Number 2 Pencil

Hands down, one of the more silly policies of late

A great muzziness of thought in a British school:

A school in London has banned children from raising their hands in class and teachers from calling on students with their hands raised...

"Some pupils are jiggling so much to attract the teacher's attention that it sometimes looks as if they need the lavatory, then when it is their turn they often don't know the answer. Boys -- and it is usually boys -- are seeking attention, so they put their hands up before they have had time to think about the question."

Buck said the same children often wave their arms in the air, but when teachers try to involve less adventurous pupils by choosing them instead, it leads to feelings of victimization, the Daily Telegraph reported Saturday. To spare embarrassment of the students who do not know the answer, the school has incorporated a "phone a friend" system, allowing one child to nominate another to take the question instead.

1. Why is being called upon by your teacher considered "victimization?"
2. If that's victimization, isn't "phoning a friend" that, too, if you nominate someone you don't like, who is making poor grades, to answer a tough question?
3. Why aren't teachers assumed to have the mental capacity to learn to ignore class clowns (who might raise their hands just to give smartass answers) and ask questions of all students in a way that doesn't embarass anyone too much
4. What if they DO have to visit the lavatory? They can't nominate a friend to take a whiz for them, can they?

Joanne has much more, including a link to an article suggesting that British schoolchildren today are less intelligent than those of previous years.

Flunking the dress code test

My, but there's an awful lot wrong with this situation:

A 17-year-old high school student said he was humiliated when a teacher made him sit on the floor during a midterm exam in his ethnicity class -- for wearing a Denver Broncos jersey.

The teacher, John Kelly, forced Joshua Vannoy to sit on the floor to take the test on Friday -- two days before the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Broncos 34-17 in the AFC Championship game. Kelly also made other students throw crumpled up paper at Vannoy, whom he called a "stinking Denver fan," Vannoy told The Associated Press.

Kelly said Vannoy, a junior at Beaver Area Senior High School, just didn't get the joke. "If he felt uncomfortable, then that's a lesson; that's what (the class) is designed to do," Kelly told The Denver Post. "It was silly fun. I can't believe he was upset."

So, in just a few short words, we've learned (a) that an ethnicity class is designed not to make students more informed, but uncomfortable; (b) that he considered insults and projectiles to be a good joke for him to play on a student; and (c) that "ethnicity" is related to choice of football teams. Hmm.

Making education harder than it has to be

George Will doesn't mince words:

The surest, quickest way to add quality to primary and secondary education would be addition by subtraction: Close all the schools of education...

The permeation of ed schools by politics is a consequence of the vacuity of their curricula. Concerning that, read "Why Johnny's Teacher Can't Teach" by Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute (available at city-journal.org). Today's teacher-education focus on "professional disposition" is just the latest permutation of what Mac Donald calls the education schools' "immutable dogma," which she calls "Anything But Knowledge."

The dogma has been that primary and secondary education is about "self-actualization" or "finding one's joy" or "social adjustment" or "multicultural sensitivity" or "minority empowerment." But is never about anything as banal as mere knowledge. It is about "constructing one's own knowledge" and "contextualizing knowledge," but never about knowledge of things like biology or history.

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.

Battling the NEA

SpunkyHomeSchooler points the way to a new blog, Wake Up the NEA. The blog is so new that they haven't got many posts up yet, but they link this article as a summary of what they're all about:

The federal and state governments continue to pour more and more money into education with pathetic results. When are politicians (and parents, for that matter) going to wake up to the fact that the education establishment is shirking its primary duty of promoting the education – as opposed to the social transformation – of our children? Is it any wonder more parents are turning to homeschooling and private schools?

There are still many, many outstanding public school teachers who do a superb job at educating despite the obstacles, distractions and interfering political agendas of the education establishment. But it is no thanks to the NEA, and the more that word gets out the better for the students and the cause of education.

No cigar for you!

Lessons learned in school in the 21st century: It's okay to make fun of the president, but heaven help you if anyone thinks your free speech is supportive of smoking.

Posters that depicted President Bush with a Groucho Marx-style mustache and cigar were ordered torn down at a high school after a student complained. Theater students, who had created the posters to advertise a satirical play, countered with new posters with a First Amendment message.

Principal Kenny Lee ordered 100 posters removed from the campus of El Camino Real High School in the Woodland Hills area last week on grounds that they promoted smoking and "endorsing one ideology over another."

"That's our take on the student speech and conduct," Lee said.

Does this mean that Marx Brothers' movies are banned as well?

(Via Joanne Jacobs).

School administrators juggle the numbers

Wizbang has the scoop on mismanaged school funds in Massachusetts:

State Auditor Joe DeNucci issued a scathing report yesterday on the Everett Public Schools that depicts a free-spending superintendent who blew school cash on homecoming, football and questionable consultants with little regard for bidding and other spending laws. The far-reaching 85-page audit - following a Herald report on the troubled school system - reveals a school business office rife with phony bids and other procurement shenanigans, unlicensed teachers in the classroom and a district overseen by a rubber-stamp school committee.

I'm not sure which Boston Herald article is referred to here, but the staff of the BH certainly can't say enough bad things about the school district:

Yesterday Auditor Joe DeNucci's office confirmed in an 87-page report what we have suspected all along - that the administration of the Everett Public Schools is a cesspool.

I'd say "cesspool" is an appropriate word for a school district that spent $59K on $59,000 "lettering football team helmets, data processing, set-up for a homecoming parade and various painting projects" instead of MCAS tutoring. Think that school district didn't need any tutoring? Think again.

Driving the talented away

Where you might see a regrettable (but unsystematic) lack of competent teachers, Steven Miller spies a conspiracy:

That teaching, by and large, no longer attracts exceptional applicants, is clear. A recent study by three University of Maryland economists found that the likelihood of highly talented females becoming teachers fell from roughly 20 percent in 1964 to just over 11 percent in 2000...the Educational Testing Service found that those indicating they intended to become teachers score near the bottom among those taking the ETS tests.

So what accounts for the increasing flight of talented women from teaching?...Now, such an approach to the question has been produced by Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby and Australian economist Andrew Leigh. And their important new study strongly suggests that, on this question, the conventional wisdom has been quite wrong.

Economists call it pay “compression” when salary schedules require those with the highest aptitude to earn no more than those with the lowest. Since the 1960s the rise of collective bargaining within education has brought increasing compression to the pay scales of public school teachers.

Moreover, teachers under collective bargaining contracts—here in Nevada and around most of the U.S.—are not compensated according to how well they teach. Instead, school districts are required under their union contracts to compensate teachers according to years on the job and number of (often irrelevant) academic credits. In consequence, teaching in America is the one profession where pay has been essentially decoupled from performance.

And it is this decoupling, say Hoxby and Leigh, which has been the biggest factor, by far, in the flight of high-aptitude women from the field of public-school teaching.

Starting the rat race young

Do kids need more preparation at the kindergarten level - or is that too much pressure?

Today's kindergarten classrooms are stocked with books sorted by reading level; students keep portfolios of their first attempts at writing; and teachers assign homework in counting, addition and subtraction. The emphasis on reading, writing and arithmetic is seen countywide, from San Diego to Poway, and nationwide, from Seattle to Detroit.

As kindergarten evolved from a cocoon for social and emotional development to a rigorous classroom environment, a national debate has emerged: How much should children be expected to learn when they are 4, 5 and 6 years old?

My impulsive response is, "As much as you can possibly cram into their little synapse-rich heads." Some educators quoted in the article say pretty much the same thing, while others worry most about putting too much stress on children this young.

A commitment to fun!

Oh, isn't this darling. The Scottsdale (AZ) Unified School District has decided to demonstrate its commitment to learning by getting rid of all those stuffy old titles for school employees:

She used to be known as the receptionist. Now she's the Director of First Impressions. Barbara Levine is one of several employees in the Scottsdale Unified School District whose job titles have changed in a sharp departure from the traditional titles that parents grew up using.

Was the school bus late? Blame the "transporter of learners," formerly the bus driver. Got a problem with your school principal? Take it up with the 10-word "executive director for elementary schools and excelling teaching and learning," formerly known as the assistant superintendent of elementary schools.

And of this demonstrates Scottsdale's commitment to learning...how? I'd be more impressed if Scottsdale could prove all their students could spell words like "transporter" and "excelling."

Workplace experts disagree whether the new job titles are a positive step. Liz Ryan, who spent 20 years in human resources and founded WorldWIT, a Web site devoted to women's workplaces issues, calls the new titles "trivial, sad and misguided."

"When you are talking about education, you better be kind of serious, and I don't mean stodgy, but grown-up. 'Director of First Impressions' makes me want to gag," she said.

I suppose it's illegal to ask Liz to marry me, but I still want to. She hits the nail on the head - these new titles don't so much demonstrate a commitment to education as they demonstrate a fear of seeming old, stodgy, grown-up, un-hip, boring, etc.

Ryan said the word "director" implies there is something wrong with being a receptionist. Director also implies that the receptionist supervises many other employees, which isn't usually the case. This may make it hard for the Director of First Impressions to find another receptionist job, she said, because people will get confused by the title on her resume. Common job titles exist for a reason, Ryan said, so people can figure out whom to call when they need help.

Yes, and even though parents haven't complained yet, it's possible that some will be confused by all this. But hey, the employees are happy:

As for Levine, Scottsdale's Director of First Impressions, she loves her new title. "I think it's classy," she recently said while answering the telephone and directing a visitor to the right office. "It sounds so important. Everyone wants to be important."

Sounds like the natural extension of the feel-good "self-esteem" movements so popular in "progressive" education theory.

Update: Link is fixed now (and no, I don't shop at NM!)

Teaching - A Content-Free Profession

The Praxix II continues to get under the skin of education majors:

As University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point senior Jenny Berg sees it, she and her fellow education majors already have plenty to cope with. There's ever-increasing tuition, sometimes-questionable financial aid and already stringent teacher certification that can be discouraging to potential future teachers.

Yes, but why is it considered a bad thing for the profession to have some hurdles? Certainly, college students for every major have to deal with tuition and financial aid issues. And many other professions have much more stringent hurdles. These aren't kids, but young women and men who are entering the professional world. Hurdles are there for a reason.

The latest hurdle, Berg said, is Praxis II, a statewide teacher certification examination that has been required of all Wisconsin teachers since August. The test and an exit portfolio are mandated by the state's Department of Public Instruction.

Educators have largely denounced the standardized tests, saying they measure course content rather than a person's true capability to teach. "The problem, I think, with this kind of test is students who do well aren't necessarily good teachers," said Paula DeHart, associated professor of education. "And students who don't do well aren't necessarily poor teachers."

Must..control...blood...pressure....

Look. It's true that possessing a great deal of knowledge does not de facto make one a good teacher. I'm willing to admit that. We've all known genuises who can't communicate. But if the education programs want to be taken seriously in the Information Age, they've got to admit that a teacher who is brilliant at communication and caring but doesn't actually know anything is not a good teacher. It's ridiculous for them to insist that teachers should not be subject to content exams, because what good is a teacher without anything to teach?

Berg, 27, said the tests weren't an accurate assessment of what kind of teacher she'll be. Substitute teaching for a couple of years before coming back for her certification gave Berg a much better test than any formal exam, she said...Despite the tests' general unpopularity, state teachers have had to accept them, Berg said. "I don't like the fact of all the hoops we have to jump through," she said. "I don't think it's the right path for the accountability that they want."

Berg is 27? And she's still complaining about the fact that she might have to jump through some hoops and master some hard facts before being unleashed on schoolchildren? Schoolchildren to whom she will have to teach hard facts, and test on those facts? Sheesh. This article seems as though it's trying to be sympathetic to education majors, but the reporter surely picked one unsympathetic person on which to focus.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Praxis II, it's a three-part licensure examination that includes "essays, oral response tasks, listening tasks, portfolio reviews, video stimuli, and in-class observations." You can download guides to the tests here. It's most definitely not a no-brainer test, but calculators are allowed for the math portion, and it's entirely appropriate for college graduates wishing to enter a professional arena that requires a well-rounded liberal arts education.

Update: The delightfully-named Dr. Cookie has more on the Praxis, and a lot more on why it's so disturbing to hear education majors complain about the hurdles of demonstrating content mastery.

Spare the cartwheel, spoil the child

Oh, for heaven's sakes. California just keeps getting sillier....

Cartwheels and handstands have gotten an 11-year-old girl temporarily bounced out of her Los Angeles-area school. Deirdre Faegre was suspended for a week after repeatedly disobeying school officials who told her not to perform gymnastic stunts during lunchtime.

Deirdre's father, Leland Faegre, said it was absurd to suspend his daughter for doing gymnastics when students were allowed to play basketball and other sports. "Contact sports, apparently, are fine. But this one is so dangerous it requires the cartwheel cops," Faegre said.

California, California - can we talk? Someone is not telling you what you need to hear. Apparently, you've spent the last 30 years surrounded by snake-oil salesmen pushing bogus child-rearing theories about self-esteem, creativity, the evils of discipline, and the supposed fragility of children. At some point, you've become convinced that it makes sense for the State to do everything in its over-reaching power to prevent children from ever encountering anything nasty, offensive, challenging, problematic, or painful. You've become convinced that no child should do anything unless all children can do it without fear of any pain being involved.

But if I may paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke here, pain is good. Pain is useful. Pain is Mother Nature's way of telling us that we're all boneheads, and that's a very good lesson to learn, as soon as possible. A student who is afraid to do cartwheels for fear of injuring one of the masses - or a student who is afraid to even try a cartwheel because they can't handle landing on their bum - is not a student who's going to grow up to be a leader in the global economy.

I spent a good two years (ages 7 to 9, if I recall correctly) doing a cartwheel every time I went through our living room, and somehow I survived to the ripe old age of 36. I even learned to do one-handed cartwheels, after falling on my head numerous times - which prepared me for the pain of facing a dissertation committee.

Pain is good, California. Let your children risk it.

Update: Oh ho! A commenter says:

I happen to know that this child was repeatedly told not to do these stunts in the walkway in the middle of foot traffic in front of the school office. She chose to disobey multiple times and for that reason she was suspended.

Get a little perspective and stop sensationalizing the antics of a disobedient child - this is not national news fodder.

Hey, I'm not the one that chose to put it out on an international press wire. And what I was mocking was the school's statement that they did worry about other children imitating the cartwheeling child, as though this were a terrible thing. I also now wonder if the kid was given a choice of an alternative place to do cartwheels, which would seem like the first line of response, rather than suspension.

Casting a worried eye on the straight guys

At Hastings High School (NY), students have been celebrating Spirit Week by dressing silly - Pajama Day, Dress to Impress Day, '80s Day (oh God, the clothing from my high school years is now officially considered bizarre.) But then school officials noticed yesterday was supposed to be "Cross-Dressing Day."

The officials said no. Not because, as you might think, that men in short skirts and bras would offend straightlaced sensibilities, or that they'd be acting too silly to focus on lessons. No, it's because they're worried about the feelings of the transgender communities:

As part of Spirit Week, students had already celebrated Pajama Day, '80s Day and Dress to Impress Day. Then educators saw yesterday's provocative theme promoted in posters around the school and asked student government leaders to announce an alternative: "New York Pride Day." About two dozen high-schoolers refused to wear Yankees shirts, however, instead borrowing each other's clothing and going to class.

Cross-dressing students said their freedom of expression was violated and that the prohibition sent the wrong message to transgender students who may want to cross-dress regularly.

What about students who regularly dress to impress? Or students who like 80's clothing? Weren't the earlier silly-clothing days disrespectful to them?

A liaison to the gay and transgender community said there is "a fine line" between personal expression and parody.

Yes, and the last I checked, both are protected by the First Amendment.

Some students pointed out that their garb was protected by the school's dress code as well:

A few students said they were following the school's Code of Conduct by respecting differences and rules on hemlines.

Laura Newman, the Westchester County liaison to the gay and transgender community, said she "could see both sides of the story. In some ways it could be seen as almost a parody, if girls are putting on charcoal mustaches and boys are wearing balloons under their (tops), are they doing it to poke fun, or are they doing it to express themselves really? It's kind of a fine line."

They're just doing it to be silly. They're teenagers. Just because they realize they look ridiculous in skirts doesn't mean they assume any person would. Trust me, they're not putting that much thought into the whole thing. They consider it to be a costume.

I'm a bit hesitant to post on this, because I got a snitty, hateful comment the last time I tried to post saying schools should spend less time focusing on the feelings of special-interest groups and more time insisting that all students treat each other with respect, no matter what. And to head off the heated comments about how I must not know any transgendered individuals - I know two of them. My guess is that kids cross-dressing as a way to be goofy and have fun is pretty far down in the list of things they consider to be offensive or insulting.

It's okay to mention God in the classroom when you're insulting the President

Remember the NJ teacher who got in trouble for posting a photo of President Bush in her classroom, as part of a presidential photo montage? Apparently, that counts as "inflammatory politics."

But I suppose this is just perfectly okay:

A Fitzgerald High School (MI) parent said he plans to complain to the school board at tonight’s meeting about what he says was one-sided political material introduced in class by his son’s American studies teacher.

Janette Brill, the Fitzgerald schools superintendent, said school officials are reviewing the teacher’s lesson plans and the Web site material questioned by Trail. “But he (the teacher) has used this material for the past three years,” she said, adding that Trail is the only parent or student to have complained.

I suppose the reason for mentioning that is to suggest that Trail is being overemotional in pointing out that the teacher took the material from a totally moronic and offensive website:

A portion of the dialogue reads:

A: Yes! You finally understand how the world works.

Interestingly, this creation is copyrighted 2003, which begs the question of how Queen has been using this exact same material in his classroom "for the past three years." I guess Queen got a jump on Bush-bashing even earlier than those who are dedicated enough to create an entire website around it.

"I love you/You love me/Regardless you still earned a D"

Remember the August entry about the horror of red pens? The idea that it matters more what color the teachers uses to grade papers, than how or what she teaches, just refuses to die:

An increasingly popular grading theory insists red ink is stressful and demoralizes students, while purple, the preferred color, has a more calming effect.

"I never use red to grade papers because it stands out like, 'Oh, here's what you did wrong.' " said Melanie Irvine, a third-grade teacher at Pacific Rim Elementary in Carlsbad. "Purple is a more approachable color."

Is it okay, then, if the purple helps the student to miss the point that they did, in fact, do something wrong? Or is pointing out what's wrong just completely verboten nowadays?

Irvine said that in elementary schools, it's unnecessary to point out every error. Instead, a teacher should find a more delicate way to help a child learn.

"This is a kinder, more gentler education system," Paper Mate spokesman Michael Finn said. "And the connotation of red is that it is not as constructive as purple."

Didn't you just know the marketing research folks were going to get involved at some point? And thus it was going to be said, with a straight face, that one color of pen was more "constructive" than another?

Here's a classic piece of educrat-speak:

"We try to be as gentle as we can and not slice children's thoughts to pieces with a red pen," said Laurie Francis, principal of Del Mar Hills Academy. "The red mark is associated with 'This is wrong,' and as you're trying to guide students in the revision process, it doesn't mean this is wrong. It's just here's what you can do better."

Oh. But if it's not wrong, why should they do better? Doesn't purple mean, well, it's really okay as is, and if you feel like improving it, here's something you could do - but no pressure, and no rush?

Really, I'm sure all these students will come back years later, when they're taking remedial classes in college, and thank their teachers for being so thoughtful with their choice in pen colors.

The idea that red induces stress, especially in younger children, has been around for years, said Lawrence Jones, a psychology teacher and former graphic-design instructor at The Art Institute of California San Diego.

"You associate red with blood, stop and danger," he said. "Teachers, realizing the immense problems they face with kids in education, find avoiding red helps them avoid one more negative in a child's life."

Wouldn't focusing on teaching in such a way that kids reduce their number of errors be a better way of reducing stress and avoiding negatives? I mean, color theory or no, if a kid is flunking, a kid is flunking, and the color with which the grade is conveyed doesn't do squat to help that kid.

Not surprisingly, as in all other articles I've seen on this topic, the teachers who prefer to stay with red are presented as old-fashioned stodges who are afraid to break with tradition:

...tradition is hard to break.

Some argue that American culture is one of extremes. They say the same students who receive color-sensitive grades leave school and play gory video games. And some attribute the dwindling number of red pens in the classroom to self-esteem sensitivity run amok. Skeptics discount fears of the shade and wonder whether all the attention to the color of a grade has any substantive effect.

Oh, those old farts with their red pens and hatred of video games. Let's just ignore them and get back to talking about the "progressive" educators and the loveliness of purple, shall we?

Stephen Ahle, the principal at Pacific Rim Elementary, said grading is much more sophisticated than it used to be. Every aspect of grading – from the language used to the teacher's tone and the color of ink used to make corrections – leaves a psychological imprint on students, he said. "I tell teachers to use more neutral colors – blues and greens, and lavender because it's a calming color," he said. "And, of course, kids also like purple because it's the color of Barney."

And school should always be something Barney would approve of, right?

Pretty soon, education will be so "enlightened" that students won't even need to show up

We live in interesting times when teachers write defensive letters to the editor about their decision to assign grades to students:

When I begin the school year, I ink my students' names into my grade book. There's nothing else on the pages yet –- no checkmarks, no alphabet letters, no percentages. But pretty soon we'll be filling things in.

One typical critic describes grades as a "club" and "a chance for teachers to give students a little payback." He condemns the work grades are based on as "random" events that only "occasionally" provide a "true reflection of what a student can do." He says he knows this from experience. The scary part is he's a college professor, and the experience he's talking about includes grading his own students.

Assigning grades is "payback"? I suppose actually teaching is "infringing upon students' rights" as well? Just what does this professor - who unfortunately is not named - think his students get from him if he doesn't believe in lowering himself to tell them how they're doing in his class?

I've given lots of tests and assigned lots of essays myself. Sometimes the questions I ask don't tell me what I need to know about what kids have learned. That's when I re-think and re-word them. Sometimes the answers warn me that my students haven't understood what I tried to teach them. That's when I go over the material again. Keeping track of their progress is why I listen to them in class and ask them if they think they've understood what we're discussing...

Letter grades don't tell a student's whole story. And they don't hit the bull's-eye every time. But letter grades aren't why public education's in trouble. Besides, we've already got enough information about how well kids are learning. That's how we know we've got problems.

The letter writer is a teacher at Weathersfield Middle School in Vermont. What I find most interesting about all this is that you could replace "letter grade" with "test score" and the letter would still flow pretty nicely. I've made all these arguments myself before in defense of test scores, but I didn't realize that teachers felt the pressure to defend letter grades as much.

When displaying a photo of the President is "inflammatory politics"

I'm starting to understand why American students have such a tenuous grasp of American politics and history:

You might say it is a symbol of the Great American Divide, a teacher putting up a picture of President Bush in the classroom. Some say it is partisanship while others say it is patriotism. Parents [are] expressing outrage after a teacher is kicked out of her public school for hanging a picture of President Bush next to pictures of other presidents in her classroom.

This is Crossroads South Middle School in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey. On Thursday, there was a back-to-school night for parents of students. Veteran English teacher Shiba Pillai-Diaz says she was shocked when three parents confronted her. The three, insisting the teacher either add John Kerry's photo to the montage of presidents or remove the Bush photo. When Pillai-Diaz refused, she says the school's vice-principal threatened her job which is an act that has parents here fuming.

Okay, so when parents don't understand the difference between a Presidential candidate and the actual President of the United States - whose photo is perfectly appropriate for a Presidential photo montage in a classroom - I'm not surprised that students might have a less-than-perfect understanding of the political system.

The NY Post has more:

A New Jersey public-school teacher claims she was bushwhacked by her principal yesterday when he ordered her to "get out" of the building after she refused to remove a photo of President Bush and the first lady from her classroom. The White House-issued photo of the Bushes was pinned to a bulletin board that held portraits of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and a copy of the Constitution.

"He told me that if I care about my employment at the school, I would take down the picture," she said. When she refused, the matter was taken up by the principal, Jim Warfel, who Pillai-Diaz said accused her of "causing disruption and hatred" with her "inflammatory politics" and told her to "get out" of the building.

Sounds like the principal doesn't like Republicans, nor does he like teachers who dare to keep their students informed about the identity of the current President. The school, however, continues to insist no one was fired. If Pillai-Diaz's comments are accurate, the whole thing is just appalling.

Public school teachers exercising choice

Are public school teachers more likely than the general public to send their kids to private schools? The Washington Times says yes:

More than 25 percent of public school teachers in Washington and Baltimore send their children to private schools, a new study reports.

In Washington (28 percent), Baltimore (35 percent) and 16 other major cities, the figure is more than 1 in 4. In some cities, nearly half of the children of public school teachers have abandoned public schools.

In Philadelphia, where 30.9% of all parents choose private schooling, 43.8% of local public school teachers do so.

Some of these teachers, I'm sure, have special needs children who can benefit more from private schools. And while teachers at the low end of income are more likely than all families to use private schools, teachers at the high end of income are less likely to use private schools.

But one conclusion to be drawn from this is that public school teachers are as well-aware, if not more so, than the general public of the differences in quality between public and private schools as one goes up and down the income ladder. I don't really see these results as damning to teachers; I see these results as yet more data supporting parental choice in the school system. These conclusions certainly don't support the educational status quo which states all parents, including low-income ones, should be satisfied with government-run public schools. If the teachers aren't, there's no reason parents should be.

What's more, when teachers DO start to prefer public schools, it just might be because there are more choices in that area:

The report says the school choice movement has begun competitively forcing public school improvement, particularly in cities like Milwaukee, called "a hotbed of school reform," where 29.4 percent of public school teachers sent their children to private schools, the study finds.

"If so, it might be evidence that choice is having the intended effect of spurring improvements in public education there. Or perhaps the emergence of [public school] charters has provided another free option to lower-income teachers who might otherwise choose private schooling."

An interesting note: 11 of the 21 schools for which teachers are less likely to send kids to private schools than the general public are in the South. But of the 29 schools where teachers are more likely, only 7 are in the South. It could be just a trick of the sample surveyed, but also might support the idea that the South has more functional urban public schools (or just fewer private schools from which to choose).

Also - hmmm:

Michael Pons, spokesman for the National Education Association, the 2.7-million-member public school union, declined a request for comment on the study's findings. The American Federation of Teachers also declined to comment.

Leave No Secretary (of Education) Behind

There's an interesting detail to this apparent snubbing of US Secretary of Education Rod Paige:

The Ohio NAACP withdrew its invitation to U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige, an outspoken critic of the group's national leadership, to speak at its weekend convention. Paige, who was initially invited three weeks ago to discuss the No Child Left Behind program, was cut from the program at the request of the national NAACP, Ohio NAACP President Sybil Edwards-McNabb said Thursday.

Edwards-McNabb said national NAACP leaders told her there was an "imbalance" in her slate of convention speakers. She said she had invited Bush and Sen. John Kerry. Bush agreed to send Paige, she said, but Kerry did not respond.

Emphasis mine, and so what? That's Kerry's loss. Leaving aside the rudeness of disinviting someone to an event of this magnitude, why would it be "unbalanced" to have a representative of President Bush there if his challenger was not there? The programs implemented by the Bush administration have a wide-reaching effect on every schoolchild today, and these programs deserve discussion by those who have had a hand in implementing them - no matter who Bush's challenger is. Just because "the opposition" wasn't there to give their side doesn't mean that Paige wouldn't have been a very appropriate speaker. Certainly, there's plenty he could have discussed that doesn't have anything to do with partisan politics.

But wait, it gets better:

Asked about the role of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is scheduled to speak today, she said Sharpton was a guest of the local NAACP, not a surrogate for Kerry. But Ohio Democrats had a different understanding. Sharpton is "speaking as a representative of the Kerry campaign," said Brendon Cull, spokesman for the Democratic Coordinated Campaign in Ohio. John White, spokesman for the national NAACP, said Thursday he was unaware that Edwards-McNabb had been directed to cut Paige from the lineup.

So, Sharpton is essentially being allowed to speak, with no concern for "balance." And the previous clashes between Paige and the NAACP don't make this situation look any less like a last-minute, high-profile snub:

The war of words between the Bush administration and NAACP has worsened this year. Bush passed on the group's national convention in July after attacks by NAACP leaders Julian Bond and Kweisi Mfume on Bush's programs, especially No Child Left Behind.

The same month, Paige responded in the Wall Street Journal to criticism from NAACP leaders that black conservatives like himself were "puppets" of white people. Paige wrote that Bond and Mfume had betrayed their "organization's own origins."

And now they disinvite him. Shabby. Certain observers aren't afraid to connect the dots:

Robert Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party, said the NAACP's move will backfire.

"It would have been a small blip on the radar screen and now it will be a big story," Bennett said. "The NAACP is supposed to be nonpartisan, but because Rod Paige is George Bush's secretary of education, they disinvite him. Isn't that ludicrous? Democrats can't tolerate any diversity in the Republican Party at all."

Getting exercised over Goths

My boyfriend couldn't wait to send me this entry from the Blabbermouth.net topic board on goth gear being banned from a Wichita middle school. Pull out your hip boots and let's go wading in the muck:

Students at Wilbur Middle School who like the Goth look will have to rethink their clothing this year. Principal Cherie Crain announced last week that the black lipstick, eye shadow, nail polish and hair dye of the so-called Goth style, can't be combined with all-black clothing anymore.

"Anything disruptive to school is a no-no, too," Crain said. "And this is definitely a disruption."

"Clothing or accessories that define a group of students"? Could you be a little more vague? Does this mean the preppy kids have to make sure they don't all wear their new polo shirts on the same day? Are the cheerleaders forbidden from wearing their uniforms on Fridays? Do all the pro football team supporters have to make sure not to all wear their jerseys at once?

I mean, get real. If weird hair color and black nail polish is out, it's out, but don't make gang assumptions about the goth kids for - horrors! - wanting to dress just like their friends. And isn't "disruptive" in the eye of the beholder? Does this mean that cropped t-shirts and low-rise pants are out too?

In this case, the accessories like studded metal bracelets, the black makeup and graphic T-shirts advertising heavy metal bands are the biggest concern, Crain said.

"We just want everybody to feel comfortable at school," Crain said.

A dozen. Out of one thousand. That's only a little over one-tenth of one percent. And Crain thinks this is a problem?

Debbie McKenna, who supervises the district's safe and drug-free schools programs, said wearing Goth clothing can be a warning sign of other problems. Teachers are trained to check if students who wear such clothes have withdrawn from other students and if they're using drugs.

Oh, how caring. Are teachers trained to look for signs of drug use in students who aren't wearing black? Are teachers aware that experts in the field of teenage violence do not consider the impact of Black Sabbath or The Matrix to be meaningful influences on such behavior? Are they aware that violent sociopaths like the Columbine killers are not in the least bit typical of your average goth?

The bottom line is that a kid who is violent could look like Marilyn Manson, Justin Timberlake - or nobody in particular. For the school to focus this sort of attention on the dozen kids wearing black, all of whom are probably budding poets or art majors, is a waste of resources.

I understand that these looks might seem extreme for middle-schoolers. But if the school is truly displeased, then it needs to implement a dress code or uniform that's across the board. If you and your friends can't dress alike in black or wear your Lamb of God t-shirts, but the preppy crowd can all dress alike in polos and wear their Dave Matthews t-shirts, that's simply unfair.

Yes, goth kids can be moody, troublesome, and immature. But while disturbed kids may be drawn to the occult, it's ludicrous to say that every kid who shops at Hot Topic is disturbed (if so, that's an awful lot of disturbance). I consider myself a well-informed amateur on the topic of goth kids and violence, and have yet to see a single instance of a murderous goth kid who didn't have a family history of mental illness, poverty, abuse, neglect, and all-around bad parenting. In other words, the pathology underlying the behavior of disturbed goth kids isn't all that different from disturbed non-goths; they just choose a different wardrobe. The schools would do well to ignore the trendiness of the mall-goth crowd (or set less-judgmental dress code limits), and instead focus their therapeutic energies on the kids who are problematic in a non-black-nail-polish way (starting fights, showing signs of drug use, showing major fluctuations in their academic work, etc.).

Update: I've been unable to access my blog all day, and thus haven't been able to correct my error - 12 is indeed a bit over one percent (which I had actually typed the first time around), not a bit over one-tenth of one percent (which I typed from lack of coffee.) Plus, I have to say I LOVE the Dell goth/preppy commercial (free reg required), not least because (a) I started dressing goth in college myself, (b) I own a Dell, and (c) I used to own a pet python (although mine was much smaller than the one in the commercial).

See Spot Stay At Home

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Critical thinking" about just one side of the story

Devoted Reader Tracy A. uncovered a humorous effort to discredit the meme that schools of education are biased and intellectually lopsided. It seems that the Teacher College Record wasn't too happy about David Steiner's investigation of the bias evident in education programs nowadays, and has published a rebuttal from one Dan W. Butin.

From Steiner's report:

What are students taught in these education programs? Surprisingly, almost nobody in the last 20 years has examined the coursework that education schools, as well as states, require as a preparation for teaching. Doing so is not easy: Some schools put their syllabi on the Web, some do not. Many have extremely complex programs — determining what students are required to take as part of their professional preparation often requires considerable detective work. Nevertheless,with the help of my research assistant, Susan Rozen, I decided to try.

Given the divide between “back to basics” and the “constructivist-progressive” models, one would expect education schools to expose students to both points of view. Our research (which covered 165 syllabi of required courses in the foundations of education, the teaching of reading,and teaching methodology) strongly suggested, however, that at many of our highest ranked schools of education, the constructivist-progressivist arguments are being taught to the almost complete exclusion of the other, direct instruction model.

No real surprise there. And it's no surprise that those who defend constructivist-progressivist education would defend it, and that they'd be very silly in doing so. Here are a couple of excerpts from the Butin rebuttal (in italics), with Devoted Reader Tracy's comments in bold:

-----
Steiner’s study was seemingly straightforward: a content analysis of course syllabi in order to determine whether prospective teachers are adequately prepared to become good teachers in the public schools. Buried within such an articulation, though, are a host of questionable assumptions of causality.

Put simply, there is an extremely loose coupling between what is written and what is taught, between what is taught and what is learned, and between what is learned and what is subsequently enacted in an efficacious way.

As I read this I had to chuckle. This seems to argue that you can't prove anything by the course syllabus because that's no way to determine that the teacher actually taught anything from it, that the student learned anything by what actually was taught, or that the student was ever able to use anything that was taught. If that's supposed to make me feel better about schools of education, it most certainly fails.

I agree, as does Butin's insistence that Seiber's sample was skewed because he examined only the elite schools, and everyone knows that the elite schools produce only researchers, and not those people who actually teach. It's nice to know that even defenders of schools of ed insist there is a gap between those who develop the theory and those who learn from it.

Here's another passage that had me scratching my head -

In regards to the fourth criterion, Steiner’s call for “ideologically balanced” content is a political and theoretical minefield. One teacher’s critical justice emphasis is another teacher’s disdain for rigor and clarity. Steiner’s target here was obvious. He highlighted the usual suspects of the intellectual left – Freire, Giroux, hooks, Ladson-Billings – that seemed to take precedence over other seemingly relevant content by, e.g., E. D. Hirsch, Diane Ravitch, and Chester Finn.

This is a legitimate complaint. Yet the social foundations of education field has reframed this issue long ago. As the Standards for the foundations field articulate (Council of Learned Societies in Education, 1996), the “purpose of the foundations study is to bring these disciplinary resources [of the humanities and social sciences] to bear in developing interpretive, normative, and critical perspectives on education, both inside and outside of schools” (p. 4; emphasis mine). Put otherwise, the political left, right, and center can all engage in deep analysis, explicitly articulate specific morals, and critically examine the assumptions and implications of normative stances. Steiner’s criteria of “balance,” in other words, focuses on the wrong agenda: he seems to want particular names included in syllabi, whereas the social foundations Standards emphasize tasks and skills.

Excuse me? Ideological balance isn't necessary, only the ability to engage in "deep analysis, explicitly articulate specific morals, and [to] critically examine the assumptions and implications of normative stances." It would seem that if all the critical thought you read is written from a single or a limited ideological perspective, you are not really grasping the concept of critical thought. It does remind me of concepts that fit very well within the definitions of propaganda and brainwashing.
-----

I can't really improve on Tracy's comments (and boy do I love it when my readers do the hard work for me. )

The unions get worried

Remember when I said we'd never hear about membership woes of the NEA? Well, Eduwonk (with the help of the Wall Street Journal, if you have a subscription) has proved me wrong. One paragraph alone lifts my spirits:

The rise of nonunion teacher associations is helping erode the longstanding clout of the NEA, the nation's biggest union, with 2.7 million members. Rival nonunion groups have amassed at least 250,000 predominantly rural and suburban members in 18 states -- including recent start-ups in Washington state, Arkansas, Alabama and Virginia -- by offering lower dues, a less-confrontational attitude toward school boards and fewer social pronouncements than the NEA. Now, after years of growth, NEA membership and revenue are leveling off, and younger teachers are less inclined than older teachers to agree with union positions.

The WSJ also covers the divide between John Kerry and the NEA:

But the unions are wrapping their support for Mr. Kerry around opposition to President Bush's No Child Left Behind education program...The unions are demanding changes to an initiative that many Democrats voted for and still generally support.

That has unions worried.

That's the same stance that some say he's backed off on, though. As I said before, it's going to be an interesting 100 days.

Redefining sex-ed

The Common Sense Chronicles blogs on a school sexual-education course where the instructor displays a startling lack of common sense:

The Common Sense Chronicles says:

The sex-ed class I took in Jr. High was centered on the reproductive parts of the male and female anatomy. It wasn't about sexual positions, technique, or toys. It was anatomical information. It was more of a science class than anything else. I didn't miss out by not having "extra" information. Believe me; by the end of class everyone understood what it took to make a baby...and what it was like to have one.

According to a report in the Santa Fe New Mexican, parent Lisa Gallegos said that when her 15-year-old daughter balked at putting a condom in her mouth, instructor Tony Escudero told her, "Come on, sweetie, have a little fun."
-----

Someone remind me again why it's the schools that refuse to teach sex-ed, or who teach abstinence, who are supposedly the biggest threat to teenagers today? This isn't sexual education; it's sexual play, and it's appalling that Mr. Escudero has been given the freedom to decide that this is what is "age-appropriate" for a ninth-grader.

Update: Then again, I suppose I should be grateful that the US's Puritan heritage keeps us from doing away with adult supervision in sex ed altogether. Only in the UK could a reporter for a major newspaper open a story with a straight face and the sentence, "Teenagers want to learn about sex from one another rather than from their teachers." (Thanks to the Rottweiler for the link.)

A victory in the math wars?

I was recently forwarded, from a Yahoo group about the "Math Wars" of NYC, a resignation letter, with commentary. It is Manhattan District 2 Director of Mathematics Lucy West who has resigned, to the apparent relief and joy of everyone who favors clarity and effectiveness in math education.

The preface to Ms. West's resignation letter, written by Elizabeth Carson of New York City HOLD (Honest, Open Logical Debate on math reform), was interesting - especially the last paragraph. I have quoted substantial portions of Ms. Carson's comments below:

Lucy West has written a farewell letter to Region 9 staff which is forwarded below.

Good riddance.

Amen (emphases mine). I won't include Ms. West's resignation letter in full, but I think this small excerpt fully conveys her love for meaningless educational prattle and her hostility towards standards, accountability, and genuinely effective and useful math education:

It's easy to believe that accomplishing a mission requires prescriptive remedies--mandated curriculum materials, required numbers of periods devoted to the study of mathematics and literacy; a set of standards; and high stakes tests. While these things may play a role, they are just as likely to keep us entrenched in a factory model of teaching as they are to catapult us into a new paradigm for education. They are at least in part based on mechanistic models of change and the misguided premise that change and people are controllable; the myth that programs, structures and a fearless leader are what it takes to make a difference.

Got that? A set of standards aren't useful; they keep the students "entrenched in a factory model". It's a "myth" that programs and structures are useful in math education. It's misguided to think change - i.e., math education - is controllable.

And this person was a director of math curriculum in NYC? Horrifying. Go read the stuff at HOLD's and Bas Braams' sites to learn more.

How to nurture kids and create peaceniks

Here's an interesting article about a teacher who is suing the South Bay (CA) Union School District for discrimination:

[Linda] Sorter taught sixth grade at South Bay School for 17 years. A longtime local activist with Amnesty International, Women in Black and other organizations, she said she's included community service and discussion of world events in her classroom for years. Sorter contends that Superintendent/Principal Rick Fauss discriminated against her for her political beliefs and peace activism by treating her rudely and eventually ordering her to move to another classroom...

She said she sees her dispute with the district as part of a larger struggle to maintain a nurturing attitude in the classroom when faced with standardized testing requirements and an educational climate which emphasizes hurrying to pass the test rather than dealing with children's personal lives.

The interesting part: The article doesn't mention what subjects Ms. Sorter teachs. As for her "peace activism," I can see where a principal could decide that such topics are not appropriate for sixth-graders, and he could also decide that it is better for a teacher to instruct her students in basic skills, rather than pry into their personal lives. "Nurturing" is all well and good, but when a teacher defines nurturing as not caring whether children can demonstrate solid reading, writing, and mathematics skills, I too would conclude that she has put her political agenda ahead of her teaching responsibilities.

For example, back in February 2003, before Gulf War II began in earnest, Ms. Sorter required her students to spend quite a lot of time on "peace" activities:

Now as the United States is on the verge of bombing Iraq once again, sixth-graders at the South Bay School in Eureka are sending a message of peace to children and families in Iraq. The 20 students in Linda Sorter's class spent three weeks making 1,000 origami cranes and sent them to be displayed at the Amariya bomb shelter memorial...

Sorter herself is an active member of "Women in Black," the nationwide anti-war protest group that holds silent vigils around Humboldt County every Friday afternoon. Sorter wears black to work on Fridays. Although she doesn't promote her philosophy in the classroom, several of her students also began to wear black on Friday.

Emphases mine. So she's not trying to push any particular agenda, or promote her philosophy in the classroom, oh no. But she has every kid in the class spending weeks making origami cranes to support victims of an accidental bombing. Did they do as much for those who were victims of Saddam, instead of the evil US? I doubt it. Does she nurture her kids who unhesitatingly support the war, or allow them to discuss pro- and anti-war arguments freely? I doubt it. Does she urge her students to think critically about Amnesty International's more controversial actions, such as insisting that Israel give all Palestinian Arabs free rein to move about? Does she allow them to criticize Amnesty International, as some very well-informed people have done? I doubt it.

Why can't Ms. Sorter just admit that teaching her students her particular, one-sided political beliefs is a big part of her agenda, if not the main part? She claims her student's parents don't complain, which is not surprising considering she teaches in Eureka, California, in a school district which strives to educate children to be "responsible participants in a global society." For Ms. Sorter to insist that she is merely "nurturing" her students, and not trying to push her personal philosophy on them, is extremely disingenuous, at best.

chuting themsevez in the fut

Massachusetts public school officials don't want new charter schools in their state, and they allegedly put their students up to a letter-writing campaign. Unfortunately, these "educators" either didn't bother to spell-check the letters, or didn't know how to spell themselves:

All the proof state Board of Education member Roberta Schaefer needed to OK controversial new charter schools were the letters before her from public school students. Schaefer ridiculed the letters against a proposed school in Marlboro for their missing punctuation and sloppy spelling - including a misspelling of the word "school'' in one missive.

"If I didn't think a charter school was necessary, these letters have convinced me the high school was not doing an adequate job in teaching English language arts,'' Schaefer said.

So these are letters from high school students who can't even spell "school"? Who helped devise their language arts curriculum, Gayle Cowley? And could there be a more effective refutation of Ms. Cowley's insistence that spelling is not a "critical skill?"

Despite the letter-writing campaign, which Schaefer said was orchestrated by school officials, the Marlboro-based Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School as well as new charter schools in Cambridge, Lynn and Barnstable were approved yesterday.

Opponents vowed a renewed campaign against the controversial public schools, which compete with traditional districts for state education dollars.

"We're going to pursue this legally and through the Legislature,'' said Kathleen Kelley, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers.

Ms. Kelley, please put that time and energy into teaching kids to spell. We'll all be better off. Kids who can't spell turn into lawyers who can't spell, and that makes everybody crazy.

(Found via Best of the Web.)

Followup on the Potty War

An update to the potty parity war in Lawrence, NJ:

A policy limiting students at a middle school to 15 bathroom breaks a month has gone down the toilet. Administrators at the Lawrence Middle School revised the rule Wednesday to allow kids to make up to 30 visits a month to the restroom, according to Saturday's editions of the Times of Trenton...

Under the new policy, students may use all 30 passes each month. With about 20 school days a month, that is about 1 1/2 visits each day. Students with health problems or with an emergency must see the school nurse.

School Principal Nancy Pitcher said the policy was not changed in response to parents' complaints, but after a review by administrators.

And that's a good thing why? Why wouldn't parental complaint have had an effect, when this idea of discipline was essentially a public health issue?

"I think the revised policy is baloney," resident Lisa Everson told the newspaper. "Administrators still haven't changed their overall philosophy with dealing with students."

Devoted Reader Regin sent along an example of an alternate philosophy that sounds more effective. This is cut and pasted from alt.tasteless on Usenet (identifying information and profanity deleted; also edited for length):

As the story goes, the school had a severe problem last fall with bomb threats scrawled on the bathroom walls in marker, most likely by a single student. True to military-style discipline, the school board elected to punish all the students in the hopes that the students themselves would ferret out the artist and and correct his behavior.

THAT, my friends is MANAGEMENT. That's how you motivate and/or de-motivate, whatever the case may be. I will never forget that little precursor to boot camp and I'm a reasonably thoughtful adult because of it. This namby-pamby "suspension" crap and all this "zero-tolerance" policy is just a mask for managerial laziness and a lack of vision.

Amusing. I remember in our high school most infractions were punished with the dreaded "lunchroom duty" - having to go around and clean the lunch tables, empty trays, and so on. It was humiliating, messy, and cut into the free time at lunch; hence, it was a very useful punishment.

Locking every kid out of the bathroom - not a useful punishment.

The "sponges" in their schools

In an amusing and acerbic article about "Britain's laziest women," Mark Steyn puts the blame on the British school system for its tendency to produce "sponges" instead of disciplined and motivated competitors:

The other day the Sun bestowed the title of "Britain's Laziest Woman" on Susan Moore of Burythorpe, North Yorkshire...as Alastair Taylor explained: "Super-sponger Susan, 34, has not done a day's work since dropping out of college in 1988."

Despite receiving "Jobseeker's Allowance" for 16 years, she does not seek jobs, and never has.."I just haven't been given a chance," says Susan. But when the space on your CV for the period from adolescence to early middle-age is one big blank, no one's ever going to give you a chance. It's hard to think of anything capitalism red in tooth and claw could have done to Susan Moore that would have left her worse off than the great sapping nullity in which Her Majesty's Government has maintained her for her entire adult life.

Primary schools have given up on the egg-and-spoon and sack race because, under the great Cult of Self-Esteem, it's too much to ask a child to endure the sting of defeat. A third of London schools play no competitive sports. Teachers are uncomfortable with the notion of an "opposing side" one must strive to "beat" - just as, in the war on terror, many grown-ups are uncomfortable with the notion of "the enemy": to the progressive mind, there are no enemies, just friends whose grievances we haven't yet fully acknowledged.

Where did this idea that children are irreparably harmed by any competition whatsoever come from? And why didn't anyone foresee that instilling a fear of competition into children is much more likely to produce a gaggle of Susan Moores than a country full of productive citizens?

The responses to the story on Ms. Moore, by the way, are heartening. The following is a typical example:

THERE is never an excuse for not working except in recognised cases, such as for health reasons. So it makes my blood boil to see people like Susan Moore.

If you are not employed but are employable, surely stacking shelves in a supermarket or something similar shouldn’t be beneath you?

Bomb threats and potty parity

One of the changes I've made lately to improve my health (which IS much improved, thanks) is to drink between 8 and 10 glasses of water a day. My face is clearer. My itchy dry skin is resolving itself. My system feels nice and clean and, well, flushed.

And if I had a kid at this school, I'd be outside with a picket sign reading, "Potty Rights for All!"

Under a new policy at the Lawrence Middle School (NJ), seventh- and eighth-graders are allowed to leave class for the bathroom a maximum of 15 times a month. As a result, some are afraid to use up their bathroom passes too quickly and end up with a full bladder and nowhere to go.

The pass system went into effect last month as a way to monitor the school restrooms and stop students from skipping class. It is the latest in a series of disciplinary measures school administrators have taken in response to behavioral problems that have included bomb threats.

I got news for that school. The way my bladder is now, I don't think I'd hesitate to call in a bomb threat if that cleared the way to the bathroom for me. And what on earth does regulating bathroom usage have to do with halting sociopathic behavior? It's unhealthy, and it's insulting to those students who aren't acting out.

"When my son Matthew used all his passes, he was then told he couldn't go to the bathroom," parent Susan Gregory told The Times of Trenton. "We called the school and were told the bathroom is a privilege, not a right. Then we were told if a child has to go to the bathroom more than three times a day, we need (to bring them) a doctor's note...

"Common sense tells you the policy doesn't make any sense," said Dr. Christopher S. Cooper, an associate professor of urology at the University of Iowa who specializes in pediatric urology.

The good doctor mentioned "common sense." Get the feeling he hasn't had much contact with public school systems lately?

"I see lots of junior high kids every day who have problems with urinary tract infections from not voiding frequently enough," he said. "There is also an epidemic of constipation because kids are not consuming enough fluids."

While Cooper acknowledges teachers need uninterrupted time to teach, and that some students ask for a bathroom pass to skip class, he says a student who sits in class trying to restrain the desire to urinate will be distracted and won't be able to pay attention to the lesson.

No kidding. Let's see, they've already locked up the bathrooms between clas periods and are limiting to kids to gym, lunch, and those 15 passes per month. What are they going to do next - take out all the water fountains so that kids don't try to do anything disruptive like replenish themselves between classes?

Principal Nancy Pitcher thinks the policy offers students ample opportunities to use the bathroom. She said it was a necessary step to guarantee the safety of her students and encourage learning. The high school implemented a similar system the previous year.

Does Ms. Pitcher follow the same constraints? No? Then it's not ample. Schools can control discipline without draconian control over this most personal of needs. There are ways to control bathroom misbehavior without making the restrooms off-limits.

Ms. Pitcher claims some kids just don't want to follow "rules." Parents are countering that locking kids out of bathrooms would be illegal in other public places (not to mention something that Child Services would investigate in a home), so why should it be allowable in a public school?

Devoted Reader Regin sent this my way; Joanne Jacobs posted on it as well. The comments on her site are great. This one from "Jon" was my favorite:

It is abusive to not allow someone to use a bathroom. The authorities should be ashamed of themselves. Justifying their cruel actions as necessary to combat the actions of a few jerks is just the kind of zero-tolerance nonsense that will probably result in Ziploc bags of urine being left on their automobiles during the next school board meeting.

I wonder if it was the thought of this kind of retaliation that prompted this followup letter from Principal Pitcher at the Lawrence Township Schools website:

Our main goal at Lawrence Middle School is to provide the best possible education for your child during their middle school years. As you may know, we had a problem the first part of this year with constant interruptions to student learning because of bomb threats which necessitated evacuating the building for as long as 2.5 hours at a time. These bomb threats were usually written on bathroom walls...

Although this pass system has virtually eliminated bomb threats and kept students in classes in our building, it has not been popular with some of our students and their parents...

To say the least. And can I ask a question? Sure, there are no more bathroom walls on which to write threats, but the kids who wrote those threats are still walking the halls. Was anything done to find out who they were? Wouldn't that have been more productive than closing the bathrooms? What's to stop these kids from writing a threat on a wall during class hours? My kid would be no "safer" just because you removed the element on which a little jerk could write his threats...

On Tuesday of this week Mrs. Biggs and I met with interested parents and staff members, talked about issues at the school and listened to their concerns. As a result of that meeting, we are making revisions to the hall pass system. The pass will no longer specify the number of trips to the bathroom but, instead, will allow the student to determine how he or she uses the 30 slots on the pass during the 20 days in a given month. Of course, we will also continue to allow any student to make additional trips to the bathroom if it is an emergency...

There will be a meeting for all Lawrence Middle School parents next Tuesday, February 24 at 7:30 PM in our school library to hear your ideas, discuss our shared vision for Lawrence Middle School and talk about next steps. We hope you will attend.

Principal Pitcher is patting herself on the back for reducing the number of bomb threats. But if I were a parent there, in a small NJ town like Lawrenceville that is most definitely NOT a deprived community, I'd still be worried. What else is being done to find the kids who would do such things?

Defining terrorism down

I'm no fan of teachers' unions, but this is just ridiculous:

Education Secretary Rod Paige called the nation's largest teachers union a "terrorist organization" Monday, taking on the 2.7-million-member National Education Association early in the presidential election year.

The education secretary's words were "pathetic and they are not a laughing matter," said Weaver, whose union has said it plans to sue the Bush administration over lack of funding for demands included in the "No Child Left Behind" schools law.

Allegedly it was a joke, but it was a pretty poor one (though not "hate speech"). As Joanne Jacobs puts it:

I fear that "terrorist" is joining "Nazi" as an all-purpose word meaning "someone of whom I disapprove." There are real terrorists out there.

Update: Joanne is more right than she knows. Drudge notes that presidential hopeful Kerry has lobbed the terms at Republicans in the past:

As Democrats express outrage over comments made by Education Secretary Rod Paige [he called the the nation's largest teachers union 'a terrorist organization'] a DRUDGE REPORT flashback can reveal Democrat presidential frontrunner John Kerry Has Called Republicans 'legislative terrorists'... MORE... In Jan. 1996, commenting on the federal government shutdown, Kerry called the House Republicans 'legislative terrorists,' who used federal workers as pawns and disrespected them. Asked about his terrorist comment, Kerry explained, 'Terrorists hold hostages, and the Republicans are holding the government hostage'...

That was pre-September-11th, but still. There should be a moratorium on anyone using the word "terrorist" so lightly.

When educrats undermine education

A teacher from NYC's Junior High School #189 lets loose with a barrage of complaints about the ridiculous rules set by New York's "progressive" educrats:

A superintendent from Joel Klein's Education Department recently sat in on one of my seventh-grade classes. He conceded that my students, among the least academically oriented in the Western world, were fascinated by the college-level words I insisted they could handle. But then I got hit with a revelation: My lesson was fatally flawed, because vocabulary words were written in chalk on a traditional blackboard!

The Education Department calls its actions progressive when they are the opposite. The department discredits any educational practice that has worked in the past. For example, spelling tests are disallowed because they supposedly strike fear, do not relate to experience and produce a distaste for language.

Hmmm, "strike fear", "do not relate to experience" and "produce a distaste for language" - sounds like the definition of an educrat to me. Hopefully, spelling bees will be here long after educrats are gone.

Teachers are warned not to correct errors with red ink because that color is "aggressive." Grammar is not taught because it is "dull." Children are encouraged to invent their own spelling so that they can discover the delights of creativity. Dictionaries are frowned on. They have been replaced by mandatory word walls where random but relevant-sounding terms are taped...

The ideologues at the Education Department are assassinating our once-proud public school system. They have brought winds of change that should provoke a storm of protest.

Grammar is not dull, but educrats and their non-challenging school programs certainly can be. And children can be counted on to be creative, but not to be educated, knowledgeable, disciplined, or logical. If the Education Department is ppreventing teachers from actually educating children (or from giving them worthwhile feedback, even in red ink), isn't it about time they changed their name?

Atlanta's educrats afraid of excellence

Joanne Jacobs and Sheila O'Malley uncovered this stunning rejection letter to a prospective teacher in the Atlanta school system:

I am a 22-year-old African-American male and recent graduate of a respectable liberal arts college in Kentucky. I acquired a 3.75 grade-point average with a double major in Social Studies Secondary Education and sociology. I was a Rhodes Scholar nominee, inducted into the Mensa society in May 2001, named to the National Dean's List for three consecutive years, successfully competed in intercollegiate forensics and served as student body president...

Recently, I interviewed with a school in one of the metro Atlanta counties, only to receive an e-mail from the principal stating, "Though your qualifications are quite impressive, I regret to inform you that we have selected another candidate. It was felt that your demeanor and therefore presence in the classroom would serve as an unrealistic expectation as to what high school students could strive to achieve or become. However, it is highly recommended that you seek employment at the collegiate level; there your intellectual comportment would be greatly appreciated. Good luck."

In other words, this teacher was rejected for the likelihood that he would have too high a standard for his students. Appalling. The writer, Mr. Marquis Harris, entitled this article, "Brains can hurt job applicants," which is as brutal a commentary on the teaching profession as I've ever seen.

Joanne's commenters have it exactly right. One says that it's not the kids who would feel threatened by Mr. Harris, and another provides this link that gives more information on this outstanding young man.

The Atlanta school officials should be ashamed. They've deprived their students of the chance to be exposed to a passionate and intelligent teacher who would have helped spur them on to greater achievement.

A "baleful" understanding of the SAT

I love the subtitle of this NRO article by Catherine Seipp: "Is the SAT biased or are college presidents nuts?" Are those our only two options?

Pitzer College alumni and donors may be wondering about the decision-making process of their president, Laura Skandera Trombley, after reading her Jan. 18 Los Angeles Times op-ed piece against the SAT. Because "we have a deep commitment to social responsibility," Trombley writes, Pitzer will no longer require applicants to submit SAT scores if they have at least a 3.5 grade-point average and are in the top-ten percent of their high-school class.

Well, that LA Times article explains the title of this article. In her article, Ms. Trombley asks, "Which Is an Exercise in Futility: the SAT, 'Survivor' or All of the Above?" Ms. Trombley's article, by the way, is an exercise in "educational equivalence," because she believes that context is everything, and some SAT references may be relevant to people like Ms. Trombley, but not to others, and we just can't expect intelligent students to be familiar with a core group of educational facts.

What's worse, Ms. Trombley's entire argument seems to be based on her reading of one SAT item:

Here, for example, is an actual SAT question:

Context: the framework within which we make sense of the world.

Obviously, Ms. Trombley's "framework" does not consider the possibility that flooding follows heavy rains, and thus an outdoor picnic - even on on high grounds - would not be too smart. Also, what Ms. Trombley is hoping to slip by the casual reader is the idea that the College Board deliberately includes test items that are familiar to smart kids from one part of the country and utterly foreign to smart kids from another region. The idea that the College Board just might try to include items that are as generalizable as possible is one that she doesn't want readers to think about.

Ms. Seipp, on the other hand, concludes that this item would be easy, even for a 10-year-old, because the correct option is the only one that represents an indoor location. Thus, even if one was not sure of what exactly "baleful" meant in this context (stormy? windy? rainy?), the one option that stands out so from the others gives you a clue.

But Ms. Trombley's inanities don't stop there. For some reason, she considers this 80-year-old, retired item to be further support for her arguments:

Another reason the SAT is an inadequate measure of student aptitude is that its questions have little to do with our day-to-day lives or with what we need to know. Here's a question from the original 1920s version of the SAT — but it could just as easily be on the test today:

"Pick out the antonyms from among these four words: Obdurate spurious ductile recondite."

Emphasis mine. If this item was on the test in the 1920's, then it was considered relevant in the 1920's. If it's not on the test today - which it isn't - then someone at the College Board rejected it in favor of items that were more relevant to current times. The argument that an ancient (by testing standards) and obsolete item proves that the current exam is inappropriate is ridiculous, but people keep making it.

Anyway, let's continue on with the Ms. Seipp and her opinion of Ms. Trombley's argument:

So no more SATs at Pitzer. "We felt that requiring the SAT — a test on which white students score 206 points higher then average than nonwhites, according to Psychology Today — was inconsistent with our values," Trombley explains.

Oh my. This is the Psychology Today article they're referring to, and regular readers of this blog will recall that my opinion of that article was that it was shallow, one-sided, and muddled. If PT is the only source Ms. Trombley has for SAT information, I can see why she believes that removing the SAT actually removes the achievement gap between blacks and whites. She's confused the message with the messenger, and it apparently makes her feel good about herself, and her school, to do something that does absolutely nothing for the state of minorities in public education.

But I digress:

For those unfamiliar with its values, Pitzer — a member of the Claremont Colleges in southern California — is a small liberal-arts college dedicated to diversity and social responsibility and is the lead Claremont College for its black-studies program. The website features a picture of "President Trombley's electric vehicle" and a quote from her about how much she likes it: "Driving along at a top speed of 25 miles per hour, with the wind in our hair, we love hearing the birds instead of an engine."

I don't think she's affecting the royal "we" here, by the way; Trombley looks in the picture like a pleasant, unpretentious woman. Apparently she just never drives even an electric car except when carpooling. She's that socially responsible.

Tee hee. Ms. Trombley actually deserves more ridicule than Ms. Seipp provides here. I mean, look at her "argument" that relates the SAT to reality TV:

The SAT was born of 1920s intelligence testing. Its creator was Carl Campbell Brigham, a Princeton psychology professor and, according to Nicholas Leman, author of "The Big Test," an enthusiastic eugenicist.

And that's where you'll find the real message of the SAT: If you are the last one standing, having beaten your competitors by any means necessary, you are the winner. Everyone else is a loser.

Whaa? First she natters on about how the SAT was developed in the 1920's - I suppose we're supposed to assume that it's still a product of those old, bad, racist days, despite the fact that eugenic science has been discredited for fifty years - then she claims that the SAT is the same thing as reality TV, which is an ugly by-product of the 2000's. What's more, if I read this right, she's against all competition whatsover, because competition produces winners and losers.

But then we read this:

Our research has shown that a student's high-school grade point average — not his or her SAT scores — is the greatest predictor of success in college. We want students who are diverse and talented, with interests and achievements in and out of the classroom.

Emphasis mine. By this standard, then, couldn't students with low high school GPA's be considered "losers" in the race for college admissions? Couldn't valedictorians be the same as those triumphant "Survivor" competitors? How is a college admissions policy that admits only those students with a 3.5 GPA or a top 10% standing in high school not a meritocratic policy? How dare Ms. Trombley demand that students show evidence of "talent"?

Oh, sure, Ms. Trombley natters on about how if students have low GPAs and no SAT scores, there are other criteria they must meet, but aren't all required criteria proof that, in some way, merit matters for college admissions?

If high school grades outperform the SAT in predicting grades at Pitzer College, then by all means, the college should stop using the SAT. That's well within their bailiwick. But Pitzer's representatives shouldn't insult our intelligence by gullibly repeating the overinflated claims of test prep companies, naively insisting that a switch from SAT to grades nullifies the dreaded "meritocracy," and idiotically claiming that removing the SAT requirement somehow equalizes the educational achievements of minority and non-minority students.

How to get rich in education without really trying

From a Devoted Reader comes this tale of financial and educational hanky-panky in Chicago. It seems that a team of three teaching sisters, including one who never managed to pass the teacher certfication exam, were paid "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in order to produce schoolteacher manuals that were so error-riddled as to be completely unusable:

One of the sisters, Judith Branch-Boyd, turned a hallmark school reform effort into an overtime gravy train that helped boost her 2001-2002 pay to $164,400 -- the highest of any public school teacher in the state that year, records indicate.

Over nearly three years, through the summer of 2002, the three sisters also racked up overtime payments totaling more than $450,000 -- much of it for curriculum-writing work -- that is now under investigation, officials said.

My, what a nice scheme. Given that Toni Branch flunked the teacher's certification exam seven times, it's not surprising that the materials to which she contributed contained errors. Doesn't sound like the Branch sisters knew much about math at all, which is what makes this paragraph so delicious:

Even their overtime records submitted by Branch-Boyd on the sisters' behalf had arithmetic mistakes, Sullivan said. In some cases, his report indicated, the time sheets also showed at least two of the sisters in two different places at the same time.

Giggle. Their mathematical incompetence extended to their embezzlement attempts. I suppose I shouldn't laugh, though, because the effects of the sisters' larceny extend to other teachers who tried to use their useless manual:

The three Branch sisters and others produced math and reading materials used by hundreds of teachers systemwide during after-school and summer school classes, a cornerstone of Mayor Daley's efforts to reform the system.

"It was likely that some of the ... manuals hindered, rather than helped, the teacher,'' Sullivan's report said. However, occasional textbook errors are not uncommon nationwide.

Public school follies

Daryl Cobranchi's uncovered some ridiculous missteps from members of our educational community lately. First off, he posted about a NYC principal who read the names of failing students over the PA system at school. Principal Bobo - I'm not kidding, that's her name - has been reassigned, although the union is defending her actions and calling her removal a "political witch hunt" and "abuse of power." Why, Bobo "did nothing inappropriate," because she did not use "corporal punishment."

I remember in middle school, I once got "paddled" for some misbehavior. In private, one swing, more embarassing than painful. I think I would have been far more traumatized had my principal announced to the entire school that I was in danger of failing. But maybe that's just me - physically tough, psychologically a weenie.

Next up, we have a case of TUI - Teaching Under the Influence. This luckless Indiana seventh-grade teacher was "removed from the classroom" after he blew a .15 on a breathalyzer. (.08 is the legal limit for intoxication.) Other teachers became concerned after smelling alcohol and called the cops on him.

Finally, Daryl questions a decision made recently in Philadelphia's schools. In order to combat obesity, the schools will no longer make soft drinks available to kids. The school believes it is sending a "powerful" and "strong" message. But as Daryl notes, high-calorie juices will still be available, and teachers will still be able to drink soda. Thus, if the problem is that kids aren't watching their intake, they can still gain weight off juice (although they'll be healthier), and kids will be able to observe their teachers swilling soda as well.

How to keep kids motivated - and incompetent

I'd say more about this McLean's article that bemoans the return of letter grades in Canadian schools, but there's no need to. Joanne Jacobs summed up neatly, with one perfect analogy, the reality that eludes the head-in-the-sand educators who believe that grades are harmful for kids:

Grades aren't measures of intelligence or potential; they're sign posts on a journey. If the sign says you're 100 miles from Chicago, that's where you are right now. You have to decide whether you want to go to Chicago or Peoria or somewhere else. You can take down the sign. But you're not in Chicago.

Okay, I lied - not about Joanne's analogy, which is perfect, but about my avowal to not say more about this article, which contains quotes and conclusions that are breathtaking in their wrong-headedness:

The [new] program test-drives an innovative approach to student assessment, one that dispenses with grades. Instead, it focuses on the developmental stages in learning, measuring student progress in terms of how well kids apply what they've learned...Kristine Daigle, whose daughter is in Grade 1 at nearby St. Lambert Elementary School, says the new system gives parents "too much information."

As though that were possible.

The evaluations are "supposed to encourage the student and not give them negative feedback," she says, "but I don't know where my kid stands." At first [fellow parent] Gaudreault shared that feeling. "I missed the marks -- we grew up on that, and every parent wants to know where their child lies in the classroom," she says. "But how important is that, really?"

I take it this means Ms. Gaudrealt wouldn't want to know if her kids were doing vastly worse - or better - than the other kids? If so, why not? Is any sort of ranking system "elitist" by default?

Grades, it seems, can be highly deceptive. But they also have amazing cachet -- especially in today's achievement-oriented education system. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, when many teachers embraced a "child-centred learning" approach, letter grades often gave way to descriptive comments about a student's progress. But the culture has since shifted, and now educational "outcomes" are what drive the system. This means that, in the past two decades, teachers have become increasingly beholden to a battery of provincial and national standardized tests that are all about raising -- and ranking -- the performance of kids, schools and provinces. And parents have been clamouring for clear, concise information about where their kids stand.

Gee, you think the fact that parents want clear information about how their kids are doing in school, as opposed to edu-school psychobabble about progress, could account for that new "cachet"?

...if [instead of giving a grade] a teacher emphasizes what the child does well -- writing "elefant" isn't necessarily evidence of failure but of successfully sounding out a word -- the child knows she's on the right track.

Does it really matter if the kid is on the right track if she still doesn't know how to spell the word? She's still hampered in her ability to communicate until the teacher corrects her. And how does one tell the kid that she's spelling the word wrong without in some way pointing out that she "failed" to spell it right?

Gah. Once I got to the point where Alfie Kohn is quoted as a "award-winning author" and one parent insists that her child's all-C report card proves that he isn't "an approval junkie," I couldn't take it any more. Those of you with the stomach to read the whole thing are welcome to do so (as for my stomach, it's very glad that the GI specialist I frequent was in fact an "approval junkie" in med school).

At its most basic level, the article seems to be about nothing other than justifying the wacky ideas of adults who are convinced that kids cannot cope with being told they did something incorrectly. Given that childhood is pretty much one big experiment of what works and what doesn't in the real world, it seems rotten not to tell kids when they've done something that didn't work. And all this blather about making sure a kid who can't spell knows she's "on the right track" won't do anything to fix that unless the teacher is willing to point out that the kid still has the wrong answer.

Median madness

Education professor Fred Hess needs a new lesson in statistics. In this article on standardized testing and the NCLB, Dr. Hess rails about the misuse of testing in schools today:

"There are serious problems in the legislation, and that was recognized when Congress passed the bill," said Education Prof. Fred Hess, director of NU's Center for Urban School Policy. "But while it's inevitable that this legislation will be amended, I doubt it will go away...

[In response to a comment about the extra funding that has been made available to schools] Hess said some of the act's problems go beyond funding. The tests being used are formulated so that 50 percent of the test-takers will fall below the median score -- in effect setting school districts up for failure no matter how much preparation students receive, he said.

Emphasis mine. I'd like to believe that the reporter printed this boneheaded statement in an effort to expose Dr. Hess's lack of understanding of statistics, but I doubt it.

Dr. Hess, and all reporters, listen up. The median is defined as the point at which 50% of the distribution falls below and 50% above. It is the midpoint of the data. It is impossible to design a test in which fewer than 50% of examinees score below the median.

Besides being defined inaccurately, the reference to the median here is a non-sequitur. Test scores will always fall in a distribution. A good school will produce a large number of students who score above a certain standard, or cutpoint, and a good school may produce students whose median test score is greater than the national median. But no school is judged a failure because 50% of its students score below the school median.

[Addendum: As two readers have already pointed out, fewer than 50% could score below the median if (a) everyone made the same score, or if (b) there were an odd number of scores with the middle score being the median. In the second case, though, the number of scores above and below the median would approach 50% as the total number of scores grew; regardless, I doubt Prof. Hess had either of these two situations in mind.]

The horrible side effects of testing

Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth that occurs when test scores are used to assess the effectiveness of teachers (registration required):

Re: "Kids' scores may sway teacher ratings," last Thursday's news story.

While politicians, superintendents and so-called education reformers seem to think that incessant testing is the answer to all our public school woes, those who spend their time in the trenches teaching, caring for and loving children know deep within their hearts that testing creates nothing but bored, cynical, uninterested students with lots of data and numbers identifying what they haven't "learned" and "proving" that public school teachers are incompetent. Tying student test scores to teacher evaluations will mean that schools become nothing more than testing farms, where the entire day will be spent in test prep.

With all that teaching, loving, and caring apparently accounting for three-quarters of the evaluation, how could anything other than rock-bottom scores negatively affect a teacher? And since when did administering tests, which are nothing more than discrete items that measure bits of knowledge, become synonymous with not "loving" children? Since when did being in love with your students take precedence over educating them? Since when did tests become the sole cause of students being "bored, cynical, [and] uninterested"?

Funny, but my high school teachers - especially the AP ones - didn't see the SAT, the AP exams, and all the other tests as being in the way of their main goal, which was to create informed, educated, and useful citizens out of the lumps of clay they were given. My guess is that those teachers knew how we did on our exams, and held themselves at least partially responsible for our performance - as they should have. They also knew that if we were bored, cynical, or uninterested, it was partially our fault; we wouldn't have been able to get away with blaming tests for that.

Bright student, dim teacher

Devoted Reader Mike recently sent along an amusing (in a black humor, how-stupid-can-people-be? sort of way) article about a bright seventh-grade student at an Ohio school who supposedly "invented" a new math process. I was going to comment on the story myself, and then I realized that Mike had included in the email his own comments, which said exactly what I was going to say.

So here's the article in italics, with Mike's comments interspersed in regular font:

----------------------------
Killie Rick found a new solution to subtraction problems involving whole numbers and fractions. She used the concept of negative numbers in a way that has never been done before, as far as her seventh-grade teacher has been able to ascertain.

Emphasis on the "as far as her 7th-grade teacher knows".

This was the problem: 8 2/5 - 5 3/5 = ?

Now all teachers know that you're supposed to do "5 time 8 is 40, plus 2 is 42, write down 42/5, then 5 times 5 ......." and eventually you get to 2 4/5.

Killie Rick realized that the symbol "8 2/5" really means "8 + 2/5", so then she did

8 2/5 - 5 3/5 = 3 -1/5 = 2 + 5/5 - 1/5 = 2 4/5

"I've never seen anybody do this, said Colin McCabe, Killies teacher. It simplifies it by taking out three steps (to find a solution). I went home and tried to find fault with it, but I couldn't. I got online and did research, and I talked to friends of mine from college, and I can't find anybody who's seen this."

Tried to find fault with it? Sheesh. Somebody ought to tell him about:

(a + b) - (c + d) = (a - c) + (b - d).

And that 3 1/2 really means 3 + 1/2.

But there's more. This is the part that makes me want to throw something across the room:

"I think a lot of credit should go to the teacher, said Anne Steck, the schools principal. I know lots of math teachers who would've looked at Killie's work and just said it was wrong."

Arrrrrrrrrrrgh!
----------------------------

What he said. The realization that neither this seventh-grade math teacher nor any of his college buddies knows about this technique is appalling. But for the principal to give credit to the teacher for not marking a correct answer as wrong is appalling and incredibly insulting to the little girl who figured it out for herself. Not to mention completely egotistical; do they really think that no one has ever used negative numbers in this way?

It is true that, when one looks online, almost every K-12 "dealing with mixed numbers" lesson plan mentions only the least common denominator, convert-to-improper-fractions method. Some of them do so clearly, others do not; this page uses a method so jumbled and jargon-ladled that I have no idea what they're trying to teach. But, this page mentions the borrowing technique the girl used at the end when she converted 3 -1/5 = 2 + 5/5 - 1/5. And this page, at the very end, mentions the method the girl used when she subtracted the two whole numbers and then the two fractions, and then converted them to positive numbers (although the page doesn't summarize it as a concise formula as Mike did, above).

So, at the very least, with only five minutes of Googling, I've manage to disprove the idea that "no one" has ever used negative numbers in this fashion. Guess the teacher above is as bad at web searching as he is at understanding improper fractions.

Update: *Sigh.* In case I did not make it crystal clear above, I found this story appalling because (a) the teacher only knew one way to solve the problem, which is one less than one of his students, (b) a competent math teacher would not have had to do research to validate this method, thus, (c) the student should not have to share any of the credit with the teacher for this. I'm appalled that the school is sharing any of the glory, when (a) this teacher is demonstrably incapable of teaching alternate methods, and (b) the little girl figured it out all by herself.

I thought the little girl should have gotten all the credit, not just some of it. My Google search was not to take credit away from the student, but to point out that her teacher obviously doesn't understand seventh-grade mathematics very well.

Sheesh. My first piece of hate mail, and the writer completely misconstrued what I wrote (and called me a lot of nasty names to boot).

A rant about Ritalin and other things

One of the more outspoken bloggers around, Mrs. Du Toit, has a rather lengthy rant on an abusive classroom "point" system for special education students, the dangers of Ritalin, and her dislike for the public school system in general. Agree with her or not, she certainly sparks some interesting debate (so interesting that she disabled the comments after 81 accumulated).

Mrs. Du Toit posts this warning on her front page: "This website contains GRAPHIC language. If you are offended by blunt speech, please leave immediately. Thank you." I advise you to take the warning seriously.

If you do read the post, though, be sure to read the comments, too. One comment in particular, I absolutely love, because it addresses the "lack of socialization" comments that homeschooling parents are often bombarded with:

Great Post Mrs. Dutoit. My wife and I are going to homeschool our daughters, now 3 and 2. Her mother is against it. "Tough shit", I believe is what I said to my mother-in-law. (I actually have a great relationship with her, and can say such things). I cut the debate off when she said "But what about socialization?". My answer: "I smoked my first joint because of "socialization". How bout you?"

Reality show format "fizzles" for administrators

I invite you to read, without comment (I'm laughing too hard to write), the tragedy that ensues when college administrators try far, far too hard to be hip:

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) - A creative idea to make meetings between University of Iowa officials and students more fun quickly changed directions when jazzy nicknames chosen for top administrators were found to have undesirable multiple meanings.

Jones, 63, suggested that he and Skorton, 54, "have to do a better job of trying to keep up with the culture of today's youth."

Does "VP" stand for "Vapidly Pious"?

A little bird forwarded me a truly unbelievable letter from one Rebecca McBride DiLiddo, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The link is here, if you've a subscription; if not, just read on to enjoy the experience of witnessing something quite boneheaded:

How to Make the SAT 'Truly Colorblind'

I agree with Jay Rosner that the SAT score gap between whites and minorities reflects bias in the test ("Researchers Charge Racial Bias on the SAT," October 10). As a scientist, I find it intuitively obvious that the SAT must have some inherent bias. The scores simply do not do what they are said to do: accurately predict performance in college for all groups. ...

That's funny, I thought scientists relied on data, not intuition. What on earth makes it "intuitively obvious" that the SAT must have "inherent" bias, and why should we take the word of a scientist who presents no data to back her claim?

What's more, I've already taken apart Mr. Rosner's ridiculous claims that only items which favor white test-takers make it onto the SAT. I won't repeat those arguments here; I'll just note that Ms. DiLiddo's complaint that the SAT doesn't "accurately predict performance in college for all groups" demonstrates as profound a lack of understanding of testing and predictive validity as Mr. Rosner showed for test bias and construction.

How do I know this? The key is Ms. DiLiddo's use of the word "accurate" in this context. Those who understand testing do not talk of an absolute "accuracy;" they speak of validity, which takes several forms. I assume by "accuracy" Ms. DiLiddo means predictive validity, which is never perfect or absolute with this type of measurement in the real world. One measure of predictive validity for the SAT is its correlation with variables such as first-year college GPA; any positive relationship between the two gives you an idea of how much of GPA variability coincides with SAT score variability, and the square of the correlation is the percent of variability in GPA explained by the SAT score. This relationship does indeed vary for different subgroups and different colleges; unfortunately for Ms. DiLiddo, that variability does nothing to prove her point.

For example, if we want to talk data, what we find is that the SAT tends to overpredict non-Asian minority college performance; removing the SAT in those cases could result in fewer such students being admitted. High school GPA also tends to follow the same patterns for ethnic groups as the SAT, so removing the test and just using grades probably wouldn't change anything. I suppose the theory is that grades are "inherently" biased, too?

It's not that there aren't valid criticisms of the SAT to be made. At least one article suggests that the SAT II is more useful in prediction of college grades for University of California freshmen than the SAT I (but yet another article suggests that the SAT and SAT II produce freshman classes of similar performance and quality). Has Ms. DiLiddo ever seen any real data showing the predictive validity of the SAT and SAT II? Or is she content with her "intuition" about the test's "accuracy"?

Jay Rosner gives us an easy way to fix the problem. Simply use the information that the Educational Testing Service already has to develop a truly colorblind test. Use a mix of questions that includes a certain number on which whites do well and an equal number on which minorities do well, and questions on which each subset does poorly. Each group would be equally advantaged and disadvantaged.

Unfortunately for Ms. DiLiddo, this paragraph demonstrates that she knows very little about test bias and measurement error. Tests are not constructed so that there are equal numbers of items that disfavor each group, nor should they be. Items that are biased in this way are measuring something other than the intended construct, and these types of items are not, and never should be, included on tests such as the SAT. Ms. DiLiddo's definition of "colorblind" here is completely perverted; a test in which each item measures some extraneous construct that is correlated with skin color is as far from "colorblind" a test as one can get.

We all know why that won't happen. The SAT is not about creating a level
playing field. It is about maintaining the advantage of an empowered class. To maintain such an advantage in an age of affirmative action, it is essential to find a way to make it look like all groups receive equal treatment while allowing the empowered class to maintain its edge. ...

Yep, that's why the Asians score so well on the math section (and have a higher mean on the Verbal section than women overall). It's because we are determined to make them "the empowered class" in America. That's how those Asians maintain their "edge" in these days when colleges such as the University of Michigan award more points to "under-represented minorities" than to applicants with perfect SAT scores (at least, Michigan used to do this; now they'll have to stop, or just be more secretive). Yep, this is all about keeping those Asians on top.

It is particularly important to expose discrimination in cases where it hides behind the facade of equal treatment. It is time for the ETS to admit the bias of the SAT, fix it, and allow academia to get down to the task of fulfilling its promise to provide equal opportunity to all students.

This statement is as uninformed and unenlightened as it is insulting to the dozens of psychometricians, test developers, and researchers who work for the College Board (not ETS) and who ensure that biased items do not go onto the SAT.

Rebecca McBride DiLiddo
Interim Associate Vice President of Institutional Research and Assessment
Fitchburg State College
Fitchburg, Mass.

Hmm, it's Associate Vice President, is it? Let's see, that leaves us with only three options:

(1) Ms. DiLiddo doesn't have a college degree or attended a college that didn't require a standardized test, thus avoiding the demonic, ruling-class-empowering minions of the College Board,
(2) Ms. DiLiddo did just fine on her SATs, thus benefiting from the "biased" system that she now despises, or
(3) Ms. DiLiddo did poorly on her SATs - but that didn't stop her from becoming "empowered" enough to be Interim Associate VP, did it?

Actually, (1) can be disproven because Ms. DiLiddo received her PhD only two years ago, which is surprisingly recent for someone in her position (and this means she probably did well on the evil GRE as well as the evil SAT).

Looking further through Google, we see that Ms. DiLiddo (or someone with her exact same name and affiliation) is listed as a member of a "think" tank, despite having shown here evidence of rather unenlightened scientific thinking. Her name is also associated (under a different college affiliation) with a few scientific works...on botany and plant biology. Yes, that's exactly the field in which I'd expect to find an expert in the "inherent" biases of standardized educational testing; one who can see right through the devious conspiracies of test developers and who knows that all tests should be constructed so that each test item contains biases based on skin color.

If this is too much sarcasm for you, I apologize. It's just truly mind-boggling (and blood-pressure-increasing) to see this sort of completely uninformed material written by those who should know better, and published by those who should know better (unless the Chronicle figured, as would I, that Ms. DiLiddo's own statements are the most damning thing one can print about her).

The phantom geometry student

Devoted Reader Mike sends along this great story, which Joanne Jacobs also noted:

Fourteen-year-old Lauren Lee recently got some great news in a progress report sent home from Sherwood High School in Montgomery County [Maryland]. The freshman got an "A" in a tough honors-level geometry course.

Not bad, thought Lauren's mother, Lauren Asbury, especially considering that her daughter never attended the school. "She doesn't go to Sherwood," explained Mrs. Asbury. "She goes to Good Counsel High School."

And you guys thought Blair Hornstine was the master of getting good grades in classes that she never attended.

Lauren, who lives in Olney, has never attended Sherwood High School in Sandy Spring, but that hasn't stopped teachers she's never met from giving her high marks. Two of the four teachers at Sherwood whose classes Lauren never attended gave her A's anyway, according to the Sept. 26 progress report school officials recently mailed home.

"It was kind of funny at first," Mrs. Asbury said. "But then it's really scary when you think about it. I mean, if they thought my daughter was really going to school there, then why didn't anybody call me?"

I agree; it would freak me out as well. What's also bothersome is that Sherwood's administrators aren't returning Ms. Asbury's phone calls, although the school's automated system is still pinging her phone to inform the Asbury's of "upcoming school events and other information. "

"I've called the school," Mrs. Asbury said, "because I want to make sure no truant officers start coming after us."

I don't think she's overreacting. The school has her address, phone number, and is convinced that her daughter is supposed to be there. If a school can send a grade to a student who never attended a class, surely they can send a truant officer after the child if her "attendence" starts to slip!

The Seattle School Board "loony-toons"

Stefan Sharkansky of SharkBlog is trying to keep his hopes up about the new Seattle School Board members, but it's not easy:

The Seattle School Board has been captured by the loony-toons slate of Sally Soriano, Brita Butler-Wall, Darlene Flynn and Irene Stewart.

I've seen campaign statements from three of the four new board members (Soriano, Flynn and Butler-Wall) blaming problems of minority achievement on "institutional racism" (here, here and here)

Oooh, that's not good. These board members also oppose standardized testing; I'll give those of you who are utterly astonished about that a moment to pull yourselves together. Soriano, in fact, thinks the test score gap can be fixed by "embedding the curriculum with awareness of racism, sexism and classism." Appalling.

And what the heck is "pre-K-20" education? Does Seattle assume that its public school system is so ineffective that kids will need to stay in it until they're almost old enough to legally drink? It's interesting, too, that these board members, who so oppose school accountability, have the stamp of approval from the Green Party, which demands police force accountability and corporate accountability. So, it's important to make sure that policemen aren't abusing their powers, but it's not important to make sure that your kid's teacher isn't an idiot?

The Shark goes on:

Butler-Wall wants to solve the "institutional racism" problem by using Ebonics as the language of instruction...

eeEEEw. That'll definitely "embed" more "awareness of racism" into classrooms, once white kids discover that black kids aren't expected to learn standard English. I don't think that's the kind of "awareness" that these board members want, though.

Both Soriano and Butler-Wall propose eliminating the high-stakes WASL test, because the use of WASL scores to label racial blocs of students as failures also constituted institutional racism and/or because it reinforces the public's perceptions about the 'failure' of our schools.

Ahh hah hah hah! What sort of Magical Thinking Class does a school board member have to take in order to believe that removing a test which shows how schools are failing will actually affect whether the schools are failing? Hey, this means if I throw my scale out the window, I can remove the "public perception" that I've gained 20 pounds in the last two years. Yeah, that's the ticket!

Morons.

Butler-Wall's priorities also include eliminating chocolate milk from school vending machines, restricting high-school students' contacts with military recruiters, and rejecting both the accountability of the federal No Child Left Behind Act and the federal funds that come with it.

These four new School Board members will still be in office when my son starts Kindergarten in four years. I hope that between now and then the new board members will moderate their extremism and focus on finding practical solutions to real problems...

Wow. Stefan is MUCH more optimistic than I would be in this situation.

Forcing "diversity" on students

Those of you who are Devoted Readers might remember seeing the name Chetly Zarko (it's rather memorable) here a few months back; he was the one who noticed that the U of Michigan seemed to be covering up survey results that didn't conform to the college "diversity" mantra. He's written more about it here, if you're interested.

Anyway, Chetly recently linked to this bizarre story on his website. I thought I'd seen some pretty obnoxious examples of forced "diversity" and social engineering before, but this Californian (where else?) principal takes the cake:

Almost every year, Principal Eric Hartwig hatches a new plan to help students at the ultra-diverse Menlo-Atherton High School mix and mingle a little more.

``It's complicated,'' Hartwig said. ``We're trying to change a social institution. It doesn't happen overnight.''

Wow. I'm just....stunned by Principal Hartwig's condescension, and pretentiousness, and his overwhelming desire to direct and control the most tiny of student freedoms. In other areas, he appears to have created a success story. The school apparently does a great deal to make all students feel comfortable, and their academic improvement record speaks for itself.

But students should be allowed to decide who their friends are, and who their lunchmates are. That is NOT "self-segregation" - it's called freedom of assembly. Notice that the principal did not say anything about encouraging the less-affluent kids to go off at lunchtime with their richer classmates. It's obvious that he assumes that it's the wealthier kids who are in need of "diversity" in their private lives; thus he restricts their lives at this one point in their day where there's no seating chart.

Why? Because he assumes that teenagers have no right to choose their own friends? Because he views his underprivileged students as tokens to provide "diversity" for all those affluent kids? Because he assumes that the rich kids must be racist, elitist snots who will stereotype every minority unless they are forced to associate with them? Because he assumes his students are not smart enough to know why they've been restricted to the building during lunchtime? Because controlling every aspect of a student's life is expected of principals these days?

I can't think of any other reason that a principal would so matter-of-factly perform such an arrogant act. It's not compassionate, it's not thoughtful, it's not promoting affection between students - in fact, it's probably creating resentment. I know I'd resent it if I thought that a principal was using my free lunch time to create his own little perfectly-integrated world. It's obvious that Hartwig wants the campus climate to change, but some aspects of teenage society cannot be forced. For all his good works, can't he have at least a little bit of faith in his students; can't he just let them eat where they want, and assume that some diverse friendships will indeed form on their own?

Chetly thinks that seating charts during lunch are soon to come at this school. I think he might be right.

Where educrats come from

Via Joanne Jacobs, here's a doozy of a research paper that questions the "wisdom" being taught at graduate schools of education today. I'll skip right to the good stuff in the Conclusions section:

Based upon our sampling of the coursework requirements in some of the most highly regarded schools of education, we doubt that most schools of education are doing an adequate job conveying essential knowledge and skills to prospective teachers. The foundation and methods courses we reviewed suggested that faculty at most of these schools are too often trying to teach an ideology to teachers – that traditional knowledge is repressive in its very nature – without offering any substantial readings that question the educational implications of this view.

The Schools of Education we reviewed are neither preparing teachers adequately to use the concrete findings of the best research in education, nor are they providing their students with a thoughtful and academically rich background in the fundamentals of what it means to be an outstanding educator...

All emphases mine. And don't miss the comments on Joanne's site. There's quite a lively debate going on there. In particular, one Andy Freeman seems to be fighting several people at once, using both hands and one of his feet - and he's doing quite well at it.

Superintendent Klein fires another round at the unions

Remember earlier this week when Schools Chancellor Joel Klein was taking potshots at the teachers' unions in New York City?

He's still at it:

For all of our successes, the simple fact is that, by any measure, we are not providing at least half of our students with the skills they need to compete in the globalized, service-based economy of the 21st century. Let me repeat: At least halfof our kids are not getting a basic education. [Emphasis original]

What makes this fact all the more startling is that there is nothing new about it...

COLLECTIVELY, these provisions mean there is no employee accountability in the system, no meritocracy and no incentive to take risks or innovate. If the very best and very worst teacher - the one who works hardest and the one who simply punches a clock - get paid based on length-of-service, the system will inevitably drift toward mediocrity rather than strive for high-performance (although, thankfully, there are many exceptions among our teachers).

This doesn't sound like a man who's willing to back down. I wish him luck.

Laboy puts his nose to the grindstone

Remember the hapless School Superintendent Wilfredo Laboy, of Lawrence, MA, who suspended bilingual teachers for failing an English Communication and Literacy exam that he himself could not pass? Sure you do.

Well, he finally passed the exam - and it only took him four tries:

The Lawrence school superintendent who failed an English test his teachers had to take is off the hook. Superintendent Wilfredo T. Laboy finally passed the Communication and Literacy Skills Test, reportedly with flying colors.

Laboy told Lawrence Mayor Michael J. Sullivan by phone Monday that he received a 100 percent passing grade on the written portion of the test that had given him so much trouble in his previous three tries.

"The three pillars of non-meritocracy"

New York Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is NOT happy with the teachers' unions right now, and my guess is they're none too happy with him, either:

Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein lashed out at the core of the teachers union contract yesterday, saying that fundamental changes were needed to improve the schools. Mr. Klein denounced seniority rights, tenure, and pay scales that are blind to teachers' subject matter as "the three pillars of non-meritocracy."

The speech, at a breakfast at the Waldorf-Astoria, appeared to be a precursor to what education officials said would be a mounting offensive against the union: by lumping together pay, seniority and tenure, Mr. Klein struck at the heart of some of the union's central reasons for being...

Good for him. He has a valid point when he says that these concepts wouldn't work in any other sector, and they don't appear to be working in this one, either.

In the speech and in interviews afterward, Mr. Klein outlined a few ways that he hoped to change — if not eradicate — seniority, tenure and pay guidelines.

Mr. Klein suggested that a group of new teachers start at a good school and move as a team to a failing school.

Only in education would it be considered a radical idea to put the greenest performers in the easiest situations, or to pay more for a person with a more valuable skill.

School district trustee guarantees failure

I found an interesting/appalling snippet in this summary of a recent Calexico (CA) Unified School District board meeting. Test scores are still down, and one CUSD Trustee apparently believes, with all his heart, that the kids in his district are hopeless:

Regardless of the fact that districts lose money when they fail to meet state and federal standards, CUSD Trustee Reynaldo Ayala said he doesn't agree the tests reflect what students are learning in Calexico.

Calling NCLB a "horrible act," Ayala said students in a city such as Calexico should not be held to the same standards as every American student because of the vast number of immigrants attending school here.

OK, so he manages to cloak his statement in the guise of compassion. However, the statement that students in one district cannot be held to the same standards as other American students, because the community itself will always prevent those students from reaching a high standard, IS the same thing as saying that these kids are not educable. It IS the same thing as saying that these kids do not have the capability of learning basic skills and that the schools simply cannot overcome any part of each student's background. It IS the same thing as saying immigrant children cannot be expected to learn English and become mainstreamed into American society, despite the fact that countless immigrants in the past saw these tasks as part of the sure path to accomplishment in the US, and managed to succeed in them.

I'm sure Mr. Ayela (and those who applauded him) believe that they are compassionate. I believe that they're idiots who are willing to make every excuse possible for why the "nature" of the community means that these kids simply "cannot" learn.

Here are the 2002 STAR scores for the Calexico Unified School District. Let's take, as an example, how the kids are doing at Moreno Junior High. At least 50% of the 7th-, 8th-, and 9th-graders are "Below/Far Below Basic" on reading skills. 60% of 8th-grades fall into these lower categories in General Math. 1% of the 9th-graders - around 3 kids - are "Advanced" in History.

Is some of this due to the fact that many of these kids are recent immigrants? Undoubtedly. Does this school district need a trustee who claims that nothing can be done to help these kids improve? Absolutely not. A school district that's willing to try something, anything, to help kids perform better still might fail. A district that lays all the blame on the "nature" of the community WILL fail.

There's a reason the Thernstroms gave their latest book the main title of No Excuses. Trustee Ayela should be reading it.

Detroit's hostile educrats

A while back I posted on the recent charter school brouhaha in Michigan, which so disgusted a generous philanthropist that he withdrew his offer of $200 million that was earmarked for the creation of 150 new charter schools.

Jack McHugh, legislative policy analyst for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, has more on the story - and boy, are his comments scathing:

Thanks to the poisonous atmosphere created by a hostile Detroit public school establishment, philanthropist Robert Thompson has decided, with deep regret, that it is impossible for him to donate a $200 million gift to the city's schoolchildren.

"Statewide, only 3.6 percent of Michigan's school districts report higher average teacher salaries than the [Detroit] district."

Devaluing mathematical knowledge

No more bloggage today; work is too imperative. Hie thee to Joanne Jacob's site and read her phenomenal summary on the "math wars" as described in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

This snippet made me almost too depressed to go on:

(Professor Richard) Askey started teaching a course four years ago in Madison for prospective elementary school math teachers. One of the things he did was ask them a question from an eighth-grade math test that was used in an international study several years ago: Divide 25.56 by 0.004. Fewer than half got the right answer (which is 6,390).

I wonder how many of them understood what even "fewer than half" means, in terms of percentages? Sigh....

Taking candy from the babies

If Reese's Pieces could lure even an alien down an unfamiliar path, surely a few M&M's could motivate a bored child to work harder in class, right? Too bad that it's now illegal to distribute candy in Texas classrooms:

Picture this: a classroom of fourth-graders eagerly competing in a math drill for a simple reward — a little piece of candy. As a former school administrator, this is a scenario I have enjoyed watching many times. It is a common teaching technique. It is motivational. It is effective. It is fun. And in Texas, as of Aug 1, 2003, it is illegal.

Whether you agree or disagree on candy in school is not the point. The point is that it is not the role of government in a civil society to order its citizens around — even for their good...

Peanuts are verboten in most schools, and now candy is out. Fresh fruit might motivate a few kids - a very few. So what's left? Do Texan teachers have to resort to gold stars and verbal praise?

Author Brian Carpenter is right to point out that the suitability of candy for classrooms is not the issue here. It's just the beginning of a slippery slope down which public schools gain the right to analyze every morsel that enters a child's mouth, both on and off the school grounds. That's what the Texas Department of Agriculture considers important, and apparently Texan officials agree.

Ironically, despite all this concern for the caloric intake of Texas's students, it seems that Texas is one of those states that define "safe" schools rather leniently. How leniently? Well, one Austin school got a safe rating from the state despite the fact that, within a few months, one girl was raped in the bathroom, and another girl was murdered on campus by her ex-boyfriend. Both of these assaults took place on school grounds, during the school day.

So, your little Lone Star student might be beaten up or even killed in school without affecting the "safe" rating of that school, but teachers now have to make sure no Snickers get distributed during class time. I didn't think much could be worse than a Nanny State, but a dangerously inconsistent Nanny State that focuses more on sweets than assaults manages it.

taking empowerment a bit too far

Fark.com refers to this teacher as a "Hero;" I'm not so sure:

Two Moroccan schoolboys were injured when their female teacher threw them out of a first floor classroom window for being too noisy.

The official had no comment on whether the teacher would be disciplined.

I'm sure many teachers have fantasized about this sort of thing, but luckily all but this one managed to keep those fantasies under control.

Taxpayer-supported brainwashing

The tireless, fearless, and inimitable Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs blogs about a public charter (read: taxpayer-supported) school in Los Angeles that is dedicated to turning out hateful little "protestors:"

At a passing glance, there was a certain familiarity about this Los Angeles public middle-school classroom. The students definitely looked the part—they were still sweet, still relatively innocent, the boys barely aware of the girls, the girls only barely able to tolerate the boys...A closer look, however, revealed that most of the students were in the back of the room making protest signs. The few 11- and 12-year olds watching the screen saw Guatemalan villagers exhuming the skeletons of victims of that Central American nation's bloody civil war. And the social studies teacher made it clear he thought the U.S. had been on the wrong side.

By contrast, the guerrillas fighting the government were, apparently in his view, valiant heroes. "What's a guerrilla movement?" the teacher asked, then quickly answered: "People fighting for change, right? For economic and political reforms, right? And they opposed the military government."

Nice of him to supply that answer. And a classic example of the liberal arrogance which decrees that immoral or violent acts are perfectly acceptable in the fight for a "moral" cause, such as "fighting for change."

This little bastion of ignorance and intolerance is the Los Angeles Leadership Academy, a "novel" charter school that considers itself "enlightened" and "progressive." The true tragedy is that this school is the alternative to the existing public school system in LA, and this school has managed to teach children to read for the first time in their lives. Too bad that what it's providing as reading material is pure tripe:

The lesson given on this autumn day a year ago was typical for this taxpayer-supported school—where the war in Iraq is wrong, capitalism is suspect, immigrants are almost always taken advantage of by their bosses, and the United States and its government are, if not the enemy per se, then at least misguided...

If these students were going to become the leaders of tomorrow, they had no time to waste. Typically blunt, [co-founder Roger] Lowenstein put it this way: "We can go to all the protest marches we want, but if we can't read, write, think critically and do math, then it's all [useless]."

I hate to break it to Lowenstein, but students who learn to think "critically" are going to learn how to criticize this fanatical left-wing ideology. And students who can use Google can quickly discover, as Charles puts it, that Lowenstein "is a radical attorney from New Jersey who, in 2001, obtained parole for Thomas Trantino—a borderline psychopath who tortured and murdered two policemen in a New Jersey bar."

Shame on the LA public school system for neglecting basic skills so severely that this school, run by a man capable of profiting from his recasting a cop-murdering psychopath into a troubled man in need of compassion, seems like a more viable alternative.

Note: I should have mentioned that the ever-excellent Joanne Jacobs has covered this story as well.

At least he's honest about his inability to educate

What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love, and Understanding? is the title of this treacly, fawning, naive article about a “teacher” who seems to exist only to teach his students that adults can be just as wacky and misinformed about human nature as three-year-olds:

Colman McCarthy knows an easy way to get people riled up. He merely suggests they consider peace. One morning this past May found the journalist-turned-teacher attempting to get the 15 or so juniors in his "Alternatives to Violence" class at School Without Walls, an experimental public school five blocks from the White House in Washington, D.C., interested in media literacy.

Oooh, already my spidey-sense is tingling; better put on the hip-waders before the shit gets too deep…

It was an unseasonably hot day two weeks before summer vacation, and the students sitting in the circle of desks just couldn't get excited about counting the number of articles about violence in the newspapers in front of them. Coming across a story on the Democratic party, McCarthy—a 65-year-old with owlish glasses whose lanky frame was arranged awkwardly in a beat-up chair—decided to pique their interest by making the lesson personal. He started asking rapid-fire questions about the political affiliations of students' families.

"They hate him now?" said McCarthy. "Well, maybe they should talk to him more, maybe they can bring him back."

Um, bring him back? To what? I thought the party line of the “Give peace a chance” crowd was that people should be tolerant and understanding of others. Why is their “hate” towards someone who’s exercising his freedom of political choice being validated here? Is the purpose of this exercise to teach kids that the US should be a one-party system?

"What party are you from?" a boy asked McCarthy—a challenge as much as a question. Before the teacher could answer, another student ventured a guess: "Anarchist, right?" she said.

"I am a conscientious nonvoter," McCarthy revealed. "I don't cooperate with the voting system because anybody sworn into office is sworn in to uphold and defend a violent constitution. How can you vote for people who believe in armies? As soon as we get a new constitution that says we're going to solve our problems through nonviolence, I'll be there to participate."

At this point, the students erupt - and bully for them. The journalist , and this bonehead of a "teacher," characterize their offense as unsophisticated and simple-minded, when in fact the students are right on the money to be scandalized by an adult displaying such a toddler-like fear of armies, fear of violence, and belief that evil dictators can be conquered through non-violent means.

The students continued to argue, but none of it penetrates the thick skull, and self-righteous air, of this “teacher:”

The teacher shrugged, seemingly accepting defeat. "I don't worry about being a success story. I worry about being faithful. And you can dismiss it as, oh, up in the air, idealistic—a fantasy world." Then his eyes glimmered, and the kids realized the argument was not over yet. "Well, the fantasy world, people, are those who say, 'Well, one more war, and we'll have peace.' I mean, keep voting for people who believe in armies. They want us to vote. They want us to vote!"

Wow, that’s profound. Who knew that our Constitution and our right to vote was based upon our wanting to kill people all the time? Who knew that we should have kept slavery legal, let all the Jews be slaughtered, and left Europe ruled by tyranny (these all being situations that were rectified by violent means)? Who knew that a vote for either Bush or Gore was a vote for violence? Who knew that Dubya's been telling us all along that we'll have peace as soon as this latest war is over?

Rather than actually teach anything constructive about politics, or world history, or wars, it's so much easier is to just justify one’s decision to NOT do anything constructive with a slather of pious judgmental attitude and a verbal harangue about how all the rest of us are just sheep waiting to lead others to the slaughter. It obviously comes naturally to this fool, but I hope for his "students'" sakes that it isn't catching.

"Peace through peaceful means" also explains McCarthy's classroom management style. He calls homework, tests, and grades "forms of academic violence." So, while he typically assigns two papers a semester and asks students to read essays by pacifists such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Leo Tolstoy, and Catholic social worker Dorothy Day, he doesn't require them to do anything. They don't even have to sit through his class if they don't want to be there, he tells them. And at the end of the course, McCarthy lets students choose their own grades.

Wow, like, he really gets students, man! He's in the groove! He really gets them to think for themselves because, by this definition, the students in the class are the only people doing any thinking at all. The "teacher" does no work, offers no guidance, and does nothing but limit the scope of the reading (while I don’t advocate the violent means of Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, it’s disingenuous to discuss the civil rights movement without mentioning that offshoot) and throw out hallucinatory diatribes about how ferocious dictators can be stopped with daisies and wishes of peace and love. What a cushy job. How can I find one like that?

I’d read more, but I don’t think my stomach could take it. At least I can soothe myself with the knowledge that the students in his class who just don’t “get it” have at least learned the valuable lesson that age and experience do not, in and of themselves, confer wisdom.

And if a student decides to test out this “teacher’s” theory of non-violence by repeatedly punching the “teacher” in the nose until he is stopped through some use of force, well, the kid will probably still get slapped with charges of assault and battery, but at least that kid will have verified the idiocy of the “teacher’s” belief that “violence can [always] be defanged with pacifist resistance” for himself.

"common sense surrenders"

That's the headline that Fark.com gives to this story, and I can't come up with one more concise - and appropriate:

Pupils across Lincolnshire may soon be able to sit exams without fear of failing, when new government guidelines come into effect. The guidelines, for marking key national curriculum exams, recommend that the current F grade, for 'fail', should be replaced with an N grade, for 'nearly'.

Nick Seaton, the chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, described the changes as "political correctness gone stark raving bonkers". He said educational managers were afraid to use the words 'right', 'wrong' and 'fail'.

I think, if this is not a joke, that Nick is right. "Stark raving bonkers" is the least-extreme term I'd use for this. Hey, Mr. "Spokesman," do you really think that a kid who gets several steps of a mathematical equation right, but gets the "uncreditworthy" answer, does in fact know what he's doing, math-wise? Do you really believe that kid should get some credit, if only psychologically, for getting to the wrong answer? What if that kid gets into engineering school with this sort of mathematical training? Would you ever drive over a bridge designed by that type of student?

Math has right answers and wrong answers, and all this PC fuddling around to hide the fact that Lincolnshire can't teach its kids to get the right answers isn't going to change that. If they follow the right steps but get the wrong answer, it's just plain WRONG, and the student's work should be corrected.

Methinks these folks need to read music teacher Bob Blount's essay on why effort isn't good enough (cached version; not sure how long it will be up). Key line:

If the results are poor but I praise the effort, here's what I'm telling them: "The quality of effort that produces poor results is not only acceptable, it is praiseworthy." I don't know about you, but I don't want MY kids getting that message from anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Fighting the unions in California

The battles waged by former NBA star Kevin Johnson in his attempt to transform a low-performing California public school into a better charter school are documented here on the National Review website. The proposed charter school generated wide community support, millions in donations - and fury from the local union, the CTA:

Impressed by Johnson's plan and his ability to mobilize local support, the school board voted to close Sacramento High at the end of the school year and granted Johnson's group the right to reopen the campus as a charter school.

Under California's charter law, St. HOPE was also free to hire its own teachers. That explains the furious reaction of the California Teacher Association and its local affiliate. These groups wanted the new school to be staffed by the same teachers who had "led" the school to its record-setting level of low performance.

The school opened its doors on September 2nd of this year. I hope it does well. I'll be keeping an eye out for future reports on it.

Why don't teachers prefer merit pay?

Hmm. Can someone explain to me just why anyone should believe these arguments against merit pay for teachers? I'm serious. I just don't get it. I do understand that money doesn't solve every problem, that teachers are often motivated mainly by the love of teaching, and that the frustrations teachers go through will not be assuaged with extra take-home pay. But these specific criticisms just seem surreal to me:

1. Control. People with more power usually set the goals, establish the criteria, and generally set about trying to change the behavior of those down below. If merit pay feels manipulative and patronizing, that's probably because it is. That's funny. Like most people in the business world, I work at a job where my raises and bonuses are tied to performance. I don't see this as patronizing. Being expected to work hard when there's no chance of being paid more than the person in the next office who slacks off - now that's patronizing.

2. Strained relationships. In its most destructive form, merit pay is set up as a competition, where the point is to best one's colleagues...pay- for-performance programs don't have to be explicitly competitive in order to undermine collegial relationships. If I end up getting a bonus and you don't, our interactions are likely to be adversely affected... Are these bonuses made public? Are teachers going to go around demanding to know who got bonuses and who didn't? Are teachers expected to be so immature that they will demand to know who got bonuses, are incapable of understanding that a bonus is based on meeting a set of standards for the year, and will then sabotage the performance of other teachers to get that money? I don't see this sort of competition in my job, despite the fact that we're all hoping to get bonuses. Are teachers really expected to be that cutthroat?

3. Reasons and motives. The premise of merit pay, and indeed of all rewards, is that people could be doing a better job but for some reason have decided to wait until it's bribed out of them. This is as insulting as it is inaccurate. Funny, I don't know many people who hold back and work hard only when there are monetary incentives. I do know people who expect to make more money and receive more praise when they improve their work performance, because even though their drive comes from within, it's nice to have the external validation. Also, I would think that teachers, of all people, understand that kids sometimes need outside incentives to better their performance. Why isn't this type of extra motivation considered valid for teachers as well?

Again, I know that school districts don't necessarily have cash to spread around, and that money doesn't solve everything. As this article points out, money isn't even listed as the most common reason for leaving the teaching profession. But I find these efforts to damn merit pay as quite bizarre, and I've yet to see anything that could convince me that teachers wouldn't be happy with better pay for better work, just like everyone else in the working world. If you've got an argument for that, be sure to share it with me.

I also note that the article equates paying people "fairly" with paying everyone on some measure other than merit, which doesn't seem fair to me. The author is also one of those people who believes that any sort of high stakes or accountability measures are bad simply because some people are motivated to cheat when the stakes increase, as though this were a valid criticism of the stakes, rather than the people involved. These statements make me even less likely to give his anti-merit-pay arguments due consideration.

Rating teachers online

Last week, when I was glancing through an issue of Seventeen magazine, I noticed an article about the two-year-old website ratemyteachers.com. The article enthusiastically and uncritically pushed the website as a place for students to anonymously lavish praise on their favorite teachers - and make critical comments about ineffective or just plain bad teachers.

Unsurprisingly, Education Week now reports that the site is coming under fire from some educators as being "irresponsible" and possibly "libelous":

The site is also attracting unexpected participants: Some teachers are posing as students in order to critique their colleagues, posting hurtful messages for everyone on the Internet to see...

Critics, however, give the site low marks. Students are able to post incorrect information or make nasty remarks about teachers without being held accountable, said Kathleen P. King, a professor of adult education..."They are more or less putting it out there with very little constraint or validation," Ms. King said of the site's operators, "and that's a big issue."

Actually, that's the Internet. There's nothing to stop a student from starting a similar site, or even a blog about their own school that is anonymously run. Constraining an Internet site from posting information is close to impossible, unless one has deep pockets and goes the $cientology route (suing anyone and everyone who posts confidential or critical information).

Are there spiteful and obnoxious comments being posted? I'm sure. But unless schools provide students with the chance to provide feedback (in perhaps the same fashion that collegians rate their professors), the students are going to find somewhere to make their comments. This is just desserts for schools that promote teachers based solely on seniority, and not on quality of teaching. My guess is that some schools are afraid of any critique of their teaching staff whatsoever, especially by the people who are the consumers of that teaching.

a test you really can't study for

The state of Arkansas has decided that childhood and teenage obesity is a problem. Their solution? To "test" each child in the public school system and send home a letter that lists each student's body mass index (or BMI) in a "health report card" that also includes educational materials about heath risks from obesity.

So, it seems the school districts are assuming that fat kids don't know they're fat, that the parents of fat kids haven't noticed that their kids are fat, and that both parent and child have somehow managed to miss the wave of information about weight-related health risks. The school districts are assuming that it's their business to put this right, and that this sort of measurement is the way to do it. Not everyone agrees.

As one senior put it:

To Mary Katherine Smith, a senior at Central High, "It's not the school's business. You go to school to get an education, not to learn whether you're fat or not. I know I'm probably overweight, and I don't need a report card to tell me."

Democratic Arkansas House Speaker Herschel Cleveland is behind this, because "we have to start somewhere and try to protect children." Apparently anything is acceptable if it's For The Children. And while it may be true that some parents are in denial about their kid's health, the statement that, "Parents also will be advised to seek medical attention for their children, if warranted," suggests to me that schools intend to back up health report cards with force. If a parent decided not to get medical intervention, does the school place a call to Social Services?

The jury is still out on whether this method of informing parents can actually help teenagers with their weight problems. And while I rarely give credence to the argument that nothing should be done in school to hamper "self-esteem," I can also see where these public BMI measurements on healthy-yet-large female students could have a negative impact, as far as body image goes. Parents also point out that if the schools really want to combat this, they could bring back PE and make sure healthy food is available in the cafeterias.

an even more shameful day in a colorado school

This is just appalling. A middle school social studies teacher in Colorado was suspended for showing a 9/11 video on September 10th. The CNN-produced video, "America Remembers," was part of the prerequisite for his lecture on terrorism, a very apt and necessary lecture in our time, but apparently he was supposed to get permission from both parents and administrators first. Students protested his suspension, along with their parents.

As LGF reports, it gets worse: The teacher, Jason Ritter, was forbidden to teach anything on September 11th about the events of 9/11/01 except the crash of United Airlines Flight 93 and a standard lesson plan about the foundation of American government:

Jeanette Washington, a student curriculum administrator, dropped by Ritter's classroom [on Sept. 10th] while he was playing the video "America Remembers," and Ritter later was called out of class to meet with principal Cynde Fischer.

School officials told him they would sit in on the class, and when he protested, they told him he could follow their directions or leave, Ritter said. When he went downstairs to think about it, he returned and Fischer told him to leave, he said. He returned for a regular day of work Friday, but administrators asked him to leave again, he said.

He's back in the classroom now, thank heavens.

What in the hell were these administrators trying to control? Did they think that their 13- and 14-year-olds couldn't handle being told that we were attacked two years ago, or any discussion of why that might have happened? The video is sold through CNN's website and the costs of the video/DVD go to provide educational assistance to the families of survivors. It was meant to be an educational program.

Yet the administrators of the Cherry Creek School District have treated Jason Ritter as though his actions were unconscionable and his judgment regarding classroom curriculum uncertain. To demand that teachers refrain from mentioning 9/11/01 in the classroom is simply appalling. It's good to see that his students, and their parents, seem to be backing him; the worst anyone had to say is that maybe he should have sent a note home first. Perhaps he should have. But it appears that the school punished him for not following that procedure with slurs about his "emotional" preparedness for the classroom, which can only mean that they believe there should be no emotion attached to the discussion of events on 9/11/01. Given their suggested lesson plan - and this is for a social studies class, remember - it appears they desire no 9/11/01 discussion in classrooms whatsoever.

Appalling.

Update: Caerdroia has another post on this here. He's not too happy about it either.

Update: Teacher Jason Ritter is allegedly "off the hook," and is back in the classroom. The school is claiming that it gave him the option to discuss "the overall impact of Sept. 11 [and] the patriotism it inspired" in the classroom last Thursday, which contradicts Ritter's earlier statements. A true "miscommunication," or backpedaling from the school? Who knows?

Update: Letters from parents can be read here. Best quote: "Falcon Creek's action underestimates its students and ignores the environment in which they live." Indeed.

Zero tolerance - for peanuts

A pushy mom in Orange County (CA) was concerned enough about her five-year-old's peanut allergies to convince the school to hire a nurse, to force his little peers to wash their hands every morning, and to institute lunchbox searches. Needless to say, the other parents think she - and the school - have gone overboard:

[Confiscation of other student's lunches] was enough to get the petitions out and by Monday night's PTA meeting more than 70 people had signed their names to a demand that school officials explain what steps have been taken and why they were necessary...Many of those attending questioned why the boy couldn't be schooled at home if his condition is so severe.

As far as his mother is concerned, the other parents are "uninformed" - as though none of them have ever heard of peanut allergies, or have kids with life-threatening allergies themselves. The comments of one allergist are enlightening:

Walnut Creek allergist and immunologist Dr. Nancy Mozelsio earlier in the day told The Chronicle that it is not unusual for schools to create a "nut- free zone" for allergic students. Children are asked not to bring nut products to class, and even items like coconut sunblock are checked.

It's possible that this 5-year-old's reactions might be so severe as to be a threat, but that would be very unusual, Mozelsio said. "I would say having someone (a nurse) go around with that person and searching lunch boxes is a bit excessive, in my opinion," she said. "There have been a couple of cases written up of reactions from people who experienced a reaction just touching or breathing peanut dust. But I think there's a little hysteria involved. That's not typical of what we see."

Important things to note: (a) the parent may be exaggerating if she claims her kid can die just from touching a drop of peanut oil, (b) if she's not, and he is that allergic, she should understand that his condition is rare enough that many parents may not believe it, nor should they be expected to know about it, and it's quite logical for them to ask why the kid shouldn't stay home, and (c) the allergist puts the onus where it should be - on the kid not to eat other children's food.

As a parent of another peanut-allergy sufferer and Valle Verde alumi put it:

"By kindergarten, and certainly by first grade, my son was able to say, 'What is in that?' " she said. "Searching a lunch box is insane. This goes to personal responsibility not changing the rest of the world to fit you."

The OpinionJournal found this story first, and I wish I had thought of the line, "Yeah, well, good luck trying to establish a nut-free zone in California" first.

Paying parents who care

The NYC school district just committed to spending $43 million to - increase test scores? Revise classroom content? Buy new textbooks? No, to put a parent in every school as a "liason," at salaries of between $30K and $39K a year. Their task? Why, to "improve communication between teachers and parents," of course.

The NYTimes has more, much more:

In a year of budget cuts, the New York City Department of Education is spending $43 million to hire a parent coordinator in every school, to encourage parents to participate in their children's education. They will be paid $30,000 to $39,000 annually.

There are certain steps a reform-minded school system can take to improve the quality of education, like adding teachers, cutting bureaucracy and introducing a new curriculum. But Chancellor Joel I. Klein acknowledges that parental involvement is a wild card, a factor as elusive as it is critical to children's academic success...

And how will parents be earning their paychecks?

If parental involvement is a wild card, so is the position of parent coordinator. According to the job description, the parent coordinator should be an ombudsman for parent and school concerns, maintain contact with community organizations involved in school activities and create "a welcoming environment for parents." The coordinator must do this 12 months a year and 35 hours a week including some weekends and evenings.

There's already a bit of PC-indoctrination involved - parent coordinators have been briefed on how to handle "cultural sensitivities" - but otherwise it appears that these coordinators will be attempting the simple (note, not easy - simple) task of getting parents more involved with their kids' educations. Not a bad thing, but is this really what NYC needed to spend millions of dollars on right now?

Stress therapy for teenagers?

Your child wants to get into a competitive college. Would you recommend that (a) your kid cut back on running track, or performing in the high school play, the better to focus on academics; or (b) the school assign less homework, so that your kid has time to "chill"?

If you said (a), boy, are you behind the times:

Lynbrook High School in San Jose will kick off school today with new guidelines that discourage teachers from assigning homework over weekends and holidays. And Palo Alto High School, which welcomes students back Tuesday, is granting its first homework holiday at the end of the semester to give high-gear students some time to chill.

That's right! Because, you know, chilling all weekend is more important than working on substantial research projects, or extensive essays, or anything else that can't be done overnight. This may ease student stress, but what about the stress of teachers who want their kids to do some substantial work in high school, and don't see homework as "busywork" that kids should get mandated time off from?

The gestures acknowledge that the intense competition to win admission into elite universities by cramming teens' schedules with unwieldy amounts of academic classes and extracurricular activities may be taking a toll on students' physical, mental and emotional well-being.

Um, is this change taking place at high schools in the same state where the exit exam, which is at the 10th-grade-level, was recently postponed, because only a little over half of the class of 2003 were passing the math section, and almost 20% were failing the English? Yep, it's the same state.

And, yet, these high schools think the problem is that elite students are working too hard? And they want to set an example for other schools in the state by reducing the workload?

Lynbrook High administrators said they have been working on reducing academic anxiety for a while. Students attend only half of their classes Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and they jump on trampolines and blow soap bubbles during the school's annual stress-free week.

Oh, for crying out loud. How much hand-holding do these kids need? Joanne doesn't believe the figure that these kids are doing an average of 7 to 10 hours of homework a night, and neither do I. The ones who are working probably have to do so; I doubt many are "padding their resumes" with jobs in high school.

Among other things, the guidelines recommend students be given reading and practice problems on topics already covered, instead of homework assignments dealing with material that their teachers have yet to explain in class.

Wow. Teachers had to be told to do this. That explains a lot. I remember well that my worst teacher in high school always gave us homework on what we were to cover the next day, because it was easier for her to make us figure it out, rather than teach us the material. And this was in AP Trigonometry, no less; not exactly a class in which students should be expected to do long problem sets on material they've not yet covered.

Yep, that was 18 years ago, and I still hold a grudge. Back to the story:

Henry Dreyfus, who will be a senior at Palo Alto High, is not looking forward to the homework respite. "There are ways to limit stress, and I don't think a homework holiday is a good one,'' said Henry, 17. "We need the homework for reinforcement. I think as a result, we're going to get behind, and teachers are going to have to go over the same thing in class.''

Henry has his head on straight, and he doesn't sound stressed out by too much homework to me. If anything, I think the thought of falling behind - or not learning enough material - is what would stress out a truly competitive student.

And this part is just priceless:

The science department at Cupertino's Monta Vista High School thought more students would enjoy football games if they didn't have to worry about turning in lab reports the next day. So last year, science teachers attended many sporting events and handed out passes allowing students who stayed for the entire game to turn in any assignment a day late.

"We tried to do something nice,'' Giffin said, "and all we got were complaints.''

Where to begin?
(1) Newsflash: You're dealing with teenagers. Of course they're going to complain.
(2) You're science teachers who are giving students leeway in class for - no, not even for participating in sport events, but for being a spectator. Why the heck would I, as a good student in science, want to see people who sit in the bleachers get extra time for homework just for sitting in the bleachers? Why would a good student view a reward for anything other than classroom performance as fair? It's not.
(3) Does anyone other than me find it creepy that science teachers bemoaned the fact that some kids chose the library instead of the bleachers? I thought science geeks weren't supposed to be into sports anyway. Is this social engineering on their part? I'd resent like hell being expected to be at the game rather than hitting the books.

Joanne Jacob notes: "If the homework is busy work, don't assign it at all. But if it's meaningful, then students should make time to do it."

As an addendum, I'd add: And don't give students credit for things that have nothing to do with homework. You might be reducing the stress on the bad students, but you'll be increasing the stress on the good ones. They're the ones who will realize that they're learning less material, and if that they don't go to the football game, they'll actually have to turn their assignments in on time.

A new definition of "bilingual"

Devoted Reader and homeschooling pundit Daryl sends along more lawsuit news, this time about the angry "bilingual" teachers in Massachusetts who can't speak English very well, and don't see why they should have to:

Fifteen Lawrence bilingual teachers who have been on unpaid leave since failing the state's new English fluency test asked a Superior Court judge yesterday to order the district to reinstate them on grounds that the test is flawed. The teachers' lawyer, Jennifer Rieker, filed a request for an injunction in Essex Superior Court to stop the school district from firing them. She said the test, an oral interview, is too broad to measure any correlation between ability to speak English and teaching effectiveness...

Oh, yeah, I'd expect an oral interview to be completely unrelated to one's ability to speak English, given that it's a real-life test of English oral skills. I'd also expect that to be completely unrelated to one's ability to teach kids English effectively as well. Um-hmm.

If the test had been multiple-choice, the flunking teachers would be complaining that the test was too artificial and not enough likereal-life, I bet.

I don't blame them for being pissed off at Superintendent Laboy, who's named in the lawsuit, since he couldn't pass the test himself, and no one seems to be holding him accountable for it. But they're wrong to be attacking the test itself.

Rieker acknowledged that the petition faces an uphill battle in court. Four Lowell teachers who lost a similar bid two weeks ago. But she said the Lawrence case is different because it will focus on the validity of the fluency test. She said she has retained James Lantolf, a professor of applied linguistics at Penn State University, to give evidence about the test in court.

Noting that the test was originally used to gauge the English-speaking ability of the country's diplomatic corps, Lantolf said the state must do more research to prove that it is the best way to measure the skills of classroom teachers.

Lantolf is all but admitting that we can't expect teachers who are responsible for teaching kids how to speak English to be able to speak English at an advanced level. Hey, all that's necessary is for the teachers to be at least one step ahead of the kids, right? No need for them to be able to speak English like a professional, or educated, adult.

Shameful.

Learning to hate America

You know, when I hear schools complain that, thanks to all the basic skills testing, curricula have been narrowed and elective classes abolished, I'm always a bit skeptical. Even more so when I hear about elective classes that do get kept on the roster, such as this course about why people hate America, that will feature readings from such reliable sources as Indymedia.org and Progressive.org. Explain to me again why this should be taught for credit in an American high school?

The course is offered to juniors and seniors in the Farmington School District and focuses on America's role in the Middle East (search). But it's not the topic that's angered some students' parents. It's the class readings, many of which come from left-wing Web sites like Alternet.org, Indymedia.org, Progressive.org and War-times.org, that vigorously attack the Bush administration...

"You can never teach kids the facts about everything," Maxfield said. [Emphasis mine] "What you can teach kids is how to recognize points of view, how to understand sources of conflict, how to understand that there are forces that have driven world affairs for hundreds of years"...

Oh. Yeah. Right. Can't be bothered to teach facts in a high school classroom; it's much easier for the teacher to dig up websites that offer points of view, often with no facts to support them. Does this mean that if a paper is required in this course, any web site is a legitimate source for quotes, and that students needn't worry about supporting any claims with facts? After all, that's the method of "research" they're learning from a teacher who uses this approach.

Little Green Footballs, who has more on the story here, has been relentless in exposing the insanity (and censorship) of Indymedia; his most recent posting on the topic, which notes that Indymedia allows The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to be displayed, yet deletes all critical posts, is revealing. Oh, and here's how the Indymedia denizens celebrated the Fourth of July.

Google also decided a while back that Indymedia was too biased a site to be used as a source for their news engine. Might have something to do with the site's celebration of a videogame that allows the players to kill Jews.

Most of the parents quoted in this article would be dismayed to learn that their high-school-aged kids were reading this crap at home. I can just imagine how they feel to know their kids have to read it for class. And the superintendent's claim that kids can't be taught all the facts will be very applicable here, because if all they're viewing is these kinds of sites, they won't be exposed to any.

While the kids are away, the teacher will play

Oakland teacher Shannon Williams was caught up a little "misunderstanding" with an Oakland undercover cop this summer:

What did you do during your summer vacation? Police in Oakland charge a teacher is turning tricks while school is out.

But Williams says it's all a misunderstanding. She vows to fight the charges in court.

I wonder:

1. Does Ms. Williams understand the contradiction inherent in saying that this was a "misunderstanding," after admitting that prostitution is something she in fact does for extra money?
2. Will local teachers union leaders defend her? And will they use this as proof that Oakland's teacher deserve a pay raise?
3. Did Ms. Williams offer to grade the cop's performance for an extra 50 bucks?

Update: Devoted Reader Richard H. found more on this story!

OAKLAND -- A Berkeley school teacher who was charged Monday with selling sex out of an apartment near the Oakland Rose Garden was supplementing her income, police said. Police said Shannon Marie Williams, 37, was arrested last Wednesday after agreeing to a $250 sex-act filled session with an undercover officer and guaranteeing his "happiness."

Williams, who rented the apartment near the Rose Garden but lives elsewhere, works for the Berkeley Unified School District as a teacher in the district's independent studies program, a school spokesperson confirmed Monday.

Does she guarantee "education" to her kids as well? "Self-esteem"? Don't know 'bout you, but I'd be real icked out if my kid ever did an "independent study" with this woman.

For the record, she still says it's a "misunderstanding" and plans to fight the charge. The details:

[Arresting Officer Mark] Turpin said police were first alerted Aug. 12 by a caller who said two women were possibly working as prostitutes in an apartment in the 600 block of Mariposa Avenue near the Rose Garden. The caller said the women only worked during the day and had a constant stream of men in and out of the apartment.

When Turpin asked the woman if the encounter would be worth it, she said, "you will be happy," according to police.

Hmmm. She's either a prostitute, or that ed-school training on how to raise self-esteem in students has really gotten out of hand. With no kids around, she's gotta go raise the "self-esteem" of lots of men with money to spend.

At the sparsely furnished apartment, which police said Williams had rented since May 2002 for $1,025 a month, Turpin said he confirmed the price and what sex acts she would perform. He said he then gave her the money -- marked bills -- and signalled for backup officers.

A "misunderstanding". Mmm-hmm. Sure. These kinds of situations happen to women all the time! It's even happened to me, once or twice. Just can't avoid 'em.

Copland said the salary range for teachers in the district is $40,000 to $70,000 yearly. Top pay goes to teachers with extensive teaching experience and advanced degrees, he said.

Does it specify what "skills" they can teach, or where they get their "experience"?

Ok, ok, I'll stop. The woman obviously has enough problems without me making fun of her. She doesn't plan to teach this coming year; a shame, because I was looking forward to seeing if the NEA was going to help her fight for her day job.

But c'mon. A woman who's making at least $40K as a "independent studies" teacher who gets nabbed for offering to sell an undercover cop some "happiness" - who needs fiction when you've got people like this?

And a child shall have no one to lead him

The Cranky Professor looks down his nose at a group of flummoxed British universities who have slammed the gates on a 13-year-old genius. Why? Because the teachers there are qualified to teach young adults, not children:

Adam Spencer already has a B-grade in maths and this summer sat a further three A-level exams. Although the child genius is expecting top grades in French, biology and chemistry on Thursday, he cannot secure a place at university because of his age.

At the moment lecturers do not have to undergo this process as they teach students aged 18 and over...

Mmm. What's this screening process, then, that is mandatory for kids but not necessary for young adults? Criminal background? Pedophilic behavior? General neuroticism? I suppose this is supposed to make us feel better about the children's teachers, but it makes me feel worse about the university teachers...

Baffled in Beaufort

As far as I can tell, this is NOT a joke:

Beaufort County district limits poor grades

Beaufort schools are the first in the state with this type of policy, state Education Department spokesman Jim Foster said.

The message it sends is that, no matter how little one tries or how little one knows, no grade of less than 62 will be given. This is simply redefining the zero point of the scale, and students who should have gotten less than 62 will be in for a rude surprise when a scale with an real zero on it is used. Students with half a brain will find this technique transparent, and risible. Any school deputy superintendent who believes that faking the numbers, rather than conveying useful educational skills, is what really gives kids "hope" should be demoted to janitor.

Beaufort (pronounced BYEW-fert, not BOH-fert), SC, is ranked as one of the richer counties in South Carolina, and it was the fastest-growing county in SC in 2000. The median income in Beaufort County is $46,992, but that's not the whole story. The use of aggregated data gives one a false impression of the true academic abilities - and earning power - in the county.

For starters, check out this chart of SAT scores for the class of 2002. Hilton Head Island is the relatively wealthy resort area off the coast of Beaufort, and their SAT scores have not only recently increased, but also surpass the SC average (though not the national average). The scores for Beaufort High School look quite different - yet both of these scores go into the Beaufort County ranking. Why pretend that Beaufort High School students aren't scoring less than 62% on their classwork? Their SAT scores are reflecting the truth.

The income data show the same thing. Of the four major cities in Beaufort County - Beaufort, Port Royal, Bluffton, and Hilton Head Island - three of them are below the median (two well below), and only one is above. Guess which one?

Why am I spending so much time on this? Well, I just find it interesting because I'm from SC, and spent a lot of time on HHI growing up. I found that untangling the data gave a much more accurate picture of the area, one that jibes with what I remember, which is the bimodal distribution of income and educational acheivement that is suggested above. This article from 2001 claims that Beaufort's schools are buckling down to improve education. Fudging the numbers scale is not a method of doing so.

Rallying the troops

Baltimore County Superintendent Joe A. Hairston recently gave a speech to school administrators, teachers, and union staff. He urged the powers that be to create in schools "a nurturing, supportive" environment - no, no, not for kids. For teachers. The speech, and the comments during it, are so cheesy as to sound like satire:

Addressing 700 school officials Friday at Loch Raven High School, Hairston emphasized that the school system can't meet federal and Maryland mandates for boosting the achievement of every student without solid classroom instruction by teachers.

Wow. Really? Who'd've thunk it? (Michael, don't correct me on this). Solid classroom instruction, eh? And how are they going to bring this about? Higher standards for teachers? More intensive teacher training? Weeding out bad teachers via standardized exams?

Nope, by touchy-feely management:

"It is all in their hands, really," he said. "Make sure your staff feels encouraged and reassured that you support them. Micromanaging will only stifle creativity. Pointing fingers and blaming others is negative leadership."...

But Bost, who attended the meeting, added: "We still need to improve the contract. Maybe this is the beginning of the realization that teachers are important, and we can continue that thought with higher salaries."

That's right, because we don't want to "crush" teachers with the burden of having to teach basic math and language arts skills, do we? And isn't it shame, how starting teacher salaries in the county of Baltimore compare so miserably to the median household income in that county? Oh, wait, the starting teachers make, on average, almost $5000 more than Baltimore's median household, and almost as much as the median income for a family in Baltimore.

But of course, to a union member, money is the cause of Baltimore's failing schools - the miserable graduation rate, the low percent of students reading satisfactorily in eighth grade - and increasing those teacher salaries will fix it, just like that.

The superintendent's annual speech traditionally opens the school year for the system's leadership. As in previous years, Hairston stressed the need to educate every child, including minorities, whose test scores lag behind those of white children.

"Children of color, immigrants, the poor, children with disabilities have all been written off in the past," he said. "But public education can no longer meet the needs of some children. Our mandate is the educational success of all children."

Given Baltimore's poor scores, I'd say they're moving from writing off only minority students to writing off all students. But then, I'm cynical about these kinds of speechs, which are full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The session ended with a chorus of students singing "No Child Behind," as Hairston's recorded voice intoned, "Every child is a gift."

eeeEEEEwww. That sounds like something you'd hear at a Scientology rally. He thinks recording his mantra and playing in public is going to improve Baltimore's schools? Sheesh.

Update: Reader Roger S just shot my thesis about teacher pay all to hell, by pointing out that Baltimore County does not include Baltimore City. Doh! Damn these knowledgable readers.

This link shows that median household income in Baltimore is around $52K, which is much higher than in the city of Baltimore. However, this link shows that women in Baltimore County have a median salary that is below the starting teacher pay for that county, and it's estimated that around three-fourths of all teachers are women, so this is perhaps the more accurate comparison.

These data don't provide evidence that teachers in Baltimore County are grossly underpaid, which is what the union leaders would like you to believe. And even if Baltimore County's teachers have a valid reason to need more money, that doesn't necessarily mean the problems will be solved. While Baltimore County appears to be doing better than the city itself, recent reports show dropping test scores (which are probably the reason behind this pep talk).

And this graph of eighth-grade Reading scores doesn't make Baltimore County's schools, as a whole, look too great either (although the Writing and Mathematics scores are better).

That chanting thing at the end is still really ooky, no matter what geographical area we're talking about.

Roadblocks to education in Atlanta

Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has some scathing commentary on the race-baiting politics that infest K-12 public education, and she holds civil rights activists like Jesse Jackson to blame for "Why Johnny Can't Read":

Just once, I'd like to see black civil rights activists take to the streets to protest schools that miseducate black children...But that's not the typical story line of black protest in matters related to education. The plot, ever so predictable, usually goes like this:

A black teacher or principal is fired. Black activists call a press conference to denounce the alleged racism of white school officials. Or, school officials propose that new teachers be required to pass a standardized test. Black activists immediately declare the requirement racist...

She calls this one right. Virtually any standardized test that is introduced nowadays carries with it the stigma of "racial bias," mostly because the more extreme civil rights activists consider any educational process which can result in inequality of outcome to be "unfair."

In the last decade or so, Clayton County has undergone a rapid demographic transformation from a majority white population to majority black; blacks now hold five of the nine seats on the school board. Given that power, you'd think that black board chairwoman Nedra Ware and her colleagues would devote their time and energy to raising test scores, lowering the drop-out rate or increasing the rate of college attendance.

The politics of black protest too seldom seem aimed at improving the scholarship of black children...the public face of black activism in education is concerned...with jobs and titles, not children. The voices of public protest are more likely to demand an incompetent black teacher be rehired than to insist that no incompetent teachers, black or white, be allowed to cripple black children.

(From Devoted Reader Michael S., who notes that Ms. Tucker is often cast in the "liberal" role on political talk shows. If the black activists in Atlanta are alienating the liberals, that doesn't bode well for them.)

Suing Harvey Milk High School

Remember my previous post on the perils of neo-segregationism, as evidenced by this high school for gay teens in New York City? I, among others, thought that isolating gay teens in their own high school was unnecessarily divisive, would help perpetuate stereotyping, and wouldn't solve the problem of the bullying attitudes in regular public schools. I also thought it odd that public funds would be used to build a public school from which heterosexual kids would be excluded.

Turns out that one NY Senator, Ruben Diaz, Sr., doesn't like the idea of Harvey Milk High, either, and he's filed a lawsuit to challenge "the legitimacy of the nation’s first 'lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth” (LGBTQ) public school.":

A few weeks ago, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that the City authorized 3.2 million dollars to establish the Harvey Milk School as the first publicly funded LGBTQ school in America. The money diverted to the School was taken from the capital expansion funds, and thus much needed capital expenditures for needy schools have suffered.

The lawsuit challenges the validity of the public school.

As well it should.

(Thanks to Devoted Reader Nick, who has more on his blog).

Making money the easy way

Okay, Joanne Jacobs and NRO's the Corner have already covered this, but I can't pass it up - a Chicago high school is going to financially reward students just for showing up to class:

Tickets to sporting events and coupons for Walgreens drug stores are among the incentives that will be offered to Chicago public high school students this year to get them to show up for class more often.

Duncan said all high schools in the system will be offered the chance to hold "rallies'' with radio or TV personalities if they improve their attendance. And students in every high school will vie for coupons to shop at Walgreens and compete for tickets to sporting events if they improve their personal attendance.

The Corner folks hated that "incent"-as-a-verb usage, by the way, and I don't blame them.

But seriously. Why should kids get tickets to see the Bulls just because they're going to class? Isn't this method as much as admitting that (a) kids hate to go to class and (b) this is the only sort of reward they're going to get out of it? It's as much as admitting that the classes are worthless to the kids.

Incentives for academic performance/improvement, or for specific tasks, are not unreasonable, if done correctly (I don't think cash or coupons should be involved). But that's not what's being proposed in Chicago. "Improving attendence" does not require the student to actually learn anything. Yes, if the kid is not there, he won't learn, but that fact that he's merely there doesn't guarantee learning.

Joanne's anecdote shows how incentives can work:

I won a trophy for perfect attendance in fourth grade. My teacher had won it in a dance contest at the Hotel Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. I cherished it because it came from Mr. Parker, a brilliant teacher. I would not have shown up every day for a Walgreen's coupon.

Note: perfect (not "improved") attendance, which does require consistent effort; respect for the teacher; a financially-worthless-yet-symbolic incentive. The fourth-grade version of Joanne felt honored by this, not bribed.

Proving harassment in the classroom

Hmm...Those of you who support webcams or video cameras in classrooms might have a point. Here's a real-life "he-said/she-said" situation where two New Jersey middle school teachers were charged with harassing a disabled student - but the charges were subsequently dropped, after nearly two months, for lack of probably cause. A videotape could have cleared the whole thing up much more quickly:

Municipal Judge Douglas Steinhardt found no probable cause in harassment charges filed June 25 by Jill Sember. Sember claimed Superintendent Dennis Wolf and Wendy Greenwald, a teacher's aide, allegedly belittled and verbally harassed her 14-year-old son, Peter Minchella...According to the complaint Sember filed in municipal court, Greenwald allowed other students to throw pencils and curse at Minchella while supervising a class...

Sember claims the Child Study Team did a "mini-evaluation" of her son in January and said he did not have any problems....Sember said she thinks her son's behavior and nine suspensions during the past school year are directly related to the way he has been treated at school. The suspensions were for behavioral problems and interrupting class, Sember said...

Videotapes showing specific behavioral problems could have helped the school defend itself against harassment charges - or it could have allowed the Ms. Semper to battle the school's claim that her child was not ADHD. Either way, more concrete evidence would have been useful.

Teaching realities

Bernard Chapin explains why he teaches at an alternative school: "There is no such thing as political correctness at an alternative school. Life is real there and reality can't be covered up with lies and euphemisms. That's why I'll never leave."

I had already completed three years of work at a job in the sticks when I interviewed for my current position. My interview was highly unusual. I sat with the principal, who struck me a tough, no nonsense type of administrator...She told me at the end of our chat that she was retiring in a year's time and that, after 35 years in the business, the last thing she wanted to do was physically restrain any more students. She said, "I don't want to wrestle on the floor at this point and I shouldn't have to." Therefore, in her mind, I was an ideal candidate for the job. The school, as is the norm, contained mostly female employees; so she wanted to have as many strong, young males in the building as was possible.

Now I'm not trying to imply that we should not be sympathetic towards an adolescent with a broken limb, but clearly, his own actions were a catalyst for the chaos that followed. Luckily, the investigation was decided in our favor...There has to be an understanding within the system that students have some responsibility over what occurs in their lives. When they attack service personnel, it is irrational to expect us to comport ourselves like clerics.

A public school would probably have been forced to suspend the aide, and not been allowed to expel the student who punched the dean.

Strangling free speech at Cal Poly

Joanne Jacob's got the goods on the latest news about Steve Hinkle, the Cal Poly student who unwittingly caused an uproar while posting flyers for an upcoming talk in his campus's Multicultural Center. Granted, the book that the black speaker would be promoting at the talk had a provocative title, but it seemed that the white male student was quickly being railroaded on charges of racial harassment. Cal Poly's actions towards the young man have been absolutely outrageous; during a seven-hour hearing, it was decided that Hinkle had disrupted a "Bible study session" and would have to issue a formal apology. The educational foundation FIRE had to step in, and they've printed a copy of the disciplinary hearing transcript on their website. Their conclusion is that Hinkle's First Amendment Rights were violated in this case.

Joanne cites a few lines from the transcript that reveal the "disruption" for what it really was:

The offended students admitted they objected to the content of the flyer, which advertised the speaker's book, It's OK to Leave the Plantation. Here's Hinkle questioning Student 6, who called the police.

S6: You’re talking about Steve’s demeanor? Was his demeanor threatening?
RG: M-hmm, or abusive?
S6: No.

So Hinkle basically tried to have a discussion with a student who questioned the flyer he was posting, and when he asked her to explain her views, in a non-abusive manner, she called the police. Right. Cornel Morton, the VP of student affairs, comes across even more shamefully:

CM: Well, it’s clear that we have an identifiably young white male who has been self-identified as a member of the College Republicans group. And although the College Republican group, I’m certain, is not exclusively white or male, there are some implications. And on the other side of this we had a group of students of color, at least identifiably, largely students of color, and the mix, unfortunately, and the collision of experience, that is, the collision of your experience with theirs, on that day at that time was placed inside a larger context, as you recall. And namely these fliers that were posted and the concern that some had about the nature of the speaker’s message and all the rest …. And then to learn later after some investigation that the College Republicans had sponsored the speaker. I think that chemistry, if you will, without question, had racial implications, not reduced solely or purely to a matter of race. But again, I think we would be naïve if we did not acknowledge at least that; we would have to acknowledge that.

What does Hinkle being a member of the College Republicans have to do with anything? Is that illegal at Cal Poly? Is that justification for calling the police? What does his being white have to do with anything? Is that not part of the "multiculture" in the Multicultural center? And why is the "acknowledgement" that race played some part of this justification for prosecuting Hinkle? Regardless of the race of either party, he was posting flyers for a college-approved talk in a public space, and a few observers decided that he didn't have the right to do that. Why did this lead to the decision that Hinkle was somehow at fault?

As Joanne puts it:

It seems like Morton is acknowledging that Hinkle was disruptive by virtue of being a white Republican in the not-so-multi-cultural center. Apparently, Cal Poly officials think that black students have a right to be sheltered from contrary political beliefs or believers. A polite invitation to discuss a conflict is taken as disruption.

Giving "opportunities" to young criminals

Joanne Jacobs explains just how a Los Angeles school in which students commit 134 school-related felonies during one school year is nonetheless not "persistently dangerous":

[From the article] ....crimes connected to Locke (meaning they were committed against faculty or students at the school, adjacent to the school, at a school event, or in transit to or from the school)...in 2000-2001...were 13 sex offenses, 43 robberies, 2 weapons possessions, 57 batteries, and 19 assaults with a deadly weapon. In 2001-2002, there was 1 sex offense, 10 robberies, 31 property crimes, 19 batteries, and 3 assaults with a deadly weapon.

These numbers weren't aberrant, by the way; one can calculate from the numbers given in the article that Locke averages 113 such incidents a year.

Joanne's explanation?

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, students enrolled in a "persistently dangerous school" have the right to transfer to a safer school in the district. But each state defines dangerous. California says a "persistently dangerous" school must "expel more than 1 percent of its students for any of nine types of crimes in each of three consecutive years."

There are no "persistently dangerous schools" in Arkansas, Georgia, Florida and Illinois either.

To put it another way: What if you bought a house in a neighborhood based on a realtor's recommendation that the area was "not dangerous," only to find out that "dangerous" was defined not as the number of crimes reported to police each year, but the percent of times that someone was incarcerated for one of these crimes? Would you think it fair if you were then trapped in that house and that neighborhood?

In each of these scenarios, the authorities (the school authorities or the real estate agent) benefit through shady statistics. Those who have to live with the crime every day are the real losers.

Lieberman's folly

The Shark Blog has a review of the Democratic presidential candidates' pitches to various labor unions (not surprisingly, given the Shark's views, it's entitled, "Dumb politicians pitching dumb proposals to dumb voters"). The Shark identifies only one candidate, Joe Lieberman, as having "the beytsim to tell the union bosses the truth," and their reaction is revealing:

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who has portrayed himself as the most centrist candidate, sought to stand out tonight as he refrained from offering unabashed endorsements of union positions.

"I'm going to speak the truth," Mr. Lieberman said. "I'm going say what I think is best for America regardless. This is an experiment. Try it for three to four years, limit it to poor children, don't take any money out of public school budgets."

Giving poor children money to go to better schools - that's boo-worthy? Sad.

Walking the walk, talking the talk - updated

Here's more on the story of the hapless school superintendent who failed to pass a literacy test that was required for teachers - Massachusett's education leaders are "lining up" to support him. Sheesh.

Governor Mitt Romney and state education leaders lined up yesterday to defend the Lawrence school superintendent, who is leading one of the state's most troubled school systems despite having failed a state-mandated writing test for educators three times...Romney said it is more important for teachers to pass an English fluency test required under the state's new English immersion law than for superintendents to pass the five-year-old licensing test Laboy failed.

Unbelievable. It's not as important for a school superintendent to be as skilled in English as the teachers. Isn't he in a position of authority over these teachers? And didn't he suspend teachers who didn't pass their literacy test? Just because he doesn't come in direct contact with kids doesn't mean he deserves to earn a six-figure salary with less English proficiency than the teachers in question...

Romney's remarks drew angry responses from leaders of the state's two teachers unions, who blasted him for what they called a double standard. They said it was unfair for state officials to espouse tough accountability rules for teachers to speak English and for students to pass the MCAS exam, but not for Laboy.

''So classroom teachers should have higher standards than the superintendent?'' said Kathleen A. Kelley, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers. ''I think it's totally inconsistent with what the governor has said in the past and somewhat ludicrous to say the chief operating officer of the school system should have less of a standard than classroom teachers.''

Damn straight, Kathleen. I don't often agree with teacher's union representatives, but I certainly do here. The state, and the governor, are wrong to back this horse.

Laboy isn't doing much to help his case, either...

Laboy did not return telephone calls yesterday. In an interview with The Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, which first reported Laboy's problems with the exam, he called the test ''stupid'' and said it is irrelevant to his work. He told the newspaper that he passed the reading section of the communications test the second time, but has failed the writing part three times. The next tests are Sept. 13 and Nov. 22, according to the Department of Education website.

Good to know a school superintendent in the United States considers English literacy to be irrelevant to his work. I suggest moving him to a job where English is truly irrelevant. Anyone got a good suggestion?

Your child is a pain in the arse - Film at 11

A group of British teachers have come up with the solution to enforcing classroom disclipline - webcams! If you're like me, your first reaction to this is, "What the --?", followed by a brief moment of wondering how all those teachers in the 1940's and '50's managed kids without the benefits of the Internet. But let's see what the webcam proponents have to say:

Cameras linked to the internet should be installed in every classroom so parents can see whether their children are misbehaving in school. Teachers who unveiled the plan today said they believed it could be the key to improving discipline, and involving parents in their children's education.

[Smith] said: "Bad behaviour in class is a big issue throughout the school system, but teachers have to handle it on their own. If pupils knew their parents could see how they were behaving then they would think twice about disrupting classes."

Indeed, pedophiles could get ahold of these images. Sure, passwords could protect the system, but no system is perfect, and who's going to install and monitor this system? How many professionals are they going to hire for security?

And - leaving aside the ghoulish image of having your kid's classroom behavior beamed across pedophelia sites - who on earth thinks this is viable idea? Do teachers really think that parents have the time to monitor their kid's behavior during the school day? Isn't that the teacher's job (despite Mr. Smith's complaint that teachers have to go it alone)? And doesn't this mean that each child's behavior is visible not only to their parents, but to everyone else's parents as well?

What is the parent supposed to do if they see something they don't like? Drop everything and rush down to the school? What if they see the teacher doing something objectionable, or another kid? Do teachers really want to open themselves up to the possibility of constant observation?

Mr. Smith has apparently convinced himself that the following scenarios are feasible:

(1) Parents will log on regularly, observe only their own child's behavior, and take appropriate action at home.
(2) Parents will not react to odd behavior by teachers or other kids, and will have no problem with their own kid's images being available to other parents.
(3) Kids who have severe disciplinary problems will calm down immediately if they believe their parents will be watching, even though the webcam idea makes it obvious that the teachers feel they can not, or should not, control kids without outside input.

Each of these scenarios seems ludicrous to me.

Webcams in nurseries is one thing - it's not surprising that parents who place their kids in day care want to have instant access, given the inability of infants to care for themselves, the horror stories you hear about unqualified daycare workers, and the general kitchy-kitchy-kooeyness that parents of such young kids have. It's easy to imagine them logging on constantly to check on, and admire, their tiny little Ians and Emmas.

However, by the time the kids are 5 and 6, the parents are probably comfortable with abdicating enough responsibility to allow the kids to go off to school, and the parents rightfully expect that, during the day, the school officials will handle disciplinary problems, notifying the parents only when necessary. This webcam idea puts the burden back on parents to be aware of what their kids are doing 'round the clock, and leaves the door open for schools to avoid the responsibility for imposing standards and discipline altogether.

Good schools, unhappy teachers

Palm Beach (FL) has some unhappy teachers right now. They're being denied a salary increase for superior teaching - because their schools as a whole didn't show sufficient increases on FCAT performance. Problem is, many of these schools already have "A" ratings, meaning that the teachers are being stymied by a ceiling effect that the state isn't taking into account:

Jerry O'Donnell, a science teacher at Eagles Landing Middle School west of Boca Raton, learned last week his A-rated school is not eligible for the teacher bonus because it did not make sufficient learning gains on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, the standardized exams that determine a school's grade from the state..."How are we supposed to improve any more if we get A's every year?" O'Donnell said.

"I was livid. I have never gotten any kind of bonus," said Karen Kaplan, a first-grade teacher at C-rated Orchard View Elementary School in Delray Beach who was a Palm Beach County Teacher of the Year finalist in 2001. She filed a portfolio but learned her school did not make sufficient gains for her to qualify. "This was supposed to be based on your individual performance and not your school's performance," Kaplan said. "It is very demoralizing."

I don't blame her for being angry. If the plan is supposed to reward individual teachers, then the school's performance shouldn't have been taken into account - especially if teachers at better schools are being penalized. I wouldn't agree with Ms. Vana in concluding that there is "no fair way" to assign merit pay, but this method certainly seems unfair.

Imagine no test scores, I wonder if you can...

Canadian anti-testing educrats are in the news again, claiming that it's a crying shame that educational reform is focused on reading, writing, and arithmetic, instead of the development of imagination:

"Imagination is not high on the list of priorities in education," said Elliot Eisner, professor of education and art at Stanford University in California. "Test scores, reading levels and math take centre-stage -- they measure outcomes and meet accountability requirements. Spending time on imagination is considered frivolous, unnecessary."

Perhaps, yes, if the child in question can't read, and the school thinks it should be spending taxpayer money on fostering the child's imagination, rather than their reading skills.

Cedric Cullingford, professor of education at the University of Huddersfield in northern England, said that politicians and those running schools repress children's imaginations with the emphasis on standardized testing.

"What we're doing to children is patently wrong," Cullingford said. "The idea is if it's not measurable, it doesn't exist, and that math, language and science are the crucial studies."

Help, help, they're being repressed! These comments from learned professors of education approach parody. They're whining about the fact that schools are focused on math, and language skills, and science. They believe that this focus represses children. How has it escaped their notice that (a) schools are for educating, and (b) children tend to show a remarkable ability for developing their own imaginations, but they don't tend to absorb reading skills or long division through osmosis?

What's more, any child who does have imagination is, at some point, going to want to express it in a more advanced way, and the basic skills are extremely important for this. What's the point of the school fostering imagination in a budding writer, if the school doesn't also teach the kid how to best express creative thoughts in writing? I wonder if the aforementioned Professor Eisner, who teaches both education and art, would agree that it's more important to foster artistic imagination in children than to teach them how to hold a paintbrush?

Bringing teachers together, the old-fashioned way

Given the, um, spirited discussions I've seen this week in my comments sections, most of which were about teachers' unions, I just can't resist reprinting this Best of the Web posting in full:

In Vermont (Gore by 9.93%), it was a scene worthy of "Monty Python's the Meaning of Life": Wayne Nadeau, head of the social studies department at Lamoille Union High School in Hyde Park, "admitted that during the 2001-02 school year he had consensual sex with a female paraprofessional in his classroom," reports the Rutland Herald. As a result, his teaching license was suspended for 20 school days "and the suspension was reported to national authorities."

Now, the Herald reports, Nadeau has been elected to the executive board of the National Education Association. Suddenly the whole thing makes sense. He wanted to be part of a "teachers union" and was just confused about the meaning of the term.

Wayne Nadeau: Giving teachers a whole new way to pay their dues.

Heh.

New forms of child "neglect"

Retired schoolteacher Daniel Lipsman is in hot water with the authorities for neglecting his 15-year-old daughter, Angela. Apparently, he removed her from the public school system after she finished the eighth grade, and NY's child protective services are after him. This week, an Albany judge ruled that he should have either homeschooled Angela, or let her continue to attend high school classes.

So what's the little "truant" been up to all this time, while her dad "neglected" her? Attending college, that's what:

Angela, who skipped high school and went straight to college last year, has earned her associate's degree and is on her way to a bachelor's - but she can't have the sheepskins because she never got a high school diploma. Even worse, the gifted girl's proud dad is being investigated by child protective services for alleged educational neglect - for letting his daughter go to college...

Angela's father, retired teacher Daniel Lipsman, figures she'll have her bachelor's degree wrapped up by the time she turns 17 and will then get three diplomas at once - including the GED. "It's very demoralizing," said Lipsman, who vowed that he'll "go to prison before my daughter goes to a city high school."

You go, dad. Meanwhile, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is investigating whether Angela's college credits, which have been enough to earn her an associate's degree, are enough to grant her a high school diploma. Mr. Klein, unlike the rest of us, is obviously having a hard time figuring out the answer.

(Via Opinion Journal's Best of the Web)

Caring for kittens

Joanne Jacobs recently discovered a nifty post by Canadian blogger Colby Cosh, who in turn has discovered a recent survey of Ontario's teachers. The teachers favor, by a 2-to-1 margin, teacher evaluations instead of standardized tests. First note the smug description of the findings by the president of the CTF:

"Only 28 per cent of respondents support standardized tests," said Doug Willard, President of the Canadian Teachers' Federation (CTF)..."This speaks to the public's growing uneasiness and concern around standardized testing...

"However, what they can measure and count are isolated skills, specific facts and functions -- the least interesting and least significant aspects of learning," explained Willard. "These high stakes tests serve to sort and rank students rather than support student learning."

As Colby so rightly notes:

Let the record show it: the national labour apparatus of Canada's schoolteachers regards skills like reasoning, mathematics, reading, and history as "the least interesting and least significant aspects of learning." You must have suspected this already if you've tried to have correct change made in a shop lately. Actually, I think it's rather courageous of Doug Willard to admit that standardized testing absolutely can measure student mastery of basic skills. That is, after all, just what those tests are meant to establish. Would you criticize a tailor because his measurement of your inseam failed to capture your ability to shoot free throws?

Good point. All you testing critics out there who claim that standardized tests don't actually measure anything - Doug Willard begs to differ. Of course, he has zero respect for what the tests do measure, but it's amusing to see testing critics switch between the contradictory viewpoints of "the tests don't measure anything" to "well, the tests do measure these skills, but we don't care about these skills" whenever the mood strikes them. This waffling is similar that that seen in the FCAT boycotters in Florida, who one minute claim the SAT is racially biased, and the next minute suggest the SAT as a valid alternative test to the "racially-biased" FCAT.

Joanne's comment on this survey:

It's true, as the teachers' union leader says, that tests don't measure creativity, initiative, love of kittens, etc. But schools have a responsibility to teach reading and math, and neither the responsibility nor the competence to teach creativity, initiative, love of kittens, etc.

Much as it pains me to say so, Joanne is wrong (there's a first time for everything). If one visits the Canadian Teacher's Federation website, one discovers the following beliefs prominently displayed:

We, Teachers of Canada, Believe:
* in a system of education rooted in the principles of equity, universality and accountability...
* that the goals society sets for students and schools must be challenging but attainable, and that progress towards these goals must be measured thoroughly and fairly.
* that the school curriculum must be designed to prepare students to become caring and responsible members of society.

Note that this list, though it does include accountability, does not state that the Canadian teachers believe that children should be educated to be well-informed about literature, or history, or science. Nowhere in this list are any beliefs related to the importance of literacy or numeracy. Nay, students should instead be "caring and responsible," and I do believe that love of kittens falls under "caring" in this respect. What's more, the Canadian teachers are all about goals and accountability; they just don't happen to mention what they should be held accountable for.

Shame on us psychometricians, with our insistence on measuring those "least interesting and least significant aspects of learning" such as math and reading, when the CTF has so explicitly stated that love of kittens is what children should learn. Why, if we'd have just listened, we'd have understood that what they want are tests designed to measure "good will" and "ethical reflection," though, if the kids haven't learned to read, designing a test with items that are comprehensible to them will be a trick.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go design a subjective, performance-based, oral exam on the proper method of petting a kitten so as to induce purring behavior. The CTF is waiting.

And yes, I am felinocentric. Want to make something of it?

Update: The posting above was modified on 7/22/03 to take into account some valid criticisms that were made in the comments section.

A failure of testing, or of ideology?

I'm not sure what to make of this news article from Seattle. It seems that the Seattle School District gave the Cognitive Abilities Test to every first-grader in the district, ostensibly for the purpose of selecting students for the district's advanced learning programs. But the district didn't really want to identify the smartest students; it wanted to identify the smartest students who are racial minorities.

The test, on the other hand, identified the best-performing group as being 91% white or Asian, and now the school district is blaming the test for failing to "diversify" the potential advanced-learning group:

Most top scorers on the Cognitive Abilities Test were either whites or Asians, already the two predominant groups in the district's advanced-learning programs. The results mean the district will now consider other criteria to try to boost enrollment of underrepresented groups in those programs.

Because the testing didn't yield the results the district had hoped, administrators said the universal screening probably won't be administered next school year. Chief Academic Officer June Rimmer said the district instead will propose a plan next month that probably would include other admission criteria for Spectrum.

In other words, the school district doesn't want to use an intellectual benchmark as admission for an intellectually-advanced program. We're not talking about an enriched program here; we're talking about classwork that is one or two grade levels ahead. That sort of challenge isn't going to be helpful for a student who isn't ready for it, and the students who are ready will likely be impatient with other kids in the class who slow them down.

Rather than educating every child to the best of their ability, what seems to be more important to the Seattle school district is placing more minority children into advanced programs, regardless of whether they're truly ready for it. The proposed alternative admission criteria are relatively subjective, so much so that one member of the district's Advanced Learning Steering Committee has already noted that this leaves the district open to criticism from parents who wonder why their children did not get admitted to the program.

Why isn't the school district using these results to focus on those kids who didn't make the cut, and admit that those kids aren't ready to be skipped one or two grades ahead? If a kid is working at grade level, focus the education there. Don't be a quota-driven bean counter who thinks that the school system is a failure if the advanced programs don't acheive some perfect, mystical racial balance. It's not about that.

OK with white people? Well, get over it!

Over on Joanne Jacob's blog, you'll discover a discussion of the evil inanity that is "whiteness studies". Unlike other ethnic-centered courses, which seek to reassure students of the importance of their race and the pride they should take in it, the field of whiteness studies is determined to teach whites to be ashamed of themselves and their forefathers. Whiteness studies advocates teach that the entire concept of "race" (and thus, racism) was invented by whites, and therefore most of the evils of Western Civilization were created by whites who wanted to remain dominant. Whiteness is not something to be celebrated, nor understood, but something to be destroyed.

Joanne's comments are, as always, concise and insightful ("College is about feeling comfortable?"), and her readers' comments are really good too, on topics ranging from AIDS activists who refuse to study science, to the wonders of "electrophallic chemistry". One of the commenters also links to James Hudnall's excellent essay on how whiteness studies is the new racist idea from the left. The fact that most whiteness studies professors are whites isn't lost on him:

Leave it to white liberals and lefties to be the most racist of all. Except their focus is on self hate. And there is nothing more annoying to me is when self haters try to push their agenda on others...What galls me about these morons is that they preach a new form of hate. A hate yourself kind of hate. And why? Because they can then think they're superior to everyone else, because they see themselves as enlightened....

These leftist professors seem themselves as priests, preaching their new dogma. What they are trying to do is fill people's head with self hatred, like their's, so they will follow along when the marching orders from the party officals are bullhorned in.

My take on it? UCLA is one of the universities offering a whiteness course. Meanwhile, one source claims that half of UCLA's incoming freshmen must take remedial English, and the dropout rate for UCLA's minority students is still much higher than that for white students (although it declined after affirmative action was abolished). Is a course designed to teach UCLA's students to hate white people, filled with historical revisionism and ideological ranting, really what those students need to succeed in the academic world?

Tune in, turn on...stand up?

It's true that the dropout rate in the US has remained relatively high for the last 15 years, especially for black and Hispanic students. It's true that drugs, alcohol, and pregancy are some of the more common causes of dropping out. It's also true that dropping out of high school doesn't do much to improve one's chances to succeed in life.

This, however, is a really bad way of pointing that out.

As Joanne Jacobs succinctly notes, "Do school administrators have to pass a stupidity exam?"