E Wayne Ross – Page 116 – Critical Theories in Education

Taking “bias” out of the history curriculum

Today’s The Detroit News editorial, “Take the bias out of history teaching”, illustrates that the Florida legislature is not alone in its ignorance of what history is or what a consistitutes a “balanced” approach to teaching issues that may be controversial.

The News believes that asking students to “analyze how ownership and use of automobiles in the United States has contributed to natural resource scarcity and global warming” amounts to “political indoctrination.”

The paper also argues that the inclusion “world population change, urbanization, the suburbs, land use policy, food and energy, plants and animals — even the West Nile virus,” in the state geography standards amounts to “environmental indoctrination.” The News admits that global warming is an “important public policy issue” but argues that it has no place in the social studies curriculum.

(The paper does allow that “Discussing or debating environmental issues might make sense in a science class.”)

The News also does not believe that the Cuban missle crisis should have a part in the study of the Cold War and that asking students how events like the Great Depression “affected different groups of people in different ways with respect to migration, economics, social justice and politics” makes for a slanted curriculum.

It’s clear that like the Florida legislature (and other right-wing groups such as the so-called social studies Contrarians), The Detroit News is not interested in the social studies teaching that encourages students to actually think about issues that affect their world.

This is another example of the incredibly shrinking political spectrum in the US and it does not bode well for democracy or free throught in American society.

June 13, 2006
The Detroit News
Take the bias out of history teaching
Does Michigan want to teach kids to despise autos?

The State Board of Education must decide today whether it is in the education or political indoctrination business.

The proposed curriculum for high school social studies students sounds like it was put together by environmental and political ideologues.

Certainly, social studies is always going to be a controversial subject because Michiganians will have conflicting values about what events and concepts should be emphasized.

Still, in the wake of the controversy that erupted when a state education consultant nearly achieved the elimination of the words “America” and “American” from social studies classes, you’d think the education bureaucracy would be a little more careful about what it proposes to require that all high school students know — especially since students only get two years of social studies.

First, American history will begin for students in 1890, not during the country’s founding years of the 1770s or even the Civil War of the 1860s. The feeling apparently is that students should have learned the basics in elementary and middle school.

But students always need history refreshers, and more sophisticated analysis of historical periods. The start of high school social studies seems like a golden opportunity for more in-depth teaching about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and others. They help bring alive the abstract governmental and constitutional principles the state wants kids to learn in high school civics.

There’s worse: The state that put the world on wheels will teach school students about the environmental evils of the automobile.

Michigan’s education leaders want students to “analyze how ownership and use of automobiles in the United States has contributed to natural resource scarcity and global warming.” In addition, the geography part of the standards obsesses about world population change, urbanization, the suburbs, land use policy, food and energy, plants and animals — even the West Nile virus.

Global warming and the environment are among a variety of important public policy issues that the proposed curriculum deals with, says Martin Ackley, the press spokesman for the Michigan Department of Education. It has an impact on the nation, he says, and students need to understand these issues.

Discussing or debating environmental issues might make sense in a science class. Otherwise, the social studies approach smacks of environmental indoctrination.

Other issues come in for a political slant as well. America’s Cold War victory is downplayed by emphasizing the U.S.-Soviet confrontation up to the Cuban missile crisis. Students are asked to look at major 20th-century events like the Great Depression and the “Conservative Revolution” through the lens of class warfare — how they “affected different groups of people in different ways with respect to migration, economics, social justice and politics.”

Another favorite: “Explore how the relationship between America’s emphasis on democratic values has conflicted with other nations’ concerns for cultural autonomy.”

Good teachers, of course, can always compensate for a slanted curriculum. But why should they have to?

The State Board of Education should stop the political indoctrination and provide a more balanced approach to American history and government.

Harvard study shows that NCLB hasn’t improved achievement or reduced achievement gaps

The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University (CRP) released a new study yesterday that reports the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) hasn’t improved reading and mathematical achievement or reduced achievement gaps. The study also revealed that the NCLB won’t meet its goals of 100 percent student proficiency by 2014 if the trends of the first several years continue.

The report, Tracking Achievement Gaps and Assessing the Impact of NCLB on the Gaps: An In-depth Look into National and State Reading and Math Outcome Trends, compares the findings from the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) to state assessment results and concludes that that high stakes testing and sanctions required by NCLB are not working as planned under the NCLB. The findings contradict claims of the Bush Administration and some previous studies that showed positive results under NCLB.

Under the NCLB, states can decide which tests to use for accountability and proficiency. In turn, states are required to look at their results and sanction low-performing schools. NCLB requires yearly progress of all groups of students toward the state proficiency levels. The report demonstrates how over the past few years since the NCLB’s inception, state assessment results show improvements in math and reading, but students aren’t showing similar gains on the NAEP—the only independent national test that randomly samples students across the country.

“Students should perform well on both tests because they cover the same subjects,” said the study’s author Jaekyung Lee, professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. “What we are seeing is, the higher the stakes of the assessment, the higher the discrepancies in the results. Based on the NAEP, there are no systemic indications of improving the average achievement and narrowing the gap after NCLB.”

The report also shows that federal accountability rules have little to no impact on racial and poverty gaps. The NCLB act ends up leaving many minority and poor students, even with additional educational support, far behind with little opportunity to meet the 2014 target.

“This report is depressing given the tremendous amount of pressure schools have been under and the damage that a lot of high poverty racial schools have undergone by being declared as failing schools,” said Gary Orfield, director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University and professor of education and social policy at Harvard Graduate School of Education. “We have not focused on the kinds of serious long-term reforms that can actually produce gains and narrow the huge gaps in opportunity and achievement for minority students.”
Key Findings

The report compares the NAEP results with state assessment results during the pre-NCLB period (1990-2001) with the post-NCLB period (2002-2005). It compares post-NCLB trends in reading and math achievement with pre-NCLB trends among different racial and socioeconomic groups of fourth and eighth graders from across the nation and states.

NCLB did not have a significant impact on improving reading and math achievement across the nation and states. Based on the NAEP results, the national average achievement remains flat in reading and grows at the same pace in math after NCLB than before. In grade 4 math, there was a temporary improvement right after NCLB, but it was followed by a return to the pre-reform growth rate. Consequently, continuation of the current trend will leave the nation far behind the NCLB target of 100 percent proficiency by 2014. Only 24 to 34 percent of students will meet the proficiency target in reading and 29 to 64 percent meeting that math proficiency target by 2014.
NCLB has not helped the nation and states significantly narrow the achievement gap. The racial and socioeconomic achievement gap in the NAEP reading and math achievement persists after NCLB. If the current trend continues, the proficiency gap between advantaged White and disadvantaged minority students will hardly close by 2014. The study predicts that by 2014, less than 25 percent of Poor and Black students will achieve NAEP proficiency in reading, and less than 50 percent will achieve proficiency in math.
NCLB’s attempt to scale up the alleged success of states that adopted test-driven accountability policy prior to NCLB, so-called first generation accountability states (e.g., Florida, North Carolina, Texas) did not work. It neither enhanced the first generation states earlier academic improvement nor transferred the effects of a test-driven accountability system to states that adopted test-based accountability under NCLB, the second generation accountability states. Moreover, both first and second generation states failed to narrow NAEP reading and math achievement gaps after NCLB.
NCLB’s reliance on state assessment as the basis of school accountability is misleading since state-administered tests tend to significantly inflate proficiency levels and proficiency gains as well as deflate racial and social achievement gaps in the states. The higher the stakes of state assessments, the greater the discrepancies between NAEP and state assessment results. These discrepancies were particularly large for poor, Black and Hispanic students.

Teachers strike, political violence in Oaxaca

Narco News: Teachers Repel 3,000 Police from Oaxaca’s Historic Center
Thousands of Police Surround the City Center as Strikers Hold Their Ground

By Geoffrey Harman
The Other Journalism with the Other Campaign in Oaxaca
June 14, 2006

OAXACA CITY: In a scene that is starting to look all too familiar in Mexico, the police attempted to disrupt the Oaxaca teachers strike in downtown Oaxaca City this morning. At roughly 3 a.m. a police helicopter flew low over the tent city where the teachers have been camped for the past 23 days and shot canisters of tear gas. Meanwhile, 3,000 state police armed with riot shields and clubs entered the chaos and tore apart the roughshod shelters where the teachers had been staying. During the course of the six-hour police intervention three people were reported to have been killed (this is unconfirmed), two women and one child.

Radio Plantón (the teachers’ pirate radio station, which had been broadcasting from the Zócalo, or central square, since the strike started and had been the main source of information for the striking teachers) was dismantled and has been off the air since the first police attack. (Four journalists from the station were among the first to be arrested: Arcelio Ruiz Villanueva, Ociel Martínez Martínez, Eduardo Castellanos Morales and Roberto Gazga.) The teachers are now broadcasting on the college radio station 89.7 FM and 113.95 AM. At roughly 10 am the police retreated and the teachers re-took the Zócalo. During the course of the struggle unconfirmed reports have said four people were arrested (three of which were from Radio Plantón), 20 people hospitalized and three police taken hostage. …

Narco News: Stand-off Continues as Oaxaca Teachers’ Strike enters Fourth Week

By Nancy Davies
June 12, 2006

The strike by Section 22 of the Síndicato Nacionál Trajabadores Educativas (SNTE), the teachers’ union, enters its fourth week in a stand-off that seems no closer to resolution. SNTE Section 22 vows to increase pressure on Ulises Ruiz Ortega (URO) by continuing the invasions or blockades of government property such as PEMEX distribution terminals, the Chamber of Deputies, the state attorney general’s office, the collection tollbooth of Huitzo on the Oaxaca-Mexico highway, the Institute of State Public Education for Oaxaca, the Secretary of Finances’ office, and the so-called public works such as the renovation of Llano Park and the Fountain of Seven Regions, and the widening of Fortin Road.

Furthermore, teachers are now soliciting citizen signatures to depose URO as governor of the state. At the corner of Independencia and Porfirio Díaz streets on Sunday, June 11, two young teachers and a professor were requesting passersby to sign on. …

Narco News: Oaxaca Near Meltdown Over Teacher Strike

More than Just an Educators’ Pay Dispute, the Conflict Is a Sign of Governor Ruiz’s Inability to Rule a State Fed Up with Repression and Corruption

By Nancy Davies
June 7, 2006

It’s unprecedented and nobody knows what will happen, but nobody is backing down.

Tens of thousands of striking teachers occupy the center of Oaxaca city, sprawled out under camp tents, on top of cardboard cartons, on stairs and walls and benches. The plantón — the occupying camp — has now been going on for fifteen days. It covers 56 blocks, preventing all traffic and access to the heart of the central square, or zócalo.

The striking teachers have with them in the zócalo and the Plaza de la Danza their embroidery and their children. Oaxaca Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortíz has called in Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) obligations in more than half the municipalities of Oaxaca and obtained signed condemnation of the teachers, along with their demands to control education at the municipal level, from more than 250 municipal mayors, which means breaking the union. …

Kentucky takes a step back (further) in time

Earlier this year, staff at the Kentucky Education Department approved curriculum changes for pre-K through grade 12, which added the use of C.E. (Common Era) and B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) to traditionally used time designations B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini, for the year of our Lord). For example, a date would have read 500 A.D./C.E.

The common B.C./A.D. system is based on the supposed year of Jesus Christ’s birth — a date posited by the monk Dionysius Exiguus in the year 525. Years after Christ’s birth go up; those before it are counted backwards. Supporters of common era notation promote it as a religiously neutral notation suited for cross-cultural use, although some Christians were the first to use the term.

The proposal quickly came under attack from a conservative group, the Family Foundation of Kentucky, which accused state officials of trying to strip religious references from the state’s public schools.

As reported by forward.com, at a public hearing in early June, “Christian groups turned out dozens of supporters who demanded that the board remove the secular references from a draft set of curriculum recommendations.

The executive director of the Central Kentucky Jewish Federation, Daniel Chejfec, was reportedly greeted with laughs and heckles when he said that stripping the secular abbreviations from the board’s documents would send the message that “anybody who is not a Christian is not welcome in this state.”

“Go home!” one woman shouted, according to Louisville’s Courier-Journal.

Some of the politicians and pundits lining up behind the conservative groups have accused the board of education of attempting to dictate which notations are used. But board officials say the document in question uses both options. Meanwhile, many of the religious activists driving the controversy say that only the Christian terms should be used.”

Today’s Lexington Herald-Leader reports that the Board has reversed its decision and won’t recommend use B.C.E., C.E. time designation along with the traditional Christian dating

The Herald-Leader also reported that the Kentucky Education Department received more than 900 comments by phone, letter and e-mail from concerned citizens who were overwhelmingly against the change. Some of the comments came from opponents in other states, including Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.

My experience with the public schools in Louisville, as a parent of an elementary-school age student, bore out the basic assumption that Christianity is at the center of the public school curriculum in Kentucky (unfortunately not an anomaly in The States).

For example, when my son was in the third grade at a public school on Louisville’s west side, a lesson on “the calendar” required him to cut out and past a yellow star in the center of a piece of construction paper to “represent the birth of Christ” and then to paste hash marks to the left and right representing years BC and AD.

When I discussed this lesson with his teacher and brought up the topic of BCE/CE, the response was initially a polite version of the “go home” comment mentioned in the Courier-Journal article. But ultimately it became clear that the teacher was ignorant of religiously neutral alternatives to BC/AD as well as the historical/political contexts that have shaped construction of calendars.

Clearly religious intolerance has become a serious threat to the core principles and goals of social studies education.

A Florida law banning relativism in classes ignores reality and 75 years of academic tradition

Here’s a follow up on “Teaching US History, Florida-style from The History News Network.

Gov. Jeb Bush just signed into law an omnibus education bill that includes this adomintion to the states social studies teachers: “American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed, shall be viewed as knowable, teachable and testable, and shall be defined as the creation of a new nation based largely on the universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence.”

In his short article titled“A Florida law banning relativism in classes ignores reality and 75 years of academic tradition”, Jonathan Zimmerman, a historian at NYU, points out that the Florida law banning revisionist history in public schools is itself based on revisionist history (and, as a matter of fact, wrong). Zimmerman points out that

Hardly a brainchild of the flower-power ’60s, the concept of historical interpretation has been at the heart of our profession from the 1920s onward. Before that time, to be sure, some historians believed that they could render a purely factual and objective account of the past. But most of them had given up on what historian Charles Beard called the “noble dream” by the interwar period, when scholars came to realize that the very selection of facts was an act of interpretation.

That’s why Cornell’s Carl Becker chose the title “Everyman His Own Historian” for his 1931 address to the American Historical Assn., probably the most famous short piece of writing in our profession. In it, Becker explained why “Everyman” — that is, the average layperson — inevitably interpreted the facts of his or her own life, remembering certain elements and forgetting (or distorting) others. …

Becker was an optimist. Although historians could never determine the capital-T “Truth,” he wrote, they could get progressively closer to it by asking new questions, collecting new facts and constructing new interpretations.

Nevertheless, he concluded his 1931 address on a pessimistic note: Unless the profession engaged lay readers — unless, that is, we taught the public about what we actually do — Americans would reject history itself, taking comfort in banal pieties and sugarcoated myths.

But of course banal pieties and sugarcoated myths are what the Florida legislature is trying to ensure are taught in social studies classrooms across the state.

For more see: occams hatchet at Daily Kos.

Rouge Forum Update (June 12, 2006)

[From R. Gibson]

Dear Friends,

The Rouge Forum No Blood for Oil web page is updated. The page is a nice re-design offering a remarkable look back at events since the formation of the Rouge Forum.

As the school year winds down we focus on social analysis and the resistance, connecting reason with power, while recognizing the discouraging emergence of fascism in the US and world-wide.

In the realm of analysis, note the CSPAN Q&A interview with our colleague, former UCSD professor Chalmers Johnson, author of the prescient Blowback and Sorrows of Empire. And, as an aside, here is one of Johnson’s pithy thoughts about retirement: “You no longer have to pretend that your colleagues are smart.”

The Taliban are making a comeback in Afghanistan where the US imposed regime of warlords is unable to travel outside of small areas of Kabul and the US defeat in Iraq, fought to a standstill by a non-existent military with no supply lines, no manufacturing base, and no sane leadership, is available for all to see—while sections of the Bush regime threaten to extend the debacle to Iran—and they eye those oil fields in Venezuela, potentially even richer than the Saudi Peninsula.

Heroic librarians are taking the lead in resisting FBI intrusions, something of a comment on the level of struggle.

In Japan, 350 teachers in Tokyo alone have openly resisted the conservative push to restore fascism in Japanese schools.

And, almost forgotten already, are the massive Mayday marches which showed, if nothing else, the incredible potential power of resistance coming from those at the shortest end of the stick in the US, and were, without much doubt, also the largest gatherings of people opposed to the Iraq invasion ever. Millions of people marched and the cops were simply set aside.

Wayne Ross’ web page has some terrific photos of past Rouge Forum events here

Your suggestions for the Rouge Forum www page, and future actions (conferences, the resurgence of the Rouge Forum News, a Speakers Bureau, etc) are always welcome.

Happy Summer! all the best,

Danger from the north? But from which group?

Canada—terrorist hotbed or just a patsy for the rich and powerful?

Today’s Washington’s Times op-ed praises the weekend arrests of 17 Muslim men for allegdedly plotting terror attacks in Canada (note however, the authorities have provided no evidence to back these charges).

But the the right-wing paper repeats the charge that Canada’s “lenient asylum, immigration and refugee-status laws have made Canada a haven for terrorists with easy access to the United States.”

While TV comedians made hay with the alleged bomb plot, Tories and Grits were united in their condemnation of such claims from Rep. John Hostettler, who last where said Canada “hosts an abundance of terrorists and as many as 50 terrorists organizations.”

Canadian pols labeld Hostettler’s comments as “completely uninformed and ignorant remarks.”

Hostettler also lashed out at “South Toronto,” which he said was “the type of enclave that allows for this radical type of discussion to go on.” Toronto is Canada’s largest city, but there is no area known as “South Toronto.” Crimes rates in the southern part of the city — which lies on the north shore of Lake Ontario — are relatively low.

But there is certainly danger to the north this week as Ottawa hosts the super-secretive society of the rich and powerful—The Bilderberg group.

Bilderberg members include European royalty, national leaders, political power-brokers, and heads of the world’s biggest companies. The Canadian Press reports that observers of “the Bilderberg group say it got Europe to adopt a common currency, got Bill Clinton to support NAFTA, and is spending this week deciding what to do about high oil prices and that pesky fundamentalist president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

The Bildergroup is so secret and powerful that the Ottawa police officers standing on guard outside a dozen metal gates that serve as security checkpoints a half-kilometre from the hotel where the group is meeting have to show the their credentials to the half-dozen black-suited men working for Global Risk, a private security firm.

2006 Bilderberg participants include: David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrice of Holland, New York Governor George Pataki, and the CEOs of Coca-Cola, Royal Bank of Canada, and key players in the US invasion of Iraq: Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Ahmad Chalabi. Look here for a longer list of Bilderberg attendees.

Whose a bigger threat to the world? Those 17 young kids from Toronto or the Bilderbergers?
Monday » June 12 » 2006

Bilderberg holds secretive meeting

Canadian Press

Friday, June 09, 2006

OTTAWA (CP) — It’s like Woodstock for conspiracy theorists.

A serene suburban setting has been transformed into a four-day festival of black suits, black limousines, burly security guards — and suspicions of world domination.

On the outskirts of the nation’s capital, a tony high-rise hotel beside a golf course is hosting the annual meeting for one of the world’s most secretive and powerful societies.

It’s not the Freemasons. They’re called the Bilderberg group.

They include European royalty, national leaders, political power-brokers, and heads of the world’s biggest companies.

Those who follow the Bilderberg group say it got Europe to adopt a common currency, got Bill Clinton to support NAFTA, and is spending this week deciding what to do about high oil prices and that pesky fundamentalist president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ottawa police officers are standing guard outside a dozen metal gates that serve as security checkpoints a half-kilometre from the hotel.

But Ottawa’s finest are clearly not in charge here.

To approach the hotel property, even these uniformed police officers are required to show their credentials to the half-dozen black-suited men working for Globe Risk, a private security firm.

“This is pretty unusual,” one Ottawa cop said.

The Bilderberg group is a half-century-old organization comprising about 130 of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people. The group is named after the Dutch hotel where it held its first meeting in 1954.

An unsigned press release, sent by fax, confirmed this year’s meeting would deal with energy issues, Iran, the Middle East, terrorism, immigration, Russia, European-American relations and Asia.

The release included a list of participants at this year’s event.

The 2006 group includes David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Queen Beatrix of Holland, New York Gov. George Pataki, the heads of Coca-Cola, Credit Suisse, the Royal Bank of Canada, a number of media moguls, and cabinet ministers from Spain and Greece.

The group also includes a pair of prominent figures involved in planning the U.S. invasion of Iraq — Richard Perle and Ahmad Chalabi. Fellow White House power-players Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, now head of the World Bank, have spoken to the group in the past.

The prime ministers of Britain and Canada — Tony Blair and Stephen Harper — have addressed the group before, as has the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

Harper spoke to Bilderberg in Versailles, France, in 2003 but his office said he would not attend this year’s conference.

Canada remains well represented, however.

The Canadian contingent at this year’s event includes Power Corp. boss Paul Desmarais, Indigo books CEO Heather Reisman, and former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna.

The Globe and Mail newspaper publisher, Philip Crawley, was also there. However, Bilderberg followers say that media moguls whose outlets report leaked details from the meetings will see themselves banned in the future.

NCATE drops “social justice” language

NCATE is the largest accrediting body for teacher education programs in the USA and has long welded the stick of accreditation over schools of education promoting dubious notions such as the use of teacher candidates’ “dispositions” as a measure of their ability to teach and of teacher education programs’ successes.

NCATE welds considerable power over the content of teacher education programs and that influence has increased in recent years as states adopted standards-based reform models forcing schools to adopt standardized curricula handed down from the state and forcing universities (via requirements that they be accredited) to adhere to NCATE’s standards.

While one can admire (and even praise) the sentiment that teacher candidates’ “dispositions” should be “guided by beliefs and attitudes such as caring, fairness, honesty and responsibility, and social justice,” but making dispositions an outcome measure was a problem from the start.

Now, the right-hearted (at least in terms of notions of social justice) NCATE has caved in to right-wing politicians by dropping the language of social justice completely. Here’s the story from The Chronicle of Higher Education: Accreditor of Education Schools Drops Controversial ‘Social Justice’ Language

Tuesday, June 6, 2006

By PAULA WASLEY

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education won a key endorsement on Monday in its quest for continued federal approval of its accrediting power after announcing that it would drop controversial language relating to “social justice” from its accrediting standards for teacher-preparation programs.

The council, which is the nation’s largest teacher-education accrediting organization, has come under fire from conservative activists for the wording of standards that require that candidates in education programs “demonstrate the content, pedagogical, and professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students learn.”The council, known as Ncate, had said that teacher candidates’ “dispositions” should be “guided by beliefs and attitudes such as caring, fairness, honesty and responsibility, and social justice.”

The concept of social justice, opponents contend, has political overtones and can be used by institutions to weed out would-be teachers based on their social and political beliefs. Several teacher candidates, in fact, have complained recently about education professors who seemed more interested in students’ political views than in their classroom performance (The Chronicle, December 16, 2005).

On Monday, at a hearing of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, Arthur E. Wise, president of Ncate, called the criticisms of the standards “unwarranted” but announced that the organization would drop “social justice” from the guidelines, “lest there be any misunderstanding about our intentions.”

Mr. Wise emphasized that the phrase “social justice” was merely an example of criteria institutions may adopt when assessing candidates’ dispositions, and was never intended as an accreditation requirement. Each institution, he said, was free to choose its own disposition evaluation criteria.

“The allegation that Ncate requires thought control is simply wrong,” he said.

His announcement pre-empted testimony from members of groups such as the National Association of Scholars and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, who had gathered to voice objections to the “social justice” provision and request that the Department of Education withhold renewal of its recognition of Ncate until that term was removed.

Stephen H. Balch, president of the National Association of Scholars, said he was “delighted” by Ncate’s decision to strike the concept of “social justice” from its standards, calling the phrase “ideologically freighted” and “necessarily ambiguous.”

Similarly, Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, applauded the change as a “step in the right direction.”

“‘Social justice’ is simply too vague of a term and susceptible to interpretation,” he said.

But, although pleased with the modification, Anne D. Neal, the president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, said rewording the standards was not enough.

Higher-education institutions have “already adopted the standard and are using it in ways that lend itself to political litmus tests,” she said in an interview after the hearing, noting that several colleges have incorporated the words “social justice” into mission statements or teacher-evaluation forms.

It is, she said, “short-sighted to think that eliminating the words eliminates the problem.”

Mr. Wise countered that Ncate had already alerted member institutions to the changes and that a draft version of the revised standards was already available for public comment on the organization’s Web site.

The National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity passed a motion recommending that the department renew its recognition of Ncate for five more years. It also recommended expanding the council’s authority to include the accreditation of programs offering distance education.

Unreported: The Zarqawi invitation

From Greg Palst.com:

They got him — the big, bad, beheading berserker in Iraq. But, something’s gone unreported in all the glee over getting Zarqawi … who invited him into Iraq in the first place?…UNREPORTED: THE ZARQAWI INVITATION

Bathroom breaks vs. grades—The abursidy of schooling in the NCLB era

Here’s a story about the absurdity of schooling in an era where test scores have trumped anything close to what might be considered authentic learning. Schools are actually giving “extra-credit” for unused hall passes!

Washington Post: How bad to you have to go?

At Some Schools, It’s Bathroom Breaks vs. Grades
By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 6, 2006; Page A01

Even though Daniel Thornton occasionally needed to go to the bathroom during his AP history course last year, he also needed a B on the midterm to maintain his grade. So he did what lots of students at Forest Park Senior High School in Woodbridge do in their Darwinian pursuit of academic success: Thornton endured a full bladder and instead hoarded his two restroom passes, which, unused, were worth six points of extra credit.

It was enough to bump the 18-year-old’s midterm grade from a C-plus to a B.

“Occasionally it made days unpleasant, but I was just very careful. I would try to go in the five minutes beforehand or afterwards, between classes,” said Thornton, who will graduate this month. “Some of my classmates definitely had a lot of trouble. People around me would fidget, especially girls.”

Bladder control, especially in an era of 90-minute classes, is a vital skill in many Washington area high schools, where administrators often limit access to restrooms during class to reduce interruptions and quash potential mischief in areas without adult supervision.Restrooms, of course, have been a choice milieu for school scofflaws since the advent of indoor plumbing. With school security a top priority, administrators have become vigilant enforcers as they try to block loitering, bullying or drug use in student restrooms.

At many schools, doors to boys and girls restrooms have been removed altogether. In Montgomery County’s Montgomery Blair High School, students can see boys standing at urinals and girls entering and exiting stalls in the bathrooms near the front office.

Teachers have whipped up creative ways to minimize restroom visits during class. Some schools have an extra-credit incentive program, which is not universally embraced among parents or within academic circles. Although advocates say the passes — which can be used for numerous destinations — maximize classroom time, critics say it is unfair to give anyone an academic advantage based on something as unacademic as bathroom habits.

“What’s the correlation between holding your urine and succeeding on a history test?” asked Kevin Barr, principal of Georgetown Day School, a private school in the District. “My basic assumption is always that kids need to be comfortable and safe to excel in the classroom.”

The Spanish class Carol Wesley’s 15-year-old daughter takes at W.T. Woodson High School in Fairfax County offers hallway extra credit. Although Wesley sympathizes with teachers trying to maintain order, she said, “It’s absurd to reward people for not taking care of simple human bodily functions when necessary.”

Public schools in the District, Virginia and Maryland do not have systemwide policies about bathroom rules but leave it to individual schools or classroom teachers to decide. Many teachers opt for the simple and venerable hall pass, which has been around for decades. In that case, students carry a visible pass so hallway monitors can immediately tell that they are authorized to be out of class.

Other schools use a more archival approach to keep track of students and their bathroom habits: log sheets on which students must jot down the time they need to leave class and their destination. A teacher’s initials are also needed.

The log sheets — in a small agenda book given out at the beginning of the year — help teachers check how often students use the restroom during class — indicating which ones may be cadging a break. In one agenda book, the log sheet is euphemistically called the Hallway Passport.

Some students who use the log sheets prefer them because they don’t have other people’s germs and they’re never scrounging for a pass. Other students, such as Samantha Mosquera at Forest Park, find the log absurd.

“Sometimes, I’ll just go through the book, and I’ll see how many times I’ve gone to the bathroom in the year, and I’m like, ‘What the heck?’ It’s a lot,” said Mosquera, 18, a senior on the crew team, who noted that she has to drink water all day to stay hydrated for her tough afternoon practices. “It should be like college, especially for seniors. We can vote. We can go to war. We should be able to pee whenever we want.”

Bathroom rules have become so ingrained in students’ psyches that they affect hallway culture. With only five or so minutes between classes, students must make potentially life-altering decisions: Should I go, or should I flirt with my locker neighbor?

At Albert Einstein High School in Montgomery, students find any scrap piece of paper — or a hand will suffice — on which to sign a teacher’s name and time. But Principal James Fernandez said he wants to order agenda books with log sheets for next year.

“The agenda books provide accountability,” Fernandez said.

Sometimes a game of cloak and dagger ensues. At Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Prince George’s County, some students have gotten in trouble for swiping blank passes off of teachers’ desks and forging teachers’ signatures, said Robynne Prince, an assistant principal.

At other times, students get in trouble when they sneak off to a restroom nowhere near their class but within shouting distance to a friend in an another room. Recently, Prince caught a student in the cafeteria who had a pass for the restroom only.

“He said, ‘Well I just stopped in to talk to someone,’ so I followed him from table to table,” she recalled. “I questioned him and said, ‘What class do you belong to?’ He said, ‘English,’ but that was on the second floor — and we were on the first floor, so I know he passed three bathrooms.”

That’s why, at schools such as Forest Park in Prince William County and W.T. Woodson in Fairfax — some teachers offer extra credit if students stay put. “It gets the students to plan ahead and organize. It’s grown in popularity because teachers feel that it cuts down on disruptions,” said Beverly Ellis, an AP history teacher at Forest Park. “I discourage them from leaving unless it’s a real emergency. They’ve got to convince me.”

For Daniel Thornton, one of Ellis’s students, the system played a minor role in his success. He got a full tuition scholarship to Washington and Lee University. And this week, he expects to be named valedictorian.