly free to decide that there are perspectives in the world that their kids should not encounter during school-age years. A diverse school would be a boon to a parent who wants a more wordly child, and if a child can navigate a diverse system while still retaining core values learned from the parents, that's great. But religious schooling and homeschooling are no less valuable for being less diverse.

Myth 7: "Minority parents don't care about the education of their children."

Anyone who has spent any time at all with minority parents knows that this is nonsense, but sadly the notion is still widely held.

Yes, but one reason the notion is widely held is because bad schools use the parental non-involvement argument as a way to avoid blame and postpone making necessary changes. And struggling schools may not be doing the most effective action to get parents involved. Rather than debate whether this is a myth, let's just stipulate that parental involvement and school quality are inter-related, and let's get schools focused on improvement parental involvement, and parents involved by letting them feel more important in their interactions with schools.

Kugler, an adviser to school districts, has many suggestions for persuading parents to take a closer look at those neighborhood schools that seem to be full of slow learners, but are actually taking American public education to new levels of achievement. Read the book and then, instead of asking your neighbor what she thinks, go to talk to someone like Kugler who has actually had a child in one of those schools.

But what if your neighbor had a child in a diverse school, and had a bad experience with it? It's not obvious to me why the viewpoint of this hypothetical neighbor, who is perhaps not in love with diversity for diversity's sake, should be less valuable than Kugler's opinion. While Kugler's advice is useful in that parents should be considering each of these aspects of a school, the fact is that a book could be written from the opposite viewpoint that lists schools in which each of these myths are founded in truth. My advice to parents would be to dismiss the diversity issue entirely, and choose schools based on quality, safety, and good involvement with parents.

If you're going to do an (inside) job, do it right

It seems the "self-esteem-is-more-important-than-skill" mantra has reached outside the public schools, and into another sort of institution entirely:

In a policy shift so irrational it could only have been designed by the state prison guards union, 300 vocational education classrooms in state prisons California - where else?] were shuttered at the beginning of the year. This might be understandable if it were a cost-cutting move, but the state is saving little or nothing by closing the courses. The instructors who formerly provided inmates a chance to succeed in the outside world are now conducting self-esteem "modules" instead. These use workbooks hammering the sort of feel-good lessons that some prison experts believe increase, not decrease, recidivism (one can imagine the resulting thought process of an inmate — "I'm gonna be the best darned crook I can be!").

Because, as we all know, low self-esteem is the root of all evil, and never mind all those studies suggesting that inflated self-esteem and narcissism are highly related to both juvenile and adult crime.

I found this part to be particularly interesting:

The self-esteem lessons came out of talks between prison officials and the guards union last year. Cynics say its doomed-to-failure approach was intentional — that it was crafted in consultation with guards who either didn't believe prisoners could be rehabilitated or who didn't want something that might diminish their job prospects by lowering recidivism.

Hmmm, let's see, employees of an public institution deliberately putting ineffective programs in place in order to guarantee themselves a job - sound familiar?

I don't know about you, but I'll sleep much easier at night knowing that the burglar who's casing my house feels really good about himself.

Power outages

No bloggage today. I'm catching up on work, and I've got a lot to catch up on at home tonight, since our power was out all day yesterday. You may have heard of the torrential thunderstorms that hit Philadelphia, and let me tell you - the news stories weren't exaggerated. I was bolted out of bed at 7 am by thunder so loud it set off car alarms on our street. An hour later, the power went off; another hour later, and the main street in my neighborhood was under six feet of water, while employees had to swim out of a McDonald's about a mile away from me. A lot of businesses have closed down because the buildings were flooded and completed ruined. Our house is fine so far (thank heavens we live uphill from where everything was really bad), but it's been such a wet summer that we already had one leak in our roof.

Yeeks. Send dry thoughts, please.

(All of the photos below are businesses that are within walking distance, two blocks or so, of our house. My boyfriend and I don't know what we're going to do without our WaWa!)