January 1 Ed Shorts

by David Safier

Let's start out the year with a bit of education and education-related news.

• People often praise the Asian Education Miracle, citing both Asian-American achievement and the quality of education in Asian countries. One group, however, puts the praise into its cultural context: Hmongs, mainly located in Thailand and Laos, though thought to have originated in China. A quarter of the Hmongs in the U.S. live in poverty, and their overall educational achievement is low. The most likely reason is, their culture is nonliterate. There is no written Hmong language. So their families have no tradition of formal, literate education.

  Compare this with the centuries-old veneration of formal education in most Asian countries and the educational level of most Asians coming to the U.S. Consider: Gutenberg's printing press (1455 AD) was four centuries behind the movable type used in China in 1040 AD, followed by advancements in type and printing presses in Korea in the following centuries. Consider: Koreans came to the U.S. with the highest educational attainment of any group which has migrated to these shores.

  Cultures that stress the importance of education tend to produce high achieving, highly educated children. To give schools too much credit or blame for children's achievement is to overlook the importance of family, community and culture.

  (These thoughts were prompted by the article, A Hmong Generation Finds Its Voice in Writing, in today's NY Times.)

• In D.C., it's possible for public school teachers to earn as much as $130,000 a year through a combination of one time bonuses and salary hikes based on their effectiveness in the classroom. It's the boldest experiment in merit pay in the country. The upside is, it's possible for top teachers to achieve far higher salaries than in most school districts, and it's an incentive for talented people to remain in the profession.

  Of course, there are downsides. Teachers who want to be considered for the bonuses and raises have to give up all kinds of job security provisions. And there is the budget issue. To pay for the higher compensation, D.C. has to raise its total budget, or, if this is a zero sum game, lower other teachers' salaries or cut back on staff. And there is the question of how teachers are chosen for the extra pay. Do art or music teachers have as much chance as, say, English and math teachers? Do teachers in the highest poverty/lowest performing schools have as much chance as those in more advantaged areas? Another possible downside is the friction the pay disparities might cause in a faculty between the haves and have-nots.

  Conservative "education reformers" are trying to turn D.C. and New Orleans into laboratories for their ideas. The jury is still out on how well their "reforms" are working.

• Two southern Arizona charter schools have been bilked out of some of their funding, one by a business manager, another by a principal. This isn't cause for cautionary notes about charters, however. This is a problem which plagues small businesses and nonprofits of all kinds.
• 2011 was the year cheating by staff on high stakes tests made the news, and an AP story reprises some of the more notable events. Investigations are ongoing in Georgia, Pennsylvania, D.C. and California. Nothing but crickets here in Arizona, however. I suspect if there were a whiff of a cheating scandal in TUSD, Huppenthal would be all over it like white on rice. But since the most likely suspect for improprieties is Carpe Diem Charter in Yuma, which Huppenthal and the Goldwater Institute love [See "Blended Education"], our DOE has chosen not to pursue the matter.
• The Pima County Library is thinking outside the box, and with the economic downturn which will drive more traffic to its free services, it couldn't come at a better time. A few weeks ago, the Star's Becky Pallack reported the library is offering free music downloads for its card holders. It's a great idea with a minimal cost. Today, Josh Brodesky reports, the library is "checking out" vegetable seeds, which obviously do not have to be returned. Our own Native Seeds as well as national seed companies are furnishing "open-pollinated, heirloom seeds, meaning there will be plenty of variety and flavor; and what you grow will be true to the plants' parents." The library is asking people to pay it forward when they reap their harvest by bringing some seeds back to the library, as well as reports about how well the seeds grew.