Interesting array of articles lately in the news about high schools that are cancelling high school sports due to lack of funding and a down economy. Hard to know if a significant trend is developing, but Sports Illustrated saw it coming last year and thought enough about it to write an article.
If a true trend develops, I wonder if it could mean a movement toward private/parochial schools. We'll see.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Irony!?!
Did anyone else catch how Obama finished his address to the students of America today?
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
He mentioned God in school! Odds are that if he was a valedictorian at one of nation's public high schools, some principal would have made him take that out of his speech.
Beautiful irony.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
He mentioned God in school! Odds are that if he was a valedictorian at one of nation's public high schools, some principal would have made him take that out of his speech.
Beautiful irony.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Textbooks
Fox News has been on the "biased textbooks" trail lately - something that is hard to find definitive examples of but is generally believed by educators to be true.
I think some level of "bias" in textbooks should be expected: if the author of a textbook approaches the subject from a Christian worldview, I would expect that its tone and outlook to be different that a textbook written by avowed atheistic college professors. Duh. I've never found it to be a huge deal. It's far more important that a Christian teacher can spot anti-Christian bias and point it out to the students.
With that being said, some of the examples put forth in the following article are shocking - Jesus as a Palestinian is pretty bad. The promotion of Islam is true for most of the World History textbooks that I have seen.
Check out the clip of this special that ran a few days ago on Fox News:
I think some level of "bias" in textbooks should be expected: if the author of a textbook approaches the subject from a Christian worldview, I would expect that its tone and outlook to be different that a textbook written by avowed atheistic college professors. Duh. I've never found it to be a huge deal. It's far more important that a Christian teacher can spot anti-Christian bias and point it out to the students.
With that being said, some of the examples put forth in the following article are shocking - Jesus as a Palestinian is pretty bad. The promotion of Islam is true for most of the World History textbooks that I have seen.
Check out the clip of this special that ran a few days ago on Fox News:
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Changing student grades
I have often wondered about an interesting dichotomy that exists in public education:
If student failures = "bad publicity" = less money to the school district, then what incentive exists for raising standards if more kids fail? Why not just artificially inflate student grades and claim academic excellence?
It seems that is becoming an issue in Chicago - check out this shocking article!
Here's an interesting bit from the article:
"It's in the culture of the schools,'' wrote one experienced high school teacher who raised numerous grades under pressure -- and said at least one was changed without his approval. "You can't completely be honest in grading students, otherwise the failure rate would be off the chart.''
WOW!
If student failures = "bad publicity" = less money to the school district, then what incentive exists for raising standards if more kids fail? Why not just artificially inflate student grades and claim academic excellence?
It seems that is becoming an issue in Chicago - check out this shocking article!
Here's an interesting bit from the article:
"It's in the culture of the schools,'' wrote one experienced high school teacher who raised numerous grades under pressure -- and said at least one was changed without his approval. "You can't completely be honest in grading students, otherwise the failure rate would be off the chart.''
WOW!
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