________________________________________  THE VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT May 03, 2004 Vol. 4, No. 19 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯  Covering education news in Vermont and beyond... Informative, provocative, unique... Published by Vermonters for Better Education  VBE is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to enlist parents and the public at large in achieving quality educational opportunities for all the children of Vermont by monitoring the state of education in Vermont; promoting the value of educational freedoms for all parents; and giving parents the evaluative tools with which to identify excellence. Libby Sternberg, executive director: VTBetterEd@aol.com NEWS & ANALYSIS... S.166 PARED DOWN IN HOUSE - PRIVATE PROVIDERS OUT A "simplified" version of S.166, the early education bill, will be discussed in House Education this week, and this form of the bill doesn't include any of the so-called "choice" language from the Senate bill. In the original bill, for example, there were provisions for parents to "request" that contracts be negotiated with private early education providers or providers outside the district. Supporters of the bill labeled this a choice component, even though the choice to include private providers still rested with the school districts. Now even that tepid provision is out of a version of the bill constructed largely by House Ed Vice Chair (and choice opponent) Rep. George Cross (D-Winooski). The Cross version of S.166 strips virtually everything from the bill except language about kindergarten starting ages and how to calculate the average daily membership (ADM) for students enrolled in kindergarten and preschool programs. ADMs determine how much money schools get from the state. Also stripped from Cross's version of the bill is a provision in the original which read: "No child shall be required to attend an approved early childhood education program." It's unclear what the purpose of the new version of the bill is. Even supporters concede S.166 is unlikely to pass. So the stripped down version could either be an attempt to get SOMETHING through the House, or be a starting point for constructing a different bill altogether.  *   *   * ELSEWHERE  From THE EDUCATION INTELLIGENCE AGENCY COMMUNIQUE On the Web at http://www.eiaonline.com NEA ENDORSES KERRY, NAMES EDELMAN FRIEND OF EDUCATION In the least surprising move of the year, NEA recommended U.S. Sen. John Kerry for the Democratic presidential nomination, and will ask its representative assembly to recommend him in the general election. The vote will require the concurrence of 58 percent of the delegates, but that figure is not in doubt. More interesting will be the percentage of the delegate vote received by Kerry when compared to past Democratic candidates. Bill Clinton received 91 percent concurrence in 1996, while Al Gore received 89.5 percent of the delegate vote in 2000. NEA will also present its 2004 Friend of Education award to Marian Wright Edelman, who founded the Children's Defense Fund. While the union will honor Ms. Wright Edelman's civil rights career and liberal activism, EIA suspects choosing her this year might have something to do with her anger about the co-opting of the Children's Defense Fund slogan by the Bush administration -- Leave No Child Behind. At least she'll have a sure-fire applause line for her acceptance speech. Previous Friend of Education winners include Paul Wellstone, Jim Jeffords, Morris Dees and Ted Kennedy. In other action, the NEA board of directors approved a plan to gradually increase the member assessment to the Ballot Initiative/Legislative Crisis Fund from $5 to $10. The motion will require to approval of the representative assembly in July. NEA headquarters has warned state affiliates that the fund is in danger of being depleted this year.  FROM "THE GADFLY," the e-newsletter of the Fordham Foundation On the Web at http://www.edexcellence.net SCORING POINTS ON COLUMBINE As we know, K-12 education is beset by snake oil and flim-flam. Usually, we don't bother to comment, on grounds that life is too short, that it's best not to draw attention to nonsense, that it's bad for our digestions, etc. But sometimes, there crops up an example of meretriciousness so obnoxious we must take note. Thus it is with "High Test Scores? Look at Columbine," by Margaret McKenna, the president of Lesley University in Massachusetts, a commentary originally published in the Washington Post and syndicated nationally by the Post newswire. As you may recall, April 25th was the fifth anniversary of the worst school shooting in U.S. history. Half a decade later, as Slate magazine has admirably demonstrated (see http://politics.slate.msn.com/id/2099203), we now know that many of the conclusions the press and public jumped to about why Columbine happened, and how to prevent it from recurring, were simply false. As FBI investigators have concluded, there was no "Trench Coat Mafia," there was no dark history of abuse by jocks and preps, there was no sick social structure at Columbine High that drove Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris to kill. In fact, while Klebold was a sad and troubled loner under the sway of a stronger personality, Harris, we now know, was a textbook psychopath, drunk with a sense of his own grandeur. He had contempt for the lower beings around him and expressed pleasure at the thought of their suffering and death. Such troubling moral realities -- the reality, indeed, of evil -- are far too stark for Ms. McKenna, who mouths psychobabble platitudes about "regimentation," "student alienation," "anonymity," and "supporting and developing human beings." (Platitudes that, by the way, would have driven Eric Harris crazy with rage, and which he was extremely adept at manipulating.) And, like those who think that the jocks bullied Harris and Klebold into murder, she has her own novel theory about what's to blame for Columbine --none other than George W. Bush and Uncle Sam! "[S]ome of the most important lessons of Columbine," she writes, "have been all but forgotten --left behind, so to speak, in no small measure because of another educational development of recent years: the No Child Left Behind Act. As class time becomes more regimented and tight budgets create larger class sizes, schools are becoming environments even less conducive to teachers' knowing their students well. [The law] forces communities to focus more on raising test scores than on raising kids." A fevered McKenna delivers what she apparently imagines to be the coup de grace: "The growing belief that rising test scores alone equate to successful schools is false, and it can breed a deadly complacency. The test scores at Columbine High were among the highest in Colorado." The logic is as tortured as the notion is repulsive. Never mind that, as McKenna notes, "statistics on school violence have shown a continuing decline since 1995" or that the reports she cites showing a rise in school bullying are routinely scoffed at by serious social scientists. Never mind that schools, high- or low-achieving, are in fact significantly safer than malls, public parks, private homes, and other places that children congregate. Never mind that, sadly enough, serious school violence, when it occurs, disproportionately does so in low-achieving schools. Never mind that there is not one shred of serious evidence linking school violence to high academic standards, and quite a bit indicating that a focused and serious curriculum can help create a disciplined learning environment. Indeed, never mind that on every factual point, McKenna is grievously, irretrievably wrong. Let us state her central contention baldly: Those who advocate for high standards and accountability are pursuing a policy that leads, in due course, to mass murder. Such a contention is outside the bounds of civilized discourse; to use a massacre like Columbine as an excuse to score debating points about testing is despicable. A few months ago, Secretary of Education Rod Paige joked about the National Education Association being a "terrorist organization." Whatever one's view of that comment, you can't say that Paige went unrebuked for his remark. Margaret McKenna, we suspect, is not kidding. And yet, from the anti-testing and standards crowd concerning her remarks: silence. That silence shames them as deeply as McKenna's words shame her. "High test scores? Look at Columbine," by Margaret McKenna, New York Newsday, April 25, 2004  From THE CARNEGIE REPORTER On the Web at http://www.carnegie.org/reporter IMPROVING EDUCATION JOURNALISM: EDUCATE THE WRITER, TOO by Richard Lee Colvin  ...We ask a lot of our public schools. We ask them to prepare graduates for the job market and for success in college-two paths that more and more these days look alike in terms of the skills they require. We want graduates to flourish in intangible ways, to gain an appreciation for art and music and competition and effort. We ask schools to help young people prepare to participate in this fragile experiment in self-regulation that we call democracy. If all that's not enough, we believe that even as our society grows more divided economically, the schools can somehow overcome that fault and provide a springboard to opportunity for all.... If we're asking all that of our schools, shouldn't we also be asking a lot of the journalists who report on them? And what must be done to make sure they're up to that task? Covering Schools vs. Covering Education Education writing started becoming a specialized task in American journalism around the middle of the century. With the advent of the G.I. Bill in 1944, military veterans began enrolling in college in record numbers. More students were going to high school instead of heading into factories. Suburbanization began. So did the civil rights movement and desegregation. The federal role in education expanded following the 1957 launch of Sputnik, which was seen, in part, as a failure of the American education system to keep us scientifically competitive. Newspapers responded to those trends by improving their coverage of education. Large, influential papers such as The New York Times and the now-defunct New York Herald-Tribune were among the first to appoint education editors. Fred M. Hechinger, who served in that capacity of both papers and after whom the Hechinger Institute is named, was among the journalists who founded the Education Writers Association (EWA) in 1947, in order "to improve the reporting of education to the public." Today, many newspapers have education editors and cadres of reporters covering schools, particularly those seeking to boost circulation in the suburbs. But, as a wise editor told me once, there's a big difference between covering schools and covering education. Many newspapers require their school reporters to churn out multiple stories each week, a process that results in superficial articles about school board conflicts and other quick features that provide little context to help readers understand how schools work or the pressures they face. Yet it is just such stories that explain the complex environment of schools that readers most want, according to work done by Public Agenda, the nonpartisan polling organization.... ...In general, what I don't see in education writing is the authoritativeness that comes from having a vast amount of knowledge. Lacking that firm base of knowledge, many stories seem naïve and built on the fragile architecture of pat, superficial quotes from educators or critics who point to a need for "more money" or "smaller classes" or private school vouchers and a crackdown on troublemakers as deceptively quick solutions to complex problems. For example, a story about testing might quote an advocate and a critic contradicting one another, with one saying it is a normal part of the learning process and the other calling it a crime. Such stories reduce the complexities of schooling to a he-said, she-said conflict that skates along the surface of the issue. They do nothing to further the public's understanding or create pressure for improvement. Knowledge and Change There's a lot that could be done to improve education journalism. But what it all adds up to is writing about education has to become a true specialty, much as covering science, business, sports, the arts or technology are all considered to be specialties, requiring deep knowledge of the domain... Knowledge alone isn't enough, of course. All journalists, specialists or not, have to find ways to make their stories compelling through rich description, strong characters, jargon-free language and drama. So, attention to good writing and reporting, and investments in professional development to hone those skills, will remain paramount... It was just over 20 years ago that the U.S. was galvanized by A Nation at Risk, a report produced by the National Commission on Excellence in Education that warned the nation's future was in jeopardy because of the mediocrity of its schools. The impact of that report, which touched off waves of reform that continue to wash over the schools, was surely due, in large measure, to attention from the press. If the No Child Left Behind legislation is to deliver on its promise of improved educational outcomes for all kids, the press must again contribute to the process by doing its job of monitoring progress, spotlighting problems, explaining research, and celebrating success. For the full article, go to: http://www.carnegie.org/reporter/08/backpage/index.html  *   *   * GET CREATIVE - WRITE A SCHOOL CHOICE AD! Vermonters for Better Education, the publisher of this newsletter, is in the process of soliciting radio ad ideas to promote school choice. VBE is working with a former advertising executive who is volunteering his time to come up with pro-school choice messages designed to educate the public on the importance of this issue. In the meantime, we'd like to hear your ideas for radio scripts! A 30-second ad limits you to approximately 75 words or less, however, so sharpen your editing pens. Submit your ideas to VBE at VTBetterEd@aol.com or mail to VBE, 170 Church Street, Rutland, VT 05701. Send a donation too! The best of the best will be posted eventually on this web site.  *   *   * The VERMONT EDUCATION REPORT is published by Vermonters for Better Education 170 Church Street, Rutland, VT 05701, 802.773.5240 Contact VTBetterEd@aol.com for more information.   Subscribe Here SubscribeRemove

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