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PDK/Gallup Poll Results

The annual Gallup poll focusing on public attitudes about schools is out.  From the Austin American-Statesman: 

Left Behind?

             By Raven L. Hill |                  Tuesday, August 28, 2007, 06:09 AM

One in two people believe the federal No Child Left Behind Act is limiting what children are taught, according to a poll released today.

According to this year’s PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools:

• 52 percent of parents believe there is too much standardized testing, which is the cornerstone of the federal law.

• 67 percent of parents give the school their oldest child attends an A or a B.

• Eight in 10 people believe that all children in the U.S. should learn a second language in addition to English.

• 7 in 10 want foreign language instruction to start in elementary school.

   

Orson Scott Card on Reading in School

From an interview with sci-fi author Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game):

Reading has always been a minority sport.  Yes, we all learn how to read in school, but we aren't all taught to love it.  But if you want to find anybody to blame for the decline in reading, look at the miserable things they require students to read in school.  They teach students systematically that anything that they like to read is crap...and anything that is "good" according to the professors or the teachers is actually unreadable drivel.  I mean, anybody who requires a child to read The House of Seven Gables or The Scarlet Letter -- Nathaniel Hawthorne was never a good writer.  The only reason he's in our literary pantheon is because he was the first American that the Brits took seriously, and we had such an inferiority complex we knew that must mean he was good.  But he wasn't good; this stuff is impenetrable.  I would rather have schoolchildren emerge from school having read The Princess Bride and Holes than to have them come out having read The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick.  The group that comes out having read The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick will hate reading; they'll think of it as a tedious duty that they'll avoid at all costs." --

Grace Paley Dead at 84

News today that the wonderful short story writer Grace Paley has died.

"None of it happened, and yet every word of it is true," she once said of her fiction. "It's truth embedded in the lie."

Read about her in The Washington Post.

Wal-Mart World

Here's the annual list from Beloit College about the world incoming college freshman have grown up in.  Of course it's true of juniors and seniors in high school as well.  (Feel free to Google the terms you don't know.)

The Mindset for the Class of 2011

• What Berlin wall?
• They never “rolled down” a car window.
• They have grown up with bottled water.
• Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
• Pete Rose has never played baseball.
• Russia has always had a multi-party political system.
• No one has ever been able to sit down comfortably to a meal of “liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
• Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
• When all else fails, the Prozac defense has always been a possibility.
• They grew up in Wayne’s World.
• U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
• Fox has always been a major network.
• Women’s studies majors have always been offered on campus.
• Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.
• They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee.
• China has always been more interested in making money than in reeducation.
• The space program has never really caught their attention except in disasters.
• They’re always texting 1 n other.
• They will encounter roughly equal numbers of female and male professors in the classroom.
• Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.
• The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.

      

New Authors Find a Place on Summer Reading Lists

From The Christian Science Monitor:

High school reading lists get a modern makeover

Find out what recent bestsellers are taking their place next to classics at schools across the US.

By Amy Brittain          | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor       

from the August 8, 2007 edition

"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." Charles Dickens's famous line in "A Tale of Two Cities" could be used to describe what is probably hitting home about now for millions of American high school students: Lazy summer days cut short by the frantic rush to finish required reading lists before school starts.

"Most teens spend the summer doing whatever, and then cram the reading in during the last two weeks," says 2007 high school          graduate Henry Qin of Boston.       

Precious summer minutes spent poring over Shakespeare or Nathaniel Hawthorne may seem less than appealing to teens, but some experts say there is a slowly growing trend to infuse more modern literature into summer reading. As a result, the revered literary cannon, which includes such classics as "Hamlet," "The Grapes of Wrath," and "The Scarlet Letter," may be due for a shake-up. Glance at high school summer reading lists across the United States and you are likely to find more recent authors such as Alice Sebold, Walter Dean Myers, and even Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong alongside Dickens and the Brontë sisters.

Read the rest here. 

                                                

Garcia: NCLB Has Failed to Deliver

With the release of this year's AYP results, NM Education Secretary Veronica Garcia adds her voice to the growing chorus saying NCLB isn't working: 

“The NCLB system, which includes making AYP designations, is currently under reauthorization,” said Secretary García. “Problematic areas must be addressed. One area is the pass/fail system of AYP designations that does not give an comprehensive picture of school improvement. “While I support the spirit of NCLB, it has failed to deliver on its promise. What we need is fairness and funding.”

You can find all the NM AYP results here.