Derek’s fate
Florida is flunking third graders who test at the 50th percentile in reading, because they just missed the 51st. The New York Times’ Michael Winerip blames “rigidity” for the expected results: 15 percent of Florida’s third graders won’t be promoted to fourth grade.

If you get to the end of the story, you’ll see that Florida isn’t all that rigid. The anecdotal victim, Derek, flunked FCAT and just missed on a nationally standardized test. But he can be promoted based on a “portfolio assessment,” that is, an analysis of his schoolwork showing evidence that he can read well enough to succeed in fourth grade. Almost certainly, the principal will promote him. The system also exempts students who don’t speak English and disabled students.

In essence, this whole story is an unacknowledged correction of a May 21 Winerip piece, which said students get only one chance to pass FCAT, and that the judgment of teachers and principals is ignored. As I wrote, that isn’t true. Winerip didn’t seem to know that students could go to summer school and pass a different test to be promoted, nor did he mention that the teacher and principal could use the portfolio option to pass a student with poor test scores.

Winerip is still ignoring the options schools can use to help retained students catch up. As I wrote in May, schools can assign held-back students to a “pre-fourth-grade” class or a third/fourth grade combination class that allows students who improve their reading to be promoted mid-year to fourth grade.

Derek’s principal is grouping the retained third graders in the same class. My guess is they’ll get special instruction to help them catch up, rather than a rehash of third grade curriculum. Isn’t that a better plan than letting them fail fourth grade because they can’t read the books?

As Kimberly Swigert writes, most of the retained students almost certainly are way behind, not just one question from making the cut on test scores alone. In fact, the principal says that most students were too far behind to catch up in four weeks of summer “reading camp.” Derek and the other anecdote, Raven, are not the norm.

Teacher Betsy Newmark adds:

The problem is that when there is principal or teacher discretion, there is tremendous pressure to pass the child. I’ve sat in on some of those conferences. If the principal suspects that there will be any complaints from the parents, he or she will pass the child rather than deal with the hassle of having to defend his decision.

Under Florida’s old discretionary system, almost nobody was held back.

Pre-school isn’t magic
Despite its budget crisis, California has $100 million from a cigarette surtax to spend on pre-schools.

“For every dollar invested in preschool, we get $7 back in reduced crime, welfare and special-education costs,” (Rob) Reiner, chairman of the First 5 California commission, said at press conferences in Sacramento and San Mateo.

Actually, that’s not true. The 7:1 ratio comes from the Perry Preschool experiment, which included home visits to help very poor mothers do better with their children. There’s also some evidence that very intensive, very expensive day care — starting with newborns — can improve the prospects of very poor children. Ordinary pre-school — “quality” or not — doesn’t transform poor children, and it certainly doesn’t change the futures of working-class and middle-class children, who’d be included under “universal access.”

Pre-school can help prepare poor children for school — if the child development specialists don’t get in the way. (They think little kids will stress out if an adult tries to teach the alphabet.) Pre-school can be fun for kids who’d otherwise be stuck in front of the TV all day. But universal pre-school isn’t magic.

Be our 296,000th visitor
Twelve months ago today, I set Sitemeter running. I should hit 296,500 visits by the end of the day. I’m running at more than 1,000 visits a day during the week, about 600 on weekends. Not bad for an education blog. I’m not sure how many visits the grand total would run to: I started in January, 2001, but didn’t keep count of visitors.

Professionalism and the professor
I figured Michael Ballou, who assigned students to write a “kill the president” e-mail, wouldn’t be rehired to teach government at Santa Rosa Junior College. After all, he’s a part-timer without tenure.

Amritas discovered that I’m wrong: College lawyers say Ballou has the right to retain his job, despite what the college president called “ridiculous” and “unprofessional” behavior. The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat reports:

Saying he was “ashamed and embarrassed,” Santa Rosa Junior College President Robert Agrella Wednesday called an instructor’s “kill the president” class assignment ridiculous but said the teacher cannot be dismissed for it.

Without naming him, Agrella in a prepared statement said that part-time political science instructor Michael Ballou had shown “unprofessional behavior” by jeopardizing students and using “the classroom lectern as a bully pulpit to espouse personal political leanings.”

Agrella said Ballou can’t be fired because he has free-speech rights. That seems nuts to me. Surely, professionalism is a job requirement. Ballou has the free-speech right to advocate his personal political biases, recite The Faerie Queen or sing “Muskrat Love” — but not when he’s being paid to teach a government class. The real issue is the union contract: Ballou “has the right to continue classroom instruction as long as he has a satisfactory evaluation in his personnel files, according to both an administrator and a faculty union representative.”

When an instructor engages in “ridiculous” and “unprofessional” conduct, and proclaims himself “unrepentant,” it’s time for a new evaluation.

2 + 2 = So what?
Cameron Wood found this Jack Handey quote on Fark:

Instead of having “answers” on a math test, they should just call them “impressions,” and if you got a different “impression,” so what, can’t we all be brothers?

Handey is not a professional educator, so he’s kidding.

D.C. vouchers
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein endorses school vouchers for low-income D.C. students in a Washington Post column.

According to the most recent census, the District spends $10,852 per student annually — the third highest level of per-pupil spending in the nation — yet test scores lag far behind. In the most recent math and reading assessments administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress:

ï Seventy-six percent of D.C. fourth-graders performed below grade level in math, and only 10 percent read proficiently.

ï Seventy-seven percent of eighth-graders performed below grade level in math, and only 12 percent were proficient in reading.

Based on the substantial amount of money pumped into the schools and the resultant test scores, I do not believe that money alone is going to solve the problem. This is why I believe the District should be allowed to try this pilot — particularly for the sake of its low-income students.

Scrappleface has reported that Feinstein and Republican Sen. Arlen Specter plan to switch party affiliations.

Risking failure
California’s state board of education wisely chose to postpone the graduation exam rather than weaken the test or lower the passing score, writes Daniel Weintraub in the Sacramento Bee. But the fight for accountability goes on. Unlike other tests, the graduation exam has consequences for students, which makes it dangerous for schools.

When kids fail, people start asking questions. Did the child try hard enough? Did the parents push hard enough? Did the school provide the proper coursework and materials? Was the teaching sufficient?

All of those questions are uncomfortable for a segment of the education establishment that would rather fuzz things up, pat kids on the head for making a good try and send them on their way with no concrete sense of what they have taken with them after 13 years of seat time in the public schools. This is a mindset that has filled our colleges with remedial classes and has frustrated employers who can’t find a clerk who can spell or compute.

If the exam demands that students learn reading, writing and math skills, some students will fail. In particular, recent immigrants who haven’t had enough time to master English — nice, hard-working kids — may not be able to pass, even with multiple tries. Some disabled students — nice, hard-working kids — won’t be able to pass.

Any state that requires students to demonstrate academic competence to earn a high school diploma will need a “certificate of completion” or some other euphemism for the nice kids who didn’t make it. Every year, as teachers and students adjust to the demands of the graduation exam, more students will earn an academic diploma and fewer will have to settle for a seat-time certificate. But Weintraub is right: Some kids will fail.

Books vs. the history channel
British professors are complaining that students don’t know much about history — except for Adolf Hitler — and don’t like to read about it.

History students at university have studied their subject more from watching television than reading serious books, according to a survey of academics published today. Few new undergraduates have read any history books at all and many expect academics to entertain them with TV-style stories rather than serious lectures.

Cronaca points out that the information comes from the history professors, not directly from the students.

Bloggers list the greatest figures in American history on Hawkins’ site. I was invited to participate, but missed the deadline. Ronald Reagan is ranked awfully high, as is George Patton, but I agree with most of the choices.

If only they’d known
A group of alcoholic Scots plans to sue liquor companies for not warning them that drinking can lead to drunkenness, which leads to trouble.

In the U.S., a Gallup poll found 89 percent of respondents opppose letting supersized Americans sue their favorite fast-food company. People who said they were fat were just as hostile to the idea as everyone else.

According to self-reports, people who eat fast food at least once a week are just as healthy as people who rarely or never let a bacon cheeseburger and fries pass their lips. That’s probably because young people eat more fast food than their elders.

Terror
Here’s what evil means. It’s why most Americans support the war in Iraq, with or without Niger’s yellowcake.