No lessons left behind

This is an anonymous editorial from "USA TODAY" that makes some good points

Oddly, you heard the sound of one hand clapping last week as the Education Department released national data showing dramatic narrowing of racial learning gaps among elementary and middle school students. The news deserved ringing applause. Rarely can education trends, good or bad, be described as "dramatic" because they tend to play out at glacial speeds. But the progress 9-year-olds are making in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation's premier sampling of student achievement, qualified as dramatic:

* Long-standing achievement gaps between white students and black and Hispanic students fell to the lowest levels ever. Plus, the gains didn't come as a result of white students falling behind. Everybody won.

* The news was nearly as good for 13-year-olds. Black and Latino students showed big gains in math.

Loudly cheering were Democrats and Republicans who championed the No Child Left Behind law that set out with a mission of closing racial learning gaps. No cheers, however, came from the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, which has filed suit to cripple No Child Left Behind. Also silent was the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. Earlier this month, the group issued a report essentially accusing the federal law of being racially discriminatory because its accountability net caught too many poor and minority school districts. Huh?

For years, poor and minority students have suffered from attending schools that have failed them. Holding those schools accountable is the law's bedrock. Considering that No Child Left Behind has been in effect for only three years, it probably played a supporting role. The primary credit belongs to decade-old state reforms that the federal law was modeled on. They have pushed up education standards for all students, using standardized tests that teachers tend to dislike as the measuring stick.

The bad news in the report is that high school students are making little progress. That's not surprising. Education reformers focused first on early grades. High schools, with older students whose habits are formed, promise to be tougher - particularly if people who can help continue denying the obvious: Accountability works.

Promising news:

Closing racial learning gaps begins with understanding the problem. If a disproportionate number of poor and minority students are dropping out of school, the public needs to know. And yet for decades states have hidden, ignored and twisted dropout data. They've preferred hiding the problem to solving it. New Mexico, for example, claims a 90% graduation rate. But the state counts only the percentage of seniors who end up graduating, ignoring students who dropped out in earlier grades, according to a report by the reform group Education Trust. North Carolina reports a 97% graduation rate but counts only those who get diplomas within four years. Those who drop out and never return don't get counted.

Now comes this promising news: Sunday, governors from 45 states accepted a common formula for calculating graduation rates. The formula would start in 9th grade and track students who transfer in and out. Final approval from governors would mean closing one more loophole that allows thousands of students to slip out of sight.

Wrong news:

Most people would agree that teachers, who earn significantly less than similarly educated nurses and accountants, are underpaid. And they would agree that higher salaries would attract the better teachers. So a new proposal to pay beginning teachers a minimum of $40,000 a year should make sense. Only it doesn't. The proposal comes from Reg Weaver, president of the 2.7-million member National Education Association. On average, teachers' salaries start about $30,000 a year. That's low, but beginning salaries play a relatively minor role in attracting bright college students into the profession. As evidence, look at the astounding response the private group Teach for America gets from the graduates of elite colleges. This year, 17,000 applicants applied for its 2,000 slots to teach in needy communities. The applicants include 12% of Yale's graduating class.

Even so, many of these talented teachers will leave, and salary is part of the reason. Whether you're a crackerjack teacher or a slacker, you face the same future: The average teacher's annual salary is $46,752. Though many governors favor raising teachers' salaries - and surveys say parents favor the same - there's no sentiment for pay increases without accountability. If Weaver wants more money for teachers, he should look at what's politically viable. In Minnesota, for example, two districts are paying teachers based on their skills and how much students learn. In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants salaries based on performance, not tenure. Linking pay to performance is how unions could help teachers earn more, particularly if the money is spent retaining teachers at the top of the pay scale, not the bottom.

Teaching might be the only profession in which a job well-done results in little more than an end-of-the-year Starbucks gift certificate from a parent. If Weaver is willing to break a bit with tradition, he could help make change that.

Source




Massachusetts: Public schools embrace competition: "Even as they are competing against charter schools and other options, Massachusetts school districts are increasingly embracing another form of choice. Now, 149 of the state's 328 school systems open their doors to students from other cities and towns. They woo the students with promises of safer schools, full-day kindergarten, and perhaps a better shot at making the basketball team. Only 32 school districts participated in 1991, after a law passed that allowed the transfers. For years, systems refused to take advantage of the law because they were full, or because they didn't want to compete with one another. Now, many say they have no choice because of tight budgets and dwindling enrollment. The law's aim was to improve education by forcing competition, and to appease those pushing for more freedom to choose schools."

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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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