Monday, May 16, 2005

MATH AND SCIENCE GETTING THE CHOP IN TEXAS HIGH SCHOOLS

Unbelievable! Just the pathetic bit they learn in grade school will be accepted as enough for a High school diploma -- Another meaningless diploma that just passes the buck for testing onto somebody else. Pity the kids are going to be deceived about what is adequate, though

Houston ISD students could earn high school diplomas without taking a single math or science class after their sophomore year under a proposal that is drawing criticism from some national education experts. Critics say the change will leave students unprepared for college and the workplace. "I'm surprised they would be considering this move," said Anne Tweed, president of the 55,000-member National Science Teachers Association. "That's a step backward."

Superintendent Abe Saavedra wants to do away with a policy that mandates three years of math and science courses for all high school students. Instead, students who pass high school-level courses in the eighth grade would get credit toward a diploma. State law requires three math and science credits to graduate. Saavedra's proposal, which is expected to win school board approval today, runs counter to a national trend of school systems requiring students to spend more time in math and science classes before they graduate. The decision is even more curious, some education experts said, given the fact that more than two-thirds of HISD's 2004 graduates who enrolled in local community colleges last fall were required to take remedial courses. "That policy will result in more youngsters having to take remedial math when they go on for further study," said Gene Bottoms, senior vice president of the Southern Regional Education Board and director of the High Schools that Work program. "It will also mean more students will not be able to pass employer exams that have a math component."

Saavedra told school board trustees earlier this week that the three-year requirement is unnecessary. It was adopted in 2001, he said, because trustees wanted high school juniors taking math and science classes at the same time they take the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills exam, which students must pass to graduate. The current policy is based more on improving test performance than on academic quality, Saavedra said. What matters, he said, is that students take the necessary courses. "We absolutely are not lowering the standard," Saavedra said. Still, Saavedra acknowledged that having high school students take more math and science classes would better prepare them for college. "If we required four years of math, it would work toward reducing the remedial requirement," he said. "I'm not telling you I won't come back with that kind of recommendation (in the future)."

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U.S. PUBLIC SCHOOLS NO PLACE FOR BRIGHT KIDS

PC types unhappy with Harvard President Larry Summers' candor about women in science may not like any better his thoughtful analysis of a swept-under-the-rug problem with the nation's public schools. That is unfortunate, because Summers is on to something in his concern that public educators, in rightly focusing on helping lower-achieving kids, are dumbing down the curriculum for top courses. In the process, they may be pushing many of the best and the brightest into private schools. Summers did not suggest that such was happening on a widespread scale. Yet the exodus from public schools by many high-achievers whose parents can manage the financial burden makes that point. And the long-term implications of such policies are troubling in their effect on top students.

Summers got into hot water by suggesting discrimination might not be the reason women are underrepresented in science and math fields. As a result, he seems wary of making his point about schools too strongly. Summers spoke about schools at a reunion of Neiman Fellows, alumni of a Harvard program that selects 12 American and 12 non-American midcareer journalists for a paid year of study. In his remarks, Summers explained why the national interest requires that more attention and resources be poured into public schools to improve learning, especially among historically lower-achieving groups.

Hooding Carter III, State Department spokesman during the Iranian hostage crisis, asked Summers to square that notion with the reality that most of those in the room, and a majority of Harvard faculty, send their kids to private schools. Summers paused, then talked about how parents must do what is best for their children, which is both obvious and beside the point. In fact, increasing numbers of parents are sending their children to private schools, according to a U.S. Department of Education study. A number choose home-schooling for reasons of finances or faith.

However, many top students attend academically rigorous private schools out of parental concerns that the public schools do not sufficiently challenge them, because of the attention rightly focused on poor learners. Summers, a public-school product, is one of those parents. While Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, he sent his three children, two of whom are now in high school and the third in middle school, to a public school in D.C.'s suburbs. After he became president of Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., in 2001, however, he put them in a private school. Summers said that when he used to attend meetings of senior Clinton aides, he was one of only two sending their kids to public schools. Clinton, you may remember, disappointed many supporters, who see private education as somehow un-American, when he chose to send his daughter, Chelsea, to a private school.

Summers said he recently talked to the other official, whom he did not identify, who had been sending his kids to public school. Summers said that man was reconsidering his decision, because the reading requirement in his son's honors English course had been cut in half to make it possible to triple the number of students able to take the course.

Some may wonder why the country should care if those with the financial means to afford private education do so. Obviously, any child attending private school is one fewer to be educated on the taxpayer's dime. Yet it is not just the wealthy who are sending their children to such private schools. I am among the many middle/upper-middle-class parents, some receiving financial aid, who are investing in their children, even though they would rather spend the money on a new car or nice vacation. At Harvard, private-school graduates make up a third of the student body -- not unusual for a prestigious college -- but roughly three times their share of high-school students. If the public-school exodus of top young minds continues, it will undermine future support for public education among those better able to pay the necessary taxes.

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INDEPENDENT EXAMS: A GOOD IDEA FROM THE U.K.

Independent schools should get off their knees, speak with one voice and set their own exams, a conference of private sector headmasters and governors was told yesterday. "Why have independent schools underplayed their hand for so long?" demanded Anthony Seldon, the headmaster of Brighton College, who organised the conference. "We have let ourselves be sidelined by governments of the Left and Right. They have sneered at us when they should have feared us."

Independent schools were major players in the economic, social and cultural life of the nation, he said. They saved Whitehall £2 billion a year because parents paid fees. Their academic results dominated the league tables. They were judged to be among the most successful schools in the world. "Yet independent schools still do not fully realise their importance in national life or make the contribution they could be making," Dr Seldon said. Because of their timidity, they were seen as schools for "toffs", yet the parents of their pupils were often not affluent. They were made out to be self-serving and self-seeking, yet the schools engaged in considerable, and under-recognised, charitable activities. They had allowed themselves to be accused of price-fixing, yet there were no cartels pushing up fees. Independent schools offered better value for money than state schools.

Independent schools should be setting their own agenda, not merely reacting to the Government, said Dr Seldon, who has written biographies of John Major and Tony Blair..... They should set up their own college for training the heads and teachers of the future. And they should devise their own exams to replace A-levels. The urgency of that was underlined by Geoff Parks, the director of admissions at Cambridge, who told the conference that A-levels no longer differentiated between good candidates and exceptional ones. "They don't test the ability to think, analyse or reason - they don't tell us what we want to know," he said. "The introduction of bite-size modules has led to predictable questions, prescribed answers and a mentality of 'learn, examine and forget'. "Able candidates have lost the opportunity to demonstrate their originality and creativity. The failure of A-levels is a tragedy."


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World-class standards: Rhetoric and reality: "For several years, education policy analysts in the United States have been aware of the fact that students in the Four Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) regularly outperform U.S. students, especially in mathematics and science. This fact underlies the U.S. concern about raising achievement to 'world-class' levels, which are generally interpreted to mean the levels attained by students in the Four Tigers and the higher-achieving countries in Western Europe. Now South Korea is raising the bar again, even before U.S. students reach the levels already attained by South Korean students. In 2007, all Korean students will be eligible for a voucher to cover the cost of one year of pre-primary education at any educational facility the parents choose."

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

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


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