Number 2 Pencil

The Breakfast Club, with mom and dad

British schools get tough on yobs - and their parents:

PARENTS face weekend detentions with their kids under a tough crackdown on classroom rowdies. Unruly pupils will have to attend catch-up lessons while their mums and dads get a lecture on how to control them. The move is among sweeping powers to tackle problem children in the Education Bill unveiled tomorrow.

Teachers will be given the legal right to detain kids on any day they choose, with or without parents’ consent. Education Secretary Ruth Kelly wants heads to set up Saturday sin-bins for bullies, yobs and truants. Offenders will be forced to turn up in full school uniform, with a parent, for two hours’ tuition. Ms Kelly said it would give staff more authority and raise standards.

She said: “It only takes a handful of poorly behaved pupils to make life difficult for staff and disrupt the education of others. The message to the minority is clear — disrupt the class and you will disrupt your weekend.” Parenting orders, backed by the threat of a £500 fine, will be slapped on families of kids who skip detention.

That's a hefty fine. Wonder if the parental rule is really expected to have an effect on the "yobs," or if the parental refusal, heaped on top of student misbehavior, is really just an avenue towards a quicker expulsion of the student? The one school that has already instituted these rules reports that "truancy rates have slumped while exam results have soared in four years" - which could certainly be the result of the problem kids being booted after their parents failed to attend detention.

Headteachers are also set to get more control over the fate of excluded pupils. They will be able to summon parents of kids barred for bad behaviour for an interview before they are re-admitted. Another measure allows teachers to seize mobile phones, iPods and games consoles if they are used in class.

They didn't have those powers before now? Wow.

All he has to know is how to fit 1 (ball) into 1 (goal)

Well, he doesn't get paid the big bucks to know math:

England football captain David Beckham confessed he is befuddled by his six-year-old son Brooklyn's maths homework in an interview.

Beckham, 30, admitted to being baffled when Brooklyn recently asked for help with a school assignment and had to turn to his former Spice Girls pop star wife Victoria to help out. "Their homework is so hard these days. I sat down with Brooklyn the other day -- and I was like, 'Victoria, maybe you should do the homework tonight'.

Is it a coincidence that Beckham is a star in a sport where the scores aren't very big numbers?

Bet the school artist had a field day illustrating this article

Here's a question for the Devoted Readers of N2P - would any article on this topic be inappropriate for a high school paper? Or are there degrees of inappropriateness here?

Some Noblesville High School students say they are being censored after the superintendent of Noblesville schools decided that the school paper will not be allowed to run a controversial article on oral sex. Superintendent Dr. Lynn Lehman said the piece was not appropriate for publication in the Mill Stream, the school's paper.

The article had been placed on hold earlier this month after Noblesville High School principal Anetta Petty said an oversight committee needed to review it before publication. "I think it's well written and in context, I don't think that this subject would offend people," said Jill Gingery, the paper's editor-in-chief.

I'd like to point out to Miss Gingery that everything will offend someone, as the recent Mohammed cartoon controversy makes crystal clear. Often, the point with information in a school newspaper is not whether it's offensive - or, rather, that shouldn't be the point - but whether the article/speech has any educational value. If it's merely prurient - or if, as one student is quoted saying, it doesn't tell students anything they don't already know - then why should the school allow it to be published?

Alice loves her new toy

Black-and-white velvet kitty toys, to match my black-and-white kitties.

Arsenic Fashions rules. They have more kitty toys, if you're interested.

FairTest feels the crunch

Well, well, well.

For more than 20 years, FairTest, a small nonprofit group headquartered on the second floor of an old house here, has been the No. 1 critic of America's big testing companies and their standardized tests. In 1987, when FairTest began publishing its list of colleges that did not require applicants to submit SAT's, there were 51; today there are 730, including Holy Cross, Bowdoin, Bates, Mount Holyoke and Muhlenberg.

...for all FairTest's impact, its days may be numbered. Never before has standardized testing so dominated American public education, thanks to the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind Law. Every child from grade 3 to high school must now take state tests. And the Bush administration is considering extending those tests to colleges.

"With N.C.L.B., a lot of people feel the debate is over," said Monty Neill, director of FairTest, officially the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. "The attitude seems to be, 'Testing is so pervasive, what's the point?' " Support from foundations has virtually dried up and individual donations have not made up the difference. "Our board has seriously discussed whether to fold the operation," Mr. Neill said.

I find this a pretty revealing comment. There's always a need for testing to be scrutinized, for tests to be evaluated, and for the public to be informed. But I've always sensed that FairTest's commentary was always anti-any-testing, not pro-good-testing. Now that testing is so pervasive, it's not helpful to bash tests rather than inform the public. ETS's president seems to agree:

Kurt Landgraf, the president of the testing service, which administers the SAT, wrote in an e-mail message: "Perhaps if they had been more attuned to the public's support for using tests to help teachers teach and students learn, then they might have had wider support."

Further along in the article, I don't quite get the point of NYT reporter Michael Winerip listing this as though it's a bombshell:

In a recent newsletter, FairTest printed an analysis of SAT results, using, and crediting, College Board research showing the direct correlation between family income and SAT scores. For every extra $10,000 a family earns, children's combined math and verbal scores go up 12 to 31 points. So children whose parents earn $50,000 score better on average (a combined 996 SAT) than students from families who earn $40,000 (967) but worse than students from families who earn $60,000 (1014).

Okay, who alive today doesn't know that kids with more money tend to have more educational advantages? It makes sense to me that kids from wealthier homes do better on all educational indices; if they didn't do better on the SAT, parents would question the efficacy of private schools and tutoring. Why this is being mentioned here as though it's surprising knowledge - or a valid test criticism - is beyond me.

At the same time, correlation doesn't equal causation. Just because A and B are correlated, that doesn't mean A causes B. B might cause A, or some C could be causing both to happen. Smarter parents might make more money, and their kids get both the nature and nurture benefits. We are trying to close the gap by offering all students better opportunities, but a test that doesn't reflect when kids know more material, either by virtue of schooling or parental largesse, is a pretty useless test.

"The Little Mermaid" - coming soon to a marine biology class near you

When is a video an "educational crutch?"

...Loudoun County (VA) School Board member Joseph Guzman (Sugarland Run) says some commercial movies, such as the Lion King, which he says was shown in a science class to illustrate the “Circle of Life,” and another Disney cartoon, Mulan, which he says was used in an AP world history class, cross the line from education to entertainment. Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Sharon Ackerman and her staff are looking into Guzman’s suggestion that commercial movies are used as educational crutches.

A compromise: Don't punish sleepers unless they snore

Parents: "Start the school day later!"
Schools: "Make your kids go to bed earlier the night before!"

The debate rages on:

The much debated idea of later start times for valley high schools will be tossed around again. The Clark County School Board is holding a special public meeting on the issue Tuesday, Feb. 23.

Armed with the latest research on how sleep-deprived teens don't do well in school, some parents will call upon the school board once again to push back the start times for high schools. But there are plenty of teachers, parents and even students who don't think the benefits of an extra hour of sleep will outweigh the costs.

What if he'd gotten a stonehenge design instead?

Too much for the British:

SCHOOLBOY Daniel Artingsall has been banned from class after getting spirals shaved in his hair. Teachers decided it broke rules on extreme styles and said Daniel, 13, would have to be taught alone so he did not start a trend.

But his father Dean, 38, was astonished by the decision and withdrew his son from school.

As trends go, it seems pretty darn innocuous, especially when compared to past British tonsorial experiments. Or is the problem that it's not spiky or moppy enough?

How about "teaching with," instead of "teaching to"?

Jay Mathews offers a spirited defense of a process much maligned in the education world - "teaching to the test":

When we say "teaching to the test," we should acknowledge that we are usually not talking about those drill fests. Rather, we often use the phrase to refer to any course that prepares students for one of the annual state assessment exams required under the No Child Left Behind Act. For reasons that escape me, we never say a teacher is "teaching to the test" if she's using a test she wrote herself. We share the teacher's view that what she is doing is helping her students learn the material, not ace the test. But if she is preparing the class for an exam written by some outsider, the thinking goes, then she must be forced to adhere to someone else's views on teaching and thus is likely to present the material too quickly, too thinly, too prescriptively, too joylessly -- add your own favorite unattractive adverb...

...Conversations about this would go more smoothly if we didn't have such distorted views of what teaching to the test means. We might instead turn the discussion to what methods of instruction work best or how much time our children should spend studying.

Wish you were here, wish I wasn't

Parents often urge their kids to go out and see the world. Doesn't look like too many parents are encouraging their kids to travel here, though:

Last week I reported on the contest being sponsored by the North Dakota National Guard which is offering high school students 540 all-expenses paid trips to the Peace Garden State.

So far, fewer than thirty kids have answered the call, and the deadline for entering is February 28. The North Dakota National Guard is offering 10 students from each state and four US territories the opportunity to come to the state in honor of the 200th anniversary of Lewis & Clark's return trip through there.

C'mon, students! Where's your spirit of adventure?

Trophies for all

At this point, should it still even be called a "trophy?"

When a youth basketball league in Framingham finishes its season next month, every fifth- and sixth-grader will receive a shiny trophy. Even those on the last-place team. ''We want them to be happy and come back to play the following year," said the Temple Beth Am Brotherhood league's director, Rich Steckloff.

In communities across Boston's western suburbs, at the end of long seasons on the soccer pitch, hoop court, or baseball diamond, kids are getting trophies not for winning championships, but for simply participating.

On the one hand, yes, participating is better than not participating, so you do want to recognize that. On the other hand, one of the purposes of youth sports is to teach the valuable lessons of good sportsmanship and how to be a polite, non-trophied loser. Giving everyone a trophy waters down the whole concept behind awarding trophies; the winners may feel less of a sense of accomplishment. (John Hawkins seconds the notion.) Better to give none at all than to give everyone one.

Update: On a not-unrelated note, John Rosenberg wonders why we're so eager to redefine the "gifted student" category to include students for whom there's no traditional evidence of being gifted:

...the reason students are “shut out of” gifted programs are not at all “difficult to pin down.” It’s the same reason so many applicants are “shut out of” Harvard, Stanford, et. al; they don’t score high enough on admission tests. Now, the reasons for that may be difficult to pin down, but opening up gifted programs to students “who might have special abilities but may not have been recognized through traditional screening methods” would not seem the way to provide answers.

I find these two situations analogous because what's happening in both contexts is that adults are trying to redefine the scoring of the "game." They're allegedly doing so for the benefit of the children involved, but I think they're making things worse. In the first situation, trophies are being given out right and left, despite the fact that you can't be a winner unless you score more points than the other team. A trophy and no points will not, in the real world, be worth much.

Being placed in an advanced class after one hasn't demonstrated basic skills as measured on a standardized test might not be worth much to a student, either.

(Via Joanne.)

Update: Dr. Helen sees this all as more support for the homeschooling choice:

Wouldn't the proper way to answer the question of why Blacks and Hispanics are lagging behind Whites and Asians be to conduct research on the factors that may be causing the discrepancies and remedy those rather than setting up a phony group of gifted students whose only gift may be that they have a teacher who holds self-esteem and looking diverse in higher regard than children actually learning anything?

With such unscientific inquiry, it is no wonder more and more parents are homeschooling or turning to private schools to educate their children...

Higher stakes, higher pay

The more-pay-for-higher-scores plan in Florida has passed the Board of Education approval stage:

The Florida Board of Education unanimously approved a plan Tuesday that will give some teachers bonuses based solely on their students' performance on standardized tests.

As early as next year, the plan will award the top 10 percent of teachers in each school district a 5 percent bonus based on learning gains shown on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

If districts want to reward more teachers, they can. But there may not be state funding for it, officials warn. The plan also will require the state to create exams or other assessments in every subject not covered by the FCAT.

Whew. Possibly no funding and definitely more testing? Gee, wonder if this plan is causing any controversy. (Obviously, I'm being sarcastic here.)

A possible conclusion to one proposition

I've seen quite a bit of coverage about this recent review of California's Prop 227:

It doesn't matter whether California students who don't know English are taught in bilingual classrooms or fully immersed in the language, according to a five-year study of California's Proposition 227. What matters is the quality of the education they receive.

"We don't see any compelling evidence that one is better than the other," said study co-director Amy Merickel with the American Institutes for Research. "We've been arguing about the wrong thing for a long time. ... It doesn't appear that forcing the majority of students to take the immersion pill is going to be a solution."

Seven years after California's controversial Prop. 227 passed and reduced the use of bilingual programs throughout the state, the 228-page study largely sidestepped the political debate surrounding English learners. Instead it recommended that educators put less emphasis on dictating specific methods and more on rewarding academic success.

The media is essentially touting the issue as "a draw." It's an interesting one, given the following salient points of the research:

Key findings from the study include:

# Since the passage of Proposition 227, students across all language classifications in all grades have experienced performance gains on state achievement tests.

# During this time, the performance gap between English learners and native English speakers has remained virtually constant in most subject areas for most grades.

# Interviews with representatives of schools and districts among the highest performers in the state with substantial English learner populations further supported the finding that there is no single path to academic excellence among English learners.

The key points also note, though, that there are critical factors here, even if there's not one critical method:

The factors identified as most critical to their success were: staff capacity to address English learners’ linguistic and academic needs; school wide focus on English language development and standards-based instruction; shared priorities and expectations in educating English learners and systematic, ongoing assessment and careful data use to guide instruction.

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Saw this snippet on the Salt Lake Tribune's website:

Palm Beach County, Fla., created the controversial ''butterfly ballot'' in the 2000 presidential election that reportedly confused more than a thousand Gore-Lieberman voters such that they wound up marking their ballots for a minor-party candidate.

In February 2006, local education officials told the Palm Beach Post that too many of the county's high school students apparently knew answers on the statewide comprehensive test but were incorrectly marking the answer sheets. The multiple choice questions require only one circle to be darkened on the sheet, but other questions require darkening digits of an actual numerical answer, apparently bewildering students into darkening too many or too few circles.

So the FCAT answer sheet is the actual problem, hmm? My question is - how do the local education officials know when students would have gotten the questions right, when their answers were marked wrong? Did they ask them? Did they just flag forms with too many or too few digits marked? Or did they actually find lots of answer sheets with the correct answer bubbled in in the wrong place? If the student didn't have the right answer, then the answer sheet confusion isn't the real problem here.

The PBP has additional info:

The FCAT math wizards, it seems, haven't quite figured out that 7.5 and 7 1/2 are the same number. That might not seem like such a big deal. Not everybody can be a math genius. Lord knows I'm not. But this is a problem because Florida students who do know that 7.5 and 7 1/2 are the same number could lose FCAT points if they rely on that mathematical certainty.

Post reporter Nirvi Shah explained the glitch in a story on Monday. The state wants to grade the math tests by machine. Shouldn't be a problem, right? Machines have graded multiple-choice tests for decades. Students just "bubble in" the correct circle on an answer form with a No. 2 pencil. But the state's standardized test gurus had a problem with that...the student could guess.

...So, on many math questions, they require what is known as a "gridded response." The student works the math problem, then fills in the correct numbers or symbols of a "grid" that consists of five columns, each containing the numbers 0 through 9 and a decimal point. The middle three columns also offer a "/" symbol used to express fractions, if the student chooses to do so.

As Ms. Shah's story explained, if 7.5 is the correct answer to a problem, students get credit for gridding the 7, a decimal point and then the 5. But students who gridded the 7 in the first column, followed by the 1 in the second column, the / in the third column and a 2 in the fourth column — which works out to 7 1/2 — would be marked wrong.

Even though they were right.

Oh, yeah, that's a problem.

Update: I should clarify my terse comment on this issue. The directions for the exam are indeed clear, and I should have linked to this earlier. It's quite possible that the newspaper coverage was less a sign of a sudden increase in misgrids and more a harbinger of a slow news day.

However, when I originally posted, I was thinking that, if in fact a lot of students are misgridding the answers - especially if there's a recent increase in that - and it's deemed worthy of newspaper coverage, there's a problem. Regardless of whether we assume instructions to be crystal clear, if the same wrong answer crops up again and again (when it's not intended to be an attractive distractor), there may be a problem with the key. It sounds like the problem may be, as one commenter alluded to, that not only do students not know math, they can't follow instructions either. However, it's reasonable to ask if there are in fact a lot of students out there who understand the concept of fractions and don't grid that properly on the exam (I suppose one could argue that their knowledge doesn't count unless they understand the concept of decimals as well).

I didn't originally say much, but I probably shouldn't have posted anything until I had the chance to explore the issue, and the media coverage, further to see if there was anything floating about suggesting that the number of misgrids had actually increased recently (the FCAT site, for one thing, says nothing on this issue).

One last thing, though - if you're going to leave a sarcastic comment about how you know where I work? Not only do you end up looking, well, silly, for getting that completely wrong, but I don't appreciate any public comments on the matter at all. I'll state for the record that I don't work for any "large testing company," but I'm also not opening the question up for public discussion. I figure I provide enough disclaimers and notification to ensure that no one confuses N2P with the official statements of any testing organization, and I don't want to have to add more.

Trackbacks are back

Trackbacks have been reinstated. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

The adventures at home

The big Cobranchi has the Carnival of Homeschooling at his place this week. He was recently interviewed by the Free Market New Network. And I agree with him 100% about the existence of the South Carolina state motto; from what I understand, folks from North Carolina use it as well.

As for the links, I like this instructional essay on fun ways to teach mathematical constructs to three- to six-year-old kids. I suppose Richard Cohen would insist on telling the little kids to pick up their paintbrushes instead - those equations are just too darn useless!

What's the value of a math-phobic "journalist"?

Start here with Joanne's comments and read the tale of the student who's flunked algebra six times - and who is being reassured, by the Washington Post, that that's just fine.

Pharyngula puts the hurting on scaredy-cat Richard Cohen: "It's about what you'd expect of a fellow who brags elsewhere in his essay that his best class in high school was typing." The comments are pretty phenomenal, too.

Let me just add my $.02. It should be a criminal offense for a journalist to address this issue (on any school subject) and fail to ask: "Were her teachers any good? Did they offer any tutoring? When she failed once, did they try something different the second time? And how many other students are this frustrated as well? How many of them all have the same teacher?" To add to this lack of any sort of journalistic investigation the insistence that the problem is the math, because it's just a bad old hard subject that adults almost never use in real life, is idiotic as well.

Thumbprints, basic skills, and lost cameras

One big honkin' post to cover some of the multitudes of testing, education and child-rearing news I've read lately. Enjoy!

Testing news:

Stockton (CA) isn't waiting for students to get in high school - or even finish middle school - before they are exposed to the CAHSEE content.

LSAC folks are wondering what the recent fuss over thumbprinting is all about. I wonder if the Patriot Act is really the issue here, or just a convenient excuse for would-be test-takers to complaint about rigorous identification methods that are implemented solely to thwart cheating.

ETS has put off the proposed modifications to the GRE for one year. A description of the revised test is here, with changes due to be implemented in the fall of 2007. The press release notes that "the delay will better serve test takers and graduate institutions." The snitty quotes from the representative of the Princeton Review in the Dartmouth article are pretty funny to me. First they complain about the test being shorter and adaptive, now they complain about it being longer and non-adaptive.

Arizona aims to add science to the state standardized exams. In addition, the current seniors have to pass all three of the AIMS sections — reading, writing and math — in order to be awarded a diploma. The current numbers aren't that pretty - only 73 percent of current high school sophomores have passed at least one section.

Education news:

I think this is going to be a pretty fascinating article for any parent to read:

The amount of black history integrated into lessons varies not only by state but from classroom to classroom, educators say. While Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois have diversified teachers’ resources, it is up to individual districts and teachers what is actually taught. And some teachers fear that a lack of focus on different cultures in standardized tests pushes that information to the background.

“I think we do get kind of bogged down with the everyday teaching that we kind of overlook a lot of the multiracial issues, not only black but other students as well,” said Peggy Durden, a third-grade teacher at Stockwell Elementary in Evansville. “They’re not concerned, I don’t think, with the issues we’re talking about. (They’re focused on) the basic concepts we teach.”

Funny, those school administrators, insisting that teachers focus on basic skills before focusing on diversity lessons. I find it a tad disturbing that a third-grade teacher would refer to her required lessons in math and reading as "bogging" her down.

Graduate student Rohan Duggan should certainly go enroll elsewhere - perhaps at a university where the grammatical skills and vocabulary knowledge of his professors are at least at the college level.

Child-rearing news:

I agree with BoingBoing that this is an example of some really cruddy child-rearing. Talk about missing the opportunity to teach a lesson in basic manners and morality.

Was this transgression worth an arrest and $10,000 bail? Perhaps we should ask the kid who was standing outside in chilly, drizzly weather for hours with no coat to protect her.

Last year, spam mail. This year, spam roses.

Talk about setting the bar too high. This guy's gonna have a few scary guys waiting for him in a dark alley, after they all get dumped by their girlfriends:

If any female juniors at Cypress Bay High School weren't aware of classmate Paul Kim - they know him now. The 17-year-old junior ordered 500 red roses and had them delivered to nearly all his female classmates on Valentine's Day.

A card attached to the roses said, "To all the lovely ladies of 2007, here's wishing you a Happy Valentine's Day. Affectionately, Paul Kim."
advertisement He said he used money he had been saving since his birthday in December to pay for the roses, which cost about $900.

So, will one of the girls who didn't get a rose allege discrimination, or will one of the girls who did get one claim sexual harassment?

And here I just thought you guys were being quiet

If you couldn't access my blog over the past couple of days, there was a good reason. Thanks to a comedy of errors (on my part, not Verve's - they're frickin' awesome), I lost my domain name for a couple of days. As you can see, there was no one else itching to get it, so it's back under my command.

If Cupid were a cat

Happy Valentine's Day to all, from me and my big-footed baby!

Higher FCATs, more bucks?

Florida Education Commissioner John Winn wants to get serious - about tying teacher bonuses to FCAT scores:

In Miami-Dade and Broward counties, teachers could earn bonuses ranging from $1,710 to $4,150 per year on salaries that range from $34,200 to $83,070.

The policy would add another set of consequences to Florida's high-stakes accountability system, which already determines school grades, high-school graduation and whether students can progress from third to fourth grade.
Winn said the Effective Compensation plan, which he dubbed E-Comp, would encourage teacher improvement, reward excellence and bolster recruitment and retention.

The critics, they disagree:

E-Comp would replace existing bonus systems in Miami-Dade and Broward, both of which Winn said were unacceptable.

In Miami-Dade, a 5 percent bonus is given to all teachers at 28 schools that have the largest gains in FCAT reading and math scores. UTD President Karen Aronowitz said that system is fairest because many teachers contribute to a student's success. ''When we send firefighters to a fire, do we pay them differently based on who handles the hose?'' she asked.

No, but we do tend to get rid of those who don't pick up their end of the hose, especially if the end result is a house burnt down to the ground. If the public were secure in the knowledge that bad teachers would not only not share in school-wide compensation, but would get dismissed to boot, I'm not sure that merit pay for especially-good teachers would even be an issue.

I'll have a Diet Coke, hold the plague germs

Now THIS is what I call a science fair project:

Benito Middle School student Jasmine Roberts examined the amount of bacteria in ice served at fast food restaurants. Her project won the science fair at the New Tampa school, and she hopes to win a top prize at the Hillsborough County Regional Science and Engineering Fair, which starts Tuesday.

The 12-year-old compared the ice used in the drinks with the water from toilet bowls in the same restaurants. Jasmine said she found the results startling. "I thought there might be a little bacteria in the ice, but I never expected it to be this much," she said. "And I never thought the toilet water would be cleaner."

Her discovery: Seventy percent of the time, the ice had more bacteria than the toilet water.

And we're not talking harmless little bugs, either. She found E. coli in three of the five ice samples. I think Tampa's got a bit of a problem - and a budding epidemiologist on its hands.

They're so adorable when they're too small to eat you

Kill me now, before I die from all the cuteness.

(Via CuteOverload.com, which isn't afraid to say that baby snakes can be cute too.)

Standardizing the college experience

A Courant (CT) editorial argues passionately against standardized tests for college students:

In the measurement-happy world of federal accountability, the presidential Commission on the Future of Higher Education is thinking about taking educational testing theory to the next level. It is pondering federal standardized testing for colleges and universities to prove that students are learning...

This is a chilling idea that completely misses the point of a college education in a free society. Higher education is a self-guided quest for knowledge. It is the students' responsibility to make the most of it, not the government's. Colleges and universities already meet rigorous standards to be accredited and to receive federal funds, and public institutions are required to meet state standards.

How is it possible to test all that a college student has learned?

It's not possible to test everything anyone has learned, but it's certainly possible to test some things. The question is, do we care? Do we care if someone graduates with a BA in Fine Arts and is a phenomenal sculptor, but not so great at spelling? Well, we certainly care when they aren't even willing to admit there are correct spellings. Do we care if someone graduates with a degree in Education but can't write a complete sentence? Well, yes, I'd say we do, at least if we're going to hire them to be around schoolchildren. And I'd be willing to argue that a college-level test of basic skills would give lie to those "rigorous standards" as listed above, at least for some college graduates, and would embarass the heck out of some degree programs. But given how tough it's been for states to create exams for the K-12 grades, and how tough it's been for them to get everyone on board with the content, standards, and stakes, I can't imagine anyone volunteering to actually produce these hypothetical college exams, no matter what the price.

The arguments for homeschooling

The Cato Institute wonders what all the fuss is about:

The reality, verifiable by anecdote and standardized test alike, is that in every academic area home-schooled students are far surpassing students enrolled in government schools. The most reliable data are from a 1998 study by Dr. Lawrence Rudner of the University of Maryland in which over 20,000 home-schooled students took standardized tests and completed other questionnaires. Unlike previous studies, Rudner's was conducted on a comparatively large sample and included only families who agreed to participate before knowing their children's test scores. The study concludes that "in every subject and at every grade level of the [tests], home schooled students scored significantly higher than their public and private school counterparts." Furthermore, the study shows that home-schooled children had average scores that fell between the 82nd and the 92nd percentile in reading and reached the 85th percentile in math. By the eighth grade, the average home-schooled student is performing four grade levels above the national average.

Home-schooled students are almost always self-selected (I suppose there are a few kids whose parents would rather not teach them at home, but are forced to do so), so author Isabel Lyman is, quite rightly, not arguing that homeschooling causes these academic gains.

Some interesting arguments:

Home schooling, by contrast, is based on the principles of liberty. Families enjoy the freedom to teach what they want, when they want. Parents can advocate a strict creationist view or they can offer evolution, without fear of offending anyone. Home-schooling parents don't take a dime from taxpayers and don't impose their educational methods on others; their children certainly are not gunning down other children.

The principles of liberty as applied to homeschooling extend so far as to include unschooling, in which it certainly seems possible for children to miss the lessons that come with drudgery, boring topics, and external schedules (whether you think those lessons should be missed is another issue). And while homeschooled kids might not be scoping out (in the ugliest sense) other children in large numbers, we can no longer argue that all homeschooled familes are insulated from teenage violence. As The American Spectator notes, though, dangerous homeschooled kids are very much the exception, not the rule, and the evidence is piling up that homeschooled kids, in general, are not lacking in academic or social progress when compared to their public- and private-schooled peers.

And as a bonus, all plates get licked clean!

German restaurant bans little stinky critters that make a lot of noise and disrupt the evening dinner hours:

A German restaurant has drawn protests and plaudits for refusing to give a dinner reservation to a mother who wanted to bring her two small children. Dogs would be welcome, it said, but "here, children are not allowed in the evening."

Jana Schmid, 32, wanted to celebrate a christening with five adults and two small children at the "Boheme" restaurant at Augsburg in southern Germany, the only non-smoking eatery in the area. "We are always being told that Germany must do more for children," she told the weekly Bild am Sonntag.

"And then we are told they are not welcome, all they do is whine and disturb people. It would be unthinkable in countries such as Italy and Spain."

Perhaps dogs aren't as well-behaved in Italy and Spain - you know those German hounds tend to be very disciplined.

I'm sure this has some parents (other than the ones quoted here) infuriated, but I can't help giggling at the thought at fancily-dressed diners breathing a sigh of relief at the lack of loud kiddies in the place, only to be seated next to a beagle who howls along with the violinists.

Problem solving in the 21st century

Warning, teachers - sometimes, you may not want to know:

(Thanks to Brian and everyone else who sent this to me!)

CAHSEE battle heats up

The battle over California's exit exam rages in the courts:

On Wednesday, 20 high school seniors and their parents sued the state Department of Education and school Superintendent Jack O'Connell, claiming the exam is illegal and discriminatory. They worry the test may prevent the students from graduating. "I don't think it should hold up your graduation,'' said Wasi, who is not part of the lawsuit but would be affected if it is successful.

The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco County Superior Court. It seeks a court injunction to delay the consequences of the exam for students in this year's class. Defendants also include the state of California and the state Board of Education. Lead attorney Arturo Gonzalez said the lawsuit likely will expand to represent tens of thousands of students who have met all local requirements to graduate except passing both sections of the exam.

Frankly, any student who receives passing grades in all their classes, is promoted all the way through 12th grade, and yet gets stumped by this test should sue the local Dept. of Ed - but not for the reasons the testing critics would think. Not only are the the California High School Exit Examination (or CAHSEE) items at the 10th grade level (math items don't go above Algebra I, for example), but the CA DOE website lists nine alternative paths for students who cannot pass the exam.

If an exit exam is going to be used, at some point, it has to count. This means a class of students will, by definition, be the first, and one could argue that the students this year haven't exactly been caught by surprise. Some enterprising reporters have even discovered that most students don't seem concerned about the exam, or go so far as to support it.

Nonethless, in addition to the lawsuit, we're seeing the usual arguments made that "multiple intelligences" are the issue when students make high grades but can't deal with multiple-choice items. It's tough enough for California to fight the battle for mandatory algebra in high school, but without the exit exam (or some equivalent high-stakes standardized test), there's no way to measure whether algebra is being taught effectively, or consistently.

If you were a parent, would you be satisfied if your teenager had an "A" in Algebra I but couldn't answer a question of the "If x=3 and y=4, then 2x+5y=" type? And would you feel comforted knowing of their "multiple intelligence?"

Zany Blizzard Roundup

As in, a roundup of the zanier education news, while the snow piles up, Dave digs out my car, and the crockpot is bubbling.

"You won't let us in the dance? We'll make our own dance! And we'll freak if we want to!"

You'd think that "Disciplinary Policies To Avoid" would have been covered in Education 101.

Bad enough boys lag so far behind in educational performance, but they're falling behind on their three-day benders, too.

Kids should beware of candy that isn't fattening. Of course, given how schools are reacting lately to sugar, whether it's identified correctly or incorrectly, kids may get in trouble even when their candy is the real deal.

YEOW. In more ways than one.

Good lumbar support, but not machine-washable

Apologies for non-bloggage this week. Workdays were hectic, and when I came home and sat down in my favorite chair, I ended up passing out on my purring pillow:

I'll catch up on Sunday.

If the Jacks have swords, doesn't that make this armed robbery?

Didn't "Cops and Robbers" used to be an innocuous child's game? Now, in today's politicized environment, it appears unwise to bring up the topic of burglary when children are involved:

An elementary school worksheet that tells the story of four people who get away with robbing a house and describes how to do a card trick has drawn criticism from a Baltimore mother who sees it as promoting criminal activity. The worksheet, called "The Four Robbers," is part of a booklet designed to prepare children for Maryland's standardized tests in March. It is intended to teach fourth-graders about sequence of events.

But Kenyona J. Moore, whose 9-year-old brought the worksheet home last week, said it promotes criminal activity to youngsters. "This is being given out to inner-city children," she told The (Baltimore) Sun. "The assumption is they can relate to this, and that's wrong."

The worksheet describes a card trick with four jacks, instructing the person doing the trick to say, "Imagine that the four jacks are robbers. They're going to rob a house." The first card, slipped into the bottom of the deck, represents the first robber, going into the first story of the house. The second and third cards are the robbers on the second and third stories. The fourth card, on top of the deck, is the robber on the roof looking out for police.

The person doing the trick is supposed to say: "Just then, the wail of a siren is heard. The robber on the roof says, 'Cops! Let's get out of here!'" The person peels off the top cards in the deck, showing that "the robber-jacks have magically migrated to the top of the deck!"

I'm finding myself more offended by the fact that Maryland schools are teaching their students card tricks as preparation for the exam. I can't find anything online about what the fourth-grade items might be, so I'm not sure what "sequence of events" means (logically? chronologically? spatially?) and how this trick could be useful.

A rose by any other name...

Heh.

Brit students work too hard, with too few results

Is it just me, or is this a really odd juxtaposition of complaints?

BRITAIN’S biggest companies gave warning last night that, despite a record number of graduates entering the job market this year, many will lack the basic skills needed for employment. Almost half of businesses said that they did not expect to receive “sufficient applications from graduates with the correct skills”...

Managers cite a series of shortcomings in potential recruits. These include:

# Too much time spent working on degrees and not enough joining clubs and societies, where students might work in teams.

# Not enough experience of giving presentations in tutorials, leaving new graduates unable to communicate ideas in the work place.

# Poor spelling, grammar and mathematical ability mean that graduates are making basic mistakes, writing illiterate memos and are in need of constant supervision.

So, they're spending too much time working on their degrees, yet they're coming out illiterate. How would joining more societies make them more mathematically literate? And they have poor spelling, but the root cause of their communication issues is not lack of basic grammar or writing skills, but not enough experience giving presentations. How competent would they be with PowerPoint if they don't have a firm grasp of grammar and spelling?

Is the root cause here their lack of preparation when they enter college, so that they must spend as much time as possible trying to catch up on the basics they should have mastered years before?

Life on campus

It's a College Follies roundup!

One hapless Arizona State student pretty much guarantees that ASU will be upping their internet connection speeds in dorm rooms as soon as possible.

Are the liberal arts liberal enough to let students follow any path after graduation?

Here's a theory for which, if they can't get students to slow down long enough to respond to the survey, they'll have the answer regardless.

At the U of Buffalo, some students might be signed up for the GRE whether they're ready to be or not. On the one hand, it would be spiffy to get a randomized set of data; on the other hand, I don't see why this should remain on anyone's permanent record.

Frederick Hess wonders why anyone would have to be "committed to preparing individuals to promote social justice" to be admitted to a school of education.

Nowadays, coeds must worry about much more than just getting their bicycles stolen.

It boggles the mind that anyone could read the recent bad news about adult literacy and come away thinking that the instruction in college classes is the root of the problem.

Update: Via Best of the Web, we discover why it's hurtful to assume that only boys and girls need dating advice at the University of New Hampshire. I agree entirely that it's silly to say, "Girls always," or "Boys never," but one needn't prattle on about "rigid forms of gender expression" to make this point.

Next week's dating advice column should read, "Be wary of asking out a person who will get upset if you assume there are any links between 'anatomical sex, gender expression and sexuality.' You'll be more likely to get a lecture than a shot at first base."

Sounds like the Sex Ed teacher is out of a job

I'm sure there are those who think that this is perfectly normal and healthy. I'm sure there are also those who find this disgusting and appalling. I think that these adolescents are merely experiencing the kind of charmingly-narcissistic curiosity that adolescents have always experienced. I just wonder why one of the supposedly-best high schools in NYC tolerates tons of public displays of that curiosity, as though its brightest students can't be taught, or expected, to control their hands and tongues during the school day.

I also wonder how these kids are going to do later on when the world/their professors/their bosses are both unimpressed by and uninterested in their blabbing to complete strangers about their sexuality, and inform them that no matter how stressful the day gets, they don't get to hold a "cuddle puddle" in the break room. Charming narcissism gets tiring after a while.

Their punishment: Being forced to take the SAT

Perhaps something is lost in the translation here:

A highly unusual break-in at a grammar school in Klæbu resulted in a bit of mental exercise. The burglar(s) did not appear to be out after material gain. Instead of stealing, the intruder(s) sat down and began to solve the math problems intended for third grade students, newspaper Adresseavisen reports.

According to local law enforcement officials a good job was done and all of the problems were solved correctly.

There has been nothing reported missing or stolen from the school building and it remains a mystery how the intruder or intruders gained access to the school.

I love the fact that the police, and the reporter, point out the burglar(s) answered the math problems correctly. Would they face more charges if they hadn't?

Munch munch munch...

Good news: I've lost 10 pounds so far, and only have 10 left to go before the wedding.

Bad news: I just bought 8 boxes of Girl Scout Cookies.

Evil, I tell you. EVIL.

Once again...

...a spammer attack took down the server yesterday, and I had to rebuild after the comment and archive pages were moved to protect them. All should be hunky-dory now.

Kerry's kooky education figures

Rich Noyes catches John Kerry pulling education figures out of his, er, um, nose:

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry must be thinking our fortunate he was that there were no real journalists in the room -- just perky Katie Couric -- when he appeared on NBC’s Today to complain about President Bush’s State of the Union address. As NewsBusters’ Mark Finkelstein noted earlier, Couric did ask a couple of pointed questions, at one point asking Kerry if there “was there anything you appreciated or liked hearing” in Bush’s speech.

But when Kerry started inventing statistics in his rant against the President’s education policies, preposterously claiming at one point that “53 percent of our children are not graduation from high school,” (in fact, 73.9 percent of incoming freshmen graduate from high school, according to the most recent Department of Education tally) Couric never even blinked -- not even when Kerry haughtily accused Bush of not presenting “the real state of the Union.”

This exchange is particularly silly:

Couric interjected: “He said he wanted to train 70,000 additional teachers in math and science.”

Kerry sarcastically shot back: “And that’s terrific, Katie but 53 percent of our children are not graduating from high school. Kids don’t have after-school programs. Only nine percent of the people eligible in America will be able to get Pell grants this year and for the fifth year in a row they’re not gonna raise the amount of money to help kids who have a 57 percent increase in, in their cost of education to be able to pay for it.”

And putting more math and science teachers in the system will hurt the graduation rate, how? And according to this source, at least 33% of undergraduates receive Pell grant funds, and the proposed scholarships for math and science majors is meant to supplement the Pell funding.

And a 57% increase? Is he kidding? Or is he just nearsighted enough to miss a decimal place, as this report showed that this year's total fees at four-year private nonprofit institutions were up 5.7%?

Boys punch, girls do lunch

Schools in the Philadelphia region tackle the issue of bullying head-on:

Penn Central Middle, in Bucks County's Pennridge School District, is one of many schools in the region and nation that have started anti-bullying programs to address the differences in the way boys and girls bully.

Schools started taking bullying much more seriously after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. The more bullying was discussed and researched, the more obvious it became to school officials that girls and boys have different favorite methods.

Boys are more likely to use their fists, while girls use words as weapons. Boys are often trying to prove their dominance over each other - who is the toughest, strongest, the best athlete.Girls are more about relationships - if one is mad at another, she tries to persuade her friends to also be mad.

"If a girl can make it so another girl can sit alone in the cafeteria, then they got her"...

Some of the definitions of "bullying," though, are far too broad:

Girls can hurt others by excluding them, said Daria Mojibian, counselor at Parkview Elementary School in Westville. Last school year, fourth-grade girls made up clubs that had animal mascots, and, even though they were not real clubs, the girls would not allow certain girls to join.

A few weeks ago, Mojibian said, a popular sixth grader found a broken pen on the playground and went around putting ink dots on the hands of her friends. "All the popular girls had them, all the popular boys had them," she said. One girl, who is accepted only sometimes by the popular crowd, did not get a dot and became so upset that she smeared the ink on a student's jacket, she said.

I don't know that I'd want my daughter to feel that everyone had to accept her, or want her to join their club, or that it would be acceptable (or productive) for her to smear ink if she didn't get included. If fourth-grade girls want to create unofficial clubs and invite only their friends to join, why shouldn't they be allowed to? While students should learn to treat everyone with respect, I've never been much for the idea that their friendships, clubs, and cliques should be forced to be as all-inclusive as possible.

The legal wrangling intensifies

Interesting...

NEW HAVEN, Conn., Jan. 31 (UPI) -- Connecticut's NAACP sides with the Bush administration in efforts to throw out the state's challenge of No Child Left Behind funding, a report said Tuesday. The civil rights organization and three students filed a motion Monday to intervene in the case in which the state argues the Department of Education has not sent Connecticut enough money to comply with the federal law.

"It's a rather unusual alignment," NAACP lawyer John Brittain told The New York Times. "It certainly creates some different alliances in civil rights." The NAACP motion argues the suit is a waste of money that could be better used to reduce gaps between poor and wealthy and minority and white students.

CivilRights.Org has more:

The NAACP and the group of minority schoolchildren want to block the state from creating a legal defense that allows them to avoid the obligations of No Child Left Behind on the grounds that the requirements are an "unfunded mandate." Such a claim, if supported, could threaten the enforcement of many civil rights statutes.

Under the rules of federal procedure, the NAACP must join the lawsuit as a defendant in intervention on the side of the U.S. Department of Education. This unusual alignment for the civil rights organization, however, does not represent full support of the No Child Left Behind Act. The group's position questions the reasoning behind the proposed suit, calling it an excuse to not meet the needs of Connecticut's children of color. Specifically, the NAACP feels that rather than filing a frivolous lawsuit against the federal government, the richest state in the nation should be working to help the poorest children have the maximum capacity to succeed with qualified teachers and other resources.

Connecticut currently has the worst gap in achievement between poor and non-poor children, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Posted by kswygert at 06:03 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack