Why No College Summit in CCSD?

Cross High School. Berkeley County. Eighty percent free or reduced lunch. Students from the small communities of Cross, Ridgeville, Pineville, Pinopolis and Sandridge. Forty seniors this year.

Where am I going with this one? Not where you would expect.

Named one of America’s Best High Schools by U.S. News & World Report in 2010.

Maybe its participation in a program named College Summit contributed to that recognition. To quote the P & C,

• At Cross, college planning starts in earnest during the spring of junior year, when students are encouraged to take the SAT or ACT. That way, they can meet early decision deadlines, which is Oct. 1 for many colleges.
• Most of the 40 seniors at the school have submitted at least one [college application by now].
• The seniors got a jump on the process thanks to a program called College Summit, a class they all take.
• “We lay out for them how to get into college,” said Seay, who teaches the College Summit program and is chair of the social studies department. “We want them to have a post-secondary plan, but this community is not a wealthy community and we find that some of them will turn down college to go into the military or get a job.”
• For that reason, all of the students also take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the military’s admission test, and attend an annual career fair with local industry.
• “One of the things I love most about College Summit is that they are very persistent in making sure the students get what they need,” Davis said. “Although not all of the students wind up going to college, it has created a college-going culture here.”

Well, amen to that. Why not Burke or North Charleston High Schools?

School Bureaucrats Compile Meaningless Statistics, Again

The State of South Carolina is touting that its Class of  2012 broke the record in "scholarship" money awarded by a total rising above $ 1 billion.

If you want to know why the statistic is meaningless, read the article carefully or go back to some of my previous postings. This craziness goes on every fall.

How much time and effort that could be directed productively is wasted on such drivel?

Bragging About Financial Need

In a yearly ritual that should have died out with black-and-white TV, school districts around the country have finished toting up a meaningless statistic usually referred to as "college scholarship earnings." Thursday's P&C touts the setting of a new record by the Class of 2011.

Who will break with tradition first and shout, "The emperor has no clothes"?

I have blogged on this nonsensical practice previously, so I won't bore you with the process of how the sausage is made. Suffice it to say that the monetary total is not earnings, will not be received by the student, and frequently has nothing to do with scholarship. Oh, yes, the student will enroll at one college and receive its financial aid package, usually a combination of grants and work-study, all based on demonstrated financial need. The only "scholarship" involved is that the student was accepted to the institution.

Forget the overall totals. Every year someone who usually performs valuable service is set to work to gather all the numbers for publication, thus taking away time that could be spent usefully. We haven't always done it this way, and I haven't had the interest to find out when the practice started and spread like a cancer.

It's time to stop and gather statistics that are actually useful, starting with how many students who graduate from the high school in question have graduated from college four or five years later.

State Scholarships Total Funny Money

I decide to advertise my old clunker for sale for $8,000. My first caller offers $5000; the second, $6500; the third, $4000 (a cheapskate!), and the fourth, a mere $3925. Things are going downhill. I decide to wait a year and try again.

The next year I advertise again, this time asking $7500 (well, it is a year older). Again, offers come in at $6000, $5500, $7000, and $5800. I'm still not satisfied, so I take my offer back.

The third year I try again with similar results. Then in the fourth year, when I ask $6500 for the car, I receive 10 offers: each for $3500.

Realizing I've hit the jackpot, I quickly sell the car to the first caller for $3500, thereby making $35,000 on the deal.

What's that, you say? I didn't make $35,000? Well, tell that to State Superintendent Jim Rex and all of those district superintendents all over South Carolina (and other states) who claim hokey scholarship totals. What I've done with my old clunker mirrors how they've jacked up the totals awarded to individual students.

It's funny money. Doesn't this practice make you wonder how they arrive at other numbers?

Sham Scholarship Totals a Cautionary Tale

Congratulations are in order. Thanks to the Army's ROTC scholarship program, after graduating from Burke High School Sharnay Green will enter the Citadel with her college expenses fully paid. It's a wonderful accomplishment, but does it merit banner headlines above the fold of the P & C? [Half a Million in Scholarships] Of course not.

In their on-going PR campaigns, school districts all over the country participate in deceptive accounting practices. They lump financial aid and scholarships from all college financial aid packages into a meaningless total; then they multiply it by four (for four years of college) in order to impress numerically-challenged parents that their schools are doing a great job. If Green had applied to 16 ROTC programs instead of eight, her total would be even more impressive, but would it prove that she was a better candidate for college or that Burke High had better prepared her? Of course not. If she had applied to only two programs, you would be reading about another student!

The Charleston County School District's fooling around with numbers and the P & C's reaction should be a cautionary tale about numbers emanating from CCSD.

PSAT Results a Local Disgrace

Why did Charleston County have more National Merit Semifinalists in the early 1960s than it does in 2008? Do you realize how much the county population grew during that more-than-forty-year period?

Some testing results act as thermometers, especially if they can be compared over a number of decades. If we were to apply a thermometer to 2007's PSAT results in CCSD, we would realize that the patient, if not on his deathbed, is sinking fast. Allow me to attempt to put the most recent results concerning National Merit Semifinalists and National Achievement Semifinalists (named on the basis of PSAT results) in context.

PSAT's, taken in October of the junior year, are the SAT without its essay portion.

What does the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, as it is grandly named, measure? First of all, it's not an aptitude test: it's a combination of an achievement test and an aptitude test. Students need to be competent in algebra and geometry to score well on the mathematics portion; on the verbal portion they need to be competent in reading for ideas and understanding passages from essays, literature, science, and/or social studies. So, looking at results, how do you separate what the student has learned from the student's native abilities? The short answer is that you can't--at least not absolutely.

Back to the semifinalists. The College Board has an arcane system that, to simplify, allocates a certain number of semifinalists to each state based on its population. If all states had remained the same in population growth relative to each other over the last forty years, the number of state semifinalists in 1968 for South Carolina would have been the same as it is now. But South Carolina has grown faster than the national average.

What has happened to CCSD's results is that in South Carolina the upstate school systems are producing a greater proportion of high scoring students (both Merit and Achievement) than they were 40 years ago. Now, does that mean that the native ability of students in CCSD has declined during that time period? All those people from Ohio and points north who have migrated here should bristle at the suggestion!

Maybe you see where I'm going with this. We are left to explain the drop using the achievement component. That's what the educational system in CCSD must answer for.

The entire CCSD had a total of ten (10) Merit Semifinalists--and only the three from Wando didn't come from a magnet or charter school; CCSD topped that poor showing with two (2) Achievement Semifinalists--both at magnet high schools. How pitiful is that?

So, what are they doing in the upstate that CCSD isn't?

Per-pupil expenditure is not the answer. Neither are school buildings.

Arrgh! J. Rex's Fake "Scholarship" Totals

Graduation rates? No, we can't brag about them.

Highest school ratings for most money spent? No, that won't do.

Fewest unsatisfactory-rated schools? Nix that.

Best school buildings? Wrong again.

Hey, boss. I've got a good one. Let's use the fake scholarship totals that school districts put over on gullible and adoring parents at graduation ceremonies. You know, the ones where few bear any resemblance to any actual scholarship but are based mainly on financial need? No one seems to know the difference. If we can get our poorest students to apply to many more schools, why maybe we could lead the nation in something after all!

What a splendid idea! Roll out the PR campaign.

[See the P & C's hook-line-and-sinker article at State Students Earn Record $767M in Scholarships.]

Dumb and Dumber: Graduate at 16

Would someone please throw Gov. Sanford a lifeline? He's gone off the deep end again.

Beyond the occasional genius, usually a genius at math, no teenager needs to enter college early. So when I saw the headline in Sunday's P & C, Educators split on cash for early grads,
I cringed. Apparently it's not enough for Sanford that today's colleges and universities have multiple remedial classes for students who can't handle college-level curriculum, now he wants South Carolina to encourage students who are not mature enough to handle the peer pressures of college life to march happily off to Columbia or Greenville or wherever, out of sight of parental control, straight into the arms of the anything-goes cultures that roam our campuses looking for victims.

What is he thinking? Probably not much. Then, Superintendent Rex chimes in to agree, proving that brain cells have not been put to work: "Jim Rex, a Democrat, said he's on board with the governor's idea as long as minor questions are addressed, such the impact on the state's on-time graduation rate. "'On the surface, I really like it,' Rex said. 'I think the concept is a good one.'"

What a self-serving statement! "Surface" is right. Does it occur to anyone else that Rex knows nothing about education? I had seen rumors that he views the post as a stepping-stone to running for governor. Now I believe them.

CCSD Superintendent McGinley was mainly concerned with district's finances: [her] main concern . . . was whether the college scholarship money would come out of the kindergarten through 12th-grade budget." Well, that's where her priorities lie.

To give the devil his due, so to speak, at least CCSD's Janet Rose made noises about the effects of such a goal on the students themselves, saying "it's not in kids' best interest to leave high school early." And "Berkeley Assistant Superintendent for Learning Services Mike Turner said district principals are unanimous in their opposition."

Well, duh.

And the incentive to make a choice that could haunt both student and parents for the rest of their lives? A mere drop in the bucket in the sea of college expenses--either $1000 or $2000. Does Sanford think our colleges and universities still act in loco parentis? Or that all of these younger students will live at home with parents? Or that students who are mentally advanced are always more emotionally mature?

What planet is he on?

What Schools Do Charleston's Achievement Scholars Attend?

It should come as no shock:

• James Island Charter High School--one

• Porter-Gaud School--two

• Wando High School--two

• Academic Magnet High School--four

students named as National Achievement Semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Competition.

Still, you have to wonder how the distribution would change if the elementary and middle schools in, say, District 4 (North Charleston), District 9 (Johns Island), and District 20 (downtown) had the resources of Buist Academy.

Food for thought.

Once-A-Year Madness Not the Answer to Financing College Education

Playing into parental fears about the rising cost of a college education, the P & C has again published this week the educational establishment's fictitous "scholarship money earned" press releases. According to reporters Courrege and Hagen (who as usual report without analyzing), "Charleston students earned more this past year than each of the four previous years, and more than half of the district's 2007 graduates will have scholarship money as they head to post-secondary education this fall."

This "news" is a tactic of the educational establishment to make itself look good. It has virtually nothing to do with "scholarship" and precious little to do with parental worries over how to pay for college. For an analysis of how these "funny" numbers work, see my posting of last August: Oh, No! Not in South Carolina Too!

The good news that can be gleaned from this year's obfuscations is that Burke High School (whose numbers have risen) finally has a guidance counselor attuned to the college applications game "as she is played." No school deserves it more!

Do the Math: New Teacher Project Doesn't Add Up

What if you got paid to fail? And the S.C. legislature helps to pay you? Sounds like Alice in Wonderland, doesn't it? Well, how about the New Teacher Project (NTP), contracted by CCSD to provide about 100 teachers per year for two years for the sum of $1.1 million.

Okay, that's $1.1 million divided by 200, which equals approximately $5500 per teacher.

Now, if the organization finds and trains teachers for failing schools that have difficulty recruiting and, especially, retaining teachers, and those recruits effectively teach for, say, at least five years each, that works out as a pretty good, if somewhat expensive, deal for students in failing schools.

But, what if NTP doesn't reach its target? Why, the NTP must pay CCSD $1500 for each position it falls short of the minimum of 90 per year that the contract requires. That means the NTP earns $4000 for each teacher IT DOESN'T FIND!

Right now, according to today's P & C, the project has signed nine teachers, "only 10 percent of the goal," and has 14 "potential hires" more in the works, for a potential total of 23. School begins in about six weeks. The seven middle and high schools in question have about 50 vacancies. The article does not clarify if 50 is the norm for them.

While the site manager for NTP says that she "believes Teach Charleston will meet its goal," let's assume just for argument's sake that instead of signing 90 it signs 50. NTP will then pay CCSD $60,000 for the shortfall, but NTP will have received $550,000 as the contract requires, for a cost to the district of $11,000 per teacher. A bit stiff, don't you think? What if NTP signs only 25?

One would hope that these teachers not only must sign but also must teach for a minimum number of months in order to count as fulfilling the obligation. Who knows?

And where does the state legislature come into play, you ask? In order to pay for Teach Charleston, CCSD "wanted to" pay half and get the community to pay the other half. Right now the community has contributed $27,600, or about 10 percent of its share.

BUT WAIT!

"The community" apparently includes the state legislature, which in its wisdom has granted $100,000 to the Coastal Community Foundation to give to Teach Charleston as part of the pork [read "earmarks"] doled out from its Competitive Grants Committee made up of former state legislators. So in effect the state legislature has given CCSD another $100,000.

No, don't get me wrong. I hope NTP succeeds with these schools that desperately need effective and stable teaching staffs. There are other ways in which the legislature could help, however--even if the State Department of Education, Jim Rex, and the education lobby would blow a collective gasket if it did:

• South Carolina should accept out-of-state certificates in good standing as qualifying those who hold them to teach in SC public schools, and those attempting to change careers through alternative certification should have their process smoothed and made less expensive.


• A hefty proportion of non-need-based lottery scholarships should be awarded to those pledging to teach for at least three years.


• Teachers who take advantage of state funding to get National Board Certification should be required to teach and/or mentor for at least three years in failing schools in order to get the salary bonus.

And individual school districts, such as CCSD, must revamp their support of "newbies" by mentors and principals as well as their discipline programs to prevent the huge percentage of certified teachers who leave the profession prematurely. Stop blaming that drain on low salaries alone.

A Saga of Grade Inflation and the LIFE Scholarship

Today's Newsless Courier (aka The Post and Courier) provides yet another clue that our entire nation has become Lake Wobegone--"where every child is above average." This gem of information is contained in AP article about a federal study comparing results of NAEP math and science testing with the same students' transcripts for 2005 graduates. The overall average for high school graduates has risen to a B.

The AVERAGE is B--get it?
So A, which USED to mean "excellent," is the only "above average" grade left? And C, which USED to mean "average," now means "below average."

It gets worse, though. While the grade-point average has risen to B, actual knowledge, as assessed by testing, has dropped.

Let that sink in for a moment. . . .

We can fudge around on this as much as we like, but the reality is that grades are rising and knowledge is dropping.

Well, it makes sense to a teacher. The harder a student must work and study to get that A (or B), the more the student has learned. You think?

Now, look what has happened to the Life Scholarship here in SC. I'm sure when the State Legislature made one of the criteria a 3.0 GPA [the others being a SAT minimum of 1100 and top third of class] it had no IDEA that would qualify the AVERAGE high school graduate. Now, it turns out that so many students qualify that the program has become a victim of its own success. The latest proposal is to change that criterion to a GPA of 3.25!

[Notice they're not proposing raising the SAT score!]

Ask yourself, how many average SC high school graduates with SAT scores below 1100 receive the LIFE scholarship based on their "above-average" B in high school and then go on to lose the money because they are unable to maintain a B in college? Is that a good picture?

And the pressure is on teachers to provide many of those B's [don't grade too hard!] so that middle-class students can get their LIFE scholarships.

The statistics show it: administrators like Inez Tennenbaum and Maria Goodloe-Johnson can fuss all they want over standardized testing, but it's the only measure that keeps them honest. Not grades.

Oh, and if you think that 11oo seems like a stretch, keep in mind 1100 is only slightly "above average" and doesn't begin to measure the ability it did 10, 15, or 30 years ago, after its multiple downward recenterings.

The average SC high school graduate has a B average and an SAT score WELL BELOW 1100.

What does that tell you?

Oh, No! Not in South Carolina Too!

I first encountered this insanity in Texas. In order to con parents into thinking how well its students "earned" scholarship money, the private school solicited from each graduating senior the amount of scholarship aid from each college or university applied to, added them all together, and multiplied by four (for the four years of college). Amounts for all students were compiled and the total released to show how much monetary value parents received in return for paying four years of high school tuition.

Then I came back to Charleston to find that school guidance departments are insane here also (they would have been laughed around the block in New Jersey!). Now today's headline:

"Class of '06 proved very scholarly," by Diette Courrege, The Post and Courier, Lowcountry and State section, Tuesday, August 8, 2006

Scholarly about what? SAT scores? NO. Graduation rates? Heavens, no. It seems that, according to a release from state Superintendent Tenenbaum, this year's seniors "won" more funds than any previous class. The State Superintendent's office encourages this nonsense by keeping a running total of scholarship money on a five-year basis!
Now, if you have been suckered into believing that this total represents intelligent accounting practices, let me enlighten you. Here are the factors that make that total a joke:

1. The more schools the student applies to, the higher his or her total; thus, Jimmy Joe, who applies to 12 schools, contributes 48 times his actual financial need, whereas Peggy Sue, who applies early decision to one school, contributes 4 times her financial need.
2. Notice I said "financial need" not "scholarship total." A FEW scholarships are not based on need, it is true; however, most of what goes into the school's (or state's) total is based on need. That brings us to
3. The higher the total amount, the more financially-needy the students. Got that? Thus, if all students applying to college were below the poverty level and all managed to apply to 30 schools each, the "scholarship" total would SKYROCKET! We sure would want to brag about that!
4. Finally, unless the state is losing population [not] or graduating fewer students total [not], the NUMBER of students reporting scholarship aid automatically increases each year, whether they are more "scholarly" or not.

My proof?

1. According to the reporter, "the state counts the value of scholarships awarded as opposed to those accepted." Exactly.
2. "It appears that no organization tracks the state-by-state totals for public and private scholarships awarded." Did the reporter ever wonder WHY? They seem to track everything else. But then, why track nonsense?
3. After it "improved" the way it "counted and reported" scholarship winners, Woodland High School TRIPLED the dollar amount from last year. Let's see: last year's $341,013 times 4 = about $1.4 million, roughly comparable to the $1.3 million reported this year. The report doesn't mention what the "improvement" was, but it seems fairly obvious to me! I bet they hadn't been told to multiply by 4 (years of college)!
4. Notice, the principal at Woodland said, "more students applied for money," not scholarships. That's financial aid being added into the total.

I could go on, but I've made my point. The Newsless Courier needs to employ more critical thinking to the handouts from the state superintendent's office. This is the second time since I started blogging that Tenenbaum's nonsense has been taken at face value.