As I noted in my June 11^th post, Professor Robert David Johnson of Brooklyn College dared to criticize that college's School of Education (SOE) for its use–or abuse–of "social justice" as a kind of gate-keeper against entry to the educational profession by people who don't adhere to certain political views.

Well, the story continues.

First, I have just discovered that Professor Johnson was not only quoted in the New York Sun about his views (as I reported in my previous entry), but he published a brief opinion paper on the subject about a week before: Disposition for Bias, Inside Higher Ed on May 23^rd. Considering the timing of the two pieces, it seems to me that the Sun article must have arisen as a result of the Inside Higher Ed piece.

Be that as it may, in the Inside Higher Ed article, Professor Johnson wrote,

In 2002, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education explicitly linked dispositions theory to ensuring ideological conformity among education students. Rather than asking why teachers’ political beliefs are in any way relevant to their ability to perform well in the classroom, NCATE issued new guidelines requiring education departments that listed social justice as a goal to “include some measure of a candidate’s commitment to social justice” when evaluating the “dispositions” of their students. . . .

The program at my own institution, Brooklyn College, exemplifies how application of NCATE’s new approach can easily be used to screen out potential public school teachers who hold undesirable political beliefs. Brooklyn’s education faculty, which assumes as fact that “an education centered on social justice prepares the highest quality of future teachers,” recently launched a pilot initiative to assess all education students on whether they are “knowledgeable about, sensitive to and responsive to issues of diversity and social justice as these influence curriculum and pedagogy, school culture, relationships with colleagues and members of the school community, and candidates’ analysis of student work and behavior.”

At the undergraduate level, these high-sounding principles have been translated into practice through a required class called “Language and Literacy Development in Secondary Education.” According to numerous students, the course’s instructor demanded that they recognize “white English” as the “oppressors’ language.” Without explanation, the class spent its session before Election Day screening Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. When several students complained to the professor about the course’s politicized content, they were informed that their previous education had left them “brainwashed” on matters relating to race and social justice.

Troubled by this response, at least five students filed written complaints with the department chair last December. They received no formal reply, but soon discovered that their coming forward had negative consequences. One senior was told to leave Brooklyn and take an equivalent course at a community college. Two other students were accused of violating the college’s “academic integrity” policy and refused permission to bring a witness, a tape recorder, or an attorney to a meeting with the dean of undergraduate studies to discuss the allegation. Despite the unseemly nature of retaliating against student whistleblowers, Brooklyn’s overall manner of assessing commitment to “social justice” conforms to NCATE’s recommendations, previewing what we can expect as other education programs more aggressively scrutinize their students’ “dispositions” on the matter.

On June 20^th, the "faculty and administration in the School of Education" wrote a letter of protest to Professor Johnson. "It is certainly your right to make whatever claims you wish," the letter begins, "[but] we want to express publicly our contempt . . . for the unsubstantiated claims and innuendoes you have made that the School of Education is imposing an ideological litmus test on students. . . ."

The letter concludes with these words: "No doubt you imagine you are championing the victims of political correctness. The reality is that your attacks on a colleague and your critique of a national accrediting body, and by extension the success of Brooklyn College’s School of Education in meeting all the standards promulgated by that body, reveal an agenda that is far more politically extreme than what you fantasize dispositions are or what you imagine took place in a particular classroom. At no point did you seek to engage any of us in a substantive discussion of NCATE, social justice, academic freedom or dispositions. We would have welcomed such discussions. Instead you chose to launch what we regard as misguided and intellectually suspect attacks on the School of Education, our mission, and our commitment to meet NCATE standards. We must insist you stop such attacks."

A withering "counter-attack," it seemed to me when I first read it.

I could not imagine how Professor Johnson could possibly reply. But reply he did, albeit 39 days later.

His letter appears to clarify the true contours of the conflict. The SOE is concerned that Dr. Johnson is making allegations against one of its faculty members (at least) and he is doing so in public. Dr. Johnson, meanwhile, is concerned that students of that one referenced faculty member (at least) are being purged from the SOE by the SOE–behind closed doors, out of public view. And they are being purged because of their political views.

As you know, allegations were made against two undergraduates, both of whom I also have taught, one month after they filed detailed complaints about how Professor Parmar was treating students who disagreed with her in-class conception of “social justice.” One student was faulted for not supplying a footnote in an assignment that did not require footnotes; a second was punished for submitting, in a lesson plan, two verbatim definitions (one of “Jim Crow”) from an online encyclopedia, an approach most professors would consider covered under principles of fair use and common knowledge. Procedurally, Dean Belton’s involvement at the dispute’s initial stage departed from the college’s official guidelines on “academic integrity” questions.

I regretted at the time, and continue to regret, the manner in which the SOE handled this case; and I wish, as I stated in January, that the matter had ended “amicably.” Such an outcome would have best served not only the students but also the college. Indeed, the students’ written complaints might have provided an opportunity for the SOE to engage in what its mission statement terms “critical self-reflection” and attempt to rectify an impression that it disrespects the opinions and concerns of our students.

Your letter’s willingness to engage in personal denunciations and speculations is unfortunate. As you know from having read the story, my Inside Higher Ed article utilized not fantasy but research in primary documents and the relevant secondary literature (publications on NCATE accreditation standards and on dispositions theory). All claims were substantiated through footnotes or links, and the article referenced the curricula and mission statements of nearly 40 education programs around the country. . . .

In contemporary society, partisans on both sides of issues such as abortion, the Middle East, affirmative action, welfare reform, prayer in public schools, and gay marriage maintain that their own position serves the cause of “social justice.” But who decides just what constitutes “social justice?” . . .

I fear that if the college continues to use the sword of academic freedom to thrust our curriculum into fundamentally political areas, the shield of academic freedom will no longer protect us when politicians, religious leaders, or the public decide that they, too, should have the right to impose their political agendas on our students. I suspect that few of us would welcome the New York state legislature requiring prospective public school teachers to demonstrate, say, “a disposition to support free-market capitalism and globalization” alongside a willingness to promote our version of “social justice.”

I am left wondering again, as I concluded my previous post on the subject: Will homeschoolers provide the last opportunity for students to learn truly diverse viewpoints?

–John Holzmann

(For a short summary article on this ongoing controversy, see "Criticism or Censorship?" by David French on the FIRE–Foundation for Individual Rights in Education–website.

Linda Seebach, a Rocky Mountain News editorial writer, brought this one to my attention. Her article is titled Report: Grad programs for school leaders appalling.

She refers to Arthur Levine's report, "Educating School Leaders," from the Education Schools Project (www.edschools.org).

Levine, president of Teachers College, Columbia University, describes graduate programs for school leaders - principals and superintendents - as being in "a race to the bottom." Competing for students who primarily want a credential so they can qualify for bigger salaries but want it to cost as little as possible in money or effort, universities lower their admission standards, weaken their degree requirements and course standards, and rely more and more on low-cost adjuncts to teach courses that have little or nothing to do with what school leaders need to know.

I decided to read the report for myself. It is quite eye-opening what the educational "establishment"–the very people who want to ensure that homeschoolers are "credentialed"–require of themselves.

Among the findings in Levine's report:

• "The nation’s 1,206 schools, colleges, and departments of education [may be found in] 57 percent of all four-year colleges and universities, . . . award one out of every 12 bachelor’s diplomas; a quarter of all master’s degrees; and 16 percent of all doctorates." (5) Yet

• Few programs provide a coherent and rigorous curriculum specifically designed to give principals and superintendents the preparation they need. Rather, most seem intent on helping students meet the minimum certification requirements with the least amount of effort, using the fewest university resources. Indeed,
• "Collectively, educational administration programs are the weakest of all the programs at the nation’s education schools" (13).
• "The majority of programs range from inadequate to appalling, even at some of the country’s leading universities. . . . Their curricula are disconnected from the needs of leaders and their schools. Their admission standards are among the lowest in American graduate schools. Their professoriate is ill equipped to educate school leaders. Their programs pay insufficient attention to clinical education and mentorship by successful practitioners. The degrees they award are inappropriate to the needs of today’s schools and school leaders. Their research is detached from practice. And their programs receive insufficient resources." (23)

How bad is the situation, really?

Levine is ruthless:

Masters I and weaker research-intensive universities are pushing to award doctoral degrees in educational administration. The goal is to increase institutional stature by joining the doctoral granting university club. The field of educational administration was chosen because, as we were told repeatedly, it is the easiest area in which to win state approval. Too often these new programs have turned out to be little more than graduate credit dispensers. They award the equivalent of green stamps, which can be traded in for raises and promotions, to teachers who have no intention of becoming administrators. These programs have also been responsible for conferring master’s degrees on students who demonstrate anything but mastery. They have awarded doctorates that are doctoral in name only. And they have enrolled principals and superintendents in courses of study that are not relevant to their jobs. (24)

Uh, yes!

But it gets worse.

Levine continues:

To attract a student body less interested in obtaining an education than in accumulating credits, a growing number of education schools are lowering admission standards, watering down programs, and offering quickie degrees. This can only be described as “a race to the bottom,” a competition among school leadership programs to produce more degrees faster, easier, and more cheaply. . . .

[S]tates and school districts as well as universities are fueling this race downward. Today, all 50 states and 96 percent of public school districts award salary increases for teachers who earn advanced degrees and credits beyond the master’s. The effect of this incentive system is to create an army of unmotivated students seeking to acquire credits in the easiest ways possible. They are more interested in finding speedy and undemanding programs than in pursuing relevant and challenging courses of study.

As for universities, they push school leadership programs downward either by underfunding them or treating them as “cash cows”—diverting revenues they generate to other parts of the campus. A cash cow program is pressured to keep enrollments high and reduce costs in order to bolster these transfer payments. This encourages programs to set low admission standards in order to hit enrollment targets; admit more students than the faculty can reasonably educate; hire lower cost part-time faculty rather than an adequate complement of full-time professors; and mount low cost, high volume, off-campus programs.

In the end, the combination of school system incentives and university funding practices serves as a barrier to improvement. In fact, it spurs the race to the bottom. (24-25)

Levine illustrates his charges by telling the stories of "two competing education schools, one highly respected nationally, the other well regarded regionally. The names of the schools and some insignificant details of their stories have been changed to mask the schools’ identities."

Some of the nuggets from these stories:

At the nationally recognized university . . .

• One administrator is quoted as saying, “We have admitted some people with GRE [Graduate Records Exam] scores just above what you get for filling out the form.”
• A faculty member says, “I almost never share journal articles with master’s students. They don’t know how to read them because they don’t take research methods courses. It is not built into the expectations of the state.”

Meanwhile, the regional school, with an off-campus program housed across the street from a similar off-campus program directed by the nationally-recognized university, has reduced its standards in almost every imaginable fashion in order to compete for the dollars that come from students who are motivated by salary aggrandizement rather than the desire to learn.

When the regional university came to believe that it was losing students to the nationally-recognized university, "[i]ts 36-credit on-campus master’s program was pared to 30 hours. Faculty claim that this was done to trim fat from the curriculum, but the university provost acknowledges increasing pressure from students to 'speed up programs.' " (26-27)

More findings:

• Applicants for educational administration programs have some of the lowest standardized test score in the entire range of education fields, let alone in academia as a whole. Elementary and secondary level teaching applicants to graduate schools outscore the educational administration applicants in all sections of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE).
• Ed admin applicants score 46 points below average in the verbal and 81 points below average in the quantitative (math) portion of the GRE! (Levine is quick to qualify this, however: "Since only the stronger and more selective educational administration programs require the GRE, the data may, in fact, overstate the academic profile of educational administration students." (31)) –For your information, the GRE math and verbal scores range from 200, at absolute bottom, to 800, tops. According to a chart Levine provides (p. 32 in his report), the national average verbal score on the GRE from July 1, 2000 to June 30, 2003 was 475; educational admin applicants average 429. Only social work applicants fared worse on average: their score was 428. In math, the national average was 602. Educational admin applicants averaged 521. Social work, public administration and nursing candidates where the only other groups with lower average scores: 464, 510 and 519, respectively.
• Levine made a comment about "selective" programs. Just how "selective" are these schools?
  

  A dean from the Midwest proudly stated that her leadership program was becoming more selective. While the overall admit rate was still about 95 percent, she said, the program had recently decided that 20 to 30 percent of students should be admitted conditionally, pending the students’ first year performance. In other words, the decision to acknowledge that many students are underqualified is an indicator of rising quality. (32-33)

I could go on. The entire report is both fascinating and disturbing.

The key point I want to make, however, is this: When the education establishment can't (or won't) police its own, they should not be permitted to lord it over others of us–the homeschooling community–who believe we have found a better way.

The second point, as a taxpayer: As Linda Seebach says in her article,

School districts pay more to people with advanced degrees, even if the degrees are worthless, so people go and earn them. They don't want to spend a lot of time jumping through pointless hoops, so they choose the easiest and cheapest programs they can find and universities accommodate them.

You can't blame people for responding to incentives, but when the incentives are perverse, they ought to be changed.

–John Holzmann

According to a recent article in The New York Sun, you are less and less likely to find room for alternative viewpoints in America's public schools. Aspiring teachers are now being evaluated not only unofficially and informally according to their political beliefs; such evaluation standards have been formally adopted into the accreditation standards of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education.

That 51-year-old agency, composed of 33 professional associations, says it accredits 600 colleges of education - about half the country's total. Thirty-nine states have adopted or adapted the council's standards as their own, according to the agency.

In 2000 the council introduced new standards for accrediting education schools. Those standards incorporated the concept of dispositions, which the agency maintains ought to be measured, to sort out teachers who are likeliest to be successful. In a glossary, the council says dispositions "are guided by beliefs and attitudes related to values such as caring, fairness, honesty, responsibility, and social justice." . . .

It is that last value, "social justice," that causes consternation.

Critics of the dispositions standard contend that the idea of "social justice," a term frequently employed in left-wing circles, is open to politicization.

And so we find a course called Language Literacy in Secondary Education. It is a required course for all Brooklyn College education candidates who aspire to become secondary school teachers.

The course, which instructs students on how to develop lesson plans that teach literacy, is built around themes of "social justice," according to the syllabus, which was obtained by The New York Sun. One such theme is the idea that standard English is the language of oppressors while Ebonics, a term educators use to denote a dialect used by African-Americans, is the language of the oppressed. . . .

Among the complaints cited by students in letters they delivered in December to the dean of the School of Education, Deborah Shanley, is Ms. Parmar's alleged disapporval of students who defended the ability to speak grammatically correct English.

Speaking of Ms. Parmar, one student, Evan Goldwyn, wrote: "She repeatedly referred to English as a language of oppressors and in particular denounced white people as the oppressors. When offended students raised their hands to challenge Professor Parmar's assertion, they were ignored. Those students that disagreed with her were altogether denied the opportunity to speak."

Students also complained that Ms. Parmar dedicated a class period to the screening of an anti-Bush documentary by Michael Moore, "Fahrenheit 9/11," a week before last November's presidential election, and required students to attend the class even if they had already seen the film. Students said Ms. Parmar described "Fahrenheit 9/11″ as an important film to see before they voted in the election.

"Most troubling of all," Mr. Goldwyn wrote, "she has insinuated that people who disagree with her views on issues such as Ebonics or Fahrenheit 911 should not become teachers."

Students who filed complaints with the dean said they have received no response from the college administration. Instead, they said, the administration and Ms. Parmar have retaliated against them. . . .

[According to Christina Harned, one student who alleges she was discriminated against, f]our students . . .. dropped out of Ms. Parmar's course during the semester. One of the students was a former mechanic from Bay Ridge, Scott Madden, who said he wanted to become a teacher because "I like explaining things."

Mr. Madden, 35, said that after he disputed a grade he received from her, Ms. Parmar encouraged him to withdraw from the course. He said he changed his plans to take the course in the summer after finding out that Ms. Parmar was again teaching both sections of the required course.

"Basically, she's a socialist, she's racist against white people," Mr. Madden said. "If you want to pass that class you better keep your mouth shut."

In an interview with the Sun, Ms. Harned said she dropped out of the School of Education and switched her major to political science because of her experience in Ms. Parmar's course.

"I'm blacklisted," she said. "How am I supposed to move forward in a department I'm not comfortable in?"

That is the point of the new format, critics of the dispositions standard said.

"In its most pernicious form, then, dispositions theory is a tool for education schools to ensure that the next generation of public school students is educated solely by those teachers who have accepted the kind of extremist beliefs articulated by Professor Parmar," [wrote a prominent history professor at Brooklyn College, Robert David] Johnson.

Will homeschoolers provide the last opportunity for students to learn truly diverse viewpoints?

Isabel Gottlieb, a holder of multiple varsity letters in sports, won't be permitted to graduate from her high school . . . because she hasn't taken enough Phys Ed, according to the school principal.

At the school she used to attend, students who participated in varsity sports could receive gym waivers. Not so in Bow, NH.

"Waivers vary from school to school and they're not standardized at all," said Bow High School Principal George Edwards.

Bow requires students to take a PE class called BEST, or Building Essential Skills for Tomorrow. Somehow, when they helped establish Gottlieb's senior year schedule last spring, the Bow counseling office missed the fact that she had not yet taken the class.

Gottlieb added the class in the fall when she was told she had to take it, but then dropped it when she found out it was too much on top of all the other classes she was taking.

Both Gottlieb and her mother said the school suggested dropping either band, chorus, AP biology or calculus. But she and her mother decided sacrificing any of those would have diminished the quality of Gottlieb's education.

"I'm trying to get into college and someone isn't going to want to see someone drop an AP biology class a month into the year in order to pick up P.E.," Gottlieb said.

Our eldest daughter, Amy, had a similar experience in her public high school: they weren't going to let her graduate unless she took another gym class.

Her swimming coach finally gave her the waiver she required. But not after inadvertently revealing the true reason for concern about offering PE waivers.

You see, Amy had lettered in varsity swimming all four years of high school. She had set numerous school swimming records. In her senior year in high school, she not only lettered, but competed in state finals in not one, not two, not three, but four varsity sports (cross-country, swimming, tennis, and track)–an unprecedented achievement. (There are only three sports seasons. And you're normally not able to participate in two varsity sports at one time.) But, y'see, there was this little issue of not enough gym during her senior year. Indeed, she had taken no PE classes, preferring, instead, AP English, Calculus, and other such academic courses.

And lacking any gym in her senior year, she was one class short of the school requirements.

"But, come on! I've received more true physical education this past year in each and every one of my varsity sports than any student in any regular gym class is likely to receive!" Amy argued.

"But what would happen if we gave a waiver to every student who participated in varsity sports?" asked the teacher. "Our PE enrollment would drop."

Ah! And we know what would happen then, don't we?

There wouldn't be as many jobs for PE teachers.

And that would be a difficult problem, indeed, wouldn't it!

After all, public schools are "all about the kids," right?

Karen Scherr of Kingwood, TX, has the highest GPA in her graduating class. She has attended Kingwood Public Schools since kindergarten. But she won't be class valedictorian unless the powers-that-be decide to bend a little on a 15-year-old rule that was intended to keep incoming students from other school districts from inappropriately grabbing the honor–students who might not have had to face the same standards Kingwood students confront.

The problem: Scherr wasn't "enrolled" at Kingwood High (or was it, really, she wasn't in attendance?) on the 20th day of her junior year. Instead, she was in a hospital being treated for anorexia nervosa.

It appears that a large percentage of other top seniors at the school all oppose the school administration's decision in the matter. "My rank as valedictorian is hollow, tainted by this unjust situation," said Alex Gorham who was named valedictorian in Scherr's place. "She deserves it more than anyone. She had an eating disorder and went to an Oklahoma hospital for help and still maintained her No. 1 rank."

A spokesperson for the Humble Independent School District in which Kingwood is located said the district must "decide if it would be fair to retroactively change a rule that would affect other students who had followed it."

I say, the district should leave the rule in place. This has nothing to do with the rule. (Or, rather, it need have nothing to do with the rule.

District officials should take a peek at their history books and recall why the founding fathers inserted the rule concerning an "impartial jury" by persons "of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed" into the U.S. Constitution (Art. III, Sec. 2; Amendment 6). They should recall the history of jury nullification.

Scherr has, if you will, been "tried" by a jury of her peers and they have found her innocent, despite the law. The law (the rule concerning enrollment) can stand. But Scherr can be set free by this "jury of her peers."

I hope I can find someone at the Humble Independent School District who might listen to my plea.

*Addendum (May 18 at 10:05)*

—–Original Message—–
From: John Holzmann
Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2005 10:02 AM
To: ‘webmaster@humble.k12.tx.us'
Subject: Historical solution for Scherr case . . .

I was informed of y'all's dilemma concerning Karen Scherr.

May I suggest that the District apply the theory of "jury nullification" to the case rather than thinking it must "change the [longstanding] rule" concerning enrollment?

Check out Jury Nullification by Doug Linder for a little history on the subject. Jury nullification has a long and illustrious history in the United States.

Based on the news report I saw (the Houston Chronicle article Head of class may not be valedictorian), Karen has been judged "innocent" by a jury of her peers.

Apply the lessons of history and let her go free.

John Holzmann

Thought this was a fascinating commentary from the Chicago Tribune:

When American novelists gave their books titles like "East of Eden," "Absalom, Absalom!" and "Song of Solomon," they assumed their audience would immediately understand the biblical allusions. With today's readers, that may be a mistake. In a recent survey, only 1 out of every 3 American teenagers could identify who asked, "Am I my brother's keeper?" . . .
It's every person's decision whether to believe or practice what is taught in the Bible. But no one can deny its influence. Trying to understand American literature and history without some knowledge of the Bible is like trying to make sense of the ocean despite a complete ignorance of fish.
Religion, particularly Christianity, has played a large role in our culture since the Puritans arrived. . . . Yet many American high schools choose not to teach their students about what is undoubtedly the most influential book in Western history. . . .
[W]hen college English professors were asked in 1986 what book they wished incoming freshmen had read, the Bible ranked first. Some 90 percent of high school English teachers in the new survey said it's important for all high school students to be acquainted with it. But they said most of their pupils are not.
That ignorance acts as a hindrance to learning. "I'll make comparisons. . . . I'll say, `You know, like Noah and the ark or like Moses,'" one teacher reported, "and I'll have kids kind of look at me: `Who's Noah?' or `Who's Moses?'" One teacher gave up using Charles Portis' novel True Grit because "the kids were so stumped" by its many biblical allusions.
But many high schools don't offer courses . . . about the Bible. Some teachers and administrators fear that any such instruction is constitutionally forbidden or that it would somehow be inappropriate. In fact, the Supreme Court has made it clear that public schools are free to teach about the Bible just as they would any other work of literature or history. The U.S. Education Department has issued guidelines stressing that religion is an appropriate subject for study.

The commentator concludes:

Public schools have no business using Bible instruction to advance a religious agenda. But when they decline to impart knowledge about such an important subject, they are not doing anything to preserve the separation of church and state. They are merely failing their students.

I'll say a hearty "amen."
What "blows me away" is the response to this editorial.

There is an online survey form. It asks, "Should public schools teach the Bible?" The response at the moment I write this? 49.1% (764) "Yes"; 50.9% (792) "No."

Why? An animus toward the Bible? Perhaps. Or a fear of religious zealots hijacking a true Bible-as-literature course for their own sectarian ends. Or, perhaps, a foolish sense that cultural literacy is truly unimportant. . . .

But any way one looks at it, it appears that a perverse extremism has taken over the public schools. Fear of one extremism (the religious zealots) has pushed many to fall into the hands of another extremism (anti-religious-zealots zealots). So now you can't even talk about the Bible for fear of retribution.

I'm glad for the homeschool option!