Proposals Would Transform College Aid

Obama Plan to Expand Federal Control of Lending Includes Creating Entitlement

President Obama's health-care goals may be garnering attention, but his higher-education proposals are no less ambitious. If adopted, they could transform the financial aid landscape for millions of students while expanding federal authority to a degree that even Democrats concede is controversial.

At stake is a plan to expand the Pell Grant program, making it an entitlement akin to Medicare and Social Security. Key to the effort is a consolidation of student lending that would give the U.S. Department of Education a near monopoly over the practice -- a proposal that has mobilized the private loan industry, which lent $55.3 billion to 6.4 million students in the 2007-2008 school year.

Obama outlined his initiatives, which also include incentives for colleges to cut costs and to raise graduation rates, in the fiscal 2010 budget that Congress approved Wednesday, and Democratic leaders said they hope to make them law by October.

The aim is to improve access to post-secondary school for those who need it most: lower-income students for whom college or vocational training can be the decisive factor in their economic future. The president has said he wants the United States to lead the world by 2010 in the proportion of college graduates, a position the country had long held; it now ranks seventh for the 25 to 34 age group. He has also called for every American to attend a post-secondary institution.

Neither goal will be met if students can't afford the cost.

The administration's plans are "the most fundamental rewriting of federal student aid policy in 35 years," said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education. "These are big changes. They are painted with a broad brush. . . . It's easy for this to be overshadowed by health-care proposals, but for many families, these discussions will be equally important."

Even critics of the plan say the status quo is unsustainable.

Students are amassing debt on a scale that approximates a home mortgage. The economic downturn has meant rising rates for defaults on loans, as well as for students dropping out. Private schools face shrinking endowments, and public universities face state budget cuts.

The tuition crisis has built over many years, however, and until recently Congress did little to address it. The maximum Pell Grant award was frozen at $4,050 from 2003 through 2007. When Democrats came to power, they laid the groundwork for many of the changes on the table, including raising Pell Grants to the current amount of $4,731. They also began to curb federally subsidized private loans.

But Obama would go much further. He wants to terminate the private Federal Family Education Loan program, the primary source of student loans. Advocates say the move is a formality: The government already effectively controls the program by guaranteeing the loans, paying a special allowance to lenders, and in recent months, buying back loans by the billions from struggling firms.

Shifting all lending authority to the government through its Direct Loan program would save $94 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Obama would use that windfall to expand the Pell Grant program, created in 1965 to cover most tuition costs for low-income students.

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Socialism, College Style

If you’re baffled by college students’ enthusiastic support for Soviet-lite economic policies, you need to watch several short videos created by members of Young America’s Foundation (YAF). In the videos, YAF members approach their classmates with a petition calling for the redistribution of student GPAs. “It would make it so that all students have an equal opportunity to go to grad school,” University of Oregon YAFer Kenny Crabtree explains. Students with bad grades would therefore be entitled to points earned by straight-A students.

Their classmates are flabbergasted. “Is that, like, a joke or something?” one guy responds. “Why would you take points from people who are higher up and give them to people who didn’t meet the requirements?” another asks George Mason University YAFers. But when asked if he supports Obama’s wealth redistribution schemes, he says “yes.”

Shocking? Not really. As I pointed out in my March 30 column, most college students are economically illiterate. When quizzed by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute about basic concepts, such as supply and demand, the average student’s score was 53 percent. And since most don’t work or pay taxes (only 46 percent of full-time students have jobs), they simply have no idea how capitalism works.

But they do understand grades. Students who study hard get good grades; students who skip class and binge drink every night get bad grades. Some struggle with difficult material, but with enough effort (attending office hours, seeing a tutor) most can maintain a decent GPA. Every sane college student realizes the immorality of “spreading the grades around”—regardless of who benefits.

And it makes their rationales for supporting socialism interesting. “I don’t think people who worked for their grades should have to suffer because someone else slacked off,” one student says. Then how can she believe in wealth redistribution? “Money is different.” Another explains, “Earning money is not the same as earning grades.” O-kay.

Again, this is typical. Day in and day out, professors indoctrinate students with hatred for the greedy “rich”—which, under our tax code, includes a lot of middle-class families just like theirs, who struggle to pay the mortgage and college tuition. They’re taught to believe that people who don’t work are entitled to endless welfare benefits financed by the productive class. But when it comes to redistributing grades they earned, they don’t support it.

There is some hope for the future. As several of my fellow Townhall columnists have pointed out, most people who support Obama’s plan to “spread the wealth around” either don’t pay income taxes or are too rich to care. (And some of Obama’s biggest supporters, including Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, are living off inherited money earned by somebody else.) As soon as these students become productive business owners and professionals, they won’t want the Democrats confiscating money they worked for.

“It’s amazing how students only care about the immorality of socialism when it hurts them,” said George Mason University student Alyssa Cordova. Her classmates were universally opposed to a GPA redistribution plan.

Now, if we could just convince Ted Kennedy and John Kerry that we need to implement a “mansion redistribution plan” or “private jet redistribution plan,” we could abolish Obama-style socialism altogether.

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Reduce exam stress: give pupils more tests

The reason British teachers dislike SATs is nothing to do with children - it's because their work is exposed to outside scrutiny. Sats are grade-school exams in Britain

Complete this sentence: a light ray hitting a mirror at an angle is reflected off at the _____ - ____ angle.

Now complete this multiplication: (a) x (b) x (c) = 286, where a, b and c are prime numbers.

Finally, fill in each gap in the following with a different word for “nice”: It was so... of Lauren to invite us all back to her house after the play. She made everyone a really... hot chocolate with some... pink marshmallows floating in it. Patrick said he thought the theatre was ...

Congratulations. You may have just passed your Key Stage 2 standard assessment tests (SATs). For a set of fairly minor exams that children take only once before the end of primary school, and which the Prime Minister yesterday promised to keep, SATs cause an inordinate amount of fuss. That the National Association of Headteachers and the National Union of Teachers have decided to ballot members over boycotting the tests next year says a lot more about the failings of the teachers than it does about the limitations of the exams.

There is no need for a child to be stressed about an exam unless adults make them so. All the pressure put on children comes from teachers and parents. Seven-year-olds should be happily unaware that they are even taking a test at Key Stage 1, particularly as their teachers do the assessment at this stage. Nor is there much need for an 11-year-old to be stressed at Key Stage 2 tests. Revision is a not particularly arduous business of answering practice questions (Will you practice/practise playing the banjo?) for an hour a day, and looking up the answers at the back of the book. Most 11-year-olds simply object to any homework.

The real reason behind the calls for a boycott is that the tests at the age of 11 are the first national ones and the first where results are published; hence they are the first test of teaching quality as well as of individual ability.

Private schools have tests at the end of each term (some at the end of each week) and you do not hear parents squealing about it. If teachers in the state system are “teaching to the test”, and confining their pupils' education to the narrow band of questions in an exam, that is their fault. A good, creative, confident teacher will not do so.

Equally, a good, creative, confident parent will not judge a school purely on its test scores. For every teacher subjecting pupils to formulaic worksheets, there are probably a dozen parents poring over the league tables. The information that these provide is far too narrow, which is a good argument for having many more tests in state schools, not fewer. They would then take on less significance individually, but provide a more rounded picture of progress overall.

An average score from a child's performance throughout the years at primary school, or even individual results every term or year, would give secondary schools far better information than Key Stage 2 results do. Many secondary schools find them so inaccurate that they retest the children anyway.

I wouldn't send a child to a school where the headteacher was boycotting SATs and I hope that most teachers will reject the boycott. Given the load of continuous assessment, and its contiguous jargon, that they are already buried under, straightforward tests that they do not have to assess themselves ought to be the least of their worries.

Look up the reading assessment guidelines for primary children. Each “level” is split into seven “assessment focuses” (AFs): “Using AFs for classroom-based assessment enables a direct link to be made to national curriculum standards in a subject and the primary framework learning objectives. The AFs sit between the national curriculum programmes of study and the level descriptions...”

Clear? So, the heading for the AF3 for reading is: “deduce, infer or interpret information, events or ideas from texts”. And at Level 3 for 7 to 9-year-olds, this is what the teacher has to gauge in each pupil: “straightforward inference based on a single point of reference in the text, eg, ‘he was upset because it says “he was crying”'; responses to text show meaning established at a literal level, eg, “‘walking good' means ‘walking carefully'” or based on personal speculation, eg, a response based on what they personally would be feeling rather than feelings of character in the text”. (Yes, it really does say “walking good”. I'm sorry; I didn't write it.)

This is learning reduced to jargon. No wonder my GP friends say that they always know when a teacher has come through the door because she will be on the verge of tears. This degree of intrusive monitoring, target-setting and assessment is a form of bullying of the teaching profession. It implicitly tells teachers that ministers do not believe they are competent and, in some cases, that is undoubtedly true.

A good teacher would not have to be told that a child should be able to make inferences from a statement, just as good schools do not actually need SATs. But scrapping Key Stage 2 tests would enable some bad schools to continue to fail to monitor their pupils.

And some teachers find themselves cheating. I have seen them monitoring in-school assessments for younger children: in one class, the teacher helped almost every child, because they had no idea that they were supposed actually to do something with the worksheets without any assistance. They sat there bemused until the teacher read out the questions and showed them how to do it, one by one, and then they copied their answers from the cleverest on the table, which was what they had become used to doing in lessons. Then the marks were noted down as theirs.

Key Stage 2 SATs are the first time that a child sits down to national exams, not tests assessed by its teacher. Given the hassle of the self-assessment process for any sensible teacher, and the unreliability of its results for parents, I would have thought the straightforward SAT would come as a relief.

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Another Israel-hating Jew in academe

His Leftist colleagues might not be nice to him unless he denounces Israel. Someone should send him to Gaza for a while. He would surely find that educational. If he survived, he would be mighty glad to get back to Israel

A sociology professor at the University of California Santa Barbara is in the center of a heated debate about academic freedom after he sent an e-mail comparing "parallel images of Nazis and Israelis" to 80 of his students in January.

Two of William Robinson's students dropped out of his sociology of globalization class after they received the e-mail. The message also caught the eye of at least two national Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, which has called upon the tenured professor to "unequivocally repudiate" it.

"If Martin Luther King were alive on this day of January 19, 2009, there is no doubt that he would be condemning the Israeli aggression against Gaza along with the U.S. military and political support for Israeli war crimes, or that he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians," the 50-year-old Robinson wrote in his e-mail. "I am forwarding some horrific, parallel images of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians." Dozens of photographs followed, depicting Holocaust victims in Nazi Germany and nearly identical images from the Israeli attack on Gaza. Robinson included a note that "Gaza is Israel's Warsaw."

The two students who dropped out of Robinson's class accused him of violating faculty code of conduct by disseminating personal or political matter unrelated to the course. "I felt nauseous that a professor could use his power to send this email with his views attached, to each student in his class," senior Rebecca Joseph wrote. "Due to this horrific email I had to drop the course."

Robinson, who is Jewish and has been teaching at UCSB for nine years, is defending his message. He says the university's ongoing investigation is an attack on his academic freedom. He did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In a letter to Robinson and UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang, Cynthia Silverman, regional director of Santa Barbara's Anti-Defamation League chapter, described the professor's comparison as "offensive" and said it "crossed the line well beyond" legitimate criticism of Israel. "We also think it is important to note that the tone and extreme views presented in your email were intimidating to students and likely chilled thoughtful discussions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Silverman wrote.

But Robinson's supporters, including prominent professor of linguistics Noam Chomsky, say the university's probe is improper and is an attempt to silence criticism of Israel. "Unfortunately, there has been a wave of similar efforts to undermine academic freedom throughout the country in recent years," Chomsky wrote in a letter to Yang. "I hope and trust that the university will take a clear and strong stand in favor of principles that are central to free inquiry and expression, particularly so in a distinguished institution of higher learning such as this one."

A group called the Committee to Defend Academic Freedom at UCSB, which includes professors and Robinson's former students and teaching assistants, has been formed to back the professor. The group's Web site includes a letter of support and a call for an apology to Robinson from the California Scholars for Academic Freedom, which represents more than 100 professors from 20 colleges. "The right to present controversial material in the context of a course — including opinions that may be deeply disturbing to some students — is an essential element of academic freedom," [as long as they are not conservative opinions, of course] the group wrote. "This includes the right to criticize government actions, whether they be American, Israeli, or those of any other government."

Paul Desruisseaux, a UCSB spokesman, said a faculty committee has been formed to determine whether the case should be considered by school administrators. "Given the nature of this case, there are some aspects of censure that could possibly be imposed that could probably fall short of dismissal," Desruisseaux told FOXNews.com. "And it's possible that this initial committee could determine it was just bad judgment. We need to let this process run its course."

Whatever the outcome of Robinson's case, a chilling effect will likely follow, particularly on local academics, according to Cary Nelson, national president of the American Association of University Professors. "Some faculty will take it as an opportunity to exercise their free speech rights while others won't because they don't want calls from 20 reporters," Nelson said. "You'll get a dual effect."

Nelson, whose organization has not announced a formal opinion on Robinson's actions, said the professor appears to be in the clear. "We wait and watch that inquiry," Nelson said. "It's easy to imagine how a course in globalization made some comparisons between different historical periods and different historical events. "If it is related to class discussion, it is almost certainly to be covered by academic freedom."

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British schools in poor areas 'fail bright pupils': High fliers at 11 'miss out on up to four GCSE grades'

Bright children who go to struggling comprehensives don't achieve their potential at GCSE [Junior school exam], researchers say. A study shows that those considered high fliers at 11 are significantly less likely to gain top grades at GCSE if they are at deprived secondary schools. The difference could be as much as four GCSE grades - for example, slipping from eight As to four As and four Bs.

These findings made ' uncomfortable reading' for politicians, said researchers from the London School of Economics. The report also found pupils do better if they are taught with high-achieving, middle-class pupils, confirming the link between GCSE performance and mixed-ability classes. [A non-sequitur. It shows the importance of HIGH ability schoolmates] And it warned that the Government's 'gifted and talented' scheme, designed to reassure middle-class parents the state system stretches bright children, appears to have little impact for many. Poor pupil behaviour, mediocre teaching and an over-reliance on vocational courses are likely to be to blame.

'The attainment of otherwise similar pupils in deprived schools lags significantly behind those in the more advantaged schools,' said researchers working on behalf of the Sutton Trust education charity. 'The findings are unequivocal, and make for uncomfortable reading for parents and policy makers alike.'

The study tracked 550,000 pupils who took Sats [grade school exam] at 11 in 2001 until they took their GCSEs. Secondary schools were categorised according to the number of pupils eligible for free meals because of family poverty. At the most-deprived 10 per cent, up to half the children had free meals. And at those schools, half the pupils did worse at GCSE than those with similar ability at schools with little deprivation. They gained two-and-a-half grades less over eight GCSEs, on average.

For those who had been in the top 10 per cent in their year aged 11, the results were even worse. They were penalised twice over - doing worse in their GCSEs, and taking vocational courses when they could have tackled extra GCSEs. On average, those high fliers achieved half a grade less across their GCSEs than those at advantaged schools, dropping the equivalent of four grades over eight GCSEs.

However, since many at deprived schools more likely to take a vocational course, many of these may not have even taken eight GCSEs. They were ten times more likely to take an intermediate GNVQ than peers in better-off schools. GNVQs are being phased out after an outcry over their high weighting in national school league tables even though they require considerably less teaching time than equivalent GCSEs. The report warned that high-achievers were being 'entered for examinations which serve to improve schools' "league table" positions but may not be in the best long term interests of the pupils concerned'.

There was also evidence of a 'peer effect' - suggesting pupils at more advantaged schools benefit from having classmates with higher levels of prior attainment, and lower levels of deprivation. It added: 'Questions will also be raised about whether the Government's current gifted and talented programme is operating effectively in all schools, particularly those with the most deprived intakes.'

The divide in achievement between pupils of similar ability, 'could be due to a number of factors associated with advantaged schools, from better pupil behaviour to more effective teaching', it adds.

Dr Philip Noden, who co-wrote the study, said: 'This is an attainment gap that needs to be closed so that parents know their children will make good progress whatever the social mix of the school.' And it warned ministers are overstating their success in narrowing the gap between poorer and more affluent pupils by ignoring 40,000 'hidden poor' in their calculations.

The study reinforces research in the Mail last month, showing that poorer children are failing to win places at university because of substandard comprehensive schooling - not because academics are biased.

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Australia: A great kid

And another lesson for us all from Asia. Odd that "racism" didn't hold her back, though. Racism affects the attainments of American blacks only, apparently



JUST two years after she arrived from Vietnam struggling to speak English, Tram Ngo is one of Queensland's greatest academic success stories. Her story is just one highlight of the 2008 Year 12 results, released by the Queensland Studies Authority and detailed inside The Courier-Mail today. Ms Ngo not only graduated with an OP 1 from Alexandra Hills State High School last year, but won a scholarship at QUT to study engineering.

Ms Ngo admits she had no idea what her teachers were saying for her first three months of Year 11. "I can read and write, but I couldn't understand 50 per cent of what the teachers say, so I take the notes and then when I went home I would read the book again and match what the teachers say to the book," she said.

She credits as her inspiration her teachers and fellow students who spent countless hours helping her. But her teachers say it is the other way around. Alexandra Hills State High School acting principal Jan Jarman said Ms Ngo was an inspiration. "She proves if you want something enough, if you want something hard enough and you are prepared to put in the effort, you definitely can succeed."

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Australia: Sex instruction book Where Did I Really Come From? aimed at toddlers

A BOOK which teaches children about lesbian mums getting pregnant using sperm donors is being pitched at kids as young as two. The controversial publication, Where Did I Really Come From?, also features a drawing of two gay men holding a baby in a chapter about surrogacy. The publisher's marketing spruiks the book, which includes in-depth descriptions of sexual intercourse, as suitable to be read to two-year-olds.

It is being advertised at some Sydney book stores and inside the cover as being part of the New South Wales Attorney General Office's Learn to Include program. A spokesman for the Attorney General was unable to confirm yesterday if the book had been funded by the State Government.

In a chapter on assisted conception, the book tells children: "Sometimes, a woman really wants to have a baby but she doesn't want to have intercourse with a man. "Some women want to bring up a baby by themselves, or with another woman, so the baby gets two mums."

However, angry family advocates claim the book targets children too young. "It devalues the traditional family unit and at the very least desensitises us," Focus On The Family spokeswoman Deb Sorensen said yesterday.

The book was first penned in the early 1990s, but has been updated and relaunched by Learn to Include, which has published a range of books featuring child characters whose parents are gay. Learn to Include's website said that the book's "simple, non-judgmental explanations of sexual intercourse, assisted conception, pregnancy, birth, adoption and surrogacy were "suitable for 2-12 year olds".

Author Narelle Wickham defended the book, describing it as a mainstream publication which just went further about ways of conceiving children. "It is just trying to normalise to children that there are many ways to conceive a child," she said.

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Leftist hostility to private education

There's something the U.S. government doesn't want you to know. And it's come out again in the new Heritage Foundation report on education. It conveys that the general public is increasingly dissatisfied with public schools, with a rising number opting for private education. The report explains that during the 2007 and 2008 legislative sessions, 44 states introduced school-choice legislation. And in 2008, choices for private school were enacted into law or expanded in Arizona, Utah, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Pennsylvania. Today 14 states and the District of Columbia offer voucher or education tax-credit programs that aid parents with sending their children to private schools. But that may be short-lived.

Despite the growing public preference for private education, Congress recently canceled the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which was created in 2004 to offer students from low-income families in the nation's capital an opportunity to join the voucher educational community. The law provided $14 million in scholarships to help pay for tuition at private schools of their choosing. But no longer.

Why did Congress nix the program, especially when recent studies showed that students receiving vouchers since the program's inception were academically 18.9 months ahead of their peers? (I read the other day that 100 percent of Thurgood Marshall Academy's charter graduates are accepted to colleges.) And why would Congress phase out a program that costs $7,500 per student annually, compared with the $15,000 it costs in Washington's public schools to educate a child?

So its cancellation is not a result of costing too much, because it's half the price of public schooling. And it's not because of inferior quality, because the kids enrolled in the program were scoring higher than students in regular schools. There's only one reason Congress canceled it, and it comes down to this: federal control and educational indoctrination.

Of course, government officials won't admit to a blatant usurpation of our rights, but they will say their educational reform is seeking to help your children. They will say it is necessary to establish common educational standards. They will say that we need to leave education to the experts and not to parents. And I fear that too many of us simply will give in to the whims of the nanny state.

As I wrote in my new best-selling book, "Black Belt Patriotism: How to Reawaken America": "The reason that government is cracking down on private instruction has more to do with suppressing alternative education than assuring educational standards. The rationale is quite simple, though rarely if ever stated: control future generations and you control the future. So rather than letting parents be the primary educators of their children -- either directly or by educating their children in the private schools of their choice -- (government) want(s) to deny parental rights, establish an educational monopoly run by the state, and limit private education options. It is so simple any socialist can understand it. As Joseph Stalin once stated, 'Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.'" (Get a free chapter of my book at here.)

What's amazing, too, is how hypocritical it is for Congress to make this decision. The Heritage Foundation's report also conveys that 44 percent of current United States senators and 36 percent of current members of the U.S. House of Representatives have "at one time sent their children to private schools." While the foundation found that 11 percent of American students attend private schools, 20 percent of the members of the 111th Congress attended private high schools. And they want to remove the voucher option for private school education?

While the members of President Barack Obama's administration profess to have education as a top priority, they did nothing in March when Congress chose to discontinue the Opportunity Scholarship Program. Why? Because they all are in cahoots to not only choose our medical care for us, own the mortgage insurance and finance businesses, and place caps on corporate earnings but also control our educational choices for our children.

Our Founders' educational philosophy seems to me to be the charter of a true American system of education. But as we know, our nation's public schools, especially our nation's colleges and universities, are the seedbeds of politically correct and leftist indoctrination. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. It's a travesty that we have come to the point that we have to protect our children from the public school systems by looking to alternative methods.

If you have a good public school, congratulations. Stay active in the PTA, and attend school board meetings to keep it that way. For many parents, the only responsible choice is to send their children to private, parochial or Christian schools or to home-school their children. My wife and I home-school our 8-year-old twins.

What I also think is good about private schools is the students' wearing uniforms. Just like in my KICKSTART martial arts program for kids in Texas schools, uniforms in private schools give students a sense of pride and empowerment. They increase the atmosphere of respect. And uniforms make economic class more of a nonissue, making rich and poor students indistinguishable -- not to mention the fact that uniforms do away with young people's style of wearing their jeans down to their knees and showing their butt cracks!

Parents deserve educational choices; choice is what this country was founded upon. Government's controlling and monopolizing education is just another avenue for usurping power and control on the slippery slope to socialism. And it's unbecoming for our republic, whose Founders created a system of freedom, choice and minimal government intervention.

Is it merely coincidental that the private choice of home schooling was outlawed by the Soviet state in 1919, by Hitler and Nazi Germany in 1938, and by Communist China in 1949? Is America next?

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Are 'No-Fail' Grading Systems Hurting or Helping Students?

What's a kid gotta do to get an "F" these days? At a growing number of middle schools and high schools across the country, students no longer receive failing marks when they fail. Instead, they get an "H" — for "held" — on their report cards, and they're given a chance to rectify their poor performance without tanking the entire semester. Educators in schools from Costa Mesa, Calif., to Maynard, Mass., are also employing a policy known in school hallways as ZAP — or "Zeros Aren't Permitted" — which gives students an opportunity to finish the homework they neglected to do on time.

While administrators and teachers say the policies provide hope for underperforming students, critics say that lowering or altering education standards is not the answer. They point to case studies in Grand Rapids, Mich., where public high schools are using the "H" grading system this year and, according to reports, only 16 percent of first-semester "H" grades became passing grades in the second semester.

Last week in Texas, state senators backed the elimination of "no-fail" grading by unanimously approving a measure that would prohibit school districts from forcing teachers to dole out minimum grades to failing pupils. The bill was introduced by Republican State Sen. Jane Nelson, who said the trend toward "no-fail" grading encourages manipulation of the education system. "These policies are more widespread than people think," Nelson said in a statement issued Tuesday. "I was appalled to hear from teachers who are not allowed to assign failing grades to students. It is often an unwritten rule, but it is happening in many of our schools." Nelson, a former public school teacher, said minimum grade policies reward "minimum effort" from students who "live up or down" to expectations set by educators.

But with the nation's high school dropout rate hovering around 30 percent, Sherri Johnson, director of programs for the National Parent Teacher Association, said school districts should consider any measures possible to stop low-performing students from quitting school. "Students ought to be assessed on how they master whatever skills they're being assessed on, and one grade cannot achieve that," Johnson told FOXNews.com. "If a teacher is not teaching to different learning styles, a student is always behind the 8-ball."

Johnson said a single letter grade does not adequately address specific skills contained within a certain subject. "What an 'F' says is that you just don't get it," Johnson said. "But what if the child gets pieces of it but they haven't mastered everything? Or perhaps that 'F' says you failed three tests but not necessarily failed the entire skill." Some students simply don't perform well on exams, and grades typically don't reveal "what's behind" the failure, Johnson said.

With an 'H' grade rather than an 'F,' she continued, students and parents alike get another opportunity to learn the lesson plan and hold schools more accountable. "Simply saying that an 'F' is what you get and everybody moves on does not help that young student," she said. "It takes the school off the hook in many ways."

The psychological impact of an "F" is also something to consider, according to Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, a professor of psychology at Columbia University in New York. "'Students who are doing poorly tend to gravitate to other students who are also getting 'F's' or not doing well," she said. "You can unintentionally start to create a culture of failure. The other effect is that students really feel like they cannot recover, particularly as schools are becoming more competitive."

But Michael Petrilli, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former U.S. Department of Education official, said he disagreed with the new grading policies. "This is clearly about dumbing down expectations for our students," Petrilli told FOXNews.com. "Some of these children are just a few years away from being in the workforce, in college or even in the military, and in none of those environment will they be coddled like they are in these programs."

Petrilli said the policy also sends the wrong message to students. "If you're getting a zero, that usually means you didn't turn in the assignment or do the job correctly," he said. "All this does is create cynicism among educators and send signals to students that the education system is not serious about achievement." If anything, Petrilli said, overall standards at high schools across the country should be raised, not lowered. "It does not take a lot to pass a high school course," he said. "If we have kids not meeting the standard, the answer is not to lower the standard."

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Student Says Teacher Scolded Him for Viewing FOXNews.com‏

That good old Leftist "tolerance" again

A Michigan high school is investigating allegations that one of its teachers berated and belittled a student for taking part in what the teacher considered an unacceptable activity: reading FOXNews.com.

A young man who identified himself only as Mitchell, an 18-year-old senior at Traverse City West Senior High School, called in to Rush Limbaugh's radio show Thursday and said he was yelled at in front of his classmates for reading the "wrong" news. The teacher of his video production class saw what he was looking at and "proceeded to give me a 10-minute lecture on why I can't read FOX News ... and that I can only listen to BBC and other news venues," the student said.

James Feil, superintendent of Traverse City Area Public Schools, told FOXNews.com that any attempts to pressure students politically would go against his schools' policies. "It would be inappropriate. I would clearly tell you that is not something that we would do anything to indoctrinate students here," he said. "That would clearly be a violation of our policies and guidelines, written or non-written."

Traverse City West principal Joe Tibaldi declined to comment about the inquiry he was leading, but school officials said the student hadn't violated any computer-use rules in his class.

But the school has a strict policy against bullying, which it says "may in circumstances be a violation of federal or state law" and goes against its commitment to provide a safe learning environment. "Bullying, taunting, stalking, hazing and other forms of harassment ... by any member of the staff are strictly forbidden," according to the school handbook. "Any student or staff member found to have bullied, taunted, stalked, hazed or harassed another person in any form will be subject to discipline."

Traverse City West has several art and science teachers, but it was unclear who leads the video production class. The superintendent wouldn't confirm the involvement of any specific teacher.

Feil said the student never filed a complaint to the school and Tibaldi was following up "in a very responsible and a timely manner."

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Drop in Sociology Jobs

Hooray! Useless "education" gets its just reward. I taught sociology for 12 years at a major Australian university so I know a bit about it. It's almost entirely Leftist propaganda. I taught the useful bits: Research methods and statistics

Add sociology to the list of disciplines reporting significant declines in available jobs. The American Sociological Association has released an analysis showing a 22.8 percent decline in announced position openings between 2006 and 2008. The analysis is based on listings in the association's job bank in the two years compared. Because there are many jobs that aren't listed in the job bank, the totals can't be seen as definitive. But because the job bank does receive a significant number of listings from year to year, the trends in postings are seen as a good reflection of trends in disciplinary hiring, especially for assistant professor positions.

The job bank receives more assistant professor openings than any other kind -- and that category of listing, the category crucial to new Ph.D.'s, is down by nearly 40 percent.

The best news in the survey was a sharp increase -- from 37 to 164 -- in the number of positions for which no one faculty rank is specified.

The association report notes that things could be even worse. Associations that have tracked the status of job listings months later have found that many searches were called off. Here is such a list in economics. The sociology association plans a survey of departments to find out how many searches were called off, so that a subsequent report can provide a more full picture of the job market.

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The decline of Catholicism at a Catholic university

What might have been a coup at many colleges was, at the University of Notre Dame, cause for scandal: “It has come to our attention that the University of Notre Dame will honor President Barack Obama as its commencement speaker on May 17," begins an online petition circulated by the Cardinal Newman Society, which, as of Monday afternoon, counted more than 336,000 signatures. “It is an outrage and a scandal that ‘Our Lady’s University,’ one of the premier Catholic universities in the United States, would bestow such an honor on President Obama given his clear support for policies and laws that directly contradict fundamental Catholic teachings on life and marriage.”

The announcement on Obama was made more than a month ago but the controversy continues unabated. On Monday, Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard University law professor and former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, who was to receive a medal during Notre Dame's commencement ceremony, declined the honor. In an explanation, she writes that she took issue with the idea that "my acceptance speech would somehow balance the event. ... A commencement, however, is supposed to be a joyous day for the graduates and their families. It is not the right place, nor is a brief acceptance speech the right vehicle, for engagement with the very serious problems raised by Notre Dame's decision -- in disregard of the settled position of the U.S. bishops -- to honor a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church's position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice." (Newsweek has published the full letter.)

Notre Dame, which will grant an honorary doctor of laws degree to Obama, has a tradition of hosting U.S. presidents as commencement speakers -- six total, including both Bush presidents. "The invitation to President Obama to be our Commencement speaker should not be taken as condoning or endorsing his positions on specific issues regarding the protection of human life, including abortion and embryonic stem cell research," Notre Dame's president, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, says in a statement.

Nonetheless, the selection has been taken as such. This controversy that won't quit has been fueled in part by pressure from outside groups like the Cardinal Newman Society, which serves as a self-appointed watchdog of sorts when it comes to colleges’ Roman Catholic identities. But it's also been fueled by a steady stream of statements of opposition from U.S. bishops -- who, under the 1990 Vatican document Ex Corde Eccelesiae, "should be seen not as external agents but as participants in the life of the Catholic University." The Cardinal Newman Society counts more than 40 bishops who have stated opposition.

In a letter to Notre Dame’s president, for instance, the Most Rev. Daniel M. Buechlein, Archbishop of Indianapolis writes: “There isn’t a single reason that would justify Catholic sponsorship of the president of our country, who is blatantly opposed to the Catholic Church’s doctrine on abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. You dishonor the reputation of the University of Notre Dame and, in effect, abdicate your prestigious reputation among Catholic universities everywhere.”

“Your actions and that of the Board of Trustees of Notre Dame do real harm to the mission of Catholic education in this country and further splinters [sic] Catholic witness in the public square,” the Most Rev. Samuel J. Aquila, the Bishop of Fargo, writes.

Meanwhile, the bishop for the diocese that includes Notre Dame, the Most Rev. John M. D’Arcy, has said he will skip the ceremony. On Tuesday, he issued a public statement challenging Notre Dame’s interpretation of a 2004 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops statement that stands at the heart of this controversy. A bullet point in “Catholics in Political Life” reads: “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

Notre Dame’s president, Father Jenkins, argued in a letter to his board that the statement did not apply to this matter because the document was understood to refer only to Catholics in political life; Obama is not Catholic. The South Bend Tribune quoted Father Jenkins' letter as saying: "This interpretation was supported by canon lawyers we consulted, who advised us that, by definition, only Catholics who implicitly recognize the authority of Church teaching can act in 'defiance' of it."

Bishop D’Arcy responded that the meaning of the document is clear, that it does in fact apply, and furthermore suggested that he should have been consulted on the question -- as he was not. "The failure to consult the local bishop who, whatever his unworthiness, is the teacher and lawgiver in the diocese, is a serious mistake," he writes. "Proper consultation could have prevented an action, which has caused such painful division between Notre Dame and many bishops — and a large number of the faithful."

New Orleans Archbishop Alfred Clifton Hughes cited that same 2004 document Thursday in a letter indicating he would not attend Xavier University of Louisiana's commencement ceremony for its choice of speaker, the Democratic strategist Donna Brazile. "I recognize that Ms. Brazile is a Catholic Louisiana native who has worked effectively in service to the poor and African Americans in particular. However, her public statements on the abortion issue are not in keeping with Catholic moral teaching," he writes.

In one other related mini-controversy, the Washington Post on Friday reported a flap at Georgetown University. Washington D.C.'s archbishop, the Most Rev. Donald W. Wuerl, expressed concern over Georgetown serving as host for an award ceremony honoring Vice President Joe Biden, a Catholic (in this case, the Post notes, a nonprofit organization, Legal Momentum, bestowed the honor, not the university itself).

A lack of clarity about the implications of that 2004 document -- and specifically that one bullet point about awards, honors and platforms -- continues to plague Catholic college presidents, says Richard A. Yanikoski, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. “You have individuals who take that one bullet outside of the context of its original document, which was titled "Catholics in Political Life," and assume that it applies equally to everyone, everywhere, if they somehow are defiant of Catholic moral teaching. Well, there are a couple of difficulties with that and I don’t assume the difficulty is bad faith on the part of anybody who makes that or some other interpretation. It simply was a poorly written document to begin with" -- released in the context of the 2004 political season, when a pro-choice Catholic Democrat, John Kerry, was running for president.

Yanikoski adds, too, that there has not been consistency in how the document is applied. “There have been other presidents who have spoken at the University of Notre Dame and at other Catholic universities who have been equally opposed to other moral teachings of the Catholic church [aside from issues surrounding abortion] and yet were never criticized by the bishops in terms of them speaking at the commencement." (To take just one example, George W. Bush was a staunch supporter of the death penalty; he spoke about the role of faith-based organizations in fighting poverty at Notre Dame's commencement in 2001.)

“I am not surprised that some bishops have taken a strong and even public stand as they have,” Yanikoski says. "I’m not surprised that far more bishops have used the discretion to remain silent on this point. The matter will not go away in the weeks or years to come. This is a very high-profile case and we probably won’t see another like it for some time but the issue is still there and it’s there largely for three reasons: 1) the language from the 2004 document is still unsatisfactory; it does not provide adequate guidance to bishops or presidents. 2) Organizations, particularly the Cardinal Newman Society, in effect make their living on these moments. This is how they raise money and gain support. ...The third reason is that there is an inherent tension between the teaching authority of the bishop and the universities’ larger exploration of points of view for educational purposes.”

“Where does academic freedom of the campus bump up against church authority?” Yanikoski asks. “What constitutes an honor versus an award versus a platform? Those were the three words in the 2004 document. Are we talking about only Catholics or all people? Are we talking only about politicians or all people? None of those things were clear in the 2004 document. I have to believe that we’re not going to just continue to let this thing sit in a difficult place without some further effort to bring clarity to it as it applies to Catholic colleges and universities.”

Meanwhile, the controversy at Notre Dame boils on. “It’s the outside groups, I think, that are feeding the fire,” says Spencer Howard, a senior and co-president of the College Democrats. On Thursday, the College Democrats and 23 other student groups delivered a letter to President Jenkins supporting the decision to host Obama.

“I think they’re trying to use a school with the name and reputation of Notre Dame has to make a political statement. I think it’s frustrating a lot of the seniors here because they just want to spend graduation day with their friends and family,” Howard says.

“I have plenty of friends who on at least that issue [abortion] don’t agree but at the end of the day they say, it’s the president. ...How many people get the president to come to their school for anything?”

“Personally for me, I hear a lot of division on this and a lot of unhappiness or uneasiness that the university administration chose someone so controversial for an event that’s supposed to be unifying,” says Edward Yap, a junior and spokesman for ND Response, a coalition of 11 student groups that organized to protest the choice of Obama. “We want to reaffirm the Catholic church’s position on this issue and really show average citizens and Catholics around the country and the world that while the preeminent Catholic university in the land might be straying, Catholics at the university are not.”

Yap adds: "We appreciate the attention that other groups are bringing to this issue but I know from my perspective and the perspectives of other students, this really is an internal matter.”

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Australia: Queensland teachers face competency exam before teaching

Good idea

QUEENSLAND primary teachers may face an Australian-first competency exam before they will be allowed to teach the state's young. Education expert Professor Geoff Masters today handed down a report into improving Queensland students' literacy, numeracy and science levels after a test last year showed results were lagging behind other states. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study showed Queensland's Year Four students ranked last in science and seventh in maths out of the country's eight states and territories.

The report made five recommendations to improve standards, including that all aspiring primary school teachers sit a Queensland College of Teachers test to show proficiency levels and gain their registration. It would be the first time such a test was imposed on Australian teachers before their registration. Its proposal followed concerns expressed to the review about some new teachers' own levels of competence in mathematics, science and literacy.

Premier Anna Bligh, who called the report a "road map'' to better results, said she expected the recommendation to be controversial. But the premier said last year's results were unacceptable and she wanted to ensure the best people were teaching the state's children. "I know there'll be some controversy about this recommendation, but teaching, like other professions, needs to have an open mind about these sorts of ideas,'' Ms Bligh said. "To become a barrister for example, a law graduate has to sit the Bar exam and satisfy the requirements for that exam.''

The report also recommended a new program be designed and delivered through distance education for teachers to improve their teaching methods. Additional money should also be provided for the advanced training and employment of specialist literacy, numeracy and science teachers to work in schools.

Ms Bligh said the government would now examine all recommendations and look at where money needed to be spent.

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Shariah goes to Harvard

What do Pakistan's Swat Valley and Harvard University have in common? Their leading Islamic authorities uphold the Shariah (Islamic law) tradition of punishing those who leave Islam with death.

There are differences, of course. For one thing, Shariah actually rules the Swat Valley, while Shariah's traditions, as promulgated by Harvard Muslim chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser, retain a more or less theoretical caste. In a recently publicized e-mail, for example, Mr. Abdul-Basser approvingly explained to a student the traditional Islamic practice of executing converts from Islam. As the chaplain put it: "There is great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment), and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human-rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand."

Certainly, one should not dismiss Mr. Abdul-Basser out of hand - or the chilling implications of what it means to have a religious leader at Harvard validate the ultimate act of Islamic religious persecution. But dismissing - or, rather, ignoring - this controversy is precisely what Harvard is doing in what appears to be an institutional strategy to make it go away. No one from the public-affairs office I contacted would answer questions or return phone calls. The lady who unguardedly answered the phone at the Harvard Chaplains' office couldn't get off fast enough, offering by way of answers a faxed "On Inquiry Statement" prepared by Mr. Abdul-Basser in which he issued a raft of denials unrelated to the e-mail statements in question.

"I have never called for, advocated or otherwise supported the murder of anyone - ever," he wrote. Nope, he didn't, especially since under Shariah, death for apostasy is not considered "murder."

"I have never expressed the position that individuals who leave Islam ... must be killed." True. Indeed, in the original statement, Mr. Abdul-Basser specified the unworkability of death for apostasy "in our case here in the North/West" because, for one thing, it "can only occur in the domain and under supervision of Muslim governmental authority and can not be performed by nonstate, private actors." And finally: "I do not hold this opinion personally."

This doesn't exactly resound as a bell-clanging denunciation of the Islamic juridical consensus on death for apostasy. But maybe more disturbing than either Mr. Abdul-Basser's Shariah position or Harvard's stonewalling is the silence of the media. With the exception of the Harvard Crimson, no news outlets have covered the story.

It broke online when someone anonymously leaked the e-mail to talkislam.info on April 3, and it was picked up by researcher Jeffrey Imm on April 4 and subsequently blogged at various sites. (I wrote about it at www.dianawest.net on April 4.) The Harvard Crimson became the sole media outlet to report the story on April 14.

Compare this silence to the uninterrupted media pillory that Lawrence H. Summers endured back in 2005. For suggesting that differences between men and women, not discrimination, accounted for a dearth of women in the sciences, Mr. Summers was ultimately driven from the Harvard presidency. Today, for seeing "great wisdom" in the Shariah tradition of capital punishment for apostasy, Mr. Abdul-Basser not only doesn't rate a news squib, but he also continues to minister to Harvard's flock.

Not incidentally, a number of Harvard Muslims - two by name and three anonymously - objected to Mr. Abdul-Basser's statements in the Harvard Crimson story. One student said Mr. Abdul-Basser shouldn't be the official Muslim chaplain. His reason, in part, was because the chaplain "privileges the medieval discourse of the Islamic jurists and is not willing to exercise independent thought beyond a certain point."

Identified by name in the original Crimson story, this student later requested and received anonymity from the online edition "when he revealed that his words could bring him into serious conflict with Muslim religious authorities." His "words"? What kind of "serious conflict"? What "Muslim religious authorities"? The article didn't say.

Another Muslim student who called Mr. Abdul-Basser's remarks "the first step towards inciting intolerance and inciting people towards violence" also requested anonymity "for fear of harming his relationship with the Islamic community." So did a third Muslim student in order "to preserve his relationship with the Islamic community."

It is here that we broach the most disturbing aspect of this highly disturbing story: There are Muslims who oppose the Shariah tradition of death for apostasy but don't feel free to say so publicly - not at Harvard, not in the Swat Valley. But little wonder. No Harvard official, neither religious nor administrative, has been willing so far to speak out against the chaplain's statement, let alone can him. This means that when it comes to Shariah rules versus freedom of conscience at Harvard, it is freedom of conscience that goes unprotected by those hallowed, ivy-covered walls. No wonder nobody wants to talk about this story.

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British Schools producing a generation of illiterates, says historian

The television historian David Starkey said that head teachers should bring back debating competitions and elocution lessons because schools were producing a generation that was illiterate and could not communicate properly.

Narrow-minded bean-counters and the internet had taken over education, he added, suggesting that Britons in the time of Henry VIII had a more rounded schooling and more competent government. “We are dangerously devaluing knowledge and learning. In much of the national curriculum there is no requirement to remember anything at all. The notion that you need to hold knowledge in your head seems to have been forgotten,” he told head teachers at a conference in Brighton.

He said that pupils “were being fed on a diet of sub-A-level accountancy” and that too many school-leavers were taking “narrow professional degrees such as law or finance”. “In the United States, anyone going to the top would not dream of doing something so narrow as a first degree — you would do a broad liberal arts degree, then specialise,” he said.

His comments were seen as a swipe at the Government’s decision to withdraw funding for courses taken by anyone who already holds an equivalent or higher-level qualification.

Dr Starkey, whose recent series, Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant, looked at the King’s early life, said: “It’s not good enough to say you can look things up on the web. You can produce connections only if you know facts.” He criticised schools for not stretching the brightest pupils and pitting them against each other. The system was less likely to identify and nurture clever children from poor backgrounds, he said.

“We are producing a generation that is not only illiterate but practically uncommunicative. Elocution competitions should be reintroduced. It is terrific training, along with acting in plays. “There was a generosity in Henry’s curriculum with music, poetry, physical education and the proper speaking of modern languages.”

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Australia: Guns, knives on the increase in NSW schools

TEACHERS have faced an escalation in the number of incidents involving students bringing weapons into the classroom, prompting calls for crisis intervention to address the problem. New figures show 400 suspensions were given to students caught with firearms or knives in school last year.

The data has triggered calls by the State opposition for an urgent increase in the number of school counsellors available, to identify and engage in crisis intervention with students at risk.

The data, provided under Freedom of Information laws, shows there were 14,405 suspensions handed out to students between kindergarten to Year 12 last year. A student who receives a long suspension is banned from entering the school grounds for 20 days. Further breaches can result in a formal expulsion.

The suspensions were for using or possessing a prohibited weapon, firearm or knife, engaging in serious criminal behaviour and physical violence. Other categories of suspension have included persistent misbehaviour, possession or use of a suspected illegal substance, or using an implement as a weapon. The figures show that the number of suspensions given for "use or possession" of a gun, knife or other prohibited weapon rose 17 per cent from 339 in 2005 to 398 last year.

However, the category with the biggest increase was for students engaging in serious criminal behaviour, such as stealing. The number of students suspended for offences that could attract a criminal charge also rose, with 970 suspensions handed out - an increase of 45 per cent on four years ago. The largest number of suspensions were handed out to students who had engaged in physical violence, which included assaults or bullying.

The figures show there were 6500 suspensions for violent behaviour - a 20 per cent increase over the past four years. A further 6061 suspensions were given to students for persistent misbehaviour - up 43 per cent. Increasing numbers of students were also removed for using or threatening to use an implement as a weapon with 204 suspensions handed out - an increase of 27 per cent.

A breakdown of ages shows the vast majority of misbehaving students are aged between 12 and 16. The data also shows pupils in Years 7-10 made up 74 per cent of the total number of suspensions.

State opposition education spokesman Adrian Piccoli said the State government needed urgently to increase the number of counsellors in schools. The latest data showed there was roughly one counsellor for every 1500 students, he said. "Counsellors can identify kids at risk and carry out crisis prevention, clinical assessments and identify behavioural difficulties before it comes to the point of weapons being brought to school," Mr Piccoli said. He said a recent survey conducted by school principals showed the greatest need for increased counsellor numbers was in schools in the Campbelltown, Cumberland, Liverpool, Mt Druitt and Dubbo regions.

A spokesman for NSW Education Minister Verity Firth said the figures showed more principals were using increased powers introduced in 2005 to suspend misbehaving students. But he said more school students were also learning from their mistakes, with 73 percent of those suspended only suspended once.

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Union aggression: Charter schools at risk

The New York Times on Monday offered a compelling portrait of Kashi Nelson, who teaches at a Brooklyn charter school targeted for takeover by teachers unions. Nelson first opposed and then embraced and then opposed unionization again, personifying a struggle for the heart and soul of charter schools taking place across the country. Explains the Times:

"Ms. Nelson’s shift from union skeptic to supporter and back again provides a glimpse of the complicated and tense dance between charter schools and unions unfolding across the country. As the number of charter schools in New York City and elsewhere swells, unions have become increasingly aggressive in trying to organize their teachers.

These two major forces in education politics, having long faced off in ideological opposition, have begun in some places to enter tentative and cautious partnerships, and in others to engage in fierce combat. New York City’s teachers’ union now runs two charter schools in Brooklyn and workers have organized at many more, including more than a dozen across New York State.

Some of the most adamant supporters of charter schools say that the teachers’ union is simply trying to stymie their growth by increasing the regulations on their operation; union leaders, on the other hand, say they are just trying to ensure that teachers are given fair pay and clear guidelines for how and why they could be dismissed."

Having largely lost the battle to stop the schools, unions have adopted a new strategy -- of destroying them from within by infiltrating and organizing their staffs. And with legislation pending before Congress that would make unionizing the workplace as simple as gathering enough signatures -- the so-called card check bill -- this assault on the independence of charter schools is only likely to spread and escalate.

Freedom from union influence is one of the distinguishing characteristics of charter schools; indeed, it's one of the secrets to their success. It's what leaves the teachers free to teach, without constant reference to what's "in the contract." It's what leaves school administrators free to manage, without butting heads with obstructionists within. Absent is the adversarial relationship between "management" and "workers" that unions feed upon. These schools put the interest of students first and teachers second. And that's why unions want to obliterate that distinction.

Teachers have a choice of working at a charter school or a conventional public school. They're intelligent enough to understand the trade-offs involved. Many choose the former over the latter because of the apathy and antipathy unions frequently bring to the workplace. Thus, the idea that unions are coming to the rescue of beleaguered charter school teachers is ridiculous.

Many of these teachers have fled to charters to escape the unhealthy and unproductive influence of unions, as Nelson was when she took the job in Brooklyn. But the unions refuse to let charter schools and charter school teachers (not to mention charter school students and parents) go their own way, insisting that uniformity, conformity, lethargy and mediocrity permeate public education in America, without exception.

If allowed to go unchecked, the union takeover of charters schools threatens to undermine and eventually destroy one of the few real innovations American public education has enjoyed in recent times.

But a more practical, bottom-line motivation also lurks behind the takeovers. The popularity of charters has the tide turning decisively against unions. It represents a steady drain on union membership, union dues and union power -- which is all most unions care about anyway. Unless they find a way to co-opt charters, not only will unions experience a continuing decline in membership and money, but America will before long have two public school systems existing side my side.

One system, free from union influence, will be succeeding, while the other, anchored down by union dominance, will be failing. And that will be the most glaring evidence yet of the cancerous influence these organizations have had on American public education.

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British regional council launches knife detectors in schools



Waltham Forest Council has become the first in the country to introduce a borough-wide weapons screening programme in schools, with knife arches in every secondary school. Council bosses said that it would be foolish to ignore the problem of knife crime as the scheme was launched at Lammas School and Sports College in Leyton, east London. Teachers, students, police and councillors all welcomed the initiative and denied that the presence of the arches in schools would criminalise young people.

Chris Robbins, council member for children and young people, said: "There's no doubt that there is an issue of knife and weapon crime in London and it would be foolish to ignore that." He said the scheme, the first in England and Wales, was in response to requests from youngsters who said they wanted to feel safe in schools. He added that the initiative would tackle the serious crime as part of a larger educational programme which involved the police talking to students in schools.

Lammas School headteacher Shona Ramsay said the programme was a good idea. "It's a preventative measure to deter our young people from carrying knives," she said. "We don't have a problem here and I want to keep it that way. We're really pressing home the message that schools are safe."

From today, the arches will be used about once a term [What good is that? Why not once a day?] in each of the borough's 22 secondary schools. Inspector Mike Hamer, head of the borough's safer schools programme, said around 12,000 pupils had been screened so far and no weapons had been found. He said: "We think that's a success. What it means is that there has been no knives in schools and the students should feel safe."

He said there had been an "overwhelmingly positive" response and denied that the arches would criminalise all young people. He added that the arches were a "response to what young people want" and helped reduce the fear of crime in schools.

Marco Santo, 12, said he was "a bit nervous before walking through the arches" but that it "wasn't that bad". Mischa Haynes, also 12, said: "It makes you feel safe in school and it's a place where you should feel safe."

The Government launched its Tackling Knives Action Programme last summer which targeted 10 knife-crime hotspots with searches, knife arches and increases in police patrols. At the time, Frances Lawrence, widow of headteacher Philip Lawrence who was stabbed outside St George's School in Maida Vale, north London, in 1995, called for more action to prevent stabbings but said knife arches amounted to "criminalisation of all young people".

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