Friday, September 15, 2006

HARVARD TO BECOME LESS "ELITIST" -- MAYBE

Harvard University is to drop a controversial fast-track admission system for elite students in an attempt to open up America's top colleges to more poor and minority students. In the competition to attract top talent, Harvard's "early admissions" policy enables it to lock in the best students four months before other candidates are allowed to apply - a system that largely benefits well-heeled applicants from good schools. Similar policies have been adopted by most of America's top colleges, but they have been increasingly criticised as excluding poor and minority students.

"Early admission programmes tend to advantage the advantaged," Derek Bok, Harvard's interim president, said. "Students from more sophisticated backgrounds and affluent high schools often apply early to increase their chances of admission, while minority students and students from rural areas, other countries and high schools with fewer resources miss out. "Students needing financial aid are disadvantaged by binding early-decision programmes that prevent them from comparing aid packages."

A recent Century Foundation study estimated that only 3 per cent of new entrants at the nation's 146 most selective colleges came from the bottom socio-economic quarter, compared with 74 per cent from the top quarter. Harvard, which accepts more than a third of its students through "early admissions", will now move to a single application deadline of January 1, with successful applicants being notified by April 1.

The change came a week after publication of a new book, The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges-and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, by Daniel Golden. The book argues that the "preference of privilege" favouring rich whites overshadows the number of minorities benefiting from affirmative action. It relates how top institutions give preference to "legacy" applicants, whose families attended the same college, and "development" cases, whose families have no previous link with the university but are seen as likely to become future donors. The book claims that the sons of Al Gore, the former Vice-President, Michael Ovitz, the former Hollywood power-broker, and Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, leapt ahead of more deserving applicants at Harvard, Brown and Princeton.

Harvard's decision to end early admissions is a risky gambit, because it could lose top students to rival institutions, but experts suggested that Harvard was the university most able to make the switch because its prestige virtually guarantees it will continue to attract the best applicants.

Source





CALIFORNIA'S "LEMON" TEACHER PROBLEM

Another evil of unionism

Imagine a company president being ordered by the board of directors to hire any misfit who knocks on the door. It's a crazy scenario -- but it's exactly the way many California school districts operate when an unsuccessful teacher is quietly edged out of a school. As long as the teacher agrees to leave voluntarily, union rules require the principal of any other school in the district with an opening to hire that teacher.

The practice, common in large and mid-size urban districts, is so reviled by principals that they've given it a derogatory name. "It's called the Dance of the Lemons," said state Sen. Jack Scott, a Pasadena Democrat who wrote a bill to ban the practice in low-scoring schools and to limit it in others. Scott, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, got the Democrat-controlled Legislature to pass his bill despite opposition from two traditional party allies: the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers. The bill was approved 33-1 by the Senate in May and 59-12 by the Assembly last month. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill. If the governor signs it as expected, California will become the first state in the nation to rein in the practice.

"There are a lot of states watching what's happening in California, and I think it'll have significant ramifications nationwide," said Michelle Rhee, chief executive officer of the New Teacher Project, a national nonprofit group that worked on the Scott bill.

Barbara Kerr, president of the California Teachers Association, called the bill "insulting to teachers," because it implies that every teacher who voluntarily leaves a school is a poor one. Some teachers leave a school for reasons unrelated to performance, such as a personality clash with a principal. Disapproval from the teachers unions often can kill a bill. But their opposition was counterbalanced this time by a constituency that proved just as persuasive: advocates for poor and minority students, who most often attend the schools where the lemons land. "Right now, poor kids and kids of color don't have their fair share of the state's experienced, credentialed teachers," said Russlynn Ali, executive director of the Oakland advocacy group Education Trust-West. "By giving a principal in a high-poverty, high-minority school some power to recruit those teachers, we can finally make headway on closing that teacher-quality gap."

Principals also love the idea. "I believe in the teachers union, but some things protect ineffective employees. We've got to put children first," said Principal Patricia Gray of Balboa High in San Francisco. "It's not just about good and bad teachers," Gray said. "Sometimes there's chemistry and a fit -- personalities that work better together. I've got a wonderful staff. I'd like to have some choice in who comes and who's going to be a good fit for the school."

Under the Scott bill, SB1655, existing labor contracts with teachers would be honored, but future agreements would largely disallow the forced hiring. The new law would no longer require principals in low-scoring schools to hire unwanted teachers. Like Balboa, these schools rank 1, 2, or 3 on the state's 10-point Academic Performance Index. Principals in higher-scoring schools would have a window of time each year to hire whom they please -- beginning on April 15 and running through the summer. Under current law, principals don't have that window. They are forced to give unwanted teachers hiring priority throughout the summer, forcing more desirable candidates to look for jobs elsewhere, usually in suburbia.

The so-called Dance of the Lemons is not just a California problem -- it goes on across the country. "It is the students who lose the most," according to a recent study by the New Teacher Project, which found that the forced hiring results in the placement of "hundreds, and sometimes even thousands, of teachers in urban classrooms each year with little regard for the appropriateness of the match, the quality of the teacher, or the overall impact on schools." The New Teacher Project looked at the impact of forced hires in five urban districts across the country. It found:

-- City schools have large numbers of unwanted teachers;

-- Teachers who should be fired are instead passed from school to school;

-- Good teachers are unable to wait all summer for the chance to be considered, so they apply elsewhere, usually by June.

The practice of forced hiring has been a part of labor contracts since the early 1960s, beginning with districts on the East Coast and growing in popularity over the years, according to the New Teacher Project. In San Francisco, Balboa High was one of those schools that could never get ahead. In 1999, Gray was hired as principal and was asked to turn the school around. But it was slow going. Gray wanted to transform the school's chaotic atmosphere by setting clear expectations for students and teachers and aligning the curriculum with the state's expectations for high school students. Though it sounded simple, Gray said it took the cooperation and enthusiasm of every staff member.

Under Gray's new system, all Balboa students could look at the blackboard and know immediately what they were expected to do because every teacher wrote a "Do Now" list for every class. Teachers also wrote the "Aim for the Day," the "Lesson Steps" and the homework assignment on the board for all to see. "You find that in every room," Gray said. The idea was to lessen confusion and help students improve.

One day, a new teacher started at Balboa who had been "consolidated" -- teacher talk for squeezed out -- from another high school. Gray had no choice but to hire her. "I was forced to take a consolidated teacher on more than one occasion," Gray recalled. When this particular teacher arrived at Balboa, Gray said, she refused to follow the school-improvement plan that every other teacher had agreed to do and that students had come to rely on. "She felt it stifled her creativity," Gray said.

Since then, Gray and a few other San Francisco principals trying to turn around low-scoring schools have received a district waiver from forced hiring. "It did make a difference," Gray said. "If you've got a teacher who has had problems in another school because she was ineffective, then of course the children are not getting the instruction they need. So the children absolutely benefited."

Source




ANOTHER BRITISH BACKDOWN

Education Secretary Alan Johnson has signalled an embarrassing U-turn over the downgrading of language learning in secondary schools. He admitted the Government was reconsidering its decision to allow teenagers to opt out of studying foreign languages from the age of 14. The revelation follows a dramatic decline in the numbers choosing to take French and German after ministers made languages optional at GCSE two years ago. Entrants for GCSE French have slumped 26 per cent from 318,095 in 2004 while German has also plummeted 26 per cent, with entries falling below the 100,000 mark this summer.

Youngsters have instead flocked to subjects considered in some quarters to be less academically rigorous such as media studies and physical education. Head teachers' leaders said modern foreign languages were now in "freefall" and warned that British teenagers would be disadvantaged on the job market. The National Union of Teachers described the declining popularity of languages as a "complete disaster".

Mr Johnson has already expressed "disappointment" at the decline in exam entries for languages, although he claimed it was not "wholly unexpected". But yesterday, in an unscripted question-and-answer session after a keynote speech to the Social Market Foundation, he admitted the decision to allow 14-year-olds to drop languages was under review. Mr Johnson said: "We are wondering whether we should have done that now. We are having another rethink about that." He went on to point out that the Government has placed on obligation on primary schools to allow all children aged seven and above to learn a language by 2010. However he admitted the initiative will not translate into increased GCSE entries for many years to come.

Late year ministers took desperate damage limitation measures following an outcry over the decision to make languages non-compulsory for 14-year-olds. They said that schools from this term would be expected to ensure at least half of pupils study a language until they are 16. But now Mr Johnson is signalling a full-scale reversal of the decision to downgrade language study, and has paved the way for the study of at least one foreign language to be compulsory up to GCSEs. It is a remarkable turnaround, for as recently as last month he said he believed 14-year-olds should not be "forced" to learn languages.

Tory schools spokesman Nick Gibb said: "It was a mistake to end the compulsion to study a modern foreign language to the age of 16 in the state sector. "In this globalised world, the ability to communicate with emerging economies such as China and India will be increasingly important, which is why the ability to learn a modern foreign language is a vitally important skill that we need to be teaching in our schools."

In a wide-ranging speech on the theme of tackling poverty, Mr Johnson also admitted a flagship 1 billion pound scheme to raise standards in inner-city schools was failing to help many of the neediest pupils. He said Department for Education research suggested nearly half of youngsters on free school meals due to low family income were "missed out" of the Excellence in Cities scheme. The poorest children also continued to "progress more slowly."

He also attacked independent schools which "breed elitism" and repeated calls for them to share facilities and teaching expertise with state schools and help set up new trust schools and academies. In an echo of Chancellor Gordon Brown's controversial attack six years ago on the "old school tie", he added: "As we know, the 'old boys network' still infiltrates some of Britain's oldest institutions." [Including the Labour government]

Source

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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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