Monday, May 02, 2005
Peter E. Pflaum, PhD
225 Robinson Road New Smyrna Beach, 32169
386 428 9609
pflaump@ucnsb.net
Sunday, May 01, 2005
http://www.wiredbrain.com/ap.htm
Advanced Placement Teachers Organization http://www.apteachers.org
Mission: To set up and then run the grants programs
Goals: To help start Local chapters - and a national organization - $25.00 membership fee - $15 for the local and $10 for the national - members have national certification as AP teachers - and work together to promote the program, scholarships and incentive grants. We will start a web journal with news of the AP program, a free web site for each local, and other benefits such as in other national associations. In the next few weeks we should have the web site going on go daddy. Local chapters can set up their own home pages - chat and boards - we want a cooperative effort.
APTO Will be a section 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that works with schools and the private sector to manage Advanced Placement™ (AP®) and Pre-AP® incentive programs for students, teachers and schools. The goal is to maximize the number of students who pass AP exams.
AP Incentive Programs™ throughout the State of Texas. These programs are modeled after a successful similar program designed and implemented by the O'Donnell Foundation in the Dallas area.
AP INCENTIVE PROGRAM IN THE DALLAS PUBLIC SCHOOLS
http://www.odf.org/ For AP Math, Science and English
• $1000 award for outstanding principals and counselors
• $100 bonus for each exam with a score 3 and over
AP SCHOOLS
• The full exam fee, $75, is reimbursed for each score of 3 and over
• $37 toward the cost of each AP exam
• $100 for each AP exam score of 3 and over
AP STUDENTS
• Vertical Teams Bonus Pool: $100 for AP scores of 3 and over
• $350 payment to attend College Board training
• $1000 annual salary supplement *
VERTICAL TEAM TEACHERS
• Teacher Bonus Pool: $100 for each AP exam score of 3 and over
• $350 payment to attend College Board training
• $2500 annual salary supplement *
AP TEACHERS * The salary supplement begins in year two and continues as long as the teacher makes satisfactory progress. Incentives are extra pay for extra work.
http://www.apstrategies.org/about_us.htm
http://www.apstrategies.org/ap_incentive_programs.htm
RE: Using funds for High Impact: Smarting up vs. dumbing down
Thinking about how private, foundation or public funds could have the most impact on the American Society. The question as in business, return on investment (ROI), is how to get the most bangs for the bucks. This is not an easy question since there are an infinite number of options and ROI is hard to measure for social action.
My suggestion involves the Advanced Placement Program (AP) at the educational testing service (ETS). I can’t think of any investment that has a higher ROI than education from a personal or social point of view. Better educated and smarter people make a smarter and better culture in the short and long run. Human resources are the most important infrastructure for our economy, our national defense, our civil society and our general welfare and happiness as well as helping improve the whole world. (I am serious)
The founding fathers often stressed the point of a valid civic culture being required for a democratic society, it is not possible to be both ignorant and free. (A lesson in international relations)
The AP program is the most important and maybe the only important reform in American Education since Horace Mann who promoted the concept of “public” schools and the public school movement, the land grant program Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 and A&M colleges, the blackboard, the school bus, and the GIs sent to college after WWII. AP sets a new tone and encourages academic performance in an anti-intellectual sports driven secondary school system. The high school curriculum was set in the Carnegie Commission in the 1890’s, Harvard’s Eliot “Committee of Ten, appointed in 1892 by the National Education Association” and then run by textbook publishers and teachers colleges and in general been dumbed down for decades.
Colleges now teach high school classes and remedial classes because the kids lack basic skills and knowledge when high school graduation does not assume basic literacy. The “No child left behind” is a useful stick but there needs to be more carrots. The school cultures need to change from just getting along with the lowest common dominator to true efforts at excellence. The example of Bronx Science is how a high quality program can make a major contribution to our civilization, not to mention Philips Academy , Horace Mann, Hunter College , Boston Latin, etc.
First, teachers of these classes should first and foremost pass the exams in their subjects at the 5 level. They should have 18 hours of college level work at 3.0 or better in the subject. They should get a nice supplement of 10% or more of their base salary. There is a critical shortage of math and science teachers who should get extra supplements. Since the teacher’s union will not allow this an external gift becomes necessary. The grant or gift could be tax free as a grant and tied to the number of AP classes taught and the number of student who actually pass the subject. http://nces.ed.gov/
Of the roughly 15 million high school students only 6.5% are candidates for AP or a million in 75,000 classes with about 50,000 more than 1/2 time AP teachers of the total of 100,000 AP teachers – with a supplement or grant of $5,000 per class or teacher who qualifies (has passed the exam themselves, where 75% of their students get 3 or better, and have 18hrs in their subject and teachers more than one AP class ) is $250 million, not an impossible number.
Setting up (Advanced Placement Teachers Organization) a non-profit to promote than run the grant program –
Strategy:
Crystallizing Public Opinion by Edward L. Bernays one of the founders of Public Relations and Advertising learned from his uncle Freud that the purely rational approach needed a hook or emotional catch to motivate people to action. If we just say this is a good idea and take the traditional academic approach maybe we get a pilot project or research grant. What we need is a movement or the appearance of a motivated organized group of true believers. In doing that there are professional experienced firms that know how to do what needs to be done, to get it moving, while most academics and educational administrators do not. The phonics movement has been at it for decades, with 1000’s of projects, tons of research and has made some progress. There has to be a better way.
I suggest several million (Gates, Carnegie, Ford The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation the usual suspects) for a public campaign to improve our economic competitiveness, our national security, and our social, political and cultural civilization. Most of the students in hard sciences graduate and undergraduate are foreigners and Orientals or both.
While there is unemployment, business has to recruit foreigners to fill critical technical and scientific jobs. These are emotional and political hooks that appeal across the conservative – liberal divide. The fact that quality education is elitist based on the fact that some students are better at hard academic subjects than others, some are more motivated and these students tend to come from families and communities with a tradition of professionalism. There are a few Booker T. Washington who was born into slavery or George Washington Carver who was born on a Missouri farm or Justice Thomas from the Pinpoint community, near Savannah, Georgia and much more should be done to find and encourage talent from deprived communities, these exceptional individuals will be a minority of outstanding students. We need a lot more people like Jaime Escalante, an immigrant from Bolivia who is now 75, who gained fame through the 1988 movie “Stand and Deliver.”
As part of an organized campaign of leading school superintends, great city schools, leading states and dynamic individuals should be identified for demonstration projects. They have to get agreement or bypass the NEA’s AFT’s objections to free labor markets, merit pay and radical reform in general. By making the incentive a grant or tax free gift it does not involve contract negotiations. Leading teachers are invited to summer workshops in pairs as used in the NSF National Defense education program after sputnik. Having the right kind of opposition can be a positive –
Looking for small central management for APTO around $100,000 including expenses
P.R. contract of a few million to top firm or firms (they need to develop their own proposals)
Demonstration contracts of a few million to high profile schools -
National and regional meeting of critical actors in association with the Governors and State legislative conferences, committee members and staff in congress, media events, paid academics for papers and reports, think tanks – both left and right – talk radio – NPR and PPS – ETS – etc. etc…
http://www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/ct0203/news0203-pushing.shtml
Spurred originally by the O'Donnell Foundation, others, including the Texas Instruments Foundation and retired PepsiCo president Roger Enrico, have joined the effort.
Last year 62 Jefferson students took courses to prepare for AP calculus, which, like other advanced placement classes, is a college-level course. Forty now take AP calculus. Trevino has a self-imposed goal: to see ten students pass the test. He is confident they can do the work. Each Jefferson student who passes an AP math or English test will receive $500 per test and could qualify for a $10,000 college scholarship, all donated by Enrico. Trevino would also receive $500 for each passing score. He and his fellow teachers, and ultimately their students, are also benefiting from extra training.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35616-2005Jan25.html
We will be providing AP at its best, to enable more colleges to raise their own standards," said Trevor Packer, executive director of the AP program, which is owned by the College Board, the nonprofit organization that also owns the SAT.
College Board President Gaston Caperton, a former governor of West Virginia, described the rapid growth of what began in 1955 as a small program designed to keep students at exclusive private schools and affluent neighborhood high schools from having to repeat in college the advanced course work they studied in high school.
High school students who take AP courses in any of 34 subjects have a chance to earn college credit, or at least to skip introductory college courses, by doing well on one of the three-hour AP exams. In 2004, Caperton said, 1.1 million students took about 2 million AP tests, more than double the number 10 years ago. The number of AP test-takers rivals the 1.4 million seniors who took the SAT last year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63182-2004Dec14.html
After two decades of observing the depth and power of college-level courses, including AP and International Baccalaureate (IB), in high school and the inferior teaching of the college introductory courses, I think Casement and many of his friends in academia need to take a much closer look at what is actually happening in high schools, and in their own college freshmen courses
Karl Rove & the Spectre of Freud’s Nephew
February 4th 2005
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized…”
So opens Propaganda (1928), one of several strikingly frank analyses of western social psychology written by Edward Bernays. This nephew of Sigmund Freud founded the public relations industry in the United States.
http://www.americanidealism.com/articles/karl-rove-and-the-spectre-of-freuds-nephew.html
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17791
Teachers Unions: Merit Pay is “Crazy”
225 Robinson Road New Smyrna Beach, 32169
386 428 9609
pflaump@ucnsb.net
Sunday, May 01, 2005
http://www.wiredbrain.com/ap.htm
Advanced Placement Teachers Organization http://www.apteachers.org
Mission: To set up and then run the grants programs
Goals: To help start Local chapters - and a national organization - $25.00 membership fee - $15 for the local and $10 for the national - members have national certification as AP teachers - and work together to promote the program, scholarships and incentive grants. We will start a web journal with news of the AP program, a free web site for each local, and other benefits such as in other national associations. In the next few weeks we should have the web site going on go daddy. Local chapters can set up their own home pages - chat and boards - we want a cooperative effort.
APTO Will be a section 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that works with schools and the private sector to manage Advanced Placement™ (AP®) and Pre-AP® incentive programs for students, teachers and schools. The goal is to maximize the number of students who pass AP exams.
AP Incentive Programs™ throughout the State of Texas. These programs are modeled after a successful similar program designed and implemented by the O'Donnell Foundation in the Dallas area.
AP INCENTIVE PROGRAM IN THE DALLAS PUBLIC SCHOOLS
http://www.odf.org/ For AP Math, Science and English
• $1000 award for outstanding principals and counselors
• $100 bonus for each exam with a score 3 and over
AP SCHOOLS
• The full exam fee, $75, is reimbursed for each score of 3 and over
• $37 toward the cost of each AP exam
• $100 for each AP exam score of 3 and over
AP STUDENTS
• Vertical Teams Bonus Pool: $100 for AP scores of 3 and over
• $350 payment to attend College Board training
• $1000 annual salary supplement *
VERTICAL TEAM TEACHERS
• Teacher Bonus Pool: $100 for each AP exam score of 3 and over
• $350 payment to attend College Board training
• $2500 annual salary supplement *
AP TEACHERS * The salary supplement begins in year two and continues as long as the teacher makes satisfactory progress. Incentives are extra pay for extra work.
http://www.apstrategies.org/about_us.htm
http://www.apstrategies.org/ap_incentive_programs.htm
RE: Using funds for High Impact: Smarting up vs. dumbing down
Thinking about how private, foundation or public funds could have the most impact on the American Society. The question as in business, return on investment (ROI), is how to get the most bangs for the bucks. This is not an easy question since there are an infinite number of options and ROI is hard to measure for social action.
My suggestion involves the Advanced Placement Program (AP) at the educational testing service (ETS). I can’t think of any investment that has a higher ROI than education from a personal or social point of view. Better educated and smarter people make a smarter and better culture in the short and long run. Human resources are the most important infrastructure for our economy, our national defense, our civil society and our general welfare and happiness as well as helping improve the whole world. (I am serious)
The founding fathers often stressed the point of a valid civic culture being required for a democratic society, it is not possible to be both ignorant and free. (A lesson in international relations)
The AP program is the most important and maybe the only important reform in American Education since Horace Mann who promoted the concept of “public” schools and the public school movement, the land grant program Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 and A&M colleges, the blackboard, the school bus, and the GIs sent to college after WWII. AP sets a new tone and encourages academic performance in an anti-intellectual sports driven secondary school system. The high school curriculum was set in the Carnegie Commission in the 1890’s, Harvard’s Eliot “Committee of Ten, appointed in 1892 by the National Education Association” and then run by textbook publishers and teachers colleges and in general been dumbed down for decades.
Colleges now teach high school classes and remedial classes because the kids lack basic skills and knowledge when high school graduation does not assume basic literacy. The “No child left behind” is a useful stick but there needs to be more carrots. The school cultures need to change from just getting along with the lowest common dominator to true efforts at excellence. The example of Bronx Science is how a high quality program can make a major contribution to our civilization, not to mention Philips Academy , Horace Mann, Hunter College , Boston Latin, etc.
First, teachers of these classes should first and foremost pass the exams in their subjects at the 5 level. They should have 18 hours of college level work at 3.0 or better in the subject. They should get a nice supplement of 10% or more of their base salary. There is a critical shortage of math and science teachers who should get extra supplements. Since the teacher’s union will not allow this an external gift becomes necessary. The grant or gift could be tax free as a grant and tied to the number of AP classes taught and the number of student who actually pass the subject. http://nces.ed.gov/
Of the roughly 15 million high school students only 6.5% are candidates for AP or a million in 75,000 classes with about 50,000 more than 1/2 time AP teachers of the total of 100,000 AP teachers – with a supplement or grant of $5,000 per class or teacher who qualifies (has passed the exam themselves, where 75% of their students get 3 or better, and have 18hrs in their subject and teachers more than one AP class ) is $250 million, not an impossible number.
Setting up (Advanced Placement Teachers Organization) a non-profit to promote than run the grant program –
Strategy:
Crystallizing Public Opinion by Edward L. Bernays one of the founders of Public Relations and Advertising learned from his uncle Freud that the purely rational approach needed a hook or emotional catch to motivate people to action. If we just say this is a good idea and take the traditional academic approach maybe we get a pilot project or research grant. What we need is a movement or the appearance of a motivated organized group of true believers. In doing that there are professional experienced firms that know how to do what needs to be done, to get it moving, while most academics and educational administrators do not. The phonics movement has been at it for decades, with 1000’s of projects, tons of research and has made some progress. There has to be a better way.
I suggest several million (Gates, Carnegie, Ford The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation the usual suspects) for a public campaign to improve our economic competitiveness, our national security, and our social, political and cultural civilization. Most of the students in hard sciences graduate and undergraduate are foreigners and Orientals or both.
While there is unemployment, business has to recruit foreigners to fill critical technical and scientific jobs. These are emotional and political hooks that appeal across the conservative – liberal divide. The fact that quality education is elitist based on the fact that some students are better at hard academic subjects than others, some are more motivated and these students tend to come from families and communities with a tradition of professionalism. There are a few Booker T. Washington who was born into slavery or George Washington Carver who was born on a Missouri farm or Justice Thomas from the Pinpoint community, near Savannah, Georgia and much more should be done to find and encourage talent from deprived communities, these exceptional individuals will be a minority of outstanding students. We need a lot more people like Jaime Escalante, an immigrant from Bolivia who is now 75, who gained fame through the 1988 movie “Stand and Deliver.”
As part of an organized campaign of leading school superintends, great city schools, leading states and dynamic individuals should be identified for demonstration projects. They have to get agreement or bypass the NEA’s AFT’s objections to free labor markets, merit pay and radical reform in general. By making the incentive a grant or tax free gift it does not involve contract negotiations. Leading teachers are invited to summer workshops in pairs as used in the NSF National Defense education program after sputnik. Having the right kind of opposition can be a positive –
Looking for small central management for APTO around $100,000 including expenses
P.R. contract of a few million to top firm or firms (they need to develop their own proposals)
Demonstration contracts of a few million to high profile schools -
National and regional meeting of critical actors in association with the Governors and State legislative conferences, committee members and staff in congress, media events, paid academics for papers and reports, think tanks – both left and right – talk radio – NPR and PPS – ETS – etc. etc…
http://www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/ct0203/news0203-pushing.shtml
Spurred originally by the O'Donnell Foundation, others, including the Texas Instruments Foundation and retired PepsiCo president Roger Enrico, have joined the effort.
Last year 62 Jefferson students took courses to prepare for AP calculus, which, like other advanced placement classes, is a college-level course. Forty now take AP calculus. Trevino has a self-imposed goal: to see ten students pass the test. He is confident they can do the work. Each Jefferson student who passes an AP math or English test will receive $500 per test and could qualify for a $10,000 college scholarship, all donated by Enrico. Trevino would also receive $500 for each passing score. He and his fellow teachers, and ultimately their students, are also benefiting from extra training.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35616-2005Jan25.html
We will be providing AP at its best, to enable more colleges to raise their own standards," said Trevor Packer, executive director of the AP program, which is owned by the College Board, the nonprofit organization that also owns the SAT.
College Board President Gaston Caperton, a former governor of West Virginia, described the rapid growth of what began in 1955 as a small program designed to keep students at exclusive private schools and affluent neighborhood high schools from having to repeat in college the advanced course work they studied in high school.
High school students who take AP courses in any of 34 subjects have a chance to earn college credit, or at least to skip introductory college courses, by doing well on one of the three-hour AP exams. In 2004, Caperton said, 1.1 million students took about 2 million AP tests, more than double the number 10 years ago. The number of AP test-takers rivals the 1.4 million seniors who took the SAT last year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63182-2004Dec14.html
After two decades of observing the depth and power of college-level courses, including AP and International Baccalaureate (IB), in high school and the inferior teaching of the college introductory courses, I think Casement and many of his friends in academia need to take a much closer look at what is actually happening in high schools, and in their own college freshmen courses
Karl Rove & the Spectre of Freud’s Nephew
February 4th 2005
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized…”
So opens Propaganda (1928), one of several strikingly frank analyses of western social psychology written by Edward Bernays. This nephew of Sigmund Freud founded the public relations industry in the United States.
http://www.americanidealism.com/articles/karl-rove-and-the-spectre-of-freuds-nephew.html
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17791
Teachers Unions: Merit Pay is “Crazy”
