Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

Hello again, everyone. Mike here, signing in from Buenos Aires, where one gets — as you might expect — a completely different picture of the Falklands War.

Introspection and reexamination of the war does not seem to be common in Argentina, although obviously my own capacity for examining Argentine academia on the subject is extremely limited. By any objective measure, the invasion of the Falklands on April 2, 1982, was a cynical attempt by a floundering junta to distract the Argentine people from severe economic difficulties. And for a couple of months, it worked. Recapturing the Malvinas, as the Falklands are called here, was extremely popular. So everything was great until the Royal Marines showed up.

Once the Argentines were ejected and returned home without the millions of dollars of equipment and arms they brought to the islands, things changed rather rapidly. The junta was ousted, democratic government was eventually restored, and although the military still is an important political player, Argentina is certainly much better off having lost the Falklands War than if the junta had been victorious.

The war is a source of national pride, despite its origins, and it is clear even after spending only a short time in Argentina that the Malvinas is still very much a national issue (how much it concerns the average citizen, of course, is another question entirely). Just yesterday, the Argentine government rejected a British offer to participate in a joint commemoration of the soldiers who fell in the war. The Argentine ambassador said the event was too much of a “victory celebration.”

It was a strange set of circumstances that set the Falklands War in motion 25 years ago. And it’s a strange set of circumstances that keeps the island’s sovereignty as an international flashpoint even today. When I return home next week, I plan to put together a fairly extensive piece on the issue – with photos. I’ll post it on my personal blog – http://www.mikeantonucci.com.

By Dr. Homeslice

I’ve read two articles regarding of online charter schools. In Indiana, BSU recently approved the state’s first two online charter schools. The teachers’ union is fighting the decision.

On the same side of the fence but in a different corner lies the Home School Legal Defense Association. Beware of the Wisconsin Virtual Academy, they warn, it’ll turn you into a public school student!

Online charter schools are the worst kind out there– they are the “crack cocaine” of charter schools.

Tell an urban high school student that they don’t have to show up to school anymore, “Just log in for several hours a week, do some work and you’ll graduate on time” and you’ve got yourself a new customer!

“What’s that? No computer? No problem! Just fill these out and we’ll loan you a free one!”

When student logs in, they realize -gasp- that there’s work to do, and now there’s no teacher to explain it to them. They call the help line for the school, get put on hold, hang up and trade emails with their instructor but still don’t understand how to do it.

Meanwhile, the e-school is getting state money and showing their students’ attendance as perfect just because they’ve logged in once. Eventually, those students end up dropping out of the virtual school and re-enroll in (you guessed it) the public school they left for the e-school. They bring with them no skills, no credits and we as teachers have to pick up the pieces.

By J3

What would a good merit pay system for teachers look like?

What should be considered?

My suggestions, in no order of priority:

It should be:

1) simple and easily understood by the public and the teachers. Not like the arcane school grading system in Florida.

2) perceived to be fair.

3) actually fair.

4) fundamentally subjective. The unions will object that no merit pay system for teachers can be objective because the quality of teaching cannot be measured; and you cannot use student achievement because of varying student ability. These are red herrings. Most of us in the private sector work under one form or another of pay for performance – and we usually only have one evaluator, “The Boss.” It seems to work.

5) supported by a merit system for every higher level of administrator. Everyone from the teacher through all the administrators to the superintendent should be rewarded for the quality of their work. Principals will be less likely to reward favorites for poor performance if their own paycheck is affected.

6) open-ended. Rewards should not be based on pre-determined goals but on ranked performance so that there is no artificial upper limit.

7) rewarding of both absolute levels of measure and improvements in those levels. That way teachers in high achieving schools will be rewarded but those in low achieving schools with higher rates of improvement will also be rewarded.

8) inducing cooperation within schools and competition between schools.

9) intrinsically inducing higher levels of parental involvement.

By Jim Hollingsworth

Tough Choices or Tough Times has gotten a lot of press. It proposes a who new educational program for the United States. My objections are many; there is too much federal government in the proposal, they include children as young as three, and there is tremendous loss of local control.

Their proposal sounds good in part: They are fairly accurate in defining the history of the problem. But their program is doomed to failure just like A Nation At Risk and other programs since.

Achievement levels have gone down since the day in which the teaching of phonics was abandoned. If children do not learn to read by the end of the third grade they become bored and a discipline problem. Not only that, they will require a lot of remediation to ever learn to read.

Look at it this way: If children do not learn to read, then a whole bunch of teachers will have to be hired to help them learn. Thus the NEA and other teacher organizations are not likely to support a program that would trim the need for more teachers.

If we really want to see our children improve we need to start in the first grade and insist that phonics be used as the only method of teaching reading. And it wouldn’t hurt if we went back to basic math as well.

Thankfully, the weather cooperated and indeed it was a gorgeous, sunny day in Stanley, capital of the Falkland Islands. We visited some battlefield sites, talked to some locals about the war, and were able to get some sense of what it must have been like in April 1982, when Argentine forces invaded this sparsely inhabited island on the edge of the world.

The war seemed bizarre then, and still does today. The culture of the Falklands – well, let’s just say it’s as if someone had carved off a slice of Scotland and deposited it in the South Atlantic. You can’t go 20 feet without spotting sheep, the entire island of East Falkland looks like a highland moor liberally sprinkled with craggy hills, and there are an inordinate number of pubs per capita. Whatever the relative merits of Argentina’s territorial claims, the place is about as similar to Buenos Aires as a jig is to a tango.

I’ve collected a pretty good assortment of photos, notes and unique sources about the war, and I hope to put something useful together upon my return home.

The Islanders have already begun their commemoration of the war’s 25th anniversary, but it bears noting that most of the British Army’s veterans of the Falklands War won’t make it for the anniversary of the liberation in June. They have to wait until November… when the weather starts to improve.

By Birch Walker

Education industry insiders are the ultimate conservatives, and they are highly skilled at preserving the status quo. No insiders are better at this than the teachers’ unions. Every focus group word they use can be translated as “higher wages, better working conditions.” Here are some other rules for propping up the status quo that I’ve learned from listening to industry insiders:

1) Blame the student first, the parent second, the taxpayer third. This rule applies in all situations involving accountability. For example: The reason test scores go down between 4th- and 8th-grade in “hormones” (blame the student). Never mind that they also have hormones in schools where test scores go up.

2) Understaffed, underfunded, lack of suitable facilities. This is used in all situations in which an outsider suggests a change to the status quo. Example: We do not have enough teachers for smaller classes and without smaller classes we can’t do that.

3) Due to cost savings, we are able to fund that project. This is used in situations where outsiders were just told there was no funding, but insiders want to proceed with a project. Example: due to savings from energy efficiency program, our heating budget has just enough left for new furniture in the teachers’ lounge.

4) We need to involve the stakeholders in the decision-making process. This works like a charm when the industry wants to make something more expensive but otherwise stay the same. Example: After meeting with stakeholders, we determined that the program needs (fill in the blank) and we are allocating funding for (higher wages, better working conditions).

5) We need to leave that to the education professionals and focus on the big picture. The big picture means: Help get higher wages and better working conditions. Get the picture.

Changes in the status quo will not come from inside the industry. Is it a lost cause? Not if you involve an outsider.

By Ted O’Neil

People – especially teachers – are always surprised when they learn that my children attend public school. Since I work at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank that advocates school choice, they assume I have something against public education. Truth is, our public school system has generally met or exceeded expectations for our first-grader and fifth-grader.

Our town is home to the headquarters of Dow Chemical and Dow Corning, as well as a large, regional hospital and several other successful businesses. If we lived where I grew up, near Detroit, or where my wife grew up, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, it’s likely our children wouldn’t come within a mile of a public school. Midland, Michigan, where we reside now, is different. Many people here make good money. Either consciously or subconsciously, the schools have responded to a Smithesque invisible hand that, in this case, represents unspoken competition. Many families here could afford to pull their kids out of public school tomorrow and enroll them in one of several top-notch private or parochial schools or in the local public charter school. So the public schools work hard to keep their customers.

What’s really unfortunate is that too many families can only afford to send their children to their assigned school districts. Too often, these schools know – and take advantage of the fact – that they’ll never have to respond to competition of any kind.