Somewhere in America...

A grad student is developing a thesis. The thesis involves a new way to teach kids reading.

Somewhere in America, a university professor is reading a dissertation about methods of developing number sense for 3rd graders.

Somewhere in America, a child is sleeping, not knowing that in a few years she will be subjected to experimentation that will change her life. But will it be changed for better or worse? The grad student thinks he knows. So does the professor.

Are they right or are they wrong? How can they know and do they actually care?

Your children's future may depend on it.

There is a threat, and we're not responding to it.

My proposal is coming soon.

...Slipping away

I mean your money.

Lots of it.

No, really, I'm talking about billions and billions of dollars, y'know, Carl Sagan-like amounts.

That's what this thing costs; this thing I think causes more trouble for your kids' education than just about anything else.

My proposal is to get rid of it.

The answer... soon.

Coming Soon

I haven't forgotten my modest proposal.

I'm not ready to unveil it yet, but here's a hint:

What costs billions of dollars but is little more than a full employment act for the Ivory Tower crowd?

Keep thinking.

A modest proposal...

I've hit upon an idea that I think, if implemented, would have a gargantuan effect on public education.

No, really. I mean it.

This idea would restore sanity to the classroom, make teachers' lives less-complicated, and radically reinvent the way universities train future educators.

In other words, it's doomed.

But I shall intrepidly pursue this idea.

More to come later.

Wake can't see the Forest for the trees...

It is a ritual that most anyone under the age of 60 or so, who aspires to go to college, can appreciate - the spring rite of SAT and ACT college entrance exams.

These tests are usually the source of some angst. After all, your ability to get into a good university or college depends in part on how well you do on these exams.

And why is that?

It's pretty simple: the managers of ACT and SAT spend a lot of time and money to set up tests that they believe will adequately measure a high schooler's knowledge base. Everything is designed to represent the type of education a student will get from Maine to Hawaii.

Except that some people think the tests are unfair and biased. Well... they are. EVERY test is in some way unfair and biased. No matter who you are and what you are, you will bring personal biases to very part of your daily existence. It's part of being human.

But critics of these tests (and by extension all standardized tests) harp about "cultural bias." Boo hoo. Get over it.

I'll over-simplify here, but since educrats love to over-complicate things, it will even out. Here's why cultural bias is a load of manure:

1. The root causes of the American Revolutionary War are the same no matter if the student who must write an essay about those causes is Anglo, Asian, Native American or whatever.

2. The value of "pi" is no respecter of a test-taker's religious convictions.

3. The implications of plutonium vs. uranium nuclear weapons are not changed if the student who's asked to explain them is from Rochester, MN; Rochester, NY, or is the great-grandson of "Rochester" from the old Jack Benny program.

In other words, facts are facts. Do you hear that, Wake Forest University?

Wake Forest is dropping the SAT and ACT admission requirements in favor of other performance measures when considering admission. That's their right, of course, but their reasoning is typical educrat fuzzy thinking.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1086264.html

Universities need to spend more time teaching their students and expecting high standards (there's that dreaded word: STANDARDS) rather than wasting tears on how the little darlings might have their feelings hurt by taking the SAT or ACT.

'Cause let me tell ya: When those darlings hit the job market, their employers are going to expect high standards of them. The real world has no pity. The academic world is just pitiful.

Tune in, turn on, drop out. Yeah, that was smart advice.

There's a lot of talk in the education world about what to do about high school dropouts.

This reminds me of the young man who sat across from me in art class in high school. I stunk at art, but I had to take an elective, so....

But I digress.

This guy seemed reasonably intelligent but it was obvious he and school were not on the best of terms. His attendance was pretty good, but he missed enough that it was noticeable.

He was a senior and I was a junior and I envied that about him because I had "junioritis" pretty bad.

We spent months in this class, and some time in late April I noticed that he had been gone several days in a row. I asked another guy nearby what happened to our acquaintance and he casually mentioned that he had dropped out.

He dropped out five weeks shy of graduation.

That guy made a short-term decision to enter society unprepared. Bad idea.

I never found out what became of him, but I bet he didn't get a job at Microsoft. He may be printing license plates, or worse, by now.

The point is, my school did nothing wrong. They provided a decent education and he threw it away.

So just what are schools supposed to do to keep kids from dropping out?

There are lots of technical strategies, and they may have some effect, but nothing, NOTHING can stop a motivated kid who has the legal right to abandon his or her education.

You can raise the age for dropping out, but then you have older kids who have no interest in school disrupting the students who want to be there.

How about sending them to vocational education? Those kids tend to face more difficult academic requirements. (Have you tried to repair a modern car today? It's not for Goober Pyle anymore.)

There are alternative high schools, schools within schools and so on, and so on. But if a kid really and truly wants to go, he will go.

All this to say there are some problems public schools and their tax dollars cannot truly solve. It's a societal and cultural problem. The stigma of being a dropout has eased somewhat and that's a shame.

I've seen an apparently homeless man on a corner near my office three days in a row now. He seems perfectly able-bodied; in fact, his schtick is to juggle and get some spare change for his talent. He could probably get a performing job with that skill, but he just won't for whatever reason.

If you know a kid who's just "juggling" school and wants to take to the streets as soon as possible, tell him about the guy by the freeway who squandered his talent.

Maybe I knew him in art class.

Let's hope there is no "D"nial...

All over the United States right now, school computers are whizzing away keeping tabs on students' grades.

The end of the school year is approaching and when it's over, there's no going back so these grades mean a lot.

Scary, huh?

Uh, for the kid, maybe.

Hopefully you're not scared. Well, maybe you're a bit nervous. After all, you don't want to see Junior do poorly. You poke and prod and hope that he (or she) does his or her best and gets good grades.

You do poke and prod don't you?

I admit I have never been good at this, personally. That's why I'm glad I "married up" to a fabulous woman who lovingly, but firmly, demands that our little scholars get good grades. Of course, I have learned to support her wholeheartedly in this. She has, uh, expectations of me, too...

There is no scuffling by in our house.

Fortunately, Ed Reformer Junior and Juniorette get very good grades. They're pretty good self-starters. But I'm sure they would have slopped off and gotten a few lower marks without the prodding of the lovely Mrs. Reformer.

I never was much of a discipline problem at home because I knew Ma and Pa would not have been happy if I played the fool. It's that way in my own house now, but especially when it comes to grades.

If you don't expect your kids to perform at their highest capability, they probably won't. Heck, they're children and they need to have their hineys kicked (metaphorically) once in a while; sometimes more than that.

Low expectations = low return and low self-esteem. High expectations = valuable return and better self-esteem.

We expect our schools to push the students, but reform starts at home.