Saturday, September 11, 2010



The Totalitarian Impulse Rears Its Head

Gateway Pundit, via Glenn Reynolds, presents another story of suppression of free speech by liberals:
School officials at Palm Beach State College kicked members of the Young America's Foundation off campus after they saw anti-Obama literature at their table.

There is much more to the story, as reported by the Orlando Political Press:
On Tuesday September 7, 2010 at around 11:00am one Palm Beach State College (PBSC) student and two Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) members, state chairman Daniel P. Diaz and state vice chairman Eddie Shaffer, were shut down and had campus police called on them after tabling and recruiting during club rush at the College. The PBSC student, Christina Beattie, had received prior permission from college administrator Olivia Ford-Morris to promote her organization on campus via telephone and email communication.

On the day of club rush, officials approached the group and after seeing information about the organization and its ideals criticizing Barack Obama's economic policy. Ms. Ford-Morris was visibly disturbed by the material presented, published by the Heritage Foundation, criticizing President Obama's administration. College officials then called the campus police to assure the group left campus. Ms. Ford-Morris denied having ever talked to Ms. Beattie about giving permission to the organization to be a part of PBSC club rush.

This reminds me of an episode years ago, when Scott and I were just becoming politically active. There was a freshman orientation at the University of Minnesota, and campus organizations were invited to set up booths and pass out literature to solicit incoming freshmen to join. The Young Republicans had a booth and passed out anti-Clinton literature--it seems like only yesterday!

Students who were running the event disapproved of the presence of conservatives, ordered the Republicans out and confiscated their literature. Their obviously illegal action was backed up by the then-Dean of Students, who wrote a rather astonishing letter to the effect that because the University of Minnesota is devoted to diversity, there is no room there for Republicans. Seriously. (BTW, it is a reasonable guess that most of the tax money that supports the University of Minnesota is paid by Republicans.)

Our friend Peter Swanson, at that time the President of the Republican group at the U of M, came to Scott and me, and we represented the college Republicans in pursuing claims arising out of the obvious infringement of their First Amendment rights. We won hands down, and one of the remedies we negotiated was that the head of the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota was required to attend First Amendment sensitivity training at the hands of a law school professor.

We have fond memories of that occasion, but the underlying reality is chilling. I really don't think most liberals have any respect for free speech as such, and if they had the opportunity, they would shut us all up or throw us in jail.

SOURCE





LAUSD Facing Budget Cuts, School Year Delayed

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is in a bind. The Tuesday after Labor Day is usually when school starts for schoolchildren in Los Angeles. But not this year. Due to budget cuts, LAUSD could not open most of its school’s doors. This latest development is in direct contrast to the bailout bill that had $10 billion earmarked to bail out schools who were facing budget cuts and layoffs. Wasn’t this the point of this bill that HAD to be passed in an emergency House session? Who is getting bailed out? What was the point?

Spending is not the problem. In 2008, LAUSD budgeted nearly $30,000 per student. That is a staggering amount, especially when you consider that less than half the kids graduate. Nationally, we spend about $600 Billion on education. That’s 27 cents of every dollar, compared to 8 cents of every dollar for Medicaid. Part of the problem is that 80% of the school district’s operating budget is consumed by teacher salaries and benefits that last a lifetime. According to the LAUSD web page, a 1% cut can save $40 million.

This is a trend that will continue until our broken education system is repaired. Heritage has written extensively on education and what can be done to fix it. The National Education Association (the teachers union) wrote an article blaming a funding crisis for the layoffs, but failed to mention their unwillingness to work with the county to help solve the crisis. For parents practicing school choice and attending charter schools in Los Angeles, the LA Times had this to say:

And students in nearly 200 independently run charter schools are starting whenever school administrators want them to.

SOURCE




Australia: Another incompetent teacher -- dangerously so

When you make classrooms such stressful environments that only dummies or desperates would take a teaching job, this is the sort of result you have to expect. The damage wrought by the Left-inspired destruction of discipline is immense

TASMANIAN taxpayers could be up for millions in compensation if any of the high school students involved in a dodgy science experiment contract a potentially lethal blood virus.

It comes as the State Government yesterday refused to confirm whether the Dover District High School teacher who took blood samples from 18 students using the same needle had a science degree. The Mercury reports a recent report by the Tasmanian Auditor-General found that just 51 per cent of a sample group of science teachers had a university science degree.

Five per cent of teachers taking science classes had no science knowledge and were simply teaching the subject because "there was a shortage of science staff" and 10 per cent were physical education teachers with a Human Movement degree which included some science-related content.

It has also been revealed that the blood experiment is not within the Tasmanian science curriculum.

The students and their families now have a nervous six-month wait as they are tested to ensure they have not contracted the blood-borne viruses hepatitis B, hepatitis C or HIV.

During the experiment the teacher used the same needle to collect the samples from the 18 students to test blood pH levels, and dipped it each time in methylated spirits. Medical authorities say this would not have been sufficient to disinfect it.

Australian Lawyers Alliance director Greg Barns said the State Government could face a multi-million-dollar lawsuit if any of the students test positive to a blood-borne virus.

"The State Government stands to face a massive prosecution here and we are talking millions," said Mr Barns, also a Mercury columnist. "Essentially you are looking at the medical expenses of the child for the rest of their life, damage as a result of a loss of income for the rest of their life and the psychological damage that has been caused to them."

SOURCE


The Totalitarian Impulse Rears Its Head

Gateway Pundit, via Glenn Reynolds, presents another story of suppression of free speech by liberals:
School officials at Palm Beach State College kicked members of the Young America's Foundation off campus after they saw anti-Obama literature at their table.

There is much more to the story, as reported by the Orlando Political Press:
On Tuesday September 7, 2010 at around 11:00am one Palm Beach State College (PBSC) student and two Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) members, state chairman Daniel P. Diaz and state vice chairman Eddie Shaffer, were shut down and had campus police called on them after tabling and recruiting during club rush at the College. The PBSC student, Christina Beattie, had received prior permission from college administrator Olivia Ford-Morris to promote her organization on campus via telephone and email communication.

On the day of club rush, officials approached the group and after seeing information about the organization and its ideals criticizing Barack Obama's economic policy. Ms. Ford-Morris was visibly disturbed by the material presented, published by the Heritage Foundation, criticizing President Obama's administration. College officials then called the campus police to assure the group left campus. Ms. Ford-Morris denied having ever talked to Ms. Beattie about giving permission to the organization to be a part of PBSC club rush.

This reminds me of an episode years ago, when Scott and I were just becoming politically active. There was a freshman orientation at the University of Minnesota, and campus organizations were invited to set up booths and pass out literature to solicit incoming freshmen to join. The Young Republicans had a booth and passed out anti-Clinton literature--it seems like only yesterday!

Students who were running the event disapproved of the presence of conservatives, ordered the Republicans out and confiscated their literature. Their obviously illegal action was backed up by the then-Dean of Students, who wrote a rather astonishing letter to the effect that because the University of Minnesota is devoted to diversity, there is no room there for Republicans. Seriously. (BTW, it is a reasonable guess that most of the tax money that supports the University of Minnesota is paid by Republicans.)

Our friend Peter Swanson, at that time the President of the Republican group at the U of M, came to Scott and me, and we represented the college Republicans in pursuing claims arising out of the obvious infringement of their First Amendment rights. We won hands down, and one of the remedies we negotiated was that the head of the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota was required to attend First Amendment sensitivity training at the hands of a law school professor.

We have fond memories of that occasion, but the underlying reality is chilling. I really don't think most liberals have any respect for free speech as such, and if they had the opportunity, they would shut us all up or throw us in jail.

SOURCE





LAUSD Facing Budget Cuts, School Year Delayed

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is in a bind. The Tuesday after Labor Day is usually when school starts for schoolchildren in Los Angeles. But not this year. Due to budget cuts, LAUSD could not open most of its school’s doors. This latest development is in direct contrast to the bailout bill that had $10 billion earmarked to bail out schools who were facing budget cuts and layoffs. Wasn’t this the point of this bill that HAD to be passed in an emergency House session? Who is getting bailed out? What was the point?

Spending is not the problem. In 2008, LAUSD budgeted nearly $30,000 per student. That is a staggering amount, especially when you consider that less than half the kids graduate. Nationally, we spend about $600 Billion on education. That’s 27 cents of every dollar, compared to 8 cents of every dollar for Medicaid. Part of the problem is that 80% of the school district’s operating budget is consumed by teacher salaries and benefits that last a lifetime. According to the LAUSD web page, a 1% cut can save $40 million.

This is a trend that will continue until our broken education system is repaired. Heritage has written extensively on education and what can be done to fix it. The National Education Association (the teachers union) wrote an article blaming a funding crisis for the layoffs, but failed to mention their unwillingness to work with the county to help solve the crisis. For parents practicing school choice and attending charter schools in Los Angeles, the LA Times had this to say:

And students in nearly 200 independently run charter schools are starting whenever school administrators want them to.

SOURCE




Australia: Another incompetent teacher -- dangerously so

When you make classrooms such stressful environments that only dummies or desperates would take a teaching job, this is the sort of result you have to expect. The damage wrought by the Left-inspired destruction of discipline is immense

TASMANIAN taxpayers could be up for millions in compensation if any of the high school students involved in a dodgy science experiment contract a potentially lethal blood virus.

It comes as the State Government yesterday refused to confirm whether the Dover District High School teacher who took blood samples from 18 students using the same needle had a science degree. The Mercury reports a recent report by the Tasmanian Auditor-General found that just 51 per cent of a sample group of science teachers had a university science degree.

Five per cent of teachers taking science classes had no science knowledge and were simply teaching the subject because "there was a shortage of science staff" and 10 per cent were physical education teachers with a Human Movement degree which included some science-related content.

It has also been revealed that the blood experiment is not within the Tasmanian science curriculum.

The students and their families now have a nervous six-month wait as they are tested to ensure they have not contracted the blood-borne viruses hepatitis B, hepatitis C or HIV.

During the experiment the teacher used the same needle to collect the samples from the 18 students to test blood pH levels, and dipped it each time in methylated spirits. Medical authorities say this would not have been sufficient to disinfect it.

Australian Lawyers Alliance director Greg Barns said the State Government could face a multi-million-dollar lawsuit if any of the students test positive to a blood-borne virus.

"The State Government stands to face a massive prosecution here and we are talking millions," said Mr Barns, also a Mercury columnist. "Essentially you are looking at the medical expenses of the child for the rest of their life, damage as a result of a loss of income for the rest of their life and the psychological damage that has been caused to them."

SOURCE

Friday, September 10, 2010



L.A. Unified's cold shoulder to charter schools

Charter school operators are receiving separate but unequal treatment from the L.A. school district.

The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools cluster, scheduled to open this fall on the site of the former Ambassador Hotel, was built at a cost of $578 million, or nearly $140,000 per student seat. It is without question the most expensive public school ever built in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and quite possibly the most expensive public school in the country.

The project's astronomical cost raises a question about whether the school district is using resources efficiently. It also raises issues of fairness.

Proposition 39, which was passed by voters in 2000, requires school districts to provide charter schools with facilities that are reasonably equivalent to those of other schools in the district. About 60,000 students in L.A. Unified have opted to attend charter schools. But administrators have in no way tried to meet the "reasonably equivalent" standard.

Take the new school at the Ambassador site: It will consist of several small, independent schools sharing facilities such as playing fields and auditoriums. But will any of those small schools be a charter? Not a chance.

When charter schools manage to get funding to build their own schools independent of the district, they do so for far less money than the LAUSD does. Recently, the Alliance for College Ready-Public Schools broke ground on a facility within sight of the Watts Towers that will serve 550 students and will cost $8.8 million. That is $16,000 per student seat, or one-ninth the cost of the Ambassador site project.

And the Alliance site is no exception. Over the past several years, Green Dot built seven charter schools in the vicinity of the RFK Community School, and it spent less than $85 million for all of them. Those schools currently serve about 4,300 students, which means they were built for under $20,000 per student seat.

If the district had given the $578 million it spent on one school to charter schools, we would have created many more seats for students, and the seats would have been in schools that are providing great results for kids and their families.

Not only does the district overspend on the schools it builds; it consistently denies dozens of charter schools equitable use of its existing facilities. Each year, as required by Proposition 39, charter schools submit applications for space in LAUSD schools. But while some charters have been granted adequate facilities in the district's existing schools, many have to rent their own space, which takes about 13% of their general funds on average.

This year, under Proposition 39, 81 of the 163 charter schools in the LAUSD applied to the district for facilities. About half received offers, but in our view the offers were not compliant with the law. Not only were none of the offers for space in the lavish new schools like Robert F. Kennedy, which were built at huge taxpayer expense, some were for far too little space — they would have housed only a portion of the students attending the charter. Other offers would have required schools to move far from their existing locations. As a result, my organization — the California Charter School Assn. — has filed a lawsuit against the LAUSD accusing it of failing to live up to the law.

Charter students deserve better, particularly when the schools many of them attend are making great strides in academic achievement in Los Angeles. The LAUSD has every reason to help charter schools grow, because that would help parents gain more faith in local public schools. As more families see the successes our schools are having, the charter movement will continue to grow, and the need for facilities will continue to expand. The LAUSD needs to work in partnership with the charters instead of treating our students as second-class citizens.

Separate and unequal is simply not OK.

SOURCE





British school outsources teaching to India

A school has become the first in the country to contract out its teaching to India. Ashmount Primary in north London is using call centre-style staff more than 4,000 miles away to lead mathematics lessons for 11-year-olds. The service – which costs £12 an hour for each pupil – is being used as a cheaper alternative to employing one-to-one tutors for children falling behind in the subject. A private tutor in the capital normally costs around £40 an hour, it was claimed.

Academics said the move could be expanded to other schools nationally but warned that it risked undermining teaching standards.

The service – run by the firm BrightSpark Education – involves each pupil logging on to a special website and talking to a tutor via a headset. Children complete work on their computer that can be checked remotely by the Indian teacher.

The Islington primary school is currently using the technology with half of its final year pupils, with plans to offer it to nine and 10-year-olds. The school had been approached by the company to pilot the system.

Rebecca Stacey, assistant head teacher, told the Times Educational Supplement that the service had made a significant difference to her pupils’ grasp of maths. “We intend to roll it out so the whole of Year 6 is using it and perhaps down to Years 4 and 5,” she said. “We try to keep every pupil with the same tutor. The kids really enjoy it. It is a different way of approaching the subject with children who might find it harder to engage with maths.”

The school told the TES that it was far cheaper than paying £40 an hour to hire private tutors to teach maths to pupils falling behind in the subject.

Dylan Wiliam, director of London University’s Institute of Education, said such a system could work for more schools, but warned of potential dangers. “It will depend on how good their English is,” he said. “They will also need to understand the cultural conventions of this country. For example, long division is laid out differently in different countries. “Having said that, I am sure that this will become commonplace in time. If brain surgery can now be done remotely, why not maths teaching?”

He added: “As with many things in education, it¹s not a silly idea, but as we have discovered in recent years, a lot of things that appeared to be good ideas at the time turn out to be useless, or worse.”

The system was devised by a British-based entrepreneur, Tom Hooper, who employs 100 Indian-based tutors full time. All are maths graduates with teaching experience who are required to undergo security checks.

“I was a tutor myself to make a bit of extra money when I was at university and after I graduated,” he said. “But paying for additional tuition can be very expensive, in London you can be spending up to £40 an hour.” He added: “So it just seemed to make sense when I thought of providing live learning online, which could be flexible and engaging.”

All of the tutors are trained in the English mathematics curriculum.

SOURCE






Fewer British students 'will take residential degrees'

Traditional university courses could become the preserve of an elite as growing numbers of students take on-line degrees, according to a report. Three-year residential degrees are likely to be limited to undergraduates at top research universities because of public spending restrictions, it was claimed.

The study by Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, suggests the emergence of a two-tier higher education system in the future as universities struggle to accommodate large numbers of new students.

The conclusions – published to coincide with the group’s annual conference on Wednesday – come weeks after record numbers of students were rejected from university. As many as 180,000 applicants failed to get on to degree courses this summer following a huge rise in applications combined with an effective freeze on new places.

This week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned that the UK had slipped from third to 15th in a global league table for the number of graduates being produced in each country.

Prof Geoffrey Crossick, vice-chancellor of the University of London, said the current system of delivering higher education was “no longer financially sustainable”. In a UUK report, he said the number of flexible courses – including part-time study, on-the-job training and internet-based qualifications – would “explode” in the future.

This would lead to a drop in the proportion of students taking full-time degrees and living in traditional student accommodation, he said, an experience that was likely to be limited to those at top universities.

“Fundamental rethinking will be needed in a world where the proportion of those who experience higher education in the traditional fashion will decline, where the range of alternatives will explode, and where the variety of providers will grow with it,” said his report. “There will remain a core of comprehensive, primarily residential and (most of them) research-based universities, but for the rest new markets and new business models will make them seem increasingly different.” It added: "Higher education as a life-course stage will narrow to just one part of the population who experience it."

David Willetts, the Universities Minister, has already called for more students to consider apprenticeships as an alternative to university.

And the Open University, which runs courses on-line, has seen applications for degrees soar by around a third this year.

Prof Crossick said ministers would have to allow more private universities to receive state-funded students to accommodate the growing numbers of young people seeking to complete alternative degree courses.

SOURCE

Thursday, September 09, 2010



More on the Higher Education Price Bubble and Failure of Reforms at K-12

“New Houses were built in every direction; an illusory prosperity shone over the land, and so dazzled the eyes of the whole nation, that none could see the dark cloud on the horizon announcing the storm that was too rapidly approaching.” -- Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

It wasn’t that long ago that I was having lunch with the father of a friend at Mory’s, the venerable dining club at Yale, and he said to me: “Do you realize, Roger, that tuition at Yale next year will be $10,000? Ten-thousand dollars.” We paused for a moment over the Golden Buck to savor this enormous sum.

Ten-thousand dollars per annum was indeed a tidy sum. It is still is. But if you hope to join the Whiffenpoofs next year, it’s going to cost someone at least $52,900.

Exactly who is going to be presented with that tab depends on a number of factors, some of which I’ll mention in a moment. But first let’s step back and ask this embarrassing question: Is it worth it?

Is four years at Yale (or Harvard, Princeton, or any other “competitive” college) worth $53,000 x 4 plus annual tuition increases for a grand total (assuming you are entering right now) of roughly a quarter of a million dollars?

This is a question that, to the consternation of academic administrators, more and more parents — not to mention responsible teenagers — are asking themselves.

I took my epigraph from Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, a remorseless anatomy of financial “bubbles” from the Mississippi Scheme and South Sea Bubble to Tulipomania in 17th-century Holland and beyond. “At last, . . . the more prudent began to see that this folly could not last forever. . . . It was seen that somebody must lose fearfully in the end.”

Glenn Reynolds, a lawyer and genius loci of the Instapundit blog, has for many months been been cataloguing signs of the higher education bubble. Writing recently in the Washington Examiner, Reynolds explained the process:

“The buyers think what they’re buying will appreciate in value, making them rich in the future. The product grows more and more elaborate, and more and more expensive, but the expense is offset by cheap credit provided by sellers eager to encourage buyers to buy.

Buyers see that everyone else is taking on mounds of debt, and so are more comfortable when they do so themselves; besides, for a generation, the value of what they’re buying has gone up steadily. What could go wrong? Everything continues smoothly until, at some point, it doesn’t.”

Have we reached that point in higher education? Over at Instapundit, Reynolds recently linked to an illuminating article at “TaxProf Blog” which includes this illuminating chart comparing the rise in housing prices with college tuition since 1978.



Paul Caron, the TaxProf himself, observes that “the housing bubble resulted from about a 4-time increase in home prices between 1978 and 2006, and college tuition has now increased by more than twice that amount since 1978 — it’s gone up by more than a factor of ten times.” Bottom line? “The college tuition bubble makes the housing price bubble seem pretty lame by comparison.”

We all know what happened — what is still happening — with the housing bubble. Must we fear — rather, may we hope — that the same thing will happen in higher education? “Bubbles burst,” Reynolds observes, “when people catch on, and there’s some evidence that people are beginning to catch on.” He tells the story of the poor — and “poor” is the mot juste — girl who graduated from some name school with a degree in Women’s Studies and Religious Studies and debt of $100,000. That’s about 3 times her current annual income. Her monthly payments for student loans are nearly a third of her take-home pay. Has she caught on?

The sad answer is, probably not. For one thing, anyone who majors in “Women’s Studies” — the pseudo-discipline to end all pseudo-disciplines — may be presumed to be securely insulated from reality.

Nevertheless, Reynolds is right: there are many signs that the natives are restless. There has been a flurry of interest in alternative, internet-based “universities” — I’ve been approached about participating in one such venture myself. Some of these are free, others charge a small fraction of what traditional colleges charge. There is widespread, if still largely anecdotal, evidence that parents and alumni are increasingly disenchanted with the sort of education on offer at most institutions. As I wrote in a piece for The New Criterion a few years ago,

“Many parents are alarmed, rightly so, at the spectacle of their children going off to college one year and coming back the next having jettisoned every moral, religious, social, and political scruple that they had been brought up to believe. Why should parents fund the moral de-civilization of their children at the hands of tenured antinomians? Why should alumni generously support an alma mater whose political and educational principles nourish a world view that is not simply different from but diametrically opposed to the one they endorse? Why should trustees preside over an institution whose faculty systematically repudiates the pedagogical mission they, as trustees, have committed themselves to uphold?”

Just imagine the sorts of sub-literate, ideologically charged nonsense that Women’s Studies debtor was battened on in her classes! The Australian philosopher David Stove, commenting on the Faculty of Arts at Sydney University, formulated a diagnosis that applies to the teaching of the humanities of most Western universities: It is, Stove wrote, a “disaster-area, and not of the merely passive kind, like a bombed building, or an area that has been flooded. It is the active kind, like a badly-leaking nuclear reactor, or an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in cattle.”

There are incipient signs that a Great Recoiling from this intellectual disaster is beginning to form. It will be greatly aided by the economic disaster in which the institutional life of universities is embedded. “Why,” hard-working parents will ask themselves, “does it cost more than $50,000 a year to send Johnny to college.” Leave aside the question of what it is that Johnny is and isn’t learning in those ivy-covered walls. Why does his four-year furlough from the real world cost so much? One reason, of course, is that Johnny, assuming his parents are paying full freight, is paying not only for his own tuition: he is also helping to foot the bill for Ahmed, Juan, and Harriet down the hall. Colleges routinely boast about their generous financial aid packages, how they provide assistance for some large percentage of students, etc. What they don’t mention is the fact that parents who scrimp and save to come up with the tuition are in effect subsidizing the others. How do you suppose Johnny’s parents feel about that?

There are many other aspects to the Higher Education Bubble. Charles Murray touched on some of them in his devastating critique of “educational romanticism” in The New Criterion and in his book Real Education. Too many people go to college; Garrison Keillor has it wrong: half of all children are below average; we need more and better vocational schools, on the one hand, and colleges that cater to the academically gifted, on the other.

I’ve cast a skeptical eye on the educational establishment at least since the first edition of my book Tenured Radicals was published twenty years ago (pick up the new, third edition here). I long ago sadly concluded that revulsion at the intellectual and moral depravity of higher education would never be sufficient to bring about radical change. Combined with the vivid impetus of economic panic, however, the bubble may just inflate so suddenly that, at long last, it bursts. As summer ends and we prepare to send the children back to school, I find it a gratifying daydream with which to conjure.

SOURCE






Racist attack on white boy by Muslim gang at British school

Every playground tiff should be investigated for elements of racism, a report has recommended. The warning follows a hammer attack by an Asian [Pakistani] gang on a 15-year-old white boy on his school’s tennis courts which left the victim with brain damage. Henry Webster’s skull was fractured when he was punched, kicked and hit with a claw hammer by a group calling themselves the Asian Invaders. They left him for dead.

A serious case review of events surrounding the attack found that his school had failed to tackle escalating racial tensions between Asian and white teenagers – even after a riot on the playing fields. It warned that schools should record the ethnicity of bullies and victims and act if a pattern of racism arises, including liaising more closely with police.

According to the review, Ridgeway School in Wroughton, Wiltshire, did not prepare for the arrival of a ‘significant number’ of British Asian students in September 2005 – less than two months after the 7/7 Tube and bus bombings in London. Some problems between white and British Asian pupils were not recognised as racist by the school, near Swindon.

Henry had agreed to fight ‘one on one’ with an Asian boy to end the harassment he thought he and his friends were experiencing. But he was ambushed by a group of youths and young men in January 2007.

The attack led to the 2008 conviction of seven young men for wounding Henry with intent to cause him grievous bodily harm.Six more were convicted of conspiracy.

Henry, now 18, still suffers short-term memory loss. He had accused the school of failing to discipline Asian pupils who abused or intimidated their white classmates.

Last year, his family launched a High Court challenge claiming the school had been negligent, failed to maintain proper discipline or deal with racial tension. The school denied liability. But in February, Mr Justice Nicol rejected their claims and said the school did not breach its duty to take reasonable care to keep Henry reasonably safe while on its premises.

Following his ruling, the Swindon Local Safeguarding Children Board commissioned a serious case review. It found that not only should playground bullying be monitored for racism, but schools should also appoint ‘different race’ mentors for new pupils to help them settle in.

And teachers should consult parents about whether their approaches to religious and cultural requirements are ‘continuously appropriate’.

But Henry’s mother, Liz, 47, said the review confirmed her belief that his school was responsible for the assault. She criticised the report as a ‘whitewash’. ‘Whilst Henry has been the primary victim, we are – and always have been – of the firm belief that this school also let down the young Asian pupils who were eventually prosecuted. They have been criminalised and demonised.

‘Had their integration been properly handled we are certain this attack would not have happened. All anybody needed to do was simple community work – to get the Asian kids playing football with the white kids, or any kind of integration. Let’s hope every teacher in this country examines why this happened.’

The school said: ‘We have noted the recommendations and we always look to improve our practice and will continue to ensure our community which remained incredibly strong after the incident, continues to do so.’

Guidance recommends schools report all bullying. Schools nationwide will not be forced to adopt the 32 recommendations from the Swindon LSCB.

SOURCE




Selective classes based on ability are best for dim kids too

Says Harry Mount. I am not sure what he thinks the end result for the dim ones should be however. Should they spend more years at school or be satisfied to finish school without any qualifications or skills? -- JR

Normally, I rate Frank Field for his unsentimental attitude to the problems of the welfare state and the education system. This time, though, I fundamentally disagree with him. Field is suggesting that children who fail exams should be kept back, to repeat the school year until they pass them.

I’m all for being tough on children, but this one just won’t work. Some of them are so stupid that they’ll never catch up with their peers; and so they’ll be consigned to a strange, sad future – like something out of a Roald Dahl short story, where they keep on ageing while younger and younger children join them every new school year.

However stupid, or clever, you are, it’s vital to be educated alongside people who are your age. At my school, you could be “accelerated” by a year if you passed an exam in your first term. It was fine, academically speaking – the bright children did better than the dimmer ones, despite being a year younger. But what was the point of throwing us together with children who were a year older – a big difference in your teenage years. The gap in sophistication immediately threw up communication barriers, particularly with girls who were only a year older but seemed like they’d been sent from the adult world to terrify us callow boys.

The answer is the obvious one, the one that state schools still shy away from: a combination of selection on entry and streaming. Dim children may fail their exams but they will be kept among their contemporaries and won’t feel the inadequacy of being left behind. Bright children can flourish, unashamed to work hard, spurring each other on to better intellectual performance.

Throw in good teachers and you have all you need for an excellent education. Surely wise Frank Field can see the sense in this?

SOURCE

Wednesday, September 08, 2010



The real curriculum of “public” education

The article below is a bit on the paranoid side but there is some truth in it -- JR

An article at the privacy rights website Pogo Was Right (“U.S. Schools: Grooming Students for a Surveillance State,” August 28) argues that schools are “grooming youth to passively accept a surveillance state where they have no expectation of privacy anywhere.” Privacy violations include “surveilling students in their bedrooms via webcam … random drug or locker searches, strip-searching … lowering the standard for searching students to ‘reasonable suspicion’ from ‘probable cause,’ [and] disciplining students for conduct outside of school hours …”

“No expectation of privacy anywhere” is becoming literally true. The schools are grooming kids not only for the public surveillance state, but also for the private surveillance states of their employers. By the time the human resources graduate from twelve years of factory processing, they will accept it as normal to be kept under constant surveillance — “for your own safety,” of course — by authority figures. But they won’t just accept it from Homeland Security (“if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear”). They’ll also accept as “normal” a work situation in which an employer can make them pee in cups at any time, without notice, or track their online behavior even when they’re away from work.

This is just part of what rogue educator John Taylor Gatto calls the “real curriculum” of public education (“The Seven-Lesson Schoolteacher,” 1992). The real curriculum includes the lesson that the way to advancement, in any area of life, is to find out what will please the authority figure behind the desk, then do it. It includes the lesson that the important tasks in life are those assigned to us by authority figures — the schoolteacher, the college instructor, the boss — and that self-assigned tasks in pursuit of our own goals are to be trivialized as “hobbies” or “recreation.”

“Good people wait for a teacher to tell them what to do. It is the most important lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives. … Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this lesson being learned.”

Or as Ivan Illich put it in “Deschooling Society,” learning is a commodity properly dispensed by qualified professionals in bureaucratic institutions called “schools.”

The real curriculum includes the lesson that everything we say or do will go on a “permanent record,” which — if we display insufficient deference to authority today — will follow us like the mark of Cain for the rest of our lives and cause us to be blacklisted from opportunities for advancement by the authority figures we encounter in the future.

The public schools teach the lesson that tasks do not carry their own internal logic or rhythm. People are not more productive when they can organize their own time around the tasks they’re performing, and pursue the task without interruption until they reach a natural stopping place. Rather, the work day is most efficiently broken up into time blocks of an hour or so, punctuated by meetings and interruptions. This carries with it the lesson of indifference:

“I teach children not to care about anything too much, even though they want to make it appear that they do. … I do it by demanding that they become totally involved in my lessons. … But when the bell rings I insist that they stop whatever it is that we’ve been working on and proceed quickly to the next work station. They must turn on and off like a light switch. Nothing important is ever finished in my class, nor in any other class I know of. … Indeed, the lesson of the bells is that no work is worth finishing, so why care too deeply about anything? Years of bells will condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer important work to do.”

In short, the public schools are charged with the task of producing human resources who are docile, obedient and compliant, ready to be used as inputs by the dominant institutions in our society. Their purpose is to condition human beings to the kinds of behavior that the major centers of power in our society require to function.

The good news is, they’re not very good at it. The quality control department wasn’t working too well in my case, obviously. The people tasked with churning out uncritical and obedient human resources, in most cases, are about as competent as the people running all the other large bureaucratic hierarchies — i.e., not very. The contradiction between what they tell us and what our own lying eyes tell us, between what they tell us this week and next week, is enough to produce endless glitches in the Matrix.

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Children learn more quickly if the brightest are prevented from putting their hands up

I would have thought some version of this was normal teaching practice anyway. I know that when I was a kid, teachers would call on me only if nobody else knew the answer. I would just smile and the teacher would know that I knew. Not in mathematics, though. That was the one subject that did not come easily to me. Amusing therefore that my son is a mathematician -- JR

Schoolchildren learn more quickly if the brightest and most confident are prevented from putting up their hands, according to a teaching expert. Those who are less willing to answer teachers' questions rapidly switch off when a minority dominate, according to Professor Dylan Wiliam, deputy director of the Institute of Education at London University.

He is pioneering an alternative technique in which all children in a class are made to answer questions, by writing their answers on small white boards they are given. They then reveal their answers simultaneously to the teacher. A variation is to ask all the children to answer a 'yes or no' question posed by a teacher, by holding their thumbs up or down.

Prof Dylan tried out his approach on a class of 13-year-olds at Hertswood school in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire.

He will outline his educational theories in two, one-hour BBC2 programmes to be aired later this month, called The Classroom Experiment. He told The Sunday Times that the children and teachers "hated it at the beginning".

He said: "The kids who were used to having a quiet time were rattled at having to do something; the ones who were used to showing off to the teacher were upset."

Prof Dylan also advocates not telling children their marks, but only what they got right and wrong, and holding physical education classes at the start of every day "to get the blood flowing".

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Cambridge tops international league table



Cambridge has been named the best university in the world in an international league table. The ancient institution has become the first British university to top the QS World University Rankings which measure research quality, graduate employment and teaching standards.

It was named above Harvard as the American institution was removed from the number one spot for the first time since the league table was published in 2004.

According to figures, four British universities, including University College London, Oxford and Imperial College London, appear in the top 10 and 19 are in the top 100. Only the United States had more top-ranked universities than Britain.

John O’ Leary, executive member of the table’s advisory board, said: “UK universities have had an exceptionally good year. Not only does Cambridge top the ranking for the first time, but there are more UK institutions than ever before in the top 100 and 200.”

For the second year running, UCL was named above Oxford in the league table.

The rankings are created following a survey of 13,000 academics and 5,000 employers. They are also based on the number of international students at each university, faculty sizes and the number of research citations.

A separate university league table – created by Times Higher Education magazine – is released later this month

SOURCE

Tuesday, September 07, 2010



Flush With Union Cash, DC Mayoral Candidate Vincent Gray Looks to Roll Back DC School Reform

The fight for the Democratic mayoral nominee in Washington DC encapsulates the national struggle for education reform. On one side you have Mayor Adrian Fenty and his appointed School Chancellor Michelle Rhee, true reformers who took on the teachers unions in hopes of improving DC’s schools.

On the other side you have Fenty’s primary opponent, Vincent Gray. Gray is your typical big city politician. He ran a dirty campaign that mischaracterized and demonized Fenty’s term, he’s owned by special interest groups (see teachers unions), and will only pay lip service to reform, something DC desperately needs.

For decades, Washington DC’s public schools were the laughingstock of the country, consistently ranking near the bottom in every education metric. Fed-up with the status quo, Fenty appointed Michelle Rhee as Chancellor of Washington’s schools giving her free rein to battle the self-serving teachers unions and implement reforms she deemed essential. So, did it work? How does DC’s education system compare to other cities, now?

A new study by AEI’s Rick Hess examines “which of thirty major U.S. cities have cultivated a healthy environment for school reform to flourish.” Hess found that DC’s education environment now ranks second in a study of major US cities, largely due to Mayor Fenty and Michelle Rhee’s reforms.

Reform is painful; Fenty bruised some egos in the process making a lot of powerful enemies. Hess writes, “Survey respondents report that Mayor Adrian Fenty is the only municipal leader willing to expend extensive political capital to advance education reform.”

Gray has capitalized on union antipathy towards Fenty and formed alliances with DC’s biggest labor unions, receiving endorsements from:

AFSCME, AFGE, AFL-CIO Washington Labor Council, Carpenter's Union, Fraternal Order of Police, Fraternal Order of Police-Department of Corrections, Fraternal Order of Police District of Columbia Lodge #1, Firefighters Local 36, Gertrude Stein Club, , National Association of Government Employees, National Association of Social Workers, Nurses Union, Teamsters Local Union 639, Teamsters Local 689.”

No wonder Fenty is trailing in the polls, all of DC’s power players have united against the mayor. Most depressing is that Michelle Rhee announced she would leave if Gray is elected; their views are incompatible--Rhee is focused on giving DC’s poorest students chance to succeed, Gray is concerned with protecting teachers unions.

Carried across the finish line by union money, Gray’s election could well nullify the education gains Fenty and Rhee made over the past three years--the last thing DC needs.

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British exams to be brought in line with world's toughest tests

Wake me up when it happens -- JR

Examinations will be toughened up to meet standards set in other countries such as Singapore, South Korea and China, according to the Coalition. Ofqual, the exams regulator, will be ordered to gather test papers from some of the world’s most respected education systems and benchmark domestic qualifications against them.

It is likely to lead to a dramatic rise in the standards teenagers will be expected to meet to gain good grades in A-levels and GCSEs.

The announcement comes amid fears that exams are becoming too easy and failing to keep pace with those in other countries. This summer almost three-in-10 A-levels were graded at least an A and the number of Cs awarded at GCSE increased for the 22nd year in a row.

Speaking on Monday, Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, said action would be taken to “restore confidence” to the examinations system. This includes an overhaul of Ofqual, the watchdog established by Labour to vet standards in school and college tests. It comes just weeks after the regulator admitted that this year’s GCSE science papers were too easy.

Mr Gove said: “Last month the exams regulator Ofqual acknowledged that the GCSE science exams were not set at a high enough standard. I’ve been saying this for years. “But the previous Government chose to ignore my warnings and they defended a status quo that was in their interest but was actively damaging the education of hundreds of thousands of children a year."

He said the creation of a “more assertive” qualifications regulator, with the power to order exam boards to toughen up their tests, was “critical to restoring confidence in our exams system”. “We will legislate to strengthen Ofqual and give a new regulator the powers they need to enforce rigorous standard," he said.

“We will ask Ofqual to report on how our exams compare with those in other countries so we can measure the questions our 11, 16 and 18 year olds sit against those sat by their contemporaries in India, China, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

“Our young people will increasingly be competing for jobs and university places on a global level and we can’t afford to have our young people sitting exams which aren’t competitive with the world’s best.”

The move forms part of a sweeping overhaul of the exams system. As revealed yesterday, the Coalition will also introduce a school leaving certificate to tackle a decline in the number of pupils studying subjects such as languages and science in secondary schools.

An English Baccalaureate will be awarded to pupils who gain five A* to C grade GCSEs in English, maths, a science, a foreign language and one humanities subject. At the same time, panels of academics, exam boards and learned societies will be asked to script A-level syllabuses and test papers to restore rigour to the education system.

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Australia: Health Fascism in Victorian schools

There is nothing wrong with exercise and kids run around naturally if allowed -- which they often are not in schools today -- but trying to dictate to parents and take over the parental role sounds a bit too much like the Hitler Youth to me

VICTORIAN primary school students are standing up in class for half an hour a day in a radical plan to beat childhood obesity. And they're having "activity breaks" to get them moving between classes.

Students are also set homework tasks such as going for a walk with mum and dad, and are being urged to reduce their time in front of the TV.

The pilot plan, involving 30 grade 3 classes from state schools, gives some students tokens that will restrict their TV viewing. If they go beyond their allocated time, the TV automatically turns off.

The Transform-Us! program, involving 750 students aged eight and nine, started four weeks ago and is being run by the Education Department and Deakin University.

Behavioural scientist Professor Jo Salmon from the university said the goal was not just to get kids moving more at school, but at home as well. This means parents are given information about healthy living such as the location of local walking trails and sports tracks, and encouragement to help restrict TV and computer use at home. "It's not about being a TV Nazi, but resetting and changing some habits such as kids watching whatever is on TV rather than actively choosing programs they want to watch," Prof Salmon said.

Children are given four 30-minute TV tokens each day and if they attempt to watch more, the TV turns off using smart card technology.

It comes as a Victorian Parliament committee is investigating the role schools can play in helping children lead healthier lives.

Prof Salmon said the school-based program, involving standing-up lessons, "was not about kids running amok in class, but getting them moving instead of sitting during the day". "We're not taking away the three Rs and making kids do more PE. We are modifying academic lessons to get them moving more," she said. "Sitting all day long isn't normal for kids. "If you stand rather than sit, there's evidence your brain works better and evidence that kids have better short-term recall of lessons."

Prof Salmon said teachers had been "very supportive and enthusiastic" but the response from parents had been "varied".

Gail McHardy, executive officer of Parents Victoria, said schools needed a balance between activity and academic study. "The focus always seems to be on sedentary kids, but a lot of kids are very active, and sometimes parents worry their kids do too much activity, not too little," she said. "We have to be realistic about what teachers can achieve."

Angela Conway, policy consultant from Pro-family Perspectives, said she liked the idea of kids standing in some classes. But she warned that schools should not encroach too much on family time. "It's good to educate and encourage, but schools should not prescribe what families do in private," she said.

SOURCE

Monday, September 06, 2010



Unions Prevent Kids from Learning in L.A.

By Warner Todd Huston

The L.A. Times has been publishing a great series about how the city's schools have been dropping the ball on education. Specifically, the Times points out that the L.A. schools district has had at its disposal stats that could have helped it to engineer a better education policy for its students but has ignored these stats. Why have they ignored these stats? Fear of unions.

The Times has a database of the effectiveness of nearly 6,000 L.A. area teachers. These findings, the Times informs us, were based on a method called "value-added analysis. It is a method that is beginning to be used to rank teachers and help administrators design a more effective education for kids all across the country.

The Times also says that the L.A. school administrators had this info all along and never used it. Why would that be? (my bold below)

L.A. Unified has had the underlying data for years but has chosen not to analyze it in this way, partly in anticipation of union opposition. After The Times' initial report this month showed wide disparities among elementary school teachers, even in the same schools, the district moved to use value-added analysis to guide teacher training and began discussions with the teachers union about incorporating data on student progress into teacher evaluations.

That's right, fear of the recalcitrant unions that are more interested in making sure that teachers are unaccountable and cannot be questioned. Unions that are more interested in fat pensions and rich benefits and are less interested in the education of our kids.

It just goes to show that the ideals of former teacher union bigwig Albert Shanker are still ruling the roost in our system of mis-education. In 1985 Shanker said:

"When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children." -- Albert Shanker, former president American Federation of Teachers

And now our school systems and administrators are cowering in the face of teachers unions instead of sticking up for our children.

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Chicago district thinks that quantity will substitute for quality

In an effort to extend what is one of the nation's shortest school days, Chicago Public Schools plans to add 90 minutes to the schedules of 15 elementary schools using online courses and nonteachers, sources said.

By employing nonteachers at a minimal cost to oversee the students, the district can save money and get around the teachers' contract, which limits the length of the school day. Mayor Richard Daley has scheduled an announcement about the "Additional Learning Opportunities" pilot program at Walsh Elementary School in the Pilsen neighborhood. School officials declined to comment on the initiative.

The program's cost is expected to exceed $10 million, the majority of which will be spent on capital improvements like technological infrastructure, wiring and broadband, a source said. Five schools will begin the program this fall, and another 10 are expected to begin in the second semester. If the program proves successful, it could be expanded to all schools, a source said.

The extra time will be tacked on to the end of the school day. The block will be divided between math and reading, with a short break for a snack and recess, a source said. Much of the cost of the program will be covered by federal economic stimulus money, a source said.

The initiative is unpopular with leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union, who view the effort as a way to undermine their contract with the city schools. Because mostly nonteachers will be used to staff the initiative, the district will not have to pay union wages. Many of those who will oversee the classrooms will likely be either after-school providers or community partners.

"I'm not against anything that helps children," said Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union. "If this is more drill and kill (testing,) then I am totally against it.

"But if it's a way to keep schools open longer and engage parents and the community, I am for it," Lewis added. "I just want to make sure that (kids) are engaged and excited and they're enjoying learning."

The district already has a stable of online initiatives, including high school credit recovery programs and summer school courses to help students advance. More than 4,000 students gained credits through online summer school, officials have said.

But the new initiative is the product of a separate online pilot program the district launched last year, which provided online math courses to certain elementary school students. In those schools, students were encouraged — but not required — to attend extended school hours. District officials say math scores increased dramatically as a result of the online classes.

Nationally, online learning is a white-hot education trend. More than a million students engaged in online learning in the 2008 school year, an almost 50 percent increase over 2006, according to the Sloan Consortium, a group of organizations that support online education.

While there is limited research regarding the effectiveness of online schools, what is out there is largely positive. In some cases, research has shown that online learning can be better than face-to-face instruction.

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British bureaucrats oppose crackdown on "Mickey Mouse" degrees

Civil servants who allocate billions of pounds to university teaching are secretly opposing moves which would ban spending on “Mickey Mouse” degree courses.

A far cry from the conventional humanities and sciences, a modern university education can involve studying subjects like pop music, puppetry, or the unorthodox combination of "waste management with dance".

An analysis of courses available through the university clearing system has disclosed that while most traditional courses are now full up, there are empty places in scores of "eccentric" degree courses. Education experts said it was unfortunate that such courses appeared to be proliferating at a time when school-leavers with good grades could not get places in core academic subjects.

The Sunday Telegraph has learned that officials who allocate billions of pounds to university teaching are secretly opposing moves which would allow spending on such courses to be cut back.

Civil servants at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) want to avoid a debate over whether to change laws which currently prohibit ministers from instructing them to award money for "particular courses of study".

When approached by this newspaper with questions about unconventional degree courses, the agency accidentally released copies of internal emails which had been exchanged between its officials as they discussed how to respond to the questions.

An email from Toby West-Taylor, the agency's head of funding, which was intended only for colleagues, said: "The risk in highlighting this to a journalist at a time when a new HE [higher education] Bill could be on the horizon, is that it might prompt a lobby for there to be change to such sound legislation."

The funding agency even referred to the questionable degree subjects in a derogative way, with one of the accidentally-released emails carrying the subject heading "Response to The Sunday Telegraph on Mickey Mouse courses." This newspaper did not use that phrase when posing the questions.

Following the revelations, David Willetts, the universities minister, predicted the end of "odd" courses as students face up to the new economic climate.

The clearing system, by which candidates who failed to get into their chosen university or college try and get places on other undersubscribed courses, began more than a fortnight ago. Yet despite record demand for places at top universities, hundreds of places are still available in less well known higher education institutions, many of them offering unconventional courses.

Northampton University initially had 250 places available through the clearing system, including such courses as Third World Development with Pop Music, Dance with Equine Studies and joint honours in Waste Management and Dance.

The clearing web-site also invites school-leavers to consider a Tournament Golf foundation degree at Duchy College in Camborne, Cornwall. The two-year course offers students the chance to "improve your tournament golf skills", and its admissions requirements indicate: "No handicap is definitive but the guide parameters are +5 to 3."

A spokeswoman for the college said: "The innovative programme gives young talented golfers the opportunity to chase their dreams whilst having the safety net of a UK university qualification to fall back on."

Glyndwr University, in Wrexham, still had 15 places available on its BSc (Hons) in Equestrian Psychology, which "investigates the unique partnership between horse and rider".

Subjects which were on offer through clearing at the start of last week, but which filled up during the week, included a degree course in Australian Studies, a joint honours degree in Criminology and Pop Music Production, and another combining Geology and Popular Culture.

Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: "It seems that many universities are going for the lowest common denominator just to get bums on seats and maximise their funding. "It seems crazy that youngsters are getting good grades in serious subjects at A-level and then being denied places, while these sort of courses are proliferating." He added: "The Secretary of State is the person democratically responsible and should be able to change things if necessary, and the law should be changed to allow him to do that."

Unprecedented demand for university and college degrees this year has left an estimated 150,000 students without a place.

Mr Willetts said: "In tough times I suspect some of these more eccentric courses, which date from the excesses of the dying days of the Labour government, will disappear because students see they are not a route into a well-paid career. "Some of them sound like very odd courses indeed.

"I think the way forward is providing students with better information about the employment outcomes from individual course at individual universities."

Farnborough College of Technology still had places available last week on its two-year foundation degree in Holistic Therapies. But if applicants find that course to be full they could turn to Warwickshire College which is offering Beauty Therapies Management, Hairdressing Management and Spa Management courses.

Writtle College in Chelmsford, Essex, offers a foundation degree in Professional Floristry which covers the "practical and theoretical aspects of floral design". There is still one place available on a three-year degree in Theatre Practice: Puppetry at London's Central School of Speech and Drama.

Jessica Bowles, the course tutor, said: "The major leads in War Horse [the successful West End play] are all from Central's Puppetry course. This leads to very concrete career opportunities."

A spokesman for the HEFCE, which allocates £4.6 billion a year for university teaching and £1.6 billion for research, said: "Universities have the discretion to spend the money according to their own priorities. "We don't stipulate which subjects universities should teach and which they should not teach. That is a matter for them. They have to make their own decisions on their own mission and their own goals."

Although the HEFCE has introduced priority funding for subjects such as sciences and modern languages, the freedom granted to universities meant that less-conventional degrees still receive funding even at a time of budget cutbacks.

When Northampton's Dance with Equine Studies was pointed out to the funding council spokesman, he said: "You are talking about some pretty out-lying courses. "They are regulated through the Quality Assurance Agency and what we can do is try to steer the sector into offering subjects that employers might value more than others.

"We do not count unfilled places in our funding allocations. If institutions cannot fill places in clearing they have the flexibility to provide additional places on other courses provided they keep within the funding agreements with us."

Asked about the use of the "Mickey Mouse" phrase, the HEFCE spokesman said: "Our use of 'Mickey Mouse' is pretty indefensible. I think the use of that phrase was a mistake, but it's a fair cop."

SOURCE

Sunday, September 05, 2010



TN: Lottery scholarship program prepares for cuts

The bad news is, Tennessee's lottery scholarship program is losing tens of millions of dollars a year. The good news is, at least it's not losing hundreds of millions of dollars, as originally feared.

Even so, the state is preparing for painful cutbacks in the popular merit-based college scholarship program, which offsets the cost of tuition at Tennessee colleges and universities for an estimated 100,000 students a year.

Tennessee college tuition goes up every year, and the prospect of losing any part of the lottery scholarship alarms parents such as Kim Lewis, a Nashville mother of three whose 15-year-old twins are rapidly approaching college age.

"The HOPE scholarship is the only thing that keeps us from tearing our hair out," joked Lewis, who doesn't even like to think about what happens when her 12-year-old also enters college and she and her husband will be putting three kids through school at once.

"Tell them not to touch the HOPE," she said, passing her marching orders along to the legislature. "Tell them to cut something else, but families really rely on that tuition money being there."

The cost of the lottery scholarship programs has tripled since it launched in 2004 as a pilot program only for college freshmen and sophomores. The program expenditures reached almost $302 million this year and could jump by $8 million next year.

For Belmont junior Nick Kirk, the HOPE scholarship has meant the difference between living on campus and commuting an hour each way from his home in Fairview. HOPE scholarships cover about 62 percent of tuition for students at public universities and about 20 percent of the tuition at the average private college in Tennessee. For Kirk, the scholarship offsets the steep cost of room, board and college fees.

"It was definitely worth the hard work in high school to earn the HOPE scholarship," said Kirk, a biology major with a dual minor in chemistry and music. "You don't realize how expensive things are going to be. The HOPE is definitely a good thing."

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"Diversity" takes a hit in NC

And the Left is squealing

AdvancED, a national and international education accreditation organization, plans to send a team to Wake County this fall to review planned changes to the public school system's student assignment policy.

The group sent a letter to Wake County Public School System Interim Superintendent Donna Hargens on July 28 outlining concerns and questions raised in a complaint filed in March.

School system spokesman Michael Evans said the original complaint was filed by Rev. William Barber, president of the state chapter of the NAACP.

Barber has been the leader of a vocal opposition to the school board's decision earlier this year to do away with a policy that assigns students to schools based on socio-economics.

He and others fear that ending the longstanding policy in favor for one that places students in schools closer to their homes will lead to re-segregation, high teacher turnover and poor students receiving a lower quality of education than their economically advantaged counterparts.

Five of the school board's nine members disagree and believe the move will help improve test scores and give parents more chances to be involved in their students' education.

In other words, since we can't stop you from undoing all the crap we did over the years, then we are going to try and bully you into stepping back.

Look, we the people have spoken and we want real solutions not more spreading of the disease. We wanted and voted in a school board that will do just that. The new head of the board stated that they will continue to proceed on the new policy regardless of the ongoing disruptions and protests.

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British children let down by failing schools, says CBI

Thousands of teenagers are still being “let down” by failing schools despite record investment in education under Labour, according to business leaders. In a damning final judgment on the previous government’s education record, employers said a 120 per cent rise in the amount of money spent on schools had “not delivered the returns” needed to drive the British economy.

The Confederation of British Industry warned that serious concerns still surrounded school leavers’ lack of literacy and numeracy skills combined with the relatively low number of teenagers studying vital science and maths subjects to a high standard.

Too many teenagers also entered the workplace lacking basic employability skills, such as the ability to analyse evidence, communicate with colleagues and solve problems, it claimed.

The conclusions were made in a report published to coincide with the start of the first full school year under the new Conservative-led Government.

The CBI, which represents some 240,000 British businesses, praised the Coalition’s reforms, including the expansion of independent academies, but insisted “much more” was needed to improve the education system.

It called for ministers to allow profit-making companies to take over the running of the worst schools to turnaround chronic under-performance.

New rules should also be introduced to teach a broad set of employability skills as well as encouraging the best students to take separate GCSEs in biology, chemistry and physics, it said.

Susan Anderson, CBI director of public services and education, said progress had been made over the last 13 years but “significant challenges remain”. “Too many school leavers leave education without the skills, knowledge and attitude to work [that] employers are looking for,” she said. “And too many of these young people are being let down by persistent underperformance of the education system through attending failing or coasting schools. “The link between a disadvantaged background and poor educational achievement remains too clear.”

The report said Government spending on education had more than doubled to £60 billion a year between 1996 and 2008, delivering better GCSE results and a drop in the number of schools placed in special measures by Ofsted.

This summer, almost a quarter of GCSE entries were graded an A in the 22nd straight year-on-year rise, while A-level results also soared to a record high. But the CBI said that looking “past the headline GCSE and A-level results” revealed a “more complex and concerning picture of the UK’s education system”. It said half of all 16-year-olds failed to gain at least five good GCSEs, including English and maths, last year.

Almost 250 secondary schools failed to hit the basic GCSE targets designed to ensure 30 per cent of pupils gain five A* to C grades in 2009, it said, and the UK has the third highest number of 16- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training in the developed world.

The CBI also said that many children lacked skills such as self-management, customer awareness, problem solving and basic communication, suggesting that schools prioritised the regurgitation of “facts” over the application of knowledge. "The decade of spending on education has not delivered the returns expected or needed,” said the study. “Neither has it delivered significant change in the systems and structures which might drive future improvement."

SOURCE