Posted 10:44 AM by Susan Darst Williams

IN OPS, YOU HAVE A
1-IN-2 CHANCE OF BEING ILLITERATE

Not exactly a Chamber of Commerce week in education news: on top of the announcement that Nebraska is tied for first in the nation in the size of its graduation gap between the races (83% for white males and 40% for black males), comes now the atrocious scores on a statewide reading test posted by the Omaha Public Schools.

Only 52% of the OPS students scored as "proficient," which is generally considered to be at or above grade-level reading skill.

So if you attend an OPS school, you have basically a 1-in-2 chance of being functionally illiterate. Of course, the inner-city schools are much worse than the suburban ones within OPS, so it's more like a 9-in-10 chance, in some places. But the overall effect is atrocious.

OPS defenders say that the statewide reading test was only a quick "snapshot" of how the kids did on one day. Their own assessments take place over much more time than that, with lots of opportunities for remediation, and so their own reading test scores are much higher than the state's.

But even if the scores are only a snapshot, think about this: a picture is worth 1,000 words.

Ironically -- or tellingly -- in the Omaha Public Schools, scores were even worse in high school. At Benson High School, for example, only 35% of the students could read proficiently. And yet reading is the schools' basic mission, and these kids have been in high-priced public school for quite a few years, which reflects even worse on the low scores.

Lousy reading doesn't bode too well for their college prospects, or for the future workforce in this state.

And just think of the impression these students now have of what their fellow Omahans and units of government really think of them, to allow them to be in school for so many years and remain unable to read. Can we really blame them for turning to crime, unwed pregnancy and welfare?

Shame, shame, shame . . . but tomorrow, an idea for change!

Labels: 52% illiteracy rate in Omaha Public Schools, Nebraska statewide reading test scores

Posted 3:12 PM by Susan Darst Williams

NEBRASKA'S 40% GRAD RATE FOR BLACK MALES
IS ATROCIOUS IN THE MIDWEST
AND THE BIGGEST RACIAL GAP IN THE NATION,
BUT FAIRLY NORMAL OTHERWISE

Talk about shocking: that horrendous 40% graduation rate for black teenage boys in Nebraska is about on par with the East and West Coasts, and actually better than many of the larger cities.

Even so, statewide figures and the huge disparity between black and white graduation rates for boys -- 83% for whites vs. that 40% for blacks -- lands Nebraska in a tie with New York for the largest statewide graduation racial gap in the nation.

Ew! Ew! Ewwww! That's a claim to No. 1 that nobody in Nebraska wants to hear -- and they're doing it to our kids, using our money.

See a report on 2008 national data from the Scott Foundation for Public Education, www.schottfoundation.org

If there has ever been a time to pull all low-income and minority children out of the public schools, and put them in the private schools where they can succeed, it is now.

There is no doubt that the relative illiteracy of Head Start teachers, the lack of phonics instruction in the early grades, and the overall atmosphere of harsh, unkind, zero-tolerance discipline by staff in the public schools has created a monstrous amount of illiteracy among young black males, and correspondingly high dropout rates with correspondingly high rates of juvenile delinquency and violence.

We need private donors to fund 200 one-room, K-12 schoolhouses around North Omaha, and it really wouldn't cost that much . . . and let OPS' inner-city schools implode, as they should, and let the district concentrate on its middle-class and upper-class schools, which also need help, but aren't in as drastic a crisis.

Labels: Nebraska No. 1 in racial graduation gap

Posted 12:12 PM by Susan Darst Williams

GREAT NEW BELLEVUE U PRO-AMERICA CENTER
LEADS THE WAY ON PROPER SOCIAL JUSTICE EDUCATION

Those who are sick about the anti-American "social justice" curriculum that is on its way to Omaha's Nathan Hale Middle School should take heart: there are, indeed, people in the metro area who know what appropriate "social justice" instruction is for kids.

Maybe those with a grasp of the right kind of "social justice" training should have a talk with the Omaha Public Schools people who are now planning the "social justice" theme at the school, well aware that around the country, "social justice" schools tend to devolve into Marxism, multiculturalism, racism and all kinds of other "isms" instead of making their students highly literate, numerate and able to take the reins of citizenship.

The good "social justice" course is offered by the Bellevue University Center for American Vision and Values, in partnership with the Jesuit Virtual Learning Academy and the Heritage Foundation. The seven-week, dual enrollment (high school students earning college credit), online course is called "Re-Visioning Social Justice: American Civil Society and the World's Poor."

The course examines the history of poverty in the United States, and the pro's and con's of various private-sector and public-sector attempts to assist the nation's poor.

As the climax of the course, students design their own anti-poverty initiative and argue for its likely effectiveness.

For more about the Bellevue University Center for American Vision & Values, see:

www.americanvisionandvalues.org

Labels: Bellevue University Center for American Vision and Values, online course on social justice for high school students, proper social justice curriculum

Posted 6:15 PM by Susan Darst Williams

HOW MANY OF THESE NEA POLICIES
DO YOU AGREE WITH? LET THEM KNOW

Here are the rather disturbing policy stands taken by attendees at the annual National Education Association convention.

Circle any that you agree with -- don't worry, you won't use much precious ink -- and mail to your state or local NEA union affiliate with a note.

Your note could say something like, "These don't seem to have much, if anything, to do with actually educating children. Are you about schools, or politics?" See if you get a response:

www.eagleforum.org/educate/2010/aug10/resolutions.html

Labels: NEA resolutions, politics vs. education

Posted 1:08 PM by Susan Darst Williams

HOW IS ANYBODY GOING TO AFFORD
SCHOOL SUPPLIES NEXT YEAR,
MUCH LESS COLLEGE TUITION?

Keep this in mind when you vote in November for new school board members, legislators, and anybody else who can levy taxes. What a bunch of anti-family, anti-education tax increases we are going to see! Do not vote for anybody who ISN'T talking about the urgent need to cut taxes and government spending, STAT, and to reverse these horrendous increases.

Imagine how hard it is going to be to save for your children's college educations now. The Democratically-controlled Congress and Democratic Party President have set in place these tax increases on you, starting Jan. 1:

-- Increase of income taxes; for example, the 35% tax bracket zooms up to 39.6%

-- New tax on the value of your health-care benefits

-- Loss of deductions for tuition, student loans and interest payments, as well as health savings accounts

-- Capital gains tax zooms up from 15% to 20%

-- Dividends tax zooms up from 15% to 39.6%

-- Death tax returns; that's 55% tax after the first $1 million in an estate, which these days, isn't all that doggone much

-- Child tax credit is cut in half, to $500

-- Marriage penalty tax is back

-- Dependent-care and adoption tax credits gone

Labels: effect of Jan. 1 tax increases on family educational saving

Posted 5:18 PM by Susan Darst Williams

STATE, NATIONAL ACT AVERAGE SCORES:
A CHAIR LEG COULD DO AS WELL

Let's remember that the national average of a 21 on the college admissions test, the ACT, announced yesterday, is about as good as a CHAIR LEG could do on the test.

A perfect score is 36, and that's very hard to get, but a score of 21 is what would be posted by someone on the verge of functional illiteracy . . . and remember, that is the average, which means half of those taking the test did worse.

Nebraska's average score of 22.1 is actually pretty embarrassing on that 1-to-36 point scale, considering that we have relatively few test-takers who are African-American and Hispanic, two student groups who have notoriously low test scores for various reasons.

The Wall Street Journal reported that 75% of 2010 graduates who took the ACT had scores so low on the individual tests, especially science, that they lacked the academic skills to pass an entry-level college course in those subjects. That means our high schools have a 25% success rate in meeting their basic mission.

Rather than celebrating that Nebraska "beat" the national average on the ACT, we really ought to demand that the State of Nebraska compel the ACT to publish the test questions and send parents the test booklet with their child's answer sheet. Then we can all see the kinds of mistakes that our kids are making after 12 or so years of educating them to the tune of more than $10,000 per pupil per year.

There would be an immediate stampede to private schools and how-to books on homeschooling, betcha.

Labels: ACT scores Nebraska

Posted 10:16 AM by Susan Darst Williams

KUDOS TO CHILDREN'S SCHOLARSHIP FUND:
HELPING 2,000 POOR KIDS GO TO PRIVATE SCHOOL

If you want to help a low-income child have the choice to attend private school instead of public school, donate to the Children's Scholarship Fund of Omaha, 3212 N. 60th St., 68104, or call 557-5650 ext. 1906 or 1908.

The organization's annual luncheon recently disclosed that donors helped 2,000 children in 23 northeast Nebraska counties, including Omaha, attend private schools through tuition assistance provided by the donors to the scholarship fund.

According to outgoing president J. Peter Ricketts, the program's effectiveness is shown by this statistic: 96% of the scholarshipped students who leave Holy Name School in Omaha's inner city go on to graduate from high school. That compares to an overall graduation rate in the inner city of less than 50%.

Around the country, the evidence is mounting that private education works better for disadvantaged children than public education.

New donors are being sought for the Nebraska group because of the recession. The poor economy has increased the need for tuition assistance at the same time as it has eroded giving power among existing donors. Ricketts said that there is only enough money to give 200 additional scholarships on top of the ones already being given this year, but the group has more than 1,300 new applications for the 2010-11 school year.

Labels: Children's Scholarship Fund Omaha, tuition assistance for disadvantaged children to go to private schools

Posted 2:02 PM by Susan Darst Williams

----------------

Whoopsie Daisy! Is K-2 Really the Answer?

Boy, is my face red. I've been going around for years, promoting K-2 as the answer to our education woes. 'Course, I mean that we need to have systematic, intensive, explicit phonics instruction on the front burner for our kindergarten through second-grade classrooms.

Comes now State Sen. Beau McCoy of west Omaha, who is sponsoring a bill next session that would make the sale or possession of a new drug, K2, illegal. K2 is synthetic marijuana, and it can give you rapid heart rate, agitation, panic attacks, paranoia and hallucinations.

We already have enough of THAT in our schools -- particularly when people get their school tax bills!

K2 is sold as "herbal incense" and goes by brand names such as Spice, Black Magic, Blue Summit, Blueberry and SuperNova.

Thanks, Sen. McCoy, for alerting parents to this latest threat to our kids . . . and giving me a heads up to make sure I make it clear, when I promote "K-2," that I'm talking about PHONICS for the itty bitty kiddies!!!

Labels: K2 drug, Nebraska legislature, phonics, school humor, Sen. Beau McCoy