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31 May, 2005

VERMONT CATHOLIC COLLEGE MOCKS CATHOLIC DOCTRINE

A Catholic college in Vermont is getting an openly-homosexual dean, according to a story in 'Out in the Mountains,' Vermont’s “voice for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, [and] transgender people.” The story, written by Stacey Horn, says that “Professor Jeffrey Trumbower, a gay man and a Unitarian, has been appointed dean of St. Michael’s College, a Catholic school established in 1904 by the Society of Saint Edmund, a French order of Catholic priests. “Trumbower, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School, currently chairs the Religious Studies Department at St. Mike's, where he has been on the faculty for 16 years. Though he is not the first non-Catholic to be dean of the college, he is the first openly gay man in the position….

“According to search committee chair and political science professor Bill Grover, ‘We were very fortunate to have two terrific people [apply] and Jeff rose to the top.’ Grover said that religion was not a factor in choosing the dean and that the committee wanted a candidate who would ‘fit with the overall mission of the college.’ Of Trumbower, Grover said, ‘He's going to be a terrific dean….’ “Trumbower came to St. Mike's in 1989, after completing his dissertation. He was not familiar with the area before he came, and when he arrived, he ‘started going to the church at the head of church street. I resonated with that community and realized that I was home spiritually.’ Trumbower met his partner here in Vermont. They have been together for ten years. “Jeff Trumbower… will assume his new position as dean of the Catholic college of St. Michael's on July 1.”

The teaching of the Catholic Church on homosexuality is as follows:

"Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved" (Catechism, no. 2357).

Source



OFFICIAL RACISM IN RETREAT: WORKING CLASS WHITES NOW BEING HELPED TO GET PH.D.S TOO:

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of affirmative action in college admissions. But the political controversy surrounding affirmative action, and the limits placed on its use by the Supreme Court as well as by various state entities, has had a major impact on graduate education, according to a report released Wednesday. According to the report, from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, many of the groups that support minority Ph.D. students have broadened their programs to include other students as well. As a result, the report warns that the cohort of new Ph.D.'s - and in turn the cohort of new professors in the years to come - may lack the racial and ethnic diversity many colleges want for their faculties.

The foundation's report has two main parts. One part summarizes data showing how few Ph.D.'s are awarded to black and Hispanic students. In 2003, the report notes, one in three Americans was black or Hispanic, but only one in nine American citizens who received Ph.D.'s that year were black or Hispanic. The data in the report largely come from the studies conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and released in December. While the data are not new, the foundation also conducted interviews and research on programs to diversify the graduate student population. The foundation studied efforts by the government, foundations and individual universities, and found retrenchment and shifts just about everywhere - money for minority Ph.D. students getting cut. Programs intended to improve diversity in doctoral education have shifted decisively away from financial support, focusing more on efforts to recruit and prepare students for graduate study," the report said.

At the federal level, the report noted that the Education Department and the National Science Foundation have both abandoned fellowship programs for minority doctoral students, the NSF doing so under the threat of a lawsuit. At the university level, the report said, "almost every program surveyed has modified its structure, its eligibility requirements, or even its name following recent legal challenges to university minority support programs."

While the interviews with program managers found that most of them continued to have strong commitments to diversifying graduate student populations, it found that even where policies hadn't been overhauled, people are reluctant to draw attention to their efforts. Program managers said that they had been urged "to maintain low public profiles," the report said. The foundation acknowledged that in many cases, fellowships that were once for minority students still exist, but are now open to low-income students from all racial and ethnic groups.

More here

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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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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30 May, 2005

PUBLIC SCHOOL COLLAPSE IN PASADENA, CALIFORNIA

Note from a Pasadena resident: The City of Pasadena reportedly has the highest rate of private school attendance of any city in the U.S. Note the stats below which indicate that only as few as 20 and 22 students in two schools pending closure come from the surrounding neighborhoods; the rest are bussed in from minority neighborhoods. The entire public school system has been effectively abandoned by the middle class as ineffectual. So all the 1960's reforms have created nothing but a two-tiered system -- which is what was supposed to be avoided. In the 1970's Pasadena's school system was slapped with a bussing order which resulted in "white flight" and "public school flight." Pasadena's public schools continued to reflect some of the lowest test scores in California as noted at end of the article below. More funding won't change any of that

To cut costs, the Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education has zeroed in on Linda Vista and San Rafael elementary schools in Pasadena and Altadena's Loma Alta Elementary School as the top candidates for closure. Officials want to close at least three schools over the summer, at least temporarily, to help bridge a $9.2 million budget deficit, and board members narrowed the list to six schools late Thursday. The board named three other elementary schools, Field in Pasadena and Burbank and Noyes in Altadena, as less likely candidates. Officials said they will consider closing more than three schools if the district's budget crunch worsens. "It's not a school closure issue, it is what is the future of this district,' board member Bill Bibbiani said Friday. "We need to see this change as an opportunity to look at our staffing patterns, our busing patterns and truly rightsize this district.'

The board hasn't yet considered several key factors, including the actual savings generated by each closure or how transportation costs would be affected, but the majority of the seven-member board is leaning toward closing Linda Vista, San Rafael and Loma Alta. Trustees have backed away from earlier discussions about closing Washington Middle School. Parents, students and teachers have held rallies and packed meetings over the past few weeks since Washington was mentioned as a possible candidate. Instead, board members now say they would like to find ways to increase the number of students at Washington rather than shutting it down, so more electives could be offered.

The PUSD needs to cut $9.2 million from its nearly $200 million spending plan by June 30. Closing three elementary schools would save an estimated $1 million, but about $2.7 million in cuts still must be identified. Closing a middle school the size of Washington would save an estimated $1 million to $1.4 million, officials said. District officials have repeatedly stressed that the closures would be temporary, but that they expect to close another one or two campuses next year. In addition to state budget cuts, the district has been steadily losing students. State funding is based on average daily attendance.

Parents said they need more advance notice than they are being given to plan for their children's education. Others criticized what they see as too many cuts that affect the classroom and not enough at district headquarters. For most of the board members, the density of students in a school's immediate neighborhood is one of the most important factors in selecting schools for closure. San Rafael and Linda Vista, both in affluent west Pasadena, have few students from the surrounding area because most of the children there attend private schools. "I will not vote to close a neighborhood school,' Bibbiani said. He said he wants to look at staffing and busing patterns, including a switch from west-to- east busing to north-to-south routes to reduce the length of bus trips. Most of the students at the three campuses are bused from other areas. Only 22 San Rafael students live in the adjacent neighborhood, and 200 are bused from Northwest Pasadena. At Loma Alta, all but 91 of the 376 students are bused from the Northwest. At Linda Vista, 20 of the 417 students are from the neighborhood....

Board members said standardized test scores are also a consideration, but one that's further down the list. Of the six campuses being considered for closure, Burbank, Loma Alta and San Rafael rank in the bottom 30 percent of elementary schools in the state on standardized tests. Field and Linda Vista performed better than half the elementary schools in the state, and Noyes outperformed 60 percent. Three PUSD schools not on the list for potential closure rank in the bottom 10 percent in the state, and three others rank in the bottom 20 percent.



Forcing NC families to pay for higher education for illegal immigrants' kids - dead for now

Post lifted from The Locker Room

Per The Charlotte Observer:

A bill to give undocumented immigrants in-state college tuition appears dead after being blasted by talk radio and emerging as the focus of North Carolina's growing debate over illegal immigration. ...

An 18-year-old girl in Eastern North Carolina just graduated as valedictorian of her high school class. Her grade-point average was 4.53. She was president of the Science Club, active in school activities and won academic honors while working part time.But when she came to this country from Mexico in the fourth grade, she and her family entered illegally. So despite her achievements, she's not eligible for lower tuition. ...

"Does it make sense to have the smartest kid at a high school putting ketchup and onion on a hamburger somewhere at a job?" said Chris Fitzsimon, director of N.C. Policy Watch, a progressive Raleigh think tank.

Ridiculous. Don't tell anyone, but a degree from a UNC institution is not the deciding factor in someone's life - and a degree from one of the state's (or the nation's) private institutions of higher education is nothing to sneer at. If the girl shows that much academic promise, she is already equipped to succeed - and if she chooses the college route, private colleges would love to have her, and no doubt she could find many scholarships and loans to help out. I bet My Rich Uncle could be particularly helpful.

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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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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29 May, 2005

ATTACK ON ACADEMIC MERIT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON

An early draft of a five-year "diversity plan" for the University of Oregon has drawn a firestorm of criticism from faculty, prompting administrators to distance themselves from the proposal. The draft plan, billed as a "long-term vision for diversity," called for the university to hire up to 40 faculty members by 2012 to teach courses in a "cluster" of diversity-related topics, including race, gender, gay and disability studies. Under the plan, academic departments that hew closely to the university's diversity goals when hiring would be given "priority in the funding of new positions."

The plan also would mandate that faculty up for promotions or tenure be evaluated on their "cultural competency" — the ability to successfully work with people from all cultural backgrounds. Traditionally, research, publications and teaching have been the key elements of a tenure review. The draft plan suggests that the university set aside more funding for hundreds of new "diversity-building scholarships" for minority undergraduates over the next five years, as well as new fellowships for graduate students aimed at those from "under-represented" backgrounds. A key goal, the draft plan continues, is to double the number of black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American students attending the university in the next five years.

Under the plan, student curriculum requirements could also change, possibly with the inclusion of a "gender and sexuality requirement." "Many people were upset with the content in different ways; the plan was sort of an Orwellian, totalitarian plan," said Michael Kellman, a chemistry professor at the university.

Sources at the university said the draft plan drew immediate condemnation from department heads across the campus, some of whom had little or no knowledge of the proposal before it was posted on the university's Web site. University officials declined to comment directly on the plan, which was overseen by Dr. Gregory Vincent, the university's vice provost for institutional equity and diversity, who last week announced his departure for a similar post at the University of Texas, Austin. But in a letter to members of the faculty senate's diversity committee, University President Dave Frohnmayer acknowledged public concerns with the plan. "We need to step back from specific details, to be mindful of alternative viewpoints, and to develop a sense of urgency in recognizing the problems we face," Frohnmayer wrote. "I also emphasized the need ... to engage faculty, staff and students who believe they have not properly been involved in this dialogue."

For years, Oregon's flagship public campus has struggled to attract diverse faculty members and students. The dust-up over the plan is the latest in a series of race-related incidents to roil the campus. Earlier this month, 150 people rallied to protest alleged racial discrimination and harassment at the school's highly ranked College of Education. Last week, a senior at the university filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education over the school's policy of reserving 10 slots of selected math and English courses for minority students, in an attempt to increased individual attention from faculty.

Chicora Martin, the university's director of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender education and support services, was part of the work group that put the plan together. She said the controversy provoked by the plan's first draft has created a welcome chance to talk about the current state of diversity on campus. "We want to make a welcoming campus around issues of diversity," she said. "I think you need to have a plan for that."

More here



And a comment on the Oregon imposition adapted from The Locker Room

Attn. AAUP: This is how a real threat to academic freedom sounds

The American Association of University Professors continues to operate with ideological blinders on with respect to academic freedom... As the group's homepage shows, the group sees two sources of threats to academic freedom here: those posed by "national security" and those presented by what the AAUP calls "the so-called 'Academic Bill of Rights'" (a note for the scholars: when you introduce something as "so-called," placing whatever it is so called within quotation marks is redundant). The first concern is understandable; the second, purely political — the Academic Bill of Rights, after all, is based on definitions that originated within the AAUP to define academic freedom. It's just that the AAUP has since abandoned its all-encompassing definition of academic freedom as its leadership in pursuit of SOME IDEOLOGIES ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.

That prologue is necessary for this: As best I can tell, the AAUP had nothing to say about a plan recently attempted by the University of Oregon that would have been a radical restructuring of the university's tenure and hiring policies — issues a naif would assume would have the AAUP's full attention. Here's what the subcriber site The Chronicle of Higher Education had to say about the plan:

...The draft plan, which was released this month, called for changing tenure and post-tenure reviews to include assessments of professors' "cultural competency." It also called for hiring 30 to 40 professors in the next seven years in several diversity-related areas, including race, gender, disability, and gay-and-lesbian studies. ...

"I was hired to teach chemistry and do research," said Michael Kellman, a chemistry professor. "I wasn't hired to be evaluated and even interrogated about cultural competency, whatever that is." In a letter to the president, David B. Frohnmayer, 24 professors called the draft plan "frightening and offensive." They complained that it would spend too much money on "diversity-related bureaucracy."

Mr. Frohnmayer said in an interview on Thursday that administrators had "taken a step back from the draft plan, given the extent of the response." "We're wedded to the objectives of the plan, but not to particular steps in any lockstep way," he said. "We're a community that lives to move with a greater sense of consensus."

The plan foresees increasing diversity by changing "the ethnic makeup of the freshman class, the racial and gender balance of tenured faculty, accessibility for the disabled, and the range of perspectives shared in campus classrooms around issues of sexual orientation, gender identity, religious differences, and other characteristics that make up the campus community."...

Not that this requires any particular insight to say, but I think this will not be the last we hear about such a move. I think Oregon has just shown us the next tyrannical step of the diversity movement. I think Oregon has just shown us the next tyrannical step of the diversity movement. I wouldn't be surprised if Texas is next; after all, the Oregon plan's "chief architect ... Gregory J. Vincent, vice provost for institutional equity and diversity at Oregon, is moving to the University of Texas at Austin to become vice provost for inclusion and cross-cultural effectiveness."

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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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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28 May, 2005

SCHOOL POLICE -- A BIT MIND-BOGGLING FOR AN AUSTRALIAN

When I think back over my peaceful country schooling -- where the biggest excitement was a dragonfly at the window -- this sounds like another planet. But I guess it's just another continent that makes the difference

For the third time in six weeks, police broke up a Jefferson High School brawl Thursday that students say was fueled by racial tension. Officers from the Los Angeles School Police Department used pepper spray and batons to quell the fight, which involved about 25 students on the South Los Angeles campus. The police arrested three students and detained more than 20 others, authorities said.

The incident reportedly began when two students argued about a cellphone. Students said that altercation sparked larger fights between black and Latino students across the campus. "It started in the cafeteria, and then it spread out to the PE field, to the auditorium, to the hallways, everywhere. I saw some people run out of the classrooms just to get into the fight," said Salvador Ingles, a 17-year-old senior. "Like with the last two fights, it happened that brown people, they go to one side, then black people go to the other side, and then they both collide."

School officials also reported two separate fights at Los Angeles High School, Thursday. The brawls attracted several hundred onlookers and prompted a brief campus lockdown while two students were detained. No serious injuries were reported. "I'm told there were some racial overtones" to the violence, district spokeswoman Susan Cox told the Associated Press.

The melee at Jefferson High School began about 12:40 when two Latino students argued about the phone, officials said. Administrators ordered a lockdown of the campus, and students were released from school about 600 at a time two hours later. The school nurse treated dozens of students for minor abrasions, and two students who were not involved in the fight were treated for hyperventilation. Six officers received minor injuries.

The fight occurred on the eve of a planned Day of Dialogue that district officials scheduled after similar brawls April 14 and April 18. Although students and parents have complained that the fights have had heavy racial overtones, Jefferson Principal Norm Morrow denied those assertions Thursday. "It had nothing to do with race," he said of the brawl. "The majority of our kids are good kids. We've got to get people to understand that some kids aren't here for the right reason."

Nevertheless, Morrow said that the campus was experiencing problems and that he expected many parents would keep their children home today. "I don't blame them," he said. "You don't want kids coming to a place where there are fights every day." After making that statement, however, Morrow paused and said fights did not occur at Jefferson every day.

He said that classes would be limited to half-day today and that the Day of Dialogue would go on. The event, he said, would involve professionals from local government and federal law enforcement discussing with students the reasons for the fights.

More here



ANTISEMITIC BRITISH ACADEMICS CAVE IN

UK academics have voted to overturn a boycott of two Israeli universities accused of complying with anti-Palestinian polices. Members of the Association of University Teachers had previously decided to sever all links with Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities. The academics' body now says it is time to "build bridges" between those with opposing views and support peace moves.

The debate has caused bitter argument among academics and others worldwide. The council of the AUT was reconvened in central London after 25 members - the required number under the union's rules - complained about the original vote, held in Eastbourne last month. Opponents of the boycott had complained that the debate had been curtailed and that the accusations were unfair.

Dr David Hirsh, from Goldsmiths College in London, welcomed the latest vote, saying: "A boycott is a tokenistic gesture which does more harm than good. "The need for hard work, building links with Palestinian and Israeli academics, is less glamorous but much more important."

Pro-boycott activists accuse Haifa of mistreating politics lecturer Ilan Pappe for defending a graduate student's research into controversial areas of Israeli history. The university denied this and threatened legal action against the AUT.

More here



SOCIOLOGY AS HATE-SPEECH

A Brooklyn College professor who called religious people "moral retards" was elected to head his department this month - sparking a campus uproar. E-mails expressing alarm that Timothy Shortell was now chairman of the sociology department circulated among students last week on the school's Midwood campus. Shortell has written in an online academic publication that the devout "are an ugly, violent lot. In the name of their faith, these moral retards are running around pointing fingers."

"I'm horrified by the ideology of Prof. Shortell," said Eldad Yaron, a Brooklyn College senior. This person has control right now on the content of many classes every student will take. Just imagine how fair and balanced these classes will be." Daniel Tauber, president-elect of the school's student government, said he was worried that Shortell and other faculty members would breed religious intolerance at the diverse college. "I would like to see professors in high positions who don't believe religious people are moral retards," Tauber said.

Shortell's remarks - which included lines such as "Christians claim that theirs is faith based on love, but they'll just as soon kill you" - elicited a multifaith backlash among university groups. "He's intolerant," fumed Alex Selsky of the school's Hillel chapter, a Jewish campus organization. "With this kind of unreasonable thinking, I don't know how he can be elected to head of a department." Kevin Oro-Hahn, director of the school's InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, said he hopes the university can "move beyond mere rhetoric in the pursuit of truth."

A college spokesman said there's little CUNY officials can do. "Whether one agrees with Dr. Shortell's comments, this is an election as mandated by university guidelines," he said. "His comments are public, but this is the decision of the sociology department." Shortell didn't return calls to him at his office. Brooklyn College, which has more than 15,000 students, observed its 75th anniversary this year. It was named one of the top 10 best values among undergraduate institutions in the country by the Princeton Review.

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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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27 May, 2005

POLITICAL BIAS IN ACADEME

Three views below:

We hear a lot these days about the importance of diversity in ensuring that ideas are heard fairly. But the individuals who are most insistent about this are interested only in racial and sex diversity. Intellectual and ideological diversity is not what the enforcers of political correctness on campuses and other sectors have in mind.

This magazine has helped pioneer evidence of how politically unbalanced most college campuses have become. Most recently (see our January/February 2005 issue) we presented the findings of University of California economist Daniel Klein, who found that the ratio of Democrats to Republicans in social sciences and humanities faculty nationwide is at least 8:1. At universities like Stanford and Berkeley it is 16:1 in favor of Democrats.

Twenty-five years ago, the ratio was less skewed, at 4:1. In the future it is going to be even more skewed. Among the young junior faculty at Stanford and Berkeley, there are now 183 Democrats, and just six Republicans--a 30:1 tilt. As today's older professors retire, political lopsidedness will grow even more extreme.

After years of denying the ideological uniformity of colleges, this accumulated evidence has now caused many academics to shift to claiming that the lack of political diversity on campus doesn't matter. It doesn't affect what gets taught, they say.

But in a recent panel discussion at the American Enterprise Institute, two experts warned that academic one-sidedness matters very much indeed, and is clearly having harmful results. We present their statements below, along with an extract from one professor's recent pointed analysis of this subject.



Anne Neal
President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni

There are now countless stories (and large volumes of hard data) about political pressure in college classrooms, and faculty hostility to non-liberal viewpoints. When confronted with this evidence, what did the higher education establishment do? Did it conduct its own surveys to see if the claims were valid? Did it try to determine whether the education of students was being impaired? Did it affirm its commitment to the robust exchange of ideas? No. It offered the classic institutional dodge: Deny the facts and attack the accuser.

Roger Bowen, president of the American Association of University Professors, stated that political affiliations are of little consequence in the classroom. Professor of political science David Kimball asserted that "any concerns about indoctrination are overblown." John Millsaps, a spokesman for the University of Georgia, insisted "we have no evidence to suggest that students are being intimidated by professors as regards students' freedom to express their opinions and beliefs."

My organization, which represents college trustees and alumni, wanted to move beyond anecdotes and test the claim that politics was not affecting the classroom. So we commissioned the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut to undertake a scientific survey of undergraduates in the top 50 colleges and universities, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report. We went right to the student population who are directly affected, who have no reason to misrepresent what is happening there, and asked them about their experiences.

What did we find? Forty-nine percent of students stated that professors frequently inject political comments into their courses even if they have nothing to do with the subject. When we asked students if they felt free to question their professors' assumptions, almost one third said they felt they had to agree with their professor's political view to get a good grade.

We also explored whether students were being exposed to competing arguments on today's issues. Forty-eight percent of all students reported that presentations on political issues seemed completely one-sided, and 46 percent said professors used the classroom to present their personal political views. Forty-two percent said reading assignments represented only one side of a controversial issue.

The students voicing concerns are not a small minority--nearly half reported abuses of one kind or another. And they are not just conservatives: a majority of the respondents consider themselves liberals or radicals. Moreover, the majority of the students we surveyed are studying subjects like biology, engineering, and psychology--where there is no reason for politics to enter the classroom in the first place. It does anyway: Fully 68 percent of all students heard their professors make negative classroom comments about George Bush, versus 17 percent who were exposed to criticisms of John Kerry.

One simply cannot deny, after these findings, that faculty are importing politics into their teaching in a way that affects a student's ability to learn. This should trouble us all. Responsible academic freedom involves not only the professors' prerogatives, but also the freedom of students to learn free of political indoctrination.



David French
President of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education

Faced with clear evidence that colleges lack ideological diversity, many campus apologists say "So what?" At FIRE, which represents students in academic freedom battles, we face the question "so what?" every day. And I can assure you the problem of ideological uniformity on campus goes far beyond the fact that many red-state suburban kids now get their views attacked in the classroom. Ideological uniformity in higher education has led to daily, systematic deprivation of the civil liberties of students and professors.

First, ideological uniformity has led to the suppression of dissenting speech. I'm not talking about extreme expressions of dissent; I'm talking about things such as an "affirmative action" bake sale sponsored by that notorious radical organization, the College Republicans. I'm talking about students who question whether an academic department should show Fahrenheit 9/11 in all classes before the election to persuade students to vote for Kerry.

These aren't isolated cases. In 2004, FIRE received more than 500 credible complaints of deprivation of civil liberties on campus. We surveyed the speech policies of the 200 leading universities and found freedom-squelching speech codes at 70 percent of those schools. In the last four years, as many as 50 universities have made attempts to eject evangelical student organizations, or to restrict them so thoroughly as to effectively rob them of their distinct religious voices. At many campuses, students are subjected from the moment they arrive to mandatory "orientations" and diversity training designed to shock many of them out of the views they bring from home.

At FIRE, we have people from across the ideological spectrum on our staff and on our board. And even the most dyed-in-the-wool liberal on our staff will acknowledge that 80-85 percent of our cases involve suppression of speech by the Left.

We're reaching a tipping point. The higher education establishment will either open itself back up to the full marketplace of ideas, or it will see its ivy-covered walls battered down by force--whether class action litigation or extreme legislation. We have reached the point where the self-regulation of higher education is no longer credible.

Universities say it's people like me, red staters who grew up in middle-class suburbs, who need their views challenged. In my experience, the exact reverse is true. I went to a Christian undergraduate school and then went to law school at Harvard, and I can tell you that the professors at my Christian college were more open to challenges to campus orthodoxy than my professors at Harvard Law School.

When I applied to teach at Cornell Law School, an interviewer noticed my evangelical background and asked, "How is it possible for you to effectively teach gay students?" If I had not given what I consider to be, in all modesty, an absolutely brilliant answer to the question, I don't think I would have gotten the job. I sat in admissions committee meetings at Cornell in which African-American students who expressed conservative points of view were disfavored because "they had not taken ownership of their racial identity." An evangelical student was almost rejected before I pointed out that the reviewer's statement that "they did not want Bible-thumping or God-squading on campus" was illegal and immoral. Academics who say "so what?" need to realize that ideological uniformity leads to restrictive speech codes and the suppression of Constitutionally protected speech on campus. It leads to the exclusion of people of faith from campuses. It twists hiring and admissions and classroom discussion.

No campus official should define what is orthodox in politics, religion, or law. Yet that happens every day to thousands of students. It is a deprivation of their civil liberties, and it will stop sooner or later, one way or another. The real question is: Will the academy wake up and begin to put its own house in order, or will it act like Dan Rather--delaying reform until an entire culture has revolted, then shuffling off into oblivion muttering about a right-wing conspiracy?



Fred Siegel
Professor of history at New York City's Cooper Union

Academia, taken as a whole, has become dominated by freeze-dried 1960s radicals and their intellectual progeny, who have turned much of the humanities and social sciences into a backwater. In 1989, when Eastern Europeans were reclaiming the ideals of human rights and political freedom, students and faculty on the Stanford campus were marching with 1988 Presidential candidate Jesse Jackson shouting "Hey hey, ho ho, Western Culture's got to go." Up the road, Berkeley--dominated by its university--announced it was adopting Jena in communist East Germany as a sister city, this just a few months before the wall fell.

Academics have been getting it wrong over and over again. Criminologists were convinced that crime couldn't be cut; sociologists were sure that welfare reform couldn't work because it didn't go to the root causes of poverty; and Sovietologists were certain that the USSR of the 1980s had matured into a successful, even pluralistic society. As for radical Islam, the consensus view of the Middle Eastern Studies Association was that the danger to America came from a "terror industry" conjuring up imagined threats in order to justify American aggression.

But even as academia's batting average has declined, its claim to superior knowledge has expanded. The old ideal of disinterested scholarship, or at least the importance of attempting to be objective, has been displaced. In 2003 the University of California's Academic Assembly did away with the distinction between "interested" and "disinterested" scholarship by a 45-3 vote. As Berkeley law professor Robert Post explained, "the old statement of principles was so outlandishly disconnected to what university teaching is now that it made no sense to think about it that way."

The reality, as Post recognized, is that many professors now literally profess. Far from teaching the mechanics of knowledge, they are in fact preachers of sorts, spreading a gospel akin to that of Howard Dean. For professors part of grievance studies departments, like "Indian" poseur Ward Churchill, there was never any expectation of objectivity. They were knowingly hired as activists and are now puzzled as to why this has become a problem for some of their students and the larger public. After all, what they preach is built into the very orientation students are given when they arrive on campus. New students at many schools are quite literally given a new faith.

In the absence of intellectual competition (other than the disputes between left and lefter), academia will continue to get it wrong. This might be of limited concern if not for the fact that the sheltered students who emerge from this one-party state are left bereft of any means of negotiating with reality once they engage in politics as adults. Instead of being given the background knowledge of American institutions they need to make judgments as citizens, they are fed attitudes. Credulous undergraduates fall prey to priestly performers who claim to be initiating them into the subterranean mysteries. Those who buy into this worldview are left both insufferably pretentious and substantively silly.

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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

***************************



26 May, 2005

Teacher Neutrality Is Hogwash

We have all been told over the years that government school teachers are supposed to be objective, to help students search for truth, and that the school is supposed to be an extension of the family, upholding what the traditional family believes. Most of us who have learned anything about the nature of government education know that such statements are an utter farce.

Many parents, however, for one reason or another, have their children in government schools and are forced to struggle through what seem to be never-ending problems in their quest to make sure their children's faith and beliefs are not tampered with by those schools--so-called. I will cite one example.

In one northeastern state, which due to possible legal ramifications for the parents, must remain unnamed, a father is standing in opposition to what the "educational" system is trying to foist upon his youngster in the name of "education." How many places around the country this scenario is being repeated can only be guessed at.

The problem started earlier this school year, when one of the youngster's teachers sent home to parents a letter stating that she was going to be showing several R-rated movies to the class of 14-year-olds this student was in. The movies were described as "documentaries." In reality, they were nothing more than liberal propaganda films by Michael Moore. The father of the student immediately complained, stating that he would not allow his youngster to be part of a captive audience, having to watch sexually explicit scenes and other very questionable material in some of the movies on the teacher's list. The teacher responded by suggesting to the father that he should allow his youngster to learn more than what is being taught in the home. So much for the "school" being an extension of the family!

At one point, the teacher decided she was going to show her class the movie "Bowling for Columbine" which was to be presented to the class as an anti-gun "documentary" and not the liberal propaganda that it really is. The father petitioned the teacher to have his youngster not have to watch this film, and, initially, the teacher flat-out refused his request. Having gotten nowhere with the teacher, the father took his complaint not only to the school's principal, but to the town's mayor as well. The movie was not shown.

After all this, the father thought and hoped the furor might die down and that the teacher would go back to her supposed job of teaching. Suffice it to say, he was in for a rude awakening, as are many parents that try to deal with a government education system that is long on propaganda and short on education.

It seemed, however, that this teacher's penchant for showing R-rated films to minors had not abated. The father ended up having his youngster removed from this teacher's class on two occasions because she was showing the kids films with full frontal nudity. As a Christian parent, the father found this disgusting, but, apparently, the vast majority of parents in that government school system had no problem with what went on--showing that, in many instances, the government "education" system has done an excellent job in desensitizing several generations as to what is proper and right and what is not.

Then, as her crowing achievement for the year, this teacher decided she would make her class learn about Islam and Buddhism, and others of what she labeled as "alternative faiths." The father wondered, and naturally so, since it was against the school's rules for his youngster to profess or display, in any way, personal Christian faith in school, why there should be such a tolorance for "alternative faiths" when there was none for the Christian faith. Good question. It was never answered.

The father, with the help and guidence of his pastor, wrote a letter requesting that his youngster be excused from this class and he had hoped the teacher might provide an alternative assignment. She did not. What she did instead was to tell the student that, even though the class went against the family's Christian beliefs, she intended to hold the student responsible for the father's refusal to allow participation in the class. So this student, who has been on the honor roll in all classes, may well end up with a tarnished academic record because of this one liberal teacher. Simply heartwarming isn't it? Makes you want to go out and shout the glories of the government school system from the rooftops doesn't it?

At that point, the father sought some legal information. He contacted a group that informed him that the government school does, indeed, have the right to teach this kind of stuff which he has objected to, but that he, as a Christian parent, also has the right to opt out if he wishes, in instances where he feels his youngster's spiritual welfare is at stake. However, because the father has opted to have his student removed from this particular assignment the teacher is going to make darn sure the student suffers academically for the father's decision. Such situations, when they come to light, should really make people question the agenda of the government school system (and, folks, it ain't education). Then, when "those people" come back to us, telling us they want to raise our property taxes yet again so they can provide more "quality education" for our children, we should have a ready response for them--and that response should be "Hogwash!"

Source



PRESSURE TO PASS CHEATS IN AN AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITY

A lecturer's allegations of plagiarism at the University of Western Sydney have left her in an invidious position - approve the results or don't get paid. The lecturer, who teaches at the university's College of Law and Business, said she could not approve student results for the university's commerce course in Hong Kong until the university dealt with plagiarism claims. But contracts issued to staff working on the college's offshore programs give management the right to withhold payment until staff approve marks and complete all the paperwork. "No one [at management level] seems to think this is a clear case of improper pressure on the unit co-ordinator to submit 'acceptable' results," said the lecturer, who declined to be named for fear of losing her job. "Otherwise, like me, you will not be paid."

She told the college's senior management she thought three of the eight students taking her subject had cheated. She received the students' work on April 29, two months after the course had finished, and only after she had made repeated requests to see the results. On May 6, the college's head of international programs emailed her: "Enough is enough. I am not going to engage in an endless exchange of emails. Can you please advise whether or not you will be in a position to present marks for these eight students at the next marks meeting." The lecturer replied that she could not "unless the conduct of the course has been investigated".

A spokesman for the university, Mikhael Kjaerbye, told the Herald the university had agreed at a marks meeting on Friday to investigate the plagiarism allegations. "There will be a full investigation," he said. "We take this seriously . the student academics misconduct policy will kick in." The students involved had in the meantime been given a pending grade. Mr Kjaerbye dismissed claims that teachers had been pressured into approving adverse results to get their pay. "They get paid when they present their report," he said. "It doesn't matter what the results are. This does not affect the payment." He said the lecturer concerned was aware of her contract's stipulations. "She's a lawyer, she signed the contract and the contract's very clear," he said.

The lecturer has also officially complained that the course was taught incorrectly by the Hong Kong-based tutors. She said the tutors ignored her feedback material and instead let students know how they were doing in their assignments by ticking appropriate boxes on printed assessment sheets. She said this was inappropriate for law units. Moreover, the university had breached its own assessment policy, she said, by failing to give students feedback during the course and allowing them to submit assignments almost two weeks after sitting the final exam.

An investigation by the Herald has revealed serious flaws in the management of many university offshore programs. The investigation also found many students had cheated in the English proficiency exams which universities require many foreigners to sit before they can enrol. Peter Armstrong, an Australian lecturer based in China, told the Herald last week his contract with the provider of a respected Australian university's intensive English course was suddenly cancelled last year, after he tried to clamp down on cheating, plagiarism, unexplained absences and poor work. "The Chinese side took the view that the students had paid a lot by local standards and should be allowed to remain in the program no matter what," Mr Armstrong said. "When I raised my concerns to the Australian side, they didn't want to hear about it. It seemed they were quite happy to retain any poor students for the sake of profit."

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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

***************************



25 May, 2005

SMART BRITISH KIDS LET DOWN BY STATE SCHOOLS

Thousands of comprehensive schools are still failing Britain’s most able children, Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, has been told. Research, commissioned by a key government adviser, shows that pupils rated among the brightest prospects at primary school go on to under-achieve at GCSE, The Times has learnt. Some do only nearly half as well as their peers in good schools. The most politically explosive finding was of a direct relationship between the number of bright children in a school and individual achievements.

The study highlights the scale of the challenge facing Ms Kelly in tackling poor secondary schooling, particularly in deprived urban areas. It emerged as the latest edition of The Times Good University Guide shows that universities plan to devote huge sums of money trying to satisfy government demands that they widen access to students from poor backgrounds.

The research, by David Jesson, of York University, used government data to track the progress of 28,000 children who scored the highest marks in national curriculum tests of English and mathematics at the age of 11. They represented the top 5 per cent from more than half a million pupils in England who take Key Stage 2 tests in primary schools each year. Professor Jesson found that nearly 6,000 pupils who took the tests in 1999 were admitted to 167 selective grammar schools and 5,800 went on to 223 high-achieving comprehensives. The remaining 16,500 went into 2,407 comprehensives, many in urban areas, with lower achievement. When the same students took their GCSEs last summer, many had effectively been lost because schools failed to push them to reach their potential.

Professor Jesson found that success rates declined in line with the numbers of bright children in a school, and dipped sharply when there were fewer than five. Where 20 pupils from the most able 5 per cent were clustered together in a year group, each achieved an average of nearly seven GCSE passes at A* and A grade last year. But where there was just one child from this group in a school, he or she passed fewer than four GCSEs at these grades. This is likely to have a severe impact on prospects for university admission. The children’s performance at A level will be followed to establish how many of those who could be expected at 11 to be candidates for Oxford, Cambridge and other top universities actually achieve the necessary grades.

An analysis of results in 2002 showed that comprehensive students had only a 5 per cent chance of getting three A grades, the standard expected at Oxbridge and many other elite universities. Nearly 20,500 18-year-olds achieved three A grades. But of the 110,000 who took A levels in comprehensives, only 5,821 reached this standard. This compared with 3,394 out of 18,265 (19 per cent) among sixth-formers who took A levels in grammar schools. At independent schools, 7,565 gained three A grades out of 32,873 candidates (23 per cent).

Professor Jesson found that individual pupils in high-achieving comprehensives scored slightly better at GCSE than those in grammar schools. This suggests that provision for the most able children within schools, rather than selection, at 11, is the critical issue.

More here



ILLITERATE CALIFORNIAN KIDS MUST NOT FAIL TO GRADUATE

Particularly if they are black

Requiring students to pass California's high school graduation exam could be postponed further at the state's lowest-performing schools under legislation by the Senate's majority leader. The measure by Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, is among dozens of bills facing tests this week in the Assembly and Senate appropriations committees. The graduation exam was part of former Gov. Gray Davis' efforts to ensure that high school graduates master math and language requirements. Originally, students were supposed to have passed the test to graduate in 2004, but the state Board of Education pushed the requirement back two years, making the class of 2006 the first one forced to pass the test to get a diploma.

Many students already have taken the exam in anticipation of the requirement kicking in. They can start taking it as sophomores. Romero's bill would suspend the test requirement for about 375 of the state's lowest-performing high schools until the state superintendent of public instruction certified that students at those schools had adequate teachers, instructional material, counseling and tutoring. The schools would have to file an annual report spelling out how they were attempting to gain certification. "I'm not proud to be carrying this bill," Romero said. "It's not a bill I would wish on anybody, but I feel compelled to carry it because I see what's happening in my own district. The exam has an extraordinarily high failure rate among low-income school districts."

Richard Riordan, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's outgoing education secretary, said he also opposes the bill and predicts the Republican governor will veto it if it reaches his desk. "Unless you start holding people accountable, starting with children and adults who teach children, you never get anywhere," said Riordan, who is resigning and will be replaced next month by San Diego schools superintendent Alan Bersin.

More here

***************************

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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

***************************



24 May, 2005

PARENTS CREATE A SAFE CHRISTIAN SCHOOL SO CALIFORNIA OFFICIALS ARE TRYING TO DESTROY THAT

And I thought minority cultures were supposed to be sacrosanct!

Early last school year, an African American high school student entered a first-grade classroom where she was volunteering as a teaching assistant. The first-graders, children of the Russian and Ukranian immigrant community around North Highlands, had had little contact with people of color. Their first response, say two administrators who supervise the schools, was fear. They screamed and cowered in a corner of the classroom. This wasn't supposed to happen. When Grant Community Charters, which runs the elementary school, began two years ago, it was envisioned as a charter school program that would provide work force training to the multiethnic youth of Del Paso Heights.

It became something quite different: A system of five public schools, from kindergarten to high school, where nearly all the students are white in a school district that is 37 percent white. Of the charter schools' 1,380 students, so far only 28 are in a vocational program. Those are also the only children not from Slavic immigrant families. The students are mostly evangelical Christians, and three of the schools are housed in churches. For many students, the school day begins with voluntary prayer.

Though the starkness of their situation may be unique, the Grant schools face a dilemma common to many charter schools. Because charters are public schools developed with a specific community's interests in mind, the students they attract tend to be less diverse than their neighborhoods as a whole, a uniformity that could conflict with the intent of state and federal anti-discrimination policies.

Grant Community Charters began as a collaboration between the Grant Joint Union High School District and the community, the sort of effort charter schools are designed to allow. Grant created a single school two years ago, which from the beginning served an overwhelmingly Slavic population. Then in August 2004, Grant created a charter high school and took over three other schools that had been run by another charter operator that collapsed and also principally enrolled Slavs. The schools are scattered. Futures High and two elementary schools are in North Highlands. One elementary school is in Rio Linda and another is on Jackson Road, west of Bradshaw Road in the Elk Grove Unified School District. The elementary schools are collectively known as the Grant Community Outreach Academy and do not have individual names.

Grant district officials acknowledge they sometimes have struggled between the Slavic immigrants' expectations for the schools and what U.S. law permits. The schools' short history has been turbulent:

* Although state law and Grant Community Charters' founding documents require the schools to attempt to reflect the racial makeup of the districts they serve, the schools do not - nor has much attention been given to this concern.

* The African American real estate developer who started the schools left the schools' board of directors this year after it was clear their focus had shifted.

* The schools' academic performance ranks in the bottom 10 percent statewide, lower than any other schools in the neighborhoods they serve. If their scores don't improve dramatically when the charter expires in 2008, state law could require them to close.

* An outside study faulted the schools last year, when they were under different management, for their religious content. Some parents still view the schools as religious, although Grant officials say they are not.

More than 100,000 Slavic immigrants have moved to the Sacramento region over the past decade. The 2000 census identifies more than 7,200 people of Russian or Ukrainian ancestry living in the Grant district.

Eileen Rishard teaches at the Jackson Road site. She said she tries to keep her students' culture intact. "I play Tchaikovsky in the morning," she said, standing in her classroom. "This is my newest addition." She opened a cabinet to reveal a ceramic tea set. "This tea set is from Armenia."

But Lynn Massetti, a second-grade teacher at one of the North Highlands schools, said she thinks the immigrant parents could be erring in shielding their children from the mainstream public schools. "You can't be scared and hide," she said.

Teachers and parents said the families wanted to get out of district public schools, which they perceive as dangerous. "We know big high schools are very bad," said Mikhail Novikov, who immigrated in 1990. Novikov is an administrative assistant at the charter high school. His seven children went to Rio Linda High, before the charters existed. "Many parents were very afraid," he said. From the street, the charter schools don't much resemble typical schools, but they do provide comfort for many parents. Three of the schools are on church campuses, which is common and legal for charters. One is at the former McClellan Air Force Base. Inside, though, classrooms look similar to those throughout the state.

Most of the Slavic families enrolled are religious refugees, according to school staff. "I genuinely believe they feel this is a safer campus for their children," said Valerie Buehl, a fourth-grade teacher at one of the sites. "They're very devout, and all the other children here are the same."

Florin Ciuriuc, executive director of the Slavic Community Center of Sacramento, which was involved in the creation of the charter schools, describes some of the schools as "sort of private." One of his children attends the charter elementary at McClellan Park. Though he said he respects the separation of church and state, Ciuriuc said he thinks discipline is maintained at the schools because the day can start with prayer. "A lot of what has to do with schools is prayer," Ciuriuc said.

Randy Orzalli, the Grant administrator who supervises the schools, says no prayer occurs at the schools, but parents are able to take students to daily prayers nearby. Orzalli said one of the challenges of running the schools has been trying to impress on Ciuriuc and others the importance of separation of church and state. "A lot of parents wanted a private religious school," Orzalli said. "Not only are we not interested in that, it's not legal." The law also requires charter schools to attempt to be racially representative of the communities they serve. The Grant charter high school is 94.8 percent white, and the elementary schools are 99.1 percent white. The Grant district is 37 percent white. Elk Grove Unified, where one of the charter schools is located, is 32 percent white.

Orzalli said the schools' homogeneity is a direct consequence of the reason children enroll: to learn English in a welcoming environment. But he said the ultimate goal is to integrate the children into the mainstream. Parents picking up their children at the Jackson Road school said their main concern is what they see as the moral depravity in mainstream public schools. They feel the charter schools allow them to preserve their values. "The cultural and moral counts more than the educational," said Miroslav Vysotsky, the father of two children at the school.....

More here



ANYTHING FOR MONEY IN AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES

Australian universities were seriously jeopardising their international reputations by placing profits before academic quality, the architect of one the world's leading English language testing systems has warned. David Ingram, a Melbourne academic who co-developed the International English Language Testing System almost 20 years ago in England, yesterday attacked universities for misusing his system. He said this had ultimately led to a serious drop in academic standards. Professor Ingram said the problem was caused in part by "irresponsible action on the part of some universities which were willing to sacrifice quality for money".

"Too often, teaching staff, either out of sympathy for the students or from pressure from marketers or administrators … push students through, whatever the students' levels of performance," he said. "In doing so, they show little regard for the welfare of the international students entering their programs, and for the long-term negative impact such scant regard for quality will have on their ability to attract students and, consequently, on their revenue."

Professor Ingram, who served as the testing system's chief examiner in Australia for 10 years and is now the executive dean of Melbourne University's Private School of Applied Language Studies, said he did not dispute the findings of a Herald investigation, which pointed to widespread problems associated with the influx of non-English speaking full-fee-paying students over the past decade. One in five students now enrolled at Australian universities is from overseas, most having gained access after sitting the English proficiency test. Professor Ingram defended the integrity of the test, saying it was the universities' inappropriate use, interpretation and application of the test's results that had led to many non-English speaking students being accepted into courses beyond their capabilities. This, in turn, had led to an overall drop in academic standards. He said his criticism applied to most Australian universities because they accepted students with a proficiency level below his recommendation of 7.0 on the test. Most universities accept overseas students if they achieve an overall score of 6.0 for undergraduate programs and 6.5 for postgraduate programs.

Professor Ingram acknowledged that a fall in Federal Government funding had forced universities to accept overseas students with inadequate language skills. However, he said the universities themselves needed to compensate for this by providing more support and language-skill programs to ensure academic standards were maintained. A study on entry procedures conducted by Professor Ingram at Griffith University in 2001-02 found widespread unease among academics who said they felt obliged to push international students through "and would pass them if they could make any sense at all out of what they wrote". Professor Ingram said the findings were "quite depressing". He said he had come across two PhD candidates from overseas who were "barely coherent" in English, yet had completed postgraduate degrees at two of Australia's most respected universities. They had been exempted from sitting the language test to gain entry. "All I was able to assume was that, undoubtedly in the false belief that they were being supportive, their supervisors had helped the students write their theses or had turned a blind eye to the fact that someone else was helping them."

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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

***************************



23 May, 2005

ANOTHER RACIAL COVERUP

A series of fights broke out today at Taft High School ahead of a scheduled visit by Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa, and school officials disputing claims by parents and students who said the brawls appeared racially motivated.

As many as 17 patrol cars and an LAPD helicopter were dispatched to the Ventura Boulevard campus about 10 a.m., a Los Angeles Police Department spokeswoman said. Taft Principal Sharon Thomas said there were three separate fights among ninth-graders lining up to take standardized tests in a multi-purpose room. Six students were detained for questioning and the others were sent to their home rooms, she said.

Sandra Torres, 18, a senior, said she saw a number of students hop a fence onto campus and run toward a group of students. "They started beating up on anybody they came across. There must have been 50 people involved. Ten people were hurt with bloody noses (and) lying on the ground. "It was a lot of violence," she said. "I was scared."

Thomas and Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Roy Romer said the fights were not between Latino and African-American students, despite what many students reported. "It was a limited thing," Romer said. "It was not racial." Villaraigosa, appearing with Romer during a news conference, reiterated district officials' comments that the violence was not racially motivated.

But Erika Robles, 17, a junior, said the fighting occurred between African-American and Latino students. About 40 parents rushed to the campus, many of them called by students using cell phones. Carletha Lee, whose nieces and nephews attend the campus, said the district and the mayor-elect were not being candid with parents. "You can only stomach so much, the fact that (Villaraigosa) is downplaying a serious situation.... He wants to discount this as a simple fight between students. We clearly know this is not the case," she said.

Source



ARIZONA SCHOOL PROTECTS CHEATS AND ATTACKS WHISTLEBLOWER

It all started last year, when the now 56-year-old teacher allowed a student to take an exam a day earlier than his other students. The student then sent an e-mail message to about 50 students, with the answers to the exam, Dorson said. No explanation or apology was ever received, he said. This year, when the student, whose name the district has withheld, was in the running for a prestigious scholarship awarded by the Flinn Foundation, Dorson said he could not support that. The Flinn is a well-respected scholarship awarded to Arizona students for use at the state's public universities. Students are judged strongly on moral character, in addition to scholastic achievements.

Dorson's road to resignation began when he went to the school's administration and said someone should speak up about last year's cheating incident, Dorson said. It was then, Dorson said, that he was told by the administration to be quiet, that if he spoke out about it he would be fired. Contrary to rumors about the controversy, Dorson said it never crossed his mind to contact the Flinn representatives directly; he just wanted someone to deal with the situation. He was only trying to protect the district, not cause trouble, he said.

In the weeks that followed, no one from the administration responded to Dorson's request, he said, which finally prompted him to say, "enough." He wrote a letter of resignation in February and the board immediately approved it. "I think there are people that wanted me gone," Dorson said.

Foothills High School Principal Wagner Van Vlack said he could not comment on the situation. "I'm reluctant on a moral ground to comment in a story that doesn't get to the moral truth," he said, adding that he could not comment because it is impossible to get to the whole story because of privacy laws and certain information that could not be disclosed.

In the months following Dorson's resignation, students, parents and teachers have supported their favorite teacher and have called upon the board to look into the matter. More than 60 people attended a May 10 board meeting, many of whom spoke in support of Dorson. "People throughout all of metropolitan Tucson know and love this individual, the man whom you do not value," said Ann Moynihan, as she spoke to the board. Moynihan, whose son is a student of Dorson, said that soon after her son joined his classroom she began to notice a difference in him, something she credits to the tremendous teaching skill of Dorson. "He puts the fire to the tinder," Moynihan said......

Zamkinos said she fully understands the reasons Dorson is leaving, and admits there is a cheating problem that is not being addressed within the district. School officials have said they take cheating very seriously and deals with each situation accordingly. One way students are cheating is by text-messaging exam answers to each other's cell phones, Zamkinos said. According to the district's student discipline policy, forgery and cheating are "prohibited student conduct."

Kareem Hassan, another student of Dorson, said that "the main issue is not whether or not Dorson is the best teacher in the world, but that the school can't even follow its own policy regarding cheating." Cheating should be taken seriously, something Hassan said is not happening within the district. Hassan said the administrators are not promoting integrity when they can't stand behind one of their own when a teacher is trying to make sure a student is punished for not having integrity. "He was essentially forced to resign," Hassan said.....

Dorson could, however, face an investigation and possible teaching certification removal by the Arizona Board of Education. On May 6, a Catalina Foothills administrator reported an alleged violation of the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act, said Lisette Flores, chief investigator for the board. Flores would not say who reported Dorson. She said, only, that it was regarding the matter of Dorson sharing the discipline of the student who cheated. Dorson said he was shocked when he received a phone call from a newspaper reporter telling him about the report. He was stunned that no one from the district told him first, he said. "They have confused dissent with loyalty," he said. "The emphasis has been on keeping things quiet."

More here

***************************

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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

***************************



22 May, 2005

MISSING MEN ON CAMPUS

(At the college level, I think it mainly means that fewer men than women are willing to waste their time and money on a crap education. At lower levels I think it means that black males are much more likely to drop out than black females -- mainly for "attitudinal" reasons)

Harvard President Lawrence Summers, still doing damage control over some ill-chosen comments about women in the sciences, dug into his university's deep pockets this week and found $50 million to spend on improving the lives of women on his campus. Those 10-year investments in mentoring and child care are to be applauded. But don't come away from Summers' gifting with the wrong idea: On most campuses, the problem is with men, not women.

More than 57% of the freshly robed graduates parading across podiums this graduation season will be female, up from 43% in 1970. In Minnesota this year, women outperformed men in every degree category, earning more than two-thirds of the master's degrees and more than half the doctorates. That's good for the girls, but what about the boys?

The trends are almost universally grim. A Yale University report released this week shows that boys are getting expelled from preschools at more than four times the rate girls are. Given the impressive benefits that high quality preschools bestow on students, that's a problem. Nothing seems to improve much in elementary school, where boys quickly fall behind girls, especially in verbal skills. Not all boys, to be sure, but a disproportionate ratio. When boys are slow to pick up reading skills,educators are quick to conclude they suffer from some medical deficiency. Boys are twice as likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities and four times as likely to be put on attention-deficit medication.

In middle school, that modest verbal gap from elementary school doubles in size. By ninth grade, the problem can't be hidden. That's when students begin a college-preparation sequence of courses that demand high verbal skills. No surprise that boys are a third more likely to drop out of high school. Many boys rally by the junior and senior years of high school. But by then girls have won most of the academic awards and school leadership roles. All that makes the girls attractive recruits for colleges.

Fixing the missing-male problem will take effort - something akin to the effort undertaken by parents and educators to make girls more successful in the classroom. Until that happens, audiences can only look up at the graduates promenading across the platform to receive their diplomas and wonder: Where are the men?

Source



CANADA DUMBING DOWN TOO

Ontario has unveiled a kinder, gentler math curriculum it hopes will stem the rising tide of high school dropouts. The government has made sweeping changes to Grade 9 math, in the more hands-on applied stream where staggering failure rates have been linked to a growing number of dropouts since the tough new four-year high school program began in 1999. Starting this fall, Grade 9 students in applied math will be expected to master nearly one-third less material while getting more practical lessons. As well, teachers will get more tips on how to make math relevant to teens.

Gone are subjects teachers deemed too abstract for many Grade 9 applied students, such as analytical geometry, the study of the steepness of "slopes" and lessons on the algebra needed to plot a parabolic curve. When marking, teachers will be encouraged to give more weight to a student's overall comprehension of math concepts, rather than simply follow a lengthy checklist of individual skills. As well, the new course will dovetail more smoothly with Grade 12 math studies for pupils interested incommunity college and the skilled trades.

And appearing in Grade 9 is the occasional reference to feet and yards instead of metres, for students who may be headed for a job in construction, where many measurements are still done in imperial units. "It's a phenomenal improvement. The big, big deal was to get less content crammed into the curriculum, and they've done that. It's huge," said Stewart Craven, math co-ordinator for the Toronto District School Board.

Rather than "dumb down" the curriculum, Craven predicts the changes actually enrich students' learning by removing a clutter of abstract concepts he said had no business in Grade 9 applied math in the first place. Many have called Grade 9 applied math the biggest roadblock to graduation for Ontario teens, because it was too similar to the more abstract academic course for those headed to university.

Fully 90 per cent of the material was the same in both courses, and teachers complained many applied students found the material too difficult. An alarming three-quarters of applied students failed to meet provincial standards on the latest Ontario-wide Grade 9 math test, compared to just one-third of academic students.

More here

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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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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21 May, 2005

INDIANAPOLIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE A TICKET TO THE BOTTOM

James Johnson isn't sure if his father ever finished high school but thinks "he probably didn't." Johnson himself dropped out of John Marshall High School (now a middle school) after ninth grade. Why? "Girls. Baby. Fast money. Hard-headed. I'm only telling the truth." As for Johnson's 18-year-old son? He just dropped out, too, after finally reaching his senior year. Johnson now is obtaining his GED at age 41. From what he can tell, when it comes to finishing high school, "All the men don't."

Yes, the men don't. More black males are dropping out than graduating from high school. Just 326, or 25 percent, of about 1,300 black males who entered IPS high schools in 1998 graduated four years later. Perhaps the 1,000 or so young black men who left moved to other school districts. More likely, they dropped out. Indianapolis Public Schools is the fifth-worst in the nation in graduating black males, trailing only Cincinnati, New York City, Cleveland and Chatham County, Ga., according to a 2004 study by the Schott Foundation for Public Education. Only 38 percent of black males graduated from Indiana's high schools in 2002. Just 42 percent of America's black males in the class of 2002 earned diplomas. Those numbers help explain why only 603,000 black males were attending college while nearly 800,000 were serving prison time in 2000. As Schott Foundation President Rosa Smith says, this is "educational genocide."

In Indiana and the rest of the nation, white males graduate at significantly higher rates than blacks. That's not true in IPS. Only 183 white males -- or 23 percent of the freshmen entering IPS high schools in 1998 -- graduated in 2002. About 600 young white men probably dropped out. They're like Manual High School freshman David Kline, who says, "None of my family has graduated." David, like his father and brother, has had a run-in with the law and landed in juvenile hall. He expects to follow their example by dropping out. His plans? "I'm in a band. I'm a lead vocalist. We've already played at (venues). I mean, our band's already getting big."

Here's the reality: White male dropouts are five times more likely to serve prison time than the national average, according to Bruce Western of Princeton University. About 37 percent of black male dropouts are likely to end up incarcerated.

The academic gap for males, both blacks and whites, appears to be widening. Men made up 43 percent of the college student population in 2000 versus 58 percent 36 years ago, according to Pell Institute senior scholar Tom Mortenson. For growing numbers of college-age women, it means more difficulties in finding equally educated -- and financially stable -- men.....

In many Indiana families, education still isn't viewed as the gateway to a better life. Which helps explain why the state ranks 46th in the nation in the educational attainment rate of its population. Schools haven't done their part in helping males adapt to the reality of a knowledge-based economy. Boys find few male role models in schools; nationally, women make up 75 percent of the teaching ranks.... Males accounted for 425, or 59 percent, of the freshmen entering Northwest High in 2001. Four years later, they made up only 48 percent of the 2005 senior class....

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UPDATE ON THE KLOCEK AFFAIR

Klocek’s suspension violated DePaul’s own policies guaranteeing academic freedom as well as its contractual promises of basic due process. Klocek was suspended without a hearing, which DePaul policies say can only be done in an “emergency.” Though DePaul now claims that the argument created the “emergency” conditions necessary for an immediate suspension, the university waited a full nine days before acting against Klocek—hardly the response of a school in the grip of an “emergency” situation.

“If DePaul professors aren’t worried about this situation, they should be,” remarked Greg Lukianoff, FIRE’s director of legal and public advocacy. “Due process is most important in cases like Klocek’s in which facts need to be sorted through and in which punishment can be severe and career-ending. By refusing Professor Klocek a hearing at such a crucial juncture, DePaul threw its stated commitments to basic procedural rights out the window and missed an opportunity to discover what actually took place.”

On March 24, 2005, FIRE wrote DePaul’s president, Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, on Professor Klocek’s behalf. FIRE asked the university to honor its own commitments and reminded DePaul that “[i]f every person had the power to punish those who expressed ideas they found offensive, we would all soon be reduced to silence.” President Holtschneider responded, saying this was not a matter of academic freedom and that “the university acted to address threatening and unprofessional behavior.” He also noted that Klocek had refused to pursue the university’s grievance process. This response contradicts Dean Dumbleton’s original justification for the school’s punishment. Furthermore, the grievance process available to Professor Klocek does not have the authority to restore his position.

FIRE’s French remarked, “While DePaul may now argue that the issue is one of professionalism, its public statements at the time of Klocek’s punishment make it clear that Klocek’s real crime was offending students during an out-of-class discussion of a controversial and emotional topic. Academic freedom cannot survive when professors who engage in debate on controversial topics are subject to administrative punishment without even the most cursory due process.”

More here

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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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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20 May, 2005

EDUCATIONAL CHOICE: SHOWDOWN IN FLORIDA

On June 7, the Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that could decide whether Florida continues to lead the nation in true education reform or joins the ranks of states where "reform" means business as usual. The question the justices will be asked to decide is whether the state constitution prohibits the state from giving scholarships to parents whose children are stuck in failing public schools so they can transfer those kids to private schools of their choice.

Opponents claim the program results in impermissible "aid" to religion because it allows scholarship recipients to send their children to religious as well as nonreligious private schools.

A major problem with that argument, however - and one school choice opponents have steadfastly refused to squarely address - is what implications that argument has for Florida's three dozen other social and educational aid programs that, just like Opportunity Scholarships, allow participants to freely choose among religious and nonreligious providers. On the education side alone, more than 200,000 Floridians receive publicly funded scholarships through a variety of state aid programs, all of which permit scholarship recipients to attend religious schools if they choose. This includes more than 100,000 college students using Bright Futures and other higher education scholarships, nearly 15,000 K-12 students attending private schools through the McKay Program for Students with Disabilities, and 12,000 K-12 students in the Corporate Tax Credit program.

Moreover, starting this fall, anywhere from 90,000 to 150,000 pre-K students are expected to enroll in the new universal pre-kindergarten program, and, like Opportunity Scholarship recipients, they will enjoy a full range of religious and nonreligious options.

Besides educational aid, many state and local agencies contract with organizations such as the Salvation Army to provide a wide range of services including prison counseling services, drug rehabilitation, and aid to the homeless. Likewise, religious hospitals receive public money through the Medicaid program. Does that count as "aid" to the churches that run those hospitals? Fortunately, the answer to that question is "no."

Florida has a long history of neutrality when it comes to allowing religious organizations to participate in all manner of social and educational aid programs. Why doesn't it count as aid to religion when a Bright Futures scholarship recipient decides to attend a school like Hobe Sound Bible College or Florida Christian College? It's because the "aid" is to the student, not the particular school he or she happens to attend. Same thing with Medicaid; even though state money ends up going to a religious institution, the aid is to the patient who chooses that hospital, not the hospital itself or the church that runs the hospital.

The same is true of Opportunity Scholarships. When the state gives parents an educational lifeline - when it gives them, for the first time in their lives, a choice of where to send their children to school - that is aid to those parents and their children. It is not aid to whatever schools they happen to choose.

School choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. Nothing more starkly divides the haves and the have-nots in this country than the question of who has the ability to ensure educational excellence for their children by choosing where they go to school, and who must simply take whatever their local public schools have to offer, no matter how clearly inadequate. Florida is on the right side of that debate and the right side of history. While many states promise all students a high-quality public education, only Florida delivers by saying to parents, "If we can't get the job done, we'll give you a scholarship so you can find someone who will." Now that is accountability.

The Opportunity Scholarship program is a true education reform that has already enriched the lives and future prospects of hundreds of children. And, as verified by a new Harvard study, it is also a means of injecting into education a little healthy competition - something from which public schools have been all but immune until now.

Source



BRITISH PARENTS SLOWLY GIVING UP ON STATE SCHOOLS

Particularly in London

More parents are turning their back on the state system and choosing to educate their children privately, as record numbers of independent students go on to university. While the overall number of pupils attending independent schools has dropped for the first time in a decade, figures published yesterday show that girls now outnumber boys at independent day schools and that the number of privately educated British children is up. The implication that parents do not trust the state system coincides with several leading universities revealing that they would take more state pupils provided they could charge the highest rate of tuition fees.

Although dozens of schools charge fees of more than 20,000 pounds a year, 620,000 children - or 7 per cent of all school pupils - are now privately educated, according to the latest census by the Independent Schools Council. Although the total numbers attending ISC schools are down by 3,250 pupils from 504,830 in 2004, the combined drop in overseas pupils and the end of the assisted places scheme equates to a real rise of 1,837 more British pupils attending private school. Jonathan Shepherd, the general-secretary of the Independent Schools Council, said that more girls now attended day school than boys for the first time since 1982, and that although overall numbers have dropped 0.6 per cent, this was against a demographic dip of 1.2 per cent.

More importantly, Mr Shepherd insisted that with a record 92.2 per cent of independent school-leavers going to university, rising to 95 per cent among girls, the ISC had found no evidence of universities discriminating against them. "We continue to take a number of people in our schools from disadvantaged backgrounds, so it would be a tragic irony if by giving them help they find another hurdle at university," he said. "However there is no evidence, apart from anecdotal here and there that this is happening. The evidence is on the contrary that more of our students are going on to university than before."

In 1997 the Government abolished the assisted places scheme, which had helped to pay the private school fees of around 100,000 pupils from less well-off families. Now, just under a third receive some form of assistance with fees, usually in the form of bursaries. More worrying, Mr Shepherd said, was that 60 per cent of A grades at A level in modern languages were achieved in private schools, a trend that was "uncomfortably high" and reflected in both sciences and engineering.

But it is precisely because of this, said Priscilla Chadwick, the leader of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, that universities cannot afford to discriminate. "A lot of students are doing a majority of subjects which universities value enormously, in sciences and languages, and these in particular contribute to the admissions to universities," the principal of Berkhamsted Collegiate School in Hertfordshire, said.

Although the 1.5 per cent drop in boarders was "disappointing", it was blamed largely on the 10 per cent drop in pupils from China, Hong Kong, Russia and the US who had been put off by the doubling of visa fees. That rise was in addition to flights home and the average annual cost of boarding fees of 19,000 pounds, which included an average fee increase of 5.8 per cent for last year alone.

In London around 20 per cent of parents send their children to private school, compared with a national average of seven per cent. At Westminster School, Tristram Jones-Parry, the head master, has said that in the past few years applications from girls has risen from 180 to 240. "They have become more aware that these days you don't just float into a decent university. You need top grades at both A level and at least five or six A* grades at GCSE, and I think girls are becoming aware of that at an earlier age," he said. Twenty-five years ago, the male-female ratio at university was 60:40, but in recent years that has changed to 56 per cent female, to 44 per cent male.

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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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19 May, 2005

A LOST RACE IN INDIANAPOLIS

Indianapolis Public Schools operates some of the worst dropout factories in the nation. Hundreds of students each year quit school, most landing in dead-end jobs or prisons. In some families, dropping out has become a way of life with neither parents nor children completing high school. IPS claims an official graduation rate of 90 percent. District administrators, however, admit the number is lower -- shockingly lower.

IPS Board President Kelly Bentley, in a meeting with editorial writers, pegged the district's graduation rate at 28 percent. A Star Editorial Board analysis found a 35 percent completion rate for the class of 2004. National and local researchers report IPS graduation rates ranging from 28 to 47 percent, depending on the formula used. Manual High School Principal Ken Poole admits that "what we're doing right now is not working." It's not for lack of trying.

* Manual freshmen who didn't make it out of middle school until age 16 -- and other at-risk students -- are put under the watchful eye of Shirl Miller-Smith, who keeps tabs on their grades and attendance as the "mother hen" of the Alpha Program.
* To keep students from skipping class, they're put to work tending children in Manual's all-day kindergarten.
* Social workers scour neighborhoods to find students who haven't shown up for class. Occasionally, they pick them up and drive them to school.

Yet, on average just 125 -- 27 percent -- of the 450 freshmen who enter Manual in a typical school year progress to their senior year on time. One freshman, David Kline, who turns 16 this month, already declares, "I'll finish this year out and then that'll probably be it."

Manual's "promotion power," or ninth- to-12th grade attrition rate, is the worst in the state. In fact, all five IPS high schools promoted less than 60 percent of their freshmen to seniors on time. IPS fares worse than school systems in New York City, Detroit and Chicago. "This is the first district I have seen where all high schools are doing this poorly," said Robert Balfanz, a Johns Hopkins University researcher who analyzed the data for The Star.

More here



FRENCH EDUCATION BEING DESTROYED BY ISLAM

France's educational system appears headed towards meltdown. An article by Olivier Guitta in the May 9th Weekly Standard reports that a leaked study conducted between October 2003 and May 2004 under the auspices of France's inspector-general of education, Jean Pierre Obin, describes an educational system that is cracking under the strain of a growing, non-assimilating Muslim population.

Orbin sent ten inspectors to examine 61 schools in 24 school departments, most of which were located in ethnically segregated neighborhoods. The inspectors found two consistencies in these schools: an increase in Muslim religious expression and an across-the-board denial, from classroom to regional administration, that the incursion of Islam into the classroom is creating serious problems for students.

Orbin found that Muslim students regularly boycott classes that concern Voltaire, Rousseau and Moliere, whom the students accuse of being anti-Islamic. The students also protest the Crusades and frequently deny the Holocaust. Orbin's report cites Muslim students' refusal to use the "plus" sign in mathematics because it looks like a crucifix; Muslims boycotting class trips to churches, cathedrals and monasteries; and forcing wholesale changes in school lunch fare to accommodate their religious and cultural practices. The report mentions a teacher who keeps a copy of the Koran on her desk for reference when controversial historical issues arise. Obin's investigators also found that most Muslim students refuse to participate in sports such as swimming, "the girls out of modesty, the boys because they do not want to swim in girls' water or non-Muslim water."

Unsurprisingly, one of the problems faced by the schools cited in the Orbin report is rampant anti-Semitism. In these schools, the term "Jew" has become an insult, even among the youngest students. Orbin's investigators reported that teachers generally ignore this problem, attributing it to "the youth culture," instead of addressing it head-on. Jewish students and those students thought to be Jews are increasingly being assaulted by Muslim students. Because of this, many Jewish students are forced into switching schools or hiding their identities.

Predictably, the biggest losers in the schools where Islam has made inroads, are women. Female students are intimidated by young Muslim men assuming the role of religious police who forbid them to play sports, wear skirts or makeup and force them to wear traditional Muslim headscarves, even though official French policy forbids the wearing of headscarves in public schools. When called to the blackboard, some female Muslim students even put on long coats for fear of retribution from their male Muslim counterparts. Obin's investigative team found that most female Muslim students were too frightened to tell them what their punishments would be if they disobeyed these unwritten rules.

Interestingly enough, the investigators found that the schools most effective in dealing with the problem of Islamization were the ones that completely refused to tolerate it. Because of this finding, the Obin report recommends a policy of "no compromise with Islamist demands." The question is, will France have the stomach to implement Obin's recommendation? Its feeble reaction to the race riots that occurred on March 8, 2005 in response to proposed educational reforms provides a possible answer.

Source



Supporting the troops? Not on campus: "It's been a tough couple years for America's antiwar movement. Unable to effect change at the ballot box and frustrated by the lack of popular support for its agenda, the antiwar crowd has turned its sights on the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and other military recruitment on college campuses across the country. It's becoming increasingly common for antiwar activists to stage protests and disruptions at college job fairs involving military recruiters. ... Of course, there's absolutely nothing wrong or illegal with exercising one's First Amendment rights and staging a peaceful protest on campus. But activists are not content to simply protest the presence of military recruiters. ... In San Francisco and Santa Cruz, mobs of protesters disrupted job fairs, forced military recruiters to leave and succeeded in either significantly delaying or shutting down the entire event."

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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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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18 May, 2005

THE BRITISH VERSION OF "SCIENCE"

The science that all pupils study from the age of 14 is to focus more on "lifestyles", general knowledge and opinion and less on chemistry, biology and physics, says the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. It published a "revised programme of study" that will govern the content of GCSE from 2006, to "ensure increased choice and flexibility for pupils so that they can study science relevant to the 21st century".

Instead of learning science, pupils will "learn about the way science and scientists work within society". They will "develop their ability to relate their understanding of science to their own and others' decisions about lifestyles", the QCA said. They will be taught to consider how and why decisions about science and technology are made, including those that raise ethical issues, and about the "social, economic and environmental effects of such decisions". They will learn to "question scientific information or ideas" and be taught that "uncertainties in scientific knowledge and ideas change over time", and "there are some questions that science cannot answer, and some that science cannot address".

Science content of the curriculum will be kept "lite". Under "energy and electricity", pupils will be taught that "energy transfers can be measured and their efficiency calculated, which is important in considering the economic costs and environmental effects of energy use".

More here



PHILADELPHIA GRADUALLY GOING PRIVATE

Maxcine Collier had been principal of the 400-student Anderson Elementary School in Southwest Philadelphia for five years when, in 2001, she was told that a for-profit company, Edison Schools Inc., was going to take over the school's management from the Philadelphia School District. Parents and teachers were apprehensive, she said. But more than three-quarters of Anderson's students were performing below grade level, according to Pennsylvania state testing standards. The school, in a neighborhood that borders suburban Upper Darby, housed many special-education students from other parts of the city. "There was no cohesiveness. Many of the children were from elsewhere, and they didn't bond, which hurts education, especially in urban settings," Collier said. "We knew something had to be done better."

Three years later, Collier said, Edison's curriculum, particularly in math and writing, has doubled the number of children who reach state proficiency levels and has unified her teachers. "We still have a long way to go, but I can see already we are on the right track," she said.

Last month, the Philadelphia School Reform Commission, which runs the nation's fifth-largest school district, awarded contracts to Edison to operate two more public schools, in addition to the 20 it gave the company three years ago. The 20 schools were considered among the worst performing elementary and middle schools in the city -- many with less than 10 percent of students at grade level -- and the district was seeking ideas on how to improve them. Though six other organizations, including Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania, were given contracts to manage schools, it is Edison that has taken the lead and come under the most scrutiny as the third academic year of Philadelphia's school "privatization" trial ends next month. Edison, which manages five charter schools in the District of Columbia, has the largest number of Philadelphia schools under its supervision and is the only provider to be offered more by the commission this year.

It has been loudest at proclaiming its purported successes and, perhaps only because it is the largest, taken the brunt of the criticism. It almost went out of business in 2001 when Wall Street traders dropped its stock to less than $1, contending that Edison could not survive managing a mere 20 schools. Edison has since been taken private and asserts that it is solvent. "I think a lot of people in public education around the country have been watching us," said Chris Whittle, Edison's chief executive. "It is in Philadelphia where the movement of outside management of schools is most advanced, and Edison is in the lead here. It is our most high-profile commitment ever, and we accept the criticism and praise that will come."

The privatization movement in Philadelphia was an outgrowth of an agreement between then-Gov. Mark Schweiker, a Republican, and Mayor John F. Street, a Democrat, that the state would offer more funding for the city's schools if it had more control over how they were run. The state appointed the School Reform Commission, which essentially runs the district, with James Nevels, an influential attorney and head of an investment firm, as its chairman.

Critics, including the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, which represents most of the unionized employees in the district, complained that Edison would reassign teachers willy-nilly. After much wrangling, Edison did not get the exclusive contract it wanted, and the teachers union continued to represent teachers and principals. Though many experienced teachers transferred out of the Edison schools, all the schools began that first year fully staffed. "There was a concern at the time that Edison wouldn't be solvent, but I am a pension manager and did the due diligence and determined they would be viable," Nevels said. "It has turned out marvelous, too. There was a lot of outcry at the beginning, which isn't all bad. But when we awarded the two schools to Edison at the April meeting, there was nary a peep."

Nevels and Richard Barth, Edison's manager in Philadelphia, said that based on a standardized state test, grade-level proficiency in the schools Edison manages has increased from 6 percent to 21 percent of students in the first two years of the contract.

More here



FUNDAMENTAL FLAWS IN PUBLIC EDUCATION

From his address at the nation's governors' conference, I give you Bill Gates: "American high schools are obsolete," he said, adding, "By obsolete, I don't just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed and underfunded.... By obsolete, I mean that our high schools-even when they are working exactly as designed-cannot teach our kids what they need to know today.".....

As a matter of historical fact, our public education system was designed two centuries ago, in large part, to honor a racist public policy. This was well researched and reported in the late E. G. West's book, Education and the State (Institute for Economic Affairs, 1965). Private schools were doing just fine, providing what markets provide in exceptionally efficient and, indeed, wise ways: a highly diverse approach to teaching students, not the statist and mainly one-size-fits-all approach, but they also did something very benign and decent-in their diverse and decentralized way they extended their services to all races and religions. But the politicians at the time couldn't stomach this, so they decided to impose a public education system that would be appropriately racist and discriminatory, to fall in line with the prevailing mainstream public philosophy of racism. The result is what we see now, a defunct public education system, defunct not because of some recent mistakes, as Mr. Gates contends, but because of a fundamental flaw in it, its association with government.

Most of us who have gone through the various stages of American public education may not realize this but we have been part of a massive collectivized system, not unlike one the Soviet Union would have championed and from which, in time, it choked to death. Elsewhere public education remains partly functional only because it tends to be highly elitist and does not aim, as it does in America, to accommodate the egalitarian pedagogical philosophy of providing everyone with schooling, nearly to the level of a guaranteed college degree.

The bottom line is that education, like all other productive, creative services in society, is better off decentralized, privatized. Sure some will have to seek out special help, but so do some as they seek to satisfy their clothing, housing, or nutritional needs. Nonetheless, once we abandon the fantasy that everyone needs to be subjected to the same schooling and everyone needs to have his property taxed so as to support this contorted system, the sort of hopes Mr. Gates, and others, with different but equally legitimate agendas for young people, are voicing will no longer have to go unsatisfied. There will be plenty of schools responding to the varied needs to American students and the opportunities that face them in all the disciplines of education. There will, in short, be entrepreneurship in education, as there is in the software industry.

No doubt, this approach is going to be dismissed with total disdain by some-first, by the people who are wedded in their thinking to how government is the solution to all human problems, and, second, by those who are currently mindlessly employed by the state educational systems across the country and care not a whit for proper schooling but mostly for their continued steady employment, not unlike those who have worked for defunct and misguided-and indeed more or less unjust-institutions throughout human history. But they really aren't the best source of wisdom about what young human beings need in the way of an educational alternative to what we have now, an evidently bankrupt one

More here

***************************

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"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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17 May, 2005

SOME DELIBERATELY MISLEADING RESEARCH:

This week a new empirical study claiming to show that public schools do a better job than private schools has made a big media splash. But the study is deeply misleading. The authors make claims their statistical method can't possibly justify. And if you guessed that the study got off the ground with help from the educational status quo, you'd be right. If there's one thing education research has shown, it's that private schools do a better job than public schools. The consensus in favor of this among empirical studies is as strong as on anything in education-policy research. Indeed, this is just the sort of thing that makes people wonder why we social scientists spend so much time doing empirical studies to prove things that everybody already knows.

Well, one reason we do it is to counteract the effects of propaganda and bad research. This new study, conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois, was first published by an openly anti-voucher think tank located at Columbia University's Teachers College. It's getting media play now because it was picked up by the journal of Phi Delta Kappa, a professional organization for teachers. The authors themselves make no bones about what their real target is. One author told the Christian Science Monitor that their study "really undercuts a lot of those choice-based reforms." Translation: People only support vouchers because they don't realize that private schools are actually worse than public schools.

Another reason why the study is getting attention is owing to its size: The data set includes 23,000 students. People tend to assume that a big study is automatically good. But the same rule applies in research as in so many other things: size does matter, but technique matters a lot more. The researchers take raw test scores from isolated years and apply statistical controls for race, socioeconomic status, and disabilities. While the raw scores are higher in private schools, they find that once you apply the statistical controls public-school students actually have higher test scores. They characterize this as evidence that public schools do a better job than private schools. In fact, it shows nothing of the kind.

The main problem is that they use scores from isolated years. That is, they take a snapshot of student achievement rather than tracking achievement over time. While they do take snapshots from different years, they have no way to track students from one snapshot to the next, which is no better in practice than taking just one snapshot. This is important because if you don't track students over time, you can't establish a causal connection between the type of school a student attends (public or private) and test scores. In other words, their data have nothing to say about the relative quality of public and private schools.

A much more likely explanation for the latest study's results is that when students enter private schools, they tend to have test scores a little lower than other students of their race and socioeconomic status. That seems counterintuitive, because people are used to thinking of private-school students as privileged. And so they are - because of their race and socioeconomic status. But that's precisely what this study controls for. In fact, it makes perfect sense that within each racial and socioeconomic group it's the low performers whose parents will be motivated to make the sacrifices necessary to put them in private schools. What counts is whether those students make better or worse gains over time after they enter private school - and that's just what this study can't tell us. I could go on, but instead I'll let the authors explain it for themselves. Buried in the back of the study, they write:

NAEP data [the test score set they use] do not allow for examinations of growth in achievement over time, nor do they include information about student movement between school sectors. Therefore, correlations between school sector and achievement are not demonstrably causal. In other words, one cannot conclude from this analysis that public schools are more effective at promoting student growth than private schools.

Read that last sentence again: One cannot conclude from this analysis that public schools are more effective at promoting student growth than private schools. So what about all the huffing and puffing in the front of the study - "At this time when market-style reforms are chan