California’s high school graduation rate is only 71 percent, says a report by Harvard’s Civil Rights Project.

Across the state in 2002, the report says, 57 percent of African American students and 60 percent of Latino students graduated on time, compared with 78 percent of white students and 84 percent of Asian students.

Official drop-out rates are notoriously unreliable, but, in a year, California will start tracking individual students, producing much more accurate data.

Wayne Brightly earned $59,000 a year as a New York City teacher, despite repeatedly failing his certification test. After 13 years of teaching, he was about to lose his job, unless he could get a passing score. He turned to his tutor, who suffers from a form of autism, reports the New York Daily News.

A Bronx teacher who repeatedly flunked his state certification exam paid a formerly homeless man with a developmental disorder $2 to take the test for him, authorities said yesterday.

The illegal stand-in — who looks nothing like teacher Wayne Brightly — not only passed the high-stakes test, he scored so much better than the teacher had previously that the state knew something was wrong, officials said.

Brightly taught at one of the city’s lowest-performing schools.

When The News went to Brightly’s Mount Vernon home yesterday, a man who strongly resembled him insisted Leitner took the test on his own. The man, who appeared to be in his late 30s, denied being Brightly – saying he was the teacher’s son.

The teacher is 38. He is tall, thin and black; his sub, Rubin Leitner, is 58, short, overweight and white. Nobody noticed till Leitner aced the test.

A seventh grader at Brightly’s old school has an idea. “The homeless man needs to be the teacher,” Imani Andrews said.

Via Education Gadfly.

From the feds, everything you always wanted to know about high school sophomores circa 2002.

Test results are dismal, Gadfly writes.

While most tenth graders possess very basic skills, the percentage who can read at the level of “simple inference” is less than half and the fraction that can handle “intermediate level” math concepts (and formulate “multi-step solutions to word problems”) is just one in five. Yet when asked about their educational aspirations, 72 percent expect to graduate from a four-year college and half expect to earn a graduate degree. Talk about a major mismatch between hope and reality.

More than two-thirds of high school graduates go to college; half drop out, usually in the first year.

Alex Russo blogs about a Century 21 Real Estate ad in which a pregnant woman, trying to find out if local schools are good before buying a house, “interrogates a busful of children on their way to school about class sizes, school budgets, and the like.”

It is delicious that the ad brings mainstream attention to parents’ ongoing desire for more information about their children’s schools. It’s wonderful that the ad sends its message with some humor. And it’s interesting — though perhaps not significant — that she doesn’t ask them whether the teachers are nice, or let them play all day. She asks about nuts and bolts.

Let’s face it. She’ll go on line and check the test scores.

Florida Republicans are backing an Academic Freedom Bill of Rights that would let students sue “dictator professors” who try to indoctrinate students. The bill passed out of its first of three committees by a party-line vote. From the Florida Alligator:

The bill sets a statewide standard that students cannot be punished for professing beliefs with which their professors disagree. Professors would also be advised to teach alternative “serious academic theories” that may disagree with their personal views.

According to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, the law would give students who think their beliefs are not being respected legal standing to sue professors and universities.

Students who believe their professor is singling them out for “public ridicule” — for instance, when professors use the Socratic method to force students to explain their theories in class — would also be given the right to sue.

“Some professors say, ‘Evolution is a fact. I don’t want to hear about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,’” (Rep. Dennis) Baxley said, citing one example when he thought a student should sue.

Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, warned of lawsuits from students enrolled in Holocaust history courses who believe the Holocaust never happened.

It’s interesting that the Socratic method, which annoyed Athenians so much back in the day, still prompts visions of hemlock. Behind this bill is the mushy, multiculturalist belief that all opinions and points of view have equal value. Sincerity counts; scholarship is all subjective and therefore worthless.

Some professors do confuse indoctrination with education. Legislation — especially legislation that facilitates more lawsuits — is no solution.

KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), a network of fifth through eighth grade schools, has issued its second report card:

There are currently 38 KIPP schools serving 6,000 students in high-need rural and urban communities across 15 states and the District of Columbia. 52.7 percent of KIPP students are female, and 47.3 are male. More than 90 percent of KIPP students are of color, and more than 75 percent qualify for the free and reduced meal program.

*COLLEGE ACCEPTANCE – 85 percent of the alumni of the original two KIPP Academies who were high school seniors in 2004 earned acceptance to college. In New York City, less than 25 percent of these students’ peers reported having plans to attend college.

*ACADEMIC GAINS – KIPP students who took the national Stanford 10 exam averaged score increases of 29 percent in mathematics and 22 percent in reading from 2003 to 2004.

KIPP reported dramatic gains in reading and math skills for students in Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia. A study of three KIPP schools founded in 2001, the first to have all four grades, found KIPP enrollees had similar reading and math scores to other students in their neighborhoods. Eighty percent of KIPP’s new students came from low-income families, compared to 89 percent of students at neighborhood schools. Some 98 percent of KIPP students were black or Hispanic, compared to 91 percent in the neighborhood.

KIPP offers a longer school day and year, so there’s more time to learn. Students are taught how to pay attention and participate in class; disruptions aren’t tolerated. Teachers are available after school hours to provide extra help. I like the motto: “Work hard. Be nice.”

Thriving cities have everything but children, observes the New York Times.

Portland is one of the nation’s top draws for the kind of educated, self-starting urbanites that midsize cities are competing to attract. But as these cities are remodeled to match the tastes of people living well in neighborhoods that were nearly abandoned a generation ago, they are struggling to hold on to enough children to keep schools running and parks alive with young voices.

San Francisco, where the median house price is now about $700,000, had the lowest percentage of people under 18 of any large city in the nation, 14.5 percent, compared with 25.7 percent nationwide, the 2000 census reported. Seattle, where there are more dogs than children, was a close second. Boston, Honolulu, Portland, Miami, Denver, Minneapolis, Austin and Atlanta, all considered, healthy, vibrant urban areas, were not far behind.

Families with children want more space and lower housing costs. And native-born Americans are having fewer children; immigrants are keeping the birth rate at the replacement rate.

When Iraq war veterans arrived at West Seattle High School to participate in what was supposed to be a balanced forum, they saw an anti-war theatrical rehearsing on stage. Over the loudspeaker, a voice proclaimed, “Americans are killing my family!”
When the vets complained, the principal canceled the performance, saying nobody on staff had realized its content was one-sided.

Sound Politics links to a letter from a Marine who took offense to the military being portrayed as “indiscriminate killers.”

At a podium, children were reading a monologue of how U.S. troops were killing civilians and shooting at women and children. Moreover, several grown adults were standing on stage in bright orange jump-suits, with black bags on and off their heads, some bound and tied, and some banging symbols and gongs in a crude depiction of what I believe were their efforts to depict victims of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse episode.

Within the auditorium, numerous adults appeared to have been supervising this behavior . . . Who are these grown adults dressed as prisoners and performing such antics on the stage of our public schools?

On the plus side, the forum really was balanced and students listened respectfully to both sides.

A Providence, RI sophomore who photographed his principal smoking outside a school door, in violation of state law, was suspended for posting the photos on his web site, which criticizes the Central High administration. Now, thanks to the ACLU, the student is back in school; the suspension is erased from his record. Principal Elaine Almagno was reprimanded by the superintendent for smoking on school grounds.

The Providence Journal story, which requires registration, says Eliazar Velasquez handed out fliers at school with a link to his site:

“This is a principal we’re talking about. She is a leader. And here we caught her smoking on school grounds; breaking the law. . . . We feel that Ms. Almagno is not suited to be principal of Central High School. Don’t take my word for it. I have pictures!”

The student was called to the principal’s office and asked who helped design the web site. The school police officer searched his book bag.

There, she found the fliers, which said, “Wanna see Mrs. Almagno take part in some illegal activities? Wanna see her breaking the law on school property? Go to centralscoop.tripod.com.”

Threatened with slander charges, the student deleted the photos but didn’t know how to take down the whole site, which the principal had demanded.

That same day, Harold Metts, the assistant principal and also a Democratic state representative, told Velasquez he was suspended. A disciplinary hearing was set for tomorrow at 1 p.m.

In a letter to Velasquez’s parents, Metts wrote that the teenager was being punished for harassing and slandering the principal and the dean of students, John Hunt. Velasquez had taken a memo written by Hunt, circled a couple of grammatical errors, then posted copies of the memo around the school.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Velasquez wrote. “He doesn’t know the difference between there, their and they’re.”

The principal told the Journal Velasquez was suspended for “an extreme disruption of teaching and learning.” He seems to have understood the lesson on First Amendment rights.

Thanks to Michael McKeown for the tip.

From the Journal’s update story:

(Superintendent Melody) Johnson said while students have a right to voice their concerns, the schools have a role in educating them “about respectful, constructive ways to do so.”

She said the student is being counseled in “appropriate ways to express disagreement, deal with conflict and reach resolutions.”

First lesson: Don’t emulate your principal.

Reading the new Carnival of Education, hosted by Jenny D, I came across this charming post by Melinama, who volunteers to read books with a first grader, who arrived in North Carolina with no English at the start of the school year.

Interestingly, Henry has decided to turn our time together into a language lab. He will pause on a page in the middle of one of our books, put his hand on the book as if to signal, “ok, we’re shifting gears, now,” and start a conversation about it in English: “I don’t like snakes.” He continues, sentence after sentence, looking up at me for feedback. He seems to want me to repeat his sentences back to him casually as if asking for elaboration, using covertly corrected English. Then he continues. I ask questions about the topic under discussion (for instance, snakes), he answers; then he asks and I answer. He guides the discussion. I’m in awe of his ability to use the few minutes we have so efficiently – he is methodically stockpiling correct English usage.

A couple weeks ago a switch in his brain got flipped, and now he chats with great verve in English from the minute he sees me. And he’s darn good! Kids are amazing!

There’s a bunch of other stuff at the carnival.