California’s Orange County Register (10/8, Leal) reported, “Hundreds of students, parents, teachers, and principals ditched cars and school buses [Wednesday] morning and slid into their sneakers and other comfortable shoes to pound the pavement” for the third annual International Walk to School Day. The nationwide event was meant to “promote children’s health, environmental awareness, and a sense of community.” The Register noted that for the walk, “local businesses donated bottled water for the kids and coffee for the grown-ups, while police officers joined in the walks to encourage safety and awareness along the roads.” More than 10 local elementary schools participated, including the Pacific Drive School in Fullerton, which “was chosen by the Orange County Department of Education and Federal Express as the featured campus in the county.” Maryland’s Gazette (10/8, Arias), Florida’s Daily News (10/9, Lewis), and Iowa ABC affiliate WQAD-TV (10/9) reported on local International Walk To School Day events.

Some California students express concerns about walking to school. The Los Angeles Times (10/9, Barboza) reports, “Students at thousands of schools nationwide walked en masse to school Wednesday in events timed for International Walk to School Day, meant to encourage physical fitness and to reduce carbon emissions.” Meanwhile, students “in poor, urban communities…where most students are not driven or bused to school but go by foot, the annual event served as a forum for long-held concerns that the journey can be a treacherous one.” At Garfield Elementary School in Santa Ana, Calif., “fifth-graders accompanied by teachers, and public health officials traced their steps to and from school” for 45 minutes on Wednesday to complete “surveys about their walk to school.

Education Week (10/6, Ash) reports that in November, “dozens of legislative referendums, citizen initiatives, and proposed state constitutional amendments affecting education” will be “on the ballot in at least 15 states, according to an overview by the National Conference of State Legislatures.” For instance, “six states — Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, and Oregon” — are proposing referendums “that would either create new revenue sources for public schools or alter the flow of gambling-related money earmarked for education.” Meanwhile, Oregon voters will decide on “performance-based raises for teachers and limits on the amount of time non-English-speakers could be taught in their native languages.” Both measures are seen as being widely opposed by educators. Education Week noted that, because “citizen initiatives typically require months of signature-gathering, and legislature-driven measures often are passed early in the year, items reflecting the current economic crisis” will be “notably absent from next month’s ballot.”

Janet Allen’s Tools for Teaching Content Literacy is a plan book-sized flipchart—a ready reference for content reading & writing instruction. The tabbed pages give teachers the what, why, and how of 33 strategies, with classroom illustrations & reproducibles.

New accountability regulations threaten school staff and programs
Local leaders need to be aware of new regulations instituted by the N.J. Department of Education (NJDOE) this summer. The regulations guide actions of the new executive county superintendents and restrict budgetary flexibility at the local school district level starting in 2009-10. This advisory summarizes information on the fiscal accountability regulations which have been issued to date, what NJEA

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Watch Classroom Close-up, NJ at a new time Classroom Close-up, NJ, NJEA’s award-winning show featuring members and students, airs on NJN Public Television every Monday at 7 p.m. and every Saturday at 9 a.m. Watch the current episode online.

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Attend Fall Focus for Leadership meetings

NJEA annually holds Fall Focus for Leadership meetings in each county for local and county leaders. NJEA officers provide insight into important educational and association issues. Each local association president should attend with members of his or her leadership team.
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Join the Committee of 1000
NJEA takes pride in its ability to organize its members to participate in grassroots politics. The Legislature makes decisions that affect our schools, our students, our communities, and our profession. Committee of 1000 members will contact only NJEA members by making phone calls, distributing campaign literature, organizing other NJEA members, and simply helping NJEA members get out the vote. You and your members can volunteer at njea.org.

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Elect pro-public education candidates NJEA’s 125-member political action committee voted to endorse Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) in his bid for re-election to the U.S. Senate. In addition, NJEA has endorsed ten candidates for Congressional seats. They include two Republicans and eight Democrats.

Study links early-grade attendance to student performance.
Education Week (9/30, Jacobson) reported that “improving early-grades attendance can help schools meet their achievement goals under the federal No Child Left Behind Act,” according to a report from the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP). The report “found that more than 11 percent of kindergartners and close to 9 percent of 1st graders are chronically absent,” with even higher rates “in schools serving poor children.” The study also found, among other things, that “children who are chronically absent in kindergarten have the lowest performance in reading, mathematics, and general knowledge in 1st grade.” Education Week noted that although the study “does not focus on students beyond elementary school, evidence gleaned from other research suggests that high school dropouts are more likely than graduates to be chronically absent as early as 1st grade.” The NCCP report recommends “expanding high-quality preschool programs, saying they ‘play an invaluable role in reducing chronic absence by orienting families to school norms and helping families make regular school attendance part of their daily routine.’”

In the Classroom
Science program focuses on outdoor learning.
Massachusetts’s Gloucester Daily Times (10/1, L’Ecuyer) reports on the Science Day program at Rockport Elementary School, which was “designed to infuse more science into the building by getting students and teachers outside.” With help from Boston University’s Sargent Center for Outdoor Education, and funding from the Rockport Education Foundation, the school designed “areas where students could learn to use a compass, make observations in both New England forest and aquatic environments, collect data on air temperature and rainfall amounts, and input that data into a computer.” Principal Shawn Maguire, “who added science centers at various locations inside the school almost immediately upon arriving in the district last year, said Science Day was the first event of a pilot ‘scientist-in-residence’ program.” Maguire noted that most of the activities involved were designed to utilize “math, writing and reading skills.”

In a commentary for Education Week (9/30), Karen S.

More Iowa schools seek four-day week.
The AP (9/29) reports, “An increasing number of Iowa school officials want to shorten the school week to four days to reduce costs.” The policy “has caught on in other states,” and “seems to have its biggest supporters in small districts, where enrollment has shrunk and budgets have been beaten by increasing fuel costs.” The fifth day is accounted for by increasing the length of the school day by two hours, to eight. Although “not everyone is sold on the idea,” according to school “officials in Arizona and Colorado…the shorter week has resulted in fewer absences by students and teachers.” Additionally, it has proven to be “a good tool to recruit teachers.” Arizona educators noted “that change hasn’t affected student achievement, and that some districts have used the day off to offer tutoring students or teacher training.”

Iowa’s Des Moines Register (9/28, Hupp) noted that education officials in some districts “want a waiver from the mandatory state schools calendar so they can switch to a four-day week as soon as next year,” while “other educators who aren’t completely sold on the idea want state lawmakers to free them from the calendar’s confines, just in case.” Heather Chikoore of the National Conference of State Legislatures pointed out that, “in many cases, state laws give school districts the freedom to decide.” In terms of Iowa, Jeff Berger, the education department’s legislative liaison, said that “one approach is to set a minimum number of hours in the school year instead of days.”

In the Classroom
Some Wisconsin schools end class ranking.

Researchers to investigate effect of incentive programs on student achievement.
The New York Times (9/25, B6, Hernandez) reports that Roland G. Fryer Jr., a Harvard economist, “has quit his part-time post as chief equality officer of the New York City public schools to lead a $44 million effort, called the Educational Innovation Laboratory, to bring the rigor of research and development to education.” The purpose of the research is “to infuse education with the data-driven approach that is common in science and business, Dr. Fryer said.” During the first year, the research team, made up of economists, marketers, and educators will “focus on incentive programs, including controversial ideas like giving students cash for good test scores. … Each of the three school districts working with the institute will use a different plan to encourage high achievement, with researchers tracking the effect of each on student performance.” Based on those studies, Fryer said, researchers “would be able to identify what works so that educators across the country could prioritize their spending.”
In the Classroom
Maine community college to offer wind power technology program.
Maine’s Bangor Daily News (9/25, Lynds) reports that “Northern Maine Community College (NMCC) is poised to launch a first-of-its-kind program in New England geared toward training wind power technicians.” On Wednesday, the Maine Community College System (MCCS) “board of trustees formally approved a proposal brought forward by NMCC to introduce a wind power technology program on campus” that “will train wind power technicians to operate, maintain, and repair wind turbine generators.” NMCC officials explained that they decided to “to create the program in light of the growing interest in wind power and NMCC’s proximity to the state’s first commercial wind farm, located…just 14 miles from the campus.” Tim Crowley, president of NMCC, “noted that the college is ideally suited to provide wind power technology instruction” because “NMCC has existing programs in electrical construction and maintenance and computer electronics, two fields that serve as foundations for the multidisciplinary wind power industry.”

Schools increasingly extending learning time.
Education Week (9/22, Gerwertz) reported, “Under enormous pressure to prepare students for a successful future –and fearful that standard school hours don’t offer enough time to do so — educators, policymakers, and community activists are adding more learning time to children’s lives.” Education Week noted that 25 years ago, a report, A Nation At Risk, “urged schools to add more time” to days and years in order “to ward off a ‘rising tide of mediocrity’ in American education.” Since then, “the idea of finding more time for learning has generated a hotbed of activity nationwide.” According to a July study by the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank, “more than 300 initiatives to extend learning time were launched between 1991 and 2007 in high-poverty and high-minority schools in 30 states.” Education Week lists several “high-profile efforts to extend learning time” in U.S. schools. New York City, for instance, “added 37.5 minutes a day to the first four days of the week so teachers can tutor underperforming students in small groups.”

In the Classroom
Some eighth grade students are not prepared for advanced math, study finds.
In continuing coverage from previous editions of The Opening Bell, the Los Angeles Times (9/22, Blume) reported, “The new [California] policy of requiring algebra in the eighth grade will set up unprepared students for failure while holding back others with solid math skills, a new report has concluded.” The study found that, “over five years, the percentage of eighth-graders in advanced math — algebra or higher — went up by more than one-third.” In 2005, “about 37 percent of all U.S. students took advanced math.” But, about eight percent of students who took advanced math scored “in the lowest 10 percent on the eighth-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress.” According to the Times, “at least two students in every eighth-grade algebra class [have] second-grade math skills.” Further, “that number rises in urban school systems where these students are more likely to attend overcrowded schools with teachers who are less experienced and less likely to have math degrees or college-level advanced math.”

Panel calls for overhaul of college financial-aid system.
In The Homeroom blog of the Los Angeles Times (9/18) Gale Holland wrote that the Rethinking Student Aid study group has called for the demise of the “horribly complicated” Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form. Holland noted that the FAFSA form is “submitted by almost every student applying to college, regardless of income.” The form, however, “is so dauntingly detailed that some families are discouraged from applying before they even start,” the panel noted.
USA Today (9/19, Marklein) noted that “the group also recommends expanding and strengthening a federal student loan repayment plan that is based on the student’s income after graduation, and rewarding colleges and states that help students succeed once they enroll.” The group’s recommendations also include basing “eligibility for federal Pell Grants only on family size and adjusted gross income;” combining “all education tax credits and deductions into a single tax credit;” and replacing “the 10-year-mortgage-style loan repayment plan with a graduated plan, so that payments would rise over time along with the incomes of most borrowers.” Education Week (9/18, Cech) also reported the story.