Moscow Education (Idaho)

Jim Pollock is producer of the Encarta Online Degrees department and business development manager for MSN Encarta.

He has written an interesting article at the Encarta site titled Are Liberal Arts Degrees Worth Anything?

I'll cite a little to whet your appetite to read the rest.

For everyone who says that a liberal arts degree doesn't prepare you for anything, you'll find someone else who claims that it prepares you for everything.

Who's right? Well, both, to some extent.

The one thing that's pretty much certain is that right out of the gate, a liberal arts grad will tend to pull a smaller starting salary than his or her friends who majored in business or a technical field.
...
I gained more life skills from my fine arts classes than anything else I studied in school. In a painting or sculpture class, you put your own, unique vision on the line and have to explain your vision to your peers. It's an order of magnitude more daunting than grinding through a finance exam--I know, I've done both. And it's the same in the corporate world. You can craft a solution on an existing model, or you can create something entirely unique.

In some ways, the numbers bear that out. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, a number of lucrative jobs are compatible with a "less than specialized" liberal arts major. Here are the mean annual salaries at a few:

• Management: $87,090
• Real estate: $75,330
• Business and finance: $57,120

As a point of reference, workers in architecture and engineering occupations pulled in a mean annual salary of $63,060. This is not to say that a liberal arts education is the key to riches, just that it's not necessarily going to hold you back if you eventually choose to pursue a path in one of these lucrative fields.
...
A liberal arts degree is more like a growth stock. Long-term expectations are strong, but you are assuming some risk, in the form of starting a little lower on the ladder. In short, you are betting on yourself and your abilities. For a high salary, or whatever professional goals you pursue, you need to create your own opportunities.

Taking the longer view, by far the more important single variable in lifetime expected salary is simply that you continue your education past high school, no matter what you decide to study. Up through graduate school, each level of educational attainment boosts your expected earnings, pretty much regardless of field. So knowing that, why not study something you're interested in?
...
The professional world is so fluid, so rapidly changing, that overspecialization can sometimes put up walls rather than open doors. That's the great thing about going back to school after you've been in the workforce a while. More than ever, it pays to try a few different things, or even keep reinventing yourself throughout your career. A lot of attention is paid to starting salaries, but what matters most to your quality of life is your success and satisfaction 10, 20, 30 years down the line. Institutions of higher education recognize this new reality, and increasingly flexible programs enable professionals to gain the additional training they need, on terms most compatible with their lifestyles.

HT: Abby J.

Other data show that Moscow Charter School's cost and student performance is far better than Moscow School District's.

In 03/04 Moscow Charter School spent (in total) $5094 per student compared to MSD's $8524.

In 02/03, 55.88% of Moscow Charter Schools' students met the Northwest Evaluation Association's Expected Yearly Growth (EYG); only 43.3% of MSD's students did. (EYG is a normed measure of value added that compares a student's growth in Math, Reading and Language Usage over the school year compared to a national sample of students who started at the same level.) Thus, for that year, the Moscow Charter School's (current) cost to produce a student who met EYG was $7,772, compared to MSD's $15,326.

The taxpayer is getting much more "bang-for-the-buck" with this charter school.

Jack Wenders

Charter school founder offers lessons

By KATHY HEDBERG
of the Tribune

MOSCOW -- Eight years after founding Idaho's first public charter school, Mary Lang has learned a few things.

"Parents have a lot of power, but they don't know about it," Lang said Tuesday, sitting behind her desk in a tiny, cluttered office of the Moscow Charter School.

"But parents do need help because the educational landscape is getting very difficult now."

Lang, 54, has recently published a new book entitled "How to Choose the Perfect School: What 21st Century Parents Need to Know about K-12 Education."

The 95-page volume, published by Trafford Publishing of Victoria, British Columbia, sells for $15.50 and is available at BookPeople and Hastings in Moscow.

Lang, who holds a doctorate in education degree from Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., says Moscow Charter School has been a laboratory of sorts for a method of research-based education that attempts to accommodate children's individual learning styles. Lang said traditional schools and curriculums are often designed more with the convenience of adults in mind than what works best for kids.

"The research shows that these activities (arts, foreign language and problem solving) are just as important as basic skills," Lang said. "We may be spending less time on basic skills, but we're enhancing and enriching children in different ways."

Moscow Charter School's emphasis on the arts is evident the moment you step through the front door. Colorful pictures, posters, murals, mobiles and other artwork festoon the walls and dangle from the sloping ceiling where exposed heating pipes and unfinished woodwork give the place the look of a rustic ski lodge.

The 135 students in kindergarten through sixth grade spend part of their school day studying dance, practicing Spanish or pondering over paintings while listening to classical music in the background.

Basic skills, such as math, reading and history, are all taught at the same time during the day at all the grade levels. Students who vary in learning abilities -- say a third-grader with a fourth-grade reading aptitude -- go to a classroom for whatever subject best suits them.

These are the things, Lang said, that make Moscow Charter School innovative and different from regular public schools. This flexible schedule helps bring out a student's individual talents, "and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg."

Court becomes a connoisseur of the obvious......

• "Public education could benefit from more competition."
• "more money does not guarantee better schools or more educated students."

Jack Wenders

From the WSJ:

Texas School Lesson
November 29, 2005; Page A18

The Texas Supreme Court did the expected last week and struck down the statewide property tax for funding public schools. But what was surprising and welcome was the Court's unanimous ruling that the Texas school system, which spends nearly $10,000 per student, satisfies the funding "adequacy" requirements of the state constitution. Most remarkable of all was the court's declaration that "more money does not guarantee better schools or more educated students."

 

Think about that one for a second. To our knowledge, this is the first time anywhere in the country that the judiciary has flatly rejected the core doctrine of the education establishment that more dollars equal better classroom performance. And it is potentially very good news for students, especially those from the poorest neighborhoods, because it shifts the policy emphasis from money to achievement. Better send the paramedics to check for heart failure at National Education Association headquarters.

 

Even more encouraging, the court endorsed more choices for parents and the state's 4.3 million school kids. It said flatly: "Public education could benefit from more competition." The Texas Public Policy Foundation, which provided much of the academic research for the court, looked at the Edgewood school district in San Antonio, where donors started a privately financed voucher program. The results indicate that not only have the kids with the vouchers benefited, but so have kids in the public schools that are now forced to compete for students.

Considerable uproar accompanied a study by EdSource that found parental involvement was much less important to a student's academic achievement than a number of other school-related factors. The Los Angeles Times highlighted that angle when the report appeared last month, and Jay Mathews of the Washington Post did the same when revisiting the report last week.

Two more articles in the nation's most prominent newspapers, when viewed in this context, suggest both schools and students might benefit from a division of labor when it comes to student achievement.

School officials correctly complain that getting students to read and write English, compute math problems, and understand fundamental facts about history and science are nearly impossible if the students don't show up, don't show up on time, and won't behave themselves when they are at school. Teachers routinely name classroom management as their biggest challenge and one of the primary reasons they leave the profession.

On the flip side, educators are constantly calling on parents to read to their children, check their homework, and fully involve themselves in public education. "[We want] parents who will take time to get to know the teacher, find out what's going on in the classroom, and reinforce at home what their child is learning at school," NEA President Reg Weaver told the delegates at the union's convention last July.

While all these things may be desirable, perhaps what the EdSource report tells us is that students do best when teachers teach and parents parent.

The Sunday New York Times contains an excellent commentary by Judith Warner headlined, "Kids Gone Wild." Warner sees a backlash growing against overindulged and misbehaving kids. Right on cue, today's Washington Post has a wonderful story about teenagers who view their school suspensions as mini-vacations.

It's great when parents can supplement their children's education through their own knowledge of literature, math or history. But it's even better if they see to it that Johnny regularly attends class with his homework completed and that he will respectfully listens to the adults who are charged with providing his education. Teachers can then spend more of their time teaching, instead of riding herd.

Such specialization might improve educational efficiency, and will certainly make it easier for the rest of us to evaluate the performance of schools, teachers, parents and students.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

Unless you are still in a turkey coma, you already know that Chief U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman dismissed the lawsuit the National Education Association brought against the federal government over the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).

This is hardly a surprising outcome, since the lawsuit took two constitutionally defensible positions – one, that Congress has spending power, and two, that the states and people retain all powers not enumerated in the U.S. Constitution – and combined them into the constitutionally indefensible position that states are entitled to federal money while ignoring key portions of the regulations that accompany the money.

As EIA published in Intercepts last Wednesday, even NEA General Counsel Robert Chanin recognized the untenable nature of such a legal argument two-and-a-half years ago when he wrote: "In point of fact, however, neither the parental notice requirement – nor, indeed, any of the other requirements in NCLB – are 'imposed' on the states in a legal sense. NCLB has been enacted on the basis of Congress' Spending Power, and states can avoid this and other statutory requirements simply by declining to accept federal Title I funds. If the states decide to accept such funds, however, then they must also accept the conditions that Congress has attached to them." (ref. EIA Communiqué December 8, 2003, and again on April 25, 2005.)

NEA announced it would appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. But there the union faces a double problem. Not only does NEA need to have Judge Friedman's ruling reversed, but the issue of the union's standing to file such a lawsuit will arise again.

Judge Friedman addressed the issue of standing in this way: "Defendant's arguments would more properly be raised in support of a motion for summary judgment. At the pleading stage, however, the court must accept the allegations as true. Plaintiffs have met their 'relatively light' burden of alleging injury, causation and redressability."

In short, should the suit be reinstated by the Court of Appeals, the U.S. Department of Education could then file a motion for summary judgment on the premise that NEA lacks standing to file suit.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

Only Encouraging Them
By JAMES PIERESON
November 18, 2005; Page W13


Students at Yale University's School of Music -- and aspiring musicians hoping to go there someday -- must have been jumping for joy two weeks ago when the school announced that it had received an anonymous $100 million endowment gift that would guarantee them all free tuition. A few days later Tufts University, not to be outdone, announced that it had received its own $100 million gift. This one was from Pierre Omidyar, alumnus and founder of eBay, who did not specify how his money was to be used, only that the principal must be invested in "micro loans" to small business enterprises in poor countries in Asia and Africa.

It all sounds high-minded and worthy. But is it a good idea? Foundations, corporations and rich individuals have long given generously to colleges and universities. Some of our most distinguished -- Duke, Vanderbilt, Stanford and the University of Chicago -- were originally endowed by entrepreneurs or wealthy families. In a recent study, the Institute for Jewish and Community Research reported that nearly 60% of all gifts of more than $10 million are donated to academic institutions. And the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Americans last year contributed some $25 billion to colleges and universities. Is it any wonder that many academic institutions are sitting on vast repositories of endowed wealth? Today there are more than 50 institutions with endowments exceeding $1 billion.

Yet this explosion of money has been accompanied by a steady erosion in the quality of education, especially in the humanities. Many research organizations, including the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the National Association of Scholars, have documented the elimination of the traditional core curriculum at most of our leading universities. We can no longer assume that college graduates possess even a rudimentary knowledge of history, for instance, or that they understand basic concepts like federalism or the separation of powers or, indeed, that they know about the ideas and events that have shaped our institutions. All this great wealth, donated with the best of intentions, appears to have had the perverse effect of liberating academic institutions to do a less than admirable job of educating the young.

And what do the young learn when they do learn? Entrepreneurs may give generously, but college faculties are today awash in antibusiness and anti-free-market prejudices, with scholarly publications beating the drum against globalization and the supposed depredations of capitalism. Not many faculty members would agree precisely with Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who said that the victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center deserved their fate because they were working on behalf of the capitalist system. But, terrorism aside, his low opinion of America's economic system does not wildly diverge from that of professors everywhere. Meanwhile the diversity ideology so common on campuses today holds that the history of the U.S. is primarily one of exclusion and oppression, another Ward Churchillian theme.

 

All this is roughly quantifiable. A recent national survey of college faculty showed that 72% of professors held liberal and left-of-center views, while just 15% held conservative ones. This imbalance, surveys show, has grown worse since the early 1980s. It is a strange paradox indeed that academic opinion should have moved so far to the left in a period of unprecedented wealth and prosperity for colleges and universities themselves -- let alone in a period of capitalism's triumph and communism's defeat.

Here is where the charitable giving comes in. These trends have taken hold in academia in part because too many donors have failed to exercise appropriate care when signing over their funds. Most donors have little understanding of the intricate workings of academic budgets or of the subterfuges that permit money to be spent on programs unrelated to intended purposes. (A little Economics 101 might help.) The anonymous donor to Yale earmarked the income from his gift to support student tuitions, but of course money is fungible: The gift will have the unintended effect of allowing Yale to move the substantial funds it now devotes to financial aid and to spend them on other purposes, possibly unrelated or antithetical. Many gifts to universities have this money-shifting effect.

From the WSJ via Jack Wenders

As reported by New Saint Andrews:

New Saint Andrews College became Idaho’s newest accredited four-year private liberal arts college today.

The Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS) – without any conditions – unanimously approved Moscow’s limited-enrollment classical Christian college as a fully-accredited bachelor’s degree-granting institution at its annual meeting in Virginia Beach, VA. The College completed in four years what is normally a five-year accreditation process.

According to TRACS, “Accreditation indicates that . . . in the professional judgment of the on-site evaluation team and the Accreditation Commission, the institution provides quality instruction, student services, and is financially stable.”

“We are very thankful for this national affirmation of the quality and integrity of our limited-enrollment classical Christian College,” said President Roy Atwood.

New Saint Andrews offers a classical liberal arts program modeled on the curriculum of Harvard of 1643 to about 150 students from 30 states, several foreign countries, and 22 Christian denominations.

The College has attracted some of the nation’s brightest students as indicated by their entrance exams scores. Of the more than 3,600 colleges and universities nationwide, New Saint Andrews students are among the top 2 percent, ranking 17th on the ACT and 73rd on the SAT.

The TRACS on-site evaluation team, which visited the Moscow campus in September, commended the College for its strong educational program, faculty, administration, and board.

“New Saint Andrews has a unique, well-conceived and coherently executed academic program,” the site team reported. “The school meets, and in many areas far exceeds, the TRACS standards for its educational program.”

According to TRACS, “New Saint Andrews has recruited and largely retained a sound, competent, and dedicated faculty. The institution goes to great lengths to find, recruit, and retain the best professors available who share their educational and theological commitments.”

“The College has an excellent proactive and effective governing board,” the site team noted, “and exhibits an exceptional leadership team headed by the President.”

TRACS is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), and the Idaho State Board of Education as a national accrediting body for colleges and universities. TRACS has more than 50 accredited and candidate undergraduate and graduate member institutions.

The College will host a formal celebration of its new national accreditation sometime early in the new year. 

Congratulations to New Saint Andrews. Well done!

To see those national rankings on the ACT exams, look over here: http://cnsearch.collegenet.com/cgi-bin/C3/cnsearch?DistLtGt=lt&DistMiles=50&schooltype=65&reorder=DESCact&qstart=10

The New York Times editorial board calls the dismissal of NEA's No Child Left Behind Act lawsuit "A Victory for Education." The lawsuits will continue because states, districts and unions won't consider the one option that would free them from all NCLB mandates: Turning down Title I money.

If the mandates are so intrusive AND costing states and local districts billions of dollars, then they should just opt out. Three states had no qualms about doing so when the issue was abstinence education.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

From the Idaho Statesman:

Enrollment in the Boise School District dropped by 465 students this year, more than double what school officials had predicted.

The steep decline almost certainly means the district will cut teaching positions through attrition for the 2006-2007 school year, as it had to do for this year, said Stan Olson, district superintendent.

Sagging student numbers also mean some low-enrollment classes could face scrutiny, as they did this year when the district combined sparsely enrolled Latin classes at four high schools into Latin classes at two schools.

How deep Boise district will cut teaching positions likely won't be known until officials analyze the numbers after the first of the year.

Enrollment in Boise schools has steadily declined since the mid 1990s, when the student population peaked at 27,000. It's now at 25,287. Meridian, by contrast, has steadily grown to nearly 30,000, making it the largest district in Idaho.

Enrollment is important because state funding for schools — which helps pay for books, teacher salaries and other expenses — is based on the number of students enrolled in a district.

Dropping enrollment in Boise, along with increased expenses in areas such as special education and employee health insurance, has forced the district to chop its budget by nearly $4 million and 46 positions for this school year.

This is a common sense approach to declining enrollment: cut teaching positions thru attrition.

However, compare that to what the Moscow School District has done as student enrollment declined during the same period of time: MSD hired faster than the student enrollment decreased (compare the pink line to the green line).

Welcome to Moscow -- anti-business, anti-common sense. But pro-spending!

ABC News reports that most high school graduates do go on to college these days; but nearly half never earn a degree:

For decades, getting more students into college has been the top priority of America's higher education leaders. But what's the point, a growing number of experts are wondering, when so few who go to school finish a degree?

Just 54 percent of students entering four-year colleges in 1997 had a degree six years later and even fewer Hispanics and blacks did, according to some of the latest government figures. After borrowing for school but failing to graduate, many of those students may be worse off than if they had never attended college at all.

How many of these that drop out were never really prepared to go to college? How many have never written a formal research paper? Cannot read at a high school level?

Are we really doing justice to these kids by encouraging them to go to college where they rack-up significant loans but not actually equipping them academically to make it through college?

HT: Joanne Jacobs

Via Joanne Jacobs:

According to a federal study which looked at 2001-02 and 2002-03 data, the four-year graduation rate for public high school students averages 73 percent.

The report didn't estimate how many students earn a high school diploma after five years.

Joanne Jacobs posts the following:

Ohio residents are "Halfway Out the Door" of their local public schools, concludes a survey commissioned by the Fordham Foundation.

Its single most compelling finding is that "if money were not an issue," only 46 percent of white public school parents and 30 percent of black parents would prefer that their child continue to attend a district-operated public school. A staggering 48 percent of white public school parents and 68 percent of black parents would opt for private (or charter) schools.

Ohioans have little faith that leaders will improve the schools.

That's been my personal sense for a while: the level of taxation keeps many families trapped in the current district school systems.

If vouchers or (better) tax credits were provided to parents, they would choose to put their children in schools that match their educational and moral values.

Andrew Roth asks an excellent question:

Why is it that liberals revel in the role of being Robin Hood, taking spoils away from the rich and giving them to the poor, but when it comes to education, they adamently REFUSE to allow poor children the opportunity to go to the private schools that are now only being enjoyed by the well-off?

I would quibble with his use of the term "well-off" -- unless that term is understood to mean everyone who is not in poverty. Many who send their children to private schools (or who homeschool) are not in the "well-off category" but are those who scrimp and save to make the tuition payments--sacrificing other things in life to give their children the education that they want for them.

But Roth's question stands -- why do the social Robin Hoods refuse to allow the poor to have the education that they want and need?

Froma Harrop has a provocative article titled The Modern University Has Become Obsolete.

The modern university is a relic that will disappear in a few decades. That prediction was made by Peter Drucker, the management genius who just died at 95 and usually got things right.

His words brought an uncharitable smile to my face as I recently strolled across the ivied campus of Brown University, in Providence, R.I. At the time, maintenance crews were busy removing leaves. Campus officials were still dealing with the aftermath of an especially drunken Saturday night. And most everyone was excited that the football team had taken the Ivy League championship.

No doubt, some education was going on, but the question nagged: Is this an efficient setup for improving young minds? Not very, according to Drucker. "Today's buildings are hopelessly unsuited and totally unneeded," he said. Satellites and the Internet can easily make classrooms obsolete.

We now read that professors at Purdue, Stanford, Duke and other universities are recording their lectures. Students download the talks on their iPods and listen to them whenever. The "whenever" can be while driving, lifting weights or between songs by Black Eyed Peas and the Pussycat Dolls.

The profs say that letting students hear the lectures on their own frees classroom time for penetrating discussions. The same conversations, however, could be held over the Internet -- or, for that matter, in a room at the public library.

Furthermore, the professors could let non-students download their lectures and charge them royalties, just like the Black Eyed Peas. Ordinary folks already buy courses on tape or CD. For example, The Teaching Company is now selling a virtual major in American history -- 84 lectures on 42 audiotapes -- at the bargain price of $109.95. It covers everything from "before Columbus" to Bill Clinton, and the lecturers are top-drawer. Some of them teach at Columbia University, where a single history course runs you $3,207.

So the pressing question for today's universities is: what is the value-added that you are providing? And at what cost?

See the rest of Harrop's article that deals with the financial issues at stake: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/com-11_25_05_FH.html

HT: Bill J.

From the Washington Post:

Perhaps the most shocking thing about students having sex in a high school auditorium was that other students didn't find it very shocking at all.

"I glanced over and, whatever, I just let him continue on with his business," said a 16-year-old linebacker on the Osbourn High School football team who, along with a friend, stumbled upon a couple engaging in oral sex. "I stayed for five to eight minutes, just talking. We weren't worried about it. When the janitor came in, everyone started running."

Manassas school officials weren't as laid back. The students -- eight in all -- were quickly identified and suspended, and the matter prompted the small school system to confront an issue many adults would rather not face: in this case, two girls and three boys engaging in oral sex or intercourse on school property while three other boys watched, according to sources familiar with what happened.

"In all the years that I've been in education, I've never run into this one before," said John Boronkay, the school system's acting superintendent. "It's a new one."

And the parents and educators are shocked why?

Via Joanne Jacobs:

If parents could choose their children's schools, there'd be no need for "an ideological death-match in the town square" over "intelligent design" vs. evolution, Cato's Andrew Coulson writes.

Intelligent design contends that life on Earth is too complex to have evolved naturally, and so must be the product of an unspecified intelligent designer. Most adherents of this idea would undoubtedly be happy just to have it taught to their own children, and most of my fellow evolutionists presumably believe they should have that right. So why are we fighting?

We're fighting because the institution of public schooling forces us to, by permitting only one government-sanctioned explanation of human origins. The only way for one side to have its views reflected in the official curriculum is at the expense of the other side.

Coulson suggests "tax relief for middle income families and financial assistance for low-income families" so parents could choose independent schools that reflect their values and beliefs. The education front of the culture war would be at peace.

Why go to a lecture when you can download it and listen to it later on your iPod?

Newsweek reports:

This fall, a dozen colleges across the country have introduced a controversial new teaching tool called course casting, aimed at supplementing -- and in some cases replacing -- large, impersonal lectures. Although it has been around for less than a year, course casting has become as popular as a keg party on homecoming weekend. Students at Purdue University have downloaded 40,000 lectures since the start of the semester -- not bad for a school with an enrollment of 38,000. Drexel, Stanford, Duke and American University have begun course-casting programs, too.

"So far, we've heard mostly positive feedback about it," says Lynne O'Brien, head of Duke's Center for Institutional Technology.

But critics complain that digital lectures delivered through earphones cut down on the vital interaction between professors and students. And parents, who shell out tens of thousands of dollars for tuition, aren't convinced that kids who rely on the lectures-to-go are getting their money's worth.

Uh, what teacher-student interaction -- in the large, auditorium lecture classes? You can have 500 students in those cattle-call, freshman undergraduate classes. Why not download the lecture and listen to it at your convenience?

As an aside, there are three types of interaction in education:

• teacher-student;
• student-text;
• student-student.

In those large freshman classes, the teacher-student interaction is next to nothing anyway.

Think of the potential cost-savings of making lectures of freshman auditorium classes available via "course casting".

Higher education is in a transition; and technology is driving the future of education. This can be for the best, if forethought is given to how best leverage it.

HT: Joanne Jacobs

Via Joanne Jacobs:

Nearly 8 percent of U.S. children aged 4 to 17 have been diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; most are being treated with drugs. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, boys are much more likely to be diagnosed than girls, especially boys from poorer families.

To be diagnosed with ADHD a child must have six or more symptoms for six months including frequent failure to pay attention in schoolwork or play, frequent mistakes due to inattention to schoolwork, frequent failure to listen when spoken to directly, failure to follow up on chores and forgetfulness.

It's a wonder so few children are diagnosed.

Some intriguing numbers from the Gazette Times:

• The American Federation of Teachers reports that over the past decade, the percentage of college and university courses taught by adjuncts has increased dramatically: Today, 43% of college teachers are working part-time, off the tenure track; a decade ago, the figure was 33%.
• In 2004, the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute reported that adjunct faculty are paid around 64 percent per hour less than tenure-track assistant professors.
• Over the past decade, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has replaced 200 tenure-track faculty with part-time, adjunct labor.
• Since 1999, the number of adjuncts teaching in Oregon's public universities has risen from 25 to 33% of all faculty. At Western Oregon University, 53% of the people teaching are adjuncts.

Erin O'Conner (Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania) comments on the above:

The figures indicate a denigration and devaluation of academic labor via a rapid process of deprofessionalization. Administrator after administrator claims that budget constraints and skyrocketing enrollment compel them to rely increasingly on adjunct professorial labor, but what gets presented as an unfortunate side effect of the market is also effecting a dramatic shift in culture.

Almost half of all college teachers are entirely unprotected by the vaunted "academic freedom" that is so often touted as the philosophical mainstay of academic life. Add to the number of adjuncts the number of grad students and non-tenured assistant professors who are also teaching college courses in the absence of job security, and you get a picture of an academic world where very, very few people actually have the freedom to speak, write, research, and teach as they see fit (by "see fit" I don't mean to defend those teachers who abuse their positions to proselytize, or who are incompetent in some way; I mean to defend those who might have legitimate reasons for pursuing unorthodox pedagogical methods and scholarly topics, as well as those whose politics might endanger their professional positions, if known). The picture is one of an academic world in which "academic freedom" is the privilege of the tenured few; it is thus not a "freedom" at all, but the special privilege of an increasingly small group of academic elites. This, it need hardly be said, flies in the face of the very concept of academic freedom, and speaks loudly to the true state of free inquiry--not to mention strong, innovative teaching--on campus. "We have a lot of reports from part-time faculty who tell us that they are very concerned that if they say something controversial, or if they are too hard on the students, they won't be rehired," said John Curtis, the AAUP's director of research.

The figures also indicate the manner in which market forces--combined with the failure of individual institutions either to adjust the teaching loads of tenure track faculty or to hire more tenure track faculty--amount to a procedure-based, unspoken, but widely accepted phasing out of tenure itself. Some say the tenure system is necessary to protect free inquiry, while others say it is actively damaging the future prospects of free inquiry by producing conformist drones who are more interested in job security than in taking intellectual risks. But surely we can all agree that tenure should not be phased out without awareness, deliberation, and intent, and that the de facto elimination of the system as more and more college teachers come from the ranks of adjuncts is both actively taking place and urgently in need of formal acknowlegement, discussion, and debate.

HT: Critical Mass

From YAF:

Warren County Community College adjunct English professor, John Daly resigned last night before the school’s board of trustees began an emergency meeting to discuss the professor’s fate. On November 13, Daly sent an email to student Rebecca Beach vowing “to expose [her] right-wing, anti-people politics until groups like [Rebecca’s] won’t dare show their face on a college campus.” In addition, Daly said that “Real freedom will come when soldiers in Iraq turn their guns on their superiors.”

School President William Austin said that he will incorporate tolerance seminars for professors during the next faculty in-service day to shield students from this type of harassment, as requested by Rebecca Beach and Young America’s Foundation.

Rebecca Beach has called for Austin to select Young America’s Foundation President Ron Robinson as the one to teach leftists how to be tolerant toward conservatives. Robinson has dedicated his career to defending free speech on college campuses.

“More colleges and universities need to follow the lead of WCCC and integrate tolerance training for insensitive leftists,” says Young America’s Foundation Spokesman Jason Mattera. “John Daly is yet another Ward Churchill. Academia is filled with intolerant leftists who openly show hostility toward conservatism.”

Good luck. As Moscow's "academic elites" have demonstrated -- Leftists only show tolerance to those who agree with them.

And is that really tolerance?

Yesterday a federal district judge in Michigan threw out a lawsuit filed by the National Education Association and school districts in three states which challenged President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” education program. The judge claims that the federal government cannot require schools to meet certain performance standards while failing to fully fund the program. The NEA says it will appeal the decision, but if schools do not want to be held to the standards, they simply need not accept the federal funds that accompany them.

A school district doesn't have to take federal funding. If you want the money, follow the rules.

HT: Greg Jones

As reported in the 23 Nov 2005 edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

For weary parents, a facility expansion that expanded kindergarten options at the Moscow Charter School was a huge relief.

Of the 18 spaces in the new afternoon class only three spots remain since it opened this fall.

Taking one of those seats is kindergartner Sean Morrissey. His mother, Shawna Morrissey, said she opted for the afternoon program because she also has a first-grader at the school and three more children at home.

“He can stay and I can drive and pick-up once a day,” she said.

Living on the other side of town, she said driving to the school multiple times a day was difficult, especially while caring for other young children.

“It’s a commute,” she said, adding the program “is totally worth it.”

Last fall, the charter school’s board of directors decided to implement an after-school kindergarten program to accommodate parents’ needs. Beginning this August, the class began running from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. and parents can pay $220 a month for the extended program.

“We wanted to offer a high-quality afternoon program for parents who wanted that for their children,” said Trish Bechtel, principal of the kindergarten through sixth-grade school.

“We saw we had parents who really wanted their children to be able to be at school longer,” Bechtel said. She explained parents also wanted their children to have the extra music, art and theatre classes of the arts-enriched charter school. She said the school’s administration found that “it was almost impossible to have those classes in the morning in addition to doing all the pre-reading and pre-math activities that you do in kindergarten.”

The school’s executive director, Mary Lang, said a lot of students are ready for the full day at age 5, but not a full day of academics. She said the charter school focuses on enrichment programs in areas like theater, visual arts, music, dance, and Spanish in addition to core math and reading studies.

Earlier, in November 2004, the school’s board of directors decided to renovate one of its three buildings at 1723 East F Street. Prior to renovations, the building housed Turning Point Learning and Developmental Center, which had leased the space from the school. The work began in July after Turning Point moved out.

The school named the building the Lang Center for the school’s founder and executive director, Mary Lang. Now in its eighth year of operations, the three buildings of Moscow Charter School contain 136 students.

After renovations, the old farm house boasted the space for the kindergarten program and a resource room. It also holds office space for the school’s counselors and AmeriCorps members.

Bechtel described the homey feel of the Lang Center with sunlight falling in the windows. “Parents feel free to sort of hang around, it really has a family atmosphere to it.”

“I love it,” Morrissey said, adding it has a lot more space, making it more fun by adding room for toys and books ... “for the kids it’s great.”

As reported in the 23 Nov 2005 edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Logos School in Moscow was a dark horse at this year’s “Math is Cool” state competition in Washington.

That didn’t seem to slow it down.

Logos took home the first place for small schools in the 11th- and 12th-grade team competition at the Math is Cool Masters Competition Monday in Moses Lake, Wash.

The team was led by Logos teacher Renee Petersen.

“Renee has every right to brag ... she should be proud of her kids,” said competition organizer Annie Bouscal. “They took first place. They beat all of the Seattle schools.”

Logos also defeated Saint George’s School of Spokane, a team that has recently dominated the small-school division.

Typically, to be able to go to the state competition, teams need to qualify at regionals, Petersen said. Logos placed seventh at regionals, but the team’s high scores relative to the rest of the state earned them a wild-card spot in Moses Lake.

“We were not one of the four top places at our own region,” Petersen said. “We were all the more delighted to take first place overall.”

The team’s four members were Jamie Nance, junior; Seth Bloomberg, senior; Chris Kreuger, senior; Sheffield Leithart, senior. They beat 11 other schools at the masters competition. At the regional level, they competed against 29 teams from eight other schools.

The majority of their challengers attend Washington schools.

Five different events make up the competition. Students compete in both individual and team events including: a mental math competition, a buzzer competition, a pressure round, an individual test and a team test.

For Leithart, this year marked his second time at the Math is Cool competition. He first tried in 10th grade and returned for his senior year.

“Tenth grade was probably harder because I didn’t know as much about math,” he said. For him, the buzzer competition is the easiest, because “they don’t ask terribly hard questions.”

He had more difficulty with the individual test, in which he admitted he only got about 17 out of the 40 questions on the timed test.

Leithart said his team did well on the team test because they could look at the problems and designate who did which questions.

“On the individual test, if you don’t know how to do it, you don’t waste time on it,” he said.

For next year’s competitors, he offered the advice to “just have fun and enjoy it. It will make your day a lot easier.”

Bouscal said the benefits of the competition include the bonus of learning to work together with others. “Most teams put in a lot of hours of practice,” she said.

The students make a commitment to be a part of a team and put in significant amount of time, she said.

For Logos’ team to come in and win at state, “they must have done heavy duty studying and practicing ... considering they placed seventh at regionals and were going against some pretty tough schools. They really did well.”

Petersen explained her trick for getting her students excited about math in her ninth-, tenth- and eleventh-grade classes.

“I try to make math as enjoyable as possible. I give them fun math problems each week, which if they do, they get candy.”

At the competition, Petersen explained that most of the questions were pulled from geometry, algebra, trigonometry and number theory. The tests are worded so that they are not just straight forward math problems.

“You apply something from one area to another,” she said. “You had to synthesize your math knowledge and apply it differently.”

“They learn higher levels than their grade levels to compete, so I think it is a real boost to their math education,” Bouscal said.

For more on the the competition and its history, check out www.academicsarecool.com.

Teacher contract talks turn sour; Cd'A educators want 4 percent raise, while district offers 2 percent

From the Coeur D'Alene Press:

If they don't get it -- well, there might be consequences.

One Coeur d'Alene teacher who has been involved in previous contract negotiations made a veiled threat that if the school district didn't approve a new contract by this evening, the district might not have teachers' support for a proposed $50 million facilities levy next spring.

"Tonight is a pivotal time for the school board," said Eric Louis, a senior English teacher at Coeur d'Alene High School, on Monday. "It's time for heroics. If this isn't resolved by tomorrow night, the timeline turns desperate.

"Negotiations could go into February. The district wants to have its levy election on March 14. The wounds will still be festering if we can't get this done. We need to get this done now."

Louis was one of several educators who spoke at an emotional school board meeting Monday night. Teachers delivered letters to board members encouraging them to give them a new contract.

Last week, The Press reported that teachers are considering taking an organized day off in a district-wide "sick-in." The Coeur d'Alene Teachers Association denied that its members are considering calling in sick en masse to negotiate a pay raise. Kristi Nivette, association president and a sixth-grade teacher at Canfield Middle School, said the association will meet with the Coeur d'Alene School District today in hopes of hammering out a new contract.

Also, Nivette said that going on strike isn't an option at this point.

"To call in sick when you're not sick is illegal," Nivette said. "We're not going to do that. We're negotiating in good faith. We're doing what we can to get the contract settled."

Despite Nivette's statements, The Press continues to hear from numerous teachers who say that a "sick-in" is being discussed and that it could happen soon.

Many of Coeur d'Alene's 514 full-time and part-time teachers are upset with the district's 2 percent counter-offer on the bargaining table.

"Two percent is zero," said Ben Curtiss, an educator in the juvenile detention center. "I can't afford to live in Coeur d'Alene. I work six to seven days a week just to put food on the table for my two little kids."

Curtiss, who commutes from the Silver Valley, said he contemplated asking for a pay cut so he would qualify for government assistance. He asked the board if the teachers were worth the money.

Negotiations ceased a few weeks ago. They have been working without a contract since the beginning of the school year, and the debates appear to be getting more contentious by the day.

Sen. John Goedde, R-Coeur d'Alene, has jumped into the fray by pointing out that people should consider the salaries and benefits when looking at teacher compensation. Goedde said that Idaho's per-capita income ranks 45th in the U.S. while teacher salaries rank 37th overall and teacher benefits rank 15th.

"Those numbers show that Idaho taxpayers realize the value of education and have rewarded teachers at a level higher than themselves," Goedde said. "I think you have to look at the total compensation they are receiving too. Those benefits are bills they don't have to pay out of pocket."

A total compensation report provided to The Press by Goedde shows that as of July, 72 percent of Coeur d'Alene teachers earned more than $50,000 annually, which includes health care benefits and life insurance, Social Security and retirement benefits, and extra pay for additional responsibilities or work, such as coaching. It also includes bonuses for having master or doctoral degrees.

• Four teachers (less than 1 percent) earn $80,000 to $90,000
• 95 teachers (18 percent) earn $70,000 to $80,000
• 165 teachers (32 percent) earn $60,000 to $70,000
• 108 teachers (21 percent) earn $50,000 to $60,000
• 106 teachers (nearly 21 percent) earn $40,000 to $50,000
• 11 teachers (2 percent) earn $30,000 to $40,000
• Almost 5 percent or 25 teachers earn less than $30,000

Nivette took exception to the report and said it's misleading to include employee benefits in salary calculations.

"There's not a bank in town that would give you a loan on that total compensation package," Nivette said. "We know that we won't be making lawyer salaries, but we get by knowing that we will have a good retirement and good health care benefits."

A starting teacher in Coeur d'Alene makes $27,500 for working 190 days annually. The top of the salary schedule is $50,081.

Idaho Falls School District, which is negotiating a new contract, has a similar wage structure. The Pocatello School District is slightly larger in size compared to Coeur d'Alene. It has the same starting salaries for its teachers. However, a Coeur d'Alene teacher with 10 years of experience makes $35,432 a year compared to a teacher in the Pocatello district that makes $32,742 annually. Pocatello's maximum wage is $53,495.

Coeur d'Alene is one of about 25 school districts in the state locked in contract negotiations. Gayle Moore, Idaho Education Association communications director, said it is unusual for nearly half of the districts in the state to have not signed contracts during the school year. Teachers in the state's larger districts -- Pocatello and Twin Falls, among others -- are also working without contracts. Both Mullan and Salmon districts have not settled disputes from the 2003-2004 school year.

Moore said the state hasn't allocated more money for the basic salary grid since 2001.

"The pie isn't big enough," Moore said. "Teachers are getting very dissatisfied with that situation. Health insurance costs have gone up, and benefits have been reduced."

To make ends meet, many teachers have taken second jobs, Nivette said. However, she could not say exactly how many teachers in the district work a second job.

"I am sure teachers have outside jobs," Goedde said. "My point is that everyone has to live within their means. You can't tell me they can't live off of $50,000 a year. They also work in an abbreviated work year. They have time to devote to other activities."

From the Houston Chronicle:

The Texas Supreme Court today struck down a key part of the state's public school funding system and gave the Legislature until June 1 to correct the problem.

The ruling, which partly upholds and partly reverses a state district court decision issued last year, means Gov. Rick Perry will have to call still another special session of the Legislature to tackle the problem.

Most likely, the session will be held after the March party primaries, when he and many lawmakers will be on the ballot in contested elections.

Lawmakers failed to agree on a new funding plan during this year's regular session and two special sessions.

The high court held 7-1 that the $1.50 per $100 valuation cap on local school maintenance taxes amounts to an unconstitutional statewide property tax because many school districts are at or near the limit.

In the majority opinion, Justice Nathan Hecht noted that the Supreme Court, in a previous school finance case, ruled that an "ad valorem (property) tax is a state tax ...when the state so completely controls the levy, assessment and disbursement of revenue, either directly or indirectly, that the authority employed (by local districts) is without meaningful discretion."

HT: Dave G.

From EIA:

• Item: Reporter Chris Peterson of the Washington City Paper writes a cover story for the November 11 edition about the Washington, DC members of the Communist Party USA. Near the end of the story is this single sentence: "Local communist meetings aren't found only in dark bars, living rooms, and coffee shops. Every month the comrades get a hot lunch, too -- at the National Education Association cafeteria on 16th Street NW."
• Item: Nationally syndicated columnist Robert Novak spots the Peterson story and mentions it as part of his November 20 column, with the subhead "Reds at NEA." The full item reads:

"The District of Columbia cell of the Communist Party USA has been revealed as holding a monthly luncheon in the cafeteria of the National Education Association, without the sponsorship but not with the disapproval of the huge, politically powerful schoolteachers union.

"The Communist meetings were reported by Chris Peterson in the Washington City Paper edition of Nov. 11-17. A lawyer attending the September meeting bolted from the cafeteria when he learned a reporter was present.

'''We had no knowledge of this,' NEA spokeswoman Denise Cardinal told this column, 'because the NEA does not screen the patrons of our cafeteria or listen in on conversations. It's open to the public.'"

• Item: The Education Intelligence Agency learns that the Communist Party USA has been meeting in the NEA cafeteria since at least May 1999, and that the cafeteria has hosted other individuals with suspect political beliefs (see here and here).
• Item: An unknown individual leaves a copy of this document on the doorstep of the EIA Operations Center. We reproduce it below:

The Cafeteria Manifesto

A spectre is haunting eateries -- the spectre of communism.

It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their appetites, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself.

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of gastric struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of cafes at large, or in the common ruin of the dining classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of eateries into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. So it has been with the NEA cafeteria. The defenders of the public gruel exploit the masses while retaining superior fare for themselves. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which they batter down all Chinese walls, with which they force the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of subsidized cuisine to capitulate.

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the NEA built itself up, were generated in feudal society. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. The modern NEA cafeteria, with its relations of coerced dues money to support a dining facility frequented by its apparatchiki, a cafeteria that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.

Thus the proletariat is born. With its birth begins its struggle with the cafeteria. At first the contest is carried on by individual diners, then by informal groups of lunch-eaters, then by the operatives of one trade, in one locality, against the individual cafe that directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported flatware that competes with their labour, they smash to pieces crockery, they set cherries jubilee ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the diner of the Middle Ages.

Here and there, the contest breaks out into food fights.

The development of the modern bistro, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the cafe produces and appropriates products. What the cafeteria therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the NEA cafe supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private provender.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all dining facilities from the NEA, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing restaurant conditions. Let NEA headquarters tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their made-to-order chicken-and-havarti sandwiches. They have a world to win.

SNACKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

The Washington State University Board of Regents has approved a new budget for the university.

From Northwest Public Radio:

The Washington State University Board of Regents has approved a new budget for the university. Glenn Mosley has more.

Under the budget approved by the Regents Friday, WSU will be able to hire 51 new faculty members to help address growing enrollment issues at its campuses around the state and will be able to help expand some academic programs.

The budget totals about $366 million in 05- 06, and almost $390 million for the following academic year. Most of the money comes from state support and tuition and fees paid by students.

The budget also includes a salary increase averaging 3 percent in September 2006 for faculty, administrative and professional staff and for graduate students.

WSU officials say a major future budget problem for the university is the rising cost of energy. WSU and other universities in the state will seek additional funding from the state legislature to help offset these costs.

From the 19 Nov 2005 edition of the Wall Street Journal:

By most measures, Monta Vista High here and Lynbrook High, in nearby San Jose, are among the nation's top public high schools. Both boast stellar test scores, an array of advanced-placement classes and a track record of sending graduates from the affluent suburbs of Silicon Valley to prestigious colleges.

But locally, they're also known for something else: white flight. Over the past 10 years, the proportion of white students at Lynbrook has fallen by nearly half, to 25% of the student body. At Monta Vista, white students make up less than one-third of the population, down from 45% -- this in a town that's half white. Some white Cupertino parents are instead sending their children to private schools or moving them to other, whiter public schools. More commonly, young white families in Silicon Valley say they are avoiding Cupertino altogether.

Whites aren't quitting the schools because the schools are failing academically. Quite the contrary: Many white parents say they're leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests.

The two schools, put another way that parents rarely articulate so bluntly, are too Asian.

Cathy Gatley, co-president of Monta Vista High School's parent-teacher association, recently dissuaded a family with a young child from moving to Cupertino because there are so few young white kids left in the public schools. "This may not sound good," she confides, "but their child may be the only Caucasian kid in the class." All of Ms. Gatley's four children have attended or are currently attending Monta Vista. One son, Andrew, 17 years old, took the high-school exit exam last summer and left the school to avoid the academic pressure. He is currently working in a pet-supply store. Ms. Gatley, who is white, says she probably wouldn't have moved to Cupertino if she had anticipated how much it would change.

In the 1960s, the term "white flight" emerged to describe the rapid exodus of whites from big cities into the suburbs, a process that often resulted in the economic degradation of the remaining community. Back then, the phenomenon was mostly believed to be sparked by the growth in the population of African-Americans, and to a lesser degree Hispanics, in some major cities.

But this modern incarnation is different. Across the country, Asian-Americans have by and large been successful and accepted into middle- and upper-class communities. Silicon Valley has kept Cupertino's economy stable, and the town is almost indistinguishable from many of the suburbs around it. The shrinking number of white students hasn't hurt the academic standards of Cupertino's schools -- in fact the opposite is true.

This reverse white-flight is interesting--the schools are allegedly "too Asian": too academic.

Chris, who has lived in Japan for many years, writes the following observations and questions:

• Why do Americans act as if the world owes us a comfortable living?
• Is it better to go to a less competitive school where you can be ranked near the top of your class with less effort, or to go to a more competitive school and only be an also-ran despite massive effort on your part? (A lot of whites prefer the former: easier schools where they can enjoy lots of self-esteem along with all sorts of fun extracuricular activities.)
• What is the primary purpose of going to school in the first place? To enjoy all sorts of extracurricular activities, or to absorb knowledge?

I would add the following question to the mix: must the schools be the sole provider of extracurricular activities? Is that what we're paying $9,000 per child per year for?

HT: Christopher W.

The annual Math is Cool masters competition was held this weekend at Moses Lake.

Congratulations to Logos School. In the team competition for the 11-12^th grades, the Logos team took 1^st place.

Whenever one points out the inefficiency of the public schools, the immediate reaction of the establishment is to say "But what about _________? (Fill in the blank). The favorites offered are special education, students with Limited English Proficiency, low income students, "public schools have to take all students", etc. These, and others, were prominent in the presentation of Phil Homer of the Idaho Association of School Administrators at the Associated Taxpayers of Idaho Annual Conference last week in Boise. (http://www.users.qwest.net/~ati-taxinfo/pdfs/2005data/PhilHomer.pdf) None of these are ever quantified, and are bogeymen intended to end the discussion and justify increased funding for public schools. My presentation can be found at: http://www.edexidaho.org/news_views/TaxConference.htm

Below is an article I did for the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. Another response to these bogeymen can be found at: http://www.edexidaho.org/news_views/nv02.htm.