Education

In the UK the Inspector of Schools “has been criticizing Islamic schools for failing to prepare their pupils adequately for life in a modern society”:http://education.guardian.co.uk/faithschools/story/0,13882,1392833,00.html . The message that has been foregrounded by the press has to do with “our coherence as a nation”, which I don’t think of as an appropriate educational goal, and to that extent some of his remarks are regrettable. But when he makes the point that such schools may be reducing the opportunities available to their charges, that’s a concern that all liberals ought to agree with. So there are real issues here, which those schools have to address if they are to be permitted to continue operating. How depressing, then, that various figures have popped up to accuse him of “Islamophobia”, which, in this context, is just a way of trying to wriggle out of answering some tough and legitimate questions about the education that they’re providing.

The latest issue of Education Next has three interesting articles on teacher pay in the US. All three articles attack the uniform salary schedule that is standard in union contracts. Teachers are normally compensated according to three indicators: years of service, numbers of university credits earned, and the welath of their district’s tax base. This means teachers who are better, or in shortage subjects, or work in schools for which it is more difficult to recruit teachers, are not paid more. Gym teachers get paid the same as Math teachers, despite the fact that it is much more difficult to recruit qualified Math teachers; inner citiy teachers get paid less than suburban teahcers even though it is more difficult to recruit to inner city schools.

Al three articles suggest alternatives to the current arrangements, and the first, by Brad Jupp, a Denver union leader, describes the real alternative they have established in Denver. He reports the interesting finding that his own members strongly supported merit pay:

bq. Though Denver had a typical salary schedule (see Figure 1) our data overthrow many of the preconceived notions held by teacher unions, school administrators, policy leaders, and opinion makers about how teachers perceive compensation systems. Since 1998 our union has asked its members what they thought about incentives for “teaching at schools with the highest percentage of high-need students.” By 2003, when the last available survey was conducted, the number of people favoring these incentives had reached 89 percent. The percentage of teachers who favor incentives for “teaching in content areas of short supply” is only slightly less, at 82 percent.

So, to put my cards on the table, I’m completely in favour of paying Math teachers more than Gym teachers, and English teachers more than Guidance Counsellors (not only because I’m married to one, either). I’m also strongly in favour of paying inner city schoolteachers more than suburban teachers. But I am very sceptical, not on principled but on practical grounds, of proposals for paying better teachers more than worse teachers. Here’s why:

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Eugene Volokh “complains”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2004_12_00.shtml#1101930018 that a recent draft of one his papers is missing something:

bq. Verve. “Energy and enthusiasm in the expression of ideas . . . . Vitality; liveliness.” My writing was the usual lawyerese, flabby and clausy. The substance was getting there (though it still needs a lot of work), but it was missing vigor, concreteness, punch. So I’ve been doing Vervification Edits as part of my substantive editing passes.

“Verve” is a good word for the quality he’s after, but I think “brio” is better, if only because its roots are mostly Italian and those people know how to live it up. In Jonathan Coe’s terrific novel, _What a Carve Up_ (published in the United States as The Winshaw Legacy) the narrator phones in a book review. Its chief complaint is that the book’s author “lacks the necessary brio” to carry off the story. Unfortunately something goes wrong in the transcription and the published version claims that the author “lacks the necessary biro,” instead. Just as debilitating to the writing process, to be sure, but as a critical observation of character perhaps not so incisive.

I’m recovering from a bad cold, so I’ve been feeling a little short of brio myself. I have three papers to draft, a review to write and a book manuscript to revise (I sign the contract this week). So if anyone has any strategies for revivifying oneself, let me know in the comments.

I’ve been looking through the headlines on international AIDS day. The BBC discusses “the disproportionate impact on women in Africa”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4052531.stm . “India has 5.1 million people infected with HIV”:http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/12/01/china.india.aids.reut/ , and nobody really knows how many victims there are in China (CNN). “HIV and Aids are expected to kill 16 million farm workers in Southern Africa by 2010” reports the “South African Independent Online”:http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=68&art_id=vn20041201042230610C465958 . In Britain the “Guardian tells us”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1363277,00.html that a fifth of respondents to a poll blame the victims. In “Lebanon”:http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=10570 , only a quarter of victims receive any kind of treatment. In Uganda “a government minister warns the UN”:http://www.365gay.com/newscon04/11/113004uganda.htm not to give advice to gays on safe sex because homosexuality is illegal. Please add more links in comments throughout the day.

Having been involved in the debate over schools policy for quite a few years, I’m enjoying a bit of schadenfreude following the publication of a couple of regression analyses showing that students at charter schools (publicly funded US schools operating independently from the main public school system) score worse on standard tests than students at ordinary public schools[1]. I don’t have a particularly strong view on the desirability or otherwise of charter schools, but I have long been critical of one of the most prominent rationales for charter schools and other programs of school reform[2].

This is the claim that “regression analyses show that students in small classes do no better than those in large classes”. If you believe this claim, you should believe the same claim with “charter schools” replacing “small classes” since both are supported by the same kind of evidence.

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The war between advocates of whole language and phonics as methods of teaching reading has broken out again in Australia. I have no particular axe to grind in this dispute. In the spirit of wishy-washy liberal compromise, I suspect that both have their place.

But it strikes me as a rather odd feature of the debate that advocates of phonics should also be the ones most concerned about spelling. The vast majority of spelling errors arise from the use of the obvious phonetic spelling rather than the “correct” spelling that is part of the whole language. So one of the costs of the phonic approach is the need to learn, by rote, the vast number of exceptions and special cases that make spelling English such a miserable experience for the uninitiated.

Phonics phans never seem to recognise this.

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I’m a fan of rules and regulations. But they should be designed so that, if there is a strong case for doing that they are basically designed to prevent, someone who pushes hard enough will succeed in doing it. Here are two stunning stories of people being prevented from working in the state (i.e. public) schools in the UK, because, although one of them has run a well-regarded private school, and the other has pursued a successful career as a professor of physics (a shortage subject), they are not properly qualified. I can see reasons for the regulation, and I do think it unfortunate that the Telegraph gave evidence in favour of Mr Jones-Parry that told us a great deal about the kinds of children whose parents can pay £15,204 a year on their schooling, and nothing at all about his abilities as a school leader. But this is hilarious:

bq. “The silly thing is that I have people from industry who are training to be teachers at Westminster. I have to sign them off to say that they are suitable. I suppose I could sign myself off.”

(Hat Tip: Michael Otsuka)

As I scanned the hallway for signs of the party, an arch of red, yellow, green and blue balloons extended a welcome. I entered the grand ballroom where fun sounds of karaoke and a sea of neon green glassware greeted me. To the left was a large screen with random words scrolling quickly: Elmers glue effect on skin; [Hebrew characters]; [Chinese characters]; pokemon cards. Scattered across the room were people forming small lines for massages, caricature drawings and tarot card readings. Ninety-five percent of those present were women. It reminded me of my college years – having attended a women’s college – and what a blast you could have putting a group of women in a room with great music. This is probably a cliché, but you really could feel the excitement and energy especially when people – whether in their 20s or 40s – crowded the dance floor for the Macarena and the electric slide. I couldn’t help but think that the songs for karaoke were not randomly selected as I listened to people sing the words to “I’m a Barbie girl” and “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover”.

Welcome to the party hosted by Women of Google at this year’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing in Chicago. The meetings were sponsored by the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and the Association of Computing Machinery. Anyone doubting whether there are still social barriers for women in computing fields needs only talk to the attendees. The young women – undergraduates or just a few years out of college pursuing graduate degrees in computer science and related fields – cannot contain their excitement of and appreciation for what this meeting offers them. Unlike the vastly male-dominated conferences and classrooms that make up most of their professional experiences and that are still often hostile to women, the Grace Hopper Celebration affords them a chance to see and meet extremely successful women in their fields – corporate VPs, university deans, inventors, inspiring mentors – who are supportive of their pursuits.

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As Dave explains, I’ve spent part of the week getting embroiled in local affairs. Our school district devoted another in-service training to the Courageous Conversations program; every employee (except the many who took sick days) had to participate. Dave’s own experience reflects pretty accurately the experiences I’ve had related to me. It’s a kind of involuntary therapy session — the kind of thing that my friends who used to be in obscure Maoist organizations report having gone through regularly. The pretext is a concern with minority underachievement, which the District regards as being caused by institutional racism, on which the day’s conversation focused. You might expect that a focus on institutional racism would look at the racism in the criminal justice system and the labor market, which deeply affect the prospects of minority males and, presumably, therefore indirectly effect their aspirations and marriageability (with predictable consequences for family structure). But: no mention of these things. It is all about the racism inherent in the schools, and particularly in the attitudes of teachers.

Prompted by one very pissed off, but honest, left-wing, and good, teacher, I wrote an op-ed for the local paper, simply arguing that the focus is misplaced and suggesting some rather dull measures which, unlike involuntary and inconsistent therapy for school employees, have a good track record of slightly raising the achievement of low income and minority students. I have to admit I was nervous about doing it, both because the racist teacher theme is popular, and because lots of people don’t like open criticism of the District for wasting resources, because that creates an atmosphere in which voters are les likely to vote for tax raises. But I’m pissed off with the District for wasting resources, both because enough waste creates a perception of waste, and because I think the achievement of low-income and minority students should be the most urgent priority of our education system; and programs like this not only have no benefits, but give ammunition to those who don’t take it seriously as a priority.

In fact the response so far has been unremarkable: a nice note from a School Board member thanking me for writing it, and a series of emails from random people expressing their own feelings. I have, though, heard from a reliable source that the program was opposed internally by the main person responsible for equal opportunities and minority achievement. The Superintendent has not commented.

I suspect that the results of Chris Lightfoot’s estimation quiz (trailed by Chris a while ago) will prove to be the Dead Sea Scrolls of the subject for years to come; there is ample evidence for both sides here. I would just like to get my oar in first by saying that it provides definitive support for my views. Well it does.

Our very own Harry Brighouse — who is away from the internet at the moment — features in “the latest Times Educational Supplement”:http://www.tes.co.uk/this_weeks_edition/opinion/story.asp?id=24230 . Harry is engaged there in a debate with … his dad. But since Tim Brighouse is commissioner for London schools and Harry has written extensively on justice in education, that’s just as it should be. The subject of the debate: for and against the comprehensive ideal in Britain’s schools. (To read the whole thing, you’ll need to buy the paper version.)

A couple of interesting position papers are available on school admissions and school choice. This one, from the right-of-centre PolicyExchange, has been up for a while. The authors give a nice quick survey of the varieties of choice scheme operating around the world (though, like many on the right, they emphasize the Swedish example a bit more than they should), and draw conclusions about what works and what doesn’t. What is interesting about this is that they are much better informed and more honest about the proimise and limitations of schemes than other voucher supporters like Chris Woodhead and Stephen Pollard: they understand, for example, that the targetted nature of the Milwaukee scheme is crucial to its political success, and also that the availability of a large, low cost, pool of providers (absent in the UK0 was necessary for it to get off the ground. They are currently working on a specifically UK-oriented proposal to which I’ll link when they’ve completed it. One of the things that is clear from it is that the Tories (presumably under the influence of Willetts) are really trying to think through the practicalities of their voucher-type proposals.

The Social Market Foundation report has been out just a week or two (why did they release it in the summer??). It’s an excellent, and well-informed, proposal about school admissions. The key, and interesting, proposals are a dramatic simplification of the admissions process; and the idea that when schools are oversubscribed they should admit by lottery (an idea I have advocated for a long time). The piece also recognises the need for built-in oversupply of places in order for the ‘market’ in places to work, an idea that the government is pretty set against (since it views ‘surplus’ places as wasteful). The government has also consistently resisted the idea of removing discretion over admissions from schools, on the grounds that it is unfeasible and would not make any difference anyway. I hope that the quirky release date of the report does not mean it will be ignored by ministers.

I don’t know enough about this case to feel comfortable commenting on the all-things-considered rights and wrongs of it. But I was taken aback by the comments of the girl’s MP on Radio 4’s PM programme. Margaret Moran, who backs the school and the court, said, in their defence, that the girl had the option of going to a Muslim school, and her family also had the option of withdrawing her from school and home-schooling. She went on to accuse them of having ‘political motivations’ for their suit.

I can imagine good reasons for having uniform regulations, and for upholding them even in the face of religious objections, hence my relctance to comment on the all-things-considered merits. But the fact that the regulations might drive a girl into an educational situation in which her religious beliefs will not be challenged or tested seems to me a reason for bending, or revising the rules, not a consideration in their favour. The parents’ enthusiasm that their child should attend a state comprehensive school is to their credit. Telling them that they should school her religiously or at home doesn’t seem very helpful to me.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden “takes a contrarian line”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/005309.html on a story about Michael Gunn, an English student who “got caught for plagiarism”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/3753065.stm but is now suing because claims he was not informed it was wrong and was shocked — shocked — to be told it was. “I hold my hands up. I did plagiarise. I never dreamt it was a problem” says the guy, “but they have taken all my money for three years and pulled me up the day before I finished. If they had pulled me up with my first essay at the beginning and warned me of the problems and consequences, it would be fair enough. But all my essays were handed back with good marks, and no one spotted it.” Teresa says:

bq. My first reaction was “Nice try, kid.” On second thought, he does have a point. It’s not enough of a point, but he has one.

I don’t think he has a point.

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