Tuesday, November 08, 2005

SHEER INSANITY

A highly selective and highly successful British private school has decided to accept "the King's shilling" (government funding) and in return has dropped all selectivity in its admissions. So it will become just another of the usual British sink schools where anybody goes and hardly anybody learns anything. It is only the academically selective schools that have provided a small stream of genuinely educated young people to British society. The fact that the school will remain privately run rather than government run may make some difference but not much. It is the quality of the students and the straitjacket of government regulations and requirements which will matter most in dictating the educational outcomes

A private girls' school in Liverpool is on course to join the state sector as an academy [charter school] in the first phase of Tony Blair's plans to take independent education to the State. The Belvedere School, run by the Girls Day School Trust and Sutton Trust, will end selection, admit boys and almost double in size within two years, if talks are successful. Children on Merseyside will be the first to benefit from the private-style teaching, in a move that ministers hope will prompt other leading independent schools to join the controversial programme.

Ministers are likely to use the school to try to win over critics of academies. One government source said that essentially it was "nationalising a private school". Labour MPs are divided over the move, with some welcoming it but others saying that the choice of academy status would be divisive and that independent schools that join the state sector should be subject to local authority controls.

The Belvedere, a 125-year-old independent school, is set to undergo a radical change under the proposals, starting with an end to all fees and academic selection from 2007. The 600-pupil school will specialise in modern languages and be open to all girls in Liverpool aged 11-18, reserving 10 per cent of places for those with an aptitude for its specialism. The sixth form, which will be open to boys, will be vastly expanded - at a cost of "a few million pounds" - to include several hundred pupils. Class sizes will also increase slightly.

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust charity, which supports under-privileged children, said he welcomed the chance to extend the school's high-quality education to the whole of Merseyside's children. "My main objection to city academies has been on the grounds of their high capital cost," he said. "I have for some months let the (Education) department know that I would be prepared to help in the setting up of a low-cost academy. This would create a low-cost academy from a school with a high academic reputation which has recently had its most successful GCSE results thanks to the Open Access Scheme."

Companies, charities and the wealthy generally invest œ2 million to sponsor an academy - where average building costs reach œ25 million - and are given control of the governing body in return. To some, the Belvedere is already halfway there. Since 2000 the school has operated a unique "needs-blind" admissions system, with only 30 per cent of parents paying the full œ6,930-a-year fees. The other places are fully or partly funded. The scheme costs both charities œ2 million a year to operate. This summer it paid off with record GCSE results, when the first cohort of girls selected on ability alone passed 63.2 per cent of all their examinations with A* or A grades.

With 19,100 pupils at 25 schools in England and Wales, the Girls Day School Trust (GDST) is the largest provider of private schools in Britain and in a good position to share best practice. "The Open Access scheme has been so successful that we wondered how we might extend it and this goes a long way to broadening its impact," Sue Bridgett, a GDST spokeswoman, said yesterday.

Although academic selection would end at Belvedere, negotiators hope an expanded sixth form would maintain standards.The Government intends opening at least 200 academies by 2010, in traditionally deprived areas, despite opposition from backbench Labour MPs and teaching unions.

In September Mr Blair said that his goal was to "escape the straitjacket of the traditional comprehensive school" and offer "genuinely independent non-feepaying state schools". Government advisers hope achievement levels at state schools will be raised. Last year more than 10 per cent of GDST A-level students gained places at Oxford or Cambridge. A government source said: "We believe having more high-quality non-selective free places in the state system is a good thing, particularly in areas where academic achievement has been too low. This, alongside ceasing academic selection and adopting fair admissions, is key to any private school joining the state system, as we set out in the White Paper."

Although a number of private schools have already joined the state sector, this is the first major independent school. Terms of the deal are not yet known, but as an academy the sponsors will be liable to pay 10 per cent of the capital costs, while all other costs will be paid for by the taxpayer.

Source





CORRUPT LESBIAN LOVERS AT THE TOP OF THE UC SYSTEM

Another affirmative action success?

University of California Provost M.R.C. Greenwood, the UC system's second-ranking leader, resigned suddenly Friday amid what UC officials described as an investigation into possibly improper hiring practices and conflict-of-interest concerns. UC President Robert C. Dynes said in a statement Friday afternoon that the university's attorneys and auditors were looking into the role Greenwood, 62, may have played in two recent hirings, including that of her son James for a $45,000-a-year internship at UC Merced. The second involves Lynda Goff, a longtime UC Santa Cruz biology professor recently named to head the UC's new effort to improve science and math education in California. UC officials recently learned that Greenwood and Goff have owned rental property together, according to the statement. "It appears that Provost Greenwood may have been involved in Dr. Goff's hiring to a greater extent than was appropriate, given that her business investment with Dr. Goff had not been properly and fully resolved in accordance with conflict of interest requirements," the statement said.

UC spokesman Michael Reese said he could not comment on whether Greenwood resigned voluntarily. But he emphasized that the investigation was not complete and that there was no presumption of wrongdoing on Greenwood's part. "The president made some decisions very quickly, and this is the result," Reese said.

Greenwood, a biologist and former chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, in February 2004 became the first woman appointed as UC provost and senior vice president of academic affairs. Known to friends and colleagues as Marci, she has been widely praised as an articulate, forceful advocate for the university at a time of growing enrollment, rising student fees and tightened resources.

Greenwood, whose resignation was effective immediately, could not be reached for comment. Reese said she had declined to speak with reporters or issue a statement. A tenured professor, Greenwood is expected to return to a teaching or other academic position with the university, Reese said.

More here

But the above looks like a big improvement on just last September, when V.D. Hanson wrote the following rather sarcastic words:

One of President Summers's chief critics, Denice Denton, the newly appointed chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz, heralded Mr. Summers's public humiliation as a "teachable moment." As one president to another, she objected: "Here was this economist lecturing pompously [to] this room full of the country's most accomplished scholars on women's issues in science and engineering, and he kept saying things we had refuted in the first half of the day."

But Chancellor Denton has her own shortcomings. They do not revolve around mere impromptu remarks, nor have they been trailed by public apologies and task forces. Yet in its own way her controversy goes to the heart of the same contemporary race-and-gender credo that governs the university, enjoying exemption from normal scrutiny and simple logic.

Before her arrival, Ms. Denton arranged the creation of a special billet--ad hoc, unannounced and closed to all applicants but one: Ms. Denton's live-in girlfriend of seven years, Gretchen Kalonji. Most recognize this as the sort of personal accommodation--old-boy networking, really--that Ms. Denton presumably wishes to replace with affirmative action, thus ending backroom deals and crass nepotism.

But if race and gender--what we now refer to as "diversity"--are to be taken seriously, one wonders whether there was not a qualified African-American or Latina woman who could at least have been interviewed for the lucrative UC position. After all, Chancellor Denton herself praised UC Santa Cruz for its "celebration of diversity." And earlier, she insisted that "it is really shocking to hear the president of Harvard make statements like that," i.e., statements that ever so gently questioned the diversity shibboleth. Consider the reaction had President Summers arrived at a public, tax-supported university and arranged for his live-in girlfriend to have lifelong employment in a specially created job, complete with a subsidized move into a rent-free home.

And a six-figure salary: Gretchen Kalonji's unusual position pays $192,000 a year. Now, it happens that Chancellor Denton--whose salary is $275,000--was granted $68,750 to subsidize the move into the rent-free University President's House. But Ms. Kalonji, too, received a grant for expenses incurred during her "transition" to the Santa Cruz campus--$50,000, in fact.

The decision to pay $120,000 in public money for moving expenses to a couple with a combined salary of $467,000 can be defended, perhaps, but one group was certainly outraged: the university's maintenance staff, secretaries, and blue-collar workers. UC Santa Cruz's workers had not received a raise in three years. Yet in response to questions about her controversial partner accommodation--and the message that it sent to less-fortunate others on the campus--Chancellor Denton did not sound like a woman of the Left. "It's a typical practice," she explained in an interview with the local Santa Cruz Sentinel, "in the corporate world or academia." As if turning for support to the suspect world of capitalism was not enough, Ms. Denton also sought the sanctuary of victimhood, of someone at the mercy of red-state yahoos: "We got caught in the middle of national forces, gay marriage, red-state/blue-state issues and a state ruling. It's a hot item right now, and it heightened the tension. I was kind of surprised at the San Francisco Chronicle coverage saying 'lesbian lover.' It seemed more like a tabloid headline."

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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"


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