The material calls for lawmakers to amend state laws governing school curriculums, and for textbook selection criteria to say that “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”

Fayette County attorney Hal Rounds, the group’s lead spokesman during the news conference, said the group wants to address “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.

So what does this really mean–besides the obvious implication that history in school is not about facts but propoganda? Before students figure out the truth, it means that only perfect people can serve their country and achieve great things. Any eight year old who has told a lie to his mom may as well give up the idea of becoming president.

However, sooner or later the students will figure out the truth and then what? Do something important enough, particularly in public service, and it doesn’t matter what you do in your personal life? We already have plenty of examples of supporters of “family values” who have had affairs and have been caught with prostitutes. And there are a few who have taken the next step and don’t believe certain laws don’t apply to them that they have broken any laws. Do you think it’s any coincidence that most of these people are also the one’s who support changing the laws as demanded by the Tea Party?

One final thought, the use of the word “majority” is disturbing. It suggests that we it’s okay to whitewash the inconsistencies of Thomas Jefferson but Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, or Caesar Chavez. How convenient…

Valerie vs. Jay on Teach for America, KIPP, etc.

Ultimately, I think I have to side with Jay Mathews on this one. I think Valerie Strauss misses the point. Teach for America isn’t saying that you need “elites” in public schools to be good teachers. It’s about getting the “elites” to be aware of and even value the role of public school teachers. I see it kind of like the argument that if we had a universal draft, maybe our political leaders wouldn’t be so eager to send troops into combat, or at the very least, be willing to provide them with the necessary equipment to do the job and the appropriate services for when they come home.

There are roughly 2.3 million people in jails and prisons in America, more than any country in the world.

The United States has 756 people in jail per 100,000 people. No other country has more than 700, and only two are over 600 Russia (629) and Rwanda (604).

AFP: US falls to average in education ranking

The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.

AFP: US falls to average in education ranking

The OECD report also noted that investment in education is paid back many times over.

Boosting US scores for reading, math and science by 25 points over the next 20 years would result in a gain of 41 trillion dollars for the United States economy over the lifetime of the generation born in 2010, the OECD said.

I’m not talking just about the obvious relationship that the better educated you are, the less likely you are to end up in jail. I think this reflects our attitudes towards education and criminal punishment. We can’t find a better to handle crime than to put people in jail and we can’t figure out a better way to educate our citizens than using a patched-up system developed for the factory system. It’s the origins of the “can’t” that is common to both problems.

Board member Don McLeroy, R-College Station, offered the amendment requiring coverage of “key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.” McLeroy said he offered the proposal because the history standards were already “rife with leftist political periods and events – the populists, the progressives, the New Deal and the Great Society.”

McLeroy probably doesn’t understand that the reasons why the above mentioned periods are included in the history standards–they resulted in concrete achievements. You know, things like safe food, eliminating child labor, social security, and medicare. If he thinks these are “liberal” causes and indicative of textbook bias, he’s not talking about history, he promoting propaganda and indoctrination. That would explain why he wants Joe McCarthy portrayed in a more positive light. Now was that change proposed by the expert reviewers or public comment?

But Perry said Texas “reserves the right to decide how we educate our children and not surrender that control to the federal bureaucracy.”

Perry’s objections seem to center on the fact that the grant rules give preference to states that sign on to a push for national curriculum standards. Perry and Scott have been critical of the Common Core Standards Initiative, a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers with support from the Department of Education. Texas and Alaska are the only two states that have not joined the initiative.

So the grant rules giver “preference” to those who sign on for national standards–why not apply anyway and see what happens? And isn’t “local control” the basis of Texas public education? So why isn’t the state supporting districts (if any) that are implementing such standards on their own?

Are there potential negative consequences of national standards? Of course there are. But national standards or no, Texans, parents, students, and citizens, deserve to know why over 80 percent of students in the more desirable high schools are considered “college ready” but only half of them can meet the minimum SAT/ACT scores required by state colleges to enroll in schools without remediation.

Texas Board of Education quashes dissenting report on rejected math book | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas News on Yahoo! | The Dallas Morning News

“This is about the credibility of this board, and I will challenge anyone here who tries to challenge my credibility,” said Rick Agosto, a Democrat from San Antonio who had abstained in the November vote over whether to reject the math book.

If he didn’t vote, how could this be about his “credibility?” If he had bothered to vote for approving the textbook to begin with (which meets all state requirements) this wouldn’t be an issue at all, now would it? What’s the deal, he’s afraid the board wouldn’t elect him as an officer again? Does he really believe that the board has the right to reject textbooks based on personal beliefs even if they meet all state requirements? No wonder he’s worried about his credibility.

The state Board of Education’s unusual decision to reject a math textbook used by Dallas and 70 other Texas school districts has evolved into a power struggle over the approval of classroom materials used across the state.

At issue is whether the 15-member state board can reject any book it wants for any reason it wants. That’s what some conservative board members, led by board president Don McLeroy, say they are allowed to do.

So much for local control.

Rejection of math textbook sparks debate on state board’s authority | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News

In Dallas, officials rolled out Everyday Mathematics books in kindergarten through sixth grade at 19 schools with low math scores during the 2000-01 school year. By the end of the year, only two of those schools still had low scores; a year later, none of them did, said Camille Malone, DISD’s director of mathematics.

The district now uses the book to teach the nearly 79,000 students in kindergarten through fifth grade at all elementary schools. Ms. Malone said games and hands-on examples help the students develop computation skills.

“The TAKS test is a test of concepts as well as skills,” she said. “Had we not had a conceptually based program, I’m not sure we would have had the achievement we have had on TAKS.”

So because some board members are more interested in establishing the authority of their beliefs, Dallas can not use a textbook that it believes has been instrumental in improving it’s math scores.

Terri Leo’s comments have to be among the most pathetic.

Rejection of math textbook sparks debate on state board’s authority | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News

Ms. Leo said. “I object very much being taken to task for rejecting a book that I actually read.”

Apparently it doesn’t matter to her that the textbook was recommended by a review committee, the TEA commissioner, and probably several textbook committees at various districts not to mention the teachers who have been using the textbook in the classroom for a couple years. Shouldn’t they be the ones “objecting” rather than Leo?

I’m pretty sure this is just a continuation of Leo’s attempt for the SBOE to regain absolute control of textbook selection which suffered a major setback in the fall of 2006. Why now? Because biology textbooks are coming up for approval soon. And if the board “establishes” it’s right to reject textbooks for any reason, then the board can easily reject books that fail to “teach the controversy” regarding evolution.

BTW, Terri Leo is up for re-election this year. Unfortunately, the Democrats don’t have a candidate in the race. However, the Libertarian candidate is Brian Kuzma. Why should seven board members get to decide on textbooks for every district in Texas based solely on their personal preferences?

Technorati Tags: Texas State Board of Education, Don McLeroy, Teri Leo, textbook selection

Texas gets a C for public education, according to Education Week’s 12th annual Quality Counts report.

Because Texas is interested in producing future presidents.

Technorati Tags: Texas Education, Education Week’s Quality Counts, Education rankings

Although the standard requires students to earn at least a 70 in every subject to participate in extracurricular events, lawmakers authorized school principals to exempt students in honors and advanced placement courses so they wouldn’t be discouraged from taking tougher classes.

When the rule was revised in 1995, the Legislature opened a loophole in the law that gave school districts wide latitude in deciding what courses could be exempted from no-pass, no-play. That led to exemptions for classes such as jewelry-making, photography, professional baking, choir and theater production.

“It turned out that school districts were exempting courses that aren’t tough but are called honors classes so they don’t count against the no-pass, no-play statute,” said Sen. Kyle Janek, R-Houston, author of the bill and vice chairman of the education committee.

The Austin school district, for example, exempts 166 courses, including auto repair, cooking and hospitality.

Hmmm, do you think this is because students are abusing their eligibility for debate by getting exempt from classes?

Let’s pretend that you run a plant nursery. You sell a healthy, well-kept tree to your customer. You give them fertilizer and detailed instructions. You might even go out and check on the tree every so often. If the tree fails to grow because it doesn’t receive enough fertilizer, who’s fault is it?

Or maybe you’re a mechanic and you get a new customer who had been taking his car to another mechanic. The car hasn’t been maintained so you do a tune-up and explain basic maintenance tasks. The customer takes the car home and it breaks down. Are you a bad mechanic?

How about being a doctor and you’re treating a child for asthma and the child keeps having asthma attacks because the parent continues to smoke around the child. (Okay, I’m winging it here since I don’t what all can cause asthma attacks.) Would your treatment of the patient be considered successful?

Of course, in most cases your customers hold up “their side” of the transaction. Even so, as a manager you would need to take account such problem customers as the ones described above when evaluating your employees. You would have to figure which employees have had truly difficult customer situations and which are just using it as an excuse for poor performance.

However, if you were to use the methods suggested from the Texans for Excellence in the Classroom report, you would simply provide the mechanic with three more sessions on how to be a good mechanic. And if the customer’s car breaks down again, fire the mechanic. The doctor would be given special training on dealing with asthma patients and if the child continued to have attacks, her license would be revoked.

As much as people would like to believe otherwise, education reform isn’t going to have a simple, easy solution. It’s not true in business, why should it be in education?

I don’t think all teachers are against being evaluate in their performance. I do think they want and deserve to have extenuating circumstances considered in their evaluations.

You can’t “make” people into good parents by passing laws to make them go to teacher conferences or feed their children five vegetables a day. There is no licensing process you have to go through before you can be a parent even though there are plenty of parents out there who are walking advertisements for such a system.

As long as there is such a large uncontrollable variable that effects the results, it’s not only unfair to the teachers to apply a one size fits all to education accountability, it’s unfair to the student as well. Schools that take the time and energy needed to truly address education deficiencies that originate in the home are penalized.

Do businesses succeed when they focus on short-term earnings for investors or investment in infrastructure and training? Both? It all depends? Do businesses succeed when they take a “one size fits all” approach? Can you think of a better way to set up public schools to fail than demand that “no child be left behind?”