Incentives improve reading scores, study finds.
Education Week (5/27, Robelen) reported, “School-based reward programs that offer students such incentives as cash, free MP3 players, or other gifts appear to produce improved reading achievement across grade levels,” according to preliminary findings from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University. The finding “comes as a growing number of school districts and charter schools around the country are experimenting with such reward programs in the hope of improving student learning and behavior,” and “suggests that incentive programs may well be a cost-effective measure to help raise achievement.” One of the researchers explained that incentives are “not a silver bullet, but for very little investment, you seem to get a pretty consistent bump.” But another researcher “who recently published his own study on performance incentives in one school district” said that while the Stanford “research holds considerable potential to shed more light on the impact of incentive programs, its academic results to date should be interpreted with caution” until there is a greater amount of data to consider.
In the Classroom
School meets NCLB requirements through classroom norms.
In a front-page story, the Washington Post (5/28, A1, de Vise) reported, “Last spring, all 184 students in the third and fourth grades at Ocean City Elementary School passed the Maryland School Assessment, or MSA, a battery of tests given by the state every year since 2003 to satisfy the” requirements of NCLB. This makes it “the first in the state, apart from a few tiny special-education centers, to meet the goal that has defined public education this decade.” Part of the school’s success is attributed to its “Ask and Answer” policy, which “abolished the practice of teachers asking questions, students raising hands and the teacher picking one to provide the answer. Instead, students pair off and answer the question between themselves.” This is one of “an ever-expanding list of” school-wide norms that “include broad directives about perseverance and choice as well as specific rules,” such as one that “dictates…students speak in complete sentences.”
Maryland district holds leadership workshop for students.
The Baltimore Sun (5/28, Williams IV) reports that “400 fourth- and fifth-graders from 27 Howard County,” Maryland schools “learned about leadership at the fifth annual Peer Leadership Conference,” a “four-hour event comprised [of] a series of seven workshops on topics that included leadership traits, effective decision-making, positive communication and conflict resolution.” The conference, which “was sponsored and coordinated by school counselors,” was originally created “to groom primary school leaders.” However, since that time the “[o]fferings have expanded to include conferences at the middle and high school levels.” The Sun notes that the “[s]tudents were chosen to attend by staff members at their schools,” in large part “because of their participation in their school’s safety patrol, peer mediation group, student government or anti-bullying initiatives.”
Ohio elementary school students to be taught engineering concepts.
Ohio’s Canton Repository (5/28, Duer) reports that “[s]tudents in grades three through five will be taught engineering concepts next fall,” Perry Local School District officials “said Tuesday night.” The Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Coalition “provided the grant money to the district,” in the amount of $19,000. Assistant Superintendent Joe Chaddock said that “a growing shortage of U.S. engineers has caught the attention of educators, so a movement to teach students engineering is under way.” According to the Repository, “Elementary-level courses will provide future high-school students a jump-start on engineering concepts.” The goals of the program “are to increase children’s technological literacy and elementary teachers’ abilities to teach engineering and technology to their students.” The Repository adds that a “proposal to expand this exposure to sixth- and seventh-graders is under design.”
Program helps New Jersey students transition into working world.
New Jersey’s Press of Atlantic City (5/27, Lemongello) reported that “[r]ather than just stand by while students are thrown out into the real world, more and more schools are playing active roles in helping them transition into the workforce after high school.” Karol Bucci, of Oakcrest High School’s School-to-Work program, said, “We like to think of ourselves as an empowerment program.” Students are “empowered to find their real strengths and choose individual pathways.” According to Bucci, “[t]he number of students involved in the program at the Hamilton Township school has increased every year since its inception in 2004.” Students can join the program in their junior year, “and what follows is an immersion into the working world.” Bucci described the initial phase of the program as one of self-assessment. “As part of that process, students” found out that their chosen pathways are “many times…not what they imagined.” Bucci described the program “in two words — experience and networks. We provide the experiences and we provide the networks.”
Study finds Chicago ACT prep ineffective.
Education Week (5/27, Samuels) reported that, despite Chicago’s teachers spending “about one month of instructional time on ACT practice in the core classes offered during junior year,” students’ “ACT scores were slightly lower in schools where 11th grade teachers reported spending 40 percent of their time on test preparation, compared with schools where teachers devoted less than 20 percent of their class time to ACT preparation.” This is according to a study from the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR), which “examined surveys and test scores of high school juniors in 2005,” and also surveyed teachers. Elaine Allensworth, a co-director at the CCSR, “identified two problems: First, devoting so much time to preparation diverts attention from the broad content knowledge that students need to do well on the test. Also, the test preparation that most teachers are doing in the classroom is poor.” A spokesman for the ACT agreed with the former issue, noting that “[t]he best preparation for students is to take a broad and rigorous high school curriculum.”
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Program helps dropouts find graduation path.
The Denver Post (5/27, Sherry) reported on the West Career Academy, a “school within a school” at West High School in Denver that is designed to help dropouts complete their high school educations. Run jointly by the United Way, two Teach for America educators, “two hip Goodwill caseworkers and a program manager,” the program addresses multiple aspects of its students’ lives. The “lessons [are] based on what pique[s] the students’ interests,” while “Goodwill Industries caseworkers help students with everything from getting a bus pass to finding a career path” and the “United Way [runs] a leadership class.” The program offers a large amount of flexibility; students can “take courses at different times of the day to accommodate work schedules.” Also, “[f]or students needing science and math classes to graduate, program director Susan Cardasis helped them enroll in an online high school run by” the Denver Public Schools, and “classes were augmented by tutors on loan from West High.”
Three out of 10 Florida students do not graduate, state figures show.
The Orlando Sentinel (5/27, Weber) reported that, across Florida, “72.4 percent of students who enrolled in ninth grade managed to graduate last spring,” according to state figures, “which means more than 37,000 students didn’t make it.” While “[t]he state’s graduation rate has been inching up in recent years,” Florida officials say more improvement is needed. Yet “[t]he real picture in Florida may be even uglier than what the state presents,” as the National Center for Education Statistics “pegged Florida’s graduation rate at 64.6 percent in 2005,” while the state’s “officials claimed a 71.9 percent graduation rate.” Experts cite a number of factors for the low graduation rates, ranging from home issues and grade repetition to higher FCAT standards. However, the graduation statistics also reveal “some bright spots, especially among technical and magnet schools that offer programs tailored to students’ special interests.”
Cell phone use in schools a growing problem.
Utah’s Deseret News (5/27, Reavy) reported, “Not only can cell phones be distracting to other students and teachers, but now police are coming across a growing number of incidents where the communication devices are also being used to help facilitate crimes.” Teachers say that “most of the problems range from simple disruption to students texting answers to tests, taking pictures of tests and distributing them, to storing cheat sheets on their phones.” However, teens also use their phones to send inappropriate photos to each other at school and record on-campus brawls to show their peers. In Utah, many districts “have policies that students cannot have their cell phones on during class,” but according to Cal Evans, executive director of compliance for the Jordan District, “banning cell phones from school altogether would not work,” because it would be impossible to enforce such a policy.
Law & Policy
New Pennsylvania gifted regulations under consideration.
The Philadelphia Inquirer (5/27, Snyder) reported, “Pennsylvania is taking steps to make gifted education available to more students, but that has done little to quell long-standing tension between parents and school districts over how the state’s brightest are educated.” A new proposed policy keeps “a 130 IQ as the trigger for gifted education,” but would “make clear that districts must use more than an IQ score to identify gifted students.” The majority of “area school administrators interviewed said they already use more than an IQ score to evaluate students,” but “education advocates disagree.” And, “[s]ome parents are skeptical that the new rules will help their children” because “[t]here’s neither a carrot nor a stick for a district to comply.” They note that it is “up to the parents to file legal action,” and that “no on-site monitoring is required to see if programs are meeting student needs.” Even so, “experts say it’s encouraging that Pennsylvania took on changes in gifted education at a time when so many states are focused on meeting federal targets.”
School Finance
Dallas schools may cut teachers’ bonus pay from budget.
The Dallas Morning News (5/28, Fischer) reports, “Dallas school officials plan to cut an estimated $4 million from the district budget in the coming fiscal year because of a shortfall largely due to declining enrollment.” The cut “represents less than one percent of total spending from the district’s general fund, which is filled by local property taxes and state aid.” Under the 2008-2009 school spending plan, teacher pay raises “would average just less than $1,000. Still, that totals $11 million in new spending. To offset that increase, district administrators are recommending eliminating $9.6 million in longevity pay bonuses.” The Morning News notes that “[t]rustees have until June 30 to adopt the budget.”
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New York City schools chancellor defends plan to cut school budgets.
The New York Times (5/28, B3, Medina) reports, “During a nearly four-hour hearing filled with skepticism that bordered on hostility from council members,” New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein “testified that the city badly needed more flexibility from the state to avoid significant cuts at dozens of public schools.” Klein noted “that many of the schools facing the harshest cuts were some of the most coveted and top-performing in the city, and that if the state allowed him flexibility, he would cut all school budgets by 1.4 percent.” He added that “if…regulations were scaled back, the Education Department would be roughly $99 million short of keeping all schools from facing cuts,” versus $400 million if “the state did not amend its restrictions.” During the meeting, “[s]everal council members criticized Mr. Klein for not doing more publicly to fight the mayor’s education budget, which allocated $428 million less than what had been planned for education,” to which Klein responded, “The city can’t give us what it doesn’t have.”
New York public radio station WNYC-FM (5/27, Rivera) added that council members also “criticized Klein for lobbying Albany to change the law to lift restrictions that regulates how $63 million of school education money should be spent.” Some are concerned “that the change would take money away from the lowest performing schools to buffer cuts at better performing schools.”