Tag Archives: Education

News

New study on education quality of universal day care programs

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Map of Canada
Map of Canada

This article from the Toronto Sun talks about the government-run day care system in Quebec. (H/T Luis)

Excerpt:

Quebec’s $7-a-day daycare system is failing to improve children’s educational outcomes, an economics professor from Montreal says.

In a new paper, Pierre Lefebvre of the Universite du Quebec a Montreal explains that when the system was created, Quebecers were told “it would promote children’s development so they would perform better in school later.”

“This never happened,” he says.

The researcher studied children under the age of five from Quebec and children of the same age from the rest of Canada and compared their progress at various points between 1994 and 2006. He found Quebec’s family policy did nothing to improve cognitive skills in children.

According to Lefebvre, it’s because the Quebec government program is doing a lousy job.

“There is a serious quality problem. I would go as far as to say that daycare quality is very low, both in terms of educators’ formation and in terms of the quality of interactions between educators and children.”

The program receives taxpayer money from all working people. So working husbands with stay-at-home wives have to pay for a day care system that they will never use.

Here’s a second article from the National Post about Sweden’s government-run universal day care system. (H/T Luis)

Excerpt:

True, parental leave in Sweden is a generous 16 months. There are no babies in daycare. But when parental leave ends, practically the reverse is true: A full 92% of all children aged 18 months to five years are in daycare. Parents pay only a symbolic amount for this; tax subsidies for daycare are $20,000 per child, annually. Swedish taxes are among the highest in the world, and the tax system was designed to make both parents seek employment in the work force.

[…]Then there are the questions about the social toll Sweden’s childcare system is taking. Sweden has offered a comprehensive daycare system since 1975; since the early ‘90s, negative outcomes for children and adolescents are on the rise in areas of health and behaviour. While direct causation has been difficult to prove, many Swedish health-care professionals point to the lack of parent involvement beyond the first 16 months as a primary contributing factor. Psychosomatic disorders and mild psychological problems are escalating among Swedish youth at a faster rate than in any of 11 comparable European countries. Such disorders have tripled among girls over the last 25 years. Education outcomes in Swedish schools have fallen from the top position 30 years ago, to merely average amongst OECD nations today. Behaviour problems in Swedish classrooms are among the worst in Europe.

This isn’t surprising. After a generation of inexperience, Swedish parenting abilities are deteriorating. A study sponsored by the European Union showed many middle-class parents lack the ability to set limits and sense their children’s needs.

Recently, Swedish public service radio investigated the state of Swedish daycares. Parents, psychologists and daycare staff expressed deep concern. In spite of high funding levels, group size and the child-to-adult ratio continue to increase. An experienced pre-school teacher recalls that in 1980 the group size for small children was 10 kids with four adults. For older children, that ratio was five kids per adult. But after the Swedish financial crisis 20 years ago, this changed. Today younger children face ratios of up to 17 kids to three adults and older children face ratios of up to 10 to one. Staff on sick leave are not replaced. “We can’t give quality care today,” one teacher reported. Only one person interviewed contended that Swedish daycare is still top quality — the Swedish Deputy Minister of Education, Nyamko Sabuni.

Again, this program is taxpayer funded. Working husbands with stay-at-home wives will be paying for something that they don’t even use.

I think parents need to consider what happens in other countries to see how good these universal day care programs really are.

News

Republicans pushing hard for school choice at the state level

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School choice is a major issue for Republicans in five different states.

Excerpt:

2011 is shaping-up to be a monumental year for school choice. The year kicked-off with big changes in Wisconsin, where in February, Governor Scott Walker broke the union stranglehold on public education and lifted the cap on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the nation’s oldest voucher program.

In March, Utah passed a statewide online learning program. The Beehive State passed the The Statewide Online Education Program, which allows children in grades 9-12 to take highschool coursework online from public or private providers anywhere in the state. Also in March, in an historic win for low-income children in the nation’s capital, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program was restored and expanded, thanks to the leadership of Speaker John Boehner.

In April, Arizona created education savings accounts (ESAs) for special-needs children, who can now receive 90 percent of state per-pupil expenditures in their ESAs, which they can use on a variety of education options, including private school tuition.

And in May, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels enacted the largest school voucher program in the country, which will help an estimated 600,000 children attend a private school of their choice.

Now, children in Oklahoma could soon benefit from a proposed tuition tax credit program. A bill which is headed to Gov. Mary Fallin’s desk would provide scholarships to children in low- and middle-income families to attend a private school of their choice. Oklahoma is building on the voucher program for special needs children passed early last year, and is on its way to having one of the most robust education markets in the country.

Meanwhile, in Illinois, Democrat women are trying to push more sex education into the schools, while Republican men try to slow them down.

Excerpt:

Bananas and condom races became topics of debate in the Illinois Senate this afternoon, when lawmakers rejected a measure that would have given the State Board of Education new control over sex education.

Under the legislation, schools choosing to offer sex education would be required to teach “medically accurate and developmentally appropriate” curriculum — local districts would choose from a range of material offered by the state board, then parents could review the material and decide whether or not their child should participate.

Republican lawmakers grilled the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Heather Steans, D-Chicago, on what would qualified as “age-appropriate” material for the junior high and high school students in question.

State Sen. Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon, asked Steans if materials suggesting “having races by putting condoms on bananas” were suited for sixth-graders.

State Sen. Chris Lauzen, R-Aurora, said he believed adopting the new standards could push parents with “traditional values” to pull their children from public schools.

[…]”This is not just educating them on math and science — this is educating them on an issue that could literally save their lives,” said state Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Plainfield.

The funny thing is that all the evidence shows that increasing sex education actually increases the number of out-of-wedlock births and sexually-transmitted diseases. If we really were serious about stopping out-of-wedlock pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, we would be pushing abstinence education – which is the only thing that is proven to work.

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Homeschooled student about to enter law school at age 16

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Reggie sent me this story from WSU Today.

Excerpt:

A 16-year-old student from Union, Wash., will soon become the youngest person on record to graduate from Washington State University.

Kayla Heard could talk at age one and read at 18 months. She started first grade at three, graduated from high school at ten and began community college at 11.

Kayla was home-schooled and is earning her social sciences degree though WSU Online.

“My parents felt it wouldn’t be good to send me to a campus at such a young age,” she said. “I appreciate their decision, mainly because online studying has given me quite a bit of flexibility in my schedule.” Kayla and her family will attend the May 7 commencement in Pullman.

Kayla’s mother said she knew her daughter was different early on.

“When she was a baby, she respected paper,” Marlyn Heard said.  “She didn’t tear it or put it in her mouth. She would look at a picture or writing like she wanted to know what it said.”

When Kayla was seven months old, her mom laid out flash cards with numbers and letters.

“In two months she knew them,” Marlyn said. “She would pick the right ones – before she could speak.” Kayla could print letters at three and write in cursive at four.

At the age of two, Marlyn said, Kayla realized that all the presidents of the United States have been male. She looked at her mom and said, “I’ll be the first female president. And I’ll defend the rights of children.”

Kayla graduates with a 3.71 grade point average. She’s already passed a law school admissions test, and will spend the summer filling out law school applications.

“I’m interested in pursuing a degree online in international law,” Kayla said. “I have a passion for traveling and learning about foreign cultures.” She wants to work abroad, possibly in Hong Kong, and she plans to “visit a plethora of foreign countries” before settling down.

Kayla spends her spare time singing in church, playing piano and guitar, and reading and writing. She also stays in her room a lot, Marlyn said. “We call her cave girl.”
Are there other brilliant members of the Heard family?

“I have relatives who are scholars, but not like Kayla,” Marlyn said. “And my son is more like a normal kid. He’s 12. When he was a baby, he put the flash cards in his mouth.”

This is what I expect from homeschooling families.

Homeschooling is not something that the secular left is OK with. The secular left doesn’t want parents to have a big influence on their children. The secular left is not OK with the generally traditional moral beliefs of the parents. They don’t want some families to be different from other families. They want everyone to be the same, even if that means that the public schools make everyone equally crappy. If homeschooled children today expect to homeschool their own children tomorrow, then they better set goals to get into the university and have an influence on public policy. Because there are forces at work who want to take homeschooling away, no matter how well it works.

Somehow, we have gotten the idea that our children are not our responsibility, and that God will not hold us accountable for the children we raise. I think that’s wrong. Why are we all so anxious to lower the bar for ourselves and lower expectations? Why don’t we look at children as serious projects worthy of our attention and RAISE the bar for what we expect from them – and help them all the time so that they can achieve it? You can’t make a succesful child like this without giving them care, attention and guidance – letting them see downfield where the challenges are so they can make the right moves NOW.

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