Updates and Information Provided by NEA
Henry Osmers, author of ON EAGLE’S BEAK: A HISTORY OF THE MONTAUK LIGHTHOUSE
Henry Osmers, author of ON EAGLE’S BEAK: A HISTORY OF THE MONTAUK LIGHTHOUSE
State-Appointed Financial Manager Restructuring Detroit Public Schools.
The AP (5/22) reports that under Detroit Public Schools’ (DPS) restructuring process, “29 public schools will close, another 40 will be restructured, 900 teachers and staff will be pink-slipped and 33 principals fired” next fall. Robert Bobb, the state-appointed emergency financial manager for DPS “has one year to correct a $300 million budget deficit, improve test scores and address a graduation rate that’s among the nation’s lowest.” Bobb has even sought to have the school system “‘placed under a special presidential emergency declaration’ to get federal funding for infrastructure and curriculum.” The AP notes that “Detroit’s schools have been plagued by mismanagement, lack of oversight and corruption, which has cost the district millions of dollars.” Education Secretary Arne Duncan “described Detroit as ‘ground zero’ for education and said that ‘Detroit is New Orleans two years ago without Hurricane Katrina.’”
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In the Classroom
California Schools Chief Warns Budget Cuts May Undermine Testing Gains.
The AP (5/22) reports that Jack O’Connell, California’s superintendent of public instruction, “said Thursday that students made modest gains in academic performance last year but warned that the [state's] budget crisis poses a serious threat to public education.” The percentage of schools reaching the state’s “target API score of 800″ increased by “3.3 percent for elementary schools, 5.7 percent for middle schools and 2.8 percent for high schools,” according to the report. But those improvements “could be jeopardized by anticipated budget cuts to education,” O’Connell said. “California faces an estimated $21 billion budget deficit after voters this week rejected a package of ballot measures that would have reduced the shortfall by about $6 billion.” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has “proposed cutting education funding by $5.3 billion, in part by reducing the 180-day school year by 7.5 days,” in order to balance the state budget. The San Francisco Chronicle (5/22, Asimov) also covers this story.
High School In North Carolina Targets Dropout Rate With iPods.
News14Carolina (5/21, Moxley) reported that “every freshman at North Rowan High School” in Spencer, NC, has received an iPod touch, “a handheld touchscreen device” that allows them “to access information on the Internet and create just about any kind of project.” With the device, “students can create multimedia podcasts in any subject and on any subject.” The goal of incorporating the iPods in the classroom is to keep students’ interest and “help lower the drop-out rate.”
Student Technology Competition Features Robot Face Offs, “Bench” Race.
The Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader (5/22, Warren) reports on the Student Technology Leadership Program competition that took place on Thursday at Rupp Arena and Heritage Hall in Lexington, KY. “More than 2,500 students, representing 300 schools from 93 Kentucky school districts, poured into” the venue, which “featured technology competitions of all types for elementary, middle and high school teams.” Events included “robotics face-offs” and “‘bench’ competitions, in which teams of youngsters had 30 minutes to figure out what’s wrong with some deliberately sabotaged computers, fix them and get them working again.” While at the arena, students could also “try out various pieces of new technology, enjoy student-created digital art, music and videos, and immerse themselves in a ‘technology playground’ on the floor of Rupp Arena.”
Pennsylvania High School Students Interview Veterans For Nationwide History Project.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (5/21, Conway) reported that “Nearly 15 North Allegheny American History students volunteered on May 11 to interview Mr. Lloyd and several other veterans so their stories could be documented and kept at the Library of Congress as part of the nationwide Veterans History Project.” The initiative was approved by Congress in 2000 to collect, preserve, and make “accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans so that future generations may hear directly from veterans and better understand the realities of war,” according to its Web site www.loc.gov/vets.” Eleventh grade history teacher Jamey Pirring “had already assigned veterans interviews to his students when he saw an e-mail last winter asking for a teacher to organize the interviews and tapings of the history project.”
Sixth Graders Teach Younger Students At Pennsylvania School’s Latin American Festival.
The Lancaster (PA) News (5/22, Pennino) reports that sixth-graders at Fritz Elementary School “have been learning about various countries in Latin America as part of the school’s social studies curriculum.” At the Latin American Festival at Fritz on Thursday, “sixth-graders explained the history, culture and infrastructure of countries in Latin America through 25 exhibits.” Throughout “the day, students in kindergarten through fifth grade strolled outside in a grassy area behind the school to visit the exhibits.” They “learned facts about countries by playing games and looking at pictures, clothing and other items native to the countries.” Along with learning “about the politics of each country,” the younger students “also learned about the major industries that contribute to the economies.”
On the Job
Science Teacher Heads Up Construction Of County-Wide Model Of Solar System.
The Washington Post (5/22, Birnbaum) reports on Seneca Ridge Middle School “sixth-grade science teacher” Rick Peck, who “has banded together with other teachers, parents, and students to try to build a Loudoun County-size model” of the solar system. Peck got the idea for the project after seeing a “solar system model in Switzerland a few years ago. ‘I tried to guess where the next planet was, and I was totally off…I had zero visual sense of the locations and the size of the planets, even though I knew mathematically where they were,’” he said. The model will “acknowledge marble-size Pluto’s recent slip to dwarf-planet status. Another dwarf, Ceres, and an asteroid, Vesta, would get representations as big as pebbles.” Peck wants to build the model “by mid-2010.”
Technology Seen As An Important Educational Supplement.
In an opinion piece for the New York Daily News (5/22) Publisher Mort Zuckerman writes, “By far the most important task performed by government in America is public education. Yet teachers, parents, the President, and his secretary of education are all intuitively aware that our system is, by and large, a failure.” Even though “we’re spending 700 percent more per pupil than we were 50 years ago,” the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that “twelfth-graders’ scores in math, science and reading have been flat for 30 years” and “large [achievement] gaps persist between whites and African-Americans and whites and Hispanics.” According to Zuckerman, research indicates that the quality of teachers is “the most important factor affecting a young person’s chances of success.” In order to get the best teachers to reach the most students, Zuckerman suggests using technology, which he describes as “an important supplement in providing a new form of blended learning.”
Stanford Professor Identifies Qualities Of Effective Teachers.
The Des Moines Register (5/22) features an interview by Editorial-Page Editor Linda Lantor Fandel of Stanford University Education Professor Linda Darling-Hammond. Fandel asks, “What are the qualities of a great teacher?” Darling-Hammond asserts that “teachers tend to be more effective when they have a strong background in the field they are teaching, and a strong background in how to teach that content, how to make it understandable to other people.” She also notes that in practice, “effective teachers set up active learning situations for students, so kids are applying and using their knowledge.” These teachers usually “have a wide repertoire of teaching strategies” and “are very attentive to the learning of each individual child.” To become more effective, Darling-Hammond noted that “in most high-achieving countries, teachers have 15 to 25 hours a week where they are planning collaboratively with their colleagues.”
Law & Policy
Colorado School Districts To Pay For High Schoolers’ Community College Courses.
The Denver Post (5/22, Slevin) reports, “Colorado is making it easier for schools to offer teens a chance to earn an associate’s degree while still in high school, a move backers say could help lower the dropout rate and help the state win millions in extra federal stimulus money.” Under House Bill 1319, which Gov. Bill Ritter (D) signed into law on Thursday, high school students will be able to “take an unlimited number of college courses a community college with school districts picking up the tab.” And “students who stay for a fifth year of high school can use a state subsidy set aside for all Colorado high school graduates to pay their tuition.”
South Carolina Governor Sues State Attorney General Over Stimulus.
The AP (5/22) reports that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) “has for months blocked the receipt of $700 million in federal bailout money intended to stop education cuts.” In a lawsuit against “his state’s attorney general,” Sanford is now asking “a federal court to declare that the Legislature violated the state Constitution by trying to require him to take the money.” Attorney General Henry McMaster (R) is named in the suit “because he’s the chief enforcer of South Carolina laws.”
Also in the News
Army National Guardsman Struggled To Regain Teaching Position After Iraq Deployment.
The Washington Post (5/24, Davenport) reports on Craig Lewis, a teacher and Virginia Army National Guard helicopter pilot. In 2005, Lewis was pulled from his teaching job at Fluvanna High School to attend flight school in Fort Rucker, AL. When he returned to Fluvanna in 2007 after fighting in Iraq, Lewis said that he was at first disappointed that the school had not held his teaching position for him while he was away. And even though “his principal had said he would keep Lewis in mind for any job openings, Lewis saw it as a flat-out rejection.” The Post points out that Lewis’s position at Fluvanna “was filled by a substitute qualified to teach special education. Still, as Barlow would later observe, ‘it’s always difficult when you lose the regular teacher.’” Eventually, Fluvanna High offered Lewis “his job back.” But Lewis, who was grappling with the thought that the position was offered just a “few weeks before the start of school,” refused.
Project Seeks To Improve On Utah’s Above-Average Bioscience Education Rankings.
Utah’s Deseret Morning News (5/22, Leonard) reports, “Utah seems to be keeping above the national average in most of the core subjects taught in schools, specifically in science and life science achievement ratings, which were released this week during the Biotechnology Industry Organization international convention.” At the same time, “the findings indicate a clear need for improved science education that incorporates the biosciences at the middle and high school levels if the country’s bioscience industry sector is to remain globally competitive.” Suzanne Winters, a Utah Science Technology and Research outreach director, described the state’s performance as “OK,” but added, “If we want to compete, I don’t think OK is good enough.” Currently, “Winters is heading up a collaborative project, called the BioInnovations Gateway, with the Granite School District’s Technical Institute and Salt Lake Community College” designed “to give students an opportunity to work directly with USTAR business incubator companies while utilizing sophisticated equipment and getting hands-on experience.”
Robot-Building Program Offers Alternative Way To Teach Math.
The Los Angeles Times (5/25, Watanabe) reported, “Cal Poly Pomona engineers help fifth- and sixth-graders build and program robots for sumo-style competitions” that “educators say…shows math’s relevance and makes learning fun.” The Cal Poly engineers brought the program to Montvue Elementary School last year “in an effort to excite kids about math by making it less abstract and more connected to real-life problem-solving.” The engineers “took care not to tell the students how to” build the robots, “but encouraged them to figure it out on their own, aiming to foster scientific inquiry, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.” By taking part in the activity, “students learned measurement, fractions, decimals, proportional reasoning,” among other things. According to the Times, Cesar Larriva, “a Cal Poly Pomona associate professor and math education specialist,” came up with the idea because “frustrated with the way math is taught in U.S. schools.”
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In the Classroom
High School Law Enforcement Class Provides “Realistic” Firearms Training.
The Sacramento Bee (5/25, B1, Lambert) reported on “the Law Enforcement Careers Class that began this year at Roseville High School.” In the class, students “are taught firearms training, weaponless self-defense, [and] forensics and law, among other things.” Each Wednesday and Friday, groups of 10 students visit a shoot house “after school to practice with Airsoft pistols – exact replicas of the Sig Sauer pistols used by the Placer Sheriff’s Department.” But instead of bullets, the pistols fire plastic BBs. Retired sheriff’s deputy Dee Ingram teaches the class, and said that “the air pistols make the training more realistic and the class more exciting.” In addition to using pistols, “the realistic training also has included being doused with pepper spray and practicing hand-to-hand combat with martial arts students.” The class, Ingram noted, “is covered by workers’ comp insurance.”
Some Educators Question Effectiveness Of Maryland’s High School Exit Exams.
The Washington Post (5/26, Hernandez) reports, “When Maryland’s high school class of 2009 graduates next month, it will become the first in the state to prove it can solve an equation such as 12x + 84=252.” And while “about 4,000 of 58,000 seniors statewide hadn’t passed the High School Assessments (HSA) or met an alternative academic standard,” education “officials predict that graduation rates will remain roughly the same and that only a handful of seniors will be denied a diploma based on the HSA requirement.” Consequently, some question whether “graduates benefit from the tests in the long run” and if the test made a difference for students at all. According to the Post, “proponents and critics agree [that] the exams measure a standard that can be met by many ninth-graders.” And “some educators, including Montgomery County Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, say the exams should test for a higher standard of knowledge.”
Workshop Aimed At Teaching Elementary Students the Importance Of Writing Skills.
California’s Contra Costa Times (5/26, Mather) reports that on Thursday, Dapplegray Elementary School “hosted its third annual Writers Workshop, bringing 18 professionals to campus to show students how they use writing in their work.” Featured writing professionals included “screenwriters and magazine editors” in addition to “professional athletes, actors, and musicians.” The event was geared toward “third-, fourth- and fifth-graders,” aiming “to show students they would use writing for the rest of their lives, regardless of their careers.” Dapplegray “students attended three workshops throughout the day, where volunteers explained how they used writing in their jobs and led students through various exercises.” Susan Liberati, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction for the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District,” said that “devoting the entire day to writing showed students how vital writing skills are.”
On the Job
Baltimore Seeks More Teach For America Teachers.
The Baltimore Sun (5/26, Bowie) reports, “The Baltimore school system has asked Teach for America, which sends thousands of recent college graduates into public schools around the nation, to nearly double the number of teachers it puts in city classrooms in the next two years if enough private money can be raised.” Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso said, “I think of [Teach for America] as almost an instrument of reform in the district, in that the mission and the commitment of the partners is very much in line with the thrust of the reforms we are putting in place.” He noted that in Baltimore, “middle and high school students taught by Teach for America participants outperformed the students in the rest of the district even though the program’s teachers were assigned to schools with the neediest students.” The school system’s proposal “would supply about 150 first-year teachers to classrooms from pre-kindergarten through high school next fall and in 2010, up from 90 this school year.”
Most Teachers In Washington District Who Received Layoff Notices May Keep Jobs.
The Sammamish (WA) Review (5/25, Kagarise) reported, “Issaquah School District Superintendent Steve Rasmussen said today some — and possibly all — of the158 teachers marked for layoffs may be able to keep their jobs.” District officials had expected “$10.5 million in cuts,” but now they expect “to lose $7.3 million in state funding.” While most teachers who received layoff notices are likely to be recalled, the district still stands to “lose between 40 and 45 positions as a result of attrition, retirements, and contracts that will not be continued.”
Illinois District Recalls 77 Teachers’ Aides, 34 Teachers.
The Joliet (IL) Herald News (5/25, Velasco) reported that the “Valley View School board has recalled all of the 77 paraprofessionals and teacher’s aides the district sent ‘reduction in force’ letters to last March and has recalled 34 of its 136 teachers.” All of the recalled paraprofessionals and aides are first-year educators. The district sought to “reduce its teaching ranks” because “a $7 million deficit [was] predicted last fall.” In March, Superintendent Phil Schoffstall said that “the district identified about $9.5 million in potential savings.”
Massachusetts Districts Implementing Strategies To Decrease Dropout Rate.
Massachusetts’ Sun Chronicle (5/25, Foster) reported that “according to the Rennie Center, a think tank that recently published a study on Massachusetts dropouts and methods for dealing with at-risk teens, Bay State school districts are trying a number of innovative strategies to reach students.” These initiatives include “ninth grade academies to keep students from falling off the pace early, credit recovery programs to help those who fall behind and mentoring and counseling programs to ensure that each student is connected with an adult vitally concerned about their future.” The Sun Chronicle pointed out that while “dropout rates increased this year in most school districts, percentages still remain below the 2006 level.”
Law & Policy
Duncan Challenges California Lawmakers To Embrace Reform.
The Los Angeles Times (5/23, Mehta) reported that “as California schools brace for billions of dollars in budget cuts,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan “warned Friday that the state’s students were in peril, and he challenged politicians and educators to embrace difficult reforms.” California was one stop on Duncan’s “15-state listening tour intended to help shape the Obama administration’s proposal to rework the federal No Child Left Behind reform law.” Duncan told lawmakers that while “stopping teacher layoffs and reducing class sizes are important,” federal stimulus dollars “must also be used to drive reform, such as using student achievement data to evaluate teacher effectiveness and turning around the most troubled schools.” Furthermore, he “challenged state and local leaders to tackle the most difficult reforms, such as reconstituting failing high schools, evaluating teachers based on their students’ performance, and paying more to teachers who work in challenging communities.”
New York City Schools Chief Favors “Rational” Teacher Pay Systems.
The Washington Post (5/25, Chandler) reported, “Before D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) took over” DC “public schools two years ago, he paid a visit” to New York “to learn about a school system at the center of urban education reform.” In 2002, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appointed Joel I. Klein as chancellor “of the 1.1 million-student system.” As schools chief, Klein “has emphasized accountability and school choice” and “has granted principals more autonomy and money in exchange for results.” He is also “a supporter and confidant” for DC schools chief Michelle Rhee. When asked how he thinks teaching should be reformed, Klein said that the “seniority-driven, life-tenure-driven, across-the-board salary-driven model of compensation” should be overhauled in favor of “more rational pay systems, the kind of thing Michelle [Rhee] is proposing. So, in the third or fourth year, people who would like to stay teaching, they are not capped at $50,000 or $52,000.”
Some Officials Seek To Limit Teacher-Student Contact On Social Networking Sites.
The Arizona Daily Star (5/24, Bodfield) reported that as social networking sites continue to increase in popularity, “some teachers have started using the new tools to build rapport” and “update students on classroom activities.” However, such openness could lead to “the appearance of impropriety and other ethical issues.” It may also lead “to criminal cases.” Last Week, an eighth-grade teacher in Arizona was arrested after “the mother of a 15-year-old student…told police she found suspicious chats between the teacher and her daughter on the girl’s Facebook page.” Some “school officials say it’s hard to know where to draw the line — although there has been some movement to do just that.” In Missouri, the state legislature “is debating a proposal to ban elementary-school teachers from having social-networking friend-ships with their students. And the Lamar County School District board in Mississippi recently passed a policy that bans ‘fraternization via the Internet’ between staff members and students.”
US Joblessness Linked To Future Of Education.
Bob Herbert writes in his column for the New York Times (5/26, A19), “America has become self-destructively shortsighted in recent decades.” That shortsightedness, he asserts “has kept us from acknowledging the awful long-term consequences of the tidal wave of joblessness that has swept over the nation since the start of the recession in December 2007.” According to Herbert, “the maintenance and development of the infrastructure” is “about schools.” A statistic from the Education Trust shows that “the U.S. is the only industrialized country in which young people are less likely than their parents to graduate from high school.” Herbert says that it is “tragic” that the US is “so dysfunctional at the end of the first decade of the 21st century.” But, if the US is to get “its economic act together over the next few years, there will have to be a much greater focus on putting people back to work. Rebuilding the infrastructure is the place to start,” he concludes.
Special Needs
Montana District’s Special Education Director Credited With Improving Communication.
The Bozeman (MT) Daily Chronicle (5/26, Schontzler) reports, “Chad Berg is just finishing his first school year after taking over the Bozeman School District’s troubled special-education program, and parents of children with disabilities say he is making a big difference.” Bozeman-area Special Education Parent-Teacher Association (SEPTA) president Maggee Harrison said that Berg has “improved communications between parents and the school district.” After taking over the special education program last summer, Berg held “a series of consensus meetings with parents, teachers and administrators. The consensus process, promoted in the Bozeman school system, requires participants to actively listen to each other, and aims to increase communication and trust.”
School Finance
Teachers In Some New York Districts Volunteer To Take Pay Cuts.
The New York Times (5/24, CT1, Hu) reported, “Bankers, lawyers, and journalists have taken pay cuts and gone without raises to stay employed in a tough economy. Now similar givebacks are spreading to education, an industry once deemed to be recession-proof.” For instance, “all 95 teachers and five administrators in” New York’s Tuckahoe school district “agreed to give $1,000 each to next year’s school budget to keep the area’s tax increase below three percent.” And “in the William Floyd district,” most teachers voted in favor of “giving up what amounted to $1,190″ of each of their salaries to help cut costs. While New York’s “teachers’ unions have rarely agreed to reopen contract negotiations in bad economic times,” teachers in some “suburban areas have opened the door to compromise to save jobs, preserve programs and smaller class sizes, and show support for the towns and villages where many of them have taught generations of families.”
DC Chancellor At Odds With Council Over School Enrollment, Funding.
The Washington Post (5/26, Turque) reports, “Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and the D.C. Council are at odds over projected enrollment for the coming academic year, and the outcome of the dispute could have consequences both for District students and the nationally prominent schools leader.” Earlier this month, the council voted “to hold back $27 million of the system’s $760 million budget for 2010, claiming that Rhee’s enrollment forecast — which calls for an increase of 373 students to a total of 45,054 after years of steady decline” — is inaccurate. The council projects a student population of 41,541 “based on the downward trend of the past three years.” Since the vote, “Rhee has waged an aggressive public and private campaign to roll back the council’s decision.” According to the Post, Rhee’s campaign “has turned the heat up on council members, who are getting anxious calls and e-mails from constituents.”
NEA in the News
Union Leader Calls For Transfer Of Principals From Maryland District Schools With Low Morale.
The Baltimore Sun (5/24, Williams) reported that the head of the Howard County [MD] Education Association, Ann DeLacy, “wants the school system to explore the option of transferring principals from schools where employee morale is low.” Results from an annual survey by the organization “show that eight of the school system’s 73 schools fall below 50 percent when it comes to teacher morale.” Furthermore, “many of the schools with the lowest numbers have consistently had low results, said DeLacy.” However, Superintendent Sydney L. Cousin said, “We can’t just use a survey — one data point — to make the decision about where an administrator is put. … A job satisfaction survey is one of many points I would look at.”