QUOTE OF THE MONTH

“We now have solid evidence that our students are far better off because we ended the disgraceful practice of social promotion.”

Joel I. Klein, NYC School Chancellor (reacting to the three-year RAND Corporation study that found students who were held back did better in subsequent years on standardized tests)

CHALLENGE TO 21ST CENTURY SKILLS MOVEMENT

Common Core, a Washington-based group that supports giving students a strong grounding across academic disciplines, has published an open letter arguing that the Partnership for 21st Century Skills’ learning goals risk “undermining the quality of education in America.” The letter was signed, among others, by Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute; E.D. Hirsch, Jr., founder of Core Knowledge Foundation; Diane Ravitch, education historian; John Silber, retired president of Boston University; and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. The organization maintains that the Partnership (P21) program “marginalizes knowledge and therefore will deny students the liberal education they need” and that skill is useless “without prior knowledge of a wide array of subjects.”

Even today, before any push to adopt P21, American students and even adult Americans lack knowledge of some elementary facts of our history and civics. For example, according to a poll taken in 2007 by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, only one-third of Americans can name the three branches of government, only 3.5% of high school students in Arizona passed the U.S. citizen’s test typically given to immigrants, and, perhaps most shockingly of all, only one in four Oklahoma students could name the first president of the United States.

EXTENDING THE SCHOOL YEAR—YES AND NO?

President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan are advocating for a longer school year. Prevailing wisdom is that more school time would result in better education for our students. Critics, however, point out some unwelcome consequences: increased costs for school systems to pay for additional teacher and staff salaries, perhaps having to retrofit schools for air conditioning, and then incurring the subsequent increased utility costs. The leisure industry would be greatly affected, and summer camps could become obsolete. The long, hot, lazy days of summer reading a book (Kindle?) under the maple tree in your backyard or on the beach may become a thing of the past.

PRINCETON STUDENTS VETO KINDLE

And speaking of the Kindle, in a pilot study where 50 Princeton students were given free Kindle DXs preloaded with their course material for the semester, early feedback is that the students are dissatisfied with the device and find it inconvenient to use. Says one senior: “It’s clumsy, slow, and a real pain to operate.”

UPDATE ON CALIFORNIA TEXTBOOK PROJECT

As mandated by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, California’s new program, the Free Digital Textbook Initiative is in full swing.

Publishers (content developers) were invited to submit digital math and science materials for high school. These had to meet at least 90% of the state’s learning requirements. Sixteen programs were submitted, and ten were approved. Six of the ten were published by the CK-12 Foundation (www.ck12.org), a nonprofit group whose mission is to provide open content, Web-based collaborative educational content. The downside, at this juncture, is the cost of computers and Internet service for the students. However, the “FlexBooks” are permitted to be printed when necessary.

MERRIE OLDE ENGLAND

A code of conduct for teachers was recently imposed by the General Teaching Council of England to reinforce the traditional role of teachers as pillars of society. One of the “rules” forbids teachers to get drunk on weekends. More than 10,000 teachers have signed a petition calling for the scrapping of these regulations, saying that the code was “practically demanding sainthood.” What would the reaction have been to the 1872 ruling in Massachusetts that “After ten hours on school, teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or other good books”?