Professor Plum rants about busting up an education professors’ teleconference by asking for evidence: “Do you have any data showing that portfolio assessment results in better judgments of teacher quality than the judgment of a principal and mentor who see a new teacher all year?”

Afterwards, four or five of my collards accosted me and said, “That was inappropriate” and “You were not respectful.” I replied, “Nice hat,” or something equally charming.

That was my first lesson in the politics and intellectual dishonesty in education. Forced consensus. Shut up and go along. After stupification, the underlying power relations become invisible. Indeed, desirable. Ed perfessers come to like Big Brother. He takes care of them. Defends them from the wolves who are onto the game.

Over the next few years I read the websites and syllabi from hundreds of ed schools. I reviewed the literature in whole language, constructivism, “authentic assessments,” learning styles, and multiple intelligences — and other “pedagogies” that struck my cynical nature as weird beyond belief. I even tried to figure out what “brain-based learning” was — because, I reasoned, “What OTHER organ WOULD be involved? Before brain-based learning was there BUTTOCKS based learning? Sure they ARE similar. Two hemispheres. A nearby segment of spine. A division down the middle. An apparatus for speaking your mind. But usually you can tell which is which. Just look for a hat!”

Then my graduate assistant and I began working on our own. We suggested to all the elementary schools in the county that they could raise reading achievement for all kids if they used better curricula — in fact, Reading Mastery, starting in kindergarten, and Corrective Reading for kids at least one year behind, starting in grade three. Within two years, 20 out of 23 schools did just that, and got those results.

Plum also lists useful resources for teachers.

Now that I’ve figured out how to block spam comments, a robot has put hundreds of pornographic trackback links on old posts. I keep deleting them, but it’s laborious. Does anyone know how to deal with this? I’m not putting trackback on new posts, but it takes forever to remove it from old posts.

A part-time instructor at Fort Lewis College in Colorado kicked the leg of a student wearing a College Republicans sweat shirt at an off-campus restaurant. According to student Mark O’Donnell, his assailant, Maria Spero, then said “she should have kicked me harder and higher.”

Spero, a visiting instructor of modern languages, apologized to O’Donnell in a letter dated Oct. 29.

“I acted entirely inappropriately by kicking you, giving vent to a thoughtless knee-jerk political reaction that should never have happened,” she wrote. “Before the incident, I did not know you and that you are a Fort Lewis student.”

Actually, it’s not OK to kick non-students either.

In Germany, fathers in a religious community were jailed for refusing to send their children to public school.

Twelve Tribes members believe in homeschooling their children to impart their religious values.

Acing the SATs is not like winning the loterry, despite this story on fraternal twins who both earned 1600 on the SATs.

It seems like the kind of SAT question custom-made for Dillon and Jesse Smith of Long Beach: If one out of every 1,511 students taking the SAT will get a perfect score, what are the odds that twin brothers will both ace the test?

Answer: No one knows for sure. Nevertheless, that’s what the Smith twins have done.

. . . Of the 1.4 million high school seniors who took the test in 2004, only 939 scored a 1600, according to the College Board, which administers the test. With those numbers, the odds of any two people getting that score would be almost 1 in 2.3 million — and that doesn’t even take into account whether those two people are related, never mind twins.

As Kimberly Swygert writes, intelligence and high expectations run in the family.

What are the odds that my friend Brad, who got 1600 on his SATs, would father two children who got 1600s (in different years)? Pretty good. Of course, Brad didn’t take the test till he was a senior. His kids got their perfect scores in eighth or ninth grade.

I’ve added Education at the Brink, a blog by an Austin teacher, to the blogroll — even though it quotes Alfie Kohn.

It seems like a bare minimum: Indiana is considering requiring public universities to require applicants to take core academic courses.

A blue-ribbon panel is pushing Indiana universities to require applicants to complete the stateÕs college-preparatory curriculum in order to win admission and financial aid.

Eventually, the Education Roundtable wants to make the “Core 40″ curriculum a high school graduation requirement.

Sixty-two percent of graduates now complete the Core 40 coursework. The curriculum requires students to complete four years of English, two years of algebra, and a year of upper-level mathematics, as well as three years each of science and social studies. It also requires electives in foreign languages, the arts, and technology.

Students who don’t complete the academic courses could start at a community college and then transfer.

Here’s an apocalyptic analysis of No Child Left Behind, linked from Gadfly.

College is stressful, says a New York Times story on the rising demand for mental health services on campus. Highered Intelligence, back to edblogging, mocks.

Kids need to suck it up and deal. Their parents need to raise them to face difficulties with maturity, grace, and honor. Hey … that’s a really nice trio of virtues — gotta remember that one. Maturity, Grace, and Honor. Goes right up there with Fortitude, Wisdom, and Temperance.

A professor of counseling at San Jose State once told me I’d make the world’s least patient counselor. “You’d just tell them to cut it out, straighten up and fly right,” she said. Yep.

On NPR’s All Things Considered, Barbara Feinberg talks about her book, Welcome to Lizard Motel, which argues for children’s stories that rely on imagination and fantasy. Feinberg’s son, an avid reader, hated school-assigned “problem” books that feature adolescents coping with abuse, dying parents, kidnapping, alcoholism, etc.

Pre-adolescents, these novels seem to suggest, ought to be confronted in fiction with “real life problems” straight on, with no magical dimension and limited imaginative scope. In fact, the child characters in these books often must face their stark circumstances nearly alone, without adult shelter. You have only yourself, these novels seem to say. Adults cannot help you; they are often the source of your troubles.

My daughter read dozens of these novels, and enjoyed them. I’ve always preferred dragons and enchanted wardrobes.