August 2001

Pop quiz on privacy rights
The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether teachers can tell students to pass their homework, quiz sheets or spelling tests to a nearby classmate for scoring. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver last year ruled the age-old practice violates the federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, which bars public schools from releasing students' academic records without parental consent.

An Oklahoma mother filed the suit, saying her kids were embarassed to have classmates know their scores.

The case isn't just about litigation run amok, editorializes the Las Vegas Review-Journal: "Privacy is being used here as a mere smoke screen to advocate a cult of uniform mediocrity -- to assert that allowing some students to achieve and excel is itself an inequity, violating the 'right' of others to retain a high measure of self-esteem neither earned nor warranted." -- 8/29

Let the screen go black
Blacks' problem isn't the dearth of minorities working in TV or starring on network shows, writes Derrick Z. Jackson in a slashing Boston Globe column. The problem is that blacks average 76 hours a week in front of the tube, compared to 54 hours for other viewers.

The NAACP, which is complaining of "network racism" once again, is "the National Association for the Advancement of Comatose People," Jackson writes. "The NAACP's fight is a diversion and denial of a much more injurious truth. The boob tube has turned black folks into boobs."

Heavy TV viewing is linked to poor reading skills, Jackson says. A North Carolina study found students "who watched six hours or more television a day were a full year or more behind in classwork." Forty percent of black students said they watched that much compared to 16 percent of whites and Asians.

TV addiction is also a public health menace, Jackson charges. "Brain rot from toxic, stereotyped shows is bad enough, but African-Americans easily lead the nation in obesity, an obesity significantly tied to our time before the tube." -- 8/28

Sisterhood supports child killer
The National Organization of Women is now collecting a defense fund for Andrea Yates, who confessed to murdering her five children. Post-partum depression made her drown the kids, say members of the Andrea Pia Yates Support Coalition, which includes anti-death penalty groups.

"It gives us a platform for something that obviously needs education," said Deborah Bell, president of Texas NOW. "One of our feminist beliefs is to be there for other women."

What's the lesson NOW is trying to teach? That women aren't responsible for their actions? That childbirth leaves mothers powerless to control themselves? That the stereotype of the hysterical woman is true?

If NOW wants to be a sister to mothers suffering from postpartum depression, it won't suggest that they're one step from murdering their kids. -- 8/27

Do your homework
The average American high schooler spends five hours a week on homework, writes Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy, in USA Weekend. Compare that to 20 to 25 hours socializing with friends, 10 to 15 hours on extra-curricular activities and, for two-thirds of teen-agers, 15 to 20 hours a week in a paid job.

The current whine blames excess homework for destroying family life, writes Loveless. A recent book, "The End of Homework", claims a University of Michigan study found grade schoolers spend 134 minutes a day on homework. Actually, "researchers found that 3- to 12-year-olds study an average of 134 minutes per week, not per day."

Parents who care about their children's education will set priorities, Loveless writes. Homework should come first, not last. -- 8/27

Good reads
What happens when affluent parents try to change the local public school so it's good enough for their kids? The Aug. 23 Wall Street Journal ran a fascinating account (subscribers only) about a Los Angeles school set between hill-dwelling whites and apartment-dwelling Latino and Armenian immigrant neighborhoods. The white parents come off as arrogant, the principal and teachers as defensive.

Why can't Johnny read? Boys fall behind girls in reading and writing in elementary school, reports the Washington Times. Meanwhile girls have just about caught up in math and science.

Some experts told the Times: "Boys also have trouble relating to the fiction used in many reading lessons. While girls can envision themselves in make-believe worlds, boys generally relate better to books describing real things.

"William Pollack, a Harvard Medical School clinical psychologist and the author of 'Real Boys,' said boys also like books about quests, duty and honor. Unfortunately, he said, those often are too violent for schools. 'When we removed the violent books, we removed the books that kept boys interested,' he said."

One suggestion is to start boys in school a year later than girls, so they're more equal in maturity. This occurred to me years ago when I volunteered in my daughter's kindergarten class. But I'd also like to see girls and boys exposed to more books involving quests, duty and honor, even if they don't culminate in a big hug.

William Raspberry argues for teaching black children in standard English in his Aug. 20 column, drawing an analogy to the success of English immersion for Spanish-speaking students. -- 8/23

Where's Jefferson?
Californians will find Kenzaburo Oe on the state Education Department's list of recommended literature, writes Peter Schrag in the Sacramento Bee. They'll find 270 books in Spanish, 73 in Chinese and 31 in Vietnamese. But a search of the 2,700 titles won't turn up Dante, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Jefferson, Paine, Emerson or Bellow. There are three kiddie books about Eleanor Roosevelt, none on Teddy or Franklin D.

"What may be most troubling, however, is the omission of almost any of the great affirmative themes of American or Western history," writes Schrag. World War II titles focus on Japanese-American internment camps, the Holocaust and Hiroshima. There's little about the war itself, except for "Catch-22'' and a couple of Dunkirk books.

"Look under independence, and there's a biography of Gandhi, but nothing about Thomas Jefferson,'' Schrag writes. "Look under Washington and you'll find one out-of-print children's book called 'George Washington's Socks'. 'The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin' is on the list, and so are the writings of Chief Joseph, but under Jefferson or Tom Paine or John Paul Jones you'll find nothing at all." There are two books on cowboys, 13 on Indians.

I looked at biographies linked to the state's history/social science curriculum. Wilma Mankiller makes the list. But I spotted no presidents except for Lincoln and JFK and no military leaders except for Chief Joseph and Sitting Bull. There are two inventors: Alexander Graham Bell and Elijah McCoy, a black engineer credited -- incorrectly, according to The Textbook League -- with inventing drip lubrication of engines.

The list contains books considered political incorrect, such as 'Huckleberry Finn,' and suspect writers, such as Kipling, Schrag observes. It includes old-fashioned classics like 'Ivanhoe'. "But that makes the absence of what used to be regarded as the nation's mainstream stories and heroes -- soldiers, presidents, explorers, inventors, business and labor leaders -- and the corresponding absence of traditional themes even more deplorable. It's not that the list makers resisted those things; rather it seems that among many educators these days, as in a lot of other parts of our culture, their absence isn't being noticed at all."

"Edspeak'' is the target of Duke Helfand of the Los Angeles Times. I know my LEPs and FEPs from my ELLs, but was stumped by FIP, FAPE and the intriguing SLAPAT. That last one sounds like the sort of thing that would get a teacher in trouble but stands for Spanish Language Assessment Procedures Articulation Test. -- 8/22

Good news that isn't news
In a "Dear Friends" letter, Ron Unz comments on the non-news: State test scores are up once again for California students who aren't fluent in English. Unz's Proposition 227, which limited bilingual education, was supposed to be a disaster for non-English-speaking children.

Unz writes: "Nationally-normed percentile ranks for the benchmark second graders, the grade most affected by the change in educational curriculum, rose another three points each in reading and in math, over twice the gains made by their non-limited English classmates."

Why did the media ignore the story? "The success of English immersion has begun hardening into the new conventional wisdom, worthy of continued reporting but hardly major headlines."

The Los Angeles Times gave the switch to English just a brief mention: "Teachers and principals attribute the rising elementary school scores to a combination of factors, including the state's phasing out of bilingual education in favor of English instruction three years ago."

Principal Martha Trevino tells the Times, "Before, the children were floundering. They
couldn't speak English. Now they have a base." --8/21

Tough track
I always liked the tough, demanding teachers the best when I was in school. Most students do, however much they complain. I also loved tracking, which started in high school. After years of boredom, I was in classes that challenged me.

Toughness went out with the self-esteem movement. Tracking was attacked by a series of studies showing it hurts disadvantaged students, who get stuck with the least experienced teachers. Now, both practices are supported by two National Bureau of Economic Research studies reported in Business Week.

By analyzing report cards and objective test scores, researchers classified third- to fifth-grade teachers in Gainesville, Florida as easy or hard graders. Mind you, the tough teachers weren't all that tough: Only 65 percent of their A students scored at the A or B level on the test, which was based on state standards. But that compared to 28 percent of A students with an easy teacher.

"The study indicates that shifting to a class with high grading standards significantly improves learning,'' writes Gene Koretz. "And shifting from a tough teacher to an easy grader retards learning by a similar amount. The results hold up regardless of students' relative achievement levels and racial or economic backgrounds."

Saying previous studies of ability tracking suffered from "selection bias," UC-Davis researchers analyzed "how a national sample of comparable students in schools that track and don't track fared on math achievement tests as they progressed from the 8th to 10th grade. Their surprising findings: There's no evidence that tracking hurts disadvantaged and low-ability students, and strong signs that it often helps them."

One theory is that tracking attracts better, richer students, who attract more resources for the whole school. They probably raise expectations too. -- 8/17

Welfare reform works
Welfare reform's success gets no respect from the liberal media, argues Mickey Kaus, urging Jason DeParle, the New York Times welfare specialist, to read his paper's Aug. 12 story, "Two Parent Families Rise After Changes in Welfare."

"The proportion of poor American children living in households with two adults is on the rise,'' with the biggest change occurring among low-income blacks, Blaine Harden reports. "After a decade-long slide, the proportion of black children living with two married parents increased significantly from 1995 to 2000. An analysis of census figures shows a 4.1 percentage point jump, to 38.9 percent from 34.8 percent.''

Other good news "includes falling rates of crime and drug abuse, the greatest decline in child poverty, particularly black child poverty, since the 1960's, and sharp increases in employment among mothers who head families, especially those who have never been married. In the last decade, there has also been a steady decline in the teenage birth rate, with the steepest decline among black teenagers."

Despite predictions by opponents of welfare reform, there's been no increase in child abuse or neglect. "A Michigan study has shown that former welfare mothers with jobs are significantly less likely than mothers still on welfare to report domestic violence or homelessness."

Kaus hits DeParle and the Washington Post's Katherine Boo for their less than enthusiastic comments while speaking on a Brookings Institution panel, "Welfare Reform After Five Years." DeParle says going from welfare to work wasn't that big a deal in recipients' lives. Boo talks about the problems of finding quality day care.

I think DeParle and Boo are more positive about welfare reform than Kaus thinks they are. They're writing about people whose lives remain very difficult, even as they move from welfare into the working world. Boo, in particular, focuses on a critical challenge, raising kids as a single working parent.

However, Kaus is also right to point out that the problems of former welfare recipients need to be put in context. Raising kids as a single welfare parent doesn't work all that well either.

In his admittedly picky critique of the two-parent story, he writes: "It's not until the 17th paragraph, long after the jump to Page 24, that we learn 'something remarkable has been going on' in the ghettos. That's because, starting in Paragraph 4, Harden turns to the story of an ex-welfare mother in Milwaukee who got married but wound up homeless when her husband became a crack addict. (At the end of the piece, we're told the marriage has held up and the father is now training to be a forklift operator.) In another family, the father has a bipolar disorder and the mother has to work two jobs. What evidence is there that the problems of these families are widespread, or more widespread than they were before welfare reform?"

On the Brookings panel, the former welfare recipients say their lives have changed dramatically for the better, with child care their biggest concern. I liked the comments of Lou Ann Cataneo, now an employee of Marriott Financial Center: "And welfare to work reform is not really about just independence, it's not about getting off welfare, it's about competitive living, competitive salaries, advancing careers, it's not just about jobs. It's about living in the real world."--8/15

What students want
High school students think basic skills tests are a good idea, according to the Horatio Alger Association's annual survey. Some 52 percent say skills testing would be a big improvement, while another 28 percent say it would improve schools a little. Minority students are more likely to back basic skills testing than white students.

Almost all high schoolers believe they'll need a college degree. However most seem to think they'll make it without breaking a sweat. The majority -- 58 percent -- spend less than five hours a week on homework. Only 15 percent devote 11 or more hours a week to homework.

The association, which funds scholarships for Alger-like youths, threw in an offbeat question: If you could be rich, smart or beautiful, which one would you choose? Smart won in a landslide, with 66 percent, rich garnered 27 percent and only 5 percent opted for beauty. -- 8/13

Crying in the boardroom
It wasn't quite funny enough to be a parody. Was it a hoax? I'm talking about the Aug. 10 New York Times story, "Toughness Has Risks for Women Executives,'' about successful female execs in Silicon Valley being forced into training to teach them how to be tentative, demure and weepy?

"Bully Broads'' coaches women whose "no-nonsense ways intimidate subordinates, colleagues and, quite often, their bosses, who are almost invariably men." They've been told to get less tough if they want to keep rising in management.

"For women to succeed now, they must become ladies first, says the program's founder, Jean A. Hollands, who has coached hundreds of executives over the last 15 years. Ditch all that hardball stuff from the 80's — being assertive, standing firm — and learn to hold your tongue, stammer and couch what you say. Don't choke back tears if you start to cry at a meeting."

One woman in the monthly support group described her sins as "intolerance for incompetence'' and "having a level of passion for my job that scared people to death." Another had been told by her boss that she walked, talked and thought too fast. A third insisted she wasn't a bully; she was critiqued for gesturing too emphatically.

Hollands admits there's a double standard. A female exec is seen as intimidating, a male exec as dynamic. But woman will go farther, she counsels, if they accept reality.

Cry through your Power Point presentation and you'll get ahead . . . Is this reality? "Um'' your way to the top?

So far no word on a comparable program teaching successful black execs how to shuffle. -- 8/10

Store story
Maybe you think of Emile Zola as the "J'Accuse'' guy who defended Dreyfus, or the author of "Germinal'' (mine workers) or "Nana'' (prostitutes). At a hotel in France, I found an abandoned copy of Zola's "The Ladies' Paradise.'' It's the story of an entrepreneur who invents the department store in Paris in the mid-19th century, coming up with ideas such as: price tags, markdowns, highly publicized sales, commissions for sales clerks, splashy displays, returns, loss leaders, free balloons for the kiddies. The hero designs the store so it always looks crowded to stir excitement. He deliberately makes it confusing, so shoppers will forget what they came in for and have to walk past impulse buys. He makes his profit by keeping prices down and turning over merchandise quickly.

Zola throws in a so-so love story between the womanizing entrepreneur and a virtuous employee with a zest for marketing. But his real love affair is with the store that titillates women with bargains and seduces them with luxuries. The book has the most erotic description of a white sale ever written.

The store drives its small, old-fashioned competitors out of business, including the dingy fabric shop of the heroine's uncle. It destroys the umbrella maker, despite his hand-carved handles. Zola and his heroine accept that as inevitable. Zola is a dynamist, as Virginia Postrel would put it.

I recommend the book not as great literature but as a wonderfully vivid picture of the consumer and bourgeois revolution. If I taught marketing, it would be required reading. -- 8/10

Eco-happy
Why are environmentalists happy only when they're gloomy? The question arises from the Aug. 7 New York Times story on Bjorn Lomborg, author of an upcoming book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist.''

Lomborg, a Danish political scientist and statistician, is an oddball environmentalist because he's optimistic about the future. He argues that "the rate of human population growth is past its peak, that agriculture is sustainable and pollution is ebbing, that forests are not disappearing, that there is no wholesale destruction of plant and animal species and that even global warming is not as serious as commonly portrayed."

No, he's not a right-winger. He's a self-proclaimed "left-wing guy,'' a vegetarian and an ex-Greenpeacer who thinks exaggerating problems distorts priorities and leads to bad decisions.

The gloom-and-doom merchants can't refute Lomborg. They don't even try. Here's a quote from the story that boggled my mind:

"In its report for 2000, the Worldwatch Institute cited the dangers it had foreseen in 1984 — 'record rates of population growth, soaring oil prices, debilitating levels of international debt and extensive damage to forests from the new phenomenon of acid rain'— and lamented that 'we are about to enter a new century having solved few of these problems.'

But in his book, Dr. Lomborg cites figures from the United States Census Bureau, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Environment Agency to show that the rate of world population growth has actually been dropping sharply since 1964; the level of international debt decreased slightly from 1984 to 1999; the price of oil, adjusted for inflation, is half what it was in the early 1980's; and the sulfur emissions that generate acid rain (which has turned out to do little if any damage to forests, though some to lakes) have been cut substantially since 1984.

In an interview, the president of the Worldwatch Institute, Christopher Flavin, agreed that progress had been made in the four problems cited in the institute's 1984 report, but he said that had been mentioned in other institute reports. "If you read through our materials as a whole," Mr. Flavin said, 'many of these improvements are acknowledged'."

Lomborg says the much-quoted "fact" that 40,000 species are lost each year comes from an unsupported estimate from a 1979 article by an Oxford ecologist, Norman Myers. Interviewed by the Times, Myers confirms that, saying the number is "an illustration used to make his argument clear'' that he uses only when a political leader says he needs a number to sell the message.

Lomborg's book, published by Cambridge University Press, will be out in September. -- 8/7

Je suis back in the U.S.A.
How was your vacation in France, you ask? Beaucoup de fun. Highlights were: a cello concert at Sainte Chapelle, the narrow streets of St. Germain de Pres, the Impressionists at the Musee D'Orsay, eating at a Sengalese-French restaurant in Monmartre (called "Le Restaurant"), hiking past fields of sunflowers and vineyards in the Dordogne, with a chateau in the distance, the cave paintings at Font de Gaume and Lascaux II, canoeing on the Vezere, Dordogne and Tarn rivers, visiting the walled cities of the Luberon, especially the ochre-colored Rousillon, which was like being in a painting.

I remember fondly the French woman we asked for directions to our hotel in Aix-en-Provence. She was sure we'd never find it --the route was fantastically complex -- so she and her friend led us there. There was the wonderful chef at the Hotel Treille in Vezac and his tournedos of canard with cherry sauce. And the guy at the hotel on the last leg of our 24 kilometer walking route who told us we'd never make it if we ordered beer, filled up our water bottles and wished us "Bon Courage!" Also all the people we asked for directions who turned out to be Dutch. As far as I can tell, the entire population of the Netherlands is now in France.

I am now trying to get my mind on the great issues of the day, which are . . . Gary Condit? Well, in keeping with the French theme, check out Jonah Goldberg's entertaining and informative column on the Marie Antoinettes of Hollywood. -- 8/7