Education blog

Archive for April, 2010

Exam supervisors caught 561 cheats in China’s national civil service exam last year, down 43.9 percent from about 1,000 cheats caught in 2008.

A statement released Thursday by the State Administration of Civil service said most of last year’s cheating comprised the use of wireless earphones and mobile phones to obtain answers during the exam, sitting the exam with fake identity cards, and hiring proxy exam-takers.

Cases of identical answers fell 76 percent from 635 in 2008 to 152 last year, and cases of cheating with wireless equipment plummeted from 34 to three, with only five exam-takers involved, down from 59 in 2008.

Also, authorities found only 12 cases of cheating with high-tech equipment, which the statement did not specify, in last year’s exam, down from 38 such cases in 2008.

Under the exam regulations, 300 of the cheats would score zero, 152 would be barred from the next round and government jobs for the next five years, and the remaining 109 would be banned for life from working in government posts, said the statement.

About 1.04 million Chinese, mostly college educated, sat the exam to compete for only 15,000 national government job vacancies on Nov. 29 last year. The number for 2008 was 1.05 million.

In China’s tough job market, government positions are believed by many to be “iron rice bowl” jobs that are immune to economic fluctuations.

China’s Education Ministry has instructed kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools to upgrade security, after a spate of violent attacks against students.

Education Minister Yuan Guiren said at a video conference Friday that schools should integrate safety awareness into the curriculum, and teach children self-protection.

Yuan also mandated schools to hire security guards, install security facilities and to make sure young students were escorted home.

The conference was held in the wake of recent cases of school violence, the worst of them in Nanping city, Fujian Province, where a man killed eight elementary school children.

People visit the 7th Algeria National Book Fair in the Algiers International Exhibition Centre (SAFEX), Algiers, capital of Algeria, April 16, 2010. The book fair, opened on April 15, will run for 10 days. (Xinhua/Xia Chen)

The first video version of the “Analects of Confucius,” the collection of the words and acts of Confucius compiled by his students, has been released on DVD in his hometown of Qufu, east China, the Qufu publicity department announced Monday.

Filming of the “Analects” of the ancient Chinese philosopher and educator took three months and covered three provinces, while post production took almost two months, said Zhang Mingzhe, spokesman of the government of Qufu, Shandong Province.

The video, which would cost about 400 yuan (58.6 U.S. dollars), comprised 102 episodes of 20 minutes each and would be sold nationwide at the end of May, Zhang said.

The video reproduced lectures of the founder of Confucianism through dialogues and dramatization, he said.

Thirteen leading Chinese experts on Confucianism were invited to advise on the video, and most of the scenes were shot in Qufu city, birthplace of Confucius, said Zhang.

Written from 475 B.C.to 221 B.C., the “Analects” are the representative work of Confucianism, which include Confucius’ political views, moral principles and educational concepts.

“How happy we are to have friends from afar” and “Do not do to others what you don’t want to be done to you” are classic sayings of the “Analects.”

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit on Friday against John Jay College of Criminal Justice, alleging that the school engaged in a pattern of job discrimination against noncitizens who were authorized to work.

The lawsuit, considered the department’s first in years to crack down on immigration-related discrimination against noncitizens, says the college violated provisions of immigration law by demanding extra work authorization from at least 103 individuals since 2007, rather than accepting the work-eligibility documents required of citizens, like a Social Security card and a driver’s license.

The suit seeks civil penalties of $1,100 for each individual and unspecified measures to overcome the effects of discrimination. It also seeks compensation for each person affected, including the woman who set off the investigation when she complained in 2008 to the Justice Department’s Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices. She called the special counsel after she was fired from her job as a part-time computer lab assistant at the college, which is part of the City University of New York.

Christine Godek, a spokeswoman for the college, said John Jay had agreed “in principle” with the Justice Department to settle the case and fully compensate the woman who complained.

“We will be instituting a comprehensive training program to prevent any recurrence,” she said. “We reaffirm our commitment to providing employment opportunities to immigrants who are authorized to work in this country.”

While the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for policing employers who hire unauthorized workers, the Justice Department is committed to enforcing provisions of the 1996 Immigration and Nationality Act that prohibit employers from imposing different employment eligibility verification standards on noncitizens than on citizens, said Alejandro Miyar, a spokesman for the department.

Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement: “Every individual who is authorized to work in this country has the right to know they will be free from discrimination as they look for a job, and that they will be on the same playing field as every other applicant or worker.”

According to the complaint, the computer lab assistant, who began working for John Jay in 2004, provided her driver’s license and Social Security card, which was unrestricted, to verify that she was eligible for employment. But John Jay required that she also produce a green card, and fired her when she did not.

“I was crying, angry,” the woman, now 57, said in a telephone interview on Friday, asking that her name be withheld for fear of retaliation. “But I did not want to give them so much trouble.”

“They are not bad,” added the woman, who said that she arrived from Korea on a student visa almost 30 years ago and that her green card application was pending while she worked at John Jay. “I think they were just poorly trained.”

The Energy Star label, the federal government’s nod of approval for energy-efficient products, usually calls to mind household appliances like refrigerators and air-conditioners. But at Ithaca College, a campus known for its embrace of all things sustainable, two dormitories proudly wear the Energy Star label, too.

The residence halls, Clarke and Hood, feature six-way zoned heating, energy-efficient boilers, digitally controlled heating systems and ample weather-stripping. They also benefit from a brigade of students on campus, known as eco-reps, who cajole and exhort their peers to reduce their carbon footprints. Among their duties is the posting of fliers inside bathroom stalls, called installments. A recent missive urged students to “beware of the phantom load,” energy used by appliances that are turned off but still plugged in.

“Instead of someone talking at you, it’s someone your own age who says, ‘This is a good idea,’ ” said Becky Webster, a junior from Troy and one of a half-dozen eco-reps on campus.

Ithaca is one of only two colleges in New York State with dormitories that have earned the Energy Star label so far; the other is Hamilton College. And administrators here say they have submitted an application for a third dormitory whose energy use has recently met the Energy Star requirements for buildings.

While the Environmental Protection Agency is widely known for its Energy Star program for appliances, the agency has rated commercial buildings — perhaps less visibly — for more than a decade. Dormitories are among 22 building categories eligible for an Energy Star label, along with bank branches, courthouses, hospitals, hotels, petroleum refineries and schools. Dormitories joined the program in 2006; so far, more than 50 residence halls nationwide have won Energy Star approval, out of more than 9,800 buildings and plants.

The ratings system for buildings works differently from appliances. Using 12 months of utility bills, colleges enter information into the E.P.A.’s Web site about a dormitory’s energy consumption. The computer program takes into account factors like building size, computer use local climate and occupancy and then compares the energy use with similar buildings nationwide. A score of 75 or higher, on a scale of 1 to 100, means the dormitory is Energy Star eligible, and the agency system invites the college to apply for the label. A professional engineer must also perform an audit of the building, at the institution’s expense.

The Energy Star label for buildings is intended to raise awareness and prompt colleges to set energy goals.

“Colleges and universities spend almost $2 billion a year on energy,” said Maura Beard, a spokeswoman for the Energy Star program. “A lot of people think the solution lies in the latest gizmo or newest technology. But there are things as simple as, who’s paying attention to the lights being on all night? The idea is extricating this waste.”

Ithaca College’s quest for green dormitories is part of a broader agenda to be environmentally sensitive, one of the hottest social causes on campuses. Set in the Finger Lakes in a college town that likes to call itself “10 square miles surrounded by reality,” the campus has a new platinum certification in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, known as LEED, for a business school building, the highest available, from the United States Green Building Council, an environmental group. A second new building is expected to earn a platinum rating shortly. The college also has an active composting program, an environmentally themed residence hall and a new organic garden. And administrators are considering a major in sustainability.

The Energy Star labels for dormitories, which come with a plaque, are one way for college administrators to get recognition for investing in improvements that are not necessarily visible. At Ithaca, for instance, the college has spent $1.3 million in the last decade on dormitories and academic buildings to upgrade boilers, insulate attics and create a digitally controlled heating system that allows for automatic thermostat adjustments.

“It lets us make a visual statement that, ‘Hey, we are doing these things,’ ” said Marian M. Brown, special assistant to the provost and vice president for academic affairs at Ithaca, referring to the Energy Star plaques.

One of the keys to the Energy Star label for dormitories is submetering. While every dormitory at Ithaca College is individually metered for electricity, only about 15 percent have submeters for natural gas. The parsing of energy use is crucial because without information from both meters, a dormitory cannot compete for an Energy Star label.

Indeed, Ms. Brown suspects that some of the college’s other dormitories would earn a score of 75 or higher if they were individually metered like Clarke and Hood Halls. But such meters would cost the college about $1,000 each, she said. And in deciding how to allocate limited funds, one question for administrators is whether to spend money on things that yield actual energy savings or, in the case of submeters, provide feedback.

“I could easily spend $20 million on new windows if I had the money, and we have a number of boilers that need to be replaced,” said Rick Couture, the college’s associate vice president for facilities. “These are all the things that people don’t see and aren’t glamorous, but they’re the guts of the building.”

With Ithaca College’s commitment to instituting practices that do not have a negative impact on the global climate, more investments are needed. Some of the money will come from energy savings that the college has already achieved. Mr. Couture estimated that the college had saved about a half-million dollars annually in the last five years as a result of the building improvements.

While the Energy Star appliance labels have been criticized for their potential for fraud, the rating system for buildings has earned mostly praise. A Congressional report released in late March detailed how auditors posing as fictitious companies managed to get Energy Star approval for a number of phony appliances, including a gasoline-powered alarm clock.

“The building program uses actual utility bill data, so there really isn’t room for abuse,” said Merrilee Harrigan, vice president for education at the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit group in Washington. “It’s a fantastic tool.”

Ms. Harrigan said Energy Star allowed colleges to see how their dormitories stacked up to others nationwide. “Even if you know the energy use of your building, you don’t have any context,” she said. “That’s the great value of the Energy Star program. It gives you an apples-to-apples comparison with other schools in the country, and that’s the piece that is extremely difficult to get any other way.”

Two dozen fourth graders from the Chapin School, all in regulation green vests that were dotted with badges, popped up from their chairs to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the Girl Scout promise: “On my honor. …”

The girls, members of Troop 3157 of the Junior Girl Scouts, had a snack — string cheese — and discussed the troop’s closing ceremony in June, where they would present the fruits of their “create your own business” projects. These include custom pillows, knitted iPod cases and baked goods for people with food allergies. Then it was on to the day’s outing: a trip to a local landmark.

“O.K.,” said the troop leader, Alyssa Moeder. “Who knows what Gracie Mansion is?”

“It’s where the mayors used to live,” answered a petite, curly-haired 10-year-old named Grace.

“But Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t live there,” she confided.

“Why?” asked Missy Rice, co-leader of the troop.

“Because,” Grace said, “he has a much better house.”

Scouting has come to New York’s private schools, a world known more for couture and expensive co-ops than for cookies and campcraft. Besides Chapin, schools with newly formed troops include Berkeley Carroll, Brearley, Dalton, Packer Collegiate, Spence and Trinity.

There are now 550 Brownies (first to third grade) or Junior Girl Scouts (fourth and fifth grade) in 25 Manhattan and Brooklyn private school troops, up from 200 girls and 9 troops last year, and from just a few dozen participants the year before.

This growth, helped along by mothers who were scouts themselves, caught the Girl Scout leadership by surprise.

“We were living with a false assumption,” said Dolores Swirin, the chief executive of the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York. “It was sort of an inferiority complex on our part. The thinking was that there were too many competing activities.”

The push has paid off in increased membership, prestige and visibility for the Girl Scouts, and has also produced a nice little dividend. In New York, cookie sales are up 11 percent so far this year, while they are flat or up only slightly in other parts of the country.

Of the five New York City scouting districts, the East River “service unit,” which includes most of the private schools, “has the highest sales rate this year,” said Dina Rabiner, a project specialist for the scouts.

Recruitment efforts began five years ago with Ms. Moeder, who had been a Brownie during her childhood in Queens and whose mother had been a scout leader. She was looking for a troop for her daughter Nicole, who was a kindergartner at Chapin.

At the invitation of a friend who was on the Girl Scout Council board, Ms. Moeder attended the organization’s annual tribute dinner, “and it was quite moving to see all they were doing with the programming,” she said. So Ms. Moeder, a first vice president in Merrill Lynch’s private banking and investment group, joined the board, too.

Soon after, Ms. Moeder said, when she sent fellow kindergarten parents an e-mail message to generate interest in establishing a Brownie troop the following school year, “we were full within 48 hours and had a waiting list.”

Ms. Moeder has just sent out e-mail registration forms for a Brownie troop at Chapin that will include her younger daughter, Sarah, who is 6.

“We’re already oversubscribed,” she said.

Madelyn Adamson, a onetime Campfire Girl (a group like the Scouts), had a similar experience when she started a troop at Columbia Grammar for her daughter Elissa.

“We thought we’d get 10 girls, and we got 25,” she said. “The only issue that came up was parents saying, ‘My daughter doesn’t like wearing uniforms. Does she have to wear a uniform?’ We let them choose between a sash and a vest.”

In fact, Ms. Swirin said, the uniform is optional. “You’re considered in uniform,” she said, “just wearing the membership pin.”

The New York Girl Scouts, who have 22,356 members across six levels ranging from Daisies (generally kindergarten and sometimes first grade) to Ambassadors (11th and 12th grade), have long had troops in public and parochial schools. But Ms. Swirin said, “Girl scouting had not had a presence in the independent schools for generations.”

Sensing the beginnings of a revival, the organization realized the gold that could be mined and hired Ms. Rabiner about 18 months ago to spearhead the expansion in private schools.

“It’s kind of a courting process,” she said. “The progressive schools have been less willing, but they’re starting to come around. Some schools just told me, ‘We don’t do Girl Scouts.’ ” She declined to name the schools.

Not surprisingly, the Boy Scouts are hoping to follow the girls’ lead.

“We’ve identified neighborhoods where there’s a heavy concentration of kids and not enough troops to support them,” said William Kelly, spokesman for the Greater New York Councils, Boy Scouts of America. “The Upper East Side is one of those target areas.”

While otherwise staying uninvolved, some schools, including Trinity, Columbia Grammar and Chapin, have made classrooms — and sometimes snacks — available for troop meetings.

These gatherings, which in some instances occur only monthly, make scouting a relatively easy sell for students juggling homework, piano lessons and sports.

“The activities are very appealing to this age level, and the girls get a finished product, whether it’s a badge or the sale of a box of cookies,” said Stanley Seidman, the director of the lower school at Columbia Grammar.

Scouting’s newfound popularity among the private schools, he suggested, is a reaction against life lived on the Internet.

“There’s a wholesomeness about scouting that should be encouraged,” he said. “It may not be quite the thing in the view of our more sophisticated parents, but I think it’s great.”

Troop leaders play a significant role in organizing activities. One mother, a docent at the Metropolitan Museum, organized a special tour there; another, a yoga instructor, led her troop in a yoga class.

Last year, Ms. Moeder’s troop did their own version of “Project Runway,” an activity that involved a trip to the garment district, the purchase of fabric and the creation of patterns, and that culminated in a fashion show.

“I also had my dermatologist come and talk to the girls about skin care,” Ms. Moeder said. “Afterward, she told me there was nothing she could tell them they didn’t already know.”

Ultimately, cookie selling and tent pitching are great equalizers. Like other Girl Scouts, the scouts in private schools busily push thin mints, Samoas and Do-Si-Dos and brave overnight trips to Camp Kaufmann in Dutchess County, a local scouting tradition.

Connie Attanasio, president of Attanasio & Associates, a trade-book vendor in Queens

Scores of salespeople traversed the city, going from school to school, peddling so-called trade books: the novels, works of nonfiction, test guides and other publications that teachers use to supplement textbooks.

But the city has transformed the way it buys these books, abandoning the decades-old process in which numerous vendors competed in door-to-door or bazaar-like settings, to one in which nearly all such books — literally millions of volumes — are purchased via computer from two large discount wholesalers that have promised savings of at least 30 percent.

In its first year, city school officials say, the streamlined process is on target to save $18 million. But, much as large book retailers have pushed out independent sellers, some of the small local companies that used to deal directly with the schools say they may be forced out of business, at a cost, they contend, to students.

“You’ve got to sit and read through hundreds of books to make good selections,” said Connie Attanasio, a trade-book vendor who specializes in collections for English-language learners. “You can’t give a discount of over 30 percent and do the kind of work we did.”

The city uses a different process to buy textbooks, which the city’s Education Department typically buys directly from publishers in large quantities.

Trade books, on the other hand, are intended to fill out lesson plans and are selected by teachers and principals in a way that retains some individualized, school-based choices to the way subjects are taught. About a third of the city’s school book budget is spent on them.

In 2007 the Education Department hired the consulting firm Accenture for $2 million to help it find a way to corral the trade-book vendors and cut spending.

“We had 100 companies selling trade books,” said Jason Henry, who directs purchasing for the Department of Education. “A hundred was too many. We were struggling big time with how to manage it.”

Mr. Henry conferred with half a dozen large companies — including Borders, Barnes & Noble, Ingram, The Booksource and Baker & Taylor — about how they do business.

When the language of the new trade-books contract was crafted, it disqualified small companies by stipulating that only vendors that had at least $5 million in annual sales were eligible.

The department set the cutoff, Mr. Henry said, because it did not believe that smaller vendors could meet the school system’s needs in terms of inventory or breadth of catalog.

The library services division of Ingram, the country’s largest trade-book wholesaler, and The Booksource, one of its main competitors, outbid their rivals with guaranteed discounts of as much as 38 percent on single titles.

Schools order their books through an internal Department of Education computer system, and many educators say that the new system has improved accountability. Administrators, for example, monitor how many copies of a title a school orders and alert teachers if there is reason to believe too few, or too many, books have been ordered.

But some describe the process as tedious, and Mr. Henry said that it accounted for more than 20 percent of the complaints logged by the department’s help desk.

“It’s one thing to have great value,” Mr. Henry said. “It’s another thing for users to take advantage of it.”

The city’s top two trade books purchased this school year have been the Barron’s Regents test preparation books in integrated algebra and United States history. The department bought more than 2,500 of each at $4.33 per copy. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary was third, with 2,039 copies at $3.87 to $4.01 per book. (Amazon, by contrast, charges a few dollars more for each book.)

Several of the salespeople who work for small businesses that were shut out by the new process noted that neither Ingram, whose corporate headquarters are in La Vergne, Tenn., nor The Booksource, which is based in St. Louis, were local companies.

The one aspect of the Conservatives’ manifesto that Timothy Garton Ash applauds (The choice this election is three brands of implausible, 15 April) is a “desire to bring more power to the local level”. He cites elected mayors as an example. Why is Garton Ash, in common with most commentators, unable to see that taking decision-making from a representative assembly of elected councillors and putting it into the hands of a single person is not spreading power? It is just another example of the bluff he notes in the rest of his article.

I recently wrote to the mayor of London on several serious problems experienced when the Oyster card travel payment system was extended to south-east London. If London transport were still run by a Greater London council, I would have a local GLC councillor to speak to who would be effective because he or she would have a vote on this, and would be an ordinary person like me. Now it is run by a media-star mayor, he has no time for the likes of me, so all I got was a bland reply from an official. My letter was copied to the Greater London assembly person who chairs its transport committee, and I had a nice reply from her, but that is just a powerless “scrutiny” committee.

This is just one example of how the mayor system centralises power. Isn’t it obvious that’s what it does?

Ofsted was contacted by Haringey council requesting that our inspectors meet Paul Fallon during his work for them as an investigator (Letters, 16 April). They wanted to establish whether Ofsted inspectors could provide further information relevant to the council’s dismissal proceedings.

As we advised the council at the time: “in all Ofsted inspections the focus of our work is on the provision and outcomes for children and learners. We do not reach judgments about the work of individuals and, as far as possible, we take steps to ensure anonymity in the evidence record to protect individuals.”

Ofsted’s inspection was not about Sharon Shoesmith – it was about arrangements for safeguarding vulnerable children and young people in Haringey as directed by the secretary of state. What happened to Ms Shoesmith following the inspection is a matter for Haringey. It was never a role for Ofsted to provide evidence to support her dismissal and neither would we.

As per the published arrangements for a Joint Area Review, Ofsted met with Haringey officers and talked them through the inspection findings and evidence for those findings. This is an opportunity for people to ask questions and discuss the issues raised by the inspection.

At no time then, or subsequently through the court proceedings, has anyone questioned the accuracy of the findings, namely that services were inadequate and as a result vulnerable children were at risk. We stand by our inspection and the integrity of the inspectors who conducted it.