When Good News Really Isn't

I'm currently reading a fascinating book by Dr. Daniel Koretz, a psychometrician at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, called Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us. In the book, Dr. Koretz talks a lot about the pitfalls of high-stakes standardized testing schemes such as those required by the No Child Left Behind Act. He devotes an entire chapter to the topic of score inflation.

I was reminded of this book today when I read an article in the New York Times about how New York State has reduced the passing score for its math test from 60% correct in 2006 to a mere 44% today. An investigation by the NYT found that a student who randomly guesses on all question now has an 89% chance of receiving a passing score.

Federal tests do not show the same kind of dramatic increase in passing rates that the New York state tests have in recent years. In fact, math scores have been stagnant on the 8th grade NAEP exams since 2003 and 4th graders have only made minimal progress. SAT math scores in the state have actually dropped by 18 points since 2005.

The jump in scores on state tests helped 97% of schools in New York City earn ratings of "A" or "B" on their state Dept. of Ed. report cards. Does anybody seriously believe that 97% of NYC schools actually are doing a good job at educating their students? Nearly 40% of all students in the city do not complete high school, including 49% of African-Americans and 52% of Latinos. Nearly 3/4 of those who do manage to graduate and enroll in college require remediation in at least one subject.

Families deserve to know the truth about how their students are faring. It is unethical to lower the bar and then trumpet the "progress" that has been made :-(

On Overrated Rich Schools

Via the "Kitchen Table Math" blog, I came across an interesting debate about "nominally high performing" schools. That is, schools located in affluent neighborhoods that score reasonably well on standardized tests because of their demographics but in reality are actually mediocre. Like the one my own children are zoned to attend, which is ranked in the top 10% statewide but the bottom 20% when compared to other schools with similar demographic profiles. I was especially struck by the following:

"Parents and school boards in affluent communities may not want to hear that the teaching in their schools is mediocre. The accountability system does not call attention to the problems of instructional quality in these schools, nor does it reinforce efforts to solve them....Unlike low-performing schools, which may be galvanized by external pressure to improve, so-called high-performing schools must often swim against a tide of complacency to generate support for change."

I get so frustrated at the perception gap in my town. "We're a California Distinguished School!" the school boasts. "We moved here because of the good schools!" beams an acquaintance. I just smile politely but inside I want to scream, "wake up and smell the coffee, people! Things aren't as hunky-dory as you all seem to believe they are!"

Laura McKenna over at the "11D" blog takes a more blase view of the problem of underperforming affluent schools:

"First of all, you should not rely on your schools to educate your kids. I spend a lot of time with my kids teaching them random things. If Jonah's doing his homework, I will be there in the room using the homework as a jumping board for my own lesson. If he does sloppy work, I make him redo it. I reteach the math lessons. We'll go up to the computer to look up a country in Africa. No school does this."

If a parent has to "afterschool" in order to make up for the academic deficiencies of the school, then what's the point of enrolling the child in the first place? Why not just homeschool and free up the child's afternoons for enrichment activities and unstructured play?

Laura follows up with a post detailing a number of the things she dislikes about her kids' school:

"Jonah's teachers have been terrible about math. They don't do enough repetition of math facts, and they just explain things really badly.

They don't do handwriting anymore, because the teachers tell me that all work will happen on laptops in the future.

Their time in specials (art, library, computers, health) is a complete waste of time.

They don't do enough writing.

They are not preparing the kids for good colleges. In fact, the head administrators seem to think that college consists of kids working in groups on laptop computers. They aren't preparing the kids for big lecture halls and blue books.

They assign book reports that consist largely of art projects that the parents complete.

They assign stupid homework like word searches and crossword puzzles."

So again my question is- if the academics are so lacking, why bother sending her kids there in the first place?

Is it "socialization"? I discussed that issue a couple weeks ago. Also, just today I was reading the newsletter from my town mothers' club when I came across a humor piece in written by a woman whose oldest child is a kindergartner. Here is an excerpt from it:

"They say a parent's influence only makes a difference for about the first seven years of a child's life. Well, make that five years. As soon as they enter the stream of public education and co-mingle with the throngs, they soak up everything like a sponge: the latest YouTube videos, the trendiest fashion fads, the most in-vogue vernacular. Soon you'll find yourself made obsolete as the go-to source of all things hip and happenin' and you feel as redundant as yesterday's newspaper (wait, make that newspapers, period)."

Yeah, I think I'll take a pass on this kind of "socialization" of my kids.

Now, quite possibly Laura is employed outside the home and is looking to her kids' school to provide childcare while she is at her job. I don't know her situation so I'm not going to make a judgment about that one way or the other. But for me personally, I'm a full-time homemaker and (God willing) plan to stay that way for a while. So that's not a reason for me to put my kids in a subpar school. I'm only going to enroll them in a school that would do a better job educating them than I can do myself. And that's definitely not my local government-run school...

What's Up With the Adoption of "Fuzzy Math" in Silicon Valley?

A few weeks ago I ranted blogged about how my local district voted to adopt the notorious "Every Day Mathematics" program. As it turns out, my district is not the only one in the area making the switch. The "Kitchen Table Math" blog has an excellent series of posts on the battle over the adoption of EM in Palo Alto.

I just don't understand why the districts are pushing to switch their math programs now. Doesn't it cost a lot of money to buy new materials and train teachers to use them? Aren't the schools facing huge cuts to their budgets because of the state's economic crisis? Not that I think that they should ever adopt a "fuzzy math" program like EM or TERC Investigations. But it strikes me as a spectacularly bad waste of scarce resources at the present time.

"Fuzzy" Math Coming to My Town, Ugh!

To stay informed, I make it a habit to read the summary published in the local paper of the school district board meeting. I may not enroll my own kids in the government-run schools, but I am very concerned about education especially in light of California's current budget crisis.

So last week I was checking out the summary from the recent board meeting when, buried among the numerous other items, I come across the following:

"Approved the Elementary Math Committee's recommendation of Everyday Math for the [district] math program."

The notorious Everyday Math? The one that eschews teaching kids traditional algorithms in favor of calculator use? The one that has students answering inane questions such as "If math were a color, it would be [blank], because [blank]", "If it were a food, it would be [blank], because [blank]", "If it were weather, it would be [blank], because [blank]". That Everyday Math? Seriously?

I went to the district website to see if I could find out any additional information on the school board's decision. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I could not find any information on the members of this math committee, nor whether there was any sort of parental/community input.

I smell something rotten in the state of Denmark. Why all this secrecy around the adoption of Everyday Math?

The next town over uses EM. Over the weekend, I bought some Girl Scout cookies there. The 2nd grader I bought them from struggled to figure out the correct change from a $20 bill for a $16 purchase. I don't think that 20 -16 = 4 should be all that difficult for a student seven months into 2nd grade, know what I mean? The Right Start Mathematics Level C that I'm using with Miss Scarlet (designed for 2nd graders) has students mentally subtracting a 2 digit number from a 3 digit number with regrouping (e.g. 103 - 58) in lesson 86. The table of contents for Saxon Math Grade 2 lists subtracting 2 digit numbers in lesson 109. Singapore Primary Math 2A also lists subtracting two and three digit numbers with regrouping. So 3 of the math programs popular with homeschoolers all expect 2nd grade students to solve even harder subtraction problems.

EDITED: I found a scope & sequence for Everyday Math Grade 2, and their goal is for students to do 2 digit subtraction "using manipulatives, number grids, tally marks, and calculators." It isn't until 4th grade (!) that students are expected to do subtraction with "automaticity".

I find it a bit ironic that just about the same time my local school board voted to adopt EM, a study for the U.S. Department of Education found that the traditional Saxon led to significantly higher student math achievement than the similarly "fuzzy" Investigations.

I predict there will be a surge in enrollment at the local Kumon tutoring center...

Average American Fails Civic Literacy Quiz

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has released the results of its 3rd annual Civic Literacy quiz, and they're pretty dismal. 71% of respondents failed the quiz; the average score was only 49% correct. A mere 0.8% of those surveyed received an "A", yikes! Those in my age group (25-34) got only 46% correct. College graduates only did slightly better than average, with a still mediocre 57%.

I'm pleased that I only missed one question, for a score of 96.97 % :-) And it was an economics-related question, which is a subject I have never formally studied. I had narrowed down the choices to 2 possibilities and simply guessed wrong.

You can take the quiz here.

Latin Making a Comeback in Schools

There's so much disheartening news about the state of K-12 schooling in this country that it's refreshing whenever I see an article about a positive trend, such as the article in today's New York Times entitled "Latin Returns From Dead in School Languages Curriculum".

Enrollment is booming in Latin courses across the country, with the language expected to surpass German as the 3rd most popular foreign language taught in schools. The number of students taking the Advanced Placement exam has doubled over the past 10 years, and the number taking the National Latin Exam has increased by roughly 1/3.

The president of the American Philological Association, Adam Blistein, told the NYT that studying Latin builds vocabulary and grammar for higher SAT scores, appeals to college admissions officers as a sign of critical-thinking skills and fosters true intellectual passion.

Students who study Latin in high school have average SAT-Verbal scores significantly higher than students who study French, German, or Spanish. Some of this may be due to selection bias, but learning Latin provides a real advantage in figuring out the meaning of unfamiliar English words. 90% of English words over 2 syllables are of Latin derivation.

I have not yet started my DD on the study of Latin but I think I will once we reach Ancient Rome in history (which I'm guessing will most likely be this coming spring). The hard part is choosing from among the many interesting looking programs for elementary Latin instruction. Minimus? Learning Latin Through Mythology? Catholic Heritage Curricula's Little Latin Readers? The American Classical League's Activitates Pro Liberis?

If NCLB Applied to Football

I couldn't find the original source on a quick Google search, but I personally came across it in one of the comments on Tamara Fisher's blog "Unwrapping the Gifted".

No Child Left Behind: The Football Version

1. All teams must make the state playoffs, and all will win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time in the same conditions. No exceptions will be made for interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabiliites. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL.

3. Talented players will be asked to work out on their own without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who are not interested in football, have limited athletic ability, or whose parents don't like football.

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th games.

5. This will create a New Age of sports where school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimal goals.

Education or Indoctrination in Oakland?

Oakland's government-run schools don't exactly have a stellar academic reputation. Consider these dreadful statistics:

• Only 45% of the students graduate from high school.
  
• Only 45% of Oakland's 10th graders were able to pass the California High School Exit Exam in math (which tests only up through 8th grade math) and only 48% were able to pass the CAHSEE in English on the first try, more than 15 percentage points below the statewide averages.
  
• A mere 3% of Oakland's 11th graders were deemed academically ready for college-level English and only 6% were ready for college-level math on the Cal State "Early Assessment Program" tests.

Sounds to me like the kids in Oakland's government-run schools really need their teachers to focus on academic basics- wouldn't you agree?

So why, then, did more than two dozen of them Thursday shelve their regular curriculum in favor of teaching about:

"topics like the war in Iraq, racial inequality and a recent 10 percent cut in the state schools budget...Teachers from elementary school to adult education classes allowed students to discuss everything from whether the United States was committing acts of violence against innocent people to whether American businesses were getting rich on the backs of the poor"?

I could see touching upon these topics in an Advanced Placement U.S. History, World History, Government, or Economics course, since those students presumably have a solid grounding in the basics and therefore should be able to hold a reasonably intelligent policy discussion.

But it is clear to me that the Oakland students lack the background knowledge to make any sort of reasonable argument and therefore the exercise is nothing but propaganda. Just listen to this quote from a 12th grader attempting to discuss California's proposed budget cuts:

"We don’t have any money because it’s all going to the war. And now they’re shutting all this stuff down."

It does not appear that Ashley Lawless has much understanding of the workings of the Federal and state governments and their budgets, nor even which part is responsible for paying for what. The Iraq war may indirectly be worsening California's current budget crunch, in that geopolitical instability in the Gulf is driving up energy costs, contributing to the downturn in the economy and resulting in lower tax revenues. But Ms. Lawless seems to believe that the Federal money spent on the Iraq war is directly causing a reduction in state funding available for education. And worse, Oakland's teachers appear to be encouraging this fundamental misunderstanding!

"One worksheet handed out to students was blunt in its assessment of the current events: 'About 1,000,000 Iraqis are dead and 4,000 American soldiers. The war will cost the U.S. about $2.8 trillion. Our schools don’t have money. Many people don’t have health care.'"

Wow, where to start in discussing this little gem of ultraliberal propaganda? How about with the allegation of one million Iraqis killed? The number of Iraqi civilian casualties is hotly debated, with wide variations in the estimates ranging from roughly 100,000 to the one million claimed in the worksheet. No one knows what the true number is, but it's reasonable to assume that it's somewhere in the middle. Still a tragedy and I'm certainly no fan of President Bush or his administration's handling of the Iraq war. The whole situation is a huge mess :-( But the Oakland teachers have no business presenting only one viewpoint as "the truth" about the war.

Also, I find it very interesting what was *NOT* discussed as contributing to California's budget woes: the enormous (and quickly growing) number of illegal aliens in the state. There are an estimated 3.5 million illegal aliens in the state, a number that has grown by an estimated *1.5 MILLION* since the year 2000. According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the estimated cost of providing K-12 education to children of illegal aliens in California is *$7.7 BILLION* per year as of 2004. Another *$1.4 BILLION* goes toward health care for illegal aliens and their families and *$1.4 BILLION* is spent on incarceration of foreign nationals. California is facing an estimated $16 billion budget shortfall this year. The $10.5 billion spent annually on government services for illegal aliens and their children would go a long way in solving this fiscal crisis without raising taxes or fees on California's legal residents!

My point is not to bash immigrants, but to point out the hypocrisy shown by Oakland teachers. They were clearly not interested in an intelligent policy discussion of the multidimensional causes of California's budget woes but rather in using class time to further their own political agenda :-(

Busywork Leading Gifted Kids to Underachieve

I got a huge sense of deja vu when reading last week's "Extra Credit" column from The Washington Post. It's about a gifted student who rebelled at all the busywork required by his high school and how his grades suffered as a result:

"To minimize frustration, we focused my son on learning, not grades. If he could get a 100 on an exam without doing the homework, we believed his time was better spent doing another activity in which he actually learned something...My son received a C-plus in his chemistry class because he didn't do all of his assigned work and received zeros on many of the 18 assignments. The class didn't move fast enough to cover all of the material, so he did different work -- on his own -- and handed notes to his teacher and classmates to help them. He's the only student in the history of the school to get a 5 on the AP chemistry exam, but this type of result never gets fed back into the course grade."

Boy, does that remind me of my younger brother! He has an IQ that places him in the "highly gifted" range but just barely graduated high school. His grades were all over the place depending on whether he liked the subject and the particular teacher. He aced tests but rebelled against anything he considered to be "busywork". Whereas I hated all the stupid busywork but was willing to put up with it to get the "A", he refused to "play the game". He would rather take a low grade (even failing) than waste his time doing too-easy assignments. He did very well on the SAT's and was accepted to a specialized music college willing to overlook his uneven grades in favor of his musical talent. He excelled in a challenging audio technology and computer synthesis program that played into his strengths of math and music and is doing fine today.

The letter-writer regrets sending her son to a traditional government-run school and wishes that she'd homeschooled him. She writes:

"After paying considerable Virginia taxes for the past 36 years, I feel cheated that top Virginia state schools won't let him in because of his high school record. If he had been home-schooled, they'd have had to look at his same test grades and SAT subject test scores and let him in."

Her son is on track to graduate high school and has been accepted to college despite his lackluster GPA. Like my brother, he appears to come from a stable, middle-class family that values education. He'll presumably be able to overcome the underachievement of his secondary schooling years and go on to reasonable success as an adult.

A significant number of gifted kids are not so fortunate, however. An estimated 20% of high school dropouts have an IQ >120, even though only 10% of the population meets that cutoff. These gifted dropouts are disproportionately likely to be from low-income families. How many of them wind up using their talents in negative ways, such as crime? What is the cost to our society for our failure to help our brightest young minds reach their full potential?

Homeschooling is certainly an excellent option for gifted kids, but not all families are able or willing to homeschool. There need to be better educational opportunities for gifted students available in traditional schools. In many places, gifted students from families unable to afford the pricey tuitions for private GATE schools (our local one charges $23k per child per year for elementary) are plumb out of luck :-(

"Fuzzy Math", Afterschooling, and the Achievement Gap

There's a very interesting article in today's Washington Post about how parents in Prince William County are fighting back against the introduction of "fuzzy math" into their kids' elementary schools.

What struck me most was the increase in "afterschooling" as a result of the new program. Because the government-run schools are failing to teach the kids how to actually calculate, parents now have to spend their time and money supplementing. The afterschoolers cited in the WP article are engineers and former math teachers- what about those parents whose own math skills aren't as strong? If they can afford it, there's always online courses such as Johns Hopkins' CTY ($1825/yr) and Stanford's EPGY ($1485/yr) or tutoring at the local Kumon center ($110/mo). But what about families who don't have that kind of cash?

Prince William County already has a significant racial and an income achievement gap. While 88% of Caucasian students passed the state standardized math test in 2007, only 72% of African-American and Latino students passed. Only 68% of poor students passed compared with an overall student passing rate of 81%.

The children who will be most hurt by the "fuzzy math" program are those whose parents are less educated and less affluent (who are also disproportionately African-American or Latino). These families also have less ability to simply move to a town with better schools or to enroll their kids in a private school.

Let's hope that the parents in Prince William County succeed in their attempt to eliminate "fuzzy math" from their schools!

The 10 Most Famous American Historical Figures

USA Today had an article last week about a survey of 2,000 high school juniors and seniors in all 50 states. They were asked to name 10 of the most famous Americans in history. After reading their responses, I posed the same question to my 5 year old DD. Here are her answers:

1. George Washington
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Benjamin Franklin
4. Paul Revere
5. Thomas Edison
6. Alexander Graham Bell
7. Neil Armstrong

She also guessed Pasteur, Mozart, and Bach. Okay, so her understanding of the national origin of historical figures is still a little fuzzy at this point :-) But overall she managed to come up with a respectable list.

The answers given by the government-school educated teens?

1. Martin Luther King Jr.: 67%

2. Rosa Parks: 60%

3. Harriet Tubman: 44%

4. Susan B. Anthony: 34%

5.Benjamin Franklin: 29%

6. Amelia Earhart: 25%

7. Oprah Winfrey: 22%

8. Marilyn Monroe: 19%

9. Thomas Edison: 18%

10. Albert Einstein: 16%

So there's an overlap of exactly 2 individuals. I'll leave it up to you to decide which list you think does a better job at answering the question...

(HT: Grant Jones at "The Dugout")

Defaulting on the Promissory Note

Today we set aside regular lessons in our homeschool for a discussion of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the struggle for civil rights in this country. As I read Rev. King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech to my five year old and explained its meaning to her, it occurred to me that many of those who attended schools named in his honor might not be able to do the same.

Jonathan Kozol gave statistics in his 2005 book The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America about just how segregated schools named for Rev. King or other civil rights heroes such as Thurgood Marshall & Rosa Parks are- typically 96-99% of students are African-American or Latino and most live in poverty. A shamefully large percentage of the students drop out, and many of those who do earn enough credits to graduate struggle to pass exit exams testing 10th grade English and 8th grade math skills. Kozol describes these schools as "tense, disorderly, socially unhappy, and often violent."

Rev. King's speech is filled with complex vocabulary and literary and historical allusions. For example, standing near the Lincoln Memorial he said:

"Fivescore years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice."

To understand this passage, one needs to be familiar with Abraham Lincoln, the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the terrible conditions existing under slavery. One must also know the definitions of "momentous", "decree", "beacon", "seared", "withering", etc. Without the relevant background knowledge, the passage is not going to make much sense.

For somebody like me who attended one of the best public schools in the state where I grew up, it is easy to grasp. But too many students of color in the U.S. are not receiving the type of education that would permit them to comprehend Rev. King's poetic and inspiring speech. De jure segregation has been replaced by de facto segregation.

It is shameful that over four decades have passed since Rev. King's speech and there still exists in this country such inequality of educational opportunity.

Britain to Ban Teachers from Promoting Academics to Pupils

Despite criticism that Britain's new "National Vocational Qualifications" have "absolutely no significant economic value to their holders", the government is proposing to ban teachers from promoting the traditional academic qualifications known as A-levels. Under the proposal, schools will be legally required to provide "impartial advice" and "must not promote any particular options." Even if one option is clearly superior to the others, teachers would need to pretend that they're all equally valid.

While this type of relativism is sadly nothing new for schools in terms of the way they treat cultural values, I find it extremely disturbing to see it extended to the realm of academics. Britain's children deserve better, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. These children are significantly less likely than wealthier ones to have informed and involved parents encouraging them to strive for A-levels. Teachers have a responsibility to their students to help them achieve their potential as best the teachers can. The government has no business interfering with that duty!

The Return of "Fuzzy" Math to CA

By now, I would imagine most of you have seen the classic YouTube video on the problems with the Everyday Mathematics textbook series. If you haven't, click here. While there has been a lot of media attention paid to the state of Texas' recent rejection of Everyday Math, there has been virtually none surrounding the California School Board's decision on November 30th to include it on the approved textbook list. I personally had no idea this had happened until I happened to see a brief mention of it in an article on Everyday Math in the Alburquerque [NM] Journal.

The textbook watchdog organization Educational Research Analysts recently reviewed eight 3rd grade mathematics textbooks including Everyday Math and also Saxon Math, a program that's popular with many homeschooling families. As you can see on this chart, Everyday Math was rated the worst overall. Some of the comments (emphasis in the original):

"Instead of teaching addition with regrouping, Everyday Math's 'focus algorithm' for addition is 'partial sums', a cumbersome, time-consuming, less efficient, more laborious, non-standard method....

Cumbersome, time-consuming, less efficient, more laborious, unduly complicated 'extended facts', 'partial products', and 'lattice' methods replace the standard simple multiplication algorithm....

Admits that a 'formal introduction to division algorithms is not included'....

Every lesson calls for small group and partner activities...

Heavy calculator dependence....

With the most calculator-dependence, peer-dependence, and the fewest practice problems of all eight 3rd grade math editions submitted by major publishers for 2008 Texas adoption, Everyday Math RETARDS SKILL BUILDING."

This is what California's Board of Ed. has decided is acceptable for use in the state's schools? This is what their report had to say about Everyday Mathematics:

"The program provides clear, grade-appropriate explanations for mathematics concepts, and clear instructions for efficient use of manipulatives to promote student learning."

Is the textbook committee looking at the same program that is the one on the YouTube video? The same one that earned such negative reviews by the folks over at ERA? The same one that parents all over the country are up in arms about? The same one rejected by the state in 2001 after significant public outrage over its deficiencies?

So why is it back in California's government-run schools? Chalk one up to the power of the educrats, who are absolutely convinced of the merits of "constructivism" regardless of what parents and the general public want.

Every time I turn around, it seems like I read about a new reason to avoid California's government-run schools. If they're not passing laws to force schools to promote alternative lifestyles to children as young as 2, they're bringing back "fuzzy" math.

Why Colleges Shouldn't Eliminate Admissions Tests

The high school I attended did not weight honors or Advanced Placement classes in its calculation of students' grade point averages. Because of this, kids who took less-challenging classes for easy A's wound up with higher GPA's than those who enrolled in harder classes & received B's. Several very bright & hardworking classmates of mine missed the cutoff for our school's chapter of the National Honor Society as a result of this policy while lazier kids got in. While it did not hurt me directly since I did well in honors & AP classes, I always felt it to be both unfair and anti-intellectual. Students should be rewarded for challenging themselves with rigorous coursework, not penalized.

There is an interesting article in today's Washington Post entitled "Grading Disparities Peeve Parents." It discusses research detailing just how wide grading disparities are. Robert Hartranft, a retired nuclear engineer from Simsbury, CT, analyzed the College Board's data to find that just 29% of SAT-takers from CT reported having an A- or better average, compared with 37% in VA, 40% in CA, 42% in FL, and 49% in TX. Overall, schools in New England were the toughest graders while those in the Sunbelt were the most generous.

When Hartranft looked at the average math + verbal SAT scores of those students reporting an A- GPA, he found that those in TX averaged 1039, those in VA averaged 1095, and those in CT an 1146.

Using the 2007 ACT data, 35% of CT's college-bound seniors demonstrated college-level readiness in all 4 subjects tested compared with 23% in VA and only 19% in TX. Unsurprisingly, 10% of students at CT public 4-yr colleges needed remedial coursework compared to 21% in VA and 24% in TX.

As a whole, this data suggests that grade inflation is rampant in this country and it's giving students a false impression of their readiness for higher education.

There's been a big push in recent years by educrats to eliminate college admissions tests such as the SAT and ACT. The complaint is that certain racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups average significantly lower scores than other groups. While this is true, the test itself isn't the real problem- it's merely the result of the fact that too many poor and minority students are stuck in lousy schools.

Research has shown that private school students show a significantly smaller racial & ethnic gap, one which is virtually eliminated for students from families with a high religious commitment. Additionally, there is no significant racial or ethnic differences in standardized test scores among home educated students. Providing a high-quality education to all students, regardless of their color is the solution to the "achievement gap".

Penn Dean Wants to Ban Fractions

I'm no math whiz, but I've never considered fractions to be particularly difficult. They are one of the math topics I find most useful in my day-to-day life. While I can't remember the last time I had to say, calculate the volume of a cylinder [I had to look up that formula, which in case you're curious is V=(pi x diameter squared x height)/4)], I'm constantly using fractions to adjust the batch size of a recipe.

Dr. Dennis DeTurck, mathematics professor and dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, has written a book to be published next year calling for a reform of mathematics education to eliminate the teaching of fractions, long division, square roots, and pencil-and-paper multiplication of large numbers. Dr. DeTurck dismisses these as obsolete:

"Fractions have had their day, being useful for by-hand calculation. But in this digital age, they're as obsolete as Roman numerals are....Parts of math are used differently now -- and different parts are used."

Dr. DeTurck goes on to give the standard educratic excuse for dumbing-down academic instruction: that teaching kids challenging material is allegedly bad for students' self-esteem.

"Part of that is our kids are remarkably sophisticated consumers. They want to know why they are forced to do complicated and difficult calculations. You can't say, 'Have faith and it will all become clear,' Kids figuratively throw up their hands. It is no longer seen as relevant."

Having high expectations for students has been shown time and time again to result in a greater level of achievement. As a woman especially, I get angry when educrats like Dr. Peggy McIntosh of Wellesley's "Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity" project allege that traditional math is "culturally oppressive" towards female and non-white students.

Dr. Maureen Stout discussed the S.E.E.D. project in her book The Feel-Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down of Our Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem:

"SEED's director, Peggy McIntosh, sells her elementary school math curriculum on the basis that it teaches children to understand themselves 'in the bodies of the world,' and places them 'in the deepest relationship with the invisible elements of the universe.' Will her program teach children basic arithmetic skills? Unlikely. McIntosh hates arithmetic problem solving because it presumes 'right' and 'wrong' answers, a presumption, she says, which in its very 'hierarchical' nature unfairly imposes a 'white,' Western paradigm of 'getting ahead' on an increasingly nonwhite, non-Western student population. In a democratic and racially diverse society, McIntosh insists, to concentrate on arithmetic skills is bound to demoralize children of color, who (she implies) are culturally not disposed to the notion of 'getting ahead.' She warns teachers against drills and tests on the grounds that in the cruel 'win-lose world of right and wrong mathematical operations... there is no way the child can feel good about the assignment.'"

News flash to Dr. McIntosh: mathematics is an exact subject. 2 + 2 = 4 not just for white males but for everybody, regardless of race or gender. She demonstrates an incredibly patronizing attitude towards female and minority students when she implies that they are less able to solve math problems correctly. It is neither "cruel" nor "culturally oppressive" to teach kids how to calculate the right answer; in fact, it is cruel NOT to!

The children most hurt by the "fuzzy math" fad are precisely those who are already at a disadvantage. Affluent, educated parents can make up for deficits in their children's curriculum by "afterschooling" or enrolling their children at the local Kumon center. Or they can simply vote with their feet and flee the government-run schools for private or home schooling.

Dr. George Andrews, president-elect of the American Mathematical Society and math professor at Penn State, summed up Dr. DeTurck's proposal thus:

"All of this is absurd. No wonder mathematical achievements in the country are so abysmal."

I couldn't agree more. India and China don't sit around worrying that teaching rigorous math hurts the self-esteem of children. The Economist forecasts China's real GDP will increase 10% in 2008 and India's will increase 8% compared to the U.S.' anemic 1.2%. If the U.S. hopes to compete in the global economy, we've got to fight against the dumbing-down of the curriculum such as the proposal by Dr. DeTurck!

There is an "I" in "Write"

When I was a sophomore attending a university widely considered to be among the best in the country, I took a biology course that had a unit on bioethics. As part of this unit, we were assigned a group research project, including an oral presentation and an accompanying policy paper. I had the misfortune to be assigned both a topic in which I had little interest (the declining water levels of Ogallala Aquifer) and to a group that included a varsity football player. Now, he was a talented running back and also personally a likable guy, but he was let's just say out of his league academically. He was as much an deadweight to our group as my DH (who played a couple years' worth of football at his prep school) would've been on the university's Division I team. Effort and attitude are certainly important, but they're not enough- there also has to be ability. Had my teammate been assigned an individual paper, he probably would've had difficulty pulling off a C. Yet he was able to free-ride on the rest of us and wound up with a B+. By contrast, I had an A in the class up to that point. The lower group grade meant that I had to work even harder to make up the lost points on the final exam. How fair is that?

I was reminded of this incident when reading "Writing is Not a Team Sport, Learning is Not Team-Dependent" by Linda Schrock Taylor. She criticizes the "cooperative learning" fad thus (emphasis in the original):

The language, Edu-Speak, now includes terms like: peer groups, peer editing, peer review, peer led, peer directed…but fails, of course, to include, peer disgust, peer disinterest, peer miseducation, peer failure, peer laziness, motivated peer doing all the work while all other group members benefit from a higher (group) grade than deadweight peers could have ever earned working individually,... But such is fad-driven educational policy.

Amen to that, sister!

I find the idea of peer reviews especially off-putting in the area of composition and writing....Picture assigning a group of four students, all with comparable (lack of) skills, editing each others’ papers! Shudder as the group adds bad corrections and simplistic, if not downright inappropriate, suggestions and rewrites to an already deficient paper!!

I can remember arguing with the other members of my group about why they couldn't include the phrase "uniformly two tier rate structure" in our presentation and paper. I just couldn't get through to them that something cannot be both "uniform" and "two tier". I even pulled out a dictionary to show them the definition of "uniform". Even then they insisted that I was wrong and that having two flat rates is "uniformly two tier". Oy! I flat-out refused to give in and they finally did cut the word "uniformly" but we had wasted a ridiculous amount of time on it.

Yes, in the workplace colleagues do often have to work together on group projects. But salaries, raises, and promotions are not handed out collectively!

By all means, students should sometimes be required to participate in group projects. However, grading should be done on an individual basis for fairness. Those team members who contribute the most should be rewarded and "free riders" should be punished.

Are Today's Students Less Well-Educated Than Their Parents?

As I mentioned the other day, I'm currently reading The Feel-Good Curriculum: The Dumbing Down of America's Kids in the Name of Self-Esteem by Dr. Maureen Stout. It's a thought-provoking book and the author makes some good arguments about the excesses of "child-centered" progressive education. Although I agree with her on many points, I question some of her other assertions. For example, she writes:

While the average citizen today is better educated than the average citizen a generation ago, the average high school and college graduate is not as well educated as her peer of 25 or 35 years ago. In other words, more people are being educated but the standards are lower.

Certainly, college completion rates have significantly increased; in 1970 only 9% of those 25 & older held a bachelor's degree while nearly 29% do today. Additionally, between 1972 and 2002, the high school dropout rate in the U.S. decreased by 4 percentage points (however, the overall percentage of high school graduates in the population has remained steady at 70% because of immigration). So it's fair to say that more people are being educated. But is it true that they are being less well-educated? I'm not convinced that the picture is quite as uniformly gloomy as Dr. Stout paints.

My mom graduated high school in 1970 and I graduated in 1995. We had very similar SAT and GRE scores, and I think it would be pretty accurate to say that we have roughly equal intelligence. While my public high school offered multiple college-level Advanced Placement courses, hers did not even offer a single one. An increasing number of schools are now even offering so-called "post-AP" courses. Furthermore, as a girl, my mom was discouraged from enrolling in the "honors" science and math courses her school did offer. She never studied calculus until graduate school, even though she majored in economics.

The average SAT score of freshmen at top universities has increased significantly in recent decades. In 1952, the median verbal SAT score at Harvard was 583. By 1985, it had risen to 659. By 2004, the median verbal score (adjusted for the exam's recentering in 1995) was 738. In 1964, the median math SAT score was 695. By 2004, it was 760. Nearly 40% of those admitted to Ivy League schools last year were ranked either 1st or 2nd in their graduating class and 90% were in the top tenth. At DH's and my alma mater too, there has been a significant increase in selectivity. I'm not sure either of us would get in if we were applying this year even though we both had good SAT's and class ranks (he was valedictorian of his class and I was salutatorian & top female of mine).

What I think has happened over recent decades has been an increased stratification between economic "haves" and "have-nots" when it comes to education. For many upper-middle-class and affluent students, there are more opportunities for rigorous coursework, particularly for girls. Additionally, the greater competition for slots at top colleges has pushed them to higher levels of achievement. Unfortunately, too many low-to-moderate income students have been left behind. They are victims of the "soft bigotry of low expectations". Even if they complete allegedly "college prep" courses, often they wind up in need of remediation.

So what can we, as a society, do to fix this situation? I don't think throwing money at the problem will solve it. We need top-to-bottom reform of the entire system. While we can't get (and should not aspire to) equality of outcome, we need to ensure equality of opportunity so that each student can make the most of his/her God-given potential.

Government-run Schools Dumping Classic Poems in Favor of Lightweight Verse

One of my favorite books to read growing up was the Golden Books Family Treasury of Poetry edited by Louis Untermeyer. I received it as a gift on my 6th birthday from one of my little friends and it still has a special place on my bookshelf decades later. I spent many hours as a child absorbed in the wonderful poems such as Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride", Poe's "Annabel Lee", Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", Thackeray's "Pocahontas", Holmes' "Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill", Lear's "The Owl and the Pussycat", Nash's "Tale of Custard the Dragon", and so on.

I was therefore very disappointed to read an article from London's Evening Standard newspaper entitled "Schools scrapping classic poetry for 'lightweight' verse." British school inspectors checking poetry teaching in government-run primary schools found that only 8% earned an "outstanding" rating. Most teachers did not know enough about the subject to teach classic poems and instead focused on easier modern verse such as "On the Ning Nang Nong" by Spike Milligan:

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So it's Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

Not exactly Shakespeare, is it?

While there is a place for modern poets such as Shel Silverstein or Jack Prelutsky in the curriculum, the primary focus should be on classic verse. Not just for cultural literacy purposes, but also because they typically demonstrate a higher-level vocabulary and structure than recent poems. A child simply gets more out of reading something that has not been "dumbed down".

In our homeschool, I'm planning to use the poetics series by Michael Clay Thompson published by Royal Fireworks Press. It looks like a good introduction to studying poetry using classic verse. I think we'll do a poetry unit in the spring with the Music of the Hemispheres book if DD appears to be ready at that point (it's so hard to predict with her).

What's Your Civics IQ?

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute did a survey of 14,000 college freshmen & seniors at 50 universities to test their knowledge of U.S. civics. The results were pretty dismal as the overall average score for seniors was a mere 54.2%. Even the elite schools in the sample had poor showings:

• Harvard 69.56%
• Yale 65.85%
• Brown 65.64%
• UVA 65.28%
• Penn 63.49%
• Duke 63.41%
• Princeton 61.9%
• Cornell 56.95%
• UC Berkeley 56.27%

I took the test and scored 86.67%. One of them was a boneheaded mistake (I read too quickly and mistook Andrew Johnson for Andrew Jackson). Most of the rest I missed were economics questions, a subject I never formally studied. I had narrowed down the choices to 2 and simply guessed wrong.

I find it very depressing that students who are supposed to be among the best and brightest in our country show such a dreadful lack of civic literacy. While a few of the questions struck me as a bit on the overly nit-picky side(when does Marbury vs. Madison come up aside from "Jeopardy" or the AP U.S. History exam?), the majority were things I would consider to demonstrate a basic understanding of our country's history and government.

(HT: Henry at "Why Homeschool")