Number 2 Pencil

Bad news in California

Not a good sign:

Nearly 100,000 California 12th graders — or about 20% of this year's senior class — have failed the state's graduation exam, potentially jeopardizing their chances of earning diplomas, according to the most definitive report on the mandatory test released today.

Students in the class of 2006, the first group to face the graduation requirement, must pass both sections of the English and math test by next June.

The exit exam, which has come under criticism by some educators, legislators and civil rights advocates, is geared to an 8th grade level in math and to ninth- and 10th grade levels in English.

I like the fact that the article lists the critical complaints and the low standards in the same sentence. It certainly lets readers draw their own conclusions.

Teachers, according to the report, said that that many students arrive unprepared and unmotivated for their high school courses and that their grades often reflect poor attendance and low parental involvement.

Point being? That the test isn't necessary? That it's impossible to teach them? Or is this the only politically-correct way to make a reference to what might be driving the achievement gap between ethnic groups?

Opponents of the exam said that it penalizes minority students and those in low-income communities whose overcrowded schools often lack experienced teachers and other necessary resources.

"It's unfair to give this test because of the unequal school system we have," said Edgar Sanchez, who teachers U.S. history at Washington Preparatory check tol High School in South Los Angeles. "Every day I see students go through conditions of overcrowding. Sometimes students don't have a desk to sit at."

If the system is this unequal, then the tests are absolutely necessary; otherwise, how will schools know what students need help? And without some sort of corrective measures, how can the state ensure that schools focus on those students?

The critics, as always, are calling for alternative assessments such as portfolios, which can be graded so squishily that no kid will ever be denied a diploma, no matter how poor their attitude or performance. I support the tests, but California's Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell faces an uphill battle against parents, students, and an educational community who believe that every student who wants a diploma must be awarded one.

Friday catblogging

This story makes me so sad...but I know from experience that this happens. There's nothing like working in a euthanasia shelter to get an understanding of just how callous and stupid people can be about pets.

If you're nearby, and looking for a cat, please consider this one.

Happy Birthday to me

Whee! Tomorrow I will be 37, which is, I'm sure, a milestone of some sort. I just don't know which sort yet. Perhaps it's the "I've finally got my head together but my body hasn't completely fallen apart yet" milestone?

Gifties: A new laptop from my parents, a new mouse, battery, and computer game from my fiance, and from myself, a new kickass red lipstick (Red Attitude). Just call me a downtown chick with self-confidence.

On the agenda for the today and tomorrow: Tutoring a friend of a friend in college algebra, getting the brakes on my car fixed, admiring the huge bouquet of roses that a co-worker sent to me, going out to see Serenity with Dave, going out with a big group tomorrow night for dinner at the Iron Hill Brewery.

On the agenda for Sunday: Sleeping.

How not to design an exam

"Irregularities," indeed.

In a rare move, the State Personnel Board threw out a promotional exam for one of the highest ranks at the California Highway Patrol, ruling that the oral test for deputy chief was so riddled with irregularities that there was no way to tell which of the 17 candidates should have passed. The board's recent audit of the June 2004 exam found that the CHP could not produce the notes taken by two panel members conducting the exam, including former Commissioner Dwight O. "Spike" Helmick, contrary to personnel guidelines.

The exam panel had three members. One, who wasn't named, challenged some competitors' responses, prompted others and tossed the exam materials across a desk in a way that one applicant considered hostile, the audit said.

Completed last month, the report found that the exam panel showed possible bias against one applicant, Hubert A. Acevedo.

I'm always amused (in an annoyed sort of way) when testing critics insist that the innocent little objective multiple-choice item is biased and discriminatory, while "performance-based" exams that use "alternate" methods of assessment must naturally be more fair and accurate. This theory, of course, is assuming that the people involved in rating the examinees bring no biases whatsoever to the table, and that the lack of standardization involved in something like this has no effect on examinee performance. As demonstrated here, the beauty of multiple-choice items that are vetted through many developers and pre-tested on many examinees is that those items can be stripped of bias as much as possible before going live. In an oral exam where an examiner does something inappropriate, those safeguards for the examinee just aren't there.

(Hat tip: Darren.)

Where the men aren't

USA Today notes that, for everyone 135 women who receive bachelor's degrees, only 100 men do so. Glenn Reynolds wonders, what's happened to all the male college students?

One would be to treat it the way we treat other "underrepresentation" issues in higher education: By wondering what universities are doing wrong. There seems little doubt that universities have become less male-friendly in recent decades, to the point of being downright unfriendly in many cases...The remedy, in this view: Affirmative action for male candidates, re-education for faculty, campus "men's centers" to match the womens' centers that were created when women were an underrepresented group on campus (and which still remain today almost everywhere), and efforts to make curricula, dormitories, and recruiting more male-friendly...

The second approach would be to shrug the problem off. Men aren't going to college as much? Big deal. Maybe it's because women are smarter, or better suited to such things...

The third possibility is that men aren't so much underrepresented in college as women are overrepresented. This is plausible.

Glenn notes that the only explanation that we're likely to see any educrat offer is the second. It'll be interesting to see if any educrats really are gullible enough to open up the topic of genetic explanations of gender differences.

While Glenn certainly isn't the first one to point out this problem, few people note that the male-female disparity is not equal across ethnic groups. In a post from 2003, I noticed that black women earning bachelors' degrees outnumbered black men 2-to-1. The most up-to-date information I found now includes the year 2001-02.

Overall, men were awarded 42% of the bachelors' degrees in 2002. But that is primarily driven by the large number of white men, who earned 43.2% of the degrees awarded to white students. In contrast, Asian men earned 40.4%, Hispanic men 39.7%, AmerInd men 39.6% - and finally, black men earned only 33.6%.

If universities are still doing everything in their power to get female students in the door, one wonders why.

The forbidden words

Evan of Brain Terminal marvels at the modern university campus, where day is night, up is down, and the word "vagina" is inoffensive while the phrase "hunting terrorists" is considered beyond the pale:

On August 29th, the Bucknell University Conservatives Club sent out a campus-wide e-mail announcing an upcoming speaker: Major John Krenson, who had been in Afghanistan "hunting terrorists." Those two words--"hunting terrorists"--resulted in three students being called to Bucknell's Office of the President by Kathy Owens, the Executive Assistant to the President.

According to the students, when they arrived at the President's Office for the meeting, Ms. Owens held up a print-out of the offending e-mail and said "we have a problem here," telling the students that the words "hunting terrorists" were offensive. For the next half-hour, the three students were given a lecture on inappropriate phrasing...

Last year, while collecting footage for my upcoming film Indoctrinate U, I noticed that the campus was plastered with flyers that screamed "vagina" in large block letters. Although some people might find these flyers offensive, it is protected speech at Bucknell--as it should be--but apparently the phrase "hunting terrorists" is not.

Bucknell denies having a speech code. But while one could argue that college students should be mature and be able to see the word "vagina" in print without getting upset, the same could be said of the phrase "hunting terrorists."

A fear of discipline

Abigail Thernstrom thinks author Jonathan Kozol's educational-reform ideas are pure fantasy:

Jonathan Kozol has a devoted following, and "The Shame of the Nation" will not disappoint his fans. It's vintage Kozol--a jeremiad. His core complaints are familiar: American public schools are segregated, and those that have few whites in them are financially starved. He adds only one new element: The standards, testing and accountability "juggernaut" has crushed the "humane and happy" education we once had.

Principals in segregated schools "create an architecture of adaptive strategies" that include "a relentless emphasis on raising test scores," "scripted lesson plans," "heightened discipline" and other policies that emulate the military--a "command and absolute control" image that Mr. Kozol uses repeatedly.

...[Mr. Kozol] proposes higher taxes, with the revenue "equitably distributed." But "equitable" actually means, by his formula, unequal funding--a great deal more money for urban youngsters than for those who are white and middle-class...Is he suggesting that, with more money to buy those clean places and green spaces, inner-city kids would catch up with their higher-performing peers? Mr. Kozol pays such scant attention to academic achievement that it's unclear. He is against longer school days, summer school for kids who need it, charter schools (and other forms of choice), merit pay and every promising avenue of school reform. He does, as an aside, acknowledge that kids should learn "essential skills," but his main concern is with schools that exude "warmth and playfulness and informality and cheerful camaraderie among the teachers and their children."

One wonders how someone could look at our current inner-city school systems and decide that, of all things, one of the most important issues to address is the "formality" of teachers these days.

On the thin edge of the (butter) knife

*Sigh.*

Note this particular sentence: "Law enforcement was contacted in the case." Meaning, the administrators in this case didn't just apply a ridiculous standard in this case, but they made sure involve cops as well.

Will I soon see, on my beloved Court TV, an episode of COPS where the officers go in with guns blazing and dogs barking after a - gasp! - butter knife is found on school property?

I have the feeling that parents who don't let their kids watch TV don't have this problem

Looks like the FCAT is getting ready to become the "F-word"-CAT:

Students say they hear a lot of profanity on television, and a high school easing its penalties for swearing now says television is where they should look for model language. Boca Raton Community High School students used to be suspended from school for cursing. But school administrators found that last year, some of their best students were getting suspended, sullying otherwise clean records.

This year, Principal Geoff McKee said students caught swearing would get a less severe penalty...Students have been told to model their choice of words on television newscasts. The newscasters improvise without using profanity, McKee said.

"It's the only place where they work to have language that's acceptable to all," McKee said.

Simply amazing that McKee doesn't suggest students model their language habits on their home life. This makes one of several assumptions, all of them ugly: (1) that parents cuss so much nowadays that children are forced to turn to TV to learn proper English, (2) that children don't listen to their parents at all, but will listen to TV, or (3) that children are home so little but glued to the TV so much that newscasters are their best role models.

Objective standards under attack

Hoo boy. Our culture of entitlement - and uninformed opposition to testing - is quite apparent in this lawsuit against FedEx:

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- A federal judge has certified a class action lawsuit alleging that FedEx Corp. discriminated against minority workers. The suit was filed in 2003 by eight current and former employees. It seeks millions of dollars in damages and an end to the company's alleged discriminatory practices...

The suit contends the delivery service paid thousands of current and former minority employees less than their white counterparts, passed over them for promotions and gave minorities poor work evaluations.

James Finberg, an attorney representing the class, said FedEx normally promotes from within, yet three times the number of package handlers and loaders are minorities compared to drivers, who earn more. Twice the number of minorities fail promotional tests than do whites, Finberg added.

"FedEx knows that black and Hispanics fail at a much higher rate, but yet has not changed the test," Finberg said.

Emphasis mine. The assumption here is that any test which has an achievement gap among ethnic subgroups is biased and therefore discriminatory.

Fed Ex tries to fight back with logic and data, which tells me they're probably going to lose:

In court documents, FedEx contended that promotions were based on "objective" factors, not race, that include time of service, passing a basic skills test, previous performance evaluations and whether the employee has been disciplined.

Tsk, tsk. You mean Fed Ex doesn't look at racial quotas when making hiring decisions? You mean they created objective standards and hold all employees to those standards? They refuse to tweak the standards to ensure a more "diverse" workgroup? How dare they.

Sneaking into school

It's "Never Been Kissed" with a twist:

27-year-old Guatemalan man arrested for posing as an 18-year-old Pasco County high school student told authorities he enrolled because he wanted to learn English and get a good education. Josue Oswaldo Ramirez-Mejia was arrested Tuesday and charged with uttering a forged instrument. He was being held on $5,000 bail.

Ramirez-Mejia used forged documents, including a Guatemalan birth certificate stating his birthday as Jan. 3, 1987, to enroll last month at J.W. Mitchell High School, officials said. Someone also posed as his guardian, according to the sheriff's office.

"Everything seemed to be in place," said Jim Davis, an assistant superintendent with the school district. Ramirez-Mejia was a good student and hadn't caused any problems, Davis said.

If he's almost 30 but can pass for 18, I say give him a diploma and let him get on with his life, because he's got things tough enough as it is.

Where's the miracle here?

An op-ed in the New York Sun and the folks at The Daily Howler focus on a recent article praising Wake County (NC) for raising test scores. The real picture, it seems, is not what the NYT the made it out to be.

Here's what the NYT printed:

Over the last decade, black and Hispanic students here in Wake County have made such dramatic strides in standardized reading and math tests that it has caught the attention of education experts around the country.

The main reason for the students' dramatic improvement, say officials and parents in the county, which includes Raleigh and its sprawling suburbs, is that the district has made a concerted effort to integrate the schools economically.

Here's what the Daily Howler concluded, after a spot of online digging:

Wow! Times readers felt a familiar glow; 80 percent of Wake County black kids scored at grade level on last spring’s tests! But here’s what Finder didn’t tell you—across the state of North Carolina, 77 percent of all black kids scored at grade level on those same tests! That’s right; the Times devoted this front-page story to a three-point difference in passing rates—a three-point difference in passing rates on tests almost everyone passes!...

WHY YOU’RE BEING PLAYED THIS WAY: Finder’s piece has an obvious sub-text. Wake County is busing to achieve economic integration—and this is producing big score gains.

For ourselves, we would favor such a program as long as the voters were willing. But these Wake Country test scores provide little evidence of big pay-offs in minority achievement if you enact such a program. Yes, Wake has shown good score gains (most likely on easier tests)—but so have schools all over the state! How can Wake’s program account for gains which are happening in all the state’s districts?

Yes, the gains are occurring all over the state...But apparently, Finder didn’t want you to know that. As good pseudo-liberals have endlessly done, he just wanted you feeling real good about a type of program he favors. As good pseudo-liberals have shamelessly done, he wanted you thinking something bogus and cruel: When it comes to the education of poor black children, success is right there for the taking...

And here's what the op-ed writer concluded:

Intrigued by the story's claim that the percentage of Raleigh's students achieving proficiency had risen dramatically over the past several years, my research assistant, Mark Linnen, took it upon himself to check out the data available on the North Carolina Web site. Over the past 10 years, the percentage proficient or better in grades 3-8 in Raleigh (Wade County) had in fact risen by 13% in math and 12% in reading between 1995 and 2005. That seemed to confirm the bragging of local officials - until it was discovered that, statewide, proficiency rates were up by 21% in math and 19% in reading - gains that outstripped those in Raleigh by over 50%. Nor did the proficiency rates of Raleigh's black and Hispanic students climb any faster than the statewide average for these groups. In fact, the gains were somewhat smaller.

Not that proficiency rates in North Carolina mean much. The state has some of the worst state standards in the country. Last spring, my Education Next co-editor, Rick Hess and I gave North Carolina's proficiency standards one of the worst marks in the country - a D minus. (By comparison, South Carolina got an A.) So low were the standards that 85% of all North Carolina eighth graders was said to be proficient in reading, despite the fact that only 29% of the state's eighth graders was found proficient on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation's report card.

One can only suspect that the allegedly astronomical gains in North Carolina - in both Raleigh and elsewhere - were simply a function of a dumbed-down scoring system.

Does the NYT even realize that all the NC scores are online, and that readers can do the math for themselves?

Parapundit has a few things to say on the topic as well

Even at the top, the gap persists

A thought-provoking article from the NYTimes about the pervasiveness of the achievement gap:

An uneasy amalgam of pride and discontent, Caroline Mitchell sat amid the balloons and beach chairs on the front lawn of Princeton High School, watching the Class of 2004 graduate. Her pride was for the seniors' average SAT score of 1237, third-highest in the state, and their admission to elite universities like Harvard, Yale and Duke. As president of the high school alumni association and community liaison for the school district, Ms. Mitchell deserved to bask in the tradition of public-education excellence.

Discontent, though, was what she felt about Blake, her own son. He was receiving his diploma on this June afternoon only after years of struggle - the failed English class in ninth grade, the science teacher who said he was capable only of C's, the assignment to a remedial "basic skills" class. Even at that, Ms. Mitchell realized, Blake had fared better than several friends who were nowhere to be seen in the procession of gowns and mortarboards. They were headed instead for summer school.

"I said to myself: 'Oh, no. Please, no,' " Ms. Mitchell recalled. "I was so hurt. These were bright kids. This shouldn't have been happening."

It did not escape Ms. Mitchell's perception that her son and most of those faltering classmates were black. They were the evidence of a prosperous, accomplished school district's dirty little secret, a racial achievement gap that has been observed, acknowledged and left uncorrected for decades. Now that pattern just may have to change under the pressure of the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Oddly, the NYT asks whether the problem of the achievement gap is due to NCLB, and it's hard to understand why one would think that, unless one subscribes to the notion that this gap wasn't a problem until we started holding schools accountable for it. The parents, on the other hand, seem to know exactly where the problem lies:

As far back as the 1960's, according to the local historical society, black students suffered from "low expectations from teachers" and a high dropout rate. In the early 1990's, an interracial body calling itself the Robeson Group - in homage to Paul Robeson, the most famous product of black Princeton - mobilized to recruit more black teachers and help elect the first black member to the school board.

Despite such efforts, the achievement gap remained. A tracking system for math separates students in middle school. The high school, while not formally tracked, has such a demand for seats in Advanced Placement classes and honors sections that a rigid hierarchy exists in effect. Guidance counselors find their time consumed by writing recommendation letters for seniors who routinely apply to 10 or more high-end schools.

And until the No Child Left Behind law was enacted there were no concrete consequences for failing to address the resulting disparity. Which may be why a number of black parents here credit the federal law with forcing attention on the underside of public education in Princeton. It requires all districts to reveal test results and meet performance standards by various subgroups, including race.

September swampland

Sorry for the lack of bloggage; I've been out of town on business and am a bit swamped at work. Be back soon.

Misplaced efforts

Jay at Wizbang is inspired by a Michael Jordan poster:

A while ago, I saw a Michael Jordan poster that had the following quote on it:

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

That crystallized a sentiment I've had for years, and touched on briefly yesterday:

One of the most valuable things in life is failure.

Nobody's perfect, and only one person in the world can be the best. Everyone, eventually, will fail at something. And the quicker and better someone learns how to deal with that, the better their chances of success in life will be...

This should be intuitively obvious to most people, but a good chunk of them (mostly liberal, and often involved in education) want to "protect" children from learning this harsh reality. They ban competitive sports, outlaw keeping score, and suppress the notion of "failing" grades in the name of "protecting their self-esteem."

I've said it for years: attempting to give someone self-esteem is, in the long run, the most damaging thing you can do to someone. Anything someone else gives you, someone else can take away. The only self-esteem that counts is that which you earn, which you get honestly from your own efforts. "A for effort" is an obscenity.

I can't agree enough. It amazes me to see the number of people involved in the education field, or the journalistic field, who believe that effort should be involved when grading students, teachers, or schools. That isn't how life works. Michael Jordan might be working in Kmart today if his basketball coaches had said that his missed baskets were "good enough."

If you are in the real world and you are responsible for doing something right, the results from trying real hard, but not quite getting there, can range from personally disastrous (you get fired) to disaster on a truly large scale (the space shuttle blows up). Why should schools be exempt?

Giving A's for effort is not only dishonest, but cruel. If a person, or an institution, is putting a lot of effort towards a goal, and is still failing at it, the most useful and humane feedback they can recieve is an honest and timely description of their failure. Otherwise, how will they ever learn to try something else?

They let me know when I'm late

Thanks to work and errands piling up, I arrived late at the shelter tonight, to hear a cacaphony of pitiful yowls.

"Where have you been? We're hungry!"

"I said, WE'RE HUNGRY!"

(N.B. They weren't actually hungry. When I put two bowls of wet food in their cage, they promptly smeared it all over the floor when I wasn't looking. What they were really yowling for was (a) attention and (b) the feather toy that was just out of their reach.)

Taking the test

Well, I suppose it's a good thing, politically, that Florida Education Commissioner John Winn and Governor Bush both did well on the FCAT:

Most questions from last spring's 10th-grade math and reading Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test were made public for the first time. Education Commissioner John Winn was one of the first to take the exam Wednesday.

''I made a perfect score on the reading,'' he said. "And I missed two on the math.'' Both he and Gov. Jeb Bush said they received a Level 5 score, the highest possible.

Bush said the main goal in releasing the FCAT to the public was to rebuff criticism of the test, which is used to set annual school grades that determine whether schools should be sanctioned or rewarded.

The Herald is still thinking like dead-tree media and didn't provide the link; you can go here to see what's required of Florida's 10th-graders. Note that on the math section, they get tons of formulas AND a handy-dandy explanation of how to use the standard calculator.

Un-lovely Rita

Lawrence Simon has the Hurricane Rita roundup. He and his family may decide to evacuate tonight.

He's the brains behind Carnival of the Cats; don't miss his homegrown version of the hurricane categorizing system.

Me, I'm just thinking about Michele's drive to send all those school supplies to Houston. Now where do we go?

Seniority doesn't matter if you don't toe the PC line

This is one of the most appalling things I've ever read:

An unnamed Florida Congressman (or more likely their staff) took a letter from Orange County elementary school teacher Jan Hall and turned it over to a Spanish language newspaper. As her letter was filled with anti-immigrant rants from her perspective as a teacher at Sadler Elementary School, it ignited a firestorm which eventually lead to suspension, resignation, and now a lawsuit. You don't have to agree with Hall's opinions to be outraged that a piece of mail to a Congressional office would be deliberately leaked to a news organization solely to draw a massive amount of negative publicity to her private communication. You can read the whole sorted story at WorldNet Daily, or dive back into the history of the story via Google News.

I went to WND site and read quotes from the letter. From what I see, she's guilty of being politically incorrect and nothing more.

...I can truthfully say that Puerto Rican teachers at my school ask me continually for help with math, as they do not get but the equivalent of a fifth grade education in Puerto Rico. They almost always can do no algebra and rely on the system to get by.

I find that Haitian children are more aggressive in the classroom and have not been to school regularly. Their poor conduct is yet another real problem...

Please be sure to note an on-the-job injury that didn't stop Hall from teaching before:

The private letter, which apparently was leaked to the Spanish paper by a member of Congress, was roundly criticized, resulting in Hall's suspension without pay by the school district.

"She has been removed from Sadler Elementary and will not be returning to Sadler Elementary regardless of the outcome of the investigation," Orange County Schools spokesman Frank Kruppenbacher said, according to WKMG-TV in Orlando. "The letter was written by an employee of our district that contained information that does not reflect the views of this school district or its leadership. Nor is it condoned by this leadership."

Hall submitted her resignation on Aug. 30, saying, "I'm tired of fooling with them. I'm sure I can go to work in a private school in another county."

WKMG reported Hall had gotten high marks from principals over the years – she's been a teacher for nearly three decades – but some Hispanics in her classroom have complained about how they were treated. The district offered several options, including teaching homebound students, if she apologized and met with a psychiatrist...

Hall said she rejected the offers because officials did not address her key issue – investigating how a principal at Englewood Elementary handled her complaints when a student battered her in 2002 so badly she underwent reconstructive surgery.

Emphasis mine. Try, if you will, to imagine the public outcry that would erupt if a teacher who had been attacked on the job were fired after she wrote a letter spouting the Cindy Sheehan moonbattery to her Republican congressman and he leaked it to a newspaper. It would be on the news channels 24-7 if it were to happen, which it never will.

Despite all the nonsense I've read over the years about the political brainwashing that takes place in some schools of education, it's hard for me to believe this has happened. Hall has resigned and is suing the school district. Blogger Pat Campbell is asking some blunt questions, and I'll be amazed if he ever gets any answers.

Some very serious charges are raised in this letter including the fact that many teachers are not properly certified. The school district superintendent Ron Blocker refuses to respond when asked if there is any validity to these charges. Also, a crime may have been committed here. Theft of mail is a federal crime punishable by jail time. How did this private letter fall into the public domain.? Why did the newspaper El Nuevo Dia publish it without Jan Hall's permission?

Because someone hoped to gain by this. It will be interesting if we ever discover who that was.

Posted by kswygert at 07:16 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

An ill wind might blow some good

Having to start all over might not be a bad thing:

Both in Louisiana and beyond, the wreckage in the Big Easy has sparked thinking about how the city might reinvent its beleaguered school system, in difficult straits long before the storm was but a gentle sea breeze.

“We need some bold, out-of-the-box thinking right now,” said Stephanie Desselle, the senior vice president of the Council for a Better Louisiana, a Baton Rouge-based advocacy group. “We absolutely ought to not return . . . to the school system that they had before.”

Clearly, New Orleans has many urgent needs, with so much of the city still drying out from flooding brought on by the hurricane. But as those priorities were being attended to last week, education thinkers were contemplating a different future for a district that the state already considered in both academic and financial crisis.

Emphasis mine. It shouldn't take a hurricane to prompt these kinds of comments, not when it had this kind of reputation before the storm:

Like many urban school districts, the New Orleans public-school system faces countless social problems. Families are poor. Violence is prevalent. Many parents are uneducated and underemployed.

New Orleans schools have been plagued by scandals and leadership crises that have made a difficult situation even more unmanageable. Led by a squabbling school board that state officials openly deride as incompetent, the system was forced to hire a private management company this summer after it was discovered that the administration was more than $25 million in the red.

There have been four acting or appointed superintendents in the past four years, and a majority of the district's students fail state-mandated English and math tests.

The brutal truth

Columnist Gary Brown still lives in fear of his "permanent record":

As it turns out, those mediocre math scores still might haunt me down the road.

“We were going to issue you a platinum card,” a credit card company might tell me in a letter, “but we notice from your permanent record that in your sophomore year of high school you got a ‘C’ in algebra, so we just don’t think you have the math skills to make the minimum monthly payment ...”

Right. I don’t think a “D” or even an “F” could prevent me from being “pre-approved” for two or three credit cards a week. Still, it seems that my permanent record from school nevertheless exists. An article in Sunday’s Repository reported that students’ permanent records continue to be stored in paper files, microfilm or digital disks...

No, I don’t fear that others will have the urge to try to tap into my permanent record. What I’m worried about is that someday I will see it.

Maybe I’ll be bored. Maybe I’ll be at some age when I want to tie up the loose ends of my life by renewing my knowledge of my past. I’ll ask to see my permanent record. I’ll scan my mediocre school grades. I’ll note my more or less average standardized test scores. I’ll look up my IQ — my God, how could it be so low?

Just when I’m feeling good about myself — I can, after all, remember jokes I hear at parties and most of the scores I see on Sportscenter — I’ll find out that, all this time, I’ve been incredibly stupid.

That kind of thing shouldn’t be recorded permanently.

No, doctor, I didn't say I was a pony, I said I was a little horse

Does anyone out there use Advair? Is anyone else suffering from one of its more common side effects, semi-permanent hoarseness?

I'm not getting sick (hallelujah), but I now sound like a three-pack-a-day smoker. While that voice might come in handy when I want to present a racy image, it tends to make me feel self-conscious at work. Has anyone had any luck with lozenges, or anything like that?

Personal choices in a very public age

The Anchoress has a lovely takedown of the NYTimes' perplexed coverage of those stubborn women who insist on making personal choices for themselves. One can't help but marvel at the naivete of NYT reporters who write articles like the following:

At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates.

There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.

Many women at the nation's most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children.

Heaven forbid! You mean smart, focused women will sometimes make their own life choices and decide for themselves how to balance work and motherhood? What a terrible "problem"!

If you think the NYT wouldn't have a problem digging up quotes from academics who are just shocked, shocked by this, you'd be right:

...the likelihood that so many young women plan to opt out of high-powered careers presents a conundrum.

"It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?" said Marlyn McGrath Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, who served as dean for coeducation in the late 1970's and early 1980's.

How does that differ from the old, bad, sexist viewpoint earlier this century when the general consensus that women shouldn't be admitted to college, or hired, because it was assumed they'd all get pregnant as soon as possible? Isn't the subtext here that women are a problem because they insist on thinking for themselves and not doing what their "betters" intend for them to do?

..."What does concern me," said Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, "is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn't constructed along traditional gender roles"...

For many feminists, it may come as a shock to hear how unbothered many young women at the nation's top schools are by the strictures of traditional roles.

"They are still thinking of this as a private issue; they're accepting it," said Laura Wexler, a professor of American studies and women's and gender studies at Yale. "Women have been given full-time working career opportunities and encouragement with no social changes to support it.

Yup, that's the subtext. These academics and "feminists" are horrified that smart, determined women still insist, despite the best of brainwashing, on making personal choices on very personal topics. By God, they're not listening to those who have the real power to determine who should work and who should stay home with the babies! They're not letting their professors tell them if they should have children or who should rear them! They're making flexible life choices that might involve working from home, flex-time, and non-traditional gender roles such as having the husband stay home with the kids,but they're not "thinking outside the box" in the correct way! How dare they!

Sheesh. The Anchoress sums it up well:

Clearly the “it takes a village” mentality, wherein children are popped out and plopped into the care of others while the superior sorts take on the world, still has a welcome home in the minds of some of these academics, but I think the young women about whom they are fretting are bringing very healthy and thoughtful opinions to the matter...

The saddest side of this issue, which is not addressed by the NY Times, is that those women who do not have the privilege of an “elite” education (and the opportunity to meet an “elite” young man to marry) may find that as much as they would LIKE to stay home and raise their children, they will not have that opportunity, as they will have to work to simply pay the bills and put food on the table.

There are still inequalities - there always will be, that’s life - but it seems to me if the NY Times wants to boo-hoo for women, it might want to boo-hoo for the sisters who want to raise their children and cannot afford to. After all…that whole “sisterhood” idea is supposed to be a real one, right? And the line about women being “free to choose” what they do with their lives, that was supposed to be real, too, wasn’t it?

She has links to other takes on this topic as well.

The proper way to get sick

Um, oops.

A salmonella outbreak that may have sickened dozens of fifth-grade students may stem from a swanky restaurant where the children took a lesson in dining etiquette. Gaston County Health Department officials on Wednesday confirmed eight cases of salmonella poisoning and that a common link in the cases was a Friday dinner at the members-only City Club of Gastonia...

The schoolchildren were at the club for an etiquette training dinner as part of the Junior Assembly of Gastonia. The program teaches etiquette, manners and dance to children in fifth through eighth grades in schools around the region.

Next up: A class in legal manners: How To Be Civil While Filing A Civil Suit.

Special ice for special people

Well, there's being indulgent, and then there's spoiling your kid rotten, and then there's this:

Calling the Orlins ice skating enthusiasts may be a bit of an understatement. The Stamford residents are spending $630,000 to build an indoor ice skating rink in the backyard of their 13-acre property just off the Merritt Parkway...

"Millions of people come down our road to see it because nobody can believe it's there," said neighbor Maria Fedele.

According to plans filed with the city, the 28-foot-tall building will have an ice surface about half the size of a regulation hockey rink. A concrete floor underneath will allow the Orlins to use the rink for roller hockey, basketball and tennis when it's not covered with ice. The building will also have a viewing balcony and wet bar.

The Orlins defy reality, but follow etiquette, by downplaying their little construction job:

City officials said they believe the Orlins are building the rink for their son, a Stamford Youth Hockey player.

The Orlins declined an interview with The Advocate of Stamford. "My husband and I want to keep it low-key," Julie Orlin said. "We don't want to make a fuss about it." She said the Orlins do not think the project is unusual, saying they know of four similar rinks in Greenwich.

I suppose if they've got $600K to spare to build a hockey playroom for their son, they might as well use it in building something that will last. And just think what it will do for the resale value! You know, in case Bill Gates or the Sultan of Brunei ever decides to move to Connecticut.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the Net

How do you manage bullying on the internet?

It's a simple question: "Who do you hate?"

But posted in January by a 17-year-old Smithtown High School student from Nesconset on a Web site called MySpace.com - a popular cyber hangout swamped by teenagers - the question dangles out there like a virtual pinata.

"I want everyone to take a moment and really think about who you hate in our school," he writes, "then choose the one that you have the most disdain for and write it here for all to see. this may cause violance ... agression, and death. but iam willing to look past that for the better of the cause. so lets here it."

A pummeling of messages follow, one verbal swing after another.

The responses stretch for the next eight months over 16 pages, and number 240. They name everyone from a boy that "sucks at life" to "that stupid blind girl." One 16-year-old girl writes that she wants to stab a boy named "alex something ... in the eye with a really hot french fry."

Welcome to the world of cyberbullying, a new age form of aggression that can instantly erupt with a few keystrokes. At least one expert describes such virtual smearing as a suburban phenomenon because so many adolescents have their own computers and unsupervised time to use them - making Long Island the perfect environment for it.

Philisophical questions:

1. Should it be considered bullying if the recipient is not the direct target of the remark, and may in fact never learn about the remark?
2. Should it be considered bullying if it's just speech, and not action?
3. Should it be considered bullying if it's just a joke?

And most importantly:

4. Should it be considered bullying if there's no way to regulate this? It's impossible to catch all these sites, and virtually impossible to decisively identify who is participating. If it's defined as bullying, then it's a problem without a solution.

The problem with the middle road

The Education Gadfly has a glowing review of Cheri Yecke's new Fordham Foundation report, Mayhem in the Middle. It's online in .pdf format. The middle of what, you ask?

American middle schools have become the places "where academic achievement goes to die." So says Cheri Yecke, K-12 Education Chancellor of Florida and author of the new Fordham report Mayhem in the Middle: How middle schools have failed America, and how to make them work. Today's middle schools have succumbed to a concept of "middle schoolism" in which a strong academic curriculum is traded for one that focuses more on emotional and social development, and less on learning the basics. And the achievement data reflects "middle schoolism's" results...

According to Fordham President Chester E. Finn, Jr., "Trying to fix high schools while ignoring middle schools is like bandaging a wound before treating it for infection."

Checker has more to say:

That the middle grades can be a time of strong academic growth and marked achievement in core skills and knowledge is demonstrated by numerous effective school examples. Though youngsters between the ages of 10 and 15 can be ornery and exasperating, they can also learn lots of math and history, plenty of literature and science, and an abundance of art and music... Yecke focuses instead on the education philosophy, assumptions, goals, and expectations that drive a school spanning the middle grades and those who lead and teach in it. If they worship at the altar of middle schoolism, their theology tells them not to dwell overmuch on academics; other things matter more. If these leaders and teachers subscribe to standards and results-based accountability, however, they will pay greater heed to their students' long-term prospects than to their short-run adjustments, and to the academic gains that play so large a role in these youngsters' futures. Yecke's goal is to show why middle schoolism should be consigned to history's dustbin—another education fad that, however well intended, now needs to be retired.

Yecke, and Checker, aren't the only ones to quibble with the "middle-school theology." At least one researcher believes gifted children are routinely shortchanged by middle school policies.

Where the school taxes go

Polipundit can't figure out why some Georgians believe that there's enough education-related funding to go around:

More than 11,000 undocumented Hispanic residents were living in Dalton in 2000, according to Census Bureau figures. Latino children now make up the majority in Dalton city schools. Many graduate from high school and meet the requirements to enroll in a state college or university. This fall, more than 50 undocumented high school graduates enrolled at nearby Dalton State College.

If some Georgia lawmakers get their way, future graduates won't have that option. Senate Republicans said last week that they will make illegal immigration a top priority in the upcoming legislative session, supporting proposals that would bar undocumented residents from receiving taxpayer-funded services in Georgia.

Let me get this straight. For all this time, Georgia's taxpayers and legal residents have been picking up the tab for students whose parents immigrated illegally? And we're supposed to feel bad that the free ride is now at an end?

Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah), a co-sponsor of the legislation, said he hopes the law will discourage illegal immigrants from coming to Georgia in the first place.

"We cannot feed, clothe and educate everybody in the world," Johnson said Friday in a telephone interview. "We have limited resources. Money doesn't grow on trees. Having people here using up our limited resources is not fair."

Exactly. No one's picking on legal immigrants, and the article also makes the point that it's the parents to blame here, not the students. Certainly, my local high school has a problem with illegal immigrants, and I bet it's not a coincidence that my property taxes are sky-high. Polipundit tries to keep the comments on the topics of security and tax issues, but the discussion devolves into the usual race-baiting.

Cheating their way out of a job

Indiana is not buying the "testing-with-high-stakes-means-we-have-to-expect-that-some-poor-teachers-will-be-forced-to-cheat" line:

The consequences for Indiana teachers who help students cheat on their federally mandated tests are about to get much stiffer. From now on, teachers caught in the act could lose their credentials and, as a result, their jobs.

The policy shift underscores the state's resolve to stop educators from trying to manipulate scores on the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress-Plus, which starts today. Until now, educators caught corrupting the system were not punished by the state. Instead, discipline was left up to local school systems and most violators went unpunished. The threat to revoke a license is one in a number of measures the state has adopted.

Good.

And in other cheating news, check out Caveon's latest cheating roundup. Doug Craigen's list of "Worst Cheaters Ever" is classic.

There's no escaping the tests

Katrina evacuee tasks: Find shelter, eat a decent meal, put on dry pair of pants, sharpen Number 2 Pencil, take the TAKS:

Louisiana students who fled their homes after Hurricane Katrina and are enrolled in Texas schools will be required to take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills and, like Texas students, will be required to meet passing standards...

Student victims of Katrina also must pass all tests at the third-, fifth- and eighth-grade level to be promoted and must pass exit exams to graduate. TAKS testing begins as early as February for some grade levels.

Testing standards between Texas and Louisiana are different, said Scott Elliff, who heads the Corpus Christi Independent School District's Curriculum and Instruction Department. But evacuees will be treated the same as any new student coming into the district.

Potential federal standards changes won't be known until the spring of 2006.

Michael, who's guest-blogging at Joanne Jacob's site, had this to say about Michigan's decision to exempt Katrina evacuees from state tests:

I know some people are going to think I'm hard-hearted, but really there's no reason that a kid who's ready to go back to school can't sit down and take a test.

It's. Just. A. Test.

You sit down, and you take it. All this fretting about students' being in the "right frame of mind" for standardized testing is a waste of time, energy, and only serves to reinforce the specious premise upon which it's based. In a way, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You hype the test as something scary, something for which you need to be emotionally prepared... and it becomes more significant, it becomes scary.

Nothing would help those displaced kids more than being put back into the routine of life without grief counselors, without a bunch of fretting and worrying, and without special testing exemptions.

I've been saying for years that the critics who constantly insist that all tests are evil and scary and hard and biased against everyone except dead white right-handed men have no business yamming about test anxiety, because it's their hyperbolic comments that do much to increase that anxiety. If the students are truly traumatized, they should not be at school. But if their head is clear enough that they can show up and sit at a desk, give them the test. My guess is they now want to fit in with their new peers as much as possible, and having them all take the same exam is at least one thing they'll have in common.

Cashing in on an educational research project

Connecticut is covering all the bases by trying out a new and improved tutoring method that includes lots of extra instruction, AND cash:

This week, two dozen middle school students will begin an intensive education program run by the Norwalk Housing Authority, with extra instruction in math and language arts and parent involvement. Aside from the improved grades and standardized test scores that are expected for the sixth- and seventh-graders involved in the Housing Authority's Work Study Academy, the students, who live in public housing, will also receive $1,000 stipends for participating.

Organizers say the money is a way to reward the students for the extra work and teach them early about managing their finances by holding an extra seminar about saving their earnings.

Well, given that they live in public housing, I suppose it's not too much of a stretch to assume that their parents aren't necessarily experts in managing finances. The program wasn't for everyone; student and parents faced an extensive entry process. Thus, the results won't generalize to the entire student-in-public-housing population - but it WILL be interesting to see if it works.

Driving students crazy

Test anxiety skyrockets as administrators find new and improved invalid ways to use test scores:

The anxiety level is sky-high at schools across the state [Indiana] this week. Annual ISTEP+ testing begins, with high-stakes implications for schools, school districts, teachers, administrators and students.

Noblesville High School even managed to push the stakes higher, with a requirement to pass the standardized test or be banned from driving to school.

Whaaaa? Come on, folks. It's hard enough to convince the public that all these tests are both necessary and useful for improving education. Pulling something like this out of the hat is just plain silly. Yes, driving is a privilege, not a right, I know. However, I see no reason for a school to assign driving/parking privileges on anything other than (a) seniority and (b) need.

Time to brush up on 10th-grade math

How well would you do on the FCAT? Come Wednesday, you can find out:

State officials will put an old edition of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test online so people can see what it's like to be in 10th grade.

If you don't know much about history, don't know much biology, you might still do well. The test measures ability in reading and math. The questions were from the 2004 exam, and most likely won't be seen on any test again any time soon.

State education officials said Friday the test will be on the department's Web site. People can download or print the test and take it like students would, then get the answer key to see what they got right and wrong.

Ding dong, catblogging calling

Avon delivery day is always a popular day around my house:

The boxes Avon uses for shipping cosmetics are a little bit shorter and a little bit wider than printer paper boxes, and apparently they are irresistible to cats. I should cover them with fabric and sell them as kitty nests.

Keeping mum on the Pledge

The recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools has now been deemed unconstitutional:

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that the pledge's reference to one nation "under God" violates school children's right to be "free from a coercive requirement to affirm God." Karlton said he's bound by precedent set by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in 2002 that it was unconstitutional for the Pledge to be recited in public schools.

The Supreme Court threw out that case, ruling that Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow had no standing to bring the legal action. Newdow objected to the words "under God" in the pledge. Newdow brought the second case to the federal court -- this time, representing unidentified parents and their children.

I'm no lawyer, or expert on legal opinions, but plenty of bloggers are.

Instapundit: "Karl Rove must have arranged this."

Jim Lindgren: "One shouldn’t confuse what should or shouldn't be in the Pledge with the question whether mandating the Pledge enacts a state religion. It obviously doesn’t."

Eugene Volokh: "Whatever you think of the merits (remember, I'm talking here about the politics, not the merits), the public seems solidly against courts' striking down the saying of the "under God" Pledge in public schools...highlighting this issue in the public's mind thus helps strengthen the case for conservative [Supreme Court] nominees."

Eugene Volokh (again): "Students aren't legally required to say any of the pledge, but the theory, which has pretty substantial foundations in the Supreme Court's precedents, is that they are in any event psychologically coerced, since omitting the 'under God' will expose them to opprobrium from their peers."

ScotusBlog: "A federal judge in Sacramento...ruled that it violates the rights of public school children in three California districts for students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day -- so long as the phrase "under God" is included. The judge did not strike down the Pledge with that phrase in it, but merely barred its recital in the three districts."

Howard Bashman: "Here we go again...I predict that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will disagree with U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton's decision...Of course, if I am incorrect, then public schools within the nine States and two Territories located within the Ninth Circuit should no longer be reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. "

Parents, what's your opinion?

Test changes Down East

The Maine Educational Assessment, or MEA, might soon be replaced by the new SAT:

Commissioner of Education Susan A. Gendron has been promoting the idea of replacing the Maine Educational Assessment for juniors with the college-admissions exam. Ms. Gendron has said she thinks requiring students to take the test would communicate the message that any student can go to college and encourage more students to seek a postsecondary education...

Roughly 75 percent of high school juniors in the state already take the SAT. Maine students who took the test in 2004—the last time the old, two-section version was given—scored an average of 509 on the verbal section and a 505 on the mathematics portion, out of a possible 800 on each. The verbal score is a point higher than the national average, while the mathematics score is 15 points lower.

Interestingly, taking the SAT would be required - with the registration fee paid by the state - but there would be no minimum required score for graduation.

Bopping for a good cause

You have to love educators who use the one real weapon that adults have against kids - the power to annoy - to raise money for hurricane relief:

Delone Catholic High School in McSherrystown, Pa., has a fun fundraising program called "Stop the Bop." Suggested by a few members of the student council, the school is playing Hanson's 1996 hit "MMMBop" through the loudspeakers before classes begin, between periods and during lunch. The idea? Annoy students into donating; have them pay to stop the music.

The goal is $3,000, which could be reached if each of the 659 students donates $5. "MMMBop" has been playing since Wednesday, and the school has raised about $2,300 so far...

"Kids have said, 'If I give you a blank check, will you stop this music?' " Cox says. "People are just, like, some people give twenties. You say, 'Thank you very much.' They say, 'No, we just want it to end. Even though it's for a good cause, we just want it to end.'

Next up - the use of Barry Manilow and Neil Diamond songs to raise test scores.

Ms. Cheesy Goth strikes again

Remember how happy I was when I discovered black vodka, and how I said I didn't care if it made me seem like a stereotypical bonehead goth who was into stuff just for the spooky aspect of it?

I'm just getting worse. I just downloaded Tubular Bells, aka the theme from The Exorcist, as my cell phone ringtone, and I can't tell you how happy it makes me. I just love that song. I listened to the album as a kid long before I ever saw the movie, so I don't find it scary.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't like the fact that my phone will now creep some people out. So if anyone knows where I can download the theme from Halloween for a Samsung camera phone, I'd like that one too.

Opening the GATE a bit too wide

The Lodi Unified school district (CA) is unhappy that membership in the gifted-student program Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) is down, and doesn't seem to reflect the ethnic diversity of the local population. So, of course, they've suggested tinkering with the admission formulas:

Trustees recently approved changing the requirements of the Gifted and Talented Education program to allow more opportunity for minority students to join its ranks.

Students are now eligible to receive extra points on top of their standardized test scores for limiting factors present in their lives. So, for example, a child who has a learning disability, is an English language learner or comes from an impoverished or culturally diverse background will receive special consideration.

"We've been seeing lately our (GATE) enrollment is down," Lodi Unified Superintendent Bill Huyett said Monday. "That's an indicator that it needs to be opened up a little"...

Despite past attempts to diversify its gifted programs, the district found GATE enrollment did not reflect the makeup of the district.

Imagine that. Schools tend to find that academic grades, test scores, and other measures of academic achievement are not randomly dispersed among ethnic group members. Seen in that light, the fact that GATE participation doesn't mirror the "diversity" of the district is a validation of the GATE admissions criteria. Unfortunately, "diversity" trumps all, so these educators would like to muddy the waters by including some very fuzzy criteria.

Who's going to define what a learning disability is? What criteria will be used? How severe does the disability need to be? Why would the district expect that a student with any sort of learning disability would be able to handle the GATE curriculum? How long can a student be living in the US and still be considered an English language learner? How are we defining an impoverished background? And why would any of these factors, which could be considered a disability, be lumped in together with being from a "culturally diverse" background, which is not? Does this mean Asian and Indian children who are already off the top of the testing charts will be even more likely to be accepted? Or will some cultures be considered more diverse than others?

I agree that the codes are in conflict; it's ridiculous to define a program as being for kids who are on the top end of the intelligence scale and then also demand that the kids in that group be diverse in any sort of multicultural way. They will be who they are, and if the district is truly unhappy to find out that any particular group seems underrepresented, the solution is to investigate why that might be, not to fudge the numbers afterward with some ill-defined and highly-unreliable admission criteria.

What really frosts my shorts about this whole scenario is that the programs are for the benefit of the students enrolled in them. Therefore, the adults involved should be committed to developing admission criteria that guarantee, as much as possible, that any particular student is ready for more challenges, will benefit by more challenges, and will complete the program with the increased self-esteem that comes from tackling, and overcoming, tough educational programs. The current criteria address this by requiring that students perform above a certain percentile on the Raven Progressive Matrices or the CAT-6 exam.

Instead, the adults involved are dithering over the fact that the "diversity" is not what it should be, and have suggested criteria that may in fact be negatively related to the ability of any particular student to do this work or to benefit from it. Does that sound like a plan that's in the students' best interests to you?

The California Association for the Gifted, or CAG defines gifted students as:

...a child enrolled in a public elementary or secondary school of this state who is identified as possessing demonstrated or potential abilities that give evidence of high performance capability...

"Abilities that give evidence of high performance capability." Period. There is no research supporting the notion that overcoming learning disabilities, or learning English late in life, or coming from an impoverished ba