Education

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When I most recently inquired as to the status of the so-called “International Baccalaureate Programme” (IB) and its implementation in my home town of Gilford, I was told that it had pretty much been shelved.  This was certainly welcome news to those of us that have been concerned for some time about this latest fad about to be foisted on the town’s unsuspecting students.

For those not familiar with the subject, let me again recount how our friend Jane, a retired schoolteacher described it in a prior post on the subject: 

“These are politically motivated programs devised by the United Nations and centered out of Geneva, Switzerland, geared more toward the acclimation of students as early as the age of 3 into the role of ‘global citizens’ subject to the rules of ‘global government’ as laid out by UN documents such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Earth Charter, and Agenda 21.”

“Like the Goals 2000 and the No Child Left Behind Act before it, IB schools attempt to instill an early acceptance of these UN ‘world government’ standards and defies local control. These teachings about governmental loyalties are directly contrary to our US Constitutional government and our country’s national sovereignty. These programs seem more about restructuring society and changing attitudes, than educating, and their founders are very up front about it. Even the tests children take would be graded in Geneva.”

And that’s not just simply the opinion of a lone teacher in the hills of New Hampshire. Early last year, Utah lawmakers decided against helping that state’s local schools pay for International Baccalaureate (IB) programs after one legislator called IB’s philosophy anti-American.

“I’m not opposed to understanding the world,” Utah state Senator Margaret Dayton told members of the Senate Education Committee. “I’m opposed to the anti-American philosophy that’s somehow woven into all the classes as they promote the U.N. [United Nations] agenda.”

You can see why myself and others were relieved when we were told IB was off the radar in Gilford, not to mention the fact that this was simply more costs heaped on top of an already heavily-funded public education system. We must be sure we’re getting the maximum bang for the buck before throwing more good money for programs of questionable results, and on IB, when conducting a search of the Internet, you can certainly conclude that, at the very least, the jury is still out. At the worst (and, in my opinion, more likely), it is yet another failed educational fad.

“But Doug, what difference does all this make? You just said you were told it had fallen by the wayside for now.” Yes, but as we’ve come to learn when dealing with all things government, pay no attention to the words, and never take what is presented at face value. And, when it happens to be the educational sector of government, the double-speak often reaches new heights. “International Baccalureate Programme? No, we’re not pursuing that at the moment. We decided to just focus on more of what we’ve got going already, instead.”

Hooray for the school board! Finally, they understand. Focus on the BASICS. Er, not so fast. According to the minutes of their October 5th meeting, member Kurt Webber

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Recess at Landaff’s Blue School

Guest post by Jeff Woodburn

LANDAFF –   Our vast, complicated education system produced its annual results last week as high schools across the country held graduation ceremonies.  In New Hampshire some ten thousand high school seniors were handed diplomas thus finishing a 13 year process at a cost of around $135,000 per pupil. Educating children has become a costly, centralized and specialized business, and it seems no one is fully satisfied with the results. Education experts and parents worry about the quality of instruction, class size and student safety, yet school districts have become large, impersonal institutions. Over the past 70 years, the number of school districts has declined from 117,000 to around 14,000 even though the student population has almost doubled reports the American School Board Association.

So there should be no surprise that New Hampshire’s once dominant one-room or tiny schools have dwindled to just two: one being Landaff’s Blue School (the other is the Croydon Village School, near Newport).

The path of preservation is never simple. It is usually a combination of circumstances and attitudes. Landaff is defined by a rugged, inhospitable or at least inaccessible landscape—most notably because of the prominent and protected White Mountain National Forest and the Wild Ammonoosuc River. With less than 376 residents spread over its 28 square miles, Landaff has the distinction of having the second smallest numeric increase in population of the any of the smaller communities in the state.  Since 1950, the town added just 36 new residents, including Jason Cartwright, who moved here from Texas ten years ago to run the Tender Corporation in Littleton. Now as a member of the school board, he says the Blue School, much like the town, is not just an anomaly or a relic, but rather is “intentionally small.”

The Blue School sits on a small knoll of land bordered by a stream, a simple baseball field and the intersection of two country roads. There is not a house in view, and little room to park. Parking wasn’t a concern when the school was built in 1858, the year of Teddy Roosevelt’s birth; the Blue School was one of six schools that served Landaff. Over time, the schools were consolidated to one. Former one-room schools, which dotted the rural landscape, were routinely sold off as transportation became easier and were folded into the existing housing stock.

A closer view reveals the building’s antiquity – like the hard wood floors, the large double hung wood stash windows, the thimble that once served the wood stove, old coat hooks in a small ante room that lead to the two small sink-less lavatories (there is shared sink in the ante room) with old tin signs above each. A second structure, a modern, modular building sits behind the old school house.  The two buildings are carefully joined by a roofed breezeway that ensures an actual and visual transition between the two. The newer rectangular building was added a few years back when there was a jump in enrollment. The numbers didn’t hold and the space now serves as the library and lunch room.  Instruction occurs in the large main room of the school house thus protecting the school’s rare status.

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Letter To the New Hampshire State Board of Education:
 
Good afternoon.  I write to you today in opposition to the proposed implementation of the "ONE" curriculum in the New Hampshire public school system.
 
While poverty in Africa is certainly a global issue/problem deserving of attention from the citizens of the United States, I have grave concerns that adding to the curriculum would again, reduce the amount of time students spend on academic content.  One cannot expect to add anything to the curriculum without subtracting from another area. 

I’m also concerned as to how this information would be given to students.  This is a highly political issue and like any other political issue, one can certainly sway children into a political ideology adding biased information or by leaving out critical facts.  
 
Too often our classrooms are becoming an atmosphere of political indoctrination. This has real ramifications on student achievement.  
 
The article I read today referred to giving students a global competitive edge by exposing them to the "ONE" curriculum.  I beg to differ.  What gives students a competitive edge in the global economy is academic knowledge.  
 
Right now New Hampshire has some of the poorest math and science standards in the country, noted in a report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.   
 
Our current Secretary of Education is looking to implement "Common Standards" to make up for this glaring deficiency in our public school system.  He’s been quoted in the Chicago Tribune as saying:

"In too many places, including Illinois, we are lying to children now. [When] we tell a child they are meeting the state standards, the logical implication is that child’s on track to be successful. In too many places, including Illinois, if you are meeting state standards you are barely qualified to graduate from high school and you are totally unqualified to go to a university and graduate."  

This is the time for the NH School Board to look for ways to bring academic excellence to the classroom, not a political agenda.  This is a time to go back and look to the best international standards and duplicate those instead of looking to form our students into a political mindset.

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Parents are probably hearing how schools are committed to a "student-centered" approach to teaching.  But what does that mean?  In Constructivism it means that your child will be participating in "discovery learning." 
 
In this setting the students work in groups or with other students, and the teacher takes on the role of "facilitator" rather than "instructor."  The goal is to get the students to come up with their own solution to the math problems (although this approach is used in other subjects too); and if the students have problems, they would turn to another student before asking the teacher.
 
This is exactly what is going on in many of the New Hampshire classrooms.
 
Reform/Fuzzy/New Math programs are generally built around a Constructivist methodology.  In 1989 the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) called for this approach to be used in the classrooms. 
 
Supporters of Constructivism will often say that this approach gives the students a "deeper understanding" of the concepts.  Yet the critics argue that students become frustrated and that it actually can hinder the learning process.

An organization called Mathematically Correct provides an amusing explanation of constructivism:

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Guest post by Jane Aitken…

UNESCO says that the International Baccalaureate curriculum promotes "human rights, social justice, sustainable development, population, health, environmental, and immigration concerns."

But are parents being told about this political agenda?

Missing from the presentation on IB on the MVRSD’s website (http://fc.mvsd.k12.nh.us/ibpresentation) is the fact that taxpayers would be supporting the agenda of UNESCO. In fact, there’s a lot missing from both the website, and from last Wednesday’s article on the subject in the Concord Monitor. Allow me to clue you in on the rest of the story…

The International Baccalaureate Organization is one of many education "industry" groups of consultants and reformers. The industry recognizes our extreme desire to improve education and competes for the large amounts of taxpayer money we put toward that cause in NH. Promoters from the IBO (www.ibo.org) a Switzerland-based group in partnership with UNESCO (www.unesco.org) use words such as "rigorous," "prestigious" and "competitive" to sell the purported eliteness of it’s program. This self-laudatory language is suggestive of academic success, even when no track record exists to support such a claim.

After a school is authorized by IBO to use IB program(s) and pays the "annual fee," it can be accepted as an "IB World School." IBO charges for using their "programs" (curriculum, teacher training, instructional methods, assessments done outside the USA, coordinator, etc.) in our schools in the U.S.A., which are then referred to as their schools.

The 2008-09 Diploma Program "annual fee" has increased from $8,850 to $9,150 per school this year.

The various individual "per candidate" costs (covering registration with IB, per subject fees, exam registration fee, per exams costs, etc.) have also risen. Schools are also required to have an IB Coordinator. What is even more concerning than the extra inflated cost is that the school and its teachers must all adopt the IBO’s "mission."

In New Hampshire, the bulk of our local property tax bill goes to support public education and it’s assumed that we have some "local control".  If the MVRSD already employs the most qualified staff they can find, why would they need to buy a program that is run from another country to provide "rigor"?  Tests are sent to any number of places abroad to be graded by the IBO. How does a student appeal a grade and how is this local control?

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