New Study Finds Narrowing Of Achievement Gap.
The Christian Science Monitor (10/2, Paulson) reports that a new national Center on Education Policy study examining student performance since NCLB took effect in 2002 finds that student achievement “is going up, and the gaps in test scores between subgroups — such as between African-Americans and whites — are closing across all grade levels and subjects.” However, the “news isn’t all positive. In 23 percent of the cases the report analyzed,” the achievement gap grew. And “in a few cases, the gap narrowed, but only because the achievement of higher-performing subgroups went down.”
The AP (10/2, Armario) reports, “Florida students have made progress in narrowing the achievement gap…but significant disparities remain.” The study “found that in math and reading, students across race and income levels made gains,” but “some of the most significant improvements were seen in elementary black and Latino students.” Still, “the gap between white, black and Latino students remains significant” at nearly 30 points between whites and blacks and nearly 20 points between whites and Latinos in the fourth grade. “That gap tends to widen as students enter middle and high school.”
Leslie Postal argues in a blog at the Orlando Sentinel (10/2) that the gap “”has narrowed in Florida, though not a lot,” while “in many other states, the gap is also shrinking, but also very slowly.”
The Chicago Daily Herald (10/2, Lester) reports, “While most states are making gains…Illinois is lagging behind.” It is “one of the few states…with gaps widening in a number of areas.” And “a surge in the number of Latino test takers, changes in which students the state tests and how, and a difference in rigor between grade school and high school assessments could all partially be to blame.”
The Star-Ledger (10/2, Alloway) reports, “New Jersey schools are narrowing the achievement gap,” but “the gaps are still large.” State Education Commissioner Lucille Davy attributed the improvements to “higher expectations set for high school students in math – which drives improvement in the lower grades, since kids must prepare for high school – and preschool expansion.”
The Akron Beacon Journal (10/2, Higgins) reports, “The results for Ohio…show that African-American and white student groups improved in eighth- and 10th-grade reading and math scores. But African-Americans improved faster,” and “Ohio also narrowed the gap between white and African-American students in fourth-grade math, but the reason is nothing to brag about: Both groups’ scores dropped, but the African-American scores dropped less.”
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In the Classroom
Connecticut School Uses Works Of Art To Inspire Students.
The New York Times (10/2, A24, Hu) reports that Christopher Columbus Family Academy in New Haven, CT “incorporates sculpture and other art into nearly every corner of its year-old building with the hope that it will inspire students in this working-class Hispanic neighborhood to learn. It is one of a growing number of newly built or renovated public schools across the country that look more like cultural centers than the austere, utilitarian houses of learning of the past, displaying museum-worthy pieces commissioned from artists alongside more traditional finger paintings and statues of school mascots.”
Educational Nonprofit Group Launches Parenting Forum.
The Washington Post (10/2, Alcindor) reports though parenting “doesn’t usually begin with a course or a go-to guide,” educational nonprofit group Side by Side “says it hopes that a series of workshops and roundtable discussions will help parents at seven Laurel [MD] elementary schools exchange experiences and gain insight into how best to support their children’s education.” According to the Post, “Last Thursday evening, more than 100 parents participated in the first of five Family Academy workshops scheduled at Deerfield Run Elementary. … The workshops are designed for whole families.”
On the Job
Denver College Offers Guarantee On Teacher Program Graduates.
The Denver Post (10/2, Meyer) reports, “Metropolitan State College of Denver is so confident about its teacher education program that its graduates now come with a guarantee. Any teacher graduating from Metro State’s licensure program who is not adequately prepared in his or her first year and requires more training can return to the classroom — for free — until the problems are fixed, said Metro State president Stephen Jordan, who announced the program Wednesday.” Sue Gill, director of professional development for Jefferson County Public Schools, “said Metro State grads are typically strong first-year teachers.”
Texas A&M Wins $3.6 Million DOE Grant To Fund Recruitment And Training Of Principals.
The San Antonio Business Journal (10/2) reports, “The Texas A&M University System has been awarded a $3.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to fund a statewide initiative to raise up a new generation of school principals. The university system will use the money toward its Leadership: Education and Development (LEAD) initiative.” That program “is designed to help school districts throughout the state develop, enhance or expand programs to recruit, train and retain principals and assistant principals.”
East Carolina U Wins DOE Grant To Improve Teacher Preparation.
The Greenville (NC) Daily Reflector (10/2, Humphries) reports, “The East Carolina University College of Education was awarded a federal Department of Education grant this week to improve teacher preparation and teacher residency programs.” The school received one of “28 new five-year Teacher Quality Partnership grants…to improve instruction in struggling schools. The grants are intended to reform traditional university teacher preparation and teacher residency programs.” ECU will use it “to fund a partnership between the College of Education, the College of Arts and Sciences, Greene County Schools and Pitt County Schools.”
Law & Policy
DC Public Education Ombudsman Office Eliminated.
Bill Turque wrote in a D.C. Wire blog for the Washington Post (10/1) that the D.C. office of the Ombudsman for Public Education has been eliminated, “a victim of the recent budget cutbacks. … Established as part of the mayoral takeover of the public school system, it was envisioned [as] an independent and impartial venue for families with questions, complaints or concerns.”
Utah Holds Meeting To Discuss Uses For Race To The Top Funds.
The Deseret Morning News (UT) (10/2, Stewart) reports, “If Utah gets a slice of the $4.35 billion ‘Race to the Top’ pie, just how should it be served up? More technology in classrooms, increased funding for charter schools, improved student assessment, higher quality teachers?” To answer the question, “About 100 state public-education leaders joined forces Wednesday at a five-hour summit led by the State Board of Education to toss myriad ideas into the mix on how to get the money, and then how to spend it.” The resulting ideas “will be summarized and taken around the state to parents, school-board members and teachers to gather feedback and more ideas on improving public education.” The state “has until December to fill out the forms” to apply.
Safety & Security
Duncan, Holder To Discuss Beating Death Of Student With Chicago Education Stakeholders.
The Chicago Tribune (10/2, Skiba) reports “A chilling cellphone video of a Chicago honors student’s fatal beating has captured national attention, and President Obama responded Thursday by announcing” that Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “would travel to his hometown next week.” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Holder and Duncan “would meet Wednesday with school officials, students and residents and talk about school violence.” Duncan “was the head Chicago’s public schools for seven years before Obama picked him as Education secretary. He already was scheduled to be in Chicago on Wednesday morning to attend an education grant conference.”
DC Officials Plan To Administer Swine Flu Vaccine To Students This Month.
The Washington Post (10/2, Hernandez) reports, “Students at some D.C. public schools will be able to get vaccinated against swine flu this month, and inoculations for students are expected to be available citywide in November, according to a plan health officials made public this week.” According to the Post, if the vaccine “arrives on time, it will first be distributed to health workers across the city. For a two-week period beginning Oct. 19, it will be given to D.C. public schools that have staff nurses, for in-school vaccinations.” Also, during the “final period, starting Nov. 1, the vaccine would be available to the remaining students in the D.C. school system as well as those from private schools in the District.”
Philadelphia Schools Officials Object To “Persistently Dangerous” Label.
The Philadelphia Daily News (10/2, Tales) reports, “Philly schools chief Arlene Ackerman expressed concern yesterday about whether a district policy on reporting crimes is putting the city’s public schools at a disadvantage.” Ackerman “told James Golden, the district’s safety chief, that he may have to reexamine how dangerous incidents are reported to police.” Golden replied “that he was legally obligated to notify police for the most egregious offenses,” but that “of the roughly 17,000 reported violent incidents over the last two years, police were called for less than half of them.” Golden was critical of the means the state uses to identify schools as dangerous under NCLB. So that while “twenty-five city schools made the ‘persistently dangerous’ list … the district has seen an 11 percent drop in violent incidents.”
Facilities
LAUSD Panel Calls For Return Of School Construction Chief.
The Los Angeles Times (10/2, Blume) reports that the “panel that oversees school construction in Los Angeles is poised to pass a resolution asking for the return of the official who heads the nation’s largest school building effort and for a reversal of decisions that apparently led to his departure.” The Bond Oversight Committee’s “hastily called special meeting was in response to the weekend resignation of Guy Mehula, chief facilities executive of the Los Angeles Unified School District.” Mehula “and members of the appointed oversight committee were concerned that this independence has been threatened by recent decisions by L.A. schools Supt. Ramon C. Cortines.”
Massachusetts Offers State Resources To Offer Solutions To School Problems.
The AP (10/2) reports from Massachusetts, “Prospective school construction or renovation projects here, in West Springfield, South Hadley and Greenfield inched closer to reality this week with the state’s School Building Authority agreeing to partner with local leaders for feasibility studies.” And “State Treasurer Timothy Cahill, SBA chairman, and Katherine Craven, executive director, said the agency will now work with local officials to study potential solutions to school problems already identified locally.”
School Finance
Announcement Of Impending DC Teacher Layoffs Sparks “Widespread Anger.”
The Washington Post (10/2, Turque) reports that the disclosure by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee of impending teacher layoffs “has been met with widespread anger and confusion — not merely because it is bad news, but also because of the timing and underlying math, which critics call fuzzy at best.” The announcement “came three weeks after the school year began and almost seven weeks after the D.C. Council sliced $20.7 million from the public school budget for fiscal 2010, which began Thursday. It followed a spring and summer during which about 900 teachers were hired.”
Education At Heart Of Michigan Legislature’s Inability To Agree On Budget.
The Detroit News (10/2, Schultz) reports, “Education funding remains a major sticking point in Lansing as lawmakers return to session today following a brief government shutdown early this morning. The 30-day continuation budget passed may have staved off a halt to state services, but major questions remain regarding how much K-12 schools will receive in funding and whether the Michigan Promise Scholarship could be restored.”
NEA in the News
Utah Education Association Celebrates Centennial.
The Standard-Examiner (UT) (10/2, Toone) reports that at its annual convention the Utah Education Association “is celebrating its 100th anniversary.” But “more than a dozen districts around Utah…are not giving teachers fall break until mid-October. In some of those districts if a teacher wants to go, he or she must pay around $80 for a substitute.” Of 22,000 K-12 teachers in Utah, “about 5,500 educators attended in 2008.” Michael Kelley, communications director for the event, said that “that number has been pretty consistent in recent years,” adding, “We will have a lot of great things lined up. It will be a great opportunity for teachers to get together and hone their skills.” Highlights of the convention “include speakers Pamela Perlich, a senior research economist in the University of Utah Bureau of Economic Research; Lily Eskelsen, vice president of the National Education Association and former Utah teacher; KSL radio personality Amanda Dickson and best-selling author Harry K. Wong.”
More Teachers Without Traditional Degrees Poised To Enter Indiana Classrooms.
The AP (10/4) reported, “An increasing number of teachers without traditional education degrees are poised to enter Indiana’s classrooms.” Schools in Indianapolis, for instance, have “struggled to fill…teaching vacancies,” and many have “hired an overwhelming number of teachers in Indiana from two of the nontraditional teaching programs — Teach for America and The New Teacher Project.” Meanwhile, critics “question whether the teachers, especially those who have had only fast-track five-week training courses, are equipped to handle situations that require detailed knowledge of child psychology or to work with struggling students.” According to “a 2008 study by a team of economists led by researchers at the State University of New York at Albany,” participants in “the New York Teaching Fellows program for career-changers were more likely to have passed a state test to become a teacher on their first try, more likely to have come from a stronger college and more likely to have a higher average SAT score — 541 in math” than “the 493 for teachers who had gone to education schools.”
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In the Classroom
Seattle Public Schools Introduces Standardized PE Curriculum.
The Seattle Times (10/5, Federis) reports, “This year, Seattle Public Schools has moved forward with a standardized PE curriculum it tested in 10 schools last year that aims to give kids a deeper understanding of health.” For the program, students’ fitness is tracked over several years using technology. “Under the new curriculum, elementary-school kids learn the foundations of fitness and are taught terms like intensity, body composition and flexibility. They also practice basic motor skills and activities like skipping, hopping, running or jumping.” Middleschoolers “develop a personalized fitness plan.” Then, “in high school,” students “take a personal fitness class and may select from among preferred activities — such as cycling, tennis or dancing.” Also as part of the new PE curriculum, “students receive both written tests and fitness assessments.” The Seattle Times points out that never before has there “been a way to ensure that schools were meeting” the state’s requirement of “100 minutes per week of PE for students in grades K-12.”
Online Games Aim To Enhance Students’ Civics Knowledge.
The Washington Post (10/4, Hill, Lat) reports on “Supreme Decision,” an online game “designed to teach schoolchildren about the judicial branch.” Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor “has a new job description this year: video game promoter. Frustrated by the fact that two-thirds of Americans are unable to name the three branches of government,” O’Connor “is spearheading a project called Our Courts, which develops Web-based games aimed at teaching seventh- and eighth-graders about government.” O’Connor “lamented the fact” that NCLB “has shifted schools’ focus from inculcating civic values to jacking up math test scores.”
Career Academies Show Mixed Results For Motivating Students To Stay In School.
The Abilene (TX) Reporter-News (10/5, Peters) reports, “Studies generally agree career academies — with smaller enrollment and specialized education meant to keep students interested — can bring positive economic impact on students and communities.” Yet, the “seem more mixed on whether they are the all-encompassing answer to dropout prevention and academic achievement.” According to results of “a national study in 2006 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,” students who dropped out of school “offered reasons why” they did so. “Among their answers, 47 percent said classes were not interesting, 69 percent were not motivated to work hard, 81 percent wanted better teachers, 75 percent wanted smaller classes with more individualized instruction, and 32 percent said they had to get a job to make money.” AISD has proposed Career Tech High School, “which would be divided into four career academies – business administration, professional services, industrial technology and natural/environmental services.”
Study Highlights Uneven Grading Criteria Among Educators.
The Chicago Tribune (10/5) reports, “Douglas Reeves, an expert on grading systems, conducted an experiment with more than 10,000 educators that he says proves just how subjective grades can be.” For his study, Reeves “asked teachers and administrators in the United States, Australia, Canada and South America to determine a final semester grade for a student who received the following grades for assignments, in this order: C, C, MA (Missing Assignment), D, C, B, MA, MA, B, A.” The semester grades given based on those scores ranged from A to F. Reeves said points out that “teachers use different criteria for grading.” For instance, “some average letter grades,” while “others consider effort (which in this case seemed to be picking up toward the end) and attendance.” He noted that unequal grading criteria “can lead to widespread student failure.”
History Seen As Platform To Teach Problem-Solving Skills.
Sam Wineburg, “a professor of education at Stanford University,” and Jack Schneider, “a doctoral student at Stanford,” write in a commentary for Education Week (10/7, “Knowledge of history…can function as a platform upon which students can stand to make judgments. But just as math is about more than learning theorems, history is about more than collecting facts.” The authors point out, “It is also a discipline that requires piecing together an accurate story from incomplete fragments.” Yet, “in thousands of history classrooms across the United States, that isn’t what happens,” they assert. Wineburg and Schneider suggest that for history classrooms, Bloom’s Taxonomy, the “familiar classification system for levels of thinking,” should “be turned upside down, locating knowledge at the peak of the pyramid and not at its base. That’s because in history, as in other disciplines, the aim is not merely to collect what is known, but to learn how to think about problems in a new way.”
On the Job
Mass California Teacher Layoffs Seen As Exacerbating Looming Shortage.
The Los Angeles Times (10/4, Mehta) reported, “As thousands of laid off California teachers sit out the school year, educators are worried about the long-term effect of losing so many teachers.” According to the Times, some teachers “are considering leaving the state or even the profession, and if history is any indication, fewer young people will pursue careers in teaching.” California “is facing a looming teacher shortage as baby boomers reach retirement age and fewer young people are expected to enter the field.”
More Than 200 DC Teachers Laid Off.
The Washington Post (10/3, Turque, Brown) reports that the D.C. public school system “laid off more than 200 teachers Friday and coped with the abrupt loss of its 300 security guards, whose company went out of business overnight Thursday.” The “combination of events…highlighted the challenges faced by Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) as they struggle to reform the troubled system in lean economic times.” All told, 388 school employees “received separation notices, the latest jolt to a system that has seen broad and sometimes wrenching change under Rhee.” However, in a “sign of significant progress, a federal judge told Rhee on Friday that the city had made enough gains in reforming its special education system that he would consider releasing the District from court oversight.”
WPost Backs DC Schools Chancellor’s Decision To Layoff Some Teachers. The Washington Post (10/3) editorialized that New York City schools “are notorious for their rubber rooms, holding tanks for incompetent teachers who are paid full salaries to do nothing.” Though D.C schools “don’t have rubber rooms,” they have “an even worse situation: Bad teachers stay in the classroom. It’s a problem too long tolerated by school officials.” So “as painful as Friday’s layoff” of 229 teachers is, D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee “was right to shake up her instructional force.”
Law & Policy
New York City Education Department Bans Most Bake Sales Amid Health Push.
The New York Times (10/3, A17, Medina) reported that as part of an “effort to limit how much sugar and fat students put in their bellies at school,” the New York City Education Department “has effectively banned most bake sales, the lucrative if not quite healthy fund-raising tool for generations of teams and clubs.” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) “has made both public health and public education centerpieces of his tenure, and the changes in the schools’ food are an outgrowth of his efforts to curb trans fats, salt and other unwanted additives.”
Special Needs
Maryland District Seen As Having Mishandled Education Of Gifted Student.
Jay Mathews writes in a column for the Washington Post (10/5) about Drew Gamblin a gifted 16-year-old student at Howard High School in Ellicott City, MD. Gamblin “craves a high school education and all that comes with it — debate team, music, drama and senior prom. After a series of inexplicable decisions by Howard County school officials, such as requiring him to stay in a Howard High algebra class he had already mastered, his parents decided to home-school him and put him in college classes.” Yet, Gamblin “insisted on his high school dream. So he is back at Howard, although it’s not clear what grade he is in, and the school district is making it hard to enjoy what the school has to offer.” Gamblin “is being forced to take a world history course he already took at Howard Community College and a junior-year English course he took at home, as well as classes in other subjects he has studied. … Drew’s situation is no surprise to advocates of gifted education, who report clumsy handling of kids like him all over the country.”
Safety & Security
Student’s Choking Death Leads To Greater Focus On Schools Emergency Preparedness.
WTHR-TV Indianapolis (10/5) reports that “the 2006 choking death of a northern Indiana elementary school student has focused attention on schools’ preparations for emergencies.” The nine-year-old student “choked on a turkey corn dog in September 2006,” the “the boy’s family has been awarded $5 million in a lawsuit against the LaPorte Community School Corp.” However, the district “won’t have to pay more than $500,000 because the state caps the amount that can be collected from a government entity.” But school officials are more concerned with increasing readiness in case of future chocking incidents in school. “LaPorte officials said after Juan’s death that they’d ensure that someone in each school building was trained in the Heimlich maneuver.”
Los Angeles District Warns Coaches On Hazing.
The Los Angeles Times (10/3, Sondheimer) reported that the Los Angeles Unified School District athletics office “distributed an e-mail Friday to its coaches, instructing them to counsel their athletes about hazing and warning that they could be held responsible for ‘negative consequences.’” The e-mail read in part, “Please be aware that if you are found to have condoned” hazing “or state that you were unaware even though you are responsible for supervision, you can be held responsible for any negative consequences. … Do not turn your head when you know or have suspicions that acts of hazing are taking place.”
Also in the News
County Will Give Swine Flu Vaccine To Every Public School Student.
The Baltimore Sun (10/4, Williams) reports, “The swine flu vaccine will be distributed when it becomes available to every student in Howard County with parental consent, the county’s health officer said last week. Dr. Peter L. Beilenson said the process probably would occur in early November and would take two weeks. Parents must give written permission for their children to receive the vaccine.” Dr. Beilenson estimates it will cost the county about $600,000 to hire enough staff to staff its 103 projected clinics, some which will be located in schools.
CDC Report Shows Decline In Sale Of Snacks, Soda At Public Schools.
The Washington Post /AP (10/6, Stobbe) reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report showing fewer “US high schools and middle schools are selling candy and salty snacks to students.” A survey of public schools in 34 states showed the number of schools selling such snacks dropped from 54 percent in 2006 to 36 percent in 2008, and the “share of schools that sell soda and artificial fruit drinks dropped from 62 percent to 37 percent.” The AP notes the decline was “dramatic” in the southern states of Mississippi and Tennessee, where only a quarter of schools now sell soda, down from around three quarters.
The Los Angeles Times (10/6, Mestel) reports on its “Booster Shots” blog reports that the CDC measured the proportion of schools “that didn’t sell soda or fruit drinks that weren’t 100 percent juice,” and “did not sell candy or salty snacks not low in fat.” Author Rosie Metsel opines that “we’re really not sure how stringent ‘salty snacks not low in fat’ might be as a yardstick for healthful fare — one wonders how many unnecessary, non-nutritious snacks those criteria still allow.”
USA Today (10/6, Toppo) reports results from the CDC study “varied dramatically across states: In Hawaii, Connecticut, California and Maine, more than half of secondary schools didn’t sell baked goods; salty, fatty, snacks; candy; soda; or sugary fruit drinks. But in Utah, Kansas, Idaho and Nebraska, it was fewer than a third of secondary schools.” In a statement, Howell Wechsler, director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, praised Mississippi and Tennessee for their progress.
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In the Classroom
Elementary School Teaches All Students How To Identify, Stand Up To Bullying.
The Arizona Republic (10/6, Strauss) reports that at Vivian Elementary School in Lakewood, Colorado, “about 12 miles from the site of the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, students in “kindergarten through sixth grade — and all of the adults in the school — learn how to identify bullying behaviors and how to stand up to a bully without inflaming the situation.” These lessons “are given for the entire school year.” According to experts, “No program can stop all bullying. But” some say that “the comprehensive strategy at Vivian in Lakewood, [Colorado] is the best — and probably only approach — that can reduce it.”
Television Meteorologist Shares Forecasting Tips With Elementary Students.
Illinois’ Daily Review Atlas (10/6, Hutton) reports that James Zahar, a television meteorologist “tries to visit a classroom once per week during the school year to meet and interact with students.” At a recent visit to Roseville Elementary School in Roseville, Illinois, Zahara told students that “forecasting the weather is like putting together a puzzle, with each area being a piece of a larger picture.” He also told them about “high pressure fronts – or happy weather, as Zahara called it — and low pressure fronts –or lousy weather. Using that information, he gave the students a forecast for the week.” In addition, “students also learned a little about the technology used to broadcast the forecast.”
Teacher Uses Music To Help Students Remember Science Concepts.
The Dallas Morning News (10/6, Meyers) reports that fourth-grade teacher Debra Cave “has designed a curriculum that infuses music into her science classes at Frisco’s Christie Elementary School, the district’s lone bilingual school.” She pointed out, “It’s hard to get excited about chlorophyll. … But by singing and dancing, emotion gets attached and it’s stored long term.” The idea came to Cave “about two years ago while driving home, her mind stuck on the day’s events. She hummed a tune about photosynthesis and then couldn’t forget it when she tried.” Afterward, she created a DVD of the musical lessons, “which on a tip from a friend ended up being produced by the former musical director of Barney and Friends, Bob Singleton.” Now, “teachers in more than 30 states” use the DVD, “some in middle and high school science classes.”
Alternative Virtual High School Curriculum Seen As Helping Students Improve.
The Lexington (NC) Dispatch (10/6, Edwards) reports that “going to an all-virtual alternative high school curriculum has resulted in progress for students at Davidson County Extended Day School, the institution’s principal reported to the Davidson County Board of Education on Monday.” Day School “students take classes through the N.C. Virtual Public School (NCVPS) and NovaNet programs.” Nova Net is “designed to help students retrieve class credits they have lost, improve test results, reduce the number of dropouts and increase a student’s self-confidence.” Meanwhile, NCVPS “provides students with expanded academic options by offering online courses and services such as test preparation, career planning services and credit recovery.” Next year, Johnson said, “schedules will be rearranged to decrease the number of students per teacher in lab settings to create more time for one-on-one instruction.” In addition, a “Virtual Tutoring Center” and “Virtual Buddy Programs” have been added “that allow for students to communicate with other students in the classes throughout the state.”
On the Job
New DC Teacher Evaluation System Incorporates Student Test Scores With Other Measures.
Stephen Sawchuk wrote in a “Teacher Beat” blog for Education Week (10/5) that D.C.’s new teacher-evaluation system, known as IMPACT, has “generated a lot of buzz for being among the first in the nation to incorporate student test scores as part of the teacher rating.” IMPACT “is not all about test scores: the evaluation system also includes other pieces, such as scores on a ‘Teaching and Learning Framework,’ an extensive set of observational measures.” IMPACT is “a composite of 20 different evaluation systems. There are standards for teachers who teach in tested subjects, and those who do not, standards for counselors, for instructional paraprofessionals, for non-instructional paraprofessionals, even for custodians.”
Students Protest DC Teacher Lay Offs. The Washington Post (10/6, Turque) reports that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee “faced mounting pressure Monday from teachers, students and elected officials to provide a more detailed justification for Friday’s layoff of almost 400 staff members, including 229 teachers.” About 200 students from McKinley Technical High School “rallied Monday to protest the dismissal of 15 teachers.” Rhee “has said the layoffs are necessary to close a $43.9 million gap in the fiscal 2010 budget that was triggered by a round of mid-summer spending cuts by the D.C. Council. … But questions remain about the severity of the crisis Rhee has described, in light of the growth of the school budget.” According to the Post, “Critics suggest that Rhee has contrived the shortfall to pursue her long-term goal of replacing most of the city’s teacher corps, especially veteran instructors — a charge she denies.”
Miami-Dade Officials Reach Pay Agreement With Teachers.
The Miami Herald (10/6, McGrory, Samuels) reports that teachers in Miami-Dade County, Florida, “can expect to see a boost in their salaries — the first in more than a year — after the school district and teachers union hammered out an agreement Monday night.” A stalemate began between the two sides “in June 2008, when then-Superintendent Rudy Crew told the” teachers union that “there wasn’t enough money in the budget to pay for promised salary increases. He froze salaries for the 2008-2009 school year.” Under the new agreement, teachers would receive an average “1.8 percent raise effective in December” and “teachers’ salaries will be renegotiated at the beginning of each year for the next three years in order to make them better aligned with the economy.”
Law & Policy
New Texas School Accountability Measures Called “Mumbo Jumbo.”
Texas’ Star-Telegram (10/5) editorialized, “Texas legislators and the Texas Education Agency have managed to add more mumbo-jumbo to the state’s school accountability system.” The Texas Projection Measure “is a mathematical calculation that says even though a particular student at a certain school might not have passed a TAKS test, the average student with that score in that subject at that school usually improves to meet required standards in grades where the stakes are really high.” This would allow students who do not pass TAKS to be “treated as if they did, if statistics indicate that they probably will down the road.” The Star-Telegram concludes, “There’s a place for standardized tests in Texas schools. … But there’s no need for mumbo-jumbo. Chances are much better that most schools will meet straightforward standards, even if they increase from year to year.”
California School Leaders Plan To Sue State Over Funding.
California’s Mercury News (10/6, Noguchi) reports, “Top California school leaders said they soon will sue the state over chronically underfunded schools — a move that in other states has infused billions of dollars into school systems.” According to the state constitution, California must “provide for a system of common schools by which a free school shall be kept up and supported.” The Mercury News adds that “the suit will allege that the state violates that provision by not ensuring adequate support.” The state spends “about 30 percent of its budget on its 1,000 public K-12 schools,” but “like other state programs, education has suffered waves of cuts in two years as state revenues have shrunk.”
Teachers Disapprove Of Florida District’s Policy Manual Revisions.
The St. Petersburg Times (10/6, Solochek) reports that “the Pasco County (FL) School Board is considering a policy that would bar classroom teachers from tutoring their students for a fee.” The teachers union, however, argues that “in many ways there’s no one better than a child’s teacher to tutor him or her.” According to the St. Petersburg Times, “the union’s concerns with that issue, along with nearly two dozen others in the proposed revisions to the policy manual, have School Board members suggesting that this week’s expected final review of the guidelines might not be so final, after all.” However, “even after the board adopts the new policy manual, it won’t be set in stone. Unlike the past set of rules, which hadn’t been thoroughly updated in decades, this one will be continually reviewed and revised.”
Safety & Security
EPA Urged To Examine Toxic School Drinking Water Issue.
The AP (10/5, Burke) reported that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D), “called on the head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday to disclose how the agency plans to address the widespread problem of toxic drinking water in the nation’s schools.” Boxer “wrote the agency in response to an Associated Press investigation showing water supplies at thousands of schools have been found to contain unsafe levels of lead, pesticides and dozens of other toxics.” The EPA “had no immediate comment” on Boxer’s request, but the AP notes that the EPA has said in the past that “it lacks the authority to require that all schools test their water, and can only provide guidance on environmental practices.”
School Finance
Budget Deficit May Hurt Ohio’s Race To The Top Standing.
The Columbus (OH) Dispatch (10/5, Candisky) reported, “Ohio appears well-positioned to win a share of $4 billion in federal education money, but the state’s budget problems and limits on charter schools could prove costly.” According to Amanda Wurst, spokeswoman for Gov. Ted Strickland, “Ohio’s chances of winning aid may be jeopardized if the state doesn’t fill an $851.5 million deficit in the education budget.” The federal Race to the Top funds will be awarded to states “can meet the requirements for funding.” Without the money to put toward education, Ohio risks “losing more than $1 billion in federal aid all states receive along with Race to the Top funds.”
Also in the News
Focus On Teaching, Learning Seen As Key To Texas District’s Broad Prize Win.
Education Week (10/5, Maxwell) reported though it “took a while for four-time finalist Aldine, Texas, to win the Broad Prize for Urban Education,” it “took even longer to craft the system that ultimately put the district over the top.” According to Education Week, “At a time when hard-charging superintendents, controversial teacher-pay plans, and pressure for school ‘turnarounds’ dominate headlines,” the Aldine district “won the 2009 prize with a steady approach focused squarely on teaching and learning.”
NEA in the News
House Panel Hearing Examines Role Of Teachers In ESEA, Stimulus.
Education Week (10/5, Sawchuk) reported that lawmakers and NEA President Dennis Van Roekel “had a spirited exchange” on the equitable distribution of effective teachers during a House Education and Labor Committee hearing last week. According to Education Week, “Differing opinions about incentive-pay programs, the role of test scores in pay and evaluation, and how prescriptive the federal government should be in seeking to boost teacher effectiveness were aired” at the hearing, which came as the “upcoming renewal of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and implementation of the economic-stimulus law are helping to spur such debate.”
Education Department Unveils Investing In Innovation Fund Criteria.
The AP (10/6) reported, “School districts and nonprofit partners can benefit from a $650 million competitive grant fund for school reforms pushed by President Barack Obama.” The “Investing in Innovation” fund “is part of the economic stimulus law, which gave Obama $5 billion to help overhaul schools. Most of the money is for states, but $650 million will go directly to school districts or schools in partnership with colleges, philanthropies, nonprofit companies that turn around failing schools or other nonprofit groups.” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “issued rules for the competition Tuesday.” The education department “plans to publish a final application early next year, accept proposals in the spring and award the money by Sept. 30, 2010.”
The New York Times (10/7, Dillon) reports that the DOE “sketched out a new nationwide competition on Tuesday under which some 2,700 school districts and nonprofit groups are expected to compete for pieces of a $650 million innovation fund.” The department “already has the 50 states vying for chunks” of the $5.4 Race to the Top, and the Investing in Innovation Fund “is a separate competition.” Congress “approved financing for the innovation fund almost as an asterisk when it approved $100 billion in federal education aid under the stimulus program in February.” Yet, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “says it could be a powerful lever for improving achievement.”
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In the Classroom
Council Urges New Approach To High School Math Instruction.
Education Week (10/7, Cavanagh) reports that a National Council of Teachers of Mathematics document urges “a new approach to high school instruction, one that aims to build students’ ability to choose and apply the most effective problem-solving techniques, in the classroom and in life.” The document, titled “Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making,” is “a follow-up to the NCTM’s 2006 document, ‘Curriculum Focal Points,’ which offered grade-by-grade content standards in math for prekindergarten through 8th grade.” The high school document is a “framework that attempts to show how skills that the NCTM considers essential-reasoning and sense-making-can be promoted across high school math.”
Teacher Creates Songs, Jingles To Help Students Memorize Math Concepts.
The Clarksville (TN) Leaf Chronicle (10/7, Wallace) reports, “Math class is alive with the sound of music at Moore Magnet – especially for the students in Brooke Knight’s classroom.” The third-grade teacher has infused math “jingles and songs… into her curriculum” to help students memorize math concepts. This “musical method has been part of her approach to instruction since she started teaching five years ago.” And she “hopes to someday market her songs and musical methodology.”
Report Examines Skills Needed For Effective Online Instruction.
eSchool News (10/7) reports on a report by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) called Examining Communication and Interaction in Online Teaching, that “reviews existing research and what it has to say about the keys to successful online instruction.” In addition, the report “reviews various policies and practices for communicating with students and parents during an online course, and it looks at the delivery model, course development, pacing, communication methods, and teacher requirements for 10 leading online-learning programs.” Included in the report are “four main skills or duties that every online teacher must have or perform, based on a review of existing research.” The skills are being “able to facilitate interaction,” being “highly responsive,” knowing “web-based technologies,” and being “trained in both synchronous and asynchronous instruction.”
Gates Foundation Sponsors Study Of “Good Teaching.”
The St. Petersburg Times (10/7) reports that “with about $1.4 million in funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,” Florida’s Hillsborough County public school district “is taking part in a national study to” find examples of “good teaching.” The foundation will “videotape teachers in their classrooms” and “test their subject-area knowledge, chart student growth, and give students in-depth tests” for the study. Between 700 to 1,000 teachers in the district have volunteered along with “about 2,000 more from other districts.”
On the Job
Teachers Unions Pushing For Shorter Work Weeks In Effort To Save Jobs.
FOX News (10/7, Thorne) reports that when Barack Obama spoke to teachers unions last fall, he “promised that ‘we will change education in this country; and we will bring about a better future for our children.’” At the time, teachers’ unions were endorsing him for president. “But now, as President Obama pushes for more hours in school, some of his staunchest supporters are moving in the other direction, seeking to adopt four-day school weeks as a way to avoid pay cuts and firings in the face of crumbling state budgets.” In several districts, “teachers’ union organizers in many states and school districts are advocating payless furloughs for all employees” so that jobs may be saved. For instance, “in Hawaii, where the Department of Education has to cut $468 million over the next two years,” the “teachers have decided to take 17 Fridays off.” Meanwhile, “other school districts using furloughs to save money this year are in Georgia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Florida and California.”
Law & Policy
GAO Report Finds Much Variability In State Testing Under NCLB.
Education Week (10/6, Robelen) reported that a new Government Accountability Office report on state testing under the NCLB “finds that although most states today spend far more on assessments than in 2002, when the federal law was enacted, 19 reported recent cuts in their testing budgets because of fiscal constraints.” Also, the report “finds that states face a variety of hurdles in ensuring the validity and reliability of those tests, such as staff capacity, assessment security, and developing alternate assessments for students with disabilities.” Additionally, the GAO says some states “are using more multiple-choice items than at the time of NCLB’s enactment because they can be scored inexpensively within the tight reporting time frames of the federal law.”
California Schools Chief Urges State Officials To Reconsider Curriculum Program Cuts.
Sean Cavanagh wrote in a Curriculum Matters blog for Education Week (10/6) that California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell “is urging state officials to reconsider their unusual decision to issue a five-year suspension on adopting curriculum ‘frameworks,’ saying the delay will hurt teachers and students.” Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) “and other state officials have been forced to take a budget ax to many aspects of state government, schools included. A law passed recently cut support for curriculum development and supplementary materials, blocks the state board of ed from adopting any materials, and prohibits any framework development.”
Student Group Says DC Chancellor Should Work With Teachers Union On Education Reform.
Bill Turque reports in the Washington Post’s (10/7) Voices column that DC schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee “didn’t leave student protests over teacher layoffs and budget cuts completely behind her while she was at Cornell University Monday for a lecture.” The school’s newspaper The Cornell Daily Sun reported that “a group called the Cornell Organization for Labor Action (COLA) distributed cards at the site of Rhee’s talk” in order to “make sure students got both sides of the story.” According to Senior Andrew Wolf, “COLA wanted to encourage Rhee to work more with the teachers’ unions instead of bashing them.”
Safety & Security
Chicago Schools Chief Launches Data-Driven Program Aimed At Preventing Student Killings.
The New York Times (10/7, A19, Saulny) reports that new Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman “has a plan to stop the killings of the city’s public school students. And it does not have to do with guns or security guards. It has to do with statistics and probability.” According to the Times, “Financed by federal stimulus grants for two years, the $60 million plan uses a formula gleaned from an analysis of more than 500 students who were shot over the last several years to predict the characteristics of potential future victims, including when and where they might be attacked.” The Times notes that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. are scheduled to meet with the family Derrion Albert, a 16-year old CPS student “beaten to death recently with wood planks after getting caught on his way home between two rival South Side gangs.”
School Closings Seen As Possible Root Cause Of Chicago Teen Deaths. The AP (10/6, Hawkins) reported, “Activists say the escalating violence among Chicago’s teens may have roots in an unlikely place – an ambitious plan to improve education that’s also thrown rival gangs together in an often-volatile daily mix.” According to the AP, since 2005, “dozens of Chicago’s public schools have been closed and thousands of students reassigned to campuses outside their neighborhoods – and often across gang lines – as part of Renaissance 2010, a program launched by Mayor Richard Daley” when Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was Chicago Public Schools CEO. Though the plan “has resulted in replacing failing and low-enrollment schools with charter schools and smaller campuses, it has also led to a surge in violence that has increasingly turned deadly, many activists, parents and students say.”
Florida District Requiring Parents To Accompany Elementary Students To School For Swine Flu Vaccine.
The St. Petersburg Times (10/7, Marshall) reports that Hillsborough County, Florida, public schools are requiring that parents accompany elementary students “to school if they want their child to” receive a swine flu vaccination at school. “While middle and high school students can get vaccinations for the H1N1 virus during school hours, elementary students will be getting vaccinated only after school — and only with a parent present.” District officials anticipated “crying children” and “the chance of a young child accidentally getting vaccinated without consent,” so they “decided to take the extra precaution for elementary students.” Superintendent Mary Ellen Elia “predicted the measure would not result in fewer elementary students being vaccinated,” citing “a tuberculosis outbreak last year, in which many parents brought their children to a high school for shots.”
Also in the News
California District Holds Substitute Training To Prepare For Possible Teacher Strike.
California’s Contra Costa Times (10/7, Meron) reports, “Even as West Contra Costa school officials say they hope to avoid a teacher strike, they are preparing as if a work stoppage is imminent” by holding “three training sessions for potential substitutes during the past two weeks.” Marin Trujillo, spokesman for the district, said that “preparing for a possible strike is ‘the responsible thing to do’” since there is no “ongoing communication” between the district and the teachers union. “But we hope to avoid the strike and come back to the table,” he added. The teachers union voted in August “to authorize a strike, which could come in many forms. … Union officials are required by law to give 72 hours notice to the district if teachers plan to strike.” So far, the union has not given any such notice, “and union leaders said a strike is not likely this week.”
NEA in the News
Rhode Island Commission Considers Limiting Some Elected Officials’ Say In Union Issues.
The Providence Journal (10/7, Peoples) reports tat the Rhode Island Ethics Commission “is moving forward with a plan that would reverse a long-held position that largely guides the behavior of labor union members who are also elected officials.” According to critics, “organized labor wields tremendous influence in state and local affairs, at least, in part, because union members serve in the General Assembly and in local town councils and school committees.” Although “the Ethics Commission has consistently ruled that such officials may vote on union issues, and even participate in contract negotiations, so long as they don’t belong to the specific local union involved,” this may change soon if the commission approves “a proposal that would prohibit elected officials from participating in any union business that affects not only their specific local union, but also the umbrella organization – such as the National Education Association – to which they may belong.”
Poll Finds Many Parents Unlikely To Permit Children To Get H1N1 Vaccine.
The AP (10/8, Stobbe) reports that an Associated Press-GfK poll conducted October 1-5 of 1,003 adults age 18 or older found that “38 percent of parents said they were unlikely to give permission for their kids to be vaccinated at school,” citing concerns about side effects or lack of concern about swine flu. “The belief that the new vaccine could be risky is one federal health officials have been fighting from the start, and they plan an unprecedented system of monitoring for side effects.” While “72 percent of those surveyed are worried about side effects…more than half say that wouldn’t stop them from getting the vaccine to protect their kids from the new flu.” Additionally, fears that thimerosal “or something in vaccines themselves can lead to autism remain entrenched in some quarters — despite no evidence from the most rigorous scientific studies.”
NBC Nightly News (10/07, story 6, 2:40, Williams) reported that a reason some Americans don’t want their children vaccinated “may be the fact that today’s parents still remember what happened with an earlier version of the swine flu vaccine back in the ’70s.” NBC (Bazell) added, “Public health officials had studied the 1918 pandemic that killed more than 50 million people worldwide, and they quickly persuaded President Gerald Ford to order production of a vaccine against the new strain and to help promote it.” Bazell continued, “The virus never reappeared. But vaccinations continued. And soon doctors discovered an ominous side effect: increased risk for a rare paralytic condition called Guillain-Barre Syndrome.” Bazell added, “Federal officials say it is different now because there is disease out there, a real pandemic. They also say that vaccine manufacturing is a safer process and they have systems in place to find rare diseases quickly.”
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In the Classroom
Academy In Texas Caters To Non-Traditional High School Students.
The Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph (10/8, Waters) reports on the Producing Responsible Individuals and Developing Excellence (PRIDE) Academy in the Henderson Independent School District (ISD), which caters to non-traditional high school students. Over the summer, PRIDE Principal Debra Brown “contacted students on a list drawn up by the high school principal of students who might benefit from a non-traditional setting.” She “explained the new program to them and their parents and answered their questions.” Afterward, “word spread, and other students called.” Students who may be drawn to the alternative academy include those who “want to work alone and don’t do well in crowds,” those who “want to recover credits they got behind on,” and students who “have responsibilities at home, such as taking care of elderly parents” or young children. “The academy conducts two, four-hour sessions weekdays for different groups of students — 7:30 to 11:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.”
Report Says Children Involved In 4H Are More Likely To Pursue Science Careers.
The AP (10/8, Pratt) reports, “Children involved in 4-H perform better in those subjects and are more likely to pursue science careers, according to the study, released Wednesday in conjunction with 4-H National Youth Science Day.” In its latest phase, the study led by Tufts University’s Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development director, Richard Lerner, “looked at more than 1,300 tenth-graders who participated in 4-H programs and nearly 800 who didn’t.” Researchers found that the longer children were involved in 4H, the more benefits they experienced, “and that girls benefited more from 4-H participation than boys, though the reason was unclear.”
Educational Video Games Seen As Key To Motivating Students.
Ian Buruma, “a professor of human rights at Bard College,” writes in an opinion piece for the Kansas City Star (10/8, Marsh), “The US Department of Education is looking to” give $650 million “to innovative school districts and nonprofit organizations that can come up with new ideas to enhance our educational system.” He asserts that “what is really needed in education is insight into what motivates today’s students and how to direct all that energy toward education,” and suggests that educational video games would fulfill that purpose. Specifically, Buruma describes “a homework system, called Adventures in Statistics, that challenges students to put forth their best effort on school work. He concludes that “with the right monetary incentives our private, free enterprise system will kick into full gear, and we will begin to see some very inventive and very exciting educational video games.” Furthermore, “if we get the incentives right, we will get the outcomes we want.”
“Flow” Concept Seen As Outlining Effective Student Motivation Methods. Po Bronson wrote in a NurtureShock blog for Newsweek (10/7) that typically, when we think of the “importance of motivation in improving the rate at which kids learn,” we “tend to think in terms of a particular activity that a kid becomes emotionally invested in.” However, according to Bronson, motivation “is also affected by structural factors-by how a subject, skill, or sport is taught. … This becomes particularly clear in the research on the concept of ‘flow.’” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi “became famous for his research on these moments of optimal experience, a state that he called ‘flow.’ … Critical to flow was being challenged but not overwhelmed.”
Mississippi Mandates Civil Rights Classes In Schools.
The Christian Science Monitor (10/4, Sisson) reported, “Most Mississippi children have never heard of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black child whose 1955 lynching in Mississippi by a white mob galvanized the civil rights movement. But they’re going to know all about” the civil rights movement “soon. In a groundbreaking reform…Mississippi will require civil rights as part of its US history curriculum.” In lower grades, students “will read books such as ‘I Love My Hair!’ as a way to discuss concepts like racial differences in skin complexion and hair texture.” Upper grades “will delve more deeply into how ordinary citizens shaped the civil rights movement and the long-term effects those changes had upon the nation.”
On the Job
DC Teachers Laid Off Without Regard To Performance, Tenure, Critics Say.
The Washington Post (10/8, Birnbaum) reports that 299 teachers were laid off Friday, ranging from “idealistic Teach for America newcomers to a 32-year guidance counselor who is praised by parents as uncommonly effective.” In total, 400 school employees “lost their jobs. … School officials have said the layoffs were necessary to close a $43.9 million gap in their 2010 budget caused by D.C. Council spending cuts in July.” However, critics, “including council members, students and the teachers’ union, have questioned the timing and underlying math of the layoffs.” Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee said “overall, less-experienced teachers were more likely to have been laid off. But she declined to release the numbers, saying they were being reviewed by District lawyers.”
Teachers Union Sues To Block Layoffs. Bill Turque wrote in a D.C. Wire blog for the Washington Post (10/7) that the Washington Teachers Union sued Wednesday “to block last week’s teacher layoffs, charging that District public school principals improperly targeted educators for dismissal on the basis of age or their willingness to speak out against administrators, union president George Parker said late this afternoon.” Parker “said the suit, filed in D.C. Superior Court, asks that DCPS be enjoined from firing the 388 teachers and other staff, who are scheduled to be dropped from the payroll on Nov. 2.”
Law & Policy
Spending Bill For 2010 Increases Funding For School Nutrition Programs.
The AP (10/8, Abrams) reports, “Reflecting the growing number of people scrambling to get by in tough economic times,” a “$121 billion agriculture spending bill for the 2010 budget year” passed by the House on Wednesday increases “aid to school and child care nutrition programs” by $1.9 billion to $16.9 billion.
Notably, the legislation contains a provision regarding school closures induced by something like a flu epidemic, according to Reuters (10/8, Abbott). If students are asked to stay home for five days or more, federal funds could be used to compensate families under financial duress — those who usually receive reduced-price or free lunches.
Hawaii Will Have Fewest Instructional Days Of All States After Furloughs Go Into Effect.
The Honolulu Advertiser (10/8, Moreno) reports that “once the 17 teacher furlough days are subtracted from the school calendar, Hawai’i public school students will likely have the fewest instructional days in the nation.” Hawai’i will have 163 instructional days beginning Oct 23, when the furloughs begin. That will place Hawai’i below the 180 instructional days required in most states and below the 173 days required by North Dakota. “Many teachers, parents and principals are concerned that the loss of instructional days will hurt student achievement,” and administrators at Kaiser High School are “considering using three of its six teacher planning days to add more instructional days back to the calendar.”
Parents Of Special Needs Students Say Furloughs Will Make Keeping Up With IEPs More Difficult. The Honolulu Advertiser (10/8, Moreno) reports in a separate story that “some parents of special-needs students are concerned that furloughing teachers on 17 Fridays this school year will interrupt federally mandated education services to the detriment of their children’s physical and mental health.” Furthermore, they say that the furloughs “will make it more difficult to meet Individual Education Plans (IEPs), federally mandated contractual agreements between parents of special-needs children and the state.” However, “State Department of Education officials say that schools currently are reviewing the individual plans for each special-needs child” and that “educators will accommodate the services a child should receive within the shortened weeks when Fridays are furloughs.”
Fordham Foundation Gives Common Core Math, English Standards A “B.”
Education Week (10/8, Cavanagh) reports, “A high-profile effort to establish common academic standards across states is far from complete, but an early blueprint has won a favorable review from” the Fordham Foundation, “a Washington think tank that has long supported standards-based accountability.” The Foundation graded “A draft of the multistate, “Common Core” standards,” giving it “a B grade in both language arts and math…a higher mark than those given to some prominent national and international standards documents.” The Foundation described “the Common Core math standards ‘simple and clear,’ although it says the authors could have done more to prioritize important math topics.” Meanwhile, “the English section is…deemed ‘praiseworthy,’ though the reviewers say the value of those standards will depend on states’ willingness to supplement them with curricular materials that help teachers ‘instill not just useful skills, but also imagination, wonder, and a deep appreciation for our literary heritage.’”
Safety & Security
Duncan, Holder Pledge Federal Help In Effort To Curb Violence Among Chicago Youth.
The AP (10/7, Hawkins) reported that Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “on Wednesday pledged federal support to fight a surge in youth violence in Chicago and other cities, calling the brutal beating death of a teenager on the city’s South Side a wake-up call for the country.” However, neither Holder nor Duncan “offered specifics or outlined any new strategies on how the government would help quell the increase in the number of violent deaths among teens.” Duncan and Holder “were sent to Chicago by President Barack Obama to meet with officials, parents and students from Christian Fenger Academy High School after the vicious beating of a 16-year-old sophomore whose Sept. 24 after-school death was captured on a cell phone video.” The New York Times (10/8, A22, Saulny) and the Washington Post (10/8, Slevin) also cover the story.
Also in the News
CDC Report Ranks Utah Schools Poorly On Junk Food Sales.
The Salt Lake Tribune (10/7, Schenker) reported that, according to a report released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Utah’s middle schools and high schools are more lax than most other states when it comes to stocking vending machines with junk food.” Specifically, the CDC report found that “among 40 states surveyed in 2008,” the state “had the lowest percentage of middle and high schools that didn’t sell candy or fatty, salty snacks in vending machines, school stores, canteens or snack bars.” And, of “34 states surveyed, Utah had the lowest percentage of secondary schools that didn’t sell soda — 25.6 percent.” The Tribune noted that “Utah does not have a state policy or law prohibiting the sales of such foods in schools.” Instead, the state “leaves the decision up to school districts.”
NEA in the News
Ninth-Grade Teacher Is New Kansas NEA Vice President.
The Topeka Capital Journal (10/8) reports, “Karen Godfrey has been named the new vice president of the Kansas National Education Association.” Godfrey, a ninth-grade English teacher in the Seaman Unified School District 345, is currently KNEA secretary-treasurer. She “will take a leave of absence from the” district “to serve full-time as the vice president.” In her new position, Godfrey will have “more opportunities to advocate for teachers and students.” She “said she relishes advocating for great public schools and for the teaching profession.”
Experts Recommend Using Multiple Tests To Measure Achievement.
Education Week (10/8, Maxwell) reported that while the Department of Education “finalizes its rules for doling out $4 billion” in Race to the Top funds, “a group of prominent testing experts is cautioning federal education officials on how they propose to use assessments to measure student achievement and teacher-quality improvements under the initiative.” The National Academies’ Board on Testing and Assessment “wrote in an Oct. 5 letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan that he…should ‘pursue vigorously the use of multiple indicators of what students know and can do,’ in the Race to the Top competition.” Furthermore, the testing experts “warned against using a single test, such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, to measure growth in student achievement, and also suggested that the department’s plans to use student growth data to evaluate teachers could be premature.”
National Academies Of Sciences Scholars Raise Concerns Over Stimulus Provisions. Ashley Merryman wrote in a NurtureShock blog for Newsweek (10/8) that in line with education stimulus goals set by the Obama administration, she is “all about standards and assessments of programs: all day, every day.” However, she adds that the National Academies’ Board on Testing and Assessment says that focusing on the National Assessment of Education Progress “may lead to the programmatic version of ‘teaching to the test.’ … Another complaint by the” organization is that the stimulus bill’s provisions “want data garnered from school and program testing” within only 72 hours.
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In the Classroom
Students In Maryland Carry Water Jugs Two Miles For Lesson On Water Scarcity In Kenya.
The Baltimore Sun (10/9, Bowie) reports that to teach his students “about the scarcity of water in some places in the world and what people go through to meet their basic needs,” City Neighbors Charter School teacher Peter French this week had “about 50 students walk about two miles to his house, fill up their water jugs from his tap and then walk back to school.” The exercise was part of a lesson about Wajir, Kenya, where “people have to walk as much as five miles to get water for just one day.” The entire “school has focused on the theme of air, water and food for the first part of the year,” which “has led to discussions about global warming and in particular which people would be less likely to survive as the Earth changes.”
One-Room School Caters To Students With Attention-Deficit Disorder, Learning Disabilities.
The St. Petersburg Times (10/9, Smetana) reports on the Academic Achievement Center, “an old-fashioned, one-room schoolhouse that” caters to students with “attention-deficit disorder or learning disabilities” or both. “This year, 13 students, in grades fourth through 12th, share the building, and in some cases, the lesson plans.” The two teachers at the school “cater to each child’s needs and create individualized curriculums. They also teach to the group as a whole.” The 13 students spend most of the day in the classroom, each with his or her “own reading and math assignments. Science and social science are taught as group,” but students are divided “into age brackets for language lessons.” The St. Petersburg Times adds that “some students stick around at the center through their senior year, earning a high school diploma. Others eventually return to public school.”
On the Job
Texas District To Use $500,000 Of Stimulus Funds On Diversity Training.
The Dallas Morning News (10/8, Holloway) reports that the Garland, TX, school district “will spend $500,000 of its roughly $21 million in federal stimulus money on diversity training. … The district already has teacher trainers studying books on working with a diverse student body, and they are taking those lessons to other teachers,” says Assistant Superintendent Phyllis Parker. The money will also “fund a program to help what educators like to call the educational environment – orderly schools with few behavior problems so that students can learn.”
Law & Policy
“Great Works” Debate Sidelined Amid Push For National Academic Standards.
The Washington Post (10/9, Anderson) reports, “”Every so often, educators, politicians, parents, students and anyone else who cares about schools will tussle over lists of works deemed essential (or not) for a culturally literate young adult.” This “Great Works” debate “gets especially fierce when the nation’s academic reputation is perceived to be at stake.” However, this time, there has not yet been an “uproar about texts included in (or omitted from) the standards experts proposed last month at the behest of the nation’s governors and state school chiefs.” Opening up this debate “could scuttle what is already a difficult mission: to craft academic standards that can be accepted nationwide without leaving the impression that states and school boards have ceded control of what gets taught in the classroom.”
DOE To Award Teacher Quality Partnership Grants.
Washington’s Daily Tell (10/9, Krowiak) reports, “The U.S. Department of Education recently announced” that it will award “$43 million in Teacher Quality Partnership grants…to 28″ high-need schools “and will focus on better preparing teachers and improving the instruction they will provide” to students in those schools. Of “the 28 programs receiving grant money, 12 will use it to start residency programs for teachers and nine will focus on reforming teacher preparation programs. The remaining seven will focus on both residency and preparation programs.” The Daily Tell notes that “another set of grants for the program will be announced in 2010 and will come care of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”
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Pennsylvania Districts Would See $300 Million Funding Increase Under House-Approved Bill.
Pennsylvania’s Patriot-News (10/9, Murphy) reports that the Pennsylvania “House passed a $27.8 billion spending bill on Thursday that cuts the level of spending by $400 million from last year.” Yet also under the spending plan, “school districts would see a $300 million increase in basic education funding, pushing the total to $5.5 billion. Special education funding would be maintained at last year’s $1 billion level.”
Connecticut Board Of Education Considers Teacher Performance Pay Plans.
WVIT-TV West Hartford, CT (10/8, Connors) reported that the Connecticut State Board of Education” is grappling with” the issue of performance pay for teachers “as it works out an application for funding” for “the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top competition.” To receive a portion of the $5 billion grant, states “must show that performance assessments for teachers and school administrators are directly linked to student achievement.”
Jeb Bush Promotes School Reform Ideas During National Tour.
The St. Petersburg Times (10/9) reports that “in the past few months, Jeb Bush has been living the chorus of an old country song, hitting the highways and byways of America — or at least its airports — as a rambling salesman for school reform.” So far, Bush has traveled to Nashville, Indianapolis, and Phoenix, and will visit “Washington D.C., this week” and “Atlanta later this month. At every stop, the former Republican governor is…pitching Florida’s ‘cocktail of reforms’ to lawmakers and business leaders as a potential remedy for their schools.”
School Finance
Stimulus Bill Seen As Having Neglected Pressing Education Funding Needs.
Paul Krugman writes in a column for the New York Times (10/9, A31) that in the 19th century, the U.S. “led the way in universal basic education.” The “rise of American education was, overwhelmingly, the rise of public education — and for the past 30 years our political scene has been dominated by the view that any and all government spending is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Education…has inevitably suffered.” Education “is mainly the responsibility of state and local governments, which are in dire fiscal straits. Adequate federal aid could have made a big difference.” Yet, in February, “centrist senators insisted on stripping much of that aid” from the stimulus bill. Krugman calls on Congress to “approve another big round of aid to state governments.” This federal aid “would be a very effective way to create or save thousands of jobs. And it would, at the same time, be an investment in our future.”
Some California Schools Rely On Fundraising To Fill Budget Gaps.
The Camarillo Acorn (10/9, Knight) reports, “School principals in Pleasant Valley and Oxnard Union High school districts are coping with markedly reduced budgets and say creative fundraising is vital to filling the funding gap.” Last week, the Camarillo Academy of Progressive Education, “a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school chartered by Oxnard Union, held a student jog-athon,” for which “students raised $20,000″ for “art and music appreciation and reading programs.” The Los Primeros School of Sciences and Arts lost about 15 percent of its preliminary budget this year. To make up for that, “the kindergarten-through eighth-grade school” will hold a student jog-athon this month “with the goal of raising $40,000. The event raised close to $30,000 last year.” Meanwhile, “middle school students are planning three benefit dances.”
Also in the News
DC Teachers, Supporters Hold Mass Protest Over Layoffs.
The Washington Post (10/9, B1, Turque) reports on the front of its Metro section that thousands of “D.C. public school teachers and supporters, buoyed by fiery speeches from national labor leaders and local elected officials, rallied in Freedom Plaza on Thursday evening against layoffs imposed last week by Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee.” According to the Post, demonstrators “demanded reinstatement of the 388 school employees, including 229 classroom teachers, who were fired to close what Rhee has described as a $43.9 million gap in the system’s 2010 budget.” Union leaders say the “fiscal crisis was contrived to purge the system of veteran teachers, an accusation Rhee denies.”
DC Teachers Union Lawsuit Questions Rhee’s Hiring Decisions. Bill Turque wrote in a D.C. Wire blog for the Washington Post (10/8) that the Washington Teachers’ Union “lawsuit to block last week’s layoffs of 266 instructors and staff addresses one of the most bewildering aspects of DCPS’ alleged budget shortfall: Why did Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee make 934 new hires in the spring and summer for a school system in which enrollment was expected to grow modestly at best?” The lawsuit “says that it asked the District to delay the layoffs until an arbitrator could hear the matter, which DCPS declined to do.”
Two Elementary School In Maryland Aim To Set New Group Reading Record.
The Hagerstown (MD) Herald-Mail (10/9, Heim) reports that “on Thursday, the reading of Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar” in two Washington County schools — Bester Elementary and Emma K. Doub School for Integrated Arts and Technology — was part of a quest to set a Guinness world record for the number of children and adults reading the same book on the same day.” The current record was set in 2008, when “700,000 readers…heard the story of Corduroy. The goal this year is to have 1 million participants.