Starting Points: education

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Apr 8, 2010

Teaching About the Web Includes Troublesome Parts - NYTimes.com

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

MILPITAS, Calif. — When Kevin Jenkins wanted to teach his fourth-grade students at Spangler Elementary here how to use the Internet, he created a site where they could post photographs, drawings and surveys.

And they did. But to his dismay, some of his students posted surveys like “Who’s the most popular classmate?” and “Who’s the best-liked?”

Mr. Jenkins’s students “liked being able to express themselves in a place where they’re basically by themselves at a computer,” he said. “They’re not thinking that everyone’s going to see it.”

The first wave of parental anxiety about the Internet focused on security and adult predators. But that has since given way to concerns about how their children are acting online toward their friends and rivals, and what impression their online profiles might create in the minds of college admissions officers or future employers.

Incidents like the recent suicide of a freshman girl at South Hadley High School in Massachusetts after she was bullied online and at school have reinforced the notion that many children still seem unaware how the Internet can transform typical adolescent behavior — popularity contests, cliquish snubs, macho boasts, sexual flirtations, claims about drinking and drugs — into something not only public, but also permanent.

The South Hadley case is leading some states to re-examine their laws against bullying; while more than 40 states address the issue, they tend to focus on punishment, not prevention.

Image by Scott McLeod via Flickr

Mr. Jenkins this year began using lessons from Common Sense Media, which tries to teach students to consider their online behavior before they get into trouble.

Financed largely by foundation money, Common Sense will offer a free curriculum to schools this fall that teaches students how to behave online. New York City and Omaha have decided to offer it to their public schools; Denver, the District of Columbia, Florida, Los Angeles, Maine and Virginia are considering it.

“You want to light a fire under someone’s fanny?” said Liz Perle, editor in chief of Common Sense Media. “Have your child post something that is close to a hate crime.”

And the Internet is where children are growing up. The average young person spends seven and a half hours a day with a computer, television or smart phone, according to a January study from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Considering that the time is mostly outside of school, the results suggest that almost every extracurricular hour is devoted to online life.

Common Sense’s classes, based on research by Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychology and education professor, are grouped into topics he calls “ethical fault lines”: identity (how do you present yourself online?); privacy (the world can see everything you write); ownership (plagiarism, reproducing creative work); credibility (legitimate sources of information); and community (interacting with others).

Image by Spigoo via Flickr

Raquel Kusunoki, a sixth-grade teacher at Spangler, recently asked Mr. Jenkins, now an educational technology specialist for the school district, to teach Common Sense classes to her students. The class listened as Mr. Jenkins read a story about a girl who got annoyed when her parents quizzed her about details from her online journal.

Lucas Navarrete, 13, asked, “What’s their right to read her personal stuff?” adding, “They have no right!”

“Maybe they’re worried,” suggested Morgan Windham, a soft-spoken girl.

“It’s public!” argued Aren Santos.

“O.K., O.K., if it was a personal diary and they read it, would you be happy?” Lucas asked. “They have no right, see?”

Mr. Jenkins asked the class if there is a difference between a private diary on paper and a public online diary. But the class could not agree.

“I would just keep it to myself and tell only people that were really, really close to me,” Cindy Nguyen said after class. “We want to have our personal, private space.”

That blurred line between public and private space is what Common Sense tries to address.

“That sense of invulnerability that high school students tend to have, thinking they can control everything, before the Internet there may have been some truth to that,” said Ted Brodheim, chief information officer for the New York City Department of Education. “I don’t think they fully grasp that when they make some of these decisions, it’s not something they can pull back from.”

Common Sense bases all its case studies on real life, and insists on the students’ participation. “If you just stand up and deliver a lecture on intellectual property, it has no meaning for the kids,” said Constance M. Yowell, director of education for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which has provided financing.

But some media experts say that in focusing on social issues, Common Sense misses some of the larger, structural problems facing children online.

“We can’t make the awareness of Web issues solely person- and relationship-centered,” said Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Children should learn things like what a cookie or a Web virus is, and how corporations profit from tracking consumers online, he said.

In San Francisco, the Schools of the Sacred Heart, related boys’ and girls’ schools, met with parents earlier this year to discuss their Common Sense pilot program with Sister Anne Wachter, the head of the girls’ school.

“The messes they get into with friends, or jumping onto someone’s site and sending a message,” she said. “They don’t know, sometimes, how to manage the social, emotional stuff that comes up.”

Crowded into a basement math classroom, the parents listened to a teacher, Bill Jennings, discuss lessons he had been trying. In front of Sister Wachter and the parents, many of whom are Catholic, he gave an example of a social-networking message the girls might see about a new student: “Amy is a slut; her mom’s a whore.”

There was startled silence from the parents.

“If I came up with five scenarios for Maya, they’d probably be so far from that — they’re not calling someone’s mother a whore,” said Sheila Chatterjee, a parent of a seventh grader.

“But the language of that is what they hear,” Mr. Jennings said.

“It’s authentic,” Ms. Chatterjee agreed.

Shirin Oshidari, who has a son in seventh grade, said this lesson seemed obvious. “To me, it’s exactly how you behave person to person,” she said. “Everything you write, the college you want to go to, they will see it. And the job you want to get, they will see it.”

Jaime Dominguez, the head of the boys school, said: “The hard part is, as adults we see that connection. They don’t.”

Apr 6, 2010

Stupid Americans? Send Them to China | china/divide

by C. Custer on April 2, 2010

So says President Obama, who is working with Chinese officials to ensure that the US sends 100,000 students to China over the next four years. The number of Americans studying in China has been rising steadily on its own, but what is the point of this? That’s a vast generalization, of course, but take it from someone who spends all day every day with American kids — they know nothing about the world outside the US.

When I say “nothing” I want you to understand exactly what I mean, so here are some examples. I asked my students what language they speak in Australia. Less than half of them knew for sure, several thought “Australian”, and one of them said French. I asked them what continent China was on, and only around half of them got it right. Several of them wrote “China”. I could go on, but you’ve heard these statistics before. That’s because they are true. American students are woefully, woefully ignorant of the world outside their iPods.

As some of you know, I teach Chinese and History at a boarding school in New England, so my students tend to be privileged. They have grown up with more and better access to education than the average American. Many of them have traveled abroad with their parents before. By all accounts, they ought to be performing better than the average American on simple questions like the ones I asked them, which makes their abject failure even more worrisome. Obviously, my “study” was not at all scientific and my sample size far too small, but this is a blog, so I’m going to make the point anyway: Americans don’t know anything about other countries.

More worrisome than that, though (after all, as a teacher, isn’t that kind of my fault) is that at least among my students, I believe there is a complete lack of empathy for those outside the US’s borders, especially those in faraway places like Asia. Students act as though historical events were plot points in a movie, and their writing further betrays that conceptually speaking, they do not perceive the places we are talking about as real.

I probably don’t have to explain why that’s a problem in the long term. Now, maybe kids are all like this, or have always been like this. I wouldn’t know. But I do think I understand why Obama wants to send 100,000 Americans to China. They aren’t all going to come back speaking Chinese fluently, ready to join the CIA’s China analysts pushing desks in Virginia. But they are all going to come back with a real sense that there is a world outside the US. They’re going to come back with friends, business contacts, and experiences — real life experiences, not classroom knowledge — that turn the Sino-American policy debate into something that seems real and important. Say what you will about Obama, but at least when it comes to China, it seems like he’s not planning to throw the whole “mutual understanding” thing under the bus.

But I am extremely tired, and it’s possible this line of reasoning makes no sense, so, what do you think?

Mar 13, 2010

Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers

Image via Wikipedia

In no other profession are workers so insulated from accountability.

By Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert | NEWSWEEK

Published Mar 6, 2010

From the magazine issue dated Mar 15, 2010

The relative decline of American education at the elementary- and high-school levels has long been a national embarrassment as well as a threat to the nation's future. Once upon a time, American students tested better than any other students in the world. Now, ranked against European schoolchildren, America does about as well as Lithuania, behind at least 10 other nations. Within the United States, the achievement gap between white students and poor and minority students stubbornly persists—and as the population of disadvantaged students grows, overall scores continue to sag.

For much of this time—roughly the last half century—professional educators believed that if they could only find the right pedagogy, the right method of instruction, all would be well. They tried New Math, open classrooms, Whole Language—but nothing seemed to achieve significant or lasting improvements.

Yet in recent years researchers have discovered something that may seem obvious, but for many reasons was overlooked or denied. What really makes a difference, what matters more than the class size or the textbook, the teaching method or the technology, or even the curriculum, is the quality of the teacher. Much of the ability to teach is innate—an ability to inspire young minds as well as control unruly classrooms that some people instinctively possess (and some people definitely do not). Teaching can be taught, to some degree, but not the way many graduate schools of education do it, with a lot of insipid or marginally relevant theorizing and pedagogy. In any case the research shows that within about five years, you can generally tell who is a good teacher and who is not.

It is also true and unfortunate that often the weakest teachers are relegated to teaching the neediest students, poor minority kids in inner-city schools. For these children, teachers can be make or break. "The research shows that kids who have two, three, four strong teachers in a row will eventually excel, no matter what their background, while kids who have even two weak teachers in a row will never recover," says Kati Haycock of the Education Trust and coauthor of the 2006 study "Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality."

Nothing, then, is more important than hiring good teachers and firing bad ones. But here is the rub. Although many teachers are caring and selfless, teaching in public schools has not always attracted the best and the brightest. There once was a time when teaching (along with nursing) was one of the few jobs not denied to women and minorities. But with social progress, many talented women and minorities chose other and more highly compensated fields. One recent review of the evidence by McKinsey & Co., the management consulting firm, showed that most schoolteachers are recruited from the bottom third of college-bound high-school students. (Finland takes the top 10 percent.)

At the same time, the teachers' unions have become more and more powerful. In most states, after two or three years, teachers are given lifetime tenure. It is almost impossible to fire them. In New York City in 2008, three out of 30,000 tenured teachers were dismissed for cause. The statistics are just as eye-popping in other cities. The percentage of teachers dismissed for poor performance in Chicago between 2005 and 2008 (the most recent figures available) was 0.1 percent. In Akron, Ohio, zero percent. In Toledo, 0.01 percent. In Denver, zero percent. In no other socially significant profession are the workers so insulated from accountability. The responsibility does not just fall on the unions. Many principals don't even try to weed out the poor performers (or they transfer them to other schools in what's been dubbed the "dance of the lemons"). Year after year, about 99 percent of all teachers in the United States are rated "satisfactory" by their school systems; firing a teacher invites a costly court battle with the local union.

Over time, inner-city schools, in particular, succumbed to a defeatist mindset. The problem is not the teachers, went the thinking—it's the parents (or absence of parents); it's society with all its distractions and pathologies; it's the kids themselves. Not much can be done, really, except to keep the assembly line moving through "social promotion," regardless of academic performance, and hope the students graduate (only about 60 percent of blacks and Hispanics finish high school). Or so went the conventional wisdom in school superintendents' offices from Newark to L.A. By 1992, "there was such a dramatic achievement gap in the United States, far larger than in other countries, between socioeconomic classes and races," says Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality. "It was a scandal of monumental proportions, that there were two distinct school systems in the U.S., one for the middle class and one for the poor."

In the past two decades, some schools have sprung up that defy and refute what former president George W. Bush memorably called "the soft bigotry of low expectations." Generally operating outside of school bureaucracies as charter schools, programs like KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) have produced inner-city schools with high graduation rates (85 percent). KIPP schools don't cherry-pick—they take anyone who will sign a contract to play by the rules, which require some parental involvement. And they are not one-shot wonders. There are now 82 KIPP schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia, and, routinely, they far outperform the local public schools. KIPP schools are mercifully free of red tape and bureaucratic rules (their motto is "Work hard. Be nice," which about sums up the classroom requirements). KIPP schools require longer school days and a longer school year, but their greatest advantage is better teaching.

It takes a certain kind of teacher to succeed at a KIPP school or at other successful charter programs, like YES Prep. KIPP teachers carry cell phones so students can call them at any time. The dedication required makes for high burnout rates. It may be that teaching in an inner-city school is a little like going into the Special Forces in the military, a calling for only the chosen few.

Yet those few are multiplying. About 20 years ago, a Princeton senior named Wendy Kopp wrote her senior thesis proposing an organization to draw graduates from elite schools into teaching poor kids. Her idea was to hire them for just a couple of years, and then let them move on to Wall Street or wherever. Today, Teach for America sends about 4,100 grads, many from Ivy League colleges, into inner-city schools every year. Some (about 8 percent) can't hack it, but most (about 61 percent) stay in teaching after their demanding two-year tours. Two thirds of TFA's 17,000 alumni are still involved in education and have become the core of a reform movement that is having real impact. The founders of KIPP, Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, are TFA products. So is the most aggressive reformer in education today, Michelle Rhee, the education chancellor of the District of Columbia, who is trying to loosen the hold of the teachers' union on a school system that for years had the highest costs and worst results in the nation. (See following story.)

It is difficult to dislodge the educational establishment. In New Orleans, a hurricane was required: since Katrina, New Orleans has made more educational progress than any other city, largely because the public-school system was wiped out. Using nonunion charter schools, New Orleans has been able to measure teacher performance in ways that the teachers' unions have long and bitterly resisted. Under a new Louisiana law, New Orleans can track which ed schools produce the best teachers, forcing long-needed changes in ed-school curricula. (The school system of Detroit is just as broken as New Orleans's was before the storm—but stuck with largely the same administrators, the same unions, and the same number of kids, and it has been unable to make any progress.)

The teachers' unions—the National Education Association (3.2 million members) and the American Federation of Teachers (1.4 million members)—are major players in the Democratic Party at the national and local levels. So it is extremely significant—a sign of the changing times—that the Obama administration has taken them on. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is dangling money as an incentive for state legislatures to weaken the grip of the teachers' unions. To compete for $4.3 billion in federal aid under the Race to the Top program, states get extra points for getting rid of caps on the number of charter schools (a union favorite, since charter schools are often nonunion) and allowing student scores to be used in teacher evaluations. Measuring teacher performance based in part on the test scores of their pupils would seem to be a no-brainer. New Orleans uses student scores to measure teacher effectiveness. But it's prohibited by law for tenure decisions in states like New York, where the teachers' union has long been powerful.

It will take a quiet revolution to improve American schools. Some educational experts have noticed an uptick in the academic quality of new teachers, at least at the high-school level, possibly because the recession has limited other job opportunities. One of the unions, the AFT under Randi Weingarten, seems to realize that sheer obstructionism won't work. "One of the most hopeful things I've seen is that the union people don't want to spend so much time defending the not-so-good teachers anymore. I think the pressure of accountability is paying off," says Haycock of the Education Trust. "They know they will be held responsible if they are defending teachers who aren't any good."

Some teachers resent the reform movement as a bunch of elitists denigrating loyal and hardworking teachers—of whom, of course, there are many. But others welcome a boost in status that would come with higher standards. "You know, the Marine Corps never has any problem meeting its enlistment goals, because it's an elite corps, and people want to be part of something that is seen as the best," says Daniel Weisberg, general counsel of The New Teacher Project and coauthor of "The Widget Effect," a critique of teacher-evaluation programs. In Europe, where teachers enjoy more social prestige and higher salaries, schools have no trouble attracting new teachers with strong academic records.

Before the American public-education system can regain its lost crown as the envy of the world, local politicians and school administrators will have to step up. At Central Falls High School in Rhode Island, half the students drop out of school, and proficiency in math measured by state exams stands at a pitiful 7 percent among 11th graders. Under state pressure, the local superintendent, Frances Gallo, tried to improve scores by requiring teachers to work 25 minutes longer each a day, eat lunch with students once a week, and agree to be evaluated by a third party. The teachers, who make about $75,000 a year, far more than average in this depressed town, balked. They wanted another $90 an hour. So Gallo took a brave and astonishing step: she recommended firing all 74 teachers. Her boldness was praised by Education Secretary Duncan—and supported by President Obama. The teachers' union initially squawked that everyone was unfairly "blaming the teachers," but then last week backed off under a storm of media pressure and accepted the new rules requiring teachers to spend more time with the students.

The Central Falls High story was a notable breakthrough, but there is a long way to go. The media are beginning to root out the more outrageous examples: last year the Los Angeles Times ran a long series documenting the unwillingness of the education bureaucracy to fire bad teachers (like the one who told a student who attempted suicide to "carve deeper next time" and another who kept a stash of pornography and cocaine at school; both are still teaching). The Indianapolis Star reported how Lawrence Township schools had quietly laid off—with generous cash settlements and secrecy agreements—a teacher accused of sexually assaulting a student; another accused of touching students and taking photos of female students; another accused of kissing a high-school student; and a fourth with a 20-year history of complaints about injuring and harassing students, including a 1992 rape allegation. At the time the story ran last summer, all four teachers still held active teaching licenses. While these horror stories are sensational, what's also disturbing is the immunity enjoyed by the thousands of teachers who let down their students in more ordinary ways. Many more teachers are overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated. Maybe they'd get more respect if the truly bad teachers were let go.

With Eve Conant and Sam Register

Jan 23, 2010

Destruction of schools in Haiti quake crushes hopes of a better future for many

Image by Ucodep via Flickr

By William Booth and Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 23, 2010; A01

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Of the many things taken from this city by the earthquake, few are as threatening to Haiti's future as the near destruction of a school system viewed across society here as the only path to a better life.

Education is as precious as water in Haiti. The ruined capital was filled with parochial and secular schools built on the strict French model, many affordable even to the poorest parents, who struggled to pay a few dollars a week in tuition. Early each morning, legions of children in crisp uniforms marched through the city's trash-strewn streets to study mathematics, civics, science and a variety of languages, a sign of hope that endured through coups, foreign interventions and natural disasters.

Now there are no schools. Education officials here estimate that the quake erased thousands of campuses, and at least 75 percent of those in the capital lie in ruins. A grim census is underway to determine the loss of teachers and staff, hundreds of whom remain unaccounted for in heaps of blackboards, concrete, desks and notebooks that appear on almost every block.

Image by :) Ali via Flickr

"Without education, we have nothing," said Michel Renau, director of national exams at the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports, which itself is a rubble pile in the city center. "We've been set back very far. But if we pull ourselves together quickly, we'll go on."

The prevalence of schools here highlights their social importance. Nearly every block has one, with many meeting in multiple sessions into the evening. In the quake's aftermath, the debris-filled sites where they once stood are the places that smell the strongest of death. They were filled with children.

The Andre Malraux School once sat on a breezy hillside, and from its second-story classroom windows, a view of the capital spread out below like a promise of opportunity.

When the 7.0-magnitude quake hit, the second story collapsed, crushing as many as 30 students. Class bells had just rung five minutes before the earth rumbled, and most of the dead appear to have been lingering in one room, cramming in a few extra minutes of study to pass upcoming national exams needed to go on to college.

Image by St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral - Memphis via Flickr

"If you don't pass it, you will stay where your father is, you will be a mechanic or a cleaner," said Osse Jean Moreno, principal and owner of the school, a son and grandson of teachers, who opened Malraux in 1988 and has added classrooms whenever he has had a little extra money.

"School is life," said Exinor Emmanuel, the school's accountant and a former Malraux student. "To succeed in life, there is no other way in Haiti but school for the regular little boy or girl."

Now in rooms redolent of death from bodies lodged inside is a glimpse of the wider damage done to the education system and to the millions of Haitians who relied on it.

'By the grace of God'

About 40 teachers taught more than 1,000 students at Malraux, whose campus covered an area about the size of a tennis court. In the gathering dusk of Jan. 12, the third of three daily sessions prepared to enter the green steel gate and begin evening classes.

Stephanie Pierre, a 21-year-old who loved mathematics, walked up the small hill from the home she shared with 15 others. Many Haitians attend high school into their 20s, having begun late or had studies interrupted because they took jobs to help their families. Rosemary Pierre, a cousin and classmate, and her boyfriend, Romelus Daniel, walked with Stephanie.

As they reached the entrance, Rosemary and Romelus began arguing over something since forgotten, but their fight made her pause outside the gate. Stephanie entered the school on time.

Moments later, the ground buckled, and Rosemary fell dazed in the street. A cloud of dust rose from what had been the school. Her mind raced to Stephanie trapped inside.

"The argument, by the grace of God, saved me," said Rosemary, a rail-thin woman with a bright smile and eyes the size of silver dollars.

Within a two-block radius of Malraux, three other schools and a university were leveled by the quake. Two kindergartens, one advertised by a mural of Mickey Mouse, were badly damaged and might be too precarious to reopen.

Jean Baptiste Edme, who has taught French grammar at Malraux for 22 years, said he had just left the school at the 4:45 p.m. bell and was walking to his home, now destroyed, a few blocks away when the quake hit.

"We don't have any money, so the only thing we can offer the students is a little bit of education," said Edme, who has taught a generation of his neighbors how to conjugate verbs and now sleeps in the street. "That is our only reward."

The French teacher said residents, stunned and consumed with loss, did not enter the debris until early on the morning after the quake. Edme said they pulled seven survivors, all students, from inside, but the bodies of two dozen or more remain.

"They haven't even found her body yet," said Josette Pierre, 32, who began caring for Stephanie when the girl's aunt died two years ago. "There's many others in there, and we're just waiting. We want her to be buried."

Pierre traveled to the capital from Des Anglais 17 years ago to study. But she said she had to leave school to work, something she did reluctantly. Even today, she hopes to return to the classroom.

Her savings went to Stephanie, whom she described as a gentle prankster who hoped to be a doctor.

She helped Pierre work around the household, a usually raucous and joyful place that has fallen into mourning.

It was unclear who paid Stephanie's tuition, and chances are that after her aunt died and the payments stopped, the staff at Malraux looked the other way and allowed her to continue her studies for free.

A year's tuition at Malraux was about $100, although the school administrators often gave "scholarships" to the poorest students, letting them attend for as little as a few dollars a month. The principal said he has never received support from the Haitian government.

Rosemary's boyfriend, Romelus, a Western Union employee, paid her fees. He finished high school and wants Rosemary to do the same, saying, "It's just the right thing to do -- go to school."

But without a school to go to, Rosemary does not know what she will do. Like many here, she might retrace her family's path back to the provinces in the hope of finding shelter and work.

"I want to go, but I have no money," she said. "So for now, I'll live here with God's help."

No plans

The owner of Malraux and his teachers have no plans, either.

"We are waiting for someone to come with a big machine to move the rubble so we can take out the bodies," Moreno said.

He continued, "I am a school principal, and I have no big savings" to rebuild. Moreno doubted that he would find an investor because the school made so little money.

"We need schools for the hope they may bring," he said.

The education ministry sits behind a high wall in the city center, and on a recent day, Renau held a staff meeting with a handful of men in plastic chairs under the shade of broad-leafed trees. A legal pad rested in his lap, its pages filled with a growing to-do list.

Renau said ministry employees had fanned into the city to survey the damage to campuses and to begin tallying how many teachers and staff might have perished.

In addition, he said, other officials are trying to gather student records from the debris. He said those would be essential if the ministry attempts to send them outside the country for studies until the schools here are repaired. That could be years away.

The clanking of hammers scored the meeting. Behind him, men worked on the collapsed second story of the ministry building, tossing down filing cabinets and air-conditioning units into a rising pile of detritus.

"Maybe," Renau said, "there is a life to save in there."

Jan 17, 2010

Girls' academic hopes disrupted as family plans return to Afghanistan

Image via Wikipedia

By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 17, 2010; C01

When Hussna Azamy was 5, she began her schooling in the living room of her family's apartment in Herat, Afghanistan. Her only classmate was a sister; their teachers were their parents. For up to five hours a day, they studied the Dari alphabet, fundamentals of math and science, and how to read the Koran.

Hussna and her older sister, Farah, came of school age in Afghanistan in the 1990s, when it was forbidden to educate girls and most of the country's schools had been destroyed. They yearned to see the inside of an actual school.

Their aspirations became real after the Taliban fell in 2001, and later, they carried their academic dreams thousands of miles to a country with one of the world's most renowned education systems.

But after less than a year in the United States -- where Hussna, 17, and her younger sister, Tamana, 13, quickly became A students in Prince William County schools -- the family plans to return to Afghanistan. Their father wants to help rebuild his country, work he has been unable to find here.

The girls, given a taste of American education, do not want to leave. They are afraid to entrust their ambitions to a system that is still vulnerable and far behind.

"I cry sometimes alone at night, sometimes with my sisters," said Hussna, a junior at Gar-Field High School in Woodbridge and an aspiring computer scientist. She worries that her lessons in Afghanistan will not be as up-to-date as those here or, worse, that girls might again be barred from schools.

Three decades of war left Afghanistan's schools in shambles, and many of its people are illiterate. Since the fall of the Taliban, the country has made strides in rebuilding, with help from foreign governments and international charities. There were 700,000 boys enrolled in primary or secondary schools in Afghanistan in 2001, according to Ministry of Education estimates. Since then, enrollment has swelled to about 7 million students, and 37 percent are female.

In recent years, the resurgence of the Taliban has brought fresh threats to the education of girls, particularly in rural areas in southern and eastern Afghanistan. But aid workers and analysts say the overwhelming demand for education and the momentum girls have achieved will continue.

The Azamys lived in Herat, a city in western Afghanistan, near the Iranian border. In 2001, the girls returned to school, donning black clothes and white head scarves to join hundreds of other girls at long tables under a big tent before moving into a renovated school building next door.

Each day, they checked around their desks for bombs and handed over their bags to be searched. Their mother, Farzana Azamy, walked them to and from school each day and worried for their safety in the hours they were away. But the girls enjoyed school and excelled in their studies.

Farah, now 21, received top marks on a grueling national college entrance exam, and in 2008, she became one of an elite group of Afghan women to enroll in a public university to study medicine.

She dropped out soon after she began college, though, because the family was preparing to move to the United States. The Azamys had long sought to join relatives in Virginia and to live far from bomb blasts in a place with good schools.

After years of waiting, their visas were issued by the U.S. consulate in spring 2008, and their departure seemed imminent. But paperwork continued to drag on. The family put schooling and jobs on hold and waited in Kabul and then Islamabad for a year before they could leave.

Last May, they moved in with a relative in Woodbridge, and their father, Ahmad Zahid Azamy, 46, began to look for work. The college-educated Azamy had spent nearly eight years working for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. He traveled the country monitoring conflicts, human rights violations and the piecemeal development of local government institutions. He hoped to find related work in the United States as an adviser or researcher for one of the many Washington-based organizations focused on Afghanistan.

"I have done a lot for Afghanistan," he said. "I have this view that I can still do a lot . . . for peace in my country."

He was still unemployed in September when his family rented a townhouse in Woodbridge, spending savings accumulated over many years. Hussna and Tamana enrolled in school.

High school, U.S.-style

American high school was overwhelming and exciting for Hussna. Teachers helped her navigate the enormous building between periods, when hallways swarmed with students. She learned what it meant to be "tardy" and how to follow a schedule marked with blue days and red days.

She traded her head scarf and black clothes for brightly colored sweaters, jeans and sneakers. And she quickly adjusted to American-style education, with lots of student interaction.

Although not yet fluent in English, Hussna was bored at first by her courses, which included basic math and science, with extra help from an English teacher. Her teachers noticed her abilities, and within a few weeks she was enrolled in the school's rigorous International Baccalaureate courses for biology and advanced algebra.

One morning this month, she was surrounded by the bubbling sound of fish tanks in biology lab. The teacher divided the class into teams and asked them to draw pictures of the various stages of photosynthesis and respiration. Hussna grabbed a marker and began to sketch the Krebs cycle.

She easily explained to her classmates how the chemical reactions happen, ultimately yielding energy and carbon dioxide. Some students stared wide-eyed as she talked. One mumbled: "Wow. Someone who knows what she is talking about."

Biology teacher James Nolan said Hussna often takes the lead in class. "She has set the curve on a few tests already," he said.

Her report cards have been filled with A's, and an assistant principal said she should be considered for the school's gifted program.

But as she and her younger sister blossom at school, her family is struggling at home.

Farah had hoped to enroll in community college and eventually pursue a medical degree. But her family has no car and no money to pay for tuition. So she spends long days at home, listening to music and quizzing herself from a geometry textbook.

A father's frustrations

Her father spends his days worrying about money and watching the news from Afghanistan. "It's nearly one year now that I am jobless," he said.

He described a frustrating job search, filled with unreturned calls and e-mails and promises of help from former employers in Afghanistan that did not materialize.

His relatives here have found jobs in banks or driving taxicabs. But he does not want work that is unrelated to his expertise about Afghanistan, knowledge that he thinks is critical to this country's security. His job worries have been compounded by health problems that he and his wife could not afford to have treated here. Finally, this winter, he decided that the family should go back.

The plan is to move to Kabul, and to move soon, so Farah, after a two-year hiatus, can enroll again in college before the next term begins in March.

The father is deeply disappointed to be starting over again, but he hopes that his daughters will find new academic opportunities and that he will be able to support his family. Kabul is home to the country's flagship public university, which is undergoing extensive rebuilding.

There is also the recently opened American University, a private school that offers scholarships and computer science degrees.

The decision has pitted him against all the women in his family, who want somehow to stay. But they are slowly preparing to go.

Hussna has begun telling her teachers that soon she will be gone. "I know that we can't stay here," she said.

Poor schooling slows anti-terrorism effort in Pakistan

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By Griff Witte
Sunday, January 17, 2010; A18

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN -- With a curriculum that glorifies violence in the name of Islam and ignores basic history, science and math, Pakistan's public education system has become a major barrier to U.S. efforts to defeat extremist groups here, U.S. and Pakistani officials say.

Western officials tend to blame Islamic schools, known as madrassas, for their role as feeders to militant groups, but Pakistani education experts say the root of the problem is the public schools in a nation in which half of adults cannot sign their own name. The United States is hoping an infusion of cash -- part of a $7.5 billion civilian aid package -- will begin to change that, and in the process alter the widespread perception that Washington's only interest in Pakistan is in bolstering its military.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

But according to education reform advocates here, any effort to improve the system faces the reality of intense institutional pressure to keep the schools exactly the way they are. They say that for different reasons, the most powerful forces in Pakistan, including the army, the religious establishment and the feudal landlords who dominate civilian politics, have worked against improving an education system that for decades has been in marked decline.

"If the people get education, the elite would be threatened," said Khadim Hussain, coordinator of the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy and a professor at Islamabad's Bahria University. "If they make education available, the security establishment's ideology may be at risk."

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

That ideology, Hussain said, involves the belief that non-Muslim nations are out to destroy Pakistan and that the army is the only protection Pakistanis have from certain annihilation. Those notions are emphasized at every level in the schools, with students focused on memorizing the names of Pakistan's military heroes and the sayings of the prophet Muhammad, but not learning the basics of algebra or biology, he said.

The nature of the education system is reflected in popular attitudes toward the Taliban, al-Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups that in recent months have carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Pakistan, many of them targeting civilians.

Although the groups in many cases have publicly asserted responsibility for the attacks, a large percentage of the population here refuses to believe that Muslims could be responsible for such horrific crimes, choosing to believe that India, Israel or the United States is behind the violence. When Hussain challenges graduate-level students for proof, they accuse him of being part of the plot, he said.

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"Telling students they need to use evidence and logic means that you are definitely an agent of India, Israel and the CIA," he said. "They don't understand what evidence is."

The madrassas have multiplied in Pakistan as public education has deteriorated. But madrassas still educate only about 1.5 million students a year, compared with more than 20 million in public schools. If Pakistan is to improve its dismal literacy rate and provide marketable skills to more of the estimated 90 million Pakistanis under the age of 18, it will have to start in the public schools.

The United States plans to spend $200 million here this year on education, the U.S. Agency for International Development's largest education program worldwide. The money comes from the Kerry-Lugar aid bill, which was passed in late 2009 and promises Pakistan $7.5 billion in civilian assistance over the next five years.

The funds are intended to signal a substantial shift from earlier years, when U.S. assistance to Pakistan was overwhelmingly focused on helping the military, which is battling the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the nation's northwest.

U.S. officials say the money will be spent on a combination of programs, including infrastructure improvements, teacher training and updates to the curriculum. Unlike in past years, the money will not be filtered through non-governmental organizations and contractors but will be given directly to Pakistan's government, officials say.

The idea is to improve the capacity of the nation's fledgling civilian-led administration, and to promote trust between the two nations.

But there is also the risk that without adequate monitoring, much of the money will go to waste.

Pakistan's current spending on education -- less than 3 percent of its budget -- is anemic, and far lower on a relative basis than in India or even Bangladesh. Much of it never reaches students.

Pakistan's public education system includes thousands of "ghost schools," which exist on paper and receive state funding. But in reality, the schools do not function: A local landlord gets the money, and either pockets it or dispenses it to individuals who are on the books as teachers, but in fact are associates or relatives who do nothing to earn their salaries. School buildings are often used for housing farmworkers or livestock, not for education.

Those buildings that do operate lack basic facilities -- a 2006 government study found that more than half do not have electricity and 40 percent have no bathrooms. About a third of students drop out by the fifth grade. Teachers, meanwhile, earn as little as $50 a month, less in many cases than that of a domestic servant. The low pay mirrors teachers' perceived value in Pakistani society.

"The social status of teachers is low, compared with other professions," said Rehana Masrur, dean of the education department at Allama Iqbal Open University in Islamabad. "If someone is doing nothing and has no future, people say, 'Why doesn't he become a teacher?' "

Top government officials have little incentive to change that, experts here say. Although the vast majority of Pakistanis must choose between the public schools or madrassas for their children, Pakistan's well-to-do can send their kids to private schools, many of which are considered world-class.

Javed Ashraf Qazi, a former Pakistani education minister, said the United States has not helped by frittering away much of its assistance budget on poorly defined programs, such as conflict-resolution training, which he said leave no enduring impact. What Pakistan really needs, he said, is a network of vocational training institutes that can prepare students for the workplace.

"What would help is something that is lasting," he said. "The U.S. is spending more money, but spending it in a way that it does not leave any impact."

But Pervez Hoodbhoy, a noted nuclear physicist at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University and a longtime proponent of education reform, said Pakistan needs something more fundamental.

"I don't think it's a matter of money. The more you throw at the system, the faster it leaks out," he said. "There has to be a desire to improve. The U.S. can't create that desire. When Pakistanis feel they need a different kind of education system, that's when it will improve."

Dec 4, 2009

US Teacher Deported from Burma

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December 3, 2009

Irrawaddy News: An American English teacher working for the American Center in Rangoon was deported on Saturday, according to a source close to the US Embassy in Rangoon who spoke to The Irrawaddy on conditions of anonymity.

Christina Peterson was briefly detained at a highway bus station in Rangoon on her way back from the American Consulate in Mandalay, where she had given a talk on environmental issues. Some members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) also participated in the talk, according to the source.

“She just talked about environmental issues in Mandalay. The moment she got off the bus in Rangoon, she was immediately taken to the airport and wasn’t even allowed to go back to her room,” the source said.

Drake Weisert, Assistant Public Affairs Officer of the US Embassy in Rangoon, confirmed the news but declined to give details, citing privacy reasons.

Peterson had been working for the American Center in Rangoon as an English teacher since 2007, and she was also an organizer of an environmental club for the center. The American Center provides English language courses and runs a library popular among young people in Rangoon.

Last May, US citizens Jerry Redfern and his wife Karen Coates, who were teaching feature writing and photography in Mandalay, were also forced to leave the country.

Nov 16, 2009

China Is Sending More Students to U.S. - NYTimes.com

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By TAMAR LEWIN

American universities are enrolling a new wave of Chinese undergraduates, according to the annual Open Doors report.

While India was, for the eighth consecutive year, the leading country of origin for international students — sending 103,260 students, a 9 percent increase over the previous year — China is rapidly catching up, sending 98,510 last year, a 21 percent increase.

“I think we’re going to be seeing 100,000 students from each for years to come, with an increasing share of them being undergraduates,” said Peggy Blumenthal, executive vice president of the Institute of International Education, which publishes the report with support from the State Department.

Over all, the number of international students at colleges and universities in the United States increased by 8 percent to an all-time high of 671,616 in the 2008-9 academic year — the largest percentage increase in more than 25 years, according to the report.

With the current recession, the influx of international students has been especially important to the American economy, according to Allan E. Goodman, president of the institute.

“International education is domestic economic development,” Mr. Goodman said. “International students shop at the local Wal-Mart, rent rooms and buy food. Foreign students bring $17.8 billion to this country. A lot of campuses this year are increasing their international recruitment, trying to keep their programs whole by recruiting international students to fill their spaces.”

The number of international students exceeded the past peak enrollment year, 2002-3, by 14.5 percent. In 2008-9, undergraduate enrollment rose 11 percent, compared with only a 2 percent increase in graduate enrollment.

In China, that shift has been quite sharp. Last year, China sent 26,275 undergraduates and 57,451 graduate students to the United States — compared with 8,034 undergraduates and 50,976 graduate students five years earlier.

Ms. Blumenthal said the growing share of undergraduates would change the face of the Chinese students’ presence in the United States.

“It used to be that they were all in the graduate science departments, but now, with the one-child policy, more and more Chinese parents are taking their considerable wealth and investing it in that one child getting an American college education,” she said. “There’s a book getting huge play in China right now explaining liberal arts education.”

The book, “A True Liberal Arts Education,” by three Chinese undergraduates from Bowdoin College, Franklin & Marshall College and Bucknell University, describes the education available at small liberal arts colleges, and the concept of liberal arts, both relatively unknown in China.

Meanwhile, many large public universities are devoting new resources to building up their share of international undergraduates. The State University of New York, for example, recently made Mitch Leventhal the vice chancellor for global affairs. Mr. Leventhal, who at the University of Cincinnati helped build a network of ties abroad, expects to increase undergraduate recruiting, especially in India and China.

“There’s growing disposable income in China, and not enough good universities to meet the demand,” he said. “And in China, especially, studying in the United States is a great differentiator, because when students get home, they speak English.”

Although the report tracks only the 2008-9 numbers, a smaller survey by the institute last month found that over all, the increase in international students seems to be continuing, with China remaining strong. Of the institutions surveyed this fall, 60 percent reported an increase in Chinese students, and only 11 percent a decline. In contrast, the number of institutions reporting increases in their enrollment of Indian students equaled the number reporting declines.

The survey also found continuing growth this year in the number of students from the Middle East, and continuing declines in the numbers from Japan.

Oct 19, 2009

More schools experimenting with digital textbooks - washingtonpost.com

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Digital texts gaining favor, but critics question quality

By Ashley Surdin
Monday, October 19, 2009

AGOURA HILLS, CALIF. -- The dread of high school algebra is lost here amid the blue glow of computer screens and the clickety-clack of keyboards.

A fanfare plays from a speaker as a student passes a chapter test. Nearby, a classmate watches a video lecture on ratios. Another works out an equation in her notebook before clicking on a multiple-choice answer on her screen.

Their teacher at Agoura High School, Russell Stephans, sits at the back of the room, watching as scores pop up in real time on his computer grade sheet. One student has passed a level, the data shows; another is retaking a quiz.

"Whoever thought this up makes life so much easier," Stephans says with a chuckle.

This textbook-free classroom is by no means the norm, but it may be someday. Slowly, but in increasing numbers, grade schools across the country are supplementing or substituting the heavy, expensive and indelible hardbound book with its lighter, cheaper and changeable cousin: the digital textbook.

Also known as a flexbook because of its adaptability, a digital textbook can be downloaded, projected and printed, and can range from simple text to a Web-based curriculum embedded with multimedia and links to Internet content. Some versions must be purchased; others are "open source" -- free and available online to anyone.

Some praise the technology as a way to save schools money, replace outdated books and better engage tech-savvy students. Others say most schools don't have the resources to join the digital drift, or they question the quality of open-source content.

Hardbound books still dominate the $7 billion U.S. textbook market, with digital textbooks making up less than 5 percent, according to analyst Kathy Mickey of Simba Information, a market research group.

But that is changing, as K-12 schools follow the lead of U.S. universities and schools in other countries, including South Korea and Turkey. In Florida's Broward County, students and teachers log online to access digital versions of their Spanish, math and reading books. In Arizona, classes at one Vail School District high school are conducted entirely with laptops instead of textbooks. And in Virginia this year, state officials and educators unveiled a free physics flexbook to complement textbooks.

California's experiment

California made the largest embrace of digital textbooks this summer when it approved 10 free high school math and science titles developed by college professors and the CK-12 Foundation, a Palo Alto-based nonprofit aimed at lowering the cost of educational materials. The titles were approved as meeting at least 90 percent of California's academic standards, with the state leaving the choice to use them up to individual schools.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) hopes they will. His digital textbook initiative is meant to cut costs in the severely cash-strapped state. (Given that the average textbook costs $100, he argued, the state could save $400 million if its 2 million high school students used digital math and science texts.) The initiative also aims to replace aging hardbound books that don't teach students about the Iraq war, the country's first black president or the Human Genome Project.

"The textbooks are outdated, as far as I'm concerned, and there's no reason why our schools should have our students lug around these antiquated and heavy and expensive books," Schwarzenegger said this summer. "Digital textbooks are good not only for the students' achievement, but they're also good for the schools' bottom line."

California public and private schools spent more than $633 million on textbooks in 2007, making the state the biggest spender nationwide, according to the latest data from the Association of American Publishers. Schools in Texas spent $375 million; in New York, $264 million. The District spent $13.9 million.

Controlling costs?

Concerns over costs prompted Congress to pass legislation last year that requires publishers to disclose the price of textbooks when they sell them to teachers. It also ends a practice in which publishers sell books and supplemental materials together, driving up costs. Several states have passed similar legislation.

But some dispute the idea that digital textbooks -- even open-source versions -- will be cheaper for states, at least right away, or improve education quality.

"Keep in mind that with open-source materials, you have to ask, 'Where are they coming from?' " said Jay Diskey, executive director of the Association of American Publishers' school division. "Is it a trusted source? Is it aligned to state standards? Is it based on real research?"

Diskey said traditional textbooks offer a comprehensive curriculum, while some open-source texts provide only bits and pieces. "There can be quite a difference of content and accuracy," he said. "In many cases, you get what you pay for."

Textbook publishers face losing business as free Internet content expands. But Diskey blames the recession, not free digital books, for any fiscal hardships facing the industry. "We don't think budgets are being cut because of open-source materials," he said.

A lack of digital resources

Schools using digital texts say it's too soon to tell how much money they may be saving. As critics point out, long-term fiscal benefits require upfront resources that many schools lack: money, teacher training, bandwidth to support Internet multimedia and, most critically, computers.

The majority of households have personal computers and Internet access, according to a 2005 report from the Census Bureau, but access declines with income. And U.S. schools on average have roughly one computer for every four students, according to 2005 data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

"It's going to be a bit of a challenge for schools throughout the country to implement this new technology," said David Sanchez, president of the California Teachers Association. "How do you guarantee all children have access to that kind of textbook?"

Glen Thomas, California's education secretary, questions whether digital textbooks require a computer for every child. "This initiative is not about hardware," he said. "I visited a classroom where there were a couple kids using laptops, several had textbooks, some had a couple chapters printed out, and the lesson was displayed on a screen in front of the class."

For now, it appears that digital textbooks are largely a school-by-school, teacher-by-teacher choice. But converts such as Stephans of Agoura High School are quick to encourage more.

"If there was a list of math teachers who would have signed up for this, I would have been at the bottom," said Stephans, who hesitantly agreed to pilot the textbook-free class this year. To educators considering the digital possibilities, he now says: "What are you waiting for?"

Sep 20, 2009

Eager Students Fall Prey to Apartheid’s Legacy - NYTimes.com

Image by JP-Flanigan via Flickr

By CELIA W. DUGGER

KHAYELITSHA, South Africa — Seniors here at Kwamfundo high school sang freedom songs and protested outside the staff room last year because their accounting teacher chronically failed to show up for class. With looming national examinations that would determine whether they were bound for a university or joblessness, they demanded a replacement.

“We kept waiting, and there was no action,” said Masixole Mabetshe, who failed the exams and who now, out of work, passes the days watching TV.

The principal of the school, Mongezeleli Bonani, said in an interview that there was little he could do beyond giving the teacher a warning. Finally the students’ frustration turned riotous. They threw bricks, punched two teachers and stabbed one in the head with scissors, witnesses said.

The traumatized school’s passing rate on the national exams known as the matric — already in virtual free fall — tumbled to just 44 percent.

Thousands of schools across South Africa are bursting with students who dream of being the accountants, engineers and doctors this country desperately needs, but the education system is often failing the very children depending on it most to escape poverty.

Post-apartheid South Africa is at grave risk of producing what one veteran commentator has called another lost generation, entrenching the racial and class divide rather than bridging it. Half the students never make it to 12th grade. Many who finish at rural and township schools are so ill educated that they qualify for little but menial labor or the ranks of the jobless, fueling the nation’s daunting rates of unemployment and crime.

“If you are in a township school, you don’t have much chance,” said Graeme Bloch, an education researcher at the Development Bank of Southern Africa. “That’s the hidden curriculum — that inequality continues, that white kids do reasonably and black kids don’t really stand a chance unless they can get into a formerly white school or the small number of black schools that work.”

South Africa’s new president, Jacob Zuma, bluntly stated that the “wonderful policies” of the government led by his party, the African National Congress, since the end of apartheid 15 years ago, “have not essentially led to the delivery of quality education for the poorest of the poor.”

Scoring at Bottom

Despite sharp increases in education spending since apartheid ended, South African children consistently score at or near rock bottom on international achievement tests, even measured against far poorer African countries. This bodes ill for South Africa’s ability to compete in a globalized economy, or to fill its yawning demand for skilled workers.

And the wrenching achievement gap between black and white students persists. Here in the Western Cape, only 2 out of 1,000 sixth graders in predominantly black schools passed a mathematics test at grade level in 2005, compared with almost 2 out of 3 children in schools once reserved for whites that are now integrated, but generally in more affluent neighborhoods.

“If you say 3 times 3, they will say 6,” said Patrine Makhele, a math teacher at Kwamfundo here in this overwhelmingly black township, echoing the complaint of colleagues who say children get to high school not knowing their multiplication tables.

South Africa’s schools are still struggling with the legacy of the apartheid era, when the government established a separate “Bantu” education system that deliberately sought to make blacks subservient laborers. Hendrik Verwoerd, the prime minister who was the architect of apartheid, said “Bantu” must not be subjected to an education that shows him “the green pastures of European society in which he was not allowed to graze.”

The struggle against apartheid dismantled the discredited structures of authority in education that Mr. Zuma’s government is now seeking to replace with a new approach to accountability. In those years, the African National Congress sought to make the nation — and its schools — ungovernable. Supervisors — part of an “inspectorate” that enforced a repressive order — were chased out of the schools, as were many principals.

Mary Metcalfe, who was the A.N.C.’s first post-apartheid education minister in the province that includes Johannesburg, recalled principals in Soweto being forcibly marched out of the township. After apartheid ended, Ms. Metcalfe, recently appointed director general in the country’s Higher Education Ministry, said there was a grab for “power and jobs and money.”

Most teachers in South Africa’s schools today got inferior educations under the Bantu system, and this has seriously impaired their ability to teach the next generation, analysts say. Teachers are not tested on subject knowledge, but one study of third-grade teachers’ literacy, for example, found that the majority of them scored less than 50 percent on a test for sixth graders.

But South Africa’s schools also have problems for which history cannot be blamed, including teacher absenteeism, researchers say. And then when teachers are in school, they spend too little time on instruction. A survey found that they taught for a little over three hours a day, rather than the five expected, with paperwork consuming too many hours. Mr. Zuma noted that this deficiency was worse in poor and working-class communities.

“We must ask ourselves to what extent teachers in many historically disadvantaged schools unwittingly perpetuate the wishes of Hendrik Verwoerd,” he recently told a gathering of principals, implicitly challenging the powerful South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, which is part of the governing alliance.

As South Africa has invested heavily in making the system fairer, the governing party made some serious mistakes, experts say. The new curriculum was overly sophisticated and complex. Teacher colleges were closed down, without adequate alternatives. The teachers’ union too often protected its members at the expense of pupils, critics say.

“We have the highest level of teacher unionization in the world, but their focus is on rights, not responsibilities,” Mamphela Ramphele, former vice chancellor of the University of Cape Town, said in a recent speech.

South Africa’s new education minister, Angie Motshekga, said in an interview that a lack of accountability had weakened the whole system.

“There’s a complete breakdown,” said Ms. Motshekga, a former high school history teacher.

Teacher vacancies commonly go unfilled for months, she said. Principals cannot select the teachers in their schools or discipline them for absenteeism.

Ms. Motshekga said she had Mr. Zuma’s strong backing to give principals greater authority, and would also seek to change the law so the education department could pick principals directly — and hold them accountable.

“The president said to me, ‘Minister, immediately look at the powers of principals,’ ” she said.

Here in the Western Cape, where the opposition Democratic Alliance recently came to power, the province is considering monitoring teachers’ attendance by having them send text messages or e-mail messages — in response to an electronic query — to confirm they are present.

“We’ve got to get discipline back in schools,” said Donald Grant, the provincial education minister.

Discipline for Teachers

Kwamfundo Secondary School illustrates just how critical an effective principal and disciplined teachers are to student achievement — and how quickly a school’s success can crumble if they are lacking.

For much of this decade, Kwamfundo was led by Luvuyo Ngubelanga, a commanding man admired by students and teachers alike for his strict insistence on punctuality, his work ethic and his faith in them. He prowled the corridors of the yellow brick school, poking his head in classrooms and collaring misbehaving students, making them pick up litter, sweep the halls or clean the bathrooms.

Mr. Ngubelanga, who now runs a vocational college, said most teachers are dedicated, but some could “be naughty like kids.” He recalled finding a classroom packed with students and tracking down its AWOL teacher loafing at the back of another class.

In his years as principal, 75 to 82 percent of students passed the matric, a set of examinations given to seniors that shape their life chances. But the school has struggled since he was succeeded by his deputy, Mr. Bonani. The matric passing rate plunged to 65 percent in 2007 and 44 percent last year.

Teachers and students describe Mr. Bonani as a far less forceful presence, though he says he is engaged and active. Teacher absenteeism has been a major problem.

“There’s a lot of teachers who take sick leave,” said one teacher, who asked not to be named, as it would jeopardize his ability to work with colleagues. “They are not punctual in the morning. How do we expect learners to behave if we do not behave?”

Hungry for Knowledge

Despite last year’s violent episode, students seem to feel genuine affection for their school and speak of their hunger for knowledge and their faith in education to bring a better life.

The classroom itself, No. 12A, seemed shaken awake one recent first period as 52 seniors lifted their voices in harmony. Tall, lanky young men at the back of the room pounded out a driving beat on their backpacks in a morning ritual of song and rhythm.

Even when they realized the science teacher was absent, the student body president and his sidekick, a radiantly optimistic AIDS orphan, rose to lead a review session on evolution. And when the second-period English teacher was late, they just kept on talking about Darwin’s finches and genetic mutations.

“Quiet!” exclaimed Olwethu Thwalintini, 18, the student leader. “Can I have your attention, please. Exercise 2.1.”

Murmuring voices and shuffling papers fell silent.

“List two environmental factors which make it possible for the vertebrates to move onto land,” said Blondie Mangco, 17, the sidekick, whose mother died during final exams last year.

Blondie has barely passing grades in physical science, but she believes she will somehow raise them to A’s or B’s, win entrance to the university of her dreams and become an environmentalist, a doctor or a biomedical scientist. Now that her parents and big sister are dead of AIDS, she feels a duty to be a role model to her little brother.

“He’s looking up to me now,” she said.

Later that day, Arthur Mgqweto, a math teacher, strode into the classroom, jauntily wearing a township take on the fedora called a square. He teaches more than 200 students each day for a salary of $15,000 a year. His students describe him as a friend, a mother, a father, a guide.

“He comes early every, every, every day,” Blondie said. “He comes here early at 7 o’clock and he’s the last one to leave. He’s given himself to us.”

Mr. Mgqweto grew up in the countryside during the apartheid years, ashamed to go to school because he had no shoes. He finished high school in his 30s, sitting in class with children half his age. His only son was stabbed to death at age 21 in a nearby township.

“I always explain to them, life is very hard,” he said. “They must get educated so they can take care of their families when they grow old.”

His students bake chocolate cakes with him on their birthdays. Dozens come an hour early on weekdays and for Saturday morning sessions with him. He is paid nothing for those extra hours, except in their gratitude.

“I love that teacher,” said Olwethu, the student leader. “I love him.”