In 1999, California legislators decided that all student should pass basic algebra or an “equivalent course” to earn a high school diploma, starting in 2004. But it’s not happening. Districts across the state are getting waivers, claiming they forgot to tell students they needed algebra to graduate. Jennifer Nelson writes in a San Francisco Chronicle column:

Everyone who felt the requirement was onerous came forward to request waivers for regular students, special-education pupils, adult learners and kids in continuation schools. Nearly 5 percent of the state’s high school seniors have not successfully completed Algebra I, yet they expect to march down the aisle and receive their diploma this spring.

. . . The curriculum director for the San Jose Unified School District, for example, told the San Jose Mercury News, “The law says every student must take and pass an algebra course. That isn’t going to happen.” Why not? It’s the law!

San Jose Unified has won kudos for requiring all students to pass college-prep classes, which include algebra, geometry and advanced algebra/trig. They must be waiving the requirement for a lot of students if they can’t even get kids past basic algebra.

A teacher at a continuation school in the Huntington Beach School District told the Los Angeles Times, “I hate this requirement. The downside is for the bottom percentage of students. They’re just not there conceptually, and the [graduation requirement] is like pounding them over the head with a hammer. They were frustrated with algebra before, and now we’re just ratcheting up the pressure some more.”

Let me understand: Kids who don’t like school and aren’t particularly good students may feel pressure to learn, so we should just not ask them to meet any higher standards?

By the way, it’s impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of 19 math curricula funded by the National Science Foundation, says a report by the National Academies’ Mathematical Sciences Education Board. Evaluations of the math programs “fall short of the scientific standards necessary to gauge overall effectiveness.” So, NSF is funding math “reforms” without demanding valid studies of what works. By the time useful research is done, a lot of students will be finding algebra unpassable.

High school students are more likely to be virgins, according to a federal survey. Teen-agers who have sex are more likely to use condoms. Boys report fewer sexual partners. The Chicago Tribune reports on the trend:

Nationally, 53 percent of high schoolers said in 2003 that they were virgins, up from 46 percent in 1991, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance survey.

The new CDC data also highlighted a broader, ongoing trend: Fewer teens are smoking, riding without seat belts, driving with someone under the influence, and engaging in violent fights than they were in the early 1990s.

. . . In 1991, 54.5 percent of boys reported using condoms; 12 years later, that number was 68.8 percent.

Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington professor, provided an interesting theory to explain some of the changes.

The new standard, she said, is that boys are no longer having their first sexual experience with a “bad” girl, but with a girlfriend. “Girls have some of the power, and that’s what has slowed boys down,” the professor explained. “What girls are demanding in return is that they be in a relationship.”

Teen pregnancies — and abortions — are way down too.

According to Education Intelligence Agency, a confidential memo from National Education Association President Reg Weaver to union officials says John Kerry is backing away from his pay-for-performance proposal under union pressure. EIA writes:

Senator Kerry gave an education policy speech at a California high school on May 6 that expressed support for higher pay for math and science teachers and for those who work in hard-to-staff schools. He also stated the need “to find ways to reward teachers for excellence, and to reward the students’ teachers who obviously show tremendous success.” Kerry said that greater achievement “ought to be able to command greater pay just the way it does in every other sector of professional employment in the United States of America.”

After the speech, Kerry’s campaign released a press statement declaring the candidate “will establish new systems that reward teachers for excellence in the classroom, including pay based on improvement in student achievement.”

Kerry met last week in Washington, D.C. with NEA leaders.

In a memo dated May 21 and disseminated widely to high-ranking NEA officials nationwide, Weaver described what he called “a very positive meeting in which the Senator expressed strong interest in working closely with NEA and outlined his support for a number of NEA priorities.”

On the issue of performance pay, Weaver reported, “We raised our concerns that the Kerry campaign used the language ‘pay-for-performance’ in his press release, although the Senator himself did not use those words in his remarks and the formal policy document did not use it. The Senator clarified that the campaign did not intend to use that language and would not do so in the future. He asked that I convey this point to NEA leaders.”

Weaver went on to note Kerry’s commitment to fully fund the No Child Left Behind Act, to advance early childhood education programs and to “roll back the Bush tax cuts” to pay for education and health care. Weaver’s memo did not mention Kerry’s proposals for differential pay, teacher testing, or expedited teacher dismissal procedures.

In a May 7 speech to the Democratic Leadership Council, Kerry said, “Yesterday, I proposed the most far-reaching reforms in teacher pay in our nation’s history.”

Whether or not Kerry uses the words “pay for performance” in the future is irrelevant to the central question: Will those reforms survive the resistance of education’s most powerful special interest group?

I’m taking it on faith here that EIA got a copy of the memo. That said, it sounds all too plausible. Kerry is missing a chance for a “Sister Souljah moment” in which he openly defies a Democratic constituency to prove his independence.

A 15-year-old student spent 100 days in juvenile hall for making threats after he showed his “dark poetry” to a classmate. The poem included the line, “I can be the next kid to bring guns to kill students at school.” George T. had been kicked out of his previous high school for non-violent disciplinary offenses. Instead of calling a counselor, Santa Teresa High officials called the cops. The case of George T. will be heard Thursday by the California Supreme Court. From the San Jose Mercury News:

Even prosecutors who deal with juveniles concede they will welcome some direction from the Supreme Court. Kurt Kumli, a deputy district attorney who supervises juvenile prosecutions in Santa Clara County, said he believes the law supports the conviction against George T., but he wonders whether it was the type of case that belongs in the criminal system.

“As a legal issue, it’s there,” Kumli said. “That having been said, I’m not sure in retrospect if the behavior is really the type of behavior that requires a juvenile justice response. A line being drawn, regardless of where it is drawn, is going to be to everyone’s benefit.”

George T. is finishing high school at another San Jose area campus. He has not committed any acts of violence, and says he never intended to. He was having a “bad day.”

Certainly, students who write and talk about killing should be taken seriously. A small percentage of kids who express violent fantasies may act out if they’re ignored. They need to talk to a counselor, not a cop.

Update: Zero Intelligence has a copy of the poem.

Faces
Who are these faces around me?
Where did they come from?
They would probably become the
next doctors or loirs or something. All
really intelligent and ahead of their
game. I wish I had a choice on
what I want to be like they do.
All so happy and vagrant. Each
Original in their own way. They
Make me want to puke. For I am
Dark, Destructive & Dangerous. I
Slap on my face of happiness but
Inside I am evil!! For I can be
the next kid to bring guns to
kill students at school. So Parents
watch your children cuz I’m BACK!!

It’s clear why the girl who read it, the teacher and the principal were worried, but it reads a lot more like a plea for help than an “imminent” threat.

Note that George T. (aka Julius) was in honors English yet spells lawyers as “loirs” and thinks “vagrant” means care-free.

It doesn’t take much to get a high school diploma from Beach High School in Soquel. Wes Beach, a former public high school teacher, requires only an essay, a letter of support from an adult and $240. Is he running a diploma mill? Or giving bored teen-agers a chance to move on to community college or a job? The answer isn’t obvious.

Beach’s son started taking college classes when he was 10 and earned a bachelor’s degree by the age of 17. The father started with programs for gifted youth, but soon branched out. The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports:

The criticism mounted after he left Soquel High in 1993 to focus on Beach High — a one-room green shed, overflowing with books, next to the proprietor’s rural Soquel home.

Beach — who earns $20,000 to $30,000 a year and depends on his second wife, De Anza College English instructor Judy Hubbard, to be the chief provider — says he is offering students who have struggled in traditional school settings with an opportunity to pursue a more productive path.

But critics say there are better alternatives for nontraditional students: charter schools, continuation schools for at-risk youth and other programs that offer more reputable diplomas than Beach High.

Many districts offer “Middle College,” a program that lets high-school-age students earn credits at a local community college; it can work well for motivated, self-disciplined students. But most alternative programs have very low graduation rates.

Beach says employers who bother to read his transcripts will learn what a student has and hasn’t studied.

But his larger response to critics is philosophical.

“There are dancers, there are musicians, there are plumbers, there are carpenters,” he said. “They don’t need to study trigonometry.”

Beach “grads” have no trouble going on to community colleges, which are open to everyone with a pulse. Employers can’t tell Beach High isn’t a traditional school unless they look at a transcript; most employers don’t bother. But the Army and Air Force no longer take Beach grads.

On Daryl Cobranchi’s site, commenter Laura Derrick says Beach has worked with the Homeschool Association of California on creating transcripts for home-schooled students and getting into college with a non-traditional education.

Some of the (Beach High) diplomas he awards are to kids who have done a pretty traditional curriculum. Others are very non-traditional, and their transcripts reflect that. Here’s a paragraph that he includes on his non-traditional transcripts:

“Beach High School exists to support students who want to gain an education outside of a traditional high school setting. We award diplomas to students who convincingly present themselves as ready and able to move on beyond high school and who have established a direction for the next part of their lives. Our experience over many years has taught us that people succeed in wonderful ways, including through academic work in college, whenever they make deliberate, informed, and deeply personal decisions to move on. Our students have accomplished a great deal in practical crafts, the arts, business, and the professions, and they often reach the highest levels of formal education. It is their recognition of their genuine interests and talents and their confidence and wholeness that carry them where they want to go.”

Many students leave high school at 18 with a traditional diploma and very meager academic skills. But I don’t think a high school diploma should mean merely that the student is sick of high school and eager to try something else. Middle College provides some structure and access to academic classes while letting students be independent learners in an adult setting.

Here’s Don Hagen’s political quiz.

10: What techniques are best for maintaining discipline in the classroom?

CONSERVATIVE: If just one student misbehaves, severely punish the entire class.

LIBERAL: Force boys who refuse to settle down to take psychotropic drugs, such as Ritalin and Prozac.

LIBERTARIAN: Anyone who doesn’t want to be in class can leave.

COMMUNIST: Anyone who doesn’t want to be in class can be made an example of.

Also:

16: A cup with that only contains half a cup of water is…

CONSERVATIVE: half full.

LIBERAL: half empty.

LBERTARIAN: an example of shortages caused by government control of our water supply.

COMMUNIST: an example of inequitable wealth distribution caused by the inherent social injustice in free enterprise.

Comedian Bill Cosby again stressed parental responsibility in a speech at Stanford.

Bill Cosby blamed parents for the shortcomings of students during a speech Sunday to educators at Stanford University, continuing a theme the comedian touched on last week when he linked the behavior of some low-income blacks with the community’s school dropout rate.

“We need to stop fooling around,” Cosby told a gathering of about 1,700 people at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium. “The mother and the father born here didn’t learn to speak standard English — or math.”

Many parents are not doing their job, he told the group, which included 150 Bay Area educators honored for their work with low-income students. “I don’t know where we lost it, or how we lost it, but people are not parenting.”

Cosby’s remarks were well-received, though educators weren’t willing to put all the blame on parents. Debra Watkins, co-founder of the California Alliance of African American Educators, said, “We know slavery happened. We know kids are poor. We know they come to us woefully unprepared. But when they are in the classroom with the teacher . . . they are absolutely all you have and it is your responsibility to rise to the challenge.”

From a Los Angeles police officer comes a story of two cousins raised by their grandmother and her husband. Both fathers abandoned their sons; both mothers are drug addicts.

In 1970 there were 2.2 million children living in homes maintained by grandparents. By 1980 the figure had risen modestly to 2.3 million, or about 3 percent of all children under age 18. In 1997 there were 3.9 million such children, or 5.5 percent of all minors in the country. The report attributes this increase to “the growth in drug use among parents, teen pregnancy, divorce, the rapid rise of single-parent households, mental and physical illness, AIDS, crime, child abuse and neglect, and incarceration of parents.”

The 14-year-old has been arrested for the murder of his 11-year-old cousin. The body of the younger boy was found in a trash bin.

Joel Klein, chancellor of New York City schools, argues eloquently for charter schools in a speech to the New York Charter Schools Association.

Charters bring in new blood. These are leaders and entrepreneurs who are not otherwise part of the system. They are people with ideas, with creativity, and who are willing to give their all for their students.

Then Klein really gets gutsy.

I think we should support charters for another reason. Public education in large urban areas in the United States has failed. This is a somewhat heretical thing for a schools chancellor to say. But if we are not going to be candid, I don’t think we can take the kind of steps we need to make the necessary changes. New York City is actually one of the best urban school systems in the United States, but by any measure, I guarantee you that at least half, probably more than half, of our students are not remotely getting the education they deserve…

Klein says education reformers have focused on changing programs, but not on changing the culture of public education in the big cities.

Via Eduwonk.

A UCLA graduate at 20, Ben Shapiro has written a best-selling book about his experiences as a conversative amid groupthinking liberals. Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth, published by a conservative group, is selling briskly, notes the Christian Science Monitor.

Professors (at UCLA), he laments, routinely spouted liberal propaganda and rarely had their biases challenged. Conservative thinkers, on the contrary, Mr. Shapiro says, were generally shrugged off as not too bright.

As a columnist for UCLA’s student paper The Daily Bruin, he was able to voice his outrage until, he claims, he was fired for his views.

Amazon reviewers either trash the book as total nonsense or praise it lavishly.

English teachers in England are protesting the “worst ever” Shakespeare question in a national test required for 14-year-olds.

The question, in the paper devised by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, told the pupils: “In Macbeth, Banquo warns Macbeth about the witches’ influence. You give advice in a magazine for young people.

“You receive this request: ‘Please advise me. I have recently moved school and made some new friends. I like spending time with them but my form tutor thinks my work is suffering. What should I do? Sam.’

“Write your advice to be published in the magazine.”

English instructors complained that the question could be answered without ever referring to Macbeth or anything else written by Shakespeare. They demanded an apology to the 630,000 students who took the test.

Via Brian.