freedombunker--2019-05-30--Rising Education Costs Stem Primarily from More Teachers and Bigger Salaries Not Administrative Blo

Rising Education Costs Stem Primarily from More Teachers and Bigger Salaries, Not Administrative Bloat

In Why Are The Prices So D*mn High? Helland and I examine lower education, higher education, and health care in-depth, and we do a broader statistical analysis of 139 industries. Today, I will make a few points about education. First, costs in both lower and higher education are rising faster than inflation and have been doing so for a very long time. In 1950 the U.S. spent $2,311 per elementary and secondary public school student compared with $12,673 in 2013, over five times more (both figures in $2015). The rate of increase was fastest in the 1950s and 1960s—a point to which I will return later in this series.  College costs have also increased dramatically over time. For this book, we are interested in costs more than tuition because we want to know what society is giving up to produce education rather than who, in the first instance, is paying for it. Costs are considerably higher than tuition even today, although in recent years tuition has been catching up. Essentially, students and their parents have been paying an increasing share of the increasing cost of higher education. Moreover, as with lower education, costs have been rising for a very long period of time.  I will take it as given that the explanation for higher costs isn’t higher quality. The evidence on tests scores is discussed in the book:  It is sometimes argued that how we teach has not changed but that what we teach has improved in quality. It is questionable whether studies of Shakespeare have improved, but there have been advances in biology, computer science, and physics that are taught today but were not in the past. However, these kinds of improvements cannot explain increases in cost. It is no more expensive to teach new theories than old. In a few fields, one might argue that lab equipment has improved, which it certainly has, but we know from figure 1 that goods in general have decreased in price. It is much cheaper today, for example, to equip a classroom with a computer than it was in the past.  The most popular explanation of why the cost of education has increased is bloat. Elizabeth Warren and Chris Christie, for example, have both blamed climbing walls and lazy rivers for higher tuition costs. Paul Campos argues that the real reason college costs are growing is “the constant expansion of university administration.” Redundant administrators are also commonly blamed for rising public school costs.  The bloat theory is superficially plausible. The lazy rivers do exist! But the bloat theory requires longer and lazier rivers every year, which is less plausible. It’s also peculiar that the cost of education is rising in both lower and higher education and in public and private colleges despite very different competitive structures. Indeed, it’s suspicious that in higher education bloat is often blamed on competition—the “amenities arms race“—while in lower education bloat is often blamed on lack of competition! An all-purpose theory doesn’t explain much.  More importantly, the data reject the bloat theory. Figure 8 (above) shows spending shares in higher education. Contrary to the bloat theory, the administrative share of spending has not increased much in over 30 years. The research share, where you might expect to find higher lab costs, has fluctuated a little but also hasn’t risen much. The plant share, which is where you might expect to find lazy rivers, has even gone down a little, at least compared to the early 1980s.  Nor is it true that administrators are taking over the public schools, see Figure 10 (above).  Compared with teachers and other staff, the number of principals and administrators is vanishingly small, only 0.4 per 100 students over the 1950–2015 period. It is true, if one looks closely, that the number of principals and administrators doubled between 1970 and 1980. It is unclear whether this is a real increase or a data artifact (we only have data for 1970 and 1980, not the years in between during this period). But because the base numbers are small, even a doubling cannot explain much. A bloated little toe cannot explain a 20-pound weight gain. Moreover, the increase in administrators was over by 1980, but expenditures kept growing.  If bloat doesn’t work, what is the explanation for higher costs in education? The explanation turns out to be simple: We are paying teachers (and faculty) more in real terms, and we have hired more of them. It’s hard to get costs to fall when input prices and quantities are both rising and teachers are doing more or less the same job as in 1950.  We are not arguing, however, that teachers are overpaid!  Indeed, it is part of our theory that teachers are earning a normal wage for their level of skill and education. The evidence that teachers earn substantially above-market wages is slim. Teachers’ unions in public schools, for example, cannot explain decade-by-decade increases in teacher compensation. In fact, most estimates find that teachers’ unions raise the wage level by only approximately 5 percent. In other words, teachers’ unions can explain why teachers earn 5 percent more than similar workers in the private sector, but unions cannot explain why teachers’ wages increase over time. If the case for unions as a cause of rising teacher compensation in public schools is weak, it is nonexistent for increased compensation for college faculty, for whom wage bargaining is done worker by worker with essentially no collective bargaining whatsoever.  A signal to where we are heading is this:  This article was reprinted with permission from Marginal Revolution.


freedombunker--2019-05-30--Todays Schools Are Yesterdays Streetcars How Technology Will Transform Education

Today’s Schools Are Yesterday’s Streetcars: How Technology Will Transform Education

We can predict the future of education by glimpsing the past of transportation. Fueled by technological innovation, namely electricity, streetcars gradually replaced the horse-and-buggy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, followed by mass-produced automobiles that ultimately toppled the streetcar.  Throughout the 20th century, cars became safer, faster, cleaner, and cheaper and allowed individuals unprecedented mobility and autonomy. Then, in the 21st century, car-sharing applications showed how technology could once again disrupt the transportation industry, expanding rider options and challenging entrenched systems of control.  Education transformation will take a similar path. Fueled by technological innovation, schools are now in the middle of their streetcar moment. Chalkboards are still ubiquitous, but computers are increasingly being used not only to supplement learning but also to administer it. Personalized learning, as this technology-enabled classroom education is called, is all the rage.  In public schools like those using Summit Learning, a personalized, online learning approach developed by Facebook engineers and funded by Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, the computer becomes the teacher, executing a largely self-paced curriculum and offering more flexibility and autonomy for students.True education transformation will come when learners realize that they don’t need an intermediary at all. The platform has sparked controversy, as some parents and educators resist change. Like the streetcar and transportation, personalized learning in schools is altering and modernizing the educational landscape. But it is just a launchpad.  True education transformation will come when learners realize that they don’t need an intermediary at all. Personalized learning in conventional schools will shift to self-directed education or unschooling, driven by the learner herself using the resource-rich networks of both real and digital communities. As Ivan Illich wrote in Deschooling Society:  Illich wrote those words in 1970 before the technological webs now at our fingertips were ever imagined. The funnel model of education, even when augmented by technology, is simply passé. Conflating learning with schooling, mired in coercion and a controlled curriculum, is an outdated idea. Schooling is something that others do to you; learning is something you do for yourself.  We already see how this works in our own adult lives. Just as the first automobiles began to disrupt old notions of transportation, recent technological innovations are recalibrating the way we learn. Whether it’s using YouTube to fix a toilet, Duolingo to learn a language, Audible to listen to books, or FaceTime to have lessons with your guitar instructor, technological platforms and applications are quickly helping us to shed our schooled vision of learning. Increasingly, we see that we can self-educate by following our own curiosities and pursuing our own personal and professional goals.  We can choose our own teachers and select the learning tools that work best for us. In his book, Illich wrote,  Technology frees us from this institutional paradigm of education and lets us teach ourselves.  It can do the same for our children. As our own relationship to learning shifts in response to new technologies that make information and knowledge more accessible, we may begin to question the worn-out ways our children learn. As we realize the value and reward of self-education in our own lives, we’ll want to give this gift to our children.  In his academic papers and award-winning 2013 TED Talk, Newcastle University professor Sugata Mitra explains how children teach themselves without institutional schooling. His “hole in the wall” studies have been widely cited, showing how children from the poorest slums of India to elsewhere around the world are able to learn to read, to teach themselves English, and to understand advanced scientific content (like DNA replication) simply by having access to an Internet-enabled public computer.  Mitra calls this approach “minimally invasive education” and concludes in his talk:  Thanks to technology, we adults now see this learning emerge all the time in our own lives. It can be the same for our children.  We will realize that we can be educated without being schooled.  In the 21st century, the transportation industry was jolted again by technological innovation. Uber, Lyft, and other car-sharing companies challenged longstanding local monopolies, granting riders more choice and flexibility with better service and lower costs. Next, autonomous vehicles may be the new wave of disruptive innovation in transportation. Meanwhile, in education, technology will continue to expand access to resources, information, knowledge, and skills that make self-education outside of schooling not only possible but preferable.  Like the streetcar and horse-and-buggy, institutional schooling will become a cultural relic, a quaint reminder of yesteryear. We will realize that non-coercive, technology-enabled, self-directed education in collaboration with others results in better, more meaningful, more enduring learning than its institutional predecessors can offer. We will realize that we can be educated without being schooled. Indeed, the future is here.


freedombunker--2019-09-11--Charter Schools vs the Education Monopoly

Charter Schools vs. the Education Monopoly

With most services, you get to shop around, but rarely can you do that with government-run schools.  Philadelphia mom Elaine Wells was upset to learn that there were fights every day in the school her son attended. So she walked him over to another school.  "We went to go enroll and we were told, 'He can't go here!' That was my wake up call," Wells tell me in my latest video.  She entered her sons in a charter school lottery, hoping to get them into a charter school.  "You're on pins and needles, hoping and praying," she said. But politicians stack the odds against kids who want to escape government-run schools. Philly rejected 75 percent of the applicants.  Wells' kids did eventually manage to get into a charter called Boys' Latin. I'm happy for them. I wish government bureaucrats would let all kids have similar chances.  Wells was so eager for her sons to attend that she arranged to have one repeat the sixth grade.  "That was the moment where I most despised Boys' Latin," the son told me.  But the boys' attitude quickly changed, says their mother. "Before Boys' Latin, I would come home and say, 'Read for an hour, read a book,' and their response would be, 'Why? What did we do?'—like reading was a punishment!"  But after they started at Boys' Latin, she found books scattered around the house. Suddenly, her boys were reading without her pressuring them.  She also was surprised to discover her son on the phone at 10 p.m. at night—talking to a teacher. Boys' Latin teachers often volunteer to help students with homework—even at night.  Other differences: Charter students spend more time in school—from 8 a.m. to 4 or 5 p.m., and they have to take Latin.  "We picked Latin because it was hard," he answered. "Life is hard. In order to be prepared, you have to work hard. We want to get that into the psyche of our students."  It works. Boys' Latin students do better on most state tests than kids in government-run schools. Hardy says, "We've sent more black boys to college than any high school in Pennsylvania."  But people who work in government monopolies don't like experiments that show there's a better way to do things. Philadelphia and other cities are rejecting new charter applications. Philadelphia rejected Hardy's plan to open a Girls' Latin.  "They realize that if we continue to take children away, they won't have jobs," says Hardy.  Instead of approving more charters, the education establishment just says, "Give us more money."  But get this: Philadelphia schools already spend $18,400 per child, about half a million dollars per classroom. With that money, they could hire five experienced teachers for every class. But they don't. So, where does all that money go?  Bureaucracy, says Hardy. "They have a director of special ed and assistant director of special ed…director of high school athletics and an assistant…lot of overhead."  The establishment's new attack on charter competition is: Charters drain resources from public schools.  It's a clever argument, but it's a lie. Charter schools are public, too, and Philadelphia, like other cities, gives charters less money than it gives to schools the city government runs. In Philadelphia, charters get only 70 percent as much. So government schools actually save money when a kid leaves for a charter.  Even if charters got equal money, says Wells, "you can't tell me that charter schools take funding from public schools! Every parent pays taxes that fund the school system. If I choose for my child to go to a charter school, then that's where my taxes should go!"  She's right. So why aren't more charters approved?  "It would mean a whole lot less union jobs," Hardy says. "The unions are not going to be for that."  It's not just unions. Education bureaucrats love working in a monopoly where they are basically guaranteed jobs. Bad charter schools close, but government-run schools almost never do—no matter how badly they treat kids.


freedombunker--2019-10-10--When the Quest for Education Equity Stifles Innovation

In March, efforts to open an innovative public high school in a diverse, urban district just outside of Boston received a devastating blow. Powderhouse Studios was in the works for seven years, with grand hopes of changing public education from a top-down system defined by coercion to a learner-driven model focused on student autonomy and self-determination. The vision for this school was so compelling that it won a $10 million XQ Super School innovation grant and was positioned to lead efforts to inject freedom into a conventional schooling system characterized by force.  The school was set to open this fall in Somerville, Massachusetts, clearing high hurdles along the way, including gaining the crucial support of the teachers’ union. Everything looked ready to go. Then, in a startling turn of events, the local school committee voted unanimously in March not to approve the school’s launch.  Entrepreneurs can catalyze far greater educational equity than well-intentioned central planners ever could.  Boston’s local NPR station ran a story about the Powderhouse debacle. While the school committee members said they appreciated the high school’s novel approach, which would focus primarily on project-based learning tied to student interests, they decided they couldn’t approve a school that would only serve 160 high school-age students when there are 5,000 students in the district who wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the program. According to the NPR reporter:  It wouldn’t be fair, school committee members concluded, to allow some young people to attend Powderhouse if not everyone could attend. As the school committee chairperson told NPR:  In the all-out quest for educational equity, innovation is systematically stifled. If not everyone can have something, then no one can.  An All or Nothing Approach  Just imagine if Motorola had the same perspective regarding its invention of the first cell phone. Imagine if company leaders (or politicians!) said: “We can’t manufacture these mobile phones because not everyone will have access to them and therefore no one should.” Fortunately, manufacturers didn’t pay attention to equity, and as a result, over five billion people around the world now have a cell phone. Five. billion. people.  Powderhouse sounded like an ideal incubator of educational innovation, where teenagers would be responsible for their education in a hands-on way.  At first, cell phones were incredibly expensive and only a few people could own them, but thanks to the power of innovation and the timeless laws of supply and demand, the costs of cell phones dropped dramatically—even as their features became more state-of-the-art. This is how innovation works in the marketplace—when it is not halted by government central planners who think they know what is best and most “equitable.”  I wrote about Powderhouse in Unschooled, before the March vote, and even then I was pessimistically hopeful. The school sounded like an ideal incubator of educational innovation, where teenagers would be responsible for designing, managing, and executing in-depth, multiyear projects leading to mastery in various subjects in a more authentic, hands-on way. There would be no assigned classes, no grades, no age-segregation, and no testing. Teachers would act as mentors and guides. The space would look more like a research lab than a school, and project mastery would ultimately be mapped back to district-wide core competency expectations.  Dreamed up by Alec Resnick, an MIT graduate inspired by social reformers like John Holt (a teacher who coined the term “unschooling” in 1977) and Ivan Illich, who wrote Deschooling Society in 1970, Powderhouse had a bold vision to move self-directed education into the public sector. Resnick was also very concerned about equity and access, ensuring that students would be selected into the school by lottery and that the population would be reflective of the demographic diversity of the larger district. The new school could be a beacon for change. But then the March vote came.  This outcome shouldn’t surprise us. The historical track record for innovative public schools like this one is dismal. They will sometimes succeed in launching with much fanfare and excitement and then eventually get reabsorbed into the larger district, ultimately becoming virtually indistinguishable from other conventional schools. True educational innovation must occur outside of the public schooling system.Since its 19th-century inception, the compulsory mass schooling system has shown itself to be remarkably resistant to change. The future of Powderhouse is unclear, but the past is often prologue.  The Powderhouse story is just the latest example of why I believe that true educational innovation must occur outside of the public schooling system. Like they did with cell phones, entrepreneurs will be the ones to create meaningful and lasting change with the potential to reach more people—with lower costs and better results. Entrepreneurs can catalyze far greater educational equity than well-intentioned central planners ever could. That is, if they are not halted by elected officials and government bureaucrats who think they are the guardians of us all.


freedombunker--2019-12-04--Fraud in Higher Education

Fraud in Higher Education

This year’s education scandal saw parents shelling out megabucks to gain college admittance for their children. Federal prosecutors have charged more than 50 people with participating in a scheme to get their children into colleges by cheating on entrance exams or bribing athletic coaches. They paid William Singer, a college-prep professional, more than $25 million to bribe coaches and university administrators and to change test scores on college admittance exams such as the SAT and ACT. As disgusting as this grossly dishonest behavior is, it is only the tiny tip of fraud in higher education.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016, only 37% of white high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 70% of them. Roughly 17% of black high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 58% of them. A 2018 Hechinger Report found, “More than four in 10 college students end up in developmental math and English classes at an annual cost of approximately $7 billion, and many of them have a worse chance of eventually graduating than if they went straight into college-level classes.”  According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, “when considering all first-time undergraduates, studies have found anywhere from 28 percent to 40 percent of students enroll in at least one remedial course. When looking at only community college students, several studies have found remediation rates surpassing 50 percent.” Only 25% of students who took the ACT in 2012 met the test’s readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math and science).  It’s clear that high schools confer diplomas that attest that a student can read, write and do math at a 12th-grade level when, in fact, most cannot. That means most high diplomas represent fraudulent documents. But when high school graduates enter college, what happens? To get a hint, we can turn to an article by Craig E. Klafter, “Good Grieve! America’s Grade Inflation Culture,” published in the Fall 2019 edition of Academic Questions. In 1940, only 15% of all grades awarded were A’s. By 2018, the average grade point average at some of the nation’s leading colleges was A-minus. For example, the average GPA at Brown University (3.75), Stanford (3.68), Harvard College (3.63), Yale University (3.63), Columbia University (3.6), University of California, Berkeley (3.59).  The falling standards witnessed at our primary and secondary levels are becoming increasingly the case at tertiary levels. “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” is a study conducted by Professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. They found that 45% of 2,300 students at 24 colleges showed no significant improvement in “critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.”  An article in News Forum for Lawyers titled “Study Finds College Students Remarkably Incompetent” cites a study done by the American Institutes for Research that revealed that over 75% of two-year college students and 50% of four-year college students were incapable of completing everyday tasks. About 20% of four-year college students demonstrated only basic mathematical ability, while a steeper 30% of two-year college students could not progress past elementary arithmetic. NBC News reported that Fortune 500 companies spend about $3 billion annually to train employees in “basic English.”  Here is a list of some other actual college courses that have been taught at U.S. colleges in recent years: “What If Harry Potter Is Real?” “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame,” “Philosophy and Star Trek,” “Learning from YouTube,” “How To Watch Television,” and “Oh, Look, a Chicken!” The questions that immediately come to mind are these: What kind of professor would teach such courses, and what kind of student would spend his time taking such courses? Most importantly, what kind of college president and board of trustees would permit classes in such nonsense?  The fact that unscrupulous parents paid millions for special favors from college administrators to enroll their children pales in comparison to the poor educational outcomes, not to mention the gross indoctrination of young people by leftist professors.  The post Fraud in Higher Education appeared first on LewRockwell.


instapundit--2019-03-30--HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE A Mole Hunt for Diversity Bias at Villanova An atmosphere o

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:  A Mole Hunt for Diversity ‘Bias’ at Villanova:  An atmosphere o…

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: A Mole Hunt for Diversity ‘Bias’ at Villanova: An atmosphere of fear-imposed silence makes it impossible to achieve a real liberal-arts education.  Last fall we were notified by the Villanova administration that new “diversity and inclusion” questions would be added to the course and teaching evaluations that students fill out each semester. In addition to the standard questions about the intellectual worth of the course and the quality of instruction, students are now being asked heavily politicized questions such as whether the instructor has demonstrated “cultural awareness” or created an “environment free of bias based on individual differences or social identities.”  In short, students are being asked to rate professors according to their perceived agreement with progressive political opinion on bias and identity. Students are also invited to “comment on the instructor’s sensitivity to the diversity of the students in the class.” Professors are rated on their “sensitivity” to a student’s “biological sex, disability, gender identity, national origin, political viewpoint, race/ethnicity, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, etc.” The “etc.” in particular seems like an ominous catchall, as if the sole principle of sound teaching has become “that no student shall be offended.” . . .  The larger implications are even more disturbing. The new evaluations will allow a professor’s professional performance to be recast as a human resources or even a legal problem. Think about it: You can’t fire a professor for being conservative, but you certainly can fire him for creating a “hostile work environment.” At a minimum, all charges of insensitivity, injustice and bigotry will become part of the faculty’s permanent record. How long will it be before professors cease to challenge their students for fear of losing their careers and livelihoods?


lewrockwell--2019-05-15--Higher Education in America

Higher Education in America

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics at Ohio University Richard Vedder’s new book, “Restoring the Promise,” published by the Independent Institute based in Oakland, California, is about the crisis in higher education. He summarizes the three major problems faced by America’s colleges and universities. First, our universities “are vastly too expensive, often costing twice as much per student compared with institutions in other industrialized democracies.” Second, though there are some important exceptions, students “on average are learning relatively little, spend little time in academic preparation and in some disciplines are indoctrinated by highly subjective ideology.” Third, “there is a mismatch between student occupational expectations after graduation and labor market realities.” College graduates often find themselves employed as baristas, retail clerks and taxi drivers. The extraordinary high college cost not only saddles students with debt, it causes them to defer activities such as getting married and starting a family, buying a home and saving for retirement. Research done by the New York Federal Reserve Banks and the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that each dollar of federal aid to college leads to a tuition increase of 60 cents. For the high cost of college, what do students learn? A seminal study, “Academically Adrift,” by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, after surveying 2,300 students at various colleges, argues that very little improvement in critical reasoning skills occurs in college. Adult literacy is falling among college graduates. Large proportions of college graduates do not know simple facts, such as the half-century in which the Civil War occurred. There are some exceptions to this academic incompetency, most notably in technical areas such as engineering, nursing, architecture and accounting, where colleges teach vocationally useful material. Vedder says that student ineptitude is not surprising since they spend little time in classrooms and studying. It’s even less surprising when one considers student high school preparation. According to 2010 and 2013 NAEP test scores, only 37% of 12th-graders were proficient in reading, 25% in math, 12% in history, 20% in geography and 24% in civics. What happens when many of these students graduate saddled with debt? The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in an October 2018 report, finds that many students are underemployed, filling jobs that can be done with a high school education. More than one-third of currently working college graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree, such as flight attendants, janitors and salesmen. In addition to this kind of resource misallocation, 40% or more college students fail to graduate in six years. It is not unreasonable to ask whether college attendance was a wise use of these students’ time and the resources of their parents and taxpayers. Vedder has several important ideas for higher education reform. First, we should put an end to the university monopoly on certifying educational and vocational competency. Non-college organizations could package academic courses and award degrees based upon external examinations. Regarding financial aid, colleges should be forced to share in covering loan defaults, namely they need to have some skin in the game. More importantly, Vedder says that we should end or revise the federal student aid program. Vedder ends “Restoring the Promise” with a number of proposals with which I agree: —College administrative staff often exceeds the teaching staff. Vedder says, “I doubt there is a major campus in America where you couldn’t eliminate very conservatively 10 percent of the administrative payroll (in dollar terms) without materially impacting academic performance.” —Reevaluate academic tenure. Tenure is an employment benefit that has costs, and faculty members should be forced to make tradeoffs between it and other forms of university compensation. —Colleges of education, with their overall poor academic quality, are an embarrassment on most campuses and should be eliminated. —End speech codes on college campuses by using the University of Chicago Principles on free speech. —The most important measure of academic reforms is to make university governing boards independent and meaningful. In my opinion, most academic governing boards are little more than yes men for the president and provost.  The Best of Walter E. Williams


Black Education Decline

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says that the city’s specialized high schools have a diversity problem. He’s joined by New York City Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza, educators, students and community leaders who want to fix the diversity problem. I bet you can easily guess what they will do to “improve” the racial mix of students (aka diversity). If you guessed they would propose eliminating the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test as the sole criterion for admissions, go to the head of the class. The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test is an examination that is administered to New York City’s eighth- and ninth-grade students. By state law, it is used to determine admission to all but one of the city’s nine specialized high schools.  It’s taken as axiomatic that the relatively few blacks admitted to these high-powered schools is somehow tied to racial discrimination. In a June 2, 2018 “Chalkbeat” article (https://tinyurl.com/y64delc3), de Blasio writes: “The problem is clear. Eight of our most renowned high schools — including Stuyvesant High School, Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School — rely on a single, high-stakes exam. The Specialized High School Admissions Test isn’t just flawed — it’s a roadblock to justice, progress and academic excellence.” American Contempt for ... Walter E. Williams Best Price: $11.48 Buy New $11.54 (as of 07:35 EDT - Details)  Let’s look at a bit of history to raise some questions about the mayor’s diversity hypothesis. Dr. Thomas Sowell provides some interesting statistics about Stuyvesant High School in his book “Wealth, Poverty and Politics.” He reports that, “In 1938, the proportion of blacks attending Stuyvesant High School, a specialized school, was almost as high as the proportion of blacks in the population of New York City.” Since then, it has spiraled downward. In 1979, blacks were 12.9% of students at Stuyvesant, falling to 4.8% in 1995. By 2012, The New York Times reported that blacks were 1.2% of the student body.  What explains the decline? None of the usual explanations for racial disparities make sense.In other words, would one want to argue that there was less racial discrimination in 1938? Or, argue that in 1938 the “legacy of slavery” had not taken effect whereby now it is in full bloom? Genetic or environmental arguments cannot explain why blacks of an earlier generation were able to meet the demanding mental test standards to get into an elite high school. Socioeconomic conditions for blacks have improved dramatically since 1938. The only other plausible reason for the decline in academic achievement is that there has been a change in black culture. It doesn’t take much to reach this conclusion. Simply look at school behavior today versus yesteryear.  An Education Week article reported that in the 2015-16 school year, “5.8% of the nation’s 3.8 million teachers were physically attacked by a student.” The Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics show that in the 2011-12 academic year, there were a record 209,800 primary- and secondary-school teachers who reported being physically attacked by a student. Nationally, an average of 1,175 teachers and staff were physically attacked, including being knocked out, each day of that school year.  In the city of Baltimore, each school day in 2010, an average of four teachers and staff were assaulted. A National Center for Education Statistics study found that 18% of the nation’s schools accounted for 75% of the reported incidents of violence, and 6.6% accounted for half of all reported incidents. These are schools with predominantly black student populations. It’s not only assaults on teachers but cursing and disorderly conduct that are the standard fare in so many predominantly black schools.  Here are questions that might be asked of de Blasio and others who want to “fix the diversity problem” at New York’s specialized schools: What has the triumph of egalitarian and diversity principles done for the rest of New York’s school system? Are their academic achievement scores better than students at New York’s specialized schools? The most important question for black parents: What has been allowed to happen to cripple black academic excellence?  The Best of Walter E. Williams


realclearpolitics--2019-03-11--The Recurring Question What About Education

The Recurring Question: 'What About Education?'

Whenever I am asked to speak before a gathering of conservatives, one question I can count on hearing is some variation of "What about education?"  In other words, "Is there any way to reclaim the culture without first winning back the halls of academe?"  Sadly, there isn’t, yet short of violent revolution, there is also little hope for restoring traditional education in public schools that includes civics, moral instruction, and strict discipline. That’s why I tend to be pessimistic about the long-term chances of survival for the free society that is the bequest of the ancient Greeks to our ungrateful generation. Storming the Bastille is one thing, but storming the ivory tower behind its massive defenses of tenure and obdurate tenacity is quite another.  I read with interest, therefore, James Delingpole's lament at Breitbart.com last week titled "O Tempora, O Mores! Social Justice Is Killing Classics." It should be noted first of all that Delingpole doesn’t feel the need to translate his Latin quotation, which is the sign of a true classicist. That signals his expectation that anyone with a decent education ought to recognize the quote from Cicero, the Roman statesman, which bewails roughly, “Oh, what times! Oh, what customs!”  But of course Latin, once a standard tool of education in Western society, was one of the first casualties of the progressive education system advanced by John Dewey at the start of the 20th century. Under the principles advanced by Dewey and now embedded in every public school in America, education doesn’t serve society. It doesn’t even serve the parents who pay for it. Rather, progressive education sees its client as the student, and this, in a nutshell, is why it caters to the whims of children — children, it goes without saying, who have no interest in learning the dead language of Latin with its declensions, cases, genders and a host of accompanying dead writers to rub it in.  As one reporter noted in a news story in 1900 (printed in the Stevens Point, Wisconsin, Journal), the John Dewey school in Chicago is “where children are permitted to grow up and acquire knowledge with the least possible interference from those in charge of them.” No wonder another syndicated writer in 1900, Milton B. Marks, described Dewey’s elementary school at the University of Chicago as a place where children “have little use for books.”  “The casual observer would probably make neither head nor tail of the class instruction as it is carried on in this school,” Marks wrote, “and would conclude that the children were enjoying a perpetual holiday.”  Well, that perpetual holiday has now lasted more than 100 years, and the children who were educated by Dewey taught the children who grew up to teach communist educator Bill Ayers, who grew up to teach the teachers who teach your children, and now your children think that they can do whatever they want whenever they want — and frankly so do most of their parents!  But it would be nice if they would keep their hands off the classics. Plutarch and Homer and Herodotus and Marcus Aurelius were doing just fine before the social justice warriors discovered them.  Sadly, the pesky revisionists of the left have taken over classical studies and are busily cleansing their ranks of backward-thinking scholars who reject identity politics and political correctness. Delingpole recounts the story of Mary Frances Williams, a classics Ph.D. who attended the annual meeting of the Society of Classical Studies for intellectual stimulation but left it in academic disgrace.  Her crime? As Delingpole notes, “She made the mistake of trying to speak out against the corruption of the [c]lassical curriculum by identity politics, race-baiting and anti-male hysteria.” Williams told her own fascinating story in a Quillette essay titled “How I was Kicked Out of the Society for Classical Studies Annual Meeting.”  To make a long story short, it turns out that a speaker at the conference, Princeton professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta, had stumbled upon the “dirty secret” of classics — that old white men were more interested in Latin and Greek than any other group of people. No surprise there, right? Another speaker at the conference, Joy Connolly, said that “ancient languages could not be taught anymore by [c]lassics departments” because students just weren’t interested. Those old white men were, but it seems that their aptitude for ancient languages, history and philosophy means less than their “white privilege.”  Interest in the classics should not predetermine success in the field, Padilla seemed to be arguing — not if you are white. Instead, qualified scholars who happened to be white men should voluntarily step aside in order to improve the quantity of scholars of color enjoying the perks of publication. Sound too crazy to be true? Just read his words for yourself:  “... white men will have to surrender the privilege they have of seeing their words printed and disseminated. They will have to take a back seat, so that people of colour, and women, and gender-non-conforming scholars of colour benefit from the privileges, career and otherwise, of seeing their words on the page.”  According to Williams, “Padilla said nothing about merit, the content of the article in question, or how it was reasoned. He said that articles by white men should be excluded from consideration, regardless of their merit, if members of other ethnic or racial groups submitted work for publication at the same time.”  Williams tells the story of how she rose to speak in defense of traditional scholarship and of the importance of the classics to the development of Western civilization and “the concepts of liberty, equality, and democracy” that underpin it. She never got a chance to argue against using race as the determinant in scholarly publication because her defense of Western civilization triggered those in the audience into a state of near panic. Nothing better encapsulates the state of disrepair of our education establishment than this pitiful encounter that resulted in Williams being banned from the conference and losing a part-time job for another professional society.  With her essay in Quillette, Williams has become an accidental warrior in the battle to preserve the best of Western civilization from the likes of John Dewey and Dan-el Padilla Peralta.  As she wrote, “Of all the academic disciplines, [c]lassics alone has managed until now to withstand most of the corrupting influences of modern critical theory and ‘social justice’ activism. Ours is the last bastion of Western [c]ivilization in the academy.”  If that tiny redoubt has fallen, then we must be even more pessimistic than ever that there is a road back from the brink. If we are to enjoy a new Renaissance, it must begin with a cry of retreat — whether in the form of home-schooling or increased participation in private schools — but then it would ultimately require a non-violent revolution on local school boards. Parents must demand a return to methods of traditional education — the kind of education that insists on students learning not just the fundamentals of knowledge, but also the moral, religious and cultural underpinnings that give that knowledge meaning and significance.  Without such a change, we face a long Dark Age where dogma replaces logic and wisdom is hidden away in hopes of a future generation that escapes the tyranny of political correctness.


sottnet--2019-04-07--University of Washington Ed Program Leftist Indoctrination Not Teacher Education

University of Washington Ed. Program: Leftist Indoctrination, Not Teacher Education

Having decided to become a high school teacher, I was excited to be accepted to the University of Washington's Secondary Teacher Education Program (STEP), which awards a masters degree in teaching and bills itself as a 12-month combination of theory and practice. Cognizant that in just over a year I would be responsible for teaching students on my own, and because of the university's laudable reputation, I expected the program to be grounded in challenging practical work and research, both in terms of how to develop academic skills in young people, and also in the crucial role public education has in overcoming some of the most grave and intransigent problems in society.I am not interested in politics or controversy, and I derive no pleasure in creating difficulties for the UW out of personal resentment. But whenever family and friends ask me about graduate school, I have to explain that rather than an academic program centered around pedagogy and public policy,As a consequence, the key components of teaching as a vocation-pedagogy and how best to disseminate knowledge-are fundamentally neglected. With little practical training or preparation, graduates of the program begin their teaching careers woefully unprepared. Even for the most ardent social justice activist, STEP's lack of practical content is a serious shortcoming.To put this in context, STEP's approach to education deserves some explanation. Public schools haven't done a great job of bridging ugly chasms in American life, such as the racial academic achievement gap between black and white populations, which has hardly narrowed since the Civil Rights Act. Discrimination based on gender and sexuality remain impediments to equality of opportunity and the way children are currently treated in public schools is clearly a part of that. The statistics on these matters are appalling, and slow progress is no excuse for complacency. Additionally, teachers should work to cultivate catholic tastes, and in light of demographic changes, white Americans shouldn't expect the literature and old-fashioned narrative history of Europe and the United States to be considered the normal curriculum, with a few token "diverse" authors alongside Shakespeare and Hemingway. Nonetheless, while these challenges exist, and although public education is a vital mechanism in the struggle to resolve inequality and to further the development of an open cosmopolitan culture, the program's attempts to address these issues are deeply disturbing.And so a culture emerges rapidly in the 60-student cohort in which words and phrases fall under constant scrutiny, and ideas thought to be inimical to social justice are pounced on as oppressive. Moreover, instead of imparting knowledge about the rudiments of pedagogy or how to develop curriculum content and plan for high school classes, the faculty and leadership declare that their essential mission is to combat the colonialism, misogyny and homophobia that is endemic in American society.When you consider that STEP's ostensible purpose is to prepare graduates to become novice high school teachers, this approach in a public university is difficult to justify.With a few notable exceptions, the content one might expect to study at graduate school is absent.Students are expected to demonstrate that the attributes of their personal identity (always reduced to race, sexuality and gender, and sometimes disability status) will shape their assumptions when they work as classroom teachers. Practically speaking, the purpose is to have teachers acknowledge and embrace a broad variety of behavioral norms and activities in the classroom and to explore a wider range of academic content than has traditionally been the case in American public schools. Above all,A good illustration of this ideology in practise is manifest in ' The Case of Carla ,' a Science Education paper that has gained something of canonical status at the UW. After observing a sixth-grade classroom, the authors of this study conclude that the subconscious privileging of white students' behavior by a white teacher and her white students is the cause of an African-American girl's relatively low academic performance. In this article, sweeping conclusions about the impact of racial and gender dynamics in science education across the public school system are based on the observation of four elementary school students over a few weeks, which doesn't seem like a very robust approach. Nonetheless, the faculty of UW's Ed School treat it as an intellectual lodestar. In one of our classes, students were asked to parse a transcript from the classroom of a white American teacher in which she challenged one of her Native American students who had claimed that water is biologically alive. Rather than analyzing her academic aims, how she came to develop her lesson plan, or her pedagogical techniques, the purpose of this session was to impress upon us that she was perpetuating oppression because she had rejected the spiritual beliefs of a non-Western culture.STEP's relentless assumption is that group identity is the most important determinant of success or failure in public education and in civic life, and that all inequality can be attributed to discrimination, conscious or unconscious, perpetrated primarily by straight white men and other reactionary elements. BecauseThis focus on ideology comes at the cost of studying the craft of teaching or how to productively deal with difficult social problems on a small scale. Much of the practical teaching guidance we were given has no demonstrable efficacy or validation in the peer-reviewed literature.. STEP is a travesty in its disservice to its own students and, because the program neglects the practice of teaching in favor of pontifications on social justice, it lets down the disadvantaged children it purports to serve. Each year it sends out a cohort of graduates who, due to a lack of preparation, are likely to become overwhelmed in a profession already suffering from alarming rates of attrition, particularly in high-needs schools.One of the more peculiar and psychologically manipulative requirements in STEP is called. White students are required to demonstrate contrition for their privilege with examples of how whiteness, latent racism, and America's institutionalized racism has benefitted them personally. Essentially, in these classes white people are asked to sit around to free-associate and express how badly they feel about race relations in America. Students of color are put in a separate caucus and at the close of the first quarter the two groups are united into one caucus and, convening in a large circle, are asked to stand up and pat their thighs, rub their palms together and click their fingers-to create the sound of a thunderstorm, for some reason. If my experience is anything to go by, the students of color then regale the group with their painful experiences and excoriate the white students, making accusations of racism and subconscious marginalization. After many tears and public apologies, my caucus finished with everyone being asked to hug one another.This, inevitably, led to further apologies, crying, hand-wringing, mandatory contrite letter-writing for white students, and a deep sense of foreboding each week as the class descended further into chaos and uncertainty from which it never recovered.The worrying educational disparity between girls and boys that has emerged in recent decades-whereby girls outperform boys in every educational phase-was not discussed, presumably because it falls outside the paradigm of male privilege and female oppression. Again and again, for months on end, several professors addressed the concept of microaggressions, always in a blatantly accusatory manner, as if graduate students in Seattle are likely to say to a female student "You're smart-for a girl!" or ask an Asian-American person: "But, where are you really from?"In STEP it is considered wholly appropriate to saddle an individual with all the characteristics of their group identity, a frightening concept indeed, which obviously has a real effect on how students conduct themselves towards one another, and, presumably, their future pupils.Another interesting and lengthy feature in STEP areStudents and instructors then parse the performances and discuss the dynamics of identity that play out in each scene. Eventually, when I questioned the pedagogical rationale of the "Theatre of the Oppressed" and the inordinate amount of time being spent on these workshops-I was paying good money for this course-I was told that it would help me as a classroom teacher to avoid the "violence" shown in the theatre scenes. When I pressed the TA to show me the evidence that this was an effective method, I was told that these workshops are "considered valuable" and that I should "work through" my "discomfort." Obviously, no evidence for their efficacy was ever presented.In one session, the instructor rejected all gender pronouns and required that we dance to Beyoncé songs while discussing instances of hetero-normative behavior and homophobia. In another class in the second quarter we were required to bring in items that represented us-a task that proved to be nothing more than Show & Tell, a harbinger of the academic rigor to come. These tasks, which require precisely no academic work, would be comical if graduate school was tuition-free and a lack of preparedness for teaching had no real-world impact.Another issue with STEP is that it woefully misallocates resources and time, even if the content under consideration is reasonable in and of itself, which it occasionally is. For instance, one class focused on the historic discrimination against African-Americans in Seattle through practices like red-lining, wherein banks would refuse to grant mortgages to qualified black customers in certain neighborhoods, inhibiting the accumulation of inter-generational wealth in black communities. This class went on for an entire quarter, with presumably no purpose other than to demonstrate reasons for the educational achievement gap and the related wealth divide between black and white populations in the United States. I was shocked at the level of ignorance assumed by the faculty in a cohort of graduate students-as if educated adults would have been hitherto unaware of the effects on contemporary society of the historic persecution of African-American people. However, openly disputing the academic program would have drawn social stigma and accusations of racism or "white fragility," which proved to be a powerful incentive to slog through the content, regardless of its relevance to pedagogy or the dissemination of academic knowledge to young people.. In one class, students in small groups monitor how much each person speaks, and for how long, in order to collect data on the participation rates of the various racial, gender, or sexuality categories. Incredibly, the chosen teaching method of several instructors is to put students in groups to create a poster using a sheet of butcher paper and colored Sharpies in reference to an issue raised in the week's readings, or after jigsawing a complex text between several students who have to explain it to one another. After several three-minute lectures, students then mill around the room with Post-It Notes making anodyne comments. These kinds of ridiculous juvenile tasks and restrictions, put on by professors with little work experience outside K-12 education, make a mockery of graduate school and remind you of the worst teachers you had growing up. I suppose they had one redeeming virtue: they teach you exactly how not to behave in a classroom.The program does have some elements of practical merit. A few sessions on how to create academic assessments for students were engaging and useful. I took two social studies methods classes and found them to be excellent. These classes teach you what methods to use to engage students in critical thinking and historical debate. One method, called Inquiry, calls for the teacher to ask a question, present different hypotheses and data sets, and then ask the students to work together to construct arguments for the validity of each side in a debate. Compared with lecturing, students are much more likely to engage with the content and to understand that history is debatable, authority should be challenged, opinions have to be grounded in data, and that engaging with the other side is critical in the development of academic expertise and authority. This is backed by decades of pedagogical research, and is the content that one might expect would typify the teaching in an ed school at a research university. Unfortunately, the professor who teaches these classes, who has been at the UW for more than 30 years, is about to retire, and there is no reason to expect him to be replaced by someone with a similar approach. And although he has garnered immense respect from decades of teaching and research, identity politics encroached on his classes, too: students complained of prejudice because he asked us to consider the various plausible reasons for the sinking of the Titanic as an illustration of how to debate a well-known historical narrative with high school students-this, apparently, is "Eurocentrism."To dispute the UW's received wisdom that a cohort of 60 graduate students should spend most of their year in ed school discussing identity politics would be tantamount to opposing the goal of ending discrimination and inequality in American life. This is how a pervasive intellectual orthodoxy emerges and remains unchallenged. And this is how the social justice elements in STEP get ratcheted up each year by a small, noisy group of committed student activists who intimidate their peers and professors into agreement and silence. Indeed, the program prides itself on its innovative and extreme measures to incorporate social justice activism into the academy with an almost theological confidence that this panacea will finally resolve all the problems in contemporary public education. At the University of Washington, the social justice zeitgeist has transformed a vocational program into something unrecognizable if you're not already familiar with campus activism., such as the courses offered by Western Governors University , an online college. A combination of that alongside easily-attainable reading materials and a chance to develop your expertise organically through field experience and trial and error and advice from veteran teachers who live and work in the real world is far more worthwhile. This is a terrible conclusion to draw, because teaching is an immensely difficult task and graduate school programs with a focus on pedagogy and academic excellence could ease the transition for novices into a successful teaching career. The instructors at STEP might even alleviate some of the social problems they claim to care about if they did.Nick Wilson is a pseudonym. He is a graduate of the University of Washington's secondary teacher education program.


telesurtv--2019-06-25--Cuba To Help Nicaragua Improve Its Education System

Cuba’s government has signed cooperation agreements with Nicaragua, which the Sandinista government hopes will help strengthen its education system.  There will be "exchanges" whereby Cuba will visit and share their experiences building a world-class school system.  > _**RELATED:**_  >  > [_**Nicaragua Creates 2,000 ‘Reconciliation Commissions’ for Peace**_](https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Nicaragua-Creates-2000 -Reconciliation-Commissions-for-Peace-20190618-0007.html)  Nicaragua’s Vice President Rosario Murillo announced Tuesday that Cuba’s Education Minister Ana Elsa Velazquez is visiting the country. The visit comes as the two countries sign accords relating to cooperation in various areas of education, and on the training of Nicaragua’s teaching staff.  State media has reported details of what Cuba’s minister has planned during her visit. She will speak in the towns of Esteli and Matagalpa to conferences of primary school teachers, where she will explain how Cuba has built a quality education system, including the use of "mobile teachers" that are deployed to homes where children are unable to attend their local institution.  Vice President Murillo celebrated the visit, saying; “Cuba is a wonderful country of solidarity, and with a high level of development in quality education, and with a long-standing commitment to solidarity and revolutionary fraternity.”  The achievements of Cuba’s education system have been praised internationally. These include the elimination of illiteracy in just one year at the beginning of the revolution.  The teaching methods and programs used to achieve this, known as  ‘Yo Si Puedo’ (Yes I Can) have been deployed in Venezuela and Bolivia to eliminate illiteracy in the respective countries. According to World Bank figures, as a proportion of its GDP, Cuba[ spends more](https://cuba- solidarity.org.uk/information/facts/) than any other country in the world on its public education system, which is free at all levels for its citizens.


theamericanconservative--2019-05-13--How Massachusetts Showed the Way on Education Reform

We are now nearly four decades beyond the publication of A Nation at Risk, a federal report that indicted the “rising tide of mediocrity” and initiated a well-deserved period of hand-wringing about K-12 public education in the United States. Massachusetts was the only state to respond to the call to create a school system that would be among the best in the world. Sadly, now even the Bay State is retreating from the policies that delivered its historic success.  The landmark Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993, which was entirely state-led, pushed academic content and high standards over the Bush I and Clinton administrations’ agenda of K-12 education as merely workforce development training. Today, however, Beltway-driven initiatives like the Obama administration’s Common Core State Standards, together with a new generation of state leaders who seem to have forgotten the importance of tying new money to high standards, accountability and enhanced school choice, threaten to undermine the reforms that made the Bay State the nation’s unquestioned educational leader.  The Education Reform Act required the state to draft liberal arts-rich “curriculum frameworks” to help schools choose curricula by specifying the content students should be able to master. Developed after years of public debate and with input from teachers and experts, the English, writing, math, science, and history frameworks were internationally benchmarked, with an eye toward authentic college readiness.  Classic literature, like the works of Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, made up about 80 to 90 percent of the English content. In math, students were required to start studying algebra in the eighth grade, years before the National Mathematics Advisory Panel made the same recommendation. A wide range of voices—including the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, noted standards expert E. D. Hirsch, Jr., educational historian Diane Ravitch, Achieve, Inc., and the American Federation of Teachers—hailed the Massachusetts frameworks as national models.  Passing Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests based on the frameworks became a high school graduation requirement early in the current century. The tests also earned accolades and applied pressure to school systems to develop rigorous curricula. If they didn’t, their students’ scores would show it.  Another state test was developed for new teachers, who had to demonstrate communication and literacy skills and the knowledge to teach this material within the frameworks.  The results of the reform were better than even the law’s authors had hoped.  Beginning in 1993, Massachusetts’ SAT scores rose for 13 consecutive years. The state’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shot up, too. By 2005, Massachusetts students became the first to score best in the nation in all four major NAEP categories (fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math). Since then, they have repeated the feat on every subsequent administration of NAEP except one.  While American students as a whole lag behind their international peers, the 2007 and 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study results showed that Massachusetts students were competitive with their counterparts in places like Japan, Korea, and Singapore. In 2007, the Bay State’s eighth graders even tied for first place internationally in science.  In addition to across-the-board improvements, race- and class-based achievement gaps narrowed. E.D. Hirsch found that Massachusetts was one of three states that made the most progress at reducing achievement gaps between 1998 and 2005. Between 2002 and 2009, the NAEP scores of African Americans and Hispanics on both fourth- and eighth-grade reading tests improved more rapidly than those of white students. Low-income students made gains as well.  With this record, Massachusetts should be the model for other states to follow. But the Bay State has chosen to retreat from its own success. In 2008, Massachusetts turned its back on accountability when an independent agency that conducted comprehensive audits of school districts was eliminated.  When the Obama administration kicked off its push to federalize public education by making adoption of Common Core English and math standards a condition of receiving federal grant money, Massachusetts acquiesced. It adopted the standards in 2010.  Common Core cut the amount of classic literature, drama, and poetry that Massachusetts students study by 60 percent. The math standards, which Stanford University mathematics professor emeritus R. James Milgram called “shopping cart math,” no longer get students to algebra by eighth grade.  Subsequent revisions also dumbed down the Bay State’s science and U.S. history standards. In 2009, then-governor Deval Patrick’s administration brushed aside the state law that required history to join English, math, and science as a high-stakes test. Instead he pushed new age fads, including educating the “whole child” and vacuous “21st-century skills.”  The Education Reform Act had also created the nation’s best charter schools. A Stanford University study found that Boston charters were doing more to close achievement gaps than any other group of public schools in the country. But after the failure of repeated legislative attempts to loosen restrictions on the number of charters that could operate, supporters chose to make the issue the subject of a statewide referendum in 2016. Opponents prevailed, claiming charters “drain money” from traditional public schools, even though Massachusetts is the only state to provide full and partial reimbursements to school districts that lose students to charters.  Results from the dismantling of education reform have been swift and predictable. While Massachusetts still ranks first on NAEP, from 2011 to 2017, state scores either stagnated or declined in both English and math. In the Common Core era, the Bay State was among those that saw the biggest declines in math.  By 2013, the percentage of students scoring “Proficient” on MCAS fourth-grade reading tests had fallen by 10 points. SAT scores have also dropped significantly, especially in writing.  More than a quarter-century after education reform, the state’s K-12 funding formula is no longer keeping up with rising health insurance and special education costs. Rather than tie new money to reforms, the foundation of the historic 1993 law, it appears lawmakers plan to simply increase spending with no strings attached.  If your children ever grouse about why they have to learn history, you might want to direct them to the story of public education in Massachusetts. Here, state leaders have forgotten what led to the nation’s most successful reforms and appear determined to return to the barren landscape that existed before they were enacted.  Massachusetts has demonstrated what works in public education. Why are the state’s leaders running away from it?  Charles Chieppo is a senior fellow at and Jamie Gass directs the Center for School Reform at Pioneer Institute, a Boston-based think tank.


theguardianuk--2019-01-11--What do you think about the future of education

What do you think about the future of education?

Do you have good ideas about education, or want to ask a question about what it could like like in the future? If so, let us know by sharing your thoughts with our panel of education experts to examine what can be done to improve education, and make systems more equal. Whether you’re a teacher, student, academic, social worker, policymaker, parent, and wherever you are in the world, we want to hear from you.  This is what Alex Beard, author of Natural Born Learners, and one of our panellists for this podcast, has to say:  “Most schools today are not teaching kids how to learn. We lack a common understanding of what education is and what purpose it serves. We set national targets and arrange institutions and organise people so that they can deliver on those targets. This managerial thinking has been around for 100 years. But by standardising things in this way across classrooms, you undermine the efforts of educators.”  In an increasingly interdependent world, it’s vital that we strive to understand not just what it is that makes other societies tick, but how others – be they British, Japanese, German or Argentinian – endeavour to solve the same problems that we all share. In this month’s podcast, we will be focusing on the issue of education, and how we as a global community can improve standards of education for children of all nationalities, genders, ethnicities and economic backgrounds.  What are the techniques and methods we can all use to reform education models? How far are they needed, and how far can they stretch? Wendy Kopp explains the extent of the issue in her article ‘It’ll take a village to reform global education’:    “More than 60 percent of primary school children in low- and middle- income countries do not reach a minimum proficiency in reading and math. We’re even further from ensuring the world’s children gain the competencies and dispositions necessary to shape a better future for themselves and all of us.”  One thing is clear: the learning crisis is severe. But the conversation on education still needs to shift towards an understanding that this is a crisis that needs fixing – we know where we want to get to, but we don’t yet know how to get there. Of course, what works in one country might not work entirely in another, but recognising that there are other ways to do things might be a good place to start.  What are the common issues we all face? What approaches have you seen implemented, or helped to implement, and what beneficial changes have been brought about in the systems you work in?  Now we’d like to hear from you. What ideas do you have for education? How do you think we can make it more inclusive? What can we learn from other societies? Or what questions would you like answered? Let us know by sharing your questions in our encrypted form below. Or you can send an email to weneedtotalkabout@theguardian.com, please include your question or comment, your name, and a phone number so we can call you to make a recording. We’ll feature some of your responses in our podcast.  If you’re having trouble using the form, click here. Read terms of service here.  If you’d like to catch up with the podcast and previous discussions, you can do so at gu.com/talk-about.


abcnews--2019-12-02--Police: ‘Critical incident’ at high school in Waukesha, Wisconsin, but building ‘safe,’ suspect in c

Police: ‘Critical incident’ at high school in Waukesha, Wisconsin, but building ‘safe,’ suspect in custody Police: ‘Critical incident’ at high school in Waukesha, Wisconsin, but building ‘safe,’ suspect in custody


eveningstandard--2019-03-13--Nigeria school collapse Eight dead after three-storey building collapses with 100 children inside

Nigeria school collapse: Eight dead after three-storey building collapses with 100 children inside

Eight people have died after a three-storey building that contained a primary school in Nigeria collapsed with at least 100 students inside.  A major, frantic rescue operation was under way and rescuers have carried about 37 people out from the rubble.  Video from the scene in the country's commercial capital Lagos on Wednesday showed at least one dust-covered child being carried out of the wreckage.  Onlookers crowded around in the densely populated neighbourhood in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, cheered as the child was lifted out.  The crowd again celebrated as another child was pulled from the rubble.  National Emergency Management Agency spokesman Ibrahim Farinloye said 37 people had been pulled out alive while eight bodies were recovered from the ruins. An unknown number remained missing.  It was not immediately clear why the building collapsed but such disasters are all too common in Nigeria, where new construction often goes up without regulatory oversight and floors are added to already unstable buildings.  Lagos state governor Akinwunmi Ambode said the building, which had been marked for demolition, was classified as residential and the school was operating illegally on the top two floors.    Thousands of people swarmed the rescue site, with people standing in narrow streets and on rooftops of rusted, corrugated metal as a single yellow excavator scooped at the ruins.  A number of shirtless, barefoot men jumped in to offer assistance with hacksaws and mallets in hand.  It is not yet clear how many children have been pulled from the rubble, and how many have survived.  Management Agency's southwest region, adding that casualty figures were not yet available.  Building collapses are common in Nigeria, where new construction often goes up without regulatory oversight  The collapse comes as President Muhammadu Buhari, newly elected to a second term, tries to improve groaning, inefficient infrastructure in Africa's most populous nation.  "Nigeria's infrastructure is generally less than half the size than in the average sub-Saharan Africa country and only a fraction of that in emerging market economies," the International Monetary Fund has noted.  "The perceived quality of the infrastructure is low."  In 2016, more than 100 people died when the roof of a church in Uyo, in the south of Nigeria, caved in.


eveningstandard--2019-09-23--Nairobi school collapse At least seven children killed after building falls down in Kenya

Nairobi school collapse: At least seven children killed after building falls down in Kenya

At least seven children have been killed after a school collapsed in Kenya's capital.  Hundreds of people gathered at The Precious Talent Top School in Nairobi as emergency workers picked through the debris.  Parents were wailing over the school's remains and it was not clear whether anyone was still trapped underneath.  Government spokesman Cyrus Oguna confirmed the seven deaths, and Kenyatta National Hospital later said 64 children had been admitted, most with minor injuries.  However, two children were said to be in a critical condition.  "The children here were all running away and crying," said neighbour Michael Otieno.  More than 800 students are enrolled at the school, officials said.  One survivor, 10-year-old Tracy Oduor, said: "We were in class reading and we heard pupils and teachers screaming, and the class started collapsing and then a stone hit me on the mouth.  "When we got out of the gate we heard that pupils were dead. I feel so sad."  It was not immediately clear why the building of corrugated metal and wood collapsed on Monday morning.  Construction can be poorly regulated in some fast-growing Kenyan communities.  "You can easily break it with your own hands, as easy as that," Peter Ouko, a neighbour, said of the building materials.  "This is chicken wire, not a construction material, and someone had the guts to use this to build a construction for our kids. I think this is basically premeditated murder."  Nathaniel Matalanga, a structural engineer with La Femme Engineering Services, told reporters he didn't think "any professionals" were involved in the school's construction and he blamed "greed."  There was no immediate comment from school officials.


naturalnews--2019-10-04--Engineering school lowers entry requirements for women guaranteeing the future collapse of building

Engineering school lowers entry requirements for women, guaranteeing the future collapse of buildings that are engineered by people who couldn't make the cut

(Natural News) Since women apparently aren’t smart enough to make it in the field of engineering on their own merits, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia has decided to give them a little extra boost by drastically lowering its entry requirements, making it easier for women to get accepted into the program.  According to reports, the goal is “to get more women to study engineering and consequently get into the engineering workforce” by basically dumbing down the entire engineering curriculum. In the process, UTS will be able to virtue signal about how “diverse” it is, while simultaneously disenfranchising men who are actually qualified for entry into the program.  Even though the actual reason why there are more men than women in engineering has to do with lack of interest rather than lack of smarts, UTS has decided to insult the entire female gender by insinuating that women require special treatment because they’re just too darn stupid to achieve anything on their own.  What UTS is telling women, in essence, is that their brains are incapable of comprehending what it means to be an engineer under the current high standards. As a results, these standards need to be abolished in order to make engineering more “inclusive.”  Our immediate thought, which may be yours as well, is that dumbing down the field of engineering like this in a sexist attempt at drawing in more women isn’t exactly sustainable in terms of public safety.  Sponsored solution from the Health Ranger Store: Lab-verified Nascent Iodine solution is a dietary supplement that provides your body with supplemental iodine to help protect your thyroid during radiation exposure. Nuclear accidents such as Fukushima (or nuclear war) can expose your body to radioactive iodine-131, a dangerous radioisotope. Pre-loading your system with stable iodine occupies the iodine receptor sites on your organs, causing your body to naturally expel radioactive iodine you may have been exposed to through air, food, water or milk products. This defensive strategy is recommended by nearly all health authorities, worldwide, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Discover more at this link.  Recognizing that female “engineers” will now be given certifications and degrees for qualifications they don’t actually possess, it’s only a matter of time before the office buildings and parking structures they help “build” start collapsing due to shoddy work.  Such a scenario has already taken place in Florida, where a bridge actually collapsed due to “a glaring weakness at a key connection point,” which experts admitted after the fact was “apparently overlooked by designers.”  The bridge was built at Florida International University in Miami, and was meant to be a “uniquely memorable bridge” – which it has now become, but in a much different way than intended.  “… the design hid a fatal flaw that its designers and reviewers failed to recognize, according to experts who have examined plans and mathematical calculations of the project,” reported the Miami Herald.  If the next generation of engineers ends up lacking the know-how in properly building bridges, skyscrapers, and other massive structures because they were unfairly awarded the title of “engineer” simply for having a vagina, then it’s only a matter of time before more such incidents become an everyday occurrence, putting potentially millions of lives at risk.  On the flip side, there are plenty of women currently studying law and medicine, two fields with high or higher standards than engineering, which once again proves that women aren’t too dumb to be engineers, but rather aren’t interested in being engineers.  “The men who are discriminated against, who work hard to get into the schools, who have an actual interest in engineering who will now be passed over for less qualified women, are not victims,” wrote one Infowars commenter, sarcastically.  “No, it’s the women who are given preferential treatment who are the real victims,” he added, noting that the feminist society of today is “always pretending that everyone except white men are the victims, even as it is only white men who are discriminated against.”  For more news about how American society caters to women at the expense of men, and all in the name of “diversity,” be sure to check out PoliticalCorrectness.news.


tass--2019-08-14--Russia to build 83 new schools before year-end minister says

Russia to build 83 new schools before year-end, minister says

GORNO-ALTAYSK, August 14. /TASS/. The Russian "Education" National Project stipulates construction of 83 schools in the country in 2019, Russian Minister of Education Olga Vasilyeva said at an extended meeting overseeing the project implementation on Wednesday.  "Thirty-nine new schools have already been built across the country by now, 83 schools will have been built by the end of 2019. This is a great number that cannot but delight us. At the same time, each [citizen] should be aware that it is not just construction of boxes, buildings. This is installing modern, advanced equipment," she said.  The minister underlined that the construction of schools is an important yet not the key task of the National Project. "We should strive for every family, every student, every parent and every person living in Russia to feel that something is truly changing in the national education [system]," she clarified.  The "Education" National Project is implemented in 2019-2024, with the overall budget of 784.5 billion rubles ($12 billion). It is planned that the project will ensure the competitive nature of the Russian education, as well as Russia’s ascension to the top ten leading countries in the education quality.


thedailyrecord--2019-02-04--Balloch school celebrates positive report one year after new building opens

Staff at Balloch Primary have welcomed a positive report from school inspectors - almost one year since the new school opened its doors.  Learning, teaching and assessment were evaluated as “good” by Education Scotland inspectors when they visited the newly formed Balloch Primary campus last year.  Raising attainment and achievement were also evaluated as “satisfactory” and numeracy was identified as a particular strength across the school.  Education Scotland have praised the “very positive relationships between staff and children” and noted that “the whole school community has made a commendable effort to merge two schools and develop a new identity.”  We reported in February last year how pupils from the former Jamestown and Haldane primaries merged together in a new state of-the-art campus to form Balloch Primary.  The school shares its new campus with St Kessog’s Primary.  The inspection commended Balloch Primary’s adopted motto: “Be Brilliant at Balloch” for its positivity  However, inspectors also noted areas for improvement including the recommendation of a more effective use of assessment and encouraging the children to read more for enjoyment.  For more local news, click here.


thedailyrecord--2019-11-05--Work to begin on new school building for Carnbroe and Sikeside merger

Work is set to start in late summer next year on the new school building to replace the existing Carnbroe and Sikeside primaries.  The project, which also includes new facilities for Calder community centre, is currently at the “detailed design and cost modelling” stage, which is due to be complete by mid-2020.  Pupils could then move into the building at Paddock Street in August 2022; and a two-year construction project would then get underway to build a new St Stephen’s Primary building on its current site at Sykeside Road.  North Lanarkshire’s education committee members were recently updated on the progress of the Coatbridge schools, plus three others across Monklands which are at early planning stages.  The merger of Sikeside and Carnbroe primaries was first agreed by councillors five years ago, with the amalgamated school originally due to move to a new joint campus with St Stephen’s; but the proposal was changed in 2017 to the creation of two schools due to rising projected rolls.  A spokesman for North Lanarkshire Council told the Advertiser: “The Carnbroe and Sikeside primaries project is about to commence detailed design and cost modelling, due to be complete by summer 2020.  “Construction is expected to commence on site towards the end of the summer next year, for approximately 24 months, with the new facilities fully operational for the start of the new term in 2022.  “It will incorporate the existing Carnbroe and Sikeside primaries, [and] will have a pupil capacity of 534 to meet future roll requirements as a result of the significant increase in housebuilding in the area.  “The new [building] will also provide a replacement for the existing community facilities provided by Calder community centre; the local community will have use of its sports facilities, including the large games hall and 3G all-weather playing field.”  Pupils at St Stephen’s will then decant into the former Sikeside building – located beside their current school on Sykeside Road – for two years while a new school is built on its current site.  Click here for more from Airdrie and Coatbridge  The local authority spokesperson added: “Design development of St Stephen’s will commence when construction of the new [Carnbroe] community campus starts.  “The aim is that when Sikeside Primary relocates, St Stephen’s will decant into their old building [to] allow demolition of the existing St Stephen’s and the construction of its replacement – expected to commence in summer 2022 with likely completion in 2024.”  Original proposals for a joint campus incorporating all three schools and a community centre had been drawn up in 2016, but changed to two standalone schools after roll projections reached a combined 926 pupils because of “a significant increase in housebuilding”, with 455 homes due to be built in the area.  Education committee members were also updated on work towards providing new schools for Gartcosh, Chryston and St Kevin’s primaries.  “A preferred site has been identified” for Gartcosh Primary, while preparatory work on the requirements for an enlarged Chryston Primary is soon due to be finalised – and both are described as “a top priority due to current capacity pressures”.  The Advertiser told in May how St Kevin’s Primary is to move out of the joint campus it has shared with Bargeddie for the past 12 years and into a new standalone school on the former Drumpark site, in order to increase capacity at both to accommodate major housing developments.  Councillors were told: “A scoping exercise is underway to review long-term requirements linked to housing to finalise the size of school [and] number of spaces/classrooms required.”  They were also reminded that this year’s budget included a community investment fund to replace the remaining 97 North Lanarkshire schools which have not already moved into new premises since 1996.  A project plan and order of priority will go to the policy and strategy committee in the coming months, and a report noted: “A significant part of this fund will be used to help deliver 21st-century community assets.”

reporters@dailyrecord.co.uk (Judith  Tonner)


thedenverpost--2019-05-30--New school buildings going up near Stapleton as summer construction kicks off for Denver-area distri

New school buildings going up near Stapleton as summer construction kicks off for Denver-area districts

When school winds down, construction season ramps up.  Schools in Denver and Jefferson County are upgrading their buildings over the summer, with plans to have everything ready before students return in August.  While some of the projects are more or less contained within school walls, you can’t miss the signs of construction at Denver Public Schools’ Paul Sandoval Campus.  Work recently started on a new “small learning community” with 46 classrooms and assorted offices, a $66.7 million project meant to alleviate population pressure at Northfield High School due to growth in the surrounding Stapleton area, said Jennifer Song Koeppe, the district’s director of planning, design and construction at Denver Public Schools.  It will be set up somewhat like a college campus, with two classroom buildings and separate facilities for shared spaces like the cafeteria and gymnasium.  “Very shortly we’ll be up to 2,000 students and we need the space before we can grow,” she said.  The campus also will have a new performing arts building and a relocated cafeteria, but the priority is to finish the classrooms first, said Jim Staples, DPS project manager for the Sandoval Campus. The district has a goal of finishing the project in time for the school year starting in August 2020.  “We have kind of an aggressive schedule,” he said. “We want to get the classrooms up and running as soon as possible.”  Liz Mendez, director of operation support services at DPS, said the current construction is part of a plan to gradually expand the campus, since the budget wouldn’t allow for building everything at once. The shared facilities will maximize what they can build in an area where “land is at a premium,” she said.  “It’s a way to sort of maximize our limited funds,” she said. “We’re not building cafeterias that are being used for one hour a day.”  Northfield isn’t the only place in Denver getting work done this summer. DPS spokesman Will Jones said the district has 75 projects at 90 schools in the works. Some of the larger projects include redesigning the Montbello campus’ 1970s-era cafeteria to offer new seating options and different lines for different types of food; converting officers into a health clinic at East High School; and installing new floors, lockers and equipment in the North High School gym, he said.  To the west, Jeffco Public Schools also has multiple projects finishing up this summer.  Tim Reed, executive director of facilities and construction management at Jeffco Public Schools, said work has started on replacing the dirt tracks with rubber ones, and replacing grass fields with artificial turf. Some playgrounds also are getting updated equipment and a base of wood chips, which hurt less than the gravel kids currently fall on, he said.  Summit Ridge, Creighton and Ken Caryl middle schools also are finishing up construction, so they can add sixth-grade classrooms, Reed said. Each middle school has eight new classrooms in a wing off the existing building, and the construction crews will remove the walls separating them from the rest of the building this summer. They couldn’t do it while classes were in session because of the need to keep whatever Mother Nature threw at them out of the hallways, he said.  “They’re shaping up real good right now,” he said.


theguardianuk--2019-03-14--Lagos school building collapse search for survivors ends

Lagos school building collapse: search for survivors ends

Emergency services have called off the search for survivors of a building collapse that killed at least nine in Nigeria’s biggest city, Lagos, as anger mounted over dilapidated property and unscrupulous owners.  The building, which housed a primary school and nursery, came down without warning in the teeming Lagos Island area at mid-morning on Wednesday.  Firefighters and other emergency services worked through the night to find anyone still trapped. One body was recovered in the early hours, the National Emergency Management Agency (Nema) said.  “We have gotten to ground zero,” added Kehinde Adebayo, a spokesman for the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency. “The debris has been cleared.  “All those trapped have been evacuated and the rescue operation has ended,” he told AFP. Final casualty figures were still being compiled and would be announced later, he said.  Nema has said that 37 people were rescued alive.  The Lagos State governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, said the building had been earmarked for demolition and a nursery and primary school were being run illegally on one of its floors.  Schoolbags, toys and clothes were among the piles of rubble as a bulldozer tried to clear a path through wreckage.  A shopworker, Adeniyi Afolabi, who lives nearby, gave the name of the school as the Ohen nursery and primary and said there were 144 pupils in attendance on Wednesday.  Another local, Zion Munachi, also confirmed the name and the number of pupils. But both said not all children were at the school because of sports activities.  Chaotic scenes of heavy lifting equipment and ambulances trying to pick their way through huge crowds and narrow streets gave way to anger on Thursday, as residents demanded answers.  Lagos Island is the historic heart of the city, which is home to an estimated 20 million people, and also home to its central business district.  Building collapses are common in the city and elsewhere in Nigeria, where building regulations are routinely flouted.  In September 2014, 116 people died, 84 of them South Africans, when a six-storey guesthouse collapsed at the Lagos church complex of the celebrity televangelist TB Joshua.  An inquiry found extra floors had been added without planning permission. Engineers responsible for the construction are currently on trial for manslaughter.  In 2016, at least 60 people were killed when the roof collapsed at a church in the southern city of Uyo.  The prominent Lagos builder and surveyor Alani Fasiu Amusa said the “unscrupulous activities” of some developers and property owners were to blame.  “Why would somebody convert a residential building to a school, for instance? Most of the buildings in central Lagos are old and cannot pass the structural integrity test,” he told AFP.  “They were built many years ago with sub-standard materials and without the involvement of qualified building engineers … The government should be strict in enforcing its building codes and regulations.”


theguardianuk--2019-12-05--Tell us about your run-down school buildings

In a survey conducted by the National Education Union last month, 47% of members said the school or college buildings they worked in was not fit for purpose, with 22% reporting that the condition of the buildings was unsafe for pupils and staff.  With years of austerity putting school budgets under strain, 65% of members blamed funding cuts for the poor quality of British school buildings.  We’d like to hear from staff and students who work and study in run-down school buildings.  What condition is your school building in? How long has it been that way? Why has it not been improved?  Tell us about your experiences – and any photos you may have – in the encrypted form below, only the Guardian has access to your responses. One of our journalists may be in touch to discuss further as part of an upcoming news report.  If you’re having trouble using the form, click here. Read terms of service here.