SOME HOPE FOR CALIFORNIA EDUCATION YET

The State Board of Education voted unanimously Wednesday to reject alternatives for "highly proficient" students who fail the California High School Exam, echoing state Superintendent Jack O'Connell's staunch support of the test. "If a student were highly proficient in both math and English, it would be a travesty if they could not pass this test because this test is very simple," said board member Donald Fisher, chairman of the Gap clothing company. The student representative to the board echoed that view. Paul Gardner III, a Culver City High School senior, said his peers support the test. But the board's decision adds fuel to the fire for opponents of the exit exam, who say the state has not met its legal obligation to study alternative paths to graduation for students who fail the math and English test of sixth-to 10th-grade skills. This year - for the first time in California - students must pass the exit exam to graduate from a public high school. At the start of the school year, more than 90,000 seniors still had not passed.

"Today's decision means that the only avenue left for students to receive a diploma is the litigation with the courts," said Arturo Gonzalez, an attorney with the Morrison & Foerster law firm in San Francisco. He has sued the state to try to block the government from denying diplomas to students who fail the exam. "Ironically, today's decision may also be one of our strongest pieces of evidence because I don't think any court is going to accept the 45-minute hearing and consider that to be an adequate study of alternatives," he said.

State law calls for the Board of Education and the state superintendent to study other ways students could demonstrate their knowledge and receive a diploma even if they fail the exit exam. At Tuesday's meeting, O'Connell's staff presented a 31-page document detailing their study of potential alternatives. The process began in 1999, the same year the law creating the exit exam was passed, said testing director Deb Sigman. Since then, she said, a panel devoted to the exit exam has held 19 meetings with numerous experts from around the country to develop the test and consider changes. Independent consultants have conducted several studies of the exam and its impact on students.

In December, the Department of Education held a daylong meeting where education experts, lawyers, students and parents voiced their feelings about alternatives to the test. Many said they thought other measures - such as a student's grades, scores on other tests, or a portfolio of work [i.e. work done by others] - should substitute for a failed exit exam.

In January, O'Connell announced that none of the alternatives was feasible. They were either too time-consuming and costly, he said, or would not hold students to the same academic standard as the exam. O'Connell said Tuesday that his study met the law's criteria.

But exit exam opponents said the state's study of alternatives was insufficient. They argued that the board should ask the Legislature to delay the exam's consequences for another year while the board studies alternatives. "I ask you as we ask them: Do your homework with all deliberation and thought," said Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles.

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AMAZING! CREATIONISM GETS A MENTION IN BRITISH HIGH SCHOOLS

An examinations board is including references to “creationism” in a new GCSE science course for schools. The OCR board admitted that a biology course due to be introduced in September encourages schools to consider alternative views to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Its new “Gateway to Science” curriculum asks pupils to examine how organisms become fossilised. It then asks teachers to “explain that the fossil record has been interpreted differently over time (eg creationist interpretation)”. OCR, one of the three main exam boards in England, said that the syllabus was intended to make students aware of scientific controversy. But critics accused the board of blurring the line between science and religious education by putting creationism into lessons alongside evolution.

A spokeswoman for OCR said: “Candidates need to understand the social and historical context to scientific ideas both pre and post Darwin. Candidates are asked to discuss why the opponents of Darwinism thought the way they did and how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence.” John Noel, OCR’s science qualifications manager, told The Times Educational Supplement: “It is simply looking at one particular example of how scientific interpretation changes over time. “The history of scientific ideas not only has a legitimate place in science lessons, it is a requirement of the new programme of study.”

But James Williams, science course leader at Sussex University’s school of education, said: “This opens a legitimate gate for the inclusion of creationism or intelligent design in science classes as if they were legitimate theories on a par with evolution fact and theory. “I’m happy for religious theories to be considered in religious education, but not in science where consideration could lead to a false verification of their status as being equal to scientific theories.”

A second exam board, Edexcel, included a reference to creationism in a draft lesson plan for teachers as part of preparations for a new biology GCSE. But a spokeswoman said that it had not been included in the final specifications for the course.

Evangelical Christians in the US have been pressing for schools to teach “creationism”, the idea that God created the world, as well as an offshoot theory of “intelligent design”, which holds that nature is so complex that it could not have evolved on its own. Controversy about the teaching of creationism has flared in England over three comprehensives run by the Emmanuel Schools Foundation, which is funded by Sir Peter Vardy, a millionaire Christian car dealer. Sir Peter said in 2003: “We present both. One is a theory, the other is a faith position. It is up to the children.”

A spokesman at the Department for Education and Skills said: “Neither creationism nor intelligent design is taught as a subject in schools, and are not specified in the science curriculum. “The National Curriculum for science clearly sets down that pupils should be taught that the fossil record is evidence for evolution.

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Shakespeare being edged out

In the article below, Prof. Henningham seems to be quoting some guy all the time

Although Brisbane will be the mecca of Shakespeare lovers for a week in July as host of the World Shakespeare Congress, our local theatre companies continue to give "short shrift" to the Bard. "That it should come to this!" For the fourth year running there is no Shakespeare in the Queensland Theatre Company's program. QTC has run four plays by the Bard since 1998 (Lear, The Tempest, Richard II and Richard III), out of almost 80 productions. It seems "forever and a day" since Shakespeare appeared in a season at La Boite Theatre which (despite its continental name) eschews anything other than good old (or bad new) home-grown Australian theatre. The last piece by the Bard was Romeo and Juliet in 1999 - 38 plays ago. Until the last quarter of last century, it seems not a year would go by without some major Shakespeare performances from our leading companies. But since the late '90s, only 4 per cent of Brisbane-based professional productions have been by Shakespeare.

Instead, "more in sorrow than in anger", theatre-goers endure a gallimaufry of experimentation, fashionable ideology, political correctness, sordid titillation and various shades of contemporary angst, with a succession of plays that have little chance of surviving the first decade of the 21st century, let alone lasting 400 years. Is this "much ado about nothing"? Falstaff? Who's he? That's what the average high school student or even university graduate would ask these days. A whole generation of Queenslanders has never seen a Falstaff (comic star of Henry IV and of Merry Wives of Windsor), one of the great character creations of all time. Sir John Falstaff is the tragic buffoon who enlivens young Prince Hal's (the future King Henry V's) misspent youth, his "salad days" when he was "green of judgment". Most Queenslanders have never even had the chance to see a Hamlet in recent years, that most brilliant, intriguing and fascinating dramatic creation, a tower of strength.

Shakespeare can at times be obscure, his words do not always speak their meaning at first glance, but, "give the devil his due", he has a rare gift of getting under the skin of human nature and evoking people's deepest longings and dreams in enduring terms. You don't have to go as far as Harold Bloom, who claims Shakespeare invented being human, to concede that Shakespeare (or whoever wrote Shakespeare) was a pretty special guy.

The failure to produce Shakespeare is even more damaging in conjunction with the watering down of Shakespearean studies in our schools. The virus of postmodernism has taken root in English syllabuses, resulting in an approach to literary studies that prefers the discernment of ideological biases to the fostering of aesthetic appreciation and admiration for great writing. It's "madness", but there's no "method in it".

Queensland's stalwart amateur companies are doing their best to rescue Shakespeare: their experience is that Shakespeare pulls crowds and draws performers like no other playwright. Audition calls are clogged when the Bard is the go, with wannabe young actors falling over themselves for the chance to be involved in a Shakespearean production. Brisbane Arts Theatre makes room for the Bard about two years out of three, as does the wandering Nash company. Pro-am Harvest Rain in New Farm also makes a regular commitment, delighting its audiences with action-packed musical versions.

Queensland Shakespeare Ensemble gives gifted amateurs serious training and brings out lesser known plays with interesting variations (such as a re-gendered Comedy of Errors last year). The redoubtable Bryan Nason's Grin & Tonic and GNT2 take Shakespeare to schools across Queensland and perform in garden settings in the city. But the most charitable critic must concede that even the best amateur productions suffer from unevenness in casting, acting and direction - "the course of true love never did run smooth" - and they certainly lack "all that glisters" in lighting, sets and costumes which professional companies can spirit up.

John Bell has been prepared to be the saviour of professional Shakespeare performance in Australia. His Sydney-based travelling Bell Shakespeare Company, unsubsidised for most of its existence, has done more than any state company to keep the flame of Shakespeare's genius alive. Brisbane has been lucky enough to see a Bell version every couple of years, the most recent being last year's extraordinarily good Measure for Measure. And Bell will be back for a Romeo and Juliet this year, during the Brisbane Festival.

Shakespeare will not be ignored by Queensland professional performing arts companies this year. But it's Shakespeare without his words. Both Opera Queensland and the Queensland Ballet (who know how to please the crowds) are running versions of Romeo and Juliet (to the music of Gounod and Prokofiev). So perhaps "all's well that ends well" and our local theatre companies will finally realise that the game is up: the people want more Shakespeare. If not, well, "the miserable have no other medicine but only hope".

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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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