In a front-page story, the Washington Post (11/12, A1, deVise) reports, “The SAT has long dominated the bustling college-prep market in [DC] and its suburbs. But the rival ACT is making inroads.” This is due, in part, to “conventional wisdom, which now holds that the tests are of about equal value and that a student would be wise to take both.” Some “colleges are driving the trend because admission officers are spreading the word that it doesn’t matter which test students take.” The Post notes that even though “the ACT was virtually unknown” ten years ago, test “participation has doubled in Fairfax [VA] and Montgomery [MD] counties in the past three years, rising from about 2,550 seniors in 2005 to more than 5,100 this year. The SAT remains dominant, but the number of seniors who took the test in the two counties declined this year to about 16,900 from about 17,600 last year.”

Massachusetts’ Berkshire Eagle (11/11, Smith) reported, “Despite an unexpectedly large enrollment, freshmen at Mount Greylock Regional High School are seeing at least one smaller class this fall. With class sizes limited to 15 students and an emphasis on one-on-one learning, the new Ninth-Grade Writing Seminar program has become a favorable classroom model among its students.” According to the Eagle, the new “writing program, a required course of all ninth-graders, was developed over the summer through the Williams Center and the English department at Mount Greylock. … In addition to the teachers’ daily instruction, lessons are led once a week by a paid Williams College Writing Fellow.” English teacher Kellie Houle said that students in the seminar “‘respond to the fellows well; they’re closer in age and can relate to them sometimes better than I could.’”

The Saginaw (MI) News (11/12, Rocha) reports, “The International Baccalaureate (IB) Organization curriculum Saginaw Township’s Heritage High School students may choose to follow soon could spread to district middle and elementary school students.” School officials “are investigating whether the Geneva-based program…could become a reality to freshmen and sophomore students, as well as those attending White Pine Middle School and the district’s five elementary schools.” Superintendent Jerry L. Seese and Joseph Ellison, director of learning, curriculum, assessment and instruction, are currently trying to determine “costs and where to open up the curriculum.” Meanwhile, the “Saginaw School District’s Handley School leaders are applying to have the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Program for children ages three to 12 come to its school.” They “would like to have the curriculum start by 2010.”

The Clearfield (PA) Progress (11/12, Nebgen) reports, “Faculty members at the Moshannon Valley Junior-Senior High School…are exploring the possibility of purchasing a new series of math textbooks at the high school in an effort to bring the school’s test scores in line with the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment examination.” The school’s math faculty discovered while developing the Math for Success program” that “the texts which were in use were too centered on either algebra or geometry and were not helping the students meet state standards in both areas.” Now, math teachers use “an algebra text that also covers some areas of geometry,” and they are “reviewing a geometry text that will cover areas of algebra so as to help students master skills and obtain proficiency in both areas of the exam.”

The Beloit (WI) Daily News (11/12, Rhodebeck) reports, “Sponsored by the Department of Public Instruction and the Wisconsin Education Association Council’s Professional Development Academy, the” Japan-Wisconsin Education Connection places Japanese “teachers in Wisconsin schools during October and November.” Akane Yamada, a Beloit Memorial High School guest teacher from Japan, “was prompted to join the program after she became friends with Canadians doing something similar in Japan.” Yamada said “it is sometimes difficult for her to understand the students because they often talk over each other instead of raising their hands. To help with translations, Yamada carries a handheld electronic translator with her and knows not to test her limits.” At Beloit High School, she teaches students about to calligraphy, origami, and Japanese food.

The Los Angeles Times (11/12, Landsberg) reports, “The burgeoning charter school movement in California has largely made its mark as an alternative to low-performing inner-city schools.” According to “an analysis being issued [Wednesday]…charters are doing that job well, outperforming most traditional public schools that serve children in poverty.” The California Charter Schools Association “found that 12 of the top 15 public schools in California that cater primarily to poor children are charters.” The analysis “focused on schools where at least 70 percent of the children qualify for free or reduced price lunches. Of more than 3,000 public schools statewide that fit that description, the highest API score — 967 — was earned by American Indian Public Charter, a middle school in Oakland whose students are primarily Asian, black and Latino, and have a poverty rate of 98 percent.”

Maryland’s Daily Times (11/11, Evans) reported, “With the use of a Web-based system known as PowerSchool, Worcester County teachers no longer have to flip through black grade books to calculate students’ grades for report cards. Now with the click of a mouse, teachers can manage assignments and grades, as well as track attendance and produce detailed reports within minutes for parents and students.” According to the Daily Times, “one of PowerSchool’s continued upgrades, Parent Access allows parents to observe their child’s attendance record and academic progress on a daily basis, versus receiving a progress report and report card every four-and-a-half weeks, said Gilbert Beety, student information systems specialist for Worcester County public schools.”

Wellesley College Education Department chairperson Barbara Beatty writes, in an op-ed for Education Week (11/12), “If there’s a silver lining to the cloud that has settled over Wall Street, it may be this: Some…economics majors” may be considering changing their majors to education. However, “many college students think teaching is a low-status job, and for many at elite colleges and universities, it often is. Part of the remarkable growth of Teach For America, for example, has occurred because such students view it more as social-justice work than teaching, and know that it’s very selective.” Beatty adds, “Let’s take advantage of this window of opportunity and give merit-based teacher scholarships a try.”

Education Week (11/12, Klein) reports that President-elect Barack Obama “can look forward to working with a beefed-up Democratic majority in Congress when he seeks to enact his education agenda after taking office in January. After last week’s elections, the Senate will have at least 55 Democrats plus two independents who currently caucus with the party. … The current Senate has 49 Democrats and the two independents, giving the party a slim, 51-seat majority.” According to Education Week, the “top education matter awaiting the new president and the incoming 111th Congress is the renewal of the almost seven-year-old No Child Left Behind law, which has created a fracture within the Democratic Party’s traditional coalition. Some left-leaning researchers, social scientists, and educators contend that society needs to invest significantly in children’s health care and other social services, as well as extend learning time, before student achievement will increase dramatically.” However, “other Democrats…favor tough accountability measures, innovative systems of teacher pay, and an expansion of charter schools.”

The Charleston (WV) Daily Mail (11/11, Rivard) reported, “Every school system in West Virginia should ask for a reprieve from strict federal accountability standards for at least one year while students and teachers adjust to a new standardized test, according to” Marion County Superintendent James Phares. State officials “say the new and more rigorous” WESTEST 2 student achievement “test along with a new, more rigorous curriculum could cause test scores to decline temporarily,” which “could throw a wrench in some schools’ compliance with federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) standards.” And, “because federal funding is tied to the outcome of test scores, Marion County wants the state Department of Education to ask the federal government to put a moratorium on accountability sanctions.” The Charleston Daily Mail noted that “even if…the state asked the federal education department for some time to adjust, it’s not clear what the federal government would do.”

Ohio’s Times-Gazette (11/11, Christ) reported, “The days of wooden hall passes are obsolete, swapped for security cameras and locked doors, monitored building entrances and lockdown drills. School security has entered a new era as anxiety over safety has increased.” According to the Times-Gazette, Loudonville High School “has even installed an access card system to quell security concerns. Each student and staff member uses an access card to enter buildings.”

Texas’ KHOU-TV (11/11) reported, “School districts in Harris County are hiding reports of campus crime from” the Texas Education Agency, which “they’re required to notify. … When a student commits a crime, the school district must report the discipline taken against that child to the state for every parent to see. But after reviewing records from 21 local school districts, we found weapons, drugs, and assault charges watered down to look far less serious, or sometimes, they just seemed to vanish.”

New York’s Penfield Post (11/12) reports that Penfield School District Superintendent John Carlevatti “and other district officials described the status” of a facilities construction project “at ‘Conversation on Education,’ a public meeting the district held on Oct. 28. … All buildings in the district are slated to benefit from the construction project. Ground has been broken on Penfield High’s 16 new classrooms, its new auditorium and its all-weather track and football field.” New York’s “widespread provision of EXCEL aid, which must be used for school construction projects,” has “helped drive up bids on the Facilities Project,” according to Assistant Superintendent for Business Mark Sansouci. Also, “as districts around the state have undertaken construction projects, the contractors available to take them on have grown relatively scarce, and their prices have risen. Sansouci said that Penfield received about $1.5 million in EXCEL aid for the Facilities Project.”

Ohio’s Indianapolis Star (11/12, Merlie) reports, “Neither redistricting nor adding additional space to the high school is on the immediate horizon at Zionsville Community Schools. Michael Shafer, the district’s chief financial officer, and Robert Bostwick, executive director of operations, presented the School Board their annual report on enrollment, class size, and building capacity usage Monday night.” Shafer “said that with growth slowing, it appears as if the district can wait to build a new high school or make major additions to increase student capacity. He said a past projection that called for building a new high school in 2011 has now been extended to 2016, and a recent addition of nearly 300 student seats should keep the school at a comfortable capacity for the next several years.”

The Miami Herald (11/11, McGrory) reported, “Its finances already strained in a difficult year, the Miami-Dade school system will need to cut as much as $122 million more from its budget, district officials said Monday. The latest round of cuts stems from problems within the district’s $5.5 billion budget, which was put together under former Superintendent Rudy Crew and submitted to the state Department of Education in September, records show.” Also, new Superintendent Alberto Carvalho “has said he would like to establish a reserve to cover anticipated cuts” in state funding. Carvalho “said he had convened a team of financial experts to comb through the budget and find both inefficiencies and problems.”

Connecticut’s News-Times (11/12) editorializes, “Education in Connecticut faces a real challenge in the coming year. And we fear that students and the state’s future economy could suffer without some thoughtful decision-making by educators and state officials.” According to the News-Times, the Connecticut Department of Education “is proposing $283 million in cuts to its 2009-10 budget to satisfy Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s mandate that agencies reduce their budgets by 10 percent in response to reduced revenues.” The News-Times adds, “These are indeed difficult economic times, and the educational system must share the pain. But state officials and local educators need to do their very best to protect the critical educational needs of the children of Connecticut, in the interest of both the kids and the state.”

The USA Today (11/12, Toppo) reports, “School superintendents nationwide say the struggling economy threatens to reverse progress they have made in closing historic achievement gaps as schools face trimmed budgets now — and possibly worse ones next fall.” A survey “released today by the American Association of School Administrators” shows that “nearly half of superintendents are reducing hiring and cutting back on supplies. Twenty percent already have laid off staff, and another 31 percent have considered it.” Those “findings suggest the economy is forcing schools to tighten purse strings and, in many cases, increase class sizes, put off textbook and technology purchases and cancel electives, extracurriculars, and field trips.” And, it is usually “children from poor families [who] are hit the hardest, even as schools try to help them catch up.”