Apt. 11D

Public v. Private Schools

I've been "energetically discussing" the latest study of private and public schools on the phone with my buddy, Suze. I thought I would put the discussion up on the blog and let everyone get in on the fight.

According to the Times, "The Education Department reported on Friday that children in public schools generally performed as well or better in reading and mathematics than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private school counterparts fared better."

This test controlled for race and income, unlike previous studies of this kind.

Elizabeth notes that the Deptartment of Education put the findings out on a Friday afternoon in July. She also points out that these findings complicate things for voucher advocates, which is exactly what Suze and I were talking about.

I am not all that surprised by these findings. Even the most gung-ho voucher researchers haven't really been able to show that voucher students improve their test scores after attending a private school. Maybe there are some slight up ticks in some selection situations, but nothing to write home about.

But test scores may not tell the whole story. Maybe kids benefit in some other ways not measured by test scores. Do they gain certain connections that help them later in life? Do the private schools have better college placement? Do the parents perceive their children to be safer in private schools, because safety is a major reason that parents choose private schools in poorer neighborhoods?

One of the major finding that has come out of the studies of private and public schools by the voucher advocates is that parents of voucher students are very, very, very happy. They are happy that they had a choice, and they are pleased with their schools for reasons that may have nothing to do with test scores.

Should contentment matter, too?

Spreadin' Love

Harry has a killer response to the Girls Outperforming Boys meme. He manages to turn David Brooks into a champion of the welfare state, which made this egghead giggle.

Next week, I'll give you all the update on making Jonah into a book-lover and treading that line between subtlety influencing and squashing enthusiasm in kids. We had a major victory last night.

In today's Times, Maureen Dowd writes about that private conversation between Bush and Blair that was caught on tape. Dowd mocks Bush for his frat boy ways and for carelessly crashing through history. He treats the presidency as a hindrance from pumping weights and clearing bush, she says. She particularly ridicules Bush for complaining about the length of the speeches of some of the other heads of state.

I'm no fan of Bush, but I have to admit that I sympathized with Bush on this point. Good Lord, has anyone been to an academic conference? Hasn't anyone ever redlined a speaker's speech? Hasn't anyone ever felt like that guy in Airplane who hangs himself, because he's trapped in his seat next to the babbling old lady?

I don't know. I really enjoyed hearing the relaxed Bush go on. He's so much better when he's not trying so hard, even if it's in a grating Pledge Master sort of tone. That formal, unblinking, stick-up-his-ass, deer-caught-in-the-headlights Bush really scares me.

Dowd seems to think that politics doesn't happen in informal chats and private phone calls between heads of state. She says that the only way to stop the horror unfolding in the Middle East is through long speeches and orchestrated diplomacy. I think she's wrong on this one.

Top Ten Blogs That I Can't Spell

I'm the poster-child for misguided, experimental approaches to reading. I never learned phonics and can't spell worth a damn. Which is why I humbly request that bloggers make their blog names easier to spell. Look at mine. It's three characters. Means nothing, but it is very easy to spell.

Now here are my top ten blogs and blogger names that I can't spell:

98 Degrees

It's going to be killer hot today. 98 degree according to my morning weather dude.

I hate the heat. When it gets this hot, I usually treat it as a natural disaster. Grocery shopping completed at 8:45am. Jonah was sent to camp with a thermos of water. Sun screen in their hair line (not really). I'm pulling Jonah out of camp early, because I can't let him bake in an unairconditioned middle school and shadeless ball field all day. I think I'll take the kids to the 12:45 showing of Cars at the multi-plex. We saw it a few weeks ago, but they want to see it again. Then, maybe, in the late afternoon, we'll go to the swim club. It might be cool enough by that point, so we won't fry up like some fatty bacon in the sun.

All these evasive measures are eating into my two hours of morning work time, so I have to be short right now.

First of all, I am very much enjoying reading the comment section on boys and reading. There's a real tension between those who feel that I am destroying my boy's innate boyness by fiddling with his natural desires and those who feel that a little helpful nudging never hurt a kid. Before I got involved in the special education world a few years ago (thanks to Ian, age 4), I would have probably been closer to the natural approach. Now I'm more in the middle. Thanks to Joanne Jacobs for the link.

Second, I've been watching a lot of CNN for the past couple of days for info on Israel and Lebanon. No wise words from me here. This is one of those topics that I feel that you should hold your tongue unless you have to have first hand knowledge or have volumes of history reading under your belt. That's why I've been very much enjoying Allison Kaplan Sommer's account of things. My husband just sent me this link to some blogger crowing about the blogosphere's ability to cover breaking news with first hand accounts. Blog triumphantalism usually gives me a headache, but in this case, I think he is right.

Boys and Reading

I've written several posts in the past few months about girls out performing boys in college. I care about this topic not because it represents some "crisis," which conjures up images of persecuted boys and dominatrix girls. We're in the midst of a major sociological shift without one clear cause. It's really an important story. I also am following this story, because as a mother of boys, I want to see what girls are doing right and then copy them.

Jonah is smart, but in a very average sort of way. His math and spacial skills are especially good. I see the chess club in his future. He makes up math problems for himself and loves to show off his abilities in this area. His verbal and reading skills are good enough for him to be in the top reading group at school, but he's not an over achiever here. He'll rarely read a book on his own. If given the choice of playing with Lego or reading a book, he'll always choose the Lego.

I want Jonah to be a book lover, like I was as a kid. I remember dreaming about reading every book in the school library. There was always a stack of Nancy Drews or Laura Ingalls Wilder on my bedside table. And it saved me academically. I was a complete space cadet throughout elementary and middle school. I had the ability to daydream for hours, a skill that I'm convinced I learned by having sit through mass as a kid. But the books taught me how to write and gave me enough information to do well on the tests. I could coast in school, because I read at home.

So, I'm trying to make my kid into a book lover, too. I'm not sure if this is a futile goal or not, but here's my plan.

First, I'm trying to make him a better reader. I think to be a book lover, you have to read beyond grade level. First graders read at too slow of a pace to make it fun. He has to be better than his grade. So, I've set up reading goals for each day. The charts tap into his competitive streak. He's got to read a chapter of the Magic Tree House series and one smaller book every day. By increasing the book consumption, his abilities should improve.

Second, I'm putting him in book environments. We're going to the library twice a week where I give the boys an hour to read and browse whatever they like. Jonah's going for the Superman comic books and the books based on TV shows. It's doesn't matter. He's getting judgment free reading time. If he wants to read the back of DVD boxes, it's cool with me. He's got to walk out of the library with some real books to borrow, but during that hour, it's just about enjoying being around books.

We also have a little room, which just contains a futon and a bookshelf full of kids' books. I try to go in there with them once a day. I'll read a magazine and just give them time for random reading.

Third, I'm limiting the time that Jonah spends in organized activities. Sports can be an enormous time suck, and he needs to be bored enough to pick up books on his own. I canceled TKD for July, so that we could have more time for random reading.

I'm not sure if this is going to work or not. It's a lot of effort on my part, and he may not have that book loving chip in his brain. Shrug. We'll have to see.

Spreadin' Love

I had terrible insomnia last night. One of the downsides of working out at the gym in the evening. After sitting in bed for an hour writing a draft of a paper in my head, I gave up trying to sleep, got out of bed, and checked out the blogs. A couple of blogs had some excellent link-fests.

Ann Bartow has been surfing madly and coming up with some good stuff. She found a blog devoted to sexism in academia.

She also points to responses by Katha Pollitt to her negative Times review. One was an op-ed in the Times and the other was an interview in Salon. I've got no stake in this Wonkette v. Pollitt rumble, although I'm finding it entertaining. I am confused as to why Pollitt's words in the interview are exactly the same as her phrasing in her written article. How did that happen? As a former editor, I am aolso fascinated that not only is bad book publicity a good thing, but writing about weathering bad publicity is also a new genre of writing.

Sandy at Imponderabilia also has a ton of links related to motherhood and feminism. Via Sandy, I found an interesting post and comments at Alas about the Pollitt book, with comments by Katha herself.

(A post later on boys and reading.)

A Day

Jonah walked into my bedroom at 6:45 to announce that we were out of milk. There were probably a couple of orphan waffles in the freezer. Not enough to fill the kids' bellies. So, we went to the bagel store at 7:30. Hurrah. Everybody likes a change in routines.

8:25 - Ian ran into his summer school classroom and barely waved good-bye. His summer school program is in the next town over with the best teacher in the whole world. She always has a project all set up for the kids at their desks, so there's no waiting around time. The kids just dive into work. Ian loves that.

Jonah loves it, too. I'm physically restraining him from pushing aside Ian and doing the project himself. The project is something dumb like putting pegs in a board, but Mrs. R. somehow magically makes it fun. Those talents can't be taught in school. Some people got it. Others don't.

More Links on Mommy Wars

I missed this post at CT about the Mommy Wars, when I was so swamped in June. It's a good one.

Ann Bartow reviews Pollitt and Hirshman.

The Next Generation Does Family and Work

I really loved that Times article about girls out performing boys at colleges. It stayed away from giving one definitive answer for this phenomenon and hit upon all the different explainations that have been floating about. One reason that girls are doing so well saddened me a bit:

"Most college women want a high-powered career that they are passionate about," Ms. Smyers said. "But they also want a family, and that probably means taking time off, and making dinner. I'm rushing through here, taking the most credits you can take without paying extra, because I want to do some amazing things, and establish myself as a career woman, before I settle down."

I expected that the next generation would have the family and work thing figured out better than we do. I expected that more guys would spend time thinking about how to balance their responsibilities as a parent with their work obligations.

It seems that college girls are more aware than I was of the difficulties of combining ambition with family, but their answer is to work harder and more strategically, which I guess is somewhat an improvement, but an unsatisfying one. It's sad that girls are forced to be serious so early. And it seems that boys are still not planning for parenthood, despite the strides by guys in our generation.

Spreadin Love

Let's have no more talk about the evils of high heels when this evil is going on in the world. Girls as young as 11 are getting married off to much older men in places like Afghanistan. "About 1 in 7 girls in the developing world (excluding China) gets married before her 15th birthday, according to analyses done by the Population Council, an international research group".

More on the gender gap in college.

Two more responses to Linda Hirshman. The first by Katha Pollitt who writes,

Hirshman's weakness is her assumption that the social problem of women's inequality can be solved if enough women make the right individual decisions. She mocks "the same old public day-care business that has gone nowhere since 1972." But really, isn't the stay-home vogue at bottom a response to the fact that society has failed to adapt to working mothers? Isn't choice feminism itself a way of dealing with the whole complex range of resistance to women's equality, by throwing up your hands and saying, Let each woman make her own tradeoffs? Unlike Flanagan, who wants women to give up the struggle, Hirshman wants individual women to fight harder and smarter, and that's great. But it only goes so far. If better personal decisions could bring about gender equality, we wouldn't be having this conversation today.

I thought that Pollitt got Flanagan totally wrong. Flanagan, at least in her earlier writings, was very proud of herself for have a job. Still, Pollitt makes an excellent point about the problems with Hirshman. It's not all about personal decisions.

Cynthia Whitfield, a regular reader, also has a published response to Hirshman.