Another of the things GB was talking about

The Anchoress has some wonderful people blogging for her while she heads to Rome.
Here is an excerpt from one of the posts on:

Vocation, Education, Digital Televisions: the Late Late Show
by Sally Thomas:

Back in the summer — it already seems like a hundred years ago — my teenager went to one of those college programs which promise the motivated high-school student an entire liberal-arts education distilled to a two-week elixir. She had a great time and came back talking about Flannery O’Connor, which I’d been trying to get her to do for, oh, ever or so.

One night over dinner with her twenty-six new best friends, the talk turned to the subject of what everyone wanted to be when he or she grew up. The girls, one by one, announced that they wanted to be lawyers. One girl said she wanted to go into politics, maybe. A few other girls thought they’d like to do some corporate kind of job.

At last my daughter’s turn came. “Well,” she said, “I want to be a mom.

There was a silence. Finally someone asked, “Then why are you here?”

“Because I think the basic unit of society ought to be educated,” my daughter said.

It makes you want to read the rest doesn't it? Go here.

How to change education for the better

Diane Ravitch has an editorial in the Washington Post this morning that lays out a good plan for education reform. Again, this is something we all know instinctively.  Good teachers are the answer. But she discusses, how good and how high up the chain of command the change should be.
Here is the meat of her essay:

To begin with, let's agree that a good education encompasses far more than just basic skills. A good education involves learning history, geography, civics, the arts, science, literature and foreign language. Schools should be expected to teach these subjects even if students are not tested on them.

Everyone agrees that good education requires good teachers. To get good teachers, states should insist -- and the federal government should demand -- that all new teachers have a major in the subject they expect to teach or preferably a strong educational background in two subjects, such as mathematics and music or history and literature. Every state should expect teachers to pass a rigorous examination in the subjects they will teach, as well as a general examination to demonstrate their literacy and numeracy.

We need principals who are master teachers, not inexperienced teachers who took a course called "How to Be a Leader." The principal is expected to evaluate teachers, to decide who deserves tenure and to help those who are struggling and trying to improve. If the principal is not a master teacher, he or she will not be able to perform the most crucial functions of the job.

We need superintendents who are experienced educators because their decisions about personnel, curriculum and instruction affect the entire school system. If they lack experience, they will not be qualified to select the best principals or the best curricula for their districts.

We need assessments that gauge students' understanding and require them to demonstrate what they know, not tests that allow students to rely solely on guessing and picking one among four canned answers.

Read it all, see if you agree with me.

No Child Left Behind has a new name

From the Washington Post:
The administration keeps the right principles in amending No Child Left Behind

EVEN THOUGH the Obama administration is jettisoning the name of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), it is not abandoning the core principles embodied in the 2002 law. The administration has embraced the principles of accountability, disaggregating data and insisting that no student groups -- not minorities, not those with disabilities -- be left behind. The details will be key, but it is heartening that the administration is mapping out a direction true to education reform. Let's hope Congress agrees to go along for the ride.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan's plan for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, released Saturday, takes aim at two of the biggest criticisms of NCLB: that it doesn't set a high bar for achievement and that it is so inflexible as to be punitive. The administration's plan would scrap the much-maligned adequate yearly progress reports of schools for a new accountability system requiring that all students by 2020 be on a path toward college and career readiness, although this goal is more aspirational than definitive. Students would still be tested every year in math and reading, but other measures, such as graduation rates or scores in other subjects, could factor into the picture of a school's success. Schools would be judged by how much progress students make year by year, not by snapshots that fail to account for different starting points. 

Read the rest.

Are Americans a Dumbed Down Nation?

Why, yes, yes we are.  If the latest round of articles on what people don't know about civics didn't convince you, maybe this will. It's from Canada Free Press via Lucianne.com

Obama Bets the Farm on American Stupidity

By Joy Tiz

Decades of entrusting the federal government with our children’s education has led, inevitably, to the dumbing down of an entire nation. Our public school system has failed to provide the most basic and elementary skills, while at the same time functioning as a ministry of propaganda for left wing causes. The hijacking of our schools has been going on for decades; we are now experiencing the repercussions.

Only in a thoroughly dumbed down America would Barack Obama’s astonishing ignorance of American history have gone unnoticed. Only in a thoroughly dumbed down America could Barack Obama have been elected to the presidency in the first place. A man with no executive experience, deeply disturbing associations, and gaping holes in his history was elevated to the highest office in the land.

Fourteen months into his presidency, with nothing but an ignominious accumulation of failures to show for it, Obama is taking his last stand. The only way he can overcome this mountain of fiascos is if Americans are every bit as dumb as he thinks they are.

Read the rest.

Van Jones has not gone away

From Investors Business Daily: (this is for those of you who have never listened to Glenn Beck, nor watched his TV show)
Van Jones Goes Back To School

Academia: The former green jobs czar in the Obama administration and self-avowed communist has landed a job at an Ivy League school, where he'll be teaching your children why America is racist, capitalism is bad, and redistribution of wealth is good.
We have often commented on how academia leans far to the left and how nutty professors like the infamous Ward Churchill can find acceptance for their wacky philosophies. So it was not a total surprise last week when Princeton University announced that Van Jones will be teaching environmental policy at the prestigious school.
Jones has been appointed a visiting fellow in the Center for African American Studies and the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the university's Wilson School.

There is Hope for Education in Houston

From the Houston Chronicle:
400 teachers may face firing over test scores
by Ericka Mellon

More than 400 teachers in the Houston school district have performed so poorly that their students have lost ground, according to HISD, and those educators' jobs could be on the line if they don't improve.

HISD Superintendent Terry Grier is asking the school board to give final approval today to a policy that would allow the district to fire teachers whose students don't make enough progress on standardized tests.

Opposed to the move, the Houston Federation of Teachers is trying to rally 1,000 educators to protest at the board meeting, though union president Gayle Fallon acknowledges the policy likely will pass. Trustees voted 8-0, with one absent, to give their initial approval last month.

It is hopeful to think the students will actually mean more than the union in this city. Read the rest here.

What Happened to Education? Here is one of the answers

From American Thinker:

Obama, Freud, and the American Progressives' Guilt Trip
By Chuck Rogér
At the turn of the twentieth century, an early "progressive" Vermonter named John Dewey kick-started a makeover of America's education system. At the conclusion of the second of his seminal works, The School and Society and The Child and the Curriculum, Dewey offered these bits of wisdom.

But save as the teacher knows, knows wisely and thoroughly, the race-expression which is embodied in that thing we call the Curriculum, the teacher knows neither what the present power, capacity, or attitude is, nor yet how it is to be asserted, exercised, and realized....

.....And so from The Child and the Curriculum emerged a construct that Dewey called the "psychologizing"[1] of education, and progressives would use his unsupported contentions to pervert the process by which education would be conducted over the next hundred years....

....Dewey-indoctrinated educators have helped to sicken American culture. On the website, Minding the Campus, former State University of New York Board of Trustees member Candace de Russy lists questions found on a completed exam discovered by a colleague in an eastern American college classroom.

Question: How does the United States "steal" the resources of other (third world) [sic] countries?

Answer: We steal through exploitation. Our multinationals are aware that indigenous people in developing nations have been coaxed off their plots and forced into slums. Because it is lucrative, our multinationals offer them extremely low wage labor (sic) that cannot be turned down.

Question: Why is the U.S. on shaky moral ground when it comes to preventing illegal immigration?

Answer: Some say that it is wrong of the United States to prevent illegal immigration because the same people we are denying entry to, (sic) we have exploited for the purpose of keeping the American wheel spinning.

Question: Please briefly explain the matrix of domination.

Answer: the (sic) belief that domination has more than one dimension. For example, Males (sic) are dominant over females, whites over blacks, and affluent over impoverished.

These questions and the answers supplied by a student and accepted by the instructor provide a taste of the professorial moralizing that churns out mush-minded "critical thinkers." Dr. de Russy observes, "A student who matriculates in [sociology] will have nothing in the way of useful skills, but will be convinced that his country is rotten to the core, and that whites and males are evil." Which is exactly what too many social studies academics want students to believe, for these academics cling to the first guiding principle of the impassioned ideologue: Agenda trumps reality.

Read the rest here. We already knew what happened but this explains it in  detail.

We Need to Work on the Education Establishment

The information in this article is not news, but it is alarming. Children are our most precious resource, it is disheartening to think of the many subtle ways they are indoctrinated to the liberal (progressive) way of thinking. This is from American Thinker Blog.
Liberal assault on education

by Jason Abston

According to various polls, many educators at all levels consider themselves to be liberal. This political ideology often makes its way into the classroom.

While some liberal educators do a good job at educating students, it is unfortunate that others are more interested in promoting their political views. Various news stories in the fall of 2009 highlighted elementary teachers leading students in singing praises to the Obama administration.

The textbooks educators use are often a tool of indoctrination reflecting their ideologies. When a particular text teaches something contrary to that ideology, the educator often avoids the topic.

Texas is currently undergoing debates on the content of textbooks for public schools that may have dramatic implications for everyone. Fox News says that book publishers develop material for the rest of the nation based on Texas.

He goes on to explain this all starts in the  education of the classroom teachers. He is right.  Keep your eye on this discussion in further news from all media. Read the rest of todays article here.

Competitive Enterprise Institute takes Action

"Climate Gate" Development: CEI Files Notice of Intent to Sue NASA
By Chris Horner

Today, on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies' refusal - for nearly three years - to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act. The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding "ClimateGate" scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries' freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies. Numerous informed commenters had alleged such behavior for years, all of which appears to be affirmed by leaked emails, computer codes and other data from the Climatic Research Unit of the UK's East Anglia University.

All of that material and that sought for years by CEI go to the heart of the scientific claims and campaign underpinning the Kyoto Protocol, its planned successor treaty, "cap-and-trade" legislation and the EPA's threatened regulatory campaign to impose similar measures through the back door.

CEI sought the following documents, among others, NASA's failure to provide which within thirty days will prompt CEI to file suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia:

- internal discussions about NASA's quiet correction of its false historical U.S. temperature records after two Canadian researchers discovered a key statistical error, specifically discussion about whether and why to correct certain records, how to do so, the impact or wisdom or potential (or real) fallout therefrom or reaction to doing so (requested August 2007);
- internal discussions relating to the emails sent to James Hansen and/or Reto A. Ruedy from Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre calling their attention to the errors in NASA/GISS online temperature data (August 2007);

- those relating to the content, importance or propriety of workday-hour posts or entries by GISS/NASA employee Gavin A. Schmidt on the weblog or "blog" RealClimate, which is owned by the advocacy Environmental Media Services and was started as an effort to defend the debunked "Hockey Stick" that is so central to the CRU files. RealClimate.org is implicated in the leaked files, expressly offered as a tool to be used "in any way you think would be helpful" to a certain advocacy campaign, including an assertion of Schmidt's active involvement in, e.g., delaying and/or screening out unhelpful input by "skeptics" attempting to comment on claims made on the website.

This and the related political activism engaged in are inappropriate behavior for a taxpayer-funded employee, particularly on taxpayer time. These documents were requested in January 2007 and NASA/GISS have refused to date to comply with their legal obligation to produce responsive documents.

This is the entire blog post, but go over to American Spectator and take a look. Be sure to look at the comments of this post. My husband is a scientist who has been very distressed at the political trend of the publications mentioned in the comments.

What's Wrong with Education?

This is part of the answer. An editorial from the Chicago Tribune:

'Too high a price'

We watched an interesting YouTube video the other day. It was brought to our attention by state Sen. James Meeks, the Chicago Democrat who is also pastor of Salem Baptist Church on the South Side. We think our readers should check out the video. It'll open your eyes.

Meeks, who chairs the Illinois Senate Education Committee, has been in a war with the Chicago Teachers Union since he had some tough things to say about public education in a Tribune essay and in a speech at Rainbow Push.

The CTU responded with a vow not to give him another dime in campaign money until he apologized. Meeks promptly wrote a check for $4,000, giving back every dime the union had already given him.

No apology.

You have to love this guy. He's genuinely looking out for kids and doesn't back down to pressure.

Back to the video. It shows the top lawyer of the National Education Association, Bob Chanin, speaking at the NEA's annual meeting in July. Chanin was retiring. This was his swan song.

Chanin makes unmistakably clear what the highest priority is for the union. Hint: It's not the education of your kids.

Chanin closed his nearly 25-minute speech by explaining the influence of the NEA:

Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.

And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year, because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.

Oh, it gets more interesting.

This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary. These are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.

Too high a price to pay for educated children. Chanin got wild applause from thousands of NEA members at the San Diego Convention Centerfor his remarks.

We tried for several days to get NEA officials to explain those remarks. We wanted to ask if the rest of the union leadership believed that kids ranked behind collective bargaining on the teacher priority list. We're still waiting to hear from them.

We know the answer the Chicago Teachers Union gave the Rev. Meeks: Cross us and we'll choke off your money.

Meeks plans to introduce a bill in January that would give the kids at Chicago's lowest-performing schools a choice. It would give kids at 15 high schools and 48 elementary schools a voucher to pay for another school.

He plans to push to remove the cap on the number of charter schools in Illinois. The legislature raised the cap this year. But there should be no cap at all.

Meeks met on Thursday with Sen. Dan Cronin, the Republican leader on the Education Committee, to see if they can work out a bipartisan agenda.

Good for both of them.

The teachers unions in Illinois get angry when we write about them. They argue that they're pushing a reform agenda, too.

If that's the case, they shouldn't be asking Meeks for an apology. They should be asking for an apology from everyone who cheered Chanin.

Too high a price, eh?

This is Alarming

From Breitbart’s Big Hollywood via Drudge

ELEMENTARY EPIDEMIC: 11 Uncovered Videos Show School Children Performing Praises to Obama

Follow the link to the story and if you can stomach it, watch the videos. I didn’t watch the transcripts are provided.

Moral Reasoning

Moral Reasoning 22: Justice is a class being taught by Michael Sandel at Harvard. Michael Gerson has an op-ed on it in the Washington Post.

I found the article very interesting, it lays down no this is right, this is wrong messages about the class. It discusses the effects and consequences of different reasonings and judgements.

An interesting article, go read it.

Bi-Lingual Education

The Media Blog at National Review has an article on Texas Bi-Lingual Education
Bilingual Education Still Doesn't Work
by Kevin D. Williamson

I've spent a lot of time writing and yakking about what Texas does right in terms of public policy. But you know what doesn't work in Texas? Bilingual education. The Texas Public Policy Foundation released an interesting report today. Bottom line:

“Bilingual education has a negative effect on reading, math, writing, and science achievement in English,” Dr. Rossell said. “Furthermore, lower testing rates for ELL students artificially raise ELL achievement because the lowest scoring students are not tested.”

Read all the links.

Dr. Sanity has a blog

I don't read it every day, just usually when someone links to it.
Dr. Sanity says:

Two posts back, I wrote about the intellectual bankruptcy of U.S. academic institutions.

If you want to understand what is waiting for us at the end of the left's rainbow, then we need to look at the agenda being implemented by the heroes of the left .

I won't copy the whole post, go there and read it for yourself. Be sure to follow all the links to get the whole picture.