Are Teachers Speaking a Different Language from their Urban Pupils?

Poor schooling outcomes disadvantage Indigenous Australians, and Dr Ilana Mushin of Queensland university and Rod Gardner, of Griffith University, want to find out why. They think the way pupils and teachers speak to each other could be part of the problem. Dr Mushin said:

We noticed that although most Indigenous children in Australia do not speak a traditional language, neither do they speak Standard Australian English in their homes and communities. Teachers may assume that their children already know Standard Australian English, even if they are perceived to speak it “badly”, when in fact they are having to learn the curriculum through the medium of another [English] dialect. Coupled with the already well documented challenges faced by Indigenous students, this can lead to real educational disadvantage.

Dr Mushin explained she hoped to show that when Indigenous children started school, they had to learn English through the medium of a second dialect, which adversely affected teaching. She continued:

At present, we are looking at how children try to get teachers’ attention for feedback or clarification, whether or not their strategies are successful, and to what extent language differences may be a factor in what happens. We have noticed that Indigenous children in early years schooling work hard to get a response, suggesting that they are highly engaged in learning, but may get less engaged over time because of the language differences. Often the teachers are from a non-Indigenous background and are not aware of the issues, which suggests the need for better teacher education in language differences and the explicit teaching of Standard Australian English. We will continue to work with the Queensland Department of Education, Training and Employment to run workshops and produce training guides and posters. We believe our findings can be applied to other culturally diverse school environments.

The pair are also producing a sociohistorical account of linguistic variation and development within some Queensland Indigenous communities, to show how vernacular dialects are robust linguistic systems, and not simply “broken English” or “slang”.

One immediately thinks, having read this, whether the vernacular of black and Asian kids in big cities in Europe and the USA is actually creating similar problems of understanding that are setting the kids back. Black urban children often have much poorer educational outcomes even than poor while kids in the same schools and environment. One answer would be to teach the kids in their own vernacular, but it would cause problems later when—given a successful outcome—they wanted to go into higher education. So, as these Australian workers suggest, maybe schools should concentrate as much attention as possible on creative and interesting teaching of English elocution and comprehension. Maybe many of the actively speaking methods of teaching like dramatics and those used for teaching English as a foreign language, rather than merely formal lessons, would bear fruit. What do experience teachers of English think?

People of Color Will be the US Majority by 2042

America's Tomorrow from PolicyLink on Vimeo.

The faces of America’s children are changing and many believe that the still white majority population and the political leaders do not see themselves in these new faces. By 2042, most Americans will be people of color. Already, California, Texas, Hawaii, New Mexico, and DC have more people of color than whites. And today, nearly half of all children are kids of color. If they don't succeed, the nation won't succeed.

While policies are looking at slashing Medicaid and cutting education budgets, the future generations of Americans are paying the price. There was a time not that long ago when we listened to the voices of tomorrow and invested in our national future. The GI Bill, affirmative action, and strong unions all helped the “Greatest Generation” establish a potent and stable middle class—and gave their children tangible hope for the future. But we aren't doing that any more. Too many who have achieved success for themselves now want to pull up the ladder behind them.

People of color are disproportionately saddled with high poverty rates, failing schools, poor health, and under-invested communities. But white families that rely on the public education system struggle with these nationwide school budget squeezes. White college students are graduating with six figure debt. White workers who need public transit to get to their jobs are hurt by the lack of forward thinking investment. And white entrepreneurs are having to spend money giving new hires the job skills a strong public school system should offer. It's no way to run a country.

This study implies the need to promote equity—just and fair inclusion. The next generation of Americans needs to be supported and encouraged, regardless of their skin color. Economists and community leaders are now seeing this idea of equity is no longer a moral battle. It will become imperative in order for America to succeed on an economic level.

PolicyLink, an American research institute which works to advance social and economic equity within the United States has released their new report titled Prosperity 2050. The report shows how, over the next 30 years, the face of America will be changing.

PolicyLink’s CEO and founder, Angela Glover Blackwell, said that the success and the future of the United States will depend on the success of people of color. She believes that equitable policies, in light of this new information, will become an economic imperative more so than a moral one. The current discrepancies of social status and wealth between the different demographics could be harmful to the future of the United States.

As a nation, we can see our future and it is captured in the hopes and dreams of a 5-year-old Latina girl and a 7-year-old African American boy. Our success depends on theirs.

PolicyLink was founded in 1999 and works on the mission of Lifting Up What Works. They believe that those people that are facing the hardest challenges, mainly the low-income and colored communities, are the most important in finding and creating solutions. In areas such as jobs, public schools, and affordable housing, PolicyLink believes that equity must be behind all federal, state, and local policies.

Loans Give Hard Up Students a Buzz Until Pay Back Time Looms

Debt can be a good thing for young people—it can help them achieve goals that they couldn’t otherwise, like a college education…Young people seem to view debt mostly in just positive terms rather than as a potential burden.

Rachel Dwyer, assistant professor of sociology, Ohio State University

Professor Dwyer seems to be encouraging young people to take on more debt to feel empowered! A nationwide study she conducted with Randy Hodson, professor of sociology at Ohio State, and Laura McCloud, an Ohio State graduate now at Pacific Lutheran University, found many young adults actually feel empowered by their credit card and education debts rather than feeling stressed by them. Ms Dwyer did add that the results offer some worrying signs about how many young people view debt:

Debt can be a positive resource for young adults, but it comes with some significant dangers.

The more credit card and college loan debt held by young adults aged 18 to 27, the higher their self-esteem and the more they felt like they were in control of their lives. The effect was strongest among those in the lowest economic class. Only the oldest of those studied—those aged 28 to 34—began showing signs of stress about the money they owed.

Researchers examined data on two types of debt:

1. loans taken out to pay for college
2. total credit-card debt.

They looked at how both forms of debt were related to people’s self-esteem and sense of mastery—their belief that they were in control of their life, and that they had the ability to achieve their goals. Dwyer said:

We thought educational debt might be seen as a positive because it is an investment in their future, while credit card debt could be viewed more negatively

How debt affected young people depended on what other financial resources they had available:

• Those in the bottom 25 percent in total family income got the largest boost from holding debt—the more debt they held, both education and credit card, the bigger the positive impact on their self-esteem and mastery
• Those in the middle class didn’t see any impact on their self-esteem and mastery by holding educational debt, perhaps because it is so common among their peers that it is seen as normal, but they did see boosts from holding credit-card debt—the more debt, the more positive effects
• Those who came from the most affluent families received no boost at all from holding debt. Debt is not an issue for them. They have the most resources and options available to them.
• The oldest people in the study, those over age 28, were just starting to feel the stress of their debt.

Having education debt is still associated with higher self-esteem and mastery, compared to those who don’t have any such debt. That suggests they still see some benefits to investing in a college degree. But the amount of education debt mattered—having higher levels of debt actually reduced their sense of self-esteem and mastery. Dwyer said:

By age 28, they may be realizing that they overestimated how much money they were going to earn in their jobs. When they took out the loans, they may have thought they would pay off their debts easily, and it is turning out that it is not as easy as they had hoped. We found that the positive effects may wear off over time, but they still have to pay the bills. The question is whether they will be able to.

The study involved 3,079 young adults who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979—Young Adults sample. The NLSY interviews the same nationally representative group of Americans every two years. It is conducted by Ohio State’s Center for Human Resource Research on behalf of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The results suggest that debt can be an important resource for young adults that allows them to make investments that improve their self-concept. But the results may also have troubling implications for the future of young people. Dwyer summed up:

Debt may make young people feel better about themselves in the short-term, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have negative consequences in the long term.

Some young people from all social classes see education as important enough to get into debt for, but those from poorer backgrounds get the biggest buzz from borrowing money, and the rich kids get little or none. It seems hardly surprising. Just being able to get the money will make many such kids feel that their education is already bringing benefits. As the debt mounts and the benefits begin to seem less clear and further off, their enthusiasm wears thin.

Poorer students must stay realistic about their future. They will have to pay back their loans and borrowings, so they should not take on excessive debt, and must not try to compete with middle class and rich kids at university. Rich kids have no worries whatever happens. They are assured of a substantial allowance and nepotistic job opportunities from daddy and mummy so can get no buzz from borrowing a the odd few thousand dollars.

Kindergarten Math Skills Predict Later Academic Achievement Best

The transition from a home to a school environment is seen by many kindergarten teachers as associated with learning difficulties like an inability to follow directions, trouble working independently or in groups, and a lack of academic skills. A National Research Council report reckons social and emotional aptitude is as important as language and cognition in young children’s scholastic achievement, while another NRC report emphasizes the importance of early acquisition of linguistic skills, and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics considers good math instruction helps 3 to 6 year olds.

To shed light on what constitutes school readiness and which K-5 skills and behaviors predict later academic success, UC Irvine distinguished professor of education, Greg Duncan and colleagues identified six population based data sets—involving 16,387 children—that included measures of reading and math competency, attention skills, prosocial behavior, and antisocial and internalizing behavior taken around the time of school entry, as well as measures of reading and math competency taken later in the primary or middle school years. Duncan says:

We found that only three of the school entry measures predicted subsequent academic success—early reading, early math and attention skills, with early math skills being most consistently predictive. Early behavior problems and social skills were not associated with later reading and math achievement. These patterns generally held both across studies and within each of the six data sets examined.

A student’s school entry ability to pay attention and stay on task is modestly predictive of later achievement, while early problem behavior and other dimensions of social and mental health issues are not at all correlated. If school readiness is defined as having the skills and behaviors that best predict subsequent academic success, concrete numeracy and literacy skills are decidedly more important than socio-emotional behaviors.

Prof Greg Duncan

Early math skills appear to be the strongest predictor of subsequent scholastic success, more so than early reading skills. While this analysis provides a clear pointer to the relative role of school entry skills and behaviors, Duncan and Katherine Magnuson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently extended the work with a second study using two large data sets (2,843 children) and the same achievement, attention and behavior measures.

They determined that K-5 students with persistently low math skills were much less likely to graduate from high school or attend college. The math results were striking. Children with persistent math problems in elementary school were 13 percentage points less likely to graduate from high school and 29 percentage points less likely to attend college.

Surprisingly, chronic reading problems were not predictive of these outcomes, after accounting for the fact that children who struggle with reading tend to also struggle with math. In contrast to the first study’s findings, persistent antisocial behavior was correlated to dropping out of high school and not attending college. But chronic difficulty paying attention and internalizing behavior were not predictive of this. Duncan proposes further work:

The next level of research should focus on why math skills—which combine conceptual and procedural competencies—are the most powerful predictor of subsequent achievement and attainment. Experimental evaluations of early math programs that focus on particular skills and track children’s reading and math performance throughout elementary school could help identify missing causal links between early skills and later success.

Houston, a Glimpse into America’s More Caring Future?

The 2011 Kinder Houston Area Survey took in a representative sample of 750 Harris County residents—including 240 respondents contacted by cell phone. The University of Houston administered the survey. Survey author, Stephen Klineberg, co-director of the Kinder Institute and professor of sociology, said:

Houston is where America’s four major ethnic communities—Anglos, Asians, blacks and Latinos—meet in more equal numbers than almost anywhere else in the country. The challenges and opportunities of creating a more unified and inclusive multiethnic society will be seen here first.

As a city at the forefront of the country’s demographic revolution, Klineberg thought that Houston offers a glimpse into America’s future, and the survey’s assessment of the city may offer important lessons for strengthening the rest of the country:

• create policies that moderate the inequalities
• nurture a far more educated workforce
• develop cities into environmentally and aesthetically appealing destinations
• empower all members of a multiethnic society.

Though Texas is a red state traditionally wanting less government, a majority of Houstonians today (52 percent) said that government has a responsibility to help reduce the inequalities between rich and poor in America (up from 45 percent in 2009). This year 48 percent said that “government should do more to solve our country’s problems” (up from 36 percent in 1996). 72 percent of respondents thought most poor people in the US today are poor because of circumstances they can’t control (up from 68 percent in 2007, and 52 percent in 1999). Although 86 percent agreed “if you work hard in this city, eventually you will succeed”, 67 percent also think “people who work hard and live by the rules are not getting a fair break these days”.

Respondents are a bit more upbeat in their personal economic outlooks—26 percent (up from 20 percent in 2010) report improving personal financial conditions—but remain pessimistic about the long term national prospects—only 31 percent (down from 43 percent in 2007) believe that young people will eventually have a higher standard of living than adult Americans today:

Houstonians feel that the bleeding has stopped, but a robust recovery is not yet on the horizon.

Stephen Klineberg

78 percent disagreed with the statement “A high school education is enough to get a good job”. The percent of people who spontaneously mentioned education when asked to name the biggest problem facing people in Houston jumped to 7.6 percent this year from just 1.7 percent in 2009 and 2 percent in 2010:

There’s a new awareness that this is now a high tech, knowledge based economy and there aren’t many good jobs for people without a college education. Education is more important than ever. Long gone are the days when you could get a job out of high school, work hard and make enough money until you retire. The resources of the knowledge economy are not found in factories, they are situated between the ears of the best and brightest, who can live anywhere.

Klineberg

Public support for new initiatives to improve the quality of life in Houston has remained firm or grown stronger across the 30 years of the survey. Area residents support measures to enhance the city’s green spaces and bayous, revitalize and preserve urban centers and improve air and water quality.

Though most respondents (52 percent) said they would prefer to live in a single family residential area, a large minority (45 percent) would choose an area with a mix of homes, shops and restaurants. In 2010, 41 percent said they’d prefer a smaller home within walking distance of shops and workplaces, rather than a single family home with a big yard “where you would need to drive almost everywhere you want to go”.

Asked how they would feel if a close relative of theirs wanted to marry a non-Anglo, 8 percent of the Anglo respondents this year said they would disapprove, down from 13 percent in 2002 and 23 percent in 1995. Among the Anglo respondents under the age of 30, 93 percent said they would approve of such intermarriage, compared with 69 percent of those 60 or older. Seventy percent of Anglos under 30, but only 35 percent in the older group, said that the increasing immigration into this country today mostly strengthens American culture. 73 percent of the younger respondents, compared with 52 percent of those 60 or older, said they are in favor of granting illegal immigrants a path to legal citizenship if they speak English and have no criminal record.

So, older Houstonians’ attitudes toward diversity, which will continue growing rapidly, are in conflict with younger Anglos more comfortable with the demographic trends.

Education not Poverty—Reclaiming What is Ours!

In the 2007, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study test, students from Singapore took first or second place in all science categories. The United States ranked 11th.

The quality of our math and science education lags behind many other nations.

Barack Obama

Mark Roth, a former science editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asks why do pupils, in a nation that is world leader in scientific research lag, behind other countries in science. Excuses range from poverty, poor training of teachers, disdainful attitudes to education and knowledge, the shockingly poor scientific illiteracy of American adults to the convenience of paying to import scientists and mathematicians from abroad where standards are higher. It is is actually cheaper for corporations to hire foreign scientists that for have to pay taxes to improve the US education service.

Meanwhile, the huge gap between students in affluent and poor school districts is reflected in racial disparities in scores. Affluent white kids in the US do as well as white kids in Europe. In the European Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, American students as a whole scored 502 in 2009, slightly above the industrialized nation average of 500. Arthur Eisenkraft, a science education expert at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, said economic differences play a part in the discrepancy:

We’ve always known there are high correlations between poverty and how kids do in school.

The downside is particularly noticeable in large urban school districts like Pittsburgh. Only two of the 17 big city school districts that participated in the National Assessment of Educational Progress science tests, in 2009, had more than a third of their students scoring in the proficient range. Eight of the districts had more than half of their students below the basic level. Alan J Friedman, a science education consultant, emphasized that those who are below basic in science at the eighth grade level most probably will be freezing themselves out of a whole lifetime of advancement opportunities.

Part of the reason for the fall in test scores from the elementary school to middle school is attitude—and is shared by parents as well as kids. In Asian countries, doing well in science is considered to be by application, hard work, but Americans think it is whether you have a natural gift for a subject, aptitude, natural ability—you just don’t want to do it! Students say, “I’m no good at science, and that’s just how it is”. Being a “celebrity” seems a lot more fun!

Besides the need for effort, school pupils need to know how to analyze problems and work out the answers to them. But many teachers who teach science are poorly trained in it themselves. Many have not done science in college. It becomes particularly critical if the content is controversial, as in teaching evolution in biology classes. Lack of the proper training in science and evolution leaves teachers without the confidence to face up to aggressive Christian kids challenging them, especially when they have equally aggressive and sometimes influential parents coming into the school to complain. Many parents love Jesus so much that they love guns, and high school shootings have become popular recently.

The lack of scientific literacy in America is compounded by the determination of many US Christians no keep on sabotaging science on the grounds that all the answers necessary are in Genesis. All Genesis answers is what is in it, and whatever regard people have for it, it is not science.

Ultimately America, and much of the west—the UK is going the same way—needs proper regulation of corporate greed. If people are to work hard, they need rewards that seem proportionate—decent wages, apprenticeships and training schemes, and sposorship of education—but corporate America could not care less than it does about American society. If they could get people to work for nothing they would, and when industry is fully robotized, that will be the real situation.

But who then would be able to buy anything? Without money at the base of society, at consumer level, society collapses, and discontent rises. Intelligent young people already see it, experience it, and feel that education is pointless when the prospect of any work for most is negligible. Already there are places where hundreds of people compete for each job that becomes available. They wonder whether it is lucky or clever to take any such job, if offered, because they will have to work for peanuts under a perpetual threat of being fired. Why bother? It is easier and more lucrative to be a thief. Already vast swathes of the inner cities are dying or dead, because industries have moved to cheap labor countries, or to another state in the Union that will offer the biggest incentives—bribes.

Social responsibility has to be made an important factor in corporate decisions. It can be done by strictly enforced legislation. And should the corporate bosses decide to move abroad, then they should do it with the knowledge that their products will be heavily taxed if they are imported to the USA, and Americans domiciled abroad whose businesses have been moved from the USA, should be taxed as if they still lived in the USA. It is time the country was taking back what it has allowed a small body of people to take away—the nation’s jobs and wages.

Who Would Want to be a Teacher in Walker’s Wisconsin?

Craig A Olson, a University of Illinois professor of labor and employment relations, and an expert in employment relations and labor economics, shows the salaries of Wisconsin teachers have fallen behind changes in the cost of living as well as wage growth in the private sector over the last 16 years.

By comparing public data from 1995 to 2009 of the earnings of an average college graduate employed in the private sector in the US versus the earnings of an average college educated teacher in Wisconsin, after accounting for inflation, and not counting fringe benefits, Olsen found:

1. in Wisconsin, the average teacher’s salary declined by 10 percent,
2. the average private sector college graduate’s weekly earnings increased by 10 percent.

In 1995, the average college educated private sector worker in the US earned 17 percent more than a Wisconsin teacher, in 2009, this gap had increased to 36 percent. Olson commented:

Not only did Wisconsin teachers not keep up with inflation, their earning power also fell behind their private sector counterparts.

Many teachers accept that they have some security of employment compared with many in private industry, and have school holidays—though they seem a much better perk than they are because the have to spend more time preparing for the academic semester than many onlookers think. So they are content not to be paid the same salary as their fellow graduates in the sometimes riskier private sector, but this work shows that their wages are getting progressively worse, with no added benefits to compensate for the decline.

Governor Walker argued that Wisconsin public employees should be required to pay higher premium co-payments to match the higher co-payments paid by employees in the private sector. In Illinois, the average inflation adjusted premium for a family health insurance policy for Illinois teachers increased from $5,758 to $10,905 from 1993 to 2008. Health insurance premium costs for the private sector also have risen sharply during that time, increasing from $5,742 in 1999 to $13,770 in 2010, adjusted to 2009 prices.

But typically, when premiums have gone up the most, teachers, through their local unions, accepted lower salary increases or agreed to higher teacher health insurance premiums when compared to districts that faced smaller increases in premiums. And Wisconsin teachers did protect their health benefits when premiums were rising rapidly… by accepting lower wage increases.

Olson thinks that Walker’s budget bill will have ill considered consequences. While these changes will save Wisconsin school districts some money in the short term, he thinks it will have an adverse impact on the quality of the state’s teacher workforce:

My rough calculations of the changes in employee pension and health benefit contributions required under the proposal suggest the changes will cost the average Wisconsin teacher about $5,000 in total compensation. This reduction in total compensation is equal to about 10 percent of the salary for an average Wisconsin teacher. Since salary increases under the bill are limited without a voter referendum to changes in the cost of living, teachers will have great difficulty negotiating higher pay to offset these higher contributions. Obviously, it will make it more difficult for Wisconsin to attract high quality young adults into teaching. What parent in Wisconsin would encourage their child to become a teacher given the trends of the last 16 years and Governor Walker’s proposal?

The cause of the Walker attack is supposedly the deficit. And whose deficit is it? Clinton had a virtually balanced budget, but the aim of Republicans is to stiff the poor to give the rich more wealth. Theft from the poor is the source of the deficit, most obviously the manufacture and sale of junk bonds and the accompanying accumulation of banking bonuses in the so-called banking crisis. Banks now are back to their old tricks, and so Joe and Jane Public are forever coughing up their hard earned moolah for the benefit of the already sickeningly rich. Hillary Clinton tells us the US is losing the information war. Without proper education, the country will nosedive into the trough. The pigs at the top already have already had their nose in it for the last thirty years. If many Arabs, every American’s favorite bogeymen of the hour, can evict their corrupt leaders, maybe it is time smart Americans did.

How the Bankers’ Greed is Ruining the US Internationally

The United States has slipped from second place to 13th out of 34 countries in the number of students enrolled in university, and it is stagnating in science teaching—in 17th place—and doing poorly in math, in 25th place. In contrast, more Chinese are enrolling in universities, which means there will be more scientists in China than there are in the US, driving up Chinese scientific output, said Penn State professor Caroline Wagner at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

At a time when the greed of bankers has forced United States and Europe to make severe cuts in government spending on social services, but also on support for industry and science, China has significantly increased spending on science and technology, said Denis Simon—a professor at Penn State University who is also the science and technology adviser to the mayor of the Chinese city of Dalian—at the AAAS meeting. Simon said that the Chinese hope to spend around 2.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the sum of a nation’s annual output, on research and development by 2020.

In the United States, Republican lawmakers are talking about trimming a billion dollars from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the world’s largest public research institute, and slashing funds for other science and research agencies, negating the billion dollar boost President Barack Obama proposed for science and health research in his 2012 budget. Republicans want to make Joe and Jane pay in poorer wages and conditions for the trillion dollar US deficit, much of which was incurred by the treasury in bailing out moribund banks “too big to fail”. Knowing that, the mainly Republican banksters milked their bonus scam—collecting huge bonuses for selling and reselling junk bonds in a type of Ponzi scheme which inevitably would collapse, but not before bankers and financiers had lined their pockets at the expense of the taxpayer.

The Republicans also want to slash funds for education by some $5 billion, even though Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, has warned that the United States must better educate its kids, especially in science and math, or risk becoming uncompetitive in the global economy.

Another sign that China is moving to the top of the science league, the number of quality scientific papers coming out of the country—measured by how often they are cited in other studies—is growing exponentially. How often a peer reviewed scientific paper is cited by another scientist is a key measure of quality. The proportion of Chinese papers being cited is up, while the proportion of citations of US and European papers is down. China already produces more research papers in the fields of natural science and engineering than the United States, which as yet remains in total the biggest producer of scientific papers in the world. But Wagner warned:

On current trends, China will publish more papers in all fields by 2015.