|
JUNE 2009
BRITISH REPORT BLASTS CORPORATIZED
EDUCATION
DUNCAN OUT TO KILL LOCAL PUBLIC
EDUCATION
STUDENT'S GRAD SPEECH REJECTED
AS TOO REAL
THE SAME SORT OF PEOPLE WHO CRASHED
THE ECONOMY NOW RUN OUR SCHOOLS
LG OFFERS TESTING TRANSLATION
TOOL FOR PARENTS
DUNCAN THREATENS STATES WITH LOSS
OF FUNDS
IF THEY DON'T PRIVATIZE SCHOOLS
LOCAL HEROES: STUDENTS WALK OUT
OF CLASSROOMS TO PROTEST SPY CAMS
WHAT ASSESSMENT ADDICTS, CORPORATE
HUSTLERS,
BUREAUCRATS & POLITICIANS ARE DOING TO OUR CHILDREN
MAY 2009
SCHOOL REFORM? UNTRAINED TEACHERS
FOR THE POOR
CHILD ABUSE: JUKING THE STATS
THE UNDERSIDE OF TEACH FOR AMERICA
COMING SOON TO A SCHOOL NEAR YOU:
A NATIONAL CURRICULUM?
HEY, IT WORKED FOR HITLER
DIDN'T IT?
EXPLORER
SCOUTS BEING TAUGHT HOW TO KILL
MORE PHOTOS
APRIL 2009
WHAT DUNCAN REALLY DID TO CHICAGO
SCHOOLS
SECRET INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT
TREATY DRAFT LEAKED
BRITISH LABOR PARTY PLANS COMPULSORY
NATIONAL SERVICE
COMING SOON TO A SCHOOL NEAR YOU:
A NATIONAL CURRICULUM?
DUNCAN BULLYING SCHOOL SYSTEMS
INTO EXCESSIVE PAPERWORK
NYC CHANCELLOR USED TAXPAYER'S
TIME TO RAISE MONEY FOR CONSERVATIVE EDUCATION LOBBY
DUMP DUNCAN, RHEE & KLEIN
AND LET THE FINNS TEACH US HOW TO RUN OUR SCHOOLS
HOW SCHOOL AUTOCRATS ARE HURTING
PUBLIC EDUCATION
PAYOFF CONTINUES TO AL SHARPTON
FOR JOINING WAR ON PUBLIC EDUCATION
OBAMA BACKS SCHOOL DISCRIMINATION
LEARNING TWITTER PLACED ABOVE
WORLD WAR II IN BRITISH STUDY
HIDDEN TRUTHS ABOUT CHARTER SCHOOLS
BRITISH SCHOOL SCANDAL RAISES
CONCERN OVER AMERICA'S TESTING OBSESSION
MARCH 2009
UNDERPERFORMING DC SCHOOL SUPER
PLAYS FAST AND LOOSE WITH TEACHERS' FUTURES
BILL GATES WANTS BIG BROTHER IN
THE CLASSROOM
WHERE BAD PUBLIC EDUCATION REALLY
COMES FROM
A TEACHER CHALLENGES LAPTOPS IN
CLASS
OBAMA TAKES RIGHTWING LINE ON
PUBLIC EDUCATION
HOMELESS STUDENTS INCREASE
STUDENTS BEAT MILITARY: END WEAPONS
TRAINING IN SAN DIEGO SCHOOLS
FEBRUARY 2009
THE MEDIA MUDDLED STORY OF TEACH
FOR AMERICA
THE DANGERS OF SCHOOL TESTING
ADDICTION
THE PRICE OF BRIBING STUDENTS
INTO BETTER GRADES
LOCAL HEROES: SEATTLE TEACHER
SUSPENDED FOR REFUSING TO GIVE STANDARDIZED TEST
STUDENTS BEAT MILITARY: END WEAPONS
TRAINING IN SAN DIEGO SCHOOLS
COMPLETE GUIDE TO PARENTING IN
JUST THREE MINUTES
JANUARY 2009
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HOW ARNE DUNCAN THINKS
ABOUT CHILDREN
I am not a manager of 600
schools. I'm a portfolio manager of 600 schools and I'm trying
to improve the portfolio. - Arne Duncan, the new education
secretary, speaking of the Chicago schools he ran. |
FLUNKIN' DUNCAN: THE TEST RESULTS
FOXES IN THE CHICKEN COOP: ARNE
DUNCAN
OBAMA SIDES WITH WAR ON PUBLIC
SCHOOLS
WHY ARNE DUNCAN IS A TERRIBLE CHOICE FOR
EDUCATION SECRETAR
DECEMBER 2008
MAJOR CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDAL IN
DC
AMERICAN TEENS LIE, STEAL AND
CHEAT BIG TIME
TEACHERS UNIONIZE AT MASSACHUSETTS
CHARTER SCHOOL
STUDY
SUGGESTS NO CHILD LAW MAY BE DUMBING DOWN STUDENTS
NO CHILD LAW EVEN MAKING LIBERALS
DUMBER
EVEN THE RIGHT IS FINDING CHARTERS &
VOUCHERS TO BE SUBPRIME
THE DECLINE OF BLACK TEACHERS
OCTOBER 2008
FINANCIAL CRISIS BEING FELT IN
SCHOOLS
THE DECLINE OF 'GOING OUT TO PLAY'
MOST AMERICANS WANT NO CHILD LEFT
BEHIND CHANGED
TEACHING HIGH SCHOOL MATH
Ted Nutting, Seattle Times
- I'm a high-school math teacher in Seattle. When I hear Mark
Emmert, president of the University of Washington, say that this
state is "at the bottom in the production of scientists
and engineers," and warn that our graduates "will be
washing the cars for the people who come here for the best jobs,"
I know what the problem is. It's math. We are failing to educate
our children in mathematics. I know how that came about, and
what we can do about it. . .
I am the Advanced Placement
calculus teacher at Ballard High School. . . I tell my students
what they need to know, they do problems to understand how it
works, and they demonstrate their knowledge and understanding
through testing. . .
We at Ballard have by
far the best AP calculus program in Seattle Public Schools, based
on AP test scores. I have no special magnetism or charisma; I'm
not a cult figure for teenagers. I have high standards and I
require the students to work. If they don't work, they know they
will probably flunk. But they do work, and I am proud of them.
I also have the benefit of having an older textbook that doesn't
fit the "reform math" model, and most of my students
have had an excellent pre-calculus teacher the year before.
In most of our other math
classes (and I doubt that Ballard is unique in this), we've tended
to follow a "reform" model. We've passed students on
from class to class; there is no meaningful threshold they must
cross to enter a more-difficult class. Since we find that many
students in our classes cannot do the work, we dumb down the
courses. We say we are admitting unprepared students into our
classes in order to "challenge" them.
But students should be
challenged in the classes that they are qualified to take, not
sent on to classes where they cannot do the work. Unfortunately,
things are changing, even in our school's AP calculus classes:
We're starting to admit unqualified students, and our program
will soon begin to deteriorate. . .
SEPTEMBER 2008
EVEN THE RIGHT IS FINDING CHARTERS &
VOUCHERS TO BE SUBPRIME
Frederick M Hess, American
Enterprise Institute - Milwaukee's voucher program initially
allowed a few hundred students to attend local private schools
with public scholarships. When it was launched, advocates voiced
expansive claims on behalf of "choice." In 1990, scholars
John Chubb and Terry Moe argued in their seminal volume Politics,
Markets, and America's Schools, "Without being too literal
about it, we think reformers would do well to entertain the notion
that choice is a panacea. . . . It has the capacity all by itself
to bring about the kind of transformation that, for years, reformers
have been seeking to engineer in myriad other ways."
The record of markets
in advancing prosperity, opportunity, and innovation is compelling.
It seemed almost axiomatic that market reforms would deliver
similar results in schooling, spurring the emergence of good
schools and pushing traditional districts to improve.
Yet things have not worked
out as intended. Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas
B. Fordham Institute and a champion of choice-based reform since
the 1980s, has voiced "growing sympathy" with choice
skeptics and warned against "too much trust in market forces.
. .
Even staunch proponents
of school choice are conceding disappointment. Earlier this year,
Weekly Standard contributor Daniel Casse reported, "The
two most recent studies show that, since the implementation of
the voucher program, reading scores across all Milwaukee schools
are falling." Howard Fuller, patron saint of the voucher
program, has wryly acknowledged, "I think that any honest
assessment would have to say that there hasn't been the deep,
wholesale improvement in MPS [Milwaukee Public Schools] that
we would have thought." Manhattan Institute scholar Sol
Stern, one-time choice enthusiast and author of Breaking Free:
Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice, brought
the concerns to a boiling point earlier this year when he declared,
"Fifteen years into the most expansive school choice program
tried in any urban school district [there is] . . . no 'Milwaukee
miracle,' no transformation of the public schools has taken place.".
. .
Today, the Milwaukee voucher
program enrolls nearly twenty thousand students in more than
one hundred schools, yet this growing marketplace has yielded
little innovation or excellence. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
recently described 10 percent of voucher schools as having "alarming
deficiencies." These include Alex's Academics of Excellence,
which was launched by a convicted rapist, and the Mandella School
of Science and Math, whose director overreported its voucher
enrollment and used the funds to purchase two Mercedes-Benzes.
Veteran Journal Sentinel writer Alan Borsuk has opined, "[The
Milwaukee Parental Choice Program] has preserved the status quo
in terms of schooling options in the city more than it has offered
a range of new, innovative, or distinctive schools."
Wisconsin headline writers
have had a field day, with the Capital Times and Milwaukee Magazine
featuring the likes of "The Failure of School Choice,"
and "Whoops, We Goofed: School Choice Doesn't Work Like
Its Supporters Promised. Gulp. Now What?" . . .
While research suggests
that some participating students benefit from private school
vouchers, these results may largely reflect the ability of students
in places like New York City or Washington, D.C., to find empty
seats in established parochial schools. There is little evidence
that voucher or choice programs have succeeded in fostering the
emergence or expansion of high-quality options.
Similar concerns plague
the charter movement nationally, even as the number of charter
schools has surged above four thousand and charter enrollment
has passed the one million mark. The U.S. Department of Education's
National Center for Education Statistics has compared the performance
of students in district and charter schools, reporting, "After
adjusting for student characteristics, charter school mean scores
in reading and mathematics were lower, on average, than those
for public noncharter schools." . . .
Stig Leschly, executive
director of the Newark Charter School Fund, has observed that
only about two hundred of the thousands of existing charter schools
"really close the achievement gap." . . .
Among the eight cities
where charter schools enroll 20 percent or more of students are
Detroit, Michigan; Youngstown, Ohio; and Washington, D.C. In
2007, Education Week reported that, despite a substantial charter
presence, Detroit had the highest dropout rate among the nation's
large school systems. A 2007 analysis found that just 57 percent
of Youngstown's charter schools, and just 38 percent of its district
schools, met Ohio's growth targets for student improvement in
reading and math.
In a study of Washington,
D.C., which has one of the nation's highest rates of charter
school enrollment, researchers Margaret Sullivan, Dean Campbell,
and Brian Kisida found no evidence of improvement in D.C. public
schools even as they lost nearly a third of their students to
charter school competition. They traced inaction to a district
"hampered by political dynamics and burdensome regulations."
. . .
YOU GOT ME. . . WHAT
MORE DO YOU NEED?
Progressive Review - We've
noticed a growing new elite that even makes the fiscal crisis
spawning boomers seem self-effacing. At the core of its style
is the assumption that certainty is an adequate substitute for
competence. We're not sure what created them - perhaps they believed
all the TV shows they watched growing up or perhaps their boomer
parents told them too many times how great they were, but we've
seldom seen such rampant unsubstantiated self satisfaction. Some
sociologist needs to find a name for them before they all get
fired for screwing up. In the meantime we might name them Generation
Rhee after that media-coddled prototype, DC school chancellor
Michelle Rhee, who has gotten unending plaudits for yet to be
seen results. And just when we thought we'd heard he best Rhee
could tell us about herself, now comes this from the Washington
Post: "D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, who didn't
fuss when a PBS interviewer asked if she was a 'benevolent dictator,'
made clear again that she was more than comfortable with the
her-way-or the-Beltway approach. 'I think if there is one thing
I have learned over the last 15 months it's that cooperation,
collaboration and consensus-building are way overrated,' she
told the Aspen Institute's education summit at the Mayflower
THE DECLINE OF BLACK TEACHERS
Philadelphia Daily News
- As the school year begins, Philadelphia School District officials
face a seldom-discussed dilemma: The percentage of African-American
teachers is declining, and now stands at its lowest point in
decades.
And students are suffering
as a result, a growing body of research shows. One national organization
found that increasing the percentage of black teachers is directly
related to closing the so-called achievement gap - students of
color lagging behind white peers. . .
Diversity advocates say
that the situation has reached a point where the continued loss
of black teachers has made it impossible for the district to
achieve a racially balanced teaching force - a stipulation of
a 30-year-old agreement with the federal Office of Civil Rights.
In 1978, when that agreement
took effect, 36 percent of the district's teachers were black.
Today, the figure has declined to 29 percent, the district says.
At the same time, the
percentage of black students in the public schools has remained
relatively stable at more than 60 percent.
To be sure, the trend
is not confined to Philadelphia. Other school districts across
the country also are grappling with declining numbers of black
teachers while the number of students of color is increasing.
. .
An analysis by the National
Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force found that increasing
the percentage of teachers of color in classrooms is directly
connected to closing the achievement gap. . .
Experts say that the number
of black teachers is declining for various reasons, including
higher pay in other school districts and in other professions.
C. Kent McGuire, dean
of Temple University's College of Education, said that black
women in particular have found increasing opportunities in "medicine,
dentistry, law, you name it."
Black enrollment in the
College of Education dropped from 17 percent in 2005 to 12 percent
last year, he said.
The federal No Child Left
Behind Act - which requires teachers to pass certification exams
to keep their jobs - has abetted the decline in black teachers,
a growing number of educators believe.
Although the district
and the state Department of Education could not provide local
numbers, the Educational Testing Service says that among African-American
teacher candidates nationally, 69 percent are passing the certification
tests, compared with 91 percent of white candidates.
AUGUST 2008
CHARTER SCHOOLS FLUNK
IMPORTANT TEST
A new report from the
National Alliance for Charter Schools argues that black students
do better in charter schools than elsewhere, citing these reports:
- A national comparison
of student achievement on 4th grade reading and math state tests
conducted by Stanford University Professor Caroline Hoxby found
that, on average, public charter schools serving a high percentage
of black students have more students earning proficient scores
than traditional public schools serving a similar student population
- A Florida Department
of Education study shows public charter schools closing the achievement
gap between black and white students at a faster rate than traditional
public schools in key subjects and grade levels.
-- Black students in Massachusetts
charter schools are overtaking peers in non-charters on state
reading and math tests, according to a study by the Massachusetts
Department of Education.
-- A 2008 survey of Chicago
charter schools reveals that black students who attend a charter
high school have an average composite ACT score half a point
higher than black students in a traditional district school.
Missing from such arguments
is one critical fact: charter school enrollment is less than
three percent of public school enrollment and represents students
whose parents had enough independence and initiative to place
them there. From the start, charter school students are in no
way typical, but come from atypical and more ambitious family
backgrounds
This is obscured because
the debate usually focuses on ethnicity or grades rather than
on psychological factors. Parents who have enough drive to switch
their children's schools out of an expectation - right or wrong
- that they will do better elsewhere are most likely to apply
that drive to their children on issues such as homework and classroom
effort.
It is also true that charter
schools tend to be smaller than public schools, another factor
- again underrated in public debate - that may make a big difference.
When such factors are
applied, bragging over a half point gain in ACT scores is a bit
pathetic.
JULY 2008
LOCAL HEROES: SOME WHO HAVE STOOD
UP AGAINST SCHOOL TEST MANIA
Fair Test Examiner Individual
teachers, parents and students sometimes respond to high-stakes
testing by putting themselves on the line:
- Carl Chew, a 60-year-old
sixth grade science teacher from Seattle, wrestled annually with
his conscience about administering the Washington Assessment
of Student Learning tests to his students. "Each year I
would give the WASL, and I would promise myself I would never
do it again," he said. "I decided, 'I'm not going to
wimp out this time.'" His refusal resulted in a nine-day
unpaid suspension along with accolades from parents and teachers
around the nation. Chew explained his reasons in a Seattle Post
Intelligencer commentary: "I performed this single act of
civil disobedience based on personal moral and ethical grounds,
as well as professional duty. I believe that the WASL is destructive
to our children, teachers, schools, and parents. . . . "
- North Carolina special
education teacher Doug Ward could no longer bring himself to
give the state's alternative assessments to his students with
severe disabilities. He was fired for his act of civil disobedience
this spring. Ward, who had been teaching special needs students
for three years, said he did not want to give a test to his students
that was invalid and that they could not pass. "Someone
needs to use a little common sense and say, 'I am just not going
to do it,'" Ward said. Like Chew, Ward has received support
from parents, colleagues and the community. Bob Williams, whose
son Kyle was taught by Ward, said he admires his son's teacher
for what he did, and that the test doesn't measure what Kyle
has learned. "If you ask me as a parent is (Kyle) succeeding,
you are darn right he is succeeding," Williams said. "When
he started third grade, he couldn't walk down the hall. When
he started school as a kindergartner, he was in a wheelchair.
Now he can walk down the hall on his own. The test doesn't test
that."
- Parent Craig Haller
of Brookline, Mass., whose daughter Hannah is a high school freshman
with severe disabilities, has launched an exhaustive effort to
exempt his daughter from the state test and alternative assessment.
State authorities failed to respond to his many requests that
15-year-old Hannah not be tested because she is unable to communicate
and her individualized education plan does not align with the
state curriculum frameworks. Haller contacted every local and
state official he could find and alerted the news media. . .
In a letter to state Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester,
Haller wrote, "She will experience heightened stress and
anxiety at the time of the exam by not being physically able
to respond to any part of the exam. She will experience loss
of self esteem and self image by completely and totally failing
an exam that is not designed to test or assess her knowledge
but the mastery of the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks."
- Virtually the entire
8th grade of a South Bronx, New York City, middle school boycotted
a practice version of the state exam. Their teacher was disciplined
for supposedly fomenting the rebellion. The 160 students from
six classes at Intermediate School 318 handed in blank answer
sheets rather than take a three-hour practice round of the state
social studies exam. "We've had a whole bunch of these diagnostic
tests all year," said 13-year-old Tatiana Nelson. "They
don't even count toward our grades. The school system's just
treating us like test dummies for the companies that make the
exams."
The students also submitted
a petition to school authorities saying they were tired of the
"constant, excessive and stressful testing" that takes
time from instruction. The students insisted the boycott was
their idea, but administrators blamed Douglas Avella, the students'
probationary social studies teacher, and reassigned him to New
York's notorious "rubber room" for teachers accused
of various kinds of misconduct. "Now they've taken away
the teacher we love only a few weeks before our real state exam
for social studies," Nelson said. "How does that help
us?"
- St. Lucie County, Florida
high school Assistant Principal Teri Pinney resigned from her
position in June rather than comply with her principal's request
that she suspend students for sleeping or "Christmas Treeing"
(filling in bubbles to make a pattern) during state testing and
other requests she believes were unethical. Neither Pinney nor
another assistant principal complied, but the principal suspended
the students. Pinney said, "Two of the kids he suspended
were good students, never got in trouble, and had excellent attendance.
They were children of migrant Mexican workers. The parents pleaded
with me and I gave in and lifted the suspensions. Of course,
that opposition with my boss got me in trouble." In a newspaper
commentary, Pinney expressed her dismay at the role played by
testing in schools today: "I believe that misuse or overuse
of standardized testing is creating a maddening race for everybody
to that elusive finishing line."
TEACHERS UNION CALLS FOR END OF
NO CHILD LAW
George N Schmidt, Substance
- In a major address to the 3,000 delegates to the national convention
of the American Federation of Teachers, outgoing president Ed
McElroy announced that the union was no longer in favor of tinkering
with the federal "No Child Left Behind" law and called
for the abolition of NCLB.
According to the press
release summarizing McElroy's remarks: "McElroy pledged
that the AFT would work with the next president to move beyond
the No Child Left Behind Act (which he called 'an idea whose
time has gone') to 'create a new education law that respects
the knowledge of classroom professionals and helps teachers and
paraprofessionals provide our students with the high-quality
education they deserve."
To the loudest cheers
of his valedictory speech, McElroy repeated that No Child Left
Behind cannot be repaired, and had to be replaced. . .
When No Child Left Behind
was originally proposed by the administration of President George
W. Bush in 2002, it received widespread bipartisan support, including
the support of U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy (D, MA) and U.S. Representative
George Miller (D, CA), who at the time were the ranking minority
leaders in the Senate and House on matters of education. Senator
Kennedy stood beside President Bush at the signing of NCLB.
AFT long maintained in
public that NCLB was basically an "unfunded" mandate,
and publicly clamored for more funding for NCLB. Kennedy and
Miller followed their lead. When NCLB came up for reauthorization
in 2007, however, widespread national opposition to the law was
even heard inside the Beltway in Washington, D.C., and at the
offices of the two national teacher unions . . . By mid-2007,
it was clear that NCLB was in trouble, and even its staunchest
supporters inside the Democratic Party were being forced to retreat.
Rep. Miller returned to his home district in California to find
himself followed by teachers and others who were actively opposing
NCLB. . .
By the summer of 2007,
two of the contenders for the nomination (U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich
of Ohio and Governor Richardson of New Mexico) told people across
the county that there were opposed to NCLB, and that the law
should be eliminated. The two leading contenders for the Democratic
Party nomination -- New York Senator Hillary Clinton and Illinois
Senator Barack Obama -- were less emphatic in their opposition
to the renewal of NCLB. Both continued throughout the 2008 primary
season to discuss NCLB as if it might be improved, and not simply
eliminated. . .
Although U.S. Senator
Barack Obama appeared before a high-priced fundraiser at one
of the two main convention hotels on the night of July 11, his
campaign has continued to announce that his address to the AFT
will be by satellite, as he addressed the NEA two weeks earlier.
Many at the AFT convention consider Obama's refusal to appear
in person before the convention a personal snub. Chicago's teachers
were among the first supporters Obama had when he was gathering
support for the Democratic Party nomination for the U.S. Senate
in 2003 and early 2004. In fact, without the support of the Illinois
Federation of Teachers, Obama would not have received the backing
of the Cook County Democratic Party and the junior senator from
Illinois today would be Dan Hynes, a member of a prominent Democratic
Party family in Chicago who was the early favorite in 2003 for
the nomination. By July 11, there was some speculation that Obama
was reconsidering his decision to snub the AFT as he had snubbed
the NEA by refusing to appear in person.
JUNE 2008
HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER SUSPENDED
BECAUSE SCHOOL BOARD DIDN'T LIKE BOOK
ARE PARENTS HAPPIER THAN CHILDLESS
COUPLES?
TEACHERS RUNNING SCHOOLS IN MILWAUKEE
CHILDHOOD WILL NEVER BE THE SAME
BRONX 8TH-GRADERS BOYCOTT PRACTICE
EXAM FOR STANDARDIZED TEST
QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT CHARTER
SCHOOLS
WHAT WAS BEHIND NO CHILD LAW?
CLAUDIA WALLIS, TIME Susan Neuman, a professor
of education at the University Michigan who served as Assistant
Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education during George
W. Bush's first term, was and still is a fervent believer in
the goals of NCLB. And she says the President and then Secretary
of Education Rod Paige were too. But there were others in the
department, according to Neuman, who saw NCLB as a Trojan horse
for the choice agenda - a way to expose the failure of public
education and "blow it up a bit," she says. "There
were a number of people pushing hard for market forces and privatization."
Tensions between NCLB believers and the
blow-up-the-schools group were one reason the Bush Department
of Education felt like "a pressure cooker," says Neuman,
who left the Administration in early 2003. . .
It was only in Bush's second term that
the hard line began to succumb to reality. Margaret Spellings,
who replaced Paige as Secretary of Education in 2005, gradually
opened the door to a more flexible and realistic approach to
school accountability. . .
Neuman also regrets the Administration's
use of humiliation and shame as a lever for school reform. Failure
to meet NCLB's inflexible goals meant schools would be publicly
labeled as failures. Neuman now sees this as a mistake: "Vilifying
teachers and saying we are going to shame them was not the right
approach."
The combination of inflexibility and public
humiliation for those not meeting federal goals ignited so much
frustration among educators that NCLB now appears to be an irreparably
damaged brand. "The problems lingered long enough and there's
so much anger that it may not be fixable," says Neuman.
While the American Federation of Teachers was once on board with
the NCLB goals, she notes, the union has turned against it. "Teachers
hate NCLB because they feel like they've been picked on."
HOW SOME CHARTER SCHOOLS MAKE
IT TO THE TOP
GUIDE TO NO CHILD OUTRAGES
MAY 2008
LEARNING FROM PARASITES
NO TIME FOR CHILDHOOD
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BUSH'S READING PROGRAM A BUST
ANTI TEEN NOISE DEVICE BEING SOLD
IN U.S.
SEATTLE TEACHER SUSPENDED FOR
REFUSING TO GIVE STANDARDIZED TEST
THE ISSUES THAT MAKE NO CHILD
LAW SO CONTROVERSIAL
SCHOOL CENSORS STUDENT PAPER FOR
SURVEY THAT FINDS SCHOOL DOESN'T LISTEN TO STUDENTS
CONGRESS MANGLES HEADSTART FUNDING
THE WAR AGAINST PUBLIC SCHOOLS:
CORPORATIONS DESIGNING CURRICULA TO HELP RECRUIT WORKERS
PERCENTAGE OF MALE TEACHERS HITS
40-YEAR LOW
NEARLY HALF OF ALL TEENS DIDN'T
BUY A CD LAST YEAR
LOCAL HEROES: SCHOOL DISTRICT
REBELS AGAINST NO CHILD LEFT LAW
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN KIDS STOP PLAYING
OUTSIDE
CHILDREN DON'T LIKE CLOWNS
BRITISH PARENTS PAYING FOR SOMEONE
TO WRITE CHILDRENS' ESSAYS
ANOTHER REASON YOU MAY NOT WANT
TO WRECK THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM
HOW THE MILITARY TEACHES OUR KIDS
TO KILL
MAINE'S SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION MESS
ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLS GETTING A
NEW LIFE
PARENTS TAKING MORE ACTIVE ROLE
IN CHILDREN'S LIVES
PARENTS TAKING FOUR MONTH OLDS
TO THE GYM TO KEEP THEM IN TRIM
WHY PRESCHOOL PAYS OFF
NEIL BUSH ZAPPED ON NO CHILD HUSTLE
TOWN STANDS UP AGAINST SCHOOL
CONSOLIDATION
NO CHILD LEFT SCHEME HAS BROUGHT
FIVE TESTING FIRMS $2 BILLION
WHY IQ SCORES RISE WHILE READING
AND MATH SCORES DON'T
BRITISH STUDY FINDS 7-11 YEAR
OLDS STRESSED OUT BY NATIONAL TESTS, NEWS
STUDY QUESTIONS PUBLIC-PRIVATE
SCHOOL DIFFERENCE FOR LOW INCOME STUDENTS
CALIFORNIA SCHOOL DISTRICT BANS
NOVELS IN CLASSROOM AS "BASED ON LITERATURE" RATHER
THAN "BASED ON STANDARDS"
SOUTH CAROLINA WANTS ADS ON SCHOOL
BUSES
STUPID SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR TRICKS:
HUG-FREE SCHOOL
NO CHILD FLUNKS OWN TEST
JONATHAN KOZOL BLOWS NO CHILD
LEFT BEHIND OUT OF THE WATER
WATCHING TV EARLY IN LIFE CAN
LEAD TO ATTENTION PROBLEMS LATER
THE ROAD TO LITERACY IS PAVED WITH WORDS,
NOT TESTS
BRINGING BACK THE COMMUNITY SCHOOL
JOE SMYDO, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE Richardo
Grimsley, a sophomore at Pittsburgh Westinghouse High School
in Homewood, said he sometimes thought about writing poetry but
didn't put pen to paper until a new after-school program debuted
in October. So far, he's authored 20 poems, including "Fantasy,"
about his childhood dreams, and "Get Up," about his
struggles with adversity. He's also refurbishing a bicycle through
the program.
Called the Lighthouse Project, the program
represents the Pittsburgh Public Schools' first efforts to create
"community" or "full-service" schools that
go beyond education to focus on students' health and welfare.
Many community schools serve adults, too.
They often stay open well into the evening,
providing a range of social services to lift individuals, mend
families and revitalize neighborhoods. "Get Up" could
be the schools' theme. . .
With a contract of about $300,000, the
Homewood-Brushton YMCA launched the project with classes in poetry,
dance, music production and visual arts, all designed to broaden
Westinghouse students' horizons.
While Richardo worked on poetry, other
students printed T-shirts with a Lighthouse Project logo, painted
murals and practiced "stepping," the dance style highlighted
in the movie "Stomp the Yard."
The program also includes guest speakers
and field trips. . .
The Lighthouse Project operates from 3
to 7:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Attendance fluctuates;
about 30 students were present Wednesday.
Community schools are modeled after the
19th-century settlement houses that provided education, health
care and other services to immigrants in New York and Chicago.
The philosopher John Dewey advanced the concept in a 1902 address
titled "The School as Social Center," and the Charles
Stewart Mott Foundation funded some of the nation's earliest
community schools in Flint, Mich., during the 1930s.
Interest has waxed and waned, with the
Coalition for Community Schools in Washington, D.C., trying to
build numbers and secure federal funding for the schools.. .
NO HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL PLAYER LEFT
BEHIND
All teams must make the state playoffs
and all must win the championship.
If a team does not win the championship,
it will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches
will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won
the championship their basketballs and equipment will be taken
away until they do win the championship.
All players will be expected to have the
same basketball skills at the same time, even if they do not
have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their
own. No exceptions will be made for lack of interest in basketball,
a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities
of themselves or their parents.
All students will play basketball at a
proficient level
Talented players will be asked to workout
on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches
will be using all their instructional time with the athletes
who aren't interested in basketball, have limited athletic ability
or whose parents don't like basketball.
Games will be played year round, but statistics
will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th games. If parents
do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers
and support private schools that can screen out the non-athletes
and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad
basketball players.
- Author unknown
APRIL 2008
REFORMING CHARTER SCHOOLS. . . MAKING
THEM WHAT THEY WERE MEAN TO BE
The charter school movement was created
to "reform" the public schools. So far, it hasn't proved
its merit and contains some dangerous and damaging elements.
Those fighting for good public schools might turn the battle
around by a drive to reform charter schools, exposing their flaws
and weaknesses while adopting some of their benefits, the primary
one being decentralization. The following was written for our
local DC news page but many of the things mentioned apply elsewhere.
SAM SMITH, DC CITY DESK This sounds weird,
I know, but I find myself wondering whether one way to battle
Mayor Fenty's plan to close more than a score of public schools
- a strange approach to improving anything, especially education
- is to investigate the possibility of turning some of them into
charter schools.
Not any old charter schools, but ones run
by the community in which they sit - with a board including teachers,
parents, appointees of the ANC and so forth - rather than vague
and alien gifts dropped on the neighborhood by the Fenty and
business crowd. Not schools modeled on 7-11 franchises but organic
institutions growing out of the community they are to serve.
With new rules and new goals. And new designs, based on ways
to make spare building space bring income to local education
rather than be used as a mayoral giveaway to friends and contributors.
There may not be time, there may not be
the energy, but a campaign for real, public, neighborhood charter
schools might substantially alter the debate, putting politicians
and the developers on the defensive for a change. After all,
if charter schools are as good as they say, why can't communities
run them, too?
The goal would be to create a new model
that, unlike the present charter system, is not in competition
with the public school system - heading it towards a revival
of its early 19th century pauper school status. The goal would
to combine the best of charter schools - their decentralization
- with a structure that revives the democratic control that vested
interests are trying so hard to eliminate. In DC they have been
remarkably successful, even eviscerating the first icon of home
rule - the elected school board.
The big problem with charter schools right
now is that if they aren't better than existing schools - and
there is no convincing evidence that they are - then there is
no reason for them. And if they are - or become - better than
existing public schools, a two tier system will have been created
no matter how much the charter crowd insists that they're just
as open to everyone as the regular system. For example, I've
heard charter advocates brag about how their schools are enticing
public school teachers, which is great for them, but not good
for the old system. Further, in order to get into one of the
charter schools you have to apply. This may not seem like much,
but it is precisely the sort of factor that creates a cultural
gap. The determined, the knowledgeable, the brave apply. The
weak, the beaten down, the confused don't. And you end up with
a two tier system.
In fact, there is no way current charter
schools can be better than the regular system without the latter
being the second best place to send your kids. It is, as it now
stands, a subtle but extremely effective attack on public education.
Obviously, there are some advantages to
charter schools, but they may not be as mysterious or as unique
as their advocates think. Some years back a Virginia school system
experimented with small sub schools featuring different educational
approaches. When they studied the results they found that students
in each of the sub schools did better, regardless of the approach
taken. The conclusion: it was the sense that they were going
to a school that mattered and that cared about them that made
the difference.
So why not throw a Hail Mary pass before
the Fenty fusillade is successful, as it presently appears it
will be? Demand that some of the schools be recreated in a modified
charter school model with extensive community control - a new
approach that is not in opposition to the public schools, but
is a prototype towards which the rest of the system might move.
For example, I have long urged a group of mini systems based
on each high school and its feeder schools, led by a board of
teachers, parents and other citizens.
What the wheeler dealers ignore in this
battle is that most of what happens in school goes on in a classroom
in which the bureaucracy and the system are for that hour irrelevant.
The point is to find the best teachers and to give them the best
support. For over two centuries, America did this well based
on decentralized, community controlled education. The answer
is not to turn the system over to educational hustlers - as encouraged
by Fenty, the business lobby and the editorialists at the Washington-Kaplan
Post - but to rediscover a system that worked.
After the above appeared we got this note
from the co-founder of Save our Schools, a parent of three
GINA ARLOT, SAVE OUR SCHOOLS - What you
describe in City Desk is very similar to what Albert Shanker,
the man who first used the term "charter school", hoped
would happen if a group of parents, teachers and others got together
to start a charter school. It was hoped that by having a school
fully invested in by the community, with some innovative idea,
we would be able to determine quickly what worked and what didn't
in public education and with feedback loops back into the overall
system, everyone would benefit. Education Week had a fairly big
commentary on the back page recently written by a man who has
written a bio on Shanker. What happened is that after the neo-cons
stopped criticizing the concept, they realized that it would
help them achieve their dearest dream-privatizing a sacred government
function, and as a bonus, the teachers and other school workers
unions would be destroyed. It was a pretty interesting commentary
about how the whole idea of charter schools has been taken over
and totally corrupted.
What follows is a collection of information
that may be useful to those interested in pursuing the approach
suggested above. Included are some of the things wrong with the
current undemocratic charter school system.
NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION - Nearly
40 percent of newer charter school teachers flee for other jobs,
according to a recently released study. Charter school students
do no better than their public school counterparts on math and
reading assessments, and in some cases score lower, according
to this national study. . .
In 2004, the National Assessment Governing
Board released an analysis of charter school performance on the
2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known
as "The Nation's Report Card." The report found that
charter school students, on average, score lower than students
in traditional public schools. While there was no measurable
difference between charter school students and students in traditional
public schools in the same racial/ethnic subgroup, charter school
students who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch scored
lower than their peers in traditional public schools, and charter
school students in central cities scored lower than their peers
in math in 4th grade.
Students taught by certified teachers had
roughly comparable scores whether they attended charter schools
or traditional public schools, but the scores of students taught
by uncertified teachers in charter schools were significantly
lower than those of charter school students with certified teachers.
Students taught by teachers with at least
five years' experience outperformed students with less experienced
teachers, regardless of the type of school attended, but charter
school students with inexperienced teachers did significantly
worse than students in traditional public schools with less experienced
teachers.
In a study that followed North Carolina
students for several years, professors Robert Bifulco and Helen
Ladd found that students in charter schools actually made considerably
smaller achievement gains in charter schools than they would
have in traditional public schools.
From a guide to converting public to charter
schools
Why should we consider converting our school
to a public charter school?
Converting to public charter school status
permits parents, teachers, and administrators to create the kind
of school they want for the children who attend. They can do
this because public charter school status confers independence,
control, and significantly increased funding at the school level.
Each charter school is an autonomous public
school organized as a non-profit corporation governed by its
own board of trustees. The trustees have exclusive control over
the school's budget, instructional methods, personnel, and administration.
Charter schools hire whom they please, spend their funding as
they see fit, and, within the bounds of their charter, control
their own curriculum and instructional methods.
Because charter schools are not connected
to DCPS, their funding comes directly from the D.C. government.
The amount of funding is prescribed by the Uniform Per Student
Funding Formula.
What are the risks?
Unlike traditional public schools, public
charter schools can be closed down if they do not perform well.
Charter schools that mismanage funds or break the law can be
closed down at any time. Schools whose students do not improve
academically can be closed down after five years. A conversion
school that is closed down for any reason is likely to revert
to a school-system school.
What happens to our current students if
we convert?
Under the School Reform Act (D.C.'s charter
school law), students enrolled in a converting DCPS school receive
preference in admission to the charter school, as do their siblings.
All students within the neighborhood boundaries of the converting
school also receive preference. Any remaining seats are filled
by students from around the District.
What about teachers and staff?
Conversion requires the endorsement of
2/3 of the school's full-time teachers. After conversion, the
board of trustees determines who works at the charter school.
Former DCPS teachers who work at a charter school receive "creditable
service" under the District's retirement system for the
entire period of their employment at the charter school. These
teachers may elect to remain in the District's system or to transfer
into the charter school's retirement system once it establishes
one.
How do we get started?
The first step is to study the petition
form and become thoroughly familiar with the application process.
Next, you should begin educating your teachers, parents, and
the community in which your school sits about the pros and cons
of conversion. Once there is general agreement about moving forward,
you should pull together a steering committee or founding board
to begin the process of developing a shared vision and mission
for your new school and to prepare the petition.
This summary points to some of the changes
needed in the charter school law.
SAVE OUR SCHOOLS - Charter schools were
supposed to be laboratories of innovation to improve public education
in DC, but instead are laboratories of privatization that are
destroying public education and draining our public resources.
Since being imposed by a Republican Congress in 1996, it has
become obvious that charters are the false promise of reform
in DC public schools.
Charter schools are not performing any
better than the public schools. In 2006-07, only 9 out of the
43 schools chartered by the Public Charter School Board reached
testing benchmarks established by the No Child Left Behind law.
Only 1 out of the 3 "highly touted"
KIPP schools met AYP in 06-07
When kids fall through the cracks, the
results can be tragic, but charter overseers don't care:
Charters do not have to provide access
to all students.
Since charters don¡¦t have
neighborhood boundaries, no one is entitled to go to a charter
school as a right. However, by law DCPS has to educate all students.
Many charter schools require parents to
sign contracts that include mandatory meetings, "volunteering",
and "activity fees."
Students are frequently "counseled
out" if they are not meeting discipline and academic expectations.
This usually occurs after October when charters receive funding
for students. Money does not follow the students out of the charters
and into DCPS.
The constant movement of students in and
out of charter schools is disruptive both to the students and
the receiving schools. Students can easily fall through the cracks
because there is no uniform tracking system or truancy policy
in charter schools.
Charters are costing the city millions
of dollars and spend more per capita than DCPS:
Many heads of charter schools make excessive
salaries. The Chairman and CEO of Friendship Public Charter School
made $260,000 in 2006.
Charters are using DCPS buildings and resources
and not putting anything back in the system: Maya Angelou Charter
School pays DCPS around $200 per student each year to rent Evans
MS despite receiving around $3,000 per student each year in facilities
allotment - that's $450,000.
Charter Schools are not public All are
owned by non-profit corporations and are only accountable to
their boards of trustees.
Even if a charter closes, its non-profit
foundation can keep the building.
Three of the 7 Charter Board members live
in Maryland or Virginia. "
Kaplan is the education corporation owned
by the Washington Post that is helping it stay afloat.
EDUCATION WORLD, 2004 Increased accountability
demands on educators have led to more districts and teachers
turning to outside resources for help. Among those resources
is Kaplan, Inc., a company traditionally known for its test-preparation
programs. Kaplan now also offers after-school education centers,
as well as programs for K-12 schools, post-secondary education,
and professional training. Seppy Basili
As Kaplan's vice president of learning
and assessment, Guiseppe (Seppy) Basili guides strategy and product
development for Kaplan K12 Learning Services. He has helped Kaplan
K12 Learning Services design and deliver instructional programs
to more than 1,000 schools nationwide. He also oversees in-house
professional development programs. . .
EW: Since the passage of No Child Left
Behind, in what areas are schools seeking the most assistance
from Kaplan?
Basili: NCLB really is creating enormous
change in schools - districts are connecting data to faces in
ways they haven't before. Those districts are turning to Kaplan
for a range of services - from intervention services for students
with the greatest need to professional development for teachers.
Districts also are turning to Kaplan for solutions, such as the
Achievement Planner learning platform - a comprehensive solution
that includes formative assessment, state testing analysis, and
targeted lesson plans.
EW: How do you respond to some educators'
concerns that they are being forced to "teach to the test"
more than ever now, and that it is adversely impacting education?
Basili: While traditional thinking is that
teachers shouldn't "teach to the test," the educational
landscape has changed during the past several years. Today, we
live in a world of criterion-referenced tests, which establishes
a proficiency baseline that every student should be able to perform
at. State tests are based on state standards. There's no problem
whatsoever in having tests that are standards-based and standards-driven.
DC WATCH, 2004 In 2002, Michael Sherer
at The Columbia Journalism Review reported that the Washington
Post Company had paid lobbyists $80,000 to monitor the No Child
Left Behind legislation in 2001. Sherer overlooked the fact that
the Post Company has journalists at not only its namesake newspaper
the Washington Post, but at Newsweek and many other media outlets
who could "monitor" and report on the legislation.
But Sherer was getting at a point regarding the journalistic
integrity of the Post Company and its media outfit because of
a certain conflict of interest. The Washington Post Company is
not only a family newspaper but is a company with a very profitable
non-media subsidiary called Kaplan Educational Services.
Not surprisingly, DC's "failing"
schools or schools with stagnant standardized test scores have
been a lead story over the last week at the Washington Post.
Two reports outlined the initial announcement of "failing"
schools and questioned whether or not money was available to
pay for the tutoring that was due to the students in those schools.
For those owning stock in the Washington Post Company, this was
good news both locally and nationally. But for those outside
of the Post's corporate lair, doubts linger as to whether or
not this will be a continuation of bad public policy.
The Washington Post Company's 2003 Annual
Report breaks Kaplan down into two divisions: Supplemental Education
and Higher Education. The more profitable of the two is Supplemental
Education, which has a long history as a test prep provider.
Sherer infers that the Post lobbied Congress to get legislation
into NCLB that would further the profits of Kaplan and therefore
the Post Company and its shareholders. Sherer goes on to state
" Overall, the newspaper's editorials have supported [NCLB's]
interests, calling for higher school standards, the use of vouchers,
and further exploration of online education."
The Post Company's Kaplan is one of nineteen
approved NCLB supplemental service providers on the District
of Columbia Public Schools' list from which parents have been
able to choose. By 2003, Kaplan had already received at least
one $90,000 contract for services from DCPS or $10,000 more than
the Post Company reportedly paid a firm to lobby Congress on
NCLB in 2001
CHARTER SCHOOL FAQ
Congress imposed charters on DC in 1996.When
they proved unpopular, Congress created a special Public Charter
School Board to encourage the creation and expansion of charter
schools. Charter schools are an example of Congress's disrespect
for home rule and their undemocratic meddling in local affairs.
But aren't charter schools well meaning?
Charters were pitched as innovative models
of reform that would help DCPS improve. There are some good and
well-intentioned charter schools, but as a whole charters are
part of a national movement to privatize all of our public institutions
and services.
Aren't charter schools public?
Charter schools use public money, but every
charter school is owned, operated, and governed by a private
corporation and Board of Trustees. Many charters receive additional
funding from private foundations and wealthy individuals, further
weakening public accountability. Also, charters don't have to
follow the rules and regulations of DCPS for enrollment and retention
of students or for the hiring and firing of teachers and other
school workers.
But can't anyone go to a charter school?
Charters are not neighborhood schools.
Prospective students must fill out applications and are selected
by citywide lottery. Often parents must attend meetings and agree
to volunteer time or pay "activity fees" before their
children can register. By selective outreach, specialized curriculum
and niche marketing, charters can target specific types of students
and ignore others. Once accepted, students can be expelled or
encouraged to withdraw for social, disciplinary, or academic
reasons.
Aren't parents just "voting with their
feet" when they send their children to charters?
Not necessarily. DCPS buildings have been
neglected and the school system overall has lost resources, staff,
and programs. Most parents would choose the neighborhood school
down the street if it was clean, modern, well-staffed, and well-maintained.
But aren't charter schools improving educational
opportunities for students in the District?
No. Even charter advocates agree that "quality"
remains a problem in charter schools, and public schools continue
to outperform charters. Even worse, charter schools are creating
a dual and unequal education system DC-charters enjoy political
support, get large amounts of money from private corporations,
and can decide who they want to remain in their school and who
they don't. DCPS has to accept everyone, including students put
out of charters. Far from fixing decades of political neglect
and underfunding of our public schools charters have only made
the situation worse.
Do charter schools contribute to segregation,
displacement, and gentrification?
Segregation: A study by the Project for
Civil Rights at Harvard University shows that charter schools
contribute to segregation by race and class. Charters can purposefully
attract a certain type of student through targeted recruitment
and niche marketing. Being a parent of a charter student generally
requires far more resources (for transportation, system navigation,
student fees and parent volunteering), which further discriminates
against lower-income families. Also, if students do not fit in
with the school's mission for disciplinary, academic, or social
reasons, they can be dismissed midyear or asked not to return
the next year. With this kind of subjective student selection,
charter schools are clearly achieving a separate and unequal
education based on race and class.
Privatization: Charters are an important
step towards systematic privatization in which corporations and
wealthy individuals make decisions for everyone else about how
students are educated, what communities need, and what happens
to available space. Because charters operate outside DCPS and
the city government, their ownership of a school building takes
the building out of the public domain and makes it private property.
Even if the Charter fails, the private owners keep the building
and land, rather than returning it to public ownership. Once
this transition is made, the public has no access or decision-making
power. They are cut out of the picture.
Gentrification: As segregators and privatizers,
unaccountable to the people or the democratic process, charter
schools are fundamental to the process of gentrification. How
better to drive poor people of color out than to undercut access
to public education, to sell off public property as "surplus"
and hand it off to gentrifiers? This is not only racist and greedy,
it shows an utter lack of respect for the people of Washington
DC.
Are all charter schools bad?
Individual charter schools may provide
a wonderful educational experience for students who attend them,
and may perform well and have high retention rates. However,
all charter schools are part of a system that threatens equality
and justice in public education and the local community. Unless
a charter school actively works to protect the community in which
it is located and the DC public school system, it is a part of
the problem
RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG, EDUCATION WEEK Twenty
years ago this month, in a landmark address to the National Press
Club in Washington, American Federation of Teachers President
Albert Shanker first proposed the creation of "charter schools"-publicly
funded institutions that would be given greater flexibility to
experiment with new ways of educating students. At the time,
some conservative education reformers opposed the idea, saying
we already knew what worked in education. Today, the positions
are reversed: Conservatives largely embrace charters, while teachers'
unions are mostly opposed. How did the notion of charter schools
evolve over 20 years? And might a return to Al Shanker's original
idea improve the educational and political fortunes of the charter
school movement?
In Shanker's vision, small groups of teachers
and parents would submit research-based proposals outlining plans
to educate kids in innovative ways. A panel consisting of the
local school board and teachers' union officials would review
proposals. Once given a "charter," a term first used
by the Massachusetts educator Ray Budde, a school would be left
alone for a period of five to 10 years. Schools would be freed
from certain collective bargaining provisions; for example, class-size
limitations might be waived to merge two classes and allow team-teaching.
Shanker's core notion was to tap into teacher expertise to try
new things. Building on the practices at the Saturn auto plant
in Nashville, Tenn., he envisioned teams of teachers making suggestions
on how best to accomplish the job at hand. Part of the appeal
of charter schools to Shanker and many Democrats was that they
offered a publicly run alternative to private-school-voucher
proposals, which they feared would undermine teacher collective
bargaining rights and Balkanize students by race, religion, and
economic status. A charter school, Shanker said, "would
not be a school where all the advantaged kids or all the white
kids or any other group is segregated."
In the early 1990s, Minnesota legislators,
working with Shanker, adopted the nation's first charter school
legislation. However, as the idea spread (eventually to 40 states
and the District of Columbia), the father of charter schools
expressed increasing alarm that his idea of teacher-led institutions
had morphed into something quite different. Many conservative
advocates saw charters as a way to make an end run around teachers'
unions, and the vast majority of charter schools today lack collective
bargaining agreements. Likewise, states disregarded Shanker's
admonition that charter schools should be diverse, as individual
charter schools often appealed to specialized ethnic, religious,
or racial groups, raising the very concerns Shanker had about
private school vouchers.
Shanker argued that in charter schools,
rigid collective bargaining rules could be bent, but that teachers
still needed union representation. Only when teachers felt secure
could they take risks, he said. "You don't see these creative
things happening where teachers don't have voice or power or
influence." Not surprisingly, lacking a collective voice,
teachers in charter schools turn over at almost twice the rate
of public school teachers. And while right-wingers assumed that
eliminating union influence would make test scores skyrocket,
a number of independent studies have found that charter schools
do no better than unionized public schools. Moreover, as a practical
political matter, as charter schools became a vehicle for anti-union
activists, powerful education unions naturally opposed their
expansion and effectively limited the ultimate growth of the
experiment.
THE ISSUES THAT MAKE NO CHILD LAW SO CONTROVERSIAL
JOAN INDIANA RIGDON, WASHINGTON LAWYER - According to its critics,
NCLB has actually lowered education standards by forcing schools
to obsess over testing while diverting some of their own funds-as
well as huge chunks of classroom time-away from their own educational
goals to do that testing.
Indeed, one thing we know from all the
testing that is required is that the nation's students aren't
making much progress under NCLB. Math scores, for instance, have
risen under NCLB, but at a slower rate than they did before the
law took effect. Reading scores have barely budged.
There's been book-cooking, too: Afraid
of having their schools tagged as failures, which could mean
large-scale staff replacement, or being forced to cede a school
to private management, many states have assured themselves of
improved results by dumbing down their assessment tests or lowering
the definition of a passing grade. Technically, that's allowed,
since NCLB requires students to be "proficient" but
doesn't say what that means. . .
While many of NCLB's original backers have
distanced themselves from the bill, even its chief architects,
Massachusetts Democrat Sen. Edward Kennedy and California Democrat
Rep. George Miller, are starting to criticize it. "Up until
at least spring of last year, they were very resistant to legislative
changes to the law and generally defenders of the law. They were
critical of funding and critical of how the Bush administration
was implementing the law, but they were not calling for a change
to the statute itself," says the NEA's Packer. "This
year they have significantly changed their tune and their tone."
Last summer, Miller declared the law "not
fair," "not flexible," and "not funded."
Last month, in a Washington Post op-ed on the eve of NCLB's sixth
anniversary, Senator Kennedy ticked off some of its accomplishments,
but then proceeded to roundly criticize it, writing that "its
one-size-fits-all approach encourages 'teaching to the test'
and discourages innovation in the classroom."
The National Conference of State Legislatures,
which has long criticized NCLB, believes the law is hopelessly
convoluted. Representative Miller's draft revision numbered 600
pages, compared to approximately 1,100 for the original. Says
David Shreve, the NCSL's federal affairs counsel: "It's
a terrible irony that you take 600 pages of amendments to fix
1,100 pages of messed up public policy, as if that's going to
simplify and clarify it."
MARCH 2008
WHAT'S HAPPENING TO SCHOOLS
[This is the best piece we've seen on what
NCLB, charter schools, reorganizations and other false school
reforms are really about]
STEVEN MILLER AND JACK GERSON, EDUCATOR ROUNDTABLE
- The "Tough Choices or Tough
Times" report of the National Commission on Skills in the
Workplace, funded in large part by the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation and signed by a bipartisan collection of prominent
politicians, businesspeople, and urban school superintendents,
called for a series of measures including:
(a) replacing public schools with what
the report called "contract schools", which would be
charter schools writ large;
(b) eliminating nearly all the powers of
local school boards - their role would be to write and sign the
authorizing agreements for the "contract schools;
(c) eliminating teacher pensions and slashing
health benefits; and
(d) forcing all 10th graders to take a
high school exit examination based on 12th grade skills, and
terminating the education of those who failed (i.e., throwing
millions of students out into the streets as they turn 16).
These measures, taken together, would effectively
cripple public control of public education. They would dangerously
weaken the power of teacher unions, thus facilitating still further
attacks on the public sector. They would leave education policy
in the hands of a network of entrepreneurial think tanks, corporate
entrepreneurs, and armies of lobbyists whose priorities are profiting
from the already huge education market while cutting back on
public funding for schools and students.
Indeed, their measures would mean privatization
of education, effectively terminating the right to a public education,
as we have known it. Many of the most powerful forces in the
country want the US, the first country to guarantee public education,
to be the first country to end it.
For the last fifty years, public education
was one of only two public mandates guaranteed by the government
that was accessible to every person, regardless of income. Social
Security is the other. Now both systems are threatened with privatization
schemes. The government today openly defines its mission as protecting
the rights of corporations above everything. Thus public education
is a rare public space that is under attack.
The same scenario is being implemented
with most of the services that governments used to provide for
free or at little cost: electricity, national parks, health care
and water. In every case, the methodology is the same: underfund
public services, create an uproar and declare a crisis, claim
that privatization can do the job better, deregulate or break
public control, divert public money to corporations and then
raise prices.
In the past year, it's become evident that
the corporate surge against public schools is only part of a
much broader assault against the public sector, against unions,
and indeed against the public's rights and public control of
public institutions.
This has been evident for some time now
in New Orleans, where Hurricane Katrina's devastation is used
as an excuse for permanently privatizing the infrastructure of
a major American city: razing public housing and turning land
over to developers; replacing the city's public school system
with a combination of charter schools and state-run schools;
letting the notorious Blackwater private army loose on the civilian
population; and, in the end, forcing tens of thousands of families
out of the city permanently. The citizens of New Orleans have
had their civil rights forcibly expropriated.
Just as the shock of the hurricane was
the excuse for the shock therapy applied to New Orleans, so the
economic downturn triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis is
now the excuse for a national assault on the public sector and
the public's rights. . .
In public education, the corporate surge
has grown both qualitatively and quantitatively. Where two years
ago the corporate education change agents were mainly operating
in a relatively small number of large urban areas, they have
now surfaced everywhere. The corporatization of public education
is the leading edge of privatization. This has the effect of
silencing the public voice on every aspect of the situation.
Across the US, public schools are not yet
privatized, though private services are increasingly benefiting
from this market. However, increasing corporate control of programs
- a different mix in every locale - is having a chilling influence
on the very things that people (though not corporations) want
from teachers: the ability to relate to and teach each child,
a nurturing approach that nudges every child to move ahead, human
assessments that put people before performance on standardized
tests.
Perhaps the single most dramatic development
of the corporate approach was the launching of the $60 million
Strong American Schools - Ed in '08 initiative, funded by billionaires
Bill Gates and Eli Broad. This is a naked effort to purchase
the nation's education policy, no matter who is elected President,
by buying their way into every electoral forum.
Ed in '08 has a three-point program: merit
pay (basing teachers' compensation on students' scores on high
stakes test); national education standards (enforcing conformity
and rote learning); and longer school day and school year (still
more time for rote learning, less time for kids to be kids. .
.
Where two years ago charter schools were
still viewed as experiments affecting a relatively small number
of students, in 2007 the corporate privatizers - led by Broad
and Gates - grossly expanded their funding to the point where
they now loom as a major presence.
In March, the Gates Foundation announced
a $100 million donation to KIPP charter schools, which would
enable them to expand their Houston operation to 42 schools (from
eight) - effectively, KIPP will be a full-fledged alternative
school system in Houston. Also in the past year, Eli Broad and
Gates have given in the neighborhood of $50 million to KIPP and
Green Dot charter schools in Los Angeles, with the aim of doubling
the percentage of LA students enrolled in charter schools. Oakland,
another Broad/Gates targets, now has more than 30 charter schools
out of 92. And, as we shall see below, the same trend holds across
the country.
NCLB in 2008 is still a major issue. It
continues to have a corrosive effect on public schools. It is
designed an unfunded mandate, which means that schools must meet
ever rigid standards every year, though no more money is appropriated
to support this effort. This means that schools must take ever-more
money out of the class room to meet federal requirements when
schools with low test scores are in "Program Improvement".
Once schools are in PI for 5 years they can be forced into privatization.
NCLB is a driving force that decimates
the "publicness" in public schools. In California,
more than 2000 schools are now in "Program-Improvement".
This means that they have to meet certain specific, and mostly
impossible standards, or they must divert increasingly greater
amounts of money out of the classroom and into private programs.
For example, schools in 3rd year PI must
take money out of programs that helped schools with a high proportion
of low achieving schools and make it available to private tutors.
. .
Privatizing public schools inevitable leads
to massive increase in social inequality. Private corporations
have never been required to recognize civil rights, because,
by definition, these are public rights. If the corporate privatizers
succeed in taking over our schools, there will be neither quality
education nor civil rights.
The system of public education in the United
States is deeply flawed. While suburban schools are among the
best in the world, public education in cities has been deliberately
underfunded and is in a shambles. The solution is not to fight
backwards to maintain the old system. Rather it is to fight forward
to a new system that will truly guarantee quality education as
a civil right for everyone.
Central to this is to challenge the idea
that everything in human society should be run by corporations,
that only corporations and their political hacks have the right
or the power to discuss what public policy should be. . .
The real direction is to increase the role
and power of the public in every way, not eliminate it. . .
FOR
FULL REPORT, EMAIL STEVE MILLER
CORPORATIONS DESIGNING CURRICULA TO
HELP RECRUIT WORKERS
ANNE MARIE CHAKER, WALL STREET JOURNAL
- In a recent class at Abraham Clark High School in Roselle,
N.J., business teacher Barbara Govahn distributed glossy classroom
materials that invited students to think about what they want
to be when they grow up. Eighteen career paths were profiled,
including a writer, a magician, a town mayor -- and five employees
from accounting giant Deloitte LLP. . .
The curriculum, provided free to the public school by a nonprofit
arm of Deloitte, aims to persuade students to join the company's
ranks. One 18-year-old senior in Ms. Govahn's class, Hipolito
Rivera, says the company-sponsored lesson drove home how professionals
in all fields need accountants. "They make it sound pretty
good," he says.
Deloitte and other corporations are reaching
out to classrooms -- drafting curricula while also conveying
the benefits of working for the sponsor companies. Hoping to
create a pipeline of workers far into the future, these corporations
furnish free lesson plans and may also underwrite classroom materials,
computers or training seminars for teachers.
The programs represent a new dimension
of the business world's influence in public schools. Companies
such as McDonald's Corp. and Yum Brands Inc.'s Pizza Hut have
long attempted to use school promotions to turn students into
customers. The latest initiatives would turn them into employees.
Companies that employ engineers, fearful
of a coming labor shortage, are at the movement's forefront.
Lockheed Martin Corp. began funding engineering courses two years
ago at schools near its aircraft testing and development site
in Palmdale, Calif., saying it hopes to replenish its local work
force. Starting in 2004, British engine-maker Rolls-Royce PLC
has helped fund high-school courses in topics such as engine
propulsion. Intel Corp. supports curricula in school districts
where engineering concepts are taught as early as the elementary
level.
Schools, for their part, have embraced
corporate support as state education funding has remained flat
for a decade and declining housing values now threaten to eat
into property-tax revenues. Teachers, meanwhile, often welcome
the lesson plans, classroom equipment and the corporate-sponsored
professional development sessions.
But however well-intentioned, such corporate
input may blur the line between pure academics and a commercial
agenda, critics say. "When you have a corporation or any
special interest offering an incentive, you are distorting the
educational purpose of the schools," says Alex Molnar, an
education-policy professor at Arizona State University who directs
the school's Commercialism in Education Research Unit.
The hiring priorities of a company or industry,
Mr. Molnar says, can change quickly. On the other hand, he says,
schools should provide a broad and consistent foundation of knowledge
and skills. Deciding what to teach is "first and foremost,
a series of choices," he says. Historically, those choices
have been made by school officials and professional educators,
based on the interests of their community's children, not on
the shifting needs of industry.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120476410964115117.html
FEBRUARY 2008
FINLAND: WHERE THEY REALLY LEAVE NO CHILD BEHIND
ELLEN GAMERMAN, WALL STREET JOURNAL - Finnish
teenagers are among the smartest in the world. They earned some
of the top scores by 15-year-old students who were tested in
57 countries. American teens finished among the world's C students
even as U.S. educators piled on more homework, standards and
rules. Finnish youth, like their U.S. counterparts, also waste
hours online. They dye their hair, love sarcasm and listen to
rap and heavy metal. But by ninth grade they're way ahead in
math, science and reading -- on track to keeping Finns among
the world's most productive workers. Finland's students are the
brightest in the world, according to an international test. Teachers
say extra playtime is one reason for the students' success. WSJ's
Ellen Gamerman reports.. . . .
The academic prowess of Finland's students
has lured educators from more than 50 countries in recent years
to learn the country's secret, including an official from the
U.S. Department of Education. What they find is simple but not
easy: well-trained teachers and responsible children. Early on,
kids do a lot without adults hovering. And teachers create lessons
to fit their students. "We don't have oil or other riches.
Knowledge is the thing Finnish people have," says Hannele
Frantsi, a school principal. . .
The Norssi School is run like a teaching
hospital, with about 800 teacher trainees each year. Graduate
students work with kids while instructors evaluate from the sidelines.
Teachers must hold master's degrees, and the profession is highly
competitive: More than 40 people may apply for a single job.
Their salaries are similar to those of U.S. teachers, but they
generally have more freedom.
Finnish teachers pick books and customize
lessons as they shape students to national standards. "In
most countries, education feels like a car factory. In Finland,
the teachers are the entrepreneurs," says Mr. Schleicher,
of the Paris-based OECD, which began the international student
test in 2000.
One explanation for the Finns' success
is their love of reading. Parents of newborns receive a government-paid
gift pack that includes a picture book. Some libraries are attached
to shopping malls, and a book bus travels to more remote neighborhoods
like a Good Humor truck. . .
Despite the apparent simplicity of Finnish
education, it would be tough to replicate in the U.S. With a
largely homogeneous population, teachers have few students who
don't speak Finnish. . .
Another difference is financial. . . The
gap between Finland's best- and worst-performing schools was
the smallest of any country in the PISA testing. The U.S. ranks
about average. . .
Once school starts, the Finns are more
self-reliant. While some U.S. parents fuss over accompanying
their children to and from school, and arrange every play date
and outing, young Finns do much more on their own. At the Ymmersta
School in a nearby Helsinki suburb, some first-grade students
trudge to school through a stand of evergreens in near darkness.
At lunch, they pick out their own meals, which all schools give
free, and carry the trays to lunch tables. There is no Internet
filter in the school library. They can walk in their socks during
class, but at home even the very young are expected to lace up
their own skates or put on their own skis. . .
Mr. Erma's school is a showcase campus.
Last summer, at a conference in Peru, he spoke about adopting
Finnish teaching methods. During a recent afternoon in one of
his school's advanced math courses, a high-school boy fell asleep
at his desk. The teacher didn't disturb him, instead calling
on others. While napping in class isn't condoned, Mr. Erma says,
"We just have to accept the fact that they're kids and they're
learning how to live."
THE MYTH OF CHARTER SCHOOLS
WALTER P. COOMBS AND RALPH E. SHAFFER,
LA TIMES - Critics of public education have argued for years
that throwing money at public schools doesn't solve the "education
crisis." Now come Eli Broad, Bill Gates, the Annenbergs,
Hunts, Waltons and other billionaires who willingly pour vast
sums of money into "public" education provided they
can designate where it goes and how it will be used. Apparently,
throwing money at the schools is acceptable if you get to call
the shots.
In the last decade, conservative philanthropists
have given hundreds of millions of dollars to establish their
own agendas. The most recent announcement, January's grant of
a paltry $23 million by Broad, was typical of this modern philanthropy.
Instead of truly aiding public education, Broad chose to subsidize
several privately operated charter school conglomerates in the
Los Angeles area. Principal beneficiaries of his largess were
the highly-regimented KIPP schools and the misnamed Aspire Public
Schools. The only thing public about either system is that they
are supported by California taxpayers. Broad's grant is but a
fraction of the amount given to these schools by the state.
Typical charter schools such as Green Dot,
which Broad also subsidizes with what are probably tax-deductible
gifts, are privately controlled and run by unelected, self-appointed
boards that are effectively unaccountable to the public. The
State Board of Education and the state agency that "oversees"
charters are now dominated by pro-charter appointees.
KIPP, Aspire and Green Dot have "succeeded"
because a relatively small number of motivated parents and students
have voluntarily withdrawn from the Los Angeles Unified School
District, believing that the district has not coped with the
massive problems facing public education in urban California
today.
From the day the Supreme Court ruled that
schools must end segregation, including the de facto system in
California's urban schools, a steady flow of white children left
our public schools. Forced busing dramatically escalated that.
Education-oriented parents who might have kept the schools on
their toes no longer had any interest in the public schools,
as their children were now attending private institutions.
Simultaneously, the percentage of nonnative
students enrolled in the public schools skyrocketed. Many had
extremely limited English language skills and their parents often
could not speak English at all. That's a recipe for educational
disaster.
KIPP, Aspire and Green Dot don't face that
problem. Through what amounts to a contract with parents and
students, they screen their applicants and admit a clientele
that, in a traditional public school, would do as well or better
than they are doing in the charter school.
If Broad's pet charters had to accept 3,000
limited-English, low-income students from ethnic backgrounds
that include a high percentage of single-parent families, with
widespread gang involvement and little commitment to education,
scores that the charters now trumpet would fall significantly.
But working with a select group of students who would score well
at any school, Broad's charters garner only somewhat better-than-average
test scores - despite the massive amount of public and private
money poured into them.
Charters claim that their schools score
far better than traditional public schools serving similar students.
That's not true. The students at Locke or any of the other at-risk
high schools in LAUSD are not "similar students" when
compared to those who have left the public schools and moved
to the charters. What Broad, Green Dot and the others do not
reveal is the scores of those charter students when they were
in regular public schools. It's our belief that those students
were already outscoring their fellow students in the traditional
schools before they moved into charters. Low-scoring students
do not enroll in Broad's charters. His charters have skimmed
off the education-oriented kids who otherwise would be raising
test scores for traditional public schools.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-shaffer12feb12,0,938309.story
LOCAL HEROES: SCHOOL DISTRICT REBELS
AGAINST NO CHILD LEFT LAW
DAILY HERALD, IL - A DuPage County school
district could be the first in Illinois - and perhaps the nation
- to refuse to administer mandatory state exams to students who
haven't yet mastered English.
The boycott by Carol Stream Elementary
District 93 would be an act of civil disobedience against the
state's decision to force English learners to take the same tests
as their fluent peers.
Nearly 10 percent of the district's 4,300
students were categorized as having limited English skills in
2007.
The federal No Child Left Behind law requires
that all public schools annually test all students in select
grades.
District 93 officials say they're willing
to break the law this spring to shield students from the frustration
and humiliation of taking an exam not designed for them. . .
Illinois dropped the test that was designed
for English learners this fall, after the U.S. Department of
Education made a final ruling that the test wasn't an adequate
measure of state learning standards. The old test was written
in simpler English.
As a stopgap measure, English learners
will take standard assessments with some special accommodations,
such as extended time and audio recordings, while Illinois develops
a test that will meet federal guidelines.
Politicians and educators throughout Illinois
have aggressively opposed the move, predicting it will cause
districts to fail and face serious sanctions under the federal
accountability law.
A group of Chicago parents plans to keep
their children home during the March testing, while local school
officials have petitioned state lawmakers for a one-year reprieve
for English learners. And, some other superintendents say they
also would consider a boycott. . .
A Wisconsin teacher made national news
last year when he protested the emphasis the law places on standardized
testing by refusing to administer the exams - for a single day.
Threatened with termination, he proctored the exams the second
day. . .
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/22/7240/
JANUARY 2008
FLORIDA COUNTY PREFERS MCDONALD'S TO
EVOLUTION
[Seminole County, Florida, is a hotbed
of opposition to teaching evolution]
AD AGE - "This is a good day for parents
and children in Seminole County and anyone who believes that
corporations should not prey on children in schools," said
Dr. Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free
Childhood. "We are pleased that McDonald's is listening
to parents all over the country who believe that report cards
should not be commercialized."
The fast-food giant had agreed to sponsor
the report-card jackets for the county's elementary schools to
cover a printing fee of $1,600. There are 27,000 children in
the school district.
On the jackets, McDonald's offered a free
happy meal to any student with all A's and B's, two or fewer
absences, or good behavior in a given academic quarter. Susan
Pagan, an area parent, notified the Campaign for a Commercial-Free
Childhood, and an all-out public-relations battle ensued by early
December. According to the campaign, the school district received
more than 2,000 calls of protest. . .
"It was McDonald's decision to remove
our trademarks from report-card jackets in Seminole County, Fla.,
because we believe the focus should be on the importance of a
good education," said Bill Whitman, a spokesman for McDonald's
USA. "McDonald's, not the school district, will cover the
cost to reprint the report-card jackets."
http://adage.com/article?article_id=123176
CONSUMERIST - The school district that
approved McDonald's-sponsored report cards has a hot new partnership
with Bus Radio, a friendly company that advertises to kids as
they ride to school. The company serves a sonorous mix of inoffensive
music, public service announcements (buckle up, kids!) and a
few harmless advertisements (maybe McDonald's?) to over 1 million
children in 23 states. Bus Radio is based in Needham, Massachusetts,
but lost its contract with the Needham school district after
uppity parents objected to the crass commercialization of something
as innocent as a bus ride. Seminole School Board members said
the benefits of the radio show seem to outweigh any drawbacks,
but they will evaluate Bus Radio's performance during the test
run.
http://consumerist.com/346745/bus-radio-advertises-to-school+bound-kids
DECEMBER 2007
HIGH PITCHED NOISE USES TO KEEP TEENAGERS AWAY
THE HERALD, UK - Devices that emit a high-pitched
and annoying sound, which can be heard only by people under the
age of 20, are being used to disperse groups of youths deemed
to be "anti-social". Adults, untroubled by the noise,
are subsequently soon untroubled by young people either, it is
claimed.
However, the use of such devices is almost
completely unregulated and children's rights campaigners object
to them on the grounds that they are indiscriminate - affecting
well-behaved and misbehaving young people alike, not to mention
infants and babies who may be unable even to object.
Since its release in October 2006, the
device - called a Mosquito ultrasonic youth deterrent, by the
company that sells it - has proven to be extremely popular south
of the border. Almost 3300 security systems were bought within
18 months of their launch. Around 70% of those were installed
in the UK, mostly in England and spread around almost every region
in the country. advertisement
They work because a condition known as
"presbycusis" or "age-related hearing loss"
means that following their teenage years, most people's ability
to hear sounds at frequencies of 18 to 20 kilohertz begins to
deteriorate then disappear, according to the system's manufacturer,
Compound Security Systems.
The firm says the Mosquito can be activated
to make groups of young people who are judged to be a threatening
presence on street corners or outside shops, move on of their
own accord. It was invented by entrepreneur Howard Stapleton,
who claimed to have been inspired when his daughter was bullied
by a group of youths outside shops near their home in Merthyr
Tydfil. . .
Human Rights campaigners Liberty have been
vocal in their opposition to the use of Mosquitoes. The organisation's
director, Shami Chakrabarti, described them as "at worst,
a low-level sonic weapon and, at best, a dog-whistle for kids".
Chakrabarti added: "Either way, it has no place in a civilized
society that values its children and young people and seeks to
imbue them with values of dignity and respect. Degrading young
people instead of providing opportunities for them is a tragic
option whose long-term effect is frightening to imagine."
Paula Evans, policy and parliamentary officer at Children in Scotland,
said: "This type of dispersal mechanism affects children
of all ages, from infants to young people. It contravenes their
right to assemble and to socialize under article 15 of the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It also fails
to address the underlying problem of a shortage, within communities
across Scotland, of suitable places for children and young people
to meet socially and a shortage of recreational facilities for
children and young people to use.
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND FLUNKS AGAIN
AP - U.S. students are lagging behind their
peers in other countries in science and math, test results out
Tuesday show. . . The average scores for U.S. students were lower
than the average scores for the group as a whole. . . . There
was no change in U.S. math scores since 2003, the last time the
test was given. The science scores aren't comparable between
2003 to 2006, because the tests aren't the same.
NOVEMBER 2007
PLENTY OF FOURTH GRADERS LEFT BEHIND
AP - U.S. fourth-graders have lost ground
in reading ability compared with kids around the world, according
to results of a global reading test. Test results released Wednesday
showed U.S. students, who took the test last year, scored about
the same as they did in 2001, the last time the test was given
- despite an increased emphasis on reading under the No Child
Left Behind law. . . Ten countries or jurisdictions, including
Hong Kong and three Canadian provinces, were ahead of the United
States this time. In 2001, only three countries were ahead of
the United States. . . On the latest international exam, U.S.
students posted a lower average score than students in Russia,
Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Hungary, Italy and Sweden,
along with the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia
and Ontario.
ANOTHER REASON YOU MAY NOT WANT
TO WRECK THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM
JOEL KOTKIN, WALL STREET
JOURNAL - For
much of the past decade, business recruiters, cities and urban
developers have focused on the "young and restless,"
the "creative class," and the so-called "yuspie"--the
young urban single professional. Cities, they've said, should
capture this so-called "dream demographic" if they
wish to inhabit the top tiers of the economic food chain and
enjoy the fastest and most sustained growth.
This focus--epitomized
by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm's risible "Cool Cities"
initiative--is less successful than advertised. Cincinnati, Baltimore,
Cleveland, Newark, Detroit and Memphis have danced to the tune
of the hip and the cool, yet largely remain wallflowers in terms
of economic and demographic growth. Instead, an analysis of migration
data by my colleagues at the Praxis Strategy Group shows that
the strongest job growth has consistently taken place in those
regions--such as Houston, Dallas, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham--with
the largest net in-migration of young, educated families ranging
from their mid-20s to mid-40s.
Urban centers that have
been traditional favorites for young singles, such as Chicago,
Boston, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, have experienced
below-average job and population growth since 2000. San Francisco
and Chicago lost population during that period; even immigrant-rich
New York City and Los Angeles County have shown barely negligible
population growth in the last two years, largely due to a major
out-migration of middle class families.
Married people with children
tend to be both successful and motivated, precisely the people
who make economies go. They are twice as likely to be in the
top 20% of income earners, according to the Census, and their
incomes have been rising considerably faster than the national
average.
There is a basic truth
about the geography of young, educated people. They may first
migrate to cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston or San Francisco.
But they tend to flee when they enter their child-rearing years.
Family-friendly metropolitan regions have seen the biggest net
gains of professionals, largely because they not only attract
workers, but they also retain them through their 30s and 40s.
. .
Contrary to popular belief,
moreover, the family is far from the brink of extinction. Most
Americans, notes the Pew Research Center, still regard marriage
as the ideal state. . .
The evidence thus suggests
that the obsession with luring singles to cities is misplaced.
Instead, suggests Paul Levy, president of Philadelphia's Center
City district association, the emphasis should be on retaining
young people as they grow up, marry, start families and continue
to raise them.
Mr. Levy notes that the
remarkable transformation of once sedate Center City--the area's
population has grown to over 90,000--has indeed been due primarily
to young singles, childless couples and a few "empty nesters."
The proliferation of clubs, restaurants and bars has created
an almost Manhattan ambiance. But he suggests that the district
is reaching the limits of its success. . .
Boosters such as Mr. Levy
look increasing towards reviving the traditional family neighborhoods
which surround Center City. His organization has worked closely
with local public and private schools, church and civic organizations
to build up the support structures that might convince today's
youthful inner city urbanites to remain as they start families.
"Our agenda," Mr. Levy says, "has to change. We
have to look at the parks, the playgrounds and the schools."
OCTOBER 2007
STUDY QUESTIONS PUBLIC-PRIVATE SCHOOL DIFFERENCE
FOR LOW INCOME STUDENTS
DC EXAMINER - Low-income students who attend
urban public high schools generally do just as well as private-school
students with similar backgrounds, according to a study.
Students at independent private schools
and most parochial schools scored the same on 12th-grade achievement
tests in core academic subjects as those in traditional public
high schools when income and other family characteristics were
taken into account, according to the study by the nonpartisan
Center on Education Policy. While the finding is in line with
a handful of recent studies, it's at odds with a larger body
of research over the years that has found private-school students
outperform those in public schools. Some of that research found
a private-school advantage even when income levels are taken
into account.
However, the new study not only compared
students by income levels but also looked at a range of other
family characteristics, such as whether a parent participates
in school life. . .
When all these factors were accounted for,
the only kind of private schools that had a positive impact on
student achievement were Catholic schools run by holy orders
such as the Jesuits. . .
The researchers found:
-In reading, family income, parental discussion,
parental expectations, parental involvement and eighth-grade
scores all positively affected 12th-grade reading scores. Scores
weren't affected by the type of school a student attended unless
it was a Catholic order school.
-In math, parental discussions and involvement
had no effect on achievement scores. Parental expectations and
family income did have an impact. . .
OHIO - WHERE CHARTER SCHOOL SCAM STARTED - BEGINNING
TO CRACKDOWN AFTER MORE THAN HALF GET FAILING GRADES
NY TIMES - Ohio became a test tube for
the nation's charter school movement during a decade of Republican
rule here, when a wide-open authorization system and plenty of
government seed money led to the schools' explosive proliferation.
. . This year, the state's school report card gave more than
half of Ohio's 328 charter schools a D or an F.
Now its Democratic governor and attorney
general, elected when Democrats won five of Ohio's six top posts
last November, are cracking down on the schools, which receive
public money but are run by independent operators. And across
the country, charter school advocates are watching nervously,
fearful the backlash could spread.
Attorney General Marc Dann is suing to
close three failing charter schools and says he is investigating
dozens of others. It is the first effort by any attorney general
to close low-performing charter schools. Gov. Ted Strickland
said he wanted to carry out his own crackdown.
Some 4,000 charter schools now operate
across the nation, most advertising themselves as a smaller,
safer alternative to the neighborhood school. Nationwide, the
movement has gained traction among Democrats, partly because
of the successes of a few quality nonprofit operators.
Fifty-seven percent of [Ohio's] charter
schools, most of which are in cities, are in academic watch or
emergency, compared with 43 percent of traditional public schools
in Ohio's big cities.
Behind the Ohio charter failures are systemic
weaknesses that include loopholes in oversight, a law allowing
70 government and private agencies to authorize new charters,
and financial incentives that encourage sponsors to let schools
stay open.
WHY PRESCHOOL PAYS OFF
[From a New American Media interview with
David Kirp, author of The Sandbox Investment]
Q - What is the effect of only one year
of preschool on society at large?
It's really crucial in the development
of children, and not just four-year-olds. We start with four-year-olds
and preschool because that's an important developmental place
and a place where you can start talking about kids getting ready
for school. But it's also important to think about education
earlier. It's not as if the learning process begins magically
with a half day of high quality instruction. Forty-five minutes
after they're born kids are tracking the movements of people.
At six months they're perfect linguists.
They can distinguish the pitch of every language, every tonal
language, at two and three. Preschool is really a first step
down that road.
Q - So many people in America go to college,
so many more than in other countries, and education is stressed
so much in this culture. Why has preschool really been ignored?
It has a lot to do with the conservative
ideology of the family. Preschool is the state takeover of the
lives of the young and some of the politicians say, "Why
stop there, why not grab the kid right out of the hospital and
start educating them?" This is their way of suggesting the
danger of more and more government intrusion.
In this country rich parents have . . .
sent their kids to private nursery schools. And since 1965 very
poor parents have had access to preschool, with Head Start. It's
the folks in the large middle, the working class and the middle
class that have done without, and they're the folks that now
see the benefits and they're the folks who are now pushing for
this.
Q - Why shouldn't we focus more on kindergarten
to twelve when there are so many people struck by the problem
of working in a deeply unequal school system?
Pre-k is not the magic bullet, but the
child of the welfare family has heard 30 million fewer words
by the age of four than the child of a professional's family.
A four year old from a professional's family has a bigger vocabulary
than a welfare mom. So if you wait until kindergarten, those
kids are really far behind.
That is why I think the most exciting and
famous piece of research tracked a group of four-year-old African
American children in Michigan for forty years and found those
kids were less likely to have been in special education, or to
have been left back, and more likely to have graduated from high
school, gone to college, less likely to be in prison, more likely
to get married, healthier and off welfare.
NEIL BUSH ZAPPED ON NO CHILD HUSTLE
NY TIMES - John P. Higgins Jr., the inspector
general, said he would review the matter after a group, Citizens
for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, detailed at least
$1 million in spending from the No Child Left Behind program
by school districts in Texas, Florida and Nevada to buy products
made by Mr. Bush's company, Ignite Learning of Austin, Tex. Mr.
Higgins stated his plans in a letter to the group sent last week.
Members of the group and other critics
in Texas contend that school districts are buying Ignite's signature
product, the Curriculum on Wheels, because of political considerations.
The product, they said, does not meet standards for financing
under the No Child Left Behind Act, which allocates federal money
to help students raise their achievement levels, particularly
in elementary school reading.
Ignite, founded by Neil Bush in 1999, includes
as investors his parents, former President George H. W. Bush
and his wife, Barbara. Company officials say that about 100 school
districts use the Curriculum on Wheels, known as the Cow, which
is a portable classroom with software to teach middle-school
social studies, science and math. The units cost about $3,800
each and require about $1,000 a year in maintenance. . .
The citizens' group obtained documents
through a Freedom of Information Act request showing that the
Katy Independent School District west of Houston used $250,000
in state and federal Hurricane Katrina relief money last year
to buy the Curriculum on Wheels.
AUSTIN STATESMAN - A three-month long investigation
by CREW raises serious questions about the use of NCLB funds
to pay for products sold by Neil Bush, the younger brother of
President George Bush. . . CREW's three-month investigation revealed
that school districts are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars,
including NCLB funds, on Ignite!'s Curriculum on Wheels, a cart-mounted
video projector and hard drive loaded with a year's supply of
Ignite's social studies, science, or math curricula. At a standard
price of $3,800-$4,200 per unit, the COW is a very expensive
device with limited use. A recent New York Times article about
the use of the COW in Spotsylvania, Virginia, put the cost into
perspective: each school in the district receives $1,000 "to
cover all the lab supplies, equipment and other expenses connected
with science for an entire year." Adding to the initial
expense, schools must pay an annual $1,000 licensing, upkeep
and upgrade fee in order to retain the COW for more than one
year
http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/09/15/0915ignite.html
CREW - Over the past five years, Austin
has spent $70,940 for the units, of which nearly $42,400 was
federal money, according to documents filed with the letter to
the inspector general. Longview has spent $126,400 for the units,
of which $94,060 was federal money, according to documents. The
watchdog group said there is no evidence the units meet standards
in the No Child Left Behind Act.
"It is astonishing that taxpayer dollars
are being spent on unproven educational products to the financial
benefit of the president's brother," said Melanie Sloan,
the group's executive director. "The IG should investigate
whether children's educations are being sacrificed so that Neil
Bush can rake in federal funds."
http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/30397
NEIL BUSH TIME LINE
1985
Neil Bush joins the board of Silverado
S&L, serves until 1988. Silverado loans his partners in JNB
$132 million which they never repay. Silverado will eventually
collapse at a taxpayer cost of $1 billion.
1983
Neil Bush forms his first oil company.
He puts in $100, his partners contribute $160,000 and Neil is
named president of the firm, JNB Exploration.
1989
Neil Bush bails out of JNB Exploration,
the firm where he became president with a $100 ante, leaving
his partners to worry about its debt. Days earlier he forms Apex
Energy with a personal investment of $3000. The rest of the money
-- $2.7 million -- comes from an SBA program designed to help
"high risk start-up companies." Like JNB, it proves
to be just that. Apex will later go belly-up with no assets.
1990
Federal regulators give Bush son Neil the
mildest possible penalty in the $1 billion failure of the Silverado
S&L. The deal is so good that Bush drops his appeal. Among
other things, Neil, as a Silverado director, voted to approve
over $100 million in loans to his business partners.
1991
Neil Bush bails out of Apex Energy after
collecting $320,000 in salary plus expenses. Bill Daniels, cable-TV
magnate who has been lobbying against regulation of the cable
industry, offers Neil a job. According to a representative, he
"thought Neil deserved a second chance."
1999
Neil Bush makes at least $798,00 in three
stock trades in a single day of a company where he had been employed
as a consultant. The company, Kopin Corporation of Taunton, Massachusetts,
announced good news about a new Asian client that sent its stock
value soaring. Bush stated that he had no inside knowledge and
that his financial advisor had recommended the trades. He said,
"any increase in the price of the stock on that day was
purely coincidental, meaning that I did not have any improper
information." When asked, in January 2004, about the stock
trades, Bush contrasted the capital gains he reported in 1999
and 2000 with the capital losses on Kopin stock he reported ($287,722
in all) in 2001. [Wikipedia]
Bush co-founds Ignite! Learning, an educational
software corporation. Bush has said he started Austin-based Ignite!
Learning six years ago because of his learning difficulties in
middle school and those of his son, Pierce Bush. The software
uses multiple intelligence methods to provide varying types of
content to appeal to multiple learning styles. To fund Ignite!,
Bush raised $23 million from U.S. investors, including his parents,
Barbara and former President George Bush, as well as businessmen
from Taiwan, Japan, Kuwait, the British Virgin Islands and the
United Arab Emirates, according to documents filed with the Securities
and Exchange Commission. Russian billionaire expatriate Boris
Berezovsky, Berezovsky's partner Badri Patarkatsishvili, Kuwaiti
company head Mohammed Al Saddah, and Chinese computer executive
Winston Wong are documented investors. [Wikipedia]
2003
Washington Post reports that Bush's salary
from Ignite! is $180,000 per year.
2007
Boris Berezovsky, a political enemy of
Russian President Vladimir Putin is under indictment for fraud
in Russia and an applicant for asylum in the United Kingdom.
Berezovsky has been an investor in Bush's Ignite! program since
at least 2003. Bush met with Berezovsky, who has been described
as "notorious" and a "wheeler-dealer," in
Latvia. The meeting caused tension between that country and Russia
due to Berezovsky's fugitive status. Bush has also been seen
in Berezovsky's box at a British soccer stadium for a game. [Wikipedia]
NY TIMES - Ignite includes as investors
his parents, former President George H. W. Bush and his wife,
Barbara. Company officials say that about 100 school districts
use the Curriculum on Wheels, known as the Cow, which is a portable
classroom with software to teach middle-school social studies,
science and math. The units cost about $3,800 each and require
about $1,000 a year in maintenan
HOW NOT TO IMPROVE SCHOOLS
NY TIMES - By many
measures, Intermediate School 289 is a place parents would be
happy to send their children. This year, it was the only middle
school in New York City to achieve "blue ribbon" status,
a marker of high achievement under the federal No Child Left
Behind Act. The leading public schools guidebook calls it a place
where "solid academics" are combined with "attention
to children's social and emotional development." Educators
from around the country routinely descend upon the school, in
Battery Park City, to shadow its teachers.
So when Ellen Foote, the school's veteran
principal, received a copy of the school's new report card from
the city's Education Department, she was taken aback at the letter
grade: D.
"It is just so demoralizing to have
a number or grade assigned that is just sort of trivializing
things," Ms. Foote said. "It doesn't reflect, I think,
the valuable work and the very complicated work that we do here."
Throughout the city, principals are bracing
for the release this week of report cards from the Education
Department that will, for the first time, grade schools on a
scale of A through F. Because the report cards will assess schools
on how much individual students improve year to year, as well
as on a complicated mixture of test scores and other factors,
many of the grades are likely to upend longstanding reputations,
casting celebrated schools as failures and lauding those that
work miracles with struggling students. Some principals refer
to the scores as a "scarlet letter."
The schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein,
has called the report cards the glue that holds together his
entire effort to overhaul the school system, the nation's largest.
While other school systems, including New York State's, give
schools report cards, few assign letter grades, and few use the
kind of complex test data analysis that the city is using.
Mr. Klein plans to tie the grades to rewards,
like bonus pay for teachers and principals, and consequences,
like closing schools and firing principals. . .
The entire analysis hinges on the accuracy
of the data. As recently as last week, some principals throughout
the city, particularly in high schools, were panicked that the
data was inaccurate. Department officials said they expected
to fix most of the errors and would delay the grades for a few
high schools because of inaccuracies. . .
Ms. Foote said it was unfair to judge a
school on just one year of test scores and ignore gains over
the last several years. She said that the percentage of students
reading at grade level in her school had increased steadily since
2003, when it was 65 percent. She also said she was surprised
to see her school compared to middle schools that required a
standardized test for admission, like the Lab School and East
Side Middle School.
"I do not want to devote more time
to teaching to the tests," she said, adding that she would
have to sacrifice art, music and individualized instruction.
"Is that what's required now to get a good grade on this
progress report? That's a compromise that I don't think I am
willing to make.". . .
TOWN STANDS UP AGAINST SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION
BILL KAUFFMAN, writing in Chronicles, argued
once that one of the most deleterious changes in public education
has been the increase in school -- rather than class -- size.
Kauffman noted that this was intentional, led by people such
as Harvard President James Conant who produced a serious of postwar
reports calling for the "elimination of the small high school"
in order to compete with the Soviets and deal with the nuclear
era. Said Kauffman, "Conant the barbarian triumphed: the
number of school districts plummeted from 83,718 in 1950 to 17,995
in 1970."
The trend hasn't stopped and - in a move
boosted by the faux experts at Brookings and the smart growth
crowd - Maine is the midst of a masochistic school district consolidation.
One town has managed to op out - perhaps only temporarily. Note
the reason: they got a pass because they're one of the better
school districts. In other words, instead of modeling other districts
on Yarmuth's, the state is proceeding with a corporate style
consolidation that hasn't worked in the fifty years it's been
tried throughout the country.
TESS NACELEWICZ, PORTLAND PRESS HERALD
- Yarmouth has been the belle of the ball among Portland's northern
suburbs, with communities ranging from Falmouth to Pownal courting
the high-performing school district as a partner under Maine's
new school consolidation law.
Now it appears that Yarmouth will choose
to remain independent rather than merge with other school districts.
Residents at a community forum on Monday indicated strongly that
they prefer Yarmouth go it alone. About 400 residents attended
the forum to discuss the town's options under the new law, which
is designed to reduce Maine's 290 school districts to about 80.
In both straw and paper balloting, nearly
100 percent of those attending the meeting showed support for
Yarmouth remaining separate, school officials said.. . .
Because Yarmouth fits into a category of
school districts considered high performing and essential, it
would be exempt from the financial penalties that the state will
impose on districts that don't consolidate. It's unclear how
many years Yarmouth will be allowed such an exemption. . .
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story_pf.php?id=144232&ac=PHnws
SEPTEMBER 2007
WATCHING TV EARLY IN LIFE CAN LEAD TO
ATTENTION PROBLEMS LATER
NEW SCIENTIST - Watching
television more than two hours a day early in life can lead to
attention problems later in adolescence, according to a large
long-term study. The roughly 40% increase in attention problems
among "heavy" TV viewers was observed in both boys
and girls, and was independent of whether a diagnosis of attention
deficit - hyperactivity disorder was made prior to adolescence.
"Those who watched more than two hours,
and particularly those who watched more than three hours, of
television per day during childhood had above-average symptoms
of attention problems in adolescence," Erik Landhuis of
the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, wrote in his
report, published in Pediatrics on Tuesday.
Symptoms of attention problems included
short attention span, poor concentration, and being easily distracted.
The findings could not be explained by early-life attention difficulties,
socio-economic factors, or intelligence, says the team. . .
Young children who watched a lot of television
were more likely to continue the habit as they got older, but
even if they did not, the damage was done, the study said. .
.
"This suggests that the effects of
childhood viewing on attention may be long lasting," Landhuis
notes. He offers several possible explanations for the association.
One is that the rapid scene changes common
to many TV programs may over-stimulate the developing brain of
a young child, and could make reality seem boring by comparison.
"Hence, children who watch a lot of
television may become less tolerant of slower-paced and more
mundane tasks, such as school work," he writes. Net effects
It is also possible that TV viewing may
supplant other activities that promote concentration, such as
reading, games, sports and play, he says. The lack of participation
inherent in TV watching might also condition children when it
comes to other activities.
A DYSLEXIC STUDENT ON BEING SPECIAL
[Vinalhaven is an island with a population
of 1200 an hour and fifteen ferry ride off the coast of Maine.
The local school has 210 student K-12. Writes Kris Osgood in
Working Waterfront, "Last spring 17-year-old Ladd Olson,
of Vinalhaven, was given an essay assignment by one of his teachers.
The topic was up to him. Having been designated a special education
student, he decided to research his learning disability (or learning
difference), dyslexia." The result was both impressive and
moving. This is an excerpt]
LADD OSGOOD, WORKING WATERFRONT - Often
the kids try to hide their disabilities so they don't stick out.
Their intelligence is hidden by their poor reading ability. They
have strong verbal, visual, auditory, motor, and comprehension
skills but lack phonological skills, which inhibits their ability
to read. When a child with dyslexia reads, 10 times more brain
activity goes on in the child's head than in the head of an average
reader; however, the activity does not enable the child to read
proficiently.
This brain activity is not obvious to the
outside observer but the student's inability to read is. Intelligence
is frequently judged by reading ability, but history has shown
that many successful people have learning disabilities. Albert
Einstein, a famous mathematician and physicist, had a learning
disability and did not speak until age three. He had a very difficult
time doing math in school, and it was hard for him to express
himself through writing. He is not the only one. There are many
others including, Winston Churchill, Nelson Rockefeller, President
Theodore Roosevelt, George Washington and many successful people
that are out of the spotlight as well.
Sally Shaywitz, a neuroscientist and author
of "Overcoming Dyslexia," was at a dinner party. A
professor at her table was speaking about dyslexia, "Now
dyslexics want to go to law school," he said. "Can
you imagine: a person like that as your lawyer?" She replied,
"I would consider it fortunate to have David Boies as my
lawyer. Yes, a person like that." Little did he know that
Boies, a high profile lawyer, is dyslexic and did not read until
the third grade. . .
Equal doesn't exist in education. As much
as we try to make it equal, equal doesn't solve anything. "It"
is education, it is society, it is life. It isn't equal. Through
trial and error we can change the education system to benefit
kids of all differences. With the help of the state legislature,
school boards, administrations and teachers it can all come together
to create not good education but great education. Once I was
asked a question, 'If I could, would I take a pill to make my
learning disabilities go away?' After researching and writing
this paper I have come to realize that dyslexia gives me the
opportunity to look at things differently and make different
choices. I feel safe to say that I would not take "the pill"
if there was one.
http://www.workingwaterfront.com/article.asp?storyID=20070934
JONATHAN KOZOL ON NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
[From an interview with Matthew Fishbane]
JONATHAN KOZOL, SALON - I think the tests
in their present form are useless, because although President
Bush promoted them by saying, "All we want to do is help
these teachers see where their students need more help,"
the results typically don't come back before the end of June.
What is the teacher supposed to do when she finally sees the
test scores in the middle of the summer, send a postcard to little
Shaniqua, saying, you know, "If I knew last winter what
I know now, I would have put more emphasis on the those skills"?
I recommended to the Democrats that they
replace these tests with diagnostic tests, which are given individually
by the teacher to her students. They are anxiety-free and you
don't have to wait six months for McGraw-Hill or Harcourt to
mis-score them, as they often do. The teacher gets results immediately.
And it's not time stolen from education because she actually
learns while she's giving this test.
FISHBANE - After the Supreme Court decision
last June on segregation in Seattle's school districts, you wrote
a critical Op-Ed in the New York Times about a transfer provision
in No Child Left Behind that says that if a student is in a perennially
failing school, that child must be permitted to transfer to a
high-performing school. Can you explain your argument?
KOZOL - The idea of the provision is that
a child's parents should be able to transfer the child to a successful
school in their district if the child's school has proven to
be a hopeless failure. The trouble is, there aren't enough schools
in overwhelmingly poor and minority inner-city districts to which
a child can transfer. So less than 3 percent of eligible kids
have transferred during the years since No Child Left Behind
came into effect.
I proposed that the transfer provision
be amended not only to permit but to require states to make cross-district
transfers possible -- so that a student in the South Bronx could
be transferred to Bronxville, which is, I have tested in my car,
only about a 12-minute drive. It would be a very simple amendment
to add and it would drive a mighty blow against the deepening
re-segregation of our urban schools, without making any reference
to race. Justice Kennedy, in his partial concurrence, pointed
out that strategies like these, which are race- neutral, would
certainly be constitutional.
FISHBANE - How would those changes help
to retain the wonderful young teachers you write about?
KOZOL - First of all, it would immediately
relieve that sense that there's always a sword above their heads,
and that sword is empirically measurable testing. It would relieve
the sense that every minute of the day has to be allocated to
a pre-designated skill. It would free them from the absurdity
of posting numbers and the language of standards on their blackboards,
which are of absolutely no benefit to a child. As Francesca once
pointed out to me, no child's going to come back 10 years later
and say, "I'm so grateful to you for teaching me proficiency
56b."
It would free the teachers from all of
that, and it would allow these young teachers, most of whom have
majored in liberal arts, and who love literature and poetry,
to flood the classroom with all those treasures that they themselves
enjoyed when they were children, most of them in very good suburban
school districts.
http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/08/30/kozol/print.html
AUGUST 2007
TAGS AREN'T WHAT KIDS NEED
PATRICK WELSH, WASHINGTON POST - The debate over designating students "gifted
and talented" has been bedeviling school districts in the
Washington area and throughout the country for years. Middle-class
parents have come to see the label not just as a guarantee that
their children will be challenged, but also as a status symbol,
and they complain when their kids aren't included in the programs.
But of all the labels that we so-called
educators give students, none seems more absurd -- and few more
destructive. When we apply this tag to a tiny group of children
in third, fourth or fifth grade, we are in effect saying that
the rest are ungifted and untalented. We're denigrating hard
work and perseverance, telling children that no matter how much
effort they put forth, they just can't measure up to their special
peers.
Just as bad, we're telling those on whom
we deign to bestow the coveted label that they have it made;
we're giving them an overblown sense of their intellectual abilities
and setting them up to fall short when they face real challenges
later. What schools need to do is not to single out a small group
as special, but push all kids to work to their fullest potential.
. .
What most parents don't realize is that
the gifted label can harm not only those who don't receive it,
but also those who do. Labeling can create what Stanford University
psychology professor Carol Dweck calls a "fixed" mindset
of intelligence -- the belief that your intelligence is set in
stone -- as opposed to a "growth" mindset, which views
intelligence as a muscle, something that can be developed throughout
your life. In 1998, Dweck conducted an experiment in which she
gave two evenly matched groups of elementary school kids the
same nonverbal IQ test. When one group of children did well,
they were told that they must have worked very hard to get their
results. The students in the other group, meanwhile, were told
that they must be very smart to have done so well.
Dweck found that as time went on, the kids
who were told that they were smart "fell apart when they
hit a challenge. They lost confidence in their abilities. Their
motivation dwindled and their performance on the next IQ test
dropped." By contrast, the children in the group praised
for working hard tended to seek out challenges and persist at
difficult tasks and ultimately learned more.
I've seen Dweck's theory proved time and
again in my AP English classes. When an Asian student who has
spoken English for only four or five years gets an A on a test
and an American kid labeled gifted gets a D, the American will
often do one of two things: denigrate the Asian's grade because
it was achieved through hard work, or bring in his mother to
argue that the test was unfair and that I should change his grade
because I "know how smart he is."
TEXAS EDUCATION HEAD TELLS HOW TO GET
SCIENCE OUT SCHOOLS
AMERICANS UNITED FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH &
STATE - The Texas Freedom Network
revealed a side of "intelligent design" proponents
rarely seen by the public at large. The group released a transcript
and recording of an extraordinarily candid speech given in 2005
by recently named State Board of Education Chairman Ron McLeroy.
McLeroy told a gathering at Grace Bible
Church in Bryan, Texas, of his efforts to expunge evolution from
the state's high school biology textbooks. "Back in November
2003, we finished [the]. . . adoption process for the biology
textbooks in Texas. . . I want to tell you all the arguments
made by all the intelligent-design group, all the creationist
intelligent design people, I can guarantee the other side heard
exactly nothing," he said.
He went on, condemning other Christian
board members for not following his lead.
"[T]he four really conservative, orthodox
Christians on the board were the only ones who were willing to
stand up to the textbooks and say they don't present the weaknesses
of evolution," he said. "Amazing."
He admonished the audience not to bicker
over the finer points of creationism because they were united
under a "big tent" against evolution.
"Whether you're a progressive creationist,
recent creationist, young-Earth, old-Earth, it's all in the tent
of intelligent design," McLeroy said. "And intelligent
design here at Grace Bible Church is actually a smaller tent
than you would have in the intelligent design movement as a whole,
because we are all Biblical literalists. . . So because it's
a bigger tent, just don't waste our time arguing with each other
about. . . all of the side issues."
"Modern science today," McLeroy
complained, "is totally based on naturalism," thus
"it is the naturalistic base that is [our] target."
. . .
Following a long spiel about biblical truth,
McLeroy told the audience to ignore intelligent design's religious
foundation when talking to the general public. Not to worry though,
the "time to address [Biblical issues] will be after we
have separated materialistic prejudice from scientific fact."
The second step, he said, is to point out
that evolution wrongly depends on "naturalism;" that
supernaturalism or divine influences are unfairly excluded from
the conversation. Finally, forget the scientists and target people
without a firm grasp on evolutionary theory. . .
TFN's press release noted that the 2006
school board elections shifted the balance of power, giving McLeroy
and his allies a slim majority. The board is slated to revise
science standards this school year.
TEXAS STATS SHOWS FAILURE OF CHARTER
SCHOOLS
HOLLY K. HACKER, DALLAS MORNING NEWS - North Texas didn't have a single charter school
with the state's top academic rating two years ago. Now there
are four.
But those campuses remain outnumbered by low-performing charters:
11 this year across the region, up from eight a couple years
ago. The same trend holds for the rest of the state: 51 of Texas'
317 charters were rated "academically unacceptable"
based on 2007 test scores, while only 15 received the top rating
"exemplary," according to data released this month
by the Texas Education Agency.
The trends raise a question: How can so
many charter schools - born of the belief they can do better
than traditional public schools - still be faring so poorly?
That's a big percentage, said Kathy Miller, president of the
Texas Freedom Network, a nonprofit group that supports public
education and religious freedom. "People in Texas would
go absolutely crazy if the traditional public school numbers
looked like that."
The 16 percent of charters labeled unacceptable
compares to 4 percent of traditional public campuses. Charters,
which are public schools run by nonprofit groups and exempted
from many state regulations, are also less likely to earn the
best rating of "exemplary" or second-best of "recognized."
Demographics explain the discrepancy to a point. Charters have
a greater proportion of children who are poor, move frequently
and struggle academically. So, those schools automatically have
a tougher job.
Still, year after year, charters are more
likely than regular schools to be rated unacceptable. This, policy-makers
say, shows that the state still lacks the full power - and, some
say, the will - to close perpetually failing charters. "We
have some really good stories to tell about charter schools,
but the really bad ones seem to be getting worse or they're multiplying,"
said state Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano.
SOCIAL STUDIES A VICTIM OF NO CHILD
LAW
ROBERT TOWNSEND, AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSN BLOG - A new study
by the Center on Education Policy offers hard evidence that the
social studies are being squeezed in America's schools by test-driven
pressures imposed by the No Child Left Behind Act.
English Language Arts and Math - the two subjects that are regularly
tested under NCLB - are taking up an increasing amount of student
time. In a survey of 491 school districts they found that 58
percent increased the amount of time in the elementary schools
allocated to ELA, and 45 percent increased the time devoted to
math.
The CEP found that over the past five years 36 percent of the
departments surveyed decreased the time allocated to the social
studies, more than science (cut by 28 percent of school districts),
art and music (cut by 16 percent), and even lunch (cut by 20
percent). . . .
http://hnn.us/roundup/41.html#41399
THE CASE FOR DISORGANIZED KIDS
PETER WILBY, GUARDIAN, UK - Once I would have been able to answer
questions about the families in my street because I would have
seen and even talked to the children playing outside - skipping,
kicking balls around, chasing each other - and I would have seen
and heard the parents, too, popping out to call their offspring
for a meal or bedtime or to admonish a child who had upset or
injured another. Now children are invisible and so, as a consequence,
are most adults. We catch glimpses of our neighbors as they pile
into cars, always in a hurry to get somewhere else. . .
Laments for lost paradises may be enjoyable, but they can be
unhelpful and sometimes inaccurate. There is no bringing back
the central England country life of Thompson's childhood, nor
the northern working-class city life of Hoggart's, even if we
accept their somewhat idealised accounts. Nor can we abolish
the many counter-attractions to street play - televisions, computers,
iPods - that can be enjoyed by the modern child.
What we can do is give children more space and stop treating
them as though they were an alien species, to be corralled into
organized activities in designated locations. The street and
the neighbourhood, not supervised playgrounds approved by health
and safety officers, are the child's natural environment. That
is where they should learn how to rub along with each other and
with adults from outside the family; where they should learn
the limits of acceptable social behavior; where they should learn
to climb and fall out of trees, to explore abandoned buildings
and scrubby bits of unused land in which they can invent games
and let off steam. . .
Engaging with children has become a function within the division
of labor: it's something for parents, schoolteachers, the police
and a few volunteers in organizations such as the Scouts. We
have, therefore, lost the art of properly socializing the young.
The dominance of traffic in the streets is only part of the story,
and the introduction of traffic-free zones only part of the solution.
. .
The more conscientious parents, afraid of drug pushers, bullies,
pedophiles, speeding cars, or just "bad company", think
it safer to keep their children indoors and fully occupied. .
. The streets become dominated by children from the more antisocial
and dysfunctional families, and they are restrained only when
somebody calls the police . . .
According to Play England, many of us wouldn't even move a car
50 meters to allow children more space for games. Children themselves
come to think of the streets as dangerous places, and gather
in ever larger groups for protection. Adults, in turn, feel more
threatened and the police - who once patrolled the streets on
foot, dispensing the occasional word of caution or warning -
feel more impelled to take heavy-handed action. The Victorians
thought children should be seen, but not heard. We don't even
want to see them.
Though traffic restrictions would help, there aren't any simple
solutions. The ones that won't work are to increase the number
of organized youth activities, to open more designated play areas,
to expand sports centers, or to keep schools open for longer
hours. Children are fed up with being organized, and required
to perform in order to meet someone else's targets. If there's
money available, don't give it to bureaucracies, still less to
commercial providers. Give it to any neighborhood that can come
up with a plausible idea to improve the quality of the environment
for itself and its children. Just for once, tell people that
the welfare of the next generation is in their hands. Give me,
in short, a reason to get to know my neighbors.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2138798,00.html
JULY 2007
SELF ESTEEM NOT ALL IT'S CRACKED UP
TO BE
ANDREW LAM, NEW AMERICA MEDIA - In a classic 1992 study, psychologists Harold
Stevenson and James Stigler compared academic skills of elementary
school students in Taiwan, China, Japan and the United States.
It showed a yawning gap in self-perception between East and West.
Asian students outperformed their American counterparts, but
when they were asked to evaluate their performances, American
students evaluated themselves significantly higher than those
from Asia. "In other words, they combined a lousy performance
with a high sense of self-esteem," noted Nina H. Shokraii,
author of "School Choice 2000: What's Happening in the States",
in an essay called "The Self Esteem Fraud."
Since the 80s, self-esteem has become a
movement widely practiced in public schools, based on the belief
that academic achievements come with higher self-confidence.
Shokraii disputes that self-esteem is necessary for academic
success. "For all of its current popularity, however, self-esteem
theory threatens to deny children the tools they will need in
order to experience true success in school and as adults,"
writes Shokraii.
A quarter of a century later, a comprehensive
new study released last February from San Diego State University
maintains that too much self-regard has resulted in college campuses
full of narcissists. In 2006, researchers said, two-thirds of
the students had above-average scores on the Narcissistic Personality
Inventory evaluation, 30 percent more than when the test was
first administered in 1982.
Researchers like San Diego State University
Professor Jean Twenge worried that narcissists "are more
likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at
risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing,
dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors."
The author of "Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans
Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled -- and More Miserable
Than Ever Before," Twenge blamed the self-esteem movement
for the rise of the "Myspace" generation.
KIDS LOSING THEIR PLACE IN AMERICAN
LIFE, MARRIAGES
BEN ARNOLDY, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
- Kids just aren't as big a part of American life as they used
to be. Americans' child-free years are expanding as empty-nest
seniors live longer and more young adults delay - or skip - childbearing.
In 1960, nearly half of all households had children under 18.
By 2000, the portion had fallen to less than a third, and in
a few short years it's projected to drop to a quarter, according
to a report from the National Marriage Project.
Children are also taking a back seat in
perceptions of marriage's purpose. Since 1990, the percentage
of people who said children were very important to a successful
marriage tumbled from 65 percent to 41 percent. The findings
were released in a Pew Research report last week.
For some child-free Americans, their growing
numbers argue for greater equality with parents in government
benefits, the workplace, and social esteem. That worries family
researchers and child advocates who see in the same trends a
move to a more "adult-centered culture" - one that
threatens the strength of families and the social compact to
provide for the next generation. . .
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0710/p01s06-ussc.htm
THE TWO BEST KEPT SECRETS ABOUT SCHOOL
INTEGRATION
Sam Smith
1. It would have been much easier if, at
the time the country was fighting over school integration, it
hadn't segregated its cities with hardly any debate.
2. It would have been much easier if zip
code had been included as well as ethnicity.
Even today, the issues of segregation by
neighborhood and by class hardly ever make it to the fore. Thus
it never occurs to people that the reason kids had to take a
bus to find integration in school was because there wasn't any
at home.
If you go back to older cities - even segregated
ones - people of different ethnicities and classes once lived
much closer to one another. After all, the very point of segregation
was a malevolent system to deal with the perceived danger of
otherwise presumed regular contact between ethnicities. In the
modern American city, segregation by geography has taken the
place of segregation by law. You don't have to enforce it; it
just is.
And the segregation is heavily based on
class as well as ethnicity, but that's something we don't like
to talk about, either. As a result, affirmative action has lost
a major weapon. Class diversity would have achieved much the
same ends without as much political and social conflict. After
all, the idea of aiding the poor is widely accepted in American
culture while aiding someone because of their gender or ethnicity
is not.
I have long supported affirmative action
by zip code, arguing that it would result in either better integrated
schools or better integrated neighborhoods. A bit simplistic
perhaps, but the serious point remains: we have refused to deal
with the geographic or class factors in affirmative action. And
you can add to that public transportation. In fact, one of the
most segregated public institutions is the bus, the very vehicle
that advocates of school integration once thought would solve
all our problems.
Using schools to even out problems we don't
want to face hasn't worked all that well. The Supreme Court may
have actually have done us a strange sort of favor: forced our
attention elsewhere. It worth noting that just a few blocks from
the Court's building, lower income blacks are being steadily
moved out through gentrification, removal of public housing and
other means. Nobody calls it segregation, of course. The correct
term of the day is economic development. We has city plans and
zoning laws to back it up and nobody sues to stop them.
One of the effects of this urban removal
will, of course, be a greater distance for the children involved
to travel to get to an integrated school. We will argue, sue,
and write about it, and few will remember how it all started.
A TEACHER EXPLAINS WHAT'S WRONG WITH
NO CHILD LAW
[Sharon Scranage teaches at one of the
poorest school districts in Southern California.]
SHARON SCRANAGE, TRUTH DIG - The No Child
Left Behind Act has received criticism from educators and policy
pundits, primarily because of unrealistic goals that often stigmatize
schools and the teachers connected with them as "underachievers."
In the quest for accountability, unattainable benchmarks of quantitative
success have replaced the more reasonable and humane goals of
qualitative growth and improvement. Despite tremendous student
progress in many schools, the inability to meet API or APY standards
often leaves teachers and staff frustrated, humiliated and punished
for their efforts.
The humiliation stems from the assumption
that teachers are the sole reason behind underachieving schools;
the punishment comes in the form of increased policing through
top-down programs dispersed by the state and the school districts.
Adding insult to injury, the teachers are asked to be part of
the planning process for upcoming years after "failing to
make the grade." Again, the onus of responsibility for student
success seems to rest entirely on the teachers. In taking this
approach, the school districts have a built-in escape clause
should the teachers' "future plans" fail, which they
inevitably will, once again making the teachers the cause for
failure and the ultimate scapegoats in the blame game. . .
Superior achievement is determined solely
through "data" goals, which fail to take into account
true student learning and achievement. . . Imagination and ingenuity
will not raise test scores, therefore schools are often unable
to support the equally valid goals of talented students who do
not test at a certain level. Developing the hidden and even obvious
gifts of a student body is often overlooked in lieu of promoting
tested skills. This philosophy has permeated most public schools,
but the tragedy for children in impoverished areas is a lack
of access to extracurricular activities and experiences that
would contribute to their academic achievement and talent development.
Without these opportunities, many children will leave school
without any of the tools they need to build upon their innate
talents and abilities.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070621_the_education_blame_game
JUNE 2007
TEACHERS USE BLOGS TO GET STUDENTS WRITING
LAURA PACE, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE - Three
teachers are using blogs to help students write -- a sort of
an online term paper in shorter bursts -- and the group is finding
it's improving the caliber of the writing and evoking scholarly
thoughts from students. . . High school English teachers Nicole
Roth, Charles Youngs and Michael Bellini are using blogs, short
for Web logs, in their classrooms. And a new pilot project will
have some kids blogging about art displays at the Carnegie Museum
of Art.
The students still have tests and papers
to write, but [Youngs] has found they have adopted a scholarly
tone in their writing. . .
Recent postings includes thoughts on "Letters
to a Young Poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke. And there are no
abbreviations or slang. Students are required to use proper grammar.
"Katie C." wrote: "Letters
to a Young Poet" truly enlightened me in many different
areas of life. Rilke presents [a] multitude [of] philosophical
ideas ... which enabled me to enjoy the text while embedding
within me a feeling of inspiration."
"Rachel B." wrote: "Rilke
finds beauty in everything, which also expresses his views of
Romanticism. Another lesson I found to be interesting was Rilke's
views on solitude. He says to embrace solitude. Today's society
tends to shun 'outcasts,' while maybe they are really the only
people [who] understand what Rilke was talking about."
The three teachers have taken what they
know on the road, and have given presentations for Prentice Hall
and schools around the country, with more appearances to come.
. .
Dr. Roth's students were nervous at first,
because unlike a regular term paper, their comments were read
by their classmates in addition to the teacher. They would stare
at the empty block on the computer screen that holds about 200
words and try to fill it all, sometimes with difficulty. But
by the end of the class, "I couldn't get them to stop,"
she said.
This doesn't mean the kids necessarily
liked to blog. She also surveyed them for qualitative information
and "all the groups, they equally hated [writing],"
she said, no matter what the format.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07158/791999-298.stm
MAINE CHARGES AHEAD WITH SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION
ANN S. KIM, PORTLAND PRESS HERALD - After
months of debate on various consolidation plans, Maine is embarking
on a plan to shrink the number of school districts from 290 to
about 80. The state estimates that reduced administrative costs
will result in savings of $66.4 million in state and local money
in the second year of the 2007-2009 budget cycle. . .
Kim Bedard, president of the Maine School
Boards Association, was unhappy about the flurry of activity
leading up to the budget's enactment, which she said did not
allow enough time to fully analyze all the . . . Bedard, a member
of the Kittery School Board, questioned how well lawmakers could
have understood the plan in the short time frame. "No question,
there will be unintended consequences," she said.
The plan is not mandatory, although districts
that do not participate will face penalties. Those districts
will lose standing in construction projects, half of their state
money for administrative costs and, in some communities with
high tax bases, the minimum state subsidies.
Nonparticipating districts will also see
their level of state funding frozen at current levels. . .
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, FEBRUARY 2007 - The
assault on community controlled public education is not only
a result of Bush's No Child law. Bill Kauffman once noted in
Chronicles that it was liberal Harvard president President James
Conant who produced a series of postwar reports calling for the
"elimination of the small high school" in order to
compete with the Soviets and deal with the nuclear era. Says
Kauffman, "Conant the barbarian triumphed: the number of
school districts plummeted from 83,718 in 1950 to 17,995 in 1970.".
. .
Education is one of those human activities
clearly centered on two people (teacher and student). As the
system surrounding this experience becomes larger, more complex
and more bureaucratic, the key players become pawns in a new
and unrelated bureaucratic game. The role of the principal also
dramatically shifts - from being an educational administrator
to being a cross between a corporate executive and a warden.
It is such a transformation that helps to bring us things like
what happened at Columbine.
Consider, for a moment, that not a single
private school has merged with five or ten other academies in
the name of efficiency and improved learning. No one has suggested
a Andover-Exeter-Groton-Milton-Choate-Kent School Administrative
District.
If conglomeration of schools really helped,
why would such places not give it a try? I once asked the head
of one of the top private girl's schools in the country what
he considered the maximum size of a school he'd like to run.
His reply: 500 students. . ."Remember, that means 1,000
parents."
Particularly bizarre is what is happening
in Maine. The plan itself is familiar: the pursuit of the false
god of educational efficiency through the concentration of school
districts as ordered by the governor. . .
What makes it stranger is that Maine is
one of a handful of New England states where one can still find
the remnants of American democracy functioning at human scale
thanks to such institutions as town meetings and lots of small
villages that do what they want without excessive interference
from above. This tradition has produced in recent years more
independent governors (although not the present one) than just
about any state and a culture of honest independence in politics
and governance that would best be emulated rather than reorganized.
And who suggested the course that the governor
is following? None other than representatives of that citadel
of Washington anti-democratic elitism, that hospice of prematurely
aging MBAs and political science majors: the Brookings Institution.
This is like Arianna Huffington coaching the Chicago Bears.
To add to the oddity, it is all being done
in the name of "smart growth." The tie-in with smart
growth is quite revealing. From the progressive movement of the
early 20th century on, well-meaning but excessively self-assured
members of the elite have controlled the debate, the money and
the plans, with barely restrained contempt for the reservations,
concerns and resistance of the less powerful. And so it is with
smart growth.
Listen to Grow Smart Maine:
"Many of Maine's smaller cities and
towns are experiencing unplanned growth but lack the resources
and experience to manage that change in ways that protect the
character of their community. . . The Model Town Community Project
will work with a selected town during 2006 and 2007 to provide
tools and advice that will help the town shape its future. The
project will mobilize local, state and regional resources, enable
the town to explore new growth strategies and fully engage local
residents by combining the best elements of New England town
meetings with ground breaking new technologies."
In other words, we'll come in and show
you how to run a town meeting our way, just like we learned at
business school.
But if smart growth is meant to be about
environmentally sound planning, how come we have to consolidate
our school districts and our town offices?
Because once you put your faith in the
sort of expertise that a planning-managerial elite offers, once
you turn to MBAs like others turn to Jesus, then you don't really
need democracy, town meetings or small schools. What you need
is efficiency and managerial skill and you have been promised
that, so why worry?
In both the school consolidation and the
smart growth debates the issue of human scale - and not some
liberal-conservative conflict - is at the core. But we have been
taught - by intellectuals, by the media, by politicians, - to
revere a promise of efficiency and technological advance over
the empirical advantages of living the way humans have traditionally
lived, including valuing the small places that host, nurture
and define their lives. We have been trained not to even notice
when our very humanity is being destroyed in the name of mere
physical change.
STUPID SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR TRICKS
MARIA GLOD, WASHINGTON POST - All touching
-- not only fighting or inappropriate touching -- is against
the rules at Kilmer Middle School in Vienna. Hand-holding, handshakes
and high-fives? Banned. The rule has been conveyed to students
this way: "NO PHYSICAL CONTACT!!!!!"
School officials say the rule helps keep
crowded hallways and lunchrooms safe and orderly, and ensures
that all students are comfortable. . .
A Fairfax schools spokesman said there
is no countywide ban like the one at Kilmer, but many middle
schools and some elementary schools have similar "keep your
hands to yourself" rules. . .
Deborah Hernandez, Kilmer's principal,
said the rule makes sense in a school that was built for 850
students but houses 1,100. She said that students should have
their personal space protected and that many lack the maturity
to understand what is acceptable or welcome.
"You get into shades of gray,"
Hernandez said. "The kids say, 'If he can high-five, then
I can do this.' "
HOW CHILDREN HAVE LOST THEIR RIGHT TO ROAM
MAY 2007
90% OF KIDS UNDER TWO WATCH TV, LESSENING
THEIR CHANCES TO GET INTO COLLEGE
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, AUSTRALIA - About 90 per cent of US children under age 2 and
as many as 40 per cent of infants under three months are regular
watchers of television, DVDs and videos, researchers said. They
said the number of young kids watching TV was much greater than
expected. . .
The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates
that children in the United States watch about four hours of
television every day. They recommend that children under age
2 should not watch any and older children should watch no more
than 2 hours a day of quality programming. But 29 per cent of
parents surveyed by Zimmerman and colleagues believed baby-oriented
TV and DVD programs offered educational benefits. . . At 3 months,
children watched less than an hour per day, but by 24 months,
they watched more than 1.5 hours per da. . . In a separate survey
of 1051 parents published in the journal Pediatrics, 75 per cent
of children aged 0 to 6 were found to watch TV every day, often
in their own bedrooms.. . .
A second study in the Archives of Pediatrics
& Adolescent Medicine found that teens who watch three to
four hours of television a day were more likely to have attention
or learning problems and were less likely to get a college degree.
"Even watching more than an hour of
TV per day had some adverse consequences, but three hours was
much worse than one hour, and two was worse than one," Jeffrey
Johnson of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
and the New York State Psychiatric Institute said in a telephone
interview.
Johnson and colleagues studied 678 families
in New York state over more than 20 years. "Kids who watched
less than one hour of TV per day were twice as likely to go to
college as those who watched three or more hours per day,"
he said.
Just 12 per cent of the parents whose children
watched less than an hour of television a day said their child
"hardly ever does homework," compared to 21 per cent
of those who watched one to three hours a day and 27 per cent
of those who watched more than three hours a day.
Parents said 22 per cent of teens who watched
less than an hour a day were often bored at school, compared
to 35 per cent of the moderate watchers and 42 per cent of those
who watched three hours or more.
THE CASE AGAINST HOMEWORK
BOING BOING - Sara Bennett and Nancy Kalish
2006 book "The Case Against Homework" is a fine and
frightening explosion of the homework myth: that giving kids
homework improves their educational outcome. The authors start
by tracing the explosion in homework since the eighties, and
especially since the advent of the ill-starred No Child Left
Behind regime, which has teachers drilling, drilling, drilling
their kids on math and reading to the exclusion of all else.
Kindergarten kids are assigned homework.
Kids get homework over the weekend. Over vacations. When they're
away sick for a day.
What's more, all the credible research
on homework suggests that for younger kids, homework has no connection
with positive learning outcomes, and for older kids, the benefits
of homework level off sharply after the first couple assignments.
Not that most teachers would know this
-- homework theory and design isn't on the curriculum at most
teachers' colleges, and most teachers surveyed report that they
have never received any training on designing and assessing homework.
. .
One thing the authors keep coming back
to is the way that excessive homework eats into kids' playtime
and family time, stressing them out, contributing to sedentary
obesity, and depriving them of a childhood's measure of doing
nothing, daydreaming and thinking. They quote ten-year-olds like
Sophia from Brooklyn, saying things like "I have to rush,
rush, rush, rush, rush, rush through my day, actually through
my seven days, and that's seven days wasted in my life."
No Child Left Behind has to shoulder some
of the blame here. No Child Left Behind and standardized testing
not only turns your child into a slave to her test-scores, but
they can even affect your property values: a school with low
test-scores brings down the neighborhood property values. That
means that whatever your approach to your kids, the chances are
that the other parents in your neighborhood are busting their
asses to get their kids great test scores, drilling them, sending
them to tutors, helping them with assignments that they were
meant to complete themselves. If you don't do the same, your
kids will suffer by comparison.
The authors report on an elementary school
in North Carolina where at least twenty standardized test books
have to be replaced after their use because the stressed out
elementary school kids working to them have vomited on them.
The stories go on and on, and just when
you're ready to throw in the towel and send your kids into the
woods to be raised by wolves, the authors supply several long
chapters of strategies and sample dialogs for convincing your
kids' teachers to ease off on homework, for changing the homework
policies in your school district and for rallying other parents
to their cause.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/05/27/homework_sucks_the_c.html
STOP HOMEWORK
http://stophomework.com
STUPID SCHOOL ADMINISTRATOR TRICKS
EARTH TIMES - Indianapolis Public Schools
Superintendent Eugene White has forbidden parents from cheering
when their graduate's name is called. The new policy is aimed
at returning a sense of decorum to high school graduations and
to ensure each graduate's name is heard, The Indianapolis Star
reported.
White sent letters explaining the policy to each graduate this
month. The letter told students how attending a graduation ceremony
is a privilege, not a right, and that 30 school police officers
will be on hand to enforce the rules. "The graduation commencement
is the completion of a 12-year program of study," White
wrote. "It is a joyous time, a proud time and a formal time.
It is not a party. It is not a pep rally." IPS parent Sally
Flood, whose daughter Maire is set to deliver an address at Tech
High School, said she has come to enjoy the clapping and cheering
that goes on at graduation. She added that as long as the person
reading the names pauses then the missing of names is not a problem.
"Some kids overcome tremendous challenges to get through,"
Flood said. "We sometimes cheer for the kids we know struggled,
especially if no one else does."
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/64920.html
TEXAS BUSINESS PAL OF BUSH GETS RICH
OFF OF NO CHILD BILL
A Texas businessman listed as a major fundraiser
for President George Bush has made millions of dollars in profits
from a federal reading program that critics say favored administration
cronies at the expense of schoolchildren. A company founded and
owned by Randy Best, who is listed by the nonprofit group Public
Citizen as a Bush "Pioneer" during the 2000 presidential
campaign, received the lucrative contracts under a Bush administration
initiative called Reading First.
Only those who pledged to raise $100,000 or more are considered
"Pioneers" by the Bush campaign. Best told the Blotter
on ABCNews.com that he did not raise $100,000 and personally
gave only the legal limit of $4,000. After receiving the Reading
First contracts, Best was able to sell his company, Voyager Expanded
Learning, for $360 million. According to his critics, the company
was valued at only $5 million a few years earlier, a figure Best
disputes.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/
TEXT MESSAGES HURT IRISH LITERACY
AP - The youth of Ireland are becoming
increasingly poor spellers and writers, and their love of text
messaging on cell phones is a major reason why, according to
the Education Department. In a report on national test results
in English for about 37,000 students aged 15 and 16, the department's
Examination Commission said cutting-edge communications technology
has encouraged poor literacy and a blunt, choppy style at odds
with academic rigor.
"Text messaging, with its use of phonetic
spelling and little or no punctuation, seems to pose a threat
to traditional conventions in writing," said the report
written by the department's chief examiner. . . The report branded
today's teens "unduly reliant on short sentences, simple
tenses and a limited vocabulary." Too many test-takers,
it said, were "choosing to answer sparingly, even minimally,
rather than seeing questions as invitations to explore the territory
they had studied and to express the breadth and depth of their
learning and understanding."
Ireland is among the world leaders in cell-phone
use - in part because of traditionally high costs for conventional
phone lines - and surveys indicate that a majority of children
have their own mobile phone by age 12, with the most enthusiastic
texters sending more than 250 a week.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2007-04-25-ireland-spells-doom_N.htm?csp=34
APR 2007
DIFFERENCE IN SCHOOL TEST SCORES SUGGESTS
SOME FACTS LEFT BEHIND
EDUCATION WEEK - Far greater shares of
students are proficient on state reading and mathematics tests
than on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and
those gaps have grown to unprecedented levels since the No Child
Left Behind Act became law in 2002, concludes a study. The study
by Policy Analysis for California Education, a nonprofit research
group based at the University of California, Berkeley, was released
here during the annual meeting of the American Educational Research
Association. The researchers compiled state and federal testing
results for the period 1992 to 2006 from 12 states: Arkansas,
California, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska,
New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington.
In all but two states-Arkansas and Massachusetts
- the disparity between the share of students proficient on state
reading tests and on NAEP, a congressionally mandated program
that tests a representative sample of students in every state,
grew or remained the same from 2002 to 2006. A similar widening
occurred between state and federal gauges of math performance
in eight of 12 states. Those findings call into question whether
the state-reported gains are real or illusory, according to the
researchers.
"State leaders are under enormous
pressure to show that students are making progress," said
Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at Berkeley
who led the study. "So, they are finding inventive ways
of showing higher test scores.". . .
Critics have suggested that, rather than
raising academic standards, the law is encouraging states to
lower the bar for passing state tests or otherwise adjust their
definition of "proficiency" downward in order to avoid
identifying too many schools as missing their targets. Greater
Transparency Urged
http://tinyurl.com/2j4qg9
PLAYGROUND ACTIVISTS RESCUING CHILDREN
FROM THE TEST SCORERS
DRAKE BENNETT, BOSTON GLOBE
- In recent years, noted architects have turned their attention
to designing playgrounds, even as public agencies and private
charities dedicated to expanding children's access to playgrounds
have sprung up. . . "There's a real international playground
movement taking hold around the world, and it's really very exciting,"
says David Elkind, a professor of child development at Tufts
University and author of the recently published book "The
Power of Play.". . .
This pro-playground vanguard, according
to the child psychologists, designers, architects, parents and
teachers who form it, is motivated by the conviction that play,
in a larger sense, is under attack. High-stakes testing has elbowed
recess out of the school day, video games keep kids indoors and
sedentary, while parents, fearful of pedophiles and abductions,
no longer let children roam freely.
All in all, the average child's life is
more regimented than it was 20 years ago, with more young children
in day care, more lessons and rehearsals and practices, and less
free time. The fact that communities are getting serious about
play, proponents hope, means leaders recognize the extent to
which it is endangered in modern society.
At the same time, this reexamination of
playgrounds is triggered by the conviction that, in the United
States in particular, playgrounds have become rather unfun --
designed with only safety in mind, they've lost the capacity
to excite or challenge children.
Playgrounds have always been places where
the need for free, even rambunctious, play bumps up against parental
fears about safety. The new playground advocates are trying to
find a better balance. "The history of playgrounds,"
says Roger Hart, director of the Children's Environments Research
Group at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York,
"is a history of containment.". . .
In the past 11 years, working with tens
of thousands of volunteers and various corporate partners, the
nonprofit organization KABOOM! has built nearly 1,200 playgrounds
all over North America, using a collaborative method in which
local children help design the playgrounds that are going up
in their neighborhoods.
According to psychologists and specialists
in early childhood education, to be valuable, play needs to be
creative, but there also has to be an element of danger. "Children
need vertiginous experiences," says Mary Rivkin, a professor
of education at the University of Maryland. "They need fast
and slow and that high feeling you get when you run down a hill.
They need to have tippy things."
If there's no challenge, no pain of failure,
she argues, there's no learning -- and less enjoyment. Indeed,
according to Hart, one problem with trying to child-proof playgrounds
is that children, trying to make the safer playground equipment
interesting, come up with unforeseen and often more dangerous
ways of using it.
Some playground advocates also point to
the rise in childhood obesity and related diseases as a reason
to get more kids playing, but they're careful to point out that
play is not just about physical activity. "Play and sports
are totally different," says Doris Bergen, a professor of
educational psychology at Miami University of Ohio. "When
they play, kids make their own rules -- then they have to negotiate
to get others to follow them. In sports, adults make and enforce
the rules for them."
WHAT'S WRONG WITH NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
KAREN JOHNSON, TENNESSEAN -
The current status of the No Child Left Behind law has all the
makings of a really bad TV reality show. To be a winner, you
have to get your group off a desert island. The show's producers
promise to give you the necessary supplies, but they don't. You're
required to load everyone into the same boat at the same time,
even though some of your group members need special help. Even
worse, your rules keep changing while other contestants have
different rules - but you're all judged by the same standards.
. .
What needs to change? The list is substantial:
- To be considered "successful,"
schools must now meet dozens of benchmarks. If they miss just
one, they're labeled "low-performing." The blanket
penalties are impossible to explain and give the entire school
a negative stigma, when in fact, it is an excellent school.
- The federal government makes the rules
without paying for the cost. Schools are required to help students
who are financially needy, who need to learn English or who have
disabilities The necessary federal money falls far short in each
category, particularly in special education, where the feds pay
only 18 percent of the actual cost.
- The rules keep changing. At first, students
who are just learning English took only the math portion of the
annual test. Last year, they were tested on reading - even though
they couldn't speak English. . .
- The rules are different. Other states
are allowed to set lower pass marks to reach the testing benchmarks.
Other states are allowed to test high school students only once
before they graduate, instead of the three tests necessary for
graduation in Tennessee.
- Private schools don't have any rules
at all. No one really knows if private schools are doing a good
job because NCLB doesn't require private schools to report their
test scores - or even participate in testing.
- The ultimate goal is just not realistic.
NCLB mandates 100 percent of students meet all testing benchmarks
by 2014. It doesn't matter if those students come from impoverished
backgrounds, if they just arrived in the U.S. with little or
no English proficiency or if they have disabilities. . .
It's not fair, and even worse, it is tearing
away the very foundation of public schooling in America. This
is no reality show. Congress must change the law.
IF WE TAUGHT ENGLISH THE WAY
WE TAUGHT MATH THERE WOULD BE 'ENGLISH ANXIETY,' TOO
TECHNOCRAT - Imagine that your only
contact with "English" as a subject was through classes
in school. Suppose that those classes, from elementary school
right through to high school, amounted to nothing more than reading
dictionaries, getting drilled in spelling and formal grammatical
construction, and memorizing vast vocabulary lists -- you never
read a novel, nor a poem; never had contact with anything beyond
the pedantic complexity of English spelling and formal grammar,
and precise definitions for an endless array of words. You would
probably hate the subject.
You might come to wonder what the
point of learning English was. In response perhaps the teachers
and education system might decide that, to help make English
relevant to students, they need to introduce more "Applied
English". This means teaching English students with examples
from "real life" (for varying degrees of "real")
where English skills are important, like how to read a contract
and locate the superfluous comma. Maybe (in an effort by the
teachers to be "trendy") you'll get lessons on formal
diary composition so you can better update your MySpace page.
All of that, of course, will be taught using a formulaic cookbook
approach based on templates, with no effort to consider underlying
principles or the larger picture. Locating the superfluous comma
will be a matter of systematically identifying subjects, objects,
and verbs and grouping them into clauses until the extra comma
has been caught. Your diary will be constructed from a formal
template that leaves a few blanks for you to fill in. Perhaps
you might also get a few tasks that are just the same old drills,
just with a few mentions of "real world" things to
make them "Applied": "Here is an advertisement
for carpets. How many adjectives does it contain?".
In such a world it wouldn't be hard
to imagine lots of people developing "English anxiety",
and most people having a general underlying dislike for the subject.
Many people would simply avoid reading books because of the bad
associations with English class in school. With so few people
taking a real interest in the subject, teachers who were truly
passionate about English would become few and far between. The
result, naturally, would be teachers who had little real interest
in the subject simply following the drilling procedures outlined
in the textbooks they were provided; the cycle would repeat again,
with students even worse off this time.
And yet this is very much how mathematics
tends to be taught in our schools today. . .
http://technocrat.net/d/2007/4/3/17225
MARCH 2007
LAWS DON'T STOP STUDENT EXCESSES; GOOD
SCHOOLS MAY
BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL - Improving the
institutional culture of schools in the UK may help reduce substance
abuse and teenage pregnancies, says an article in this week's
BMJ. Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine's Centre for Research on Drugs and Health Behavior say
that substance misuse and teenage pregnancy are major public
health challenges and argue that existing responses to these
issues seem to have brought about only limited benefits.
Previous surveys show that a third of 15
year olds in England have taken illegal drugs in the past year
and a quarter of 15 year old girls smoke. Rates of illegal drug
use and drinking continue to rise, whilst teenage pregnancy rates
in the UK are the highest in western Europe.
So the authors reviewed evidence suggesting
that interventions aiming to promote positive school ethos might
provide an effective complement to existing approaches.
A study carried out in Scotland found that
in some secondary schools 'risky' health behaviors (e.g. substance
misuse, alcohol and tobacco use) couldn't be explained by student,
family or neighborhood factors, but did seem to be explained
by large school size and independently rated poor school ethos.
And trials in both Australia and the United
States showed that projects which aimed to improve school ethos
helped improve the health behaviors of their students. Both projects
involved a range of activities including improving teacher-student
communication, increasing parent and student involvement in school
policy-making and better training for teachers.
The US study reported a 34% reduction in
a combined measure of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis use among
boys, plus significant benefits regarding condom use, frequency
of sex, violence and truancy. However, similar benefits were
not reported among girls.
The Australian research found that students
at schools taking part in the project were slightly less likely
to report a range of risky health behaviors (such as regular
smoking and drinking and marijuana use). Follow-up research suggested
impacts might increase over time as the changes 'bedded down'
in schools.
This evidence makes sense, say the authors.
After the family, and alongside the media and peers, the most
important institution in the lives of most children and young
people is their school.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7593/547
WHY DO FINLAND'S SCHOOLS WORK?
[This is a long but consistently interesting
report on the Finnish educational system, especially for those
struggling with the hypocritically named No Child Left Behind
and other peculiarities of American public education. A major
difference is that Finland is a much more homogenous culture
than the U.S. but there is still much to learn.
SIX DEGREES, FINLAND - Finland has repeatedly
been rated top of the class in international comparisons of educational
standards, even though spending on education is low, and Finnish
children spend much less time in school than kids in other countries.
. .
Foreign educationalists are particularly
interested because Finland's success does not seem to be related
to money: OECD statistics show that Finland spends just 6.1%
of its gross domestic product on education, significantly below
the OECD average of 6.3%, and well below spending levels in many
similarly wealthy countries.
Another factor to discount is the amount
of time children spend in the classroom. For a start, Finnish
kids only graduate from the kindergarten sandpit to the primary
school at age 7. Their schooldays remain short, often ending
as early as midday or one o'clock, and their 10-week summer holidays
must be the envy of kids all over the world. All in all, Finnish
pupils spend an OECD record low total of some 5,523 hours at
their desks, compared to the average of 6,847 hours. . .
The results of Finland's brightest students
are not significantly above those from other successful countries,
but where Finland really shines is in the scores of the lowest
performing students. This means that very few Finnish schoolchildren
are falling fall through the educational net. . .
Looking after low achievers The Finnish
system is designed along egalitarian principles, with few fee-paying
private schools, and very little streaming of pupils into different
schools or classes according to their exam results. . .
Another factor behind Finland's success
could be the narrow focus of the PISA tests. Levels of reading
literacy are extremely high in Finland. Many children learn to
read before they even start school. Although many foreigners
find Finnish hard to learn, the language is so phonetically logical
that words are always simple to read and write correctly. . .
The atmosphere in Finnish schools is generally
informal. Teachers are given considerable freedom to teach as
they see fit, without overbearing supervision or bureaucratic
reporting. . .
http://www.6d.fi/index.html/page.2007-02-21.9993404054
WHY HOMEWORK ISN'T SUCH A HOT IDEA
ALFIE KOHN - After spending most of the
day in school, children are typically given additional assignments
to be completed at home. This is a rather curious fact when you
stop to think about it, but not as curious as the fact that few
people ever stop to think about it. It becomes even more curious,
for that matter, in light of three other facts:
1. The negative effects of homework are
well known. They include children's frustration and exhaustion,
lack of time for other activities, and possible loss of interest
in learning. Many parents lament the impact of homework on their
relationship with their children; they may also resent having
to play the role of enforcer and worry that they will be criticized
either for not being involved enough with the homework or for
becoming too involved.
2. The positive effects of homework are
largely mythical. In preparation for a book on the topic, I've
spent a lot of time sifting through the research. The results
are nothing short of stunning. For starters, there is absolutely
no evidence of any academic benefit from assigning homework in
elementary or middle school. For younger students, in fact, there
isn't even a correlation between whether children do homework
(or how much they do) and any meaningful measure of achievement.
At the high school level, the correlation is weak and tends to
disappear when more sophisticated statistical measures are applied.
Meanwhile, no study has ever substantiated the belief that homework
builds character or teaches good study habits.
3. More homework is being piled on children
despite the absence of its value. Over the last quarter-century
the burden has increased most for the youngest children, for
whom the evidence of positive effects isn't just dubious; it's
nonexistent. . .
Principals deal with an endless series
of crises; they're called upon to resolve complaints, soothe
wounded egos, negotiate solutions, try to keep everyone happy,
and generally make the trains (or, rather, buses) run on time.
In such a position there is a strong temptation to avoid new
initiatives that call the status quo into question. Considerable
gumption is required to take on an issue like homework, particularly
during an era when phrases like "raising the bar" and
"higher standards" are used to rationalize practices
that range from foolish to inappropriate to hair-raising. But
of course a principal's ultimate obligation is to do what's right
by the children, to protect them from harmful mandates and practices
that persist not because they're valuable but merely because
they're traditional.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/rethinkinghomework.htm
FEBRUARY 2007
NO CHILD, OTHER ED REFORMS A BUST, SCORES
SAY
MITCHELL LANDSBERG, LOS ANGELES TIMES - US high school students are taking tougher classes,
receiving better grades, and, apparently, learning less than
their counterparts of 15 years ago. Those were the discouraging
implications of two reports issued yesterday by the federal Department
of Education that assess the performance of students in both
public and private schools. Together, the reports raised sobering
questions about the past two decades of educational overhauls,
including whether the movement to raise school standards has
amounted to much more than window dressing. . .
Bruce Fuller, a professor of education
and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley,
said he found the results "dismal.". . .
The standardized test results showed that
12th-grade reading scores have generally been dropping since
1992, casting doubt on what students are learning in those college
prep classes.
Math scores posed a different sort of mystery,
because the Department of Education switched to a new test in
2005 that wasn't directly comparable with those used before.
Still, the results of the new test didn't inspire confidence:
Less than one-quarter of the 12th-graders tested scored in the
"proficient" range.
REPORT
nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard .
YOUNG LESS INTERESTED IN NATURE
TREE HUGGER - One would think that with
growing environmental awareness and the rise of the green movement,
tree huggers everywhere would be flocking to national parks.
In fact, over the last ten years attendance at Yosemite has dropped
17%, Death Valley at 28%, and camping and back-country trips
are down 24% overall. The Economist says " The importance
of this decline can hardly be over-estimated for big environmental
organizations such as the Sierra Club: they have depended on
what one expert calls "a transcendent experience in nature",
usually in childhood, to gain new members and thus remain powerful
lobbyists for environmental causes."
"The political implications are enormous,"
says Richard Louv, a writer whose most recent book, "Last
Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder",
describes the social, psychological and even spiritual ramifications
of a dearth of outdoors experience for a generation raised on
electronic, rather than natural, stimulation and entertainment."
National Wildlife Federation has had its
"Ranger Rick" magazine and education program for children
in place for 40 years, but Kevin Coyle, the group's vice-president
for education, thinks that the declining interest in the outdoors
has spurred a feeling of urgency among environmentalists. "There
won't be a conservation movement 30 years from now if there's
no love for nature," he says.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/no_child_left_i.php
PRIVATE MANAGEMENT NOT FOUND TO HELP
SCHOOLS
BLOOMBERG - Philadelphia
students who attended public schools managed by private operators
fared no better academically than other students over the past
four years, an analysis by Rand Corp. and Research for Action
shows. Philadelphia began an experiment - the largest in the
United States - with private management in 2002 after the state
took over the 200,000-student district. Private managers were
given about $90 million extra over four years to run 45 elementary
and middle schools in the nation's fifth-biggest city.
The private managers include New York-based
Edison Schools Inc., the nation's largest for-profit operator
of public schools. A five-year Rand study released in October
found that Edison is producing student gains that are comparable
to the public schools they replace. Edison manages 97 schools
with 58,000 students.
JANUARY 2007
THE CHILD PROFITEERS: APPLYING CRUDE
SCORES TO LITERATURE
VALERIE STRAUSS WASHINGTON POST - Accelerated Reader, by Renaissance
Learning Inc., the largest supplemental reading program in the
United States, is used in nearly 60,000 schools across the country.
The company provides computer software that allows teachers to
quiz kids on their comprehension of 100,000 books -- which students
select themselves -- and assigns a readability formula that determines
grade level and difficulty.
Under the formula, the complicated
and violent "Macbeth" earns a reader four points, and
the Nancy Drew mystery "The Picture of Guilt" is worth
five points. Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" is
worth 20 points; Tom Clancy's voluminous "Executive Orders,"
78 points.
"Macbeth," the story
of a man's lust for power, is given a book level of 10.9, meaning
that it is understandable by 10th or 11th grade. Toni Morrison's
Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Beloved," which depicts
a mother choosing to kill her daughter rather than see her enslaved,
is given a book level of 6.0, appropriate for sixth grade. It
is worth 15 points. . .
There have been several studies
of Accelerated Reader by independent researchers over the years,
with mixed results. Some studies show organized reading programs
have positive effects on reading scores. But some researchers
say the testing and rewards associated with Accelerated Reader
help perpetuate the "high stakes" testing atmosphere
fueling education today.
Accelerated Reader gives point
and reading levels to books by using a readability formula that
measures texts for difficulty of words, length and other features,
said Laurie Borkon, a spokeswoman for Renaissance Learning. It
does, she said, "intrinsically encourage" students
to choose longer books because point values are higher. . .
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
would be rated "exactly equal" on readability formulas
if the exact same text were read backward, according to the report.
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth
upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created equal," would
be equivalent to: "Equal created are men all that proposition
the to dedicated and liberty in conceived, nation new a continent
this upon forth brought fathers our ago years seven and score
four."
LOCAL HEROES: SCHOOL SYSTEM STANDS UP
TO BUSH
MARIA GLOD, WASHINGTON POST - The Fairfax County School Board last
night defied the U.S. Department of Education -- and challenged
the No Child Left Behind Act -- by declining to force thousands
of immigrant students to take a federally mandated test because
local educators think it is unfair. Fairfax school officials
said they will continue to test how well those students are learning
to read, speak and write English and will report those results.
But this year they will not, as the federal government requires,
give the students reading exams that cover the same grade-level
material as tests taken by peers who are native-English speakers.
INNER CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS BEING CLOSED
ACROSS THE LAND
DIANE BUKOWSKI, NNPA - From Detroit to San Francisco, Chicago
to Baltimore, a tidal wave of school closings, usually in large,
poor urban districts, has washed over the country. In many cases,
the closings have wreaked havoc and met with little resistance,
but other communities are fighting back, in some cases calling
for complete moratoriums on school closings and demanding additional
"equivalent" funding for poor districts.
- Chicago: Mayor Richard Daley's "Renaissance 2010"
campaign has called for closing 100 schools by 2010. A 2006 article
in the Chicago Sun Times said closings which have taken place
so far have resulted in an increase in violent incidents at the
schools which are left as those from the closed schools flood
in. A 1996 study showed that students who have been moved from
other schools also have lower student achievement scores than
their stable counterparts.
The Chicago teachers union and community organizations have slowed
the closings through persistent mass protests. Additionally,
Black and Latino state legislators there have drafted legislation
providing a way for voters to keep their schools open, and additionally
threatened to withhold construction funding for the district.
Chicago Alderman Michael Chandler has campaigned for a city ordinance
that would halt school closings entirely until a study is conducted
on how children displaced by closings are doing in their new
schools. . .
- New York City: In 2001, a New York court ruled that the state
was violating its own constitution which guarantees every child
the right to a "sound basic education," by failing
to provide "equivalent funding" for New York City's
children, 62 percent of whom live in poverty. In 2002, a higher
court ordered the state to come up with $5.6 billion in additional
funding for NYC schools. Republican Governor George Pataki appealed,
a hearing was held in November, and results are still pending.
. .
Additionally, New Yorkers for Smaller Class Size are petitioned
for a ballot referendum requiring immediate reductions in class
size. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg blocked the referendum
in court, and that appeal is also pending.
- Baltimore: The Baltimore Education Advocates, a coalition of
groups, is campaigning for a moratorium on school closings. .
.
- Seattle: Strong public opposition forced Seattle Superintendent
Raj Manhas to drop plans to close schools in 2004, but he came
back with a proposal to close ten schools in 2006, aided by a
14-member advisory committee of executives from the business,
finance, communication and education arena. He talked the board
into supporting the closures. . .
- San Francisco: A school board decision to close or merge 14
schools in 2006 resulted in rallies in front of the central office,
petitions by families to start their own district, and a one-day
attendance boycott at one of the
http://blackpressusa.com/News/Article.asp?SID=3&Title=Hot+Stories&NewsID=11944
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
A SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT EXPLAINS WHY NO CHILD LEFT
BEHIND IS A FRAUD
TEACHERS, PARENTS LINING UP TO DUMP NO CHILD LEFT
BEHIND
RALLYING TEACHERS AGAINST NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
CHILDREN IN NEIGHBORHOODS LEFT BEHIND GET LEFT
BEHIND IN SCHOOL, TOO
PETITION AGAINST NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
AN ONLINE PETITION FOR TEACHERS
and others to sign against the atrocious No Child Left Behind
Act has already received 9,000 signatures and it's just getting
started. Writes activist Susan Ohanian, "Democrats as well
as Republicans supported this law, which really is a continuation
of a Business Roundtable proposal that was picked up by Arkansas
Governor Bill Clinton and his business crony Lou Gerstner. They
helped it become America 2000 under Bush the Elder and Goals
2000 under President Clinton. Now it's NCLB. And Hillary is pushing
for a national test, something she and Bill failed to get during
his tenure."
http://educatorroundtable.org
A FEW THINGS WRONG WITH NO CHILD
LEFT BEHIND
1. Misdiagnoses the causes of
poor educational development, blaming teachers and students for
problems over which they have no control.
2. Assumes that competition is
the primary motivator of human behavior and that market forces
can cure all educational ills.
3. Mandates data driven instruction
based on gamesmanship to undermine public confidence in our schools.
4. Uses pseudo science and media
manipulation to justify pro-corporate policies and programs,
including diverting taxes away from communities and into corporate
coffers.
5. Ignores the proven inadequacies,
inefficiencies, and problems associated with centralized, "top-down"
control.
6. Places control of what is
taught in corporate hands many times removed from students, teachers,
parents, local school boards, and communities.
7. Requires the use of materials
and procedures more likely to produce a passive, compliant workforce
than creative, resilient, inquiring, critical, compassionate,
engaged members of our democracy.
8. Reflects and perpetuates massive
distrust of the skill and professionalism of educators.
9. Allows life-changing, institution-shaping
decisions to hinge on single measures of performance.
10. Emphasizes minimum content
standards rather than maximum development of human potential.
11. Neglects the teaching of
higher order thinking skills which cannot be evaluated by machines.
12. Applies standards to discrete
subjects rather than to larger goals such as insightful children,
vibrant communities, and a healthy democracy.
13. Forces schools to adhere
to a testing regime, with no provision for innovating, adapting
to social change, encouraging creativity, or respecting student
and community individuality, nuance, and difference.
14. Drives art, foreign language,
career and technical education, physical education, geography,
history, civics and other non-tested subjects, such as music,
out of the curriculum, especially in low-income neighborhoods.
15. Produces multiple, unintended
consequences for students, teachers, and communities, including
undermining neighborhood schools and blurring the line between
church and state.
16. Rates and ranks public schools
using procedures that will gradually label them all "failures,"
so when they fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress, as all schools
eventually will, they can be "saved" by vouchers, charters,
or privatization.
COMMENTS BY PETITION SIGNERS
http://www.petitiononline.com/1teacher/petition.html
RECESS
DRIVE ON TO REVIVE RECESS
TESTS
COULD YOU PASS THE NY FOURTH GRADE READING
TEST?
[To help understand why our public
schools are so screwed up, follow these steps]
1. READ THIS ESSAY FROM THE 4TH
GRADE NYC READING TEST
"Why the Rooster Crows at
Dawn" by Tulle Miller
Many years ago, roosters did
not crow in the morning. When the sun came up, all was quiet
and still. Slowly the animals would wake up. One dog would bark.
Then another would bark, too. A cat would meow. The cows would
moo. Horses would neigh. Then everyone would wake up.
You might know that chickens
are proud. They are proud of their fine feathers. They are proud
of their fine families and chicks. Hens cluck with pride over
their eggs. Roosters have always thought they were the kings
of the farm. They hold their heads high and strut proudly about
the farm.
One day, the rooster strutted
into the pasture where the cows were grazing. The rooster roamed
the grass, stepping wherever he pleased. He did not worry about
the great big cows with their great big hoofs. Brownie, the kindest
of all the cows, worried that the rooster would get hurt.
"Go away, little one,"
said Brownie. She showed the rooster her hoof. Brownie's hoof
was bigger than the rooster's head.
The rooster only laughed. "You
might be big," he said. "But I am king."
The rooster left. The cows laughed
at the little bird who thought he was king. They decided to play
a joke on the rooster.
The next day, the rooster strutted
into the grassy pasture again. The cows were ready.
"I wonder that you have
time to visit us, great king," said Brownie.
"I have all the time in
the world," said the rooster grandly.
"That is a surprise. You
have so much work. I wonder that you can get it all done,"
said the cow.
The rooster was surprised. He
did not know he had so much work to do. Up until now, he had
spent all his time roaming the farm. He asked the cow what she
meant.
"Well, as the king, it is
your job to know everything that happens on the farm," said
Brownie. "That means you are the first to wake up. Then
you must be the last to sleep."
The rooster left the pasture.
He thought carefully about what the cow had said. All these years
he had left his duties undone! He decided that things would change
at the farm. He was the king! He had work to do! He would wake
up with the dawn and begin his royal work.
The next morning, the rooster
began crowing as soon as he saw the sun. "I'm awake! I'm
awake! No fear, the king is awake!"
It made the cows laugh to hear
the rooster crow each morning. They let him believe that he was
the best and most hard-working king there ever was. To this day,
the rooster crows every morning to show that he is doing his
duty.
http://browniethecow.org/see-for-yourself/book2-text/
2. ANSWER THE QUESTIONS FROM
THE NYC TEST
[Do not go back and reread the
essay]
How does Brownie the cow act
at the beginning of the story?
How does her behavior change
by the end of the story?
What causes this change? Use
details from the story to support your answer.
3. IF FRUSTRATED, READ THE FOLLOWING
FROM A GROUP OF FRUSTRATED PARENTS
How Fourth Graders Responded
to the Question
Parents of NYC students who took
this test have asked their children how they perceived these
essay questions about Brownie the Cow. Every student we've asked
has responded in one (or more than one) of the following ways:
1. It seems like there was a
mistake. Didn't they mean to ask these questions about the rooster,
rather than the cow?
2. I don't think the cow changes
much - certainly not as much as the rooster. If she does, I don't
think we're given enough information to say how she changes.
And the teachers told us in the test instructions that we're
not supposed to guess. I'm not sure what the right answer is.
3. Since I have to give an answer
about how the cow changes, I'd say she gets a little meaner as
the story goes along. When Brownie is first mentioned, it says
she was the "nicest" cow. But then she gets annoyed
at the arrogant rooster, and plays a trick on her.
4. Since I have to give an answer
about how the cow changes, I'd say she starts out a little threatening,
raising her hoof to the rooster. But by the end she seems more
good-natured, because the cows allow the rooster to believe he
is the king.
Here is what one current Brooklyn
fifth-grader wrote when asked to recall his reaction to the Brownie
the Cow question:
"I didn't think the test
made that much sense. I felt good and confident when I was going
to take the test. I listened to the story about the rooster (I
couldn't look at it). They read it twice, I took all the notes
I could and once I got to the big question I only had one thing
I had recorded about the cow. I felt terrible. I didn't have
the information to answer the question. I thought I had made
a mistake, how could I have missed the information about the
cow?"
4. HOW THE STATE OF NEW YORK
EXPLAINS ITSELF
We talked with a state Education
Department official responsible for this test, and asked how
fourth graders were supposed to answer the Brownie question.
. .
Yes, the questions were originally
meant to be about the rooster. The state's testing contractor,
CTB/McGraw Hill, developed two sets of questions about the "Rooster"
passage, we're told. The first set asked students to write about
how the rooster changed.
But the "test development
team" convened by the Department of Education rejected those
questions. The Education official told us that the teachers on
this panel felt that the questions about the rooster required
students to analyze changes in the rooster's thinking, rather
than "outward" changes in the rooster's behavior, and
that this was too complex or ambiguous. So the panel rejected
CTB/McGraw Hill's questions about the rooster, and instead selected
the back-up questions about the cow. Because of time pressures
and the terms of the state's contract with CTB/McGraw Hill, the
state was unable to develop any other alternatives, and was stuck
with the "Brownie the Cow" questions.
The students who got the "right"
answer, according to the state, were those who wrote essays with
response #3 above. "The cow starts out nice, and becomes
mean," the state official said.
But students with the other responses
could have done fine on their essays too. There's not really
a right answer, according to this official. The real point is
just to "get them writing." And the graders are instructed
to "look at the writing holistically."
Oh.
But if the point is to "get
them writing," doesn't asking a nonsensical question risk
undermining that goal?
Well, yes. "The smart kids
and the analytical kids have problems with these questions,"
the state official said. "They drive themselves crazy looking
for the right answer."
So how about the test graders?
Did they look for "right" answers, or just good writing?
Were the students who answered #3 ("Brownie gets meaner")
rewarded with higher scores, and the students with other answers
punished with lower scores? We've not yet received clear answers
to these questions.
But in any case, we find it hard
to believe that any student - "right" or "wrong"
about Brownie the Cow - could do his or her best writing in response
to such a nonsensical question.
http://browniethecow.org/see-for-yourself/book2/
ANOTHER COST OF TEST MADNESS
VOCATIONAL EDUCATION
VOCATIONAL TRAINING MAKING A COMEBACK
THE DECLINE OF SHOP CLASS |