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What They've Thought
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What They Thought September 24, 2006 Alan
Caruba Click here for columnist bios |
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It is an act of thievery to take money to provide goods or services and then fail to do so. Our nation’s schools have become a great criminal conspiracy, promising to educate our children, but more often producing “graduates” without even the most basic skills, let alone a useful, wider body of knowledge. “My daughter is now 20 years old,” one mother wrote to me recently. “After graduating from high school in June 2005, she enrolled at the local community college. It was necessary for her to take a placement test and it was determined she needed to take Basic Skills Math and English before she could take [college level courses]. After failing both classes twice, she will not be returning. It breaks my heart to see that she can’t pass a basic math or English class. How did she graduate high school?” The answer is that her parents were heavily levied with property taxes, the vast portion of which was then given to the local school system to pay teachers' and administrators' salaries, along with all the other costs of operation. They, in turn, passed her daughter along, unmindful and indifferent to whether she learned anything. “She has been robbed of a basic education and we have been robbed of our tax dollars for 19 years.” Early in his first term, President Bush embraced the “No Child Left Behind” legislation that has since been found wanting for its one-size-fits-all approach to education, its over-emphasis on testing, and its punishment of “under-performing” schools. The result has been to expose most schools as inadequate and to encourage every form of administrative cheating necessary for a school to meet the standards set by the law. The idea was to force some improvement on a system everyone already knew was failing students. Laws, however, do not educate students. Teachers are expected to do that and it is no surprise that the National Education Association — a union — hated the idea of improvement. Indeed, from the 1960s to the present day, the NEA has done its best to undermine, if not destroy, a system of education that served previous generations of Americans quite well. In the July/August edition of The American Enterprise, Jay Greene, wrote “Education Myths: Debunking the fictions that obstruct school reform.” The article was based on Greene’s book of the same name. Here are just a few examples of how schools rob parents to pay teachers who are producing students deliberately rendered ignorant. The standard answer to any question about the quality of our schools is the demand for more funding. The truth, however, is that “spending per student has been growing steadily for 50 years.” It has doubled and then doubled again. What did not occur, however, was any significant improvement in test scores, particularly since the introduction in the 1970s of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Okay, we may be spending more on schools, but isn’t it true that teachers still aren’t paid enough? No, if the poorly educated students they produce are the standard, they are vastly over-paid. “The average teacher’s salary does seem modest at first glace”, wrote Greene, “about $44,600 in 2002 for all teachers.” However, teachers only work nine months a year. A nurse making the same salary works twelve months with two week’s vacation and perhaps ten paid holidays. The statistics are damning evidence they are paid well for far less actual work than comparable jobs. Another favorite myth is “that schools are helpless in the face of social problems is not supported by hard evidence,” wrote Greene. “The truth is that certain schools do a strikingly better job than others at overcoming challenges in the culture.” There is a reason why parents clamor for school choice, vouchers, when they know that some schools do a better job. Competition and incentives for the better schools would raise the standards for all schools. Class size is yet another myth. Greene notes, “Research suggests there may be some advantages to smaller classes — though, if so, the benefits are modest and come at a very high price tag.” There is ample evidence that reducing class sizes is costly to the point of taking money from the purchase of books, equipment, and other reforms that would benefit students. In most professions and trade, certification is regarded as a reliable sign that practitioners have demonstrated a reasonable level of expertise. “One of the strongest and most consistent findings in the entire body of research on teacher quality is that teaching certificates and master’s degrees in education are irrelevant to classroom performance.” When the teacher corps is drawn from those college graduates who enter the profession for a lack of aptitude that would give them access to other, presumably better paying jobs, you end up with classrooms filled with people who may know barely more than their students. Or worse, are teaching classes on subjects for which they have no real skill, nor knowledge. “According to the U.S. Department of Education, the average private school charged $4,689 per student in tuition for the 1999-2000 school years. That same year, the average public school spent $8,032 per pupil.” Somehow, private schools are able to out-perform public schools when it comes to imparting knowledge and skills despite the fact their students have less than half as much funding as public school students and the success of home-schooled students over their contemporaries is already legendary. The entire education establishment, frequently advocating the teaching of values at odds with those held by parents, has ruined our nation’s schools and are defrauding taxpayers by failing to truly educate the children placed in their care. |
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No column this week. R.A. Hawkins Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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Over the summer, Geno’s Steaks in Philly made national headlines when owner Joey Vento posted a sign in his window saying: “This is America. When ordering, speak English.” The whole City of Philadelphia could use the same reminder. In fact, so could the country. I don’t know what the hell language we’re speaking in America. But whatever it is, English isn’t it. Last week, Philly became the latest city to ban smoking in public places. This was the culmination of several years and about 8,000 near misses on the part of local anti-smoking forces. Right up until the final hours, some people feared Mayor John Street would veto the legislation. Not because he opposed it, but because it wasn’t tough enough. The ban covers smoking in most bars and restaurants; Mayor Street wanted one that included sidewalk cafés. Nevertheless, he signed it — pinching his nose with one hand, holding a pen with the other. People treated this as some sort of victory. Yet anyone with any understanding of English could’ve predicted it. Philadelphia was always going to pass anti-smoking legislation. If it didn’t happen now, it was going to happen eventually. Once planted in a region’s imagination, smoking bans take on a death-and-taxes certainty. It’s never a matter of if they will happen, but how they will happen, when they will happen, and who will get to take credit for it. This is partly because anti-smoking groups are tenacious, and partly because smoking is a crappy habit. However, neither of these things explain why smoking bans are becoming inevitable. The real reason so many cities have banned smoking in public places is because of the words “public places.” Somehow, this phrase has come to describe privately owned bars and restaurants, which, by nature, tend to be privately owned. Just because you go “out in public” to visit these places doesn’t make them public any more than having sex in a park in broad daylight makes the park private. There’s an obvious difference between public and private property, and reasonable human beings can spot this difference. Unfortunately, this country is full of something, but it isn’t reasonable human beings. I don’t care if it sounds like I’m splitting hairs here. To me, this isn’t an issue of mere semantics. If you call privately owned bars and restaurants “public places,” it tells me you don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you shouldn’t be making — or even so much as influencing — policy. No one should care about your opinion. I’m not even sure you should have the right to vote. As a moron, you are just annoying enough to solve every problem in the worst and most uncreative way. Usually, this means imposing your preferences on others, instead of giving your fellow citizens a choice. Smoking bans are a typical case in point. Over the last few years, dozens of smoke-free bars and restaurants have opened up in Philly and the surrounding area. These restaurants are doing what all good restaurants do: They’re catering to people’s desires. Sometimes this means serving Italian food when customers want Italian food; other times it means banning smoking when customers don’t like smoking. In a world that made sense, someone would’ve stepped back, taken a look at this trend, and concluded a Philadelphia smoking ban was unnecessary. Smoke-free establishments would continue to exist side-by-side with smoking establishments, and everyone would be happy because everyone would get their way. Instead, we’ve decided not to be happy unless everyone does everything exactly like we do. This is what you get when you don’t even know what the words “public place” mean. When you don’t understand the idea of private property, you tend to think every place on the planet needs the same rules. Jonathan David Morris Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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Last week I spoke about simple steps Congress should take to address the problem of illegal immigration. Simple, however, does not mean easy. While the American people are demanding real immigration reform, many in Washington lack the political will to do what is required. That’s why I’ve joined my colleagues in the House Immigration Reform caucus in demanding legislation this year that focuses on securing physical control of our borders while rejecting amnesty in any form. Congress has taken notice, and took an important first step last week by passing the Secure Fence Act of 2006 — legislation that provides physical security by lengthening border walls and creating a virtual border fence that extends thousands of miles. But many Senators, Representatives, and administration officials remain committed to pursuing amnesty in some form. The dictionary defines amnesty as a general pardon for offenders by a government, and most of the immigration reform proposals in both chambers of Congress certainly meet that definition. Millions of people who broke the law by entering, staying, and working in our country will not be punished, but rather rewarded with a visa and ultimately citizenship. This is amnesty, plain and simple. Lawbreakers are given legal status, while those seeking to immigrate legally face years of paperwork and long waits for a visa. What message does this send to the rest of the world? If we reward millions who came here illegally, surely millions more will follow suit. Ten years from now we will be in the same position, with a whole new generation of lawbreakers seeking amnesty. The immigration problem fundamentally is a welfare state problem. Some illegal immigrants-- certainly not all-- receive housing subsidies, food stamps, free medical care, and other forms of welfare. This alienates taxpayers and breeds suspicion of immigrants, even though the majority of them work very hard. Without a welfare state, we would know that everyone coming to America wanted to work hard and support himself. Since we have accepted a permanent welfare state, however, we cannot be surprised when some freeloaders and criminals are attracted to our shores. Welfare muddies the question of why immigrants want to come here. Illegal immigrants also threaten to place a tremendous strain on federal social entitlement programs. Successive administrations support so-called “totalization” agreements that allow millions of illegal immigrants to qualify for Social Security and other programs- programs that already threaten financial ruin for America in the coming decades. Adding millions of foreign citizens to the Social Security, Medicare, and disability rolls will only hasten the inevitable day of reckoning. Social Security is in serious trouble already, and sending benefits abroad to millions of illegal aliens who once worked here will cost hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. Every American who hopes to collect Social Security someday should stridently oppose totalization and amnesty proposals. The problems associated with illegal immigration will not be solved overnight, but we cannot begin to address them until we take the hard steps of securing the borders, rejecting amnesty, and reclaiming our right as a sovereign nation to control immigration without apology. Rep. Ron Paul Web Site Back to Top |
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Research proves that effective reading teachers know how students learn to read (acquisition), how to teach students to read (instruction), how to judge how well students read (assessment), and how to strengthen students’ reading skills (remediation). Despite this, only three out of sixteen Reading First Education Network States require their licensed elementary school teachers demonstrate proficient knowledge of the essential components of reading instruction: phonemic awareness; phonics; vocabulary development; reading fluency; and reading comprehension strategies. While tests specifically designed as reading licensure tests, such as: the California Reading Instruction Competency Assessment (RICA), the Virginia Reading Assessment (VRA), the Massachusetts Foundations of Reading test, and the ETS Praxis 0201: Reading Across the Curriculum: Elementary) are aligned with the five components of effective reading instruction as defined by scientifically based reading research (SBRR), general tests commonly used for initial licensure of elementary teachers, are not aligned with SBRR. States that depend upon these more generic licensure tests do not have a good measure of the knowledge or skills of new teachers in terms of reading instruction. Indeed, state licensure test questions are more often reflective of ideology. The Language Arts standards set by these states do not necessarily specify any or all five components of proven effective reading instruction be utilized in adopted reading curriculum. Although Title II requires teachers pass licensure tests, the content tested in the general tests does not assure “best practice” in teaching. Certainly, “the data from state licensing tests, the alignment of those tests with standards, and the alignment of specialty professional association standards with knowledge from research and practice—are all significant considerations for accreditation,”1 yet one must question how schools of education, state boards of education, accrediting agencies and test manufacturers are actually being held accountable for what eventually takes place in the classroom? Isn’t that part of NCLB? Instead of offering tutoring or restructuring individual schools, shouldn’t the “housecleaning” start from the top? As was explained by Reid Lyon, in Developing an American College of Education, “Colleges of education are not accountable for what their graduates know and how that knowledge affects students in their graduate’s classrooms... You only have to look at the billions of dollars that states and districts are spending on professional development for teachers already teaching to understand the gravity of this situation. Why in the world would schools have to re-teach concepts to teachers that they should already know?”2 Sadly, my own personal experience has been that classes providing teachers continuing professional development often end up being based on more of the same non scientific ideology. Is it fair, then, to fault an individual teacher, principal, or even an at risk environment for students’ failure to make adequate yearly progress in reading when teachers are not required to demonstrate proficiency in “best practice” to begin with? In a recent report, Educating School Teachers, the National Council for the Accreditation of School teachers (NCATE) is seen as “more a part of the problem than the solution.” 3 The author of the report, Arthur Levine writes that, “Teacher education is the Dodge City of the education world…. Like the fabled Wild West town, it is unruly and chaotic. Anything goes and the chaos is increasing.” 4 One of his conclusions is that students seem “to be graduating from teacher education programs without the skills and knowledge they need to be effective teachers.” 5 His recommendations include changing accreditation standards and making student achievement the primary measure of teacher preparation programs. 6 An established illustrator/artist and old friend of mine once asked me why I thought so many adults drew the exact same way as when they were kids. She went on to explain that no one had taught them how to “see”. Her students were wonderful artists because she used direct teaching strategies. Best practice in reading includes direct teaching, as well. Recently, the mainstream media reported on a government audit that accused the Reading First program of being “beset by conflicts of interest and willful mismanagement. It suggests the department broke the law by trying to dictate which curriculum schools must use.” 7 The director of Reading First was accused of repeatedly using, “his influence to steer money toward states that used a reading approach he favored, called Direct Instruction, or DI.”8 Anyone who knows anything about effective reading instruction should understand that a large percentage of students require direct instruction in order to learn how to read. This type of knowledge is…well…, elementary. However, judging from the most recent reports about accreditation and licensure, it doesn’t appear that very many people in the field of education are aware of or have been made to demonstrate proficient knowledge of the essential components of reading instruction. As for the mainstream media, they need to turn in some extra credit or they receive an “F” for not doing their homework on this subject before defaming some in the education community and trying to sell it to the American people. 7, 8 Bush reading program gets failing grade 2 Developing an American College of Education An Interview with G. Reid Lyon 4, 5 Educating School Teachers 1 Report on Licensure Alignment with the Essential Components of Effective Reading Instruction 3 Teacher Preparation and Licensure Nancy
Salvato
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©2004-2006 by their respective authors. Reprinted by permission. |
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