Category: Education

Teachers at Thaddeus Stevens Elementary School in Pittsburgh have been forbidden to grade papers with red ink because the color has become a symbol of negativity. “You could hold up a paper that says, ‘Great work!’ and it won’t even matter if it’s written in red,” said principal Joseph Foriska. With parents at other schools complaining that their children find the mere sight of red ink “stressful,” Foriska instructed teachers to switch to more “pleasant-feeling tones,” such as purple.

The Week Newsletter

From CNN.com:

NEW YORK (AP) — Go to Google, search and scroll results, click and copy.

When students do research online these days, many educators worry, those are often about the only steps they take. If they can avoid a trip to the library at all, many students gladly will.

Young people may know that just because information is plentiful online doesn’t mean it’s reliable, yet their perceptions of what’s trustworthy frequently differ from their elders’ — sparking a larger debate about what constitutes truth in the Internet age.

Georgia Tech professor Amy Bruckman tried to force students to leave their computers by requiring at least one book for a September class project.

She wasn’t prepared for the response: “Someone raised their hand and asked, ‘Excuse me, where would I get a book?'”

Link via dangerousmeta!

From the Los Angeles Times — Putting Knowledge in Their Grasp

Students at a Newport Beach intermediate school will soon stop passing notes in class. Instead, they’ll beam them.

All 625 seventh-graders at Ensign Intermediate School received hand-held computers last week.

With the personal digital assistants, once the toys of tech-savvy executives, the students will be able to download books, write reports and quietly exchange written questions and answers with their teachers.

And those who care as much about appearances as they do academics will be able to check their hair, thanks to software that makes the device’s screen reflective….

In Sandy Asper’s English class, students already have begun writing essays on their PDAs, using miniature keyboards that plug into them. Their assignment is displayed on the board: write a five-paragraph essay about a favorite book. As students begin writing, the classroom quickly becomes a symphony of clicking and tapping.

Once finished, students beam their completed work to Asper’s PDA. The technology is similar to that of a television remote control, in which digital information is carried through an infrared light beam.

“I can’t tell you how excited I am,” said the 32-year veteran teacher. “It will be infinitely better.”

Asper said a question can now be answered simultaneously by all students, instead of the old-fashioned way of raising hands. She will be able to determine how many students knew the answer.

For instance, when her students read books downloaded onto their PDAs, Asper will be able to beam a reading question that will appear on their screens. Students will beam back their answers.

From The Week Magazine:

Schools in Nashville have stopped posting honor rolls so as not to hurt the feelings of underachieving students. After several parents complained that the honor rolls were embarrassing, lawyers warned that the school district could be sued under a law that bars schools from releasing academic information without permission. “If there are some children that always make it and others that always don’t make it, there is a very subtle message that is sent,” said one principal. He said that a public honor roll doesn’t “fit my world view of what a school should be.”

NewMexiKen wonders if the “letter” men and women will be forbidden to wear their letter jackets/sweaters to school, too, so that the underachieving jocks won’t have their feelings hurt.

The Georgia Department of Education recently unveiled a draft of the new high school history curriculum. A Georgia high school history teacher says “the plan will gut the subject.” Read his essay in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Excerpts:

The new curriculum calls for teaching only the period from 1500 to the 21st century. Students will no longer study such figures as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, William the Conqueror or Joan of Arc.

“The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” will not be mentioned. The development of democratic government in Greece and the fall of the Roman Empire will be skipped. Jesus, Muhammad, the Buddha and Confucius are not to be found in the new curriculum. Great civilizations like ancient Egypt will no longer merit study, and the concept of feudalism will not be discussed….

In the proposed changes, teachers will spend two or three weeks discussing the foundation of our country, with the remaining time devoted to studying events from 1876 to the present. Gone is any mention of the Louisiana Purchase or Lewis and Clark. There will be no discussion of Indian removal and the Trail of Tears.

Students probably will not be remembering the Alamo; it won’t be a topic of discussion in Georgia’s high schools. Daniel Webster and Henry Clay will be omitted, as well as Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and the Underground Railroad.

Search in vain for discussion of the Civil War; that topic is off limits. In a course entitled “American History,” students will not study our most devastating war. There is no mention of Fort Sumter, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee or anything else associated with those years.

From The Arizona Republic

The Scottsdale School Board moved Thursday to fire a teacher who it said hit students for speaking Spanish in class instead of English.

Kim Youngblood, who teaches English Language Learner students, told district investigators in a report released Thursday that she was enforcing the district’s English immersion program and did not intend to injure the children.

Youngblood, who taught seventh-graders at Ingleside Middle School, described the physical contact as “a gentle touch on the shoulders or a tap on the wrist.”

The Scottsdale Unified School District investigation said Youngblood hit eight students at the east Phoenix school. The district said the hits ranged from slaps on the forearm to strikes with a pen. Some children said they were hit multiple times.

NewMexiKen can remember a particular nun he ran across in the 6th grade who should have been fired.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports on minority achievement levels in schools.

A new study of how Santa Fe students scored on a state standardized test confirms what local educators know and what national studies show.

Hispanic students score lower than Anglos at all grades and in all subjects. But what hasn’t been apparent until now is that the gap continues to show up when poverty and language are discounted….

Sandra Rodriguez, an education professor at the College of Santa Fe, drew similar conclusions in a published dissertation based on her study of eight students in Española Public Schools in the late 1990s.

“Damn it, it’s true. People say it’s poverty, but it’s not. People say it’s language, but it’s not,” she said.

Rodriguez has another idea. Native New Mexico Hispanics, she said, tend to distrust the education system because of bad experiences of their relatives, and that could explain the gap in motivation….

Gwen Perea, a bilingual teacher at Nava Elementary School, said that the most important factor in success of her students — more than money or divorce — is parental involvement. [emphasis added]

Blogger Chris C. Mooney has an interesting post about college admissions essays. Calpundit linked to it and has some good comments from his readers. Matthew Yglesias has some interesing and amusing comments from readers as well.

From Joe Klein at TIME.com (October 26, 2003)

In 1999, an unassuming Michigan road builder named Bob Thompson sold his construction company for $442 million, an amount he and his wife Ellen believed was far more than they needed for retirement. His first act, which received national attention, was to distribute $128 million to his employees; about 80 became instant millionaires. Then Thompson decided to donate most of the rest of his money to public education, preferably in Detroit. After doing some research, he offered $200 million to build 15 small, independent public high schools in the inner city. A few weeks ago, Thompson withdrew his offer after the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) led a furious, and scurrilous, campaign against his generosity. The philanthropist is in seclusion now—friends say he is stunned and distressed—but his is a story that deserves telling.

Test scores are up in California and New York. Nationwide math scores are trending up; reading scores are relatively steady.

Mickey Kaus asks, “Is it possible the much-maligned No Child Left Behind Act, with its crude emphasis on testing and ‘standards,’ is actually, you know, working?”

Is it?

All the scores are at NAEP — State Profiles

From The Volokh Conspiracy

Latest “hostile learning environment” allegations: From the Arizona Republic:

Two Hispanic legislators on Thursday denounced a Glendale Community College math professor who circulated e-mail messages criticizing “diversity double-talk” and celebrating “the superiority of Western civilization.”

The professor, Walter Kehowski, said he sent the messages in the community college system because he was upset at a recent Dia de la Raza celebration at which he felt students expressed racist attitudes toward non-Hispanics by praising separatism.

Without naming Kehowski, Dr. Rufus Glasper, chancellor of the Maricopa Community Colleges, issued a statement referring to a GCC faculty member whose correspondence he isound “insensitive.”

Glasper said academic freedom is important and the law restricts what administrators can do regarding faculty members’ speech outside the classroom. But he called the messages “abrasive and divisive.” . . .

Rep. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, said Kehowski has created a hostile learning environment and used school resources “to promote his prejudice.”

Kehowski said ethnic groups should be assimilated into society but some activists use ethnic pride as an excuse for separatism. He said that’s what he was trying to convey in his e-mail messages, adding, “I don’t call them insensitive. I’d call them controversial.”

I’m glad that the college seems to acknowledge its obligation to protect faculty members’ academic freedom; but I’m troubled by the “hostile learning environment” rhetoric, which is classically an argument for legal censorship — since a “hostile learning environment,” the theory goes, constitutes “harassment,” and thus violates antidiscrimination laws, see, e.g., here.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the text of the e-mail, but the professor’s site, which the e-mail apparently linked to (see this opinion piece), is here.

Teachers, however, are another matter

Easterbrook: “My kids attend classes in Montgomery County, Maryland, where the public schools are excellent. The echo of the Baby Boom is loud in the county, and many schools lack sufficient classroom space. The response is trailers. But they’re not trailers, perish the thought. They are ‘learning cottages.’“

Even more from The Atlantic:

According to a survey of student attitudes by the Higher Education Research Institute, based at the University of California at Los Angeles, only 33 percent of college freshmen—a smaller share than ever before—report having done six or more hours of homework a week during their senior year in high school. And the percentage who said they studied less than one hour a week as seniors has doubled since the question was first asked, in 1987, to 16 percent. Yet the grades they bring to college have improved, evidently as a result of grade inflation. Whereas in 1968 only 17.6 percent of college freshmen reported having earned A averages in high school, today 44.1 percent do. The survey director, Linda Sax, a professor of education at UCLA, says that the decline in study time, at least, may be attributable to the hours students spend using the Internet. Time spent recreationally surfing the Web is clearly displacing time spent studying—but Sax says the Internet may also be helping students to do their homework more efficiently.

Yeah, right.

This year Maine is providing wireless iBooks to all 7th and 8th grade students and teachers. Michigan is providing laptops or other wireless devices to every 6th grader.