Posted 9:09 AM by Susan Darst Williams

THE ‘DO-IT-YOURSELF’ APPROACH TO EDUCATION

There’s a wealth of assistance available on the market for parents to fill in the cracks and blanks often left by a public school curriculum that can’t be all things to all people. It’s important to supplement in key areas, including writing, if your child is college-bound.

That’s because increasingly, public schools are focusing on the bottom 50% and “back-burnering” the top echelon. Yet those are the students who desire and deserve more academic polish.

You know what they say: if you want something done right, you do it yourself.

In response to yesterday’s column about greatly lowered expectations for student writing assignments, here’s something you can do with your child to improve those crucial writing skills.

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Homeschooling a Young Report Writer

Q. If it’s true that public schools aren’t developing children’s expository writing skills very well any more, how can I help my son, who is now in fifth grade? Is there tutoring available so that, by the time he needs to write good college admission essays and score well on the SAT essay, he’ll have good report writing skills?

There’s always the old-fashioned way – do it yourself! There are many good guides that parents can use to homeschool or “after-school” their children in the kinds of traditional, academic skills that they know their children should have. One of the basics of these is how to plan, research and write a term paper.

It doesn’t sound very much like summer fun, but if you help your child pick a “fun” topic – how roller coasters were invented and what principles of physics are employed in their design . . . different kinds of tornadoes . . . the chemistry of swimming pools – helping him or her write a solid term paper can be a very worthwhile summer vacation activity.

Education activist Kathy Schrock and colleagues have written a good guide for this purpose, aimed at helping children in Grades 4 – 8. It’s updated for computer-based writing, which is what the kids like today, and with proper guidance, can be an outstanding way to prepare a solid report.

The book is called “Writing and Research on the Computer,” by Kathy Schrock, Mary Watkins, and Jan Wahlers. It comes with a CD-ROM as well as PDF versions of all the handouts, sample databases, and additional information.

The 96-page book includes chapters entitled:

Introduction to Research
Choosing a Topic
Documenting Information
Collecting Information
Searching for Information
Evaluating the Information
Using the People on the Internet
Information Retrieval Skills System
Research Investigations Lesson

The book is available for $18.95 plus $4.50 shipping and handling.

Homework: Order the book and browse the rest of Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators site at http://school.discovery.com

Posted 3:10 PM by Susan Darst Williams

A CALL FOR A RETURN TO TERM PAPERS

It’s hard to imagine how secondary schools justify the fact that students are expected to do so much less serious research and report-writing these days.

It’s pretty sad to contemplate the valid complaints of most secondary-level teachers, that they don’t have time to teach students how to write a solid, lengthy thesis any more – but somehow or another, their administrations believe they have time to coach swimming for more than 20 hours a week, or fulfill other extracurricular functions that no one would dare say are more important than the traditional curricular ones, including expository writing.

When is this going to change? When enough people demand that writing be taken more seriously from 7th grade on up. You don’t have to take hours and hours, and write thousands of words, to express this point. A courteous note to your school board will do.

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Kids Don’t Write As Much Today – So What?

Q. What’s all the fuss about kids not knowing how to write more than a few words at a time any more? Can’t they express themselves even more with all the other media they use today?

Despite the advantages of computers and other technology that make written expression far easier than the days of the inkwell, mimeos and white-out paint, the average word count produced in assignments by a typical high school student today is minuscule compared to yesteryear.

Consequently, students aren’t getting the deep, analytical, quality thinking skills that are polished with term paper assignments any more.

In 2002, with a grant from the Albert Shanker Institute, The Concord Review commissioned a study of the state of the history term paper in United States high schools. According to that group’s website, 95% of the teachers interviewed said term papers were important or very important, 82% never assign a 5,000-word paper, and 63% never assign a 3,000-word research paper.

Taken together with studies that show high school students spending less than three hours a week on homework, it seems most probable that the majority of high school students in this country now leave without having done a serious research paper, and perhaps without having read one nonfiction book.

But the reason isn’t that today’s students don’t need the skills that come with serious report-writing, including how to narrow down your hypothesis, choose the best evidence, organize a lot of material, achieve perfection in the use of writing conventions, and create a conclusion fully supported by the research.

The reason is that teachers say they do not have enough time to assign, coach and evaluate research papers, even though it takes a lot less time than varsity sports participation.

Quality private schools do expect their students to learn to write research papers and teachers are given small classes so that they can work on papers with students, and have the time to assess them. But that’s a relatively small number across the U.S.

Homework: Read The Concord Review’s study, “The State of the Term Paper,” on www.tcr.org/tcr/institute/stateofthetermpaper.pdf

Posted 9:15 AM by Susan Darst Williams

WHAT WE WANT: PLAIN AND SIMPLE REPORT CARDS

There’s a virus going around that makes educators pop out in hives when they even think about evaluating children’s academic progress on traditional report cards. Imagine that: and you thought assessment was a basic task of K-12 education!

But nooooooo. It’s not Politically Correct to evaluate and compare students any more, and so we have the Warm, Fuzzy Report Card. You learn that your child is “growing” in math class – but if that’s “code” for “growing so far behind his peers he needs remedial help this summer, bigtime,” you’d never know it. Instead, you’re supposed to bust your buttons that your child is “growing.” Ahem.

If that’s the kind of report card your child received this past semester, it’s time to photocopy a report card from your childhood – with the letter grades, plain and simple -- and photocopy what your child received – they’re often wordy, hard to understand, full of educational jargon, and as subjective as can be – and mail these to school officials and your elected school board, asking for what we want:

It’s as easy as ABCDF – we want plain and simple report cards!

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Grading Report Cards

Q. I don’t like these new report cards with smiley faces and cheerful little messages that my child is “growing” in a certain subject. I want letter grades! Why have schools abandoned the clear communication of A-B-C-D-F?

Educators have veered away from simple, objective report cards because they want the focus to be on the process of learning, rather than the classic purpose of grades: evaluation of the child’s academic progress. Schools’ focus now is on how the child fits in to the small group of his or her peers, rather than how the child compares to the schoolwork being done by large numbers of other children nationwide.

The focus in K-12 education has been taken off demonstrated knowledge and performance, per se, and put more onto the child’s attitude and behavior. That’s why you’re seeing cheesy little sayings, like “Junior works well with others,” or “Mimi really liked the photosynthesis project,” rather than straightforward communication about how well your child is doing on tests, assignments and homework.

This doesn’t set too well with most parents, who recognize that there is great value and accountability in a traditional, honest report card. A lot of good can come out of the shakeup of receiving a bad grade.

The truth: parents need it, the child needs it, and even the educators need it.

Among other things, letter grades tell the teacher that there is such a thing as good and bad performance. They also signify that there is an established academic standard expectation, and that part of a teacher’s job is assessing where the child stands in relation to that standard.

According to educators in Britain, where letter grades were abandoned long ago, school reports have now become something of a nightmare for teachers, who spend ages writing them and choosing which stock platitude seems most apt. This kind of report tells parents nothing, and tells kids that they can do anything they want, and it doesn't much matter.

Especially in the early grades, parents want to know how well their child is performing against the set, established and objective standard. One parent put it this way: “Can my child perform a particular set of mathematics calculations in a given time, can my child write a coherent paragraph using proper grammar and conventions, can my child read a particular passage and then be able to answer a given set of questions relating to that passage?”

Parents have a right to know those answers, and schools have a duty to give them to them.

Homework: Write letters to school officials and your elected school board, asking for a return to traditional letter-grade report cards.

Posted 8:32 AM by Susan Darst Williams

ADMINISTRATOR IQ: A RISING TIDE WOULD LIFT ALL BOATS

One of the most practical changes that would improve K-12 education overnight would be to open up competition for school management jobs to applicants from outside the K-12 arena.

With today’s complicated school systems and multimillion dollar budgets, it’s ridiculous to expect someone trained as a gym teacher or to do other relatively simple educational functions, whose orientation is toward helping little kids, do an outstanding job of administration.

Parents, who come from all walks of life, have already noticed that school administrators often make decisions that are contrary to what would be done in THEIR lines of work. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, business owners and others who basically think for a living have a hard time understanding why school leaders keep hanging on to whole language and whole math curriculum despite obvious declines in literacy and numeracy, for example, or why they are adding more and more offbeat, special-interest programming and social engineering when mediocre test scores indicate the students aren’t mastering the academic basics.

Could the problem be that school managers just don’t KNOW any better? That it’s an intellectual deficit? This comparison of test scores – not from kids, but from would-be school managers – seems to suggest that a little more intellectual firepower in the executive suite could be a big help to schools:

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Are Educators Just (Gulp) Dumb?

Q. There’s broad consensus that even though we’re spending far more money than in the past, K-12 educational quality is going downhill. The finger of blame shouldn’t be pointed at the teachers, but at school management. Maybe educators aren’t smart enough to run our schools well. Is that horribly mean, or is that true?

It could very well be that K-12 education is hamstrung by being a “closed shop” that mostly requires its managers to have come up through the ranks of teaching.

There really is a lot more to managing a multimillion dollar educational operation than knowing how to keep a bunch of 10-year-olds on task, after all. And the facts show that, academically speaking, educators are closer to the bottom of the barrel than to the top.

Decide for yourself based on this report from the June 20, 2005, News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C.:

According to an analysis of Graduate Record Examination scores of applicants to graduate school in various fields, students who wish to study educational administration ranked dead last.

The GRE is a general screening test for graduate programs, similar to the ACT and SAT as predictors of academic competence.

Here are the mean verbal, quantitative and composite scores for broad categories of applicants applying to graduate school from GRE records:

Engineering -- 468, 721, 1189
Physical Sciences -- 488, 699, 1187
Humanities/Arts-- 541, 561, 1102
Life Sciences -- 464, 580, 1044
Social Sciences -- 485, 559, 1044
Education -- 450, 531, 981

Looking deeper within the education category, applicants for graduate study in educational administration had the lowest individual and composite scores: mean verbal -- 429; mean quantitative -- 520; total composite -- 949.

Those are the lowest individual and composite scores of all 34 subcategories tabulated by the Educational Testing Service.

Solution: among other changes, there’s growing support for alternative certification of educational administrators so that they can come from other fields, especially management and finance, instead of from within the K-12 system.

Homework: Among the many organizations working on upgrading the quality of educational management is the American Association of School Administrators, www.aasa.org

Posted 12:39 PM by Susan Darst Williams

A CHANCE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN NEBRASKA ED

There’s an opening on the State Board of Education for the Lincoln area. Calling all cars! AA-OO-GAH! Let’s see if we can encourage a great person with a heart for children who is impervious to educrat propaganda and has a lot of common sense to step forward and take this important job.

Kim Peterson of Lincoln, a board member for eight years, has announced that she will resign at the end of this month. The term runs through 2008.

District 1 covers most of Lancaster County, except parts of the northwest area. You can check the district map on www.nde.state.ne.us on the State Board subpage.

Applicants should send a cover letter and resume with a completed application form to Whitney Bumgarner in the Governor's Office, at P.O. Box 94848, Lincoln, NE 68509. The application form can be found on http://gov.nol.org or call (402) 471-2244. Deadline: June 30.

Service on the State Board of Ed is one of the best ways to influence the future and serve the public in its top-priority need for quality education. This development fits nicely with today’s Show ‘n’ Tell topic:

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HOW CAN JUST ONE PERSON MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

Q. The problems with K-12 education are so enormous, it’s daunting to even think of getting involved and getting anywhere. How have individuals been able to make a difference?

-- Enroll your children in private school or homeschool them, since competition appears to be the best way to bring about change in the public schools.

-- Start a private school or afterschool.

-- If you keep your child in public school, then equip yourself by reading books, attending conferences and networking to become an effective volunteer advocate for your child and all others.

-- Befriend the principal, the school secretary, and the school janitor, not necessarily in that order. They’re all well-informed and quite powerful.

-- If you disagree with your child’s teacher on an issue, or with the school’s direction in any given area, present solid background evidence for your position in writing, and bring in an expert consultant to meet with the teacher, school officials and a school-board member.

-- Be a leader in your PTA / PTO and change the focus to academics, not fluff.

-- Volunteer in the classroom for an indispensable bird’s-eye view.

-- Serve on district committees.

-- Befriend your superintendent and other key officials, sending them brief articles and other data from the parent and taxpayer point of view.

-- Plan a year in advance to run for the school board, get elected, and focus on informing voters about key issues.

-- Write letters to members of your state board of education and your state legislature on education bills, and follow up on their voting.

-- Write letters to the editor on education topics, citing an outside source for more information to increase your credibility.

-- If networking and working within the system don’t solve an important problem, occasionally, you have to sue. Parents have stopped outrageous sex ed, unauthorized genital examinations of young girls, violations of First Amendment rights, and many other atrocities, by devoting their time and money to win justice for us all.

Homework: One of the most inspiring stories of one person making a difference is www.marvacollins.com

Posted 10:04 AM by Susan Darst Williams

HEAD START: WHY IT DOESN'T WORK

Q. Evidence shows that the billions we’ve spent on Head Start, the preschool program for disadvantaged children, doesn’t help bridge the school achievement gap between them and middle-class kids, and doesn’t reduce future dropout and crime rates to any degree. Is it because they’re using the wrong methods, or because the socioeconomic problems of these kids are so difficult, nothing would work?

Educators often use poor children’s meager home circumstances as an excuse for the achievement gap. But the truth is, there is less poverty today than in generations past, more home ownership, more employment and more parental educational attainment. While there are also more broken families and more drug use today, both key factors, the focus should be squarely on the Head Start philosophy and methods, not blaming the children and families it’s supposed to be helping.

We’ve known for decades that Head Start does not, as promised, raise IQ and does not, as designed, improve children’s readiness for reading and math instruction once they start school. It stings, since the average cost of a year in Head Start exceeds the average cost per pupil in a K-12 public school.

The reason: Head Start all over the land has wandered into social engineering programs such as “Anti-Bias Curriculum” and radical environmentalism instead of sticking to the fundamentals of instilling the skills of literacy and numeracy.

It’s also because there is no accountability – no measurement of what the children learn while in Head Start. That’s because there is no standard curriculum nationwide – not that anyone wants nationalization of the sandbox set. But the range of quality is vast, and because Head Starts get their money and direction straight from the federal government, there is no local control or balance of power. Simple testing requirements would go a long way: “Do you read words from left to right, or from right to left?” and “How many blocks are on the rug? If I take one away, how many are left?”

The other reason Head Start has failed is that the program is rooted in President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” philosophy from the 1960s, where the disadvantaged are equipped to help themselves. Head Start uses parents as employees and volunteers, but spends so much time training them to provide emotional stability in the home, nutritious meals and how to access social services that academics fall by the wayside.

Head Start’s role model should be Abraham Lincoln: an impoverished, neglected child of a single father who focused on academics, not his socioeconomic woes, and built himself into one of the greatest thinkers of world history with some chalk, a slate, and a few borrowed books . . . more powerful than a boatload of expensive government social services.

Homework: For great ideas on simple ways to build a child’s cognitive skills that programs like Head Start should be using, get the book, “Your Child’s Growing Mind” by Jane M. Healy, Ph.D.

Posted 12:16 PM by Susan Darst Williams

HEAD START: THE POWER OF A VAST PARASITIC CONSTITUENCY

Q. With all-day kindergarten, school-based day-care, year-round school calendars, increasing numbers of kids put on drugs like Ritalin, classes on homosexuality and AIDS education, more and more school clinics opening up to dispense birth-control to teenagers and so forth, schools are becoming more like social-service centers than places where children can go for academic knowledge. How did all this get started?

Look no farther than Head Start, the 40-year-old, $7 billion experiment in government-provided early childhood education. Everyone agrees it’s a flop, but it continues to get more and more funding anyway, and is the model for a number of educational entitlements that are expanding at breakneck speed.

Why? Because low-income parents like the free child care, and the growing army of early childhood workers likes the jobs. Conservatives call Head Start’s lobby a “vast parasitic constituency.” Taxpayers and voters may not like the waste of money, but so far, they’ve been outshouted and outmaneuvered.

As states move toward more and more government-provided preschool and child care programming, expanded school hours like all-day kindergarten and expanded school services such as in-school health services, the people who make public policy need to take a close look at the study released this month by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Head Start Impact Study: First Year Findings."

Congress ordered this study of 5,000 Head Start kids to measure the program’s effectiveness. Conclusions: Head Start had a small to modest impact on preschoolers’ ability to identify letters, draw and name colors, but no effect on their early math skills or oral comprehension. It did inspire slightly more positive parental behavior, such as reading to children and doing “cultural enrichment” activities as a family, but had no effect in helping parents make their homes safer or choosing more effective disciplinary practices.

Regarding mood and behavior problems, such as aggressiveness, depression and hyperactivity, Head Start reduced some of these problems in 3-year-olds but not in 4-year-olds.
In terms of its overall impact on children's health, Head Start affected only 3-year-olds. Head Start was linked to more dental care for children, but not more health insurance. While access to free health care improved, the children’s actual health did not.

The most important finding, though, is that children leaving Head Start continue to fall significantly behind national learning achievement norms, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars.

Homework: See the study at: http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/hs/impact_study/reports/first_yr_finds/firstyr_finds_exec_summ.html.

Posted 12:01 PM by Susan Darst Williams

DANGER: HUGE SCHOOL DISTRICTS ARE BAD FOR KIDS, TAXPAYERS

The move by the Omaha Public Schools to take over its suburban neighbors does not bode well for the future academic achievement of the Omaha metropolitan area as a whole.

Bigger is not better – not by any stretch of the imagination.

What might actually be best would be to have a county-wide “housekeeping” office, serving all schools in the metro area, for purchasing -- to obtain the real economies of scale that come with big numbers in ordering goods and services.

But then do away with the enormous bureaucracy, and have each high school declared to be its own district, with its own elected school board responsible for hiring and firing the principal, who in turn would be responsible for hiring and firing everyone else.

That’s because the evidence shows that, up and down the demographic scale, kids do best in small schools and small districts which minimize fluff and maximize instruction.

The only down side is that it would make the job of the news reporters harder. Imagine covering ALL those school board meetings!

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Is ‘One City, One School District’ Wise Public Policy?

Q. Can school consolidation go too far? I can see important economies of scale that can be gained by consolidating numerous school districts into one big one. But in our metro area there’s one big district that’s having some problems, and it’s ringed by richer, more successful, and smaller districts. Now it wants to swallow them up. Will that help learning, in the long run?

Not if what’s happened in other cities is any yardstick. According to researchers such as Herbert J. Walberg, states with lower achievement scores have bigger schools and bigger school districts. Big school districts tend to have test scores below what their demographics would suggest, while small school districts tend to overachieve. Huge school districts generally have the worst achievement, affective and social outcomes for kids, researcher Kathleen Cotton reported, and low-income students suffer the most.

Larger school districts supposedly hold down costs because of centralized and streamlined functions, and offer more academic choice and depth to students. But according to the evidence, what they really yield is inordinate power to the bureaucracy, parental alienation, overcomplicated budgets that block efforts at accountability, and diseconomies of scale as funds are allocated more toward the nonteaching bureaucracy and less toward instruction.

We’ve known this for a long time, too: a 1984 study by Webb and Ohm found that smaller districts not only posted better test-score results, but were more cost-effective than larger ones in dollars spent per student and numbers of administrators per student.

Another indication that big districts are a problem: suburban schools that are part of behemoth urban districts all over the country would love to secede. Example: schools in the San Fernando Valley would love to leave the gigantic, problem-plagued Los Angeles Unified School District. And inducing Chicago’s wealthier suburban districts to merge into the urban core district would be a tough sell indeed.

Nowhere is it written that it’s a good idea to have a single district in a metropolitan area, anyway. Consider the San Jose, Calif., metro area: Santa Clara County has 36 public-school districts, 19 of them within the city limits. The only ones who don’t seem to like it are the news reporters: that’s a lot of school board meetings to cover.

Homework: Report, “Big Trouble: Solving Education Problems Means Rethinking Super-Size Schools and Districts,” by David Cox, www.SutherlandInstitute.org and also see “Small Works in Arkansas: How Poverty and the Size of Schools and School Districts Affect School Performance in Arkansas” on www.ruraledu.org/docs/sapss/ar_rep02.html

Posted 10:17 AM by Susan Darst Williams

ATTENDANCE RATES: OPS KIDS SKIP CLASS TWICE AS OFTEN, AND IT SHOWS

One of the reasons suburban parents don’t want their schools swallowed up by the Omaha Public Schools is that they’re afraid the “culture” at OPS will infect their own school cultures, for the worse.

One crucial difference between OPS and the ‘burbs is in an elementary measure of K-12 school effectiveness: school attendance rates. Nearly twice as many kids are absent from OPS classrooms as from the ones in the adjacent suburban districts OPS would like to take over.

According to the Nebraska Department of Education, OPS had an absentee rate of 9.5% in the last school year for which figures are available, vs. 4.9% for Ralston, 4.3% for Millard and 4.2% for Elkhorn. The statewide average, if you leave out OPS’ numbers, is 4.5%. With it, it’s 5.3%.

Figures were compiled from annual financial report data on http://ess.nde.state.ne.us, subtracting each district’s “average daily attendance” from its “average daily membership,” or enrollment, totals.

On the average school day during the 2003-04 school year, 4,172 kids were enrolled in OPS, but did not attend school. Note that Nebraska taxpayers pay through state aid for all students who are enrolled in a district, whether they actually attend school or not.

So every day, that’s 4,172 OPS kids we’re paying for who aren’t receiving the educations we’re trying to provide for them. And my OPS sources say that, on Mondays and Fridays, there are so many kids missing from those classrooms you could shoot a cannon through some OPS buildings and not hit anyone.

Yet our tax dollars supporting the massive operational spending that goes on in that district are being spent, anyway.

Long before we start tussling over whether OPS should get to take over those suburban districts, we need to explore why so many children – whose educations we’re paying for, and many if not most of whom are low-income and minority kids – elect NOT to be in school from day to day. They can’t ALL be sick.

Maybe, as my OPS sources say, it’s the perception of chronic racism, low morale, low expectations, and negativity that sometimes pervades a big social-service organizations such as an urban school district.

How to fix it: make school so good that the kids are enthusiastic about wanting to come to school.

If OPS can manage that glaring problem, maybe – just maybe – they would be deemed fit to take on more responsibility. But ‘til they get their own house in order, fuhgeddaboudit.

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A QUICK, CHEAP WAY TO HELP DISADVANTAGED KIDS LEARN BETTER

Q. What one single thing could we do to help low-income kids do better in school?

It’s so simple, it’s scary. The most effective thing public schools can do to help disadvantaged and minority kids is to encourage them to improve their school attendance rates.

Absenteeism is a strong correlate to school failure and low test scores, more so than factors such as spending per pupil, teacher qualifications and experience, rates of poverty among pupils, lack of political access by parents, innate cognitive ability, and internal features of the school, including curriculum.

Bottom line: you’ve got to be there to learn anything, especially in an incremental subject such as math. And if you switch schools, you lose about a year’s worth of academic achievement. So poor attendance and family mobility are extremely destructive factors.

Large urban districts with low test scores commonly have absenteeism rates more than twice that of surrounding suburban schools. It’s a key reason why small schools are more effective than large ones – because the students feel that others care about them and miss them when they’re gone.

Improving attendance is much more important than other factors that dampen test scores, according to a study of recent test score data from Minnesota. Researchers concluded, for example, that “school poverty impacts are small and often statistically insignificant.”

That finding is striking, since it was published in the Journal of Negro Education (Winter 2004), yet reveals as false one of the pillars of liberal philosophy: that poor kids do poorly in school because they are poor, and pouring more money into schools will “fix” them.

Instead, the researchers call for “greater efforts by public schools to increase school attendance, especially among minority students,” as well as measures to limit frequency of school changes, expanding gifted and talented programs for minority students, and sharply reducing inappropriate placements of minority youth in special education programs.

Homework: Article, “Effects of School Poverty on Racial Gaps in Test Scores: The Case of the Minnesota Basic Standards Tests,” www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3626/is_200401/ai_n9401451

Posted 11:45 AM by Susan Darst Williams

SCHOOL CHOICE: A FAR BETTER SOLUTION THAN AN OPS TAKEOVER

It’s pretty obvious to everyone BUT the Omaha Public Schools that nobody BUT the Omaha Public Schools wants to see the takeover of Millard, Ralston and Elkhorn public schools take place.

Here’s another reason why it shouldn’t take place: there’s a much better, much more cost-effective solution to help the low-income and minority children who are underachieving in OPS.

And that solution is: school choice legislation for Nebraska, so that they can attend private schools. State senators, listen up. Here’s the solution that will make everybody happy – everybody but OPS, that is.

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PRIVATE SCHOOLS: A SUPERIOR CHOICE FOR THE DISADVANTAGED

Q. Which does the better job of educating low-income and minority children, the public schools or the private schools?

Clearly, it’s the private schools. The obvious advantages that private education yields for kids of all income levels and races is fueling the boom in private school enrollments and the push for school choice programs around the country.

Foundations and donors looking to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged children might be forced to reject supporting public education because its track record is pretty sorry. The achievement gap between rich and poor, white and black or brown in public schools has been widening, or staying static, for the past 30 or 40 years. Today’s white children score an average of 200 points higher on the SAT and on all subjects tested by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Yet in private schools, the achievement gap has been markedly narrowed in recent years. Researcher Jay Greene, senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute, revealed that in studies using NAEP data compiled from all Milwaukee public-school students of all income levels, comparing their scores with those of the low-income participants in Milwaukee’s private-school voucher program.

Greene reported that voucher students were more than 1½ times as likely to graduate as public-school students. The test-score gap between the two races actually widened in writing and math between fourth grade and 12th grade among public-school students, Greene found. The gaps increased by 15% and 10%, respectively, although the racial gaps got slightly smaller in reading and science in those eight years.

However, Greene noted that relatively high numbers of minority students drop out of public schools every year, leaving a pool of minority students in public schools who are academically better performers than minority students as a whole. So by all rights, the gaps should have been narrowed considerably more.

That’s exactly what happened in Milwaukee’s private schools. The racial gap in reading, 27 points for fourth-graders in public schools, was reduced by nearly 50%, to a gap of only 14 points dividing the races for seniors. Writing, math and science gaps also were closed, by factors of 18% to 26%.

Homework: See the Citizen’s Guide to Education Reform, www.schoolchoices.org

Posted 11:23 AM by Susan Darst Williams

IS OPS TRYING TO USE WHITE, SUBURBAN TEST SCORES TO HIDE ITS OWN SHORTCOMINGS?

The Omaha Public Schools admits it wants to annex most schools in Millard and Ralston, and, in the future, Elkhorn’s, to get the juicy property taxes and higher test scores of the rich suburbs.

In other words, it wants to cannibalize them to conceal its own shortcomings, both in revenue and in academic methodology. OPS has already been embarrassed nationally by Education Week (www.edweek.org) in recent years for having one of the nation’s largest achievement gaps between white and black students.

Folding in those relatively higher suburban test scores to outrageously low scores in the inner-city for a higher overall average might trick the public into thinking those inner-city kids are doing OK . . . when they’re not.

OPS wants what’s best for OPS -- NOT necessarily what’s best for the academic achievement and future prospects of all of the children in the entire Omaha metropolitan area.

In fact, what OPS does in the way of curriculum and instruction is NOT what’s best for kids – and it shows, in their test scores, which are considerably lower than the scores posted by the same demographical groups of Omaha-area children in private schools.

Minority parents hate that. In fact, all parents hate that, because we hate to see evidence of racism in our public schools. But it’s hard to call it anything else. So it’s natural that the suburban parents fear that OPS’ failed methods and curriculum will infect the reasonably good systems they have built up in the western ‘burbs if this takeover goes through.

All the sweetness and light about OPS wanting to share the joys of “diversity” across the metro area with this takeover is NOT what most minority parents want from their schools. They want better learning for all kids, including their own. They do NOT want political propaganda or forced “equity” that hurts other people’s kids.

And here’s proof:

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What Minority Parents Want

Q. The achievement gap persists between white children, and those of color, despite the immense amounts of money we’re spending on public education. What do parents of minority children think about this?

According to two national surveys, most African-American and Hispanic parents want standardized tests, strict curriculum, effective discipline and teachers with high expectations . . . exactly like white parents.

That flies in the face of what is often advocated by educators on behalf of minority parents. Often, we’re told that minority parents don’t want strict curriculum and discipline. But that’s not true.

When you hear educators say that what’s best for minority kids is “diversity curriculum,” “group projects” and “cultural awareness,” don’t believe it for a second. Groups like the New York Collective of Radical Educators (www.nycore.org), who oppose standardized tests as being racially biased, simply do not speak for the majority of minorities.

Here’s what the two national surveys found:

-- African-American parents, by a factor of 8 to 1, favor making schools focus on raising academic achievement rather than promoting racial integration and diversity. They want the public accountability of publishing standardized test scores separated by racial groups, in order to expose the disparities and force schools to change. Seven out of 10 say that white teachers have lower expectations for black students than for white students, and they want that to change, too. Though 28% agree that standardized tests contain racial bias, they still support them. 1998 Public Agenda survey, “New Study Explores Views of Black and White Parents Toward Our Nation’s Schools,” www.publicagenda.org

-- Hispanic parents agree by a factor of 3 to 1 that standardized tests should be a key focus in public schools, and test scores are a good determinant for grade promotion and graduation. Two-thirds agreed with the minimum standards put in place by the federal legislation, No Child Left Behind. 2003 study reported in the Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation National Survey of Latinos: Education, www.pewhispanic.org

Homework: Book, “Whose America: Culture Wars in the Public Schools” by Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of educational history, New York University (Harvard, 2002)

Posted 11:12 AM by Susan Darst Williams

ALL-DAY KINDERGARTEN FUNDING WOULD BE A BIG, BIG, BIG MISTAKE

It broke my heart Thursday to read that some of the nicest, richest people in Omaha are donating nearly $6 million to pay for the expansion of all-day kindergarten throughout the Omaha Public Schools, and the State Board of Education is pushing to mandate all-day k throughout the state by 2008.

No doubt the educrats kept the truth from the foundations and the State Board in going after the start-up capital that will double the time in school spent by these itty bitties, when readily-available evidence shows that young children are better off NOT in organized, structured, government settings.

It was easy for me to find conclusive evidence that all-day kindergarten does nothing for kids academically in the long run, and is not at all cost-effective for mainstream kids.

Besides the two well-documented studies at the bottom of the column, below, the fact that all-day k is a bomb was in a Jan. 26 story in Education Week (www.edweek.org), the educrats’ Bible.

How come OPS and the State don’t seem to be able to find out the facts that don’t dovetail with their plans for more spending and more control over kids? We all know the answer to that: they don’t WANT to know. But the rest of us do, and should.

According to the research, children who are low-income and non-English speaking do benefit from more time in organized preschool and all-day kindergarten, although the benefits wash out within three years. But anything schools can do to effectively bring kids up to speed, I’m for.

Here’s what should happen: that $6 million should be returned to the donors so that they can direct it to where it’s really needed. Blessings to the Lozier Foundation, the Susan A. Buffett Foundation, the Holland Foundation, and the William and Ruth Scott Foundation, for being so willing to help people. But this is not a good idea, and someone should tell them.

Then the State Ed Department and school districts should be made to greatly decrease the all-day kindergarten programming they now offer so that it is only for the small percentage of the small children who might benefit from it.

The REST of the small fry should go back to where they flourish, at that age: in their own homes with their own families, or in private, unsubsidized, play-oriented day-care centers and homes.

Be sure to share this one across the state, because it’s important:

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Is All-Day Kindergarten Worth the Money?

Q. Is the push nationally to switch our schools to all-day kindergarten likely to pay off academically for our kids, or is it just about funneling more money into schools and giving parents free day-care at taxpayer expense?

It appears to be the latter. Academic gains by children in full-day kindergartens are modest, compared to those in half-day programs. Moreover, those gains diminish to insignificant levels by first grade, and completely disappear by third grade in a phenomenon called “fadeout.”

Key federal research indicates that for the vast majority of kindergartners, all-day kindergarten is a waste of time and money, although there is evidence that it can be a help to low-income and non-English speaking children.

This is according to the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study of the National Center for Educational Statistics, www.nces.ed.gov/ecls

Researchers started following 22,000 children at kindergarten entry in 1998, and recently reported their third-grade status reflecting the “fadeout” effect of all-day k.

Among other findings, the study reported that kindergarten “readiness” is in great shape in this country: 97% of the children come to school in excellent or good health; 94% can read numerals, recognize shapes and count to 10; 92% are deemed eager to learn, and 82% already have basic reading skills such as knowing that you read print from left to right.

Defenders of expanded government preschool and full-day kindergarten claim that for every $1 spent on early schooling, society saves $7 in “social costs” on down the road. But that figure has been thoroughly discredited; it stems from a 1960s study of just 123 mentally retarded children; that cost-benefit ratio has never been replicated.

Despite the utter lack of effectiveness, though, full-day kindergarten is being implemented at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars for added staff and space in schools nationwide. Nine states mandate it, seven offer financial incentives, and most districts either have it or are planning it.

The full-day schedule is popular with working parents because it saves on child-care expenses and transportation headaches. Teachers like it because they say they have more time for enrichment activities, assessing children individually, and building better relationships with parents.

However, child psychologists say improper early instruction with “time on task” in structured settings may be a key cause of the current epidemic of learning disabilities. And it denies children what they really need: free time for self-directed play, and a chance to be reared and shaped mostly by Mom and Dad, who know and love them best.

Homework: Two excellent and related articles on this topic are available from Arizona’s Goldwater Institute, www.goldwaterinstitute.org/article.php/542.html and the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, www.tennesseepolicy.org/publications/studies/52005_1.pdf

Posted 9:14 AM by Susan Darst Williams

DO SCHOOLS OVERDO CONSENSUS?

Q. Educators have trouble making decisions. They say: “We’ve ALWAYS done it this way.” It does seem as though the private sector is more decisive. Why is this?

For various economic reasons, we don’t have to pay educators high salaries. We compensate by giving them great fringe benefits and a lot of power over their working conditions.

On top of this, we’re consolidating school districts drastically, which makes everybody but those at the very top feel less significant. So we seek to mitigate that by giving them more “say.” But when school employees form such a large group, their voices and their wishes tend to outshout school boards and the electorate, who have become rubber stamps. It’s the old “inmates in charge of the asylum” routine.

That’s how we get distortions in decision-making, especially with “management by consensus.” Instead of evidence-based, rational decision-making by leaders flexible enough to respond to problems and innovate, we have rigid and old-fashioned systems in schools, such as pay and job assignments based mostly on seniority.

Schools use a collectivist approach instead of a democratic one. A typical consensus model has “site-based councils” at schools, dominated by union members, adding programs and staff because those are good for THEM, but minimizing the basics that would make the educational process more productive for CHILDREN.

Consensus management seeks to be all things to all people, instead of choosing among options to find the best. The consensus style bends ‘way over backward to give too much power to just one faction. So if everybody loves an idea EXCEPT the superintendent, it dies. If parents and taxpayers demand a change but the teachers don’t want to do it, the change doesn’t happen.

That’s how the status quo is maintained. As education thinker Alan Bersin puts it, “This is a perversion of the concepts of consultation, collaboration and cooperation, and it tends to drive agreements to a lowest-common-denominator consensus level.”

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Homework: An excellent explanation of where school management has gone wrong, and how we must focus on educational productivity or perish, is available from Alan Bersin, http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050605/news_lz1e5making.html

Posted 8:33 AM by Susan Darst Williams

NEWS IN OMAHA MAY DO SOME GOOD – SPURRING PRIVATE-SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT

The news that the Omaha Public Schools is launching a hostile takeover of Ralston, Millard and Elkhorn schools may not be all bad. It may wind up inspiring some much-needed development in private-sector education in West Omaha. I know that was my first thought for our daughter, who’s 5. Huge school districts are bad news all across the country, and tomorrow we’ll talk about another reason why they’re not good for kids – nor for any of us, politically speaking. The place to be is in a small private school where the focus is still on academics and not social engineering. Driving the smart kids out of the public schools is the last thing the power push by OPS is probably intended to do, but I predict that’s what it will do. And that’s not all bad.

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Is Consolidation Worth It?

Q. We’re all for smaller class sizes and smaller schools. So then, why are so many people demanding the opposite -- bigger school districts – when smaller seems to be better everywhere else in education? Are the economies of scale that you can get by consolidating schools really worth it?

In a word, no. According to research compiled by education reporter Mike Antonucci, students do worse academically in a huge school district than if they were in a smaller one. Why? Because educators get “off-task” from their basic mission in those big districts. Instead of gaining economies of scale, Antonucci says that paradoxically, big districts create “penalties of scale.” The ultimate victim: learning.

In a 1999 article, he reported that the nation’s largest school districts spend only about 50 percent of their budgets on classroom instruction, compared to the national average of 61.7 percent. In the bigger districts, fewer than half the staff are classroom teachers, too, as more and more specialized nonteaching staff is hired to support the bigger numbers of students and teachers in various nonclassroom functions.

Diverting money from the classroom is destructive to all students, he wrote, but especially low-income and minority students.

“(E)vidence suggests that the larger a school district gets, the more resources it devotes to secondary or even non-essential activities,” he wrote. “Schools provide transportation, counseling, meals, child care, health services, security, and soon these ‘support’ functions require support of their own.”

It should be noted that bigger staffs and more staff specialization lead to more management problems involving coordination and control. Unions also gain more bargaining power since they are working with bigger bargaining units, so salaries and other personnel costs tend to rise.
Meanwhile, what falls by the wayside? Student learning.

The bottom line: the more “inputs” into a school district, the lower the “outputs” – student achievement rates.

As a model, we should be looking at successful private schools, which have relatively tiny administrative staffs, spend a whopping amount of money in the classroom vs. on everything else, and consistently whip public schools academically.

Homework: Antonucci’s Nov. 17, 1999, research article is available on the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute’s site, www.adti.net, by searching for its title, “Mission Creep: How Large School Districts Lose Sight of the Objective – Student Learning”

Posted 9:10 AM by Susan Darst Williams

HELP FOR MATH FROM OUTSIDE SCHOOL

Q. What are some ways to supplement a child’s math education outside of the regular classroom?

Afterschooling. That’s a parent-led, informal, spontaneous form of outside enrichment that can make a real difference for those kids who are out ahead, or lagging behind. It’s probably best to keep your child’s teacher and school out of it: the idea is a fresh, new approach, supplementation, and enrichment.

Summer is a great time to start because your child’s schedule is likely to be more relaxed.

Tutoring is the most obvious form of afterschooling, though it costs money and can be very hard to work into a child’s schedule if sports and extracurricular activities are also on the docket and important to your child. Big after-school helpers include www.kumon.com and www.sylvanlearningcenters.com You can ask around, perhaps at a private school known to have excellent students, because teachers there are often looking for moonlighting income. The Yellow Pages are always a good source, too.

There are online services available, many free of charge. Students in need of remedial help and practice could try www.amath.com or Japanese Math Challenge on the very fun and worthwhile David Goodman website, www.dabanasa.com/dave/math

You could find an online tutor from www.tutor.com or download online tutorials from www.a1tutor.com/tut_math.html

Mentoring is another approach. Ask at the middle school or high school, whichever is one level up, or a local college, for a personable, good student looking to make a little extra cash. The mentor could meet with your child once or twice a week and help with math homework, talk about math in everyday life, maybe shoot hoops and share dreams a little . . . just be a friend and encourager.

But most of all and best of all, as you live life with your child, talk about math and “do math” together. Measure your vegetable garden. Compute gas mileage. Double a recipe. Figure a batting average. Comparison shop. Figure price per ounce.

Your goal: teach your child how math and life are intertwined. That’ll make it really . . . add up.

Homework: Saxon Math offers afterschooling and homeschooling curricula. You can find out more and order a placement test from www.saxonpublishing.com

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CALL FOR QUESTIONS: Please send your questions about any facet of K-12 education to Go Big Ed via swilliams1@cox.net, and thanks!

Posted 10:13 AM by Susan Darst Williams

TODAY MARKS THE START OF EDUCATIONAL Q&A

Go Big Ed will endeavor to answer your questions about K-12 education in the following format for the next few weeks. Send in your questions and comments, and share these with friends and colleagues. Happy summer!

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Afterschooling For Math

Q. My son is going into the eighth grade. He needs help with math; we moved a few times when he was younger. We’d like to supplement his regular schooling in math so that he’ll score up to his potential on the PSAT, SAT and ACT coming up. What can we do for him this summer and next school year?

Sounds like a job for afterschooling – the systematic supplementation of public school curriculum in a top-quality private school that operates independently and after school hours.

If by some miracle you live in the Boston area, you have access to Ground Zero for afterschooling in mathematics – the Russian School of Mathematics. That private, after-school math center now enrolls more than 700 students from K-12, including a lot of middle schoolers from some of the ritziest neighborhoods in the Boston area.

A mom who was fed up with mediocre math instruction in the public schools began the school out of her home seven years ago with her two children and a few of their friends, and reportedly is turning students away now, her school is so popular.

After the need for the service became so apparent, she went to district officials and proposed that the district pay the kids’ tuition and let them test out of the regular math class in school, if they choose to attend her school because it meets their academic needs better. But the school district would have none of that. And so parents have been paying double for their kids to learn math – once, through their taxes, to the public schools, and again, through private tuition, to the afterschool, which is what parents say is doing the better job.

Reportedly, the problem with many public school math curricula is that they are tied to the benchmarks of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Those in turn are reflected in most statewide math assessments, but mathematicians and others who are conservative about math education don’t like them because they don’t emphasize the basics.

Homework: Why not start an afterschool in your community? For inspiration, see www.russianschool.com

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CALL FOR QUESTIONS: Please send your questions about any facet of K-12 education to Go Big Ed via swilliams1@cox.net, and thanks!

Posted 10:13 AM by Susan Darst Williams

BULLETIN: Kudos to Gov. Dave Heineman for vetoing LB 126, the bill that would kill Nebraska’s country schools. Let’s hope the state senators see the wisdom of conserving those schools, and that they don’t override his veto.

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HOW COME WE DON’T HAVE LETTERS TO THE EDITOR LIKE THIS?

A Go Big Ed reader was in Madison, Wis., recently and forwarded this no-nonsense letter to the editor from the Capital Times (www.madison.com). It seems that despite being outspent 8:1, a grassroots taxpayers’ group got voters to turn thumbs down on two out of three school-spending ballot questions there the other day.

It’s pretty remarkable, since Madison is such a liberal city. But according to accounts in the online paper, operational spending in the public-school district there had increased by twice the rate of inflation in the past 10 years. Meanwhile, student enrollment had fallen by 162 pupils, but staff had increased by 655.

Two school board members reacted to complaints about rising property taxes by suggesting that homeowners . . . get this . . . take out second mortgages or reverse mortgages in order to pay their taxes and stay in their homes.

Now, there’s compassionate public service for you! Sheesh.

The leader of the pro-spending group said that the 75 percent of Madison taxpayers who don’t have kids in the district should . . . get this . . . have no say in how their tax dollars are spent. That attitude was dubbed “sit down, shut up, and hand over the cash.”

Don’t you love that attitude coming from the educators whose salaries we pay, and their often naïve or financially interested supporters?

It reminds me a lot of what went on, to our shame, in Omaha a few years ago when the Omaha Public Schools and Westside Community Schools pushed through huge extra-spending bills, steamrollering the high-principled, common-sense opponents, such as moi, who tried to talk some sense into the electorate and shine a light on where we could save money, instead.

But we didn’t have guys with guts like this writer. Why don’t we have letters in Nebraska newspapers telling it as it is, the way this guy does? If we did, I have no doubt we’d have more cash in our personal accounts, and better schools.

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James Nikora: Model for schools needs to be updated with new ideas
A letter to the editor
May 27, 2005

Dear Editor:

I am a "liberal" citizen of Madison who supports education for both civic and selfish reasons. I believe education is essential to successful representative government and provides a better quality of life for the entire community.

But I voted "no" on the school referendums and my reasons were not just about money. They are about our educational system, the people who run it, and the lack of ideas on the table.

Our current system of education was designed before the Industrial Revolution. We cannot compete in the 21st century using an 18th century model. We need to step outside of this obsolete box, engaging and challenging students with relevant material, while rethinking everything from our physical plants and schedules to teaching methods and systems.

I understand that the system is suffering societal pressure from the overall cuts to social programs at state and federal levels and the economic need families have to provide two incomes. Thirty years ago, in my high school, there was one principal, only one vice principal and two guidance counselors for 1,200 plus students. There were no social workers or psychologists and no executive athletic director. Our parents were biological - not provided by the school district. We need to remove this burden from our schools and make it, once again, their business to educate.

Perhaps I could have been persuaded to vote "yes" had it not been for the arrogance, distorted facts and dogmatic approach of the referendum supporters. I never once heard a proposal to cut administration before placing sacrificial lambs, like the strings program, on our altars. Even now, after defeat, they are looking only for teachers to cut. Their campaign claims of previous cuts to staff and budget were disingenuous and they vilified opponents as "anti-education."

I will continue to support education, first by advocating new leadership in the administration. The district would be better served by an administration that looks in earnest for solutions and seeks to unite the community, rather than divide it.

James Nikora
Madison

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CALL FOR QUESTIONS: Please send your questions about any facet of K-12 education to Go Big Ed via swilliams1@cox.net, and thanks!

Posted 9:59 AM by Susan Darst Williams

HOW COME WE DON’T HAVE STATE SENATORS LIKE THIS?

Here’s an excellent, meaningful and satiric article about public education finance. It’s from a California state senator whose rhetorical skills make even Nebraska State Sen. Ernie Chambers look amateurish:

A Modest Proposal for Saving Our Schools
enator Tom McClintock
Date: May 15, 2005

The multi-million dollar campaign paid by starving teachers’ unions has finally placed our sadly neglected schools at the center of the budget debate. Across California, children are bringing home notes warning of dire consequences if Gov. Schwarzenegger’s scorched earth budget is approved – a budget that slashes Proposition 98 public school spending from $42.2 billion this year all the way down to $44.7 billion next year.

That should be proof enough that our math programs are suffering. As a public school parent, I have given this crisis a great deal of thought and have a modest suggestion to help weather these dark days. Maybe – as a temporary measure only – we should spend our school dollars on our schools.

I realize that this is a radical departure from current practice, but desperate times require desperate measures. The Governor proposed spending $10,084 per student from all sources. Devoting all of this money to the classroom would require turning tens of thousands of school bureaucrats, consultants, advisors and specialists onto the streets with no means of support or marketable job skills, something that no enlightened social democracy should allow.

So I will begin by excluding from this discussion the entire budget of the State Department of Education, as well as the pension system, debt service, special education, child care, nutrition programs and adult education. I also propose setting aside $3 billion to pay an additional 30,000 school bureaucrats $100,000-per-year (roughly the population of Monterey) with the proviso that they stay away from the classroom and pay their own hotel bills at conferences. This leaves a mere $6,937 per student, which, for the duration of the funding crisis, I propose devoting to the classroom.

To illustrate how we might scrape by at this subsistence level, let’s use a hypothetical school of 180 students with only $1.2 million to get through the year. We have all seen the pictures of filthy bathrooms, leaky roofs, peeling paint and crumbling plaster to which our children have been condemned. I propose that we rescue them from this squalor by leasing out luxury commercial office space.

Our school will need 4,800 square feet for five classrooms (the sixth class is gym). At $33 per foot, an annual lease will cost $158,400. This will provide executive washrooms, around-the-clock janitorial service, wall-to-wall carpeting, utilities and music in the elevators. We’ll also need new desks to preserve the professional ambiance.

Next, we’ll need to hire five teachers – but not just any teachers. I propose hiring only associate professors from the California State University at their level of pay. Since university professors generally assign more reading, we’ll need 12 of the latest edition, hardcover books for each student at an average $75 per book, plus an extra $5 to have the student’s name engraved in gold leaf on the cover.

Since our conventional gym classes haven’t stemmed the childhood obesity epidemic, I propose replacing them with an annual membership at a private health club for $39.95 per month. This would provide our children with a trained and courteous staff of nutrition and fitness counselors, aerobics classes and the latest in cardiovascular training technology.

Finally, we’ll hire an $80,000 administrator with a $40,000 secretary because – well, I don’t know exactly why, but we always have. Our bare-bones budget comes to this:

5 classrooms $158,400 150
Desks @ $130 $19,500
180 annual health club memberships @ $480 $86,400
2,160 textbooks @ $80 $172,800
5 C.S.U. Associate Professors @ $67,093 $335,465
1 Administrator $80,000
1 Secretary $40,000
24% faculty and staff benefits $109,312
Offices, expenses and insurance $30,000
OTAL $1,031,877

This budget leaves a razor-thin reserve of just $216,703 or $1,204 per pupil, which can pay for necessities like paper, pencils, personal computers and extra-curricular travel. After all, what’s the point of taking four years of French if you can’t see Paris in the spring?

The school I have just described is the school we’re paying for. Maybe it’s time to ask why it’s not the school we’re getting.

Other, wiser, governors have made the prudent decision not to ask such embarrassing questions of the education-industrial complex because it makes them very angry. Apparently the unions believe that with enough of a beating, Gov. Schwarzenegger will see things the same way. Perhaps.

But there’s an old saying that you can’t fill a broken bucket by pouring more water into it. Maybe it’s time to fix the bucket.

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Senator McClintock represents the 19th district in the California Legislature. His website address is www.sen.ca.gov/mcclintock.

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CALL FOR QUESTIONS: Please send your questions about any facet of K-12 education to Go Big Ed via swilliams1@cox.net, and thanks!

Posted 8:18 AM by Susan Darst Williams

THE BRITISH ARE COMING . . . BACK TO PHONICS

The vast majority of public and private schools in Nebraska use an approach to teaching reading that clearly doesn’t work, but they cling to it anyway.

For a while, it was called “holistic reading,” or “Whole Language.”

Then when everybody said it didn’t work, they changed the name to “eclectic.”

Then when everybody STILL said it didn’t work, they changed it again, to “balanced literacy.” That’s where we stand, at least for the moment, in Nebraska. You can call your local grade school and listen to the pride in their voices as they tell you that’s how they teach reading. Listen, too, for the phone to go dead when you said, in all sincerity and backed up by the evidence of widespread declining literacy, “But it doesn’t WORK.”

A rose by any other name . . . holds true for a cowpie, too.

Well, get this: the schools in Great Britain have gone through the same progression of name-changing and political posturing, but their reading wars are now coming to a close. And guess who won?

Phonics!

How I wish we could leap forward a few years and do what they’re doing. It’s inevitable that we’ll turn back to what works. But it’s taking so looooooong.

According to a worldwide education “list” I subscribe to, a British educator reported that The Evening Mail and the Daily Standard have predicted that British Education Secretary Ruth Kelly will soon announce that “synthetic phonics” will replace that nation’s failed National Literacy Strategy ASAP.

What they call “synthetic phonics,” we call “systematic, intensive, explicit phonics.” That style is in use in the best-loved phonics system, Spalding, and it’s here in Nebraska, at the Millard Core Academy, a handful of inner-city public and private schools, and Omaha’s Phoenix Academy, and scattered other schools around the state.

The current British system is like what’s in use in most American public schools: “balanced literacy,” with just a thimble full of proper phonics mooshed in with a whole lot of Whole Language mishmash. Finally, after decades of wrangling and declining classroom performance, the Brits understand that there’s mud in them there tea, and it’s ‘way past time for change.

My British correspondent commented about the country’s chief educrat, “There is little doubt that her hand was forced, as she has quite pointedly rejected the evidence for synthetic phonics, even when the House of Commons Education Committee and virtually all of the press -- and even the BBC -- were putting pressure on her to look again at the evidence.

“As an interesting note on how British politics works, it is an open secret that Tony Blair has been pressing for SP ever since his own son was rescued by the method. In order to get the DfES to move, he had to elevate his chief policy advisor, Andrew Adonis, to the House of Lords so that he could be appointed as a junior minister in the Government. Apparently, very little can be done from No. 10.”

Sound familiar?

Will it take a Nebraska governor with a child mislabeled as “learning disabled,” who finds out that the REAL problem is “balanced literacy,” or whatever the NEXT name for this boneheaded non-reading system will be, to lead us back to where we should have been all along – on the strong foundation of proper phonics?

My British friend concluded:

“It's too early to tell how it will all pan out. We will almost certainly see some monumental foot-dragging efforts on the part of the officials who, along with Ruth Kelly, have been publicly humiliated.

“However, our official literacy strategy has no friends left outside our politicised education bureaucracies.

“Another downside is that I will have a fair bit of rewriting to do before my MA thesis can be published -- but I can just live with that.”

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CALL FOR QUESTIONS: Please send questions about K-12 education to Go Big Ed for a freewheeling summer Q&A series that will help us all understand the issues better. Sample topics: reading, writing, ‘rithmetic, other curriculum, parental involvement, management, finance, instructional methods, personnel, teaching, practices in the various stages of schooling, special needs, public policy, and innovations and solutions. Send them anonymously or with your name and hometown to swilliams1@cox.net, and thanks!