Is TAKS Too Easy?

Is the TAKS Test too easy? A study claims so:

The study found two national trends that apply in Texas, where the study was based on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills in grades three through seven:
State reading tests are easier to pass than state math tests. Texas students pass the reading section of the TAKS more often than the math section, even though Texas students tend to do better on the math SAT, a college entrance exam, than on the verbal section.
Middle school tests are relatively more difficult to pass than tests for elementary grades.

We may be thinking our kids our better off then they are, but at least they are still 'above average' nationally speaking:

And though it raises questions about the difficulty of the TAKS, a separate set of newly released scores shows that Texas students are performing relatively well.

This year's National Assessment of Educational Progress, a reading and math test given in grades four and eight, showed that Texas scores beat the national average when comparing students from the same ethnic groups.

"Texas students seem to be outperforming their peers in most states," said Holly Eaton of the Texas Classroom Teachers Association.

The worry over testing, and the demand for nationalized testing is misplaced, as what really counts is whether the students are learning. Yet you don't need a national test to determine that, as even this study comparing state test shows. What we do need however, is to maintain state-level testing and make sure it is up to a rigorous enough standard to truly test academic progress.

Teach The Children Well

Mark Krikorian on NRO's The Corner asks:

" We were talking about how schools no longer do much of a job of patriotically Americanizing anyone, American kids or immigrant kids. I noted that limiting immigration was necessary in such an environment because, however poorly the schools are doing in this regard, American kids at least inherit a certain amount of American-ness from their parents, whereas immigrant parents are bringing their kids to school specifically to be Americanized. Linda Chavez disagreed, saying that the level of future immigration is irrelevant because, without rolling back multiculturalism and racialism in society in general and the schools in particular, the grandchildren of today's Americans will be no more American than the grandchildren of today's immigrants.

My question, and I don't mean it sarcastically, is does anyone agree? It seems to me clear that, given equally deficient efforts at Americanization, the children and grandchildren of Americans are more likely to grow up with a sense of patriotic solidarity with their fellow Americans than those of immigrants."

We can see the multiculturalism in our local schools, our children attend public elementary and middle schools in RRISD:
- The elementary school has a sign that says they are making kids "citizens of the world". (Silly me, I thought you were citizens of a sovereign nation).
- The school celebrated earth day, but learned nothing about President George Washington on Presidents Day.
- They send kids home with "TIME for kids", a schlocky liberal media take on current and past events; history as the polemic of the liberal as I would call it.
- The Sixth grade social studies was 'world cultures', there was only a little American history taught in 5th grade, as far as we could tell, so that our sixth grader recalls little about the American Revolution (only what we've told her).

Mark Krikorian is partly right about the immigration connection with multiculturalism, based on my personal experience. The school district and these schools we attend have a high concentration of immigrants (Asian immigrants in high-tech) and it helps 'validate' the multi-cultural thesis.

The solution for our kids is to 'home school' those critical gaps that the schools miss. Today, July 4th, was such a day, to remind our children what this country was founded on, and the facts and concepts around the American revolution. I am an active and concerned parent; probably only a fraction of parents are thus concerned enough to actively do such a thing.
Assimilation doesn't happen by the schools and so those immigrant parents may not be able to do the same for their kids, but neither are most American-born parents either.

Those who assert that the problem is with the schools themselves have the larger point. Despite these correlations between immigration and multiculturalism, the root cause is how
our schools are run, not who is attending the schools. Schools fail to do their job of teaching American citizenship as they should.

A sociologist once said that we are forever 20 years from barbarism. We are also, perhaps, 20 years from breakdown in American civic faith as well, and only in the schools and homes can we address it.

The errors of how schools are run can only be partially addressed by either limiting immigration and/or by making sure language and other assimilation factors are addressed when immigrants become citizens. The direct and sure way to address and solve this problem is to make sure citizenship, the ideals of our founders, and history of our Republic are all a serious part of the learning experience of every schoolchild - even the many children of illegal aliens that we are today educating in the public schools.

Education News

Education News
(Connie Sadowski)

Texas Commissioner of Education Shirley J. Neeley announced today that she is resigning as head of the Texas Education Agency effective July 1.

Neeley was appointed to the top public education post in January of 2004 by Gov. Rick Perry. Commissioner Neeley said she motivated her staff to work towards becoming a more "kinder, gentler, more customer friendly state agency"--something, said Connie Sadowski with the Austin CEO Foundation we all should strive for to benefit the children of Texas. We wish her well in all she endeavors."

To view the PERSONAL LETTER TO CO-WORKERS AND FRIENDS as well as the entire Texas Education Agency press release as well as other education news, please go to www.ceoaustin.org/eduNews.
There you may also subscribe to the free Edu News

Dangers of Home-Schooling

One of them is: Your kid may become an over-achiever. Wow, a 20 year old professor?

SCHOOL COUNSELORS SHOULD BE ACCOUNTABLE TO PARENTS

SCHOOL COUNSELORS SHOULD BE ACCOUNTABLE TO PARENTS
May 4, 2007 - HB 2136 by Rep. Kelly Hancock (R-Ft. Worth) addresses an important issue in Texas schools but it addresses it so timidly it has no more than symbolic value.

The bill requires some school districts report to their school boards the outside agencies to which school counselors refer students for various services. The report must include a list of these outside agencies and the number of times students were referred to each agency.

No argument there. Elected school board ought to know where their counselors are sending students for various services in the sensitive areas counselors deal with.

Unfortunately the bill has major loopholes that make it close to useless as a way to keep tabs on what school counselors are doing. One of these is the limited applicability. The legislation only applies to school districts with an enrollment of more than 5,500 students and whose counselors made at least 20 total referrals at the middle school, junior high school, and high school levels during the preceding school year

The other, and more serious defect, is that the information must be provided to the school board “in a manner that does not identify the specific students involved.”

If you’re a parent in a school district covered by this legislation, you could find out from the school board the number of students referred to outside agencies and which agencies they were. But you wouldn’t know the one thing you want to know – was your kid one of those referred and to which agency was he or she referred. Did a counselor sent your 13-year-old daughter to Planned Parenthood to get a contraceptive or an abortion. Or did he send you son to Out Youth Austin who will help him find out whether he is gay or not and how to enjoy it if he is.

Rep. Hancock’s heart may be in the right place but his bill is totally inadequate. What is needed is legislation requiring a counselor to contact the parent before he refers the student to an outside agency and obtain the parent’s permission – in writing.

Hb 2136 has passed the House and is in the Texas Senate where it faces opposition from the Texas Federation of Teachers, a union whose membership includes counselors. Their complaint is that the bill, if passed, would deter kids from seeking counseling. That is a damning admission that counselors are referring kids to agencies that they don’t want anyone to know about. It is also further evidence that public school teachers will resist any suggestion that the children they deal with every day are not their own that parents have the right and the responsibility to raise them -- and that includes providing guidance on personal issues. It would be a welcome outcome if Hancock’s legislation did have the effect of deterring kids from going to school counselors instead of their parents for help with personal problems.

Despite its weaknesses the Senate should pass Hancock’s bill as a first step. The ideal legislation would bar school personnel from counseling children on anything but academic matters. It is one thing for an educator to advise a student on what electives he should choose to advance his career objectives. It is something else for a stranger to send someone else’s daughter to Planned Parenthood to arrange an abortion. .

Public school educators are forever claiming they want parents involved in the education of their children. Their opposition to this bill – mild as it is -- reveals they don’t even want parents involved in parenting their children.

Central Texas legislators supporting the b ill were Republican Reps. Mike Krusee and Harvey Hildebran. Reps. Valinda Bolton, Robbie Cook, Donna Howard, Elliot Naushtat, Mark Strama, Patrick Rose and Dawna Dukes – all Democrats – opposed the measure.

Bob Ward

Perspectives on School Choice

Perspectives on School Choice (Submitted to Austin American Statesman but not published)

There as been an ongoing debate over school choice for decades. Proponents argue that vouchers help students who are shackled to poor schools escape into better ones and, at the same time, provide competition that forces betterment of the public school system. Opponents claim this would take money away from the education system where it is needed to improve low-performing schools.

However, both sides agree that our public schools are in need of substantial improvement.

Examples of a variety of approaches exist from which the education establishment could profit to help it thoroughly change the “system.” However, over the decades, it stayed the course with minor tweaks producing insignificent changes in performance and drop-out rates, sadly short-changing our children.

Our positions reflect our experiences. Mine have led me to support school choice.

First of all, my experience with other education approaches includes the Swiss education system, into which I was immersed when my father was transferred to Switzerland.

This system is multi-track. Two tracks lead to trade schools or apprenticeships. The third track is academically oriented and lasts through 12^th grade. I was admitted to the latter.

This college preparatory track is very demanding. There were a full 36 hours of classroom and laboratory instruction per week, and college type midterms and final exams. The teachers had doctorates in the subjects they taught.

When I returned to this country and entered college, I found this preparatory education to be much broader than ours, equivalent in several subjects to Junior College and many more subjects taught.

This experience led me to two conclusions: First, it is impossible to compare student performance of our single track system with this complex European system. Secondly, while I do not advocate duplicating the European systems for several reasons, we should expect our education establishment to benefit from them by creatively incorporating modifications to our own system for a seamless transition from high school to college or trade schools.

Then there is the interesting home schooling paradigm.

I did not understand how children can be educated without trained teachers until our son embarked on this approach with his five children.

It is really very simple. They first had to learn to read and subsequently got their learning from the excellent home school textbooks. At the earliest age they were taught to develop the discipline for daily study of a chapter in each book of several subjects, as well as doing the problems. No teacher was needed, only an adult for supervision and encouragement.

In my example, our grandchildren never sat on a school bench before going to college, where they excelled as “A” students. A high school age grandchild recently achieved 98 percentile in the PSAT.

These children are not geniuses but are advantaged by the discipline of independent study, a proficiency which carries over into life-long learning. It is by far the lowest cost and demonstrably the most effective education paradigm.

I conclude that this paradigm contains elements that ought to be creatively applied to public schools.

In my experience, our education bureaucracy strenuously resists any incisive solutions for genuine improvement, while teachers tended to be helpful and open-minded. I encountered this problem when I was on the Mayor Todd’s task force on Apprenticeships and Career Pathways some years ago.

Specifically, we addressed the fact that a large number of careers do not require college and that many high school students are not willing or equipped to go to college. Statistics showed us that only one in eight beginning high school students eventually graduated from college. Sadly, many high school students are thus short-changed and either drop out or graduate without marketable skills.

A Swiss expert in career development was hired to help out. We developed a pilot apprenticeship program with Koblenz, Austin’s sister city in Germany. The program enjoyed great success. Some seven high school students participated. However, the education establishment was unresponsive and the Swiss expert left after two years, admitting that changes to our entrenched education system could only occur when forced upon it by legislation.

In summary, legislation and public pressure are needed in order to free up education from the shackles of a flawed, yet unresponsive system. Mindlessly pouring in money does not help. Public education needs to be fundamentally improved, drawing on other laboratories of progress which need to be part of our educational landscape. To accomplish this, I firmly believe that education money must follow the child and the family needs to be given the informed freedom of choice.

REFERENCES:

FOR SCHOOL CHOICE

- Texas Policy Foundation:

http://www.texaspolicy.com/commentaries_single.php?report_id=1271

- CONFíA National Hispanic Organization supporting school choice: http://www.confianow.com/news.php?id=19&PHPSESSID=f4af505231fd6231b3444f8674bae298

- CREO Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options;

http://www.hcreo.org/content/article/detail/838/

- Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation

http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/schoolchoice/index.html#2

AGAINST SCHOOL CHOICE

- Texas Freedom Network

http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/02/6/miller_edit_vouchers.html

MORE MONEY, STAGNANT PERFORMANCE

- Fordham Foundation studies:

http://www.fordhamfoundation.org/foundation/publication/publication.cfm?id=363&pubsubid=1452#1452

- Government statistics:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/search.asp?searchcat=subjectindex&L1=116&L2=0

20% OF TEACHERS SEND THEIR CHILDREN TO PRIVATE SCHOOLS

- Washington Times article:

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040922-122847-5968r.htm

Support for my conclusion: FAULTY COMPARISON WITH EUROPE

- http://www.toddseal.com/rodin/2006/02/faulty-comparison-american-public-schools-versus-the-world/