Value of early childhood education challenged

The effectiveness of early childhood education is taken as an article of faith by groups like Ready4K and proponents of more and bigger taxpayer-funded government programs.

At a July 18 early childhood education luncheon, The Center of the American Experiment will challenge this assumption in a big way, with questions like:

• Isn't it true that advocates rely excessively on a few small and idiosyncratic studies when arguing the merits of early childhood education?


• Given the enormous increase in the proportion of boys and girls in early childhood programs over the last four decades, why haven't they performed better in K-12?


• What makes anyone think such programs can significantly reduce achievement gaps between white and minority kids when they haven't so far?


• What makes anyone think exceptional programs can be replicated on a mass scale?


• In sum, aren't the benefits of early childhood education programs routinely overstated?

To register, contact Peter Zeller at (612) 338-3605, or go to the Center's web site to register online.

EDUCATION

Minnesota's achievement gap

Minnesota educators, policymakers, and teachers are wringing their hands over an Education Week report on the state's high school graduation rates. According to the Star Tribune:

Fewer than half of Minnesota's black high school students end up getting their high school diplomas, according to a new study by Education Week magazine. That's a graduation rate for black students that's one of the lowest in the country, further evidence that a big achievement gap exists between Minnesota's white students and students of color.

Predictably, liberals and progressives believe that this problem can and should be solved by government; specifically, raising taxes to fund massive expansions of early childhood programs and mandatory preschool, and redistributing wealth from rich to poor. They believe that society's ills can be fixed by government.

Conservatives, as Ronald Reagan said, believe that "Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem." They believe that society can and should be advanced through culture and values such as family and faith.

In 2004, Bill Cosby delivered a surprising, hard-hitting, and controversial take on the achievement gap on the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. It was a condemnation of the gangsta culture that pervades much of black society.

...Brown versus Board of Education: Where are we today? They paved the way, but what did we do with it? That white man, he's laughing. He's got to be laughing: 50 percent drop out, the rest of them are in prison.

Interestingly, the Education Week report does not include Minnesota race and ethnicity graduation rates for any group other than white and black. But it does list national data:

• American Indian/Alaska Native (national): 47.4%


• Asian Pacific Islander (national): 77.0%


• Hispanic (national): 55.6%


• Black (Minnesota/national): 43.6/51.6%


• White (Minnesota/national): 83.1/76.2%

Why is the national Asian graduation rate higher than the rate for whites? Is it because more Asians are enrolled in preschool programs than whites? Do they receive better government programs than blacks? I would guess that the reason for this, and the reason that so many winners of academic competitions have eastern Indian, Chinese, and Korean family names, is that staying in school, learning English, getting a job, and delaying pregnancy are high priorities in those cultures.

Government may be part of the solution, after all the public schools are run by the government, but the achievement gap won't narrow dramatically until things change dramatically at home.

EDUCATION

EdWatch responds to Strib pro-IB editorial

The Strib recently savaged EdWatch for its stand on International Baccalaureate (IB). Here is EdWatch's response:

To the editor:

Your June 12 editorial countering EdWatch's criticisms of International Baccalaureate (IB) programs should have dug beneath the cheerleading to learn why the ranks of IB critics are growing.

For example, former IB student Liam Julian of the Fordham Foundation states, "Literary merit wasn't in the mind of those who created the reading lists in my IB English classes; multiculturalism and gender concerns were. ... Literature that had stood the test of time was sacrificed for contemporary works that addressed immediate cultural or feminist struggles."

IB standards are set in Geneva, Switzerland, and in some cases they are in direct conflict with Minnesota's new academic standards. IB states that it "promotes" the United Nations, while only teaching "appreciation" for our nation's founding documents.

One New York school district opposed IB because it competes directly with Advanced Placement classes, which are much more cost-effective and whose credits are accepted at the college level. Thousands of colleges do not give credit for individual IB classes.

Julie M. Quist, Chaska
Vice President, EdWatch

[I'm still working on my AP/IB post. As Mr. Strickland would say, "Slacker!"]

EDUCATION

Fordham gives Pawlenty's ed reform vision an "A"

Former Minnesota education commissioner Cheri Pierson Yecke broke a few eggs during her tenure in an attempt to make an education reform omelet, by implementing Gov. Tim Pawlenty's ambitious education reform agenda.

One of the hallmarks of Yecke's tenure was replacing the process-oriented Profile of Learning graduation standards with a new set of content-oriented academic standards in English, mathematics, social studies, and science. Yecke's standards creation process was transparent and rapid — the mirror image of the process used to create the Profile of Learning. The results satisfied the public's hunger for teaching both skills and knowledge, process and content, to Minnesota's public school students.

Last week, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation awarded Minnesota's Academic Standards in World History with a grade of "A." The full text of the Fordham report, "The State of State World History Standards 2006," is available on the Fordham Foundation web site. The previous Profile of Learning standards earned a grade of "F" shortly before they were replaced by the current standards.

According to the report:

The recently approved and substantially improved Minnesota state standards begin by saying, "Public education in Minnesota must help students gain the knowledge and skills that are necessary to protect and maintain freedom." They aspire to specify "the particular knowledge and skills that Minnesota students will be required to learn." They suggest that the purpose of world history is to help students "recognize the common problems of all humankind, and the increasing interactions among nations and civilizations that have shaped much of human life." In that vein, they point out how the "increasing connections" make world history of critical importance "in fostering the respect and understanding required in a connected and interdependent world."

The revised standards deliver on much of this ambitious promise and will serve the current generation of Minnesota students well.

"Many Minnesotans devoted a great deal of hard work to these standards. They should all be proud about this excellent review of their work," current Minnesota Commissioner of Education Alice Seagren said in a press release. "Our current standards help Minnesota students understand the history that shapes their world, the traditions they have inherited, and the lessons of the past so they can meet the challenges of the future."

EDUCATION

Back to International Baccalaureate

Check out Norman Draper's fairly balanced article in the Star Tribune on International Baccalaureate, or IB. IB is a controversy coming to a school district near you. Just ask the folks at Minnetonka, who are emerging from a battle royale over IB (they adopted it in addition to Advanced Placement or AP), which may have been partially to blame for the resignation of one school board member.

Is IB anti-American or internationally-aware? Fuzzy touchy-feely or as one high school senior in Draper's article put it, "To me, AP is such a quantitative class...I think IB makes the conscious effort to go beyond the scholarship approach." Needlessly expensive or sound investment?

I am working on a longer post or possible newspaper op-ed piece in response to a local column that basically equated IB and AP as twin sons of different mothers. That may be a convenient shorthand for busy parents, but au contraire, mon frère, they are not the same.

EDUCATION