Sweden — the next Germany for homeschoolers?
Home School Legal Defense Association has sent a formal letter of inquiry to the head of a local Swedish social services unit as well as several other Swedish and American government officials inquiring about the case of Annie and Christer Johansson of Gottland, Sweden.
Christer and Annie Johansson are the parents of Dominic Johansson, who was forcibly removed from a plane by a fully armed police unit minutes before the family was due to take off to start a new life in India, Annie’s home country.
The couple had sold all of their belongings and were planning to minister to the poor in India. Annie was also looking forward to reconnecting with her family, whom she had not seen since moving to Sweden with Christer after they married in 2000.
HSLDA President J. Michael Smith expressed concern in a letter to the Swedish Authorities on this case. “If the facts as stated are true, it appears that the family has been subjected to a gross injustice and the best interests of Dominic are not being upheld. This case is particularly alarming in light of a recent proposal to the Swedish parliament to impose severe restrictions on home education.”
In the letter, copied to Swedish ministries of Education, Foreign Affairs, Social Affairs and the Justice Minister, as well as the U.S. ambassador to Sweden and the Swedish ambassador in the United States, Smith has requested that the agency return the child to the family. “If any of the information as stated above is inaccurate, we would welcome correction of the record. If, however, the situation is as I have recounted, we respectfully request that you reconsider your decisions and return Dominic to his family immediately. To do otherwise would be to perpetuate a grievous harm upon the Johanssons.”
Mats Tunehaga is President of the Swedish Evangelical Alliance. In a blog post today at the Swedish newspaper Varlen Idag he noted that the situation is beyond tragic. “Christer Johansson called me again this morning. He was crying softly, obviously in pain and despair. His wife Annie was taken into emergency room—again. She is suffering from a severe trauma, hard to comprehend. Their son has been taken away from them and put into foster care. Why? They wanted to home school their child, 7-year-old Dominic.”
Both parents are Christians and were treated like terrorists, notes Tunehaga. “Annie is from a Christian family in India, and they had planned for some time to move there to live, work and to homeschool Dominic. Due to the harassment from Swedish authorities the trip was delayed. But finally in June this year they were on their way, sitting on the plane bound for India. Then the police came rushing into the plane—as if they were to apprehend dangerous terrorists—and snatched Dominic, saying he is to be taken into care. Can anyone imagine?”
HSLDA Staff Attorney Michael Donnelly has also been in contact with the family. “Christer told me that the family originally planned to move to India in the spring of 2008. They decided they would homeschool Dominic in order to minimize the disruption of pulling him out of school when they moved and also because Dominic requested it noting that the local public school he had visited was too noisy and stressful,” said Donnelly.
Donnelly expressed grave concern over the situation. “This kind of gross disregard for family integrity and simple human decency is becoming the hallmark of countries like Germany, and now apparently Sweden, where the state is more interested in coerced uniformity than in protecting fundamental human rights and fostering pluralism. In Germany, courts have said that homeschooling creates dangerous ‘parallel societies’—an absurd notion that grotesquely turns the notion of pluralism on its head.”
Since homeschooling is legal in Sweden the parents contacted the Swedish Ministry of Education as their son approached compulsory school attendance age. They were informed it was the local principal’s responsibility to assist them with home education and that he would provide materials. Contacting the local school principal, Christer told him that the Ministry of Education had informed him to get in touch with the local school. The conversation was short because the principal informed Christer that the school law required that Dominic attend school.
Christer was surprised by the Principal’s more hostile response when he followed up later after not hearing from the school. “He was very short and not at all in favor of homeschooling. I told him that it was my right under Swedish law to homeschool and that I was making contact with him to make the necessary arrangements and to get the materials. We were planning to leave Sweden in just a month or two. Mr. Eneqvist told me that he ‘didn’t care about my right’ that I didn’t have a ‘right to educate my son like that’ and that he was going to take the matter farther,” Christer said.
This unexpected turn of events caused them to delay their move to India. “I was very upset about this as were my wife and son. We were planning to leave Sweden, and I had promised my wife and son that we would be moving to India, but I felt that I had to stay to make sure that this dispute was resolved properly. I didn’t want to leave Sweden on such a sour note,” said Christer.
The family were contacted by social workers and the school about the requirement to send Dominic to school but decided to wait for more senior officials to respond. They continued to provide formal instruction to Dominic. “Both Annie and I believe in education. We are both very studious. Annie is qualified to teach at the university level, and I had been a teacher in the community before. Dominic is a very bright boy, and so we made sure to provide him with lots of materials that were interesting to him. We started teaching him formally when he was six.” Christer said.
In August 2008 the case reached the local school board. Christer sent a letter to a school board member to ask if they could try to restart the discussion about homeschooling. Christer recognized that he and the principal hadn’t gotten off on the right foot and he was determined to try again. However the board member told Christer she was “too busy at the moment” to meet with him. “She told me that she couldn’t meet with me. I sent letters to the school board that I had a right to educate my son at home according to Swedish law. I called them and tried to get them to meet with me, so we could discuss this. Whenever I received any communication from them all they wanted to talk about was getting Dominic to school. They didn’t answer my other questions or respond to my letters.” ....
The family, currently represented by state-appointed attorneys, is pursuing an appeal to the Swedish Supreme Court in Stockholm. They continue to express their willingness to cooperate with the authorities.
“We have always expressed our willingness to cooperate with the authorities and even to send Dominic to school. We believe we have a right to homeschool our son, and we believe that these social workers have harmed our family greatly. My wife and son and I are under extreme pain from this separation. On his eighth birthday just a few weeks ago we were only able to see him for two hours at the office of the social workers. We are not permitted to call him or write to him. And his grandparents were not able to see him either. In the last three months since he was taken we have only been permitted to see him for a total of about eight hours. We cannot believe that such a thing as this could happen in a country like Sweden. We are doing our best to be kind and cooperative. All we want is to have our son home so we can get back to being a family again,” Christer said....
Donnelly noted that there seems to be an increase in these kinds of attacks against homeschoolers in Europe. “The case of the Johanssons may be the first shot in extending this type of repression to another European country—all in the name of uniformity and conformity. This spectre is raising its head not just in Sweden but in other places including Great Britain, France, Belgium, and Switzerland where there are attempts to impose additional restrictions on home education.”...
In remarks to the World Congress of Families, Michael Farris, founder and chairman of HSLDA and president of ParentalRights.org, an organization dedicated to protecting Americans from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child by passing an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, agreed. “Any nation that severely restricts the ability of parents to choose alternative forms of education, including home education, in the name of creating national unity, cannot call itself a free nation. Freedom necessarily requires the individual to have the liberty to think differently and believe differently than programs instituted by the current rulers of any nation. Educational freedom is the cornerstone for all freedom of thought and conscience.”
More here
House shines light on student bankruptcy
Will Congress at long last fix a mess that it created?
Earlier this week the House held a hearing on private student loans and bankruptcy, shedding light for the first time on a rather unknown yet devastating aspect of student debt.
Did you know that because of legislation dating back to 1976 under the Higher Education Act private student loans are unable to be discharged through bankruptcy? In other words, feel free to run up the credit card and splurge, but take out loans to pay for education? That’s just reckless.
The number of students taking out private (or nonfederal) student loans has increased significantly over the past decade. Private student loans now make up nearly a quarter of the overall market, compared to just ten years ago when they made up a small fraction. This spike is not only due to skyrocketing tuition –the average four-year tuition has increased 30 percent from a decade ago –but also because of the complexity of the financial aid process that leaves many students vulnerable to take out the worst of loans. In fact, many students turn to private loans before even exhausting available federal aid and loan options.
Meanwhile, private lenders capitalize on this confusion, even at times in cahoots with universities, preying on young adults, steering them towards more risky loans.
These loans pawned on students by private lenders are often downright predatory, offering little consumer protections. Private loan interest rates are normally variable, with average interest rates running between 9 and 13 percent, nearly double that of federal loans. On top of that, the flexibility of repayment for private loans are much less pliant, in almost all cases a missed monthly payment results in an automatic interest rate hike of 2 percent, with additional fines and fees to punish borrowers.
And you can imagine that with the toughest job market in decades, coupled with staggering student debt averaging $23,000, students are finding they can no longer keep up with repayment. But unlike federal loans, private lenders do not have to offer flexible payment plans or a forbearance option to struggling borrowers. Why should lenders? When they can maintain hefty profits.
While in truly tough times, students needing to discharge their private loans in bankruptcy are forbidden to. In other words, if you face chronic unemployment, a medical emergency or even die –tough luck, student loan debt will continue to be an albatross.
Congress though may finally be addressing this injustice. This week’s hearing was the first time the issue has been addressed since written into law in 1976! Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) announced he will soon file legislation to give private student loan borrowers more equitable treatment during the bankruptcy process. And in another good sign, House Chairman of Education and Labor Committee, Rep. George Miller is on board as well, stating, "There’s no justifiable reason that the lenders who provide them should be treated any differently than credit card companies, auto finance companies, utility providers, and other creditors.”
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"Tough love" welfare policies work -- as quarantining parent payments cuts indigenous truancy in Australia
INDIGENOUS leader Noel Pearson's tough welfare reforms in Cape York, which financially punish the parents of children who repeatedly miss school, have dramatically boosted attendance rates.
A report to be tabled today in Queensland parliament shows that school attendance in one of the nation's most troubled Aboriginal communities, Aurukun, has almost doubled since the introduction last year of the Family Responsibilities Commission in four Cape York communities. The report on the FRC, which links welfare payments to social responsibility, allows a comparison of school attendance in the four Cape York communities that are taking part in the welfare reform trial, one year on from its introduction.
The communities of Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge are all part of the $48million four-year Cape York Welfare Reform Trial, which is being funded by the federal and Queensland governments in partnership with the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership, founded by Mr Pearson. It aims to tackle school attendance, drug and alcohol abuse, health, child safety, economic development and housing.
The FRC is a key plank of the Cape York reform agenda, with a magistrate and respected Aboriginal community members sitting on a commission that has the power to direct that a person's income be managed by Centrelink. The FRC is notified if a person's child is absent from school three times during a term or is not enrolled in school, if a person is the subject of a child safety report or is convicted of an offence in the Magistrates Court, or if someone breaches their tenancy agreement. The project is aimed at restoring social norms through collective responsibility.
Figures contained in today's quarterly report show that school attendance has increased in Aurukun, which had an average attendance rate of 37 per cent 12 months ago and now is achieving an average rate of 63 per cent, while Mossman Gorge rose from 60.9 per cent to 81.6 per cent.
Attendance at schools in Coen and Hope Vale have experienced a slight reduction, with Coen's attendance rate falling from 96.8per cent to 93.6 per cent, and Hope Vale's attendance falling marginally from 87.6 per cent to 86.9 per cent. Those two communities have remarkably high rates of indigenous attendance compared with poor attendance rates in remote schools across the nation.
The Queensland Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, Desley Boyle, said the commission had been working with local schools, parents and case managers during the first six months of this year to devise ways of getting children to come to school. "I want to applaud all those involved, including parents and community leaders," she said. "As a result of this concerted effort, there are important improvements in school attendance."
Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said yesterday research indicated that education and employment made the largest contribution to closing the life expectancy gap. "The latest report from the commission shows a promising upward trend in school attendance, and demonstrates what can be achieved when parents take responsibility for their child's future," she said.
Figures contained in the quarterly report reveal that the commission has been following through vigorously on the punitive aspects of the welfare reform project. Between April and June this year, there were 31 conditional income management orders issued. More than 252 school attendance notices were issued, together with 46 child safety notices, 336 magistrates court notices, and two housing tenancy notices.
Those who are issued with such notices are referred to the FRC, which sits periodically in each of the four Cape York communities. When the FRC receives a referral it typically holds a conference in an informal setting with the notice recipient, who is encouraged to come an agreement with the commission about an appropriate response to the issues that have led to the notice being issued. If the person is unwilling to change their behaviour, the FRC can issue warnings, refer the person to community support services, or order income management.
The FRC is a crucial aspect of the Cape York Institute and governments' efforts to reinforce indigenous community values of respect and responsibility, as well as determining what actions will be taken at a community level to address dysfunctional behaviour.
The federal government has also moved to link school attendance to welfare in certain communities in the NT.
But Mr Pearson's tough model measures to instil social norms have not been popular with all Aboriginal leaders. Indigenous education expert Chris Sarra yesterday slammed government attempts to combat truancy through welfare quarantining as ill-conceived and a waste of taxpayers' money. Dr Sarra said the policies -also being trialled in the NT and scheduled for testing in suburban Brisbane - were ill-conceived because they are based on flawed assumptions. "The assumptions are that parents are actively trying to keep their kids away from school, that parents don't want quality education for their kids, and that schools are the kind of places that are really exciting for every child," Dr Sarra said. "That's simply not the case." Dr Sarra is the executive director of the Queensland University of Technology's Stronger Smarter Institute and is the former principal of Cherbourg primary school.
A fortnight ago, Federal Minister for Families Jenny Macklin and Queensland Premier Anna Bligh announced that a year-long trial would begin in Brisbane's urban southern fringe, which could see parents lose welfare payments if their child was routinely and inexplicably absent from school. The trial will also run in the remote indigenous communities of Doomadgee and Mornington Island and follows a trial in several Northern Territory communities.
The Queensland and Northern Territory trials are separate to the Cape York welfare reform trials.
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EDUCATION SWEEDEN
Higher Education
Research in swedensweden is talking part in the bologna prosess. a wide-ranging European cooperative venture whose goal is to harmonize all higher education in Europe. As a result, the Swedish education system will change. By providing competitive undergraduate and graduate training, Sweden is to become a more attractive country to study in for students from abroad. In Sweden, the Riksdag (Parliament) and Government have overall responsibility for higher education and research, which means that they make decisions on aims, guidelines and the allocation of resources.Education and research fall under the brief of the Ministry of Education and Research. The Swedish National Agency for Higher Education is the central government agency responsible for matters concerning higher education, but universities and university colleges are separate government authorities and make their own decisions about the content of courses and other matters. The development of basic research in Sweden is financed and promoted by the Swedish Research Council. EligibilityTo meet general admission requirements for attending a university or university college, students must have a school-leaving certificate from the high school or municipal adult education in Sweden or have completed high school education outside Sweden. Studies at a “folkhögskola” (folk high school) can also qualify students for higher education. When there are more applicants than places available, applicants are ranked, based in part on their grades when they leave school. A government bill introduced in March 2007 proposed among other things that passing grades be required in the core subjects of Swedish or Swedish as a second language, English and mathematics education4sunee
More school: Obama would curtail summer vacation
Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way. Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe. "Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."
The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go. "Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
Fifth-grader Nakany Camara is of two minds. She likes the four-week summer program at her school, Brookhaven Elementary School in Rockville, Md. Nakany enjoys seeing her friends there and thinks summer school helped boost her grades from two Cs to the honor roll. But she doesn't want a longer school day. "I would walk straight out the door," she said.
Domonique Toombs felt the same way when she learned she would stay for an extra three hours each day in sixth grade at Boston's Clarence R. Edwards Middle School. "I was like, `Wow, are you serious?'" she said. "That's three more hours I won't be able to chill with my friends after school."
Her school is part of a 3-year-old state initiative to add 300 hours of school time in nearly two dozen schools. Early results are positive. Even reluctant Domonique, who just started ninth grade, feels differently now. "I've learned a lot," she said.
Does Obama want every kid to do these things? School until dinnertime? Summer school? And what about the idea that kids today are overscheduled and need more time to play?
Obama and Duncan say kids in the United States need more school because kids in other nations have more school. "Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here," Duncan told the AP. "I want to just level the playing field."
While it is true that kids in many other countries have more school days, it's not true they all spend more time in school. Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).
Regardless, there is a strong case for adding time to the school day. Researcher Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution looked at math scores in countries that added math instruction time. Scores rose significantly, especially in countries that added minutes to the day, rather than days to the year. "Ten minutes sounds trivial to a school day, but don't forget, these math periods in the U.S. average 45 minutes," Loveless said. "Percentage-wise, that's a pretty healthy increase."
In the U.S., there are many examples of gains when time is added to the school day. Charter schools are known for having longer school days or weeks or years. For example, kids in the KIPP network of 82 charter schools across the country go to school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., more than three hours longer than the typical day. They go to school every other Saturday and for three weeks in the summer. KIPP eighth-grade classes exceed their school district averages on state tests.
In Massachusetts' expanded learning time initiative, early results indicate that kids in some schools do better on state tests than do kids at regular public schools. The extra time, which schools can add as hours or days, is for three things: core academics — kids struggling in English, for example, get an extra English class; more time for teachers; and enrichment time for kids.
Regular public schools are adding time, too, though it is optional and not usually part of the regular school day. Their calendar is pretty much set in stone. Most states set the minimum number of school days at 180 days, though a few require 175 to 179 days. Several schools are going year-round by shortening summer vacation and lengthening other breaks.
Many schools are going beyond the traditional summer school model, in which schools give remedial help to kids who flunked or fell behind. Summer is a crucial time for kids, especially poorer kids, because poverty is linked to problems that interfere with learning, such as hunger and less involvement by their parents. That makes poor children almost totally dependent on their learning experience at school, said Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, home of the National Center for Summer Learning.
Disadvantaged kids, on the whole, make no progress in the summer, Alexander said. Some studies suggest they actually fall back. Wealthier kids have parents who read to them, have strong language skills and go to great lengths to give them learning opportunities such as computers, summer camp, vacations, music lessons, or playing on sports teams. "If your parents are high school dropouts with low literacy levels and reading for pleasure is not hard-wired, it's hard to be a good role model for your children, even if you really want to be," Alexander said.
Extra time is not cheap. The Massachusetts program costs an extra $1,300 per student, or 12 percent to 15 percent more than regular per-student spending, said Jennifer Davis, a founder of the program. It received more than $17.5 million from the state Legislature last year. The Montgomery County, Md., summer program, which includes Brookhaven, received $1.6 million in federal stimulus dollars to operate this year and next, but it runs for only 20 days.
Aside from improving academic performance, Education Secretary Duncan has a vision of schools as the heart of the community. Duncan, who was Chicago's schools chief, grew up studying alongside poor kids on the city's South Side as part of the tutoring program his mother still runs. "Those hours from 3 o'clock to 7 o'clock are times of high anxiety for parents," Duncan said. "They want their children safe. Families are working one and two and three jobs now to make ends meet and to keep food on the table."
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British school admissions reforms 'failing'
A £15m Labour plan to get poor pupils into the best state schools has had a “minimal effect”, according to research. But if it had succeeded, the schools concerned would no longer be "best". Feral students will destroy any school in the absence of strict discipline and strict discipline is a distant memory in British schools
The reforms – introduced in 2006 – have benefited less than one child in 100 and are just as likely to help pupils from middle-class families, it was disclosed. Every local council in England is required to run a team of “choice advisers” to make the school admissions system fairer.
Under plans, they are supposed to advise parents about secondary school admissions policies, help them fill out forms and provide information on uniform policies, the curriculum, term dates, travel details and understanding league tables and Ofsted reports.
Launching the programme four years ago, ministers said they would “have a real impact on ensuring that all parents are armed with the information they need to find the right school for their child”. They were introduced alongside a more stringent system of school admissions rules to stop head teachers selecting bright pupils from middle-class backgrounds.
But a study by Sheffield Hallam University said the high-profile reforms had an “incommensurate” impact. “The proportion of children benefiting from the service is, and in any likely policy context could only ever be, tiny,” it said. “While it substantially benefited a small group of parents, some of whom were very needy, it had a minimal effect on the numbers of poorer parents gaining entry to the more popular schools.”
This year, one in six children failed to get into their preferred secondary school. In some areas, such as London, where parents face the stiffest competition for places, up to half of 11-year-olds missed out.
Researchers led by Professor John Coldron, from the centre for education and inclusion research, studied the impact of choice advisers in 15 local authorities. The report said 73,000 children transferred between primary and secondary schools in the affected areas but only 602 had contact with a choice adviser. It represented 0.8 per cent of parents, but only half of those were from the poorest families, the study said.
Researchers suggested other parents taking advantage of the additional help were from middle-class backgrounds. “We dubbed them ‘well-informed, but anxious’,” said Prof Coldron. “They were parents who wanted to ensure no stone was left unturned in their attempt to make sure children got into the best schools.”
The report said the initiative had failed because it ignored the fact that postcode was the “main driver” of school “segregation”. It suggested that – even with the help of advisers – many poor families could not get into the best state schools because they did not live in the catchment area. The study also found that many parents did not want to send children several miles to sought-after schools, preferring the local comprehensive irrespective of quality. "While the choice advice service has delivered a valuable service to a few needy families, the proportion helped was so small it could not make any significant impact on the larger process of segregation of schools and therefore had a minimal impact on the fairness of admissions," it found.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "We’ve outlawed covert selection and given all parents a fair and equal chance to get into a school of their choice through the mandatory admissions code. Choice advisers target families that need the most help with the application and appeal process – it was never designed to deliver fair access for all parents so it is disingenuous for this research to claim it was.
"Parents now have more choice because there are undeniably more good schools and standards have gone up across the board.The vast majority of parents will get a place at a school of their choice - most at their first choice school. We have given the admissions watchdog real teeth to police the system and crack down on unfair admissions.”
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Australia: Only one State is set to use the best method of teaching kids how to read
The amazing defiance by teachers of all the research evidence shows how deeply they are involved with the most destructive elements of the Left: Simplistic theories must triumph, no matter how much havoc they cause. And the havoc wreaked on literacy has been extreme, with many kids years behind where they could be in reading ability.
FOUR years after the national inquiry into teaching reading, one Australian government has finally embraced the key recommendation that children be taught the sounds that make up words as an essential first step in learning to read. The NSW government has released literacy teaching guides incorporating the latest research evidence on the best way to teach reading. The guides mandate that children from the first years of school be explicitly taught the sounds of letters and how to blend and manipulate sounds to form words in daily 10 to 20-minute sessions.
The guides set out key principles for teachers to follow in reading instruction, stipulating that phonics need to be taught to a level where children can automatically recall the knowledge. They also debunk "common myths" about phonics that "have almost become accepted as truths", including that "phonics knowledge is caught, not taught" or that having a sound of the week is an effective way of teaching. Devised in response to the 2005 national review on teaching reading, the NSW guidelines were yesterday lauded as the benchmark for the rest of the country.
A bitter debate has raged for the past three decades over the teaching of reading, with the proponents of phonics pitted against those favouring the "whole language" method, which emphasises other skills instead of sounding words.
Whole language advocates encourage students faced with an unfamiliar word to look at the other words in the sentence, the picture on the page or the shape of the letters rather than by "sounding out" the word. The national review, released after an inquiry led by the late educational researcher Ken Rowe, was one of three large international studies in the past decade to examine all the evidence about teaching reading, including an earlier US report and Britain's Rose report, completed in 2006.
All three reviews concluded the same thing, that teaching children phonics and how to blend sounds to make words was a necessary first step in learning to read, but not the only skill required.
The Australian inquiry was prompted by a letter from reading researchers and cognitive psychologists, many based at Macquarie University, concerned about the state of literacy teaching in the nation. One of the signatories to the letter, Macquarie University professor Max Coltheart, yesterday said the NSW guides were entirely consistent with the recommendations of the reading inquiry and that "Ken Rowe would have been delighted". Professor Coltheart called on the other states and territories to follow NSW's lead.
Jim Rose, author of the British report and now reviewing the English primary curriculum for the British government, praised the NSW guides for "establishing the essential importance of phonics". "It provides some firm guidance for principals and teachers rather than leaving them to reinvent reading instruction, school by school," Sir Jim said.
The assistant principal and kindergarten teacher at Miranda Public School in Sydney's south, Susan Orlovich, has already started using the guides in teaching her students. "For the first time, we have really clear materials and guidelines for setting up an early literacy program that's integrated and balanced but ensures we also teach phonics and phonemic awareness explicitly and systematically," she said. Ms Orlovich said the guides had struck the right balance between teaching the skills necessary to sound out words and decode the alphabet, and comprehension with students being able to write their own words. They also gave teachers strategies for students at different stages in recognition that some already understand the phonemic basis of language.
"Some kids can learn with whole language, and make those connections and do phonemic substitution, so if they know how to write 'look', they can write 'book'," she said. "Some kids are able to make that substitution without being taught, but for other students, you need to teach them explicitly, make it visual for them."
In an interview with The Australian during a visit to Australia last week, Sir Jim said the simple view of reading was that it had two dimensions, comprehension and word recognition. While teaching sounds is often denigrated by the whole language side of the reading debate as a decoding skill unnecessary to be able to read, Sir Jim said it was essential children knew how the alphabet worked and that it was a code to be understood. "It's not just barking at print, although that is a stage you go through," he said.
Professor Coltheart, said he understood the new national English curriculum being written would include extensive material on the teaching of phonics in the early years of school, including phonemic awareness in the first year. "This alignment between the national curriculum and the NSW guides for teachers is going to be of enormous benefit for the state's young children. I hope other states will be following in NSW's footsteps," he said.
Sir Jim said the reading debate was a false dichotomy and the two sides had more in common than the extremists were prepared to recognise. "A picture has emerged from the research that is overwhelmingly clear; I can't see any conflict, they're closer than they admit," he said. "I don't understand why they can't accept good evidence that would enrich both sides."
The NSW Education Department has produced two guides, one focused specifically on phonics and a companion guide on phonemic awareness, or the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds that make up words. In response to the myth that phonics knowledge is "caught, not taught", the guide says letter-sound correspondences are arbitrary and therefore difficult to discover without explicit teaching. "Left to chance or inference alone, many students would acquire phonics knowledge too slowly or fail to learn it at all," it says.
Another myth debunked is that teaching phonics impedes student comprehension by having them rely too much on "decoding" rather than "reading for meaning", resulting in students "barking at print" without understanding what they're reading. "Effective phonics teaching supports students to readily recognise and produce familiar words accurately and effortlessly and to identify and produce words that are new to them. Developing automatic word recognition will support and enhance students' comprehension skills," the guide says.
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Students beware: The summer vacation you just enjoyed could be sharply curtailed if President Barack Obama gets his way. Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe. "Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."
The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go. "Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
Fifth-grader Nakany Camara is of two minds. She likes the four-week summer program at her school, Brookhaven Elementary School in Rockville, Md. Nakany enjoys seeing her friends there and thinks summer school helped boost her grades from two Cs to the honor roll. But she doesn't want a longer school day. "I would walk straight out the door," she said.
Domonique Toombs felt the same way when she learned she would stay for an extra three hours each day in sixth grade at Boston's Clarence R. Edwards Middle School. "I was like, `Wow, are you serious?'" she said. "That's three more hours I won't be able to chill with my friends after school."
Her school is part of a 3-year-old state initiative to add 300 hours of school time in nearly two dozen schools. Early results are positive. Even reluctant Domonique, who just started ninth grade, feels differently now. "I've learned a lot," she said.
Does Obama want every kid to do these things? School until dinnertime? Summer school? And what about the idea that kids today are overscheduled and need more time to play?
Obama and Duncan say kids in the United States need more school because kids in other nations have more school. "Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here," Duncan told the AP. "I want to just level the playing field."
While it is true that kids in many other countries have more school days, it's not true they all spend more time in school. Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).
Regardless, there is a strong case for adding time to the school day. Researcher Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution looked at math scores in countries that added math instruction time. Scores rose significantly, especially in countries that added minutes to the day, rather than days to the year. "Ten minutes sounds trivial to a school day, but don't forget, these math periods in the U.S. average 45 minutes," Loveless said. "Percentage-wise, that's a pretty healthy increase."
In the U.S., there are many examples of gains when time is added to the school day. Charter schools are known for having longer school days or weeks or years. For example, kids in the KIPP network of 82 charter schools across the country go to school from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., more than three hours longer than the typical day. They go to school every other Saturday and for three weeks in the summer. KIPP eighth-grade classes exceed their school district averages on state tests.
In Massachusetts' expanded learning time initiative, early results indicate that kids in some schools do better on state tests than do kids at regular public schools. The extra time, which schools can add as hours or days, is for three things: core academics — kids struggling in English, for example, get an extra English class; more time for teachers; and enrichment time for kids.
Regular public schools are adding time, too, though it is optional and not usually part of the regular school day. Their calendar is pretty much set in stone. Most states set the minimum number of school days at 180 days, though a few require 175 to 179 days. Several schools are going year-round by shortening summer vacation and lengthening other breaks.
Many schools are going beyond the traditional summer school model, in which schools give remedial help to kids who flunked or fell behind. Summer is a crucial time for kids, especially poorer kids, because poverty is linked to problems that interfere with learning, such as hunger and less involvement by their parents. That makes poor children almost totally dependent on their learning experience at school, said Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, home of the National Center for Summer Learning.
Disadvantaged kids, on the whole, make no progress in the summer, Alexander said. Some studies suggest they actually fall back. Wealthier kids have parents who read to them, have strong language skills and go to great lengths to give them learning opportunities such as computers, summer camp, vacations, music lessons, or playing on sports teams. "If your parents are high school dropouts with low literacy levels and reading for pleasure is not hard-wired, it's hard to be a good role model for your children, even if you really want to be," Alexander said.
Extra time is not cheap. The Massachusetts program costs an extra $1,300 per student, or 12 percent to 15 percent more than regular per-student spending, said Jennifer Davis, a founder of the program. It received more than $17.5 million from the state Legislature last year. The Montgomery County, Md., summer program, which includes Brookhaven, received $1.6 million in federal stimulus dollars to operate this year and next, but it runs for only 20 days.
Aside from improving academic performance, Education Secretary Duncan has a vision of schools as the heart of the community. Duncan, who was Chicago's schools chief, grew up studying alongside poor kids on the city's South Side as part of the tutoring program his mother still runs. "Those hours from 3 o'clock to 7 o'clock are times of high anxiety for parents," Duncan said. "They want their children safe. Families are working one and two and three jobs now to make ends meet and to keep food on the table."
SOURCE
British school admissions reforms 'failing'
A £15m Labour plan to get poor pupils into the best state schools has had a “minimal effect”, according to research. But if it had succeeded, the schools concerned would no longer be "best". Feral students will destroy any school in the absence of strict discipline and strict discipline is a distant memory in British schools
The reforms – introduced in 2006 – have benefited less than one child in 100 and are just as likely to help pupils from middle-class families, it was disclosed. Every local council in England is required to run a team of “choice advisers” to make the school admissions system fairer.
Under plans, they are supposed to advise parents about secondary school admissions policies, help them fill out forms and provide information on uniform policies, the curriculum, term dates, travel details and understanding league tables and Ofsted reports.
Launching the programme four years ago, ministers said they would “have a real impact on ensuring that all parents are armed with the information they need to find the right school for their child”. They were introduced alongside a more stringent system of school admissions rules to stop head teachers selecting bright pupils from middle-class backgrounds.
But a study by Sheffield Hallam University said the high-profile reforms had an “incommensurate” impact. “The proportion of children benefiting from the service is, and in any likely policy context could only ever be, tiny,” it said. “While it substantially benefited a small group of parents, some of whom were very needy, it had a minimal effect on the numbers of poorer parents gaining entry to the more popular schools.”
This year, one in six children failed to get into their preferred secondary school. In some areas, such as London, where parents face the stiffest competition for places, up to half of 11-year-olds missed out.
Researchers led by Professor John Coldron, from the centre for education and inclusion research, studied the impact of choice advisers in 15 local authorities. The report said 73,000 children transferred between primary and secondary schools in the affected areas but only 602 had contact with a choice adviser. It represented 0.8 per cent of parents, but only half of those were from the poorest families, the study said.
Researchers suggested other parents taking advantage of the additional help were from middle-class backgrounds. “We dubbed them ‘well-informed, but anxious’,” said Prof Coldron. “They were parents who wanted to ensure no stone was left unturned in their attempt to make sure children got into the best schools.”
The report said the initiative had failed because it ignored the fact that postcode was the “main driver” of school “segregation”. It suggested that – even with the help of advisers – many poor families could not get into the best state schools because they did not live in the catchment area. The study also found that many parents did not want to send children several miles to sought-after schools, preferring the local comprehensive irrespective of quality. "While the choice advice service has delivered a valuable service to a few needy families, the proportion helped was so small it could not make any significant impact on the larger process of segregation of schools and therefore had a minimal impact on the fairness of admissions," it found.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "We’ve outlawed covert selection and given all parents a fair and equal chance to get into a school of their choice through the mandatory admissions code. Choice advisers target families that need the most help with the application and appeal process – it was never designed to deliver fair access for all parents so it is disingenuous for this research to claim it was.
"Parents now have more choice because there are undeniably more good schools and standards have gone up across the board.The vast majority of parents will get a place at a school of their choice - most at their first choice school. We have given the admissions watchdog real teeth to police the system and crack down on unfair admissions.”
SOURCE
Australia: Only one State is set to use the best method of teaching kids how to read
The amazing defiance by teachers of all the research evidence shows how deeply they are involved with the most destructive elements of the Left: Simplistic theories must triumph, no matter how much havoc they cause. And the havoc wreaked on literacy has been extreme, with many kids years behind where they could be in reading ability.
FOUR years after the national inquiry into teaching reading, one Australian government has finally embraced the key recommendation that children be taught the sounds that make up words as an essential first step in learning to read. The NSW government has released literacy teaching guides incorporating the latest research evidence on the best way to teach reading. The guides mandate that children from the first years of school be explicitly taught the sounds of letters and how to blend and manipulate sounds to form words in daily 10 to 20-minute sessions.
The guides set out key principles for teachers to follow in reading instruction, stipulating that phonics need to be taught to a level where children can automatically recall the knowledge. They also debunk "common myths" about phonics that "have almost become accepted as truths", including that "phonics knowledge is caught, not taught" or that having a sound of the week is an effective way of teaching. Devised in response to the 2005 national review on teaching reading, the NSW guidelines were yesterday lauded as the benchmark for the rest of the country.
A bitter debate has raged for the past three decades over the teaching of reading, with the proponents of phonics pitted against those favouring the "whole language" method, which emphasises other skills instead of sounding words.
Whole language advocates encourage students faced with an unfamiliar word to look at the other words in the sentence, the picture on the page or the shape of the letters rather than by "sounding out" the word. The national review, released after an inquiry led by the late educational researcher Ken Rowe, was one of three large international studies in the past decade to examine all the evidence about teaching reading, including an earlier US report and Britain's Rose report, completed in 2006.
All three reviews concluded the same thing, that teaching children phonics and how to blend sounds to make words was a necessary first step in learning to read, but not the only skill required.
The Australian inquiry was prompted by a letter from reading researchers and cognitive psychologists, many based at Macquarie University, concerned about the state of literacy teaching in the nation. One of the signatories to the letter, Macquarie University professor Max Coltheart, yesterday said the NSW guides were entirely consistent with the recommendations of the reading inquiry and that "Ken Rowe would have been delighted". Professor Coltheart called on the other states and territories to follow NSW's lead.
Jim Rose, author of the British report and now reviewing the English primary curriculum for the British government, praised the NSW guides for "establishing the essential importance of phonics". "It provides some firm guidance for principals and teachers rather than leaving them to reinvent reading instruction, school by school," Sir Jim said.
The assistant principal and kindergarten teacher at Miranda Public School in Sydney's south, Susan Orlovich, has already started using the guides in teaching her students. "For the first time, we have really clear materials and guidelines for setting up an early literacy program that's integrated and balanced but ensures we also teach phonics and phonemic awareness explicitly and systematically," she said. Ms Orlovich said the guides had struck the right balance between teaching the skills necessary to sound out words and decode the alphabet, and comprehension with students being able to write their own words. They also gave teachers strategies for students at different stages in recognition that some already understand the phonemic basis of language.
"Some kids can learn with whole language, and make those connections and do phonemic substitution, so if they know how to write 'look', they can write 'book'," she said. "Some kids are able to make that substitution without being taught, but for other students, you need to teach them explicitly, make it visual for them."
In an interview with The Australian during a visit to Australia last week, Sir Jim said the simple view of reading was that it had two dimensions, comprehension and word recognition. While teaching sounds is often denigrated by the whole language side of the reading debate as a decoding skill unnecessary to be able to read, Sir Jim said it was essential children knew how the alphabet worked and that it was a code to be understood. "It's not just barking at print, although that is a stage you go through," he said.
Professor Coltheart, said he understood the new national English curriculum being written would include extensive material on the teaching of phonics in the early years of school, including phonemic awareness in the first year. "This alignment between the national curriculum and the NSW guides for teachers is going to be of enormous benefit for the state's young children. I hope other states will be following in NSW's footsteps," he said.
Sir Jim said the reading debate was a false dichotomy and the two sides had more in common than the extremists were prepared to recognise. "A picture has emerged from the research that is overwhelmingly clear; I can't see any conflict, they're closer than they admit," he said. "I don't understand why they can't accept good evidence that would enrich both sides."
The NSW Education Department has produced two guides, one focused specifically on phonics and a companion guide on phonemic awareness, or the ability to hear and manipulate the sounds that make up words. In response to the myth that phonics knowledge is "caught, not taught", the guide says letter-sound correspondences are arbitrary and therefore difficult to discover without explicit teaching. "Left to chance or inference alone, many students would acquire phonics knowledge too slowly or fail to learn it at all," it says.
Another myth debunked is that teaching phonics impedes student comprehension by having them rely too much on "decoding" rather than "reading for meaning", resulting in students "barking at print" without understanding what they're reading. "Effective phonics teaching supports students to readily recognise and produce familiar words accurately and effortlessly and to identify and produce words that are new to them. Developing automatic word recognition will support and enhance students' comprehension skills," the guide says.
SOURCE
Costly Lessons in America
How traditional universities rip students off
By RICHARD VEDDER
In a typical year over the past generation, the cost of attending college has risen at about double the rate of inflation. Family incomes have not kept pace. And despite huge increases in federal financial assistance, the proportion of lower-income Americans in the college population has actually declined over the past 30 years.
The other sector that has seen comparable inflation over the past generation is health care, and this is no accident. In both sectors, government intervention largely neuters the ability of markets to allocate resources efficiently, by establishing third parties (neither consumers nor producers) that pay many of the bills. When that happens, the consumer is not very sensitive to prices, and consumes wastefully. For these and other reasons, a good argument can made that we are overinvested, or at least mal-invested, in higher education.
Compounding the problem, over 90 percent of American higher education is nonprofit. Nonprofit institutions lack incentives to be efficient. The officers of for-profit entities work hard to do two things: increase revenues and reduce costs. But there is no well-defined bottom line in nonprofit higher education. Is Yale having a good year in 2009? Who knows?
For-profit corporations compete to win new customers and despair when they lose market share. But in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, higher scores come from turning customers away — in the form of a lower acceptance rate. Supply therefore tends to be rigid and unresponsive to demand at many of the nation’s best-known colleges and universities. Moreover, with third parties paying part or all of the bills (via government and private “scholarships,” subsidized loans, and subsidies of institutions), schools can often raise fees without dire financial or academic consequences. In particular, they sock it to more affluent customers — whose financial condition they know in exquisite detail, thanks to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which requires a level of disclosure unique in American consumer life.
The supply of educational institutions is itself rigid. Accreditation organizations have restricted the ability of innovative education entrepreneurs to enter the market. The for-profit higher-education sector costs less and, perhaps ironically, disproportionately serves the low-income, first-generation university students whom premier universities have largely abandoned.
In addition, perverse incentives for administrators and students often increase costs. It is often ambiguous who actually runs the school — the university trustees? Top administrators? Faculty? Students? The alumni and major donors? Tenured faculty and their deans usually control the curriculum and can make life miserable for university presidents. The presidents, to buy peace, give the faculty nice salaries and benefits, light teaching loads, and good parking, and maintain low-demand academic programs that should be axed. Students are given fancy country-club-like facilities in which to live and play, and a curriculum of decreasing rigor (average GPAs on a four-point scale have risen from about 2.5 to around 3.1 or 3.2 over the past 50 years), as well as the opportunity to lead lives focused on partying, booze, and sex. The alumni’s favorite collegiate entertainments, typically sporting events, are heavily subsidized. In short, everyone who is part of the “shared governance” of universities is paid off. To make things worse, decisions are often made by committee in a costly, bureaucratic fashion.
Allow me to offer a personal anecdote of university inefficiency at work. In a weak moment a quarter of a century ago, I agreed to be a department chairman. I conned my dean into letting me hire a new faculty member, meaning that 17 people now did what 16 had done before. In other words, the department’s productivity fell — yet I was nicely rewarded for my efforts, since my compensation was based partly on peer evaluations and my colleagues were grateful to have less work. (In what other business do employees have partial control over their boss’s salary, and even a say in who their boss is?)
Universities do little to measure what students learn, and it is hard to assess the value of their research, so good estimates of academic productivity are hard to come by. Nonetheless, under almost any reasonable assumptions, it is lower than it was 40 years ago — and it is certainly not higher. Yet over the past 30 years or so, the number of non-instructional university employees, adjusted for changing enrollment, has roughly doubled. My university has a sustainability coordinator, a recycling coordinator, and umpteen diversity and public-relations specialists — almost none of whose posts existed when I began teaching. How much do they improve the instructional and research programs? Not at all.
Speaking of research, much of it achieves only trivial refinements of insignificant issues, and is produced for a nearly nonexistent audience. Jeff Sandefer of the Acton School of Business estimates that an academic-journal article costs on average $50,000 — and is read by 200 people. That’s $250 per reader. Mark Bauerlein of Emory University notes that over 22,000 articles about the works of Shakespeare have appeared since 1980. Are there that many new and insightful thoughts to be had about the Bard? Have not diminishing returns set in — for this topic and many others?
More generally, statistical analysis from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity suggests that the correlation between economic growth and state-government appropriations for higher education is negative — i.e., resources are taken from the highly productive for-profit sector and reallocated to relatively inefficient universities, retarding growth. As the late Milton Friedman said to me a few years before he died, perhaps he was wrong in his early writings, and instead of subsidizing higher education we should tax it.
The solutions? Reduce, do not increase, the federal student-loan programs that have raised both demand and prices. Give money directly to students, rather than to institutions, and restrict aid programs to those who are truly needy and perform well (40 percent of students do not graduate within six years; support should be cut off after four years of full-time undergraduate study). Substitute a system of good consumer information for most of the current accreditation process, which stifles competition. Make it easier for students to transfer between institutions, and favor lower-cost community colleges that are not as afflicted with the ailments described above. Develop non-university programs for certifying vocational competence — for example, tests similar to the CPA examination.
More radically, a strong case can be made that higher education is a truly private good, that the positive spillover effects of universities are vastly overrated or even nonexistent, and that government should get out of higher education altogether. In short, we should implement roughly the opposite of the strategy favored by policymakers in Washington and most of our states.
SOURCE
British science uptake figures are 'science fiction', says report
Lies never stop from a Leftist regime
Labour has been accused of fiddling the figures on the number of students studying science and maths, covering up the nation's skills crisis. The Government has trumpeted a "significant increase" in the numbers of pupils taking separate GCSEs in physics, chemistry and biology.
But a new report claims the rise is accounted for, in part, by the growth in the number of 16-year-olds, while the proportion studying science A-levels has dropped since 1997. At university level, big increases in the number of undergraduates studying science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects are also a "fiction", according to the study.
The Government now includes as "science", courses such as nutrition and complementary medicine, geography studies, sports science, nursing and psychology, even though in dozens of universities it is classed as an arts degree. "The Government is deliberately trying to make the statistics on STEM subjects appear better than they really are," said Anna Fazackerley, the head of education at the Policy Exchange think tank, which produced the report. "This must stop. We must have a sound picture, based on consistent and meaningful data, of what is really happening to these skills in our schools and universities."
Industry experts insist that Britain need more science skills if it is compete internationally. According to the Confederation of British Industry, 92 per cent of firms across all sectors require employees with science, technology engineering and maths skills but nearly two thirds have problems finding them. By 2014, there will be more than two million extra jobs which need STEM skills.
Ministers have acknowledged their importance and in 2007 designated STEM as "strategically important subjects" to the economy. Since then, they have claimed success in boosting the numbers studying the subjects. But the new report, due to be published tomorrow, said the figures do no stand up to scrutiny.
In 2006, Gordon Brown pledged that all children achieving high grades in science tests at 14 would be "entitled" to study three separate sciences at GCSE. But less than half of state schools entered at least one pupils for the traditional science GCSEs last year. [Not even ONE student!] The percentage of pupils studying three separate sciences barely improved from 1997 to 2007, rising from 6 per cent to 8 per cent. Instead, the vast majority of pupils take a single science GCSE which focuses on scientific literacy and issues that are in the public eye, such as global warming and mobile phone technology.
Teachers and academics warned that the qualification, taken for the first time in 2008, was a "dumbed down" version, needing little scientific knowledge and understanding. One question in a recent science paper asked "why is wireless technology useful?" - the correct answer was: "no wiring is needed". Earlier this year, the exam regulator Ofqual admitted there were serious problems with the exam and ordered it to be redesigned.
At A-level, the percentage of pupils taking biology, chemistry and physics has actually fallen since 1997. In 2008, 6.5 per cent of students were studying biology, down from 7.2 per cent in 1997, while 4.9 were studying chemistry, down from 5.5 per cent. The proportion studying physics fell from 4.3 per cent to 3.3 per cent in 2008.
University level STEM subjects seemed to be rising. The number enrolled has grown from 370,000 to 515,000 in just over a decade. Even when converted to a percentage, they are still increasing, from 38 per cent in 1997 to 42 per cent in 2008. But analysis by the think tank shows that study of the traditional subjects of biology, chemistry and physics has barely changed over this period. Biology has actually fallen, from 13,923 students in 1997 to 12,515 in 2008. The dramatic increase in science numbers has been driven partly by the growth in new subjects and the manipulation of what counts as science.
The Government's classification is now much broader and includes subjects such as sports science, forensic science and complementary medicine. Psychology students have been included as "biological science" students since 2003, adding more than 13,000 students to the STEM total. Even students at universities which classify psychology as an arts degree are included.
SOURCE
Britain: University terms begins again, and the Chinese are back
I was in Sainsbury’s yesterday afternoon. Looking around me I might have been in Guangzhou Tesco. The occasional foreigner (as they will insist on calling us, even in our own country), but otherwise wall-to-wall the sons and daughters of the Middle Kingdom. And then I remembered; it is the end of September, and I live in a small university town.
Yes, around this time of year we go Chinese. I merely observe; I have no racist reactions, and nor does anyone else. Firstly, this is the era of globalisation; virtually a quarter of the world’s population is Chinese, and why shouldn’t that be the case here? Secondly, these are all bright and valuable undergraduate and postgraduate students; they’re not on the dole, and if you get beaten up late at night it won’t be one of them who does it. No doubt they keep our university afloat with the fees they pay. (Economists often complain about the high Chinese savings rate; I wonder if they realise what a large proportion of those savings go to British and American universities, to educate the savers’ grandchildren.)
The strange thing is that Chinese universities are riding high in the world rankings. Only the very best UK/US places of learning can compete with the best of Beijing and Shanghai. So why are so many Chinese parents so keen to send their kids to our universities?
Partly, of course, because the top universities in Beijing and Shanghai are not so easy to get into. The word is that it doesn’t exactly depend on school results. Natives of those cities enjoy a built-in advantage, and good connections also help. Chinese who don’t enjoy these advantages feel better off sending their kids to Western universities than second-rate Chinese ones. Western education, you see, still carries a certain innate cachet. In a society where “face” is everything, it’s interesting to see that our products are seen as automatically superior, however debased we may sometimes feel it is. The Chinese theoretically believe their culture is superior to all others; but they are voting with their feet, or at least their children’s and grandchildren’s feet – and long may it remain so.
SOURCE
How traditional universities rip students off
By RICHARD VEDDER
In a typical year over the past generation, the cost of attending college has risen at about double the rate of inflation. Family incomes have not kept pace. And despite huge increases in federal financial assistance, the proportion of lower-income Americans in the college population has actually declined over the past 30 years.
The other sector that has seen comparable inflation over the past generation is health care, and this is no accident. In both sectors, government intervention largely neuters the ability of markets to allocate resources efficiently, by establishing third parties (neither consumers nor producers) that pay many of the bills. When that happens, the consumer is not very sensitive to prices, and consumes wastefully. For these and other reasons, a good argument can made that we are overinvested, or at least mal-invested, in higher education.
Compounding the problem, over 90 percent of American higher education is nonprofit. Nonprofit institutions lack incentives to be efficient. The officers of for-profit entities work hard to do two things: increase revenues and reduce costs. But there is no well-defined bottom line in nonprofit higher education. Is Yale having a good year in 2009? Who knows?
For-profit corporations compete to win new customers and despair when they lose market share. But in the U.S. News & World Report rankings, higher scores come from turning customers away — in the form of a lower acceptance rate. Supply therefore tends to be rigid and unresponsive to demand at many of the nation’s best-known colleges and universities. Moreover, with third parties paying part or all of the bills (via government and private “scholarships,” subsidized loans, and subsidies of institutions), schools can often raise fees without dire financial or academic consequences. In particular, they sock it to more affluent customers — whose financial condition they know in exquisite detail, thanks to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which requires a level of disclosure unique in American consumer life.
The supply of educational institutions is itself rigid. Accreditation organizations have restricted the ability of innovative education entrepreneurs to enter the market. The for-profit higher-education sector costs less and, perhaps ironically, disproportionately serves the low-income, first-generation university students whom premier universities have largely abandoned.
In addition, perverse incentives for administrators and students often increase costs. It is often ambiguous who actually runs the school — the university trustees? Top administrators? Faculty? Students? The alumni and major donors? Tenured faculty and their deans usually control the curriculum and can make life miserable for university presidents. The presidents, to buy peace, give the faculty nice salaries and benefits, light teaching loads, and good parking, and maintain low-demand academic programs that should be axed. Students are given fancy country-club-like facilities in which to live and play, and a curriculum of decreasing rigor (average GPAs on a four-point scale have risen from about 2.5 to around 3.1 or 3.2 over the past 50 years), as well as the opportunity to lead lives focused on partying, booze, and sex. The alumni’s favorite collegiate entertainments, typically sporting events, are heavily subsidized. In short, everyone who is part of the “shared governance” of universities is paid off. To make things worse, decisions are often made by committee in a costly, bureaucratic fashion.
Allow me to offer a personal anecdote of university inefficiency at work. In a weak moment a quarter of a century ago, I agreed to be a department chairman. I conned my dean into letting me hire a new faculty member, meaning that 17 people now did what 16 had done before. In other words, the department’s productivity fell — yet I was nicely rewarded for my efforts, since my compensation was based partly on peer evaluations and my colleagues were grateful to have less work. (In what other business do employees have partial control over their boss’s salary, and even a say in who their boss is?)
Universities do little to measure what students learn, and it is hard to assess the value of their research, so good estimates of academic productivity are hard to come by. Nonetheless, under almost any reasonable assumptions, it is lower than it was 40 years ago — and it is certainly not higher. Yet over the past 30 years or so, the number of non-instructional university employees, adjusted for changing enrollment, has roughly doubled. My university has a sustainability coordinator, a recycling coordinator, and umpteen diversity and public-relations specialists — almost none of whose posts existed when I began teaching. How much do they improve the instructional and research programs? Not at all.
Speaking of research, much of it achieves only trivial refinements of insignificant issues, and is produced for a nearly nonexistent audience. Jeff Sandefer of the Acton School of Business estimates that an academic-journal article costs on average $50,000 — and is read by 200 people. That’s $250 per reader. Mark Bauerlein of Emory University notes that over 22,000 articles about the works of Shakespeare have appeared since 1980. Are there that many new and insightful thoughts to be had about the Bard? Have not diminishing returns set in — for this topic and many others?
More generally, statistical analysis from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity suggests that the correlation between economic growth and state-government appropriations for higher education is negative — i.e., resources are taken from the highly productive for-profit sector and reallocated to relatively inefficient universities, retarding growth. As the late Milton Friedman said to me a few years before he died, perhaps he was wrong in his early writings, and instead of subsidizing higher education we should tax it.
The solutions? Reduce, do not increase, the federal student-loan programs that have raised both demand and prices. Give money directly to students, rather than to institutions, and restrict aid programs to those who are truly needy and perform well (40 percent of students do not graduate within six years; support should be cut off after four years of full-time undergraduate study). Substitute a system of good consumer information for most of the current accreditation process, which stifles competition. Make it easier for students to transfer between institutions, and favor lower-cost community colleges that are not as afflicted with the ailments described above. Develop non-university programs for certifying vocational competence — for example, tests similar to the CPA examination.
More radically, a strong case can be made that higher education is a truly private good, that the positive spillover effects of universities are vastly overrated or even nonexistent, and that government should get out of higher education altogether. In short, we should implement roughly the opposite of the strategy favored by policymakers in Washington and most of our states.
SOURCE
British science uptake figures are 'science fiction', says report
Lies never stop from a Leftist regime
Labour has been accused of fiddling the figures on the number of students studying science and maths, covering up the nation's skills crisis. The Government has trumpeted a "significant increase" in the numbers of pupils taking separate GCSEs in physics, chemistry and biology.
But a new report claims the rise is accounted for, in part, by the growth in the number of 16-year-olds, while the proportion studying science A-levels has dropped since 1997. At university level, big increases in the number of undergraduates studying science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects are also a "fiction", according to the study.
The Government now includes as "science", courses such as nutrition and complementary medicine, geography studies, sports science, nursing and psychology, even though in dozens of universities it is classed as an arts degree. "The Government is deliberately trying to make the statistics on STEM subjects appear better than they really are," said Anna Fazackerley, the head of education at the Policy Exchange think tank, which produced the report. "This must stop. We must have a sound picture, based on consistent and meaningful data, of what is really happening to these skills in our schools and universities."
Industry experts insist that Britain need more science skills if it is compete internationally. According to the Confederation of British Industry, 92 per cent of firms across all sectors require employees with science, technology engineering and maths skills but nearly two thirds have problems finding them. By 2014, there will be more than two million extra jobs which need STEM skills.
Ministers have acknowledged their importance and in 2007 designated STEM as "strategically important subjects" to the economy. Since then, they have claimed success in boosting the numbers studying the subjects. But the new report, due to be published tomorrow, said the figures do no stand up to scrutiny.
In 2006, Gordon Brown pledged that all children achieving high grades in science tests at 14 would be "entitled" to study three separate sciences at GCSE. But less than half of state schools entered at least one pupils for the traditional science GCSEs last year. [Not even ONE student!] The percentage of pupils studying three separate sciences barely improved from 1997 to 2007, rising from 6 per cent to 8 per cent. Instead, the vast majority of pupils take a single science GCSE which focuses on scientific literacy and issues that are in the public eye, such as global warming and mobile phone technology.
Teachers and academics warned that the qualification, taken for the first time in 2008, was a "dumbed down" version, needing little scientific knowledge and understanding. One question in a recent science paper asked "why is wireless technology useful?" - the correct answer was: "no wiring is needed". Earlier this year, the exam regulator Ofqual admitted there were serious problems with the exam and ordered it to be redesigned.
At A-level, the percentage of pupils taking biology, chemistry and physics has actually fallen since 1997. In 2008, 6.5 per cent of students were studying biology, down from 7.2 per cent in 1997, while 4.9 were studying chemistry, down from 5.5 per cent. The proportion studying physics fell from 4.3 per cent to 3.3 per cent in 2008.
University level STEM subjects seemed to be rising. The number enrolled has grown from 370,000 to 515,000 in just over a decade. Even when converted to a percentage, they are still increasing, from 38 per cent in 1997 to 42 per cent in 2008. But analysis by the think tank shows that study of the traditional subjects of biology, chemistry and physics has barely changed over this period. Biology has actually fallen, from 13,923 students in 1997 to 12,515 in 2008. The dramatic increase in science numbers has been driven partly by the growth in new subjects and the manipulation of what counts as science.
The Government's classification is now much broader and includes subjects such as sports science, forensic science and complementary medicine. Psychology students have been included as "biological science" students since 2003, adding more than 13,000 students to the STEM total. Even students at universities which classify psychology as an arts degree are included.
SOURCE
Britain: University terms begins again, and the Chinese are back
I was in Sainsbury’s yesterday afternoon. Looking around me I might have been in Guangzhou Tesco. The occasional foreigner (as they will insist on calling us, even in our own country), but otherwise wall-to-wall the sons and daughters of the Middle Kingdom. And then I remembered; it is the end of September, and I live in a small university town.
Yes, around this time of year we go Chinese. I merely observe; I have no racist reactions, and nor does anyone else. Firstly, this is the era of globalisation; virtually a quarter of the world’s population is Chinese, and why shouldn’t that be the case here? Secondly, these are all bright and valuable undergraduate and postgraduate students; they’re not on the dole, and if you get beaten up late at night it won’t be one of them who does it. No doubt they keep our university afloat with the fees they pay. (Economists often complain about the high Chinese savings rate; I wonder if they realise what a large proportion of those savings go to British and American universities, to educate the savers’ grandchildren.)
The strange thing is that Chinese universities are riding high in the world rankings. Only the very best UK/US places of learning can compete with the best of Beijing and Shanghai. So why are so many Chinese parents so keen to send their kids to our universities?
Partly, of course, because the top universities in Beijing and Shanghai are not so easy to get into. The word is that it doesn’t exactly depend on school results. Natives of those cities enjoy a built-in advantage, and good connections also help. Chinese who don’t enjoy these advantages feel better off sending their kids to Western universities than second-rate Chinese ones. Western education, you see, still carries a certain innate cachet. In a society where “face” is everything, it’s interesting to see that our products are seen as automatically superior, however debased we may sometimes feel it is. The Chinese theoretically believe their culture is superior to all others; but they are voting with their feet, or at least their children’s and grandchildren’s feet – and long may it remain so.
SOURCE
America’s institutions of higher learning: The idiot factory
Did you know our public universities are producing idiots? PajamasTV’s Steven Crowder goes undercover exposing UC Berkeley’s liberal bias and the indoctrination underway in its classrooms. You won’t believe the hilarious and alarming interactions Steven has with the Berkeley students.
You’ll notice that the most popular president on the campus of UC Berkley is Abraham Lincoln (probably the most hard-to-miss president in U.S. history). Most aren’t sure what political party he belonged to. (Remember, these are college-educated people at a top-rated university–explains a lot, doesn’t it?)
When it comes to the Great Depression (wow!), you know, “the first one,” there isn’t a wealth of knowledge about its causes at this high-rated institute of higher learning. There is also a dearth of knowledge about firearms and the Second Amendment.
Here’s one of my favorites: “The Second Amendment was written in a very different time, socially. It was a time when people lived mostly rural lives, and it was also a time after a huge rebellion against an ‘unjust’ government.” When Crowder asks him about his gesture of quotations around “unjust,” the kid replies, “There were some pressures put on the American people that maybe were unjustified but I also think that those revolutionary people in American history were maybe blowing those issues up a little more.”
There you have it from the young voice of the Left: the United States shouldn’t even be here, because the founders made a mountain out of a molehill. (I wonder if he’s read the Declaration of Independence for himself).
This would actually explain a lot about liberals. If they look at the abuses of the people by a king thousands of miles away and say “Chill, bruh,” then perhaps it’s no wonder they look at the abuses of our own government and its attacks on freedom and say, “What’s the big deal, dude?”
(Don’t forget to look at some of the ultra-Leftist tshirts on some of these recipients of too much of someone else’s hard-earned money)
SOURCE. (See original for video)
Some British students go to America for more generalist degrees and keener teaching
Growing numbers of school-leavers are going to the United States to take their degrees because of “apathetic teaching” and “faceless, sprawling campuses” at too many British universities, a leading head teacher will warn this week. Andrew Halls, headmaster of King’s college school in Wimbledon, south London, believes there is a “growing sense of panic” about whether British universities are places of learning or “vocational conveyor belts” for job applicants.
The vehemence of his comments is rare among head teachers, who are often deterred from speaking publicly by fear that negative remarks may damage the university chances of their pupils. Halls, whose independent school is ranked 18th in the country in The Sunday Times Parent Power league table, will make his comments at a conference he is hosting to promote American higher education.
Halls is among those who believe American universities, usually with more lavish facilities than those in Britain, often give a far broader education: “I was at a meeting where a UK admissions tutor told hundreds of pupils that his university had ‘no interest whatsoever’ — his words — in anything beyond their academic ability.”
He will add in his speech that British universities have been “bullied [by the government] to the very edge of a precipice”. He will warn of grade inflation, “dumbed-down teaching, often provided by dumbed-down graduates” and “worst of all, apathetic teaching, often in groups so large no one actually knows if you are there or not”. “No wonder so many boys and girls at our schools are beginning to say, ‘Does it have to be like this?’,” Halls will say.
Fears about quality have been highlighted by a Commons report and by student protests at universities such as Bristol and Manchester.
However, a report this week by the Higher Education Funding Council for England is expected largely to clear universities of “systemic” failings, finding most claims of poor standards are anecdotal. It will nevertheless recommend that parents and applicants should be given clearer information on how courses are taught and suggest changes to the way the quality of degrees is policed.
The growing popularity of American degrees, particularly at Ivy League universities, is reflected in new figures. At St Paul’s, the boys’ school in London ranked seventh by The Sunday Times, a record 28 of this year’s leavers have gone to America, up from about 20 last year. St Paul’s girls’ school sent 14 pupils to the US, twice the total two years ago.
Other independent schools reporting steady growth in interest include Cheltenham ladies’ college, where 18 pupils have applied to study in the United States next year, a 50% increase on this year. Ten are applying from Halls’s school for entry next year, up from seven. At Wellington college in Berkshire, which is co-hosting Halls’s conference, 25-30 pupils have expressed strong interest in studying in the US next year, up from 15.
There is growing state sector interest. At Monkseaton high school in North Tyneside, six pupils plan to apply, up from two last year. It came to prominence in 2000 when Oxford’s rejection of Laura Spence, a pupil there, resulted in a political row over “university elitism”. Spence went to Harvard.
US universities are reporting growing interest from Britain — Yale received 308 applications for entry this year, up from 257 the year before. It gave places to 26. Harvard reports a rise in state sector applicants.
Britons studying in the US include Felix Cook, a pupil at Wellington who turned down a place at Oxford, in favour of a liberal arts degree at Harvard. A month into the course he is enjoying the breadth of study: “I’m doing English literature but I’ve also got the chance to do Mandarin and sociology. I’ve met a much more diverse range of people than I would at Oxford.”
Celia Harrison, a former Cheltenham pupil now at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said she found the range of activities “inspiring” although going there was a “major culture shock”. [I believe that!]
One deterrent to studying in the US is financial. Harvard costs more than £40,000 a year in fees and accommodation. But lavish bursaries are available at the richest institutions and even families with incomes of £120,000 have to pay only about £12,000 of the cost at Harvard.
Stephen Spurr, headmaster of Westminster school, which sent 12 pupils to the US this year, said: “As fees go up in this country, as they almost inevitably will do, the gap between the cost of studying in the US and here will narrow still further.” However, Paul Ingham, head of careers at Hills Road sixth form college in Cambridge, warned: “There’s a lot of interest, but when the universities tell you about the scholarships they offer they don’t say how difficult it is to get them.”
SOURCE
Unruly British pupils 'expelled by the back door'
The appalling British school discipline scene again
Schools are expelling thousands of children “by the back door” to ensure they do not appear in official statistics, it has been disclosed. Up to 7,000 pupils a year are transferred to other schools as part of a “managed move”. It is almost the same as the number of children permanently excluded every year – suggesting the real expulsion rate is around twice the official total.
Parents’ groups claim that unruly children are being foisted onto other schools to give the false impression that behaviour is under control. It is also feared that the most disruptive pupils are not being given the support they need. Figures suggest as many as a quarter of children shifted to other schools are eventually forced to move back.
Adam Abdelnoor, a child psychologist and founder of Inaura, a charity promoting policies to keep pupils in school, said: “Heads have to stop passing the buck.” So-called "managed moves" – when pupils are transferred between schools – are supported by many headteachers. They see them as cheaper, less time-consuming and less bureaucratic than permanent exclusions, which can be challenged and overturned.
But pupils transferred in this way do not count in official exclusion data, suggesting figures are being kept artificially low. In 2007/08 just 8,130 primary and secondary school children were expelled in England – a fall of more than 4,000 in a decade.
Ministers claim the reduction is due to Government behaviour initiatives and the use by schools of the "short, sharp, shock of suspension" which "nips problem behaviour in the bud". But research by Mr Abdelnoor suggests figures could be much higher. He surveyed almost 300 schools and more than half conducted managed moves. Extrapolated nationally, research suggests as many as 7,000 managed moves took place over a 12 month period, according to the Times Educational Supplement.
Previous research has shown how pupils suspected of serious offences have been allowed to move to another school under the rules. Among the pupils moved between schools in 2007 were two teenagers from Barnsley who had brought weapons into school. In Bristol, a 15-year-old who attacked a pupil, verbally abused teachers and brought drugs and alcohol into school also escaped expulsion and was transferred. In St Helens, Merseyside, a 12-year-old was moved after threatening a classmate with a knife, as was a 15-year-old who brought a meat cleaver into school.
SOURCE
Did you know our public universities are producing idiots? PajamasTV’s Steven Crowder goes undercover exposing UC Berkeley’s liberal bias and the indoctrination underway in its classrooms. You won’t believe the hilarious and alarming interactions Steven has with the Berkeley students.
You’ll notice that the most popular president on the campus of UC Berkley is Abraham Lincoln (probably the most hard-to-miss president in U.S. history). Most aren’t sure what political party he belonged to. (Remember, these are college-educated people at a top-rated university–explains a lot, doesn’t it?)
When it comes to the Great Depression (wow!), you know, “the first one,” there isn’t a wealth of knowledge about its causes at this high-rated institute of higher learning. There is also a dearth of knowledge about firearms and the Second Amendment.
Here’s one of my favorites: “The Second Amendment was written in a very different time, socially. It was a time when people lived mostly rural lives, and it was also a time after a huge rebellion against an ‘unjust’ government.” When Crowder asks him about his gesture of quotations around “unjust,” the kid replies, “There were some pressures put on the American people that maybe were unjustified but I also think that those revolutionary people in American history were maybe blowing those issues up a little more.”
There you have it from the young voice of the Left: the United States shouldn’t even be here, because the founders made a mountain out of a molehill. (I wonder if he’s read the Declaration of Independence for himself).
This would actually explain a lot about liberals. If they look at the abuses of the people by a king thousands of miles away and say “Chill, bruh,” then perhaps it’s no wonder they look at the abuses of our own government and its attacks on freedom and say, “What’s the big deal, dude?”
(Don’t forget to look at some of the ultra-Leftist tshirts on some of these recipients of too much of someone else’s hard-earned money)
SOURCE. (See original for video)
Some British students go to America for more generalist degrees and keener teaching
Growing numbers of school-leavers are going to the United States to take their degrees because of “apathetic teaching” and “faceless, sprawling campuses” at too many British universities, a leading head teacher will warn this week. Andrew Halls, headmaster of King’s college school in Wimbledon, south London, believes there is a “growing sense of panic” about whether British universities are places of learning or “vocational conveyor belts” for job applicants.
The vehemence of his comments is rare among head teachers, who are often deterred from speaking publicly by fear that negative remarks may damage the university chances of their pupils. Halls, whose independent school is ranked 18th in the country in The Sunday Times Parent Power league table, will make his comments at a conference he is hosting to promote American higher education.
Halls is among those who believe American universities, usually with more lavish facilities than those in Britain, often give a far broader education: “I was at a meeting where a UK admissions tutor told hundreds of pupils that his university had ‘no interest whatsoever’ — his words — in anything beyond their academic ability.”
He will add in his speech that British universities have been “bullied [by the government] to the very edge of a precipice”. He will warn of grade inflation, “dumbed-down teaching, often provided by dumbed-down graduates” and “worst of all, apathetic teaching, often in groups so large no one actually knows if you are there or not”. “No wonder so many boys and girls at our schools are beginning to say, ‘Does it have to be like this?’,” Halls will say.
Fears about quality have been highlighted by a Commons report and by student protests at universities such as Bristol and Manchester.
However, a report this week by the Higher Education Funding Council for England is expected largely to clear universities of “systemic” failings, finding most claims of poor standards are anecdotal. It will nevertheless recommend that parents and applicants should be given clearer information on how courses are taught and suggest changes to the way the quality of degrees is policed.
The growing popularity of American degrees, particularly at Ivy League universities, is reflected in new figures. At St Paul’s, the boys’ school in London ranked seventh by The Sunday Times, a record 28 of this year’s leavers have gone to America, up from about 20 last year. St Paul’s girls’ school sent 14 pupils to the US, twice the total two years ago.
Other independent schools reporting steady growth in interest include Cheltenham ladies’ college, where 18 pupils have applied to study in the United States next year, a 50% increase on this year. Ten are applying from Halls’s school for entry next year, up from seven. At Wellington college in Berkshire, which is co-hosting Halls’s conference, 25-30 pupils have expressed strong interest in studying in the US next year, up from 15.
There is growing state sector interest. At Monkseaton high school in North Tyneside, six pupils plan to apply, up from two last year. It came to prominence in 2000 when Oxford’s rejection of Laura Spence, a pupil there, resulted in a political row over “university elitism”. Spence went to Harvard.
US universities are reporting growing interest from Britain — Yale received 308 applications for entry this year, up from 257 the year before. It gave places to 26. Harvard reports a rise in state sector applicants.
Britons studying in the US include Felix Cook, a pupil at Wellington who turned down a place at Oxford, in favour of a liberal arts degree at Harvard. A month into the course he is enjoying the breadth of study: “I’m doing English literature but I’ve also got the chance to do Mandarin and sociology. I’ve met a much more diverse range of people than I would at Oxford.”
Celia Harrison, a former Cheltenham pupil now at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, said she found the range of activities “inspiring” although going there was a “major culture shock”. [I believe that!]
One deterrent to studying in the US is financial. Harvard costs more than £40,000 a year in fees and accommodation. But lavish bursaries are available at the richest institutions and even families with incomes of £120,000 have to pay only about £12,000 of the cost at Harvard.
Stephen Spurr, headmaster of Westminster school, which sent 12 pupils to the US this year, said: “As fees go up in this country, as they almost inevitably will do, the gap between the cost of studying in the US and here will narrow still further.” However, Paul Ingham, head of careers at Hills Road sixth form college in Cambridge, warned: “There’s a lot of interest, but when the universities tell you about the scholarships they offer they don’t say how difficult it is to get them.”
SOURCE
Unruly British pupils 'expelled by the back door'
The appalling British school discipline scene again
Schools are expelling thousands of children “by the back door” to ensure they do not appear in official statistics, it has been disclosed. Up to 7,000 pupils a year are transferred to other schools as part of a “managed move”. It is almost the same as the number of children permanently excluded every year – suggesting the real expulsion rate is around twice the official total.
Parents’ groups claim that unruly children are being foisted onto other schools to give the false impression that behaviour is under control. It is also feared that the most disruptive pupils are not being given the support they need. Figures suggest as many as a quarter of children shifted to other schools are eventually forced to move back.
Adam Abdelnoor, a child psychologist and founder of Inaura, a charity promoting policies to keep pupils in school, said: “Heads have to stop passing the buck.” So-called "managed moves" – when pupils are transferred between schools – are supported by many headteachers. They see them as cheaper, less time-consuming and less bureaucratic than permanent exclusions, which can be challenged and overturned.
But pupils transferred in this way do not count in official exclusion data, suggesting figures are being kept artificially low. In 2007/08 just 8,130 primary and secondary school children were expelled in England – a fall of more than 4,000 in a decade.
Ministers claim the reduction is due to Government behaviour initiatives and the use by schools of the "short, sharp, shock of suspension" which "nips problem behaviour in the bud". But research by Mr Abdelnoor suggests figures could be much higher. He surveyed almost 300 schools and more than half conducted managed moves. Extrapolated nationally, research suggests as many as 7,000 managed moves took place over a 12 month period, according to the Times Educational Supplement.
Previous research has shown how pupils suspected of serious offences have been allowed to move to another school under the rules. Among the pupils moved between schools in 2007 were two teenagers from Barnsley who had brought weapons into school. In Bristol, a 15-year-old who attacked a pupil, verbally abused teachers and brought drugs and alcohol into school also escaped expulsion and was transferred. In St Helens, Merseyside, a 12-year-old was moved after threatening a classmate with a knife, as was a 15-year-old who brought a meat cleaver into school.
SOURCE
Tucson Schools To Implement Race Based Punishment - Blacks And Hispanics To Receive Passes
Sounds like a blatant contravention of the 14th Amendment to me: "nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". Note that it is the person, not the group which is to be treated equally
Black and Hispanic students in the Tucson Unified School District will soon receive passes for breaking school rules if the TUSD board has its way. It proposed a two tiered punishment system for the whole district that will reduce suspensions and expulsions for minority students, even if warranted, so that in the end there is "no ethnic/racial disparities" in punishment meted out.
I wonder why they didn't just go the other direction. Say for instance a white student is 2 minutes late for class, why not expel them, that way the number of white expulsions will eventually catch up to other minority groups.
Some would say I am a racist for even covering this news story, to them I say "What the hell are you smoking?" It is not racist to point out other people in this country who are pushing for racial quotas and special favors for those of minority groups. There can be nothing more racist than giving gifts to those of one race and not to those of another. Doug MacEachern of the Arizona Republic sums up nicely what the TUSD has passed and plans to implement.
TUSD is known nationwide for its open policy on disenfranchising white students through special favors to all other minority groups. It's "Raza Studies" program has been covered numerous times on this website and as recently as last week when I reposted "Raza Studies, Occupied America, Mexican American Heritage And The Reconquest Of America". The "studies group" pushes the agenda of amnesty for all illegal aliens because the southwest really still belongs to Mexico. It also sows hatred of the United States in its students and a pro-racial pride agenda inciting insurrectionist thought.
It should be noted that the Raza Studies program is very well funded and the TUSD board is calling for an expansion of the program. Meanwhile, TUSD has been closing libraries, arts and music programs and laying off teachers in other areas not related to Raza Studies due to funding. You'd think that someone would be looking into where of all this funding is coming from. It is obviously not being funded by those who care about America and equality for all.
MacEachern continues and shows that not only are students are being rewarded by race, the TUSD is participating in race-based hiring.
They are actively doing so, claiming that they want the race of teachers to be the same racial makeup as students. This is illegal under federal law, yet no one is doing anything about it.
It is all quite sickening. The TUSD is populated by Liberal, "tolerance", "social justice" and "race justice" bed-wetters, yet they are the true face of hate in this country. They are too blind to see what they are doing is exactly the opposite of what "equality for all" means. They don't want an equal playing field, they want to hold one group down and promote another without merit. There can be nothing more un-American, or illegal, than that.
SOURCE
Let’s get back to worksheets
The U.S. is falling behind the world in math. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, "We are lagging the rest of the world, and we are lagging it in pretty substantial ways." A special analysis put out by the National Center for Education Statistics found that the math performance of U.S. high schoolers was in the bottom quarter of the countries that participated in the most recent Program for International Student Assessment. Results of the 2009 ACT and SAT show that U.S. students are no better in math this year than they were last year. Math performance has improved in other countries while it has remained stagnant in the U.S.
These findings are disturbing in an increasingly global economy where careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are becoming progressively more important for nations to compete internationally.
According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the proportion of students obtaining STEM degrees from U.S. universities has dropped from 32 percent to 27 percent over the past decade. At the same time, the percentage of non-U.S. students earning these degrees from U.S. universities has increased dramatically.
In The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Friedman argues that getting more Americans to pursue careers in STEM fields is critical to the future of our nation's economy. Friedman is not alone in his opinion.
The National Science Foundation reports that non-U.S. graduates from U.S. universities accounted for more than half of the doctorate recipients in physics (58 percent), computer sciences (65 percent), engineering (68 percent), and mathematics (57 percent). The most numerous of these non-U.S. graduates were from China, India, and South Korea. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that over 40 percent of non-U.S. doctoral degree recipients intended to leave the U.S.
Not only are we losing ground to non-U.S. citizens at our own universities, but we're also falling behind other nations. The U.S. is no longer the leader in STEM education. In absolute numbers, Japan and China are producing more graduates. Our rate of STEM to non-STEM graduates is roughly 17 percent while the international average is nearly 26 percent. We're not even keeping pace with some developing countries.
President Obama has acknowledged that other countries--especially Asian countries--are performing better in math than the U.S. How does he plan to prevent us from falling farther behind?
In the U.S., we used to focus on basic computation skills when we taught students traditional math. Ever since the U.S. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics developed standards for school math in 1989, many U.S. schools starting teaching reform math.
Recently, I visited schools in Japan and Taiwan. I found they're teaching math the way we used to teach it; they're focusing on basic computation skills. Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea--all top performers in math--are also focusing on the basics. Even the cram schools, which are prevalent in Asia, focus on the basics.
The largest and most established cram school in Asia is Kumon. I visited their head office in Tokyo to interview public relations executives Mayu Katata and Shinichiro Iwasaki about the Kumon method. In a nutshell, they focus on using worksheets to help students master basic computation skills. Traditional math emphasizes basic computation skills and algorithms that lead to the correct answer while reform math places more value on the thinking process that leads to any answer.
Both of these skills are needed. However, the major problem with reform math is that it puts the cart before the horse by trying to teach students abstract concepts of math before they have built strong foundational skills. With traditional math, students often work individually on worksheets. With reform math, they often work in groups cutting, pasting, and coloring.
Sure, worksheets and algorithms are boring compared to gluing stuff and explaining how you came up with an answer that may not even be correct, but which method will better prepare our students to compete in an increasingly global economy? America, let's get back to worksheets.
SOURCE
One in 12 British secondary schools 'failing'
One in 12 secondary schools could be closed or merged unless they hit GCSE targets next year. As many as 270 secondaries, including 40 of Labour’s flagship academies, fell short of the Government’s strict exam benchmark last summer. Those failing to improve by 2011 could be shut, merged with better performing schools nearby or turned into academies, which are sponsored and run by the private sector.
Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, warned that academies which have been open for at least three years could also have their sponsors replaced if they did not show "clear evidence" of improving results.
The Government also announced that it would send expert advisers into a series of local authorities to raise standards. It includes Kent, which has a selective education system that includes grammar schools and secondary moderns.
Mr Balls has previously criticised academic selection, insisting pupils who did not win grammar school places at 11 were made to feel like “failures”.
On Tuesday, he said: “I've always said that non-selective schools in selective areas face extra challenges. It's harder but it's not necessarily harder because there's more deprivation or it can't be done.
“There's no doubt in my mind that if you have a new cohort of young people who have all arrived in secondary school having been told that they didn't succeed then you have greater issues around aspiration and belief.”
Under the National Challenge initiative, every school must ensure at least 30 per cent of pupils gain five A* to C grades at GCSE, including the key subjects of English and maths. They are supposed to meet the target by 2011.
Every school below the benchmark was told it would receive extra funding to help boost scores. The number of schools failing to hit the target has dropped from 638 two years ago to around 270.
Around 40 academies are still below the 30 per cent benchmark, according to the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Of these, around 10 have been open for at least three years, before National Challenge began.
The DCSF said today that it had "concerns" about the performance of a "handful" of these, because their results had either stalled or fallen.
Nick Gibb, the Conservative shadow schools minister, said: “There are still far too many schools where fewer than a third of children reach the basic standard of five good GCSEs including English and maths, and it is the poorest areas that are worst affected.
“We urgently need a different approach with more powers for teachers to keep order, more highly qualified people encouraged into teaching, and making schools answerable to parents instead of bureaucrats.”
SOURCE
Sounds like a blatant contravention of the 14th Amendment to me: "nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". Note that it is the person, not the group which is to be treated equally
Black and Hispanic students in the Tucson Unified School District will soon receive passes for breaking school rules if the TUSD board has its way. It proposed a two tiered punishment system for the whole district that will reduce suspensions and expulsions for minority students, even if warranted, so that in the end there is "no ethnic/racial disparities" in punishment meted out.
I wonder why they didn't just go the other direction. Say for instance a white student is 2 minutes late for class, why not expel them, that way the number of white expulsions will eventually catch up to other minority groups.
Some would say I am a racist for even covering this news story, to them I say "What the hell are you smoking?" It is not racist to point out other people in this country who are pushing for racial quotas and special favors for those of minority groups. There can be nothing more racist than giving gifts to those of one race and not to those of another. Doug MacEachern of the Arizona Republic sums up nicely what the TUSD has passed and plans to implement.
From the section of the 52-page plan titled "Restorative School Culture and Climate," subhead, "Discipline":
"School data that show disparities in suspension/expulsion rates will be examined in detail for root causes. Special attention will be dedicated to data regarding African-American and Hispanic students."
The board approved creating an "Equity Team" that will oversee the plan to ensure "a commitment to social justice for all students."
The happy-face edu-speak notwithstanding, what the Tucson Unified School District board of governors has approved this summer is a race-based system of discipline.
TUSD is known nationwide for its open policy on disenfranchising white students through special favors to all other minority groups. It's "Raza Studies" program has been covered numerous times on this website and as recently as last week when I reposted "Raza Studies, Occupied America, Mexican American Heritage And The Reconquest Of America". The "studies group" pushes the agenda of amnesty for all illegal aliens because the southwest really still belongs to Mexico. It also sows hatred of the United States in its students and a pro-racial pride agenda inciting insurrectionist thought.
It should be noted that the Raza Studies program is very well funded and the TUSD board is calling for an expansion of the program. Meanwhile, TUSD has been closing libraries, arts and music programs and laying off teachers in other areas not related to Raza Studies due to funding. You'd think that someone would be looking into where of all this funding is coming from. It is obviously not being funded by those who care about America and equality for all.
MacEachern continues and shows that not only are students are being rewarded by race, the TUSD is participating in race-based hiring.
In a year in which hundreds of district teachers received pink slips, meanwhile, TUSD spent thousands on recruiting teachers from out of state.
And it hired a coordinator at $80,000 per annum to lead the effort.
... TUSD's race-obsessing board of governors is taking racial bean-counting to preposterous extremes.
... increasing the number of minority teachers - per the summer hiring spree, which netted 14 special-education teachers and one math-science teacher.
They are actively doing so, claiming that they want the race of teachers to be the same racial makeup as students. This is illegal under federal law, yet no one is doing anything about it.
It is all quite sickening. The TUSD is populated by Liberal, "tolerance", "social justice" and "race justice" bed-wetters, yet they are the true face of hate in this country. They are too blind to see what they are doing is exactly the opposite of what "equality for all" means. They don't want an equal playing field, they want to hold one group down and promote another without merit. There can be nothing more un-American, or illegal, than that.
SOURCE
Let’s get back to worksheets
The U.S. is falling behind the world in math. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, "We are lagging the rest of the world, and we are lagging it in pretty substantial ways." A special analysis put out by the National Center for Education Statistics found that the math performance of U.S. high schoolers was in the bottom quarter of the countries that participated in the most recent Program for International Student Assessment. Results of the 2009 ACT and SAT show that U.S. students are no better in math this year than they were last year. Math performance has improved in other countries while it has remained stagnant in the U.S.
These findings are disturbing in an increasingly global economy where careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are becoming progressively more important for nations to compete internationally.
According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the proportion of students obtaining STEM degrees from U.S. universities has dropped from 32 percent to 27 percent over the past decade. At the same time, the percentage of non-U.S. students earning these degrees from U.S. universities has increased dramatically.
In The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Friedman argues that getting more Americans to pursue careers in STEM fields is critical to the future of our nation's economy. Friedman is not alone in his opinion.
The National Science Foundation reports that non-U.S. graduates from U.S. universities accounted for more than half of the doctorate recipients in physics (58 percent), computer sciences (65 percent), engineering (68 percent), and mathematics (57 percent). The most numerous of these non-U.S. graduates were from China, India, and South Korea. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that over 40 percent of non-U.S. doctoral degree recipients intended to leave the U.S.
Not only are we losing ground to non-U.S. citizens at our own universities, but we're also falling behind other nations. The U.S. is no longer the leader in STEM education. In absolute numbers, Japan and China are producing more graduates. Our rate of STEM to non-STEM graduates is roughly 17 percent while the international average is nearly 26 percent. We're not even keeping pace with some developing countries.
President Obama has acknowledged that other countries--especially Asian countries--are performing better in math than the U.S. How does he plan to prevent us from falling farther behind?
In the U.S., we used to focus on basic computation skills when we taught students traditional math. Ever since the U.S. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics developed standards for school math in 1989, many U.S. schools starting teaching reform math.
Recently, I visited schools in Japan and Taiwan. I found they're teaching math the way we used to teach it; they're focusing on basic computation skills. Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea--all top performers in math--are also focusing on the basics. Even the cram schools, which are prevalent in Asia, focus on the basics.
The largest and most established cram school in Asia is Kumon. I visited their head office in Tokyo to interview public relations executives Mayu Katata and Shinichiro Iwasaki about the Kumon method. In a nutshell, they focus on using worksheets to help students master basic computation skills. Traditional math emphasizes basic computation skills and algorithms that lead to the correct answer while reform math places more value on the thinking process that leads to any answer.
Both of these skills are needed. However, the major problem with reform math is that it puts the cart before the horse by trying to teach students abstract concepts of math before they have built strong foundational skills. With traditional math, students often work individually on worksheets. With reform math, they often work in groups cutting, pasting, and coloring.
Sure, worksheets and algorithms are boring compared to gluing stuff and explaining how you came up with an answer that may not even be correct, but which method will better prepare our students to compete in an increasingly global economy? America, let's get back to worksheets.
SOURCE
One in 12 British secondary schools 'failing'
One in 12 secondary schools could be closed or merged unless they hit GCSE targets next year. As many as 270 secondaries, including 40 of Labour’s flagship academies, fell short of the Government’s strict exam benchmark last summer. Those failing to improve by 2011 could be shut, merged with better performing schools nearby or turned into academies, which are sponsored and run by the private sector.
Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, warned that academies which have been open for at least three years could also have their sponsors replaced if they did not show "clear evidence" of improving results.
The Government also announced that it would send expert advisers into a series of local authorities to raise standards. It includes Kent, which has a selective education system that includes grammar schools and secondary moderns.
Mr Balls has previously criticised academic selection, insisting pupils who did not win grammar school places at 11 were made to feel like “failures”.
On Tuesday, he said: “I've always said that non-selective schools in selective areas face extra challenges. It's harder but it's not necessarily harder because there's more deprivation or it can't be done.
“There's no doubt in my mind that if you have a new cohort of young people who have all arrived in secondary school having been told that they didn't succeed then you have greater issues around aspiration and belief.”
Under the National Challenge initiative, every school must ensure at least 30 per cent of pupils gain five A* to C grades at GCSE, including the key subjects of English and maths. They are supposed to meet the target by 2011.
Every school below the benchmark was told it would receive extra funding to help boost scores. The number of schools failing to hit the target has dropped from 638 two years ago to around 270.
Around 40 academies are still below the 30 per cent benchmark, according to the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Of these, around 10 have been open for at least three years, before National Challenge began.
The DCSF said today that it had "concerns" about the performance of a "handful" of these, because their results had either stalled or fallen.
Nick Gibb, the Conservative shadow schools minister, said: “There are still far too many schools where fewer than a third of children reach the basic standard of five good GCSEs including English and maths, and it is the poorest areas that are worst affected.
“We urgently need a different approach with more powers for teachers to keep order, more highly qualified people encouraged into teaching, and making schools answerable to parents instead of bureaucrats.”
SOURCE
Do Charters 'Cream' the Best?
A new study finds breakthrough evidence against Leftist excuses
'Creaming" is the word critics of charter schools think ends the debate over education choice. The charge has long been that charters get better results by cherry-picking the best students from standard public schools. Caroline Hoxby, a Stanford economist, found a way to reliably examine this alleged bias, and the results are breakthrough news for charter advocates.
Her new study, "How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement," shows that charter students, typically from more disadvantaged families in places like Harlem, perform almost as well as students in affluent suburbs like Scarsdale. Because there are more applicants than spaces, New York admits charter students with a lottery system. The study nullifies any self-selection bias by comparing students who attend charters only with those who applied for admission through the lottery, but did not get in. "Lottery-based studies," notes Ms. Hoxby, "are scientific and more reliable."
According to the study, the most comprehensive of its kind to date, New York charter applicants are more likely than the average New York family to be black, poor and living in homes with adults who possess fewer education credentials. But positive results already begin to emerge by the third grade: The average charter student is scoring 5.8 points higher than his lotteried-out peers in math and 5.3 points higher in English. In grades four through eight, the charter student jumps ahead by 5 more points each year in math and 3.6 points each year in English.
Charter students are also shrinking the learning gap between low-income minorities and more affluent whites. "On average," the report concludes, "a student who attended a charter school for all of the grades kindergarten through eight would close about 86% of the 'Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap' in math and 66% of the achievement gap in English."
The New York results are not unique. In a separate study, Ms. Hoxby found Chicago's charters performing even better than the Big Apple's. Using the same methodology, other researchers have seen similar results in Boston.
Charters are also a bargain for taxpayers. Nationwide on average, per-pupil spending is 61% that of surrounding public schools. New York charters spend less than district schools but more than the national average because, unlike district schools, they generally have no capital budget and must pay rent from operating expenses.
Little wonder President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are pressuring states to become more charter-friendly. Why the Administration can't connect the dots from the evidence to other effective school choice reforms, such as vouchers, can only be explained by union politics. Caroline Hoxby has performed a public service by finally making clear that "creaming" is a crock.
SOURCE
Paedophile fears are 'driving male teachers from British primary schools'
More than a quarter of state primary schools have no male teachers, partly because they have been deterred from working with young children for fear of being labelled paedophiles, an expert claims. The result is that thousands of boys are being taught solely by women and have no educational male role models. The trend is fuelling concerns that a generation of boys is growing up without an authoritative male figure in their lives.
Teaching remains a predominantly female profession, data published today by the General Teaching Council of England confirms. Only 123,827, or 25 per cent, of the 490,981 registered working teachers are men, with the majority in secondary schools and further education. Male teachers make up just 13 per cent of state primary teachers (25,491) and three per cent of state nursery school staff (43). Of 16,892 state primary schools in England, 4,550 have no male teachers - around 27 per cent.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said the figures were concerning. 'It's a sad comment on society that more men aren't attracted into teaching in primary schools. In part, this is due to concerns in society about paedophilia. Men are receiving the signal that it's more appropriate for them to teach in secondary schools than primary schools.'
The 'feminisation' of the curriculum, which includes an emphasis on coursework rather than 'sudden death' exams, is already believed to be responsible for a widening gender gap at secondary level.
Professor Smithers said: 'There's a danger that boys could grow up thinking that education is sissy. 'When it comes to reading, they might be offered what appeals to the female teachers whereas male teachers often have different interests in reading. 'Similarly, in interpreting what's been read, there are distinct male and female points of view. Both these views need to be offered to boys.'
GTC chief executive Keith Bartley said: 'We should focus on attracting the best recruits to teaching, regardless of gender. 'If men do not believe that teaching is a worthwhile career option for them, or worse still, if their interest in teaching is viewed with suspicion, then children potentially miss out on a huge pool of talent.'
Only two men under the age of 25 work in state-run nurseries in England, according to the GTC register. One of them, 22-year-old Jamie Wilson, from Merseyside, insists that children need to be taught by male and female teachers. He said: 'I am firmly of the belief that gender should not be an issue when it comes to early years and primary teachers. Why should it matter? 'However, I have found that it has been an issue in my own experience. Even within my first week I encountered anxiety from a parent who was reluctant to leave their three-year-old in my care because I am a male in a female-dominated environment.'
SOURCE
Oxbridge: one student explodes the myths
Students have less than a month to get in their applications for Oxford and Cambridge . The fact that the two universities, generally seen as the "top" places to study in the UK, have a different application deadline from other universities, just adds to the aura around them.
Costas Pitas is studying History and French at Balliol College, Oxford. As someone from a grammar school, he says he didn't know what to expect when he applied, and is keen to help others to, as he says, "explode the myths". In fact, he says that Oxbridge should be "at the top of every working class child's UCAS form." Over to Costas....
"There are many misunderstandings surrounding Oxford and Cambridge. You don’t need to be a Lord, or the son or daughter of one, you don’t have to live in a gold-encrusted palace or have a double-barrelled name. In fact, in my view, Oxbridge should be at the top of every working class child’s UCAS form, and not at the bottom. It’s the best place to study if your worried about finances and fancy the shortest term times of any universities. If you’re predicted the necessary grades, or even just short, here are some myth-busting facts to prove why you shouldn’t think twice about applying.
Myth one: the fees are more expensive
FALSE: For most people Oxbridge is actually the best value-for-money choice you could make. On tuition fees, 99 per cent of courses across the country at every uni will charge £3,225 for this coming academic year. Oxford and Cambridge charge the same. When you consider that the pair continually top The Times Good University Guide, and are among the best-performing institutions in the world, it’s surely a bargain price for the best education money can buy.
Myth two: it’ll cost you more to study
FALSE: Oxford and Cambridge have the best libraries of any universities in the country. The Bodleian in Oxford, for example, is a copyright library which means that it has the right to every book published in the UK. With central libraries, faculty libraries and college libraries, Oxbridge has got to be the place where the need to buy your own reading materials is at its minimum. Plus, many of the colleges and faculties offer book-buying grants to students.
Myth three: it’ll cost more to live
FALSE: Research conducted by the National Union of Students shows that students in London will face living expenses of £8,375 per year, whilst those out of the capital save a cool £1,300 a year, down to £7,011. Furthermore, a combination of generous benefactors, rich alumni and a social guilty conscience means that Oxford and Cambridge offer the most generous financial support anywhere in the country. With a household income of up to £25,000, Cambridge will award a bursary of £3,250 per year, whilst Oxford will splash out the same each year plus a potential £875 in your first year to the poorest students. Any household income under £50,000 will entitle you to hundreds or thousands of pounds worth of non-repayable grant.
Myth four: all the students are snobby
FALSE: OK, of course you’ll find some people who believe God reports to them. However, that applies to all walks of life and my experience of Oxford has been entirely positive. Many people at my college come from schools such as Eton, which you might consider to be the crème de la crème of toff towers, but are anything but. In fact many worry that other students will have a whole truckload of preconceptions about them. Roughly 55 per cent of students at both universities come from state schools, so even if you consider snobby synonymous with independent schools that accusation doesn’t stand up either. My experience shows it to be untrue anyway. Ultimately, everyone’s in the same boat on day one of freshers’ week. It took me the week to find my friends, but the vast majority of people do fit in just fine.
Myth five: they’re all…boring
FALSE: There does seem to be a concern that Oxbridge types are, to quote My Big Fat Greek Wedding, ‘toast. No honey No jam just toast, dry toast’. (I wish I could convey the thick Greek accent in text). A small minority may prefer the lecture theatre to the dance floor but in general that is far from the truth. The parties are some of the most extravagant you’ll find anywhere in the world. College balls are renowned for their grandeur and almost every society, of which there are dozens, will throw in a free chocolate fountain here or free drinks there, as a matter of course. Not that I’ve done this with friends, but the sheer amount of corporate sponsorship, means you can pull up to some amazing events, feign interest in corporate law and enjoy a boat party or drinks event with no charge.
Myth six: they’re all right-wingers...or left-wingers
FALSE: Bizarrely, I’ve heard both stereotypes, which is probably the best proof that they’re wrong. Whether you’ve got a photo of Margaret Thatcher on your wall or in your furnace, Oxford is home to a wide range of political viewpoints. The major political parties have their own groups, the Oxford Union sustains debate, and gossip, uni-wide and the Student’s Union takes on welfare and pastoral issues. Each college’s students have their own committee and, in all, if you’re a lefty or a righty, there’s wide scope to get involved. Equally, if you decide that your free time is for fun and games and not more brain power, then you can easily avoid the whole lot of them!
With the most generous bursaries, the best value-for-money tuition fees and great parties, students shouldn’t be on the look out for largely unfounded stereotypes on why not to apply. Instead they should be fighting to print off the application form."
SOURCE
A new study finds breakthrough evidence against Leftist excuses
'Creaming" is the word critics of charter schools think ends the debate over education choice. The charge has long been that charters get better results by cherry-picking the best students from standard public schools. Caroline Hoxby, a Stanford economist, found a way to reliably examine this alleged bias, and the results are breakthrough news for charter advocates.
Her new study, "How New York City's Charter Schools Affect Achievement," shows that charter students, typically from more disadvantaged families in places like Harlem, perform almost as well as students in affluent suburbs like Scarsdale. Because there are more applicants than spaces, New York admits charter students with a lottery system. The study nullifies any self-selection bias by comparing students who attend charters only with those who applied for admission through the lottery, but did not get in. "Lottery-based studies," notes Ms. Hoxby, "are scientific and more reliable."
According to the study, the most comprehensive of its kind to date, New York charter applicants are more likely than the average New York family to be black, poor and living in homes with adults who possess fewer education credentials. But positive results already begin to emerge by the third grade: The average charter student is scoring 5.8 points higher than his lotteried-out peers in math and 5.3 points higher in English. In grades four through eight, the charter student jumps ahead by 5 more points each year in math and 3.6 points each year in English.
Charter students are also shrinking the learning gap between low-income minorities and more affluent whites. "On average," the report concludes, "a student who attended a charter school for all of the grades kindergarten through eight would close about 86% of the 'Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap' in math and 66% of the achievement gap in English."
The New York results are not unique. In a separate study, Ms. Hoxby found Chicago's charters performing even better than the Big Apple's. Using the same methodology, other researchers have seen similar results in Boston.
Charters are also a bargain for taxpayers. Nationwide on average, per-pupil spending is 61% that of surrounding public schools. New York charters spend less than district schools but more than the national average because, unlike district schools, they generally have no capital budget and must pay rent from operating expenses.
Little wonder President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are pressuring states to become more charter-friendly. Why the Administration can't connect the dots from the evidence to other effective school choice reforms, such as vouchers, can only be explained by union politics. Caroline Hoxby has performed a public service by finally making clear that "creaming" is a crock.
SOURCE
Paedophile fears are 'driving male teachers from British primary schools'
More than a quarter of state primary schools have no male teachers, partly because they have been deterred from working with young children for fear of being labelled paedophiles, an expert claims. The result is that thousands of boys are being taught solely by women and have no educational male role models. The trend is fuelling concerns that a generation of boys is growing up without an authoritative male figure in their lives.
Teaching remains a predominantly female profession, data published today by the General Teaching Council of England confirms. Only 123,827, or 25 per cent, of the 490,981 registered working teachers are men, with the majority in secondary schools and further education. Male teachers make up just 13 per cent of state primary teachers (25,491) and three per cent of state nursery school staff (43). Of 16,892 state primary schools in England, 4,550 have no male teachers - around 27 per cent.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said the figures were concerning. 'It's a sad comment on society that more men aren't attracted into teaching in primary schools. In part, this is due to concerns in society about paedophilia. Men are receiving the signal that it's more appropriate for them to teach in secondary schools than primary schools.'
The 'feminisation' of the curriculum, which includes an emphasis on coursework rather than 'sudden death' exams, is already believed to be responsible for a widening gender gap at secondary level.
Professor Smithers said: 'There's a danger that boys could grow up thinking that education is sissy. 'When it comes to reading, they might be offered what appeals to the female teachers whereas male teachers often have different interests in reading. 'Similarly, in interpreting what's been read, there are distinct male and female points of view. Both these views need to be offered to boys.'
GTC chief executive Keith Bartley said: 'We should focus on attracting the best recruits to teaching, regardless of gender. 'If men do not believe that teaching is a worthwhile career option for them, or worse still, if their interest in teaching is viewed with suspicion, then children potentially miss out on a huge pool of talent.'
Only two men under the age of 25 work in state-run nurseries in England, according to the GTC register. One of them, 22-year-old Jamie Wilson, from Merseyside, insists that children need to be taught by male and female teachers. He said: 'I am firmly of the belief that gender should not be an issue when it comes to early years and primary teachers. Why should it matter? 'However, I have found that it has been an issue in my own experience. Even within my first week I encountered anxiety from a parent who was reluctant to leave their three-year-old in my care because I am a male in a female-dominated environment.'
SOURCE
Oxbridge: one student explodes the myths
Students have less than a month to get in their applications for Oxford and Cambridge . The fact that the two universities, generally seen as the "top" places to study in the UK, have a different application deadline from other universities, just adds to the aura around them.
Costas Pitas is studying History and French at Balliol College, Oxford. As someone from a grammar school, he says he didn't know what to expect when he applied, and is keen to help others to, as he says, "explode the myths". In fact, he says that Oxbridge should be "at the top of every working class child's UCAS form." Over to Costas....
"There are many misunderstandings surrounding Oxford and Cambridge. You don’t need to be a Lord, or the son or daughter of one, you don’t have to live in a gold-encrusted palace or have a double-barrelled name. In fact, in my view, Oxbridge should be at the top of every working class child’s UCAS form, and not at the bottom. It’s the best place to study if your worried about finances and fancy the shortest term times of any universities. If you’re predicted the necessary grades, or even just short, here are some myth-busting facts to prove why you shouldn’t think twice about applying.
Myth one: the fees are more expensive
FALSE: For most people Oxbridge is actually the best value-for-money choice you could make. On tuition fees, 99 per cent of courses across the country at every uni will charge £3,225 for this coming academic year. Oxford and Cambridge charge the same. When you consider that the pair continually top The Times Good University Guide, and are among the best-performing institutions in the world, it’s surely a bargain price for the best education money can buy.
Myth two: it’ll cost you more to study
FALSE: Oxford and Cambridge have the best libraries of any universities in the country. The Bodleian in Oxford, for example, is a copyright library which means that it has the right to every book published in the UK. With central libraries, faculty libraries and college libraries, Oxbridge has got to be the place where the need to buy your own reading materials is at its minimum. Plus, many of the colleges and faculties offer book-buying grants to students.
Myth three: it’ll cost more to live
FALSE: Research conducted by the National Union of Students shows that students in London will face living expenses of £8,375 per year, whilst those out of the capital save a cool £1,300 a year, down to £7,011. Furthermore, a combination of generous benefactors, rich alumni and a social guilty conscience means that Oxford and Cambridge offer the most generous financial support anywhere in the country. With a household income of up to £25,000, Cambridge will award a bursary of £3,250 per year, whilst Oxford will splash out the same each year plus a potential £875 in your first year to the poorest students. Any household income under £50,000 will entitle you to hundreds or thousands of pounds worth of non-repayable grant.
Myth four: all the students are snobby
FALSE: OK, of course you’ll find some people who believe God reports to them. However, that applies to all walks of life and my experience of Oxford has been entirely positive. Many people at my college come from schools such as Eton, which you might consider to be the crème de la crème of toff towers, but are anything but. In fact many worry that other students will have a whole truckload of preconceptions about them. Roughly 55 per cent of students at both universities come from state schools, so even if you consider snobby synonymous with independent schools that accusation doesn’t stand up either. My experience shows it to be untrue anyway. Ultimately, everyone’s in the same boat on day one of freshers’ week. It took me the week to find my friends, but the vast majority of people do fit in just fine.
Myth five: they’re all…boring
FALSE: There does seem to be a concern that Oxbridge types are, to quote My Big Fat Greek Wedding, ‘toast. No honey No jam just toast, dry toast’. (I wish I could convey the thick Greek accent in text). A small minority may prefer the lecture theatre to the dance floor but in general that is far from the truth. The parties are some of the most extravagant you’ll find anywhere in the world. College balls are renowned for their grandeur and almost every society, of which there are dozens, will throw in a free chocolate fountain here or free drinks there, as a matter of course. Not that I’ve done this with friends, but the sheer amount of corporate sponsorship, means you can pull up to some amazing events, feign interest in corporate law and enjoy a boat party or drinks event with no charge.
Myth six: they’re all right-wingers...or left-wingers
FALSE: Bizarrely, I’ve heard both stereotypes, which is probably the best proof that they’re wrong. Whether you’ve got a photo of Margaret Thatcher on your wall or in your furnace, Oxford is home to a wide range of political viewpoints. The major political parties have their own groups, the Oxford Union sustains debate, and gossip, uni-wide and the Student’s Union takes on welfare and pastoral issues. Each college’s students have their own committee and, in all, if you’re a lefty or a righty, there’s wide scope to get involved. Equally, if you decide that your free time is for fun and games and not more brain power, then you can easily avoid the whole lot of them!
With the most generous bursaries, the best value-for-money tuition fees and great parties, students shouldn’t be on the look out for largely unfounded stereotypes on why not to apply. Instead they should be fighting to print off the application form."
SOURCE
Corruption behind a firing at a British school
'Bully' named by fired dinner-lady is school governor’s son. The school initially tried to cover up the assault until the dinner lady spoke to the mother of the bullied girl. The school then fired the dinner lady for breaching some imagined code of Omerta
A governor at the school where a dinner lady was sacked for telling parents about alleged bullies is the mother of one of the four boys involved, The Times has learnt.
Angry parents are demanding the resignation of the headmistress and governors of Great Tey Primary School, Essex. Some are threatening to remove their children if Carol Hill, 60, is not reinstated. Mrs Hill, who was dismissed this week, has since been banned from a voluntary post in the Beaver Scouts and the local youth group because of the decision. The grandmother has spent thousands of pounds on legal fees and is preparing to take further action against the school.
The headmistress, Deborah Crabb, the governors and the local vicar, John Richardson, struck off the dinner lady for a breach of pupil confidentiality after she informed the parents of Chloe David, 7, that the girl had been tied up and whipped by a group of boys at playtime.
Parents questioned whether the decision was influenced by the fact that Kathryn Spicer, a parent governor who did not take part in the disciplinary hearings, is the mother of one of the four boys accused of tying Chloe’s wrists and ankles with a skipping rope.
Sarah Harris, 36, who has two children at the school, described the treatment of Mrs Hill as terrible and unfair. “Maybe this would have been dealt with differently had a governor’s child not been involved,” she told The Times. “You put your trust in these people not only to teach your children but to keep them safe and look after their pastoral care. I am worried and very concerned as to what else may have been covered up.”
Ms Spicer has been a governor at the school since 2006 and has two children there. She refused to comment yesterday. Mrs Crabb, 35, has been headmistress for three years. She was previously a reception teacher at the school, which has 60 pupils.
Sue Dyer, who has five children at the school, said that she no longer trusted the headmistress or the governors and called for Mrs Crabb to step down. Her husband, Ivan, said that parents had been concerned over the headmistress’s level of experience.
Mrs Hill is preparing a case against the school. Her lawyer was not permitted into the dismissal hearing on Monday but the school’s legal representatives and a human resources adviser from Essex County Council were present to advise the board.
Mrs Hill said that she was not able to comment until her appeal. Her husband, Ronald, 65, said: “She is a very strong person but this has got her down. She really loves her job.”
SOURCE
Kiddy "bang, bang" game deemed politically incorrect in sick England
Now the deranged headmistress is lying in her teeth about her actions
Excited by stories of the Second World War during school classes, Steven Cheek did what generations of young boys have done before him. Making an imaginary gun with his fingers, the nine-year-old pointed it at a classmate and said: 'We've got to shoot the German army.' Moments later he found himself in front of the deputy head, who accused him of racism because his 'victim' had been a Polish boy.
He was made to stand in front of the class and make an apology while his mother, Jane Hennessey, was called in by the head of Purford Green Junior School in Harlow, Essex. She was informed that a permanent record of her son's misconduct would be placed on file.
Miss Hennessey yesterday accused the school of overreacting. 'Steven has always wanted to join the Army when he grows up,' she said. 'That's his burning ambition and he loved learning about the war in class. 'In the week leading up to what happened, the school had been telling the children about the history of the war and he had come home every night talking about it.
'He's not a racist. He's only nine years old and he didn't single out the Polish boy, who is one of his good friends. This just happened to be who he was playing with. The deputy head shouted at Steven and said, "That's racism", which is ridiculous because Steven has a Polish aunt and they were on our side during the war. 'He didn't understand what he had done wrong. He was just playing a game like kids always do. He came home after being told off and said, "Mum, what's racism?" The school has overreacted and been very heavy-handed. They could have quietly told him off instead of turning it into a big issue.'
Miss Hennessey, 37, who lives in Harlow with Steven's father Darren Cheek, 39, an electrician, said her son got carried away during a class where the war was being discussed. He had never been in trouble before and had been bullied by other pupils since having to make the public apology.
'My main concern is that this will stay on his record and count against him when he goes to secondary school.' Miss Hennessey added: 'Other teachers have told me that they think he has been harshly treated. Everything was blown completely out of proportion. 'This young Polish child had only started at the school in September and I thought he and Steven got along well. 'He speaks perfect English. I don't think Steven even really knew or understood he was Polish and from another country. Children don't see differences between people like adults do.'
Nick Seaton, of the Campaign for Real Education pressure group, accused the school of 'absurd political correctness'. He said: 'It's a shame that teachers these days all too often fail to crack down on real problems like bullying but overreact to a child with a healthy imagination. Boys will be boys and what the teacher should have done was ask Steven not to play in the classroom, instead of sending him to the deputy head who then humiliated him in front of his class.'
The school, which has around 175 boys and girls aged between four and 11 and was rated 'good' in its last Ofsted report, yesterday claimed Steven's class had been learning about space, not the war, when he was reprimanded and denied he had been accused of racism. Headmistress Viv Perri said: 'When a pupil uses inappropriate language or terms that could be offensive, we have a responsibility to explain to them why their behaviour is wrong. 'We want to give all our pupils the best possible start in life which can mean educating them about knowing right from wrong. 'The incident in question involved a short conversation with a pupil to explain the inappropriateness of his comments and then a meeting with the parent to explain the context.'
SOURCE
Arizona Pols expected to tighten school tuition tax credit rules
Arizona needs to adjust its private-school tuition tax-credit law to ensure better oversight and keep pace with other states that have enacted similar programs, some key lawmakers said Monday. Rep. Rich Crandall, R-Mesa and chairman of the House Education Committee, said the Legislature will consider changes to the law when it convenes next year. "The budget will overshadow everything, but there will be legislation run on this," Crandall said after a meeting of a Democratic-led task force that is examining gaps in the law highlighted in a series of reports by The Arizona Republic. "My guess is there will be something that passes."
The program faces renewed scrutiny after reports that, in many ways, the 1997 law has fallen short of its original purpose: to help make a private education available to all children, not just those who can afford it.
The Republic has found that the school-tuition organizations that collect the tax-deductible donations have almost no oversight and that, last year, 10 of 53 had fallen short of spending at least 90 percent of their revenue on scholarships, as required by the law. Some of the organizations have encouraged a system of swapping donations, allowing even children of affluent families to effectively receive a publicly subsidized private education. The tax credit allows donors to give up to $1,000 for private tuition and cut their income-tax liability dollar for dollar.
Crandall and Rep. David Schapira, D-Tempe, agreed that any legislative changes would likely go beyond the tax-credit donations used to defray private-school costs and would affect a tax credit for those who help underwrite the cost of extracurricular activities at public schools.
At least two groups that advocate for school choice have joined the chorus calling for changes to the state's law. Last week, House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, formed a Republican-led special committee to weigh changes to the law, as well. Schapira stressed that his goal is to improve the tax credit, not end it.
Lawrence Mohrweis, an accounting professor at Northern Arizona University who also oversees a tuition organization in Flagstaff, said school-tuition organizations should register with the state and have annual audits or financial reviews, depending on how much money they handle. He also urged lawmakers to give the Department of Revenue some oversight authority. "I compare it to speed-limit signs," Mohrweis said. "What would happen if the state patrol could pull you over but never give you a fine or give you a ticket? . . . That's effectively what we have within STO organizations right now."
The Goldwater Institute for years has suggested changes to the tax credit. Matthew Ladner, vice president for research at the free-market, non-profit think tank, supports auditing responsibilities and empowering the Revenue Department. But he also favors a personal-use tax credit that would allow all parents to deduct at least some of the cost of educating their child regardless of whether the child attends public or private school. At the same time, he would change the current tax-credit law to also help only students from low-income families. Arizona has a corporate-tax credit that must go to the poor, but the credit available to individuals is not limited. "Fundamentally, the program needs some kind of sheriff," Ladner said. "There are different public or private models that could help accomplish that goal."
The School Choice Working Group, which represents more than a half-dozen groups, plans to work with the special committee on legislation that would create need-based criteria for scholarships and would offer reports on how prevalent such scholarships are, said Sydney Hay, a spokeswoman for the group.
SOURCE
'Bully' named by fired dinner-lady is school governor’s son. The school initially tried to cover up the assault until the dinner lady spoke to the mother of the bullied girl. The school then fired the dinner lady for breaching some imagined code of Omerta
A governor at the school where a dinner lady was sacked for telling parents about alleged bullies is the mother of one of the four boys involved, The Times has learnt.
Angry parents are demanding the resignation of the headmistress and governors of Great Tey Primary School, Essex. Some are threatening to remove their children if Carol Hill, 60, is not reinstated. Mrs Hill, who was dismissed this week, has since been banned from a voluntary post in the Beaver Scouts and the local youth group because of the decision. The grandmother has spent thousands of pounds on legal fees and is preparing to take further action against the school.
The headmistress, Deborah Crabb, the governors and the local vicar, John Richardson, struck off the dinner lady for a breach of pupil confidentiality after she informed the parents of Chloe David, 7, that the girl had been tied up and whipped by a group of boys at playtime.
Parents questioned whether the decision was influenced by the fact that Kathryn Spicer, a parent governor who did not take part in the disciplinary hearings, is the mother of one of the four boys accused of tying Chloe’s wrists and ankles with a skipping rope.
Sarah Harris, 36, who has two children at the school, described the treatment of Mrs Hill as terrible and unfair. “Maybe this would have been dealt with differently had a governor’s child not been involved,” she told The Times. “You put your trust in these people not only to teach your children but to keep them safe and look after their pastoral care. I am worried and very concerned as to what else may have been covered up.”
Ms Spicer has been a governor at the school since 2006 and has two children there. She refused to comment yesterday. Mrs Crabb, 35, has been headmistress for three years. She was previously a reception teacher at the school, which has 60 pupils.
Sue Dyer, who has five children at the school, said that she no longer trusted the headmistress or the governors and called for Mrs Crabb to step down. Her husband, Ivan, said that parents had been concerned over the headmistress’s level of experience.
Mrs Hill is preparing a case against the school. Her lawyer was not permitted into the dismissal hearing on Monday but the school’s legal representatives and a human resources adviser from Essex County Council were present to advise the board.
Mrs Hill said that she was not able to comment until her appeal. Her husband, Ronald, 65, said: “She is a very strong person but this has got her down. She really loves her job.”
SOURCE
Kiddy "bang, bang" game deemed politically incorrect in sick England
Now the deranged headmistress is lying in her teeth about her actions
Excited by stories of the Second World War during school classes, Steven Cheek did what generations of young boys have done before him. Making an imaginary gun with his fingers, the nine-year-old pointed it at a classmate and said: 'We've got to shoot the German army.' Moments later he found himself in front of the deputy head, who accused him of racism because his 'victim' had been a Polish boy.
He was made to stand in front of the class and make an apology while his mother, Jane Hennessey, was called in by the head of Purford Green Junior School in Harlow, Essex. She was informed that a permanent record of her son's misconduct would be placed on file.
Miss Hennessey yesterday accused the school of overreacting. 'Steven has always wanted to join the Army when he grows up,' she said. 'That's his burning ambition and he loved learning about the war in class. 'In the week leading up to what happened, the school had been telling the children about the history of the war and he had come home every night talking about it.
'He's not a racist. He's only nine years old and he didn't single out the Polish boy, who is one of his good friends. This just happened to be who he was playing with. The deputy head shouted at Steven and said, "That's racism", which is ridiculous because Steven has a Polish aunt and they were on our side during the war. 'He didn't understand what he had done wrong. He was just playing a game like kids always do. He came home after being told off and said, "Mum, what's racism?" The school has overreacted and been very heavy-handed. They could have quietly told him off instead of turning it into a big issue.'
Miss Hennessey, 37, who lives in Harlow with Steven's father Darren Cheek, 39, an electrician, said her son got carried away during a class where the war was being discussed. He had never been in trouble before and had been bullied by other pupils since having to make the public apology.
'My main concern is that this will stay on his record and count against him when he goes to secondary school.' Miss Hennessey added: 'Other teachers have told me that they think he has been harshly treated. Everything was blown completely out of proportion. 'This young Polish child had only started at the school in September and I thought he and Steven got along well. 'He speaks perfect English. I don't think Steven even really knew or understood he was Polish and from another country. Children don't see differences between people like adults do.'
Nick Seaton, of the Campaign for Real Education pressure group, accused the school of 'absurd political correctness'. He said: 'It's a shame that teachers these days all too often fail to crack down on real problems like bullying but overreact to a child with a healthy imagination. Boys will be boys and what the teacher should have done was ask Steven not to play in the classroom, instead of sending him to the deputy head who then humiliated him in front of his class.'
The school, which has around 175 boys and girls aged between four and 11 and was rated 'good' in its last Ofsted report, yesterday claimed Steven's class had been learning about space, not the war, when he was reprimanded and denied he had been accused of racism. Headmistress Viv Perri said: 'When a pupil uses inappropriate language or terms that could be offensive, we have a responsibility to explain to them why their behaviour is wrong. 'We want to give all our pupils the best possible start in life which can mean educating them about knowing right from wrong. 'The incident in question involved a short conversation with a pupil to explain the inappropriateness of his comments and then a meeting with the parent to explain the context.'
SOURCE
Arizona Pols expected to tighten school tuition tax credit rules
Arizona needs to adjust its private-school tuition tax-credit law to ensure better oversight and keep pace with other states that have enacted similar programs, some key lawmakers said Monday. Rep. Rich Crandall, R-Mesa and chairman of the House Education Committee, said the Legislature will consider changes to the law when it convenes next year. "The budget will overshadow everything, but there will be legislation run on this," Crandall said after a meeting of a Democratic-led task force that is examining gaps in the law highlighted in a series of reports by The Arizona Republic. "My guess is there will be something that passes."
The program faces renewed scrutiny after reports that, in many ways, the 1997 law has fallen short of its original purpose: to help make a private education available to all children, not just those who can afford it.
The Republic has found that the school-tuition organizations that collect the tax-deductible donations have almost no oversight and that, last year, 10 of 53 had fallen short of spending at least 90 percent of their revenue on scholarships, as required by the law. Some of the organizations have encouraged a system of swapping donations, allowing even children of affluent families to effectively receive a publicly subsidized private education. The tax credit allows donors to give up to $1,000 for private tuition and cut their income-tax liability dollar for dollar.
Crandall and Rep. David Schapira, D-Tempe, agreed that any legislative changes would likely go beyond the tax-credit donations used to defray private-school costs and would affect a tax credit for those who help underwrite the cost of extracurricular activities at public schools.
At least two groups that advocate for school choice have joined the chorus calling for changes to the state's law. Last week, House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, formed a Republican-led special committee to weigh changes to the law, as well. Schapira stressed that his goal is to improve the tax credit, not end it.
Lawrence Mohrweis, an accounting professor at Northern Arizona University who also oversees a tuition organization in Flagstaff, said school-tuition organizations should register with the state and have annual audits or financial reviews, depending on how much money they handle. He also urged lawmakers to give the Department of Revenue some oversight authority. "I compare it to speed-limit signs," Mohrweis said. "What would happen if the state patrol could pull you over but never give you a fine or give you a ticket? . . . That's effectively what we have within STO organizations right now."
The Goldwater Institute for years has suggested changes to the tax credit. Matthew Ladner, vice president for research at the free-market, non-profit think tank, supports auditing responsibilities and empowering the Revenue Department. But he also favors a personal-use tax credit that would allow all parents to deduct at least some of the cost of educating their child regardless of whether the child attends public or private school. At the same time, he would change the current tax-credit law to also help only students from low-income families. Arizona has a corporate-tax credit that must go to the poor, but the credit available to individuals is not limited. "Fundamentally, the program needs some kind of sheriff," Ladner said. "There are different public or private models that could help accomplish that goal."
The School Choice Working Group, which represents more than a half-dozen groups, plans to work with the special committee on legislation that would create need-based criteria for scholarships and would offer reports on how prevalent such scholarships are, said Sydney Hay, a spokeswoman for the group.
SOURCE
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