Shrimp and Grits

I am a couple of days late on this, but Kevin Drum’s site has a post up with the Washington Monthly’s take on the latest federal report on higher education.

When you look at the system as a whole, the numbers are disturbing — only 37% of students who begin at four-year colleges nationwide actually graduate in four years.

Now while I teach at a two-year college, I do not really find that number disturbing at all. To get a four year degree in four years requires that you be a full-time student the entire four years. College students are adults, and they are not compelled to be ful-time students. Some work part-time to help pay for college, and as a result may take a reduced course load. Some co-op, so that they have a better chance of landing a job after graduation. That means … longer than four years to get a degree.

While you may blame the colleges to some extent for this, there’s not a whole lot they can do about it, except to perhaps require less credit hours for graduation. (Some schools are doing exactly this - I got a newsletter from Clemson’s chemistry department the other day detailing how the curriculum was to be “streamlined” to reduce the number of credit hours required for a degree.

Extending the timeframe to six years only brings the rate up to 63%. For black and Latino students, it’s less than 50%.

While I agree that the percentage of minority students that don’t graduate is disturbing simply because it’s lower than the rest, you can clearly see that a lot of folks are extending their stay at college.

We have a similar issue at the two-year schools. Many of our students do not graduate with a two-year degree in two years. Of course, the vast majority of these students have jobs (many have full-time jobs), and cannot take full-time loads. Those that try to juggle full-time work and full-time student status are sometimes forced to let their studies slide. Is it useful to criticize the school in this situation? What can the school do about it?

Criticizing the way financial aid is given might be a useful place to look, though. Many students tell me they “have to be full time” for financial aid reasons.

Timothy Sandefur, the resident no-comment Libertarian at Panda’s Thumb, asks us Is School Choice the answer?, and links us to a mini-debate between Neal McCluskey of CATO and Matthew Yglesias on the issue of resolving the creation/evolution debate.

The simple answer to Sandefur’s question and McCluskey’s assertion is, obviously, no - vouchers would not solve the problem of kids getting a poor science education. Vouchers would merely force me and other taxpayers to foot the bill for deluding children with demonstrably incorrect pseudoscience.

Sure, vouchers could eventually end the complaining about what kids were being taught in public schools (by eliminating the public schools), but it would do little else other than shift the complaints onto other targets.

Colleges would (rightly) penalize students with with the kind of substandard education you get from the small, fundamentalist schools that stand to benefit the most from vouchers. And then these disadvantaged students would sue the colleges, et cetera. Problem most definitely … unsolved.

I mentioned in a previous post that, in my unvarnished opinion, the ACE curriculum was “bad pedagogy and bad science”. I have my reasons for saying this - not the least of which is the fact that I went, for several of my childhood years, to an ACE school.

Let me briefly describe life in the ACE school. The school I attended was a small school, and what passed for learning in that school was to sit in a desk facing a white wall. On the sides of the desk were red and blue dividers to prevent you from looking to the sides. The day consisted mainly of sitting in that little isolated desk and working through workbooks, called PACEs.

If you had questions or needed to take the test at the end of each workbook, you were to raise a flag (either an American or a Christian flag - depending on what you needed), and one of the “supervisors” would come by and attempt to help you. Help was often rather limited, as the supervisors weren’t necessarily experts in any particular area of the curriculum. The supervisors meant well, I suppose, but they were far more concerned with keeping an appearance of order than they were about scholarship.

If sitting at a desk most of the day working through bland workbooks and staring at a blue, a white, and a red wall sounds to you like a lot like an inquisitive child’s vision of hell …. that’s exactly how it felt to me. I would not wish this type of education on my worst enemy or his children. Thankfully, I was eventually sent to a more sane school after four years of this - but I’ve always felt that my four years at an ACE school stunted my intellectual growth. It takes a long time to deprogram yourself of all that nonsense …

At the risk of bringing on some nasty flashbacks to my ACE days, I’ve dug up some samples of the ACE curriculum - so you can judge for yourselves how awful this stuff is.

The lessons start off looking mostly harmless.

Here’s an early sample of Math, for first graders. Counting money is, of course, something you’d want kids to pick up. But the curriculum rapidly goes downhill from there.

Since I’m a teacher of science, I’m going to focus on the science part of the curriculum for now.

Here’s a page from first grade science that describes the taste buds. You’ll notice that the page is as much about thanking God for taste buds as it is about the taste buds themselves. Also notice that the kids are asked to fill in the blanks, with answers that are trivially easy to find in the preceding few paragraphs. While this might not be much of an issue in first grade, the entire curriculum is based on “read and regurgitate” - little if any critical thought is involved.

Here’s another page from first grade science. This page highlights one of the severe failings of the ACE curriculum - it’s more about making kids into fundamentalists than it is about educating kids. Can anyone tell me what this has to do with science, and why it is in the science workbook?

God made all things.
So, all things belong to Him.
All things tell us that God is good.
All things tell us that He is wise and kind.
All things we see tell us that God loves us.
He helps us all day and all night.
He will help us all the time.
God is wise, good, and kind.
The Bible tells us so.

This might be a fine Bible lesson (provided you don’t let the kids hear about Katrina or that tsunami in Asia that killed 200000+ just after Christmas), but it’s in the wrong place.

Let’s move on to third grade science. Here’s what passes for the history of the Earth in the ACE curriculum. The most obvious criticism of this material is that it isn’t science at all - it’s simply part of Genesis in simpler words.

Another criticism of this material is that, again, no thought is involved. For instance, the text says that

There is a band of air which God placed around the earth on the second day.

It then asks the kids to select the best completion to this sentence.

There is a (creation, sand, band) of air around the earth.

Whether you know the real answer or not, only one answer can fit! Lots of ACE questions are this way - even on their end-of-workbook tests. It’s like this at the higher levels, too.

If you have the stomach for it, continue reading the sample third grade science book: here, here, here, here, and here. You’ll find no science, of course. You’ll find only fundamentalism - in big print.

Moving on into the fourth grade, you’ll find that the science ACE is peddling doesn’t get any better.

We use measurement to compare one object with another.

If we want to check or measure our own lives, we compare ourselves only to God. We do not measure up to God because we are sinners.

The curriculum is short on science, and long on fundamentalism. And, like the other pages we’ve looked at, the ACE curriculum relies almost entirely on rote memorization. Science is not viewed as a process of discovery - it’s viewed as a laundry list of facts to memorize. Facts are important, but they’re only part of science.

One thing that I noticed while I was in the ACE school was that the later science PACEs seemed afraid of presenting science. The curriculum was careful to dismiss well-established scientific ideas as “what scientists believe” and cast doubt on established science that might not agree with the ACE authors’ take on the Bible. Take a look at this sample.

Have you ever wondered how many kinds of plants there are? Even scientists do not know for sure. They think there are about 350,000 varieties; however, no one but God knows exactly how many kinds of plants exist in the world.

Sounds innocent (for a religious school) so far, right? Read on, in the ninth grade ACE materials.

Most scientists classify man as a mammal in the phylum Chordata since he has characteristics similar to those of mammals. Man, however, is a unique being with characteristics that he alone possesses. For this reason, we will not classify man as a mammal. Man is not an animal - he is a unique being who was created in God’s image.

Obviously, the ACE curriculum doesn’t teach evolution - the theory that binds biology together. So biology is simply presented as a big dump of largely unrelated information. Much of ACE biology revolves around the classification of organisms. But ACE can’t even give the kids that without screwing it up with fundamentalism!

Finally, we come to tenth grade science. The site I’ve been pulling this material from doesn’t have much in the way of actual content from the science part of the curriculum at this grade level, but what they do provide supports the points I’ve made above. Just take a look at this tenth grade science quiz. For reference, in the tenth grade at the normal high school I went to after escaping from the ACE school, I was taking laboratory-based chemistry and biology courses. The poor ACE kids at that level sit in their cubicles and regurgitate stuff like this:

Special revelation ______________________.
A) reveals God in natural laws
B) is the Word of God
C) teaches man how to know God
D) reveals Who God is
E) B, C, and D
F) A, B, and C
G) all the above

It goes without saying that special revelation is not a scientific concept at all, and has no place in a decent science curriculum. If you click the link above, you can see that the other questions on the page are worded in such a way as to overstate the uncertainties in science. While it’s true that in science all knowledge is provisional, this point isn’t what the ACE curriculum tries to drive home. The ACE point is, plainly put, don’t trust science.

In summary, here’s why i think the ACE curriculum should be put “in the hole”.

• It relies on rote memorization - and only rote memorization - in most areas except some parts of math.
• The assessments are simplistic and don’t involve any sort of critical thought.
• The content is so steeped in fundamentalism that important topics are either left out or distorted. This is especially apparent in science, where the curriculum spends much of its time on theology instead of science.

I’ve heard it said that spending money on public education is “throwing money at the problem” (as if the solution to an aging bus fleet is to spend less money on buses). I generally do not agree with that assertion, because it’s pretty obvious that a lot of the problems facing our public schools are connected to funding. Education isn’t cheap!

Having said that, there does seem to be one area where South Carolina seems to be “throwing money at the problem” - charter schools. Have a look at this Greenville News article about Restoring the Minds Math and Business Academy, one of South Carolina’s less-than-successful charter schools.

One-third of the 43 groups in the state that have received grants of $20,000 to plan one of these publicly funded independent schools never opened, costing taxpayers at least $280,000, according to the state Department of Education.

Now that’s throwing money at a problem. What have we gotten for our $280,000? We could have gotten buses or teachers. But we didn’t.

But let’s look at one of the charter schools that did open - Restoring the Minds Math and Business Academy.

Some charter schools that do open, such as Restoring the Minds Math and Business Academy, draw from a $200,000 start-up grant but go out of business before they finish a school year.

That giant flushing sound you just heard was your tax money, which could have gone for for more buses and more quality teachers, going down the toilet.

This particular charter school was run by Martha Evans, pastor of Resurrected Treasure Ministries. This church also runs a private school using the ACE curriculum, a holy-roller curriculum that’s a combination of bad pedagogy and bad science.

Why did their charter school close? Their charter was revoked for many reasons, according to the the Greenville county school board. They accuse the school of

(1) Material violations of the conditions, standards, and procedures provided for in the charter, as demonstrated by these failures:

• Failure to operate according to a year-round calendar
• Failure to provide single-gender classes
• Failure to utilize school uniforms
• Failure to comply with State curriculum standards
• Failure to comply with provisions for special education teacher
• Failure to follow employee grievance and termination procedures
• Failure to follow student discipline procedures
• Failure to implement innovative ideas, techniques, and methodologies
• Failure to implement interdisciplinary learning

(2) Failure to meet or make reasonable progress toward pupil achievement standards identified in the charter application, as demonstrated by the following:

• Failure to comply with State curriculum standards
• Failure to assess and implement individualized academic plans

(3) Failure to meet generally accepted standards of fiscal management, as demonstrated by the following issues:

• Failure to maintain records of financial transactions or receipts of bills paid
• Failure to comply with routine procedures and standards for compensating employees
• Inflation of enrollment numbers
• Failure to comply with SASI reporting procedures
• Failure to secure payment for out-of-district students

(4) Violations of provisions of the law from which the charter school was not specifically exempted, as demonstrated by the following:

• Failure to submit proper reports, conduct manifestation determinations, handle discipline, comply with IEP’s, provide compensatory education, and provide instruction from a qualified teacher in violation of IDEA, section 504, and the ADA
• Failure to employ certified teachers for at least 75% of the school’s teaching staff in violation of section 59-40-50(B)(5) of the South Carolina Code
• Failure to test and provide instruction to students with limited English language proficiency in violation of the fourteenth amendment, title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974
• Failure to comply with audit procedures and requirements in violation of section 59-40-50(B)(3) of the South Carolina Code
• Failure to comply with student attendance requirements in violation of section 59-40-50 (B)(2) of the South Carolina Code

I’ve highlighted a few things above. It looks like the school already had corruption problems (shady handling of funds and inflation of enrollment numbers) and quality problems (lack of certified teachers and substandard curriculum). This is what we’re pulling money away from our public schools to fund?

Something to think about …

That report from the Department of Education turns out to be pretty interesting - especially when you look at a few comparisons between public schools and private schools.

One interesting point is the fraction of students in the public schools with either learning disablilites (LD) of some kind or who are learning English as a second language (ELL). These students are more difficult to teach (in terms of time and money) than a non-disabled student who is from an English-speaking home. The data below was for fourth grade reading, but the percentages are similar for the other groups the study examined.

So the next time someone says that private schools seem to have a lower average cost per student (and they must therefore be running much more efficiently as a result), remember that they’re educating different students. They simply don’t take the more costly students!

Here in South Carolina, we’ve got a bunch of small private fundamentalist religious schools. The Department of Education report breaks these apart from private schools in general in a few places. Here’s the money quote:

For math scores,

the initial difference between Conservative Christian schools and all public schools was substantially smaller (5.1 points) and not significant. The average difference in adjusted school means between Conservative Christian schools and all public schools was -7.6 points (i.e., a higher average school mean for public schools) and was significantly different from zero.

In other words, fundamentalist schools don’t do a significantly better job at educating students in math even if you don’t recognize the fact that they don’t have as many LD/ELL students. When you do account for student factors, you see that these fundamentalist schools do demonstrably worse than the public schools.

So why is it that we want vouchers here in South Carolina, again?

There’s a new Senate bill generating some buzz on the news: S.3682, sponsored by Alexander Lamar from TN (search for it at thomas.loc.gov or try clicking here). The bill looks like it’ll provide vouchers for “low-income” kids to go to private schools - presumably on the basis that transferring poor kids from public school to private school will help them do better.

This premise appears to be flawed. The National Center for Education Statistics has released a report that says sometihng like this. While private schools appear at first glance to produce students who score better on assessments of reading and math than public school students, this difference disappears (and even reverses in some cases), when differences among ethnicity, family income, etc. are taken into account. In other words, it’s not that private schools are necessarily better at educating, it’s that they can and do select their own students.

I fail to see the great need to funnel students out of public schools (which are accountable on some level to taxpayers) to private schools (which are largely unaccountable to taxpayers), when it does not appear that the private schools will do any better a job at educating these students than the public schools do.

But even if you accept that school vouchers are a good idea, if you are into quality science education this little provision in S.3682 should give you a bit of indigestion. While schools

participating in a project under this Act shall not discriminate against an individual participant in, or an individual applicant to participate in, the project on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin

, all bets seem to be off if the school is a religious school. In particular,

if a school [...] receives funds made available under this Act for an eligible student as a result of a choice made by the student’s parent, the receipt of the funds shall not, consistent with the first amendment of the Constitution–

(A) necessitate any change in the school’s teaching mission;

. So, while public schools are required (for good reason) to teach accepted science, the fundamentalist religious schools can slurp up those sweet, sweet taxpayer dollars while teaching kids nonsense like creation science on religious grounds.

(Edited - fixed thomas link and corrected bill number)

I spent the afternoon yesterday at a meeting that included several teachers from our local high schools. It seems we’re trying to align the curriculum at the high school to better prepare students for entering our two-year programs. I didn’t hear this at the meeting, but talking to these teachers made me a bit more receptive to something a friend forwarded me today:

School Answering Machine
Hello…You have reached [...] High School.

• To lie about why your child is absent, press 1
• To make excuses for why your child did not do his work, press 2
• To complain about what we do, press 3
• To swear at staff members, press 4
• To ask why you didn’t get info that was already enclosed in your newsletter and several flyers mailed to you, press 5
• If you want us to raise your child, press 6
• If you want to reach out and touch, slap, or hit someone, press 7
• To request another teacher, for the third time this year, press 8
• To complain about bus transportation, press 9
• To complain about school lunches, press 0

If you realize that this is the real world and your child must be accountable and responsible for his/her own behavior, classwork, homework, and it’s not the teacher’s fault for your child’s lack of effort, hang up and have a nice day.

For those of you who are used to having your students stagger in with a hangover after a weekend beer binge, here’s some good news!

Nearly three quarters, or 73 percent, of 1,200 students surveyed said iPods were “in” — more than any other item in a list that also included text messaging, bar hopping and downloading music.

They’ll still stagger in drunk, but they’ll also have the earphones of their iPod stuffed into their ears!

But hey - maybe they’ll at least be listening to someone’s class…

It’s that time of year again - time for college faculty to attempt to line up in a straight line.

Faculty demonstrate scatter in linear curve fit

It was also time for severe thunderstorms to give us, for the first time in my years here, a cellphone-lighted graduation ceremony. (I’d have said a “candlelight ceremony”, but that would be so 20^th century!)

It was a dark and stormy night …

But in all seriousness, this is the day we faculty members work for - they day our graduates go out and show the rsst of the world that they learned something - and are better people for their time here at our school.

Marching to the stage

Congratulations 2006 graduates! We’re proud of you!

Warning - rant coming up!

Occasionally, at the end of the semester, I will get e-mails like this:

I just looked up the grade and saw that I had a “D”. I would like to talk with you face to face and see if there is anything that I can do to get a “C”. Please let me know.

As an instructor, this is probably one of the most annoying kinds of e-mails I ever receive. It’s more annoying than finding out you have a 7:30 AM meeting on the same day you have a night class that meets until 11 PM. It’s more annoying than the bazillion e-mails generated by my blog software when a spambot hits my filters - et cetera.

Why are these sorts of e-mails so annoying? Look at what the student it actually saying. The student isn’t saying that I made an error calculating grades or anything like that. The student knows full well that (s)he earned a “D”, and would like me to just, well, “give” out a grade that wasn’t earned - to certify that a student has certain knowledge when I know (s)he doesn’t.

That’s insulting, because it implies that the student thinks that I am dishonest enough to simply change a student’s grade because they whine loudly enough.

If you’re a student reading this, let me clue you in - most of us instructor types value our integrity. We will do our best to help you earn a good grade in our courses. We will sit with you in our offices or in the lab and help you wrap your head around the course material. Many of us offer nearly 24-hour-a-day access via e-mail, if you need help outside of school hours. At the end of the term, we will record a grade that is in line with your mastery of the course content. If you do “D” work, you’ll get a “D”. If you do “A” work, you’ll get an “A”. Very simple. if we screw up calculating your grade, we’ll correct it - but we won’t just “give you a C” if you flunked. So don’t ask.

This concludes the rant.