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31 August, 2007

More on Whether Affirmative Action in Law Schools Backfires on Prospective Black Lawyers

Gail Heriot has an excellent op-ed on the subject in the Wall Street Journal. As I've emphasized in previous writings and speeches, it's a real problem when the consistent focus of affirmative action in law schools is on how many black students are admitted, with little if any attention paid to how many of the admittees actually succeed in becoming lawyers.

Interestingly, the ABA, which just last year was on the offensive in passing new guidelines requiring all law schools to engage in significant racial preferences, has now proposed new accreditation rules that threaten the viability of many lower-tier law schools, including several historically black law schools. The ABA is acting under pressure from the Department of Education, which has grown weary of the ABA mandating all sorts of requirements for law school, but ignoring what would seem to be the most significant mandate: that the schools actually succeed in preparing their students for careers in law, not least by ensuring that they actually pass the bar.

Isn't it time the ABA just gave up, and acknowledged that as a body completely captured by the perceived interests of the profession it's supposed to be regulating, is in no position to serve as a neutral gatekeeper for law school accreditation?

Meanwhile, my antenna have picked up some subtle new signals from the ABA bureaucracy, that it is less interested in enforcing universal norms on schools that find its preference policies counter-productive, and more interested in finding ways to get all sides together to cooperate in increasing transparency and improving the prospects of minority law students. Unfortunately, I doubt this shift would last if the Department of Education lays off, as it will almost certainly do if a Democrat wins in '08.

UPDATE: The ABA's new proposed rules have apparently been "withdrawn for further study" until February 2008. Thanks to Lee Otis for the pointer.

Also, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that:

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights plans to issue a report today calling for federal and state officials to require law schools to disclose detailed information about their use of affirmative action in admissions and the short- and long-term success of the minority students they enroll.

The report also urges the section of the American Bar Association that accredits law schools to drop a requirement that law schools seeking accreditation demonstrate a commitment to diversity, with a majority of the commission's members arguing that such a requirement infringes on the schools' academic freedom. Among its other recommendations, the report calls for the National Academy of Sciences or some other entity to finance research on the effect of law schools' affirmative-action policies, and it urges state bar associations to cooperate with such studies.

Source




Illinois School Pushes Smut on Children as Young as 12 with Porn-Laden Book

Illinois School District 126, covering Alsip, Hazelgreen and Oak Lawn, has defended its choice to assign summer reading to 12- and 13-year-olds that is replete with harsh profanity and references to teen sex (even teen sex with adults).

Prairie Junior High School's required reading list for rising 8th graders gave children six books to choose from over the summer. Parents have complained that three of the six books contain adult content which is highly age-inappropriate. Those complaints, however, have fallen on deaf ears. At a recent school board meeting, school board members said they intend to continue assigning the books.

To add insult to injury, the school didn't even have the courtesy to warn these kids - or their parents - about the adult content within the assigned reading. And parents are understandably furious. If one of my daughters came to me at twelve having been assigned this smut, I'd be ticked-off too.

Whatever happened to classics like Ivanhoe or Up From Slavery? Sure, some of them may even contain limited profanity and adult content, but there's a big difference. The profane content in Fat Kid isn't sporadic. It's pervasive and gratuitous. The book has 110 pages containing the F-word and other profanities, and there are multiple crude sexual references.

With all the objectionable material children are subjected to on the internet, on television and in theatres, it's outrageous that educators, who are charged with helping to mold the minds of these 12- and 13-year-olds, would willingly - if not eagerly - contribute to their moral degradation by pushing this kind of vulgarity on them. It amounts to educational malpractice, and School District 126 should have its mouth washed out with soap.

I telephoned Robert Berger, superintendent of schools for District 126, fully expecting him to assure me that this foolishness would be remedied. But instead, his response was defiant, defensive and arrogant.

Berger refused to answer me when I asked him several times if District 126 believed that such mature content was appropriate for children. (I wonder; if it's so appropriate, then why wouldn't he defend it?)

I asked Berger if one could infer that the district found the material appropriate since it was assigned to children. He quipped, "Infer whatever you want to."

No one's calling for a book burning here, but c'mon, these are just kids. Does District 126 have any standards of decency at all?

Unfortunately the actions of District 126 are symptomatic of a metastasizing moral malady within our larger system of public education. Kids in public schools across the country are constantly inundated with material which promotes profanity, homosexuality, promiscuity and abortion.

The Agenda is pushed and the curriculum set by leftist groups like the National Education Association (NEA), the ACLU and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Even the American Library Association (ALA) gave Fat Kids its "Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature." The book also received a rave review from America's largest homosexual activist literary organization, Lambda Literary Foundation.

By constantly lowering the bar on decency, educators are intentionally playing a game of ideological limbo with our children's moral well-being as they seek to create little moral relativists in their own iconoclastic self-image. And they're robbing kids of great reading like Oliver Twist, Treasure Island and many others in the process.

How low will they go?

By the looks of things in Alsip, Illinois, they're not going to bottom out anytime soon.

Source




Middle school woes in Britain

Boys will be boys despite all the politically correct propaganda

Examiners have raised concerns over the standard of writing in English GCSEs, with some teenagers producing "sickeningly violent" stories this year.

One of the most frequently used titles for creative writing coursework was The Assassin, the latest examiners report on GCSE English from the Edexcel board said.

There were also concerns over teachers giving pupils "incomprehensibly high marks" for poor quality work, while plagiarism was still seen as a problem.

In some cases the "personal and imaginative writing" coursework, worth 10 per cent of the final GCSE English marks, produced thinly plotted but extremely violent content, examiners said.

Jim Knight, the schools minister, said: "We are concerned about any violent influences in school."

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30 August, 2007

British pre-school scheme fails

Start out with wrong assumptions (e.g. that "privilege" is responsible for educational success) and you will not get the results you expect. The Grammar (selective) schools showed how to help bright children from poor families but that offends against the "equality" religion. It is however sad that such a large and expensive series of programs did absolutely NO good at all. It shows how important it is to get your basic assumptions right

A 3 billion pound series of policies designed to boost the achievements of pre-school children has had no effect on the development levels of those entering primary school, a study suggests. Although there have been big changes in early years education, children’s vocabulary and their ability to count and to recognise letters, shapes and rhymes are no different now than they were six years ago.

The results of the study from the University of Durham will come as a huge blow to the Government after a string of initiatives that have cost more than 3 billion since 2001 and that include the early childhood curriculum, the Sure Start programme, free nursery education for all three-year-olds and the Every Child Matters initiative. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown made much of the drive to improve pre-school education, which was promoted heavily in Labour’s last general election manifesto.

The findings follow the results of an assessment of the Sure Start programme in 2005, which also found no overall improvement in the areas targeted by the scheme. Sure Start, which was influenced by the Head Start programme in the US, is targeted at children aged up to 5 and their families in deprived areas. It is intended to offer a range of early years services, including health advice, childcare, parenting classes and training to help mothers into work.

Christine Merrell, of the University of Durham’s Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre and co-author of the study, said that she had no idea why the investment of so much public money had produced so few results. “One would have expected that the major government programmes would have resulted in some measurable changes in our sample of almost 35,000 children. It is possible, however, that it is just still too early to measure the effects of these programmes, particularly those of the Children Act and Every Child Matters, which were only introduced in the past few years,” she said.

Dr Merrell and her team studied 6,000 children a year aged 4 and 5 at 124 primary schools. The children were asked to complete a 15-minute series of fun activities on a computer and were not aware that they were being tested. The tests were designed to measure the children’s vocabulary acquisition and whether they could recognise rhyming words and repeat certain sounds. The children were also tested on their ability to count and to recognise shapes, letters and words.

No clear progress was detected on these measures among the 35,000 children from a range of backgrounds who were studied over the course of the six-year study, to be presented today at the biennial European Association for Learning and Instruction conference in Budapest. Dr Merrell admitted that the study was limited because it failed to identify which children, if any, had been subject to contact with Sure Start or any other of the Government’s recent pre-school initiatives. However, given that 35,000 children in 124 schools were assessed, she said it was likely that many had taken part in the initiatives. She said that the research highlighted the importance of subjecting education policies to continuous scientific monitoring to see if they were working before introducing them nationally. “Even then, high-quality data needs to be used to track the impact of the evolving intervention. Only then can the Government really measure what does and doesn’t work in education,” she said.

The research used the Centre’s performance indicators in primary schools (Pips) assessment to measure the cognitive development of the children. The Pips baseline assessment is one of a range of assessments that enable schools to monitor children’s progress. Pips is used by more than 3,000 primary schools in Britain, 800 schools in Australia and others worldwide including New Zealand, the Netherlands and South Africa.

Source




Pressure on Australian PhDs to meet grade

STUDENTS may have to defend their PhD theses orally and examiner panels could be audited for quality under reforms being considered by elite universities. The ideas floated by Group of Eight executive director Mike Gallagher come amid claims that the once respected qualification lacks relevance, suffers from dubious quality and gives candidates false hope of employment. These claims have dominated a lively debate on the HES website after Curtin University of Technology academic Richard Nile declared the PhD "a dinosaur from a previous age of elite education" in an HES online article.

Mr Gallagher told the HES that the PhD had undergone so much change it was high time for a fundamental review. "There are a lot of PhDs going into universities that don't have much of a performance record in research, and that's a worry," he said. "I don't know what level of confidence there is in the community any more." The Go8, not expecting much help on standards from politicians or the Australian Universities Quality Agency, was carrying out its own fact-finding survey.

Yesterday, federal Education, Science and Training Minister Julie Bishop said it was the responsibility of universities to work with industry to give graduates the skills they needed and to "focus on the quality of their programs, including their PhD programs, to ensure the sector is able to compete internationally for students and academics". "It is up to individuals to decide whether a particular qualification has relevance for their career prospects, whether in the private sector or academia," she said.

AUQA executive director David Woodhouse said: "Just like the Go8, we are concerned about standards." Although AUQA looked at processes for enrolling, supervising and examining research students, the agency had not yet carried out "a sample check" on the standing of overseas examiners. This might be done during a 2008 second-cycle audit. But as yet no institution had suggested the relevant audit theme of research training, despite the advent of the research quality framework.

Mr Gallagher said it was possible the Go8 would audit examiners to make sure they represented centres of strength in the fields examined. This would underpin quality and include an element of public accountability. "If your PhD examiner panels are made up of people from second-rank institutions in that field (under examination), then that will be known," he said. "There's (also) a lot of discussion of panels reverting to the viva voce, (which would mean) you have to demonstrate that you can actually defend your propositions."

As part of a broad review of the PhD, the Australian National University was looking at a logistically manageable viva, according to pro vice-chancellor Mandy Thomas. Professor Thomas said it would not be feasible to fly in all the international examiners. (ANU had about 500 PhD completions a year.) A few months before they submit, candidates might defend their work before a panel of supervisors and experts in the field. But if this practice were adopted it would be as an "internal quality measure" and not part of the examination.

Nigel Palmer, president of the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations, said: "Students are always going to be cautious about anything that looks like a viva. "Particularly towards the end of their candidature, PhDs are close to exhaustion. It's a very daunting proposition to come out and give a stunning presentation. Also, (a viva) disadvantages international students." Mr Palmer said a key issue was the unrealistically tight time frame for PhDs imposed by the federal research training scheme and scholarships. "The pressure of shorter completion times has had an impact on quality," he said. "The message from supervisors is: forget this being your life work, forget this being an original contribution to the field, it's just got to be good enough to get you across the line and ... in time."

Mr Gallagher also criticised the research training scheme: "The Government's timing of 3 1/2 years is at least one year tooshort." Professor Thomas said it was possible completion times might get longer as the university put more emphasis on skills. "We're boosting professional training within the PhDs; that is useful for people who will become academics as well as for those who will leave the university and join industry or government," she said. This training might involve dissemination of research results, commercialisation, journal editing or conference organisation.

Within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Australia had very short completion times; the longer PhDs of the US were thought to be one reason for a decline in domestic candidates. It was possible that the duration of PhDs in Australia and the US would converge. Mr Gallagher said Australia's leading universities were struggling to find domestic PhDs in essential fields such as mathematics. He was not a critic of trends such as the professional, work-focused PhD; it was a matter of striking a balance between depth and breadth and re-establishing the relevance of the qualification. "You hear reports where people say: 'I didn't disclose in my job application that I have a PhD.' In the labour market it's seen as a nerdy thing to have," he said.

Even if the thesis were given less weight by examiners to make room for more coursework, the essential nature of the PhD had to be preserved. "I think the capacity to undertake original research and to demonstrate that you are in command of your field, that you can critically evaluate the literature, that you can construct a hypothesis and defend it, the discipline of it, in the old academic sense, is fundamental," Mr Gallagher said.

Source





29 August, 2007

Academic antisemites can't take the heat

In a follow-up to my last post about Walt and Mearsheimer's unhappiness about having to defend their work, I post the following reflections by Winfield Myers, director of Campus Watch, on the broader unhappiness of the professoriate getting monitored by people who are not worried about getting a good grade.

Sissy Willis at Sisu remarked a while ago that the "left" has been talking to itself for so long that they don't do well in responding to real objections. This certainly seems to be a sign of such weakness.

Winfield Myers: Shedding light on the professoriate

Lisa Anderson, the former dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs best remembered for her failed attempt to bring Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to campus, had a complaint yesterday for the Web publication Inside Higher Ed. "Young scholars of Middle Eastern literature or history are finding themselves `grilled' about their political views in job interviews, and in some cases losing job offers as a result of their answers," Anderson said. She carefully stressed that she wasn't talking about those who study policy or the current political climate. This situation has arisen, Anderson said, because "outside groups that are critical of those in Middle Eastern studies . are shifting the way scholarship is evaluated."

Anderson's lamentations are part of a rising chorus from professors who consider themselves besieged by external organizations whose mission is to critique the performance of scholars. These include the one I head, Campus Watch, to which Anderson clearly alluded in her remarks.

Academic radicals have for years controlled campus debate by blackballing internal opponents, intimidating students and crying censorship whenever their views or actions were challenged. They got away with such behavior for two principal reasons: A sympathetic media assured the nation that universities were in the front lines of the fight for liberty and justice, and there were few external organizations or individuals offering sustained critiques of politicized scholarship and teaching. These helped ensure that the public's reservoir of good will toward universities remained full.

But times are changing. Scholars no longer operate in an information vacuum. Their words carry great weight not only with their students, who pay for and deserve far better than they receive, but with the media, which funnel their often politicized, tendentious views to a broader public. Given such influence, it should shock no one that the professoriate is scrutinized and, when found wanting, challenged.

Anderson and company's frequently alleged claims that outsiders threaten their freedom of speech is, on the one hand, risible. Campus Watch and other organizations or individuals who critique academe don't possess the authority of the state; we have no subpoena power, no ability to force their acquiescence, nor do we seek it.

What we've challenged isn't the academics' right to speak as they wish. Rather, we've challenged their ability to practice their trade in hermetically sealed conditions free from the need to answer to anyone but themselves. We've held them accountable much as countless organizations and journalists have critiqued the behavior of other professions, from doctors and lawyers to clergy and businessmen. Given this new reality on campus, it's almost understandable that outside critics could make the doyens of Middle East studies long for the days when they could operate behind closed doors. They had much to hide:

In May at Stanford, Arzoo Osanloo of the University of Washington decried "Western, paternalistic attitudes towards Muslim women," and asserted that Iranian women had made great strides since the 1979 revolution that brought the mullahs to power and implemented Sharia law. She failed to mention the regime's ongoing crackdown on women who wear Western clothing or makeup, the brutal punishments (including death by stoning) of women accused of adultery, or the continuing illegal detention of American scholar Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

In a failed attempt to silence critics and elicit media sympathy, some Middle East studies scholars claimed to have received death threats. Most recently, Nadia Abu El-Haj, an archaeologist at Barnard College whose spurious denial of an ancient Hebrew connection to Jerusalem is designed to delegitimize the Jewish state, made such an unsubstantiated claim. Preceding her in making questionable charges were Khaled Abou el Fadl of UCLA and Joel Beinin of the American University of Cairo, whose charges against a journalist were dismissed.

Last November, Michigan professor Kathryn Babayan aided efforts to disrupt the public lecture of her former colleague Raymond Tanter, who was invited to campus to speak about Iran.

Moreover, the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association, the umbrella group for scholars of the field, has yet to utter a word in protest of Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz's successful settlement against Cambridge University Press, which saw the American-authored book "Alms for Jihad" pulped and pulled from bookstores.

During a follow-up interview for a teaching position in a large state university, Middle East studies professor Timothy Furnish was told that he "appeared to be more conservative than others in [his] field" and that he "sounded like Daniel Pipes." No, he didn't get the job.

Source




Accountability left behind

"Many Americans do not believe that the success of our students or of our schools can be measured by one test administered on one day, and I agree with them. This is not fair," Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., told the National Press Club last month. As the House Education and Labor Committee he chairs is expected to roll out a draft for legislation to reauthorize the 2001 No Child Left Behind bill, Miller and fellow Democrats want to change NCLB testing.

Currently, the law requires that students be tested in math and reading every year between third-grade and eighth-grade, then once in high school. Miller explained he would add "multiple measures of success. These measures can no longer reflect just basic skills and memorization, but rather critical thinking and the ability to apply knowledge to new and challenging contexts."

On the one hand, Miller is right to push to improve NCLB. He wants to allow states to apply graduation rates toward their yearly NCLB progress scores and also would have states include history and science test scores. On the other hand, when the education establishment touts testing for "critical thinking," that can be code for: Maybe the kid can't read, but look at the bright side, he's smart.

And when educrat groups -- such as the Forum on Educational Accountability -- recommend that NCLB add "comprehensive assessments systems," which would include portfolios (essays, drawing, reports) in order to offer "rich and challenging educational goals," beware. What sounds like more sophisticated testing could end up being more confusing and inconclusive. A kid who can draw does not mean a kid who can multiply. "The great danger here is that it clouds the accountability system," noted Amy Wilkins, vice president of Education Trust, a nonprofit group that advocates for higher standards in K-12 education.

No Child Left Behind's mission -- to help all children read and compute at grade level -- puts basics first so that children have the fundamentals in place to tackle more challenging subjects. Testing for problem-solving and critical thinking skills would only allow children who don't know the basics to score higher than they should....

"It's goofy, they (the anti-test crowd) talk out of both sides of their mouth," Wilkins noted. Some educators complain that NCLB tests are confined to low-level skills and that they have to spend all their time teaching to the test. But: "If they're such low-level skills, why do you spend so much time teaching them?"

What the education establishment is desperately trying to avoid is accountability for what they produce. That is their basic objection to the No Child Left Behind Act. To the extent that the educrats can read and comprehend on their own, they should be required to read Victor Davis Hanson's article on what has happened to education in his small California community. The education establishment in this country has lost too much credibility to be believed on this issue.

Source





28 August, 2007

University heads and interior decorators

What is it about being appointed to run a major university campus that causes the appointee to hire an expensive interior decorator? A trial just begun in Houston exposes yet another case of a senior administrator in state-funded higher education feathering her nest with lavish appointments courtesy of taxpayers. The New York Times reports:

With Texas Southern University struggling to survive as one of the nation's largest historically black colleges, the former president once hailed as its savior faced a state jury here Friday, charged with misspending hundreds of thousands of dollars on personal luxuries.

A $1,000 silk canopy for a four-poster bed, $138,000 for landscaping and $61,600 for a security system are among the items that prosecutors say the former president, Priscilla Slade, fraudulently billed the public for and kept secret from trustees from 1999 to 2005. The charges being considered in Harris County District Court carry penalties from probation up to life in prison.

This is awfully reminiscent of the notorious wish list handed to the University of California by the late Denice Denton when she became Chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Denton most notoriously got a $30,000 dog run in the backyard, but also other luxury goodies for the mansion she inhabited, plus a $192,000 job for her lesbian partner, plus a $60,000 housing allowance for said partner, plus other perks totaling about $600k.

Denton faced no legal liability because she went through channels to get her perks, whereas Priscilla Slade, the former head of TSU is alleged to have spent the money on herself without proper authorization. Denton, however, later killed herself by leaping from the roof of a skyscraper apartment building.

The mess at the University of California system, where a culture of top management helping itself to lavish salary and perks while obscuring responsibility and accountability for spending the university's $20 billion annual budget, has gotten so bad that Richard Blum, gazillionaire husband of Sen. Diane Feinstein and chair of the Board of Regents, has issued a scathing denunciation of mismanagement at the top, calling for seerious reform.

Face it: higher education is one of the biggest industries in the country, and it is one heavily subsidized by taxpayers, directly through state schools, and indirectly through federal loans, grants, contracts, and other payments. Over the four decades I have spent studying at, working in, and observing higher education, the field has grown fat, all the while mercilessly squeezing out tuition increases at double the rate of inflation, pushing higher education into a luxury category, requiring deep sacrifices from all but the wealthiest.

Reform is long overdue. But with the professorate heavily contributing to Democrats, they have a defender class of politicians. It is too bad that indictments are necessary to send a signal of the need for reform. University administrators deserve adequate compensation, but they cannot treat the public coffers as a personal windfall to be tapped for all the luxuries of their dreams. It is time for the gravy train to be halted.

Source




Can socioeconomic mixing fix schools?

The article below by a California educrat is more realistic than most

Once viewed largely as a strategy to avoid legal challenges to the use of race for integrating schools, socioeconomic factors are getting a fresh look in California and elsewhere as the next focus for providing equitable opportunities for learning. While the impetus for this approach existed before the recent Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in the Seattle and Louisville cases, it was limited to about 40 school districts, with some 2.5 million students. Now, however, the lessons learned from these pioneers are taking on greater relevance for schools in California and those across the country.

In 2000, the Wake County School Board in North Carolina voted to implement a plan to assure that no school in the district would have more than 40 percent of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, and no school would have more than 25 percent of its students performing below grade level. Based on the evidence to date, the plan is working to raise achievement of all students and narrow the gap between groups. Low-income and minority students in Wake County have achieved better academic results than those in other North Carolina districts that have failed to break up pockets of poverty. In 2005, for example, more than 80 percent of black elementary students were reading at or above grade level, up from 57 percent in 1998.

But before concluding that the Wake County model, which takes in Raleigh and its extended suburbs, is applicable to districts in California, it's important to bear in mind that a set of unusual conditions have made the task of socioeconomic integration possible there. The school district is countywide, making it relatively easy to combine students from the city and the suburbs. Wake County also has a 32-year history of busing, so that parents are accustomed to long rides to schools. Finally, the local economy is prosperous, with no signs of cooling in sight.

In the absence of any of Wake County's factors, it's unclear how the strategy would fare in California. Research has shown that schools must be at least 50 percent middle class in order to produce the expected benefits. This is known as the tipping point because educational quality begins to decline when a school becomes more than half low income. What would happen, therefore, if a particular district had a large low-income Hispanic or white population? Where would those students, whose enrollment is necessary to carry out socioeconomic integration, come from?

According to the Children's Defense Fund, nearly 18 percent of the nation's children live in poverty, and the number is rapidly growing. Contrary to popular belief, the phenomenon is not limited to urban areas. Thirty rural counties in 11 states have poverty rates higher than those in the poorest inner cities. Exacerbating the problem are undocumented immigrants, half of whose children live in low-income neighborhoods, compared with 35 percent of children of native-born families.

But even if the demographics were ideal, there is always the possibility that attempts to promote socioeconomic integration would exacerbate the flight of middle-class families to private and religious schools. According to Robert Reich, former labor secretary, the top 20 percent of families by income and education nationwide are already in the process of seceding from public schools. If socioeconomic integration of schools were adopted as policy, more of these same families might be tempted to follow suit. In that case, the number of middle-class students would be insufficient to create the desired socioeconomic balance.

If studies going back more than 40 years are any consolation, a school's socioeconomic composition -- second only to a family's socioeconomic status -- is the most reliable predictor of academic achievement.

Source




Attempting To Prevent Diversity in Debate Over "Diversity"

Post lifted from Discriminations. It's always rather hilarious when the Left and the Greens try to withhold data. That clearly conveys as nothing else could that they know the facts don't support them. If the facts did support their claims, they would be delighted to give them maximum exposure

Most readers are familiar with the pioneering work UCLA law professor Richard Sander has produced on the effects (they are not good) of "diversity" of law school admissions, especially his "mismatch" theory that preferences have actually reduced the number of minority lawyers. (Not familiar? Become so quickly by looking here, here, here, here, and here.)

Even though Sander has no ideological or partisan ax to grind, his studies have gotten under the skins of diversiphiles, some of whose reactions to his work have resembled tantrums more than scholarship. Now comes Gail Heriot, a law professor at the University of San Diego and a new member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, with a powerful, and powerfully depressing, OpEd today in the Wall Street Journal with disturbing evidence of various attempts to block Sander's continuing investigation of how preferences actually operate.

Some of the same people who argue Mr. Sander's data are inconclusive are now actively trying to prevent him from conducting follow-up research that might yield definitive answers. If racial preferences really are causing more harm than good, they apparently don't want you -- or anyone else -- to know.

Take William Kidder, a University of California staff advisor and co-author of a frequently cited attack of Sander's study. When Mr. Sander and his co-investigators sought bar passage data from the State Bar of California that would allow analysis by race, Mr. Kidder passionately argued that access should be denied, because disclosure "risks stigmatizing African American attorneys." At the same time, the Society of American Law Teachers, which leans so heavily to the left it risks falling over sideways, gleefully warned that the state bar would be sued if it cooperated with Mr. Sander.

Sadly, the State Bar's Committee of Bar Examiners caved under the pressure. The committee members didn't formally explain their decision to deny Mr. Sander's request for this data (in which no names would be disclosed), but the root cause is clear: Over the last 40 years, many distinguished citizens - university presidents, judges, philanthropists and other leaders - have built their reputations on their support for race-based admissions. Ordinary citizens have found secure jobs as part of the resulting diversity bureaucracy.

If the policy is not working, they, too, don't want anyone to know.

If the policy of racial preference worked even remotely as well as its supporters argue you'd think they would be begging serious scholars like Prof. Sander to examine all the available data. Instead, they act like those prissy librarians who live in constant fear that some child will actually touch a book in their care.

UPDATE: Kidder Must Be Kidding

As Prof. Heriot indicated, one of Sander's most vociferous critics is William Kidder, who is also a leader in the effort to block Sander's access to bar association data that he needs to pursue his research. As she noted, "Mr. Kidder passionately argued that access should be denied, because disclosure `risks stigmatizing African American attorneys.'"

But what Prof. Heriot doesn't say, perhaps because she is too polite, is that Kidder's position not only violates any reasonable notion of honest and open scholarly debate; it is also blatantly hypocritical.

Kidder is identified, accurately, as "a University of California staff advisor." For a number of years, however, he was closely associated with the Equal Justice Society, a pro-preferences organization. Most of the articles he wrote criticizing Prof. Sander, and others, identified him as a researcher with the Equal Justice Society. (See, for examples, here, here, here, here, and here.)

So what? you ask. Why, you ask, do I bring up Kidder's long association with the Equal Justice Society? For a very good reason: to support my charge of rank hypocrisy. Since Kidder is so concerned now that release of data such as bar passage rates by race "risks stigmatizing African American attorneys," even though no names would be released, perhaps he can point to examples that show when and where he disagreed with his former colleagues and employers who led the fight to defeat Ward Connerly's Racial Privacy Initiative (Proposition 54) in 2003 and jumped with joy when it was defeated.

Equal Justice Society Cheers Overwhelming Defeat of Proposition 54

Organization Played Key Role in Coalition that Downed Divisive Measure

SAN FRANCISCO (October 8, 2003) - The Equal Justice Society played a pivotal role in the broad coalition that decisively defeated Ward Connerly's Proposition 54 on October 7, 2003. The dangerous, divisive measure would have banned the collection of racial and ethnic data by any state agency, thus making it virtually impossible to track and document race discrimination or to bring civil rights suits to court. ....

EJS Executive Director Eva Paterson was a leading spokesperson for the No on 54 Campaign. More than two years prior to the election, Paterson was part of the core group that launched the Coalition for an Informed California, the official opposition campaign organization. The coalition was an extraordinarily broad and diverse network of supporters including health professionals, classroom teachers, law enforcement, trade unionists, civil rights activists, lawyers, academics and students.

"Connerly's Proposition 54 was about burying information about race that could be used to track racial profiling, challenge discrimination in housing, target effective programs to keep kids in school, and - most importantly, perhaps - provide vital health research and treatment," said Paterson, who debated Connerly numerous times during the campaign, including on National Public Radio.

Even aside from the hypocrisy of supporting the collection of racial data so that it can be used to "challenge discrimination," etc., but opposing access to it by scholars they deem unfriendly, Kidder and friends' objection to Prof. Sander's access to state bar data makes little sense since, as a commenter to this post has pointed out, the California State Bar has already released a good deal of racial data on bar passage rates.

But wait. It gets even better. In trying, without success, to find other examples of Kidder's opposition to the use of personally anonymous racial data in research, I found that he himself has used the very sort of data that he now wishes to deny to Prof. Sander.

The following is from the trial transcript of Grutter v. Bollinger in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. Miranda Massie, an attorney for and one of the leaders of By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), the group that has instigated high school students to riot in favor of preferences, among other offenses (see here, here, here, and here), was examining a testing expert, David White, the founder of a group in Berkeley called Testing For the Public ("Strategies For Standardized Tests In A Diverse World") that believes standardized tests are racist in their effect and that offers LSAT test preparation courses. After White discussed the earlier studies by Joseph Gannon finding racial gaps in LSAT scores, the following exchange occurs (Trial Transcript, pp. 146-147):

Q Have you - has Testing for the Public recently undertaken to update this research?

A ... So it so happened that one of my students, William Kidder, who I was happy he took my LSAT course, then I was happy that he decided he was going to teach the LSAT course for me, I was happy for him that he got into Boalt Hall. I was flattered that he read all my old law review articles, and I was amazed that he took on the burden of actually trying to reproduce Dr. Gannon's study.

He asked Boalt Hall to give him anonymous data from their applicant pool and he reproduced the study that Dr. Joseph Gannon had done twenty years ago. He did the very same matching process, and this time we had the identities of the school available to us, and you can see, Your Honor, they are very famous schools, it's the top five feeder schools to Boalt Hall, UCLA, Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard and Yale.

This data was personally anonymous, but it was less anonymous than the data Prof. Sander has requested from the State Bar of California because it identifies the undergraduate colleges of the otherwise anonymous applicants to Boalt Hall.

Obviously Kidder and friends want racial data collected, but apparently they want it released only to those they can trust to cook it so that it supports their own devotion to racial preferences.





27 August, 2007

Britain's traditional "Public" (independent) schools still rule the roost

The Leftist British government has had all sorts of schemes to close the social class gap but because the schemes have been based on false theories ("all men are equal" etc.), they have tended to achieve the opposite of what was supposed to happen

Eton College is the top-performing school in the country at A level for the first time in more than 13 years, according to the The Times table of leading schools this year. The school's success also illustrates another trend - the narrowing gap in overall achievement between boys and girls. Although girls continue to outperform boys nationally, the gap is closing and seven of the top ten schools in this year's table of leading schools admit boys. The highest-placed girls-only school is North London Collegiate School, in fourth position.

Eton, like other boys' private schools, tends to score the bulk of points on the scale operated by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) by entering its pupils for more exams than the girls' schools, which earn more of their league table Ucas points from getting grade As.

But the table, which includes independent and state schools, is headed by two private schools that have abandoned A levels altogether in favour of the International Baccalaureate (IB). The return to top form of Eton, the nation's most elite school and alma mater of princes William and Harry, comes under the headship of Tony Little.

Mr Little attributed his school's A-level success to its studiously non-academic approach. "My belief is that if you set up a good pastoral structure and you provide rich extracurricular activities, such as music, sport and theatre, then the academic results will follow. It pleases me that this year of boys who have done so well at A level have also done well outside the classroom." He added that the school's rowing eight won the national schools championship this year, while the theatre group staged a festival of plays written by the boys themselves. "I would be very concerned if people thought we were the kind of institution concerned with academic performance only," Mr Little said.

This approach is in keeping with the ethos of the school, which has never felt the need to be judged on its academic credentials, resting comfortably instead on the knowledge that its very name will bestow on its pupils a unique place in society unmatched by any other educational establishment.

The school's top-performing student this year, however, is unashamedly academic in his approach. Marius Ostrowski, who set a school A-level record with ten A grades, said that he was primarily motivated by "love of the subjects" and "the fact I am good at them".

Although his performance is exceptional, Mr Ostrowski, 18, neatly illustrates the phenomenon noted by exam board chiefs last week of a widening gulf in A-grade achievement between the independent and state sector. Figures released by the Independent Schools Council (ISC) yesterday confirmed this trend, showing that this year for the first time half of all A-level entries in ISC member schools scored an A grade. This compares with 25 per cent nationally.

Sevenoaks School in Kent, which only eight years ago was placed 40th among private schools at A level, broke through the 600 mark on the Ucas points scale with 619.7. It is followed by three other IB schools, headed by Hockerill Anglo-European College in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, the top-performing state school in the table. Next are King's College School in Wimbledon, with 529 points, and North London Collegiate for Girls, whose pupils take A levels and the IB, with 500 points.

The success of the IB schools will add pressure on other schools to introduce the qualification instead of or alongside A levels. Students taking the IB study six subjects as well as completing an extended essay and a course in the theory of knowledge.

The only other state school in the top ten is Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet, a grammar school that has remained with the A level. Despite immense government investment in state schools, for A-level entries in science, technology, maths and languages, the ISC data show the continued dominance of independent schools in these subjects.

Source




Australia: Government indifference to dangerous school bullying

A BOY bullied to the brink of suicide has seen his tormentor follow him to a new school. The boy, now 14, tried to kill himself in the schoolyard when bullying by another Year 5 student became too much. After counselling and psychologist sessions, he enrolled at a secondary school in Mt Eliza. But this week he discovered the bully had changed schools and joined his class. The teenager has penned a plea for help in the hope his plight will be reconsidered by school officials, police and education authorities.

His mother has pulled him out of class and is seeking an intervention order to keep the boys apart if her son returns to the school. She said the situation had brought years of fears flooding back for her son's safety. "When he was at primary school, every time the phone rang I thought it was someone saying he was dead," she said. "That left when the boys went to different schools, but now that feeling is back again."

The boy's mother said the family was seeking legal advice, but felt "hamstrung" by the lack of help it had received. "The police can't help us, the courts won't help us and the school won't do anything - we're helpless," she said. "It seems my son has to be beaten to death before they will actually help him."

In his letter, the boy says: "I want him (the bully) out of my life forever because I don't want what happened in Year 5 and 6 to happen again. "I want him in the past, nowhere near me, not even talking to me." The school this week ruled out any chance of the bully being removed.

Source





26 August, 2007

A REAL-LIFE "HAWTHORNE EFFECT"?

It now seems generally agreed that there was no Hawthorne effect at the Hawthorne plant but we know something close to it as the placebo effect -- possibly the best documented therapeutic effect in medicine. The basic lesson of the Hawthorne study was that any changes made with enthusiasm had some benefit. I doubt that the study abstracted below has shown any more than that. As the improvements noted were small, one hopes so. One hopes that there are other strategies that can do more to help poor blacks than was demonstrated below. High discipline schooling would be an example of an alternative strategy that has worked well in the past

Effects of a School-Based, Early Childhood Intervention on Adult Health and Well-being: A 19-Year Follow-up of Low-Income Families

By Arthur J. Reynolds et al.

Abstract:

Objective: To determine the effects of an established preventive intervention on the health and well-being of an urban cohort in young adulthood.

Design: Follow-up of a nonrandomized alternative-intervention matched-group cohort at age 24 years.

Setting: Chicago, Illinois.

Participants: A total of 1539 low-income participants who enrolled in the Child-Parent Center program in 20 sites or in an alternative kindergarten intervention.

Interventions: The Child-Parent Center program provides school-based educational enrichment and comprehensive family services from preschool to third grade.

Main Outcome Measures: Educational attainment, adult arrest and incarceration, health status and behavior, and economic well-being.

Results: Relative to the comparison group and adjusted for many covariates, Child-Parent Center preschool participants had higher rates of school completion (63.7% vs 71.4%, respectively; P = .01) and attendance in 4-year colleges as well as more years of education. They were more likely to have health insurance coverage (61.5% vs 70.2%, respectively; P = .005). Preschool graduates relative to the comparison group also had lower rates of felony arrests (16.5% vs 21.1%, respectively; P = .02), convictions, incarceration (20.6% vs 25.6%, respectively; P = .03), depressive symptoms (12.8% vs 17.4%, respectively; P=.06), and out-of-home placement. Participation in both preschool and school-age intervention relative to the comparison group was associated with higher rates of full-time employment (42.7% vs 36.4%, respectively; P = .04), higher levels of educational attainment, lower rates of arrests for violent offenses, and lower rates of disability.

Conclusions: Participation in a school-based intervention beginning in preschool was associated with a wide range of positive outcomes. Findings provide evidence that established early education programs can have enduring effects on general well-being into adulthood.

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2007;161:730-739




New Florida Hebrew school greeted with suspicion

The new public school at 2620 Hollywood Boulevard stands out despite its plain gray facade. Called the Ben Gamla Charter School, it is run by an Orthodox rabbi, serves kosher lunches and concentrates on teaching Hebrew. About 400 students started classes at Ben Gamla this week amid caustic debate over whether a public school can teach Hebrew without touching Judaism and the unconstitutional side of the church-state divide. The conflict intensified Wednesday, when the Broward County School Board ordered Ben Gamla to suspend Hebrew lessons because its curriculum - the third proposed by the school - referred to a Web site that mentioned religion.

Opponents say that it is impossible to teach Hebrew - and aspects of Jewish culture - outside a religious context, and that Ben Gamla, billed as the nation's first Hebrew-English charter school, violates one of its paramount legal and political boundaries. But supporters say the school is no different from hundreds of others around the country with dual-language programs, whose popularity has soared in ethnically diverse states like Florida. "It's not a religious school," said Peter Deutsch, a former Democratic member of Congress from Florida who started Ben Gamla and hopes to replicate it in Los Angeles, Miami and New York. "South Florida is one of the largest Hebrew-speaking communities in the world outside Israel, so there are lots of really good reasons to try to create a program like this here."

The battle over Ben Gamla parallels one in New York over Khalil Gibran International Academy, a new public school that will focus on Arabic language and culture. But some who have followed the evolution of both schools say Ben Gamla could prove more problematic. As a charter school that receives public money but is exempt from certain rules, they say, it is subject to less oversight. "Charter schools have greater autonomy than a school being run by the Board of Education," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "Let's give it a shot, but let's watch it very, very carefully."

Mr. Deutsch said Ben Gamla, named for a Jewish high priest who established free universal schooling in ancient Israel, received 800 applications in one week this summer. About half of the applications were from adjacent Miami-Dade County, but the school admitted only Broward County residents, ensuring that almost everyone from the county who wanted to attend could do so.

The students are in kindergarten through eighth grade. About 80 percent transferred from other public schools, Mr. Deutsch said, and many, if not most, of the rest came from private Jewish day schools. "I just didn't appreciate the demand at all," said Mr. Deutsch, who splits his time between South Florida and Israel. "If I had 5,000, maybe 10,000 desks available in South Florida today, I think I could fill them."

Under the school's charter agreement, students are to spend one period a day learning Hebrew. They will have a second daily class - math or science, for example - conducted in a mix of Hebrew and English. There are no separate classes on Jewish culture, but Rabbi Adam Siegel, the school's director, said it would come up during Hebrew instruction. Teachers might also do special units on aspects of Jewish culture, he said, like Israeli folk dancing.

School officials have not asked students whether they are Jewish, Rabbi Siegel said, but 37 percent of parents identified Hebrew as their first language. Seventeen percent said Spanish was their primary language, he said, while 5 percent said Russian and 5 percent said French. The school has a handful of black students, including members of a Baptist church that provides their transportation to and from the school.

Mr. Deutsch and Rabbi Siegel, a former Jewish day school director, said their critics were mostly defenders of Jewish day schools that stand to lose students and tuition money. No one has sued to stop the school, but Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said a lawsuit was possible. "Whether this is going to cross the line or not will depend on what goes on in the classroom," Mr. Simon said. "Will they neutrally and academically address religious topics, or will there be more preaching than teaching going on in the classroom? It is too early to tell."

Rabbi Siegel said the school was proceeding with such extreme caution that even a neutral mention of religion was unlikely. The sign outside Ben Gamla was going to include a Hebrew phrase for "welcome," Rabbi Siegel said, but because the literal translation is "blessed are those who come," he decided against it. "Even basic things, like if there was a page that had a picture of a shofar, I pulled it out," Rabbi Siegel said, referring to the ram's horn used in High Holy Day services. "We went so far overboard, it's crazy."

More here





25 August, 2007

Insane Leftism in the schools again

These assholes must really hate kids. It shows the need for vouchers. The assholes would have lost a customer under a voucher system

A 13-year-old student who drew a picture of a gun on his homework at Payne Junior High School in Queen Creek was initially suspended for at least five days, but his father was able to slash it to three days.

The Mosteller family moved to Chandler from Colorado Springs only four weeks ago, but it's not the kind of greeting Paula Mosteller said she was expecting. Her 13-year-old son was suspended from school because he drew a picture of a gun on homework. "My son is a very good boy," Mosteller said. "He doesn't get into trouble. There was nothing on the paper that would signify that it was a threat of any form," she said.

The principal at Payne Junior High School kept the actual drawing. The picture was enough to get him suspended, initially, for five days. "He was just basically doodling and not thinking a lot about it," Mosteller said.

CBS 5 News tried to get more details from the Chandler Unified School District but were told, "Federal privacy law forbids the school or district from discussing student discipline."

"We're not advocates for guns," Mosteller said. "We don't have guns in our home. We don't promote the use of guns. My son was just basically doodling on a piece of paper," she said. After the father went to the school and talked to the principal, the suspension was trimmed to three days.

CBS 5 News investigated the rules students must follow while at school. There's nothing in a portion of the student handbook that addresses conduct to indicate the drawing of a weapon poses threat. There is a rule that says students should not engage in "Threatening an educational institution by interference with or disruption of the school."

Source




A school where the U.S. constitution is unwelcome

The control freaks are afraid that the kids might learn something without a Leftist spin on it

Two Colorado school districts recently said it is wrong because the schools should not accept gifts from private citizens. [Well, who the Hell else is going to give them gifts?]

El Paso County Commissioner Douglas Bruce bought thousands of pocket-sized Constitutions to give to students when they graduate from high school. Some schools accepted the gifts, but Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 and Lewis Palmer School District 38 rejected the offer. They worry that if they do accept some gifts it would set an inappropriate precedent and would open a Pandora's box of future problems.

Bruce, author of the state's controversial Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR), said that there were no strings attached to the gift, although there is a sticker on the back of the pamphlets promoting the educational nonprofit organization that he founded. Bruce told the Colorado Springs Gazette that giving out copies of the Constitution is not the same as others giving out coupons for pizza. "Seniors are on the verge of voting for the first time," Bruce told the paper.

The pamphlet consists of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and quotes from the Founding Fathers. Dave Herrmann, board president of Fountain-Fort Carson District, said the document is readily available on the Internet and the schools already teach the Constitution.

Source





24 August, 2007

Higher education corruption in California

The taxpayer-supported University of California is seeing off departing president Robert Dynes with a cushy severance package. Matier & Ross, the outstanding investigative reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle, lay out the shape of the going away present:

"...first he will be entitled to a full year's paid leave to brush up on his studies." [....]

"Now that he has to vacate the UC-provided president's mansion in Kensington, Dynes - like all senior administrators - is eligible for a low-interest home loan to help him relocate.... it's uncertain whether Dynes will take advantage of the benefit." [....]

"When Dynes chooses to retire completely from academic life, his pension will be based on a percentage of the average of his last highest-earning years. That would include his time as president.

"Upshot: Calculations show that if he were to stop working next June, he could either cash out for $1.6 million or get $145,524 a year in retirement pay."

All of this coming to a guy they say was "nudged out as UC's top dog after a string of embarrassing stories about the university's liberal pay and perk packages for top managers"

So the punishment for embarrassing the university by wretched excess in pay and perks appears to be more wretched excess for the miscreant! That is a form of twisted logic that can only exist within an organizational culture that regards itself as exempt from any accountability to others.

A similar contempt for taxpayers and tuition-payers is the way top UC managers try to have the best of both worlds: academia and corporations. When justifying their increasingly high salaries, university presidents and other top academic managers cite pay scales for executives of comparably-sized private companies.

But when it comes to the academic perks, little things like 400 grand for a full year's vacation, then the robes come out and it's perk, perk, perk your way to financial happiness. Like the outrageous bennies granted the late Denice Denton (a $30,000 backyard dog run for the Chancellor's mansion at the University of California Santa Cruz and a high paying job for her female companion among others), the incident once again betrays the get-it-while-you-can attitude that evidently permeates upper ranks of academia in places like the University of California. I am reminded of the scenes of Russian revolutionaries invading the homes of the aristocrats and grabbing whatever they could carry off of the lifestyle enjoyed by those they have hated and envied their entire lives.

If top management of big schools wants to play in the corporate major leagues when it comes to pay, then they should obey the league rules there, like personal accountability for performance metrics, strict accountability for their decisions, transparency in accounting and broad disclosure that goes beyond Sarbanes-Oxley, since they are nonprofits and some are organs of government.

There is a risk component to executive responsibility in corporations, and that is one justification for the high pay. If academics do not want to bear the risks, then they don't deserve comparability in pay.

Source




British schools dodging core subjects

The proportion of pupils obtaining five good GCSEs in core subjects is in long-term decline, research suggests. As 600,000 pupils prepare to open their GCSE results tomorrow, a new analysis of the trends in results shows a widening gap between the pass rate for five good GCSEs in any subject and for pass rate when fundamental subjects such as maths and science are included. The proportion of students gaining five good (A*-C) GCSEs including English, maths, science and a language, has fallen from 61 per cent in 1996 to 44 per cent last year. Over the same period the overall pass rate for five good GCSEs in any subject has risen from 44 to 58 per cent. Tomorrow's results are expected to show another rise.

Michael Gove, the Tory education spokesman, who carried out the analysis, said the results suggested that schools were trying to maximise their league table position by moving away from core subjects, the very subjects that universities and employers were looking for most. Heads are accused of entering students for "easier" vocational courses - which can be worth more than four GCSEs each in the league tables. "These figures emphasise the importance of truly robust measurements of achievement. The decline in core subjects marks a worrying trend and underlines the need for teaching to focus on the neglected basics," Mr Gove said.

The Conservative analysis shows that, although the proportion of pupils getting five or more good GCSEs in any subject has increased by 13.6 percentage points in the past decade, the improvement when English and mathematics are taken into account is less than ten points. Figures including English, maths and science have improved by only 5.4 percentage points on the period. Figures including English, mathematics, science and a modern foreign language, have declined since 1996, by 1.5 points.

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, rejected the Tory analysis as "cheap spin". As modern foreign languages were no longer compulsory at GCSE, it made no sense to include them in any new league table of results, he said. "Adding any optional GCSE in and then using this as evidence of failure simply undermines the real achievements of teachers, schools and pupils," he said. "The number of children achieving five good GCSEs including English and maths has risen substantially since 1997, and our new tough measures will show the proportion achieving grade C or above in a modern foreign language as well as science."

At the heart of the disagreement between the Government and the Opposition lies a fundamental disagreement over how best to measure school performance. Last year ministers took the bold step of introducing a new, deliberately tougher benchmark showing how schools were performing in the basics of literacy and numeracy. By this measure, only 45 per cent of pupils achieved five good GCSE passes, including English and maths - considerably less than the 58 per cent of pupils achieving five good passes in any subject, the traditional measure. Later this year the Government will add science passes to its basic measure of success. The Tories, however, want an even greater emphasis on core, or traditional subjects.

Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham, agreed that merely measuring how many pupils got five good GCSEs in any subject was no longer satisfactory, as this masked weaknesses in the basics. "You could take an NVQ in ICT [information and communication technology] and this would be worth the equivalent of four GCSEs," he said. But he questioned the Tory analysis: "It is stretching a point to include modern foreign languages, as these are not compulsory." Professor Smithers added, however, that he expected this year's maths results to be disappointing. Last year the pass rate in maths was lower than for all other main subjects, as more than 343,000 pupils (45.7 per cent) failed to gain even a C.

Source




The need to study warfare

Try explaining to a college student that Tet was an American military victory. You'll provoke not a counterargument-let alone an assent-but a blank stare: Who or what was Tet? Doing interviews about the recent hit movie 300, I encountered similar bewilderment from listeners and hosts. Not only did most of them not know who the 300 were or what Thermopylae was; they seemed clueless about the Persian Wars altogether.

It's no surprise that civilian Americans tend to lack a basic understanding of military matters. Even when I was a graduate student, 30-some years ago, military history-understood broadly as the investigation of why one side wins and another loses a war, and encompassing reflections on magisterial or foolish generalship, technological stagnation or breakthrough, and the roles of discipline, bravery, national will, and culture in determining a conflict's outcome and its consequences-had already become unfashionable on campus. Today, universities are even less receptive to the subject.

This state of affairs is profoundly troubling, for democratic citizenship requires knowledge of war-and now, in the age of weapons of mass annihilation, more than ever..........

Military history teaches us, contrary to popular belief these days, that wars aren't necessarily the most costly of human calamities. The first Gulf War took few lives in getting Saddam out of Kuwait; doing nothing in Rwanda allowed savage gangs and militias to murder hundreds of thousands with impunity. Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, and Stalin killed far more off the battlefield than on it. The 1918 Spanish flu epidemic brought down more people than World War I did. And more Americans-over 3.2 million-lost their lives driving over the last 90 years than died in combat in this nation's 231-year history. Perhaps what bothers us about wars, though, isn't just their horrific lethality but also that people choose to wage them-which makes them seem avoidable, unlike a flu virus or a car wreck, and their tolls unduly grievous. Yet military history also reminds us that war sometimes has an eerie utility: as British strategist Basil H. Liddell Hart put it, "War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it." Wars-or threats of wars-put an end to chattel slavery, Nazism, fascism, Japanese militarism, and Soviet Communism.

Military history is as often the story of appeasement as of warmongering. The destructive military careers of Alexander the Great, Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler would all have ended early had any of their numerous enemies united when the odds favored them. Western air power stopped Slobodan Milosevi?'s reign of terror at little cost to NATO forces-but only after a near-decade of inaction and dialogue had made possible the slaughter of tens of thousands. Affluent Western societies have often proved reluctant to use force to prevent greater future violence. "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things," observed the British philosopher John Stuart Mill. "The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse."

Source





23 August, 2007

Multiculturalism's War on Education

Back to school nowadays means back to classrooms, lessons and textbooks permeated by multiculturalism and its championing of "diversity." Many parents and teachers regard multiculturalism as an indispensable educational supplement, a salutary influence that "enriches" the curriculum. But is it?

With the world's continents bridged by the Internet and global commerce, multiculturalism claims to offer a real value: a cosmopolitan, rather than provincial, understanding of the world beyond the student's immediate surroundings. But it is a peculiar kind of "broadening." Multiculturalists would rather have students admire the primitive patterns of Navajo blankets, say, than learn why Islam's medieval golden age of scientific progress was replaced by fervent piety and centuries of stagnation.

Leaf through a school textbook and you'll find that there is a definite pattern behind multiculturalism's reshaping of the curriculum. What multiculturalists seek is not the goal they advertise, but something else entirely. Consider, for instance, the teaching of history.

One text acclaims the inhabitants of West Africa in pre-Columbian times for having prosperous economies and for establishing a university in Timbuktu; but it ignores their brutal trade in slaves and the proliferation of far more consequential institutions of learning in Paris, Oxford and elsewhere in Europe. Some books routinely lionize the architecture of the Aztecs, but purposely overlook or underplay the fact that they practiced human sacrifices. A few textbooks seek to portray Islam as peaceful in part by presenting the concept of "jihad" ("sacred war") to mean an internal struggle to surmount temptation and evil, while playing down Islam's actual wars of religious conquest.

What these textbooks reveal is a concerted effort to portray the most backward, impoverished and murderous cultures as advanced, prosperous and life-enhancing. Multiculturalism's goal is not to teach about other cultures, but to promote--by means of distortions and half-truths--the notion that non-Western cultures are as good as, if not better than, Western culture. Far from "broadening" the curriculum, what multiculturalism seeks is to diminish the value of Western culture in the minds of students. But, given all the facts, the objective superiority of Western culture is apparent, so multiculturalists must artificially elevate other cultures and depreciate the West.

If students were to learn the truth of the hardscrabble life of primitive farming in, say, India, they would recognize that subsistence living is far inferior to life on any mechanized farm in Kansas, which demands so little manpower, yet yields so much. An informed, rational student would not swallow the "politically correct" conclusions he is fed by multiculturalism. If he were given the actual facts, he could recognize that where men are politically free, as in the West, they can prosper economically; that science and technology are superior to superstition; that man's life is far longer, happier and safer in the West today than in any other culture in history.

The ideals, achievements and history of Western culture in general--and of America in particular--are therefore purposely given short-shrift by multiculturalism. That the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age were born and flourished in Western nations; that the preponderance of Nobel prizes in science have been awarded to people in the West--such facts, if they are noted, are passed over with little elaboration.

The "history" that students do learn is rewritten to fit multiculturalism's agenda. Consider the birth of the United States. Some texts would have children believe the baseless claim that America's Founders modeled the Constitution on a confederation of Indian tribes. This is part of a wider drive to portray the United States as a product of the "convergence" of three traditions--native Indian, African and European. But the American republic, with an elected government limited by individual rights, was born not of stone-age peoples, but primarily of the European Enlightenment. It is a product of the ideas of thinkers like John Locke, a British philosopher, and his intellectual heirs in colonial America, such as Thomas Jefferson.

It is a gross misconception to view multiculturalism as an effort to enrich education. By reshaping the curriculum, the purveyors of "diversity" in the classroom calculatedly seek to prevent students from grasping the objective value to human life of Western culture--a culture whose magnificent achievements have brought man from mud huts to moon landings. Multiculturalism is no boon to education, but an agent of anti-Western ideology.

Source




Australia: Still some life in mathematics

The University of Wollongong has defied the sector-wide trend of cutting back mathematics and has more professors and honours students in the field than ever. Departing deputy vice-chancellor for research, Margaret Sheil, said a combination of "opportunity and strategic planning" had given the university eight full professors and 21 honours students. The eight includes three professors recruited in the past year and a half. One of them, Iain Raeburn, bought a whole maths team with him from rival the University of Newcastle.

Professor Sheil, who started as Australian Research Council chief executive officer last week, said the school of mathematics and applied statistics' beefing up had been driven partly by a need to be prepared for the RQF and by a sponsorship from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a popular graduate destination. "We are looking to build maths more generally; it's going to come back," Professor Sheil said.

A report released last month painted a bleak picture for the discipline across the nation. The National Tertiary Education Union found that at least seven universities had cut maths staff in the past 18 months. Melbourne, La Trobe, Macquarie, Flinders, RMIT, James Cook had all cut staff. The University of New England had made two maths and stats staff redundant but they won their jobs back on appeal.

At a time when enrolments in maths have fallen by 34 per cent (from 1989 to 2005, according to the Australian Councils of Deans of Science) Wollongong has three times as many honours students as normal. "That's because of a combination of our reputation and the fact that we've got a really dynamic group in maths," Professor Sheil said. The university had a history of strength in the discipline, mainly because local industry needed good graduates, and a more recent association with the ABS had kept that strength.

Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute executive officer Jan Thomas said it was good that Wollongong was expanding but other universities needed to do more.

Source





22 August, 2007

A Promise for West Virginia's future

In a Daily Mail column last week, economist Matt Ryan reported that the state now ranks 29th in the nation of young adults in or entering college. That is up from 49th place in 2000. Wow. What could have possibly propelled the state to move up so quickly? Two words: Promise scholarships. The state now picks up the tab for tuition for any student who graduates from high school with at least a B average and scores high enough on the entrance exams. The program is simple. It selects the students who are most likely to finish college and gives them free tuition in college.

This is so unlike the state’s Higher Education grants, which give money to students not based on the likelihood of their success in college, but rather on their income. The grants are a welfare program. The grants are far less successful than Promise has proved to be. Higher Education grants have been around for decades. They failed to move us out of 49th place. But Promise scholarships began in 2002, and already we’re No. 29 in percentage of kids in college.

Promise works because it is a merit program. Higher Education grants fail because they are an entitlement. The minimum grade point average is 2.0 for the latter. Students who are that lacking in either skill or interest in school have no business being in college. Let them work for a few years. Then they will either be motivated for college, or not. The state should concentrate its aid on its many deserving high school graduates. Every year, the politicians try to rip Promise off in the name of “saving” money.

May I remind people that the Promise program was used as an excuse to legalize video slot machines on every corner? You want to save money? Cut legislative pay. The one lever the politicians use to “save” money is by “raising the standards” on Promise scholarships. It is a game. Every year, politicians raise the minimum score required on the entrance exams. And this year, students defied them by meeting the higher standard.

Daily Mail reporter Jessica Karmasek reported in June that even after the bar was raised, more students in Kanawha and Putnam counties qualified for Promise scholarships. The numbers in Kanawha County rose from 372 in 2006 to 412 in 2007. Likewise, Putnam County’s numbers rose from 152 in 2006 to 164 in 2007. As Nelson Muntz says on “The Simpsons” show: “Ha, ha.”

I live for the day when each and every high school senior in West Virginia qualifies for a Promise scholarship. From what little I have observed, the Promise scholarships help high schools by giving kids an incentive to study hard and to stay out of trouble. My kids are beyond their Promise scholarship years. But I will defend this program because it shows for the first time that West Virginia is serious about education.

To be sure, funding for education has always been there. West Virginia is second only to Vermont in percentage of taxable income that goes to the public schools. Being 49th in income and beating the national average in spending per student is quite an achievement. That is the result of good lobbying by teachers unions. Don’t get me wrong. Teachers are the people who educate the kids. But you have to motivate those kids. You have to reward them. I cannot promise that this program will help turn the state’s economy around. But it cannot hurt.

One final thought: A Mormon is suing to get an exemption so he can take a year or two off for missionary work. Well, he certainly is free to do so, but when he comes back home, he should forget about that Promise scholarship. I hope the courts politely and firmly remind him that it is his choice. The Promise scholarship is for one year at a time. If a person misses a year, he is out. The Promise program is a reward, not an entitlement. That is the secret to its success. Now to see if all those extra kids in college do the state any good.

Source




Another charter success

Not much can compare to the excitement of the first day of school, as evidenced by the smiles at the University of Texas Elementary School last week. Save maybe finding out that your campus has been rated exemplary by the state. "It is our Rose Bowl," said Ramona Trevino, principal of UT Elementary, a four-year-old, university-run charter school that this month earned the highest rating under the state's accountability system for the first time.

The school, which primarily serves a low-income, mostly minority population, is the only campus in East Austin to achieve the rating under the current requirements, which are largely based on performance on state achievement tests. School officials credit several factors in their success, including the latest research on effective teaching, small class sizes and motivated parents. It's a feat that only 8.6 percent of 7,385 campuses rated statewide achieved; it's particularly surprising given the school's large at-risk enrollment.

More than 90 percent of UT Elementary third- and fourth-grade students who took the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills in the spring passed each subject to earn the rating. Furthermore, more than 90 percent of students in all ethnic and economic groups passed in all subjects. In the Austin school district, seven schools earned an exemplary rating, but all are west of Interstate 35 and have significantly fewer economically disadvantaged students. "I feel very confident that my girls are getting a good education here," said Pedro Reyes Jr., father of Yulissa and Jessenia, both of whom are UT Elementary students. "They're raising little Longhorns. It's kind of cool. It's a special school, and we're very proud of it."

The campus uses a "three-tier" model for helping struggling students, based on research from the UT Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts, in which teachers use intervention strategies typically reserved for special education students in regular classroom settings. As a result, 20 percent to 30 percent of UT Elementary students receive additional in-class instruction, and 5 percent to 10 percent get after-school tutoring and attend summer school. The interventions, Trevino said, are combined with other social and emotional practices, like motivational school-wide assemblies every morning and "peace tables," where students can meet to sort out their differences. Nurses and psychologists often team up to deal with problems from home. "Creating a culture of caring is very important to what we do," Treviño said. And that includes making students and their families feel part of the UT family: All students wear burnt orange-and-white uniforms.

Teachers said they have more freedom to add research-based teaching techniques to their curricula than they would in public schools. And small class sizes — there are 40 students per grade and 20 per class — allow teachers and administrators to have close relationships with parents.

Another key to the school's success is parental involvement. Parents have made a choice to have their children attend, Treviño said, so she can have higher expectations for them as well. "I expect 100 percent participation in the science fair, and I actually get it," she said. "The idea truly is for these kids to feel like they are on track for college. . . . It's that whole 'We're UT' thing."

Choice is just part of what makes it difficult to compare the performance of charter schools with that of public schools. Families have to go through the extra step of applying to charter schools, so there is often a higher level of engagement from the beginning. On the flip side, many charters specialize in serving at-risk students, which can be reflected in their test scores.

Although students reap the benefits of university-based research, the University of Texas has made it a point not to throw large amounts of money into the charter campus; it has a $1.6 million operating budget, of which $1.3 million is state money, said Marilyn Kameen, senior associate dean at UT's College of Education. The elementary campus is simply a collection of portable buildings with no real gymnasium. Enrollment is limited to five East Austin ZIP codes, and acceptance is based on a lottery. "The intent was always to create a real school with real kids who have all the issues that kids in urban settings have," Kameen said.

As the plans for a UT charter school were being laid out in 2002, Austin school district officials offered to work with UT as an alternative to the charter, but UT declined. At the time, school vouchers were a hot topic in the state Legislature, and Charles Miller, a friend of President Bush's and a charter proponent, chaired the UT Board of Regents. Before voting to create the school, he quoted the Austin district as saying, "We can do it better." "It has not adversely affected us or any of the schools in that area," Austin school district spokesman Andy Welch said.

Struggling charters in Texas outnumber those that are doing well. This year, 16 percent of 317 charter campuses rated statewide were rated unacceptable, compared with 4 percent of Texas public schools. In Travis County, their performance has been mixed. In addition to UT Elementary, the NYOS charter school, which serves preschoolers through third-graders, was rated exemplary this year, but six other charter schools were rated unacceptable.

Critics argue that charter schools, which are funded with public tax dollars, should not be supported to the detriment of the traditional system. "The last thing we want to do is talk about expanding the system before we fix the mess we've already got," said Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network, a group that supports public schools.

Amid the debate, UT Elementary parents are so satisfied with how their school is performing that many are trying to get a middle school created. Officials at UT say that a charter middle school is not part of their plans, but several other ambitious plans are in the works. This year, UT Elementary will begin a $19 million capital campaign to build a permanent facility at its location on East Sixth Street. The school also plans to launch a pilot program to strengthen teacher preparation.

There's also talk of testing some new research in physical education and publishing a teacher training manual that can be used by other schools. Trevino said she plans to reach out more to the Austin school district. "I know we can do more," she said.

Source




Illiterate British school leavers are a business ‘nightmare’: "Employers have claimed that they face a “nightmare” scenario as they try to deal with teenagers who are unable to read or write properly. Many school-leavers were more technologically literate than their bosses, but more than half of employers were unhappy with the basic literacy and numeracy skills of 16-year-olds, according to a survey by the CBI. Many businesses said that they were training employees in skills that should have been learnt in the classroom. “Basic literacy and numeracy problems are a nightmare for business and for individuals, so we have to get these essentials right,” Richard Lambert, the CBI’s director-general, said."





21 August, 2007

Some teachers say yes to pay tied to scores

While the words "merit pay" drew hisses and boos at a recent teachers' union convention, educators are endorsing contracts that pay bonuses for boosting students' test scores. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers oppose linking a teacher's paycheck to how well their students do on tests. But that is not stopping Rob Weil, the AFT's deputy director of educational issues, from helping local unions hammer out contracts that include new merit-pay plans. "We don't have a message on a board that says, 'Hey, thinking about this?'" he said. But he said the AFT feels obliged to assist chapters that have decided to go this route.

Teachers usually are paid according to a century-old career ladder that rewards seniority and levels of education. The system was designed to ensure fair compensation for women and minorities. The average starting salary today is about $31,000.

"They don't make enough money, especially the good ones -- especially the great ones," said Louis Malfaro, the teachers' union president in Austin, Texas, where nine schools are part of a pilot program to overhaul how teachers are paid. Malfaro said Austin's approach is modeled partly on Denver's, which links salaries to students' test scores and other measures. Malfaro says the Austin effort will expand slowly and be evaluated methodically to avoid the kinds of mistakes made elsewhere. "Our approach has been a slow, deliberate and steady one," Malfaro said. "This is a highway with wrecked cars all over it."

Florida recently had to retool a merit-pay plan after a large number of districts opted out, citing teacher concerns. A plan in Houston came under criticism because it was put in place over teachers' objections. Vanderbilt University education professor Jim Guthrie said the involvement of teachers is essential. "I just put myself in their shoes. All of a sudden you are going to change all the rules and you're not going to talk to me?" said Guthrie, who is assisting districts that got federal grants to implement merit pay.

Weil, the AFT official, said teacher compensation has to be bargained locally. He also said the new plans should make good professional development available to increase the chances that teachers will raise students' achievement.

Union opposition to merit pay stems partly from failed efforts of the 1980s. In those cases, principals generally were given the power to decide who would get the additional dollars. "They often had no basis of any objective measure of performance," said Susan Moore Johnson, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "So what sometimes happened is there would be different awards made to different individuals and they would become public, and people would be appalled at the individuals who were given the awards or not given the awards."

More here




Fascist school system in Quebec

A community of a dozen Mennonite families in Quebec is ready to leave the province rather than succumb to provincial government demands that would require their children to be taught evolution and homosexuality. While the government sees its actions as nothing more than enforcing technical regulations, many view the case as intolerance of Christian faith.

The community runs a small Mennonite school out of a church in Roxton Falls where eleven children in elementary grades were expected to commence studies this Fall. Subjects include reading, writing, math, science, geography, social sciences, music and French. However, they are not schooled in evolution and homosexuality (sex education) as demanded by the official provincial curriculum.

Quebec Education Ministry Spokesman Francois Lefebvre told LifeSiteNews.com that the province has two requirements for approval of private schools. "That the teachers are certified and that the provincial curriculum which is mandatory in all Quebec schools is followed," he said.

Ronald Goossen, a spokesman for the families, told LifeSiteNews.com the community rejects both demands. With regard to certified teachers, he said, "we have pulled our students out of public schools and by asking us to have certified teachers they are asking us to send our teachers to public school. So basically they're asking something of us that we don't feel we can do." Regarding the curriculum, Goosen said, "Some of the things - the theory of evolution would be a problem, the attitudes portrayed, the lifestyles we don't ascribe to, making it look that single motherhood is fine, that alternate lifestyles are fine - gay 'marriage', we'd be very much against that."

After visiting the Mennonites in November, the Ministry of Education told the school that their teaching was not up to standard and threatened them with legal action. Parents were informed that their children must be enrolled in government-approved schools by the fall.

Given other incidents in the province, Goossen was concerned that if they don't comply, children might be taken from their families by social workers. In 2002, social workers in Aylmer removed seven children from a Mennonite family because the family used spanking as a form of discipline.

This move is an enactment of the Ministry of Education's decision last year to shut down schools that don't teach the full government-approved curriculum. The Ministry threatened to shut down private Evangelical schools that didn't want to teach evolution and sex-education.

The Mayor of Roxton Falls, Jean-Marie Laplante, said that the majority of non-Mennonites in his town support the school. Laplante has complained to the education department and Education Minister Michelle Courchesne to save the school from being shut down. "We want to keep these people here - they're part of our community," the Mayor told the National Post. "They're good neighbours. They integrated into the community, they work hard, they have farms, they work in businesses in the region." The prospect of losing the families, said the Mayor, "hurts economically, but it also hurts because everybody loves these people and we're saying, 'Why? Why is this happening?' " (Contact the Mayor here: roxton@cooptel.qc.ca )

Goosen told LifeSiteNews.com that the families are serious about moving and will be gone in a couple of weeks when school commences. He noted that most have already rented housing in Ontario. Should the government reconsider and allow them the freedom to educate their children within the boundaries of their faith, the community would gladly stay he said.

Lefebvre told LifeSiteNews.com that the school had not yet applied for permission to run privately. However, Goosen responded that the ministry of education had all the required information and his application was not 'officially' submitted only due to a technicality related to the online submission process. Moreover, said Goosen, "we have been informed that our application would be rejected since they require certified teachers and adherence to the curriculum."

Lefebvre at first seemed conciliatory. He claimed that the regulations "do not exclude giving other courses or teachings related to their religious convictions, but at this moment it is outside of the official program of education." LifeSiteNews.com asked whether a compromise could be reached, whether it would be possible to eliminate from the school's curriculum the offensive parts which deal with evolution and homosexuality. Lefebvre replied, "It's difficult to say because the educational program insists that students acquire competence in the whole program therefore how could you eliminate one part of the program and still have a general competence?" He referred to religious schools in Quebec, emphasizing that they also have to "respect the program of education (curriculum) of Quebec."

Goosen told LifeSiteNews.com that the Mennonite community has its own curriculum which is accepted in seven other Canadian provinces. "Our own curriculum system has served us well and produced good results," he said.

The option of home schooling is permitted, Lefebvre stated in answer to another question, as long as the progress of the children is reported as satisfactory to the local education ministry. He told LifeSiteNews.com that homeschoolers in the province must be receiving an equivalent education as those in public schools, which means the provincial curriculum must be followed. That curriculum, with its pro-gay sex education and its teaching of evolution, remains unacceptable to many.

Source





20 August, 2007

Are you more conservative than a 2nd-grader?

It’s not in the interest of the government’s education system to teach kids to question laws and challenge authority – you know, the way the Founding Fathers did. What’s in the government’s interest is blind obedience and unquestioning submission. You know, like the way everyone dutifully parades through those airport checkpoints without raising a stink. Baa-aaaa!

So even if you don’t home-school your children, it’s important for conservatives to teach their children what it means to really be an American citizen in this regard because, as the Founders recognized, freedom and liberty aren’t a natural state of existence for human beings. Humans have an inherent desire for someone else to take care of them. You know, like Social Security.

Which brings me to the home-school lesson my 2nd-grader, Kristen, was hit with this week titled, “Rules and Laws.” It turned out to be a rather interesting and eye-opening experience which I highly recommend to all conservatives with children of any age - ESPECIALLY if they’re attending a public school: “Pretend you are a leader who is in charge of deciding the laws for your country. Create five new laws that the people of your country will have to obey.”

As you can imagine, Kristen was in seventh heaven at the notion of running her own country and coming up with rules everyone else had to obey. After all, there’s a little dictator in every kid yearning to get out, right? Anyway, here are the five laws the new queen came up with for Kristenistan, along with my side commentary:

1.) “Black people and white people should have the right to sit wherever they want.”

As you might have guessed, the lesson the day before was about the civil rights movement, so this really wasn’t too much of a surprise and is, of course, an admirable sentiment to be expressed by a 7-year-old. But here comes the conservative teachable moment; an opportunity to convey the quintessential American notion of property rights, as well as the law of unintended consequences as it pertains to creating new laws.

“OK, Kristen. Let’s say you use your allowance to buy a front-row ticket to see Dora the Explorer in concert. Does someone else, black or white, have the right to sit in your seat that you paid for? And do they have the right to sit in your seat at our dinner table?”

“Um…no.”

Correct. Lesson learned. Onward…

2.) “All campsites should have campfires.”

This comes from the fact that we are leaving today for our two-week summer camping trip at Lake Tahoe, scene of a rather large forest fire earlier in the season. As such, the governor has decreed that campfires be banned for the duration of the summer. How, Kristen wondered, are we supposed to toast marshmallows and s’mores, let alone read ghost stories by the campfire if we’re not allowed to have a campfire? Good question.

This presented an opportunity to teach about the dangers of government passing laws which punish a majority of responsible people for the actions of an irresponsible few, as well as the tendency of government to make rules, not because they are particularly effective, but because they make people think the government is doing something constructive. You know, like creating the TSA.

The fact is, I explained, more forest fires are started by lightning strikes than campfires built by responsible campers in a campground. By banning campfires in campgrounds, the government really didn’t do anything to make forest fires less likely. Lightning will still strike, and irresponsible people not camping in a campground just ignore the law anyway. Only the innocent, law-abiding people are being harmed by this new rule. You know, like gun control laws.

3.) “Everybody should throw their trash out.”

A fine sentiment. Who could argue with that, right? Yet still another teachable moment. “What,” I asked, “will you do to people who are caught littering?”

“I’ll put them in jail and torture them!” (Ah, it’s good ta be da Queen!) “How long will you keep them in jail?” “Three years.”

“For littering? Isn’t that a bit harsh? Who will take care of their children and feed them while they’re in jail for three years? So, do you think maybe jail isn’t the best punishment for doing something that doesn’t really hurt other people?” You know, like putting dying cancer patients behind bars for smoking pot.

4.) “Everybody should have the right to go to at least one ball.”

This comes from a combination of Cinderella and the fact that Kristen went to an inaugural ball for Nevada’s new governor earlier this year (the same one who banned campfires!). ‘Tis only natural to decree that everyone in Kristenistan have the opportunity to experience such an exciting event. I have no problem with this one, providing that the opportunity to go to a ball doesn’t become an entitlement, a lesson better driven home after #5…

5.) “Every child should have a computer.”

Yikes! How Al Gore-ish. You see, folks, this is how liberalism gets its start. Kristen has a computer because her Dad worked hard to earn enough money to buy her one. But her friend up the street doesn’t have a computer because her Dad can’t afford it. And in the mind of a 7-year-old, that’s not fair. So how does a 7-year-old fix this “injustice”? By passing a law mandating that every kid gets a computer.

“OK, Kristen, fine. Now…who’s going to pay for the computers?” “Uh, all of the people in Kristenistan will pitch in.” You know, like taxes. “But what if I don’t want to give my money to buy someone else’s kid a computer? What if I want to spend my money on something for MY kids? Will I have to chip in, or can I choose not to?”

I think you can guess where this one went from there. The point here is that liberal tendencies are natural and begin at an early age. And the public schools won’t do anything to discourage them. In fact, just the opposite.

So if you want your kids to learn that laws can have unintended consequences, that property rights are crucial rights (tell THAT to the Supreme Court!), that the innocent shouldn’t be punished with the guilty, that punishment should fit the crime, that the government just doing “something” isn’t really doing anything if all it does is make people feel better, that life isn’t always fair, and that “good” ideas cost money which many people might not think is worth chipping in for…you better teach them these lessons yourself. If only members of Congress were smarter than 2nd-graders.

Source




Educating The Nonexistent

The Washington, DC school system received about $4 million in Federal money over a decade to pay for the education of the children of migrant workers. Which is all well and good except for one thing: they didn't have any children of migrant workers enrolled in their schools. The grant money was intended for the children of seasonal workers in agriculture or fishing, two industries that Washington, DC is not exactly noted for. Worst of all, it appears to have been done deliberately based on false claims filed by officials.

The school system received $3.85 million between 1994 and 2004 for children whose families had seasonal employment in agriculture and fishing. The U.S. Department of Education awarded the grants on an annual basis based on information submitted by D.C. education officials.

Federal education officials did not give information yesterday on how many children were claimed by D.C. officials to have been served under the grants. The receipt of money for migrant students was first reported by the Washington Examiner.

Melissa Merz, spokeswoman for the D.C. Office of the Attorney General, said city attorneys have looked into the issue "and believe that the D.C. public schools drew down these funds in error." The office is working on a resolution with federal attorneys from the Justice Department, Merz said. Local jurisdictions can face fines for the misuse of funds under the federal False Claims Act.

This went on for a decade. It seems unlikely that it was a one-off oopsie on the part of officials. Whatever arrangement Washington officials make for repayment of the money should also include some punishment for whoever kept filing the false claims. Given that it is part of the educational bureaucracy involved, that seems unlikely. Unless the Examiner keeps the heat on.

Source





19 August, 2007

More Evidence of Liberal Bias in Our Schools

Post excerpted from Flopping Aces.

Now is it any wonder the youth in this country are so totally lacking in common sense?  Look at the top academia donations given so far for the 2008 election:



A little graph I put together:



And these are the yahoos teaching our youth.  Long ago teachers would not wear their politics on their sleeves, instead they did the job they were hired to do.  Teach!  Without bias.  Not anymore:

Conservative groups cite professors’ growing activism as evidence that education and politics have become muddled. “There’s been a transformation of universities over 30 or 40 years, where what was once an institutional ethic that you leave your politics at home, that your students should never know your personal opinions on controversial topics, has been eroded to the point where it is rarely used,” said Peter Wood, director of the conservative National Association of Scholars.

Click that link and head down to the writers summarization of their findings:

The simplest explanation for the college community's resounding opposition to President Bush, however, may be that professors understand the importance of participating in the political process, are well-versed on issues and—perhaps more so than the general population

Yup, it's all because they are so much smarter than the rest of us.




Stop the NYC Madrassa

When Dhabah "Debbie" Almontaser resigned as principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy on August 10, her action culminated a remarkable grassroots campaign in which concerned citizens successfully criticized the New York City establishment. But the fight goes on. The next step is to get the academy itself canceled.

The five-month effort to get Almontaser removed began in March with analyses, including one by this writer, pointing out the inherent political and religious problems in an Arabic-language school. By June, a concerned group of New York City residents joined with specialists - among them my colleague, R. John Matthies - to create the Stop the Madrassa Coalition. with the goal of preventing an avowed Islamist from heading a taxpayer-funded school.

The coalition, made up of some 150 people, energetically did research, attended events, peppered public officials - notably Mayor Michael Bloomberg and School Chancellor Joel Klein - with letters, collared journalists, and spoke on radio shows and national television. The odds seemed impossibly long, especially as the city government and most of the city's press clearly supported the KGIA's opening and Ms. Almontaser as principal, while denouncing their critics.

Unrelenting efforts by the coalition eventually led to the development in early August that caused Almontaser to resign. One of its leaders, Pamela Hall, photographed T-shirts bearing the words "Intifada NYC," which were sold by an organization, Arab Women Active in Art and Media, that shares office space in Brooklyn with the Saba Association of American Yemenis. Ms. Almontaser, it turns out, is both a board member and the spokeswoman for the Saba Association.

The T-shirts' call for a Palestinian Arab-style uprising in the five boroughs, admittedly, had only the most tenuous connection to Ms. Almontaser. She could have maintained her months-old silence, which was serving her well. But the KGIA principal also has a long history of speaking out about politics, and apparently she could not resist the opportunity to defend the shirts, telling the New York Post that the word intifada "basically means `shaking off.' That is the root word if you look it up in Arabic. I understand it is developing a negative connotation due to the uprising in the Palestinian-Israeli areas. I don't believe the intention is to have any of that kind of [violence] in New York City. I think it's pretty much an opportunity for girls to express that they are part of New York City society ... and shaking off oppression."

This gratuitous apology for suicide terrorism undid Ms. Almontaser's months of silence and years of work, prompting scathing editorials and denunciations by politicians. Perhaps most devastating was a harsh letter from the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, who previously had supported Ms. Almontaser. Ms. Almontaser submitted an angry resignation letter just four days after the publication of her statement apologizing for intifada.

"I remain committed to the success of Khalil Gibran International Academy," Mr. Klein insisted after Ms. Almontaser's resignation. Fine, but KGIA's prospects for opening on September 4 remain clouded. Count its problems: The school has only an interim, non-Arabic-speaking principal; it has only five teachers; and it is 25% undersubscribed by students. In addition, it faces the outspoken opposition of politicians such as Assemblyman Dov Hikind and is wildly unpopular; and an unscientific America Online poll of 180,000 subscribers found that more than four-fifths of the public is unsympathetic to the school.

Ms. Almontaser's departure, however welcome, does not change the rest of the school's personnel, much less address the more basic problems implicit in an Arabic-language school - the tendency to Islamist and Arabist content and proselytizing. To reiterate my initial assessment in March, the KGIA is in principle a great idea, as America needs more Arabic speakers. In practice, however, Arabic-language instruction needs special scrutiny.

The city, in other words, could take steps to make the KGIA acceptable by dispensing with the existing set of goals, fundamentally rethinking its mission, appointing a new advisory board, hiring new staff, and imposing the necessary educational and political controls. Unfortunately, statements by the mayor and the schools chancellor suggest that such steps are emphatically not under way. Until and unless the city leadership changes its approach to the KGIA, I shall continue to call for the school not to open until it is properly restructured and supervised.

Source




The British charade continues

Getting top marks in A-level examinations could become harder after the introduction of a new A* and an A** grade, exam chiefs suggested yesterday, after record results showed that more than a quarter of all A-level entries were awarded an A. The pass rate rose for the 25th year in succession, with nearly three in ten candidates achieving three A grades, traditionally enough to secure them a place at a top university. The results meant that a record 316,549 pupils were able to confirm their university places on results day, up from 294,567 last year, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) said.

Ministers and teaching unions congratulated students on their results, attributing the rises to improved teaching and learning and a greater awareness of the importance of mastering exam techniques. Examination boards insisted that the A level remained the gold standard examination and denied that the number of A grades achieved, which accounted for 25.3 per cent of all marks, was a result of grade inflation. [And all those wishy-washy subjects they do these days have nothing to do with it, of course] There was no escaping the fact, however, that rising grades have made it more difficult for many bright pupils to get into their university of choice. Whereas once a B grade was regarded as a respectable score, it spelled failure for the academic plans of some pupils yesterday.

Most exam boards do accept that the introduction of a new A* grade for the 2010 exams would help universities and employers to identify the very brightest students from among those qualifying for an A. The A* will be awarded to students who achieve 90 per cent in their exams.

Mike Cresswell, director general of AQA, England's biggest exam board, went further. He accepted that a new A** could eventually be required as more pupils get the new top A* grade. "The A* is an eminently sensible response to what is essentially a problem of success," he said. "More and more students are doing better and getting grade A. You can see why a small number of universities at the moment have a problem differentiating between the very, very, very best and the very best. "Were one to find oneself in a situation at some point in the future where things had improved to such an extent that there was now a similar difficulty with an A*, the sensible thing to do would be to repeat the medicine.

Alan Smithers, Professor of Education at the University of Buckingham, described the idea of a possible A** as "just plain daft", saying it would amount to an admission of failure. "For the A* to work it must be based on tougher questions which will sort out those with real understanding of the subject," he said.

Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said he thought it would be an extraordinary achievement for any student to get three A*s and said the need for an extra top grade at A level was "a long way away". He pointed out that, from this year, universities will be given the percentage mark of all pupils in every A level module to help them to distinguish between those who have scraped through with an A and those who had passed with flying colours.

Michael Gove, the Shadow Children, Schools and Families Secretary, said that he agreed that it was important to allow the new A* to bed down before thinking of reforming A levels again. The results for the 310,000 students sitting 806,000 A levels were released yesterday by the Joint Council for Qualifications, representing the exam boards. The pass rate was 96.6 per cent. Girls continued to score better grades than boys in every major subject apart from further maths and foreign languages, although boys did manage to narrow the gap overall by 0.3 per cent.

Source





18 August, 2007

Latest tests show racial achievement gap

California results show that it's not poverty that causes the racial disparity -- so all sorts of speculative explanations are trotted out instead -- all explanations except the obvious one. The results are PERFECTLY predictable by the average IQ scores for the groups concerned. And IQ rankings are very little changed no matter what you do.

Whether they are poor or rich, white students are scoring higher than their African American and Latino classmates on the state's standardized tests, results released Wednesday show. And in some cases, the poorest white students are doing better than Latino and black students who come from middle class or wealthy families.

The so-called achievement gap -- the difference in performance between groups of students -- has long been chalked up to a difference in family income. It makes sense that -- regardless of race -- students whose parents have money and speak English would do better in school, on the whole, than students whose families struggle with employment, food and shelter. But this year's test scores show that the difference in academic achievement between ethnic groups is more than an issue of poverty vs. wealth.

On the standardized math tests that public school students take every year from second to 11th grade, 38 percent of white students who qualify for subsidized lunch scored proficient or above, compared with 36 percent of Latino students and 30 percent of black students whose families made too much money to qualify for school meals. On standardized English tests, poor white students did about the same as non-poor Latino and African American students. "These are not just economic achievement gaps," state Superintendent Jack O'Connell said in announcing the test scores from an elementary school in Inglewood. "They are racial achievement gaps, and we cannot continue to excuse them."

It's a new twist on what has become a common theme for O'Connell -- the danger the achievement gap poses for California's economic future. About 56 percent of the state's public school students are Latino or black, so their academic performance now will have a big influence on the work force of the future. "I've been pounding this drum and am going to continue to do so, not just for the moral imperative that we have, but for the economic imperative," O'Connell said. "We're going to focus on (the achievement gap) like a heat-seeking missile during my last three years here as the state superintendent."

In general, test scores were flat compared with last year, but up from five years ago. Forty-one percent of students were proficient in math this year, while 43 percent were proficient in English. Even though students are doing better than five years ago -- when 35 percent were proficient in math and English -- the achievement gap between racial groups has remained a constant, with white and Asian American students scoring higher than their Latino and African American peers.

O'Connell said little Wednesday to explain why the achievement gap persists. "That is the $50 billion question," said Francisco Estrada, public policy director for the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, one of several Latino and African American activists who lauded O'Connell for drawing attention to the issue, even while they criticized the state government for not doing enough to improve education for students of color. "Superintendent O'Connell should be commended for not just simply saying, 'We're doing great and let's keep doing what we're doing,' which is what we've heard in other years," Estrada said.

Russlynn Ali, director of Education Trust West, said state policymakers are responsible for the achievement gap that has kept black and Latino students behind because they've done little to put experienced, well-trained teachers and rigorous high-level courses in schools that predominantly serve those groups. "Our system takes poor kids and kids of color -- not just the students of color who are poor -- and provides them less of everything research says makes a difference," she said. "That is the underlying cause of the achievement gap."

While Ali blamed the government for distributing resources inequitably, others said the gap is due to teachers' expectations. "The expectations are not as high for African American students as they are for other students," said Anita Royston, an education consultant who used to work for the Sacramento City Unified School District. That district's school board president once found the same to be true in his Latino family. In 1989, Manny Hernandez said, his son was forbidden from taking college-prep classes in high school. "That kind of tracking took place, not because people were bad or racist, but because that was the expectation," Hernandez said. When he became a school board member some years later, Hernandez wanted to change the district's expectations about who goes to college. The Sacramento City Unified school board increased graduation requirements, so that more students will graduate with more of the courses necessary to enter college.

Sharroky Hollie sees the achievement gap yet another way. He is a professor of teacher education at California State University, Dominguez Hills, who focuses on strategies that help Latino and African American students learn. Hollie says the achievement gap reflects a biased education system that doesn't accept behaviors and learning styles common in African American and Latino communities. For example, he said, an African American student who is talkative and frequently gets out of his seat will be seen as disruptive and defiant in most schools. Instead, Hollie said, teachers should develop teaching strategies that work with the student's social and kinesthetic nature, a trait that could be attributed to his cultural background. [Strategies that will work on kids who won't pay attention??] "The first thing we want schools to do is to change their mind-set in seeing these behaviors as cultural and not negative," he said. "The rest of it is: How can the instruction be reshaped to validate and affirm the cultural behaviors as a segue to standards-based learning?"

Testing experts said too many factors affect test scores to attribute the racial differences to any one thing. Jamal Abedi of the UC Davis School of Education said the test questions use complex language that may throw students off, particularly those who are not native English speakers or who speak in the vernacular at home. "Those terms prevent students from understanding the assessment questions," he said. "Therefore, they may not be able to respond."

Wednesday's release shows how students did on the California Standards Tests they took in the spring. Their scores are divided into five categories -- advanced, proficient, basic, below basic and far below basic. The goal is for all students to reach proficient or advanced. Later this month, the state Department of Education will use these scores to calculate an Academic Performance Index number for each school and to determine whether schools are meeting the requirements set by No Child Left Behind

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Stab-proof school uniforms go on sale in Britain to protect pupils from knife attacks

The story below is not the half of it. Some British parents in areas with large black populations send their kids to school in BULLET-proof vests

Parents are sending children to school in stab-proof uniforms to guard against knife crime, it has emerged. They are paying a firm which makes body armour to line blazers and jumpers with a stab-resistant material called Kevlar. The precautions are aimed at protecting pupils from knife attacks as street crime spills over into schools. A wave of stabbings involving teenagers includes the killing of promising footballer Kiyan Prince, who was knifed just yards from his school gates in north London.

Kevlar is a synthetic fibre that can be spun into fabric five times stronger than steel and is used in armoured vests worn by British troops in Iraq. Essex-based firm BladeRunner produces clothing lined with the material for police and security guards. But inquiries from parents have now prompted it to modfify school uniforms.

Barry Samms, one of the firm's directors, said the company initially produced stab-proof hooded tops that were bought by teenagers. It was then asked by parents about the possibility of strengthening school uniforms with Kevlar. The firm now offers to line blazers and jumpers with the material if pupils send in their uniforms. Blazers cost 120 pounds to stab-proof and jumpers 60 to 70. "The blazers and jumpers have come on the back of the hooded tops which we launched in April," said Mr Samms. "Since then we had a small amount of parents contacting us and asking if we could do something similar with their kids' uniforms so we have been modifying them for them. "We have done blazers and jumpers - we have done about half a dozen so far. It's somehing that we can do and it's something we are offering."

He said parents who had inquired about stab-proof clothing were genuinely fearful for their children's safety. He said: "From what I can gather and from speaking to parents it's just peace of mind for them. "I spoke to a lady yesterday whose son was mugged on a bus coming home from school. She has also got two daughters, but she always sends them to school with no money on them and no jewellery."

Police chiefs said the precautions were an "extraordinary step". "The reality of course is that crimes involving knives are proportionately very very low" Alf Hitchcock, of the Association of Chief Police Officers told BBC News Online. "But we do recognise some parents have that fear and some feel they need to go these steps."

Seven boys under the age of 16 have died in knife attacks in the space of just two months this year. Teachers are also demanding to be equipped with stab-proof vests to protect them from attack as they frisk pupils for knives and guns. New laws which recently came into effect will allow staff to conduct forcible searches of students suspected of carrying offensive weapons. But members of the Professional Association of Teachers are saying they should not be made to carry out searches unless they are provided with body armour.

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Who cares about punctuation?

Comment from Australia

If punctuation guru Lynne Truss had intended to make the title of her new book ambiguous, then she has succeeded brilliantly. Forget Eats, Shoots and Leaves the surprising international bestseller. This time, Truss has lined up apostrophes for her special attention. The new book is titled The Girl's Like Spaghetti. This is confusing. What the book's title is intending to say is the girl is like spaghetti. It all comes down to the placement of an apostrophe. But for a child looking at the cover, which is pitched for junior primary aged children, they could be forgiven for thinking that The Girl owns something. The point illustrates the need for clarity with punctuation. More than this it is how it is taught that makes it meaningful.

While Truss may find apostrophes pesky little squiggly things, it seems that the apostrophe, like so much punctuation and grammar, is abused. A casual look around any city's signage will find apostrophes missing, floatingly homelessly over a word ending in "s" or placed incorrectly. Then again you'd have to know what is correct to notice.

Understanding apostrophes is just one of the skills in determining a literate child. Others include correct spelling, clear sentence construction and a full suite of punctuation marks. The reality is something very different. On recent state literacy testing, one in four Queensland children at Year 7 level failed the state benchmarks for agreed acceptable minimum literacy standards. Let's be absolutely clear here. The operative word is "minimum". Students who do not make the cut on Queensland's literacy tests are effectively illiterate. This is in no way acceptable.

This uncomfortable reality is one of the reasons why the Federal Government from 2008 will introduce national literacy and numeracy tests at Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. Queensland parents need to know if their children compare favourably with children in the other states and territories. If they do not do so, then the reasons need to be understood and necessary action taken.

As uncomfortable as it may be for some, the literacy buck stops with teachers. Sure it is unhelpful if shops and advertising appropriate apostrophes, spelling and punctuation for effect. It is up to schools to correct it. On Queensland evidence, 25 per cent of Year 7 students are not performing at even a very basic literacy level. So who teaches them and how are they prepared?

When research was being undertaken into the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy in 2005, chairman Dr Ken Rowe found that many university students were receiving literacy instruction while they were learning how to be teachers. At the time, Rowe observed: "Many university faculties of education are running remedial English classes for their trainee teachers. Their basic grammar and spelling is that poor." Add to this that up to 30 per cent of students in schools were "simply not achieving to the extent they could or should", Rowe said.

The Queensland Government in the June state Budget promised $35.6 million over four years to improve literacy. That's a lot of apostrophes. Moreover, $10 million over four years has been set aside to meet the literacy and numeracy needs of indigenous students. But unless students can confidently understand how the English language works, apostrophes and all, then this will be money of limited impact. Already the school curriculum, particularly at primary level, is awash with socially based subjects masquerading as a rigorous curriculum. The result of schools looking at animal care, bike safety, dental hygiene and financial management, perhaps all good in themselves, is "literacy lite".

This is why the draft Primary School Charter, released earlier this month by the Australian Primary Principals Association, has recommended four core subjects are essential with art, sport, music and languages in a supplementary role. The core includes: English literacy, Maths and numeracy, Science and Australian history. This makes sense. By uncluttering the curriculum, more time can be given to the inculcation of basic skills in literacy and numeracy. A view expressed by APPA president Leonie Trimper, who has warned that currently, the curriculum is compromising the acquisition of core skills. "Primary schooling marks a cultural milestone in the lives of all young Australians so we must get it right. Children only get one chance to establish a solid foundation on which to build a future," Trimper said on release of the draft Charter.

While Lynne Truss has identified the need for a book about apostrophes, the pity is that it is needed at all. The aim should surely be that all Queensland children know how to spell, punctuate, read and write clearly - let alone amend a rogue apostrophe.

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17 August, 2007

No tolerance at the university of Maryland

Four things Leftists cannot tolerate: Christianity, conservatives, Israel and anybody who disagrees with them. But conservatives have to tolerate everything, of course. Democracy would of course be impossible if most people could not tolerate others with different views

For two decades, America's schools and colleges have made a signal virtue of "tolerance" and the "celebration" of diversity. When skeptics have voiced concerns that these bumper-sticker sentiments pose a threat to free speech and intellectual freedom, or threaten to substitute the habits of therapy for those of disciplined inquiry, they have been dismissed as retrograde curmudgeons.

Tolerance is a cardinal virtue when it entails parties disagreeing over questions of beliefs, values, and culture, but respecting the rights of their opponents to live and politic within the confines of the American constitutional order. However, in today's colleges and universities, tolerance has too often evolved into a watery, uncritical acceptance of illiberal behavior. A telling little farce recently played out at the University of Maryland, illustrating just how troubling "tolerance" can become.

As the Washington Post's Marc Fisher reported, University of Maryland student Mia Lazarus recently went to buy some chips and juice at the Maryland Food Collective. The clerk at this grocery and sandwich shop in the student union read her t-shirt's "Baltimore Zionist District" and "I Stand for Israel" slogans and then declared, "Your shirt offends me. I won't ring you up."

Another coop cashier eventually sold Lazarus her chips and juice. But more instructive than Lazarus's ability to finally buy her groceries has been the aftermath. After an hours-long, "teary" meeting between Lazarus, her friends, and the collective, the coop agreed that it would serve any customer who wasn't physically or verbally abusive, but that workers offended by a customer's politics could arrange for another clerk to serve a patron.

The president of the university's Pro-Israel Terrapin Alliance opined, "The arrangement we worked out, while not ideal, is a reasonable accommodation. I would not want to force anyone to act against their own political beliefs." Coop employees told the Post's Fisher that "no one should have to have contact with people whose views they find hurtful."

Meanwhile, Lazarus clearly saw it as her responsibility to make amends. When Lazarus and her friends from Maryland's Jewish community met with the collective, they brought a chocolate cake they had baked as a peace offering. In a studiously nonconfrontational letter to the cashier who turned her away, Lazarus wrote, "I got the impression that your action at the register was a very `in the moment,' emotional reaction. Nonetheless, the way you expressed your feelings was not the most constructive." In case that proved too sharply worded, she then volunteered at the coop herself.

Ironically, the University of Maryland's "human rights code" prohibits discrimination on the basis of political beliefs, along with sex, race, and so on. The university's student union director, Gretchen Metzelaars, was, however, unable to convince members of the coop that they had discriminated. After agreeing to serve students like Lazarus in the future (by allowing clerks to discreetly slip away from customers they disapprove of), the coop told Metzelaars, "Okay, but if someone came in wearing a swastika, we wouldn't serve them."

Did the experience shake Lazarus's simple faith in the power of tolerance? Turns out she's a big fan of the coop's solution. Asked whether allowing clerks to selectively refuse to serve customers was acceptable, or whether it rested on the same troubling rationale that once supported "separate but equal," Lazarus rejected the analogy. "Separate but equal wasn't equal," she told him. "In this case, I'm getting the same service, but it's just from a different cashier."

Exactly how "tolerance" devolved into coddling those who choose to take offense for the slightest of reasons is a question for another day (although decades of experience demonstrates that on-campus tolerance is more frequently understood as the right of "victims" to air grievances than of heterogeneous speakers to be heard). Another question is how and why we've allowed identity politics to constrict public spaces.

But the pressing problem with the way "tolerance" as touted by too many educators is that it rewards zealotry; while the zealots are understood to be beyond its soggy grasp, the rational and pragmatic are expected to do what is necessary to keep the peace.

The champions of "tolerance" have pitched it as a costless and all-embracing virtue, all the while dismissing or sidestepping concerns that it might dim critical faculties or undermine commitment to core American values. Indeed, the goings-on at the Maryland Food Collective suggest just how readily this doctrine can become tantamount to unilateral intellectual and moral disarmament.

Is this the way to equip the new generation for the rigors of the 21st century? When Islamofascists next demand that newspapers refuse to run a cartoon or an essay, or cite "provocative" American books or music as a justification for murder, can we have any confidence that we have prepared the painfully pleasant Mia Lazaruses of this world to stare them down? For those who have long suggested that "tolerance" should be the lodestar in our educational compass, this is a question well worth pondering.

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British dumbing down continues

Pressure for a reform of A levels [High School diploma] has led to a surge in support for rival qualifications

With a record crop of A-level results expected today, one of Britain's leading examination boards has said that it will introduce a new exam in dozens of schools from next month with a view to offering it nationally from next year. The new "AQA Bacc", from the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, is designed to offer sixth-formers a broader range of studies than A levels so that university admissions staff can select the brightest students for their most popular courses.

A big criticism of the A-level system is that so many students get A grades it is impossible to tell the really brilliant from the merely well-drilled. In response, many universities have introduced their own admissions tests to identify the top candidates, and the Government has promised to introduce a new A* grade at A level from next year for students gaining 90 per cent or more.

With the AQA baccalaureate, students will still study three A levels but will take a further paper in critical thinking, citizenship or general studies. They will also complete an extended essay, project or thesis designed to show their ability to develop an argument and their writing skills. The new qualification will also highlight any community work they have done.

John Mitchell, director of Qualifications Development and Support at AQA, said: "To achieve this award, students have had to demonstrate planning, research and self-management skills alongside academic ability. In developing such important skills, AQA Bacc students are well placed for progression to further study or employment." Results of the first students to take the new qualification, in a trial at Farnborough Sixth Form College, will be published today. John Guy, the college's principal, said: "The extended project has encouraged students to undertake real research in an area above and beyond their A levels, providing evidence of real stretch and challenge."

The AQA's decision to bring in a new qualification follows growing interest in the highly academic international baccalaureate (IB), which the Government has supported. Last year Tony Blair said that more state schools would offer the IB to ensure that students could choose the courses that best met their individual abilities and needs.

The IB offers a much broader curriculum, in which students study a range of seven subjects rather than just the traditional three for A levels. The number of schools offering the IB in Britain has doubled in the past decade and is expected to reach 100 by 2010.

Growing numbers of private schools are also expressing an interest in the rival Pre-U qualification, which is being developed in Cambridge. Due to be taught from next year, the Pre-U will involve a return to final exams after two years, rather than the "bite-sized" modules of A levels. Support for the new exams reflects growing concern among university admissions officers about grade inflation at A level. A survey of 56 universities, published yesterday, found that nearly 40 per cent of admissions officers thought the Government's decision to back the IB was an acknowledgement that it is a better preparation for university than A levels.

Last night the Liberal Democrats called for an independent review of exam standards. Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, accused them of trying to undermine young people.

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16 August, 2007

Theory behind busing finally bombs

Moving Students Out of Poor Inner Cities Yields Little, Studies of HUD Vouchers Show. Rather a pity they didn't test the theory first, isn't it? But Leftists just KNOW: Evidence not necessary

Many social reformers have long said that low academic achievement among inner-city children cannot be improved significantly without moving their families to better neighborhoods, but new reports released today that draw on a unique set of data throw cold water on that theory.

Researchers examining what happened to 4,248 families that were randomly given or denied federal housing vouchers to move out of their high-poverty neighborhoods found no significant difference about seven years later between the achievement of children who moved to more middle-class neighborhoods and those who didn't. Although some children had more stable lives and better academic results after the moves, the researchers said, on average there was no improvement. Boys and brighter students appeared to have more behavioral problems in their new schools, the studies found. "Research has in fact found surprisingly little convincing evidence that neighborhoods play a key role in children's educational success," [But IQ does -- though we must not mention that. Better to fart around with myths] says one of the two reports on the Web site of the Hoover Institution's journal Education Next.

Experts often debate the factors in student achievement. Many point to teacher quality, others to parental involvement and others to economic and cultural issues. Some critics, and the researchers themselves, suggest that the new neighborhoods may not have been good enough to make a difference. [The classic last-ditch defence of a busted theory: Demand ever higher standards of proof for the contrary narrative] Under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Moving to Opportunity program, one group of families received vouchers that could be used only to move to neighborhoods with poverty rates below 10 percent, one group got vouchers without that restriction and one group did not receive vouchers. Families with the restricted vouchers moved to neighborhoods with poverty rates averaging 12.6 percent lower than those of similar families that did not move, but not the most affluent suburbs with the highest-performing schools. "There is a wide body of evidence going back several decades to suggest that low-income students perform better in middle-class schools," said Richard D. Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Washington-based Century Foundation. "But, in practice, Moving to Opportunity was more like moving to mediocrity."

Harvard University sociologist William Julius Wilson said that although the families that were studied moved to neighborhoods that weren't as poor, they still had many disadvantages. Three-fifths of the families relocated to neighborhoods that were still "highly racially segregated," he said, and "as many as 41 percent of those who entered low-poverty neighborhoods subsequently moved back to more-disadvantaged neighborhoods."

The authors of one of the new reports were Lisa Sanbonmatsu, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research; Jeffrey Kling, a Brookings Institution economist; Greg J. Duncan, an education and social policy professor at Northwestern University; and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, a child development and education professor at Columbia University. They cite several possible explanations why students' performance did not improve when their families moved to less poverty-stricken neighborhoods in the Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York areas. Some families returned to poorer neighborhoods after sampling a more middle-class environment. "For many families who remained in their new tracts, the poverty rate in their neighborhood increased around them," [Moving blacks in destroyed the neighborhood? How surprising!] the researchers said.

Stefanie DeLuca, a Johns Hopkins University sociologist who wrote the second report based on interviews of Moving to Opportunity families in Baltimore, said many of the parents had little faith that better teaching in better schools would help their children. They felt it was up to their children to make education work.

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Classics vanishing from British High Schools

THE last dedicated A-levels in Latin and Greek are to be scrapped from next year, sparking opposition from the country's leading classicists. As thousands of A-level candidates wait to get their results this week, it has emerged that the OCR exam board is planning to combine the two subjects along with ancient history and classical civilisation into a single classics A-level, to be taught from 2008. Other boards that set A-levels in England have already combined the subjects or stopped offering them.

Although the classics A-level would still allow pupils to specialise in Greek, Latin or the other two subjects, opponents believe the proposed syllabus waters down the knowledge required. "We do not think it provides adequate training for university classics," said Christopher Pelling, regius professor of Greek at Oxford University. "The demands of a first-year university course would demand a vast leap from what students will learn at A-level." But Greg Watson, chief executive of OCR, defended the new qualification, saying it could revive classics. Last year just 183 candidates sat Greek A-level and 927 took Latin.

"There is a real eagerness to get classics moving again. Most of the classicists we've talked to say this seems to be the right way to go," said Watson. "Maybe the reason people aren't doing classics is because it seems a bit intimidating or a bit fusty and giving them the opportunity to combine Latin, for example with a couple of units of history and culture, could bring the subject to life."

The clash over classics comes in advance of A-level results to be released this Thursday that are set to revive the row over whether standards are going up or down. Officials expect a quarter of students will gain A grades, up from 24.1% last year, and that overall results will improve for the 25th successive year. So many are now gaining As that reforms are to be introduced from next year to help universities distinguish the best.

"Some of the most selective universities have been saying with some justification that A-levels have not been stretching enough at the top end," said Watson The changes include a new grade of A*, likely to require a mark of 90%. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority estimates that 5-6% of papers will win A*s, creating an elite from whom leading universities are likely to choose successful applicants.

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Wimpy "modern" teacher backed up by official body

Any real man would have tried to break up a student fight. And are teachers "in loco parentis" or not? What parent would not try to break up a fight between children in his care?

Should school teachers jump in to separate brawling students? Teacher Peter Moran didn't think so, and instead hung back and watched a ferocious "bitch fight" involving eight girls. Mr Moran, a senior teacher and football coach, stood behind about 50 students crowded around the 16-year-old girls as they threw punches at each other and pulled out clumps of hair. He yelled for them to stop and waved his arms. But he did not intervene. "I'm here to teach, not to break up fights," Mr Moran told a distressed and injured girl afterwards. She told him to "f--- off, c---".

The headmaster of Langwarrin Secondary College, Robert Loader - a teacher with 40 years' experience - contacted the Education Department's conduct and ethics branch. He thought his teacher had a duty of care and should have "moved into the students" during the fight. The Education Department, which was later supported by the Industrial Relations Commission, dismissed Mr Moran and the Victorian Institute of Teaching cancelled his teacher registration.

But in a decision with far-reaching ramifications for Victorian teachers, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal recently overturned the decision to cancel Mr Moran's registration and attacked the lack of guidelines available to teachers on how to deal with physical fights. "There is no immutable rule that a teacher should physically intervene in a fight between students," VCAT ruled. "There are many occasions when it would be physically dangerous to the teacher or to one of the students to do so. "A teacher is not required to risk his physical safety or that of another student in the discharge of his professional responsibility."

VCAT said the teaching profession needed guidelines on how to handle fights and should educate teachers on appropriate strategies. "Teachers have a responsibility to protect students. However, we do not consider that extends to placing himself or herself physically in harm's way or taking the risk of harming another child," VCAT said.

Mr Moran, who started teaching in 1979 and spent 12 years at the Langwarrin school, hired a senior barrister and went to VCAT to appeal against a finding of serious incompetence by the Victorian Institute of Teaching, which registers teachers. VCAT brought down its decision on July 31. It concluded that only luck had prevented the fight from assuming "catastrophic proportions". But it found that Mr Moran's lack of intervention was an error that did not warrant deregistration. It found he was incompetent in not ascertaining the extent of one girl's injuries despite seeing handfuls of her hair on the ground.

VCAT ruled that suspension until January 1 next year was more appropriate than deregistration. "It is conduct that took place during only a few minutes of this teacher's career," the tribunal said. Mr Moran, who declined an interview with The Sunday Age, was directed to undertake courses on student discipline and professional development.

Despite VCAT's decision, Mr Moran will be unable to teach in the state system due to his earlier dismissal by the Education Department. Unemployed since his dismissal in 2002, he now will be able to apply for teaching jobs in the private sector. Mr Moran - tall, well-built and winner of several football coaching awards - was on yard duty on July 23, 2002, when students started streaming towards an area known as W6. Up to 100 students were crammed into a yard around eight girls who were arguing.

Mr Moran was about six metres from the girls, in a corner and out of sight of a surveillance camera. He says he told the students to "break it up" and "go, leave" and waved his arms. He claims he asked two boys to get the vice-principal after the teacher assigned to the area did not appear. (Due to an administrative error no teacher was assigned to the area that day.)

In evidence to the VCAT hearing, one student said Mr Moran told her, "(girl's name) is a smart chick and she knows what she's going to get herself into". Mr Moran denies this. Another student said he seemed to enjoy the fight. However, VCAT found it more likely that he "looked discomforted and smiled awkwardly". "Our impression from watching the video is that (Moran) appears inexplicably absent from the centre of the action for the three minutes of video footage prior to the occurrence of the fight itself," VCAT says. Mr Moran made no move towards the action during the 30-second fight. After it was over, friends of an injured girl abused him for not intervening.

Mr Moran told the hearing he was waiting for the teacher rostered on yard duty to arrive and was standing back so he could see the two entrances to the area. He thought early intervention could inflame the situation. In May 2004, Mr Moran told a separate inquiry that the principal, Mr Loader, had instructed teachers not to touch students under any circumstances. He also said the crowd of students was threatening and that he was terrified. The inquiry dismissed both arguments. In February last year, Mr Moran told a hearing by the Victorian Institute of Teaching that he could have been accused of assault if he had touched a student. He told the institute's panel he believed he had been made a sacrificial lamb.

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15 August, 2007

INDIANA: SPECIAL ED CLASSES FAILING

Contrary to what you might think, most special education students don't suffer from Down syndrome or other severe cognitive disabilities. Nor are they unable to learn in school or pass the ISTEP-Plus exams. Most have been diagnosed with "specific learning disabilities" such as dyslexia. Others suffer from speech impediments or behavior difficulties that stem from problems at home. In many cases, special ed students can perform well in school -- if they are taught by trained professionals. Unfortunately, there's a shortage of special ed teachers.

Concerns over special education have grown over the past decade, as the No Child Left Behind Act and its accountability requirements force school districts to show whether they are giving at-risk students, including those in special ed, the attention they need to succeed. Many school officials -- across the nation and the state -- are concerned that the requirement to test even the most severely disabled students makes educators look bad. Some local and state educators want to lower expectations for special ed students. Considering the evidence found by The Star, lower expectations seem counter-productive.

Too many special ed students are dropping out of school. Forty-nine percent of special ed students ages 14 to 21 who left school during the 2004-05 school year -- 5,200 young Hoosiers -- dropped out, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Only 28 percent of special ed students nationwide dropped out that year. The state trails the nation in graduating special ed students. Only 40 percent of special ed students who left school graduated compared with a 55 percent national average.

Blacks, already more likely to land in special ed than whites, fare worse than others in those settings. Sixty percent of black special education students -- 1,400 youngsters -- dropped out that year, compared with 47 percent of whites. Nationwide, only 35 percent of black special ed students dropped out. Graduation rates are even more abysmal. Twenty-seven percent of blacks leaving special ed in 2005 earned a diploma, compared to 43 percent of whites. Thirty-nine percent of black special ed students nationwide graduated in that period. Blacks are twice as likely as whites to spend more than 60 percent of their time in special ed classes. They get fewer opportunities to achieve academically.

Most special education students aren't suffering from mental retardation or other cognitive disorders. Mentally retarded students make up just 13 percent of Indiana's special education population between the ages of six and 21. While they make up a larger portion of the state's special ed population than the national average, they aren't the majority. Forty percent of special ed students are primarily diagnosed with "specific learning disabilities," a wide-range of disorders that include attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Another 24 percent are primarily diagnosed with speech impairments caused by brain injury and such birth defects as cleft palates. Students suffering emotional disturbances account for the rest.

These students can learn, notes Erin Dillon of the Education Sector, an educational think tank, in a recent report. Sixty-nine percent of third-grade special ed students who didn't need accommodations passed the math portion of the ISTEP-Plus exam last year, barely trailing students in regular classes. For the most part, this can be done while still mainstreaming students into regular classes to avoid the stigma of special ed labeling. Additional help, including reading specialists and counselors, is key to helping those students achieve. The use of individualized learning plans, mandated by the federal Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, can also help parents and teachers help students succeed.

Sadly, a shortage of special education teachers, especially those trained in handling emotional problems, means that students aren't getting the specialized instruction they need. So classes end up being taught by instructors with little or no special ed experience.

Another problem is the over-diagnosis of learning disabilities, especially among young black and white males. The lack of intense early remediation to deal with achievement gaps is a culprit. Cultural differences between students and the teaching corps, which consists mostly of white females, also doesn't help. Black males, who made up just 30 percent of Indianapolis Public Schools' overall population in 2004-05, accounted for 39 percent of those diagnosed with a learning disability and 53 percent of the emotionally disturbed population.

Solving these problems will require systemic changes in the public education system: Improve pay for special ed jobs, along with merit bonuses to attract talented teachers. Provide specialized training for all instructors to sensitize them to the needs of special ed students and help streamline them into regular classrooms. Be more discerning in diagnosing special education needs. This can be helped by luring more males, especially black men, into teaching.

There are some special ed students, notably those with mental retardation, whose ability to learn will always be limited. But a large pool of students has the potential to do great things, given the opportunity. That's why it's so important to address this need -- a need that lies at the root of many learning issues facing educators. The students deserve better.

Source




What a great idea from Britain

Pupils are to be given a question-by-question breakdown of their GCSE and A-level results over the next fortnight, which could give parents the ammunition to sue schools for poor teaching. Edexcel, one of the country's largest exam boards, will give heads feedback on the performance of all their students and teachers when they publish their results for the examinations, starting on Thursday. Not only will heads and teachers be able to compare results for questions across year groups, but some fear that parents and pupils will be able to do the same.

Teaching unions have expressed concerns that Edexcel's latest move could be exploited by parents to punish underperforming staff and have called for the information to be used solely for in-school improvements. Next week more than 200,000 sixth-formers will receive their A-level results amid expectations that a quarter of entries could achieve an A-grade, thereby putting greater pressure on students aiming for places at the top universities.

Jerry Jarvis, the managing director of Edexcel, admitted that revealing more information could encourage parents to sue schools, but he said that it was crucial that pupils knew whether they had been taught badly. "The last thing we want to do is damage the teaching environment, when we're short of heads and so on," he said. "So we don't want this technology to be used to sue schools, but we know that parents want the best for their children, so the pressure to get the results is going to come."

Last year the examination board piloted the results feedback system of 1,500 pupils at 10 schools. From next week the results of all the 1.2 million pupils taking Edexcel GCSE and A-level examinations will be made available to heads all over Britain. Teachers will also be able to apply to see the results of their pupils. They will be able to compare them across the year group, with the national average and with past years. But they will not be able to look at other schools' results.

The students will also be able to access their own results, module scores and grades online. But they will have to ask their teachers for the school's comparative figures. They will also be able to tell how close they were to a higher grade and gauge whether they should ask for a re-mark. Mr Jarvis is also considering arming students with their test results throughout the year, as well as their classmates' average, the national average in a subject or course and that of neighbouring schools. "If I then see that I'm likely to gain a C and I can see that the class is performing at a much lower level than others, what do I do with that information?" he asks.

Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said that part of the problem was that parents were not expert at understanding the marking system.

Martin Ward, deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Lecturers, said most heads would welcome the information, and that they would be concerned only if it allowed parents to make comparisons between classes. "I don't think it will be easy to make comparisons on that basis, but obviously there's a concern that parents will try to and come to erroneous conclusions," he said.

Source





14 August, 2007

Missouri: Kansas city school science labs get an ‘F’

The state of science laboratory classrooms took a double shot Friday. First, a local study showed that most middle school and high school lab classes in the Kansas City area are probably not safe enough, are poorly organized, are ill-equipped and don’t blend with the curriculum.

Then came Carl Wieman — a Nobel Prize winner in physics and chairman of the board of science education at the National Research Council of the National Academies — with the really sobering news for area educators. In analyzing the roots of success for students who achieve science careers, he has found that it’s as if they succeed despite their experience in labs, not because of it. “Labs can and should play an important role in science education,” Wieman told a gathering of science teachers and administrators at the Central Library downtown. “But generally they are not.” For far too many students, lab classes are “generally useless,” he said. Science classes in secondary schools and the introductory courses in colleges that should be inspiring students are too often pushing them away.

The bad news for science converged as part of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s continuing investment in trying to boost science, math and technology education. The foundation paid for a five-month study of 170 lab classrooms among 30 area school districts by SuccessLink, a nonprofit agency created by Missouri to research best education practices.

Concerns were numerous, particularly in middle schools, said Amy Youngblood, the project director for SuccessLink. Goggles, aprons, gloves, fire blankets and first-aid kits were frequently missing. Fume hoods often didn’t work. Nearly half of the districts did not provide lists of chemicals kept in their schools. Many lists that were provided were not current. Many lists included chemicals that were considered excessively risky by the Environmental Protection Agency. Many middle schools had chemicals that were appropriate only for work at the high school level and above.

Most of the labs viewed in the study needed more space. Many storage rooms were cluttered or inconveniently located, or their contents were too unfamiliar to teachers. Most schools were not giving enough time to lab classes, and the time spent in labs was often not well integrated into the overall curriculum. If students aren’t engaged in science as a connection to the real world and real learning, then the skills won’t follow them beyond the classroom, Youngblood said. “At the end of the day, can they do it in the field by themselves?” she said.

Wieman said he steered his career from physics to science education because he wanted to help understand why secondary schools and colleges weren’t inspiring more students. Students fall on a scale from novice to expert in their attitudes toward science and how they understand the scientific method and its role in the world, he said. National studies are showing, he said, “that students in introductory sciences courses (in colleges) are more novicelike in their attitude toward science when they finish the class than when they started. “That’s very disturbing.” Also troubling, he said, are surveys of various college students in science courses that reveal elementary education majors as “dramatically more novicelike.”

Source




Science education drought in Britain

A shortage of science graduates threatens the future of British industry at a time of record demand for scientists to combat problems such as climate change and to take advantage of trends in the global economy. Even when students opt for science degrees, they are often lured into the “wrong” kind of subjects, which they perceive as more glamorous than hard-core options of physics, chemistry, maths and engineering. TV dramas such as Silent Witness have popularised the study of subjects such as forensic science, despite a lack of jobs in this field, and sports science and psychology courses are also growing even though they do not necessarily give people better job opportunities.

With A-level results coming out this week, Richard Lambert, the Director-General of the CBI, called on the Government to offer £1,000-a-year “golden carrots” to students to encourage more to study the science, technology, engineering and maths subjects that were becoming increasingly important to the economy. The shift to a low-carbon economy would require dramatically increased numbers of people with skills in these subjects, he said. The CBI estimated that Britain would need 2.4 million newly qualified staff with such degrees. “Too many potential scientists and engineers are abandoning these subjects at an early stage in their lives and missing out on rewarding, varied and lucrative career options,” Mr Lambert said. “Some employers are already finding it difficult to get the right talent, and the problem is set to get worse. Bursaries towards the cost of degrees which are most useful to the economy could kick-start thousands of young people into reconsidering a future in science.”

While the number of students obtaining first degrees in science subjects had risen by nearly half since 1994, much of this was because of the numbers taking biology, computing, sports science and psychology. Since 1984 the number of people studying physics A level has slumped by 57 per cent, and the take-up of chemistry has dropped by 28 per cent. And although there was a rise in applications to study science, technology, engineering and maths subjects at university this year, in the long term the proportion graduating in physics and chemistry fell by 25 per cent between 1994 and 2006.

Mr Lambert cautioned that “a pared-back science curriculum, a lack of specialist teachers and patchy classroom lab facilities” undermined the study of science. Many see science subjects as harder and opt for what they believe are easier choices, he said.

Graham Love, chief executive of the defence and security company QinetiQ, said that there was a decline in the number of applicants with suitable qualifications. “Five years ago we were getting 75 applicants per job,” he said. “Now the figure is 30. That is a concern because our business is based on our ability to continue to recruit high-calibre science, technology, engineering and maths graduates.”

Andy Duff, chief executive of RWE npower, said: “We need people with the right skills to deliver secure, affordable power for the nation and who relish the chance to be at the forefront of the battle to address climate change.”

Source




Elite maths 'discouraged' in Australia

SCHOOLS have been accused of discouraging average maths students in an attempt to boost their academic results. As the number of year 12 students enrolled in advanced and intermediate maths continues to slide, the chairman of the national committee for mathematical sciences, Hyam Rubinstein, said because maths was viewed as a difficult subject in schools, only the best and brightest were encouraged to pursue it at an advanced level. "If a school wants to maximise their performance, they may feel that 'if we encourage weaker students not to take maths, our results will look better'," he said.

Professor Rubinstein's concerns precede the release of a report ordered by federal, state and territory governments on numeracy teaching, learning and assessment practices. The report is due later this month. Last year 10 per cent of students took advanced maths and 21 per cent took intermediate maths compared with 14 per cent and 27 per cent in 1995

Source





13 August, 2007

High College Costs Driven by Global Warming Researchers Say

Researchers at California State University, Van Nuys, and Michigan Central Teacher College of Farwell reported this week that global warming is the primary cause of both declining academic performance among North American college undergraduates and the rising costs associated with a baccalaureate degree. The three-week-long multiple-perspective study was undertaken by assistants for the Senior-Level Sub-Dean of Diversity Quotas in Environmental Studies at CSUVN and four tenured members of the Alternative Literacies [sic] Program at MCTCF. The team systematically surveyed multiple self-evaluations and statistical-anecdotal probability memoranda culled from a wide variety of auto-probative and theosophical sources appearing in carefully vetted blogs posted on the Internet since February. “This is one of the most exhaustive studies of its kind to be carried out by institutions of our accreditation-level, in California or Michigan, during the past seventeen and a half months,” said Dr. Michelle Mausse, a CSUVN Diverse Arts Practical Instructor, who is acting co-chair of the project, and supervising gender-fairness editor of the semi-final quasi-executive summary of the project’s yet-to-be-published report. Mausse also said that a surprising side-result of the consortium’s monumental data-collection effort was a strong indication that an expected storm of irate denials inspired by and aimed at the report would almost certainly exacerbate global warming, thereby degrading student performance even further and raising the price of a college education even higher.

When a reporter asked why Mausse anticipated such a belligerent reception for her findings, she replied, “Given the cutting-edge status of our conclusions and the transgressive methods employed during our strenuous three weeks of research, you can bet that Bill O’Reilly and Fox News will be working overtime to sap public confidence in our assertions.” According to Mausse, the best way to prevent such obfuscation would be “to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, ban SUVs, and approach North Korea with an environmentally friendly attitude.”

As stated in the semi-final quasi-executive summary, “Last year’s harsh winter in the Northeast and this summer’s record-breaking cool weather across the Upper Midwest prove incontrovertibly that global warming is on a steep rise.” In an informative historical aside, the report states that public consciousness about global warming arose in earnest in the late 1960s with the appearance of Dr. Saul Schmerlich’s prophetic tract, Heat-Death by 1970 – No Doubt About It. Mausse attributes her own environmental “conversion” to perusing the Utne Reader’s “condensed” version of Schmerlich’s book while writing her feminist studies thesis at Mannless County Community College, near New Mytilene, Ohio, in 1984. Republication of Schmerlich’s book has correlated over the decades with strong, measurable decreases in science-competency among first-semester freshmen, “and not just at campuses like CSUVN and MCTCF,” Mausse adds. Is Schmerlich’s book therefore a bad influence? “No,” says Mausse. “Without Schmerlich, young people wouldn’t be alarmed about global warming and if they weren’t alarmed about global warming, they wouldn’t be in a haze when it comes to science. Scientific illiteracy is not unambiguously bad although the anxiety it produces is. Fighting global warming means getting people to relax and feel comfortable about their ignorance while maintaining an implacably hostile stance towards the deniers.”

Reminded that her own university had recently issued a statement contradicting the assertion that scientific literacy among the 17-24 age group has sunk in North America to near Third-World levels, the feisty Mausse attacked “phallogocentric thinking and the prejudice against non-linear reasoning intrinsic to the patriarchy.” She blamed the alleged error or contradiction on “structural biases in male-dominated education-research hitherto not addressed by affirmative action hiring.” As Mausse told a news conference earlier today, “Women tend to be more nurturing, caring, and intuitive than men, and our work reflects those qualities in a harsh, unsentimental, and unflinching way.”

The research revealed by Mausse and her collaborators defines a three-stage process by which global warming drives down the level of student performance, increases the likelihood of degree non-completion, and at the same time inflates the cost of undergraduate matriculation.

The first stage of the process is global warming itself. The team ascertained the reality of global warming by repeatedly viewing the Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and by skimming selected pages of Schmerlich’s Heat-Death by 1970 – The Revised Edition. Several telephone consultations were also arranged with Ward Churchill, noted plastic artist and former chair of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “We wanted the authentic Native American perspective,” Mausse explains, “as part of our diversity mandate.” A photograph of Churchill’s papier-mâché figurine, “Hot Prof,” will decorate the cover of The Mausse Report “whenever it’s published,” its main author affirmed. “Hot Prof” depicts an environmentally sensitive, tribally affiliated, non-Ph.D.-holding chair of an academic department horribly oppressed by a white-male-European-inflicted global climatic catastrophe.

After global warming per se, says Mausse, the second stage of the process that she and her co-researchers have discovered is global warming awareness, already hinted at in Mausse’s remarks about Schmerlich. “Normally,” Mausse explained, “we here at CSUVN value the diverse forms of awareness dearly, such as awareness of being a fully tenured faculty member at one of the most highly rated third-tier pre-teacher-training colleges in Van Nuys, but some kinds of awareness turn out to have a deleterious effect on holistic non-gendered wellbeing.” Mausse’s senior research partner, Dr. C. Lardner Brainepanne of the Farwell Alternative Literacies [sic] Program (Michigan), seconds this point. “For example,” Brainepanne says, “research has shown that awareness of not being able to read or write so good gets a lot worser for a person when they’re forced to be in a room with a bunch of smart-asses who know a lot of really big words. When I was a undergraduate, there was this teacher, see, and he went around acting like he knew more than anybody else in the whole damned classroom. That four-eyed little rat-face really got on my nerves. That’s why we invented alternative literacies [sic] in the first place – to take the gut-wrenching awareness out of illiteracy and make TV-based cultural complacency compatible with high self-esteem.”

Mausse picks up the thread of Brainepanne’s explanation. “Simply put, awareness becomes obsession, but in a good way. Thinking obsessively about how many manatees, dugongs, and sea cows Vice President Dick Cheney has already tortured and murdered, and about how many copies of The Greenpeace Manifesto he’s already flushed down the toilet, can make it virtually impossible for a person to think about other, unimportant things, like science. I go to sleep every night thinking obsessively about sea cows and toilets, and so does my husband. We have to remind people constantly of how close to extinction Bush and Cheney have already pushed the spotted owl, the snail darter, and the lorax, not to mention Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, and Garrison Keillor. How many of those are left? I devote most of my lecture-time to just this and I show An Inconvenient Truth as often as possible, especially in my literature classes, along with The Lion King or Ocean’s Eleven. Many of my better, most committed students bring their environmental convictions with them from high school, along with their body-piercings, tattoos, backwards baseball hats, enthusiasm for Nick at Night, binge drinking, cell phones, and sexual promiscuity. So it’s not surprising that facts and figures or abstruse scientific arguments only confuse and anger our young people. We make an effort metaphorically at CSUVN not to confuse these youths further by literally turning their baseball caps around in the so-called right way.”

In a third, culminating stage of the process, global warming decreases academic performance by forcing students to wear fewer and skimpier clothes, a trend noted keenly by students themselves, especially males. Arwel Wankler, a seventh-year junior-level adult-entertainment major at Van Nuys, told a reporter, “Dude, what with all the sun bathing on a June afternoon, the main lawn here at CSUVN is a total babe-park. It’s Thong City! My boss at the place where I intern – Spanker Videos International… like, he’s not even a student and he spends hours and hours of his own time right here scoping out the scene. Quite a few Van Nuys girls have gotten good employment out of that.” Mausse points to Wankler as a demonstration case for her hypothesis. “Arwel should have graduated summa cum casually, our highest distinction, three years ago, but he has taken my capstone seminar on Lesbian Semiotics and the Politics of Oil four times without being able to pass the final exam. There isn’t even any reading in that course, but you do have to bring your own oil. I guess his parents will just have to keep financing him until he sweats out the transgressive challenge and earns his degree, or until the earth cools off. I admire him for his hold-onto-it-until-you-bring-it-off attitude.”

Coeds are not immune from the distraction. A young “interpretive dance major,” identifying herself only as “Tiffany,” says that the only thing she brought with her from high school were her augmentations, which are environmentally quite sensitive. “Mostly I only go out at night anymore,” the young woman says. “Fortunately, I work at a place called The North Pole. The ‘pole’ is refrigerated as well as antiseptic and my job is sort of… air conditioned.”

In the past, sociologists and education specialists have blamed falling test-scores on factors like the intentional de-emphasis of basic literacy in K-12 and the corrosive effects of insipid mass-culture on the cognitive skills of children in elementary and secondary schools. They have blamed soaring higher-education costs on administratively top-heavy institutions and the insistence by unionized faculty members that they teach fewer courses per semester than was regular in the past. Astrophysicists and climatologists have attributed a small rise in the mean yearly global temperature to a cyclic increase in solar activity, said also to have affected the planet Mars, whose polar caps are retreating. “Nonsense,” Mausse and Brainepanne argue. “If you divest yourself of linear thinking, you’ll quickly see that global cooling in the past is part of a much vaster Bush-Cheney conspiracy. Look at the creepy Skull-and-Bones eye on that pyramid on the dollar bill and tell us if there’s anything Bush and Cheney can’t do with their insidious male gaze. As a matter of fact, we celebrate global cooling in past centuries, since without it global warming today would never have been so obvious.”

According to Mausse, global warming, in addition to depressing intellectual acuity in college students and hiking the baccalaureate’s price tag without any foreseeable limit, has other devastating effects. “There are the vapors, for example. More and more cases of the vapors are being reported on college campuses, especially when someone questions the rationale for great programs like feminist studies or diverse arts. We’ve also heard reliable tales of conniption fits and ‘restless panty syndrome.’”

When the report sees print, it will include five key policy recommendations.

*Keep as much of Canada as possible frigid and uninhabitable for the next ten thousand years.

*Get people in Des Moines to act “cooler” – like people in Portland, say, or Seattle.

*Reinstate Rosie O’Donnell on The View.

*Use less toilet paper – only one sheet per visit.

*Mandatory goddess-worship.

Mausse sees a connection between the problems she investigates and, perhaps surprisingly, the current debate over immigration. She even sees an opportunity to bring conservatives, who tend to take a skeptical position on global warming, to her point of view. Referring to the second-to-last policy recommendation, she says, “As we learn to use less and less toilet paper per visit, there will be fewer and fewer people from foreign countries wanting to come to the United States – and people born in this country will find more value than ever in the soft vellum of their expensively purchased college diplomas.”

The above deeply insightful story came to me via an email from the author, Thomas F. Bertonneau [dactylic@verizon.net]




Boston fathers Create Bulletproof Backpacks

Sadly, the report below is NOT satire. Note also that in some areas of Britain with a large black population, parents send their kids to school wearing bulletproof vests

It's time for parents to make the annual trek to get back-to-school items, which usually includes jeans, jerseys and a few notebooks. Boston television station WCVB reported Thursday that a couple of Boston men want parents to consider something else -- a bulletproof backpack. "They have them with them on the floor, on their laps, on the bus. They always have a backpack," said Joe Curran, of My Child's Pack

It started with the Columbine shooting in 1999. Curran and Mike Pelonzi said that they watched and worried for their own children. They had the idea to hide bulletproof material inside a backpack. They call it defensive action. "If the kid has a backpack next to them, or under the desk, they can pick it up, the straps act as a handle and it becomes a shield," Curran said.

It's much lighter than a 15-pound police vest. After three years of experimenting, the backpacks that were tested by an outside lab ranked threat level two. It stops an assortment of bullets, including 9-millimeter hollow point bullets. The fathers researched school shootings from 1900 to this year.

They will sell for $175, but do the special book bags play upon paranoia when most schools are called safe? "I want to keep my kid safe," Curran said. "I don't care what you do -- if you want to fight the good fight or fix the world's hurts, I can't help you, but my kids are going to be safe because of these backpacks."

Source




The Australian Left pledges $20m security for Jewish schools

That should wrap up most of the Jewish vote for them. The Australian Labor party has however long been supportive of Israel so the latest policy is in accord with party traditions

Jewish schools are set to become the main beneficiaries of a $20-million security plan announced by Kevin Rudd in Sydney on Friday. Rudd, together with his education spokesman Stephen Smith, also offered an extra $16 million in general funding to Jewish schools and committed to the Howard Government's changes to the socioeconomic status (SES) funding appeals process.

The joint announcement came on a red-letter day for Labor, which is also set to benefit from the Greens' announcement on Friday it will hand preferences in the key seat of Wentworth to ALP candidate George Newhouse, who was present for the funding announcements at Sydney's Moriah College.

Rudd told the gathered media that if elected, the ALP would assist any school with a particular security risk, but emphasised the funding is for "predominantly the Jewish schools". "This will be funding which will be available immediately. We are very conscious of the particular needs of the Jewish community in regard to security," Rudd said. "We are not talking about regular acts of vandalism, because they occur at schools right across the country, [but] where because of national security considerations there are particular threats to particular school community, we believe nationally we have a responsibility to act."

Smith added that a Rudd government would fund security so that Jewish schools would not have to direct resources away from education. "We would actually [prefer] the schools to be spending money on educational outcomes and so those schools which are assessed to be at risk will be eligible to apply for assistance," Smith said.

Member for Melbourne Ports Michael Danby, Australia's only Jewish federal MP, made the trip to Sydneyfor the important announcement. Danby has been lobbying against the government's controversial SES system, which disadvantages some "poorer" Jewish schools, for nearly 10 years. "The announcement today is, as far as I am concerned, the biggest political achievement I have been involved in since being elected in 1998," Danby said.

Last week, Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop announced an amendment to the SES funding appeals process, which the Coalition has promised Jewish schools it would address for almost a decade. The Howard Government also announced a plan that will see donations towards funding Jewish community security become tax-deductible.

The security spending announcement was followed by confirmation that a Labor government would support the government's amendment. Under the new appeals process, Jewish schools have already begun to appeal their SES rating based on a calculation that will take family size into account.

In addition, Labor said it would also throw an extra $4 million per year for the next four years in the direction of the Jewish schools, particularly ultra-Orthodox schools such as Kesser Torah College in Sydney and Yeshivah-Beth Rivkah Colleges and Adass Israel School in Melbourne.

Source





12 August, 2007

Unions of urban decay

On Fox News Sunday last week, Newt Gingrich singled out Detroit as an example of deep national problems needing bold solutions. "The Detroit Public School system currently graduates 22 percent of its entering freshmen. If you're an African-American male, you have 73-percent unemployment in your 20s if you drop out of school," lectured Gingrich, joining a long list of outside political and business leaders who speak passionately about what is happening to children here - and in other urban areas like it.

"I do think a president has an obligation to say to the country: `You can't compete with China and India if your education system is failing,' and that has to be solved locally," continued the undeclared presidential candidate, rallying a nation to Detroit's bedside. Trouble is, the locals don't care. And no amount of bold national solutions will matter until they do.

Ignoring the staggering statistics Gingrich cited, Detroit leaders instantly manned the ramparts to shoot the messenger. Detroit Federation of Teachers President Virginia Cantrell said Gingrich should "leave Detroit alone."

Detroit School Board President Jimmy Womack disputed Gingrich's numbers, hauling out a discredited Michigan Department of Education graduation figure of 67.2 percent as proof. In truth, the public system is so broken that Detroit has no idea how many students graduate from its high schools. An independent Manhattan Institute study puts Detroit's grad rate at 42 percent - not quite the 22 percent figure Gingrich cites from a 2006 Education Week report, but still well below the national average of 70 percent.

Piling farce on tragedy, Councilwoman Monica Conyers (wife of Detroit Congressman John Conyers who has devoted his time in office - not to teaching Detroit children - but to impeaching George W. Bush), invited "Gingrich to come here. Detroit is on the upswing" - a ridiculous claim given that the city (as Gingrich noted) has lost half its population since 1950.

As a direct consequence of its education and family collapse (a 70-percent child-illegitimacy rate), Detroit today sports a 47-percent adult illiteracy rate, a significant barrier to attracting new business.

Gingrich rightly says that "we should basically, fundamentally replace the Detroit school system with a series of experiments to see if they'll work." But he is hardly the first person to suggest such a thing.

Consider former Republican Governor John Engler who made Detroit school reform a priority, including a 1998 city school-board takeover and passage of legislation approving charter schools. At every turn, these reforms were met by intense resistance from entrenched unions and their Democratic puppets. Education consultant Tom Watkins, a former superintendent of Michigan schools, is a rare Democrat willing to counter the party line. He calls the refusal to address Detroit's problems "state-sponsored stupidity at best, and institutional racism at worst."

Consider Michigan millionaire and philanthropist Robert Thompson, who in 2003 offered the city $200 million - $200 million! - to build 15 Detroit charter high schools. He was run out of town. Mayor Kwame Kilptrick, who sends his own kids to charter schools, advertised Detroit's poisonous racial politics when he rapped the white businessman for trying "to ride in on a white horse" and save the city.

Or consider Dave Bing, a prominent black Detroit entrepreneur. The former Detroit Pistons star was heaped with scorn for partnering with Thompson. At a 2005 banquet hosted by the Call `Em Out Coalition, Bing was awarded a "Sambo Sell-Out Award" by Councilwoman Sharon McPhail.

Even the great Bill Cosby is shunted aside. When Detroit hosted the NAACP national convention July 7-12, nary a word was spoken about grad rates or shattered families. Cosby, who has made a second career of highlighting dysfunctional black families - including high-profile trips to Detroit - was not even invited. He had to organize his own meeting with 800 black men a week later.

"Let's be clear," said Gingrich, "This is entirely about the unions." True, and as Detroit's middle class drains away, city politicians are ever more dependent on unions for power. An estimated 30 percent of Detroit's population is in government employ - including education. Last year, when Detroit teachers illegally (by state law) walked out on the first week of classes to protest a new labor contract, no one lifted a finger to stop them. Not a Democratic judge. Not the Democratic mayor. Not the Democratic governor.

Many of the reforms Gingrich talks about in Detroit are being quietly seeded in experiments like private Cornerstone schools or the University Prep charter. But the deeper, systemic problems of family collapse and union loyalty are likely to take generations to overcome.

Source




Graduating in history from a British High School may become a thing of the past

The future of history as an A level subject is at risk as pupils choose "soft options" such as media studies over traditional academic subjects, the head of an examiners' body has said. Katherine Tattersall, of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors, gave warning that the subject could disappear from some schools because it was no longer compulsory for pupils over 14. Ms Tattersall said that history was one of the subjects that was threatened by alternative A levelss such as media studies and photography, which are perceived to be more likely to lead to a job. However, the Department for Children, Schools and Families rejected the claim.

Nearly a quarter of a million pupils took history exams last year, a record number. However, take-up of the subject and others, such as modern foreign languages and geography, is likely to show a decline when A-level and GCSE results are published this month. Ms Tattersall said: "History is disappearing because it is no longer a requirement of the national curriculum for 14 to 16-year-olds. It is just one of the subjects that is at risk. History is also disappearing into the new citizenship [syllabus], which is being promoted by the Government."

Ofsted, the education inspectorate, said recently that two thirds of pupils dropped history at the age of 14. It also said that pupils lacked an overview of world history and that the subject focused too much on England.

Ms Tattersall rejected criticism that exams were being "dumbed down". She said: "Examinations are far more sophisticated and demand a greater range of skills than they used to, and kids have a lot more to do."" Heather Scott, chairman of the Historical Association secondary committee, said she feared that the status of history was being diminished. She said: "We remain particularly concerned by the growing number of secondary schools ending pupil statutory entitlement to Key Stage 3 history in Year 8 by collapsing the Key Stage into two years. In effect, time for history is reduced by a third and the age at which pupils no longer study the subject falls to 13."

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said that history was secure on the curriculum. He said: "We don't agree that history A level may `become a thing of the past'. Ofsted states that it is one of the best-taught subjects. Standards in history compare well with other subjects and are improving: at A level, 75 per cent of candidates achieved an A-C grade compared with an average for all subjects of 71 per cent."

Classical scholars persuaded the Government to prevent the scrapping of the only remaining A level in ancient history this year. The move by the OCR exam board to replace the subject with a "classical civilisation" alternative had caused an outcry among academics and students.

Source




Too few female academics in New Zealand?

According to the feminist assumptions embodied below there are but such assumptions deny innate male/female differences so are religious rather than factual

Canterbury's universities still have a long way to go to improve their numbers of senior female academics, the Human Rights Commission says. Women now make up 8.22 per cent of professors at Canterbury University compared to 6.15 per cent in 2005 and 3.33 per cent in 2003. Just over 20 per cent of associate professorships are now occupied by women, a major jump from the 2005 figure of just 6.41 per cent. Lincoln University now has women in 9.4 per cent of its professor positions, compared with 5 per cent two years ago, and 20 per cent are associate professors compared with 5.88 per cent in 2005.

Equal Employment Opportunities commissioner Judy McGregor. said the figures showed progress was slow, but steady. "We are delighted that Canterbury and Lincoln are taking seriously the need to recruit and promote women into senior roles, but there's still a long way to go," she said. Canterbury University vice chancellor Roy Sharp said the university culture in the past made it hard for women. "That's what I was told and that's why I set up the equity and advisory committee. It's a question of changing the culture of an organisation."

Sharp said attention was also being focused on the low percentages of Maori and Pacific staff. In 2005, Maori made up just 1.8 per cent and Pacific .6 per cent of academic staff. Those numbers have improved slightly to sit at 3.5 per cent and .9 per cent, respectively. "I think it will take time and there's nothing you can do to hurry it in a way because you can't appoint people who are not the best for the job," Sharp said. "The situation has improved a lot, but that doesn't mean we can't and won't improve further."

Canterbury University Pacific student adviser Liz Keneti would like to see more Pacific staff at the university. "Academia is not a traditional career path for Pacific people so they do need to be steered," she said. [Aren't the Pacific islanders lucky to have such a wise, all-seeing mother to "steer" them? There is a photo of the wise one below]



Lincoln University does not measure the ethnicity of its staff. Environment, Society and Design Development divisional director Stefanie Rixecker said because Lincoln was a small institution, it was easy to keep track of its ethnic mix and it had many international academics. The university had faced challenges in the past promoting women to senior academic positions, she said. "Traditionally, we have been focused on agriculture so there's been an historical time lag for women moving up the ranks." Lincoln was looking to balance its gender issues as positions became available. "We have some catching up to do and we could and should be doing better."

Source





11 August, 2007

Brooklyn's Khalil Gibran Madrassah Will Function As Jihad Recruitment Center

It is now clear why the New York Department of Education has been dodging requests by concerned citizens who have been trying to determine what type of institution the proposed Khalil Gibran International Academy will be. Charges leveled against KGIA by these writers - that it will in essence function as a madrassah, a center for indoctrination not education - are proven by the school's own executive summary [Access KGIA Executive Summary Here], a document recently released under threat of a lawsuit by the Stop The Madrassah Coalition.

The summary is actually a manual for creating an Islamist vocational school, one in which every activity is planned around creating social activists with an Arab supremacist mindset, in the mold of KGIA's activist/principal Dhabah Almontaser. Despite the New York Dept. of Education Chancellor's assertions to the contrary, KGIA will even bow to shari'a in its cafeteria, where halal food will be served. This is a clear incursion of Islamic religious principles into the public sector, a reason recently cited by Mr. Klein as justification for shutting the institution down.

With a pedagogy wrapped around social activism, the student will be strongly urged to get involved with the surrounding Arab community, within which a radical Islamist sentiment figures prominently. The executive summary is open about how KGIA will function as a prep school for social activists, outlining a mythical day at the institution where the, "goal is to share with the rest of the freshman class their own collaborative experiences and reflect upon the lessons they've learned from them utilizing the following quote."

"Genuine collaboration is a coming together of people to create something that would have been impossible to make alone. A dialogue, a communication, a connection that transforms the participants can occur. Deep collaboration compels us to see ourselves through others. Truly collaborative works are commitments in time and space, cause and effect at once, even a form of love." - Tom Rollins - social activist [source page 16-17 executive summary]

Actually the quote is from Tim not Tom Rollins [to whom Almontaser mistakenly made the attribution] he is indeed a social activist, he is also a public school teacher who operates a group call KOS [chaos] which preaches a radical, art based anti-American message.

"Tim Rollins wrote a few years ago that he used the profession of schoolteacher as a cover..." [source http://shs.westport.k12.ct.us/jwb/Collab/KOS/Rollins.htm#background]

In that role Rollins' approach perfectly coincides with that of KGIA, which is also cover, a front operation. One of Rollins murals is called "Amerika - for the people of Bathgate," a nightmarish Guernica-like work of art that draws its primary inspiration from Kafka's novel "Amerika" in which the United States is portrayed as a land of broken dreams and empty promises. Spelling America with a "k" is a predilection of modern extreme leftists who believe that employing the German spelling of the word equates the U.S. with Nazi Germany.

According to the executive summary this brand of social activism will not only be encouraged it will be a requirement starting with the sixth grade - "A minimum of 40 hours a year" - must devoted to such activities as "Town Meeting Coordination." Town meetings being typical settings for Brooklyn's Islamists to allege that America is bigoted and that Muslim civil rights are routinely and intentionally abridged.

As detailed on page 21 of the KGIA blueprint, another area of agenda based education, social responsibility, will be taught by the notorious Educators for Social Responsibility, a group with clear Marxist leanings.

In a column by Sol Stern a City Journal commentator on educational issues, he noted about one of the prime movers in the Educators for Social Responsibility movement, Seth Gutstein, "on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he [Gutstein] was able to convince his seventh-grade math class that the U.S. was wrong to go to war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. "I told students that none of the hijackers were thought to be Afghan," Gutstein writes. He also told them that he would not "fight against Iraq or Afghanistan...because I did not believe in going to war for oil, power, and control." [source http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-03-19ss.html]

The "Human Rights" section will be co-taught by an "Arab-American lawyer," unnamed but consider that the American Muslim Association of Lawyers [AMAL] will offering internships to KGIA students. AMAL is the acronym for the American Muslim Association of Lawyers.

Omar Mohammedi owns the AMAL domain - www.theamal.org - indicating an extremely close relationship between Mohammedi and AMAL [Otmlaw.com is Mohammedi's website].

More importantly Omar Mohammedi is the president of the New York chapter of CAIR [source http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=2304&theType=NR]. CAIR is the Council on American Islamic Relations, a Saudi funded, Hamas front group which was recently named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas funding prosecution. Ghassan Elashi, the primary defendant in this case founded the Texas chapter of CAIR and was previously convicted and sentenced in the Infocom terror fundraising case. Other former CAIR members have been convicted of terror related offenses and one, still very active in the organization, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot.

Bassem Khafagi - former director of Community Relation for CAIR, plead guilty to bank and visa and has been deported to Egypt. According to Fox News, "The FBI said Khafagi is a founding member of the Islamic Assembly of North America, a charity that purports to promote Islam...Federal investigators said Islamic Assembly has funneled money to activities supporting terrorism and has published material advocating suicide attacks on the United States.

Randall Todd "Ismail" Royer - a former communications & civil rights specialist for CAIR, according to AP "Royer...admitted helping members of the conspiracy join the militant Pakistani group Lashkar-e-Taiba in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks. He pleaded guilty to the use of a firearm in a crime of violence and aiding and abetting the carrying of an explosive during commission of a felony. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison."

Siraj Wahhaj - CAIR advisory board member named as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the "Blind Sheik" Omar Abdel Rahman 1993 World Trade Center bomb plots by US Prosecutor Mary Jo White. Rahman is serving a life sentence.

Through Mohammedi, a group with ties to the terrorist group Hamas will be having direct access to KGIA's students, grooming them to be future CAIR legal activists. AMAL is affiliated with the National Association of Muslim Lawyers group - http://www.namlnet.org. Farhana Khera, a Pakistani is the group's president. Khera is also the executive director of Muslim Advocates - http://www.muslimadvocates.org -which is an offshoot of NAML.

"I think many Muslim Americans realize that the founding values of our country - freedom, justice and equality - these values were now being threatened and that.we cannot allow this time of fear to shred America's promise of freedom and justice." - http://www.muslimadvocates.org/news_more.php?id=34_0_3_0_M

Khera and her group Muslim Advocates were parties in a Fourth Circuit Court appeal, in the case of Ali Salih Al-Marri, an al-Qaeda sleeper agent. [Al-Marri Amicus] It is the extremist position of Muslim Advocates and the National Association of Muslim Lawyers that foreign al-Qaeda operatives operating in our midst deserve the same constitutional rights as American citizens.

In remarks made by President Bush on May 23, 2007 he stated:

"In December 2001 We Captured An Al Qaeda Operative Named Ali Salih Al-Mari Who Was Planning Attacks In The U.S. Our intelligence community believes Ali Salih al-Mari had training in poisons at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and had been sent by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad ("KSM") to the United States before 9/11 to serve as a sleeper agent ready for follow-on attacks. Our intelligence community believes KSM brought Ali Salih to meet Osama bin Laden, to whom he pledged loyalty. Our intelligence community also believes he and KSM discussed potential attacks on water reservoirs, the New York Stock Exchange, and U.S. military academies." [source http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070523.html]

AMAL, NAML and Mr. Mohammedi share an Islamist ideology and have united with others in a strategy of legal intimidation to deny the United States the tools which are necessary to preserve national security against the terrorist threat. The participation of such organizations and individuals in the day-to-day operation of KGIA provides irrefutable evidence about how the school will function - a publicly funded madrassah that will instill in students a psychology of victimhood and resentment - which will then be channeled through a pedagogy designed to shuttle them into the ranks of an already seething community of Islamist social activists.

More here




Rhee raps D.C. schools 'bureaucracy'

D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee yesterday called the city's struggling school system a "faceless bureaucracy," adding that it does not need to augment its 11,500-member work force. "We have thousands of people [in school administration] right now who don't know what their jobs are and who are not being effective in the positions that they have," Mrs. Rhee told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. "So why am I going to layer on top of that additional people who also won't know and who also won't have clarity on what they're doing? I'm not going to do it."

In a wide-ranging interview, Mrs. Rhee - selected by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty to reform the District's 55,000-student school system - said that students and parents should expect clean, safe schools when classes begin Aug. 27 and that teachers will have adequate supplies.

The new chancellor has faced several difficulties that have plagued the system for years, including news that at least half of the city's 146 schools may not have textbooks by the time school starts and that others will not have air conditioning. Mrs. Rhee yesterday said she expects the "vast majority" of textbook problems to be solved within the next few weeks, as officials identify what is stored in the system's book warehouse and which schools have extra books they can give to others.

Mrs. Rhee, 37, also said that increasing the staff of the textbook department from one to five persons - as recommended by a school-system consultant - and raising its budget from $1.5 million to $8 million is "not my solution." The chancellor prohibited any hirings in the school system's central office without her explicit approval, but she refused to confirm or deny that any staff members would be fired for bungling the delivery of textbooks. "My actions will speak for themselves," Mrs. Rhee said. "When I send the signal, there will not be any questions."

Mrs. Rhee told several stories illustrating the endemic problems she has encountered since taking her position in June and offered examples of a bloated bureaucracy that increasingly has hampered school improvements. In one situation, she said parents hoping to help transport books from a middle school that is transitioning its ninth grade to a high school were told by system officials that the books had to be sent to the warehouse before going to the high school. "People are so focused on following the rules and the procedures," said Mrs. Rhee, who intervened and allowed parents to move the books. "What is the right thing for the kids? What is the right thing for the schools? The right thing for the schools is to move the books as expeditiously as possible from this building to this building."

Mrs. Rhee said 17 of 19 principal vacancies have been filled with interim heads, and candidates are being vetted this week for the two remaining slots. "Verification teams" also finished their first round of visits to every city school last week to identify problems, and officials are working to fix as many as possible before school opens, the chancellor said.

Mrs. Rhee said she will continue to focus on core areas of reform that include improving student achievement by assessing teacher and pupil performance. The result will be a "data-driven" system that will create better teachers and subsequently better students, she said. "You're not teaching unless your kids are learning, and unless we're able to actually measure that learning and see that is taking place," she said.

The chancellor said a key to her succeeding where past superintendents have failed will be rounding up good reform ideas throughout the District and "getting everybody pointed in the same and right direction." "This is not rocket science, right?" Mrs. Rhee said. "I believe that we are beginning to create a sense of hope in the District that something is going to be different and something is going to be changed."

Source




IQ test comeback for Australian university admissions

IQ tests always were a good way of circumventing social disadvantage and were promoted as such by Leftist psychologists (such as Sir Cyril Burt) for many years -- until the low average IQ of blacks made the tests politically incorrect. The new test is not of course called an IQ test but it amounts to the same thing. The new test is designed as a predictor of academic performance and predicting academic performance is what IQ tests do best

MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY will offer places to some school-leavers using a combination of the students' HSC results and other tests - and at least five other universities may follow in a sign of their lack of confidence in the present admissions system. Macquarie's vice-chancellor, Steven Schwartz, has railed against using a single entry mark as the sole determinant of a student's ability because it is unforgiving of students who have experienced hardship in their final year or attended disadvantaged schools. The university will allow students who did not qualify on the basis of their university admissions index to sit a supplementary aptitude test, known as uniTEST, the results of which will be considered, along with their HSC results and an application letter, in a pilot initially limited to a few faculties.

"If you look at the data, you will find that ... the kids who go to private schools, the kids who have private tutoring, they're the ones who get high UAIs," Professor Schwartz said. "And the likelihood is, there might be kids who might be smart enough, but because they don't go to those schools don't get high enough UAIs." But there would still be a minimum UAI, he said.

UniTEST was developed by the Australian Council for Educational Research and the University of Cambridge and is already being used by the Australian National University, Monash and seven British universities. It assesses problem-solving, comprehension and reasoning skills.

Six Australian universities, including Macquarie, had expressed interest in piloting the test since the Federal Government announced funding for a national year 12 aptitude test in the May budget, said Deirdre Jackson, the director of assessment services at the Australian Council for Educational Research. "I think everyone's been aware of it as a concern, that there's a group of students who for one reason or another have the skills to go to university but don't, and they're often the ones who go back at a later date as mature-age students."

Professor Schwartz, who chaired a British taskforce on university admissions while he was vice-chancellor of Brunel University in London, said research showed 5 per cent of students who did not do well in their A levels - the British equivalent of the HSC - scored highly in the uniTEST. "And they're the interesting ones, because if you only [selected students on] the UAI, they wouldn't even be on the radar."

Several universities already accept students with university entrance scores lower than their official cut-off marks if they have done well in subjects relevant to their course, including the University of NSW, which will formalise the practice for 2008 entrants in a scheme called HSC Plus. The ANU, which tried uniTEST for the first time this year, plans to use it again next year because the pass rate of students who came in via that method was "quite good", said the university's registrar, Tim Beckett.

Andrew Stanton, the managing director of the Universities Admissions Centre, which manages the university admissions index, said he had no problem with universities using supplementary measures in choosing who to admit, but he rejected the idea that the UAI had been devalued. The vice-chancellors' body Universities Australia decided last month to commission a study on equity and access to university for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Source




Australia: Legal scrutiny of postmodernism

John Hookham and Gary MacLennan, the two Queensland University of Technology academics suspended for their criticism of the project, have lodged a complaint about their treatment with the federal Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. They argue that QUT punished them because of their political opposition to post-modernism, the ideology they see behind the PhD project. Political opinion is one of few grounds for discrimination prohibited by federal law. "They say that the most recent and disturbing expression of this theory is that you can laugh at the disabled," their solicitor, Susan Moriarty, told the HES. "Our case is very strong."

Adam McBeth, deputy director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law at Monash University, said there was "very little (case law) on what's political and what's not. "I don't know that you could point to anti-post modernism as a political movement, it's probably at best a cultural idea. "It's certainly arguable and it would be interesting to see it run."

HREOC is expected to call QUT managers to a conciliation meeting with Dr MacLennan and Dr Hookham. A date for this has yet to be set. If the meeting fails to resolve the complaint the academics have the option of litigating the human rights point in the Federal Court. They already have on foot a separate court challenge limited to the fairness of the procedure leading to their suspension. QUT said it was aware of the HREOC complaint but would not comment while there was litigation.

The Hookham-MacLennan complaint to HREOC quotes from their article published in April by the HES under the headline Philistines of relativism at the gates. "When we say it is morally wrong to laugh at the afflicted, our colleagues seem indifferent to the truth of this statement. Presumably, for them, it is just our `narrative'," their HES article says. "They can take this position because in the post-modern world there are no theories, no knowledge and no truth; there are only narratives, fictional stories, all told with bias. "(But) if we are to take meaningful political action, if we are to act morally, if we are to teach our students how to live, how to act in an ethical fashion and how to make progressive and powerful art, then we need to be able to determine what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false."

The QUT position is that Hookham's and MacLennan's criticism of the PhD student Michael Noonan went beyond civil academic discourse. The university's code of conduct says differences of opinion must be met with rational debate, not vilification or bullying, and forbids behaviour that "may be distressing, offensive or humiliating".

Mr Noonan says his reality TV-style film project -- given the go-ahead by QUT under the changed title Laughing with the disabled -- is an attempt to give the disabled a voice. Its stars are two young intellectually disabled men. Mr Noonan points out that he has ethics approval for the project as well as the support of the men, their families and guardians, and the disability organisation Spectrum.

Source





10 August, 2007

California Leftists hate successful charter schools

Partly because they are hard to unionize

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2007-08 budget included $43 million to help charter schools in low-income areas pay rent on classroom space. As the Legislature's dominant Democrats reconfigured his budget in May and June, they lowered the appropriation to $18 million and then shifted it from the budget bill into one of the 15 "trailer bills" that accompany the budget.

The trailer bill, Senate Bill 92, contains a little extra verbiage that reportedly was written in Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez's office and is vaguely described in the Assembly's budget synopsis as "various changes regarding the state's regulation of statewide-benefit charters. ..." There is nothing vague about the words' effect, however. They would virtually eliminate statewide charter schools and appear to be aimed at the Green Dot system of charter schools that is revolutionizing -- for the better -- high schooling in poor Los Angeles neighborhoods with smaller, more focused schools.

Current law allows the State Board of Education to approve statewide charters in addition to those granted by local authorities. SB 92, which cleared the Assembly but is hung up in the Senate due to a broader budget impasse, would limit such charters to three years and prohibit renewal. And since no one would found a charter school for just three years, the effect of its enactment would be to eliminate statewide charters.

While Green Dot is not specifically mentioned in the legislation, it would inhibit or block the expansion that founder Steve Barr wants to pursue. Green Dot filed an application for a statewide charter last year, then withdrew it for modification after an initial hearing.

Why would Green Dot be targeted? Barr is a one-time fundraiser for the state Democratic Party and a co-founder of the left-leaning Rock the Vote movement who has made improvement of education for poor children a crusade, but he's earned the enmity of the powerful United Teachers of Los Angeles, or UTLA.

Why? It's not because Barr is anti-union, but because he's invited Green Dot teachers to form their own union, Association de Maestros Unidos, which has a contract that's more flexible than UTLA's contract with the hugely troubled Los Angeles Unified School District. "We could have and probably should have organized the Green Dot schools," A.J. Duffy, UTLA's president, said in remarkably candid remarks in a lengthy and quite positive New York Times article about Green Dot last month. "They started with one charter school, and now have 10, and in short order they'll have 20 schools in Los Angeles, with all the teachers paying dues to a different union. And that's a problem."

Earlier in the year, Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, carried a bill that was amended to repeal the State Board of Education's charter school authority altogether, but the measure stalled. SB 92, in effect, revives its thrust.

Nunez maintains a very close political relationship with UTLA, but his spokesman, Steve Maviglio, insists that Green Dot is "not particularly" being targeted; rather, he says, the bill's aimed at the board's broad interpretation of its authority to grant charters and is meant to spur negotiations on the issue with the Schwarzenegger administration.

Barr said that he was warned that the money for charter schools in poor neighborhoods would be used as leverage on the battle over statewide charter school policy.

Pairing the $18 million appropriation for charter schools in poor neighborhoods with the extra language would create a carrot-and-stick dilemma for Schwarzenegger. If he were to sign the bill, it would stunt the growth of charter schools statewide, but if he were to veto it, the lack of funds would stunt their operation in poor areas. And who really loses in all of these machinations? Poor kids, of course.

Source




'Baby Einstein': not such a bright idea

Infants shown such educational series end up with poorer vocabularies, study finds. Researcher says 'American Idol' is better.

Parents hoping to raise baby Einsteins by using infant educational videos are actually creating baby Homer Simpsons, according to a new study released today. For every hour a day that babies 8 to 16 months old were shown such popular series as "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," they knew six to eight fewer words than other children, the study found. Parents aiming to put their babies on the fast track, even if they are still working on walking, each year buy hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of the videos.

Unfortunately it's all money down the tubes, according to Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington in Seattle. Christakis and his colleagues surveyed 1,000 parents in Washington and Minnesota and determined their babies' vocabularies using a set of 90 common baby words, including mommy, nose and choo-choo. The researchers found that 32% of the babies were shown the videos, and 17% of those were shown them for more than an hour a day, according to the study in the Journal of Pediatrics. The videos, which are designed to engage a baby's attention, hop from scene to scene with minimal dialogue and include mesmerizing images, like a lava lamp. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no television for children under 24 months.

The Brainy Baby Co. and Walt Disney Co., which markets the "Baby Einstein" videos, did not return calls from the Los Angeles Times. Christakis said children whose parents read to them or told them stories had larger vocabularies. "I would rather babies watch 'American Idol' than these videos," Christakis said, explaining that there is at least a chance their parents would watch with them - which does have developmental benefits.

Source




Shocking British grade-school education

Four out of ten pupils could not read, write and add up properly by the time they left primary school this summer, the Government said yesterday. The national curriculum results for this age group improved slightly on last year, but the figures showed that 166,500 pupils did not meet the standard expected in writing, 67,000 failed to make it in reading, 54,000 could not reach it in science and 105,000 could not add up to the same level.

Lord Adonis, the Schools Minister, hailed the test results as the best ever, but critics said they showed that there had been little real improvement in recent years and that the literacy and numeracy strategies had run out of steam. Overall, the proportion of 11-year-olds reaching Level 4 at Key Stage 2, or the nationally expected level, improved for all subjects by one percentage point, with the exception of writing, which stalled at 67 per cent.

Of the 600,000 11-year-olds who took the test this summer, 80 per cent made the grade in English, 84 per cent in reading, 77 per cent in maths and 88 per cent in science. The figures also showed, however, that the Government had missed its targets in all areas and that only 60 per cent of the "Blair generation" of primary school pupils had met the expected level in all subjects, including reading, writing, maths and science.

Lord Adonis said that compared with 1997, 100,000 more 11-year-olds were achieving the standard expected of them in English and 90,000 more in maths, but he acknowledged that there was more to do. "From this September we are introducing further measures to accelerate the pace of learning," he said. "There will be a renewed emphasis on phonics in early reading teaching, and in maths children will focus more on mental arithmetic, including learning times tables one year earlier."

As well as teaching synthetic phonics, where children learn the sounds of letters and how to blend them to form words, more money will be spent on classroom assistants, one-to-one tuition, intensive reading and maths catch-up programmes and on better training for teachers, he said.

Achieving Level 4 at age 11 means that children should have the right skills to progress at secondary school. Figures show that, of the pupils who reached Level 4 or above in English or maths at Key Stage 2 in 2001, nearly 70 per cent went on to get five good A*-C grades at GCSE last summer, compared with only 11 per cent of those who did not reach Level 4. Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, called on ministers to carry out a review of testing.

Alan Smithers, of Buckingham University, said that the results showed that primary schools were doing as much as they could and that the Government needed to intervene earlier. Professor Smithers said that children should learn about the concept of reading and writing from the age of 3. He added that when children were achieving Level 4 in English, maths and science with marks below 50 per cent, and as low as 41 per cent, there should be a debate about whether they were reaching expected standards

Source




Plan to encourage Australian literature in Australian schools

This is an improvement on studying the back of the Kellogs cornflakes packet but, much though I love the classics of Australian literature (NOT including Patrick White), English literature from Britain is a much richer resource. It should be literature in English generally that kids are introduced to

CONTEMPORARY writers such as David Malouf or Helen Garner could help to compile reading lists for students, and publishers could be given cash incentives to reprint Australian classics under a plan to encourage more Australian literature in schools. And according to recommendations from an Australia Council education forum yesterday, the study of literature would form a core element of English courses in schools, and include a component of Australian literature.

Under the proposals, a group of distinguished writers, teachers and scholars would build a list of Australian literary works that would form part of the "intellectual inheritance of all Australians". "Wouldn't it be good to see David Malouf, for example, on such a panel?" [Malouf is of Lebanese Christian ancestry but deserves better than being regarded as a token Middle-Easterner] Imre Salusinszky, the chairman of the Australia Council's literature board, said yesterday. "He's just the kind of person to be part of that conversation. People like John Tranter, or Frank Moorhouse, Helen Garner, they could certainly participate in the group that would turn its mind to what is the core literary canon that we would like to think that all students who pursued Australian literary studies to an advanced level might be encouraged to learn about."

Dr Salusinszky was among the "education roundtable" of 20 publishers, critics, academics, writers and scholars, including former NSW premier Bob Carr, emeritus professor of Australian literature at Sydney University, Elizabeth Webby, literary critic Peter Craven, English teacher Sarah Golsby-Smith and publisher Robert Sessions, who met in Canberra yesterday.

The panel recommended a survey of Australian literature teaching in universities and teacher-training courses as a way of encouraging more Australian contemporary and classic writing in high school and university curriculums. It also recommended an inquiry be held to discover the most effective way to prepare teachers of literature in the primary and secondary school systems; that Literacy and Numeracy Week give a greater emphasis to Australian literature; and education ministers consider establishing a scheme to assist publishers to keep Australian classics in print.

The roundtable was convened yesterday to discuss concerns within state and federal governments that the influence of local literature and Australian writers has declined in recent years. "The excellence of Austalia's literary culture depends on a thriving literary education in our schools and universities, which will produce the writers and readers of tomorrow," the roundtable said in a statement yesterday. "The decline in such teaching, particularly in universities, has contributed to a situation in which many Australian classics are out of print." Dr Salusinszky last night described the meeting as "very productive". "There was a real spirit of consensus and co-operation", he said. He said teacher representatives at the meeting "felt we need to give teachers a bit more space just to explore literature for its own sake, for its imaginative value, for what they (readers) might find in it, and for the dialogue it generates".

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9 August, 2007

Alabama: Religious group sues school board

The Child Evangelism Fellowship of Alabama has sued the Gadsden Board of Education, alleging the board is discriminating against the Christian organization by not allowing it to use school property as secular groups do.

Liberty Council, a public interest religious liberties law firm, filed the suit in federal court Thursday. The suit said the school district is violating the fellowship's right to freedom of speech, equal protection and free exercise of religion. The CEF made several written and oral requests to Gadsden Superintendent Bob Russell for a meeting about the club using board property for meetings after school, according to the suit. But the suit said Russell refused to discuss the group using board property. The CEF is a national interdenominational group that sponsors Good News Clubs for elementary school children.

An attorney for the school board, Ralph Strawn, told The Gadsden Times in a story Friday that the board hadn't been served and declined comment. Liberty Council founder Mathew Staver told the newspaper he hopes the court will set a hearing soon and grant a preliminary injunction so CEF can begin holding meetings this fall. The CEF began seeking permission to use board facilities in 2004 and efforts continued through this year.

The suit said the board is creating a "limited public forum" by allowing other groups to use school facilities. It cited a 2001 Supreme Court decision that ruled a public school may not discriminate against a Good News Club because of the club's religious viewpoint

Source




Ideology degrades quality in American academe

You don't have to be a crusading right-winger to recognize that University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill, who compared the victims of the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack to Nazis, is an extremist, an ideologue whose scholarship is less than objective. Nor do you have to be a flame-throwing left-winger to agree that the university where he was once director of the ethnic-studies department shouldn't have ditched him the way it did. It needed to do much, much more.

Two short years ago, Mr. Churchill's labeling of WTC victims as "little Eichmanns," a reference to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi in charge of sending Jews to death camps, provoked a heated yet necessary national debate on the state of scholarship at American universities. By last month, however, that deliberation had degraded into a mealy-mouthed academic discussion over one man's firing. The University of Colorado's trial and punishment of Churchill, in other words, was a little like the federal government prosecuting Al Capone for tax evasion and then calling its pursuit of gangsters complete.

Technically, the regents of the University of Colorado got rid of Churchill not for his outrageous political views but because of three faculty committees' findings that he had committed plagiarism and conducted fraudulent research in other writings. Too bad they hadn't subjected him to that much scrutiny before they hired him. Rather than targeting Churchill and making him a martyr for academic freedom, university officials should have been more self-reflective and asked themselves how someone as intellectually irresponsible as Churchill got to be head of a department at their esteemed institution in the first place. Sure, Churchill might be gone, but that doesn't solve the problem that his notoriety brought to public attention: the presence of activists posing as scholars on college campuses, particularly in colleges supported by taxpayers' money.

For years now, conservatives have been railing against what they consider the leftist takeover of elite US universities. And many of their complaints are not without merit. What should concern us all, however, is academia's nurturance of professors such as the hate-filled Churchill. No, they are not many, but they shout louder than their numbers would suggest. Although their influence is minor in American higher education overall, they can be very influential in particular fields, such as comparative literature and gender and ethnic studies. That's because the problem on campuses isn't rigorous Marxist materialists, as conservative stereotypes would have you believe, but craven emotional warriors in the arena of identity politics.

Ethnic-studies departments, such as Churchill's, may be the worst offenders. Created in the wake of the ethnic-pride movement in the early 1970s, many simply never had the same kind of academic oversight as more established and prestigious fields. Their scholarship wasn't tested in the high-stakes, high-profile competition that hones other academics and other fields. They earned their "psychic income" trying to turn minority undergraduates into activists. Meanwhile, the quality work on ethnicity was being done in more traditional disciplines.

But by many accounts, today's undergraduates of all backgrounds tend to be in search of good jobs rather than ideological causes. If anything, ethnic studies are part of the accepted last stage of American education, the puncturing of myths. Still, just because an academic field is relatively harmless and even irrelevant (in the eyes of many fellow academics) doesn't mean that shoddy professors who can't sort fact from ideology should be tolerated, particularly at taxpayer expense.

The Churchill case might be closed, but university officials nationwide have an obligation to bring scrutiny and the ideal of objectivity to these below-par departments – perhaps by dismantling and absorbing them into more rigorous disciplines and insisting, not on any one set of views or conclusions, but on the high standards of scholarship that we expect from the best of academia.

Source




Australia: Schools in push for Catholic-only rule

Cardinal Pell is waging an heroic fight to save his religion from degenerating into just a splodge of conventional secular pieties



THE Catholic Church wants to discourage non-Catholic families from enrolling their children in its schools under a return to strict religious values. Church leaders headed by Cardinal George Pell yesterday issued an edict to all Catholic schools, demanding that students and their parents be more devout and outlining a plan to lure back thousands of poorer families who have left the system. The Church will not ban non-Catholic students from enrolment - it says it considered, but rejected, plans for a formal "downsizing to accommodate only those who are committed to the faith". But it wants to introduce a new four-way selection test to give preference first to children from the school's local parish, then to other Catholics, other Christians and finally children from other religions.

The state's 585 Catholic schools have been urged to "re-examine how they might maximise enrolment of Catholic students". The edict also tells Catholic schools to increase the proportion of school staff who are "practising and knowledgeable Catholics". Catholic families will be urged to "maximise their participation". Students and younger teaching staff will be encouraged to take part in religious events such as World Youth Day.

Church leaders want more people at Sunday Mass and deeper involvement in the life of the local church by students and ex-students. Fears that the drift of Catholics away from the Church's schools is seriously "watering down" numbers of the faithful has forced Cardinal Pell and other Catholic leaders to take action in a bid to reverse the trend. Enrolment of students from a non-Catholic background in Catholic schools across the State has more than doubled to 20 per cent over the last two decades.

In a rare pastoral letter, "Catholic Schools at a Crossroads", the Bishops of NSW and the ACT admit changes in enrolment patterns have "radically affected the composition and roles of the Catholic school..." The letter, with Cardinal Pell as head signatory, said: "Half the students of Catholic families are enrolled in state schools and a growing proportion go to non-Catholic independent schools. "Another enrolment trend of particular concern has been the decline in representation in our schools of students from both poorer and wealthier families."

The letter reveals church leaders faced pressure to "downsize" the Catholic school system to include only students and staff who embraced the religion. But the bishops decided against such a radical change. Catholic schools educate about 240,000 students and employ 15,500 teachers across the state. Cardinal Pell was not available to comment yesterday, directing inquiries to the Bishop of Broken Bay, David Walker. Speaking at the launch of the pastoral letter at the Mary MacKillop Memorial Chapel, Bishop Walker said it was time to reassess the future of Catholic schools

Source





8 August, 2007

EDUCATIONAL FRAUD IN INDIANA

At the beginning of the 2005-06 school year, there were 969 seniors left in Indianapolis Public Schools' graduating class. By the end of the school year, nearly 1,300 seniors collected diplomas from the district. Yes, you read that correctly. IPS had 33 percent more graduates than seniors who began the year, the second consecutive school year it has done so.

There's no way that IPS, which promoted a mere 31 percent of the eighth-graders who made up the original graduating class, experienced a sudden influx of transfers. The fact that just 52 of them would have graduated the previous year shows that holdovers don't account for this. As the nonprofit Education Trust notes in a report released today, parents and state officials "cannot allow such dubious figures to go unexplained -- or unchallenged." That admonition must also extend to the Indiana Department of Education and its boss, Superintendent Suellen Reed. After all, IPS' graduation numbers reflect the agency's longstanding difficulty in accurately reporting the condition of education in our state.

Indiana isn't alone. As the Education Trust reports, Texas, long a pioneer in improving school data, has its own problems in reporting which students are graduating or dropping out. Some 12,700 students, many of whom likely dropped out, were removed from the state's graduation rate calculation because they were considered "data errors."

For years, the agency reported that 90 percent of young Hoosiers graduated from high school, even as reports from groups such as the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, concluded that the number wasn't even close to reality. If not for the implementation of a new, more accurate graduation rate formula -- which the legislature passed at the behest of state Higher Education Commissioner Stan Jones and the Indiana Chamber of Commerce -- the education department wouldn't have revised its numbers last year, revealing the extent of the dropout crisis.

The education department has been just as neglectful when it comes to attendance figures, tolerating an underlying formula that allows schools to report 95 percent attendance rates while hiding the fact that they are plagued by high rates of chronic truancy. School financial data, as the legislature's Government Efficiency Commission can attest, are so poor that even accountants can't make heads or tails of the numbers.

Reed and her staff, who have been more interested in engaging in misleading happy talk than dealing realistically with the state's education woes, deserve much of the blame. Their willingness to duck responsibility on such matters as the overuse of graduation qualifying exam waivers by some school districts is maddening. Why can't Reed deal honestly with the reality of low educational expectations? That means using the department's audit powers to make sure school districts are accurately accounting for their graduates and demanding an explanation as to why they are not.

Source




Single sex black school popular

The hot, hazy sun was baking the sidewalks along Market Street in West Philadelphia. And the 25 teens who gathered late last week in an office building meeting room could have been whiling away their time with myriad summer activities. Instead, the incoming ninth graders at Boys' Latin of Philadelphia Charter School were so determined to get a head start at their new college-prep school that they had volunteered to spend the morning poring over John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and the thick novel Troy, about the Trojan War. Many had been showing up twice a week for the sessions since the start of July to read, discuss and write about the books they were assigned to read this summer.

"You could read at home, or you could come here and read it as a group," said Jesse Oyola, 13, whose parents had driven him to and from their home in North Philadelphia for every session. "This will give you a boost," added Khalif Khan, 15, another session regular.

Although charter officials encouraged students to attend, they didn't entice them with candy, snacks or prizes and were amazed by the turnout. They had to scramble to rent the room at First District Plaza because the charter's temporary offices eight blocks away had space for only half the crowd. "I didn't think everybody was going to show up," said David Hardy, the charter's founder and chief executive officer. In all, he said, 80 percent of the 150 members of the inaugural ninth grade have participated in some or all of the voluntary sessions. Students work in groups with teachers and are assisted by a few student tutors from top local public and private schools.

"These guys," Hardy said as he looked around the room at the students bent over their paperbacks, "are going to have a leg up." Boys' Latin is a first on many fronts: It's the first single-sex charter approved in Pennsylvania. It's the first publicly funded school in Philadelphia that requires students to take Latin. And it's the first charter in the region modeled after the rigorous Boston Latin School.

The Philadelphia School Reform Commission initially rejected the charter application in January 2006 after the Education Law Center, the Women's Law Project, and the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia complained that a single-sex charter school would violate state and federal laws. The commission reversed itself six months later. In the fall, the U.S. Department of Education approved changes to federal Title IX regulations to give school districts greater flexibility to offer single-sex schooling, including publicly funded charter schools.

Boys' Latin was originally known as Southwest Philadelphia Academy for Boys, but the name was changed to avoid confusion with Southwest Leadership Academy, another charter opening in September, Hardy said. Although Hardy, who is African American, had hoped to launch Boys' Latin with a racial mix of students, all 150 ninth graders are African American. (The school has a waiting list.) "I will do a better job of recruiting next year, because I do want the school to be a little more diverse," he said. "But these guys all wanted to come."

Students came from a variety of public and private schools and other charters, Hardy said. He said they and their families were attracted by the promise of academic rigor, the sports and after-school programs, and the boys-only setting.

Janice Oyola said she and her husband, both school district educators, were impressed by Hardy, the academic program, and the charter's strong network of parents. But she said it was her son, Jesse, who wanted to try a boys' school. "He said he wanted the focus," she said. "He said he didn't need any of the distractions of girls." The school requires Latin because it boosts vocabulary and English skills, makes learning other languages easier, and can help open doors.

Latin teacher Sara Flounders, who completed her student teaching at Boston Latin while in graduate school at Harvard's Divinity School, contacted Hardy as soon as she heard about the proposed charter. She said Boys' Latin offered a rare chance to combine her love of Latin with her dream of teaching in an inner-city school. "I am a certified Latin teacher, and there aren't that many places," she said. "It's not fair [inner-city students] don't have the same educational opportunities. I want to try to level the playing field. Latin is one way to do it because it gives them access to the language of academia, and it lets them say, 'I know Latin,' which isn't something that the average person on the street can say."

In addition to the head start on summer reading, Boys' Latin students will get an early start to the school year. They must attend an eight-day orientation that will cover rules and regulations, the dress code, and study and organization skills, and will introduce them to their classes. And in groups of 30, the ninth graders will spend a day tackling the ropes course at the Philadelphia Outward Bound Center in Fairmount Park. "The whole faculty did it last week, and it was great," said Hardy, who has been involved for years with Outward Bound programs, which are designed to build skills and boost confidence.

The charter will be in the former Transfiguration of Our Lord parish school at 5501 Cedar Ave. Hardy said the school would start out in trailers until renovations are completed. "It's going to be really different," said Richard Cherry, 14. "They are going to teach us, but it's going to be weird. There's only going to be boys." Oyola said he knew about boys' schools from seeing reruns of the TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, in which Will Smith's character attended a boys' school. He added: "But I never would have believed that I would go to a high school with all boys."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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7 August, 2007

Islamic education for all in Britain

Plan would move toward 'religion of state'

A new government study is being condemned by the Christian ministry the Barnabas Fund because its proposals would move closer to imposing Islam in the United Kingdom as "a religion of state." Among the proposals from the study being considered for implementation is the provision by universities for Islamic studies for all students. The report was initiated by Bill Rammell, the minister of state for higher education and lifelong learning, officials said. He appointed Ataullah Siddiqui, senior research fellow at the Islamic Foundation, to write it.

The Barnabas Fund, in an analysis, said the report "signals another step toward the Islamisation of Britain and its education system" "Should this report be implemented, education will be handed over more and more to Muslims who will train and shape the next generation," the analysis said.

The Barnabas Fund, which works primarily with Christians in Muslim-majority environments by channeling money from Christians, through Christians to Christians for projects developed by local bodies of believers, said the appointment of Siddiqui, at the outset, signaled a problem. "It is well known that the Islamic Foundation is an Islamist institute founded by high ranking members of the Pakistani Islamist party, Jama'at-I Islami," the group said. "However, in answer to questions in the House of Commons about possible links between Ataullah Siddiqui and Jama'at-i-Islami, Rammell stated that 'Dr Siddiqui has assured me categorically that he has no links to the Jamaat-e-Islami Party.' . This reveals that Rammell does not understand how Islamists use dissimulation (taqiyya) to hide their real goals while claiming to be moderate and liberal," the analysis said.

Among the other recommendations are that universities should employ Muslim scholars to teach Islamic theology, all universities must employ Muslim chaplains and provide Muslim prayer rooms, Islamic Student Societies should be better recognized and encouraged, and universities should cooperate with Islamic schools and colleges to break down the divisions between British society and the Muslim community. The study also recommended Islamic studies should be linked to job opportunities such as teaching, chaplaincy and Islamic banking, and guidance should be given to all universities on Friday prayers, Ramadan and halal food.

The Barnabas Fund said it's simply a demand for a "privileged position for Islam in the universities." "It would seem to aim at transforming Islamic studies in Britain into a Muslim monopoly, a Muslim enclave in which the vast majority of staff and students are Muslim. It is implied that non-Muslim scholars cannot teach Islam because they do not unquestioningly accept its basic premises regarding the revelatory nature and divine authority of Quran and Hadith." If that happens, the teaching faculty soon would be limited to Muslim and Islamist lecturers, the group said. "It is most likely that censorship would develop, affecting choice of staff, teaching methods and acceptable subjects for research and publication," the group said.

It's a part of the larger goal, the Barnabas Fund said. "The aim is to expand Islamic domination into all spheres. The whole system of Western academic education must, say the Islamists, be recast and remolded on Islamic lines as it is tainted by Christian and pagan influences." "Implementing these recommendations, as the British government has promised to do, would be likely to narrow the scope of university Islamic studies and make them more intolerant and radical," the critique said. The organization said one of its goals is to inform and enable Christians in the West to respond to the growing challenge of Islam to the church, society and mission. Reports said the government already has pledged several million dollars to universities in order to boost Islamic studies.

Source




With a high IQ comes need for special education

From Charles Murray -- who is in Australia at the moment

I define the "intellectually gifted" as those individuals who can stand out in almost any profession. Research indicates an IQ of at least 120 is usually needed to achieve this. This covers the top 10 per cent of the IQ distribution, or about a million people out of Australia's total labour force. In professions such as medicine, engineering, law, the sciences and academia, most people must, by the nature of the selection process, have IQs better than 120. But people with IQs of 120 or higher also occupy most of the top positions in corporations and the senior ranks of government. They produce most of the books and newspaper articles we read and the television programs we watch. They are the people who invent our new pharmaceuticals, computer chips, software and every other form of advanced technology.

Combine these groups, and the top 10 per cent of the intelligence distribution has a huge influence on whether our economy is vital or stagnant, our culture healthy or sick, our institutions secure or endangered. It follows that our future depends crucially on how we educate the next generation of people gifted with high intelligence. Most Australian children with IQs above 120 get the opportunity for higher education, and large numbers of them end up attending the most prestigious universities. It would probably be better for the nation if more of the gifted went into the sciences and fewer into the law. But if the issue is the amount of education they get, then the nation is doing fine with its next generation of gifted children.

The problem with the education of the gifted involves not their professional training, but their training as citizens. We live in an age when it is unfashionable to talk about the special responsibility of being gifted, because to do so acknowledges inequality of ability, and this sounds elitist. Because of this reluctance to acknowledge intellectual differences, no one tells high-IQ children explicitly, forcefully and repeatedly that their intellectual talent is a gift, and that they are not superior human beings but lucky ones. They are never told that their gift brings with it obligations, and that the most important and most difficult of these obligations is to aim not just at academic accomplishment, but at wisdom.

The encouragement of wisdom requires a special kind of education. It requires recognition of one's own intellectual limits and fallibilities - in a word, humility. This is perhaps the most conspicuously missing part of education of the gifted. Many high-IQ students go from kindergarten through an advanced degree without ever taking a course that forces them to say to themselves, "I can't do this".

Humility requires that the gifted learn what it feels like to hit an intellectual wall, just as their less talented peers do. That can come only from a curriculum and pedagogy designed especially for them. The gifted need to be educated with each other, not to be coddled but because that is the only setting in which their feet can be held to the fire.

The encouragement of wisdom also requires mastery of analytical building blocks. The gifted must assimilate the details of grammar and syntax and the details of logical fallacies because these are indispensable for precise thinking at an advanced level. They also need to be steeped in the study of ethics, starting with Aristotle and Confucius. It is not enough that gifted children learn to be nice. They must know what it means to be good. And the encouragement of wisdom requires an advanced knowledge of history. Never has the aphorism about the fate of those who ignore history been more true than it is today.

Unfortunately, most of this is antithetical to the mind-set that now dominates mainstream educational thinking. To be wise, gifted children need to learn how to make accurate judgments, but many educators want to teach them to be non-judgmental. To be wise, bright children need to be exposed to the best that has come before them, but many educators insist on treating all cultures as equally valuable and avoid discriminating between them. Educators say they want our little darlings to express themselves, but the primary purpose of education should be to give children the tools and the intellectual discipline for expressing themselves as adults.

What I am calling for is a revival of the classical definition of a liberal education, serving its classic purpose: to prepare an elite to do its duty. If you don't like the sound of that, reflect on the fact that the only leaders we get to choose are our elected officials. In all other areas, the government, economy and culture are run by a cognitive elite that we do not choose, and there is nothing we can do to change this. All we can do is try to educate this elite to be conscious of, and prepared to meet, its obligations. For years, we have not even thought about the nature of that task. It is time we did.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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6 August, 2007

British schools run by Islamic group Blair pledged to ban

Members of a radical Muslim group that Tony Blair promised to ban after the July 7 bombings have set up two schools in Britain to educate primary age children. The Islamic Shaksiyah Foundation, a registered charity that runs private schools in Haringey, north London, and in Slough in Berkshire, was established two years ago by female members of the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Between them, the schools educate more than 100 children. A 2005 Ofsted inspection report for the school in Slough was glowing about its work, stating: “The school’s provision for the pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is very good.”

The schools’ curriculum contains elements of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s ideology, which calls for the union of all Muslim states into a worldwide empire, the khilafah (caliphate).

Hundreds of Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters were gathering yesterday at the Alexandra Palace in north London for a conference on how to realise the khilafah. The group is also planning a global convention next Sunday for which it has booked a stadium with a capacity of 100,000 in Jakarta, Indonesia. The group has an estimated 2,000-4,000 active supporters in Britain and continues to operate openly despite Blair’s promise to proscribe it. Although Hizb ut-Tahrir states it is nonviolent, the organisation has radicalised a number of British Muslims who have gone on to commit terrorist acts after leaving the group. One is thought to be Omar Sharif, the Derby-born Muslim who tried to blow himself up outside a bar in Tel Aviv, Israel, in 2003. His partner, Asif Hanif, killed three people in the suicide attack.

According to the Islamic Shaksiyah Foundation’s curriculum document, children aged 7-8 are taught “our rules and laws come from Allah” and asked to contrast Islam with “other belief systems where human beings make rules”. At age 9-10 children should be taught: “There must be one khali-fah [ruler of the caliphate].” Tahir Alam, education spokesman at the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), said he had seen the khilafah being taught as a historical subject, but never as an ideological principle. “I know a lot of schools up and down the country and I’ve never seen khilafah being taught [in this way] at any school,” said Alam. “We’re in Britain and we’re dealing with a curriculum that prepares you to be a citizen of this country so I don’t really see the relevance for why a school should have that scheme of work.”

The people running the schools, which opened about two years ago, have close links to some of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s most prominent members. Yusra Hamilton, proprietor of both schools and one of three members of the foundation’s board of trustees, has spoken at Hizb ut-Tahrir events and is the wife of Taji Mustapha, media spokesman for the organisation, whose name is Arabic for “party of Liberation”. Farah Ahmed, head teacher of the ISF’s Slough school and author of its religious curriculum, is the sister-in-law of Majid Nawaz, a British member of the party who was jailed and allegedly tortured by the Egyptian authorities in 2002 for spreading Hizb ut-Tahrir literature.

The author of the school’s history curriculum, Themina Ahmed, has previously written for Hizb ut-Tahrir about her hatred of western society and desire to see it destroyed. Ahmed wrote in the July 2001 issue of Khilafah Magazine: “The world will, insha-Allah [God willing], witness the death of the criminal capitalist nation of America and all other [infidel] states when the army of jihad is unleashed upon them.”

Anthony Glees, director of Brunel University’s centre for intelligence and security studies and author of a report on extremism on British campuses, warned: “This is a matter of grave concern. The government needs to take another look at proscribing Hizb ut-Tahrir.”

The party has operated in Britain since the mid-1980s but it is part of a much larger worldwide movement, founded in Palestine in 1953, that claims up to 10m supporters in 40 countries from Malaysia to Scandinavia. It is banned in Germany, Russia and throughout the Middle East because of its antisemitism and its stated aim to establish a global Islamic state. It also calls for the destruction of Israel and the reunion of all lands that were ever under Muslim rule — including parts of southern Spain — through jihad if necessary.

Until a month after the July 7 bombings, when the group became far more cautious following Blair’s pledge, it was possible to obtain antisemitic literature on the group’s British websites. One leaflet stated: “The Jews are a poisoned dagger thrust into the heart of the Islamic [nation], an evil cancerous gland which spreads deep within the Islamic countries.” A short paragraph with the heading “What can Muslims in Britain do to reestablish the khilafah” went on to state that Muslims in Britain “should not become integrated into the corrupt western society and accept their diseased notions of democracy freedom and capitalism”. Recently, it was claimed Hizb ut-Tahrir had tried to recruit one of the suspects in June’s alleged terrorist plot against targets in London and Glasgow.

One parent whose child had attended the Islamic Shaksiyah school in Haringey said most parents knew the teachers were from Hizb ut-Tahrir. Despite this parents enrolled their children because it was “very well run”. The parent said that even though the school gave a rudimentary education in Hizb ut-Tahrir, children were not pressurised into joining the group. She said teachers often invited parents to Hizb ut-Tahrir events and discussions to try to recruit them. Neither the foundation nor Hizb ut-Tahrir would reply to questions put to them. In a previous statement Hamilton has said the curriculum was a result of “comprehensive research” and denied that either school sought to propagate the views of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Home Office said the issue of whether to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir was under “constant review.

Source




Smart Australian kids wise up to useless education

Record numbers of Queensland high school graduates are snubbing university to chase "instant cash in the strong labour market. The rush to work comes as new research shows the number of Year 12 students who have decided to defer tertiary study has risen sharply in the past two years. Students admit they are weighing up the costs of taking out loans from the Government for tertiary courses when some high school graduates are earning up to $1200 a day in parts of north Queensland as bricklayers.

Universities face the long-term challenge of competing for a "relatively static pool of potential students", experts say. Professor Kerri-Lee Krause, director of the Griffith Institute for Higher Education, told The Sunday Mail: "It's no longer just a given that Year 12 students see university as the obvious pathway. "Universities need to be mindful of how they market themselves and we're seeing evidence of that even now with more flexible options with courses."

Education researcher David Phillips, from KPA Consulting, analysed tertiary admission applications and found that there had been no increase in Queensland Admissions Centre applicants fot the last 15 years despite Queensland school leavers growing more than 20 per cent in that time. There were 9000 more applicants for universities in 1993 than there were in 2006," Mr Phillips said.

University campuses are continuing to grow only because mature-age and overseas students make up the shortfall. Also concerning for universities is the trend of deferring study, with about 600 Year 12 students taking a break in 1993-94 compared with 2700 in 2005-06. "This number has risen very sharply, especially in the last two years," Mr Phillips said.

Mandy Coles,l7, of Varsity Lakes, was accepted by Bond University for a Bachelor of Business, but has opted to pursue a management career with fashion store Supre. Ms Coles estimates her two-year, full- time course at the private university would have cost $74,000, less about $300 per week in study assistance. "As soon as I turn 19, I'm on more than $12 an hour (at Supre). It's a lot better than the cost of going to university," she said.

The above article by Paul Weston appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on August 5, 2007

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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5 August, 2007

Germany still obstructing home schooling

Homeschoolers in Germany, where the activity now is illegal, need to develop a new strategy in their pursuit of parental rights over their children's education, because continuing legal challenges won't work, an expert says. Michael P. Farris, cofounder of the Home School Legal Defense Association and a top expert in the field of homeschooling worldwide, said Germany right now is taking an "incredibly hard-line approach" against homeschooling.

In Germany in recent months homeschoolers have been fined the equivalent of thousands of dollars, had custody of their children taken away, had their homes threatened with seizure and in one case, that of Melissa Busekros, had a team of SWAT officers arrive on a doorstep with orders to seize her, "if necessary by force."

In a recent letter to constituents, Farris said while the Busekros case has calmed down, there still remain many challenges for homeschoolers in Germany, both in and out of court. "It seems as if a week doesn't go by without another family being threatened with fines, imprisonment, or the loss of their children," Farris said. "Over the last seven years, HSLDA has chronicled through e-mail alerts the escalating persecution German homeschoolers face. Since the late 1990s, scores of these families have been involved in court cases. While there have been a few instances where families have been able to continue to homeschool after or while paying fines, or when the local authorities turn a blind eye, this is by far the exception," he said.

"In most cases families are fined, in some cases thousands of dollars, or when threatened with the removal of their children by German Youth Welfare authoritites, have fled the country," he continued. "Other families have been (and remain) separated for years - the fathers remaining in Germany to provide for their families and mothers and children living in another country where they are able to safely homeschool." And yes, the penalties have gone further. "Mothers and fathers have been also imprisoned, had their bank accounts confiscated, their wages garnished, or their businesses ruined by the actions of their local government," he said.

The "now infamous" court case "Konrad v. Germany" in which the European Court of Human Rights essentially said that parental rights to raise their children must take second place to the government's objections to homeschooling, "has clearly demonstrated that German homeschoolers have no hope of relief from their courts," he said.

"To win," Farris concluded, "a legislative solution is needed. And in order to convince a German legislative body to change the law in favor of homeschooling, public opinion in Germany will have to be changed." He said German officials are filled with fear that homeschooling will result in parallel societies, such as Islamic fundamentalism, that would create a danger, even though those in the United States understand it supports pluralism. "In America, and other countries, research demonstrates that homeschooling does not isolate or create parallel societies but rather, it allows students to become highly engaged in society, enjoying a diverse and real-world educational experience, especially when compared to the institutional, uniform, and age-segregated public school system," Farris said.

He said those ideas are foreign to German officials and citizens, and his organization is working to introduce them, even while supporting the German homeschoolers who are in the midst of battle now. "This strategy will include engagement with academic and professional institutions that influence the opinions of judges, politicians, and government officials," he said, by working to provide credible and authoritative research from German experts on the issues. And it must include political pressure from the international community through public pronouncements, diplomacy, media reports and grassroots activity, he said. "First and foremost, we ask you to pray for German homeschooling families enduring persecution. . We ask you to pray that God would change the hearts of the German people and their elected and appointed officials so that homeschooling will be allowed in Germany."

In the case involving Melissa Busekros, a German appeals court ordered legal custody of the teenager who was taken from her home by a police squad and detained in a psychiatric hospital for being homeschooled, be returned to her family because she no longer is in danger. The lower court's ruling had ordered police officers to take Melissa - then 15 - from her home, if necessary by force, and place her in a mental institution for a variety of evaluations. She was kept in custody from early February until April, when she turned 16 and under German law was subject to different laws. At that point she simply walked away from the foster home where she had been required to stay and returned home, but she and her family had been living under the possibility that police would intervene again.

The appellate court's decision said "observations" of Melissa over the last few months "show there is no danger to her well-being and she may now stay with her family," according to Michael Donnelly, a lawyer working with the HSLDA.

Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, has commented on the issue on a blog, noting the government "has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole." Drautz said homeschool students' test results may be as good as for those in school, but "school teaches not only knowledge but also social conduct, encourages dialogue among people of different beliefs and cultures, and helps students to become responsible citizens."

The German government's defense of its "social" teachings and mandatory public school attendance was clarified during an earlier dispute on which WND reported, when a German family wrote to officials objecting to police officers picking their child up at home and delivering him to a public school. "The minister of education does not share your attitudes toward so-called homeschooling," said a government letter in response. "... You complain about the forced school escort of primary school children by the responsible local police officers. ... In order to avoid this in future, the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement."

The issue of German parents and their decision-making authority for their children's education was covered in this once-enforced statement: "And this [government] will give its youth to no one, but will itself take youth and give to youth its own education and its own upbringing." Adolf Hitler issue the dictate when his government, in one of its first actions when he came to power, took control of all educational institutions and issues.

Source




Middle-class teenagers made the 'whipping boys' of British education

British class envy is as poisonous as ever

Middle-class teenagers are being turned into "whipping boys" as ministers discriminate against them in favour of students from poor homes, teachers warned. Education is being "dumbed down" as universities turn their attention towards easy subjects like surfing studies, beauty therapy and knitwear to attract more working-class students, it is claimed. In a fierce attack, the Professional Association of Teachers called for the Government to halt its drive towards so-called "social engineering".

The comments come amid controversy over policies designed to increase the number of university students from state schools and deprived backgrounds. Ministers want to see half of all school-leavers studying beyond the age of 18 and have given dons tough targets to attract "hard to reach" students. But Peter Morris, chairman of the PAT in Wales, accused ministers of "creating barriers in education based on social class".

Addressing the union's annual conference in Harrogate, he said: "I am angry because this Government has interfered with my children and their children's chances of getting a good education in this country. "They have changed the ways that examinations are assessed, and clearly this has had a 'dumbing down' effect on the academic standards, in order to get more pupils to achieve."

Under new rules, teenagers applying for university will be asked to say whether their parents have degrees in an attempt to attract more students from poor homes. But Mr Morris insisted it amounted to discrimination against middle-class pupils. "This political interfering with university applications clearly is designed to reduce the chances of hard-working applicants getting places," he said. "How can any academic institution make a selection of candidates for university courses based on the perceived social class of the parents? "The middle classes are becoming the new whipping boys for 'New Labour'."

Criticising the Government's education record, Mr Morris, a retired teacher from Swansea, said exams had gone from being academically rigorous to posing "woolly, touchy-feely" questions with little intellectual merit to act as a leg-up to the working classes. Courses such as physics, chemistry and maths have been replaced with "non-academic" degrees such as "surfing, beauty therapy, knitwear, circus skills, pig enterprise management, death studies, air guitar, David Beckham studies and wine studies", he said.

The comments come just days after universities were accused of cashing in on soft courses by plugging degrees in subjects such as complementary medicine. It was disclosed that applications for complementary medicine are up more than 31 per cent this year, while there has been a 19 per cent fall in applications to study anatomy, physiology and pathology.

Speaking at the PAT conference, Nardia Foster, a psychology teacher from Enfield, north London, said that Labour had created a more "fractured, divided, selfish society". "There is a lack of consistency, stability, moral integrity and fairness in our society," she said. "To dumb down declares to the whole world 'British children are stupid'."

Geraldine Everett, PAT chairman, said universities should not set "quotas" for admissions. "It is wrong to manufacture reasons to put one group forward ahead of another," she said. "It is an invasion of privacy to take account of parental background. Places should go on merit - not your parents' education."

Last month it emerged that leading institutions were actually taking fewer students from deprived areas - despite the Government's drive to redress their middle-class bias. Teenagers from wealthier families and private schools increased their hold on places at half of the 20 most sought-after universities, according to official figures.

A spokesman for the newly-formed Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "We are ensuring every child has the best possible start in life and the opportunity to succeed - nobody can argue with that. "New ways of raising standards in schools, such as progression and personalisation, will ensure that all pupils get the education they deserve to reach their full potential. And it is only right that we are also ensuring the opportunity of higher education is accessible to everyone who desires it." [Irrelevant waffle!]

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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4 August, 2007

The teachers' party

By Ann Coulter

CNN commentators keep telling us how young and hip the audience was for last week's YouTube Democratic debate, apparently unaware that the camera occasionally panned across the audience, which was the same oddball collection of teachers' union shills and welfare recipients you see at all Democratic gatherings. Noticeably, Gov. Bill Richardson got the first "woo" of the debate - the mating call of rotund liberal women - for demanding a federal mandate that would guarantee public schoolteachers a minimum salary of $40,000. So much for the "younger, hipper" audience. Maybe CNN meant "hippier," as in, "My, she's looking a bit hippy these days."

Not counting talking snowmen, the main difference in the YouTube debate audience and the audience for the earlier CNN Democratic debate is that the YouTube debate had 173,000 fewer viewers in the 18-49 demographic. So it was provably not young and, on the basis of casual observation, definitely not hip.

As usual, the audience consisted mostly of public schoolteachers. According to CNN, the highest reading achieved on the CNN feelings-knob was for Richardson talking about public schoolteachers. (Some in the audience said they hadn't been that excited since the last time they had sex with an underage student.) B. Hussein Obama said he was for slavery reparations in many forms, but the only one that got applause was for more "investment" in schools. In Obama's defense, the precise question was: "But is African-Americans ever going to get reparations for slavery?" So a switch to the subject of education was only natural.

Moreover, a question on reparations has got to be confusing when you're half white and half black. What do you do? Demand an apology for slavery and money from yourself? I guess biracial reparations would involve sending yourself money, then sending back a portion of that money to yourself, minus 50 percent in processing fees - which is the same way federal aid works.

It was fun to hear the Democratic candidates give heart-rending reasons for not sending their own kids to public schools. Except John Edwards. He got a "woo" for sending his kids to public schools from all those "young, hip" Democrats whose greatest concern is how to transfer more money to public schoolteachers while reducing their workload. The candidates all managed to come up with good reasons for sending their kids to private schools - with extra points for reasons that involved a family tragedy or emergency - but it didn't seem to occur to any of them that ordinary families might have good reasons, too.

In her first risible lie of the debate, Hillary said Chelsea went to public schools in Arkansas. But when they moved to Washington, they were advised that "if she were to go to a public school, the press would never leave her alone, because it's a public school. So I had to make a very difficult decision." "Unfortunately," she said, it was "good advice."

Was it really that difficult a decision not to send Chelsea to public schools in Washington, D.C.? This is how the New York Times recently described the schools in Washington, which it called "arguably the nation's most dysfunctional school system." "Though it is one of the country's highest-spending districts, most of the money goes to central administration, not to classrooms, according to a recent series of articles in the Washington Post. Its 55,000 mostly poor students score far worse than comparable children anywhere else in reading and math, with nearly 74 percent of the district's low-income eighth-graders lacking basic math skills, compared with the national average of 49 percent."

So Hillary was dying to send Chelsea to the D.C. public schools, but "unfortunately" did not do so only because of the press? Did she also agonize over whether to allow Chelsea to play in traffic? She was not dying to send Chelsea to D.C. public schools. And no Democrat cares about "education" or "the poor." Democrats care about social service bureaucrats who make their living allegedly working on behalf of the poor - the famed "public service" the Democrats always drone on about - jobs that would disappear if we ever eliminated poverty. That's why Democrats keep coming up with policies designed to create millions and millions more poor people. Democrats fight tooth and nail against any measures that would actually help the poor, such as allowing schools to fire bad teachers. They refuse to allow parents with children in the rotten D.C. public schools to take money out of the public school system so their kids could go to Sidwell Friends like Chelsea.

Most important, Democrats resolutely refuse to tell the poor the secret to not being poor: Keep your knees together until marriage. That's it. Not class size, not preschool, not even vouchers, though vouchers would obviously improve the education of all students. You could have lunatics running the schools - and often do - and if the kids live with married parents, they will end up at good colleges and will lead happy, productive lives 99 percent of the time.

But Democrats don't care about the poor. They don't care about the children. They care about government teachers and other government bureaucrats - grimy, dowdy women who "woo" at political debates. Or as CNN calls them, the "young," "hip" crowd.

Source




Australia: Lazy NSW teachers

They already have the shortest working hours of any employee group but they want to work even less

The state's 50,000 public school teachers are demanding to spend less time with students in class because they are "overwhelmed" by their workload. Teachers have launched a campaign seeking extra "release time" from classes in 2240 primary and secondary schools. They will ask the Iemma Government to increase staff numbers in schools, at a cost of millions of dollars, to cover for teachers who are out of class doing other work.

The Teachers' Federation claims too much work is impairing teachers' ability to operate effectively. "Unreasonable teacher workload is debilitating for the profession and quality public education," senior vice president Bob Lipscombe said. "For some it is also impacting adversely on their health. "Teachers have difficulty in accessing such basic entitlements as lunch and morning tea breaks." Among the demands teachers have made are:

* AN extra two hours' release time per week in primary schools;

* AN additional two 40-minute periods release time per week in high schools;

* AN extra hour of release time a week for TAFE teachers;

* EXTRA clerical and support staffing; and

* THE reduction or phasing out of playground duty.

A spokesman for Education Minister John Della Bosca said yesterday most primary school teachers already received two hours of release time every week. "High school teachers receive six hours of release from face-to-face teaching each week," he said. "These arrangements have been in place for years and provide teachers with time away from the classroom to undertake a range of activities, including time to review teaching programs, prepare assessments and work on other planning activities. "Schools also have three pupil-free days a year to enable teachers to undertake planning and professional development. "We support these arrangements and there is no plan to change them."

Mr Lipscombe said teachers were demanding the restoration of minimum lunchbreaks uninterrupted by playground duties or meetings. Teachers earn up to $75,000 a year on an incremental scale based on years of service but increasingly are being required to meet performance standards. Technology, increased professional development and the imposition of new curricula are among the issues teachers say are putting them under pressure.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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3 August, 2007

Psychiatry's Views on Education: Some excerpts

Tracing the thinking behind modern educational corruption

"Every child in America entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It's up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well - by creating the international child of the future"
Dr. Chester M. Pierce, Psychiatrist, address to the Childhood International Education Seminar, 1973

"We have swallowed all manner of poisonous certainties fed us by our parents, our Sunday and day school teachers, our politicians, our priests, our newspapers, and others with a vested interest in controlling us. `Thou shalt become as gods, knowing good and evil,' good and evil with which to keep children under control, with which to impose local and familial and national loyalties and with which to blind children to their glorious intellectual heritage. The results, the inevitable results, are frustration, inferiority, neurosis and inability to enjoy living, to reason clearly or to make a world fit to live in."
Dr. G. Brock Chisholm, President, World Federation of Mental Health

Teaching school children to read was a "perversion" and high literacy rate bred "the sustaining force behind individualism."
John Dewey, Educational Psychologist

The school curriculum should ".be designed to bend the student to the realities of society, especially by way of vocational education. the curriculum should be designed to promote mental health as an instrument for social progress and a means of altering culture."
Report: Action for Mental Health, 1961

"Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know - it means teaching them to behave as they do not behave."
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) sponsored report: The Role of Schools in Mental Health

"This is the idea where we drop subject matter and we drop Carnegie Unites (grading from A-F) and we just let students find their way, keeping them in school until they manifest the politically correct attitudes. You see, one of the effects of self-esteem (Values Clarification) programs is that you are no longer obliged to tell the truth if you don't feel like it. You don't have to tell the truth because if the truth you have to tell is about your own failure then your self-esteem will go down and that is unthinkable."
Dr. William Coulson, explaining Outcome Based Education (OBE)

"Despite rapid progress in the right direction, the program of the average elementary school has been primarily devoted to teaching the fundamental subjects, the three R's, and closely related disciplines. Artificial exercises, like drills on phonetics, multiplication tables, and formal writing movements, are used to a wasteful degree. Subjects such as arithmetic, language, and history include content that is intrinsically of little value. Nearly every subject is enlarged unwisely to satisfy the academic ideal of thoroughness. Elimination of the unessential by scientific study, then, is one step in improving the curriculum."
Edward Lee Thorndike, pioneer of "animal psychology"

"...a student attains 'higher order thinking' when he no longer believes in right or wrong". "A large part of what we call good teaching is a teacher's ability to obtain affective objectives by challenging the student's fixed beliefs. .a large part of what we call teaching is that the teacher should be able to use education to reorganize a child's thoughts, attitudes, and feelings."
Benjamin Bloom, psychologist and educational theorist, in "Major Categories in the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives", p. 185, 1956

Source




Australia: Nutty Steiner schools in the Victorian State system

For more superstitious Steiner thinking, see here

Ray Pereira could not believe what he was hearing. His son's teacher had just said his child had to repeat prep because the boy's soul had not fully incarnated. "She said his soul was hovering above the earth," Mr Pereira said. "And she then produced a couple of my son's drawings as evidence that his depiction of the world was from a perspective looking down on the earth from above. "I just looked at my wife and we both thought, 'We are out of here'." And so ended the Pereira family's flirtation with the alternative schooling method known as Steiner education. After this extraordinary parent-teacher interview, the Pereiras withdrew their son and his brother from the inner-city Melbourne government school that ran the Steiner stream.

They are one of a number of families who have relayed strange Steiner experiences to The Weekend Australian, including claims that AFL football was banned because the "unpredictability of the bounce" would cause frustration among children; immunisations were discouraged; and students recited verses to save their souls in class.

The allegations come as more and more children attend Steiner schools, with the education movement celebrating 50 years since the first school was set up in Australia. There are now more than 44 private Steiner schools across the country, 10 programs in government-run schools and it is one of the fastest-growing education movements in the world. But as Steiner moves into the state education system in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, questions are being raised about the alternative approach. Critics say that its philosophical basis is too religious -- even comparing it to Scientology -- to be in the secular public system. But supporters deny Steiner education is religious and argue it is a holistic approach to learning.

The alternative curriculum is based on the teachings of 19th century Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who believed a spiritual world existed alongside our physical one. Steiner founded anthroposophy, which believed that by deepening the power of thinking, people could become capable of experiencing "spiritual truths". Supporters of Steiner are adamant anthroposophy is not taught to children, and that Steiner himself said the spiritual science was only for adults who chose to do it. But parents and religious experts are concerned that Steiner teachers learn about anthroposophy in their training and these beliefs seep into the classroom. "What a lot of people don't get is that Steiner is based on a spiritual system not an educational one," says cult expert Raphael Aron. "The majority of people who enrol their kids don't have a clue who Rudolf Steiner really is."

Dr Aron, who is the director of Cult Counselling Australia, said schools varied greatly in their adherence to Steiner's anthroposophy beliefs because of the decentralised nature of the system in Australia. He said there was a lack of transparency in the schools and often parents were not told about what Steiner believed, making it not dissimilar to Scientology. "We have been contacted by a few people who have come out of the Steiner system and say they are damaged and are seeking help," Dr Aron said.

Mr Pereira said he believed parents at Footscray City Primary School were deliberately misled about the role that Steiner's beliefs played in the classroom. "It is implicit in everything they do," he said. Mr Pereira, who is from Sri Lanka, said his concerns about Steiner's racist beliefs were realised when his children were not allowed to use black or brown crayons because they were "not pure". He said Steiner teachers at the state-run school recommended they not immunise their children because it would lead to the "bestialisation of humans".

But Rudolf Steiner Schools of Australia executive officer Rosemary Gentle said anthroposophy was not taught to children, although teachers were introduced to the subject during their training. "It has nothing to do with what is taught. It is just the approach to teaching," she said. "The teachers are given an anthroposophy background ... and it allows them to look into a child more deeply. You look at children as you would in a family. You strive to understand the child and recognise their emerging personality."

Ms Gentle said the spotlight was on Steiner education because of a "smear and fear" campaign being waged by a small group of people. "Steiner education has been a small, but respected part of the Australian educational landscape for 50 years," she said. Under the system, students have the same "main lesson" teacher for the first six years and textbooks are not used in primary school. Computers are banned in the primary years and television is discouraged to allow children to develop their "senses in the physical world". Reading and writing is delayed until children have developed adult teeth -- at age seven -- to focus on developing the child's healthy body.

Anthroposophy lecturer Robert Martin, who trains Steiner teachers, said being aware of the spiritual side of life enriched the education experience. He said people had many different names for the spiritual world -- arch angels, angels, intelligent beings and presence -- and they existed long before humans. "I want to co-work with the angels," Mr Martin said. "These individuals are very advanced ... Our job is to co-work with the spiritual beings."

Source




Early concern about Steiner method

SERIOUS concerns about Steiner education were raised in a government report seven years before a policy change by the Bracks administration cleared the way for its use in Victorian state schools. The report, completed by the Victorian Department of Education, says Steiner's approach -- in which children learn to read and write after their adult teeth come through at age seven -- was the "antithesis" of the Government's program. The report was completed by two curriculum officers in 2000 for then acting regional director Greg Gibbs after Footscray City Primary School indicated it wanted a Steiner stream.

Mr Gibbs told the school he was unable to "support such a proposal" but the principal introduced Steiner in 2001. The program has caused deep division among parents, and the state Government has been forced to intervene, dissolving the school council last year and establishing an inquiry. Despite this, the state Government last year changed departmental policy, allowing programs such as Steiner and Montessori to be run in state schools.

The report examined Steiner curriculum proposals provided by Footscray City Primary School and information available online about Steiner education. Authors Pat Hincks and Janette Cook say Steiner's ban on computers and multimedia in primary school is in "direct contradiction" to department policies. "Steiner education is based on a philosophy of cocooning children from the world to develop their imagination," the report says. "This is in direct contrast to, for example, the studies of society and environment ... where the emphasis is on study of family as a 'starting point to help them understand the world in which they live'."

A Victorian Department of Education spokeswoman said specialised curriculums had rigorous guidelines.

Source




Australia: Crackdown on politics in NSW schools

EDUCATION chiefs fear thousands of school children are in danger of having their minds poisoned by "political" activity in the classroom. The Daily Telegraph has learned that principals have received a strong warning not to allow their schools to be infiltrated by controversial political issues. A written memorandum issued by a senior education officer tells primary and secondary school heads: "Schools are not places for recruiting into partisan groups."

The memo sent by Hunter/Central Coast regional director John Mather says "issues" for schools had arisen during the state election in March. Referring to the federal poll due later this year, Mr Mather warned principals: "Schools are neutral grounds for rational discourse and objective study. They are not arenas for opposing political views or ideologies. "Discussion of controversial issues is acceptable only when it clearly serves the educative purpose and is consistent with curriculum objectives. "Such discussion is not intended to advance the interest of any group, political or otherwise."

The reminder to principals follows accusations in November last year that schools allowed children as young as five to distribute "political propaganda" against the Howard Government's controversial WorkChoices laws. Parents were outraged and one school principal was "counselled" by the Department of Education for breaching guidelines on political material.

As the latest warning was sent out to principals, bemused parents yesterday criticised a bizarre turf war between the state and federal governments over access to schools. Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop was refused permission by NSW Education Minister John Della Bosca to meet up to 71 principals on the Central Coast. Ms Bishop said yesterday it was the first time anywhere in Australia she had not been allowed to see public school heads. "This was a petty attitude . . . we (the Commonwealth) provide $1 billion a year to NSW public schools," she said. "I think the state Education Minister was frightened of what I might learn (from the principals)."

Opposition education spokesman Andrew Stoner claimed the Iemma Government had been caught "peddling politics in the playground". But Mr Della Bosca's office said Ms Bishop had given just 24 hours' notice of the meeting planned for the first day of the new school term. A request to visit Berkeley Vale Public School to make an announcement about chaplains had been approved, a spokesman said. "Neither Ms Bishop, nor any other Federal Minister for that matter, has been banned from visiting public schools or meeting principals. "Ms Bishop should know better than organising a forum for 71 principals on the first day back at school during school hours. Principals should be looking after their schools and supporting their teachers and students during school hours," the spokesman said.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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2 August, 2007

SAUDI MONEY BUYS 'TOLERANCE' EDUCATION

If the Marxist ideologues weren't enough of a threat in their determination to get their nefarious clutches on our children, the Saudis are buying their way into the seizing of young hearts and minds. Though this post is based on a situation in the U.S., you can be sure that it's going on all over the west as Saudi money has spread its creeping fingers far and wide.

The basic outline of this Saudi school initiative was exposed in 2004, by Sandra Stotsky, a former director of a professional development institute for teachers at Harvard, and a former senior associate commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Education. Stotsky found that Harvard trained primary/elementary school teachers were being encouraged to celebrate the life and teachings of Mohammed and the 'revelations' of Islam.

According to Stotsky, if Harvard's outreach personnel had designed similar classroom exercises based on Christian or Jewish models, "People for the American Way, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the A.C.L.U. would descend upon them like furies."

Oh yes, the A.C.L.U. never misses a chance to tear down our own cultural heritage. How on earth did the Islamists get into our education system? With their filthy money, of course. In Australia, the Emirates own (or have large vested interests in) countless organizations from the Randwick Racecourse to Collingwood football club. In the U.S. the story is pretty much the same with both Jimmy Carter and the Clintons known to be on the Saudi payroll. Why would they not logically also be looking at targeting the upcoming generation?

The full extent of Saudi curricular funding, and the magnitude of its influence over university outreach programs funded under Title VI, was only revealed in late 2005 by a special four-part investigative report by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). As the JTA put it: "Saudi Arabia is paying to influence the teaching of American public schoolchildren. And the U.S. taxpayer is an unwitting accomplice....Often bypassing school boards and nudging aside approved curricula....These materials praise and sometimes promote Islam, but criticize Judaism and Christianity....Ironically, what gives credibility to...these distorted materials is Title VI of the Higher Education Act....Believing they're importing the wisdom of places like Harvard or Georgetown, they are actually inviting into their schools whole curricula and syllabuses developed with the support of Riyadh."

And they wonder why we want to home-school our children. The public education system is an ideologically-loaded, dumbed down shambles, not only with Leftist pigswill but also Islamist trash.

Source




British tyranny again

Plans to force teenagers to stay in education or training until they are 18 could cause mass truancy and criminalise thousands of young people, a teachers’ leader claimed yesterday. Raising the education leaving age from 16 to 18 would simply “prolong the agony” of school for many disaffected pupils, Geraldine Everett, chairman of the Professional Association of Teachers, said.

Speaking at the PAT annual conference in Harrogate, Ms Everett said that the issue was a “potential minefield” if not handled sensitively and that teenagers should be given some choice over whether they worked, stayed on at school or in training. “Here is a Government that has toyed with the idea of lowering the voting age to 16 in order to promote a greater sense of citizenship among our young people. Yet it proposes to extend compulsory education or training to 18, to compel the already disaffected to, in their perception, prolong the agony,” she said.

Last year Alan Johnson, the former Education Secretary, who left school at 16, said it was unacceptable to see a 16-year-old working and not receiving any training or schooling. He said that the number of 17-year-olds receiving some sort of education or training should be raised from the current 75 per cent to 90 per cent by 2015.

But Ms Everett gave warning that children for whom the system had already failed were unlikely to want to be alienated further by compulsory 16-18 education or business-led training, which is designed for purely economic reasons to fill a skills gap. “To make them conscripts is likely to reinforce failure, leading to even greater disaffection,” she said. “Enforcement could lead to mass truancy, further disruption to other learners and staff, maybe even needless criminalisation if enforcement measures are imposed.” To make sure teenagers turn up at school, college or their work placements, the Government proposes to threaten them with possible court action and 50 pound fines. Ms Everett added that providing opportunities for this age group should perhaps be compulsory, but pleaded with the Government not to turn schools into “mere exam factories”.

Gordon Brown wants to change the law to require all teenagers to stay on in education or training until their 18th birthday from 2013 in an attempt to cut the number of young people who drop out of school and struggle to find jobs. More than 200,000 under17s are estimated to be out of education, employment and training. Ms Everett suggested that more money should be spent on early years education, which would prevent the need for catchup later on. Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said: “It is only right that we are looking at all options to keep young people engaged in education or training up until 18, whether at school, training or in a job. Those young people who continue in education or training for longer earn more, and are less likely to be involved in antisocial behaviour.”

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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1 August, 2007

Marxist indoctrination of little kids in Seattle

Post lifted from Dinocrat. See the original for links

You probably have seen this article about teachers' banning Legos in a Seattle school and then browbeating the eight year old children until they got the results they wanted:

"We should have equal houses. They should be standard sizes.. We should all just have the same number of pieces, like 15 or 28 pieces."

As teachers, we were excited by these comments. The children gave voice to the value that collectivity is a solid, energizing way to organize a community - and that it requires power-sharing, equal access to resources, and trust in the other participants. They expressed the need, within collectivity, for personal expression, for being acknowledged as an individual within the group. And finally, they named the deep satisfaction of shared engagement and investment, and the ways in which the participation of many people deepens the experience of membership in community for everyone.

From this framework, the children made a number of specific proposals for rules about Legos, engaged in some collegial debate about those proposals, and worked through their differing suggestions until they reached consensus about three core agreements:

* All structures are public structures. Everyone can use all the Lego structures. But only the builder or people who have her or his permission are allowed to change a structure.

* Lego people can be saved only by a "team" of kids, not by individuals.

* All structures will be standard sizes.

With these three agreements - which distilled months of social justice exploration into a few simple tenets of community use of resources - we returned the Legos to their place of honor in the classroom.

Children absorb political, social, and economic worldviews from an early age.We believe that educators have a responsibility to pay close attention to the themes, theories, and values that children use to anchor their play. Then we can interact with those worldviews, using play to instill the values of equality and democracy.

It's hard to say what is most offensive about this. Perhaps it is the relentless indoctrination of these 8-year olds with Marxist and feminist claptrap. Perhaps it utterly clueless tone of moral superiority that Ann Pelo and Kendra Pelojoaquin manage to infuse into every clich‚ they form. Those are bad enough. Worse still, in our view, is that these fine examples of the contemporary teaching profession inflicted on the rest of us 4,814 words to describe all this. Each one of their words should be a violation of Geneva Convention prohibitions against torture.




Australia: Selective schools improve learning

SELECTIVE schools are helping students score an extra 10 marks in the Higher School Certificate. The NSW Department of Education has for the first time released official data which shows that students at selective schools have been achieving on average an additional two marks for each subject, based on their relative performance in year 10.

The department has a database that allows it to compare students' results as they progress from year 3 to year 12. Their marks in the basic skills test in years 3 and 5 are compared. The same is done for the literacy and numeracy tests in years 7 and 8. The department also tracks improvement in students' results between years 10 and 12. This measure is called value-added, and shows that students in selective schools are lifting their performance in year 12 beyond expectations. The value-added index can often be higher in comprehensive schools, which help poor-performing students reach their full potential. But selective school students often perform to their potential in year 10, which leaves little room for improvement.

A spokeswoman for the department said there was "truth to the idea that students in selective schools are close to the ceiling of performance and that it is more difficult for them to demonstrate consistent growth compared with average- or lower-achieving students". "The fact that students in selective schools demonstrate above-expected levels of achievement so consistently is a truly stunning outcome of the selective stream," she said.

Last year the average "value-added per student" for selective schools across the five School Certificate external tests ranged from 2.5 marks in science to 5.8 marks in mathematics. The School Certificate value-added is the number of marks a student obtains above or below what might be expected, based on relative performance in the year 5 basic skills test.

But the Greens MP and education spokesman, John Kaye, challenged the department's value-added data. "Most comparisons between schools are meaningless because of the wide variations in student performance and the spread of improvements within schools," he said.

The Minister for Education, John Della Bosca, said he would establish a working group to help determine which schools would receive the extra 600 selective school places announced before the election in March. He said the composition of the working group was expected to include representatives from parents' and citizens' associations, primary and secondary principals, the Department of Education, and teachers. "Some of the issues it will take into account will include the fair allocation of places in rural, regional and metropolitan areas and the impacts on surrounding school communities," he said. "Our overall objective is to ensure the places are allocated in an equitable and sensible way."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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