Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: Is this OT?



I believe there is a lot of data suggesting that
single sex classes can be beneficial, especially for
girls. But where's the extra money going to come from?
Transportation costs would almost certainly rise.
Would that be the best use of extra school funding if
it were available? John Barrere
--- Rick Tarara <rtarara@SAINTMARYS.EDU> wrote:
But the responses to date, I think prove my point
about any constructive
suggestion getting attacked from all sides--with the
tone decidedly colored
by political philosophies. The biggest problems are
not the teachers or the
administrations, it is all the outside influences.
;-)

Look, if nothing else, uniforms reduce a LOT of
wasted time on the part of
teachers and administrators (my wife has been both)
dealing with student
dress. One might want to look at some of the
private schools that do
outperform the public schools and notice that many
have very strict dress
codes or uniforms.

Now to stir up thing even more, let me propose that
we separate the sexes
from 5th grade through HS (and if you do that, you
can probably do without
the uniforms).

[Does anyone want to talk 9-month boarding schools
to really improve
learning! ]

Rick


*********************************************************
Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, Indiana
rtarara@saintmarys.edu

********************************************************
Free Physics Educational Software (Win & Mac)
www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html
NEW: Mac versions of Lab Simulations

********************************************************


----- Original Message -----
From: "Hugh Haskell" <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 11:44 AM
Subject: Re: Is this OT?


At 11:22 -0500 9/5/02, Rick Tarara quoted:

In the first year following implementation,
overall school crime
decreased
by 36%; sex offenses, by 74%; physical fights
between students, by 51%;
weapons offenses, by 50%; assault and battery
offenses, by 34%; school
suspensions, by 32%; and vandalism, by
18%.[13,18]

As usual clips like these always raise more
questions than they
answer. The first one that pops to my mind is,
what else was going on
at the same time? We aren't told how the distict's
statisticians
controlled for the "uniform" variable. Often such
actions are coupled
with increased vigilance on the part of the school
administration and
faculty, which is likely to have a large effect on
such events,
regardless of whether uniforms were mandated at
the same time or not.
I would like to see data on how things were after
several years, when
attention to the problems that led to the change
had dropped back to
the pre-change level. There easily could have been
any number of
things done without the fanfare given to the
uniforms that made a
difference--increased police presence on campus,
improved
communications on campus, better counselling
services available, more
administrators patrolling the halls, better
communications with
parents, more involvement by faculty, and on and
on. We are told
nothing about these things, one way or the other.
All we hear about
is the change that the article's author is
focusing on.

Hardly a scientific result.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want
to, Windows because they
have to..

******************************************************


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
http://finance.yahoo.com