January 31, 2005
Puppy love
Here's my version of babyblogging - my newest "family member," my nephew's lab puppy, Roxie:
Awwww. Everyone in my family has always kept a lab or three around, since they're such great Southern dogs (love to hunt, love to fish, love to swim, love to play, love to chase cars). One of my stepfather's labs, in fact, is named Bubba. Don't get much more Southern than that.
A swing and a miss
Reader BBeeman sent a link my way about a pretty horrifying example of one university's opposition to free speech. It seems that LeMoyne College has rescinded their acceptance of a masters-level student in education for a paper that he wrote. No, it wasn't plagiarized - it just expressed a viewpoint with which they disagreed (free reg required):
LeMoyne College expelled Scott McConnell, a student from its Masters of Education program, for writing a paper in which he advocated the use of corporal punishment in schools, he said. The paper, written for a class on classroom management, originally earned McConnell an A-. However, when he attempted to enroll in classes for the spring semester, he found he couldn't.
"LeMoyne doesn't believe students should be able to express their own views," McConnell said. "If you differ from our philosophical ideal you will be expelled from our college."
McConnell, who hopes to become an elementary school teacher, was informed last Tuesday that he couldn't continue at the school. "LeMoyne has handled the situation poorly," he said.
McConnell was raised in Oklahoma, where corporal punishment was used when he was a student, he said. In the fourth grade he was paddled by a teacher for being unruly.
"It worked. I never talked out of turn again," he said.
Let's count all the things wrong with this story, if in fact it is accurate:
(1) Arguing for corporal punishment in the classroom - not putting it into practice, just reporting that it might be useful (and legal in 22 states, if not in New York), presumably in the context of a research paper - is grounds for expulsion.
(2) The punishment for making such an argument isn't made clear in advance, otherwise it's doubtful that McConnell would have written the paper.
(3) The punishment for such an argument is not in fact even clear to the faculty, or the paper would not have originally garnered an A-.
The mysteries remain. When did paddlings in school become not only wrong, but evil, with those who dare even think about it cast out from the crowd? Who made the decision to expel McConnell? What other transgressions of thought are unacceptable at LeMoyne? If you ask me, McConnell should put the paper on the web and let the rest of us read it. I'm not a fan of corporal punishment, but I'd really like to see if it's a well-done paper that addresses the multitude of anti-corporal-punishment research that's out there. I can't find anything else out about this story via Google, so if you know of any related links, let me know.
Update: Incorrect references to Syracuse U fixed. The Education Wonks also have a roundup of other responses to this story. Captain's Quarters notes that LeMoyne is a Catholic college that follows the Jesuit tradition and found this additional news article that has much more about the decision to refuse McConnell and the details in his paper:
Dr. Cathy Leogrande, director of the Graduate Education Program, told McConnell in the letter that she had reviewed his grades and talked to his professors. "I have grave concerns regarding the mismatch between your personal beliefs regarding teaching and learning and the Le Moyne College program goals," leading to the decision not to admit him, Leogrande wrote...
[McConnell] said he's also been trying to find out what Leogrande meant by "mismatch." College administrators have told him, he said, that it stems from the four-page "Classroom Management Plan" he submitted Nov. 2 for his Planning, Assessing and Managing Inclusive Classrooms class.
In the opening paragraph of his essay, McConnell wrote: "I do not feel that multicultural education has a philosophical place or standing in an American classroom, especially one that I will teach. I also feel that corporal punishment has a place in the classroom and should be implemented when needed." He got an A for the course.
In general terms, he said, the college's teacher training includes evaluating students' teaching philosophy and approach and the way they follow state guidelines. It also looks at how the student adheres to Le Moyne's mission, he said, "one of a caring community, one that strives for diversity."
Hoo boy. So McConnell didn't fit in because he refused to toe the diversity line, eh? Interesting, because one of CQ's commenters notes that the college's mission also says that "every student needs to grow as an independent learner." Just not too independent, I suppose.
To be honest, it doesn't look like LeMoyne would have been a good match for him, not if they're unwilling to tolerate any discussion of the "diversity" principle.
McConnell said he knew he was stating a view that contradicted the curriculum when he wrote his paper. The essay stresses "strong discipline, hard work," teaching respect for adults and heavy parental involvement. Students would have basic rights in his classroom, and individual needs and abilities would be dealt with as they appear, he wrote. But all children are special, and none should get special rights, he said...
Rewards and praise would be used to build a strong work ethic. Rule breakers would have to write rules 100 times and apologize in writing to teacher and classmates. More consistent troublemakers also may get their parents called and be isolated from all but instructional activities. "The classroom environment would revolve strictly around the American culture and the state culture, not multicultural learning," he wrote. He defined multicultural learning in an interview as the notion that a student's native culture should take precedence over American culture.
Sounds like an edublogger to me.
The part that interests me is - had LeMoyne left out the more controversial aspect of corporal punishment, would he still have gotten booted out? I think he might have. In that case, the school's rigid adherence to politically-correct ideologically would have been even more evident. However, thanks to the paddling aspect, any public debate on this story will probably focus more on McConnell's alleged "pro-violent" beliefs than on the school's insistence on conformity of vision.
The Captain:
This shows that far from striving to provide students the ability to debate and discuss all points of view, colleges and their administrations have developed a thought police of almost Orwellian proportions to defend their last bastion of Utopian thought.
Some high school students express opinion that the government should control their opinions
This is pretty frightening:
One in three U.S. high school students say the press ought to be more restricted, and even more say the government should approve newspaper stories before readers see them, according to a survey being released today. The survey of 112,003 students finds that 36% believe newspapers should get "government approval" of stories before publishing; 51% say they should be able to publish freely; 13% have no opinion.
Asked whether the press enjoys "too much freedom," not enough or about the right amount, 32% say "too much," and 37% say it has the right amount. Ten percent say it has too little.
The survey of First Amendment rights was commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and conducted last spring by the University of Connecticut. It also questioned 327 principals and 7,889 teachers. The survey "confirms what a lot of people who are interested in this area have known for a long time"...Kids aren't learning enough about the First Amendment in history, civics or English classes.
Yes, but don't these kids read blogs? If nothing else, the blogosphere is about as fine a lesson in free speech as one can get. Or even LiveJournal.
I'm being facetious, of course, but only partially. What's more, it's very hard to believe that mere ignorance of the particulars of the First Amendment leads to not only the assumption that the government can interfere with journalism, but that it should. That second assumption smacks more to me of a an overfamiliarity with speech codes and politcally-correct educrats who spend far too much time demonizing those who don't the party lines.
Editor and Publisher also covered this story:
The study also revealed that the more students were exposed to First Amendment and new media courses in the classroom, the more involved they were in student journalism. For example, among those students who had taken First Amendment or other press-related courses, 87% believed people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions, while only 68% of those who had not taken such classes shared the belief.
Again, I say: Blogs. The wave of the future. Hope HTML programming is included in those student journalism classes; if it isn't, students should branch out from the "school newspaper" model. One of the reasons those newspapers might be biting the dust in such numbers is because many people, young or old, get their news from alternative sources nowadays.
Updates
Not a lot of time to post today, so I thought I'd add a few updates to previous popular posts:
* Great comments for the post about the spelling bee. My two favorites are the suggestion that some educators must believe in No Child Gets Ahead (by Alessandra), and the theory that spelling bees are necessary because in addition to learning to be winners, kids need to learn how to be graceful losers (by ricki).
Also, the bee might not be extinct after all. But who knew that spelling bees took "several months" of preparation? Think there's a bit of inefficiency in there?
* My comments filter out the words "sports" because I was hit by spammers who had that in their URLs. I'll see if I can go back and un-ban that URL now.
* Reader Alice E noted in the post about the immodest prom dress that one solution is to hold a pre-prom fashion show featuring pretty yet modest gowns, so that young girls do have a choice. Not surprisingly, the Mormons have some experience in dealing with this problem. Of course, for all you parents on a budget, you should know that while modest can mean "pretty," it can also still mean "expensive."
* I discovered last weekend that certain of my coworkers have been sneaking in my office after hours and breaking off hunks of my Ghirardelli bar by slamming the bar down on my desk (it's in a plastic bag). I had already used up about 4 pounds of it for a fondue party and thus didn't notice that more had disappeared. Work is going to continue to get more stressful, so I guess I don't have to worry about what to do with all that chocolate.
January 30, 2005
Growing up in the blogosphere
First catblogging, then babyblogging makes the big time:
The world's most thankless occupation, parenthood, has never inspired so much copy. For the generation that begat reality television it seems that there is not a tale from the crib (no matter how mundane or scatological) that is unworthy of narration. Approximately 8,500 people are writing Web logs about their children, said David L. Sifry, the chief executive of Technorati, a San Francisco company that tracks Web logs. That's more than twice as many baby blogs as last year...
With a new blog popping up every 4.7 seconds, according to Technorati, it is no surprise that there would be parent blogs, along with those for dating, politics and office life. But what makes them interesting is the way that blogging about parenthood seems to have become part of parenthood itself...
The anxiety and uncertainty so commonly expressed in the baby blogs definitely make for good reading. ("He likes cars and tutus with equal passion," Melissa Summers writes of her 2-year-old, Max, on Suburbanbliss.net. "I think he might be gay.") But it also shines a spotlight on a generation of parents ever more in need of validation, an insecurity that doesn't necessarily serve the cause.
What the blogs show is that "parents today are focused on taking their children's emotional, social and academic temperature every four or five seconds," said Wendy Mogel, a clinical psychologist and the author of "The Blessing of a Skinned Knee." "It deprives us of having a long view of development. Kids do fine. The paradox is that the way to have them not do fine is to worry about them too much."
Maybe that is so. But perhaps all the online venting and hand-wringing is actually helping the bloggers become better parents and better human beings...
I confess that, despite the fact that many of my Devoted Readers are parents, I haven't read many baby blogs, save for those run by bloggers whose children are an integral yet peripheral element (like James Lileks). Except for a two-year stretch of being married with stepchildren when I was in my 20's, I have no parenting experience that could result in useful advice for others. And my life - which revolves around 12-hour-workdays, my fiance, psychometrics, music, cats, eyeshadow, black velvet clothing, Court TV, and chatting on the phone - probably doesn't have much in common with those who are minutely detailing early-morning feedings and first steps.
But I say the baby blogging is a great thing. There's no better feeling than realizing that others out there are in the same (frustrated, overworked, sleep-deprived) boat as you, and I agree entirely that sharing experiences through blogging will be extremely helpful to parents.
(Via Wizbang.)
January 28, 2005
Spelling the end of spelling bees
OK, I'm still scratching my head over this one:
The Lincoln [RI] district has decided to eliminate this year’s spelling bee -- a competition involving pupils in grades 4 through 8, with each school district winner advancing to the state competition and a chance to proceed to the national spelling bee in Washington, D.C....Assistant Superintendent of Schools Linda Newman said the decision to scuttle the event was reached shortly after the January 2004 bee in a unanimous decision by herself and the district’s elementary school principals.
The administrators decided to eliminate the spelling bee, because they feel it runs afoul of the mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. "No Child Left Behind says all kids must reach high standards," Newman said. "It’s our responsibility to find as many ways as possible to accomplish this."
The administrators agreed, Newman said, that a spelling bee doesn’t meet the criteria of all children reaching high standards -- because there can only be one winner, leaving all other students behind.
"It’s about one kid winning, several making it to the top and leaving all others behind. That’s contrary to No Child Left Behind," Newman said. A spelling bee, she continued, is about "some kids being winners, some kids being losers." As a result, the spelling bee "sends a message that this isn’t an all-kids movement," Newman said.
Furthermore, professional organizations now frown on competition at the elementary school level and are urging participation in activities that avoid winners, Newman said. That’s why there are no sports teams at the elementary level, she said as an example. The emphasis today, she said, is on building self-esteem in all students.
"You have to build positive self-esteem for all kids, so they believe they’re all winners," she said. "You want to build positive self-esteem so that all kids can get to where they want to go." A spelling bee only benefits a few, not all, students, the elementary principals and Newman agreed, so it was canceled.
Oooookay.
You know, my first thought here was that perhaps Newman and the school principals actually oppose NCLB and are being craftily sarcastic in their opposition to it, by coming up with a ridiculous position and insisting that it follows the letter of the law. Certainly, anyone who knows little of NCLB won't think much of it if they believe it prohibits any and all competition.
But on second thought, I doubt the thought processes here are that complex. It's probably just another simple-minded case of an educrat assuming that competion is evil and winning on any scholastic front is a zero-sum game. So much for the self-esteem of those who had hoped to win the spelling bee this year - or even those who would have been quite happy to make the top 10.
Hey Newman, are you making sure that all of your students learn to spell perfectly? If so, then we'll be quite happy to call them all "winners." If not, then those kids are most definitely going to realize their shortcomings when they graduate from your overprotective environment and learn that it's up to them to keep from being left behind.
Oh, and these school principals might want to take a look at this month's Scientific American, which contains the article "Exploding the Self-Esteem Myth." Key grafs:
At the outset, we had every reason to hope that boosting self-esteem would be a potent tool for helping students. Logic suggests that having a good dollop of self-esteem would enhance striving and persistence in school, while making a student less likely to succumb to paralyzing feelings of incompetence or self-doubt. Early work showed positive correlations between self-esteem and academic performance, lending credence to this notion. Modern efforts have, however, cast doubt on the idea that higher self-esteem actually induces students to do better.
Such inferences about causality are possible when the subjects are examined at two different times, as was the case in 1986 when Sheila M. Pottebaum, Timothy Z. Keith and Stewart W. Ehly, all then at the University of Iowa, tested more than 23,000 high school students, first in the 10th and again in the 12th grade. They found that self-esteem in 10th grade is only weakly predictive of academic achievement in 12th grade. Academic achievement in 10th grade correlates with self-esteem in 12th grade only trivially better. Such results, which are now available from multiple studies, certainly do not indicate that raising self-esteem offers students much benefit. Some findings even suggest that artificially boosting self-esteem may lower subsequent performance.
Emphasis mine, with "artificially" being the key word there. If Newman's kids aren't taught to relish the art of spelling - and relish academic competition in general - it's quite possible that any boost in "self-esteem" they recieve from not having to watching others win at spelling bees will be pretty artificial.
Learning a valuable lesson
Remember the hapless yet litigious Wisconsin student that I mentioned last week? The one who is suing over having had to do homework assignments over the summer for an (honors, elective) course in the fall?
Well, he may not have learned any pre-calculus last summer, but he's learning a valuable lesson now:
On Thursday, Wisconsin Attorney General Peggy Lautenschlager released the state's reply in which she asked the court not only to dismiss the suit but suggested Larson and his father may need their knuckles rapped for bringing a no-merit lawsuit.
Her filing in county court in Milwaukee said the state had "no authority to implement any policy regarding course assignments" and that local school districts had the power to abolish summer vacation completely and hold classes all year long.
She also said that because the Larsons had been advised of the same thing informally beforehand, and sued anyway, the state schools superintendent "should be reimbursed for costs and attorney fees incurred in responding to the ... unmeritorious complaint," to be assessed against the Larsons.
That lesson being: The squeaky wheel might get the grease, but the tallest blade of grass often gets cut first. Will Larson win and be hailed a hero by his fellow students? Or will he be spending even more time working outside of school to pay the court costs? Be interesting to see what ruling the court hands down.
January 26, 2005
Get busted for cocaine, keep your job
Over at The Education Wonks, they've been keeping a close eye on those who would sully the good name of education - and those who seem unable to fire teachers deserving of censure:
Here at the 'Wonks, we like to keep an eye on those whose wrong-doing is a detriment to the Education Craft. We will continue to do so. As we profiled before, The City of New York has a great deal of trouble getting rid of many of its teachers that have had....er...um...problems.
This is due to a combination of union rules, and government statutes. The allegations of bad behavior run the gamut from being drunk in the classroom, to being arrested with crack cocaine and other forms of criminal behavior.
So, when I saw this article in The New York Post titled "Class Clowns," I just knew that the news was not going to be good.
Nearly half of all public-school educators that have been brought up on disciplinary charges over the last five years---allegations ranging from drug use to corporal punishment--are still in the school system and earning full salaries. In some 37% of cases, the educator kept his or her job by order of an independent arbitrator of by settling their cases with the Department of Education.
Only 74 of the 555 educators charged with wrong-doing have been fired since the year 2000.
In a move allowing them to keep their pensions, more than 180 resigned under pressure.
There are currently 68 educators who have disciplinary cases pending.
I used to live in a town near Niagara Falls, New York. So I know a little something about The Post. It is a tabloid. And like many tabloids, it has an axe to grind. The use of "shock headlines" are The Post's stock-in-trade. But I think that in this case, they may be right.
Usually, where there is smoke, there is fire.
Assuming this isn't another "dress-on-backwards" take on the truth, The EduWonks are quite right to be concerned about this type of track record.
The equations are coming to get you, Barbara!
The Moebius Stripper at Tall Dark & Handsome made me laugh out loud with this tale:
The Student Who REALLY doesn’t get math: As in, the one who asked me last week, in all earnestness, “to what extent” she would “have to use equations” in my class. I managed, in a feat that should surely mark me as a force to be reckoned with in the domain of improvisational theatre, to eke out a coherent yet tactful reply in which I succedeed (I think) in gently pointing out that this is a math class and that it we would do math things in it, and math things tend to involve equations of some form. (At least, math things at this level do. I’m sure that she didn’t want to hear “Oh, no, this class is ALL PROOFS.") Worried that she would break if I in any way made light of the situation, I did not add that if she could come up with equation-free means of solving for unknowns then she was certainly welcome to use them. She seemed disppointed and scared.
Mmmphghgh BWAh haha ha! I don't think I could have managed coherent yet tactful in that situation, much less a straight face. Then again, I was never tested to that level; despite springing stats 101 on several classes' worth of math-shy psychology majors, none of my charges was ever dense enough to admit to my face that they were hoping for a lack of equations in the class.
And had anyone been rash enough to bring in an entire jar of peanut butter when I was a graduate TA, they would have seen it rapidly confiscated, as I greatly enjoy peanut butter but couldn't afford to buy it on my tiny stipend.
Future Proofreaders of London
Most parents would be thrilled just for their child to read the encyclopedia, never mind to be correcting mistakes in one:
A schoolboy has uncovered several mistakes in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica - regarded by readers as an authority on everything. Lucian George, 12, from north London, found five errors on two of his favourite subjects - central Europe and wildlife - and wrote to complain.
The book's editor wrote back thanking him for "pointing out several errors and misleading statements". A Britannica spokesman said the company was "grateful".
Lucian, who attends Highgate Junior School, spends several hours a week reading through the encyclopaedia's 32 volumes. One evening, he discovered a reference stating that the town of Chotyn, in which two battles between the Poles and the Ottoman Empire were fought, lies in Moldova. Lucian, whose mother is Polish, disagreed, saying it was in Ukraine.
He was right.
His father, Gabriel George, told BBC News: "Lucian told me he had found a mistake. Then, a few days later, he found another. Then there was another.
"By the time he had found five, I said to him that he should write to the editors to complain about it."
Father George hastens to add that his son is perfectly normal, interspersing bouts of reading the 32-volume encyclopedia with Playstation and Eastenders. But why should he protest? Any kid who not only devours the Encyclopaedia Britannica but catches errors in it should be proud to not be just like all the other kids.
Florida expands retention policy
Orange County (FL) may shock some parents this spring, as the movement to end social promotion gains steam:
Educators are prepared to hold back more than double the usual number of students as the district launches a policy tying promotions in grades three to eight to scores on the reading portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. The new policy puts Florida's fifth-largest school district in the middle of one of the most contentious debates in public education: Should struggling students be moved along with youngsters their own age or be made to repeat the grade they didn't master the first time?
School systems across the nation have cracked down on social promotion in recent years, making standardized-test scores the key to advancement to higher grades. Florida joined those ranks two years ago when it made passing FCAT reading a requirement to move to fourth grade.
At least one recent study claims that retaining students (and giving them extensive lessons) helps them perform better within a year.
Some researchers think, however, that these retention rules do little to help children and can harm them academically and emotionally. Orange's new rule already has some parents worried.
"I don't think they should keep them back because of that one test. I really think that's unfair," said Dennis Hamilton, whose two daughters attend Pine Hills Elementary in Orlando. Hamilton's girls, now in fourth and fifth grades, have passed the FCAT previously, he said, so he would be "highly upset" if they falter this year and anyone mentions holding them back.
Understandable. On the other hand, it sounds like he's happy with the fact that they passed in the past, which suggests that he believes the exam measures something worthwhile. If, all of a sudden, his daughters failed, couldn't one reason be that their current teachers aren't cutting the mustard? Wouldn't he want to know that?
It sounds like Florida education officials certainly want to know that:
In the view of Florida's education officials, who have been rallying against social promotion, the 17,151 students who failed but moved on were socially promoted and, perhaps, doomed to failure.
"Nobody wants 15-year-olds in a third-grade classroom," but struggling children have no chance if they're moved on, said Mary Laura Openshaw, a former high-school teacher in Texas and Mississippi who oversees Just Read, Florida!, Gov. Jeb Bush's statewide reading initiative. "Even the best-trained reading teacher cannot move a ninth-grader who is reading at a sixth-grade level up to proficiency," she said. "I taught too many kids in high school who had no chance of success."
Outlawing obnoxious teenagers
Live in Norfolk, VA? Bothered by obnoxious teenagers? One persnickety lawmaker is trying to regulate the most ridiculous behavior out of existence:
Heads up to all the front-seat leaners and thong-barers. A Norfolk legislator wants you to pull up your low-riding pants and to sit your butt up while driving. While you are at it, turn down the blasting car stereo, and do not try to watch movies on your in-car video player while driving.
"If you want to show your underwear in your private home, I don't have any objections," said Del. Algie T. Howell Jr., a Norfolk Democrat who has filed legislation that would levy a $50 fine on anyone who "exposes his below-waist undergarments in an offensive manner."
Howell also has filed bills dealing with drivers who lean way back and people who play their car stereos obnoxiously loud. Howell said he's seen enough and heard from enough folks to know they are as bothered as he is by folks who expose their undergarments.
I can understand his annoyance. On the other hand, the local police might have enough to do without spending time giving out tickets for baggy pants.
January 25, 2005
Boys don't care why Heather Has Two Mommies
N2P reader and math guru Mike McKeown mentioned this WaPo article to me, entitled, "Why Johnny Won't Read." That's Johnny, as opposed to Jane; between 1992 and 2002, the gender gap in reading by young adults widened from a 8% difference to a 16% gulf:
Placed in historical perspective, these findings fit with a gap that has existed in the United States since the spread of mass publishing in the mid-19th century. But for the gap to have grown so much in so short a time suggests that what was formerly a moderate difference is fast becoming a decided marker of gender identity: Girls read; boys don't...
Although one might expect the schools to be trying hard to make reading appealing to boys, the K-12 literature curriculum may in fact be contributing to the problem. It has long been known that there are strong differences between boys and girls in their literary preferences. According to reading interest surveys...boys prefer adventure tales, war, sports and historical nonfiction, while girls prefer stories about personal relationships and fantasy. Moreover, when given choices, boys do not choose stories that feature girls, while girls frequently select stories that appeal to boys.
Ooo, yeah, I can see where this is going. War? Sports? Historical non-fiction? Stories that do not feature girls? Something tells me those types of books aren't considered appropriate reading material for the more PC types of educrats.
...Gone are the inspiring biographies of the most important American presidents, inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs. No military valor, no high adventure. On the other hand, stories about adventurous and brave women abound. Publishers seem to be more interested in avoiding "masculine" perspectives or "stereotypes" than in getting boys to like what they are assigned to read.
The "girls rule, boys drool" type of social engineering does seem to be the prevailing theory in education today. Given the antipathy with which educators regard the "masculine" (horrors!) perspective, is it any wonder that boys refuse to read?
...the evidence is accumulating that by the time they go on to high school, boys have lost their interest in reading about the fictional lives, thoughts and feelings of mature individuals in works written in high-quality prose, and they are no longer motivated by an exciting plot to persist in the struggle they will have with the vocabulary that goes with it.
When will educators get the picture? You'd think even the gynocentric ones would notice that the overall reading rates for young adult women have also slipped, which suggests that the overbearing focus on sob story books aren't doing much for the girls, either.
I think if I had been forced in middle school to read "short novels about teenagers and problems such as drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, domestic violence, divorced parents and bullying," as opposed to the classic novels, biographies, and sci-fi that I devoured, I too would have lost my taste for reading.
I feel for the young man who could benefit from The Hobbit or Old Yeller but instead is forced to deal with books chosen from, for example, this list. And then there's this list of suggestions, ostensibly from the American Library Association. Does anything on there look the least bit challenging, or any different from an after-school special?
Surf the web, earn an A
Jim at Snooze Button Dreams discovered a nifty new plan in the works that would allow homeschooled and private school students to take public school courses online:
The Senate Education committee approved a plan to create the Georgia Virtual School - giving students in small school systems computer access to advanced placement classes and other courses that may not be available to them locally.
The classes would be funded by state tax dollars based on the number of courses students were taking. A change introduced by Sen. Don Thomas, R-Dalton, would open up to six online courses a year to students not enrolled in public school.
"I want to be fair to every student," Thomas said. "Their parents are paying a lot of taxes."
Incidentally, Jim apologizes for the profanity in his response to those who complain that this plan somehow "weakens public schools"; he was feeling a bit cheeky this morning. Entirely justified, in my mind.
A new blog
N2P Devoted Reader Darren has a new blog, Right On the Left Coast. Some of his initial posts include letters that he has written to the NEA and the California Teachers Association (he's a math teacher in Sacramento, CA).
Welcome to the blogosphere, Darren!
January 24, 2005
Another benefit of homeschooling - no proms
Well, I'm officially old. I was already feeling sort of old this evening, because I'm eBay shopping for black concert t-shirts. My beloved Thrill Kill Kult and NIN and Alice in Chains t-shirts have literally disintegrated, and I need more of them.
Then I read this article, and now I feel really old, because my first reaction was, "No way in HELL would a daughter of mine wear this." And I don't even have a daughter.
This prom dress is so skimpy, even the designer's CEO wouldn't let his teenage daughter wear it. But the dangerously revealing gown, prominently advertised in Seventeen Prom, YM Prom and Teen Prom, and on sale in a Midtown shop, is a top seller for the company this season.
"I was shocked when I first saw it, but now it's one of our top 20 dresses nationwide," says Nick Yeh, the CEO of Xcite, the Stafford, Texas, company that designed the dress and some 200 other styles this season. "I have a 15-year-old daughter and, no, I would not recommend she wear this dress. As a businessman," he adds, "I'm not judging what a teenager should wear or not wear. It's up to the parents to decide for their own children."
Nice cop-out, dude. Just admit that you're making clothes so scanty that double-sided tape and parental permission slips are required (pepper spray would come in handy, too). So what if your own daughter doesn't wear them? Obviously, you think it's just fine if someone else's daughter does.
It's too early to tell how many girls in New York City will buy the dress, but those who do may have a hard time getting through the prom door. While it's up to individual school administrators to rule on prom fashions, the Board of Education maintains a disciplinary dress code that prohibits "wearing clothing or other items that are unsafe or disruptive to the educational process."
Lisa Maffei-Fuentes, principal of Christopher Columbus High School in The Bronx, bans "anything that resembles the famous [green Versace] J.Lo dress. I personally have to check every dress," says Maffei-Fuentes. "Breasts must be entirely covered and there should not be any cutouts in the bodice.
"On the night of the prom, we have chaperones at the entry looking at every dress. We also provide needle, thread and pins to close up holes and fix dresses to the appropriate length," she says.
Good for them. I'd back 'em all the way if they went even further and sewed several yards of muslin onto any girl who had parents dumb enough to pay $495 for this ridiculous dress. They ought to send the bill for the thread and muslin to the parents while they're at it.
What's so very sad is that this sends a message to teenage girls, and that is: This is what is sexy, desirable, classy, and "grown-up." Unfortunately, some of them will have parents clueless enough to second that notion. When a prom dress advertisement has to use a model over 18 years of age - otherwise, the photographer would be skirting the edge of child pornography laws - something is very, very wrong.
(Hat tip: Right Thinking From The Left Coast.)
Update: Reader John Stark notes that the Post photo in fact features the dress being worn backwards. According to the link he provides, he's right about the reversal, and probably right with the theory that this was done just to drum up publicity about the dress. The possibility remains that the dress isn't very clearly marked as to front vs. back, though, and perhaps some stores were marketing the reversed version.
That much said, the true frontal design isn't exactly modest, especially if a young girl is well-endowed. When the dress is worn correctly, it doesn't make my jaw drop - but it's still inappropriate for the prom.
Wizbang also caught the trick. His comment section features a discussion about whether or not the dress is actually on backwards, by some readers who have obviously been (ahem) studying the photos of the models far too long, and far too closely.
One state down, 49 to go
Do you live in Arizona? Wonder about per-pupil spending in your school district? Want to know where your tax money goes?
A new analysis of Arizona public school financing shows average total spending for an Arizona public school student is between $8,500 and $9,000. The report, co-published by the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation and the Goldwater Institute, presents information from the Arizona Department of Education’s multiple accounting systems in a clear, straightforward way that is readily accessible to parents, taxpayers, and policymakers.
The report compiles data from the Arizona Department of Education for all 218 regular Arizona public school districts to determine how much funding is tied to students when they enter the public school system or change districts, and shows fixed and variable expenditures. An accompanying online interactive database allows anyone to easily access per-student funding figures.
Sweet. Summary graf from the pro-vouchers report here:
Under Arizona’s current education finance system, the state has determined how much education funding is tied to students when they enter the public school system, when they leave it, or when they change districts within the state. However, despite attempts to equalize student funding, expenditures do not reflect the true costs of educating children. Funding is still based on the values of their parents’ homes, and in many cases the districts’ non-equalized portions of local, county, state, and federal non-equalized funding exceeds the students’ equalized base funding.
Allowing parents to control their children’s education dollars would help improve transparency, simplicity, and accountability in Arizona education finance. Most important, letting parents control their children’s education dollars arms them with the knowledge they need to make informed educational decisions and gives them the buying power to act on that information.
I'll have a blue January
Yesterday, I got out and spent an hour shoveling my car out from in front of my house. I live at the end of a one-way street with parking on both sides, and once I was cleared out I realized that the once-plowed street was quickly becoming impassable from neighbors digging their cars out. So I moved my car a quarter-mile away to the Blockbuster parking lot, which was the closest spot that was relatively clear.
This morning, I got up, put my ski bib on over my workout clothes, hiked all the way to my car, and on to work. It was pretty tricky, because it was still dark, many sidewalks weren't plowed, etc. I figured I could get by with just my snow boots coming home, though, because some snow would have been cleared away, right?
Wrong. This was the last thing I wanted to see at 5:00 today, but it's what I saw:
In case it's not clear from the photo, it started snowing again at 4 pm. That's my car in the parking lot. It took me an hour to get home, and then I had to clomp home in my ski bib, roads nice and wet again, and the street on which I live darn near impassible/imparkable once again.
Yeeks.
Spelling an end to social promotion
Despite the howls of protest over retaining Florida's third-graders who didn't pass the FCAT, the retained students appear to be doing better:
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research's study encourages the use of standardized tests to end social promotions, which allow students to advance to the next grade level to keep up with their peers...the state Board of Education last week decided it would ask lawmakers to end social promotions at all grade levels...
The Manhattan Institute, a think tank that researches public-policy issues, released a study in December that showed Florida third-graders who were retained did better on the FCAT than those who were socially promoted. Researchers presented testimony about the study earlier this month at a meeting conducted by the House of Representatives' PreK-12 Committee.
The study compared the third-grade class of 2002-03, the first to fall under the retention policy, to the previous class. Low-performing students who were retained made higher gains - 4.10 percentile points - than similar performing students who were promoted.
Researchers acknowledged that their results only show one year and that they hope to conduct a long-term study to learn more about the impact of the policy.
The study is here; Devoted Readers will not be surprised to learn Jay Greene is the author (in fact, you probably got around to reading it before I did).
Where does the science fit in?
In Spring of 2008, the state of North Carolina is going to begin testing fifth- and eighth-graders in science. The trick now is in deciding just where to squeeze science classes into the elementary and middle school curricula:
Science has continued to be taught, of course. But with schools struggling to find enough time in busy days, top priority often goes to reading and math. Test results in those crucial subjects help establish a school's reputation and determine teacher bonuses.
A Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board committee is scheduled to discuss Tuesday whether to lengthen its six-hour and 15-minute elementary school days, which are shorter than in many other N.C. districts. The extra push on science is helping spur the idea, which some board members and district officials have already endorsed...
Some fear tests will prompt school districts to rely solely on textbooks instead of also including the experiments that help science come alive. But state and local education leaders say they must do more hands-on learning.
"If they are actually manipulating the materials, they are going to understand the concept better, instead of just memorizing a definition," said Marty McGinn, Fort Mill, S.C.'s testing coordinator.
In South Carolina, teachers combine science with reading and math to save time and help students learn, McGinn said. One Fort Mill class, for example, read about earthquakes, then worked with partners to write books about them.
That kind of so-called integrated instruction helps kids truly grasp what's taught, said Colleen Sain, Cabarrus County's assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. "We have to decide what we're about as far as education," Sain said. "Do we have a list of 100 facts that we want every child to memorize and spit out by the end of high school? Or do we want them do see the connectiveness?"
I'd've said "connectivity," but I see her point. However, it's good to see that schools are considering lengthening the school day in order to respond to an increased push for science education.
Whatever happended to "Sticks and Stones may break my bones..."?
Many middle schools are observing a time-out from name-calling this week:
Middle schools across the United States will observe "No Name-Calling Week" starting Monday. The program, now in its second year, takes aim at insults of all kinds, whether they are based on a child's appearance, background or behavior.
It has the backing of the Girl Scouts of America and Amnesty International, but a handful of conservative critics have zeroed in on references to harassment based on sexual orientation. "No Name-Calling Week" was developed by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which is seeking to ensure that schools safely accommodate students of all sexual orientations.
The group said it's unsure how many schools will participate in this week's event, but says 5,100 educators from 36 states have registered, up from 4,000 last year.
My first thoughts:
(1) Why just middle schools?
(2) Does this mean names are just dandy next week?
(3) What business does Amnesty International have getting involved in a domestic education issue?
(4) What conservative critics?
Well, this conservative critic, for one, who notes that the national spokesperson for the event has no problem with using nasty names for those who disagree with him (Dr. Throckmorton has more to say about hypocrisy, here.) And much of the ire seems to be coming from the fact that the movement has been centered around a book entitled The Misfits (when I first read that title, I thought it was the Arthur Miller play; yes, I'm old), in which there are four "much-taunted" middle-school students, one of whom is gay. Hence the involvement of groups such as GLSEN in the movement.
I've disagreed with GLSEN before (without calling them names), but I can't honestly disagree with an no-names policy. Lord knows we had one in my household growing up. My caveats: it has to be an across-the-board and round-the-clock policy on school grounds, that is, with the list of "bad names" well-defined - and that goes for teachers too. This means no nasty names against straights, whites, Republicans, or anyone else perceived to be the majority.
Of course, defining that list is apt to be tricky.
Men vs. women
You've probably all heard about Harvard President Lawrence Summer's provocative statement that innate differences may help explain why women lag behind men in succeeding in math- and science-based careers. The NYT takes a closer look at the research:
Researchers who have explored the subject of sex differences from every conceivable angle and organ say that yes, there are a host of discrepancies between men and women - in their average scores on tests of quantitative skills, in their attitudes toward math and science, in the architecture of their brains, in the way they metabolize medications, including those that affect the brain.
Yet despite the desire for tidy and definitive answers to complex questions, researchers warn that the mere finding of a difference in form does not mean a difference in function or output inevitably follows...
To further complicate the portrait of cerebral diversity, new brain imaging studies from the University of California, Irvine, suggest that men and women with equal I.Q. scores use different proportions of their gray and white matter when solving problems like those on intelligence tests. Men, they said, appear to devote 6.5 times as much of their gray matter to intelligence-related tasks as do women, while women rely far more heavily on white matter to pull them through a ponder.
What such discrepancies may or may not mean is anyone's conjecture.
I have to admit, what I find fascinating about the whole thing is not so much the science behind it as the public reaction to any mention of this topic. Summers was essentially vilified for speaking about an area that has some solid research behind it. Meanwhile, we were treated to the spectacle of female audience members having to leave lest they "throw up" at his remarks, which doesn't exactly support the image of women being tough enough to handle intellectual debate.
I tend to agree with Linda Chavez on the topic:
...as uncomfortable as it might make feminists, the empirical evidence points to small but important differences in scientific and mathematical abilities between men and women.
On average, women perform better on verbal tests, while men demonstrate greater visual-spatial capabilities, and these differences are more striking at both the lower and upper extremes of intellectual ability. Boys outnumber girls in remedial reading classes — by large ratios, in most studies — but they are even likelier to outnumber girls among the most gifted in math and science. In one Johns Hopkins University study of gifted pre-adolescent students, boys outperformed girls among the top scoring students on math by 13-to-1.
One thing the media tends to downplay whenever discussions of intellectual ability arise is the fact that men tend to be further out on both tails of the intelligence spectrum. It's silly to complain about the "unfairness" of the relative proponderance of male geniuses when developmentally-delayed children are more likely to be males.
For example (from the NYT article):
Among college-bound seniors who took the math portion of the SAT in 2001, for example, nearly twice as many boys as girls scored over 700, and the ratio skews ever more male the closer one gets to 800, the top tally. Boys are also likelier than girls to get nearly all the answers wrong.
Something you don't often hear when people are whining about the "unfairness" SAT score disparities.
Back to Chavez:
For years, feminists have tried to explain away these achievement differences by suggesting girls are not encouraged properly to pursue math and science. Lately, some have even started blaming how these subjects are taught: too much emphasis on competition and being "right," too little on collaborative learning and nurturing self-esteem.
A strategy, by the way, that's guaranteed to get women who make it to the math programs laughed out of them. If there's one thing that any person, male or female, needs to succeed in the hard sciences, it's a burning desire to get things "right."
I do believe socialization can play a big part in the effort to guide more women towards math- and science-based careers; it's just that those "feminists" who believe in dumbing down the topics and focusing on "nurturing" are going about it all wrong. Any child, male or female, who is interested in science should be encouraged to be a tough, competitive, confident little know-it-all, and should be required to not only understand the importance of research but also to know how to use it to back up their claims.
When I was 4, my parents bought me the full set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica's Young Children's Encyclopedia - and encouraged me to be a total smartass with it. I still remember with glee the day I won a bet with my sister - who was then in high school - because I knew that a chicken's eyes were on the sides of its head, not the front.
Hey, it wasn't much, but it was a start. Without that encouragement, I daresay my career - and this blog - might not have ever gotten off the ground.
Gimme an "A"!
Princeton U. is experimenting with a norm-referenced standard as a means to combat grade inflation:
For students at Princeton University, final exams are even more stressful this year: The Ivy League school decided to make it harder to earn an A. The crackdown on high grades, part of a national battle against grade inflation at elite schools, has increased anxiety, and in some cases, made friendly students wonder whether they should offer study help to their competitors, er, classmates...
In a move students protested last year, Princeton became the first elite college to cap the number of A's that can be awarded. Previously, there was no official limit to the number of A's handed out, and nearly half the grades in an average Princeton class have been A-pluses, A's or A-minuses. Now, each department can give A's to no more than 35 percent of its students each semester.
Princeton's effort is being monitored closely by other hallowed halls, and some expect to see a ripple effect in coming years.
At other Ivy League schools, the percentages of A's in undergraduates courses ranges from 44 percent to 55 percent, according to Princeton's Web site. At Harvard University, 91 percent of seniors graduated with some kind of honors in 2001.
At that point, do the honors really mean anything? The Princeton plan does have its downside (especially in classes and departments with small numbers of students), but I agree that something needs to be done about the easy A. The proposal doesn't just limit the number of A's, but also provides guidelines for professors about what constitutes A-level work. And for those who worry that this system will frighten students away from "challenging" courses, I wonder if any student who avoids hard work just because the A isn't guaranteed needs to be in those classes anyway.
Buzzing around campus
While the nation's public schools are busily devising ways to get parents more involved in education, colleges are seeing a boom in parents who are too involved, and dubbing them, "helicopter parents:"
Some people say the phenomenon is related to a baby-boom generation of involved parents who have been organizing their children's lives since infancy. And when their babies go off to college, some parents are unable to deal with the empty nest.
One of the names applied to them is "helicopter parents," who hover over campus and their children - mostly during their freshman year.
"I've talked to some students in this community whose parents moved here to be close to their child," said Mike Rollo, UF's associate vice president for student affairs....He said privacy laws that generally prevent parents from seeing their college students' grades also may contribute to more parental involvement....Rollo said he has seen cases in which parents demand a student's PIN so they can access their grades.
...perhaps most significant to the boom in parental involvement, some say, is technology. Cell phones, instant-messaging and other technological advances allow parents and students to be in almost constant touch.
"I have friends whose moms call them two and three times a day to check on them and see what they're doing," said Anthony Huereca, 21, a UF senior from Tampa who plans to graduate in May with a degree in computer engineering. "Sometimes when they see it's their mom, they ignore the call."
While any educator would be happy to see parents who obviously care how their children do in school, college administrators also want to point out that there can be too much of a good thing:
Resnick said some parents are reluctant to let their college students learn how to make their own choices, and mistakes. They feel that as parents they need to have a strong say in their children's academic and other decisions, she said.
"That can interfere with a student's development," she said. "Running a student's life and making all the decisions does not allow the student to develop good judgment and learn to manage and transition to young adulthood."
Blansett, who also is an appeals officer for UF's housing division, said they have had to ask students to turn off their cell phones during petition meetings. "A student comes in to talk to us, and a parent calls during the meeting and wants to be part of the appeal," she said. "We welcome parental involvement, but our challenge is to take that force and make it a positive force good for the parent and student."
I went to an undergrad university in my hometown; my freshman dorm was within walking distance of my mom's office, my stepfather's office, and my sister's office. While this arrangement was spiffy whenever I needed money or a trip to the doctor's office, I never felt I was being "hovered over," and my parents did their level best to leave me alone and let me get on with my life.
January 21, 2005
Friday cheating news
Caveon's biweekly Cheating In the News feature is up, and it features some doozies.
I particularly like this article, in which teachers blamed that dratted Internet for a rise in student cheating:
The Roosevelt High School literature assignment, an analysis of three works by American authors, was composed of awkward sentences full of clumsy grammar — except for the occasional flawless paragraph with complex syntax and striking observation.
The teacher, David Ehrich, suspected an Internet cut-and-paste job. When he confronted the student, the boy broke down and admitted to copying whole sections of his essay from the Web.
The widespread use of the Internet as a research tool has given rise to another phenomenon — widespread cheating among high-school students.
Hmm. Think the fact that high schooler haven't been taught anything past clunky grammar and awkward sentences also might have something to do with it?
Educators say a generation of tech-savvy students, raised on the hacker's mantra that "information wants to be free" and accustomed to downloading copyrighted music, may not realize that copying even a few sentences from the Web and weaving them into their papers, without crediting the original source, constitutes plagiarism and is grounds for suspension from many schools.
Isn't that where the teachers come in? Don't they make this clear to the students in each and every class? And do they really believe all these cheaters who claim that, "Gee, I just didn't know that copying someone else's work was wrong"?
Last year, an editor of the Roosevelt student newspaper touched off a firestorm when she wrote that cheating was a way of life for many high-school students.
"Cheating is certainly an art and once you get good at it, you begin to feel proud of some of the genius cheating plans you have developed. Why would you waste your time working when you can spend it coming up with 20 different ways to cheat?" asked Hanna Lirman, who is now in college.
Lirman's article was accompanied by a poll of 460 students. Ninety percent said they'd cheated within the past several years; 71 percent admitted to copying material from the Internet to complete assignments.
Yes, the Internet makes it easy. But if the Internet were to disappear tomorrow, somehow, I doubt all the cheating would disappear, too.
Of course, the Internet also makes it easier to catch cheaters, but some teachers believe the solution lies beyond better technology:
Some educators, however, say detection services only inspire more ingenious cheaters. They argue that carefully crafted assignments and more creative teaching is a better deterrent to plagiarism.
"Students often resort to cheating because they can, not because they have to," said Greg Van Belle, an English instructor at Edmonds Community College. Van Belle said assigning an essay on the same topic year after year invites cheating. Better to vary assignments, link classic texts to current events, ask students to work in groups or to write about how a work of literature relates to their own lives, he said.
Teachers who don't teach - the next radical "education" idea
UK comprehensive school St. John's has apparently decided to abdicate most of its responsibilities and put the pressure for teaching students completely on the parents:
All 12-year-olds at a comprehensive will be told today that homework is being scrapped because teachers have better things to do than mark it.
Dr Patrick Hazlewood, the head teacher of St John's in Marlborough, Wilts, who has already scrapped subject teaching, will not put it quite like that, of course. He will tell them that, to make their schooling more "relevant to life in the 21st century", they are to be given responsibility for "managing their own learning".
Parents, who were told on Monday, are confused because, according to school policy, "regular homework is an essential element of learning and contributes to the development of sound study habits". They are also asked to say if they think their child has been given too little.
St John's sees itself as at the forefront of radical educational change and Dr Hazlewood is testing a futuristic project devised by the Royal Society for the Arts which rejects the notion that a teacher's job is to transmit a body of knowledge to pupils.
The project aims instead to encourage pupils to "love learning for its own sake" and the project is intended to replace the "information-led, subject-driven" national curriculum with one based on "competences for learning, citizenship, relating to people, managing situations and managing information".
The point of schooling, the RSA says, is to acquire competence not subject knowledge. It believes that exams only impede pupils' progress.
Hoo boy. It's hard to imagine a more complete stew of inane "educational" theories. I'd say it's amusing to contemplate how St. John's will teach students to "manage information" when they're retreating from an "information-led" curriculum, but I imagine the parents of kids there don't think it's very funny. And it's absolutely horrifying to realize that a group of "educators" consider themselves radical, futuristic, and ground-breaking because they've trashed "the notion that a teacher's job is to transmit a body of knowledge to pupils."
I'm sure the kids are thrilled, though. No subjects, no homework, and they get to grade each others' work! All in the interest of giving students "responsibility" for their own learning, and in forcing parents to teach their children.
Captain Ed has the right response:
...what St. John's proposes is to switch places with the parents. St. John's said that teaching the national curriculum "grinds teachers into the ground," but what good are the schools if they don't teach any specific subjects? They want to teach values and how to get along with others in the sandbox while parents have to force their children to follow a curriculum in the hope that they won't give up like their teachers did.
I have a better idea for the parents of St. John's pupils. Pull them out of the school entirely and home-school them. The administration of St. John's proposes to transform itself into a day-care center for adolescents instead of an educational facility, a pointless exercise except for indoctrination. Parents will find it no more difficult to school their children directly and honestly, and this way they don't have to expose their kids to St. John's surrender ethics.
Update: Uh-oh, now the American students are getting ideas. And silly ideas, at that. How big of wanker do you have to be to bitch about summer homework for a presumably-voluntary honors pre-calculus class? Presumably, this kid knew that the fall class required summer homework when he signed up for it.
And do you even deserve to take the class when three "complex" assignments over the summer push you to the point of litigation?
The teacher gave Larson and his classmates three complex math assignments to do over the summer. Larson said it just wasn't right to get such difficult work over the summer. 'I had no energy at the end of the day to actually do it during my week. I only had one day off each week when I actually came home, and I could not do it then because I was catching up on sleep or just enjoying myself because that's what I should be able to do during the summer,' Larson said.
Excuse me, I just rolled my eyes so hard that I lost a contact lens.
January 19, 2005
Quick links
Things I've been meaning to link to, and would have earlier if life weren't so insane:
Eduwonk asks a good question. Did Susan O'hanian really call them "thugs?" How lovely.
The Education Wonks have a fantastic regular round-up of education-related news from around the blogosphere. Go read this blog regularly (and no, I'm not saying that just because they link to me often in their "extra credit" posts).
Daryl Cobranchi has uncovered a hysterically-illogical statement by a lawyer fighting to keep unruly kids in school. Be sure to cite this guy any time you hear people picking on homeschoolers because their kids missed out on the vaunted public school "socialization" experience.
Our Horrible Children: Best frontpage image. I think I posed for a photo like that at her age...
My Short Pencil is unimpressed with the argument that red, white, and blue beads are gang colors.
Teachers using web technology in education: Weblogg-Ed.
Heathen Jenny D. starts a ruckus in the classroom.
Finally, do not get hooked on this game. I tend to play things like this in the downtime between stressful hours at work. One time I played this right before I drove home, and as I was changing lanes in rush-hour traffic I realized I was mentally lining up cars of similar colors to see if I could spot three in a row. Unfortunately, even when I did, they didn't disappear.
Update: Cat lovers with dirty computer monitors, click here! (It wasn't loading when I created this link, but I had gotten it to load before; hopefully, it will again.)
Hoosier standard going to impact?
Indiana has a mandatory exit exam, and a panel recently voted to up the standard for passing - apparently for the sole purpose of keeping the percentage of students passing the same from year to year:
An advisory panel voted Tuesday to recommend that the state raise the score required to pass Indiana's mandatory graduation exam...Officials expect about 32 percent to fail the English portion of the test. About 36 percent are expected to fail the math portion, which included algebra for the first time last fall.
The state agency adjusted the pass-fail scores recommended by a panel of teachers to achieve those percentages, which are about the same as last year's failure rate, said Wes Bruce, who heads student assessment at the Indiana Department of Education.
You don't see many attempts at norm-referencing in exit exams, for the simple reason that an exit exam should represent material mastered, not location on the curve. There's no reason why 100% of students can't pass a high school exit exam, and no reason why 32% failing should be a number that Indiana hopes to see year-to-year. I think this is an attempt at equating the exam across years, but it's not a useful attempt.
The percentage of students who pass or fail is a more important number than the score, an expert said. "With all the games we play, we're just deciding the percentage of kids that are going to fail," said Lowell Rose, a former Kokomo school superintendent and consultant with the Indiana Urban Schools Association.
I have no idea what that quote is supposed to tell us. Yes, percent failing is important, but there's no reason to tweak standards to keep that constant year-to-year.
Raising the passing score on the GQE is the latest move to make the earning of a high school diploma more demanding. The panel in October unanimously approved a plan that by 2011 would make college aid and admissions contingent on students earning a Core 40 diploma — a much more stringent academic path.
That, I have no quarrel with.
Education officials say such measures are necessary to ensure that Hoosiers have the skills needed to get into college and get good jobs. Critics say the tougher standards will make it impossible for some students to graduate regardless of their college plans and doom their chances of making a decent living.
Do the critics stop to think that students who don't master high-school-level material (and the stuff on exit exams tends to be VERY easy) won't have many college plans, or much hope for a decent income? That it's not the test that will hold students back, but their educational deficits?
That much said, the test should only be made more difficult if the curriculum is well-aligned to it. Increasing the difficulty of test items while not focusing on the teaching of those items in school would miss the point entirely, which is to intensify the curriculum, not the items.
The GQE is the cap of a series of annual standardized tests Indiana students must take beginning in third grade. Sophomores who do not pass both sections on the first try are given four more chances to pass before they finish high school. Students also can apply for waivers to graduate despite failing the exam, and people who do not pass the test can retake it after they leave high school, though they might have to take remedial classes at their own expense or take free televised courses.
Remember what I said about how easy exit exams are?
PA schools requiring mention of intelligent design
The Dover school district (PA) is making national (and probably international) news with the teaching of "intelligent design:"
Administrators in the Dover Area School District read a statement to three biology classes yesterday and were expected to read it to other classes today...The district is believed to be the only one in the nation to require students to hear about intelligent design — a concept that holds that the universe is so complex, it had to be created by an unspecified guiding force...
Biology teacher Jennifer Miller said although she was able to make a smooth transition to her evolution lesson after the statement was read, some students were upset that administrators would not entertain any questions about intelligent design.
"They were told that if you have any questions, to take it home," Miller said.
The district allowed students whose parents objected to the policy to be excused from hearing the statement at the beginning of class and science teachers who opposed the requirement to be exempted from reading the statement.
So, it's not an iron-clad requirement. And the lawsuits have begun. Some say that teaching evolution as fact is censoring debate. Others claim that requiring such a statement in schools is a violation of church and state.
Meanwhile, down in Georgia, a judge has ordered that stickers affixed to high school bio books that read, "Evolution is a theory, not a fact" be removed:
A federal judge on Thursday ordered the immediate removal of stickers placed in high school biology textbooks that call evolution "a theory, not a fact," saying they were an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. The disclaimers were put in the books by school officials in suburban Cobb County in 2002...
School board members said in a written statement that they were disappointed by the ruling and were reviewing it to determine whether to appeal. A board spokesman said no decision had been made on when, or if, the stickers will be removed...Schools in the suburban district just north of Atlanta placed the stickers after more than 2,000 parents complained the textbooks presented evolution as fact, without mentioning rival ideas about the beginnings of life...
"Science and religion are related and they're not mutually exclusive," school district attorney Linwood Gunn had argued. "This sticker was an effort to get past that conflict and to teach good science."
The stickers read, "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
If you're really interested in the topic, don't stay here; go visit Evolution Blog and The Panda's Thumb, which are both chock-full of posts on the topic.
I'm not only not an expert in this area, I didn't even know pandas had thumbs.
Rearing young capitalists
I recently saw a commercial encouraging Americans to stand up for more arts education in schools. It's not one of the Americans for the Arts commercials, and I can't find it online. I wish I could find a link to it, though.
In the ad, you see a man (suspiciously preppy-looking and well-dressed) playing violin on a tree-lined suburban street. A soccer mom walks by with her well-fed and well-dressed young son. As they pass the "street musician" (who looks right out of Eddie Bauer), the mom smiles - and the kid sneers, stares at the violinists, and says, "Get a job!"
The music comes to a screeching halt as both violinist and mom stare in horror at the kid.
What you're supposed to take away from the ad: If children don't have art classes in school, they won't respect the arts in real life.
What I actually took away from the ad: I don't know, because I was laughing too hard to think about it. Had I seen this little scenario transpire in real life, I would have laughed even harder.
Will colleges ask for BMI GPAs?
You know, I hear a lot of complaints from educators about standardized exams and how they "reduce children to a number." The idea of computing one score, one result, one piece of data, and attaching that to a student as a measure carrying consequences fills them with horror.
Not surprisingly, I think they'll also react negatively to the idea of reducing a child to a BMI:
Texas school districts would be required to include the body mass index of students as part of their regular report cards under a bill introduced Tuesday by a lawmaker seeking to link healthy minds with healthy bodies. When the measurement, which calculates body fat based on height and weight, indicates a student is overweight, the school would provide parents with information about links between increased body fat and health problems, said Democratic state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte.
More than a third of school-age children in Texas are overweight or obese, according to the Texas Department of Agriculture.
Eric Allen, a spokesman for the Association for Texas Professional Educators, said most parents don't need to be told their child is overweight. "It doesn't have a place on a report card," he said.
This article contains quotes from the senator which will frighten the pants off of every libertarian and small-government supporter:
"We should be just as concerned with students' physical health and performance as we are with their academic performance," said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio.
"Just as concerned"? Let's see, what usually happens when the government decides to become "concerned" about something? Fines, fees, regulations, red tape....if teachers and parents are having a hard enough time dealing with NCLB, what's it going to be like when No Child Fattened Up gets implemented?
Please, Sen. Van de Putte. We have a hard enough time getting schools to focus on things that should be on report cards (reading, writing, 'rithmatic). Sure, send all the health information home to parents (or teach it during health class), but it's hard to imagine the rationale for preserving for all eternity one's BMI during elementary school.
January 18, 2005
Making math more complicated than it needs to be
Tom Mountain of the Newton Tab believes he's uncovered the reason for the sudden drop in local