Monday, July 25, 2005

THE TEXAS DISASTER

An excerpt from Texas Journal

In Texas, we've got an intractable problem with teacher quality Half of our teachers are incompetent, half are indispensable. The only people capable of discerning which are which are powerless observers of this continuing tragedy

It gets worse. The Texas legislature and/or Texas courts, are about to do additional grievous harm to our children by enabling and perpetuating poor teacher performance It appears they may flood our sickly system with billions of new dollars while demanding neither professional nor fiscal accountability from Texas public schools.

Both empirical and anecdotal analyses provide compelling evidence that not less than 50% of Texas teachers currently in the classroom should be summarily dismissed.

How did we get to this sad state of affairs? Poor education, over unionization, lax administration and parental disassociation has provided Texas with some of the worst results in the nation. The following details the causes, the evidence and the cure

Colleges of Education

On March 15, 2005, Dr. Arthur E Levin, President of Columbia University, the nations most prestigious teacher's college, released a scathing report on the quality of colleges of education currently producing education leaders He said the quality of programs was "Inadequate to Appalling." . Issues elucidated include:

An Irrelevant Curriculum - The typical course of study amounts to little more than a grab bag of survey classes Almost 9 out of 10 of program alumni said schools of education fail to adequately prepare their graduates to cope with classroom realities.

Low Admission and Graduation Standards - Education school faculty give students in leadership programs their lowest ranking on academic motivation and performance As a group, those students appear more interested in earning credits and the salary increases that follow than in pursuing rigorous academic studies.

Weak Faculty - Graduate programs in educational administration depend too heavily on adjunct professors, most of whom lack expertise in the academic content they are supposed to teach Their dominant mode of instruction is providing personal anecdotes from their careers as administrators.

Inadequate Clinical Instruction - Although many aspiring administrators say they want opportunities to connect university study with practical experience, meaningful clinical instruction is rare.

Inappropriate Degrees - There are too many degrees and certificates in educational administration, and they mean different things in different places

Poor Research - Educational administration is overwhelmingly engaged in non-empirical research and it is disconnected from practice Currently, the research in educational administration cannot answer questions as basic as whether school leadership programs have any impact on student achievement in the schools that graduates of these programs lead.


To arrive at these conclusions, Dr. Levine examined more than 1200 departments and schools of education across the country. A June 22, 2005 Education Week article buttresses Dr. Levine's conclusions. According to the article:

"After spending four years sifting through hundreds of studies on teacher education, a national panel has concluded that there's little empirical evidence to show that many of the most common practices in the field produce effective teachers."


The conclusion was published in a 766-page study produced by a panel of experts from the American Educational Research Association. Additionally, a review of GRE scores supports the contention that those least qualified academically are presently in charge of our children's academics The following numbers were obtained from the 2004-2005 GRE Guide to the use of scores The guide provided recent verbal and quantitative scores for a variety of disciplines

Mean GRE Verbal Score for Education Students: 450

Mean GRE Verbal Score For Engineering Students: 471

Mean GRE Quantitive Score For Education Students: 531

Mean GRE Quantitive Score For Engineer Students: 722


Number of other disciplines, out of 6, with mean scores higher than Education: 6. Dr. Levine reports that education programs are engaged in a: "Race To The Bottom" in which they compete for education students by lowering standards and offering faster and less demanding degrees. Independent evidence from a variety of sources supports his argument Unfortunately, Texas is way out front in this race........

Half Of Texas Teachers Can't Teach.

Fifty percent of Texas public schools cannot meet Adequate Yearly Progress as defined by No Child Left Behind For an expanded discussion:Click Here

Fifty percent of Texas High School Graduates require remediation in reading, writing or mathematics upon matriculation into a Texas state university For an expanded discussion, Click Here

According to the April 2005 Intercultural Development Research Association Newsletter, Texas leads the nation in adult illiteracy.

When Texas public schools can't perform, they fall back on tried and true methods They "Teach to Cheat." Click Here If that doesn't work, they "Pretend To Pass." Click Here.




BLACK AND LATINO DISASTER IN CALIFORNIA

Parents are shuffling the deckchairs in the Titanic. Only high discipline schools really help minorites and there will be snowstorms in hell before any significant group advocates that in California

Just 53 percent of Sacramento City Unified students graduate after four years in high school, according to 2002 data analyzed by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. The success rate is lower among the district's African American and Latino students, who graduate at rates of 38 percent and 41 percent, respectively, Harvard researchers found.

"What about the 60 percent that didn't make it?" said Reggie Fair, who serves on the board of Sacramento's chapter of the NAACP, as he addressed the crowd gathered outside the Capitol. "Where are they? What is the impact to our society?" The new group of which Fair is a member - called the Coalition for African American and Latino Academic Achievement, Now - was formed by several Sacramento community groups including the NAACP, La Raza Network, Greater Sacramento Urban League, Chicano Consortium and the League of United Latin American Citizens. The group came together in response to the Harvard report released in March, as well as others that have documented a big gap between the academic performance of Latino and black students and their white and Asian American peers.

In Sacramento City Unified, for example, 51 percent of white students are proficient in English language arts, while 22 percent of black students have reached that level, according to data from Just for the Kids - California, a Web site that analyzes state test data. The pattern continues across the region and the state. "It's been well-documented in various reports that we are facing a crisis," said Manuel Valencia, of La Raza Network. "We're here ... to solve this." Community leaders called on educators, parents and students to join the coalition and work on finding solutions to a problem that has nagged at public education for decades. They invited people to visit a new Web site, www.caalaan.org, for information on community meetings and links to reports on the achievement gap and graduation rates.

Fair said he wanted to listen to community concerns regarding the education of Latino and African American youth. Then, he said, the group would form an action plan. That could include conversations with school officials about race and equality, forming a more culturally relevant curriculum or coming up with ways to boost parent engagement, Fair said.

Rivera said she wants each high school to have an adult who is responsible for looking out for African American and Latino students. The person would act as an advocate for the students, call parents when their children miss class and make sure students are accumulating the credits necessary to graduate on time. That proposal mirrored one suggestion from a researcher who worked on the Harvard dropout report. "Something that's often useful is more individualized attention to a student's plan for graduation, someone making sure they get the credit they need," said Chris Swanson, who now works as a researcher for Ed Week in Maryland. It's important for students to feel "that adults at school care about how they do," he said.

Swanson also suggested an emphasis on literacy in the ninth grade as a way to close the achievement gap and boost graduation rates. Students with poor reading skills tend to suffer in all academic subjects, he said, because the skill is crucial to understanding lessons in history, science and math. Once they fall behind in credits, Swanson said, they're more likely to drop out.

The report has generated massive community response throughout California, said Julie Mendoza, a UCLA education policy expert who also worked on the Harvard study. "African American and Latino community members and politicians have known for years that these problems existed. The report gave them a framework to begin to organize," Mendoza said. Efforts similar to those in Sacramento have been launched in Los Angeles, San Diego and Oakland, she said. "This report provides the type of information that says: It's not just in our heads; this is concrete, this is real."

Two school board members from Sacramento City Unified - Roy Grimes and Miguel Navarrette - attended a press conference July 14 and said they were committed to boosting academic performance. They were joined by a trustee from Natomas Unified. "I started looking at the numbers in Natomas and I realized we are like the rest of the state when it comes to students of color," said Jennifer Baker, who was elected to the school board last year. Natomas schools generally score well on the state's standardized tests. But Baker said huge disparities remain between ethnic groups. "Just because you have high test scores doesn't mean all the kids are doing well," she said.

Demanding that schools focus on the students who are not doing well is exactly why the coalition came together, said Rivera, the Sacramento City parent. "I'm proud to be a part of a group of people who are finally saying, 'Ya basta,' " she said. That's Spanish for "Enough, already."

More here





BLACK DISASTER IN DENVER TOO

A group of prominent civic leaders gathered at the Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library on Tuesday to discuss a "desperate" situation: the status of education in Denver for African-American teen boys. "The education of the African-American male is a desperate situation that needs to be talked about," said Celeste Archer, a member of the board of Women for Education , the hosting group, and a social-studies teacher at East High School.

Black students in Denver Public Schools tend to score low on CSAP tests. For example, among black 10th-graders in 2004, only 2 percent scored proficient or better in math, 23 percent in writing, and 33 percent in reading. Comparable figures for white 10th-graders were 31 percent in math, 60 percent in writing and 70 percent in reading. The district's figures don't differentiate between males and females, but national studies have indicated that black boys tend to score lower than black girls.

A host of problems can confront many black teenage boys, including economic pressures, a lack of positive male role models and an attitude among their peers that being smart isn't cool, panel members said. Panelist Richard Smith, an assistant DPS superintendent, said he worried that funds to create culturally sensitive programs may be shifting to projects for the fast-growing Latino population and that blacks might be left by the wayside. He suggested that projects for the two groups be combined because the groups face similar socioeconomic problems.

Panel members, all black men, discussed a wide range of solutions, including bringing parents into the schools. They also talked about encouraging teachers to become positive role models and to mentor students who need more attention. "A lot of times, our goals aren't high enough for black males," panelist and DPS board member Kevin Patterson said. "When we lower our standards, we allow the system to lower their standards."

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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