HOW CONTROVERSIAL IT IS! SHOULD CALIFORNIA HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES BE ABLE TO DO EIGHTH GRADE MATH?

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated the state high school exit exam as a graduation requirement for this year’s senior class, leaving 47,000 high school students who failed the test in danger of not graduating. The high court ordered a state appeals court to hold hearings in the case, but with schools ready to hold commencement ceremonies as soon as this weekend, a resolution appeared unlikely before then. The high court ordered a state appeals court to hold hearings in the case. This year's class was the first in which passing the test of 10th grade English and eighth grade math and algebra was required for graduation.

A group of students sued the state, claiming the test discriminates against low-income and minority students. On May 12, Alameda Superior Court Judge Robert Freedman invalidated the graduation requirement for the Class of 2006, saying California was ill equipped "to adequately prepare students to take the exam," especially in poor, underfunded areas of the state. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell planned an afternoon news conference. The plaintiffs' lawyers were not immediately available for comment.

After Freedman threw out the graduation requirement for this year's seniors, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell immediately appealed to the Supreme Court, demanding that the decision be promptly reversed ahead of looming commencement ceremonies. But the justices rarely decide a case before an appeals court hears it. The high court ordered the 1st District Court of Appeal to hear the case, but did not say when - leaving students who failed the test in a state of legal limbo. Still, the justices said they were not convinced that Freedman ruled correctly. "At this juncture this court is not persuaded that the relief granted by the trial court's preliminary injunction ... would be an appropriate remedy," five of the seven justices wrote.

Lawyers for the state wrote in their appeal that Freedman's decision was "bad public policy" and an illegal intrusion into the lawmaking branch of state government. O'Connell wanted the decision overturned to "further society's interest in ensuring that students demonstrate minimal academic proficiency in order to receive a high school diploma." O'Connell, who wrote the 1999 exit exam legislation while he was a state senator, said students who fail the test can still get further remedial instruction and take the test again.

The plaintiffs' lead attorney, Arturo Gonzalez, told the justices in a filing that the students should not be punished for the education system's shortcomings. "As of the start of the current academic year, fewer than half of California high schools had taught all of the course material that is tested on the exam," Gonzalez wrote.

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EDUCATION DISASTER IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Two articles below:

Nutty music-education honcho

A "postmodern" ignoramus is trying to destroy music education

A drama teacher who does not play a musical instrument and believes turntables and computers are musical instruments is the co-ordinator of Western Australia's new music course. State Curriculum Council arts framework officer Christine Adams said yesterday that music-producing machines such as turntables and computers were equal to the piano or violin. "Sales of turntables are way outstripping sales of guitars," Ms Adams said. "In this course, the status of all instruments is equal and the turntable is one of them."

But the course for Years 11 and 12 students, revealed in The Australian yesterday, was condemned by one of Australia's leading music educators and conductors, Richard Gill, who described it as "educational double-speak and claptrap". "It could just as easily be the curriculum for cooking as music," said Mr Gill, a former dean of the West Australian Conservatorium of Music. To describe turntables and computers as musical instruments was "totally meaningless", he said. "A computer is a computer and a turntable is a turntable. One of the points of education is to make the distinction."

Ms Adams, who learned the flute in high school in the 1970s, has spent the past three years working on the new music course and described it as more inclusive than the old course, which was "very Western-focused". "For example, if there is a student from India who wants to play the tabla, they can - and they couldn't do that in the old course," she said. Ms Adams said the new course placed an appropriate emphasis on theory. Students are required to write about politics, racism and other aspects of society that influence music in one of four subject areas called Music in Society, worth 25 per cent of the total mark. "It's really important to know the political and cultural background to music," she said. "It makes it a really, really rich experience."

But Mr Gill, who has received an OAM for his services to music and is recognised around the world for developing young musicians, said the course attempted to teach students how to respond to music, which was impossible. "Reaction to music is a personal and subjective thing - you can't teach it," he said. "The teaching of music should be about music itself. We learn to understand music by making music, by writing music, by performing music." Mr Gill said the first four sentences of the new music course, to be introduced next year, were rubbish. "By all means define music, but don't tell tell us the role it plays - that's up to us to determine. You can't teach the emotion of music. It's personal."

The course introduction starts: "Music plays an important part in the life of people the world over. It brings people together through a natural form of communication by providing a means of expressing ideas and emotions. "It combines words, sounds and movements which enhance the meaning of life in world cultures. Music has unique aspects which give expression to human experiences and understandings that cross cultural and societal boundaries."

Mr Gill challenged this. "Who says? Where's the evidence for that? How do you teach that? What are the ideas communicated in I Still Call Australia Home, which is in the course, or the ideas nominated in a Beethoven symphony?" Mr Gill said the course read like "a generic curriculum to which the word music is applied from time to time". The course also requires students to study ethical and health and safety issues of music, and asserts that "audiences construct meaning from music according to their own values, attitudes and ideological positions".

The course has been condemned by music teachers in Western Australia, who say students are no longer required to play an instrument and that the course downgrades the importance of reading music. State Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich said yesterday she was unaware students in the new course could pass without playing a musical instrument. "That's news to me," she said. But Ms Ravlich was not prepared to label this as unacceptable until she verified the position at a meeting with the Curriculum Council in the next day or two.

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Dum-dum-dum down: WA's new music curriculum hits all the wrong notes

An editorial from "the Australian" newspaper puts the music madness into perspective. It is education generally that is being destroyed in Western Australia

Music education is the latest casualty of Western Australia's misguided foray into the world of outcomes-based education. The state's new music curriculum will no longer require students to learn to play an instrument, and rap songs backed by downloaded music will be considered perfectly acceptable come exam time. Long-time music teachers are aghast at a plan that threatens to make Western Australia "a laughing stock". But as The Australian reports today, those involved with the new course admit that all instruments will be treated equally - even turntables and computers - and complain about the Western focus of the old curriculum. As with so much of outcomes-based education - which has become so controversial in Western Australia that the federal Government has threatened to withhold billions of dollars in funding if introduction of the new curriculum is not delayed - music lessons will now be more concerned with theory and sociology than actual skills.

Sadly for the state's students, music is not the only area to suffer under outcomes-based theory, which seeks to turn every subject into a subset of sociology. Under the proposed new curriculum, physics students will be asked to debate the ethics of airbags, while chemistry students will discuss the cosmetics industry. English students will not be required to read a book, spell, or demonstrate their ability to write continuous prose. Needless to say, failure is not an option under the new curriculum: in a system where everyone is allowed to achieve at their own pace, it is impossible not to pass. This will translate into terrible wake-up calls for many students whom outcomes-based education will allow to coast by, on the rationale that they are being prepared for the "real world". The fact is, the state's new curriculum does anything but. Musicians who can't play instruments, engineers who can't get complex maths problems right and just about anyone who can't string a sentence of correct, standard English together will find the job market a cruel place indeed. At the rate Western Australia is going, its music students will be lucky if they graduate knowing how to play anything more than an iPod.

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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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