Monthly Archive for July, 2005

Middle school is “where academic achievement in America falters and begins its accelerating decline,” writes Education Gadfly, citing an LA Times editorial that praises KIPP middle schools. Gadfly goes on:

(Middle schools) are usually places where academic rigor and achievement take a back seat to “personal development,” social consciousness, and the inculcation of egalitarian principles. Middle schoolism is about curing the middle school student of his or her supposed dysfunction — which doesn’t leave much time for learning (which the most radical proponents of middle schoolism believe is beyond the ability of early adolescents anyway).

Many kids who’ve done reasonably well in elementary school disengage in middle school and never get back on track.

Forget about learning for its own sake. A Boston-area high school will pay students $25 per quarter for perfect attendance. They’ll get the money if they graduate. This is a trend, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

(Chelsea High School) joins a number of districts throughout the country turning to incentives to boost test scores, GPAs, and student turnout.

Some schools, like Chelsea High, are focused solely on attendance. Officials there maintain that they can’t carry out their mission if a student is not in class absorbing the material. Others are doling out gift certificates, coupons, and checks if students earn straight A’s or land on the honor roll.

I had perfect attendance in fourth grade. Mr. Parker, my favorite all-time teacher, gave me a gold-painted plastic cup he’d won in a dance contest at the Hotel Fontainebleu in Miami Beach. I displayed it with pride on my dresser. I wonder what happened to it. But it was an after-the-fact award. You have to wonder what message it sends students when a school tells them the only thing of value they can get in school is cash. And $25 a quarter isn’t much of a bribe.

Rita, a University of Chicago student interning in Washington, D.C., sermonizes about the dangers of sermonizing professors on her delightful blog, Nobody Sasses a Girl in Glasses, which I discovered through University Diaries. It’s refreshing to encounter an undergrad who writes this well. Check out the post on the ho-bag roommate and sexiling as well.

At free Operation Purple summer camps organized by the National Military Family Association, the children of deployed military personnel can relax, have fun and share their anxieties with other children in the same situation. Sears funds one-week campus in 18 states, Guam and at three U.S. bases overseas.

Jenny D is hosting the Carnival of Education, which features Moebius Stripper on what high school students should learn about math before they show up in her college classroom and Math and Text on the fatal phrase, “My kids won’t get this.”

In addition, Education Policyist analyzes the evidence on a claim by Martin Gross in a Washington Times editorial that, “Our educators, from teachers through superintendents of schools, are academically and intellectually so inferior that the fourth grade is apparently the outer limit of their teaching abilities.” Gross cites below-average SAT scores of high school seniors who say they want to be teachers, though the weakest students aren’t likely to finish college.

Those who pass the PRAXIS teacher test required of high school teachers “score above the average for college-bound high schoolers (although admittedly below the average for all college graduates),” writes EP.

Gross goes on to say that “the GRE, the Graduate Record Exam, taken by those seeking a master’s in eight professions, teachers score the lowest, with engineers at the top. The engineers even beat the teachers in the verbal test by 29 points.”

EP points out that “high school teachers outscore those going into psychology, sociology, business administration and management, communications, public administration, social work, and even health and medical sciences.”

An analysis of data from the National Adult Literacy Survey found that teachers score much higher than all adults and slightly higher than college educated adults in prose and document literacy, and tying with other college-educated adults at quantitative literacy. Teachers scored at the same level as lawyers (in two categories), engineers (in one category), accountants and auditors (in two categories), marketing/pr professionals, financial managers, counselors, and physicians.

Elementary teachers, who are likely to major in education, tend to have lower SAT scores than high school teachers.

Update: I think Education Policyist is wrong about GRE scores (pdf). Would-be educators who take the GREs score lower than GRE takers in all the broad categories (humanities and arts, engineering, business, life sciences, physical sciences and social sciences), outscoring only master’s candidates in home economics, social work and public administration, who are grouped under “other fields.” This Education News column points out that would-be school administrators have particularly dismal GRE scores.