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31 August, 2005

SCOTLAND CAN'T TRAIN ENOUGH DENTISTS -- BUT WHY?

Socialized education gone mad: Despite a shortage of dentists, they actually pay people NOT to study dentistry. Worthy of Ripley

Scotland's chief dental officer said that “constructive” talks had taken place at a university after it emerged that it was offering students bursaries to defer their studies. Ray Watkins met staff at Dundee University, which was paying prospective dental school students 2,000 pounds to postpone their studies after an unprecedented number took up offers of a place on the course, leaving it oversubscribed. The offer has attracted criticism from some politicians, who say that more places should be made available at at time when there is a shortage of NHS dentists in Scotland.

Speaking after a meeting with the dental school’s dean, Professor Bill Saunders, Mr Watkins said: “Last week the Deputy Health Minister highlighted the fact that our priority is not just on getting more students through our dental schools, but on making sure that we get more dentists committed to the NHS at the end of their training. Today I have had a very constructive meeting. I shall now feedback to ministers and they will respond fully in due course. ”

The school, one of only two in Scotland, has seen a 40 per cent rise in applications this year, with the number of acceptances increasing by more than 30 per cent. The shortage of NHS dentists has seen hundreds of people queuing outside surgeries to register with new practices when they open. The Executive responded to the crisis by announcing a 150 million pound funding package for dentists over three years.

The SNP’s Richard Lochhead called for the Executive to fund extra training places. “The hundreds of thousands of Scots who are not registered with a dentist will be wanting as many new dentists trained up as soon as possible,” he said. “The chief dental officer should go back to his political masters and demand resources to plug the funding gap that will allow our dental schools to take on more students.”

Source



Australian Secondary Teachers reject profit motive

And this is worthy of Ripley too: Teachers don't want education to be useful

The national teachers union has questioned whether schools should be teaching the skills needed to get jobs. In a submission to the national inquiry into the teaching of literacy, due to report within weeks, the Australian Education Union has questioned the value of knowledge becoming an "economic tool". The submission said teaching was now "the subject of intense debate by people who have little understanding of the process of education but great interest in the product. "(These are) people for whom the purpose of education is to enable nations and companies to profit within a knowledge society ... (though) such a purpose, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, within compassionate constraints," it stated.

The union argues against vocational teaching aimed solely at equipping students for the workplace, calling instead for a broad-based education. Federal president Pat Byrne said last night the submission aimed to show that "the purpose of education is not simply to prepare people for the workforce".

But federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson blasted the submission, saying "the union appears to think it is teaching students in a pre-industrial era". "It's seriously disturbing that the peak teachers' organisation in Australia can bemoan the fact it is educating young people for work," Dr Nelson said. "Of course, the moral, cultural, intellectual purpose of learning is important. But so too is preparing students for the world of work."

Ms Byrne said there was too much pressure on schools - from business, government and some parents - to produce students "who are prepared primarily for the workforce". "No one is saying that it shouldn't be the case but education serves a public good, beyond the benefit that it provides the individual. "It's not just: 'What does my child need so that my child benefits?"'

Ms Byrne came under fire earlier this week for criticising Australian voters for returning the Howard Government. In an address for a Queensland conference, Ms Byrne urged teachers to defend the "progressive" curriculum in schools and attack the rise in conservative values in education. "(The conservatives) certainly haven't won the curriculum debate, but they have made significant inroads into framing education to fit their version of the world," Ms Byrne wrote.

Her comments prompted Dr Nelson to say she was "not fit" to lead the union.

Dr Nelson announced the inquiry into literacy last May, after 26 leading academics questioned the teaching of literacy in Australia. The inquiry will study the effectiveness of both phonics and "whole learning" as learning tools.

The union's submission took a postmodernist stance on literacy, saying basic skills tests that only measure students' reading and writing ability "reinforce the one-dimensional view of literacy which is often seen in the press". The union argued against "accepting a narrow, cognitive-psychological approach to defining literacy at the expense of a broader socio-cultural definition". "Cognitive skills are a means to an end and must be situated within the broader context of the social and cultural purposes of literacy," the union said, adding that successful literacy programs "focus on the constructions of both masculinities and femininities" and that teachers must "avoid the 'competing victim' syndrome".

[Prime Minister] John Howard yesterday said more vocational training was needed to make up the skilled labour shortage. But Federation of Parents and Citizens Associations of NSW president Sharryn Brownlee warned: "There's a real danger ... that students will be told that school is only about getting a job."

Source

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

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

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

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30 August, 2005

Proving the Critics’ Case

By KC Johnson

Inside Higher Ed recently reported on four University of Pittsburgh professors critiquing the latest survey suggesting ideological one-sidedness in the academy. According to the Pitt quartet, self-selection accounts for findings that the faculty of elite disproportionately tilts to the Left. “Many conservatives,” the Pitt professors mused, “may deliberately choose not to seek employment at top-tier research universities because they object, on philosophical grounds, to one of the fundamental tenets undergirding such institutions: the scientific method.”

Imagine the appropriate outrage that would have occurred had the above critique referred to feminists, minorities, or Socialists. Yet the Pitt quartet’s line of reasoning — that faculty ideological imbalance reflects the academy functioning as it should — has appeared with regularity, and has been, unintentionally, most revealing. Indeed, the very defense offered by the academic Establishment, rather than the statistical surveys themselves, has gone a long way toward proving the case of critics who say that the academy lacks sufficient intellectual diversity.

In theory, ideology should have no bearing on how a professor teaches, say, physics. Even so, should responsible administrators worry that the overwhelming partisan disparity is worthy of further inquiry? And, in theory, parents who make their money in traditionally conservative professions such as investment banking or corporate law probably do not encourage their children to enter academe. Yet, as money-making fields have always been attractive to conservatives, why has the proportion of self-professed liberals or Leftists in the academy nearly doubled in the last generation?

Had members of the academic Establishment confined themselves to such arguments (or had they ignored the partisan-breakdown studies altogether), the intellectual diversity issue would have received little attention. Instead, the last two years have seen proud, often inflammatory, defenses of the professoriate’s ideological imbalance. These arguments, which have fallen into three categories, raise grave concerns about the academy’s overall direction.

1. The cultural left is, simply, more intelligent than anyone else

As SUNY-Albany’s Ron McClamrock reasoned, “Lefties are overrepresented in academia because on average, we’re just f-ing smarter.” The first recent survey came in early 2004, when the Duke Conservative Union disclosed that Duke’s humanities departments contained 142 registered Democrats and 8 registered Republicans. Philosophy Department chairman Robert Brandon considered the results unsurprising: “If, as John Stuart Mill said, stupid people are generally conservative, then there are lots of conservatives we will never hire.”

In a slightly different vein, UCLA professor John McCumber informed The New York Times that “a successful career in academia, after all, requires willingness to be critical of yourself and to learn from experience,” qualities “antithetical to Republicanism as it has recently come to be.” In another Times article, Berkeley professor George Lakoff asserted that Leftists predominate in the academy because, “unlike conservatives, they believe in working for the public good and social justice, as well as knowledge and art for their own sake.” Again, imagine the appropriate outcry if prominent academics employed such sweeping generalizations to dismiss statistical disparities suggesting underrepresentation of women, gays, or minorities.

These arguments become even more disturbing given the remarkably broad definition of “conservative” employed in many academic quarters. Take the case of Yeshiva University’s Ellen Schrecker, recently elected to a term on the AAUP’s general council. This past spring, Schrecker denounced Columbia students who wanted to broaden instruction about the Middle East for “trying to impose orthodoxy at this university.” The issue, she lamented, amounted to “right wing propaganda.”

The leaders of the Columbia student group, who ranged from registered Republicans to backers of Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential bid, were united only in their belief that matters relating to Israel should be treated objectively in the classroom. Probably 98 percent of the U.S. Congress and all of the nation’s governors would fit under such a definition of “right wing.”

Indeed, it seems as if the academic Establishment considers anyone who does not accept the primacy of a race/class/gender interpretation to be “conservative.” To most outside of the academy, such a definition would suggest that professors are using stereotypes to abuse the inherently subjective nature of the hiring process.

2. A left-leaning tilt in the faculty is a pedagogical necessity, because professors must expose gender, racial, and class bias while promoting peace, “diversity” and “cultural competence.”

According to Montclair State’s Grover Furr, “colleges and universities do not need a single additional ‘conservative’ .... What they do need, and would much benefit from, is more Marxists, radicals, leftists — all terms conventionally applied to those who fight against exploitation, racism, sexism, and capitalism. We can never have too many of these, just as we can never have too few ‘conservatives.’”

Furr’s remarks echoed those of Connecticut College’s Rhonda Garelick, who decried student “disgruntlement” when she used her French class to discuss her opposition to the war in Iraq and teach “‘wakeful’ political literacy.” Rashid Khalidi, meanwhile, rationalized anti-Israel instruction as necessary to undo the false impressions held by all incoming Columbia students except for “Arab-Americans, who know that the ideas spouted by the major newspapers, television stations, and politicians are completely at odds with everything they know to be true.”

To John Burness, Duke’s senior vice president for public affairs, such statements reflect a proper professorial role. The “creativity” in humanities and social science disciplines, he noted, addresses issues of race, class, and gender, leading to a “perfectly logical criticism of the current society” in the classroom.

At some universities, this mindset has even shaped curricular or personnel policies. Though its release generated widespread criticism and hints from administrators that it would not be adopted, a proposal to make “cultural competence” a key factor in all personnel decisions remains the working draft of the University of Oregon’s new diversity plan. Columbia recently set aside $15 million for hiring women and minorities — and white males who would “in some way promote the diversity goals of the university.” And the University of Arizona’s hiring blueprint includes requiring new faculty in some disciplines to “conduct research and contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the importance of valuing diversity.”

On the curricular front, my own institution’s provost, Roberta Matthews (who has written that “teaching is a political act") intends for the college’s new general education curriculum to produce “global citizens” — who, she commented, are those “sensitized to issues of race, class, and gender.”

Given such initiatives, it is worth remembering the traditional ideal of a university education: for faculty committed to free intellectual exchange in pursuit of the truth to expose undergraduates to the disciplines of the liberal arts canon, in the expectation that college graduates will possess the wide range of knowledge and skills necessary to function as democratic citizens.

3. A left-leaning professoriate is a structural necessity, because the liberal arts faculty must balance business school faculty and/or the general conservative political culture

University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, denouncing the “ridiculous and pernicious line” that major universities need greater intellectual diversity, complained about insufficient attention to the ideological breakdown of “Business Schools, Medical Schools, [and] Engineering schools.” UCLA’s Russell Jacoby wondered why ” conservatives seem unconcerned about the political orientation of the business professors.” Duke Law professor Erwin Chemerinsky more ambitiously claimed that “it’s hard to see this as a time of liberal dominance” given conservative control of the three branches of government.

Professional schools reflect the mindset of their professions: Socialists are about as common on business school faculty as are home-schooling advocates among education school professors. But, unlike business schools, liberal arts colleges and universities do not exist to train students for a single profession. Nor are they supposed to balance the existing political culture. If the Democrats reclaim the presidency and Congress in the 2008 elections, should the academy suddenly adopt an anti-liberal posture?

The intellectual diversity issue shows no signs of fading away. Ideological one-sidedness among the professoriate seems to be, if anything, expanding. And so, no doubt, will we see additional surveys suggesting a heavy ideological imbalance among the nation’s faculty — followed by new inflammatory statements from the academic Establishment that only reinforce the critics’ claims about bias in the personnel process.

In an ideal world, campus administrators would have rectified this problem long ago. A few have made small steps. Brown University’s president, Ruth Simmons, for instance, has expressed concern that the “chilling effect caused by the dominance of certain voices on the spectrum of moral and political thought” might negatively affect a quality education; her university’s Political Theory Project represents a model that other institutions could follow.

To my knowledge, however, no academic administration has made the creation of an intellectually and pedagogically diverse faculty its primary goal. This statement, it should be noted, applies equally as well to institutions frequently praised by conservatives, such as Hillsdale College. Such an initiative, of course, would encounter ferocious faculty resistance. But it would also, just as surely, excite parents, donors, and trustees. If successful, an institution that made intellectual diversity its hallmark would encourage imitation — if only because other colleges would face the free-market pressures of losing talented students and faculty. So, the question becomes, do we have an administration anywhere in the country willing to take up the cause?



A GOOD SATURDAY EDITORIAL FROM "THE AUSTRALIAN" -- AUSTRALIA'S NATIONAL DAILY

Educational idiocy: The teachers' union has ideas inimical to education

It seems the social engineers of the Australian Education Union could not care less what happens to individual kids in their members' care. In its submission to a national inquiry into the teaching of literacy the union warns against people "who see education only as an individual, economic benefit", as if acquiring the skills to earn a living should not be the paramount goal of schooling. Parents who want schools to teach their children functional literacy and numeracy generally also want them to receive the basics of a broad liberal education that gives them the confidence to think for, and express, themselves. A good schooling does all these things. But the AEU knows better than the rest of us and says education should "fulfil a nation-building role in which the tenets of democracy are promoted". Perhaps the union means the tenets education academic Wayne Sawyer invoked in February when he suggested teachers had failed in the teaching of "critical literacy", because the Howard Government was re-elected last year.

It appears as if the AEU is led by ideological warriors from another age. They are part of the army of activists who were trained to teach by academics in the 1960s, or their heirs, who abhor the free market, deny the core cultural values in the Western literary canon (too many dead white males) and believe teachers fail if kids leave school feeling inferior. They are the reason why Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson has had to fight state ministers, who are always desperate not to annoy the powerful education unions, to introduce report cards that show how children compare against their peers. And why league tables that rank schools on objective performance measures are educational anathema. Perhaps this anti-competitive culture also explains why teacher education courses now attract academic low achievers, because starting teachers are not badly paid. Whatever the reason, parents should be less alarmed than terrified by the AEU attitude – that education is about acquiring the right sort of ideas as much as the skills to earn a living.

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

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

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

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29 August, 2005

Perversity and Diversity at My Little University

By the inimitable Mike Adams

Most people don’t know it, but there is a war currently being waged within the UNC system. The administrations of each of the sixteen campuses are trying to outdo one another when it comes to funding unmitigated idiocy and perversion in the name of “diversity.” Recently, UNC-Asheville showed a porn movie to 200 students in order to take the lead. That has administrators at UNC-Wilmington fighting mad and fighting back.

In an effort to take the lead in this race (and become the most idiotic university in North Carolina), UNCW is helping to sponsor a showing of the film “Trans Generation.” In fact, the Office of Campus Diversity, the Office of the Dean of Students, and the UNCW Women’s Resource Center are all pitching in to help.

For those who don’t know, “Trans Generation” is an eight-part documentary series that charts the lives of four college students undergoing “gender transition.” It is produced by the same people who brought us the classics “Inside Deep Throat” and “Party Monster.” According to the flier, the film features “Gabbie, Lucas, Raci, and T.J.” who are “confronting the challenges of school, campus life, family… and changing their sex.” The film joins the four transitioning youths – two soon-to-be-ex-males and two soon-to-be-ex-females - as they “define who they are and take control of their gender identity.”

Although I don’t know whether to wear a dress or a suit, you can bet that I will be there on Wednesday, September 14th, at 7:30 p.m. in UNCW’s Cameron Hall Auditorium to experience this monumental event. Since it is free and open to the public, I plan to bring a lot of friends and ask a lot of questions. Some of them follow:

1. I noticed that the Women’s Resource Center is co-sponsoring this program. Is that because they are pleased that two of the students in the film wanted to have surgery in order to become women?

2. Is the Women’s Resource Center offended by the two women who wanted to become men? Will the two new men get their new hoo-hoo dillies from the two new women? How does that work, exactly?

3. When a woman has a hoo-hoo dilly surgically attached, does that not legitimize Freud’s sexist notion of penis envy? Is that something the Women’s Center really wants to touch - figuratively speaking?

4. Is it misogyny that causes a woman to have a sex-change?

5. Is it mister-ogyny that causes a man to have a sex change?

6. In the past, UNC has spent tax-dollars to address the problem of teen self-mutilation. Why is the system now spending tax dollars to encourage self-mutilation in the form of sex-changes? Are we, a) having trouble making up our minds or do we, b) enjoy going in complete circles at tax-payer expense?

7. Most people think of someone who wants to surgically remove his or her sex organs as mentally ill. How did the diversity movement arrive at the conclusion that this is not a sign of mental illness? And how did it become a cause for celebration as we “celebrate sexual diversity” with taxpayer-funded events?

8. The last time I saw a trans-gendered person at a UNCW diversity event, she (formerly he) said (when she was a he) that he was advised by his psychiatrist to move to a cabin in the mountains. The reason was that he (now a she) was so violent and dangerous that he (now she) might hurt someone. But when he became a she by cutting off his hoo-hoo dilly, she became less angry. Does the university support hoo-hoo dilly removal as a form of anger management?

9. Have you ever considered putting a fence around UNCW and hanging up a sign that says “Welcome to the North Carolina State Zoo?”

10. If your answer to number 9 was “yes,” I know some capitalists that could help you out. Together we could sell tickets and erase some of this wasteful government spending.



A HISTORIC END IN SIGHT FOR COMPULSORY UNIONISM IN AUSTRALIAN UNIVERSITIES

Unbelievable as it may sound, Australian university students have for decades been forced to join a union!

The Opposition education spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, has defended Labor's position on voluntary student unionism, saying colleagues had been properly briefed every step of the way. Labor leader Kim Beazley recently abandoned his party's long-standing commitment to compulsory student union membership in a bid to safeguard a variety of welfare and support services on campuses. Under laws introduced into Parliament in March by the Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, university students will no longer have to join student unions and pay compulsory union fees. The changes would mean the introduction of user pays to subsidised services such as childcare, health care, food, entertainment, sporting clubs, accommodation advice, counselling and student support services.

Labor deliberately split the issues of student unionism and services in a bid to lure dissenting coalition members to vote for its amendment, which allows the collection of an amenities fee to run existing student support services. Ms Macklin today said the decision to commit the policy to the next election and beyond had been a difficult but pragmatic solution to try to secure the long term interests of students. "It's a solution we're putting forward to a very, very extreme piece of legislation," Ms Macklin told ABC television. What the Howard Government wants to do is get rid of the amenities fee, which will see the end of all of those services. We want to make sure that those services continue and that's what the amendment's about."

Ms Macklin, who was booed by some protesters at VSU rallies last week, said she thought most students understood Labor's position. "I do think that most students on our university campuses do understand why Labor is putting forward this solution," she said. "They know that if the Howard Government legislation gets through unamended, student services on our university campuses will just be decimated. There won't be the sporting facilities, there won't be the subsidised childcare, counselling services, the advocacy services, the drama facilities - all the things that students depend on at university."

But some in the Opposition are thought to be critical of the policy shift, due the unnecessarily alienation of students who would normally be expected to vote Labor. There is also confusion over whether shadow cabinet and caucus members were made aware the position on compulsory student union membership would become policy rather than a one-off tactical move.

But Ms Macklin today rejected that assertion. "What we did was take the amendment to both the shadow ministry and the caucus, it was very clear what the amendment was about," she said. This view was backed by Opposition finance spokesman Lindsay Tanner, who said he did not recall any serious dissent at the time the position was adopted. "We're happy to compromise on those matters, we're happy to ensure that there is a workable alternative here," Mr Tanner told the Ten Network.

With the Government now having the numbers in the Senate, Labor must gain the support of at least two coalition senators to see its amendment adopted. Liberal Senators Alan Eggleston and Russell Trood, in addition to Nationals Senators Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash, have said publicly they hold concerns over the legislation in its current form. But Dr Nelson has so far refused to budge from his position to force VSU on all Australian university campuses.

Source

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

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

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

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28 August, 2005

Educational mobility

An Economist opinion editorial from July 14th (“The Missing Rung In The Ladder”) lamented the decrease in social mobility in the United States, and suggests that the solution is for the government to pour resources and legislative reforms into improving the public school system. This, the Economist argues, is the only chance for lower-income Americans to compete with wealthy children whose parents are willing to invest in fancy college degrees. The underlying assumption is that America’s growing class separation and decreasing social mobility are due to a market failure, to be compensated for by the government. But is that really the solution?

The greatest obstacle to social mobility is the gap between income growth rates among the various economic classes. The Economist author points out that over the last several decades “the real income of the poorest fifth of American households rose by 6.4%, while that of the top fifth rose by 70% (and of the top 1% by 184%).” The higher a person’s starting capital, the faster it will grow, enabling him or her to transition into higher-investment, higher-returns segments of the economy. In addition, the costs of entering a higher-grade business grow at a rate that follows income growth in the higher classes. Thus gaps in income growth rate generate bigger gaps in income growth rate--and the more difficult it is for those near the bottom of the ladder to catch up and move into the higher classes.

But although capitalism produces the income gaps that stifle social mobility, it also creates hope for those in the lower economic stratum. Financial capital is not the only way to produce more capital. The other way is entering--or creating--new industries, where competition is still low or non-existent. The diversification of industry constantly creates opportunities even for those who cannot grow their money fast.

Let us return momentarily to the issue of education. We often hear that, if only public schools were better and less corrupt, they would increase the earning potential, and hence the social mobility, of their students. However, the more qualified students come out of public schools, the more selective colleges become. For a quick example, as more students across the nation aspire to go to college, admissions rates at all the Ivy League universities keep dropping; they are significantly lower today than they were in the 1990s, and the trend is decidedly downward. Similarly, the more people go to college, the less rare, and hence less valuable, college degrees become, and the more employers discriminate based on the schools from which job applicants get their degrees.

This means that the market value of education is a function of its exclusivity more than its quality. A stint at Harvard or Yale brings credibility and connections to powerful alumni; but most importantly, it brings distinction. Such distinction is naturally costly, both in tuition payments and in the money and time that must be invested from early on to enable a student to compete for acceptance at a top school.

Thus the children of wealthy parents will always have an advantage in the competition for employment, correlated to the gap in income growth rates between economic classes. Free public education, which by its very nature is non-exclusive, will never bridge the gap between the poor and the increasingly rich--even assuming that inefficiency and corruption could be eliminated by a wave of the No Child Left Behind wand.

There is, however, a viable alternative to expensive education. In the same way that diversification of industry can open the door to social mobility for those with little starting capital, diversification of schools can help those who cannot afford to pay for educational prestige. But diversity in education is not merely analogous to diversity in employment options; it directly leads to it. Receiving a non-standard education can help one start a non-standard line of business, due to unique insights and experience gained.

In contrast to the public school system, with its relatively uniform educational methods and non-selective admission, private schools can expose students to a wide array of educational methods and resources. Lower-income students who attend private school will emerge better suited to seek out a unique economic niche, and thus to rise above their background.

Free public schools do not give value to education and do not allow the poor to adjust to a diverse economy; thus, even when functioning well, they cannot improve social mobility in the face of growing income gaps. At the same time, they force private schools to keep prices high by cornering the low-income student market, thus making diversity in education less available to those who need it the most. Instead of solving the problem of decreased mobility, as the Economist suggests, public education only exacerbates it.

If we are to live in a just and prosperous society where a hard-working person can carve out a better life than his or her parents, we must be freed from the yoke of the public education monopoly.

Source



Pork Barrel Education

The biggest mistake an economist can make when analyzing U.S. public education is to presume that expenditures have anything to do with the necessary costs of educating students. Economists instinctively presume that costs are developed by cost minimizing producers weighing the productivity of various inputs and choosing an optimal mix. Total expenditures are then built from the bottom up.

In the U.S. public education system, this assumption is dead wrong. There total expenditures are allocated from the top down to mop up available revenues. How much any public school spends depends not on how much it "needs" for efficient operation but on how much it can extract from taxpayers. These revenues are then dissipated among various squabbling constituencies to feed their continuous demand for public funds.

In the topsy-turvy world of public education, the incentive is for efficient, low-cost schools to imitate the less efficient, high-cost schools by spending more. The result is that U.S. public education is greatly over-funded. Public school per-pupil costs are roughly 40 to 45 percent higher than those of private schools. When we take into account the larger number of private elementary schools and further adjust for special ed, the difference narrows to about 36 percent. Put another way, a minimum of 36 percent of public school expenditures is wasted.

These results are consistent with education in OECD countries where education costs are about 35 to 30 percent lower than those in the U.S. The greater competition between public and private schools abroad makes all schools almost as efficient as private schools in the U.S. Thus, U.S. public education wastes around $141 billion annually -- about 1.4 percent of 2000 gross domestic product, or about $501 per capita. Add in remedial education and the total comes to at least $157.6 billion annually -- about 1.58 percent of gross domestic product, or about $560 per capita.

The education establishment attributes increased costs to the onerous mandates of state legislatures and federal acts such as No Child Left Behind. To the extent that these mandates raise the cost of public education (and not all do), they simply represent some of the more visible mechanisms by which the waste is generated and dispersed among special interests.

Similarly, the requirement that public schools must admit any student is often cited as a reason for higher costs. But slower students are increasingly shoved into special education, and this program explains only about 10 percent of the cost differential between public and private education. Further, a shocking 25–30 percent of all students are drop-outs. Once dropped out, it is hard to see how non-students can impose increased costs on the public school system. If the diverse student body created by an open admissions policy really produces public school inefficiency, it is an argument for reducing the monopoly enjoyed by the public school system and allowing for smaller, more specialized schools.

Most of the waste in public education is excessive labor costs. Over the period 1980–2000, national student enrollment grew by 15.5 percent, but total school employment grew by 37.4 percent, and teachers grew by 35.2 percent. Public schools now have about one employee for every 6.5 students, and teachers make up only 40 percent of school employees. Our public schools have become vast jobs programs, reminiscent of the Depression era WPA, rather than educational institutions.

On average, individual public school teachers' pay is well above that of both their private school counterparts and those in comparable occupations. Also, public schools employ a more expensive mix of teachers and unions make it virtually impossible to fire even the most incompetent employees.

Wherever competition with or among U.S. public schools is found, the evidence shows better and cheaper public school performance. Abroad, both direct competition and the presence of surrogate competition in the form of curriculum-based external exit exams produce better, cheaper education.

Source

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

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

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

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



27 August, 2005

ISN'T EQUALITY WONDERFUL?

Except that it is an officially-fostered illusion. Comments from Britain:

An abundance of top grades in this year's A-level and GCSE results shows that the exams are too easy and must be reformed, the deputy head of an independent school said yesterday. As almost 600,000 students receive their results today, Richard Cairns, of Magdalen College school in Oxford, said that all 83 pupils who sat English and maths GCSE had achieved an A* or A grade and that no grades fell below A for those who took German, Greek, Spanish, religious studies, chemistry and geography.

Mr Cairns, who becomes the headmaster of Brighton College next term, also accused the Government of failing the top 5 per cent of students and called for a return of state-funded scholarships for poorer, gifted pupils to attend private schools. The exceptional results come a week after 51 of the 73 boys taking A levels at the school achieved at least three As. Mr Cairns said: "GCSEs and A levels are just too easy." The results demonstrated that the exams no longer stretch the most able students. "Pupils are thinking they need to do more and more in order to differentiate themselves from others so they are piling on more subjects rather than trying to stretch themselves by doing something different and challenging. It's like building 15 roads rather than building a bridge. They are not being stretched intellectually."

The proportion of pupils getting five good GCSE passes has risen by 8.6 percentage points since Labour came to power in 1997, from 45.1 to 53.7 last year. That figure is also expected to rise for GCSEs results released today. Mr Cairns said that the Government was neglecting the top 5 per cent and suggested that independent schools were better able than those in the state sector to provide further academic challenges to able students.

Magdalen's performance at GCSE and A level was "obviously very pleasing" for the boys, he said. "But it also demonstrates why we can no longer depend on GCSE or A-level examiners to stretch and challenge our most able students." It was now up to individual schools to provide that extra intellectual stimulation that bright teenagers need. "Some very clever boys and girls from academically deprived backgrounds are doubtless missing out, their talent squandered," he said. "There is, in my view, a stronger case than ever for the State to support scholars at leading independent schools, selected on the basis of academic ability and genuine financial need."

Mr Cairns's call came as Lord May of Oxford, President of the Royal Society, said that studying science at GCSE was more an exercise in memory than understanding. "The sciences are truly dynamic and exciting subjects," he said. "However, the experience of studying science for many GCSE students is one of rote-learning for exams and memorising a few standardised experiments. Consequently we see that many students drop science like a hot potato as soon as they have the opportunity."

Source



MORE ON A MEANINGLESS BRITISH EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION

GCSE results showed the highest increase in top grades in 13 years yesterday as head teachers’ leaders admitted that schools were increasingly “playing the system” to boost their standing in examination league tables. The proportion of exams awarded at least a C grade rose by two percentage points to 61.2 per cent this year, the biggest increase since 1992. The number of top A* and A grades also rose by 1 percentage point to 18.4 per cent of entries. Overall, students passed 97.8 per cent of the 5.73 million papers this year, an increase of a fifth of a percentage point on last year....

The results showed that less able pupils were being entered for vocational subjects instead of GCSEs in languages and sciences. Mr Hart said that many schools were focusing on vocational qualifications to boost standings in the league tables. He called on ministers to review the practice that permitted a vocational GNVQ to be considered equivalent to four GCSEs in the tables. New applied GCSEs in subjects such as construction and “learning for life and work” were also worth two GCSE grades. “The demands of league tables are driving the system and that is not in the interests of students or of UK plc,” he said. “Students are understandably playing the system and studying their stronger subjects.”

Professor Alan Smithers, of the University of Buckingham, said that many more less able students had been “switched out” of “harder” academic GCSEs into less challenging vocational courses. “The league tables need to be reviewed in the light of the evidence of their impact on schools’ behaviour,” he said. ...

Sir Digby Jones, Director-General of the CBI, said that the education system still left too many teenagers with inadequate levels of literacy and numeracy. Nearly half of students failed to get a grade C or better in maths and almost 40 per cent in English. “Every student deserves praise for their achievements and I wish every one of them a prosperous future, but there is clearly a systemic failure in the education system as yet again almost half of GCSE entrants have failed to reach the basic levels of competency in the three Rs,” Sir Digby said. "Being taught how to read, write and add up was regarded as fundamental right for all in the 20th century, so why in the 21st century is the education system of the world’s fourth richest economy seemingly unable to deliver?”

More here

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

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

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

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



26 August, 2005

BOEHNER REPLIES TO PHI DELTA KAPPA ABOUT NCLB

U.S. Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), chairman of the House Committee on Education & the Workforce, today criticized the methods used to produce the latest Phi Delta Kappa (PDK) annual survey, which claims to independently assess Americans' views on K-12 public education. "The PDK survey is released annually, and has annually drawn criticism from education reform supporters for its `softball' questions that protect the interests of education establishment lobbyists. This year's survey, released this morning, carries on this dubious tradition," said Boehner.

"The United States spends more than $500 billion a year on K-12 education - more than we spend on national defense - yet our students lag behind those of other nations in key subjects, and millions of disadvantaged children do not have the same educational opportunities as their more fortunate peers," Boehner said. "The Phi Delta Kappa survey relies on a number of loaded questions carefully phrased by education reform opponents to make it appear the American public isn't bothered by these facts. The result once again is a confusing tangle of survey information that is frequently contradictory and of questionable value to the education reform dialogue in our country."

Boehner listed a number of ways in which the PDK survey presents a distorted picture of public opinion on President Bush's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education reforms and efforts to expand parental choice in education:

* Special education students can learn. The PDK report implicitly contends Americans do not believe public schools should be held accountable if special education students do not make academic progress - but the survey avoids asking that question directly. The poll presents no evidence to suggest Americans do not believe public schools should be accountable for ensuring all of their students, including students with special needs, make academic progress.

* Minority children do not yet have equal educational opportunities. Asked "do black children and other minority children in your community have the same educational opportunities as white children?" - the PDK report suggests most Americans answer by saying "yes, the same." What the survey is careful not to ask is whether respondents believe black and other minority children in general have the same opportunities as white children. The poll presents no evidence to suggest Americans believe black and other minority children overall have the same opportunities as white children in America , and even contradicts itself by showing an overwhelming majority of Americans believe closing the achievement gap between minority students and white students is a very important goal.

* Americans are far more concerned about children not learning to read than they are about "too much testing." The PDK poll suggests the number of Americans saying there is "too much testing" has increased, but fails to note polls consistently show Americans are far more concerned about children passing through public schools without learning to read than they are about children being tested too much. Asked which is the bigger problem - children passing through U.S. schools without learning to read, or children being forced to take too many tests - Americans overwhelmingly (77%) believe the more important problem in education is that children are passing through schools without learning to read, according to a 2004 poll of 1,000 Americans conducted for Americans for Better Education (ABE) by The Winston Group, a top national polling firm.

* Loaded school choice questions. The PDK report contends public support for giving low-income families the right to send their children to the school of their choice (private or public) - an option PDK refers to only by the codeword "vouchers" - is decreasing. The PDK poll presents no evidence to suggest Americans believe low-income parents should not be allowed to transfer their children to better performing private schools if their public schools are chronically underachieving or dangerous. President Bush fought successfully for legislation giving this option to more than 1,000 low-income children and families in the District of Columbia .

* "Single test" myth. The questions in the PDK survey repeatedly suggest - incorrectly - that schools are judged under NCLB based on the performance of their students on a "single test." But NCLB simply requires states, in exchange for billions in federal education funds, to use tests that generate results that can be compared from one year to the next in key subjects such as reading and math. Nothing prohibits states from taking performance in other subjects into account as well for their own purposes in addition to reading and math. NCLB not only explicitly bans anything resembling a national test taken by all students, but allows states to design and implement their own tests, and makes clear that no two states are required to adopt the same test.

* "Narrow curriculum" myth. The questions in the PDK survey suggest - incorrectly - that an increased focus on basics such as reading and math forces states and schools to teach students less in other areas, such as art, music, and history. But across the nation, thousands of schools are reporting improved results in the core subjects under NCLB without having abandoned their efforts to teach these other subjects.

Source. Note: The poll itself is here



CALIFORNIA FUDGES THE FIGURES

By ignoring dropouts

UCLA researchers say the state is overestimating the number of students passing the California High School Exit Exam. But state officials say it depends on how you do the math. And they prefer their method. This year's incoming seniors make up the first class that must pass the exam to receive a diploma. The Department of Education reported last week that 88 percent of students in the class of 2006 have passed the English language arts part of the test and 88 percent have passed the math.

But at a meeting at National Hispanic University here, researchers on Tuesday presented a study showing lower numbers - an 81 percent passage rate in language arts for students in the class of 2006 and 80 percent passage rate in math. Students must pass both portions of the test to receive a diploma. The reason for the difference: UCLA's calculations include class of 2006 students who dropped out in 10th and 11th grade or didn't take the test for some other reason. The California Department of Education includes only students still enrolled and trying to pass the test by the end of 11th grade. "This difference is highly consequential," said UCLA professor John Rogers, one of the study's authors. Rogers was among 200 educators and civil rights advocates gathered at a conference partly sponsored by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project, an organization that researches social justice issues in education. "The state has forgotten about 40,000 students in each section," Rogers said.

Where the state Department of Education says about 54,000 students have not yet passed each section of the two-part test, Rogers says the number is closer to 90,000 for the English part and 100,000 for the math.

Department of Education officials said their measurement is more accurate. "We're measuring how many kids that are taking the (exit exam) are passing it," said Rick Miller, spokesman for Jack O'Connell, the state superintendent of schools. "That seems like the information we ought to want to know." Miller said the state's dropout rate is a significant problem. But information on graduation and dropout rates should be examined separately from the exit exam data, he said. "What we're trying to talk about is not how many are graduating, but how many are passing the (exit exam)," Miller said.

For exit exam opponents, the two pieces of information are related. Students who don't graduate from high school - either because they fail an exit exam or because they drop out - will likely have a hard time earning a living. Russell Rumberger, an education professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who spoke at Tuesday's event, estimated that high school graduates earn about $7,000 more a year than those who don't have a diploma, a difference in lifetime earnings of around $270,000.

More here

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

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

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

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

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



25 August, 2005

THE INCOHERENT CONNECTICUT CHALLENGE TO NCLB

They say that they do plenty of testing already and then say NCLB testing is a bad idea and would take up too many resources

Calling the federal No Child Left Behind law a cruel hoax, Connecticut officials sued U.S. Education secretary Margaret Spellings on Monday in Hartford federal court, making the state the first to legally challenge the mandates of President Bush's signature education policy. The lawsuit follows repeated attempts by the state this year to ease the requirements of the federal law that at its core requires schools to meet academic goals measured in annual test scores meant to ensure that all groups of children are achieving. Connecticut's efforts earlier led Spellings to criticize the state's campaign as "unAmerican."

In announcing the lawsuit Monday, state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and other state officials repeatedly lauded the goals of No Child Left Behind, which attempts to close the achievement gap between white students and their minority counterparts, but said the federal government had failed to live up to its promise to not shift the law's costs to them. "We in Connecticut do a lot of testing already, far more than most other states," said Gov. M. Jodi Rell. "Our taxpayers are sagging under the crushing costs of local education. What we don't need is a new laundry list of things to do -- with no new money to do them."

Blumenthal summed up the lawsuit, assigned to federal judge Mark Kravitz, with a pithy comment modeled after a popular 1990s movie. "Give up the unfunded mandates or give us the money," Blumenthal said.

Federal education officials strongly criticized Connecticut for going ahead with the lawsuit and said it detracted from the real issue at hand: the gap between how its white students and their minority counterparts perform on standardized tests. "Unfortunately, today's action doesn't bring the state any closer to closing its achievement gap, which is among the largest in the nation," said Susan Aspey, a federal Education Department spokeswoman. "From the day she walked in the door, Secretary Spellings has worked diligently to listen and respond to states' needs and concerns, and she has kept her word to help states implement No Child Left Behind in a workable, common-sense way."

According to a state Department of Education estimate, it will cost Connecticut $41.6 million through 2008 to comply with the federal law, which would require Connecticut to start testing students in grades three, five and seven in addition to the schoolchildren it already tests in grades four, six and eight. Despite Monday's lawsuit, state officials conceded that $3.8 million was already in this year's state budget to proceed with the federal testing schedule.

Blumenthal first threatened to file suit five months but waited to give other states a chance to join. That hasn't happened, but still could, Blumenthal said Monday. States have been reluctant because of "fear of retaliation from the federal government," he said last week. Some in Connecticut have been reluctant, too. Even the state school board declined to support the lawsuit earlier this year, saying it wanted to allow more time to reach a compromise. Now, though, its chairman publicly supports it and other members are reconsidering. "A lawsuit certainly would not have been my preference," said state board member Lynne Farrell of Shelton, who added she will support Blumenthal, Rell and Sternberg in the lawsuit. "Who am I to say they shouldn't have filed a lawsuit? These are top-notch people and I support them."

Connecticut's 29-page lawsuit comes amid a growing restiveness among states and educational organizations that have begun to openly oppose the federal law. Proponents of No Child Left Behind argue that the law has helped to improve student performance, decreased the achievement gap between whites and minorities and that frequent testing aids teachers in identifying problems early. "If states were closing achievement gaps on their own, the federal government would not have needed to intervene," said William Taylor, chairman of the Citizens' Commission on Civil Rights, who called Monday's suit ill advised. In eighth grade math, only 17 percent of Connecticut's white students scored in the lowest category of achievement compared to more than half of black and Latino students, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Despite the brewing controversy, many states are taking aim at the federal law. According to a recent report, every state except Alabama, Delaware and New York is fighting the law in some way. Utah has taken perhaps the most bold stance, authorizing its schools to ignore provisions of the federal law that conflict with its education program, even though it could cost the state $76 million in federal aid. Nine school districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont, meanwhile, joined a lawsuit filed earlier this year by the National Education Association, which is arguing against the law's unfunded mandates. But Connecticut's lawsuit represents the first time a state has gone to court to challenge the law. "If there's a bully on the playground, it often takes one brave soul to step forward," said Rep. Andrew Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, and a co-chairman of the legislature's Education committee. "We're stepping forward." ....

The suit, in many respects, boils down to the issue of who must fund the implementation of the education law, the state or federal government, and whether the law's sweeping mandates work the same in every state. Critics call it a cookie-cutter approach. If there were research that showed testing every year was helpful, "I'd be the first in line to advocate for the tests," said Connecticut Education Commissioner Betty J. Sternberg. "But the tests have questionable merits."

Federal officials did tell the state it could save money by converting the state's existing mastery tests to a multiple-choice format. Current Connecticut tests require a written portion for students. No Child Left Behind requires testing in math, reading and a third subject selected by states. Writing is more expensive to score because it can't be done by computers. State educational officials balked. "We're not going to dumb down our tests," added Allan Taylor, who as chairman of the Connecticut State Board of Education stood with Blumenthal and other officials Monday when the lawsuit was announced.

Sen. Thomas Gaffey, D-Meriden, a longtime opponent of the federal education law, said the fallout requiring student testing in every grade from third to eighth merely heightens the stress for students. "It sucks the creativity out of the classroom," Gaffey said. Farrell, a retired elementary principal in West Hartford, agreed. "I was never an advocate for a lot of testing. I found that I could test best by going around the room quickly and asking questions and looking at the expressions on the students' faces. You could find out how much they knew through active discussion," she said. "Testing turns off kids and I worry about that."

Besides, she said, it wastes time. "You have to prepare for it, then finally do the testing and accumulate all the tests and then test all the students that were absent. It takes up an awful lot of time that could have been devoted to teaching students," she said. Mary Bucaccio of Torrington, agrees. She is a fourth-grade teacher in Farmington and the parent of two students at Torrington High School. Tests help measure progress, but once every two years is enough, she said.

Education leaders such as Waterbury Superintendent David Snead agree. "These tests require huge amounts of resources to tell us what we already know: that the kids trying to overcome poverty aren't doing as well as kids who are wealthier," he said.

No Child Left Behind requires schools to test every year starting this spring. Blumenthal's suit "is a step in the right direction," Bucaccio said. The state should not concern itself over federal intimidation because of the federal lawsuit, Blumenthal said. "The first glimmer of intimidation, we will be in court seeking immediate injunction against the secretary of education," the attorney general said. She has directed her senior staff to be on the lookout for such behavior, Sternberg added.

Source. See also here



GIFTED CHILDREN: MORE GOOD SENSE FROM AUSTRALIA'S FEDS

Treasurer Peter Costello has urged the states to embrace selective schools for academically gifted students, warning that talented children are being left behind.

Blaming the decline of selective schools as a factor in the exodus of children from the public sector, the federal Treasurer said parents wanted more choice over state-run schools. "I believe there is a place for selective schools, most definitely," he told The Australian yesterday. "Particularly, in my own state, Victoria, where we only have a couple of selective schools, I think that is a real problem. "Many parents as a consequence are taking them to private schools, because they don't have the option of a government selective school. The talents of some of these kids could be stretched much greater than they are in comprehensive schools."

A spokesman for Victorian Education Minister Lyn Kosky said the Government had "no plans" to introduce more selective schools. "Our position is every student in every school should have every possible opportunity to succeed to their full potential," he said.

The balance of selective to non-selective schools is not uniform nationally, and Mr Costello praised NSW for its approach. The state, which has the country's biggest school system, has been criticised by others for creating too many selective schools, bleeding ordinary public schools of the best students.

Mr Costello, a privately educated son of a schoolteacher, backed performance pay for teachers and a greater push to attract and retain talented teachers. "I know education is important for Australia's economic future and I believe that, while we spread education well in the Australian population, we are going to have to continue to focus on excellence in education. "We have got to value good school teachers: these are very important people for our children and our future."

He backed Education Minister Brendan Nelson's push to ensure plain language in school report cards. "I reckon Brendan is doing a good job, in tying commonwealth funding to standards, to our values education. As a parent myself, I've tried to read some of these reports and they are very difficult to understand. I think we want our students to have an understanding of their common values and Australia's values. It's what I call a common culture."

John Howard sparked a controversy last year by warning that "politically correct" public schools were prompting parents to switch to private schools.

Yesterday, Mr Costello stepped up his warnings over left-wing teachers contributing to anti-Americanism. Labor has accused Mr Costello of sparking the debate to improve his chances at the Liberal leadership.

Source

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

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

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

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



24 August, 2005

PROSECUTING A PARENT WHO JUST WANTED INFORMATION

David Parker of Lexington, Mass., is scheduled to go on trial on Sept. 21 for asking his son's public school to provide parental notification before discussing homosexuality with the 6-year old. The actual charge is criminal trespassing. But the real issue is whether parents or schools will control the teaching of values to children. The conflict began on Jan. 17, when Parker's then-5-year-old son brought home a Diversity Bookbag from kindergarten. Included was Robert Skutch's "Who's In a Family?" that depicts families headed by same-sex couples. Parker had wanted to decide for himself the timing and manner in which his son was introduced to the subject of homosexuality. (The Bookbag is supposed to be a voluntary program but the Parkers knew nothing about it in advance.)

Parker immediately e-mailed the Estabrook school principal, Joni Jay. Parker expressed his belief that gay parents did not constitute "a spiritually healthy family"; he did not wish his son to be taught that a gay family is "a morally equal alternative to other family constructs." Parker acknowledged the equal rights of gays but objected to "the 'out of the closet' and into the kindergarten classroom mentality." In essence, Parker highlighted the difference between tolerance, which acknowledges someone's right to make a choice, and acceptance, which is the personal validation of that choice.

The conflict moved quickly from the Diversity Bookbag to the more general issue of parental notification. The Parkers wanted to know if sexuality was scheduled to be discussed in class so they could remove their son. They also wanted their son removed from any "spontaneous conversations" about sexuality that involved an adult.

By law, Massachusetts requires schools to notify parents when sexuality is scheduled for discussion. Lexington School Committee chairman Thomas B. Griffiths explained, "We don't view telling a child that there is a family out there with two mommies as teaching about homosexuality." In an e-mail, the Estabrook school principal stated, "I have confirmed ... that discussion of differing families, including gay-headed families, is not included in the parental notification policy."

At an April 27 meeting at the school, Parker refused to leave without an assurance that he would receive parental notification. Arrested for criminal trespass, he spent the night in jail. When asked why he insisted on staying, Parker replied, "I wanted to see how far they [school authorities] would go for [my] asking something simple."

The state now wishes to impose probation upon Parker, along with other restrictions -- such as banning him from Lexington school properties without prior written permission from the superintendent of schools. This means he is barred from places to vote, as well as school committee and parent-teacher meetings. Parker is contesting the charge. Why? After his arraignment, he stated, "I'm just trying to be a good dad." During a May 11 appearance on the FOX News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor," Parker expanded on this statement, saying that he wanted his son "to play on the swing set and make mud pies. I don't want him thinking about same-sex unions in kindergarten." Parker's attorney, Jeffrey Denner, points to a larger issue -- "the role of family and what kind of encroachments government can make into children's and people's lives."

Otherwise stated, schools are usurping the parental role of teaching personal values to children. They are not acting as educators but as guardians, "in loco parentis" (in the place of a parent). Some schools clearly consider this function to be their right, even over parental objections. Thus, Estabrook defends its "right" to teach Parker's son to accept same-sex marriages. Denner hopes to resolve the conflict before trial but he also intends to file a civil suit in federal court against the town of Lexington, the school system and its officials.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a campaign to discredit Parker. The Lexington School Board has reportedly accused Parker of wanting to be arrested to grab "headlines." If true, it is strange that he wasted months on e-mails, faxes and school meetings before making his move. Parker's actions sound more like those of a father with no options left. The school also claims that Parker's demands would prevent other children from discussing their families or drawing pictures of them.

But this is far from what's been officially requested. According to Neil Tassel, Parker's co-counsel, "the Parkers' proposal was simple: notify them in advance if there is a planned discussion about same-sex issues, and, if an adult becomes involved in a discussion spontaneously begun by a child, then remove their child from the discussion."

School authorities quite reasonably responded that they could not be held responsible for monitoring spontaneous conversations or remarks made in the class. Moreover, they contend that children with gay parents have a right to talk about their families and have their families represented. At some point in the dialogue, however, reason broke down; police were called. The attacks on Parker have been so intense that Tassel recently found it necessary to write a defense in the local paper denying that his client is a shill for or member of Article 8, a controversial organization opposed to same-sex marriage. He pointed to Parker's Ph.D. to deflect criticism of his client as an ignorant book burner. To counter the charge that Parker hates gays, Tassel described him as "an exceptionally kind hearted man" whose best friend was gay.

Perhaps Estabrook authorities are trying to divert attention from the real question: Is Parker simply demanding parental notification or not? I think he is. David Parker cares so deeply that he is willing to go to jail and endure a lengthy court process for the right to be a parent. In a world where a myriad of social problems can be traced back to parental abuse or indifference, it is incredible that Parker is being treated as a criminal and not as the hero he is.

Source



AUSTRALIAN POLICE WIMP OUT BEFORE LEFTIST THUGGERY

Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott says NSW Police are allowing "thugs" to threaten freedom of speech by urging him not to attend a university debate because of the threat of violence. Mr Abbott today said he had withdrawn from a planned debate about voluntary student unionism (VSU) at Sydney University after NSW Police advised him not to attend because they could not guarantee his safety. He had been scheduled to debate Labor opponent Julia Gillard today about the Government's plans to abolish compulsory student fees.

Student groups oppose the Government's VSU legislation and have staged major rallies across Australia, including a protest at the University of Sydney on August 10, in which three police officers were injured.

Mr Abbott said he did not like the idea that intimidation was stifling free speech. The minister said he called on police to consider the ramifications of allowing "thugs" to intimidate people. "I've asked them to ponder the implications of their actions," he said. "If baddies can threaten goodies with violence and the police then tell the goodies that they can't do what they're lawfully entitled to do, what does that say about the smooth functioning of society? "It says that intimidation works; it says that, forced to adjudicate between normal people and thugs, instead of keeping the thugs in line the police will tell the normal people not to do whatever it is they're trying to do, [and] that's a real worry."

Mr Abbott said he was prepared for a verbal stoush with student groups but was disappointed police were unable to ensure law and order would prevail. "I'm disappointed that the NSW Police didn't feel able to ensure that [the debate] went ahead in comparative safety at Sydney University," he said. "No one expects a university debate to be conducted in an atmosphere more reminiscent of a church service - everyone thinks that a university debate would be a lively and maybe even a rowdy occasion and I've been in plenty of them. "But I am disappointed that the police first thought that there was potentially violent disruption planned and second weren't sufficiently able to stop it to allow it to go ahead."

Mr Abbott admitted being "quite tempted" to ignore the police warnings and attend the debate. "[But] had anything gone wrong and had people been hurt, I would have been blamed and I didn't want to be in that position," he said.

The University of Sydney Union said it was saddened Mr Abbott had decided to pull out of today's debate because of fears for his safety. The debate has since been cancelled. "I'm very disappointed," union spokesman George Livery said. "Mr Abbott is always welcome back to this campus. He's an old boy and he's always been fun to have here, he's never shied away from a debate on campus." Mr Livery would not criticise police for urging Mr Abbott to withdraw from the event but said he had thought police were satisfied with security arrangements for the debate at the university's Manning Bar. "I thought that we had provided the kind of assistance [to police] that alleviated a majority of concerns," he said. "In fact indications from the [police] area command were that they were quite satisfied with what we had done." The union could not control the actions of people outside the university campus but it had not received any indications students were planning violence, Mr Livery said. "From all of our conversations with clubs and societies ... all they were looking forward to was a good, fun day and a great debate," he said.

More here

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

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

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

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



23 August, 2005

ANTI-AMERICANISM TAUGHT IN AUSTRALIAN SCHOOLS

GROWING anti-American attitudes have been generated in part by left-wing teachers in Australian schools, according to Treasurer Peter Costello. Mr Costello last night delivered a speech to the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue dinner, warning of the dangers of anti-Americanism taking hold in Australia. He says allowing anti-American sentiment to fester could incite terrorism. "There's no doubt in my mind that anti-Americanism can easily morph into anti-Westernism, particularly we've seen that with terrorists," Mr Costello said today. "They don't really draw distinctions between Americans or Britons or Australians, they just like to hit anybody who they consider to be a part of the West. "And that's why I think we've all got an interest in working to explain the aims and objectives of our policies."

Mr Costello said he was aware of anti-American attitudes among students while he was at university in the 1970s. Some of these students had become teachers carrying with them "ideological baggage" which he said was now filtering through to their students in schools. "I think in the schools, if your teacher's carrying that bias it tends to get passed on," he said. "And I think in the schools, the other side of the story ought to be taught.

The other side of the story, he said, was when Australia was dealing with Japanese attack and when Darwin was being bombed in February of 1942. "The American allies together with Australian troops, began to turn the tide in the Pacific, through the islands and back up to Japan," he said. This is a side of the story that young people in Australia need to know. "In our greatest security threat ... our allies came and helped defend Australia with us."

Mr Costello said the US itself should do more to counter growing anti-Americanism, for the benefit of all Western countries including Australia. "I think that's in the general interest of the whole West," he said. "Because anti-Americanism can easily morph into anti-Westernism which picks up and encapsulates Australia and threatens our interests as well."

Anti-American sentiment was generally based on a fear of US power, Mr Costello said. "And the point I was making last night was that US power is much more likely to come to the aid of Australia and its values than to threaten Australia and its values," he said. "There's no solid reason for Australia to fear the emergence of US power." "But I also made the point last night, that just as the United States has become the pre-eminent world power, it's still important that it act in concert with other people."

Source



Horrors! Information!: "Colleges are accustomed to being ranked on the basis of everything from the quality of their libraries to the vibrancy of campus party scenes. But a proposal to have the federal government compare schools by how much they increase tuition has administrators and higher-education groups objecting. Such a ranking, proposed as part of legislation to renew higher-education programs, would require public and private colleges to report their tuition and fees annually to the US Department of Education. The federal agency would then assign each school a 'college affordability index' based on the rate of increase, and make the information public."

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

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

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

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22 August, 2005

Less is Good, Nothing is Better: How the State Can Improve British Education

By Sean Gabb

Even before Mike Tomlinson reported on examination reform, everyone agreed, and competed at agreeing, that British state education was a mess. Schools all over the country are turning out generations of innumerate, semi-literate proles. They have become places notable for bullying, truancy in its various shades, drugs, unwise sex, the occasional murder, and a pervasive contempt for achievement. Yes, there are those whose job it is to disagree with this proposition. Naturally enough, there are the teachers and educational bureaucrats; and there are the relevant Ministers, who every summer put their names on news releases lauding the latest set of examination results. But everyone knows they are talking nonsense. If examination results were an indicator of excellence, we should be living in a nation of Shakespeares and Newtons. In fact, grade inflation and a continuous debasement of the whole examinations system have made the results largely worthless. We can no more make people educated by giving them pretty certificates than we can make them rich by giving them bags of forged banknotes. State education is a mess.

The standard response is to whine or boast about levels of funding. But this is a manifestly threadbare response. In 2002, the authorities spent £49.354 billion of our money on schooling and further education. Given a total of 10.094 million children and young people in the maintained sector, we have spending per head of around £4,900. Many independent schools charge less than that - and get better results. Indeed, there are schools in black Africa that do better. These are places without school books, without roofs over the classrooms, where the teachers are dying of aids, and where bandits every so often turn up and conscript the more promising children to fight in what are pretentiously called civil wars - and they still turn out children with a better English prose style than the average inmate of an English comprehensive.

There is no one explanation for why things are so bad. But this does not mean the problem is intractably complex. Though there are others, there are three main explanations.

In the first place, there is the emphasis on vocational learning that we owe to the vulgar economic liberalism of the Thatcher and Major Governments. The belief here is that the main or even sole purpose of education is to promote economic development. Accordingly, any subject from which no tangible return could be imagined was either removed from the curriculum or fragmented or simplified into nothingness. History and Classics were the most obvious victims - and, in lesser degree, Music. Much of the time thereby freed was filled with the almost obsessive teaching of Information Technology.

Now, there is a case for teaching children how to type: left to themselves, most people develop typing habits that reduce their general efficiency. There may also be a case for teaching the basics of the Microsoft Office suite. But these are things to be learnt over a few weeks. All else specified in the Information Technology syllabus is useless or would be picked up anyway by the children themselves. No one has yet developed a course in Mobile Telephone Studies. This has not visibly left any of my students at a disadvantage. In my experience, much of the time given to Information Technology is used to play games or look up trivia on the Internet. The time would be better given to teaching German or a musical instrument.

In the second place, there is the fact that the main purpose of state education has always been to legitimise the wealth and status of the ruling class. We can see this was so in the past. Without all the drilling in the playground, and all the team sports, and all the hours given to nationalist propaganda, would those ten million young men have marched even semi-willingly to die in the killing grounds of the Great War? Nothing fundamental has changed since then. All that has changed is the personnel of the ruling class and the nature of its legitimation ideology.

Because it is suited to our present assumptions, we cannot see this ideology so clearly as we now see those it replaced. It is there, even so. It is that axis of anti-liberal, anti-western, anti-science, anti-Enlightenment and pro-collectivist values and coercive social engineering that we call political correctness. With the decline of traditional socialism, this has gained a growing and hegemonic role in most developed societies. As an ideology, it manifestly promotes the power and privileges of our new ruling class - this being a coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, educators, lawyers, media people and associated business interests who derive wealth and status from an enlarged and activist state. The ideology is used to stigmatise and demonise any dissenting opinion, and to censor and silence it; and information is socially constructed in order to balkanise society into alleged "victim groups" who provide tribalistic bases for the exercise of political power and the extraction of economic profit by the ruling class. As ever, education is the chief mechanism by which this legitimation ideology is transmitted from one generation to the next.

As illustration, take the way in which GCSE English Literature is taught. Some years ago, while short of cash, I acted as an assistant examiner. Two of the most commonly examined books - both American - were To Kill a Mocking Bird and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Doubtless, these are worthy enough texts in their own right. But they are nothing much compared with the great classics of English literature produced in these islands. Judging by the several thousand pages of answers I must have read, however, they had been preferred because they allowed English lessons to be made into sermons of racial hatred that passed unrebuked only because the objects of hatred were white.

In the third place, there is the centralised, authoritarian control that both of the above require for complete enforcement. We have the National Curriculum and we have endless testing to see that arbitrary and often incomprehensible targets are being reached.

The combined result is a demoralised teaching profession, bored and apathetic children, and a collapse of standards as these were once universally defined. The system was not very good before the 1980s. Since then, it has rotted away to the point where just about everyone with money either avoids it altogether, choosing the independent sector, or rigs it by moving into middle class catchment areas.

The politicians promise reform. But all reforms so far discussed can only make things worse. Labour promises more money and a restructuring of management - not only rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but also replacing the canvas with silk. The Conservatives promise "choice" - though always supervised by the same philistine and politically correct bureaucracy that messed up the present system. The more adventurous Conservatives even talk about a voucher scheme. This has its merits. But conservatives of all people ought to know that any scheme of improvement takes its whole tone from the circumstances in which it is introduced. Any voucher scheme introduced now would give our ruling class a perfect excuse to spread the corruption deep into the independent sector. It would do this by setting criteria for the reception of vouchers, and would enforce these criteria through the usual agencies of inspection and control.

The only answer is to get the state entirely out of education. The education budget should not be expanded, or its administration reformed. It should simply be abolished. That £49 billion - now, I believe, £63 billion - should be handed back to the people in tax cuts; and these should be directed at the poorest taxpayers. The schools should be sold off or given away, and the bureaucrats be made redundant. The people should then be left to arrange by themselves for the education of their children.

The argument that parents would not or could not do this falls flat on any inspection of the third world, where parents make often heavy sacrifices and choose often highly effective schemes of education. There is also the experience of our own past. A generation ago, E.G. West showed how growing numbers of working class people in the 19th century paid for and supervised the education of their children. The beginning of state education in 1870 should be seen as ruling class coup against an independent sector that looked set to marginalise its legitimation ideology. And that reaction was promoted on the basis of fraudulent statistics.

Left to themselves, it is inconceivable that parents would not do substantially better than those presently in charge of state education. How they might do this is for them to decide. Some would pay for a conventional independent education. Some would send their children to schools run by their ministers of religion, or by charitable bodies. Some would educate their children at home. Many do this already, by the way; and Paula Rothermel of Durham University caused a stir in 2002, when she looked at a sample of children educated at home and found they performed consistently better in standard tests than schoolchildren - indeed, she found that the children of people like bus drivers and shop assistants were receiving a better education than those committed to the care of state-certified teachers. Parents could hardly do worse than the present arrangements manage. They could easily do better.

This is not a "left" or a "right" wing cause. It is about allowing children to get an education which is not directed to moulding them to believe as suits the convenience of their betters, and which really will enable them to make the best of their own lives.

Source



A CALIFORNIA COVERUP

They want as little as possible to be known about their appalling results

By the end of this school year, the state could deny diplomas to tens of thousands of high school seniors who didn't pass the California High School Exit Exam. But don't ask state officials exactly how many or who they are or what schools they attend. There won't be an exact count until the spring of 2007 - nine months after failing students are denied their diplomas and successful ones will have tossed their graduation caps. Until then, a precise count is only available from individual school districts, which vary greatly in their ability to produce the information on request. "We're struggling with what's the best kind of information to give (to the public) without going too far into estimates," said Deb Sigman, director of testing for the state Department of Education.

The situation flies in the face of the state's move toward greater public accountability. And it frustrates parents curious about how the pass rate at their child's school stacks up against other schools, as well as civil rights advocates concerned about pass rates of African American and Latino teens. "You can't make head nor tails of how many kids actually failed, or dropped out in lieu of taking the test," said Kelly O'Hagan, president of the Sacramento Council of Parent Teacher Associations. "If the state's using it (to determine graduation) they need to know which schools are performing well." The class of 2006 is the first required to pass the exit exam to receive a diploma, though the testing program has been in development since 1999.

Sigman expects to have a good idea of how many seniors have passed by the end of this school year. But the final number won't be known until 2007, she said, because some districts allow students to take the test for the last time after their senior year.

Incomplete reporting can have political consequences, said Patty Sullivan, director of the Center on Education Policy, in Washington, D.C. Her organization studies exit exams in the 25 states that have them or are developing them. Sullivan said states that report the information well tend to have greater public support for the exams, while states that report only limited information suffer battles that threaten the exams' staying power. "Arizona has people so confused about what's going on and the result is that kids are not taking the test seriously," she said. Other states, including Massachusetts, are able to report the percentage of each class in each district and school that have passed the exit exam - after each administration of the test. "Our attitude is: The numbers are the numbers, and they speak for themselves," said Heidi Perlman of the Massachusetts Department of Education.

In California, public school students in the class of 2006 first took the test as sophomores. Those who didn't pass got two more chances as juniors. If they still haven't passed, they can try three more times as seniors. School districts are supposed to keep track of which students pass the exam each time it is given - but they don't report that information to the state. "We can't (require) that without a law," Sigman said. So even though the state reported Monday that an estimated 88 percent of California's incoming seniors have passed the math section of the test and 88 percent have passed the English section, officials are unable to report the same information for each school and each district. "That's a total redesign of the system," Sigman said. "That's not to say it isn't a good idea, but it wouldn't happen overnight."

Yet it's information Debra Durazo would like to see about her son's school. She knows that her son passed the exam as a sophomore. He's now beginning his senior year at Sacramento New Technology High School. "I'm curious (about the pass rate) because it's a new school," Durazo said. She said she'd like to see how the senior class at New Tech compares with other schools.

The state's reporting system also frustrates researchers and advocates who want to know how many students passed both the math and English sections of the test, as required for graduation. State education officials say they can't report that figure because they don't have identification numbers that would allow them to match students' English scores with their math scores. A system is in development, said Keric Ashley, the Education Department's director of data management, but won't be complete until at least 2008.

Jeannie Oakes, an education professor at UCLA, said the lack of information portends a crisis. "Because we don't know the combined test results for any one student, we simply don't know ... if there are 49,000 students at risk (of not graduating) or 96,000 students at risk, or somewhere in between," she said. "It really seems terrible that we have to make guesses about something that important." Oakes is calculating exit exam pass rates using a formula different from the state's. She said if students who drop out after 10th-grade are included, the pass rate is 8 to 20 percentage points lower than the state reports. And her analysis shows that students who fail the exit exam tend to be clustered in the same schools.

Ashley, the education department's data manager, said he expects the state's reporting method to improve . "We're probably going to have to work out some way to do this better," he said.

Source

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

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

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

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21 August, 2005

SOROS ON CAMPUS

News media reports from meetings organized by billionaire George Soros say he and some rich allies are now funding groups intended to counter the efforts on college campuses of the Leadership Institute and other conservative educational organizations. Although Soros and his allies hope through their spending to increase the effectiveness of the left on campus, I do not fear that activities they bankroll will significantly increase the left's campus influence. Nor can Soros stop the growth of campus conservative activities.

My Leadership Institute's Campus Leadership Program, for example, grew its number of active, independent, conservative campus groups from 216 in September 2004 to 437 groups in May 2005. And Institute graduates have created 32 new conservative student publications already in 2005. The Institute will send 27 field staff out to visit all 50 states this fall, and I expect them to increase the number of active conservative student groups by at least 300.

George Soros and his wealthy friends cannot write checks big enough to increase significantly the resources the left already spends on American college campuses. Not all college professors and administrators are leftists, but the great majority of the politically active ones are, as Dan Flynn's "Deep Blue Campuses" proved. Take all the money which pays the salaries of leftist professors and administrators. Add the money spent on the leftist, official student newspapers. Add the college funds and the compulsory student fee money spent to bring off-campus leftists to speak during the school year and at graduation ceremonies. Then add in all the compulsory student activity fees money poured into leftist student organizations. And the support national left-wing organizations pour into support of the vast array of campus leftist groups. The total has to be many billions every year.

George Soros, billionaire though he is, can't write checks of that magnitude. Neither can his wealthy allies. They can spend a lot, especially if compared to what LI and other conservative foundations spend on campus. But their spending won't have much more effect than pouring a bucket of water into Lake Michigan.

If you study how Soros affected the political situation in other countries, you will see that in every case he supported political insurgents against repressive regimes. In all those cases, he found it easy to identify and fund dissidents morally indignant against the abuses of those in power.

American college campuses certainly are now a fertile field for the kinds of activities which proved successful for Soros in the past. But now he's on the wrong side, and conservatives are on the right side. On U.S. campuses, those with the power are almost everywhere abusive leftists. Those who chafe under the bias and persecution on campus have a big moral edge, particularly when trained and organized conservative students shine spotlights on the abuses. Students appreciate cleverness, but they react negatively to unfairness when it is skillfully called to their attention. Conservatives have moral indignation on our side regarding the leftist abuses on campus. Moral indignation is highly contagious, so powerful that it tends to sweep aside everything else. That is why, in almost every case, a three-pronged strategy of public relations, political heat, and legal responses wins against leftist abuses on campus.

George Soros achieved spectacular results when he funded highly motivated political insurgents against all the massive resources of repressive, socialist regimes. American campuses today are dominated by repressive, socialist regimes. Leftists believe that any conservative presence on campus is too much, even though the resources of time, talent, and money available for campus conservative activity are still minuscule compared to those of the left.

Yet conservatives are making great progress. Once again it's David vs. Goliath. Conservatives have achieved a lot on campus, but barely begun to fight. We shall achieve a lot more as our resources continue to grow. Soros funded David against the Soviet empire. That worked. Now he's funding Goliath on campus. That won't work.

Source



Leftist ideologues in Australian schools

Imagine the outcry if a conservative think tank, such as the H.R. Nicholls Society, set up an internet site for schools and offered students a $200 prize for the best essay extolling the virtues of the free market. Imagine the outrage if a teachers' organisation then promoted the website and the essay competition to schools, lauding it as something that teachers should incorporate in their lessons.

The response would be one of concern about special-interest groups pushing their agenda on unsuspecting students. Recall the outrage of the Carr Labor Government in NSW in 2003 when federal Employment Advocate Jonathan Hamberger wrote to school principals asking them to inform students about Australian Workplace Agreements. According to then state education minister Andrew Refshauge, the attempt to inform students about employment contracts was "completely inappropriate". The federal Office of the Employment Advocate was told to butt out. One wonders whether the Iemma Government and NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt will respond in the same way to the ACTU [Australia's version of the AFL-CIO] and Australian Education Union's attempts to enter schools?

The AEU sent an email to teachers across Australia headed "ACTU National Competition for Students -- Win $200". Some weeks ago, the winners of the competition were announced and their essays are posted on the ACTU website, www.worksite. actu.asn.au. The email described the competition as follows: "To enter, students must tell us in 300 words or less what makes a job fair and fun for them and why, as well as their ideas to amke [sic] jobs fairer and more fun." The AEU extolled the virtues of the ACTU website, saying: "Worksite for Schools continues to be a valuable resource for younger people about the world of work. Worksite is a terrifice [sic] source of information about the workforce, providing statistics, encouraging debate, creativity and analysis."

Welcome to the double standards of political correctness. It is outrageous for the OEA to inform schools about the increasing reality of the Australian workforce: individual contracts. But it's perfectly fine for the ACTU and the AEU to publicise their one-sided (and increasingly outdated) view of industrial relations. Take a look at the ACTU-sponsored website. Under the section Personality Profiles, students are introduced to trade union and ALP worthies such as Bob Hawke, Sharan Burrow and Greg Combet. That the list is biased towards trade union and Labor stalwarts is to be expected. Yet there is no attempt to balance the list by including other notable figures, such as leading economic dries Bert Kelly, Hugh Morgan and Peter Costello, who represent an alternative view.

Similarly, on examining Fact Sheets, students are again presented with a jaundiced view. On reading about the Ansett collapse in 2001, the impression is that the union movement guaranteed worker entitlements; there are no details about the federal Government's Special Employees Entitlement Scheme. Given the Howard Government's planned changes to the industrial relations system, it is obvious the subject is highly contentious and politically sensitive.

It should be no surprise, given that the ACTU is funding the website, that students are told that the present system works well and that the federal Government has no reason to change the system whatsoever. The website quotes ACTU secretary Combet: "There is no need to change this system. It works well and strikes a balance between reasonable increases for workers and economic factors." Never mind any counterarguments.

In the aftermath of last October's federal election, Wayne Sawyer, an editor of the Australian Association for the Teaching of English journal English in Australia, lamented that, because the Howard Government was re-elected, English teachers had clearly failed to teach critical literacy. According to Sawyer, the teacher's role, instead of being disinterested, is to teach students about the failures of a Coalition government in an effort to ensure that students, as future voters, do not vote conservative. Alas, this most recent example of PC bias involving the ACTU and the AEU proves that the ideological stance taken by Sawyer is not isolated. Such incidents also demonstrate the hypocrisy of the Left: while the OEA is attacked for approaching schools, the ACTU and the AEU are given free rein.

Source

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

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

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

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20 August, 2005

BRITAIN'S MAJOR HIGH SCHOOL QUALIFICATION IS NOW MEANINGLESS

The cartoon that goes with this story is pretty apt. Excerpts from "The Times" below:

A-Level pass rates will record their lowest rise for more than two decades when the results are released this morning, The Times has learnt. The pass rate in the examinations, taken by more than 265,000 students, will reach 96.2 per cent, up just 0.2 of a percentage point from 2004. Sources close to the Joint Council for Qualifications, the umbrella group representing exam boards, told The Times that the proportion of A grades had risen more sharply, by 0.4 of a percentage point to just under 22.8 per cent of entries - the lowest since 2000.

But ministers and exam boards will maintain that the academic "gold standard" is being maintained in the face of allegations of "dumbing down".... Lord Adonis of Camden Town, the Schools Minister, made a strong defence of A levels yesterday, insisting that better results were the product of improved teaching and increased government investment in education. He dismissed the "bogus argument" that exams were getting easier and said that students could have full confidence that standards were being maintained. "Continued progress in exam performance is real - it is not the result of dumbing down of standards - and the roots of this success lie in a fundamental shift in the quality of teaching in our schools," he said in a speech at a summer school for gifted children in Canterbury...

David Hart, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: "I am absolutely certain that an increase in A grades and in the overall pass rate is a tremendous tribute to the work of students and their teachers. But at some stage - sooner rather than later - the Government has got to face the fact that the current system is creaking. "Universities and employers are finding it more and more difficult to make sense of the grades for university entrance and employment purposes."

Independent schools said that the A level was in "terminal decline" and hinted at establishing their own alternative qualification. Geoff Lucas, general secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference of 314 leading schools, said: "It is not just that A level no longer discriminates between candidates. It no longer prepares them properly in key subjects because it has become such a mechanical exam."

The Institute of Directors said that there was little evidence that A-level standards had fallen. Miles Templeman, its Director-General, said that employers were more worried about low levels of literacy and numeracy among school-leavers. "There is no case for replacing GCSEs and A levels with a diploma. A revolution in the examination system would not in itself deliver the improvements that are so desperately needed," he said.

More here



NO TENURE UNLESS YOU ARE A LOCKSTEP LEFTIST

This spring Professor William Bradford received a poor vote from the law faculty at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis both on a straw vote for his eventual tenure, and even on a vote simply to retain him as an untenured associate professor for the next three years. This occurred despite the fact that he has an outstanding teaching record (including a teaching award from the law students), an excellent record of service, and a stunning record of publication, including a book, a forthcoming book, and 21 articles in law reviews or in books-enough ordinarily to assure someone at Indy-Law not merely of tenure but of a full professorship. Indeed, one of his colleagues with a similar record of publication, a person who came to IU-Indy School of Law in the same semester as Bradford, has just received promotion not merely to tenure but to full professor. Bradford believes that he was denied tenure because he refused to sign a petition circulated in the law school this spring which supported Ward Churchill, the Professor of Ethnic Studies at Colorado who described the victims of 9/11 as "little Eichmanns" deserving what they got. The petition was circulated by Florence Roisman, who is a full professor holding a prestigious Chair in Law at the school. Bradford's position was that as far as he was concerned, someone who couldn't distinguish between commercial office workers and Nazis who engineered the Holocaust did not deserve to teach.

What makes the story even more interesting is that while Ward Churchill falsely claims to be an Indian, William Bradford really IS an Indian. He is a Chiricahua Apache. He is also a veteran, who served for 10 years in the armed forces, including at the Pentagon. He says Roisman's response to his refusal to sign the Ward Churchill petition was to say to him: "What kind of Native American ARE you?" Bradford sees this as an expectation that as an Indian, he is expected by leftist colleagues such as Florence Roisman to support any other Indian or even someone who just CLAIMS to be an Indian. Bradford calls such expectations racist.

When he refused to conform to Roisman's view of what an Indian's opinions should be, she engineered a vote in the law school in which one-third of the faculty voted against retaining Bradford for future tenure, and one-third voted against retaining him for three more years untenured. This is a bad sign concerning his eventual tenure; university administrations only rarely grant tenure to someone against whom one-third of the department has voted. The vote on Bradford HAD to be political in origin, because on the merits (teaching, service, publication) Bradford should obviously already be tenured. Indeed, he should probably be a full professor.

More here

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

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

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

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



19 August, 2005

U.S. HIGH SCHOOLS FAIL TO PREPARE KIDS FOR COLLEGE

The poor b****s cannot even read properly -- and we're not talking about dropouts here. Leftists destroy anything they get control over and American education sure is a prime example of that

Only about half of this year's high school graduates have the reading skills they need to succeed in college, and even fewer are prepared for college-level science and math courses, according to a yearly report from ACT, which produces one of the nation's leading college admissions tests. The report, based on scores of the 2005 high school graduates who took the exam, some 1.2 million students in all, also found that fewer than one in four met the college-readiness benchmarks in all four subjects tested: reading comprehension, English, math and science. "It is very likely that hundreds of thousands of students will have a disconnect between their plans for college and the cold reality of their readiness for college," Richard L. Ferguson, chief executive of ACT, said in an online news conference yesterday.

ACT sets its college-readiness benchmarks - including the reading comprehension benchmark, which is new this year - by correlating earlier students' ACT scores with grades they actually received as college freshmen. Based on that data, the benchmarks indicate the skill level at which a student has a 70 percent likelihood of earning a C or better, and a 50 percent chance of earning a B or better. Among those who took the 2005 test, only 51 percent achieved the benchmark in reading, 26 percent in science, and 41 percent in math; the figure for English was 68 percent. Results from the new optional ACT writing test, which was not widely taken this year, were not included in the report.

About 40 percent of the nation's 2005 high school graduates took the ACT, and the average overall score, 20.9 of a possible 36, was unchanged from the year before. But Dr. Ferguson found it heartening that scores were holding even, given that the pool of test takers had become so much larger and more diverse, in part because both Illinois and Colorado now use the ACT to test all students, even those who do not see themselves as college-bound.

Minority students now make up 27 percent of all ACT test takers, up from 24 percent in the class of 2001. The number of Hispanic test takers has grown 40 percent in that period, and the number of African-American test takers 23 percent. Caucasians taking the test have increased by only 2 percent. "It's wonderful that more and more students who might not have considered college several years ago are now making plans for education beyond high school," Dr. Ferguson said.

But it is a source of concern, he said, that too many students are not taking the kind of rigorous high school courses that will prepare them for college. In fact, only 56 percent of this year's graduates who took the ACT had completed the recommended core curriculum for college-bound students: four years of English and three years each of social studies, science and math at the level of algebra or higher. Those who do complete the core curriculum are far more likely to meet college readiness standards, Dr. Ferguson said, but the percentage who complete that core has been falling. "The message doesn't seem to be getting though," he said.

The ACT report highlighted other worrisome trends as well, including a continuing decline in the percentage of students planning to major in engineering, computer science and education. And at a time when more women than men go to college, Dr. Ferguson said, it is also a matter of concern that 56 percent of this year's graduates who took the ACT were female, and only 44 percent male. As in previous years, men had higher average math and science scores, and women higher averages scores in English and reading.

Source



MATH TEACHERS WHO CAN'T DO MATH

This story is from Australia but is certainly not unique to Australia

It's the moment all new teachers dread - standing in front of 30 bright-eyed students eager for a maths lesson, knowing they are only just ahead of the youngsters after swotting up on the textbook the night before. Up to 40 per cent of high school maths classes are taught by teachers with no training in the subject and, according to academics, many of them cannot add five one-digit numbers without a calculator.

That is hardly surprising as teachers spend little time at university actually learning maths. Instead, trainee teachers are being instructed - in the words of universities - in how to teach "the social, cultural and political contexts" of mathematics or to think mathematically "from socially inclusive and critical perspectives". This "psychobabble" has been highlighted as a problem for primary school teachers, who need a wide range of skills to cover the extensive curriculum and cater for the range of students' academic ability. The director of the International Centre of Excellence for Education in Mathematics, Garth Gaudry, says the average four-year primary bachelor of education degree devotes just 7 per cent of study time to "anything remotely to do with mathematics".

Only four of 31 Australian universities require trainee teachers to have studied mathematics to year 12 level. More than half do not require any senior school mathematics. "An extremely high proportion of the very small number of courses containing the words 'mathematics' or 'mathematics education' . don't delve into mathematics at all," Gaudry says. "They're about sociological theory, or pop psychology about theories of learning and the child as a learner."

Saddled with teachers with only a minimal grasp of mathematics, students were turning off the subject and often entered high school ill-prepared for secondary studies, he says. "The degree requirements in education faculties in universities are often cast so low . that the poor trainees are going out into primary schools utterly unprepared for the task of teaching mathematics," Gaudry says. His federally funded centre was set up this year to improve mathematics education, from kindergarten to postgraduate students.

The Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers, with 5000 members, said in a recent submission to a Federal Government inquiry that there was "strong anecdotal evidence" that mathematics instruction in teaching degrees "has been curtailed in many institutions". In high schools, the shortage of specialist teachers is being felt. A 2003 survey by the association found that two in five secondary classes were taught by teachers with no training in mathematics, with country schools most affected.

The teaching of maths has been changing. In modern mathematics, students are taught to add, subtract, multiply or estimate using mental computation. In other words, a return to mental arithmetic. The catchcry is "Do it in your head". Students are encouraged to understand concepts before they practise their number sense, perhaps by playing a card game. Then they memorise the basic facts - a variation on their parents' "drill and kill" chanting of times tables.

Ed Lewis, a mathematics education lecturer at the Australian Catholic University, says the emphasis on mental and oral work reflected "the prime mode of calculation used in society". "People do things in their heads; if they can't they will pick up a calculator," he says. "The research tells us that students need to understand the concepts first . Once they have a good handle on the concepts, then they can memorise."

The NSW primary syllabus was modernised in 2002 to reflect these changes, and introduced a new strand called "working mathematically". It underpins what primary school students do in patterns and algebra; data; measurement; space and geometry; and numbers, by stressing the skills of questioning, reasoning, applying strategies, reflecting and communicating. Lewis and colleague Jim Grant were consultants on the mathematics syllabus shake-up, the first since 1989. The syllabus now promotes mental computation, problem-solving, mathematics in a real-life context and more on technology. Grant says the changes were influenced by feedback from teachers that students could cope with more challenging problems. "Children were finding a lot of the syllabus too easy," he says.

There is greater precision in measurement, such as working out a swimming race time down to the parts of a second. Whole numbers, which previously only went up to 1 million, now soar into the trillions. But calculators, which have been available for 35 years and can be used from kindergarten, are still resisted by some tea