NEED FOR BIG REFORM BEING ADMITTED

With dropout rates rising, governors nationwide are being asked to lead a high school overhaul that demands more skills of students and help from colleges. The call for action, outlined Tuesday by leaders of an upcoming national summit on high schools, would change everything from core course requirements to state graduation standards. It came as the Educational Testing Service reported Tuesday that high school completion rates dropped nationally from 1990 to 2000, with about one third of students failing to graduate. It is the latest in a string of sobering assessments of high school performance. "Students can make it to the top of the K-12 ladder, only to find that they still can't reach the bottom rung of success for the rest of their lives," said Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, co-chairman of Achieve, a group formed by governors to help states raise academic standards. "In order to close this gap," Taft said at a news conference Tuesday, "we must pursue a fundamental redesign of a sacred institution - the American high school."

Governors from virtually all 50 states and five U.S. territories are expected to be in Washington on Saturday and Sunday for a summit hosted by Achieve and the National Governors Association. It is the fifth governors' education summit, but the first one on high schools. "We have this moment in time, where there is a growing understanding that high school redesign and high school reform must be a national agenda item," said Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, chairman of the governors association and a leader of this weekend's meeting.

Summit leaders released their goals in advance of the event in hopes of building attention and momentum. Given the scope of the policy changes they want, and the fact that each state decides what to demand of students, organizers know they have a sales job to do. It will start with the governors themselves - state chiefs who can help coordinate the efforts and missions of their states' overlapping education agencies. The goal is to unite governors, business executives and school leaders around a plan in each state to:

_ Demand tougher courses, and align graduation requirements with what's expected in college and the workplace. As one example, each state would need to require four years of rigorous English and math classes.

_ Redesign high school to provide all students with more choices and support. States would give priority to low-performing schools and provide more college-level courses.

_ Give all students excellent teachers and principals, particularly by offering incentives to draw top instructors toward the neediest schools.

_ Set clear, measurable goals for high schools and colleges, and vastly improve data collection and coordination between secondary schools and higher education.

_ Streamline education leadership. In most states, K-12 schools and postsecondary schools have separate governing boards and budgets, often contributing to competition over money.

Governors have become increasingly vocal about education reform, challenged to respond to unprecedented federal demands and complaints from employers. Arthur Ryan, chairman and CEO of Prudential Financial, said business leaders aren't happy with the pace of change. "Improving one high school at a time or one state at a time simply isn't fast enough," said Ryan, co-chairman of Achieve.

The high school graduation rate, meanwhile, remains the subject of debate. The new report by the nonprofit Educational Testing Service shows that the high school completion rate was 70 percent in 2000, down from 72 percent in 1990. It dropped in all but seven states. "This is a story of losing ground," said Paul Barton, the ETS researcher who wrote the report. "At the same time that the dropout rate is increasing and out-of-school education and training opportunities are dwindling, the economic status of young dropouts has been in a free fall since the late 1970s."


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ENGLISH EDUCATION DISASTROUS TOO

Tony Blair's principal claim to success in improving school standards was undermined yesterday by a devastating report from Ofsted. Almost half of boys and a third of girls continue to leave primary school unable to write properly, nearly seven years after the Government introduced the national literacy strategy. Ofsted blamed poor teaching and said that one in three English lessons were no better than satisfactory. A third of mathematics classes were just as weak, despite the introduction of the numeracy strategy in 1999.

The findings came as Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, faces a bitter split with the teaching profession today by ditching a radical reform of secondary school qualifications recommended by a government inquiry. Ms Kelly will reject plans to replace GCSEs and A levels with a new diploma drawn up by Sir Mike Tomlinson as a means of boosting achievement and staying-on rates. Charles Clarke, her predecessor as Education Secretary, appointed Sir Mike in 2002 to develop a blueprint for transforming secondary education.

Ms Kelly will insist, however, on retaining the "gold standard" of A levels and GCSEs, while promising to boost the standing of vocational qualifications.

Sir Mike, the former head of Ofsted, said that he would be very upset if the Government left the present structure essentially unchanged. A levels were now "strangling both teacher and student scholarship".

Ofsted's review of the literacy and numeracy strategies in primary schools made clear that huge numbers of children continue to enter secondary education ill-equipped to cope with the demands of the curriculum. Ministers have made much of the improvements in literacy and numeracy since 1997. The proportion of 11-year-olds achieving level four, the expected standard, in national curriculum English tests rose to 78 per cent last year from 75 per cent in 2003, the first rise since 2000.

Maths results improved by one percentage point to 74 per cent.

However, the English result masked a 20 percentage point gap in achievement in reading and writing. The expected standard in reading was met by 83 per cent of pupils last year, but only 63 per cent managed it in writing. Just 56 per cent of boys passed the writing test, compared with 71 per cent of girls. As a result, one in three pupils enters secondary school without the writing ability considered necessary to cope with the curriculum. Only 14 per cent of children who fail to reach the expected standards at 11 go on to pass five good GCSEs at 16.

Ofsted concluded that a lack of subject knowledge among a significant minority of teachers was a key failing in primary schools and said that the problems were serious enough to prevent further improvements in standards. "Teaching of this quality, while having no significant weaknesses, is not effective enough to improve the quality of pupils' learning and what they know, understand and can do," it said.

David Bell, the Chief Inspector of Schools in England, said: "There are still schools where children are not receiving the daily diet of good teaching that they need in order to raise achievement further."

Tim Collins, the Shadow Education Secretary, said: "The fact that at least one in three primary pupils go on to their senior school without being able to write properly is one of the single biggest failings of eight years of Labour government. Ruth Kelly and her predecessors have managed to get so hung up on their departmental target culture that they have lost sight of the underlying problem of classroom literacy and numeracy."

The Government sought to boost achievement in schools by merging the two strategies last year into a broader "primary national strategy". Ofsted found that this was having little impact because few schools had embraced the change.

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Time is up for radical professors like Ward Churchill (By Joe Scarbough)

Radical college professors are finally being put on notice by middle America that anti-American views will no longer go unchallenged if a liberal arts professor mutters the words "academic freedom." But the question is whether our elected officials will have the guts to do anything about it.

For years, Americans have been led to believe that campus radicalism was confirmed to Ivy League institutions and left wing enclaves like Cal Berkeley. But the firestorm that has erupted over professor Ward Churchill's anti-American 9/11 screed has proven what college students have known for years: That colleges in middle America have long been led by left-wing leaders who are radical by any measure when it comes to politics, culture, and faith.

I loved my years at the University of Alabama, but my college professors were almost to politically left of center. And that was in the reddest of all states. Don't get me wrong. I learned a great deal by having professors who attacked Ronald Reagan as a dangerous war-monger, who questioned my religious faith, and who openly mocked my family's middle American values. There were a few notable exceptions, but only one or two.

So the question you need to ask yourself is this: Why are my elected officials using my taxes to promote values that are radically opposed to my own views? And if there is academic freedom and diversity of thought, why don't those two principals apply to conservative professors?

A recent study showed that an overwhelming number of college professors are big government liberals, while conservative professors rarely get a chance to teach college courses. This ideological monopoly ensures that another generation of college students will be brainwashed to believe that the values parents spent 18 years instilling in them are quaint, obsolete notions.

Enough is enough. It is time to call your state representative and demand action. It is time to call your governor and demand a full investigation into the political bias that is infecting the state colleges that you keep open with your tax dollars. It is time to put campus radicals back on their heels and tell them that simply chanting the words "academic freedom" will no longer cow us into accepting the status quo. It is time to take your college classrooms back. And if our elected officials won't do it, we will run them out of office and find someone who will.

This is not about free speech. It is about how your tax dollars being spent to promote agendas that the overwhelming majority of Americans would find deeply offensive.

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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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