And while most economists with the possible exception of Milton Friedman would think it's not news, some people point out that scores are up in poorer districts that got more money for educational programs.

At a news conference in Albany, the state education commissioner, Richard P. Mills, called the results “encouraging and exciting,” saying they were evidence that the state’s emphasis on giving more money to poorer school districts and focusing on high standards was successful. “The schools have delivered,” he said. (New York Times)

The War on Education continues unabated, however. The headline in the New York Daily News: "State math and reading exam scores released; critics question improvements."

A beleaguered parent commented at the Daily News site:

our children are forced to do homework over weekends, Christmas vacation, winter break, spring break, etc. to prepare for these tests - their scores are up because they've worked hard all year!

If we're wise, we'll applaud the students and teachers, and we'll wait for a lot more analysis. NYC Educator? JD2718? Is this good news for teachers in New York? Good news from teachers?

Update, June 26: NYC Educator takes note, "Test Scores Explode Statewide."  JD2718, "Integrated Algebra Conversion Chart, Later Today." Also:

• "Teaching for Higher Test Scores," On the Shoulders of Giants
• Norm's Notes, "Or is it a case of inflation of results"
• Eduwonk, "New York Testing"

Other notes and resources:

• "The truth about urban schools," Matthew Yglesias in The Atlantic (Yglesias says urban schools generally do better than average, especially when compared demographically)
• Jay Mathews, the guy who makes the Newsweek top high schools list, on some of the really, really best schools in the nation, "The Nation's Most Elite Public Schools."

As described at the company's website:

• Model BD-10A is the standard tester
• Model BD-10AS features a momentary ON/OFF switch
• OUTPUT: 10,000-50,000 volts at frequency of approx. 1/2 megahertz

The company also offers a line of instruments for teaching science -- notably absent from that part of the catalog is this shocking device (literally).

Generally, this tester should not produce serious injury, even when misapplied. Standard middle school lab safety rules would suggest that it should never be used to "test" a human for leaks. Such voltages are designed to produce sparks. Sparks do not always behave as one expects, or hopes. High voltages may make cool looking sparks, but the effects of high voltage jolts differs from person to person. It may be harmful.

"We have instructions to warn people that it's not a toy," said Cuzelis, who owns Electro-Technic Products in Chicago. "If this device is directed for seconds (on the skin), that's a clear misuse of the product."

Cuzelis said he is not aware of anyone seriously hurt with the device and said that his company has never been sued for injuries.

What sort of lab safety rules did Freshwater have for other experiments?

If you discovered your child's science teacher had this device, designed to produce high-voltage sparks to highlight holes in rubber and plastic liners of tanks, would you be concerned? If you know what should go on in a science class, you'd know there is probably little use for such a device in a classroom. It's been described as a Tesla coil.

Tesla coils of extremely small voltages can be safe. They should be safe. But one occasionally finds a safety warning, such as this generalized note at Wikipedia:

Even lower power vacuum tube or solid state Tesla Coils can deliver RF currents that are capable of causing temporary internal tissue, nerve, or joint damage through Joule heating. In addition, an RF arc can carbonize flesh, causing a painful and dangerous bone-deep RF burn that may take months to heal. Because of these risks, knowledgeable experimenters avoid contact with streamers from all but the smallest systems. Professionals usually use other means of protection such as a Faraday cage or a chain mail suit to prevent dangerous currents from entering their body.

Freshwater was using a solid state Tesla coil, if I understand the news articles correctly. Knowing that these sparks can cause deep tissue and bone damage in extreme cases, I suspect that I would not allow students to experience shocks as a normal course of a science classroom, especially from an industrial device not designed with multiple safety escapes built in.

Freshwater had been zapping students for years.

Here is a classic photo of what a Tesla coil does, a much larger coil than that used by John Freshwater, and a photo not from any classroom; from Mega Volt:

There is nothing in the Ohio science standards to suggest regular use of a Tesla coil in contact with students performs any educational function.

I offer this background to suggest that the normal classroom procedures designed to ensure the safety of students were not well enforced in Freshwater's classrooms, nor was there adequate attention paid to the material that should have been taught in the class.

The teacher, John Freshwater, has been dismissed by his local school board. Freshwater supporters argue that this is a case of religious discrimination, because Freshwater kept a Bible on his desk.

Among the complaints are that he burned crosses onto the arms of students with the high-voltage leak detector shown above. This gives an entirely new and ironic meaning to the phrase "cross to bear."

Cafe Philos wrote the most succinct summary of the case I have found, "The Firing of John Freshwater." Discussion at that site has been robust. Paul Sunstone included photos of one of the students' arms showing injuries from the schocks. He also included links to news stories that will bring you up to date.

Amazingly, this misuse of an electrical device may not be the most controversial point. While you and I may think this physical abuse goes beyond the pale, Freshwater has defenders who claim he was just trying to instill Biblical morality in the kids, as if that would excuse any of these actions. Over at Cafe Philos, I've been trying to explain just why it is that Freshwater does not have a First Amendment right to teach religion in his science class. There is another commenter with the handle "Atheist" who acts for all the world like a sock puppet for anti-First Amendment forces, i.e., not exactly defending a rational atheist position.

Below the fold I reproduce one of my answers to questions Atheist posed. More resources at the end.

Atheist's questions are noted in italics.

More resources:

• Dakota Voice defends Freshwater
• Dispatches from the Culture Wars: "Daubenmire defends Freshwater;" "The Next Fake Martyr;" "The Freshwater Investigation Report"
• Columbus Dispatch posting of the report to the Mount Vernon (Ohio) City Schools, of HR On Call, on the Freshwater incidents
• Pharyngula: "Fire John Freshwater, but for the right reasons;" "John Freshwater is on his way out;" "John Freshwater is going to trial"
• Mount Vernon News, story on Freshwater's firing, with links to more than a dozen other stories
• Complaint in the suit against Freshwater (from Ed Brayton)
• Christian Post worries the decision shows anti-Christian bias
• "Teacher to be fired for pressing beliefs," UPI (now owned by Rev. Moon)
• Carpetbagger Report story

Marshall apparently isn't even an engineer, but instead designs ads for internet placement -- at least one step removed from the usual joke about engineers as creationists. Of course, that doesn't help any of his arguments.

Wayne linked to three YouTube presentations, about half of the presentation Marshall made at an unidentified church (there are five segments total, I gather). What you see is bad PowerPoint slides, with audio. Marshall suggests that evolution couldn't get from the American pronghorn antelope to the African giraffe, but in classic creationist form, he doesn't address the unique signs of evolution we find in giraffes (neck, vagus nerve, for example) nor in pronghorns (bred for speed to beat the American cheetah, which is now extinct, and thereby hangs a great tale of sleuthing by evolution).

Marshall's presentation is insulting. To me as a historian, it's astounding how he can't accurately list sequences of events well known to history. The science errors he makes are errors any 7th-grade student might make -- but he's passing them off as valid criticism of evolution theory.

Here's the first YouTube presentation, and below the fold, my response to Wayne.

These presentations are an omen. They are sent to us as a warning for what the Discovery Institute will try to sneak into classrooms if Jindal signs that bill into law -- heck, they'll try anyway, but we don't have to drill holes in our kids' heads to make it easier for con men and snake oil salesmen to get their fingers in there.

My response below the fold.

"Wayne from Jeremiah Films" asked if I thought those films suitable for children.

Here's my response, with a couple of edits for clarification:

Wayne,

The only stuff obscene about that film is the gross distortion of science and the celebration of ignorance.

1. There is absolutely no indication that DNA was designed. Why does Marshall assume that? Gross, incorrect assumptions completely unsupported by evidence isn’t a good way to make a case for rationality.

2. Why does he start with American pronghorn antelopes, and suggest they go to giraffes? While I think anyone familiar with mammalian physiology would see the links — but why didn’t he start with a relative of the giraffe, the okapi? Wouldn’t it make more sense to line up cousins we know to be related and ask whether they look like relatives?

Giraffes are walking advertisements for natural selection, especially with their bad designs — the neckbones, for example. To get a long neck on a giraffe, because they are mammals, evolution has seven bones to work with. You have seven bones in your neck, so does the giraffe. To make the neck long, the bones must get massive — that’s probably the easiest mutation to make a long neck in an okapi-like animal, something like the okapi being the ancestors to modern giraffes (okapis are cousins to giraffes). The massive bones mean that giraffes are not balanced well — they put their lives at risk to simply bend down to get a drink of water (many giraffes die getting a drink; when they’re old, they simply can’t get back up).

So, if giraffes are made by designers, the designers are sadistic, cruel things that play jokes on the gentle giraffe.

Why not give a giraffe a bird’s neck? Birds have about 14 bones in their neck — take the hummingbird, for example. 14 bones, and the bones are made lighter and structurally stronger by “pneumatizing” — they are matrices of bones that air can flow through, reducing mass dramatically. Bird necks would work much better for a giraffe.

Wouldn’t an intelligent designer figure that out? Evolution has to work with what it has, seven mammalian neck bones. Designers shouldn't be fettered by exactly the same constraints that evolution is.

Giraffe evolution is pretty well known, from fossils, corroborated by DNA. There’s one quirk in giraffe anatomy that points back to mammalian piscine origins, too — the vagus nerve, which loops through one of the brachial arches, same as it did in fish. In fish, it’s a straight line from the brain to the throat where the nerve terminates. In mammals, the nerve must go from the brain, down the neck, through the aorta (as I recall), and back up the neck. In giraffes, then, that connection from brain to neck covers a distance of about 7 inches as a tiny crow would fly; however, because the nerve has to go down the neck, through the aorta, and back up the neck, typically it’s about 15 feet long.

How stupid does the designer have to be before you guys fire him?

3. The Google ad example isn’t analogous to evolution in living things — and probably more to the point, the guy didn’t bother to test the mutations to see which would survive or survive better. Clearly he doesn’t have a much of an understanding of evolution. He doesn’t subject the ads to natural selection. What are his criteria for a “more effective ad?” He doesn’t say, but it’s clear that he thinks proper spelling is the key. Were he familiar with advertising, he’d know that’s unproven. In any case, he appears frightened of trying the ads himself to see what happens — that would be natural selection.

4. The guy presents false conclusions from Dobzhansky’s and Goldschmidt’s work, especially lying about the creation of new species. New species are rather common in fruit fly work. If this is a damaging presentation to evolution, why doesn’t he present the real results of the research, the real conclusions of Dobzhansky — who was a devout Christian, by the way? Why does he lie about the work of good Christian men?

5. The presentation on Barbara McClintock’s work is truncated — but the guy’s up in the night. Genes were not known about, he claims? Genes were known about broadly after about 1900. McClintock was born two years later. Don’t take my word for it — but back to Dobzhansky for a moment: This LSOS Marshall talks about fruit fly research without mentioning Thomas Hunt Morgan, under whom Dobzhansky worked when Dobzhansky first got to America — when Marshall ignores the major theorist in the field for the early work, we can simply conclude that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But Dobzhansky, who is quite famous among biologists, published one of his great lifetime works in 1937 — catch the year — and it was titled, Genetics and the Origin of Species. So, Marshall argues that we didn’t know about genes, when there were major works on genes published in English in 1937? He’s obviously wholly unfamiliar with the great Russian geneticists of the 1920s.

Does this gross and grotesque ignorance start to bother you yet? (You may read whole chapters of Dobzhansky’s book here: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/dobzhansky_genetics.html )

Why does Marshall think he can misrepresent the Nobel Prize winning work of a woman and get away with it? It’s well known that McClintock's major work was done in the 1950s — not only were genes well known then, but DNA’s structure was figured out in 1953.

Marshall appears completely unencumbered by any knowledge of the history of biological research. Are creationists generally so out of it that they don’t bother to Google her up? McClintock’s work, on transposons, “jumping genes,” directly refutes many of the claims Marshall makes in his Google ad comedy routine. One has to wonder if he bothered to look at McClintock’s real work at all, or if he just imagined what he thought a “very old lady” (Marshall’s characterization) ought to be doing in science.

The gall of Marshall is appalling, isn’t it? We should keep children from seeing it just to let them avoid seeing such an obnoxious man.

6. Marshall’s claim that DNA is exactly like computer code is a fatuous error of monumental proportions. Do you really think he does not understand that there is a difference between chemistry and electronics? Is he such a monumental fool that he doesn’t understand the error of his claim?

7. Having gotten away with so much wool-pulling, I suppose Marshall thinks he can fabricate whole-cloth stories about anything and not get caught. On another page of that site:

When Darwin created his theory he stated his assumptions clearly in a true scientific method. He believed that cells were simple and if they were complex then his theory would be invalidated. To put it in other terms if the cell were as complex as an engine and a gun was fired through the engine which resulted in no immediate harm to the engine but instead improving the engine. If the cells were as complex as an engine than the theory would have problems.

That’s absolutely false. Darwin didn’t believe cells were simple. Darwin didn’t believe complexity of a cell would affect the validity of evolution in any way — Darwin’s evidence was almost all above the cellular level, so the complexity or simplicity of a cell was completely irrelevant to the function of evolution theory as Darwin discovered it.

It’s as if, having told a few fibs to get into this topic, Marshall and his accomplices must invent bigger and bigger fabrications as they go. There is a scientific term for this in psychology: Pathological lying.

So, why in the world would any Christian offer that presentation to kids trying to learn evolution? It offers no salient information for or against evolution, and nothing for design. It botches up what little evolution information it has. It suffers from a complete lack of critical thinking, instead relying on a false analogy to make its point. Why would any noble person offer to confuse and confound students so?

It was good of you to call those films to my attention, Wayne. You’re right, they shouldn’t be shown to children. They are garbage. I cannot imagine anyone hating children so much that they’d want to fill them up with boring, inaccurate, silly presentations like those. Marhall’s science wouldn’t get him past the 9th grade biology test on evolution here in Texas, and it’s well below high school understanding for any other biology classes. As for Marshall himself, I gather he’s no Christian. Any Christian would be familiar with Jesus’s teachings about those who would lead innocent children astray, repeated in three of the four gospels: “It would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around his neck than for him to cause one of these little ones to sin.” (Luke 17:2; also see Mark 9:42 and Matthew 18:46). You can see why the Louisiana Coalition for Science is trying to keep Marshall from condemning himself.

State Board of Education chairman David Bradley of Beaumont told GOP delegates [at the Texas State Republican Convention] that the board was about to take up the science curriculum for public schools. He forecasted a fight over evolution vs. creationism.
Bradley said there are some on the board (he's among them) that believe God created Man.
"There are others who think their ancestors were apes. That's okay. But I'm going to vote the right way," Bradley said.

Is there anything there that suggests Bradley wants good science in Texas textbooks and Texas classrooms?

Remember the Excellence in Education Commission Report in 1983? The Commission warned that the nation was facing "a rising tide of mediocrity" in schools, in such things as lax science standards.

"Our nation is at risk. The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament. History is not kind to idlers."

25 years later, Commissar Don McLeroy is leading the tide of mediocrity, doing crippling things to our education system that the likes of Nikita Khruschev and Mao Ze Dong could only dream about.

Art from students at the school I'd like to attend many days:

Wouldn't you like to do what those students at the Community School of West Seattle do?

See also Andy Goldsworthy.

Institute spokesman Lawrence Ford said the voluminous appeal — it is 755 pages long, including supporting documents — is based upon a claim of "viewpoint discrimination."

The appeal described the board's decision as "academic (and religious) bigotry masquerading as Texas Education Code 'enforcement.' "

Board members and staff are accused of denying the request in April because the institute and its leaders believe the biblical version of the Earth's creation is literally true.

Institute CEO Henry Morris III said last spring his school's program includes information about evolution, although he and others affiliated with the school don't accept the proof of evolution offered by mainstream scientists.

Board members and Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes said they were concerned the degree would not equip graduates to teach science in Texas' public schools.

The real issue, Stafford said Monday, is whether the institute's course work — offered online and still available, although not accredited — fits the label of the proposed degree.

The disputed degree is a Master of Science in science education. "Either the curriculum or the label has to change," Stafford said.

"That label has a particular meaning of preparing somebody as a science teacher."

Paredes reiterated that in a May 21 letter to Morris. "It was determined that the designation of the degree and the content of the degree were not adequately aligned," he wrote. "Approval would require either a change in the designation of the degree or a change in the content covered."

The institute is not inclined to do either, Ford said.

More information at these websites:

• Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, set of documents in the case
• THECB, the 755-page appeal itself (more than 45 mb in .pdf)
• Institute for Creation Research (I can't find their set of documents as promised by the Houston Chronicle, other than this old press release -- maybe you'll have better luck; by the way, I think none of the pictures showing researchers or science in progress have any connection to ICR -- just sayin')
• Texas Citizens for Science; see this, too.

From August 8, 2007, the post that exposed the educationally-destructive, religiously-drenched mathematics curriculum from Castle Hills First Baptist School in San Antonio, Texas.

One might be too stunned to shake one’s head; this is a description for a high school calculus course:

CALCULUS
Students will examine the nature of God as they progress in their understanding of mathematics. Students will understand the absolute consistency of mathematical principles and know that God was the inventor of that consistency. Mathematical study will result in a greater appreciation of God and His works in creation. The students will understand the basic ideas of both differential and integral calculus and its importance and historical applications. The students will recognize that God created our minds to be able to see that the universe can be calculated by mental methods.

No, I’m not kidding. It’s from Castle Hills First Baptist School in San Antonio, Texas.

The scientist who sent me the link called it “God’s math.” Architect Mies van der Rohe once said, “God is in the details.” But he didn’t mean that math should be taught as anything other than mathematics. He didn’t mean that any religion should be inserted into math classes — and frankly, that’s a little worrying to me. I speak regularly with theologians who read the same text and come up with radically different descriptions of what it means, sometimes diametrically opposite descriptions.

The social studies curricula are more troubling. What is described is at best second-rate course work. One hopes that the teachers teach the material instead of these descriptions:

SOCIAL STUDIES/HISTORY

WORLD HISTORY I
NINTH GRADE
The students will examine the nature of God as revealed through the study of social studies. Students will develop convictions about God’s word as it relates to world history and will define their responses to it. Through the study of world history, students will develop an understanding of the economic, social, political and cultural developments of our world, as they compare countries and civilizations, Students will learn and acquire an appreciation for God’s relations throughout the timeline of world events. The integration of literature into studies of ancient civilizations will enhance and inspire their learning process. Students will develop attitudes, values, and skills as they discover their place in the world. Students will analyze, synthesize and evaluate social studies skills, including social relationships such as family and church.

WORLD HISTORY II
TENTH GRADE
The students will examine the nature of God as revealed through the study of social studies. Students will develop convictions about God’s word as it relates to world history and will define their responses to it. Through the study of world history, students will develop an understanding of the economic, social, political and cultural developments of our world, as they compare countries and civilizations since the Reformation. Students will learn and acquire an appreciation for God’s relations throughout the timeline of world events. The integration of literature into the studies of modern civilizations will enhance and inspire their learning process. Students will develop attitudes, values, and skills as they discover their place in the world. Students will analyze, synthesize and evaluate social studies skills, including social relationships such as family and church.

AMERICAN HISTORY
ELEVENTH GRADE
Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons (I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will study the history of our country beginning with the Civil War with a biblically integrated filter as they examine the political, social, and economic perspectives. An emphasis will be placed on the major wars, the industrial revolution, and the settlement of the frontier, requiring students to critically analyze the cause and effect relationships of events in history.

GOVERNMENT/CIVICS
TWELFTH GRADE
Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons (I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will study the foundational documents of our founding Fathers built upon as they formulated the ideals upon which our country was established. Such documents include: The Magna Carta, The English Bill of Rights of 1689, and the Mayflower Compact. Students are equipped with an understanding of the basic principles contained in these documents, and are able to identify their dependence upon biblical and Reformation principles, leading them to an understanding why the American system is meant for a religious people.

ECONOMICS/FREE ENTERPRISE
TWELFTH GRADE

Students will evaluate the past and learn from its lessons (I Corinthians 10:11), and become effectual Christians who understand “the times” (I Chronicles 12:32). Students will gain an understanding of the workings of economic systems, being able to identify the strengths and weaknesses inherent in capitalism (Deuteronomy 8, 15, 28, Leviticus 25), and the reasons for its superiority to the models of communism and socialism (Ezekiel 46:18).

The last description there, for economics, might lead one to understand this school ignores most of the lessons of Jesus, and especially the stories of the disciples in the immediate aftermath of the crucifixion as described in Acts 2. Not only are the courses described inadequate (we hope the teachers teach the state standards instead, at least), where scripture is specifically mentioned, they appear to be tortured to fit the agenda.

Then comes the choker:

SCIENCE

BIOLOGY

Students will study the physical life of God’s creation. They will continue to develop skills in the use of the scientific method. The students will learn methods and techniques of scientific study, general attributes of the cell and its processes, characteristics of the wide spectrum of living organisms, the classification, similarities and differences of the five kingdoms, evolutionary models and the creation model, the mechanics of inheritance, disease and disorders, and the workings of the human body. Students will gain experience in manipulating the conditions of a laboratory investigation and in evaluating the applications of biological principles in everyday life.

There is no “creation model” that is scientific, nor is there one that conflicts with evolution and is also Biblical. What, in God’s name, are they teaching?

CHFB School was established over 25 years ago, and claims to have more than 300 students enrolled, K-12. Surely there is a track record to look at.

Anybody know what the actual curricula look like at this school? Are there any measures to suggest the school teaches real subjects instead of what is described?

What was the Texas legislature thinking when they authorized Bible classes? Isn’t this bad enough as it is?

____________________

Update: See parent and student comments and ratings of the school, here.

Did you know God sculpted Antarctica to look like a trumpeting elephant? Did you know God did it for political reasons?

Dr. Pamela Bumsted of Grassroots Science alerts us to this website, God's Geography, which should contain enough abuse of scripture to offend all Christians, and Jews and Moslems, too. The site steals good maps from good sites -- but the accuracy in geography stops there.

Consider Antarctica:

This is the map God's Geography borrows from the University of Texas Libraries (to their credit, giving close to proper attribution), Antarctica (small map) from the Perry Castañeda Map Collection at the University of Texas Library.

Argh: Here's what the site says:

Why is Antarctica shaped like an elephant's head? I believe it is to illustrate a global political system. Nations typically have an animal or bird as their national symbol (such as the American eagle), but no single country owns Antarctica, although about 40 nations have made claims. So let's think of these 40 nations as one nation, living in peace, and their symbolic animal is the elephant because it is the largest beast on earth.

* * * *

A global government means all nations cooperating together for the benefit of mankind, and not for the benefit of God or the King of kings. And as the world's largest terrestrial animal it makes a perfect symbol of the world's largest government.

So the elephant gives us a visual clue as to what a global political system looks and acts like. It's very formidable, and can not be defeated except by God Himself. It's futile to fight against it, but we shouldn't want to because it's part of our heavenly Father's overall plan. He'll guide the elephant where He wants it to go, and He'll take care of the ivory towers, as it's written in Amos 3:

13 Hear ye, and testify in the house of Jacob, saith the Lord GOD, the God of hosts, 14 That in the day that I shall visit the transgressions of Israel upon him I will also visit the altars of Bethel: and the horns of the altar shall be cut off, and fall to the ground. 15 And I will smite the winter house with the summer house; and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall have an end, saith the LORD.

It's crazy enough to send you to the law books to see if you can find a loophole in Poe's Law, ain't it?

I don't object to the use of mnemonic devices. Remembering Italy as the peninsula and nation "shaped like a boot" seems to cement the identity of country into the minds of students otherwise a bit weak on European geography.

God's Geography passes over the line into pure fantasy, into false claims about geography. The religious claims also far exceed any rational claim from Christian theology. I can't imagine serious Christians not being offended at the religious messages the author claims to find in the simple shape of geographic entities.

My second complaint is that the religious claims tend to obscure reality, also. Again, on the Antarctica page, we find a gratuitous note about Elephant Island, which is off the tip of the archipelago this guy sees as an elephant's trunk:

Near the tip of the elephant's trunk is an island called Elephant Island, although I'm sure it wasn't named for elephants, but rather for the largest member of the seals, the Elephant Seal.

Elephant seals were sighted there in the year of its discovery. But every description of the island I've ever seen notes that the island's profile resembles an elephant's head, and that's how it was named. The island provided scant refuge, but enough refuge for the crew of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated ship Endurance in 1916, so it is relatively famous among history, exploration and geography buffs.

So contrary to the history books, the author of God's Geography claims Elephant Island is not named because it looks like an elephant's head. Fantasy is just one egregious problem with this site; gross error is a second. In a game where one strike equals an out, this odd site has three strikes against it: Whole cloth invention, offense to scripture, and geographic error.

And may God save us from God's Geography's description of the island of Lesbos.

Watch out: This is the sort of stuff that might excite Texas Education Commissar Don McLeroy.

Serious resources:

• Perry-Castañeda Map Collection at the University of Texas Library
• Welcome to Antarctica!, University of Chicago
  
• World Atlas.com entry on Antarctica
• PBS's NOVA website on The Endurance
• BBC History: Ernest Schackleton
• South Pole.com, Ernest Shackleton
• Exploratorium site on Antarctica research
• National Geographic Society web page on Antarctica
• Zoom School on Antarctica (Enchanted Learning.com)

It's probably not so bad a pig in a poke as it might be -- of course, no one had the chance to review it, so no one knows, really -- but the processes used, worthy of Napoleon or Kruschev on a bad day, should give cause for concern.

Gotta think about this one for a while.

To maintain its standing as an economic power, the United States must encourage programs that help students achieve the highest levels in math and science, especially in poor communities where the teacher corps is typically weak.

The National Academies, the country’s leading science advisory group, has called for an ambitious program to retrain current teachers in these disciplines and attract 10,000 new ones each year for the foreseeable future. These are worthy goals. But a new study from a federal research center based at the Urban Institute in Washington suggests that the country might raise student performance through programs like Teach for America, a nonprofit group that places high-achieving college graduates in schools that are hard to staff.

Recruiting high-achievers, across the board and not just with the help of a flagship do-gooder program, will require that starting salaries be competitive with those jobs where people of high caliber flock.  Education competes with accounting, law, medicine and other high-paying professions for the best people. 

If Milton Friedman and Adam Smith were right, that most people act rather rationally in their own interests, economically, which jobs will get the best people?

Teaching is the only profession I can think of where the administrators and other leaders threaten to fire the current teachers, work to keep working conditions low and unsatisfactory, and say that more money will come only after championship performance. 

There isn't a person alive who hasn't cursed George Steinbrenner and said that he or she could run the Yankees better.  Whenever he opens his checkbook, the nation howls.  And yet, year in an year out, the Yankees win. 

Is there any fool alive who thinks Steinbrenner could do what he does by cutting pay, not cleaning the locker room, and drafting the cheapest players he could find?  Were we to assume Steinbrenner the world's most famous lousy boss, there are a million education administrators who would need to step it up to get to Steinbrenner's level.

As Utah Phillips famously said, graduates are about to be told they are the nation's greatest natural resource -- but have you seen how this nation treats its natural resources?

Oh, I miss Molly Ivins.

This woman got a kidney from a former student.  How could you top that?

In Elwood, Indiana, former student Angie Collins saved Darren Paquin's life.  What did he teach her, besides English?

Each child has two million minutes of life over the four years of high school. Whether the U.S. can remain competitive in the global economy depends more than ever on how each child allocates those two million minutes.

A new film raises concerns that U.S. children are losing out against students from India and China.

Dallas Morning News business reporter Jim Landers wrote about the movie, "Two Million Minutes," in an article May 6. It's an indication of something that this is front page in the business section -- an indication of genuine concern, one may hope.

Science and mathematics education gets the major attention in the film. One wishes this film could compete with the anti-science film "Expelled!" which still lingers malodrously in a few theatres across the nation.

Landers wrote:

2 Million Minutes argues that "the battle for America's economic future isn't being fought by our government. It's being fought by our kids."

And in a series of international comparisons, the U.S. kids are not doing so well. The one area where they score better than the rest is self-confidence.

Once they leave the eighth grade, students have a little more than 2 million minutes to get ready for work or college and the transition to being an adult. This documentary, made by high-tech entrepreneur Robert Compton, follows two high school seniors in Carmel, Ind., two in Bangalore, India, and two in Shanghai, China, to see how they use their time.

All six are bright, accomplished, college-bound individuals.

Our students spend a lot of time watching TV, working part-time jobs, playing sports and video games, but not so much on homework. The Chinese kids spend an extra month in school each year, more hours at school each day and more hours doing homework. By the time they graduate, Chinese students have spent more than twice as much time studying as their U.S. counterparts.

While one may hope kids will pay attention, one may be unhappy to recall the topic, and many of the same or similar numbers, were published nationally in the 1980s by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) at the U.S. Department of Education. I remember it well, since I was publisher for some of the work.

The website for the movie offers more details, including a calendar of screenings. DVDs are available, but at very high prices -- $25 for home use, $100 for school or non-profit use. I'd love to show it to students; I can get a couple of much-needed PBS videos for that same price. I hope producers will work to arrange distribution competitive with opposition movies like Stein's. I'll wager "Expelled!" will hit the DVD market at about $10.00, with thousands of DVDs available for free to churches and anti-science organizations.

Landers chalks up some of the stakes, and we should all pay attention:

FALLING BEHIND IN EDUCATION

Nearly 60 percent of the patents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the field of information technology now originate in Asia.

The United States ranks 17th among nations in high-school graduation rate and 14th in college graduation rate.

In China, virtually all high school students study calculus; in the United States, 13 percent study calculus.

For every American elementary and secondary school student studying Chinese, there are 10,000 students in China studying English.

The average American youth now spends 66 percent more time watching television than in school.

SOURCE: "Is America Falling off the Flat Earth?" by Norman R. Augustine, chairman, National Academy of Sciences "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" committee

By SAM DILLON

Published: May 2, 2008

President Bush’s $1 billion a year initiative to teach reading to low-income children has not helped improve their reading comprehension, according to a Department of Education report released on Thursday.

Read the study here:

Created under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, the Reading First program provides assistance to states and districts in using research-based reading programs and instructional materials for students in kindergarten through third grade and in introducing related professional development and assessments. The program's purpose is to ensure that increased proportions of students read at or above grade level, have mastery of the essential components of early reading, and that all students can read at or above grade level by the end of grade 3. The law requires that an independent, rigorous evaluation of the program be conducted to determine if the program influences teaching practices, mastery of early reading components, and student reading comprehension. This interim report presents the impacts of Reading First on classroom reading instruction and student reading comprehension during the 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years.

The evaluation found that Reading First did have positive, statistically significant impacts on the total class time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction promoted by the program. The study also found that, on average across the 18 study sites, Reading First did not have statistically significant impacts on student reading comprehension test scores in grades 1-3. A final report on the impacts from 2004-2007 (three school years with Reading First funding) and on the relationships between changes in instructional practice and student reading comprehension is expected in late 2008.

In short, McLeroy told Texas Hispanics to "drop dead."

Board chairman Don McLeroy insisted that major changes to the proposed updates are no longer possible. Advocates say the standards need opinions from experts who have researched Hispanic children and understand their learning styles.

"There is no way that ignoring such a sizable chunk of this population from consideration of education policy will do anything but harm the opportunity of a generation," Herrero said.

McLeroy said there had been plenty of time for experts to weigh in earlier on new curriculum standards. He said he was shocked by accusations that he and others board members are trying to shortchange Hispanic students.

"There's no malice at all, none, zip, nada. There's just no time to get another expert in," McLeroy said. "None of us would do anything to hurt any group of children or any (individual) child. What we want is for them to be successful in the English language because it's so important."

In the latest of a string of politically charged bulldozings, McLeroy is pushing standards substituted at the last minute for standards Texas educators had worked on for three years. McLeroy hired a political consulting group to rewrite the standards and substituted the rewrite in a meeting earlier this year (you'll see my bias when you read the story in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram). Educators, parents, legislators and community leaders criticized the action for disregarding the educational needs of Texas students.

"It's just ignorance on their part," said Mary Helen Berlanga, a 26-year board member from Corpus Christi.

The board is set to take a preliminary vote March 27 on the new English language arts and readings standards, which will influence new textbooks for the 2009-10 school year.

A four-member board subcommittee signaled its intent Wednesday to stick with that schedule after state Rep. Abel Herrero, D-Robstown, pleaded to let Latino experts review the standards first.

McLeroy is flexing never-tried-before political muscles in a series of changes at TEA. Last year he led the SBOE to arbitrarily reject a math book by a major publisher, daring legal action, hoping he could finally win a case establishing that the board can reject books on political grounds. Biology books are due for a review in the near future, and science and biology standards will be rewritten before that process.

Moving against Hispanic students on the English standards, if successful, would tend to demonstrate that Texas educato needs to dance to the red book writings of Chairman McLeroy. While 47% of Texas public school students are Hispanic, Hispanic voters have generally packed less clout.

McLeroy appears to be counting on Obama and Clinton Democrats to demonstrate apathy again near the general election. If election numbers from the March primary hold up, McLeroy will remain chairman of the SBOE, but the legislature will be likely to shift against many of the actions he's pushed since assuming the chair, and may turn antagonistically Democratic.

The stakes are higher for Texas students.

Critics of the process asked the subcommittee to allow an expert in Hispanic culture and language to assess the proposed new standards before a preliminary vote next week by the full education board.

The four-member subcommittee that worked on the curriculum did not include anyone of Hispanic descent, or anyone from South or West Texas, and critics said the committee did not seek advice from anyone with expertise in Hispanic language or culture.

Statewide, 47 percent of the more than 4.6 million public school students are Hispanic. Eighty-nine percent of El Paso County's 173,000 students are Hispanic.

According to the Texas Education Agency, about 16 percent of students statewide and about 28 percent of students in El Paso County in 2006 had limited English proficiency.

Resources:

• Betsy Oney in the online Pegasus, "Whose interests do these elected officials represent anyway?"
• Houston Chronicle story, "State panel rejects Latino call for input on curriculum"
• KVEO-TV, "Board of Education Looks To Change Curriculum"
• Brownsville, Texas, Monitor, "State board education member urges public to rally for classroom ..."
• El Paso Times, "Legislators say education panel lacks Hispanic"
• Draft TEKS ELAR (March 19, 2008) (in .pdf format)

Is this really news? It was a jarring reminder to me. Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science (just before his blog was swallowed up by the many-tentacled Seed Magazine empire) noted a study that shows testing improves performance more than study.

But a new study reveals that the tests themselves do more good for our ability to learn that the many hours before them spent relentlessly poring over notes and textbook. The act of repeatedly retrieving and using learned information drives memories into long-term storage, while repetitive revision produced almost no benefits.

More quizzes instead of warm-up studies? More tests? Longer tests? What do you think? Certainly this questions the wisdom of high-stakes, end of education testing; it also calls into question the practice of evaluating teachers solely on the basis of test scores.  Much grist for the discussion mill.

Here's the citation to the study: Karpicke, J.D., Roediger, H.L. (2008). The Critical Importance of Retrieval for Learning. Science, 319(5865), 966-968. DOI: 10.1126/science.1152408

Karpicke is at Purdue; Roediger is at Washington University in St. Louis.

I don’t want to imply that every geologist should be visiting third-grade classrooms and discussing radiometric dating with the students. That wouldn’t be comfortable for most of us, or most of them. But we can support a strong geological curriculum by getting involved in state and local textbook adoption procedures and curriculum development. Those folks need good scientific advice, and we need to listen to them to see how we can best meet their needs.

I’m actually going to suggest something even easier — something that most of us who teach in colleges and universities do all the time: improve the textbooks we use.

Texas's state school board is running in exactly the opposite direction, undertaking several initiatives to dumb down science texts, even after approving a requirement for a fourth year of science classes required for graduation.

We can hope Texas's policy makers will listen to veteran scientist educators like Padian.

Click thumbnail for larger chart to view. Evolution of Tetrapods, courtesy of Kevin Padian.

"Padian is a professor of Integrative Biology and curator in the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California at Berkeley, and president of the National Center for Science Education."

You, however, would be well advised to tune into this discussion described below:

This Week's Live Chat

Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik
When: Wednesday, March 5, 2 p.m., Eastern time
Submit questions in advance.

Please join us for this online chat to get an insider's view of school-reform movements over the past five decades.

In a new book titled Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik, Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, provides a close-up history of postwar education reform and his own role in it. Mr. Finn, assistant secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, and an aide to politicians as different as Richard Nixon and Daniel Moynihan, recounts how his own experiences have shaped his changing and often contentious views of educational improvement efforts, from school choice to standards-based education to the professionalization of teaching.

For background, please read:
"Lessons Learned: A Self-Styled 'Troublemaker' Shares Wisdom Gleaned From 57 Years in Education," Education Week, February 27, 2008.

[Here's a version that doesn't require a subscription.]

About the guest:

• Chester E. Finn Jr. is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and senior editor of Education Next. He is the author of We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future and many other books.

Submit questions in advance.

No special equipment other than Internet access is needed to participate in this text-based chat. A transcript will be posted shortly after the completion of the chat.

Finn is one of those guys whose views you may not always like, with whom you may not always agree, but to whom you must listen, because you will always learn something from him.

Joseph Juran, who made "Six Sigma" a symbol of high quality control and pointed the way to statistical analysis of problems that factory floor workers could understand and use, is dead at 103.

He created the Pareto principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, which states that 80 percent of consequences stem from 20 percent of causes. Today managers use the Pareto principle, named for an Italian economist, to help them separate what Mr. Juran called the “vital few” resources from the “useful many.”

“Everybody who’s in business now adopts the philosophy of quality management,” David Juran said. “He came along at just the right time. Most of the reference books that have been written about this field are either books that he wrote or imitations.”

Among his best-known works were the “Quality Control Handbook” in 1951, the first mathematically rooted textbook on product quality, now entering its sixth edition, and “Managerial Breakthrough” in 1964, which described a step-by-step improvement process that inspired the Six Sigma and lean manufacturing philosophies.

Perhaps a mark of how far out of favor serious quality control has fallen, the New York Times article makes no mention of other quality control pioneers who worked with Juran, such as W. Edwards Deming, nor does it note the amazingly long list of companies who used the principles to achieve greatness, some of which were later skewered by other economic problems.

And I'll wager that not one school principal in 1,000 knows who Juran was or how his methods might improve education.

I really like a well-run carnival now.  Here are a few well-run carnival events.

Carnival of the Liberals #58 flew to England, at Liberal England. Double the posts, ten from England, ten from the Americas.  Geography and history teachers might be particularly interested in a post at Pickled Politics on whether Australia's government will follow up with real action following their official apology to the continent's aboriginals, for past mistreatment.

Will I ever catch up with the Carnival of Education? Teachers ought to browse this weekly -- I haven't looked at it weekly in the past month. Let's go back to #155: Bluebird's Classroom has a post about a teachable moment, involving her unit on weather, and the tornado warning that popped up during class. Pay particular attention to her use of the LCD projector and live television link. Odds are that your classroom can't support such teaching, as mine cannot right now.

The rest of Carnival of Education #155 plays out at Median Sib. But I'm much farther behind. #156 resides at Creating Lifelong Learners. #157 can be found at Colossus of Rhodey. #158 moves in at Instructify. That one features this post (from Creating Lifelong Learners) about using your iPod in class to high purpose. I'll wager there is not a school of education in the U.S. that teaches iPod use as a tool of classroom control and educational excellence. This is why we need to read these on-line collections. ("Hot 4 Teacher" graphic borrowed from Instructify.)

Microsoft plans a product announcement at the end of this month. Rumors claim it's a new version of Photosynth. Photosynth mades "3D" touring by computer possible for almost any destination.

I'll wager not a single classroom in the nation is ready to make this work. If you disagree, I'd love to hear about the class that can make use of it.

System requirements for Photosynth won't tax the computers that most high school gamers use, but they are beyond most of the classroom computers I've seen in the last five years.

Probably more to the point, curriculum designers in public schools don't even have Google Earth on their horizons. Photosynth? I'll wager it's not even on the radar screens of GIS users in the nation's Council of Governments (COGS).

Geography is an exploding discipline. GIS and computerized map programs make cell phone companies go, not to mention oil and gas exploration, coal mining, air pollution monitoring (for building new power plants, for example), and road building. GPS helps drive express shipping, and all other shipping. RFI and GPS together are revolutionizing retail.

You must know how to read a map just to get a job delivering pizza.

But 9th grade geography classes? The exciting stuff is absent today.

At the Texas Education Agency (TEA), officials fret about how to stop science from being taught in science classes, for fear the facts will skew the religious beliefs of their children. They need to worry about their children not even getting hired by the pizza delivery company for being ignorant of nature and science, and the maps that show them. In a competitive, technologically savvy world, inaction, dithering and damaging action by the TEA mean our kids won't even have a prayer.

Relevant posts:

• Explore ancient Rome, in 3-D, from your computer

I can easily see a time when a student with a computer terminal gets an assignment to look at some of the activities available at a site like America by Air, with on-line quizzes as the student progresses through the exhibits.

How far away are we? Two questions: Does your school provide an internet-linked computer for each student? Do you have the software or technical support to give an on-line assignment and track results?

Teaching stays stuck in the 19th century, learning opportunities fly through the 21st.

Conditions surrounding Texas science standards, and education standards in general, have deteriorated very rapidly, with the chairman of the State Board of Education going on the warpath against mathematics, English and science teaching. For quick destruction to get the foolishness out of the way, one might hope he'll go on the warpath against football and cheerleading. I've not had time to pass along all the sad details.

But then, not all crazies are stupid.

Earlier:

• Don't "limit" science classes to evolution
• Politics at Texas Education Agency
• Skirmishes before the war:  Creationist assault on Texas
• Hijacking science in Texas

So, yesterday in the staff meeting, when he complained the news media were aiming specifically at him, the generally noisy teachers fell suddenly silent.

Studies may be generally accurate, but they are, by nature and design, generalizations. Across Texas yesterday, good teachers in struggling schools took a hit they don't deserve.

I'm sure that's not what the authors intended.

See this story in the Dallas Morning News. Check it out in the Houston Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

Look at the report, from the Education Trust, here.

So far, I can't tell if the study said anything about improving conditions for teachers to encourage the good ones to stay in the profession and take the tougher assignments. Conservatives will see this as a call to fire more teachers, I'm sure. Reaction will start any moment now.

Tip of the scrub brush to Aunt Betsy.

Of course, in order to boost student performance by starting high school later, bus schedules would have to change. Change costs money. Anyone care to wager whether this quick, proven method for boosting student performance will catch on, considering it costs a little?

The survey has now reached a statistical “critical mass.” With over 1,200 respondents, we are now gaining a clearer picture as to how you would prioritize the issues listed. While we would like the poll to stay out there for a while longer, some of the results to-date are interesting.

The top issues at this point, reaching a response rate of 40% or higher are:
1. Alcohol & drug abuse 56.6%
2. Issues surrounding teenage sex including pregnancy 49 %
3. Neighborhood & school violence and bullying 48 %
4. Education quality and access 45%

I have some thoughts about the results thus far, but what do you think?