All posts by Jim Zellmer

Education data system key to additional federal stimulus money

Kristi Swartz:

Almost like being tagged with a barcode, at some point schoolchildren in Georgia will receive a unique number that tracks their test scores and other data from the moment they enter kindergarten until they’ve graduated.
Such a data system, which would update nightly, school officials say, may sound like a pipe dream. In fact, if the state wants a crack at a huge pot of additional stimulus money from the U.S. Department of Education, that system must one day become a reality.
The money, $4 billion total in what Education Secretary Arne Duncan has dubbed the “Race to the Top” fund, will be distributed next year at Duncan’s discretion.
A strong data system is one of four measures the secretary will use in awarding the grants. The others are creating international academic standards, turning around low-performing schools and teacher quality.
Because of the sums of money involved, and because the grants will only go to a few states, the Race to the Top represents a potentially enormous payoff.
The amount of the grants or how they will be distributed is unknown at this point.

Should High Schools Bar Average Students From Rigorous College-Level Courses and Tests?

Jay Matthews:

Fifteen years ago, when I discovered that many good high schools prevented average students from taking demanding courses, I thought it was a fluke, a mistake that would soon be rectified.
I had spent much time inside schools that did the opposite. They worked hard to persuade students to take challenging classes and tests, such as Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and Cambridge, so students would be ready for the shock of their first semester at college, which most average students attend. The results were good. Why didn’t all schools do that?
I still don’t have a satisfactory answer. It always comes up this time of year because of my annual rankings of public high schools for Newsweek, which is based on schools’ efforts to challenge average kids as measured by participation in AP, IB and Cambridge tests.
Many school superintendents and principals who run schools that restrict access to those college-level courses and tests have disappointing results on the Newsweek list. Some of them object to my methodology. It is clear from my conversations with them that they are smart and compassionate people.

New York Must Start Putting Teacher Training Schools to the Test

Merryl Tisch:

In the coming year New York State will play a leading role in the movement to set one high national standard for all our school children. We will look to raise the bar to require that all students leave high school not only proficient on state tests – but ready for higher education.
But it won’t be enough to simply raise standards and hope for the best. We also need to do a much better job preparing our teachers. After all, study after study confirms that teacher quality is the single most important factor in boosting student performance that is under the control of schools.
In cases when our students aren’t learning, we must start to question, among other things, the preparation of their teachers.
Improving the quality of teaching in New York will mean partnering with the institutions that train our classroom instructors – SUNY 23%, CUNY 11% and independent colleges 66%.

Still behind – Chicago Public Schools

Chicago Tribune Editorial:

So how are we going to know if Chicago’s public schools are succeeding?
Mayor Richard Daley and school officials boasted this week that Chicago kids’ performance on state standardized tests edged higher in all categories and all grades this year. One snapshot: 76.2 percent of 8th graders met or exceeded standards on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test.
But we’ve known for some time now that nobody can put much faith in the ISAT. In 2006, state education officials significantly changed the test. Like magic, the test results took a leap.
What really happened: Illinois responded to pressure from the federal No Child Left Behind law by deciding it was simpler to make the tests easier than make the kids smarter.

Pure Parents has more.

A Vietnamese American is bringing hope to disabled people in his homeland through IT training

John Boudreau:

Some wounds never heal. In 1968, at the age of 15, Do Van Du lost a leg and part of an arm while serving as a combat interpreter for the US Special Forces near the Cambodian border. He moved to the US in 1971 and became a successful software engineer and systems analyst. Then, seven years ago, Du returned to his homeland to help found a college-level programme run by Catholic Relief Services to train disabled young people to be software engineers and tech workers – a first for Vietnam.
“People with disabilities don’t have a voice in Vietnam,” he says. “You are basically thrown away. You are not ‘normal’. You can’t work. You are a leech on society,” he says, before walking into a classroom full of eager students on crutches and in wheelchairs. “In Asia, because of the belief in reincarnation, people think you have done something in a prior life and now you are paying for it.”
Grim evidence of the harsh treatment of Vietnam’s disabled citizens is easy to find among the students in Du’s programme.
Duong Anh My was pelted with rocks because his leg was deformed.

Middleton students prepare for national competition

Pamela Cotant:

Five students from Middleton are spending part of their summer preparing for the North American Canon Envirothon after winning the Wisconsin event earlier this year.
The students will head to Asheville, N.C., to compete in the event Aug. 2-8.
This is the second year in a row the high school has won the Wisconsin Envirothon.
The Envirothon is a North American competition that provides an opportunity for students to show their knowledge of topics such as forestry, wildlife, aquatic resources and soil resources, according to Kirsten Moore, coordinator for the Wisconsin Envirothon and office manager of the Wisconsin Land and Water Conservation Association.
This year the Envirothons are focused on “Biodiversity in a Changing World.”
In addition to taking written tests at the event in August, the students will be sequestered in a room for a day and expected to prepare an oral presentation using notes from review sessions during the week.

Charter Schools Aren’t the Solution for Virginia

Kitty Boitnott:

The Obama administration and The Post are fascinated with charter schools [editorial, July 5], but charters do not make sense for Virginia. Maybe charter schools are needed in the District or Chicago, but in Virginia they are a solution looking for a problem.
The first question to consider is whether charter schools actually work. A recent study by the Rand Corp. suggests that they produce about the same results as traditional public schools.
Charter schools haven’t flourished in Virginia because our school boards already have the autonomy to create specialty schools. In the Richmond area alone we have schools that specialize in the arts; engineering; communication; languages; the humanities; technology; international studies; leadership and government; global economics; the military; science and mathematics; and technology. We have governor’s schools, magnet schools and centers for the gifted, and the list goes on and on. Virginia school boards, unlike those in states where charters have proliferated, don’t need charter legislation to allow flexibility and innovation. Our school boards have great autonomy and flexibility. They are free to innovate, and they do.

Madison police chief: Time to gang up on gangs

Steven Verburg:

Madison police chief Noble Wray wants to send more officers after gang members, and he plans to talk to the mayor next week about an initiative to make that possible.
A recent assessment by the police department’s two-officer Gang Unit indicated more than 900 confirmed Madison gang members and another 500 people considered associates of gang members.
“It is clear the number of young people connected to gangs is on the rise, and we need to respond to that growth,” Wray said in a press release issued Friday.
Many gang members and their associates commit burglaries, robberies, assaults, shootings, and they deal drugs, he said. Wray wants to form a new “Gang/Crime Prevention Unit.”
The unit would work closely with neighborhood officers, community policing teams, detectives and others by tapping the expertise of staffers who analyze crime data.

Related: Gangs & School Violence Forum.

Maths dunces who don’t make the cut: Haberdashers have to reject nine out of ten applicants because they can’t add up

Andrew Levy:

When the Bamberger family opened a haberdashery 65 years ago, they insisted their staff use mental arithmetic to price up customers’ purchases.
Despite the arrival of calculators, that attitude has remained unchanged over the intervening years.
But now the family finds itself facing an unexpected maths problem – most youngsters it would like to employ are incapable of working out sums in their heads.

Columbus High School student dies after playing ‘the choking game’

Devin Rose:


At 17, Macklin “Mack” Jensen was getting ready to compete at a national wrestling tournament in Fargo, N.D.
Jensen also played rugby, like his father, Dan, had played years ago, and one of his teams won a national championship June 18 in Colorado.
“He loved life,” said Dan Jensen. “Anybody that knew him could see that he had lots of life.”
Mack died Friday while participating in “the choking game,” also called “space monkey” or “gasp.”
The game is typically played by adolescents who strangle themselves or have others push on their chests in order to feel light-headed for a few seconds, according to GASP, a campaign organized by parents of victims to educate about the dangers of the game.

Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood: Paths Toward Excellence and Equity

Christopher T. Cross, Taniesha A. Woods, and Heidi Schweingruber, Editors; Committee on Early Childhood Mathematics; National Research Council:

arly childhood mathematics is vitally important for young children’s present and future educational success. Research has demonstrated that virtually all young children have the capability to learn and become competent in mathematics. Furthermore, young children enjoy their early informal experiences with mathematics. Unfortunately, many children’s potential in mathematics is not fully realized, especially those children who are economically disadvantaged. This is due, in part, to a lack of opportunities to learn mathematics in early childhood settings or through everyday experiences in the home and in their communities. Improvements in early childhood mathematics education can provide young children with the foundation for school success.


Relying on a comprehensive review of the research, Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood lays out the critical areas that should be the focus of young children’s early mathematics education, explores the extent to which they are currently being incorporated in early childhood settings, and identifies the changes needed to improve the quality of mathematics experiences for young children. This book serves as a call to action to improve the state of early childhood mathematics. It will be especially useful for policy makers and practitioners-those who work directly with children and their families in shaping the policies that affect the education of young children.

Online Discussion: Teachers Unions and Professional Work

Education Sector, via a kind reader’s email:

Welcome to Education Sector’s online discussion of teachers’ work and teachers unions. Last year, we released results from a survey of public school teachers, Waiting to Be Won Over: Teachers Speak on the Profession, Unions, and Reform, which revealed a mix of opinions about the role of unions in school reform. Teachers believe unions are essential, the survey found, particularly for safeguarding jobs. But the survey also found teachers to be surprisingly open to change, and to the idea that unions should drive rather than resist reform. So what does this mean for the future of teachers unions? To delve into this further, we have assembled a group of current and recent teachers from different kinds of schools, different parts of the country, and with different views on this question.
Briefly, they are, Laura Bornfreund, a former Florida teacher who now works for Common Core, an organization focused on the liberal arts in education; Julie Eisenband, a teacher and adviser at SAGE Academy Charter School in Brooklyn Park, Minn.; Arthur Goldstein, who teaches English as a Second Language at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, N.Y.; Caitlin Hollister, a third-grade teacher from Boston Public Schools; and Bruce William Smith from Green Dot Public Schools in Los Angeles. Education policy expert Paul T. Hill from the Center on Reinventing Public Education is also joining us to provided national context and to discuss research he has done on teachers unions and charter schools. (Panelist biographies here.)

Driver’s education and more for 3 teens

Kirk Dooley:

Ralph and Robin Burns have three teenage boys, each one armed with a driver’s license.
Nick, Zach and Lucas Burns are good drivers, but like most other relatively inexperienced motorists, they have yet to hit a slick patch of ice on the road or to hydroplane on rain-soaked pavement. When any driver faces such road hazards for the first time, the outcome is usually determined more by luck than skill.
If a young driver hits a patch of ice for the first time and loses control of the car, it could be the last mistake he or she ever makes.
Ralph took a special driving class sponsored by Lexus a few years ago at Texas Motor Speedway and remembered being impressed with the program as it simulated emergency conditions in a controlled environment. When a friend recently told him that he had sent his daughter to a similar program geared for teen drivers, Ralph’s ears perked up.

DPS gives control of lagging schools to private sector

Marisa Schultz:

Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb announced Friday that he has hired four educational management companies to turn around 17 of the worst-performing high schools in the district, a move that marks what leaders say is the largest public school district overhaul of its kind in the nation.
“We have not been making the grade,” Bobb said at a press conference at Central High School.
School board members expressed shock and dismay Friday — just one day after they rolled out their own academic plan that they’ve asked Bobb to fund. Some accused Bobb of overstepping his bounds as a financial manager by launching an academic plan that will affect 20,000 students in three-quarters of the district’s high schools without the board’s knowledge.
The board was charged with working on the academics, while Gov. Jennifer Granholm brought in Bobb to work on the finances for a year.
“We have asked Robert Bobb to do a very difficult job and he needs the authority to do it right,” said Granholm’s spokeswoman Liz Boyd, noting Bobb is not overstepping his role. “He doesn’t need to be micromanaged.”
The district signed multiyear contracts with four out-of-state companies that will be funded through $20 million in federal stimulus dollars. The aim is to improve student achievement, discipline, respect, safety and graduation rates, district officials said.

Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship

Christina Hoff Sommers:

“Harder to kill than a vampire.” That is what the sociologist Joel Best calls a bad statistic. But, as I have discovered over the years, among false statistics the hardest of all to slay are those promoted by feminist professors. Consider what happened recently when I sent an e-mail message to the Berkeley law professor Nancy K.D. Lemon pointing out that the highly praised textbook that she edited, Domestic Violence Law (second edition, Thomson/West, 2005), contained errors.
Her reply began:
“I appreciate and share your concern for veracity in all of our scholarship. However, I would expect a colleague who is genuinely concerned about such matters to contact me directly and give me a chance to respond before launching a public attack on me and my work, and then contacting me after the fact.”

Rubik Cube inventor devises new puzzle to drive us all to distraction

Chris Smyth:

His cube was one of the most popular and infuriating toys of all time. Now Professor Ernö Rubik is hoping that the sphere will bring sleepless nights to the world’s obsessive puzzlers.
The creator of Rubik’s Cube is back with his first new puzzle for almost 20 years and early indications are that it is going to be every bit as irritating as the original.
Rubik’s 360, which goes on sale next week, features six small balls inside three interlocking spheres. The task is to lock each ball into colour-coded capsules on the outermost sphere. Professor Rubik said of his cube that it was “easy to understand the task, but hard to work out the solution”. It is just as aggravating to crack the 360.
In The Times newsroom yesterday, the angry rattles of plastic pellets signified dozens of journalists failing to coax so much as one ball from the centre of the sphere.

The Periodic Table of Videos

The University of Nottingham:

ables charting the chemical elements have been around since the 19th century – but this modern version has a short video about each one.
We’ve done all 118 – but our job’s not finished. Now we’re updating all the videos with new stories, better samples and bigger experiments.
Plus we’re making films about other areas of chemistry, latest news and occasional adventures away from the lab.

New student loan repayment plan is based on borrower’s income

Kathy Kristof:

The federal program is complex and won’t apply to every borrower, but it could dramatically reduce monthly payments for some.
The 32-year-old father of two just graduated from architecture school with $125,000 in debt. He and his wife, an audiologist, expect to make good money someday — more than enough to pay the loans. But between the rotten economy and a new baby, the Savannah, Ga., couple have only been able to find part-time work. They’re struggling to make ends meet, so the $1,200 a month that Jeff’s lenders want on his loans doesn’t seem feasible.
Fortunately for the Zollingers, a new federal student loan repayment plan goes into effect this month that could dramatically reduce payments for highly indebted borrowers. Called “income-based repayment,” the plan limits the monthly payments to a percentage of the borrower’s monthly income.

Task force on Minn. high schools taking shape

AP:

A task force asked to suggest ways to design an accountability system for Minnesota high schools is seeking suggestions itself.
The panel created this spring by the Legislature is soliciting advice through July 15 on the key issues it should tackle.
From there, the task force plans to produce a report on high school assessments and accountability. Preliminary recommendations could be out this fall, and the goal is to deliver a final report to the state education commissioner and lawmakers by year’s end.

School committee model questioned

Jonathan Braden:

The service of school board members on district committees generally does not work well, a state education consultant told school officials yesterday during the Columbia Board of Education‘s retreat.
But board members and administrators agreed that it has worked well for Columbia Public Schools.
“This district has moved this way, and it’s had some successes,” Superintendent Chris Belcher said.
David Lineberry is the associate executive director for education and training for the Missouri School Boards’ Association. He presented to the school board yesterday afternoon during its three-hour retreat.
Lineberry and officials talked about the board’s overall role, the school district’s upcoming Comprehensive School Improvement Plan, or CSIP [PDF], and the role of board members on committees.

Admissions 101: Are Low Grades in AP/IB Classes Better than High Grades in Regular Classes?

Jay Matthews:

A few weeks ago, Jay Mathews asked readers a tough question in his Admissions 101 forum – which is better: an A or B in a regular course or a C in a more challenging course like an AP or IB class? Jay sided with AP, saying that all students interested in tier 1 or tier 2 schools should take at least 2 AP or IB courses. Even if that means a C on a high school transcript, Jay argued, colleges will appreciate a student who is willing to take on a challenge. Reader reactions have been pouring in ever since:

eloquensa: “My strategy suggestion is a little different from yours – I don’t know about the college front in the C-in-AP/IB-or-A-in-regular argument, but if the student is a little more strategic in course and teacher selection it’s a lot easier to avoid that dreaded C.

Middle Class Children in KIPP

Catharine Bellinger, a Princeton sophomore who has plans to start a campus journal on education policy.
I suggested she practice with a topic provocative enough to get her in trouble, a good place for all writers to be. My question to her, inspired by her experiences in the D.C. schools, is: “Should middle class parents send their kids to KIPP?”
I have written a great deal about that successful network of public charter schools, known for raising the achievement of low-income students in our poorest urban and rural neighborhoods. I am hearing from some middle-class parents who would like some of that teaching for their own children. Here is Bellinger’s take on whether that will work. Her email address is cbelling@princeton.edu. Let her, and me, know what you think.
By Catharine Bellinger”>:

New Index Will Score Graduate Students’ Personality Traits

Daniel de Vise:

The Educational Testing Service wanted to help graduate school applicants prove they are more than a set of test scores. So it developed a tool to rate students across a broad sweep of traits — creativity, teamwork, integrity — that admission tests don’t measure.
The Personal Potential Index, unveiled this week, looks suspiciously like another set of scores. An applicant’s personality is distilled into six traits, and the applicant is rated on each of them by various professors and former supervisors on a scale of 1 to 5.
Officials with the nonprofit organization, based in Princeton, N.J., say the index marks the first large-scale attempt to codify the elusive, subjective attributes that make up a successful grad student. The goal is to raise the share of students who finish graduate school. Non-cognitive, or “soft,” skills are considered crucial to success in higher education.

Monona School Board Abolishes Standing Committees

Peter Sobol:

But after some discussion the board voted to abolish the standing committees (Curriculum, Policy and Business Services) and instead move to two meetings of the entire board each month. Concerns were mostly expressed about the inefficient use of staff time under the current system.
My feeling is that we risk distancing ourselves from the community and will have diminished working relationships with the administrators. My observation has been that the board’s best work gets done at the committee level as items well vetted in committee tend to be broadly supported by the board. I am worried about the efficiency of trying to work out the details on issues with the larger group, this issue already came up tonight when it was suggested we would need a special policy committee to work through several pending policy issues.

Madison School District: Private/Parochial, Open Enrollment Leave, Open Enrollment Enter, Home Based Parent Surveys

Kurt Kiefer, MMSD Chief Information Officer [1.3MB PDF]:

This memo is a summary of the results from the surveys completed during the past school year with various parent groups whose children reside within the MMSD attendance area but receive certain alternative education options. Also included are results of the survey conducted with non-residents who attend MMSD schools via the Open Enrollment program (Le., Open Enrollment Enter).



Background
Groups were surveys representing households whose students were enrolled in one of four different educational settings: MMSD resident students attending private/parochial schools, MMSD resident students attending other public schools via the Open Enrollment program, non-resident students attending MMSD schools via the Open Enrollment program, and MMSD resident students provided home based instruction.



The surveys were conducted between December 2008 and February 2009. The surveys were mailed to households or they could complete the survey online. Two mailings were conducted – the initial mailing to all households and a second to non-respondents as a reminder request. Total group sizes and responses are provided below.

This document will be discussed at Monday evening’s Madison School Board meeting.
UPDATE:

Everybody Hates The Teachers’ Unions Now

Mickey Kaus:

When Father Hesburgh throws down … How can we know when the tide of respectable opinion has decisively turned against the teachers’ unions? When a panel that includes Father Hesburgh, Birch Bayh. Bill Bradley, Eleanor Holmes Norton and Roger Wilkins goes medieval on them, saying their resistance to reforms designed to hold schools accountable has hurt “disadvantaged students” and led to “calcified systems in which talented people are deterred from applying or staying as teachers …”
Here are two undiplomatic grafs from the report’s final page:

The unions have battled against the principle that schools and education agencies should be held accountable for the academic progress of their students. They have sought to water down the standards adopted by states to reflect what students should know and be able to do. They have attacked assessments designed to measure the progress of schools, seeking to localize decisions about test content so that the performance of students in one school or community cannot be compared with others. They have resisted innovative ways-such as growth models-to assess student performance.
In their attack on education reform, the national unions have often been unconstrained by considerations of propriety and fairness. They have sought to inject weakening amendments in appropriations bills, hoping that they would prevail if no hearings were held and the public was unaware of their efforts. They have used the courts to launch an attack on education reform, employing arguments that could imperil many federal assistance programs going back to the New Deal. They have failed to inform their own members of the content of federal reform laws.

Locally, it will be interesting to see what substantive changes, if any, come out of the current Madison School District / Madison Teachers, Inc. bargaining.

Hawaii Board of Education Approves 12.6% Budget Reduction ($227M on $1.8Billion Annual Spending)

Loren Moreno:

Faced with the most drastic budget cuts ever to the state’s public education system, the Board of Education approved a plan yesterday that includes about $117 million in yet-to-be negotiated labor savings — from potential pay cuts to furloughs of teachers and administrators.



The plan, which trims a total of $227 million from the $1.8 billion school system budget, includes a 5 percent across-the-board cut to school-level programs, a reduction of part-time workers and slashing of school-level funding.



Several board members said the plan is certain to have repercussions on teaching and learning.



“There is nobody in this room who wants to do what we’re about to do. But the fiscal reality is such that we have to do this,” said board member John Penebacker.

An Alternative Path to Teaching

Kevin Brown:

The recent job market reminds me of when I finished my doctorate in the mid-1990s. Though the market was not as saturated then, it definitely was not conducive to finding a job. I applied to more than 100 colleges and universities, garnering only a phone interview at one college, where I happened to know two people on the search committee. I made it to a final cut of 10, but no further.
However, I knew that I wanted to teach, so I adjusted my plans and applied for positions at independent high schools (also known as “private schools,” but they do not care for that designation). For those struggling in this job market, I would suggest that this path has numerous benefits and few drawbacks, especially for someone beginning a career.
First, independent schools have talented, often highly motivated students. At the first school I worked at, I taught sophomores and juniors, not in Advanced Placement classes or even Honors classes. The sophomores read The Scarlet Letter, among other works, and the curriculum for the juniors included Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, Hamlet, Macbeth, Jane Eyre, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Heart of Darkness, and the British Romantic poets. Teachers assigned works such as Moby-Dick to their classes, and none of us were disappointed in the students’ responses to the level of difficulty. In fact, we had to move through Heart of Darkness quickly, as the end of the semester was approaching, and neither of my junior classes complained about the pace or load for what is a difficult read for the college sophomores I now teach in a non-majors course at a four-year, liberal arts university.

Related: via Janet Mertz.

Wisconsin requires teaching of organized labor in public schools

AP:

A state bill up for a hearing today would require Wisconsin public schools to teach the history of organized labor and the collective bargaining process in the U.S.
Labor unions support the requirement. But groups representing school boards and administrators have registered against it saying they don’t want the curriculum micromanaged

North Carolina’s House:

ouse members have endorsed teaching North Carolina public school students about how thousands of people were sterilized through a state program in the mid-20th century.
The House Education Committee approved legislation Tuesday that would order the eugenics program be included in the public school curriculum. The bill also direct students and professors at University of North Carolina campuses to interview program victims so future generations know what happened.

Teachers union attacks Schwarzenegger’s proposed suspension of Proposition 98

Michael Rothfeld:

The California Teachers Assn. unveiled a television ad Thursday attacking Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for his proposal to suspend Proposition 98, the law that sets funding guarantees for schools.
Schwarzenegger last week proposed reducing the guarantee by $3 billion for the coming fiscal year to help address the state’s $26.3-billion deficit.
The well-funded union, which has turned public opinion against the governor in the past, focuses its commercial on Schwarzenegger’s failure in 2005 to repay money he had promised to return after suspending the guarantee the year before. “He said he was sorry,” the ad says. “He said never again. . . . And now Schwarzenegger says he’ll break the minimum guarantee to our schools again.”
Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the governor would not be dissuaded.

Drivers of Choice: Parents, Transportation, and School Choice

Paul Teske, Jody Fitzpatrick, Tracey O’Brien, via a kind reader’s email:

Transportation is clearly a consideration to be factored into any discussion of school choice. Yet we know very little about how much it matters in family’s decisions about their children’s school, and almost nothing about how much of a barrier it is to school choice, especially for low-income families. How far does the average family want their child to travel to school? Would they be as comfortable letting their younger children travel as far as they might a middle or high school student? What transportation options are available to low-income families? These are the kinds of questions we tried to address in this study, in order to obtain meaningful data to help shape school transportation policy.


This project first surveyed the landscape of transportation and school choices. It examined the density of large districts in the U.S. The project team contacted large school districts to find out their policies on transportation and choice, then examined district budgets to see how much they actually spend on transportation. Most importantly, the project surveyed families in two cities—Denver and Washington, D.C.—to find out their travel patterns and school choice options. The study breaks down that data, collected from households earning less than $75,000 in annual income, to determine how much transportation is a barrier to choice.


This report addresses the following questions:

More Rigorous Requirements for Teacher Education Will Encourage Programs To Emphasize Clinical Training, Focus on Critical Needs of P-12 Schools

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, via a kind reader’s email:

As part of the first major revision of teacher education requirements in 10 years, i nstitutions seeking the NCATE seal of approval must either demonstrate that they are on track to reach an “excellent” level of performance, rather than remain at an “acceptable level,” or make transformative changes in key areas, such as:

  • strengthening the clinical focus of their programs to better prepare educators to meet the needs of today’s P-12 students and foster increases in student learning
  • demonstrating the impact of their programs and graduates on P-12 student learning
  • increasing knowledge about what works in teacher education to improve P-12 student learning, using a research and development strategy to build better knowledge and help institutions use that knowledge to improve programs, and
  • addressing critical needs of schools, such as recruiting talented teachers and bolstering teacher retention.

The new accreditation strategy, approved by the NCATE Executive Board last month, creates two alternative pathways to accreditation. The Continuous Improvement track raises the target level of performance beyond the “acceptable” level. The second pathway, the Transformation Initiative track, encourages institutions to build the base of evidence in the field about what works in teacher preparation and help the P-12 schools they serve address major challenges, from raising student achievement to retaining teachers.

School Choice and Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor

Andy Smarick:

Will Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s life experience, including attending a private Catholic school, lead to an uncomfortable conclusion–that government-supported school choice is just?
The Obama administration has made Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s life story a central part of her introduction to the nation as a Supreme Court nominee. The administration has focused attention on her inspiring, only-in-America path from public housing through elite institutions of higher education to the top of the legal profession.
……
Consequently, we might expect to see these experiences clearly reflected in their positions on three contemporary issues.
First, President Obama ought to be a vigorous defender of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which provides vouchers to low-income students in the nation’s capital so they can attend private schools.
Second, the president should be expected to act forcefully to save America’s urban Catholic and other faith-based schools, which are disappearing at a rapid pace, robbing disadvantaged families of desperately needed private education options.
Third, we should expect Judge Sotomayor to decide in favor of school choice programs while on the bench.
In practice, however, there appears to be a limit to the influence of personal experience. President Obama failed to stand up for the D.C. voucher program, and Democratic congressional leaders went after it with a vengeance. If his 2010 budget is adopted, no new students will be allowed into the program, and it will slowly wither away. Similarly, while his Department of Education has $100 billion in stimulus funding for America’s schools, neither he nor Education Secretary Arne Duncan has uttered a word about preserving faith-based urban schools.

Duncan’s Donut: The Ed. Sec.’s Impact on Chicago Student Achievement Was Near Zero

Andrew Coulson:

For seven months, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the media have bombarded us with tales of how Duncan dramatically boosted student achievement as leader of Chicago Public Schools. Based on two new independent analyses, Duncan’s real impact appears to have been near zero.
The usual evidence presented for Duncan’s success is the rise in the pass rate of elementary and middle school students on Illinois’ own ISAT test. But state tests like the ISAT are notoriously unreliable (they tend to be corrupted by teaching to the test and subject to periodic “realignments” in which the passing grade is lowered or the test content is eased). In January, the Schools Matter blog argued that exactly such a realignment had occurred in 2006.
So to get a reliable measure of Duncan’s impact, I pulled up the 4th and 8th grade math and reading scores for Chicago on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — a test that is much less susceptible to massaging by states and districts. I then compared the score changes in Chicago to those for all students in Large Central Cities around the nation, and tested if the small differences between them were statistically significant. Not one of them is even remotely significant at even the loosest accepted measure of significance (the p < 0.1 level). Chicago students did no better than those in similar districts around the nation between 2002/2003 and 2007, a period covering virtually all of Duncan's tenure in Chicago.

University students not shy about asking profs to reconsider grades

Todd Finkelmeyer:

Compiling final grades for students in Sharon Thoma’s Zoology 101 course is fairly simple.
Students take three multiple-choice exams, plus a final, during the semester. The grading scale is spelled out at the start of the year in the syllabus, which also notes there is no way to earn extra credit.
“So it’s solely objective and it’s pretty clear where you fall,” says Thoma, a University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty associate who co-teaches the huge lecture with two professors.
And yet, over the past two years Thoma has observed a surprising uptick in the number of students who e-mail her at the end of the semester, asking if she’d reconsider the grade she awarded them “because they worked so hard.”
Thoma estimates she received 20 such e-mails this spring out of some 850 students. “They’ll typically say, ‘I know you said there won’t be any grade adjustments, but I worked really hard and I don’t feel that the grade reflects the effort I put into the class,'” says Thoma, who stresses most students work hard in class and understand the ground rules. “And so I have a new standard reply: ‘I can’t quantitate your effort.'”

Not Making the Grade – English Curriculum on Hong Kong

The Standard:

As an international city, English has always been at the center of discussions regarding Hong Kong’s education system. Regretfully, the standard of English among students has fallen to such a level that it is worthy of attention.
Although I do not work in the field of education, I realize there may be many reasons for falling standards.
However, to my astonishment I heard recently of Hong Kong Institute of Education graduates majoring in English who merely got a D grade in English in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination and Hong Kong Advanced Level yet got degrees to teach senior school students.

Learning the ropes: Program helps teens transition to high school

Gayle Worland:

On Monday, it was all about maneuvering through a seemingly endless maze of high school hallways. By Tuesday, it was about soaring through the air on a zip line.
It was day two of LIFE, or Learning is for Everyone, a pilot program launched this summer for graduates of Whitehorse and Sennett middle schools. In the fall, the teens will enter La Follette High School as ninth-graders — both statistically and anecdotally one of the toughest periods of a student’s school career.
“Ninth grade can be a really rocky, challenging transition for many students,” said Julie Koenke, a grant communications coordinator for the Madison School District who helped write the curriculum for LIFE. “They’re not always sure of the change in expectations for them around academics. There’s a different school culture, and just the largeness of what a high school can be.”
LIFE — which offers students everything from scavenger hunts at La Follette to learn their way around the school to an athletic ropes course, classes on time management and visits to MATC and UW-Madison — is part of a trend: High schools are reaching out to freshmen to keep them in school even before the school year begins.

Newark Starts a Summer School Aimed at Advanced Placement

Winnie Hu:

Advanced Placement classes do not begin at Science Park High School until September, but Cristiana De Oliveira will spend many a summer day sitting behind a desk in A.P. calculus for five hours rather than lounging by a swimming pool.
Cristiana is one of 335 students signed up for Newark’s new A.P. Summer Institute, in which A.P. courses in calculus, biology, United States history and English language and literature each get an intensive two-week introduction, paid for with $300,000 in federal grants.
Intended to help increase enrollment in the special courses as well as student performance, the new program, which starts on Monday, is expected to reach more than half the students taking Advanced Placement classes this fall in the 40,000-student Newark school district.
“We’re in a stressful environment in school, and if we can start now, it will be a lot easier,” said Cristiana, 17, a senior who will be getting up at 6:30 a.m. and riding two public buses to reach the high school for the summer program.

We Are All Writers Now

Anne Trubek:

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook: these outlets are supposedly cheapening language and tarnishing our time. But the fact is we are all reading and writing much more than we used to, writes Anne Trubek …
The chattering classes have become silent, tapping their views on increasingly smaller devices. And tapping they are: the screeds are everywhere, decrying the decline of smart writing, intelligent thought and proper grammar. Critics bemoan blogging as the province of the amateurism. Journalists rue the loose ethics and shoddy fact-checking of citizen journalists. Many save their most profound scorn for the newest forms of social media. Facebook and Twitter are heaped with derision for being insipid, time-sucking, sad testaments to our literary degradation. This view is often summed up with a disdainful question: “Do we really care about what you ate for lunch?”
Forget that most of the pundits lambasting Facebook and Twitter are familiar with these devices because they use them regularly. Forget that no one is being manacled to computers and forced to read stupid prose (instead of, say, reading Proust in bed). What many professional writers are overlooking in these laments is that the rise of amateur writers means more people are writing and reading. We are commenting on blog posts, forwarding links and composing status updates. We are seeking out communities based on written words.

Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2006 (PIRLS): pedagogical correlates of fourth-grade students in Hong Kong

Wai Ming Cheung, Shek Kam Tse, Joseph W.I. Lam and Elizabeth Ka Yee Loh:

Reading literacy of fourth-grade students in Hong Kong showed a remarkable improvement from 2001 to 2006 as shown by international PIRLS studies. This study identified various aspects of the teacher factor contributing to the significant improvement among students. A total of 4,712 students and 144 teachers from 144 schools were randomly selected using probability proportional-to-size technique to receive the Reading Assessment Test and complete the Teacher’s Questionnaire, respectively. A number of items pertaining to teachers’ instructional strategies and activities, opportunities for students to read various types of materials, practices on assessment, and professional preparation and perception, were found to be significantly correlated with the outcome of students’ reading literacy. Stepwise regression procedure revealed four significant predictors for students’ overall reading achievement. The most powerful predictor was the use of materials from other subjects as reading resources. Suggestions to improve quality of teaching of reading and further studies are made.

Daniel Willingham has more.

Houston Community College Has Global Appeal

Larry Abramson:

America’s community colleges suffer from an image problem at home, but some are experiencing a boom — especially when it comes to foreign student enrollments.
Take Houston Community College. Thanks in part to an aggressive outreach campaign, the school has the highest percentage of international students of any community college in the U.S.
Betting On An American Education
Even if there were ivy on the walls of Houston Community College, it would wither in the Texas heat. The drab buildings of the school’s Gulfton neighborhood campus are typical community college architecture, but that doesn’t scare anyone away.
Sejal Desai came here after the college’s fame spread — via word of mouth — to the small city she comes from in India.

The Top 10 High School Athletic Programs in the United States

Kevin Armstrong:

In his 11 years as athletic director at the Honolulu’s Punahou School Tom Holden never decorated his school’s gym walls or outfield fences with championship banners. State titles, of which there have been 61 over the last four years, hold a place in Buff ‘n Blue lore, but that’s in the trophy case. “We just congratulate among ourselves,” said Holden, who retired last Thursday. “Nothing public.”
Punahou’s 19 state titles during the 2008-09 school year were a nice retirement gift for Holden. Now he can add being named Sports Illustrated’s top high school program for the second consecutive year. To come up with our top 10, as well as our top programs in each state, we looked for state championships and Division-I scholarship athletes and success on and off the field. Punahou was at the head of the class.
On the mainland, Jesuit High (Portland, Ore.), won seven state titles to rank just behind Punahou. Throughout the country and the District of Columbia, SI.com found schools that exemplified excellence in athletics during all seasons. Here is our top 10:

Dear Plagiarist

G. Thomas Couser:

When you got your paper back with a grade of F for plagiarism, you reacted in predictable fashion — with indignant denial of any wrongdoing. You claimed “you cited everything” and denied that you had committed intentional plagiarism, or ever would.
This response is all too familiar to an experienced professor. Only once in my three decades of teaching has a student I caught plagiarizing owned up to it right away. And in that case, I believe (perhaps cynically) that she (a graduate student) thought a forthright confession might lead me to lighten the penalty. It didn’t; I failed her for the course and wrote her up. Indeed, I found out later that she had been caught plagiarizing by a colleague the previous term and let off lightly. I suspect that, because too many professors (many of them adjuncts fearful of student backlash) overlook or are unwilling to pursue plagiarism — the process can be labor intensive, and it is always unpleasant — cheating has become a way of life for many students, and they are genuinely surprised at being held responsible for it. So I don’t doubt that your shock is real.

How I Spent My Summer: Hacking Into iPhones With Friends

Yukari Iwatani Kane:

Like many teenagers, Ari Weinstein spends his summers riding his bike and swimming. This year, the 15-year-old had another item on his to-do list: Foil Apple Inc.’s brightest engineers and annoy chief executive Steve Jobs.
Ari is part of a loose-knit group of hackers that has made it a mission to “jailbreak” Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch. The term refers to installing unapproved software that lets people download a range of programs, including those not sanctioned by Apple.
Since Apple began selling its latest iPhone 3GS on June 19, Ari and six online cohorts spent hours a day probing the new product for security holes. This weekend, one of the member of the group, dubbed the Chronic Dev Team, released the jailbreaking software they’ve been working on. Ari says the program is a test version with some bugs, but that users have successfully downloaded it. A quarter-million people have visited the site, he says.
“Coding and testing things that may or may not work, and figuring things out, is a really rewarding experience,” says Ari, a Philadelphia resident who began hacking when he was 11.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Tax Bill Appeals Take Rising Toll on Governments

Jack Healy:

Homeowners across the country are challenging their property tax bills in droves as the value of their homes drop, threatening local governments with another big drain on their budgets.
The requests are coming in record numbers, from owners of $10 million estates and one-bedroom bungalows, from residents of the high-tax enclaves surrounding New York City, and from taxpayers in the Rust Belt and states like Arizona, Florida and California, where whole towns have been devastated by the housing bust.
“It’s worthy of a Dickens story,” said Gus Kramer, the assessor in Contra Costa County, Calif., outside San Francisco. “These people are desperate. They know their home’s gone down in value. They’ve watched their neighborhoods being boarded up. They literally stand in there and say: ‘When can I have my refund check? I need to feed my family. I need to pay my electric bill.’ “

Lessons for Failing Schools

NY Times Editorial:

Mr. Duncan has said from the start that he wants the states to transform about 5,000 of the lowest-performing schools, not in a piecemeal fashion but with bold policies that have an impact right away. The argument in favor of a tightly focused effort aimed at these schools is compelling. We now know, for example, that about 12 percent of the nation’s high schools account for half the country’s dropouts generally — and almost three-quarters of minority dropouts. A plan that fixed these schools, raising high school graduation and college-going rates, would pay enormous dividends for the country as a whole.
Mr. Duncan can use his burgeoning discretionary budget to reward states that take the initiative in this area. But Congress could push the reform effort further and faster by granting the education department’s request for two changes in federal education law. The first would be to come up with new federal school improvement money and require the states to focus 40 percent of it on the lowest-performing middle and high schools. The second change would allow the secretary to directly finance charter-school operators that have already produced high-quality schools.

6 Great Tools for LSAT, SAT and GMAT Test Prep

Dana Oshiro:

Thousands of intelligent students seize up during standardized test season. They’re the ones in the back of the gymnasium, frantically writing to the last minute and choking under the pressure of an egg timer. I am this student.
Perhaps test anxiety doesn’t come from the actual questions sitting in front of us, but rather the fact that these standardized test scores can be life altering. These scores affect our admittance to the right schools, our ability to gain scholarships and our ability to qualify for certain types of aid. The weight of these tests had many of us prematurely self-destructing, and honestly, it doesn’t get any easier as we get older.
Want to do an MBA or law degree? Your qualifying test scores could mean the difference between a great life transition and a mediocre one. Below is a list of test prep resources. If you’re spending your summer prepping, these might just help you gain the confidence you need to come out on top.

Q & A With US Education Secretary Arne Duncan

Chicago Tribune:

ucation Secretary Arne Duncan recently answered questions about his goals and relationship with the business community. An edited transcript:
QWhy include business in the policy debate about public education?
AWe all need to work together on this stuff, business leaders and educators. Everyone’s mutual interests are absolutely aligned.
QBusiness leaders want reform but don’t want to pay for it, right?
ANo; there’s been unbelievable generosity, not just in resources but in ideas. We’ve had a great relationship with the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable. I’ve met with a number of CEOs.

No Ordinary Man, This Principal Has Influenced a Legion of Educators

Jay Matthews:

When I first met him a dozen years ago, Mike Durso struck me as an okay principal. He didn’t say much about himself, but his school, Springbrook High in Silver Spring, was well-run. The students liked him. He had been around a long time, another good sign.
It took some time to realize how badly he had deceived me. His adopted persona, good ol’ boy administrator, hid something more important. I began looking for clues to how amazing Durso was, what an impact he was having on the region with his phenomenal eye for talent, while he pretended to be like everybody else, just getting through the day.

Bout with cancer gave Evers the drive to become Wisconsin schools chief

Alan Borsuk:

When the surgery was over, the worst of the aftermath survived, and the tumor gone, Tony Evers met with his oncologist, Linn Khuu.
“You know, you’ve been given a second chance,” she told him. “Go do something great.”
Evers felt a bit insulted at first. He thought he had worked hard and done good things for years. For one thing, he had been deputy state superintendent of public instruction for almost seven years at that point.
Then he decided she was right.
Now, Evers said, he would tell people who went through what he went through, “If you do get a second chance, make the most of it.”
At 11 a.m. Monday, Evers, 57, will show what he is doing to make the most of it. He will be sworn in as Wisconsin’s 26th superintendent of public instruction – and almost surely the first without an esophagus.
Within months of being told he had a form of cancer that generally has low survival rates, Evers decided to undertake a race for statewide office.
“Once you get over a hurdle, it does make you a bit more fearless,” he said in an interview last week.

Harvard President: School has tough choices in decline

Melissa Trujillo:

Drew Gilpin Faust started as Harvard’s president when the university’s prosperity seemed limitless. With its ballooning wealth, Harvard planned almost frenzied growth, from a building boom into Boston to vast increases in student financial aid.
Billions of lost endowment dollars later, though, Faust faces a much different reality.
“We can’t have chocolate and vanilla and strawberry. We have to decide which one,” she said.
It’s a question few at Harvard expected Faust to be forced to answer in the infancy of her presidency.

A Union Promotion
An enemy of education reform gets kicked upstairs.

Wall Street Journal Editorial:

In her weekly “What Matters Most” newspaper column, Randi Weingarten recently bid the Big Apple farewell. Ms. Weingarten has been elevated to president of the national American Federation of Teachers from head of its New York City affiliate, and she had some notable parting words: “One of the most rewarding (and exhausting) things about working in public education in New York City is that it is the best laboratory in the world for trying new things.”
Well, it could be, if it weren’t for Ms. Weingarten’s union. Since taking over in 1998, she has done everything she could to block significant reforms to New York’s public schools. Take her opposition to charter schools. She resisted raising the state cap on charters from 100 unless the union could organize them. (She lost and the cap now is 200.)

Wisconsin’s New K-12 Academic Standards

Alan Borsuk:

Wisconsin education officials are aiming to move into the national mainstream by setting firmer standards for what children should learn in school and finding better ways to measure achievement.
A new report from the American Diploma Project praises Wisconsin’s proposed new set of standards for high school English and math. The report is the latest of several indications that changes are being made when it comes to student expectations – and that others are noticing.
Wisconsin built a reputation in recent years for having loosely written state standards. The state was viewed as setting the bar about as low as anywhere in the country in determining if students were proficient, and taking too rosy an approach to deciding whether schools were getting adequate results.
Several national groups, some of them with conservative orientations but others harder to peg politically, criticized the state for its softness.
The report from the Diploma Project, issued last week, says that in revising its statement of what students are expected to learn in English and math, “Wisconsin has taken an important step to better prepare young people for success in post-secondary education and in their careers.”

Much more on the WKCE here.

Privacy & Social Network Sites: Wife Blows MI6 Chief’s Cover on Facebook

Nadia Gilani:

The wife of the new head of MI6 has caused a major security breach and left his family exposed after publishing photographs and personal details on Facebook.
Sir John Sawers is due to take over as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, putting him in charge of all of Britain’s spying operations abroad.
But entries by his wife Shelley on the social networking site have exposed potentially compromising details about where they live and work, their friends’ identities and where they spend their holidays. On the day her husband was appointed she congratulated him on the site using his codename “C”.

Milwaukee School District Spending Online

http://mpsspending.milwaukee.k12.wi.us

Via Alan Borsuk:

When a citizen taxpayer group, the CRG Network, posted online a database of all invoices paid by Milwaukee Public Schools a few months ago, it brought some amount of criticism of specific items – how much had been spent on food for meetings and parent events, on iPods for student prizes and so on.
But it also led some MPS officials, such as finance chief Michelle Nate, to say the system ought to post the data itself since it’s all public information.
Now MPS has done that.

A great idea.

Education Letters on Classroom Structure, Among Others

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Context and analysis is key part of schooling
While I entirely agree with David Elmore that the structure of many classrooms can work against the normal ways that young students learn, I must protest the picture of learning which he proposes.
ADD is a real disease. Anyone who “mostly got A’s and B’s” in school was not ADD. Elmore should spend some time in a class with real ADD students –he will soon see the qualitative difference between their distractibility and the usual kind. Lack of structure is hard for them.
Learning to add numbers or read words is not the same as learning mathematics or reading a sophisticated text: Both require understanding underlying ideas and comparing and contrasting them with other ideas.
Talking to a parent about how invasive taxes are also will not prepare someone for adult conversation. While most of the time people don’t know theories, they use them. The first time someone proposes a Hamiltonian view of freedom while yours is Jeffersonian, if you don’t know theory, you will not be able to respond convincingly, and you will soon feel pretty stupid.
An exciting school, at any level, gives students not only skills like addition and reading, not only facts without context, but the joy of deep understanding and analysis, which requires teachers and a structure leading students to it.
Sally MacEwen, associate professor and chair of classics at Agnes Scott College

What it’s Like to Teach Black Students

Marty Nemko:

Despite almost 50 years of large and accelerating efforts to improve the school achievement of African-American students, the gap between their achievement and that of whites and Asians remains about as large as ever.
Yet proposals for what to do about it seem basically unchanged: Spend more money and divert existing money to reduce class size and train teachers better, have more students take a rigorous college prep curriculum, work on improving self-esteem, eliminate ability-grouped classes, use cooperative-learning techniques, and reassign top teachers to schools with a high percentage of African-American students.
I have become especially doubtful about whether those approaches will work better in the future than they have in the past when I read this report from the trenches. Usually, we hear only from politicians and education leaders (who also are politicians) spouting lofty rhetoric. Occasionally, we hear of a promising program, but which never turns out to be scalable. Or we see a Hollywood movie about some amazing teacher.
We rarely, however, hear from a more typical teacher who, day to day, teaches low-achieving African-American kids. So it was with interest that I read this truly depressing account from a teacher. I’ve edited out a couple of unnecessarily snarky sentences, which are irrelevant to the issue. Nonetheless the essay is long yet, I believe, worth your time.)

Like Her Subject, Math Teacher’s Dedication and Conviction Were Absolute

Lauren Wiseman:

Doris Broome DeBoe, who became one of the District’s leading math teachers, said she was drawn to the subject because it was absolute. Where other subjects were subjective, she said, math was exact.
“Once you understand what you are doing, there is no deviation,” she said.
As a teacher, she believed in endless math drills, nightly homework and practice. She described herself not as a harsh instructor but as one who thought algebra is “a skill like ball playing and piano playing. Once you learn the basics, practice is necessary to ensure mastery.”
She said every child had the potential to do well in class. “My best dog is the underdog,” she told her students.
Her conviction motivated many students. Michael Bell, a student at Bertie Backus Middle School in the mid-1970s, said Mrs. DeBoe was the inspiration for creating his math preparation company, Acaletics, which helps develop curriculums and training programs within the Florida public school system. His company follows the same basic formula as Mrs. DeBoe’s teaching: Practice makes perfect.

Md. School Joins Test of Online Courses Tailored to Girls

Michael Birnbaum:

When the Online School for Girls flickers to life this fall on computer screens across the country, students will take part in an unusual experiment that joins two trends: girls-only schooling and online teaching.
A consortium that includes the 108-year-old Holton-Arms School in Bethesda is driving the project, in the belief that girls can benefit from an Internet curriculum tailored just to them.
“There’s been a lot of research done on how girls learn differently with technology than boys,” said Brad Rathgeber, Holton-Arms’s director of technology. “Part of this is a little bit of theory that we’re trying to put in practice to see if it really does play out.”
For now, the online collaboration will allow the four participating schools — Holton-Arms, Harpeth Hall in Nashville, Westover School in Middlebury, Conn., and Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio — to offer classes that would not have generated enough student interest or teacher support in any one school. When the classes open to the public a year later, the educators hope that students around the world — including homeschoolers and girls at coed schools — will be able to take part in a version of the girls’ school experience. And they want to prove that single-sex online education works. They can’t find anyone who has done anything similar.

Mayoral control isn’t the answer for Detroit schools

Andy Kroll:

On a recent visit to Cody High School in southwestern Detroit, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan reiterated one of his key talking points on how to improve the nation’s underachieving urban public school districts: Put mayors in charge of big-city public schools.
Transferring authority over urban school districts from school boards and superintendents to mayors, Duncan explained in March at the Mayors’ National Forum on Education in Washington, D.C., will ensure greater stability in the leadership of school districts. Duncan pointed out that mayors usually hold office longer than the average school superintendent.
The secretary of education also said that mayors make stronger leaders at the helm of public schools.

Wisconsin K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: State Redistributions to Madison Smaller Than Expected

Mark Pitsch:

Barely a week after the Legislature approved a budget that local and state officials said would slash state aid to Madison schools by no more than 10 percent, new estimates show the cuts will actually top 15 percent.
Word of the $9.2 million cut in general state school aids next year came as a rude shock to lawmakers and district officials. That’s because cuts approved by the Legislature’s budget committee were estimated to be 13.1 percent, but the final budget was believed to limit the cuts to 10 percent.
Dave Schmiedicke, Gov. Jim Doyle’s budget director, said several factors affected the new school funding calculation, including the number of students expected to enroll this fall, the district’s relatively larger increase in spending per student compared with other Wisconsin districts and the district’s high property values.

Related: Open Enrollment.

Learning-community dorm: Cool or not cool?

Deborah Ziff:


There are dorms that are popular on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus: Elizabeth Waters, the scenic hall in the center of campus, or the new Ogg, which has air conditioning and walk-in closets.
And then, for whatever reason, there are the ones that aren’t. Whether it be Witte, Cole, Kronshage, or another, officials say they’re never sure which dorms will drop to the bottom of the list on any given year, falling victim to the whims of 17- and 18-year-olds.
In particular, the university has had some trouble enticing students to live in dorms they label as learning communities, or those that bring faculty, staff, and unique seminars into dorm life.
There are two full dorms on campus with this mission — Chadbourne and Bradley — plus floors with special interest themes like women in science and engineering, entrepreneurship, international interests and more.
Last year, UW-Madison started a program that rewards students for picking these halls by allowing them to choose their room online, a la seat selection with the airlines. The fate of other students are left to a computer program’s random picks.

A Hot Beach Debate for Edu-Nerds Like Me

Jay Matthews:

Those of us who spend our days mesmerized by discussions of summer learning loss, looping and longitudinal analysis need a summer break, just like everybody else. We are readers, so on vacation we are likely to have a book in our hands, or if we are very old, a newspaper. For me, bestselling thrillers are too predictable and mysteries too complex. I need something different, something weird, something fresh that taps into my essential nerdiness, and I have found it. “Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality,” by Gerald W. Bracey.
The first few chapters are familiar, if you, like me, are a fan of the irascible Bracey and his assaults on the conventionally wise among our education leaders. But in chapter 10 he does something totally unexpected. He resurrects The Eight-Year Study, a 70-year-old corpse, and makes me want to talk about it, even with that guy sprawled out on the next beach towel.
The Eight-Year Study was published in 1942, three years before I was born. That is, to me, a virtue. So few people have heard of it they cannot have any knee-jerk reactions. It was a very large experiment. More than 30 high schools in the 1930s were encouraged to try non-traditional approaches to teaching, like combining Engish and social studies and science into one course, to see how the students who studied that way did when compared to students who did not attend the schools in the study. More than 300 colleges agreed to abandon their traditional admissions procedures in accepting students from the experimental schools.

Throwing a Lifeline to Struggling Teachers

Daniel de Vise:

Jean Bernstein rang a cowbell, her cue to quiet the sixth-graders at Roberto Clemente Middle School for a lesson on multiplying decimals. “You need to settle down,” she said.
But that afternoon in Germantown, students seemed intent on chatting, clapping and exchanging high-fives. As the teacher led the class through a sheet of problems, one boy punctuated every answer by exclaiming, “I agree!”
The students might have cut Bernstein some slack had they known that she, too, was being graded.
Last fall, Bernstein entered Peer Assistance and Review, a Montgomery County program that identifies struggling teachers and tries to help them improve. Those who do not face dismissal.

Jay on the Web: Can Unions and KIPP Schools Co-exist?

Jay Matthews:

Mike Klonsky has some strong words for Jay Mathews on his recent column about unions and charter schools. In the piece, Jay argues that union demands might swamp the progress that one Baltimore KIPP school has shown under the direction of KIPP founder Jason Botel.
In his blog Small Talk, Klonsky, an educator and activist, argues Mathews is ignoring the difficult conditions many KIPP teachers work under:

US Education Secretary Duncan Promotes Charter School Debate

Mary Bruce:

chools specialize in math, science or the arts. Some are Afro-centric, others are religious. They are publicly funded but operate independently of local schools boards and, often, teacher unions.
They all make up the growing charter school movement that the Obama administration would like to see flourish.
“The charter movement is absolutely one of the most profound changes in American education, bringing new options to underserved communities and introducing competition and innovation into the education system,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan told attendees at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ annual conference last week.

Naval Academy Professor Challenges Rising Diversity

Daniel de Vise:

Of the 1,230 plebes who took the oath of office at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis this week, 435 were members of minority groups. It’s the most racially diverse class in the academy’s 164-year history.
Academy leaders say it is a top priority to build a student body that reflects the racial makeup of the Navy and the nation. The service academy has almost twice as many black, Hispanic and Asian midshipmen as it did a decade ago. Much of the increase has occurred in the past two years, with a blitz of 1,000 outreach and recruitment events across the country.
But during the past two weeks, a faculty member has stirred debate by suggesting that the school’s quest for diversity comes at a price. Bruce Fleming, a tenured English professor, said in a June 14 opinion piece in the Capital newspaper of Annapolis that the academy operates a two-tiered admission system that makes it substantially easier for minority applicants to get in. Academy leaders strenuously deny Fleming’s assertion. Fleming served on the academy’s admissions board several years ago.

Return of Board of Education means parents have less say on schools

Meredith Kolodner & Rachel Monahan:

Parents who’ve complained for years about having little input under mayoral control of schools, have even less power under the resurrected Board of Education.
They say they have been left with fewer avenues for involvement, including the loss of their Community Education Councils, which expired with mayoral control.
“We had no power when we were authorized, what power will we have now?” said Queens CEC 26 head Robert Caloras.
He plans to file a formal complaint over the appointment of a deputy mayor to represent Queens on the Board of Ed.
He said the appointment of Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott to the seven-member board was a conflict of interest, since he works for the mayor.

Shake-up in Seattle schools coming soon

Danny Westneat via a kind reader’s email:

Maybe it was brought on by lean times. Or maybe long-simmering angst about the state of Seattle schools is finally boiling over on its own.
But the decision this month to lay off 165 of Seattle schools’ newest teachers in a “last hired, first fired” manner has got some of liberal Seattle suddenly sounding more like a conservative red state.
More than 600 school parents have signed an online petition, at supportgreatteachers.com, that calls out the teachers union for causing “great distress and upheaval” in the schools. At issue is the policy of choosing who gets laid off solely by seniority.
“Wake up and see how union refusal to consider merit is damaging the profession and our kids,” wrote one parent.
“We want the best teachers, not the oldest, teaching our kids,” wrote another.
“Teacher unions are an anachronism,” said another.
The organizers of the petition are a group of parents called Community and Parents for Public Schools. They agree what they’re doing is very un-Seattle.

Number of Black Male Teachers Belies Their Influence

Avis Thomas-Lester:

Tynita Johnson had attended predominantly black schools in Prince George’s County for 10 years when she walked into Will Thomas’s AP government class last August and found something she had never seen.
“I was kind of shocked,” said Tynita, 15, of Upper Marlboro. “I have never had a black male teacher before, except for P.E.”
Tynita’s experience is remarkably common. Only 2 percent of the nation’s 4.8 million teachers are black men, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In fact, Thomas, a social studies teacher at Dr. Henry A. Wise Jr. High School, never had a black teacher himself.
“I love teaching, and I feel like I am needed,” said Thomas, 33, of Bowie. “We need black male teachers in our classrooms because that is the closest connection we are able to make to children. It is critical for all students to see black men in the classrooms involved in trying to make sure they learn and enjoy being in school.”

A parent’s plea on teaching

Michael Laser, via a kind reader’s email:

IF I could change public education, here’s what I’d do first: reward the best teachers with higher pay and stature, and fire the worst teachers, because they shouldn’t be in the classroom.
My children have gone through a total of 16 years of public schooling in New Jersey. Over the years, I’ve seen outstanding teachers, and outstandingly bad ones. Our kids have had teachers who introduced them to everything under the sun, and made every day different and fascinating. Some of our daughter’s teachers gave up their lunch and stayed late to help her find her way through the maze of math. Two of our son’s teachers comforted him when traumatic events laid him low. My daughter’s sixth-grade teacher made students feel like real scientists; her language arts teacher covered everyone’s papers with useful suggestions. These people put everything they have into teaching. They light sparks that stay lit for years.
But we’ve also seen teachers who put dents in our children’s spirits, day after day, teachers who barely taught anything at all, who, I suspect, chose the profession because they wanted summers off.
My father used to come home from his post office job railing about co-workers who didn’t do their share of the work, but couldn’t be fired. Watching bad teachers fail to do their jobs, I’m even angrier than he was. How can anyone justify protecting the jobs of teachers who:

Seniority vs. Effectiveness

Seattle: Support Great Teachers:

As a Seattle community, we can and must speak up to improve the effectiveness of every school, in every neighborhood.
We, the undersigned, ask our leaders to do the following:
1. Delay the immediate assignment of replacement teachers until the effects of attrition and retirement are understood. Keep successful teams intact.
2. In the new contract between the teachers’ association and the school district, change the layoff policy to prioritize effectiveness. Put in place a system that promotes, rewards and protects teamwork, expertise, best teaching practices and each site’s unique programmatic needs.
3. Ensure that all kids have consistent access to highly effective teachers.
4. Give our principals the tools they need to support and retain effective teachers within their individual schools.

Korean School Preps Students For Ivy League

Anthony Kuhn:

With admissions getting more competitive every year, spots at top American colleges are becoming a globally coveted commodity. In Seoul, one elite South Korean prep school has become the envy of many upper-crust U.S. prep schools with its success at getting its students into Ivy League colleges.
The Korean school’s formula is simple: Select the country’s brightest and most ambitious students and work them extremely hard.
U.S.-Style Studying 101
Roughly 1,200 students at the private Daewon Foreign Language High School begin their day with a nationally required curriculum of Korean, math and English. Three afternoons a week, about a quarter of them continue their studies in the Global Leadership Program — a special course that emphasizes the research, writing and analytical skills they will need at top U.S. colleges.

L.A. school board lets Birmingham High go charter

Mitchell Landsberg:

A newly constituted Los Angeles school board took its first action Wednesday by giving up control of its largest campus, allowing Birmingham High to convert itself into a charter.
The action, which took place after Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called for a “revolution” in city schools, followed months of bitter infighting at the school in the Lake Balboa section of the San Fernando Valley, and was a blow to teachers union leaders and others who had advocated the simultaneous creation of a union-sponsored school on the Birmingham campus. The charter will begin its first school year Aug. 19.
New board members Steve Zimmer and Nury Martinez admitted being unprepared to vote on the issue, which stirred deep passions among teachers, parents and students. Zimmer said he felt as though he were “on my Star Trek maiden voyage,” and Martinez complained that she had been briefed about the months-long saga only the day before. Zimmer ultimately abstained, while Martinez joined four other board members in voting for the charter.
Trustee Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte dissented, saying she supported the concept but wanted more time to heal the wounds on the campus and prepare plans for the union-backed school.

US Education Secretary Duncan Advocates Merit Pay at NEA

Stephen Sawchuck:

To answer the question I’m sure you all have: Yes. Teachers booed and hissed during some of the performance-pay portions of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s speech. And they weren’t overwhelmingly happy with the talk of reform to seniority and tenure systems, either.
But some of the stories I’ve seen around the Web on the speech are billing this as “tough love” for the teachers’ unions. There was some of that, sure, but President Barack Obama and Duncan clearly telegraphed their intentions to push hard on these issues in the stimulus legislation, and that passed months ago.
So there was an element to this whole proceeding that came off as a little bit rehearsed to me. I wonder if Duncan had prepared his seemingly ad-libbed line for when the booing started: “You can boo; just don’t throw any shoes, please.” And I’m pretty sure most of the delegates had gotten their vocal chords ready, too.
To me, the biggest news out of the speech is that the administration is increasingly emphasizing student achievement as one measure of teacher pay or evaluation, although not the only measure. That is a big issue, and it’s one that helped sink congressional attempts to renew the No Child Left Behind Act in 2007.

Joanne has more along with Thomas.
Libby Quaid:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan challenged members of the National Education Association Thursday to stop resisting the idea of linking teacher pay to student achievement.
It was Duncan’s first speech at the union’s annual meeting, a gathering at which President Barack Obama was booed when he mentioned the idea of performance pay last year. By contrast, Duncan drew raucous applause and only a smattering of boos.
“I came here today to challenge you to think differently about the role of unions in public education,” Duncan told the 3.2 million-member union in San Diego.
“It’s not enough to focus only on issues like job security, tenure, compensation, and evaluation,” he said. “You must become full partners and leaders in education reform. You must be willing to change.”

Violin-making has put a nondescript town near Beijing on the map. Now the locals have caught fiddle fever

Andrew Jacobs:

Perhaps the only thing more aurally challenging than a roomful of novice violinists screeching their way through Mary Had a Little Lamb is a roomful of novice violinists screeching along on out-of-tune instruments.
“Stop,” Chen Yiming says to her enthusiastic students, ages eight to 47. “Can we please pay attention to our instruments and make sure they are tuned correctly?”
After a short break for adjustments, the cacophony resumes.
Violin fever has hit Donggaocun, a drab rural township about an hour’s drive from Beijing. Hundreds of residents, young and old, are picking up the bow as Donggaocun tries to position itself as the mainland’s string instrument capital.
Once known primarily for its abundant peach harvest, the town has become one of the world’s most prodigious manufacturers of inexpensive cellos, violas, violins and double basses. Last year the town’s nine factories and 150 small workshops produced 250,000 instruments, most of them ending up in the hands of students in the US, Britain and Germany.

A Bank Run Teaches the ‘Plain People’ About the Risks of Modernity

Douglas Belkin:

Dan Bontrager is a 54-year-old Amish man with flecks of gray in his long beard. He’s also treasurer of the Tri-County Land Trust, an Amish lending cooperative created to support the Amish maxim that community enhances faith in God.
This past spring, Mr. Bontrager was startled when a number of men he has known most of his life tied their horses to the hitching post outside his office and came inside to withdraw their money from the Land Trust.
“We had a run,” Mr. Bontrager says. “I don’t know if you know anything about the Amish grapevine, but word travels fast. Somebody assumed it was going to happen, and it started a panic.”

Barb Thompson takes Montgomery (AL) Superintendent Post

Adrienne Nettles via a kind reader’s email:

In a vote preceded by outbursts from board members, the Montgomery County Board of Education on Wednesday selected Barbara Thompson as Montgomery’s new superintendent.



The board voted 4-3 along racial lines to offer the job to Thompson, who currently serves as superintendent of New Glarus Public Schools in Wisconsin.



Black board members Mary Briers, Eleanor Dawkins, Robert Porterfield and Beverly Ross voted for Thompson. Voting against her were white members Charlotte Meadows, Heather Sellers and Melissa Snowden, who all wanted to continue the search process.



Thompson was the lone finalist for the job after Samantha Ingram, superintendent of Fairfield County Schools in South Carolina, withdrew on Monday.



Ross, chairwoman of the school board, said she called Thompson shortly after the vote and Thompson accepted the job.



“I am excited that she’s excited about coming here,” Ross said. “She was already talking about how to get our test scores up.”



Thompson, in a phone interview from her house in Wisconsin, said she and the board in the next few days should begin working out the details of her contract, which include salary negotiations.

Thompson was formerly principal at Lapham Elementary in the Madison School District. The Montgromery School District, with 31,000 students, is nearly 1/3 larger than the Madison Schools.

Education in America and Britain: Learning Lessons from Private Schools

The Economist:

The right and wrong ways to get more poor youngsters into the world’s great universities
LOTS of rich people and crummy state schools, especially in the big cities where well-off folk tend to live: these common features of America and Britain help explain the prominence in both countries of an elite tier of private schools. Mostly old, some with fat endowments, places like Eton, Harrow and Phillips Exeter have done extraordinarily well. Fees at independent schools have doubled in real terms over the past 25 years and waiting lists have lengthened. Even in the recession, they are proving surprisingly resilient (see article). A few parents are pulling out, but most are soldiering on and plenty more are clamouring to get their children in.
Row, row together
All sorts of class-based conspiracy theories exist to explain the success of such institutions, but the main reason why they thrive in a more meritocratic world is something much more pragmatic: their ability to get people into elite universities. For Britain and America also have the world’s best universities. Look at any of the global rankings and not only do the Ivy League and Oxbridge monopolise the top of the tree, British and (especially) American colleges dominate most of the leading 100 places. This summer graduates will struggle to find jobs, so a degree from a world-famous name like Berkeley or the London School of Economics will be even more valuable than usual. The main asset of the private schools is their reputation for getting children into those good universities.

Private Schools & The Recession

The Economist:

In both America and Britain recession has so far done little to dent the demand for private education.


“COMPARED with last year, applications are up 14%,” says Mark Stanek, the principal of Ethical Culture Fieldston, a private school in New York. All through the application season he and his board of governors had been on tenterhooks, waiting to see if financial turmoil would cut the number of parents prepared to pay $32,000-34,000 a year to educate a child. Requests for financial help from families already at Fieldston had been rising fast, and the school had scraped together $3m–on top of the $8m it spends on financial aid in a normal year–in the hope of tiding as many over as possible. Nothing is certain until pupils turn up in the autumn. Some parents could get cold feet and sacrifice their deposits. Yet so far the school is more popular than ever.


Across America the picture is patchier, but there is little sign of a recession-induced meltdown in private schooling. Catholic parochial schools and some in rural areas are finding the going harder–but this is merely the acceleration of existing trends. Private schools in big cities with rich residents, and those with famous names and a history of sending graduates to the Ivy League, seem to be doing rather well. “Some parents weighing up their options may be worried about what recession will do to public-school budgets,” says Myra McGovern of the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS), which represents around 1,400 of the country’s 30,000-odd private schools. “And some may think that if other people are struggling, that will mean their children are more likely to get in.”

Massachusetts Teachers Union Votes Down Advanced Placement Grant

Mike Antonucci:

Today’s lesson comes courtesy of Bernadette Marso, president of the Leominster Education Association in Massachusetts. Her members just voted down, by a 305-47 margin, a five-year, $856,000 grant from the Advanced Placement Training and Award Program. The program, among other things, pays teachers of Advanced Placement courses bonus money “if they successfully recruit more students to take AP courses and if the students perform well on the end-of-the-year AP exam.”

Some district officials and parents complained about the union decision because the bonuses were just one part of the program, which includes professional development and a subsidy to offset the AP exam fee for the students. But the union stood firmly opposed.

“We understand that some people will not understand the vote, but we confronted this from a union perspective,” Marso said. “We have a fair and equitable contract with the district, and to have a third party come in and start paying certain teachers more money than other hard-working teachers goes against what a union is all about.”

It will be interesting to see how the Madison School District’s contract negotiations play out with respect to community 4K partners and other curriculuar issues.

Tony Evers Evokes Change as He Enters Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Office

WisPolitics:

“Education is all about continued improvement, and the status quo is not satisfactory,” Evers told the audience at a WisPolitics.com luncheon Tuesday at the Madison Club.



In addition to guiding local schools as they navigate state cuts and an influx of federal stimulus funding, Evers is promoting a single federal test and an overhaul of accountability and assessment standards for public education. Under the new system, which Evers said would be formed quickly over the next few months, the state will be able to consistently measure other educational categories aside from test scores.



The test score measurement mandates under the federal No Child Left Behind law drew criticism from Evers for their incomplete picture of education, but he said the federal standard has done educators “a tremendous favor” by showing disparities between performance of white and non-white students.



He also called for a national standard of testing and curriculum, which he said 46 states had backed. He said that Wisconsin isn’t able to truly compare its educational growth to other districts and states because 50 different tests are being administered annually. He also called the current system “economically irrational.”
“Public education, even though it’s a state responsibility, is a national endeavor, and we have to view it as such,” Evers said. “By doing this, we’re going to make our system more transparent.”



Perhaps nothing will test the new state accountability system as much as Milwaukee. Evers went to great lengths to discuss the “magic” that teachers work with many less fortunate students in the state’s largest school district, but recognized a graduation rate that, despite increasing to about 70 percent, lags well behind the state average.

Making the Right Choice: Which School is Best?

Ross Tieman:

Choosing a school for one’s child must be one of life’s toughest decisions. The consequences can last a lifetime – for one’s offspring – and have enormous effects upon their wealth and happiness.
The data on which to base a decision are incomplete – even academic league tables such as our own are only a partial measure of a school’s “success” in preparing pupils for adult life – and money, or the lack of it, may limit the range of options.
But if money were no object, would it be better to send your child to an independent, or a state school?
On the face of it, evidence in favour of independent schools looks strong. Independent schools educate only 7 per cent of children in the UK, yet they dominate our rankings. Parents who have the financial resources also vote with their pockets.
According to studies by MTM Consulting, a specialist adviser to independent schools, almost a quarter of families who can afford the fees send one or more children to independent schools.
They are therefore spending a lot of cash to buy a private-sector service in preference to one that, in theory, is available free from the state. These parents clearly believe they are buying some added value.

FT Top 1000 Schools.

Reroute The Pre-K Debate!

Andy Rotherham:

It just can’t be a very good sign that when someone raises serious questions about one of the liveliest and controversial issues in our field those questions are ignored or distorted and caricatured. I’ve heard Checker Finn’s new book on pre-kindergarten education referred to as an anti-pre-k book (it’s not), an intemperate attack on the pre-k movement (it’s critical, sure, but let’s assume they’re not as vulnerable as the kids they serve), or dismissed as simply too conservative to be taken seriously by the field (again it’s not).
That doesn’t mean it’s a flawless book. Sara Mead has engaged with it and points out some problems with the analysis (in particular Finn overstates current participation levels – especially from a quality standpoint – and that’s no small thing given his underlying point) and she also rounds up the other writing on it. But in general there hasn’t been a lot of discussion of Reroute the Preschool Juggernaut’s points about current program coordination, costs and how to think about costs, quality, and universality. These are not small matters; they cut to the heart of what is likely to be a massive public investment in an important strategy to improve outcomes for economically disadvantaged youngsters.

Sports Salaries Show What We Really Value

Allen Barra:

The issue of escalating compensation and rising ticket prices in professional sports has been around for years. But next month it could reach a boiling point when 21-year-old Stephen Strasburg, the No. 1 pick in this year’s Major League Baseball draft, signs for at least $15 million. And that’s just a bonus before salary is even discussed.
The blogosphere and radio call-in shows are already buzzing, with people saying things like “Man, the [Washington] Nationals” — or whatever team ends up signing Mr. Strasburg — “are sure going to have to raise prices to pay for this guy. You’ll be lucky to afford a beer when you go out to the ballpark to see him pitch.”
Well, if you can’t afford to buy a beer at the ballpark then it didn’t do the team much good to sign the player, did it? Sportswriters and radio guys delight in reminding fans that every time a team acquires an expensive player the cost of everything goes up. But that’s just not the way economics works.

US obesity problem ‘intensifies’

BBC:

The Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found adult obesity rates rose in 23 of the 50 states, but fell in none.
In addition, the percentage of obese and overweight children is at or above 30% in 30 states.
The report warns widespread obesity is fuelling rates of chronic disease, and is responsible for a large, and growing chunk of domestic healthcare costs.
Obesity is linked to a range of health problems, including heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.
Dr Jeff Levi, TFAH executive director, said: “Our health care costs have grown along with our waist lines. “The obesity epidemic is a big contributor to the skyrocketing health care costs in the US.

Madison’s Population Grew 22,491 from 2000 to 2008, School Enrollment Flat

Bill Glauber:

Madison continued its remarkable population surge with a 10.7% increase from 2000 to 2008, top among Wisconsin cities with a population of 50,000 or more. The capital also led Wisconsin in numerical growth, adding 22,491 people, for a total population of 231,916.
“Madison remains a very desirable place to live, and positive growth rates like this reflect that high quality of life,” Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said in a statement.
The new estimates are intriguing, both locally and nationally, because they detail America’s population at the cusp of the financial meltdown and in the midst of a housing bust. They’re also the last estimates to be released before the 2010 census is taken.
“Big cities are resilient,” said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. “They’ve been able to survive in a very difficult economy. These cities have diverse economies that can hold their own in these troubled times.”

Related:

Madison’s enrollment was 24,758 during the 1999-2000 school year and 24,189 during the 2008-2009 academic year. More here and here.
Given Madison’s academic orientation (UW-Madison, MATC, Edgewood College, not to mention a number of nearby institutions), our students (every one of them) should have access to world class academics.

$10 million for new science books as state adds exam

Jane Roberts:

Teaching science in a school district that for years paid little attention to it will cost $10 million for textbooks alone over the next six years.
The city school board approved the expense Monday night, and also OK’d $2.1 million for more print and Web-based reading materials for students in pre-K through third grade.
Half of the district’s students are held back at least one year by the time they are in third grade because they cannot read well enough.
The effects, district officials say, show up in low graduation rates and high dropout and incarceration rates, costing the city millions a year in lost productivity alone and millions more in prison and jail costs.
Since the federal No Child Left Behind mandate was passed in 2002, science has gotten short shrift here because it is not one of the subjects covered under the state exams. Instead, teachers have focused on math and reading, often doubling up class periods to give students a bigger dose of what they must know to pass.

Toyota Unveils Wheelchair Propelled by Thoughts Alone

Clay Dillow:

We’ll still have to wait a few years to mind-meld with our Camrys, but researchers at Toyota have unveiled an advanced brain sensing system that controls the movement of a wheelchair by reading a user’s thoughts alone. By processing patterns in brain waves, the system can propel a wheelchair forward, as well as make turns, with virtually no discernable delay between thought and movement.
Developed by researchers at BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center, the brain machine interface technology can return a response from a thought stimulus in just 125 milliseconds, whole seconds faster than existing technology, in effect creating real-time responsiveness. Five electroencephalography sensors stationed above the regions of the brain that deal with motor movement interpret patterns in the signals generated by the user. Further, the software interpreting the signals adapts to a particular user’s patterns of thinking, achieving 95% accuracy after just one week of three-hour training sessions.
The potential applications for BMI technology extend far beyond the wheelchair, but Toyota’s immediate focus will be to help those with mobility issues regain their freedom of movement, as well as to improve nursing care for the elderly. In that pursuit, Toyota is far from alone, as an aging population has Japan forecasting a shortage of health-care workers in the future. Rival automaker Honda is experimenting with a similar technology that allows its Asimo robot to be manipulated via brain signals, the idea being that humanoid robots could replace home care nurses in coming years.

Khosla: How To Succeed In Silicon Valley By Bumbling And Failing…

Tom Foremski:

Vinod Khosla is one of Silicon Valley’s most successful VCs. I was at the recent SDForum Visionary Awards where Mr Khosla was one of four winners of the 2009 awards.
His acceptance speech was short and very good. Excellent advice for entrepreneurs.
Also, he talks about failure, which I have long advocated is Silicon Valley’s strength.
A couple of years ago I met with a delegation of Russian diplomats, VCs, and government officials. They were visiting Silicon Valley and wanted to meet with me as part of their tour. They were looking for ways to create several silicon valley-like regions in Russia.
During our meeting, I told them I would tell them the secret of Silicon Valley. I paused. They all leaned in a little closer…

University Of Illinois Tracked Applicants With ‘Clout’

David Schaper:

The state of Illinois is embroiled in yet another political scandal. This one involves the University of Illinois and allegations that students with political clout were admitted to the school over other, more qualified applicants.
A Shoo-In
When William Jones graduated from high school three years ago, he thought he had done what he had to do to get into University of Illinois that fall.
“I was mostly an A student. A’s, with a couple of B’s. I got a 29 on my ACT,” Jones said. “So when I originally applied to U of I, I guess I cockily thought I was a shoo-in, but apparently not.”
Jones scored high enough to get on Illinois’ waiting list before ultimately being denied. His Plan B was to go to the University of Iowa, where he paid out-of-state tuition.

Autism patients’ treatment is denied illegally, group says

Lisa Girion:

State regulators are violating mental health and other laws by allowing health insurers to deny effective treatment for children with autism, consumer advocates contended today.
In a lawsuit, Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica group that monitors insurance practices, is asking a judge to order the Department of Managed Health Care to enforce the law and require insurers to provide their autistic members with the services their physicians have ordered.
Without court action, the suit says, “California’s thousands of autistic children and their families will continue to suffer.”
The department said it was “holding health plans accountable to provide a range of healthcare services for those with autism” and was handling consumer complaints according to the law.
Autism impairs communication and socialization and is often accompanied by repetitive, injurious behavior.

38,000 Hong Kong Students Receive A-level results

Simpson Cheung:

Over 38,000 Hong Kong students received their A-level results on Tuesday morning – in one of the most eagerly anticipated but stressful days for young people in the territory.
The Examination Authority said this year there were 38,647 students sitting the A-level exams.
Of these, 8,859 were private candidates and 9,711 were repeating the exams. While most are secondary school pupils, some are also mature students. The exams allow people to enter university.
A total of 17,744 students obtained minimum qualifications for university – a rise of 174 over last year, the authority said.
But it said there were only 14,500 government-funded undergraduate places available at universities. This means 3,244 students will have to attend other tertiary institutions.

Problem pregnancy ‘autism risk’

BBC:

Complications during pregnancy and giving birth later in life may increase the risk of having a child with autism, a review of dozens of studies suggests.
Researchers found the bulk of studies into maternal age and autism suggest the risk increases with age, and that fathers’ age may play a role too.
The mothers of autistic children were also more likely to have suffered diabetes or bleeding during pregnancy.
The US review of 40 studies appears in the British Journal of Psychiatry.
The recorded number of children with autism has risen exponentially in the past 30 years but experts say this is largely due to improved detection and diagnosis, as well as a broadening of the criteria.
The cause of the condition is unclear, and the review team from the Harvard School of Public Health said there was “insufficient evidence” to point to any one prenatal factor as being significant.

Military academy struggles with finances

Scott Williams:

As one of the nation’s oldest military schools, St. John’s Northwestern Military Academy has endured every economic crisis since Grover Cleveland’s time.
But the current recession is squeezing the Waukesha County institution anew with dwindling revenue and declining enrollment.
Administrators of the private boarding school for boys have responded with an aggressive strategy: employee layoffs, management reorganization and possibly sacrificing the school’s golf course for redevelopment.
Officials also have scaled back a long- anticipated celebration this fall marking St. John’s 125th year in operation.
“Things are not business as usual,” said Kenneth Smits, vice president of administration. “It’s something we have to deal with.”

Wisconsin School funding getting precarious Budget removes option for districts to cap increases for teachers’ salaries, benefits

Alan Borsuk & Amy Hetzner:

The three-legged stool is now down to one leg.
Will that leave either schools or taxpayers wobbly? Will the last leg fall, too?
In any case, Wisconsin’s old order for how to fund schools is coming to an end, and what comes next remains to be decided, perhaps two years from now when the next state budget is adopted. Pressure for an overhaul is growing, even as economic realities are providing strong pressure to hold down budgets.
When Gov. Jim Doyle signed the state budget for 2009-’11 on Monday, the leg of the stool known as the qualified economic offer fell away. The QEO meant school districts had the option of capping increases in teachers’ pay and benefits to 3.8% a year.
A second leg – the state’s commitment to fund two-thirds of general operations of public schools – has been weakening over the past six years. It looks as if it now will be the state’s commitment to fund something over 60% of school costs but not the full two-thirds.
That will leave only the third leg – revenue caps – in force. There will still be limits on how much school districts can collect in state aid and property taxes combined, a rule that will keep total spending growth restricted in general, but with widely varying impacts on property tax increases.
The three-legged stool was created in the mid-1990s, when Republican Tommy Thompson was governor. The goal was to put brakes on rapidly rising property taxes by increasing state aid, while holding down increases in overall spending through revenue caps and the threat of QEOs.