NAACP BAD FOR BLACKS

It's Leftism that motivates them, not the best interests of blacks

A Houston school district plan that might turn three low-achieving but historically important schools in minority neighborhoods over to private contractors triggered a stinging rebuttal Friday from black and Hispanic community leaders who accused officials of neglecting the schools, then sidestepping responsibility for fixing them. Yolanda Smith, president of the Houston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said her organization is outraged by the possibility of turning Yates, Kashmere and Sam Houston high schools over to for-profit educational companies. The NAACP, she said, will seek an injunction to stop the effort. "Houston taxpayers hold HISD accountable for closing the gaps in educational opportunity and student achievement and do not expect our public dollars to be spent on private entities," Smith said. " ... We did not create a public entity in HISD to then have the public entity outsource this responsibility."

Terry Abbott, spokesman for the Houston Independent School District, said indignation over the plan, which was outlined earlier this week by Superintendent Abe Saavedra during his annual State of the Schools address, is misplaced and based on media accounts that he contends are inaccurate. While contracting with for-profit entities to run the schools is a possibility, Abbott said, the district also welcomes reform proposals from district employees and community groups. Texas education officials have decreed that the schools, which have been deemed "low-performing" for two consecutive years, must be dramatically improved or closed.


Yates Principal George August has advised HISD that his school's administrators, teachers, parents and other community members will offer trustees a "bold, innovative redesign and restructuring of the entire instructional program at Yates to improve student achievement." August declined to elaborate on his group's proposal Friday. Also at the NAACP news conference were U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, and representatives from the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Houston Area Urban League, Houston Federation of Teachers and other groups. Jackson Lee admonished HISD to seek more community input before making a decision to privatize the schools......

Earlier this week, Saavedra, the district's first Hispanic superintendent, told those attending his State of the Schools speech that "small steps toward improvement" would no longer suffice for the trio of academically unacceptable schools. "HISD," he said, "will seek applications this spring from reform providers to submit their plans to totally redesign these schools. These redesigned schools must be fundamentally different from what exists now," Saavedra added. "The reform groups that take over these schools will have to correct the deficiencies, raise academic standards, redesign management practices, improve capacity among staff members or replace staff and engage parents in improvement efforts."

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Takeover as a Reform Strategy

Detroit Public Schools is currently operating under a five-year reform plan implemented by the Michigan legislature in March 1999. Although the measure provides that the mayor of the city appoints six of the seven board members, it is commonly referred to as a "state takeover" because it temporarily removed Detroiters' ability to elect a school board. The Detroit district is hardly the first to be subject to a "takeover" by city or state government officials in an effort to produce systemic reform.

In the spring of 2002, the National Association of State Boards of Education published the study, "Do School District Takeovers Work? Assessing the Effectiveness of City and State Takeovers as a School Reform Strategy," by Kenneth K. Wong and Francis X. Shen. The report provides a useful overview of state and city takeovers of school districts between 1988 and 2000. According to the authors, takeovers "either by a state authority or by the mayor" are allowed in 24 states and the District of Columbia. Actual takeovers during the period occurred in 18 states and in Washington, DC, whose schools are now governed by a board of five elected members and four mayoral appointees--a reform structure created by the D.C. Council.

Eleven of 15 "comprehensive" district takeovers--interventions with "financial, managerial, and academic components"-- have occurred since 1995, "including the highly publicized takeovers in Chicago (1995), Cleveland (1997), and Baltimore (1997)." In 2002, Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City initiated a takeover of the city's 900-school district.

Concerning the effectiveness of the takeovers, the authors find "research ... is lagging behind the pace of policy and practice, and overall `there is a scarcity of research on the effects of state takeovers.'"


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ACADEMICS ARE NOW THE ENEMIES OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Now that they are overwhelmingly Leftist....

Academic freedom - which endows members of the university with the right to hold, express and teach any views they deem fit, and to research and publish their findings without restraint - is widely recognised as essential to the pursuit of knowledge. As a 1998 report by UNESCO observed, academic freedom is 'not simply a fundamental value', but also 'a means by which higher education fulfilled its mission'. Even those politicians, bureaucrats and administrators who are, by temperament, hostile to academic freedom feel compelled to defend it......

Paradoxically, direct attacks on academic freedom often come from within the university. There is a mood of intolerance towards those who hold unconventional, unpopular opinions, especially in the area of politics. Some academics do not simply challenge views that they dislike; they often seek to ban them and to prevent individuals who advocate them from working or speaking on their campus.

Traditionally academics, particularly social scientists, were at the forefront of defending free speech. Today, some academics actually attempt to deny their colleagues the right to free speech. The campaign to ban Tom Paulin from speaking at Harvard for being anti-Semitic, and the censoring of Israeli academics by the editor of an academic journal in Manchester on the grounds that they are Israeli, are testimony to the illiberal tendencies that prevail in academia.

Academic freedom has become negotiable. Consequently, only the more grotesque attacks on this freedom tend to provoke a reaction on campus. One such example is the recent revelation of a memo issued to colleagues in arts and humanities at Durham University, which said lecturers would have to obtain approval from an 'ethics' committee if they wanted to give lectures and tutorials on subjects that might offend students - including abortion or euthanasia.

This illiberal policy is not simply the handiwork of few philistine zealots. It is the inexorable consequence of an academic culture that is increasingly prepared to censor itself and others. That Durham assigned an ethics committee the role of Chief Inquisitor and Censor is not surprising: for some time now, such committees have made pronouncements on which kind of research is ethical and which is not. Extending the role of these committees from policing research to censoring academics' views was a logical next step. Academics who treat ethics committees with derision, as a minor nuisance, should realise the extent to which their freedom is under threat.

The Durham memo may have stated its case rather bluntly. But its premise - that words that offend students should be banned - is now widely accepted and institutionalised in British higher education. Virtually every British university has adopted rules of conduct or codes of practice that convey the message: 'the student must not be offended.'

To take a random example: the University of Derby's 'Code of Practice For Use of Language'. In an Orwellian tone, the code announces that 'the use of language should reflect the university's mission and support relationships of mutual respect'. It demands that staff and students 'try to be sensitive to the feelings of others in the use of language'. In case academics fail to get the message and mistakenly think that being 'sensitive' is a question of individual preference rather than a mandatory form of behaviour, the code warns that the 'university recognises that individuals are responsible for their own use of language but expects line managers to help staff carry out the terms of this policy'. This is unlikely to create a climate where the free exchange of opinion can flourish.

That academics are expected to work within such a code, which explicitly demands that the pursuit of knowledge and expression of ideas should be restrained by the need to spare the feelings of others, is a symptom of our times. Such censorious speech codes have been institutionalised through the UK, without any serious opposition from staff or students. Once upon a time, instructions on the use of language were for schoolkids; today they are aimed at restraining the speech of the academic.

Of course words can offend. But one of the roles of a university is to challenge conventional truths - and that means academics questioning the sacred and mentioning the unmentionable. A proper university teaches its members how not to take hateful views personally, and how not to be offended by uncomfortable ideas. It also teaches its members how to deal with being offended. And it never turns to the Inquisitor or the Censor for the answer......

Today, lecturers need to ensure that their teaching is consistent with bureaucratically devised 'learning outcomes'. One young academic was recently asked in an interview for a sociology post how his work fitted in with his potential employer's mission statement. 'Fitting in' with rules and procedures - it seems that conforming to the imagination of the bureaucrats is the freedom offered to new academics.

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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.

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