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But the ed schools and k-12 institutions are still run by people who are subconsciously prejudiced against mathematics and science. They may think, for example that all classes should be the same length (of time), but these are really hard subjects that take more time to learn. What they really require is contemplation. You can’t rush this. TIMMS showed that American students’ perfomance dropped between 4th and 10th grade from among the best for industrialized nations, to among the worst. Perhaps as problematically, the American students self-rated their mathematics and science knowledge as very strong before they got “spanked” by their international counterparts.

El Dorado wasn’t the school I had in mind, nor was Mr. Legleiter that teacher – although I have oodles of respect for him.

Your caricature of all math & science teachers as unqualified and of substandard intelligence was offensive to those professionals who are very highly qualified. You dug far enough to find the outstanding Mr. Legleiter; there are other science teachers in the state who are just as professional.

But I was really, really good in lab. There was a history of students “dry labbing”, e.g. purchasing finished-product organic compounds. So the professor looked at my incongruity and decided to slip me a phony starting compound. I produced this gooey stuff, when other students were getting flakes. I alerted my TA, “I don’t know, this isn’t working.” I got an A in lab, because the only way to get gooey stuff was to do the laboratory procedures superbly. The professor and graduate assistant learned I wasn’t cheating. I was flunking lecture exams because I wasn’t studying enough, and I wasn’t cheating to cover up my study deficiencies. I was excelling in lab, because I had years of doing chemistry experiments at home, using chemicals that ordinary people can’t buy today, thanks to 9/11 “national security measures” that have the unintended consequence of dumbing down some really smart young experimentalists.

There was also a case of a Berkeley student who scaled 8 stories to break into the chem department office, in order to procure a test. This was in the 70’s long before free-climbing became popular. He was given an “F”, but he’s probably doing well now, somewhere. Some kinds of cheating that involve extraordinary skill and creativity, are worthy of admiration. Buying papers off the internet isn’t one of them.

I wish that were true, Patrick, but you might surprised at how far some people get with primarily paper qualifications. For Exhibit A, I give you former Vice President Dan Quayle (those with a little money can buy degrees online; those with a lot of money can buy them at Yale! :-).

As a civil libertarian, I share your concerns about due process, but you don’t often hear of the wrongly accused getting sanctioned. In any event, that’s an argument for being more careful, not for abandoning the policy.

If want to go to law or med school, or a competitive-admission MBA program, this can matter. If you just want a degree, it may not as much, but again, even here, “C’s” can go to a “D’s” with curve grading. Cheating does hurt honest students. I have a non-cheating child who found that out the hard way at a major university.

I find it insulting. I’m 27 years old and I’ve never cheated on a single assignment in school. There are several reasons:

1.) It’s dangerous, because if you get caught, your educational career goes right out the window.

2.) It’s stupid, especially in core major classes, because if you cheat to pass one course you’re not going to understand the material in subsequent courses, thus beginning a vicious cycle.

3.) Yeah this sounds trite, but it’s just plain wrong.

Frankly, I am sick of being treated like a criminal by default . I’ve been afraid, when writing essays and reports, that what I’m writing might somehow turn out to be similar to someone else’s writing when the grader inevitably runs it through whatever insidious new software they’re using now, and I’ll get charged with plagiarism. Considering how many millions of college students there are in the United States, it’s bound to happen eventually.

If I did, how would I be able to demonstrate that no, I didn’t cheat, I wrote it all myself? You can’t, really. You’re presumed guilty. Of course there are levels of appeal you can go through, but to me the process seems designed to swiftly eliminate anyone found guilty and give them no recourse in the end.

I don’t care if 28% of undergraduates have cheated in the past…that means 72% have not, and it’s unfair to punish the majority for the sins of the minority.

If people want to be stupid and cheat, let them. As someone else stated, more often than not professors are able to detect cheating just by knowing their students’ writing styles. We don’t need Big Brother-style monitoring and software and we don’t deserve to be treated like 12 year old juvenile delinquents. I pay something $7,500 a year to go to Wichita State University and I deserve that much respect, at least.

If the cheaters manage to graduate and get a degree, let’s watch how far they go in the real world when they didn’t actually learn anything, because they chose the quick and easy route. I don’t imagine it’ll be very far.

Does he actually live in that community or is he just going off on another of his tangents?

I see that El Dorado offered physics-first under the leadership of Earl Legleiter, who, alas moved to Colorado to work for the non-profit education-analysis center, Mid-Continent Research in Education and Learning after doing physics-first at El Dorado HS for 5 years.

Under Mr. Legleiter’s visionary leadership, El Dorado High was one of the earliest adopters of physics-first (1998-99). Anyone who can convince a small-town high school’s BOE, administration and teachers to buy into a revolutionary experimental science-education proposition has well-beyond-ordinary abilities.

Here are some questions:

1. Is the program operating today? The web doesn’t answer this question, but maybe you know.

2. Were statistically-significant student-achievement gains made during Mr. Legleiter’s 5 year period of using the new curriculum, for example, in ACT Math and Science scores?

3. Did Mr. Legleiter leave in frustration, finding that the effects of his program were limited, perhaps due to circumstances beyond his control? Or did he find, “This works really well, now I want to work at a ‘think tank’ level to promote widespread change?

4. If statistically-significant gains were made, have they been lost?

I ask these questions for several reasons. Gifted individuals in some institutions can work wonders. I am married to one of these extraordinary people. But when they leave institutions, gains are often lost, because their personal passion and talent to teach and inspire others are crucial. To wit, some people are irreplaceable. It is very hard to create persistent “cultural change” in many circumstances, without a charismatic leader’s being there to personally maintain it.

In 2004, of all Eldorado 10th grade students combined achieved a 45% proficiency-or-better score on the state math assessment test. In 2005, that dropped to 26%. This is a horrendous drop.

At the hs level, only 31% of El Dorado students are economically disadvantaged, and 90% are white (5% Hispanic, 3% African-Amercan, 2% other). These factors do not explain El Dorado’s abysmal 2005 performance, because statewide 38% of 10th graders are economically disadvantaged, 7% more than at EDHS, and 8% are African-American, and 6% are Hispanic (3% and 2% more than at EDHS) . But statewide, 10th grade math proficiency+ scoring was 50% in 2004 and 51% in 2005.

A 1% rise is not adequate, but it least it isn’t a 19% FALL. Because physics and math are intertwined, there could potentially be a relationship between Mr. Legleiter’s presence, and his absence.

In the 10th grade science-assessment test, in 2003 (no data at ksbe.org for 2004), only 34% of El Dorado students scored proficiency+. In 2005, this rose to 38%. However both years scores are seriously anemic: the statewide proficiency+ scoring was 54% in 2003, and 58% in 2005.

There are no older science state-assessment data. The phys-chem-bio sequence is really designed for college preparation, so sequence-completing students would take the ACT as a natural concommitant. El Dorado students have been taking the ACT for decades. For these combined reasons, evaluating El Dorado’s ACT Math and Science score trends before and after 1998 would be highly probative.

Can you, or anyone else here access the data and report?

(As a “free-lancer” I can’t get information I need to perform the analyses I want to do. Maybe I should try to get an education Ph.D. and a university or think-tank position so I can access the info. ;) )

5. Finally, was EDHS the physics-first school to which you were referring, or is there another one out there? Can you name it? I can only find EDHS online.

I’d hate to see EDHS’s terribly deficient math and science assessment-test scores used as a seemingly compelling argument to halt any further attempts to implement physics-first in Kansas.

I’ve only expanded desires of WSU in this topic. The expansion of WSU could affect KU and KSU.

You asked, “BTW, is he teaching in a private or public school?”

Later you stated, “the NCTM’s ideology, which holds that minority students and girls cannot do real math, which is a disturbing prejudice.”

Public – but your own prejudice/preconception is showing. :) Yes, that desire to teach seems to spring from a passion to spread the wonder and grandeur of science, but a spouse with a good job makes it possible.

As I understand it, Physics First isn’t a very practical idea for Kansas schools at this time. Local curricula are driven by the almight State Assessments, and their mile-wide-inch-deep approach seems to require that students receive a smattering of various sciences by spring of their sophomore year in high school, when testing occurs. In terms of test scores, it would make more sense to offer a solid physical science course (physics/chemistry/earth science/astronomy) to freshmen and biology to sophomores.

Anyway, this post has strayed far from the “Plagiarism U” topic.

IMHO, KU screwed up big-time. I know of some high school students who’ve been *nailed* with Turnitin.com. Stunning, and much more effective than simply googling key phrases.

They don’t have to be Miami, Norte Dame, but Louisville, TCU, Marshall kind of teams from a variety of conferences.

In the far, far future, if WSU gains more students, becomes attractive to a football conference completely, for all programs, so be it. Bye MVC or they could stay a “power” in the MVC and only be independent in football. What’s the best course, don’t know right now. The NCAA allows some flexibility the needs of the community, putting people in stadium seats.

1AA isn’t that good to do with a new program because of the marketability problems. A lot of 1AA are upgrading to 1A.

There could be a split in 1A so the college investment isn’t so high to compete with the bigger colleges. Two national championships among division 1A.

The cost of investment isn’t solely based on WSU paying for everything, that’s how it can be affordable to the college.

It’s easier to start in IAA. The costs are a lot lower. It’s entertaining football. If you get good enough, then you can move to IA, and do well, like Boise State, but you have to be patient.

Apophis is driven to raise teachers salaries. But is he driven to pay people like your friend the open-market value of his expertise? If so, this must be an underground campaign. Actually, I’ll bet your friend really doesn’t care about the money generated by union political activities. Why do I think this? Because he’s shown a willingness to give up much more lucrative careers to pursue a passion. Is my inference correct or mistaken?

BTW, is he teaching in a private or public school?

On the Kansas school using physics first, what school is it? Has USD 259 sent a delegation to examine it and bring home notes? To make this work, the school has to have a strong math program. San Diego has tried a weak-math variant, and La Jolla-area parents, led by people who work at UC San Diego, are rebelling against it.

I have heard that some teachers here are rebelling against “integrated math” developed by the NCTM, and endorsed as “the core curriculum” by the administration, and teachers are instead teaching traditional mathematics. Kudos to them for exercising excellent judgment, and denying the NCTM’s ideology, which holds that minority students and girls cannot do real math, which is a disturbing prejudice.

California dumped the NCTM version of “progressive math” a decade ago, after a group of Stanford-faculty-led evaluators who were gravely upset to find their own children becoming mathematics-incompetent, determined, through careful analysis, that the NCTM curriculum was math-teaching’s version of the equally disastrous whole language reading program.

The NCTM tried to cry “elitism”, and claim that public teachers college math faculty supported NCTM, but thoee faculty in California sided with the Stanford faculty, as did many well-respected high school math teachers, such as Jaime Escalante, who made calculus aces out of general-math students, hundreds of research scientists nationwide, including Fields Medal winners and Nobel Laureates, and the science and math faculties of the University of California and Caltech.

The Berkeley-invented “Math Circle”, a weekly open-enrollment math-exploration math-exploration course, now being emulated around the country, provided three of last year’s six-student American team to the International Mathematics Olympiad, which placed third after China and Russia. The coach, who teaches in Dallas, is now running a “Math Circle”. The upshot is: these people KNOW MATH.

California bolted from the NCTM standards for a reason: California’s economy is utterly math-and-science dependent. Even its agriculture is”, ranging from GPS-controlled furrowing and seeding, to soil-moisture-measuring automated drip irrigation to conserve water, to integrated pest-control management. California has far more than its population-based share of Nobel Laureates. Despite having 11% of America’s population it has ca. 25% of America’s National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineering members.

The point being that California’s mathematician and scientist corps sent the NCTM and its political machine in California running with its tail between its legs, because the former knew vastly more about mathematics, and mathematics knowledge’s implications, than the NCTM.

Unfortunately, most K-12 school administrators here aren’t mathematically knowledgeable. If you’re not knowledgeable, you become easily bamboozled and intimidated by people who tell you they are experts, and that their program is used nationwide, so you’d be an ignorant fool not follow along, and you don’t want to look stupid do you?

Fortunately, some math teachers here are knowledgeable, but they can’t exert a strong enough force to move the central administration to enact a sound district-wide mathematics curriculum, because there aren’t enough of them to compel change. So a lot of kids are being dumbed down. This is hurting Wichita, and will have seriously adverse consequences over ensuing decades. You have to change course, because the rocks are straight ahead. You’ve still got time, but it’s running out.

It’s for the betterment of “kids” college student oppurtunities. It’s better we create more fun in town to see do.

If you forget Cessna Stadium completely as a place to play college football, we don’t need a “trial run”.

I would hope Cessna could be filled with fans interested in WSU football they help pay for the increased scholarship oppurtunties for all the new programs needed. Throw more concerts in Cessna stadium for that reason.

The WSU football progam will have the subsidy money Don Beggs has always talked about. WSU isn’t paying a nickel for the stadium. They have to create football program and maintain it. They will have operating funds.

New dorms, apartments have to built so the students can live near campus. Are those paid for by WSU or apartment builder companies.I’m for a more dynamic WSU with higher GPA entrance requirements. State fixes buildings on the campus. Professors are paid a decent wage. But the tuition has to be frozen for a decade, twelve years possibly so the costs aren’t increased on students. That gives WSU an advantage cost wise cheaper than KU and KSU as its trying to attract students.

We have to beat them in sports, play on their “level”. It’s why WSU is shamed today. WSU isn’t investing enough to have more younger than 25 age students. Wichita isn’t investing enough to make WSU more dynamic.

Out of state stadium designer know WSU lost its football program. They didn’t understand why Wichita hasn’t done something about it.

Why isn’t the city profitable enough in this community to have a Division 1 football team. Use a stadium for more than just football. Combine facilities, we can finally do that. Others have designed stadiums that we can use.

It took this much time for those stadiums to be created nationally since WSU ended the football program. We have few years left to take advantage. It would start now, but because of the downtown arena, the process has to start after that is finished.

Can’t distract County and City gov too much, their not able to do multiple tasks. We have a lot of unfinished projects needing attention in the city and county.

What did you think of my proposed steps? Might something like that either prove or disprove the feasibility of your dream?

“It can’t be disproved until it is tried”. Then what. You have a big empty stadium?

I’m optimistic Wichitans can gather like other communities.

It’s not a program for today. Allow future growth to happen in Wichita.Aren’t more moving to Wichita in hundreds of numbers every year? To this area, within commuting distance to Wichita.

Are the biggest businesses hiring a few more and want to? Koch consolidated. Cargill. Cessna. Spirit. Retail jobs expanding. More accountants and bookkeepers. Law offices splitting, combining or growing.

Growth in Wichita, on all levels. More new homes built and sales of existing increasing.

People will alter their life schedule over time as the stadium is being constructed. They will try to find time on future Saturday’s to see a football game. Budget their money to buy season tickets or on that day.

Could scheduling happen, between KSU, KU, WSU that only two colleges play in state on those Saturdays if possible. It can happen that way. So out of city people can road trip to Wichita for a game. Wichitans won’t be road tripping as much to KU or KSU.

Wichita will be more dynamic, maybe we have casino downtown. We should.Don’t all the malls bring in out of towners for shopping? Are our hotels good enough to stay in, not so expensively.

Allow Wichita as a community needs a key event facility. It’s obvious. Subsidy at the airport demands we try to bring more events to town.

How can I have the financial partners today, 3 years before its discussed between County, City, WSU and interested parties, the group formed to pay for the stadium.

I know they exist, its just gathering them together. No, it won’t be hard at all to get folks in a meeting.

Business model exists in bond financing, the group could use. Its all there for Wichita to take advantage of.

I need WSU to try and be more dynamic as its mission statement. Add more students in scholarship oppurtunities. Add more interest kids choosing WSU to attend. Give them incentive to attend.