Some Teachers Using Sign Language To Aid Classroom Management.
The Washington Post (10/16, B1, Brown) reports on the front of its Metro section that in addition to instructional goals, teachers “must confront a more pressing problem: how to manage children’s urgent requests, in the middle of the most carefully planned lessons, for permission to sharpen pencils, get drinks of water or visit the bathroom.” According to the Post, “One solution, a growing number of teachers are finding, is learning to speak without sound.” Sign language “has become a saving grace — a way to communicate without interrupting instruction.”

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In the Classroom
Education Stakeholders Respond To NAEP Results.
In a “Room For Debate” blog, the New York Times (10/15) posts responses from a number of education stakeholders to news that only “39 percent of fourth graders and 34 percent of eighth graders scored at or above the proficient level” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress “math test given this spring.” Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at University of California, Berkeley, wrote, “This week’s dismal test-score results is bad news for President Obama, just as his education secretary, Arne Duncan, begins to rethink Washington’s role in lifting the schools, searching for a less punitive, more robust blend of policies that energize students and teachers alike.” Lance T. Izumi, senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute, write, “Disappointing test scores, like the recent National Assessment of Educational Progress math scores, don’t mean that testing systems need to be abandoned. … The issue is not testing, but what is going on in classrooms that lead to poor test results.”

Maureen Downey wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (10/15) Get Schooled blog, “The release of NAEP math results yesterday prompted some applause here in Georgia over the state’s new performance standards.” Yet the Center for Education Reform said in a statement “that NAEP scores should be seen as an alarm bell.” The organization noted that “for the first time in the assessment’s history, fourth grade students showed no growth in math proficiency while eighth graders have shown only a slight uptick since 2003.” Furthermore, it says, “results also illuminate a continued achievement gap amongst ethnic groups, further showcasing a need for dramatic reform of America’s schools.”

Texas NAEP Results Applauded, Seen As Showing Need For Improvement. William McKenzie wrote in “The Education Front” blog for the Dallas Morning News (10/15), “Here’s what’s exciting about Texas’ most recent scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress math exam. … Texas minority students outpaced their peers nationwide.” Also, Anglo students “in fourth and eighth grades also beat their peers nationally. … In a populous, diverse state like Texas, those scores are not something to wave off. They show that peer group-to-peer group, our students are holding their own.” However, the results show a “troubling” achievement gap. Texas “still has a lot of work to do with its schools.”

Some California Districts Will Let Teachers Decide Whether To Observe Harvey Milk Day.
The Glendale (CA) News Press (10/16, Zimbert) reports that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s (R) “decision to sign a bill that encourages local school districts to commemorate the life and legacy of the first openly gay elected official in the U.S. has put education officials in familiar territory.” Under “the new state law” honoring “the birthday of Harvey Milk, the San Francisco County Supervisor and gay rights activist who was assassinated in 1978,” school boards are not mandated to comply with the observance. “Officials with Glendale and Burbank Unified school districts said they would likely defer to teacher discretion.” They also noted that one of the purposes behind the bill — to “enrich elementary and high school tolerance and diversity lessons” — is also “promoted through existing programs.”

Police Teach Students In Connecticut District “Protocol” For Dealing With Strangers.
The New Canaan (CT) Advertiser (10/15, Schmelkin) reports that “with four reports in the span of three days of strangers offering rides to students or asking for directions around town,” administrators and security officers in New Canaan Public Schools “are reinforcing the importance of daily safety protocols, planning upcoming school assemblies and sending out letters to parents reminding them to review safety tips with their children.” The district, “in collaboration with the New Canaan Police Department…is particularly emphasizing its Stranger Danger program with its younger students, reiterating the importance of walking in groups and knowing when a stranger’s behavior is inappropriate.” They are also teaching students “about the ways officers help citizens, when to make emergency calls and when to report suspicious behavior from strangers.”

California Schools Chief Joins Students In Earthquake Drill.
Raja Abdulrahim wrote in a L.A. Now blog for the Los Angeles Times (10/15) that California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell “joined a group of Los Angeles teachers and students this morning in the Great California Shake Out, a statewide earthquake drill that had O’Connell and others seeking cover under tables and desks.” O’Connell noted that “before the drill, the students engaged in earthquake education projects with the help of student teachers who explained earthquake dynamics.”

On the Job
Baltimore-Area Schools See Results From Efforts To Promote Walking To School.
The Baltimore Sun (10/16, Burris) reports that in an effort “to make kids fitter and more independent while saving the environment, advocates and some parents are promoting a return to the days when walking to school was the norm” with “events such as International Walk to School Month, which takes place throughout October.” And some Baltimore-area schools are seeing results. One Severna Park Elementary parent “said that she has seen an increase in walkers since” the school “began taking part in International Walk to School activities last school year.” And Geoffrey Casey, assistant principal at Mills-Parole Elementary School in Annapolis, said that “about 30 percent of the school’s 500 students walk to school.”

Teacher Merit Pay Systems Seen As Counterproductive.
Deborah Meier wrote in a “Bridging Differences” blog for Education Week (10/15) that schools “need to be highly collegial settings” and teacher merit pay systems create “a setting that makes this harder, not easier to achieve.” Also, “I believe that schools work best when we can help young people see that the highest goal of learning is not some external reward, but the enormous satisfaction of learning.”

Law & Policy
Nevada District Seeks To Define Merit Pay Criteria.
The Las Vegas Sun (10/15, Richmond) reports that the question of “what criteria should be used to judge teacher performance” for merit pay plans “is especially dicey in Nevada, where a state law generally disallows using test scores to measure teacher success.” As such, “the Clark County School District is trying to better define its ‘pay for performance’ formula – criteria that will be applied when judging who deserves bonuses at the district’s 17 empowerment schools.” Staff bonuses at empowerment schools “are supposed to range from 0.5 percent to 2 percent of their annual salaries, depending on how well the school performs on criteria such as gains in student achievement (which accounts for half the total score), parental feedback, and evaluations of campus management.” Clark County “had also considered whether schools served large populations of at-risk children,” but “those additional criteria…were never written into the operational manual” for empowerment schools, though school “officials think they should be.”

Special Needs
Mother Claims Police Erred In Fining Special-Needs Son For Cursing.
The Dallas Morning News (10/16, Holloway) reports that Thomas Hayman, a student at Westwood Junior High School in the Richardson (TX) school district, “used an expletive in his classroom…and got a $364 police citation for it. Police and school officials say that’s to be expected in an environment where there is little tolerance for disorderly conduct.” However, the “boy’s mother, Camber Hayman, says she’s more concerned that police officers who deal with students do not have training needed to deal with special-needs children like her son, who has Asperger’s syndrome.”

School Finance

Stimulus Helps Increase Pennsylvania’s Basic Education Subsidy.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (10/16, Chute) asks, “How will Pennsylvania continue paying the bill for basic education when federal economic stimulus expires in 2011?” The state received $654.7 million in federal stimulus money, and “about $300 million is an increase in the basic education subsidy over last year. With the rest of it, the legislators substituted federal money for state money.” This means that “while there is an increase in basic education subsidy” this year, “there is a decrease in how much basic education money comes from the state.” Pennsylvania plans to spend about $1.3 billion of its “$1.56 billion [in] fiscal stabilization money” over the next “two years — about $655 million each year — on basic education.” That plan does not “leave any federal money for future years.” It notes that, “as the last state to approve its budget, Pennsylvania…is the only state that does not have a fiscal stabilization fund plan approved by the federal government.”

DC-Area Schools Raise Funds Via Grocery Store Loyalty Cards.
John Kelly wrote in a column for the Washington Post (10/15) that D.C.-area schools have received upwards of $20,000 due to grocery store loyalty card programs. Kelly goes on to list dollar amounts earned by individual schools, and provides details on how to sign up for the programs.

Also in the News
GAO Investigating High School Diploma Mills.
U.S. News and World Report (10/15, Clark) reported that government investigators “are pursuing high school diploma mills, which, for a fee, give high school dropouts diplomas or answers to the tests that enable them to enroll in college and qualify for federal financial aid.” According to U.S. News, “In testimony before a congressional panel on Wednesday, George Scott, a director of the Education, Workforce, and Income Security division of the Government Accountability Office, played secretly made audiotapes of a test proctor apparently giving students the answers to college-qualifying tests.” The GAO “also provided examples of tests that the investigators had purposely failed yet someone had ‘corrected’ to make sure they passed and qualified for college and aid.” Scott said the evidence has been passed on to ED, which “will decide whether or not to press for prosecution.”

NEA in the News
East Providence Education Association Resumes, School Committee To Resume Pay Talks.
The East Bay (RI) Newspapers (10/16, Morse) reports that October 31 “will mark one year since the East Providence School Committee and East Providence Education Association had a collective bargaining agreement.” The contract negotiations between the two sides have been “one of the most…controversial labor issues in the state,” according to the East Bay Newspapers, and the negotiations “became even more contentious when the school committee voted to unilaterally roll back teachers salaries by five percent in early January, a move that was accompanied by a mandatory charge of 20 percent for health insurance premiums.” Last week, the school committee and the education association resumed negotiations. “The next negotiation sessions between the union and school committee is scheduled for” next week.

National Council Of Teachers Of Mathematics Releases Teaching Guidelines.
The Washington Post (10/19, B3, Chandler) reports that “engaging teenagers in open-ended conversations about math is an uncomfortable challenge.” However, “getting students to better understand how math works — and what it’s good for — are fundamental goals for the nation’s corps of high school math teachers,” according to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. The NCTM “released new guiding principles for high school mathematics this month emphasizing that ‘reasoning’ and ’sense-making’ should be at the center of all lessons. The document…will probably influence how textbooks are written, teachers are trained and lessons are crafted in coming years.”

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In the Classroom
“Value Added” Achievement Data Seen As Vanguard Of Reform Efforts.
The Los Angeles Times (10/18, Felch, Song) reported that now-Houston, TX district Superintendent Terry Grier “hoped to bring with him a revolutionary tool that had never been tried in a large California school system” when he was hired to run the San Diego Unified School District in January 2008. This “value-added” approach “threatened to upend many traditional notions of what worked and what didn’t in the nation’s classrooms. Rather than using tests to take a snapshot of overall student achievement, it used scores to track each pupil’s academic progress from year to year.” However, what made the tool “incendiary…was its potential to single out the best and the worst teachers in a nation that currently gives virtually all of them a passing grade.” The Times reported that the Obama administration “has made value-added a pillar of its school-reform efforts, including” the Race to the Top competition. Also, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan championed the value added approach when he headed the Chicago Public Schools.

Approach Examined. The Los Angeles Times (10/18) ran a Q&A on the value-added approach to teacher assessments. According to the Times, “Experts agree that many current achievement tests are flawed and tend to reflect socioeconomic background more than actual learning.” Yet, “because the value-added approach compares students to themselves, rather than to other pupils with different backgrounds, it mitigates the problem with raw achievement scores, experts say.”

The Los Angeles Times (10/18, Song, Felch) reported, “For years, schools and students have been judged on raw standardized test scores. Experts say this approach is flawed because they tend to reflect socioeconomic levels more than learning.” Thus, the “value-added” approach “attempts to level the playing field by focusing on growth rather than achievement.” Via statistical analyses of test scores, value added assessments track individual student improvement “year to year, and uses that progress to estimate the effectiveness of teachers, principals and schools.

Fathers Seen As Becoming More Involved In Children’s Education.
Texas’ American Statesman (10/19, Taboada) reports, “Studies by the U.S. Department of Education show that having men in schools translates into higher student achievement and fewer disciplinary problems.” And according to a survey by the National Center for Fathering and the National PTA, “fathers are more involved in their child’s education than they were 10 years ago.” Furthermore, Chuck Saylors, “the first male National PTA president,” said the message “that a child is most successful when both parents are involved is Taking hold. “Nationally, about 11 percent of the National PTA’s members are men; historically, that number has hovered around 3 percent, according to the group.” According to the PTA study, “men previously didn’t get as involved because they were never asked to be.”

Mentoring Programs In South Carolina District Aim To Stem Bad Behavior.
South Carolina’s The State (10/19, Dominick) reports that L.W. Conder Elementary in South Carolina’s Richland 2 school system “has a host of longstanding mentoring programs, as well as some new this year.” One of the new programs are the A+ Girls, “a group of fourth-graders who” get together “every morning before school” with their mentor “for a half-hour of discussions and lessons on life.” The State adds that “the A-Plus Girls, a companion group to the Star Gents for boys, is just one of a myriad of mentoring programs aimed at developing leaders and stemming bad behavior before it starts.” Both programs “are led by teachers and teaching assistants through a small grant. Students get into the program by teacher recommendation.”

Parents Develop Hands-On K-8 Education Program That Encourages Family Participation.
California’s Mercury News (10/19, Carney) reports on Fairwood Explorer, a “new hands-on, challenge-based” K-8 grade program in the Sunnyvale (CA) School District geared toward families “who want a program that encourages parent and family participation.” The program, created by district parents, is “modeled…after PACT in Mountain View, an alternative public school offering a ‘progressive education and a developmental curriculum.’” The Fairwood “campus will offer two to four classrooms for the program at first, a number that…could grow if and when the program does.” Meanwhile, “Fairwood will continue to serve the district as a neighborhood school in other aspects. The goal is to have half of the program slots reserved for students from the neighborhood and the other half for open enrollment students from within the district.”

Science Day Aims To Expose Elementary Students To Unfamiliar Disciplines.
Texas’ Daily Herald (10/17, LaFlure) reported that last week, “about 60 presenters from across Texas traveled to” Nolanville Elementary School “for the school’s fourth annual Science Day, aimed to enhance the students’ love of science.” Presenters “showcased subjects ranging from crime scene investigations to dental casting, a star lab, inventions and exotic reptiles.” The event was organized by Pam Anderson, a campus instructional specialist who “created the day of fun to expose students to subjects they didn’t know existed,” she said. The Daily Herald notes that Nolanville’s Science Day is “one of many ways schools in the Killeen Independent School District have tried in recent years to boost math and science performance.”

Second-Graders At School In Pennsylvania Learn Hand-Washing Skills.
The Philadelphia Inquirer (10/17, Hardy) reported that “with the swine-flu pandemic spreading through many Pennsylvania schools this fall, hand-washing and other preventive measures are becoming as much a part of the daily student routine as one-two-threes and ABCs.” For instance, “second graders…at Arrowhead Elementary School in Collegeville” last week learned about hand washing from Grace and Hale Soloff, children of Stephen Ostroff, the state’s acting physician general. “The two guest teachers…took turns reading a picture book, Germs Are Not for Sharing. They talked about using tissues to ‘blow, wipe, and toss,’ and demonstrated how to wash palms, backs of hands, fingernails, and up to the wrists, for about as long as it takes to sing the ABC song.” Afterward, “they took the children into the school bathrooms for a practice run.”

On the Job
Core Elements Trains New Orleans Teachers To Boost STEM Curriculum With Hands-On Activities.
Louisiana’s Times-Picayune (10/19, Haydel) reports on “Core Element, previously known as the Greater New Orleans Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Initiative,” which “offers 30 hours of training to third- through 12-grade teachers in Orleans and Jefferson parish schools.” The purpose of the two-year program “is to help teachers introduce more hands-on learning opportunities for students, bolstering the strength of the curriculum.” According to the Times-Picayune, “the program’s strength is its connection to cutting-edge techniques, access to practical learning experiences, and ability to connect with some of the best academicians, curricula and resources throughout the country.” Core Elements receives financial backing from the Shell Corporation as well as “several other…science and technology companies like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin — also are involved. A partnership with the National Science Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution has provided additional financing.”

Law & Policy
US, Australia Agree To Share Education Reform Ideas.
Australia’s The Age (10/19, Harrison) reports that Australia’s Education Minister Julia Gillard has signed a deal with US President Barak Obama’s Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, to foster collaboration between Australia and the United States on ways to improve schools.” Ms. Gillard signed a memorandum of understanding during a recent visit to Washington. Under the agreement, “policy officers from both nations will come together regularly to share ideas on education reform.” Trevor Cobbold, “spokesman for the public education advocacy group Save Our Schools, said it was ‘bizarre’ to look to the US for ideas on education,” and said that “Australia should instead look to Finland, which outperformed both Australia and the US in international tests.”

Parents In Hawaii Seek Alternative To Teacher Furloughs.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (10/19, Essoyan) reports, “The prospect of no public school on Furlough Fridays is spurring parents across the state to fight for their children’s education, while some are pulling their kids out of the system entirely.” And, “parents who have joined forces on the issue say they are in it for the long term. Some call for an emergency legislative session to find the money, either from the Hurricane Relief Fund or an increase in the excise tax. Others suggest a pay cut for teachers rather than furloughs. Many want to codify the number of school days in law, rather than leave it up to labor negotiations.” The Star-Bulletin adds that “private schools are reporting a flurry of interest from public school parents. Le Jardin Academy in Kailua has been getting inquiries and has already accepted new students since the furlough announcement, according to its admissions office.”

Attorney Details Complaint Against Hawaii DOE. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (10/18, Borreca) reported that attorney Eric Seitz, “is readying a new complaint against the [Hawaii] Department of Education because of the 17 school furlough days set to start Friday.” At a news conference last week, Seitz “said the furlough days ‘will be enormously disruptive and cause irreparable harm to every child,’” and that “public school children with special needs have individual education plans prepared and to move away from those plans risk damaging the child’s educational potential.” Seitz said that “to avoid a lawsuit,” the district must “change the [furlough] schedule and compromise.” However, “both the DOE and the union said it would take extra money to fund a compromise.” In response to Seitz, School Superintendent Pat Hamamoto said in an email that the Department of Education is “working diligently to prepare students, parents, employees, and the community for the upcoming furlough days.” He added, “Should funds become available for public education, we would be willing to re-open negotiations with the union and restore instructional time by reducing the number of furlough days.”

Safety & Security
Slain Teacher Warned Of Student’s Potential For Violence.
The AP (10/18) reported that Todd Henry, a special education teacher in the Tyler, TX district, a “victim of a fatal stabbing in his classroom,” called a friend “days before the attack saying he feared that the teenager who is now being held in his death was capable of killing.” The friend remembers advising Henry “to document his concerns and alert his bosses. Henry said he already had.” According to the AP, the student “had a history of mental illness and had been accused of other violent acts.” The “juvenile’s lawyer and others say the case spotlights deficiencies in how Texas handles its most disturbed and violent juvenile offenders.”

School Finance
Virginia District Poised To Implement “Dramatic” Series Of Budget Cuts.
The Washington Post (10/19, B1, Chandler) reports on the front of its Metro section that the Fairfax County, VA School Board “is bracing for the most dramatic reduction in services in more than 20 years as it attempts to bridge a projected $176 million budget shortfall with cuts that could extend to closing schools, increasing class size, ending summer school, discontinuing most full-day kindergarten classes and eliminating foreign language instruction in elementary schools.” According to the Post, district officials are releasing a list of potential cuts early “because they want to give the public the earliest possible look at the severity of this year’s deficit.”

Also in the News
Report: Indiana District Schools Feature $4 Million In Artwork.
The AP (10/18) reported that according to the Indianapolis Star, donated paintings by T.C. Steele, William Forsyth and other impressionist painters “hang with little fanfare” at public schools across Indianapolis. Indianapolis Public Schools “house paintings and artwork from many Indiana artists, and the district’s collection has been estimated to be worth $4 million.” Schools “might not be the safest place for such valuable paintings and at least a few have needed to be repaired due to pencil stabbings, the report said. … Under the terms of the donations, most of the paintings must remain at the schools to which they were originally given, IPS officials say.”

Roughly 250,000 Education Jobs Saved, Created From Stimulus Bill, Report Says.
The Washington Post (10/20, A4, Anderson) reports that federal stimulus funds have “created or saved 250,000 education jobs, the Obama administration announced Monday, although states and school systems continue to face enormous fiscal pressures.” The announcement highlighted a report, issued by the White House and ED, suggesting that “without $67 billion in federal aid provided through Sept. 30 under the economic stimulus law, state and local budgets for public schools and higher education would be hemorrhaging. The report previews more detailed education jobs data that will be announced Oct. 30.”

The Washington Times (10/20, Weber) adds that “the report being released by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council — in cooperation with the US Department of Education — shows money from the $787 billion” stimulus bill “has enabled states to cover nearly all of their projected education-budget shortfalls for fiscal 2009 and 2010.” Bloomberg News (10/19, Goldman) added that the stimulus plan “has allowed school districts and universities to avoid layoffs and states have been able to restore ‘nearly all of their projected education budget shortfalls’ for fiscal years 2009 and 2010, the White House said, citing preliminary data in a new government report.” Yet, even “with stimulus spending, job growth lags behind other indicators of a recovery. The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent last month and the president has said he expects it to exceed 10 percent before it starts coming down.” The Wall Street Journal (10/20, Pulizzi) also covers this story.

Stimulus Has Saved 6,000 Education Jobs In Los Angeles, Report Finds. The Los Angeles Times (10/20, Markman) reports, “Some 250,000 education jobs have been saved or created by the economic stimulus package, according to a White House report released Monday. … According to the report, more than 6,000 education jobs in Los Angeles were saved by stimulus funds.” White House Domestic Policy Council Director Melody Barnes is quoted saying that the stimulus bill also helped “avert massive class [size] expansion.”

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In the Classroom
Teacher-Developed Outdoor Classroom Curriculum Aligns With Texas Educational Objectives.
The Dallas Morning News (10/20, Holloway) reports the Beverly Murray-Ferrell, a science teacher at Gentry Elementary School in Mesquite, Texas, developed an idea for a nature trail outside the school. She sought approval from her principal, and after more than a year, “the trail opened this month at the school.” The Dallas Morning News explains that “the city already had a paved trail alongside its wooded property at the school’s border. Murray-Ferrell’s idea was to put instructional signs along the pathway to turn it into an outdoor classroom.” The signs, “like those found at zoos and outdoor museums, explain such things as the water cycle, the nitrogen cycle, food chains and the life of amphibians. Each is carefully tied to state educational objectives.”

Obama Visits Maryland Elementary School.
The AP (10/20, Pace) reports, “President Barack Obama visited a Maryland school Monday to congratulate the students and teachers on their hard work.” Viers Mill Elementary “receives federal poverty aid and has been celebrated for closing the achievement gap between minority children and other students.” Obama said that he visited the school “because it is ‘a great example of how much improvement a school can make.’” The Washington Post (10/20, Hernandez) also covers the story.

PeaceBuilders Teaches Students Not To Put Down Peers.
The Salt Lake Tribune (10/20, Schencker) reports on PeaceBuilders, “a California-based violence prevention and character education program in many of the nation’s schools.” The program, which teaches children “six basic principles: praise others, give up put-downs, seek wise people, notice hurts, right wrongs and help others,” is active in 56 elementary schools in Utah. Recently at East Layton Elementary, for instance, “students wrote put-downs on small pieces of paper, crumpled them and put them in boxes in their classrooms. At the end of the week, students gathered in the back of the school and dumped them on the lawn,” where “local firefighters then decimated the put-downs with a fire hose.” On a day-to-day basis, Bonnie Barlow, “a counselor at East Layton, advises students to deflect put-downs by ignoring them, making a joke or changing the subject, among other things.”

Researchers Focusing On Oral-Language Skills For English-Learners.
Education Week (10/19, Zehr) reported that a National Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English-Language Learners conference held earlier this month highlighted the trend of educators and researchers who specialize in the education of English-language learners “putting new emphasis on the importance of teaching oral English. … Although it’s essential that English-language learners have a chance to practice speaking and listening in the classroom, the same goes for any student with weak verbal skills, researchers say.”

On the Job
H1N1 Vaccination Efforts At US Schools Complicated By Seasonal Flu, Parent Permission.
Education Week (10/20, Fine) reports, “Thousands of American schools are mobilizing to ensure that students are vaccinated against swine flu in the coming weeks, a task complicated by parental fears and overlap with vaccine programs for seasonal flu.” In Maryland’s “142,000-student Montgomery County…school district,” officials have suspended “school-based clinics for seasonal-flu vaccine because of inadequate supply of that vaccine, and to make way for the swine-flu vaccine, which was shipped sooner than expected.” Another issue for school and health officials is that they “must educate parents about the swine-flu vaccine and secure their permission before administering it to students.” Amy Garcia of the National Association of School Nurses, based in Silver Spring, Maryland, pointed out that “if it takes a while for parents to have questions or concerns addressed, it could delay their returning the consent forms on time.” And “adding to the paperwork challenge, there is often not a lot of turnaround time for consent forms, with the vaccine supplies arriving on short notice.”

Michigan School Closes Amid The Spread Of Flu-Like Symptoms. The AP (10/19) reported that the “spread of flulike symptoms has led to the closing” of East Olive Elementary School in the St. Johns, MI school district The “school serves kindergarten through fifth grades in Clinton County’s Olive Township, about 10 miles north of Lansing.”

Study Finds Students Benefit When Science Teachers Engage In Research.
T.H.E. Journal (10/19, Nagel) reports, “When high school and middle school science teachers engage in extracurricular research work, their students benefit,” according to a recent study from Columbia University, which also “found that such extracurricular research work can also bring economic benefits to schools and communities.” The NSF-funded study “focused on middle school and high school teachers in New York, who engaged in a program called the Columbia University Summer Research Program for Secondary School Science Teachers (CUSRP),” and “evaluated the performance of their students over the course of several years following the completion of the program.” The researchers “found a definite, statistically significant benefit for the students of the teachers who participated in the program, but only after a delay of a couple years.”

Texas District Sees Sharp Increase In Students Transferring From Private Schools.
The Dallas Morning News (10/20, Stahl) reports, “More students than usual transferred from private schools to the Highland Park [TX] school system this year, in what may be a sign of belt-tightening in the Park Cities.” According to the Morning News, school officials “say they have no other explanation for the surge in new students during the first six weeks of the school year.” Overall, Highland Park Independent School District “enrollment grew by 2 percent this year, in a district with about 6,400 students. Officials say some year-to-year variation is normal, but the largest increase is usually at the high school level.”

Law & Policy
Obama Administration, Congress Urged To Boost Funding For After-School Programs.
The New York Times (10/20, A30) editorializes though after-school programs “are a cost-effective way to boost student achievement, reduce juvenile crime and help overstressed working parents,” a new Afterschool Alliance study titled, “America After 3,” finds that the number of “after-school slots continues to lag far behind parents’ demand.” The Times calls on President Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Congress to “acknowledge that a lot more is needed – and quickly come up with a plan to increase financing for quality after-school programs.”

Kentucky Governor Appoints Task Force To Align State’s Education Initiatives.
Kentucky’s Courier-Journal (10/20, Rodriguez) reports that “in a move he says is meant to re-energize support for public education,” Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear “announced Monday the creation of a task force charged with developing a unified vision of what Kentucky schools need to offer to better prepare students for the 21st century.” The task force — made up of “education advocates, teachers, superintendents, legislators, business leader and a parent-teacher association representative – will examine efforts underway in the state, such as the Common Core Standards Initiative, Graduate Kentucky, the Gates Foundation/SREB college and career readiness initiative, the Race to the Top competition and the Governor’s Task Force on Early Childhood Development and Education.” Jay Blanton, a spokesman for Beshear, pointed out that “while several initiatives are underway, there has not, until now, been any “overarching effort, tying these good initiatives together into a single, focused strategy.’”

Wisconsin Governor Pushing Education Reform In Bid To Qualify For Race To The Top.
The AP (10/19, Bauer) reported that Wisconsin “must change its state law to allow student test results to be used to evaluate teachers in order to compete for $4.5 billion in federal education stimulus money, Gov. Jim Doyle [D] said Monday.” Doyle, in stops in Madison, Milwaukee and Wausau, “outlined what he called ‘an incredibly ambitious agenda’ of education reforms he said the state must make in order to compete” for “Race to the Top” stimulus grants. According to the AP, “Many of the changes outlined by Doyle, such as allowing test results to be used in teacher evaluations, need legislative approval. Others, like encouraging schools with struggling students to extend the school day and academic year, do not.”

Michigan Governor Rejects Proposed $54 Million For Public School Funding.
The Detroit Free Press (10/20, Christoff, Higgins) reports that Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) “flexed her veto muscle today, wiping out $54 million from a public school budget and putting lawmakers on the spot to come up with more cash for schools.” The two districts “hardest hit by Granholm’s veto would be” Livonia and Dearborn, “each losing $4.9 million in state aid — on top of the $165-per-pupil reduction affecting all Michigan districts approved by the Legislature earlier this month.” A spokesman for the Troy School District, “which stands to lose nearly $3 million,” said that district officials feel “shocked” and “abandoned” by the veto. Troy has “already cut $7 million from its budget this fiscal year,” and stands to lose another $2 million ” in per-pupil funding.”

Federal Education Officials Urged To Focus On Curriculum Improvements.
Mary Ann Zehr wrote in a Curriculum Matters blog for Education Week (10/19) that a new paper by Grover Whitehurst, former research chief for ED and currently the director of the Brown Center on Education at the Brookings Institute, “makes the case that federal education officials should consider ways to support” curriculum improvements “over such efforts as expanding charter schools and teacher merit-pay programs because research has shown that the impact of the curriculum used has been greater than the impact of charter schooling or merit pay.”

Also in the News
Grant Will Fund Teacher Training For Native American Students.
The Arizona Republic (10/20, Gavri) reports that “a $6.7 million grant has been awarded to Arizona State University (ASU) to enable more students in the Arizona Native American communities to earn teacher certification.” The money comes from a $33.8 million “five-year teacher quality partnership” — Professional Development School-Teaching Excellence Network through Educational Technology (PDS) – “that will be used to reform traditional university teacher preparation and teacher residency programs.” According to Matthew Crum “of ASU media relations…another upcoming grant will expand PDS into even more Native American communities.”

NEA in the News
School Bus Drivers In Pennsylvania District Propose “Extremely Reasonable” Wages In Contract Negotiations.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (10/19, Gazarik) reports that “the union representing bus drivers in the Hempfield Area School District has submitted a proposal to the school board that offers ‘a fair amount of savings’ on health care and an ‘extremely reasonable amount’ on wages.” The school board is seeking “concessions worth $9 million to $10 million over four years.” If the union — a branch of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, an NEA affiliate — does not oblige, “directors will hire a private contractor, First Student, to take over transportation of the districts 6,400 students. First Student’s proposal would save the district $1.4 million in the first year, board members said.”

Institute Of Medicine Recommends School Lunch Overhaul.
NBC Nightly News (10/20, story 2, 2:15, Williams) reported, “The prestigious Institute of Medicine today recommended a big overhaul in this nation’s school lunch programs.” NBC (Costello) added, “While the nation’s schools served lunch to 30 million kids and breakfast to 10 million each day, the cafeteria standards haven’t been updated in 14 years. The new recommendations call for school lunches to offer 2 1/2 to five fruit servings each week, up to 2 1/2 servings of vegetables each week, nine to 13 servings of grain with at least half and whole grains, skim milk, and in addition to minimum calorie suggestions, for the first time, age-specific calorie ceilings, too. But implementing all of those ideas will likely mean school lunch programs could get more expensive,” so “the researchers want the USDA, which administers school lunch programs, to help pick up the tab.”

ABC World News (10/20, story 9, 2:30, Gibson) reported, The Institute of Medicine says to combat obesity, schools should be serving more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and cut down on fat and sodium and set maximum calorie levels for meals. But that’s expensive.” ABC (Besser) added, “In the last 20 years, the national rate of childhood obesity has tripled.” Tony Geraci of Baltimore’s Public Schools “has revamped school lunches in one of the nation’s toughest urban areas, with one restriction: he couldn’t spend a penny more to do it. He added more fresh produce from local growers, cutting down on transportation costs. And he introduced ‘Meatless Mondays’ in all 218 schools, a first for a US public school system.”

Jennifer LaRue Huget wrote in “The Checkup” blog for the Washington Post (10/20) that the “new rules would, for the first time, establish an upper limit for calories. … The guidelines also embrace a gradual reduction in sodium content over the coming decade, noting that too dramatic a cutback would leave school food unpalatable.”

Op-Ed: Federal Government Should Promote Vegetable-Eating Among Youth. Marcus Weaver-Hightower, an assistant professor of educational foundations and research at the University of North Dakota, wrote in an op-ed for Education Week (10/20) that President Obama “is fond of saying that parents have a responsibility to their children’s education to turn off the TV and video games, an idea reiterated in his back-to-school speech to U.S. schoolchildren.” Yet, what Obama “neglected to mention…was the importance of the school cafeteria. He should have told America’s students to eat their vegetables.” Among other measures to promote vegetable eating among youth, Weaver-Hightower calls for child nutrition to be a responsibility of ED, as currently, “the school lunch program is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whose mission is to help agribusiness first, kids second.”

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In the Classroom
Baltimore-Area Educators Experimenting With Wikis In The Classroom.
The Baltimore Sun (10/19, Gencer) reported on the increasing classroom use of wikis, online spaces “where people can edit and contribute to content.” In schools in Baltimore County and throughout the region, “teachers and staff have begun experimenting with the Web tool, using it for class exercises, homework and projects — as well as professional collaboration.” Alyssa Smith, a library-media specialist at Catonsville Middle School in Baltimore County said that use of wikis is a way for educators to “keep up technologically with…kids who have had technology since they were born.” Some school systems have even “developed policies and guidelines for using such technology” recently in recognition of its “growing need and interest. They aim to ensure Internet safety and to supply more of a framework for teachers.”

Harlem Success Academy Exposes Students To Rural Life To Boost Test Scores.
The New York Times (10/20, A1, Hernandez) reported on its front page that educators at the Harlem Success Academy, a “chain of four charter schools known for a relentless emphasis on data,” have “invented a form of test preparation. The schools haul their students to a farm each year, hoping to expose them to the rural life and lift their scores.” Educators “have long known that prior knowledge of a subject can significantly improve a child’s performance on tests. … At many urban schools across the country, field trips to unfamiliar locales are standard events in the academic year.” Yet, education experts “said they knew of no other schools that organized trips with test preparation in mind.”

On the Job

Lack Of Decisionmaking Power Seen As Increasing Stress Among Teachers.
University of New Hampshire Professor of English Thomas Newkirk writes in an op-ed for Education Week (10/21), “Until fairly recently, psychologists accepted the common-sense view that job stress was directly related to the significance of the decisions being made.” However, “A longitudinal study of male civil servants in Great Britain, now referred to as the Whitehall Study,” found that “mortality rates, as well as a range of stress-related illnesses, were inversely related to job status.” Researchers “concluded that, contrary to popular wisdom, the lower-status workers experienced more stress precisely because they had less control over their work. … When teachers lose control of decisionmaking,” when teachers “must abandon units they love because there is no longer time, when they must follow the plans designed by others, when they are locked in systems of instruction and evaluation they don’t create or even choose — they will not be relieved of stress.”

New York City Elementary Schools To Begin Vaccination Efforts.
The New York Times (10/21, A28) reports that New York City’s public elementary schools will begin swine flu vaccinations “next week, officials said Tuesday as they encouraged parents to sign consent forms being sent home with students now.” The vaccinations will be in nasal spray form, and “will be given by school nurses.” They “are expected to be available for about eight weeks. Private schools that choose to participate will also receive the vaccine.”

Law & Policy
Education Department Will Consider Public Opinion In Designing Common Tests.
Education Week (10/20, McNeil) reported that as 48 states “charge ahead with plans to adopt common academic standards the U.S. Department of Education will enlist experts and the public to help design a $350 million competition for the next step: the development of common tests.” According to Education Week, “education Department officials will travel to Atlanta, Boston, and Denver for a series of meetings that will solicit testimony from testing experts, including those with research and technical know-how, as well as to hear from the public.” The department will use the information it gathers “to design the $350 million grant competition — paid for through the federal economic-stimulus program — that will help consortia of states fund new, common assessments.”

Los Angeles District Officials Embark On Door-To-Door Anti-Truancy Campaign.
The Los Angeles Times (10/20, Blume) reported that Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Ramon C. Cortines “went door to door Monday to urge teens to return to school, netting about a dozen students with the effort and drawing attention to a growing problem.” Cortines “was among 150 staffers and school board members who joined campus employees in the first-time, broad-based initiative, which targeted 10 truancy-plagued middle and high schools. … Cortines and others who took part in Monday’s friendly sweep emphasized that their main goal was to help students, but said another reason was this month’s deadline for districts to provide final enrollment figures to the state.”

Mayors Stress Key Role Of Education In Long-Term Economic Recovery.
Indianapolis, IN Mayor Gregory A. Ballard, Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker and Nashville, TN Mayor Karl Dean write in an op-ed for Education Week (10/21), “Given the beating that city and state budgets have taken in recent months, America’s mayors have come under tremendous pressure to scale back all but the most critical investments in public safety, infrastructure, transportation, and other core services.” Yet, for the “nation’s big cities, there can be no true, long-term economic recovery without adequately educating far greater numbers of young people.” Ballard, Booker and Dean call on mayors to “redouble local efforts to improve graduation rates and — no less important — to create meaningful educational options for the staggering numbers of adolescents who have been pushed aside or have given up on school altogether.”

Safety & Security
California District Hires Security Guards After Two School Staff Members Are Robbed.
The Salinas Californian (10/21, Zamudio) reports that “after the armed robberies of two school custodians in Monterey County last week, a Salinas school district has hired private security to help keep this type of crime away from its campuses.” A security guard from the Monterey Private Security Firm will “patrol middle schools and high schools in east Salinas” at a rate of $21 per hour. “The security officer started Monday and will patrol the campuses three hours before school starts and four hours in the evening.” The district is also trying to identify lighting problems, and it “is encouraging its workers to use a ‘buddy system’” when walking outside in the dark.

School Finance

Some States Not Compliant With Stimulus Spending Rules.
CNN (10/20, Hornick) reported, “Creating and saving jobs while boosting investment in the future are among the top goals of the Obama administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan.” However, some states that used stimulus funds “to fill existing budget gaps could face a crisis when the money runs out after 2010.” ED “has chastised certain states for their stimulus funding programs and warned them that they risk their chances at getting other [ED] grants down the road.” However, despite “some of the accountability and tracking problems,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “said early feedback from states ‘also tells us that many districts are using stimulus dollars in ways that will move us beyond the status quo.’”

Maryland Governor Warns Superintendents Over Potential Education Cuts.
The AP (10/20, Witte) reported, “With an ominous budget challenge looming again, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley [D] called on school superintendents Tuesday to work together in hunting for ways to save money.” Despite protecting education from budget cuts in the past, O’Malley “put superintendents on notice during a meeting in Annapolis that he needs their help to battle a staggering $2 billion shortfall next year in the state’s $13 billion operational budget.” O’Malley “urged superintendents to search for ways to save money in school construction by using standard designs for facilities instead of starting from scratch.”

John Wagner wrote in a “Maryland Politics” blog for the Washington Post (10/20) “With Maryland facing a $2 billion shortfall next year, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) offered few budgetary assurances to a meeting of the state’s public school superintendents Tuesday morning.” Yet thus far, with the “help of federal stimulus money, the state’s schools have fared far better during tight budget times than other state-funded entities.”

NEA in the News
Teachers Union Official Proposes Charter School To Groom Future Educators.
The Las Vegas Sun (10/20, Richmond) reported that John Jasonek, “the executive director of the Clark County Education Association,” has proposed a charter high school that grooms students as “the next generation of educators.” Under Jasonek’s plan, students who are “still interested in teaching” after graduation would be offered scholarships “to a local college — on the condition that after they graduate, they stay in Clark County to teach for four years.” The “proposal is believed to be unique among the nation’s charter schools — not only by offering a curriculum that would benefit future teachers, but by promoting synergy among like-minded students who want to teach.” The Las Vegas sun adds that the “if the Nevada State Board of Education agrees to sponsor the charter school, it would start in August.”

New Jersey District Using NEA Grant To Improve Student Achievement In Math.
New Jersey’s Suburban News (10/21, Izzo) reports that “A $5,000 National Education Association (NEA) Learning & Leadership Grant is helping the Cranford Public School District” discover how to improve student achievement in math. With the Teaching Math in the 21st Century grant “Cranford Public Schools’ novice elementary-school teachers will participate in an after-school collegial group study in which they’ll analyze grade 3-5 student math work, learn how to address common math misconceptions, and digest content on a deeper level.” They will also “be observed in the classroom by members of the committee and their study-group peers to refine math lessons and teaching techniques.”

More Schools Close Due To H1N1.
The CBS Evening News (10/21, story 3, 2:35, Couric) reported, “Since the start of classes, 628 schools have closed for at least one day because of concerns over H1N1.” CBS (Reynolds) added, “Vacant halls at this closed suburban Chicago high school are a vivid symbol of the alarm the flu has stirred among students, administrators, and parents nationwide.” Reynolds continued, “As of this afternoon, 198 schools were closed in 15 states, affecting some 65,000 students and 4,000 teachers. And a new report by Qwest Diagnostics said five to 14-year-olds are spreading the H1N1 virus to others.” Reynolds added, “Federal officials say closing schools should be a last resort,” continuing, “Closing a school is costly not only in terms of idled staff but because those kids staying home could force at least one working parent to stay home with them. ”

USA Today (10/22, Toppo) reports, “The figures — up from just 11 schools in five states on Monday — represent the largest jump in school closures so far this fall.” Amy Garcia, executive director of the National Association of School Nurses, predicts “that contagion rates for H1N1 ‘will continue to increase until a good percentage of the population has either had it or has been vaccinated against it.’”

The Washington Post (10/21, Ruane, Aratani) reports, “Some secondary and elementary schools across the Washington region are seeing a gradual increase in absences that apparently are due to suspected cases of swine flu.” According to state and local officials, “the trend is clear, if not dramatic.” The article goes on to list absenteeism rates for all the localities in the area.

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In the Classroom
Students From Around The World Participate In Online Math Competition.
The St. Petersburg Times (10/22, Ritchie) reports, “Parrott Middle School students recently competed in a 48-hour online math competition, Math Mania, matching their skills with children around the world.” The “students competed at different levels ranging from basic addition to more complex problems” and “were assessed by speed and accuracy.” Overall, “than 2 million students from 204 countries answered 452,681,681 problems correctly.” Math Mania is “sponsored by Voyager Expanded Learning, which provides reading, math and professional development programs for U.S. school districts.”

Middle School Agriscience Program Gets New Lab, Landscape-Design Software.
The Baltimore Sun (10/22, Gencer) reports on a new computer lab at Baltimore County’s Hereford Middle School “with professional landscape-design software recently purchased with about $7,000 from the school’s PTA” that was “paid for in part by a $10,000 donation from the Baltimore County Farm Bureau.” The lab is used as an “instructional tool in the middle-school agriscience program,” said the district’s technical programs supervisor, Rhonda D. Hoyman. The landscaping software’s “animated, 3-D walk-throughs of student designs” help “provide a real sense of what the kids’ projects will look like.” And “students can even see what the design will look like at different times of day, giving them insight into where shadows will fall.” The Baltimore Sun notes that as “the only middle-school agriscience program in” Maryland, Hereford’s agriscience department “aims to expose students to the range of possibilities and potential careers in the field.”

Analysis Shows Nearly Half Of Dallas Fifth-Graders Not Ready For Middle School.
The Dallas Morning News (10/22, Rado) reports that according to a Dallas Morning News analysis of data recently released by the Dallas school district, almost half of fifth-graders are not “ready for middle school. Roughly 52 percent of the fifth-graders were considered ‘on track for middle school’ at the end of their elementary years in 2008-09.” The “low ‘on track’ rates at many schools raise a question about how students can become ready for college if they haven’t even mastered the basics of elementary school.” The Morning News adds that at the Dallas district’s “top magnet schools, more than 90 percent of fifth-graders were considered on track. But at 60 schools across the district, fewer than half of fifth-graders were deemed prepared, the data shows.”

Survey Reveals Student Attitudes Toward Sex Education In DC Public Schools.
The Washington Post (10/22, Fears) reports, “D.C. public high school students who participated in focus groups on sexual health said they were unimpressed with the District’s sex education curriculum, do not trust the school nurses who are charged with counseling them about disease prevention and disdain the brand of condoms distributed by schools.” According to the Post, the mostly-female groups of students “said they were too suspicious or embarrassed to talk to school nurses about sex or ask about condoms. … Those were some of the findings of a survey conducted by the Youth Sexual Health Project, funded by the D.C. Council Committee on Health.”

On the Job
Teachers Make House Calls To Encourage Parental Involvement.
The Boston Globe (10/22, Vaznis) reports that “dozens of elementary, middle, and high school teachers in Boston and Springfield…are making house calls this year to visit their students’ families, a practice gaining popularity nationwide.” The purpose of these visits is “to build stronger relationships between teachers and families in a quest to bolster parent volunteerism in school and involvement in their child’s education at home, as well as break down any misconceptions that parents and teachers might have about one another.” The effort in Springfield’s public schools began “about five years ago as a partnership among that city’s teachers union, a middle school, and the Pioneer Valley Project, a faith-based community-organizing group.” Meanwhile, “Boston, which is working in partnership with Harvard University, began its program two years ago and has expanded it to five elementary schools.”

As Many As 30,000 Texas Teachers Lack “Highly Qualified” Credential.
The Dallas Morning News (10/22, Stutz) reports, “As many as 30,000 Texas teachers hired this year may have to take a competency test to keep their jobs under revised federal requirements for classifying educators as ‘highly qualified.’” In order to “give teachers and campuses as much time as possible to meet the requirements, school districts ‘may choose to be proactive and begin taking steps to come into compliance with the new interpretation,’” said Gene Lenz, the state’s deputy associate education commissioner.

Teacher Evaluation System In Seattle Public Schools Seen As In Need Of Reform.
Columnist Lynne K. Varner writes in the Seattle Times (10/22), “Once I read the 71-page critique” of Seattle public education “by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a national research and advocacy group, about how Seattle attracts, develops and retains good teachers, I found both a critical lens and a blueprint for change. According to the report, “Seattle starts out with good teachers,” with “more than half of its nearly 3,500 teachers” having “graduated from colleges ranked selective or better by U.S. News & World Report.” But because “principals and administrators evaluate teachers in a thumb up or down way…many problems…go unnoticed.” Varner suggests that education reform “include both a change in the tenure track and an evaluation system teachers and the public can trust.”

In a separate opinion piece for the Seattle Times (10/22), Lynne Varner writes that the report, Human Capital In Seattle Public Schools, “by the National Council on Teacher Quality goes beyond the merit pay issue to offer a sharp and prescriptive look at how Seattle manages its teaching corps.” It showed that “Seattle gives its biggest pay raises to its most experienced teachers, leaving newer teachers — who might be performing better — out in the cold.” It also notes that it is difficult to fire a school employee, to which Varner asserts: “An extreme level of due process may sound attractive but the costs, financial and otherwise, are borne by all of us.”

Teacher Contract In Connecticut District Touted As Model For Nation.
Education Week (10/21, Sawchuk) reported that a “teacher contract approved in New Haven that lays the groundwork for changes to the way teachers in the Connecticut city are paid, supported, and evaluated, has been hailed by union and district leaders alike — as well as federal education officials — as a potential model for the country.” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan praised the pact for making “changes to areas that have been traditionally sensitive for teachers.” Under the terms of the deal, a “reform committee would make recommendations on the best ways to measure student growth. … Those recommendations would be used by a separate teacher-evaluation committee charged with determining how to weigh” student-growth data “as part of an overall teacher-evaluation system capable of distinguishing among four levels of performance.”

Law & Policy

DOE Calls For Overhaul Of Teacher Training Programs.
The AP (10/21, Quaid) reported that the Obama administration “is calling for an overhaul of college programs that prepare teachers, saying they are cash cows that do a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the classroom.” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “called for ‘revolutionary change’ in these programs, which prepare at least 80 percent of the nation’s teachers.” According to the AP, “In a speech prepared for delivery Thursday, Duncan…noted the administration is using stimulus dollars to reward states that tie student achievement data to the education schools where their teachers had credentials.” The US Department of Education “also is helping to pay for an expansion of teacher residency programs in high-needs schools.”

Hawaii Education Official Says Schools Can Request Increased Instructional Time.
The Honolulu Advertiser (10/22, DePledge, Nakaso) reports that “at a private meeting with Gov. Linda Lingle (R) yesterday afternoon, [Hawaii] schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto and school board and union leaders said schools can request to increase instructional time and convert waiver and planning days to offset furlough days.” For instance, schools “could ask to increase instructional time on Wednesdays, when school days are shorter, to help offset furlough days scheduled for Fridays.” This, according to Hamamoto, “could restore a few hours of classroom instruction each week and lessen the impact of furloughs.” The requests would have to “go before a campus’s School Community Council and requires a two-thirds’ vote of its teachers. … If endorsed at the school level, the request then goes before a four-member panel of the BOE and the Hawaii State Teachers Association and then the full board for final approval.”

Despite Lack Of A Bill, Utah Legislators Debate Sexual Education.
The Salt Lake Tribune (10/22, Schencker) reports that a bill to change and clarify sex education in Utah wasn’t ready to be discussed on Wednesday, health and human services committee co-chairman state Sen. Chris Buttars “decided to hold the discussion anyway because he had already flown in psychiatrist and author Miriam Grossman to talk about the topic on his own dime.” Legislators “spent two hours debating sex education in schools,” then passed “an oddly-worded motion intended to urge lawmakers not to promote groups that encourage ‘high-risk sexual behavior’ in schools, possibly including Planned Parenthood.”

Former School Trustee In Orange County, California, Seeks To Ban Book By Maya Angelou.
The Los Angeles Times (10/21) reported in a L.A. Now blog, “There have been several attempts in recent years to ban certain books at Orange County [CA] schools.” Now, Judy Ahrens, a former Westminster School District trustee, “has raised concerns” about “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” a book written by Maya Angelou “that includes a rape scene.” Ahrens “took to the podium at Monday’s Huntington Beach City Council meeting to read” the passage in question to demonstrate “why the book should be banned, she told the audience.”

School Finance
District Officials In Louisiana Approve Bonuses For All School Employees.
Louisiana’s Houma Courier (10/21, McBride) reported that “hundreds of Terrebonne [LA] school employees will get up to $3,000 in bonuses, money the board says they earned by posting improved scores at a dozen schools throughout the parish.” Overall, the 760 employees will receive $1.7 million in federal stimulus money next week. “The money will go to workers at schools that met growth targets for the 2008-09 school year. Instructional employees, such as teachers, will get $3,000 each. Non-instructional employees, such as cafeteria workers, will get $600 each.” In addition, “the school board has “approved a round of bonuses for all school-system employees. This supplemental pay comes from money left over at the end of the 2008-09 fiscal year.”

At-Risk Children Who Attend Preschool Found Less Likely To Need Special Education Services.
The AP (10/23) reports that a four-year “study of 10,000 at-risk children in Pennsylvania has found that special education needs drop from an average of 18 percent to just two percent in kids that attend preschool.” It “also found that 80 percent of the children who went to preschool met state school competency standards for transition to kindergarten.” The $1 million study funded by Heinz Endowments was “conducted by the University of Pittsburgh.”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (10/23, Smydo) reports that the study showed that Pennsylvania’s Pre-K Counts program helps students prepare “for kindergarten” and reduces their “need for special-education services.” Researchers found that “Pre-K Counts classes benefited children of various racial and ethnic groups”; despite “poverty and other disadvantages.” This study “is the evidence that allows us to finally declare victory in a debate Pennsylvania has been mired in for much too long,” said Heinz Endowments Chair Teresa Heinz, “alluding to disagreements about the program’s worth during budget battles in Harrisburg.”

States Maintaining Pre-K Funding Despite Budget Woes, Pew Study Finds. Education Week (10/22, Ash) reported that despite “declining revenues and budget shortfalls, state funding for prekindergarten is expected to increase by about 1 percent, or $5.3 billion, nationally in fiscal 2010, says a report” from the Pew Center on the States’ Pre-K Now campaign. Education Week adds that according to the Pew report, 27 of the 38 states “with existing pre-K programs, as well as the District of Columbia, increased or maintained funding for early education in their 2010 budgets. … In addition, two states-Alaska and Rhode Island-launched pre-K pilot programs this fiscal year.”

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In the Classroom
Writing Curriculum Integrates Senses Into Descriptive Writing.
Massachusetts’ Wicked Local Orleans (10/23) reports on “Let’s Explore,” the theme for a writing curriculum that integrates “the five senses for descriptive writing.” A second-grade class at Orleans Elementary School walked the perimeter of the school to find inspiration for writing on the theme. “Rich vocabulary was sparked by what students found, saw, heard and felt during their exploration, along with ‘word bank’ information presented by the teacher.” During the trip, “students carried a clipboard” to log what they saw outside. “Upon returning to the classroom, the teacher worked with a group of six students outlining the descriptive writing project they would begin, and then guided students to work in pairs to articulate the process and content of their piece of writing.”

Chicago Agricultural Sciences Students Create Public Golf Course.
The Chicago Tribune (10/23, Helfgot) reports that students at Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences have developed “the city’s newest golf course — a three-hole layout that was designed and built by the collaborative work of more than 300 students.” The course consists of three, par-3 holes “which will be run by students, is handicap accessible and open to the public, free of charge.” Now that it is built, “students will now learn how to maintain — and financially sustain — one.” Dr. Robert Bush, a teacher at the school and “the project’s mastermind,” said, “This is agricultural career and technical education at its best. Numerous lessons were learned that would have only been theory in the classroom. They might be future golf superintendents, or architects, or engineers, or teachers.” Students at the school take “two years of general studies,” followed by “one of five agricultural tracks: agricultural finance, agricultural mechanics, animal science, horticulture and food science and technology.”

Law & Policy
Former NASA Engineer Wants Virginia To Overhaul “Sputnik-Era” Science Standards.
The Virginian-Pilot (10/23, Roth) reports that a draft of Virginia’s “new science standards approved Thursday by the state Board of Education” includes modeling and simulation, nanotechnology, and organic chemistry. “Jim Batterson, a former teacher and NASA engineer…has been pushing the board for two years to change the standards,” because, he said, “he wanted to save children from learning ‘Sputnik-era science.’” His “proposed standards eliminate an out-of-date reference to cathode-ray tubes and cut optics and fluids from the physics standards.” The public will be asked to comment on the proposal “as early as today, followed by hearings around the state.”

Judge Rejects Request To Open Schools On Hawaii’s First “Furlough Friday.”
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (10/23, Essoyan) reports that “US District Judge David Ezra today rejected an effort to open” Hawaii public “schools [today], saying he had virtually no choice but to allow the first ‘furlough Friday’ to take place.” According to Ezra, Thursday was “too late to try to call teachers and staff back to campuses.” Still, the judge said that he has not yet “decided on the merits of the arguments and set a hearing for Nov. 5 to consider the two lawsuits that are trying to stop the state’s effort to cut 17 days from the school year.” Both “lawsuits requested a temporary restraining order to stop ‘furlough Fridays,’ the state’s plan to help balance the budget by giving teachers and school staff unpaid days off.” Two more furlough days are scheduled before Nov. 5, the Honolulu Bulletin points out. One lawsuit represented nine students with autism, while the other was filed on behalf of regular and special education students.

Special Needs
Maine Education Chief Proposes New Special Education Standards.
The Bangor (ME) Daily News (10/23, Leary) reports that Maine’s Education Commissioner Susan Gendron “is proposing an overhaul of the way the state provides special education to students, with an independent report showing those costs increasing at twice the rate of other education spending.” According to Gendron, “different schools are assessing the needs of students very differently under the current law,” and “lawmakers have been disturbed at the increasing costs” of special education services. For instance, “while general instructional costs have been increasing less than three percent, special education costs have been increasing more than six percent.” Gendron’s proposed legislation will address how to deliver services to all students who need them and how to “get at equity without excluding those children that really need a certain level of service.” The Bangor Daily News notes, “The final version of Gendron’s proposal is weeks away.”

Safety & Security
Violence, Vandalism Reports Decrease In New Jersey Public Schools.
New Jersey’s Star-Ledger (10/23, Mascarenhas) reports that during the 2007-08 school year, “the number of reported incidents of violence and vandalism in New Jersey public schools declined five percent” from the 2006-07 school year, “although amid that good news, cases of substance abuse increased four percent, according to a state report released today.” Specifically, “school violence declined five percent, vandalism fell 11 percent, and weapons incidents decreased 14 percent in the one-year period, according to the report.” But the report also shows that, “the number of reported instances of bullying, intimidation, and threats grew slightly in one year, and by seven percent over three years, the study found.”

Facilities
Schools Await EPA Report On Possible Health Danger Posed By Artificial Turf.
McClatchy (10/22) reported, “It’s been more than a year since the Environmental Protection Agency began looking to see if” artificial-turf fields made of ground-up tires release toxic chemicals that “might be harmful to children. With turf fields continuing to open at a rate of roughly 800 a year,” federal officials “are under increasing pressure to say whether any risk exists.” McClatchy noted that a “national spotlight first shone on the popular synthetic surfaces in April 2008 when New Jersey health officials announced that high levels of lead dust were discovered in artificial grass fibers on aging Newark and Hoboken fields.”

Thermal Energy Storage Systems Expected To Save Florida District Up To $75,000 Annually.
The St. Petersburg Times (10/23, Stevenson) reports that Roland Park Elementary and Middle school “is one of five schools where Hillsborough County schools have installed…thermal energy storage” systems. The district uses the most energy “during off-peak hours, which saves the district money, says Bob Wegmann, general manager of operations for the Hillsborough County School District.” The district paid $585,708 to install the systems, which are “projected to save” the district “$50,000 to $75,000 a year in those five sites alone.” According to “a study completed last year by the Army Corps of Engineers…off-peak thermal cooling saves as much as 50 percent on energy bills.”

Florida District Building New Elementary School On “Noisy” Property Near Airport.
New Elementary School The Orlando Sentinel (10/23, Weber) reports, “A new $15 million school next to Orlando Sanford International Airport is being built on property that federal aviation officials caution could be noisy from airplanes taking off and landing.” The FAA has warned Seminole County school officials “that building a school on property tagged as noisy ‘would be considered a noncompatible land use and would not be recommended.’” But the district says “average noise levels won’t be a problem at the new Midway Elementary School.” Scott Stegall, director of facilities planning for Seminole said, “It’s like having a conversation with the vacuum cleaner on at your house.” The new school will open “after winter break.”

School Finance
Increase In Federal Education Spending Seen As Key To US Students’ Competitiveness.
Mark Rice, chair of the American Studies Department at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, NY writes in a column for Forbes (10/23) that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “has been charged with reshaping public K-12 education. On Thursday he spoke forcefully about the need to improve the quality of teacher education in the U.S., but that’s only part of the puzzle.” According to Rice, “It has become commonplace that when basic competencies are tested, students in the U.S. do not compare favorably to students in other countries. … There are no simple solutions,” but “any broad-based rethinking of public education needs to include increased funding.” Ultimately, countries “whose students fare best in comparative assessments are also those countries that have committed a greater share of their national budgets to their children’s futures.”

Also in the News
Academies Help Parents Engage In Children’s Education.
Time (10/22, Cruz) reported though the concept of parent academies “has been around for more than a decade, several larger cities are starting or expanding such programs in an effort to engage parents who are otherwise uninvolved in their child’s education.” Philadelphia “has invested heavily in this year’s launch of a comprehensive and wide-ranging program for parents. Boston is reviving its Parent University following an earlier version’s demise due to budget cuts.” Parent academies “are particularly helpful for urban communities full of mothers and fathers who for various reasons are disengaged from their children’s education.”

NEA in the News
Massachusetts Teachers Association Endorses Candidate To Replace Sen. Edward Kennedy.
The AP (10/23) reports that the Massachusetts Teachers Association’s, an NEA affiliate, “is throwing its support behind Rep. Michael Capuano’s bid for the late Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat.” MTA President Anne Wass has “said Capuano has a deep understanding of the challenges facing urban public schools, in part from his eight years spent a mayor of Somerville.”

Parents Protest Hawaii School Closures.
The AP (10/23, Niesse) reported, “Hundreds of angry parents protested Hawaii’s statewide public school shutdown Friday, saying their children are losing out on education due to government budget cuts.” Hawaii “closed 256 public schools Friday, the first of 17 teacher furlough days planned for this school year, giving the island state the shortest school year in the nation at 163 days. Most states have 180 school days.”

13,000 Hawaii Teachers Affected By Furlough. The Honolulu Advertiser (10/25, Tsai) reported that 13,000 Hawaii teachers were “affected by a furlough program expected to save the state more than $60 million per year.” The Advertiser noted that many teachers are “coping with growing unease about the long- and short-term impact of lost instruction days on their students, public perception that they have abandoned their students, and their own financial and professional futures.”

Hawaii Lawmakers Scrambling To Cope With Estimated $1 Billion Deficit Through June, 2011. The Honolulu Advertiser (10/25, DePledge) reported that amid parents’ outrage over the loss of 17 school days, Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle (R) “and state House and Senate leaders say their priority must be the larger issue of the state’s budget deficit.” According to the Advertiser, Lingle and Democrats who control the Legislature “worry the public still does not fully comprehend the magnitude of an estimated $1 billion deficit through June 2011. … State tax collections have fallen lower than projected through the first quarter of the fiscal year, so unless collections improve, the deficit could actually be significantly larger.”

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In the Classroom
District Considers Adding Singapore Math Curriculum To Supplement Current Program.
The Tampa Tribune (10/25) reports, “With U.S. students lagging behind their counterparts in some countries, local educators are turning to Singapore to shake up their math curricula.” That nation “ranked second in the world on fourth-grade math scores in the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.” Currently, the Hillsborough County school district “is thinking about adding” the Singapore Math curriculum at schools. The curriculum “puts a greater emphasis on problem-solving skills, visual techniques and hands-on learning.” If adopted, the program would be optional for teachers to use to supplement their lessons. Lia Crawford, the elementary mathematics supervisor for Hillsborough County, said that “the program can’t be used as the main curriculum in public schools because the state has not approved it as a program that follows state standards closely enough.” But “a district committee will review the program later this year to determine if it will make it…as an additional resource.”

Forensic Science Classes Introduce Problem-Solving Using Scientific Methods.
The Washington Post (10/24, Birnbaum) reported, “Long the preserve of career prep academies, forensics classes have flourished throughout the country in the past several years.” According to the Post, science educators “praise the courses for drawing together strands of chemistry, biology, physics and more, and they say that the lab work is a practical introduction to solving problems using scientific methods. Teachers can capitalize on the popularity of such TV shows as ‘CSI’ and ‘Law & Order,’ which have drawn so much attention to forensics that some lawyers say they’ve had to change their tactics in court.”

Students Build Three-Hole Golf Course For Agricultural Sciences High School In Chicago.
The Chicago Tribune (10/25, Metsch) reports that “more than 20 years after it was first discussed, there’s a golf course at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences.” The idea for the course came from Robert Bush, who thought that the “putting green would teach students more about soil and grasses.” Bush said that “students did all the work” on the course, “learning first-hand about a wide range of jobs.”

After-School Elementary Program Helps Girls Build Character, Increase Self-Esteem.
The Tyler (TX) Morning Telegraph (10/25, Middleton) reported on an after-school club at Bell Elementary School that aims to help female students build character and increase their self-esteem. “With a year under its belt, Bella Girls has become very popular among students, school officials said — so popular that there is a waiting list.” Each month, the club meets. During that time, the girls “eat snacks, meet in small groups with an adult leader for an activity, and then reconvene in a large group for a lesson.” The Tyler Morning Telegraph adds that the “standard of behavior expected from a Bella Girl includes being respectful of others, treating others the way you would want to be treated, showing kindness, being honest, and having fun.”

On the Job
Pittsburgh Public Schools Poised To Hire Think Tank To Develop Merit Pay Plan.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (10/23, Smydo) reports, “The Pittsburgh school board Wednesday approved a $1.8 million contract with a New Jersey think tank that’s going to help the school district develop a pay-for-performance plan for teachers.” If the school system receives “a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,” it will pay Mathematica Policy Research Inc. of Princeton, New Jersey, to “help the district develop ‘multiple measures of effective teaching,’ including a way to measure a teacher’s impact on students’ standardized test scores.” The Pittsburgh district “is in line to receive a major share of $500 million” the Gates Foundation “has earmarked for teacher effectiveness programs. It hasn’t said how much Pittsburgh would receive.”

Year-Round Schedule Credited With School’s Success Meeting AYP Goals.
The Augusta (GA) Chronicle (10/26, Sparks) reports on the year round instruction schedule at Taliaferro County School in Crawfordville, Georgia. School “administrators, parents and students say they love the year-round calendar, which is in its eighth year.” State records show that “in the past four years, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding…standards for Adequate Yearly Progress has steadily increased in many of the school’s grade levels, and the school as a whole made AYP for the first time this year.” The Augusta Chronicle adds that Taliaferro County School “is one of just 13 school systems out of 191 in Georgia to offer a year-round schedule, according to Georgia Department of Education records.” Many of the districts that do offer year round school “are in population areas of less than 20,000 and have a high percentage living below the poverty level.”

New Study Finds That 40 Percent Of K-12 Teachers Are “Disheartened” About Jobs.
Valerie Strauss wrote in an “Answer Sheet” blog for the Washington Post (10/23) that a new study conducted by Public Agenda with Learning Point Associates finds that 40 percent of the nation’s 4 million K-12 teachers “are ‘disheartened’ about their jobs. The vast majority think that there is too much standardized testing and that it is a ‘drawback’ to teaching.” According to Strauss, the results of the study, titled “Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today,” “should be noted by federal policy-makers who are doling out billions of federal dollars for reform efforts. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has disappointed many educators who had hoped that he would change the strong emphasis the Bush administration had placed on standardized testing. He hasn’t.”

Law & Policy
Duncan Criticizes Decision To Cut 17 Days From School Year In Hawaii.
The Wall Street Journal (10/24, A3, Radnofsky) reports that Hawaii officials’ decision to cut 17 days from the school year amid a budget shortfall was sharply criticized by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in an op-ed for the Honolulu Advertiser. Duncan noted that Hawaii has received $105 million in education stimulus dollars and the state is slated to receive another $52 million in education stimulus later this year. The Journal notes that Hawaii is the only state that has only one school district, and districts in almost every state have laid off teachers.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan wrote in an op-ed for the Honolulu (HI) Advertiser (10/23) that Hawaii “has been making progress on student achievement. Over the 20 years that the National Assessment of Educational Progress has been given to states, Hawaii students have recorded steady gains.” However, Hawaii “is cutting 17 days from the current school year. … This is a step in the wrong direction.” Duncan adds, “I understand that Hawaii is feeling the pain of the economy more than many states.” Yet, “now is not the time to decrease investment in education. Hawaii’s economic problems should not be creating an educational crisis for its children.”

Alabama Schools Chief Releases Plan Calling For More Teacher Contributions To Benefits.
The AP (10/23, Hunter) reported that Alabama schools Superintendent Joe Morton “unveiled a plan to deal with budget cuts for fiscal year 2011 partly by making teachers pay more for health insurance and retirement benefits. The plan, unveiled Thursday, also calls for a constitutional amendment that would base appropriations to K-12, postsecondary and four-year universities on the number of students enrolled at each level of education, a move supported by the state teachers union.”

Gates Foundation Partnering With Obama Administration In School Reform Effort.
The AP (10/25, Quaid, Blankinship) reported that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation “has been the biggest player by far in the school reform movement, spending around $200 million a year on grants to elementary and secondary education.” Now, the foundation “is taking unprecedented steps to influence education policy, spending millions to influence how the federal government distributes $5 billion” in stimulus grants “to overhaul public schools.” The foundation “is offering $250,000 apiece to help states apply, so long as they agree with the foundation’s approach. Obama and the Gates Foundation share some goals that not everyone embraces: paying teachers based on student test scores, among other measures of achievement; charter schools that operate independently of local school boards; and a set of common academic standards adopted by every state.”

School Finance
School Districts Struggling With Rising School Lunch Debt.
The AP (10/24) reported that school districts across Indiana “are battling rising lunch debt as more students arrive without money to pay for meals. The rising debt could force some administrators to consider turning delinquent accounts over to collection agencies, said Gregg Hixenbaugh, a spokesman for Mishawaka schools.” The “jump in delinquencies comes as more students are qualifying for free or reduced price meals because of the struggling economy.”

School Budgets Hit Hard By Rising Food Expenses. The Long Island Newsday (10/25, Tyrrell) reports that a School Nutrition Association report finds that as “more children depend on free and reduced-price school meals during the economic downturn, schools are grappling with rising costs that surpass the federal reimbursement rate for these meals.” The “survey found the average cost to prepare and serve a school lunch that meets federal nutritional standards is $2.92, but the federal reimbursement is $2.68. An added 6-cent state reimbursement still leaves a substantial gap.”

Also in the News
Principals Offering Food To Lure Parents To School Meetings.
The Denver Post (10/23, Sherry) reported that “in the battle to get parents through the door of the state’s poorest schools, principals are turning to a traditional gathering device” by offering food. “Schools across the state are stocking up on hot dogs, granola bars and hamburgers” in order to “remove a burden from busy parents and, most important, get them in the building.” Each year, for instance, Denver Public Schools spends $121,500 on food. In the future, “with an additional $111 million in Title 1 money coming to Colorado schools from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, principals say they will spend even more — as much as 25 percent more — on dinners, breakfasts, and snacks for parents and children.”

Study Shows Narrowing Achievement Gap Between Native, Non-Native American Students.
Wisconsin Public Radio (10/26, Quirmbach) reports, “A recent study says the school achievement gap between Native American students and non-native students is closing in many states.” The study led by Dawn Mackety, “a member of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, in Michigan,” examined “four years of state reading and math test data for 8th graders in Wisconsin and 25 other states that serve large populations of American Indian and Alaska Native students.” Researchers saw “that in most of those states, all students showed achievement gains.” And even though “native students generally still trailed non-native students, in most of the states studied, including Wisconsin, the achievement gap closed.”

NEA in the News
Michigan Districts May Have To Make Further Budget Cuts Due To Declining State Revenue.
The Kalamazoo (MI) Gazette (10/25, Mack) reports, “In 2008-09, Michigan gave K-12 schools a minimum of $7,316 per student to fund their operations.” This year, however, “declining state revenue means the state may cut funding $165 to $293 per student this school year and $500 to $600 per student in 2010-11, once the state’s federal economic stimulus money is exhausted.” As a result, school districts may be required to “make cuts that total up to about $900 per student.” The Kalamazoo Gazette outlines several ways districts may reduce their budgets. They include reducing “the work force through layoffs or attrition” and freezing or reducing pay for school employees. Another option is to “reduce benefits, particularly in health care for current and retired employees.” However, this could pose a problem because Michigan Education Association affiliate the Michigan Education Special Services Association (MESSA) provides “excellent coverage and high premiums,” which unions would likely fight to keep.

New York City Schools Begin First Stage Of H1N1 Vaccination Efforts.
A number of cities began preparing for the beginning stages of their vaccination efforts. The New York Times (10/27, A29, Hartocollis) reports, “Despite nationwide shortfalls in the supply of swine flu vaccine, New York City’s health commissioner said on Monday that the city was going ahead with the first stage of its plan to vaccinate schoolchildren.” According to Dr. Thomas A. Farley, school nurses at 125 small public elementary schools would begin receiving nearly 40,000 doses, which he believed “should be adequate” for now. Dr. Farley added that “as of last week, the city had received about 300,000 of the 380,000 doses of H1N1 vaccine it had ordered, which are being distributed to private physicians, hospitals, public clinics and schools.” He also said the city was “optimistic” that the vaccine supply would continue to increase.

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In the Classroom
South Dakota District Studies Benefits Of All-Day, Half-Day Kindergarten.
South Dakota’s Argus Leader (10/27, Thiele) reports, “Valley Springs second-graders are helping determine whether all-day kindergarten is good for Brandon Valley School District kids.” The program compares standardized test scores from second graders at Valley Springs Elementary, who attended an all-day program in kindergarten, to scores from second graders “at the district’s three other elementary schools,” where “kindergarten is held half days.” Superintendent Dave Pappone said that the study focuses on the question, “Do the benefits of all-day kindergarten last through second grade?” Next spring, the school board will review “test scores from this year’s second-graders,” then “decide whether to offer all-day kindergarten throughout the whole district, have only half-day kindergarten in all four of the district’s grade schools, or develop some combination of all- and half-day classes.”

Low Expectations Perpetuates Low Achievement For Disadvantaged Students, Expert Says.
The Montgomery (AL) Advertiser (10/26, Woodruff) reported that according to Kati Haycock, with the National Education Trust, “low expectations can doom disadvantaged children to a substandard education.” She added that often, “poor and minority students” have “the least qualified teachers and have the least challenging classroom assignments.” And “huge funding differences” between districts only compound the problem. “Our education system is organized to make it worse. … The kids with less get less in school,” Haycock told a group of about 250 school administrators in Alabama. Haycock also offered a solution for educators by explaining five things “school systems that excel in teaching such children generally do.” They include providing “guidance to teachers on what to teach;” insisting “on exceptional work” from students “in order to earn a top grade;” and “placing all students “in challenging courses,” rather than lowering graduation requirements.

On the Job

New Haven, Connecticut Teacher Contract Called “Groundbreaking.”
The Rockford (IL) Register Star (10/27) editorializes, “New Haven, Conn., is 800 miles away, but we’re excited about a groundbreaking agreement there last week on a teacher contract.” The contract between the school district and teachers union is noted for its “flexibility and potential to advance school reform goals.” And, it “spells out the terms of collaboration with a reform committee, which makes recommendations on the best ways to measure student growth (and not standardized test scores alone, a move long opposed by unions). Bonuses would be given to schools that show remarkable growth,” with “a committee of teachers and principals in those schools” determining “how to divvy up the bonuses.” The Rockford Register Star also points out that the “contract was overwhelmingly supported by New Haven teachers. Teachers voted 21-1 in favor of the changes.”

Bill Turque wrote in a D.C. Wire blog for the Washington Post (10/26) that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has hailed the pact “as a model for what’s possible when unions and elected officials collaborate in good faith.” Turque also describes the pact “as a not-so-subtle rebuke” to D.C. schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee “over the District’s inability to close a deal with its union.”

Law & Policy
Hawaii Teacher Furlough Lawsuit Amended For Public Hearings.
The AP (10/26) reported, “A federal lawsuit filed by parents of special education students has been amended to seek public hearings on teacher furloughs in Hawaii. The lawsuit was one of two filed last week against the furlough plan, which began Friday.” According to the AP, the plan requires teachers to “take 17 unpaid days off this school year and the same number next year. It was adopted to help the state eliminate a budget deficit estimated at $1 billion or more through June, 2011.”

The Honolulu Advertiser (10/26, Roig) reported that a “federal lawsuit filed on behalf of special education students was amended yesterday to require the state to hold public hearings on the plan to furlough teachers on 17 Fridays.” Also, the “families of special education students are asking [ED] to intervene so the students won’t lose any more days of education.” According to the Advertiser, “Arguments will be heard by U.S. District Judge David Ezra on Nov. 5 on the amended lawsuit, which claims the state violated its own Hawaii Administrative Procedures Act, which requires a public hearing for any changes to rules.”

Hawaii Education Officials Urged To Heed Duncan’s Concerns Over Teacher Furloughs. Christine Donnelly wrote in a column for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (10/26), “Hawaii’s public school system is often described as the most unified in the country, with a unique, single statewide school district that consolidates funding, policy and oversight.” However, that “sense of cohesion is illusory,” as in reality, public schools “are ruled by such diverse interests…that it’s easy for any single entity to duck accountability for decisions affecting the public schools.” Donnelly added that rather than dismissing Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s concerns over the negative consequences of the furlough, “all the players — the governor, the Legislature, the Board of Education and DOE, the education unions — should heed his concern. They should welcome the impetus to develop a less Draconian response to the state’s fiscal crisis than the one unfolding right now on the backs of Hawaii’s schoolchildren.”

Duncan Announces $10 Billion Early Childhood Grants.
Maureen Downey wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (10/27, Downey) Get Schooled blog that on Monday, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan “called for a new focus on early childhood education.” In comments to the National Black Child Development Institute Monday in Atlanta, Duncan’s “announcement of new early childhood grants delighted his audience. He noted that while former Education Secretary Rod Paige had $17 million to disburse for education reform, he has $10 billion.” He added that the investments will go to programs marked by “innovation, quality, and results.”

Fans Defy Georgia District’s Restriction On Displaying Biblical Messages At Games.
The New York Times (10/27, A14, Brown) reports that banners with Bible-based messages displayed by cheerleaders Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, were part of an “eight-year-old tradition” that began after the Sept. 11 attacks. The tradition “ended last month after a parent expressed concern that it could prompt a First Amendment lawsuit. Church and state were not sufficiently separate, the school district agreed, and the banners came down.” The Times adds that “the new policy has produced an unexpected result: more biblical verses than ever at football games, displayed not by cheerleaders but by fans sitting in the stands.” Fans “calling themselves Warriors for Christ” attend sports events holding up “signs reading, ‘You Can’t Silence Us’ and ‘Living Faith Outloud,’ along with biblical verses.” According to the Times, “the backlash demonstrates the difficulty of separating church and state in communities, especially in the South, where many prefer the two merged.”

School Finance
New Orleans Schools Still Waiting On Promised Federal Funding.
Louisiana’s Times-Picayune (10/27, Alpert) reports, “When federal financing formulas reduced New Orleans’ share of education money in the federal stimulus package from a projected $25 million down to $673,000, Obama administration officials promised to fix the shortfall.” The calculations reflected assistance tied “to 2007 student enrollment and poverty numbers, which were lower than 2008 and 2009 because of delays many displaced families faced in trying to rebuild or replace their homes after Hurricane Katrina.” To remedy the shortfall, “President Barack Obama proposed an extra $30 million for Gulf Coast schools affected by Katrina and Rita in his first budget.” Now, “four weeks into the new federal fiscal year,” the extra funding “remains in limbo.” The Times-Picayune explains that “an education spending bill, approved by the House in July, didn’t include the money” because of “cost-cutting efforts by Democratic leaders.”

Also in the News
Celebrity Chef Providing Recipes For New York City School Lunches.
Jennifer Lee wrote in a “City Room” blog for the New York Times (10/26) that celebrity chef Rachael Ray is now providing recipes for New York City public school lunches “as part of a collaboration with the city’s Department of Education. On Thursday, 600,000 students in the public school system…will be able to sample the menu she developed.” While New York City “has collaborated with a number of chefs to develop menus,” Ray “is the highest-profile celebrity chef they have worked with. In London, the chef Jamie Oliver did a similar project that became an award-winning television series.”

National Institute Of Medicine Releases Recommendations For Overhaul Of School Lunch Guidelines. The Daily Green (10/27, Shapley) reports, “It’s been at least 16 years since the federal government last updated the guidelines school cafeterias must follow when preparing school lunches and breakfasts,” and few meals currently served in schools meet nutritional requirements. The National Institute of Medicine has released its recommendations for restoring “the outdated system.” The recommendations cover fruit, vegetable, bread, and milk offerings in schools, and calorie and sodium levels of school foods. The Daily Green adds that currently, “the nutritional guidelines are up for Congressional review.”

School Replaces Most Books With Digital Texts.
USA Today (10/27, Toppo) reports that last summer, the Cushing Academy, a boarding school in New England, “began getting rid of most of the library’s books. In their place: a fully digital collection.” In the school library, “65 Kindle handheld electronic book readers from Amazon.com…circulate like library books,” visitors are greeted by “three big-screen TVs…at the entrance, and the old circulation desk is now a coffee bar.” USA Today notes that news of the new Cushing library has sparked much debate among “bloggers and commenters worldwide.” The Kindles “run from $200 to $500.” However, Tom Corbett, Cushing’s director of Media and Academic Technology, said that “he can purchase many e-titles much more cheaply than traditional books. Often he pays just $5 apiece, so for the price of a $30 hardback, he now orders six e-books.”

States Setting Low Student Achievement Standards, Study Finds.
The AP (10/29, Quaid) reported that a new study by the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics finds that many states “declare students to have grade-level mastery of reading and math when they do not.” The NCES “compared state achievement standards to the more challenging standards behind the federally funded National Assessment of Educational Progress. State standards were lower, and there were big differences in where each state set the bar.”

The New York Times (10/30, A22, Dillon) reports that the NCES study “shows that nearly a third of the states lowered their academic proficiency standards in recent years, a step that helps schools stay ahead of sanctions under [NCLB]. But lowering standards also confuses parents about how children’s achievement compares with those in other states and countries.” Fifteen states were found to have “lowered their proficiency standards in fourth- or eighth-grade reading or math from 2005 to 2007. Three states, Maine, Oklahoma and Wyoming, lowered standards in both subjects at both grade levels, the study said.”

The Christian Science Monitor (10/30, Paulson) reports, “State standards and ‘proficiency’ measures vary widely, according to a new study from the National Center for Education Statistics. How advanced a student is may have more to do with where he lives than how much he knows.” The “study aims to provide useful comparisons among the state standards. To do so, it put states’ data on test scores into the system used by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. … What this shows is that states are all over the map when it comes to what they expect their students to learn.” Education Week (10/29, Viadero) also covered the story. The Dallas Morning News (10/30, Stutz) reports on the NCES study’s findings for Texas.

Washington State Tests Seen As Tougher Than Tests In Most Other States. The AP (10/29, Blankinship) reported that the NCES study finds that Washington’s “statewide math tests appear to be tougher than those in most other states. … The study compares the rigor of the tests states use to judge whether schools are meeting the requirements” of NCLB. Also, results “from the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress for math revealed that once again Washington eighth- and fourth-graders are both doing better than the national average.”

Nina Shapiro wrote in a blog for the Seattle Weekly (10/29) that ever since high-stakes testing came into being in Washington state, scores have been dismal. Yet, a “new federal study released yesterday provides a counterweight to the doomsayers. Turns out there’s a reason that math” Washington Assessment of Student Learning “scores are embarrassingly low. The test is hard–harder than the math tests used by most states, according to the study by the National Center for Education Statistics.”

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In the Classroom
Effects Of Tennessee’s Pre-K Program Not Proven After Second Grade, Report Says.
The AP (10/30, Hayes) reports, “Kindergarten students who went through Tennessee’s pre-kindergarten program did better academically than their non-pre-K peers, but there is ‘little evidence’ that pre-K’s ‘unique effects’ last beyond second grade, according to a comptroller’s report released Thursday.” The purpose of the report is to “determine whether children who attended a state-funded pre-K program performed better academically in the short and long term than a comparable group of peers who did not attend a Tennessee pre-K program; and to assess what aspects of pre-K programs impact student academic achievement.”

Immigrants Share Their Life Stories With Students At Elementary School In New York.
WBNG-TV Johnson City, NY (10/30, Hickling) reports that fourth-graders in the Windsor School District “have been studying up about immigration…for weeks,” and this week they “talked to immigrants in [the] community about their life stories.” They listened to first-hand stories about immigration “from those who left home for an opportunity in the United States.” The guest speakers “talked about their ethnic food, clothes, and way of life in their native countries.” Principal Fran Kennedy said, “One of the misconceptions we wanted to clear up today is students feel that all immigrants come through Ellis Island, so we wanted to show that there are many immigrants and that immigrants come from various countries.”

Many Los Angeles Students Do Not Exit ELL Programs, Study Finds.
The Los Angeles Times (10/30, Gorman) reports, “Nearly 30 percent of Los Angeles Unified School District students placed in English language learning classes in early primary grades were still in the program when they started high school, increasing their chances of dropping out,” according to a new Tomas Rivera Policy Institute study. According to the Times, “More than half of those students were born in the United States and three-quarters had been in the school district since first grade. … The findings raise questions about the teaching in the district’s English language classes, whether students are staying in the program too long and what more educators should do for students who start school unable to speak English fluently.”

On the Job
Maryland District Superintendent, Union Chief Tout Performance Pay Program.
Prince George’s County (MD) Public Schools Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. and Prince George’s County Educators’ Association President Donald J. Briscoe write in an op-ed for the Washington Post (10/30), “Performance pay is supposed to be the third rail of education reform. But in Prince George’s County, we have shown that it doesn’t have to be.” According to Hite and Briscoe, “During the 2006-07 school year, Prince George’s schools and the unions joined hands to create and implement the district’s first pay-for-performance program, supported by a five-year, $17 million grant from the federal government’s Teacher Incentive Fund.” President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan “have said repeatedly that they do not plan to impose reform on teachers. … Our experience in Prince George’s County shows that district and union leaders will respond to the challenge of creating innovative solutions that benefit staff and students.”

Washington Area Schools Remain Open, Despite Flu Outbreaks.
The Washington Post (10/30, Anderson) reports that “waves” of flu-related illnesses have affected Washington area schools, “doubling the normal absence rate in several school systems and leaving some campuses with as many as one-fifth of students out sick.” But while the outbreaks have closed schools in other parts of the nation, many area schools have stayed open. According to the Post, “the only Washington area school closure related to swine flu this fall was at St. Vincent Pallotti High School in Laurel. The Catholic school shut down for one day this month after about a quarter of its students fell sick.” That stands in stark contrast to states like Michigan, where “as many as 154 schools were reported closed this week.”

Schools Closely Monitoring Absenteeism. Massachusetts’ Republican (10/30, Freeman) reports, “Daily attendance sheets are being anxiously scrutinized by school officials throughout the Pioneer Valley as they weigh their options in dealing with H1N1 swine flu.” Several schools saw sharp fluctuations in absentee rates from day to day. “While many students who stayed home or were sent home from school showed flu-like symptoms, the diagnosis of H1N1 required a laboratory test, which is rarely being done.” But “federal health officials have said” that “most influenza cases occurring now are H1N1. Cases of the seasonal flu tend to peak in winter.”

Atlanta-Area Schools See Absenteeism Decrease After September. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (10/30, Torres, Diamond) reports that “only two schools in Georgia — including one in DeKalb County — have shut their doors this school year due to absences related to the flu or illness, according to the state Education Department.” According to school officials “in metro Atlanta, where schools opened in early to mid-August, weeks ahead of most of the nation’s schools…the number of students and staff absent seemed to peak in late August and September and has fallen steadily since.”

Law & Policy
Some Schools Tightening Restrictions On Halloween Costumes.
The New York Times (10/30, A1, Steinhauer) reports on its front page, “Guns, daggers and other toy weapons have long been excised from costumes at many school celebrations on Halloween.” However, “in some classrooms across the country, the interpretation of what is too scary — or offensive, gross, or saddening — is now also leading to an abundance of caution and some prohibitions.” For instance, “in a school district in Illinois, students are being encouraged to dress up as historical characters or delicious food items rather than vampires or zombies.” And “at the Walt Disney Elementary School in Burbank, CA,” students “are not allowed to bring any weapons or masks to the costume parade, no swords, and they can wear moderate face makeup,” said Addys Gonzalez, an office assistant at the Disney school.

School Finance
Massachusetts Governor Plans To Maintain Education Funding.
Massachusetts’ Cape Cod Times (10/30, Pizzi) reports, “Local aid and education funding are not among the cuts Gov. Deval Patrick (D) announced this afternoon.” He has instead proposed cutting “about $277 million from executive offices he controls, and is asking the Legislature for authority to make $75 million in cuts to the budget of the Legislature, the Judicial system, sheriff departments and district attorneys offices.” Patrick announced “two weeks ago…that the state faces a $600 million shortfall for this fiscal year, which started July 1, because of shrinking state revenues.”

Also in the News
More Than Half Of Ninth Graders In Denver Public Schools Do Not Graduate In Four Years, Report Says.
The Denver Post (10/30, Meyer) reports, “More than half of Denver Public Schools [DPS] students who start the ninth grade do not graduate in four years, a trend that will take a concerted effort to reverse, according to a report released” by the Donnell-Kay Foundation on Thursday. The report “found that 3,600 students drop out of DPS each year and that among the more than 7,500 who fall behind on the four-year graduation track, 42 percent are at risk of dropping out later.” It also recommends that DPS “create a portfolio of high-quality options and policies to ensure the success of all secondary students” that “focus on areas in the district where the dropout rate is high, such as the far northeast and the southwest.”

Students Join First Lady To Harvest Vegetables From White House Garden.
Mary MacVean wrote in a “Daily Dish” blog for the Los Angeles Times (10/29) that First Lady Michelle Obama “joined some elementary school children in the White House garden again today to harvest vegetables. … Joining them was Jim Adams, the chief horticulturist from the White House.” The First Lady “said that more than 740 pounds of food has been harvested from the garden.”

School Systems Nationwide Reconsider Zero-Tolerance Policies.
USA Today (11/2, Dorell) reports, “Parents and elected officials across the USA are demanding that schools slacken zero-tolerance policies that are meant to reduce violence because strict adherence has lead to some students being forced out of school for bringing items such as eyebrow trimmers and a Cub Scout’s camping tool to campus.” USA Today lists several school systems nationwide that have reconsidered and changed their zero-tolerance policies. In Texas, for instance, “state lawmakers this summer required school officials to consider intent, self-defense, past disciplinary history and whether the child has special needs before acting on cases where a student can be expelled or suspended.” Also, the Florida state Legislature last spring “ordered school boards to ensure that students who are expelled or referred to law enforcement pose a serious threat and are not expelled or arrested for petty misconduct.”

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In the Classroom
Elementary School In Illinois Starts All-Male Book Club To Increase Reading Scores.
Illinois’ Courier News (11/1, McFarlan) reported on “Liberty Elementary School’s new boys-only book club.” The book club meetings kicked off Oct. 23 as “an innovative way to bridge the national gap in reading skills between boys and girls, according to Liberty Principal Kristin Corriveau.” Club members “will meet Fridays during the school day,” and “each week, a different male guest reader will read a book aloud, then discuss it with the boys.” Boys at Liberty scored “lower than girls in reading” on nationwide and state standardized tests. “The idea for a boys-only book club came from third-grade teachers from both Liberty and Lincoln Prairie Elementary schools at last month’s staff development meetings,” which “focused on the different needs of male and female readers.”

Teachers Of All Subjects At Alabama High School Weave Literacy Into Instruction.
Education Week (10/30, Gerwertz) reported that at Buckhorn High School in Alabama, teachers of all subjects weave “literacy instruction into” their instruction. They “use a variety of strategies to build comprehension.” For instance, as science teacher Karen Stewart prepared “her class in human anatomy and physiology to perform” sheep’s brain dissections, she “had the students read articles on the brain’s structure and use computer-presentation software to share what they learned.” In addition, Stewart “used ‘guided notetaking’ strategies, explicitly teaching the teenagers how to read the materials and take notes on key scientific concepts.” Education Week adds that literacy instruction has “been an obsession for a decade, ever since school leaders tested their students and found that one-third of the entering freshmen were reading at or below the 7th grade level, many at the 4th or 5th grade level.”

Low-Achieving Illinois District Aligning Math, Reading Curriculum To College-Ready Standards.
The Rockford (IL) Register-Star (11/1, Bayer) reports that “the Rockford School District continues to round out the bottom of standardized test scores among public schools in the Rock River Valley, but district officials are taking steps to boost student achievement with targeted math and reading instruction among other strategies.” Twelve schools will receive aid from “math and reading intervention specialists Evans Newton Inc. Reading and math curriculum will be aligned to college-ready standards, and student assessments will be streamlined.” The Rockford Register-Star notes that challenges faced by schools within the district include large numbers of English-language learners and “a high mobility rate.”

Illinois Elementary Raises Low-Income Student Test Scores To Meet AYP.
Georgia’s Herald & Review (11/2, Wells, Churchill) reports that “of Decatur schools that improved on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test,” Muffley School” had the most gains in the most areas.” The number of passing scores in reading increased by “21 percentage points, with 81.4 percent of students meeting or exceeding state learning goals. The performance of low-income students rose by more than 25 percentage points.” Moreover, “math went up by almost 16 points, with 82.8 percent of all students meeting goals.” Because of the improving test scores, “Muffley made adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act” this year, “which required 70 percent of students at all schools and districts to meet or exceed standards in reading and math.” To achieve these results, Muffley principal Theresa Bowser Bowser and her teachers look at the work of individual students to see exactly where each child needs help and make sure each gets it.”

Alabama District Offers Night School For Students At Risk Of Dropping Out.
Alabama’s Press-Register (11/1, Philips) reported that B.C. Rain High School in Mobile County, Alabama, “is now offering night classes to students from throughout Mobile County who are at risk of dropping out.” The night classes — called Evening Educational Opportunity — are being offered “in conjunction with the Mobile Area Education Foundation.” Most of the students taking advantage of the program are juniors “between the ages of 17 and 21″ who “have failed a grade at least once and need help to catch up, officials said.” The Press-Register notes that “the program costs $1 million, which comes from almost $60 million that the system is receiving in federal stimulus money.”

On the Job
Op-Ed: Student Achievement Should Be A Key Component Of Teacher Evaluations.
CommonWealth Magazine Executive Editor Michael Jonas wrote in an op-ed for the Boston Globe (11/1), “A good teacher equals a good school year,” as individual teachers “can make a huge difference.” However, “almost nothing about the way” American public schools “hire, evaluate, pay, or assign teachers to classrooms is designed to operate with that goal in mind.” According to Jonas, “Most teachers receive only cursory performance evaluations, with virtually every teacher graded highly.” Still, Jones adds that as “critics of value-added studies have pointed out, there are reasons to exercise some caution in developing teacher policies that take account of student achievement.” He concludes, however, that there “is a bigger price to pay for failing to act and muddling on with a system that doesn’t distinguish, reward, or build on excellence.”

Law & Policy
Illinois Schools Using Loophole To Boost Test Scores.
The Chicago Tribune (11/1, Banchero, Little, Malone) reports that school districts across Illinois “are using a loophole that allows them to define what constitutes a ‘junior.’ By ratcheting up the credit hour requirements, schools are disqualifying thousands of third-year high school students from taking” the Prairie State Achievement Exam, which is the “primary tool to hold the schools accountable for student achievement.” According to the Tribune, many students take the exam as seniors, “but their scores are not used for state and federal [NCLB] accountability purposes. In fact, the state does not even track how well seniors perform on the test.” The Tribune adds that school officials “say that giving students more time in class better prepares them for the exam. Still, a Tribune analysis found that 20 percent of Illinois sophomores didn’t officially advance to junior-level status last year and, therefore, never took the exam.”

Even Without Furloughs, Hawaii Ranked Below Average On High School Instruction Time.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin (11/2, Oda) reports, “Even before the state cut the academic year by 10 percent to reduce costs, students in Hawaii’s public high schools could count on far less time in the classroom than their counterparts across the nation” because “Hawaii has one of the shortest school days in the country.” The state requires for high school students to “receive at least 1,285 minutes of instructional time per week, or roughly 4 hours and 17 minutes a day” — about “an hour shorter than the national average of 5 hours and 14 minutes…according to the Education Commission of the States.” With “a typical 180-day school year in Hawaii, high school students are assured of at least 771 hours of instructional time,” compared to “the national average of 996 hours.” But “with 17 Furlough Fridays this year and another 17 planned next year…Hawaii students will come up even shorter on classroom time.”

Editorial: Hawaii “Going In The Wrong Direction” By Cutting School Days. The New York Times (10/31, A20) editorialized that Hawaii, the only state “with a single statewide school district, has just cut 17 days from the academic year, under a new labor contract with public school teachers that avoids layoffs in favor of pay cuts and furloughs, all to be taken on instructional days. Barring a court order or other intervention, there will be no classes on most Fridays for the rest of the school year, leaving 170,000 children in the lurch.” The Times noted that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in an op-ed article in The Honolulu Advertiser, “called it ‘inconceivable’ that furlough Fridays were the best solution to school-budget woes and wondered why the state hadn’t used its federal stimulus money to save classroom days.” According to the Times, as “other states struggle to bolster education, to add classes and lengthen the school year, Hawaii is going in the wrong direction.”

Schools In Pennsylvania County Adjust Policies To Help Sick Students Stay Current.
Pennsylvania’s Intelligencer Journal (11/2, Wallace) reports, “School administrators and teachers are scrambling to help students make up work in the wake of widespread absences – many related to swine flu – at Lancaster County schools.” For this effort, “schools are actively encouraging parents to take schoolwork home for their sick children and promoting online resources so students can access homework and lessons from home.” Officials at several schools are also adjusting “policies regarding when missed work and classes must be made up…on a case-by-case basis.” Teachers, meanwhile, “are giving up planning periods, recesses, and lunch periods and staying after school to help keep students who’ve been ill from falling behind.” As a result of such efforts, students have been able to stay “on track this year, despite absentee rates at some schools of 20 percent or more, without the need to delay instruction or alter academic standards,” school leaders say.

School Finance
Michigan Policy Makers Seek To Overhaul School Funding Mechanisms.
The AP (11/1, Hoffman) reported that 15 years ago, Michigan “changed the way it pays for public education, switching from local property taxes to a mix of sales and property taxes, lottery revenue and other money.” Now, as “cuts of nearly $300 per student looming and some districts looking at losing as much as $600 per student, think tanks, business groups and education advocates are calling for looking again at the way Michigan pays for public schools.” The AP notes that the cuts “would have been even worse if the state didn’t have $450 million in federal stimulus money to draw on for schools.” To help stem the school funding shortfall, the Legislative Commission on Government Efficiency “recently suggested giving the state superintendent the power to consolidate school districts or intermediate school districts if at least five percent savings can be shown.” Also, a “variety of think tanks have suggested making school employees pay more for health care, or lowering health care benefits.”

Also in the News
South Carolina Has Highest Eighth-Grade Reading, Math Standards Nationwide, Report Says.
The Anderson (SC) Independent-Mail (11/2, Carey) reports that “according to a new national report, South Carolina student achievement standards are among the highest in the nation.” The Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics “compared state achievement standards to the standards behind the federally funded National Assessment of Educational Progress” and found that “many states deemed children to be proficient or on grade level based on state standards when those students would rate ‘below basic,’ meaning lacking even partial mastery, in reading and math under the NAEP standards.” South Carolina standards, however, “measured among the highest,” and its “standards for eighth-grade reading” and math “were the highest in the nation.”

NEA in the News
NEA Sponsored National Council Of La Raza Conference On Bilingualism.
The San Antonio Express-News (10/30, Preyor-Johnson) reported that last week, “the National Council of La Raza — the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States — is hosting” its first ever “conference focused on bilingualism.” La Raza organizers want to “make the conference a more expansive, annual event possibly in San Antonio because of [its] rich history of bilingualism.” Some “130 educators and experts from 17 states” attended the conference, which was “sponsored by Marathon Oil Corp., Toyota, and the National Education Association.”

Opinion: Schools Of Education Not Entirely To Blame For Low Student Performance.
Los Angeles educator Walt Gardner wrote in an opinion piece for the Sacramento Bee (10/31, E5) that “the conflict between the persistent need for new teachers and the urgent need to screen for competence is given short shrift by critics.” This “problem will only get worse in the next decade,” because “approximately 37 percent of the education work force is over age 50 and considering retirement, according to the National Education Association.” Meanwhile, “reformers insist that schools of education are to blame for the disappointing performance of students. They assert that if schools of education were preparing teacher candidates better, once they were in the classroom they would be able to turn around failing schools.” Gardner asserts that “the sheer number of teachers needed to staff schools across the country should make it abundantly clear that reformers are engaged in wishful thinking. Schools of education certainly need to improve, but they don’t deserve wholesale condemnation.”

Study Shows Merit Pay In Texas Did Not Boost Student Achievement.
The Dallas Morning News (11/4, Stutz) reports that “for the $300 million spent on merit pay for teachers over the last three years, Texas was hoping for a big boost in student achievement. But it didn’t happen with the now-defunct” Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG), “according to experts hired by the state.” Researchers from Texas A&M University, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Missouri studied “flaws in the way the program was designed and did not conclude whether merit pay for teachers in general is a good idea.” However, they did say, “There is no systematic evidence that TEEG had an impact on student achievement gains” in Texas. The Dallas Morning News notes that TEEG, “which provided incentive pay for teachers at about 1,000 campuses a year in lower-income neighborhoods, was discontinued by the Legislature after the 2008-09 school year because of design problems.”

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In the Classroom
Opinion: Public School Students Will Not Benefit From Charter Restrictions.
The Wall Street Journal (11/4) editorializes that that evidence as to the effectiveness of charter schools is continually being found by researchers. Recently, economist Caroline Hoxby of Stanford University discovered that low-income students from urban neighborhoods who attend charter schools from kindergarten to eighth grade are able to close the achievement gap by up to 86 percent in reading and 66 percent in math with their affluent suburban peers. But those who oppose school choice say that charter schools take the highest achieving schools away from public districts. According to the Journal, Hoxby’s research disproves that theory. Therefore, it concludes, public school students will not benefit from restrictions on charters.

On the Job
Judge, Lawyers Involved In Hawaii Furlough Lawsuits May Settle Case Privately.
The AP (11/4, Sample) reports, “With less than a week before what could be a pivotal court hearing, a federal judge and lawyers involved in two lawsuits that seek to end Hawaii’s teacher furloughs may meet privately in the next few days to discuss settling the cases.” However, “If no settlement is reached by Monday,” a judge from California’s Ninth Circuit, Wallace Tashima, “will hear arguments over a request…to grant a preliminary injunction halting the furloughs. Tashima was due in Hawaii next week anyway to handle a separate lawsuit related to layoffs and furloughs of state workers,” the AP adds.

Philadelphia Community Groups Seek To Influence Teacher Contract Negotiations.
Lesli Maxwell wrote in Education Week (11/4, Maxwell) District Dossier blog that “while school district leaders and teachers’ union officials in Philadelphia remain at the negotiating table to hammer out a new, multiyear contract, local community organizations are ramping up the pressure on both sides to deliver key reforms that they believe are necessary to transform the quality of the city’s teaching corps.” Advocates for the improvement of teacher quality, called “Effective Teaching for All Children: What It Will Take,” stress an overhaul of “the district’s teacher-evaluation system.” They also want “the best teachers” assigned “to the neediest schools,” for principals to have “full authority over hiring, among other changes. All of these are policy changes that Arlene C. Ackerman, Philadelphia’s superintendent, has pledged to demand from the union.”

Strategic Management Of Human Capital Releases Suggestions On Teacher Development.
Stephen Sawchuck wrote in Education Week (11/3) Teacher Beat blog that “the Strategic Management of Human Capital initiative released a report today outlining new strategies for attracting, developing, and maintaining an effective teacher workforce.” The report recommends that “states and districts…raise entry requirements for teacher preparation; institute a tiered licensure system requiring teachers to complete an induction program and demonstrate teaching effectiveness before receiving tenure; and overhaul professional development and evaluations to be standards-based and to provide pathways for teacher improvement.”

“Whole-School” Teacher Development Meeting Seen As Outdated.
Ross Hunefeld writes in an opinion piece for Education Week (11/4, Hunefeld) that “whole-school workshop sessions that many [teachers] have experienced are what I’ll call ‘old PD.’” It is “professional development in the form of an expert up front and teachers listening passively.” According to Hunefeld, “if improved teaching practice and better student outcomes are the goal, then these methods of keeping teachers up to date and growing professionally are not working.” He adds that “current research suggests…that teachers don’t improve by listening to someone tell them how to do something newer or better in their classrooms. They learn by working together to address problems they themselves identify in their schools and classrooms.”

Law & Policy
Obama To Highlight States’ Education Reform Efforts In Wisconsin Today.
The Washington Post (11/4) reports that “White House aides said” that on Wednesday, President “Obama will visit a middle school in Wisconsin, where lawmakers are on the verge of allowing teacher evaluations to be linked to student performance data.” During the visit, Obama “will highlight education reform efforts in 10 states where governors and lawmakers are maneuvering for a piece of the $4.35 billion to be awarded in the ‘Race to the Top’ competition.” According to White House officials, “Obama is not abandoning the standards-based approach that many lawmakers found appealing in” the No Child Left Behind law. However, they added that “the funding competition is designed to spur local education reforms that go beyond the rigid accountability formulas set up by the No Child law.”

California Lawmakers Said To Be Considering “Common Sense” Reforms.
The Los Angeles Times (11/4) editorializes that “if California schools want a piece of $4.2 million in new federal education grants, they’ll have to make some changes.” Currently, “legislation by state Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) and several coauthors would pave the way for those changes, but the bill is so awkwardly constructed at this point, with so many unnecessary and possibly harmful additions, that it doesn’t deserve the fast-track passage Romero is seeking,” according to the Times. Still, the Times notes, it “moves in the right direction in enacting common-sense reforms that were outlined by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan as requirements for states that want to compete for Race to the Top grants.” As Romero’s “bill goes to committee this week,” the Times concludes, “it should be streamlined into a simple piece of legislation that accomplishes one aim: qualifying California schools for the federal funds they urgently need.”

Special Needs
Teacher Wins Retaliation Suit Over California School’s Lack Of Special Ed Resources.
The Washington D.C. Examiner (11/4, Dillon) reports that Susan Barker, a special education teacher in California, “has won a suit for retaliation because she spoke out about the limited services provided to her special education students. According to an article in Disability Scoop,” Barker “was a resource specialist in Riverside, Calif. in 2005 when she raised red flags about the limited services provided to students with disabilities in the school district and that the school district was ‘non-compliant to federal and state laws’” Barker “made a formal complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.” Barker “took the school district to court, which concluded that she lacked standing to sue.” However, on appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit “said otherwise, asserting that educators do have the right to claim retaliation if they are acting on behalf of their students.”

Colorado District Poised To Revamp Special Education Program.
Colorado’s Daily Reporter-Herald (11/3, Widhalm) reported that Thompson School District’s (CO) special education program “is undergoing a few changes that will affect the nearly 2,000 students on an Individualized Education Program – a plan designed for students with disabilities that outlines their educational goals with benchmarks to measure their progress in meeting those goals.” According to the Reporter-Herald, the changes may include “a new name for the department, switching from the special education department to exceptional student services.”

Safety & Security
California High School Increases Security Measures After Homecoming Gang Rape.
The AP (11/4) reports that officials at Richmond High School in California’s West Contra Costa School District “are moving to tighten campus security with the long-stalled purchase of surveillance cameras, powerful lighting and new fencing.” The measures come weeks after “a student was gang-raped in a courtyard” near the school after she left the school’s homecoming dance. According to Bruce Harter, superintendent of the West Contra Costa School District, “administrators have long pushed for the new measures but couldn’t find the money until now.”

Facilities
Florida District Defends Building Plan.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel (11/4, Bushouse) reports, “Projections show Broward public schools will have more than 34,800 empty seats during the 2012-2013 school year, but beleaguered School Board members on Tuesday said the district didn’t overbuild and the numbers don’t show the whole picture.” According to the Sun-Sentinel, the board members “said the district needs a school-by-school review of how classrooms are being used, rather than a school’s overall capacity compared to its enrollment.” However, the state “requires the district to look at overall capacity at individual schools and for the district. That means Broward can’t build classroom additions or new schools in the overcrowded western part of the county because many schools in the east are underenrolled — some up to 40 percent.”

Voters In Arlington, Texas, Approve $197.5 Million Construction Bond Package.
Texas’ Star-Telegram (11/4, Shurley) reports, “Arlington school district voters on Tuesday supported by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio a $197.5 million bond package to provide building upgrades, technology, transportation and fine arts equipment for the district’s more than 63,000 students.” With the five-year bond issues, district taxes will increase “almost 5 cents from 2011 through 2017, adding $40 to the yearly tax bill of the owner of a $100,000 home with a $15,000 homestead exemption. Seniors with an over-65 exemption won’t see an increase.” The first project the school system will to tackle “will be $13.5 million in science lab renovations at its six high schools.” The Star-Telegram notes that “in trimming budgets over the past few years, Arlington has eliminated money for new computers, buses and fine arts equipment.”

School Finance
Education Department Defends Massachusetts Against Charges Of Stimulus Misspending.
The AP (11/4, Quaid) reports, “The Education Department is reassuring the state of Massachusetts it does not agree with an internal watchdog who suggested the state was using economic stimulus money improperly.” Massachusetts was “singled out” along with Connecticut and Pennsylvania by the department’s inspector general “for using stimulus dollars to plug budget holes instead of boosting aid for schools.” In response, “Massachusetts officials had sent a written complaint to the department, saying their plan for spending the stabilization dollars was approved by the department and was in compliance with the stimulus rules.” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, “We’ve looked at this pretty carefully. … Massachusetts has done nothing wrong or illegal.”

Arizona Districts Seek Federal Funds To Help Maintain, Expand Programs.
The Arizona Republic (11/4, Gordon) reports that “as school budgets continue to shrink, district leaders are increasingly seeking federal aid to sustain and grow programs.” School systems in West Valley, Arizona, “have applied for competitive grants available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,” under which “seven education-specific grants will be awarded to schools nationwide over the next two years.”

Data On Illinois Education Jobs Saved, Created Through Stimulus Seen As Inaccurate.
The Chicago Tribune (11/4, Secter, Slife) reports, “More than $4.7 million in federal stimulus aid so far has been funneled to schools in North Chicago, and state and federal officials say that money has saved the jobs of 473 teachers.” But, according to the Tribune, “the district employs only 290 teachers.” The Tribune points out that statistics “compiled initially by the Illinois” and included in a report released by the White House last week “appear riddled with anomalies that raise questions about their validity.” And, “many local school officials were perplexed by the stimulus data attributed to their districts.” Furthermore, “the totals do not reflect any school jobs saved or created in Chicago, the state’s biggest district and the recipient of at least $293 million in stimulus funds.” School officials in Chicago estimate that “the district easily saved at least 1,200 jobs because of the stimulus, but” said they “didn’t report them as such because of directives from the state board.”

NEA in the News
States Rush To Ease Charter School Restrictions To Comply With Race To The Top.
The AP (11/4, Quaid) reports, “Using stimulus dollars as bait, President Barack Obama is coaxing states to rewrite education laws and cut deals with unions as they compete for $5 billion in school reform grants, the most money a president has ever had for overhauling schools.” On Wednesday, the President will visit Wisconsin, where lawmakers plan to vote on Thursday “to lift a ban on using student test scores to judge teachers,” which “helps clear the way for an Obama priority, teacher pay tied to student performance.” And, after Education Secretary Arne Duncan “repeatedly warned that” restrictions on charter schools “would hurt a state’s chances at the money,” several states eased “charter school restrictions or budget cuts.” Responding to the Obama administration’s focus on charter schools, the NEA commented to the Department of Education, “Despite growing evidence to the contrary, it appears the administration has decided that charter schools are the only answer to what ails America’s public schools.”

USA Today (11/4, Toppo) reports, “It’s relatively small by Washington standards, but the Obama administration’s $4.35 billion carrot for schools is already leading states to adopt a handful of key reforms.” To receive the Race to the Top grants, states must “show that they’re attending to…details that President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan believe are important, including: Tying teacher and principal pay – and school assignments – to student test scores” and “loosening legal caps on the number of charter schools” allowed each year. With “the first batch of money…scheduled to go out” in January, “state legislatures over the past few months have been scrambling to rewrite laws governing these systems.” So far, “10 states already have moved to raise or get rid of caps on…charter schools,” and “four — Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana and Texas — have already raised or eliminated them,” according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

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