All of us know it is true -- the first rule that new teachers learn is to forget most of what they learned in their education classes back in college. Indeed, some of the worst teaching we experience comes from our education professors, so following that advice is not difficult.

This should be a shining moment for education schools. Never has the nation paid so much attention to improving the quality of teaching. Yet the institutions that produce teachers have never faced so much criticism.

"Teacher education is the Dodge City of the education world," said Arthur Levine, former president of Columbia University's Teachers College. "Like the fabled Wild West town, it is unruly and chaotic."

Stanford University educational historian David F. Labaree wrote in a recent book: "Institutionally, the ed school is the Rodney Dangerfield of higher education; it don't get no respect. The ed school is the butt of jokes in the university, where professors portray it as an intellectual wasteland."

The attacks have become so frequent and intense that some educators say they have gone too far. But a growing number of educators say ed schools fail to give teachers enough background in their subject matter, fail to prepare them for the difficulties of urban schools and fail to recruit the best students.

For a study on ed schools released in September, Levine surveyed administrators with firsthand knowledge of these problems: principals. Only two of every five principals surveyed said ed schools were preparing teachers very well or moderately well to get new curriculum and performance standards into the classroom. Only one-third said their teachers were very or moderately well prepared for maintaining classroom order. Only one-fifth said their teachers were that well prepared to work with parents.

Of course, there is little agreement on what to do to make things better. I'll put in my two-cents worth on the matter.

1) Require that students get a degree in their subject matter. My college allowed education students to take two fewer classes in their subject area so that they could take teaching methods classes. I had already taken the full class-load for a regular history degree before switching to the education program, so I was the exception among my classmates in having just as much preparation as a student seeking a regular degree.

2) Make education degrees a five-year program. Heck, maybe make it a Master's degree program.

3) Talk about how to deal with parents. My first parent conference was at 22, during student teaching. Many of my colleagues didn't have their first until after they were hired. It is a daunting experience, and one that most new teachers are ill-prepared for.

4) It is all nice to prepare teachers for a classroom where every kid has a computer at home, reads on grade level, and isn't worried about the food and shelter components of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That isn't where I teach, nor is it where most teachers teach. help us learn about real kids, not ideal kids -- or the children of professors at the campus laboratory schppl.

Posted by: Greg at 11:30 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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And it is about time. When students get to high school without knowing nouns and verbs, much less punctuation rules, there is a problem. And sometimes the only solution is to teach the rules by the old "drill and kill" method, rather than by having children "explore" their way to proper grammar.

Direct grammar instruction, long thought to do more harm than good, is welcome once more.

Several factors -- most notably, the addition of a writing section to the SAT college entrance exam in 2005 -- have reawakened interest in Greiner's methods.

Nationwide, the Class of 2006 posted the lowest verbal SAT scores since 1996. That was the year the test was recalibrated to correct for a half-century decline in verbal performance.

Gaston Caperton, the College Board president, has lamented the scarcity of grammar and composition course work in public schools. In surveys, not quite two-thirds of students said they had studied grammar by the time they took the 2005 SAT.

Those concerns, and a growing consensus among scholars that many high school graduates "can't write well enough to get a passing grade from a professor on a paper," drove the addition of a third section to the SAT, upending decades of balance between reading and math, said Ed Hardin, a content specialist at the College Board.

Let's hope for a more literate future generation.

Posted by: Greg at 10:13 PM | Comments (170) | Add Comment
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Maybe, maybe not. The availability of a defibrilator may not have made a difference. But wouldn't you think that every coach (those most likely to need it) would have a key to gain access to the equipment?

Katy school district officials acknowledged Friday that two coaches did not have keys to unlock a room where an automated external defibrillator was stored, 25 feet from the track where 16-year-old Jhonathan Bruda collapsed and died last week.

District officials originally told the Houston Chronicle that both track coaches — Ryan Ratcliff and Amy Pitzel had keys to the trainer's room on the morning of Oct. 6. They said Friday that police reports and witness statements won't be released now because of an ongoing investigation.

"We thought all the coaches had keys but now we know that's not true," said Steve Stanford, a spokesman for Katy Independent School District. ''Neither coach had a key."

This was just one of the discrepancies in the accounts the district gave this week about how coaches responded to Bruda, a Taylor High School cross-country team member who collapsed after a light workout.

Stanford also acknowledged Friday that a 911 dispatcher did, in fact, ask Pitzel if she had access to an AED. According to Stanford, Pitzel responded, "Yes, but I can't get to it."

Pitzel was relaying information to Ratcliff as he performed CPR on Bruda, Stanford said.

I'm not surprised by the discrepancies between the original account and the current one. It is only about two weeks since we had a 12-year-old collapse and die during football practice at one of the middle schools that feeds into my high school. The initial statements of the district and the later ones contained some differences that can best be ascribed to the rush to supply information in a timely fashion vs. the desire to to transparantly release all facts. None of the changes impacted teh basic narrative, though.

I am shocked, however, by the discovery that coaches didn't have a key to the defibrilator. I'm willing to bet that it will come out that only the "big sport" coaches have them. It is typical that minor sport coaches are disregarded in that fashion. Let's just hope that it didn't cost a boy his life.

Posted by: Greg at 04:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I've noticed this trend over the last few years -- many of my kids cannot use cursive writing and continue to print. Not only that, some don't even print well.

The computer keyboard helped kill shorthand, and now it's threatening to finish off longhand.

When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters.

And those college hopefuls are just the first edge of a wave of U.S. students who no longer get much handwriting instruction in the primary grades, frequently 10 minutes a day or less. As a result, more and more students struggle to read and write cursive.

Many educators shrug. Stacked up against teaching technology, foreign languages and the material on standardized tests, penmanship instruction seems a relic, teachers across the region say. But academics who specialize in writing acquisition argue that it's important cognitively, pointing to research that shows children without proficient handwriting skills produce simpler, shorter compositions, from the earliest grades.

Scholars who study original documents say the demise of handwriting will diminish the power and accuracy of future historical research. And others simply lament the loss of handwritten communication for its beauty, individualism and intimacy.

I'd add one additional reason for the use of printing -- the increase in the number of foreign-born or first-generation Hispanic students. The Mexican education system teaches block printing -- to the point that students do written work on what in this country considers to be graphing paper, with one letter to the box. Studetns who started school south of the border learned that system, and the children of such immigrants are often taught that at home. The result is a shift in style.

Posted by: Greg at 10:37 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Of all the unmitigated gall!

First your try to prevent a speech by interrupting the speaker.

Then you rush the stage and unfurl banners, stopping the program.

You drive the speaker from the stage.

And when the college you attend seeks to punish you for violating the First Amendment rights of the speaker and his sponsors, as well as the academic freedom of the university community, you claim that you are the real victims!

The protesters who rushed the stage at Columbia University Wednesday night when the founder of a volunteer border-patrol group tried to speak are crying foul, asserting that they were the victims of the violence and that they should not be disciplined by the university.

After the students climbed onstage, overturning tables and chairs and causing mayhem, President Lee Bollinger called the students' disruption of the event "one of the most serious breaches of academic faith that can occur at a university."

"It is unacceptable to seek to deprive another person of his or her right of expression through actions such as taking a stage and interrupting the speech," Mr. Bollinger said in a statement, adding that "of course" the university is investigating the incident.

Three students who claimed responsibility for taking the stage and interrupting the speech by the border-patrol group known as the Minutemen held a press conference yesterday on Broadway outside the university. One of the students, Karina Garcia, the political chairwoman of the Chicano Caucus, said that she and her fellow protesters were the victims of a "massive campaign of vilification and demonization."

Flanked by members of the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism group and the National Lawyers Guild, which have rallied to the student protesters' cause, Ms. Garcia said,"We wanted the whole world to know that the Minutemen are racists who terrorize defenseless immigrant families" and that the protesters set out to "sabotage them."

In other words, the arrogant Ms. Garcia claims that she and her Leftist colleagues have the right to determine what views are acceptable and may be expressed on the campus of Columbia University. They claim the right to respond with violence to silence any view that they disagree with. That is typical of a totalitarian mindset. I won't even get into the inaccuracy of the characterization of the Minutemen, whose group includes members of all ethnic groups and is concerned with stopping the illegal crossing of our nation's borders, not the race of the border-jumpers.

In a reversal of standard accounts of Wednesday evening's events, Ms. Garcia said that when the protesters stormed the stage, they were attacked by the Minutemen and other students. "Shame on the administration for launching an investigation into peaceful protesters," she said. Ms. Garcia referred to video footage captured by the Spanish television network Univision that she said depicted the violence.The video shows students fighting over a banner that the protesters unfurled, but the violence to which Ms. Garcia said she was victim is not evident.

Ms. Garcia said that no disciplinary action had been taken yet. She nonetheless called on the public to send letters to Mr. Bollinger demanding that the investigation be halted. She said that he has already received over 3,000 such notes.

Student protesters attesting to the violence they said had been inflicted on them by the Minutemen followed Ms. Garcia at the podium. The student leader of the International Socialist organization, Monique Dols, said that the Minutemen's "violent backlash" was "in the same tradition of the attackers in Birmingham and Montgomery," referring to events of the Civil Rights era. Comparing the plight of illegal immigrants to that of blacks in the 1960s, Ms. Dols advocated for granting full rights to illegal aliens, noting, "Every movement for social justice has always been deemed untimely or too extreme. It's time for immigrant rights."

Ms garcia, what those who had reserved the stage and sponsored the talk were doing was defending themselves and their civil rights from a lawless mob intent on denying them their liberties as American citizens. Given the history of violent attacks upon defenders of American sovereignty by those who support immigration criminals, their actions were reasonable. You engaged in mob action, and they treated you like the violent gang you and your supporters proved yourself to be.

Ultimately, Ms. Garcia, you reveal yourself in one comment from the press conference.

Challenged by reporters to square her advocacy of free speech with her decision to take the stage at last Wednesday's event, Ms. Dols said, "The nature of these questions shows there's more concern for the Minutemen than for helpless illegal immigrants."

Damn straight -- we are much more concerned with preserving our nation and the rights and liberties enshrined in our Constitution than in allowing and assisting the violation of American law and American sovereignty. That comment proves that you place foreign law-breakers ahead of American citizens. You should be ashamed of yourself. Here's hoping that Columbia expels the lot of you.

Posted by: Greg at 10:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Women don't participate in sports at the same rate as men. Why then should men be denied the opportunity to compete in order to achieve some sort of "balance" in opportunities for women?

The James Madison University menÂ’s and womenÂ’s cross-country teams had run especially well against an elite field during a competition late last month in eastern Pennsylvania. Afterward, Coach Dave Rinker gathered a giddy, excited group of athletes with tears in his eyes.

RinkerÂ’s runners noticed he was not smiling. In the middle of the meet, back here on the James Madison campus, the university had announced it was eliminating menÂ’s cross country and track, along with eight other, mostly menÂ’s, sports to comply with Title IX, the federal gender-equity law.

“Title IX was created in 1972 to prevent sex discrimination, and it was needed,” Jennifer Chapman, a senior on the women’s cross-country team, which is not being eliminated, said four days later as she led a protest rally of 400 students on campus. “But look what’s happening now. We rode the bus home from Pennsylvania for four hours, 14 guys and 19 girls all crying together. How is that supposed to have been Title IX’s intent?”

* * *

James MadisonÂ’s student body of 17,000 is 61 percent female, and one provision for complying with Title IX instructs institutions to have the percentage of participating athletes match the ratio of men to women on campus. At James Madison, the elimination of seven menÂ’s sports (swimming, cross country, indoor and outdoor track, gymnastics, wrestling and archery) and three womenÂ’s sports (gymnastics, fencing and archery) will boost the proportion of female athletes to 61 percent from about 50 percent.

When the cuts take effect in July, James Madison will be left with 12 womenÂ’s sports and 6 menÂ’s sports, the minimum required to participate in N.C.A.A. Division I competition. Three full-time coaches and eight part-time coaches will lose their jobs, and 144 athletes will be without a varsity team.

Officials conceded that the three womenÂ’s sports eliminated might not be termed exclusively Title IX cuts. Rose said that fencing had struggled with a dwindling roster, that archery was a niche sport that might be better suited as a club team, and that gymnastics was not a conference sport and had few nearby rivals for competition.

Title IX is a good idea gone horribly wrong. The interest is there for the eliminated men's sports. The eliminated women's sports were struggling programs with limited interest. But because it has become a results-oriented game rather than an issue of providing the opportunity to participate in sports, men are consistently denied the chance to participate in activities in which they are interested and which women are not. Shouldn't the real measure not be matching the percentage of students enrolled, but rather the percentages of students interested in participating in sports?

Maybe we can start applying that logic to academic programs. We'll cap enrollments based upon sex, and eliminate programs that are so seriously out of balance that they are unredeemable. I suspect that we will then see a drop in the number of Women's Studies programs around the country.

Posted by: Greg at 02:02 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Let’s hope this doesn’t give the NEA any ideas.

A teacher was hacked to death in this historic Mexican city that has been paralyzed for months by protests and violence, police said late Thursday. A colleague claimed the man was killed for opposing a teachers' strike.

Thousands of trade unionists and leftists have been camped out in Oaxaca since May, building barricades, taking over buildings and burning buses. The protesters are demanding the resignation of Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz, accusing him of rigging the 2004 election to win office and sending armed thugs against dissenters.

Victor Alonso Altamirano of the Oaxaca state police said teacher Jaime Rene Calva Aragon was on his way to a meeting Thursday evening when he was killed by two assailants wielding hefty ice picks.

Fellow teacher Alma Rosa Fernandez accused militant leftists of killing Calva for opposing a statewide teachers' strike that was a catalyst for the wider protests. Fernandez, who also opposes the strike, said the dissident teachers have been receiving death threats.

"We blame this murder directly on the radical teachers' wings," Fernandez said.

And lest you think this couldn’t happen here, consider the history of union violence in this country. Union opponents are regularly stalked, threatened and assaulted. When will union thugs recognize that the right to join a union and the right to strike can exist only insofar as there is the equally valid right to refuse to join a union and to refuse to strike? Until they do, unionism is not about freedom – it is merely about who gets to do the oppressing of the workers.

Posted by: Greg at 01:52 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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LetÂ’s hope this doesnÂ’t give the NEA any ideas.

A teacher was hacked to death in this historic Mexican city that has been paralyzed for months by protests and violence, police said late Thursday. A colleague claimed the man was killed for opposing a teachers' strike.

Thousands of trade unionists and leftists have been camped out in Oaxaca since May, building barricades, taking over buildings and burning buses. The protesters are demanding the resignation of Oaxaca Gov. Ulises Ruiz, accusing him of rigging the 2004 election to win office and sending armed thugs against dissenters.

Victor Alonso Altamirano of the Oaxaca state police said teacher Jaime Rene Calva Aragon was on his way to a meeting Thursday evening when he was killed by two assailants wielding hefty ice picks.

Fellow teacher Alma Rosa Fernandez accused militant leftists of killing Calva for opposing a statewide teachers' strike that was a catalyst for the wider protests. Fernandez, who also opposes the strike, said the dissident teachers have been receiving death threats.

"We blame this murder directly on the radical teachers' wings," Fernandez said.

And lest you think this couldn’t happen here, consider the history of union violence in this country. Union opponents are regularly stalked, threatened and assaulted. When will union thugs recognize that the right to join a union and the right to strike can exist only insofar as there is the equally valid right to refuse to join a union and to refuse to strike? Until they do, unionism is not about freedom – it is merely about who gets to do the oppressing of the workers.

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Those who object to Harry Potter books being in the public or school library simply need to sit down and shut up. Not every library book can or should reflect your views.

A suburban county that sparked a public outcry when its libraries temporarily eliminated funding for Spanish-language fiction is now being asked to ban Harry Potter books from its schools.

Laura Mallory, a mother of four, told a hearing officer for the Gwinnett County Board of Education on Tuesday that the popular fiction series are an "evil" attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.

Board of Education attorney Victoria Sweeny said that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban "Macbeth" and "Cinderella."

"There's a mountain of evidence for keeping Harry Potter," she said, adding that the books don't support any particular religion but present instead universal themes of friendship and overcoming adversity.

The books are age appropriate and of high quality among other works of the juvenile fiction category. Eliminating them would leave the library impoverished in many ways.

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It shouldn't be a federal case, but it is. Why? Because some of my colleagues in education appear unable to digest the basic lesson of Tinker v. DesMoines and subsequent decisions on the rights of students while at school.

Amber Mangum was a frequent reader during lunch breaks at her Prince George's County middle school, silently soaking up the adventures of Harry Potter and other tales in the spare minutes before afternoon classes. The habit was never viewed as a problem -- not, a lawsuit alleges, until the book she was reading was the Bible.

A vice principal at Dwight D. Eisenhower Middle School in Laurel last month ordered Amber, then 12, to stop reading the Bible or face punishment, according to a lawsuit filed Friday by Amber's mother. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, alleges that the vice principal's actions violated the girl's civil rights.

"Amber's a new Christian, and she's trying to learn all she can," said Maryann Mangum, the girl's mother. "She reads her Bible and she goes to Sunday school. . . . It really upset me when she was not allowed to read it on her own time."

John White, a spokesman for the school system, said administrators learned of the lawsuit Friday and were not prepared to comment on its claims. "We're just beginning to look into it," he said.

Mangum said her daughter was reading her Bible on Sept. 14 when Vice Principal Jeanetta Rainey approached. According to Mangum and the lawsuit, Rainey told Amber that reading the Bible violated school policy and that she would face discipline if she continued to do so.

Later that day, Amber recounted the episode to Mangum, who is her adoptive mother and also her biological grandmother. James Baker, a family friend, sent a note to the school asking that the principal identify any policy barring students from reading the Bible during their free time.

The note quoted a section of the school system's administrative procedures, saying that students "may read their Bibles or other scriptures, say grace before meals, and pray before tests to the same extent they may engage in comparable, non-disruptive activities."

In other words, not only did the administrator ignore the constitutional rights of Amber Mangum, this administrator also ignored written district policy. And when the family challenged that misconduct, the school's principal decided to send teh complaint down the memory hole and ignore it.

No one is asking for special rights here. All that is being sought is equal rights. And if students may read the book of their choice during non-instructional time, the religious content of their choice cannot legitimately be used to thwart their choice of literature.

Posted by: Greg at 10:29 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I would have thought that common sense would have prevailed. making the video was probably not a good idea -- and posting it on the district website was an eve worse one.

A suburban school superintendent says he was only trying to be funny when he took videotaped interviews with his new teachers, spliced in his own gag questions and made the faculty members look like killers, strippers and drug users.

Now he could lose his job.

"How do you like to unwind?" Bremen High School District Superintendent Rich Mitchell asks in the mock documentary that he later posted on the Internet. The tape cuts to a teacher who replies: "I enjoy a lot of leisure activities."

"Such as?" Mitchell asks.

"Killing," says the teacher.

Mitchell asks another teacher: "What were the results of the last drug test that you took?"

The reply: "It was positive."

School board president Evelyn Gleason said Mitchell could be fired over the stunt, though she said the seven-member board will first investigate. "I think at the very least an apology should be made," Gleason said.

"I personally think he stepped over the line when it went on the Web site," she said. "I think it was a bad idea gone wrong."

Now I'm all for a little humour at the beginning of the year, but this seems to have crossed the line. And making the video available where it could circulate is even worse. I wonder if this matter doesn't open the district up to lawsuits.

Posted by: Greg at 10:02 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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