92 replies to this topic

[Mind]

Just a few more numbers concerning education in the U.S.

Education follies
Mona Charen (archive)
January 2, 2004
Though the news from the education world is gloomy, dismal and sad, I do believe that in 2004 things will improve. Eventually, in America, when things get bad enough, a reforming impulse pushes through the muck and begins to set things right. The following education follies from 2003 are offered in hopes of goosing that process along.


In October, the mayor of Detroit and the governor of Michigan joined forces to reject a $200 million gift offered by philanthropist Robert Thompson. Thompson proposed to help build 15 small charter high schools in Detroit, whose students consistently score below those of other Michigan residents. But after the Detroit teachers staged a one-day walkout to protest the charter plan, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm scurried away from the deal.

Detroit spends, for the record, more than all but 9 percent of Michigan school districts. Only 3.4 percent of Michigan's districts graduate a smaller proportion of high school students. Detroit students score near the bottom on statewide achievement tests. Only 2.5 percent of Michigan school districts spend more on administrative costs than does Detroit. The city also boasts teacher salaries near the very top.

Paul E. Peterson of Harvard reported in 2003 the results of a randomized study examining the effect of school vouchers on African American youngsters in New York. The study began in 1997, when the School Choice Scholarships Foundation offered vouchers to 1,200 New York City public school students in kindergarten through fourth grade. The scholarships were worth $1,400 annually. The students who received the vouchers were similar in every way to those who did not. Eighty percent came from single-parent families. The results were impressive. Students who received vouchers scored one grade level higher in reading and math than students in public school.

Read the rest here Education article

[Lazarus Long]

This isn't about education in the US but is about how it is being addressed in one of the poorest areas of the emerging Third World where we need to realize the problems that threaten us most emanate from and where those problems must be addressed through socioeconomic reform more than militantancy. Such reforms don't begin in the market place, they begin in education and the proposal Brazil is experimenting with is commendable and one that I agree would argue should go further by rewarding students directly more for their level of participation and paying them as well.

Perhaps part of the problem in the US is the incentives are out of whack. In many inner urban communities the view on the street is that crime pays and education is for fools. An image reinforced by videos of gan$ta rap with $tarrry eyed bling-bling $exuality.

Don't blame the fools paradise videos, they are just relating their experience of wish fulfillment, blame the $ociety that makes such dream$ the idea of best possible alternatives.

LL


To Help Poor Be Pupils, Not Wage Earners, Brazil Pays Parents
By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: January 3, 2004

FORTALEZA, Brazil — Vandelson Andrade, 13, often used to skip school to work 12-hour days on the small, graceful fishing boats that sail from the picturesque harbor here. His meager earnings helped pay for rice and beans for his desperately poor family.

But this year he qualified for a small monthly cash payment from the government that his mother receives on the condition that he shows up in the classroom.

"I can't skip school anymore," said Vandelson, whose hand-me-down pants were so big that the crotch ended at his knees and the legs bunched up around his ankles. "If I miss one more day, my mother won't get the money."

This year, Vandelson will finally pass the fourth grade on his third try — a small victory in a new breed of social program that is spreading swiftly across Latin America. It is a developing-country version of American welfare
reform: to break the cycle of poverty, the government gives the poor small cash payments in exchange for keeping their children in school and taking them for regular medical checkups.

"I think these programs are as close as you can come to a magic bullet in development," said Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit research group in Washington. "They're creating an incentive for families to invest in their own children's futures. Every decade or so, we see something that can really make a difference, and this is one of those things."

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former factory worker who took office last January as a champion of the poor, is consolidating an array of cash transfer programs, sharply expanding his version of the model, named Family Grant, and tripling the average monthly benefit, to about $24.

By 2006, Family Grant will reach 11.4 million families — more than 45 million people, about a quarter of Brazil's population. That would be by far the world's largest such program. Ana Fonseca, the director — who reports directly to the president and his chief of staff — called Family Grant the payment of "an old debt the country has to its poor citizens."

Mr. da Silva's moves are popular with constituencies that include the poor — a bedrock of his political base — as well as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, big supporters of the model, which are putting up $3 billion in loans for the program. Its total cost over the president's four-year term will be close to $7 billion.

Its annual cost — about a third of 1 percent of Brazil's gross domestic product — will be more than offset by savings Mr. da Silva's administration has squeezed out of the civil service pension system, said Joachim Von Amsberg, the World Bank's lead economist for Brazil.

But the program has also won wide public acceptance here, surviving from government to government in large part because it is not simply a handout.

Mr. da Silva's Workers' Party can claim credit for being among the first in the world to experiment with this model in the federal district of Brasília in 1995. "The idea was to pay the families to bring their children to school rather than put them to work," said Cristovam Buarque, an economist who was then Brasília's governor and is now Mr. da Silva's education minister.

But it is equally telling that Mr. da Silva's political rival and predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, adopted the approach and turned it into a national program in 2001. His party had also tested the model in the city of Campinas in the mid-1990's.

The spread of this approach across Latin America has been fueled by impressive results from a raft of studies — in Nicaragua, Honduras and, most influentially, Mexico, whose program now reaches more than 20 million people.

The rigorous Mexico evaluation, conducted by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, found that the children who took part were healthier and better nourished and stayed in school longer than those in a control group.

Poor Brazilians, in recent interviews, made clear that the bits of money that seem trivial by rich-country standards loom large for families living, as millions here do, on less than a dollar per person a day.

From a sprawling favela built on the sand dunes of this seaside city by the poor from the parched rural interior, people said the government money paid for beans, rice, carrots, potatoes, eggs, mangoes, cooking oil, haircuts and school supplies.

Children whose families get the grants say the fear of losing the money makes them more serious about school. Most still have jobs, too, but outside school hours.

Carla dos Santos, 12, like Vandelson, is in fourth grade at the Fernando Cavalcante Mota School on Senator Robert Kennedy Street. But her face bears the weariness of someone several times her age.

"She has suffered a lot," said her teacher, Maria das Mercês. "She takes care of her family. She has the responsibilities of an adult. She's trying so hard."

For four hours every morning before school, Carla works as a maid, cooking, washing clothes and scrubbing floors for 30 cents an hour. She never splurges on treats. "I buy groceries — rice, beans, spaghetti, chicken," she said earnestly.

Then she goes to school, as she must for her family to get the grant. Several times she has fainted — from hunger and stress, her teacher thinks. In the evening, Carla often cares for her brother and sister, ages 5 and 7, in the two small, windowless rooms they call home while her single mother, Elisebete dos Santos, goes to an aunt's to cook dinner in "a house full of lazy people who don't do anything," Carla said bitterly. Ms. dos Santos said she cooked for her relatives because they gave her food for her children.

The family's biggest source of income is the government grant, which more than doubled two months ago, to $32. "It's a tremendous help for people without jobs," Ms. dos Santos said.

Claudimir Portela, an impish 11-year-old with lush brown eyes and a thick fringe of lashes, lives a few blocks away. He would rather be anywhere but the classroom. He is happiest playing soccer on a scruffy lot in the favela, but he even prefers kneading dough at his job in a bakery that pays him in small change and loaves of bread.

"My mother tells me, `You've got to stay in school or you'll be stupid and you'll never amount to anything,' " Claudimir said. But he did not seem impressed. It is not the long-term promise of a better life that keeps him in school, but his mother's threat that if he loses the $5 a month from the government, she will send him to live in the boring countryside with his father.

"The fact that I have to go to school every day is a real pain," he said. "If it wasn't for the money, I'd stay on the street. I wouldn't come for even one day."

A two-and-a-half-hour drive from Fortaleza, in the tiny, parched rural settlement of Quixába, the families eat what they grow — often not enough — and have virtually no opportunities to earn extra money. The land is rocky, the skies often devoid of rain. Even now, in Brazil's summer, the trees look like kindling. Brazil's drought-prone northeast has Latin America's largest concentration of rural poverty.

Parents and teachers here say the children would go to school even without the grants. There is not much else to do. But the parents are still deeply grateful for the money.

Those who have recently begun getting larger payments have no doubt about whom to credit: "First, I thank God," said Maria Andrade, an illiterate woman who for the first time was able to buy flip-flops for her barefoot children. "Second, I thank President Lula."

In what has become a monthly ritual, the mothers go to Canindé, about 30 miles away, to collect their payments. They swipe their government-issued electronic cash cards at the local lottery booth and out pops the money. Then they spend it at the market.

Antônio Souza, 48, and Maria Torres, 37, are raising seven children in a mud hut a couple of hills away from Ms. Andrade. Every member of the family is sinewy and lean. The parents cannot remember the last time the family ate meat or vegetables. But their grant of $27 a month makes it possible to buy rice, sugar, pasta and oil.

Mr. Souza and Ms. Torres, illiterate believers in the power of education, have always sent their children to school. "If they don't study, they'll turn into dummies like me," said their father, whose weathered, deeply creased face broke into a wide smile as he surveyed his bright-eyed daughters, Ana Paula, 11, and Daniele, 8, among them. "All I can do is work in the fields."

His wife said proudly: "There are fathers who don't want their children to go to school. But this man here has done everything he could to send his children to school."

Each weekday morning, a big flatbed truck jounces down the rutted dirt road that threads a path through Quixába, stopping at the scattered mud huts to collect children. The little girls' dresses — hot pink, lime green, lemon yellow — make splotches of color against the dun-colored landscape. The truck kicks up a billowing cloud of dust as it slowly chugs up and down the hills, carrying students to the country school.

[Lazarus Long]

It is time to go beyond 19th century thinking; education is as important as force of arms in the defense of a nation and as quintessential to the ability to sustain a viable democracy as the vote.

If we are failing to teach our children adequately then a number of hard questions should be being asked and the answers aren't likely to please anyone, starting with taxpayers, parents, teachers and students. The beginning might be if we better defined the goals of education in a manner that was more universally compressible and appealing.

I have little doubt that my idea of an education and someone that seeks the teaching of creationism as science in the school system possess a core of irreconcilable difference. This is one issue and obviously there are numerous examples of such subjective battling going on, standards of dress, levels of discipling, structure of classes, class size, duration of class time, school calender etc. Education needs to return to a local standard on many levels but also must meet criteria that are nationwide (internationally actually) academic values grounded in the objective measures first and the subjective measures as well.

Will this be another easy task? I doubt it but perhaps here is where a healthy standard of competition would be a good thing instead of the ridiculous corrupt standards of institutional prostitution being promulgated by NCAA sports.

When writing, physics, history, math, and biotechnology prizes are as heralded as the Heismann I think you will see a lot better participation in the classroom. I have another pet peeve about social engineering regarding sexuality and title nine but it is a separate subject and downright atavist by many people's standards so I will leave it to a separate thread.

[Mind]

Here is some historical data regarding literacy. No surprise to me, more people were literate before the advent of public schooling.

by Barry Dean Simpson

[January 28, 2004]

A common view promoted by advocates of "free" or public education is that a system primarily based on fees would cause many children to forego an education. Subsequently, literacy rates would decline, and America would slide down a slippery slope toward low economic growth and stagnation. Whether education is part and parcel to economic growth is not the concern of this article. Rather, the charge of illiteracy in a fee-based or privatized system seems to be weak at best, considering the history of education in America and England.

England's system of education was not completely "free" until 1870. However, literacy and attendance had been steadily climbing for hundreds of years. In 1640, male literacy in London was more than 50%, and more than 33% in the countryside. These rates were obtained under a privately administered fee-based educational system.[i] As the demand for education rose during the Industrial Revolution, however, private schools grew to supply consumer needs. By 1818, one of every fourteen people in the total population attended school for some period. Twice as many children attended school only ten years later. A Government Report of 1833 (criticized for underreporting attendance levels) found a 73% increase in the number of schooled children between 1818 and 1833.[ii] During 1833, 58% of attendees paid full fees, while only 27% received endowments for education.[iii]

The private system continued to grow in England. Attendance in day school had reached one of every 8.36 of the total population by 1851, and one of every 7.7 by 1861. The Education Act of 1870 provided "free" schools for the entire population. In 1975, however, after over 100 years of "free" schooling, the figure dropped only to one of every 6.4 citizens.[iv] The private investment in education in England prior to the Education Act is phenomenal considering the circumstances. The wages of children were still an important part of the average family budget. Eddie West estimates that a full one percent of Net National Income was spent on day-school education alone in 1833. This figure exceeds that of America in 1860. Moreover, it exceeds the figures of 1860 Germany and 1880 France where education was free and compulsory.[v] West argues that the goal of educating 100% of the population is unattainable. But if universal education means at least 90% attendance, then a private system of universal education had been achieved in England by 1860—a full ten years before education became "free."[vi]

The situation in America roughly parallels that in England. In 1650, male literacy in America was 60%. Between 1800 and 1840, literacy in the Northern States increased from 75% to 90%, and in Southern States from 60% to 81%. These increases transpired before the famous Common School Movement led by Horace Mann caught steam. Massachusetts had reached a level of 98% literacy in 1850. This occurred before the state's compulsory education law of 1852. Senator Edward Kennedy's office released a paper in the 1980s stating that literacy in Massachusetts was only 91%.[vii]

While some people might wonder exactly what literacy entailed during the early Nineteenth Century, anecdotal evidence points to a highly educated and refined populace. In his book Separating School and State, Sheldon Richman gives a variety of examples of the sophisticated nature of America's readers. Thomas Paine's Common Sense sold 120,000 copies to a population of three million—the equivalent of ten million copies in the 1990s. Noah Webster's Spelling Bee sold five million copies to a population of less than twenty million in 1818. Walter Scott's novels sold the same number between 1813 and 1823—the equivalent of sixty million copies in the 1990s. James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans also sold millions of copies. Scott and Cooper are certainly not written on today's fourth-grade level. Travelers to America during the period such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Pierre du Pont were amazed at the education of Americans.[viii] The reading public of Victorian England is so famous that numerous books and college literature courses are devoted to the subject. In fact, England eventually passed a paper tax to quell a public the leaders felt was too smart.

The reason behind the successes of private, fee-based systems should be elementary to any student of economics: Private businesses are consumer oriented. The feedback of profit and loss tells an entrepreneur when they satisfy, or fail to satisfy, the needs of consumers. Entrepreneurs who continue to lose eventually cease to be entrepreneurs. Conversely, profit is a reward to entrepreneurs who correctly anticipate consumer wants. A brief look at the private schools of the period attests to these facts. Private schools offered a varied curricula to students. While public schools concerned themselves with the three R's, private schools offered courses in geography, bookkeeping, geometry, trigonometry, surveying, French, German, history, and sometimes dancing.[ix] Specialty and night schools emerged to meet the growing demand of consumers. Many states cut local funding for schools after the American Revolution, but private education thrived.

Why then, did Mann and other so-called reformers lead a call-to-arms to bring public, free schools to all children? One reason is that consumers preferred the quality of the private schools. Although attendance per se did not decline from 1830 to 1840, attendance in public schools began to fall faster and faster. Mann and his followers developed many arguments to attack the private schools. Such arguments ranged from bad parents who refused to educate their children, to calls of private education being "undemocratic." Economic arguments concerning economic growth, crime, and educated voters were also used in an attempt to solidify the position of public schools. Once educators and administrators organized into powerful lobbying groups, the die of our modern public system was cast. Few people can afford to pay for education twice: once through fees, and once through the fiat of taxation.

Most people now realize the failure of public schools, even those who seek only to reorganize a bad system. Parents certainly realize this fact, since private and home schooling is again on the rise. Apparently, many people find that paying twice for education is better than receiving little education at all. Economic theory shows us that private businesses cater to the needs of diverse consumers far better than bureaucracies. History tells us that a private system is feasible, that those at the bottom of the ladder will gain the education they need, and that literacy will not suffer if the mass of the pubic education system disappears—if only we will listen.

Full article - Ludwig von Mises Institute

[Lazarus Long]

Mind this article demonstrates 19th century thinking and is a very clear example of biased statistical analysis. In 1860 for example literacy was assessed only on the basis of white males and the figures do not reflect the very poor level of literacy among enslaved blacks, immigrants, and native Americans living outside the structure of the dominant culture. Not to mention the complete denial of the importance of half the population, 'women' whose literacy was not in single digits but was still "frowned upon" socially and who still found little support for their participation in education (especially higher ed) as schools (private and public) still denied many women access and so didn't count them in the statistics gathered above.

I don't credit this kind of analysis when it is fostered by the Left and I have the same contempt for the practice when it comes from the Right. It is overtly biased additionally by how it doesn't allow for the differences in size of population and the make up of those populations.

My arguments in favor of public education are also predicated on the principle of defense of the Nation and our democracy and the idea that our democratic ideals of social responsibility are impossible to realize with anything less than near total literacy combined with "competency." The second notion is even more important than the first and far harder to achieve. It is also not addressed at all by the article above.

An aspect of the Constitution that I suggest is willfully ignored is that the founders of this Nation placed a higher importance on the idea of the "Promotion of Science and the Useful Arts" than they did to a standing Army. This promotion was considered by them a mandate to ensure a process of public education to achieve total literacy and go beyond that to an informed, involved, and competent electorate, capable of sustaining a democracy by participation and engagement in the process decision making, not merely public contract with private enterprise.

This last idea was however balanced between being a goal and a means as it was not possible in their day and so a system of checks and balances of power was installed (one which is falling out of balance) and the idea of the Senate and Electoral College created to ensure the cooperation of special interests of the time and the continuance of the State under emergency conditions.

The idea of using education as a means of social engineering is as old as the idea of education itself, Plato openly contemplated this aspect at the founding of his "Academy" when he posits the importance of education in the creation of philosopher kings. The problem is that the standards under which teaching must be performed and the goals for actual education are now so erratic that the product (educated students) is not well guaranteed.

Social engineering has come to supplant fundamentals in education and this is unconscionable but quite common. It is true when issues of social life take precedence over literacy and just as true when the current Georgia legislature tries to take on the task of writing evolution out of the their science textbooks.

I do not see the system we possess as a goal in itself. I see a system demanding profound reform but very little agreement on the direction of that reform and even less rational dialog about the specifics of such goals. Is reform even possible when so few define it even remotely the same?

One would hope that we could come to agree on the basic principles of conduct and standards for "primary" aspects like literacy, mathematical competency, and scientific methodology and logical reasoning. My own observation is however there is no such "popular" consensus at the local level and far less so the larger the population being examined.

[David]

Ok, I don't know a lot about your education system, but I do know that it's not working particularly well. Some of the texbooks we use for my second degree, business (marketing major) are American published, so we know you are having trouble, 'cos you tell us so. Over and over again!

Why not look around for a couple of successful models, (Our Aussie system works reasonably well) and cannibalise the usefull bits you see from here and there.

If you wanted to do some work on your house, you'd go ask someone who's done the work you are proposing successfully, why not treat education the same way? No point being insular.

I agree with Laz though that more emphasis on learning and less on the so called "hidden curiculum" is needed. Both where you are and here.

I also understand from watching US TV shows that you don't pay your teachers much. Well, you're probably getting what you pay for. Australian teachers are paid quite well. Could be something in it, you know.

Dave

[Mind]

Laz:Mind this article demonstrates 19th century thinking and is a very clear example of biased statistical analysis. In 1860 for example literacy was assessed only on the basis of white males and the figures do not reflect the very poor level of literacy among enslaved blacks, immigrants, and native Americans living outside the structure of the dominant culture.

Please provide data for your statement: ie. the "unbiased" statistical data.

Are you saying male literacy was worse then than it is now?
Are you saying female literacy was worse then than it is now?
Are you saying Native americans and immigrants were not literate within their own language?

[rgvandewalker]

Yes, public education is bad and deteriorating.

As it happens, I home-school. I can't honestly recommend it for everyone, but my research turned up something that might. Lancaster schools.

John Lancaster might be the reason that the English-speaking world has public schools. Basically, he was a very poor Quaker in London, in the 1800s and he worked out a way to teach impoverished street-children for a tuition of roughly $40/year in 1998 dollars. His basic scheme was to have more-educated children teach less-educated children.

The $40 was turned into scrip. A kid then purchased everything in the school using his scrip. All instruction was directly purchased and negotiated by the children. Schoolbooks were rented from the library. Positions like "library monitor", "hall monitor" etc. were also filled by children, who bid aggressively for the positions and collected their fees in scrip.

Every time somebody thought of an economical alternative, it was widely adopted. Children eventually learned to rent individual pages of books from the library, sharing them on music stands to reduce textbook costs. Purchasing up-tutoring with proceeds from down-tutoring was commonplace. The school also maintained a small store where stationary, small toys and the like could be purchased with scrip.

Teacher-student ratios were usually under 10, yet just one paid adult could manage 1000 pupils. If I remember rightly, a typical child learned the three Rs in a bit less than a year and a half, well enough to get honest, clean work as a clerk. Part of the reason they leanred so quickly was because they had to, in order to have something to sell.

Using this system, Mr. Lancaster grew financially successful. In fact, his schools were so successful, and so widely imitated that free public schools in Britain were instituted "to keep education in responsible hands." Need I mention that Lancaster schools were not always very complimentary about government policy?

So, there's an existence proof that children can be motivated and educated without spending a lot of money. Also, a Lancaster school is a pretty hard-nosed commercial environment, because it harnesses children's natural competition and negotiation skills. It's hard to imagine a better preparation for a working world.

[Mind]

Laz:I don't credit this kind of analysis when it is fostered by the Left and I have the same contempt for the practice when it comes from the Right. It is overtly biased additionally by how it doesn't allow for the differences in size of population and the make up of those populations.

Only male literacy was assesed in 1860...therefore public schools are better than private schools or homeschooling????

I do not follow your logic here Laz.

The only point you have made is that only male literacy was assesed in 1860. The article in question points this out in the text.

...male literacy in America was 60%. Between 1800 and 1840, literacy in the Northern States increased from 75% to 90%, and in Southern States from 60% to 81%. These increases transpired before the famous Common School Movement led by Horace Mann caught steam. Massachusetts had reached a level of 98% literacy in 1850. This occurred before the state's compulsory education law of 1852. Senator Edward Kennedy's office released a paper in the 1980s stating that literacy in Massachusetts was only 91%.[

If male literacy in 1850 (Massachusetts) was 98%, or even if only white male literacy was 98%, and now the statewide literacy is 91%, I am willing to bet male literacy is not still 98% (that would mean women are significantly lower in order for the average to be 91%).

If you are arguing that the entire population as a whole is more literate now than in the past, please provide data. Even if this fact is true, it does not follow from this data alone that public schools are better than private, only that some sort of education is better than none.

[Lazarus Long]

First of all Mind I have not yet replied at all to your earlier request for follow up and I do intend to but for the record this is an unsubstantiated claim:

If male literacy in 1850 (Massachusetts) was 98%, or even if only white male literacy was 98%, and now the statewide literacy is 91%, I am willing to bet male literacy is not still 98% (that would mean women are significantly lower in order for the average to be 91%).

First of all because of all the groups excluded from testing, immigrants, blacks, women, etc and second because of the standard of literacy measured. At this time literacy was established if it was merely functional (signing your name, reading signs, some headlines etc) it wasn't tested as a component of comprehension and essay writing for the majority.

But there are many factors that you are not addressing at all that do not allow this blanket comparison across the ages, another issue is the size of the tested population and the nature of the literacy in one more respect who was doing the teaching if it wasn't "public" which in Massachusetts is a deceptive reply as it was a modified form of public education controlled by religious institutions. The vast majority of people were neither home schooled nor members of elite academies. They were educated in parish schools funded by a mix of public and private funds as the separation of church and state was not so clear.

Look at the role of Webster in the period before 1850 and remember he was a minister and the clergy was not excluded from either politics or more certainly education as the mandate was not for political purpose exclusively but also a spiritual one that the culture of Massachusetts was encouraged to be literate. This is a part of the puritan traditions well.

This author is using the case of one state to make claims about all the states and this is also invalid as the conditions in Kentucky, Georgia, Ohio, etc. at that time do not mirror New England and all of these claims are contingent on population size as a function of educational efficiency.

The factor of student population size is still an issue for effectiveness in education as well as access to resources. This is the core debate teachers are making when criticizing class size and why today parents have at their disposal more resources than at any time in history to utilize for educating our children when opting for home schooling.

Also I am not going to be in the position of defending the school system from all criticism because I have my own serious concerns but I do want to focus both on the causal issues that are prevalent today and not two centuries ago and second of even greater importance in my opinion is to focus on the solutions.

I will add however that I see a very different mandate I suspect as to the quintessential importance of education with respect to both the underpinning of the defense of the nation as well as its prosperity. I interpret there to be a Constitutional mandate to educate our citizenry equivalent in importance to the maintenance of a national defense, and I see it impossible to maintain a democracy of any kind with a citizenry inept at coping with the concerns that might underlie the available decision of any given plebiscite.

Now how we accomplish these goals and how we define such goals are valid subjects of debate as well as to what extent a subject like "Citizenship," which by its very definition is social engineering shall be taught and administered.

What you are not asking however is that given the amount of funds being thrown at the problem of urban schools why are we failing to teach and accomplish our educational goals?

I would suggest there is a lot of blame to go around and instead of pointing fingers in search of scapegoats it would be more fruitful to more considerately and introspectively re-examine our methods from top to bottom .

The tax basis is inefficient and inadequate to the task, the available funding is misspent and resources misapplied, there exists unrealistic expectations about the levels of productivity possible when schools are burdened with overcrowding and social demands that should be filtered better from that environment, teachers are not competitively paid to keep them in education and they are exploited, parents are not constructively involved and children return home to latch key conditions in unsupervised homes as both their parents (when not members of single parent families) work. Not to mention the school day and years are still modeled on a rural agricultural work cycle that hasn't been related to reality for almost a century for urban dwellers.

These are just the start of the issues today, not two centuries ago, and when I say the start I emphasize that not pages but that whole volumes can do little justice to this topic. I will add in closing that it is long past time that we stopped glorifying the past in a mythic manner as to the accomplishments of those period. They were great but also must be analyzed within context and adjusted to reflect this when comparisons to today are made.

[Lazarus Long]

Oh a simple point in case, in 1850 if a child was sent home with a note complaining about behavior the issue was dealt with in a summary manner not legally allowed today in most states but today the teacher's qualifications to make such a judgment are questioned and litigation is an ever present threat.

Doctors want relief from malpractice: How about teachers?

Probably the only group that should be made more liable are the lawyers but of course they and politicians are nearly exempt from the tort maelstrom they have brought down on society. Is there no better way than with litigation to resolve every conflict? Especially conflicts that could be prevented?

In 1850 a child that threatened a teacher with a weapon wasn't merely expelled. Of course the incidence of such occurring was virtually nil, so ask why?

You state:

Only male literacy was assessed in 1860...therefore public schools are better than private schools or homeschooling????

I do not follow your logic here Laz.

The only point you have made is that only male literacy was assessed in 1860. The article in question points this out in the text.

No, what I am saying is that when you have the vast majority of students, which are members of families with virtually no extended family support structure and being raised in either a home with both parents working or in single parent families how do you want to make comparisons to homeschooling as even feasible?

Shall we eat today or learn to read?

This is a vastly different world today than mid nineteenth century New England and the social concerns are not the same at all nor solved by similar strategies. What is happening is that the crisis in education is being used as a back drop to return us to a publicly funded parochial school system and this should not be considered a solution as much as a retreat from reason in a secular society.

This approach is like asking us to accept Intelligent Design as the basis of biological study because it worked to promote advances at a former period. The probable outcome is instead the turning of the keys to the hen-house over to the foxes.

[Mind]

Laz:This author is using the case of one state to make claims about all the states and this is also invalid as the conditions in Kentucky, Georgia, Ohio, etc. at that time do not mirror New England

From the article: In 1650, male literacy in America was 60%. Between 1800 and 1840, literacy in the Northern States increased from 75% to 90%, and in Southern States from 60% to 81%.

I still do not see the reason for "contempt" of the data. If you have data to refute this, you should present it. The author of the article deserves that much.

Laz: First of all Mind I have not yet replied at all to your earlier request for follow up and I do intend to but for the record this is an unsubstantiated claim:

QUOTE :Mind
If male literacy in 1850 (Massachusetts) was 98%, or even if only white male literacy was 98%, and now the statewide literacy is 91%, I am willing to bet male literacy is not still 98% (that would mean women are significantly lower in order for the average to be 91%). 

Yes, I know this is unsubstatiated. That is why I said "I am willing to bet". If I had the data on hand I would have said something like "here is the evidence". The comparison of percentages is just a thought experiment at this point. I am sorry this was unclear. Maybe next time I will highlight it in bold.

[Lazarus Long]

I did not say " contempt" for the data, though I do think that a more careful analysis of it shows the comparisons suggested are issues of apples and oranges. The extrapolations are even more suspect and my greatest concern is the recognition that all through my life I have listened to this very same debate rage with ever worsening result.

When do we attempt to actually make things better than they are rather than indulge a conflict which is inherently and demonstrably obstructive to healthy progress?

If there is disdain in my tone it is that I see few to no positive result from the positions or manipulations of data from the right or left. What I implied is that ii is just as corrupt to manipulate data in the manner I observe regardless of any good intention or general political persuasion. I want constructive debate and for most of the entrenched groups reason has left the discourse and all I observe is rationalization.

Whether it is the teacher's unions, libertarian deconstructionists, Right Wing advocates of NCLB (No Child Left Behind), populist property tax rebels, Cultural Parochialists, Authoritarian Structuralists, or left-wing decentralists it appears that each is more concerned with their respective agendas' than the pragmatic results of their Pyhrric conflict. It isn't that the truth is somewhere in the middle; it is that each sees only a part of the problem and has made that part their exclusive focus due to their respective agenda. In the end few are pragmatic and all indulge demagoguery.

I have studied a lot of history and the history of education included. I do not think it is valid to treat mid 19th century statistics as sacrosanct until you adjust for the plethora of reasons necessary to make them remotely comparable to contemporaneous ones. When these criteria are so adjusted the results are often very different than originally intended. Think of trying to make financial comparisons of values from that time period without adjusting for inflation. It is similarly invalid to make the such an analysis of educating 500 culturally homogeneous children statewide versus five million widely diverse ones in a single urban region. You can't just scale up.

You also can't just include some students and not others, or switch values for what you are measuring and then ask (or selectively ignore) if they are literate in their own language, especially if their language perhaps had no alphabet in that period to be literate with, or was an oral culture. These are specious comparisons and say more about those that are making them then they do about the subjects.

Literacy in 1850's was often measured by rote memorization of specific biblical passages, or elements of specific documents related to state and national law or history. The ability to produce an essay at length was considered not as relevant. Many we call today "functionally illiterate" were considered literate in their day by virtue of being able to sign their name and read some levels of job related instruction and a little news. The very standards by which we assess literacy today are too different from back then and the groups being measured are vastly more diverse and larger in population size with widely differing characteristics and needs. Penmanship for example was almost on a par with content for essay writing and computer skills (or even typewriting) weren't even imagined as relevant.

This nation has absorbed 30 million immigrants in the last ten years alone, are you suggesting that some child is illiterate because they read and write Spanish fluently and eloquently but can't yet speak English adequately?

Nickleby (as NCLB is nick named) does, except that it does rightly assume we are responsible for those children and their needs must be met also.

How many WASP children are held to a multiple language standard for literacy?

Now don't just switch to the requirements of cultural assimilation and citizenship as that is simply a different issue and not about the pragmatic demands of education. It is the same switch to social engineering the Right berates the Left for. It may belong in the debate by not necessarily as how it is being used. All the while it is the children that are shortchanged and the taxpayer as the principal investor that is ripped off too.

If the standards for any evaluation are too subjective then the results of the evaluation are too suspect to be helpful. I do not see this debate as yet focused on practical solutions to the dilemmas before us. I also think there is a serious and separate debate over the importance of, and standards for education in the first place, not to mention whose responsibility it is.

Earlier I raised issues of liability, issues of practicality, the shifts of family structure and the contribution this makes to the problem and all this is ignored by you. It is platitudinous to suggest that education begins at home and then strip away all ability for most people to have a family to begin with.

I am bringing up the reality of dealing with divers populations in which the student population might come to class speaking a dozen different languages with teachers that might not speak a single one of them, and are constrained by law from teaching in " native language". Add to this the social problems of inner city with parents that cannot supervise because they aren't present and a community that is exploitive as well as behavioral standards that should be considered suspect at best.

We are no longer an agricultural society, yet in 1850 the vast majority (85%+) of those students had a school day predicated on child (hard) labor. Unpaid labor at that. Are we prepared to put a whole generation back under those conditions too?

What about at least altering the school year and day to conform to realistic hours that compare to today's work schedule, or putting the demands for education back on industry (since they are the prime beneficiary anyway) and make employers directly responsible for contributing to daycare, child leave requirements and protected leave for parents volunteering at school?

The past is a very limited guide for solving this conundrum, and gross generalizations made from "cherry picked statistics" reminds me a lot of other highly questionable decisions made popular of late.

[randolfe]

I've only scanned many of the postings here. However, a few issues raised are very important to society in general.

First of all, I don't think the average voter/taxpayer realizes how important a role the financing of schools play in establishing the taxes on their homes. I live in Hoboken, the city with the highest paid teaches in the entire United States,

Even though I have no children, actually rent rather than own my own home, I got very involved in a chool board election several years ago. Was out there trying to get that 10% of the electorate who bother to vote in School Board elections to go to the polls and elect our reform slate.

Well, we actually won the election. However, the system had become systemic.; Nothing could be done about controlling costs because the teachers union, in collaboration with the politicians, had gotten contracts, tenure and salary guarantees that it was not possilbe to chance.

So, the solution to this problem is a long term one. The next election cycle, the reformers were voted out by the "monied interests" who controlled everything in the town.

I agree with Don Spanton's oberservations about the need for children to be exposed to mental stimulaztion before school. However, I don't think that has to be "academic" in tone. The studies I have seen indicate that a child developes a higher IQ if an adult simply talks more frequently to him/her while he/she is in the crib.

The reality is that lower scores in the inner cities are simply a reflection of the collapse of the black family, financed by the welfare system between 1960 and 1995. Sen Daniel Moynihan was one of the few liberals who spoke out about what well-intentioned "liberals" were actually doing to inner-city families.

I also think that "political correctness" has made it impossible to legitimately debate certain issues. I haven't read "The Bell Curve". I am someone who tends to read reviews, news stories about debates and (mainly) writers talking about their books on C-Span 2's "Book TV" every weekend.

My impression is that "The Bell Curve" was viewed as "social heresy" simply because it argued their might be underlying minor differences between racial groups.

In a capsule, it argued that "as a group" Caucasians scored something like 15 points higher on IQ tests (a dubious measure as anyone knows) than Blacks. However, it also said that "genius" was scattered randomly among all racial groups.
Most interestingly, it also said Asians, as a group, scored about 15 points higher on IQ tests than Caucasians.

No one seemed to pay any attention to the "supposed" lower IQ scores of Caucasians when compared to Asians. You can only wonder about that assertion when you see that Asians have nearly taken over the "magnet schools for outstanding students" in San Francisco and elsewhere.

Discussing these "findings" using the crude method of IQ tests should not be considered beyond the pail. Given that children whose parents talk to them more have higher IQs, given the fact that children whose parents read to them, instill in them a thirst for learning do much better at school, these results don't lead to any substantial claim of potential mental ability among different racial or social groups.

One of the great problems we have today is people come to broad conclusions using only narrow evidence.

Much as I personally despise Roman Catholicism (being Roman Catholic myself gives me the freedom to say so), Roman Catholic schools seem to do a much better job of educating inner-city kids. I suspect that is because the nuns who frequently serve as teachers have greater leddway in disciplining unruly students and perhaps also do a better job of instilling a desire to learn in the pupils in their class.

I know that was my own experience. I was a rebellious little kid who nearly flunked 2nd grade, sat in the aisles and screwmed,etc. A nasty old fat nun would take me in the hall and beat the palm of my hands with a ruller. I hated her and was the "problem child" of the second grade.

In the Third grade, I was lucky enough to get a lovely warm young nun who somehow made me want to do well at my studies so as to please her. I became a "teacher's pet" and a good student.

Yes, I have conflicting views about allowing Roman Catholic Schools (with public money) compete with the general public schools. On the one hand, they turn the students (in many/most cases) into "good" Roman Catholics. But on the other hand, they turn children into better students who are better prepared to go on and get higher education and to make more of their lives.

My own experiences have lead me to support the idea of vouchers if they are used in some sensible manner.

[Mind]

Laz:  I did not say " contempt" for the data, though I do think that a more careful analysis of it shows the comparisons suggested are issues of apples and oranges.

You are right you really said:

Laz: I don't credit this kind of analysis when it is fostered by the Left and I have the same contempt for the practice when it comes from the Right.

Laz: When do we attempt to actually make things better than they are rather than indulge a conflict which is inherently and demonstrably obstructive to healthy progress?

I am trying to make things better by bringing some historical data to the discussion. As are a few other members following this thread.

Laz: If there is disdain in my tone it is that I see few to no positive result from the positions or manipulations of data from the right or left.

What manipulations? There seems to be no attempt to hide anything in the article in question. The author is openly comparing rising literacy rates from the 1700's through the 1800's to literacy rates today. The article specifically states that the older data are from males only. What manipulation?

Laz: It is simmilarly invalid to make the such an analysis of educating 500 culturally homgeneous children statewide versus five million widely diverse ones in a single urban region.

Please provide your source for the "500". I would be interested to read it.

Laz: You also can't just include some students and not others, or switch values for what you are measuring and then ask (or selectively ignore) if they are literate in their own language, especially if their language perhaps had no alphabet in that period to be literate with, or was an oral culture.

Laz: This nation has absobed 30 million immmigrants in the last ten years alone, are you suggesting that some child is illiterate because they read and write Spanish fluently and eloquently but can't yet speak English adequately?

I did nothing of the sort....or am implying nothing of the sort. You brought up immigrants (as not being included in the older data), and I simply asked if you were implying that they were not literate in their own language. Perhaps you have some data on 1850 immigrant illiteracy. I would be interested to see it. It would help with the discussion.

Laz: Earlier I rasied issues of liability, issues of practicallity, the shifts of family structure and the contribution this makes to the problem and all this is ignored by you.

All non-sequiters in regards to the data from the article. They certainly belong in this thread but not in the question of data and analysis you have challenged.

The past is a very limited guide for solving this conundrum, and gross generalizations made from "cherry picked statistics" reminds me a lot of other highly questionable decisions made popular of late.

The author (Barry Dean Simpson) did some work and found some data. Maybe it is only a modicum, maybe it doesn't relate perfectly to the present (I cannot be for sure since no one else has presented contrary data), but the author has provided historical statistics from which we can learn. He could have just came up with a bunch of rationalizations and opinion, but then who would believe it or much less gain anything from it.

[Lazarus Long]

I am going to have to beg off for a bit. I am currently facing a major comp crash crisis. I do think this debate is important and I will return to it soon. Before departing I think it is impossible to do a fair analysis of past education methods and effectiveness without also including its relationship to demographic aspects.

As for the data, again I was not disputing it per se, as much as the allegations being made. I have read many things about education but no I was giving a relativistic comment not an accurate depiction of the specific populations of 1850 schools. Some of that data is available but not a lot of good objective scientifically gathered data however and as you saw with Phenom' s survey it is not that easy to create precise data as the questions themselves are often suspect.

I have studied the history of development for the school systems as well as some of the migration patterns for immigrants in and out of New England in the pre Civil War era. It is an interesting time and a lot of immigrants are arriving and these families are educated in Europe even prior to arrival, and they are educated in the parochial system even when not Catholic. The influence of the Church on education was paramount in this period as private as opposed to public school didn't really yet exist. This is one of the reasons this is not entirely a fair comparison.

However as fast as many immigrants were coming to Massachusetts they were passing through on to the newer lands to the west. The Methodist Church ran a series of Private One Room school houses that were a mainstay of the period but calling these private by today's standards is not entirely fair as they were the model for much of Dewey's proposals later. They were successful and they were vastly simpler than today. I was not criticizing them in that era I was saying it is unfair to extrapolate too much from this data.

I am often disgusted by the public debate today because I do not think education is something that can be turned into an exclusively privatized industry. I think it is not only Constitutionally mandated but an essential for the survival of any Democracy and it cannot be left to the private sector. This is not a profit driven industry. Elements of it should be competitive and perhaps like competitive procurement for the military should be open to publicly bid contracts but the fundamentals for why education is critical are non negotiable, however they are also not yet clearly enough defined and establish by public consent.

I have known people that were educated in prairie one room school houses in the later 19th century and I have listened to them at great length describe what it was like. My personal proposals would attempt to reintroduce aspects that relate to elements I consider positive but also please consider how very different was life for most people then. I outlined why before and these differences make it not only difficult to make too much out of past data, it is offers very simplistic options for how to face our current decaying schools. The point is that this isn't just a question of funds and where they are spent, it is about how they are spent and this is a back drop to a very different system of values for what to educate. These values determine a lot about what happens in school.

Schools in Boston and the fishing communities were famous for their quality. But just calling these church dominated small town schools private is also a little misleading. They were funded by tithes (church taxes) and teachers were granted town stipends, as well as being paid in " kind" (food baskets are a tradition stemming from this practice). Books were shared and based on the board backed "primers," sometimes passed from generation to generation. The demands were too different to qualify as equivalent to today IMO.

The English I learned as a child, today has to be augmented by learning an entirely new linguistic register for computer use created over the last 20 years and now that lexicon is added to the amount of vocabulary a student has to learn for example. Literacy was assessed on the basis of only a few hundred common use (many now obsolete), and an extended couple of thousands words at most. Today's demands are actually much larger when technical registers are added to the demands of the language.

I am a parent, a teacher, and a small town property owner with skyrocketing taxes Mind. I am disgusted because I see this debate from all sides and all too few people that are actually making comprehensive proposals that are qualitative steps forward or even valid social experiments with alternative methods. Conversely I don't think we need, or can afford a free market approach to schools as the profitable areas will benefit and the non profitable zones will turn into social jungles worse than they are now. What is the incentive to go into areas that are already non functional with no one able to pay?

Like I said, I do see real areas where privatization is valid and certainly approaches like charters and vouchers are appropriate in some areas IMO too, but there is no simple fix to the school problem. What is there are mountains of obstacles that are entrenched competing interests, which are wasting time and resources through struggles that are much more about maintaining the status quo in general than about change, or sometimes opposing them are people that are trying to force change based on ideology, not pragmatic alternatives that cope with the current state of affairs..

It more often than not seems no one contemplates doing anything different until they appear faced with crises. Too few see reason to innovate until to late. The current state of the schools can be understood only in context to todays social pressures any analysis that cannot be adjusted for this is crippled. Perhaps it is the old adage about squeaky wheels but todays' disparity between per student funding and performance is too wild to make assumptions about either.

[Mind]

Laz: It more often than not seems no one contemplates doing anything different until they appear faced with crises. Too few see reason to innovate until to late.

It is too late. There is definitely a crisis. See story below. It is time for a shake-up. It is time for market forces to be let loose on the school system (or at least a small test of incentive/performance based free-market solutions). It absolutely positively cannot get any worse for inner city school children in the U.S. Change can only make things better when when you are starting from the bottom of the barrell

Worst Rates of Graduation Are in New York, Study Says
By GREG WINTER

Published: February 26, 2004

lack and Latino students in New York State are less likely to finish high school on time than their counterparts anywhere else in the nation, according to a new analysis of graduation rates around the country.

Less than a third of Latino students in New York earned a high school diploma in four years, the worst showing of any state, compared with more than half of all Latino students in the nation as a whole.

Only 35 percent of black students in New York graduated on time, also the worst showing of any state, while slightly more than half of black students graduated on time nationally.

New York's Asian students did considerably better, with about 6 out of 10 graduating on time, but that, too, still fell far shy of the national average of 77 percent for Asian students, the study found. It was conducted by researchers at Harvard University and the Urban Institute.

Only among white students did New York mirror the national average, with about three-quarters of students finishing on time in both cases. Even among white students, however, the researchers considered graduation rates to be startlingly low.

"It's frightening," said Christopher Edley, the co-director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project, who will become dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, in July. "With graduation rates this low, one has to worry about the long-term growth and wealth of the nation."

In terms of overall graduation rates, New Jersey ranked first, with 86 percent of students finishing on time. Connecticut ranked 12th, with 77 percent of students finishing in four years, and New York State 43rd, with 61.4 percent graduating on time.

Part of the reason New York ranked so poorly was the dismal performance of the New York City school system, whose 1.1 million students account for more than a third of the state's schoolchildren, the authors said. The study found that 38 percent of students graduate in four years in New York City. Among the 100 largest school districts in the nation, only four cities - Cleveland; Cincinnati; Columbus, Ohio; and Oakland, Calif. - had a worse record of students graduating on time in 2001, the latest year for which data was available, the report found.

Why New York City's schools did so poorly was not the focus of the report, but researchers said that its very size and its high concentrations of poor students were major disadvantages. Racial isolation and the prevalence of non-English speakers in the city schools compound those problems, the researchers said.

After reviewing the analysis, officials at the New York State Department of Education expressed skepticism, given that their records show the overall graduation rate for the city was about 50 percent, almost a dozen percentage points higher than the report found. But that aside, they said the concern was warranted.

"All the data show both the level of student achievement and the graduation rate have been much too low for a long time in New York and the nation,'' said Alan Ray, a spokesman for the department. He added: "We need to direct still more funds to the neediest children.''

Educational researchers have long complained that government statistics grossly underestimate the number of dropouts every year. Students who leave school without notifying administrators, or who enroll in equivalency diploma programs, are often not counted as dropouts, though they do not end up finishing high school, researchers contend..........

Read the full story here

[Mind]

Just another take on the poor graduation rates in urban American. The author suggests competition and accountability. I doubt the educational establishment is listening.

Minorities drop out when they should drop in
Armstrong Williams (archive)

March 10, 2004

There is an alarming disparity in graduation rates between white students and minority students.

That's the conclusion of the new report, "Losing Our Future: How Minority Youth Are Being Left Behind by the Graduation Rate Crisis," conducted by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard and the Urban Institute.

According to the report, 75 percent of white students graduated in 2001. By contrast, only 50 percent of all black students, 51 percent of Native-American students, and 53 percent of all Hispanic students got a high school diploma that year. The study also found that a lack of ethnic diversity in public schools fuels the problem. "In every state," reads the report, "districts with high minority concentrations had lower graduation rates than districts where whites were the majority. This is just another indication that the public education system is failing minority students.

Yearly, The Department of Education (DOE) finesses this fact with all kinds of phony accounting. For example, official measures of graduation rates often fail to include GED enrollees in their calculations. By treating these students as if they never attended high school, the DOE inflates the "official" diploma-completion rate for the state. When GED recipients are included, the dropout rate soars (regrettably) for minority students.

There is a logical progression to dropping out: A lack of education equals a racial achievement gap equals a lack of economic integration equals ugly stereotypes about how minorities are lazy and unintelligent. For these reasons, improving the graduation rate amongst minority students should be considered one of the primary goals of the civil rights movement.

So, why are so many minorities dropping out of high school? "I suspect that part of the problem is that too many in the education establishment believe that African-American students cannot really do much better and so they tolerate a system with incredibly low graduation rates for black students," explained Dr. Jay Greene, a researcher with The Manhattan Institute, a public policy think tank. "If expectations for African-American performance were much higher and if African-Americans students had access to the same range of educational options available to affluent whites, including private school options, African-American graduation rates would be much higher," concluded Greene.

This arbitrary shaping of our youth is occurring in poor, urban school districts across the country. According to the 2000 National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test, 63 percent of black, inner-city fourth-graders and 58 percent of urban Hispanic fourth-graders are unable to demonstrate a "basic" proficiency in reading.

There is ample evidence that this is an urban problem. But geography is not destiny. Rather than blame families for failure, we need to ensure that the education system offers solutions. A good place to start would be to adjust the graduation formulas so that we receive an accurate accounting of the problem, and then set minimum standards of accountability for our public schools.

As it stands, there is little oversight of graduation rates. "As a result," observes the study, "Thirty-nine states now set a 'soft' Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goal for graduation rates, meaning they can avoid accountability simply by exhibiting even the smallest degree of improvement from one year to the next." This needs to change. Schools that fail to graduate large numbers of minority students must be held accountable under the No Child Left Behind Act. Then, perhaps they will get serious about instituting dropout prevention programs, counseling and other measures that would ensure that public schools work as well for minority students as they do for whites.

Original Appeared Here

[randolfe]

One thing that is lost in all this debate is the fact that even huge amounts of money can't solve certain educational problems. In Hoboken, N.J. where I live, we have the highest paid public school teachers in the nation. Nevertheless, the schools here are so bad that young couples move to Monclair, N.J. about fifteen miles away when their children reach school age.

Private schooling certainly isn't the answer either. I read in the NYT today that it now cost $26,000 a year to send a child to private school in NYC.

I think religious schools are better positioned to discipline students. If a publi school teacher touches a student, there is Hell to pay. But nuns, priests and ministers can use necessary discipline in teaching and be pretty sure that such discipline will be approved by parents.

The sad fact is that the absence of a two parent family causes a lack of discipline at home that spills over into the educational environment.

[Mind]

Here is another great opinion article about the socialist grip on our school system by the teachers union. The author is Armstrong Williams. I admit it is hard to blame the teachers union for wanting higher wages, job protection, and many other benefits, but when it comes at the expense of actually educating the students, they are sowing the seeds of their own demise.

The Big Education Sell Out
Armstrong Williams

The National Education Association is the nation's largest professional employee organization, representing 2.7 million elementary and secondary teachers. Their professed goal is to make public schools great for every child. The real goal is to increase their own bargaining power by ripping to shreds any education reform that seeks to hold public schools accountable to their failures.

I don't think there is any doubt about this. For example, their most recent anti-voucher edict, it's called "Strategic Plan and Budget, Fiscal Years: 2002-2004,  starts out by saying, the NEA's goal is to "focus the energy and resources of our 2.7 million members toward the promotion of public confidence in public education." So, in other words, their top priority is not the oft professed goal of "making public schools great for every child," but rather massaging the perception of public education.  It goes on to say, "the success of students is inextricably tied to the success of teachers. . . who serve them. . . ." In other words, protecting the perception of public education is inextricably linked to keeping the teachers from being perceived as failing. This is important because it reminds us that the organization exists to advocate for the teachers who pay their dues, not the children. At least one way that the NEA has  accomplish this is by sparing public teachers any close scrutiny. They are fundamentally opposed to any education reform-like vouchers or the No Child Left Behind Act-that seeks to hold public schools accountable for their failures.

Of course there is no academic reason why this should necessarily be so. Private school students routinely test better than their public school counterparts. At least part of the success of private school students should be attributed to the fact that private school educators are held highly accountable for their job performance. They have no long--term job security, work only on year-to-year contracts and are held accountable by annual job evaluations. In public schools, by contrast, powerful teachers unions have secured long term tenure for the teachers, thus removing a powerful mechanism for immediate accountability.

Sparing public schools teachers the rigors of accountability only makes sense from a business perspective.  The two largest unions, the AFT and NEA, realize that vouchers would mean fewer teachers, fewer membership dues, the likely defections by public school personnel to privatized systems that have traditionally resisted centralized unionization, and the birth of competing collective bargaining entities. For the teacher's unions,  the idea of competition can only mean giving up leverage. Since the job of unions is to accumulate leverage and membership dues, the teacher's unions have declared war not just on vouchers,  but any meaningful education reform that seeks to hold public school teachers accountable for failing to properly educate our children.

For example, the unions have attacked President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)with the kind of ferocity that only a genuine threat (to the perception of public education) could pose. The NCLB initiative holds entire schools accountable when subsets of students - defined by income, race, etc. - lag behind in test scores. The act would withhold large amounts of federal funding to those educational institutions that are failing to properly educate their students. 

Not surprisingly, the NEA's 108th Congress Legislative Program formally announced that they "oppose federally mandated parental option or choice in education programs."  In case anyone missed the point, during the 2003 NEA convention delegates approved business item 11, which directs NEA officials not to use the title "No Child Left Behind" Act.  In other words the level of opposition is so great that union representatives are barred from even raising the words "No Child Left Behind" to consciousness for examination.

By deciding that the very words "No Child Left Behind" do not deserve to be heard, the NEA goes beyond regulating education reform, and seeks to regulate the dialogue itself.  Of course, genuine reform is never accomplished this way. More not less discussion facilitates learning. The best way to discredit bad ideas and combat distortions about education reform is to raise them to consciousness for public examination. By restricting the dialogue on this important issues, the NEA attacks a symptom, rather than the problem of underachieving public schools.

Of course this should not come as a surprise to anyone who has read their literature. Remember, their stated goal is to protect the "perception" of public education. The NEA's budget is constructed accordingly. Far and away, the majority of their money is funneled into improving government relations and corralling new members. According to their 2002-2004 budget summary, the NEA dedicated $13.532 million to "governance and policy,"  $19.582 million to "government relations," and $14.114 million to "state affiliate relations." By contrast, they spent $2.699 million on "Student achievement." Get it? The NEA isn't using their money to help our kids, or to make our schools better. They're using it to increase their own collective bargaining strength-that's their real mission-by doing everything they can to prevent public schools from being held accountable. 

On a political front, the NEA is  engaged in a full court legislative press. Last year, they lined the Democrats coffers with $20 million in donations, second only to the American Federation of State/City/ municipal employees. Receiving  a large part of your campaign money directly from the teacher's unions means the Democrats are obliged to repay the debt in some form.  Maybe that's why the same Democratic representatives who send their own children to private school, are up in arms each session crying about how extending that same right to the poor would destroy the public education system.

Meanwhile our public schools are deteriorating, our children are being demoralized before they even have a chance, and our supposed leaders are refusing to even discuss the real problem.  This is a crime. This is a shame. This needs to change now.

[randolfe]

Mind, I think you should point out that Armstrong Williams is a leading black conservative. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I find black conservatives a most interesting group.

However, while the description of the politics gripping the NEA and our school system is accurrate, this article fails to point out the legitimate criticisms of No Child Left Behind.

First of all, it got a lot of verbal promotion but very little financial backing from the Bush Administration. I also understand that teachers start gearing their teaching toward enabling their students to pass the "annual tests". Some say this has a negative effect on the overall quality of teaching.

A far better idea is the one from South America, linking financial support for families to their children's attendance in school--with bonuses if their children do particularly well.

Expense is pricing education out of reach for most people. I think we should offer "targeted scholarships and living expense stipends" for that number of needed trained workers (engineers for example) that our economy will need in the next few years.

This might not make those interested in majoring in drama or philosophy happy but it would be wise social policy.

For that matter, why not graduate so many doctors that competition developes among them and they lower their fees, even make house calls again.

The political reality today is which of the "two sides" you support in national politics. In that respect, the NEA is on the right side from my point of view. They might be greedy, hegemonious, etc. However, they stand with us on the correct Democratic side of the great divide.

First, thinking people have to take over government and then we can deal with the problems in our ruling coalition.

[Mind]

Yes, Randolfe, good point, I realize that the "no child left behind act" is not perfect, but I do like the accountability. Even when "teaching to the test" we can at least ensure that most students are reaching minimum requirements in reading and math. The "smart" students will still excel in the "teaching to the test" environment.

The political reality today is which of the "two sides" you support in national politics. In that respect, the NEA is on the right side from my point of view. They might be greedy, hegemonious, etc. However, they stand with us on the correct Democratic side of the great divide.

I am not so sure that the NEA is completely on the side of democracy. That may sound blasphemous, but I am a libertarian and always quite skeptical. Sometimes members of an advocacy group can get so wrapped up in their own cause that they forget about basic freedoms. I think the NEA shows at least some signs of this.

[Mind]

Here is another group of people calling for radical change in the educational establishment. I hope the NEA, parents, and school boards are listening.

Originally on Reason.com

Class Struggle

School equality: a black responsibility?

Cathy Young






A few days after the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, an extraordinary panel met in New York City to discuss the urgent problem still posed by the racial gap in educational achievement.

The panel was part of an event many would be quick to identify as a "conservative" venue—a conference of the National Organization of Scholars, an 11-year-old group formed in opposition to "political correctness" in academia. The same conference offered a workshop on new legal strategies to combat race-based preferences in college admissions. Many, perhaps most, of those in attendance would have probably described themselves as right of center politically. Yet racial inequality in education was clearly seen as a matter of grave concern.

Abigail Thernstrom, a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education and a commissioner on the US Commission on Civil Rights, presented the alarming data. (She and her husband Stephan Thernstrom, a professor of history at Harvard University and also a speaker on the panel, are co-authors of the 2003 book, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning.) On the National Assessment for Educational Progress test, the typical black or Hispanic student at age 17 scores below at least 80 percent of white students. "On average, these non-Asian minority students are four years behind those who are white and Asian," said Thernstrom. "They are finishing high school with a junior high education."

What's more, Thernstrom added, differences in socioeconomic status account for only about a third of this gap. The rest is due to a variety of cultural factors—some of which can be overcome by a concerted effort to provide better schooling. Thernstrom cited exceptional inner-city charter schools that seek not only to educate children in a safe, orderly environment but also, unabashedly, to impart "middle-class" cultural values such as discipline and responsibility.

Some say that to blame racial disparities in education on social and cultural ills within the black community amounts to "victim-blaming." No one denies these ills are rooted in a shameful legacy of oppression. But what are the implications of this today? Another speaker, University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, addressed this issue in a striking parable. Suppose, she said, that a person is badly injured in a car accident through no fault of his own, and has to undergo rehabilitative therapy in order to walk again. The culprit can be forced to pay damages—but without arduous effort on the part of the victim, the therapy will not work.

White panelists talking to a mostly white audience about the need for the black community to fix its problems risk coming across as offensively patronizing. But the message of responsibility was most powerfully articulated by a black speaker, Vanderbilt University law professor Carol Swain.

Swain identified a number of cultural factors that may hold black students back, including "dysfunctional abusive homes," "lack of parental involvement in the schools," and "negative peer pressure about learning and about high achievement as evidence of one's 'acting white.'" Better schools may provide some solutions, Swain said, but there must also be cultural change, and "middle-class minorities must take a leadership role in this area." On an even more controversial note, Swain identified affirmative action as currently practiced by universities—lower admissions standards for blacks and Hispanics—as part of the problem. These policies, she said, have "created a negative incentive structure for African-Americans who have either internalized societal messages about inferiority or have chosen an easier path of not exerting themselves too vigorously" since they don't have to meet higher standards.

Swain's message was made all the more powerful by her personal story as one of 12 children in a poor rural home in Virginia. None of her siblings finished high school. "I was by no means the smartest," said Swain. "By the grace of God, I was the one who managed to escape."

Read the full article at Reason Online

[Mind]

Here is a leading CEO blasting the Presidential candidates about education in the U.S. I think he hits the nail on the head, when he talks about what kind-of jobs will be valuable in the future.

 
Semiconductors

Bush, Kerry ignoring tech debate, says Intel's Barrett


Silicon Strategies
October 20, 2004 (1:31 PM EDT) 

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Craig Barrett, Intel Corp.'s chief executive, on Tuesday (Oct. 19) blasted the presidential candidates over their lack of attention to declining U.S. competitiveness, according to the Associated Press.

Speaking at the Gartner Symposium ITXPO at Walt Disney World, Barrett said the United States is losing its edge over other nations in education, technology and research and development, according to the report.

Barrett said, for example, well-educated engineers from China, India and Russia are competing with the United States for jobs, according to the report.

"This is what you don't see being debated by our two presidential candidates today," Barrett said in the report. "What we're debating about instead is how we're going to protect a textile worker in South Carolina. The future of the United States is not pillowcases."

Barrett said the U.S. spends nearly $20 billion on agricultural subsidies. The funding, he said, could be better spent on education and research and development, according to the report.

"What do you think the industry of the 21st century is going to be? Agriculture?" he said in the report. "We're sending our workers into the marketplace with a disadvantage: their education."

Sorry Dems, but from my perspective I have to lay the "outsourcing demogaugery" squarely at the feet of the Democrats. That is all I hear in the Democrat campaign ads. There is absolutely no economic reality from the Democrat side. They aren't looking forward. They are sacrificing international cooperation. More free trade will bring the world closer together and make us more dependent on each other. It is a good thing in the long term. Countries that trade with each other are much less likely to fight each other.

A good education is the most sure ticket to higher incomes and protectionism is not going to solve the education problem (or keep wages high in the U.S.).

[Mind]

Wow, what an old thread. I was sure adamant about reform back then!

Sorry to bring up some more depressing news about Americans, but here it is. Americans know nothing about nanotech and synthetic biology.

Some sort of reform is still needed. Argue for or against Unions, charter schools, homeschooling, whatever, but the situation needs to change.

The poll, which was conducted by the same firm that produces the well-known NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls, found that about two-thirds of adults say they have heard nothing at all about synthetic biology, and only 2 percent say they have heard "a lot" about the new technology. Even with this very low level of awareness, a solid two-thirds of adults are willing to express an initial opinion on the potential benefits versus risks tradeoff of synthetic biology.

This survey was informed by two focus groups conducted in August in suburban Baltimore. This is the first time—to the pollsters' knowledge—that synthetic biology has been the subject of a representative national telephone survey.

At the same time, the poll found that about half of adults say they have heard nothing at all about nanotechnology. About 50 percent of adults are too unsure about nanotechnology to make an initial judgment on the possible tradeoffs between benefits and risks. Of those people who are willing to make an initial judgment, they think benefits will outweigh risks by a three to one margin when compared to those who believe risks will outweigh benefits. The plurality of respondents, however, believes that risks and benefits will be about equal.

[Lazarus Long]

Some reform is still needed but what that reform will be is also still under debate and little has fundamentally changed. Ironically I still agree with much of what I stated above and will add that I am now enrolled in a master of science, education program so I may from time to time weigh back in on this and add what I have been writing on the subject from my studies.

I also think I am going to pick up a biology teachers certificate in the process.

[RighteousReason]

How to fix American Education:

Privatize. Nothing else matters.

[Lazarus Long]

(Savage)
How to fix American Education:

Privatize. Nothing else matters.

Privatization is woefully inadequate to the task as a stand alone option. It took centuries, if not millennium to advance out of the dark ages when we were dependent on it alone before.

Privatization as a bench mark to compete against by the public system and a place to advance innovative methodology is however, a very good way of integrating the two.

Let's be clear, the idea of privatization as the cure all of all ills is just basically a form of religiosity for social issues and simply demonstrates narrow minded thinking.

[Mind]

How to fix American Education:

Privatize. Nothing else matters.

Public school education in the U.S. (on average) is still incredibly abysmal. Righteous Reason, might have a good point about privatization. It is now coming, no matter what the public education establishment desires: Online education in the U.S. exploding. I wish I had online resources when I was growing up. The public mind prison school system was helpful to me, but it was also restrictive and prevented me from reaching a greater potential, IMO.

[RighteousReason]

How to fix American Education:

Privatize. Nothing else matters.

Public school education in the U.S. (on average) is still incredibly abysmal. Righteous Reason, might have a good point about privatization. It is now coming, no matter what the public education establishment desires: Online education in the U.S. exploding. I wish I had online resources when I was growing up. The public mind prison school system was helpful to me, but it was also restrictive and prevented me from reaching a greater potential, IMO.

epic 4 year bump, lol. for some reason I got an email about this post.