The Female Math Myth

In the 1630s Puritan leader, John Winthrop, warned husbands against allowing their wives to be swept up in the dizzying and debilitating business of book learning. A hundred and fifty years after that, Rousseau argued that Nature, no less, had destined women to an education for the benefit of males, "to make life sweet and agreeable for them." Such domination and stupidity could not be altered by the few women who dared to speak the truth, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, who earned an attribution as the "hyena in petticoats" for her fearless counter-arguments in the late 18th Century.

Now we find that that Mary was right, of course, and that women are just as capable as men in intellectual pursuits, if not more so. From Time Magazine, and note how the author, a woman herself, continues the long, long tradition of offering a male orientation to readers who may find reason enough to dismiss these findings when they see that all the researchers were, gasp, women. The research appears in the most recent issue of Science:

A new report by researchers at University of Wisconsin and University of California, Berkeley, aims to overturn the long-held belief that girls aren't as good at math as boys. According to new data, the researchers say, that gender gap has become a myth — a finding they hope will help shift the very real gender gap in math, science and technology professions, which are currently dominated by men.

Janet Hyde, a psychologist at University of Wisconsin, and her (all-female) collaborators culled data from federally mandated annual math tests administered to 7.2 million second- through 11th-grade students in 10 states. They found little difference between boys' and girs' average math scores. Hyde also searched for a gender difference in the outlying scores — that is, whether more boys were among the top math scorers than girls — but again found negligible difference, although boys did still slightly outnumber girls in the 99th percentile.

The equalizing of math scores may reflect the simple fact that more female students are now taking math courses, says Hyde, whose study, funded by the National Science Foundation, appears in the current issue of Science. In Hyde's earlier research in the 1990s, she found that girls and boys scored similarly on math tests in elementary school, but that by high school the boys were overtaking the girls. Why? Because somewhere along the way, girls stopped taking math and never learned the skills required to do well on standardized tests. Today, girls are increasingly sticking with math classes through school — according to the paper, girls and boys take advanced math in high school in equal numbers, and women receive nearly half of all bachelor degrees given in math in the U.S. — and their scores are closing the gap. But "the stereotype that boys are better at math is alive and strong," Hyde says. "Parents still believe it, and teachers still believe it." . . . .

Choice Editorial from Jacksonville, NC

Too bad the NY Times or the Washington Post don't have the guts or insight of Jacksonville, NC's JD News:

It’s time to leave‘No Child’ behind
July 26, 2008 - 12:16AM

No Child Left Behind, the massive education program enacted by U.S. Congress in 2001, is one of those well-intended initiatives that has turned into a train wreck. It is time to admit that it simply doesn't work.

Onslow County Schools, like many other educational systems, have struggled with the stringent goals set by NCLB since its inception. In addition to what, on paper, appears an admirable objective - to improve the performance of the nation's public schools - NCLB has probably done less to foster actual learning and more to tie teachers' hands than any program before it.

Once criticized for "teaching to the tests," educators have now been saddled with goals that are next to impossible to reach and draconian sanctions that are supposed to raise the quality of instruction. Instead, NCLB has sent many excellent teachers scrambling for the door.

At a time when educators' salaries are losing ground along with the rest of America, why would anyone want to enforce a provision that does little but drive good teachers from the profession? It makes no sense, but that is what is happening.

The rural, lower-wealth counties and inner-city schools can barely keep enough teachers on staff to meet their needs, yet NCLB, which purports to raise the qualifications of those who teach, discourages the ones they do have, forcing many fine teachers to rethink their personal career objectives.

Although NCLB is designed to raise the reading and writing levels of America's children and provide measurable means of testing those abilities, what it is really doing is forcing teachers to "teach to the test" with a whole new desperation. The Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, goals that schools are required to meet are often impossible, turning the process into a shell game played between school and program administrators.

Recently, Onslow County's latest AYP report card revealed Onslow did not do very well in its latest assessment. Overall, the number of schools meeting their AYP goals in the county declined.

What does that mean in terms of students actually learning something useful? How do parents make any sense of these numbers? They are the forgotten component of the NCLB Act.

In truth, the only provision of NCLB designed to benefit parents and students allows those at low-performing schools to move to other schools in the district.

No matter which candidate carries the day in November, it is hoped he will take seriously the business of teaching, limit Congress' input into education and, finally, kick the NCLB Act to the curb.

It's an expensive, complicated program that delivers little but red tape and bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, something the American people already have in abundance.

Money Saved from Rhee's School Closures to Open Charterized Catholic Schools

Back in January Chancellor Michelle Rhee argued for and got the closing of 23 DC Schools, based on the premise of saving taxpayers $23 million. Now it seems that Rhee will use $7.5 million of those saved dollars to bail out five Catholic schools in DC, which are now scheduled to open this Fall as "secular" charter schools.

No word yet about what their "charters" will be or how they entirely skipped the 12 to 15 month review process that is customary. No word either on how the application for funding just missed by four weeks the regular budget deadline, which, of course, would have put these questions on the table for debate. Is someone required to approve such takeovers, or is a note from the Chancellor enough? From WaPo:

The District will use a $7.5 million education reserve fund to pay for the seven former Catholic schools slated to reopen as secular charter schools next month, and it will be able to find more money if necessary, officials said this week.

The D.C. Council allocated $366 million in May for 63 charter schools as part of its fiscal 2009 budget. Financing for the Center City Public Charter Schools was omitted, officials said, because Center City's application was not approved by the charter school board until June 16.

The Catholic school conversions are unusual, they said, because most charters spend 12 to 15 months between approval and opening to find buildings and staff. Center City's seven campuses are ready to accept students. . . .

Chinese Corporate Communist Government Buys Silence from Grieving Parents

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

The Chinese Corporate Communist Government.

The Chinese Corporate Communist Government, who?

The Chinese Corporate Communist Government that wants to give you a check to buy your silence about its own criminal negligence and corruption that caused the earthquake to bury your child in a school made of sand.

From the NYTimes:

By EDWARD WONG

HANWANG, China — The official came for Yu Tingyun in his village one evening last week. He asked Mr. Yu to get into his car. He was clutching the contract and a pen.

Mr. Yu’s daughter had died in a cascade of concrete and bricks, one of at least 240 students at a high school here who lost their lives in the May 12 earthquake. Mr. Yu became a leader of grieving parents demanding to know if the school, like so many others, had crumbled because of poor construction.

The contract had been thrust in Mr. Yu’s face during a long police interrogation the day before. In exchange for his silence and for affirming that the ruling Communist Party “mobilized society to help us,” he would get a cash payment and a pension.

Mr. Yu had resisted then. This time, he took the pen.

“When I saw that most of the parents had signed it, I signed it myself,” Mr. Yu said softly. A wiry 42-year-old driver, he carries a framed portrait of his daughter, Yang, in his shoulder bag.

Local governments in southwest China’s quake-ravaged Sichuan Province have begun a coordinated campaign to buy the silence of angry parents whose children died during the earthquake, according to interviews with more than a dozen parents from four collapsed schools. Officials threaten that the parents will get nothing if they refuse to sign, the parents say.

Chinese officials had promised a new era of openness in the wake of the earthquake and in the months before the Olympic Games, which begin in August. But the pressure on parents is one sign that officials here are determined to create a facade of public harmony rather than undertake any real inquiry into accusations that corruption or negligence contributed to the high death toll in the quake.

Officials have come knocking on parents’ doors day and night. They are so intent on getting parents to comply that in one case, a mayor offered to pay the airfare of a mother who left the province so she could return to sign the contract, the mother said.

The payment amounts vary by school but are roughly the same. Parents in Hanwang, a river town at the foot of mist-shrouded mountains, said they were being offered the equivalent of $8,800 in cash and a per-parent pension of nearly $5,600.

Flush with tax revenues after two decades of double-digit economic growth, China has used its financial muscle to make Beijing and Shanghai into architectural showcases and to open diplomatic doors in developing nations. At times, the state also acts like a multinational corporation facing a product liability suit, offering money to people with grievances in hopes of defusing protests. Most people, the government assumes, ultimately put profit before principle. . . .

ETS Shows Serial Incompetence Abroad

Not all the gold-covered lavatory handles in its Princeton, NJ headquarters can bail ETS out of another fiasco that demonstrates their dominant cultural characteristics:

Polly Curtis
Saturday July 19, 2008
The Guardian 

Over the past month ETS Europe has not only been handling the biggest crisis in Sats history but also one of the toughest recruitment jobs in finding a new marking director. Senior people at every exam board have been approached. The post, which the company insisted was vacated for reasons entirely unrelated to the marking problems, is not yet filled.

Minutes of the Qualification and Curriculum Authority meeting when the decision was made to give ETS the £165m contract to process 9.5m papers this summer and for the next four years say they offered "best value for money". It has since transpired theirs was also the cheapest bid and there were only a handful of other contenders.

The Conservatives, who first warned ministers of the problems surrounding ETS in May, produced a dossier on the board's record. In 2002 software errors by ETS led to serious failures, including giving the wrong marks, in the graduate management admission test (GMAT).

The New York Times reported in 2004 that mismanagement by ETS led to over 40,000 teachers taking a flawed exam. Thousands were given the wrong marks and there was a shortage of teachers. ETS paid millions of dollars in compensation. . . .

Needed: Students to Pass Tests, Salary Negotiable

In defiance of the growing belief that the testing insanity can't get any crazier, Fresno Superintendent Larry Powell moves test talk into a whole new padded room.  He wants to pay students to pass the junk tests through a game of Name Your Incentive.  

Does Powell really believe that the students are failing because they are not trying hard enough? What kind of incentive would it take to get this guy's resignation?

By Norma Yuriar & Laura Fabian

Like any parent trying to motivate their kids to do better in school lawmakers believe they have come up with something that will encourage students to do better.

Larry Powell Superintendent of the Fresno County Office of Education said he supports legislation that would reward middle and high school students individually for excelling on standardized tests.

"It has good and bad as you can imagine.  I can just see an enterprising young man say 'tell you what, you want me to do better what else will you give me,' so you may end up with something like that," said Powell.

The Bill would leave it up to students to come up with ideas for an appropriate prize if they improve their test scores.  "I like the idea of the student part, where students can come up with an opportunity to say what kind of incentives can we put together that are non-monetary to help kids do better on STAR testing," said Powell.

But, critics like retired valley Principal Terry Allen said they are leery of the concept, "I feel this reward would be a false one, we are teaching kids to learn for a test, but not to learn for their own benefits," said Allen.

Fresno teacher Janet Fiorentino see it differently, "the concept is good," said Fiorentino, "I believe kids should be rewarded with some sort of rally or a dance."

6th Grader Donovan Judd could not agree more, "It would be pretty cool, it would motivate me more," said Judd.

The Genocide Olympics, Brought to You by Western Corporations Without Scruples

No amount of crimes against nature or humanity by a corrupt government against its own people or the rest of the world could now mute the roar of approval by the multinational corporations lined up at the trough to cash in on the upcoming Genocide Olympics.

Forgotten are the schools made of sand where thousands of children were buried from earthquakes, forgotten is the continuing history of support for African governments that allow genocide within their own countries, forgotten are the worker exploitation and slave labor to produce poisonous products to line the shelves of Walmarts around the world, forgotten are the children of Tianamen Square where tens of thousands were mowed down for their dreams of democracy, and forgotten are the tens of milliions of tons of pollutants spewed into the environment to produce the easy profits for international corporations and the oligarchs who own them.

So even th0ugh all the ads from Macdonald's, Coke, Verizon, Adidas, and the rest or the corporate sharks will be cheering on the Chinese people to win the medals, we may remain assured the billion-dollar Madison Avenue boosterism offers nothing more than a tissue of cover for the naked greed of those who will really take home the gold from the most polished exploitation on Earth.

The story in the NYTimes:

BEIJING — It is becoming increasingly clear which nation global corporations will be rooting for at this summer’s Olympics: China.

Or at least that’s what it looks like from advertisements here. McDonald’s is running a “Cheer for China” television ad. Nike ads feature China’s star hurdler, Liu Xiang, and other Chinese athletes besting foreign competitors. Earlier this year, Pepsi even painted its familiar blue cans red for a limited edition “Go Red for China” promotion.

The campaigns for Western companies are part of an advertising blitz the likes of which this ostensibly communist nation has never seen. Ads are papered over bus shelters, projected on giant outdoor television screens and plastered on billboards. Commercials even flicker at commuters as they zoom through subway tunnels.

China, already the world’s second-largest advertising market, after the United States, is a dream for consumer product companies. “For most international brands here, China is the growth market for the next 10 years,” said Jonathan Chajet, strategic director at Interbrand, which consults on brands.

A record 63 companies have become sponsors or partners of the Beijing Olympics. Olympic-related advertising in China could reach $4 billion to $6 billion this year, according to CSM, a Beijing marketing research firm. . . .

Charter Looting

As ideologues press on in their battle to replace public schools in urban areas with unregulated, though tax-supported, charter chain gangs for the poor, the opportunities for corruption and outright thievery increase. Here are details of the latest from Philadelphia, where freedom from oversight quickly turned to the opportunity to loot:

By Martha Woodall
Inquirer Staff Writer

The embattled board of the Philadelphia Academy Charter School last night released a scathing internal report alleging that the charter's founder and its former chief executive officer systematically looted the school for personal gain.

The report, compiled by a team of lawyers led by a former federal prosecutor, says more than $700,000 is missing from a school account and cites "substantial evidence of wrongdoing" by Brien N. Gardiner, a former public school principal who founded the popular charter in Northeast Philadelphia, and Kevin M. O'Shea, a former police officer who replaced Gardiner as CEO two years ago.

Gardiner's alleged "frauds" were complex and included what appears to have been a no-interest $70,000 loan to one of his other business entities, the report says.

O'Shea's misconduct, it says, was "no less destructive, as he systematically siphoned cash from virtually every aspect of [the school's] operations, even going so far as to misappropriate money raised by the Student Council and National Honor Society that was intended for the Marine Corps' Toys for Tots Program."

The 62-page report, by former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer and other attorneys at Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll L.L.P., also alleges that O'Shea's sister, Constance, coordinator of the school's elementary program, destroyed computer records in April at her brother's behest to keep investigators from getting them.

. . . .

Hockeimer's team found Gardiner had violated his duties to the charter to advance other business interests. By doing so, the report says, he jeopardized the school's ability to pay for capital projects and educational programs.

"Gardiner's conduct is particularly surprising and disappointing in light of the profound trust PACS' faculty, staff, parents and students placed in him," the report says.

Ballard Spahr investigators labeled O'Shea's allegedly fraudulent conduct "pervasive." Their report says they uncovered "substantial evidence" that he stole a large amount of lunch money at the high school, pocketed the $2 students paid to attend school without uniforms on Dress Down Days, kept the proceeds from the candy and soda machines at the school, and forced maintenance staff to cut his lawn and make repairs to the $1.4 million house he built in Beach Haven.

A former city police officer with a high school diploma, O'Shea earned $204,000 as the school's chief executive officer until he and Gardiner were fired in May.

The "largest abuse in monetary terms" detailed in the report stems from actions of the nonprofit that owns the Philadelphia Academy's high school building. The school has been paying nearly $67,000 a month in taxpayer money to rent the building from Philadelphia Academy Charter Development Corp., a nonprofit established by Gardiner that had been led by O'Shea's wife, Jamie. . . .

Retention Still Harms Students, Just As It Always Has

The gross immorality of student retention based on standardized test scores continues to spread, even though the vast compendium of research consistently points to the harm caused by such practices.  Here is the latest in a long line of research that points to what the test and punish crowd has known and ignored for years.  ht to Monty Neill for this link:

Five years after a state law required school districts to make third-graders who fail the reading FCAT repeat the year, questions remain about whether the strict rule that has affected tens of thousands of students is effective.

Soon after the law was enacted, the state trumpeted stories of parents initially upset by the retention who later were pleased. But a recent Miami-Dade study that followed the first group of retained students concluded that retention only improves student achievement initially.

''It appears now that the gains have essentially disappeared,'' the study states.

A similar Broward study that tracked the first group of retained students -- who just finished seventh grade -- also found that as they have grown up, their attendance rate in school has dropped and their suspension rate has risen.

State data show that for students who have repeated third grade -- despite the extra year in elementary school -- nearly half fail the reading test as fourth-graders.

Arizona State University Professor Mary Lee Smith studied Florida's law the year after it was enacted and has continued monitoring its effects. In 2004, her policy brief recommended the law be repealed.

Four years later, Smith's objections are the same.

'The research stretching over a 60-plus-year period has consistently demonstrated the same thing: that retention in grade does not improve performance in subsequent years' achievement and bears a strong relationship to dropping out of school later,'' Smith wrote in an e-mail to The Miami Herald. ``No other body or research is so strongly one-sided, yet policy makers and politicians point to it as a way to improve performance.''

She said many other strategies, including small class sizes, high quality preschools, good teachers, remediation on academic skills before and after school and tutoring are better than retention as long as they are not teaching to the test.

Policies like Florida's dot the country. In New York City, for the last four years, third-graders who score in the lowest of four levels on English and math tests have been required to repeat the grade unless they score higher after summer school or if teachers appeal. . . .

Weingarten's New Nonsense Rhetoric as AFT Chief

Randi Weingarten got national attention with her recent support for public school destruction by charter--and for her enthusiasm for teacher bonus pay based on test scores.  In kowtowing to the Gates and Broad agenda, she obviously built a network of insiders strong enough to deal her way to the top of the AFT.  Today she offered the rank and file a litany of pipe dreams that are confounded by the recent capitulations of principle that got her into her new position.  Here is a clip:

. . . .In a speech minutes later to the delegates gathered in Chicago, Ms. Weingarten criticized the No Child Left Behind law, President Bush’s signature domestic initiative, as “too badly broken to be fixed,” and outlined “a new vision of schools for the 21st century.”

“Can you imagine a federal law that promoted community schools — schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one roof all the services and activities they and their families need?” Ms. Weingarten asked in the speech.

“Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities and homework assistance,” she said. “And suppose the schools included child care and dental, medical and counseling clinics.” . . . .

See Randi's imagination soar.  Soar, soar, soar.  Imagine, imagine, imagine.  Let's just forget her most recent enthusiasm for the cheap charter school solution for the poor, with the test prep parrot curriculums and facilities that routinely do not have basics like libraries, gyms, or even cafeterias.  Imagine that!