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30 June 2006

Great Moments in Higher Education

Post lifted from Taranto

The U.S. Senate is considering an amendment to the Constitution that would exclude the desecration of the flag from the First Amendment's free-speech protections, effectively overturning the Supreme Court's ruling in Texas v. Johnson (1989) that held burning the flag to be a form of "symbolic speech." Sixty senators have signed on as sponsors, with 67 needed to propose the amendment. The House approved it last year, 286-130, so an affirmative Senate vote would send it to the states, 38 of whose legislatures would have to ratify it. Weighing in against the proposed amendment, in an op-ed for the Charlotte Observer, is Dr. Susan Roberts:

Flag burning was thrust into the public eye following an arrest of a young man during the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas. The man identified himself as a member of a group calling itself the Revolutionary Youth Brigade. He was charged with a violation of the Texas Desecration of Venerated Objects statute.

In 1989 the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed an appellate court decision that the man was within his First Amendment rights. Wasting no time, Congress passed the Flag Protection Act just months after the ruling. Wasting no time, the Supreme Court ruled that the Flag Protection Act was inconsistent with First Amendment freedoms and thus unconstitutional. It seems unlikely that the Supreme Court would now uphold an amendment prohibiting flag burning, even with the change in the court's composition.

It may seem unlikely that the Supreme Court would uphold a statute prohibiting flag burning (and indeed, in 1990's U.S. v. Eichman it overturned the federal Flag Protection Act of 1989). That's why Congress is considering a constitutional amendment, which the court couldn't overturn.

It's embarrassing enough that Dr. Roberts's error got past the editors of the Observer, but it's even worse that she made such a goof in the first place. For she is not a real doctor but a professor of political science, at North Carolina's Davidson College, where she teaches such courses as The Legislative Process (POL 211) and The Politics of Feminism (POL 215). It is troubling indeed to think that the political scientists of tomorrow are being taught by people who lack basic knowledge about the workings of American government. [No doubt she was an "affirmative action" appointment with an "affirmative action" doctorate]



No place for New Age school syllabus

In the Australian State of New South Wales

NSW Education Minister Carmel Tebbutt has slammed other states for designing their curriculums using an "outcomes-based" approach, saying school students should be protected from syllabuses adopting the latest educational fads. Ms Tebbutt warned that if those curriculums infused the new national syllabus and Australian Certificate of Education being promoted by the Howard Government, there was a risk NSW students could be penalised. "What's happened in some other states is that they've elevated one (outcomes) at the expense of another (content) and my view is you need both," she told The Australian.

The NSW school curriculum differs from other states in prescribing the content of what students should be taught as well as describing the outcomes of what students should be able to do, which Ms Tebbutt said shielded NSW students from the educational trends adopted in some other states, such as postmodern interpretation of literature. "I certainly don't subscribe to the view that there are no pieces of work that aren't more superior than other pieces of work," she said. "There are great pieces of literature, and they should be studied as such." In some states, literary works such as those by Shakespeare are treated as having equal merit with websites, film posters and CD covers.

Ms Tebbutt, who belongs to the Left faction of the ALP, expressed concern that NSW students would be forced into studying a narrower curriculum if the new national syllabus were restricted to the common elements from among the other states. "Any attempt to examine students right across Australia would end up ... pooling the common elements from each state and territory, and we'd only get a part of what we teach being tested," she said yesterday. "The danger is that your teaching program gets skewed to what's being tested, and that ... would narrow our curriculum."

The NSW school curriculum is widely regarded by educational experts as the benchmark, with the West Australian Government saying it would look to the NSW system in redesigning its controversial courses for Years 11 and 12. The Australian Certificate of Education and a national curriculum are expected to be discussed at the national education ministers' council next month.

Ms Tebbutt gave short shrift to many of the current educational trends that carry weight in other states. For instance, she questioned the ability of senior students to grasp complex philosophies, such as Marxism, and apply them to English texts. "I don't subscribe to the view that there are no universal truths ... we might as well all give up now if that's the case," she said. "I don't support that view because it then becomes completely unclear what students are supposed to be learning."

Ms Tebbutt said ensuring a content-rich syllabus was taught consistently throughout the state had enabled NSW to avoid its curriculum becoming dominated by one approach. "We've had a strong approach and we don't want fads in our system," she said. "We stick to an approach that's worked." While some teachers asked senior English students to analyse Shakespeare plays from a Marxist and feminist point of view, Ms Tebbutt questioned the capacity of students to interpret a work at that level. "You've got to remember it's Year 12 students," she said. "And sometimes we're expecting them to have a level of understanding about other philosophies that at that age they're not able to make."

Source

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

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

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

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29 June 2006

WARD CHURCHILL FINALLY GETS THE ORDER OF THE BOOT

Below is a circular from University of Colorado head Phil DiStefano

Fifteen months ago, I met with you to discuss the findings of specific allegations concerning the scholarship and conduct of Professor Ward Churchill. My Committee sought to answer two primary questions raised in various allegations. First, did certain statements by Professor Churchill exceed the boundaries of protected speech? Second, was there evidence that Professor Churchill engaged in other conduct that warranted further action by the University-such as research misconduct, teaching misconduct, or fraudulent misrepresentation in performing his duties? The key findings of this review were the following:

* The content and rhetoric of Professor Churchill's essay on 9/11 and other works that we examined were protected by the First Amendment.

* Allegations regarding research misconduct, including plagiarism, fabrication and misuse of others ` work, had sufficient merit to warrant further inquiry, and they were referred to the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct.

* Questions raised about Professor Churchill's possible misrepresentation of his ethnicity in order to gain employment advantage were reviewed, resulting in a finding of no action warranted. However, questions raised in regard to the allegation of misrepresentation of ethnicity to gain credibility and an audience for scholarship were also reviewed, and the Committee felt that such misrepresentation might constitute research misconduct and failure to meet the standards of professional integrity.

Nine allegations of research misconduct were sent to the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. The nine allegations were reviewed by an Inquiry Subcommittee, which dismissed two of the allegations because they did not fall within the definition of research misconduct. The Inquiry Committee referred the remaining seven allegations to an Investigative Committee to explore them in more detail.

Membership of the Investigative Committee included three distinguished professors from the Boulder campus and two distinguished professors from other universities. I want to publicly thank these outstanding faculty members for their time and commitment to this difficult and onerous task. The investigative Committee concluded that Professor Churchill committed research misconduct. You all have seen a copy of that previous report and can refer to it for additional detail. It is also posted on our Web site.

The Standing Committee on Research Misconduct accepted the Investigative Committee's report on May 15, 2006, and issued its report to the provost and dean of the College of Arts & Sciences on June 13, 2006. Both the Investigative Committee and the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct recommended sanctions ranging from suspension without pay to termination.

I have carefully reviewed the Report of the Investigative Committee, Professor Churchill's responses to the Committee, and the Recommendations of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct. I have met with and obtained the separate input of Provost Susan Avery and Todd Gleeson, the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. I met with Professor Churchill and his attorney, David Lane. After conducting the due diligence I felt was necessary, I have come to a decision regarding the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct pertaining to Professor Ward Churchill. Today, I issued to Professor Churchill a notice of intent to dismiss him from his faculty position at the University of Colorado, Boulder. My issuance of this notice now triggers a process that is governed by Regents Law, Article 5.C.1 and 2 and Regents Policy 5-I.

Let me make two very important points. The first is about the integrity of the process that was used to investigate the allegations of research misconduct. Faculty members from this institution and others across the country enjoy the freedom of expression that is the foundation of what they do in their scholarly pursuits. A university is a marketplace of ideas-a place where controversy is no stranger and opinionated discourse is applauded. Indeed, one of our most cherished principles is academic freedom-the right to pursue and disseminate knowledge without threat of sanction.

But, as is true with all liberties enjoyed by all Americans, with freedom comes responsibility. Appropriately, we in the academy are held to high standards of integrity, competence and accuracy, at the same time we freely engage in spirited, unimpeded discourse in the "marketplace of ideas." The faculty members on both Committees fully understood their duty to uphold the standards that allow them academic freedom and freedom of expression, and I applaud them for their work, their dedication, and their commitment.

Secondly, of great importance to me as chancellor is the suggestion that the University's ethnic studies department is in some way responsible for, or deficient, because of the investigation of research misconduct of one of its faculty members. This perception is unfounded in fact, and it is a perception that the University will work to reverse in the coming months.

At no time during the work of the Inquiry and Investigative Subcommittees, or the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct, has the work of the other faculty members of the ethnic studies department been called into question. As stated in the Standing Committee's recommendation, "We have taken pains in this report to explain that the findings apply only to Professor Churchill, and should not be casually generalized to others in his department or field of study." Indeed, the proceedings of all the Committees have been focused on the research misconduct of one faculty member only.

The Standing Committee also made some recommendations with regard to the University's policies and procedures. We are following through on these specific recommendations.

Now, let me briefly explain the process as we go forward. Professor Churchill may request within 10 days to have President Brown or me forward this recommendation to the Faculty Senate Committee on Privilege and Tenure. If Professor Churchill does so, a special panel will then conduct hearings about this matter and make a recommendation to the president about whether the grounds for dismissal are supported. The handout you received outlines more detail about this process.

Source



Corrupt lesbian UC Chancellor takes a jump

Shocked community leaders wondered Sunday whether the pressure of the job prompted the apparent suicide of the University of California, Santa Cruz chancellor. "Everybody's stunned," Santa Cruz Mayor Cynthia Mathews said of the death Saturday of Denice Dee Denton, 46. "It's sad for her personally and for the university. It's been a very tough tenure for her."

Denton apparently jumped from a 43-story luxury apartment building in downtown San Francisco, police and university officials said. Her longtime partner, Gretchen Kalonji, has an apartment in the building, according to property records.

In this city famous for political activism, running the University of California campus can be a pressure-cooker, Mathews said. "This is a community that puts everybody in a spotlight," she said. "That can create a lot of pressure. I'm not sure she was prepared for that." Denton's mother, Carolyn Mabee, was in the apartment building the time of the death, and reportedly told investigators her daughter was "very depressed" about personal and professional problems.

Denton was appointed two years ago and inherited an array of controversies. There were red-hot debates over the university's long-range plans to increase enrollment, and growing statewide concerns about UC perquisites for executives. Denton was also plagued by accusations of lavish spending at a time the university is raising fees and cutting budgets. She was criticized for demanding $600,000 in renovations to her campus home and for helping secure a $192,000-a-year job for Kalonji as director of international strategy development. Denton was also ensnared in the controversy that erupted last fall over revelations that UC executives were granted millions of dollars in bonuses, housing allowances and other perks without proper approval. An independent audit released in April found that Denton received a series of benefits in violation of UC policy, including a $21,000 moving allowance and a $16,000 signing bonus....

And though Denton was not heavily involved in activism surrounding local gay and lesbian issues, she was an influential role model, said Bob Correa, past director of The Diversity Center, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community center. "She came to town with the label as an 'out lesbian,' no one outed her, and that always has a positive impact," Correa said. "Young people need to see that. Her role as a leader in the UC community was an important symbol."

More here. See also here regarding the corruption. From the photo supplied with the original article, she looks more like a guy with a wig on than anything else. If she did indeed have female genitals, no wonder she was depressed

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

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

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

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28 June 2006

Blacks Call UCLA Biased, Seek Overhaul of Admissions

Leaders in Los Angeles' African American community called Thursday for the overhaul of UCLA's undergraduate admissions practices, charging that many black applicants were unfairly rejected by the university.

The demand for reforms follows the disclosure two weeks ago that blacks account for only 96, or 2%, of the more than 4,700 freshmen expected to enroll at UCLA this fall. That is the lowest level in more than three decades, and gives UCLA a lower percentage of African American freshmen than USC or UC Berkeley.

The call for changes was also propelled by this week's release of a report by researchers at UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies that was sharply critical of the university's freshmen admissions procedures.

In a news conference on campus, a newly formed group consisting of African American religious, civic, alumni and student leaders said UCLA's admissions practices discriminate against blacks.

The Alliance for Equal Opportunity in Education rejected university administrators' frequent assertion that California's ban on affirmative action in public employment, contracting and education - mandated by the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996 - was a major impediment to bringing in more black students.

The activists called for a complete overhaul of admissions practices to bring about "immediate and demonstrative actions to increase African American admissions and enrollment." They did not offer specifics other than urging a more holistic approach that would put applicants' achievements and performance in a fairer context.

Mandla Kayise, president of the UCLA Black Alumni Assn., said the alliance holds the University of California regents and the UCLA administration responsible for "denying highly qualified African American students who have achieved some of the highest levels of academic achievement [and] personal achievement and have overcome some of the greatest life challenges of any group of students the African American community has ever produced."

"They have been accepted at UC Berkeley, they have been accepted at USC, they have been accepted to top campuses across this country and yet we find some of those same students have been denied at UCLA," Kayise said.

UCLA officials said that their declining number of black freshmen was tied to Proposition 209. Before the ban was imposed on affirmative action, "We consistently led the UC system year after year after year in both the number of admits and the proportion of our freshman classes that were underrepresented minorities," said Tom Lifka, a UCLA assistant vice chancellor.

But many of the group of about 20 black community leaders who appeared at the UCLA news conference cited the new Bunche Center report as evidence of UCLA's flawed admissions practices.

That report noted that UCLA is extending fewer admissions offers to black high school seniors despite rising percentages of African American students in the state who are meeting the minimum standards for eligibility for UC campuses and who are applying to the schools.

Darnell Hunt, director of the Bunche Center, said UCLA's admissions procedures fail to fully account for the obstacles low-income black students often face compared to affluent students who have more opportunities to take Advanced Placement courses and SAT preparation classes.

He added that UCLA's numbers of African American students have fallen to such low levels that even when black prospective students visit the campus, "It becomes a tough sell when they . don't see any other people like themselves."

Ward Connerly, a former UC regent and leading opponent of affirmative action, took issue with the Bunche report, saying that the main problem is a small pool of high-performing black high school students.

Source



Bush/Kennedy education reforms not doing much good: Harvard study

U.S. President George W. Bush's signature No Child Left Behind education policy is failing to close racial achievement gaps [Surprise!] and will miss its goals by 2014 according to recent trends, a Harvard study said on Wednesday. It said the policy has had no significant impact on improving reading and math achievement since it was introduced in 2001, contradicting White House claims and potentially adding to concerns over America's academic competitiveness. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act was meant to introduce national standards to an education system where only two-thirds of teenagers graduate from high school, a proportion that slides to 50 percent for blacks and Hispanics.

The study released by Harvard University's Civil Rights Project said national average of achievement by U.S. students has been flat in reading since 2001 and the growth rate in math has remained the same as before the policy was introduced. The study follows results last month from the first nationwide science test administered in five years which showed achievement among U.S. high school seniors falling over the past decade -- a time when students in many other developed countries are outscoring U.S. students in science testing. The Harvard report said only 24 to 34 percent of U.S. students will meet a reading proficiency target by 2014 and 29 to 64 percent will hit a math target under current trends.

Under No Child Left Behind, children in every racial and demographic group in every school must improve their scores on standardized tests in math and English each year. Failure to achieve annual progress can lead to sanctions against schools. Children in poorly performing schools can switch schools if space is available. In extreme cases, schools can be closed. But a surge in the number of schools identified as "needing improvement," including many considered top performers in their state, has stirred opposition to the law nationwide -- from a legal challenge in Connecticut to a rebellion by state legislators in staunchly Republican Utah.

U.S. officials counter the reforms are working. "Across the country test scores in reading and math in the early grades are rising," Deputy Secretary for the Department of Education, Raymond Simon, testified in Congress on Tuesday. "The 'achievement gap' is finally beginning to close."

That differs from Harvard's study, which predicts less than 25 percent of poor and black students will hit the 2014 target in reading proficiency and less than 50 percent in math, with the overall racial achievement gap barely closing by 2014. The averages were based on the federal government's National Assessment of Educational Progress, considered the most accurate test for measuring achievement in core subjects.

Source

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

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

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

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27 June 2006

EDUCATION PROMOTES IMMATURITY?

The adage "like a kid at heart" may be truer than we think, since new research is showing that grown-ups are more immature than ever. Specifically, it seems a growing number of people are retaining the behaviors and attitudes associated with youth. As a consequence, many older people simply never achieve mental adulthood, according to a leading expert on evolutionary psychiatry.

Among scientists, the phenomenon is called psychological neoteny. The theory's creator is Bruce Charlton, a professor in the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He also serves as the editor-in-chief of Medical Hypotheses, which will feature a paper outlining his theory in an upcoming issue.

Charlton explained to Discovery News that humans have an inherent attraction to physical youth, since it can be a sign of fertility, health and vitality. In the mid-20th century, however, another force kicked in, due to increasing need for individuals to change jobs, learn new skills, move to new places and make new friends. A "child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge" is probably adaptive to the increased instability of the modern world, Charlton believes. Formal education now extends well past physical maturity, leaving students with minds that are, he said, "unfinished." "The psychological neoteny effect of formal education is an accidental by-product - the main role of education is to increase general, abstract intelligence and prepare for economic activity," he explained. "But formal education requires a child-like stance of receptivity to new learning, and cognitive flexibility." "When formal education continues into the early twenties," he continued, "it probably, to an extent, counteracts the attainment of psychological maturity, which would otherwise occur at about this age."

Charlton pointed out that past cultures often marked the advent of adulthood with initiation ceremonies. While the human mind responds to new information over the course of any individual's lifetime, Charlton argues that past physical environments were more stable and allowed for a state of psychological maturity. In hunter-gatherer societies, that maturity was probably achieved during a person's late teens or early twenties, he said. "By contrast, many modern adults fail to attain this maturity, and such failure is common and indeed characteristic of highly educated and, on the whole, effective and socially valuable people," he said. "People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence in the sense of being unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact."

Charlton added that since modern cultures now favor cognitive flexibility, "immature" people tend to thrive and succeed, and have set the tone not only for contemporary life, but also for the future, when it is possible our genes may even change as a result of the psychological shift. The faults of youth are retained along with the virtues, he believes. These include short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness. At least "youthfulness is no longer restricted to youth," he said, due to overall improvements in food and healthcare, along with cosmetic technologies.

David Brooks, a social commentator and an op-ed columnist at The New York Times, has documented a somewhat related phenomenon concerning the current blurring of "the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture," which Charlton believes is a version of psychological neoteny. Brooks believes such individuals have lost the wisdom and maturity of their bourgeois predecessors due to more emphasis placed on expertise, flexibility and vitality.

Source



SINGLE-SEX SCHOOLS BETTER?

Boys and girls are no more likely to achieve better results when they are educated in separate schools than together, according to a study of the way children learn. Girls' schools consistently top the league tables at GCSE and A level - which the author suggests is attributable to selection and background, rather than gender.

Advocates of single-sex schooling argue that children achieve more academically when they are taught separately. After reviewing a decade of international and national research, Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at the University of Buckingham, says that the evidence does not support this view. "On performance, there is no evidence that girls will get better results in a single sex than a co-educational school. The same is true for boys," Professor Smithers said. "The girls' schools feature highly in the league tables because they are highly selective, their children come from particular social backgrounds and they have excellent teachers."

The number of single-sex state schools has declined from 2,500 in the 1960s to 400 today. In the independent sector, 130 single-sex schools for boys and girls have merged, turned co-educational or closed. Many single-sex comprehensives perform relatively poorly overall. "If you look at GCSEs and at A-level results, girls overall do better than boys," Professor Smithers said. So, on average, a girls' school would achieve better results than a boys' school. "However, if you have a highly selective boys' school, they will do better than most girls," said Professor Smithers, who this week presents his findings at Wellington College, which recently turned co- educational.

Last year 23.9 per cent of girls were awarded A grades at A level, compared with 21.5 per cent of boys. In most subjects, with the exception of English and modern languages, girls outperformed boys. Professor Smithers, who sent both his daughters to a single-sex school, is keen not to diminish the schools' achievements but insists that their emphasis on gender is misplaced. He cites, for example, the claim that girls in single-sex schools are more likely to study science than if they study alongside boys. According to his research, this is simply not the case. The proportion of girls taking physics went up between 1960 and 1985 - at a time that single-sex schools in Britain were disappearing. The trend, he says, appears to have been caused by the new mixed comprehensives offering girls more opportunities to take physics. "The pattern emerging was that girls were at least as likely or more to study physics in co-ed schools, possibly because of the critical mass of students, the facilities and the teachers," said Professor Smithers. This was particularly the case among the brightest girls.

His research will be unwelcome to the top boys-only public schools such as Eton, Harrow and Radley - as well as to the country's 203 feepaying girls' schools. They point out that last year girls and boys in single-sex independent schools achieved 10 per cent more A grades at A level than those at independent co-educational schools. Brenda Despontin, president of the Girls' Schools Association and head of Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls, says that single-sex schooling offers more than academic achievement. "Children have the opportunity to develop at their own pace, to grow in confidence and not worry about others around them," she said. "They gain much more than As at A level - they come out aiming high and confident of taking the world by storm."

Last year a study by academics at Cambridge University suggested that single-sex classes within co-educational schools could be the key to helping adolescent boys and girls succeed. Schools that taught boys and girls certain subjects separately - to address differentials in achievement - found that both became more confident and grades climbed rapidly. This "parallel education" is favoured by Steve Biddulph, the Australian educational psychologist and author of Raising Boys. After 20 years of research he believed that there was strong evidence to suggest that boys and girls aged between 12 to 15 did not learn well together. "The reasons are developmental - there is an almost two-year difference in the onset of puberty, so girls leap ahead physically and emotionally," Mr Biddulph said. Among his suggestions were that although boys and girls should mix in the playground, in their teens they should learn separately until they reached the age of 16.

Source

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

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

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

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



26 June 2006

Charter schools moving parents away from union-controlled schools

A decade ago, charter schools existed largely on the fringes. Many were start-ups operating out of rented church basements -- alternatives to failing urban schools that struggled to teach the basics. Now more than 200,000 California students are enrolled in 574 charters -- independently operated public schools that have wide latitude in what they teach and how they teach it.

While charters are still most popular in big cities and among low-achieving students, they're starting to take root in bedroom communities and affluent suburbs, creating stiff competition for regular public schools and drawing students from highly regarded private schools as well. ``We shop around to find the right mechanic for our car, but a lot of time we don't take the same approach when it comes to choosing schools,'' said Wanny Hersey, a skilled pianist and principal of Bullis Charter School in Los Altos. ``Once parents realize that school choice is out there and that one size doesn't fit all, they can evaluate different programs.''

Bullis was founded three years ago by parents outraged after their neighborhood elementary school was closed during a budget crunch. The K-6 school lacks a permanent campus; it's housed in a dozen portable trailers on the parking lot behind Egan Middle School. But families are flocking to the young school's small classes, rich drama and instrumental music programs and individual learning plans for each student. One measure of parent interest: 180 students applied for 40 kindergarten slots available this fall. Sustainable cooking, public speaking and conflict management are among the electives. Numerous projects, including an environmental education partnership with Hidden Villa, a 1,600-acre wilderness preserve in Los Altos Hills, are in the works.

For Steve Johnson, moving his daughter Sophia, 12, from a private school to Bullis last year was like moving from a house to something that really feels like home. Sophia graduated from sixth grade last week. ``She has learned faster and better here,'' he said. ``It's challenging, but she's rising to the occasion. I wish they would expand.''

Charter schools are by no means a magic bullet for the numerous challenges of public education. Some stumble, fail to meet community expectations, lose students and ultimately close. The California Charter Academy, a statewide chain of schools, fell to pieces in 2004, and a state audit found millions of dollars in questionable spending.

Some schools never make it through the approval process. RAICES, a proposed K-8 charter school in San Jose's Alum Rock neighborhood, recently had its petition rejected by the Santa Clara County Board of Education. ``The curriculum hadn't been thought through, and it felt slapped together,'' said Bill Evers, who serves on the county board and is generally supportive of charter schools. ``The charter didn't look ready, and I couldn't in good conscience approve it.''

The research on charter schools is also mixed. A May report by EdSource found that charter elementary and middle schools were more likely than non-charters to reach their goals when it came to improving test scores, but that charter high schools lagged.

There are 18 charter schools in Santa Clara County serving more than 5,400 students. Roughly half were founded to help struggling students from low-income families. Two more are scheduled to open this fall, and others are in the planning stages. Downtown College Prep in San Jose got enormous statewide attention when its standardized test scores shot up 90 points in 2004-2005. It focuses on students who would be the first in their families to go to college; the vast majority speak Spanish at home. Entire classes go on field trips to colleges and universities.

But charters are also drawing families who are frustrated with the teach-to-the-standardized-test pressure facing many public schools, as well as parents shopping for specific programs. ``With No Child Left Behind, many schools are focusing just on reading, writing and arithmetic,'' said Caprice Young, president of the California Charter Schools Association. ``Parents of all kinds are looking for schools that still offer music and science and a diverse, enriched curriculum. Charter schools are a direct response to that.''

In Silicon Valley, the charter school movement has largely grown by word of mouth -- parents talking to other parents at soccer games and birthday parties. However, local school districts, which can approve or deny charter school proposals, are not always as enthusiastic as parents. ``The fact is that getting a charter approved is still difficult, and a number of districts have signaled `Over my dead body,' '' said Eric Premack, co-director of the Charter Schools Development Center in Sacramento.

Other districts are wholeheartedly in favor: Cambrian School District in west San Jose converted four of its five elementary schools to charters so each could have more autonomy. Charter schools are governed by their own boards, have fewer regulations and work rules and have greater flexibility when it comes to raising and spending money, hiring staff and developing curriculum.

The first years of a charter school are reminiscent of dot-coms in the early days: It's a mad scramble to find classroom space, and charters often outgrow their facilities within weeks. There's enormous energy and excitement, along with near-constant retooling. ``It's like a full-time start-up job. This is pretty much my obsession,'' said Barbara Eagle, a parent who has helped drive Discovery Charter School, scheduled to open this fall in Campbell with a student body drawn from 25 public and private schools. ``It's really hard, but I knew we could do it.''

Source



Australia: Black welfare 'link to school'

The Federal Government is considering tying welfare payments to school attendance and nourishment at home as part of its response to the social crisis in Aboriginal communities. The idea has been endorsed by Treasurer Peter Costello ahead of tomorrow's summit of state and federal indigenous affairs ministers, called to find ways of combating violence and child sexual assault blighting many remote settlements. The summit is also expected to consider garnishing welfare payments for parents who are substance abusers. Under the proposal, part of their payments would be held by the Government and directed towards their children's welfare.

Mr Costello said there had been "no shortage of money spent on Aboriginal affairs". "Like any other people, they get family tax benefits and CDEP (Community Development Employment Projects). In addition to that, they get much higher per-capita spending on health and education, yet they're still suffering from great hardships. "What we've proven is that simply shovelling money at these problems is not necessarily the answer. "One option is to tie that money to health and education outcomes much more carefully. For example, making family benefits payments payable only if the parents' kids are going to school. "You could also make family benefits payments conditional on the kids being properly nourished. It's no good if the money is being spent on grog and gambling."

Mr Costello said he'd been convinced to try the scheme by Cape York Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson. He said the Government had set aside money for pilot schemes tying welfare to health and education in the Cape. But in the wake of a controversial call by Health Minister Tony Abbott for a "new paternalism" in Aboriginal affairs, Mr Costello said his plan would apply to all welfare recipients. He said it would probably work better in Aboriginal communities, where leaders were able to identify families in need.

Source

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

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

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

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



25 June 2006

BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS UNDER ATTACK

The charitable status of private schools and hospitals will be challenged by a powerful campaign led by MPs, charities and lawyers, and backed by the Charity Commission, when the Charities Bill returns to Parliament next week. The Bill replaces the 400-year-old common law definition of charity and removes the presumption of charitable status from independent schools. Instead, it requires all charities that charge high fees to demonstrate that they are of “public benefit” if they are to retain tax breaks worth a total of 88 million pounds a year.

As the Bill does not give any details of what constitutes the “public benefit”, critics believe that it is almost meaningless and want a stricter definition. Without it, the whole Bill could fall, taking with it changes that will modernise the legal framework within which charities operate, they say.

Stuart Etherington, of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), which represents 4,700 charities, said a tighter definition of public benefit was essential. “The Bill must protect and promote the charity ‘brand’ by making it clear that only those organisations that benefit the public can be charities,” he said. He insisted that the NCVO’s stance, which is widely shared by leading charities, was not aimed at excluding particular types of charity. “It’s about ensuring that long-term trust and public confidence in charities is maintained and enhanced.”

The Charity Commission, which will be responsible for ensuring that all registered charities pass the public benefit test, is also calling for a clearer definition of terms. “It would be helpful to see an amendment to the Bill removing some of the uncertainty, particularly as regards fee-charging charities,” a spokeswoman said.

John McDonnell, MP for Hayes and Harlington, is one of perhaps 50 Labour backbenchers who want a more robust definition. He said: “Without it, the Government would have a problem.” Martin Horwood, the Liberal Democrat charities spokesman, favours an amendment modelled on Scottish law, to ensure that charities charging high fees do not place “unduly restrictive” conditions on people wanting to use their services. Scottish law requires the regulator to weigh up the benefit to those that can access a charity’s service against the “disbenefit” to the general public who cannot, particularly where there is a charge involved.

Stephen Lloyd, Head of Charity and Social Enterprise at the law firm Bates, Wells & Braithwaite, said that without such an amendment there would be two types of charity: Scottish and English. “If the English public benefit test is less onerous than the Scottish one, you could see independent schools which might be under threat under the Scottish test setting themselves up as English charities but operating north of the Border,” he said.

A spokesman for the Cabinet Office, the department in charge of the Bill said that the government was happy with the way it was worded. He added: “Of course, it still has to be scrutinised.”

The Independent Schools Council argues that most independent schools that are charities already provide a public benefit, saying that for every 1 pound in tax benefits they get they provide 3 pounds in assistance with fees. The Conservative Party seems implacably opposed to any kind of public benefit test. Andrew Turner, MP for the Isle of Wight, said such a test was unnecessary for schools, religious organisations or charities working for the poor.

Source



Education Savings Accounts: Giving Families Ownership in Education

With college tuitions soaring, parents are beginning to save for their children's education earlier and earlier. A growing number of families are putting their savings in education savings accounts (ESA), which enjoy certain tax advantages. The popularity of these accounts suggests that parents want to control the resources spent on their children's education. Policymakers should consider how these accounts could be used to expand school choice and improve American education. Federal law provides two kinds of educations savings accounts. So-called 529 plans allow for tax-protected savings for higher education through state-managed plans. Coverdell ESAs allow for tax-free savings in privately-managed accounts for K-12 and higher education expenses.

529 accounts-named after a section in the IRS code-offer families two ways to save for college expenses. This first option is to lock in today's tuition rates and prepay tuition at a participating higher education institution. The second is to invest in a state-managed investment account where earnings grow tax-free and can be used for tuition when a child enrolls. Under 529 plans, annual contributions can range from $10,000 up to $300,000 in some states. States contract with financial institutions to manage the 529 accounts, and each state offers families different investment options. Most states don't require residency to invest in a 529 plan, and so families are free to shop the state plans to find the best investment. This is important, because some states offer different fees and rates of returns, and competition ensures that families can get the best deal.

The Financial Research Corporation reports that total assets in 529 college savings plans totaled $68 billion at the end of 2005-30 percent over 2004 levels. One reason for the growing use of 529 plans is that 25 states provide various tax incentives-credits or deductions-for investment contributions. (Learn more about 529 accounts here [http://www.savingforcollege.com/college_savings_201/] and whether your state offers tax incentives incentive here [http://www.findaid.org/savings/state529deductions.phtml].)

Until now, states have limited tax incentives for contributions to the state's own plan. But this year, the Maine state legislature enacted a per-beneficiary deduction worth $250 per year for a contribution to any state's 529 plan. This could pave the way for more states to provide tax breaks for out-of-state plans. If so, families can look forward to greater competition among providers and better investment options and returns. Unlike 529 plans, Coverdell Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)-named after the late Georgia Senator-let families contribute up to $2,000 per child annually in a tax-free savings account that can be used for K-12 or higher education expenses. Eligible expenses include K-12 private school tuition, books, school supplies, tutoring, and after-school programs. Unlike 529 college savings plans, Coverdell ESAs can be opened and managed by banks and brokerage firms, similar to 401(k) accounts.

No state currently offers tax incentives for Coverdell ESAs. And since the tax benefits of Coverdell ESAs are deferred, few families are using them. But many American families could make good use of this opportunity to save for their children's education.

As familiarity with education savings accounts grows, supporters of parental choice in education should consider reforms that give families control of education resources. One option would be for states to level the playing field between 529 accounts and Coverdell ESAs by evening out the tax breaks for contributions to either savings vehicle. Another option would be for Congress to reform 529 accounts to include K-12 education expenses, like Coverdell ESAs do today. At a minimum, federal lawmakers could increase contribution limits for Coverdell ESAs to give families greater ability to save.

The promise of a system of widespread ESAs is great. Parents, grandparents, and other relatives would have greater opportunities to save for a child's education. Charities, corporations, and individuals could be given incentives to make contributions to low-income children's accounts, which could be used to pay school or college tuition or any other legitimate educational expense. State governments could create matching-funds plans to help needy children-seven states are already doing this with their 529 plans.

Widespread use of education savings accounts would improve the efficiency of education spending. According to the Department of Education, U.S. taxpayers spend approximately $500 billion annually on K-12 education. Government officials and bureaucrat largely dictate how it's spent. Expanding access to education savings accounts would begin to return control of education decisions to parents. With parents in charge, educators would compete for students and tailor their products and services to individual children's needs.

Choice and competition are keys to improving American education. By giving parents greater power to direct their children's education, education savings accounts could make widespread choice and competition a reality.

Source

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

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

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

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



24 June 2006

Pope report rips into writing at UNC, NCSU

The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy released a paper Monday criticizing introductory writing courses at UNC and N.C. State for overemphasizing group work and underemphasizing grammar and literature. Nan Miller, author of the paper and a former English professor at N.C. State and Meredith College, also condemned the courses for including instruction about writing for the sciences and social sciences at the expense of writing about the humanities.

The Pope Center, a conservative watchdog group, has criticized Carolina faculty members in the past. The organization has ties to the John William Pope Foundation, a group from which the university has requested about $4 million for programs in Western studies. That grant proposal has drawn ire from some UNC professors who say an outside and politically motivated organization should not intervene in curricular choices.

Todd Taylor, who directs UNC's writing program, called the Pope Center's publication of the paper an effort to "whip up politically biased hysteria aimed at teachers and education." "The writing programs at UNC and N.C. State are some of the least political, least liberal areas of the curriculum," Taylor wrote in an e-mail message. "Both of these programs are national exemplars, filled with instructors who are exceptionally committed to their students."

But Miller said professors are not spending enough time teaching during writing courses. She questioned whether workshop-style classes, in which professors spend little time giving traditional lectures, are effective. "An inherent contradiction in this arrangement is that students with SAT scores not high enough to place out of freshman composition are presumed qualified to critique the work of their peers," Miller wrote in her paper, called "English 101: Prologue to Literacy or Postmodern Moonshine." Miller also said group work wrongly takes competition out of the classroom. "To eliminate competition is the greatest disservice you can do to a student," said Miller, who presented her paper Monday at a luncheon at the John Locke Foundation, the public-policy think tank that founded the Pope Center.

In a telephone interview, Taylor said seminar-style courses -- which emphasize work-shopping and revising writing -- align with the goals of many education associations. "Our pedagogy is perfectly consistent with what the university promotes and what large organizations on teaching and learning promote," Taylor said.

Miller said she conducted most of her research on the curriculum at Carolina by talking with writing instructors and senior faculty members in UNC's English department and by looking at course information online. Other main points of her research were that students do not learn enough about grammar or read enough literature in traditional writing courses. Miller said universities make the latter curricular choice out of a belief that the study of books silences student voices and promotes too much "teacher talk."

Source. The PDF of the full Pope report is here



Democrats for (school) choice

When the Arizona legislature concludes its 2006 session in a few days, it will set a record for school-choice legislation by enacting four new or expanded programs allowing disadvantaged children to attend private schools. Even more remarkable: The programs were enacted in a state with a Democratic governor.

Yet Arizona is not an aberration. Already in 2006, a new Iowa corporate scholarship tax credit bill was signed into law by Gov. Tom Vilsack; and in Wisconsin, Gov. Jim Doyle signed a bill increasing the Milwaukee voucher program by 50%. Gov. Ed Rendell may expand Pennsylvania's corporate scholarship tax credit program, as he did last year. Messrs. Vilsack, Doyle and Rendell are all Democrats. And last year, hell froze over: Sen. Ted Kennedy endorsed the inclusion of private schools in a rescue effort for over 300,000 children displaced from their schools by Hurricane Katrina. As a result, tens of thousands of kids are attending private schools using federal funds, amounting to the largest (albeit temporary) voucher program ever enacted. Before that, a voucher program for the District of Columbia was established with support from Democratic Mayor Anthony Williams and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Joseph Lieberman.

What gives? The Democrats are not exactly untethering themselves from the education establishment. While some (like Messrs. Williams and Lieberman) are converts to the idea of school choice, others (like Messrs. Kennedy, Vilsack, Doyle and Rendell) remain generally opposed. Still, school choice has experienced unprecedented legislative success over the past two years for a few underlying reasons. First and foremost, the school choice movement is acting smarter. Instead of taking the unions and their massive resources head-on, advocates are adopting toe-hold strategies, pursuing small programs addressing specific problems that are difficult for politicians to oppose. The strategy makes sense from a moral perspective, for it focuses assistance on the neediest schoolchildren.

It also works politically, because choice begets choice: Once the Rubicon is crossed and legislators vote to adopt a school choice program--no matter how small or targeted--it becomes easier to support a new one, or expand the old one, the next time around. Hence, of the seven new school choice programs enacted last year, six were in states that already had school choice. The seventh was a program for disadvantaged children in Utah, which was expanded this year. At the same time, pro-school choice legislators are bargaining hard, exchanging increases in public school funding for private school choice.

Arizona offers a classic example. The state already has so much school choice--open public school enrollment, more charter schools per capita than any other state, individual scholarship tax credits--that it's more or less impossible for opponents to demonize it. So accepted and popular is the idea that when Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano proposed a full-day kindergarten public school program last year, she called it school choice because, after all, families could choose whether to enroll their children.

This year, the Republican legislature enacted a $5 million corporate tax credit to provide low-income children with scholarships to attend private schools. Ms. Napolitano vetoed it twice before allowing it to become law without her signature. In a budget compromise between the governor and legislature reached last week, the corporate scholarship tax credit will be doubled this year, and increased by 20% each subsequent year, until it grows to nearly $21 million and 7,000 students by 2010. Additionally, Ms. Napolitano agreed to a voucher program for children with disabilities (similar to programs in Florida and Utah) and a first-of-its-kind voucher program for disadvantaged children in foster care.

In return, Republicans agreed to Ms. Napolitano's statewide full-day kindergarten program and salary increases for public school teachers. Both sides will now see which reforms work better: Pouring more money into public schools, or greater choice and competition. Fortunately, both parties are learning that the two approaches are not mutually exclusive.

Another factor inducing a more supportive or tolerant attitude toward school choice among Democrats is that they are running out of viable alternatives. The U.S. Department of Education reported recently that three million children are attending chronically failing schools--that is, schools that have failed to satisfy minimal state standards for at least six consecutive years. Under the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, children in schools failing to make adequate progress are entitled to transfer to better-performing public schools within the district. Trouble is, the number of children eligible to transfer vastly exceeds the number of seats available in the better public schools. In Los Angeles, for example, only two of every 1,000 children in failing schools have transferred.

For Democrats who truly believe in social justice, that presents a terrible dilemma: Either forcing children to remain in schools where they have little prospect for a bright future, or enlisting private schools in a rescue mission. Democrats are increasingly unwilling to forsake the neediest children.

For children in chronically failing schools, the day of reckoning is fast approaching: Legislation to add private school options to NCLB will be introduced next month. Democrats who supported private school relief for Katrina children to alleviate a disaster will be forced to confront the reality that New Orleans schools were in crisis long before the hurricane appeared--and so are millions of other children in inner cities across the nation. Arizona is evidence of the possible. Although she could have allowed them to become law without her signature, as she did with the corporate scholarship tax credits, Gov. Napolitano yesterday became the first Democrat to sign new voucher programs into law. For children with disabilities or in foster care, how the bill became law is of little moment; but by affixing her imprimatur, Ms. Napolitano conveyed powerful symbolic evidence that the future for school choice is bright.

Source

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

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

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

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



23 June 2006

New Arguments on Affirmative Action

While courts continue to hear arguments about affirmative action and Michigan voters prepare to decide the issue in their state, another round of intellectual debate is brewing in law reviews. Two articles - one just published and one forthcoming - challenge some conventional wisdom about affirmative action in higher education. Early buzz suggests that the pieces may attract considerable attention and challenge both critics and defenders of affirmative action.

One article - in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law - takes on the view that the primary beneficiaries of the end of affirmative action in college admissions would be Asian American applicants. The piece analyzes some of the same data that has been used to make that argument and says that what it really shows isn't that affirmative action hurts Asian Americans but that "negative action" (in other words, discrimination) is placing a limit on the enrollments of Asian Americans.

The other article - not yet available online or published - will appear in the North Carolina Law Review. This article examines the attrition of black lawyers from top law firms and links their departures to their poor grades in law school, which in turn the author has previously attributed to the use of affirmative action to admit minority law students who, on average, can't compete at the same level with their white colleagues. A previous article on affirmative action by the same author - Richard Sander - was one of the most discussed pieces of legal scholarship in 2004, drawing both strong praise and intense criticism. Advocates are already lining up to dissect the new Sander article, even before it has appeared.

`Negative Action Versus Affirmative Action'

The article about Asian Americans comes amid many reports that they are the group that most benefits from the elimination of affirmative action. That supposition is important for several reasons, both practical and political. On a practical level, it counters the idea that colleges will be all white in a post-affirmative action era. Politically, these projections have been used repeatedly by critics of affirmative action, arguing that they are not "anti-minority" and to appeal for Asian support in referendums. One of the most dramatic studies on this issue came last year, when two Princeton University researchers analyzed data from elite colleges and projected that, without affirmative action, four of every five slots lost by black and Latino students would go to Asian Americans.

In "Negative Action Versus Affirmative Action: Asian Pacific Americans Are Still Caught in the Crossfire," William C. Kidder takes issue with the Princeton study and similar findings by other scholars. It's not that the demographic shift seen by the Princeton researchers wouldn't take place in an admissions system that's truly race-neutral, says Kidder, a senior policy analyst at the University of California at Davis. Rather, it's the question of why those slots would go to Asian applicants.

The reason, he says, isn't the elimination of affirmative action, but the widespread use of "negative action," under which colleges appear to hold Asian American applicants to higher standards than they hold other applicants. Using the available data from the Princeton study - and not all of it is available - Kidder argues that the vast majority of the gains that Asian American applicants would see come from the elimination of "negative action," not the opening up of slots currently used for affirmative action. Based on the data used by the Princeton study, Kidder argues that negative action is the equivalent of losing 50 points on the SAT. The lead author of the Princeton study did not respond to messages about the findings.

Kidder wanted to check his critique of the Princeton findings about undergraduate applications so he also compared the impact of the end of affirmative action on Asian American enrollments at five public law schools where racial preferences were banned: three in the University of California, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Washington. Tracking enrollment patterns from 1993, when all of the law schools had affirmative action, to 2004 - when they all did not - and then to 2005, when Texas restored it, his results were surprising. Without affirmative action, the share of Asian American enrollments dropped at two of the law schools and increased only marginally at three of the schools - even though people assume Asian American enrollments will go way up without affirmative action. Kidder notes that during the time period studied, the percentage of Asian Americans applying to law school increased 50 percent, so the pool should have created the opportunity for major increases.

What does this all mean? Kidder argues that all the references to growing Asian enrollments in a post-affirmative action world encourage a return to the "yellow peril" fear of people from Asia taking over. More broadly, he thinks Asian Americans in particular aren't getting accurate information about the real cause of their perceived difficulties getting into competitive colleges. Their obstacle, he says, isn't affirmative action, but the discrimination Asian Americans experience by being held to higher standards than anyone else. He says that the differential standards appear to be growing and are similar in some ways to the way some Ivy League institutions limited Jewish enrollments in the first half of the 20th century. "Whether an individual Asian American supports affirmative action or not, this is an independent problem, not because of affirmative action," Kidder says.

His interest in law schools comes from his own experience, since he is a graduate of Boalt Hall, the law school at the University of California at Berkeley, and was a student there in the second class after affirmative action was eliminated. He could see the more diverse third-year class and compare it to his own, which was almost entirely white, as is Kidder. "There was an erosion in discourse and the quality of education I received," he says, noting that in his experience, the affirmative action changes that sent black and Latino enrollments tanking did not lead to an influx of Asian American enrollments.

`The Racial Paradox of the Corporate Law Firm'

The article on law firms might appear to be about affirmative action outside of the educational context, but it is very closely related to law school and other admissions policies. Sander, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles, uses the article to explore why black lawyers appear to do well in getting hired by top law firms, but rarely rise to be partners. Sander's earlier work on affirmative action argued that by admitting poorly qualified black applicants, law schools do them a disservice as they don't do as well as they would have at less prestigious law schools. The new piece carries the idea forward and argues that law firms hire black students with grades that would never have been sufficient for a white student - and that this sets the black students up for failure.

While the article has not been publicly released, Stuart Taylor wrote about it Monday in National Journal and copies of the Sander article have since become a hot commodity. (Sander did not reply to messages Tuesday.) Many defenders of affirmative action see the Sander work as likely to have a big impact - as his 2004 article had - and to be applied broadly to higher education. "This is an extension of his basic argument of a mismatch between students and schools, which he's applying to law firms," says Christopher Bracey, an associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and co-administrator of Blackprof.com, a group blog of black law professors. "This is now going to be applied to any sector of the economy, and people are going to say that this explains the reduction in tenure rates of African American professors," Bracey says. He sees Sander's arguments as appealing to those "who want to sincerely believe that we are in a meritocracy."

What Sander does in his article is set out a series of statistics that suggest a sharp gap in the educational achievements of white and black law students who end up at top firms. (He also compares figures for other minority groups, but the gaps are most stark for black students). For example, of new lawyers working in law firms with offices of at least 100 lawyers, Sander finds that 21 percent of white students, and only 2 percent of black students, have grade point averages of 3.75 or higher. Only 14 percent of white students who work at such firms have GPA's below 3.25, but 46 percent of black students do. Not only do these data suggest race-based hiring standards, but the new black lawyers themselves believe that their race played a role in getting their jobs. Asked if various factors were important in obtaining their jobs, 56 percent of new black lawyers said that their race or ethnicity was important, compared to only 2 percent of white lawyers who felt that way.

Sander writes that law firms place a high value on appearing to be diverse, and so hire black lawyers with low grades, even though these lawyers are then far more likely to leave the firms and far less likely to rise than are other lawyers. Of various activities and legal duties Sander compares, there is one where new black lawyers are significantly more likely than white lawyers to be participants: 41 percent of black lawyers and 26 percent of white lawyers report that serving on a recruitment committee is something they do regularly.

Citing a range of other data, Sander writes that law firms have found that law school grades actually mean something - and predict success in legal work - so that if they are willing to apply that test to white applicants, they should apply it across the board. Sander writes that law firms would benefit by placing less emphasis on their numbers of black lawyers and more on the quality of those they hire. "If firms are less focused on achieving proportional representation among summer associates, and more focused on hiring a modest number of minority associates whom they are more committed to training and developing, they will both narrow the credentials gap and decrease the likelihood of attrition," Sander writes. He also urged top law firms to pressure law schools to improve black student performance - both by decreasing the use of affirmative action in admissions and by providing more academic support.

The same issue of the North Carolina Law Review with Sander's article will contain a strongly worded rebuttal by James E. Coleman Jr. and Mitu Gulati, law professors at Duke University. In their piece, they argue that Sander overstates the role of grades and understates other factors in explaining the performance of new black lawyers. In particular, they note that law firms have cultures that may or may not be receptive to diversity (and they suggest that some are and others aren't).

Coleman and Gulati also argue that Sander doesn't have enough evidence about grades and subsequent legal career performance to make the claims that he does. They state, for example, that he should have tracked the group of black students who do perform well in law school to see whether their grades correlate with success in large law firms. Failing to look at such students, they write, raises major questions about his findings. They also cast doubt on his reiteration of his belief that black students will be better off earning better grades at less prestigious law schools. Where is the evidence, they write, that top law firms will recruit at such law schools? (There's ample evidence that top law firms recruit at a very narrow group of law schools.)

Even as they question Sander's article, however, Coleman and Gulati write that they fear its impact. Sander's writings are "taken seriously" outside law schools, they write, and this work will damage young black professionals as it will reinforce stereotypes about their abilities, they write. "To the extent there is material in his article that will be understood as empirical confirmation of the lack of qualification of black students, the article imposes a high cost on those who need no additional obstacles placed before them," they write.

Bracey, the Washington University professor, has his own criticism of Sander's ideas - even while acknowledging that he believes that there is a grades gap between black and white law students. Bracey is in many ways part of the sample that Coleman and Gulati suggest Sander should have examined: He not only went to Harvard Law School, but excelled academically, serving as an editor on the Harvard Law Review and holding a clerkship before working for a few years in a large law firm. Sander's work would classify him as someone who somehow "failed" - even though he's a professor at a top law school, Bracey notes. "Many minority lawyers move to different sorts of activities," Bracey says. "That's not necessarily a negative."

In his courses, Bracey says, he feels confident that race does not influence grades: Tests are scored blindly. But when you are a black law professor, he says, you get visits from plenty of students - minority students and women, who talk about the culture of institutions - about fellow students' expectations, about what it means to study in libraries where portrait after portrait shows dead white men, about courses where you are expected to be the voice of black men or white women, or some other group. Even without overt racism, Bracey says that there are many "subtle factors" that have a real impact on the experience of minority law students.

In his courses, Bracey says, he goes out of his way to include plenty of case law about issues of race and gender and bias, but he also makes sure that he asks students - black and white, male and female - about all of these issues. He wants all students to see that these issues are important, and that no one group is responsible for these issues. "I do these kinds of things, but not everyone does," Bracey says. "I'm a blip on the otherwise steady radar that students experience."

Source



Mom? Dad? I'm Home!

Why are so many grads returning to live with their parents? $40 billion in loans

Keep an eye out for more boomerang kids, the ones who move back in with mom and dad. In fact, the most recent crop of college graduates will be home a lot longer than their parents expect because of burdensome student loans.

A soon-to-be released study commissioned by AllianceBernstein Investments attempts to document just how much and how long the burden of college debt weighs down grads. The survey of some 1,500 21- to 35-year-old college grads, sometimes referred to as Generation Broke, found this cohort owes an average of $30,000 in student loans. What's more, they are delaying marriage, kids, even medical procedures, to pay off their educational loans. "Clearly, the scope of this issue is much broader and more far-reaching than just college planning," says Michael Conrath, senior product manager for 529 college savings plans at AllianceBernstein Investments.

The bottom line? Parents with debt-laden grads may want to dig into their pockets to help their kids gain some financial footing, says Jennifer DeLong, AllianceBernstein's director of college savings plans. And, more than ever, parents with young kids need to start socking money away for college as soon as possible. "Unless parents today do something about it and begin to save, we are not going to break the cycle," DeLong says.

Grads say parents should take some of the blame for this mess. Forty-four percent with debt would give their parents or guardian a "D" or "F" in their financial preparations for college.

The Class of 2006 faces an especially frightening financial picture. The 3 million students graduating from U.S. colleges and universities this year carry more than $40 billion in student loans, and interest rates on federal loans are jumping two percentage points in July. That means new grads are going to feel an even bigger pinch than their predecessors, such as the people profiled in "Thirty & Broke" (BW -- Nov. 14). They do have a window to secure the lower rates if they consolidate their loans with one lender by June 30 ("Locking in low rates," BW -- May 22).

The first step for new grads is to tackle credit-card debt, since interest rates tend to be in the double digits. Those who want to play the balance-transfer game -- the survey found a $3,000 average balance -- can find a list of credit cards with low introductory interest rates at bankrate.com.

Living with mom and dad, while not ideal, will cut costs. Nearly a third of the respondents to the AllianceBernstein study say they had been "forced to move back in with parents or guardians or lived with them longer than they expected" because of education-related debt. Over a third of respondents with debt had sold personal possessions to make ends meet, vs. 17% of respondents with no debt. More than a quarter said they had delayed a medical or dental procedure.

That's a predicament Kelly Reid, 27, knows all too well. After she finished graduate school at the London School of Economics & Political Science, Reid sold her car to pay off loans, and she moved back in with her mother in Harrisburg, Pa., for eight months. She avoided going to the dentist for three years because she couldn't afford it. Her advice: Suck it up and live with your parents for as long as it takes to get your financial house in order. "You are not pathetic," says Reid, now a program manager at a human rights group in San Diego. "I take comfort in the fact that all my friends moved back home, too."

Advisers say planning ahead for college is key for parents, yet three-quarters of those polled who have kids say they haven't started saving for their own children's college education. "By the time my kids go to college, I'll still be paying off my debt, plus taking on theirs," says Maddy Stephens, 25, a publicist in Los Angeles who graduated from Trinity College and University of Southern California, with more than $70,000 in student loans.

Even if they make sacrifices to trim costs, few respondents expect to pay off their college debt anytime soon. Indeed, 31% of those paying off college debt say Madonna will become a grandmother before they are debt-free. Like the Material Girl, they are living in a material world.

Source

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

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

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

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



22 June 2006

THE RETURN OF THE UNIFORM IN FRANCE

Four decades after school uniforms were abolished in France, head teachers are being urged to bring them back in an attempt to improve classroom discipline. Gilles de Robien, the Education Minister, called yesterday for trials in a few schools with a view to reintroducing uniforms across the country.The move comes as debate rages in France over the need to restore order on unruly youths, and as ministers in Switzerland and Germany are also expressing support for a return to a formal dress code. M de Robien was supported by Francois Bayrou, head of the centrist Union for Democracy in France party and a likely candidate in next year’s presidential election. He urged his compatriots to “reflect on the British approach”.

British-style uniforms were abandoned in French schools after the Second World War when pupils were told to wear overalls instead. But those, too, disappeared after the May 1968 riots ushered in a philosophy of individual freedom. School dress codes now tend to be lax, although the Government introduced legislation banning pupils from wearing religious symbols, notably Muslim headscarves, in 2004.

Calls for a return to uniforms have caught the mood of a nation increasingly worried about its youth. Both the leading contenders for the presidency — the Socialist Segolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right Interior Minister — have pushed order and discipline to the centre of their policies. In an opinion poll published yesterday 59 per cent of respondents said that they would prefer more order and authority in France, while 37 per cent said they would prefer greater personal freedom.

The mood is also changing among parents, with 48 per cent saying that they are in favour of restoring uniforms and 44 per cent against. Mothers are more likely than fathers to favour school uniforms.

Although supporters of school uniforms cite discipline as a reason, parents also have an eye on the household budget, with a typical family now estimated to spend between 600 euros and 700 a year on clothes for teenage children. Yesterday M de Robien said uniforms “may be an interesting way of avoiding the rush for expensive clothes, although I would not want to take a dogmatic approach to this”. Dominique Marcilhacy, a spokeswoman for the Union of European Families, said: “Children who don’t have the right clothes are rejected and ostracised in a very cruel way. That is a good reason to consider uniforms.”

Some senior French politicians are also calling for l’uniforme a l’ecole to stamp out what they describe as indecent clothes — and particularly the look. Eric Raoult, the Mayor of Raincy, near Paris, for instance, denounced girls “who wear low-slung jeans so everyone can see the ring in their navel. They wouldn’t be allowed into a nightclub like that.”

Source



Australian Catholic school parents want grades

The overwhelming majority of Catholic school parents support the introduction of the new A-to-E report cards, particularly the move to rank students against their peers. The support opens up a potential split with parents groups in government schools after their national body, the Australian Council of State School Organisations, foreshadowed at the weekend a campaign to inform parents of their right to refuse the new plain-English reports.

ACSSO president Jenny Branch wants state parents and citizens branches to ensure parents are aware they can choose to exclude their child from the new system, designed in response to complaints existing assessment models are vague and confusing. Challenging the push towards simpler A-to-E gradings on report cards, she told The Weekend Australian on Saturday the "traditional end-of-the-year report card is a celebration of achievement of a child throughout the year".

But a survey by the Federation of Parents and Friends Associations and the Catholic Education Office in Sydney shows almost three in four Catholic school parents support the introduction of the plain-English reports and just 8per cent are opposed. Reporting the results in the parents newsletter, About Catholic Schools, federation executive officer Franceyn O'Connor said parents were "largely enthusiastic" about the five-level grading system. "Many parents have indicated in several discussions and meetings held throughout the year that they welcome the opportunity to compare their child's progress against statewide standards using a common grading scale," Ms O'Connor said. "They appreciate how difficult it may be for teachers to convey bad news but they still want a fair and honest assessment of their child's abilities to determine their rate of progress."

The federal Government introduced a requirement for all schools in the government, Catholic and independent sectors to provide plain-English report cards as a condition of funding. All the states and territories are introducing the reports, which must grade students in five levels, such as A to E, and also provide information on the students rankings according to their peers.

Ms O'Connor said the decision by governments to only grade and rank students from Year 1 was crucial for parents' support, with the survey showing more than one in five were concerned that grading children when they started school could harm their self-esteem. ACSSO, representing parents in government schools, maintains opposition to the grading and ranking of students, raising questions of how representative their views are.

The federal Education Department has received many letters of support for the reforms to school reports and federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said the parents she had spoken to welcomed the changes. "The vast majority of parents I talk to want to know in plain English how their children are performing, and how they're performing in relation to other students," she said.

One parent quoted in the Catholic newsletter, Veronica Molloy, who has two children in high school and one at primary, welcomed the chance to gauge how her children were performing against statewide standards. Ms Molloy's only concern was about preconceived ideas that attached a stigma to any grade lower than an A. "There are a lot of negative perceptions in society about a C grade, for example," she said. "Children themselves might perceive any grade other than an A as a failure ... it's up to the Government to address these misconceptions."

Source

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

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

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

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21 June 2006

Education Myths

Myths aren't lies. They are beliefs that people adopt because they have an air of plausibility. But myths aren't true, and they often get in the way during serious problem-solving. This essay identifies seven common myths that dominate established views of education these days. Dispelling these misconceptions could open the door to long-awaited improvement in our nationIs schools.

The money myth

If people know anything about public schools today, it's that they are strapped for cash. Bestselling books, popular movies, and countless lobbying groups portray urban schools as desperately underfunded, and editors of the New York Times write without fear of contradiction that "providing quality education for all America's children will take...a great deal of money." Bumper stickers declare, "It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber." No matter what aspect of education is being debated, activists generally find the solution in more school spending.

This is the most widely held myth about education in America--and the one most directly at odds with the available evidence. Few people are aware that our education spending per pupil has been growing steadily for 50 years. At the end of World War II, public schools in the United States spent a total of $1,214 per student in inflation-adjusted 2002 dollars. By the middle of the 1950s that figure had roughly doubled to $2,345. By 1972 it had almost doubled again, reaching $4,479. And since then, it has doubled a third time, climbing to $8,745 in 2002.

Since the early 1970s, when the federal government launched a standardized exam called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), it has been possible to measure student outcomes in a reliable, objective way. Over that period, inflation-adjusted spending per pupil doubled. So if more money produces better results in schools, we would expect to see significant improvements in test scores during this period. That didn't happen. For twelfth-grade students, who represent the end product of the education system, NAEP scores in math, science, and reading have all remained flat over the past 30 years. And the high school graduation rate hasn't budged. Increased spending did not yield more learning.

This big-picture evidence is strongly confirmed by academic research. Though you'd never know it from the tenor of most education debates, the vast majority of studies have found no sustained positive relationship between spending and classroom results. Economist Eric Hanushek of Stanford University examined every solid study on spending and outcomes--a total of 163 research papers--and concluded that extra resources are more likely to be squandered than to have a productive effect.

Still, countless people assume that our schools are underfunded. One explanation is that people don't want to believe that large amounts of public money have been used without producing significant results. There's plenty of room for debate on how best to reform our school system, but the sooner Americans realize that lack of resources is not the real problem in our schools the sooner we can have a meaningful debate on how to make education more productive.

The teacher pay myth

The common assertion that teachers are severely underpaid when compared to workers in similar professions is so omnipresent that many Americans simply accept it as gospel. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen has declared that teachers ought to be excused from paying any income taxes. Teachers unions are not shy about claiming, like one spokesman for the National Education Association, that "it's easier to earn more money with less stress in other fields." Even First Lady Laura Bush, herself a former public school teacher, has said that for teachers, "salaries are too low. We all know that. We need to figure out a way to pay teachers more."

But the facts tell a different story. The average teacher's salary does seem modest at first glance: about $44,600 in 2002 for all teachers. But when we take an accurate account of what teachers are paid for their labor and compare it to what workers of similar skill levels in similar professions are paid, we find that teachers are not shortchanged at all.

One reason for the prominence of the underpaid-teacher belief is that people often fail to account for the relatively low number of hours that teachers work. It seems obvious, but it is easily forgotten: teachers work only about nine months per year. During the summer they can either work at other jobs or use the time off however else they wish. Either way, it's as much a form of compensation as a paycheck--as anyone who has ever had to count vacation days knows. If a teacher makes $45,000 for nine months of work while a nurse makes $45,000 for 12 months of work, clearly the teacher is much better paid. Nurses would certainly consider it to be a generous raise if they were offered three months' vacation each year at the same annual salary.

The most recent data available indicate that teachers average 7.3 working hours per day, and that they work 180 days per year, adding up to 1,314 hours per year. Americans in normal 9-to-5 professions who take two weeks of vacation and another ten paid holidays per year put in 1,928 working hours. Doing the math, this means the average teacher gets paid a base salary equivalent to a fulltime salary of $65,440. That's the national average for all teachers--more experienced instructors, and those working in better-paying school districts, make tens of thousands of dollars more, sometimes approaching the equivalent of six-figure salaries.

Data from the U.S. Department of Labor show that in 2002, elementary school teachers averaged $30.75 per hour and high school teachers made $31.01. That is about the same as other professionals like architects, economists, biologists, civil engineers, chemists, physicists and astronomers, and computer systems analysts and scientists. Even demanding, education-intensive professions like electrical and electronic engineering, dentistry, and nuclear engineering didn't make much more than teachers per hour worked. And the earnings of teachers are much higher than those of registered nurses, police officers, editors and reporters, firefighters, and social workers.

Some argue that it's unfair to calculate teacher pay on an hourly basis because teachers perform a large amount of work at home--grading papers on the weekend, for instance. But people in other professions also do offsite work. The only important question is whether teachers do significantly more offsite work than others.

Many assume that teachers spend almost all of the school day teaching. But in reality, the average teacher in a departmentalized school (where students have different instructors for different subjects) taught fewer than 3.9 hours per day in 2000. This leaves plenty of time for grading and planning lessons during regular school hours.

What's more, unlike most other professionals, public school teachers cannot easily be fired. Teachers have unparalleled job security because of the strong tenure protections they (but almost no other profession) enjoy. They face essentially none of the performance tests, work quotas, or pressures to produce that people in most other professions requiring a college degree do. Further, unlike other professionals, teachers are not rewarded for exemplary performance with pay raises because their salaries are entirely driven by their years of experience and the number of academic credentials they have earned. This leaves them with little incentive to do great amounts of weekend or overtime work.

It has been well documented that the people drawn into teaching these days tend to be those who have performed least well in college. If teachers are paid about as well as employees in many other good professions, why aren't more high performers taking it up? One suspects that high-performing graduates tend to stay away from teaching because the field's rigid seniority-based structure doesn't allow them to rise faster and earn more money through better performance or by voluntarily putting in longer hours. In any case, it's clear that the primary obstacle to attracting better teachers isn't simply raising pay.

The myth of insurmountable problems

Schools frequently cite social problems like poverty, broken homes, and bad parenting as excuses for their own poor performance. They claim the existence of these challenges means education is doomed to fail. Some seem to think that the very idea of a "failing school" is misleading--that it is really society that has failed, not educators. "It's just plain folly to demand that a school, where a kid spends part of the day, be held accountable for what happens the rest of the day," argues Richard Cohen. Student failure is inherent in poverty itself, he says.

No one would deny that because of factors beyond a school's control, learning is more difficult for some students. If the advocates of this argument were merely cautioning us to be mindful of difficulties like poverty and broken homes, or exhorting us to try to alleviate social problems, no one could disagree with them. But instead, they use these problems as an excuse to oppose school reforms. If low-income minority students perform poorly, they argue, it's because of poverty. No school reform can ever make a difference. Kids who start out lagging must always lag. Social problems are forever more powerful than anything a school may do.

This argument that schools are helpless in the face of social problems is not supported by hard evidence. It is a myth. The truth is that certain schools do a strikingly better job than others at overcoming challenges in the culture. To test the evidence on this question, I developed a systematic method for measuring levels of advantage and disadvantage in student populations across states. I combined measurements of 16 social factors that researchers agree affect student outcomes, such as poverty, family structure, and health. I named this measurement the Teachability Index, and tested its relationship with actual student outcomes. I found it to be a reliable predictor. Armed with this tool, I calculated the level of achievement that each state's students should be expected to reach. Then I compared that to actual achievement in every state. I found a large degree of variation.

In Texas, for example, schools perform much better than their student demographics would predict: whereas its raw test scores place it 32nd among the states, Texas ranks fourth after its academic outcomes are adjusted for the Teachability Index. In Louisiana, on the other hand, schools performed less well than student backgrounds would predict.

Inherent in the claim that schools are helpless to educate disadvantaged students is the idea that any attempt to improve educational outcomes through reforms to the system would prove futile. However, the evidence suggests that reforms that focus on the incentives of public schools lead to educational gains. One reform that has been shown to work is measuring each school's performance through standardized testing, and then providing rewards or sanctions based on a school's performance. This gives a school a direct incentive to educate its students well. States with this sort of accountability testing make statistically significant improvements, researchers have demonstrated. Stanford investigators have found that stronger accountability systems particularly help black and Hispanic students.

Another reform that can help overcome the educational challenges caused by social problems is school choice. Few question that vouchers help the students who use them to leave failing public schools for a private school. This positive impact for voucher participants has been found in five "random assignment" studies. Less understood, however, is the positive effect that school choice has on students who remain in the public schools as well. When school choice programs, such as vouchers and charter schools, are adopted, urban public schools that once had a captive clientele must improve the education they provide or else students, and the funding they represent, will go elsewhere.

In a study I performed of a voucher program in Florida, I found that when chronically failing public schools faced competition from vouchers, they made very impressive gains compared to the performance of all other schools. Similarly low-performing schools whose students were not eligible for the vouchers did not make similar gains. Many other researchers have found that school choice programs increase the performance of public schools. In fact, despite the frequent claims of teachers unions, I am not aware of a single study that has found that a school choice program harmed the academic performance of a public school system.

Both of these strategies--accountability and choice--have been shown to improve student performance, even in places where lots of kids come to school with lots of problems. Other strategies that focus on the incentives of public schools have also been demonstrated to have positive effects. So schools are hardly helpless in the face of social challenges--we only need to adopt the proper reforms.

The class size myth

Just about everybody agrees that smaller classes produce better results. This view was captured crisply in a Chicago Tribune feature story on schools: "The advantages of small classes seem intuitive; who wouldn't want children to learn in a small class? Parents crave them, teachers love them, and policymakers push for them."

As popular discontent with the state of education has grown, class sizes have emerged as a key political issue for both parties. The National Education Association has been particularly aggressive, supporting "a class size of fifteen students in regular programs and even smaller in programs for students with exceptional needs." Given that shrinking class sizes means hiring more teachers, and thus putting more money into the pockets of teachers unions, it is hardly surprising that unions are the loudest supporters.

Unlike other myths, this one isn't totally baseless. Research suggests there may be some advantages to smaller classes--though if so, the benefits are modest and come at a very high price tag. And whether this research is actually correct is a matter of debate. So the strong claims for class size reduction made by political activists are not at all justified.

The centerpiece of class-size research was the STAR project, a 1980s experiment conducted by the state of Tennessee. Students were randomly assigned to one of three types of classes as they progressed from kindergarten through third grade. The first type was a regular-sized class of around 24 students with one teacher. The second option was a regular-sized class with a teacher plus a teacher's aide. The third alternative was a small class of around 15 students with one teacher.

The study found that students in the small classes showed a one-time benefit in test scores as compared to students in regular-sized classes (the teacher's aide resulted in no significant difference). The increase, however, was not large--the equivalent of an eight-percentile-point improvement in performance for a student starting in the middle of the pack. But follow-up research found that 44 percent of students in STAR's small classes took college entrance exams, compared to 40 percent among regular-class students--not so trivial a difference. If we could be reasonably sure that this increase resulted from smaller classes, and could be replicated on a large scale without sacrificing other educational priorities, then class-size reduction would be solidly supported. Unfortunately, the evidence does not allow us to reach those conclusions.

There were a number of shortcomings in the STAR program's implementation that raise doubts about the accuracy of its findings. Most significantly, students weren't tested when they entered the program--so we can't confirm that the three groups started out at the same level as the experiment began. There is no way to know if the project's random assignment method was accurate, and thus no way to be certain that differences observed among the groups weren't there from the beginning.

There is reason to be suspicious because of an anomaly in the research findings: If smaller classes really do improve student performance, we would generally expect to see these benefits accrue over time. But instead, the improvement in STAR test scores was a one-time event. This is unusual and unexpected. Considering that the project's supposed benefits were moderate to begin with, this raises serious doubts about whether the STAR results should lead to policy prescriptions--particularly since evidence on large-scale class size reduction is much less encouraging.

In California, the state appropriated $1 billion in 1996 to reduce elementary school class sizes. When California's test scores rose, advocates of smaller classes held up their program as a model. The reality, however, wasn't so clear. A RAND Corporation study concluded that California students who attended larger elementary school classes improved at about the same rate as students in smaller classes. Though California's overall educational performance went up, it did not seem to be due to smaller classes. (The state had also undertaken a number of other major education reforms at the same time it was reducing class sizes.)

Even if class size reduction does improve performance under optimal conditions in a small, controlled experiment like the STAR project, labor pool problems may prevent this from being reproduced on a large scale. Replicating the benchmarks of the STAR project would entail hiring almost 40 percent more teachers nationwide. Digging that deeply into the teacher labor pool would require accepting a lower quality of hire, likely bringing disappointing results.

And the financial costs of reducing class sizes on that scale would be exceptionally high--$2,306 per pupil according to calculations by Caroline Hoxby of Harvard University. There is only a finite amount of money available, so every dollar spent on class size reduction is a dollar that will not be available for salary increases, books, equipment, or the implementation of other reform policies. This will be true no matter how much money a school system has. Given that other reform strategies are more promising and less costly, the modest benefits of class size reduction simply can't justify the very large sacrifices that would have to be made.

The certification myth

Receiving professional certification is generally regarded as a reliable sign of expertise, because in most occupations, credentials are given to those who have proven their worth. Few people would see a doctor who wasn't licensed, or a lawyer who hadn't passed the bar. Teacher quality is certainly a crucial factor in students' academic achievement, but having an extra education degree is not linked to success.

Many researchers, politicians, and most Americans assume that more credentialing means better teachers, but the evidence suggests that it doesn't. One of the strongest and most consistent findings in the entire body of research on teacher quality is that teaching certificates and master's degrees in education are irrelevant to classroom performance. Yet most school systems reward certification and experience, instead of rewarding more reliable direct indicators of good teaching.

In a review conducted for the Abell Foundation, researchers found that teachers holding a master's in education did not produce higher student performance, and among new teachers, traditional certification made no difference in student performance. After examining every available study on the impact of teaching credentials on job performance--171 in total--Eric Hanushek found that only nine uncovered any significant positive relationship between credentials and student performance, five found a significant negative relationship between the two, and 157 showed no connection. Looking at Teach For America--a program that lets recent college graduates become teachers without obtaining traditional education credentials--three scholars at Mathematica Policy Research found that students taught by these non-credentialed instructors made significant gains in math in one year, and kept pace in reading. Current policy--which generally centers on teachers having education certificates--therefore appears to be seriously misguided.

The current teacher pay system, which connects compensation to education degrees, also harms teacher quality by artificially redirecting time and money toward earning those pieces of paper instead of advanced knowledge in specific subject areas. One NAEP study pointedly concluded that education master's degrees have "little effect on improving teachers' abilities," and therefore the enormous amount of money spent pursuing these degrees "is arguably one of the least efficient expenditures in education."

Researchers have also investigated the relationship between years of teaching experience and students' academic achievement. Here, the story is inconclusive. If anything, the evidence indicates that teachers grow a little more effective during their first few years as they get up to speed in the classroom, but that after this initial period, their effectiveness plateaus. This evidence raises doubts about the practice of giving relatively small raises in a teacher's second and third years, while giving teachers in their 20th and 30th years large annual raises.

Members of the education establishment fiercely resist giving up the old linkage of pay to paper accomplishments. When Michigan adopted new standards emphasizing a teacher's proven academic ability (as measured in skills tests) rather than their credentials or years of experience, the Detroit News profiled angry teachers. "It's a slap in my face that I have to go back and take a test," said one teacher with a master's degree and 30 years of experience. Until we stop hiring and financially rewarding teachers according to qualifications that are irrelevant to their performance, we can never expect improved quality in classroom instruction.

The rich-school myth

A popular myth says that private schools do better than public schools only because they have more money, recruit high-performing students, and expel low-performing students. The conventional wisdom is captured in one Michigan newspaper's warning that "a voucher system would force penniless public schools to shut down while channeling more and more money into wealthy private schools."

There is no question that, on average, students in private schools demonstrate significantly greater achievement. For example, on the eighth-grade reading portion of the NAEP test, 53 percent of private school students perform at or above the level defined as "proficient," compared to only 30 percent of public school students. In eighth-grade math, only 27 percent of public-school students perform at the "proficient" level, compared to 43 percent of private-school students. Interestingly, twice as many private-school eighth graders go on to earn a bachelor's degree as their public-school counterparts, in percentage terms.

However: it simply isn't true that public schools are penniless while private schools are wealthy. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the average private school charged $4,689 per student in tuition for the 1999/2000 school year. That same year, the average public school spent $8,032 per pupil. Among Catholic schools (which educate 49 percent of all private-school students), the average tuition was only $3,236. The vast majority of private-school students actually have less than half as much funding behind them as public-school students.

Some point out that private schools don't always provide all the services that public schools do: transportation, special ed classes, lunch, counseling. But in an analysis comparing public-school and Catholic-school costs in New York, D.C., Dayton, and San Antonio, researchers found that excluding all of these services plus administration costs from the public-school ledger still left public schools with significantly more resources than Catholic schools. Besides, if public schools provide additional services, then those services should contribute to their students' educational outcomes. All spending is ultimately relevant to the question of a school's cost-effectiveness.

Just as lack of money cannot be blamed for poor outcomes in public schools, neither can differences in selectivity be held responsible. Surprising as it may be, most private schools are not very selective. A study of the nation's Catholic schools concluded that the typical institution accepted 88 percent of the students who applied. Other research in D.C., Dayton, and New York private schools found that only 1 percent of parents reported their children were denied admission because of a failed admissions test. Moreover, the academic and demographic backgrounds of students who use vouchers to attend private school across the country are very similar to those who don't.

Private schools don't significantly alter their student populations by expelling low-achieving or troublesome students, either. One study found that "Catholic high schools dismiss fewer than two students per year" on average. While it is true that every student is officially entitled to a publicly funded education, students in public schools are regularly expelled. According to the U.S. Department of Education, roughly 1 percent of all public school students are expelled in a year, and an additional 0.6 percent are segregated into specialized academies. That's more than in Catholic and other private schools. Moreover, public schools actually contract out 1.3 percent of their disabled students to private schools.

In any case, numerous studies have compared what happens when students with identical backgrounds attend private versus public schools. And consistently, in study after study, the matched peers who remain in public schools do less well than children who shift to private schools. Higher student achievement is clearly attributable to some difference in the way private schools instruct--and not to more money, or simple exclusion of difficult students.

The myth of ineffective school vouchers

When reporting on school vouchers--programs that give parents money they can use to send their children to private schools--the media almost always describe research on vouchers' effects as inconclusive. The New York Times, for instance, responded to a Supreme Court decision approving vouchers by declaring: "All this is happening without a clear answer to the fundamental question of whether school choice has improved American education. The debate...remains heated, defined more by conflicting studies than by real conclusions."

In reality, though, the research on vouchers isn't mixed or inconclusive at all. High quality research shows consistently that vouchers have positive effects for students who receive them. The only place where results are mixed is in regard to the magnitude of vouchers' benefits. There have been eight random-assignment studies of school voucher programs, and in seven of them, the benefits for voucher recipients were statistically significant. In Milwaukee, for example, a study I conducted with two researchers from Harvard found that students awarded vouchers to attend private schools outperformed a matched control group of students in Milwaukee public schools. After four years, the voucher students had reading scores six percentile points above the control group, and standardized math results 11 percentile points higher. All of the students in this study (which is mirrored by other research) were low-income and Hispanic or African American.

In a study of a different program based in Charlotte, North Carolina, I found that recipients of privately funded vouchers outperformed peers who did not receive a voucher by six percentile points after one year. All of the students studied were from low-income households. In New York City, a privately funded school choice program has been the subject of many careful studies. One found that African-American voucher recipients outperformed the control group by 9 percentile points after three years in the program. Another analysis found a difference of 5 percentile points in math. A similar program in Washington, D.C. resulted in African-American students outperforming peers without vouchers by 9 percentile points after two years.

Every one of the voucher programs studied resulted in enthusiastic support from parents as well. And all this was achieved in private schools that expend a mere fraction of the amount spent per student in public schools. The most generously funded of the five voucher programs studied, the Milwaukee program, provides students with only 60 percent of the $10,112 spent per pupil in that city's public schools. The privately funded voucher programs spend less than half what public schools spend per pupil. Better performances, happier parents, for about half the cost: if similar results were produced for a method of fighting cancer, academics and reporters would be elated.

Spread the truth

Over the past 30 years, many of our education policies have been based on beliefs that clear-eyed research has recently shown to be false. Virtually every area of school functioning has been distorted by entrenched myths. Disentangling popular misconceptions from our education system--and establishing fresh policies based on facts that are supported by hard evidence--will be the work of at least a generation. That work will be especially difficult because powerful interest groups with reasons to protect and extend the prevailing mythology will oppose any rethinking. But with time, and diligent effort by truth-tellers, reality and reason have triumphed over mythology in many other fields. There is no reason they can't prevail in schoolhouses as well.

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The Media Studies Mess

By Keith Windschuttle, the ABC board's latest appointment, who says media studies reject everything that journalism stands for



University degrees in communications and media studies in recent times have had the highest entry level requirements of any courses in the humanities and social sciences in Australia. In some institutions, it is as difficult to get into a media course as it is to get into medicine or law. This popularity has been important in ensuring that many of the new universities created since 1988 have been able to attract a high-calibre enrolment and have not been seen to house a second-rate student body.

Not surprisingly, this development has been a source of pride to many of the new university administrators. Indeed, these courses are changing the idea of what it means to study for an arts degree. Every year, more of the older universities, faced with declining entry aggregates in the humanities, are reappraising their traditional liberal arts degrees to accommodate media and communications studies, thus shoring up their student demand.

Within media studies, journalism is one of the options between which students choose. Journalism is offered as a major or a subject stream by more than 20 universities in Australia. In a typical bachelor of arts degree, the journalism stream occupies one-third to one-half of the total hours a student spends as an undergraduate. The rest of the program normally contains a small number of liberal arts subjects, with the remaining one-third to one half of the total degree devoted to media theory. There are a number of variations on this model, including some programs devoted almost entirely to media and communications theory, but it remains fairly typical.

There are three characteristics of journalism that most teaching in the field upholds. First, journalism is committed to reporting the truth about what occurs in the world. Second, the principal ethical obligations of journalists are to their readers, their listeners and their viewers. Third, journalists should be committed to good writing. This means their meaning should be clear and their grammar precise. However, in most of the media theory that is taught within Australian communications and media degrees, none of these principles is upheld. Indeed, they are specifically denied, either by argument or by example, by the dominant intellectual field that has reigned in