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31 October, 2005

A SKEPTICAL VIEW OF THE LATEST BRITISH EDUCATIONAL REFORM PROPOSALS

UK prime minister Tony Blair's latest education reforms, designed to give schools more 'autonomy', have caused something of a controversy within his own government. Blair says that his plans represent a 'pivotal moment' for schools, and the move has been widely seen as an attempt by the prime minister to revive his credentials as a bold reformer. Some, including deputy PM John Prescott, counter that this will flatter the middle classes while disadvantaging the poorest pupils.

Who's right? Who knows. Blair's big reform, with its rhetoric of expanding parental choice and new freedoms from local authority control, clearly is a sop to the middle classes, whose desperate search for control over the minutiae of their child's education has been widely noted and frequently ridiculed. Then again, given the empty character of these reforms, it is doubtful whether poor children will find themselves really disadvantaged, or merely aggrieved. Whatever 'autonomy' means in Blair's dictionary, it does not mean the freedom of schools to provide a decent, rigorous, liberal education - or the ability of parents to choose such an education for their child.

The new proposals, outlined in a White Paper published today, involve allowing schools to opt out of direct control by local education authorities (LEAs), allowing schools themselves to decide how pupils are selected and the courses and teaching methods they offer. Under this new regime, promises Blair, every school 'who want[s] it' will be able to transform itself into 'a self-governing independent state school', backed by businesses, faith organisations and parents' groups (1).

So it's goodbye to the state-run bog-standard comprehensive, and hello to a kind of private education on the cheap, where a certain kind of parent can choose the school he or she wants without shelling out thousands in fees. 'What we do have to do is raise aspiration and get people to think about the education that best suits them, put their parents in the driving seat, as it were, so that parents can exercise real choice', said education secretary Ruth Kelly (2). If you are the kind of parent who wants the best for your kids, goes the argument, you will want to put in the time and emotional energy required to tailor-make their education. And if you want to tailor-make their education, you should be allowed to do so.

But is a good parent one who wants to insinuate him or herself into every detail of a child's education? What if parents would prefer to spend their home life playing with their kids and introducing them to new experiences, rather than hunching over a revision guide or ferrying them from one extra-curricular hot-housing activity to another? Yes, many parents have become quite obsessed with their children's schooling, and demand more involvement. But part of this is because the education system has become so chaotic and mediocre that they do not feel able simply to let the schools do their job; part of it is because politics has narrowed so much that parents increasingly try to live their lives and achieve their ambitions through their chilren. Either way, for the government to pretend that parental involvement in schools is not a necessary evil but something that parents really really want is a typically dishonest manoeuvre.

And what does 'opting out' of state control really mean, anyway? If a bunch of parents were to opine that teachers were spending far too much time and energy on teaching kids about safe sex and healthy eating and scrutinising them for potential signs of trouble at home when they should be teaching Latin instead; if they were to decide that their schools' meals did not in fact have to be healthy, organic, locally sourced and expensive, and that children would do better to provide their own lunches; if they were to argue for a return to frowned-upon methods of classroom discipline, like the odd telling off; if they were to rule that basic literacy and numeracy targets were a waste of time and should be replaced by the whole-class teaching of entire Shakespeare plays and the recitation of multiplication tables..

If one of Blair's new parent-power schools were to decide that what they wanted for their pupils was a traditional liberal education, would they have the freedom and autonomy to go down that route? It's hardly likely, given that for every mention of 'autonomy for schools' the government brings in at least two other policies exercising more central control over what children eat, how teachers teach, how schools structure their timetables and how parents help their children with their homework. When it comes to education, the New Labour administration just can't leave it alone. This is the politicisation of education, and its consequences are equally terrible for all.

There are many criticisms to be made about the comprehensive school system, just as there are about the grammar school system that preceded it. But both, at least, were coherent systems of education, rooted in a distinct educational philosophy. The New Labour approach, by contrast, continually presents education policy as a means to instrumental ends - social inclusion, the politics of behaviour, flattery of its core voters among the middle classes.

Having destroyed the ethos of education, through insisting that schools play a greater role in everything from healthy eating to bullying prevention to teenage pregnancy reduction, the government now intends to abdicate responsibility for a school's performance on the learning front

Source



Anti-bullying programs for all schools

Good if they can make it work

AUSTRALIAN Government schools which don't adopt anti-bullying programs from next year may lose their funding, the Federal Government said today. Education Minister Brendan Nelson, speaking via video to the second conference of the National Coalition Against Bullying (NCAB), said there would be reporting requirements for all schools to show how they were tackling the issue from January. "Research shows that one child in six is bullied by peers each week in Australian schools," Mr Nelson said. "Up to 50 per cent of children have been bullied in the past year. Victims of bullying are two to three times more likely to contemplate suicide than their peers and school bullies are four times more likely to engage in serious criminal activity as adults. "This disturbing research was the catalyst for the development of the National Safe Schools Framework."

A spokesman for Mr Nelson said the Government had allocated $4.5 million to implement the framework. The Government's four year school funding program would be contingent on schools participating. "It is a condition of the Government's $33 billion school funding program that schools implement the anti-bullying strategy," he said.

NCAB chairman and former chief justice of the Family Court, Professor Alastair Nicholson, said victims of bullying were more prone to depression and poor academic results. "For the bully it can mean an equally uncertain life that is likely to involve a breakdown in relationships, possible criminality and a lifetime habit of controlling those who are weaker and more vulnerable, thus perpetuating the problem," he said.

Prof Nicholson said a good friend had recently confided in him about his experience of bullying and sexual abuse at a boarding school during the 1960s. His friend told him it had "left him without a partner, no kids and no trust in love or relationships". "I felt enormously sad when I heard this story," Prof Nicholson told delegates. "But it made it even clearer to me that we are on the right track in tackling this problem and seeking to prevent yet another generation of children being subjected to this sort of treatment."

Source



NYC: Poor kids shun tutoring: "More than 84 percent of poor students in the city's worst schools entitled to free tutoring this year have not signed up for the benefit, according to city Department of Education data released yesterday. Education officials said the agency has received applications for tutoring from 32,307 of the 205,322 kids who are eligible because they attend schools funded by federal poverty aid and failed to meet state standards. Under the No Child Left Behind Law, students in such schools may transfer to a better school or get tutored for free. The percentage of eligible kids whose parents do not sign them up prior to the start of the tutoring service has crept up slightly in each of the last two years, prompting criticism the city does not do enough to promote the benefit".

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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 October, 2005

TEACHING THE TEACHERS IS A FARCE

Educational reformers had reason to take heart earlier this year when Arthur Levine, the president of Columbia University's Teachers College, issued a report blasting the nation's schools of education. You can't go wrong attacking ed schools, even if you're the head of a famous one yourself. Mr. Levine singled out the "inadequate to appalling" graduate programs in educational leadership and called for the abolition of the Ed.D. degree. These programs, he asserted, suffer under the weight of lax admissions standards, weak faculties and inappropriate degree requirements and are often cynically used by their host universities as "cash cows." A rather bold bit of truth-telling on his part; and apparently there are three more such scathing reports coming from Mr. Levine, as part of a project underwritten by the Annenberg, Ford, Kauffman and Wallace Foundations.

Now, one shouldn't get too excited and expect such daring words to generate perestroika in the closed and self-perpetuating universe of ed schools. Mr. Levine deliberately refrains in his report from naming any specific institutions that are failing. Moreover, his enthusiasm for reform has somehow not extended to any effort to get his own institution to eliminate the Ed.D. In fact, Mr. Levine has played his reformist cards so close to the vest that his own faculty and students appear to have been shocked, and bitterly upset, to find out that he believed such things. So real change is going to be glacial at best. But still, it's encouraging to see such a notable figure in the education world begin to acknowledge how much is amiss in the way this country teaches teachers.

In keeping with this candor, we should acknowledge that there are similar deficiencies in graduate education in nearly all academic fields, across the board. Those professors who like to look down their noses at the ed schools and call for their elimination would do well to look in the mirror first. For one of the most striking deficiencies in American graduate training, in fields ranging from history and literary studies to physics and psychology, is the appalling inattention given to teaching--that is, to precisely the work that newly minted Ph.D.s will be expected to engage in for the rest of their careers. If, that is, they're lucky enough to get an academic job at all.

In fact, the problem goes beyond inattention. In the best graduate institutions, students are socialized into the view that teaching is a lowly activity. This view is everywhere reinforced by the willingness of universities to use graduate teaching assistants and untenured adjunct faculty to carry more and more of the instructional load.

It's a wonder that there are as many outstanding college teachers as there are. In my own graduate years, I saw eager-beaver teaching assistants subtly encouraged by their advisers to cool it and spend as little time as possible on their teaching, lest they be taken for unserious and unscholarly lightweights. They were there to do research and eventually to get jobs like. . .well, like those of their advisers, in which the teaching responsibilities are dumped on lowly graduate students.

In effect, most American graduate schools prepare students for jobs that they will never have and fail to prepare them--even conveying disdain--for the jobs that they will most likely have. No area of American higher education is more in need of reform, and none is less likely to receive it. As our chief means of forming college teachers, graduate education could hardly be more dysfunctional if we had set out to make it that way.

The result can be seen in every American college and university, where good teaching is rarely recognized and even more rarely rewarded. But this state of affairs may not continue indefinitely, as a new force for reform could come from the outside, from the consumer. William Strauss and Neil Howe have recently argued in the Chronicle of Higher Education that with tuition and the resulting debt reaching surreal levels, and colleges and universities failing to reverse the post-1960s collapse of academic standards, parents and students are increasingly skeptical about the value of a college education.

Parents born after 1961, Messrs. Strauss and Howe have found, experienced that collapse of standards in their own college educations and are determined not to tolerate another overpriced and underperforming disappointment for their own children. This is the generation that "propelled school choice, vouchers, charter schools, home-schooling and the standards-and-accountability movement." These parents will be more likely to treat higher education as a market, in which smart buyers exercise discretion.

Academics tend to be contemptuous of markets, which is why the for-profit University of Phoenix is their bete noire. But markets will do a better job of sorting these things out, at least in some aspects, than the accredited professionals who, after all, merely respond to a system that rewards time spent on research and scoffs at time spent on teaching. Such incentives need to change.

It will be a good thing if parents and students become more demanding, and it will be a very good thing if more sources of information are made available to them about what constitutes good teaching and where it is taking place--and not taking place. There is a huge and completely unanswered need for college guides that are as frank, intelligent and unsparingly honest about the quality of undergraduate instruction as consumer guides are about, say, cars and stereo equipment. Unless, that is, we think of higher education as nothing more than a credential and a badge, a source of social prestige that we buy for ourselves and our kids. In that case, we will continue to get what we pay for.

Source



BRITAIN: "LEARNING TO LEARN" IS THE LATEST EXCUSE FOR A FAILURE TO TEACH

Contemporary educational thinking is obsessed with the question of method. Hardly a month goes by without weary teachers being exhorted to adopt another brain-based, evidence-informed or student-sensitive technique. At the same time, the once privileged position of knowledge, and by extension the teacher, is being questioned. To raise standards in the future, it is said that the student and his learning must take centre stage.

One proposal that neatly encapsulates the elevation of method and diminution of content is the idea that schools should teach pupils how to learn. Advocates of the 'learning to learn' agenda have been warmly received within policy circles. Schools minister David Miliband has referenced the idea in a number of key speeches, and reports commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) (3) have addressed the notion. Techniques associated with learning to learn have also been piloted in schools.

The learning to learn agenda can be broken down into two core propositions and one proposal. Proposition one states that the world in which we live is changing with such rapidity as to render traditional canons of knowledge redundant. Following from this, proposition two asserts that teaching that aims to transmit knowledge will fail to equip pupils for the world in which we live. Finally, the supporters of learning to learn propose that schools should adopt teaching techniques that encourage students to focus on their own learning. By doing so, they will develop the skills and attitudes required to adapt to an uncertain future.

If we address these points in reverse order, we will see that there are a number of reasons why educationalists might want to question this agenda.

A vast array of teaching techniques has been included under the banner of learning to learn. These include generic approaches to marking student work and providing them with structured feedback, as well as teaching methods which claim to be based on neuroscience. Strategies that attempt to modify directly students' attitudes towards learning, as well as methods of organising classroom activities using real-life problems and extended projects, have also featured.

Some of the approaches are quite sensible. In terms of assessment it is right, for example, that teachers should explain their grading and provide pupils with a sense of how their work might be improved. Equally, practitioners must take care that the messages they transmit, both formally and informally, do not encourage the less able to reach the conclusion that they are incapable of development.

But while some of these approaches have been tested with impressive results, a recent report produced for the DfES makes it clear that there is nothing close to a unified, commonly accepted definition of learning to learn. Rather, there exists a miscellaneous set of attributes and approaches that have been grouped together on the arguably tenuous basis that they all encourage pupils to consider the how, as opposed to the what, of learning. A concept this baggy is unlikely to make for clear curriculum development.

While the overall coherence of the notion of learning to learn might be questioned, it is possible that it could become more focused and refined through the process of implementation and evaluation. This project would have a sound footing if the rest of the learning to learn agenda were valid. So is it true that existing forms of teaching ill-equip pupils for the future? And is the world in which we live changing so fast as to call into question the position of received knowledge?

The advocates of learning to learn evidently take a rather dim view of forms of schooling in which the teacher and their subject-knowledge have been the organising principle. The suggestion that teachers should address how students learn implies that this has not been a concern in the past. Some advocates of learning to learn seem to believe that many teachers exhibit a rather self-indulgent preoccupation with their own knowledge. Others argue that the dialogue between teachers and students has been frustrated by the lack of a commonly held educational vocabulary.

Certainly, there is some truth to the claim that our ability to make explicit the process of learning has been encumbered by the collective ignorance of educational ideas. But the suggestion that teachers have been so fixated with their knowledge as to have shown little regard for their pupils' learning is little more than a stereotype. This might describe ineffective teachers, but the effective delivery of subjects necessarily draws teachers into a discussion of the means of education, be that study skills, revision techniques, or the procedures that are specific to their discipline. In doing so, teachers involve their pupils in a discourse about their learning, even if they haven't dubbed it learning to learn.

This leaves us with the final component of the learning to learn agenda: the notion that rapid change is making received knowledge redundant. Advocates of learning to learn concede that some rudimentary areas of knowledge should still be taught, such as the practical elements of maths and English. And they acknowledge that most students only learn about their learning in response to significant content, even if it's of little practical or lasting value. But no purpose is served, they conclude, by compelling students to engage with more challenging areas of the curriculum, such as Shakespeare, if this results in them developing negative attitudes towards learning in general.

I would suggest that advocates of learning to learn have got it wrong on both counts. If we accept the growing rapidity of social change - which is unlikely given the parlous state of contemporary politics - then knowledge in fact becomes more, not less, important. In a period of flux it may be true that past ideas provide no easy solutions to the problems of the present, but they enable one to frame these problems in their specificity. In contrast, ignorance leaves one lacking the perspective required to differentiate between problems that are old and resolved and those that are really new and require innovative thinking.

And while the proponents of learning to learn are right to suggest that many students find the more advanced areas of the curriculum remote and unforgiving, they are wrong to argue that we should organise on this basis. The fact that many students experience aspects of the curriculum in this way is a sad testimony to their diminished conception of themselves and the failure of the schooling they have experienced. Our response should be to make a more compelling case for knowledge and general education. And to make this case convincing, we need to do more than appeal to the past or to the notion of eternal truths.

(From Spiked)

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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 October, 2005

DISDAIN FOR KNOWLEDGE

Cognitive scientists are generally agreed that one of the most important faculties of the human brain and its associated sensory apparatus is the ability to detect patterns. It is patterns that make the world intelligible, that carry meaning, that make it possible for the past to be a guide to the future. So primordial and so powerful is this faculty, however, that it brings with it also a large capacity for error, for imputing patterns where there are none, or at least none that are meaningful.

It is with that in mind that I hesitate to claim that I have detected a pattern in some things that I have read lately. But denying that there is a pattern in these bits of published news and opinion strains my bump of skepticism. See what you think.

1. A student at the University of Iowa published an opinion piece in the campus newspaper titled "On schooling's useless lessons." The upshot was that she is in college to qualify for her chosen profession and cannot understand why she is required to take courses in subjects she deems irrelevant to her goals. Listen:

"[M]ost students aren't going to be mathematicians, historians, or chemists. So why do we have to take these classes?...

"Not only did the gen-ed classes waste my time and money, but they also hurt my GPA..Statistics and astronomy bored me, so I opted not to attend class and neglected to study for them..As it turned out, my GPA was below3.0 after my first year. I had to take summer classes to raise it..I cannot imagine what I would have done if I were not admitted [to my chosen professional course]. I would have had to change my major.

"How is this fair?"

If that doesn't break your heart, you're made of sterner stuff than I.

2. A week later an AP wire story appeared in my local newspaper, informing me that an heiress to the Wal-Mart fortune has surrendered her 2004 degree from the University of Southern California after a classmate revealed that she had done the Walton scion's homework for over three years, netting about $20,000 for her efforts.

3. Same day. New York magazine published an article that opens thus:

"This story begins, as it inevitably must, in the Old Country.

"At some point during the tenth century, a group of Jews abandoned the lush hills of Lucca, Italy, and -- at the invitation of Charlemagne -- headed for the severer climes of the Rhineland and Northern France."

The author is a frequent and, presumably, trusted contributor, and New York magazine is, so far as I know, a respectable publication. So who was responsible for fact-checking? If you haven't caught it yet, here's the problem: Charlemagne died in 814 CE. No one is expected to know that particular fact, but many generally educated persons might recall that he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor at Christmas in 800. This would make his survival into the tenth century highly unlikely on the face of it.

Two points define a line; are three sufficient to establish a trend? Let me just note that the student's intended major was journalism; that the heiress's degree was from the Annenberg School for Communication at USC; and that, obviously, the New York author is a working journalist. One, already in the business, evidently doesn't know a simple fact of history (and didn't check it out). The other two have made quite manifest, in their distinctive ways, their disdain for knowledge.

But my aim is not to disrespect journalists or the schools in which they train. The problem I am suggesting is far wider. Thus my last piece of evidence:

4. Same day. The Wikipedia, an online project to create an encyclopedia by means of contributions and editing by volunteers, irrespective of their knowledge of their subjects or ability to write coherently, has just lately begun to come to grips with the fact that some substantial proportion of the articles thus generated are substandard. They have therefore launched "Project Galatea," whose aim is to have still more self-selected volunteers impose "large-scale, sweeping stylistic improvements." Note that the improvements hoped for are stylistic, not a matter of accuracy or adequacy. In the "Philosophy" of the project, prospective stylists are told this:

"While there is no need to be an expert on the article you're working on (in fact, there are some advantages to being completely ignorant of the subject to start with), by the time you're done, you will have at least a working knowledge of the topic."

Another point, spang on my line. How worried ought I to be? How worried are you?

Here is what I wonder: Whence this notion that citizens, especially those who aspire to careers of informing the rest of us, need not bother with what once would have been considered the common body of knowledge? And where on earth did the idea arise that knowledge might actually be a hindrance?

I do not blame computers or the Internet. Well.except for one thought that gives me pause. How is it that these tools that were to make achieving our lofty goals easier have instead been commandeered to move the goal posts?

What or whom then to blame, if any? Nicholas Carr has written lately in his blog "Rough Type" about the other-worldliness of much of the literature of the World Wide Web and the simple, communal, yet transcendent virtues it is imagined to foster. He notes, too, the strong preference for the amateur over the professional. I'm inclined to see this as a particular instance of a more general phenomenon, the replacement of the adult by the adolescent as the paradigm citizen.

Adolescents already know all they need to know. They are uninterested in what may have come before them and confident that it did so for naught. They see instantly into the heart of the world's problems and believe them to be simple of solution. They value sincerity, authenticity, getting real, over experience or effort. Approved attitude trumps informed opinion with them, and does so by means of social pressure rather than by, say, demonstrated efficacy. And their sense of entitlement can sometimes border on solipsism.

More here



MORE ON THE NYC DISASTER

From top down, starting with Chancellor Klein, the Mayor has relied almost exclusively on non-educators to set policy about matters in which they have no expertise, but impose with raw and unmonitored power. They have abolished curriculum and replaced it with a single, mandated teaching style and methodology that has been discredited and despised by almost all educators, except those whose careers tend to prosper and wallets fatten by its advocacy.

The public has a stake in the demoralization of the entire public school professional staff citywide. Some people see educators' universal loathing for Chancellor Klein as nothing more than spoiled unionists griping because someone is finally standing up to them and showing them who's boss.

It is bad enough to show contempt for teachers in every way imaginable, plus more that nobody ever dreamed possible. But worse yet is the devastating damage being done to a whole generation of children, whose alleged educational gains under Bloomberg and Klein are fraudulently manufactured by their corrupt consultants and press agents.

The reign of Chancellor Klein, under union and sanity-busting Mayor Bloomberg, has formed many unholy alliances, among the most spectacular of which is Columbia University Teachers College. In the past, its admirers hailed TC as the high temple of progressivism. Throughout the twentieth century, with only minor exceptions for deviant professors who strayed from the party line, Teachers College could reliably be counted on to instill generations of new teachers and administrators with pure progressivist doctrine. In recent years, those who entered its hallowed halls were greeted by a bronzed head of John Dewey, the patron saint of Teachers College. Given its devotion to progressivist principle. Teachers College became home to critics of standardized testing and standardized instruction. With the advent of the Bloomberg/Klein era of education reform, Teachers College has abandoned almost all of its progressivist principles in exchange for power over the school system's instructional program and millions of dollars in grants and contracts.....

Teachers College, though it has been paid to help set the tone, is not wholly to blame for some of the bizarre and unprecedented antics of the current Department of Education. In the last hour since I started this essay for the New York Resident, I got two phone calls from bewildered teachers. One is a thirty-four year master teacher in Region 3 who was formally censured by the principal because he was sitting at his desk taking attendance during a ninety-minute class session. Teachers are under orders to be circulating around the room every minute. This teacher has for decades spent 6 hours after school for no extra pay, every day, communicating with parents, planning lessons and processing papers.

The second received a letter in his file reprimanding him for asking why it is required to use a stopwatch issued by the DOE to time precisely the mandated length of each lesson. Mayor Bloomberg is no more the "education mayor" than China is a "people's republic." The schools are suffering from a reign of terror and our children have been made into caged birds that can neither fly nor sing.

(Excerpt from another post by RedHog)



UK: Asbo bars London teenager from going to school: "A teenager has become the first youth in Britain to receive an anti-social behaviour order that bans him from going to school. The two-year Asbo on Gary Addy, 16, stops him from going within 50 metres of any educational premises in the east London borough of Newham unless he has prior permission from the headteacher. Police and officials from Newham council imposed the order last Thursday after staff at Eastlea community school in West Ham complained that the teenager assaulted them with eggs and water in July."

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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 October, 2005

How Do We Get Students Ready for College?

A lament frequently heard by college professors is that many incoming students are not ready for college-level work. Even though what passes for “college-level work” isn’t what it used to be at many institutions, professors still report that their students struggle with reading, writing, and basic math. (Lest one think that such laments are only heard at unselective, fourth-tier schools, Patrick Allitt’s book I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student, which recounts Professor Allitt’s difficulties in teaching American history at Emory University, will serve as an antidote.) The question is, what can be done about this problem?

In the October 14 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Charles B. Reed (chancellor of the Cal State system) and Kristin Conklin (a program director at the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices) address that question (“Enrolling in College, Ready or Not”). Reed and Conklin write,

After they are admitted, students must meet institutional placement standards, measured by tests that colleges require them to take. Most of those tests focus on language skills like critical reading and writing, as well as mathematics, because those skills are the foundation of further learning. If a student can’t meet certain standards, he or she must take remedial or developmental education before moving on to regular college-level course work.

Quite true, but many students who manage to pass the placement tests still have serious academic deficits, and it is an article of faith that passing a semester in remedial (“developmental” is a lovely euphemism, but I decline to use it) English or math will suffice to get a student ready for regular college studies.

The authors recognize that the solution to the problem does not lie within higher education, but rather in the years that precede it. K-12 academic standards have been eroding for years, thanks to the “best practice” notions widely taught in American education schools. Required reading on that depressing subject includes Rita Kramer’s Ed School Follies, Martin Rochester’s Class Warfare, and Cherie Pierson Yecke’s The War Against Excellence. Today, your typical high-school graduate believes that school is just a rather boring, obligatory use of his time that is tolerable only because it leads to the paper credentials necessary to unlock the door to high-paying employment. Put a lot of young people with that attitude in a classroom and a professor has little choice but to water down the material and make sure he keeps the kids entertained. On that point, one more book to read—Generation X Goes to College by Peter Sacks.

Here is what Reed and Conklin propose: “[E]ach state needs to agree on one consistent set of readiness standards for all public higher education within that state. Otherwise schoolteachers and students cannot have a clear, focused view of what being prepared for college means and how to achieve that.” A quintessentially bureaucratic approach—have public officials come up with a set of standards.

It isn’t by accident that government schooling is the way it is. Millions of teachers are doing things exactly as they believe they should—and want to. The soft, undemanding approach to education suits most of them perfectly. Why, for example, is it now rare to find a teacher who will take a red (or purple or any other color) pen to a student essay and give it severe, line-by- line scrutiny? Without that, students simply won’t learn to write well. Alas, the idea that there are rules for good writing is now regarded by writing theorists as the stuff of Neanderthals. And besides that, grading essays takes a lot of time and criticizing the way students write is apt to upset them . Even if the teacher were capable of giving students a useful writing critique (something we should not assume), it’s much easier not to bother.

State “college readiness” standards are bound to become a political game in which the end-product will be an impressive-sounding document that won’t accomplish anything. The officials and interest groups involved will find a way to say that students need to be proficient in English and math that will take up enough pages to justify all the time that went into writing the document. Whatever the standards ultimately say, the teaching of the 3Rs will continue pretty much as it has in the past. Public education, after all, is not like a business where people need to worry about losing their jobs if they don’t perform.

Speaking of public education (or more accurately, government schooling), the complaints about students who are not college-ready almost always pertain to those who have spent their K-12 years in government schools. Most children who have either attended private schools or who have been home-schooled are well prepared for anything college professors throw at them. Sometimes, in fact, those students find that college courses are too simple and boring. Private schools don’t have elaborate standards for “college readiness,” nor do parents who home-school. Somehow, though, the results are much better when the focus is on learning rather than on meeting bureaucratic standards.

Several years ago the writer Jonathan Rauch made the case for “enlightened defeatism” with respect to big government. Much as I want to hope that somehow government schooling will change its stripes and start graduating lots of students who are eager and well equipped to learn in college, I strongly suspect that enlightened defeatism is in order about that. No matter what conferences are held and what standards are written, freshman classes at most colleges and universities will continue to be largely composed of “disengaged students,” as Professor Paul Trout calls them. (See his article “Disengaged Students and the Decline of Academic Standards,” Academic Questions, Spring 1997.)

For decades educational “progressives” have been promoting the idea that institutions need to adjust to the supposed needs and desires of the students. That is the implicit message in all the talk about “learning styles” and “multiple intelligences”—schools must conform to their students. To suddenly do an about-face and insist that students and teachers must adjust to some definite set of college-readiness standards is simply too jarring to imagine.

Source



British schools 'should be allowed to punish disruptive pupils'

What an original thought!

TeachersS must be given explicit legal rights to punish pupils and to restrain unruly children by "reasonable force", ministers will be told today. A government task force on behaviour in schools will say that present powers to maintain discipline are too vulnerable to legal challenge. It will also press for schools to be given rights to seek orders from magistrates against any parents who are unwilling to co-operate with teachers. "Some parents and carers need to be challenged to take their responsibilities seriously," the report by 13 senior head teachers will say.

The group will call on Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, to introduce a national charter that will spell out the rights and duties of parents, pupils and teachers in keeping order in schools. Ms Kelly set up the behaviour task force this year to bring forward proposals for enforcing "zero tolerance" of indiscipline and classroom disruption. The group, led by Sir Alan Steer, the headmaster of Seven Kings High School, in Ilford, Essex, will publish its recommendations today. Details were leaked to The Times Educational Supplement.

The task force said that teachers' powers to act "in loco parentis" against unruly pupils were open to challenge. It said: "The Government should introduce a single, new piece of legislation to make clear the overall right to discipline pupils."

It welcomed the Violent Crime Reduction Bill, which gives head teachers the power to search pupils for weapons without their consent, but said that additional powers might be necessary to enable them to search pupils for stolen property and drugs.

The recommendations come two days after David Bell, the head of Ofsted, reported a slight improvement in behaviour at schools in his annual report. However, he said that disruption remained "a major problem" for some secondary schools.

When Sir Alan met Tony Blair to discuss the work of his task force, he told the Prime Minister: "We do not want to produce a report that just ends up in the filing cabinet." The report recommends changes to procedures for dealing with disruptive pupils. Parents should retain the right to appeal to an independent panel against a school's decision to expel their child. But panels should be prevented from reinstating pupils on procedural technicalities. The task force said that all schools should develop policies on the use of mobile phones by pupils. The National Union of Teachers backed the recommendations

Source



Sticking to the book

Books are better for student study than digital detritus

Yesterday The Sydney Morning Herald quoted HSC students denouncing critics of Year 12 English courses - we think they meant us. Apparently because "the media lies" it is important for young people to know what the reptiles of the press are up to, the students said. Presumably by studying episodes of the D-Generation's Frontline TV series, which is on the NSW syllabus. Or the book jacket that students in that state can study. Not the book, just the cover and publisher's blurb. Or any of the modern movies that are on course lists around the country. Or blogs and other digital resources, including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission website - which is also set for study in NSW, even though the organisation no longer exists.

Using literature to learn how to critically analyse what authors are up to should be a core component of any English course. But the world is not short of good books suited for the task. Books - not blogs, not digital ephemera, but books, the artefacts that really inquisitive students will find behind the paperback cover set for study. Reading a whole book takes time and discipline, and it is about the best way imaginable to learn how to analyse authorial intent and interpret their arguments.

But all that examining the ATSIC site will do is expose students to propaganda from an organisation that in the end represented only itself. There are all sorts of objective sources that set out the condition of indigenous Australians that could be provided to support any of the many books by Aboriginal authors about the poison of racial prejudice. The study of ATSIC is irrelevant. And The Australian believes that studying the D-Generation for advanced English courses betrays the educational interests of students and will appal parents who want kids to develop a love of literature. And if students are really interested in analysing the motives of powerful organisations, here is a question to critically consider: "The study of senior school English is shaped by a contempt for the Western canon and a belief held by education theorists that all texts are equal. Discuss."

The above is an editorial from "The Australian" newspaper (a national daily) of 22 October

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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 October, 2005

FASCIST CALIFORNIA TEACHER'S UNION

Below is a letter from two members of the CTA to all other members

In every public school in California, we teach our students about our right to freedom of speech. We teach them the value of being able to disagree, but still respect the opinions of those you disagree with. Apparently, freedom of speech is not something our union, the California Teachers Association (CTA) supports.

We wrote to you last week because we strongly disagreed with the political and financial decisions being made by the leadership of the CTA. The purpose of our email was to express a legitimate opinion and to inform our colleagues of our concerns.

Never in our wildest imagination did we believe that the CTA would threaten us with jail time for exercising free speech! Two days after we sent our email, the CTA announced that it was seeking to press criminal charges against us. This is what was reported in the Sacramento Bee:

"CTA Chief Counsel Beverly Tucker sent letters Friday asking the district attorneys of Sacramento, Alameda and Los Angeles counties to investigate the e-mails and `take appropriate action including filing criminal charges.'" (10/15/05)

This is what happens when you challenge the political agenda of our union's leadership.

They do not tolerate a different point of view and instead threaten us with criminal charges because we dare disagree with them. We will never stop speaking out on what we believe and no amount of threat or intimidation will deter us.

We can only assume CTA leadership reacted this way because we are telling you information they don't want you to know. For example, did you know that the CTA has already spent over $60 million THIS YEAR ALONE on political consultants and television ads? They have spent so much money on politics that they are seeking a $40 million loan just to keep providing basic services to teachers. According to a sworn affidavit by CTA Controller Carlos Moreno, an inability to get this loan would "cause great financial harm to CTA and affect CTA's ability to continue to deliver its current level of services to members over the long term."

How is it that our current leadership allowed our union to spend so much money on politics that it must now put itself even deeper in debt in order to provide actual services for teachers? Did you know that our leadership had a private meeting in June where they voted to raise our dues by $180 in order to cover the debt created by all of this political spending?

Our union leadership has grown quite adept at wasting our money on politics. In the past few years alone the CTA has spent over $100 million on political consultants and television ads supporting ballot measures that have NOTHING TO DO WITH EDUCATION!

Here are just a few examples, and you decide for yourself if you agree or disagree with how our leadership spends OUR MONEY. Did you know that CTA:

*Spent $10,000 fighting AGAINST the Three Strikes Law?
*Spent more than $2 million this year on ballot measures dealing with prescription drugs, state energy policy and an abandoned effort to regulate the way people buy cars?! (WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH TEACHING???!!!)
*Spent more than $2 million in 2004 in support of a losing ballot measure that would have made it easier to raise taxes?!
*Spent close to $3 million last year in a botched effort to roll back Prop. 13 and raise property taxes?! Then tried to do it again this year, spending more than $2 million, and botched that one too! (AN UTTER WASTE OF YOUR MONEY!)

Now what on EARTH does state energy policy, and shopping for cars, have to do with education? And what does it get us, as teachers in the classroom? Not a thing.

The millions they wasted on things like that abandoned car shopping campaign sure could come in handy in my classroom. Or yours.

As we mentioned, the CTA leadership is seeking criminal charges against us for sending you these emails. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with our view of the union leadership, we hope you will at least support our right of free speech to voice our opinion.

More here



AUSTRALIA'S LITERACY LAG

IS there a literacy problem with senior school English students? Not so, according to Mark Howie, head of the English Teachers Association NSW. In a paper posted on the Australian Association for the Teaching of English's website, under Latest News, Howie argues the literacy crisis is a media beat-up and that critics' concerns "have no basis in fact".

Never mind the research carried out by academics at the Australian Defence Force Academy, where 600 undergraduates had to be tested as many found it impossible to write a well structured and grammatically correct essay. Howie also appears unaware of the admission by Roslyn Arnold, dean of education at the University of Tasmania, that as many as one in 10 students undertaking teaching courses need remedial lessons as a result of inadequate writing skills.

As to why many students, after six years of secondary school, are at risk, one needs to go no further than looking at how English teaching has changed through the years and how Year 12 is examined. The NSW English (Standard) and English (Advanced) Paper I is a case in point. This week's paper provides ample evidence of how English has been dumbed down and how examinations are so user-friendly that all can succeed. Not only does the paper include numerous visual images, as writing is no longer considered privileged, but, in question one, where students are asked about a particular book, all they are asked to look at is the front and inside covers.

In addition to the concern that the comprehension questions are more suited to Year 10, also troubling is that questions such as "In what ways might the front book cover and inside book cover appeal to a potential reader" ignore the fact there may be some students wanting to argue the counter case.

The way section III is structured is also flawed in that not only are the questions so broad and nebulous that students can easily use pre-prepared answers, but none of the questions ask students to critically analyse individual texts in any substantial way.

Adrian Mitchell, head of the department of English at the University of Sydney, describes Paper I as bland and like "cold gravy". He also suggests that many of the illustrations in the paper are facile and unimaginative and that, in attempting to meet the needs of all, the paper fails to stimulate and challenge better performing students.

An interesting exercise is to compare Year 12 NSW English Paper I with equivalent papers produced during the mid-1990s. Not only did the 1995, 1996 and 1997 papers contain fewer pictures and images, with the result that students were expected to read more, but the material and the questions were more challenging.

Being able to use pre-prepared answers because of generic questions and shifting the emphasis from close textural analysis to discussing texts in terms of broad themes and ideas is also a criticism of the NSW Advanced English paper.

No matter what type of text, whether poems, plays, novels, multimedia websites, speeches or hypertexts, the same question is asked on the basis that they are of equal worth. Thus a Paul Keating speech and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission website are treated in the same way as Shakespeare's King Lear and Jane Austen's Emma.

It should be noted that the malaise represented by the adoption of what Baden Eunson, an academic at Monash University, describes as English lite, is not restricted to NSW. On comparing what is expected of students, as represented by present examination papers and what was expected from Victorian Year 12 students during the '60s, Eunson makes the point that an emphasis on teaching and assessing correct grammar, punctuation and spelling has largely disappeared.

The draft English examination being circulated as part of Western Australia's extension of outcomes based education to the senior years also represents a watered-down, critical literacy view of English. Questions such as, "Write a set of instructions for the use of the 21st century" and "Write a contribution to an online chat room in which you discuss something (for example, sport/project/hobby/film/performance/event/gaming community)" appear to have little substance or worth.

As one of the teachers contributing to the Perth-based PLATO website says: "What level of language expression, grammar and spelling would be acceptable for writing in a chat room? A student could argue that any old rubbish is acceptable, 'cz thts wot eye rte in a cht rom'."

Source



Tennessee: No. 1 reason teachers ousted is sex : "Sexual impropriety is the No. 1 reason teachers lose their licenses in Tennessee. Two in five teachers whose licenses were revoked by the State Board of Education from 2003 through the present were accused of sex-related violations or inappropriate contact with students, according to a Tennessean review of state records. In about a third of the 35 sex-related revocations, teachers who had licenses in more than one state lost their Tennessee license when they got into trouble somewhere other than Tennessee. New rules passed by the state board last week would also allow for administrators to lose their licenses if they fail to report teachers who resign after allegations emerge. The idea is to prevent problem teachers from moving from one district or state to another."

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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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26 October, 2005

BIG SHOWDOWN OVER BRITISH EDUCATION: BLAIR SOUNDS GOOD

But can he make it happen? Three different reports below:

Prime Minister Tony Blair has unveiled plans for a huge shake-up of state education - describing it as a "pivotal moment" for his last term in office. The reforms will be "irreversible" and driven by the needs of parents and pupils. They will also free schools from local authority control, he said. Teachers will have an "unambiguous right" to discipline children, he said.

But reports say Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott fears the plans will disadvantage the poorest pupils.

Public school educated Mr Blair said he had been lucky enough to have "a very privileged education", during his speech to parents in Downing Street. Outlining the reforms, he said: "We will continue to put more money into our schools, but we will also complete the reforms we began so that in time we will have a system of independent, self-governing state schools with fair funding and fair admissions." The changes would be "driven above all by the needs of pupils, the wishes of parents and the dynamism of the best teachers", he said. "We want to see that change being made irreversible."

A White Paper, to be published on Tuesday, will allow schools, not councils, to decide how pupils are selected and the courses and teaching methods they offer.

But Mr Prescott fears the plans will see the poorest pupils paying the price for making schools independent and giving parents more choice.

BBC education correspondent Mike Baker said the reforms would see the majority of schools becoming "trust" schools. These would have the "freedoms of city academies and a more arm's-length relationship with local councils", he said. They would also be backed by businesses, faith organisations and parents groups. Under the plans, local education authorities would have a more strategic role, monitoring standards and commissioning services rather than running schools.

The paper will also see transport subsidies for poorer pupils and school choice advisers to help parents select schools.

They would also make it easier for independent groups to open state funded schools.

Mr Prescott has questioned whether the 17 new city academies championed by Mr Blair have raised standards. He is said to be worried about plans to bring some of the ethos of public schools to the state sector.

Ex-Labour education secretary Baroness Morris said she agreed that head teachers should have the right to manage their own schools. But she argued that Britain's most successful schools should federate with mediocre schools, giving them the leadership expertise they need to raise their standards

(From The BBC)



Blair takes a cane to the Left over school reform

TONY BLAIR has set the stage for the biggest showdown with the Left in his last term of office by promising to force through changes to enable state schools to match the best in the private sector. As left-wing MPs began mobilising against the schools White Paper, which is to be published today, Mr Blair made it plain that he would face down his critics and introduce legislation early next year to create "irreversible change" and "real parent power".

Although John Prescott is among ministers who fear that the plans might disadvantage the poor, Mr Blair said in Downing Street yesterday that complaints from the Left that the Government was privatising public services and giving too much to the middle classes were a version of the old "levelling-down mentality that kept us in opposition for so long".

Criticism from the Labour back benches was swift. Ian Gibson, the MP for Norwich North, said that he was "dismayed that all the good work that is being done could be destroyed by the changes that are taking place. "There will be a lot of people disquieted about that and there will be a lot of lobbying going on to try to row back on some of the proposals." Members of the far-Left Campaign Group are also reported to be spoiling for a fight.

Mr Blair, who appears to be relishing one of his final reforming battles, confirmed the key plans, disclosed by The Times last Monday. He said that the proposals could be taken "to their final stage". All schools are to have the same freedoms as city academies. All will be able to take on external partners and no one will be able to veto parents starting new schools or new partners coming in simply because there are surplus places locally. Mr Blair admitted that in health and education there would be, in a sense, a market. "The parent and the patient will have much greater choice. But it will only be a market in the sense of consumer choice, not a market based on private purchasing power. And it will be a market with rules. Personal wealth won't buy you better NHS service. The funding for schools will be fair and equal."

Mr Prescott has said at least twice in Cabinet that the new generation of schools run by independent charitable trusts with the power to set their own curriculums and teaching methods was promoting the "public school ethos" and discriminating against the poor. Cabinet sources said that he had secured some changes to the proposals, and that he was prepared to go along with the White Paper.

Yesterday Mr Blair insisted that the reforms would help the poorest inner-city pupils because they were aimed at schools that were underperforming and aimed at giving "as good an education in the state sector as anyone can buy in the private school system". "I have no doubt that the changes will be controversial in certain respects, but I have also no doubt that they are right for the country, and in particular right so that every child in our country, not just those from a privileged background, gets the best chance to succeed," he told parents. Mr Blair said that in two years almost all secondaries would be specialist schools, and there would be 200 academies by 2010. Academies could provide a legal model for independent state schools, with independent schools allowed to join the state system.

Under the plan it would be easier for parents to complain or to replace the school leadership. They would also have greater choice and have a say on the curriculum, meals and uniform. It should be possible to reform failing schools more rapidly, and schools should be free to seek partners such as charities, and businesses.

(From The Times)



The historical background

TONY BLAIR is said to enjoy comparisons between himself and Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister but, on schools at least, he has more in common with John Major. In September 1995 Mr Major declared that "all state schools should gain the benefits of becoming self-governing, independent schools free to parents". Mr Blair said yesterday: "We want every school to be able quickly and easily to become a self-governing independent state school."

Mr Major ran out of time, hampered by party divisions over his plan to make schools grant-maintained. Mr Blair faces opposition in Cabinet and on Labour's backbenches to his proposals. Will he also run out of time? The Prime Minister dismisses the comparison of his plans with grant-maintained schools, arguing that the latter enjoyed unfair privileges, "creating a two-tier system". The same criticism is levelled against his plans by John Prescott and Labour's traditional wing. The "parent power" reforms, they say, favour elite schools while condemning the poor to sink schools.

However, Mr Blair is clearly conscious of the impending judgment of history on his commitment of "education, education, education". His rhetoric to parents yesterday suggested that he believes this latest Education White Paper will fix the problems facing schools for all time. Government's role in future, Mr Blair said, will be to remove itself from the education system "except to help where help is needed". Will Mr Blair's successors be able credibly to promise that education is their priority when power resides in the relationship between 24,000 schools and their parents?

The White Paper faces two big questions if it is to achieve such revolutionary ends. Do parents want the power offered to them to shape the school system, and will local authorities give it up? Mrs Thatcher claimed "parent power" as a slogan before her landslide 1987 election victory. Mr Blair understands the electoral consequences of opposing consumer choice. He now seeks to make "real parent power" his legacy as Labour leader

(Comment from The Times)

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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 October, 2005

ISRAEL'S EDUCATION SYSTEM

I normally restrict my posts to cover only the three "allied" countries of the USA, the UK and Australia but I am also a great supporter of Israel. I think I am just about as Zionist as a WASP can be. So what I hear about the school system in Israel is a great sadness to me. I reproduce below an article from 2003 as background and follow it up with a current article:

The everyday threats to life and limb in Israel make it hard for Israeli policymakers and citizens alike to focus on much more than the immediate security situation. The abysmal performance of Israeli students on international educational exams, however, should be no less a source of concern about the country’s future.

Jews in Israel, it would seem, are fast becoming a glaring exception to the title ``the people of the Book." Last year’s international exams in math and reading comprehension found Jewish students in Israel lagging far behind their contemporaries in other industrialized nations.

In an international literacy test, Israeli students floundered in the bottom third of of 35 industrial states, next to such centers of learning as Slovenia and Moldava. Approximately 30% of eighth-graders in Hebrew-language schools failed the last Education Ministry reading comprehension exam, and the average grade of Jewish pupils in written expression was 56.

Over half of the eighth graders tested failed the international math exam, receiving grades from 0-45. Israel was the only country to rank in the bottom third of industrialized nations for the last three years running.

A comparison of the results of standardized international tests over the last five years shows that the gap between low achievement schools and high achievement schools has widened dramatically despite the Education Ministry’s focus on improving the performance of pupils from low achievement schools. Over that period, the gap has grown from 11 points to nearly 18.

Unfortunately the source of that increased gap has not been improved performance in schools in more affluent areas. Scores are declining across the board. Overall there has been a 10-point drop in mathematics scores, and a similar decline in reading comprehension. In 1997, the average grade of Jewish eighth-graders on international math exams was 60. Last year, the comparable figure was 50. In reading comprehension, the average score dropped from 69 to around 60.

A number of studies correlate scores of pupils in mathematics to overall national wealth. And that correlation can only be expected to grow in coming decades as human resources, rather than natural ones, play an increasingly large role in wealth creation.

To be sure, Israel is still producing its share of geniuses. Israel has been a world leader in the high-tech revolution, and Israeli science continues to be responsible for an astounding number of breakthroughs in medical research. Nevertheless, in a world in which knowledge is increasingly correlated to the ability to earn a decent living, it is not enough for a country to produce a disproportionate share of geniuses. A country where technical knowledge is not dispersed over a wide swath of the population will have difficulty attracting international investment in non-labor intensive fields, and income gaps will continue to grow.

THERE ARE NO EASY answers to the educational failure of the Israeli school system. Yet some clues as to how the overall performance of Israeli Jewish students could be improved might be garnered from the success of SHUVU, a network of independent religious schools for children from Russian-speaking homes. On the face of it, the SHUVU system would seem to have few factors operating in its favor. In general, immigrant students do even worse than the national average on mathematical exams. The average score for new immigrants on the most recent international exam was 42.

The general economic level of the students’ homes is low. Nearly half the students come from single-parent homes. Contrary to a common myth, SHUVU is not an elite system – approximately 40% of the families are from the Moslem republics of the former Soviet Union. Finally, many of the teachers in the SHUVU system are products of Bais Yaakov seminaries and lack a B.A. (The success of these teachers should perhaps force a reconsideration of the government’s refusal to recognize a Bais Yaakov teaching degree.)

Despite these negative factors, the level of math instruction in SHUVU schools is way above the national average. Using the Ministry of Education guidelines as a base, SHUVU adds another 20-25% more material each year. Dov Kaplan, a doctoral researcher in science education at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who has headed the math departments in both secular and SHUVU schools, attests that the level in the SHUVU schools is significantly higher.

When the new curriculum was instituted five years ago, teachers insisted that the goals set were impossible, but experience has shown otherwise. On a visit to a SHUVU school in Ashdod last year, Education Ministry Director-General Ronit Tirosh was shocked to find second-graders at the beginning of the school year multiplying single-digit numbers in their heads. She remarked that the SHUVU curriculum should become a model for all Israeli schools.

From the beginning of first grade, SHUVU schools work on mathematical thinking, not just rote memorization. The recent Education Ministry survey found that Israeli junior high schools are particularly weak in developing independent cognitive mathematical thinking.

Three times a year, the students are tested on all the material learned. In the lower grades, the average scores are well over 90%, and even with the addition of much more difficult material in fourth-grade, the average scores remain consistently above 85%, and never dipped below 75%. Of the 130 SHUVU students in Nahariya who participated last year in the Orange Math Olympiad for grades 6-10, 90 reached the first level of the competition, 30 made it to the semifinals, and two were finalists.

To some extent, the success of the SHUVU schools in math instruction needs no explanation. More hours are devoted to math instruction than in state schools, teachers receive classroom supervision two or three times a year, all teachers have thrice yearly training seminars, and every teacher has a hot-line to SHUVU’s methodological center in Jerusalem if problems arise in teaching the material

But Dr. Shmuel Lazinkin, head of the methodological center, attributes much of SHUVU’s success to intangible factors. Chief among these he lists the dedication of the teachers. Strikes are unknown in SHUVU schools, despite the fact that salaries are often late. Though teacher salaries are lower than in the general school system, teachers contribute many teaching hours without pay to private instruction of weaker students and those transferring from other school systems.

Equally important is the learning environment in the schools. Israeli schools have among the highest rates of violence in the Western world. Only in the United States do more students carry weapons to school. Fifteen percent of Israeli students age 11-16 come armed for ``self-protection" at least once a month. Nearly half the male students and over a third of the female students in that age group experience physical harm in a violent episode in the course of the school year.

In such a Blackboard Jungle of rampant violence and poor discipline learning becomes impossible. No wonder that in a recent study of 28 Western nations, Israeli students reported the highest levels of dissatisfaction with school.

Over the last three years, I have personally visited at least 10 SHUVU schools and the contrast to these grim statistics could not be more stark. The enthusiasm of the students is palpable. And that impression is borne out by a survey of SHUVU parents. Eighty-four per cent of the parents feel that there is less violence in the SHUVU system; nearly 80% that the cultural level is higher; and 70% that the decorum is superior. (Virtually all the rest thought the two systems were equal.) Not surprisingly, 84% of the parents report that their children enjoy school quite a lot or very much.

While the SHUVU model cannot be automatically exported to all Israeli schools, much could clearly be learned from its successes.

Source



The Ultra-Orthodox system is showing the way forward

Israel's failing education system is ripe for an educational variant of the "broken windows" theory. Our test results in math and reading comprehension increasingly resemble those of countries from which we import foreign workers. A 2003 international study revealed that the level of student satisfaction in Israel is the lowest of 28 industrialized countries. Many of these failures result from the rampant violence and general air of disrespect in schools. The status of teachers is low in the eyes of their students and society in general. According to a recent poll published by "Mishmar HaChinuch," an educational watchdog group, few parents would advise their children to consider teaching as a profession because of its low status.

Teachers themselves have contributed to their low status and lack of authority. When they come to class dressed in bare midriffs and décolletage, imitating their students imitating Britany Spears, they are viewed as figures of ridicule, not serious professionals. Two Bar Ilan professors recently found that Israeli teachers place fewer demands on their students and more readily accept sloppy work than teachers in the rest of the developed world.

A number of the new Education Ministry reforms are designed to reduce the general air of anything goes. Students are to stand when their teachers enter the room, and dress codes have been instituted for students and teachers. These reforms are straight from the haredi [ultra-Orthodox] educational system, where uniforms for girls and strict dress codes for boys are the norm. No haredi student would think of calling a teacher by his or her first name, and teachers are usually addressed in the third person. Not surprisingly, teaching is the highest status calling for haredi women, despite pay scales lower than the secular system, and one of the highest for men.

To judge by the educational marketplace, even secular parents are discovering the virtues of haredi education. SHUVU, a system originally created for Russian-immigrant children, added nearly 2,000 students this school year, 10% of them from native Israeli families and another 70 French immigrants. A SHUVU school in Kfar Saba designed for native Israelis opened last year with 28 students. Despite the sustained opposition of the municipality, the school began this school year with 122 students, as many as the building can hold. The Kfar Saba example is part of a larger pattern. In 1999, a haredi-run school with 25 first-graders opened up in Tzoran near Netanya. For the first month, the 25 six-year-olds had to run a gauntlet every morning of jeering demonstrators, some with large dogs.

The next year the school reopened in nearby Kadima with 125 students, and the third year with 300. Among those 300, were three children of the principal organizer of the original demonstrations against the school. He was so struck by the poise with which the young Bais Yaakov teachers guided their charges past the screaming demonstrators that he chose them for his own children.

Even Modi'in, a city without a single haredi resident, now has a haredi-run school (or did until two weeks ago when the city refused permission to reopen.) LeMa'an Achai started two years ago with nine students. It began this school year with 130 students, from a mixture of secular and national religious homes, in temporary headquarters in Modiin Ilit.

These schools have one thing in common: virtually all the teachers are Bais Yaakov-trained. And in each case word of mouth has enabled the schools to mushroom in size. In a survey of SHUVU parents, over 80% attribute their decision to transfer their children to the general respect for learning and lower levels of violence. In addition, they almost invariably cite the dedication of the teachers.

There is perhaps a larger lesson behind the success of haredi teachers operating in a framework of respect and authority. As we approach Rosh Hashanah, a day devoted to crowning G-d over us as King, we would do well to consider how much we suffer from the feeling of living in a hefkervelt [a world where anything goes]

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

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



24 October, 2005

BUREAUCRATS DEFEAT BLAIR

A radical plan to give parents much greater choice over the schools their children attend has been blocked by Whitehall in a humiliating rebuff to Tony Blair.

The proposal - to bring forward by several months the date at which parents apply for school places - was originally put up for inclusion in the long-awaited White Paper to be unveiled this week by Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary. The Prime Minister enthusiastically supported the move, which would have boosted pupil numbers at popular schools while less popular ones could have closed. Just weeks ago he told colleagues it would be in the White Paper.

However, the proposal was rejected by senior officials at the Department for Education and Skills, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. Instead, the paper will contain vague promises to offer more schools greater "freedom" and more "independence". Thousands of primaries and secondaries will be offered "trust" status, giving them more say over their own day-to-day affairs, while more resources will be directed at brighter children between the ages of 11 and 14 to ensure that they do not fall off the pace during their first years at secondary school.

There will also be greater emphasis on "banding" children of differing abilities, along with measures to deal with "disengaged parents" who let their children play truant and who do not do enough to make sure that homework is done properly. Ms Kelly is said to have endured a "rough ride" when she outlined the proposals to the rest of the Cabinet on Thursday. Some Left-leaning ministers protested that the measures were aimed at satisfying middle-class families and would do little or nothing to help those from disadvantaged communities. Mr Blair, however, is infuriated at the refusal by the department's leading officials to countenance the admissions plan. It would have seen parents, who currently "choose" a secondary school for their children in October or November, doing so in January of the same year.

This would have given local authorities more time to ensure that the best schools could expand to take more pupils. The Prime Minister told colleagues he was quite prepared to see worse-performing schools close if necessary.

Source



HOW E-TUTORING WORKS

A few stars are still twinkling in the inky pre-dawn sky when Koyampurath Namitha arrives for work in a quiet suburb of this south Indian city. It's barely 4:30 a.m. when she grabs a cup of coffee and joins more than two dozen colleagues, each settling into a cubicle with a computer and earphones.

More than 7,000 miles away, in Glenview, Ill., outside Chicago, it's the evening of the previous day and 14-year-old Princeton John sits at his computer, barefoot and ready for his hourlong geometry lesson. The high school freshman puts on a headset with a microphone and clicks on computer software that will link him through the Internet to his tutor, Namitha, many time zones away.

It's called e-tutoring - yet another example of how modern communications, and an abundance of educated, low-wage Asians, are broadening the boundaries of outsourcing and working their way into the minutiae of American life, from replacing your lost credit card through reading your CAT scan to helping you revive your crashed computer.

Princeton is one of thousands of U.S. high school students turning to tutors in India. "Hello Princeton, how are you? How was your test?" Namitha asks. "Hello, yeah ... I'm good," Princeton replies. "It was good."

Namitha works for a company called Growing Stars, based in Cochin and Fremont, Calif. Princeton and his 12-year-old sister Priscilla each meet with their online math teacher twice a week. The chitchat ends quickly and a geometry worksheet pops up on Princeton's computer screen. Teacher and pupil speak to one another, type messages and use digital "pencils" to work on problems, highlight graphs and erase mistakes. Princeton scrawls on something that looks like a hyped-up mouse pad and it shows up on Namitha's screen. He can also use a scanner to send copies of assignments or textbook pages that he needs help understanding. "Here we go," Princeton says, as they begin a lesson on such concepts as parallel lines and complementary angles in the quiet coziness of the family's suburban home. Above him, on the desk, sit plastic figurines of Mickey and Minnie Mouse and the Statue of Liberty. On the walls are framed photos of his family, including his grandparents who - by coincidence - live in southern India. His mom, Bessy, brings him orange juice and cookies.

"India has very good teachers, especially in math and science. Also, these subjects are culture-free so it is comparatively easy for Indian teachers to teach them," says Kiran Karnik, who heads India's National Association of Software and Service Companies. "Online tutoring is an area which shows enormous potential for growth." Most companies are reluctant to talk about earnings. But Shantanu Prakash, chief executive of India-based Educomp Datamatics, estimates that Indian online tutoring companies earned about $10 million last year, 80 percent of it from the United States. That's small change in the Indian information technology industry - a business built largely on the outsourcing that is shifting jobs from the West to cheaper, foreign locations. Annual export revenue from offshore outsourcing last fiscal year totaled $17.2 billion. But about a dozen Indian software firms are banking that online tutoring will flourish in America, where falling standards are causing concern.

The first e-tutoring businesses started less than three years ago, and already thousands of Indian teachers coach U.S. students in math, science or English for about $15-$20 an hour, a fraction of the $40-$100 that private tutoring costs in the United States. The Indian firms have benefited from the growing U.S. government-financed tutoring industry - which had revenues last year of nearly $2 billion. That growth is partly due to the No Child Left Behind law, which requires schools to test students in math and reading every year from third grade through eighth grade.

While the outsourced tutoring companies are competition for their U.S.-based counterparts, the National Education Association - a professional organization that represents millions of American teachers - "enthusiastically supports the continued and expanded use of distance education," according to a statement and its guidelines for promoting quality teaching in class and online.

However, not every child has Internet access at home, said Denise Cardinal, an NEA spokeswoman. "We think that good tutoring and good public schools should be available to every student, regardless of the family's income," she said. Princeton's family, like others with college-bound students, pays its own tutoring bills, seeing online tutoring as a way to get high-quality instruction at a lower cost.

Most full-time teachers at Growing Stars earn about $230 monthly. But while the money is good by Indian standards, what's missing is one-on-one contact. "This is a bit like teaching in a void," says Priya Shah, who helps high school students improve their English writing skills. "The lack of eye contact is a disadvantage, but it's a gap which one overcomes with time." But the work is much less stressful than teaching a class of 40 kids or more, and the tutor can adapt to the individual student's learning pace.

That was evident during Princeton's class. "Princeton, let's go over that again," Namitha says a couple times when he didn't understand, patiently redrawing a diagram on the screen. When he gets answers correct, Namitha flashes a smiley face on his screen. "Oh, I am smart," Princeton half-jokes.

The system isn't perfect. Sometimes Princeton has to repeat himself so Namitha can hear him. Or his computer freezes up. "It's so old," he says. "That's why I'm asking my dad to get a new one." But despite the glitches, Princeton's mother, Bessy Piusten, is pleased with the results, saying her children have been getting all A's and B's since they started online tutoring about two years ago.

Daughter Priscilla, who takes online algebra lessons, wants to be a neonatal physician. Princeton wants to be a pharmacist. Their mother is a respiratory therapist at a Chicago hospital, and her husband is a radiology technician.

At the end of the session, Namitha assigns Princeton problems for their next meeting. "Homework! C'mon!" Princeton protests. "Fine, fine. But without homework, life would be wonderful," he says. His little sister, who is watching, giggles. Princeton acknowledges that because of his tutor "math is now easy for me." Maybe some day, he adds, he'll be able to chat with his tutor via video screen. But either way, he prefers an online tutor over an in-person one. "If I talk back to that person, they won't do anything to me," he says, laughing. "This way is much better."

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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23 October, 2005

PRACTICAL HELP FOR HURRICANE VICTIMS MOOTED

Reps. John Boehner (R-OH) and Bobby Jindal (R-LA) today led a group of House education leaders in introducing the Family Education Reimbursement Act (H.R. 4097), an innovative proposal to assist the students and families affected by the Gulf Coast hurricanes as well as the public, private, and charter schools that have enrolled displaced students. For one year, the bill would create Family Education Reimbursement Accounts to allow families and schools to bypass existing bureaucracies and provide reimbursement to schools on behalf of children displaced by the storms.

“As the Gulf Coast rebuilding and recovery effort continues, we must not lose sight of the needs of the schools and communities that have welcomed displaced families. Public, private, and charter schools have all opened their doors to hurricane affected students, and we should put in place a simple reimbursement process for schools that cuts through the layers of bureaucracy,” said Boehner, chairman of the Education & the Workforce Committee.

"Parents know that the continued education of their children is a top priority, especially at a time such as this," Jindal said. "I am confident that, through this legislation, everyone can work together to make sure that children who have been uprooted will continue to have the educational opportunities they deserve, that their parents are empowered to make the best choices for their children, and that the communities and schools that have opened their doors to so many students are not financially punished for that generosity. This legislation will cut through the typical red tape and bureaucracy that otherwise might have hindered parents in their efforts to give their children the best education possible."

“As the recovery continues, we cannot allow red tape and bureaucracy to stand in the way of meaningful assistance for the schools that have so generously opened their doors to the students who have lost their homes, their schools, and their communities. Reimbursement accounts are a simple, straightforward plan to empower families and provide relief to the schools that have enrolled displaced students,” said Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA).

More here



NOW WHY WOULD LOONY-LEFT CALIFORNIA BE SO BAD AT EDUCATING ITS KIDS?

When it comes to mastering reading and math skills, California's students lag behind their peers across most of the country, according to results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress released Wednesday.

The test, often called the nation's report card, has been around for decades. This is the second time that every state has been required to participate under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Administered to fourth-and eighth-graders every two years, the assessment is now seen as a key indicator of No Child Left Behind's progress. Taken by 660,000 pupils nationwide, the exam shows California's fourth-graders ranked 44th in math and 48th in reading. The state's eighth-graders fared even worse: 44th in math and 49th in reading. Nationwide, 36 percent of fourth-graders have achieved proficiency in math, compared to 28 percent in California. In reading, the results are more bleak: 31 percent of American fourth-graders are proficient, compared to 22 percent of Californians.

The results also highlight the continued achievement gap between white and minority students: In California, 46 percent of white fourth-graders were proficient or above in math. But just 12 percent of African American students and 14 percent of Latinos reached that level. Nationally, math scores rose slightly, but reading scores were flat for both grades, compared with results of two years ago.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said while it's clear California must do more to improve student achievement, "there are valid reasons to question the fairness of state-to-state comparisons." In a statement, O'Connell said the exam "is not aligned to the content taught in California's classrooms." [I believe it!] He also pointed out that California has the highest proportion of English learners and tested a higher proportion of them than any other state.

No Child Left Behind supporters like Russlynn Ali say O'Connell is making excuses. "NAEP is not directly aligned to any state standards," said Ali, executive director of the Education Trust-West, an Oakland-based group that works to improve minority and low-income student achievement. "But it is regarded by experts nationwide as an assessment of the common sets of skills that students should be able to master no matter what state they live in."

While California does have a higher proportion of English learner and low-income students, who traditionally score lower on standardized tests, the state's white and affluent students didn't fare much better, Ali pointed out. For example, California's white eighth-graders only outperformed their peers in New Mexico, Mississippi and Louisiana. "For the fifth largest economy in the world, these data are simply embarrassing," Ali said.

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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22 October, 2005

AMERICAN NON-EDUCATION

A magazine cover story about postmodern life on the American college campus depicts three monkeys in cap and gown, covering their ears, eyes and mouth, a parody of the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil caricature. But students at many colleges actually get quite the opposite. They're required to hear, see, speak and study all about evil, as long as it's the evil oppression of everybody in American society.

Parents, inoculate yourselves. It may be too late for your children.

There's an emphasis on multicultural studies and few campuses have escaped the disease, and it's not yet Halloween. The title of a course taught to undergraduates in American studies at New York University, for example, is called "Intersections: Gender Race and Sexuality in U.S. History and Politics." You might think this is a strange way to get at American history. The class spends a week analyzing the murder of Teena Brandon (aka Brandon Teena), a young woman who pretended to be a man, and includes the screening of the movie, "Boys Don't Cry," the narrative version.

The following week students study the life and murder of Tupac Shakur, the "gangsta" rapper whose rough and raw lyrics glorified drugs, abusing women and the violence that finally took his life. There's "Queer Lives and Culture," "Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora," and a discussion of the relationship of gender, race and war in Haiti through the lens of "Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism." One teaching assistant of this course describes herself as an "anti-racist queer activist feminist." That covers just about everything, except the tuition for a year at NYU, which parents shell out $40,000.

Smith College, the elite school that once was only for women, and still is, sort of, has a different problem. About two dozen women who arrived as female have become male, more or less. The Financial Times reports that some of the more traditional "girls in pearls" on campus think the new "guys" should transfer to a co-ed college. Smith has long been "gay friendly," but now that girls have become "boys" Smithies joke that the school motto is "Queer in a year or your money back." It's not a joke, and it costs $37,000 a year.

Somewhere Sophia Smith is spinning. The Massachusetts woman who left her fortune to create a college where women "could develop as fully as may be the powers of womanhood" did not have a third sex in mind. Once known for their dedication to academic rigor, Smith students voted to change the school constitution to purge all "gender-specific" language. No "she" and no "her," but an all-purpose "student." The Rev. L. Clark Seelye, the first president of Smith College, said that the study of English should produce clarity of thought and expression. Other seats of higher learning have gone farther, creating synthetic pronouns, using "hir" for "her" or "his," and "ze" for "she" and "he". You thought "herstory" for "history" was a joke.

Smith is not alone in disfiguring what passes for education. A popular introductory freshman course at the University of Pennsylvania deconstructs Herman Melville and other dead white males (if not white whales), seeking hidden meanings of homosexuality, pederasty and incest. Majors in the humanities are down, and why not? In "Binge: What Your College Student Won't Tell you," author Barrett Seaman finds lots of colleges that promote gay-ity. Vassar College has a "Homo Hop" and the Queer Student Union at Williams College holds a "Queer Bash" with gay pornography, widely attended by straight students. Adrienne Rich, a lesbian poet, encourages young women to experiment with homosexuality and bisexuality.

An authentic liberal education promotes both character and understanding with a rigorous study of what Matthew Arnold called "the best that is known and thought in the world." When dead white males like Thomas Jefferson and John Milton are replaced, or must compete with popular studies about transgendered males and newly-minted homosexual heroes in classic novels, students are deprived of any trace of disciplined thought. They're doubly vulnerable when at the same time they're encouraged to indulge in undisciplined social experimentation without anchors of moral reference.

"Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies, Afro-American Studies, Women's Studies, Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Studies," writes Roger Kimball, author of "Tenured Radicals," in New Criterion magazine, "are not the names of academic disciplines but political grievances... Parents are alarmed, rightly so, at the spectacle of their children going off to college one year and coming back the next having jettisoned every moral, religious, social and political scruple they have been brought up to believe." These studies inhibit debate, corrupt young minds and infect learning with a virus for which, like bird flu, there is not yet an antidote.

Source



MORE BRITISH GLOOM

One school in four no better than mediocre, says Ofsted. And you can be sure that "mediocre" is a very polite way of putting it

The head of Ofsted cast doubt yesterday on the effectiveness of key government programmes for raising standards in schools. David Bell said that one in four schools continued to offer "nothing better than mediocrity" to their pupils despite an overall decline in levels of outright failure. Pupils who had fallen behind in English and maths continued to struggle at secondary school despite initiatives costing hundreds of millions of pounds to help them. Primary schools were ignoring efforts to broaden the curriculum, while a minority of head teachers were actively resisting attempts to improve classroom standards.

Mr Bell gave warning in his annual report for the 2004-05 academic year that "the challenge of dealing with some persistent weaknesses in our education system should not be underestimated". A "significant minority" of primary schools had failed to use materials designed to improve teaching standards across the curriculum as part of the Government's Primary National Strategy. "Primary schools have been reluctant to risk losing hard-won improvements in English and mathematics and have missed opportunities to broaden the curriculum by not giving enough emphasis to other subjects," it said.

Schools with the worst results "lacked a sense of urgency and determination in taking effective action to improve achievement". Ofsted said: "Overall, schools have not evaluated sharply enough the impact of actions on the achievement of all pupils." Many schools gave their most able children extra work to do "rather than matching the curriculum more closely to their needs and providing sufficiently challenging teaching".

Pupils in greatest need of help were "too frequently" left with untrained classroom assistants, while teachers concentrated on the rest of the class.

The Chief Inspector was even harsher on the Key Stage 3 National Strategy, which cost 670 pounds million last year and aims to boost standards in the early years of secondary school. Catch-up lessons in English and maths for children who had fallen behind were unsatisfactory in a quarter of secondaries and good in only a third. Ofsted said that "well under half of pupils" had caught up with their peers by the age of 14.

Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, announced on Monday that she will spend a further 450 million pounds by 2008 on catch-up tuition, including one-to-one and small group lessons. The Department for Education and Skills has also awarded a 178 million pound contract to the consultancy firm Capita to advise schools on improving the primary and secondary strategies over the next five years.

Ofsted concluded that the Key Stage 3 strategy, introduced in 2001, had made an "inadequate" impact in 20 per cent of secondary schools. In half of schools, "the intended substantial transformation in the effectiveness of teaching and sharp rise in standards have not yet occurred".

Some teachers know too little about their subject, particularly in mathematics, to respond effectively to pupils' questions. The report raised concerns about maths teaching generally. There had been a "marked drop" in maths achievement at GCSE compared with results in national curriculum tests at 14. The initial positive effect of the national numeracy strategy in primary schools had slowed and there was evidence of a rise in unsatisfactory achievement by the youngest pupils. The report said: "Renewed momentum to tackle these issues and improve achievement is needed."

Ofsted said that the Government's Primary Leadership Programme, which focuses on heads of the 4,500 weakest schools, had been "compromised by the resistance to change of a small minority of schools and their failure to recognise that raising standards needs to be a key outcome of the programme".

More herre

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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 October, 2005

THE "CULTURAL COMPETENCE" RACKET

by Norman Levitt

A new buzzword has entered the lexicon of academic fashion in the USA, threatening to drown poor professors like me in yet another wave of coy euphemism. The term is 'cultural competence'. Like its predecessors 'affirmative action,' 'diversity,' and 'multiculturalism', it attempts to cloak problematical and even disturbing policy initiatives in linguistic vestments that suggest that no right-minded person could possibly demur. A 'culturally competent' academic, one might naively surmise, would be one who has absorbed and is able to propound some of the deep values - ethical, aesthetic or epistemological - that embody the stellar achievements of Western culture, one who could explain, for instance, why Dante or Kant or Ingres is present, at least subtly, in the assumptions under which we all live. Or something like that.

This, alas, would be a comical error. 'Cultural competence' is, in essence, a bureaucratic weapon. 'Cultural competence', or rather, your presumed lack thereof, is what you will be clobbered with if you are imprudent enough to challenge or merely to have qualms about 'affirmative action', 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism', as those principles are now espoused by their most fervent academic advocates. Cultural competence, like the UK's proposed new identity card, is something a professor is supposed to keep handy at all times, and to display with a straight face whenever confronted with a socially or ethnically charged situation, in order to dispel any suspicion of racism, sexism or Eurocentrism that might arise in the minds of the professionally suspicious.

The term has been around for a couple of years, drastically mutating as it puts down deeper roots. Originally, it was fairly innocuous. It was largely restricted to the healthcare professions, and referred to the ability to function effectively with members of ethnic minorities and immigrant groups by dint of insights into the local community's idiosyncratic prejudices, fears and assumptions, insofar as these differed from the norms of middle-class white society. It seems obvious that such knowledge could be helpful to a doctor, nurse or social worker hoping to convince patients or clients from these groups to keep medical appointments, complete a course of antibiotics or have their children vaccinated. Though cultural competence, in this sense, presumes a degree of open-mindedness and empathy, it seems only vaguely political, at most.

Now, however, cast loose from its original moorings, the phrase has become emphatically political. I offer the reader, with some trepidation, the formal definition as jargonistically set out by some purported educators: Cultural competence requires that individuals and organisations:

a) Have a defined set of values and principles, demonstrated behaviours, attitudes, policies and structures that enable them to work effectively in a cross-cultural manner;

b) Demonstrate the capacity to 1) value diversity, 2) engage in self-reflection, 3) manage the dynamics of difference, 4) acquire and institutionalise cultural knowledge, and 5) adapt to the diversity and the cultural contexts of the communities they serve;

c) Incorporate and advocate the above in all aspects of leadership, policymaking, administration, practice and service delivery while systematically involving staff, students, families, key stakeholders and communities.

If we divest this of its thick integument of happy talk and explore the details, we find that in practice it means deference, even servility, toward the norms and values espoused by fervent multiculturalists, along with tame assent to whatever measures they propose to achieve their aims. Attempts to explicate the idea occasionally slip into language that reveals the underlying political programme:

In the context of higher education, cultural competence necessitates abject refusal to articulate or defend ideas that might make certain protected groups uncomfortable. Professors can only be deemed 'culturally competent' if they openly profess the approved corpus of received values.

Here is an illustrative if fragmentary list of transgressions that would likely strip an academic of any chance of being designated culturally competent:

* Suggesting that affirmative action might conflict with other standards of justice and equity, or that opponents of affirmative action are not ipso facto Klansmen waiting for their white sheets to come back from the laundry;

* Taking issue with the claim that Malcolm X was a paragon of humanitarianism and political genius;

* Disputing the wisdom of feminist theory as regards the social constructedness of gender;

* Asserting that the early demographic history of the Americas is more accurately revealed by scientific anthropology than by the Native American folklore and myth celebrated by tribal militants;

* Expressing doubts that 'queer theory' should be made the epicenter of literary studies.

Likewise, to maintain that hiring, retention and promotion within the university should focus on the traditional academic virtues of the scholar, rather than assigning enormous importance to the candidate's race, ethnicity, sex or sexuality, would banish one permanently from the culturally competent elect. To deny that feminist theorists should call all the shots on matters having to do with sexual harassment would be an act of self-immolation.

Much more here



MILITARY MEN MAKE GOOD TEACHERS

The six-year-old Troops to Teachers program recruits and prepares former members of the armed services to teach in public school. A new report on the 7,500 teachers who have gone through the program from Virginia's Old Dominion University reveals that nine of every ten principals surveyed say the former troops are unusually effective, particularly in areas of greatest need. They are more likely to teach in high-poverty schools. They are also more likely to teach hard-to-staff subjects such as math and science. The program also adds diversity: 37% of the former members of the armed forces are non-white, compared with 15% of the general teaching force, providing role models for minority children.

The news gets better: more than 80% are men. That's a badly needed jolt. The number of men teaching in K-12 classrooms has plummeted from 31% in 1986 to 18% this year, and the academic performance of boys in those grades has plummeted as they've left - an under-noticed national problem with sweeping implications. Junior high and middle schools - grades 6 through 9 - appear to have taken the biggest losses, and suffered the greatest impact. During those middle school years, gender gaps in verbal skills double in size, an assortment of research shows. That sets boys up to fail in high school. And they do, graduating and attending college far less often than girls do. Troops to Teachers is one of the few effective counter-strategies that has been found. Finding a way to boost the numbers would be even better news.

Soldiers know the importance of preparation, unlike high school seniors who are long on college ambitions but short on preparation to make those dreams come true. This week, the National Center for Education Statistics defined the problem quite sharply. Though an impressive 62% of high school seniors said they plan to attend a four-year college, only a third of those have mastered even low-level math skills. The news doesn't get any better for the more ambitious students, those planning on getting a graduate degree. Only about half of those can handle intermediate math skills. This not the first time surveys have picked up this mismatch. A poll sponsored in part by the Gates Foundation this year reported that nearly 90% of young people of all races and income levels would like to get a college degree. But according to the Census Bureau, only about a third of 25-29 year-olds have college degrees. Among African-Americans, 17% have earned degrees. Among Hispanics, 11%.

The reason for the mismatch is clear: Only 32% of high school seniors graduate from high school with the skills they need to succeed in college, according to a 2005 report from the Manhattan Institute. Recent reports from Achieve Inc., a school reform group led by business leaders and governors, help explain the gap between ambition and reality. While more than 70% of high school seniors enter two- and four-year colleges, nearly half end up taking either remedial English or math courses. The odds of dropping out rise sharply with the number of non-credit, remedial courses a student is required to take.

Much of the blame for the poor preparation falls on the students: Only 56% who took the 2005 ACT college admissions test studied a college-preparation curriculum: four years of English and three years each of math, science and social studies. So much ambition, so little preparation. Such a needless waste.

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 October, 2005

TOP TEN SCHOOL RULES FOR TEACHERS



You think it's a joke, don't you? Or at least a bit exaggerated. Go here and you will see every one of the ten rules multiply documented.



DANCE AND COOK TO QUALIFY FOR UNIVERSITY!

Top marks in cooking and dance could help West Australian students into university law degrees, ahead of those who studied physics and chemistry. n education lobby group opposed to the state's new curriculum yesterday described the 50 new subjects being finalised by WA's Curriculum Council as nonsense. The changes mean that old subjects that did not count towards tertiary entrances will be scrapped.

Curriculum council acting chief executive Greg Robson has described the rewritten courses as intellectually rigorous, providing real challenges for students who reach the top levels in each course. "All we are trying to do is recognise a broad array of achievement," Mr Robson said. He said he understood that some teachers were reluctant to accept that food science and technology was as worthy a subject as physics but that view was out of date. "It makes a lot of sense to acknowledge high standards wherever they are. "There is a huge difference between a highly-talented chef and what he or she prepares and the average Joe like me who has trouble cooking a steak."

Among the new subjects being drafted are physical education, food science and technology, dance, religion and life, building and construction, children, family and the community, Australian indigenous languages and recreational and environmental studies. But People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes claims it is outrageous for subjects such as food science and technology -- no matter how challenging -- to be considered on a par with the sciences and mathematics. PLATO co-founder Greg Williams said until universities set pre-requisites for entry to courses that presently did not have any, the system would be open to manipulation. "I don't have a problem with these courses coming into the calculation of a student's tertiary entrance score -- they can put needlework in as far as I'm concerned -- but I have a problem with the fact that level 8 physical education is being considered equally as difficult as level 8 calculus," he said.

The new courses are part of the state's outcomes-based education model in which no student can fail and everyone achieves at least one of eight levels of difficulty. Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson has been highly critical of OBE and the introduction of similar models in other states. The State School Teachers Union is generally supportive, claiming the present system treats students, who are not destined for university, as second-class citizens. Under the proposed OBE model, any subject can be examined for university entrance, with only those students who achieve at the top three levels (six, seven and eight) in each subject considered for a tertiary place. "In theory you could do metalwork, woodwork, cooking and English and if you get high enough 'levels' in those you can get into one of the most demanding university courses that doesn't set any prerequisites. And at the moment that includes law," Mr Williams said.

Mr Williams's criticisms come as a delegation of university physicists prepare to meet Mr Robson and other Curriculum Council chiefs today to discuss concerns about OBE. Introduced to West Australian primary schools 10 years ago, the OBE model has similarities to those systems already in place in NSW and Victoria. The council claims universities have backed the new courses saying these will provide students with greater opportunities than current subjects.

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 October, 2005

"DISPOSITIONS" THEORY

Enforced ideological conformity that the Soviets would have been proud of

The cultural left has a new tool for enforcing political conformity in schools of education. It is called dispositions theory, and it was set forth five years ago by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education: Future teachers should be judged by their "knowledge, skills, and dispositions." What are "dispositions"? NCATE's prose made clear that they are the beliefs and attitudes that guide a teacher toward a moral stance. That sounds harmless enough, but it opened a door to reject teaching candidates on the basis of thoughts and beliefs. In 2002, NCATE said that an education school may require a commitment to social justice. William Damon, a professor of education at Stanford, wrote last month that education schools "have been given unbounded power over what candidates may think and do, what they may believe and value."

NCATE vehemently denies that it is imposing groupthink, but the ed schools, essentially a liberal monoculture, use dispositions theory to require support for diversity and a culturally left agenda, including opposition to what the schools sometimes call "institutional racism, classism, and heterosexism." Predictably, some students concluded that thought control would make classroom dissent dangerous. A few students rebelled when a teacher at Brooklyn College School of Education showed Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 9/11 in class and dismissed "white English" as "the language of oppressors." Five students filed written complaints and received no formal reply from the college. One was told to leave the school and take an equivalent course at a community college. Two of the complaining students were then accused of plagiarism and marked down one letter grade. The two were refused permission to bring a witness, a tape recorder, or a lawyer to meet with a dean to discuss the matter.

K. C. Johnson, a history professor at the school who defended the dissenting students, became a target himself. After writing an article in Inside Higher Ed attacking dispositions theory as a form of mind control, Johnson faced a possible investigation by a faculty Integrity Committee. The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in E