bright lime-green T-shirts, groups of parents, students and teachers of the 16 elementary schools in Woodbridge Township and residents in the surrounding areas volunteered their time over the weekend to be part of making the routes to their individual schools safer.
Top and above: Teacher Beth Heagen, from Woodbine Avenue Elementary School No. 23 in Avenel, leads Bhavika Shah and her children Hetri, 8, a third-grader, and Ishika, 6, a firstgrader, as they travel through the streets that they and other students walk each day to get to school, looking for unsafe conditions as well as positive ones.
Dr. Wansoo Im, president of Vertices LLC, a GIS consulting firm, and a professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, led the group of a dozen or so people at Woodbine Avenue Elementary School No. 23 in Avenel to kick off the Discovering Safe Routes to School event, which was a walkability assessment, on May 30.
Each person was given a pedometer and took a map of the route, a survey and a digital camera to take photographs of what each one felt needed improvement, such as implementation of sidewalks, dangerous street crossings and overgrown shrubbery, and also what the participants felt worked well in the area.
“This event is an outgrowth of the walk we took with former Olympic racewalker [Mark Fenton] last year,” said Mayor John E. McCormac. “Our job as public officials is to keep the kids safe. What is safe to us might not be what is safe to an 8-year-old kid. The kids walk these routes every day.”
Teen sacrifices fun for hard work, education
While her classmates were signing yearbooks and preening for the prom, Vicheka Chres was experiencing a different kind of senioritis as she approached Friday’s graduation.
As she had since she started high school, Vicheka, 17, was studying six hours a night. After school and on weekends, she was making apple turnovers in her uncle’s bakery – for no pay. At home, she was translating for her mother, whose English is poor and who has a sixth-grade education.
“Fun? I don’t really have fun,” Vicheka said recently while taking a break from swabbing tables at Rio Vista Bakery, where her mother also works. “I know American kids go see movies, concerts. Go shopping. But that’s not what I do.”
Vicheka has reason to be motivated. She knows that if her family had stayed in their native Cambodia, which they left in 2003, she wouldn’t have had the luxury of studying trigonometry and literature six hours a night. She’d be working in a factory, sewing clothes 12 hours a day for $50 a month.
Instead, she’s bound for UC Davis. She plans to study biochemistry so she can eventually be a pharmacist and support her family, those in Rio Vista as well as in Phnom Penh.
Scholastic Programs Are Feeling the Pinch as Financing for Sports Dries Up
AP:
Tyler Peters has wrapped up his high school athletic career. Now he can only feel sympathy for his friends who are underclassmen at Coral Gables Senior High.
Across the country this spring, the recession has taken its toll on high school athletic programs. As states and school districts have tried to shore up their budgets, Florida has taken some of the most drastic steps.
The Florida High School Athletic Association is considering sweeping, two-year schedule changes with all sports except football canceling some matches, meets or games. The changes were approved earlier this year, but officials backed off the plan, saying they would take it up again at a later date.
A swimmer in high school, the 18-year-old Peters said he might have given it up if his season had been cut down.
Student charged with keeping teachers from grading
AP:
A high school computer whiz didn’t get a high grade for a recent feat: designing software to shut teachers out of the grading system.
A New York State Police spokeswoman says 16-year-old Matthew Beighey has been charged with unauthorized use of a computer and third-degree identity theft. He was ordered to return to court Wednesday.
Our Changing World
This graphic, from Boeing’s Current Market Outlook (2009-2028) provides a very useful look at the changes our children are facing. The Asia Pacific region is forecast to take delivery of more airplanes than North America, with Europe close behind. We should substantively consider whether the current systems, curriculum and organizations, largely created in the Frederick Taylor model over 100 years ago, are up to the challenge….
Locally, the Madison School District’s Proposed Strategic Plan will be discussed Monday evening.
Related: China Dominates NSA Coding Contest.
Global Academy Presentation to the Dane County Public Affairs Council Audio / Video
Watch the May 27, 2009 video here, or listen via this mp3 audio file.
Bill Reis: Coordinator, Global Academy [Former Superintendent, Middleton-Cross Plains School District]
Dean Gorrell: Superintendent, Verona Area Schools
To a significant degree talented and gifted students in our schools are under-served. These students are often left to do it on their own, particularly if that talent is in only one or two areas. Finally, there is something being done about that. Not only is the Global Academy going to be a reality, but surprise beyond belief, eight area school districts, including Madison, are actually cooperating and going to be part of the Global Academy. The presentation and discussion will focus on
What is the rationale and data to support this educational experience?
What school districts are involved and how will it be financed?
What students will be served by the Academy? How will students be selected?
What will be the curriculum and methodology for instruction?
Will these students be prepared for post high school education and work?
Will there be partnerships with MATC, other colleges and universities, community persons and organizations?
How will the students relate with their home schools?
Thanks to Jeff Henriques for recording this event.
Connecticut District Retools High School Math Instruction
Mathematics teachers in one coastal Connecticut school district were frustrated with students’ inability to retain what they learned in Algebra I and apply it to Algebra II, so they decided to approach high school mathematics instruction in a new way. The teachers shrank the number of topics covered in each course by about half and published their custom-made curriculum online last fall, the New York Times reports.
The new curriculum’s lessons were written by Westport, Conn., teachers and sent to HeyMath! of India, a company that adds graphics, animation, and sound to the lessons before posting them on the Web. But teachers say the new curriculum is as much about bringing classroom instruction into the digital age as it is about having the opportunity to teach students fewer concepts in greater depth.
Westport’s decision to rewrite its math curriculum is part of a growing trend to re-evaluate “mile-wide, inch-deep” instruction. In 2006, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics pushed for more basic math skills instruction, and two years later a federal panel of investigators appointed by then President George W. Bush also urged schools to whittle down their elementary and middle school math curricula.
Will Federal Education Standards Help US Students?
Education Secretary Arne Duncan threw his weight Wednesday behind a Text”common” education standard for all of America’s schoolchildren, saying the current state-by-state system has produced uneven results in which some students “are totally, inadequately prepared to go into a competitive university, let alone graduate.”
Mr. Duncan, who has been on a cross-country “listening tour” in preparation for submitting revisions for the No Child Left Behind Act, says he’s encountered support for the idea of a national standard. “Teachers have been really positive on this idea of common standards,” he said at a Monitor-sponsored breakfast for reporters. “That has played much better with teachers than I thought it would.”
Alaska Opts Out of US National Standards Initiative
Gov. Sarah Palin has opted out of an effort to develop national education standards for reading and math curricula, a decision that has riled some but satisfied other Alaskan education officials, the Anchorage Daily News reports.
Forty-six states have agreed to help create the Common Core State Standards Initiative, an effort to allow states to compare their students’ academic progress at each grade level using a single rubric. Alaska joins Missouri, South Carolina, and Texas on the shortlist of states that have bowed out of the attempt to form what many believe education in the United States has lacked for too long: a common denominator.
Carol Comeau, superintendent of the Anchorage School District, said she was disappointed in Palin’s decision. Alaska’s pupils have a right to know how they measure up against their peers in other parts of the country, Comeau said. The Anchorage School District serves nearly half of Alaska’s 120,000 public school students.
Wisconsin high schools webcast graduations to reach wider audience
While iQ Academy Wisconsin can reach students statewide through lessons taught over the Internet, that doesn’t mean all 128 graduates can reach the academy for Sunday’s commencement at Waukesha South High School.
So, for the first time, the school is offering a webcast of its graduation, which students and their relatives can watch in streaming video as names are called out and awards are distributed.
“A lot of our students live pretty far from Waukesha,” said iQ Principal Rick Nettesheim, who estimates about two-thirds of the graduating class will be at commencement this year. “Now they can participate in the graduation or, if they have friends or family that live far away, they can participate, too.”
The Waukesha-based charter school is one of a growing number of high schools to broadcast their graduation ceremonies over the Internet, allowing far-flung friends or family members who couldn’t travel or get tickets to participate in once-in-a-lifetime events.
Henry Holmes, 18, said the webcast will allow his grandfather in Waupun to watch as he picks up his iQ diploma.
Teenage readers are gravitating toward even grimmer fiction; suicide notes and death matches
Until recently, the young-adult fiction section at your local bookstore was a sea of nubile midriffs set against pink and turquoise backgrounds. Today’s landscape features haunted girls staring out from dark or washed-out covers. Current young-adult best sellers include one suicide, one deadly car wreck, one life-threatening case of anorexia and one dystopian universe in which children fight to the death. Somewhere along the line our teenagers have become connoisseurs of disaster.
Jay Asher’s “Thirteen Reasons Why,” which is narrated by a dead girl, came out in March 2007 and remains on the bestseller list in hardcover. The book is the account of a fragile freshman named Hannah Baker who kills herself by overdosing on pills and sends audiotapes to the 13 people she holds responsible for making her miserable in the last year of her life. There may be parents who are alarmed that their 12-year-olds are reading about suicide, or librarians who want to keep the book off the shelves, but the story is clearly connecting with its audience–the book has sold over 200,000 copies, according to Nielsen BookScan.
For those young readers who find death by pill overdose inadequately gruesome, there’s Gayle Forman’s “If I Stay,” which takes as its subject a disfiguring car wreck. The book has sold a robust 17,000 copies in its first two months on sale, and was optioned by Catherine Hardwicke, the director of the film “Twilight.” The story follows an appealing cellist named Mia who goes on a drive to a bookstore with her unusually sympathetic ex-punk-rocker parents. When a truck barrels into their Buick, Mia hovers ghost-like over the scene. She sees her family’s bodies crushed, then watches on as her own mangled body is bagged and rushed to the hospital. Lingering somewhere between this world and the next, Mia must decide whether to join her parents in the afterlife or go it alone in the real world. The brilliance of the book is the simplicity with which it captures the fundamental dilemma of adolescence: How does one separate from one’s parents and forge an independent identity?
A Team’s Struggle Shows Disparity in Girls’ Sports
The Cougars of Middle School 61 had a basketball game in the Bronx, but a half-hour before tipoff, six girls and Coach Bryan Mariner were still inching through traffic in Brooklyn.
A cellphone rang. It belonged to forward Tiffany Fields-Binning, who passed the phone to Mr. Mariner.
“You don’t want her to go?” he said. He peered up at a street sign. “We’re on Atlantic and Flatbush.” He paused. “O.K. O.K. We’ll wait here.”
Mr. Mariner turned off the ignition. “Tiff-a-ny.” He said her name slowly, like a sigh. “You didn’t set this straight with your pop?”
Tiffany stared out a window.
Mr. Mariner turned and assessed the situation: “We’ve got five.”
Five players. No substitutes.
Marketplace’ will help rein in college costs: Duncan
Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the former Chicago Public Schools chief and basketball buddy of President Obama, says the “marketplace” will work to keep university costs down.
And he seems intrigued with the notion of developing “no-frills” campus options for financially strapped students.
Duncan has moved his family from Hyde Park in Chicago to the northern Virginia suburbs, where his kids go to a public school. I caught up with Duncan at a breakfast with reporters last week.
He has been on his own “listening tour” of the nation to figure out what needs to be changed in the No Child Left Behind law. He said he has no timetable for asking Congress to rewrite the controversial Bush-era program.
The economic stimulus measure has given Duncan $10 billion in discretionary spending. By comparison, President George W. Bush’s first education secretary, Rod Paige, had only $17 million in the cash drawer to pass around.
Duncan said he wants to use some of the federal money as an incentive to “change behavior” when it comes to college expenses.
Leopold Elementary does it bilingually
In a classroom with walls lined with bright pictures, Erin Conway’s third- and fourth-grade students are working on mathematical word problems. For the first time in their relatively short educational careers, the problems are in English.
“I think I know the answer,” a student tells Conway. But then he gives her the wrong answer.
“It’s not that hard,” Conway says, repeating the question to him in Spanish. The second time the student tells Conway the right answer.
The classroom looks the same as other third-grade classrooms. The top of the black chalkboard is bordered with the alphabet in cursive. Each number on the clock has its handwritten digital equivalent next to it. The student desks with attached chairs open up to reveal school supplies.
But the population of Conway’s classroom makes it different. All of her 16 students are native Spanish speakers, in what’s called a transitional education program.
As kindergartners at Leopold Elementary, on Madison’s west side, the students were placed in classrooms where 90% of their academic instruction was given in Spanish and 10% in English. In second grade, 80% of their instruction was in Spanish and 20% in English.
Wisconsin Math Standards
From a recent post on the Madison United for Academic Excellence (MUAE) listserve:
There is an effort under way to rewrite the Wisconsin math state standards. Comments from the public are invited until this coming Monday (June 15).
Some math professors at UW-Madison believe the draft could use some improvement and encourage folks to review the standards and submit comments via a survey all of which can found at: http://dpi.wi.gov/cal/standards-revisions.html
Another website with standards that can be used for comparison is: http://www.achieve.org/node/479 Achieve is one of the organizations that are involved in drafting the
national standards-to-be. The governor has agreed to enroll in the group of States that will align the standards of the state with the national standards the Obama administration is pushing for.
Which States Have the Best High School Graduation Rates
President Obama expects all Americans to complete at least one year of postsecondary education, and a report released this week by Education Week highlights both the obstacles to attaining that goal and the hopeful signs that–at least in some states–success appears to be within reach.
“Diploma Count 2009” places the national graduation rate at about 70 percent for the class of 2006 and notes that this rate has increased nearly 3 percentage points since 1996. According to the report, New Jersey has the highest rate, 82.1 percent; Nevada has the lowest, 47.3 percent. But with about 30 percent of American students failing to graduate high school, and many other qualified students opting out of the college application process, the report states, Obama’s goal can easily seem unrealistic
Trying to Turn Around Washington, DC’s Webb/Wheatley
Daniel Charles’ four part audio series on Webb/Wheatley Elementary.
College in Need Closes a Door to Needy Students
The admissions team at Reed College, known for its free-spirited students, learned in March that the prospective freshman class it had so carefully composed after weeks of reviewing essays, scores and recommendations was unworkable.
Money was the problem. Too many of the students needed financial aid, and the college did not have enough. So the director of financial aid gave the team another task: drop more than 100 needy students before sending out acceptances, and substitute those who could pay full freight.
The whole idea of excluding a student simply because of money clashed with the college’s ideals, Leslie Limper, the aid director, acknowledged. “None of us are very happy,” she said, adding that Reed did not strike anyone from its list last year and that never before had it needed to weed out so many worthy students. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m still doing this.”
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: The US Fiscal Black Hole
It does not yet include price tag for the laudable ambition of the Obama administration to ensure that no American is without health insurance. Nor does it include planned government outlays for updating America’s clapped-out infrastructure or the pursuit of the environmental agenda. Bringing American secondary education (numeracy, literacy, foreign language skills etc.) up to the levels of the most successful emerging markets will also be very expensive, although more government money is only a necessary condition for significant progress in this area; a major change in the governance arrangements for schools in the incentives faced by teachers, heads, pupils and parents are also necessary. And I cannot really envisage Obama confronting the American Federation of Teachers. Without reform in governance and incentives, even vastly increased public spending on health and education will achieve in the US what it achieved the UK under Labour in the past six years: very little indeed.
The Genius Index: One Scientist’s Crusade to Rewrite Reputation Rules
Jorge Hirsch had been getting screwed. For years. At a scientific conference in 1989, he presented a paper arguing that the generally accepted theory of low-temperature superconductors–the BCS theory–was wrong. Most researchers at the time held that under certain low-temperature conditions, vibrations in a metal’s crystal lattice can allow electrons to become attracted to one another, which drops electrical resistance to zero–a superconducting state. Hirsch said this “electron-phonon interaction” in fact had nothing to do with superconductivity. He was a youngish up-and-comer then, but physics rarely forgives apostasy. After his fateful presentation, similar conferences stopped inviting him to speak. Colleagues no longer sought him out for collaboration. Grants dried up. High-visibility journals shunned his papers.
It’s not that Hirsch wasn’t getting his work published. He was. And other physicists were still citing his research, implying some acceptance of his views. Hirsch just wasn’t able to get his papers into the really high-visibility journals–places like Science, Nature, and, for a solid-state physicist, Physical Review Letters. There’s a clear pecking order, established and reinforced by several independent rating systems. Chief among them: the Journal Impact Factor.
Shocker! Some Teachers Like AP for All
When I got to work Monday, I was certain I was about to be pummeled by e-mails telling me what an idiotic column I had written that day praising high schools that were trying to get everyone, even struggling students, to take Advanced Placement courses and tests.
The first e-mail had arrived at 7:56 a.m. I opened it gingerly, expecting harsh language. It was from a teacher — not a good sign. Many of them find my AP obsession an outrage, particularly since I have never taught a class and would not be competent to do so.
So what did the e-mailer, Michael Willis, a physics teacher at Glen Burnie High School in Anne Arundel County, have to say? He said he liked the column. Hmmm. Maybe he was being sarcastic? Nope. He said he retired from a career in nuclear engineering to teach physics at all levels, including AP, and said “having such low performers in a class does them a world of good.” He even offered a rationale for low performers in AP I hadn’t thought of: “In these days of economic woe, schools with a historically large percentage of low performance may more easily rationalize the targeting of such classes for cutting due to low enrollments. This would have the effect of locking out the ‘smart’ kids from classes they need to be competitive with students from districts and schools that are more affluent.”
Obama’s Charter Stimulus
Wall Street Journal Editorial:
The Obama Administration’s $100 billion in “stimulus” for schools has mostly been a free lunch — the cash dispensed by formula in return for vague promises of reform. So we were glad to hear that Education Secretary Arne Duncan is now planning to spend some of that money to press states on charter schools.
“States that don’t have charter school laws, or put artificial caps on the growth of charter schools, will jeopardize their application” for some $5 billion in federal grant money, Mr. Duncan said in a conference call with reporters this week. “Simply put, they put themselves at a competitive disadvantage for the largest pool of discretionary dollars states have ever had access to.”
Charter schools improve public education by giving parents options and forcing schools to compete for students and resources. For low-income minority families, these schools are often the only chance at a decent education. Charters are nonetheless opposed by teachers unions and others who like the status quo, no matter how badly it’s serving students. As a result, 10 states lack laws that allow charter schools (see nearby table), and 26 others cap charter enrollment.
To his credit, Mr. Duncan singled out some of the worst anticharter states. “Maine is one of 10 states without a charter schools law, but the state legislature has tabled a bill to create one,” he said. “Tennessee has not moved on a bill to lift enrollment restrictions. Indiana’s legislature is considering putting a moratorium on new charter schools. These actions are restricting reform, not encouraging it.”
Public Debt: The biggest bill in history
THE worst global economic storm since the 1930s may be beginning to clear, but another cloud already looms on the financial horizon: massive public debt. Across the rich world governments are borrowing vast amounts as the recession reduces tax revenue and spending mounts–on bail-outs, unemployment benefits and stimulus plans. New figures from economists at the IMF suggest that the public debt of the ten leading rich countries will rise from 78% of GDP in 2007 to 114% by 2014. These governments will then owe around $50,000 for every one of their citizens (see article).
Not since the second world war have so many governments borrowed so much so quickly or, collectively, been so heavily in hock. And today’s debt surge, unlike the wartime one, will not be temporary. Even after the recession ends few rich countries will be running budgets tight enough to stop their debt from rising further. Worse, today’s borrowing binge is taking place just before a slow-motion budget-bust caused by the pension and health-care costs of a greying population. By 2050 a third of the rich world’s population will be over 60. The demographic bill is likely to be ten times bigger than the fiscal cost of the financial crisis.
Will they default, inflate or manage their way out?
Related: earmarks, K-12 Tax & Spending Climate.
Summer Fun
June means the end of high school and the start of summer. Perhaps there will be jobs or other chores, but, as James Russell Lowell wrote in The Vision of Sir Launfal, “what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days…”
Those rare June days are full of mild air, sunshine, leisure, and time, at last, for student to pick up that absorbing nonfiction book for which there has been no place in their high school curriculum.
Why is it that so many, if not most, of our high school graduates arrive in college without ever having read a single complete nonfiction book in high school, so that when they confront their college reading lists, full of such books, they are somewhat at sea?
The main reason is that the English department controls reading in most schools, and for most of them the only reading of interest is fiction, so that is all that students are asked to read.
For the boys, and now the girls too, who may soon serve in the military, and are interested in military history, they have to read the military history books they will enjoy on their own, after school or, better, in the summer. All the students who would love history books on any topic would do well to pick them up in the summer, when their other assignments, of fiction books and the like, cannot interfere.
The story of the world’s work and the issues that trouble the world now (and in the past) can only be found in nonfiction books, and for students who can see the time coming when they will be responsible for the work of the world, those are the books which they should read, and have time to read, mainly in the summer months.
Summer reading of nonfiction books also means that when they return to their history, economics, sociology, and even their science and English classes in the fall, they will bring a more substantial and more nuanced understanding of the world they will be studying, with the benefit of the knowledge and appreciation they have gained in their nonfiction reading over the summer.
For those who are concerned with “Summer Loss”–the observed decline in student knowledge and skill over the summer months–the reading of nonfiction books brings a double benefit. The habit and the skill of reading significant material are refreshed and reinforced in that way, and knowledge is gained rather than drained away over the summer. And in addition, engagement with serious topics confirms young people in their primary role as students rather than “just kids” as they read over the summer.
Adults still buy and read a lot of nonfiction books, even in these days of the Internet/Web and Television, and students will have a much better chance of taking part in adult conversations over the summer if they are reading books too.
The objection will surely be raised in some quarters that reading nonfiction books in the summer is too much like work. One answer that could be offered is that, as reported in Diploma to Nowhere, more than a million of our high school graduates every year, who are accepted at colleges, are required to take remedial courses because they have not worked hard enough to be ready for regular courses. The problem then may actually be that our high schools are too much fun and not enough work and we give our diplomas to far too many “fools” as a result.
Malcolm Gladwell, in Outliers, cites K. Anders Ericsson’s research on the difference between amateur and professional pianists, and writes: “Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top musical school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t just work harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”
We see those who labor constantly to relieve our students from working too hard academically. They worry about stress, strain, overwork, joyless lives, etc. But that only seems to apply to academics. When it comes to sports, there is nearly universal satisfaction with young athletes who dedicate themselves to their fitness and the skills needed for their sport(s) not only after school, but during the summer as well.
While reading nonfiction books in the summer has not yet been widely accepted or required, high school athletes are expected to run, lift weights, stretch, and shoot hoops (or whatever it takes for their sports) as often in the summer as they can find the time. Perhaps if we applied the seriousness with which we take sports for young people to their pursuit of academic achievement, we would find more students reading complete nonfiction books in the summer and fewer needing remedial courses later.
“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
Data-Driven Schools See Rising Scores
Last fall, high-school senior Duane Wilson started getting Ds on assignments in his Advanced Placement history, psychology and literature classes. Like a smoke detector sensing fire, a school computer sounded an alarm.
The Edline system used by the Montgomery County, Md., Public Schools emailed each poor grade to his mother as soon as teachers logged it in. Coretta Brunton, Duane’s mother, sat her son down for a stern talk. Duane hit the books and began earning Bs. He is headed to Atlanta’s Morehouse College in the fall.
If it hadn’t been for the tracking system, says the 17-year-old, “I might have failed and I wouldn’t be going to college next year.”
Montgomery County has made progress in improving the lagging academic performance of African-American and Hispanic students. See data.
Montgomery spends $47 million a year on technology like Edline. It is at the vanguard of what is known as the “data-driven” movement in U.S. education — an approach that builds on the heavy testing of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law. Using district-issued Palm Pilots, for instance, teachers can pull up detailed snapshots of each student’s progress on tests and other measures of proficiency.
The high-tech strategy, which uses intensified assessments and the real-time collection of test scores, grades and other data to identify problems and speed up interventions, has just received a huge boost from President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Related notes and links: Wisconsin Knowledge & Concepts (WKCE) Exam, Value Added Assessments, Standards Based Report Cards and Infinite Campus.
Tools such as Edline, if used pervasively, can be very powerful. They can also save a great deal of time and money.
Wisconsin Democrats vote for student cap in Milwaukee’s school-choice program
Steve Walters, Stacy Forster & Patrick Marley:
Democrats who control the state Assembly voted Thursday to cap participation in Milwaukee’s parental choice program at 19,500 students for the next two years – about the same number of students who now attend private schools at state expense.
If it becomes law, the change would reverse a 2006 compromise that would have allowed participation to grow to 22,500.
The 19,500 cap was added to the state budget, which the full Assembly was scheduled to debate at 10 a.m. Friday, by state Rep. Fred Kessler (D-Milwaukee). It was one of the final decisions made by the 52 Democrats, who ended four days of closed-door caucus meetings that resulted in dozens of proposed changes to the 2010-’11 budget.
Assembly Speaker Mike Sheridan (D-Janesville) said Democrats will have enough votes to pass the budget Friday.
“When you look at the document, it’s well-balanced, and I think we did a lot of good things,” Sheridan said.
An opponent of the choice program, Kessler said it would be the first major reduction in the number of choice students – a number that had been expected to grow next year.
The two-year budget includes $2 billion in tax and fee increases, cuts aid to local governments and schools and would force 6% across-the-board spending cuts by state agencies.
But choice supporters said the cap would be fought in both the Assembly and Senate.
Gifted education audit in Waukesha
Amy Hetzner via a kind reader’s email:
In the year that the Waukesha School District laid off all but one staff member devoted to gifted and talented education, identification of students for the gifted program dropped 29%, according to an audit by the state Department of Public Instruction.
Nominations of students for the gifted program dropped even more — by 65% — in the 2007-’08 school year. This followed a school year in which nominations and identifications already were down from the year before.
At the time they made the GT staff cuts, Waukesha school board members said they hoped that regular classroom teachers would take on the task of providing special programming for gifted students, as required by state law.
But district officials acknowledge difficulty without speciality staff.
“Any time you have budget reductions it is going to have an effect,” Ben Hunsanger, Waukesha’s new GT coordinator, said in an e-mail. “There was a drop in GT identifications because we lost GT resource teachers. The GT student population also lost direct resources as a result of the staffing reductions.”
Video Interviews with Harvard’s Drew Gilpin Faust
Chrystia Freeland @ The Financial Times.
So much hinges on that high school education
Volunteering as a GED program tutor continues to be one of my most gratifying experiences, but it also has been sobering to realize how many in our community lack basic – high school – education. (GED is the acronym for general equivalency degree, a recognized substitute for a high school diploma.)
Students in GED programs range in age from the mid-20s to the late 40s; many are minorities. They say they’ve recommitted themselves to furthering their education in order to enhance job skills, to help their children succeed with their education or simply, but profoundly, to regain some self-esteem. GED programs are a lifeline to those who have the courage to “go back” later in life to achieve these goals, but the programs currently serve just a fraction of those who lack a high school education.
You get a sense of the magnitude of the problem by reading a 2008 publication of the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center called “Cities in Crisis.” The study, which was funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, looks at the 50 largest cities in the United States (Milwaukee is No. 25) and the number of kids enrolled in high school in the “focal” district of each city (in our case Milwaukee Public Schools). In the year studied – 2006 – MPS’s high school population (grades nine through 12) was estimated to be 25,000.
Physical Stress and Academic Performance
I’ve been preoccupied by sleep lately. Not sleeping — though as I approach the end of my first trimester I sure could use some — but sleep itself. What it means to sleep a little or a lot, how it affects your daily interactions with others, etc. This is something I know a tiny bit about, having spent a solid year sleep-deprived after the birth of my first child, but not something I’ve devoted my academic time to.
Until now. I just spent two full days at the Cells to Society (C2S) Summer Biomarker Institute. C2S is also known as the Center on Social Disparities and Health at Northwestern University. It’s directed by developmental psychologist Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, and has additional star power in folks like Thom McDade, Emma Adam, and Chris Kuzawa. These are social science researchers who have mastered the hard sciences as well, and are using medical tools to get at how social practices and environments “get under the skin.”
What does that mean? Well, to explain I’ll tell you why I’m thinking about sleep. It all begins with an attempt to understand the reasons why so many low-income kids drop out of college. A big problem, to be sure — and one that we still don’t know enough about. I’m thinking that has to do with the limited number of ways in which we’ve approached the problem. It’s primarily treated as an educational issue, one we tackle with a combination of college practices and individual-level incentives like money.
Alternative Testing on the Rise
hese were not multiple-choice tests that computers grade in seconds. They were thick “portfolio” tests representing a year’s worth of student worksheets, quizzes and activities. The time-intensive evaluations have proliferated in recent years in response to the testing requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The District and many states, including Maryland and Virginia, use portfolios for students with serious cognitive disabilities. But Virginia has gone much further, expanding their use for students with learning disabilities or beginning English skills. Statewide, the number of math and reading portfolios submitted for such students nearly doubled in a year, from 15,400 in 2006-07 to more than 30,000 in 2007-08, and state officials predict another jump this school year.
Portfolios have long been used for in-depth evaluations because they can gauge more skills and higher-order thinking. Many educators say the year-long portfolios are a fairer way to measure what some students know than a one-day snapshot.
“We all learn differently,” said Patrick K. Murphy, assistant superintendent for accountability in Fairfax schools and Arlington County’s incoming superintendent. “We also have to recognize there are different ways people can show proficiency beyond a multiple-choice test.”
Schwarzenegger seeks online revolution in schools
In the state that gave the world Facebook, Google and the iPod, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says forcing California’s students to rely on printed textbooks is so yesterday.
The governor recently launched an initiative to see if the state’s 6 million public school students can use more online learning materials, perhaps saving millions of dollars a year in textbook purchases.
“California is home to software giants, bioscience research pioneers and first-class university systems known around the world. But our students still learn from instructional materials in formats made possible by Gutenberg’s printing press,” Schwarzenegger wrote in a recent op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News.
In a state with a projected $24 billion budget deficit, Schwarzenegger has asked education officials to review a wealth of sources that already are on the Internet, many of which are free, and determine whether they meet curriculum standards.
Microsoft Anti-Trust Settlement Generates Some Cash for Wisconsin Schools
In a sea of otherwise bleak budget news, 850 schools in Wisconsin are looking at an unexpected windfall: a share of at least $75 million from Microsoft Corp. for new technology purchases.
According to estimates released this week by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, schools where at least 33.3% of the students qualify as low-income will split about $75 million to $80 million in vouchers that can be redeemed for cash after the schools purchase new hardware or software.
The money for eligible schools is part of a settlement from a class-action antitrust lawsuit that Microsoft reached with Wisconsin residents in 2006. Other states have reached similar settlements with Microsoft. Plaintiffs claimed that Microsoft stifled competition and harmed consumers.
Eligible schools may redeem their vouchers for cash after buying new desktop computers, laptops, printers, scanners, faxes and software, none of which has to be from Microsoft, said Stephen Sanders, director of instructional media and technology for the DPI.
It would be interesting to compare these amounts with the royalties districts have paid to Microsoft……
Is AP for All A Formula For Failure?
pend much time with aggressive Advanced Placement teachers. They tell me, quite often, that students must be stretched beyond their assumed capabilities. Whenever I try to pass on this advice, however, I become a target for ridicule and disbelief from readers.
Here comes more of that stuff. Newsweek unveils this week my annual rankings of America’s Top High Schools, with a new twist that skeptics will find even less congenial.
The latest list, to appear on newsweek.com, will include about 1,500 schools that have reached a high standard of participation on college-level AP, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests. The bad news is they represent less than 6 percent of U.S. public high schools. The good news is that 73 percent of Washington area schools are on the list. The interesting news is that some of those schools have begun to require AP courses and tests for all students, even those who struggle in class.
2 Madison Elementary Schools Fail No Child Left Behind Standards
For the first time, two Madison elementary schools will face sanctions for failing to meet federal No Child Left Behind standards.
Leopold and Lincoln fell short of the federal law’s criteria for “adequate yearly progress” for the second year in a row, marking them as “schools identified for improvement,” or SIFI. The SIFI list targets schools that miss the same testing benchmark, such as reading scores among economically disadvantaged students, for two or more consecutive years.
Under the sanctions, the schools will have to review their school improvement plans, offer more academic services outside of the regular school day and allow parents to transfer their child to any public school within the School District where space allows. Students performing poorly on statewide tests would get first preference to transfer.
Former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin comments.
Wisconsin Assembly Democrats Approve a $500,000 Earmark for the Madison School District’s 4K Program
The hope of four-year-old kindergarten in Madison schools stayed alive early Thursday as Assembly Democrats pushed through a $500,000 start-up grant for the district as part of the state budget bill.
But even with that money, the challenges to offering the program remain great as the district could face an $8 million cut in its state aid, or 13 percent, under one new estimate of the effect of state budget cuts on Madison schools.
And Republicans criticized the grant money to the district as an earmark that comes at a time when schools statewide are having their funding cut.
“Any funding that can help mitigate the (four-year-old kindergarten) costs in the first two years is very helpful,” said Madison Schools superintendent Dan Nerad. “We’re very pleased with the proposal that’s been advanced.”
Fascinating.
Underworked American Children
ut when it comes to the young the situation is reversed. American children have it easier than most other children in the world, including the supposedly lazy Europeans. They have one of the shortest school years anywhere, a mere 180 days compared with an average of 195 for OECD countries and more than 200 for East Asian countries. German children spend 20 more days in school than American ones, and South Koreans over a month more. Over 12 years, a 15-day deficit means American children lose out on 180 days of school, equivalent to an entire year.
American children also have one of the shortest school days, six-and-a-half hours, adding up to 32 hours a week. By contrast, the school week is 37 hours in Luxembourg, 44 in Belgium, 53 in Denmark and 60 in Sweden. On top of that, American children do only about an hour’s-worth of homework a day, a figure that stuns the Japanese and Chinese.
Americans also divide up their school time oddly. They cram the school day into the morning and early afternoon, and close their schools for three months in the summer. The country that tut-tuts at Europe’s mega-holidays thinks nothing of giving its children such a lazy summer. But the long summer vacation acts like a mental eraser, with the average child reportedly forgetting about a month’s-worth of instruction in many subjects and almost three times that in mathematics. American academics have even invented a term for this phenomenon, “summer learning loss”. This pedagogical understretch is exacerbating social inequalities. Poorer children frequently have no one to look after them in the long hours between the end of the school day and the end of the average working day. They are also particularly prone to learning loss. They fall behind by an average of over two months in their reading. Richer children actually improve their performance.
Gifted education audit in Waukesha
Amy Hetzner
Journal Sentinel
June 4, 2009
In the year that the Waukesha School District laid off all but one staff member devoted to gifted and talented education, identification of students for the gifted program dropped 29%, according to an audit by the state Department of Public Instruction.
Nominations of students for the gifted program dropped even more — by 65% — in the 2007-’08 school year. This followed a school year in which nominations and identifications already were down from the year before.
At the time they made the GT staff cuts, Waukesha school board members said they hoped that regular classroom teachers would take on the task of providing special programming for gifted students, as required by state law.
But district officials acknowledge difficulty without specialty staff.
“Any time you have budget reductions it is going to have an effect,” Ben Hunsanger, Waukesha’s new GT coordinator, said in an e-mail. “There was a drop in GT identifications because we lost GT resource teachers. The GT student population also lost direct resources as a result of the staffing reductions.”
In an April letter to Waukesha’s superintendent, the DPI recommended the district refine its methods for identifying students as gifted and talented and provide professional development for staff on providing special services for such students.
The state audit was performed after a group of district parents filed a complaint last year alleging numerous deficiencies in Waukesha’s program for gifted students.
One of those parents, Amy Gilgenbach, said she wishes the audit had focused less on policy corrections and more with what was going on in the program itself. She said the state agency should have looked into what happened to instruction due to the loss in staffing.
“At the elementary level, when you have already overburdened teachers with 28 or more kids in their classes and then expect them to take on added responsibilities without additional training or instruction, obviously you’re not creating a good situation for GT students in those classes,” she wrote in an e-mail.
“At the middle and high school levels, not having appropriate guidance and course selections and potential college and career paths is a huge pitfall for GT students.”
Report From China: “Novels are not taught in class, and teachers encourage outside reading of histories rather than fiction.”
Annie Osborn in the Boston Globe:
Teen’s lessons from China. I am a product of an American private elementary school and public high school, and I am accustomed to classrooms so boisterous that it can be considered an accomplishment for a teacher to make it through a 45-minute class period without handing out a misdemeanor mark. It’s no wonder that the atmosphere at Yanqing No. 1 Middle School (“middle school” is the translation of the Chinese term for high school), for students in grades 10-12, seems stifling to me. Discipline problems are virtually nonexistent, and punishments like lowered test scores are better deterrents for rule breaking than detentions you can sleep through.
But what does surprise me is that, despite the barely controlled chaos that simmers just below the surface during my classes at Boston Latin School, I feel as though I have learned much, much more under the tutelage of Latin’s teachers than I ever could at a place like Yanqing Middle School, which is located in a suburb of Beijing called Yanqing.
Students spend their days memorizing and doing individual, silent written drills or oral drills in total unison. Their entire education is geared toward memorizing every single bit of information that could possibly materialize on, first, their high school entrance exams, and next, their college entrance exams. This makes sense, because admission to public high schools and universities in China is based entirely on test scores (although very occasionally a rich family can buy an admission spot for their child), and competition in the world’s most populous country to go to the top schools makes the American East Coast’s Harvard-or-die mentality look puny.
Chinese students, especially those in large cities or prosperous suburbs and counties and even some in impoverished rural areas, have a more rigorous curriculum than any American student, whether at Charlestown High, Boston Latin, or Exeter. These students work under pressure greater than the vast majority of US students could imagine.
Truth In Teaching
Education reform will go nowhere until the states are forced to revamp corrupt teacher evaluation systems that rate a vast majority of teachers as “excellent,” even in schools where children learn nothing. Education Secretary Arne Duncan was right to require the states that participate in the school stabilization fund, which is part of the federal education stimulus program, to show — finally — how student achievement is weighted in teacher evaluations. The states have long resisted such accountability, and Mr. Duncan will need to press them hard to ensure they live up to their commitment.
A startling new report from a nonpartisan New York research group known as The New Teacher Project lays out the scope of the problem. The study, titled “The Widget Effect,” is based on surveys of more than 16,000 teachers and administrators in four states: Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois and Ohio.
The first problem it identifies is that evaluation sessions are often short, infrequent and pro forma — typically two or fewer classroom observations totaling 60 minutes or less. The administrators who perform them are rarely trained to do the evaluations and are under intense pressure from colleagues not to be critical. Not surprisingly, nearly every teacher passes, and an overwhelming majority receives top ratings.
Math & Science: China dominates NSA-backed coding contest
Programmers from China and Russia have dominated an international competition on everything from writing algorithms to designing components.
Whether the outcome of this competition is another sign that math and science education in the U.S. needs improvement may spur debate. But the fact remains: Of 70 finalists, 20 were from China, 10 from Russia and two from the U.S.
TopCoder Inc., which runs software competitions as part of its software development service, operates TopCoder Open, an annual contest.
About 4,200 people participated in the U.S. National Security Agency-supported challenge. The NSA has been sponsoring the program for a number of years because of its interest in hiring people with advanced skills.
Participants in the contest, which was open to anyone — from student to professional — and finished with 120 competitors from around the world, went through a process of elimination that finished this month in Las Vegas.
China’s showing in the finals was also helped by the sheer volume of its numbers, 894. India followed at 705, but none of its programmers were finalists. Russia had 380 participants; the United States, 234; Poland, 214; Egypt, 145; and Ukraine, 128, among others.
Learn from three success stories
Rising above IQ
Nicholas Kristoff
In the mosaic of America, three groups that have been unusually successful are Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks — and in that there may be some lessons for the rest of us. Asian-Americans are renowned — or notorious — for ruining grade curves in schools across the land, and as a result they constitute about 20 percent of students at Harvard College. As for Jews, they have received about one-third of all Nobel Prizes in science received by Americans. One survey found that a quarter of Jewish adults in the United States have earned a graduate degree, compared with 6 percent of the population as a whole. West Indian blacks, those like Colin Powell whose roots are in the Caribbean, are one-third more likely to graduate from college than African-Americans as a whole, and their median household income is almost one-third higher.
These three groups may help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories. In the debate over nature and nurture, they suggest the importance of improved nurture — which, from a public policy perspective, means a focus on education. Their success may also offer some lessons for you, me, our children — and for the broader effort to chip away at poverty in this country.
America’s Top Public High Schools
Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement, Intl. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2008 divided by the number of graduating seniors. All of the schools on the list have an index of at least 1.000; they are in the top 6 percent of public schools measured this way.
If you have questions about the list, please contact challenge@washpost.com. Note: Subs. Lunch % is the percentage of students receiving federally subsidized meals. E and E % stands for equity and excellence percentage: the portion of all graduating seniors at a school that had at least one passing grade on one AP or IB test. For more information on methodology, see our FAQ; please leave your comments on the list in the comments box below.
26 Wisconsin high schools made the list with Milwaukee’s Rufus King on top at #271 and, locally, Verona High School at #1021 the only Madison area institution on the list.
US Education Secretary Duncan Shares His Plans
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan knows there are dire problems with the U.S. school system. He sees no other issue as more pressing, and calls it “the civil rights issue of our generation.”
Duncan shares his plan for a complete overhaul of the public schools.
Samuel Beer
HIS hair turned no whiter than a pale auburn, and he was never caught standing on his head, but even in his advanced years Sam Beer continued to surprise–by playing the harmonica in bravura style, for example, or by coming 13th in a skydiving competition among 250 contestants half his age. The vitality that sparkled most brightly, though, was that of the mind. When Harvard’s grandest political scientists gathered last year to brief alumni on their activities, the former chairman of the department, then a mere 96, was asked to make a few comments about the study of government during his tenure from 1946 to 1982. “He completely stole the show,” said one. Speaking without notes, remembering everyone and everything, he upstaged all the incumbent professors.
Mr Beer was a formidable scholar, the author of countless articles and several books. The best of these, “British Politics in the Collectivist Age”, picked apart the country in which he had studied before the war and established him as the foremost authority on modern British politics (which was the title of the British edition). He wrote two other books on Britain, one on the Treasury and one on what he called “the decline of civic culture” or, more politely, “the rise of the new populism”. He also analysed his own country, notably in a book that examined the creation of the American nation through the twin lenses of history and political theory.
On California’s Hard Copy Textbook Purchase Ban
“Textbooks are outdated, in my opinion,” said the film-star-turned-politician. “For so many years, we’ve been trying to teach exactly the same way. Our children get their information from the internet, downloaded on to their iPods, and in Twitter feeds to their phones. Basically, kids feel as comfortable with their electronic devices as I was with my pencils and crayons
“So why are California’s school students still forced to lug around antiquated, heavy, expensive textbooks?”
State officials said textbooks typically cost between $75 (£46) and $100, far more than their digital equivalents.
A spokesman for Pearson said it has been planning for the switch from printed text to digital for a decade, but conceded that the company will collect less money per unit from digital sales. The company added the move would allow it to save money on printing and distribution costs.
I have been a slow, but generally pleased user of electronic books (stanza, kindle and open source) on my iphone. It is time to transition and save money….
Matthew Garrahan & Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson have more:
“But our students still learn from instructional materials in formats made possible by Gutenberg’s printing press. It’s nonsensical – and expensive – to look to traditional hard-bound books when information is so readily available in electronic form.”
However, with California facing a record $24bn budget deficit the state could struggle with high start-up costs – particularly as Mr Schwarzenegger has pledged to make digital text books available to each of the state’s 2m students.
“The main practicality is that until students have full and equal access to computers, this would be very difficult to phase in,” wrote Citigroup analysts in a research note.
The state is one of the biggest purchasers of school textbooks in the world so the transition to digital learning could have big implications for publishers, such as Pearson, owner of the Financial Times.
Eight Tuition-Free Colleges
During difficult economic times, the cost of higher education leaves many students wondering if they can afford to go to college. For those who want to avoid being saddled with huge loans, the U.S. government offers one of the best deals around: Enroll at one of the five service academies tuition-free and receive free room and board. (And you thought the Grand Slam promotion at Denny’s was cool.) But if military service isn’t for you, here are eight other schools that offer tuition-free educations:
1. College of the Ozarks
Several schools share the “Linebacker U” and “Quarterback U” monikers in reference to the NFL talent that their college football programs produce, but the only “Hard Work U” is located in Point Lookout, Missouri. In 1973, a Wall Street Journal reporter bestowed that title on the College of the Ozarks, where students pay no tuition and work at least 15 hours a week at a campus work station. Jobs are taken seriously at the school of 1,400; students are graded on their work performance in addition to their academics.
History: In 1906, Presbyterian missionary James Forsythe helped open the School of the Ozarks to provide a Christian high school education to children in the Ozarks region, which spans parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The school added a two-year junior college 50 years later and completed its transition to a four-year college program in 1965. The school was renamed College of the Ozarks in 1990 and has established itself as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the Midwest.
LEAP scores improve in New Orleans for third straight year
New Orleans test scores jumped this year across most grade levels and school types, with both charter and traditional schools celebrating gains.
The boost in scores, the third consecutive year of improvement, helped narrow a still-sizable gap in student achievement between the city and the rest of Louisiana.
“In some cases, the gap is closing dramatically, ” said Recovery School District Superintendent Paul Vallas.
Vallas’ district includes 33 traditional and 33 charter schools. Overall, both types of schools saw some growth, although the charters still outperformed the noncharters, echoing last year’s scores. The directly run RSD schools, however, must accept students enrolling throughout the year, while charters can cap their enrollment, giving them a more stable student population.
Madison School Board OK’s 1 More Year of Infinite Campus, with More Oversite
Monday evening’s Madison School Board meeting included approval of another year of Infinite Campus along with (and this is quite important) a motion requiring that within six months, administration document use of IC and identify barriers to use where they exist, with the purpose of achieving 100% implementation by the end of 2012 or sooner.
Successful implementation of this student and parent information portal across all schools and teachers should be job one before any additional initiatives are attempted.
The Examined Working Life
The Swiss essayist Alain de Botton has cultivated a following by unpacking the psychological and philosophical underpinnings of our everyday lives.
His 1997 breakout book “How Proust Can Change Your Life” imparted practical lessons to be found in Marcel Proust’s classic “In Search of Lost Time.”
He has also written books and hosted television programs on travel, love, and architecture. In his latest book, “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work,” he examines of the activity we spend most of our waking hours doing: our jobs.
To research this project, Mr. de Botton, who lives in London, shadowed members of various professions including an accountant, a rocket scientist, a cookie manufacturer, and an inventor. He answered our questions by email.
Is AP for All a Formula for Failure
I spend much time with aggressive Advanced Placement teachers. They tell me, quite often, that students must be stretched beyond their assumed capabilities. Whenever I try to pass on this advice, however, I become a target for ridicule and disbelief from readers.
Here comes more of that stuff. Newsweek unveils this week my annual rankings of America’s Top High Schools, with a new twist that skeptics will find even less congenial.
The latest list, to appear on newsweek.com, will include about 1,500 schools that have reached a high standard of participation on college-level AP, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests. The bad news is they represent less than 6 percent of U.S. public high schools. The good news is that 73 percent of Washington area schools are on the list. The interesting news is that some of those schools have begun to require AP courses and tests for all students, even those who struggle in class.
State law, attitudes slow charter school movement in Iowa
The nation’s 4,500 charter schools, free to bend tradition in the name of innovation, are credited with some of the biggest leaps in education reform.
Waiting lists are getting longer. Enrollment has doubled. President Barack Obama wants more of the taxpayer-supported alternative schools as a way to restore America’s worldwide education standing.
But in Iowa, charter schools have drawn attention for what’s missing. The movement never took off, despite a $4.2 million infusion of federal money and a special law.
Of 10 schools that opened in the past five years, two have dropped their charters. Eight schools are left. Some resemble their traditional public school counterparts, despite their license to break the mold.
Falling flat-screen TVs a growing threat for kids
Samara Brinkley dozed off just for a moment as she was watching cartoons on TV with her 4-year-old daughter.
Then “I heard the boom, and I woke up and I [saw] my child laying on the floor, and I [saw] a pool of blood coming out in the back of her head,” said Brinkley, 26, of Jacksonville, Fla.
Dymounique Wilson, one of Brinkley’s two daughters, died last Wednesday when the family’s 27-inch television fell over on her.
Nearly 17,000 children were rushed to emergency rooms in 2007, the last year for which complete figures were available, after heavy or unstable furniture fell over on them, a new study reported this month. The study, published in the journal Clinical Pediatrics by researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, found that the such injuries had risen 41 percent since 1990.
History of US Children’s Policy-1900 to present
uring the last century–since the Progressive Era and the first White House Conference on Children in 1909–the federal government has vastly expanded its role in promoting the welfare of America’s children and youth. While families remain the bulwark for successful child development, and states, localities, and a host of private entities provide services to infants, children, youth, and their families, the federal government has long supported and provided services ranging from health care to education and enforces a wide range of laws and regulations to protect and enhance the well-being and rights of Americans under age 21.3
This essay offers a brief survey of the development of federal policies affecting children and families from the early 20th century to the early 21st century. The focus is on federal legislation and important federal court decisions; state policy developments largely are excluded.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: After the Crisis: Macro Imbalance, Credibility and Reserve-Currency
High rates of growth, based on the increase in consumption of the mature economies of first-world countries, cannot be sustained for a prolonged period. First-world countries have low or zero demographic growth, an inverted demographic pyramid and already very high standards of living. The maintenance of a high rate of consumption growth depends, both on the creation of new consumption needs and on the permanent expansion of credit to families with ever higher levels of debt. The rich central countries consume, financed by ever higher levels of debt, in order to satisfy ever more artificial needs, with products made in China, which controls its labor costs and buys raw materials from emerging countries. No need of a profound analysis to conclude that in the long run this model is unsustainable.
There are two currents of interpretation of the present crisis. The first emphasizes a deficiency of the regulatory framework. It argues that it was such deficiency that ultimately led to the excess of leverage in the financial system. The explosion of ingenuity that followed the development of contingent contracts, the so called “derivatives”, and the securitization of credits transformed the financial system from a relationship oriented system into a market transaction oriented system. It should have been more and better regulated in order to avoid the resulting excesses. The second current emphasizes the presence of large international macroeconomic imbalances. Obviously both interpretations are at least partially correct, but they are above all complementary. The macroeconomic imbalance would not have been so deep and persistent without the extraordinary development of the financial market. Indebtedness and leverage would not have reached such extremes in the world without the international macroeconomic imbalance. To accept that both interpretations are complementary does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that to redesign the regulatory framework is as important as to find a way to reverse the international macroeconomic imbalance. If promoted in a hurry and under the emotional impact provoked by the need to inject public money to limit the damage of recent excesses, a new regulatory framework carries the risk of being too repressive, geared to avoid errors of the past and not necessarily able to cope with the challenges of the future. It is easier to restrict and to prohibit than to adapt the regulatory framework to the impending challenges.[2] The design of a new financial regulatory framework, as important as it is, at this present moment, would not be able either to unlock the financial system, or to help the recovery of the world economy. The central question today is how to give a new dynamism to the world economy based on factors different from those that lead to the imbalances or the last decades. Which would be the institutional framework capable to guarantee a sustainable dynamism to the world economy without resuming and deepening the imbalances of the last decade?
Related: Top Chinese banker calls for US to issue Yuan debt instruments.
School Spotlight: Decorated student bassoonist stands out in Mount Horeb
When David Richards tried out instruments during sixth-grade orientation, he was drawn to the bassoon because it was one of the pieces from which he could coax a sound.
He wound up playing the woodwind instrument as a student in Austin, Texas. Now a senior at Mount Horeb High School, Richards is an accomplished musician in a district known for its music.
“The bassoon requires constant vigilance to play cleanly, as David does,” said John Widdicombe, who plays bass with the Piper Road Spring Band and whose daughter played with Richards in high school. “One really must hear David play to appreciate the gentle voice he offers through his instrument.”
Richards has performed in Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras since eighth grade and started playing in Winds of Wisconsin as a sophomore and the experiences have propelled his interest in the bassoon.
Extensive Cheating found at an Ohio High School
An Ohio school district says it uncovered a cheating scheme so pervasive that it had to cancel graduation ceremonies for its 60 seniors — but will still mail their diplomas.
A senior at Centerburg High School accessed teachers’ computers, found tests, printed them and distributed them to classmates, administrators said.
Graduation was canceled because so many seniors either cheated or knew about the cheating but failed to report it, said officials of the Centerburg School District.
Superintendent Dorothy Holden said the district had to take a stand and let students know that cheating can’t be tolerated.
“I am alarmed that our kids can think that in society it’s OK to cheat, it’s a big prank, it’s OK to turn away and not be a whistle-blower, not come forth,” Holden said.
Related: Cringely on Cyber Warfare.
Strong correlation found between school rankings and parental education
State education leaders have come up with their own analysis in response to our KSL Schools high school rankings. In April, KSL unveiled a comprehensive database on Utah high schools. The state’s findings pertain to every parent.
Our KSL Schools research project ranked the top Utah high schools as Park City, Davis, Skyline, Viewmont, Lone Peak and Timpview. State Education leaders compared our rankings to census data showing communities ranked with the percentage of adults who have college degrees.
Superintendent Larry Shumway said, “I thought there would be some correlation, but what I was surprised to see was almost perfect correlation.”
The State Office of Education found Park City had the most college educated adults, with 52 percent. The communities that follow virtually mirror our list.
Male lecturers pass the test
City University president Way Kuo came from a science background, but has a keen interest in educational work. When he was in the United States, he spent a lot of time on educational research despite his busy school administrative duties.
Professor Kuo recently published Clarifying Some Myths of Teaching and Research (Clusty), which he jointly penned with education psychologist Mark E Troy, detailing the results of a study on 10,000 students and 400 teachers.
The study explores the relationship between research work and quality of teaching, and explodes – or confirms – certain myths within education circles, as the book title suggests.
Kuo was invited by the Hong Kong University Graduates Association to give a speech on his new book, and many interesting education- related issues were raised during the talk.
One of the questions concerned whether scholars who engage in research work perform worse in teaching, and whether class size affects teaching performance.
Five Ways to Fix America’s Schools
AMERICAN education was once the best in the world. But today, our private and public universities are losing their competitive edge to foreign institutions, they are losing the advertising wars to for-profit colleges and they are losing control over their own admissions because of an ill-conceived ranking system. With the recession causing big state budget cuts, the situation in higher education has turned critical. Here are a few radical ideas to improve matters.
Raise the age of compulsory education. Twenty-six states require children to attend school until age 16, the rest until 17 or 18, but we should ensure that all children stay in school until age 19. Simply completing high school no longer provides students with an education sufficient for them to compete in the 21st-century economy. So every child should receive a year of post-secondary education.
The benefits of an extra year of schooling are beyond question: high school graduates can earn more than dropouts, have better health, more stable lives and a longer life expectancy. College graduates do even better. Just as we are moving toward a longer school day (where is it written that learning should end at 3 p.m.?) and a longer school year (does anyone really believe pupils need a three-month summer vacation?), so we should move to a longer school career.
Coaches struggle to find balance between work and family
Keith Hennig has a 3-year-old boy named Trevor and a 1-year-old named Brady. He wants to watch them grow up. Not in the brief moments between school and basketball practice. Not in the late-night hours when he would get home from a game or an open gym.
“I hate it during the winter season because I leave when it’s dark out, and when I come home it’s dark out,” Hennig says. “It’s almost depressing.”
Long before he led the Kentwood High girls basketball team to the state championship in March, Hennig, only 32, had decided that it would be his last season. But Hennig discovered that, as with any addiction, it’s one thing to decide to quit. It’s quite another to go through with it.
For two weeks after the championship game, he walked past the state championship trophy every day and saw his girls in the halls at Kentwood, where he is a history teacher. He remembered all those moments that made the late nights and early mornings worth it. He was going through withdrawal.
Steamboat Springs School Board Settles Open Meeting Lawsuit with Newspaper
The Steamboat Springs School Board formally accepted a lawsuit settlement offer from the Pilot & Today on Monday.
The settlement was tentatively approved by board members last month on the heels of a March ruling by the Colorado Court of Appeals that the previous School Board violated the state’s Open Meetings Law by not properly announcing the intention of its executive session at a Jan. 8, 2007, meeting. As a result of the ruling and settlement offer, the district will pay $50,000 of the newspaper’s attorney fees and release the transcripts from the illegal meeting.
The motion to accept the settlement offer was approved 4-1 on Monday, with a couple of board members expressing satisfaction that the lawsuit is now behind them. Board member John DeVincentis was the only dissenting vote, but he wasn’t the only one displeased with the outcome.
The 2009 HUES Row of Excellence
The Capital City HUES is proud to present the fourth annual HUES Row of Excellence. This honor is bestowed on seniors of color graduating with a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or above.
Read more at http://www.capitalcityhues.com/052809RowofExcellence1.html
Congratulations to these fine young scholars!!! We wish you well as you follow your dreams.
Peanut Butter Politics & The Widget Effect
“education is the dullest of subjects,” Jacques Barzun wrote in the very first sentence of his astonishingly fresh 1945 classic, Teacher in America. Barzun de- spised the idea of “professional educators” who focus on “methods” instead of subject matter. He loved teachers, but knew they “are born, not made,” and that most teachers’ colleges teach the wrong stuff.
Cut to 2009, when Barack Obama thinks education is the most exciting of subjects. Even so, Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, get Barzun. They understand that the key to fixing education is better teaching, and the key to better teaching is figuring out who can teach and who can’t.
Just as Obama has leverage over the auto industry to impose tough fuel–economy standards, he now has at least some leverage over the education industry to impose teacher-effectiveness standards. The question is whether he will be able to use it, or will he get swallowed by what’s known as the Blob, the collection of educrats and politicians who claim to support reform but remain fiercely committed to the status quo.
Teacher effectiveness-say it three times. Last week a group called the New Teacher Project released a report titled “The Widget Effect” that argues that teachers are viewed as indistinguishable widgets-states and districts are “indifferent to variations in teacher performance”-and notes that more than 99 percent of teachers are rated satisfactory. The whole country is like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon, except all the teachers are above average, too.
Related: teacher hiring criteria in Madison.
The Numbers Guy: Statistics Used and Abused
Carl Bialik via a kind reader’s email:
Even when stats are reliable, they may not tell the whole picture. Aldritt pointed to the example of testing results, which may indicate more about success in teaching to a test than in overall education.
The irony of the poor survey results is that, at least according to Mr. Aldritt and independent statisticians, U.K. stats are generally reliable. He says the main problem comes in the beginning and end of the process — “deciding which statistics should be published, and explaining how they should be used.”
However, the authority will have to reserve judgment until it begins issuing its assessments, in the next month or so. And recent statistical snafus elsewhere illustrate that getting the basic numbers right isn’t always easy. A government audit of South Korean statistics found that farms with thousands of chickens were reported as lacking the birds, and that unclaimed dead bodies weren’t being included in death counts. A spokesman for the National Statistics Office said the office is gathering relevant documents to determine how to punish those at fault.
US Federal Government Stimulus / Splurge Funds and Wisconsin School District Budgets
The possible cuts come on top of other proposed changes to school finance, including ending an effective 3.8 percent cap on teacher pay and benefits in July 2010.
“I think you can argue that this is the worst state budget for public schools in a generation,” said Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, who said a few districts may have to consider closing.
UW-Madison economist Andy Reschovsky said the Madison School District could see a net cut in aid of $4.1 million, or 4.6 percent, possibly forcing program cuts, teacher layoffs and big increases in property taxes. His analysis, which is less precise when looking at any single district, suggests the falling aid could set up Madison schools to raise property taxes by up to 7 percent.
Stimulus math
Over the next two years, the state would cut direct aid to schools by nearly $300 million under a budget proposal that still must be approved by the Assembly and Senate and signed by Doyle. Over that period, the federal government is expected to pump $350 million in stimulus money directly into schools through two main streams. The money would mainly have to be used to help poor and special education students.
Doyle’s budget director, Dave Schmiedicke, noted the budget uses some additional stimulus money and $55 million in state money not included in Reschovsky’s analysis to offset part of the increase in property taxes.
Related: Wisconsin K-12 Tax and Spending Growth: 1988-2007
Research suggests children can recover from autism
Leo Lytel was diagnosed with autism as a toddler. But by age 9 he had overcome the disorder.
His progress is part of a growing body of research that suggests at least 10 percent of children with autism can “recover” from it — most of them after undergoing years of intensive behavioral therapy.
Skeptics question the phenomenon, but University of Connecticut psychology professor Deborah Fein is among those convinced it’s real.
She presented research this week at an autism conference in Chicago that included 20 children who, according to rigorous analysis, got a correct diagnosis but years later were no longer considered autistic.
Among them was Leo, a boy in Washington, D.C., who once made no eye contact, who echoed words said to him and often spun around in circles — all classic autism symptoms. Now he is an articulate, social third-grader. His mother, Jayne Lytel, says his teachers call Leo a leader.
The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, involves children ages 9 to 18.
Autism researcher Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer of the advocacy group Autism Speaks, called Fein’s research a breakthrough.
Illinois joins school march toward national standards, test
Illinois has joined a growing list of states that favor common learning guidelines for math and English, a movement that could lead to national testing and what supporters say is a better way for teachers and parents to gauge whether students are improving and measuring up on a nationwide level.
With a deadline for signing onto the idea Wednesday, officials hope to move quickly and have set December as a target for mapping out grade-by-grade standards from kindergarten through senior year.
The initiative would represent a dramatic departure from the past, by ending the current patchwork of state-set expectations and exams that vary widely in rigor. It also could save millions of dollars in redundant tests at a time when governments are struggling with budget deficits.
Backers believe that the groundswell of state support — together with the endorsement of Education Secretary Arne Duncan and a promise of stimulus funds to bankroll the project — may spell success where past efforts have failed.
Students taking advanced placement have tripled in Duval County, but more fail
Topher Sanders, Mary Kelli Palka:
Briana Hudson, a senior at Wolfson High School, took her first Advanced Placement class two years ago and received a B.
She was happy with the boost to her grade-point average. She was excited by the chance to receive college credit by passing the national AP exam. She thought her class had prepared her for it, which was the point.
Except it didn’t. She didn’t pass.
“But if I’m getting B’s in the class, and I’m doing all the work and turning everything in and I answer questions and you say that they’re right,” Hudson, 18, said, “… it’s just kind of like everything that I did was basically a lie.”
Hudson is one of thousands of Duval County Public Schools students who passed AP classes in the past two years but failed to pass the related AP exams, a Times-Union review has shown.
Duval students passed 80 percent of their AP courses last year with a “C” or better. But only 23 percent of the national AP exams, taken near the end of those courses, were passed.
The national exam pass rate for public schools was 56 percent.
The disparity widens depending on the school: Students in the district’s four “A” high schools, whose students are largely white, passed 85 percent of their AP courses and 42 percent of their exams. In the four “F” schools, whose students are largely black or from lower income families, 74 percent of the courses were passed – and only 6 percent of the exams were.
‘Getting to Yes’ Skills Useful at Home Too
Though women still do more of the housework and child care, the so-called second shift scenario–in which working women are stuck doing all the work at home too–is less widespread than a decade or so ago.
The fact that men can do the grunt work at home doesn’t mean that they will “naturally” do it though–usually the wife has to exert some leverage. Sometimes that leverage is her earnings; other times it’s her ability to negotiate.
Unfortunately, the fear that abounds now is that the punishing economic climate may eviscerate a positive trend of more decision making by women.
Women Are Often the Deciders
The Pew Research Center conducted a study in 2008 of 1,260 people who were married or living together as couples and found striking equality in decision making in finances, weekend activities and big-ticket purchases.
It’s Not About You
3 June 2009
Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
Although many high school students do realize it, they all should be helped to understand that their education is not all about them, their feelings, their life experiences, their original ideas, their hopes, their goals, their friends, and so on.
While it is clear that Chemistry, Physics, Chinese, and Calculus are not about them, when it comes to history and literature, the line is more blurred. And as long as many writing contests and college admissions officers want to hear more about their personal lives, too many students will make the mistake of assuming the most important things for them to learn and talk about in their youth are “Me, Myself, and Me.”
Promoters of Young Adult Fiction seem to want to persuade our students that the books they should read, if not directly about their own lives, are at least about the lives of people their own age, with problems and preoccupations like theirs. Why should they read War and Peace or Middlemarch or Pride and Prejudice when they have never been to Russia or England? Why should they read Battle Cry of Freedom when the American Civil War probably happened years before they were even born? Why should they read Miracle at Philadelphia when there is no love interest, or The Path Between the Seas when they are probably not that interested in construction projects at the moment?
Almost universally, college admissions officers ask not to see an applicant’s most serious Extended Essay or history research paper, to give an indication of their academic prowess, but rather they want to read a “personal essay” about the applicant’s home and personal life (in 500 words or less).
Teen Magazines like Teen Voices and Teen People also celebrate Teen Life in a sadly solipsistic way, as though teens could hardly be expected to take an interest in the world around them, and its history, even though before too long they will be responsible for it.
Even the most Senior gifted program in the United States, the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, which finds some of the most academically promising young people we have, and offers them challenging programs in Physics, Math, and the like, when it comes to writing, it asks them to compose “Creative Nonfiction” about the events and emotions of their daily lives, if you can believe that.
The saddest thing, to me, is that I know young people really do want to grow up, and to learn a lot about their inheritance and the world around them, and they do look forward to developing the competence to allow them to shoulder the work of the world and give it their best effort.
So why do we insist on infantilizing them with this incessant effort to turn their interests back in on themselves? Partly the cause is the enormous, multi-billion-dollar Teen market, which requires them to stay focused on themselves, their looks, their gear, their friends and their little shrunken community of Teen Life. If teens were encouraged to pursue their natural desires to grow up, what would happen to the Teen Market? Disaster.
In addition, too many teachers are afraid to help their students confront the pressure to be self-involved, and to allow them to face the challenges of preparing for the adult world. Some teachers, themselves, are more comfortable in the Teen World than they think they would be “out there” in the Adult World, and that inclines them to blunt the challenges they could offer to their students, most of whom will indeed seek an opportunity to venture into that out-of-school world themselves.
We all tend to try to influence those we teach to be like us, and if we are careful students and diligent thinkers as teachers, that is not all bad. But we surely should neither want nor expect all our students to become schoolteachers working with young people. We should keep that in mind and be willing to encourage our students to engage with the “Best that has been said and thought,” to help them prepare themselves for the adulthood they will very soon achieve.
For those who love students, it is always hard to see them walk out the door at the end of the school year, and also hard when they don’t even say goodbye. But we must remember that for them, they are not leaving us, so much as arriving eagerly into the world beyond the classroom, and while we have them with us, we should keep that goal of theirs in mind, and refuse to join with those who, for whatever reason, want to keep our young people immature, and thinking mostly about themselves, for as long as possible.
“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
Consortium for Varsity Academics® [2007]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
A Day With Autism
We spend some time with a family whose little boy is newly diagnosed.
Madison School Board Infinite Campus Discussion
Watch the discussion here. I’ve not had a chance to watch or listen to this yet, but I plan to. Much more on Infinite Campus here.
Via a kind reader’s email.
Online classes can save schools money, expand learning time for K-12 students
University of Florida News:, via a kind reader’s email:
New research at the University of Florida predicts more public school students in kindergarten through 12th grade will take classes online, have longer school days and more of them in the next decade. Academic performance should improve and schools could save money.
While distance education over the Internet is already widespread at colleges and universities, UF educational technology researchers are offering some of the first hard evidence documenting the potential cost-savings of virtual schooling in K-12 schools.
“Policymakers and educators have proposed expanding learning time in elementary through high school grades as a way to improve students’ academic performance, but online coursework hasn’t been on their radar. This should change as we make school and school district leaders more aware of the potential cost savings that virtual schooling offers,” said Catherine Cavanaugh, associate professor at the University of Florida’s College of Education. “Over the next decade, we expect an explosion in the use of virtual schooling as a seamless synthesis between the traditional classroom and online learning.”
Leaving “No Child Left Behind” does not depend on more teachers or more money, but selfless children
via email:
It’s time to move away from “differentiated curriculum” which is really segregated learning, to student-centered cooperative education.
It’s time to embrace what the children have to teach our world: their cooperative, creative, and compassionate spirit.
It’s a shame we continue to spend more money to prevent children from sharing learning and ideas with each other and our world.
Us adults would stand to learn much on how to alleviate economic woes, if we cooperated with the regenerative spirit that children keep trying to impart in our world.
I’ve been a sub for a while in this district that continues to bow down to parents who care only about self-serving educational models while exploiting resources, schools, and our community.
Since I’ve resolved that I probably will never be hired as a full-time teacher, I’ve written a book recently published called The Power of Paper Planes: Co-Piloting with Children to New Horizons.Dave Askuvich, daskuvich@hotmail.com
How the Web and the Weblog have changed Writing
Publishing from Gutenberg (1455) through 1990
- The pre-1990 commercial publishing world supported two lengths of manuscript:
the five-page magazine article, serving as filler among the ads- the book, with a minimum of 200 pages
Suppose that an idea merited 20 pages, no more and no less? A handful of long-copy magazines, such as the old New Yorker would print 20-page essays, but an author who wished his or her work to be distributed would generally be forced to cut it down to a meaningless 5-page magazine piece or add 180 pages of filler until it reached the minimum size to fit into the book distribution system.
Mesquite schools’ proposal would let students score days off for passing TAKS, classes
Some Mesquite high school students could skip the last week of school next year while others get intensive academic help under a program that could be approved tonight.
Students who pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills and their classes would attend class for fewer days, essentially earning extra days of summer vacation.
High school students who haven’t passed both would attend the full year and receive intensive help while the other students are off. Those still behind after the end of the school year would go to summer school.
“It just seems like a great opportunity to work with a smaller number of students who may have some more intensive needs,” said Jeannie Stone, a district administrator who has been investigating the program.
The school board is expected to adopt the plan, known as the optional flexible year program, at its regular meeting. If approved, Mesquite would be one of the larger districts in the state to use the program
UD AND THE TEACHING COMPANY
I rail against distance learning, laptops in classrooms, PowerPoint, and other trends toward too much technology in university life, yet yesterday I made an audition lecture cd for the Teaching Company.
If the sample audiences around the country to whom TC will now send it like UD’s lecture, she’ll prepare a TC lecture series. Instead of lecturing to fifty or so people every semester, she’ll have an audience that spans the nation. She’ll become a distance instructor. Big time.
How to wrestle her way clear of this hypocrisy?
Well, how about this:
Universities are one thing, and companies that make educational videos and disks are another. Throughout her years of blogging about universities, UD’s been arguing for the survival of four years of liberal arts education on a campus set apart – physically, metaphysically – from the world of the streets. Professors dwarfed by PowerPoints, students invisible behind laptops, destroy the immediacy of human interaction, the give and take of spontaneous, attentive discourse that challenges and changes you in college.
Family Life a Complex Affair for Immigrants
Roughly four million American-born children have at least one parent who is in this country illegally, and life for these immigrant families can be complex. Immigration status determines who can work and drive a car, as well as who can leave the country to rush to a dying relative’s bedside. The situation is at the heart of the debate over immigration reform. Advocates are pushing for a way to keep families together; opponents say people should not be rewarded for sneaking across borders.
In digital age, interest in traditional yearbooks wanes
Karl Lorin and Marisa Lander stood at the edge of Liberty High School’s cafeteria in Frisco oblivious to the lunchtime circus surrounding them. Transfixed, they swept hands across glossy pages and flipped through an index in search of their names.
Then they snapped the book shut and handed it back to the classmates distributing them. Neither had bought one.
The nostalgia of this decades-old relic hasn’t faded completely from the Frisco school, but the students’ actions represent a growing detachment with the hardbound encapsulation of geeky high school moments.
The traditional yearbook is no more.
Liberty High, which pre-sold yearbooks for $60 each to about half its student body, is at the top of the heap. South Oak Cliff High School sold only a handful to its underclassmen.
2008-2009 Madison West High School ReaLGrant Initiave update
57K PDF, via a kind reader’s email:
The School Improvement Committee has spent this year investigating academic support models in other schools to begin to develop an effective model for West High School. The committee visited Memorial High School, Evanston High School, Wheeling High School, and New Trier High School, in IL. Some of the common themes that were discovered, especially in the Illinois schools, were as follows:
- Many schools have an identified academic team who intervene with struggling students. These teams of support people have clearly defined roles and responsibilities. The students are regularly monitored, they develop both short and long term goals and the students develop meaningful relationships with an adult in the building. The academic support team has regular communication with teaching staff and makes recommendations for student support.
- There are mandatory study tables in each academic content areas where students are directed to go if they are receiving a D or F in any given course.
- Students who are skill deficient are identified in 8th grade and are provided with a summer program designed to prepare them for high school, enhanced English and Math instruction in 9th grade, and creative scheduling that allows for students to catch up to grade level.
- Some schools have a family liaison person who is able to make meaningful connections in the community and with parents. After school homework centers are thriving.
- Social privileges are used as incentives for students to keep their grades up.
Recommendations from the SIP Committee
- Design more creative use of academic support allocation to better meet the needs of struggling students.
- Create an intervention team with specific role definition for each team member.
- Design and implement an after school homework center that will be available for all students, not just those struggling academically.
- Design and implement student centers and tables that meet specific academic and time needs (after school, lunch, etc.)
- Identify a key staff person to serve in a specialized family liaison role.
- Develop a clear intervention scaffold that is easy for staff to interpret and use.
- Design and implement enhanced Math and English interventions for skill deficient students.
Related topics:
Tough Times, Tough Choices
“There still appears to be a constant flow of expats being relocated to Budapest compared to last year,” says Lena Sarnblom, relocation coordinator for Move One Relocations. “But April and May have also been busy with departure services and we have been informed that this will continue to rise.”
Ingrid Lamblin, branch manager at AGS Budapest Worldwide Movers, confirms that AGS is also seeing an increase in expatriate departures, and she says that “incoming expatriates are more often single people with less belongings, or couples without children, or whose children are already grown.”
But János Prihoda, general manager of Inter Relocation Group, says that while he thinks it likely that there will be a decrease in expatriates in manufacturing industries, such as telecommunications and the automotive industry, he has in fact seen an increase in expatriates coming in to work for financial organisations and as consultants.
“Our main clients come from the service centre market,” he says, “and despite the economic situation, the number of expats have grown rather then decreased.”
iPhones May Help Japanese University Catch Absent Students
The days of skipping class for students at one Japanese university are over.
At least that’s the hope of administrators at Aoyama Gakuin University, in Tokyo, whose School of Social Informatics will give Apple’s iPhone 3G to 550 of its students as a way to track attendance with the phone’s global-positioning system.
Attendance is an important graduation requirement at the university, the Associated Press reported, and in the past, students would fake attendance by asking friends to answer attendance roll calls or hand in signed attendance sheets with their signatures.
In the new system, students will be required to enter their ID number into an iPhone application at the beginning of class. The phone will pinpoint the students’ location when they do, to ensure they are actually on campus.
The Strengths of Poor Families
Sherylls Valladares and Kristin Anderson Moore:
In the minds of many people, poor families equal problem families. Indeed, that perception is not surprising, giving compelling evidence of the harsh effects that poverty can have on family life and child well-being. However, far less attention has been paid to the strengths that many poor families have and the characteristics that they may share with more affluent families. This Research Brief
examines these issues.
To explore the similarities and contrasts between poor and non-poor families, Child Trends analyzed data for more than 100,000 families from the 2003 National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH). Our results suggest that, although poor families experience socioeconomic disadvantages, these families may be enriched by the strengths found in their family routines and relationships. Specifically, we found that poor families are at a disadvantage when it comes to receiving services and benefits and are more likely to express concerns about their neighborhoods. On the other hand, we found that poor families do not differ from more affluent families in many ways, such as in the closeness of their relationships and the frequency of outings together or attending religious services.
Also, while parents in poor households express concerns about neighborhood safety in general, they are just as likely to report feeling that their child is safe at home or at school as are parents who are better off. Moreover, we found that families in poverty are somewhat more likely to eat meals together.
iPhone applications can help the autistic
Leslie Clark and her husband have been trying to communicate with their autistic 7-year-old son, JW, for years, but until last month, the closest they got was rudimentary sign language.
He’s “a little bit of a mini-genius,” Clark says, but like many autistic children, JW doesn’t speak at all.
Desperate to communicate with him, she considered buying a specialized device like the ones at his elementary school in Lincoln, Neb. But the text-to-speech machines are huge, heavy and expensive; a few go for $8,000 to $10,000.
Then a teacher told her about a new application that a researcher had developed for, of all things, the iPhone and iPod Touch. Clark drove to the local Best Buy and picked up a Touch, then downloaded the “app” from iTunes.
Total cost: about $500.
Valedictorian Knows What Future Holds
Thursday was graduation day for Cathy Watkins. She received a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Marymount Manhattan College.
Ms. Watkins did so well in her courses that she was named the class speaker. She set her speech on the lectern and put on her reading glasses. At 41 — a grandmother of three, no less — she was not the standard age for a graduate.
Much of what she said would sound familiar to anyone who ever sat through a commencement ceremony. “One person can make a difference,” she told her fellow students. “Let that difference start with you.” Afterward, she joined her classmates and visiting relatives for lunch.
And then Ms. Watkins returned to her normal life, locked up behind the walls and concertina wire of the maximum-security state prison for women in this Westchester suburb of New York City.
After-School Grows Up: Helping Teens Prepare for the Future
Alicia Wilson-Ahlstrom, Nicole Yohalem and Sam Piha:
From all corners of the country, concerns are growing among parents, educators, policy makers, employers, and students themselves, that a large number of teens are not engaged in their education, not on track to graduate from high school and/or not prepared to successfully transition into post-secondary education or the workforce.
These various stakeholders come at this concern from different perspectives but tend to agree on a definition of success, one that extends well beyond high school graduation. In short, young people need to be ready for college, work and life.1 Getting there requires a range of supports:
New data – same staffing inequities at high-poverty Philadelphia schools
Paul Socolar & Ruth Curran Neild:
Despite efforts to more equitably distribute teachers, School District data obtained by the Notebook this spring show that schools with the highest concentration of poverty still have the most teacher turnover and the lowest percentages of highly qualified and experienced teachers.
Differences are most striking at middle schools and high schools. For instance, at high schools where more than 85 percent of the students live below the poverty line, nearly one in three teachers is not highly qualified and one in five has two or fewer years of experience. In the highest-poverty middle schools, nearly one in three teachers has two years or less of experience.
The same pattern is true for teacher retention and turnover – higher rates of poverty correlate with higher rates of turnover. Again, the differences are most striking in middle schools. Many schools lose 30 to 40 percent of their teachers or more each year.
The School Aid Stand
When states and counties cut their budgets, school districts usually lose funding. And of course, that’s happening across the country right now. I’m sure there’s plenty of screaming at school board and PTA meetings, but some schools and communities are focusing their energy in a different way. They’re raising the money themselves.
Case in point: Coralwood School in Decatur, Georgia. Coralwood is a cool school for several reasons. It’s the only public school in Georgia dedicated to special needs children 3-6 years old. The kids with special needs learn in classrooms together with other children.
Plus, Coralwood has its own foundation with a Director of Development whose full-time job is to raise money for the school from the community. That’s pretty unusual. Most schools or districts rely on parent volunteers to do fundraising. Even the most dedicated parents don’t have time to do the job properly.
Alternative Teacher Certification Works
UW-Madison professors Peter Hewson and Eric Knuth took up a valid cause in their May 15 guest column when they voiced concerns about having under-prepared teachers in Wisconsin classrooms.
But they’re off base in implying that alternative certification programs such as the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, proposed in SB 175, will mean more students won’t have effective teachers.
Research has shown otherwise.
A recent study in “Education Next” showed states with genuine alternative certification programs see higher test scores and more minority teachers. A Brookings Institute study from 2006 showed that teachers who have come through colleges of education are no more effective than teachers who come through an alternative certification program or no certification program at all.
In addition, ABCTE’s rigorous teacher preparation program includes nearly 200 hours of workshops on topics such as pedagogy and classroom assessment. Our exams are difficult, with only 40 percent of candidates passing on the first try. As a result, our teacher retention rate is 85 percent after three years, compared to less than 65 percent for traditional certification routes.
I understand Hewson and Knuth’s motivation for suggesting that an alternative to traditional certification may not produce great teachers. That philosophy is good for their employer, but not — as research has shown — any better for students.
/– David Saba, president, ABCTE, Washington, D.C./
The End of Over-Parenting
Perhaps you know it by its other names: helicoptering, smothering mothering, alpha parenting, child-centered parenting. Or maybe there’s a description you’ve coined on your own but kept to yourself: Overly enmeshed parenting? Get-them-into-Harvard-or-bust parenting? My-own-mother-never-breast-fed-me-so-I-am-never-going-to-let-my-kid-out-of-my-sight parenting?
There are, similarly, any number of theories as to why 21st-century mothers and fathers feel compelled to micromanage their offspring: these are enlightened parents, sacrificing their own needs to give their children every emotional, intellectual and material advantage; or floundering parents, trying their best to navigate a changing world; or narcissistic parents, who see their children as both the center of the universe and an extension of themselves.
But whatever you call it, and however it began, its days may be numbered. It seems as though the newest wave of mothers is saying no to prenatal Beethoven appreciation classes, homework tutors in kindergarten, or moving to a town near their child’s college campus so the darling can more easily have home-cooked meals. (O.K., O.K., many were already saying no, but now they’re doing so without the feeling that a good parent would say yes.) Over coffee and out in cyberspace they are gleefully labeling themselves “bad mommies,” pouring out their doubts, their dissatisfaction and their dysfunction, celebrating their own shortcomings in contrast to their older sisters’ cloying perfection.
A Mathematician’s Lament
One of the most eye-opening pieces of writing I’ve ever read is A Mathematician’s Lament” How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form by Paul Lockhart. I’ve known Paul since our sons met when they were about eight years old, and I was so happy to hear that his essay (called a “gorgeous essay” by the Los Angeles Times) was printed in paperback form. This book belongs on everyone’s bookshelf.
Here’s how it begins:A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he finds himself in a society where music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made–all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.
Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school.
Duncan: States Could Lose Stimulus Dollars if they Fail to Embrace Charters
Education Secretary Arne Duncan says states will hurt their chance to compete for millions of federal stimulus dollars if they fail to embrace innovations like charter schools.
Duncan was responding to a question about Tennessee, where Democratic state lawmakers have blocked an effort to let more kids into charter schools. President Barack Obama wants to expand the number of charter schools.
Schooling Does Not Work For Us
While the debate continues about school systems and which type of school works best, thousands of children and families decide that no school provides what they want.
Special needs, bullying, philosophical views or dissatisfaction with a particular school offered are all typical reasons behind home education.
Parents and children talk about why they have chosen this option – or a combination of home and school – for the education they find most appropriate.
Jamie McDonald’s mother June founded a home education group in Bedford which was the first to obtain any form of state funding.
Six years ago, her group decided to collaborate with a local secondary school to use the resources of school but keep the autonomy of home education.
The only condition of joining the group is that the children sit national exams.
Starting Over Sometimes Difficult For Moms
NPR:
Mothers who fall victim to drug abuse, domestic violence, and other life altering circumstances are often vulnerable and need help starting over. Regular parenting contributor Jolene Ivey is joined by Malika Saada Saar and Imani Walker to discuss how families can find paths to stability and safety. Saar and Walker are co-founders of The Rebecca Project for Human Rights.
In tough times, graduates (and parents) assess the worth of a liberal arts education
As Nicole Marshall posed for photos on the eve of her commencement, someone joked, “Smile – think of all the loans you took out for this!” She says she chose St. Michael’s, a Catholic liberal arts college near Lake Champlain in Colchester, Vt., because it offered the biggest aid package, “but I’m still leaving with quite a bit of loans” – about $20,000.
Her debt is a little lighter than the national average for graduates of private, four-year schools who borrow: nearly $23,800 as of 2007, according to the College Board in New York.
But if there’s any time that students and parents can take such costs in stride, it’s during the heady rush of commencement, when the campus is fragrant with fresh blossoms and abundant hope. For added inspiration to help them focus on the value of learning, these families heard a commencement speech Thursday from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
North Carolina’s End of Grade Exams
Test time begins today for Charlotte-Mecklenburg’s elementary and middle school students. And as with almost everything else, the economy will make it more challenging.
North Carolina’s end-of-grade exams are designed to gauge whether students in grades 3-8 have mastered reading and math. They influence whether students advance to middle or high school.
The tests themselves aren’t getting harder. But with summer school options shrinking because of budget cuts, thousands of students who score below grade level must now keep trying to pass before the school year ends June 10.
In Mecklenburg and across the state, tight budgets are forcing cutbacks in summer school, which is usually an option for kids who need help getting ready for the next grade.
An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria
Thanks much for taking the time from your busy schedule to respond to our letter below. I am delighted to note your serious interest in the topic of how to obtain middle school teachers who are highly qualified to teach mathematics to the MMSD’s students so that all might succeed. We are all in agreement with the District’s laudable goal of having all students complete algebra I/geometry or integrated algebra I/geometry by the end of 10th grade. One essential component necessary for achieving this goal is having teachers who are highly competent to teach 6th- through 8th-grade mathematics to our students so they will be well prepared for high school-level mathematics when they arrive in high school.
The primary point on which we seem to disagree is how best to obtain such highly qualified middle school math teachers. It is my strong belief that the MMSD will never succeed in fully staffing all of our middle schools with excellent math teachers, especially in a timely manner, if the primary mechanism for doing so is to provide additional, voluntary math ed opportunities to the District’s K-8 generalists who are currently teaching mathematics in our middle schools. The District currently has a small number of math-certified middle school teachers. It undoubtedly has some additional K-8 generalists who already are or could readily become terrific middle school math teachers with a couple of hundred hours of additional math ed training. However, I sincerely doubt we could ever train dozens of additional K-8 generalists to the level of content knowledge necessary to be outstanding middle school math teachers so that ALL of our middle school students could be taught mathematics by such teachers.
Part of our disagreement centers around differing views regarding the math content knowledge one needs to be a highly-qualified middle school math teacher. As a scientist married to a mathematician, I don’t believe that taking a couple of math ed courses on how to teach the content of middle school mathematics provides sufficient knowledge of mathematics to be a truly effective teacher of the subject. Our middle school foreign language teachers didn’t simply take a couple of ed courses in how to teach their subject at the middle school level; rather, most of them also MAJORED or, at least, minored in the subject in college. Why aren’t we requiring the same breathe and depth of content knowledge for our middle school mathematics teachers? Do you really believe mastery of the middle school mathematics curriculum and how to teach it is sufficient content knowledge for teachers teaching math? What happens when students ask questions that aren’t answered in the teachers’ manual? What happens when students desire to know how the material they are studying relates to higher-level mathematics and other subjects such as science and engineering?
The MMSD has been waiting a long time already to have math-qualified teachers teaching mathematics in our middle schools. Many countries around the world whose students outperform US students in mathematics only hire teachers who majored in the subject to teach it. Other school districts in the US are taking advantage of the current recession with high unemployment to hire and train people who know and love mathematics, but don’t yet know how to teach it to others. For example, see
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE54L2W120090522
If Madison continues to wait, we will miss out on this opportunity and yet another generation of middle schoolers will be struggling to success in high school.
The MMSD has a long history of taking many, many year to resolve most issues. For example, the issue of students receiving high school credit for non-MMSD courses has been waiting 8 years and counting! It has taken multiple years for the District’s math task force to be formed, meet, write its report, and have its recommendations discussed. For the sake of the District’s students, we need many more math-qualified middle school teachers NOW. Please act ASAP, giving serious consideration to our proposal below. Thanks.
Students surging out of Madison School District
Gayle Worland
Wisconsin State Journal
More than 600 students living in the Madison School District have applied to leave their hometown schools through open enrollment next fall — more than any previous year.
While district officials say it’s likely only about half will actually leave, the district wants to know why so many want to go.
The net number of students who left the Madison district through open enrollment jumped from 156 in 2007-08 to 288 this school year.
One explanation for the jump, district officials say, is that since 2008, the district no longer considers the effect of open enrollment on its racial balance. The district suspended that practice in February 2008, eight months after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling cast doubt on the enforceability of a state law the district cited in denying transfer requests.
Still, Madison superintendent Dan Nerad said the increasing numbers are a concern.
“There’s all kinds of reasons that people make this choice,” he said, “but it’s not a dissimilar pattern than you’ll find in other quality urban districts surrounded by quality suburban districts.”
‘Object’ of my affection
My father’s StB file reveals as much about the secret police as it does about him
Those who don’t know their past are bound to repeat it,” reads the billboard in the entry hall of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. When I first came here, it was for an interview with two institute researchers who co-authored the book Victims of the Occupation about the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion.
After the interview, I asked one of the researchers, Milan Bárta, to find my parents’ old communist secret police (StB) file. I wanted to see if there were any pictures of their wedding Jan. 13, 1979, just days before they emigrated to West Germany. My family has no pictures of that day, but my father had always joked that the StB had taken some.
A month later, I was invited to the institute to take a look at my parents’ documents.
Note: Email Newsletter visitors: This article was incorrectly link to a headline on outbound open enrollment from the Madison School Districts.