Janet asks, “How should we professorial types be addressed by our students?” I’m introducing myself to a new crop of students in an hour, so this is something I also go through every year.

My answer: if the students don’t know the professor, the default should be “Dr” or “Professor.” Always. It’s the safe thing to do.

To my students, I always tell them I’d rather not be addressed so formally, and “Paul” or “PZ” are better choices. “Hey, Myers!” is a little too brash.

I think the appropriate way to answer the question is to turn it around: how do we professors address the students? If you insist on being called “Dr”, I think you should be expected to address all your students as “Mr” or “Ms.” We can set the level of formality to whatever we want, but it has to be reciprocal. Of course, I’m also at a small college where I get to know every student, and by name…I suppose another alternative at the bigger places is to insist on being called “Dr,” while addressing all your students as a nameless, faceless, tuition-paying mob.

The syllabus for Biol 4181, Developmental Biology is now online. Start reading! It looks like I’ll have you reading 50-100 pages of Wolpert and Carroll or Zimmer a week.

I want you all to know this is something of a miracle—I usually finish my syllabus the night before the class starts, so I’m very proud of myself for getting it done a whole four days ahead of time. Of course, the reason it’s early is that I’ve got a stack of extra-curricular writing that needs to be done in the next couple of days…

Surprise, surprise, surprise—private schools aren’t better than public schools, and private schools run by conservative Christian organizations are the worst.

The federal Education Department reported Friday that, in reading and math, children attending public schools generally do as well as or better than comparable children in private schools. The exception was in eighth-grade reading, where the private-school children did better.

The report, which compared fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores from nearly 7,000 public schools and more than 530 private schools in 2003, also found that conservative Christian schools lagged significantly behind public schools when it came to eighth-grade math.

The report separated private schools by type, and found that among private-school students, those in Lutheran schools did best, while those in conservative Christian schools did worst. For example, in eighth-grade reading, children in conservative Christian schools did no better than comparable children in public schools.

In eighth-grade math, children in Lutheran schools did significantly better than children in public schools, but those in conservative Christian schools fared worse.

I wouldn’t take this as an uncritical endorsement of the public school system, though—this report could also be interpreted as saying both public and private schools are doing just as poorly at educating kids, and all could use substantial improvement.

I am surprised a bit by the fact that more private schools weren’t getting better test scores for one specific reason: selective admission. Private schools do have one sneaky edge over public schools in that they have more power to reject problematic children, while the public schools are obligated to make an effort to educate everyone. Maybe what this shows is that if you try to use economic advantage as a filter, rich kids aren’t necessarily smarter than poor kids, and if you use ideology as your filter, Jesus-freaks aren’t smarter (and maybe dumber) than kids with a ho-hum attitude towards religion. It may also mean that private schools have a whole different set of problems than do the public schools.

Anyway, the key thing is that these data show that there is no gain to be had from privatizing education, or worse, moving to ‘faith-based’ education. We can be aware of problems in the public schools, but we have to realize that switching to vouchers or otherwise ripping more money from the schools to support private efforts won’t fix them.

(via Atheist Revolution)

This is the very last time I’ll be haranguing you about the scienceblogs fundraiser for schools—I’ve reached my goal of $2000 and doubled it! Reaching that goal was not enough to fund all of the projects, though, and there are four remaining that could use additional donations.

• How can you resist this title? Evolution Is Science (fund this one) is a project looking to purchase replica hominid skulls for teaching low income kids in Chicago about evolution.
• Here’s another one I like: Real Specimens for Marine Science (fund this one). A Brooklyn school is looking to purchase aquaria and invertebrate specimens so kids can see what real animals are like.
• This one aims low, but you’ve got to appreciate how desperate they must be. Essential Supplies for Biology and AP Biology Classrooms (fund this one)is looking for something very basic for low income kids in LA: colored paper and pads.
• You can’t turn down a library! Science Books for Enloe Students (fund this one) is a project to replace old books in health and life sciences at a Raleigh, NC school library.

If those projects don’t appeal to you, click on over to Evolgen (challenge),

Island of Doubt (challenge),

Neurotopia (challenge), or

The Questionable Authority (challenge), who all also have challenges that haven’t been met yet.

I won’t be pestering you again, so this is your last chance; I have to admit that the generous readers of Pharyngula dug deeper than expected, and I don’t want to impose further. Thanks again!

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IMPORTANT ADDITION: I’m sorry to say that DonorsChoose only accepts donations from Americans, so if you’re Canadian or European or Australian or Brazilian, you (and by that I mean “we”) are out of luck. It seems to me that they’re missing out on a golden opportunity: if they advertised this as a chance to improve US education, the money would come pouring in from all over the world. People respond well to the need to help the less fortunate overcome calamity.

Via Coturnix, here’s an extremely depressing resignation letter from a public school teacher. I’ve seen this kind of thing a few times now: our problem is that the public schools are being treated as little factories, where you push kindergarten kids in at one end, and a dozen years later an adult with an education pops out. A high school diploma is regarded as an entitlement rather than an earned acknowledgment of ability, and what that means is that administrators tend to lower their standards and be extremely lenient about the behavior and skills of both students and faculty. Even where there are great teachers and first-rate students, they are getting swamped in the rising tide of permitted nonsense.

After all, if all the voting public cares about is your graduation rate, it’s easy to keep that high: just hand out diplomas to kids for showing up.