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7 September, 2009

Students Borrow More Than Ever for College

Heavy Debt Loads Mean Many Young People Can't Live Life They Expected

Students are borrowing dramatically more to pay for college, accelerating a trend that has wide-ranging implications for a generation of young people.

New numbers from the U.S. Education Department show that federal student-loan disbursementsthe total amount borrowed by students and received by schoolsin the 2008-09 academic year grew about 25% over the previous year, to $75.1 billion. The amount of money students borrow has long been on the rise. But last year far surpassed past increases, which ranged from as low as 1.7% in the 1998-99 school year to almost 17% in 1994-95, according to figures used in President Barack Obama's proposed 2010 budget.

The sharp growth is "definitely above expectations," says Robert Shireman, deputy undersecretary of the Education Department. "But we're also in an economic situation that nobody predicted." The eye-opening increase in borrowing is largely due to the dire economic environment, which is causing more people to seek federal loans, he says.

The new numbers highlight how debt has become commonplace in paying for higher education. Today, two-thirds of college students borrow to pay for college, and their average debt load is $23,186 by the time they graduate, according to an analysis of the government's National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, conducted by financial-aid expert Mark Kantrowitz. Only a dozen years earlier, according to the study, 58% of students borrowed to pay for college, and the average amount borrowed was $13,172.

Some options for graduates having trouble making payments on their federal student loans:

* Borrowers can request a deferral or forbearance, which suspends payments temporarily

* The extended-payment option makes monthly payments smaller by increasing the loan term

* Income-based repayment means the borrower pays up to 15% of discretionary income each month

The ripple effects for today's heavily indebted young people are becoming palpable. A growing body of research suggests that tough loan payments are affecting major life decisions by recent graduates, forcing them to put off traditional milestonesfrom buying a first home to even marriage and having children.

Also, the rising levels of borrowing may ironically be contributing to the accelerating cost of college, say some college-finance experts. Loans can give colleges an artificial sense of a family's ability to pay tuition. To some extent, that false sense of security gets built into the assumptions schools make when setting prices, say experts. The idea is that as prices rise, families borrow more and more, spurring prices to rise further, which in turn requires more borrowing. Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, says this phenomenon is playing a role in why tuition grows at about twice the rate of inflation. "Instead of imposing tougher choices" on college costs, he says, it's "easier to raise prices...because this additional loan amount is made available."

These and other impacts are likely to continue to spiral for future generations of tuition payers, college finance experts say. It is unclear whether we have seen the worst of it. Mr. Kantrowitz predicts the rate of increase will slow to 12% for the 2009-10 school year due mainly to what he expects to be a rebounding economy. On the other hand, Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com, says he thinks unemployment rates will be at least as high as they are now, and housing prices will fall further, making it difficult for families to borrow against home equity.

"Growth in student lending can remain very strong, at least through the next school year," Mr. Zandi predicts.

The total borrowing limit for dependent undergraduates who take out federal Stafford loansthe most popular federal aid programgrew to $31,000 this past school year from $23,000. Raised limits in federal loans may have siphoned some borrowing away from riskierand costlierprivate loans, which are now harder to get due to the retrenchment of that business. The move away from these risky loans may be one bright spot in an otherwise frenzied student credit environment, Mr. Kantrowitz says.

Still, students cringe when they think of what they will owe by the time they graduate. Kordi Solo, a senior majoring in journalism at Central Michigan University, expects to owe about $60,000 in student loans by the time she graduates in the spring. She had hoped to owe much less, but her father, a construction worker, has been out of work since last fall. She worries about the ramifications that debt will have on her futurewhether it is being able to afford health insurance or qualifying for future loans.

Zack Leshetz, a 30-year-old lawyer in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has $175,000 in student loans from his seven years in college and law school. Lately he has had his eye on the real-estate market. "Everyone says that it's a great time to buy a house," he says. But that is not an option right now, he says, thanks to $800 a month in paymentsand another chunk of student loans in forbearance, which means payments are halted while interest accrues. "I find myself living paycheck to paycheck," he says.

He has also been engaged since March, but has held off on marriage. "There's no way I can pay for a dream wedding, or even just a regular wedding," Mr. Leshetz says. "I feel like I'm putting my entire life on hold."

"There are no guarantees about how easily you'll be able to pay off your student loans," says Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access and Success.

These students' experiences are mirrored in research by Mathew Greenwald & Associates Inc. for investment-management firm AllianceBernstein LP. In a 2006 survey of 1,508 graduates under age 35, 39% of college graduates say it will take them more than 10 years to pay off their household's education-related debt. The survey says that this has caused a delay in certain key "rites of passage" associated with adulthood. Forty-four percent of respondents said they delayed buying a house because of their student loans, while 28% delayed having children.

"Loans have gone from being the exception to being the norm for most students," says Mr. Nassirian. He laments that, rather than fixing the problem of sticker price, policy makers typically tweak student-aid programs to make it easier for students and families to continue to borrow more.

Attacking the problem of cost is thorny because it is politically difficult to get all the interested parties -- which include federal and state governments, foundations and private institutionsto agree. "There are so many stakeholders, different explanations at different schools as to what's happening with cost, that it becomes politically dicey," says Christine Lindstrom, higher-education program director for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, which advocates for consumers. Also, colleges can be big employers in congressional districts, making it challenging for politicians who represent them to also take them on. "You're not going to win friends if you're alienating them," she says.

Some Republicans made attempts at controlling tuition increases when they held the majority in Congress. Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon of California championed legislation in 2003 that would have penalized colleges for raising tuition too much by taking away federal subsidies. Though the bill died, he plans to continue pursuing the issue in the upcoming Congress, a spokeswoman says.

Some recent graduates say they wish they had known more about the consequences of debt before taking it on. Lillian Russell graduated from law school at the University of Pittsburgh last year with $181,000 in debt from her seven years in school. She has spent much of the past year looking for work. In recent weeks, she found a job clerking at a small law office. While she settles into her job, she has deferred payments on most of her federal loans, though interest continues to accrue.

"I wish I had considered the long-term impacts of what I was getting into," Ms. Russell says. When she entered school, "the idea was I'd take out the loans, get a job, and pay it back," she says.

It seemed straightforward. But as the economy has soured, "I feel like it's shifted a lot of my life goals," says Ms. Russell, from buying a house to starting a family. "I'm really concerned about handling this obligation while taking on new ones."

SOURCE




Indianapolis Tests Out Education Reform

A confluence of factors favors school choicefor now

The classrooms were full and bustling with activity at Valley Mills Elementary School on the city's southwest side one recent rain-soaked morning. Children smiled and raised their hands, eager to answer questions, and to tell me how happy they were to be in school on a summer day. This was not your father's summer schoolpunitive and mandatorybut a fresh approach to bridging the achievement gap.

Education reform has long been a popular buzz phrase. But too often it's proven to be a hollow call as the education establishment kills off common sense reforms even while we watch districts struggle with failing schools and low graduation rates. Last year, for example, the district that serves the core of Indianapolis had a heartbreakingly low graduation rate of 47% and half of the state of Indiana's schools failed to meet federal improvement standards in English or math.

But now, as the new school year begins, a confluence of events is making Indianapolis a test case for real reform. Reformers here have dared to introduce a modicum of school choice through charters and have tried to focus the system on the quality of instruction (not just dollars spent) through merit pay. Here, reformers are receiving a bipartisan assist from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, state and local policy leaders, and from a nonprofit organization that's filling the city with education entrepreneurs. The stars are aligned for reform, which means that if it doesn't happen now, and it doesn't happen here, it's hard to image how it could happen.

Take Valley Mills Elementary. I visited the school to see an education entrepreneur in action. Three years ago, David Harris founded a nonprofit called The Mind Trust with former Democratic Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson with the goal of luring new education ideas to the city. One of their successes was on display at Valley Mills this summer. It's called Summer Advantage USAa five-week pilot program funded by a state grant that selects teachers and provides lively instruction to students in low-income areas. The hope is to help these kids advance by keeping them focused on their studies through the summer.

Summer Advantage is run by Harvard and Yale graduate Earl Martin Phalen. He told me his goal is to bridge the achievement gap between students of different socioeconomic groups by reversing an education tradition that "leaves three months on the table each year." Low-income kids often fall further behind over the summer because their parents can't afford to enroll them in summer programs. Thanks to Mr. Phalen, the students at Valley Mills didn't suffer that fate this summer.

Other steps are being taken to increase school performance across the city. In recent years, the mayor's office has sponsored 18 new charter schools, a trend started by Mr. Peterson and carried on by current Republican Mayor Gregory Ballard. The Mind Trust has brought several national education groups to the city, such as Teach for America. And the state's new superintendent of public instruction, Tony Bennett, is trying to break habits that have long guided school policy.

Mr. Bennett recently unveiled a plan to pay bonuses to top teachers willing to work at the city's worst schools, and to tie their pay to student performance in the future. He also wants to require teachers to have more expertise in their subject areas than they are required to have now.

"Our intent is to be the leader on education reform," Mr. Bennett said in launching his initiatives earlier this year. "The question is not, how much can we do? It is, how do we become the leader?"

But change comes hard. Mr. Bennett has come under fire from local superintendents, unions and education-school leaders who fear, among other things, that merit pay will unravel a seniority system that rewards longevity not quality of instruction. Meanwhile, a group of state legislative Democrats, cajoled into action by urban school leaders, earlier this year tried to pass a bill to curtail the future growth of charter schools in the state.

It was a tough fight that ended in a close victory for reformers and that ultimately highlighted the increasing strength of the reform movement. The measure passed both houses of the legislature but was shelved in late-session negotiations after Mr. Duncan warned that he will be handing out about $5 billion this year to states that show "a deep-seated commitment to education reform," which he partly defines as an embrace of charters.

The fight also underscored the bipartisan push for reform. Mr. Bennett and Gov. Mitch Daniels, both Republicans, routinely praised the Obama administration for challenging teachers unions on merit pay and charters, and for helping shape the debate in Indiana.

And that debate is at a full simmer at Indianapolis Public Schools, which serve the core of the city. Superintendent Eugene White has begun lobbying against collective bargaining policies that prevent merit pay for teachers and make it difficult to fire older, poorly performing teachers. Earlier this year several of the district's "Teacher of the Year" nominees found themselves on a list of teachers who could be laid off if school budgets are cut. The reason top-notch teachers made the list is that it is based strictly on seniority.

"If you are truly going to be fair to urban students you have to provide them with the best teachers they can have," Mr. White told me recently. "You shouldn't have a mandate that says you are untouchable because you have been here longer."

While Indianapolis teachers union President Ann Wilkins promises to fight any attack on seniority rules, Mr. Bennett agreed with Mr. White and told me, "The rules have to be challenged." He isn't alone in that belief. The New Teacher Project, a New York-based nonprofit that has studied Indianapolis Public Schools, recently surveyed district officials and found that 74% of teachers believe the district should consider more than seniority on key staffing decisions.

"That's big stuff," Daniel Weisberg, one the authors of The New Teacher Project's study, told me. It's also encouraging because it suggests support for education reform stretches from the White House to the statehouse to many of the classrooms in this city. That gives Indianapolis a rare moment to build a broad coalition for reform and enact substantial changes. But, Mr. Weisberg warned, the "window of opportunity is a small one." If reformers fail to capitalize on the moment, it will be lost. "Now is the time to think big," he said. "This is a once in a lifetime opportunity."

SOURCE




Britain: Children worse off with classroom assistants

There's no substitute for good teachers and good discipline but I think that this finding should be rather obvious. It is the dummies who get handed to the TAs and it is also of course the dummies who do less well. The study is presented to make teachers look good when it shows nothing of the sort

Children do worse in tests and exams the more time they spend with classroom assistants, according to a major study published today. The report, due to be unveiled at the British Education Research Association conference in Manchester this morning, says the classroom assistants have significantly reduced teachers' stress levels - but had a negative effect on pupils' progress.

The findings are an embarrassment to Labour which has made great play of its achievement in increasing the number of support staff in schools since it came to power. Since Labour came to power in 1997, their numbers have risen from 133,500 to 322, 500 last year.Researchers at the Institute of Education, London University, discount the idea this is because of the low attaining profile of the children teaching assistants work with. They say their survey of 8,000 pupils compared youngsters of similar ability, social class and gender who were with or without classroom assistants.

Professor Peter Blatchford, who headed the research, said one of the key reasons was that less than a quarter of the teachers surveyed had been trained to manage teaching assistants. In addition, only a quarter of the teachers surveyed - and only one in 20 in secondary schools - had allocated any time for feedback on pupils with their teaching assistants.The report also found that - the more time a pupil spent with a classroom assistant - the less contact they had with the teacher.

"While TAs are extremely dedicated - many work extra hours without pay - their routine development to pupils most in need seems to be at the heart of the problem," said Professor Blatchford. "Pupils with the most need can be separated from the teacher and the curriculum.

"The report describes the negative results on academic progress as "troubling", adding: "We found a negative relationship between the amount of additional support provided by support staff and the academic progress in pupils in years one (five and six-year-olds), three (seven and eight-year-olds) and seven (11 and 12-year-olds) in English and mathematics and ten (14 and 15-year-olds) in English."

In national curriculum tests, results showed seven-year-olds given support for between one and 50 per cent of their time at school scored one point less in English (which could be the equivalent of achieving level two - the standard for a pupil of that age - and failing). the difference between those with the most and least support was three points. It was a similar story with maths and in national curriculum tests for 11 and 14-year-olds.

"A consistent view of teachers, when they considered the benefits of support staff for their own teaching and pupils' learning and behaviour, is that the TA's presence allows more teacher attention to the rest of the class and therefore better progress for the rest of the class," the report added.

It went on: "Some support staff are less well qualified than teachers and this might be expected to be related to the educational progress of pupils that are supported..."TAs' subject knowledge did not match that of teachers."

It concludes: "It would seem appropriate to argue that all pupils should get at least the same amount of a teacher's time, and, indeed, that those in most need are most likely to benefit from more, not less."

SOURCE





6 September, 2009

UK foundation to distribute textbook that lauds Muslim world's scientific and cultural heritage

This is tired old garbage. The one thing they get right is that the Dark Ages were not uniformly dark. The Christian Greek half of the Roman empire -- Byzantium -- continued on alongside the Islamic imperium for fully half a millennium. They were militarily powerful and the Muslims could not conquer them. It was actually the Venetians who ended up destroying Byzantium. Classical scholarship was at no time lost in the Christian world, though it was largely lost in Western Europe. The Muslims simply borrowed books from the Greek Christians of Byzantium next door. They also took over the learning of the Persian empire when they conquered it. And the scholarship in Spain was mainly the work of Jews. And many so-called Muslim books were in fact the work of Assyrian Christians. There is very little in so-called Muslim civilization that is actually Muslim. It was little more than a patchwork of borrowings from other cultures

An educational foundation in the UK has announced plans to distribute to high schools a free book that highlights the scientific and cultural legacies of Muslim civilization. "1001 Inventions: Muslim Heritage in Our World" is the creation of the Foundation for Science Technology and Civilization (FSTC), a Manchester-based organization set up to raise awareness of the contributions of the Muslim world to modern civilization.

FSTC said the contribution that Muslim and other civilizations have made to the modern world has been widely overlooked and that its team of academics has focused on debunking the myth of the so-called "Dark Ages of Civilization." "The period between the 7th and 17th centuries - which has been erroneously labeled 'the Dark Ages' - was in fact a time of exceptional scientific and cultural advancement in China, India and the Arab world," Prof. Salim Al-Hassani, chief editor of the book, said. "This is the period in history that gave us the first manned flight, huge advances in engineering, the development of robotics and the foundations of modern mathematics, chemistry and physics."

The foundation said it hoped to distribute 3,000 copies of the book to UK schools by October and is seeking public support for the campaign through a sponsorship scheme.

Last month, British evolutionary biologist, popular science author and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins announced plans to distribute free DVDs to high schools across the UK. "While the Dawkins campaign, supported by the British Humanist Association, positions science and religion as opposing forces, the 1001 Inventions project reminds us that for 1,000 years the religious and the scientific were comfortable bedfellows and led to unprecedented openness to new ideas and social change," the FSTC said.

The foundation said it was not challenging Dawkins with the free book but only wanted to "encourage debate about the relationship between science, faith and culture." It said FSTC has campaigned for school curriculums to acknowledge the scientific achievements of Muslim civilization for more than a decade. "Whilst the Dawkins DVD teaches young people about the experimental scientific method, it fails to point out that it was pioneered by a religious physicist called Ibn-Al Haytham, who saw no conflict in being both a Muslim and a scientist," Prof. Al-Hassani said. The book comes with a DVD, a poster set for classrooms, a free Teachers Pack and lesson plans.

Responding to the initiative Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the representative organization of Anglo-Jewry, said: "Foundations can distribute materials to schools, but that does not mean that schools will or should use them. We would expect the DCSF [Department for Children, Schools and Families] to monitor carefully what is made available to children for appropriateness and balance."

The project has been accused of being Islamic propaganda by a London-based think tank. "This organization calling itself the FSTC is not an educational project. It is a dawah project. That is, it is Islamic propaganda," said Douglas Murray, director of the Center for Social Cohesion, a non-partisan organization that focuses on issues related to community cohesion in the UK.

"There is significant ignorance these days, in the Britain, and the West in general, about our own scientific and cultural heritage. Organizations like the FSTC aim to step into the gap created by that ignorance and claim that the roots of our culture do not lie in our Greek and Judeao-Christian heritage, but in Islamic history."

Murray accused the FSTC of mixing propaganda with scientific history. "There are those who would claim that no good whatsoever has come from the Islamic world, such claims are demonstrably ignorant. But it is also ignorant and indeed ridiculous to mix propaganda with scientific history as the people behind this project seem to be doing."

A spokesperson from the Department for Children, Schools and Families said schools could use the material at their discretion.

SOURCE




An open letter to Notre Dame's president to release abortion protestors

Dear Father Jenkins:

Im writing you, as president of Notre Dame, my alma mater, with an urgent plea that you drop the criminal trespass charges that have been pending against the many defendants most of whom are faithful, fervent pro-life Catholics who dared to venture onto Notre Dames campus last Spring, 2009, to bear peaceful, prayerful witness to the sanctity of all human life, from conception to natural death.

Among them were at least one priest and several nuns, Norma McCorvey, the Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, former presidential candidate Alan Keyes, two ladies Jane Brennan, author of Motherhood Interrupted (2008), and Laura Rohling who preach about healing and hope after abortion in the Archdiocese of Denver, Colorado, and many other non-violent participants in Americas pro-life movement.

Many were praying the rosary or singing religious hymns. The priest Fr. Norman Weslin, who regularly prays and counsels abortion-bound women about live-saving alternatives outside the Omaha, Nebraska abortion facility of late-term abortionist, Dr. Leroy Carhart carried a heavy wooden cross and a rosary.

Others carried signs proclaiming that life is sacred, that abortion kills children, and other pro-life messages. All were arrested, handcuffed, and hauled off to jail where they spent the night and sometimes longer in custody. Surely that protracted detention and the humbling impact of a public arrest on trying to enter the campus of Americas premier Catholic university was enough of a penalty to offset whatever injury or insult these good people inflicted on Notre Dames property rights.

So, it was shocking to hear that the charges were not quickly dropped, and an even worse surprise to hear that these good Catholics had to return to South Bend to enter their pleas of not guilty and then again to demand jury trials.

When the St. Joseph County prosecutor backed off the latter demand, we were yet more deeply aggrieved on hearing, Fr. Jenkins, that you had responded to a request that the charges be dropped by claiming that it is out of [your] hands. With respect, Father, the future of these cases if they must go on is squarely in your hands. Notre Dame is the complainant. Its security personnel directed and/or conducted the arrests, pointing out those who would be arrested (pro-lifers) and those who would not (those carrying pro-Obama signs and/or taunting the pro-lifers).

Participation of Notre Dame witnesses will be essential if these 88 cases all of which are to be scheduled for jury trials actually go forward. Some defenses that already have been raised by initial trial counsel e.g., Catholics access to the Sacred Heart Basilica on campus also would require Notre Dame witnesses involvement in the trials.

Im not only a Notre Dame alumnus but also president and chief counsel of a public interest law firm, based in Chicago, the Thomas More Society. We founded the Society over 10 years ago to carry on the defense of a nationwide federal class action lawsuit against pro-life protesters, NOW v. Scheidler. The Scheidler case involved charges that what Dr. M.L. King called peaceable, non-violent direct action (Letter from Birmingham Jail (April, 1963)) constituted the federal felony crimes of extortion and racketeering. We won Scheidler only after two decades of litigation and three U.S. Supreme Court appeals. We finally prevailed, with two successive Supreme Court wins, both by decisive, bipartisan margins: by 8-1 (2003) and then by 8-0 (2006).

Notre Dame helped us when we defended NOW v. Scheidler. Fr. Hesburgh wrote letters and agreed to testify as a character witness at the trial. Fr. Joyce sent us many generous donations. Notre Dame law professor Bob Blakey argued our first Supreme Court appeal.

But now the Notre Dame 88" have asked us to take the lead in their defense. Not to spite Notre Dame but because we love it, we have agreed. Americas civil rights movement is ongoing, and the pro-life movement is its next phase. Notre Dame should not only support this new civil rights movement but lead it. It should honor all who dare to speak out for the dignity of all human beings born or unborn, wanted or unwanted, humble or exalted not prosecute them!

SOURCE [I doubt that the make-believe Catholics of Notre Dame will take much notice of this. They are not even religious enough to be called today's Pharisees]




British independent schools score far more A and A* grades at GCSE than do State schools

About two thirds of GCSE exams taken at independent schools this year gained at least an A grade, compared with only one in five in the state sector. The increase in the proportion of top marks at private schools comes as a growing number of independent head teachers abandon GCSEs in favour of more rigorous exams, casting doubt on their usefulness.

Westminster School, London, which leads this years independent schools table with 98.1 per cent of all grades at either A or A*, will offer ten subjects as International GCSEs (IGCSE) in the next academic year. Pupils taking more rigorous IGCSE exams have found them more intellectually stimulating and enjoyable, so they do even better in them [than in GCSEs] said Stephen Spurr, the headmaster of Westminster.

The IGCSE contains no coursework element and is similar to a traditional O level. It is favoured by all of this years Top Ten independent schools but is still not recognised by the Government. Dr Spurr said the GCSE syllabus for some subjects, particularly science, is not challenging enough for pupils at the 19,000-a-year school. We want them to have reached a level of scientific understanding which is going to help them make informed scientific decisions in the future, even if they are not taking it at A level, he said. The GCSE doesnt allow for that for the academic level of pupils at Westminster it is too low.

At St Pauls Girls School, also in London, which heads the independent girls table with 97.3 per cent at A or A*, only maths is offered as an IGCSE. But Clarissa Farr, the schools High Mistress, said that the school was planning a review of education for 14 to 16-year-olds this year. We want to be sure that the curriculum provides sufficient challenge for our students, she said. The school is considering expanding the number of IGCSEs it offers and could also adopt the middle years baccalaureate in place of GCSEs.

Magdalen College School, Oxford, came top of the all-boys table with 97.9 per cent A and A* grades. Tim Hands, the headmaster, said he still believes in the capacity of the GCSE syllabus to test even the cleverest. They offer a broad base, discriminate between schools effectively and are challenging, Dr Hands said. If we have too much change, then young people are deprived of stability.

Almost 60 per cent of GCSEs and IGCSEs taken by independent pupils were awarded A or A* this year compared with 21.6 per cent of those taken in state schools. Admissions tutors at top universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, have indicated that they value the IGCSE most highly. State schools cannot take IGCSEs and are allowing their brightest pupils to leap-frog GCSEs and take AS levels instead.

One in seven independent schools has boycotted the league tables published by the Independent Schools Council. Among them is St Pauls School for Boys in London, whose High Master, Martin Stephen, denounced league tables as a lie. He said: The problem with league tables is they compare apples and pears. Its absolutely idiotic to have a highly selective day school compared on the same basis as a comprehensive entry rural school.

SOURCE





5 September, 2009

Zogby Poll: 25% of College Grads Say Degree Not Worth the Cost

Survey finds 52% of likely voters believe higher education today is worth the price, 33% say it is not

One in four college graduates -- 25% -- believe higher education is not worth the price of attendance, given today's significant college costs including tuition, room and board, and books, a new Zogby-Scoop44 interactive poll shows.

There is a considerable difference in opinion between those who have earned their college degree and those who have not. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents who have a college degree think the money spent on higher education is worth it. Among respondents who do not have a college degree, fewer than half (44%) think higher education is worth the cost. Overall, slightly more than half (52%) of all respondents believe the costs associated with a college education are worth it, while 33% say they are not. Another 14% are not sure. Women with a college degree (65%) are slightly more likely than men with a college degree (61%) to believe higher education costs are worth it in the end.

The interactive survey of 2,530 likely voters nationwide was conducted Aug. 18-20, 2009, and carries a margin of error of +/- 2.0%. Margins of error may be higher in subgroups. The survey was commissioned by Scoop44.

While respondents of all ages are more likely to view a higher education as worth the expense, older respondents are most likely to believe the costs of college are worth it in the end - 61% of those age 65 and older feel this way. Among those age 65 and older with a college degree, 70% say the cost is worth it, and more than half of these oldest respondents without degrees (55%) feel the same.

On the younger end of the spectrum, more than half (55%) of those age 18-29 believe higher education is worth the price, while 35% disagree and 10% are not sure. Many of these youngest voters are already well aware of the high price tag associated with college attendance and the hefty student loans they may face after they get their degree, but those age 18-29 with college degrees are much more likely to believe the costs are worth it (62%). Even so, 28% of these younger respondents with degrees don't believe higher education is worth the cost. Younger respondents without degrees are even more likely to think higher education isn't worth the money (41%).

More here




Homeschoolers are beating the state

Moderate temps, shorter days, state fairs, football, peppers and gourds, Labor Day weekend.back to school. Except for some. A growing number of families have bucked the autumn tradition of pep rallies and discount office supply shopping. They have chosen to homeschool.

A few posts back, Brad showed how Sweden is trying to outlaw homeschooling. This is a travesty, and if you want to try to help all those young Bjorns and Bjorks who might have had a taste of true freedom, there is a petition here.

Reading about how Sweden is trying to crack down on homeschoolers, I get a very rare feeling of pride to be an American. Liberty lovers are losing the battle on all sides right now, but we do have one extraordinary victory in the recent past we can point to with pride, and that is the homeschooling movement.

In 1964, John Holt published How Children Fail, a small book of observations from a teacher, epic in its implications. Although he didnt know it at the time, Holt was tearing down the notion of formal classroom schooling so thoroughly that he would kick off an international movement. Holt wasnt alone, of course. Many parents, teachers, and child psychologists in the mid-sixties were beginning to suspect that kids might be better off if they stayed away from school altogether. So some of them started leaving their kids out.

These early pioneers frequently operated in violation of compulsory attendance laws. In 1976, Holt, now fully convinced that the classroom was a destructive place, called for a Childrens Underground Railroad to help children escape compulsory schooling. Families that were homeschooling in secret around the country contacted him. Through Holt, homeschoolers formed a network to help one another and work at legalizing their activity.

Homeschooling grew in the 70s as the movement figured out creative ways to get around compulsory attendance laws. With this growth came successful removal of legislation that prohibited it, state by state, including a landmark case in 1978 that concluded that the Massachusetts compulsory attendance statute might well be constitutionally infirm if it did not exempt students whose parents prefer alternative forms of education.

By 1980, homeschooling was completely legal in 40 states, and legal in the other 10 if overseen by a government-certified teacher. In 1983, The Homeschool Legal Defense Fund was founded. Once that legally approved door was opened, fundamentalist Christians began entering the homeschool movement in large numbers. Today homeschooling is legal in all 50 states. 2.5 million kids are doing it.

And, as readers would expect, the homeschoolers are torching their government school counterparts. On average, homeschool students score 37 per cent higher than their peers on standardized tests. There are no discernable achievement gaps between races, genders, and income levels in the homeschool movement, with homeschoolers consistently landing in the 85th percentile or higher on achievement tests, regardless of background. The average annual education-specific expense for a homeschooler is $500. For a government school student, it is $10,000.

With American homeschooling, we have a pro-liberty, anti-state movement that is:

a) Achieving positive results that far surpass the government alternative.

b) Growing rapidly.

c) Allowing a huge number of children to grow up in freedom.

d) Resistant to government attempts to thwart it.

Its letter D that I think of as I read about the poor Swedish kids. In America, the government, which is winning in the battle against liberty at every turn, is losing its battle to shut down the homeschool movement. In 1997, as the explosive growth in homeschooling was first becoming evident, the National Education Association adopted its first anti homeschooling resolution, saying that homeschooling programs cannot provide the student with a comprehensive education experience. Clearly fearing that homeschooling would expose the government schools for the scheme they are, the NEA also resolved that, if homeschooling is chosen, instruction should be by persons who are licensed by the appropriate state education licensure agency.

The NEA continues to adopt an anti homeschooling resolution in their charter every year, and lobbies state governments to make it harder to homeschool. The UN has adopted and is now considering resolutions that clearly are opposed to homeschooling.

Homeschoolers are under the same assault as anyone else trying to secure freedoms from the government.

But unlike most other pro-freedom movements, the homeschoolers are winning.

Since the NEA adopted its first anti-homeschooling resolution, the number of homeschoolers has doubled. Their number is growing at 7% a year, and through an immensely organized nationwide effort, they continue to win court cases and legislative battles making it easier to homeschool in America, even as the NEA tries to make it harder.

In homeschooling, I see real-time activity that improves lives, increases freedom, contributes to our efforts to one day achieve a free society, and successfully holds back the state. Not only is it growing, but its growth rate is accelerating.

Clearly we have a model of success. I wonder what lessons we might learn from the homeschool movement that can be applied to other freedom-seeking efforts.

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Australian school wins right to hire male handler for aggressive student

Except for the complete destruction of school discipline by Leftist "educators", this would never have arisen. It is a disgrace that anyone was ever exposed to danger by an unrestrained monster like this. Plenty of thrashings in response to his acts of violence would have slown him down and taught him the badly-needed lesson that violence begets violence

A SCHOOL has won permission for a male handler for a primary pupil so violent the principal fears for the safety of teachers and other pupils. The special school in Melbourne's eastern suburbs was given an exemption by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to employ a man to supervise the youngster, because he is too dangerous for women. The school will now spend between $35,000 and $42,000 a year on the "education support" officer, the Herald Sun reports.

The youngster's "extreme" violent behaviour is escalating, despite intensive counselling and constant talks with the boy's family and protective services officers, the tribunal heard. The boy, not yet even a teenager, is so unruly he is allowed to use the playground only for a limited time in school breaks and under one-on-one supervision. He was also regularly hauled from class because of the disruption he caused, the school's application to the tribunal stated. The age of the youngster has not been released, but the school only accepts children aged five to 12.

The school contended it was "very difficult to provide a safe work environment for our staff, most of whom are female, and for our student population, without a male education support officer".

VCAT gave the school an exemption from anti-discrimination laws so that it could specifically employ a man for the role on August 26. "This student has exhibited extreme violence both within and outside school grounds," VCAT deputy president Anne Coghlan said in the tribunal's decision. "He demonstrates threatening and aggressive behaviour towards students and staff."

While the school accepts students with "severe behaviour disorders", its assistant principal confirmed the latest measure was a first. "This is the first time we have ever done it, that's purely something we decided as a staff to do," she said. "Within our school we have mainly women (staff)."

Australian Education Union state president Mary Bluett said in rare cases some special schools had to take the measure for extremely difficult students. "They get to a size and physical strength that it is a challenge to restrain them for both their protection and the protection of others," she said. "What it is, on the face of it, is an enormous effort by the school to maintain the student in their care and education. "At least we are not back in the dark days where these children were actually shut away. "In these cases we have to make every effort to ensure it is a safe working environment for teachers and other children."

Department of Education and Early Childhood Development spokeswoman Karen Harbutt said the department backed the school's decision.

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4 September, 2009

Using student loans to slow tuition-fee growth

ITS back-to-school time for college students, which means big tuition bills. Most will defer large out-of-pocket costs until after college through the use of student loans. No one is happy about the explosion in student loan debt to pay rising tuition, but there is a silver lining: We can use student loans to slow tuition growth.

There are two sides to the college affordability ledger: financial aid and tuition. Politicians focus almost exclusively on expanding financial aid, which is crucial, but its like chasing a rabbit. Tuition outpaces inflation, grant aid, even health care cost growth, and, most importantly, median family income. To keep pace with rising tuition, student loan debt doubled over the last decade.

To slow tuition growth, supply-and-demand incentives have to change. If suppliers are on the hook for a portion of student loan default costs, theyll be less likely to run up tuition beyond what they can expect students to repay. If consumer demand can be nudged at the same time toward colleges that are good investments, schools that offer poor value at a high price will have to slow tuition growth and improve student outcomes. We shouldnt regulate tuition; we should nudge it in the right direction.

Colleges, because their mission rightly is to build and diffuse knowledge, have insatiable growth aspirations. Many will raise tuition as much as the market will bear, and it bears a great deal.

But families choose colleges and borrow almost blindly. They have relatively little information as to how good an investment a particular school is. Ranking guides like that of US News & World Report focus on the top 20 percent of schools and inputs like class size as opposed to outcomes like how much students learn.

If colleges are made responsible for a portion of student loan default costs, theyll be more responsible in who they let in, how much they charge, and how well they prepare students for good-paying jobs that enable those students to pay off their debt. In the private student-loan market, banks are increasingly placing proprietary colleges on the hook for a portion of student loan default costs. The federal student loan market is five times as large. We need recourse there as well.

Theres a danger colleges will respond by pricing their exposure to defaults into even higher tuition. Thats why we also need to nudge demand away from high-cost, poor-value schools. Most colleges supply a good product, and shouldnt be penalized simply for serving high-risk populations. But a subset of schools is clearly not serving students well. Community colleges in that group arent the issue here, because of their low cost and low borrowing rates. The real problem is with low-level private institutions and shoddy for-profit trade schools. We should steer students away from them, but how?

Few Americans want to see No Child Left Behind-like testing at the college level. But its relatively easy to compare colleges according to what students most want out of higher education: good jobs and financial security.

We need a price-to-earnings ratio - that is, price of college to expected future earnings - for higher education. The US Department of Education has the average net price for each college. It can generate lifetime student default rates for each school as well. A private website, Payscale.com, lists median starting and mid-career salaries for hundreds of schools. Put such data together and construct a higher-education value index, including a lemon list. Just like politicians have to say they approve campaign commercials, make the lemons warn consumers on their marketing materials.

Warning: One in two Acme College borrowers defaults on a student loan within three years of separation from Acme College. Acme graduates earn an average starting salary of $22,000 a year. Be careful before assuming substantial student loan debt to attend Acme College.

Schools will want to be identified as good-value options and shudder at the prospect of being on a lemon list. To avoid it, theyll be less quick to raise tuition - and more interested in making sure their students get good-paying jobs.

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Crooked German academics

Germany's academic community is being shaken by doubts cast on the integrity of around one hundred professors.

The professors, working across all academic disciplines at many major German universities, are suspected to have accepted thousands of euros in bribes from the now-insolvent Institute for Scientific Consulting ("Institut fr Wissenschaftsberatung") in Bergisch-Gladbach, near Cologne.

The scandal is the latest in a series of investigations into the Institute's business practices. Public prosecutors searched its offices back in 2005 and again in March 2008, after malpractice accusations first emerged.

In July 2008, the managing director of the Institute was sentenced to three and a half years in prison and a 75000 fine for having paid a law professor in Hanover up to 4000 to accept PhD candidates, some of whom did not fulfill the prerequisites for studying towards a PhD. The law professor was also convicted of accepting bribes.

Files found after the Institute was searched last year created enough suspicion to trigger the current investigation.

Most of the professors involved are of junior status, without full tenure, although some tenured professors are among those being investigated, says Cologne's senior public prosecutor, Gnther Feld.

"This is not about selling PhD titles, but about whether academics accepted money to take on particular PhD candidates," Feld emphasises.

Even so, there are grave concerns within the academic community. The federal minister of education, Annette Schavan, said on Sunday that the credibility of Germany's academic community could sustain major damage if the accusations turn out to be true.

The president of the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers (DHV), Bernhard Kempen, said that a thorough investigation of these cases was urgently needed and that the legitimacy of an agency offering services to students to help them obtain PhDs should generally be questioned.

He called for university regulations to require PhD candidates to sign statements that they have not accepted any outside help in obtaining their PhDs.

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Hate shouldnt be a pillar of Islamic education

When the Islamic Saudi Academy in Fairfax, Va., requested to expand the campus, protests about the curriculum came to a head. Why allow such an expansion when the schools books are tainted with hate? The books are the same as those used in schools in Saudi Arabia: Students are taught to incite violence and cause human rights violations, to be hostile toward non-Muslims, and how to punish people, among other shocking passages.

Under pressure from a congressional report in 2008, the academy changed its textbooks but inflammatory passages remain. An 11th-grade textbook reads: Scholars of the People of the Book know that Islam is the true path because they find it in their books, but they shy away out of ignorance and stubbornness. And God knows their deeds and will judge them. The People of the Book are Jews and Christians, who are allegedly ignoring the truth of Islam. Even more horrifying, the books promote child marriage, going so far as to condone forced marriage with a 1-year-old child. In Saudi Arabia, there are many examples of such marriages between children who are prepubescent.

There are over 5 million students in the state schools in Saudi Arabia, not to mention the sizeable quantity of students enrolled in Saudi-supported schools across the world, including the one in Fairfax. What students are taught in school should be a concern for the United States, and stopping the problem at its roots should be a top priority.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, the schools former valedictorian, was convicted in 2005 of joining al Qaeda and planning to assassinate President George W. Bush. Another graduate of the academy, Raed Abdul-Rahman Al-Saif, was arrested just last month at a Florida airport while trying to board a plane with a concealed butcher knife.

The existence of a Muslim school in the United States should not even be debated. There has been some strong response to the Islamic Saudi Academy, perhaps some of which may be too reactionary.

Generalizing Islam as a fanatical religion that breeds hatred and terrorism is false. Students instead need to be taught Islam without the influence of the Saudi government and its archaic, strict practices.

Achieving a moderate and appropriate curriculum has proved to be an attainable goal. The King Fahd Academy in London, a sister school to the one in Virginia, used to teach from the same controversial textbooks. Over time, the school modernized its curriculum to contain moderate teachings of Islam. In the United States, students should be able to go to Islamic schools. But getting rid of these toxic textbooks should be part of the package.

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3 September, 2009

Nasty British university finally trumped

A law student who refused to accept the results of her final examinations has won a four-year legal battle to have her marks upgraded. Alice Clarke was given low marks in two assessments for her Bar Vocational Course that all lawyers have to pass to practise as a barrister. She claimed that the low marks for her oral examinations in advanced criminal law and legal negotiation were because of disagreements with her tutors and asked Cardiff University to reassess them. When it refused, she pursued her claim through the High Court.

An independent assessor who listened to her performance in criminal law examination gave her 71 per cent instead of the 40 per cent that she originally received. The university was ordered to allow her to retake the negotiation test, which she passed with 62 per cent instead of 46 per cent.

In a written judgment Mr Justice Wyn Williams ordered that the revised results should be accepted as though she had passed when she sat the papers the first time.

Mrs Clarke, 43, a mother of two, studied law as a mature student after a career as a nurse. She said that the legal battle to have her results reassessed had been worth it even though it has cost her tens of thousands of pounds. She said: I am very glad to have won but I am sad that I have lost four years of my career fighting this battle. The university only finally accepted I had passed in March, four years after I took the exams. Its been a living nightmare but I am just so pleased the court has vindicated me.

Mrs Clarke was determined to have the original results cancelled out after claiming that disagreements with tutors had led to her being marked down. She said: I was worried that barristers chambers wouldnt take me on if they thought Id failed the two papers at the first attempt. I decided to challenge it through the courts even though I knew it would cost me thousands of pounds. On a professional level its simply astonishing, on a human level its extraordinary the way I have been treated by the university. They banned me from taking a resit, they banned me from campus and they even began disciplinary proceedings against me.

After graduating in law in 1998 Mrs Clarke carried on working as a nurse and bringing up her two children Sarah, now 12, and Aaron, 9, before taking the advanced law degree. She was finally registered as a barrister in March and is hoping to find work representing people whose homes have been repossessed.

Mrs Clarke is waiting for a High Court hearing to decide who is responsible for the majority of costs in a case that she believes has legal fees of up to 400,000. She said: I dont know the exact amount of my costs but they could be as much as 100,000. There have been eight hearings in the High Court but however much it cost me I was determined to fight to its conclusion.

In his written judgment, Mr Justice Williams said: I have reached the conclusion that the decision of the extenuating circumstance committee of June 30, 2005, to refuse the claimants application for extenuating circumstances relating to her negotiation assessment should be quashed. Unless any representation is made to the contrary, I propose also to quash the decision of the reconvened examination board of September 27, 2005, insofar as it relates to the claimants application for extenuating circumstances.

Cardiff University said that it was considering the implications of the judgement:The university is aware of the judgment handed down at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. At this stage, the university is considering the implications of this judgment in consultation with our legal advisers. It is of relevance that the university offered independent marking at a hearing as long ago as October 2006. Mrs Clarke only agreed to this after 18 months and three orders of court. This delay caused the court to order Mrs Clarke to pay towards the universitys costs.

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Australia: School covers up brutal bashing

Days after a 15-year-old boy died after a schoolyard brawl, a Gold Coast high school has been accused of covering up a savage assault that left a 17-year-old boy with a fractured skull. Southport State High School student Angelo Feraru, 17, will need plastic surgery after the unprovoked attack on August 21 that broke his nose and fractured his skull. His mother Mihela is just grateful her son, unlike Jai Morcom, is alive.

Angelo was sitting, eating his lunch when he was attacked by another student and punched in the face. His face was covered in blood and he was taken by ambulance to the Gold Coast Hospital where doctors said the teen's nose was badly broken and his sinus bone fractured. Doctors reset his nose and told Mihela her son would need extensive surgery to repair the damage.

Despite the severity of the attack, Southport State High School failed to report it to police. It handled the issue internally by dishing out a 10-day suspension. [What a joke!] Queensland Police yesterday confirmed they had no record of the vicious assault.

It is understood Angelo's attacker is a fellow student with a history of violence. He was expelled from another Gold Coast school after attacking a fellow student, breaking his jaw. He transferred to Southport High School where he assaulted another Southport student only three weeks before attacking Angelo.

On Monday, Ms Feraru and her son went to the Runaway Bay Police Station to report the incident but were warned against the complaint. The officer who dealt with the pair warned Angelo of the potential fallout if he pressed charges. "They tell us to be careful because Angelo has to live with this kid for the next few months before he finishes school," said Ms Feraru.

Gold Coast police district Superintendent Jim Keogh said it seemed 'incredible' police had only been told of the matter nine days after the assault. He said police needed Angelo to make a formal statement before officers could act on the complaint.

Mrs Feraru said she was scared to send her son back to school.... Ms Feraru said she went to the police station hoping they would stop the violence.

The danger of inaction is all too clear after the death of Jai Morcom last week. The 15-year-old died in Gold Coast Hospital on Saturday after suffering massive head injuries during a brutal brawl over lunch tables on Friday. "It make me feel sick in my stomach," said Ms Feraru.

In a statement released yesterday, Education Queensland confirmed 'an incident took place on August 21 and a student required medical attention'. "A student was disciplined in line with the school's Responsible Behaviour Plan," it read. The department said it would investigate any reports of schools not following policy. [So that's policy?? Expose innocent kids to brutal violence and do nothing significant to prevent a recurrence??]

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Australia: Teachers are powerless to stop schoolyard violence

Not exactly surprising in the light of the severe limits placed on discipline by a Leftist government

The bashing death at school of a 15 year old boy in Mullumbimby last week is a symptom of a much bigger statewide problem in schools. Teachers are too scared to step in before things get totally out of hand. Put simply teachers now have little control. The consequences for students of bad, even violent behaviour, are now so insignificant students simply dont care.

A teacher cannot restrain a student at all, they cant yell at students or else they will be accused of emotional abuse. A teacher must simply say please dont do this and then hope they are obeyed. Step outside this rigid set of rules and you risk being EPACed - every teachers worst nightmare. To be EPACed is to be investigated by the Education Departments Employee Performance and Conduct Unit, a Gestapo-like division.

Students know this and play on it and why wouldnt you if you were a child and knew what you could get away with. Eventually the ultimate punishment for persistent disobedience (after the student refuses to come to detention and throws the detention slip at the teacher) is suspension from school.

This means they are rewarded a holiday for their actions. If there are too many suspensions at a school the department then asks the school Principal to explain why so many students are being suspended and to come up with strategies to reduce the high suspension rate at the school.

Any teacher who physically intervenes in a physical fight in the play ground risks being reported by a student for physical assault and marched off to EPAC, where the onus is on them to prove their innocence.

EPAC acts as policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury and then executioner. EPAC do not make final decisions using the words Guilty or Innocent. Unless a student actually admits they were lying when they complained about their teacher, then the most a teacher can expect if they are innocent is if EPAC finds there is insignificant evidence to prove the conduct occurred the teacher then has this black mark on their record for life.

Some examples of a teacher being EPACed include a primary school teacher and friend of mine in Sydneys North Shore who broke up a fight by physically restraining a student who was bashing another student.

That teacher was then EPACed and although it was found that the teacher trying to exercise their duty of care, the record of this incident is in their teacher job file held in Oxford Street (where EPAC keep all files) for the rest of their teaching career.

Another incident involves a teacher at a high school who whilst taking students on an excursion to an Art gallery was asked about a particular painting which was on public display which may have been interpreted as having sexual themes. The teacher told the students they did not want to discuss this painting and to move on.

Two female students then complained and the teacher was EPACed for allegedly showing students sexually explicit artwork. Even though EPAC decided that there is insignificant evidence to prove the conduct occurred the teacher now has that case in their EPAC file for the rest of their career.

Whilst a teacher is being EPACed they are told by the Principal not to discuss the investigation with anyone at the school. This makes them feel anxious and even more upset and attempts to punish them psychologically even though nothing has been proven against them.

After two accusations where there is insignificant evidence the teachers name is reported to the Commission for Children and Young People, (CCYP) essentially they are labeled a child abuser on the hearsay of often vindictive students who know they have the power now.

As a result of all this is it any wonder that what started as a fight in the playground at Mullumbimby lead to a bashing death of a student?. Students have the power and teachers know they cant intervene physically anymore. The DET student discipline policy and it EPAC procedures are to blame and the situation statewide is only going to get worse as students relish in their new found power at school.

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2 September, 2009

Court orders Christian child into government education

BECAUSE she is a Christian. First Amendment, anyone?

A 10-year-old homeschool girl described as "well liked, social and interactive with her peers, academically promising and intellectually at or superior to grade level" has been told by a New Hampshire court official to attend a government school because she was too "vigorous" in defense of her Christian faith. The decision from Marital Master Michael Garner reasoned that the girl's "vigorous defense of her religious beliefs to [her] counselor suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view."

The recommendation was approved by Judge Lucinda V. Sadler, but it is being challenged by attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund, who said it was "a step too far" for any court. The ADF confirmed today it has filed motions with the court seeking reconsideration of the order and a stay of the decision sending the 10-year-old student in government-run schools in Meredith, N.H.

The dispute arose as part of a modification of a parenting plan for the girl. The parents divorced in 1999 when she was a newborn, and the mother has homeschooled her daughter since first grade with texts that meet all state standards. In addition to homeschooling, the girl attends supplemental public school classes and has also been involved in a variety of extra-curricular sports activities, the ADF reported.

But during the process of negotiating the terms of the plan, a guardian ad litem appointed to participate concluded the girl "appeared to reflect her mother's rigidity on questions of faith" and that the girl's interests "would be best served by exposure to a public school setting" and "different points of view at a time when she must begin to critically evaluate multiple systems of belief ... in order to select, as a young adult, which of those systems will best suit her own needs." According to court documents, the guardian ad litem earlier had told the mother, "If I want her in public school, she'll be in public school."

The marital master hearing the case proposed the Christian girl be ordered into public school after considering "the impact of [her religious] beliefs on her interaction with others." "Parents have a fundamental right to make educational choices for their children. In this case specifically, the court is illegitimately altering a method of education that the court itself admits is working," said ADF-allied attorney John Anthony Simmons of Hampton. "The court is essentially saying that the evidence shows that, socially and academically, this girl is doing great, but her religious beliefs are a bit too sincerely held and must be sifted, tested by, and mixed among other worldviews. This is a step too far for any court to take."

"The New Hampshire Supreme Court itself has specifically declared, 'Home education is an enduring American tradition and right,'" said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Mike Johnson. "There is clearly and without question no legitimate legal basis for the court's decision, and we trust it will reconsider its conclusions."

The case, handled in the Family Division of the Judicial Court for Belknap County in Laconia, involves Martin Kurowski and Brenda Kurowski (Voydatch), and their daughter.

The ADF also argued that the issue already was raised in 2006 and rejected by the court. "Most urgent is the issue of Amanda's schooling as the school year has begun and Amanda is being impacted by the court's decision daily," the court filing requesting a stay said. "Serious state statutory and federal constitutional concerns are implicated by the court's ruling and which need to be remedied without delay.

"It is not the proper role of the court to insist that Amanda be 'exposed to different points of view' if the primary residential parent has determined that it is in Amanda's best interest not to be exposed to secular influences that would undermine Amanda's faith, schooling, social development, etc. The court is not permitted to demonstrate hostility toward religion, and particularly the faith of Amanda and Mother, by removing Amanda from the home and thrusting her into an environment that the custodial parent deems detrimental to Amanda."

"The order assumes that because Amanda has sincerely held Christian beliefs, there must be a problem that needs solving. It is a parent's constitutionally protected right to train up their children in the religious beliefs that they hold. It is not up to the court to suggest that a 10-year-old should be 'exposed' to other religious views contrary to the faith traditions of her parents. Could it not be that this sharp 10-year-old 'vigorously' believes what she does because she knows it to be true? The court's narrative suggests that 10-year-olds are too young to form opinions and that they are not yet allowed to have sincerely held Christian beliefs," the ADF said.

"Absent any other clear and convincing evidence justifying the court's decision, it would appear that the court has indeed taken sides with regard to the issue of religion and has preferred one religious view over another (or the absence of religion). This is impermissible," the documents said.

The guardian ad litem had an anti-Christian bias, the documents said, telling the mother at one point she wouldn't even look at homeschool curriculum. "I don't want to hear it. It's all Christian based," she said.

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Lets stick up for boisterous boys

Comment from Britain: Dreary coursework and earnest women teachers have let pupils down. Many prefer the excitement of sudden-death exams

It was an axiom of 1970s feminists that, apart from a bit of irritating biology, boys and girls were the same. Girls could be motorbike engineers and corporate lawyers, boys could be homebody childminders. And so they can.

They adjured us to give our girl-babies toy power-drills and press dollies and dusters on the lads. Any female infant found wrapping her Fisher-Price workbench in a shawl and nursing it, any boy-child going Neeeeeeowwwwwww! and setting up aerial battles between his toy dustpan and brush, must in this theory be firmly dissuaded.

Worse still was the school of thought that did acknowledge inbuilt differences, but despised them: Jill Tweedie, of The Guardian, wrote with angry scorn even about her teenage sons, and when Jenni Murrays first boy was born, she relates with horror that a friend hissed: Poor you, having to raise one of the enemy!

I never bought in to this viperous pretence, as I grew up with three brothers and spent three years in a rough-and-tumble village school. I saw that boys were not the enemy, but that on the other hand neither were they girls. Alfie at school might push me in a ditch in a fit of high spirits and say a rude word, but Annie would tell sneaky tales behind my back. On the other hand Alfie was creative and daring in the raiding of woodpiles at Guy Fawkes, and when Annie was nice we could yarn for hours.

I like boys and men. The sexes have a lot to learn from one another. Of course, rights must be equal, and of cours,e there have been terrible injustices to women. But the pretend war, the psychological war, is only for amusement Violet Elizabeth Bott foils William and the Outlaws. We need both sexes to complete the full and fabulous picture of humanity.

Education should reflect this happy synthesis, but it hardly does. In reaction against the days when bigots argued that educating girls caused sterility, and more recent decades when girls were denied sciences other than Domestic, the system has swung over into a bias against boys. As fewer and fewer primary teachers are men (rightly scared of demonisation as child molesters), a feminised culture rises. Boys, says the staffroom, are exhausting: lazy, aggressive, disrupters and debunkers, too fond of rude jokes.

More seriously, as the writer Doris Lessing said in a 2001 lecture, boys are told that their gender made the world dangerous. She visited a classroom where an earnest young woman taught that war is caused by the violent nature of men. The boys sat there crumpled, apologising for their existence. Out of the classroom, no doubt, they hastened to the shrine of Arnie Schwarzenegger, as the most positive role model.

Meanwhile, girls more keen to please, gentler, less driven by itching muscular energy, are seen as sugar and spice. Easier for Miss to relate to. I remember once being faintly ashamed of my own gender on arriving in a playground where the boys were tearing around in some wild happy game while a knot of little girls stood still in clean socks, testing one another on their times-tables. With a caveat about oversimplification (there are happy wrestling tomboys and gentle anxious boys), the fact is that boys natural behaviour prompts a belief that what they mainly need is well, controlling.

Quite apart from the literal feminisation of the teaching profession, even school routines militate against young male biology: as fewer children walk to school, boys arrive with natural surplus energy, which it is a torment to suppress. One primary school that used to start with a quiet assembly tried replacing it with ten minutes of energetic running at the start of the day: boys disruption in class fell away.

Various studies confirm the way that expectations of boys (trouble! disruptive!) can damage their education. In 1964 in California an experiment was carried out in which 132 five-year-olds were taught reading by a machine: both sexes reacted in the same way and the boys scored marginally higher. Taught conventionally by women teachers, boys scores dipped. The plea that teachers have to spend three times more attention on boys is countered by researched observations (in an Australian study of 2001) that actually, a lot of this attention is devoted to berating them for inappropriate behaviour. Some of which, of course, may be simply boisterousness: a more exuberant style of learning and reacting. Tiring, yes: but natural. Yet even at A level the poor lads suffer punitive assaults on their whole sex as they are forced to study feminist dystopianism like The Handmaids Tale alongside smugly pious girls.

For those of us who have been uneasy about this for years, and hated the growing triumphalism about girls outperforming boys, there was a considerable buzz in last weeks exam figures. GCSE coursework is a plodding, dreary business, less a test of knowledge and understanding than of compliance and tidy punctuality. It has ruled the roost under new Labour, but after various scandals is gradually being cut down in favour of the more daredevil, challenging ordeal of the sudden death exam where you have to pull out all the stops on one hot summer day.

They cut coursework from maths for this year: and what happens? After nearly 20 years of girls outdoing boys in that subject, the moment the coursework is dropped the boys surge slightly ahead. QED. It is only one small proof, but underlines the strong probability that the style, the ethos, the expectations of schools are demoralising boyish boys.

And hear this: such a bias also damages and demoralises quite a few boyish girls, too. For just as some boys are quiet and anxious, some females are not compliant, quiet, teacher-pleasers prone to apple-polishing and recreational times-table-testing. There are swashbuckling girls who take risks, stir things up, laugh at inappropriate moments, hit deadlines in an adrenalin rush, and prefer the risky terror of the examination hall to organised, deliberative female steadiness.

When we worry about boys we should remember these girls too: just as concern about the status of female professions should include those men who join them. We need yin and yang, male and female, buccaneers and consolidators, nurses and surgeons, stevedores and embroiderers of either sex. We should celebrate both.

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Australian school bullying shame: three children a class bullied daily

But all schools have "policies" about it -- policies that are a vacuity in the absence of significant disciplinary powers

BULLYING has become such a "pervasive problem" in schools that three children in each class are bullied daily or almost daily. Startling research, held by Queensland's Education Department, shows another five children per class are bullied in some way weekly. Education Department assistant director-general of student services Patrea Walton told a community forum at the weekend that bullying was a "pervasive problem in schools" and had been identified as "one of the biggest fears parents have for their children".

The State Government has hired national bullying expert Professor Ken Rigby to help address the scourge.

Up to 70 per cent of suspensions currently handed out in Queensland schools relate to bullying. The horrific death of year 9 Mullumbimby student Jai Morcom, who suffered massive head injuries after he was allegedly targeted during a schoolyard brawl on Friday, has reignited the debate on student cruelty and violence.

Rising school violence continues to dog Education Minister Geoff Wilson, who is trying a raft of measures to tackle the problem, including hiring Prof Rigby. [Ken Rigby is a nice guy but there are severe limits on what psychology can do]

Australia's largest study of school bullying, released two months ago, showed Queensland had among the highest levels of bullying in the country. The forum, organised by the Queensland Council of Parents and Citizens Associations Metropolitan West Regional Council, heard terrifying accounts of cyber bullying in which students spoke of killing peers. Speakers also told of messages in which students wrote of hurting students' families.

Ms Walton said research showed bullying victims were more likely to be depressed, anxious, have low self-esteem, exhibit medical problems and talk about suicide than their peers. But she said it was not a recent phenomenon and not confined to schools.

Tullawong State High School principal Leonie Kearney, credited with turning her Caboolture school around through a tough stance on bullying and bad behaviour, said 70 per cent of suspensions she administered related to bullying.

Ms Walton said she didn't believe the proportion of suspensions for bullying would be as high across the state, but was unable to provide a figure, citing no agreed definition. More than 50 per cent of the 55,000 suspensions handed out to state school students in 2008 were for physical, verbal and non-verbal misconduct.

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1 September, 2009

American parents should demand public school refunds

And now, from the tortured and twisted logic department, comes this little tidbit from an activist opposed to vouchers being used to send D.C. students to private schools. Last week, about 100 supporters of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program held a rally outside the U.S. Department of Education headquarters. According to news reports, about 200 students were awarded vouchers this past spring. Then our federal government double crossed the kiddies and yanked the vouchers.

The voucher program gives parents who are unable to afford to send their children to private schools the same choice the ones who can do, and that's why Robert Vinson Brannum, the activist in question, opposes vouchers. "Not every choice can come on a public dollar," Brannum said in one news report. "I should have to pay for my child to go to private school. If it's acceptable for those who oppose abortion not to have their dollars used to pay for abortions, I should have that same choice."

And, by comparing the use of taxpayer money to fund abortions to the use of taxpayer money to send a kid to private school, Brannum wins the twisted, tortured logic award for 2009. His reasoning is wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin to pick his argument apart, but I'll start with this one. Government doesn't compel anyone to have sex. Government doesn't compel women to get pregnant, either.

Having sex is strictly a private matter, one that should be the most private. In fact, when the so-called "pro-choice" crowd supported Norma McCorvey - the Jane Roe in Roe v. Wade - in her case that went to the Supreme Court, they used the "right to privacy" argument. They went rooting around in the "penumbra" of the Constitution and just yanked the right out. The "right to privacy" is the ball field the "pro-choicers" chose to play on. Later, they decided that they didn't really mean a "right to privacy" at all, but the right to an abortion at any stage of a woman's pregnancy. And they insisted that poor women should have the same right as rich women, and advocated for public funds be made available for abortions for poor women.

Realizing that they were asking the public to foot the bill for the consequences of a very private act, the pro-choicers completely abandoned their "right to privacy" language. These days they say "a woman's right to choose."

Public education isn't even a different pew in the same church. Heck, it's an entirely different religion. Government makes education compulsory for children up to a certain age. That means those parents who don't have the money to send their children to private school or the time to home school them have to send them to public schools. Once the government has compelled parents to send their children to public schools, it has entered into a contract with those parents.

Government has promised not only to educate children, but also to do so in a safe environment. If the school either provides little to no education or isn't safe, or both, then the government has reneged on its promise. At that point, parents have the right to demand that government provide them with an alternative. I've gone so far as to say those parents have the right to demand the government cut them a check for whatever the per-pupil expenditure is in their district for public education. With that check they should be able to pick between another public school, a charter school, a private school or even a parochial school.

I developed my refund philosophy some years ago, after I learned one Baltimore public high school was so bad that it had a section called "The Level of Death," where the hoodlums smoked pot and played craps and where no serious student or even faculty member dared to venture. Why, I asked myself, are taxpayers required to even fund a public school with a "Level of Death"? What kind of education could possibly go on at the school? Why, none, of course. Maryland taxpayers, I concluded, would be perfectly justified in demanding a refund of any tax money that went to fund "Level of Death" High.

Vouchers aren't about choice. They're about government refunding our tax dollars misused for public education.

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Meddling with Britain's final High School exams has hit standards, says top head

The head of the top school for A-levels yesterday condemned ministerial meddling in exams for putting academic standards at risk. Bernice McCabe, head of the North London Collegiate School, warned that syllabuses increasingly required schools to solve social problems instead of promoting rigorous education.

She spoke out as her 11,925-a-year girls' day school topped the Daily Mail's A-level league table for independent schools. Pupils passed 99 per cent of exams at grades A and B, with more than 90 per cent at A.

But Mrs McCabe said political interference was 'skewing' the curriculum in favour of fashionable causes such as encouraging pupils to lead 'healthy lifestyles' and giving them an awareness of poverty. She accused the Government of a knee-jerk reaction to problems in wider society. 'That is inappropriate political interference in education,' she said. 'I would love an exam system separate from Government interference. 'I'm not sure that it's helpful to have such central control. It doesn't seem to have worked particularly well over the last 20 years.'

She added: 'Healthy lifestyles is a sort of criteria that's dominating it in a way that skews things and feels non-educational. 'It's very easy for the Government always to take the moral high ground, and say "how could you possibly disagree with that?" 'Naturally these things are important. But to put that right up there as a top priority brings everything down to it.' Education policy should be inspired by 'a proper education philosophy' and not in response to problems of society-she said.

Mrs McCabe's remarks came as the head of a second high-performing school said top A-level grades had become easier to come by. The availability of examiners' marking schemes and sample papers mean it is 'not hard to get a good grade', according to Cynthia Hall, head of Wycombe Abbey School in High Wycombe. She said: 'A-levels are still an appropriate challenge, but there is much more information for students about what is expected of them.' Pupils can 'see what the job is' and get on with it in a 'methodical' way, she added.

A-level results from 400 independent schools, published today, show that pupils passed 53.6 per cent of exams at grade A, compared to just over 20 per cent at comprehensives. But many schools including Eton, Winchester and St Paul's refused to allow their results to be used in tables for the second year running.

Perse School for Girls, in Cambridge, said the tables were a 'flawed beauty parade'. However, Richard Cairns, head of Brighton College, said: 'It is patronising to suggest that parents are confused by league tables and that therefore they should not exist. 'Fee-paying parents have the right to know our results.'

Rising numbers of parents are paying up to 2,000 in legal fees as they fight for places at sought-after state schools. A BBC survey of legal firms found that nearly all have been bombarded with requests for help winning school admission appeals. Parents who can no longer afford private education and wish to give their children the best chance of getting into a state grammar school or good comprehensive are said to be fuelling the trend. An initial meeting with a legal firm to discuss an appeal can cost more than 80.

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Some British university graduates now working in call centres

HELLO, Ive got a 2:1. How may I help you? Call centres, once seen as the sweatshops of the British economy, are being flooded with job applications from university leavers who have found that traditional career opportunities wither in a recession. Hays, a recruitment agency for call centre staff, said the number of new graduates seeking jobs as operators had trebled in the past year. Thousands of this summers graduates are now thought to be applying for jobs through Hays and other firms.

Those which have seen a surge in graduate applications for call centre jobs include O2, the mobile phone provider, and Denplan, the dental health insurer. Cambridgeshire county council has reported a similar trend.

Vacancies for degree-level jobs have fallen 25% in the past year, according to the Association of Graduate Recruiters, while some economists have warned that those aged 18-25 risk becoming a lost generation with nearly 1m of them already unemployed.

The fear of joblessness has led growing numbers of university leavers to enter careers not traditionally seen as suitable for those with a degree. The call centre industry, which employs more than 900,000 people in Britain, insists that the boom in graduate interest is not simply a result of the recession but shows that being a phone operator dealing with customers is seen as a possible route to a high-flying career.

It has also continued to expand throughout the recession, despite the trend in recent years for companies to locate call centres in countries with cheap labour, such as India.

Peter Mooney, head of operations at Holiday Extras, which specialises in selling pre-booked airport car parking and hotels, said he had had 250-300 applications for 17 vacancies at the companys telephone sales centre near Hythe, Kent. They have included graduates from universities such as Leeds and York. He added that the quality of applicants would mean a highly educated call centre workforce.

It is partly because of the recession, said Mooney. But we expect some of the graduates to stay with us. A lot will go via the call centre for a couple of years and will then be poached by other departments.

Elspeth Hutchinson, 22, a Holiday Extras employee, graduated from Christchurch Canterbury University this summer with a psychology and history degree. When I first graduated, I was initially thinking I wasnt going to stay here long and I would go elsewhere and the recession wouldnt hold me back, but since then Ive changed my mind.

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