August 25, 2006
One wishes this were a Dave Barry column, but of course, it’s not. It’s a report from Denver’s Channel 7 news, the ABC affiliate.
A middle school teacher in Lakewood, Colorado, has been suspended for hanging flags in the world geography room. They were the flags of Mexico and China.
No kidding. Colorado has a law against “permanent” display of foreign flags. I write it off to mass Dobson disease.
“Under state law, foreign flags can only be in the classroom because it’s tied to the curriculum. And the principal looked at the curriculum, talked to the teacher, and found that there was really no curriculum coming up in the next few weeks that supported those flags being in the classroom,” said Jeffco Public Schools spokeswoman Lynn Setzer.
But Hamlin said although his curriculum may not speak specifically about those flags, they are used as reference tools for world geography.
“It’s much along the lines of a science teacher who puts up a map of the solar system. They may not spend every day and every lesson talking about Mars, but they want the students to see that and to see the patterns of the planets and the order, and the students will observe that and absorb that learning visually,” Hamlin said.
It’s a silly law, unjustly applied in this case. Pray for sanity to come back to Colorado.
(Tip o’ the backscrub brush to Flashpoint.)
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Flag etiquette, Freedom - Political, Geography - Political, Public education, Teaching | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
August 23, 2006
Gee, I wasn’t counting — is this the third report in a couple of months that notes no great improvements in performance at charter schools?
The National Center for Education Statistics released a report Tuesday showing fourth graders in public schools testing higher than fourth graders in charter schools. According to the Los Angeles Daily News, for example:
Fourth-graders in traditional public schools did significantly better in reading and math than comparable children attending charter schools, according to a report released on Tuesday by the federal Education Department.
Other news reports: Associated Press in the Boston Globe; Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Utah; Jay Matthews in the Washington Post.
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Leave a Comment » | Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Charter schools, Education, No Child Left Behind Act, Pedagogy, Public education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 21, 2006
Brett Younger is pastor at Fort Worth’s Broadway Baptist Church. In the Baptist Standard he tells a story of a near-disaster in his high school chemistry class, on the way to urging Christians to use common sense on the issues of evolution in public school science classes. One more voice of reason, for sanity.
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2 Comments | Creationism, Education, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Public education, Religious Freedom | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 21, 2006
Corporal punishment of students is still legal in Texas. A few school districts use it, extensively — and to good effect, they argue. The Dallas Morning News featured the practice in a front-page story on Sunday, August 20. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Ed Darrell
August 14, 2006
I’ll make this quick (back to the grindstone, you know).
In my immediately previous post I make a minor case that advocacy of intelligent design is the less preferable alternative to understanding evolution, for moral reasons. Advocacy of intelligent design has so farproven incapable of making a case in a straightforward and honest fashion. All cases for intelligent design rest in large part, or completely, in distortions of science and history. What originall caught my eye and my ire was the mischaracterization of the recent decision in the Pennsylvania intelligent design case. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Ed Darrell
August 14, 2006
I’m straying only a bit off topic, and only by certain legalistic interpretations. History folks, bear with me.
My complaint about what is called “intelligent design” in biology is the same complaint I have against people who wish to crown Millard Fillmore as a great light for bringing plumbing to the White House over the complaints of health officials — that is, my complaint against those who push H. L. Mencken’s hoax over the facts.
Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost listed at great lengths his list of reasons that arguing for science actually promotes intelligent design instead (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). This blog’s response was in two parts, one and two. Other people offered other rebuttals, including notably, P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula, a very good blog that features the hard science of biology and especially evolution.
Joe provided a first affirmative rebuttal here. This post is my reply, on the single point of whether it’s fair to say creationists, IDists, or others who twist the facts and research, are “dishonest.”
The text is below the fold; I left it in remarks at Evangelical Outpost. I have one other observation I’ll make quickly in the next post.
Enjoy, and chime in with your own remarks (I’m headed back to the grindstone). Read the rest of this entry »
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23 Comments | Creationism, Current History, Curricula, Education, Evolution, First Amendment, Intelligent Design, Public education, Religious Freedom, Science | Tagged: Creationism, Current History, Curricula, Darwin, Education, Evolution, First Amendment, Intelligent Design, Joe Carter, Religious Freedom, Science, Voodoo science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 12, 2006
Steel engraving of Stephen Girard, the man who personally saved the United States, with his signature, by Alonzo Chappel,”National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans from original full length portraits by Alonzo Chappel” Vol I, New York: Johnson, Fry & Co. 1862 “The Cooper Collections” via Wikipedia
Irony strikes the White House.
I mean, you can’t really make stuff like this up.
To be sure, the humor is quite Santayanaesque — if you don’t know the history, you won’t see the irony.
President Bush issued a proclamation noting the 50th anniversary of one of our national mottoes, “In God We Trust.” No big deal, these presidential proclamations. Note the occasion, say it’s worth commemorating, urge citizens to commemorate it “appropriately.”
Somebody in the White House communications commissariat decided to dress it up a little, add some history — you know, pad the proclamation to please the partisan pundits. What better thing to mention than, say, the “Star-Spangled Banner,” our national anthem, which has a line in it, “in God is our trust?” Read the rest of this entry »
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3 Comments | 4th of July, Accuracy, Current History, First Amendment, Freedom - Political, History, Public education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 11, 2006
RECAP: It’s only nine months since Judge John Jones’ extremely well-reasoned and carefully-written decision in Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District, which declared unconstitutional the efforts by the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, to sneak creationism into their schools’ biology curriculum. But the revisionists are out in force. On August 8, Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost posted “10 ways Darwinists help intelligent design,” in extreme length.
Other people were bothered by the post, too. I see that Matt over at Pooflingers fisked the thing, too. I haven’t read his post yet — his is no doubt more incisive than what I’ve written below. But can there be too much taking to task those who would sacrifice our children’s education on a cross of hooey?
You can go read the entire thing at Evangelical Outpost if you want. I’ll post the list of ten, with corrections. History revisionism is an ugly thing, especially when the court decision is still fresh, available and an easy and educational read, and especially on things scientific, where one’s errors may be easier to spot. In keeping with the ethical standards ofthisblog, to expose hoaxes about bathtubs wherever they may appear, here goes;
Part 2: Joe Carter posted his list of ten things scientists do wrong; Part 1 covered the first five, here are numbers 6 through 10:
#6 By invoking design in non-design explanations. Anyone who wonders why so many people find intelligent design explanations plausible need only to listen to scientific community discuss the evolutionary process. Scientists have a complete inability to talk about and explain processes like natural selection without using the terms, analogies, and metaphors of design and teleology.
Take, for instance, the recent finding that leads researchers to believe they have found a second code in DNA in addition to the genetic code. On The New York Times science page we find an explanation by Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute in Israel:
“A curious feature of the code is that it is redundant, meaning that a given amino acid can be defined by any of several different triplets. Biologists have long speculated that the redundancy may have been designed so as to coexist with some other kind of code, and this, Dr. Segal said, could be the nucleosome code.” [emphasis added]
No! No! No! Scientists note the appearance of design, but scientists go the extra mile; they go on to look for natural explanations for such appearances. Most often they have found a perfectly natural explanation that involves fitness for survival, sexual selection, or chemical and physical necessity, and they have found no intervention outside the critters’ struggle for survival. Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted by Ed Darrell
August 10, 2006
One of my chief complaints about the history textbooks available in Texas is that they are, ultimately, dull. They don’t sing. The narrative quality suffers. To meet Texas standards publishers make sure to pack the chapters with facts and factoids. But students have a difficult time figuring out what the story is, why the story is important, and why they should care. One way I know things are working in my class is when kids tell me “that’s not in the book, and that’s cool” (even though, yes, it is in the book). If the kids think it’s a good story, they let me know — and it sticks with them.
History is where we tell our cultural myths, and I use the word “myth” in the sense that a rhetorician or rhetorical critic would: Those stories around which we build our lives.
I hope to be able to present the Texas State Board of Education with serious criticism of the textbooks in the next round of approvals, to urge them to let the publishers loose to really tell the stories that make up the story of America — knowing about the de Llome letter might be part of an interesting narrative of the Spanish-American War, but the narrative should be the focus, not the letter itself (if you don’t know what that letter is, you’re in good company; it’s an interesting factoid, but not really critical to understanding the war, or the times).
I look around the web to see what other teachers see and think, too. At a blog called In the Trenches of Public Ed., a veteran and probably very good teacher addresses the same issue. Go see.
History is not a collection of dates memorized. History’s value is in the stories, told parable-like, that warn us from future error, or call us to keep on a steady path. George Washington’s story is impressive, for example; it’s more impressive when we recognize and understand that he fashioned his life around that of his hero, Cincinnatus, the Roman general who, given the powers of dictator in 458 B.C., vanquished the threatening armies of the barbarians, and then resigned the dictatorship to return to his plow. That story is not in the textbooks. More the pity.
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1 Comment | America's founding, Curricula, Education blogs, History, Public education, State school boards, Teaching, Textbook Selection, Textbooks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 8, 2006
An editorial in Alabama’s Montgomery Advertiser commends progress in Alabama schools toward achieving standards under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Alabama public schools made huge strides toward meeting national No Child Left Behind accountability standards, with 1,194 of the state’s 1,364 schools making “Adequate Yearly Progress” toward a goal of having every child in the state and in the nation performing at proficiency levels in reading and math by 2014.
That’s 87.5%.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
August 8, 2006
No sooner did I note the Nevada State School Board’s request for more money, mostly to increase teacher pay, than today’s editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal started shooting at the proposal, saying it has no chance to pass.
The editorial board wrote:
That the board would make such an outlandish demand is not surprising. Leading into each legislative session over the past decade, the board has prepared budgets that far exceed the state’s ability to pay. Of the board’s 10 members, six have ties to education, either through teaching positions or retirements from schools and colleges. From their perspective, schools can never have enough money, no matter how much they pull from your pockets.
The earlier story noted that the slide to the current average classroom size took several years. From the appearances of the earlier story, the state has not kept pace with funding needs in education. If the state board’s recommendations are not met one year, and they recommend full funding the next year, the recommendations will begin to look “outlandish.” As the needs continue to be unmet with funding, the need for funding grows — and usually such growth is not linear, but is instead exponential. Ten years of budget failure does not indicate that the current budget proposal is too large by any means. It would be the logical result of a state sliding in education capability. Read the rest of this entry »
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3 Comments | Classroom size, Education, Education spending, Harry Wong, Public education, State school boards, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 8, 2006
Nevada’s State School Board Saturday voted to ask the legislature for an additional $1.1 billion, mostly for increases in teacher pay, but also to add 2,000 teachers. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported the story in Sunday’s paper:
The Nevada State Board of Education voted Saturday to recommend that the 2007 Legislature increase spending on public education by $1.1 billion over current levels.
The proposal, if approved by lawmakers, would boost Nevada’s education funding by 50 percent and consume more than the $1 billion in additional general fund tax revenue that Gov. Kenny Guinn has said will be available for all state agencies in the upcoming budget.
Guinn estimates that state government will receive $6.9 billion in tax revenue for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 budgets, compared with $5.9 billion in the current two-year budget.
The board, which approved its education spending recommendation in a 9-1 vote, wants to increase teacher salaries 3 percent each year over the next two years. It also voted to reduce the current ratio of 21.4 students per teacher to 19.65. That ratio last was achieved by Nevada public schools in 2001-02.
Reducing the ratio would require public schools to hire about 2,000 additional teachers.
In the current two-year budget, the state spends about $2.2 billion on public education, or $4,600 for each of the 404,000 students. The proposals backed by the state board would increase state spending to $3.3 billion and raise the per-student allocation to $6,244.
(story reported by Ed Vogel of the Review-Journal’s Capital Bureau in Reno)
In Nevada, all but about 10% of local school funding comes from the state government. Nevada is the state among the continental 48 with the highest percentage of land controlled by federal agencies, way over 50%. Most of that land is unpopulated, but the state has experienced explosive growth around Las Vegas and Reno. New schools pop up with amazing frequency around Las Vegas. Budget issues in Nevada education may vary from other states.
The vote on the proposal was 9 in favor, one opposed. The one opponent to the budget recommendation explained her vote in a way that may pop eyes in other states:
Barbara Myers, the only board member to vote against the budget request, said she opposed the plan only because she wanted to reduce the student-teacher ratio even more.
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Posted by Ed Darrell
August 7, 2006
Utah’s State Board of Education voted late last week to toughern the graduation requirements, with 18 state-mandated topics — requiring another year of science, another year of math, and another year of “language arts.” Here’s the story from the August 5 Deseret News.
Michigan recently strengthened graduation requirements, too, as noted in this story from the Macomb Daily.
Missouri joined a number of states (Texas and Utah) that require financial literacy, reported in this story from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
[Please send me a note if your state is considering or has recently adopted new graduation standards, to edarrell AT sbcglobal DOT net.]
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Leave a Comment » | Curricula, Education, Public education, Science, State school boards | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 7, 2006
Mark Olson is a veteran blogger on issues of concern to conservatives and to Christians, at Pseudo-Polymath. He’s responded to my earlier post on vouchers. Marks calls it ‘a bit of a quibble.’
His first complaint goes to history: I wrote that once we had a broad consensus on the value of education. Mark wrote:
In colonial (and I presume probably pre-Civil War Virginia) the Chesapeake bay/plantation folkway had a … hegemonic attitude toward education. In fact, while the plantation “masters” were 100% literate, the servants and other classes in the society (white) were some 70% illiterate. It was something of a point of pride that public education was not generally available. Literacy and education as well, was not emphasised in the backcountry as well (which continues (I think) today in Appalachia for example). So of the four folkways which made up our early nation, only two held that education was of value.
That official policy prevented education as a mark of oppression and/or racism only makes the point. Infamously, some states and localities at various times had laws against teaching slaves to read, or to educate slaves formally in other ways. Denying education is a traditional form of oppression. This does not change the consensus that education is valuable, but instead is a dramatic demonstration that the policy makers regarded education as valuable and as a political tool for change. At the same time that these governments forbade educating slaves, they established schools for other people. Read the rest of this entry »
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5 Comments | America's founding, Education, Freedom - Political, History, Public education, School vouchers, TAKS, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
August 6, 2006
Huntsville Times (Alabama) on extensive summer workshops teachers take in order to keep current and keep teaching credentials: Who says teaches take summer off?
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) notes that some educators seem to fear teaching history for fear of saying something politically incorrect; Australia’s public school history courses are virtually non-existent, with the topic covered in other subjects: Schools ‘afraid of teaching history.’
An Associated Press story on a project that I think would work wonders in my high school classes: Pitt professor aims to help teach other subjects through music. A sample:
What do Woody Guthrie, Neil Young, James Brown, Dolly Parton, Irving Berlin and Bob Dylan have in common? They, among others, just may save music in American schools and put a powerful tool in the hands of teachers of all subjects.
A University of Pittsburgh music professor is disseminating a new approach to teaching history, English, social studies and other humanities by including music to be studied like any primary text. The results have been stunning for those teachers who have implemented his program in their curriculums.
More from Down Under: The Australian notes that several parts of Australian history face pressure from revisionists — and goes on to detail a challenge to the common notion that the Great Depression there featured a lot of evictions of renters into the rain — it was, instead, a tough time where Australians helped each other get by: The Myth of the Great Depression.
A press release from Pearson Scott Foresman details a new California history curriculum the company is selling, which is almost completely digital, and focused intensely on California standards.
A high school history teacher in Tibet got a 10-year prison sentence for writing a text on Tibetan history, government and geography that appears to have come too close to telling the facts, for Chinese authorities. He’s asked the United Nations to intervene.
One of America’s great local newspapers, the Louisville Courier-Journal, carried a report on the death of Henry E. Cheaney, a University of Kentucky professor who collected massive amounts of data on the state’s African American people, for in-depth history.
The Grand Rapids Press (Michigan) criticized proposed history standards from the Michigan State Board of Education. According to the newspaper:
A straight telling of the American story is what Michigan students need. State education bureaucrats should have been able to provide it.
Instead, they produced a truncated and ideologically tilted version that fully deserved the subsequent uproar and the decision of state Superintendent Michael Flanagan to send it back for remedial work.
Enjoy!
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Leave a Comment » | America's founding, Education, Geography - Physical, History, Public education, Textbooks | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 