Sarah Palin: Proof That K-12 Education is in Crisis

In his state of the union address, Obama called this our Sputnik moment, referring to the massive infusion of federal funds into math and science education following the launch of Sputnik so that we could humiliate the USSR in the race to the moon. The fear we were losing the cold war led to the National Defense Education Act of 1958, the first large-scale federal involvement in K-12 education. And today, Obama is playing on fears of losing high tech jobs to China, India and South Korea.

In typical Palin fashion, she not only misunderstood the metaphor, thinking that Obama was suggesting we emulate the Soviets with a lot of state funding and suppression of free enterprise, but she actually believed that the Sputnik program was what felled the super power, 34 years prior to its actual demise through bloated military spending and failed occupation of Afghanistan.(A better criticism would be that the U.S., like the USSR, has a bloated military budget and a failed occupation of Afghanistan).

                                     Palin’s WTF Moment

Few High School Biology Teachers Accurately Teach Evolution

I hate to bag on my own colleagues, but the evidence is overwhelming: most high school biology teachers either do not teach evolution or undermine their own teaching by giving nods and winks to creationist ideas. (See Most high school biology teachers don’t endorse evolution, by Valerie Strauss.)

 

Tom Schmal

The result is that few U.S. high school students are really being taught evolution in an accurate or comprehensible way. Not only is this unfair to students who graduate believing they have mastered biology, when many have not, but it is a violation of teachers’ responsibility to accurately teach the content standards, including the scientific process (how scientists obtain data, analyze it and determine the validity of their hypotheses).  

Here are some of the details from Strauss’ article:

• Only 28% of biology teachers consistently teach the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) recommended evolution curriculum,
• Around 13% of biology teachers explicitly include creationism or intelligent design for at least part of their curriculum
• The remaining 60% either fail to explain the scientific process sufficiently, undermine the authority of evolution experts, or legitimize creationist arguments
• Many teach evolutionary biology as if it is only applicable to molecular processes, but not to populations or the process of speciation.
• Many tell students that they don’t have to “believe in evolution, but they have to know it for tests, which, for many students, implies that it is just one of many explanations that may or may not be true.
• Others tell students to decide for themselves what to believe, even though scientists are as certain of the validity of evolution as they are about any other scientific fact. We would not tell students to decide for themselves if the Holocaust or slavery occurred (although I wonder, based on the evolution data, if there are many biology teachers who are also climate deniers).

This is Not Simply a Problem of Religious Teachers Refusing to Do Their Jobs

Just like a Christian pharmacist should be required to sell all legal drugs, including birth control, a Christian biology teacher should be required to teach the content standards, including evolution. However, the problem is not just an issue of religious activists deliberately refusing to do their jobs. For some teachers, the last two examples above (e.g., “you don’t have to believe; just know it for tests” and “you decide what to believe”) may result more from a desire to respect their students’ cultural and religious beliefs and not insult or alienate them, than from their own religious biases or activism. I regularly have students tell me that they don’t have to learn evolution because it’s against their religion. My response is, “Well, actually you do. It is an important part of biology and it is in the content standards. Furthermore, it is impossible to understand other parts of biology without a foundation in evolution. Evolution helps scientists to develop new medicines, understand certain diseases and even make predictions about climate change.”

My response is not insulting or demeaning, nor does it undermine the science by implying that evolution is just one of many explanations that one can choose to believe, or not. On the contrary, it emphasizes that evolution is a lynchpin of biology, not just a stand-alone branch of the discipline. It is important to emphasize that evolution can be taught and misconceptions about it can be corrected, without engaging in the kind of hostile and insulting discourse expressed by people like Richard Dawkins. This sort of behavior probably does more to shut down students’ curiosity and openness to new ideas than to dispel their faith-based misconceptions.

In order to correct misconceptions is important to clarify the scientific process, particularly the meaning of the word “theory,” which many people misuse to mean “belief” or “opinion,” rather than its actual scientific meaning: “fact, based on a collection of related hypotheses that have been repeatedly verified.” Also, before I even get into the nuts and bolts of evolution, I emphasize the distinction between the scientific process, which is evidence-based, and faith-based thinking, where one believes without (or despite) evidence. I even go so far as to tell students that in certain circumstances faith-based thought is sometimes the most effective way to think (for example, having faith in oneself can help one remain motivated and focused during sports or academic challenges), but that in science, evidence is required, lots of it, and it must be verifiable by independent researchers using controlled experiments. Faith that a scientific hypothesis is right (without evidence) can lead to deadly consequences.

Another problem is that many science teachers have little or no experience doing “bench” science, having earned a degree in biology and then a teaching credential without having worked in a lab. As a result, they sometimes do not fully understand the scientific process themselves. For example, many cannot explain why a randomized, double blind, controlled study is more compelling than anecdotal evidence. Even doctors sometimes have this problem. Consider all the times you have heard doctors give advice based on their anecdotal experience with other patients.

Many Americans (including some biology teachers) do not truly understand evolution, making it difficult to believe and even harder to teach. This is due in part to the considerable misunderstandings and oversimplifications that are perpetuated in our culture (e.g., “we came from monkeys,” which implies that monkeys gave birth to humans or had sex with humans; in contrast to the idea that we share a common ancestor).

Even without the misconceptions, evolution is not an easy theory to understand. For example, the idea that an organ as complex as the human eye could be the result of random mutations and natural selection seems really far-fetched, until one realizes that the rudiments of vision, proteins that sense and respond to light, have existed for millions of years and have been utilized in sensory organs of animals that existed long before the evolution of the modern eye. It is also difficult to really get a handle on the slow rate of random mutations and how they can accrue in organisms without some background in biochemistry. For example, I don’t think that most biology teachers understand or teach that human DNA polymerase, the enzyme that builds new DNA molecules during replication, has a natural mutation rate of about 10^-8.

Of course none of this is to say that there aren’t creationist biology teachers who deliberately try to undermine the teaching of evolution. A recent Gallop poll shows that 40% of Americans believe in young Earth creationism (i.e., the Earth and all its life were created by God 10,000 years ago), while another 38% believe in a form of evolution with God playing a role in it. No doubt some of these folks have made it into biology classrooms as teachers.

Cop Faked Shooting That Shut Down 9 L.A Schools

LAPD has arrested the school cop who claimed he had been shot last week for faking the incident. The shooting prompted a manhunt that led to lockdown of 9 schools. Some schools were locked down for as long as five hours, with students forced to remain in their classrooms without food, water or access to toilets. Some students were forced to relieve themselves in buckets before their peers.

Los Angeles School Police Department Officer Jeff Stenroos has been booked on a felony charge of filing a false police report. Stenroos had been shot in the chest, but was wearing a bullet proof vest. Without the vest the shot would have killed him. The police are still trying to determine why he pulled off the hoax.

Compton Corporate Trigger

Even Obama Says They Cheated (186kps)

This week Compton Unified School District (CUSD) officials were verifying parent signatures in the Parent Revolution attempt to take over McKinley school and replace it with a private charter school using California’s “Parent Trigger” law. CUSD required parents to show up in person at the school, show official identification and then sign a document saying whether their signatures on the original petition were valid. Parents had two days to verify their signatures, from 7:30-9:00 am and from 3:00-6:00 pm. Parents who didn’t show up would have their signatures invalidated. CUSD later extended the deadline after getting pestered by Mother Jones magazine (a curious anti-union move by an organization named for a labor leader).

Parent Revolution is calling the signature verification process intimidating and illegal. While the rules set up by CUSD do seem unreasonable considering how difficult it is for parents to get time off work, it should be made very clear that the verification process was only necessary because Parent Revolution had engaged in a campaign of intimidation and bullying in order to acquire the signatures in the first place. There was ample evidence that the petition should be invalidated. Parent Revolution initiated their campaign with such secrecy that even the school’s own PTA didn’t know about it in advance. Their members harassed parents at work and at their homes, even after they refused to sign the petition. Some parents were told they would be deported if they didn’t sign the petition. Others felt they were tricked into signing.

“The process is messy because of the politics,” said USC education professor Priscilla Wohlstetter. In reality it is not politics at all, but business that is messy, specifically the business of privatizing schools. Parent Revolution is a front group for Green Dot charter schools, chaired by Steve Barr, former CEO of Green Dot and heavily funded by Eli Broad, billionaire opponent of public education. Both Broad and Barr are vocal supporters of school privatization. Their goal, of course, is to convert LA public schools into private charters that can skim off tax dollars. However, when schools are converted to charters, parental and community control is replaced with centralized decision-making by the charter school, with virtually no transparency or accountability to the community or teachers. What is messy is getting parents to relinquish their rights and influence to a private company that only wants to make a buck off their kids.

California’s New Wave Of Billionaire Ed Reformers

Billionaire (by Maggie T)

The San Diego Education Report Blog had a nice summary of some of the newest wave of Ed Deform coming to California. As most of you who follow education reform already know, Michele Rhee is basing her StudentsFirst organization in Sacramento. Rhee is engaged to Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who will no doubt support Rhee’s agenda in Sacramento.

Rhee wants to raise $1 billion and recruit 1 million volunteers and she just might be able to pull it off. Billionaire Eli Broad has already stated that he plans to be a big donor to the cause. According to the SD Ed Report Blog, much of the $1 billion will be used to buy election board members and other elected officials sympathetic to Rhee’s ed deform agenda, including more charter schools, value-added teacher evaluation and the elimination of tenure.

New to California is the group Democrats for Education Reform, a New York-based organization backed by hedge fund billionaires like David Einhorn. They hired State Sen. Gloria Romero, former chair of the Senate Education Committee and author of the “parent trigger” law. She is allied with Rhee declaring, “I am proud to march shoulder to shoulder with Michelle Rhee. . . Si se puede!”

Translated: Yes we can wrest control of the Democratic party from the CTA. “We have to tackle the special interests which for too long have dominated the education discourse in our party,”

U.S. Still the Most Barbaric Industrialized Nation in World

Young Offender (by Iaihiu)

Pennsylvania is poised to sentence a thirteen-year old boy to life in prison for a crime he is accused of committing back when he was only 11 years old. If convicted and if he does receive this sentence, it would make him the youngest person ever to receive a life sentence in the U.S. and the youngest person serving a life sentence in the entire world.

The youth, Jordan Brown, is accused of shooting the fiancée of his father out of jealousy. She was eight and a half months pregnant. Psychiatrist Dr. John O’Brian claimed that Brown was not a good candidate for rehabilitation as he expressed no remorse nor accepted any responsibility. Consequently, the judge refused to send the case to the juvenile courts (in Pennsylvania, all murder suspects are automatically tried as adults unless the judge rules otherwise).

Image by Tavisland

 The U.S. only recently banned the execution of minors in 2005. Prior to that, the U.S. was the leader in state killings of youth, responsible for four out of the six juvenile executions worldwide that occurred between 2002 and 2005 and 22 child executions since 1976. Before the 2005 decision, the U.S. was one of only six nations that executed minors, along with Iran, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and China.

While it is certainly a step forward to ban the executions of minors (we are the only industrialized nation that still has a death penalty), we are still locking up record numbers of children and throwing away the key. According to Human Rights Watch, there are 2589 children serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole in the U.S. (the most of any nation in the world), 450 of whom are in Pennsylvania (the most of any state in the U.S.).

From wikipedia

Joe Ligan was locked up for life in 1953, when he was 15. Today he is still in prison in Pennsylvania. His accomplices have either died or been released.

Pennsylvania is also the state where two judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, raked in over $2.6 million in kickbacks from private prisons for funneling child convicts into those private prisons, many of whom were innocent.

Grand Jury Repression of Muslim Students in California

Speak No Evil Again Israel, Or Else (Image by S)

The Orange County (California) district attorney’s office has convened a grand jury that will consider filing conspiracy charges against the Irvine 11, a group of Muslim students who disrupted a 2010 speech by the Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. The students shouted over the Ambassador as he tried to deliver a speech on U.S.-Israeli security. They were disruptive enough to force Oren to take a 20-minute break. They were later arrested.

There is speculation that the move is politically motivated and intended to win conservative Jewish votes in conservative Orange County. Callers to the morning radio show, Air Talk, expressed shock that a grand jury was being convened for what is essentially a free-speech issue.

Grand juries are often used as a way to suppress popular movements and free speech. The grand jury has no power to convict the students; only to determine whether they should be charged with felony conspiracy. However, the grand jurors are not screened for bias. They can subpoena virtually any document, physical evidence or witness they desire, giving them phenomenal power to “fish” for anything that could be used against the suspects, or any of their friends, family or colleagues. The grand jury operates in secrecy. Defense lawyers are not allowed to be present and may not present evidence. Witnesses cannot obtain transcripts of their testimony and cannot take the 5^th. Either you appear and do what they say, or you are in contempt and face as much as two years in prison.

Fight Back Against Grand Juries

There is a movement to resist grand juries as they are often used to attack social movements. You can read about strategies for resisting grand juries at the No Compromise website: “How to Crush a Grand Jury the No Compromise Way.” You can also find out more about grand juries and grand jury resistance at the Grand Jury Resistance Project.