Draft Of Common State Academic Standards Released.
The Washington Post (9/22, A6, Anderson) reports, “Experts convened by the nation’s governors and state schools chiefs on Monday proposed a set of math and English skills students should master before high school graduation, the first step toward what advocates hope will become common standards driving instruction in classrooms from coast to coast.” In math, the “proposal envisions that students would be able to solve systems of equations; find and interpret rates of change; and adapt probability models to solve real-world problems.” In English, students “would be able to analyze how word choices shape the meaning and tone of a text; develop a style and tone of writing appropriate to a task and audience; and respond constructively to advance a discussion and build on the input of others.” The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers “launched the Common Core Standards Initiative this year, enlisting 48 states and the District of Columbia.” Two states yet to join the effort are Texas and Alaska.

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In the Classroom
Nearly All Maryland Students Pass High School Exit Exam.
The Baltimore Sun (9/22, Bowie) reports, “State education officials reported Monday that after a decade-long attempt to raise high school graduation standards by instituting high-stakes tests only 11 students of about 63,000 in the Class of 2009 did not graduate because they failed to meet the new requirement.” According to the state, thousands of other students did not graduate because they “failed to pass the courses they needed to collect enough credits. Overall, the dropout rate for last year’s seniors fell to 2.6 percent.”

The Washington Post (9/22, B8Hernandez) reports The class of 2009 was the first in Maryland required to pass the High School Assessments, a battery of English, algebra, biology and government tests. Though test results “are encouraging, some are asking how tough the tests could be if only a tiny percentage of the students fail.” According to the Post, proponents of tougher academic standards, led by State Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick “successfully pushed through the testing plan, arguing that it would hold schools accountable for educating children who had been allowed to slide through in the past.” However, these proponents “made compromises that effectively allowed nearly a third of the Class of 2009 to graduate without passing all four exams.”

High School’s New Engineering Class Attracts Home School, Out-Of-District Students.
The St. Petersburg Times (9/22, Solochek) reports on a new engineering class at East River Ridge High School in Pasco County, FL, in which students can “mess with robots” and “experiment with 3-D design software,” among other activities. “River Ridge showed off its new career academy to the public on Monday, taking the time to highlight the team effort among educators, business partners and community leaders who made it happen.” The class is a hit with students, with 67 students signing up for the class, “including 10 from outside the attendance zone and one homeschooled teen who comes to River Ridge just for engineering.” School administrators had expected only 30 enrollees the first year. School Board member Kathryn Starkey said “that county leaders are working to extend the River Ridge program’s ties to college courses,” noting that “They’re in talks to bring courses from Kettering University, rated one of the nation’s top undergraduate engineering schools, to Pasco County.”

More Dallas-Area Students Using Netbooks In Class.
The Dallas Morning News (9/21, Unmuth) reported that more Dallas-area students “are using ‘netbooks’ at school,” small computers that “are much lighter and cheaper than traditional laptop computers.” Netbooks “are more closely related to cellphones, which many students are familiar with.” However, netbooks are “not the best option for advanced video production capabilities.” Yet, educators “say they are ideal for basic functions as more schools get wireless access and move textbooks and lessons online.”

Students Explore Agriculture During Field Trip To Oklahoma State Fair Park.
The Oklahoman (9/22, Brown) reports that several Spencer Elementary School teachers took “nearly 80 third-, fourth- and fifth-grade students to State Fair Park” to learn about agriculture. “Students walked through the Barnyard Birthing Center where they experienced newly born piglets and goats nuzzling close to their mothers,” and “learned farming and ranching vocabulary.” Meanwhile, the “AGtropolis exhibit, a make-believe city…that is centered on teaching youth interesting facts about present-day agriculture,” gave students the opportunity to “plant seeds, pick apples, pumpkins and potatoes and gather eggs.”

Law & Policy
Opinion: Michigan Lawmakers Should Look To Detroit Public Schools For Reform Ideas.
Editor Amber Arellano wrote in an opinion piece for the Detroit News (9/21), “To the surprise of many, Detroit could be held back by the state when it comes to educational progress, or at least the strategic policymaking needed to make that happen.” She asserts that “the Detroit Public Schools’ emergency financial manager Robert Bobb and his impressive administration appear to be well-prepared to compete for President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top competitive education stimulus money.” State lawmakers, however, are “stuck in an ideological battle, threatening to risk Michigan’s application to win hundreds of millions for Michigan schools.” Arellano pointed out that “Bobb has made such sweeping changes” in the district since taking over in March that “even his critics have had to pause in awe.” She urged readers to pressure lawmakers “to do what’s best for students — not for special interests. Michigan needs to do that — and for once, follow Detroit’s lead.”

Education Funding “Race” Seen As Fueling Teacher Evaluation Reform Efforts In Colorado.
The Colorado Independent (9/21, Redding) reported, “If Colorado doesn’t win Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top, it won’t be for lack of studies. Last week, yet another ‘How Colorado Can Win the Race to the Top’ study was released by the Colorado Legacy Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the Colorado Department of Education.” Two other similar studies were published this summer. The Legacy foundation’s report argues “that the most important topic in education reform right now is the concept of ‘teacher effectiveness.’” The Colorado Independent points out that although “a new teacher evaluation still looks like it’s still in the brainstorming phase,” it seems inevitable that, “given the state’s enthusiasm for the Race to the Top contest, Colorado teachers shouldn’t expect the current evaluation system to last much longer.”

Border District Chief Moves To Prevent Students From Illegally Attending Schools.
The AP (9/21, Roberts) reported that Mexican students living close to the U.S. border “have skirted residency requirements to attend U.S. public schools for generations,” but when Kelt Cooper, superintendent of the San Felipe Del Rio (TX) Consolidated Independent School District “got word that about 400 school-age children were crossing the international bridge each day with backpacks but no student visas, he figured he had to do something.” Cooper “directed district officials to stake out the bridge and warn students they could face expulsion if they don’t prove they live in the district – a move that’s brought complaints from civil rights groups and support from anti-immigrant proponents.”

Students Speak Out Against High School’s Backpack Ban.
The Jackson (MI) Citizen-Patriot (9/22, Cummings) reports, “A new policy that bans backpacks from being used during the school day at Jackson High School drew criticism from several students and parents Monday who urged the board to rethink the policy it approved in August.” According to Principal Barbara Baird-Pauli, “the policy was enacted as part of the school’s student handbook to improve safety, stem congestion caused by backpacks left in aisles and between lunch tables, and eliminate a way for students to easily steal things.” But students argued that the five minutes between classes “make it difficult to run back and forth to store and retrieve books, and get to class on time.” The school board left the decision on whether or not to change the backpack policy “up to Baird-Pauli, who said she would take a few days to consider the options.”

Safety & Security

Audit Finds Deficiencies In Federal Food-Safety Notification System For Schools.
USA Today (9/22, Eisler, Morrison) reports, “Federal agencies that supply food for 31 million schoolchildren fail to ensure that tainted products are pulled quickly from cafeterias, a federal audit obtained by USA Today finds.” The audit reviewed recent recalls of food, “including one this year in which salmonella-infected peanut butter sickened almost 700 people.” It focused “on the Food and Nutrition Service, or FNS, an arm of the Department of Agriculture that provides states and school systems with federally purchased commodities for school lunch and breakfast programs.” According to the audit, FNS “lacks systems to ensure that it is notified when the Food and Drug Administration begins a food-safety investigation that may lead to a recall.”

Administrators To Undergo Sensitivity Training To Address High School’s Hazing “Tradition.”
The New York Times (9/22, A26, Kelley) reports, “The president of the Millburn Board of Education said on Monday night that district administrators would have to undergo sensitivity training and ordered them to come up with a plan within the next two months to address the longstanding tradition of hazing at Millburn High School.” The board decision came after “parents reported that their freshman daughters were pushed into lockers, that senior girls blew whistles in their faces and that girls were made to wear camouflage shirts” on the first day of school Sept. 8.

Also in the News
Students Can Interact With College Counselors Through Virtual College Fair.
The San Francisco Chronicle (9/22, Asimov) reports on the website CollegeWeekLive.com, which gives students the opportunity to “correspond with college counselors about everything from her SATs to college sports.” The site, “billed as ‘the world’s biggest virtual college fair,’” features “a virtual trade show, with booths for about 200 colleges. More than 100 additional colleges are due to join in the next few weeks, said spokeswoman Martha Collins.” Students can also log onto the site for “interactive seminars on numerous topics, including writing college essays and interviews with experts on student aid and admissions strategies.”

NEA in the News
Linking Teacher Performance To Tests Causes Contention Between Unions, “Democratic Allies.”
McClatchy (9/21, Hotakainen) reported that “the nation’s public school teachers are feeling the squeeze from all sides these days, and some of the heat is coming from unlikely sources: minorities and longtime Democratic allies.” For instance, President Barack Obama is “suggesting that student test scores be used to judge the success of educators.” David Sanchez, “president of the 340,000-member California Teachers Association,” an NEA affiliate, “said teachers had high hopes for Obama but that so far there has been little change.” In a speech to the NEA this summer, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said “teachers unions are ‘at a crossroads’ and” urged union members “to think differently about the role of unions in public education.” Sanchez, however, argues that “teachers are being unfairly picked on in the current education debate. And he said teachers know much more about teaching than Duncan.”

High Erasure Rates On DC Standardized Tests Cast Scores In Suspicious Light.
The Washington Post (9/23, B1, Turque) reports on the front of its Metro section that Bowen Elementary School was part of what D.C. officials “hailed as the success story of their 2008 standardized test results.” The reading proficiency rate at Bowen “jumped 27 points, to 63 percent of the student population. The math score surged 17 points, to 41 percent.” However, Bowen “also had four classrooms where children erased wrong answers and replaced them with correct ones at abnormally high rates.” According to the Post, 45 of D.C.’s 150 public schools “had at least one classroom with an elevated erasure level in 2008,” according to an analysis by CTB McGraw-Hill, publisher of the District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System (DC-CAS).

Opinion: Cheating Undermines NCLB Accountability Approach. Diane Ravitch wrote in a “Bridging Differences” blog for Education Week (9/22) that the problem with NCLB’s “incentives and sanctions approach” to prodding teachers and schools to produce higher test scores “is that it works. … We see scores going up in many states, sometimes at rates that defy belief.” However, the “problem is that schools, principals, teachers, and students will reach the goal by hook or by crook. Some states, like New York and Illinois, will play statistical games.” Also, some states “will dumb down their tests, carefully field-testing the tests and removing any questions that are too difficult.”

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In the Classroom
Program At High School In Massachusetts Pays Students, Teachers For Passing AP Test Scores.
The Salem (MA) News (9/22, Galang) reported that “a controversial grant program that pays both teachers and students at Peabody High School for success on Advanced Placement tests kicked off yesterday with triple the student enrollment.” With the “$640,000, five-year grant from Boston-based nonprofit Mass Insight,” up to 345 juniors and seniors at the school will be able “to participate in the classes,” up from 99 students who “took Advanced Placement courses in math, science and English at Peabody” last year. “Mass Insight’s grant will provide $100 to students who earn a 3, 4 or 5 on the Advanced Placement exams in math, science and English. Teachers” meanwhile, “receive a $500 stipend to participate plus a potential of another $1,000, $2,000 or $3,000 depending on the numbers of their students in who pass.”

Schools Urged To Expand Literacy Testing To New Media Forms.
Paul Barnwell, a middle school language arts teacher in Shelbyville, KY, writes in a commentary for Education Week (9/23), “The federal No Child Left Behind Act and standardized state curricula and assessments are stuck on a notion of literacy that does not reflect the reality of our time.” He asserts that schools are testing students’ literacy based “on print media only. It’s time,” he adds, “for the accountability movement to demand that schools teach and foster responsible student use of new literacy forms” such as assessing “the validity of a Web site” or understanding “the point of view and potential bias of” a YouTube clip. Barnwell points out that “some may argue that it’s a waste of time to assess other forms of literacy if students aren’t ‘proficient’ at more traditional forms of reading and writing.” However, he argues, “If we develop critical literacy skills with new forms of media, the skills can transfer to the written word.”

Schools Urged To Grant Greater Authority To Students.
Joan F. Goodman, “a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s graduate school of education,” writes in a commentary for Education Week (9/23, Goodman), “The requirement that schools meet state standards, or else, is in conflict with the notion of student autonomy. How this plays out in classrooms is all too familiar to teachers.” For instance, “a child may want to do research on turtles, but mastery of turtles is not a state objective.” As a result, the child’s teacher would insist “that [the] child adhere to the required curriculum.” Goodman suggests that, “given the existing constraints of imposed instruction,” teachers can include “students in the authority structure” by reviewing “all the controls exercised by adults in a school day” to “determine which might gradually be shifted to students, in part or in their entirety.” She concludes that “increasing students’ authority in schools is likely to reduce problems that currently create the demand for so much adult authority.”

Renaissance Festival Character Teaches Elementary Students Elizabethan Customs.
The Shawnee Dispatch (9/23, Kieler) reports, “Sixth-graders at Blue Jacket-Flint Elementary School went back in time Friday afternoon with a visit from a Renaissance Festival character” for a lesson about “Elizabethan times.” Linda Boyce, “who performs during at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival in Bonner Springs, was dressed in full period gear” during the classroom presentation. “She told students about the lives they would have led during the time of Queen Elizabeth I, who ruled England in the late 1500s.” Boyce also “taught the students how” they would have greeted “each other during the period.”

Principal Credits Research-Based Literacy Initiative For Students’ Improvement On State Tests.
New York’s Post-Standard (9/23, Potrikus) reports, “Five years ago, about 60 percent of the students at Camden Elementary School passed state literacy assessments.” Now, “90 percent of the students are passing, with some students getting perfect scores.” The school was recently named “a Blue Ribbon School, one of 314 picked nationwide as the best schools.” Principal Nick Pulizzi said school improvement efforts were based “on research that students from low-income homes are less prepared than their more affluent peers when it comes to vocabulary. … The building’s schedule now includes 90 minutes of uninterrupted reading, where students rotate between literacy stations aimed to help them with reading, writing, listening and comprehension.”

On the Job
Georgia District Seen As Leading Data-Driven Decision-Making Trend.
Education Week (9/23, Ash) reports that the Fulton County, GA district “is so well known for its data-management system and data-driven decision-making techniques that it has been named a ‘best practice’ district by both the Washington-based Consortium for School Networking’s Data-Driven Decision Making Initiative and the education division of the Houston-based American Productivity and Quality Center.” Fulton County “is one of various school districts across the country that have made data-driven decision-making a top priority.” According to Education Week, “Part of what helps keep each school, as well as teachers, on track is the Balanced Scorecard, a system implemented in the district in 2001 that defines specific district-wide targets and benchmarks, which are then used to create individualized objectives for each school.”

Law & Policy
Obama’s Education Reform Successes Noted.
Ruth Marcus writes in a column for the Washington Post (9/23, A29) that beneath the “headline turmoil” surrounding President Obama’s efforts to enact overhauls of the healthcare and financial regulatory systems, the President “is overseeing a quiet upheaval in the nation’s approach to education from preschool through college.” Though Marcus says she has “been somewhat skeptical of the president’s ability” to enact education reforms, given resistance from student lenders and teachers unions, so far, “so good,” as numerous states have revoked their caps on charter schools and the House has cleared a bill overhauling the student loan system.

Task Of Finding Impartial “Race To The Top” Judges Seen As Difficult.
Education Week (9/23, McNeil) reports that ED “is seeking 50 to 80 outside judges to help award $4 billion in Race to the Top Fund grants under the economic-stimulus program — job openings that demand both education policy expertise and a detached interest in the high-stakes education reform competition.” According to Education Week, finding these “‘disinterested superstars,’ as U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has called them, could be difficult, given the scope, scale, and money attached to the competition, observers say.” The potential conflicts of interest remind “many observers of the awards process for President George W. Bush’s $1 billion-a-year Reading First program, which was marred by charges that independent experts who reviewed grant applications had inappropriate interests in the selections.”

Safety & Security

GAO Finds USDA Failed To Tell Schools Of Suspect Food.
The AP (9/23, Quaid) reports, “Federal authorities failed to tell schools about recalls of potentially tainted peanut products and canned vegetables, and cafeterias may have unknowingly served them to children, the Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday. A GAO investigation found the Agriculture Department didn’t always make sure states and schools were notified promptly about recalled food distributed through the federal school lunch and breakfast programs, which serve 30 million students.” According to GAO, it took as much as a week for states to determine which products had been recalled, and schools could have served the suspect food in the meantime. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, in a written statement, said that the agency was working to develop a better food safety system; the U.S. Food and Drug Administration also said it was moving to improve notification to schools.

School Finance
Many Districts Have Yet To Use School Modernization Stimulus Funds.
Alyson Klein wrote in a Politics K-12 blog for Education Week (9/22) that only three states, Arkansas, North Dakota, and Wyoming, have “been able to use a portion of their state stabilization money for school modernization and repair, according to a preliminary analysis by the very knowledgeable folks at the 21st Century School Fund.” Also, states are just beginning to spend $22 billion in school construction stimulus bonds, though some advocates “are worried that needy school districts won’t be able to take advantage of the bonds because they can’t even put up the principle.”

Texas District Bracing For Another Round Of Budget-Cutting.
The Houston Chronicle (9/23, Jackson) reports that Cypress-Fairbanks school district (TX) officials “are working on the 2010-11 school year budget, which is projected to have a $10 million deficit.” Superintendent David Anthony “said the district’s inadequate state funding level will not change next year, and the district needs to prepare for another tough budgeting process,” following cuts of $41 million “in the past two budget cycles. … Anthony said state legislators will not meet until 2011 to discuss the school funding formula that has created financial challenges for Cy-Fair ISD.” However, Anthony added that additional funding will likely not be available in light of a projected $5 billion state budget deficit.

NEA in the News
Film Aims To Present Charter Schools “Laboratories Of Innovation.”
Education Week (9/23, Cavanagh) reports on the documentary Two Million Minutes: A 21st Century Solution, the sequel to a 2007 “documentary that presented a critical view of American students’ academic performance and motivation compared with their peers in China and India.” The new film “focuses on a single U.S. school, BASIS Tucson, which the filmmakers hold up as a model for how the American education system can meet the challenges of international competition.” BASIS “is a high-performing charter school serving grades 5-12 in Tucson, Ariz.” Filmmaker Robert A. Compton “said he hopes the new documentary will present charter schools as ‘laboratories of innovation,’ and persuade policymakers to lift restrictions on their growth.” Education Week notes that NEA Executive Director John Wilson, who has “seen only a trailer for the film,” acknowledged that the US “should consider international models in teacher development,” but “pointed to high-scoring Finland, where educators are required to receive extensive educational training yet are also given significant classroom autonomy.”

Concurrent Enrollment Becoming Mainstream For Colorado High School Students.
The Denver Post (9/24, Simpson) reports that under a new Colorado law, concurrent enrollment, which allows high school students to take college courses, has become mainstream in Colorado, in an effort to expand “the pool of potential college students and offering those who might drop out a reason to stay in school.” Students use “their share of K-12 tax dollars for postsecondary courses” and “reap economic benefits of paid-for college credit hours while getting an academic jump-start.” The Denver Post explains that “the process begins with a high school striking a concurrent enrollment agreement with a postsecondary institution. With the help of counselors, students explore class options that move them toward career goals.” In the last several years, “the number of 11th- and 12th-graders statewide who take college courses has risen…to a little more than 5,000.”

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In the Classroom
Principals In Clark County, Nevada, Aim To Preserve Music Programs Amid Budget Cuts.
The Las Vegas Sun (9/24, Richmond) reports that in the Clark County School District, “principals have some discretion in deciding which programs to cut and which to protect as the district reacts to the first drop in student enrollment in more than 25 years.” Most “are working hard to preserve the district’s much-lauded music program.” The Las Vegas Sun notes that “research has long shown that students who are involved in fine arts programs typically do better in their academic classes than their peers who don’t take part.” Alpin Hong, a professional pianist and artist-in-residence at Clark County’s Basic High School who has “seen firsthand the impact of the economic downturn on the nation’s public schools,” said that ‘there’s no question Clark County’s commitment to its fine arts program sets it apart from other districts.”

Educators Weigh Social Effects Of Online Learning.
The Wall Street Journal (9/24, Glader) reports that as more students enroll in online high schools, educators are intensifying efforts to prevent the social isolation that sometimes accompanies online learning. Also, sociologists and child psychologists are conducting research on how online schooling may or may not help students develop social skills.

On the Job

District Will Require Teachers To Follow Professional Growth Plan Tied To Student Performance.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch (9/24, Lizama) reports, “Starting in the fall of 2010, the Chesterfield County school system will require all teachers to follow a professional development growth plan that will be tied to student academic performance and job evaluations.” Goals for “professional growth development” will be set by teachers “based on student academic progress, the school improvement plan and the teacher’s evaluation results.” Based on the evaluations, school officials will decide whether “to keep or dismiss teachers.” The plan was piloted in 16 schools last year. “This year, those same schools are continuing with the initiative. In the 2010-11 school year, it will be implemented in all schools.”

Law & Policy
Maryland Education Officials Consider Raising Standards On High School Exit Exam.
The Baltimore Sun (9/24, Bowie) reports, “Members of the education community questioned Tuesday whether Maryland should raise its standards, a day after the state released data showing that only a handful of seniors did not graduate because they could not pass newly required tests.” Only 11 of 62,000 students in the class of 2009 “were denied a diploma because they had not met the High School Assessment requirement.” School officials “engineered a system that included projects and waivers to ease the state into the high-stakes tests so that thousands would not fail the first year.” And “in most schools in the state, the data show that nearly all the students can pass the tests.” Still, “the discussion of how high to set the mark is” expected to “bubble up in the next year throughout the U.S. as a coalition of states, including Maryland, works on adopting common-core standards.”

Graduation Rate In Maryland County Falls To 13-Year Low. The Washington Post (9/24, Hernandez) reports that the high school graduation rate in Montgomery County, MD “has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to state data, continuing a trend of declines that county officials said they will investigate.” According to the Post, from a “high of about 93 percent in 2003, the graduation rate had fallen to 87 percent for the class that graduated in the spring, according to state data released this week.” The county’s graduation rate “fell from 89 percent last year to 87 percent for the Class of 2009. That is the lowest graduation rate recorded since 1996, when the state changed the way it measured the statistic.”

Superintendent’s Tweet Sparks Dialogue About Utah Math Standards.
The Salt Lake Tribune (9/24, Stewart) reports, “Weeks ago from his seat at a statewide meeting of educational chieftans,” Canyons School District Superintendent David Doty “logged onto Twitter and posted a tweet challenging Utah State Superintendent Larry Shumway’s philosophy on math standards.” During the meeting, Shumway said that “Utah’s ‘math curriculum shouldn’t automatically end in calculus for every student.’” In a matter of “minutes, Doty’s tweet surfaced in a popular education listserv, resulting in a reportedly ‘cordial’ conversation between the two superintendents.” Doty said that his remarks were meant to be “provocative,” but not “critical.” The Salt Lake Tribune points out that Doty and Shumway both “support upping graduation requirements from three years of math to four,” but “differ…on the type of math that should be taught.” Shumway prefers “a dual track that requires some level of Algebra, and then lets students choose between calculus and quantitative reasoning or statistics.” But Doty supports “a single track geared to preparing all students for college.”

Safety & Security
Safe Schools Czar Criticized For Referencing Personal Drug Use.
FOX News (9/24, Lott) reports that the Obama administration’s “safe schools czar,” Kevin Jennings “is a former schoolteacher who has advocated promoting homosexuality in schools, written about his past drug abuse, expressed his contempt for religion, and detailed an incident in which he did not report an underage student who told him he was having sex with older men.” According to Fox News, “Jennings was appointed to the position largely because of his longtime record of working to end bullying and discrimination in schools.” But Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, said that while Jennings’ progress in making schools “safe for homosexuality,” is apparent, there is no evidence “about what qualifications Jennings has for promoting drug-free schools.” Sprigg points to quotes in Jennings 2007 autobiography, Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son: A Memoir, that refer to “his personal drug abuse.” Supporters, however, argue Jennings “is fully qualified for his position and is the victim of a right-wing smear campaign.”

Also in the News
Education Secretary Encourages Fathers To Be More Involved In Children’s Education.
The AP (9/23) reports that during a “National Conversation on Fatherhood” event in Manchester, NH yesterday sponsored by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said getting fathers “involved in their children’s education will take turning off the TV at home and opening the school doors to them.” Duncan is quoted saying, “Educators desperately need parents to be more involved, particularly fathers, and fathers desperately need to be involved in their children’s education. … When fathers step up, students don’t drop out.” Duncan “said lengthening the school day, week and year also would allow nonprofit groups to get more involved in schools.”

NEA in the News
Teachers Accused Of Ongoing Harassment Of High School Student.
Newsweek (9/24, Dokoupil) reports, “Teachers are supposed to prevent harassment of students. But in a controversial case, they were allegedly the harassers.” Last month, “a report issued by the Minnesota Department of Human Rights” was made public, which detailed verbal attacks including “homophobic slurs” against then-16-year-old student Alex Marritt in 2007 that “were perpetrated by social-studies instructor Diane Cleveland and Walter Filson, a former cop who taught a course on law enforcement” at Secondary Technical Education Program (STEP) in Anoka, MN. But both teachers “deny Merritt’s allegations, and maintain that they have been miscast as homophobes.” Meanwhile, “the school district, despite its own findings, has not acknowledged wrongdoing.” The NEA suggests in a 2009 report that schools “provide programs that promote tolerance among students, provide training for educators, and include policies that specifically prohibit harassment and bullying on the basis of sexual orientation.”

Gay Middle School Students Often Face Hostile Climates. The New York Times Magazine (9/24, MM36, Denizet-Lewis) reports that for many “gay youth, middle school is more survival than learning.” A national 2007 survey of 626 gay, bisexual and transgender middle-school students by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, found that 81 percent of respondents “reported being regularly harassed on campus because of their sexual orientation. Another 39 percent reported physical assaults.” Also, “of the students who told teachers or administrators about the bullying, only 29 percent said it resulted in effective intervention.” The Times adds, “As a response to anti-gay bullying and harassment, at least 120 middle schools across the country have formed gay-straight alliance groups, where gay and lesbian students — and their straight peers — meet to brainstorm strategies for making their campus safer.”

Duncan To Challenge Education Stakeholders To Focus On Underperforming Schools.
USA Today (9/24, Toppo) reports that in a speech on Thursday in DC, “U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan plans to challenge educators, civil rights groups and others to put aside ‘tired arguments’ about education reform to help him craft a sweeping reauthorization of federal education legislation by early 2010.” Duncan plans to “challenge the groups to focus on getting ‘great teachers and principals into underperforming schools’ and giving schools a testing system that ‘accurately and fairly measures student growth and uses data to drive instruction and teacher evaluation,’ among other measures.” The speech will be delivered to a “stakeholders’ forum” that includes the NEA, “as well the NAACP, National Governors’ Association, United Way of America, the Children’s Defense Fund and the Business Roundtable, among others.”

The AP (9/23, Quaid) added that in his speech, Duncan will point out that the Obama administration “is committed to the testing and school accountability at the heart” of NCLB, and will acknowledge that the law has put “a spotlight on kids who need the most help.” According to the AP, the education secretary has said, however, that “there is plenty he wants to change about the law,” agreeing with critics that standardized tests “are not ideal measures of student achievement.” But, he has also pointed out that standardized tests “are the best” gauges of student achievement “we have at the moment.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 7:21 am and is filed under NEA Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.