I can't help but wonder what the goal of 20/20 really is- it seems that all of their religious segments have been pro-religion and anti- secular government.

by Lorie Johnson on Fri Mar 31, 2006 at 02:23:43 PM EST

As a full scale liberal Democrat how do I balance my egalitarian urges with my own experience in public schools?

I was bored almost to going postal in high school. Around the 8th grade on,  it seems all we did was endless repetition aimed at the slowest students along with a dumbing down of complex issues and truncation of each book as spring made it clear that the end of the school year was approaching with more than half a textbook untouched.

The repubs want to eliminate public schools but they are going to get some sympathy from those who were strangled by the uneven quality of schools in the US.

This was in the 70's in the south and school integration may have played a part as the poor quality of the black schools in the area gave lie to the segregationist claims of separate but equal. But from what I hear, the same situation contributes to the dropout rate in some school districts as well as explaining the attraction of "charter" schools in some areas.

by Nom de grrrr on Sat Apr 01, 2006 at 02:16:56 PM EST

Most dominionist educational programs (both private schools run by dominionist churches and "homeschool"--more properly termed "correspondence school"--courses promoted in the dominionist community) use one of four major curriculum packages from Pensacola Christian College (A Beka), Bob Jones University (using its own branded curriculum), School of Tomorrow (Accelerated Christian Education) or Christian Liberty Academy (CLASS).

All four of these curriculum packages are known to sacrifice entire areas of education at the expense of dominionist indoctrination, and even the most liberal of these curricula (A Beka and BJU) are so blatantly dominionist and promoting ideology over educational content (in the case of A Beka, even to the point that set theory--the foundation of most modern mathematics--was completely excised from their maths books) that it is not exaggeration to state these curriculum packages are designed less for education and more towards blatantly inducting children into coercive religious groups and their theology.  (This is not exaggeration, by the way; a recent post on Dark Christianity details an article from "The Chronicle" showing how the parent publishers of the A Beka curriculum may in fact qualify as a bona fide "Bible based" coercive religious group.)

I myself have written articles on A Beka in particular (part 1 and part 2 are here for your reading pleasure); even as an informal researcher and science and maths geek I found an absolutely amazing number of shortcomings educationally and--more disturbingly--quite a bit of stuff in the curriculum that brings up "red flags" for potentially coercive groups.   (The "Bible education" section in particular throws up quite a number of warning signs; quite a bit of "scripture twisting" and other serious signs of spiritual abuse.)  The history section is frank "Christian Supremacist" historical revisionism, maths deletes set theory altogether due to it being a form of "moral relativism" (as noted previously), science is explicitly young-earth creationist, and in fact discourages "reality testing" or inquiry (another major "red flag" sign of a potentially abusive group).

A Beka is actually far from alone at this--BJU and ACE in particular have been documented as having the same problems by a wonderful series Rethinking Schools has done specifically in regards to voucher initiatives (which is one way dominionists are trying to use your tax dollars to indoctrinate their little sprogs).  A few articles of note from that series:

School Vouchers: A Threat To The Rights Of Women And Gays (notes in part how anti-LGBT and anti-woman's-lib material is part of most dominionist curricula, includes examples from BJU curriculum)
With God On Their Side... (part of what inspired my own A Beka research, is part of a book by Frances Patterson containing extensive research into dominionist school curricula; A Beka, BJU, and ACE curricula packages are quoted from extensively to show promotion of "Christian Supremacist" and often frankly Christian Reconstructionist content throughout the curricula)
Teaching Religious Intolerance (details anti-Catholic, anti-non-Protestant, and, well, anti-non-dominionist content in A Beka, BJU and ACE curricula)
A Visit To A Religious Elementary School (details taxpayer dollars used to fund an Assemblies of God-operated private school in Milwaukee as part of its voucher program, notes that daily operations (including mandatory religious services) have not changed despite state regs requiring allowing students to opt-out; notes religious content so infused that entirely separate program would be necessary)
Privatizer's Trojan Horse (notes, interestingly, how "No Child Left Behind" is being used to dismantle public school funding in favour of private, sectarian, often-dominionist schools)

It is really no wonder that increasingly state universities are starting to scrutinize the actual educational "content" of these curricula.  One major state university system, the University of California, has actually ruled the three most commonly used curricula packages in dominionist schools as educationally insufficient for admission; they are being sued by, among others, one of  the major accreditation mills for dominionist pre-secondary school education. (ACSI, one of the parties in the lawsuit against the University of California, is not recognised by any group including the US Department of Education offering accreditation--one of the warning signs of an accreditation mill.  At least one other listing shows ACSI as a potential accreditation mill.)

by dogemperor on Sat Apr 01, 2006 at 10:34:23 PM EST

Available with links on my site: http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/tclim/weblog/stossel.htm

In his ABC report, Stupid in America: How a Lack of Choice Cheats Our Kids Out of a Good Education, John Stossel makes a compelling and purposely provocative case. His argument is encapsulated in the subtitle of his report: "How a lack of choice cheat our kids out of a good education." According to Stossel, the basic problem facing American schools is that they are insulated from competition. As he puts it, "American schools don't teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don't have much incentive to compete." His reference to "other countries" is an important part of his argument. Indeed, much of his argument hinges on a type of comparative analysis, in which he ostensibly reveals the fundamental flaws of the American educational system through comparison with other cases. For example, to "prove" his basic claim, he focuses on Belgium, where the government forces schools to compete for students by funding students as opposed to schools. In other words, education money "follows" children to whatever school they decide to attend. It is, as Stossel is careful to point out, a kind of voucher system. Stossel peppers his report with a number of other international comparisons as well. He says, for instance, "The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea." Significantly, he implies, but does not explicitly state, that Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea must also have schools systems premised on the same competitive principles that exist in Belgium. Indeed, based on Stossel's basic comparative argument, we should expect every country in the world that scores better than the U.S. to have a "competition-based" school system. We don't know, however, because Stossel doesn't tell us. His use of "facts" (and comparative cases) in other words, is extremely selective. Is he hiding something? Or is he simply too stupid to know that that sort of selective analysis is inherently flawed?

What happens when we examine some of these other cases in a bit more depth? One country to consider is Finland, which, according to a 2004 study done by PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), has the "best" school system in the world. So, does Finland have a "competition-based" system? Well, at least not based on Stossel's criteria. In fact, Finland has a "unified" school system, which sees children staying at the same school between the ages of seven and 16, rather than having primary and secondary schools. In other words, not only do schools not compete for students, but students are "stuck" in the same school 10 consecutive years. Interestingly, Finland also "spends more per elementary, middle- and high- school student than any other nation on Earth, and comes in second on spending for higher education. School lunches, health care, most class materials and university tuition are all free." But according to Stossel's report, money is largely irrelevant in determining educational quality. In fact, Stossel belittles those who think money is the problem. As he explains it, "while many people say, 'We need to spend more money on our schools,' there actually isn't a link between spending and student achievement." He also approvingly quotes Jay Greene, author of Education Myths, who asserts, "If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved....We've doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years, and yet schools aren't better." True, but in keeping with Stossel's generally superficial (stupid?) analysis, there is no further discussion of why this is the case. Perhaps the problem is not money per se, but how the money is spent. Indeed, early on in his report, Stossel notes how one very successful charter school in California uses its money to pay its teachers "more than what public school teachers earn." I am not suggesting that higher salaries are a magic bullet:this isn't the case at all. But it is disingenuous, at best, to assert that just because state funding has increased that money is irrelevant to a quality education. A better, less "stupid" analysis would have examined in detail and depth the manner in which money is being spend by school districts today. Moreover, a comparative analysis of school spending in the US and other countries would also likely have shed light on the issue. By the way, teacher pay in Finland is relatively low, but this may ultimately hurt the education system since so many young teachers are leaving after only a few years.

It is important to emphasize that I am not making the case that "competition-based" schools systems are bad. That would be stupid. Rather, I am saying that the issue is far more complex than Stossel is willing to admit. Certainly, the simplest comparative analysis will tell us that so-called monopoly-systems are not destined to "cheat" children of a high quality education. So, what is the answer? I do not purport to have one, if only because I know I haven't done the research necessary to develop an adequate understanding of the issue. What I do know, however, is that anyone serious about the issue must avoid polemics and instead engage in serious analysis. And, one way to do "serious analysis" is to be much more careful about doing comparisons.

On this point, consider what Stossel could have done if he had looked at Belgium in more depth. In so doing, we will easily discover that there are a lot of differences between Belgium and the United States. One obvious difference is simply that Belgium has a population of only 10.3 million people, compared to almost 300 million in the United States. It is also an overwhelmingly Catholic country with two basic ethnic groups, the Flemish (58 percent) and the French-speaking Walloon (31 percent). Further analysis would show, moreover, that the educational performance of the Flemish and Belgium communities in Belgium are statistically different: while the mean scores on the math scale for the Flemish community were higher than those in the best-performing OECD countries, Finland and South Korea, the means scores for the French-speaking community were only "average" (relative to other OECD countries). It is also worth noting that, in Belgium, children can start mainstream nursery education at the age of 30-months. Very countries in the world provide publicly financed education at such an early age (almost all children in the Flemish parts of Belgium receive nursery education). Identifying differences such as these are important, and they are important for a basic reason: each is a potential explanatory variable. That is, each could possibly explain why the school system in Belgium produces better-educated, "smarter" students. We cannot know for sure because a comparison of only two cases suffers from the small-N problem ("smart" people know what this is). To determine which factors--or combination of factors--is important or essential requires more cases and more systematic comparative analysis. This is hard. But, this might explain why Stossel didn't do this. Maybe he's not just stupid, but lazy.

Of course, I'm being facetious. Stossel isn't stupid and he isn't lazy. But he has an ax to grind. Unfortunately, as with many TV personalities (it's hard to call him a reporter), he's willing to make his case even if it means ignoring or, worse still, hiding important facts. He sees only the world he wants to see, and will use his considerable resources to ensure that the rest of the world sees the same thing. Fortunately, as a political science, I can easily identify poorly constructed, highly biased "analysis." Indeed, it is quite ironic that, while bemoaning the poor educational system in the United States, Stossel intentionally propagates ignorance. He doesn't really want a well-educated, critical and analytically adept American public; he wants a public that is easily manipulated and conned by facile "reporting" with a clumsily concealed political agenda. That's too bad.

By Timothy C. Lim

Available with links on my site: http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/tclim/weblog/stossel.htm


by tclim on Sat May 06, 2006 at 11:09:02 AM EST