Thursday, August 03, 2006

AFFIRMATIVE INACTION

It's a sad fact that an achievement gap between minority and white students exists. The real question is what to do about it. For too long, affirmative action - boosting minorities in the college admissions process - has been the preferred big government remedy. Defenders say this helps achieve "diversity" - a sacred concept in academia - and makes up for discrepancies in school funding and quality.

After years of controversy over affirmative action, Michigan will soon decide if racial preferences remain the status quo. Sparked by two 2003 Supreme Court cases challenging the University of Michigan's use of racial preferences in student admissions, a group proposed the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative - a statewide referendum that would ban racial preferences for hiring, contracting and education. The initiative's success would have national implications.

Many argue affirmative action is needed to level the playing field for minority students trapped in bad schools. But what makes a school "bad?" In Detroit, for example, the district now outspends the state average in total and instructional per-pupil expenditures and recently constructed two of the most expensive high schools in the country. Its teachers are among the highest paid in the nation, and 96 percent are deemed "highly qualified." Nonetheless, Detroit schools continue to boast below-average test scores and a graduation rate under 50 percent. Why hasn't money bought success?

One reason is Detroit's large education bureaucracy. Administrative costs are well above the state average, drawing charges of waste and cronyism. Public school districts also tend to spend more for supplies and services than their private counterparts. As such, fewer dollars make it into the classroom.

Regardless, "bad" schools are more the product of poor learning environments than inadequate funding or teachers. In urban schools, students often enter unprepared, fall behind early and lose interest, leading to the disciplinary problems that plague urban schools. Graduation is not the norm and expectations are low. These factors lead to a greater number of at-risk children in urban schools and inhibit learning.

The problem is that nearly all schools rely on the same, one-size-fits-all model (textbooks, many classes, little individual attention) to educate drastically different students. When this fails, officials don't search for innovative ways to improve minority education or increase efficiency. Blaming an alleged racist conspiracy, they lower standards.

And, while lowering the bar may help minority students enter a particular college, it may harm students before and after the admissions phase. High school students have little incentive to improve their performance beyond what is deemed "good enough" for admission. Once enrolled, these students may find themselves overwhelmed. It's the academic equivalent of throwing a child in the deep end to teach him to swim. As Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out in Grutter v. Bollinger, it "[helps] fulfill the bigot's prophecy about black underperformance - just as it confirms the conspiracy theorist's belief that 'institutional racism' is at fault for every racial disparity in our society."

To truly succeed, schools must address the unique needs of their students. The University Preparatory Academy in Detroit does just that. With largely the same students as public schools, U Prep achieves considerably higher test scores, graduates 90 percent of its students, and sends 90 percent of its graduates on to college - all while spending $2,000 less per pupil than Detroit public schools.

How? Among other factors, U Prep develops personal learning plans, places students in mentorship groups and promotes community and parent involvement. Private contractors and the reduction of elective courses help reduce costs. Schools achieve success by promoting environments conducive to learning - not by increasing spending or lowering standards.

Affirmative action allows those responsible for the failures of urban education to shirk accountability with a simple, ineffective solution to a complex problem. For 13 years, urban and suburban students are treated the same way in cookie-cutter schools, despite their disparate characteristics. In the college admissions process, officials suddenly decide minority students should be treated differently. Such is the great paradox of affirmative action - one that Michigan voters may choose to end in a move to try to improve minority education.

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INFORMATION PROLIFERATING

Web sites that allow college students to anonymously evaluate their professors -- slamming them as buffoons or rating them as "hot" -- have grown in popularity in recent years. Now, a unique site called Pick-A-Prof, which also posts the numbers of A's through F's given out in individual classes, is breaking into the California market of more than 2.3 million public university and college students.

The for-profit company prevailed recently in a public-records lawsuit against the University of California, Davis, that was seen as a test case in California. (The school initially refused to hand over the letter-grade information, then backed down and paid Pick-A-Prof $15,000 in legal fees.) Now the company is seeking the distribution of grades at other University of California schools, the California State University system and the state's community colleges -- to the ire of faculty members who say students will shop for easy classes.

Meanwhile, students by the millions are embracing the Web sites -- from ratemyprofessors.com, with ranting and praise for professors at more than 6,000 schools, to sacrate.com, which focuses on teachers at CSUS.

Pick-A-Prof covers about 150 schools, including the University of Texas, the University of Florida and Michigan State University. The pickaprof.com site displays bar graphs showing the grading history for individual professors. "All students have a right to know as much as possible about the classes they are taking and the professors who will play a central role in their education," said William Cunningham, a former systemwide chancellor at the University of Texas, in a sworn statement filed as a part of the suit against UC Davis.

Cunningham's son started the Web site as a class project in 2000 at Texas A&M University. But Dean Murakami, president of the faculty union for the Los Rios Community College District, refers to the Pick-A-Prof site as "Pick-On-A-Prof." Last month, the company asked one of the Los Rios schools -- American River College -- for its letter grades. The school is grudgingly complying. In a letter sent last week to professors at the Los Rios colleges, which also include Cosumnes River, Folsom Lake and Sacramento City, Murakami called the effort a "shameless assault" on academic freedom -- the freedom, he said, for teachers to determine their own system of grading and level of academic rigor.

Jane DeLeon, an English professor at American River and president of the Los Rios academic senate, said there's apprehension among faculty members that students will stay away from classes they perceive as hard. If a class doesn't meet a minimum enrollment requirement, it gets canceled. "They're concerned they wouldn't get a chance to teach," DeLeon said. Los Rios Chancellor Brice Harris agrees, but said in a letter to faculty and staff that it wasn't worth losing a legal fight after UC lawyers determined that the aggregate letter-grade data amount to a public record that can be given to anyone who asks for it.

San Diego State University -- approached by Pick-A-Prof last month -- also is complying with a request for information. Meanwhile, the Los Rios faculty union is talking about pushing state legislators for an exemption to the California Public Records Act that would keep the letter-grade information private. The teachers union at San Francisco State University also is considering how to block that school from handing over the information, citing possible violations to collective bargaining agreements and federal education privacy rules.

But Pick-A-Prof won't be easy to pick off. In January, the company filed a suit in Yolo Superior Court after UC Davis refused to provide the grade information. The school actually had been cooperating and handing over grades as far back as 2001. But less than two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, UC Davis lawyers rejected Pick-A-Prof's request for more updated information. In court documents, UC Davis lawyer Lynette Temple argued that the public interest of maintaining a rigorous academic environment on campus is greater than the private interest of Pick-A-Prof to obtain the grades. She said students "may be disadvantaging themselves in the long run" by using the data to take more lenient classes. Lawyers at UC headquarters in Oakland reconsidered the UC Davis position and agreed in late May to settle the case and hand over the information.

Darnell Holloway, 22, student-government president at UC Davis, said he scans professor-rating Web sites and says Pick-A-Prof could be a valuable tool for students comparing two professors who teach the same class. "A couple of grade-points can affect your future," he said. However, he said he believes that most students will not select classes based solely on a professor's grading history. Evelyn Chua, 22, who graduated from UC Davis last month with a degree in exercise biology, said she also referenced the professor-rating Web sites. But it's not that easy to pick and choose professors because of scheduling conflicts, Chua said. Also, required upper-level classes are always going to be hard, she said during an outdoor lunch break near campus Friday. "You're just going to have to take a class no matter what," she said.

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Scotland: Free Church plea for Presbyterian schools

The "Wee Frees" are more fundamentalist than the Church of Scotland

Free Kirk ministers are calling for Presbyterian schools to be set up to combat "the sustained attack" on Scotland's Christian heritage. The Free Church of Scotland, which fears that children are being fed a secular agenda, is examining whether state funding would be possible or whether the schools would have to be set up privately.

A resolution adopted by the church's General Assembly ordered the review, saying: "The General Assembly express their concern at the sustained attack upon and continual erosion of the Christian ethos and foundation of Scotland's nondenominational schools. "They note with particular concern that the Scottish Executive now deems it appropriate to use schools to further a secular social and cultural agenda."

The Rev David Robertson, the Free Kirk minister in Dundee - who proposed the resolution - said: "We're concerned that the schools are being used, in some parts of Scotland at least, to advance a secular agenda and so we need to look at the possibility of having to set up Christian-based schools. "Ideally we would want Scotland's school system to return to its Christian foundations. Both the Free Church and the Church of Scotland established complete systems of schools in the 19th century which they later handed over to the state."

Robertson admitted that the 12,000-strong Free Church would struggle to set up such schools on its own resources and that it would have to seek out like-minded church-goers from other groups, such as Baptists, the Church of Scotland or other Evangelical believers. He added: "The schools could be set up privately, which would be costly, or there is an case for state funding. We see the current emphasis on faith-based schools, and if we have state-funded Muslim schools, Church of England schools, and Catholic schools, then it's hard to resist the argument for Presbyterian schools, or whatever you would call them."

In recent years some in the Church of Scotland have called for Kirk schools to stem the decline in organised religion.

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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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