Physically Fit Students In Texas More Likely To Score Well On Tests, Study Shows.
The AP (3/10) reports, “Physically fit students in Texas are more likely to do well on the state’s standardized test and have better attendance, according to a study released Monday.” For the study, researchers at the Cooper Institute “reviewed results of fitness assessments of students across Texas,” and “found that fit students are less likely to have disciplinary problems.” They also “found that cardiovascular health, measured by a walking/running test, had a higher correlation to school success than the students’ body mass index.”

According to the Dallas Morning News (3/10, Stutz), results were “Based on annual physical fitness assessments of more than 2.4 million students in” the state’s public schools.

In the Classroom
Students Said To See Relevance Of Lessons On Depression Era.
Education Week (3/9, Zehr) reported, “Teachers are comparing and contrasting the causes of the Great Depression and the current recession, as well as the New Deal and the recent stimulus package and other government responses to today’s crisis.” This year, many teachers throughout the US “say their lessons about the Great Depression and ensuing recovery efforts have come alive.” For instance, “Elaine Holmes invited guest speakers with a vivid memory of the Depression to her history classes at Fort Collins High School in Colorado. … Ms. Holmes said it seemed the students could relate to the speakers’ stories because her community has been directly affected by the current recession, with the downsizing of a local technology plant.” Furthermore, “teachers said that even elementary students are being primed by news coverage and conversations at home to understand the importance of the Great Depression and the federal government’s response to it.”

Increasing Numbers Of High School Students In Virginia Opting For Vocational Education.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch (3/9, Slayton) reported, “As the economy dives, high school students across Virginia are increasingly turning to career and technical-education programs so they can go directly into the work force after graduation.” The Times-Dispatch points out that “completing courses at a technical center aids students as they prepare to enter the job market upon graduation, if they don’t pursue a college degree immediately.” Some districts offer “career and tech-ed courses…at high schools,” while others “have their own technical centers,” and other “localities bus students to another district for some career and technical-education classes.” But even as “Central Virginia technical centers” increase “the number and types of classes they offer…they are still finding it difficult to keep up with the demand.”

Program Teaches Students To Design Computer Networks. The Richmond Times-Dispatch (3/9, Lizma) reported that “second-year students enrolled at the Cisco Networking Academy at the Chesterfield Technical Center are embarking on a hands-on project to address the technology network of a growing fictitious company.” The students must “investigate the existing network of the company and design and prototype the upgrades necessary to support the network’s growth.” Afterward, they “will present their proposals…to the Cisco Networking Academy’s advisory board, made up of business and technology professionals, which will pick a winner.” The academy “is a two-year program in high schools and colleges…in which students learn to design local and wide-area computer networks.” It also “offers internships for students with local businesses.”

Students At High School In Virginia Hold Mock Supreme Court Trial On “Case Day.”
The Washington Post (3/10, B2, Glod) reports on “Case Day” at Langley High School in Fairfax County, VA. The annual event allows students to present “legal arguments to a mock court in a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.” Case Day “was started by a government teacher in 1993 and has grown more elaborate over the years.” The day is run by “senior AP government students” who “take a quiz on the case and earn credit for participating.” This year, “the exercise capped weeks spent delving into the justice system and the role of DNA testing in criminal cases.” The Supreme Court Case involves “convicted rapist William G. Osborne, who is asking the high court to allow modern genetic testing of evidence from the 1993 Alaska crime of which he was convicted.”

Elementary Students Study The Anatomy, Life Cycle Of Trout.
The Los Angeles Times (3/9, Ho) reported on “Trout in the Classroom, a nationwide program that brings the art of raising trout to city classrooms.” Through the program, “third-graders at Linwood E. Howe Elementary in” Culver City, CA, learned about the trout’s “anatomy and life cycle. … During the three-month journey, the students keep trout journals documenting the fish’s size and appearance and take turns taking home and caring for a trout plush toy named Rainbow.” Trout in the Classroom incorporates “a teaching philosophy called service learning,” which “aims to broaden students’ perspective beyond classroom walls. The equipment is donated by the Santa Monica Wilderness Fly Fishers, and the $1,700 for the school buses up to Piru Creek comes from grants from the Culver City Education Foundation.”

Florida District Allows Some Students To Stay Home On Days Reserved For State Testing.
The St. Petersburg Times (3/10, Solochek) reports that administering the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) “takes up people, time, and space. The bells don’t ring. The halls must remain silent. Most regular classes don’t have a room or a teacher available.” In Pasco County high schools, students “who already have passed the graduation exit exam” are offered “the chance to stay at home.” Students who choose to stay at home must “bring back proof about what college interest they explored or what part of their senior project they completed,” said Ridgewood assistant principal Shawn Hohenthaner.

Electronic Mini Lessons Bring Physical Education Into Elementary School Classrooms.
The Buffalo (NY) News (3/9, Gee) reported, “Orchard Park primary school pupils needed to get more physical education time, but the gyms were busy all day long, and the instructors were teaching a full load.” As a solution, “the district decided to bring the physical education teachers to the classroom — albeit electronically — each day.” Kindergarten through third-grade teachers “link to mini-exercise sessions on the televisions or Smart Boards in their classrooms. The six-to 10-minute lessons have a warm-up and a cool-down, and concentrate on upper or lower muscle groups and the cardiovascular system.” The Buffalo News noted that “Orchard Park has adapted the ACES Program — All Children Exercising Simultaneously — for its four elementary schools.”

Kids In The Kitchen Initiative Targets Childhood Obesity.
The Baltimore Sun (3/10, Cohn) reports on “the Junior League of Baltimore’s Kids in the Kitchen initiative,” a “four-year-old program…aimed at tackling a growing youth obesity epidemic and related health issues, including type-2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.” The day-long event took place at the “Port Discovery children’s museum on Saturday.” Students “made the rounds of several stations, including an Iron Kids Chef Challenge and kebab-making with one-time Food Network chef Stella, an international spokesman for the program.”

On the Job
Los Angeles School Officials Seek To Reduce Impact Of Seniority On Teacher Lay Offs.
The Los Angeles Times (3/10, Song, Mehta) reports, “Cutting enthusiastic, effective teachers just because they’re new is not good for students, say some district officials and education reform advocates. Unions leaders say it’s an issue of fairness.” In the Los Angeles Unified School District, “instructors with less than two years of experience are expected to be” laid off before teachers with more experience. Still, “some top L.A. Unified officials believe layoffs could rob the district of their most enthusiastic employees, and are trying to find ways to keep them.” Several “districts across the state, including L.A. Unified, are offering early retirement packages to employees, which would help retain younger teachers.” Meanwhile, school “board members have questioned whether the district can circumvent firing by seniority.” One board member “said she would push the district to revise the law to allow districts to retain teachers based on merit.”

Law & Policy
Georgia Senate Approves Bill Easing Transition For Students With Military Parents.
The AP (3/10, McCaffrey) reports, “Children whose parents are in the military would have an easier time changing Georgia schools under a bill approved unanimously in the state Senate on Monday,” thatwould ease the transition for children with parents in the military “as they shuffle from school to school. Similar legislation passed last year that would have had Georgia join a multistate education compact backed by the Pentagon. But Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue vetoed the measure, arguing it would cost the state money; he did not say how much.” The Senate bill “passed on Monday would have Georgia adhere to the compact without becoming a dues-paying member.” According to state Sen. Ed Harbison (D), “the bill would affect about 40,000 military children in Georgia.”

Emergency Funding Prevents Oregon School Districts From Having To Shorten School Year.
The Los Angeles Times (3/10, Murphy) reports, “Plummeting tax revenue has left schools across the country on the ropes, but in few places has the situation been quite so dire as in Oregon — which has no sales tax, severe limits on property taxes…and a corporate tax structure that allows companies with multimillion-dollar profits to pay as little as $10 a year.” Last week, the state “Legislature passed an emergency $51-million appropriation” ending the “flood of red ink [that] had threatened to close two-thirds of Oregon’s 197 school districts before their scheduled last day.” According to the Times, “the prospect of early closures is particularly alarming in Oregon, where school calendars already are three weeks shorter than the national average.” Now, “in the search for a way out of Oregon’s budget woes, legislators are turning their attention to the state’s minimum corporate income tax.”

Also in the News

Two Former Science Teachers Prepare For Space Flight.
The AP (3/10, Dunn) reports, “Two science teachers who have spent the past five years under NASA’s tutelage are about to graduate with high-flying honors.” Former teachers Joseph Acaba and Richard Arnold II will board the space shuttle Discovery on Wednesday night for a “two-week construction mission to the international space station.” They “both will attempt multiple spacewalks — the most dangerous job in orbit.” And, along with “their five crewmates — the usual assortment of military pilots and rocket scientists” — Acaba and Arnold “will deliver and install a final set of solar wings for the space station. With just over a year remaining until the orbiting complex is completed, the framework holding the solar wings is the last major American-made building block left to fly.” The AP notes that “More teachers with math or science backgrounds are expected in the next class of astronauts this spring and will receive the same training as everyone else.”

Study Reveals Hardships Faced By Homeless New York City Youths.
The New York Times (3/10, A23, Bosman) reports, “Many homeless youths in New York City are victims of abuse who grew up in foster care or other institutions and now lack jobs, a high school education, birth certificates and adequate health care, according to a study” from Covenant House, “which operates shelters for young people.” The “study, one of the largest-ever examinations of young homeless people in New York, found that their future did not look much better — because they are dangerously isolated from mainstream channels of work, family life and basic schooling.” The study “examined 444 people between the ages of 18 and 21 who entered the Covenant House Crisis Center between October 2007 and February 2008.”

NEA in the News
Stimulus Does Not Solve Problems With NCLB Accountability Measures, Some Educators Say.
Education Week (3/9, Klein) reported, “Even as states and school districts prepare to absorb billions of dollars in economic-stimulus aid for education, policymakers and analysts are quietly discussing whether the infusion of federal cash may reshape the landscape around reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act.” Some say that the claim that NCLB is under-funded “has less validity after passage last month of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, whose aims include stemming a potential wave of layoffs and programmatic cuts in education.” But “some practitioners and education organizations argue…that problems with the accountability system at the heart of the No Child Left Behind law remain unchanged.” NEA president Dennis Van Roekel, for instance, “said that while increases for the Title I program for disadvantaged students and for special education ‘definitely have an impact…we also have to do things inside that system to change.’”

Obama Outlines Plan For Education Reform.
President Obama yesterday outlined his education reform plans in a speech to the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. The address is receiving largely positive media coverage, with a number of print stories and analyses crediting the President with taking on the teachers’ unions, which are considered to be a key Democratic constituency. ABC World News (3/10, story 7, 2:55, Tapper) briefly noted Obama’s education plans as part of a story on his domestic agenda, saying that he “called for higher standards for schools and students; pay for performance for teachers; more charter schools, and longer school years.”

According to NBC Nightly News (3/10, story 4, 3:00, Guthrie) Obama also “opened the possibility that the school day should be longer for students. He said he knew it wouldn’t go over big with the nation’s students, including his own two girls, Sasha and Malia.” Furthermore, Obama embraces “the idea of merit pay for teachers, tying their pay to student performance, something teachers unions have resisted in the past,” the CBS Evening News (3/10, story 3, 0:20, Couric) reported.

On its front page, the Washington Post (3/11, A1, Wilson) reports, “President Obama sharply criticized the nation’s public schools…calling for changes that would reward good teachers and replace bad ones, increase spending, and establish uniform academic achievement standards in American education.” He also “encouraged experimentation in the public school system, including proposals to extend the school day — to bring the United States in line with some Asian countries whose students are scoring higher on tests — and to eliminate limits on the number of charter schools.”

The New York Times (3/11, A14 Stout) adds that the Obama administration sees charter schools as “laboratories of innovation.” In his speech, Obama said that “putting limits on charter schools, even in places where they are performing well, “isn’t good for our children, our economy or our country.” The Times points out that “teachers’ unions have opposed charter schools in some places, saying they take away financing for public schools, while supporting them in others.”

Regarding the President’s stand on the No Child Left Behind Act, Bloomberg News (3/11) reports that “without spelling out details, Obama has said he would retool the” law in order “to set more uniform and rigorous standards for tests on reading and mathematics in elementary schools.” The AP (3/11, Quaid) and the Los Angeles Times (3/11, Parsons) also cover the story.

In the Classroom
Reports Said To Be Inconclusive As To Value Of Single-Sex Classrooms.
The New York Times (3/11, A24, Medina) reports, “The single-sex classes at Public School 140″ in New York, “which started as an experiment last year to address sagging test scores and behavioral problems, are among at least 445 such classrooms nationwide, according to the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education.” But the initiative has its critics. For example, “Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said separate classrooms reinforce gender stereotypes.” Research regarding the effects of single-sex classrooms on student achievement, meanwhile, “is inconclusive,” the Times notes. At the Eagle School in the Bronx, “students of both sexes in the co-ed fifth grade did better on last year’s state tests in math and English than their counterparts in the single-sex rooms, and this year’s co-ed class had the highest percentage of students passing the state social studies exam.” However, “these numbers are as much a reflection of who is in which room. In general, struggling students are steered toward the single-sex classes.”

Elementary Students Use “Travelbugs” To Study Geography.
New Jersey’s News Transcript (3/11, Morton) reports that “fourth grade pupils at the Conover Road Elementary School are traveling the world vicariously through four travelbugs that have been released into the wild.” The bugs “are actually tags similar to a dog tag and each one has an identification code on it. Each travelbug was given a colored keychain and a note on the keychain asked the person who found the travelbug to move it one cache closer to the west coast.” An “Internet Web site tracks the progress of the bugs as the cachers log the identification number into the site with the tag’s current coordinates.” The project is aimed at enhancing the students’ “geography and math lessons, while having the children use GPS technology. The children have been plotting the distances on a map each time a bug has arrived at a new location.” In addition to geography, the students are also “incorporating the travelbugs in other subject areas, such as history.”

Computer-Aided Instruction May Improve Learning In Pre-Algebra, Algebra.
Education Week (3/10, Cavanagh) reported that “computer-aided instruction can potentially improve student learning in pre-algebra and algebra, partly because the technology gives teachers the ability to tailor instruction to children’s individual needs,” according to a new study. “The study, which appears in the February issue of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, found that students using” the “I Can Learn” program “made gains in mathematics test scores. Those improvements were especially strong for students in large classes and those with high absentee rates.” Researchers “conducted a randomized study of students in three urban districts.” They examined the “pre- and post-test results in specially designed algebra exams” and statewide tests of “3,451 late-middle and early-high school students from 17 schools.” Results showed “that student achievement rose significantly for students who used the technology, with somewhat larger gains for students in larger classes.”

Singapore Method Seen As “Happy Medium” On Math-Instruction Spectrum.
Utah’s Deseret News (3/11, Stewart) reports, “During Silver Hills Elementary School’s math night, first-graders showed off their new skills — and their parents learned more about the school’s Singapore math pilot program.” In the Singapore method of math instruction, “students learn mastery of core concepts then move on to solving problems by applying that knowledge. The curriculum is extremely visual and involves word problems.” Educators say that “on the math spectrum…Singapore math [is] a happy medium. It’s not as structured as traditional ‘algorithm math’ which involves a lot of memorization and is deemed as too rigid by some teachers.” Still, it “isn’t as fluffy as the controversial ‘Investigations math’ which some educators have labeled as vague and lacking in solid concepts.” The Deseret News points out that “In southeast Asia’s Singapore, students consistently test No. 1 internationally in math.”

On the Job
Indiana District’s Policy Provides Peer Support To New, Seasoned Teachers.
Indiana’s Herald Bulletin (3/11, Watters) reports that “a new policy adopted by the Anderson Community Schools board could change the ways teachers are evaluated.” The board approved of the Peer Assistance and Review program, which “creates between one and three consulting teacher positions meant to oversee and provide support to new teachers and seasoned ones who might be struggling in the classroom.” For the program, “new teachers will be paired with a consulting teacher chosen by a nine-member panel that includes teachers, administrators and union representatives. … After two semesters, the consulting teacher will recommend to the panel whether the new teacher should be terminated or given a contract with the district.” Another “part of the program involves intervention. … Teachers may end up in the intervention program if a principal or committee of the teacher’s peers deems the program necessary.”

Teacher Returns To Classroom After Time Spent In Jail.
The Houston Chronicle (3/11, Gray) reports, “In January, after a random drug sweep turned up two Xanax pills in” Mindy Herrick’s car, parents at Roberts Elementary School “pressured the Houston Independent School District not just to let the award-winning teacher back in the classroom, but to change the entire zero-tolerance policy that had drug dogs randomly sniffing teacher parking lots.” This week, on “Herrick’s first day back, a celebration greeted her.’” Herrick answered students’ questions about the time she spent in prison. According to the Houston Chronicle, the students “learned a lot from their teacher’s travails. They’d learned that being accused isn’t the same as being guilty. That big institutions, like school boards, can make stupid policies and stupid mistakes. That people, even kids, have to fight for what’s right.”

Florida Teacher Fired For “Incompetence.”
The St. Petersburg (FL) Times (3/11, Matus) reports that “a Pinellas middle school teacher whom a judge found to be incompetent pleaded for mercy Tuesday before the Pinellas County School Board.” But “board members, not in a forgiving mood, voted 7-0 to accept the recommendation of an administrative law judge to fire” former math teacher Curtis Brown. “At John Hopkins [Middle School], Brown was assigned to teach students struggling with the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and to be a mentor in a dropout prevention program. But district officials said he didn’t prepare adequate lesson plans, teach assigned subject matter or use the required teaching software.” In addition, Brown was alleged to have made “disparaging remarks toward students” and to have left “students unsupervised. In 2005, he was suspended for 15 days for reportedly falling asleep in class.”

Law and Policy
Provision In US Senate Bill May Lead To Elimination Of Voucher Program.
The Los Angeles Times (3/11, Oliphant) reports, “Congress is poised to do away with one of former President George W. Bush’s signature initiatives in education: the taxpayer-funded vouchers that enable students from low-income families in the District of Columbia to attend private schools.” On Tuesday, the US Senate passed a “$410-billion spending bill” that included a provision which “says that no funds will be appropriated for the” voucher “program after the 2009-10 school year unless Congress reauthorizes it and the District of Columbia Council approves it.” The DC program is “the only voucher system in the country that uses federal funds.” According to the Los Angeles Times, “if the voucher program is allowed to expire, the students would probably be back in the public system within two years.” The AP (3/11) adds that according to Republicans, the provision “is likely to kill” the voucher program.

School Finance
Schools Across Nation Taking Drastic Steps To Cut Spending Amid Recession.
The Washington Times (3/11, Billups) reports that school districts across the nation are taking steps to trim spending amid a recession, including silencing marching bands and doing away with “sports programs, summer school and driver’s education.” Also, schools “are facing closure and consolidation” and teachers “have been told to do away with space heaters and office refrigerators because they consume expensive electricity. Even the school year is being shortened as districts across the nation are making hard choices amid a worsening recession as they deal with budget woes.”

Also in the News
School Districts See Surge In Substitute Teaching Applicants.
USA Today (3/11, Lloyd) reports that “as unemployment continues to rise, school districts nationwide are being flooded with applications for substitute teaching jobs.” Applicants “range from a laid-off finance manager for Harley-Davidson to a vice president of a collapsed financial institution.” They are applying “for work that pays $45 to $160 a day.” USA Today points out, however, that “the nation’s three largest school districts, New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago, are no longer accepting applications. In Detroit, the only substitutes sought are those trained in bilingual education.”

Seven Out-Of-School Factors Said To Influence Students’ Academic Success.
Education Week (3/10, Viadero) reported that “a new report makes a case for paying more attention to the critical role that out-of-school factors — such as inadequate health care, food insecurity, or environmental pollutants — have on children’s school success.” The report, “published jointly on March 9 by the Education and the Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder and ASU’s Education Policy Research Unit,” presents “evidence showing how seven out-of-school factors influence students’ academic success and lead to inequalities among children.” Those factors are “prenatal care; health care; food insecurity; environmental pollutants; family stress; neighborhood characteristics; and extended learning opportunities, such as preschool or summer programs.” The report’s author, Henry C. Berliner, “a professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Arizona State University in Tempe,” includes “a laundry list of recommendations for policymakers.”

NEA in the News
NEA, Business Groups Join To Promote Changes In Education.
Education Week (3/10, Gewertz) reported that “the nation’s largest teachers’ union and two leading business groups said today they have become partners in the work of a blue-ribbon commission trying to revolutionize American education.” The National Education Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers “issued a joint statement encouraging states to seek grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s $5 billion ‘Race to the Top’ fund of economic-stimulus money to help finance their own versions of the” New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce’s recommendations.” The recommendations call for “sweeping, systemic changes in education funding, assessment, school management, and teacher pay and training.” According to John Wilson, the NEA’s executive director, “details of the concrete steps the union and business groups would take have yet to be worked out.”

School Districts, States Battle Teacher Unions Over Drug Testing.
The Washington Times (3/12, Honawar) reports, “A growing number of school districts and states are trying to give teachers random drug tests, citing student safety concerns, but their efforts are running afoul of unions who say such tests violate teacher privacy rights. In Missouri, the House education committee is weighing a bill that would require districts to randomly test teachers for drug use. … Elsewhere, at least four districts that have tried to implement random testing are either facing or have faced court challenges.” According to the Times, supporters of the tests “say teachers need to be tested for drug use because of a safety issue: children spend most of their waking hours in the company of teachers. … Opponents of teacher drug testing say mandates such as ongoing, random tests are unnecessary, expensive and invasive.”

In the Classroom
Second-Graders Hone Writing Skills With Twitter.
The AP (3/12) reports, “Twitter, the online social networking service that’s become popular with celebrities and politicians, is linking second-grade classes in two Maine towns.” The students in “Mrs. White’s class in Orono” have “been Twittering for about a month with Mr. Thompson’s class in Greene, exchanging messages that can’t exceed 140 characters.”

According to WCSH-TV Portland, ME (3/12, Matuszewski) “The classes started exchanging messages, known as Tweets, mid-February.” Students write most of their own messages, but, occasionally, the class will write messages as a group. Through the exercise, students learn “lessons in grammar, spelling, math…online security, and digital citizenship.”

College Admissions Process Motivates Some High School Students To Study Latin.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (3/12, Tennery) reports, “In the past decade, studies have shown Latin to have practical academic benefits. High school students who study Latin attain higher verbal SAT scores than students who study more commonly taught languages such as Spanish, French and German, according to the National Committee for Latin and Greek.” For that reason, some students decide “to pursue the language.” Another reason some students may choose to study Latin is “the draw of cultural studies.” Meanwhile, “some researchers believe the college application process is a common motivation for high schoolers to pursue Latin.” A study conducted by Richard A. LaFleur of the Department of Classics at the University of Georgia shows that “nearly 19 percent of college admissions officers claimed to respond more favorably to applicants who had studied Latin or ancient Greek, as opposed to a modern language.”

School Overcrowding Forces Florida District To Reevaluate Gifted Program.
The St. Petersburg Times (3/12, Marshall) reports that “overcrowding at Explorer [K-8 School] may force the School Board to revisit that issue” of expanding gifted education “when it meets on March 23. And superintendent Wayne Alexander said it’s possible the district may offer some gifted services in other schools next fall, in part to alleviate pressure at the school.” At the beginning of last year, “1,994 students showed up” to enroll at Explorer after the school board moved the gifted education program to the school. That number was “235 more than officials had expected.” About 200 of those students “enrolled in the gifted academy.” District officials are now “struggling to lower the school’s enrollment to manageable levels for next fall.” Meanwhile, “supporters of the gifted program say research favors an intensive, full-day approach to gifted education, rather than pulling students out of classes for extra services. But Alexander said he believes some students are only gifted in certain areas and need a more individualized approach.”

On the Job
DC Schools Chief Rolls Out Teacher Evaluation Plan.
The Washington Post (3/12, B4, Turque) reports, “District teachers will be evaluated on their individual effectiveness and their school’s overall success in improving student performance under an assessment system to be unveiled this fall, Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said” on Wednesday. “Rhee said at a D.C. Council hearing that the approach would combine standardized test scores where practical, intensive classroom observation and ‘value added’ measurements of students’ growth during the year.” Rhee said that “one feature of the new system…would be the use of expert ‘external peer evaluators’ to observe teachers in classrooms.” The new system would replace the Professional Performance Evaluation Program the District currently uses, which Rhee said “is inadequate and does not reflect a teacher’s worth or how much he or she has helped students grow.” The school district is “collaborating with Harvard University on the [new] system.”

Underperforming Teachers In Denver Public School District Seen As Difficult To Fire.
The Denver Post (3/11, Meyer) reported, “Quality teaching is the top reform initiative for Denver Public Schools (DPS), yet the district’s worst teachers are rarely formally removed from the classroom.” For instance, “last year, four teachers out of 4,500 were officially dismissed because of poor performance — the most in a decade.” According to district rules, “if a principal determines a teacher is underperforming, a 30- to 90-day remediation plan may be implemented. Goals are set. If the teacher fails, he may be dismissed with board approval.” Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said, “The reality is there is lots of red tape to make it difficult to fire a teacher for poor performance. … What (districts) have to invest in dismissing teachers can be hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it becomes not worth it.” In Denver, the “teachers union has pushed for a work group to study best practices around the nation for…remediation and dismissal.”

Teacher Pay Increases Funded By Federal Stimulus Debated.
BusinessWeek’s (3/11) Debate Room column presented opposing views on the question of whether “most of the economic stimulus money earmarked for schools should go to increase educators’ pay.” Sabrina Laine of Learning Point Associates wrote, “Research confirms that teachers are crucially important to students’ success, yet such subject areas as math, science, and foreign languages suffer severe, long-term teacher shortages.” This is said to be caused by a “very large salary differential between teaching and private sector work in these fields — and perceptions of teaching as a low-status profession.” Laine concludes that “By investing stimulus dollars to attract and retain teachers, we can ensure that American students emerge prepared to create innovations that further stimulate our economy for years to come.” On the other hand, W. Norton Grubb of the Russell Sage Foundation wrote that “if stimulus funds simply increase salaries without changes in who is hired or how they teach, these revenues will be wasted.”

Wyoming District Eliminates Wednesday Staff Development.
The AP (3/12, Gruver) reports that until recently, students “at the four elementary schools in” Wyoming’s Laramie County School District 2 were “let out of class to play at school or head home, while their teachers met for staff development.” But “concern over the schedule came to a head recently when the Laramie County School District 2 board voted to get rid of” the so-called Wacky Wednesday. According to “a new report by the National Staff Development Council…the district’s elementary teachers have been out front in the United States with their in-school training.” The report shows that “American teachers spend about 80 percent of their time teaching and only about 20 percent on those other things that teachers do — planning lessons, talking to other teachers and improving their skills.” Most, however, do not “engage in as much at-school training as the teachers in Laramie County 2.”

Law & Policy
Opinion: US Schools Must Measure Up To Standards Set By Other Nations.
The Christian Science Monitor (3/12) editorializes, “Of his three biggest projects, one is clearly closest to President Obama’s heart.” While he is “leaving it to Congress to fill in the details of his ideals” regarding healthcare, when it comes to education, “no detail is being left behind.” This week, the President spoke on “his agenda for public schools,” which “is bolder than he promised on the campaign trail and reflects his particular interest in urban schools.” Obama “wants longer school years and days;” he is “asking states to lift the caps on the number of charter schools,” and “he wants teachers’ pay tied to the success of students. He would push states to toughen standardized tests, while also broadening their scope to include skills such as critical thinking and creativity.” The Christian Science Monitor concludes, “Just as the US economy is now being held accountable by world markets for its failings, so must US schools now measure up to the higher standards set in many other nations.”

New Hampshire Town’s Voters Support Suit Opposing Free Kindergarten.
USA Today /AP (3/12) reports that voters in Hudson, NH, “are supporting their school board’s legal fight against free public kindergarten.” On Tuesday night, “voters decided…to allow the Hudson school board to proceed with its lawsuit against the state to block the program. Lawyers and outside groups say they believe the lawsuit filed last year is the only one of its kind nationally.”

Bill Would Expand Enrollment In Utah Schools For Deaf And Blind.
The Salt Lake Tribune (3/12) reports that “Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind will soon likely serve children with milder impairments.” This week, “both legislative houses…passed HB296, a bill that would expand enrollment to students with functional hearing loss and low vision.” The bill “would also require the State Board of Education to draft rules allowing siblings of deaf and blind students to enroll, even those who are not sensory impaired.”

Special Needs

Record Number Of Students In Oregon Qualify For Special Education Services.
The Oregonian (3/12, Hammond) reports that “a record 72,800 Oregon students qualified for special education services this year, with the biggest growth among students with attention disorders or other health problems that make it hard for them to concentrate in school, the state reported Wednesday.” The largest group of students qualify for these services because of a learning disability, “with about 28,000 Oregon students in that category,” according to the report. Meanwhile, “about 9,300 students…qualify for special education” because they “have attention-deficit disorder or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.” The report also shows that “9,000 preschoolers qualify for early intervention services.” The state “gives schools slightly more than twice as much money to educate a special education student as the roughly $6,000 a year it gives schools to educate a student without disabilities,” the Oregonian points out.

Also in the News
Maryland BOE May Join Partnership To Create Regional Teacher-Tracking Database.
The Baltimore Sun (3/12, Bowie) reports, “The state Board of Education said yesterday that it will explore a partnership with neighboring states to create a regional data base that tracks the performance of teachers and students.” Maryland’s schools chief Nancy Grasmick said that the state “lags in such data gathering. …. Already, 21 states track teachers, but Maryland does not.” She added that “identifying numbers would allow the state and districts to link student test scores to individual teachers. Such a tracking system could yield other information, she said, including looking at which colleges and universities produce the best teachers and what teacher training programs work best.”

Board Will Allow Non-Resident Students To Continue Attending Schools In Beverly Hills.
The Los Angeles Times (3/12, Mehta) reports that “after months of rancorous debate about what to do with non-Beverly Hills residents who attend the city’s schools under special permits, trustees voted unanimously late Tuesday to allow them to continue.” Each year, “the district receives $6,114 in state funding” per student. “For years, it has pumped up its coffers by issuing “opportunity permits” to non-residents.” But “those permits were called into question recently because Beverly Hills Unified” will soon “rely largely on local property taxes rather than state aid based on student attendance. And when it does, the district will no longer have a financial incentive to enroll non-residents.” Last week, trustees learned “that the shift to basic aid is unlikely to occur before 2015.”

Tennessee Leads In Graduation Rate Improvement.
The AP (3/13, Mielczarek) reports, “Tennessee’s high school graduation rate rose more than any other state’s between 2002 and 2006 according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University.” The university’s Everyone Graduates Center released a report on Thursday which shows that during the four-year period, the graduation rate in Tennessee “rose from 61 percent to 72 percent.” Tennessee Department of Education spokeswoman Rachel Woods “credited Gov. Phil Bredesen’s focus on education and the hard work of local teachers. She said a number of ‘local on-the-ground programs’ made a difference.” One such program “is the credit recovery that allows high-schoolers to take classes they had failed but that are required for graduation.”

In the Classroom
Accelerated Program Aims To Prepare Gifted Middle Schoolers For IB, AP Courses.
The Washington Post (3/12, GZ1, De Vise) reported that “a new generation of advanced courses in English, social studies, and science will be rolled out in Montgomery County’s middle schools over the next few years, with a goal of raising the level of rigor in the schools and giving better definition to gifted-and-talented education in the middle grades.” The “new course sequences…are intended to lay out a track for Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate study in high school.” For instance, “a pair of sixth- and seventh-grade Investigations in Science courses condense three years’ study into two, allowing students to take the high school course Earth/Space Systems in eighth grade.” And the “advanced English courses in grades 6 and 7 are accelerated, leading to a high school-level course in the eighth grade. Advanced world studies courses are available in grades 6 and 7, as well as an eighth-grade advanced US history course.”

Program Gives Hands-On Experience Of Astronomy To Elementary Students.
New Jersey’s Hunterdon Review (3/12, Regan) reported that “During the months of January and February, five third grade classes at” Tewksbury Elementary School “participated in a special science and astronomy program called Wonders of the Universe in which they took part in a number of unusual lessons and activities such as comet making, rocket making, and launching, and observing the day and night skies through high powered telescopes.” The curriculum is “taught by astronomers,” teachers, and the owner of the Pearl Observatory, “a traveling Earth and space science enrichment company. The program afforded the school’s 101 third graders the opportunity to use scientific experiment methods to answer questions, make predictions, and conduct experiments about space.”

More High Schools Adding Online Components To Journalism Departments.
USA Today /AP (3/13, Stafford) reports that “media advocates worry that…budget problems, advertising declines, and the migration to Internet-based news delivery — are reaching into high school, leaving print publications especially vulnerable.” Although “the printed word remains a top focus of most high school journalism departments,” Diana Mitsu Klos, senior project director for the American Society of Newspaper Editors, said that “the move to add online components is growing.” The reason “high schools are embracing online publications” is “because they allow more immediacy, innovations such as podcasts or videos and don’t require a district to buy increasingly expensive newsprint and ink or sell advertising to support small press runs.” Some experts, meanwhile, “contend that high school journalism will thrive by finding ways to merge traditional print with Web-based publications.”

Some Pennsylvania Schools Offer Incentives For Students To Score Well On State Exams.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (3/13, Calabro) reports that the results of the Pennsylvania System of Schools Assessment (PSSA) exams “have huge implications for schools and districts.” Because school officials are “aware that the conventional advice to students about test-taking — get a good night’s rest, eat a good breakfast — is not enough to ensure quality results, some districts apply basic psychology to motivate test-takers.” In Penn Hills, for example, each “school has a celebration for students who achieve proficiency on the tests.” At Linton Middle School, students “who achieve proficient or advanced scores, or who improve their scores by 10 percent over the previous year, can enter a special drawing to throw a pie in a teacher’s face — among those teachers who agree to participate.” Renel Williams, the district’s “director of teaching, learning and assessment,” said of the incentives, the “rationale is to motivate students to put forth their best effort. It also alleviates some of the pressure that comes with the PSSAs by focusing on the effort the students put forth and just asking them to do their best.”

On the Job
Teacher-Student Rapport Seen As Key To improving Education.
In an opinion piece for the New York Times (3/13, A27), columnist David Brooks wrote, “In his education speech this week, Barack Obama retold a by-now familiar story. When he was a boy, his mother would wake him up at 4:30 to tutor him for a few hours before he went off to school. When young Barry complained about getting up so early, his mother responded: ‘This is no picnic for me either, Buster.’” Brooks says that “the reform vision” for education that Obama “sketched out in his speech” this week “flows from that experience. The Obama approach would make it more likely that young Americans grow up in relationships with teaching adults.” According to Brooks, in education, “what matters most is the relationship between one student and one teacher.”

School Officials Expect Georgia District To Regain Accreditation Next Month.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (3/13, Matteucci) reports, “Clayton County school board members are convinced they will regain accreditation next month, but said it will take several more years for the district to be ‘free and clear.’” On Thursday night, the school board approved “a 180-page report documenting their progress on nine improvement mandates. … The report will be sent to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools on Monday. On April 13, a team of educators from SACS will return to Clayton to review the district’s progress on the nine mandates.” The Atlanta Journal Constitution lists each SACS mandate with a short explanation of steps the school district has taken to comply.

Law & Policy
Utah Lawmakers Approve New Performance Pay Pilot Program.
The Salt Lake Tribune (3/13, Schencker) reports that on Thursday, Utah “lawmakers passed a new $300,000 performance pay pilot program…for elementary schools, shortly after scrapping what was left of a $20 million performance pay program passed last year.” The pilot program will be funded with less that 10 percent of the money from an initiative “passed last year that pays some math and science teachers extra money.” According to the Salt Lake Tribune, “math and science teachers will likely get slightly less extra pay” this year than last year.

DC Mayor Expresses Support For Continued Federal Funding Of Voucher Program.
The Washington Times (3/13, Hillgrove, Rowland) reports that D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty “called for continued federal funding” of the D.C. voucher program, “breaking with the congressional leaders of his own Democratic Party who ended the initiative. ‘Political leaders can debate the merits of vouchers, but we should not disrupt the education of children who are presently enrolled in private schools through the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program,’” Fenty remarked in an email. Fenty’s stance “puts the mayor at odds with Democrats on Capitol Hill, who late last week circulated a document indicating that they have no plans to reconsider the program, which loses its funding next year in the $410 billion omnibus spending package.” Fenty “now joins President Obama in arguing for allowing children now in the program to stay in it through graduation.”

Special Needs
Michigan District Changing Procedures For Identifying Cognitively Impaired Students.
The Ann Arbor (MI) News (3/13, Jesse) reports, “The Ann Arbor school district has started correcting problems that were causing a disproportionate number of black students to be labeled as cognitively impaired, the district’s special education director told the school board Wednesday night.” Last year, “the state Department of Education found the district was not complying with federal and state law in the way it determined which students were cognitively impaired and ordered the district to review its procedures and make corrections.” Of the “85 students [that] had been identified as cognitively impaired…40 of those were black. At that time, about 16 percent of the district’s students were black.” The district has since implemented “new process for referring students to special education to create tiers of intervention, said Larry Simpson, the district’s special education director. The district is also looking at how cultural differences affect special ed assessments.”

Safety & Security
Assaults On Teachers At Ninth-Grade Academy In DC Seen As Difficult To Verify.
On its front page, the Washington Post (3/13, A1, Turque) reports that teachers at Woodson Academy “say the 260-student” school for ninth-graders “is overcrowded and dangerous.” At least seven teachers claim to “have been attacked this academic year, including one who was pelted by textbooks and another pinned to a desktop and choked. Other teachers” claim to be “routinely subjected to verbal threats of violence.” Such “claims about safety and discipline issues are the kind that have long been a source of tension between D.C. teachers and school officials. They involve classroom and hallway incidents in which staff witnesses are often rare and available accounts are frequently contradictory.” But “there are no reliable statistics on attacks against teachers. D.C. police and school officials say they don’t break down data on school crime victims to differentiate between students and staff.” According to “D.C. police spokeswoman Traci Hughes…several incidents at Woodson are under investigation.”

School Finance

Teacher, Support Staff Salaries Increase By 4.9 To 13.1 Percent In Massachusetts District.
Massachusetts’ Southborough Villager (3/13, Jordan) reports, “With a close eye on the town’s tight finances, the School Committee Wednesday night gave the public a look at next year’s proposed $16.2 million budget.” According to Northborough-Southborough “Superintendent Charles Gobron…the committee’s budget priorities included preserving student-teacher ratios, maintaining facilities, funding high-priority items and meeting technology goals.” The proposal represents a four percent increase in funding for day programs, and a 1.4 percent decrease in special education funding. “Contracted teacher salary increases for regular day programs were up 4.9 percent next year, while teacher specialist and substitute teacher budgets rose 13.1 percent and 11.1 percent, respectively. Under special education, four aides were cut saving $28,388. Those positions will be lost through attrition.”

Also in the News
Kindergartner With 176 IQ Profiled.
USA Today (3/13, Kranz) reports on Pranav Veera, a six-year-old boy with “an IQ of 176. One person in one million has an IQ of 176 or above. Albert Einstein’s IQ was believed to be about 160. The average IQ is 100.” Pranav is thought to have “a photographic memory, so keeping [him] engaged and learning is a big challenge for his family.” He is able to “recite the names of the US presidents in the order they served in office” and “can say the alphabet backward.” As a prekindergartner, Pranav worked on division math problems. In kindergarten, while “his classmates are learning the alphabet and numbers up to 100,” Pranav is “counting over one million.” In the future, “Pranav might eventually have his learning accelerated, even by skipping grades, but his father said they would have to consider that with his social needs. ‘We want him to be as normal as possible,’ his father said.”

NEA in the News
Obama’s Education Plans Spark Mixed Reactions Among Vermont Educators.
The Rutland (VT) Herald (3/12, Kumka) reported, “One pillar of President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s plan to reform education — rewards for teacher performance — sparked mixed reaction Wednesday from teachers and Vermont’s educational leadership. Representatives of Otter Valley Union High School — one of the only school districts in the state to have a contract that calls for paying teachers based on their performance — spoke highly of a performance-based pay system, a goal of the Obama administration, according to the US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.” However, Angelo Dorta, head of the National Education Association of Vermont, “hesitated to lend his support for teachers getting paid based on how well students do on tests or the federal government implementing an umbrella mandate for teachers getting paid based on their performance.”

Sheltered Classrooms Said To Help Immigrants Achieve Academic Standards.
On its front page, the New York Times (3/16, A1, Thompson) reports that within the last decade an influx of legal and illegal immigrants to the US “has strained many districts’ budgets and resources and put classrooms on the front lines of America’s battles over whether and how to assimilate the newcomers and their children.” The schools “are required to enroll students regardless of their immigration status.” Educators, meanwhile, focus on “how best to educate” those students. For instance, Hylton High School in Prince William County, VA, “has responded to the surge of immigrants by channeling them into a school within a school. It is, in effect, a contemporary form of segregation that provides students learning English intensive support to meet rising academic standards — and it also helps keep the peace.” According to some studies, “English learners in separate, so-called sheltered classrooms perform better in school than do the majority of their peers who are immersed in the mainstream with little or no language support.”

In the Classroom
Some Utah Districts Propose Increasing Participation Fees.
The Salt Lake Tribune (3/16, Stewart) reports, “Public school is supposed to be free. But high school students in Salt Lake can expect to pay $90 for art class, $20 for a Spanish workbook and up to $50 for science lab.” Furthermore, “Four of Utah’s larger school districts have proposed increases for the next year: Granite, Salt Lake, Jordan and Canyons. The fee hikes are largely limited to ‘electives,’ such as summer school, football and band.” According to school officials, without the fees, “cash-strapped schools might have to cut back on extracurricular offerings.” The Salt Lake Tribune notes, “Schools have routinely hit up students for ancillary goods and services, from art supplies and football helmets to lockers and parking spaces.” But some question “the legality of this practice…with parents and advocates for the poor arguing it’s unconstitutional.” Meanwhile, “district officials defend the fees, saying they don’t reflect the true cost of doing business.”

In-House Bank At High School In Tennessee Offers Students, Teachers Loans.
The Tennessean (3/16, Giordano) reports, “On Wednesday, a slew of school officials and students shook hands, posed for pictures and officially opened” Franklin High School’s “very own in-house bank,” the Franklin Financial Center. The bank “will provide students and staff with basic savings account services and small loans” for up to $2.75. The Tennessean adds, “Much like the real world, if students don’t pay the bank back, they will have to pay transaction fees, or worse, receive demerits or have letters sent to their parents.” Students in Maria Shepherd’s banking and finance classes “will work at the financial center, rotating in and out of banking positions, which will be a part of their grade.”

Video By California High School Students Highlights Families’ Economic Struggles.
The Los Angeles Times (3/14, Mehta) reported on “a nine-minute video made by students at Village Academy High School in Pomona” that featured “tales of families dealing with the economic crisis.” In the video, “students speak directly to the camera in front of a blue background, laced with footage of foreclosed homes, abandoned storefronts and others advertising going-out-of-business sales.” In President Obama’s “first major speech on education since taking office” last week, he “described the video and spoke directly to the Pomona students.” Obama told the students “America is listening. … And we are not going to rest until your parents can keep their jobs, your families can keep their homes, and you can focus on what you should be focusing on: your own education.” The Los Angeles Times explains “how the documentary…made at a low-income yet high-achieving public school” wound up “in a speech by the president.”

On the Job
Nonprofits Redistribute Business Castoffs As School Supplies.
The New York Times (3/15, A18, Mayer) reported that Boston’s Extras for Creative Learning “is a nonprofit organization that funnels castoff items from businesses into the hands of teachers, day care providers and parents. And the economic downturn is fueling a boom in some donations.” The “center, which has an annual budget of $175,000, picks up donated items at no charge. To raise money, it sells new and used donated furniture, like filing cabinets, tables, desks and chairs.” Also, Recycling for Rhode Island Education, in Providence, “also redistributes corporate castoffs with an environmental angle — ensuring that materials are reused rather than trashed. The Kids in Need Network gives free school supplies to low-income students in 23 cities.”

Officials In Colorado District Propose Performance Pay For All School Employees.
The Denver Post (3/15, Sherry) reported that the Jefferson County school district “plans to create a sweeping performance-pay system for everyone who has contact with students, giving bonuses for improvement in math, reading, writing — even art.” In order to fund the program, “school administrators and teachers-union leaders will apply for a grant from the federal education stimulus fund. … If both sides decide to move forward after the pilot, they will need voter approval for extra money to support the raises and bonuses for the district’s 5,100 teachers, counselors, librarians and therapists.” Even though “there are no concrete details” about the performance-pay plan, yet, Jefferson County officials pointed out that “they don’t want Denver’s system, ProComp, which is a complex cafeteria-style approach to teacher pay raises and bonuses.” Superintendent Cindy Stevenson said that under Jefferson County’s program, “raises…may not always come down to an individual teacher’s performance but to an entire school boosting grades and test scores of an identified group — Latino boys, for example.”

DC Schools Chief Says Drive To Fix Schools May Have Overwhelmed Teachers.
The Washington Post (3/14, B1, Turque) reported on the front page of its Metro section that in a letter, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee “told teachers…that in the drive ‘to fix everything all at once,’ she and her staff might have overwhelmed them with new programs and initiatives to turn around the under-performing school system.” Rhee was appointed as chancellor in June 2007. Since then, she “has moved with urgency at all levels of the school system. Her most visible changes include closing 23 schools, firing dozens of principals and attempting to introduce a potentially groundbreaking pay-for-performance package in labor negotiations.” She also implemented several “pilot programs and policy changes that have placed increasing demands on many teachers” such as “Saturday programs to prepare students for the DC-CAS standardized tests” and “cash reward program for students in selected middle schools.” According to the Post, “the letter is part of an effort by the chancellor to improve her standing with D.C. teachers as she negotiates a labor contract.”

“Mrs. Rhee wants teachers to agree to performance-based pay, a major point of contention between her and the Washington Teachers’ Union,” the Washington Times (3/16, Simmons) adds.

Maryland District’s SchoolMax Computer System “Plagued With Errors.”
On The front of its Metro section, the Washington Post (3/16, B1, Hernandez) reports, “A $4.1 million computer program designed to put Prince George’s County [MD] students’ grades, attendance and discipline data online has been plagued with errors in its first year, leading to botched schedules, an over-count of students and report cards that were delayed or, in some cases, simply wrong.” In all, “errors led to the duplication of 3,600 student identification numbers in the 128,000-student system; almost 300 were double-enrolled, leading to an inaccurate count of the student population.” SchoolMax “is owned by Harris Computer Systems, based in Canada, and has 76 clients, among them the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school system in the United States, where 300,000 middle and high school students use it.” The Post notes that a 2003 Los Angles Times article “reported similar complaints about grading and attendance glitches, but they do not seem to have caused as much trouble as in Prince George’s.”

Law & Policy
Florida District’s Code To Ban Hazing, Phones During Testing, And Bullying.
The St. Petersburg Times (3/16, Solochek) reports that proposed changes to Pasco County schools’ student code of conduct include prohibiting “students from using their [mobile] phone or other personal technology” during standardized testing “that can access the Internet to visit Web sites that would not make it through the district filters.” Another update would explicitly ban “hazing — defined as ‘any action or situation which coerces another including the victim to perform any act which causes or creates a substantial risk of causing mental or physical harm’…for the first time. Bullying is more tightly defined,” in accordance with “the state’s new antibullying law.” And, “distribution of illegal substances is specifically stated as grounds for disciplinary action, as are use and possession.” The Pasco County School Board “will have its first reading of the student code of conduct during its meeting today.”

Safety & Security
Violence Free Zone Reduces Suspensions, Altercations At Virginia High School.
The Richmond Times Dispatch (3/16, Reid) reports that at George Wythe High School in Richmond, VA, “Nearly every non-academic indicator of school failure — truancy, dropouts, suspensions, physical encounters, thefts on and near campus — is down this year, according to the school system and city police.” The change, according to the Richmond Times Dispatch, has come as a result of “a program called the Violence Free Zone,” a “national school-based violence-prevention program” by the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise. The program is run by the Richmond Outreach Center, a “religious outreach group,” which “sends 10 staff members daily to Wythe. Each youth adviser is responsible for 12 to 20 students, though they work with any student who asks for help.” School administrators are aiming to get “the 150 students in the Violence Free Zone more in line with the 850 or so other students.”

School Finance
Reliance On Property Tax Revenue Makes Many Schools Vulnerable To Recession.
USA Today (3/16, Toppo, Gillum) reports that “across the USA, hard times have forced schools to trim budgets, freeze hiring and, in a few cases, make substantial job cuts, raising doubts about the future of a range of programs.” USA Today points to seven school districts “across the nation” that it says are “particularly vulnerable to budget cuts in the coming year. They’re in areas hit by a wave of mortgage delinquencies, foreclosures and upside-down mortgages, in which borrowers owe more than their homes are worth, according to data analyzed by First American CoreLogic.” Because “education budgets also are especially reliant on local property tax revenue, which is likely to slide at a time when thousands of residents in the districts are losing their homes,” many “school systems across the USA are vulnerable.” According to USA Today, “more than half of school districts nationwide…rely on local property taxes for more than 25 percent of their budgets.”

Also in the News

Columnist Praises Education Secretary’s Leadership Skills.
In an opinion piece for Newsweek (3/14) columnist George F. Will wrote that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is “impressively impatient with what George W. Bush called ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations.’ But under Bush’s NCLB, Duncan says, ‘we have been lying to children and their parents because states have dumbed down their standards’ of proficiency. ‘Sometimes…you have to call the baby ugly,’” he said. Will touts some improvements made in the Chicago Public School district under Duncan’s leadership. For instance, “Duncan had many schools open 10 to 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week, for voluntary activities, including instruction.” And “under a policy whereby money follows the students, 59 percent of high-school students are attending schools they choose away from their neighborhoods. By closing failing schools and opening replacements, Chicago is ensuring that the portfolio of schools is churned and improved.” Furthermore, “By making teaching more fun, [Duncan's] Chicago innovations helped increase the number of applicants from two for each teaching position to 10.”

Virginia Officials, Educators Launch Online Physics Textbook.
The Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch (3/17, Nolan) reports, “Physics textbooks in some Virginia public schools are so outdated that instruction on the physics of television does not include LCD or plasma technologies and stops with the cathode ray tube.” But yesterday, Virginia officials and educators launched the “’21st Century Physics Flexbook’…a free, Web-based physics curriculum that educators throughout Virginia can access online to supplement the sometimes outdated textbook instruction on the subject.” The flexbook “was conceived as a way of making available current teaching and knowledge of the physical principles upon which the universe operates.” It was created by a “13-member team of college professors, industry professionals and high school teachers who collaborated for four months to produce [the] 10-chapter online manual.”

In the Classroom
Computer-Aided Instruction May Help Improve Learning, Study Shows.
Education Week (3/16, Cavanaugh) reported that according to a new study published in the February issue of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, “computer-aided instruction can potentially improve student learning in pre-algebra and algebra, partly because the technology gives teachers the ability to tailor instruction to children’s individual needs.” For the study, researchers looked at “3,451 late-middle and early-high school students from 17 schools, who were given various tests.” They found that “students using a particular program called ‘I CAN Learn Education Systems’ made gains in mathematics test scores.” Study authors “Lisa Barrow, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; Lisa Markman, the acting director of the Education Research Section at Princeton University; and Cecilia Elena Rouse, a professor of economics and public affairs, who is also at Princeton,” noted that the “improvements were especially strong for students in large classes and those with high absentee rates.”

Some Teachers Use Latest Technology To Enhance Lessons, Engage Students.
The Wilmington (DE) News Journal (3/16, Price) reported, “While most children today learn how to operate a computer and get on the Internet before they start school, many teachers are still trying to catch up with the digital world.” But some teachers manage to keep up-to-date on the latest technology, and use it to enhance lessons and keep students engaged. For instance, when Kara Patti, a kindergarten teacher at North Star Elementary School “left her classroom last month to go on maternity leave, some of her students had a hard time adjusting to the change.” In an effort “to ease the separation, Patti began talking to her students through a webcam from her Oxford, Pa., home. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Patti calls her classroom using Skype.” The idea was so successful that North Star’s enrichment teacher Karen Ammann incorporated “it into one of North Star’s third-grade classes, which has a pen pal program with a South Korean elementary school.”

DC Schools To Reduce “Read-Aloud” Accommodations For Test-Takers.
Bill Turque wrote in the “D.C. Wire” blog for the Washington Post (3/16), “More than 2,000 students in D.C. public and public charter schools with reading difficulties have questions and passages in the English Language Arts portion of the annual DC-CAS standardized test read to them. But federal and state officials have ordered D.C. schools to sharply reduce the number of ‘read-aloud’ accommodations, contending they have been overused.” Turque added that under an agreement between ED and “the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education, the District must cut by half the number of read-loud arrangements before next month’s DC-CAS exams.” D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee “said the accommodation ‘can hide the extent to which your child may be struggling to read. Therefore, changing the use of this accommodation will allow us to see more clearly the kind of help your child may need.’”

On the Job
Oklahoma Teacher Fired Over Gay-Themed Film Controversy.
USA Today (3/17, Toppo) reports, “Gay rights groups are complaining about the firing of a rural Oklahoma high school teacher who lost her job last week after assigning a play about the 1998 death of a gay college student. But the tiny school district says the move came after the teacher held a mock ‘funeral’ for a canceled film production of the play.” According to USA Today, “The episode began in January, when Debra Taylor showed students at Grandfield High School The Laramie Project, a 2002 film based on the play of the same name, about the murder of Matthew Shepard. The students soon decided to film selected scenes themselves for an in-class project.” Though Taylor “got her principal’s permission,” to move forward despite the play’s “strong language,” a “few weeks into it, the principal told her to stop production. … Taylor says she was let go for complaining” to a school board member, “but others say it was a result of the play’s subject: homophobia.”

Law & Policy
Court Upholds Texas Law Requiring Moment Of Silence In Public Schools.
The AP (3/17) reports, “A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a Texas law that requires public school students to observe a daily minute of silence in order to pray, reflect, or otherwise remain quiet.” The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by David and Shannon Croft, whose three children attend schools in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District, and an anonymous family. The group “contended that including the word ‘pray’ in the mandatory moment of silence law was a way for lawmakers to advance religion in schools.” Meanwhile, “the state argued that the moment of silence fostered patriotism, provided time for contemplation, and protected religious freedom.” The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that “the law is constitutional because it expressly allows for any silent use of the period, either religious or nonreligious.”

Education Stimulus Seen As Supporting Both New, Old Initiatives.
The Christian Science Monitor (3/17, Chaddock) reports that “at the heart of President Obama’s historic $787 billion economic stimulus program is a tough choice for educators: Do states and local school districts use the $100 billion spike in federal aid to do new things for kids or mainly to backfill the status quo?” According to the Christian Science Monitor, “the Obama administration is calling on schools to do both.” The stimulus package provides “$8.8 billion for priority initiatives of governors that could include education,” $13 billion to “boost programs [that] help schools serving poor families under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and $12 billion” for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Speaking to the Council of the Great City Schools on Sunday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, “If all we do is use the stimulus money to invest in the status quo, we’re not going to get to where we need to go.”

Duncan Outlines Criteria For Education Awards In Meeting With Urban School Chiefs.
The AP (3/17, Quaid) reports that Education Secretary Arne Duncan “says schools must make drastic changes to get money from a special $5 billion fund in the economic stimulus bill. ‘We’re going to reward those states and those districts that are willing to challenge the status quo and get dramatically better,’ Duncan said Monday at the White House.” According to the AP, “To get an award, schools and states must show they have been spending their money wisely. They are supposed to find innovative ways to close the achievement gap between black and Latino children who lag behind their white counterparts in more affluent schools.” Applications “will be available later this spring, and money will be awarded beginning in October. … Duncan was meeting with urban school leaders who belong to the Council of the Great City Schools.”

Aid To Struggling Schools Seen As Key In Effort To Reduce Dropout Rate. Education Week (3/16, Hoff) reported, “In the seven years since enactment of No Child Left Behind Act, the number of academically troubled schools identified for turnarounds has grown steadily.” Now the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act “will give states a previously unexpected $3.4 billion to spend on improving the schools that are farthest from reaching the NCLB law’s goal that all children be proficient in reading and math by the end of the 2013-14 school year.” According to federal officials, the “money to fix struggling schools will be a key part of the Obama administration’s efforts…to reduce the dropout rate and increase the number of students earning college degrees.”

Safety & Security
St. Louis School District Aims To Reduce Lead Paint Hazards.
The AP (3/17, Taylor) reports that the “St. Louis [MO] school district said it wants to reduce potential lead paint hazards at 25 elementary schools before the start of the next school year.” Last week, the school board “approved about $5.4 million to abate the lead, with work to begin in May or June and be completed by August. The district has not yet identified a funding source,” but “hopes to be able to use economic stimulus money for the work.” The AP notes that “many of St. Louis’ school buildings were built long before a 1978 ban on lead paint that was based on studies showing exposure could cause reduced intelligence and brain damage in children.”

Anti-Circus Protestors Target Students At Elementary School In New York.
New York’s Newsday (3/17, Lam, Kelleher) reports, “Last week, protesters from” People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) came to Fulton Elementary School “unannounced and uninvited, to try to convince youngsters leaving at day’s end that circuses mistreat their animals.” This week, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus “will be at Nassau Coliseum.” The group chose to stage their protest at Fulton because of the school’s proximity to Nassau Coliseum. PETA “handed out coloring books with stickers that read, ‘Circuses are no fun for animals’” and “activity books that explained that tigers and elephants belong in the jungle, not under the big top.” School officials meanwhile, “were not pleased. … ‘I just think targeting children this age is inappropriate, in my opinion,’ said Rodney Gilmore, Hempstead district assistant interim superintendent for elementary education.”

Facilities
Debate Stalls Plans To Build High School In “Overcrowded” New York District.
The New York Times (3/17, A20, Hernandez) reports, “In a Queens school district that is one of New York City’s most overcrowded, a plan to replace an old restaurant supply store with a gleaming $70 million high school for 1,100 students might seem irresistible.” But “the proposal has instead become a flashpoint of contention over how public school enrollment should be determined.” The residents of “Maspeth, a blue-collar area with a small-town feel in western Queens, have long lamented the lack of a high school there, and they want to give local children a leg up in getting into the new school.” The Bloomberg administration, however, believes that “that giving certain students an advantage threatens to further splinter the sprawling system by class, leaving families lacking savvy and resources to attend some of the worst schools.” The Times notes that “if a compromise is not reached before a critical City Council vote that is expected later this month,” plans to build the new high school “may be scuttled.”

School Finance

Portland, Oregon, Superintendent Suggests No Cost-Of-Living Increase.
The Oregonian (3/17, Melton) reports, “Portland Superintendent Carole Smith proposes that the district eliminate cost-of-living pay raises for most employees and increase class sizes slightly in 2009-10 to keep a full school year and maintain critical services for students.” Portland Public Schools plans to “cut about $15 million” from its budget next year. Eliminating cost-of-living increases for most district workers “would allow Portland to save about $9 million and preserve 140 teaching positions,” while cutting “roughly one percent of teaching positions,” or about 27 full-time teachers, “is expected to save about $2 million.” The Oregonian notes that “none of the district’s reserves are used in the 2009-10 operating budget. Portland maintains about $8 million in reserves in the general fund and can access an additional $25 million in a capital improvement fund.”

Also in the News
Clayton County Schools Said To Be On Track Toward Regaining Accreditation.
The AP (3/17, Turner) reports that “the troubled Clayton County school district is headed in the right direction to win back its accreditation,” according to newly-appointed interim superintendent Valya Lee, who took over her current position “on Saturday after the school board unanimously fired John Thompson.” Although Lee said that she “has not ruled out applying for the permanent job,” she “wants to focus on regaining accreditation first.” During a news conference, Lee said, “My goal is to have those seniors graduate from a fully accredited school.” The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools “is scheduled to send a team to Clayton County April 13-15 to determine if the district has done enough to regain accreditation.”

NEA in the News
Florida Education Association Organizes Rally In Support Of One-Cent Tax Increase.
The St. Petersburg Times (3/17, Hollyfield) reports, “The plan was simple: Pile more than 2.6 million pennies on the steps of the Capitol for a rally by parents, teachers and other educators.” The Florida Education Association, which organized the rally, wanted to present one penny for “each student in the state of Florida” to “show support for a proposal by state Rep. Dwight Bullard (D-Miami), that calls for a three-year, one-cent raise in the state sales tax to fund education.” But “the Department of Management Services, which handles requests for rallies and demonstrations at the Capitol…said no to the penny plan,” because the pennies would “weigh some 15,000 pounds.” Still, “hundreds of thousands have arrived already at an undisclosed location near the Capitol. More than 300,000 were delivered Monday by Chuck McNaughton who sells hay in Brevard County.”

Despite Opposition, Momentum Grows For Building Performance Pay Systems.
The Christian Science Monitor (3/18, Paulson, Khadaroo) reports, “Performance pay is one of several areas getting attention right now as education reformers zero in on high-quality teaching as the key to helping students learn.” The idea behind performance pay is that “it takes good teachers to improve student achievement, and it will take better pay to lure and keep good teachers.” Advocates say that one way to determine teacher quality is to look “at students’ scores on standardized tests.” Currently, several states, including Florida and Minnesota “now have policies promoting what’s sometimes called merit pay.” But “critics, including many unions,” contend that “it’s difficult to determine which teachers are most effective, and it’s particularly unfair to tie pay partly to student test scores.” They also note that “there’s a lack of solid evidence so far that changing the pay structure really improves teaching.” The Christian Science Monitor lists some of the most common “new pay structures” being implemented in districts throughout the US.

In a separate story, the Christian Science Monitor (3/18, Khadaroo) reports, “Education reformers want to look at how well an individual teacher does in improving students’ scores, but the focus on specific teachers doesn’t sit well with many in the profession.” Overall, teachers are concerned about the amount of time they must devote to preparing students for standardized tests. “So for many teachers, the idea of using students’ scores to judge how well they teach — and to decide how much money they earn — is a nonstarter.” Nevertheless, “momentum is growing for building more data systems and sophisticated formulas that” performance pay “advocates say can be part of the picture in fairly judging teachers.” Ross Wiener, “a senior adviser at The Education Trust in Washington, which focuses on closing gaps in student achievement,” said that it is “only fair to students ‘to get strategic about rewarding the best teachers and helping the weakest to improve.’”

In the Classroom
Art, Music Instruction Time Has Not Changed Under NCLB, GAO Report Shows.
According to the Dallas Morning News (3/18, Haag, Yan), a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) “found that elementary school time devoted to art and music curriculum hasn’t changed despite the ongoing pressures of standardized testing in core subjects such as math and science.” The report shows that “90 percent of elementary teachers surveyed indicated that art and music curriculum remained the same during three school years starting in 2004-05 and ending in 2006-07. Only seven percent of the teachers reported that instruction time decreased.” The GAO study was “conducted…in response to concerns that the No Child Left Behind law’s annual yearly progress reports, which grade and compare schools’ math and English scores, would deprive students of art and music instruction.”

Senior Citizens Tell High School Students About Living Through Great Depression.
The St. Petersburg Times (3/18) reports on an “educational partnership evolving between residents of Atria Baypoint Village in Hudson and students in Eric Johnson’s history classes at Hudson High” School in Florida. Through the partnership, senior citizens speak to the students about living “through the Great Depression.” Atria Baypoint residents recently “set their alarm clocks for 5 a.m. to get to school on time, just so they could talk to Johnson’s students about the Great Depression. On Thursday, they’ll come out again to talk about World War II.” According to Johnson, the visits enhance his curriculum. “‘It’s one thing to have the kids read about it in a book, but for them to hear these stories gives a whole new perspective,’ he said. ‘Let me just tell you — these kids were silent for a whole hour.’”

Cosmetology Students Offer Discounted Services To Peers With Special Needs.
The Las Vegas Sun (3/18, Richmond) reports on a partnership between the Southeast Career & Technical Academy’s cosmetology program and special education students at Liberty High School. Through “what’s known as ‘community-based instruction,’” cosmetology students can test “what they’ve learned in the classroom” by providing services to their clients from Liberty High. Most days, “special education students, ranging from high functioning to severely disabled, are among the salon’s clientele.” The salon is open Monday through Friday, and offers a wide range of services, each only $2 for Liberty special education students. The public, meanwhile, pays between $5 and $30, depending on the service. “The interaction between special education and career students is the kind of crossover program the Clark County School District prides itself on — and educators are determined to protect — amid steep budget cuts.”

High-Schoolers Teach Elementary Students About Why Dogfighting Is Illegal.
The Chicago Tribune (3/18, Woodward) reports on a “presentation by four Walter Payton College Preparatory students” to teach elementary students “about why dogfighting is illegal. … Instead of preaching the wickedness of fighting animals, however, the teens have spent most of the visit instructing the youths how to safely interact with dogs and teaching them that animals, like humans, can feel pain.” First, the teens show “photographs of dogs in various situations — such as playing in a park or chained to a tree.” They ask the students “if the scene depicted is good or bad.” Toward “the end of the presentation…the teens [discuss] dogfighting.” The Walter Payton students “visit an elementary school in Chicago neighborhoods where dogfighting is prevalent” once every week as “part of a weekly seminar course headed by Payton English teacher Michelle Mowery.” Mowery and Cynthia Bathurst, the principal director at Safe Humane Chicago, “developed the course two years ago” to help “students…develop leadership skills and become more engaged in the community, while also addressing dogfighting.”

21st Century Learning Center Gives Students At Arizona Elementary Math, English Help.
The Arizona Republic (3/18, Schneider) reports that 50 students in San Marcos Elementary School’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program “are doing activities to reinforce math and language arts lessons.” According to San Marcos Principal Christine Sargent, “the program serves as an extension of the school day and allows extra time for students to grasp material.” It is funded through a five-year grant that mainly services “Title 1 schools, which are schools with a low-income demographic makeup, that haven’t met annual progress set by No Child Left Behind.”

More English Language Learners In New York City Gain Proficiency In 2008.
The New York Times (3/18, A22, Hernandez) reports that New York City’s “Department of Education released a report on Tuesday showing that unprecedented numbers of” students struggling to learn English “became proficient in [the subject] last year and that more of them passed state tests in English and math.” Specifically, the report shows that “about 29 percent of fourth graders struggling with English passed the state language-arts test last year, compared with about four percent in 2003. Among eighth graders, five percent passed, up from about one percent in 2003.” The Times points out, “The report on English language learners followed a heated debate Friday between Education Department officials and state lawmakers at a hearing on the 2002 mayoral control law.” One main “point of contention was whether the city had made adequate progress with a particularly vulnerable set of students, including some who have not had formal schooling in years.”

On the Job
Several California Districts Recruit Teachers From Philippines to Fill Critical Areas.
The Los Angeles Times (3/18, Watanabe) reports that “more than 100 school districts, including at least 20 in California, are recruiting in the Philippines to fill teacher shortages in math, science, and special education.” For instance, “The Los Angeles Unified School District has hired between 250 and 300 teachers from the Philippines — the largest contingent among more than 600 foreign exchange teachers overall, a district official said.” Deborah Ignagni, a district human resources administrator, said that LAUSD officials have recruited teachers from the Philippines for years, because “the higher education system is similar, so credits are easily transferable for U.S. teaching credentials.” Furthermore, “most Filipinos speak English and can understand some Spanish, which is embedded in the Filipino language as a result of Spain’s 300-year colonization of the islands.” Meanwhile, Filipino teachers “say they jumped at the chance to work in the United States, lured primarily by far better pay.”

Law & Policy
Texas Bill Would Not Require Elementary Students To Pass State Tests To Be Promoted.
The Dallas Morning News (3/18, Stutz) reports, “Texas high school students would have to pass at least eight out of 12 end-of-course exams to get a diploma, and elementary school students would no longer have to pass the state achievement test, The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), “in certain grades to be promoted under school improvement legislation taken up Tuesday by House and Senate committees.” The goal is to “take the pressure off elementary and middle schools to focus on preparation for the TAKS test by allowing school districts to devise their own promotion standards — using TAKS results, course grades, and teacher recommendations.” High school students, meanwhile, would have to pass “at least two of the three” high-stakes tests “now being developed in each of four core subject areas — English, math, science and social studies” — to receive a diploma. Current rules specify that “students must pass the TAKS exit-level exam and complete required course credits to earn a diploma.”

Safety & Security
CPSC Chief Of Staff Clarifies Agency’s Stance On Hazardousness Of Children’s Books.
The AP (3/18, Logan) reports that “a new federal law banning more than minute levels of lead in most products intended for children 12 or younger — and a federal agency’s interpretation of the law — prompted at least two libraries last month to pull children’s books printed before 1986 from their shelves.” In a recent interview with the Associated Press, a spokesperson for the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said that “until more testing is done, the nation’s more than 116,000 public and school libraries should take steps to ensure that children are kept away from books printed before 1986.” The AP notes that “lead was present in ink until a growing body of regulations banned it in 1986.” But On Tuesday, CPSC Chief of Staff Joe Martyak said that the agency “has neither concluded that older books could be hazardous to children nor made any recommendations to libraries about quarantining such tomes.” He added that the agency spokesperson “‘misspoke’ about the agency’s stance on older books and younger children.”

Also in the News
Task Force To Develop Cross-Curricular Outline Of Black History For Educators.
The Annapolis (MD) Capital (3/17, Shapiro) reported that according to David Terry, executive director of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture in Baltimore, “a task force of state education officials and historians is developing an outline of black history for use by teachers and administrators.” The goal is to “integrate black history into a variety of school subjects.” Terry said that “Black History Month…has served as a model for how to introduce alternative experiences into the American narrative.” And “he thinks that in the future all of the history focus months that have followed, include Women’s History and Hispanic Heritage months, will be seen as part of the whole educational experience rather than as isolated themes.” The task force has not set a completion date for the project, yet, but the outline is expected to be launched soon.

NEA in the News

Event Showcases Technology Initiatives At Michigan Schools.
WXYZ-TV Detroit (3/17) reported, “Some of the best ideas in high tech education will be on display at the MEA/MACUL Student Technology Showcase at Cobo Center in Detroit” on Thursday, March 19. At the event, “students from around the state will show how technology is helping them achieve in the classroom.” For example, “One fourth grade student from Erie Elementary School in Clinton Township will present a digital storybook of her adoption from China, while her classmates use PowerPoint to illustrate the life cycle of the monarch butterfly.” And “Students from La Mora Park Elementary school in Battle Creek will show how they harnessed the power of technology for common good” by using “computer software to create posters to raise money for a variety of charities.” The showcase is being sponsored by the Michigan Education Association (MEA).

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