Do international test comparisons make sense?

The article below is typical of Leftist focus on groups rather than on those pesky individuals. It endeavours to downplay poor average performances by American students in international comparisons by pointing out that America has a large and strong elite class. And, as we know from smart fraction theory, that is what matters most to a nation's prosperity.

That is a cop-out however, that ignores the individual. Why are so many individual students doing badly? It is they for whom concern may be warranted, not the USA as a whole. Individuals matter

Tomorrow we will learn the latest results from the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA and promoted as the most comprehensive study to test and compare student performance internationally.

Each time PISA, or other international test results are released, there is angst in the United States because American students aren’t ranked as high as Japan and Finland and Singapore and South Korea and a bunch of other countries.

Experts are quoted about how the United States is going to slip into oblivion if we can’t get these scores up, and other experts are quoted as saying that we have to speed up specific school reforms (the current ones in vogue involved high-stakes standardized testing, expanding charter schools, etc.) so that we can reclaim our rightful place at the top of these test result lists.

Expect to hear all of that this week and more.

So before all the hullabalo starts, it is a good time to look back at what the late, great social scientist Gerald Bracey wrote about international comparisons. Bracey was director of research, evaluation and testing for the Virginia Department of Education from 1977 to 1986, as well as a trained psychogist who was the leading critic of how today’s tests measure success. He authored numerous articles and books, including "Reading Educational Research: How to Avoid Getting Statistically Snookered."

Below are two separate writings, one a blogpost he wrote for The Washington Post blog x = why? and the other from his last Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education. The report was jointly published in 2009, shortly after Bracey passed away, by the Education Policy Research Unit at Arizona State University and by the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado. The whole report is worth rereading, but here’s part of what Bracey wrote on international comparisons of student test scores:

....Many critics cite the performance of American students on international comparisons of mathematics and science. The most often used comparison comes from rankings on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Most recently (2006), American students ranked 24th of 30 OECD nations in mathematics and 17th of 30 in science. Errors in the test booklets prevented the reporting scores for American students in reading.

It should be noted that these rankings are determined by nations’ average scores. Some researchers have suggested, however, that average score comparisons are not useful: even presuming that the tests have some meaning for future accomplishment, average students are not likely to be the leaders in fields of mathematics and science.

Those roles are more likely to fall to those scoring well. A publication from OECD itself observes that if one examines the number of highest-scoring students in science, the United States has 25% of all high-scoring students in the world (at least in “the world” as defined by the 58 nations taking part in the assessment—the 30 OECD nations and 28 “partner” countries). Among nations with high average scores, Japan accounted for 13% of the highest scorers, Korea 5%, Taipei 3%, Finland 1%, and Hong Kong 1%. Singapore did not participate.

The picture emerging from this highest-scorer comparison is far different than that suggested by the frequently cited national average comparisons; it is a picture that suggests many American schools are actually doing very well indeed.

Of course, the U.S. is much larger than these other countries and should be expected to produce larger numbers of successful students. But it is only when we look beyond the mean and consider the distribution of students and schools that we see the true picture. Students attending American schools run the gamut from excellent to poor. Well-resourced schools serving wealthy neighborhoods are showing excellent results. Poorly resourced schools serving low-income communities of color do far worse. --

The second Bracey writing is from a blog that Post reporter Michael Chandler wrote while she was spending a year retaking high school math. In December 2008 she asked Bracey to write about the results of the just relased 2007 TIMMS test. Here’s what he wrote:

So the U. S. is not #1 in mathematics or science testing. So what?

So, very little.

First, comparing nations on average scores is a pretty silly idea. It’s like ranking runners based on average shoe size or evaluating the high school football team on the basis of how fast the average senior can run the 40-yard dash. Not much link to reality. What is likely much more important is how many high performers you have. On both TIMSS math and science, the U. S. has a much higher proportion of "advanced" scorers than the international median although the proportion is much smaller than in Asian nations.

This was not true on PISA, another international comparison that tests 15-year-olds. Only 1.5% of American students scored at the highest level compared to top performing New Zealand at 4% and second place Finland at 3.9%.

Yet the proportion of Americans at the highest level meant that 70,000 kids scored there compared to about 2,000 for New Zealand and Sweden. No one else even came close--Japan was second with about 33,000 top performers. These are the people who might end up creating leading edge technology in the future. Who cares if Singapore, with about the same population as the Washington Metro Area, and Hong Kong, with about twice that number, score high?

There aren’t many people there. (And, as journalist Fareed Zakariya found out, the Singapore kids fade as they become adults. More about that in a moment). The bad news is that the U. S., on PISA anyway, had many more students scoring at the lowest levels; these kids likely can’t compete for the good jobs in the country.

Second, test scores, at least average test scores, don’t seem to be related to anything important to a national economy. Japan’s kids have always done well, but the economy sank into the Pacific in 1990 and has never recovered.

The two Swiss-based organizations that rank nations on global competitiveness, the Institute for Management Development and the World Economic Forum, both rank the U. S. #1 and have for a number of years. The WEF examines 12 "pillars of competitiveness," only one of which is education. We do OK there, but we shine on innovation. Innovation is the only quality of competitiveness that does not show at some point diminishing returns. Building bigger and faster airplanes can only improve productivity so much.

Innovation has no such limits. When Zakariya asked the Singapore Minister of Education why his high-flying students faded in after-school years, the Minister cited creativity, ambition, and a willingness to challenge existing knowledge, all of which he thought American excelled in. But, as Bob Sternberg of Tufts University [he is now provost of Oklahoma State University] has pointed out, our obsession with standardized testing has produced one of the best instruments in the nation’s history for stifling creativity.

But really, does the fate of the nation rest on how well 9- and 13-year-olds bubble in answer sheets? I don’t think so. Neither does British economist, S. J. Prais. We look at the test scores and worry about the nation’s economic performance. Prais looks at the economic performance and worries about the validity of the test scores: "That the United States, the world’s top economic performing country, was found to have school attainments that are only middling casts fundamental doubts about the value and approach of these [international assessments]."

Third, even if comparisons of average test scores were a meaningful exercise, it only looks at one dimension--the supply side. Predictably, the results gave rise to calls for more spending on science instruction. This ignores the fact that we have more scientists and engineers than we can absorb. In one study, Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University and Harold Salzman of the Urban Institute found that we mint three new engineers for every new job (this is from permanent residents and citizens, not foreigners).

More disturbing was the attrition rate. While educators fret over losing 50% of teachers in 5 years (and well they should), Lowell and Salzman found that engineering loses 65% in two years. Why? Low pay, lousy working conditions, little chance for advancement. American schools of engineering are dominated by foreigners because only people from third world nations can view our jobs as attractive. In fact, long-time science writer, Dan Greenberg, invented a new position for those emerging with Ph.D.’s: post-doc emeritus.

Schools are doing a great job on the supply side. Business and industry are doing a lousy job on the demand side. The oil industry, responding to increased demand for oil exploration raised the entry-level salaries for petroleum engineers by 30-60%. The number of students lining up to be petroleum engineers has doubled and enrollment at Texas Tech has increased sixfold.

As usual in these comparisons, Americans in low-poverty schools look very good, even in mathematics. They would be ranked third in the 4th grade (among 36 nations) 6th in the 8th grade (among 47 nations). This is important because while other developed nations have poor children, the U. S. has a much higher proportion and a much weaker safety net. When UNICEF studied poverty in 22 wealthy nations, the U. S. ranked 21st.

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Poor British children 'fall behind classmates after two years of school'

The elephant in the room -- IQ -- is being ignored, of course. Rich kids come from brighter families and IQ is both hereditary and the best single predictor of educational success. And differences in IQ do tend to widen with age. Dumb kids peak earlier. See "The chimpanzee effect"

Children from poor families are falling up to eight months behind richer classmates after just two years of school, according to research. Despite billions spent attempting to boost social mobility under Labour, academics found the gap between rich and poor pupils widened throughout early education.

The study – based on a major analysis of children born in the first two years of the millennium – suggested that social class remained the biggest barrier to success at school.

Academics said the number of books in the home, parental qualifications, regular mealtimes and bedtimes, the state of housing and the quality of early childcare all had an impact on children’s education.

But Dr Alice Sullivan, senior lecturer at the University of London’s Institute of Education, who led the research, said Government policies designed to improve parenting skills were not enough to address chronic under-performance among deprived pupils.

She suggested that welfare reforms – including access to housing and jobs – would have a bigger impact on school standards. “Our research shows that while parenting is important, a policy focus on parenting alone is insufficient to tackle the impacts of social inequalities on children,” she said. “Redistributive economic policies may be more effective than policies directly addressing parenting practices.”

As part of the latest study, academics tracked the performance of more than 11,000 seven-year-olds in reading and maths. They also analysed teachers’ assessments of children’s abilities in other subjects such as speaking and listening, writing, science, maths, PE and creative arts.

The report – part of the Millennium Cohort Study, an on-going analysis of children across the UK born between 2000 and 2002 – compared education standards with pupils’ family backgrounds.

It found the children of parents in professional and managerial jobs were around eight months ahead of those with parents who were long-term unemployed.

The study found this gap had widened over the last two years. A similar test carried out when pupils started school aged five found that the gap was just four months – half as wide.

The conclusions come despite a sharp rise in funding under the last Government to address chronic underperformance among children born into the poorest households. In recent years, children have been given more access to free childcare and billions has been spent on a generation of Sure Start children’s centres in deprived communities.

The study found that a stable home environment and good parenting had an impact on children’s early education, but this was not enough to explain the differences.

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Australia: Still problems with national schools curriculum says NSW State Government

THE New South Wales Government says it will refuse to roll out a substandard national schools curriculum. Federal, state and territory education ministers will meet tomorrow to discuss the content of the curriculum, which was meant to be rolled out around the country in 2011.

NSW Education Minister Verity Firth today said that she was not going to compromise on quality. "The advice that I have from the NSW Board of Studies ... is that the draft curriculum in its current form is not ready," she told ABC Radio. "I'm not going to rush it. I'm going to take the advice of my board about quality and I think that's the responsible thing to do."

Ms Firth said the states had until 2013 to implement the national curriculum anyway. "Tomorrow's meeting was never going to be the be-all-and-end-all, the absolute sign off of a finished and perfect curriculum," she said.

There were still three main problems with the document, she said.

Ms Firth said more consultation with teachers on the syllabus was needed, while the structure of the curriculum needed to balance the amount of content with the time available to study it.

A new syllabus must also cater for all students, from those with learning difficulties to gifted and talented, she said. "There needs to be a broad spectrum in the curriculum, especially from special needs teachers there is a sense that there really isn't."

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Arne Duncan sees the light

For about two years now, President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have been co-opting much of the GOP playbook on education. They support charter schools. They endorse merit pay. They decry teacher tenure and seniority. On alternate Thursdays, they bracingly challenge the teacher unions.

But on one key issue—spending—they have acted like traditional borrow-and-spend Democrats, only more so. The 2009 stimulus bill included over $100 billion for schools, most of it designed to simply save teachers’ positions. A 2010 “edujobs” bill showered another $10 billion in bailout bucks on K-12 systems to forestall hard choices. And Duncan’s insistence last summer that school districts had already cut “through, you know, fat, through flesh, and into bone,” only served to pull the rug out from under those state and local leaders inclined to swing the budget ax, by making their tough medicine seem mean-spirited—and unnecessary.

Well. We’re not sure if the Secretary of Education had a conversion experience, had a secret plan to woo the ed establishment and then hit it with tough love, or is simply reading the Tea Party leaves, but what a difference a couple months can make! The week before Thanksgiving, Secretary Duncan sang the praises of productivity in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute titled “The New Normal: Doing More With Less.”

It was a humdinger. Duncan opened: “For the next several years, preschool, K-12, and postsecondary educators are likely to face the challenge of doing more with less… [This] can, and should be, embraced as an opportunity to make dramatic improvements… It’s time to stop treating the problem of educational productivity as a grinding, eat-your-broccoli exercise. It’s time to start treating it as an opportunity for innovation and accelerating progress.”

We couldn’t agree more. Throughout the federal spending spree of the past two years, we’ve worried about the pernicious effects of dumping so much cash on our already-bloated schools. All this did, we argued, was prop up an unsustainable system whose revenues grew by one-third since 1995, thanks to the dot-com bubble and then the housing bubble. After three generations of steady growth in per pupil spending, education is going to have to face its day of reckoning and schools are going to have to start spending dollars smarter.

Duncan’s was a speech unlike any we have heard from a U.S. Secretary of Education-Republican or Democrat. He said resources are limited, embraced the need to make tough choices, urged states and districts to contemplate boosting some class sizes and consolidating schools, and didn’t spend much time trying to throw bones to the status quo.

Duncan called for wide-ranging reforms in the name of cost-effectiveness. He said, “The legacy of the factory model of schooling is that tens of billions of dollars are tied up in unproductive use of time and technology, in underused school buildings, in antiquated compensation systems, and in inefficient school finance systems.”

He rightly argued that schooling had to abandon the notion that reform is always bought and paid for with new dollars and argued that it’s essential to think of technology as a “force multiplier” rather than a pleasing add-on.

His to-do list was comprehensive and spot on. He said, “Rethinking policies around seat-time requirements, class size, compensating teachers based on their educational credentials, the use of technology in the classroom, inequitable school financing, the over placement of students in special education—almost all of these potentially transformative productivity gains are primarily state and local issues that have to be grappled with.”

In one speech, this (Democratic) Secretary of Education came out swinging against last hired, first fired, seniority-based pay raises, smaller class sizes, seat time, pay bonuses for master’s degrees, and over-bloated special education budgets. Which means he declared war on the teachers unions, parents groups, education schools, and special education lobby. Not a bad day’s work!

To be sure, Duncan has control over almost none of this. Still, this is classic bully-pulpit stuff, and we expect it will resonate big-time in state capitols all over the country. When the unions start busing in kids, parents, and teachers to rally against increases in class size or pay freezes, expect a lot of Republican governors to start quoting their good friend Arne Duncan.

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The climate of fear that has poisoned British schools

Ousted teacher exposes the tyranny of liberalism that has betrayed a generation of children:

By Katharine Birbalsingh

I am the teacher who spoke at the Conservative Party Conference and then found herself out of a job. Some might argue that had I criticised the education system at a National Union of ­Teachers conference, I would have been cheered on by the delegates.

Had I blamed our broken education system on lack of funds, institutional racism or the challenge of private education, I would have been the darling of the Left and all would have been well. It was the fact that I sided with the Right that has turned me into a mortal enemy.

But we are all in pursuit of the same utopia, aren’t we? We want every child to have the best possible education, to feel safe and happy, to reach for the top, and for schools to provide environments where this is possible.

Or do we? It is interesting that teachers come up to me in the street, voicing their support, agreeing with everything I’ve said, yet refuse to tell me their names because they are scared to speak out ‘given the current climate’. By ‘the current climate’ they are pointing to Leftist ideology that insists private-style education for a comprehensive intake of students is simply a contradiction in terms.

The Left has a stranglehold over teachers and gives them little ­freedom to think outside their ideological box. For a long time, I have been a victim of that ideology.

The other day, I had tea with a friend to bring her up to date with the details of my personal drama. She is originally from Calcutta, married to a very liberal Scot and has two children. I begin, as I always do these days, defending my actions. I try to explain my reasons for voting Conservative, why it doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person, why I believe Right-wing thinking is what we need in schools. My friend leans forward. 'Well, you know, Katharine, I never told you, but I voted Conservative, too.’

Such is the state of political freedom in this country. We may believe we all have freedom of speech, but when we diverge from the pack, we don’t tell even our closest friends.

Peer pressure is not only the main force that keeps children in gangs, walking as if they’re constipated, speaking as if they’ve never read a book and permanently playing on their portable video-game machines; it is also the principal reason most adults vote the same way from the day we were born until the day we die. Political persuasion is tribal and no one is ever meant to change their minds.

I grew up in a very Left-leaning family and went to a state school. Fresh out of Oxford, where I read the magazine Marxism Today, I began teaching, firm in the belief that racist, white teachers were responsible for black under­achievement. I thought that state schools had no money and that the poor (both black and white) were left to languish.

I wanted what was best for the underprivileged. So I decided to teach only in the inner city. Not much has changed, except that I no longer read Marxist magazines and I have stopped dabbling with the Socialist Workers Party.

Why? Because my experiences in teaching have taught me that it is not lack of money or prejudice that keep my children poor, although clearly money is useful and prejudice is to be found everywhere.

Over time, I came to realise how mistaken I had been in my understanding of the education system. I remember taking a white colleague to Diane Abbott’s Black Child ­conference, aimed at tackling ‘educational underachievement in black communities’. It was Saturday ­morning and so dedicated was he, even after 20 superb years in the classroom, that he followed me there, always ­willing to learn from new experiences.

As the speakers expounded on the inner racism in the teaching profession, on the fear white teachers have of their black pupils, I will never ­forget the sense of shame that consumed me. Why? Because not only were the speakers talking utter nonsense, but I knew how much this teacher had done for black boys over the years, and here was I, dragging him out of his bed on a Saturday morning so that he could be called a racist just for being white and for being a teacher.

For years, I soldiered on in the classroom, working hard to change the minds of children who were paralysed by a sense of victimhood.

They found it impossible to believe that I had chosen to be their teacher, that I wanted to be there, that I loved being around them. Eventually, like any good teacher, I won them over by using all the tricks of the trade, from gold stars to phone calls at home with positive comments, to holding breakfast clubs in the early morning when I would spend my own money on croissants. My students felt grateful. Like me, other teachers give their life to the job, and we ‘succeed’ despite the shackles of the system.

The regular dumbing-down of our examination system is obvious to any teacher who is paying attention and who has been in the game for some time.

The refusal to allow children to fail at anything is endemic in a school culture that always looks after self-esteem and misses the crucial point, which is that children’s self-esteem depends on achieving real success. If we never encourage them to ­challenge themselves by risking ­failure, self-esteem will never come.

I started to climb the professional teaching ladder, rising to positions of middle and senior management. There, too, I succeeded, but often only by fighting against people’s innate liberalism. Indeed, I would sometimes find myself arguing with my own deeply embedded liberalism: ‘Take pity on the boy. Don’t punish him. It isn’t his fault he didn’t do his homework; just look at his home situation.’ Or: ‘Why ask them to do their ties to the top or tuck in their shirts? What does any of that have to do with learning?’

I had become indoctrinated by all the trendy nonsense dictating that if children are not behaving in your classroom, it is because you have been standing in front of them for more than five minutes trying to teach them. If only you had sat them in groups with you as facilitator, rather than teacher at the front, then you’d have the safe environment conducive to learning that we all seek.

The basic ideology is that if there is chaos in the classroom, it is the ­teacher’s fault. Children are not held responsible for their actions. Senior management fails to establish systems that support teachers and punish pupils for not doing their homework, whatever their home situation.

I argued constantly with my ­colleagues and bosses. Often I won and, almost as if they were inextricably linked, as the innate liberalism within people waned, the department or the school would improve.

In every instance, I could see for myself that a move away from liberalism was a step in the right direction, a step that brought calm out of chaos, learning in place of trendiness, and success instead of failure. At first, I had no idea that my natural inclinations were ‘Right-wing’. I just argued for what I knew would work to improve schools.

But, in 2007, I began to blog anonymously about my experiences and people unknown to me from around the country, and indeed the world, would comment on my thoughts. The Left-wingers insisted I was bitter and twisted, that I hated children and was clearly disillusioned, while the Right-wingers tended to support my natural inclinations.

Writing my blog was a kind of ­therapy and I never sought to publicise it. I loved writing it because it allowed me to vent my frustrations. What I didn’t know at the time was that it did far more than that: my blog and its respondents taught me that my thinking was Right-wing.

Eventually, the 2010 election came. While Labour’s education manifesto had a tone which reminded me of the ‘all must have prizes’ culture I had come to despise, the Conservatives were promising to abolish the 24-hour rule for detention (one ­cannot give a lengthy detention without 24 hours’ notice to parents). So I did the unthinkable: I voted Conservative and never told a soul.

Why did I choose to stand at the Conservative Party Conference and announce to the world that I voted Conservative? Because October 5, 2010, was the day I threw off the weight of the Leftist ideology that had weighed me down for so long and shouted: ‘Free at last! Free at last!’

The law says we have the freedom to think as we please; social ­conformity says we do not. For more than a decade I have been fighting for my freedom and I have finally taken it back.

Back at the cafe, my Calcutta friend and I laugh at the absurdity of ­neither of us feeling comfortable enough to tell the other that we voted Conservative. She turns to me and says: ‘But just because I voted Conservative this time does not mean I will do so in the next election. These politicians need to earn my vote.’

And she’s absolutely right. That’s why the recent reforms announced by Education Secretary Michael Gove were so exciting. Finally, here is a politician who genuinely cares about education, who has listened to what critics of the existing system have had to say and who has reacted with a set of ­common-sense proposals that I naively thought no one could take issue with.

But almost before he’d sat down in the House of Commons, Labour MPs were accusing him of promoting a ‘two-tier education system’. But that, in fact, is exactly what we have now and what these reforms are trying to address.

Mr Gove’s proposals represent several steps in the right direction. I particularly warm to the changes that will increase the power of teachers - abolishing the need to give 24 hours’ notice of a detention, giving them the right to search bags and restrain violent pupils.

But it’s the way they offer the prospect of bringing state schools - or certain parts of the state school sector - more into line with fee-paying private schools that is most exciting.

Middle-class parents, perhaps ­university-educated themselves, know how the university system works and - whether their children are state or privately educated - can help ensure their children choose appropriately rigorous academic subjects when it comes to GCSEs.

But those children at state schools, with working-class parents who have little or no knowledge of further education, don’t get that sort of help. They need to be guided towards the right subjects, something which the current system definitely does not do.

After all, what carefree 14-year-old, considering their GCSE options, isn’t going to choose something soft like media studies or PE over a tough subject such as ­physics, or plump for the four GCSE passes that information and communications technology offers over the one that German does?

We have a system that offers too much choice without enough ­direction. Universities and employers are crying out for young people with a good command of the basics, which is why Mr Gove’s proposal to concentrate on five core subjects - English, maths, a science, history or geography and a foreign language - is such a sensible one. These are precisely the subjects you need to get a decent start in life.

I’m keeping an open mind about Mr Gove’s headline-grabbing Troops to Teachers programme; let’s see how it goes. And I certainly applaud his ­initiatives to improve the standard of teachers - better aptitude tests, more stringent degree requirements - although I think he may need to go further if the new powers that heads now have to get rid of the small minority of under-performing teachers are actually going to be used.

Lazy or incompetent teachers are not only a waste of taxpayers’ money, they can have a devastating impact on young lives, too. They must be moved on, not just for the sake of the children, but for their own sakes, too. Just because they haven’t excelled at teaching doesn’t mean they won’t excel at something else.

What schools are crying out for are teachers who can inspire but also control an unruly class, teachers who can effectively impart the basics to everyone but who can also help the more able achieve their highest potential. They’ve certainly been a long time coming, but Mr Gove’s reforms are certainly a very good start.

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Birthday cake row led to British headteacher's firing

Incredibly trivial minds in a British school system. Thin skins and nastiness to one-another is very British. It's why the expression "jobsworth" is unknown outside Britain. It refers to a person who uses any excuse to refuse a service to others -- even though the "jobsworth" is paid to provide that service. And when it comes to social-class-based contempt for others ....... ! Britain is a very miserable and unhappy country

A row over an uneaten slice of birthday cake triggered a disciplinary case which cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds.

When Diane Hill took over as head teacher of Devonport High School for Girls it was near bottom of the grammar school league table. Within months she had begun a massive programme to turn around an institution that many parents believed had become "lazy". But little did she know that the biggest challenge for her would be the delicate nature of the staff.

When a slice of birthday cake was left for the head teacher in her in-tray by an office worker, she failed to eat the gift. The member of staff took offence and lodged a complaint with school governors. The head teacher was also said to have failed to commiserate after the death of a staff member's dog.

She was further accused, wrongly, of confiscating a kettle from the staff room during a row over unwashed crockery. Another complaint to governors centred on Miss Hill's failure to ask a colleague about her mother's health.

In yet another incident, cleaners and dinner ladies at the Plymouth school complained they had been excluded from a "secret Santa" present-buying list – and when Miss Hill investigated the matter, she was accused of intimidating the person who had compiled the list.

Friends of Miss Hill say that the flurry of trivial accusations stemmed, in fact, from resentment among a small group of staff that the new head teacher was changing the established way of doing things – or in some cases by personal dislike of her.

Yet after hearing the litany of complaints, the school's governors decided to suspend the head on full pay, leading to a full-on war of allegations and counter-allegations. The local authority, Plymouth city council, then launched a full investigation which ultimately led to Miss Hill's dismissal.

Now she has been awarded undisclosed damages after the city council agreed an out-of-court settlement just before an employment tribunal was due to take place.

The total cost to taxpayers of the payout, the investigation, and other costs arising from the case is understood to exceed £300,000.

A parent at the school, Fiona Kerr, said: "We have lost the most fantastic head teacher, and for what? A few people's hurt feelings. It's disgraceful. "The school had become lazy. Other schools had improved immensely and Devonport had stood still. Diane was a great loss."

Miss Hill's friends say that the case raises important questions about the powers of school governors and about reforms proposed by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, which would hand them even more control.

The former head teacher is bound by a confidentiality clause which prevents her from talking about what happened at the school. But a friend speaking on her behalf said Miss Hill was concerned that other heads could suffer similar treatment – and may be left even more isolated by the Government's plans.

The friend said: "The outcome of this whole sorry incident is that they have potentially destroyed Diane's career. "She had a 25-year unblemished record and that has been taken away from her. "The education authority found no misconduct and no incompetence after the investigation. It begs the question – why did they dismiss her?

"Her case should act as a warning to others, particularly since governing bodies are now being given more power and independence by the Government."

The final report by city council education officials made numerous comments about the head teacher's frosty relationship with staff, but nowhere did it claim there had been serious incompetence or misconduct on her part.

The birthday cake incident stands out as the most extraordinary complaint in Miss Hill's case – particularly because the 48-year-old has dietary requirements which mean she cannot eat cake. "She is allergic to milk. This was a sponge cake with cream in the middle," said her friend, who declined to be named. "It would be funny if it were not so serious. I don't think there was a single allegation that amounted to anything substantial." .....

Despite the decision to pay damages to Miss Hill, which her friends regards a vindication of her case, the head teacher's opponents remain unrepentant.

More HERE

Is America's college debt bubble ready to explode?

It should

Hans Bader

College tuition has skyrocketed much more than housing did during the housing bubble, in percentage terms. 100 colleges charge $50,000 or more a year, compared to just 5 in 2008-09. College tuition has surged along with federal financial-aid spending, which indirectly rewards colleges for increasing tuition. College financial-aid policies punish thrifty families, so that “parents who scrimp and save to come up with the tuition are in effect subsidizing the others."

“University administrators are the equivalent of subprime mortgage brokers,” notes Facebook investor Peter Thiel, “selling you a story that you should go into debt massively, that it’s not a consumption decision, it’s an investment decision. Actually, no, it’s a bad consumption decision. Most colleges are four-year parties,” he says, an assessment shared by prominent law professor Glenn Reynolds.

My wife is French. She spent twice as much time in class at her second-tier French university as I did in my flagship American university (the University of Virginia), and more time studying, too (even though I was studious by American standards, and as a result, later went on to attend Harvard Law School). France spends less per student on higher education than we do, to produce a more literate and knowledgeable citizenry.

Vast amounts of money are spent by American colleges on useless administrators and politically-correct indoctrination. For many people, college no longer pays off as an investment.

Much of college “education” is a waste of time. I learned more practical law in six weeks of studying for the bar exam and a couple summers of working for law firms than I did in three years of law school. I spent much of my time at Harvard Law School watching “Married With Children” or arguing with classmates about politics, rather than studying (much of what I did study was useless). Even students who were high on drugs had no difficulty graduating.

(Higher education is no guarantee of even basic literacy. When I worked at the Department of Education handling administrative appeals, I was dismayed by the poor writing skills of the graduate students who lodged complaints against their universities).

I used to work for a polling firm, and found that people with a couple years of college were frequently factually dumber about the world around them, and more politically-correct, than people who had not attended college at all, in their responses to public-opinion surveys. An electrician with no college degree is far more likely to know who his Congressman is and to understand the economy than some liberal-arts college dropout.

When law schools claim almost all of their graduates find jobs, what they don’t tell you is that they include low-paying, part-time and temporary jobs in non-legal fields in making that claim. Sending excessive numbers of people to college results in even unskilled jobs being performed by people with college degrees.

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Anger as British schools drop Christian assemblies in favour of multi-faith sessions or 'moments of reflection'

Such assemblies once offered moral guidance

Christians have criticised the growing number of schools which have dropped their traditional assemblies in favour of multi-faith sessions or ‘moments of reflection’ which include children staring at rocks, meditating or discussing the news.

More than 140 primary and secondary schools across Britain have won the right to opt out of the legal requirement to provide a daily act of worship which is ‘broadly Christian’ in character.

Several hold Islamic assemblies with readings from the Koran, while others hold sessions giving weeksequal prominence to all faiths and sometimes incorporate events such as Black History Month and Chinese New Year.

The disclosure that so many schools have ditched the Christian service has upset traditionalists. Mike Judge, of The Christian Institute, said: ‘It is part of an attempt to airbrush Christianity from public life. Of course it is important to be sensitive to other faiths but I think all children should be made aware of our Christian heritage. It is as much part of our island story as 1066 and the Battle of Hastings.

‘A lot of Muslim parents don’t mind their children learning about the nature of Christianity. I think it’s a question of other people being offended on their behalf.’

Schools which no longer feel a Christian assembly is relevant to their pupils can seek permission to opt out from their local authority Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education (SACRE), which is made up of council representatives and local faith representatives.

Schools must provide an alternative form of worship. The highest number of opt-outs, which are also known as determinations, are in areas where there are a large number of ethnic minority residents.

Bradford, West Yorkshire, which has a large Muslim community, has the highest number of opt-outs at 47. In 40 of these schools pupils attend one assembly a week which is devoted to Islam and four other sessions which have a multi-faith approach. In the other seven schools there are five multi-faith sessions.

An increasing number of schools in London are also changing the nature of their assemblies. In the past five years 37 schools in the London borough of Brent have made successful applications to their local SACRE committees.

In Ealing, where 12 schools have opt-outs, one school head proposed introducing a ‘thought spot’ with children reflecting on a single object on a table such as
a candle, a rock or an artefact.

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British Labour party's failure on schools exposed: Billions spent, but standards plunge to a new low

If you base your policies on wrong theories, you will not get the results you expect

Britain plummeted down the world education league under Labour, despite the millions poured into schools. A major international study will reveal next week that in less than a decade our schools have nosedived in rankings of teenagers’ performance in reading, maths and science.

Previous studies have shown how the UK slid 16 places in maths between 2000 and 2006 and ten places in science and reading, leaving our schools trailing smaller nations such as Estonia and Liechtenstein.

Education experts are predicting that the latest snapshot of school standards, which is being published on Tuesday, will fail to show an improvement. There are claims our place in the tables – based on tests taken by 15-year-olds in 64 nations – could be worse than in 2006.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development created its Programme for International Student Assessment in 2000. In that year, Britain came seventh in reading, eighth in maths and fourth in science. Three years later our schools were ranked 11th, 18th and 12th respectively.

By 2006, Britain had fallen further, to 17th, 24th and 14th. Education Secretary Michael Gove has used previous international studies to attack Labour’s record. He is likely to renew his assault when the latest findings are published next week.

The findings will cause renewed concern that extra resources ploughed into schools since 2000 have been swallowed up in red tape and ill-conceived initiatives. Tony Blair’s mantra when he came to power in 1997 was education, education, education. But a recent analysis suggested that schools’ productivity – taxpayers’ value for money – slumped by 6.7 per cent between 2000 and 2009. Over the same period, education spending nearly doubled from £35.8billion to £71billion.

One of the architects of Labour’s numeracy strategy – designed to raise maths standards in primary schools – said he believes next week’s international study ‘won’t be good for England’, although it would continue to be ahead of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Professor David Reynolds told the Times Educational Supplement: ‘Little has happened that would have changed what was a downward trajectory in England’s performance.’

The professor, now an education academic at Plymouth University, said 15-year-olds who took the latest OECD tests would have benefited from Labour’s multi-billion pound initiatives aimed at boosting performance in the three Rs. But he added: ‘I don’t believe the strategies necessarily had the kind of legs that one might have expected.’

Professor Reynolds admitted efforts to improve patchy maths knowledge among teachers had come ‘a wee bit late’.

Other critics say next week’s rankings will also cast fresh doubt on year-on-year increases in GCSE and A-level grades.

Ministers want to introduce a set of school league tables to help parents judge standards for five-year-olds in school reception and nursery classes. At present they are assessed on 13 subjects, but these are only published at national and local authority level.

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For the Boys' Sake, Don't Kill the SAT

Three years ago, before any of my kids had reached the age to take the SATs, I noticed an interesting piece by Charles Murray on the tests. Murray is always interesting, of course, but I was curious about his take on the SAT because his views on IQ are well known.

Murray argued that the SAT should be scrapped. His case was not (no surprise) the usual indictment of the tests as culturally biased. Instead, he argued that the SAT is unnecessary and, in some ways, counterproductive.

The SAT began as a way for colleges to identify bright students from less than stellar high schools and give them an opportunity. Admission committees might discount excellent grades from inferior schools, but scores on an "aptitude" test (they later changed the word to "assessment" to avoid the accusation that the SAT was measuring IQ) could be revealing. Murray suggests that he used to think his own performance on the test was what got him into Harvard.

But a study by Saul Geiser and Roger Studley from the University of California seemed to show that the SATs contributed little to predicting a student's success in college, whereas achievement tests and high school grades were more reliable. "Those of us who thought that the SAT was our salvation were probably wrong ... our scores on achievement tests would have conveyed about the same picture to college admissions committees as our scores on the SAT conveyed."

The reality, Murray wrote, is that smart kids tend to do well on tests, whether a pop quiz or the AP exams. But whereas the SAT was originally designed to flag kids who might otherwise have been missed by college admissions committees, it has today become a "corrosive symbol of privilege." Everybody now believes, according to Murray, that wealthier parents can purchase higher scores for their kids through expensive coaching. And while Murray points out that this is not so (coaching adds, at most, a couple of dozen points, according to three studies), it is the case that children of college-educated (and graduate degreed) parents walk away with the best scores. Everyone else is found wanting. "All who enter an SAT testing hall feel judged by their scores," Murray writes.

While the idea of junking those stressful, laborious three-hour tests has its appeal, there are reasons to resist.

If achievement tests were substituted for the SAT, all of the cultural and psychological baggage of the high-stakes test would simply switch over. All would continue to "feel judged by their scores" -- just on a different test. (And Murray may overestimate the importance people attach to scores.)

Additionally, Murray doesn't account for the important male/female difference in test performance, particularly on aptitude tests. (Cards on the table: I write as a parent of three boys.) For whatever reason, during the past 30 years, our society has seen girls outperforming boys at every level of education. The average high school GPA for girls is 3.09. For boys, the average is 2.86. About one quarter more boys than girls drop out of high school, and boys are three times as likely to be expelled. Girls do significantly better at reading proficiency in all grades. And in math, traditionally a male preserve, the two sexes are tied. Women now earn 58 percent of bachelor's degrees and 60 percent of master's degrees in the U.S.

Something is going on. It may be the significant attention the educational establishment has lavished on girls, the lure of video games, the lack of fathers in so many homes, the fact that boys mature more slowly than girls, or maybe none of those. But we do know that whatever may be inhibiting them from excelling in high school as much as girls, boys do score proportionately better on the SATs.

In 2010, a total of 382 students scored a perfect 2400. Of these, 206 were boys, and 176 were girls. (If the writing test is omitted, 1,305 students got a 1600 -- 820 boys and 485 girls.) Among those who scored a 2350, 341 were boys, and 266 were girls. The same rough ratios hold (with one exception) for all of the scores in the top 10 percentiles. At the 90th percentile and below, some of the girls' scores are higher than the boys'. And in the middle range, it's a mixed bag.

So long as college requires mental ability, the SATs will remain a signal that boys with less than perfect high school records may be late bloomers or perhaps were ill served by their schools. But scrapping one of the few remaining avenues for talented boys to show, yes, their aptitude, seems unwise.

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Students should be judged on 'potential', says Oxford admissions chief

If he really did want to do that, he would be using IQ tests. They are the best predictor of educational success -- and they are almost totally unaffected by home background

Universities should consider giving priority to pupils with good grades from poor performing schools, according to Oxford’s head of admissions. Students gaining a string of good grades at sink schools “may have more potential” than those with similar scores from elite schools and colleges, it was claimed.

Mike Nicholson, director of undergraduate admissions at Oxford, said universities should have “no hesitation” about taking students’ backgrounds into consideration during the applications process.

The comments are likely to fuel controversy over “social engineering” in university admissions. Headmasters have warned that the use of “contextual data” – including students’ school, family background and social class – risks penalising pupils with good results from top-performing independent schools.

It comes amid rising competition for university places. Demand for degree courses is expected to reach record levels next year as students scramble to get in to higher education before a sharp rise in tuition fees in 2012.

But the Sutton Trust – a charity campaigning to improve levels of social mobility – insisted universities still had a duty to “take into account the educational context of students when deciding whom to admit”.

It came as a report from the charity suggested that teenagers admitted on to degree courses with relatively low GCSE and A-level performed just as well as those with better grades. The study said a comprehensive school pupil with three Bs at A-level was just as likely to get a good degree as those admitted from private school with two As and a B.

Comprehensive students with average A-levels and GCSEs actually did better at university compared with privately-educated pupils with the same grades, the report added.

The Sutton Trust said this proved that universities were justified in making lower offers to pupils from poor-performing comprehensives. “The use of data about the educational context in which students have obtained their qualifications, particularly the type of school attended, should be encouraged when comparing the attainment of [higher education] candidates,” the study said.

Many top universities currently use contextual data during the applications process.

Addressing a conference in central London on Thursday, Mr Nicholson told how Oxford’s medical school looked into the number of A* grades applicants scored at GCSE – then compared scores with the overall performance of their school. “A student who gets five A*s from a school where nobody gets A*s may have more potential than a student who gets five A*s where the average student gets seven or eight A*s,” he said.

Speaking at the Westminster Education Forum, he said contextual data gave admissions tutors “an indication, if used rightly, of [students’] potential” to do well in a degree course. He said he had "no hestitation" in employing "evidence-based use of contextual information" during applications.

Meanwhile, the Sutton Trust study was condemned by the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, which represents 250 top independent schools.

“This is just one of a number of studies of university outcomes which come to contradictory conclusions about the influence of different types of school education,” said a spokesman.

“Independent schools share universities’ enthusiasm to identify academic promise as well as prior attainment but this latest study does beg the question of why some comprehensive school students are evidently so less well prepared for A levels than those in independent schools.”

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Australia: A private education has its awards

Non-disruptive classrooms give teachers time to teach

ONE of Melbourne's bastions of male privilege - Scotch College - has educated more of Australia's most honoured and influential citizens than any other school in the nation.

An analysis of the 435 people who have received the nation's top Order of Australia honours since they were first awarded in 1975, shows they disproportionately attended a handful of elite Victorian secondary schools.

Scotch College alumni blitzed the field, with 19 former students receiving Australia's highest honour, including former governor-general Sir Zelman Cowen, historian Hugh Stretton, High Court judge Kenneth Hayne, indigenous eye health pioneer Professor Hugh Taylor and former Tasmanian premier Jim Bacon.

The only school that comes close is Geelong Grammar, with former students, including Prince Charles and Rupert Murdoch, receiving 17 honours.

Alumni from the two schools have received more than 8 per cent of all the knight, dame or Companion of the Order of Australia honours - more than all the schools in each of Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, ACT and Northern Territory.

The analysis provides a fascinating insight into the transfer of social advantage through the school system, with independent schools dominating rankings in Victoria.

The only government school in Victoria to be ranked in the top 30 was the selective-entry Melbourne High School, whose alumni - including Nobel prizewinning neurophysiologist John Eccles and former Reserve Bank governor Ian Macfarlane - received six honours. However, study author Rohan Reid said outside of Victoria the dominant schools were not always private, with former students from the selective state schools Sydney Boys' High and Fort Street High receiving the third and equal fourth highest number of awards.

Professor Jack Keating from the University of Melbourne said that unlike Melbourne, Sydney had about 20 selective-entry high schools. "Sydney Boys and Fort Street are long-established, so the economic and social elite will be more inclined to send their kids there," Professor Keating said.

"The selective-entry high schools have been favoured by a certain middle class on the Labor side of politics. A lot of the lawyers' class and the professional class comes through these schools, whereas in Melbourne, the law and medical classes tend to come through the private schools."

He said the study mirrored the findings of Melbourne University researchers Mark Peel and Janet McCalman, who analysed the educational backgrounds of the people listed in the 1988 Who's Who. Again, Scotch College outranked all other schools.

Professor David Penington, an Old Scotch Collegian who was made a companion of the Order of Australia in 1988 for his service to medicine and the community, believes the school's Scottish Presbyterian background meant it has always placed a strong emphasis on community contribution.

It's a sentiment shared by former premier and old Scotch boy Jeff Kennett, AC, who still recalls the words of former headmaster Richard Selby Smith. "He used to say to us that we had an obligation to the college when we left school - it wasn't all about money, it was actually about service. It was something that stuck in my mind as a young boy."

Mr Kennett believes Order of Australia honours should reward what people do outside their jobs.

"I think there are so many people who consistently give to the community, who don't get the recognition they deserve," he said. Author Shane Maloney infamously described Scotch College as a "machine for the transmission of inherited privilege" during a creative writing seminar at the school nine years ago.

Asked whether the analysis of Order of Australia honours reinforced his view that Scotch was a factory of privilege, Mr Maloney said: "You could draw that conclusion. Alternatively, the argument could be put that it simply reinforces the value parents get for their money."

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DC trailblazer comes to Florida

Gov.-elect Rick Scott [GOP] announced Thursday that he has formed a transition team of education and community leaders to help him create "a new education system for a new economy."

Topping the list is Michelle Rhee, the controversial former chancellor of Washington, D.C., schools who has become something of a rock star in the world of education reform. Sharply critical of teacher tenure, she butted heads with the teachers union and fired or forced out hundreds of educators and other employees before she resigned recently. She also closed dozens of failing schools.

The vast majority of the people named to Scott's education transition team — there are 18 of them — are from Florida, and some have been called upon by previous governors for guidance.

For example, Jonathan K. Hage, the president of Charter Schools USA, one of state's largest providers of charter schools, has helped both governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist, a spokesman for Hage said.

Before Thursday's announcement, there had been widespread speculation in the blogosphere and other media that Scott might ask Rhee to become Florida's next commissioner of education. Her selection to the transition team heightened that speculation.

Neither Scott nor Rhee could be reached for comment. And a spokesman for Florida's teachers union had little to say except, "We hope that the governor and the Legislature will seek the viewpoints of public-school teachers when discussing changes in our public schools."

It isn't yet clear precisely what Scott's transition team will do or how often it will meet. But his announcement said the group will help him find creative ways to cut costs and set legislative priorities that will "help reduce the size of government, improve the education system in Florida and meet the workforce needs necessary to create 700,000 jobs over the next seven years."

Hillsborough County Schools Superintendent MaryEllen Elia, who was asked to serve on the team, said she expects Scott to use the panel to vet ideas. She said she was impressed by the breadth of views included in the group, including community members, business owners and supporters of charter schools, private-school vouchers and virtual schools.

Hillsborough is breaking ground in Florida in its own way by using a $100 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to overhaul teacher evaluation and pay. "It's a really important approach the governor is taking — to put together a group of people to give him insights as he takes over the governorship," Elia said.

Other members of the team, dubbed by Scott as his "Champions for Achievement," include Patricia Levesque, executive director of Bush's Foundation For Florida's Future; as well as Judy Genshaft, president of the University of South Florida; and Julio Fuentes, president of Florida State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

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Britain should end the madness of "predicted" High School exam results

The current nonsensical system is a prize example of British eccentricity. I won't even try to explain it

Mary Curnock Cook, chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, said exam boards should be required to mark tests quicker to give teenagers time to apply for degrees over the summer. Currently, applications are made on the basis of predicted results but as many as half of estimated grades turn out to be wrong.

There are also fears that the quality of predictions differs wildly between schools – often pushing students onto courses ill-suited for their needs.

Students usually sit final exams in May and courses are only confirmed when grades are published in mid-to-late August. It gives candidates just a few weeks to appeal against results and find places through the clearing system if they have fallen short of predicted grades.

Speaking on Thursday, Mrs Curnock Cook said Britain should move to a post-qualifications admissions system. She said examiners should “speed up the marking” of tests to allow pupils to apply for degree courses in early summer before starting university in September or October.

Ucas has already launched a review into the points-based tariff used to award places on degree courses following concerns that it fails to differentiate between students’ qualifications.

The move could give institutions greater freedom to prioritise candidates taking the toughest courses at school and sixth-form college.

Mrs Curnock Cook said: “I have come to the conclusion that probably the biggest single reform that we can do in the qualifications arena and higher education is to move to a post-qualifications admissions system. “This is something that’s been put in the ‘too difficult to handle box’ for a very long time.

“I have to say that I was quite shocked to have a circular from [exam boards] setting out the A-level results day dates for the next five years. And it is still that same Thursday in August. “You know, guys, what’s happened to technology? I cannot believe that in the next five years we cannot speed up the marking of exams.”

The comments were made in a speech to the Westminster Education Forum in central London.

Similar proposals were made by a leading official from the former Department for Education and Skills five years ago. But they were rejected amid claims that they would not leave enough time for rigorous academic selection. It could also have a serious impact on university interviews and aptitude tests staged by the most selective universities.

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Australia: Bureaucracy that it as obstructive as it is stupid holds back university research

A year ago I was introduced at a blue chip institute, owned by Sydney University, to an eminent professor leading an exciting research project. His team had (almost) isolated the scent molecule in cat fur that is recognised by and affects the behaviour of rodents. He can demonstrate that exposing rats to the critical molecule, in tiny concentrations, causes them to flee from the source, with great reluctance to return, and brief exposure appears to interrupt their prolific breeding cycle. Almost one-third of the Indonesian rice crop is lost to rats and mice each year. For a country trying to feed 240 million people, most of whom eat rice every day, this is a seriously interesting idea.

The professor needed $300,000 to fund three senior scientists and their equipment and materials for a year to take the final step in isolating the active molecule from a dozen alternatives. I offered to raise the money privately but he explained this was not possible, as any private investment had to be sanctioned and brokered by the university's commercialisation arm, Sydnovate. I was informed that his funding rounds take place at fixed intervals – miss one and you have to wait for the next – and that grants of $50,000 are hard to get. It was possible for a private investor to help but there were very strict rules. The last time his team had gone down this path, it took two years to consider the request and a competing university in Europe published the innovation in the interim.

The Commonwealth gave Sydney University $750 million in grants in 2009 – before you get to HECS payments and student fees. About $200 million a year goes to the faculty of medicine for research. Those funds employ a small army of very clever men and women in trying to solve human health-related problems. Sydnovate's sole purpose is to commercialise the good ideas that this army of researchers (and their colleagues in the faculties of engineering, chemistry, etc) create. So what is the royalty return that we taxpayers get for $750 million a year? It's $2.5 million in 2009 out of total university revenue of $1.4 billion – or one-third of 1 per cent. After 160 years of operation, Sydney University makes more money selling beer and hamburgers to students than it does licensing intellectual property.

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Sydnovate employs 26 full-time staff including six lawyers and five PhDs. Like one hand clapping, they are expert at registering patents, hopeless at making money – all protection, no profit. They remind me of the Soviet shoe factory that suffered a failure of the left sole cutter and continued producing thousands of right shoes, knowing their quota in a command economy was measured by the number of shoes produced, rather than the number of pairs. There are partnerships, where industry has come to the university asking for help in a research task, but as far as I can tell, negligible revenue from faculty-created knowledge. Performance reporting is opaque; Sydnovate doesn't produce an annual report. If public company directors practised these levels of transparency with other people's money, they would be struck off.

It's unfair to pick on one institution when the story is repeated so consistently. The University of Queensland gets points for effort in its Uniseed collaboration with Melbourne University and UNSW, which has attracted $15 million in third-party superannuation investment.

That ray of hope is overshadowed by the most recent DEEWR data (2008) suggesting "royalties, trademarks and licences" generate 0.46 per cent of total university operating revenue. By contrast, one US listed therapeutics company, AmGen, has amassed $50 billion in 30 years, improving the prospects of 18 million patients, by commercialising three good ideas.

The cost of running a research-intensive university is rising twice as fast as government willingness to fund it. The most creative idea to fill the hole seems to be more full-fee-paying foreign students. We go through the motions of running commercialisation units but there is little conviction and fewer results – partly because the culture of the education unions is so anti-profit and anti-business. How can our universities credibly teach "entrepreneurship" when their own record on the subject is so bad?

There will always be a place for "pure" research but we must move beyond the infantilism of institutions addicted to the easy money of government grants and foreign students.

The relevant leading body of public institutions – Knowledge Commercialisation Australia (KCA) – appears to see its role as rationalising the failure of its members and organising further and deeper raids on commonwealth and state treasuries.

KCA's message is that Australian universities ought to expect to make much less than 1 per cent of revenue from commercialising ideas because "discoveries that produce financial bonanzas are so rare that policies designed to pursue them would almost always lead to failure".

How inspiring. Recurrent funding to public research institutes should include incentives and penalties. If they prove incapable of giving cartilage to ideas, we should contract the role to others. Researchers must be able to bypass the politburos masquerading as deal-brokers. We could create an annual "Australian Innovation Market", bringing together venture capitalists and the research community, allowing scientists to produce a simple prospectus and pitch deals to recruit capital in a global online IP auction.

Failure to act also involves risk. The rats will keep eating the rice and our best minds will emigrate, fondly recalling Australia as a nice place to retire.

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Feds should flunk out of education

If there's one thing the 2010 elections made clear, it's that voters want a smaller, cheaper, more effective federal government. A terrific place to start giving them that is education. Washington meddles in our schools without constitutional authority to do so, and, as newly released test scores illustrate, without making things any better.

The scores in question are from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the so-called "Nation's Report Card." More specifically, they are reading and mathematics scores for 12th-graders — our schools' "final products" — and they reveal federal failure on at least two levels.

First, there are the scores themselves. In reading, they were slightly lower than in 1998 or 1992, and they are part of an overall trend of almost pure stagnation. In mathematics, there was a tiny uptick from 2005-09 and ... that was it. The NAEP framework for math was changed so drastically from 2002-05 that no pre-2005 scores were comparable, making no meaningful trend discernable. Nonetheless, the NAEP press release touted gains for math and reading.

So our latest federal test results show stagnation in reading, and for all practical purposes nothing in math. The federal government has neither improved outcomes on its own metric, nor kept its metric very useful.

To be fair, there are lots of NAEP tests, including a long-term mathematics assessment that tracks achievement consistently since the early 1970s. Only the so-called "main" math NAEP is hobbled right now. The long-term test, though, confirms the big point: There's been essentially no change in high school math achievement for the last nearly four decades.

It hasn't been for a lack of spending or legislating.

According to the federal Digest of Education Statistics, in 1970 Washington spent an inflation-adjusted $32 billion on elementary and secondary education. In 2009, the feds blew an estimated $83 billion — about a 160 percent increase. On a per-pupil basis, the Digest reports an inflation-adjusted rise from $435 in 1970 to $1,015 in 2006 (the latest year with per-pupil data).

Of course, Washington hasn't just spent money. It's increasingly demanded more standards, testing, and "accountability." The No Child Left Behind Act is the apogee of that, as well as a terrific example of federal failure. While it's impossible to ascribe results completely to NCLB, we know for sure that scores haven't improved under the law. High school reading results were slightly higher before NCLB than after according to the most recent NAEP scores, and the long-term trend shows math achievement a wee bit higher before the law.

Why does Washington fail? In part because actual educational success hasn't mattered that much. On the assumption that it would translate into better results, well-intentioned voters have generally supported politicians who have promised to spend more money and make schools "accountable."

The problem is that politicians say lots of things, and, unlike when you pay more for a car to get better safety or mileage, when politicians spend money it's often not to get better education. No, it's to curry favor with teacher unions, administrator associations or other special interests whose members get paid with increased federal funding and will raise hell for politicians who don't push it. So spending goes up, up, up, but achievement stays down, down, down.

Perhaps, though, the public has finally wised up. It certainly has when it comes to the overall size of government: According to Nov. 2 exit polls, 56 percent of voters think "government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals." Only 38 percent feel "government should do more to solve problems."

There isn't such exit polling data for education, but other bits of information suggest that the sentiment applies there, too. For instance, several victorious Tea Party-type candidates such as Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, have spoken explicitly about eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. And the most recent Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll on attitudes about public schooling revealed that a sizable majority of Americans think education should remain primarily a state and local function.

In light of all this, it seems that the time has come to start pulling Washington out of education. Not only might the political stars have aligned, but we have fresh new evidence that the federal government is an educational failure.

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Latin lessons for British state school pupils aged five in language revival bid

The study of Latin is one of the best ways of learning to use English well so I heartily approve -- but I would like to know where they are going to get the teachers for it

Children as young as five will be given Latin lessons as ministers attempt to revive the language in primary and secondary schools. Condemning the long-term ‘decimation’ of Latin in state schools, Education Minister Nick Gibb swept away Labour guidance which effectively restricted primaries to teaching modern languages.

He also revealed teenagers taking a GCSE in Latin or Greek will be able to count the qualification towards the new English Baccalaureate, the proposed benchmark for secondary school achievement. It will be awarded to youngsters gaining at least a C at GCSE in English, maths, a science, a humanities subject and a language.

The emphasis on languages comes as ministers prepare to overhaul the National Curriculum. Mr Gibb told the Politeia think-tank in London that learning Latin helps general language skills, but it had been squeezed out by a curriculum ‘straitjacket’.

Those who argued it should not be taught to state pupils as it was ‘elitist’ were widening the gap between the rich and poor, he said. A ‘pitifully small’ number of primaries teach Latin and only 9,246 teenagers took a GCSE in it last year – 70 per cent of them at private schools, he added.

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Weak excuse to ban conservative student group at USF

Mike Adams

The University of South Florida (USF) has reversed its denial of recognition to the USF Young Pakistani Student Cultural group. USF had argued that the Young Pakistanis were too "similar" to the Young Indian Student Cultural group on campus. After USF denied the Young Pakistani application for recognition, they came to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

This case is disturbing because USF currently recognizes over 60 multicultural groups and no fewer than 20 engineering clubs. But, according to USF, the Pakistanis are considered too similar to Indians to be allowed on campus. The Pakistanis were initially told to simply join the Indian group because USF administrators were unable to discern a difference between the two groups.

The ordeal of the USF Young Pakistanis began in April 2010 when they submitted a constitution in order to gain official recognition. USF rejected the application in a September e-mail from the USF Student Programs Coordinator. She told the Young Pakistani Founding Chairman the following: "the purpose of your proposed organization may be fairly similar, if not the same, as another existing organization that is established at the USF Tampa campus." She added "no other student organization can exist with the same or similar mission/purpose."

By now, the reader of this column may be sensing some familiarity with the general argument employed by USF. A few years ago, the University of Miami refused to recognize Advocates for Conservative Thought (ACT), a student organization that was created for "the exposition and promotion of conservative principles and ideas." The University of Miami argued that this decision was justified because it had previously recognized the College Republicans. FIRE also intervened in that case and ACT finally received official recognition. This was after four failed attempts without the help of FIRE.

By now, the reader of this column may also be sensing that it is a parody. USF did not ban the Pakistanis because they were similar to the Indians. USF banned a conservative group, Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), because it was similar to a libertarian group, Young Americans for Liberty. The analogy is a good one given the extent to which conservatives and libertarians often fight over important issues.

Fortunately, FIRE wrote USF President Judy Genshaft in October in order to explain (slowly) that YAF and Young Americans for Liberty are indeed different in terms of their ideology and stated goals. FIRE also explained that USF's policy is unconstitutional. Specifically, the policy gives administrators too much discretion to reject new student organizations. Such discretion fails the Supreme Court's 40-year old requirement that government representatives use "narrow, objective, and definite standards" when subjecting First Amendment rights to a permit system. See Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham (1969).

The good news is that USF Dean of Students Kevin Banks has responded to FIRE. And he has provisionally recognized YAF pending approval of the group's constitution. The bad news is that USF has yet to revise its unconstitutional policy of preventing groups "with the same purpose/goals" from obtaining recognition.

FIRE Vice President of Programs Adam Kissel observed that, after the College Republicans, YAF is the largest and oldest conservative student organization in the United States. Given that fact, it seems a stretch to imagine that USF administrators really are ignorant and/or confused about how YAF differs from Young Americans for Liberty, which is only a couple of years old. After all, the folks who approve different student organizations should know something about how student organizations differ.

Maybe the great minds roaming the administrative halls of USF really failed to grasp the difference between these two groups. Maybe they still fail to grasp the larger differences between conservatives and libertarians. It is more likely, however, that USF administrators knew the groups were different from each other – and, more importantly, different from the administration. And because neither is liberal their collective campus influence had to be minimized.

The sad thing about all of this is that these administrators usually call themselves liberals. There used to be a difference between liberals and totalitarians. To be honest, I can’t tell the difference anymore.

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Antisemitism at Princeton

Under the usual cloak of misrepresentations about Israel. The name "sabra" would of course be a red rag to an antisemite. It is a descriptive nickname for native-born Israeli Jews

Beginning today, students will be able to register support, opposition or complete apathy toward the Sabra hummus referendum, which has been hotly debated on campus over the past two weeks. The referendum will appear on the USG runoff election ballot this week. If passed, it will ask Dining Services to supply an alternative brand of hummus in addition to Sabra.

The petition for the referendum, which was submitted Tuesday night with the signatures of 269 undergraduates, is one piece of a campaign by the Princeton Committee on Palestine to register moral opposition to the activities of The Strauss Group, which owns 50 percent of Sabra Dipping Company. PepsiCo owns the other half.

The Strauss Group has made public statements in support of the Israeli Defense Forces and also sends care packages to soldiers. The Golani Brigade, members of which have been accused of human rights abuses, has been financially and publicly supported by The Strauss Group.

The referendum has garnered coverage in numerous publications around the world, from Fox News to The Huffington Post to The Jerusalem Post. It is part of a larger movement calling for the boycott of and divestment from companies supporting alleged human rights abusers within the Israeli military.

While alternative brands are available at the U-Store and off campus, Sabra is the only brand sold at University-run retail locations and the only hummus that can be purchased at late meal in Frist Campus Center. The U-Store, which sells other brands, is not run by the University.

According to Campion, the lack of options in University retail locations causes a problem. “Students can only use their meal plan, which they’ve have already invested a lot of money in, to purchase one kind of hummus,” she said. She did acknowledge, however, that Dining Services also makes its own hummus which is served in residential college dining halls.

PCP’s Sabra hummus campaign was inspired by Philly BDS, an organization that calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against companies that support the Israeli military. The organization, which similarly emphasizes the human rights abuses of the Golani Brigade, has also targeted companies it sees as “partners” of the military.

The campaign against Sabra hummus has spread to other campuses. DePaul University in Chicago has discontinued sale of Sabra products, and students at the University of Pennsylvania have taken both sides in a boycott campaign in Philadelphia.

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Hatred of Christianity in an American school again

It was a state semi-final game and there was a lot riding on 23-yard touchdown run by Tumwater High School’s running back Ronnie Hastie. After he crossed into the end zone for his second quarter score, Hastie took a knee and briefly pointed to heaven above, thanking God.

It was this action which drew the attention of one referee and, subsequently, the referee’s yellow flag. Hastie was surprised to learn that his momentary pause for prayer would earn him a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports:

Hastie said he‘s pointed up as a gesture to God after every touchdown he’s scored in every game and never had a problem before. “It’s usually one or two seconds long,” he said.

Hastie said he asked the ref why he was penalized, and the ref responded that Hastie wasn’t supposed to draw attention to himself. “That wasn’t the point (of the gesture), so I guess I was a little confused,” Hastie said.

Asked if he planned to point to the sky after future touchdowns, Hastie said he would not. “I’ll just have to change it up and not make as big of a statement, I guess. The refs are in charge,” he said. “I‘ll just point to the sky once I’m off the field.”

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Junk teachers for junk British schools

It reads as though it was written by a schoolchild – and a below-average student at that. But this brief note, riddled with 16 grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, was actually the work of a teacher.

The report was sent by email to the parents of a pupil in the state school teacher's class, summarising the girl’s performance over the previous year.

But yesterday her mother said that all it really did was raise questions about the teacher's own ability. Alongside simple spelling mistakes such as 'requriements' and 'occaisions', were misplaced apostrophes, missing letters and embarrassing typos such as 'ativities’ and ‘everning'.

The unnamed teacher at 800-pupil Gleed Girls’ Technology College, in Spalding, Lincolnshire, committed her first two errors in the email’s subject heading, before the note even began.

The pupil's mother said: 'What concerns me most is that this teacher is supposed to be responsible for raising my daughter’s educational standards. 'If her standards are that low, how can she expect my daughter’s to be high? 'By the time I got to the third paragraph I’d noted five mistakes. 'I would always check an email before I clicked send.

'I am very happy with the school in all other aspects of their dealings with my daughter. But I just received this email and was shocked at how poorly written it was.'

The all-girls school’s website says it is a ‘trailblazing’ institution which has an 'excellent reputation locally and nationally’, although the school is rated only as 'satisfactory' by Ofsted.

The watchdog concluded its most recent inspection report in October 2007 by ordering the school to improve the 'quality of teaching and learning’.

Only days ago Education Secretary Michael Gove called for teachers to clamp down on poor spelling and grammar.

Yesterday, the school’s head, Liz Shawhulme, said she was ‘shocked by the number of mistakes, many of which appear to be typos'. 'It was obviously written in haste and not checked but this is no excuse and I will be contacting the parent to apologise.’

Marie Clair, of the Plain English Campaign, said: ‘Teachers who do this should wear their own dunces' hats.'

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