Whether you think this sounds like a good idea or not, why does important news like this get brought forth on a Saturday afternoon? Do read the full article, but here is a teaser:

The Obama administration unveiled its plan Saturday to radically change his predecessor’s No Child Left Behind law in hopes of replacing an accountability system that in the last decade has tagged more than a third of schools as failing and created a hodgepodge of sometimes weak academic standards among states.

The changes would dismantle the 2002 law championed by President George W. Bush, moving away from punishing schools that don’t meet benchmarks and instead focusing on rewarding schools for progress, particularly with poor and minority students. The blueprint calls for states to adopt standards that ensure students are ready for college or a career rather than grade-level proficiency – the focus of the current law.

“Unless we take action – unless we step up – there are countless children who will never realize their full talent and potential,” Obama said during a video address on Saturday. “I don’t accept that future for them. And I don’t accept that future for the United States of America.”

We can hope that with the size and scope of the proposed changes, substantive discussion will take place.

I’ve been tracking this developing story for several weeks, but the big news last night from Kansas City is still sobering. Nearly half of K.C. public schools will be shuttered:

The Kansas City school board narrowly approved a plan Wednesday night to close nearly half of the district’s schools in a desperate bid to avoid a potential bankruptcy. The board voted 5-4 after parents and community leaders made final pleas to spare the schools even as the beleaguered district seeks to erase a projected $50 million budget shortfall. The approved plan calls for shuttering 29 of 61 schools – a striking amount even as public school closures rise nationwide while the recession eats away at academic budgets.

…the district’s buildings are only half-full as its population has plummeted amid political squabbling and chronically abysmal test scores. The district’s enrollment of fewer than 18,000 students is about half of what the schools had a decade ago and just a quarter of its peak in the late 1960s. Many students have left for publicly funded charter schools, private and parochial schools and the suburbs. Fewer students means less money from the state.

On one hand, migrating populations and shifting demographics will always lead communities to adjust their priorities and assets. If school buildings are only half-full, then consolidation, though painful to alumni of a particular school, is a necessary step.

Further, it would not be taking a great risk here to say something to the effect, “Public schools have systemic problems.”

Instead, this morning I am thinking along a different track. Even as my heart goes out to those caught up in the decline and dysfunction in Kansas City, my mind turns once again to a great gospel-preaching pastor in Raleigh, N.C. Pastor J.D. Greear has been leading his church to create “joy in the city” (Acts 8:8) by seeking to serve people in creative and compassionate and costly ways — including muscular service within the struggling-to-thrive school systems:

This summer we have several opportunities arranged for the Summit and other congregations in the RDU area to come together and serve our community. This summer we are working with three of our local elementary schools to meet some of the needs that their principals and staff have identified. At some of these schools we will be repainting hallways and classrooms, scrapping chewing gum off of desks, removing staples from cork boards, refreshing landscaping, and many other tasks. We plan to have more than 1,000 volunteers serve these three schools over two days (July 11 & 12).

As a direct result, here is a word of thanks from someone within the school system:

Positioning the K.C. story together alongside the Raleigh story, let’s think like gospel-entrepreneurs.

In the spirit of Matthew 25, I believe that “the least of them” could be led, by God’s grace and for His glory, to discover the sweet aroma of Christ — after smelling the sweat of our brow as we serve them.

The Wall Street Journal reported today on a growing trend of schools districts cutting their school weeks down to four days in order to cut costs and help minimize their budget deficits.  The system is already in place in 100 districts in 17 states as one less day will decrease the costs for transportation expenses and utilities, along with pay for custodial workers, cafeteria workers and bus drivers.

Teachers’ pay would not be changed as they would still be required to teach the same amount of hours per week with longer school days.

Although there has not yet been any studies done on whether or not four-day weeks will impact learning, many teachers and parents are wary of this new change.  Teachers will need to find new activities to keep the attention of the students on these longer days and working parents need to find alternative day care for their children on their day off.  For the school staff that cannot make up the lost time like bus drivers and cafeteria workers, their pay will be decreased 20 percent.

Superintendent Deb Henton of North Branch, Minn. is set to adopt a four-day week in her school district next school year because she has no other option.

“We’ve repeatedly asked our residents to pay higher taxes, cut some of our staff, and we may even close one of our schools,” she said. “What else can you really do?”

Within a month of landing Kenneth Starr as its new president, Baylor University announced on Thursday that they will be receiving a $200 million anonymous gift:

The estate provision, announced Thursday, will be used to benefit medical research at the world’s largest Baptist university. Baylor officials say it’s the second-largest gift to a Texas college or university and ranks among the top 20 private gifts to higher education institutions in the country. They cite the most recent data reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Our nation’s teachers were unwittingly in the thick of last week’s dramatic healthcare summit hosted by President Obama. Whether they liked it or not, their union dues supported a public relations campaign in favor of big government healthcare.

Politically savvy and seizing a timely opportunity, the National Education Association (NEA) produced radio and print ads, a video by its president, and an opinion editorial by its chief healthcare lobbyist, all designed to move public opinion in favor of the unpopular reform initiative in advance of the summit. But why?

Writing at the Huffington Post, NEA director of Collective Bargaining & Member Advocacy Bill Raabe said, “… health care coverage, at heart, is an education issue,” which is the NEA’s official position on the matter.

But is healthcare truly an education issue? The NEA says that it wants students to be healthy and, therefore, the reform of our healthcare system comes under the education umbrella. Following that line of reasoning, any issue that affects children could be defined as an education issue.

An organization that began in 1857 to “elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching, and to promote the cause of education in the United States,” the NEA has morphed into a powerful political force taking leftward positions on a variety of issues, including family planning and “reproductive freedom.” This is the NEA’s official position on that topic (see page 84 of the 2009-2010 NEA Resolutions):

The National Education Association supports family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom.

The Association urges the government to give high priority to making available all methods of family planning to women and men unable to take advantage of private facilities.

The Association also urges the implementation of community-operated, school-based family planning clinics that will provide intensive counseling by trained personnel.

As I’ve written before, America is adrift because her citizens lack knowledge about the most basic constitutional principles. The NEA is a party to this problem. Just last week, we saw the NEA urging Congress to go beyond its enumerated constitutional powers to advocate for national healthcare.

We’ve got an education crisis in this country. Quality education is an education issue. The NEA should keep its eye on the ball.

All the teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island have been fired after talks between the superintendent and the local teachers’ union failed.  Seventy-four teachers and 19 staff will lose their jobs, and only half of the teachers will be rehired in the upcoming school year.

This was in response to a federal plan to help failing schools like Central Falls: Schools would be able to compete for millions of dollars in federal funding if they choose one of four options to turn their school around.  They could either close the school for good, let an independent organization take over the school, transform the school to a charter-like school with longer school days or to fire all the teachers and rehire no more than half of them the next fall.

Superintendent Frances Gallo previously tried the transformation option–talking with the teachers to work for longer hours and offer more tutoring.  However the school would not be able to pay the teachers more for their extra work, so the talks failed.  In response, the school board voted to fire all the teachers.

Central Falls High School is one of the worst-performing schools in Rhode Island with a 48 percent graduation rate and only 4 percent of its 11th graders proficient in math.  The school serves the state’s poorest city where 68 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch program.  Central Falls is also the most densely populated city in the nation with a large number of immigrants living in the area.

US Education Secretary Arne Duncan has applauded the plan, urging that the move is “showing courage and doing the right thing for kids,” according to the Providence Journal. He believes that drastic measures must be taken to improve students’ education.

However, teachers and the AFL-CIO are calling the firings “immoral, illegal, unjust, irresponsible, disgraceful and disrespectful.”  Many of the teachers are holding protests against the firings and believe that although the school does need change, they are doing their best against the odds and making the school a support system that many of the students don’t have at home.

Gallo plans on filling the open teaching positions by partnering with organizations such as Teach For America, and has already been receiving resumes from all over the US.

According to a report on Christianity Today’s website, Philip Ryken, the pastor of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, has been named president of Wheaton College, a prominent Christian liberal arts college near Chicago. Ryken, a 1988 Wheaton graduate and the son of Wheaton English professor Leland Ryken, succeeds Duane Litfin who retires as president this summer. Ryken became a pastor at Tenth in 1995 and was named senior pastor following the death of James Montgomery Boice in 2000.

Earlier this week, Kenneth Starr was named the new president of Baylor University, a large, private Baptist-affiliated school located in Waco, Texas.

UPDATE: Read Joel Belz’s interview with Philip Ryken.

A picture of Jesus holding a beer can and a cigarette is heating up India. According to BBC, the picture appeared in a primary school handwriting textbook, oddly. The government of the Indian state of Meghalaya has responded by confiscating the textbooks, and the State Education Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh said the government is considering legal action against the textbook publishers.

The Catholic Church is now boycotting the textbooks. Dominc Jala, the Archbishop of Shillong, said, “We are shocked and hurt by this act where Jesus Christ has been portrayed in a highly objectionable manner…we condemn the total lack of respect for religions by the publisher.”

The state is reportedly 72 percent Christian.

A front-page article in yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer reports, “A nuanced view of abstinence” (“nuance”: appreciation of subtle shades of meaning, feeling, etc.).

The University of Pennsylvania conducted a study of four groups of 662 inner city Philadelphia sixth and seventh graders (average age: 12 years old) as follows: one group was placed in an abstinence-only program; a second group received a comprehensive course instructing them in both abstinence and condom use; a third group was exposed to counsel on safe sex; a fourth set of kids, the control group, did not discuss sex but studied nutrition. Most workshops took place in four-hour sessions over two Saturdays, and researchers followed the lives of the participants for two years afterward.

Results in the abstinence-only group: 95 of the 165 youngsters had been virgins when the program began. Of these, 33 percent engaged in sex in the next two years.

Results in the comprehensive (abstinence and condom) group: 41 percent of the original virgins had sex in those two years.

Results in the nutrition group: 47 percent went on to have sex in the two years.

An advocacy group called Abstinence Clearinghouse hailed the study as proof that “comprehensive sex ed [is] a big flop.” But the punch line of the Inquirer article can be seen in the third paragraph, which begins, “Not so fast.” It proceeds to whittle away at—to “nuance”— the significance of the findings. It does so first with a baffling and nonsensical statement:

“Jemmott’s study . . . examined an abstinence program that would not have qualified for federal funding during the Bush administration. Those programs required an emphasis on abstaining until marriage, whereas Jemmott’s involved no preaching and no denigrating the effectiveness of contraception.”

Huh? Was the abstinence-only instruction abstinence-only or wasn’t it? Or was it careful to not “denigrat[e] the effectiveness of contraception”? If it was careful not to denigrate the effectiveness of contraception, how was it an abstinence-only perspective, by definition? If it was abstinence-only, what is the point of this comment?

Cheering for team abstinence was further dampened by the observation that 33 percent versus 41 percent between groups one and two (participants who went on to have sex in the two years after the Saturday school) is not statistically significant. On the other hand, 33 percent versus 47 percent for the control group is.

The reader of the Inquirer article is left “nuanced” into a stupor—by design, I would say. Here are my own reactions to the newspaper report:

1. Let’s all rend our garments in shame and throw dust on our heads that 12-year-old children are having sex.
2. Let’s all congratulate ourselves that we are such “nuanced” and sophisticated people, so able to see the varying shades of . . . the meltdown of civilization.
3. Let’s test God’s ways and commands and see if they produce positive results that are statistically significant enough to meet with our approval.

To hear commentaries by Andrée Seu, click here.

Should the Bible be taught in public schools? If so, then how? If no, then why not?

The Tennessee Board of Education believes they have the answers, or at least the guidelines (here is the link to the Board of Education PDF):

(AP) The state Board of Education has approved guidelines on how to teach the Bible in public high schools despite concern the curriculum could be challenged in court.  Legislation approved in 2008 authorized a course for a “nonsectarian, nonreligious academic study of the Bible” in public schools.

The course will teach students about the content of the Bible and its historical context. It is an elective, meaning high schools can choose whether to offer it to students as a social studies credit, and students can decide whether to take it.

This is a complicated issue, but if my children were in these schools, I would keep them out of the class.

As even the postmodern philosopher Stanley Fish has argued:

The truth claims of a religion — at least of religions like Christianity, Judaism and Islam — are not incidental to its identity; they are its identity.

The metaphor that theologians use to make the point is the shell and the kernel: ceremonies, parables, traditions, holidays, pilgrimages — these are merely the outward signs of something that is believed to be informing them and giving them significance. That something is the religion’s truth claims. Take them away and all you have is an empty shell, an ancient video game starring a robed superhero who parts the waters of the Red Sea, followed by another who brings people back from the dead. I can see the promo now: more exciting than “Pirates of the Caribbean” or “The Matrix.” That will teach, but you won’t be teaching religion.

Read Al Mohler’s discussion of this topic, “What is Christianity without Truth?”.