Boy Home Schooled Due to Death Threats
It’s a weekday and Matthew is not in a cafeteria, because two years ago the 12-year-old and his mother, Susan, decided to leave public schools for independent study at home.
That came after the boy received death threats in elementary school from another student and was told by school officials that he and his mother were overreacting when they complained...
“Violence was a reason I kept my son home. When he was in first grade, a child went up to him and told him he was going to kill my son,“ said his 38-year-old mom, who takes her son to Covina-Valley Unified School District twice a month for independent testing.
“I know I can’t protect my son forever, but he’s getting a good education and in a safe environment.”
(Excerpted from “Student stays home for education,” by Justino Agulla, San Gabriel Valley Daily Tribune,August 24, 1999.)
Science Textbooks Don’t Make the Grade
The most widely used middle school science textbooks flunked an evaluation by the nation’s largest organization of scientists [the American Association for the Advancement of Science].
The analysis said the texts “include many classroom activities that are either irrelevant to learning key science ideas or don’t help students relate what they are doing to the underlying ideas.”
“This study confirms our worst fears about the materials used to educate our children in the critical middle grades,” said [George] Nelson [director of Project 2061, which evaluated the books].
(Excerpted from “Science Books Not So Good,” by Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press, posted on www.abcnews.go.com, September 29, 1999.)
American Have Lower Confidence in Public Education
Education is America’s preoccupation, and has been since the launch of Sputnik shook the nation’s intellectual self-esteem. With the space race long since won, anxiety has shifted to a different kind of global competition—economic—and there has been renewed mistrust of schools. The percentage of Americans who have confidence in public schools has dropped from 58 percent to 36 percent in just the last two decades; a third of parents and 59 percent of employers believe a high school diploma is no guarantee that a student has even learned the basics. The criticism runs in both directions; 81 percent of teachers say parents do a poor job bringing up their children.
(Excerpted from “The Shocking Truth about Our Public Schools,” by Jon Marcus, Boston Magazine, www.bostonmagazine.com, October 13, 1999.)
Blumenfeld: “Experts” Redefine Literacy
[E]ducators tell us that “10 million U.S. students are classified as ‘poor’ readers. According to the NAEP 1998 Reading Report Card, 68 percent of 4th graders in high poverty areas fall into this category.” Yet, Marva Collins, in her private school in Chicago, has 100 percent of the students reading well, despite the fact that these children come from high poverty areas. How come Marva Collins can achieve such outstanding success while the public educators can’t? The readers of Educational Leadership might have learned something if Mrs. Collins had been invited to write an article on how well intensive, systematic phonics works in her school. But that’s not what the education establishment wants to hear.
The proof is also massive and overwhelming that Whole Language has caused a literacy catastrophe among the school children of California. The March 7, 1996, issue of L.A. Weekly reported,
In the eight years since whole language first appeared in the state’s grade schools, California’s fourth-grade reading scores have plummeted to near the bottom nationally, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Indeed, California’s fourth-graders are now such poor readers that only the children in Louisiana and Guam.... both hampered by pitifully backward education systems.... get worse reading scores.
(Excerpted from “The literacy war goes on,” by Samuel Blumenfeld, World Net Daily, October 20, 1999.)
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