Number 2 Pencil

The plight of the good C- student

Board members in Enfield, CT, are depressed about the idea of exit exams:

Members of the Board of Education don't want to base high school graduation requirements on test scores, but they have no choice in the matter. State law mandates that school systems craft graduation standards beginning in 2006 based in part on the results of the Connecticut Academic Performance Test, a test given annually to high school sophomores. In response, the school board Tuesday discussed revisions to the current graduation policy that would make high school graduation contingent on meeting testing requirements...

Currently, a student must earn a minimum of 22 credits and maintain at least a C-minus average to graduate. Roger Jones, school board member, expressed dismay about changing the policy.

"It's just not right," Jones said. "You've got a poor kid who works hard, a good C-student, and they're just not good test takers, and it winds up they can't get a diploma."

Does the CAPT measure what Jones' think high-school graduates should know? Perhaps not. But if it does, then any student who doesn't pass the exam shouldn't get a diploma. Otherwise, students will receive CT high school diplomas based on effort, not achievement.

The draft policy, which received a first reading Tuesday, includes several opportunities for students to meet the testing requirements. According to the draft policy, students would receive diplomas if they demonstrate proficiency in math and in either reading or writing by scoring a 3 or higher on the CAPT -- or scoring at least 430 on the math and verbal sections of the SAT.

They also could meet the graduation standards by scoring an 18 or higher on the reading and math sections of the ACT, a standardized test similar to the SAT. Students who are unable to achieve the minimum scores on the CAPT or SAT will have the opportunity to take proficiency tests developed by the school system in math and reading.

In other words, the district will bend over backwards to help any kid who struggles with the CAPT. But please note that minimum SAT scores given above identify students who are in the 23rd and 21st percentiles, respectively - and if they can't manage that, they get to take yet another test designed by the school system.

If the district has any faith in tests at all, at some point, they'll have to admit that grade inflation can produce students with C- averages who really don't know enough to earn a high-school diploma. If they're not willing to deny any of those "good C-" students a diploma, then they shouldn't bother with the tests at all.

By the way, we're not talking about large numbers of kids who can't pass the testing gauntlet:

Assistant Superintendent Anthony Torre said the school system has been tracking testing performances for incoming seniors.

He said parents of students who have not yet met the requirements have been notified. Torre said only nine students at Fermi High School have yet to achieve a required score on one of the testing options. He did not have figures for Enfield High School.

A limited tolerance for zeroes

Despite the recent Praxis flap, it's apparent that at least some teachers understand mathematical concepts like averages:

Some teachers, aware of the devastating effects that one zero can have on a student’s final grade and recognizing the string of perfect scores necessary to negate it, have simply stopped logging zeros. Instead, at some schools, the lowest score students can receive is as high as 50 or 60 – even if they don’t turn in assignments.

The practice challenges a long-held philosophy that if you don’t do the work, you don’t get the grade.

In an article for the education journal Phi Delta Kappan , Douglas Reeves wrote that a zero for work that is not turned in is punished much more severely than work “that is done wretchedly and is worth a D.”

And Reeves' problem with that is? Certainly, a student might have a valid reason for not turning in an assignment, and teachers should have the freedom to extend deadlines. But to simply blow off an assignment shows contempt for the teacher and the class, and students should suffer the consequences. What's more, if a struggling student knows that the difference between (a) ignoring an assignment and (b) struggling with the assignment and failing at it is a mere 10 points or so, why do the assignment at all?

And speaking of math, note that a school board member had to provide a specific example so everyone could understand the concept that averages are affected by outliers:

Virginia Beach School Board member Emma L. Davis offered this example: Consider trying to find the average temperature over five days and recording 85, 82, 83 and 86, then forgetting a day and recording 0. The average temperature would be 67, a figure that does not accurately show the weather from that week.

If those temperatures were grades, a student would fail after consistently earning B’s and C’s.

Pardon my French, but no s--t. But if there are only five assignments in a semester or school year, and a student completely blows off one of them (or 20%, for those math-challenged folks), one could argue that the student deserves to fail the class. If I blew off one-fifth of what my boss asked me to do, I'd be looking for a new job pretty soon. Yes, some students will forget to turn things in, and teachers should be prepared to deal with that in a non-punitive way (constant reminders, stretching deadlines a tad, etc.) But a student who just doesn't bother to turn something in? Stamp a big ol' red zero in the grade book and move on.

I agree that, in the example above, the grade of 67 above is not necessarily a good estimator of the student's overall ability, if we assume that the zero assignment was not missed due to lack of understanding. However, we often hear that it's important for teachers to be able to grade the effort of students in the class, and when it comes to students who don't make an effort, I wholeheartedly agree with the zero approach.

Rest in Peace

Lawrence Simon, who organized the famous Carnival of the Cats and has made his pet kitties famous through catcams, has suffered a grievous loss. One of his kitties, the majestic and tyrannical Edloe, recently passed away. Condolences can be made here.

I don't even want to think about the day when I lose one of my cats.

My day

If anyone wonders why I've been posting up a storm today, it's because I was worked from home. My skin, which is more sensitive to slights than a Kerry-voting PETA supporter, reacted badly to the sunscreen I slathered on it Sunday. A neck-to-ankles rash didn't keep me home from work yesterday, but I was so uncomfortable in my turtleneck and long sleeves that I figured I'd work from home today and let my skin recover. Thank God for Caladryl.

In addition to the multitude of posts, I had to finish up my talk for the upcoming International Meeting of the Psychometric Society in Tilburg, the Netherlands. Practice talk is tomorow, real talk is next Tuesday at 4 pm (Tilburg time), and I'm fretting away. (The title of my talk is, "A hierarchical linear model approach for modeling item response times on a large-scale certification exam,” should you care).

Staying home today, I reverted to my old graduate schools ways, which was to procrastinate madly through housework. So, in addition to the blogging and the presentation, I washed eight loads of clothes, de-cat-haired the sofas and the rugs, vacuumed the whole house, and cleaned the bathroom. Boy, this place was a sty - and it will revert to styhood by the time I return from my trip, but I suppose that can't be helped. To plagiarize Dave Barry, my fiance, like most men, doesn't notice dirt until it forms clumps large enough to support plant life.

A stampede of new scholars in Harlem

City Journal notes that a cohort from one Harlem charter school is ready - and well-prepared - for the trials and tribulations of middle-school:

Seventy-three kids who entered Sisulu-Walker as kindergarteners in 1999 left as newly minted fifth-grade graduates last week. The school has now educated part of New York’s first small generation of elementary charter-school kids. And the kids have done well...

A full 90 percent of those fifth-graders could read at or above grade level this year. By contrast, only 69 percent of the fifth-graders who attended the regular public schools citywide did as well. In math, 77 percent of Sisulu-Walker’s kids scored well, compared with 54 percent of regular public-school kids.

Sisulu is a public school, but not one run by the city. Each New York charter school receives about 70 percent of the public funding that a traditional public school gets. Each school must rent its own space; Sisulu’s kids learn in makeshift classrooms owned by a neighborhood church. Sisulu-Walker chose its inaugural kindergarteners through a citywide lottery, from several hundred five-year-olds whose families had applied. Nearly 90 percent of the kids are poor.

What has Sisulu done that works so well for these kids? According to the NYC Charter School guide, they use the Core Knowledge program. Note here that third- to fifth-graders cover pre-algebra, optics, elements of music, art of the Renaissance, Shakespeare, and Greek and Roman mythology. Not too shabby.

Since we've had a few math-related posts of late, here's what's covered in CK's third-grade math:

Fractions
Recognize fractions to one-tenth
Identify numerator and denominator
Write mixed numbers
Recognize equivalent fractions (for example, 1/2 = 3/6)
Compare fractions with like denominators using the signs <, >, and =

Geometry
Identify lines as horizontal, vertical, perpendicular, parallel
Polygons: recognize vertex; identify sides as line segments; identify pentagon, hexagon, and octagon
Identify angles: right angle; four right angles in a square or rectangle
Compute area in square inches and square centimeters

I won't be snarky here and overlap this curriculum with what's required to pass the Praxis I exam. That would just be too mean.

"If Ms. Grundy has 7 bottles of vodka and makes 10 screwdrivers per hour..."

I understand teaching elementary school is a tough task, but can't teachers be expected to keep the sozzlement to a minimum on the job?

A primary school teacher kept a stash of 200 BOTTLES of alcohol in her classroom cupboard. Barbara Edwards, 50, nipped into the store for swigs during lessons and fell asleep at her desk during lunch hour.

Her classroom stank of drink, but she only admitted to a problem when her hoard of brandy, wine and Bacardi was found.

Guess what? She most likely gets her job back once her doctor says she's over the drinking problem. Isn't that great? Wouldn't you want your kids in her care for seven hours a day? I forsee some wicked math word problems in her future. And just how big is that cupboard of hers?

How many students actually graduate?

Jay Mathews discusses the dishonorable (but long-standing) practice of fudging the numbers:

Many states are finding creative ways to misinterpret the rules for reporting their statistics so that their school children seem to be doing wonderfully even though that often is not the case.

This is the latest version of a game that has been popular since Alexander Hamilton and James Madison created the federal system as a playground for generations of political mischief makers like themselves...

Now there is a new report on how states are hiding their feeble high school graduation rates under thick glops of statistical nonsense. It is "Getting Honest About Grad Rates: How States Play the Numbers and Students Lose," by Daria Hall of the Education Trust, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., that works for higher academic achievement, particularly for low-income and minority children. The report is available on the Education Trust website.

No Child Left Behind tries to encourage high schools to improve their graduation rates, but unlike its test score improvement provisions, it does not threaten much action if they don't. It turns out this is like telling all the thieves in the neighborhood that you have turned off your burglar alarm. No Child Left Behind was passed in 2001 because many states ignored similar rules in the 1990s that had no muscle behind them. That is happening again with graduation rates, Hall said.

The report is here. It makes for eye-opening reading, especially when you realize that some states don't count pre-senior-year dropouts when calculating graduation rates, and other states don't report graduation rates at all.

When a parent goes too far

It's bad enough when kids cheat on the NY Regents exams; it's worse when parents - who happen to be school administrators - are willing to help their kids do so:

Long Island school officials say they caught a sophomore cheating on a Regents examination last week and were quickly able to trace the cribbed answers - written on his hand - to the student's father, an assistant superintendent in charge of exams and answer sheets in another district.

The alleged scheme was disclosed yesterday when the father, Isben Jeudy, 40, of East Northport, was charged with official misconduct in First District Court of Nassau County, in Hempstead. He pleaded not guilty and was released on his own recognizance. His lawyer did not return a call seeking comment.

How many things are wrong with this picture? First off, the father's willingness to help his son cheat is not only sending the wrong message, but is also an admission that he doesn't think his son has what it takes to pass the exam. Next, the father jeopardized his own career to do so. Finally, the exam form that father was in charge of is now suspect - if he gave answers to his kid, maybe he (or his kid) gave them to other students as well.

Update: The Education Wonks, for whom this topic hits close to home, are asking the right questions:

One question that needs to be asked is this: Why would the answers to such a high-stakes assessment be in the unsupervised custody of any school site or district administrator? Common sense would seem to indicate that those who would have an inherent interest in an examination (such as school site/district administrators) should never be in the possession of test answers....

Considering the high-stakes nature of these examinations, security should be a priority...This whole sad episode (and possibly others that have gone unreported) should have been avoided.

American expectations in public education

The results of ETS's recent bipartisan survey on American opinions about high schools are in. The executive summary highlights some pretty low numbers:

Few (11%) Americans say that schools are working well enough today (the same proportion who said that this was the case four years ago) and they continue to be divided between those who say that we should make minor changes to public schools but basically keep them as is (39%) and those who say that schools need major changes (30%) or a complete overhaul (18%). The desire to improve education leads to strong majority support for a wide range of reform...

Given that NCLB has been in effect for the past four years, it's interesting to see that the proportion who believe the schools are working well has stayed low. It would also be interesting to know if the group who thought schools needed major changes four years ago believe that NCLB has been a helpful change.

I also found this part fascinating:

Most (55%) Americans say that all students, teachers, and schools should be held to the same performance standard even if many students come from disadvantaged backgrounds; once more, endorsing a fundamental precept of NCLB. Only one-quarter (26%) of teachers agree.

Instead, 60% of teachers say that students enter school with different backgrounds and levels of academic preparation, and we should not expect teachers working with disadvantaged students to have their students reach the same performance level as teachers working in more affluent schools.

Sampling information is contained in the Power Point presentation.

Parents battle new math program in CT

The "math wars" continue, this time in Connecticut:

In one [content area] however, Simsbury shares dismal scores with most of the state. Strand 25, known as Integrated Understandings: Mathematical Applications, is consistently the lowest-scoring strand for a large percentage of the state's public schools. In fact, only 17 percent of eighth grade students tested in 2004 achieved mastery level. In Simsbury, that number has fluctuated between 26 and 32 percent since 2000.

So, while Simsbury students are among the state's best when it comes to arithmetic and mathematical operations, they're floundering when applying those skills and demonstrating understanding.

In part to improve those scores, the Simsbury school system has implemented a new math curriculum that eschews traditional teaching methods in favor of a discovery-based program. Rather than simply memorizing facts, formulas and specific operations, students will acquire a working knowledge of math. By deconstructing how a concept works, students will learn to think mathematically.

That program would be Investigations in Number, Data and Space. From the website:

Activity-based investigations encourage students to think creatively, develop their own problem-solving strategies, and work cooperatively. Students write, draw, and talk about math as well as use manipulatives, calculators, and computers.

In other words, "Wheee! What's important is that we make math fun and that we make sure no one gets to sit alone and work on those hard problems by themselves!"

Some parents are, as am I, underwhelmed by this program:

Some Simsbury parents have taken issue with the new program. They say it has lowered grade-level expectations and that there is a decreased emphasis on fundamentals, such as multiplication tables, long division and fractions. Research can be found both supporting and refuting those claims.

A parent-formed website opposing the program can be found here. They link to Mathematically Correct and Bas Braam's collections of the content reviews for this program. Many of the reviews, such as this one for the fifth-grade component, are quite scary:

This program does not teach the standard algorithm for multiplication. If students already know this algorithm, they will still be required to develop other strategies. If they do not know the standard algorithm, the text does not direct them to learn it...

In summary, the instruction in multiplication of whole numbers is not learned from a text and thus is highly dependent upon teacher supervision. While the objective is to get students to devise methods that make sense to them, there is little regularity to any particular approach. The number of practice items is very limited, as is the level of difficulty of the products...

This program received the lowest rating of Mathematical Depth of the fifth-grade programs in this review. The strongest presentation it offers is in the case of multiplication and division of whole numbers. However, these suffer from several drawbacks. The instruction is not learned from a text and is thus highly dependent upon teacher direction. At the same time, the emphasis on having students to devise their own methods leaves open the possibility that the students will not achieve any regular and reliable approaches...

Given the recent Praxis flap, and the fact that education schools are apparently turning out graduates who are lost without calculators, who wouldn't be worried to learn that this new program depends heavily on the teacher's understanding of math?

(Hat tip: NYC Hold.)

Do clothes make the student?

The Education Wonks describe a tale of school uniforms that worked.

It was in response to the high-level of violent gang activity that the California elementary school district in which I teach adopted a policy of "mandatory" student uniforms back in 1997...In fairly rapid fashion, the governing board...adopted a "student uniform policy." The policy was implemented during the 98-99 school year.

On the first day of school, our junior high campus was a "sea of blue bottoms and white tops." We teachers noticed an immediate (and positive) difference in overall student attitudes and behavior...Even though in California parents can "opt-out" of any uniform policy, a surprising number of our district's parents choose not to do so...

For us, student uniforms worked. There was a significant reduction in the amount of gang-related violence in our district's middle and junior high schools.

Was the addition of a school uniform the only change that was made at the time to combat later gang violence, I wonder?

As the Education Wonks note, some disctricts are having to worry about combating gang recruiting at the elementary school level. That, to me, suggests problems that might not be fixed with a bit of fabric.

(Via Joanne.)

Put down the bong and step away from the computer

The Baltimore Chronicle publishes a long, long, meandering and bizarre slumgullion of conspiracy theories and ignorant statements and calls it a commentary. I just have to note that this particular member of the "reality-based community" doesn't fail in his required anti-testing-propaganda duties:

No Child Left Behind has left teachers behind, as they have little recourse but to teach their students to succeed on a standardized test, which represents a very shallow educational goal. It leaves little room for nurturing innate curiosity and fostering independent thinking...

Which is presumably what Baltimore's teachers were doing before NCLB came along - you know, when all that innate curiousity was being so nurtured that Baltimore's students were doing so well on all those other measures of academic achievement.

And while we're at it, I'd like to offer $100 to the first person who can produce solid evidence (research in peer-reviewed journals, that sort of thing) showing either (a) that independent thought and curiosity are skills that cannot be taught in conjunction with the basic skills that tests measure, or (b) that measures of independent thought/curiosity are more predictive of adult success than are standardized test scores.

Oh, sure, I'm beating a dead horse, but it never fails to amaze me, the power these testing opponents ascribe to tests. Just one class on basic skills and one day filling in bubbles, and poof! There goes all that innate curiosity of yours!

Looking for the best schools

The Dallas News reports that affluent black parents are voting with their feet and moving into school districts that promise the best education:

In some school districts where black affluence has increased so has poverty, raising new challenges for schools and questions for families. Do they stay and try to improve the public schools? Or do they use their financial resources to transfer their children into academically superior schools?...

The parents who are interviewed did indeed transfer their kids, but the article points out that black kids can suffer from the "too much too soon" affluenza just like white kids, which, along with the lack of support for education in black popular culture, can be a double whammy. Thus, the recipe for success for black parents doesn't seem to be just about finding the right schools, but also in trying to combat the low expectations that society has for black students.

Mama don't let your babies grow up to sing folk songs

Quick, what's the scariest monster you can think of? A vampire? A zombie? A werewolf?

Me, I think of over-earnest old hippies writing drippy songs for little kids who get picked on in school:

New York City...seems to prefer, in these post-Giuliani years, to be an avatar of positive reinforcement...Over the course of the next year, the Department of Education will introduce into all of its elementary and middle schools “Operation Respect: Don’t Laugh at Me,” an intensive curriculum in character development. The program, which is the brainchild and heart’s desire of Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul & Mary, aims to combat bullying by emphasizing the moral lessons of folk music.

“Don’t Laugh at Me” (or dlam) was born when Yarrow—a veteran of the civil-rights, gender-equality, nucleardisarmament, peace, and Amtrak-subsidization movements—heard a country ballad of that name at the Kerrville Folk Festival, in the summer of 1999. Moved to tears by its swelling harmonies and first-person testaments to the effects of ridicule—“I’m a little boy with glasses, the one they call a geek / A little girl who never smiles ’cause I’ve got braces on my teeth”—he decided to incorporate the tune into Peter, Paul & Mary’s repertoire.

At a gig with the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the group played the song. “The principals gave a tremendous response to it, and said, ‘We need this in our schools,’ ” Chic Dambach, Operation Respect’s president and C.E.O., said the other day. “And Peter, being the activist and the organizer that he is, said, ‘You won’t just have a song but a whole program.’ ” dlam is now used in at least twelve thousand American schools and camps.

Be sure to check out the assignments, as we learn how Magic Markers are useful for teaching people to “explore creating agreements around behaviors." Oh, if there are any parents of 14-year-old daughters among my Devoted Readers - be sure to let me know how you'd feel knowing that a man who was convicted of this in 1970 was designing these sorts of "educational" programs.

(Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)

The new math means no math for Virginia teachers

Several Devoted Readers have sent in the news that the Virginia Board of Education is phasing out the Praxis I licensure exam for teachers. There is a new exam for these teachers that apparently doesn't contain any of the tricky math that was on the Praxis I:

Praxis I is a basic reading and math skills test that has been a hurdle for some teachers--especially the math portion.

Starting Jan. 1, the state will require teachers to take a new test for licensure. It will eliminate the math material of the Praxis I. Instead, it will require teachers to analyze readings, write an essay, interpret tables and graphs, and demonstrate knowledge of grammar and vocabulary, all "on a college level," said Charles Pyle, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education.

The Washington Post claims that VA teachers will now have to be more "literate and proficient in the subjects they teach," but those who don't intend to be teaching math need not worry about a standardized math test:

Kate Walsh, president of the Washington-based National Council on Teacher Quality, said she pushed for a new literacy test when she testified before a Virginia panel examining licensure requirements. Research has shown that the ability to read and speak effectively is the most reliable predictor of future success in the classroom, she said...

The Virginia board claims that the this new test actually represents an increase in standards, which makes me wonder - if the pass rate drops dramatically from the Praxis I rates, will Virginia stick by the new exam?

The Cranky Professor is skeptical:

What's not at all clear from the article is what the 'Instead, they will have to pass a new "literacy and communications skills" exam that will be introduced in January' is. Will it be a product of the ETS people, like Praxis? Will it be home-grown, in which case I dread the first 3 or 4 years of results and controversies.

I took the Praxis I a long time ago, by the way, and it really IS at the 8th-10th grade level (I was half-heartedly pursuing certification to teach high school Latin). If people can't pass it (the Post's anecdote has a PE teacher passing on her 6th attempt) they probably aren't capable of figuring their own grades.

Why is no one asking why so many teachers - who are, after all, college graduates - are having so much trouble with basic math skills? The Praxis I math test has only 40 items and takes only an hour - but calculators are not permitted. The sample items mentioned in the ETS link are not tricky, and most of them, quite frankly, could be done in one's head, or with a bit of pencil scribbling.

Do English and music and PE teachers need to know this much math? Not necessarily. I just find it fascinating that schools of education are apparently churning out college graduates who can't do this.

Update: This can't not be related to the observed dumbing-down and politicization of math instruction in schools. Joanne's comments on this article are not to be missed.

Also, Right on the Left Coast has much more to say.. He also quotes the excellent book Innumeracy on the astounding phenomena of how people who would be ashamed to admit they can't read have no problem admitting that they don't understand basic math. It's all about being a "people person" instead of a cold, impersonal number cruncher, don't you know.

Update #2: As always, Joanne cuts right to the point:

Thirty-five years out of high school, I can do these problems in my head. It's hard to believe there are people smart enough to teach who can't pass a basic math test. How are they going to average students' grades?

Why does Joanne assume that these math-phobic teachers will be assigning objective, numerically-based grades? My guess is anyone this terrified of Praxis math items will be giving "holistic" and subjective letter grades.

That's much more "personal" and "caring" than those nasty ol' averages, you know.

Speaking the language

The International Herald Tribune covers the problem of teaching assistants who aren't fluent in spoken English:

With a steep rise in the number of foreign graduate students in the past two decades in the United States, undergraduates at large research universities often are in classes and laboratories run by graduate teaching assistants whose mastery of English is less than complete. The issue is found especially in subjects like engineering, where 50 percent of graduate students are foreign born, and math and the physical sciences, where 41 percent of graduate students are foreign born, according to a survey by the Council of Graduate Schools, an association of 450 schools. The issue has spawned legislation in at least 22 states requiring universities to make sure that teachers are proficient in spoken English.

Not surprisingly, the undergrads themselves come under fire for being too "insular" and "lazy" to learn to understand foreign accents. However, it's nice to see that most of the educators quoted understand that it's in everyone's best interest to increase the spoken English fluency of foreign graduate students.

A Sunday of Metal

Yesterday - the Sounds of the Underground tour at Festival Pier in Philly. Dave and I had a great time:

I was representin' for Slayer, thank you very much:

.

Good show, although we left a bit early (after Opeth). I finally got to see Gwar for the first time (no, I didn't stand up front!).

All can walk, but not all can do the work

The San Diego Union-Tribune has a fairly critical article about a San Ysidro middle school that is allowing every eighth-grader to walk in the graduation ceremony - even those who flunked:

Today, San Ysidro Middle School will recognize 516 eighth-graders in a ceremony to promote them to high school, regardless of whether they passed middle school. More than a fourth of them did not. In today's ceremony, 143 students who either flunked classes, didn't earn at least a 2.0 grade-point average, or missed too many days of school will march alongside those who did everything required of them.

Several teachers at the school have protested in staff meetings that students who don't make the grade shouldn't walk in the ceremony. To them, it's a matter of holding students accountable.

"If you don't earn it, you stay home," San Ysidro Middle counselor Rosemarie Ponce said.

The principal, however, notes that all are walking because not one teacher actually filed the paperwork to hold back a student:

Part of Flores' rationale in allowing all comers into the ceremony is that they're all being promoted and leaving the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade San Ysidro School District. No teacher at San Ysidro Middle has filed paperwork to hold back a single student.

Needless to say, the high school teachers awaiting these "graduates" are not happy:

Whether they walk in today's ceremony or not, all 516 students are going to high school next year. And the problem is much worse than the promotion statistics indicate. How many students met promotion criteria and how many walk in the ceremony are irrelevant statistics to Hector Espinoza, principal of San Ysidro High, where today's ceremony will take place. They'll all be his students next year.

He just wants to know whether they're ready for ninth grade. He sent a team of teachers out to test middle school students, and they reported back to him that 70 percent of the incoming freshman class at San Ysidro High is not at grade level.

Emphasis mine. The article reports that while retention at the earlier grades may be helpful, retention at the eighth-grade level allegedly does more harm than good. It may increase the drop-out rate, but it's hard to see why promoting a student who is struggling to ninth grade does much for the drop-out rate, either.

Adding my data

If you blog, be sure to check out MIT's survey of bloggers and blogs by clicking on the image below.

A question of need

A University of California panel has voted to recommend that UC stop participating in - as in, funding - the National Merit Scholarship program. One reason given was concern over the PSAT's validity for the purpose, and UC is within reason to question that validity. No standardized test is beyond that sort of questioning. But I believe the heart of the matter is here:

Faculty members had also raised concerns about the fairness of the program's selection process, which has tended to choose more whites, Asians and upper-income students.

Of UC's National Merit Scholars last year, only 3 percent were black, Latino or Native American, and less than one-fifth came from families making less than $40,000, said Michael Brown, the head of UC's systemwide faculty admissions policy committee.

Notice that they've now defined "fair" not as a system that might identify the most-qualified or most-able (assuming the test were appropriate), but a system that makes sure the ethnic and SES composition of the winning group is pleasing to the committee. Whatever that might be.

Some experts yesterday applauded the UC vote.

"I'm not fond of merit-based scholarships," said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

"I don't think they produce much public benefit," he said, noting that many of the upper-income students that benefit from the scholarships already have the means to afford college.

I certainly don't know how many National Merit scholars are upper-income. I find it odd, however, that Callan would use the "public benefit" argument to reject merit-based scholarships. Isn't he saying that it's better to award scholarships who those who want to go to college, but might not be qualified, instead of to those who are qualified to go but are just above the lowest-income-level? Does it really benefit people, colleges, or society more to make sure only that the poorest have a way in?

Full disclosure - I was a National Merit Scholar, and my family fell squarely into that not-poor-enough-for-needs-but-not-rich-enough-to-pay-full-tuition category. Presumably that's the category that UC, and those who think like Callan, would like to write off.

To give the article credit, it addresses this issue:

Redd speculated that even if UC drops the National Merit program, other schools are unlikely to do so because of the accelerated competition to attract top students and the program's popularity among middle-and upper-income families who have trouble qualifying for need-based aid...

Some incoming college students said yesterday they would oppose a move by UC to discontinue participation in the program.

"I would be disappointed if UC stopped paying the scholarships because I've seen a lot of people stuck in the middle class who cannot get need-based scholarships and cannot find enough merit-based scholarships to go to college," said Liz Krow-Lucal, a National Merit scholar who will be studying biology at UC San Diego in the fall.

Disappointed, indeed, to disover that UC, unlike most of the real world, seems unwilling to reward those who have achieved something.

A student speaks up in praise of testing

An amusing (because it's positive) editorial on testing from the Arizona college newspaper:

They say the tests are ruining the educational landscape -- that they're causing students to study for nothing else...Many want to see them eliminated. These opponents point to statistics like the amount of money people spend on preparation, $310 million a year by one count, as signs that the standardized-test mania has gone too far and that a return to the core values of education is warranted.

However, such logic fails to understand the purpose that they serve. Simply put, standardized tests serve one vital function – as providers of a means of comparison to admissions panels.

What makes them so valuable? Why can't admissions panels look at more important factors? Factors like grades, letters of recommendation, and extra-curricular activities? That's where the standardized part comes in. Without standardized tests, there is no way to compare students across the country. With GPA, for example, there's no way to tell whether the 3.6 from Northwestern is more impressive than the 3.6 from Virginia.

So standardized tests are good because they're standardized. But rather than complain, UA students should cheer this opportunity as they approach grad school rather than boo it. It's hard enough competing with students from big name schools like MIT and Princeton. With the GRE/MCAT/LSAT/GMAT to level the playing field, students can show that they're just as sharp as the Ivy-League trained type.

In fact, that's why tests of these kinds were developed. With all the anti-testing commentary in the press, it's easy to forget that. What's more, it's always driven me crazy that opponents produce the over-inflated and unproven expensive test prep course as evidence (somehow) that the tests themselves are a problem.

Cute photo of the author, by the way.

Also, this is the nth article I've seen that references the book, "Freakonomics," so I'm going to have to break down and buy a copy.

Another Day, Another Carnival

The latest Carnival of Education is up at Jenny D's site. Despite my programming a reminder into my Palm Pilot, I always seem to miss the deadline for submitting to the Carnival each week. Luckily, Jenny added a post of mine on her own.

The latest Carnival of the Cats is at Blog d'Elisson. Forgot to submit anything for that, too.

Hopefully I'll never appear on the Carnival of the Clueless, nor on the Carnival of Classiness.

A question of history

A brilliant editorial in the LATimes by Dr. David Gelernter is in part about Senator Dick Durbin's recent idiotic remarks (The Sundries Shack has a great timeline of events), but the take-away message is a plea for better history education in our schools:

Not knowing history is worse than ignorance of math, literature or almost anything else. Ignorance of history is undermining Western society's ability to talk straight and think straight. Parents must attack the problem by teaching their own children the facts. Only fools would rely on the schools.

My son told me about a high school event that (at first) I didn't understand. A girl in his English class praised the Vietnam War-era draft dodgers: "If I'd lived at that time and been drafted," she said, "I would've gone to Canada too." I thought she was merely endorsing the anti-war position. But my son set me straight. This student actually believed that if she had lived at the time, she might have been drafted. She didn't understand that conscription in the United States has always applied to males only. How could she have known? Our schools teach history ideologically. They teach the message, not the truth. They teach history as if males and females have always played equal roles. They are propaganda machines...

To forget your own history is (literally) to forget your identity. By teaching ideology instead of facts, our schools are erasing the nation's collective memory.

Dr. David Gelernteris a well-respected Yale professor (of computer science), author, contributing editor (for The Weekly Standard), columnist, and scientist who has experience in criticizing politicians who don't understand their economics or teachers who view history as something to be revised and reviled. A Republican who proudly defends Western culture - and often wonders aloud why public schools should be allowed to exist - he's a voice that ought to be listened to by eduators and parents.

Regardless, something tells me Durbin's hysterical, ignorant remarks will be latched upon by those with little or no understanding of the historical meanings of the words "Nazi" and "gulag," while Gelernter's reasoned pleas will be ignored. And if the media really did start agreeing that history lessons ought to be improved, my guess is that everything currently wrong with history classes would be blamed on NCLB (all that testing of other subjects leaves no time for history, you know).

A dangerous testing situation

Good Lord.

Two charter school administrators have been suspended for 10 days each without pay following a 13-year-old girl's claim that she was raped by a boy during a state proficiency test in March. Dayton Academy Principal Emory Wyckoff should have called police as required by state law, said Adam Tucker, a spokesman for New York City-based Edison Schools, which manages the school.

Wyckoff's suspension will begin in July. Assistant Principal Aundray Brooks also was suspended. Brooks was supervising the state-mandated standardized test but left the room to deal with a noisy situation in the hallway. The girl told police that a 14-year-old schoolmate attacked her during that time. Brooks will begin his suspension Friday. Both administrators have received letters outlining the reprimands and the rationale behind it, Tucker said.

Any administrator who doesn't call police for such a situation should be looking for work. And how long was the room free of adult supervision? Weren't there any other kids in the room? Why didn't someone else step in to help? The claim is bizarre - this is something that shouldn't have been possible.

The Kayak Kid takes on the Ohio exam

Hoo-boy. A smart Ohio student, John Wood, takes a very public stance against an exit exam:

My high school graduation took place during the Memorial Day weekend. However, despite being ranked sixth in my class, I did not cross the stage that day, and my dad, our high school principal, did not give me a diploma. I did not drop out at the last minute, and I was not expelled. I didn’t graduate because I refused to take the Ohio Proficiency Tests.

I did this because I believe these high-stakes tests (which are required for graduation) are biased, irrelevant, and completely unnecessary.

For whom? Irrelevant for those who are ranked sixth in their class and have a principal for a father to boot? Unnecessary for those who won't have much trouble grabbing a GED and some online time to air their anti-testing views?

The bias of the tests is demonstrated by Ohio’s own statistics. They show consistently that schools with high numbers of low-income and/or minority students score lower on state tests. It is argued (in defense of testing) that this is not the tests’ fault, that the scores are only a reflection of the deeper socioeconomic injustices. This is very likely true. What makes the tests biased is the fact that the state does little or nothing to compensate for the differences that the students experience outside the classroom. In fact, the state only worsens the situation with its funding system. Ohio’s archaic school funding system underfunds schools in poorer areas because it is based on property taxes. The way we fund our schools has been declared unconstitutional four times, and yet the state legislature refuses to fix the problem.

Tests that measure what we intend them to measure - in this case, academic performance - are not biased. Critics have quite the tendency to stretch the definition of the word "bias" into anything they see as "not quite fair," and that's what John is doing here. What is happening here is "differential impact," which is something else altogether (see here for a previous discussion). What John is fighting against here is the right of the state to use a test that has differential impact - a test showing that students whose parents don't contribute much financially towards education tend not to do so well. He obviously doesn't believe that parents should have a choice in deciding where their property tax money goes. He should label his fight as such, rather than erroneously tossing around words like "bias."

The irrelevance of these tests is also demonstrated by state statistics—in this case, the lack of them. In 13 years of testing, Ohio has failed to conduct any studies linking scores on the proficiency tests to college-acceptance rates, college grades, income levels, incarceration rates, dropout rates, scores on military-recruiting tests, or any other similar statistic.

If true, this proves only that Ohio has failed to produce data showing the relevance of the exams. It does not prove that the tests are irrelevant. What's more, if the purpose of the exam is to show that a student has learned what they need to know in high school, then we would not expect the test to be any more predictive of variables such as income, incarceration, or college grades than we would expect high school performance to be. If achieving a high-school diploma is not highly correlated to college grades, there's no reason to expect the test scores to correlate with those grades - but that's not proof the test is irrelevant.

More important, a system already exists for determining when students are ready to graduate. The ongoing assessment by teachers who spend hours with the students is more than sufficient for determining when they are ready to graduate.

If it weren't for grade inflation, social promotion, widely-varying standards among teachers, and the fact that teachers nowadays are unlikely to flunk the vast numbers of students who deserve it, he might have a point here.

in southeastern Ohio, alternative assessments are alive and kicking. At my school, Federal Hocking High School, in Stewart, Ohio, every senior has to complete a senior project (I built a kayak), compile a graduation portfolio, and defend his or her work in front of a panel of teachers in order to graduate. These types of performance assessments are much more individualized and authentic, and are certainly difficult, something I can attest to, having completed them myself.

(1) The key word here is is "individualized," which can translate to, "Almost impossible to use to compare students over time, students within schools, or schools to one another." Good for some students, bad for seeing whether large groups of students are improving.
(2) Does John have data showing that kayak-building skills are highly positively related to college grades or income? No? Then why does he claim the Ohio tests are irrelevant based on the lack of that same information?
(3) A kayak? In Ohio? The point was?

Note that John is already signed up to attend college this fall, and his voice - in the form of a well-written article - has now been heard publicly. He obviously has not been disadvantaged by this situation, either from the exam itself or his failure to take it. Does he really believe, I wonder, that kids who enter high school still struggling with reading and basic math would benefit as much as he did from a kayak-building experience in place of a basic skills exam?

Update: I forgot to mention that this week's EdWeek has a forum set up to discuss this article. Be sure to leave a comment.

Update #2: Excellent discussion by Quincy, including a link to Joanne's comments about the heartbreak of discovering in college that you aren't quite as great as you thought you were in high school.

Oddball roundup

Devoted Reader Reginleif uncovered a hysterical exchange over school lunches on a community message board. The discussion starts when a mother asks if it's legal for her to deliver a fresh lunch to her child's school at lunchtime every day, and it's obvious she's not prepared to deal with any questions about her method. (And before you ask - no, the kid doesn't have any life-threatening food allergies.)

Early school bells: The Evil Plan of the Morning People. Slate suggests that letting your cranky night owl teen catch a few more z's is more important than making her get up early for breakfast.

No more skirts! In a desperate attempt to deal with what must be a rash of micro-minis, one British junior high school has decreed that all students will wear full-length trousers as part of their uniforms. Now, if only they'd done something about those ridiculously short shorts I had to wear in gym class, back in 1982.

Turning winners into losers

In my first-ever fiance-submitted link (thanks, Dave!) we have a tale of two youth baseball teams in Ohio.

No one misbehaved. No one broke any rules. But after only a few games, the Columbus Stars have been kicked out of a recreational youth baseball league in Canal Winchester.

The players, ages 11 and 12, were deemed too good.

On May 9, the Stars beat the Red Sox, 18-0. Two weeks later, the Stars also beat World Harvest, 13-0. But the biggest blowout occurred on May 27, when the Stars defeated Sugar Grove II, 24-0. Sugar Grove I lost to the Stars the next day, 10-2.

"After hearing and seeing the scores from that group, I called up the league office and said, ‘No way are we going to play them,’ " said Terry Morris, who coaches one of three teams from Bloom-Carroll schools in Fairfield County. "I wasn’t going to subject my players to that." Other teams started complaining. And canceling. The Stars were pulled from the league schedule. The team appealed to the league’s commissioner, Joe Bernowski, to no avail.

Though I'm surprised to admit it, I can sort of see the point to all this. The Stars clearly are too good to be on this schedule. It's not likely that all the best players would come from one zip code and assemble under a great coach, but it's not impossible, either. If it appears that every other team will get trashed, perhaps the Stars should be playing the older boys.

On the other hand, at what point does parental concern for self-esteem trump the rights of children to play? The Stars have won every game so far, but what if they'd lost one? Or two? What if only one game had been a blowout? Does kicking them out of the league now encourage parents to complain in a future situation which seems less cut-and-dried? Will parents now rush to boot out any team that seems just a tad too over-qualified? And note that it is in fact the parents being quoted here as the complainers.

When the best seat on the bus is empty

Earlier this week, I noted an upswing in school-bus-related violence. Many readers mentioned that adult chaperones might help. But a link from Illuminaria suggests that schools might not have much luck finding volunteer chaperones when they can't even manage to find drivers.

Wanted: Drivers to transport dozens of often-unruly students to school on a 38-foot bus through congested suburban traffic.

Requirements: Extensive training, criminal background checks and physical exams. Sincere affection for young people is strongly preferred, even when they're misbehaving.

Starting salary: $13,920.

Add noisy working conditions to the job description, and it's not surprising that many school districts are having a tough time hiring bus drivers...

Megan Williams, a mother of four, thinks potential bus drivers don't want to put up with disrespectful children, for which she blames parents.

"I am part of the problem. I have four boys. They are the kind that don't sit still and say, 'Yes, ma'am, no, ma'am,"' Williams said. "I drive my van with my four kids in it and that's enough. I can't imagine a bus full of them."

It seems no one wants the responsibility of a bunch of other parents' children - especially when, as it seems these days, parents no longer teach manners at home.

But were there hanging chads?

Reader S. notes that administrator's penchants for cheating have extended beyond tests to student elections (and no, we're not talking about the movie Election here):

His opponent was known throughout school as "the perfect kid," Scott Dubnoff said. Smart. Athletic. Popular. Even Dubnoff liked Dave Dobrosky. But Dubnoff had thrown his hat in the ring for student government president of Mountain Lakes High School, and he planned to win.

The votes were cast, but who won for sure is now a matter of dispute. School administrators say Dubnoff lost, but they can't prove it because the ballots were thrown away. Dubnoff says he won and insists he can prove it -- because his father dug the ballots out of the school's trash bin.

Hoo-boy. Sounds like the educrats didn't appreciate Dubnoff's sense of humor:

Dubnoff said he knew that to defeat his opponent, he would have to be creative. Instead of delivering a standard, straightforward speech -- the kind he expected from his competitor -- he would be different.

"Different" meant walking on stage in a generalissimo-style uniform, flanked by two friends dressed as Secret Service agents, and riding the joke for all it was worth. "The spirit of our collective mass has made it known that I am the Chosen One, the manifest of our destiny here in Mountain Lakes," said Dubnoff, who often goes by "Mitch." "Under me, the Mitch Coalition will march into the dawning of a new era: A utopia where homework, tests and punctuality are henceforth irrelevant."

He made his classmates promises -- some sincere, others intentionally ludicrous..."I was up against the best guy," Dubnoff said. "I wanted it to be big and I wanted it to be funny and I wanted people to talk about it."

The school has since made Dubnoff and Dobrosky co-presidents, which sounds like an admission that someone fudged the numbers, or that the school admins can't count.

Portfolios in NY?

The portfolio option arises again, this time as an alternative to the Regents exam ($ubscrip required):

One of the items still on the table in this final week of the legislative session in Albany is a bill that would direct the state education commissioner to come up with an alternative to the Regents exams required for a high school diploma in New York...

The bill has already passed the state Senate and is now before the assembly, where the speaker, Sheldon Silver, can either pass it or kill it. Our friends in the education policy community...are hoping the speaker will kill the bill, seeing it as a departure from the measurement, accountability, and standards that are essential to quality education. The New York Times and the Daily News are in agreement on the point.

I can't find this story anywhere else (the blurb from Google quoted a line about portfolios), and, unfortunately, that's all I can get without subscribing. Anyone out there got a subcription?

Update: A sharp-eyed reader found a more informative article from back when the bill had just passed the Senate:

Supporters say it's better than the state's current one-size-fits-all system of testing. Opponents, including state Education Commissioner Richard Mills, fear the measure could cripple their decade-long effort to use the Regents exams as a way of raising academic standards across the state...

One of the bill's sponsors, Stephen Saland, R-Poughkeepsie, who heads the senate's Education Committee, said the measure stems from what he views as an unwillingness by Mills and the board to compromise on having all students take the exams. "It's their way or the highway," said Saland.

But Mills says setting up a system of portfolios would be too costly and difficult to police. "The bill would create an unworkable system," predicted an Education Department memo to lawmakers. "It would be virtually impossible to monitor all schools closely enough to ensure that schools followed the curriculum and assigned all projects, and that an A in one school equaled an A, not a C, in another school."

When it comes to school accountability, what exactly is wrong with "their way or the highway?" And Mills hits the nail on the head with his concern about the un-standardized nature of portfolio projects.

Update #2: The Instructivist has more, and links to a NYT editorial which is, astonishingly, crictical of the bill:

Before they jeopardize education reform, legislators should revisit a disturbing report issued a few years ago by a panel of education experts that evaluated the portfolio assessments used by the schools in the New York Performance Standard Consortium, a politically influential education group. The panel could find no evidence to support the claim that the consortium's schools were conforming to the state's learning standards or measuring student progress in any meaningful way.

A little "creative" bookkeeping

We keep hearing about how awful all these mandatory standardized tests are for today's youth. Why, then, are most of the episodes of cheating we hear about based on adult misbehavior? Are the teachers really cheating the most? Some say yes - depending on how broadly we define "cheating:"

Last week, Esther Jones, the principal of Santa Ana's Saddleback High School, circulated a memo asking teachers to reassess the failing grades of 98 students in hopes of helping the school meet the federal No Child Left Behind Act's standards. The note read, "please review your records for these students and determine if they would merit a grade of 'D' instead of a failure."

Sadly, this isn't surprising. Instead it unfortunately reaffirms an increasingly common practice: from graduation rates to test scores to violence stats, schools across the country are painting a false picture of their performance.

Take Wesley Elementary in Houston. From 1994 to 2003, Wesley won national accolades for teaching low-income students how to read and was featured in an "Oprah" segment on schools that "defy the odds."

It turned out that Wesley wasn't defying the odds at all; the school was cheating. The Dallas Morning News found...severe statistical anomalies in nearly 400 Texas schools.

If schools don't want to cheat on the tests, they get rid of poor students. Oak Ridge High School in Florida boosted its test scores after purging its attendance rolls of 126 low-performing students...

Misrepresenting the dropout rate is another common way to make a school's performance look better than it is. The New York Times described an egregious example. Jerroll Tyler was severely truant from Houston's Sharpstown High School. When he showed up to take a math exam required for graduation, he was told he was no longer enrolled. And he never returned.

Funnily enough, for every case of misbehavior like this that's uncovered, the testing critics rush to blame the tests. They say that all of these cheaters are just hapless teachers/administrators with their backs to the wall, forced to fudge the numbers. I say every instance of this behavior is evidence that real, standardized, objective evidence of student performance is necessary. These sorts of crimes are proof that too many in the education world are willing to resort to fakery to make their students look better, and if it weren't for these tests, we'd be willing to believe them when they claimed the K-12 system was working just fine.

Gives new meaning to the complaint, "My brain is full."

Big brains = High IQ's?

People with bigger brains are smarter than their smaller-brained counterparts, according to a study conducted by a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher published in the journal “Intelligence.”

The study, published on line June 16, could settle a long-standing scientific debate about the relationship between brain size and intelligence. Ever since German anatomist and physiologist Frederick Tiedmann wrote in 1836 that there exists “an indisputable connection between the size of the brain and the mental energy displayed by the individual man,” scientists have been searching for biological evidence to prove his claim.

“For all age and sex groups, it is now very clear that brain volume and intelligence are related,” said lead researcher Michael A. McDaniel, Ph.D...McDaniel, a professor in management in VCU’s School of Business, found that, on average, intelligence increases with increasing brain volume. Intelligence was measured with standardized intelligence tests, which have important consequences on peoples' lives, such as where they’ll go to college or what kind of job they get. Critics have called the tests inaccurate or irrelevant to the real world, he said.

“But when intelligence is correlated with a biological reality such as brain volume, it becomes harder to argue that human intelligence can’t be measured or that the scores do not reflect something meaningful,” said McDaniel.

Yes, but what I - an admitted pinhead - want to know is, can bigger brains exist in smaller heads?

KU students go public about public embarassment

If you're a flunking student at the University of Kansas who's in danger of losing scholarship money, well, at least you know you're not alone:

More than 100 students who failed their classes at the University of Kansas last semester found out who shared their misfortune. The school's Office of Student Financial Aid sent an e-mail to 119 students Monday notifying them that they were in jeopardy of having their aid revoked.

But the names of the students were included on the e-mail address list - meaning everyone who got the e-mail could see the names of all the other recipients.

"It was a completely inadvertent, unintentional mistake," university spokesman Todd Cohen said Thursday. "It was our error, our mistake and we deeply regret it."

Time for the university to hire someone who understands Outlook. And students, look on the bright side - this will make contacting everyone regarding participation in the class-action lawsuit that much easier.

Down for the count

On Tuesday, I mentioned that I was sick with what I thought was a minor sinus infection. I made it to work on Wednesday, then struggled to get home as my fever shot up and I felt worse and worse. Luckily, I'd already made an appointment with my doctor for Thursday morning.

The diagnoses: Sinusitic, bronchitis, AND an inner ear infection (that explains the non-stop dizziness). The cure: Several days of huddling on the couch, watching daytime TV (as IQ points dribble out my tender ears), guzzling cough syrup with codeine, gulping antibiotics and Tylenol, and just generally feeling sorry for myself. My mom calls about every three hours to check on me, so everyone else is spared my whining (except for you guys, right now).

Bloggage will resume when the room stops spinning.

The perils of teaching the process

College professor Robert over at brightMystery has an enthralling exchange of emails all centered around a certain hapless, and flunking, student:

Let's call this student "Pat". Pat was in my calculus class; Pat was a nice person, easy to talk to and we enjoyed a good rapport personally. But Pat was not doing well in the course, and Pat's visits to office hours showed me why. If I told Pat what to do on a problem, Pat could do it most of the time with a little prompting. But in terms of working problems alone, Pat would get hopelessly stuck every time...So the problem wasn't Pat's skill with the material so much -- the processing skill was the problem.

Accordingly, when Pat would ask me a question such as, "Can you tell me how to do problem 7?", I would say: Let's start by asking the right questions. What are you being asked to do in this problem? What information is given to you in the problem statement? And what do you know from the course, your reading, or your work on other exercises that will help get you to the goal? I made it a point to NEVER give Pat explicit help on content unless it was a last resort...

Sounds like an excellent calculus teacher, right? One-on-one tutoring with emphasis on the process, not just memorizing facts; many college profs wouldn't have gone this far. Despite this, Pat didn't do well as the course progressed, and sent an email with his interpretation of his poor grades:

Pat sent me an email just after midterms that said something like: I now understand why I am not doing well in your class. My learning style is such that you have to show me exactly what to do, or else I can't do it. But you always answer my questions with more questions, which isn't showing me exactly what to do. So from now on, please show me exactly what to do first, and then I should be able to do it.

I would have had trouble controlling my blood pressure at that point, and would have been unable to resist - though Robert did - sending an reply taking a few hard swats at Pat with a clue bat. But it gets better. Pat's mom starts sending emails accusing the professor of ignoring poor Pat and his "disability":

...I know [Pat] tried to explain to you that when [Pat] asks questions [Pat] needs answers not another question. We had [Pat] tested at [a local university] in January through the suggestion of [an academic counselor at my college]. During this testing we found out [Pat] has a learning disability. [Pat] does better with visual explanations then being asked another question. [Pat] needs to see how to physically work a problem so he can comprehend it....

I know this takes up more of your time but all people learn differently. This was one of the reasons we choose a small college because of the special attention a student gets. I would appreciate it if when [Pat] asks a question if you could show [Pat] how to do it and explain it then answer it with another question.

The ensuing emails are highly entertaining, not least because Robert has extensive experience in tutoring students with disabilities. Read it all. Can I just say that Robert has much more self-control than I do? And can I also say that the blogosphere is a godsend for those who have to deal with this kind of nonsense?

College protestors act like idiots

I agree with John Hawkins that the level to which college protestors will stoop is pretty low. So much for the days when we would expect college students to act like grown (but young) men and women.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's return to his alma mater turned into an exercise in perseverance when virtually his every word was accompanied by catcalls, howls and piercing whistles from the crowd.

Schwarzenegger's face appeared to redden during his 15-minute commencement address Tuesday to 600 graduates at Santa Monica College, but he ignored the shouting as he recalled his days as a student and, later, his work as a bodybuilder and actor.

"Always go all out and overcome your fears," he told the graduates. "Work, work, work. Study, study, study."

Inside the stadium, the drone from hundreds of rowdy protesters threatened to drown out the governor's voice at times. Many in the crowd erupted in boos when a police officer pulled down a banner criticizing the estimated $45 million cost of the Nov. 8 special election that Schwarzenegger proposed Monday.

Captain Ed shows no mercy:

...what are they protesting? The fact that Arnold has called a special election for a direct democratic vote on issues that the legislature has refused