2008 October 31 Archive at The Core Knowledge Blog

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

The Fordham Foundation’s Checker Finn looks at the budget austerity facing U.S. schools in the new Education Gadfly, and the conventional wisdom that any reductions are bound to damage the quality of schooling. He lays out and skewers a half dozen arguments typically used to combat cuts:

We see signs of the “Washington Monument gambit,” i.e., the threat by the National Park Service that, if it doesn’t get more money, it won’t be able to keep one of the Capital’s foremost tourist attractions open for visitors. Its counterpart in public education is to say that, if we have to cut our budget, we’ll have to (take your pick) eliminate sports, increase class size, abbreviate the school year, scrap gifted education, end after-school programs, curb college counseling, close the school library, etc., etc. That’s how school systems think about budgets: in terms of “programs” and “services,” not efficiencies, productivity, or such tradeoffs as personnel versus technology.

The kicker comes at the end, when it’s revealed that Finn’s essay is a barely updated version of a previous piece he wrote five years ago–the last time there were widespread budget cuts.

Children who develop headaches while reading or who struggle to complete their homework may be sufferring from an under-diagnosed vision problem. As many as one of every 20 students have some degree of “CI” or “convergence insufficiency,” the AP reports. Standard vision screenings administered by schools won’t catch it, since such exams stress distance vision.

To bring print or other close-in work into focus, both eyes must turn slightly inward, or converge. Convergence insufficiency means the eyes aren’t doing that properly. Words may appear blurry or double, or disappear as readers lose their place. “Complaints are rare in very young children because pictures and large type don’t require as much convergence,” the AP notes. “Parents tend to start noticing a problem once homework and deeper reading begins.”