Alright, back to the foreign language intra-Q&E debate, sparked by Kevin's commentary on the questionable utility of studying a foreign language in high school and then another to highlight a reader's view, and then Sara's bust up of Kevin's so-called consensus of two, followed by Margie's idea to start with Chinese.
So I have to weigh in...
Kevin's lament about his own French-taking experience aside, he and Sara and the-one-who-wrote-in are all right that we need to teach foreign language earlier, but it's not so simple.
First of all, a few hours a week at any grade will offer, at best, mere exposure to language. This isn't a bad thing if exposure is the goal, but it will not ensure proficiency. In the early grades, we need full immersion where kids are taught the language not as a separate "language class" but as part of content learning throughout the day. Critics say that this approach delays achievement in English and research backs this but also shows that this lag only happens in the very short term and, in the long run, these kids score as well or better than their peers in all subjects and test higher on cognitive tests.
Secondly, our public schools are woefully under-prepared to teach foreign language well- not to mention bilingualism and biliteracy, which is really what we should pay attention to as our population changes and our approach to language (hopefully) evolves. So we have a big job ahead of us in developing a teaching force- elementary and secondary. I think it’s a task worth taking on but have to point out that we are behind the curve.
Finally, I think Margie and Sara are right that Arabic and Chinese and other languages would be good to teach and learn, but wrong to suggest that the demographic changes in this country shouldn't be the driver for its foreign language curriculum. In some places, this will mean Chinese. But in most, it means Spanish. This is most practical, not only for the nation but also for me. Consider a place like Oakland, CA- with a large Chinese population. It has several English-Chinese dual immersion programs that teach both English and Chinese. This makes perfect sense. Native English-speakers learn Mandarin or Cantonese, while Mandarin or Cantonese-speakers learn English. Both emerge able to communicate and participate more fully in the community. And in the Fruitvale area of Oakland, where the population is largely Vietnamese and Spanish, the elementary school rightly offers bilingual classes in these two languages. There are kids in this area that speak at least 20 other languages but these are the dominant ones, the ones that drive the community, and the ones that schools should teach.
The Bay Area, being the Bay Area, has immersion programs in French, German, Swedish, Armenian, Farsi and many other languages. And I agree it's good for any child to learn other world languages (by the way, the $114 million next year for critical language learning in Farsi and Hindi and others should help). But the fact remains that the practical second language in this country is Spanish (Chinese is a very distant third, albeit growing along with Vietnamese and Russian) and most populations and school programs should and will reflect this. If a choice is to be made for public school curriculum, Spanish is the right one. The fact that Spanish is not a language of power outside of this nation does not change the reality that it is a language that has a strong history and an inevitable future in this country.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Higher Ed Revolution From the Lower Ranks?
A NYTimes front-page story earlier this week focused on the strenuous efforts of the University of Florida's flagship Gainesville campus to ascend in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings. A few days earlier, the Charleston Daily Mail reported on how a growing number of West Virginia colleges and universities are trying to figure out how well they're teaching students and how much those students actually learn. Of the two, I'm guessing the Times article attracted a lot more attention. But West Virginia is where the really interesting and important story lies.
For an institution like the University of Florida, climbing the U.S. News rankings creates all kinds of conflicts and contradictions with their obligation as a public university to provide an accessible, affordable education to a broad array of students. That said, it's a fundamentally rational thing for them to do. They're 13th in the rankings now, so getting to the Top 10 isn't out of the question. In the elitist, status-driven context that governs the way people think about higher education quality, it would undoubtedly help them.
Public universities in West Virginia, by contrast, are never going to be in the upper echelons of the U.S. News hierarchy. Unlike the University of Florida, it wouldn't make sense for Glenville State College, where 59% of students receive Pell grants and the median incoming SAT score is 905, to launch a huge effort to become wealthy, famous, and exclusive, which is what it takes to look better according to U.S. News.
For an institution like Glenville, and the hundreds of other public and private universities like them, the only way to truly distinguish yourself is to add value, to show that you do a really good job teaching the students you enroll, and that they learn a lot between the time they arrive and the time they leave (hopefully with a degree). That's exactly the kind of information that National Survey of Student Engagement and the Collegiate Learning Assessment, which are referenced in the article, provide.
At the moment, most of the NSSE and CLA results are kept close to the vest. Universities use them for internal evaluative purposes, but don't release them the general public. Insitutions are nervous about how they data might be interpreted, particularly if it indicates that they need to improve in some areas.
But in the long, I think the Glenvilles of the world are going to figure out that it's in their best interests to release this information, to create new terms of competition and status in higher education. If you can't beat the likes of the University of Florida at the current game, then change the game. Tell people that you're good at doing the job you're meant to do. Challenge the institutions that have a monopoly on all the money, status, and acclaim in higher education to prove that their reputations hold up when it comes to educating students.
There are a lot more Glenvilles than Gainesvilles in higher education. Eventually, they're going to figure out what's good for them. Then the institutions that have worked so hard to get to the top of the U.S. News rankings may find that they picked the wrong mountain to climb.
For an institution like the University of Florida, climbing the U.S. News rankings creates all kinds of conflicts and contradictions with their obligation as a public university to provide an accessible, affordable education to a broad array of students. That said, it's a fundamentally rational thing for them to do. They're 13th in the rankings now, so getting to the Top 10 isn't out of the question. In the elitist, status-driven context that governs the way people think about higher education quality, it would undoubtedly help them.
Public universities in West Virginia, by contrast, are never going to be in the upper echelons of the U.S. News hierarchy. Unlike the University of Florida, it wouldn't make sense for Glenville State College, where 59% of students receive Pell grants and the median incoming SAT score is 905, to launch a huge effort to become wealthy, famous, and exclusive, which is what it takes to look better according to U.S. News.
For an institution like Glenville, and the hundreds of other public and private universities like them, the only way to truly distinguish yourself is to add value, to show that you do a really good job teaching the students you enroll, and that they learn a lot between the time they arrive and the time they leave (hopefully with a degree). That's exactly the kind of information that National Survey of Student Engagement and the Collegiate Learning Assessment, which are referenced in the article, provide.
At the moment, most of the NSSE and CLA results are kept close to the vest. Universities use them for internal evaluative purposes, but don't release them the general public. Insitutions are nervous about how they data might be interpreted, particularly if it indicates that they need to improve in some areas.
But in the long, I think the Glenvilles of the world are going to figure out that it's in their best interests to release this information, to create new terms of competition and status in higher education. If you can't beat the likes of the University of Florida at the current game, then change the game. Tell people that you're good at doing the job you're meant to do. Challenge the institutions that have a monopoly on all the money, status, and acclaim in higher education to prove that their reputations hold up when it comes to educating students.
There are a lot more Glenvilles than Gainesvilles in higher education. Eventually, they're going to figure out what's good for them. Then the institutions that have worked so hard to get to the top of the U.S. News rankings may find that they picked the wrong mountain to climb.
The Last Day of Christmas
Here's your final picture of Mary Brown in her festive Christmas garb, accompanied once again by her AP Senior English class--and Santa! As you can see, everyone is very excited by the prospect of the coming week of winter break.*
Vote for your favorite festive holiday photo here.
Thank you, Mary, for sharing your holiday spirit with us this month and, more importantly, for the great work you do all year long teaching Honors French, AP English, and SAT Prep to students at Clear Spring High School in Washington County, Maryland. On top of all her other work, Mary is working towards her National Board Ceritfication.
Special thanks, also, to Mary's Clear Spring colleague Nadine Fox for her excellent photography and for uploading and sending me these pictures every evening. In addition to working with Clear Spring's students with special needs, Nadine and her husband run Buck Valley Ranch, a bed and breakfast in Warfordsburg, Pennsylvania.
Thanks also to Mary's AP students for joining in the festivities the past few days.
Finally, thanks to my sister, Rachel Kurtz, who teaches English along with Mary at Clear Spring and who helped set this whole thing up. I'm looking forward to seeing Rachel this afternoon as we head home to celebrate Christmas with family in Michigan and Indiana!
Merry Christmas, y'all!
*The Quick and Ed team is also looking forward to a winter break next week, so expect light posting until January 2, when we'll return rested and feisty for the new year.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Alternative Lifestyles
In an attempt to create more opportunities for charter schools and/or improve the quality of charter school authorizing, some states are allowing "alternative" authorizers--such as state level charter boards, institutions of higher education, mayors and other municipal officials, and nonprofit or philanthropic organizations--to approve charter schools in addition to or instead of the local and state boards of ed that approve and oversee charters in most states. A new Progressive Policy Institute report by Louann Berlein Palmer looks at how these alternate authorizers are performing.
Holiday Sweater Bonanza!
I couldn't resist adding to the Q&E holiday festivities (thanks, mom!). I narrowed it down from about 20 pictures (just a normal day of holiday wear at a Virginia elementary school) to three runner-ups (see below) and this one - my top choice. As my mom says, "The kids love them" and so do we!
The Rich Get Richer
The Education Trust released its annual Funding Gap report yesterday, just in time for New Year's. (Disclosure: I used to work at Ed Trust and wrote the 2003 and 2004 editions of the report.) As always, the report exposes the basic resource inequities that hamstring many educators and disadvantaged children. Despite the fact that low-income children need more resources, many states are giving them less.
As the Post wrote this morning, this year's report features an expanded analysis of an issue that previous reports have touched on: flaws in the Federal Title I formula. The essential problem is that while Title I provides more money to poor school districts than wealthy school districts within each state, it actually provides more money to poor districts in wealthy states than it does to poor districts in poor states. That's because it adjusts per-student funding to states based on how much money the states themselves spend on education. States that spend more, get more.
This seems to reward states that make the effort to support their schools. But as the analysis shows, state funding levels are less a function of effort than they are of wealth. States that have more tend to spend more. So we end up with a situtation where Massachusetts gets more than twice as much Title I money per poor child than Arkansas, even though education funding effort in Arkansas, measured as education spending divided by taxable resources, is greater.
This issue hasn't received a lot of attention, but hopefully that will change as discussions heat up around the reauthorization of NCLB. The federal government should ameliorate inter-state differences in resources, not make them worse.
As the Post wrote this morning, this year's report features an expanded analysis of an issue that previous reports have touched on: flaws in the Federal Title I formula. The essential problem is that while Title I provides more money to poor school districts than wealthy school districts within each state, it actually provides more money to poor districts in wealthy states than it does to poor districts in poor states. That's because it adjusts per-student funding to states based on how much money the states themselves spend on education. States that spend more, get more.
This seems to reward states that make the effort to support their schools. But as the analysis shows, state funding levels are less a function of effort than they are of wealth. States that have more tend to spend more. So we end up with a situtation where Massachusetts gets more than twice as much Title I money per poor child than Arkansas, even though education funding effort in Arkansas, measured as education spending divided by taxable resources, is greater.
This issue hasn't received a lot of attention, but hopefully that will change as discussions heat up around the reauthorization of NCLB. The federal government should ameliorate inter-state differences in resources, not make them worse.
Twenty-first Day of Christmas
Only one more day left until our teachers get a well-deserved winter break! Here's our special holiday guest teacher, Mary Brown, with her senior AP English class helping share the holiday cheer. Check in tomorrow for our final festive Christmas photo, more information about Mary and her school, and a chance to vote on your favorite festive Christmas outfit!
In the meantime, catch up on previous days of Christmas here.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
College Rankings Return
The NYTimes goes to Florida to explore the problems and contradictions of public universities trying to climb the greased pole that is the U.S. News & World Report rankings system. Leaders from the University of Florida explain why it's important to jack up tuition by $1,000 in order to move from being the 13th-ranked public university in the country to the Top 10:
The unquestioned assumption is that if faculty with great research reputations work there, and students with high SAT scores enroll there, it's a good school. The problem is that this assumption is plainly illogical--faculty often build up their scholarly credentials at the expense of teaching, and colleges should be judged based on how much their student learn while they attend college, not how much the learned before they got there. Institutional selectivity as a mark of quality is completely self-reinforcing--students will go to whichever institution is hardest to get into, because that's what selective universities are selling: a diploma that tells the world, "I got in."
For an explanation of why the U.S. News rat race is bad for higher education and how we could create a new rankings system to channel the ambitions of institutions like the University of Florida to more productive purposes, click here.
“Florida wants a top-10 university because it’s clear that our economic development is increasingly tied to research,” said Dr. Machen, the president.
Manny A. Fernandez, chairman of the board at the University of Florida, talks as frankly as Dr. Machen about rankings.As is always the case when higher education leaders try to explain why the want to move up in the rankings, these comments say a lot about where their priorities truly lie. What you won't find in this article, and this is very typical, is anyone saying something along the lines of, "We're doing this because it will result in a higher quality education for our students." It's always, "the state will benefit from the research" or "we'll get 'better' students to enroll" or "the alumni will donate more."
“I want to be on the cocktail-party list of schools that people talk about, because that influences the decisions of great students and great faculty,” Mr. Fernandez said. “I don’t apologize for trying to get the rankings up, because rankings are a catalyst for changes that improve the school.”
The unquestioned assumption is that if faculty with great research reputations work there, and students with high SAT scores enroll there, it's a good school. The problem is that this assumption is plainly illogical--faculty often build up their scholarly credentials at the expense of teaching, and colleges should be judged based on how much their student learn while they attend college, not how much the learned before they got there. Institutional selectivity as a mark of quality is completely self-reinforcing--students will go to whichever institution is hardest to get into, because that's what selective universities are selling: a diploma that tells the world, "I got in."
For an explanation of why the U.S. News rat race is bad for higher education and how we could create a new rankings system to channel the ambitions of institutions like the University of Florida to more productive purposes, click here.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Nineteenth Day of Christmas...and the Fourth Day of Hanukkah!
Monday, December 18, 2006
A Teachable Moment in Fiji?
There's been a lot of discussion on this blog and elsewhere recently about the value of teaching foreign languages and otherwise exposing students to cultures other than their own. On the latter point especially I'm inclined to agree that we must do more. For example, did you know that the government of Fiji has been overthrown via military coup four times since 1987? The latest coup happened just a few weeks ago, led by someone named--seriously--"Commodore Bananarama Bainimarama." I totally missed that. This could be used as the launching point for a lot of important school discussions, such as:
- What does it say about human nature that people living in an island paradise can have such problems that their government gets overthrown by coup more often than some governments turn over via actual election?
- Given that the head of a military dictatorship can call himelf pretty much anything he wants, has any anti-democratic strongman ever adopted a less imposing title than "Commodore"?
- Can you imagine the restraint exercised by the reporters and headline writers who didn't work the phrase "Cruel, Cruel Summer in Fiji" into their coverage?
Don't Ban "Blankets"
The AP published a variant on the tried-and-true "libraries ban books" story today, focusing on parental objections to children having access to certain graphic novels. Among them: Craig Thompson's "Blankets."
Most of the graphic novels you'll find in the book store are compendiums of multiple, previously-published comics books. "Blankets" is a single, book-length (582 pages) volume based on the author's experiences growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household in Minnesota. The story revolves around his adolescent struggles with faith, family, and the intense feelings of his first romantic relationship. A few pages contain exceptionally tasteful portrayals of semi-nudity, causing one concerned Missouri parent to ask, "Does this community want our public library to continue to use tax dollars to purchase pornography?"
I have a lot of sympathy for parents who are concerned about their children being exposed to a popular culture that seems to grow more vulgar, exploitative, and unavoidable by the year. This is true of some mainstream comic books, which tend to feature a lot of consequence-free violence and anatomically improbable women runing around in skin-tight spandex.
But here's the thing: "Blankets" is exactly the opposite of that. It's as honest, touching, and humane as one could imagine. Here are some reviews:
"...a first-love story so well remembered and honest that it reminds you what falling in love feels like...achingly beautiful." -Time
"In telling his story, which includes beautifully rendered memories of the small brutalities that parents inflict on their children and siblings upon each other, Thompson describes the ecstasy and ache of obsession (with a lover, with God) and is unafraid to suggest the ways that obsession can consume itself and evaporate." -The New York Times Book Review
"...recreates the confusion, emotional pain and isolation of the author's rigidly fundamentalist Christian upbringing, along with the trepidation of growing into maturity, with a rare combination of sincerity, pictorial lyricism and taste." -Publisher's Weekly
"...an impressively concrete portrait of emotional emphemera, captured with talent, disarming humor, and a gentle sincerity that glows through on every remarkable page." -The Onion
Children absolutely need to be protected from pornography, but doing so means applying a reasonable definition of what that word means. At its worse, pornography stimulates the basest human impulses with graphic, dehumanizing depictions of violence and sex. It's ironic that the word itself has become debased in a way that seems allow the worst imaginable kinds of violence while drawing a bright line at the portrayal of specific, fairly innocuous elements of female anatomy, regardless of context.
Libraries shouldn't be banning "Blankets," they should be handing out free copies at the door.
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