AP:
A high school basketball coach has been told he can’t hypnotize his players anymore because it sends the wrong message to other schools and could get the students hooked on hypnosis.
The St. John High School boys team — the same team that won state two years ago and finished second last year — was just 7-6 through last week when coach Clint Kinnamon decided to bring in a hypnotist.
He chose Carl Feril, a Church of Christ minister who also is a clinical family and marriage therapist.
Now that Arne Duncan, President Obama’s new education secretary, has presented the administration’s $150 billion plan for reviving our education system, it’s time to start separating Obama’s smart ideas for schools from his dumb ones. The first folly Duncan could dispense with – at an enormous cost saving – would be Obama’s desire to outfit the nation’s classrooms with new computers. His big push for this idea occurred in December, when he said, “Every child should have the chance to get online,” Obama said, “and they’ll get that chance when I’m president – because that’s how we’ll strengthen America’s competitiveness in the world.”
Really?
Educators have been trying to improve schools with every technology we’ve ever invented, beginning with Thomas Edison’s promise, in 1912, to create “100 percent efficiency” in the classroom through the medium of “the motion picture.” Since personal computers and the Internet first arrived in classrooms, in the early 1990s, schools have spent approximately $100 billion on technology. Throughout this campaign, educators and the technology industry have been searching madly for solid evidence of whether the computers were boosting achievement. So little has been found that this data has become education’s WMD.
Wagner promotes seven “21st century” skills that he claims are not taught in our schools. These “survival” skills are also being promoted by advocacy groups like the National Educational Association.
Wagner’s list seems plausible. Who can argue against teaching students “agility and adaptability” or how to “ask good questions?” Yet these “skills” are largely unsupported by actual scientific research. Wagner presents nothing to justify his list except glib language and a virtually endless string of anecdotes about his conversations with high-tech CEOs.
Even where Wagner does use research, it’s not clear that we can trust what he reports as fact. On page 92, to discredit attempts to increase the number of high school students studying algebra and advanced mathematics courses, he refers to a “study” of MIT graduates that he claims found only a few mentioning anything “more than arithmetic, statistics and probability” as useful to their work. Curious, I checked out the “study” using the URL provided in an end note for Chapter 3. It consisted of 17, yes 17, MIT graduates, and, according to my count, 11 of the 17 explicitly mentioned linear algebra, trig, proofs and/ or calculus, or other advanced mathematics courses as vital to their work – exactly the opposite of what Wagner reports! Perhaps exposure to higher mathematics is not the worst problem facing American students!
K-12 school districts that lay off personnel according to seniority cause disproportionate damage to their programs and students than if layoffs were determined on a seniority-neutral basis.
School districts face severe budget challenges with state funding at risk in this perilous economy. In this four-page analysis of K-12 district layoff issues, Marguerite Roza, a senior scholar at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, calculates that if a district is required to use layoffs to cut its budget by 10 percent and cuts the most junior employees, it will need to axe 14.3 percent of its workforce (including teachers) to meet the 10 percent budget reduction.
On the other hand, if that district followed a seniority-neutral layoff policy–say by a standard of employee effectiveness–only 10 percent of the workforce would lose their jobs.
Nationwide, if all districts followed a seniority-neutral layoff policy to save 10 percent, 612,256 jobs would be lost compared with 874,623 lost under a seniority-based policy.
Neil deGrasse Tyson is one in a million.
He said so himself.
“There are six-and-half billion people on this planet, and there are 6,500 astrophysicists, so that makes each of us (astrophysicists) one in a million,” Tyson said Monday night at the Wisconsin Union Theater as part of the UW’s Distinguished Lecture Series.
It’s too bad there aren’t a lot more like Tyson, who kept the packed house enthralled with his charisma, knowledge and off-the-cuff humor for more than two hours.
Tyson is the 21st century face of space, a mantle previously held by the late, great Carl Sagan. Tyson is director of the Hayden Planetarium and the host of PBS’ “NOVA ScienceNOW” program, aimed at educating a new generation of Americans in science.
And that is no small task.
Tyson pointed out numerous examples of scientific illiteracy in the U.S., including a general lack of understanding and a belief in silly superstitions.
On the screen behind him he showed a photo of the inside of an elevator in a tall building, and how there was no button for the 13th floor.
“We are supposedly a technologically advanced country, and yet people are afraid of the number 13?” he said.
How some of the major spending will be shared among the states, according to estimates for the current stimulus bill proposed by House Democratic leaders.
In its first five years on campus, Delta has made a profound impact on UW-Madison’s teaching and learning culture. A fall 2008 review found that more than 400 faculty and instructional staff enhanced their teaching practices in some way as a direct result of Delta workshops.
As Delta grows, it continues to receive recognition for its efforts. On Monday, Feb. 9, Delta will be presented with the National Consortium for Continuous Improvement in Higher Education’s Award for Leveraging Excellence.
Delta members are encouraged to take Delta courses and small-group-facilitated programs, attend roundtable dinners and seminars, and participate in the Delta internship program to learn how to implement Delta’s three pillars — teaching-as-research, learning community and learning-through-diversity — into the classroom.
Gov. Jim Doyle is stumping for a bill that would require insurance companies to cover autism.
Most insurance companies don’t cover autism because it is classified as an emotional disorder rather than a neurological condition.
A host of lawmakers and Drew Goldsmith, a 12-year-old autistic boy from Middleton, backed Doyle at a press conference in his office Tuesday.
Doyle is proposing strengthening current legislation to include minimum coverage levels of $60,000 for intensive treatment and $30,000 for post-intensive services. He said it would cut the waiting list to join a state-run program for autism services by a third.
Lawmakers on Tuesday said they hope to win support for the bill in the Legislature.
In the summer of 1998, over two frantic weeks in July, I wrote an essay titled The Future of Online Learning. (Downes, 1998) At the time, I was working as a distance education and new media design specialist at Assiniboine Community College, and I wrote the essay to defend the work I was doing at the time. “We want a plan,” said my managers, and so I outlined the future as I thought it would – and should – unfold.
In the ten years that have followed, this vision of the future has proven to be remarkably robust. I have found, on rereading and reworking the essay, that though there may have been some movement in the margins, the overall thrust of the paper was essentially correct. This gives me confidence in my understanding of those forces and trends that are moving education today.
In this essay I offer a renewal of those predictions. I look at each of the points I addressed in 1998, and with the benefit of ten year’s experience, recast and rewrite each prediction. This essay is not an attempt to vindicate the previous paper – time has done that – but to carry on in the same spirit, and to push that vision ten years deeper into the future.
Via a kind reader’s email. Three surveys for families that have left the Madison School District for the following destinations [PDF]:
Related Links:
The Madison School District’s tax and spending authority is based on its enrollment.
The Singularity University will be based at the space programme’s Ames campus in Silicon Valley, USA.
Its chancellor will be the controversial futurist Ray Kurzweil, whose 2005 book The Singularity is Near inspired the name of the school.
He believes that the rapid rise of technology will enable machines in the near future to use artificial intelligence to make themselves cleverer than humans.
Critics of singularity believe such sophisticated technology could end up being a threat to man.
But Mr Kurzweil said it was important to realise the potential of technological development: “The law of accelerating returns means technology eventually will be a million more times powerful than it is today and cause profound transformation.”
Singularity University will accept 30 graduate students in its first intake this summer, increasing to 120 next year.
Despite its name, the college is not an accredited university but will offer nine-week courses exploring ways to ensure technology improves mankind’s plight instead of harming it.
Most sections of Psychology 101 at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee fit the popular image of a college class: Hundreds of students pack into a lecture hall twice a week and attend regular discussion sections.
With four 100-point exams making up most of the grade, it is the kind of course an academically weak student might struggle to pass.
But as the university faces pressure to improve success rates for underprepared college students, one professor’s markedly different approach to the introductory psychology course is turning heads.
Professor Diane Reddy has replaced the traditional lecture format with an online version of Psych 101. Students learn at their own pace but also have to obtain mastery, demonstrated by passing a quiz on each unit, before they can move on to the next.
Along the way, students get help from teaching assistants who monitor their online activity, identifying weak spots and providing advice – even if the students don’t seek it.
Initial evidence says it works: In a study of 5,000 students over two years, U-Pace students performed 12% better on the same cumulative test than students who took traditional Psych 101 with the same textbook and course content, even though U-Pace students had lower average grades than those in the conventional course.
The online model, the study found, was particularly successful for disadvantaged or underprepared students – low-income students, racial and ethnic minorities, and those with low grades or ACT scores. And students in general do better in the class, too, earning a higher percentage of As and Bs than students earn in traditional Psych 101.
Times are tough, particularly in our schools. We don’t have the money, beleaguered education officials say, for every student who wants to play games after class. Some school sports have to go. Loudoun County is talking about cutting junior varsity lacrosse and all freshman sports. Fairfax County’s proposed budget would end girls’ gymnastics. Other teams are in jeopardy. The public high schools can’t afford them anymore.
And yet many people who reflect for a moment will remember their own school days and see this kind of financial austerity as shortsighted, like cutting back on English classes because most kids already speak that language. Many of us remember some competitive activity, usually in high school, that became a vital force in our adolescence. It gave us a self-awareness and self-confidence that changed us forever.
None of us read all of the 481,563 articles published last year on the early life and struggles of the soon-to-be president of the United States, but most of us know that if Barack Obama had not discovered basketball he would not have become the leader he is today. On the opposite end of that scale of significance, I compiled the worst record ever at my high school, 0-14, in league play as the tennis team’s No. 1 singles player. I didn’t care much about winning. I got some exercise, and something even better. I was a total nerd, but I could strut around with my very own varsity letter, just like the football players. I still carry that morale boost.
The legal segregation of U.S. public schools was supposedly halted in 1954 by the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. But according to a January report released by the Civil Rights Project, school segregation is now at the highest level in four decades.
The study, titled “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge,” [960K PDF] concludes that the election of the first African American president does not indicate that the United States has become a “post-racial” society. Rather, it argues against the notion that things are progressing in the right direction, especially in light of the harsh reality of race relations in public education.
The 1954 Supreme Court decision concluded that Southern segregation was “inherently unequal” and did “irreversible” harm to Black students. In an education system segregated by race, poverty and language, most Black and Latino students do not receive opportunities equal to their white counterparts. The U.S. Department of Education states, “Poverty poses a serious challenge to children’s access to quality learning opportunities and their potential to succeed in school.”
Institutionalized racism has effectively replaced the Jim Crow laws of the post-Reconstruction period as the basis for continued segregation. Although there have been significant reforms, mostly won during the Civil Rights movement, these victories have been eroded by reactionary court decisions and racist political leadership from elected officials.
ebro, who had never been to America before arriving in Palo Alto in late September 2005, had dreams of earning a degree in economics and going to work for a venerable bank, either in finance or computer systems.
Now, the 21-year-old Sebro is months shy of graduating. Financial markets have convulsed and unemployment is climbing. And Sebro, who interned at Goldman Sachs in New York in September, had a front row, white-knuckle seat as Lehman – once the nation’s fourth-largest investment bank – went bankrupt.
Sebro, who listens to friends talk about job offers rescinded and about the possibility of taking a fifth year of school in hopes the market will recover, is rethinking his own strategy as he prepares to leave the cocoon of college and make it on his own.
“I learned a lot from this crisis,” says Sebro, an economics major. “We do not know who will fail next. There is a total change in what is considered risky.”
Sebro added, “Nobody knows if a job offer is real these days. I’ve realized I can’t tie my fortune to a big bank. My thinking now is that starting my own business is going to be less risky than going to work for someone else.”
But while this generation of baby-boom teachers has witnessed remarkable transformations in their lifetime — in women’s rights, in civil rights — the waves of education reforms aimed at remaking our urban schools that they have been dispatched to implement have repeatedly fallen short.
Ms. Huff has taught both basic math and calculus at East High, a failing school under the federal No Child Left Behind law, considered by many here to be the city’s most troubled. As I walked in the front door one frigid day last month, ambulance attendants were rolling out a young man on a gurney and wearing a neck brace.
MS. HUFF’S eighth period has just five calculus students — normally not enough to justify a class — but the administration keeps it going so these children have a shot at competing with top students elsewhere. No sooner had they sat down and finished their daily warm-up quiz, than there was a loud clanging. “A pull,” Ms. Huff said. “Let’s go.” Someone had yanked the fire alarm. Ms. Huff led her students through halls that were chaotic. Several times when she tried to quiet students from other classes, they swore at her.
For 15 minutes she and her calculus students — none of them with coats — stood in a parking lot battered by a fierce wind off Lake Ontario. Everywhere, kids could be seen leaving school for the day, but all the calculus students returned, took their seats, and just as Ms. Huff started teaching, there was another false alarm and they had to march out again.
Seems like a simple question, but given how much time and money we spend on it, it has a wide range of answers, many unexplored, some contradictory. I have a few thoughts about education, how we use it to market ourselves and compete, and I realized that without a common place to start, it’s hard to figure out what to do.
So, a starter list. The purpose of school is to:
- Become an informed citizen
- Be able to read for pleasure
- Be trained in the rudimentary skills necessary for employment
- Do well on standardized tests
- Homogenize society, at least a bit
- Pasteurize out the dangerous ideas
- Give kids something to do while parents work
- Teach future citizens how to conform
- Teach future consumers how to desire….
The consumption aspects of this list are useful to consider, particularly in light of some reform textbooks.
The giant economic stimulus bill working its way through Congress should deliver enough money to Wisconsin to keep the state from taking such draconian measures to close its $5.7 billion budget shortfall as furloughing prisoners, knocking poor children off Medicaid rolls and slashing school aids.
But the federal largesse — up to $4 billion or more for Wisconsin alone — carries the potential of leaving the state budget worse off in the future if the economy doesn’t recover and lawmakers don’t do a better job than they have in the past of making sure the state lives within its means.
“In two years this money won’t be there,” Sen. Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, said of the stimulus. “The programs will be there, the costs will be there, but the money will be gone.”
“(It’s as if) your uncle died and left you a few bucks,” Ellis said. “And did you take your wife out for a beer and a burger? No. . .You’ve spent the inheritance, and therein lies the problem.”
Jason Stein on Wisconsin’s lack of prudent budgeting:
Instead, they’ve pushed today’s bills off until tomorrow, creating some of the shakiest budgets in the nation and jeopardizing future commitments to safe roads, good schools and aid to the poor, according to a Wisconsin State Journal review of past budget practices.
“We’ve met the enemy and it’s us,” said Mark Bugher, a former Administration secretary who helped write state budgets when Republican Tommy Thompson was governor. “On both sides of the spectrum … politicians have just demonstrated a lack of ability to face the public and say, ‘We’re not going to be able to afford this.’ ”
Showing such leadership now is more difficult than it has been in decades. The recession has struck tens of thousands of families, leaving many workers without jobs or health coverage, and pinching businesses and local governments. Aging roads, dams and bridges require massive investments. The global economy calls for better schools and smarter graduates. The demand to hold the line on taxes is high.
A 19th-century school that served Prince William County’s African American population opens for public tours today in honor of Black History Month.
The Lucasville School, at 10516 Godwin Dr. in the Manassas area, will be open every weekend this month from noon to 4 p.m. The one-room school was the only one in the county solely for African Americans, said Robert Orrison, a historic site manager for the county. A few one-room schools that served whites remain, but most have been converted into homes.
“We opened the school up last February,” Orrison said. “It’s a great place to learn about segregated schools and how education was done in the 19th and early 20th century.”
Built in 1885, the Lucasville School served children in grades one through six until 1926, Orrison said. About 20 to 25 students of different ages would pack into the building each year to learn from a single instructor. The school was filled with benches, not desks, Orrison said, and blackboards were made of pieces of plywood painted black, unlike at white schools, where students had blackboard slates.
via a kind reader’s email:
Superintendent Dan Nerad is conducting a survey of families who left the MMSD and invites your participation.
If you opted to not enroll your child/children in their MMSD school — if they attend private school, you home school or you moved out of the District — or you are strongly considering the same and you are willing to participate in this survey, please let Superintendent Nerad know. Send your contact information to his assistant, Ann Wilson (awilson@madison.k12.wi.us or 608 663-1607).
Related: Wisconsin Open Enrollment begins February 2, 2009.
The problem child of English grammar is a tiny, tadpole-shaped bundle of trouble that makes no sound, but spells chaos. Three centuries after it invaded our language (almost certainly sneaked in by the French), the apostrophe continues to defeat, confuse and humiliate large numbers of people, and, in retaliation, they want to abolish it.
Then we wont have to worry about where its supposed to go.
Last week Birmingham city council announced that it would no longer use apostrophes on street signs . Councillor Martin Mullaney, the Liberal Democrat chairman of its transport scrutiny committee, claimed that dropping them would make the city’s signage policy “more consistent”, and easier for users of computer databases and satellite navigation systems. Apparently, if you have the misfortune to be a Mr O’Dowd, needing a minicab from the King’s Arms in D’Arcy Avenue, drivers can’t find you.
So, St Paul’s Square, an elegant, late-Georgian landmark in Jewellery Quarter, will become St Pauls Square. We’ll have the fashionably de-apostrophised Druids Heath and Acocks Green, but things are unlikely to stop there. Once they start to slide they slide quickly, and it surely won’t be long before Great Charles Street, in the shopping district, becomes GR8 Chas St.
City dwellers want out
“City residents disproportionately are more likely than people living in other types of communities to say they would prefer to live in a place other than a city,” Morin says. “Fewer than half of all city residents say there is no better place to live than in a city.”
A smaller proportion of women express the desire to live in the nation’s largest cities. “Women are less drawn to big cities,” says Robert Lang, co-director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. “It could be safety.”
Wanting to live outside cities doesn’t necessarily mean people reject urban lifestyles, however. The appeal of developments with an urban flair — ones that combine housing, stores and offices in a neighborhood setting — is growing.
The complete report can be found here.
Marshall Middle School in Janesville is in its second year of offering single-gender classrooms, and students and teachers said the program has made a positive difference in their education.
Currently, more than 200 school districts around the country are testing out the teaching method, and about 10 schools in Wisconsin offer a single-gender classroom program.
Marshall Middle School teacher Charles Smith said getting eighth-grade boys and girls to agree on music isn’t easy. But his social studies class is girls only, and Smith said the class prefers to study to the music of Beyonce.
“If the kids are comfortable, they feel better about it. Then this is a good place for them,” said Smith.
Smith said the single-gender classroom is about making students feel comfortable.
While his students learn, he said he’s also learning how to better tailor his lessons.
*The administration has been developing a differentiated compensation strategy. Saavedra has hinted at this before, but the bottom line is he wants to pay the highest-performing teachers significantly more money. Some proposed details: The district would identify the teachers who rank among the top 10 percent of value-added student test data for at least two consecutive years. Those top performers would get a 10 percent salary increase, and they would have the option — Saavedra emphasized this would be a choice — to transfer to a low-performing school and get another 15 percent salary increase. These top teachers also could get even more money if they agree to teach summer school; rather than the usual $25-an-hour rate, they would get 125 percent of their full daily rate of pay. And there’s more: These teachers could choose to serve as master teachers and share their best practices across the district for 15 days, at a rate of $500 per day.
*Mission and vision for human capital, from Best’s PowerPoint (I’ll try to get an electronic copy and post later):
Mission: HISD’s most important resource in helping our students become college- and career-ready is our employees. Our success to move our organization to its next level of achievement depends on our ability to attract and cultivate human capital and provide the support for our employees to excel in their work.
Vision: HISD seeks to create a culture that values employees who are talented, innovative thinkers who are reuslts-oriented; individuals who strive to increase student achievement and revolutionize the field of education. We know that a wise investment in human capital in each individual at every level will yield success for our students.
*On the recruiting strategy, it sounds like Best wants the central HR department to have a bigger central office role in the recruiting process. Basically, the department would take the lead in identifying talent, wherever it is. Best is proposing a pilot where principals would agree to hire some of the centrally recruited teachers.
I was honored to be part of the Madison School District’s “Strategic Planning Process” this weekend. More than 60 community members, students, parents, board members and district employees participated.
The process, which included meetings Thursday (1/29/2009) from 8 to 6 Friday (1/30/2009) from 8 to 5 and Saturday (1/31/2009) from 8 to 12, thus far, resulted in the following words:
MMSD Mission Statement (1/30/2009):
Our mission is to cultivate the potential in every student to thrive as a global citizen by inspiring a love of learning and civic engagement, by challenging and supporting every student to achieve academic excellence, and by embracing the full richness and diversity of our community.
Draft Strategic Priorities
1. Student:
We will eliminate the achievement gap by ensuring that all students reach their highest potential. To do this, we will prepare every student for kindergarten, create meaningful student-adult relationships, and provide student-centered programs and supports that lead to prepared graduates. (see also student outcomes)
2. Resource/Capacity:
We will rigorously evaluate programs, services and personnel through a collaborative, data-driven process to prioritize and allocate resources effectively and equitably, and vigorously pursue the resources necessary to achieve our mission.
3. Staff
We will implement a formal system to support and inspire continuous development of effective teaching and leadership skills of all staff who serve to engage our diverse student body while furthering development of programs that target the recruitment and retent ion of staff members who reflect the cultural composition of our student body.
4. Curriculum
We will revolutionize the educational model to engage and support all students in a comprehensive participatory educational experience defined by rigorous, culturally relevant and accelerated learning opportunities where authentic assessment is paired with flexible instruction.
5. Organization/Systems:
We will proudly leverage our rich diversity as our greatest strength and provide a learning environment in which all our children experience what we want for each of our children. We will:
New Jersey high school teacher Peter Hibbard flunked 55 percent of the students in his regular biology class the year before he retired. There were no failures in his honors classes, he said, but many of his regular students refused to do the work. They did not show up for tests and did not take makeups. They did not turn in lab reports. Homework was often ignored.
“Still, the principal told me that the failure rate was unacceptable, and I needed to fix it,” Hibbard said. “The pressure to give grades instead of actually teaching increased. A colleague told me that he had no problem. If students showed up, they got a C. If they did some work, they got a B. If they did fair or better on tests, they got an A. No one ever complained, and his paycheck was the same. He was teacher of the year, and a finalist for a principal’s job.”
I often get helpful letters from teachers. They are fine people who assume I am educable, despite evidence to the contrary. Sometimes, as in Hibbard’s case, teachers are so candid and wise I am compelled to quote them, and see if readers share their view of reality.
Here is what Hibbard told me:
For a new generation of well-wired activists in the Washington region, it’s not enough to speak at Parent-Teacher Association or late-night school board meetings. They are going head-to-head with superintendents through e-mail blitzes, social networking Web sites, online petitions, partnerships with business and student groups, and research that mines a mountain of electronic data on school performance.
In recent weeks, parent-led campaigns helped bring down a long-established grading policy in Fairfax County and scale back the unpopular practice of charging fees for courses in Montgomery County. They have also stoked debates over math education in Frederick and Prince William counties.
Links:
Arne Duncan, the brand-new Secretary of Education, said today that he would consider using $15 billion in proposed federal incentive grants to reward states for setting more “rigorous” standards. The money would be available to him under a broad $819 billion stimulus package that passed the House, with no GOP support, last night.
“There’s a series of things we’re looking for,” in allocating those funds, Duncan told me, in the first of a round of one-on-one interviews he gave to reporters. He indicated that the Department would want states that receive the funds to have a comprehensive data system, strong assessments, and rigorous standards. “With this fund, we really have a chance to drive dramatic changes, to take to scale what works, invest in what works.”
Given his emphasis on standards, I asked him whether he might use the fund to push for national or more uniform, rigorous standards. He left the door open for that. “Sure, absolutely,” he told me (though without committing himself.) “Lots of folks are already thinking this way. We want to reward rigor and challenge the status quo.”
I asked him about some of the reform-oriented programs in the stimulus package. He wasn’t specific about which items the administration had pushed for until I brought up the $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund in one version of the bill, which doles out grants to districts for alternative pay programs, the $25 million for charter school facilities, and the $250 million state data systems.
Rarely in our history have two more critical and incredible moments collided the Inauguration of Barack Obama and the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. We feel the excitement of change no matter what our party affiliation may be, and yet our enthusiasm is tempered by what we know lies ahead.
In Sept. of 2008, our financial illiteracy as a nation dramatically revealed itself and the unraveling continues today. The propensity of many to spend beyond their means and make unwise financial decisions demonstrates that many of us don’t even know the basics of budgeting or handling debt.
But we have an opportunity to turn this crisis into the ultimate learning experience. Our new leaders, including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, fresh from Chicago Public Schools, can help make sure future generations don’t repeat our mistakes.
Lori Weiss via a kind reader’s email:
Wauwatosa School District officials have found a home for the trade charter school that will be opening for the 2009-10 school year.
For the first year, the School of the Trades will be housed in the basement of the Fisher Building, 12121 W. North Ave.
Superintendent Phil Ertl said the district is looking at the location for one year as it evaluates the viability and efficiency of the building.
It was determined that the Fisher Building would be the best place to house the district’s second trade charter school because it doesn’t need major renovations.
“It’s all there right now,” Jason Zurawik, West associate principal who has been working with the trade charter school committee, told the School Board on Jan. 26.
Faced with a dismal market for college summer internships, a growing number of anxious parents are pitching in to help — by buying their kids a foot in the door.
Some are paying for-profit companies to place their college students in internships that are mostly unpaid. Others are hiring marketing consultants to create direct-mail campaigns promoting their children’s workplace potential. Still other parents are buying internships outright in online charity auctions.
Even as the economy slows, internship-placement programs are seeing demand rise by 15% to 25% over a year ago. Critics of the programs say they deepen the divide between the haves and have-nots by giving students from more affluent families an advantage. But parents say the fees are a small price for giving their children a toehold in a treacherous job market. And operators of the programs claim they actually broaden access to internships by opening them to students who lack personal or political connections to big employers.
The whole idea of paying cash so your kid can work is sometimes jarring at first to parents accustomed to finding jobs the old-fashioned way — by pounding the pavement. Susan and Raymond Sommer of tiny St. Libory, Ill., were dismayed when their daughter Megan, then a junior at a Kentucky university, asked them to spend $8,000 so she could get an unpaid sports-marketing internship last summer in New York City. Paying to work “was something people don’t do around here,” says Ms. Sommer, a retired concrete-company office worker; her husband, a retired electrical superintendent, objected that if “you work for a company, you should be getting paid.”
The School Board in Loudoun County, where the recession might be having a greater effect on teachers’ wallets than in any other Washington area jurisdiction, late last night approved a budget of $747. million that would freeze teacher salaries.
The spending plan, which passed by an 8 to 1 vote, would omit cost-of-living and seniority raises to save $31. million. It would be the second straight year that Loudoun teachers have gone without a cost-of-living increase. The other type of raise, for rising seniority, is also known as a step increase. The no vote came from John Stevens (Potomac).
Last week, Superintendent Edgar B. Hatrick III proposed forgoing the step increase, a move he said would align Loudoun schools with others in the state. Some of the savings would preserve jobs that had been in jeopardy.
“We’ve been weighing this against the positions that were disappearing in order to keep the step alive,” Hatrick said before the board meeting in Ashburn. “We’re cognizant that there’s a lot of economic strife out there.”
Trinity Episcopal School survived Hurricane Ike last fall. But then another storm hit — the economy.
The Galveston, Texas, school, where tuition is between $5,000 and $8,000 a year, has seen its enrollment drop 12%, says David Dearman, the head of the school. Many parents of its students were among the 3,000 workers laid off by the area’s largest employer, the University of Texas Medical Branch. At the end of 2008, the school’s endowment was $800,000, down about 20% from July.
The school has ramped up donation efforts through its Web site, and held car washes and bake sales. It stopped using substitute teachers — other staff members now step in when a teacher is out sick. “Our school will survive, but it will take years to recover,” Mr. Dearman says.
Trinity Episcopal School is one of many kindergarten-through-12th-grade private schools caught in the middle of an economic tempest: anemic endowments, dwindling donations, financially strapped parents slashing tuition from the family budget, and an exodus to suburbs with more appealing public schools where costs are lower.
“The discourse has shifting from sustainability to survivability,” says Myra McGovern, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Independent Schools.
Of the many parallels between Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy, one has eluded all coverage: Both attended Catholic school as children. In fact, while JFK may have been the Irish Catholic from Boston, he spent less time at the Canterbury School in Connecticut than did young Barry (as he was then called) at St. Francis of Assisi in Indonesia.
At a time when America’s 6,165 Catholic elementary and 1,213 secondary schools are celebrating Catholic Schools Week, President Obama’s first-hand experience here opens the door to a provocative opportunity. In his inaugural address, the president rightly scored a U.S. school system that “fail[s] too many” of our young people. How refreshing it would be if he followed up by giving voice to a corollary truth: For tens of thousands of inner-city families, the local parochial school is often the only lifeline of hope.
“When an inner-city public school does what most Catholic schools do every day, it makes the headlines,” says Patrick J. McCloskey, author of a new book called “The Street Stops Here,” about the year he spent at Rice High — an Irish Christian Brothers school in Harlem. “President Obama has a chance to rise above the ideological divide simply by giving credit where credit is due, by focusing on results, and the reason for those results.”
HR1 on 28 January 2009: 244 (all Democrats) -188 (11 Democrats and 177 Republicans).
Much more on the splurge here.
At least one local school administrator is encouraged by Gov. Ted Strickland’s education plan unveiled during Wednesday’s State of the State address.
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The plan includes the elimination of phantom revenue and a new conversion-levy option that would allow tax revenue to grow with inflation, Newark City Schools Superintendent Keith Richards said.
“House Bill 920 has been one of my pet peeves since I’ve become an administrator,” he said of the 1976 bill that freezes levy revenues at the amount of money they’re originally passed for. “I believe conversion is the way schools should be funded.”
The other funding portion Strickland addressed — the phantom revenue — means that the state will fund districts at the 20-mill floor, instead of funding them as if they were taxing at 23 mills.
Those funding ideas, however, didn’t hold weight with state Rep. Jay Hottinger, R-Newark, who said the solution was nowhere to be found.
“There was no new formula, no significant change. I’m flabbergasted and really underwhelmed,” he said.
‘ve lost count of how many trillions of bailout money have been laid out (fortunately for all of us, Bloomberg keeps track: $8.5 trillion and counting). Layoffs are being announced in the tens of thousands in a single day. The housing market continues to collapse, as does the banking industry. We have a new administration, which has created a huge appetite for any shred of news from the White House. Those two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still drone on. The news industry is collapsing. And Oklahoma is 20-1 in basketball (Beg pardon on this last one.)
But today, the heavy guns are out for the approaching-trillion-dollar stimulus package Obama is pushing through Congress. And it’s an impressive performance.
First, The New York Times has a double-barreled effort with its lead stories on page one today, one about the unprecedented education spending in the bill and the other on the massive health-care expenditures it contains.
The Times is excellent on both counts. On education, it reports that fully $150 billion of the stimulus package is allocated for learnin’. It puts the numbers in great context:
…a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget…
…would amount to the largest increase in federal aid since Washington began to spend significantly on education after World War II…
…New York would be among the biggest beneficiaries, at $760 per student, while New Jersey and Connecticut would fall near the bottom, with $427 and $409 per student, respectively. The District of Columbia would get the most per student, $1,289, according to the foundation’s analysis…
And it clearly explains the potential ramifications of implementing such an enormous plan:
Critics and supporters alike said that by its sheer scope, the measure could profoundly change the federal government’s role in education, which has traditionally been the responsibility of state and local government…
The bill would, for the first time, involve the federal government in a significant fashion in the building and renovation of schools, which has been the responsibility of states and districts…
Much more on the stimulus/splurge here.
1.2MB PDF File. This document includes responses from Madison School Board seat 1 candidates Arlene Silveira and Donald Gors, Seat 2 candidate Lucy Mathiak and a number of other local and statewide candidates for office in the upcoming April, 2009 election. Via a kind reader’s email.
But there is controversy with 4K, and not just because of the cost. In other districts that have started programs, operators of private centers that stand to lose tuition dollars have emerged as opponents.
That’s unlikely to be true for Renee Zaman, director of Orchard Ridge Nursery School on Madison’s west side, who said last week that her center would be in a good position to participate with a 4K program because they already teach 84 4-year-olds and because all of their early childhood teachers are state certified.
But Zaman also said she hopes that the district doesn’t push a 4K program through too quickly. She is particularly worried that the curriculum might focus too heavily on academics.
One sticking point in past 4K discussions in Madison was concern from the teachers union, Madison Teachers Inc., that preschool teachers at off-site programming centers might not be employees of the school district.
But Nerad and MTI Executive Director John Matthews have had many discussions about 4K over the past several months, and Matthews said as long as no district teachers are displaced, he is in favor of the program.
Related: Marc Eisen on “Missed Opportunities for 4K and High School Redesign”.
Via a kind reader’s email: The Wall Street Journal:
“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”
So said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November, and Democrats in Congress are certainly taking his advice to heart.
And don’t forget education, which would get $66 billion more. That’s more than the entire Education Department spent a mere 10 years ago and is on top of the doubling under President Bush. Some $6 billion of this will subsidize university building projects. If you think the intention here is to help kids learn, the House declares on page 257 that “No recipient . . . shall use such funds to provide financial assistance to students to attend private elementary or secondary schools.” Horrors: Some money might go to nonunion teachers.”
The US debate over the fiscal stimulus is remarkable in its neglect of the medium term – that is, the budgetary challenges over a period of five to 10 years. Neither the White House nor Congress has offered the public a scenario of how the proposed mega-deficits will affect the budget and government programmes beyond the next 12 to 24 months. Without a sound medium-term fiscal framework, the stimulus package can easily do more harm than good, since the prospect of trillion-dollar-plus deficits as far as the eye can see will weigh heavily on the confidence of consumers and businesses, and thereby undermine even the short-term benefits of the stimulus package.
We are told that we have to rush without thinking lest the entire economy collapse. This is belied by recent events. The spring 2008 stimulus package of $100bn (€76bn, £71bn) in tax rebates was rushed into effect in a similar way and we now know it had little stimulus effect. The rebates were largely saved or used to pay down credit card debt, rather than spent. The $700bn troubled asset relief programme bail-out was also rushed into effect and its results have been notoriously poor.
The Tarp has not revived the banks or their lending, but it has supported a massive transfer of taxpayer wealth to the management and owners of well-connected financial institutions. Some of those transfers – as in the case of Merrill Lynch using its government-financed sale to Bank of America to enable $4bn in bonuses last month – are beyond egregious. Yet the US is now inured to corruption and in such a rush that even billions of dollars of public funds shovelled into Merrill’s private pockets in broad daylight barely merited a day’s news cycle.
More from Victor Davis Hanson and Greg Mankiw on the Congressional Budget Office:
So only 8 percent of this spending occurs in budget year 2009, and only 41 percent occurs in first two years. Note that spending on transfer payments and tax relief occurs much faster than this: click through to the above link for details.
Mario Rizzo quotes Keynes:
“Organized public works, at home and abroad, may be the right cure for a chronic tendency to a deficiency of effective demand. But they are not capable of sufficiently rapid organisation (and above all cannot be reversed or undone at a later date), to be the most serviceable instrument for the prevention of the trade cycle.”
Finally, a look at the origins of the Madison School District’s $18M slice of the splurge. Long time Wisconsin Congressman David Obey is chair of the House Appropriations Committee, a position that gives him a prime seat for earmarks.
Finally, Nanette Asimove notes the proposed borrowing and printing money for California.
The best women’s chess player in the world flipped a dirty diaper into the trash as she pondered her next move after a dominating year.
“I want to open a chess academy online, keep training, doing the podcast,” says south Floridian Alexandra Kosteniuk. “But right now, my priority is being a mother.”
Kosteniuk, 24, won the Women’s World Chess Championship in her homeland, Russia, in September. After several months of travelling the globe, Kosteniuk, her husband, Diego Garces, and their 20-month-old daughter Francesca are home.
About 3,000 people subscribe to her podcast at chessiscool.com, and about 10,000 others log on each month to her website, where they can see photos of Kosteniuk in bikinis and buy her instructional DVDs. “It’s the most popular chess site out there,” says her husband, 49, who is also her webmaster and publicist.
I’m writing about the Democrats’ intra-party squabbles on schools, the kind that exploded during the campaign and grew more vociferous in the election’s aftermath but quieted down somewhat with President Obama’s appointment of (consensus candidate) Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education. Well, they’ve returned. Word is that Senate Democrats have stripped virtually all of the reform-friendly provisions out of the House stimulus bill (a bill that was not terribly reform-friendly to begin with ). The Teacher Incentive Fund (which supports merit pay programs): gone. Charter school facilities dollars: gone. Money for data infrastructure projects: gone. Language ensuring that charter schools have equitable access to the money: gone. The teachers unions firmly in control of the Democratic Party: back with a vengeance.
Related: Carl Hulse talks with the Splurge’s author: 40 year congressional veteran David Obey (D-Wisconsin):
Indeed, it was Mr. Obey, the third-most-senior member of the House, who, in large measure, shaped the bill, in concert with other House Democratic leaders. And though Mr. Obama has embraced the bill, not a single House Republican has lent it support. The president himself is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday to try to address Republican concerns that Mr. Obey and others are using the legislation to push vast amounts of money into health care and other favored initiatives.
Mr. Obey’s impatience, temper and occasionally cutting tone are well known. Even as he outlined the economic plan before Mr. Obama’s inauguration, he flippantly referred to the new president as “the crown prince.” The remark was evidence that Mr. Obey, like other veteran chairmen involved in writing the stimulus package, might not be entirely deferential to the new president until he proved he could exert his influence.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California placed Mr. Obey in charge of producing the economic measure and shares his view that the spending for health, nutrition and unemployment programs is justified and a quicker way than tax breaks to pump money into the economy. Ms. Pelosi is very loyal to the chairman, who was a top ally in her 2001 race for Democratic whip.
Putting the economic bill together turned out to be challenging. Mr. Obey and a contingent of Democratic staff members worked over the holidays, meeting with other lawmakers. They were in talks with Rahm Emanuel, who was soon to be the White House chief of staff, and Rob Nabors, a former staff director of the Appropriations Committee who had left to join the Obama team as a budget official.
More here:
For some House Democrats, the problem is less a matter of balancing the short and long term than a shortage of focus and will on the part of the administration. Their disappointment centers on the relatively small amount devoted to long-lasting infrastructure investments in favor of spending on a long list of government programs. While each serves a purpose, the critics say, they add up to less than the sum of their parts, and fall far short of the transformative New Deal-like vision many of them had entertained.
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The bill to be voted on today includes $30 billion for roads and bridges, $9 billion for public transit and $1 billion for inter-city rail — less than 5 percent of the package’s total spending. Administration officials have said they did not push for more infrastructure spending because of concerns about how many projects are “shovel ready” — a view that House members say is held most strongly by Lawrence H. Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser.
These successes and failures have underscored the need to aim high and embrace change in America’s schools. Our goal as a nation should be to ensure that 80 percent of our students graduate from high school fully ready to attend college by 2025. This goal will probably be more difficult to achieve than anything else the foundation works on, because change comes so slowly and is so hard to measure. Unlike scientists developing a vaccine, it is hard to test with scientific certainty what works in schools. If one school’s students do better than another school’s, how do you determine the exact cause? But the difficulty of the problem does not make it any less important to solve. And as the successes show, some schools are making real progress.
Based on what the foundation has learned so far, we have refined our strategy. We will continue to invest in replicating the school models that worked the best. Almost all of these schools are charter schools. Many states have limits on charter schools, including giving them less funding than other schools. Educational innovation and overall improvement will go a lot faster if the charter school limits and funding rules are changed.
One of the key things these schools have done is help their teachers be more effective in the classroom. It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one. Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.
Whenever I talk to teachers, it is clear that they want to be great, but they need better tools so they can measure their progress and keep improving. So our new strategy focuses on learning why some teachers are so much more effective than others and how best practices can be spread throughout the education system so that the average quality goes up. We will work with some of the best teachers to put their lectures online as a model for other teachers and as a resource for students.
Although lawmakers continue to argue over how to resolve the state’s fiscal crisis, they already have endorsed $6 billion in spending cuts that provide a painful preview of what is likely to be in store for Californians.
The proposed cuts would mean that money for the state’s university systems would decrease. Transportation and schools would take a hit. Funds for regional centers that help treat developmental disabilities in babies and toddlers would decline. Cash to help the elderly, blind and disabled keep up with rising food costs would be slashed.
None of these cuts has been enacted. But the fact that they were included in the fiscal plan that Democrats passed last month — and have been separately backed by Republicans — ensures that they will be at the top of the list when lawmakers finally decide how to bridge a budget gap projected to exceed $40 billion within a year and a half.
Indian Mound Middle School students are spending study halls in an outdoor classroom right next to their school.
Two groups of sixth-graders trek weekly through the McFarland School Forest adjacent to their school during their study hall period. They participate in various activities such as the recent scavenger hunt to look for and photograph things like deer tracks and evidence of animals eating.
“It’s just a good way to get outdoors (and) shed off the extra energy we have,” said sixth-grader Dayne Mickelson. “We just have one recess.”
The field trips are part of an effort to have students spend more time in the immense natural resource in the school’s backyard.
“I would love to take every child in this school out in the woods as much as possible,” said Janet Moore, community outreach/school forest coordinator in the McFarland School District. “It is good to kind of get an ongoing relationship with the place.”
Democrats want to use the big spending package designed to jump-start the staggering economy to send billions to long-term programs to help poor and disabled school children.
President Barack Obama’s recovery plan amounts to the biggest increase ever in federal money for schools. Many Republicans say it is not a short-term boost but an immense expansion that will be impossible to roll back.
“What will happen two years from now when the Democrat spending spree comes to an end?” asked California Rep. Buck McKeon, top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee.
“It’ll never go away,” said Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “You’re talking about a permanent increase at a time when we are in the worst financial shape we’ve ever been in.”
The measure making its way through Congress would achieve a long-sought goal of Obama and other Democrats. For the first time, it would fully fund No Child Left Behind, former President George W. Bush’s education program. Democrats complain Bush never provided enough money for the kindergarten-through-12th grade program.
Not a coincidence, critics said.
Related: Democrats dispute the Congressional Budget Office’s report on the stimulus/splurge.
Joe Kimball, via a kind reader’s email:
Some details emerged today from the proposal by Gov. Tim Pawlenty and several lawmakers for what they call a bipartisan effort to require Minnesota school districts and charter schools to combine efforts to reduce costs.
Under their Minnesota K-12 Shared Service proposal, school districts and charter schools will be able to pool their purchasing power for information technology, food services, supplies and equipment, operations, transportation and other goods and services. All Minnesota public school districts and charter schools will be required to participate in shared services.
The proposal calls for the Minnesota Department of Education to create and maintain a list of preferred vendors for various shared services. Once the list was compiled, the ed department would create contracts with the preferred vendors on behalf of the state and work with school administrators, educators and other stakeholders on a two-year shared-services plan to best realize cost savings.
he bill would require (note the “require” part) all public K-12 and charter schools to purchase services in the following areas from a list of approved vendors: all school materials, supplies, tools, and equipment for school facilities operations and maintenance; technology equipment and communication services; food services; and transportation services. MDE would be responsible for approving the vendors and maintaining the list. The bill would be effective July 1, 2009. A consultant would be hired for the first two years to help the department implement the program. The consultant would be paid on a percentage of realized savings not to exceed 5%. The consultant’s fee would be paid from the savings realized by individual school districts, so each district would have to calculate how much their participation in the shared services program had saved them. MDE would reduce their state funding by a certain amount to recover the funds to pay the consultant. Each district’s savings would be required to be allocated to “classroom education.”
The senators quickly moved to the heart of the matter, and Sen. Bonoff introduced a Mr. Dahl from Deloitte, the accounting firm. Apparently Deloitte had done some work on shared services in schools in Pennsylvania. He shared a PowerPoint with the committee describing the benefits and anticipated savings. He estimated a potential savings for MN schools of $1M/week. The questions starting coming right after he was done.
Sen. Hann (R-Eden Prairie) wondered how the new bureaucracy would not consume all of the potential savings. Dahl recognized the work of the OET and existing service coops and said that their work would be made more effective.
Sen. Hann asked if it was possible that some schools in the state would see an increase in their costs because they had already negotiated very favorable contracts. Dahl said possible, but not likely.
Sen. Hann asked what constitutes “classroom use” for the allocation of savings. Sen. Bonoff said that the intent of the legislation is to be “loose” with the classroom use restriction.
Sen. Saltzman (DFL-Woodbury) asked if the bill would have curriculum implications for textbooks, etc. Bonoff said no.
When voters on Feb. 3 decide on the Dubuque Community School District’s tax proposal, the decision comes down to one thing: trust.
Do they trust school officials when they say this is a revenue-neutral proposition?
Basically, the school district is cash-strapped in one account and adequately funded in another — but money from those funds cannot be commingled.
So, the proposal is that voters double the Instructional Support Levy and the school board promises to reduce the Cash Reserve Levy an equivalent amount. That way, taxpayers will pay the same but the district has the authority to spend dollars where they are most needed.
Voters should support the change.
However, taxing issues are never that simple. Taxpayers might vote against the Instructional Support Levy if they don’t trust the school district to keep its word. It’s a matter of trust. During this past decade, especially, the Dubuque Community School District has worked hard to earn and retain citizens’ trust.
Fanta Konneh is the first girl in her family to go to school. Not the first to go to college, or to graduate from high school. Fanta, 18, who grew up in Guinea after her family fled Liberia, became the first to walk into a classroom of any kind last year.
“Just the boys go to school, so I always knew I was left out,” said Fanta, a student at Ellis Preparatory Academy in the South Bronx. “But here, I am trying. I can say many things I did not know before. I can learn things more.”
New York City classrooms have long been filled with children from all over the world, and the education challenges they bring with them. But hidden among the nearly 150,000 students across the city still struggling to learn English are an estimated 15,100 who, like Fanta, have had little or no formal schooling and are often illiterate in their native languages.
More than half of these arrive as older teenagers and land in the city’s high schools, where they must learn how to learn even as their peers prepare for state subject exams required for a diploma.
Are the flowing curves and fancy loops of cursive writing disappearing from elementary school classrooms?
Some fear classic penmanship has been left behind as preparation for state assessment tests dominates class time. Others blame the rise of the Internet, combined with a push to ensure that children are technologically literate, for rendering delicate handwriting an art of yesteryear.
“With all the other subjects we must teach, we just don’t have the time to spend a lot of effort on cursive,” said Carl Brown, principal of Manatee Elementary in Viera, Fla.
That’s a big change from years past. Brown recalled that he had to attend a summertime handwriting camp in Brevard County, Fla., about 25 years ago because of his illegible scrawl.
Joyce Roche CEO of Girls, Inc.:
I WAS born in Iberville, La. My mom moved to New Orleans after my dad died in an accident. I have seven sisters and three brothers; all but one brother are still living. At the time we moved, I was the baby of the family. My mom had two other children after she remarried.
When I was growing up, segregation was real. When we rode the bus, there was something we called the screen. African-Americans, or Negroes as we were called then, were expected to sit behind a piece of wood. Since where we lived had movie theaters and grocery stores, it was only when we traveled to Canal Street to department stores that segregation was most noticeable.
One of my older sisters moved in with my Aunt Rose, my mother’s sister, who was married but had no children of her own. Soon I lived there almost permanently, too. She made sure I was doing well in everything at school. As a black female, I expected to be a nurse, a teacher or a social worker. I had an English teacher in high school who made me feel like an A student, even though I was a strong B student. She became the person I could see myself being.
Pupils in every secondary school should be taught the statistical skills they need to make sensible life decisions, one of Britain’s leading mathematicians says.
A basic grasp of statistics and probability — “risk literacy” – is critical to making choices about health, money and even education, yet it is largely ignored by the national curriculum, according to the UK’s only Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk.
David Spiegelhalter, of the University of Cambridge, told The Times that as the internet transformed access to information, it was becoming more important than ever to teach people how best to interpret data.
Familiarity with statistical thinking and the principles of risk could help people to make sense of claims about health hazards and the merits of new drugs, to invest money more wisely, and to choose their children’s schools.
Wisconsin parents who want to send their children to a school outside the district in which they live can start applying Feb. 2.
The open enrollment period for next school year ends three weeks later on Feb. 20.
The program has grown in popularity since it started in the fall of 1998. Only about 2,400 students participated that school year. But last year, nearly 26,000 did.
Parents interested in enrolling their children are encouraged to do so online at the Department of Public Instruction’s Web site. Parents will be notified April 10 about whether their request has been approved or denied.
Senior class president Christopher Jolly says suspensions are so common at Anacostia High School — where eight students were injured, including three who were stabbed, in a melee two months ago — that they have become meaningless as a form of discipline.
“The fact that everyone knows someone who has been suspended before often causes kids not to respect the suspension process,” Jolly said at a community forum this month on D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s proposal to revise the District’s student behavior code.
Rhee’s changes would move the system in a direction that makes sense to Jolly: away from out-of-school suspension as the disciplinary method of choice and toward counseling, peer influence and more options for keeping suspended students in school.
Officials said reliable data on suspensions are hard to come by because recordkeeping has been slipshod. But the available numbers suggest a dramatic surge. According to District figures, suspensions grew 72 percent between the 2006-07 and 2007-08 school years, from 1,303 to 2,245. That represents 4.5 percent of total enrollment. Numbers through November, the latest available for the current academic year, show suspensions running slightly behind last year.
Are your kids safe online? A recent report about this sensitive subject is stirring up controversy.
The study, released by Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, finds that it’s far more likely that children will be bullied by their peers than approached by an adult predator online.
The 278-page document cites studies showing that sexual solicitation of minors by adults via the Web appears to be on the decline. “The image presented by the media of an older male deceiving and preying on a young child does not paint an accurate picture,” reads one of document’s conclusions. “The risks minors face online are complex and multifaceted and are in most cases not significantly different than those they face offline.”
In other words, children are about as savvy online as they are offline, said Ernie Allen, president of the Alexandria-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which contributed to the report.
“The vast majority of kids in this country have heard the messages about the risks online and are basically dealing with them as a nuisance, as a fact of life, and aren’t particularly vulnerable,” he said. “This report should not be read as saying there are not adults out there doing this.”
he Fairfax County School Board voted unanimously late last night to abandon a strict grading policy it has long upheld as a hallmark of high standards, after a year of intense pressure from parents who have argued that the policy hurts students’ chances for college admission or scholarships.
The School Board decided to move toward a more commonly used grading scale that parents have championed. The board also approved a plan to add extra points to the grade-point averages of students who take college level or honors classes.
Two board members, Kaye Kory (Mason) and Martina A. Hone (At Large), were absent for the 10 to 0 vote.
At issue is what it means to earn an A or to pass. Currently, Fairfax students must score 94 percent to earn an A and 64 percent to pass. In most school systems, including those in Montgomery and Arlington counties, 90 percent is an A and 60 percent is a passing grade. Many school systems also add points to the GPAs of students who take more challenging classes.
In the letter, Mr. Gates goes out of his way to acknowledge setbacks. For example, the Gates Foundation made a major push for smaller high schools in the United States, often helping to pay for the creation of small schools within larger buildings.
“Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students’ achievement in any significant way,” he acknowledges. Small schools succeeded when the principal was able to change teachers, curriculum and culture, but smaller size by itself proved disappointing. “In most cases,” he says, “we fell short.”
Mr. Gates comes across as a strong education reformer, focusing on supporting charter schools and improving teacher quality. He suggested that when he has nailed down the evidence more firmly, he will wade into the education debates.
“It is amazing how big a difference a great teacher makes versus an ineffective one,” Mr. Gates writes in his letter. “Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.”
I could not agree more. Rather than add coaches and layers of support staff, I’d prefer simply hiring the best teachers (and paying them) and getting out of the way. Of course, this means that not all teachers (like the population) are perfect, or above average!
Much more on Small Learning Communities here.
On Toledo’s SLC initiative.
Click for a larger version of this very simple illustration
Mark Pitsch:
The House version of a federal economic stimulus bill would deliver more than $4.3 billion to Wisconsin over the next two years, under details of the bill released Friday.
That figure includes nearly $18 million for Madison schools and millions more for other local districts.
“I’m very pleased by this. We know this is a difficult time, but at the same time there are needs that our children have that can’t go unmet,” said Dan Nerad, Madison schools superintendent. “I’m very hopeful. I’m very optimistic and we’ll see what comes.”
Under bill descriptions released by Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, and an analysis of Medicaid by a Washington, D.C. think tank, the House version would also provide:$1.2 billion to help the state fill its $5.4 billion budget hole, with at least 61 percent being spent on schools and colleges.
Related:
Total taxes collected from Wisconsin averaged $12,281 per person in 2007-08. The $69.4 billion in annual collections was up 3.4%. Relative to personal income, however, taxes were down slightly, from 34.9% in 2007 to 34.2% in 2008.
One telling example is found in the following quote that has already created international consternation. Geithner twice answered questions about currency and China. In so doing he has placed the Obama administration squarely in the middle of the tension between the United States and the largest international buyer and holder of US debt: China. This happened as the same Obama administration is unveiling a package that will add to the TARP financing needs and the cyclical deficit financing needs and cause the United States to borrow about $2 trillion this year. Two trillion dollars of newly issued Treasury debt – and this is how the question was answered. Not once but twice.
Geithner (on page 81 and again on page 95) answered: “President Obama – backed by the conclusions of a broad range of economists – believes that China is manipulating its currency. President Obama has pledged as President to use aggressively all the diplomatic avenues open to him to seek change in China’s currency practices.”
“Manipulation?” “Aggressively?” This is strong language. Geithner did not do this on his own authority. These are prepared answers. He is citing the new President, not once but twice.
China’s response was fast and direct. China’s commerce ministry said in Beijing that China “has never used so-called currency manipulation to gain benefits in its international trade. Directing unsubstantiated criticism at China on the exchange-rate issue will only help US protectionism and will not help towards a real solution to the issue.”
Are we seeing the world’s largest and third largest economies calling each other names in the middle of a global economic and financial meltdown?
And, the $150,000,000 inauguration party.
To increase public awareness of the nature and urgency of key economic challenges threatening America’s future and accelerate action on them. To meet these challenges successfully, we work to bring Americans together to find sensible, sustainable solutions that transcend age, party lines and ideological divides in order to achieve real results.
Your critics blame your monetary policies for Zimbabwe’s economic problems. I’ve been condemned by traditional economists who said that printing money is responsible for inflation. Out of the necessity to exist, to ensure my people survive, I had to find myself printing money. I found myself doing extraordinary things that aren’t in the textbooks. Then the IMF asked the U.S. to please print money. I began to see the whole world now in a mode of practicing what they have been saying I should not. I decided that God had been on my side and had come to vindicate me.
It will be interesting to see how this money, assuming it is authorized and borrowed, is spent. Will it be spent in a way that grows the District’s operating costs and therefore increases the local property tax burden once the stimulus/splurge is exhausted?
If we must borrow these funds from our grandchildren, then I would like to see it spent in a way that has long term benefits. Superintendent Nerad spoke of children whose needs are going unmet; well, those kids will be paying for these borrowed funds.
Finally, it appears that someone is spreading the love, as it were. The Congressional Research Service (whose work is not publicly available) wrote a report on stimulus/splurge funding for all US school districts. Have a look at all of the Google News references. Defense programs are known for spreading jobs around key congressional districts as a means of self preservation.
“Not getting cut is the new increase in this budget,” Doyle said in a speech at the State Education Convention in the Milwaukee Hilton Hotel.
The annual event is sponsored by the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators and the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials.
In his speech, Doyle called education his No. 1 priority. But, he said, with increasing unemployment and a looming budget deficit, it would be a challenge to even maintain funding.
“We cannot allow our children to be the ones who pay the cost for this recession,” Doyle said. “The decisions we make today have consequences that last decades and decades to come.”
Doyle did not give details of his budget plans.
If the state keeps its revenue cap system for schools, a level that increases each year to reflect inflation, the effect of flat state funding could mean massive property tax increases by local school boards, which may turn to that source of money instead.
Related:
ell that didn’t take long; the glow from the inauguration of the first African-American president is rapidly dimming. In President Barack Hussein Obama’s (D) Chicago, the school system, recently under the superintendency of new Education Secretary Arne Duncan,
issued the following directives for high school sports competitions.
The Public League is taking drastic measures to curb a rash of violence that has erupted at its basketball games in the last week.
Marquette sorority members have to deactivate their Facebook pages until Bid Day this Sunday, part of a growing number of sororities hoping to avoid decisions – about where to pledge and who to allow in – being made based on preconceptions and stereotypes.
Instead, they’re reverting to old-fashioned, face-to-face contact.
“It’s not about the purse you carry, the shoes you wear or what your parents do . . . it’s about being yourself,” Profita said. “We want to know you for you.”
These days, for most college students, getting-to-know-you is incomplete without requisite Facebook research. Who are your friends? How many do you have? What do your photos say about you?
But despite their reliance on the social networking site, sorority members say they still think real contact is the best way to decide who your true friends are.
The argument over what to do about America’s struggling schools is still raging. Programs such as No Child Left Behind have achieved some success by introducing a measure of accountability into the process. But American students continue to get clobbered on international tests by other countries whose school systems spend less money per student and have larger average class sizes.
Facing budget realities in a down economy, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently proposed shortening the school year by five days to contribute $1.1 billion in savings toward the state’s $42 billion budget shortfall.
State school superintendent Jack O’Donnell vehemently disagreed, saying a longer school year was needed to prepare students for “the competitive global economy.”
The operative word here is “competitive.” Success in the marketplace depends on being able to produce the best product at the lowest cost. Competition in the business world produces a better product at less cost. Why shouldn’t it be so in education? Well, it is.
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 70% of the countries that outperformed the U.S. in combined math and science literacy among 15-year-olds had more schools competing for students. Countries ranging from Japan to Latvia all had more education options than American students.
Memphis high-tech entrepreneur Bob Compton, producer of the stirring documentary “Two Million Minutes,” has been suggesting, in his genial way, that I am a head-in-the-sand ignoramus. This is because I panned his film as alarmist nonsense for suggesting, based on profiles of a grand total of six teenagers, that the Indian and Chinese education systems were superior to what we have here in the much-beleaguered United States. When we debated the issue on CNBC, Bob told me I should get on a plane and see for myself instead of relying on my memories of living in Asia in the 1970s and 1980s and my reading of recent work by other reporters.
Sadly, even in the days when The Washington Post was flush with cash, there was no money to send the education columnist abroad. But I am happy to report I don’t have to go because an upcoming book from education scholar James Tooley goes much deeper into the Chinese and Indian school systems than Bob or I ever have, and takes my side. Tooley shows that India and China, despite their economic successes, have public education systems that are, in many ways, a sham.
Tooley’s book, “The Beautiful Tree,” reveals him to be the kind of traveler who often strays off the main roads, driving official escorts crazy. He covers not only China and India, but also Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya. He wants to discover how the world’s poorest people are educating themselves, and surprises himself repeatedly.
A new report from a higher education research center says Gov. Jim Doyle’s Wisconsin Covenant program needs to fund the initiative with state money for financial aid if it truly wants to boost enrollment of low-income students.
The program currently guarantees a spot in college for students who maintain good grades and take the right classes in high school, but it doesn’t promise automatic funding.
The privately funded Wisconsin Covenant endowment and Fund for Wisconsin Scholars will use their combined $215 million to offer scholarships that complement the covenant pledge, but that’s not likely enough to cover all the Covenant Scholars’ full need.
“First and foremost, we’d like to see some money, some public money, put toward this goal because up to this point there hasn’t been any sort of state-managed funds,” said Beth Stransky, who co-authored the report by the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education.
The policy brief, issued this week, does not suggest a specific amount for the state to invest. The push comes at a time when Wisconsin faces a two-year, $5.4 billion deficit that is certain to mean cuts for the UW System.
Doyle said he was committed to funding higher education and providing scholarships and financial aid to students who are eligible and do the work, but he wouldn’t give a firm commitment to a dollar figure, or to an increase in Covenant funding for scholarships.
Teachers College @ Columbia University:
TC faculty member Jeffrey Henig was a guest on The Brian Lehrer Sho (WNYC) on January 15, where he discussed what we can expect from Arne Duncan as U.S. Secretary of Education.
Henig noted that as superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools, Duncan has kept the pressure on for reform inside the classroom, but has managed to do it without antagonizing teachers unions.
he Oregon Supreme Court has largely rejected a suit demanding the Legislature substantially increase K-12 school funding.
In a ruling today, the state Supreme Court largely affirmed a lower court ruling in Pendleton School District v. State of Oregon, a much-watched suit brought on behalf of 18 school districts and seven students. The suit alleged the state is in violation of a 2000 voter-approved ballot measure that requires the Legislature to fund schools at “a level sufficient to meet certain quality educational goals established by law.”
The suit sought an injunction to direct the Legislature to appropriate the “necessary” funds.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice Paul DeMuniz agreed the Legislature has failed to fully fund public schools. However, he said the court concluded that Oregon voters did not intend for the courts to enforce funding requirements when they passed Ballot Measure 1 in 2000, a constitutional amendment that became Article VIII, section 8, of the state Constitution.
KAI RYSSDAL: Like so many presidents before him, President Obama has talked a lot about the importance of education. He’s talked about the need for arts in schools. The need for teacher training. Good ideas, but ones that cost money — money that we’re in short supply of these days.
Harvard researcher Susan Eaton’s most recent book is called “The Children in Room E4: American Education on Trial.” We got her on the line to talk about education, the Obama administration, and the economy. Welcome to the program.
SUSAN EATON: Hi, great to be here.
RYSSDAL: You, in the course of writing your book, spent a lot of time in and out of public school classrooms in the United States. What’s your take on the biggest problems that are out there?
EATON: Well, I think that the biggest problem is the fact that huge shares of our children in the United States — disproportionately, children of color; Latino and African American children — are simply not connected to mainstream opportunities. And our schools are really . . . have not, at least in the last eight years or so — and probably even more than that — been trying to connect them to those opportunities.
RYSSDAL: But it does, in a lot of measure, come down to money. Doesn’t it?
A Dec. 16 article in The Washington Post reported that the Montgomery County school system might end the longtime practice of labeling students as gifted or not in the second grade.
The article ignited a fire within the local gifted-and-talented community. More than 300 people posted comments on http://www.washingtonpost.com, and 9,957 voted in an informal online poll on the merits of scrapping the gifted label. The latest tally was 54 percent in favor of keeping it, 41 percent saying dumping it would be a good idea.
The school system went to the unusual length of responding publicly to the article, clarifying that although the idea was under study, no decision had been made. Gifted policy is ultimately decided by the school board, whose members expect to take up the future of the label sometime this year.
The reaction illustrated the level of community interest in accelerated instruction and underscored the friction between advocates for the gifted and school system officials on a more basic question: Are the needs of advanced students being met?
The Minnesota ACLU has filed suit against TIZA, a charter school in Inver Grove Heights and Blaine, claiming it is promoting the Muslim religion.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota filed suit Wednesday against a publicly funded charter school alleging that it is promoting the Muslim religion and is leasing school space from a religious organization without following state law.
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis against Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, known as TIZA, and the Minnesota Department of Education, which the ACLU says is at fault for failing to uncover and stop the alleged transgressions. The suit names the department and Alice Seagren, the state education commissioner, as co-defendants.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will announce a nearly $3.8 million grant today to help fund a mega-database that provides Dallas school educators instant access to student information – from preschool to graduation.
The Dallas Independent School District began testing the database last year. It allows educators to access “real time” student academic information and helps them watch for learning patterns. The system also holds other district-related data, such as student and teacher absences.
The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation got the data system off the ground last year with a $5 million donation to the Dallas Education Foundation, a nonprofit group created in 2006 to raise money to benefit DISD.
Today’s grant of $3.77 million will be distributed over three years to DISD to help build onto the current system. The donation is among more than $22 million in grants that the Gates Foundation is announcing today for research and data systems for schools and a number of education organizations.
The Gates Foundation has invested $4 billion in improving schools and providing scholarships to students since 2000, according to foundation officials.
Mark Liberman on “The Last Professor“:
Determined inutility is one thing — Prof. Fish is free to choose that path if he wants to — but determined ignorance of history is something else again.
It’s odd for a scholar to throw around phrases like “today’s educational landscape” as if contemporary economic and cultural forces were laying siege to institutions that were founded and managed as ivory towers committed to impractical scholarship. But the truth is that American higher education has always explicitly aimed to mix practical training with pure intellectual and moral formation, and to pursue research with practical consequences as well as understanding abstracted from applications.
Stanley Fish himself was an undergraduate at my own institution, the University of Pennsylvania, which was founded by Benjamin Franklin on this educational premise (“Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania”, 1749):
This year marks the ninth year of public reporting on the Board of Education Priorities for reading and mathematics achievement and school attendance. The data present a clear picture of District progress on each of the priorities. The document also reflects the deep commitment of the Madison Metropolitan School District to assuring that all students have the knowledge and skills needed for academic achievement and a successful life.
1. All students complete 3rd grade able to read at grade level or beyond.
- Beginning in the fall of 2005-06, the federal No Child Left Behind Act required all states to test all students in reading from grades 3-8 and once in high school. This test replaced the former Wisconsin Reading Comprehension Test. MMSD now reports on three years of data for students in grade 4.
- District wide 74% of students scored proficient or advanced in reading on the 2007-08 WKCE, which is a 2% decline.
- Hispanic and Other Asian students posted increases in percent of proficient or higher reading levels between 2007 and 2008.
2. All students complete Algebra by the end of 9th grade and Geometry by the end of 10th grade.
- The largest relative gain in Algebra between the previous year measure, 2007-08, and this school year was among African American students.
- Students living in low income households who successfully completed Algebra by grade 10 at the beginning of 2008-09 increased since the previous year.
- The rate for Geometry completions for females continues to be slighter higher than their male counterparts.
3. All students, regardless of racial, ethnic, socioeconomic or linguistic subgroup, attend school at a 94 percent attendance rate at each grade level. The attendance rate of elementary students as a group continues to be above the 94% goal. All ethnic subgroups, except for African American (92.5% rate for 2007-08, 93.0% rate for 2006-07 and 93.1% for the previous two years) continue to meet the 94% attendance goal.
This report includes information about district initiatives that support students’ goal attainment. In the context of the MMSD Educational Framework, the initiatives described for the literacy and the mathematics priorities focus primarily within the LEARNING component and those described for the attendance priority focus primarily within the ENGAGEMENT component. It is important to note that underlying the success of any efforts that focus on LEARNING or ENGAGEMENT is the significance of RELATIONSHIPS.
Around the country, school districts are urging officials to crack down on charter school growth–and on existing charter schools–because, they assert, there isn’t enough money in strapped state budgets to pay for this sector–and of course the districts must come first.
I’m seeing this in Ohio, in Utah and in Massachusetts and do not doubt that it’s happening all over the place.
But of course it’s completely cockeyed. If every public-school pupil in America attended a charter school, the total taxpayer cost would be 20-30% LESS than it is today. That’s because charters are underfunded (compared with district schools) and thus represent an extraordinary bargain–even if their overall academic performance isn’t much different from that of district schools. Think of it as the same amount of learning at three-quarters of the price.
Brickbats are flying over President Obama’s plan to expand government-funded preschool. Advocates argue all children need access to preschool; opponents cite studies pointing only to benefits for disadvantaged kids. The debate leaves parents wondering how much — if any — preschool their children really need.
Weighing the decision last year, Peter Canale, father of three small children, got caught in the crossfire. Co-workers and family members warned him, “you’d be crazy not to send your kid to some kind of preschool,” he says. But the Yonkers, N.Y., financial-services manager, who never attended preschool himself and whose wife stays home with their children, was skeptical; “I thought pre-K was a fad,” he says.
Actually, all kinds of kids reap some academic benefits from preschool, a growing body of research shows. Among 22 scholarly studies I reviewed, the five that encompass children from middle- and high-income families show preschool grads enter kindergarten with better pre-reading and math skills than those in other kinds of care or at home with their parents. To be sure, the benefits for mainstream kids are smaller than for children from poor or disadvantaged homes, but they’re still significant.
Milwaukee School Superintendent William Andrekopoulos and the School Board agreed Tuesday night to extend his contract to June 30, 2010 – at which point he expects to end his lengthy run in the job.
After a closed session that took less than 90 minutes, the board voted 8-0 to give Andrekopoulos the additional 15 months he asked for. His current contract expires March 23.
Andrekopoulos will be 62 at the end of the 2009-’10 school year and will be finishing eight years as superintendent, one of the longest runs currently among urban school chiefs in the country. He succeeded Spence Korté as superintendent in August 2002.
The board and Andrekopoulos agreed that the contract extension will include provisions that would pave the way for him to help with the transition to a new superintendent. That could include having him stay on in some capacity for a limited time beyond July 1, 2010.
BBC:
Anyone viewing President Obama’s education plans from a UK perspective will be reminded of Labour’s ambitions in 1997.
The incoming US president wants to offer more support for early years children, promote innovation in schools and shut down those that are failing.
There will be a drive to widen access to higher education – with more student funding and awareness-raising.
Obama’s education secretary is Chicago school chief, Arne Duncan.
Under the banner of “Zero to five”, the new administration is promising extra support for early years – arguing that for every dollar invested, there will be a return to society worth $7 to $10.
After-school clubs
State budget director Dave Schmiedicke estimated that Wisconsin could be in line to receive $2.5 billion in federal stimulus money for education and medical assistance programs.
Schmiedicke also said that estimates show the state could receive $575 million for transportation and infrastructure projects.
Schmiedicke made the remarks at a Wisconsin Credit Union League meeting at the Monona Terrace this morning. He was joined at the forum by Rep. Mark Pocan, the co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee, and Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.
The estimates given by Schmiedicke were based on the $87 billion allocated for the Medicaid program and $79 billion for education in the proposal from the House of Representatives last week. Schmiedicke’s estimate is based on population and income figures, and he said the state will likely receive about 1.7 percent of the funding for those programs.
Much more on the stimulus/splurge here.
Barack Obama was just sworn in as President of the US and though he stumbled in repeating his oath, the speech that followed was delivered flawlessly and was widely praised around the web. (Several readers have told us that it wasn’t Obama that stumbled, it was Justice Roberts.) There were quite a few concepts discussed that we suspect haven’t been a part of past inaugural speeches. What words were used most often? We ran the full text of the speech through tag cloud generator Wordle.net for one view of the event, and just for the sake of historical context we ran George W. Bush’s second inaugural speech through as well. Update: After one reader suggested it, we’ve also added word clouds from Bill Clinton’s second inaugural speech and Reagan’s first below. Second update: By reader request, we’ve added Lincoln’s first and second inaugural speeches as well.
The most common words in the Obama and Bush speeches were dramatically different.
BBC:
“Home education”, where children study at home rather than at school, is to face a review in England.
“There are concerns that some children are not receiving the education they need,” said Children’s Minister Baroness Delyth Morgan.
The government says there are no plans to remove the right to educate children at home.
But home educators’ charity, Education Otherwise, said it was “infuriated” by the proposed investigation.
There is no legal obligation for children to be sent to school – but parents have to provide a suitable education.
In previous columns and in a recent book I have argued that higher education, properly understood, is distinguished by the absence of a direct and designed relationship between its activities and measurable effects in the world.
This is a very old idea that has received periodic re-formulations. Here is a statement by the philosopher Michael Oakeshott that may stand as a representative example: “There is an important difference between learning which is concerned with the degree of understanding necessary to practice a skill, and learning which is expressly focused upon an enterprise of understanding and explaining.”
Understanding and explaining what? The answer is understanding and explaining anything as long as the exercise is not performed with the purpose of intervening in the social and political crises of the moment, as long, that is, as the activity is not regarded as instrumental – valued for its contribution to something more important than itself.
This view of higher education as an enterprise characterized by a determined inutility has often been challenged, and the debates between its proponents and those who argue for a more engaged university experience are lively and apparently perennial. The question such debates avoid is whether the Oakeshottian ideal (celebrated before him by Aristotle, Kant and Max Weber (German sociologist), among others) can really flourish in today’s educational landscape. It may be fun to argue its merits (as I have done), but that argument may be merely academic – in the pejorative sense of the word – if it has no support in the real world from which it rhetorically distances itself. In today’s climate, does it have a chance?
Tomorrow marks a turning point in the history of our schools as well as our country. Note how the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom we honor today, had to confront the cold, hard, in-your-face prejudice of a legally segregated system, while the next president, Barack Obama, speaks of a softer negligence, illuminated by the frequently heard phrase, “These kids can’t learn.”
These days, those of us interested in schools — parents, students, educators, researchers, journalists — are not sure if we believe in teaching or sorting. Is it best to strain ourselves and our children trying to raise everyone to a higher academic level, or does it make more sense to prepare each child for a life in which he or she will be comfortable? The people I admire in our schools want to be teachers. Sorting, they say, is a new form of the old racism but subtler and in some ways harder to resist.
It took me a long time to understand this. My parents were socially conservative but politically and religiously liberal, and they raised me in the United Church of Christ, the same denomination that Obama and his family joined in Chicago. There were few black people in our pews in San Mateo, Calif., however. My public high school had only two black students, my private college not many more. The first African Americans I got to know well were in my Army basic training company. They teased me, the only college graduate in the barracks, about my utter lack of street smarts. They had not done well in school, but they were shrewd, energetic and learned quickly, once subjected to the Army’s refusal to tolerate inattention. Many went to college when they finished their service.
In the Washington area, with some of the best public schools in the country, finding money has rarely seemed a problem for superintendents eager to improve education. Until now. As one school system after another prepares spending plans for the next academic year, officials are facing tough choices as the recession chokes off tax revenue. Scenarios range from difficult to grim to worse. In many places, school improvement is on ice. The goal, instead, is preservation. What follows is a snapshot of the budget cycle for major local school systems, ranked in size by fall 2008 enrollment.
Fairfax
(169,000 students)
Superintendent Jack D. Dale proposed a $2.2 billion budget Jan. 8 that would raise average class size and omit cost-of-living raises. Public hearing planned Wednesday and school board action Feb. 5. Current spending: $2.2 billion.
Montgomery
(139,300)
Superintendent Jerry D. Weast proposed a $2.1 billion budget Dec. 11 that would eliminate cost-of-living raises for employees. Public hearing planned Wednesday and school board action Feb. 9. Current spending: $2.1 billion.
Eric Schwartzberg and Marie Rossiter:
Mason school officials said they are taking a proactive educational approach in advance of next week’s planned Inauguration Day activities.
“Inappropriate comments that may make other students, staff or families feel unwelcome or uncomfortable in school or on the bus will not be tolerated,” Superintendent Kevin Bright said in an e-mail sent to parents Monday, Jan. 12.
The district, he said, expects students and staff to show respect for President-elect Obama and the incoming administration, as well as President Bush and the outgoing administration, and recognize that “while the election is a competitive process, our nation’s greatness is displayed when all sides come together for a united country.”
Jeff Schlaeger, Mason High School’s psychologist, said “inappropriate comments” occurred around election week when doctored pictures of Obama appeared at the school, including “derogatory caricatures” of him dressed like a terrorist and signs that read “Obama ’08/Biden ’09.”
The seventh-grade students are playing a round-robin trivia game, excitedly naming the countries on a blank map showing on their classroom’s overhead projector. Burkina Faso. Cote d’Ivoire.
Faster and faster, the teacher goes around the room until it’s just Justyn and another boy.
The tallest mountain in Africa? Mount Kilimanjaro. The tallest mountain range in South America? The Andes.
And then it’s over. Justyn doesn’t win the game but he’s still smiling, showing off the deep dimples in his cheeks. His 25 classmates erupt into cheers, applauding both students.
This is how it works at the extraordinary Ron Clark Academy, a private middle school tucked among boarded-up houses and graffiti-peppered walls in Lakewood, one of Atlanta’s poorest neighborhoods.
The USA’s public schools stand to be the biggest winners in Congress’ $825 billion economic stimulus plan unveiled last week. Schools are scheduled to receive nearly $142 billion over the next two years — more than health care, energy or infrastructure projects — and the stimulus could bring school advocates closer than ever to a long-sought dream: full funding of the No Child Left Behind law and other huge federal programs.
But tucked into the text of the proposal’s 328 pages are a few surprises: If they want the money — and they certainly do — schools must spend at least a portion of it on a few of education advocates’ long-sought dreams. In particular, they must develop:
- High-quality educational tests.
- Ways to recruit and retain top teachers in hard-to-staff schools.
- Longitudinal data systems that let schools track long-term progress.
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The Wisconsin test: WKCE has been criticized for its low standards. More on the WKCE here.
AFP:
Pakistan will keep schools open in the troubled northwestern Swat valley despite a ban on girls issued by the local Taliban, a minister pledged Sunday.
It follows a threat last month by a local Taliban commander to kill any girls attending classes after January 15, and to blow up schools where they are enrolled.
Officials said last week that, as a result of the threat, about 400 private schools were unlikely to open their doors after the winter holidays, depriving tens of thousands of students of an education.
But Pakistan’s information minister Sherry Rehman vowed to keep open all girls schools in Swat and North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
“From March 1, all closed schools in Swat and NWFP will be reopened after the winter break,” Rehman told reporters in the southern city of Karachi.
ust days into his tenure as superintendent in the River Rouge School District, Carlos Lopez started going door to door in a bid to boost enrollment.
He had to get a handle on an enrollment nosedive that today leaves the district with fewer than half as many students as it had 10 years ago. It even exceeded the oft-reported hemorrhaging of Detroit Public Schools, which is down 42%.
An analysis of a decade’s worth of enrollment data found it’s becoming an increasingly common tale in metro Detroit schools.
In Macomb, Oakland and Wayne counties, the growth that spurred multimillion-dollar construction projects a few years ago is quickly fading, with those districts losing a total of 66,030 students in the last five years. This school year alone, almost 50 districts in metro Detroit lost students.
That 5-year, 10% enrollment drop in metro Detroit comes at an enormous financial cost — as much as $129 million in lost state aid in the last school year, based on unaudited enrollment data. The downward trend has forced districts to close buildings, increase class sizes, eliminate programs and lay off staff.
Many Americans of my generation and older, of all races, who grew up in the 1950s and ’60s or before, never could have imagined someone looking like Barack Obama, or me, becoming president of the United States.
During the campaign, I was struck by the optimism and hope of my UMBC students about our country’s future. Many of them, like America’s younger generation in general, have had different experiences – and therefore different perspectives – from those of us who are older.
On Election Night, students shared with me their sense of enthusiasm about voting for the first time, and I thought about America in 1960, when John Kennedy became president. At that time, he challenged us in his inaugural address to commit to public service and the “struggle against … poverty, disease, and war.”
Almost a half-century later, as President-elect Obama takes office, a new period dawns, and no doubt he, too, will emphasize our common values and purpose as we continue addressing these same challenges.
It looks like the trillion-dollar “stimulus” (read: pork) bill is going to include a hefty dose of spending on schools. Of course, we don’t know yet what the proposed bill will contain, and the proposal will undergo a lot of revision when it goes through the congressional sausage grinder. But from the leaks and preliminary reports, respectable observers are estimating that as much as $70 billion or even $100 billion may ultimately end up going to K-12 schools. For comparison, after the radical expansion of federal education spending that came with No Child Left Behind, the feds now spend about $40 billion per year on K-12 education.
Politically, it’s a shrewd move. They don’t really care what they’re building, as long as they’re building something, so as long as they’re building a bunch of roads and bridges and community centers they may as well build some schools, too. The teachers’ unions have successfully spread the myth that schools desperately need more facilities spending, even though facilities spending per student almost doubled from 1990 to 2005 (after inflation). So “New School to Be Built” is always a crowd-pleasing headline.
Stephen Kreider Yoder & Isaac Yoder:
A couple days after I signed up for the SAT last year, I began to panic. Getting a good score was key to getting into a good college, I thought, yet I hadn’t even begun studying. Many of my schoolmates who had gotten good scores had regularly used pricey tutors, and my older brother used a tutor a couple of times to prepare for the ACT. So it seemed natural for me to do the same. And mandatory for me to get the score I needed.
I walked upstairs to where my dad was working and asked him how much he’d be willing to pay for an SAT class or tutor.
“I’ll pay as much as you think it’s worth,” he told me.
I went downstairs and looked over the information I had on the tutor I had picked out. I thought about it for a while and decided it just wasn’t worth it. The next day I checked out a book of SAT practice tests from my school at no cost and got to work.
I ended up doing great on it. I’m convinced that the SAT book I borrowed did just as much for me as any tutor would have. Sure, I had to motivate myself to practice — which wouldn’t be necessary with a regular tutor — but I don’t think I lost anything else by not paying for help.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the benefits of a tutor. There have been plenty of times when I’ve fallen behind in class and getting a tutor would have helped me catch up. And having a regular tutor would have kept me more organized with things like searching for a college. A friend hired a counselor to help her narrow her list of potential colleges and to pick the perfect essay for her applications.
To keep up with competition among virtual schools in the state, the Waukesha School District’s virtual charter high school has received the green light to expand its computer-based learning environment to middle school students next year.
The Waukesha School Board approved a proposal last week to add grades six, seven and eight in the 2009-’10 academic year to “>iQ Academy Wisconsin, perpetuating a trend in virtual-school growth that’s happening elsewhere around the country.
The 5-year-old iQ Academy is one of 18 virtual schools in Wisconsin that residents can attend for free through open enrollment.
Susan Patrick, president of the International Association of K-12 Online Learning, said virtual high schools around the country are expanding rapidly to include middle-school opportunities.
“We’re seeing a lot of growth on both sides: Elementary programs that started as K-5 or K-6 are expanding to middle-school programs, and at the high-school level, we’re seeing them reaching back to the middle-school grades,” Patrick said.
Virtual high schools that expand to middle schools often do so because they want to make sure students are competent in the academic content for core courses at the high school level, Patrick said.
Typically, virtual schools exist in one of two forms. Thirty-four states, including Wisconsin, have part-time virtual schools that serve as supplemental programs for students behind on credits or to offer students a class they can’t get in their public school. Students may spend a portion of their normal, supervised school day logging into an online course.
Poor test scores. High dropout rates. Enormous schools. Large class sizes. These are the words that come to Milena Skollar’s mind when you ask the transplant about sending her children to school in Georgia.
“It’s not fun to be 50th in the nation in SAT scores — plus the size of the schools is very disturbing,” the mother of three said. “I believe in public education. I just wish the schools were better for my children.”
Eric Johnson is a Republican state senator from Savannah. Skollar, a New Jersey native, is also a school social worker employed by a metro Atlanta school system. She is among the 68 percent of Georgia voters in a recent poll who support offering parents the option to transfer their children to a private school with a voucher.
As we commence another session of the General Assembly, it’s time to start thinking about parents such as Skollar and stop offering a one-size-fits-all education model to Georgia students. It’s time to offer a school voucher program for parents who want it for their children who need it.
Because both of her daughters excel in the classroom, Skollar believes her Fulton County public schools cannot challenge them enough as they get older and that a private school with smaller classes may be more appropriate. She would like more options.
Stan Jones, who announced this week that he’ll step down in April after 14 years as Indiana’s commissioner of higher education, is right when he says that the state has made major improvements in recent years in its educational system.
But he’s also correct in noting that “we still have a long way to go.”
One area of vital growth, and a major part of Jones’ legacy, has been the creation of a community college system, a key step toward building a work force ready to handle the challenges of the 21st century economy.
Jones on Friday said the state’s community college network, launched a decade ago, is starting to show deeper maturity and higher quality. The rapid growth in enrollment at Ivy Tech Community College also indicates that students who in the past would have missed out on an education beyond high school are now pursuing degrees.
One measure of success: Two decades ago, Indiana ranked 34th in the nation in the percentage of high school seniors who went on to college. It’s now 10th.
Yet, as Jones points out, college graduation rates are abysmal.
As colleges and students around the country struggle with the effects of the worldwide economic downturn, help appears to be on the way from the nation’s capital. And plenty of it, to judge from a draft of a massive, $825 billion stimulus package released by Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives Thursday.
Calculating exactly how much of the proposed money — $550 billion in new spending and $275 billion in tax breaks over two years — could (if enacted) flow to postsecondary institutions, and to students and potential students, is difficult because many of the proposals in the package lack detail. It would also be premature for anyone in higher education (or any other potential recipients of stimulus funds) to start spending it, since (1) budget hawks in Congress and elsewhere blanched at the size and scope of the package, (2) this is just the House’s version, with the Senate reportedly drafting its own, and (3) multiple steps remain in the process.
Still, none of those factors are likely to dampen interest in what’s in the legislation, and a rough estimate by Inside Higher Ed suggests that tens of billions of dollars could flow to colleges and their students, in the following broad categories:
As they grapple with crippling budget shortfalls, states are weighing whether to cut back on merit-aid scholarship programs that benefit hundreds of thousands of college students every year.
Since the early 1990s, more than 15 states have launched broad-based programs that offer students scholarships and tuition breaks based solely on grades, class rank and test scores. Supporters say such programs boost college-enrollment rates and help persuade high achievers to remain in their home states. Critics maintain that the programs siphon aid money away from students with financial need in favor of some who probably could have afforded college without the help.
The National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs, an organization of agencies responsible for state financial-aid programs, says merit grants accounted for $2.08 billion, or 28%, of all state-sponsored grants awarded in its latest tally, covering the 2006-2007 academic year. That’s up from $458.9 million in 1996-1997, when merit-aid accounted for about 15% of all state grants.
But the economic crisis has raised fears that such growth may be unsustainable, as tax revenue plunges and legislatures make drastic cuts to other state programs. And the pinch comes just as layoffs and investment losses affecting millions of families are likely to boost demand for financial aid based on need.
It is a familiar drill in nearly all of the nation’s Roman Catholic school systems: a new alarm every few years over falling enrollment; church leaders huddling over what to do; parents rallying to save their schools. And then the bad news.
When the Diocese of Brooklyn last week proposed closing 14 more elementary schools, it was not the deepest but only the latest of a thousand cuts suffered, one tearful closing announcement at a time, as enrollment in the nation’s Catholic schools has steadily dropped by more than half from its peak of five million 40 years ago.
But recently, after years of what frustrated parents describe as inertia in the church hierarchy, a sense of urgency seems to be gripping many Catholics who suddenly see in the shrinking enrollment a once unimaginable prospect: a country without Catholic schools.
From the ranks of national church leaders to the faithful in the pews, there are dozens of local efforts to forge a new future for parochial education by rescuing the remaining schools or, if need be, reinventing them. The efforts are all being driven, in one way or another, by a question in a University of Notre Dame task force report in 2006: “Will it be said of our generation that we presided over the demise” of Catholic schools?
WITH unemployment rising, house sales falling and retirement accounts shrivelling, college students are not at the top of most people’s worry lists. But they face a miserable set of financial circumstances. Tuition costs and other fees are soaring: up 439% since the early 1980s, says a recent report from the National Centre for Public Policy and Higher Education. Family incomes have not begun to keep pace. This year’s average bill from a private college is about $25,000, according to the College Board, a body that, as well as managing standardised tests such as the SAT, also studies financial aid for students. Public universities are far more affordable, with an average price tag of $6,500 for in-state tuition. But that is still a big chunk of the budget for a poor or middle-class family. And living expenses quickly run up the tab, even if a student makes do with a grotty apartment and lives on noodles.
The unsurprising result is that more students are borrowing to finance their education. According to the College Board, student debt has ballooned from $41 billion ten years ago (in 2007 dollars) to $87 billion today. Nearly two-thirds of those who graduate from a four-year programme, public or private, are in debt. Last year a borrower’s average burden, according to the Project on Student Debt, was slightly more than $20,000.
I’m always interested in finding new ways to learn better and faster. As a graduate student who is also a full-time science writer, the amount of time I have to spend learning new things is limited. It’s important to get the most educational value out of my time as possible. However, retention, recall and transfer are also critical. I need to be able to accurately remember the information I learn, recall it at a later time and utilize it effectively in a wide variety of situations.
1. Memory Improvement Basics
I’ve written before about some of the best ways to improve memory. Basic tips such as improving focus, avoiding cram sessions and structuring your study time are a good place to start, but there are even more lessons from psychology that can dramatically improve your learning efficiency.
For years, I took care of a very rude child. When he was 3, I called him rambunctious — and I talked to his mother about “setting limits.” At 4, I called him “demanding.” At 5, he was still screaming at his mother if she didn’t do what he wanted, he still swatted me whenever I tried to examine him, and his mother asked me worriedly if I thought he was ready for kindergarten.
I could go on (he didn’t have an easy time in school), but it would sound like a Victorian tale: The Rude Boy. I never used the word “rude” or even “manners” when I spoke to his mother. I don’t describe my patients as rude or polite in the medical record. But I do pass judgment, and so does every pediatrician I know.
It’s always popular — and easy — to bewail the deterioration of manners; there is an often quoted (and often disputed) story about Socrates’ complaining that the young Athenians have “bad manners, contempt for authority.” Sure, certain social rubrics have broken down or blurred, and sure, electronic communication seems to have given adults as well as children new ways to be rude. But the age-old parental job remains.
And that job is to start with a being who has no thought for the feelings of others, no code of behavior beyond its own needs and comforts — and, guided by love and duty, to do your best to transform that being into what your grandmother (or Socrates) might call a mensch. To use a term that has fallen out of favor, your assignment is to “civilize” the object of your affections.
schoolinfosystem.org
