Moscow Education (Idaho)

Jay Greene notes that critics call No Child Left Behind an “unfunded mandate.”

Jay asks the big question: what did schools think they were supposed to be doing pre-NCLB?

Let’s leave aside the fact that federal spending on education has increased 41% since passage of NCLB. And let’s leave aside that NCLB is not actually a mandate, since states do not have to comply with NCLB if they do not want Title I funds (which have increased 59% since 2001).

Besides neither being unfunded nor a mandate, the argument that NCLB is an unfunded mandate is especially odd because it makes one wonder what all of the funding that schools received before NCLB was for. It’s as if the unfunded mandate crowd is saying: “The $10,000 per pupil we already get just pays for warehousing. If you actually want us to educate kids, that’ll cost ya extra.”

…

[NCLB] requires that states wishing to receive Title I funds have to establish goals for student success, select tests for measuring progress towards those goals, and report results from those tests broken out by subgroups.

That’s measuring the outputs. Now everyone is complaining because our measurements are showing how poorly the outputs of the system perform.

[The] Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics for the 2003-2004 school year put average tuition paid by private elementary school students at $5,049…

—National Review

FWIW, Logos School’s elementary tuition is $3,480 for 1^st – 2^nd, and $4,200 for 3^rd – 6^th — well below the national average.

Compare that to the cost of a government education: over $10k/year in Moscow.

How, you ask, can private schools educate for a third of what it costs the government schools to educate? And their education be outstanding?

TIMSS compares the mathematics achievement of 4^th graders among the 25 participating countries.

We’re talking 4^th graders here. It’s good to see that the US scores right up there with Hungary, Russia, Cyprus, and Moldova.

The US is even further behind in math when you look at the high school aptitudes.

Average mathematics scale scores of fourth-grade students, by country: 2003

I have mixed feelings about this.

First, if there’s no crime (“unsubstantiated allegations”), then there’s nothing to report per se.

Yet this is clearly contrary to the public records act and allows the school districts to decide not to respond to public records requests — a dangerous precedent.

From KREM News in Spokane:

The state Supreme Court has ruled the identities of public school teachers who have unsubstantiated allegations of sexual misconduct against them are exempt under the Public Disclosure Act.

In a 6-3 ruling Thursday, the high court partially reversed a Court of appeals ruling that said the identities must be disclosed unless the allegations of misconduct were patently false.

The majority says a teacher's identity should only be released when alleged sexual misconduct has been substantiated or when that teacher's conduct results in some form of discipline, even if only a reprimand.

In a sharply worded dissent, three justices say the majority's ruling is contrary to the public records act and puts children at risk.

The charts are from the recently released study “Given Half a Chance: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males” (PDF).

These are some very scary numbers.

Progressives have no solutions to our education crisis. They want to keep the status quo and throw more money at the teachers unions — as though the unions have any incentive to produce a high quality education. The progressives “solution” is what has gotten us in the predicament we are today.

Out of the 21 graduates,

• Three (3) are national merit finalists
• The class received over $175,000 in scholarships and awards.

Congrats to the Logos class of 2008.

Who says that the wealthy cannot get a good government education? They just move to areas where the property taxes are higher, keeping the “undesirable” students out of the schools.

And “low class” parents try sneaking their kids in for a better education.

Classic government education.

From the Idaho Statesman:

Sun Valley's "superior" schools bringing in fakers

The Mtn. Express reports on a new proof-of-residency requirement from the Blaine County School District that is aimed at making sure "outsiders aren't taking advantage of the Wood River Valley's superior school system."

"As a district we're seeing that a lot of students are circumventing the system and coming in from Shoshone, Fairfield or Richfield to take advantage of the programs that the Blaine County School District has in place that other school districts haven't the budget for," said Mike Chatterton, school district treasurer.

The district spends almost twice as much per student per year as the state average. 

From Neal McCluskey over at Cato-at Liberty:

Sadly, Carey’s blatant disregard for the distinction I drew between public schooling and public education, and even his failure to consider any of my major points or evidence, isn’t what ends up taking the sorry cake. The lowest point is his effort to equate opposing government-dominated schooling with supporting propertied-class privilege, disenfranchised women, and all sorts of other inequalities that Carey knows weren’t the products of a free education system, but rather legally—read: government—imposed constrictions. 

From today's Spokesman Review.

Hundreds of people working in the military, government and education are on a list of almost 10,000 people who spent $7.3 million buying phony and counterfeit high school and college degrees from a Spokane diploma mill.

The complete list of buyers, which the U.S. Department of Justice has refused to release to the public, has been obtained by The Spokesman-Review.

"There are people in high places with these degrees, and only one of them has been charged with a crime," a source familiar with the list said Monday.

A preliminary analysis of the list by The Spokesman-Review shows 135 individuals with ties to the military, 39 with links to educational institutions and 17 employed by government agencies. Those numbers were derived from e-mail addresses that are part of the list obtained by the newspaper.

However, the exact number of individuals with ties to the military, government and education is believed to be far greater because many of those buyers used their personal e-mail accounts.

Check out the list and see if anyone you know is named. There are 17 from Idaho and 92 from Washington.

And the UI didn’t make it in the top 20.

No wonder enrollment is plummeting.

From the Associated Press:

Following is a list of the top party schools in the nation, according to Princeton Review's survey of 120,000 students.

1. University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla.
2. University of Mississippi, University, Miss.
3. Penn State University, University Park, Pa.
4. West Virginia University, Morgantown, W.Va.
5. Ohio University, Athens, Ohio.
6. Randolph-Macon College, Ashland, Va.
7. University of Georgia, Athens, Ga.
8. University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
9. University of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, Calif.
10. Florida State University, Tallahassee, Fla.
11. University of New Hampshire, Durham, N.H.
12. University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa.
13. University of Colorado, Boulder, Co.
14. Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.
15. Tulane University, New Orleans, La.
16. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Ill.
17. Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz.
18. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tenn.
19. University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Ala.
20. Loyola University-New Orleans, New Orleans, La.

Now this on school choice:

The profound failure of inner-city public schools to teach children may be the nation’s greatest scandal. The differences between the two Presidential candidates on this could hardly be more stark. John McCain is calling for alternatives to the system; Barack Obama wants the kids to stay within that system. We think the facts support Senator McCain.

—Wall Street Journal

This goes with the previous post about food choices.

For progressives, less choice is always better — well, as long as they are the ones making our choices for us.

According to the L.A. Times, a Temple University study found that obesity in children is linked to a tendency to shy away from athletic teams, and having lower test score. 

When grade point averages were compared among 566 middle school students in a suburb of Philadelphia, overweight students came in at about half a grade point lower than normal-weight kids.

The study, published in the July issue of the journal Obesity, also found that overweight students had lower reading comprehension scores on a nationally standardized test, ranking in the 66^th percentile; normal-weight kids ranked in the 75th percentile. Heavier kids were also five times more likely to have six or more detentions than their normal-weight peers, had more school absences and lower physical fitness test scores, and were less inclined to participate on athletic teams -- 37% compared with 75% of normal-weight students.

Anders Henriksson is assistant Professor of history at Shepherd College.

Henriksson has assembled a collection of some of his favorite paragraphs from the history essays of his college students. 

You just have to shake your head in amazement at what passes for college-level intelligence these days.

Here are some student quotes, via the Wilson Quarterly:

• History, a record of things left behind by past generations, started in 1815. Throughout the comparatively radical years 1815–1870 the western European continent was undergoing a Rampant period of economic modification. Industrialization was precipitating in England. Problems were so complexicated that in Paris, out of a city population of one million people, two million able bodies were on the loose.
• An angry Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door. Theologically, Luthar was into reorientation mutation. Calvinism was the most convenient religion since the days of the ancients. Anabaptist services tended to be migratory. The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic. Monks went right on seeing themselves as worms. The last Jesuit priest died in the 19th century.
• After the refirmation were wars both foreign and infernal. If the Spanish could gain the Netherlands they would have a stronghold throughout northern Europe which would include their posetions in Italy, Burgangy, central Europe and India thus serrounding France. The German Emperor’s lower passage was blocked by the French for years and years.
• Louis XIV became King of the Sun. He gave the people food and artillery. If he didn’t like someone, he sent them to the gallows to row for the rest of their lives. Vauban was the royal minister of flirtation. In Russia the 17th century was known as the time of the bounding of the serfs. Russian nobles wore clothes only to humour Peter the Great. Peter filled his government with accidental people and built a new capital near the European boarder. Orthodox priests became government antennae.
• The enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare wrote a book called Candy that got him into trouble with Frederick the Great. Philosophers were unknown yet, and the fundamental stake was one of religious toleration slightly confused with defeatism. France was in a very serious state. Taxation was a great drain on the state budget. The French revolution was accomplished before it happened. The revolution evolved through monarchial, republican and tolarian phases until it catapulted into Napolean. Napoleon was ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained.

This is truly scary.

I posted previously about The Dumbest Generation.

In that article was the following quote:

"As a result, professors have widely lowered their standards to accommodate the a-literacy of their students."

Frank C makes a great observation about the American system that needs to be highlighted:

So true, and university administrators have browbeaten professors into submission with student evaluations of teaching. The harder the course the lower the evaluations and hence no pay raises. Get higher evaluations, higher pay raises. Hence fluff courses. Several of my recently arrived European and Asian colleagues have pointed out to me this big conflict of interest in the American system of measuring professor performance. This is done all in the name of keeping enrollments up. More student numbers mean more state money, the only thing that seems to be of importance to modern university management. The voters and university trustees, in this state the SBOE, should wise up to this but I doubt that'll happen.

Perhaps most disappointing is the growing lack of natural curiosity and the disdain for hard work with many students. This is all linked to the “you must go to college” syndrome:

http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/2008/06/ymgtc-problem.html

We knew this was coming.

It sure looks like the retirees have a solid case.

As reported in today’s edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Four University of Idaho retirees filed a lawsuit against the UI and the Idaho State Board of Education on Monday, alleging they reneged on promises the university made during buyout offers in 1999 and 2002.

UI retirees Wileen Anderson, Harvey Neese, Joyce Presby and Arthur Smith are named as plaintiffs in the suit, which was filed in Latah County District Court by their Moscow-based attorney, Ron Landeck.

Landeck also filed a motion to maintain class action status, meaning any judgement will affect the entire group of retirees regardless of whether they are named in the lawsuit.

The group claims to represent 268 retirees and alleges breach of contract related to health and life insurance coverage.

The board of education is named as a defendant in the suit because it also acts as the UI Board of Regents.

UI spokeswoman Joni Kirk said Monday that university officials don't comment on current or pending litigation, but noted they are aware that the lawsuit had been filed.

The case has been assigned to Second District Court Judge John Stegner, according to court documents.

HT: Chris W.

Via EIA:

Quote of the Week #1. "In public employment, they have the right not to belong, but I still must represent them. If under the law we're obligated to represent every employee, then it's only fair that every employee pays something toward the cost of being represented." – New York State United Teachers President Richard C. Iannuzzi, after the legislature made the state's agency fee law permanent. (July 24 New York Times)

 

Quote of the Week #2. "Iannuzzi's language is fairly typical among union officials (they frequently use the term 'fair share' to describe the dues they seize from nonmembers to pay for unwanted 'representation'). But painting union bosses as hapless victims of the very special privileges they got enacted is absolutely absurd. Exclusive representation -- monopoly bargaining -- is a statutory power given to unions precisely because union bosses lobbied for it.

I'd love to call Iannuzzi's bluff -- will he and other union bosses actually consent to lifting federal and state laws which give unions the special privilege of monopoly bargaining?" – Nick Cote, commenting on the Freedom@Work blog.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

A press release from Bob Hieronymus, Executive Vice President of Administration and Advancement at New Saint Andrews College:

NSA and Seventh-Day Adventists co-sponsor

"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed"

Movie to show downtown at the Kenworthy Aug. 8, 9 and 10 

New Saint Andrews College and the Seventh-Day Adventist Church of Moscow are co-sponsoring the showing of the movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" in Moscow at the Kenworthy Theatre August 8, 9 and 10.

Show times are at 5:30 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. on Friday, August 8, and Saturday, August 9. On Sunday, August 10, show times will start at 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. The price of admission is $6/adults, $3/children 12 and younger.

After both showings on Saturday, New Saint Andrews College Senior Fellow Dr. Gordon Wilson will be available to visit with interested attendees.  Dr. Stan Hudson, a creationist lecturer from the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, will speak with interested attendees after the showing on Friday afternoon and after both showings on Sunday.

The controversial movie has sparked a national discussion about academic freedom and religious liberty on campuses since its release in April. It exposes "Big Science" and its persecution of scientists, teachers, and students who have questioned the modern version evolutionary theory which requires an agnostic or atheistic view of the origins of life.

New Saint Andrews is a classical Christian liberal arts college located on Friendship Square in downtown Moscow. 

Dr. Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University, has just finished writing a book titled The Dumbest Generation.

According to The Pope Center, Bauerlein’s book is not your average “kids these days!” kind of finger-wagging book. Rather, it’s a scholarly look at why kids don’t learn and don’t want to learn these days.

The glorification of youth was strongly reinforced by “progressive” educational theories emanating from our leading schools of education – theories insisting that the proper role for teachers is to act simply as “facilitators” who guide students in “constructing their own knowledge.” Supposedly, active young minds would do that if they were free to follow their own natural inclinations.

That theory took hold first in the lower K-12 grades and rapidly spread upward. Many college professors resisted it and continued to assign challenging reading material, only to discover that students either wouldn’t read it or if they tried, just couldn’t grasp it. As a result, professors have widely lowered their standards to accommodate the a-literacy of their students. In turn, that means that our supposedly highly educated populace actually contains a small and declining number of people capable of functioning at a high intellectual level.

Oakland Military Institute is a college-prep charter school.

Darren Miller (a teacher at OMI) discusses the explicit standards at the school:

There are standards of behavior, standards of academic work, standards of discipline/bearing/decorum. The students know what those standards are, and the standards are not flexible.

…

While utilizing a military model, OMI is not a soldier factory, it’s not a recruiting arm of the military, and they’re not teaching warmongering there.

…

In addition to academic subjects OMI teaches leadership, it teaches respect, it teaches self-discipline, it teaches peaceful resolution to problems — values sorely needed given the environment so many of the students come from. Uniforms, formations, military-type discipline–these are just effective tools, very efficient tools, for instilling those values in students. They are merely a means to an end, and that end is college.

Perhaps we need more charter schools like OMI, especially for inner-city kids.

Twiggs County (central Georgia) will let principals paddle misbehaving students with their parents’ permission.

Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn  have recently published a book that has also created quite a stir: Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.

They also have an article in Education Next, How Do We Transform Our Schools?, that has also created quite a stir.

Some excerpts:

That schools have gotten little back from their investment in technology should come as no surprise. Virtually every organization does the same thing schools have done when implementing an innovation. An organization’s natural instinct is to cram the innovation into its existing operating model to sustain what it already does. This is the predictable course, the logical course—and the wrong course.

…

The way to implement an innovation so that it will transform an organization is to implement it disruptively—not by using it to compete against the existing paradigm and serve existing customers, but to let it compete against “non-consumption,” where the alternative is nothing at all.

Online learning may be a great segue for parents who want out of the government schools but who don’t want to do homeschooling alone.

As George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers’ Union, noted:

The charter school enrollment is increasing. Public school enrollment is decreasing. We are now a competitive school district where student achievement may very well determine our existence.

Online learning could very well be another positive disruption for the socialist schools.

The News Hour: interviewed George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers’ Union.

He speaks the truth:  

JOHN MERROW: Rhee is hoping to tie teacher pay to student achievement. Because teacher union membership is declining, Rhee may have an edge in negotiations.

GEORGE PARKER: The charter school enrollment is increasing. Public school enrollment is decreasing. We are now a competitive school district where student achievement may very well determine our existence.

JOHN MERROW: More than a quarter of D.C.’s school-age children now attend public charter schools, where teachers do not have to belong to the union.

GEORGE PARKER: Normally, unions have not had to contend with any sense of accountability or responsibility for student achievement, and our existence and survival has not depended upon that.

JOHN MERROW: Why hasn’t student achievement been a bread-and-butter issue for teacher unions all along?

GEORGE PARKER: I think that there has been a union paradigm of union and management of, “This is your turf. This is our turf.”

Perhaps there’s another reason?

"When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children."
—Albert Shanker, the AFT's longtime president, famously remarked in 1985

Prior to charter schools, for the most part, I think that as a union we could relax a little bit, because for the most part we were the only kid on the block.  And you pretty much had to come to us.  Unless you could afford to send your child to a private school or et cetera, you had no other choices.

—George Parker, president of the Washington Teachers Union

One way to raise test scores is by lowering the bar.

From Marc Epstein over at City Journal.

A year ago, I wrote about the dumbing down of New York State’s Regents exams, the five tests in core subjects that students must pass to get a regular high school diploma. Since then, little has changed—unless it’s that the exams have become even dumber. Look no further than this year’s United States History and Government exam for 11th-graders.

The test has three parts and a total of 75 points weighted and calculated to total 100 percent, in a Byzantine formula established in Albany. Fifty multiple-choice questions, along with 15 document-based questions, account for 65 of those points. The student’s raw score is then plotted on a conversion chart provided by the state in combination with the student’s score on two essays, which account for the total score’s remaining ten points. If a student receives as few as 36 points out of 65 in the first two parts of the exam, he can still pass the Regents by earning five out of the ten essay points. According to the point-conversion chart, if he scores 50 points in the first two parts, he doesn’t even have to answer an essay question to pass—because his overall grade is already a 65, the minimum passing grade. If you’re confused by this elaborate scoring system, you’re not alone. But the key point is that students who get fewer than half of the questions correct can pass. And this leniency applies to other Regents tests as well. Students taking the algebra exam, for instance, need only earn a “raw score” of 30—out of a possible 87 points—to pass.

Could it be that the exams are just too tough for our poor kids?

Some might argue that the rigor of the examinations justifies this system of weighting scores. That’s laughable. Consider some of the questions on the history exam. The multiple-choice section features a political cartoon in which a Supreme Court justice points to a chart showing pictures of the three branches of government. The cartoon reads “U.S. Constitution” at the top and “checks and balances” at the bottom. The test question asks: “Which constitutional principle is the focus of the cartoon?” This is all too typical of the half-dozen graphs, maps, and cartoon questions in this section of the test.

The document-based questions account for another 15 points; information garnered from them is then incorporated into one of the essay questions. Students need no prior knowledge of American history to answer the questions successfully. For example, a picture of students outside Little Rock Central High School, where troops guard the schoolhouse doors, bears the caption: “A white student passes through an Arkansas National Guard line as Elizabeth Eckford is turned away on September 4, 1957.” A second photo of Elizabeth Eckford, a black student, reads, “a mob surrounds Elizabeth Eckford outside Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.” The question asks the student to describe what happened to Eckford when she tried to attend Central High School! Another photo depicts the eventual resolution of the Little Rock standoff, when the military enforced desegregation rulings at President Eisenhower’s command. The caption reads: “On September 25, 1957 federal troops escort the Little Rock Nine to their classes at Central High School.” The student is asked, “Based on this photograph, what was the job of the United States Army troops in Little Rock, Arkansas?”

Pretty arduous, ‘eh?

“Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers.”

—The American Scholar

Which is the difference between training and education.

Think back on your education experience — were you taught to think or to do?

Were you taught to regurgitate what you had been spoon-fed, or to extrapolate and think critically of what you had learned?

Notice the school district’s presumption of stupidity of the voters. Clearly if they had understood what the $587k was going to be used for, they would have voted for it. Since they voted against it, they didn’t understand.

You just have to love the logic there.

As reported in today’s edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

The Potlatch School Board is unlikely to revote on a plant facilities levy that has now failed twice, according to a school board member.

The levy would have raised money to replace two school buses and complete a bus facility and barn project that was started in 2001.

The levy was voted down the first time May 20, and then it failed again Tuesday. School Board member Doug Scoville said the board does not have adequate time to re-explain the levy and try again this year.

"We feel the patrons do not want it, with the economy and the high price of fuel and other things they're facing," said Scoville.

The levy asked for $587,340 over two years. The cost for taxpayers would have been assessed by the December 2007 assessed market value of their properties, said Potlatch Superintendent Joe Kren. For a $100,000 home, the levy would have cost $199.60 the first year, and $129.70 the second.

Scoville said voters may have been confused by the vote because of a 2001 levy that paid to begin the bus facility project.

"There was a misunderstanding in some people's minds that they'd already voted on the levy. That was a mistake," said Scoville.

Personally, I think property tax payers are saying “enough if enough already!”

The following “Ink” by Vera White appeared in Friday’s edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

The rumor that circulates when there is an opening for president at the University of Idaho has surfaced again - Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne. There is a problem that he might lack the proper educational credentials, but when did a little thing like following procedure ever stop the Idaho Board of Education?

Without doubt, Dirk could count on the support of board member Paul Agidius of Moscow, who behaves like a giddy teenager panting after a rock star when in the presence of the former Republican Idaho governor.

If Kempthorne did make the cut, God forbid, the INKster could live with it, knowing she'd never lack for column items in this lifetime!

The INKster tried to confirm this rumor with a call to Chris Paolino, deputy director in the secretary's office of communications, but the call was not returned by press time.

Kempthorne as UI President? Interesting.

Is the UI trying to bolster its Boise connections? Is that even necessary?

As reported in today’s edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

The University of Idaho will pay more than $90,000 to executive search firm Korn/Ferry International to assist with the search for a new president.

The search firm will "fill the hopper" with candidates to replace former president Tim White, said Mark Browning, spokesman for the State Board of Education.

Why don’t they save the $90k and keep the President we’ve got?