Philippine Basic Education

When Jonathan Plucker and coworkers wrote "Talent on the Sidelines: Excellence Gaps and America's Persistent Talent Underclass", they cautioned us, "One reasonable criticism of the 2010 study was our reliance on standardized test data at the national and state levels." Plucker and coworkers recognize that they are reducing the definition of excellence to proficiencies in math and reading. This indeed is a narrow view of education, but even with "a broader range of indicators — for example, 21st century skills or measures of creative productivity" as Plucker and coworkers have suggested, their view remains incomplete because it focuses on human performance at the individual level. This is a major problem because it is no secret that the current frontiers of human knowledge are multidisciplinary thereby requiring a number of viewpoints. Thus, with 21st century challenges, what we also need to look at is "collective intelligence".

We are very f…

"Of course, as a parent, you want the best possible future for your child. But the best possible future should include a society that isn't organized around racism. Hagerman's book is a careful, painful and convincing argument that when white people give their children advantages, they are often disadvantaging others. Racism is so hard to overturn, in part, because white people prop it up when they work to make sure their children succeed." These words are from Noah Berlatsky in his recent article in NBCNews. A former principal of the school my children attend brought this article to my attention. The article's title is "White kids, racism and the way privileged parenting props up an unjust system". In this article, Berlatsky discusses a book written by Margaret Hagerman, "White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America (Critical Perspectives on Youth)". The book exposes how "families who do not have racist intentions,…

Teachers in public schools in the Philippines are scheduled to receive raises this year. Without seeing the actual numbers, this sounds like good news. With the actual numbers, the news is not necessarily good. It is actually bad. Novice teachers are about to see a 3-4 percent increase in their pay while master teachers are set to gain 6-8 percent. Percentages, however, only tell part of the story. Since novice teachers' base salaries are lower than those of master teachers, the absolute amount in pesos for the raise of a master teacher could be as high as seven times that of a novice teacher. Such arrangement is not only unjust, but also detrimental to basic education.


Research shows that providing higher salary raises for teachers early in their career benefits education. Grissom and Strunk write in a study published in the journal Educational Policy, "We find that frontloaded compensation schemes—those that allocate greater salary returns to experience to novice teachers—a…

Schools in my county opened their doors this morning after a two-week long winter break. My son had to wake up early to catch his school bus. Basic education continues even with a federal government shutdown. It is true that some programs in our schools are funded by the federal government but the United States Department of Agriculture says that "the Child Nutrition (CN) Programs, including School Lunch, School Breakfast, Child and Adult Care Feeding, Summer Food Service and Special Milk will continue operations into February". Still, a federal shutdown affects workers and their families. It affects science and research. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for instance, is not as fortunate. Ninety five percent of its employees are not able to work due to the shutdown. So my children were able to see the shutdown in action as we were in Houston this past Thursday.






The above are photos of the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility where astronauts train. The likelihood …

It was my first time to witness a school board meeting in Fairfax county. Fairfax County School Board At-Large Member Karen Keys‐Gamarra last night requested the Board to consider a work session to discuss "inequities of opportunity and access for historically underrepresented populations to Advanced Academic Programs". This is certainly a good first step. What struck me the most however was what I heard before the meeting from a current student. The student talked about his experience of being enrolled in the gifted program in grade school during which he might have appeared a year ahead of his peers in math. Now, that he is in high school, he is now five years ahead in math. He is wondering whether his peers would not have fallen so far behind if they were likewise afforded the same opportunities and access that were given to him.

Poverty profoundly affects basic education in so many ways. One way poverty insidiously undermines education is by limiting opportunities. Often…

Paul L. Morgan, George Farkas, Marianne M. Hillemeier, and Steve Maczuga write in Replicated Evidence of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Disability Identification in U.S. Schools, "Findings of minority underidentification are consistent with reports that schools are more likely to (a) medicalize the struggles of White children while criminalizing those of minority children and (b) identify White children as gifted among those who are similarly high achieving." Sadly, the county I live in is an example of such schools.

Here are the facts.

(1) White and Asian children are much more likely to be identified as talented than Black and Hispanic children:


The Gifted and Talented program of Fairfax county already suffers from over-identification. More than 23 percent of students are deemed gifted or talented. Statistically, this means some of these students enrolled in talented programs are not even one standard deviation above the mean.

(2) Black and Hispanic students are more li…