April 2001

No drones
To research David Brooks' "Organization Kid'' hypothesis, readjacobs.com sent its daughter Allison on a spring break tour of ruling class breeding grounds: Harvard, Tufts, Dartmouth, Wesleyan and Princeton. Allison, who goes to UCLA, agrees with Brooks' basic point: Elite college students have little interest in overthrowing the system. They're pretty darned content. Brooks' satire of the hyper-enriched childhood also rang true. She loved the "Millenials Rising" quote: "Ironically, where young Boomers once turned to drugs to prompt impulses and think outside the box, today they turn to drugs to suppress their kids' impulses and keep their behavior inside the box . . . Nowadays, Dennis the Menace would be on Ritalin, Charlie Brown on Prozac.''

However, her Princeton friends tell her Brooks got the social life wrong by talking to professor-recommended drones. The average undergrad isn't that eager an academic beaver.

Brad Simmons, a Princeton sophomore, agrees that 98 percent of students don't fit Brooks' studyaholic stereotype. Nobody sets dates to chat with friends. And those who complain they don't have time to read the newspaper seem to find time to "go out, play pool, watch movies, sit around do nothng, etc. Simmons has a sensible theory on how Brooks got his quotes:

"I can only imagine the sorts of questions he would ask these 'organization kids' during their interviews. Perhaps: 'You kids were recommended as top Princeton students by your professors, students willing to go the extra mile to learn. Does this process leave you with much time to do other things?' If someone asked me that, I imagine my ego would be sufficiently boosted to make me say whatever the interviewer wanted. Add to this the (generally true) stereotype that Princeton students are excellent at sounding much more intelligent/aware than they truly are, and you have a recipe for disaster."

Of course, Simmons and two Princeton friends have founded StudentDiscourse.com, a web site for news analysis and commentary by students. Animal House it isn't. -- 4/2

It's the poverty, stupid
They were called "crack babies." They were declared unteachable, uncontrollable, unadoptable. In a 1988 Washington Post column, Charles Krauthammer described cocaine-exposed babies as a "a bio-underclass, a generation of physically damaged cocaine babies whose biological inferiority is stamped at birth."

Not true, says a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Maternal cocaine use is only one of many risk factors that affect a baby's development before and after birth. Problems blamed on cocaine exposure "can be explained in whole or in part by other factors, including prenatal exposure to tobacco, marijuana, or alcohol, and the quality of the child's environment,'' researchers wrote in JAMA.

Ten years ago, (check the San Jose Mercury News archives for July 27 and 28, 1991), I talked to researchers who'd reached the same conclusions: Women who use crack also use other drugs, including alcholic and nicotine. They don't eat their veggies; they don't get prenatal care. And they make terrible mothers. Their kids may be cycle between relatives and foster homes while mom tries to get her act together. Compared to children from stable middle-class homes, crack users' children do poorly. Compared to the children of poor, single mothers who didn't use cocaine, the crack kids look . . . pretty much the same.

My attack on the crack baby myth generated little response. People wanted to believe it, so they did. They kept on believing it. My clip files include reports on research in 1992 ("New diagnosis for cocaine exposed infants"), 1996 ("Studies suggest little effect from prenatal cocaine exposure"), 1997 ("Slow development in 'crack babies' may be caused by conditions of urban poverty, says new study"), 1999 ("Poverty impacts mental development of children exposed to cocaine before birth"). The new study analyzed 36 previous studies. The Washington Post summarized:

"As a generality, the studies found that when a woman used alcohol and tobacco, or alcohol and marijuana, cocaine use had little or no "incremental impact" on her child's risk of problems after birth. Specifically, cocaine had no lasting effect on physical growth; it generally did not affect the cognitive ability of infants or young children; it did not affect language skills (although few studies looked at this question); and a deleterious effect on motor skills that some researchers had found seemed not to extend beyond the first six months of life.''

While several studies concluded cocaine-exposed children show "less joy, sadness or interest in learning tasks," overall, "children of cocaine-using mothers have no clear-cut behavioral problems," compared to children from similarly disadvantaged homes where mom didn't use crack.

All this is both encouraging and sad: Crack kids aren't doomed because Mom used crack. They're doomed because Mom's poor, Dad's gone and all the other ills of urban poverty. They're not born to lose. But they usually do. -- 4/6

Da to SATs
Russia will pilot SAT-like tests to improve access to university admissions, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. Currently, each university gives its own test. Grading is subjective, and corruption is common. Higher education opportunities "are tilted drastically in favor of students from families that are well-off,'' education minister Vladimir M. Filippov told the Chronicle.

The test will be piloted in four republics, then rolled out nationwide in 2004. Bonus question: Which of these is not the name of a Russian Republic: Chuvash, Marii El, Mordoviya, Yakutiya and Borschtiya? -- 4/6

Surprise! Experts are wrong
All the experts thought welfare reform would boost child neglect and abuse caseloads. It didn't happen, concluded an Urban Institute study: "Allegations and substantiated reports of abuse and neglect have been stable or declining since welfare reform was implemented, continuing the trend in caseloads prior to welfare reform."

In the April 9 New Yorker, Katherine Boo writes about a former welfare mother who's now a D.C. police officer struggling to support her three children, to get them into decent schools, to keep her daughter away from predatory boys, to keep going on very little sleep. I'd provide the link, but I can't figure out how to find anything on the New Yorker's site. -- 4/9

Safety first
Goal: No defects

Strategy 1: Test random samples for defects.

Strategy 2: Require suppliers to use a process that eliminates the risk of defects.

American manufacturers learned from the Japanese, who learned from American Edward Deming, that the way to improve quality is to focus on improving the process, not on inspecting for mistakes.

If we want a quality food supply -- salmonella-free beef for school lunches, for example -- we won't get it by testing for salmonella in a fraction of the beef sold for kids' consumption. We'll get it by requiring that meat be irradiated, killing salmonella and other dangers. Of course, that would mean putting the safety of children first, ignoring the fears of the ignorant.

The Agriculture Department's proposal to rely on on a Deming-style approach to meat safety died a quick death. Irradiation is "controversial,'' though there's no controversy among people who know how it works. The "no testing'' people were painted as the ones who didn't care about kids. Actually it's the "no irradiation'' people who are putting kids at risk.

And what about adults? The nervous nellies -- always nervous about the wrong things -- are denying us the chance to buy germ-free food. -- 4/9

Poor schools subsidize rich schools
There’s a way to help inner-city schools hire quality teachers, writes Marguerite Roza in EdWeek and the Christian Science Monitor. Ban an accounting trick called salary averaging.

Currently, most districts pretend that they’re spending the same amount per teacher in high-poverty schools as in low-poverty schools. It ain’t so. Experienced teachers use their seniority rights to gravitate to schools where it's easier to teach; inner-city schools are stuck with the least experienced, least qualified teachers. Districts end up spending far more per student at the least-needy schools.

Seattle claims to spend $41,000 per teacher in each school, writes Roza. However, its popular schools are staffed with top-scale teachers, who make $56,000 with 15 years’ experience and a master’s, while its high-poverty, high-minority schools end up with rookie teachers, who start at $28,000.

According to a study by the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, “Personnel funds designated for schools with larger numbers of poor and minority students— schools that consistently operate with less expensive teachers—are essentially used to pay for the costly teachers in the high-rent north end. Schools like M. L. King Elementary that can't attract the most expensive teachers are cheated out of about $300,000 per year—resources that could be going toward luring better teachers.’’

If each school had to pay the real salaries of its teachers, low-poverty schools wouldn’t be able to afford all those experienced, high-scale teachers. High-poverty schools would be able to hire more experienced staffs, using federal Title I money as incentives.

Roza proposes that the new Title I bill forbid salary averaging for federal funds. Districts really should be shamed into ending it for all funds. Equalizing teacher quality could make a real difference in student achievement. -- 4/17

Good reads
Andrew Sullivan wonders whether "the brutal Darwinianism of shows like 'The Weakest Link,' and 'Survivor,' are partly ways in which our popular culture balances out the prevailing p.c. notions that winning is somehow suspect, that self-esteem matters more than academic achievement, that every Harvard student deserves an A or an A-."

Interesting point. But the individual achiever remains suspect. All these shows are about functioning well in a group. No Crusoes need apply.

Mickey Kaus, a fan of welfare reform, points out the good news on the teen birth rate: It's down to the lowest level in 60 years, 49.6 for every 1,000 girls 15 to 19 years old. (In the old days, teen moms were much more likely to be married.) In particular, the black teen birth rate dropped by 30 percent in the '90s. Out-of-wedlock births are down for teens as well, says a government study. Less sex, more contraception is the answer, researchers say.

When adults are factored in, the unwed birth rate is down slightly for blacks -- though still very high -- and up a bit for whites and Hispanics.

Earlier, Kaus heralds the comeback of the traditional Mom-and-Pop family: The percentage of children living in families consisting of a mother, father and their biological children rose from 51 percent in 1991 to 56 percent in 1996, says the Census Bureau. In addition, more stepparents, grandparents and adoptive parents are raising children. -- 4/18

Negative action
Female and minority students do worse on tests if they believe they've "benefited" from gender or race preferences. That's the conclusion of research by Ryan Brown, now a University of Oklahoma psychology professor, as described by Richard Morin.

In one study, female students were told different stories about why they'd been chosen as "team leader" in a future research project. One group thought they'd been chosen due to merit, another group thought it was a coin toss and the third group thought that all women who signed up had been chosen. Then all were given 15 problem-solving questions from the Graduate Record Exam.

"The women who had been told they were selected as leaders solely because they were women did significantly worse in answering the questions than the women who had been designated leaders on the basis of merit," writes Morin. The merit group edged out the coin-tossers.

In another study, black and Latino students earned lower grades at the University of Texas than comparable whites and Asians -- if they believed they'd been admitted on the basis of race or ethnicity. Researchers controlled for SAT scores and other variables that might have influenced performance.

Finally, Brown and a colleague wondered whether Hispanic high school students were psyched out by Massachusetts' achievement tests, known as MCAS, on which minority students are expected to do poorly. One group took an unidentified test; the other took the same test, labeled as "MCAS Version 2." Mentioning MCAS lowered Hispanic scores by 20 percent; it had no effect on white students' scores. -- 4/19

First grade lite
"First-grade teachers across the country spend very little time actually teaching academic skills, instead focusing on classroom management," according to a study for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development reported in the April 20 Los Angeles Times.

Researchers observed 827 first-grade classrooms in 26 states. They found "no uniform standard for what a proper first-grade instructional program should be." Many teachers neglected math, science and social studies to focus on reading. Class size did not affect how much teaching went on.

This could be the secret of the success of scripted programs, such as "Success for All,'' which requires elementary schools to set aside 90 minutes a day for reading and tells teachers how to teach at each skill level. Teachers teach a clearly defined program for a substantial amount of time. Kids learn.

Fewer teachers are shortchanging math these days, thanks to the much-maligned state tests. But, in most states, science and social studies aren't tested in elementary school. -- 4/23
     

Good reads
Ben Affleck campaigned doggedly for Al Gore and Hillary Rodham Clinton. But he didn't vote for them, reports The Smoking Gun. He didn't vote. Affleck's publicist blamed a "snafu'' at the New York City polling place. The apparent problem: Affleck never registered to vote in New York. His Los Angeles registration is suspended: After voting in 1992, when he was 20, he never showed up again at the polls and didn't re-register when he moved from his '92 address.

Affleck said recently he's thinking of a political career -- once he's independently wealthy. He's into "oration,'' he said. Just remember, Ben: Every vote counts. If it's cast.

My darkest suspicions about the black-bereted, self-esteeming "Army of One'' are confirmed by Matt Labash in an April 30 Weekly Standard piece headlined "The New Army: Be whatever you want to be.'' -- 4/25

Defining poverty up
Wisconsin's pioneering welfare-to-work program is an amazing success -- when judged by reasonable standards, writes Jay Hein of the Hudson Institute. Conventional wisdom said one third of adults on welfare were incapable of working, even with support. "Nine in ten families on welfare in the Badger State fifteen years ago are now free of public assistance."

Press coverage of a new study of "Wisconsin Works,'' stressed that half of ex-welfare families remain below the poverty level. Hein points out they're doing a lot better than they were on welfare, and a lot better than anyone predicted with average income of almost $12,000 -- more than $16,000 with state and federal earned income credits. "This glass half full is quite satisfying considering that absolutely zero of these families were above the poverty threshold when receiving a welfare check. In the span of one year, the majority members of the most entrenched welfare population group in the nation exchanged a $673 monthly W-2 check for more than $1,000 per month in earned income." -- 4/27

SAT II
SAT scores predict college grades throughout all four years of college and correlate with graduation rates, according to a new study, which analyzed data from 1,700 previous studies. "Our results clearly indicate that the SAT predicts important criteria both early and late in college," concluded University of Minnesota researchers, as reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Test-bashers, who argue that SAT scores correlate only with freshman grades, dismiss the results because the College Board funded the study. -- 4/28