Songs never sung
In previewing a Human Development textbook, Bernard Chapin came across a peculiar line:

“As a folksinger once sang, how many roads must an individual walk down before you can call them an adult.” 

Of course, it should be: “How many roads must persons of all races, colors, creeds, ability levels and sexual identities walk or roll down before they can catch the electric-powered, wheelchair-accessible bus?” (The answer: 37.)

Via Photon Courier.

Gay High
New York City is opening a gay high school, reports the New York Post. It’s an expansion of an alternative program for gay (and bisexual and transgender) students who’d otherwise feel unsafe and unwanted. Harvey Milk High School eventually will enroll 170 students, and will specialize in computer technology, arts and cooking.

State Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long blasted the school as “social engineering” that wastes tax dollars.

“Is there a different way to teach homosexuals? Is there gay math? This is wrong. This makes absolutely no sense,” Long said.

. . . What burns Long most is the $3 million spent on renovations.

At Twilight of the Idols, a new education blog, Nick also thinks segregating gay students is a bad idea.

Michael Bloomberg, mayor of NYC, says that “everybody feels that it’s a good idea because some of the kids who are gays and lesbians have been constantly harassed and beaten in other schools and this lets them get an education without having to worry,” apparently ignoring the fact that every school should offer the safe environment he describes.

Gay-bashing shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere, but let’s be realistic. It happens, and it’s going to keep happening, at many high schools. The pressures contribute to a high rate of alcoholism, drug abuse, high-risk behavior and suicide for gay teens. Maybe Harvey Milk High’s renovations are too lavish — make your own interior decorating jokes — but the basic idea is defensible.

Given the post below, I wonder if the staff will be all gay. The new principal used to work at Brooklyn Automotive, but, well, who knows? I’m sure the school won’t discriminate against heterosexuals who want to attend. There won’t be any.

By the way, I filled out a survey yesterday at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. I was startled to be given three choices for gender: male, female or transgender. I found it an easy question, but I noticed some filmgoers were taking their time.

Black-only history
Only blacks can teach black history, say a group of parents of Oberlin High School students. Due to a scheduling conflict,  the black teacher who’s taught the course for seven years may not be able to handle it this year. A white teacher may take over the class.

Phyllis Yarber Hogan, a member of the Oberlin Black Alliance for Progress, said a white teacher wouldn’t be well-suited to teaching students about subjects like slavery.

“When you talk about slavery, students need to understand it is not our fault,” she said. “Our ancestors did nothing wrong to be enslaved.

“How do you work through that when the person teaching it is the same type of person who did the enslaving?”

I sure hope Oberlin High doesn’t let non-whites teach European history. For that matter, with black history removed to a separate class, U.S. history should be taught by white teachers, preferably white males whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower. Segregation forever!

The regatta is over
An LA Times story on the demise of analogies on the SAT is annoying.

1. To illustrate the elitism of analogies, it cites a discarded question that required knowledge of “regatta.” The question was dropped decades ago, yet it comes up again and again as the example of elitism. Is it the only one in 20 years? If so, the SAT writers are doing a great job.

2. It implies that the analogy questions measure the ability to memorize vocabulary words and nothing else. Not so. A test-taker has to think about relationships.

3. A critic says students should spend their time reading Dickens, not learning the meaning of “lummox.” What’s the point of reading Dickens if you don’t have the vocabulary to understand his writing? Dickens uses a lot of words not in the standard 21st century American teen-ager’s vocabulary. Those not willing to learn new words will be flummoxed.

The new analogy-free SAT will require students to write an essay. Expect complaints that the writing requirement penalizes students who speak English as a second language and low-income students with less exposure to standard English.

Evil are they
Conservatives are Sith, writes Michael Lopez, who knows his Yoda.

Conservatives, according to that Berkeley study, are characterized psychologically by:

Fear and aggression
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
Uncertainty avoidance
Need for cognitive closure
Terror management

Actually, the data suggest otherwise, but never mind. Listen to Yoda:

. . . fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

“Progressive” Yoda is.

$110,000 to teach phys ed
Washington-area teachers have been collecting their pensions as early retirees while teaching at their full salaries, reports the Washington Post.

The (Maryland) law that created the program was designed to fill positions in areas where there were critical teaching shortages — math, science, reading, English as a second language, foreign languages and special education — or to steer veteran teachers to a district’s lowest-performing schools.

Some districts let any teacher return to any school with a full salary and pension. But now, with the economy faltering, it’s easy to hire new teachers — at half the pay of veterans. So districts are re-retiring top-scale teachers in non-shortage areas. The Post quotes Barbara McArdle, 54, a high school physical education who was paid $110,000 in salary and retirement benefits last school year. She’s indignant at the prospect of losing her post-retirement job to a new teacher.

Senator says: No exit
Washington, D.C. public schools aren’t good enough for Sen. Mary Landrieu’s children. But she doesn’t want poor parents to get help in getting their kids out of the system. A pro-voucher vote under President Clinton, she’s opposed to D.C. vouchers now that President Bush is pushing them. William McGurn writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Outside the committee’s meeting room last week, nine-year-old Mosiyah Hall, a D.C. public school student himself, politely asked Sen. Landrieu where she sent her own children to school. “Georgetown Day,” came the response, a reference to one of Washington’s most exclusive private schools. Mosiyah’s mother says an obviously agitated Sen. Landrieu then came over to a group of local mothers to explain that a voucher would be no help for them here, because even with the $7,500 voucher this bill offers, they still couldn’t afford Georgetown Day.

If the voucher covered the full amount spent on miseducating D.C. students — $15,000 apiece, says McGurn — parents might be able to afford the ritzier private schools. Georgetown Day tuition ranges from $19,000 to $22,000, depending on grade level, and the school offers financial aid to needy students.

The Washington Scholarship Fund, funded by donations, has helped 1,200 children escape public schools with modest vouchers that pay partial tuition.

In a D.C. school district where two out of every five kids never see a high school diploma, moreover, the kids who started with this program in grade school are now beginning to graduate from high schools, and almost all these are headed to college.

Scholarship recipients are chosen by lottery.

E.J. Dionne asks: If unions are so sure vouchers will fail, why not let experiments prove the case?

Udderly odd
How now protest cow. Via Number 2 Pencil.

Teachers back ‘combat pay’
Teachers strongly support “combat pay” — paying teachers more to work with difficult students in tough schools — writes Steve Farkas of Public Agenda, guest editorialist on Education Gadfly.

Today, the most experienced teachers tend to teach the best students in the best schools. In focus groups, teachers told us that new teachers are more likely to draw the short straw: at the building-level, they’re assigned to teach the toughest kids; at the district-level, they’re sent to work in the toughest neighborhoods. This seems paradoxical and, according to teachers themselves, plain wrong. In our survey, only 20 percent say this is reasonable because veterans have earned it while fully 61 percent say it’s wrong because it leaves inexperienced teachers with the hardest-to-reach students. Not surprisingly, newer teachers are most likely to feel this is wrong (69 percent) but the majority of veterans (55 percent) agrees.

It’s likely that many rookies who would otherwise be on track to becoming good teachers are overwhelmed by their first experiences and drop out. Those who stay in the profession may seek better positions at the first opportunity, leaving the most challenging kids for the next poor draftee to struggle with. The principal of one low performing school described to us his frustrations. Because of his school’s reputation, he’s often reduced to filling vacancies with new teachers he judges to be promising. He invests in their mentoring and professional development. But just as his bets seem about to pay off, he frequently loses these teachers to districts or schools that can offer better work environments and less stress. For him, this is a frustrating treadmill. For education leaders, it’s a public policy dilemma.

Seventy percent of teachers support financial incentives for “teachers who work in tough neighborhoods with low-performing schools.” Sixty-three percent would pay more to teachers who work with hard-to-reach students.

According to our findings, teachers know that some of their colleagues work harder and put in more effort. Most say it’s easy to spot the truly great teachers in their building, that there would be no argument about who they are, and that there would be little resentment if those teachers were paid more for taking on the harder assignments. Moreover, it’s logical that, with an incentive system to entice first-rate teachers into hard-to-staff classes and schools, the kids with the greatest learning needs will have a better chance of landing in the hands of someone who can help them succeed.

Gadfly also reviews Richard Phelps’ Kill the Messenger: The War on Standardized Testing and its exact opposite, The Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing..

Challenges of parenting
I remember a disastrous drive with my daughter, then four years old, during which I contemplated locking her in the trunk of the car. But I didn’t. Unlike a Maryland couple, who drove 20 miles with their 12-year-old son and his friend in the trunk because . . . Their lawyer says it was a “mistake.” The boys had asked to ride in the trunk of the car.

It would be just for fun, the boys said. The Dulthoys, knowing the ride wasn’t a long one, obliged.

Someone who saw the boys shut up in the trunk called the police.

The dad is supposed to be a “model father.” The mother is a former teacher.