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In the Washington Post, Jay Mathews describes how novice teachers Mike Feinberg and David Levin founded KIPP, a national network of charters targeting very disadvantaged minority communities. The results are impressive.

One hundred percent of eighth-graders at KIPP Academy Houston passed the Texas state tests last year. KIPP Academy New York ranks in the top 10 percent of all New York city schools. Students at KIPP schools opened since 2001 averaged score increases last year of 39 percent in mathematics and 20 percent in reading. About 80 percent of KIPP students in 15 states and the District have family incomes low enough to qualify for federal lunch subsidies, and they are all of the hormone-addled middle school age that makes even teachers at wealthy private schools tremble. (KIPP is starting an elementary and a high school in Houston this year.)

Feinberg and Levin say they want discipline, attention and steady, measurable progress that supplants the distractions of their students' homes and neighborhoods.

KIPP students go to school for as much as 9 1/2-hours during the week, and come in regularly on Saturdays. They get a lot more time to learn. Discipline is enforced consistently so distractions are minimized. Despite paying teachers more to work longer hours, KIPP spends only about 13 percent more than the national average. "In some expensive cities like New York, however, KIPP is still spending less per student than regular public schools are."

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Welcome, teacher

Via Eduwonk, I've discovered Hip Teacher, written by a brand-new high school English teacher. She's teaching in an inner-city school, but I can't figure out where.

Dave Shearon thinks Hip Teacher should include some white westerners in her World Literature class. She doesn't even get the book that's been ordered for five weeks into the school year.

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August 24, 2004

Too serious about sports

Children are being pushed to specialize in a single sport, writes teacher Patrick Welsh in USA Today. The pressure may start in elementary school.

Take the situation with youth basketball. Fifth- and sixth-grade kids playing in recreation leagues are being scouted by Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) coaches with connections to sneaker companies.

Coaches from prestigious private schools have their street-dude surrogates hanging around recreation centers using sneakers and promises of scholarships to entice the best players. Once kids are in the clutches of these coaches, they are encouraged to play in year-round leagues.

. . . Now kids are made to feel like second-class underachievers unless they make a city's "traveling" or All-Star team. Some kids even refuse to play on their high school teams because they say that their club teams are more competitive and that their club coaches have better contacts with college recruiters.

Via Donald Sensing, father of athletes. I'm the mother of the only child in Palo Alto who never played soccer. She said she'd heard it involved running. I'd heard it involved parents waking up early on Saturday morning.

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Latin, updated

Does a Latin textbook need to be updated?

Critics say they understand why biology and accounting textbooks need frequent updating, by why algebra or ancient languages?

Unnecessary updates are "one of the biggest driving factors behind the high costs of textbooks," says Merriah Fairchild, higher education advocate at the California Public Interest Research Group.

Wheelock's Latin textbook includes many more photos and maps than in the original version, published 50 years ago.

Readings feature fewer battlefield dispatches and more emphasis on women and everyday life. There is even a dirty poem by Catullus.

Wheelock's also has a Web site, e-mail discussion groups and, soon, online audio recordings.

A new version comes out about every five years.

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Daddy

Raising Kevion in the NY Times Magazine is excerpted from reporter Jason DeParle's upcoming book on three ex-welfare mothers and their families. The main character is a man trying to be a good father in a world in which selling drugs is "cool" and delivering pizza is "gay."

Mickey Kaus says a Washington Post story buried the good news: The birth rate for unwed teen-agers is down, and it can't all be explained away.

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August 23, 2004

Royally wrong

Purple is replacing red as the color of correction, according to this Boston Globe story. Red is too associated with wrongness. Green and yellow don't offer enough contrast. Orange is too close to red. Purple is "friendlier." So pen makers are boosting production of purple pens and office supply stores are thinking purple.

A mix of red and blue, the color purple embodies red's sense of authority but also blue's association with serenity, making it a less negative and more constructive color for correcting student papers, color psychologists said. Purple calls attention to itself without being too aggressive. And because the color is linked to creativity and royalty, it is also more encouraging to students.

"The concept of purple as a replacement for red is a pretty good idea," said Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Color Institute in Carlstadt, N.J., and author of five books on color. "You soften the blow of red. Red is a bit over-the-top in its aggression."

The Globe quotes an immigrant mother who's taking English classes. Victoria Nedruban stands up for red.

"I hate red," she said. "But because I hate it, I want to work harder to make sure there isn't any red on my papers."

Apparently, she hasn't assimilated 21st century American values.

Via Cris Simpson and The Corner.

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Regulating recess

Child's play is too dangerous for recess, school administrators are deciding. Josh Cohen links to a Sacramento Bee story:

Concerned about safety and injuries and worried about bullying, violence, self-esteem and lawsuits, school officials have clamped down on the traditional games from years past.

Gone from many blacktops are tag, dodgeball and any game involving bodily contact. In are organized relay races and adult-supervised activities.

At one school, children aren't allowed to push each other on the swings. Administrators worry about "bullying and potential lawsuits from parents."

Many see the recess restrictions as part of larger cultural shifts. Schools now must craft lesson plans on responsibility, honesty and violence prevention, Maeola Beitzel Principal Judy Hunt-Brown said. And those lessons, among other things, fit neatly into the structured, organized play so prevalent on today's schoolyard.

"To some degree, the school has needed to take a larger role in teaching children how to play with each other - the whole taking turns, how to deal with conflict," Hunt-Brown said.

When I was a kid -- OK, I'm about the same age as Beaver Cleaver -- children worked these things out for ourselves. Of course, we had competent parents who'd taught us self-control and basic good manners.

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Double victim

If your blood needs boiling, consider this Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel column about a 15-year-old girl who was forced to perform oral sex by a 17-year-old classmate at a Milwaukee high school. She reported the assault. The boy, who claimed the sex was consensual, was suspended for five days. So was the girl. Eventually, he pleaded guilty to "abusive, indecent or otherwise disorderly conduct," after his lawyer used the girl's suspension as proof the sex was consensual. The boy got a 30-day stayed jail sentence and 18 months probation, and paid $400 restitution. He transferred to another high school where he was allowed to compete in basketball.

The girl, an honor student, is trying to get her record cleared of the suspension, which she fears will hurt her college admission chances. The school district refuses to admit that it made a mistake by punishing the victim for reporting a sexual assault.

Right after sentencing, Assistant DA Michael Mahoney took the extraordinary step of firing off a letter to school officials expressing his anger with how they handled the matter.

"(She) did not consent to this assault and, indeed, did not know the defendant or his name, prior to the assault," Mahoney wrote Jan. 21. "Also please note that (she) was not legally capable of consenting to this sexual activity alleged by the Defendant."

The suspension remains on her record.

Via Eduwonk.

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August 22, 2004

Aaaaarrrrrgggghhhh!

Explain this to me, folks. My e-mail program (it comes with the i-Mac) is downloading 7,133 e-mail messages dating from July 31. I've already received and deleted these messages, of course. What is going on? I haven't done anything weird to my e-mail. Why is it being weird to me?

Update: It now says it's downloading from 11,017 messages dating from July 30. I keep erasing; it keeps downloading the same messages. I tried changing my mail preferences to kill all messages on the server as soon as they've been downloaded; when I hit the "do it now" button, it crashes the mail program.

Update: Victory! My ISP killed all the e-mail, and the massacre seems to have worked. So far.

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No testing backlash

Public Agenda's survey of teachers, parents and students, Reality Check 2002, finds widespread support for standards and testing.

Most students say they can handle the testing, and while a strong majority of teachers, parents, professors and employers say they're worried about "teaching to the test," only one-quarter of teachers say they're actually doing it. All groups endorse standardized testing in some form, with one major caveat: majorities in all groups agree that a student's graduation or promotion should not hang on one test. The groups surveyed report tangible change in other ways. Teachers report that summer school attendance is up, and social promotion is down.

However, the impact of higher academic standards has been mixed.

Few teachers report that schools have been either rewarded or sanctioned based on student performance. Employers and professors also continue to voice considerable dissatisfaction with high school graduates' basic skills.

Check out Public Agenda's fact file too.

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August 21, 2004

Apples vs. oranges

Charter schools designed to serve struggling students can't be compared to regular schools, writes Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute in response to the New York Times story.

Because so many charter schools are specifically targeted to struggling students, a large percentage of their minority and poor students face obstacles greater than students of similar demographics in regular public schools.

Manhattan Institute researchers "compared test-score gains in charter schools serving the general student population to those of their nearest regular public schools."

When we make this fairer comparison, charter schools outperform regular public schools by 3 percentile points in math and 2 percentile points in reading for students at the 50th percentile over a one-year period. Charter schools might not be trouncing regular public schools, as some overzealous advocates claim, but when we make fair comparisons charter schools are significantly better.

Charters could raise test scores easily by targeting suburban students. But what's the point of that?

Chester Finn, who helped talk the feds into testing charter students, discusses the charge that the National Assessment of Education Progress hid the data (on its web site).

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Sacrificing students to save the school

Chris Cibelli, who wants to be an astrophysicist, applied to transfer from his low-performing San Jose high school to a school with space science classes and a planetarium. He was turned down, until a Mercury News reporter called James Lick High to ask why. Basically, the school didn't want to lose a high-scoring student; already, one quarter of the freshman class has used the transfer option, guaranteed under No Child Left Behind, to choose another campus in the district.

The incident reveals one of the challenges inherent in the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001: How do you rescue a struggling school when so many students, often the more ambitious, want out?

"That's the youngster that's going to raise my test scores,'' said (co-principal Rick) Esparza, part of a turnaround team that arrived six months ago hoping to lift James Lick from the lowest levels of test performance. James Lick is one of 18 schools in Santa Clara County where test scores have remained so low that students are allowed to transfer. "It's hard to take, that there's a law that says your child has a right to move on."

That's a remarkable sentence. It implies that students should be sacrificed for the good of the school.

Prodded by NCLB, Lick is changing its curriculum dramatically to teach reading and math skills -- and nothing else -- to students who are far behind when they enroll. It may become a good school for students who need to catch up, and remain a poor choice for students like Chris, who wants to major in physics and astronomy in college and then work for NASA.

John Wright, Chris' stepfather, feels the family needed to focus on Chris' future rather than the school's survival.

"The Bible states that if a tree does not put off good fruit, that tree must die. This is how I feel about James Lick," he said. "Maybe this tree deserves to die."

The Mercury News includes a handy chart on how to request a transfer under NCLB -- but the deadline was Aug. 8.

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August 20, 2004

John Kerry, education radical

John Kerry has a radical plan for improving schools by paying more to good teachers who teach in bad schools, argues Jonathan Schorr in Washington Monthly.

(In his June education speeches), Kerry . . . challenged two longstanding, and fiercely defended, union prerogatives: seniority-based pay increases and rules virtually guaranteeing veteran teachers tenure. The candidate proposed a "new bargain" -- a $30 billion, 10-year plan of federal grants which would allow districts to raise the pay of teachers whose students consistently test above average, while at the same time making it easier for schools to fire bad teachers. "Greater achievement ought to be a goal," Kerry said, "and it should be able to command greater pay, just the way it does in every other sector of professional employment."

Schorr doubts that Kerry's $5,000 bonuses would be enough to transform the system: Good teachers want to teach in schools where they can be effective, and they won't accept horrible working conditions for a slightly fatter paycheck. However, he believes the lure of more money could force unions and districts to collaborate on systems to evaluate which teachers are raising student achievement. That would be a huge breakthrough.

Josh Benson, who's retiring as a TNR blogger, credits Kerry with a "Sister Souljah" approach to teachers' unions, but wonders if the plan to tie bonuses to results ever will become reality.

So do I. It's so easy to pay more money, so hard to devise a workable merit pay plan -- much less one that's politically workable. I think the unions believe they can water down the plan to be very unradical. And they're probably right, unless Kerry is willing to fight hard and risk alienating a major part of his political base. Kerry has said some very good things about education in the past. And then he's waffled. I don't know what he'd actually do as president.

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Hispanic math

With help from a $10 million federal grant, the University of Arizona will try to make math instruction culturally and linguistically sensitive to Hispanics, thereby raising math achievement. The Tucson Citizen reports:

Among the goals of the new center are to create teaching materials and ways of teaching that bring in a cultural and linguistic context specific to Latinos, said Ron Marx, dean of the UA College of Education.

"Historically the dominant culture of the country has been western European and English. Curriculum materials reflect (those) cultural patterns, which isn't good or bad, it just means that kids from those kinds of backgrounds tend to have more advantages because the content and the way it is delivered matches the way their culture represents the world and what they learn at home," Marx said.

Educators can take advantage of the way Latinos express concepts of the world and the way they interact with parents and the community to build a better math program for them, Marx said.

"If you build on their home culture, then you are going to have more success," he said.

Rosenblog thinks this is about teaching math in Spanish. I think it's more devious than that. They're going to come up with a "Hispanic way of knowing" math. None of that Anglocentric 2 + 2 = 4.

Linda Seebach, a former mathematician, describes "ethnomathematics" in this 2000 column. She quotes Ron Eglash of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:

"What goes under the name of multicultural mathematics is too often a cheap shortcut that merely replaces Dick and Jane counting marbles with Tatuk and Esteban counting coconuts," he writes.

At least, 2 coconuts plus 2 coconuts equals 4 coconuts.

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Student snitches

In Lubbock, Texas, students can make money by snitching on classmates. Deanna Kemper, the mother of a seventh grader, complained that her son had been turned in by a snitch for bringing a cell phone to school. School administrators told her "cell phones were banned for being linked to drug-related activities." Kemper said she was told a cell phone or Game Boy could be traded for drugs.

Superintendent Pat Henderson came up with another rationale.

(Henderson) defended using the program to catch cell phone violators. A cell phone could inadvertently set off an explosive device, which makes the phones dangerous in the event of a bomb threat, he said.

I wonder how many cell phone-controlled bombs have been placed in Lubbock schools in the last 100 years. I'm guessing zero.

Henderson said the cell phone snitch got $5 for turning in a classmate.

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August 19, 2004

The uses of distorted data

In Washington state, the teachers' union is trying to repeal the new charter school law, reports Shark Blog. The union's campaign is exploiting statistically meaningless data provided by the American Federation of Teachers to the New York Times. (Scroll down for a photo of Shark's incredibly cute little boy.)

Chester Finn explains what's wrong with the AFT-Times' story in the New York Post. Floyd Flake gets an op-ed rebuttal in the NY Times.

In the Rocky Mountain News, columnist Linda Seebach jumps in too, adding Colorado test scores which show charter students doing as well as students in conventional schools. There are many unmeasured variables, however. Colorado is working on a system to track individual students' progress, which would make it possible to compare the effectiveness of different schools over time.

Robert Tagorda and The Torch are on the case too. Tagorda provides an accessible link to the Wall St. Journal op-ed by a trio of Harvard professors, who point out that the data also show the superiority of religious schools to public schools, if interpreted in the same manner as the AFT crunched the charter school scores.

Eduwonk has more links.

California released statewide test scores this week. I compared Downtown College Prep, the charter school in my book, to other high schoools in its district, San Jose Unified. But there's a catch. All the comprehensive high schools in San Jose created spin-off schools for students at high risk of dropping out when the state accountability system went into force. Sending these students to special programs may be educationally sound. But getting rid of the worst students also is a great way to raise test scores in the comprehensive high schools.

Most Downtown College Prep students start out as high-risk students: 88 percent are Hispanic; nearly half aren't considered fluent in English. More important, most were D and F students in middle school. DCP scores below the comprehensive high schools, but way above the spin-off schools. If the other schools had to average in the scores of their worst students, DCP probably would outscore at least half the comprehensive schools.

Overall, DCP students nearly meet the state average on the graduation exam, which measures basic skills. By 11th grade, 44 percent test at the 50th percentile or above on a nationally normed exam. They score poorly on the test linked to state standards, which is a much harder exam.

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Blogging in class

Classroom weblogs are proving useful because the technology is so easy to use and accessible to students, says a New York Times story.

In the blogs, students write about how they attacked a tough math problem, post observations about their science experiments or display their latest art projects.

For teachers, blogs are attractive because they require little effort to maintain, unlike more elaborate classroom Web sites, which were once heralded as a boon for teaching.

. . . One way teachers say they use blogs is to continue spirited discussions that were cut short or to prolong question-and-answer periods with guest speakers.

Teachers can provide feedback more quickly. Students are encouraged to do more writing, though often without attention to grammar, spelling or other writing conventions.

The Educational Bloggers' Network lists 130 members, but undoubtedly there are more teachers out there experimenting with blogs as a classroom tool.

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ACT scores rise

ACT scores rose slightly in 2004, but college-bound students are no more prepared to succeed in college math and science classes than in the past. The average score rose one tenth of a point to 20.9 in 2004. The average was 21 before 2002, but dipped when Illinois and Colorado required all students -- including those not planning to attend college -- to take the ACT.

The ACT score results indicate that many high school graduates still have not mastered the key academic skills they need to be ready for first-year college science and math courses. Only a fourth (26%) of 2004 graduates earned a score of 24 or higher on the ACT Science Test, while just four in 10 earned a score of 22 or higher on the ACT Math Test. Students who reach these score levels have a high probability (75%) of earning a C or higher -- and a 50/50 chance of earning a B or higher -- in credit-bearing college biology and algebra courses, respectively. These figures are unchanged from 2003.

Two-thirds of ACT test-takers scored well enough to indicate they'll probably earn a C or better in writing.

Many students who plan to go to college don't take a college-prep curriculum in high school. Only 62 percent of ACT-tested graduates in 2004 "took the recommended core coursework for college-bound students Ñ at least four years of English and three years each of mathematics (algebra and higher), natural sciences and social sciences," ACT notes. This hasn't changed in eight years. Not surprisingly, students who take college-prep classes score higher than those who don't, and are more likely to earn a degree.

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August 18, 2004

Help the blogger

Sunday, I drove my daughter to Oakland Airport for her flight to New York City. She's not visiting. She's moved. I was so focused on making sure she hadn't forgotten anything crucial that I forgot my purse and had to borrow $10 from her to get the car out of short-term parking and pay the bridge toll. Also, I forgot that I was wearing slippers, but they look shoeish, so that wasn't too bad.

At any rate, she's now looking for a place to live in Washington Heights or maybe Morningside Heights. And she'll need to find a part-time editing, writing or coffee-making job, since her magazine can't afford to pay the staff actual money. Apartment and job tips are welcome.

Also, I've got a new ad up for Quo Vadis planners. They gave me a freebie. Quite nice. I've dropped the Google ads, which were a bust, and I'm planning to go to BlogAds. After all, I've got a college graduate to support. Temporarily.

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NY Times vs. charters

Charter schools are bad and it's all Bush's fault, editorializes the New York Times.

Eduwonk, which is pushing for a Democratic education policy that's not tied hand and foot to the status quo, keeps repeating that President Clinton backed charter schools, as do liberal groups like Education Trust, which is devoted to improving education for low-income, minority students. The Times implicitly argues that providing alternatives to kids trapped in bad urban schools is a Republican policy. That can't be a good strategy for the Democrats.

Eduwonk also has a round-up of reaction to the Times, including Mickey Kaus. The Chicago Tribune quotes a researcher:

"Any parent who has a kid in a school who's doing great and is learning a lot, is happy and is scoring high on standardized tests probably isn't going to take him out of his regular school and put him in a charter school," says Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, who has conducted several studies on charter schools.

Most Chicago charter schools have long waiting lists. Parents apparently think the charters offer more than neighborhood schools.

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Money for the middle class

John Kerry's tax-credit plan to help poor kids go to college is a middle-class entitlement that ignores the real problem: Few low-income students are prepared for four-year colleges. So argue Jay P. Greene and Greg Forster of the Manhattan Institute.

Kerry proposes a $4,000 refendable tax credit for college tuition. Families that owe less than $4,000 in taxes would get a check from the IRS. Greene and Forster writes:

Kerry could jack up his tax credit to $40,000 a year and it wouldn't increase the number of low-income students who attend college by more than a tiny fraction.

Remember that a kid needs a lot more than money to go to college. He needs to meet a set of minimum academic standards that are required by virtually all four-year colleges before they will even look at his application.

Just about every student who meets these academic standards already goes to college, regardless of income level. That's because financial aid and other policies have already expanded college access to the point where even poor kids are able to enroll if they qualify academically. The kids who don't meet these standards couldn't go to college no matter how much money you gave them.

Kerry's plan would provide a financial break to parents whose children already are going to college. That's nice, but it doesn't increase the pool of college-ready students.

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Once a San Jose Mercury News columnist, I'm now writing School Work: How Two Grumpy Optimists Built a Successful Charter School. Support this site by donating through PayPal or Amazon or by using my book links to buy Amazon stuff; it also helps if you patronize advertisers and click on sponsored links. You can reach me at joanne(at)joannejacobs.com.

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