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to affiliate with Magazineline.com 21st Century Politics
and Proposition 26 MALDEF refuses
appeal on TAAS suit Plagiarism: The new online plague (EduQuery; Jan. 18, 2000) District Court: TAAS is OK (EduQuery, Jan. 7, 2000) Visit the EduQuery Aggie Bonfire Memorial Page (EduQuery, Nov. 21, 1999) EduQuery registers with RealNames.com (EduQuery, November 17, 1999) Rojas meets with troubled waters (EduQuery Opinion, Nov. 10, 1999) Cola wars still brewing (EduQuery Opinion, August 30, 1999) Dallas ISD hires new superintendent (EduQuery, August 11, 1999) Texas Legislature grants $3000 raise to teachers (EduQuery, May 26, 1999) Texas teachers demand more from legislature (EduQuery Opinion, Mar. 16, 1999) The State of Education in Texas (EduQuery, Mar. 9, 1999) Education Committee to decide fate of bills in Texas (EduQuery, Feb. 28, 1999) The Great Voucher Debate (EduQuery, Feb. 27, 1999) The Cola Wars Come to School (EduQuery, Jan. 27, 1999) Cheating on TAAS: a bad idea (EduQuery Opinion, Jan. 17, 1999) TENET to remain open at least one more year (EduQuery, October 25, 1998) Government announces $1.2 billion for new teachers (EduQuery, October 23, 1998) Sharing of contact lenses cited as a health concern (EduQuery, September 29, 1998) [Note: many of the links to the following stories may be out of date since online newspapers typically archive material after a certain amount of time has passed. WorldNetDaily, Newsweek, Time, and some other links tend to be more static. Even though some links are out of date, the Old News pages can be useful to educational researchers who need to know the date certain noteworthy events occurred. These pages can be used as a reference in papers that touch upon the events.] Stories from 2001:
Corporate sponsors
pay tuition Chris Barrett and Luke McCabe, who just
graduated from high school, came up with a unique way to pay for their college education:
Corporate sponsorship. In an unprecedented campaign, reports The Saturday Early Show, they
will serve as "student ambassadors" for First USA Bank. In return, the company
has agreed to pay each of them $40,000 in college tuition, room and board. Their
assignment formally beings this fall when they head off to their prospective schools,
Pepperdine and USC. Much of their corporate-sponsored schedule is still undecided.
Throughout the year, both are expected to make campus appearances and publicize financial
tips for students on their Web site.
'English only' would
have killed Marines Native language is a precious resource that should not be squandered. That is the moral of an exceptionally good story now being shared far and wide. At a U.S. Capitol ceremony long overdue, President Bush recently presented the Congressional Gold Medal, our nation's highest civilian honor, to four of the five living Navajo code talkers who provided invaluable service to the U.S. Marines during World War II. Assigned to all six Marine divisions, the Navajo took part in every Marine assault in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. In Western states in the early- and mid-20th century, Navajo – like other Indian languages – proved so frightening to English speakers that those who ran the schools tried to erase it by punishing those who spoke it. As with Spanish-speakers in states like Arizona, Texas and California, Indian children were spanked for speaking their native languages, their mouths washed out with soap – all in a vile campaign to scrub away human differences and make something that was considered "foreign" appear less so. Those lessons were, we can assume, failed by 29 young Navajo who grew up to be Marines. That is something for which the country should be grateful.
Big Brother and Big Tests The
proponents of President George W. Bush’s education initiative, called “No Child
Left Behind,” believe that they can make schools accountable to parents as well as
taxpayers. The centerpiece of this, as it appears in the amendments to the Elementary and
Secondary School Act, still in House-Senate conference as Insight goes to press, is a
massive nationwide program designed to test every student in grades three to eight in
reading and math. Both House and Senate bills propose some $400 million in federal funds
to be sent to the states to devise and administer the tests on a state-by-state basis.
The conservative
Michigan school board member support group When college professor Lori Yaklin discovered that her business ethics students were unable to do the fundamental research, writing and issue evaluation required in her class, she started investigating the Michigan's K through 12 education. What she found surprised and disappointed her. "The overall problem is that academic achievement is dismal," said Yaklin. For example, "You have over 60 percent of the poor children in our country can't read in the fourth grade," she said. "The students [in the business ethics class] told me that their idea of being 'ethical' was not judging others and recycling," she said. "On the first day of class I threw out all of my lesson plans to discuss Aristotle and other great thinkers." The next step for Yaklin was to find a way to effect real change in her state's approach to education. So in March 1999, armed with an idea and a few well-connected supporters, she launched an organization called the nonprofit Michigan School Board Leaders Association to challenge the status quo on school boards across the state. She soon discovered that meant locking horns with the state's powerful teachers union, the Michigan Education Association. She and her staff of two support reform-minded school board members by coming to testify before the board, helping the board member draft letters to the editor and distribute literature and providing the board member with a support network of like-minded members from other school districts.
Time
for a principal shortage? Jennifer Henry has a goal: to run an inner city school where all the students go to college, to prove that it can be done, that "you can't just blame the kids and the neighborhood." She's got an impressive educational rèsumè: During high school and college she taught for Making Waves, a California-based non-profit that targets low income kids at risk of falling behind grade level. At 22 she became the program's executive director, and turned what was a mostly mushy, feel-good enterprise into one with real instructional rigor. She also taught high school history, unpaid, at a nearby prep school. This year Henry, 28, graduated from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management. But when she began looking for a job in Chicago, she faced a harsh reality: to become a principal she would need six years of experience in a Chicago public school, and she had no teaching or administrative credential. At job interviews, school administrators saw business school on her rèsumè and doubted her commitment to education. Credentialing courses could cost more than $10,000. "It's amazing to me," says Henry, "how high and wide the barriers are to becoming an educator."
Anorexia sites gain
bloated notice For eating disorder educators, the very language of the sites can provide invaluable hints into a troubled psyche. "I think some of these sites are worded in a way that indicates the hosts do want help," says Vivian Meehan, president and founder of the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, or ANAD. "They’re putting themselves out there. But then they also put up a defense against it. Don’t come on the site if you’re only interested in putting us down."
The Three
F's The bad news first: There is no good news.
Public education and government schools are a mess. If it were a business it would be in
receivership. If it were mentally ill it would be in a padded cell on heavy doses of
lithium and Prozac. Nevertheless, after Social Security, public education is the secondary
third rail of American life and politics – it isn't supposed to be touched. It is THE
sacred cow of modern times.
Baylor disses
homeschool applicants Home-school advocates are challenging an apparent bait and switch by Baylor University, saying it "smacks of discrimination." After accepting, and even awarding scholarships, to home-school graduates, the Waco, Texas, university is now telling them they must be 18 years of age or get a GED certificate in order to be enrolled this fall. The ill-timed policy reversal comes too late for some to make other plans, leaving them in limbo.
NEA's smoke and mirrors Phyllis Schlafly writes:
Admissions controversy
at UC system High school seniors are lined up, waiting for the start of their last lap in the years-long quest to gain admission to the college of their choice. When the doors to their high schools open this fall, among the first tasks will be tackling those applications, gathering the recommendation letters, and writing the dreaded essay. This past week the University of California system took another step backwards from fairness, confirming again the widespread suspicion that the admissions game is rigged by unseen bureaucracies pursuing agendas unrelated to fairness.
Universal Head
Start? When Head Start was founded in 1965, it was hailed as a revolutionary way to help America’s poorest children prepare for school. The idea, advocates said, was to create that proverbial level playing field. Today, the president of the country’s second-largest teachers’ union announced a new path to that mythical leveled field, declaring that all children — middle class, working class and poor — should be eligible to attend quality pre-school programs like Head Start.
An agenda in the schools There was a time, let's call them the good old days, when parents could send their little children off to school with full confidence they would be in good hands. Sadly, the good old days are gone. It is appropriate that most of the criticism of government schools deals with academic failure. But that is only half the wretched story. Contrary to what many parents think, most of those responsible for the education of our children are not socially and politically neutral. They are ideologues with an agenda.
Colleges flunk when
graduating blacks A Detroit News investigation of seven Michigan universities shows that among black students who were freshmen in 1994, just 40 percent got their diplomas after six years, compared to 61 percent of white students and 74 percent of Asians.
FTC says kids have
privacy rights on the Net The Federal Trade Commission has cracked down on companies who amassed information about minors without their parents' consent. The FTC found that three companies violated the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which went into effect April 21, 2000. The law requires that websites that collect information from children must get parental permission first.
Self-esteem theories
stink One thing you learn if you have ever been associated with the world of education is that for every season there is a theory. The season of self-esteem began its stranglehold on education in the '50s and it has been downhill from there. Low self-esteem was blamed for nearly everything from poor achievement in school to violent social behavior. It is a fact that educrats and psychologists are kind of an incestuous breed. When some theory sounds good, even when it flies in the face of common sense, educrats will cling to it and try it as a new panacea that will eventually mean absolute perfection. The tried and true usually gets dumped for the latest sociological or educational theory no matter how inane or foolish. It is reminiscent of the "wellville" era in the 19th century when people allowed themselves to be subject to all kinds of horrors in the name of "wellness."
Was Darwin a racist? Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, supported racist ideologies that Louisiana's Legislature should reject, a state House committee decided Tuesday in a resolution educators said would open the state to ridicule. Rep. Sharon Broome, D-Baton Rouge, said the resolution would shine a light on racism, but opponents argued it was a ploy by creationists to edge evolutionary teachings out of schools.
Education is not a
matter of money David Limbaugh writes: I think it's time for President Bush to reframe his education package. He should make school choice the centerpiece, rather than the perceived throwaway item of his plan. So far, the Democrats have been controlling the education debate by making this a contest as to which party is willing to spend the most money. Last week Bush emphasized that his education plan wasn't about just throwing money at the problem, but he hastened to boast that his proposal involved greater federal spending than ever before on education.
Tattoos are deadly
indicators It's all the rage: teenage kids sporting tattoos all over their bodies. Now a new study by a University of Rochester doctor finds that kids who wear tattoos are far more likely to have premarital sex, alcoholism, and be prone to violence.The study also found that tattoo-stained kids had lower grades and were more likely than their peers to use drugs.
Education bill
proving divisive While the White House has avoided a partisan blow-up in the Senate on Bush's school-reform agenda, some members of the House are trying to revive school vouchers for private schools and several other potentially explosive proposals. One would allow school officials to take federal education funds intended to help underprivileged children and use them instead to fight lawsuits over school prayer. Another would ban federal money for programs that teach how to reduce hate crimes against homosexuals.
Kids & guns:
What is the problem? Walter Williams writes: Every time there's a school shooting, there are demands for greater gun control measures that range from longer waiting periods and mandated gun locks to stricter licensing and restricted sales. With all the political posturing and demagoguery that follows, a hysterical public buys into the seeming plausibility that reduced availability of guns, especially to children, will reduce gun violence. The facts of the matter are just the opposite. Yale University legal scholar John Lott demonstrates this in his book, "More Guns, Less Crime." Lott's brilliant study destroys one falsehood after another about guns, but I want to focus on one of his findings -- gun accessibility and gun violence. Is gun accessibility the problem? The fact of the matter is that gun accessibility in our country has never been as restricted as it is now. Lott reports that until the 1960s, New York City public high schools had shooting clubs. Students carried their rifles to school on the subways in the morning, then turned them over to their home-room teacher or the gym coach -- and that was mainly to keep them centrally stored and out of the way.
Government schools
push more drugs Every day some 6 million children – some as young as 2 or 3 – are now given Ritalin and other stimulants at the urging of school officials and psychiatrists. The reason: They are diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a recently discovered mental "disease" whose symptoms include short attention span, impulsive behavior, and difficulty sitting still. Many more boys than girls are diagnosed with ADHD. In some schools – including two school districts near Virginia Beach, Virginia – as many as 20 percent of the boys are now given Ritalin daily.
Hawaii
teachers end strike Hawai'i's 13,000 public school teachers will vote today on a proposed contract that calls for raises totaling about 18.5 percent over the next two years. The agreement, reached late last night, is expected to be ratified by teachers today. If they approve the agreement, teachers will report to work tomorrow, and students will return to class Thursday. The settlement appears to be a slightly sweeter version of an offer the state made on Saturday, with raises amounting to 10 percent across the board, plus two step increases worth approximately 3 percent each. Step increases are generally tied to individual start date and seniority.
Elementary, my dear teacher A technological revolution is brewing in an
unlikely locale: elementary school cafeterias. In a few Pennsylvania schools, kids can now
pay for lunches with their fingerprints. It's one of the first consumer applications of
biometrics, an industry that offers an uneasy tradeoff, some argue, between efficiency and
privacy. At schools such as Welsh Valley, in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, children have
been speeding through the lunch line. They press their finger to a scanner, which records
17 grid points that are then used to identify their personal school lunch accounts. (The
actual fingerprints are not recorded.) Bush praises
America's teachers President Bush welcomed 2001 National Teacher of the Year Michele Forman to the White House Monday, as the Senate was getting set to begin debate later this week his education package. "Teachers inspire students, fire imaginations, nurture their natural abilities, and encourage them to explore the possibilities of life," he said. "They prepare good students to be good citizens, but they also know better than anyone else they can't do it alone. It's so important for the moms and dads of American to hear."
Academic monkey wars
continue Last Monday, Mark Edwards, PR man for the conservative think tank the Discovery Institute, was excited. "We landed on the front page of yesterday's New York Times," he enthused. Two weeks prior, the Discovery Institute was featured in a story on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. And CNN recently turned its cameras on the Seattle institute. Old-fashioned creationists have often been happy to follow along. With their help, the decade-old movement is gaining momentum. State officials in Michigan and Pennsylvania are considering whether to allow schools to teach alternative theories to evolution. And a series of books, conferences, and speeches are bringing the case for intelligent design to the public. This week, the Discovery Institute is co-sponsoring a speech at the University of Washington by the father of intelligent design theory, Phillip Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and an advisor to the Discovery Institute. Later this month, the institute will hold a conference at Seattle Pacific University featuring a number of design proponents. The movement has a martyr: a high school biology teacher in the small upstate town of Burlington, Washington, Roger DeHart, who was told he must stop bringing design theory into the classroom, even if he did so on only one day of a two-week unit on evolution. Last month, DeHart was forbidden from using outside materials that critique Darwin in any way. Support groups of parents have formed on both sides.
Sign
language ban generates controversy Her hearing has started to deteriorate, her parents say, so 12-year-old Danica Lesko usually communicates with her friends in sign language, especially in noisy places like the school bus. But Branchburg school officials have ordered her to stop signing, insisting the practice has created a safety problem on the bus. The Leskos want to know how silent communication can cause a ruckus.
Heavy-handed
efforts by schools panned In an effort to keep schools free of drugs and violence, authorities are resorting to heavy-handed measures that impinge on students' privacy rights and chill the learning environment, says one observer. J. Bates McIntyre, who graduated last spring from the University of Illinois law school, makes her case in the article "Empowering Schools to Search: The Effect of Growing Drug and Violence Concerns on American Schools," published in a recent issue of the university's Law Review.
Bureaucrats first,
kids second The National Assessment of Educational Progress reading scores for American fourth-graders came out last week, and the news is abysmal. For eight years reading skills have been virtually static; they are the same as they were in 1992 and 1998 (they were slightly worse in 1994). Indeed, reading scores haven't improved in 20 years, so the overall data are nothing new. But the details are devastating.
E-books: Fad or
foe? Digitized books have been touted as the biggest revolution since the Gutenberg press. What impact will they have on schools?
Elementary, my dear teacher A technological revolution is brewing in an unlikely locale: elementary school cafeterias. In a few Pennsylvania schools, kids can now pay for lunches with their fingerprints. It's one of the first consumer applications of biometrics, an industry that offers an uneasy tradeoff, some argue, between efficiency and privacy. At schools such as Welsh Valley, in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, children have been speeding through the lunch line. They press their finger to a scanner, which records 17 grid points that are then used to identify their personal school lunch accounts. (The actual fingerprints are not recorded.)
Johnny still can't
read Last week, the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) year 2000 tests for fourth-grade reading were released, and they were received with the usual yawning complacency. Which is unfortunate, since the news contained in these results was, as is also usual, catastrophic. The NAEP confirmed that we are continuing to create a nation radically divided along meritocratic class lines. The top level is held by a tiny, hyper-schooled and highly competent overclass to which, in an information-based economy, accrues a vast overproportion of the nation's jobs, wealth, status and power.
African
history profs are in high heaven after find It was the kind of day of which every scholar dreams. Professor John Hunwick was in Timbuktu, and a young man who knew of his interest in African history invited him to see the family library. Leading the professor into a small room in his modest house, the man lifted the lid on an old trunk filled with manuscripts. "By the third one, my eyes were popping out of my head," recalled Hunwick, sitting in his office at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. "I'd never seen anything quite like them before." Nor had any other Westerner - and, precisely for that reason, the contents of that trunk are expected to profoundly alter long-accepted views of African history and civilization, many shaped by racial prejudice rather than scientific inquiry.
Core
values classes on the rise When Kathy Perini became principal of Emperor Elementary School eight years ago, teachers peppered her with complaints about ill-behaved, unkind students. These days, courteous sixth-graders at the school in San Gabriel, Calif., volunteer to clean up the cafeteria and teach computer skills to younger pupils. Teachers fashion ''integrity trees'' to honor students' good deeds. And youngsters formally pledge to show respect and compassion for others. What made the difference was Values in Action, a character education program that teaches seven core values, including responsibility and perseverance.
Losing history The workings of
government in the first decades of the information era have been poorly recorded,
archiving experts say. Years of valuable public records may have already been lost,
creating a gap in the country's historical record. Archivists, government watchdog groups
and investigative reporters worry that unless the problem is solved, the lack of
information could make it more difficult to hold government officials accountable for
their decisions and policies.
Favored
college admissions essay topic: Columbine The massacre at Columbine High School two years ago this month penetrated the psyche of American teenagers in much the way John F. Kennedy's assassination or astronauts walking on the moon did for their parents' generation. The very word Columbine is shorthand for a complex set of emotions ranging from anxiety to sadness to empathy. Nowhere is this knotted mix of feelings as clear as in the essays young people write as they apply for admission to college. From New Jersey to Virginia to Texas, Columbine is cited as life's defining moment.
Seattle
schools pay $180,000 to get rid of kid Seattle School District officials called him the toughest special-education case they'd seen in decades. Students at Chief Sealth High School called him the "kid in the cage." The blind, developmentally disabled 16-year-old could throw a tantrum so fierce school officials placed him in a padded basement room for months, isolated from other students. Then they paid to make him go away. In a settlement that special-education experts say is both rare and troubling, the district has agreed to pay Kathy Harris $180,000 on condition she keep her son out of the district. School officials say it's the first time in memory they've paid to remove a student from Seattle schools.
For teens, cash
or plastic is becoming moot Credit card companies have aggressively pushed their products to college students for years, despite criticism from consumer advocates who argue that many kids aren't ready for the responsibility. Now the industry is aiming even younger -- at teenagers in high school, or even middle school. To some researchers and consumer groups, such products illustrate a growing debt problem among the young. They suggest a connection between easier credit for younger and younger people and a personal bankruptcy rate that is rising faster among those under 25 than for the population as a whole.
Baiting
Whitey One thing you can say for David Horowitz: After almost 40 years of work as a political journalist, after a career in activism dating back to the civil rights struggle, after courting both Black Panther and Gopac tiger, after a miraculous conversion from the radical left to the woolly right, after writing books and columns beyond number, he is now capable of outwitting a bunch of college students.
San
Francisco schools give up $50 million It was one of the largest federal education grants ever. But the district's budget problems prevent school officials from coming up with the needed matching funds.
Zero
tolerance = many problems The teacher in the room that day would later say
that in her mind the whole ordeal could have ended with Paul filling out a
"responsibility sheet," detailing what he did wrong and how he could learn from
it. But the situation got so far out of control. As the teacher leaned in to talk to Paul,
he swung back and accidentally struck her in the nose with his arm. Some confused students
tackled Paul. A girl ran to the principal’s office.
Teacher/student relations gone
to extremes Instead of answers, an investigation into allegations that one teacher had an affair with a student has produced a series of shocks for residents of this affluent Atlanta suburb. Three young, male teachers have resigned and face charges. And on Friday, Principal J. Rick Ingram announced his resignation, saying the scandal has "brought shame, ridicule and embarrassment" to Woodstock High School.
Schools ain't what they used
to be The days of the little red schoolhouse and an apple for the teacher are so much a part of the past that most people today wouldn't even know what it means. More's the tragedy. Today's schools are not the warm, homey affairs they once were; today's schools are factories. Just listen to the words used by the people called educators. They talk about their "delivery" of education as though it was a load of canned goods. It's a "load" all right, but not what they have in mind! They talk about the students as "units." Never mind the students as human beings with first and last names. The children have identifying numbers. Never mind knowing brothers and sisters and knowing the parents. They are just the ones who don't turn up for meetings.
NY PS gives
classes on vandalism It's no April's Fool's joke. A New York public school is offering art classes that teach graffiti. "A Brooklyn public high school called the El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice pursued its ideological agenda by teaching the students how to spray-paint graffiti."
Annual
Polly Awards given A Princeton University prof's idea of loving animals is having sex with the critters, the University of Oregon offers student financing of "how-to" guides on vandalism and arson and other forms of terrorism, and SUNY-Albany has OK'd a campus S&M club. These are three of the five outrageous campus incidents that provoked the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) to give their annual Polly Awards to five institutes of so-called higher learning for providing last year's worst examples of out-of-control political correctness on American campuses. Topping the list of winners for 2000 was Princeton University.
Horowitz replies to
Doggett In one of several articles David Horowitz wrote in the aftermath of his anti-reparations ad, he replies to WorldNetDaily columnist John Doggett.
Get an MBA while
you work What do you call a chemist who pilots a 1999
Cessna 172R between Lincoln, Neb., and Chicago every weekend so he can someday run his own
business? One very determined part-time MBA student. Mark Zieg, 34, is a drug formulator
for Novartis Pharmaceuticals and a weekend student at the University of Chicago's Graduate
School of Business. Each week until March, 2003, he will fly a total of seven hours to and
from classes. "It's the only top school that's within reach," he says. From
Left to Right, but still Rad They're gathered to hear a former high priest of the 1960s left "I marched for civil rights not only before you were born," the speaker begins, "but before many of your parents were born . . .Thirty years ago I contributed to the atmosphere here – and I'm appalled! This is a place of intellectual terror! Leftists have contempt for America." So perfect, this David Horowitz moment, the blend of agitprop and indignation and intellectual provocation. A week before, the 62-year-old Marxist turned conservative Republican firebrand called the Berkeley student newspaper and took out an advertisement to advance his new cause: the anti-reparations movement.
Should teachers
go armed? One of the most controversial ideas is the arming of teachers. Proponents of this concept point to the successful Israeli effort to reduce terrorist attacks on schools by arming teachers and older students. There is also a positive example to be found in the success of concealed-carry laws that now allow responsible adults to carry handguns for self-defense in about 32 states. The field of civilian firearms training is thriving and some citizens, including teachers, now receive more instruction than the average police officer. One example largely ignored by the media occurred at a high school in Pearl, Mississippi. Assistant Principal Joel Myrick used his handgun to stop the murderous shooting rampage of a deranged student. Unfortunately, the law forced Myrick to keep his weapon locked in his car off school property. By the time he could retrieve it and return, two students were already dead.
Weakening the grip of
multicampus boards Do the public colleges that answer to their own boards have an advantage over the rest? For lawmakers in a growing number of states, the answer is yes. Several states have established new oversight or advisory boards for individual public colleges, and some are even dismantling multicampus public-college systems to give "local" boards more power. The changes are designed to help public colleges compete in a changing higher-education market. Many lawmakers are concluding that institutions with their own boards can respond more quickly to the needs of their students and local businesses.
School bullies using Coke Which is the more menacing threat to America's teen-agers -- a bully or a can of soda? State legislatures are rushing to rescue our youth from bullies just as the world's largest soft-drink maker agrees to save them from their sweet tooth. Saying it is responding to complaints about the poor nutritional value of soft drinks, the Coca-Cola Co. is putting a cap on an aggressive marketing pitch to schools. Through exclusive "pouring rights" contracts with more than 200 schools, Coca-Cola and other soft-drink companies can put soda machines in school cafeterias and hallways in exchange for giving the schools millions in shared profits.
The sad state of college
journalism Some veteran journalist ought to start traveling around to college campuses and teaching student editors the following five words: "We stand by our story." This is what an adult editor says, under ordinary circumstances, when an article he has published comes under attack. If a paper makes a factual error, of course, it corrects it; and if a writer behaves unethically, he is fired or otherwise disciplined. But an editor does not apologize for an article he has published simply because some readers didn't like it.
Bush leaves
E-rate alone Rethinking a campaign proposal, the Bush administration has decided to leave a popular program that provides Internet technology to schools and libraries as is, rather than give states more control over the program. The little-noticed move was made in the face of a mounting political challenge on Capitol Hill. The education technology program, known as the "e-rate," gives rural and poor schools discounts of up to 90 percent on the cost of Internet access. The program is administered through the Federal Communications Commission and financed by payments collected from telecommunications companies, which pass the cost on to consumers in small assessments on monthly bills.
A question
of academic freedom Julie Bosmon, a senior journalism major at U. Wisconsin and editor of its campus newspaper, is given an opportunity by the Wall Street Journal to defend her decision to run the controversial Horowitz ad that argues against reparations for slavery. Read the full text of the ad here. Cal Berkley editor Daniel Hernandez defends his position on printing a front page apology for running the ad in a letter to the editor of the Washington Post.
BW cover
story: How to fix our schools If you take it for more than a political slogan, President Bush's motto for education reform--"no child left behind"--is a wildly ambitious goal. It is every bit as audacious as Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty or John F. Kennedy's race to the moon. Since the U.S. first embraced universal public education decades ago, there has been a largely unspoken assumption that some children will never earn a high school degree. Now, says National Urban League President Hugh B. Price, Bush is "asking our schools to do something that no society has ever done, to educate all children well, regardless of their circumstances." In effect, Bush is declaring that in the Information Age, a solid education is a fundamental civil right. The President's pronouncement is the culmination of nearly twenty years of mounting efforts to fix America's schools. The educational crusade began in earnest with A Nation at Risk, a 1983 report commissioned by the Reagan Administration warning that "a rising tide of mediocrity [in our schools] threatens our very future as a nation." In 1989, then-President George Bush and the nation's governors held the first-ever national education summit, where they set sweeping goals--from eliminating illiteracy to vaulting U.S. students to No. 1 in the world in math and science.
Don't tune in: Drop out The editor of the world's most popular online news site says the solution to public school violence is to leave the public schools.
Horowitz
gets heavy security They expect violence tonight sometime after 8 p.m. at the University of California's Berkeley campus when David Horowitz, America's one-man antidote to racial and cultural political correctness, attempts to address the student body. And so university officials will have a small army of police and security guards on hand to make sure Horowitz survives the evening. Why all the heavy security? Horowitz, like nearly three quarters of Americans surveyed on the question, doesn't think reparations for slavery is a particularly good idea.
In Bush
era, FastForWord garners some publicity The little guys wearing the big headphones are learning to read by learning to hear. And the computer program they are plugged into is shaking up notions of how to teach children who struggle with reading. The program, Fast ForWord, is drawing scrutiny as educators address what some fear is a national crisis: Up to 20 percent of school-age children have trouble learning to read, a problem that President Bush acknowledged with his five-year, $5 billion Reading First initiative. The initiative sets a national goal of ensuring that all children can read by third grade. Reading instruction used to be the province of parents and teachers. Now, schools hire consultants and reading specialists and buy expensive software from the fast-growing educational-services industry.
Harvard fights
pro-life poster posting In the past, the bludgeoning of college conservatives has included making bonfires of alternative newspapers and shouting down speakers on the right. But attempts to suppress dissent from the reigning campus orthodoxy are now far more subtle. Consider the case of Matt Evans, a third-year student at Harvard Law School. Evans' choice to speak out for the unborn has the law school and some of his fellow students seeing crimson. In early January, the Utah native started posting small signs on student bulletin boards with what some consider an inflammatory slogan: "Smile! Your mother chose life." The signs were torn down almost as fast as Evans put them up.
Ferris Bueller
detained for shooting Ferris Bueller was detained, yesterday, as a likely high-school shooter. Well, not really. But in the current hysteria over school shootings, the FBI and school administrators think Bueller -- the campy main character of the popular '80s movie -- would be an excellent candidate for detainment and questioning by teachers and principals. So would most high-school students. Especially nerds and geeks. As if high school weren't bad enough for them already. Freedom lovers and civil libertarians beware. In response to school shooting incidents, like last week's episode at Santana High School in Santee, Calif., or in 1999, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Co., government and school officials are engaging in dangerous profiling and zero-tolerance policies that won't stop school violence. But they will take away our freedoms.
Schools and gun
control In the 1950's, America had more guns per capita than we do today. However, there were no school shootings. What has changed? Today we have fewer guns yet seemingly unending school violence. Columnist Barry Farber posits some answers.
Oh, horrors!
Horowitz ad stirs up a hornet's nest David Horowitz is having a ball. Armed with a modest advertising budget, the conservative provocateur (and Salon columnist) set out to buy ads in college newspapers across the country, attacking the notion of slavery reparations: "Ten reasons why reparations for slavery is a bad idea -- and racist too." But so far at least 10 papers have rejected the ad, editors at three of the four that agreed to run it have since apologized and the result has been a windfall of free publicity for Horowitz and his case against reparations. The San Francisco Chronicle and the Wall Street Journal have come to Horowitz's defense; in the Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley called the attacks on the ad "hogwash," concluding "I have read the ad several times and can find no racism in it." Also: Horowitz's response to this article.
Voucher debate rages on Prime time at the
Johnson house. Time for “7th Heaven” on the WB. But Mom is home, and the kids
know what that means: don’t even think about TV until the homework is done. Brandon
has polynomials to divide for pre-algebra. Tony has to read up on mollusks for science
class. And Jessica has to change out of her basketball gear and hit the Spanish books.
“In public school they don’t even have to bring books home, and we get three
assignments a night,” grumbles Tony, 13, across the dining-room table. Mom comes back
without a beat. “That’s exactly why you’re not in public school.”
BusinessWeek examines the home
schooling industry Once dominated by the Christian Right, the home-schooling movement is gaining mainstream adherents every year. The U.S. Education Dept. estimates that more than 1 million children are being taught at home. As home-schooling's popularity has grown, so has an industry of Web sites, curriculum materials, online courses, and enrichment classes that cater to the home-education family.
B-Schools be gone As faculty openings expand, the number of new PhDs in business and management is nearly flat. In 1999, the most recent year studied, 1,104 PhDs were awarded in business fields--and only half of these new doctorate-holders headed for a career in academia. That's not nearly enough to meet demand, say many B-school deans. ''The pool is getting smaller so we're all competing harder--it creates some tension,'' says Awi Federgruen, senior vice-dean at Columbia University Graduate School of Business, which has 12 vacant positions and plans to expand.
Grading
on the Harvard curve Harvey C. Mansfield's first lecture this semester landed him in the pages of the Boston Globe. On the first day of class, Mansfield, a legendarily tough grader, announced a new approach to evaluating his students. Henceforth, he would bestow two grades—one reflecting the true value of their work, and another "ironic grade" reflecting Harvard's inflated grading system. The "ironic grade" would go to the registrar so that each student's perfect transcript, if not his ego, would remain intact. That Harvard inflates its grades should hardly be a controversial claim. This past academic year, more than half of the marks given to Harvard students were "A-" or higher. Grades are supposed to convey relative merit. And it seems preposterous that half the students at Harvard have achieved near perfection. Yet, that is precisely what many Harvard students believe. Mansfield's new two-tiered system was applauded on campus, but not for its subversive intent.
TAMU
prof: Secrets of Stradivarius revealed Texas A&M University biochemist Dr. Joseph Nagyvary says he has unlocked the secret of why the Stradivarius violin makes its dazzling sound: Special chemicals, including the ingredient now used to wash clothes, were used. Dr. Nagyvary was honored for his 25 years of research at A&M during a program, "Decoding the Stradivarius," this month.
First Lady beckons
teachers Moving to make her mark as first lady, Laura Bush will issue a call today for new teachers, including asking those who served their country in the military to help fill depleted ranks in classrooms. After avoiding the limelight during the first five weeks of her husband's administration, Mrs. Bush will use her status as first lady to tackle key education issues, particularly those affecting poor and minority children.
Edison: Union study biased Edison Schools, the nation's largest private manager of public schools, announced today that in a report funded by the nation's largest teachers union, researchers at the Western Michigan University's Evaluation Center purport to challenge the substantial achievement gains experienced in the 113 public schools Edison manages across the country. "Despite the mountains of statistics designed to give it an aura of legitimacy, the study is a political attack piece, pure and simple," commented Dr. John Chubb, Edison's Chief Education Officer. "The report's methodology is stacked to support its predetermined conclusions. It examines trends at only 10 of Edison's 113 schools, and even then completely omits critical data that fail to support the conclusions it labors so hard to reach. It includes no data whatever from the 1999-2000 school year, even for those few schools it examines -- an omission that leads it to ignore, quite literally, award winning gains. It is shocking that social scientists would attempt to pass off such work as an objective evaluation."
For-profits find allies in
teacher unions In his 1992 manifesto, "Reinventing the Schools," Steven Wilson called teachers' unions "pathological" and accused them of perpetuating "much of what is wrong" in schools while standing "ready to sting the innovator with a volley of grievances." But today, Mr. Wilson, now chief executive of Advantage Schools Inc., says he is confident of a "productive relationship with the unions" if he wins his bids to manage public schools in Baltimore and other cities.
The world
according to Gatto Thanks to an old hip injury, John Taylor Gatto, age 65, walks with a slight limp. But, in many ways, he is still a big presence. Big is an adjective former students use to describe Gatto, who quit his profession—and explained his reasons for doing so in the Wall Street Journal—almost immediately after winning the New York State Teacher of the Year Award in 1991. And big is what I think as I watch him walk across a stage in a Boston auditorium to address an audience consisting largely of defectors from the public school system.
A new chief
in town When Rod Paige first took the helm of the struggling Houston public schools seven years ago, Gayle Fallon, president of the local teachers' union, blasted him as "the most antiteacher superintendent we've had in the past decade." By the end of Paige's tenure last month, however, Fallon was giving a far different testimonial. She gushed that Paige "will leave a better district than he came to" and that "he'll be a very effective Secretary of Education."
Electronic
texts are upon us The good news is that the days of teachers' having to navigate through error-strewn, out-of-date texts--and of kids' having to lug 30-lb. book bags--are almost over. The major publishers, fearful of yet another report slamming their product, have hired more fact checkers and instituted extra layers of review. More significant, this month McGraw-Hill plans to launch its first e-textbooks--online versions of its printed texts, featuring videos, interactive lab exercises and personalized assessment tools. Factual errors, once discovered, will be corrected immediately. Five years from now the visual resolution of handheld text devices should be clear enough--and the prices low enough--that one portable e-textbook containing downloads for every subject could replace a backpack full of books.
Taking back the
academy Step one is to use the bully pulpit to highlight and de-legitimize the academy's prejudices. This was William Bennett's old job as Ronald Reagan's secretary of education. Bush's education secretary, Roderick Page, is preoccupied with primary schooling. But whomever Bush picks to chair the National Endowment for the Humanities could take on the academy. That's how Lynn Cheney got famous, after all. If there's one place where the Bushies need to forgo their preference for experienced administrators over intellectuals, this is it. The NEH doesn't need a manager at the helm. It needs to be headed by a respected public intellectual, not a fire-breather, but someone able to muster a credible case for restoring ideological balance to the universities.
MIT prank site results in
FBI investigation A web site that purports to offer suggestions for growing kittens in Mason jars has incurred the wrath of animal rights activists. Such a firestorm has been generated that the FBI has been called in to investigate possible animal rights abuses. MIT, whose servers initially hosted the ruse site, finds itself in the crossfires of a growing controversy and federal subpoenas. Meanwhile, the students responsible for www.bonsaikitten.com wonder what all the fuss is about -- and loudly proclaim their First Amendment rights of parody while watching in amusement as the hate mail pours in.
Bush
living up to education promises For at least a quarter century, the conservative policy establishment has developed a coherent critique of American public education. The argument, which has been worked out over millions of think tank man hours, is that the central problem with our educational system is that it is a public monopoly. Power resides in an entrenched bureaucracy, which, Soviet-style, serves its own interests, not the interests of students and parents. Conservatives have argued that the system must be transformed to give consumers—students and their parents—more power. With more competition and more choice, the schools will have to improve. The Bush administration doesn't reject this argument, but it doesn't embrace it either. It sort of gives it a pat on the back and moves on.
New ideas about an old
therapy Nurse Ratchet sadistically shocking those under her care ... huge arcs of electric volts shaking the bodies of helpless patients ... such are the images conjured in the body politic when discussing electric shock treatments. But despite Hollywood's efforts to demonize it, many psychiatrists have returned to a safe, and dare we say, effective treatment for mental disorders.
Issue
number 1: Health insurance Texas Monthly takes a close look at the
issue considered top priority among the state's educators: Affordable insurance on a par
with other state employees.
Two very
different private education companies The two biggest players in the private K-12 arena are Edison Schools and Nobel Learning Communities. Nobel is profitable while Edison continues to bleed red. So why is Edison's stock in the 30's while Nobel's trades in single digits?
A Harvard study indicates so called "soft" news results in far fewer consumers than when substantial happenings are discussed. "Critical journalism" could also be discouraging traditional news junkies.
Changing
of the guard Out with the old, in with the new. Education Week takes a look at the Bush Administration's sweeping changes planned for the educational landscape.
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This page updated 12/27/01 |