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Flickr photo by Francisco Diez

Last Sunday was Pi Day, (3/14), and at 1:59 pm, MIT released its admission decisions for the class matriculating in 2010. ECs got to see the results Tuesday morning, and once again, some really bright, personable young men and women weren't offered admission. Many of those bright young people wasted their time in applying.

As some of you may know, I'm an alumnus of MIT, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1986. (I don't say much about it -- I figure when you've been out of college for more than a decade, what you've done since graduation matters far more than where you went to school.)

My only ongoing involvement with the school is my work as a member of the MIT Educational Council, a group of hundreds of alumni worldwide who assist with the undergraduate admissions process. We serve as a local presence for the admissions office, and our main role is to interview applicants for admission. I've been an EC (as Educational Members are known) since 1987.

There are five ECs in northeastern Oklahoma. Gary Bracken '59, chairman of Ernest Wiemann Ironworks, is the current regional coordinator, responsible for managing the load of applicants among the alumni, making the arrangements when touring MIT admissions officials visit Tulsa (usually every other fall), and holding meet-and-greets for admitted students in the spring. (Gary was preceded in that role by John McGinley '52 and, before John, petroleum geologist Bob Rorschach '43, who interviewed me when I applied to MIT.)

The opinions presented here are my own, the description of admission processes and policies are my impressions and understandings, and they do not necessarily -- almost certainly do not -- represent the official views and policies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My use of the masculine form of the third person singular pronoun is in accordance with traditional English usage and is not meant to suggest that women are unwelcome at MIT. In fact, the sex ratio is nearly 50-50, a far cry from the 3:1 male-to-female ratio in my freshman class. Click this link for the official MIT admissions website.

Currently, I interview applicants from Bixby, Jenks, Cascia Hall, Holland Hall, Memorial, Hale, and Edison, but occasionally I'll pick up an interview from a different school if another alumnus is overloaded. This year I interviewed six applicants, including one from Azerbaijan. (That interview was conducted via Skype, which enables students in remote locations where there are no ECs a chance to meet with an alumnus.)

I'm pleased and proud to welcome a new BatesLine sponsor: Janet Barresi, a candidate for State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Barresi has an impressive background in K-12 education, including direct experience in dealing with the challenges of urban education as a founder of two successful charter schools in Oklahoma City.

I believe our schools should be as great as our state, but that goal cannot be achieved without solid leadership in the Department of Education, which is why I have chosen to run for State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

My platform is very simple. I want to ensure that parents are always encouraged to be involved in the education of their children and that they have the ability to choose the correct education for their child. I want to create a State Department of Education that is a resource for local districts, and I want to ensure that our testing of students is a byproduct of good teaching that enables us to truly understand how effective we are being, while empowering teachers to do what they do best: teach.

I know we can do better than we are today. Through my experiences in launching what is now Independence Charter Middle School, as well as Harding Charter Preparatory High School (which was recently recognized as one of the top high schools in America by Newsweek), I have seen that high expectations, a rigorous curriculum and an involved staff can be successful, regardless of the socio-economic background of the students.

Beyond her volunteer work in the schools, Janet Barresi was a speech pathologist and then a dentist for 24 years before retiring.

Tulsa Chigger, who is our local watchdog on charter school issues, had this to say:

I whole-heartedly endorse Dr. Janet Barresi and her campaign for the office of Oklahoma State Superintendent of Schools. She is an experienced reformer with the right set of priorities. I have personally worked with her on some charter school issues in years past.

I urge you to learn about Dr. Barresi by clicking that ad in the sidebar and visiting her website. I think you'll be impressed.

(A click-through is also a nice way to tell her thanks for sponsoring BatesLine.)

One message you've been hearing a lot this year is to shop locally. Shopping in your own town keeps money circulating in the community, which keeps your friends and neighbors employed, and generates sales tax to help fund local government.

The Tulsa area has many unique local businesses that can help you stuff your Christmas stockings as you help the local economy. One of those businesses is Grace & Truth Books, based in Sand Springs:

Grace and Truth Books is a Christ-centered Christian book publisher and Christian book distributor that provides character building children's books and books for fathers and Christian women's books to help develop family devotion in the home. Many Christian book sellers carry and promote what "sells" and not what is spiritually profitable to build Christian charcter and strong godly families. At Grace and Truth, our focal point and goal has always been to bring the great, character-building books of past centuries to the attention of this generation of families! At Grace & Truth Books you'll find a great selection of Christ-honoring Christian Books for the whole family.

Grace & Truth Books is owned and operated by the Gundersen family, the realization of a long-held dream. They began selling classic 19th century books on character building from a small specialty publisher, became that publisher's biggest distributor, then acquired the publisher and began developing their own catalog of books.

You'll find contemporary books and classic books in Grace & Truth's catalog. The list of December specials includes

• Christian in Complete Armour, the (3 volume set) by William Gurnall
• A Simple Christmas: 12 Stories that Celebrate the True Holiday Spirit by Mike Huckabee (autographed-by-author copies)
• Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching, and Appreciating Boysby Hal & Melanie Young
• Before You Meet Prince Charming - A Guide to Radiant Purity by Sarah Mally
• For You They Signed: Character Studies from the Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence by Marilyn Boyer
• Morning by Morning: TruTone Leather, ESV edition by Charles H. Spurgeon
• The Person I Marry ~ Things I'll Think About Long Before Saying "I Do" by Gary Bower, featuring the oil paintings of Jan Bower

There's also a special collection of 19th-century children's books -- 11 titles, 900 pages total, on sale in December for $39.

Continued on sale for December! One of the best Christmas gifts you could ever give a child: the renowned, classic 19th century Children's Character Building Collection, in the highest-quality edition ever printed, as all 11 titles have beautiful new hand-painted covers! This is our all-time favorite set of children's stories from last century, and all with fresh artwork that captures the era!

Each of these delightful volumes are full of Biblical truth, presented in the most winsome possible stories, sure to warm the heart and teach the mind of every family member. The reading level for this set is said to be 4th - 5th grade, but we find children of all ages enjoy them, and even adults often tell us they find them delightful to read....

Filled with rich, Christ-centered (not merely moralistic) content, these reprints from the best of the American Tract Society's children's selections of the 1800's will be valued by any family who desire your children to be saturated in God's truth, as portrayed in fascinating stories.

Not on special this month, but if you're looking for books that will help history come alive for your children, they have G. A. Henty's historical novels.

According to Dennis's Facebook page, "Still taking Saturday book orders - and we can get them to you by Christmas."

A new documentary on the state of public education in America opens in theaters today. The Cartel takes a close look at the disconnect between how much taxpayers spend and the results we see. For more info, read my latest post at Choice Remarks, the blog of Oklahomans for School Choice.

Too tired and on the verge of getting sick, so no actual writing tonight, but here are a few links of interest from hither and yon:

Steve Lackmeyer raises a concern for "Lost Bricktown," the part of Oklahoma City's warehouse district west of the Santa Fe tracks that escaped 1960s urban renewal. These surviving buildings may be doomed by Core to Shore, and these most vulnerable buildings are slated to be the last to be covered by a historical survey of downtown architecture and may be gone by the time the survey gets around to them. Pictures here.

Chicago-based blogger Anne Leary, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at last year's RNC, had an interesting encounter with Bill Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist and pal of Barack Obama, at the Starbucks at Reagan National Airport. Apparently prompted by Anne's statement that she was a conservative blogger, Ayers told her that he wrote Dreams of My Father, Barack Obama's autobiography, at Michelle Obama's request. In a more recent post she rounds up some of the reaction. Was he pulling her leg? Christopher Andersen's new book on the Obamas' marriage reports that Ayers took Obama's notes and tapes and turned them into the book.

Tulsa Chigger offers a platform for public education reform in Tulsa and salutes the announcement that charter school founder Janet Barresi is running for State Superintendent.

Ephemeral Isle has a birthday salute to Le Corbusier. And there's a link to this interesting BBC story on how central heating has changed family life, not necessarily for the better.

Doncaster, Yorkshire, England, has a mayor named Peter Davies who ran on an anti-political-correctness platform. He is canceling funding for the gay rights parade ("I don't see why council taxpayers should pay to celebrate anyone's sexuality"), ended the town's sister cities relationships ("just for people to fly off and have a binge at the council's expense"), asked to reduce the number of councilors from 63 to 21, saving £800,000 a year, got rid of the mayoral limousine, cut his own salary by more than half, and cut council tax by 3 percent. All that in his first week in office. (The Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster has just under 300,000 residents, somewhat smaller than the City of Tulsa.) By the way, Doncaster uses a limited form of instant runoff voting that has voters mark their second preference. If no candidate receives a majority all but the top two candidates are eliminated and their votes redistributed according to second preference. Not the ideal, but better than no runoff at all. Telegraph blogger Gerald Warner writes of Davies:

Davies, the father of Tory MP Philip Davies, is one of just 11 directly elected mayors and he is enjoying increasing media exposure because of his outrageous agenda which, against all the tenets of consensual British politics, consists of doing what the public wants.

You may be feeling disorientated, overcome by a surreal sensation, on hearing such extraordinary, unprecedented views. They are the almost forgotten, forcibly extinguished voice of sanity which most people had thought forever excised from British politics. These policies are common sense, which is something we have not experienced in any council chamber, still less the House of Commons, in decades. The establishment is moving heaven and earth to discredit and obstruct Davies. He is that ultimate embarrassment: the boy who reveals that the Emperor has no clothes.

Michael Palin, the incoming president of the Royal Geographical Society, spoke out in support of strengthening geography as an academic subject in the latest issue of Geographical, the society's magazine, according to a story in the Daily Mail:

'It's a subject that still seems to be neglected,' he said.

'It's seen as a slightly nerdy subject, and I can't really begin to think why when you look at what's happening in the world.

'Whether it's endemics, terrorism, or global warming, knowing the geography is so vitally important. I want to overcome the feeling that geography isn't really a serious subject, or a subject you should choose to study - and say that it's the subject you ought to choose.'

In the same article, Palin said it was time for Britain to stop apologizing for the British Empire:

The TV star said: 'If we say that all of our past involvement with the world was bad and wicked and wrong, I think we're doing ourselves a great disservice.

'It has set up lines of communication between people that are still very strong.

'We still have links with other countries - culturally, politically and socially - that, perhaps, we shouldn't forget.'

(If the name seems familiar, you might recall Mr. Palin's role in a TV series that first aired 40 years ago this week. It seems to me that much of Monty Python's humor reflects the rigorous instruction in history, geography, and literature that Britons of Palin's generation received.)

(UPDATE: Just rediscovered where I found this story linked -- belated hat tip to Violins and Starships.)

Geography as a separate school subject had disappeared by the time I came along, having been replaced by "Social Studies," which mushed together a lot of related disciplines, teaching none of them well. (On the other hand, we had some great history classes, including Frank B. Ward's 7th grade American History and the U. S. Constitution test that you had to take over and over again until you achieved proficiency.)

One of the things I love about my oldest son's homeschool curriculum is the emphasis on learning the world map. Each week he has to learn a new continent or region -- it's South America this week; last week was Central America and the Antilles -- drawing the map freehand and labeling it with countries and capitals four times over the course of the week. The beginning of the course covered the US, with rivers and mountains along with states and capitals. He had to learn to draw Canada's provinces and territories as well. By the end of the class, he should be able to find any country on a map, and he'll have geographical hooks on which to hang information he picks up in news stories, history books, and fiction. Those geographical hooks will complement the chronological pegs he established by memorizing the timeline from the Veritas history cards. Without memorizing places, names, and dates, how can anyone organize the other facts one learns about the world?

Meanwhile, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service alumni are appalled at the watering down of a traditional subject called Map of the Modern World. The challenging course walked students through the evolution of political boundaries from the Napoleonic upheaval to the present day. The revamped course will include lectures on plate tectonics and global climate change and will emphasize physical geography over political geography. The course is considered a rite of passage for Georgetown SFS students, compared by this alumnus to a "boot camp":

In an earlier post on geography, I mentioned a course I took at Georgetown called "Map of the Modern World", a 1-credit boot camp of world geography and geopolitics. As a student at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service (SFS) I had to take this course as a graduation requirement-since the qualification exam rendered me, in Professor Pirtle's thundrous voice, "geographically ignorant." Even though it was a killer for a one-credit course, it was one of the most rewarding courses I took. I know of no other university that has a geography course that even comes close.

Yet, just as it does in the world of education, the "boutique" theories seem to be adopted by administrators as if they were flavors of the month. Such is the case at SFS, where the new dean, James Reardon-Anderson, wants to take over the course personally. Instead of the classic geopolitical survey that each student in the SFS has received (gratefully) for decades, Reardon-Anderson plans to restructure the course as a study of geographic forces and human interactions. The grit-and-grind of the Mercator map is replaced by the soft Venn diagrams of interactions, encounters and relationships.

The change has inspired a Facebook group called Take Back Map of the Modern World, which offers the catalog descriptions of the old and new versions:

Faculty: Keith Hrebenak

This one-credit-hour course is designed to provide you with regional overviews of the evolution of the world political map since 1800. The objective of this course is to enhance your basic working knowledge of the political map of the modern world as a first step in understanding world events and international relations. The method of instruction
will be lectures supported by a heavy dose of maps and short outside readings. The lectures will focus on the evolution of the modern political map of each region and on major nationalist, ethnic, boundary, and territorial conflicts and tension areas.

Faculty: James Reardon-Anderson

This one-credit course is designed to provide basic knowledge of the physical and political geography of the world. Weekly lectures cover the fundamental forces that shape the physical geography and the effects of physical geography on human behavior in ten regions of the world. The final exam covers information presented in the lectures,
the location and capitals of contemporary states, and the identification of major geographical features. The final examination is multiple choice and graded pass-fail. The course is required for graduation from the School of Foreign Service.

Since Georgetown's School of Foreign Service provides the United States with many of our career diplomatic leaders, I hope the school reverses course and again includes a rigorous political geography course as a core requirement. Better still, let's restore geography as one of the basic "grammars" to be learned by young school children, alongside parts of speech, spelling rules, and multiplication tables.

(Note: The photo above is from the photo section of Michael Palin's travel website.)

Irlen Syndrome, also known as scotopic sensitivity syndrome. There's an informational meeting tonight, Monday, October 5, 2009, at 7 p.m., at the La Quinta Tulsa Airport, east of Sheridan on the south side of I-244, presented by Catherine Barnes, an Irlen diagnostician. To make a reservation or for more information, contact Mrs. Barnes at 859-489-7773.

Our oldest son has been helped immensely by Irlen filters. His fourth grade year at Regent was the school's first in the old Higher Dimensions facility. The walls were painted bright white, the fluorescent lights were very bright, and there was sunlight, too. The combination gave him severe headaches, and there were many days when he had to come home early. He loved to read, but he preferred to do so in dim light. (Of course, we wouldn't let him read in the dark because it was bad for his eyes.) Grid paper and sheet music were particularly problematic for him.

He had a number of medical and ophthalmological tests, including an MRI, trying to figure out the source of the headaches. Everything appeared to be normal. Contrary to occasional parental suspicions, there was something between his ears. :)

My wife remembered that her sister had had trouble filling in the bubbles on standardized tests, and that the use of a translucent pink overlay sheet had helped immensely. My wife found out about the Irlen Institute started working with a diagnostician to find a color that would help him. A dark shade of purple seemed to work best, and so he began using purple overlays to read text and to photocopy assignments and music onto purple paper. Wearing hats helped, too, by shading his eyes. (Hats have become his trademark.)

After finding a tint that seemed to work, he was fitted for glasses with Irlen filter lenses -- no optical correction, just tint. Direct light leaking around the sides continued to be a problem, so we found some wraparound frames that keep the stray light out. He doesn't need them all the time, but they're a must for working with music or doing schoolwork.

What's happening here is a visual processing problem that's aggravated by certain parts of the visible spectrum. The problem is not in the eyes -- it's not optical in nature -- but in the visual processing portion of the brain. Filtering out the offending wavelengths makes the letters look to him they way they do to the rest of us. He no longer has to strain to read and write, and the headaches have gone away.

Irlen lenses have been helpful to people with dyslexia, other reading problems, writing difficulties, and headaches related to bright light. If you've had these sorts of problems or know someone who has, visit the Irlen Institute website to learn more, and, if you can, come to tonight's informational session at the Tulsa Airport La Quinta, 123 N. 67th East Ave.

MORE: Here's an ABC News video about Irlen.

And this Salt Lake City news report shows some examples of ways black on white text appears to Irlen syndrome sufferers:

STILL MORE: This critical blog entry attacking Irlen lenses drew many testimonials from people who have benefited from using colored lenses and overlays and from parents of those who have benefited. As several responses point out, Irlen lenses don't cure dyslexia, but they remove a significant barrier to learning to read -- words seeming to shift, whirl, dance, blur, or fade from the page. In my son's case, he has never had difficulty reading fluently and voraciously, as long as he could read in subdued light.

A cool bit of news from Linda Duntley's Tulsa Home Educators e-mail list:

Starting Sep 9, 2009, Grace Lutheran Church (located on the corner of 5th Place and Lewis) will be offering a 20-minute Latin morning prayer service for Latin students and their families. Starts at 9:00 a.m.

Held in the beautiful medieval-style sanctuary of Grace Lutheran Tulsa, the Latin service is based on the "Ordo Oficii ad Completorium," as found in the "Brotherhood Prayer Book."

The Latin service will be held every 2nd and 4th Wednesday.

This is an excellent supplement to any Latin class--demonstrating that Latin is a living language!

I love Latin and love the tradition of the divine office -- meeting together for a daily liturgy of scripture and prayers -- and it's wonderful to see the two brought together by this traditional, liturgical Lutheran church.

By the way, if you're a homeschooling family and don't subscribe to T.H.E. News, you're missing out on a lot -- for $15 a year you get a comprehensive monthly newsletter and regular news items in your inbox. The next newsletter is due out on September 28, and it's the annual field trip guide.

Back in the early '80s, my mother-in-law, Marjorie Marugg-Wolfe, started teaching at a vo-tech school in Springdale, Ark., and working with "displaced homemakers," women who, by reason of divorce or widowhood, found themselves looking for work after years of not working outside the home. Her involvement grew out of graduate research at the University of Arkansas. She helped women with resume preparation, learning how to present oneself in an interview (including learning how to dress for the job hunt), and getting additional education and training. Many of her clients still had children at home, and they often ran into financial obstacles that forced them to drop out of classes. It might be as simple as the car breaking down and needing to work overtime to pay for the repairs. There were expenses that financial aid through the school would not cover. So she started a scholarship fund in her home county, Benton County, to meet those needs.

Yesterday's Benton County Daily Record reported on a volunteer appreciation luncheon marking the 25th anniversary of the Single Parent Scholarship Fund of Benton County. According to the story, since 1984 the fund "has awarded more than 4,987 scholarships totaling $3,478,943." According to the program website:

Designed to supplement existing government assistance, college grants and loans, the scholarships awarded by Single Parent Scholarship Fund of Benton County encourage students to enter school and prevent them from dropping out of school because of unexpected financial hardships. Often times, scholarship funds are used for:

• Transportation
• Child care
• Housing & utilities
• Medical insurance
• School supplies
• Glasses
• Computers and desks
• Other day-to-day necessities
• Clothing, food and necessities for children

Here are a couple of stories from scholarship recipients:

Christie Parvin-Vogel is one of the many whose lives have been changed by Single Parent Scholarships.

"I came into the program as a 19-year-old mother of a baby boy," Parvin-Vogel said. "I knew I needed to go to college and have an education so I could support myself and my child, but there were no scholarships available to me."

Through the Single Parent Scholarship Fund, Parvin-Vogel was able to get two associate degrees and later a bachelor's degree in computer information systems and a master's degree in management information systems.

"SPSF has been a blessing to me not only because of the money, but because of you guys," Parvin-Vogel said, referencing a room filled with people who helped launch the program 25 years ago.

Another scholarship recipient, Geri Lovelace-Lee, told of her decision to apply for the Single Parent Scholarship Fund: "When I came to a crossroads where I found myself without a car, without a home, and I had these two children and a few pieces of furniture, I knew I had to do something. This program not only helped us with an education, but it came full circle. It helped with everything in life. Thank you," she said.

Anyone know if such a program exists in Tulsa?

TulipGirl tweeted a link to an anti-homeschooling blog rant by a teacher named Jesse Scaccia. He begins, "Homeschooling: great for self-aggrandizing, society-phobic mother...... but not quite so good for the kid," and he goes on to list his "top ten reasons why homeschooling parents are doing the wrong thing." His "reasons" include: homeschooled students are "geeky," homeschooling is selfish (because your child won't be in public school to help teach his peers), it's arrogant for a homeschool parent to think she can teach as well as Jesse Scaccia with his many academic degrees, and, most significantly, "As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off."

In the blog post's comments, a diverse assortment of homeschooling parents take Mr. Scaccia to task for his ignorance and prejudice. Of the many solid responses, this one by The Princess Mom, who blogs at Growing Up Gifted, was my favorite:

Homeschooling is the ultimate in school accountability. I can't pass the buck to next year's teacher-I *am* next year's teacher. I can't blame the parent's poor attitude-I *am* the parent. I can't justify poor test scores by comparing to the whole neighborhood, or blaming the diverse student population or being an urban district. (I've heard all these excuses from teachers and administrators across the country.) I'm accountable to someone even more important than the district or the state department of ed. I'm accountable to my kids. If I don't prepare them for college and life in the world, that's my fault. And if that didn't matter to me, I wouldn't be homeschooling in the first place.

MORE from homeschooling parents:

Dana at Principled Discovery does an interesting thought-experiment with a paragraph from Scaccia's follow-up ("Homeschoolers: Do They Care Too Much?").

Tammy Takahashi liked what she saw in homeschooling families and wanted it for her own:

Here's what I noticed:

1) The teens and the parents liked each other.
2) The teens all had a pretty clear idea of what they wanted to do with their lives, and most of them were already doing them.
3) The parents and kids were all relaxed, happy, well-spoken. (Even when we disagreed a LOT.)
4) The kids were incredibly interested in life. They were enthusiastic about what they were doing in their lives and in planning for their future. (BTW, so were the parents, about their own lives, not just the kids'.)
5) The teens were not judgmental of each other, were not afraid or wary of adults, and treated the little ones well....

They had this way about them that I had never seen before - the geeks, jocks, musicians, brainiacs... they were all cool with each other. There are no gangs, or "us against them" mentality (granted, I chose to only attend inclusive conferences and park days). When someone acted like a jerk, they dealt with it, then moved on and forgave. They liked themselves and each other. Some were gawky and some were attractive, some were buff, others were lanky, yet, they were all cool with each other. There is a ton of social pressure in homeschool groups, and that's to be cool to one another....

The truth is this: kids and families who go through public school (and even private schools to a certain degree) have to struggle and fight to stay in a good place, and to maintain involved in the world around them. Kids and families who homeschool are naturally in a place to have these things, without fighting. Why choose to fight if we don't have to? If see two lines at a grocery store, one long and one short, which one would you choose? If you get a job offer and one has a comfortable working environment, and the other requires longer hours and lots of work at home, for the same pay, which would you choose?

We knew we wanted a liberal, open-minded, accepting, and involved life for our kids. In the world around us, not just in school. And we just couldn't see how we'd have enough time to have all these things without killing ourselves, if they went to public school.

An MIT admissions officer offers advice to homeschooled applicants.

Via Jeff Lindsay on Twitter, I learned about Classical School in Appleton, Wisconsin, a charter Pre-K - 8 school of 450 students that follows a classical curriculum. The school follows E. D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum. Hirsch is the author of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. From the Core Knowledge FAQ:

The "Core Knowledge" movement is an educational reform based on the premise that a grade-by-grade core of common learning is necessary to ensure a sound and fair elementary education.... Professor Hirsch has argued that, for the sake of academic excellence, greater fairness, and higher literacy, early schooling should provide a solid, specific, shared core curriculum in order to help children establish strong foundations of knowledge.

The FAQ is worth reading for their responses to questions like:

"Students are unique individuals, so can we really expect them all to learn the same material? Shouldn't schooling respond to the unique learning styles of each individual child?"

"Is the specific academic content in the Core Knowledge curriculum developmentally appropriate for young children?"

Since knowledge is changing so rapidly, isn't the best approach to teach children to "learn how to learn," rather than to teach specific knowledge?

Without coming right out and saying it, the Core Knowledge approach rebuffs the philosophies and fads of modern public education while embracing the classical Trivium, which begins with "Grammar." The Grammar of the Trivium is not merely how you put words together, but it encompasses the facts and rules of a range of disciplines, including math, history, music, the visual arts, and science, as well as language.

Here's part of the Core Knowledge response to the "learn how to learn" concept:

...Children learn new knowledge by building upon what they already know. It's important to begin building foundations of knowledge in the early grades because that's when children are most receptive, and because academic deficiencies in the first six grades can permanently impair the quality of later schooling. The most powerful tool for later learning is not an abstract set of procedures (such as "problem solving") but a broad base of knowledge in many fields....

...The basic principles of science and constitutional government, the important events of world history, the essential elements of mathematics and of oral and written expression -- all of these are part of a solid core that does not change rapidly, but instead forms the basis for true lifelong learning.

And in response to the criticism of rote memorization and the idea that children need critical thinking skills, not just a bunch of facts:

No one wants schools to think of curriculum solely in terms of facts. We also want -- and students need -- opportunities to use the facts, to apply them, question them, discuss them, doubt them, connect them, analyze them, verify or deny them, solve problems with them. All these activities, however, rely upon having some facts to work with. Without factual knowledge about an issue or problem, you can't think critically about it -- you can only have an uninformed opinion.

Oklahoma has three officially certified Core Knowledge schools -- schools that have implemented at least 80% of the curriculum with a goal of full implementation: Cleveland and Sequoyah Elementary Schools in Oklahoma City, and Clegern Elementary School in Edmond.

Clegern Elementary is certified as a Core Knowledge visitation site, a model school where the curriculum has been fully implemented. Clegern is also a "parent choice school" -- any family in the Edmond district may apply to attend; students are chosen by lottery. It's telling that much of the school's FAQ page has to do with who does or doesn't get an edge in the selection process.

Another 13 schools in Oklahoma City and one in Anadarko are "Friends of Core Knowledge," which means that the schools are implementing the curriculum at some level.

The curriculum of Classical Charter School in Appleton reminds me in many respects of the curriculum at Regent Preparatory School in Tulsa -- for example, both use Saxon Math and Shurley Grammar. I like the fact that instead of the vague "social studies," they have history, geography, and literature.

Now that the Tulsa Public Schools board has dropped its senseless and expensive lawsuit against the state's charter school law. An editorial in the Oklahoman noted a report that the Tulsa school board spent $103,000 on attorney's fees to pursue the suit; appealing to the State Supreme Court would have cost another $125,000. The Oklahoman's advice:

This lawsuit was a bad idea from the start. Money that could have been spent for the benefit of teachers and students went to lawyers instead. That was the only guaranteed outcome, and by no logic could that be considered good for children or taxpayers.

What's good for children -- and by extension taxpayers -- is for Tulsa to not just accept but embrace quality charter schools. Those schools exist to serve Tulsa's children. Their success doesn't reflect poorly on the district; rather, it says that the district cares enough about its students to step outside its comfort zone.

Oklahoma City has 12 charter schools. Tulsa has three. Perhaps now the Tulsa district will be open to new charters, or perhaps one of the universities would sponsor a Core Knowledge charter school here.

TulipGirl linked to this post on a blog called Quiet Garden. It's a letter from one mom to another on making the shift away from some of the controlling, behavioristic parenting methods popular in evangelical circles and toward a way of Christian parenting that reflects God's fatherly grace towards his children. It is packed with helpful and convicting insights. Here are just a few:

I started questioning all of the things I had been taught about "christian parenting", and I did word studies in the Bible on things like "obedience" and "discipline". I was shocked at what WASN'T in there... none of the harshness or retribution I expected; instead, obedience was almost always linked to *love*, especially in the New Testament. "If you love me, you will obey me"... not "if you don't obey me, you will suffer". It was obedience based on relationship, not fear of punishment, which was a totally foreign concept to me. I guess in my mind I thought it was "if you obey me, then I can love you".

I had to really look at how I viewed my relationship with God... is that the way I thought he saw me? If I was obedient, he would love me and be nice to me, but if I wasn't, he would make bad things happen to me? I couldn't find that idea anywhere in scripture. Instead I found him saying "if you focus on loving me, you will WANT to be obedient". The focus was always on my relationship with him, my obedience was supposed to be a natural product of my love for him.

When I started asking God to show me how to parent, it didn't happen the way I expected. Instead of getting "Holy Spirit parenting tips" on how to make my kids behave, I started getting convicted for my OWN behavior. When I started to get angry at them for something they were doing, I would be reminded of a situation where *I* was doing the exact same thing my child was doing, only in an adult context....

If I wanted them to handle frustration calmly and reasonably, then I had to demonstrate self-restraint and not fly off the handle and yell at them when they ticked me off. The idea is not just to *tell* them how to act, but to *show* them what it looks like. After all, how can we expect them to do something we can't?...

If I could not behave better than my child, how could I be so arrogant as to stand in judgement over him and be less merciful than I would want God to be to me? God showed me all of the times I made excuses for myself for my bad behavior, for being crabby or impatient or selfish, or just plain rebellious towards him. It was so easy to rationalize my own behavior, but my children, who were immature and still learning were expected to jump to it, never have a bad day, never make mistakes?...

Take your cue from the Holy Spirit... one who is called along side to help. Instead of MAKING your kids do what you want, work on finding ways to HELP your kids do what you need them to do. Don't see yourself as standing over them, but be someone who comes in alongside them and helps them do what they need to do. More kindly coach/mentor and less crabby old school teacher.

There's more. She unpacks the description of love in I Corinthians 13, turning each phrase into a question for parents to ask ourselves about our motivations in how we direct and discipline our children.

We read the Ezzo books before our oldest was born. Many of our friends -- good, loving Christian people -- recommended them to us. I regret it. That approach to discipline alienates parents from children, and sets mom and dad up as scorekeepers and penalty managers. I found myself denying myself the enjoyment of time with my brilliant, funny, and beautiful kids for the sake of teaching them a lesson. And a child's natural desire to please mom and dad turns to despair -- the feeling that nothing he does will ever be good enough, so why bother trying?

It is hard to ditch the Ezzo mindset. You're confronted with regrets over years wasted and damage done, as the letter on Quiet Garden discusses. There's also the inner Ezzo nagging you that you're being too lax, too lenient, that you're spoiling your kids. But I'm starting to think that the worst kind of spoilage would be if my child no longer felt connected to me, if my child felt alienated from me, no longer identifying with my values, uninterested in my advice, unwilling to learn from my experiences.

I'd rather work alongside my children, enjoying their company, sharing laughter, and guiding them down the right path -- not like the guy back at the gas station who gave you directions but like the sherpa who is with you step-by-step up the treacherous mountain trail.

I posted this question on Twitter

Question to young midtown Tulsa hipsters: What are your plans when you have school-age kids? TPS, private, homeschool, or move to burbs?

and got several quick replies; thought I'd post it here, too, in expanded form:

If you're young and have moved into an older core neighborhood in midtown Tulsa, or any of the neighborhoods within a mile or so of downtown, what will you do when your children (if/when you have them) are old enough for school? Will you stay put and send your kids to Tulsa Public Schools or a private school or homeschool them? Or will you move to a suburban school district?

If your answer is TPS, is that contingent on getting your children into magnet programs like Eisenhower or Zarrow or transferring them into a highly regarded neighborhood school, or will you be content with the assigned school for your neighborhood?

Whatever your answer, I'm curious to know your reasons as well.

Back in 1998, I first ran for City Council and got involved in the Midtown Coalition. At the time, I met a number of younger couples who either didn't have children yet or had children who weren't old enough for school. They lived in cute 1200 sq. ft. cottages and bungalows, but they all seemed to move as soon as the first child approached the age of five. I'm wondering how many of the young adults from the current cohort who are attracted to traditional neighborhoods and urban living will stick around when the babies start coming.

Feel free to post a comment below or e-mail me at blog at batesline dot com. This is for an upcoming column on the connection between schools and urban revitalization. If you'd prefer I didn't quote you at all, or if I can quote you but not by name, please mention it when you write, otherwise I'll assume I have permission to quote you by name.

Brandon Dutcher, whose wife homeschools their four children, reacts to State Sen. Mary Easley's plan to regulate homeschooling by requiring families to register with the local school district and provide progress reports. He tells Sen. Easley he'd like to see progress reports from the public schools so he can know, for example, just how far behind his children are from the public-schooled kids:

For example, when my oldest son was in 8th grade, all he was really able to learn that year was Algebra II, Henle Latin I, intermediate logic, physical science, grammar, and composition. Well, plus he read and discussed The Epic of Gilgamesh; The Code of Hammurabi; The Odyssey; The Histories; The Oresteia Trilogy; Plutarch's Lives; The Theban Trilogy; The Last Days of Socrates; The Early History of Rome; The Aeneid; The Twelve Caesars; Till We Have Faces; The Unaborted Socrates; Genesis; Exodus; I and II Samuel; I and II Kings; Isaiah; Jeremiah; Chosen by God; and Socrates Meets Jesus, among others.

Now, I'm not naïve. I realize that 8th graders in Oklahoma's world-class public school system are learning all this and more. Who among us didn't have an 8th-grade history teacher/football coach wax eloquent on the influence of Stoic philosophy on Gaius Gracchus? Heck, as a retired teacher you know better than anyone that the 8th graders in your hometown of Tulsa (or Owasso, or Grand Lake Towne, whatever) are learning all this and more.

Later, he points out that his family has saved Oklahoma taxpayers over $200,000 by homeschooling their children.

Oklahoma's freedom to homeschool has encouraged the growth of a diverse homeschooling community, with all sorts of co-op groups, special classes, sports, field trips, clubs, and other school activities to provide learning opportunities beyond what parent-teachers can easily provide at home. Instead of breaking something that works well, we ought to promote the state to attract homeschoolers from across the country to move here. Who knows -- we might grow enough to get back that 6th congressman we lost 10 years ago.

In a Friday editorial, the Oklahoman took the Tulsa school board to task for continuing its lawsuit against the state's charter school law. The TPS board claims the law is unconstitutional because it limits charter schools to certain parts of the state based on population and district size.

Charter schools exist because many parents and educators aren't happy with what they see at traditional schools. Some are in direct competition with traditional public schools; others have programs that serve students who have struggled in a traditional education setting. That's not to say all charter schools are perfect and a great fit for every student. But we believe the marketplace will sort the good from the bad, and parents ultimately will vote with their children's feet.

Charter schools were designed to be incubators for new ideas that could be replicated. Instead, we tend to hear excuses on why some of their innovations won't work in regular schools. Even Oklahoma City, which has been a more welcoming environment for charter schools than Tulsa, has had tense and sometimes hostile relationships with charter schools.

We said when the lawsuit was filed that it was a waste of money. It still is. Schools -- and school boards -- would do better to embrace the competition as an opportunity for students to receive a better education and a challenge to do better. That's not too much to ask.

The editorial refers to a December 15 attempt by TPS board members Brian Hunt and Lana Turner-Addison to drop the lawsuit. The motion failed by a 4-2 vote.

(Crossposted at Choice Remarks.)

There's no place for "plaice" in this dictionary. Words about Christianity (vicar, sin, parish), Christmas (carol, mistletoe), the monarchy (coronation, duke, monarch), seafood (lobster, mussel), pets (corgi, goldfish, hamster), fairy tales (elf, goblin), woodland flora (tulip, sycamore, pasture), and fauna (doe, starling, terrapin) are gone, too, from a popular children's dictionary:

Oxford University Press has removed words like 'aisle', 'bishop', 'chapel', 'empire' and 'monarch' from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like 'blog', 'broadband' and 'celebrity'. Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.

How can you read Winnie the Pooh or The Wind in the Willows without words like stoat, beaver, gorse, or (oh, bother!) piglet? And what fiend would flush "budgerigar" down the lexicographical loo? As one commenter on the linked story wrote:

What a pity! Future generations will not be able to understand Monty Python until they've studied it at university.

(This isn't necessarily a new phenomenon: Some advanced individuals in previous generations used comedy and comic strips as a personal curriculum in cultural literacy.)

Another commenter writes:

I've got to 62 and have survived life still not quite knowing what a trapezium is. But the same could not be said had I not known the meaning of buttercup, fern and hazelnut. Our children's lives are being impoverished by this kind of misguided editorial policy.

As a teacher for 30 years, I was saddened by the increasing disappearance of basic idioms from children's language; the Oxford Dictionary policy is symptomatic of the cultural impoverishing of children's vocabulary, language and its use.

And another:

Take away our language and who are we? Our beautiful words, many of which date from Anglo-Saxon times, are now taken from us and generations of future children. They are more than words, they are the golden threads that bind together the rich tapestry of our country's story.

Reading the words taken out is absolutely heartbreaking. They read like the roll call of honour for a country that is dying.

This seems to put it all in a nutshell, referring to the sets of words deleted from and words added to the dictionary:

It would be interesting to try to write two poems: one with the first set of words, the other with the second.

The list of removed words brings to mind "Last of the Summer Wine," "The Archers," and All Creatures Great and Small. The list of added words brings to mind "Only Fools and Horses" and "The Office."

This sentence from the Telegraph story suggests that the shift away from church and countryside has already taken place in children's literature:

Oxford University Press, which produces the junior edition, selects words with the aid of the Children's Corpus, a list of about 50 million words made up of general language, words from children's books and terms related to the school curriculum. Lexicographers consider word frequency when making additions and deletions.

This defense of OUP's omission of these words didn't give me any comfort:

Critics tend to assume that children either read dictionaries for fun to learn new words (which they probably don't) or look up words that they meet in reading or in everyday life. In fact, it's older children who use dictionaries to look up the meanings of words; children aged 7-9 tend to use dictionaries to help them with spelling when they are writing out what they did at the weekend, or keeping a diary - typical school writing tasks. Therefore the contents of the dictionary need to reflect children's actual lifestyles, not an idealised picture of how we would all like childhood to be.

This suggests that children 7-9 aren't reading good books in school, where they might encounter unfamiliar words.

Read the full list here.

(Via Roger Kimball, via NRO's Corner.)

Jonathan Aitken, an alumnus of Eton, sees the best aspects of the education he received reflected in the methods of Geneva School, a new classical Christian school in Orlando, Fla.

Like many an Etonian I chafed under what seemed to be the excessive burden of studying Latin for five years. However, in later life I have come to acknowledge at least some truth in Lord Macaulay's dictum "No man can write a decent English sentence until he has first learned to construe a Latin one." I have also come to respect the valedictory words of my Headmaster, Sir Robert Birley, to the leavers' class of 1956, "I hope you will come to realize that the main purpose of your education at Eton has been to enable you to know when the fellow opposite you is talking rot."...

But perhaps the most central principle of Geneva is the ancient imperative of classical education that students must be given the intellectual training that will enable them to think for themselves.

"Most American education consists of teaching how to pass knowledge-based exams," says Geneva's headmaster, the Rev. Robert Ingram. "We are different here. Of course we do not neglect knowledge but we go deeper than substance. We strive to give our students the tools with which they can succeed at reasoning, analysis, argument, and presentation. We want to give them the ability to ask questions such as 'What is this author saying and is it true? How do I know it is true? How can I defend the truth in a rhetorical battle to persuade others by presenting arguments that are winsome, attractive, and convincing?'" Headmaster Ingram also gives priority to the teaching of Christian values and aesthetics, saying: "We help our students to discover what is morally good, aesthetically beautiful, and Biblically philosophically true."

From Sen. John McCain's acceptance speech in St. Paul tonight:

Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.

When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.

Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students. And when I'm President, they will.

(Crossposted at Choice Remarks.)

McCain's remarks, quoted above, brought the delegates to their feet with loud cheers several times.

School choice received many prime-time mentions from the podium of the Republican National Convention this week.

GOPAC Chairman Michael Steele:

Some just talk about change, but John McCain believes the resiliency of the American people is the real source of the change America needs; and that means putting country first.

So, do you want to put your country first? Then let's change the way we educate our kids.

Let's empower those whose minds are shackled by a poor education with real choices in where they go to school....

John McCain knows we must empower working families and stand with them against the erosion of our constitutional rights, the corruption of our school systems, the weakening of our families and the taking of human life - born and unborn.

Mitt Romney:

Opportunity expands when there is excellence and choice in education, when taxes are lowered, when every citizen has affordable, portable health insurance, and when constitutional freedoms are preserved.

Rudy Giuliani:

And as we look to the future never let us forget that - when we are at our best - we are the party that expands Freedom. We began as a party dedicated to freeing people from slavery ... And we are still the party that is willing to fight for freedom at home and around the world. We are the party that wants to expand individual freedom and economic freedom ... because we believe that the secret of America's success is not central government, it is self-government. We are the party that believes in giving workers the right to work. The party that believes parents should choose where their children go to school.

From the 2008 Republican platform about Washington, D. C.:

Washington should be made a model city. Two major Republican initiatives -- a first-time D.C. homebuyers credit and a landmark school choice initiative -- have pointed the way toward a civic resurgence, and a third piece of GOP legislation now guarantees young D.C. residents significant assistance in affording higher education.

From the education section of the platform.

Parents should be able to decide the learning environment that is best for their child. We support choice in education for all families, especially those with children trapped in dangerous and failing schools, whether through charter schools, vouchers or tax credits for attending faith-based or other nonpublic schools, or the option of home schooling.

Over on Choice Remarks, the blog of Oklahomans for School Choice, I've linked to a clip from the classic British sitcom Yes, Prime Minister, in which the PM and his cabinet secretary argue about whether parents should have the right to choose where their children go to school. It's a brilliant spoof of the typical arguments of school-choice opponents.

Be sure to check out the Choice Remarks home page, which today includes an item that proves satire can't outdo educratic reality: The Broward County, Fla., school board chairman supports making it a felony to lie about your address for the purposes of school enrollment, saying, "There shouldn't be school shopping."

RELATED: I received an e-mail from someone who has heard that seven of the Tulsa school district's nine high schools will be on the No Child Left Behind "needs improvement" list this year. The only two off the list are Washington and Edison, and as a magnet school, Washington doesn't accept NCLB transfers. Edison parents are worried about overcrowding. More charter schools and tuition vouchers and scholarship fund tax credits would relieve the pressure on Edison and make living in the Tulsa school district more attractive to families with children.

Strategic Vision polled 1200 Oklahoma voters for the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Here is the executive summary:

This scientifically representative poll of 1,200 likely Oklahoma voters measures public opinion on a wide range of K-12 education issues. The underlying theme of the Friedman Foundation's Survey in the State series is to measure voter attitudes toward their public institutions, leaders, innovative ideas, and the current K-12 power and priority structure.

In particular, Oklahomans have shared with us their views about "school choice" in the forms of taxcredit scholarships, school vouchers, charter schools and virtual schools. Results imply that voters like the idea of customizing the school selection process in a way that best meets the needs of a child and his or her family. So how high is the support for school choice reforms? Percentages favoring tax-credit scholarships, school vouchers, and charter schools are consistently in the 50s--generally and across nearly all subgroups.

In some cases, favorability to a particular school choice reform reaches the 60s. For example, 60 percent of African-Americans favor a scholarship granting system funded through business tax credits; 63 percent of African-Americans like charter schools; and 63 percent of Hispanics favor "allowing students and parents to choose any school, public or private, to attend using public funds."

School choice is not a partisan issue among voters in Oklahoma. Favorability spans political parties and political self-identification. Democrats, Independents, and Republicans favor publicly funded scholarship granting systems (through business or individual tax credits), school vouchers, and charter schools.

Proportions are very similar across these subgroups on school choice-related questions. In some cases, support is extraordinarily high: 61 percent of Democrats favor tax-credit scholarship legislation; 60 percent of Republicans and 58 percent of Independents favor a scholarship granting system funded through individual tax credits; and all three political groups are more likely to vote for rather than against a candidate who supports a tax-credit scholarship policy.

A total of 1,200 phone interviews were conducted by Strategic Vision, between April 25 and April 27, 2008. The margin of error for the full sample of likely voters is ± 3 percentage points; the margin of error is higher when considering the response percentages for a given demographic subgroup.

Key findings include:

• About two-fifths of Oklahoma voters are not satisfied with the state's current public school system--41 percent rate Oklahoma's public school system as "poor" or "fair." Excluding the one of five voters who are undecided, this proportion rises to 51 percent.


• Nearly two out of three Oklahomans are content with current levels of public school funding. A large majority of voters (64 percent) say Oklahoma's level of public school funding is either "too high" or "about right." At least 67 percent of the poll's respondents underestimate the state's actual per-pupil funding, which suggests that the funding satisfaction level is probably a conservative figure.


• More than four out of five Oklahomans would prefer to send their child to a school other than a regular public school--only 17 percent say a regular public school is their top choice. This low figure is consistent with what we have learned from previous state polls asking the same question, most recently in Idaho (12 percent), Tennessee (15 percent), Nevada (11 percent), and Illinois (19 percent).


• Oklahoma voters value private schools--they are more than twice as likely to prefer sending their child to a private school over any other school type. When asked "what type of school would you select in order to obtain the best education for your child?" 41 percent of respondents selected private schools. This finding is consistent with other recent state polls asking the same question: Idaho (39 percent), Tennessee (37 percent), Nevada (48 percent), and Illinois (39 percent).


• Oklahomans like having a range of schooling options. Majorities express support for school vouchers (53 percent) and charter schools (54 percent), with many also open to virtual schools (40 percent), even though nearly a third of respondents stated they "have never heard of virtual, cyber, or online schools." School choice is not a partisan issue among likely voters. There is solid potential for building bridges between Democrats (D), Republicans (R), and Independents (I). Voters who identify themselves differently in terms of political affiliation are likely to have common views on various school choice reforms and policies spanning charter schools (D: 52 percent | R: 56 percent | I: 55 percent), virtual schools (D: 38 percent | R: 40 percent | I: 42 percent), school vouchers (D: 53 percent | R: 54 percent | I: 53 percent), or a generic public-funded school choice system (D: 55 percent | R: 53 percent | I: 56 percent).


• More than half of voters are favorable to a tax-credit scholarship system. When asked "if a proposal were made in Oklahoma to create a tax-credit scholarship system," 54 percent say they favor a scholarship system funded by business charitable donations. A slightly higher figure (57 percent) say they favor a scholarship system funded by individual charitable donations.


• Likely voters view recent tax-credit scholarship legislation positively--58 percent say they are favorable to such school choice legislation. Majorities cut across Democrats (61 percent), Republicans (55 percent), and Independents (53 percent).


• Oklahomans are more likely to vote for a state representative, state senator or governor who supports a taxcredit scholarship system. Nearly twice as many voters say they are "more likely" (21 percent) rather than "less likely" (11 percent) to vote for such a candidate. Independents are nearly five times more likely to vote for a person supporting tax-credit scholarships (23 percent vs. 5 percent).


• Knowledge about school vouchers is at a low baseline in Oklahoma--there is an information deficit about this type of system reform. Although a majority of Oklahoma's likely voters (55 percent) said they were either "very familiar" or "somewhat familiar" with school vouchers, there is still a lot of potential for educating citizens on the issue. This figure is comparable to what has been measured in other states such as Idaho (59 percent), Tennessee (45 percent), Nevada (55 percent), and Illinois (51 percent).

Read more about the battle for school in Oklahoma at the Choice Remarks blog.

Incredible: The Republican-controlled State House of Representatives voted today to kill SB 2093, the New Hope Scholarship Act, by a vote of 40 to 57.

Fred Jordan, who represents Jenks, Glenpool, and south Tulsa, and Weldon Watson were the only Republican s representing Tulsa who voted no. (Earl Sears, who represents a small piece of north Tulsa County along with much of Washington County, and Skye McNiel, who represents Creek County, plus a small piece of southwest Tulsa County, also voted no.) I can only speculate about the motivation of Fred Jordan, a suburban homebuilder. The lack of adequate educational options in the Tulsa Public Schools district creates outward pressure that would help him sell new homes in far south Tulsa County.

A glance at the names of other naysaying Republicans reveals a number from rural and suburban areas. Perhaps they have the attitude, "What's in it for the schools in my district?" Perhaps their school board members and superintendents pressured them into voting no.

North Tulsa Democrat Jabar Shumate was a leading advocate for the bill, which would have been a great benefit to students in his district, which is plagued with underperforming public schools, but his Democratic colleagues in neighboring districts -- Lucky Lamons, Jeannie McDaniel, Darrell Gilbert, and Scott BigHorse -- abandoned him. It's hard to understand why the first three, who represent parts of the Tulsa Public School district, would oppose a measure that would provide educational choice and thus incentive for families with children to remain in the older parts of central and north Tulsa. I suppose pressure from the OEA, the most influential interest group in the Democratic Party, was a factor. Their votes may have been good for their political careers, but they were bad for their districts.

David Derby (R-Owasso) and Eric Proctor (D-northeast Tulsa) did not vote -- they are listed under "Constitutional Privilege."

This was a very modest bill that would have created a tax credit for donations to scholarship funds. These scholarship funds would be designated for students in underperforming schools. It was too limited -- capped at a certain dollar amount each year -- but it would have provided more school choice than we currently have for the students who need it most. Shame, shame on the House members, particularly the Republicans and those who represent inner-city districts, who voted against this bill.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma continues to languish at the bottom of the school choice charts with a failing grade.

If city officials want to bring families with children back to the older parts of our city, they ought to be lobbying the legislature to expand school choice -- more charter schools, vouchers, tuition tax credits. Here's a recent example from the Cincinnati area of the positive effects of school choice on the revitalization of older neighborhoods:

The homes are square and solid, like the dark-red bricks from which they're built. Old steps and wrought-iron railings lead to small porches shaded by big trees. The uneven sidewalks, postage-stamp yards and 1950s styles look like so many neighborhoods in Cincinnati's aging first-ring communities.

But something is happening on the quiet, clean streets that straddle Golf Manor and Amberley Village: It's a mini-population boomlet.

While most of the city has been losing families to suburbs that offer more land, newer houses, lower taxes and better schools, this neighborhood is a magnet for young professionals with large, growing families.

A recent inventory of new residents includes an ophthalmologist, a Procter & Gamble manager, an Internet entrepreneur, a journalist, two in real estate, two in construction, two in the nursing home business, a restaurant owner and seven rabbis.

Nearly all of these Orthodox Jewish families were attracted by two things: Cincinnati Hebrew Day School, and vouchers provided by Ohio EdChoice.

The vouchers are especially important to young parents who are still working on advanced degrees or medical school, said Rabbi Ben Travis, development director at the Hebrew Day School on Losantiville Road, which has become "the cog around which the community revolves."...

Tuition at Hebrew Day School is $6,365. Students in neighborhoods with failing public schools are eligible for private school vouchers up to $4,375, depending on income, Motzen explained. Families usually pay more of their tuition as their careers take off, Travis said.

The two communities mentioned are called "first-ring suburbs" -- bedroom communities, just outside the limits of the core city, set up to accommodate the post-war baby boom wave of new home buyers. Fifty or sixty years later, these inner-ring communities have long since been passed over by families in favor of newer suburbs further out. Often the infrastructure, housing stock, and retail stock has aged badly. They're in a kind of no-man's land -- lacking the amenities of the core city and newness of the newer suburbs.

The nearest examples of inner-ring suburbs can be found around Oklahoma City -- e.g., Midwest City, Del City, Warr Acres. Because of the annexation policies Tulsa pursued in the '40s and '50s, we don't have these kinds of communities as separate municipalities. (Highland Park -- 31st to 36th, Yale to Hudson -- was one, but was annexed by Tulsa. Tulsa used its water supply and much higher rates for out-of-city customers as leverage to bring new neighborhoods into the city.) But we do have neighborhoods with similar characteristics -- e.g., along Peoria north of 36th St. N. and the 21st and Garnett Area. Some are in better shape than others, but in many of them, homes that once housed families of four or more now house singles and couples. The density is no longer there to support the level of retail that once existed in these areas.

School quality is the major deterrent to attracting families back to these areas. In this case from Ohio, vouchers are giving young families the ability to have affordable housing and high-quality schooling at the same time.

(Hat tip: Brandon Dutcher. Crossposted at Choice Remarks.)

MORE: State Sen. Judy Eason McIntyre and State Rep. Jabar Shumate, both Democrats who represent north Tulsa, including the area I mentioned above, are receiving national recognition for their support for school choice in the Oklahoma Legislature. Here's syndicated columnist Star Parker's salute to McIntyre and Shumate. An excerpt:

No Child Left Behind allows parents to move their child to a performing district public school if the child's school is failing and does not improve for three consecutive years. But this provision is effectively meaningless because rarely is there an available public-school alternative.

The Tulsa and Oklahoma City School Districts have 7,000 students in such failing schools.

Graduation rates in Oklahoma City and Tulsa are 47.5 percent and 50.6 percent, respectively.

Legislation is now moving through the Oklahoma legislature that would allow a 50 percent tax credit to individuals or businesses contributing to a fund that would provide scholarships for low-income kids in failing schools to go to a private school.

The heroes here are two black Democrats -- Sen. Judy Eason McIntyre and Rep. Jabar Shumate. Going against the grain of their party, and against the Oklahoma union and public-school establishments, these brave souls are championing this initiative.

The bill is SB 2093, the New Hope Scholarship Act. Here's a rebuttal to some of the attacks against the proposal. And one of the sponsors, State Sen. James Williamson, explains the proposal in an op-ed in today's Oklahoman.

The best place to follow the school choice debate is at Choice Remarks, the blog of Oklahomans for School Choice.

A recent California appellate court ruling has Golden State homeschooling families nervous. Brandon Dutcher and J. Scott Moody of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs urge them to load up the jalopy and migrate east on the Mother Road to the most homeschooling friendly state in the nation:

Indeed, HSLDA notes, "Oklahoma is the only state with a constitutional provision guaranteeing the right to home school." The state constitution directs the legislature to provide for attendance at some public or other school--"unless other means of education are provided."

As one delegate to the Oklahoma constitutional convention argued in 1907, "People ought to be allowed to use their own discretion as to how to educate their children."

Not only do we have freedom to homeschool, Oklahoma's lower cost of living and lower taxes make our state an even sweeter option for homeschooling families.

Something that Dutcher and Moody don't mention is that Oklahoma also has wonderful support networks for homeschooling. There are bookstores that buy and sell used curriculum, co-ops that provide mutual support on advanced topics, and plenty of informal support from other homeschooling families who can provide advice and encouragement.

(I wonder if the State, Oklahoma City, or Tulsa Chambers of Commerce have ever thought of using our homeschooling options in marketing the state to potential residents. Targeted to the right audience, homeschooling could attract new residents here.)

(Plain-text version found at the McCarville Report.)

Oklahoma is lagging behind the rest of the nation in offering a variety of affordable K-12 educational options to our children and their parents. In hopes of improving the situation, there's now an organization called Oklahomans for School Choice, with an official blog called Choice Remarks, headed up by Brandon Dutcher, vice president for policy for the Oklahoma Center of Public Affairs.

The blog's sidebar offers a synopsis of the issue:

School choice refers to any education policy which allows parents to choose the safest and best schools for their children, whether those schools are public or private. As state school Superintendent Sandy Garrett has correctly noted, "We have a lot of choice already in Oklahoma." Oklahoma is fortunate to have interdistrict choice, intradistrict choice, charter schools, magnet and specialty schools, privately funded K-12 vouchers, a thriving homeschool sector, and more. Unfortunately, we don't yet have what many other states have--vouchers or tax credits which allow thousands of students to choose private schools.

I've been invited to contribute to the blog, so as I come across news items relating to charter schools, tuition vouchers, scholarship fund tax credits, and other means of expanding parental choice in K-12 education, I'll be posting them at Choice Remarks.

PonderInc considers the choices in tomorrow's Tulsa Public Schools board election:

The Tulsa World endorsed Guess, citing her extensive educational experience and training.

On one hand, I want to believe that an education background is a good thing; but on the other hand, I think that many of the problems with our school system (inept teachers, principals, and administrators) are caused by people with education degrees.

My skepticism increased after taking education classes 10 years ago when I was considering teaching. I thought: this is the dumbest stuff I've ever heard, who invents this crap? It led me to believe that the school system would be much improved if everyone had a degree in the subject they teach...instead of a goofy education degree.

So...can an "insider" reform from the inside? Or is it better to support an "outsider" who might just bring some common sense to the table?

At the same time, I disagree with the pragmatists who think all schools should do is prepare students for the business world. Education is different from training. And those who would limit art, music, and theater programs for the sake of more "hard skills" don't realize the importance of creativity, experimentation and imagination.

I don't really know where each of these candidates stands on these topics. And I'm not sure who to vote for tomorrow. Looks like I've got homework to do!

That point about schools of education is the crucial issue in school reform, but it's overlooked amidst discussions of funding, testing, discipline, etc. One of the advantages that charter and private schools have over public schools is that it's easier for a charter or private school to hire a teacher who has a degree in the subject area he or she will be teaching. Public schools can hire teachers outside the usual ed-school track, but there are many more hoops to jump through with alternative certification, and many school officials can't be bothered, especially if there is no shortage of ed-school graduates, who won't require the extra effort to get them into the classroom.

Courses in an education degree program tend to be all about process, rather than content. If you love math or English lit or history and dream of imparting your love of the subject to young skulls full of mush, the process of gaining certification -- whether by traditional or alternative methods -- may very well drain you of your enthusiasm.

A friend of mine with an MBA and many years in the corporate world had the urge about a decade ago to go into teaching. He had gained some classroom time as a Junior Achievement sponsor and enjoyed the experience immensely. He thought he might teach math or business at the junior high or high school level, so he began working for his alternative certification. Texas, where he lived, had pioneered the process, but he wasn't able to get the time of day from two of the major school districts in the DFW Metroplex. (Thinking back on it, he might have had more cooperation from a smaller district.) He gave up on the idea.

It may be that schools of education, with their focus on process and theory and their ideological attacks on practices that work (e.g. phonics, math fact drills, and high expectations), are the heart of what's wrong with public schools in America. They deter many with the gift of teaching from getting into the profession, and they provide a bad foundation for those who do pursue teaching.

Sadly, people don't become aware of the problem until they encounter it directly as my friend and PonderInc did. PonderInc gets it now. I wish she were running for school board.

To keep families in the center city, offer them real school choice. It's working in Cleveland:

When Citizens' Academy [a Cleveland charter school] surveyed its parents, more than 40 percent said the school -- consistently among the state's top performers -- played an integral role in their decision to remain in Cleveland. To Perry White, the East Side charter school's director, that means successful schools are as much an economic development issue as an education issue.

"To stem the exodus of families from Cleveland, we must leverage our best public schools -- charter and district -- as catalysts for creating neighborhoods of choice," White said. "The future of our city and region depends on it."

Josipa Peric can vouch for that. Peric, who works as a waitress, has a fourth-grader at Citizens'. Another son graduated from the school two years ago and was awarded a scholarship to attend University School, a prestigious private school.

Peric said she and her husband had planned to leave Cleveland and move to Eastlake with other Croatian immigrants. Through friends, they discovered Citizens' and transferred their two sons there from Catholic school. Now, they plan to stay in town and open a bakery here.

"We were planning to move, too, but the school is great," Peric said. "They are like family to us."

That kind of symbiotic relationship between parents and schools, which died in some neighborhoods decades ago, could be the greatest legacy of the charter movement.

When will Tulsa's business leaders -- people with an economic interest in the prosperity of the inner city -- start putting the pressure on our public school system to be more hospitable to charter schools?

Thursday, it was reported that employees at Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU) were banned from using the word Christmas. Here's the latest statement from SWOSU president John Hays on the matter:

Update: No Ban on Christmas December 21, 2007

After the stories about Christmas were published stating that Southwestern Oklahoma State University banned the word 'Christmas' or Christmas decorations, I made inquiries to discover if there was any basis to the reports. The university does not have a policy that bans the word 'Christmas' or Christmas decorations. However, some supervisors or department leaders within the university who meant well may have suggested to employees that caution should be taken with respect to Christmas decorations. One thing led to another and the result was that some mistakenly assumed that Christmas decorations were being prohibited. I have met with various staff members to get to the bottom of the matter and have also had a pleasant discussion with Mathew Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel.

The university will continue to follow the law and to respect the right of all its staff members. Thus, the university will follow the general principles set forth by the courts regarding the display of religious symbols and/or Nativity scenes. A publicly sponsored Nativity scene on public property is constitutional so long as it is displayed in the context of other secular symbols of the holiday, like Santa Claus or a Christmas tree, so as not to appear to be endorsing a particular religion. A privately sponsored religious symbol or Nativity on public property where members of the public are permitted to display such symbols does not need an accompanying secular symbol to be constitutional.

In applying this general rule to the university, if a Nativity or other religious symbol of the holiday is displayed in a place open to the general public (like a lobby), the university will include secular symbols of the holiday in the nearby context. However, employees in their cubicles or offices may personally display a Nativity or other religious symbol of the holiday. In such setting, the employee need not include secular symbols of the holiday. Employees have always been and continue to be permitted to greet one another with the greeting 'Merry Christmas' or 'Happy Holidays.' The decision is up to each employee.

I trust that these guiding principles will clarify the matter regarding Christmas for the staff and the general public.

John Hays
SWOSU President

Am I wrong in noticing a bit of a contradiction with his earlier statement?

No Ban on Christmas December 20, 2007

An attempt to be respectful of the diverse religious population at Southwestern Oklahoma State University has been misinterpreted as an attempt to ban Christmas on the Weatherford campus.

The rumor of this ban is not true.

The university attempted to prevent the appearance as a state agency of endorsing any particular religion.

John Hays
SWOSU President

On December 20, he refers to an official university action: "The university attempted to prevent the appearance as a state agency of endorsing any particular religion."

On December 21, he denies that official university action was involved: "The university does not have a policy that bans the word 'Christmas' or Christmas decorations. However, some supervisors or department leaders within the university who meant well may have suggested to employees that caution should be taken with respect to Christmas decorations. One thing led to another and the result was that some mistakenly assumed that Christmas decorations were being prohibited."

I'm happy that they've come around in support of freedom of expression, but it still looks like someone is playing a game of CYA.

Liberty Counsel, the national group which first called attention to the issue, is very pleased with the outcome:

Mr. Hays deserves a big "Thank You and Merry Christmas." His leadership in resolving the controversy over Christmas and the general guidelines he has set forth regarding the appropriate way a state school and its employees may acknowledge and celebrate Christmas serves as an example for others to follow. Christmas is a wonderful time of the year and it can and should be enjoyed by all.

The Oklahoman story adds a detail from the SWOSU spokesman:

Spokesman Brian Adler said employees were asked to keep public areas of the campus free of religious decor because not all students celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday.

Mark Tapscott, who brought the story into the blogosphere, spoke with John Hays by phone:

"We don't have any written guidelines now, but Matt [Staver of Liberty Counsel] tells me the court cases are pretty clear that when you do have something like a nativity scene on public property, like on City Hall, you also have to have some secular items with it," said John Hayes, SWOSU's president. Staver promised to provide Hayes with materials on court cases on the issue that would be useful in writing guidelines for the school's existing policy, the SWOSU official said.

Hayes said his university doesn't have "a new policy, there has just been a big mis-understanding. One of the offices told somebody they couldn't do something and it was over-emphasized." An employee had placed a snowman in a public area of an office that said "Merry Christmas," according to Hayes. The snowman was then moved to a different area, he said.

Saint Augustine Academy's fall banquet, titled "Wisdom and Eloquence at the Renaissance" (the Renaissance Hotel, that is), was a wonderful event. People even thought the 25 minutes when I spoke went well; at least that's what they told me. It was a privilege to serve as the keynote speaker.

I'm used to writing for publication, where I can perfect the delivery of my thoughts before I actually "deliver" them to the reader. I'm used to speaking extemporaneously on whatever topic is thrown my way, as I do every Tuesday morning at 6:10 on KFAQ with Gwen Freeman and Chris Medlock. Giving a prepared speech is in some ways the worst of both worlds. There's a need to be conversational and engaging and to "read the room" (a challenge when everyone is sitting at banquet tables a great distance away). At the same time, there's a need to choose words with great care, something that can't be done spur of the moment. I'm afraid I wound up reading most of my speech.

I was preceded by the local chapter of the Gospel Music Workshop of America, a 100-voice gospel choir sound produced by about 15 singers. They were a fitting and rousing introduction to my talk, which I announced as "Tax Increment Financing: The Benefits and the Risks." (Another dad told me afterwards he was sort of hoping I would talk about TIF districts. I told him to read my column in this coming Wednesday's Urban Tulsa Weekly. Or you could read about them here.)

Later we had the pleasure of listening to testimonials from Caleb Gayle, class of '07, and Leah Farish, whose daughter Colleen graduated from SAA. Both spoke about the excellent preparation that SAA gives to its students to prepare them to think and to contend for the truth. (Colleen served in Congressman Sullivan's Washington office and as an intern in the White House speechwriters' office. She served as a scheduler and constituent services assistant for Texas State Rep. Dan Gaddis in the last legislative session. You can read about her post-SAA background in the resolution passed by the Texas House thanking her for her service.)

Kirk Post, the principal and one of the founders of SAA, then spoke eloquently about the school's distinctive qualities, and Dr. Larry Ehrlich, the school's administrator, closed out the evening with an appeal for funds to support the school's programs.

At some point, probably not until after the weekend, I'll post the audio of my talk. In the meantime, several people asked me about some of the anecdotes and quotes I used and the books I mentioned, so here are some links to point you in the right direction. (You'll find many of them in the linkblog, which is on the left sidebar of the main page. I used the linkblog to bookmark quotes of interest as I worked on the speech.)

The anecdote I opened with came from the blog of the Dallas Observer, in an item by Julie Lyons, "How Jesus Found Dawn Eden Goldstein". Here's a link to Dawn Eden's blog and the website for her first book, The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On.

You can read G. K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday online at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. You can also download the book in various formats.

Dorothy L. Sayers' essay, "The Lost Tools of Learning," may be read on the Saint Augustine Academy website. As I mentioned in my talk, it's one of the foundational documents for the present-day effort to recover classical education. In the essay, she explains the concept of the trivium and its suitability to the ways children learn at different stages in their growth. I'll give you one paragraph to whet your appetite for more:

Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined? Do you put this down to the mere mechanical fact that the press and the radio and so on have made propaganda much easier to distribute over a wide area? Or do you sometimes have an uneasy suspicion that the product of modern educational methods is less good than he or she might be at disentangling fact from opinion and the proven from the plausible?

"Today" in that quote was in 1947.

The Joel Belz quote came from his May 13, 2006, WORLD Magazine column, "Confessing Our Weaknesses." (For some reason, I was able to Google into the full article, but following my own link, I only get the opening paragraphs.)

Although I didn't quote directly from it, I was helped by this Susan Olasky column from 2001.

The Gene Veith quote was from an interview about homeschooling and classical Christian education on The Old Schoolhouse website.

I mentioned the Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs (OCPA), a free-market think-tank leading the effort for school choice in Oklahoma. Here's a recent column by OCPA's Brandon Dutcher, reminding us that, "Yes, school choice is alive and well in Oklahoma--if you can afford it. Simply pay tuition to a private school, or buy a house near the public school of your choice. If you can't afford it, well, sorry. No exceptions."

UPDATE: Here are several audio excerpts:

• Michael Bates on classical Christian education (26 mins., 3.1 MB MP3)
• Leah Farish gives a testimonial as the mother of an SAA alumna (6 mins., 0.7 MB MP3)
• Principal and co-founder Kirk Post speaks on the school's distinctives (9 mins., 1.1 MB MP3)

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has developed a 60-question civics quiz, and you should give it a whirl. Here's how they describe the test:

Each question included was intended to test important knowledge. Working with a distinguished board of professors from around the country and outside reviewers, we identified 60 themes that appear in the first column of the following table. This listing illustrates the range of ideas tested in American history (questions 1-17), American government and political thought (18-31), international affairs (32-47) and the market economy (48-60). The themes consist of basic civic knowledge or concepts, not obscure or arbitrarily selected knowledge.

It's multiple choice, and each question has five choices. 70% is the average so far among those taking it on the Internet.

I aced it, to my surprise. There were a few where I wasn't positive about the right answer, but I was able to eliminate all the other answers.

Take the quiz first, then read on below.

They've tabulated the results among college freshmen and college seniors at 50 colleges and universities. The most missed question among freshmen and seniors had to do with the traditional criteria for a just war; only 16% and 19% got the answer right, respectively.

Only five questions cracked 80% in either group. They had to do with (in descending order) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Cold War and the USSR, the inalienable rights enumerated in the Declaration, the New Deal, and Brown v. Board of Education.

(Via Wizbang.)

I'm honored to have been selected as the featured speaker for this year's fall banquet for St. Augustine Academy, to be held on Friday, October 26, at 6:30, at the Renaissance Hotel in Tulsa. The theme of the event is "Wisdom and Eloquence at the Renaissance" -- I hope I manage to live up to the title with my speech.

I can't provide a better description of the school than this paragraph from their website:

St. Augustine is a small, independent, Christian classical school dedicated to training students to take the lead in their personal lives, in their educations, and in their communities. St. Augustine boasts a climate that is truly conducive to the free exchange and development of ideas. At SAA education is built on the best traditions of our academic, intellectual, cultural, and moral heritage, allowing the student to shape their future in a setting that is both challenging and supportive.

You can learn more about the school's distinctives on this page.

The school is relatively young (just 10 years old), but in that time they've turned out many sharp young people who are well-trained in mind and spirit. The banquet is an excellent opportunity to learn about the school, as you'll hear brief testimonials from alumni and parents. I think you'll be impressed.

The cost is $25 per person. Monday, October 22 is the last opportunity to buy tickets for the event. For more information, contact the school at 832-4600.

My friend and fraternity brother Jim Reisert writes to let me know about a recent story in Computerworld about how Tulsa's Monte Cassino School is solving the problem of providing adequate and backed-up disk space for faculty and students.

Monte Cassino, a Catholic K-8 school, is paying a hosted storage service called School Web Locker, which will give each 7th & 8th grade student 100 MB of space, and a gigabyte to each faculty member.

"We knew this year [students] would be creating movies and doing other things, [so] they needed a lot more space," she said. The hosted offering "resonated with me as easy to manage," Stutsman said, adding that "we had problems with kids' files disappearing a lot last year. [The new system] would relieve a lot of that."

School Web Lockers also includes chat, calendaring and collaboration capabilities, she noted. In addition, the hosted system lets school administrators monitor and track all files uploaded to the system and enables them to lock out individuals for misuse.

And there's no need for boltcutters if someone forgets their combination or tries to use the locker to conceal contraband.

The system also includes password access that students must share with their parents, she said. The system also scans all files uploaded to School Web Lockers servers for potential viruses using Sophos PLC's security software and default controls, said Kelly Agrelius, marketing associate for School Web Lockers.

A school official estimates the system will cost them about a dollar per user per year.

I'm stunned by today's banner headline article on the front page of today's Whirled. Here's the headline:

Test results spike after change

The story breathlessly tells of "remarkable results":

The statistical leaps being reported by area districts in the percentage of students deemed proficient in Algebra I are staggering -- up 51 percentage points in Glenpool, more than 60 percentage points in Sapulpa and 44 percentage points in Broken Arrow.

In Tulsa Public Schools, the percentage of students deemed proficient in Algebra I at Washington High School jumped from 17 to 86 percent, and Memorial High School's numbers went from 9 to 50 percent.

What change caused these results? A return to traditional methods of instruction? Better control of classroom behavior?

Nope. They just lowered the passing grade. Instead of needing to answer 41 questions out of 55 to be deemed proficient, now students only need to answer 26 out of 55 questions. In percentages, the passing grade was dropped from 75% correct to 47% correct. A student who gets as many answers wrong as right still is deemed proficient in Algebra.

What might be motivating this change in standards?

End-of-instruction exams are given to secondary students in Oklahoma in four subject areas, but only the results for the Algebra I and English II tests are used to gauge overall student achievement under state and federal school accountability systems.

They lower the standard and more students are able to meet the lowered standard. I'm just amazed that the Whirled would think that's worth a banner headline.

UPDATE:

Retired algebra teacher Michael Phillips comments on the Whirled website about the use of competency tests:

I am a retired Tulsa Public Schools teacher, who taught mostly algebra through out my career. I dreamed of someday seeing end-of-instruction exams in my classroom. There was a time in the mid 80s when Tulsa had a version of this. We were required to give what we called Competency Tests to each student in any high school level math class. Those students who passed were given the grade the teacher believed they earned through their course work. Those who failed the Competency Test failed the course. This system worked out well for those teachers who were demanding of their students. It was disaster for those teachers who offered little or no instruction and things were even worse for the students in their classes. The Tulsa Board of Education did away with these tests after a few years because too many parents were complaining about their children, who appeared to be doing well all year long and then suddenly failed their algebra course. I was of the opinion that they should have gotten rid of the do-nothing teachers, and kept the tests.

Much easier to fudge the numbers than to fix the problems that the numbers are revealing. It's like taking your child's temperature, finding out he's running a 102° fever, and instead of taking him to the doctor, re-marking the thermometer so it reads 98.6.

TRACKBACK: Stan Geiger says it's an example of the "media leg of the political-educational complex at work."

Our great "heroes of the classroom" have moved to increase the number of passing students by lowering the bar. And one of the biggest newspapers in the state offers no criticism. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The way this story is written and its placement on the page are worth scrutiny. While the facts that reveal the number-fudging are in the story, they aren't called to the reader's attention in the headline or lead. The skimming reader may come away with the impression that Commissar Sandy Garrett has worked an educational miracle.

Regent Preparatory School of Oklahoma, a classical Christian school in Tulsa, is holding an open house tonight beginning at 7 p.m. for parents interested in the kind of education the school offers. The evening includes a chance to tour the school, visit classrooms, meet teachers and parents, see a video presentation of special school activities, and hear a discussion of the school's philosophy and approach to education.

Regent's new campus is located at 8621 S. Memorial Drive; park and enter on the south side of the building. Call 918-663-1002 for more information.

UPDATE: Brandon Dutcher reminds me about Pat McGuigan's profile of Regent Preparatory School, which appeared in the OCPA's April 2003 newsletter:

In our conversation, I discerned ways in which this institution separates itself from some other private schools where much of the emphasis seems to lie in separation from modern culture and its problems. Regent’s leaders and teachers view the school not as a retreat from the "real world," but as a place to prepare children for that world—and for the life beyond this one.

See also Gene Veith's article from that same newsletter on the resurgence of classical education in America.

Yale University has admitted as a special student Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, who had been a high-ranking official in Afghanistan's brutal Taliban regime. John Fund had the story in the Wall Street Journal, writing of his spring 2001 encounter with Rahmatullah:

After a meeting in which he defended the Taliban's treatment of women and said he hadn't seen any evidence that their "guest" Osama bin Laden was a terrorist, I felt I had looked into the face of evil.

I walked Mr. Rahmatullah out. I will never forget how he stopped at a picture window and stared up at the World Trade Center, which terrorists had failed to destroy in 1993. When I finally pried him away, I couldn't help but think, He must have been thinking about the one that got away.

In his latest Townhall.com column, Yale alumnus Clinton W. Taylor relays a creative way for alumni and others to protest Yale's action. In honor of the Afghan women who had fingernails pulled out by the Taliban for the crime of wearing fingernail polish, Taylor calls on us to send press-on nails to the school's president and head fundraiser. Taylor helpfully provides addresses for the recipients of your nail snail mail, and suggestions for more worthy recipients of what you would have given to Yale's alumni fund this year. And he encourages you to mail these tips along with the nail tips:

Feel free to point out the hypocrisy of Yale’s decision to admit Sayeed Rahmatullah Hashemi, who supported a regime that killed homosexuals, stoned women, tortured/killed many, and destroyed Buddhas, even though Yale keeps ROTC off campus and files briefs with the Supreme Court protesting the military’s right to recruit on campus.

I'm sure Yale administrators won't appreciate it, but I appreciate it when alumni like Taylor use what leverage they have to exert pressure on our elite academic institutions counter to the prevailing forces of political correctness and Western cultural suicide.

(* I know, somebody else beat me to this headline, but I thought of it as soon as I read the e-mail alerting me to Taylor's article, before she posted it over there. Really. And if my first idea was identical to that of an award-winning headline writer, there wasn't much point in trying to come up with a better one.)

It's the golden age of the autodidact.

An increasing number of universities are making course materials available online for free. The materials can't be used for course credit, but they are available for one's personal enlightenment and enrichment. Two institutions where I gained some higher learning offer online course material.

First, there's the MIT OpenCourseware program.

For example, the Urban Studies and Planning department offers materials from well over 50 undergraduate and graduate courses, with syllabi, reading lists, lecture notes, and assignments. Their introductory course, 11.001J, looks like an excellent, well, introduction, to the history, terminology, and trends of urban planning.

The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department offers everything I took in my undergraduate program, including the four foundational courses taken by all Course VI undergrads (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Circuits and Electronics, Signals and Systems, Computation Structures); Artificial Intelligence; Automata, Computability, and Complexity. They even have Strobe Lab, including the required lab experiments (student must supply own stroboscope, rifle, ammunition, and target objects).

Back in the early '90s, our church offered extension courses from Covenant Theological Seminary, and I took about a half-dozen until our church dropped out of the program. Covenant, in St. Louis, was founded in 1956 as the seminary of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC), a denomination which, through a couple of mergers, became part of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), which denomination the seminary now serves. (There's a newer EPC, founded in the 1980s, which has no connection with the earlier denomination.)

Anyway, Covenant Worldwide offers materials from the 20 courses that would constitute the Master of Arts in Theological Studies program if you were taking the courses on campus. For each course there is lecture audio in MP3 format, plus lecture notes in PDF format, and a list of recommended reading materials.

I can highly recommend Ancient and Medieval Church History and Reformation and Modern Church History, both taught by Prof. David Calhoun. One of my fond memories about his lectures is that he always began with a prayer written in the age he is covering in the lecture.

The Francis Schaeffer course is interesting, too -- not only because it's about the background, life, and work of the renowned evangelical writer, but because the milestones of his life were the milestones that shaped modern evangelicalism, from the fundamentalist/modernist controversy in the '20s, through the break between separation-minded fundamentalists and evangelicals in the '50s, to the beginnings of Christian political activism in the late '70s.

I've never heard his lectures on theology, but Robert Peterson served as pulpit supply at our church during two periods when we were between pastors, and he's a wonderful teacher. His course, Humanity, Christ, and Redemption is online.

Many thanks to TulipGirl for the tip.

Sarah Beth has some sensible things to say (here and here) about higher education: Let's stop pretending that most college students are getting a broad, liberal education and recognize that for most students, even in the finest universities, college is little more than vo-tech, except that it takes longer and costs more.

Just now learned about this website, Operation: Information, which has a voter's guide for today's school board election in the Union school district. The site belongs to a group called Oklahomans for School Accountability.

After my entry last week about Tulsa Tech Board member Jim Baker's reelection campaign, and after mentioning him again this morning on KFAQ, I've heard from some friends who have positive things to say about Baker's challenger, O. M. "Bud" Sanders, Jr. I'm told that he's anti-recall, which is good, and that he would be the first board member in a very long time to be first elected to office, instead of getting on the board by appointment.

I haven't received any info by e-mail from him yet, but would be happy to post it when it comes in. In the meantime, he can be reached at 446-5194 or on his cell phone at 633-5032 if you have questions for him. His e-mail address is ombudsand@aol.com.

UPDATE: Here's Sanders' website from his previous campaign for State House. My wife spoke to him and said that he was concerned that there hasn't been an election for this seat in over 15 years, as board members have been appointed to fill vacancies but haven't faced opposition at election time. He also feels that it is wrong that Tulsa Technology Center is getting away from serving high schoolers (the original purpose of the Vocational-Technical education system) and trying to be more of a community college on a padded budget.

Greg and Susan Hill have put together a comprehensive guide to Tuesday's school board elections around the Tulsa area, complete with the names and phone numbers of all the candidates, and the precincts voting in the Tulsa County school board districts. (I converted their Word document to HTML -- unfortunately, the conversion made the tabs come out funny. Sorry.)

The Hills urge voters to call candidates and ask them their positions on the issues. School board elections are traditionally low turnout, and if enough reform-minded voters turned out to vote for a reform-minded candidate, some positive changes could be accomplished.

As I promised -- if Tulsa-area school board candidates will send me their contact information and something about their candidacy, I'll post it, in advance of next Tuesday's school board elections. Here's the first and only candidate who's taken me up on the offer so far.

Dr. Jim Baker is the incumbent member of the Tulsa Technology Center Board of Education for Office 7.

First, here is Dr. Baker's contact information: Phone number 918-299-3491, e-mail is jim.baker@att.net

You'll find his bio after the jump.

I received the information from Jonathan Goodwin, someone I met when I was helping to make get-out-the-vote effort at Tulsa County Republican HQ. Jonathan is now working with Dr. Baker's campaign, and he tells me that Baker, a two-term incumbent, is the conservative candidate in the race. He pointed out that Baker's opponent, Bud Sanders, ran in 2002 as a Democrat in State House district 68 against Chris Benge, the Republican incumbent. In that race, Sanders supported a general tax increase and was endorsed by the unions and the Tulsa Whirled.

Donald Luskin posts a message from reader Jameson Campaigne about corruption in textbook purchasing decisions. Some excerpts:

At a meeting of the nuns who chose elementary reading texts for the diocese schools in Chicago some decades ago, the head honcho nun praised a look-say basal reading series that nearly destroyed American literacy, and a voice from the back of the room quipped, "C'mon Sister, we know they buy you a new car every year!" ...

The cartel even conspires to prevent competition by lobbying through state laws which say, roughly, no state money can be spent on a textbook series with a copyright older than "X" years. In other words, a tried-and-true textbook series which really teaches kids how to read -- like that of the small firm Open Court, which consequently was forced to sell its superb program to McGraw Hill -- has to be scrapped or completely revised every "X" years, at the cost of $20+ million, an amount only the giants can afford.

The reasonable desire for every child to have his own textbook, combined with a belief that newer is better, provides fertile ground for textbook profiteers. Campaigne makes the point that centralized purchasing decisions make a publisher's job easier: Instead of having to convince someone in every school district to buy its books, it can target its marketing campaign (and possibly bribery) on a handful of individuals in each state. He advocates eliminating federal involvement in education and reducing the state role to administering tests and providing funds in the form of vouchers, so that parents can reward the schools that perform best. Campaigne quotes Wheeler's Law: "The way to get rid of corruption in high places is to get rid of the high places."

Textbook publishers don't make any money if schools are content with the books they have. It becomes essential for the publisher's bottom line to encourage new research revealing that their previous edition is inadequate and must be replaced. Universities are happy to receive funding to conduct such studies and to reach the conclusions desired by their sponsors. The mainstream media turns a blind eye to all this because many media conglomerates include a textbook publishing division.

Parents and children just want something that works.

Hat tip to Ace of Spades, who linked to that article, commenting on President Bush's failure to communicate clearly on this issue:

But Bush has this tendency to speak in shorthand, and it gets him into trouble. This person actually supported Bush's call to return to older, more effective ways of teaching children to read, but because he didn't make a very strong effort to explain what phonics was, this person thought he was calling for some newfangled and untested pedagogy. When in fact he was doing the opposite: calling for a rejection of the newfangled pedagogy, now tested and found wanting, and calling for a return to the old ways of teaching reading, the exact methods she favored.

Bush is the Great Miscommunicator, alas.

For speaking in shorthand, no one could beat Bob Dole, who chose to deliver all his 1996 campaign speeches in Senatese. It's easy to forget that not everyone is working from the same frame of reference.

A search for "slimy" and "Rhodes Scholar" turned up this item. Baldilocks tells the story of an educated and successful young black man who wanted to give back to his community and applied to teach in the metro Atlanta area. He was turned down -- here's part of the rejection letter:

"Though your qualifications are quite impressive, I regret to inform you that we have selected another candidate. It was felt that your demeanor and therefore presence in the classroom would serve as an unrealistic expectation as to what high school students could strive to achieve or become. However, it is highly recommended that you seek employment at the collegiate level; there your intellectual comportment would be greatly appreciated. Good luck."

Appalling -- read the whole thing.

(Oh, there was just an incidental Rhodes Scholar reference in the comments.)

Brian Micklethwait reports on Samizdata that the British free-market think-tank Civitas is nurturing the development of a chain of local and affordable private primary schools, called the New Model Schools.

A look at their curriculum reveals that their approach is similar to that of the classical Christian school movement in the US. They will be drawing on proven techniques for teaching basic skills, using direct instruction rather than the "child-centred discovery approach" favored in state schools. Storytime will draw on the best of Western culture -- "Bible stories, classic myths and legends, and other traditional tales" -- to build cultural literacy, including a basic knowledge of history and geography. Discipline will be grounded in Judeo-Christian ethics:

The New Model School has no problem with the idea that there are immutable moral laws and that, even with well-behaved children, there will always be a need for sensible rules....

The New Model School will be Christian in ethos, and will treat Judaeo-Christian ethics as an authoritative set of principles to be aspired to, rather than simply as one lifestyle choice among others.

During "reception year" -- for six-year-olds apparently -- the children will be in school three hours a day. By the end of the year, they will have learned phonics and high frequency sight words, and will be able to read a complex sentence. They will also be able to add and subtract two-digit numbers.

Their approach to education means you don't need extensive and expensive facilities like a pool or a computer lab or a campus. Local school organizers will be responsible to find an affordable place to hold classes. The aim is to keep the cost per pupil for reception year below £1000 (about $1800) a year.

The only thing I see missing is a hands-on component, something Regent Preparatory School (my son's school) provides through nature studies and art and music classes. This aspect of learning is emphasized in classical Christian schools influenced by the educational philosophy of Charlotte Mason.

It is wonderful to see a think-tank going beyond simply making recommendations for government action and instead stimulating and guiding private action to fill a glaring societal need. As these schools are established and prove their worth, they should create pressure for public schools to drop the educational fads they've been embracing. In the meantime, British society needs the kind of educated citizens that these schools should produce if it is to have any capable civic leadership in the future.

Yesterday I posted some educratic bilge from 20 years ago:Larry Zenke, then superintendent of Tulsa Public Schools, defending declining test scores by saying that knowing things wasn't really important anymore, and teachers would no longer be "disseminators of cognitive information". I closed by writing, "I suspect that Zenke's ideas are now mainstream among public education administrators, but perhaps better disguised behind a veil of Educanto."

A reader whose daughter takes French at a Tulsa high school writes and confirms my fears. [Identifying info has been redacted.] "This is what I received back from [my daughter's French teacher]. I was concerned when my daughter was complaining that they have not been studying or learning any French yet. I did figure that she was stretching it a bit but I was surprised at the answer I got back from the teacher as to why. Am I just out of the loop?"

Here is the answer he got back from the teacher:

On the first day of school, the students were given a course expectancy sheet with a copy of the syllabus on the back side. They were asked to read and sign the sheet and to have their parents/gardians read and sign it also and return it the next day. It was their first homework assignment. [Your daughter] has hers, signed, in her notebook.

The theme for the year is Discovery. The concept for the first 6 weeks is systems. Then the concepts are perspectives, celebrations, economics, exploration and adaptation.

The training I received this summer on the Tulsa Model for School Improvement stressed the importance of accessing the knowledge that students already have about the themes and concepts and then building on it. Building the background knowledge they will need for the new learning, introducing the themes and concepts is to be done in broad generalizations that they can apply to their lives now and in the future before it is "narrowed" for specific classroom use. After a summer of asking the experts what they would do/how they would do it, I decided to introduce the new learning in English to enable the students to more easily and quickly grasp the concepts that we will be using. New strategies and techniques are to be non-academic the first time the students use them to allow them to concentrate on learning the new strategies and techniques before they are used academically. To this end, I have been teaching the 7 Learning
Community Guidelines and the Life Skills, class and team building activities to teach the new strategies and structures. Teachers are also expected to teach students about the 8 Multiple Intelligences and how they learn best, the 7 Learing Community Guidelines and the 18 Life Skills which are the basis of the Tulsa Model discipline plan. This is what we have spent the first several weeks concentrating on.

What has been "French" in the classroom:

The day, date, month and classroom directions are given in French. We have reviewed classroom objects. The 7 Learning Community Guidelines and Life skills have been translated into French. The colors (used for learning preferences and communication styles) have been learned in French, also. Since we have been working with the names of the colors in French, the students have created a pattern book about the colors in French that will be read and donated to a local elementary school. This meets the community service/social action component of the Tulsa Model and satisfies the PASS objective of using the foreign language outside of the classroom in the community. The quiz on the colors was 10/3. The students saw a video on the French impressionist artist Edgar Degas when I had to have a substitute for a professional development day. The students evaluated how effectively Degas, the ballerina and Degas' housekeeper used the Life Skills and what the students would have done in the same situations.

We have been working on class and team building activities and stressing mutual respect and attentive listening since research proves that students learn best in cooperative groups. Sadly, most students do not know how to work effectively in a group and these skills must also be taught. What does this have to do with learning French? It is setting the background for the rest of the year and the rest of their lives. It is also part of the Tulsa Model for School Improvement that I am expected to teach the students in addition to teaching them French.

I am doing my best to integrate into the curriculum everything that I am expected to teach the students in addition to teaching them French and to do so in a brain-compatible manner. (This includes using music and movement activities.) The Multiple Intelligences, the Learning Styles, the 7 Learning Community Guidlines, the Life Skills, how to work effectively with others and so on fit best at the beginning of the year. I am open to suggestions on a better, more effective way to accomplish what is expected of me.

I hope this addresses your concerns.

Yow! That really is appalling. This isn't the raving of some rogue teacher, imposing her own nutty ideas on her defenseless pupils, but a teacher trying to do what her school district has trained and instructed her to do. This is the "Tulsa Model for School Improvement".

This approach to teaching is ill-suited to learning a foreign language, which is, I believe, the point of a French class. Learning French in America means learning sounds and words with which you have no personal experience. (It would be different for an English-speaking student in Quebec.) Learning a language has nothing to do with grasping big ideas and key concepts. It's about learning spelling and pronunciation and verb forms and sentence structure -- many little details that you just have to learn. J'ai, tu as, il a, nous avons, vous avez, ils ont. Yes, a good teacher will draw on the student's experience to help explain concepts or teach vocabulary words, but much of a foreign language is by definition foreign and just has to be learned by heart. Yes, a good teacher will draw on different techniques to help students with different learning strengths, but memorization, learning by ear, and learning by sight are essential to learning a language well enough to use it.

This sort of thing is why my wife and I are willing to spend the money to send our son to a private school, where they still have the idea that school is about learning facts.

(UPDATED 2008/01/21 to replace broken link with a working link to the Wayback Machine.)