Earlier this week I said I found it interesting that colleges were moving away from standardized tests while K-12 school rush to test more. Some apparently are in doubt about the first part of my statement. While none of the top 20 universities have declared the SAT/ACT optional on their campus, a growing number of reputable schools have. Here's a list of 815 colleges who don't require SAT/ACT for all students. I have no idea if this trend has reached its zenith or if this list will continue to grow, but it seems clear to me that the trend in college admissions has definitively shifted toward placing less emphasis on standardized test scores.
CNN wrote about the movement away from SAT/ACT scores a year ago, USA Today wrote about it three years ago, and the NY Times featured an article on the topic six years ago. And I won't get into all the coverage of other steps taken to deemphasize standardized test scores.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with colleges that have moved in this direction, I think it's notable that they have done this in the midst of perhaps the largest expansion of standardized testing in K-12 schools in our nation's history.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Colleges and Standardized Tests
A headline in today's local paper pointed out that another high-ranking college has chosen to eliminate the SAT and ACT as a requirement. Does anybody else find it odd that colleges are placing less emphasis on standardized test results while K-12 schools rush to test more?
Monday, March 16, 2009
Sunday Commentary: What Can Obama Really Do?
Following his first major address on education, the education world has been abuzz with reaction to and advice for the President. Every major newspaper ran editorials, and every blogger threw in their two cents. But two things about the dialogue over the past week bother me:
1.) Too many people base their judgment on the degree to which their pet reform was mentioned in the speech rather than the degree to which new policies might affect our schools
2.) Too few stop to ask what, exactly, the federal government can do that will actually impact our schools
Call me cynical, but I remain skeptical that the president or the Secretary of Education can enact any policy that will turn around our worst school systems. The problem with school reform is that it never works unless it affects the details of daily school life. Everybody thinks they know how school should be taught but very few can say they have actually turned their vision into reality.
The federal government is so far removed from your typical classroom that it is incredibly difficult for decisions at that level to effect significant and sustained change. Schools are largely local endeavors in America, and it becomes increasingly difficult to effect change the further removed one is from daily life in the classroom. It is difficult enough for teachers to impact students' lives, but it is many times more difficult for a principal, a superintendent, a mayor, or a governor, yet alone the President or the Secretary of Education.
In order for the federal government to effect change it either needs to change the way that schools are governed -- so that teachers report directly to the president -- or, more realistically, it needs to affect the way that governors, mayors, school boards, principals, teachers, and students behave. In other words, reforming schools from the oval office is a bit like playing telephone -- the odds are that the person at the end of the chain is not going to hear the message the way you meant it to be heard.
That said, I will be the last one to argue that we should give up. But before we lay out sweeping plans, we need to be aware of how they will end up affecting individual schools, classrooms, teachers, and students. And herein lies the largest dilemma for Obama and Duncan. If they lay out broad and sweeping reform, only little bits will trickle down to the classroom. But if they lay out detailed and incremental reform, they will hardly inspire the nation. In short, they are between a rock and a hard place. I don't envy their position.
1.) Too many people base their judgment on the degree to which their pet reform was mentioned in the speech rather than the degree to which new policies might affect our schools
2.) Too few stop to ask what, exactly, the federal government can do that will actually impact our schools
Call me cynical, but I remain skeptical that the president or the Secretary of Education can enact any policy that will turn around our worst school systems. The problem with school reform is that it never works unless it affects the details of daily school life. Everybody thinks they know how school should be taught but very few can say they have actually turned their vision into reality.
The federal government is so far removed from your typical classroom that it is incredibly difficult for decisions at that level to effect significant and sustained change. Schools are largely local endeavors in America, and it becomes increasingly difficult to effect change the further removed one is from daily life in the classroom. It is difficult enough for teachers to impact students' lives, but it is many times more difficult for a principal, a superintendent, a mayor, or a governor, yet alone the President or the Secretary of Education.
In order for the federal government to effect change it either needs to change the way that schools are governed -- so that teachers report directly to the president -- or, more realistically, it needs to affect the way that governors, mayors, school boards, principals, teachers, and students behave. In other words, reforming schools from the oval office is a bit like playing telephone -- the odds are that the person at the end of the chain is not going to hear the message the way you meant it to be heard.
That said, I will be the last one to argue that we should give up. But before we lay out sweeping plans, we need to be aware of how they will end up affecting individual schools, classrooms, teachers, and students. And herein lies the largest dilemma for Obama and Duncan. If they lay out broad and sweeping reform, only little bits will trickle down to the classroom. But if they lay out detailed and incremental reform, they will hardly inspire the nation. In short, they are between a rock and a hard place. I don't envy their position.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Sharpton and Klein's Imperfect Op-Ed
The Huffington Post has a piece today by Al Sharpton and Joel Klein entitled "Teacher Rx: The Perfect Storm for Reform." They make a lot of good points, but they also come up short on a number. Here are some of the parts where they slip up:
"the teaching profession does far too little to recruit promising teachers to high-poverty schools or retain them by providing merit pay"
I'm not sure "the teaching profession" really controls either of these things. I don't see "the medical profession" running recruiting campaigns or paying certain doctors more. I guess the closest thing to an action taken by the teacher profession would be an action taken by unions, but they don't exist to recruit or pay people. I think what they meant to say was that our education system does far too little.
"From the moment a prospective teacher enters a teachers college to the day of his or her retirement party, a teacher's ability to elevate student learning is poorly assessed (if at all), and virtually never linked to consequences--either positive, as in the case of awarding merit pay, or negative, like being dismissed for poor performance."
This is part of their discussion of merit pay, but is really only tangentially related. Teachers can both be rewarded and punished without the aid of tests or merit pay. If too few teachers are dismissed it's not just because the system doesn't punish bad teachers, it's also because principals aren't making a concerted effort to fire bad teachers.
But in the 21st century, teachers are long overdue to join the ranks of other white-collar professionals, whose remuneration is based chiefly on job performance. "It is astonishing to me that you could have a system that doesn't allow you to pay more for strong performance, or for teaching in a particular school," says Bill Gates. "That is almost like saying 'Teacher performance doesn't matter'--and that's basically saying 'Students don't matter'."
It's not that simple. Teacher performance can matter without being linked to pay. Students can matter without earning caretakers money. Parents aren't paid more if they take better care of their child, but an awful lot of them find the will to care anyway.
"credentials and certification are poor indicators of who will become an effective teacher"
As are test scores and college transcripts. But they might be preventing worse teachers from entering the classroom.
"In fact, promising alternative programs for recruiting and certifying teachers, like Teach for America and the New York City Teaching Fellows program, are every bit if not more effective than the traditional training provided at teachers colleges."
No, their teachers obtain about the same results on standardized tests. That may or may not indicate that they're good at training teachers. It might mean that they're better at recruiting/hiring people with more natural talent at teaching. It might mean that people in those programs simply work harder because they're more willing to burn out and move on. That fact in and of itself tells us very little about how well TFA or NYCTF train teachers.
"When disadvantaged students have a good teacher a number of years in a row, it can eliminate, or at least make a huge dent, in the achievement gap. One study of 9,400 math classrooms in Los Angeles in grades three through five projects that if low-income minority students could be assured of having teachers who fell in the top 25 percent of effective teachers four years in a row (in lieu of a sub-par instructor from the bottom quartile of teachers), students could close the achievement gap altogether"
Ugh. Really? People still haven't gotten the memo? This projection was based on pure, and inaccurate, speculation that has since been disproved. Stop citing this. There's plenty of evidence that teachers are important -- we don't need to resort to citing faulty evidence. Remember: overstating your case doesn't make it stronger. Read Aaron Pallas for more on this.
"the teaching profession does far too little to recruit promising teachers to high-poverty schools or retain them by providing merit pay"
I'm not sure "the teaching profession" really controls either of these things. I don't see "the medical profession" running recruiting campaigns or paying certain doctors more. I guess the closest thing to an action taken by the teacher profession would be an action taken by unions, but they don't exist to recruit or pay people. I think what they meant to say was that our education system does far too little.
"From the moment a prospective teacher enters a teachers college to the day of his or her retirement party, a teacher's ability to elevate student learning is poorly assessed (if at all), and virtually never linked to consequences--either positive, as in the case of awarding merit pay, or negative, like being dismissed for poor performance."
This is part of their discussion of merit pay, but is really only tangentially related. Teachers can both be rewarded and punished without the aid of tests or merit pay. If too few teachers are dismissed it's not just because the system doesn't punish bad teachers, it's also because principals aren't making a concerted effort to fire bad teachers.
But in the 21st century, teachers are long overdue to join the ranks of other white-collar professionals, whose remuneration is based chiefly on job performance. "It is astonishing to me that you could have a system that doesn't allow you to pay more for strong performance, or for teaching in a particular school," says Bill Gates. "That is almost like saying 'Teacher performance doesn't matter'--and that's basically saying 'Students don't matter'."
It's not that simple. Teacher performance can matter without being linked to pay. Students can matter without earning caretakers money. Parents aren't paid more if they take better care of their child, but an awful lot of them find the will to care anyway.
"credentials and certification are poor indicators of who will become an effective teacher"
As are test scores and college transcripts. But they might be preventing worse teachers from entering the classroom.
"In fact, promising alternative programs for recruiting and certifying teachers, like Teach for America and the New York City Teaching Fellows program, are every bit if not more effective than the traditional training provided at teachers colleges."
No, their teachers obtain about the same results on standardized tests. That may or may not indicate that they're good at training teachers. It might mean that they're better at recruiting/hiring people with more natural talent at teaching. It might mean that people in those programs simply work harder because they're more willing to burn out and move on. That fact in and of itself tells us very little about how well TFA or NYCTF train teachers.
"When disadvantaged students have a good teacher a number of years in a row, it can eliminate, or at least make a huge dent, in the achievement gap. One study of 9,400 math classrooms in Los Angeles in grades three through five projects that if low-income minority students could be assured of having teachers who fell in the top 25 percent of effective teachers four years in a row (in lieu of a sub-par instructor from the bottom quartile of teachers), students could close the achievement gap altogether"
Ugh. Really? People still haven't gotten the memo? This projection was based on pure, and inaccurate, speculation that has since been disproved. Stop citing this. There's plenty of evidence that teachers are important -- we don't need to resort to citing faulty evidence. Remember: overstating your case doesn't make it stronger. Read Aaron Pallas for more on this.
To move toward a true performance-based compensation system for teachers, school districts would need to be able to track the effect that individual teachers have on student performance from year-to-year over a period of years . . . Unfortunately, only a handful of states and districts have developed data bases that would enable school officials to track the performance of individual teachers and students over a multi-year period.
We believe that the Obama administration should require states seeking money from the new $5 billion "Race to the Top" innovation fund to not only develop but implement longitudinal value-added systems for assessing teacher performance. For all its imperfections and methodological challenges, value added analysis is still a vast improvement on the existing system, which fails its elemental duty to judge whether teachers are advancing student learning.
Two thoughts: 1.) Value-Added systems are difficult and expensive to develop. Might it be better for the federal government to create one (especially if we end up with national standards) and allow states to either opt-in or create their own? 2.) If the current system "fails its elemental duty" then why are we pressing to use it to evaluate teachers and schools?
Other than those problems, it's a pretty good piece.
Famous Criminals and Bronx Middle Schools
GothamSchools points to a piece this morning about an ebay auction for Lee Harvey Oswald's old school transfer card. The most interesting part of the article is that the school social worker (an "emotionally starved, affectionless youngster") and a psychologist ("personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies.") both apparently diagnosed Oswald with serious problems before his mother moved him to New Orleans. Perhaps if they'd been taken seriously, JFK would still be alive.
But Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the only famous criminal to attend a Bronx middle school. David Berkowitz, better known as the "Son of Sam" serial killer, attended the school where I formerly taught ("now we know why he was so messed up" remarked at least one cynical teacher when we learned of this). I wonder what the school social worker wrote about him.
But Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the only famous criminal to attend a Bronx middle school. David Berkowitz, better known as the "Son of Sam" serial killer, attended the school where I formerly taught ("now we know why he was so messed up" remarked at least one cynical teacher when we learned of this). I wonder what the school social worker wrote about him.
Tests Aren't Omniscient
I like David Brooks, but sometimes he goes off the reservation when he writes about education. Today's column isn't too bad -- it's worth a read.
He makes a number of points, but I found his remarks surrounding measurement of teacher quality most notable -- two sections in particular:
Most important, it would increase merit pay for good teachers (the ones who develop emotional bonds with students) and dismiss bad teachers (the ones who treat students like cattle to be processed).
Developing bonds with students should be encouraged; treating students like cattle should not. But Brooks mostly discusses the use of standardized test scores and I'm unaware of any in use that measure this. If he's talking about making relationships with students a criteria in evaluating teachers, then I'm with him -- but if he thinks that this is what state tests are measuring then he needs to give this a little more thought.
Today, tests can tell you which students are on track and which aren’t. They can tell you which teachers are bringing their students’ achievement up by two grades in a single year and which are bringing their students’ levels up by only half a grade. They can tell you which education schools produce good teachers and which do not.
New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has data showing that progress on tests between the third and eighth grades powerfully predicts high school graduation rates years later — a clear demonstration of the importance of these assessments.
The first paragraph represents a problem I have with a lot of proponents of merit pay and accountability -- it oversells what we can do with tests. Brooks says that tests can tell us these things. At this present moment, using the tests we currently use, they can do nothing of the sort. What they can do is inform us -- using the information we can make reasonable guesses, but teachers' results one year are only weakly to moderately correlated with their results the next year. In other words, if we base our evaluation of teachers on one year of test data then we're going to be wrong an awful lot of the time (not to mention the approximately 2/3 of teachers who don't teach a subject that's tested by a state test). I think there are a lot of solid arguments for better and more widespread use of data, particularly in evaluating teachers and schools, but paragraphs such as the one above aren't really truthful and don't do anybody any favors. Remember: overstating your case doesn't make it stronger.
As for the second paragraph, I hardly think it's a surprise that a child's growth in test scores over the course of six years of schooling is correlated with whether or not they graduate from school. All that means is that the tests aren't completely useless -- it's not any sort of demonstration of their omniscience.
By all means, let's find better ways to use the data we collect -- but let's start with a realistic understanding of what we can and cannot know from this usage.
He makes a number of points, but I found his remarks surrounding measurement of teacher quality most notable -- two sections in particular:
Most important, it would increase merit pay for good teachers (the ones who develop emotional bonds with students) and dismiss bad teachers (the ones who treat students like cattle to be processed).
Developing bonds with students should be encouraged; treating students like cattle should not. But Brooks mostly discusses the use of standardized test scores and I'm unaware of any in use that measure this. If he's talking about making relationships with students a criteria in evaluating teachers, then I'm with him -- but if he thinks that this is what state tests are measuring then he needs to give this a little more thought.
Today, tests can tell you which students are on track and which aren’t. They can tell you which teachers are bringing their students’ achievement up by two grades in a single year and which are bringing their students’ levels up by only half a grade. They can tell you which education schools produce good teachers and which do not.
New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has data showing that progress on tests between the third and eighth grades powerfully predicts high school graduation rates years later — a clear demonstration of the importance of these assessments.
The first paragraph represents a problem I have with a lot of proponents of merit pay and accountability -- it oversells what we can do with tests. Brooks says that tests can tell us these things. At this present moment, using the tests we currently use, they can do nothing of the sort. What they can do is inform us -- using the information we can make reasonable guesses, but teachers' results one year are only weakly to moderately correlated with their results the next year. In other words, if we base our evaluation of teachers on one year of test data then we're going to be wrong an awful lot of the time (not to mention the approximately 2/3 of teachers who don't teach a subject that's tested by a state test). I think there are a lot of solid arguments for better and more widespread use of data, particularly in evaluating teachers and schools, but paragraphs such as the one above aren't really truthful and don't do anybody any favors. Remember: overstating your case doesn't make it stronger.
As for the second paragraph, I hardly think it's a surprise that a child's growth in test scores over the course of six years of schooling is correlated with whether or not they graduate from school. All that means is that the tests aren't completely useless -- it's not any sort of demonstration of their omniscience.
By all means, let's find better ways to use the data we collect -- but let's start with a realistic understanding of what we can and cannot know from this usage.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Coverages, A Dirty Little Secret
According to USA Today, NYC is no longer taking applications for substitute teachers (hat tip: Gotham Schools). It's unclear exactly why this is, but the blurb on the increase in applications makes it sound like too many people have applied and that they no longer need more subs.
This means one of two things:
1.) Times have drastically changed since my teaching days, or
2.) Somebody is really stupid
Back when I was teaching, subs were a precious commodity at my school -- they were few and far between. One of the dirty little secrets that people outside of schools don't realize is that when subs are missing that "emergency coverages" become common (in elementary schools they often prefer to split classes up and assign a handful of students to other classes for the day).
Since we almost never had subs available, it meant that other teachers had to cover whenever one was absent. When you walked in the door in the morning there was a white slip declaring that there was an emergency and you were needed to cover another class. I usually had 2-3 per week. I used to dread the sight of that little white slip folded over my time card -- the worst was when I had already breathed a sigh of relief only to have a student sent to my room with a coverage slip during homeroom (if not later).
Coverages were one of the worst parts of an awful job. When I first found out that we had to cover other classes during our free periods, it was from a memo distributed to teachers. According to at least one administrator in the building, teachers were supposed to be prepared to teach any other class at any other time in case of a coverage. Did they really expect me to come up with a lesson for Spanish or 8th grade math or choir at the drop of a hat? I asked a veteran teacher if this was how things actually worked. "If nobody gets hurt, you've had a successful coverage" is what I was told. Indeed, I don't think that statement was overly hyperbolic.
In theory, teachers from the same school would better control students than would subs -- but that assumes that students know (and care) who the teacher is. Given the size of the school, most classes I covered didn't know me other than possibly seeing me around the hall. They could've cared less (and wouldn't have known the difference anyway) whether I was the sixth grade teacher from the 3rd floor or some poor sap off the street.
One of the best coverages I ever had was when I covered a chorus class. At that point in the year two chorus teachers had already quit, so the kids were wondering when a new one would come (nobody ever did). I walked into the classroom and the students immediately asked if I was the new chorus teacher. There was only one right answer -- yes, I was, and we needed to get to work right away. I passed out the stack of textbooks that were sitting on the shelves and tried to remember what I'd learned in middle school band. It bought me a solid half hour of relative cooperativeness.
But back to point #2. If there still aren't enough subs to go around, but they've stopped taking applications, then somebody is an idiot. Not only do coverages make teachers' lives hell (which, given the retention problem in NYC isn't the best policy) but they're cost inefficient. When NYC teachers are asked to cover another class, they're paid at the per diem rate of around $40/hour. I don't know exactly what subs make, but I guarantee it's less than that.
This means one of two things:
1.) Times have drastically changed since my teaching days, or
2.) Somebody is really stupid
Back when I was teaching, subs were a precious commodity at my school -- they were few and far between. One of the dirty little secrets that people outside of schools don't realize is that when subs are missing that "emergency coverages" become common (in elementary schools they often prefer to split classes up and assign a handful of students to other classes for the day).
Since we almost never had subs available, it meant that other teachers had to cover whenever one was absent. When you walked in the door in the morning there was a white slip declaring that there was an emergency and you were needed to cover another class. I usually had 2-3 per week. I used to dread the sight of that little white slip folded over my time card -- the worst was when I had already breathed a sigh of relief only to have a student sent to my room with a coverage slip during homeroom (if not later).
Coverages were one of the worst parts of an awful job. When I first found out that we had to cover other classes during our free periods, it was from a memo distributed to teachers. According to at least one administrator in the building, teachers were supposed to be prepared to teach any other class at any other time in case of a coverage. Did they really expect me to come up with a lesson for Spanish or 8th grade math or choir at the drop of a hat? I asked a veteran teacher if this was how things actually worked. "If nobody gets hurt, you've had a successful coverage" is what I was told. Indeed, I don't think that statement was overly hyperbolic.
In theory, teachers from the same school would better control students than would subs -- but that assumes that students know (and care) who the teacher is. Given the size of the school, most classes I covered didn't know me other than possibly seeing me around the hall. They could've cared less (and wouldn't have known the difference anyway) whether I was the sixth grade teacher from the 3rd floor or some poor sap off the street.
One of the best coverages I ever had was when I covered a chorus class. At that point in the year two chorus teachers had already quit, so the kids were wondering when a new one would come (nobody ever did). I walked into the classroom and the students immediately asked if I was the new chorus teacher. There was only one right answer -- yes, I was, and we needed to get to work right away. I passed out the stack of textbooks that were sitting on the shelves and tried to remember what I'd learned in middle school band. It bought me a solid half hour of relative cooperativeness.
But back to point #2. If there still aren't enough subs to go around, but they've stopped taking applications, then somebody is an idiot. Not only do coverages make teachers' lives hell (which, given the retention problem in NYC isn't the best policy) but they're cost inefficient. When NYC teachers are asked to cover another class, they're paid at the per diem rate of around $40/hour. I don't know exactly what subs make, but I guarantee it's less than that.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Fudging Grades
This principal in Brooklyn (hat tip: Gotham Schools) got the boot the other day for changing grades on student report cards so that fewer students would fail. I know for a fact that she's not the only NYC school administrator to do this, and I wonder how widespread this is.
The Origins of Summer Vacation: Another Explanation
Kevin Carey posted on an interesting alternate explanation for the summer vacation yesterday. He disputes that the summer vacation was for agriculture and, instead, says it had a lot to do with wealthier city-dwellers wanting to take time off to travel and rest their children's minds. I definitely believe the first part and, running short on time, I'm willing to take his word on the second part without reading the full report. But you should know that there's another equally reasonable explanation floating around out there.
In 2005 William Fischel published an article entitled Will I see you in September?: An Economic Explanation of the Summer Vacation that also shoots down the notion that summer vacation had anything to do with agriculture. When you think about it, that explanation makes no sense -- vacations would be during planting and harvest, not during the summer, if that were true.
Rather than writing a thorough summary of the article, I'm going to copy and paste his abstract and then some notes I passed out when I presented on this last year -- I think they speak for themselves.
Abstract:
The September-to-June school year is not an agricultural holdover. It is a coordinating device to facilitate geographic mobility. The adoption of age-graded schools, which work best if all students start together, and the growth of worker mobility, which requires extra time and amenable weather to relocate households, produced the standard calendar. A "natural experiment" supporting this explanation is the equator. Summer vacation is a norm both north and south of it. However, American and European families on temporary assignment in the Southern Hemisphere use schools that maintain a Northern Hemisphere school year in order to facilitate relocation to their home countries.
My Notes:
The traditional explanation is that September-June school year developed because children needed to work on the farm during the summer. Fischel attempts to de-bunk this “myth” due to the fact that:
Fischel claims the real reasons that that September-June school year developed are:
Fischel buys these arguments because:
I'm willing to buy a combination of Fischel's and Ed Sector's explanations -- in other words, that summer break started both so families could move and so that they could vacation.
In 2005 William Fischel published an article entitled Will I see you in September?: An Economic Explanation of the Summer Vacation that also shoots down the notion that summer vacation had anything to do with agriculture. When you think about it, that explanation makes no sense -- vacations would be during planting and harvest, not during the summer, if that were true.
Rather than writing a thorough summary of the article, I'm going to copy and paste his abstract and then some notes I passed out when I presented on this last year -- I think they speak for themselves.
Abstract:
The September-to-June school year is not an agricultural holdover. It is a coordinating device to facilitate geographic mobility. The adoption of age-graded schools, which work best if all students start together, and the growth of worker mobility, which requires extra time and amenable weather to relocate households, produced the standard calendar. A "natural experiment" supporting this explanation is the equator. Summer vacation is a norm both north and south of it. However, American and European families on temporary assignment in the Southern Hemisphere use schools that maintain a Northern Hemisphere school year in order to facilitate relocation to their home countries.
My Notes:
The traditional explanation is that September-June school year developed because children needed to work on the farm during the summer. Fischel attempts to de-bunk this “myth” due to the fact that:
- Agricultural help was not needed the most during the summer but, rather, during planting and harvesting. Besides this, planting and harvesting were at different times in different regions.
- In the mid 1800’s the school year usually ran from about May-August and November-March
Fischel claims the real reasons that that September-June school year developed are:
- With the beginning of graded schools (starting around 1840 in cities and about 1880 in rural areas) meant that teachers and students needed a specific beginning and end of the school year
- Schools all began taking the summer off so that people would have time to move. During the time that September-June started becoming the norm 1880-1920) there was a lot of mobility since the economy was shifting from agrarian to industrial. It is better to both move and go on vacation during these summer months.
Fischel buys these arguments because:
- Schools in other countries run on similar calendars and were obviously not influenced by the same central management. Schools in the southern hemisphere are on break during their summer.
- Foreign families that set up schools in the southern hemisphere run the same school year as their native country rather than adapting to the local norms
I'm willing to buy a combination of Fischel's and Ed Sector's explanations -- in other words, that summer break started both so families could move and so that they could vacation.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Let Sleeping Bobs Lie
From the pantheon of terrible ideas comes this plan from Bob Kravitz of the Indianapolis Star:
A Division I athlete, man or woman, revenue-producing sport or non-revenue-producing sport, gets the option: a scholarship or a paycheck with no academic strings attached.
Yes, he's serious -- since a few scholarship athletes don't take school seriously he thinks they should just be paid a salary and refrain from attending classes. I could do a point-by-point rebuttal of his plan, but I don't see why I should. It's as if somebody proposed that we outlaw driving in order to prevent car accidents and then expects a serious response.
NCAA president Myles Brand made a feeble attempt at a response (which was then mocked by Kevin Carey), but he should have just let Kravitz be.
A Division I athlete, man or woman, revenue-producing sport or non-revenue-producing sport, gets the option: a scholarship or a paycheck with no academic strings attached.
Yes, he's serious -- since a few scholarship athletes don't take school seriously he thinks they should just be paid a salary and refrain from attending classes. I could do a point-by-point rebuttal of his plan, but I don't see why I should. It's as if somebody proposed that we outlaw driving in order to prevent car accidents and then expects a serious response.
NCAA president Myles Brand made a feeble attempt at a response (which was then mocked by Kevin Carey), but he should have just let Kravitz be.
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