Who SHOULD
the N.U. Educators Invite to Speak,
Besides
Bill Ayers?
The
University of Nebraska College of Education and Human Sciences leaders were not
the brightest lights in the candelabra when they invited unrepentant terrorist and
education reform failure William Ayers to be keynote speaker at the N.U.
Teachers College's upcoming 100th anniversary celebration.
Politics
aside, Ayers' design for school reform was an utter failure. Go Big Ed
uncovered the final report of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, dated August
2003, which states that "the Challenge had little impact on student outcomes."
Ayers
devised and profited from the grant program that was supposed to help
inner-city Chicago kids with academics. It amounted to $150 million with
matching funds, and Barack Obama acted as chairman. The money didn't go for
academics at all, but for radicalizing schools and building political capital
for Obama. You can see the final report, which includes a footnote on p. 6
showing Ayers' connection, at:
http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/downloads/p62.pdf
So
N.U. was correct to disinvite Ayers after a public outcry over the invitation. Now
they have to come up with somebody else, quick. And it'd better be somebody
good.
Considering
that Nebraska has one of the widest racial achievement gaps in the nation, ideas
for how to plug it might be a pretty focus for that speaker. Ayers and Obama
proved totally impotent on that, even armed with $150 million of other people's
money to throw around in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which did nothing.
So
who else could N.U. invite? Is there anybody out there who has proven how to
help disadvantaged kids do better in school . . . without setting bombs, committing
treason against the United States, or trying to kill anybody? Well, let's see:
·
Another Chicagoan, only
a REAL educational hero, Marva Collins.
She started a private school for inner-city Chicago kids in 1975 with $5,000 of
her own money. At the end of her first year, every single student tested at
least five grade levels higher. Almost all of her students, who come from the
lowest socioeconomic groups, manage to go on to college, including the Ivy
League. Mrs. Collins has inner-city fourth-graders reading (and understanding!)
Plato. And she speaks all over the country about how schools could cut the
baloney, and start TEACHING again, to make a huge difference for kids. So she's
pro-American, her educational style is very inexpensive, and she gets results.
What a concept!
·
Former Chicago school
superintendent Paul Vallas,
who has acknowledged that the Obama-Ayers ed project in Chicago was an utter
failure, is now trying to patch up the absolute mess that the lefties and
Hurricane Katrina made of the New
Orleans school system. He got there to find 97% African-American
populations in the public schools, and 75% poor and on free or reduced-price
lunch. What he has developed is so exciting and creative, it would be a
slam-dunk to fix the failing schools within the Omaha Public Schools. Instead
of a top-down, command-and-control structure like OPS now has, with no room for
educational entrepreneurship, New Orleans is using a "Diverse Providers
Strategy." There's school choice, charter schools, magnet schools, plenty of
freedom for principals of schools that are doing great or OK, and increasing
focus and control over principals of schools that are still failing. There are
tons of sharp young teachers from Teach
For America, too - another fantastic school reform that's in 1,000 schools
across the country but not a single one in Nebraska.
·
Florida education
commissioner Eric J. Smith
is an expert in using quality curriculum to improve the academic achievement of
all student groups, especially the disadvantaged. In 10 years, using
back-to-the-basics curriculum, Florida has lifted the quality
of its educational delivery so high that Florida Hispanic students now
score higher on the National Assessment of Educational Progress than the
mostly-white, overall, total student
populations of 15 other states. And all it took was good curriculum?!? What a
concept!
·
Lance
Izumi is a California researcher who found that low-income students could
still be high-achieving with inexpensive, cost-effective educational practices
such as learning to read with phonics, and concentrating on computation mastery
to get ready for algebra instead of way-out "rainforest math" activities in
grade school such as most public schools use today. His report, They Have Overcome: High-Poverty,
High-Performing Schools in California, documented that there is no
correlation between higher student achievement, and higher spending and higher
teacher salaries. It's not the money; it's the curriculum and the expectations!
We don't need mountains of more money?!? What a concept!
n Mike Feinberg and Dave
Levin are teachers who started the KIPP Academy (Knowledge is Power
Program) in inner-city Houston in 1994, got funding from Doris and Don Fisher
of Gap Inc., and by 2007, their inexpensive, common-sense methods have spread
to 66 KIPP schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia serving 16,000
students, almost all low-income and minorities. While only 20% from that
sociodemographic group typically go on to college, among KIPP students, the
percentage is 80%. Wow! Of course, we desperately need programs like KIPP in
Nebraska, and don't have a single one. N.U. could pave the way by inviting them
here to speak. What? Invite GOOD guys, who have succeeded in real life? Not
washed-up, educationally bankrupt terrorists? Educators who've actually helped
people, not hurt them, to come and speak and inspire? What a concept!!!
