Friday, September 22, 2006

DUMB U.S. HIGH-SCHOOL "HONORS"

During a visit in March to an honors sophomore English class in an impoverished area of Connecticut, Robyn R. Jackson heard the teacher declare proudly that her students were reading difficult texts. But Jackson noticed that their only review of those books was a set of work sheets that required little thought or analysis. Jackson, an educational consultant and former Gaithersburg High School English teacher, sought an explanation from a school district official. He sighed and told her, "We have a lot of work to do to help teachers understand what true rigor is."

In an American education system full of plans for better high schools, more and more courses have impressive labels, such as "honors," "advanced," "college prep" and "Advanced Placement." But many researchers and educators say the teaching often does not match the title. "A company selling an orange-colored beverage under the label 'orange juice' can get in legal trouble if the beverage contains little or no actual juice," said a February report from the National Center for Educational Accountability, based in Austin. "But there are no consequences for giving credit for Algebra 2 to students who have learned little algebra."

Grade inflation is a well-known issue. Many critics of public schools contend that students nowadays get better grades for less achievement than they used to. Experts also worry about courses that promise mastery in a subject but fail to follow through. Call it course-label inflation. The educational accountability center's researchers, Chrys Dougherty, Lynn Mellor and Shuling Jian, found course-label inflation particularly harmful to low-income and minority students. They said 60 percent of low-income students, 65 percent of African American students and 57 percent of Hispanic students who had received course credit for geometry or algebra 2 in Texas failed a state exam covering material from geometry and algebra 1. By contrast, the failure rates for non-low-income and white students were 36 and 32 percent, respectively.

U.S. Education Department senior researcher Clifford Adelman, the government's leading authority on the links between high school programs and college completion, said some high school transcripts apply the label "pre-calculus" to any math course before calculus. Some students who had taken "pre-calculus," according to the transcripts he inspected, had skills so rudimentary that they were forced to take basic algebra in their first year of college. The College Board's Advanced Placement program plans to ask teachers soon to fill out a form confirming that their course materials meet college-level standards. Jackson said one College Board official told her of a school that had started an AP Spanish course but was using seventh-grade workbooks.

AP courses at least have final exams, written and scored by outside experts, that reveal whether students have mastered the material. Wayne Bishop, a math professor at California State University in Los Angeles, examined an AP calculus class in a Pasadena, Calif., high school. All 23 students, Bishop found, got As and Bs from their teacher, but their grades on the AP exam were the college equivalent of 21 Fs and two Ds.

Most high school honors and advanced courses don't have independent benchmarks like the AP tests, so inflated course labels are more difficult to detect. Michael Goldstein, founder of the MATCH Charter Public School in Boston, described the sort of dialogue that often produces courses that don't keep their promises in other schools: "The principal tells the teacher, 'You're teaching algebra 2.' The teacher responds, 'But our tests show these kids haven't mastered one-fourth plus one-half, let alone algebra 1.' The principal responds, 'Well, we need to offer them algebra 2 because it helps on their college transcripts.' "

Many selective colleges defend themselves against course-label inflation by giving admitted students placement tests to see which college courses they are ready to take. A better and more far-reaching solution, many high school educators say, is to prepare students in lower grades for the demanding courses ahead of them and make sure the standards do not slip.

The center for educational accountability's report recommended that high schools help ninth-graders see the worth of taking challenging courses and find ways to build their skills so they are ready for them. Experts cite Wakefield High School in Arlington, which this year won a $25,000 Inspiration Award from the College Board for preparing large numbers of low-income and minority students for AP courses.

Wakefield junior Narciso Chavez, 16, is a product of the school's AP Network, a collection of summer programs, ninth-grade interventions and student clubs operated by teachers who look for potentially strong students who had been overlooked. Chavez's father is a bus driver and his mother a hotel supervisor; both are from El Salvador. Before Chavez arrived at Wakefield, he was told he had a learning disability. But the Wakefield teachers thought he could handle an accelerated program, including geometry and algebra 2 in his sophomore year.

Chavez said he resisted until his friend Marcelo Rejas, already in the courses, suggested that Chavez wasn't up to it. Chavez accepted the challenge, took both courses and received high scores on the state tests in geometry and algebra 2. This year, he is taking AP Spanish, AP English language and AP chemistry. He also has a special AP seminar that gives him extra time at school to confer with teachers and do homework. He does four more hours of homework a night, with an hour-long break at 9 p.m., when he reads the Bible and prays with his family. "I decided I wanted to be successful," said Chavez, who is thinking of a career in engineering, law or chemistry.

Mike Riley, superintendent of a school district in Bellevue, Wash., and a proponent of higher national high school standards, said the solution to course-label inflation was to connect tightly the curriculum of each grade, from kindergarten through high school, to the next, so it is obvious which students need more help. Several educators said external benchmarks are also necessary, pointing to state math tests that Chavez took in the spring. They showed that he had mastered geometry and algebra 2. Without such benchmarks, said Andrew Rotherham, a former White House education adviser and a member of the Virginia Board of Education, "there is too much variance, and that ultimately disadvantages students, in particular poor and minority students. It sounds very romantic to say, 'Leave it all to the schools or the teacher,' but it just doesn't work in a system as heterogeneous, in every way, as ours is."

Source





SCHOOLS THAT THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT CANNOT MAKE WORK

Instead of solving the problems that their failed educational theories have created, they are just running away and hoping someone else can solve them

The worst-performing secondary schools in the country face being taken over by the best or shut down completely, The Times has learnt. Head teachers of schools with trust status, an initiative designed to give them greater independence from local authorities, will be able to act as chief executives overseeing the progress of less successful institutions. The plans come amid concerns that Labour's record investment has failed to improve standards at the bottom of school league tables, with more than one in six secondaries now providing a second-rate education.

A confidential government hitlist has identified 512 secondary schools, from a total of 3,385, that are officially classified as "underperforming" because only 25 per cent or less of pupils attain five good GCSEs. An estimated 400,000 children attend these schools, with many leaving at 16 without the skills to get a job. They include Montgomery School in Canterbury, where just 1 per cent of pupils achieved five A* to C GCSEs, including maths and English, in 2005, against a national average of 44.3 per cent. Also on the list is Ridings School in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, which achieved notoriety in 1996 after pupil behaviour and staff action plunged it into chaos. Despite the help of troubleshooting head teachers, just 5 per cent of pupils managed five A* to C GCSEs, including maths and English, last year.

Under the new plans, such schools would be taken over by high-achieving schools, linked together by a single independent trust. The trusts, set up under the new education Bill, would be run by a chief executive, usually the existing head of the lead school in the partnership. The chief executive would appoint new heads for each of the partner schools and would have the freedom to take whatever other actions were necessary to raise standards, including the removal of up to 20 per cent of staff. Sir Cyril Taylor, head of the Government's specialist schools programme and the architect of the reforms, said that a large number of heads in high- performing schools had already expressed an interest in taking over underperforming schools nearby.

The key in turning round an underperforming school was good leadership and a strong vision. "I believe that the strong should help the weak. Best practice can be replicated with good leadership in even the most challenging schools," he said. Sir Cyril said that the reforms would help to nurture new leaders and address the leadership crisis in schools. At present 1,500 English primary and secondary schools lack a permanent head. "If we are short of 1,500 head teachers, it will clearly be difficult to find sufficient outstanding head teachers for every underperforming school, and this is where collaboration and co-operation between schools can be crucial in raising performance," Sir Cyril added.

High-performing schools can already take over failing schools by forming a federation under existing legislation, but such arrangements cannot be permanent and have limited powers. Under the new education Bill, expected to receive Royal Assent this year, a new breed of independent school trust, free from local authority control, will be possible. In a speech today at the Federations and School Leadership conference in London, Sir Cyril will say that trust status will be key to making school partnerships work. Those underperforming schools that were not taken over by others should either be closed down completely, if their pupil numbers were falling, and their pupils sent to nearby schools, or they should seek private sponsorship to become academy schools, he said.

Teaching unions are generally in favour of the move towards more partnerships between schools, provided that heads and teachers from failing schools who lose their jobs are properly compensated. John Dunford, of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "The principle of a successful school supporting a less successful one in partnership is an excellent one." However, he questioned the idea of classifying as "failing" all schools with 25 per cent or less of pupils attaining five good GCSEs. "It will depend on the ability of the children when they join a school," he said.

Examples of successful take-overs include the Ninestiles Federation in Birmingham. In 2001 the highly successful Ninestiles School took responsibility for the Waverley School, then on the brink of special measures. The partnership finished in 2005, by which time the proportion of Waverley students gaining five good GCSEs had risen from 16 to 75 per cent.

Source






ANOTHER NASTY ATTACK BY OFFICIAL BULLIES ON A HARMLESS LITTLE KID

Treating little kids kindly is obviously an alien concept for them. They might profit by reading Matthew 18:1-6

A mother is angry that her first-grader was suspended from school over a plastic toy gun. "I asked her, 'You're going to suspend my son for 10 days for this? He cannot harm a soul with this,'" said Danielle Womack, whose son, Tawann Caskey, was suspended from Milton Moore Elementary School. KMBC's Natalie Moultrie reported that Tawann was suspended over a 2-inch plastic squirt gun

"She told me it's a weapon, a little girl saw it and reported to a teacher that he had a weapon," Womack said. According to Kansas City, Mo., School District policy, the squirt gun is a simulated weapon and a class IV, which is the most serious school offense. Moultrie reported that principals have no discretion in cases like Tawaan's. It is an automatic 10-day suspension. "We ask our principals for safety of students and staff, and we do follow the code of conduct and do not give exceptions to Class IV offenses. We take it very seriously," the school district's Phyllis Budesheim said.

Moultrie reported that the incident will stay on Tawann's school record. But Womack said her son does not understand why he's not in school. "I think this could have been resolved in a different way. It's wrong to bring it school, but come on, he's 6 years old. This would not hurt a soul," Womack said. The school district said it is all policy -- one that the school told students and parents about at the start of the year. "We regret that this happened. My feeling is that by not giving any exceptions, this young man will not bring a toy gun to school again," Budesheim said.

The school district said that the incident should be a reminder to parents to check their children's backpacks before they go to school. Moultrie reported that Womack is waiting to state her case before a school district hearing Wednesday morning.

Source

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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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