Category: Education

The editors of the American Heritage® dictionaries have compiled a list of 100 words they recommend every high school graduate should know.

“The words we suggest,” says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, “are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language.”

The entire list of 100 words.

… have a Wikipedia entry? NewMexiKen’s does.

An attorney friend writes in his Christmas letter:

“Kevin’s punishment for academic enthusiasm in the type-A Montgomery County school culture is an AP English teacher who assigned the following essay: ‘Compare thoughts about art in Hamlet and Ode to a Grecian Urn. Your essay must include the three concepts of Montainesque skepticisim.’ Thank God Kevin stopped asking for homework help in middle school. . . . .

The new . . . varsity [baseball] coach was reputed to have run a conditioning drill that required sprinting intervals, with a penalty of an additional group lap if any single participant lagged behind. One kid stopped to puke, and the coach told them all to run another lap.”

Again, from Dubner at Freakonomics Blog:

I have long heard the argument that one reason for the decline in teacher quality in U.S. schools (if in fact there has been such a decline) was the feminist movement. The argument goes like this: until the mid-1960’s or so, teaching was one of the few career paths wide open to women; as feminism opened up opportunities for women in other fields, many bright women followed those opportunities; the remaining pool of female teachers since then is therefore of lesser quality.

Like I said, I had long heard that argument, but couldn’t find any research on the subject. But thanks to Richard Morin’s always-excellent “Unconventional Wisdom” WashPost column (2nd item), here’s a new paper by Marigee Bacolod at Cal-Irvine, making that very argument.

Bacolod’s solution? Raise teacher salaries, of course.

Illinois has laid down the law for five-year-olds:

“The 172 new ‘benchmarks,’ or skills, cover language arts, math, science, social science, physical development and health, fine arts, foreign language and social/emotional development.”

Read all about Illinois kindergarten standards from the Chicago Sun-Times. Some examples:

LANGUAGE ARTS
• Read one-syllable and high-frequency words
• Explain past events with accurate detail

MATH
• Estimate numbers of objects in a set
• Represent data using concrete objects, pictures and graphs

SCIENCE
• Understand the purpose of recycling
• Describe the effects of forces in nature

SOCIAL SCIENCE
• Participate in voting as a way of making choices
• Understand that each of us belongs to a family and recognize that families vary

SOCIAL/EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• Demonstrate control of impulsive behavior
• Describe positive qualities of others

Members of the class of 2010, entering college this fall, were mostly born in 1988. For them: Billy Carter, Lucille Ball, Gilda Radner, Billy Martin, Andy Gibb, and Secretariat have always been dead.

1. The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
2. They have known only two presidents.
3. For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt.

6. There has always been only one Germany.
7. They have never heard anyone actually “ring it up” on a cash register.
8. They are wireless, yet always connected.

11. A coffee has always taken longer to make than a milkshake.
12. Smoking has never been permitted on U.S. airlines.

15. They have never had to distinguish between the St. Louis Cardinals baseball and football teams.

17. They grew up pushing their own miniature shopping carts in the supermarket.
18. They grew up with and have outgrown faxing as a means of communication.
19. “Google” has always been a verb.
20. Text messaging is their email.

22. Mr. Rogers, not Walter Cronkite, has always been the most trusted man in America.
23. Bar codes have always been on everything, from library cards and snail mail to retail items.
24. Madden has always been a game, not a Superbowl-winning coach.

32. Reality shows have always been on television.

34. They have always known that “In the criminal justice system the people have been represented by two separate yet equally important groups.”
35. Young women’s fashions have never been concerned with where the waist is.
36. They have rarely mailed anything using a stamp.

47. Small white holiday lights have always been in style.
48. Most of them never had the chance to eat bad airline food.

From the Beloit College Mindset List. There’s 75 altogether.

Via Ample Sanity.

The Washington Monthly takes on U.S. News:

By devising a set of criteria different from those of other college guides, we arrived at sharply different results. Top schools sank, and medium schools rose. For instance, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, 48th on the U.S News list, takes third place on our list, while Princeton, first on the U.S. News list, takes 43rd on ours. In short, Pennsylvania State, measured on our terms–by the yardstick of fostering research, national service and social mobility–does a lot more for the country than Princeton.

Don’t get us wrong. We’re not saying Princeton isn’t a superb school. It employs many of the nation’s finest minds, and its philosophy department is widely considered the best in the country. Its eating clubs, or whatever they’re called, are surely unmatched. Princeton may be a great destination for your tuition dollars, all 31,450 of them, not including room or board. But what if it’s a lousy destination for your tax dollars? Each year, Princeton receives millions of dollars in federal research grants. Does it deserve them? What has Princeton done for us lately? This is the only guide that tries to tell you. That, and a bit more.

National Rankings

Liberal Arts College Rankings

An excerpt from After the Bell Curve in The New York Times Magazine:

A later study of French youngsters adopted between the ages of 4 and 6 shows the continuing interplay of nature and nurture. Those children had little going for them. Their I.Q.’s averaged 77, putting them near retardation. Most were abused or neglected as infants, then shunted from one foster home or institution to the next.

Nine years later, they retook the I.Q. tests, and contrary to the conventional belief that I.Q. is essentially stable, all of them did better. The amount they improved was directly related to the adopting family’s status. Children adopted by farmers and laborers had average I.Q. scores of 85.5; those placed with middle-class families had average scores of 92. The average I.Q. scores of youngsters placed in well-to-do homes climbed more than 20 points, to 98 — a jump from borderline retardation to a whisker below average. That is a huge difference — a person with an I.Q. of 77 couldn’t explain the rules of baseball, while an individual with a 98 I.Q. could actually manage a baseball team — and it can only be explained by pointing to variations in family circumstances.

Taken together, these studies show that the issue has changed: it is no longer a matter of whether the environment matters but when and how it matters. And poverty, quite clearly, is an important part of the answer.

From today’s Daily Howler:

For those of you who are younger than 40, we’ll now tell a startling tale. Believe it or not, liberals once spent a lot of time worrying about low-income/minority children! The young will find this hard to believe, but we swear that our statement is accurate. Starting in the mid-1960s, a range of well-known, best-selling books were written about low-income schools—among them Jonathan Kozol’s brilliant Death at an Early Age and Herbert Kohl’s semi-puzzling but heartfelt 36 Children. It was a standard liberal concern—what should we do about the needs of black children? For ourselves, books like those were part of what brought us here to Baltimore in the first place. When we started teaching fifth grade in 1969, it was books like those, by Kozol and Kohl, which framed our (very meager) understanding.

But uh-oh! It soon became clear that it wouldn’t be easy to solve the problems of low-income schools. In the sixties, pleasing thoughts had prevailed; many liberals assumed that racist teachers were holding black kids back in school, and that basic good faith would solve the problems which obtained in their classrooms. (To his credit, Kozol never really said or implied this. Nor did he claim, in his award-winning book, that he had produced great academic outcomes in the Boston school where he taught.) But as time went by, it became fairly clear that the problems found in low-income schools wouldn’t be easy to solve at all. And everyone knows what happened then; liberals dropped low-income kids like a rock! As we all know if we think about it, we modern liberals don’t discuss the problems and pathologies of our low-income schools. Decades ago, we libs took a hike. We too sang, “Farewell, Gabriela.”

Do you have any doubt about this? If so, consider what happened in liberal and mainstream circles when Helfand published his lengthy piece about Gabriela Ocampo—and about the thousands of low-income kids being pushed from Los Angeles high schools.

What happened when Helfand’s report appeared? In liberal circles, nothing happened! Liberal journals didn’t discuss it, nor did liberal bloggers. Whatever one thinks of the L.A. school board’s new policies, Helfand’s report was quite remarkable—and it opened with a well-known former Democratic politician, L.A. superintendent Roy Romer, wringing his hands about the “cumulative failure” involved in the massive algebra drop-outs. But liberal bloggers and liberal journals didn’t say a word about this. In the modern world, conservatives talk about low-income kids—but we liberals no longer bother. We simply don’t care about low-income kids. We don’t waste our time on their problems.

How little do liberals and mainstream writers seem to care about low-income kids? Consider what happened when the Post’s Richard Cohen discussed Gabriela’s large problem.

“I am haunted by Gabriela Ocampo,” Cohen wrote, at the start of a February 16 column—a column which appeared on-line but not in the Post itself. But as Cohen wrote, it became fairly clear that he wasn’t all that “haunted” by Ocampo’s plight. He wrote a largely fatuous piece about his own alleged struggles with algebra—a piece in which he addressed Gabriela, apparently trying to buck up her spirits. “Gabriela, this is Richard,” he wrote. “There’s life after algebra,” he sagely advised. And then he offered this foolish attempt to empathize with this low-income child—with a child who’d been left far behind:
…

Let’s be fair: If Gabriela were planning to become a Post columnist, this would constitute useful advice. But Gabriela looks ahead to a lifetime of “nickel and diming”—a lifetime of low-wage employment. The problem isn’t her lack of algebra; almost surely, the problem is her lack of a wide range of skills—and now, her lack of a high school diploma. But Cohen seemed almost totally clueless about the real problem which Helfand described. After all, Gabriela “won’t need algebra” at that Subway shop, either. But readers, that misses the point.

NewMexiKen urges you to read all of this excellent piece from The Daily Howler and learn “the point” — and to continue reading his reports on education.

The Daily Howler has more on whether Algebra should be required in high school. Scroll about half-way down to the header: Special report—Farewell, Gabriela!

See previous NewMexiKen posting.

Richard Cohen wrote this column week before last. It took quite a hit in blogland, but I took a pass. I bring it up here, because of the math quiz (next item).

I am haunted by Gabriela Ocampo. Last year, she dropped out of the 12th grade at Birmingham High School in Los Angeles after failing algebra six times in six semesters, trying it a seventh time and finally just despairing over ever getting it. So, according to the Los Angeles Times, she “gathered her textbooks, dropped them at the campus book room and, without telling a soul, vanished from Birmingham High School.”

Gabriela, this is Richard: There’s life after algebra.

The key point Cohen goes on to make is: “Here’s the thing, Gabriela: You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it.”

While NewMexiKen is certainly saddened by the story of Gabriela Ocampo, Richard Cohen makes no sense. I feel fairly certain I have relied upon the reasoning I learned in Algebra most days of my life. Further, I doubt I could code this blog without the patterns algebra teaches.

But more importantly, what kind of school (what kind of society) lets a kid flunk a class six times? Learn more here. The incomparable Daily Howler addresses the Gabriela issue as well, in a three part series starting with A brilliant report in the L. A. Times begins with a child left behind