As O'Hanian says, this is, "One of two blockbuster reports, this sounds more and more like ReadingGate:
1. Conspiracy
2. Cover ups
3. Lies and more lies to cover up the conspiracy
4. Top folks in Washington leading the conspiracy and cover ups
Here is the other report.
You must read these to understand how and why all the states that are signing up for reading first are ending up with the same programs. The game has been fixed. Be sure to check out the table showing what the states chose and how many times they applied before then accepted the "correct" programs and finally became accepted. As I have been saying all along, this is more about making money for those with the right political connections than it is about what is best for kids.
Monday, August 29, 2005
Friday, August 26, 2005
The un-empirical presidency -
August 24, 2005
Now the administration's propensity to ignore empirical data threatens the search for effective school reforms. The latest case of science snubbed emerged last week and involves the quiet quashing of new findings on the success of bilingual teaching in the nation's classrooms.
Californians understand how important such research is almost two-fifths of the state's schoolchildren come from non-English speaking homes. And parents and employers everywhere want to know what advances children's reading and language skills. Figuring that out was the charge given, along with 1 million in taxpayer dollars, to Bush's prestigious National Literacy Panel, appointed three years ago.
Panelist Robert Slavin, an education professor at Johns Hopkins University, was asked to review the best-designed experiments, where children were randomly assigned to either bilingual or English-immersion classrooms. The administration, rightfully, wanted to test reforms with the same rigor with which it tests new drugs. Or so it said.
Slavin found that, according to the best data, children's early literacy skills climbed at a faster rate in bilingual classrooms. He wanted to publish his findings immediately; the Education Department said to wait until the panel's full report was done.
"From the perspective of academic freedom, I didn't like the idea of something being held up," Slavin said. He resigned from the panel.
Now the panel's report is finished. Another of its members extended Slavin's research, with the same results: Good bilingual education programs produce faster results than good English-only programs. These findings have been peer-reviewed, but Bush's Education Department won't make the report public.
"They said they weren't going to release it," the panel chairman, University of Illinois psychologist Timothy Shanahan, told me last week...
...Why would the administration sideline its own report? It's possible that the bilingual education results weren't what it wanted to hear. "English only" is a rallying cry in the culture wars, and evidence that works against it also works against such Bush allies as English First, which has lead the charge against bilingual education.
And this wouldn't be the first time the administration has buried inconvenient education data. It was not until the New York Times brought suit and forced the release of a charter school study that we learned that such schools which are mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act in some cases do no better on average than public schools.
And Republicans aren't alone in this game. In 2000, Clinton administration officials tried to recast research I led, which found that many toddlers were entering unhealthy child-care settings in the wake of its welfare reforms.
Scientific evidence alone shouldn't make or break public policy. But as conservative John Locke argued in the 18th century, government must advance objective knowledge so that citizens can reason through remedies to their shared problems. When the government invests in legitimate research, we should not be prevented from hearing the results.
In the mind of the politicians in charge it's obviously not what's best for the kids but what suits the needs of the politicians and their cronies best.
latimes.com : Print Edition : Editorials, Op-Ed
PRESIDENT BUSH'S love affair with the scientific community is awkward at best. The White House science advisor, John H. Marburger III, is on record as saying that "in this administration, science strongly informs policy." But where's the romance for scientists if Bush casts a blind eye over evidence of a human role in global warming or the difference between evolution and intelligent design?Now the administration's propensity to ignore empirical data threatens the search for effective school reforms. The latest case of science snubbed emerged last week and involves the quiet quashing of new findings on the success of bilingual teaching in the nation's classrooms.
Californians understand how important such research is almost two-fifths of the state's schoolchildren come from non-English speaking homes. And parents and employers everywhere want to know what advances children's reading and language skills. Figuring that out was the charge given, along with 1 million in taxpayer dollars, to Bush's prestigious National Literacy Panel, appointed three years ago.
Panelist Robert Slavin, an education professor at Johns Hopkins University, was asked to review the best-designed experiments, where children were randomly assigned to either bilingual or English-immersion classrooms. The administration, rightfully, wanted to test reforms with the same rigor with which it tests new drugs. Or so it said.
Slavin found that, according to the best data, children's early literacy skills climbed at a faster rate in bilingual classrooms. He wanted to publish his findings immediately; the Education Department said to wait until the panel's full report was done.
"From the perspective of academic freedom, I didn't like the idea of something being held up," Slavin said. He resigned from the panel.
Now the panel's report is finished. Another of its members extended Slavin's research, with the same results: Good bilingual education programs produce faster results than good English-only programs. These findings have been peer-reviewed, but Bush's Education Department won't make the report public.
"They said they weren't going to release it," the panel chairman, University of Illinois psychologist Timothy Shanahan, told me last week...
...Why would the administration sideline its own report? It's possible that the bilingual education results weren't what it wanted to hear. "English only" is a rallying cry in the culture wars, and evidence that works against it also works against such Bush allies as English First, which has lead the charge against bilingual education.
And this wouldn't be the first time the administration has buried inconvenient education data. It was not until the New York Times brought suit and forced the release of a charter school study that we learned that such schools which are mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act in some cases do no better on average than public schools.
And Republicans aren't alone in this game. In 2000, Clinton administration officials tried to recast research I led, which found that many toddlers were entering unhealthy child-care settings in the wake of its welfare reforms.
Scientific evidence alone shouldn't make or break public policy. But as conservative John Locke argued in the 18th century, government must advance objective knowledge so that citizens can reason through remedies to their shared problems. When the government invests in legitimate research, we should not be prevented from hearing the results.
In the mind of the politicians in charge it's obviously not what's best for the kids but what suits the needs of the politicians and their cronies best.
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
The American Public -- More Informed About NCLB and More Skeptical of Its Strategies; Press Conference Aug. 23 -
8/23/2005 10:01:00 AM
To: National and Assignment Desks, Education Reporter
Contact: Dr. Lowell Rose, 812-320-1835 or lcrose@indiana.edu, or Molly Andres, 800-766-1156 ext. 2254 or mandres@pdkintl.org
WASHINGTON, Aug. 23 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A nationwide survey released today reports that an increasing number of Americans say they know a fair amount about the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. But the more they know about it, the less they like it. According to the 37th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, the public likes NCLB's goals but rejects the strategies used to implement those goals. The concern rises to the level where, if a large number of schools fail to make the mandated adequate yearly progress, the public is at least as likely to blame the law as it is to blame the school....
The poll also finds that the public supports the use of growth assessments, believing that schools should be judged on how much students improve in a given year, not on the percentage of students passing the state-mandated test.
Another message for policy makers to heed is that the public makes a distinction between the "nation's schools" and "schools in the community," giving low grades to the former and higher grades to the latter. The strongest support comes from the 69 percent of parents who give an A or a B to the schools their own children attend.
A full report appears in the September 2005 issue of the Phi Delta Kappan and is also available at http://www.pdkintl.org. Contact Dr. Lowell Rose, PDK Poll Director (lcrose@indiana.edu, 812-320-1835) or Molly Andres, PDK Marketing Director (mandres@pdkintl.org, 800-766-1156 ext. 2254) for additional information.
More good news!
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Local discontent with 'No Child Left Behind' grows -
Andrea Marks, Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 19,
Just as students are heading back to school, frustration with the federal No Child Left Behind education law is hitting new heights at the grass-roots level from Maine to California.
"There is a palpable increase in the level of dissatisfaction that I see, but it's not being translated into legislation in Congress," says Jack Jennings, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy in Washington. "There's really a disjuncture here between a growing dissatisfaction and the lack of a political response."
Although test scores are going up, they were before NCLB was passed, as well. That's because of state education reforms and testing protocols put into place over the past 25 years. Indeed, there's been no research to determine which reforms get credit for the increasing scores. But many teachers and local legislators credit the earlier state improvements, and they're concerned that NCLB mandates are actually undermining their students' long-term success.
Several US representatives and senators are reportedly working on bills to amend NCLB in the upcoming legislative session, but few education experts believe it will happen before 2007, when the law comes up for reauthorization. But as the calls for change increase on the local level, that may change.
Just as students are heading back to school, frustration with the federal No Child Left Behind education law is hitting new heights at the grass-roots level from Maine to California.
"There is a palpable increase in the level of dissatisfaction that I see, but it's not being translated into legislation in Congress," says Jack Jennings, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Center on Education Policy in Washington. "There's really a disjuncture here between a growing dissatisfaction and the lack of a political response."
Although test scores are going up, they were before NCLB was passed, as well. That's because of state education reforms and testing protocols put into place over the past 25 years. Indeed, there's been no research to determine which reforms get credit for the increasing scores. But many teachers and local legislators credit the earlier state improvements, and they're concerned that NCLB mandates are actually undermining their students' long-term success.
Several US representatives and senators are reportedly working on bills to amend NCLB in the upcoming legislative session, but few education experts believe it will happen before 2007, when the law comes up for reauthorization. But as the calls for change increase on the local level, that may change.
"I think the dissatisfaction will continue to grow," says Reggie Felton, director of federal relations with the National School Boards Association in Alexandria, Va. "That will result in a stronger sense of urgency in congressional districts, which will then result in members of Congress saying, 'We can't wait. We must act now because I'm up for reelection."
And today Connecticut finally has sued. So we continue to wait and see.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Special ed scores don't paint the real picture -
This is an editorial from 8/15 Mobile Register
...No Child Left Behind allows states to use what Alabama calls "alternative achievement standards" to evaluate students with what it considers the "most significant cognitive disabilities." Roughly, those are students whose IQ's are 55 and below, and who may be unable to achieve at grade level even with the best of instruction.
...No Child Left Behind allows states to use what Alabama calls "alternative achievement standards" to evaluate students with what it considers the "most significant cognitive disabilities." Roughly, those are students whose IQ's are 55 and below, and who may be unable to achieve at grade level even with the best of instruction.
The catch is, if the number of special education students showing proficiency on the alternate tests exceeds 1 percent of the total number of students who passed, some of those special ed scores are arbitrarily deemed to be failing. In other words, even if the kids have done the best that they possibly can on tests they have a chance of passing, some of their scores don't count.
U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has recently modified the national policy to allow schools to exempt 3 percent of their special ed students from the standardized tests. That's an improvement, but in the Mobile County school system, 13 percent of students are considered special ed.
The special ed provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act need to be modified so that schools aren't set up to fail just because they have a significant number of special ed students enrolled.
In the meantime, parents who have been notified that they can transfer their children from low-performing schools need to take a hard look at why the schools have been rated that way, before deciding whether their children really can get a better education somewhere else.
In my town the only elementary schools to not make AYP were the schools with enough special ed students to count. In other words a school has to have big enough numbers so that the results are what they call "statistically significant." Our schools that do not have many spec. ed. students all made AYP. The editor is right on here. Just another of at least 31 ways that all schools can fail.
Monday, August 15, 2005
Federally funded Reading First called into question -
Well summer is over for me and now maybe I can get back to paying serious attention to this blog. When I finally got around to checking my mail after my vacation I discovered this article in USA Today but noticed right away that Endless Faculty Meeting had already done a good job of reporting on it. So go and check that out.
In the above mentioned USA today article it was stated"Robert Slavin of the Success for All Foundation a non-profit research group that has developed its own reading materials, requested the investigation in May, saying Reading First officials have discouraged schools from using his materials despite evidence they are effective. He says Reading First relies on the work of 'consultants with major conflicts of interest.''' Then a day or two after, this letter from Susan Harman, principal, Growing Children charter school, Oakland ,appeared in the same paper.
Conflicts of interest in reading program
In the above mentioned USA today article it was stated"Robert Slavin of the Success for All Foundation a non-profit research group that has developed its own reading materials, requested the investigation in May, saying Reading First officials have discouraged schools from using his materials despite evidence they are effective. He says Reading First relies on the work of 'consultants with major conflicts of interest.''' Then a day or two after, this letter from Susan Harman, principal, Growing Children charter school, Oakland ,appeared in the same paper.
Conflicts of interest in reading program
Congratulations to Robert Slavin of the Success for All Foundation for pointing out that President Bush's Reading First program is riddled with conflicts of interest. And congratulations to USA TODAY for having the courage to print this criticism ("Federally funded Reading First called into question," Life, Monday).
Slavin is right that federal consultants run the committees that review states' plans for buying the very expensive "reading" programs favored by Bush. He left out that some of the same "researchers" also sat on or were contributors to the National Reading Panel that defined "scientific" as those same programs. Conflicts of interest? Yes, sir.
The article says that "Congress is expected to distribute about $6 billion to schools by 2007." Actually, this money doesn't wind up at schools. It quickly passes through them to the few approved publishers, the most prominent of which is McGraw-Hill, run by old Bush family friend Harold McGraw III.
Slavin's complaint comes on the heels of an Aug. 4 request from the highly respected Reading Recovery Council of North America for a formal investigation of the U.S. Department of Education's actions in its implementation of Reading First...
Now I'm not a betting man but if I was I would be willing to bet nothing comes of this. And I'm pretty sure the mainstream media will not pick it up. Too many people with the right connections mare making too much money from this. As I have said before here, NCLB and Reading First with it are not about the kids as much as they are about making money for those people.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
No Child Left Behind Act and WASL will leave kids behind
Guest Commentary by Joe Guppy, The Seattle P.I. Tuesday, July 19, 2005
I leave tomorrow for two and a half weeks to see my folks back east among other things. Summer is not proving the most productive time for writing in this blog, sorry. Maybe I'll be ready to roll when I get back. Anyway, there's this perspective from a therapist in Seattle.
I leave tomorrow for two and a half weeks to see my folks back east among other things. Summer is not proving the most productive time for writing in this blog, sorry. Maybe I'll be ready to roll when I get back. Anyway, there's this perspective from a therapist in Seattle.
A few weeks ago I sat in the Seahawks football stadium watching my nephew graduate from high school. He was one of the notorious Garfield 44, the record-breaking 44 valedictorians from Garfield this year. I felt a quasi-parental pride as he stepped to the microphone and -- in a voice deeper than I remember -- delivered with conviction a quotation from John Wooden about the value of generosity toward others.
I also felt pride in the diversity among the graduates and the crowd. It was inspiring when society seems to be growing ever more divisive to see a unified celebration of youthful achievement. But as each member of the entire class of 400-plus came forward to accept diplomas, and as the cheering of family and friends rose up from different sections of the stadium, I thought:
How many of these graduates would not be here if the rigid WASL test graduation requirements were in place now, instead of in three years? How many of these whooping and hollering families would instead be struggling with a child who had dropped out of high school, stigmatized as a "failure"? How many younger brothers and sisters will not join their siblings as high school grads?
Over the past four years, I've gotten to know many of the students who are likely to be left behind by the No Child Left Behind Act. I ran a teen anger management group at a Seattle-area community agency, working with students who struggle with the pressures of a society in which to be average is considered failure, and to be below average is to be considered worthless.
I remember one young man who was passionate about working on cars but had difficulty with traditional academics. What troubles me is not that we would want him to graduate high school with minimum competence in basic reading and math, but that he had obviously picked up the dominant social attitude that gives little dignity and respect to an ordinary working-class life.
Beneath the stories of anger, fights, shoplifting and drug abuse, I always see in these kids a deep shame. We do not give them dignified options, and instead they turn to an identity that offers them respect within an alternative society -- the "gangster" or "outlaw" culture.
We need to return to the values embodied by my father, a first-generation American whose parents were from England and Australia. During World War I, my grandfather jumped ship in Canada, illegally crossed the U.S. border and joined the U.S. Army to gain citizenship. He was a house painter with an eighth-grade education. My father earned a Ph.D. and became a top academic officer at Seattle University, but he never gave even a hint that his "career" was of greater value than his father's "job." Perhaps this comes out of the Depression, when any employment was valued and honorable. And he passed this on to his five sons. Some of us hold more working-class jobs and others have advanced degrees, but we know that we all have equal dignity.
Even though most of the teens in my anger management group had been kicked out of various classrooms throughout their school careers, the vast majority completed 10 required sessions and left with new skills and, I believe, a greater sense of self-worth. Each teen who finished the program got a "graduation ceremony" in which I gave them a completion certificate and offered "the traditional ceremonial handshake." On one occasion, the rest of the group spontaneously burst into a rather humorous rendition of "Pomp and Circumstance."
I fear that fewer of these troubled kids will be hearing that song at their own high school graduation ceremonies in the future.
Joe Guppy is a therapist in private practice in Seattle.
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Let's Pretend To Improve Education --
Well, my in-laws left today but we leave in 10 days to visit my folks for two and a half weeks. The computer is in the spare room so I will have some time for the next ten days to comment, now that it is free. Here is a gem from the tiny town of Newtown Ct.
By William A. Collins
Testing's not,
The only tool;
To get our kids,
To finish school.
With even right-wing Utah now railing against No Child Left Behind (NCLB), that meanspirited law can't claim many adherents anywhere anymore. Outside Washington, it's a joke. The president coveted such a scheme as his personal education legacy, and as a sop to his private school supporters. Thus, we remain stuck with it against all appeals to reason.
But if Nutmeggers are certain in their negative views of NCLB, they are less certain about almost every other aspect of education. What, for example, should we do about dropouts? Approximately a third of our kids still don't graduate from high school. And what about racial isolation? Our schools are more segregated now than before Brown v. Board of Education.
Well, if the truth were known, we citizens don't actually care that much about graduation rates and segregation. As long as our own kid graduates and gets into college, what's the problem? And maybe segregation even helps. It's mostly minority and poor kids who falter in school and make it harder for ours kids to learn. Most Nutmeggers therefore aren't going to lose a lot of sleep if zoning laws and real estate prices keep those bad influences bottled up in just a few towns.
Well aware of this unspoken dynamic, local politicians often focus their education platforms instead on simply getting more money from the state for their own town. No one ever lost an election doing that. And that money, if received, is generally aimed at reducing taxes, not reducing dropouts.
In fact, most of us are pretty darn happy with our schools just the way they are. Connecticut's blessed home rule legacy from colonial times allows every village to have its own fiercely independent school district, about 135 in all that allows us to keep out the riff-raff. These districts perform very well indeed and have put our state high up in the national rankings. However, if you can't afford to live in one of those snazzy towns, and can't afford private school either, then your kid is just going to have to muddle through in a more marginal system. Sorry.
Educators are naturally well aware of all this and do the best they can to cope. Those in low-income districts seek funding for magnet schools, charter schools, after-school programs, breakfasts, tutors, Saturday academies, and what-have-you. They often shell out their own cash to buy classroom supplies, and they work overtime to help troubled kids. But they're all stopgaps.
Now some in Connecticut are looking at Maryland as a model. It's a state noted for public school reform. But not all those reforms would be popular here. One is the spending of a lot more money. You can imagine how well that idea would sell in our capitol. Another is reducing the number of school districts. Maryland has only 23, thus throwing lots of rich and poor towns in together. Good luck.
The ultimate solution, of course is one that all professionals understand. Unfortunately, it flies in the face of the great American concept of self-reliance. The idea would be to put all pupils on an equal footing long before they ever set foot in a classroom. Its elements involve such heretical notions as a universal living wage, prenatal care, postnatal care, health insurance, decent housing, adequate food, day care, preschool, public transportation, and other common aspects of civilized life.
Worse luck, it probably only weakens the case for this approach to point out that most European countries already do it. America doesn't have much truck with Europe these days. But we should nonetheless grasp in our own minds the reality of this fundamental cure for crummy school performance. That understanding at least helps protect us against politicians selling educational snake oil.
(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Joshua Benton: Can cash buy good schools?
I'm back, temporarily at least. My new roof is on and now my in-laws are here for a visit. They will leave on the 10th but then I will go to visit my folks, and others for three weeks toward the end of July. For now here is an interesting article from the Dallas Morning News.
An interesting new study by two University of Illinois researchers seems to indicate it often isn't. And it gives further evidence that many folks can't spot a "good" school when they see one.
An interesting new study by two University of Illinois researchers seems to indicate it often isn't. And it gives further evidence that many folks can't spot a "good" school when they see one.
Their study looks at math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. NAEP is the big federal test whose results researchers love to slice and dice, since it includes scores and demographic data for tens of thousands of students.
When NAEP scores are reported, they always show private-school students outperforming their peers in public school. It's been a consistent finding for decades.
But the Lubienskis were curious. Is that because private schools are really better? Or is it just because they generally enroll wealthier, better-prepared students?
So they built a way to try to remove social class as a factor. They gathered up data on the students taking the test. Were they poor enough to qualify for free school lunch? Did they have a computer at home? Did their parents graduate from college, or did they drop out of high school? They then compared how public and private schools fared when these socioeconomic factors were stripped away.
They found that, at all class levels, public schools had a small but consistent edge over privates. Their suspicions were supported by the numbers: The reason private schools look better on paper is because they serve more middle- and upper-class kids.
Or, to be even plainer: Poor kids in public schools did better than poor kids in private schools. Middle-class kids in public schools did better than middle-class kids in private schools. And rich kids in public schools did better than rich kids in private schools. "All kids can learn" is a nice idea, and "no child left behind" is a nice slogan. But kids who come from poor, literacy-starved homes start school so far behind better-off suburbanites that the gap isn't closable on any large scale. Dallas ISD could corner the market on the world's best teachers and its test scores still wouldn't beat Highland Park's. I once heard a researcher say that if you want to eliminate the achievement gap in American schools, the answer was simple: Just end poverty. Good luck with that. There's more but this is a study that shows once again that in education things are not as black and white as our leaders would have us believe.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Nathan Greeno, Strategic Process Consultant: Troops to Teacher Initiative Launched (NCLB) --
From Google comes this recent press release.
Nathan Greeno, the president and CEO of Drawing Board Consulting Group continues his strategic facilitation role with the No Child Left Behind funded Troops to Teacher Initiative. In San Antonio Texas earlier this month Nathan and the Leadership Team of the newly formed Western States Certification Consortium (http://www.pathway2teach.org) officially launched the beginning of the candidate recruitment phase...
..The Western States Certification Consortium (WSCC) for Troops-to-Teachers, a multistate organization, supports collaborative alternative certification pathways for U.S. armed forces service members transitioning to the teaching profession. Through training referral, job placement assistance and mentoring guidance as a career service, WSCC provides service members with professional career assistance and access to alternative and regionally approved distance delivered options to certification in all the member states...
Nathan Greeno, President of Drawing Board, is a Strategic Process Consultant and an Organizational Learning Expert. His focus is maximizing return on human capital investment. He works with fortune 500 companies, higher education institutions and the American Council on Education Corporate Programs specializing in Organizational Learning Strategy, Alignment and Measures...
(Nathan Greeno, Strategic Process Consultant and Organizational Learning Expert, maximizes your return on human capital investment.)
Now my translation: If you live in a western state why would you want to hire a teacher trained in some LIBERAL university or college teacher training program when we, Corporate America can provide you with alternatively trained teachers with conservative values? (Pay no attention to the fact that recent research shows that alternatively trained teachers do not do as good a job.) And who could be more conservative than a former G.I trained by us? This is so important that we hired a high paid, slick and shiny consultant to get the word out paid for by a $2 million No Child Left Behind grant. Help us do our best to keep those Red States red.
Nathan Greeno, the president and CEO of Drawing Board Consulting Group continues his strategic facilitation role with the No Child Left Behind funded Troops to Teacher Initiative. In San Antonio Texas earlier this month Nathan and the Leadership Team of the newly formed Western States Certification Consortium (http://www.pathway2teach.org) officially launched the beginning of the candidate recruitment phase...
..The Western States Certification Consortium (WSCC) for Troops-to-Teachers, a multistate organization, supports collaborative alternative certification pathways for U.S. armed forces service members transitioning to the teaching profession. Through training referral, job placement assistance and mentoring guidance as a career service, WSCC provides service members with professional career assistance and access to alternative and regionally approved distance delivered options to certification in all the member states...
Nathan Greeno, President of Drawing Board, is a Strategic Process Consultant and an Organizational Learning Expert. His focus is maximizing return on human capital investment. He works with fortune 500 companies, higher education institutions and the American Council on Education Corporate Programs specializing in Organizational Learning Strategy, Alignment and Measures...
(Nathan Greeno, Strategic Process Consultant and Organizational Learning Expert, maximizes your return on human capital investment.)
Now my translation: If you live in a western state why would you want to hire a teacher trained in some LIBERAL university or college teacher training program when we, Corporate America can provide you with alternatively trained teachers with conservative values? (Pay no attention to the fact that recent research shows that alternatively trained teachers do not do as good a job.) And who could be more conservative than a former G.I trained by us? This is so important that we hired a high paid, slick and shiny consultant to get the word out paid for by a $2 million No Child Left Behind grant. Help us do our best to keep those Red States red.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
New Advocate is Up --
Joe Thomas over at ShutUpAndTeach.org has recently posted a new Education Advocate. Good reading here. Check it out!
Monday, June 13, 2005
26 of county's lowest-performing campuses found short of materials --
June 12, by Laurel Rosenhal, Sacramento Bee staff writer
Now it would seem to follow that if kids do not have the required text books they are not going to do well on the tests. The folks that brought us NCLB will try to you that you can't just throw money at the problem. Well, the problem is the money hasn't been spent for decades!
A check of Sacramento County's lowest-performing schools confirms what critics have long contended: Many needy children do not have textbooks and other materials required to learn.
...26 schools out of 71 reviewed came up short - lacking books for English, social studies, science or math. The majority are in the Sacramento City Unified School District.
Now it would seem to follow that if kids do not have the required text books they are not going to do well on the tests. The folks that brought us NCLB will try to you that you can't just throw money at the problem. Well, the problem is the money hasn't been spent for decades!
A check of Sacramento County's lowest-performing schools confirms what critics have long contended: Many needy children do not have textbooks and other materials required to learn.
...26 schools out of 71 reviewed came up short - lacking books for English, social studies, science or math. The majority are in the Sacramento City Unified School District.
The survey's results are little surprise to teachers and parents at schools with low test scores. They say their students have been shortchanged for years...
...The findings come as the county office wraps up the first round of audits required by the settlement of a lawsuit filed in 2000 on behalf of students in the state's struggling schools.
Williams v. State of California, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and settled by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last year, alleged that the state had failed to provide all children with sufficient learning materials, safe and clean school buildings and properly trained teachers.
The settlement established new laws and provides about $1 billion to remedy problems in schools with Academic Performance Index scores in the bottom 30 percent statewide - mostly schools that serve impoverished, nonwhite children.
One of those new laws says that each student must have a set of state-approved books, or other learning materials, in each academic subject - math, English, science and social studies.
The settlement earmarks about $138 million for districts to buy textbooks and supplies needed to meet the requirement. About $2.8 million goes to schools in Sacramento County.
The agreement also requires that county offices of education check low-performing schools each year to make sure students have the books they are entitled to and report any emergencies in building conditions...
A lawyer with the ACLU said that Sacramento's experience is typical. Brooks Allen said visits to Williams schools across the state are finding textbook shortages. The procedure validates the group's original allegations, he said...
Apparently something good might come from the Gubanator after all.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Board member says meddling pushed him out --
from Juneau Empire, Web posted June 12, 2005, by MATT VOLZ - The Associated Press
In my state of Alaska our right wing republican administration appears to be right in line the with the national administration, that is, out to permanently damage public education. This past legislative session saw them do what Bush and company have not yet been able to do, take away retirement programs from teachers, police and fire personnel and state workers and replace them with a defined benefits package. We knew that was happening but now this. And all this is buried inside of the newspaper that serves the state capital.
A state Public Employees Retirement Board member has resigned, accusing the Murkowski administration of manipulating and interfering with the board and its duties.
In my state of Alaska our right wing republican administration appears to be right in line the with the national administration, that is, out to permanently damage public education. This past legislative session saw them do what Bush and company have not yet been able to do, take away retirement programs from teachers, police and fire personnel and state workers and replace them with a defined benefits package. We knew that was happening but now this. And all this is buried inside of the newspaper that serves the state capital.
The resignation of Pat Wellington, a 27-year board member, will have little effect because the board's final meeting was canceled at the request of Gov. Frank Murkowski.
In a May 31 letter to Chairman George Sullivan, Wellington said Administration Commissioner Ray Matiashowski and Retirements and Benefits Director Melanie Millhorn "have interfered with the board's duties, responsibilities and its members' professional integrity."
Most of Wellington's allegations focus on the administration's assistance with legislation to change the public employees and teachers retirement systems from a traditional pension plan - called a defined benefit plan - to a defined contribution plan with 401(k)-type investment accounts.
The bill, Senate Bill 141, passed the Legislature after a protracted political battle that forced a special session last month. The measure was pushed by the governor and Senate Republicans who said it was a structural fix to the systems and a first step to solving the systems' $5.7 billion shortfall.
This supposed shortfall has yet to have been proven and even if it's true this bill does not fix the problem. Sound familiar?
The bill includes consolidating the three oversight boards - the teachers, public employees and Alaska State Pension Investment boards - into one. The new board goes into existence Oct. 1.