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31 October, 2007

1 in 10 Schools Are 'Dropout Factories'

Showing a complete failure to tailor black education to black characteristics. There have been very successful black schools in the past -- and all had high levels of discipline. But blacks kids get just the opposite of that these days -- with predictable results. For decades there have been the bright-eyed reformers who get passable results for a while by giving selected student huge amounts of individual attention but they always have been and always will be an ungeneralizable model for education as a whole -- as the immovably low level of overall performance reported below shows. Learning to shut up, sit up and listen is of itself one of the most valuable lessons these "dropout" kids could learn

It's a nickname no principal could be proud of: "Dropout Factory," a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That description fits more than one in 10 high schools across America. "If you're born in a neighborhood or town where the only high school is one where graduation is not the norm, how is this living in the land of equal opportunity?" asks Bob Balfanz, the Johns Hopkins researcher who coined the term "dropout factory."

There are about 1,700 regular or vocational high schools nationwide that fit that description, according to an analysis of Education Department data conducted by Johns Hopkins for The Associated Press. That's 12 percent of all such schools, about the same level as a decade ago. While some of the missing students transferred, most dropped out, says Balfanz. The data look at senior classes for three years in a row to make sure local events like plant closures aren't to blame for the low retention rates.

The highest concentration of dropout factories is in large cities or high-poverty rural areas in the South and Southwest. Most have high proportions of minority students. These schools are tougher to turn around because their students face challenges well beyond the academic ones - the need to work as well as go to school, for example, or a need for social services.

Utah, which has low poverty rates and fewer minorities than most states, is the only state without a dropout factory. Florida and South Carolina have the highest percentages. "Part of the problem we've had here is, we live in a state that culturally and traditionally has not valued a high school education," said Jim Foster, a spokesman for the South Carolina department of education. He noted that residents in that state previously could get good jobs in textile mills without a high school degree, but that those jobs are gone today.

Washington hasn't focused much attention on the problem. The No Child Left Behind Act, for example, pays much more attention to educating younger students. But that appears to be changing. House and Senate proposals to renew the 5-year-old No Child law would give high schools more federal money and put more pressure on them to improve on graduation performance, and the Bush administration supports that idea. The current NCLB law imposes serious consequences on schools that report low scores on math and reading tests, and this fallout can include replacement of teachers or principals - or both. But the law doesn't have the same kind of enforcement teeth when it comes to graduation rates. Nationally, about 70 percent of U.S. students graduate on time with a regular diploma. For Hispanic and black students, the proportion drops to about half. The legislative proposals circulating in Congress would:

_Make sure schools report their graduation rates by racial, ethnic, and other subgroups and are judged on those results. That's to ensure that schools aren't just graduating white students in high numbers, but also are working to ensure that minority students get diplomas.

_Get states to build data systems to keep track of students throughout their school years and more accurately measure graduation and dropout rates.

_Ensure that states count graduation rates in a uniform way. States have used a variety of formulas, including counting the percentage of entering seniors who get a diploma. That measurement ignores the obvious fact that kids who drop out typically do so before their senior year.

_Create strong progress goals for graduation rates and impose sanctions on schools that miss those benchmarks. Most states currently lack meaningful goals, according to The Education Trust, a nonprofit group that advocates for poor and minority children.

The current law requires testing in reading and math once in high school, and those tests take on added importance because of the serious consequences for a school of failure. Critics say that creates a perverse incentive for schools to encourage kids to drop out before they bring down a school's scores. "The vast majority of educators do not want to push out kids, but the pressures to raise test scores above all else are intense," said Bethany Little, vice president for policy at the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy group focused on high schools. "To know if a high school is doing its job, we need to consider test scores and graduation rates equally."

Little said some students pushed out of high schools are encouraged to enroll in programs that prepare them to take the GED exam. People who pass that test get certificates indicating they have high-school level academic skills. But the research shows that getting a GED doesn't lead to the kind of job or college success associated with a regular diploma.

Loretta Singletary, 17, enrolled in a GED program after dropping out of a Washington, D.C. high school that she describes as huge, chaotic and violent. "Girls got jumped. Boys got jumped, teachers (were) fighting and hitting students," she said. She said teachers had low expectations for students, which led to dull classes. "They were teaching me stuff I already knew ... basic nouns, simple adjectives." Singletary said a subject she loved was science but she wasn't offered it, and complaints to administrators went unanswered. "I was interested in experiments," she said. "I didn't have science in 9th or 10th grade."

A GED classmate of Singletary's is 23-year-old Dontike Miller, who attended and left two D.C. high schools on the dropout factory list. Miller was brought up by a single mother who used drugs, and he says teachers and counselors seemed oblivious to what was going on in his life. He would have liked for someone to sit him down and say, "'You really need to go to class. We're going to work with you. We're going to help you'," Miller said. Instead,"I had nobody."

Teachers and administrators at Baltimore Talent Development High School, where 90 percent of kids are on track toward graduating on time, are working hard to make sure students don't have an experience like Miller's. The school, which sits in the middle of a high-crime, impoverished neighborhood two miles west of downtown Baltimore, was founded by Balfanz and others four years ago as a laboratory for getting kids out on time with a diploma and ready for college. Teachers, students and administrators at the school know each other well. "I know teachers that have knocked on people's doors. They want us to succeed," 12th-grader Jasmine Coleman said during a lunchtime chat in the cafeteria.

Fellow senior Victoria Haynes says she likes the way the school organizes teachers in teams of four, with each team of teachers assigned to a group of 75 students. The teachers work across subject areas, meaning English and math teachers, for example, collaborate on lessons and discuss individual students' needs. "They all concentrate on what's best for us together," Haynes said. "It's very family oriented. We feel really close to them."

Teachers, too, say it works. "I know the students a lot better, because I know the teachers who teach them," said 10th-grade English teacher Jenni Williams. "Everyone's on the same page, so it's not like you're alone in your mission."

That mission can be daunting. The majority of students who enter Baltimore Talent Development in ninth grade are reading at a fifth- or sixth-grade level. To get caught up, students have 80-minute lessons in reading and math, instead of the typical 45 minutes. They also get additional time with specialists if needed.

The fact that kids are entering high schools with such poor literacy skills raises questions about how much catch-up work high schools can be expected to do and whether more pressure should be placed on middle schools and even elementary schools, say some high-school principals. "We're at the end of the process," says Mel Riddile, principal of T.C. Williams High School, a large public school in Alexandria, Va. "People don't walk into 9th grade and suddenly have a reading problem."

Other challenges to high schools come from outside the school system. In high-poverty districts, some students believe it's more important to work than to stay in school, or they are lured away by gang activity or other kinds of peer or family pressure.

At Baltimore Talent Development, administrators try to set mini-milestones and celebrations for students so they stay motivated. These include more fashionable uniforms with each promotion to the next grade, pins for completing special programs and pizza parties to celebrate good attendance records. "The kids are just starved for recognition and attention. Little social rewards matter to them," said Balfanz. Balfanz says, however, that students understand the biggest reward they can collect is the piece of paper handed to them on graduation day. Without it, "there's not much work for you anymore," he said. "There's no way out of the cycle of poverty if you don't have a high school diploma."

Source




Australia: Bureaucracy choking universities too

Three new bureaucrats for every new teaching position

Universities had increased administrative staff numbers by nearly 300 per cent in 10 years because the federal Government had swathed them in red tape, a sector union said yesterday. National Tertiary Education Union policy analyst Andrew Nette scoffed at Education Minister Julie Bishop's comment on ABC radio that universities did not need more money but rather better management, more academics and fewer administrators. "It's a simplistic argument to say that universities should employ less general staff and more academics, given the demands of her own Government that have been a significant factor in the increase in general staff," Mr Nette said.

Education Department figures show that full-time academic staff increased by 85 per cent between 1997 and last year, from 21,787 to 40,216. In the same period, general staff numbers increased by 293 per cent, from 17,665 to 51,792. The Group of Eight largest universities released a report at the weekend saying that because of a fall in public funding, university standards were falling as students paid more to attend.

In response, Ms Bishop told ABC radio: "The administration costs of universities are increasing at the expense of teaching and research. I believe the universities should be employing more lecturers and fewer administrators ... they should be changing that balance."

National lobby group Universities Australia said that since 2004, increases in academic staff were higher than in administrative staff. UA chief executive officer Glenn Withers said: "We are prioritising teaching."

Labor education spokesman Stephen Smith agreed that universities had to be efficient. "When the commonwealth hands over money, it needs to be satisfied that sufficient and appropriate governance and accountability procedures are in place," he said. "My criticism is there is not enough invested. The Government has tried to micro-manage the inputs and not stand back and focus on the outputs. There is no doubt some of the regulatory red tape-burden can be relieved."

Source





30 October, 2007

Antisemitism at Columbia Teachers' College

I am inclined to think that the noose incident was a "plant" -- as I have said before. I am inclined to believe that the incident below is genuine, however. There are a lot of Leftists in the universities and the Left today seems to be as Jew-hating as it was in Hitler's day

Two Teachers College faculty members received "anti-Semitic materials" yesterday, according to an e-mail sent to TC students by Provost Tom James. In his message, James wrote that TC reported the incidents to the New York City Police Department and have consulted the Anti-Defamation League. In order to protect the privacy of the faculty members involved, James wrote that TC will not release their names. "As always, Teachers College deplores these hateful acts and takes them extremely seriously," James wrote.

The incident comes during a time of turmoil in Teachers College, two-and-a-half weeks after a noose was found on the door of a TC professor and anti-Semitic graffiti was found in a bathroom stall in Lewisohn Hall.

Source




Oxford University students stirring the pot again

They have a long tradition of it -- but some understandable concern is voiced below

Less than a month after Columbia University gave Holocaust denier, Iranian president Ahmadinejad, a platform in the name of freedom of expression, the Oxford University debating society has contacted Holocaust denier David Irving using the same argument and asked him to participate in one of the society's forums in November. The club also wants to invite Belarus dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, and chairman of the British Nationalist Party (BNP), Nick Griffin.

Debating society president, Luke Tryl, told the British Guardian newspaper that the Oxford Union debating society "is famous for is commitment to free speech" and that the three had been invited despite their "awful and abhorrent views" He argued that the students at Oxford are intelligent enough to challenge and ridicule them.

Tryl's weak rationale for the invitation has failed to convince various groups of students and anti-fascist campaigners in Britain. In a joint statement the co-presidents of the Oxford Jewish Students Union said it would be a disgrace if the three were allowed to address a forum on free speech, and that it would leave a black mark on the reputation of the Oxford Union. Students at the university said that their appearance would encourage right wing extremist groups which have become increasingly arrogant.

Irving, who until recently was serving a three year prison sentence in Austria after being convicted of Holocaust denial, told the Guardian that he had not received a formal approach but if he did he would like to speak to the students. He said that he had received many invitations to appear at Oxford but most had been withdrawn due to public pressure, threats, and intimidation even though he thinks "there are a lot of students who would like to hear what I have to say".

Last month Irving told the Guardian that his views on the Holocaust have not changed at all and that his views have become stronger over the years. In several books he plans to publish soon, Irving maintains that "the Jews are the architects of what happened to them in the Second World War" and that the "Jewish problem" has been the cause of most wars in the past hundred years. Irving also claims that the gas chambers in Auschwitz never existed and that the camp was not an extermination camp and has only been publicized because it was well preserved.

Besides offering further proof of growing activism (such as the call to boycott Israeli universities which went into the garbage bin of history) by the extreme left in Britain, Europe, and the United States, the problem with inviting loathsome Holocaust deniers like Irving and Ahmadinejad and asking them to address forums, is that it offers legitimacy to the very discussion of whether the Holocaust and the genocide of the Jewish people actually took place. If not prevented, discussions on this subject may pave the way for a future debate on Israel's status as the home of the Jewish nation and the right of the Jewish People to exist.

Israel's political leadership must face it that the world does not take for granted the right of the Jewish People to live as a free nation in the land of Israel, and that there are some who question this. Consequently, they must do everything possible to stem the growing phenomenon of hiding behind academic freedom of expression to lend legitimacy to the debate on the destruction of the Jewish People. Given the doctrine preached by Ahmadinejad and his like, the Israeli government must be more pro-active and not be indifferent in its policy on Iran, which seeks to destroy us.

Iran is more problematic for Israel than it is for the rest of the world, and Israel must act accordingly with regard to Iran and anyone else who challenges its existence. If Irving is invited to speak to students others will follow and it will become legitimate to discuss the right of the Jewish People to exist. The Israeli government together with the Jews of the Diaspora must specifically challenge Ahmadinejad and David Irving and all those who want to question the right of the Jewish People to live in Israel and ensure the Jewish People keeps its promise of "Never again".

Source





29 October, 2007

Dropouts cost state more than $850M

This is not very good cause-effect thinking I am afraid. Many of those who dropped out would probably have been dysfunctional regardless

A group favoring school vouchers says high school dropouts cost North Carolina hundreds of millions of dollars each year. A new report from the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation says the 716,000 working-age dropouts in North Carolina cost the state $712 million in tax revenue every year. That's based on research that says dropouts make less money and are less likely to have jobs than those who finish high school.

The report also says that dropouts use Medicaid disproportionately and cost the state $155 million in extra expenditures for the government-backed health insurance program. And dropouts cost the state at least $6 million in prison costs, the report states, because they're more likely to be incarcerated.

The Friedman Foundation's report was commissioned by Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, a group favoring vouchers that would give families public money to help send their children to private school. Added competition, the organization says, would also improve public schools, increasing the graduation rate and saving money. Currently, only about two of every three North Carolinians finish high school.

Source




Some people will complain about anything

Silence is a religion?

A 14-year-old girl and her outspoken atheist father filed a federal lawsuit Friday challenging a new Illinois law requiring a brief period of prayer or reflective silence at the start of every school day. The lawsuit asks the court to declare the law unconstitutional, said attorney Gregory Kulis, who represents Dawn Sherman, a freshman at Buffalo Grove High School, and her father Robert Sherman, a radio talk show host.

Kulis said the law is an attempt to inject religion into public schools in violation of the First Amendment. The suit also seeks a temporary restraining order to halt schools' obeying the law until the case is decided. A judge will consider that request at a hearing Monday. The lawsuit names Gov. Rod Blagojevich and officials of Township High School District 214 as defendants. School district spokeswoman Venetia Miles said schools will continue to comply with the law.

Blagojevich spokesman Abby Ottenhoff said the law was passed over the governor's veto. "We don't believe requiring time for reflection is the role of government," Ottenhoff said.

Sherman said he went to court after he asked the school board to ignore the law and was rebuffed. The school district informed him it would carry out the moment of silence during third period, beginning Tuesday, the lawsuit said. "What we object to is Christians passing a law that requires the public school teacher to stop teaching during instructional time, paid for by the taxpayers, so that Christians can pray," Sherman told The Associated Press.

An Illinois law called the Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act already allowed schools to observe a moment of silence if they wanted. A new measure changed just a single word: "may" observe became "shall" observe. The Illinois law originally passed during the spring legislative session, but Blagojevich vetoed it, saying he had doubts about its constitutionality. Lawmakers overrode the veto this month.

It's not Sherman's first church-and-state lawsuit and not the first to involve his children. He has sought removal of religious symbols from city seals and a ban on Boy Scout meetings at public schools. Some school administrators have complained the law is too ill-defined and puts many teachers and some students in an awkward position.

The Shermans may have legitimate concerns, but they are suing the wrong party when they target the school district, said Brian McCarthy, an attorney for the district. "The General Assembly -- for better, worse, foolish or wise -- passed this law and it's not up to school districts to pick and choose which laws they follow," McCarthy said. "He needs to go after the entity that enforces that law."

Source





28 October, 2007

Don't make public schools a state church

Americans would revolt if the government forced them to join a state-established church. They guard too fiercely their liberty of conscience, guaranteed by the First Amendment. Yet when some parents choose not to submit their children to the government-operated school system - whose curriculum and culture embody beliefs and values with which they disagree - they still must pay taxes to support the system. Even then, they often face opposition.

We contend that the conduct of schooling in the United States should be determined by the rights of conscience of parents, in accord with the democratic nature of our society and our confessional pluralism. Parents who choose not to send their children to public schools should not be subject to harassment. Nor should they be forced to support the state system as well as their preferred educational arrangement.

Contrary to popular belief, the US has never had one universally accepted system of public education. American history is full of dissenters who acted on conscience - and faced opposition for it. In the mid-19th century, Americans created what was then called the "common school." Allegedly free of the evils of sectarian educational institutions, the common school, supported by mandatory taxation, was touted as the bastion of republicanism, guarantor of liberty, and avenue of equal opportunity for all Americans. Advocates claimed it would abolish crime and poverty, and establish morality on a universal scale.

As was the case with prior government-established ecclesiastical institutions in Europe and early America, for example, Congregationalism in Connecticut and Anglicanism in Virginia, the "inclusive" common school was not common to all. Like its predecessors, it bred dissent. The leading educational dissenters in the 19th century were Roman Catholics. Their religious conscience clashed with the "nonsectarianism" of the common school, which in reality was a form of Unitarian pan-Protestantism. At considerable sacrifice, and despite their poverty, Catholics established their own schools and were confronted by opposition that sometimes turned violent.

As the 19th century progressed, others, most notably German Lutherans, joined Catholics in their conscience-based dissent from state-sanctioned educational orthodoxy. As had been the case with the established churches, those advocating the state system of education attempted to quell the "uprising" by regulating the dissenting schools.

In the 1960s, new groups joined the ranks of dissenters. A minority of evangelical Protestants were outraged by Supreme Court declarations that state-sanctioned prayer and devotional Bible reading violated the "no establishment" clause of the First Amendment. They felt discouraged by what they perceived as the establishment of secularism as the de facto religion of government-sponsored education. Consequently, they created Christian day schools to educate their children according to the dictates of conscience. Like Catholic and Lutheran dissenters, these schools, and some of their leaders, were harried at times by the state.

Most recently, a small but rapidly growing number of parents, a majority of whom are conservative Christians, have chosen to educate their children at home. Holding to the proposition that parents have the primary right to direct the education of their offspring, a right affirmed by the Supreme Court several times since the landmark Pierce v. Society of Sisters decision of 1925, they are the most radical dissenters yet. Like earlier dissenters, most home-schooling families believe the public school system transmits an orthodoxy alien to their belief system. As a matter of conscience, they feel bound to provide an education congruent with their worldview. And like other dissenters from earlier state churches and the current functional equivalent, the public school system, these parents have had to pay taxes to support a government-privileged institution as well as the costs of the education they prefer, been occasionally harassed, and sometimes hauled into court.

Any government establishment, ecclesiastical or educational, breeds dissent. Unfortunately, dissenters have often been subjected to legal prosecution, unjust financial burdens, and sometimes outright persecution. Such actions have often been justified as necessary for the "common good," while the "unorthodox" have been demonized as "divisive" or, in the case of 19th-century Catholic schools, "un-American." Today, home-schoolers are sometimes accused of being "selfish" or "undemocratic."

For those wanting a secular education for their children, as it currently exists in public schools, that is their choice and their right. Parents desiring a different kind of education should not have to pay twice as the price of liberty of conscience. The role of government in a democracy should be to see that the public is educated, not to mandate, directly or indirectly through financial policies, one particular form of education. When the government privileges a specific set of propositions of knowledge and dispositions of value and belief, it has established the educational equivalent of a state church. Such an arrangement is just as incompatible with liberty of conscience, as were the established churches of America's early history.

Source




This poor sod thinks the world owes him a living

His "ideals" require him to sponge off others rather than doing something useful. A good Leftist, in other words

I am 24, live with my parents, can't find work and am floundering in a sea of debt five figures high. I think of myself as ambitious, independent and hardworking. Now I'm dependent, unemployed and sleeping under the same Super Mario ceiling fan that I did when I was 7. How did this happen? I did what every upstanding citizen is supposed to do. I went to college. I took out loans so I could enroll at Alfred University, a pricey private school. The next year, I transferred to the more finance-friendly University at Buffalo, where I could commute from home and push carts part-time at Home Depot.

I related my forthcoming debt to puberty or a midlife crisis - each an unavoidable nuisance; tickets required upon admission to the next stage of adulthood. But as interest rates climbed and the cost of tuition, books and daily living mounted to galactic proportions, I realized this was more than some paltry inconvenience. Upon graduating, I was helplessly launched headfirst into the "real world," equipped with a degree in history and $32,000 in student loans. Before ricocheting back home, I would learn two important lessons: 1) There are no well-paying - let alone paying - jobs for history majors. 2) The real world is really tough.

Desperate times called for desperate measures, and I had no intention of living in a society that was as unfair as this one. To seek a haven devoid of the ruthless 9-to-5 ebb and flow of contemporary America, I moved to Alaska. As a liberal arts major, I dreamed of making a profound difference in people's lives. Instead, for a year, I lived in Coldfoot, a town north of the Arctic Circle that resembles a Soviet Gulag camp. My job as a tour guide for visitors temporarily alleviated my money woes because it provided room and board, but when the season ended and I moved back home, I was again confronted with the grim realities of debt.

Desperate, I browsed through insurance and bank job descriptions. I had hit an all-time low. Could I surrender my soul for health coverage and a steady income? Could I sacrifice my ideals by falling into line? Suddenly, living at home didn't seem nearly as degrading as selling out. But sadly, other graduates don't have any choice but to work for temp agencies and retail stores to eke by.

That's the tragedy of student debt: it doesn't just limit what we do, but who we become. Forget volunteering. Forget traveling. Forget trying to improve your country, or yourself. You've got bills to pay, young man. Unfortunately, the recent passage of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act doesn't portend that times are a-changin'. The act reduces interest rates on Stafford Loans and increases Pell Grant awards. Whoopty-do.

There's no question that this is a step forward. But we're still talking pennies and nickels when we need to completely revolutionize the government's role in financing post-secondary education. College is a wonderful experience and something every young citizen should pursue. But without help, a college education is becoming an unaffordable rite of passage and a privilege of the affluent.

My loan payments can't wait much longer, and soon I must leave home to find work that doesn't compromise my integrity. Although I sometimes wonder what it would be like if I had declared as an accounting major and got a cushy job punching numbers somewhere, I'll take my history major, my debt and my mom's cooking any day of the week.

Source





27 October, 2007

THERE ARE NONE SO BLIND AS THOSE WHO WILL NOT SEE

Affirmative action causes less able blacks to pass through the educational system at all levels. So when they finally get to be teachers, it is reasonable to expect that they will be less able as teachers. And that is exactly what students report. They evaluate black faculty less favourably. PREJUDICE! Or so the authors below seem to think. They suggest that the evaluations of black faculty by students be "adjusted" upwards. Inconvenient truths must be suppressed! This is Soviet Russia, you know. Abstract follows:

Leveling the Playing Field: Should Student Evaluation Scores be Adjusted?

By Michael A. McPherson & R. Todd Jewell

Objectives. Colleges and universities routinely use evaluation scores to assess the quality of an instructor's teaching for purposes of promotion and tenure and for merit-raise allocations. This article attempts to identify the determinants of these scores, and to suggest ways that departments' numerical rankings of instructors might be adjusted.

Method. This article applies a feasible generalized least squares model to a panel of data from master's-level classes.

Results. We find that instructors can "buy" better evaluation scores by inflating students' grade expectations. Also, the teaching experience of instructors has an impact on evaluation scores, but this effect is largely seen as an increase after tenure is granted. In addition, we find evidence of a bias against nonwhite faculty.

Conclusion. Our results suggest that an adjustment to the usual departmental rankings may be in order.

Social Science Quarterly. Volume 88 Issue 3 Page 868-881, September 2007




Age differences in grade-school classes

Some reflections by Prof. Brignell below on the latest British panic. In any given class some kids will be younger than others. How awful!

Long ago in the dim dawn of pre-history, your bending author experienced the first day at grammar school. At the end of the day he was taken aside by the form master, who explained the special problems he would experience as the youngest boy in the class, born (like Number Watch) on July 13th. That advice came from the accumulated wisdom that can only accrue from a century of existence as an institute of learning. That school was wantonly destroyed for ideological reasons and, when the demolition ball crashed through the elegant gothic arches, not only the fabric was destroyed but also that priceless store of wisdom. Now instead of wisdom we have what Kingsley Amis called "pseudo-research into non-problems" as illustrated by this heading in The Telegraph:

Pupils born in summer more likely to struggle

How things have changed! Now schools no longer run themselves, but are subject to endless interference and targetry by Government ministers and underemployed bureaucrats. Pupils are repeatedly tested into a state of coma. Expensive research is commissioned to replace what was once common knowledge. Stupid interventions and "urgent action" are thought up at the drop of a hat. "Equity" and "efficiency" are the watchwords, while teachers and parents are deemed too stupid to be able to make the allowances that they once made without instruction from above.

Furthermore, changes are suggested that are self-evidently nonsense. However many children are "held back" there is always going to be one who is the youngest in the class, while those held back now become the eldest, so there is always a difference of one year between them. Even common sense is no longer common.





26 October, 2007

Good teachers make a big difference

But why would any capable person want to go into teaching these days? There are a lot more attractive things for an able person to do than stand up in front of an undisciplined rabble every day. As more money has been spent on education, discipline has eroded -- thus neutralizing any advantage the better funding might have given. Money cannot replace discipline

THE British government, says Sir Michael Barber, once an adviser to the former prime minister, Tony Blair, has changed pretty much every aspect of education policy in England and Wales, often more than once. "The funding of schools, the governance of schools, curriculum standards, assessment and testing, the role of local government, the role of national government, the range and nature of national agencies, schools admissions"-you name it, it's been changed and sometimes changed back. The only thing that hasn't changed has been the outcome. According to the National Foundation for Education Research, there had been (until recently) no measurable improvement in the standards of literacy and numeracy in primary schools for 50 years.

England and Wales are not alone. Australia has almost tripled education spending per student since 1970. No improvement. American spending has almost doubled since 1980 and class sizes are the lowest ever. Again, nothing. No matter what you do, it seems, standards refuse to budge (see chart). To misquote Woody Allen, those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, run the schools.

Why bother, you might wonder. Nothing seems to matter. Yet something must. There are big variations in educational standards between countries. These have been measured and re-measured by the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) which has established, first, that the best performing countries do much better than the worst and, second, that the same countries head such league tables again and again: Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore, South Korea.

Those findings raise what ought to be a fruitful question: what do the successful lot have in common? Yet the answer to that has proved surprisingly elusive. Not more money. Singapore spends less per student than most. Nor more study time. Finnish students begin school later, and study fewer hours, than in other rich countries.

Now, an organisation from outside the teaching fold-McKinsey, a consultancy that advises companies and governments-has boldly gone where educationalists have mostly never gone: into policy recommendations based on the PISA findings. Schools, it says, need to do three things: get the best teachers; get the best out of teachers; and step in when pupils start to lag behind. That may not sound exactly "first-of-its-kind" (which is how Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's head of education research, describes McKinsey's approach): schools surely do all this already? Actually, they don't. If these ideas were really taken seriously, they would change education radically.

Begin with hiring the best. There is no question that, as one South Korean official put it, "the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers." Studies in Tennessee and Dallas have shown that, if you take pupils of average ability and give them to teachers deemed in the top fifth of the profession, they end up in the top 10% of student performers; if you give them to teachers from the bottom fifth, they end up at the bottom. The quality of teachers affects student performance more than anything else.

Yet most school systems do not go all out to get the best. The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce, a non-profit organisation, says America typically recruits teachers from the bottom third of college graduates. Washington, DC recently hired as chancellor for its public schools an alumna of an organisation called Teach for America, which seeks out top graduates and hires them to teach for two years. Both her appointment and the organisation caused a storm.

A bias against the brightest happens partly because of lack of money (governments fear they cannot afford them), and partly because other aims get in the way. Almost every rich country has sought to reduce class size lately. Yet all other things being equal, smaller classes mean more teachers for the same pot of money, producing lower salaries and lower professional status. That may explain the paradox that, after primary school, there seems little or no relationship between class size and educational achievement.

McKinsey argues that the best performing education systems nevertheless manage to attract the best. In Finland all new teachers must have a master's degree. South Korea recruits primary-school teachers from the top 5% of graduates, Singapore and Hong Kong from the top 30%.

They do this in a surprising way. You might think that schools should offer as much money as possible, seek to attract a large pool of applicants into teacher training and then pick the best. Not so, says McKinsey. If money were so important, then countries with the highest teacher salaries-Germany, Spain and Switzerland-would presumably be among the best. They aren't. In practice, the top performers pay no more than average salaries.

Nor do they try to encourage a big pool of trainees and select the most successful. Almost the opposite. Singapore screens candidates with a fine mesh before teacher training and accepts only the number for which there are places. Once in, candidates are employed by the education ministry and more or less guaranteed a job. Finland also limits the supply of teacher-training places to demand. In both countries, teaching is a high-status profession (because it is fiercely competitive) and there are generous funds for each trainee teacher (because there are few of them).

South Korea shows how the two systems produce different results. Its primary-school teachers have to pass a four-year undergraduate degree from one of only a dozen universities. Getting in requires top grades; places are rationed to match vacancies. In contrast, secondary-school teachers can get a diploma from any one of 350 colleges, with laxer selection criteria. This has produced an enormous glut of newly qualified secondary-school teachers-11 for each job at last count. As a result, secondary-school teaching is the lower status job in South Korea; everyone wants to be a primary-school teacher. The lesson seems to be that teacher training needs to be hard to get into, not easy.

Having got good people, there is a temptation to shove them into classrooms and let them get on with it. For understandable reasons, teachers rarely get much training in their own classrooms (in contrast, doctors do a lot of training in hospital wards). But successful countries can still do much to overcome the difficulty.

Singapore provides teachers with 100 hours of training a year and appoints senior teachers to oversee professional development in each school. In Japan and Finland, groups of teachers visit each others' classrooms and plan lessons together. In Finland, they get an afternoon off a week for this. In Boston, which has one of America's most improved public-school systems, schedules are arranged so that those who teach the same subject have free classes together for common planning. This helps spread good ideas around. As one educator remarked, "when a brilliant American teacher retires, almost all of the lesson plans and practices that she has developed also retire. When a Japanese teacher retires, she leaves a legacy."

Lastly, the most successful countries are distinctive not just in whom they employ so things go right but in what they do when things go wrong, as they always do. For the past few years, almost all countries have begun to focus more attention on testing, the commonest way to check if standards are falling. McKinsey's research is neutral on the usefulness of this, pointing out that while Boston tests every student every year, Finland has largely dispensed with national examinations. Similarly, schools in New Zealand and England and Wales are tested every three or four years and the results published, whereas top-of-the-class Finland has no formal review and keeps the results of informal audits confidential.

But there is a pattern in what countries do once pupils and schools start to fail. The top performers intervene early and often. Finland has more special-education teachers devoted to laggards than anyone else-as many as one teacher in seven in some schools. In any given year, a third of pupils get one-on-one remedial lessons. Singapore provides extra classes for the bottom 20% of students and teachers are expected to stay behind-often for hours-after school to help students.

None of this is rocket science. Yet it goes against some of the unspoken assumptions of education policy. Scratch a teacher or an administrator (or a parent), and you often hear that it is impossible to get the best teachers without paying big salaries; that teachers in, say, Singapore have high status because of Confucian values; or that Asian pupils are well behaved and attentive for cultural reasons. McKinsey's conclusions seem more optimistic: getting good teachers depends on how you select and train them; teaching can become a career choice for top graduates without paying a fortune; and that, with the right policies, schools and pupils are not doomed to lag behind.

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The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history

The article below is by Mark Morford, who is Leftist and generally rather excitable, but I think he is not far wrong this time. The only thing that I think he overlooks is that society has always depended for its progress and for its management on a small and generally gifted elite and that elite undoubtedly still exists and is mostly being privately educated to a reasonable standard. So the general dumbing down may not be all that influential on anything other than the life-satisfaction of the less-gifted students who have been deprived of much culture and understanding of the world about them

I have this ongoing discussion with a longtime reader who also just so happens to be a longtime Oakland high school teacher, a wonderful guy who's seen generations of teens come and generations go and who has a delightful poetic sensibility and quirky outlook on his life and his family and his beloved teaching career. And he often writes to me in response to something I might've written about the youth of today, anything where I comment on the various nefarious factors shaping their minds and their perspectives and whether or not, say, EMFs and junk food and cell phones are melting their brains and what can be done and just how bad it might all be. His response: It is not bad at all. It's absolutely horrifying.

My friend often summarizes for me what he sees, firsthand, every day and every month, year in and year out, in his classroom. He speaks not merely of the sad decline in overall intellectual acumen among students over the years, not merely of the astonishing spread of lazy slackerhood, or the fact that cell phones and iPods and excess TV exposure are, absolutely and without reservation, short-circuiting the minds of the upcoming generations. Of this, he says, there is zero doubt.

Nor does he speak merely of the notion that kids these days are overprotected and wussified and don't spend enough time outdoors and don't get any real exercise and therefore can't, say, identify basic plants, or handle a tool, or build, well, anything at all. Again, these things are a given. Widely reported, tragically ignored, nothing new. No, my friend takes it all a full step - or rather, leap - further. It is not merely a sad slide. It is not just a general dumbing down. It is far uglier than that. We are, as far as urban public education is concerned, essentially at rock bottom. We are now at a point where we are essentially churning out ignorant teens who are becoming ignorant adults and society as a whole will pay dearly, very soon, and if you think the hordes of easily terrified, mindless fundamentalist evangelical Christian lemmings have been bad for the soul of this country, just wait.

It's gotten so bad that, as my friend nears retirement, he says he is very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of years due to the absolutely irrefutable destruction, the shocking - and nearly hopeless - dumb-ification of the American brain. It is just that bad.

Now, you may think he's merely a curmudgeon, a tired old teacher who stopped caring long ago. Not true. Teaching is his life. He says he loves his students, loves education and learning and watching young minds awaken. Problem is, he is seeing much less of it. It's a bit like the melting of the polar ice caps. Sure, there's been alarmist data about it for years, but until you see it for yourself, the deep visceral dread doesn't really hit home.

He cites studies, reports, hard data, from the appalling effects of television on child brain development (i.e.; any TV exposure before 6 years old and your kid's basic cognitive wiring and spatial perceptions are pretty much scrambled for life), to the fact that, because of all the insidious mandatory testing teachers are now forced to incorporate into the curriculum, of the 182 school days in a year, there are 110 when such testing is going on somewhere at Oakland High. As one of his colleagues put it, "It's like weighing a calf twice a day, but never feeding it."

But most of all, he simply observes his students, year to year, noting all the obvious evidence of teens' decreasing abilities when confronted with even the most basic intellectual tasks, from understanding simple history to working through moderately complex ideas to even (in a couple recent examples that particularly distressed him) being able to define the words "agriculture," or even "democracy." Not a single student could do it.

It gets worse. My friend cites the fact that, of the 6,000 high school students he estimates he's taught over the span of his career, only a small fraction now make it to his grade with a functioning understanding of written English. They do not know how to form a sentence. They cannot write an intelligible paragraph. Recently, after giving an assignment that required drawing lines, he realized that not a single student actually knew how to use a ruler.

It is, in short, nothing less than a tidal wave of dumb, with once-passionate, increasingly exasperated teachers like my friend nearly powerless to stop it. The worst part: It's not the kids' fault. They're merely the victims of a horribly failed educational system.

Then our discussion often turns to the meat of it, the bigger picture, the ugly and unavoidable truism about the lack of need among the government and the power elite in this nation to create a truly effective educational system, one that actually generates intelligent, thoughtful, articulate citizens. Hell, why should they? After all, the dumber the populace, the easier it is to rule and control and launch unwinnable wars and pass laws telling them that sex is bad and TV is good and God knows all, so just pipe down and eat your Taco Bell Double-Supremo Burrito and be glad we don't arrest you for posting dirty pictures on your cute little blog.

This is about when I try to offer counterevidence, a bit of optimism. For one thing, I've argued generational relativity in this space before, suggesting maybe kids are no scarier or dumber or more dangerous than they've ever been, and that maybe some of the problem is merely the same old awkward generation gap, with every current generation absolutely convinced the subsequent one is terrifically stupid and malicious and will be the end of society as a whole. Just the way it always seems.

I also point out how, despite all the evidence of total public-education meltdown, I keep being surprised, keep hearing from/about teens and youth movements and actions that impress the hell out of me. Damn kids made the Internet what it is today, fer chrissakes. Revolutionized media. Broke all the rules. Still are.

Hell, some of the best designers, writers, artists, poets, chefs, and so on that I meet are in their early to mid-20s. And the nation's top universities are still managing, despite a factory-churning mentality, to crank out young minds of astonishing ability and acumen. How did these kids do it? How did they escape the horrible public school system? How did they avoid the great dumbing down of America? Did they never see a TV show until they hit puberty? Were they all born and raised elsewhere, in India and Asia and Russia? Did they all go to Waldorf or Montessori and eat whole-grain breads and play with firecrackers and take long walks in wild nature? Are these kids flukes? Exceptions? Just lucky?

My friend would say, well, yes, that's precisely what most of them are. Lucky, wealthy, foreign-born, private-schooled ... and increasingly rare. Most affluent parents in America - and many more who aren't - now put their kids in private schools from day one, and the smart ones give their kids no TV and minimal junk food and no video games. (Of course, this in no way guarantees a smart, attuned kid, but compared to the odds of success in the public school system, it sure seems to help). This covers about, what, 3 percent of the populace?

As for the rest, well, the dystopian evidence seems overwhelming indeed, to the point where it might be no stretch at all to say the biggest threat facing America is perhaps not global warming, not perpetual warmongering, not garbage food or low-level radiation or way too much Lindsay Lohan, but a populace far too ignorant to know how to properly manage any of it, much less change it all for the better. What, too fatalistic? Don't worry. Soon enough, no one will know what the word even means

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25 October, 2007

S. Carolina: Another insane school

Freaked by butter-knife possession but happy to make murderous gunmen feel safe by declaring the school a "gun-free zone"

A Berkeley County student is kicked out of school for bringing a butter knife to campus. "I know I made a really stupid decision but I don't think I should be expelled for it," Amber Dauge said. Amber says that stupid decision was taking a butter knife to school. She ran out of the house to meet the bus while making a sandwich, when she realized she had the knife. She put it in her bookbag, then she put it in her locker at Goose Creek High school. She forgot it was there until a few weeks later when the knife fell out of her overstuffed locker.

"A kid behind me yelled out a comment that I was going to stab someone with the knife and everyone started laughing and the teacher saw it," Amber told us. The teacher told the principal. Amber was suspended and recommended for expulsion. She attended an expulsion hearing last Thursday and it was made official.

"We got the paperwork for the expulsion in the mail on Friday. They had sent the paperwork out before they had even done the hearing saying she was expelled," Amber's mother, Kristi Heinz said. The Berkeley County school district has a zero tolerance policy. But is it too harsh? "I don't think zero tolerance is the right thing. I really don't. Every situation has its own circumstances," said Steven Heinz, Amber's father.

Amber realizes she could have made a better choice, like leaving the knife on the porch at home or actually giving it to a teacher. "I knew I was gonna get in trouble but I didn't think I was was gonna get expelled," Amber said. Amber can appeal the school board's decision. Her parents will write a letter to the superintendent and will attend the next school board meeting on Tuesday.

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Maryland: Colleges report dismal results

Wishy-washy approach to High School standards bears the inevitable fruit: Kids who are rarely ready for further study

Baltimore school board meetings have been ending on a somber note lately, as schools chief Andres Alonso is capping the evenings with presentations of student data that thus far have been dismal. Last night was no exception, as the new chief executive officer turned to the subject of city students' college enrollment and graduation rates.

According to the data presented at the meeting, only 14 percent of students who graduated from Baltimore's public high schools in 2001 had earned a college degree five years later. And among students who graduated from high school in the spring of 2006, just 44 percent enrolled in a two- or four-year college that fall, compared with a national college enrollment rate of 66 percent.

Alonso was quick to acknowledge the information's shortcomings: The data were gathered by the National Student Clearinghouse, which collects student enrollment and graduation information from the majority of the nation's colleges and universities. But Morgan State University did not provide statistics to the clearinghouse, nor did Allegany College or Sojourner-Douglass College. Still, even if those schools had been included, Alonso said the data show that the city is clearly not doing its job to prepare students for college. "If there are still people out there who argue that the children should be graduated, this is what happens," said Alonso in an interview before the meeting. He added that college graduation rates for students from other urban school systems are comparably low.

The report adds fuel to the debate on the state's High School Assessments, which would require students starting in the Class of 2009 to pass exams in English, Algebra 1, biology and government to graduate. Faced with the prospect of denying diplomas to thousands of students, many in Baltimore, state officials are weighing whether to back down. State Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick has proposed allowing students who fail the tests to instead complete a senior project.

But Grasmick, too, said in an interview that the city's college enrollment and graduation rate data show why schools must still prepare their students for the tests. "If we don't create a meaningful and accountable foundation for these students, we're never going to be able to build on that to make students work-ready and college-ready," she said. Grasmick pointed to the city's low pass rate on the Algebra 1 test: Only 35.6 percent of students in the Class of 2009 have passed so far. To do well on the SAT college entrance exam, she said, students must have mastery not only of Algebra 1, but also Algebra 2.

Like Grasmick, Alonso has backed the senior project option, but he says he also wants to make sure that students are earning a diploma that means something. He supports keeping students in school for as long as they want up to age 21 to get a diploma with value. At the same time, he must find a way to curb the high school dropout rate. In the Class of 2009, about 6,300 students started out as ninth-graders two years ago. Today, the class has about 4,500 students, meaning 1,800 have dropped out or moved.

Since taking the helm of the city school system in July, Alonso has been fixated on measuring the baseline from which he is starting. He says it is important for him, and the public, to understand the magnitude of the task at hand to reform education in Baltimore. Skeptics question whether he might be trying to paint an overly negative picture now so he can take credit for improvements later.

The statistics presented last night called into question even the value of diplomas from the city's prestigious citywide magnet schools: Polytechnic Institute, City College, Western High, Dunbar High and School for the Arts. Only 33 percent of students from those schools' Class of 2001 who enrolled in college that fall had earned a bachelor's or associate's degree five years later, the data show. At the city's career and technology high schools - Carver, Mergenthaler and Edmondson - 6 percent of students in the Class of 2001 had a degree within five years. At the city's neighborhood high schools, the figure was just 4 percent.....

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24 October, 2007

Schoolyards are just full of 'Charlie Browns'



The problem described below is an old one and the Leftist response is to eradicate as far as possible all distinctions between the achievements of different children. This is however to found a policy on a lie. That comes easily to Leftists but a healthier response is clearly needed. I thought therefore that I might mention that I am rather clumsy physically and was therefore spectacularly bad at all school sporting activities in my youth. As a consequence I was rather socially isolated (though not unhappy) at school. But "nerds" often do well in later life (look at Bill Gates) and I have certainly done so. The clear strategy for genuinely kind people therefore is not to ignore differences in ability but to stress to all that sometimes in the long run "the last shall be first" (Mark 10:31). Just the thought that the jock might one day be asking the nerd for a job should have considerable effect

Charlie Brown, the sad and loveable loser, is a real character in many school playgrounds, psychologists say. In the American comic strip Peanuts, sensitive Charlie is never able to kick a football, fly a kite or win at baseball. He is of often ridiculed by his classmates, made the butt of jokes and called "blockhead". Now a Canadian study has found that Charlie Brown's problems are true to life. Children appear to place a great deal of value on athletic ability, and those with a reputation for lacking such skills often experience sadness, isolation and social rejection.

Dr Janice Causgrove Dunn, of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, said: "For both boys and girls, we found that popular children reported less loneliness and received higher athletic ability ratings from their peers than rejected children. "Conversely, the kids who reported higher levels of loneliness tended to receive lower athletic ability ratings and lower social acceptance ratings from their peers."

The findings are published in the latest issue of the Journal of Sport Behaviour. Previous research has shown that loneliness in childhood and adolescence is often associated with psychosocial and emotional problems. Prolonged loneliness has the potential to undermine seriously an individual's psychological, emotional and physical wellbeing.

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Hypocrite or realist?

Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty has taken full control over his city's long suffering public schools. But he sends his own twin girls to a private school. Does that make him a hypocrite? A bad mayor? Or, perhaps, just a good father?

Fenty is not alone. Many big city mayors educate their kids privately. A far greater percentage of public school teachers -- especially in urban areas -- send their own kids to private schools than does the general public. And a 2003 survey of members of Congress found that 41 percent of U.S. representatives and 46 percent of U.S. senators now send or have sent at least one of their children to a private school.

Granted, there is hypocrisy at work. Many of these folks stump for public schooling, opposing systems of private school choice. And yet, they choose to opt out of the system they allegedly shore up . . . from competition. The kind they themselves rely upon.

Years ago, during a campaign, Fenty pledged to send his kids to public schools. So, if voters want to hold that against him, they have every right to do so. My point is only that had Fenty -- or any politician or educator -- made the opposite decision, wouldn't that be even worse? Mayor Fenty's choice boils down to this: Should he put the public schools ahead of his own children? Or should he put his children ahead of the public schools? Which would you put first?

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23 October, 2007

Brits fleeing disastrous government schools

If they are lucky enough to be able to afford to do so. The cost is a considerable burden for many families but keeping their children safe and in an environment where they can learn is a huge priority. Would YOU want your kid to go to a school where some of the black kids are armed with machine pistols?

The middle-class exodus from state schools in London is speeding up, with nearly half of children in some parts of the capital now privately educated. An analysis of government figures suggested a widening of the social class divide in education since the turn of the century. Some of the highest levels of child poverty, as measured by the proportion of children eligible for free school meals (FSM), were found in areas with the greatest proportion of children in independent schools. The figures followed concern from Christine Gilbert, the Chief Inspector of Schools, who said that the school system was dividing children along social and economic lines.

The finding was most striking in [largely black] inner-London boroughs. In Kensington and Chelsea, 45.3 per cent of children are educated in independent schools, yet the borough has the sixth-highest rate in the country for FSM [poor] children, at 37.7 per cent. [What a coincidence!] The national average for FSM is 12 per cent.

In Hammersmith & Fulham, which has the third-highest rate of FSM children in the country at 42.2 per cent, a quarter of children are independently educated. In Westminster, 26.4 per cent go to independent schools, and yet the borough has the eighth-highest rate in the country for FSM children, at 35.8 per cent. Greg Hands, the Conservative MP for Hammersmith and Fulham, obtained the figures from the House of Commons, amid concern about the flight of middle-class families from state schools in his borough. In 2000 22.6 per cent of children in the borough were educated independently. Now the figure is 25.6 per cent. Other inner-London boroughs have seen similar shifts. In Wandsworth, the proportion in independent schools has risen from 15.1 to 18.7 per cent.

These figures come against a nation-wide long-term demographic decline in the number of young people and steady increases in independent school fees to an average of about 11,000 pounds a year.

Mr Hands said: "In Hammersmith & Fulham, we have one of the fastest-rising rates of private school attendance in the country and one of the highest rates of surplus places in [state] secondary schools. "Part of that can be explained by changing demographics in that we now have more parents who can afford to go private. But there is more to it than that. Middle-class parents concerned about standards are opting out of the state system and it's my objective to get them to opt back in. Our local state schools are making themselves better, but the missing element in their bid for improvement is the professional classes."

Sam Friedman, head of the education unit at the Policy Exchange think-tank, said the social divide in education was particularly acute in London [which is now 50% black]. The phenomenon could be attributed in part to its population, which is extremely socially mixed. "In more rural areas, populations tend to segregate naturally. In London, there are pockets of advantage and disadvantage right next to each other and one way they segregate themselves is through school choice."

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ARCHAEOLOGISTS CHALLENGE BARNARD PROFESSOR'S CLAIMS

On Monday night, Columbia University's pro-Israel student group played host to the latest installment in a lecture series aimed, at least partially, at rebutting Nadia Abu El-Haj, whose work has been critical of the traditional narratives of Israeli archeology. Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard since 2002, first gained notice with her 2001 book "Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society," in which she argued that Israeli archaeologists use their research to validate a national origin myth. The book was praised in some quarters - it won the top award from the Middle East Studies Association - but was slammed by others as poor scholarship motivated by ideology. Columbia is currently deliberating whether Abu El-Haj should be given tenure, and the university has received petitions from her opponents and supporters.

"If you get real live archaeologists on campus who know the material, they're naturally going to contradict her," said Alan Segal, a professor in Barnard's religion department who delivered the first lecture in the series. The bottom line, Segal said, is that Abu El-Haj "hates Israelis." Abu El-Haj could not be reached for comment.

On the academic level, the debate about Abu El-Haj has drawn out a conflict between those scholars who believe archaeology has the potential for objectivity, and others - particularly younger scholars in disciplines such as anthropology - who see archaeological practice as inextricably tied to ideology.

On Monday night, the featured speaker was William Dever, a retired professor of Near Eastern archaeology at the University of Arizona who is a critic of Abu El-Haj. Although he never referred explicitly to Abu El-Haj in his lecture, Dever challenged notions advanced by some academics about archaeology's inherent biases. "Archaeology has never been edited," he said. "When we dig these things up, they are pristine."

Judith Jacobson, a member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, made the opening remarks at Dever's lecture. She said that the lecture series, titled "Underground: What Archaeology Tells Us about Ancient Israel," was conceived partly to remind the community that good Israel archaeology exists in abundance. Asked if she thought the series served a political purpose, Jacobson answered carefully. "Only to inform the community," she said. "It's all we can do."

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22 October, 2007

One school fits all

Do you have the right to take my earnings by force and spend them on football gear, school buses or teaching Greek to your kid? Maybe I needed tires for the car, removal of an infected tooth or food. Can you decide that for me? What gives you the right? Are people unique? Can one system fit them all? Would you like to have a simplified life where government agents design THE car that we all get to drive, and THE clothes that we all get to wear, and THE store where we buy the selection of foods government planners put there. I assure you it would be a drab world bereft of choices, absent innovation and backward in the extreme.

Why, when it comes to something as important as education, do we abandon choice, control, innovation, variety and the individual prioritization that comes from paying as you go for what you want?

I wouldn't care if the school system down the road was the best or the worst possible. As long as I didn't have to use it. As long as I didn't have to pay for it. There would be plenty of choices, just as there are for electronics, food, clothing and trombones. What if the government made two models of trombone, tenor and bass. What more could you ask for? Got both bases covered. Quality - Bah! Tone - Bah! This model is all you NEED. You want better sound, learn to play better.

So we have a kid who should be working on a ranch, learning animal husbandry, veterinary science, living and working in the outdoors. But our ONE SYSTEM puts him in a classroom doped up on Ritalin so he won't disrupt the teacher who is boring him to distraction. Another is writing symphonies in her head while a small fraction of her brain multi-tasks to keep up with the snail's-pace the rest of the room is on. She should be at music academy, but our single-model school system isn't set up that way.

One of my daughters escaped in the 10th grade with an academic scholarship to a challenging private school to the wealthy. She was atrophying in public school, while getting A's. The buildings were old and cheap, but the teachers earned university-level pay and had the freedom to make their subjects come alive.

Another daughter was being age-channeled along, testing at the 4.5-grade-level as she entered the 8th grade. A had many hours in helping her with her work, talking with teachers, resource specialists, psychologists. She spent 8th grade in a Waldorf school. She studied and homeworked until midnight-to-3:00am. She worked her butt off for that teacher and the class - to exit 8th grade AT GRADE LEVEL.

My middle girl left in her high-school Jr year. They weren't reaching her or teaching her. She got her GED. Graduated from North American Firefighter's academy. Worked there a bit. Started putting herself through a University Nursing program, getting A's in the weeder courses where 40 enter and a dozen survive.

So the one-size-fits-all school system only failed to serve 3 out of 3 for me. Do you wonder why I resent paying for it? I resent far more the educational opportunities that IT DISPLACES. There is next to nothing that should be taught at an age-specific level. I have just as much right to learn calculus on my dollar as my next-door neighbor's kid does. more, in fact. . and I would love to be teaching trombone to a dozen kids between 8 and 80 years old. This town would have a great trombone choir. But no, here you learn trombone in government school when you are 12 and play it for 1/2 hour a day until you are 17. Then put it away forever.

In case I didn't make it clear: I do not want to design THE ONE school system, teaching or learning environment for this community. I don't want anybody else to do that either.

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Australia's education wars

Education unions and left-wing education academics cling to proven failures in education theory, despite years of evidence demonstrating the errors of their thinking. They reject, for instance, the research-based evidence showing that "whole language" dominated reading programs do not work for a large proportion of children.

The power of sensible thinking by political leaders in holding off barbarian ideologues can be seen in the influence of the former NSW premier Bob Carr, who saved NSW from the worst educational excesses suffered elsewhere, particularly in Western Australia, where a decade-long experiment in outcomes-based education has just been abandoned.

But while governments control the purse strings they have little effect on deep-rooted cultural prejudices in organisations such as the ABC and teacher unions. In the battles for hearts and minds, they are outclassed by ideological guerillas, who can only be vanquished from within. At last, however, there are encouraging signs from teachers that the civil war may have begun.

Take the English Teachers Association, which claims to speak for all English teachers. Its most honoured operative is former president Wayne Sawyer, an associate professor at the University of Western Sydney, who has helped develop the NSW English curriculum and is editor of the journal English in Australia. It was his editorial that blamed the Howard Government's 2004 re-election on the failure of English teachers to properly educate their charges in critical theory.

And in the last edition of the International Journal of Progressive Education, Sawyer tackled the discredited "whole language" theory of teaching reading in an article entitled Whole language and moral panic in Australia. He claimed "moral panic" was behind a "media campaign . to demonise whole-language methods" of teaching reading, despite the fact the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (which I served on) spent a year examining the worldwide evidence about the best way to teach children reading and came down on the side of systematic, direct instruction in phonics.

If you ever wondered how the teaching of reading could be politicised, the journal is instructive, having devoted its entire June edition to whole language, including "the multilayered dimensions of social justice activism involved in whole language teaching". The articles read like a long confession from the stubborn practitioners of a movement which has condemned so many underprivileged children to illiteracy, while professing to care about injustice.

In an article about teaching sixth graders in Grover Cleveland Middle School, New Jersey, the authors "search for ways to disrupt the pre-service [trainee] teachers' traditional notions of teaching, learning, and curriculum . We strive to help our pre-service teachers understand that their roles as teachers include a political dimension . "Too often," they complain, the teachers "fall back into the direct instruction model with which they feel comfortable."

Naughty teachers, trying to teach rather than indoctrinate their students. But Sawyer and his acolytes at the association have so provoked those they purport to represent they have sparked a grassroots protest movement of teachers across the country. In Western Australia, one group of teachers became so fed up at having to implement outcomes-based education, a favourite of the English Teachers Association, that they managed to have it overturned this year. Their lobby group PLATO, People Lobbying Against Teaching Outcomes, persuaded the West Australian Government to reinstate the traditional syllabus, concentrating on literacy and numeracy.

Now a group of secondary English teachers from Catholic, government and independent schools in Western Australia have formed the English Teachers Forum, the ETFWA, in direct opposition to the English Teachers Association, because they are "concerned about the misrepresentation of English teachers and their views regarding the implementation and the efficacy of the English Course of Study". In a letter to the association, the breakaway group wrote: "The ETAWA must realise that the collective voice of the majority of English teachers simply cannot be ignored any longer. It is not just a matter of numbers. It is also a matter of fairness." The English Teachers Forum has also managed to have Western Australia's year 11 and 12 curriculum reviewed by a "jury" of impartial classroom teachers, with the result the West Australian Government agreed to rewrite the courses by 2010.

In NSW, there is similar grassroots unhappiness with the English Teachers Association, judging by a letter I have received from an anonymous secondary English teacher of 30 years. "The problem in NSW English teaching is not the syllabus. It is the way the syllabus has been interpreted by the English Teachers Association of NSW and its transformation from a wonderfully principled, supportive professional association to a site of left-wing political activism and ideological posturing .. "My dismay comes from a jettisoning of our literary heritage for an obsession with critical literacy and an approach to English based on overt critical theory. "I look through my past issues of [the association's journal mETAphor] and ask myself what has happened to the aim of fostering a love of literature in our children? What has happened to the great works of literature?"

That journal is full of articles about postmodernism and such literary gems as: "Power Struggles in the Big Brother House" and "Earnestly Queer: Responding to Oscar Wilde's The Importance of being Earnest Through the Critical Lens of Queer Theory" by Mark Howie, the president of the English Teachers Association. It is no good for Australian students that a body promoting extremist ideology should have come to represent their English teachers. But it seems their teachers have finally had enough. Hoorah for them.

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21 October, 2007

BIG BROTHER AT SCHOOL

By Jeff Jacoby

"Freedom of education, being an essential of civil and religious liberty . . . must not be interfered with under any pretext whatever," the party's national platform declared. "We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children as an infringement of the fundamental . . . doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government."

Now which political party said that? The Libertarians? The Barry Goldwater Republicans of 1964? Some minor party on the right-wing fringe? Actually, that ringing endorsement of parental supremacy in education was adopted by the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1892, which just goes to show what was possible before the Democratic Party was taken hostage by the teachers unions. (The same platform also warned that "the tendency to centralize all power at the federal capital has become a menace," blasted barriers to free trade as "robbery of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few," and pledged "relentless opposition to the Republican policy of profligate expenditure.")

Today, on education as on so much else, the Democrats sing from a different hymnal. When the party's presidential candidates debated at Dartmouth College recently, they were asked about a controversial incident in Lexington, Mass., where a second-grade teacher, to the dismay of several parents, had read her young students a story celebrating same-sex marriage. Were the candidates "comfortable" with that? "Yes, absolutely," former senator John Edwards promptly replied. "I want my children . . . to be exposed to all the information . . . even in second grade . . . because I don't want to impose my view. Nobody made me God. I don't get to decide on behalf of my family or my children. . . . I don't get to impose on them what it is that I believe is right." None of the other candidates disagreed, even though most of them say they oppose same-sex marriage.

Thus in a little over 100 years, the Democratic Party -- and, for that matter, much of the Republican Party -- has been transformed from a champion of "parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children" to a party whose leaders believe that parents "don't get to impose" their views and values on what their kids are taught in school. Do American parents see anything wrong with that? Apparently not: The overwhelming majority of them dutifully enroll their children in government-operated schools, where the only views and values permitted are the ones prescribed by the state.

But controversies like the one in Lexington are reminders that Big Brother's ideas about what and how children should be taught are not always those of mom and dad.

Americans differ on same-sex marriage and evolution, on the importance of sports and the value of phonics, on the right to bear arms and the reverence due the Confederate flag. Some parents are committed secularists; others are devout believers. Some place great emphasis on math and science; others stress history and foreign languages. Americans hold disparate opinions on everything from the truth of the Bible to the meaning of the First Amendment, from the usefulness of rote memorization to the significance of music and art. With parents so often in boisterous disagreement, why should children be locked into a one-size-fits-all, government-knows-best model of education?

Nobody would want the government to run 90 percent of the nation's entertainment industry. Nobody thinks that 90 percent of all housing should be owned by the state. Nobody believes that health care would be improved if the government operated 90 percent of all hospitals, pharmacies, and doctors’ offices. Yet the government's control of 90 percent of the nation's schools leaves most Americans strangely unconcerned.

But we should be concerned. Not just because the quality of government schooling is frequently so poor or its costs so high. Not just because public schools are constantly roiled by political storms. Not just because schools backed by the power of the state are not accountable to parents and can ride roughshod over their concerns. And not just because the public-school monopoly, like virtually all monopolies, resists change, innovation, and excellence.

All of that is true, but a more fundamental truth is this: In a society founded on political and economic liberty, government schools should have no place. Free men and women do not entrust to the state the molding of their children's minds and character. As we wouldn't trust the state to feed our kids, or to clothe them, or to get them to bed on time, neither should we trust the state to teach them. What Americans in an earlier era knew in their bones, many in the 21st century need to relearn: Education is too important to be left to the government.




Hope for the innumerate from Australia

A teaching program that helps students "trust their heads" to recall basic mathematical facts has turned students failing maths into some of the best performers. The QuickSmart program, developed at the University of New England at Armidale in northern NSW, targets students failing national numeracy benchmarks who enter high school struggling with basic arithmetic and who often still count on their fingers.

John Pegg, who developed the program with Lorraine Graham, said QuickSmart was a last chance for students who needed to be proficient in basic maths before the end of primary school to develop the skills and proficiency required in high school. "These students use inefficient and error-prone approaches to learning and recalling information," he said. Professor Pegg, director of the National Centre of Science, ICT and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia, said students likened the improvement to "trusting their heads", meaning the answer to a sum like 7x5 came immediately.

The program received funding last week worth $200,000 from the federal Government and is being used with 800 students in 60 schools in NSW and the Northern Territory, including remote indigenous communities, where the rise in test scores is more than double the improvement in the average student.

At Orara High School in Coffs Harbour on the NSW north coast, about 70 students in Year 7, with about one in three having failed to meet minimal national numeracy benchmarks, were then taught using QuickSmart. Learning support teacher Lyn Alder said the school had a large proportion of students from low socio-economic backgrounds and about 11 per cent were indigenous. When they sat the NSW numeracy test earlier this year, the improvement in their results had almost doubled compared with the rest of the state, while the indigenous students' marks more than doubled compared with other indigenous students.

Ms Alder said about 40 per cent of the students jumped two levels in the four-level assessment system, from low to proficient or elementary to high. "It's given students the confidence to put up their hands and answer questions in class," she said. "They may not always be correct but they're prepared to have a go, and when you're dealing with students in a low socio-economic school, that's not always the norm."

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20 October, 2007

Some good no-degree jobs

Sure, college is a good idea. Over a lifetime, a college graduate makes, on average, $1 million more than someone who only has a high school diploma, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But despite what parents and teachers would like teenagers to believe, college is not essential to making a decent living.

Indeed, some no-degree jobs will have you earning more, and earlier in your career, than your average college grad with a liberal arts degree. If you're focused enough to know what you want to pursue, you can get on a non-college career track at 18 and earn more than your contemporaries--and keep out-earning them 10 years down the line.

We've compiled a list of 10 jobs that can pay more than $85,000 a year at the top end, no degree required. But beware, just because no college is required doesn't mean you'll be able to slack off. Many of these jobs require extensive training, either on the job or in a vocational school.

Take being an elevator mechanic: With mean earnings of $61,930 a year and a possible annual income of $87,660, these jobs are more secure and pay better than many in construction. But new elevator mechanics, who install and repair elevators, escalators and moving walkways, have to undergo a four-year training period. And that's after being admitted to an apprenticeship program, run jointly by the International Union of Elevator Constructors and employers. Getting in is competitive, and the field has low turnover.

On the other hand, some of the highest-paying jobs in the U.S. have no barriers to entry other than hustle. Plenty of billionaires have made it on talent and entrepreneurship alone, perhaps most famously Microsoft's Bill Gates, a college dropout.

For many sales jobs, technical knowledge is less important than powers of persuasion. Sales reps for wholesale and manufactured goods, not including technical and scientific products, make a mean of $58,540 and $101,030 at the top end. Real estate brokers--who must be licensed but don't necessarily need a college degree, make a mean of $80,230, with their earnings at the high end limited only by effort, salesmanship and the hours in the day.

In fact, there are very few jobs that require a bachelor's degree. You can even become a lawyer without ever setting foot on a college campus, though you still have to pass the bar exam. But official requirements are one thing, and career reality another. In many competitive fields, recruiters use a college degree to filter applicants. Even aspiring artists and writers usually get master's degrees these days. Nobody cares about your diploma when you're selling a manuscript or a piece of art. But at the beginning of your career, when you're trying to develop your talents and make connections, school can be a useful pit stop.

Most career paths have multiple entry points. If you want to become a talent agent, you'll probably need a college degree if you want to start out with a big company. On the other hand, plenty of actors' agents were one-time actors themselves, who built up contacts among casting directors and others in the industry. In the end, the mean annual income of all agents and managers for artists, performers and athletes is $84,070 a year. Among the top 25% of earners, the average income is $114,400 a year. At the top end of the wage scale, the sky is the limit. And once you get to the top, no one cares whether you went to school.

Source




Britain's hopeless "NEETs"

No discipline means no education for the less able

More than 200,000 young people aged 16 to 18 have virtually no hope of getting a foot in the door to the world of work after leaving school with no qualifications, the Chief Inspector of Schools said yesterday. Christine Gilbert, head of Ofsted, said the fate of these young people, known as Neets (not in education, employment or training), highlighted the enormous challenge facing society in closing the gap in educational attainment between rich and poor.

Publishing her annual report yesterday, Ms Gilbert said the barren prospect facing these young people, who represent more than ten per cent of all 16 to 18-year-olds, was “alarming and unacceptable”. Her predictions for their immediate future were even more gloomy. It was hard, she said, “to find encouragement from inspection evidence” that things would get better for young people on the cusp of adult life.

In a bold attempt to widen the public debate about educational standards beyond the school gate, Ms Gilbert focused her attention on the “stark” relationship between poverty and educational achievement. “It cannot be right that people from the most disadvantaged groups are least likely to achieve well and to participate in higher levels of education and training,” she said.

Overall, Ofsted reported that just 51 per cent of secondary schools were judged to be good or outstanding, up from 49 per cent last year. Ten per cent of secondaries were classed as inadequate, down from 13 per cent. In primary schools, the proportion of good and outstanding schools rose from 58 to 61 per cent.

Ms Gilbert said that a large proportion of failing schools were in the most deprived areas and that poorer children still had the “odds stacked against them” in education. The road to recovery would be a long one with “no quick fixes”, she added. On the gap between rich and poor, the figures show that only 12 per cent of 16-year-olds in care and just 33 per cent of pupils entitled to free school meals (FSM, the proxy measure for poverty) gained five or more good GCSEs last year, compared with 61 per cent of nonFSM children and a national average of 56 per cent. Among primary pupils, 61 per cent of FSM children achieved the expected level in English, compared with 83 per cent of nonFSM pupils. For maths the figures were 58 and 79 per cent respectively.

Ms Gilbert said that failures in leadership and management and poor practice in the classroom were the primary causes of school failure. But she was critical, too, of the lack of aspiration often displayed by teachers when it came to vocational education. Students often seemed far more enthusiastic about such opportunities than their teachers, she said, blaming this divide on a misguided tendency among teachers to associate vocational teaching with the least able students. Ms Gilbert added that she hoped that Ofsted, having taken over the inspection of children’s services and adult education in the last year, would now have greater leverage across a wide range of services to effect change.

Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, hoped that Ms Gilbert’s comments on the “poverty gap” would act as a rallying cry to those working with young people. “No child should be held back because of poverty and disadvantage, or deterred from going to the best school because of where they live or their family background, their ethnicity or their disability,” he said.

But teachers’ leaders said it was “totally unrealistic” to think that schools could tackle socio-economic disadvantage on their own. Martin Johnson, of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: “Schools cannot compensate for a child’s family background - financial or aspirational poverty – or a local culture of unemployment.” John Dunford, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that it would not be easy in a society as divided and diverse as England for schools to overcome social inequality on their own. “It requires action from central and local government in areas much wider than education to make this task feasible,” he said.

The report also highlighted concerns over behaviour, which was “just satisfactory” in 29 per cent of secondary schools, and about the failure of schools to give children a clear understanding of “what it means to be British”.

Source




Australia: Government school unable to stop bullying

Good at bulldust, though



Dale Fitzhenry was a happy grade 4 student until he was picked on by a vicious school bully last term, his family says. Over 12 weeks Dale, 10, said he was repeatedly kicked, punched and pushed by a classmate. He claims he was assaulted so badly he suffered concussion one lunch time. His glasses were shattered in another playground attack at River Gum Primary School in Hampton Park.

His attacker, who was in Dale's 3/4 composite class, received a suspension, Dale's mother said. The school said the accused bully was moved to another class. It said every effort was made to settle a dispute between the students.

Dale now attends another school. His mother said her boy suffers nightmares and his doctor has recommended that he see a psychologist. Mum Melissa Fitzhenry believes the school did not do enough to protect her son. "I was going up to the school every second day, begging them to do something, telling them my son is coming home terrified," she said. Ms Fitzhenry said the school's decision to keep the bully in Dale's class made no sense. "I am so angry that I have had to pull Dale out of school while the bully remains in class," she said. "I think the bully should have been pulled out of the school."

Acting principal Joan Johnston said the school put strategies in place to deal with the situation and kept Ms Fitzhenry informed with letters and offers of further help. "Any bullying is taken very seriously at River Gum Primary School and is simply not tolerated," Ms Johnston said. "If any students or their parents have any concerns they are always encouraged to come and see me and we will take immediate and appropriate action. "I can assure parents that it was taken very seriously at the time by the school and dealt with promptly and appropriately."

Dale said he was disappointed with the school. "They just told me to stay away from him, but he kept coming after me," Dale said. "It made me very sad and angry, and I just wished they would have made him stay inside at lunch time like I asked, or I wished they expelled him." Bullying expert Evelyn Field said the school had failed Dale. "The situation always seems to end with the bullies staying and the victims leaving," said Ms Field, a psychologist.

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19 October, 2007

Law fails to make dummies smart

As the director of high schools in the gang-infested neighborhoods of the East Side of Los Angeles, Guadalupe Paramo struggles every day with educational dysfunction. For the past half-dozen years, not even one in five students at her district's teeming high schools has been able to do grade-level math or English. At Abraham Lincoln High School this year, only 7 in 100 students could. At Woodrow Wilson High, only 4 in 100 could.

For chronically failing schools like these, the No Child Left Behind law, now up for renewal in Congress, prescribes drastic measures: firing teachers and principals, shutting schools and turning them over to a private firm, a charter operator or the state itself, or a major overhaul in governance. But more than 1,000 of California's 9,500 schools are branded chronic failures, and the numbers are growing. Barring revisions in the law, state officials predict that all 6,063 public schools serving poor students will be declared in need of restructuring by 2014, when the law requires universal proficiency in math and reading. "What are we supposed to do?" Ms. Paramo asked. "Shut down every school?"

With the education law now in its fifth year - the one in which its more severe penalties are supposed to come into wide play - California is not the only state overwhelmed by growing numbers of schools that cannot satisfy the law's escalating demands. In Florida, 441 schools could be candidates for closing. In Maryland, some 49 schools in Baltimore alone have fallen short of achievement targets for five years or more. In New York State, 77 schools were candidates for restructuring as of last year. Some districts, like those in New York City, have moved forcefully to shut large failing high schools and break them into small schools. Los Angeles, too, is trying small schools, along with other innovations, and David L. Brewer III, its schools superintendent, has just announced plans to create a "high priority district" under his direct control made up of 40 problem schools.

Yet so far, education experts say they are unaware of a single state that has taken over a failing school in response to the law. Instead, most allow school districts to seek other ways to improve. "When you have a state like California with so many schools up for restructuring," said Heinrich Mintrop, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, "that taxes the capacity of the whole school change industry."

As a result, the law is branding numerous schools as failing, but not producing radical change - leaving angry parents demanding redress. California citizens' groups have sued the state and federal government for failing to deliver on the law's promises. "They're so busy fighting No Child Left Behind," said Mary Johnson, president of Parent U-Turn, a civic group. "If they would use some of that energy to implement the law, we would go farther."

Ray Simon, the deputy federal secretary of education, said states that ignored the law's demands risked losing federal money or facing restrictions on grants. For now, Mr. Simon said, the department is more interested in helping states figure out what works than in punishment. "Even a state has to struggle if it takes over a school," he said.

A federal survey last year showed that in 87 percent of the cases of persistently failing schools, states and school districts avoided wholesale changes in staff or leadership. That is why, Mr. Simon said, the Bush administration is proposing that Congress force more action by limiting districts' options in responding to hard-core failure.

In California, Jack O'Connell, the state superintendent of schools, calls the law's demands unreasonable. Under the federal law, 700 schools that California believed were getting substantially better were counted last year as failing. A state takeover of schools, Mr. O'Connell said, would be a "last option." "To have a successful program," he said, "it really has to come from the community."

Under the No Child law, a school declared low-performing for three years in a row must offer students free tutoring and the option to transfer. After five years, such schools are essentially treated as irredeemable, with the law prescribing starting over with a new structure, new leadership or new teachers. But it also gives schools the option of less sweeping changes, like reducing school size or changing who is in charge of hiring.

Source




"Associational Preference" And The Rationale For "Diversity"

Post below lifted from Discriminations. See the original for links

I have criticized more than once the, for lack of a better term, hypocrisy of higher education institutions whose lofty statements of principle trumpet their devotion to fundamental principles of non-discrimination, including the "without regard" principle, while other statements and a myriad of policies proudly proclaim exactly the opposite, that they are committed to using race, ethnicity, and gender to produce "diversity."

As I discussed several years ago, in a post that I invite you now to re-read (or read), Preferences, Principles, And Hypocrisy In Higher Education (Hey, I just had to re-read it; why shouldn't you?), the University of Pennsylvania is a typical example. Its Policy of Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action and Nondiscrimination states (or least it did in 2004 when I first quoted it):

Penn adheres to a policy that prohibits discrimination against individuals on the following protected-class bases: race, color, sex (except where sex is a bona fide occupational qualification), sexual orientation, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, age (except where age is a bona fide occupational qualification), disability (and those associated with persons with disabilities), or status as a special disabled, Vietnam era veteran or other eligible veteran.....

Penn is committed to ensuring that all academic programs (except where age or sex are bona fide occupational qualifications), including social and recreational programs, and services are administered without regard to an individual's protected-class status.

Penn is also committed to ensuring that its personnel and other employment decisions are made without regard to an individual's protected-class status.

Penn, of course, is permeated with policies that explicitly violate the "without regard" principle, and my post went on to mention some of them. Now take a look at this initially similar statement of principle at the University of Iowa, as quoted in this fascinating column in the Des Moines Register (HatTip to RealClearPolitics):

The University of Iowa prohibits discrimination ... on the basis of race, national origin, color, creed, religion, sex, age, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or associational preference.

If you note that somewhat opaque "associational preference" at the very end of the string of protected categories that are off limits to discrimination, you will see why I said the Iowa statement was only "initially similar" to others of its ilk.

What is "associational preference," you ask, and what does it actually protect? Good question. Nobody seems to know, including officials at the University of Iowa, although there is evidence at Iowa that political affiliation comes under its somewhat leaky umbrella. As a result, a controversy has been ignited by a complaint filed by Mark Molar, an unsuccessful applicant for a position in the history department noting that the department contains 27 registered Democrats and 0 registered Republicans. The Des Moines Register column describes Molar as

a[n] historian with an impressive record: bachelor's degree from Harvard, doctorate from Cambridge; two books, one with Cambridge University Press; laudatory recommendations from distinguished historians; and a growing record of public commentary in national periodicals.

The point of his complaint is not that he wasn't hired but that he was more qualified that all eight candidates who were selected for a final screening. His problem?

He is also a conservative, and his thesis about the Vietnam War - that it was a noble cause that could have triumphed had the United States supported its allies more vigorously - falls well on the right side of things.

Molar himself has an article today on National Review Online going into greater detail about his complaint, and it is well worth reading. He makes, not surprisingly, a variation of the familiar "diversity" (in this case, however, real diversity) argument, noting that

the University's own hiring manual states that search committees must "assess ways the applicants will bring rich experiences, diverse backgrounds, and ideology to the university community."

Molar proposes, in effect, that universities spend as much time delving into the ideology of applicants as they do in determining skin color and, presumably, weigh it as heavily on the "diversity" scale. I have reservations about this approach - would, should, it for example, encourage the creation of "Conservative Studies" programs on the model of the Blacks Studies and Womens' Studies programs that were and remain a primary means of promoting race and gender "diversity"? One of their initial functions was to funnel black and women that traditional departments would not hire onto faculties. That seems to be what Prof. Molar (now a professor at the U.S. Marine Corps University) suggests, calling on universities "to create new faculty positions for conservatives beyond the reach of other professors' tentacles, as other schools have started doing."

But I don't want to argue remedies today; I want to discuss the nature of the problem. Or I should say, the nature of the problem if there is one, since Iowa, and other universities, maintain there is no problem, that they cannot assess the ideology of applicants and, even if they could, they should not. If there's no problem, of course, no remedy is needed.

Whether we are still in a post-modern era or have progressed (or regressed, if you prefer) into a post-post-modern era, it remains powerfully true that fields like history are much more enthralled by interpretation than fact. Graduate students spend as much (usually, quite a bit more) time mastering the various and conflicting interpretations of the past than they do on the pedestrian and mundane details of what actually happened. ("Actually!" they might exclaim aghast. "Actually? Don't tell me you still believe in the correspondence theory of truth.") If point of view takes precedence over what is viewed, if it takes a black to teach black history and a woman to teach womens' history, then ... well, you can see where this leads.

What interests me, however, is not what (if anything) should be done about the ideological imbalance in humanities and social science faculties. What interests me is how a whole generation of academics appears to have so little difficulty reconciling irreconcilable principles and behaviors: professing a commitment to treating people "without regard" to race, ethnicity, and gender while proceeding flagrantly and proudly to "take race [and ethnicity and gender] into account," favoring some and disfavoring others on the basis of characteristics they continue to promise not to regard; professing a profound commitment to the fundamental indispensability of "diversity" while remaining cavalierly unconcerned about an ideological conformity in many departments that would make forced re-education camps green with envy. At first I though the answer might lie in cognitive dissonance:

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon first identified by [Stanford psychologist] Leon Festinger. It occurs when there is a discrepancy between what a person believes, knows and values, and persuasive information that calls these into question. The discrepancy causes psychological discomfort, and the mind adjusts to reduce the discrepancy. In ethics, cognitive dissonance is important in its ability to alter values, such as when an admired celebrity embraces behavior that his or her admirers deplore. Their dissonance will often result in changing their attitudes toward the behavior. Dissonance also leads to rationalizations of unethical conduct, as when the appeal and potential benefits of a large amount of money makes unethical actions to acquire it seem less objectionable than if they were applied to smaller amounts.

But this, on reflection, doesn't work, since our esteemed faculties don't seem to experience any dissonance at all, cognitive or otherwise. If they did, they'd at least revise all their statements of civil rights principles to reflect what they actually do in their affirmative action policies. But they don't.

In any event, for whatever reason I'm simply not very interested in hearing about (much less proposing) cures to this conformity. But I do confess one keen interest: I would dearly love to hear a learned exposition of exactly why the fate of the university and indeed of the western world as we know it rests on our success in achieving pigmentary "diversity" - what, for example, does it contribute to the life of the mind? - while ideological diversity appears to be of no concern whatever.




Low expectations won't help anybody

Full disclosure: My wife got good grades in law school. She graduated third in her class. She practices law with a firm downtown that only hires lawyers with good grades, just like every attorney there. Full disclosure: I got good grades in graduate school (though I was nowhere near third in my class). That helped me get on the faculty at one of the most selective institutions in American higher education. There, I give out grades. Good ones to those who master the material, bad ones to those who do not. That is my job. It is, I think, an important one.

So when it comes to today's topic, I might be biased. I actually believe in things like academic excellence and intellectual merit. I believe that right answers are better than wrong answers, that people can differ in their ability to distinguish between the two, and that identifying those who can do that well, is an important social good.

Grades, professional careers, and academic excellence are in the news thanks to the President of the National Urban League. In an interview that made national news, Marc Morial talked about law firms and diversity. It turns out that lawyers at the best firms want to hire only applicants who got good grades in law school. This, apparently, is bad.

Grades in post-secondary education exist to solve an important social problem: discovering who is good at what. It is highly beneficial to society to identify individuals with intellectual ability and professional skill, so that people can find them when they need them. That's how things like "reputation" and "prestige" work. It's also important for smart people to find and work with other smart people. Professional ability is best when leveraged. No one is suggesting that grades are the only thing professional firms should consider. There are plenty of straight-A law school and medical students who have no business being around people. That's why law firms and residency programs conduct interviews. Where you went to school is important too. Some places are tougher than others. Grades aren't perfect, but they're a pretty good indicator of whether or not you can do what you trained for and how you compare with your peers.

Morial's comments were particularly insulting to the minorities he claims to defend. The comments imply that minority law students can't achieve the same grades as white students. Since he doesn't claim discrimination by a conspiracy of racist law professors (good thing too, since there's no evidence for it), I can only assume that he's given up the fight. He seems to imply that the only way non-whites will ever be proportionally represented in American law firms is if lawyers with good grades stop asking for the same in the associates they hire.

Let's do a little thought experiment. Suppose you were accused of a crime, or your kid got into trouble, or someone decided to sue you. Whatever it is, you need a lawyer. You've heard good things about Smith & Jones, so you stop by their office. On their front door you find a newly painted sign: "The law firm of Smith and Jones now supports the hiring policies of the National Urban League. We are proud to announce that, in support of the visual diversity of our professional staff, we have reduced the emphasis we place on the academic performance of applicants for positions with the firm." Would you want them to represent you?

The National Urban League is right when they declare that urban black America is in crisis. They are right in that the standard "solutions" of modern politics have not worked. At the risk of stating the obvious, they are also right in that racism in America has not gone away. But they are wrong if they believe that lower academic standards for law firms, or medical practices, or any professional organization, are the answer. That would be unfair to those who use professional services, unfair to everyone who meets high standards, and unfair in the long run to those it supposed to help. If you ever have wondered what the phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations" means, look no further.

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18 October, 2007

Criticism and censorship in academe

Leftists whine but it is they who are doing the censoring

Fears are repeatedly voiced about dangers to academic freedom. But these expressions of concern exhibit a great deal of hyperbole. In essence, there is a common mischaracterization. It treats criticism as though this were tantamount to censorship. To be sure, criticisms can be shrill and they may be warranted or unwarranted, fair or unfair, and serious or unserious, but they simply do not amount to the banning or suppression of scholarly ideas. Those of us who venture to express our views about matters of public policy and engage in debates about domestic and foreign affairs should expect that at times our ideas will evoke vigorous and even caustic disagreement. And even under the best of circumstances our words may come back to haunt us. Our written and spoken words are fair game, and we can hardly complain when these are subjected to comment and criticism.

In Middle East studies and among much of the academic left, denunciations of U.S. foreign policy, past and present, and sweeping condemnations about America's world role are common. This has been evident for a considerable period of time, beginning at least as early, for example, as the debates about the 1973 Middle East War and Arab oil embargo, and continuing through the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Rushdie affair, Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the 9 ? 11 terrorist attacks, war and insurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Not surprisingly, a good deal of professorial writing and speaking on these subjects has been subject to strong criticism, some of it from within the academy and a considerable amount from outside. In response, a number of Middle East scholars have complained about what they consider to be intimidation and threats to academic freedom. Their alarms are expressed in various ways. For example, an established Middle East expert, writing in a book for a top university press, voices such concerns in earnest but hyperbolic language: ``The last several years of often vicious attempts to intimidate members of the academy, particularly the Middle East Studies community, have been both disturbing and angering.'' The author refers to ``grim'' circumstances and declares a determination to pursue her scholarship, ``as a protest against those who seek to curb the polyphony of the academy'' in ``saying `no' to the trampling of free speech.'' (Brand 2006:xiii). Still others add to the complaints about infringement of academic freedom by alleging a prohibition on criticism of Israel.

It is not at all evident, however, that anything like intimidation, the ``trampling of free speech,'' or the curbing of the ``polyphony of the academy'' has occurred. Indeed, much of the alarm about censorship is a reaction to having one's words held up to critical scrutiny, both inside and outside the academy. For example, Martin Kramer's (2001) thoughtful critique of Middle East Studies has elicited angry reactions among those he has identified for what he describes as analytical deficiencies in their work. But one need not agree with every single conclusion he draws to note that a very large part of his monograph consists of copious quotations from the words of the academic figures whom he critiques.

As for any prohibition on criticism of Israel, the opposite is far more prevalent in the majority of academic Middle East studies programs and departments. Indeed, even while citing examples of what he considers to be inappropriate efforts to protest or even forestall Israel's critics from expressing their views, Wolfe (2006) concedes that ``none of those cases resulted in suppression of ideas.'' And he adds that ``even Walt and Mearsheimer, despite the factual errors and sometimes hysterical tone of their working paper, received a very lucrative offer from Farrar Strauss to publish a book based upon it.''

A much earlier case in point concerns assessments of the Iranian revolution. In 1979, a prominent international relations scholar wrote in a New York Times op-ed about Ayatollah Khomeini that, ``.the depiction of him as fanatical, reactionary, and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false.'' The author ventured the prediction that ``Iran may yet provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a third-world country,'' and weeks later he responded to a rejoinder from a Times columnist by writing, ``To single out Iran for criticism at this point is to lend support to that fashionable falsehood embraced by Mr. [Anthony] Lewis that what has happened in Iran is the replacement of one tyranny by another'' (Falk 1979a, 1979b). In light of subsequent events in Iran, the writer of those words has come in for periodic and even strident criticism, so that nearly three decades later his words are still recalled and quoted.

Criticism of such judgments is fair game, as is the give and take in debates about 9 ? 11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, radical Islamism, and the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Indeed, such criticism can even be unfair, but cases in which moderate, conservative or right-wing criticism has led to genuine infringement on academic freedom-through censorship, punitive action or dismissal- are very hard to find.

Moreover, an alleged case involving University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill does not constitute a breach of academic freedom at all. Churchill, who gained notoriety for likening some of those killed in the 9 ? 11 attacks to ``little Eichmans,'' became the subject of an academic investigation which determined that he had committed research misconduct. A report by the University's Privilege and Tenure Committee ``found, by clear and convincing evidence, three instances of evidentiary fabrication by ghost writing and self citation, two instances of fabrication of material, one instance of falsification, two instances of plagiarism, and one instance of failure to comply with established standards on the use of author names on publications,'' according to a letter from the President of the university to the Board of Regents recommending Churchill's dismissal (Monastersky 2007). In other words, the actions taken by the University of Colorado against Churchill have been for serious violations of academic principles and do not constitute suppression of academic freedom.

Others have pointed with alarm to David Horowitz's controversial book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. His criticisms come from outside the established academic and think tank community and are at times polemical, though they do include copious and sometimes damning quotations and endnotes. Whatever the merits or lack thereof in his critique, Horowitz's book is not taken seriously within the academy, and there exists little evidence that academic freedom has been infringed by his condemnations

There are threats to academic freedom, though they are almost entirely the opposite of those cited by some contributors to this forum. In practice, it is scholars who do not share the dominant sympathies, ideologies, and beliefs that characterize the current Middle East studies community who are marginalized, often excluded, and thus isolated and even stigmatized. The response to their work takes a variety of for