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Risa Lavizzo-Mourey grew up with two parents who were also opinionated doctors that often brought work into their Seattle home. She followed their lead, and upon graduating from Harvard University, began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. Her specialty: geriatrics. She later chaired several federal advisory committees including a White House task force on healthcare reform. Today she is the first African-American – and the first woman -- to head the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest philanthropy dedicated to health care in the U.S. Despite a full schedule, she also practices medicine at a community health clinic in New Jersey. Writer Dennis Nishi spoke with Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey about her career path. Edited excerpts follow.
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As education expenses continue to grow, strapped taxpayers have begun pushing back on state and local governments. In the tiny State of Maine, many school districts are finding that passing a school budget for the upcoming school year a sincere challenge.Even the tiny town of Monmouth, home to one of Maine’s finest public school systems, has seen such a rebellion, leaving school officials without a school budget for 2008-09. With another school year set to begin in less than a month’s time, Monmouth finds itself in an extremely challenging position.
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Why did the United States become the leading economic power of the 20th century? The best short answer is that a ferocious belief that people have the power to transform their own lives gave Americans an unparalleled commitment to education, hard work and economic freedom.Related:Between 1870 and 1950, the average American’s level of education rose by 0.8 years per decade. In 1890, the average adult had completed about 8 years of schooling. By 1900, the average American had 8.8 years. By 1910, it was 9.6 years, and by 1960, it was nearly 14 years.
As Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz describe in their book, “The Race Between Education and Technology,” America’s educational progress was amazingly steady over those decades, and the U.S. opened up a gigantic global lead. Educational levels were rising across the industrialized world, but the U.S. had at least a 35-year advantage on most of Europe. In 1950, no European country enrolled 30 percent of its older teens in full-time secondary school. In the U.S., 70 percent of older teens were in school.
In “Schools, Skills and Synapses,” Heckman probes the sources of that decline. It’s not falling school quality, he argues. Nor is it primarily a shortage of funding or rising college tuition costs. Instead, Heckman directs attention at family environments, which have deteriorated over the past 40 years.
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To help meet the economic and business challenges ahead and retain Michigan's position as the state with the highest percentage of engineers in the nation, Michigan high-school students will get significantly increased chances to develop critically needed engineering, science and math skills in 2009, thanks to a restructuring of the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) in Michigan."Although it is impossible to predict the future, including the economic opportunities and challenges Michigan may face, it is clear that to re-energize our economy we need more than a favorable business tax environment and financial incentives alone," said Bloomfield, Mich. resident and FIRST in Michigan Director, Francois Castaing.
"We need a steady flow of new engineers and technicians who will help existing and new industries tackle international competition and environmental challenges," he continued. "Michigan needs the next Larry Page to start another Google or to invent a new fuel from crab grass."
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Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
29 July 2008
Katherine Kersten tells me that at Providence Academy in Plymouth, Minnesota, high school history students are required to read James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom [946 pages] and Paul Johnson’s History of the American People [1,104 pages] in their entirety.
It seems likely to me that when these students get to college and find reading lists in their courses in History, Political Science, Economics, and the like, which require them to read nonfiction books, they will be somewhat ready for them, having read at least two serious nonfiction books in their Lower Education years.
For the vast majority of our public secondary students this may not be the case. As almost universally, the assignment of reading and writing is left up to the English departments in the high schools, most students now read only novels and other fiction.
While the National Endowment for the Arts has conducted a $300,000 study of the pleasure reading habits of young people and others, no foundation or government agency, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, has show an interest in asking whether our secondary students read one complete nonfiction book before graduation and if so, what book would it be?
Although I studied English literature at Harvard and later at Cambridge University, and I still find the reading of novels a pleasure, in the last thirty years most of my reading has been in history, and I am greatly puzzled by the apparent willingness of Edupundits and educators to leave all assignments of complete books in the hands of the English Departments.
When our students reach Higher Education, they can no longer rely on their ability to read novels alone. They will be expected to manage fairly serious nonfiction books, in history and in their other courses. How did we decide to leave them so unprepared to do that?
Of course, fiction, poetry and drama may be the focus of concern for the National Endowment for the Arts, but would not the reading of history books in the schools be a focus of interest for the National Endowment for the Humanities? So far, apparently not.
Somehow a consensus has emerged that high school students do not need to be assigned complete nonfiction books and that the History or Social Studies Departments may confine their homework to short readings and readings in a textbook. Have we decided, for some odd reason, that the work of historians is perhaps too difficult for our high school students? They may be capable of studying Calculus, Latin, Chemistry and Chinese, but a work by David McCullough, for example, is judged to be beyond their ability to read or understand?
I realize that English is required every year in high school and that Social Studies Departments have in some cases almost completely cut their ties to the field of History, but even in the other Social Studies there are complete nonfiction books which could be assigned. But it appears that they are not.
The high schools are at fault, of course, for not encouraging or requiring teachers to assign serious complete nonfiction books as a preparation for Higher Education and for good jobs, but why have our Edpundits, Eduscholars, and University Professors, of Education and other disciplines, been so indifferent and so careless as to have no curiosity about whether our high school students are reading one nonfiction book before graduation or not.
If our students were taking no math courses, or science courses, or language courses, or literature courses, there would surely be concern and studies and the like. But if our students come to think that all books are novels, as many now do, and graduate quite unprepared to take on a serious nonfiction book, as they now are, no one seems to notice or to mind.
I have no children, but if I did, I would certainly want them to attend a secondary school like Providence Academy, in Plymouth, Minnesota, which would introduce them to at least a few great history books before they graduate, and I wish that those who do have children in high school could now have that opportunity in much greater numbers.
“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
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More than a year ago, Kaiser Aluminum Corp. was looking for a spot to build an $80 million office-and-research center that would employ 150 workers.After considering cities in three different states, the maker of aluminum products settled on Kalamazoo, Mich., a once-prosperous manufacturing city that had lost thousands of jobs in the last decade or so.
One of the draws: The Kalamazoo Promise, a program that provides at least partial college tuition to all graduating seniors who spent their high-school years in the city's public schools.
Just as Kaiser was gearing up its search, a group of wealthy philanthropists who have remained anonymous unveiled the Promise as a gift to the city. The lure of the program as a benefit for Kaiser employees, and its potential to produce a highly educated work force, proved a big attraction, says Martin Carter, vice president and general manager of common alloy products at Foothill Ranch, Calif.-based Kaiser.
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Wall Street Journal Editorial:
The profound failure of inner-city public schools to teach children may be the nation's greatest scandal. The differences between the two Presidential candidates on this could hardly be more stark. John McCain is calling for alternatives to the system; Barack Obama wants the kids to stay within that system. We think the facts support Senator McCain."Parents ask only for schools that are safe, teachers who are competent and diplomas that open doors of opportunity," said Mr. McCain in remarks recently to the NAACP. "When a public system fails, repeatedly, to meet these minimal objectives, parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children." Some parents may opt for a better public school or a charter school; others for a private school. The point, said the Senator, is that "no entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity."
Mr. McCain cited the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program, a federally financed school-choice program for disadvantaged kids signed into law by President Bush in 2004. Qualifying families in the District of Columbia receive up to $7,500 a year to attend private K-12 schools. To qualify, a child must live in a family with a household income below 185% of the poverty level. Some 1,900 children participate; 99% are black or Hispanic. Average annual income is just over $22,000 for a family of four.
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A federal judge in Phoenix has scheduled a wide-ranging November hearing on the adequacy and funding of Arizona's programs for educating students who are learning English.In the meantime, U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins on Friday left intact a state mandate that school districts begin using a new instructional model that many districts contend is inadequately funded.
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Few could call Milwaukee’s Rufus King High School shy about divulging how it stacks up on Newsweek magazine’s annual report on the nation’s best public high schools.The only Madison area high school to make the list was Verona at #808."Newsweek: Top-Ranked School in Wisconsin" blares the headline on the school's Web site, with a link to the magazine's site and a rundown on how Rufus King has topped other Wisconsin schools in previous years of comparisons.
This honor distinguishes the school, Rufus King Principal Marie Newby-Randle says in a written statement on the Web site, and it proves its students "are truly among the brightest and the best."
Colleges have their U.S. News & World Report rankings.
American high schools have the Challenge Index.
Related: Dane County, WI AP Course Offerings.
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Ahmad Hattix looks preoccupied as he is about to be relaunched.It could be because he has spectators - his father, his fiancée, young children bouncing around in a hallway at Gateway Technical College in Racine, where he's about to graduate. Maybe he's just eager to get moving.
Which happens. People assemble around tables, officials speak, men come up to receive certificates. Hattix, now smiling, makes several trips, as he has not only graduated but has earned some other honors. He is a changed man.
Hattix has been changed by technical education, by Gateway's "boot camp" in the sort of high-end computerized metalworking called CNC machining. Hattix, 31, of Racine has a prison record and practically no job experience. But thanks to the boot camp, he has bright prospects. As of his graduation July 18, he already has a job offer in Kenosha.
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Compton is a successful high-tech entrepreneur who made himself into an first-rate polemicist. His one-hour documentary film, "Two Million Minutes," pushes our most sensitive cultural buttons. He argues that kids in India and China are studying much harder than U.S. students. In the film he chronicles two fun-loving teens in Carmel, Ind., an affluent Indianapolis suburb, and shows how little attention they pay to their homework compared to two students of similar age in China and two in India.I interviewed Compton and responded to his film twice, in a Feb. 11 column and in a piece in the spring issue of the Wilson Quarterly. I confessed I, too, was distressed to see, in his film, Carmel High's Brittany Brechbuhl watching "Grey's Anatomy" on television with her friends while they were allegedly doing their math homework. I said I agreed we had to fix our high schools, not because of the threat of international competition but to end the shame of having millions of low-income students drop out and fail to get the education they deserve. I said I admired Compton's consistency in insisting that his daughters spend more time on their studies just as he wants all American teens to do.
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Thousands more California students will have to find their own way to school this fall, as districts slash bus routes to cope with budget shortfalls and high fuel costs.Critics worry that the cuts will increase traffic around schools, shift costs to parents already struggling with rising gas prices and prompt more absenteeism, hurting students' academic achievement. But paramount is the fear that the reductions will endanger students as more walk or drive to school.
"All the parents, we've been scrambling to try to work out carpools," said Wayne Tate, whose second-grader's bus to Castille Elementary, two miles from their home in Mission Viejo, was eliminated. "For somebody that young, that's a pretty long way to walk or ride a bike. All you need is one kid getting hit to realize that maybe the [savings] wasn't worth it."
Districts say they have no choice.
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For the 140 students lucky enough to attend the Texas School for the Blind, life is about team sports, class plays, American Idol parties, and prom night. In fact, it’s the one place where they can see themselves for who they really are: typical teenagers.Three days before the prom at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, I stopped by House 573, a small girls’ dormitory on the school’s campus, in Austin. Tammy Reed, House 573’s sturdy, perpetually good-natured dorm manager—beloved for, among other things, her Tuesday night American Idol viewing parties, which include running commentary and hot wings—was telling me why the prom was the most thrilling night of the year for her girls. “Blind students usually don’t get asked to the prom,” she said as we sat at the kitchen table, which had been taken over by curling irons, cans of hair spray, bobby pins, Q-tips, nail polish, and costume jewelry. “And if they go to the prom, they end up standing against the wall. Everyone comes to our prom, and there won’t be a kid there who doesn’t dance.”
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Before leaving for Chompovon Primary School on the outskirts of the capital, students say, their parents give them 10 to 15 cents of pocket money. That's enough to buy some breakfast cakes and rice -- and pay their teachers a few cents before they walk into class.The fee, a widespread practice in Cambodia's public schools, is a kind of informal toll that students must pay. If they don't, parents say, they risk receiving a lower grade or even being demoted.
Here, schoolchildren are taught at an early age what it takes to get ahead. And it only gets worse as they grow up. At every turn, Cambodians pay under the table: for a birth certificate, a travel visa, a fair ruling from a judge.
Transparency International, a corruption-fighting organization based in Berlin, says the majority of Cambodia's public servants earn their living by collecting bribes.
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Seven years ago, I watched my daughter, Janet, receive her diploma from Johnston High School, in East Austin. No parent will ever do that again: In June, Johnston ceased to exist. A few days before this year’s graduation ceremony, Texas education commissioner Robert Scott informed the Austin Independent School District that he was invoking the nuclear option authorized by the Texas Education Code to close the school after five consecutive years of “academically unacceptable” performances on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills test. Scores improved this year, but not enough to save the school. State rules mandate that three fourths of Johnston’s teachers and half of its students be reassigned when the 2008—2009 academic year begins (some students and teachers can opt to remain at the current campus, which will be “repurposed”). The Johnston name will be expunged, and AISD must produce a plan for some sort of educational triage.I was saddened to read about Johnston’s fate—but not surprised. For almost two years I had served on its campus advisory council (CAC) with other parents, teachers, administrators, and representatives of the community. I knew Johnston’s problems all too well. In one of my first meetings, we learned that 50 percent of the freshman class had failed all four core courses (English, math, science, social studies) the previous year. In an educational environment dominated by high-stakes testing, Johnston got the black mark, but the roots of the problem reached back into the elementary and middle schools that had failed to prepare their students for high school.
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Schools run by private enterprise? Free iPods and laptop computers to attract students?It may sound out of place in Sweden, that paragon of taxpayer-funded cradle-to-grave welfare. But a sweeping reform of the school system has survived the critics and 16 years later is spreading and attracting interest abroad.
"I think most people, parents and children, appreciate the choice," said Bertil Ostberg, from the Ministry of Education. "You can decide what school you want to attend and that appeals to people."
Since the change was introduced in 1992 by a center-right government that briefly replaced the long-governing Social Democrats, the numbers have shot up. In 1992, 1.7 percent of high schoolers and 1 percent of elementary schoolchildren were privately educated. Now the figures are 17 percent and 9 percent.
In some ways the trend mirrors the rise of the voucher system in the U.S., with all its pros and cons. But while the percentage of children in U.S. private schools has dropped slightly in recent years, signs are that the trend in Sweden is growing.
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When Allison Meyer was a forward on the Fennimore High School girls basketball team in the mid-1990s, all eyes were on her. On her way to winning all-conference honors her sophomore through senior seasons, Meyer 's play turned quite a few heads.
Now, she 's back at her alma mater turning heads again -- for a different reason.
Earlier this summer, the 29-year-old Meyer was named Fennimore boys varsity basketball coach. She will replace Mark Fifrick, who stepped down after 12 seasons.
Fifrick approached Meyer -- who coached the school 's junior varsity boys team the past two years -- and encouraged her to go after the job.
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Oklahoma State University has agreed to sponsor a proposed charter high school in Tulsa that would recruit juniors and seniors from across the state to study arts and other subjects "through the lens of art," as leaders described it.The Oklahoma School for the Visual and Performing Arts is still seeking the Legislature's approval to create the school and to fund about $5 million annually for operations, said David Downing, the school's co-chairman with his father-in-law, John Brock, a retired Tulsa oilman and philanthropist.
Leaders plan to raise $20 million in private donations to pay for land, buildings and equipment, Downing said.
The school would be the artistic equivalent of the Ok-lahoma School for Science and Mathematics in Oklahoma City.
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A dozen 9-year-old girls in jelly-bean-colored bathing suits were learning the crawl at Lake Bryn Mawr Camp one recent morning as older girls in yellow and green camp uniforms practiced soccer, fused glass in the art studio or tried out the climbing wall.Their parents, meanwhile, were bombarding the camp with calls: one wanted help arranging private guitar lessons for her daughter, another did not like the sound of her child’s voice during a recent conversation, and a third needed to know — preferably today — which of her daughter’s four varieties of vitamins had run out. All before lunch.
Answering these and other urgent queries was Karin Miller, 43, a stay-at-home mother during the school year with a doctorate in psychology, who is redefining the role of camp counselor. She counsels parents, spending her days from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. printing out reams of e-mail messages to deliver to Bryn Mawr’s 372 female campers and leaving voice mail messages for their parents that always begin, "Nothing’s wrong, I’m just returning your call."
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An ongoing series takes a look at Paul Vallas in New Orleans and Michelle Rhee in Washington, DC.
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West High School senior Tierney Chamberlain is one of six East Coast finalists in the reality-t.v. show "High School Musical: Get In the Picture." Watch the performance that moved her from semi-finalist to finalist.
As many of you surely know, Tierney has a huge and amazing voice. Check out this 2006 video of her singing the national anthem. Tierney was last seen in the role of Cassie in West's spring, 2008, production of "A Chorus Line."
Tierney, our hats are off to you back here in Madison, not just at West, but all over town. You are an AMAZING talent. We're rooting for you all the way!
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The board of directors of the Greater Rome Chamber of Commerce voted unanimously Thursday to support the third phase of the special purpose, local option sales tax for education.Floyd County citizens will go to the polls on Sept. 16 to vote on SPLOST III.
“Rome and Floyd County have a commitment to offering superior educational opportunities for our children,” said Randy Quick, chairman of the Chamber board and general manager of South 107. “Education is often identified by current employers as necessary to their continuation of business.”
Quick said prospective businesses and industries exploring expansion and relocation to Rome and Floyd County look at the educational opportunities offered.
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I thoroughly enjoy working for my principal. He's a great guy, has a no-nonsense approach to dealing with discipline and doesn't try to micromanage the staff. He's not perfect (e.g. he still requires me to wear a tie), but after reading all of the comments about other principals, he does an outstanding job. That said, I would very much enjoy to see him more at school, not off at DISD-mandated principals' meetings.Now, I don't know the exact number he has gone to meetings across Dallas, but it's often more than once a week, and usually half a day or longer. He tries to make it every morning, give the announcements, meet with parents, etc., but then he's off in a flash to learn about some new initiative, see how our OHI scores are faring, or TAKS test security guidelines. And when we hit the AYP list the first time, he was gone almost twice as much. I've yet to see the man take a day off and I wonder how he maintains his sanity sitting in meetings all the time.
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Bulleh Bablitch:
Local brat/hot dog sale donates proceeds to Project LiberiaBulleh Bablitch, Project Liberia, Inc. 608-577-6711
WHAT: A good ol’ fashioned Wisconsin cookout, complete with brats, hot dogs and soda,
will donate proceeds to Project Liberia , a burgeoning non-profit organization, dedicated to helping children and families in Liberia , West Africa recover from a devastating civil war.
WHEN: Saturday, July 26 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m.
WHERE: Super Wal-Mart 2101 Royal Ave., Monona
WHO: Supporters of Project Liberia and Sports for Africa
WHY: Project Liberia is a collection of individual programs designed to meet some of
the most pressing needs for a nation recovering from a devastating civil war. Each venture — from building a community center, developing a micro-loan system and bringing sports equipment to children in villages and orphanages — has been developed to enhance the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual fiber of the people of Liberia. 501(c)(3) status pending.
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Scores from 7 million students nationwide show that girls and boys do equally well on tests. But Minnesota's high school girls still lag.When it comes to math scores, high school girls are measuring up, reports a national study challenging the persistent notion that boys are naturally better with numbers.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison study released Thursday in the journal Science reported that, overall, U.S. girls and boys got equal math scores, from second through 11th grades. The results of the study, the largest of its kind, represented marked improvement over a 1990 study showing measurable differences in complex problem-solving, starting in high school.
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"Last Lecture" Professor Randy Pausch, 47, Dies
Tara Parker-Pope
The New York Times
Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon computer science professor whose last lecture became an Internet sensation and bestselling book, has died of pancreatic cancer. He was 47.
Dr. Pausch, whose proudest professional achievement was creating a free computer programming tool for children called Alice, was an improbable celebrity. A self-professed nerd, he pushed his students to create virtual reality projects, celebrated the joy of amusement parks and even spent a brief stint as a Disney “Imagineer.'’
Last September, Dr. Pausch unexpectedly stepped on an international stage when he addressed a crowd of about 400 faculty and students at Carnegie Mellon as part of the school’s “Last Lecture” series. In the talks, professors typically talk about issues that matter most to them. Dr. Pausch opened his talk with the news that he had terminal cancer and proceeded to deliver an uplifting, funny talk about his own childhood dreams and how to help his children and others achieve their own goals in life. He learned he had pancreatic cancer in September, 2006.
Sitting in the audience was Carnegie Mellon alumnus Jeff Zaslow, a columnist with The Wall Street Journal, who wrote about the speech. Media outlets and bloggers linked to the story, and more than 10 million people have since watched an Internet video of the talk. The lecture was translated into seven languages, and Hyperion published a book version that became a New York Times bestseller.
I was fortunate to meet Dr. Pausch this spring and was amazed by his boyish good nature and optimistic outlook even in the face of death. During an April interview near his home in Virginia, he called the furor surrounding his lecture “a ridiculous chain of coincidental luck.'’
“I was thrilled because my whole life anything I could do to get Carnegie Mellon some well-deserved exposure, I always felt compelled to do,'’ he said.
But, he added, he never expected so many people to tune in to his advice about letting kids paint on their walls and win stuffed animals at amusement parks. “I didn’t set out to tell the world about how to live their life,'’ he said.
Dr. Pausch died early today at his home in Virginia. Although Dr. Pausch was famous for his poignant, frank discussion of his impending death, he was also aggressive about seeking treatments that could prolong his life and the time he had left to spend with his wife, Jai, and their three children. A lifetime problem solver, Dr. Pausch was determined to help his wife and children cope with his death. “I haven’t found a way to clever my way out of it,'’ he told me.
Although cancer and his last lecture helped make him a celebrity, Dr. Pausch said much in his life was the same as always.
“Cancer didn’t change me at all,'’ he said. “I know lots of people talk about the life revelation. I didn’t have that. I always thought every day was a gift, but now I am looking for where to send the thank you note.'’
On the Well blog, Dr. Pausch first gave us “Words to Live By,'’ followed by a fun contest that led to advice for our kids. Most recently, he gave us “A Lesson on How to Say Goodbye” and talked about “Keeping Priorities Straight, Even at the End.”
Randy Pausch's homepage.
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For Trinity Wilbourn, teaching high school via the Internet offers a heartening and maddening prism into the teenage mind-set.Sitting one day at her home office overlooking a golf course, the Prince William County teacher received a snarky comment in all capital letters from a devil-may-care summer school student. But the next moment, she marveled at another male student's frank e-mail: "[W]hen I first went to high school, I did not know who I was for awhile. . . . I tried being someone I could not be."
"I feel like, what kind of guy is going to say that out loud in his class?" Wilbourn said.
Educators who supplement or replace their day jobs with online teaching for local public schools are discovering that the perks of working at home come with hurdles: grappling with awkward or confusing lines of communication with their pupils; gauging student performance without seeing facial expressions; and struggling to withstand the urge to check e-mails from students during weekends.
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Jeff Spitzer-Resnick says the case could spur the Madison school district to offer 4-year-old kindergarten and amp up its assistance to dozens of families."My clients can afford preschool," says Spitzer-Resnick, an attorney with Disability Rights Wisconsin, a nonprofit public-interest law firm. "The people who most need help and most stand to benefit are the ones who can’t."
Spitzer-Resnick is representing the parents of a 4-year-old special needs child. A district evaluation in mid-2007 determined that the child qualified for special education services, as is mandated for 3- and 4-year-olds by state and federal law.
But the Madison district does not offer 4-year-old kindergarten and has only nominal programming for kids in this category. And so the parents (whom Isthmus is not naming to protect their child’s privacy) asked Disability Rights Wisconsin to argue that the district must pay the costs of a private preschool they used as an alternative.
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Wisconsin State Journal Editorial: "Tame State's Tax Bite on Homes":
The poor rating should serve as yet another warning to state and local leaders not to jack up this worst-of-all tax even higher. It also should energize groups such as The Wisconsin Way, which is brainstorming for creative and fair ways to reduce our state 's property tax burden while growing our high-tech economy.Mark Perry - "A Nation of Entitlements":If anything, the Taxpayers Alliance ranking Tuesday minimized the pinch many Wisconsin homeowners feel. That 's because the group looked at the burden on all properties together -- homes, businesses, farms and other land.
If you single out just homes, a different study last year suggested Wisconsin property taxes rank No. 1 in the nation. The National Association of Home Builders compiled property tax rates on a median-valued home in each state. Only Wisconsin and Texas (which doesn 't have a state income tax) exceeded $18 per $1,000 of property value.
In its report Tuesday, the Taxpayers Alliance measured the property tax bite more broadly. It ranked states based on ability to pay. It found that Wisconsin 's property tax burden eats up about 4.4 percent of personal income here.
These middle class retirement programs, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, cost more than $1 trillion annually (about the same as the entire economic output of Canada, the 13th largest ecoomy in the world, see chart above), and will cause federal spending to jump by half, from 20% of the economy to 35% by 2035. This tsunami of spending is a major threat to limited government because it runs on auto-pilot with automatic increases locked in by each program’s governing laws. While other programs are constrained through annual budgets, entitlements get first call on resources. Other goals such as defense or national security must compete for an increasingly smaller share of what’s left.
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A case in point: When a class of local elementary school students wrote emails to district officials last year expressing their disappointment over a canceled field trip, the district responded by reprimanding their teacher. (See "The Danger of Teaching Democracy," 2/7/08.) Apparently, Rainwater didn’t appreciate the teacher’s efforts to give her students a little civics lesson.That’s not to say the district doesn’t listen to students at all. Each year, students complete a school climate survey, which gathers their opinions on the fairness of school policies and the effectiveness of support services.
But if students want to share what’s on their minds on their own terms? Forget it.
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JOHN MERROW: ... when she announced she would close the 23 chronically under-enrolled schools. Ongoing protests did not slow Rhee down. By the end of the school year, she had removed 36 principals, 22 assistant principals, and 121 employees in her central office.She also revealed plans to overhaul 27 additional schools that had failed to meet federal standards for academic improvement.
MICHELLE RHEE: I'm proud of the fact that we have made some very difficult decisions that there was very vocal opposition to, that we stuck to our guns.
ADRIAN FENTY: We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make this school system excellent. And to the extent we can allow her to do that, as free from outside obstacles as humanly possible, the faster she will move.
JOHN MERROW: Last year, D.C. voted to dissolve the elected school board. Unlike her predecessors, Rhee reports to one person alone: the mayor.
Has he ever said no to you?
MICHELLE RHEE: No.
JOHN MERROW: Never?
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Texas schools with student dropout problems are getting a break in the state’s performance ratings this year – a move likely to spare dozens of school districts and campuses from being slapped with “academically unacceptable” ratings.State Education Commissioner Robert Scott has decided to excuse schools that fail to meet minimum criteria under the new federal definition for dropouts as long as their passing rates for all student groups on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills are satisfactory.
The decision means that no school district or campus can receive an unacceptable rating solely for dropout or student completion rates that fall short of the federal standards.
Those standards basically require a high school completion rate of at least 75 percent and an annual dropout rate of no more than 1 percent of the students in grades 7 and 8. The current completion rate refers to the percentage of ninth graders from five years ago who graduated in the Class of 2007.
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IT WOULD make great material for a business ethics course. In late June ScoreTop.com, a website that helped users prepare for the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), was shut down following allegations that it had published questions being used in current GMAT exam papers. The Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), the business-school body that created the test, intimated that test-takers’ scores might be cancelled if they had abused access to “live” questions (though the council later said it was concentrating on users who may have posted the offending material).Ominous rumblings from GMAC sparked a flurry of virtual hand-wringing on websites and in the blogosphere. “As the site always maintained that all the questions are its own material there is not much a student can do”, complained one ScoreTop customer posting on BusinessWeek.com. Students are not the only ones fretting. A multi-million dollar industry of test-preparation publishers and training schools has grown up to help aspiring business moguls prepare for the GMAT and the ScoreTop scandal has caused consternation among its ranks. “These threats put users [of test-preparation materials] in a strange position,” wrote a GMAT trainer. “What do you do when sites tell you they have great practice material but you have no clue if its [sic] legal or not?”
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A charter school whose widely anticipated opening in Hartford was threatened by a lack of cash will open this school year, city officials said Tuesday.City hall spokeswoman Sarah Barr said in a press release that the Achievement First charter school, run by the same group that operates the acclaimed Amistad Academy in New Haven, will open to 252 students "thanks to public and private support."
Barr, along with officials at the public school system and Achievement First, declined to say where the money for the school was coming from. A press conference is scheduled for this morning to announce the opening and the funding source.
"The plan is to announce that at tomorrow's press conference," Patricia Sweet, an Achievement First official, said Tuesday.
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Earlier today I had the high privilege of visiting and being given a tour of the Oakland Military Institute, a charter school in the Oakland (California) School District. Summer school was in session so I did get to see some cadets, but I look forward to visiting again some time when the full student population is present--that's the only way to get a true feel for a school.The school board and local teachers union were hostile to the creation of OMI from the very beginning; it was only the persistence of then-Mayor Jerry Brown (former CA governor, current attorney general), that allowed the school to get off the ground. For its first few years, OMI was located at the former Oakland Army Base. But that facility became needed, and OMI had to find a new home. There was a closed elementary school in a residential neighborhood...
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In my State of the State address this year, I outlined six principles that will guide me as I draft my plan for education. We will follow these in pursuit of one clear standard: schools that rank among the best in the world and meet the needs of every Ohio child.This is not an issue that can be fixed overnight. It involves a grassroots effort and collaboration among communities, governmental leaders and education stakeholders to develop a plan and put it into action.
That's why I'm holding regional meetings across Ohio. I want to give you the opportunity to vet proposed ideas for creating a system of education that is innovative, personalized and linked to economic prosperity.
As we conduct these conversations, I will engage parents and students, teachers and school administrators, business and community leaders, school board members, and education advocates across the state.
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Wisconsin State Journal Editorial: Six school districts in Dane County are showing that when the going gets tough, the tough come up with smart ideas.
Administrators in the six districts hope to pool resources and work with Madison Area Technical College to offer courses in specialized skills that might not otherwise be possible.
The administrators hope to launch by 2010 what 's being called The Global Academy, a hybrid of career-related high school and college courses for high school juniors and seniors from the Verona, Middleton-Cross Plains, Belleville, McFarland, Mount Horeb and Oregon school districts.
Changing enrollments, higher expenses, taxpayer angst and the state 's faulty school financing system are making it harder for individual districts to provide as many courses or offer new ones.
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Julie Chang is spending the summer learning calculus at a college prep school. In the fall, she's going to take calculus again, as a junior at Plano Senior High.Her strategy is simple: Learn as much as possible about the subject over the summer so there's a good chance of acing the class when it really counts – during the school year.
And maybe she can reach her goal of being valedictorian for the Class of 2010
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Mayor Villaraigosa announces a program to train students in culinary arts and tourism while they complete high school. The goal is to prepare them for both a career and further college education.A $1.2-million program designed to curb galloping high school dropout rates will send Santee Education Complex students to Los Angeles Trade Technical College to train in culinary arts and tourism Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced Tuesday.
Funded by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation,, the three-year program will combine college classes with hands-on work experience to produce graduating seniors who are both college-ready and qualified to join the workforce, officials said. Currently, nearly half of Santee's mostly low-income students drop out.
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It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League dees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.It’s not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society’s most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable.
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The banality and sense of entitlement of rich students at Harvard left John H. Summers feeling his teaching had been degraded to little more than a service to prepare clients for monied careersI joined the staff of the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University in 2000. As tutor, then as lecturer, I advised senior theses, conceived and conducted freshman and junior seminars and taught the year-long sophomore tutorial, Social Studies 10, six times. The fractured nature of my appointment, renewed annually for six successive years while never amounting to more than 65 per cent of a full-time position in any one year, kept me on the margins of prestige and promotion even as it kept me there long enough to serve three chairmen of social studies, two directors of study and three presidents of Harvard.
The post-pubescent children of notables for whom I found myself holding curricular responsibility included the offspring of an important political figure, of a player in the show business world and the son of real-estate developer Charles Kushner.
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Lucy Shi, a job seeker who has a genetic condition that causes short stature, says she's happy to be singled out as a disability candidate as she hunts for a position in New York.A graduate of New York University, Ms. Shi, 25, recently interviewed with several Wall Street firms at a recruiting event geared toward people with disabilities who aim to develop professional business careers. "It's hard to have a disability that's so visible, and it's just nice to be able to talk to recruiters without competing with the rest of the world," says Ms. Shi, who believes many interviewers view her as a child because of her height.
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Beyond Google, Wikipedia and other generic reference sites, the Internet boasts a multitude of search engines, dictionaries, reference desks and databases that have organized and archived information for quick and easy searches. In this list, we’ve compiled just 100 of our favorites, for teachers, students, hypochondriacs, procrastinators, bookworms, sports nuts and more.
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THE election on July 14th of Randi Weingarten as president marks a new era for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), or so the union says. For years teachers’ unions have been demonised as the main obstacles to school reform, often with good reason. Now the AFT is billing Ms Weingarten as a “reform-minded advocate”. With American students lagging, Ms Weingarten insists that “the union is the solution.” She has some convincing to do.If any teachers’ union were to promote reform, it would be the AFT, America’s second-biggest. While the larger National Education Association has historically been less nimble, the AFT’s president from 1974 to 1997, Al Shanker, supported accountability and even some pay-for-performance schemes. (“I used to shy away from bribery,” he reportedly said, “but I’ve come to the conclusion that it has a place.”) Today the AFT supports such bonuses, if negotiated with a local union. It also represents teachers in more than 70 charter (publicly funded but self-governing) schools, in ten states.
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DROPPING OUT of high school isn't just a teenager's personal problem. It's a loss for the Massachusetts economy, which needs educated workers.Recognizing that schools can't single-handedly solve this problem, a promising bill in the state House would bring in powerful partners to help.
In the 2006-07 school year, more than 11,000 teenagers - nearly 4 percent of the state's public high school students - dropped out. More troubling is the cumulative number of students who enter ninth grade but, four years later, fail to graduate. Statewide, while 81 percent of the class that entered ninth grade in 2003 graduated on time in 2007, 9 percent dropped out. And 6.6 percent were still in school.
Time can be punishing. Once dropouts reach their 20s, they are no longer seen as youngsters in need of academic help. And their own motivation to get a high school degree can fade. That's why the state needs a dropout prevention and recovery system that can respond quickly when students quit school. It also needs more alternative programs that meet the needs of young adults who seek diplomas, but who won't sit in a classroom full of younger students.
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As his extended family gathered around the table for dinner last Christmas, Ben Brock received one final present. It was a scrapbook, each page adorned with photos of him as a child and handwritten notes from his relatives. Then, on the last sheet, the names of his mother, sister, uncles and aunts appeared, with a dollar figure next to each.Those numbers reflected the money they had pledged to send Ben, 16, almost as far from his home in Seattle as it was possible to go within the continental United States. At the end of that journey lay the dream he had nurtured since watching the movie “Drum Line” in sixth grade: to become part of the Marching 100, the renowned band at Florida A&M University.
So on a gauzy gray morning seven months later Ben and his snare drum strode onto the dewy grass of the band’s practice field on the Tallahassee campus. He had been awakened at 5 a.m. and the day’s last rehearsal would not end until 10 p.m. His feet screamed. His shoulders ached. Gnats swarmed around his face, daring him to break rhythm and lose composure.
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Net property taxes in Wisconsin rose 5.7% in 2008, the largest increase since 2005, the year before the recent levy limits on municipalities and counties were imposed. A new report from the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WISTAX) found that while gross property taxes climbed 6.2%, state lawmakers increased the school levy credit $79.3 million to $672.4 million to lessen the impact on property taxpayers. The new study, "The Property Tax in National Context," notes that 2006 property taxes here were ninth highest nationally and higher than those in all surrounding states.Related: Wisconsin State Tax revenues up 2.9%.According to the new study, school levies rose the most, 7.4%. With the recent state budget delayed until October 2007, school aids were unchanged from 2006-07. Since school property taxes are tied to state aids through state-imposed revenue limits, the budget delay resulted in higher school property taxes, WISTAX said. Now in its 76th year, WISTAX is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public-policy research organization dedicated to citizen education.
County and municipal levy increases were limited by state lawmakers to the greater of 3.86% or the increase in property values due to new construction. There were exceptions to the limits, particularly for new debt service. The WISTAX report noted that, with a slowing real estate market, statewide net new construction growth was 2.5%. However, municipal property taxes climbed 5.0%, and county levies were up 4.5%.
Among the three types of municipalities, municipal-purpose property tax levies in cities (5.3%) grew fastest, followed by villages (4.6%) and towns (4.2%). The report noted that the state’s two largest municipalities had above-average increases: Milwaukee was up 9.0%, while Madison’s municipal levy climbed 6.9%. The largest county increases were in Eau Claire (19.2%), Polk (13.5%), Door (12.4%), and Pierce (12.3%) counties.
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Ruby Payne and Jawanza Kunjufu had never shared the stage before Friday, but their careers have intertwined for years in a debate over how American teachers differ from their students.Both believe teachers fail to make connections with students because of differences in cultural backgrounds. Payne, a white former principal, believes poverty is the root of that disconnect. Kunjufu, a black educator, says that theory ignores race.
The two have sparred in writing and in separate appearances but spoke together for the first time Friday at Indiana Black Expo to a room of hundreds of educators from around the state.
"They do not agree on many issues, but they have agreed on one important thing: They have agreed to come together and talk to us and help us better understand their views," Brownsburg Schools Superintendent Kathleen Corbin said in an introduction.
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Ellen Estrada is principal of Walter Payton College Prep High School on the near north side of Chicago, near downtown. The public magnet school, which opened in 2000, is named in honor of the legendary Chicago Bears football player, who died shortly before it opened. In 2006, Walter Payton won a prestigious Goldman Sachs Prize for Excellence in International Education. Almost all students take four years of a foreign language and have the opportunity to travel abroad. Videoconferences have been held with students in Iraq, South Africa, Morocco, China and Chile, among other places. The school's reputation for nurturing global citizens brought U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the school for a visit in February. Estrada was interviewed by Linda Lantor Fandel, deputy editorial-page editor.
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Jordan Nolan didn't have to show up after school on a Friday in late May for a discussion about the invisible children of Uganda. Neither did about 30 other teenagers sprawled on couches and chairs in a classroom at Walter Payton College Prep High School in Chicago.But after a brief presentation by four students, they engaged in a spirited, hour-long debate about just whose responsibility it is to try to end a civil war fought with kidnapped child soldiers.
The turnout wasn't surprising, not even at the end of a week near the end of the school year.
Not at a public high school that's an American showcase for how to prepare young people for a globally competitive economy in the 21century.
While the national and international conversation grows louder about how to define a world-class education, Payton is a real-life laboratory.
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A neurosurgeon who spent $4,230 of his own money to run newspaper ads challenging a $62.2 million referendum to upgrade two Brookfield high schools said Monday that he wishes he would have spent another $10,000 to get it defeated.Brookfield resident James Hollowell had said in March that his ads were not trying to advocate for or against the building plan and were merely to urge residents to investigate the accuracy of district information.
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No Child Left Behind can't catch a break lately on the campaign trail. Barack Obama last week slammed its "broken promises" and John McCain called it "a good beginning" that "has to be fixed."
Ask first lady Laura Bush and she'll tell you that, come what may, the 2002 education law, championed by President Bush, will be a lasting part of her husband's legacy.Its requirement for annual testing in reading and math for virtually all children in grades three through eight has led critics to charge that it focuses too much on testing, but Mrs. Bush says she doesn't buy it.
"We would never go to a doctor and say, 'I'm sick, you can't try to diagnose me … you can't use any kind of test," she says.
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Las Vegas is a city known for making and breaking dreams, and that's where hundreds of high school basketball players have converged this week hoping to lock up college scholarships.For five days beginning today, coaches will be out en masse observing and scouting the biggest collection of teenage talent in the nation, with nearly 900 travel teams playing in four tournaments in dozens of high school gyms spread across the city.
In attendance will be the nation's most recognizable college coaches and just about everyone else whose business is basketball, with shoe company and apparel executives, agents and professional scouts joining the Elvis impersonators.The most important requirement for a coach: "If you don't have GPS, you're in trouble," USC assistant Bob Cantu said.
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or the seventh year in a row, state audits of Seattle Public Schools highlighted some questionable expenses and persistent payroll problems.The audits, released Monday, noted about $23,890 worth of questionable expenses from the 2006-07 school year. In one case, a former school district secretary forged her supervisor's signature to get paid for nearly 300 hours of overtime that she had not worked, costing the district more than $8,700. The district fired her.
In another case, auditors found that more than $15,100 in Associated Student Body money was used improperly to pay for plane tickets to bring South African exchange students and teachers to Seattle as part of a high school foreign-exchange program.
The district also was faulted for paying some Seattle high school students participating in the exchange program approximately $25,000 up front for travel expenses to South Africa and Ireland. The district should have reimbursed them later, auditors said, and shouldn't have covered some improper purchases made during the trips -- including alcoholic drinks and host gifts.
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Early in her career teaching special education, Beverly Levett Gerber once had an unusual mix of students; some had behavior problems, others developmental disabilities and some were gifted.
It was quite the challenge, but she knew how to achieve harmony.
“There were few things we could do together, but we could do the art work together at their rate and level,” Gerber said. “When you reach them at their level, they succeed.”
Gerber, a professor emeritus at Southern Connecticut State University who still teaches a course each semester, is a nationally recognized star in the fields of both art education and special education, most noted for combining the two seemingly divergent fields. Gerber taught at her alma mater, Southern, for 33 years before retiring from full-time work in 2003.
“Because of the uniqueness of the two fields coming together, I call myself a matchmaker,” Gerber, of Milford said with a twinkle in her eye.
Gerber’s commitment to the notion that art is a vehicle for special needs students to learn other subjects, to express themselves emotionally and show their level, has led to such groundbreaking progress in the field that colleagues from the National Art Education Association established The Beverly Levett Gerber Lifetime Achievement award to go each year to an outstanding art educator who works with special needs children.
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Parents have said they want to be more involved with the selection process. About 25 JPS parents and Jackson residents rallied on South State Street in front of the district's administration buildings Friday, urging the board to slow down the selection process and allow for more community involvement.Jackson supports about 31,000 students and the article notes that "20 community members responded". I recall that the Madison Superintendent Search consultants mentioned that the approximately 400 community responses (in a district with 24,268 students) was quite good. Certainly, apathy reigns.In an attempt to get the public more involved, the board asked community members to submit suggested questions for the board to ask applicants. Stamps said at least 20 community members responded.
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This report includes general purpose revenue (GPR) taxes collected by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, and does not include taxes collected by the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance (OCI), administrative fees, and other miscellaneous revenues. Total General Fund tax collections are reported in the Department of Administration’s Report of Monthly General Fund Financial Information, which includes GPR and program revenue taxes collected by all state agencies.Overall tax collections are up 2.9%, however, state spending is growing at a faster rate, which has caused state and local spending changes. I wonder how the 2.9% tax collection increase compares to the average annual wage changes?
More: "Where Does All That Money Go?" by John Matsusaka:
Some of it went to cover increases in the cost of living, and state spending naturally grows with the size of the population. But even adjusting for inflation and population growth, state spending is up almost 20% compared with four years ago, a big enough bump that ordinary Californians should be able to notice it. The state's financial statements describe where the money went -- the big gainers were education ($13 billion), transportation ($10 billion) and health ($10 billion) -- but not why these billions don't create even a blip on our day-to-day radar.One possibility is that we simply do not notice all of the valuable services we receive. A national 2007 survey by William G. Howell at the University of Chicago and Martin R. West at Brown University found that respondents underestimated spending in their school district by 60%; on average, they believed spending was $4,231 per student when in fact it was $10,377. They also found that Americans underestimated teacher salaries by 30%. How many Californians know that public school teachers in the state earn an average of $59,000 a year, essentially tied with Connecticut for the highest average pay in the country? Likewise, perhaps we don't notice the repaired roads or new buses and trains that take us to work.
On the other hand, maybe these billions of dollars just do not translate into services that are valuable to us.
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Believe it or not, walking the halls of local high schools this summer are students not forced to make up courses they flunked in the spring, but ones who maybe — just maybe — want to be there.And not just because they want to learn how to drive. They’re taking classes so they can have more time for elective offerings and Advanced Placement classes during the regular school year, or maybe pick up an internship, or even graduate early.
“You’re able to take everything you want if you take a lot of classes during the summer,” said Aaron Redlich, an incoming senior at Nicolet High School in Glendale who is enrolled in physical education and creative writing classes this summer.
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In 1997, when Gordon Brown announced the "most radical welfare reforms since the Second World War", he declared that the unemployed young would be first in the firing line. "How," he asked, "did a society like ours get itself into a position where we are wasting young people's talents like this?"The Chancellor had what he thought was a solution. Under his Welfare-to-Work programme, funded by a £5 billion windfall tax on the privatised utilities, the welfare state would be transformed, making it crystal clear that "staying at home is not an option".
But, 10 years on, the work ethic that Mr Brown was so confident he could inculcate in the nation's jobless youth remains elusive. In fact, things have got worse: the phenomenon of Neets (young people "not in education, employment or training") is on the rise.
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Seth Jovaag via a kind reader's email:
Local school officials took another early step Monday toward creating a Verona-based magnet school that could offer area high school students specialized classes they might not get otherwise.Deborah Ziff:With Madison Area Technical College searching for a new place to build a campus in southwestern Dane County, six area school districts are lining up behind the idea of a "Global Academy," where high schoolers could learn job skills and earn post-secondary credits.
The Verona Area school board Monday approved the spending of $6,750 to hire a consultant to put together a detailed plan for how the six districts could work with MATC - and possibly the University of Wisconsin - to create such a campus.
That money will pool with similar amounts from five districts - Oregon, Belleville, Mount Horeb, McFarland and Middleton-Cross Plains - eager to see MATC land nearby, too.
The consultant, expected to start Aug. 15, will be asked to hone the concept of the school, including how it could be organized and how the consortium would work together.
Though the academy is currently little more than a concept, board member Dennis Beres said that if it comes to fruition, it could be a huge addition for the district.
Administrators from six Dane County school districts are planning to create a program called The Global Academy, a hybrid of high school and college courses offering specialized skills for high school juniors and seniors.Smart. Related: Credit for non-MMSD Courses.The consortium of districts includes Verona, MiddletonCross Plains, Belleville, McFarland, Mount Horeb and Oregon.
The Global Academy would offer courses in four career clusters: architecture and construction; health science; information technology; and science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
"We really see a need for vocational and technical programs and career planning," said Dean Gorrell, superintendent of Verona Schools. "It's tough to keep those going."
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In a sign of increasing concern about cheating, the nation's top business schools will soon require a high-tech identity check for standardized admissions tests.Aspiring corporate executives taking the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, will have to undergo a "palm vein" scan, which takes an infrared picture of the blood coursing through their hands. The image -- which resembles a highway interchange in a major city -- is unique to every individual. The scans are used widely in Japan among users of automated teller machines but only recently have appeared in the U.S.
Palm-vein scanning on GMAT test takers will begin next month in Korea and India, with U.S. centers starting as early as this fall and a world-wide rollout by May.
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Des Moines Register Editorial:
What would it take for Iowa - and the nation - to fully prepare students for the globally competitive world of today and tomorrow?What does that mean for the curriculum, training of teachers and expectations for students? What is the best way to transform classrooms to deliver this world-class education, not just to elite students but to everyone? Are national standards the answer, or should that be left to states?
Those are some of the questions The Des Moines Register's editorial board has asked in recent months. We've talked with educators and policymakers, we've visited schools and we'll visit others here and abroad.
everal things are clear from conversations to date:One is a growing, though hardly universal, concern that the United States must better educate students to keep its competitive edge in a fast-changing global economy. The rise of Asia and the flattening of the world with technology - allowing jobs to move virtually anywhere in the world - create great opportunities but also pose significant threats. That's especially worrisome when American youngsters perform so poorly in math and science on international tests compared to their peers in many other places.
Interest grows in higher standards.
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Like surgical scars, once promising or trendy ideas for reform have left their marks all over the D.C. school system. Many came as officials pursued the best way to configure schools for students coping with their turbulent adolescent years.At one time or another, the city has tried schools starting with kindergarten through ninth grade and K-7; junior highs with grades seven through nine; middle schools with grades six through eight; and, most recently, schools with pre-K through eighth grade.
Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has decided to expand the District's investment in that last format, making it a major element in the program of school closures and consolidations she launched last month.
At a cost of $58 million, five elementary and middle schools -- Oyster-Adams, Powell, LaSalle, Francis and Brown -- will expand to pre-K-8, receiving students from the shuttered schools when classes begin in August. An additional 13 will become pre-K-7 this fall and add eighth grade in 2009.
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