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In Washington, D.C. one-quarter of public school students are now attending charter schools.  Here's why.

Dsylexia

Does dyslexia really exist, and if it does, should "dyslexics" be granted academic allowances for it?

More problematic still, to me, is the fact that dyslexic students can get their degree under less stringent conditions than non-dyslexic candidates, and, crucially, the fact that they had the extra leeway does not appear on the certificate.

This has nothing to do with the issues of whether dyslexia is a real condition (I think it is) or what proportion of those claiming it really have it (I have no sure knowledge, though in considering any question to do with the integrity of the modern British examination I am a pessimist.) It also has nothing to do with lack of sympathy for those who honestly struggle with spelling, for any reason. I sympathise greatly with those who are not cheating and not at all with those who are. The prime victims of the false dyslexics, naturally, are the genuine dyslexics.

But even assuming that the diagnosis of dyslexia was utterly certain and utterly unfakeable, an exam is meant to measure how well the candidates do certain set tasks under certain set constraints. It should not measure how well they would have done them if the world had been different.

Powerpoint 101

I've suspected that public education was failing our youngsters and now I'm even more convinced.  They're teaching our elementary school kids how to use Powerpoint!  With Spellcheck, no doubt.

A month or so ago, I attended a meeting at work illustrated entirely by typed transparencies on an overhead projector. I could hardly believe it?  This guy was really old-school.

Not a single "slide" whooshed in from stage left or cleverly "dissolved" into blocks before the next agonizingly built itself pixel by pixel from the center out.  The lecturer didn't need artificial transitions. He knew his material and was either finishing up his current point or beginning the next one while he changed slides
It was a rare thing of beauty.

Marriage Is A Hurtful Concept

Just when you thought it couldn't get any wackier.

Schools should be banned from promoting traditional marriage in sex education lessons for fear of discriminating against gay and lesbian children, academics claim.

The biggest lecturers' union criticised teachers who champion heterosexual wedlock for instilling "negative images" of same-sex relationships.

That's from the UK.  It will take, oh I don't know, until tomorrow for some educator over here to espouse the same view.  No pun intended, of course.

And A 'Das Kapital' In Every Backpack

When New York Assemblymen dictate school curricula.

Mr. Rivera, who up until now never seemed to be particularly interested in the education issues of his community, where test scores rise a lot slower than the temperature of the earth, seems to have found a new cause.

 

“Al Gore has suggested that every science class in America watch this film [um, you know the one, Ed.],” Mr. Rivera says. “My legislation will mandate the showing to all students in grades 1 through 12 because the message of this documentary must be seen by every member of the next generation. They are the ones most likely to listen.”

I don't know if it proves Al Gore's theory or not, but after having read this I can tell you that my temperature's going up.

H.T. to Joanne Jacobs.

This Is Education?

The University of Nottingham is now offering an MBA in "Corporate Social Responsibility."

What a worthless subject for a degree.  Better, I'd think, that the college drill them in spelling and teach them how to conduct an effective meeting without having to resort to a dreary Powerpoint presentation.  The entire business world would applaud and some actual good might result.

Laptop Follies (No, I'm Not Talking About "Dancing")

The American education establishment is generally clueless, but apparently it's still capable of learning. Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops.

The students at Liverpool High have used their school-issued laptops to exchange answers on tests, download pornography and hack into local businesses. When the school tightened its network security, a 10th grader not only found a way around it but also posted step-by-step instructions on the Web for others to follow (which they did).

Scores of the leased laptops break down each month, and every other morning, when the entire school has study hall, the network inevitably freezes because of the sheer number of students roaming the Internet instead of getting help from teachers.

So the Liverpool Central School District, just outside Syracuse, has decided to phase out laptops starting this fall, joining a handful of other schools around the country that adopted one-to-one computing programs and are now abandoning them as educationally empty — and worse.

This can only come as a surprise to those who don't understand how human beings learn -- unfortunately that seems to include a lot of school administrators.  A couple years ago, Niagara Falls opened a shiny, new high school and, to much press coverage and praise, issued each of its students shiny, new laptops.  I've read nothing since about how the experiment worked out but I'd wager that it's been quietly dropped for the above reasons.

Computers are a tool -- and rather expensive ones at that.  Yes, children need to be taught how to use them, but that's about as difficult as it was to teach my generation how to adjust the rabbit ears to better watch Leave It To Beaver.  Judging the content of what the computer can reveal to us remains the challenge, just as it was important to an earlier generation to determine the value of the boob-tube's programming.

24/7 access to a TV wasn't required for the latter, nor is laptop-ownership required for the former.

Diversity Gone Awry

JoAnne Jacobs on one school's experience.

Bribes For Charter Schools

The Buffalo News editorial board praises a very bad policy, Governor Spitzer's raising of the limits on charter schools and his "transitional aid" to the public schools.

The doubling of the cap gives charter school proponents several years to add schools and add quality to what charter schools offer. As Peter Murphy of the New York Charter Schools Association said, there is enough administrative and statutory rigor, and enough safeguards, to argue that a cap is unwarranted. But raising the cap to 200 allows room for both expansion and further evaluation.

The transition aid, along with huge overall increases in state education funding, should soften the blow for school districts that lose much of the per-pupil aid when children shift from public to charter schools. The $12 million in transition aid is designed to ease the impact of future student shifts, although it won’t help districts recover costs for students who already have left.

School districts should be heartened by this first-ever response to the funding impact problem by the Spitzer administration, the Division of Budget and the State Legislature, including work by Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, D-Buffalo.

The loss of per-pupil aid has put a squeeze on districts, an expense Buffalo School District Chief Financial Officer Gary M. Crosby has calculated for the city system. The difference between the drain and the $12 million in aid comes to about $28 million, he said.

Well, of course, the loss of per-student aid to the charter schools has put a squeeze on districts -- that was the point.  The primary benefit of charter schools (which, we must remember, are "public" schools) was to provide more personalized and more effective schooling to children who weren't being served adequately, but the second was to inject some competition into the public school system.

By eliminating the pain of losing the student subsidies, the Governor has removed the incentive for the older schools to improve.   Now, I applaud Mr. Spitzer for his support of charter schools, but will his "transitional" aid now have to become become permanent aid?  Will it now be built into each succeeding year's budget?  If that happens, the teachers' unions' opposition to charter schools will dissolve. After all, they wouldn't mind charter schools any more than they do private schools as long as they weren't financially harmed by them.

Sooner or later, someone in New York State is going to have to stand up to the unions and tell them that we think we're spending quite enough money on our school's already, thank you, and now it's your turn to hold up your end.  The loss of per-student aid had been working to bring around changes to the traditional schools.  Governor Spitzer's compromise has seriously weakened that.   

Rush To Judgement

Some of us wondered if the earlier switch to Daylight Savings Time would go smoothly this year.  And it did -- except for this school kid in Pennsylvania.

A fifteen-year old boy in America was incarcerated for twelve days, wrongly accused of making a hoax bomb threat - because his school had forgotten that the clocks had gone forward.

Cody Webb was arrested last month, after Hempfield Area High School received a bomb threat on their student hotline – which provides a range of information to students about the school - at 3.17am on March 11th. They believed they'd found the culprit when they traced the phone number they thought was responsible to Webb.

Unfortunately, they forgot that the clocks had switched to Daylight Saving Time that morning. Webb, who's never even had a detention in his life, had actually made his call an hour earlier.

Despite the fact that the recording of the call featured a voice that sounded nothing like Webb's, the police arrested Webb and he spent 12 days in a juvenile detention facility before the school eventually realised their mistake.

Webb gave an insight into the school's impressive investigative techniques, saying that he was ushered in to see the principal, Kathy Charlton. She asked him what his phone number was, and , according to Webb, when he replied 'she started waving her hands in the air and saying “we got him, we got him.”'

'They just started flipping out, saying I made a bomb threat to the school,' he told local television station KDKA. After he protested his innocence, Webb says that the principal said: 'Well, why should we believe you? You're a criminal. Criminals lie all the time.'

All charges against Webb have now been dropped.

I hope there are some pending against the principal.  It's yet another illustration of how all the education in the world can't fix stupid.