Kid's Aren't Cars - No Duh!
It is a sorry state in America that a film like this has to be made. If parents do not know this already they are just not paying attention. If you are a parent you should be aware of your school's report card and what is in all the teachers', administrators' and support staffs contracts. You should also be reviewing your children's books and that is just for starters.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) 09 report, the USA is 27th in math, 22nd in science, 32nd in reading – dead last in 32 industrialized nations! But so called good parents, conservatives and libertarians keep their children in Taxpayer Funded Socialist Indoctrination Centers, I have to ask once again, "Why are you allowing someone to bare the burden of educating YOUR children?"
The following piece appeared on Big Government.com. Be sure to visit the Big Government website to see the links associated with this story.
Quote of the Day - "Freedom requires responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw
Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
New Film Exposes Unions’ Decimation of Education
by Kyle Olson
“Kids Aren’t Cars” is a new short film series set for release February 1st. Using examples from the Midwest, it documents the impact organized labor has had on the American education system, creating a one-size-fits-all assembly line model that leaves students behind and treats teachers equally, stifling innovation and improvement.
Our government education system has been spending more and more each year, yet the results have been the same. While unions demand higher spending – which of course ends up in the pockets of their members – money is not fixing the problem.
Those that have been in the trenches gave shocking interviews – stories of money grabs by adults while children are left behind.
An executive director of a literacy clinic in Detroit – where high school graduates go to learn how to read – compared the actions of the school board to the Ku Klux Klan. “If they were sitting up there in Klan robes,” she said, no one would be tolerating what is going on, but the effect is the same. [Eight of the 9 school board members are black.]
We tell the story of two Indiana teachers recognized state-wide for their impact on students, only to be fired literally the next day because they lacked seniority of their co-workers.
Numerous leaders sound the alarm, but do elected leaders have the courage to stand up to the all-powerful teachers’ unions? The tide seems to be turning, but the need is dire. The United States continues to slip globally, with student achievement lagging behind Iceland and Hungary.
In short, it’s because our public school system is designed to benefits adults, at the expense of children. The focus has been on spending – which invariably ends up in pay, health benefits and retirement for the employees.
“Kids Aren’t Cars” is an unflinching look at the state of public education in America and what can be done about it.
The film’s Facebook page is here.
Showing posts with label Test Scores. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Test Scores. Show all posts
Monday, January 17, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
We see it, do you?
We see it, do you? A partial list of the many reasons why we homeschool.
The following piece appeared on Betrayed - Why Public Education is Failing.
Quote of the Day - "Together we have come to realize that for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school." - Ivan Illich, "Deschooling Society"
Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Monday, January 3, 2011
"What I see" - Parent volunteer tells heartbreaking tale
By Breann Treffry, school volunteer and parent of three, Spokane, WA
We’ve heard much recently about the United States slipping in the education ranking of developed nations. Having been a product of the American public school system, I knew, like many other American parents, that the education it provides is, shall we say, lacking in certain areas. What I didn’t realize - until I enrolled my own children, immersed myself in their schools, classrooms, curricula, and classmates, attended school board meetings, and heard the stories of other concerned parents and teachers - is just how lacking that education truly is.
From home, it can be hard for parents to understand the damage that’s being done to our kids until it’s too late and our children suddenly require remediation, tutoring, or have their hopes for their future crushed when they discover they’re woefully unprepared for college. When I initially began volunteering at my kids’ school, I admit, it was to monitor the education my own kids were receiving. In these last years, however, the education all our kids are receiving has revealed itself as the train wreck from which I can’t look away. Moral duty compels me to share what I have seen that every parent should know.
While I have either personally witnessed or have reliable sources who have witnessed these atrocities within Spokane Public Schools, they are in no way isolated to this little town in eastern Washington. The trend is nationwide.
1. Cursive writing is no longer taught.
2. I see high schoolers who cannot read cursive because they were never taught to write in cursive.
3. I see math curricula that do not teach standard algorithms, but rather create dependency on calculators and technology.
4. I see curricula that drive a wedge between students and their parents by fostering a dependency on peers through excessive group work.
5. I see math curricula that prevent parental involvement by excluding the methods we were taught and teaching only “new math.”
6. I know parents who can’t help their elementary age children with math homework because it doesn’t make sense to parents or students.
7. I’ve seen the light come on for students who have struggled for years - after their tutors or parents show them standard algorithms.
8. I have heard teachers ask parents to “please, please” not teach their children standard algorithms.
9. I know teachers who have offered classes for parents on how to understand the “new math.”
10. I know kids who “get in trouble” in class when they use the algorithms they learned at home.
11. I’ve heard parents and teachers remark that math has “changed so much” since we learned it; but, of course, math doesn’t change. Two plus two still equals four.
12. I see 12-year-olds who cannot add or subtract, let alone multiply or divide, yet have been pushed through to the next grade regardless.
13. I’ve heard teachers telling students, “You have to draw pictures to show your work” in math.
14. I see third and fourth graders who draw literally hundreds of marks or pictures to figure a single math problem because they haven’t been taught efficient methods, and still get the answer wrong.
15. I’ve seen eleventh graders who cannot divide a 3-digit number by a 1-digit number without a calculator.
16. I see elementary school classrooms with a calculator in every desk.
17.I know teachers who have been told not to try to engage struggling and difficult students in lessons but to let them be content with picture books in class.
18. I know teachers who have been reprimanded for criticizing district curricula or policy.
19. I see teachers paranoid and intimidated over teaching traditional math like standard algorithms and facts drill in their classrooms.
20. I’ve heard district administrators openly discussing “problem teachers.”
21. I see students in classrooms where the teacher taught algorithms and drilled math facts excel the following year over students from classrooms where the teacher did not.
22. I know volunteer tutors who’ve been refused because they teach traditional math methods rather than “fuzzy” math.
23. I see students who are “good at math” in tears over their math homework.
24. I’ve heard a teacher tell students, “Abraham Lincoln fought and died in the Civil War.”
25. I see an appalling rate of high school graduates who require remedial math courses in college.
26. I’ve seen students who successfully test into college-level math ultimately struggle and learn that they need remediation after all to fill in the holes in their math education.
27. I see kids being taught daily to a level far beneath their capacity, and being told that they just have to sit there.
28. Alternately, I see teachers struggle to provide additional challenges for those kids using only “district-approved curricula.”
29. I see third graders singing preschool songs as a class.
30. I’ve seen district-provided material that tells teachers to spend more individual instructional time with lower-performing students than with higher-performing students.
31. I see students who mock and taunt adults in the school, with no significant consequences.
32. I see students with multiple truancies that result in no consequences.
33. I see unexcused absences that go undisciplined.
34. I see late work given full credit.
35. I see students receive extra credit points through no effort of their own, for example, when the teacher calls them by the wrong name in class.
36. I’ve seen implementation of a grading system where it’s often impossible to achieve either the highest or the lowest grade.
37. I’ve seen materials that tell teachers to train students not to question teachers or other students, not to raise their hand when they have the right answer, and not to take the lead in groups.
38. I see academic learning time used for social exercises designed to make sure everyone a) feels good and b) realizes that they’re a small part of a large group.
39. I’ve learned that - despite what the district has claimed - the WASL (now the MSP or HSPE at the high school level) is not required, not at any grade level and not for graduation in the state of Washington – rather, there are several ways to meet the graduation requirement.
40. I see students’ love of and excitement for learning turning to drudgery and perceived failure.
As much I want to spare my own children from these wrongs, it’s just as wrong for adults to sit quietly by as the next generation, with eyes wide and full of hope and excitement, receives what has become the empty promise of an American public education. The essence of public schools is education for all, yet our schools are falling far short of the claim that they will prepare students to compete as adults, let alone in a global market.
I ask parents and teachers, what have you seen that just doesn’t sit right with you? What have you been told to teach or not to teach? What have your kids brought home that didn’t make sense, but you feel you can only assume that the schools must know best? Any one of these seemingly little things as an isolated incident might not mean much but for our children’s sake, do not discount it. These incidents add up to one giant failure across the country, putting the United States at the bottom of the list. http://www.geographic.org/country_ranks/educational_score_performance_country_ranks_2009_oecd.html#maths
Parents and teachers, you are not alone. Get together, talk, stand up for our children. It’s their future and our nation’s future that are at stake.
The following piece appeared on Betrayed - Why Public Education is Failing.
Quote of the Day - "Together we have come to realize that for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school." - Ivan Illich, "Deschooling Society"
Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Monday, January 3, 2011
"What I see" - Parent volunteer tells heartbreaking tale
By Breann Treffry, school volunteer and parent of three, Spokane, WA
We’ve heard much recently about the United States slipping in the education ranking of developed nations. Having been a product of the American public school system, I knew, like many other American parents, that the education it provides is, shall we say, lacking in certain areas. What I didn’t realize - until I enrolled my own children, immersed myself in their schools, classrooms, curricula, and classmates, attended school board meetings, and heard the stories of other concerned parents and teachers - is just how lacking that education truly is.
From home, it can be hard for parents to understand the damage that’s being done to our kids until it’s too late and our children suddenly require remediation, tutoring, or have their hopes for their future crushed when they discover they’re woefully unprepared for college. When I initially began volunteering at my kids’ school, I admit, it was to monitor the education my own kids were receiving. In these last years, however, the education all our kids are receiving has revealed itself as the train wreck from which I can’t look away. Moral duty compels me to share what I have seen that every parent should know.
While I have either personally witnessed or have reliable sources who have witnessed these atrocities within Spokane Public Schools, they are in no way isolated to this little town in eastern Washington. The trend is nationwide.
1. Cursive writing is no longer taught.
2. I see high schoolers who cannot read cursive because they were never taught to write in cursive.
3. I see math curricula that do not teach standard algorithms, but rather create dependency on calculators and technology.
4. I see curricula that drive a wedge between students and their parents by fostering a dependency on peers through excessive group work.
5. I see math curricula that prevent parental involvement by excluding the methods we were taught and teaching only “new math.”
6. I know parents who can’t help their elementary age children with math homework because it doesn’t make sense to parents or students.
7. I’ve seen the light come on for students who have struggled for years - after their tutors or parents show them standard algorithms.
8. I have heard teachers ask parents to “please, please” not teach their children standard algorithms.
9. I know teachers who have offered classes for parents on how to understand the “new math.”
10. I know kids who “get in trouble” in class when they use the algorithms they learned at home.
11. I’ve heard parents and teachers remark that math has “changed so much” since we learned it; but, of course, math doesn’t change. Two plus two still equals four.
12. I see 12-year-olds who cannot add or subtract, let alone multiply or divide, yet have been pushed through to the next grade regardless.
13. I’ve heard teachers telling students, “You have to draw pictures to show your work” in math.
14. I see third and fourth graders who draw literally hundreds of marks or pictures to figure a single math problem because they haven’t been taught efficient methods, and still get the answer wrong.
15. I’ve seen eleventh graders who cannot divide a 3-digit number by a 1-digit number without a calculator.
16. I see elementary school classrooms with a calculator in every desk.
17.I know teachers who have been told not to try to engage struggling and difficult students in lessons but to let them be content with picture books in class.
18. I know teachers who have been reprimanded for criticizing district curricula or policy.
19. I see teachers paranoid and intimidated over teaching traditional math like standard algorithms and facts drill in their classrooms.
20. I’ve heard district administrators openly discussing “problem teachers.”
21. I see students in classrooms where the teacher taught algorithms and drilled math facts excel the following year over students from classrooms where the teacher did not.
22. I know volunteer tutors who’ve been refused because they teach traditional math methods rather than “fuzzy” math.
23. I see students who are “good at math” in tears over their math homework.
24. I’ve heard a teacher tell students, “Abraham Lincoln fought and died in the Civil War.”
25. I see an appalling rate of high school graduates who require remedial math courses in college.
26. I’ve seen students who successfully test into college-level math ultimately struggle and learn that they need remediation after all to fill in the holes in their math education.
27. I see kids being taught daily to a level far beneath their capacity, and being told that they just have to sit there.
28. Alternately, I see teachers struggle to provide additional challenges for those kids using only “district-approved curricula.”
29. I see third graders singing preschool songs as a class.
30. I’ve seen district-provided material that tells teachers to spend more individual instructional time with lower-performing students than with higher-performing students.
31. I see students who mock and taunt adults in the school, with no significant consequences.
32. I see students with multiple truancies that result in no consequences.
33. I see unexcused absences that go undisciplined.
34. I see late work given full credit.
35. I see students receive extra credit points through no effort of their own, for example, when the teacher calls them by the wrong name in class.
36. I’ve seen implementation of a grading system where it’s often impossible to achieve either the highest or the lowest grade.
37. I’ve seen materials that tell teachers to train students not to question teachers or other students, not to raise their hand when they have the right answer, and not to take the lead in groups.
38. I see academic learning time used for social exercises designed to make sure everyone a) feels good and b) realizes that they’re a small part of a large group.
39. I’ve learned that - despite what the district has claimed - the WASL (now the MSP or HSPE at the high school level) is not required, not at any grade level and not for graduation in the state of Washington – rather, there are several ways to meet the graduation requirement.
40. I see students’ love of and excitement for learning turning to drudgery and perceived failure.
As much I want to spare my own children from these wrongs, it’s just as wrong for adults to sit quietly by as the next generation, with eyes wide and full of hope and excitement, receives what has become the empty promise of an American public education. The essence of public schools is education for all, yet our schools are falling far short of the claim that they will prepare students to compete as adults, let alone in a global market.
I ask parents and teachers, what have you seen that just doesn’t sit right with you? What have you been told to teach or not to teach? What have your kids brought home that didn’t make sense, but you feel you can only assume that the schools must know best? Any one of these seemingly little things as an isolated incident might not mean much but for our children’s sake, do not discount it. These incidents add up to one giant failure across the country, putting the United States at the bottom of the list. http://www.geographic.org/country_ranks/educational_score_performance_country_ranks_2009_oecd.html#maths
Parents and teachers, you are not alone. Get together, talk, stand up for our children. It’s their future and our nation’s future that are at stake.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Doing the Right Thing
Good for the Ms. Goudeau, social promotion aids neither society or the individual.
The following piece appeared on Foxnews.com.
Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left an exercise for my readers.
Updated May 07, 2010
Teacher Sues Over Right to Flunk Her Students
By Ed Barnes - FOXNews.com
Sheila Goudeau, by all accounts, was a good teacher. In fact, she was the only nationally certified teacher at Riveroaks Elementary School, and she was a nominee for teacher of the year.
But that didn’t qualify her to grade her students, according to a suit she has filed against the East Baton Rouge, La., school and its administrators.
According to the civil rights suit filed in federal court in Baton Rouge, Goudeau was asked to teach fourth grade last year by the school’s principal, Shilonda Shamlin, in order to help raise grades and have students prepare for the state mandated Louisiana Educational Assessment Test (LEAP), which all students in the state must pass to move on to the next grade.
After she took the job, the suit alleges, Shamlin ordered that no student was to get a failing grade and that teachers were not to record any grade lower than a "D."
Goudeau’s attorney, Craig Sterling Watson, said the suit doesn’t specify why Shamlin gave the orders, and he said Goudeau still doesn't know. He said Goudeau complied with the orders and didn’t fail students, but she complained about the orders and filed a grievance with the school district.
At that point, the suit claims, Goudeau was monitored, harassed and disparaged in front of her students.She has since transferred to another elementary school in the district.
The suit seeks unspecified damages for Goudeau's severe and extreme mental pain, suffering, and anguish; physical pain, suffering and anguish; loss of sleep; loss of quality of lifestyle; loss of reputation and standing in the community; humiliation and embarrassment; medical expenses; counseling; wages; and loss of earning capacity from the principal, the school district, and current and former school superintendents of the district.
Principal Shamlin did not reply to repeated requests for comment. Domione Rutledge, general counsel for East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, said the school district couldn’t speak about the allegations “because it still hadn’t been served with the papers.”
Lawsuits like the one Goudeau filed are rare, said Perry A Zirkel, a professor in education and law at Lehigh University says. He explained that while courts generally agree that a teacher's right to grade is protected by the First Amendment, they also find that administrators have the same right and can change grades as they like.
“So the teacher wins the right to give a D and the school has the right to change it to an A,” he said.
But the suit has already served one purpose. It brought about a wave of criticism aimed at the principal and school administrators and showed that the school staff was bitterly divided. When a story about the lawsuit appeared in The Advocate, a Baton Rouge daily, a chorus of complaints charged that Shamlin ruled the school with a heavy hand and demanded regimentation of studies and classrooms.
“It's a crippling work environment at Riveroaks and the school's reputation is well-known throughout the parish," wrote an anonymous poster to the newspaper's website. "Just consider the teacher turnover at the school. There is almost an entire new staff hired each year. This year won't be any different.”
But another responded, "Mrs. Shamlin has done more to improve the quality of education at Riveroaks in the last four years than any other principal. Ask any parent that has had more than one child there over the years. She cares about the students and has high standards for them and the teachers."
The case is unlikely to go to trial for some time, Watson said.
The following piece appeared on Foxnews.com.
Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left an exercise for my readers.
Updated May 07, 2010
Teacher Sues Over Right to Flunk Her Students
By Ed Barnes - FOXNews.com
Sheila Goudeau, by all accounts, was a good teacher. In fact, she was the only nationally certified teacher at Riveroaks Elementary School, and she was a nominee for teacher of the year.
But that didn’t qualify her to grade her students, according to a suit she has filed against the East Baton Rouge, La., school and its administrators.
According to the civil rights suit filed in federal court in Baton Rouge, Goudeau was asked to teach fourth grade last year by the school’s principal, Shilonda Shamlin, in order to help raise grades and have students prepare for the state mandated Louisiana Educational Assessment Test (LEAP), which all students in the state must pass to move on to the next grade.
After she took the job, the suit alleges, Shamlin ordered that no student was to get a failing grade and that teachers were not to record any grade lower than a "D."
Goudeau’s attorney, Craig Sterling Watson, said the suit doesn’t specify why Shamlin gave the orders, and he said Goudeau still doesn't know. He said Goudeau complied with the orders and didn’t fail students, but she complained about the orders and filed a grievance with the school district.
At that point, the suit claims, Goudeau was monitored, harassed and disparaged in front of her students.She has since transferred to another elementary school in the district.
The suit seeks unspecified damages for Goudeau's severe and extreme mental pain, suffering, and anguish; physical pain, suffering and anguish; loss of sleep; loss of quality of lifestyle; loss of reputation and standing in the community; humiliation and embarrassment; medical expenses; counseling; wages; and loss of earning capacity from the principal, the school district, and current and former school superintendents of the district.
Principal Shamlin did not reply to repeated requests for comment. Domione Rutledge, general counsel for East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, said the school district couldn’t speak about the allegations “because it still hadn’t been served with the papers.”
Lawsuits like the one Goudeau filed are rare, said Perry A Zirkel, a professor in education and law at Lehigh University says. He explained that while courts generally agree that a teacher's right to grade is protected by the First Amendment, they also find that administrators have the same right and can change grades as they like.
“So the teacher wins the right to give a D and the school has the right to change it to an A,” he said.
But the suit has already served one purpose. It brought about a wave of criticism aimed at the principal and school administrators and showed that the school staff was bitterly divided. When a story about the lawsuit appeared in The Advocate, a Baton Rouge daily, a chorus of complaints charged that Shamlin ruled the school with a heavy hand and demanded regimentation of studies and classrooms.
“It's a crippling work environment at Riveroaks and the school's reputation is well-known throughout the parish," wrote an anonymous poster to the newspaper's website. "Just consider the teacher turnover at the school. There is almost an entire new staff hired each year. This year won't be any different.”
But another responded, "Mrs. Shamlin has done more to improve the quality of education at Riveroaks in the last four years than any other principal. Ask any parent that has had more than one child there over the years. She cares about the students and has high standards for them and the teachers."
The case is unlikely to go to trial for some time, Watson said.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
If Some People Really Believed In Civil Rights they would Support Educational Freedom
I just love Walter E. Williams he types it like it is. If Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton really cared about civil rights they would fight for school choice. They are for keeping their fellow man down not lifting them up to their fullest potential. The following piece appears on Townhall.com.
Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left an exercise for my readers.
Black Americans and Liberty
by Walter E. Williams
Having recently reached 74 years of age, if one were to ask me what's my greatest disappointment in life, a top contender would surely be the level of misunderstanding, perhaps contempt, that black Americans have for the principles of personal liberty and their abiding faith in government. Contempt or misunderstanding of the principles of personal liberty and faith in government by no means make blacks unique among Americans, but the unique history of black Americans should make us, above all other Americans, most suspicious of any encroachment on personal liberty and most distrustful of government. Let's look at it.
The most serious injustices suffered by blacks came at the hands of government, at different levels, failure to protect personal liberty. Slavery was only the most egregious example of that failure. Congress and the courts supported the injustice of slavery through the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision. After emancipation, there were government-enforced Jim Crow laws denying blacks basic liberties and court decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson that reinforced and gave sanction to private acts that abridged black people's liberties.
The heroic civil rights movement, culminating with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, put an end to the grossest abuses of personal liberties, but government evolved into a subtler enemy. Visit any major city and one would find that the overwhelmingly law-abiding members of the black community are living in constant fear of robbery, assault and murder. In fact, 52 percent of U.S. homicides are committed by blacks, 49 percent of homicide victims are black and 93 percent of them were murdered by fellow blacks. The level of crime in black communities is the result of government's failure to perform its most basic function, namely the protection of its citizens. The level of criminal activity not only puts residents in physical jeopardy but represents a heavy tax on people least able to bear it. That tax is paid in the forms of higher prices for goods and services and fewer shopping opportunities because supermarkets and other large retailers are reluctant to bear the costs of doing business in high-crime areas. This government failure has the full effect of a law prohibiting economic development in many black communities.
Then there's the grossly fraudulent education delivered by the government schools that serve most black communities. The average black high school senior has a sixth- or seventh-grade achievement level and most of those who manage to graduate have what's no less than a fraudulent diploma, one that certifies a 12th-grade level of achievement when in fact the youngster might not have half that. If the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan wanted to sabotage black academic excellence, he could not find a more effective means to do so than the government school system in most cities.
Tragically, most Americans, including black people whose ancestors have suffered from gross injustices of slavery, think it quite proper for government to forcibly use one person to serve the purposes of another. That's precisely what income redistribution is: the practice of forcibly taking the fruits of one person's labor for the benefit of another. That's also what theft is and the practice differs from slavery only in degree but not kind.
What about blacks who cherish liberty and limited government and joined in the tea party movement, or blacks who are members of organizations such as the Lincoln Institute, Frederick Douglass Foundation and Project 21? They've been maligned as Oreos, Uncle Toms and traitors to their race. To make such a charge borders on stupidity, possibly racism. After all, when President Reagan disagreed with Tip O'Neill, did either charge the other with being a traitor to his race? Then why is it deemed traitorous when one black disagrees with another, unless you think that all blacks must think alike?
I hope it's misunderstanding, rather than contempt, that explains black hostility toward the principles of liberty.
Cathy
Spelling errors, grammar errors, misuse of homonyms and typos are left an exercise for my readers.
Black Americans and Liberty
by Walter E. Williams
Having recently reached 74 years of age, if one were to ask me what's my greatest disappointment in life, a top contender would surely be the level of misunderstanding, perhaps contempt, that black Americans have for the principles of personal liberty and their abiding faith in government. Contempt or misunderstanding of the principles of personal liberty and faith in government by no means make blacks unique among Americans, but the unique history of black Americans should make us, above all other Americans, most suspicious of any encroachment on personal liberty and most distrustful of government. Let's look at it.
The most serious injustices suffered by blacks came at the hands of government, at different levels, failure to protect personal liberty. Slavery was only the most egregious example of that failure. Congress and the courts supported the injustice of slavery through the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision. After emancipation, there were government-enforced Jim Crow laws denying blacks basic liberties and court decisions such as Plessy v. Ferguson that reinforced and gave sanction to private acts that abridged black people's liberties.
The heroic civil rights movement, culminating with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, put an end to the grossest abuses of personal liberties, but government evolved into a subtler enemy. Visit any major city and one would find that the overwhelmingly law-abiding members of the black community are living in constant fear of robbery, assault and murder. In fact, 52 percent of U.S. homicides are committed by blacks, 49 percent of homicide victims are black and 93 percent of them were murdered by fellow blacks. The level of crime in black communities is the result of government's failure to perform its most basic function, namely the protection of its citizens. The level of criminal activity not only puts residents in physical jeopardy but represents a heavy tax on people least able to bear it. That tax is paid in the forms of higher prices for goods and services and fewer shopping opportunities because supermarkets and other large retailers are reluctant to bear the costs of doing business in high-crime areas. This government failure has the full effect of a law prohibiting economic development in many black communities.
Then there's the grossly fraudulent education delivered by the government schools that serve most black communities. The average black high school senior has a sixth- or seventh-grade achievement level and most of those who manage to graduate have what's no less than a fraudulent diploma, one that certifies a 12th-grade level of achievement when in fact the youngster might not have half that. If the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan wanted to sabotage black academic excellence, he could not find a more effective means to do so than the government school system in most cities.
Tragically, most Americans, including black people whose ancestors have suffered from gross injustices of slavery, think it quite proper for government to forcibly use one person to serve the purposes of another. That's precisely what income redistribution is: the practice of forcibly taking the fruits of one person's labor for the benefit of another. That's also what theft is and the practice differs from slavery only in degree but not kind.
What about blacks who cherish liberty and limited government and joined in the tea party movement, or blacks who are members of organizations such as the Lincoln Institute, Frederick Douglass Foundation and Project 21? They've been maligned as Oreos, Uncle Toms and traitors to their race. To make such a charge borders on stupidity, possibly racism. After all, when President Reagan disagreed with Tip O'Neill, did either charge the other with being a traitor to his race? Then why is it deemed traitorous when one black disagrees with another, unless you think that all blacks must think alike?
I hope it's misunderstanding, rather than contempt, that explains black hostility toward the principles of liberty.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Homeschooling Works
The Home School Legal Defense Association has commissioned a report from the National Home Education Research Institute to look at academic achievement in homeschoolers. As you will read homeschooling works. It is time for the government to get out of the way so homeschooling parents can focus on educating their children instead of dealing with ridiculous Legislators who want to make it more difficult to homeschool.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
New Nationwide Study Confirms Homeschool Academic Achievement
Ian Slatter
Director of Media Relations
August 10, 2009
Each year, the homeschool movement graduates at least 100,000 students. Due to the fact that both the United States government and homeschool advocates agree that homeschooling has been growing at around 7% per annum for the past decade, it is not surprising that homeschooling is gaining increased attention. Consequently, many people have been asking questions about homeschooling, usually with a focus on either the academic or social abilities of homeschool graduates.
As an organization advocating on behalf of homeschoolers, Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) long ago committed itself to demonstrating that homeschooling should be viewed as a mainstream educational alternative.
We strongly believe that homeschooling is a thriving education movement capable of producing millions of academically and socially able students who will have a tremendously positive effect on society.
Despite much resistance from outside the homeschool movement, whether from teachers unions, politicians, school administrators, judges, social service workers, or even family members, over the past few decades homeschoolers have slowly but surely won acceptance as a mainstream education alternative. This has been due in part to the commissioning of research which demonstrates the academic success of the average homeschooler.
The last piece of major research looking at homeschool academic achievement was completed in 1998 by Dr. Lawrence Rudner. Rudner, a professor at the ERIC Clearinghouse, which is part of the University of Maryland, surveyed over 20,000 homeschooled students. His study, titled Home Schooling Works, discovered that homeschoolers (on average) scored about 30 percentile points higher than the national average on standardized achievement tests.
This research and several other studies supporting the claims of homeschoolers have helped the homeschool cause tremendously. Today, you would be hard pressed to find an opponent of homeschooling who says that homeschoolers, on average, are poor academic achievers.
There is one problem, however. Rudner’s research was conducted over a decade ago. Without another look at the level of academic achievement among homeschooled students, critics could begin to say that research on homeschool achievement is outdated and no longer relevant.
Recognizing this problem, HSLDA commissioned Dr. Brian Ray, an internationally recognized scholar and president of the non-profit National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), to collect data for the 2007–08 academic year for a new study which would build upon 25 years of homeschool academic scholarship conducted by Ray himself, Rudner, and many others.
Drawing from 15 independent testing services, the Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academic Achievement and Demographics included 11,739 homeschooled students from all 50 states who took three well-known tests—California Achievement Test, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, and Stanford Achievement Test for the 2007–08 academic year. The Progress Report is the most comprehensive homeschool academic study ever completed.
The Results
Overall the study showed significant advances in homeschool academic achievement as well as revealing that issues such as student gender, parents’ education level, and family income had little bearing on the results of homeschooled students.
There was little difference between the results of homeschooled boys and girls on core scores.
Boys—87th percentile
Girls—88th percentile
Household income had little impact on the results of homeschooled students.
$34,999 or less—85th percentile
$35,000–$49,999—86th percentile
$50,000–$69,999—86th percentile
$70,000 or more—89th percentile
The education level of the parents made a noticeable difference, but the homeschooled children of non-college educated parents still scored in the 83rd percentile, which is well above the national average.
Neither parent has a college degree—83rd percentile
One parent has a college degree—86th percentile
Both parents have a college degree—90th percentile
Whether either parent was a certified teacher did not matter.
Certified (i.e., either parent ever certified)—87th percentile
Not certified (i.e., neither parent ever certified)—88th percentile
Parental spending on home education made little difference.
Spent $600 or more on the student—89th percentile
Spent under $600 on the student—86th percentile
The extent of government regulation on homeschoolers did not affect the results.
Low state regulation—87th percentile
Medium state regulation—88th percentile
High state regulation—87th percentile
HSLDA defines the extent of government regulation this way:
States with low regulation: No state requirement for parents to initiate any contact or State requires parental notification only.
States with moderate regulation: State requires parents to send notification, test scores, and/or professional evaluation of student progress.
State with high regulation: State requires parents to send notification or achievement test scores and/or professional evaluation, plus other requirements (e.g. curriculum approval by the state, teacher qualification of parents, or home visits by state officials).
The question HSLDA regularly puts before state legislatures is, “If government regulation does not improve the results of homeschoolers why is it necessary?”
In short, the results found in the new study are consistent with 25 years of research, which show that as a group homeschoolers consistently perform above average academically. The Progress Report also shows that, even as the numbers and diversity of homeschoolers have grown tremendously over the past 10 years, homeschoolers have actually increased the already sizeable gap in academic achievement between themselves and their public school counterparts-moving from about 30 percentile points higher in the Rudner study (1998) to 37 percentile points higher in the Progress Report (2009).
As mentioned earlier, the achievement gaps that are well-documented in public school between boys and girls, parents with lower incomes, and parents with lower levels of education are not found among homeschoolers. While it is not possible to draw a definitive conclusion, it does appear from all the existing research that homeschooling equalizes every student upwards. Homeschoolers are actually achieving every day what the public schools claim are their goals—to narrow achievement gaps and to educate each child to a high level.
Of course, an education movement which consistently shows that children can be educated to a standard significantly above the average public school student at a fraction of the cost—the average spent by participants in the Progress Report was about $500 per child per year as opposed to the public school average of nearly $10,000 per child per year—will inevitably draw attention from the K-12 public education industry.
Answering the Critics
This particular study is the most comprehensive ever undertaken. It attempts to build upon and improve on the previous research. One criticism of the Rudner study was that it only drew students from one large testing service. Although there was no reason to believe that homeschoolers participating with that service were automatically non-representative of the broader homeschool community, HSLDA decided to answer this criticism by using 15 independent testing services for this new study. There can be no doubt that homeschoolers from all walks of life and backgrounds participated in the Progress Report.
While it is true that not every homeschooler in America was part of this study, it is also true that the Progress Report provides clear evidence of the success of homeschool programs.
The reason is that all social science studies are based on samples. The goal is to make the sample as representative as possible because then more confident conclusions can be drawn about the larger population. Those conclusions are then validated when other studies find the same or similar results.
Critics tend to focus on this narrow point and maintain that they will not be satisfied until every homeschooler is submitted to a test. This is not a reasonable request because not all homeschoolers take standardized achievement tests. In fact, while the majority of homeschool parents do indeed test their children simply to track their progress and also to provide them with the experience of test-taking, it is far from a comprehensive and universal practice among homeschoolers.
The best researchers can do is provide a sample of homeschooling families and compare the results of their children to those of public school students, in order to give the most accurate picture of how homeschoolers in general are faring academically.
The concern that the only families who chose to participate are the most successful homeschoolers can be alleviated by the fact that the overwhelming majority of parents did not know their children's test results before agreeing to participate in the study.
HSLDA believes that this study along with the several that have been done in the past are clear evidence that homeschoolers are succeeding academically.
Final Thought
Homeschooling is making great strides and hundreds of thousands of parents across America are showing every day what can be achieved when parents exercise their right to homeschool and make tremendous sacrifices to provide their children with the best education available.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
New Nationwide Study Confirms Homeschool Academic Achievement
Ian Slatter
Director of Media Relations
August 10, 2009
Each year, the homeschool movement graduates at least 100,000 students. Due to the fact that both the United States government and homeschool advocates agree that homeschooling has been growing at around 7% per annum for the past decade, it is not surprising that homeschooling is gaining increased attention. Consequently, many people have been asking questions about homeschooling, usually with a focus on either the academic or social abilities of homeschool graduates.
As an organization advocating on behalf of homeschoolers, Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) long ago committed itself to demonstrating that homeschooling should be viewed as a mainstream educational alternative.
We strongly believe that homeschooling is a thriving education movement capable of producing millions of academically and socially able students who will have a tremendously positive effect on society.
Despite much resistance from outside the homeschool movement, whether from teachers unions, politicians, school administrators, judges, social service workers, or even family members, over the past few decades homeschoolers have slowly but surely won acceptance as a mainstream education alternative. This has been due in part to the commissioning of research which demonstrates the academic success of the average homeschooler.
The last piece of major research looking at homeschool academic achievement was completed in 1998 by Dr. Lawrence Rudner. Rudner, a professor at the ERIC Clearinghouse, which is part of the University of Maryland, surveyed over 20,000 homeschooled students. His study, titled Home Schooling Works, discovered that homeschoolers (on average) scored about 30 percentile points higher than the national average on standardized achievement tests.
This research and several other studies supporting the claims of homeschoolers have helped the homeschool cause tremendously. Today, you would be hard pressed to find an opponent of homeschooling who says that homeschoolers, on average, are poor academic achievers.
There is one problem, however. Rudner’s research was conducted over a decade ago. Without another look at the level of academic achievement among homeschooled students, critics could begin to say that research on homeschool achievement is outdated and no longer relevant.
Recognizing this problem, HSLDA commissioned Dr. Brian Ray, an internationally recognized scholar and president of the non-profit National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI), to collect data for the 2007–08 academic year for a new study which would build upon 25 years of homeschool academic scholarship conducted by Ray himself, Rudner, and many others.
Drawing from 15 independent testing services, the Progress Report 2009: Homeschool Academic Achievement and Demographics included 11,739 homeschooled students from all 50 states who took three well-known tests—California Achievement Test, Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, and Stanford Achievement Test for the 2007–08 academic year. The Progress Report is the most comprehensive homeschool academic study ever completed.
The Results
Overall the study showed significant advances in homeschool academic achievement as well as revealing that issues such as student gender, parents’ education level, and family income had little bearing on the results of homeschooled students.
There was little difference between the results of homeschooled boys and girls on core scores.
Boys—87th percentile
Girls—88th percentile
Household income had little impact on the results of homeschooled students.
$34,999 or less—85th percentile
$35,000–$49,999—86th percentile
$50,000–$69,999—86th percentile
$70,000 or more—89th percentile
The education level of the parents made a noticeable difference, but the homeschooled children of non-college educated parents still scored in the 83rd percentile, which is well above the national average.
Neither parent has a college degree—83rd percentile
One parent has a college degree—86th percentile
Both parents have a college degree—90th percentile
Whether either parent was a certified teacher did not matter.
Certified (i.e., either parent ever certified)—87th percentile
Not certified (i.e., neither parent ever certified)—88th percentile
Parental spending on home education made little difference.
Spent $600 or more on the student—89th percentile
Spent under $600 on the student—86th percentile
The extent of government regulation on homeschoolers did not affect the results.
Low state regulation—87th percentile
Medium state regulation—88th percentile
High state regulation—87th percentile
HSLDA defines the extent of government regulation this way:
States with low regulation: No state requirement for parents to initiate any contact or State requires parental notification only.
States with moderate regulation: State requires parents to send notification, test scores, and/or professional evaluation of student progress.
State with high regulation: State requires parents to send notification or achievement test scores and/or professional evaluation, plus other requirements (e.g. curriculum approval by the state, teacher qualification of parents, or home visits by state officials).
The question HSLDA regularly puts before state legislatures is, “If government regulation does not improve the results of homeschoolers why is it necessary?”
In short, the results found in the new study are consistent with 25 years of research, which show that as a group homeschoolers consistently perform above average academically. The Progress Report also shows that, even as the numbers and diversity of homeschoolers have grown tremendously over the past 10 years, homeschoolers have actually increased the already sizeable gap in academic achievement between themselves and their public school counterparts-moving from about 30 percentile points higher in the Rudner study (1998) to 37 percentile points higher in the Progress Report (2009).
As mentioned earlier, the achievement gaps that are well-documented in public school between boys and girls, parents with lower incomes, and parents with lower levels of education are not found among homeschoolers. While it is not possible to draw a definitive conclusion, it does appear from all the existing research that homeschooling equalizes every student upwards. Homeschoolers are actually achieving every day what the public schools claim are their goals—to narrow achievement gaps and to educate each child to a high level.
Of course, an education movement which consistently shows that children can be educated to a standard significantly above the average public school student at a fraction of the cost—the average spent by participants in the Progress Report was about $500 per child per year as opposed to the public school average of nearly $10,000 per child per year—will inevitably draw attention from the K-12 public education industry.
Answering the Critics
This particular study is the most comprehensive ever undertaken. It attempts to build upon and improve on the previous research. One criticism of the Rudner study was that it only drew students from one large testing service. Although there was no reason to believe that homeschoolers participating with that service were automatically non-representative of the broader homeschool community, HSLDA decided to answer this criticism by using 15 independent testing services for this new study. There can be no doubt that homeschoolers from all walks of life and backgrounds participated in the Progress Report.
While it is true that not every homeschooler in America was part of this study, it is also true that the Progress Report provides clear evidence of the success of homeschool programs.
The reason is that all social science studies are based on samples. The goal is to make the sample as representative as possible because then more confident conclusions can be drawn about the larger population. Those conclusions are then validated when other studies find the same or similar results.
Critics tend to focus on this narrow point and maintain that they will not be satisfied until every homeschooler is submitted to a test. This is not a reasonable request because not all homeschoolers take standardized achievement tests. In fact, while the majority of homeschool parents do indeed test their children simply to track their progress and also to provide them with the experience of test-taking, it is far from a comprehensive and universal practice among homeschoolers.
The best researchers can do is provide a sample of homeschooling families and compare the results of their children to those of public school students, in order to give the most accurate picture of how homeschoolers in general are faring academically.
The concern that the only families who chose to participate are the most successful homeschoolers can be alleviated by the fact that the overwhelming majority of parents did not know their children's test results before agreeing to participate in the study.
HSLDA believes that this study along with the several that have been done in the past are clear evidence that homeschoolers are succeeding academically.
Final Thought
Homeschooling is making great strides and hundreds of thousands of parents across America are showing every day what can be achieved when parents exercise their right to homeschool and make tremendous sacrifices to provide their children with the best education available.
Monday, July 20, 2009
We Agree Tenure Must Go
Jim and I have been saying this for years and totally agree with the article below.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
The following piece appears on the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution website.
End tenure, improve teaching
By John D. Marshall
Over the past 70 years, public education has been a catalyst for America’s rise to global leadership. Public schools are a gateway to opportunity for everyone and offer the best hope for lifting a child out of poverty, giving him an opportunity for a better life.
As conscientious citizens, we must invest significantly more time and resources in our public schools, and specifically in our best teachers. On most standardized and norm-referenced tests, American students score in the middle of the pack or worse, and far below the developed countries in Europe and Asia.
We read about increasing class sizes, reduction of teachers’ aides and extracurricular activities, elimination of special ed programs, and “virtual” education replacing the traditional classroom teacher — all as a result of the current economic downturn.
However, this recession may provide the leverage to make fundamental changes to our education system and specifically, to enhance the teaching profession, whose reputation has suffered for the past 30 years.
The most important factor in student learning is the quality of the teacher. Recent research indicates overwhelmingly that, with the exception of the family’s role, the capabilities of the classroom teacher are more important than any other school factor in a student’s learning. It is more important than class size, facilities, curriculum, the number of computers in a school, and per-pupil funding.
The difference in what students learn from a good teacher compared to a poor teacher is vast. We are better off having our child in a class of 25 with a great teacher than in a class of five with a mediocre teacher.
But how do we identify promising teacher candidates? It turns out that identifying the good teachers before they enter the field is surprisingly difficult. Research indicates that a college graduate’s grades, test scores, graduate degrees and teaching certifications have little predictive value in determining effectiveness. The many intangibles make it almost impossible to predict someone’s ability to connect with kids. In fact, many experts believe that teachers’ character, integrity and personality may be more important than their content knowledge.
However, what everyone in the field can agree on is that becoming a really good teacher takes time. And by the time the school system is able to determine who is a good teacher — and who is not — everyone in the profession has achieved tenure. This is a problem.
What other professions have tenure — the guaranteeing of a job, in essence, for life? One can argue the steel and auto industries have a form of tenure, and look what has happened to their competitiveness. We must revisit tenure in public education, and all of us, the American people, must recognize that teachers unions have not been good, neither for our most gifted teachers (who deserve more recognition and money) or most importantly, for the children in our schools.
Education must become more open to talented professionals coming into teaching from a variety of fields and at different stages in their careers. We must not allow teacher certification to limit high-potential teacher candidates’ access to the profession.
I believe we can experience a true renaissance in the teaching profession if we can encourage talented people — of all ages — to enter teaching, support the best teachers through constructive evaluation and far better compensation, and reduce the influence of the unions to protect everyone, regardless of competence.
If America is to be competitive in this challenging new world, this change in how we support our teachers can’t happen soon enough.
John D. Marshall is the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School head of school.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
The following piece appears on the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution website.
End tenure, improve teaching
By John D. Marshall
Over the past 70 years, public education has been a catalyst for America’s rise to global leadership. Public schools are a gateway to opportunity for everyone and offer the best hope for lifting a child out of poverty, giving him an opportunity for a better life.
As conscientious citizens, we must invest significantly more time and resources in our public schools, and specifically in our best teachers. On most standardized and norm-referenced tests, American students score in the middle of the pack or worse, and far below the developed countries in Europe and Asia.
We read about increasing class sizes, reduction of teachers’ aides and extracurricular activities, elimination of special ed programs, and “virtual” education replacing the traditional classroom teacher — all as a result of the current economic downturn.
However, this recession may provide the leverage to make fundamental changes to our education system and specifically, to enhance the teaching profession, whose reputation has suffered for the past 30 years.
The most important factor in student learning is the quality of the teacher. Recent research indicates overwhelmingly that, with the exception of the family’s role, the capabilities of the classroom teacher are more important than any other school factor in a student’s learning. It is more important than class size, facilities, curriculum, the number of computers in a school, and per-pupil funding.
The difference in what students learn from a good teacher compared to a poor teacher is vast. We are better off having our child in a class of 25 with a great teacher than in a class of five with a mediocre teacher.
But how do we identify promising teacher candidates? It turns out that identifying the good teachers before they enter the field is surprisingly difficult. Research indicates that a college graduate’s grades, test scores, graduate degrees and teaching certifications have little predictive value in determining effectiveness. The many intangibles make it almost impossible to predict someone’s ability to connect with kids. In fact, many experts believe that teachers’ character, integrity and personality may be more important than their content knowledge.
However, what everyone in the field can agree on is that becoming a really good teacher takes time. And by the time the school system is able to determine who is a good teacher — and who is not — everyone in the profession has achieved tenure. This is a problem.
What other professions have tenure — the guaranteeing of a job, in essence, for life? One can argue the steel and auto industries have a form of tenure, and look what has happened to their competitiveness. We must revisit tenure in public education, and all of us, the American people, must recognize that teachers unions have not been good, neither for our most gifted teachers (who deserve more recognition and money) or most importantly, for the children in our schools.
Education must become more open to talented professionals coming into teaching from a variety of fields and at different stages in their careers. We must not allow teacher certification to limit high-potential teacher candidates’ access to the profession.
I believe we can experience a true renaissance in the teaching profession if we can encourage talented people — of all ages — to enter teaching, support the best teachers through constructive evaluation and far better compensation, and reduce the influence of the unions to protect everyone, regardless of competence.
If America is to be competitive in this challenging new world, this change in how we support our teachers can’t happen soon enough.
John D. Marshall is the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School head of school.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Obama's Education Secretary is Doing at Least One Thing Right.
Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan is doing at least one thing right. In the story below Arne Duncan tells the teachers' unions correctly "But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible."
The following article appeared on CNSnew.com.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Education Secretary Challenges NEA on Teacher Pay
Thursday, July 02, 2009
By Libby Quaid, Associated Press
Washington (AP) - Education Secretary Arne Duncan challenged members of the National Education Association Thursday to stop resisting the idea of linking teacher pay to student achievement.
It was Duncan's first speech at the union's annual meeting, a gathering at which President Barack Obama was booed when he mentioned the idea of performance pay last year.
"I came here today to challenge you to think differently about the role of unions in public education," Duncan told the 2.7 million-member union in San Diego.
"It's not enough to focus only on issues like job security, tenure, compensation, and evaluation," he said in a speech distributed by the Education Department. "You must become full partners and leaders in education reform. You must be willing to change."
Unions are an important part of the Democrats' political base of support. Duncan, even as he challenged NEA members, promised to include teachers in his decision-making.
"We're asking Congress for more money to develop compensation programs with you and for you, not to you," Duncan said.
Duncan described how, as CEO of Chicago public schools, he negotiated a performance pay program with the Chicago Teachers Union, which is part of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, the other national teachers' union.
The program is still very small; it will be in only about 40 of Chicago's more than 600 public schools next fall.
The Chicago program started with federal dollars from the Teacher Incentive Fund, which the administration is trying to drastically expand. The administration wants Congress to boost spending on the program from $97 million this year to $717 million next year.
But Obama may face resistance. Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, challenged Duncan at a hearing last month on whether there is any evidence of performance pay having improved student achievement.
Critics worry that pay might be based mostly on test scores, even though tests can be flawed, and all subjects are not tested. Some states prohibit student test scores from being used to evaluate teachers.
Duncan said Thursday that test scores should never be the driving force.
"But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible," he said.
Duncan has made a series of speeches to promote Obama's priorities, though Thursday's was the first where he faced a potentially hostile crowd.
He told charter school supporters last week they should do a better job of closing bad schools and opening good ones. Last month, he urged the nation's governors to agree on common, internationally measured academic standards for students.
(Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
The following article appeared on CNSnew.com.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Education Secretary Challenges NEA on Teacher Pay
Thursday, July 02, 2009
By Libby Quaid, Associated Press
Washington (AP) - Education Secretary Arne Duncan challenged members of the National Education Association Thursday to stop resisting the idea of linking teacher pay to student achievement.
It was Duncan's first speech at the union's annual meeting, a gathering at which President Barack Obama was booed when he mentioned the idea of performance pay last year.
"I came here today to challenge you to think differently about the role of unions in public education," Duncan told the 2.7 million-member union in San Diego.
"It's not enough to focus only on issues like job security, tenure, compensation, and evaluation," he said in a speech distributed by the Education Department. "You must become full partners and leaders in education reform. You must be willing to change."
Unions are an important part of the Democrats' political base of support. Duncan, even as he challenged NEA members, promised to include teachers in his decision-making.
"We're asking Congress for more money to develop compensation programs with you and for you, not to you," Duncan said.
Duncan described how, as CEO of Chicago public schools, he negotiated a performance pay program with the Chicago Teachers Union, which is part of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, the other national teachers' union.
The program is still very small; it will be in only about 40 of Chicago's more than 600 public schools next fall.
The Chicago program started with federal dollars from the Teacher Incentive Fund, which the administration is trying to drastically expand. The administration wants Congress to boost spending on the program from $97 million this year to $717 million next year.
But Obama may face resistance. Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, challenged Duncan at a hearing last month on whether there is any evidence of performance pay having improved student achievement.
Critics worry that pay might be based mostly on test scores, even though tests can be flawed, and all subjects are not tested. Some states prohibit student test scores from being used to evaluate teachers.
Duncan said Thursday that test scores should never be the driving force.
"But to remove student achievement entirely from evaluation is illogical and indefensible," he said.
Duncan has made a series of speeches to promote Obama's priorities, though Thursday's was the first where he faced a potentially hostile crowd.
He told charter school supporters last week they should do a better job of closing bad schools and opening good ones. Last month, he urged the nation's governors to agree on common, internationally measured academic standards for students.
(Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Deliberately Dumbed Down by Those Who Should Not Allow It to Happen
The following piece appears on Townhall.com and a number of other places. I can't believe Al Sharpton and I actually agree on something. Schools have failed to adequately educate the populous for 40 years and it has nothing to do with money. This has been an intentional dumbing down and indoctrination of the populous. It took a nation of ignorant people to get us where we are today.
Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.
Dumbest Generation Getting Dumber
by Walter E. Williams
The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international comparison of 15-year-olds conducted by The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that measures applied learning and problem-solving ability. In 2006, U.S. students ranked 25th of 30 advanced nations in math and 24th in science. McKinsey & Company, in releasing its report "The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America's Schools" (April 2009) said, "Several other facts paint a worrisome picture. First, the longer American children are in school, the worse they perform compared to their international peers. In recent cross-country comparisons of fourth grade reading, math, and science, US students scored in the top quarter or top half of advanced nations. By age 15 these rankings drop to the bottom half. In other words, American students are farthest behind just as they are about to enter higher education or the workforce." That's a sobering thought. The longer kids are in school and the more money we spend on them, the further behind they get.
While the academic performance of white students is grossly inferior, that of black and Latino students is a national disgrace. The McKinsey report says, "On average, black and Latino students are roughly two to three years of learning behind white students of the same age. This racial gap exists regardless of how it is measured, including both achievement (e.g., test score) and attainment (e.g., graduation rate) measures. Taking the average National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores for math and reading across the fourth and eighth grades, for example, 48 percent of blacks and 43 percent of Latinos are 'below basic,' while only 17 percent of whites are, and this gap exists in every state. A more pronounced racial achievement gap exists in most large urban school districts." Below basic is the category the NAEP uses for students unable to display even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level.
The teaching establishment and politicians have hoodwinked taxpayers into believing that more money is needed to improve education. The Washington, D.C., school budget is about the nation's costliest, spending about $15,000 per pupil. Its student/teacher ratio, at 15.2 to 1, is lower than the nation's average. Yet student achievement is just about the lowest in the nation. What's so callous about the Washington situation is about 1,700 children in kindergarten through 12th grade receive the $7,500 annual scholarships in order to escape rotten D.C. public schools, and four times as many apply for the scholarships, yet Congress, beholden to the education establishment, will end funding the school voucher program.
Any long-term solution to our education problems requires the decentralization that can come from competition. Centralization has been massive. In 1930, there were 119,000 school districts across the U.S; today, there are less than 15,000. Control has moved from local communities to the school district, to the state, and to the federal government. Public education has become a highly centralized government-backed monopoly and we shouldn't be surprised by the results. It's a no-brainer that the areas of our lives with the greatest innovation, tailoring of services to individual wants and falling prices are the areas where there is ruthless competition such as computers, food, telephone and clothing industries, and delivery companies such as UPS, Federal Express and electronic bill payments that have begun to undermine the postal monopoly in first-class mail.
At a Washington press conference launching the McKinsey report, Al Sharpton called school reform the civil rights challenge of our time. He said that the enemy of opportunity for blacks in the U.S. was once Jim Crow; today, in a slap at the educational establishment, he said it was "Professor James Crow." Sharpton is only partly correct. School reform is not solely a racial issue; it's a vital issue for the entire nation.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
This was a shocker.
I found this on a Progressive Website of all places. It sure would be nice if Obama lead from the center and not the left. If nothing else I wish he had the Cahoonas to fight the educational establishment and fight for real education reform. Over the last four decades millions of children have been left behind and those devastated most are black and African American children. It would be great if he would step up to the plate for the children of America.
Cathy
EDU REFORMERS CELEBRATE INAUGURATION WITH FIGHTING WORDS.
Even as official Washington came together to celebrate Martin Luther King Day and Barack Obama's inauguration, fault lines were deepening in an intra-Democratic Party policy debate that the incoming president hopes to avoid -- but may not be able to.
On Monday at Cardozo High School in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of D.C., the Rev. Al Sharpton and New York City schools Chancellor Joel Klein hosted a bipartisan group of civil rights leaders and educators focused on addressing the achievement gap, in part through advancing policies opposed by teachers' unions, including test score based performance pay and private school voucher programs. Other speakers included incoming secretary of education Arne Duncan; Sen. John McCain; outgoing education secretary Margaret Spellings; Newark mayor Cory Booker; New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg; former
speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty; and controversial D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee.
In front of an audience of enthusiastic African American families and District community activists, speaker after speaker came to the podium and attacked the "status quo" in Democratic education policy. To the trained ear, these were thinly veiled fighting words addressed toward the leadership of urban teachers' unions. "As a Democrat, there are forces in our party that hold us back from doing the right thing for children," said Cory Booker, who has been targeted by Newark's teachers' union because of his support for a voucher program. "So I am no longer concerned with right or left. I just want to move forward."
But proving that fiery rhetoric about education reform might be more popular with parents than actual change in their children's classrooms, local schools leader Michelle Rhee -- the embodiment of this movement -- was tepidly received. When Rhee said, "There are a lot of people who benefit from our system being dysfunctional," a few voices raised in the crowd, booing. "That's not true!" a woman shouted. But Rhee continued, referring obliquely to her long-running contract dispute with the Washington Teachers' Union over merit pay and tenure. "People who keep their jobs. People who keep their contract."
--Dana Goldstein
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Is college really worth it?
Our children are young, we have a one year old and a four year old. We have been saving for their college since birth. Our hopes are that they will get full rides to college and we can use said funds for retirement. My husband and I talk often of college and about the empty degrees at many colleges and universities across America. We have also talked about many people we know that have degrees and who are not working in the field in which they have a degree or who are working in a field in which no degree is required. Many of those people are doing well financially a few making six figures in their jobs. When the time comes our children if they choose to attend college will receive funds if the degree is an actual requirement in their chosen career.
What I gleaned from this article is the failure of schools to prepare students for college and the dumbing down of higher education to meet said students lack of qualifications for college.
Public schools and colleges will continue to decline until Americans take back education from special interest groups. Americans and parents have to put the burden of educating their children on themselves instead of the government until than we will continue to see a decline in the quality of output from government institutions.
Cathy Peschke
Some college degrees are great, others are worthless. "Let the buyer beware". It doesn't require hindsight to know which degrees are fluff.
When a degree entails genuine rigorous transfer of skill and knowledge in a field of use to society (think medicine, science, engineering, computers, etc.) that is difficult to obtain outside of the college environment, you can feel pretty safe.
But when the coursework is primarily subjective, requires minimal effort or skill, and has questionable value in the real world (Sociology?!? What did you expect?), you're being had.
As more businesses and individuals come to recognize how worthless so many degrees are, hopefully tighter scrutiny will alleviate some of the pain from these college con-artists.
Jim Peschke
The following piece appeared in the Union Leader.
Walter E. Williams: Is college really worth it?
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS
As parents pack their youngsters off to college, they might ask themselves whether it's worth both the money they will spend and their children's time. Dr. Marty Nemko has researched that question in an article aptly titled "America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education."
The U.S. Department of Education statistics show that 76 out of 100 students who graduate in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class do not graduate from college, even if they spend eight-and-a-half years in college. That's even with colleges having dumbed down classes to accommodate such students.
Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million students who took the ACT college entrance examinations in 2007 were prepared to do college-level study in math, English and science. Even though a majority of students are grossly underprepared to do college-level work, each year colleges admit hundreds of thousands of such students.
While colleges have strong financial motives to admit unsuccessful students, for failing students the experience can be devastating. They often leave with their families, or themselves, having piled up thousands of dollars in debt. There is possibly trauma and poor self-esteem for having failed, and perhaps embarrassment for their families.
Dr. Nemko says that worst of all is that few of these former college students, having spent thousands of dollars, wind up in a job that required a college education. It's not uncommon to find them driving a taxi, working at a restaurant or department store, performing some other job that they could have had as a high school graduate or dropout.
What about students who are prepared for college? First, only 40 percent of each year's 2 million freshmen graduate in four years; 45 percent never graduate at all. Often, having a college degree does not mean much. According to a 2006 Pew Charitable Trusts study, 50 percent of college seniors failed a test that required them to interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials and compare credit card offers. About 20 percent of college seniors did not have the quantitative skills to estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas station.
According a recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the percentage of college graduates proficient in prose literacy has declined from 40 percent to 31 percent within the past decade. Employers report that many college graduates lack the basic skills of critical thinking, writing and problem-solving.
Colleges are in business. Students are a cost. Research is a profit center. When colleges boast about having this professor who has won a science award or that professor who has won the Nobel Prize, very often an undergraduate student will never be taught by that professor. It is a "bait and switch" tactic and very often your youngster will take classes not taught by a professor but taught in large classes by a graduate student.
Faculty who bring in large grants are more highly valued than faculty who teach well. Teaching excellence is so often undervalued that the late Ernest Boyer, vice president for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, quipped, "Winning the campus teaching award is the kiss of death when it comes to tenure."
Parents and taxpayers cough up billions upon billions of dollars to the nation's colleges and universities. Colleges make money whether students learn or not, whether they graduate or not, and whether they get a good job after graduating or not. Colleges and universities engage in "bait and switch," confer fraudulent degrees and engage in other practices that would bring legal sanctions if done by any other business.
There is little or no oversight of the nation's more than 4,000 colleges and universities that enroll in excess of 17 million students. There are some colleges, such as Grove City College in Pennsylvania and Hillsdale College in Michigan, that do a fine job of undergraduate education. Useful information about what colleges are doing what can be found in the Delaware-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute's "Choosing the Right College" (http://isi.org/college_guide/choosing_right_college.html).
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
What I gleaned from this article is the failure of schools to prepare students for college and the dumbing down of higher education to meet said students lack of qualifications for college.
Public schools and colleges will continue to decline until Americans take back education from special interest groups. Americans and parents have to put the burden of educating their children on themselves instead of the government until than we will continue to see a decline in the quality of output from government institutions.
Cathy Peschke
Some college degrees are great, others are worthless. "Let the buyer beware". It doesn't require hindsight to know which degrees are fluff.
When a degree entails genuine rigorous transfer of skill and knowledge in a field of use to society (think medicine, science, engineering, computers, etc.) that is difficult to obtain outside of the college environment, you can feel pretty safe.
But when the coursework is primarily subjective, requires minimal effort or skill, and has questionable value in the real world (Sociology?!? What did you expect?), you're being had.
As more businesses and individuals come to recognize how worthless so many degrees are, hopefully tighter scrutiny will alleviate some of the pain from these college con-artists.
Jim Peschke
The following piece appeared in the Union Leader.
Walter E. Williams: Is college really worth it?
By WALTER E. WILLIAMS
As parents pack their youngsters off to college, they might ask themselves whether it's worth both the money they will spend and their children's time. Dr. Marty Nemko has researched that question in an article aptly titled "America's Most Overrated Product: Higher Education."
The U.S. Department of Education statistics show that 76 out of 100 students who graduate in the bottom 40 percent of their high school class do not graduate from college, even if they spend eight-and-a-half years in college. That's even with colleges having dumbed down classes to accommodate such students.
Only 23 percent of the 1.3 million students who took the ACT college entrance examinations in 2007 were prepared to do college-level study in math, English and science. Even though a majority of students are grossly underprepared to do college-level work, each year colleges admit hundreds of thousands of such students.
While colleges have strong financial motives to admit unsuccessful students, for failing students the experience can be devastating. They often leave with their families, or themselves, having piled up thousands of dollars in debt. There is possibly trauma and poor self-esteem for having failed, and perhaps embarrassment for their families.
Dr. Nemko says that worst of all is that few of these former college students, having spent thousands of dollars, wind up in a job that required a college education. It's not uncommon to find them driving a taxi, working at a restaurant or department store, performing some other job that they could have had as a high school graduate or dropout.
What about students who are prepared for college? First, only 40 percent of each year's 2 million freshmen graduate in four years; 45 percent never graduate at all. Often, having a college degree does not mean much. According to a 2006 Pew Charitable Trusts study, 50 percent of college seniors failed a test that required them to interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials and compare credit card offers. About 20 percent of college seniors did not have the quantitative skills to estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas station.
According a recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the percentage of college graduates proficient in prose literacy has declined from 40 percent to 31 percent within the past decade. Employers report that many college graduates lack the basic skills of critical thinking, writing and problem-solving.
Colleges are in business. Students are a cost. Research is a profit center. When colleges boast about having this professor who has won a science award or that professor who has won the Nobel Prize, very often an undergraduate student will never be taught by that professor. It is a "bait and switch" tactic and very often your youngster will take classes not taught by a professor but taught in large classes by a graduate student.
Faculty who bring in large grants are more highly valued than faculty who teach well. Teaching excellence is so often undervalued that the late Ernest Boyer, vice president for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, quipped, "Winning the campus teaching award is the kiss of death when it comes to tenure."
Parents and taxpayers cough up billions upon billions of dollars to the nation's colleges and universities. Colleges make money whether students learn or not, whether they graduate or not, and whether they get a good job after graduating or not. Colleges and universities engage in "bait and switch," confer fraudulent degrees and engage in other practices that would bring legal sanctions if done by any other business.
There is little or no oversight of the nation's more than 4,000 colleges and universities that enroll in excess of 17 million students. There are some colleges, such as Grove City College in Pennsylvania and Hillsdale College in Michigan, that do a fine job of undergraduate education. Useful information about what colleges are doing what can be found in the Delaware-based Intercollegiate Studies Institute's "Choosing the Right College" (http://isi.org/college_guide/choosing_right_college.html).
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Grading Teachers’ Unions
Grading Teachers’ Unions
Grading Teachers’ Unions
by: Peter Seabrook, August 02, 2004
Helping or hindering the education of America’s youth? Linda Chavez (pictured) gives a damning indictment of teachers’ unions in her new book, Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics.
“In the past four decades the teachers’ unions have been very successful in persuading Americans that schools need more money,” she notes, mainly to pay teachers “higher salaries,” “give teachers more say in [curriculum] development,” and to decrease class size. Despite this, “reading scores have barely increased in the past three decades . . . and math hasn’t gone up much faster.”
Chavez cites an “excellent book on teachers’ unions” by Peter Brimelow “showing that ‘in any given year, unionization raised inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending by 12.3 percent compared with nonunion districts’ . . . the only thing taxpayers have gotten for the extra billions we’ve poured into education is more unionized employees.” This is hardly surprising, she later adds, considering that “the unions’ dues or agency fees, by the way, are taken directly out of teachers’ paychecks by most school districts.”
Chavez notes that both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) made hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2001-2 fiscal year. “So where does this money go? A good chunk of it goes to pay union officials’ fat salaries”—in one case, “more than $1.1 million for just three employees,” Chavez writes. “Hundreds of other employees [earn] six-figure incomes in addition to their extremely generous benefits.”
Besides giving themselves opulent salaries, union officials spend much of their members’ money on politics, Chavez maintains. “As far back as the 1970s, a top NEA official, then-executive director Terry Herndon, bluntly stated the teachers’ unions’ true priority: ‘The ultimate goal of the NEA is to tap the legal, political, and economic powers of the U.S. Congress . . . [to] collect votes to re-order the priorities of the United States of America.’”
And what might these “priorities” be? Chavez quotes from the NEA’s current policies, which include supporting: “bilingual education programs,” “a single-payer health care plan for all residents of the United States,” and “family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom;” and opposing: “efforts to legislate English as the official language” and “governmental intrusion or monitoring of library materials and bookstore records,” to name a few of the issues on which the NEA has taken sides. Its “resolutions cover everything from abortion to world hunger,” Chavez writes, “though the ideological range is decidedly more narrow: from left to farther left.”
Chavez points out, however, that while “98 percent of [the AFT’s and NEA’s total $40 million in] contributions have gone to Democratic candidates,” the average teaching members of these unions form a political cross section far closer to that of the general voting public. “Only 40 percent of NEA members characterize themselves as Democrats, according to the union’s own polling.”
She describes one failed amendment sponsored by infuriated educators within the union “that would have allowed NEA members to designate how the political portion of their dues was spent,” which, “with NEA leaders opposing. . . was defeated in the Representative Assembly by a vote of 6,369 to 2,113,” with voters “who function more or less as employees of the union” in a body which “decides 90 percent of motions by simple voice vote.”
Chavez also mentions Proposition 226, a California ballot initiative “which would have required unions to get annual written approval from their members before using union dues for political purposes.” This proposal was also defeated after the California Teachers Association (CTA), whose “660-member state council voted unanimously to oppose [it],” “funded a major initiative to gain support for its position.”
The issue of school vouchers is another area where the opinions of union leadership and members diverge, Chavez contends. “According to the NEA’s own budget, in 2000 the organization spent a remarkable $218 million to defeat school voucher initiatives in Michigan, Arizona, and California. At the very same time, however, an NEA internal poll showed that 61 percent of NEA members believed that it was ‘not very important’ or ‘not at all important’ for the union to take a stand on the school choice issue.”
Even so, Chavez observes, 13.1 percent of all American parents (and 12.1 percent of those who teach) “choose private schools for their children. . . But in urban areas, where poor children would most benefit from voucher programs, a substantial percentage of public school teachers choose to send their children to private schools—for example, Boston, 44.6 percent; Cleveland, 39.7 percent; San Francisco, 36.7 percent; Chicago, 36.3 percent.”
This is where the unions’ political contributions pay off. Chavez recounts the fate of a voucher initiative originally proposed for Washington, D.C. in 1995—a city whose per-student spending is “70 percent higher than the national average—[while] their dropout rate is a whopping 42 percent and their average SAT score is more than 220 points below the national average.”
“Union leaders fought it from the beginning,” as did “a reliable ally, Senator Ted Kennedy” and although “the unions’ lobbying worked [in the Senate]. . . the D.C. voucher proposals would not go away.” The next attempt, in 1997, passed Congress only to fall under a veto. Chavez adds that a Washington Post “poll of D.C. residents show[ed] that 56 percent of District residents wanted school choice. Those who stood to benefit most from vouchers—that is, poor parents who could not afford to get their children out of the failing public schools—supported school choice even more strongly. . . 65 percent of African-Americans with incomes under $50,000 favored the plan.”
Eventually vouchers finally won out, “nearly a decade after the first D.C. voucher program was introduced. . . But the teachers’ unions and their Democratic partners did not give up. . . ‘Even after this vote, don’t bank on vouchers coming to D.C.,’ [Senator Kennedy] said.”
“Though the teachers’ unions make no secret” of the immense power they wield, Chavez maintains, “‘they also have a positive public image from representing teachers that much of labor lacks,’” quoting Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Governmental Studies at the University of Virginia. Chavez adds that teachers’ unions “capitalize on the image of their members: the humble, hardworking American teacher.”
At one time, the National Education Association, the major American teachers’ union, was indeed “not a union but rather an innocuous professional association, controlled by and made up mostly of school administrators.” That all changed in the tumultuous 1960s, Chavez writes: “by the 1970s, the NEA had kicked out its administrator-members and adopted policies sanctioning strikes, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had officially designated it as a union.”
She quotes U.S. News & World Report’s observation that “the AFT and the NEA have given teaching the feel of classic blue-collar work, where winning workers big checks for the shortest possible hours has been the aim and the quality of the product is considered to be management’s worry.”
A rising sophomore at Kenyon College, Peter Seabrook is an intern at Accuracy in Academia.
Quote of the Day ". . . the only thing taxpayers have gotten for the extra billions we’ve poured into education is more unionized employees.” Peter Brimelow
Grading Teachers’ Unions
by: Peter Seabrook, August 02, 2004
Helping or hindering the education of America’s youth? Linda Chavez (pictured) gives a damning indictment of teachers’ unions in her new book, Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics.
“In the past four decades the teachers’ unions have been very successful in persuading Americans that schools need more money,” she notes, mainly to pay teachers “higher salaries,” “give teachers more say in [curriculum] development,” and to decrease class size. Despite this, “reading scores have barely increased in the past three decades . . . and math hasn’t gone up much faster.”
Chavez cites an “excellent book on teachers’ unions” by Peter Brimelow “showing that ‘in any given year, unionization raised inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending by 12.3 percent compared with nonunion districts’ . . . the only thing taxpayers have gotten for the extra billions we’ve poured into education is more unionized employees.” This is hardly surprising, she later adds, considering that “the unions’ dues or agency fees, by the way, are taken directly out of teachers’ paychecks by most school districts.”
Chavez notes that both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) made hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2001-2 fiscal year. “So where does this money go? A good chunk of it goes to pay union officials’ fat salaries”—in one case, “more than $1.1 million for just three employees,” Chavez writes. “Hundreds of other employees [earn] six-figure incomes in addition to their extremely generous benefits.”
Besides giving themselves opulent salaries, union officials spend much of their members’ money on politics, Chavez maintains. “As far back as the 1970s, a top NEA official, then-executive director Terry Herndon, bluntly stated the teachers’ unions’ true priority: ‘The ultimate goal of the NEA is to tap the legal, political, and economic powers of the U.S. Congress . . . [to] collect votes to re-order the priorities of the United States of America.’”
And what might these “priorities” be? Chavez quotes from the NEA’s current policies, which include supporting: “bilingual education programs,” “a single-payer health care plan for all residents of the United States,” and “family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom;” and opposing: “efforts to legislate English as the official language” and “governmental intrusion or monitoring of library materials and bookstore records,” to name a few of the issues on which the NEA has taken sides. Its “resolutions cover everything from abortion to world hunger,” Chavez writes, “though the ideological range is decidedly more narrow: from left to farther left.”
Chavez points out, however, that while “98 percent of [the AFT’s and NEA’s total $40 million in] contributions have gone to Democratic candidates,” the average teaching members of these unions form a political cross section far closer to that of the general voting public. “Only 40 percent of NEA members characterize themselves as Democrats, according to the union’s own polling.”
She describes one failed amendment sponsored by infuriated educators within the union “that would have allowed NEA members to designate how the political portion of their dues was spent,” which, “with NEA leaders opposing. . . was defeated in the Representative Assembly by a vote of 6,369 to 2,113,” with voters “who function more or less as employees of the union” in a body which “decides 90 percent of motions by simple voice vote.”
Chavez also mentions Proposition 226, a California ballot initiative “which would have required unions to get annual written approval from their members before using union dues for political purposes.” This proposal was also defeated after the California Teachers Association (CTA), whose “660-member state council voted unanimously to oppose [it],” “funded a major initiative to gain support for its position.”
The issue of school vouchers is another area where the opinions of union leadership and members diverge, Chavez contends. “According to the NEA’s own budget, in 2000 the organization spent a remarkable $218 million to defeat school voucher initiatives in Michigan, Arizona, and California. At the very same time, however, an NEA internal poll showed that 61 percent of NEA members believed that it was ‘not very important’ or ‘not at all important’ for the union to take a stand on the school choice issue.”
Even so, Chavez observes, 13.1 percent of all American parents (and 12.1 percent of those who teach) “choose private schools for their children. . . But in urban areas, where poor children would most benefit from voucher programs, a substantial percentage of public school teachers choose to send their children to private schools—for example, Boston, 44.6 percent; Cleveland, 39.7 percent; San Francisco, 36.7 percent; Chicago, 36.3 percent.”
This is where the unions’ political contributions pay off. Chavez recounts the fate of a voucher initiative originally proposed for Washington, D.C. in 1995—a city whose per-student spending is “70 percent higher than the national average—[while] their dropout rate is a whopping 42 percent and their average SAT score is more than 220 points below the national average.”
“Union leaders fought it from the beginning,” as did “a reliable ally, Senator Ted Kennedy” and although “the unions’ lobbying worked [in the Senate]. . . the D.C. voucher proposals would not go away.” The next attempt, in 1997, passed Congress only to fall under a veto. Chavez adds that a Washington Post “poll of D.C. residents show[ed] that 56 percent of District residents wanted school choice. Those who stood to benefit most from vouchers—that is, poor parents who could not afford to get their children out of the failing public schools—supported school choice even more strongly. . . 65 percent of African-Americans with incomes under $50,000 favored the plan.”
Eventually vouchers finally won out, “nearly a decade after the first D.C. voucher program was introduced. . . But the teachers’ unions and their Democratic partners did not give up. . . ‘Even after this vote, don’t bank on vouchers coming to D.C.,’ [Senator Kennedy] said.”
“Though the teachers’ unions make no secret” of the immense power they wield, Chavez maintains, “‘they also have a positive public image from representing teachers that much of labor lacks,’” quoting Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Governmental Studies at the University of Virginia. Chavez adds that teachers’ unions “capitalize on the image of their members: the humble, hardworking American teacher.”
At one time, the National Education Association, the major American teachers’ union, was indeed “not a union but rather an innocuous professional association, controlled by and made up mostly of school administrators.” That all changed in the tumultuous 1960s, Chavez writes: “by the 1970s, the NEA had kicked out its administrator-members and adopted policies sanctioning strikes, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had officially designated it as a union.”
She quotes U.S. News & World Report’s observation that “the AFT and the NEA have given teaching the feel of classic blue-collar work, where winning workers big checks for the shortest possible hours has been the aim and the quality of the product is considered to be management’s worry.”
A rising sophomore at Kenyon College, Peter Seabrook is an intern at Accuracy in Academia.
Quote of the Day ". . . the only thing taxpayers have gotten for the extra billions we’ve poured into education is more unionized employees.” Peter Brimelow
Friday, February 22, 2008
NECAP math scores fall short
In the story below the Education Commissioner states. "We need to dig deep and find out what's happening here," when talking about the poor test scores of our 11th grade public educated students. 45% of these students tested "substantially below proficient." I will tell you what is happening. Our pubic schools are failing to properly educate our students and in turn jeopardizing the future of our country. Tenure, empty education degrees, legislators bent on kowtowing to the demands of teachers unions and useless educrats, teachers bent on protecting their special interests and the public education system as their own entitlement program. Between 1960 and 2000 education spending in the United States went up 240 percent adjusted for inflation yet proficiency on standardized tests have remained flat.
Our public education system does not work. It is time to fund the child and not the system. It is time for choice. If New Hampshire legislators truly care about our system they will fund the child, get rid of tenure and get rid of the useless requirement of a teaching degree. Scientist need to be teaching science, mathematicians need to teach math, english majors need to teach english, etc.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)
The following story appeared in the Union Leader.
NECAP math scores fall short
By JOHN WHITSON
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
CONCORD – Education Commissioner Lyonel Tracy didn't try to put a good spin on test results that show a majority of the state's high school juniors aren't doing well in math.
"We need to dig deep and find out what's happening here," Tracy said at a Department of Education press conference yesterday.
Citing the fact that 45 percent of the state's 11th-graders tested "substantially below proficient" in math on a test designed by teachers and aligned with DOE-endorsed curriculum, Tracy promised "no excuses."
"It's impossible to accept that," he said.
The New England Common Assessment Program was given to New Hampshire 11th-graders for the first time last October. Results were made public yesterday.
Elementary and middle school students have taken the NECAP the past three years.
Scores are used to determine the status of schools and districts under No Child Left Behind.
Along with mathematics, students were tested in reading and writing, but it was abysmal math scores that drew most of Tracy's attention yesterday.
"No educator in New Hampshire should be pleased with these scores" he said.
Four levels
Four achievement levels are used in reporting NECAP scores: proficient with distinction, proficient, partially proficient, and substantially below proficient.
In math, 15,546 students took the test, and 7,026 of them scored in the bottom level. Just 244 students statewide tested at the top.
►Merrimack students do a little better than statewide average
►Click here to view NECAP results and analysis.
The news was nearly as bleak in writing, with 33 percent of the state's students testing at least proficient; just 3 percent, or 470 students, tested at the top.
Reading scores provided a bright spot, with 67 percent of students scoring proficient or better.
Deb Wiswell, who heads the DOE's Bureau of Accountability, said staffers will fan out across the state to talk with students and teachers about curriculum.
The NECAP has "a lot of algebra and geometry," she said, and schools need to make sure all students are studying that material.
The test also requires students to explain their work, she said, so teachers need to put more emphasis on writing.
"(Students) really need to write every day in all content areas," said Wiswell.
Tracy rejected the idea that the test was too hard.
"Our teachers set very high standards in New Hampshire, and they should be commended for that," said Tracy. "We're going to be looking for these scores to dramatically improve in mathematics next year."
The DOE polled students after they took the test. Forty percent said the math test was harder than their typical school work, and 17 percent said the same about the writing test.
Manchester's numbers
John Rist, principal of Manchester Central High, said it's self-evident the math test was too difficult when 78 percent of students statewide essentially failed.
"I know at Central we're doing better than that," said Rist.
Central's math scores mirrored state averages. The school's reading scores were slightly lower, but its writing results were higher.
Though just 39 percent of Central students passed the writing test at proficient or better, that was 13 percent higher than the district average and 6 percent higher than the state average.
Rist said Central places a priority on writing, with English teachers providing material to science, math and other disciplines to incorporate in curriculum.
Manchester Memorial High had the district's highest reading scores, with 62 percent of students testing at least proficient. But Memorial also had the district's lowest scores in writing and math.
District-wide, Manchester's scores were lower than state averages in all three subjects.
Acting Superintendent Henry Aliberti said teachers and administrators at the city's high schools will dig deep into the results.
"We have formed building-level data teams," he said. "Those teams of teachers and administrators will take a look at this NECAP information and analyze it."
The teams will identify students who need help and come up with a concrete plan to provide it.
"The same process started last year in elementary schools," he said, "and we're seeing the benefits of implementing those plans this year."
Tracy said every school needs to align its curriculum with "grade level expectations" established at the DOE.
Just 29 percent of schools have done so, 55 percent have begun the process, and 16 percent haven't started, according to DOE statistics.
Londonderry, Pinkerton
NECAP results for 11th graders in Londonderry and at Pinkerton Academy told a familiar tale: Students are faring well in reading and writing but have a lot of work to do in math.
In Londonderry, just 34 percent of high school juniors scored proficient or better on the standardized tests -- above the state average of 28 percent but not good enough for Superintendent Nate Greenberg.
"We're not particularly pleased with the scores as they came through, but at the same time I don't believe you can judge individual student performance by one assessment," he said.
In reading, 74 percent of students scored proficient or better, while 54 percent did in writing.
At Derry's Pinkerton Academy -- New Hampshire's largest high school -- NECAP scores settled right at state averages.
In reading, 67 percent of students were proficient or better, while 33 percent were proficient or better in writing.
Just 28 percent were proficient or better in math. School officials were not immediately available for comment.
Greenberg said while meaningful, NECAP scores are part of a larger picture when it comes to fully assessing student achievement.
"Obviously, any time you take a measure of performance, it may raise a red flag for you. And if you're testing the right way, you can use it as an assessment tool," he said. "We'll take a look at the test items, how our kids took the test and whether there's certain things we should make adjustments on."
Campbell High School
In Litchfield, Campbell High School students achieved only 20 percent proficiency in math and 27 percent in writing. Reading scores were slightly better, with 65 percent of Campbell students meeting requirements compared to a state average of 67 percent.
Principal Bob Manseau, who is new this year to Campbell, said he would've liked to have seen higher scores.
"I think we have some work to do in terms of student achievement," he said.
Test results were also reported based on different categories of students.
Female Campbell high school students achieved higher results in reading and writing -- 70 percent of girls met standards in reading compared to 61 percent for boys, while 35 percent of girls achieved proficiency in writing compared to 19 percent for boys.
The opposite was true of math scores -- only 11 percent of girls achieved proficiency in math, while 29 percent of boys met the standards.
Union Leader Correspondents Suzanne Bates and Adam Benson contributed to this report.
Our public education system does not work. It is time to fund the child and not the system. It is time for choice. If New Hampshire legislators truly care about our system they will fund the child, get rid of tenure and get rid of the useless requirement of a teaching degree. Scientist need to be teaching science, mathematicians need to teach math, english majors need to teach english, etc.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein, (attributed)
US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)
The following story appeared in the Union Leader.
NECAP math scores fall short
By JOHN WHITSON
New Hampshire Union Leader Staff
CONCORD – Education Commissioner Lyonel Tracy didn't try to put a good spin on test results that show a majority of the state's high school juniors aren't doing well in math.
"We need to dig deep and find out what's happening here," Tracy said at a Department of Education press conference yesterday.
Citing the fact that 45 percent of the state's 11th-graders tested "substantially below proficient" in math on a test designed by teachers and aligned with DOE-endorsed curriculum, Tracy promised "no excuses."
"It's impossible to accept that," he said.
The New England Common Assessment Program was given to New Hampshire 11th-graders for the first time last October. Results were made public yesterday.
Elementary and middle school students have taken the NECAP the past three years.
Scores are used to determine the status of schools and districts under No Child Left Behind.
Along with mathematics, students were tested in reading and writing, but it was abysmal math scores that drew most of Tracy's attention yesterday.
"No educator in New Hampshire should be pleased with these scores" he said.
Four levels
Four achievement levels are used in reporting NECAP scores: proficient with distinction, proficient, partially proficient, and substantially below proficient.
In math, 15,546 students took the test, and 7,026 of them scored in the bottom level. Just 244 students statewide tested at the top.
►Merrimack students do a little better than statewide average
►Click here to view NECAP results and analysis.
The news was nearly as bleak in writing, with 33 percent of the state's students testing at least proficient; just 3 percent, or 470 students, tested at the top.
Reading scores provided a bright spot, with 67 percent of students scoring proficient or better.
Deb Wiswell, who heads the DOE's Bureau of Accountability, said staffers will fan out across the state to talk with students and teachers about curriculum.
The NECAP has "a lot of algebra and geometry," she said, and schools need to make sure all students are studying that material.
The test also requires students to explain their work, she said, so teachers need to put more emphasis on writing.
"(Students) really need to write every day in all content areas," said Wiswell.
Tracy rejected the idea that the test was too hard.
"Our teachers set very high standards in New Hampshire, and they should be commended for that," said Tracy. "We're going to be looking for these scores to dramatically improve in mathematics next year."
The DOE polled students after they took the test. Forty percent said the math test was harder than their typical school work, and 17 percent said the same about the writing test.
Manchester's numbers
John Rist, principal of Manchester Central High, said it's self-evident the math test was too difficult when 78 percent of students statewide essentially failed.
"I know at Central we're doing better than that," said Rist.
Central's math scores mirrored state averages. The school's reading scores were slightly lower, but its writing results were higher.
Though just 39 percent of Central students passed the writing test at proficient or better, that was 13 percent higher than the district average and 6 percent higher than the state average.
Rist said Central places a priority on writing, with English teachers providing material to science, math and other disciplines to incorporate in curriculum.
Manchester Memorial High had the district's highest reading scores, with 62 percent of students testing at least proficient. But Memorial also had the district's lowest scores in writing and math.
District-wide, Manchester's scores were lower than state averages in all three subjects.
Acting Superintendent Henry Aliberti said teachers and administrators at the city's high schools will dig deep into the results.
"We have formed building-level data teams," he said. "Those teams of teachers and administrators will take a look at this NECAP information and analyze it."
The teams will identify students who need help and come up with a concrete plan to provide it.
"The same process started last year in elementary schools," he said, "and we're seeing the benefits of implementing those plans this year."
Tracy said every school needs to align its curriculum with "grade level expectations" established at the DOE.
Just 29 percent of schools have done so, 55 percent have begun the process, and 16 percent haven't started, according to DOE statistics.
Londonderry, Pinkerton
NECAP results for 11th graders in Londonderry and at Pinkerton Academy told a familiar tale: Students are faring well in reading and writing but have a lot of work to do in math.
In Londonderry, just 34 percent of high school juniors scored proficient or better on the standardized tests -- above the state average of 28 percent but not good enough for Superintendent Nate Greenberg.
"We're not particularly pleased with the scores as they came through, but at the same time I don't believe you can judge individual student performance by one assessment," he said.
In reading, 74 percent of students scored proficient or better, while 54 percent did in writing.
At Derry's Pinkerton Academy -- New Hampshire's largest high school -- NECAP scores settled right at state averages.
In reading, 67 percent of students were proficient or better, while 33 percent were proficient or better in writing.
Just 28 percent were proficient or better in math. School officials were not immediately available for comment.
Greenberg said while meaningful, NECAP scores are part of a larger picture when it comes to fully assessing student achievement.
"Obviously, any time you take a measure of performance, it may raise a red flag for you. And if you're testing the right way, you can use it as an assessment tool," he said. "We'll take a look at the test items, how our kids took the test and whether there's certain things we should make adjustments on."
Campbell High School
In Litchfield, Campbell High School students achieved only 20 percent proficiency in math and 27 percent in writing. Reading scores were slightly better, with 65 percent of Campbell students meeting requirements compared to a state average of 67 percent.
Principal Bob Manseau, who is new this year to Campbell, said he would've liked to have seen higher scores.
"I think we have some work to do in terms of student achievement," he said.
Test results were also reported based on different categories of students.
Female Campbell high school students achieved higher results in reading and writing -- 70 percent of girls met standards in reading compared to 61 percent for boys, while 35 percent of girls achieved proficiency in writing compared to 19 percent for boys.
The opposite was true of math scores -- only 11 percent of girls achieved proficiency in math, while 29 percent of boys met the standards.
Union Leader Correspondents Suzanne Bates and Adam Benson contributed to this report.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Students still lag on reading, math tests - More challenging courses not helping
The following piece appeared in The Birmingham News newspaper. Our public education system is failing our students. More money is not the answer real reform and competition is the only solution.
Without reform we will continue to see lagging scores, reduced literacy rates, billions spent on remedial education at the college level and essentially flat dropout rates.
Students still lag on reading, math tests
More challenging courses not helping
Friday, February 23, 2007
NANCY ZUCKERBROD
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - High school students are getting better grades and taking more challenging courses, but that is not showing up on national math and reading tests.
"The reality is that the results don't square," said Darvin Winick, chair of the independent National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the tests. Scores were released Thursday.
Nearly 40 percent of high school seniors scored below the basic level on the math test. More than a quarter of seniors failed to reach the basic level on the reading test.
"I think that we are sleeping through a crisis," said Massachusetts Commissioner of Education David Driscoll, a governing board member. He said the low test scores should push lawmakers and educators to enact school reforms.
The new reading scores show no change since 2002, the last time the test was given.
"We should be getting better. There's nothing good about a flat score," Winick said.
The government said it could not compare the math results with the previous scores because the latest test was significantly different.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress - often called the nation's report card - is viewed as the best way to compare students across the country because it's the only uniform national yardstick.
The tests were given in 2005. The government released the scores Thursday along with a report examining the high school transcripts of 2005 graduates.
The transcript study shows students are earning more credits, taking challenging courses and getting higher grade-point averages than in the past.
In 2005, high school graduates had an overall grade-point average just shy of 3.0 - or about a B. That has gone up from a grade-point average of about 2.7 in 1990.
It is unclear whether student performance has improved or whether grade inflation or something else might be responsible, the report said.
More students are completing high school with a standard curriculum, meaning they take at least four credits of English and three credits each of social studies, math and science. More students also are taking the next level of courses, which generally include college preparatory classes.
"I'm guessing that those levels don't connote the level of rigor that we think they do. Otherwise kids would be scoring higher on the NAEP test," said David Gordon, a governing board member and the superintendent of schools in Sacramento, Calif.
The study showed no increase in the number of high-schoolers who completed the most advanced curriculum, which could include college-level or honors classes.
On the math test, about 60 percent of high school seniors performed at or above the basic level.
Just one-fourth of 12th-graders were proficient or better in math, meaning they demonstrated solid academic performance.
On the reading test, about three-fourths of seniors performed at or above the basic level, and 40 percent hit the proficient mark.
© 2007 The Birmingham News© 2007 al.com All Rights Reserved.
Without reform we will continue to see lagging scores, reduced literacy rates, billions spent on remedial education at the college level and essentially flat dropout rates.
Students still lag on reading, math tests
More challenging courses not helping
Friday, February 23, 2007
NANCY ZUCKERBROD
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - High school students are getting better grades and taking more challenging courses, but that is not showing up on national math and reading tests.
"The reality is that the results don't square," said Darvin Winick, chair of the independent National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the tests. Scores were released Thursday.
Nearly 40 percent of high school seniors scored below the basic level on the math test. More than a quarter of seniors failed to reach the basic level on the reading test.
"I think that we are sleeping through a crisis," said Massachusetts Commissioner of Education David Driscoll, a governing board member. He said the low test scores should push lawmakers and educators to enact school reforms.
The new reading scores show no change since 2002, the last time the test was given.
"We should be getting better. There's nothing good about a flat score," Winick said.
The government said it could not compare the math results with the previous scores because the latest test was significantly different.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress - often called the nation's report card - is viewed as the best way to compare students across the country because it's the only uniform national yardstick.
The tests were given in 2005. The government released the scores Thursday along with a report examining the high school transcripts of 2005 graduates.
The transcript study shows students are earning more credits, taking challenging courses and getting higher grade-point averages than in the past.
In 2005, high school graduates had an overall grade-point average just shy of 3.0 - or about a B. That has gone up from a grade-point average of about 2.7 in 1990.
It is unclear whether student performance has improved or whether grade inflation or something else might be responsible, the report said.
More students are completing high school with a standard curriculum, meaning they take at least four credits of English and three credits each of social studies, math and science. More students also are taking the next level of courses, which generally include college preparatory classes.
"I'm guessing that those levels don't connote the level of rigor that we think they do. Otherwise kids would be scoring higher on the NAEP test," said David Gordon, a governing board member and the superintendent of schools in Sacramento, Calif.
The study showed no increase in the number of high-schoolers who completed the most advanced curriculum, which could include college-level or honors classes.
On the math test, about 60 percent of high school seniors performed at or above the basic level.
Just one-fourth of 12th-graders were proficient or better in math, meaning they demonstrated solid academic performance.
On the reading test, about three-fourths of seniors performed at or above the basic level, and 40 percent hit the proficient mark.
© 2007 The Birmingham News© 2007 al.com All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Spinning the tests: Are NH scores really that good?
Whenever student scores improve it is amazing how it is because of the great teachers and schools but when the scores decline educrats blame the results on lack of funds, parents, class size and the students.
The following editorial appeared in the Union Leader.
Spinning the tests: Are NH scores really that good?
Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2007
HALF OF fifth-graders and only 42 percent of eighth-graders scored proficient or above on state writing tests last year. Given that the state Department of Education press release announcing the results had a grammar error in the first paragraph, that might not be surprising.
Education Commissioner Lyonel Tracy called the test results "good news." In most grades, reading and math scores were up over last year and huge percentages of students scored proficient or better. Little mention was made of the dismal writing scores. The official spin: We're doing just fine.
But the picture is not so rosy. Progress on the state tests is minimal if it's even real. And the state tests are generally considered less rigorous than the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests. On those, in no grade did more than half of the students score proficient in reading or math.
So while the department spins the state test scores as all sunshine and butterflies, remember that education bureaucrats often downplay the bad news, and the bad news is that we still have a long, long way to go before our students are performing acceptably.
Quote of the Day
"Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless."
Milton Friedman
The following editorial appeared in the Union Leader.
Spinning the tests: Are NH scores really that good?
Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2007
HALF OF fifth-graders and only 42 percent of eighth-graders scored proficient or above on state writing tests last year. Given that the state Department of Education press release announcing the results had a grammar error in the first paragraph, that might not be surprising.
Education Commissioner Lyonel Tracy called the test results "good news." In most grades, reading and math scores were up over last year and huge percentages of students scored proficient or better. Little mention was made of the dismal writing scores. The official spin: We're doing just fine.
But the picture is not so rosy. Progress on the state tests is minimal if it's even real. And the state tests are generally considered less rigorous than the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests. On those, in no grade did more than half of the students score proficient in reading or math.
So while the department spins the state test scores as all sunshine and butterflies, remember that education bureaucrats often downplay the bad news, and the bad news is that we still have a long, long way to go before our students are performing acceptably.
Quote of the Day
"Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless."
Milton Friedman
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