Archive for Issues in the News

In a bid to highlight funding inequalities at Illinois public schools, community leaders in the nation's third largest school district have called on students from poorer parts of Chicago to skip the first day of classes and spend the day instead trying to enroll at a school in a wealthy suburban district.

Critics of the planned Sept. 2 protest say it will undermine campaigns to get as many Chicago students as possible to attend the first day of classes and send the wrong message to children. Protest organizers, though, say their message about unequal funding trumps any on attendance.

"Today we are back to two-tiered schools—white and affluent on one side, and black, brown and poor on the other," said State Senator James Meeks, a black minister on the city's South Side. "That's an injustice and it's immoral." Read the article in Education Week online.

 Thousands of teachers rallied in Nashville, Tennessee, with First Lady Laura Bush on Monday, July 28, 2008, hoping to save a $1 billion-a-year federal reading program from the budget ax.

Congress is poised to kill the controversial Reading First program. The program, one of the cornerstones of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind initiative, has been plagued with allegations of corruption and lackluster test results. But the first lady argued that Reading First, a science-based teaching method that emphasizes basic skills like phonics, is the best possible use of federal Department of Education funds. Reading First targets poor children in at-risk elementary schools for intensive reading curriculums.

"Isn't it sensible to teach kids to read?" Bush asked, to cheers and wild applause from the 6,000 educators and administrators gathered at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center for the three-day annual national Reading First conference. "It's not unfair to expect a third-grade student to read at a third-grade level. In fact, it's our obligation." Read the story in The Tennessean online. The full text is available here.

 At least 35 Triangle public schools will face federal punishment for not meeting tougher No Child Left Behind testing requirements.

Based on preliminary results released Monday, July 21, 2008, more than half of schools in North Carolina's Research Triangle didn't have enough students passing state exams this past school year. At schools receiving federal Title I funding to help low-income students, consequences include letting students transfer out and providing paid tutoring services to children.

"It's draconian to hold back a school because one subgroup didn't make it," said David Holdzkom, the Wake school system's assistant superintendent for evaluation and research. A record 14 Wake elementary schools will face sanctions. At least 14 schools in Durham, four in Johnston County and three in Chapel Hill-Carrboro also face corrective measures. Read more of this News & Observer article at redOrbit.com.

Presumptive presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain have released more details about their education platforms in recent days, with both candidates emphasizing technology, according to an article by Maya T. Prabhu for eSchool News. Beyond that, there are major differences in their proposals, she adds. For further information, read the full article.

McCain discussed education as part of his speech to the 99th Annual NAACP Convention on Wednesday. For details, access the speech text on McCain's website.

Students in areas served by TD BankNorth (most of New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) could find summer reading to be more valuable than ever this year. Through its Summer Reading Program, BankNorth will deposit $10 into a new or existing BankNorth savings account of any child 18 years of age or younger who reads a minimum of 10 books prior to September 30, 2008.

For further program details, visit the following page on the BankNorth website.

 For many Maryland schools that miss academic targets year after year under the No Child Left Behind law, the stigma associated with needing help will ease under a precedent-setting program the federal government announced July 1, 2008.

The U.S. Education Department's action will relax one of the 2002 law's toughest and most-criticized provisions, with repercussions for Prince George's and Montgomery schools. Instead of lumping together chronically struggling schools with those that are generally strong performers but fall slightly short of targets, Maryland will have two accountability tracks: schools with "comprehensive" needs and those with "focused" needs.

Five other states also won leeway from the department. Virginia sought to join the experiment, but its bid was not accepted. Read more in The Washington Post online.

With the general election less than five months away, voters’ concerns about rising gas prices and the sagging economy trump education as a campaign issue, even as more Americans believe the nation’s schools are getting worse, according to a new national poll released June 25, 2008, by the Public Education Network (PEN).

In fact, education is slipping as a campaign issue. Two years ago, when many governorships and state legislatures were up for grabs, education ranked as the most important issue in a similar poll conducted by the Washington-based group, a network of community-based organizations that work on school improvement in low-income areas. During the 2004 presidential election, education ranked second, behind the economy. Read more in Education Week online. To view a copy of the report, visit the PEN website.

 Minnesota's students have performed slightly better on state math and reading tests this year, according to results released by the Minnesota Department of Education Monday, June 30, 2008. But the list of schools facing sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind law is going to grow anyway, the department said.

The data also reveal two major concerns for Minnesota schools: The state's achievement gap shows no signs of closing, and scores on the 11th-grade math test were alarmingly low. Read the article in The Minneapolis Star Tribune online.

The Fallon elementary school is a joyous place. But last week, some parents, students, and staff felt as blue as the hallway walls. On Friday, the small school in Lynn, Massachusetts, shut its doors—not just for the summer, but for good. In districts across the United States, budget shortfalls are resulting in locked-up schools, flurries of pink slips, and empty shelves where new books and computers should be. In cities from Los Angeles to Detroit, and in rural towns from Louisiana to New Hampshire, schools, like other sectors, are caught between skyrocketing prices and dried-up funding streams.

"You have the perfect storm forming," says Chuck Essigs, director of government relations for the Arizona Association of School Business Officials. "You have costs going up ... for energy and fuel and health insurance ... and a loss of revenue from the state. [That is] creating certainly a lot more of a challenge than school districts have faced in many, many years." Twenty-nine states are facing a total of about $48 billion in overall shortfalls for fiscal year 2009, nearly a 10% drop, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, and education will bear some of the burden. Read more of this gloomy news in The Christian Science Monitor online.

As did a House panel last week, a Senate Appropriations subcommittee voted on June 24 to eleminate all funding for the Reading First program, according to an article by Alyson Klein for Education Week online. The decision came as part of a fiscal 2009 spending bill that would provide modest increases for other education programs.

In the article, IRA Director of Government Relations Richard Long is quoted as calling the actions by the House and Senate panels "unfortunate." Long added, "We hope this doesn't mean that the emphasis on reading improvement and professional development is dropped."

Meanwhile, a federal advisory panel is urging Congress not to eliminate funding for Reading First, according to a separate article posted on Education Week online by Kathleen Kennedy Manzo. The panel's members believe the recent evaluation of the Reading First program has caused misperceptions about the program's effectiveness.

For further information, visit the Education Week website.

The controversial federal Reading First program would be eliminated under a fiscal spending measure approved unanimously last week by a House Appropriations subcommittee, according to an article by Alyson Klein appearing on Education Week online. Representative David Obey (D-WI), chair of the House Appropriations Committee explained the decision by citing the results of a preliminary federal evaluation of Reading First, released last month, which found the program had not had an impact on students' reading comprehension. He also cited concerns about mismanagement and conflicts of interest, as noted in previous reports issued by the U.S. Department of Education Inspector General's office.

For further information, read the full article at the Education Week website.

 Although the nation's lowest-performing students have made great progress in the No Child Left Behind era of testing, the top students are not making similar strides, according to a report by the Fordham Institute.

The trend in Maryland mirrors the nation, said Tom Loveless, a Brookings Institution researcher who helped write the report for Fordham.

Students who scored in the 90th percentile and above are making the least progress on national standardized tests. Read more about the trend in The Baltimore Sun online.

 Cameron Elementary School located in Virginia and Ponderosa Elementary in North Carolina are similar in many ways. They are about the same size, and both enroll a high percentage of low-income students of color. The bulk of students at both schools qualify for free-or-reduced price lunch. Both struggle to meet performance goals set by the No Child Left Behind Act.

There is one notable difference.

Cameron receives more than twice as much government funding as Ponderosa to educate its children. Under Title I, a federal funding program which provides money to school districts with high concentrations of poor students, schools in wealthy states receive more funds than schools of the same size in poor states, according to a report released by Education Sector, an independent think tank based in Washington. Read the article in Diverse online.

The presumed November matchup produced by the long presidential-primary season that ended last week offers contrasting approaches to K-12 policy, along with some common ground on the basics of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee, and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who last week secured enough delegates to claim the Democratic nomination, both express support for the NCLB law’s goals and its use of testing to measure schools’ success.

But McCain would promote market forces as a way to spur school improvement, and would likely seek to freeze education spending as part of a review of the effectiveness of federal programs. Obama, meanwhile, promises to search for new ways of assessing students and to invest significantly in efforts to improve teacher quality. Read more about their takes on education issues in Education Week online.

Children are being slighted in U.S. federal spending, says a recent report titled Children's Budget 2008, prepared by First Focus. Here are a few key facts from the report.

* Over the past five years, federal spending on children increased by about 1.4%. Total federal non-defense spending grew at nearly ten times that rate.

* Children’s share of the federal non-defense budget declined from 11% in 2004 to 10% in 2008. This drop continues a 45-year trend in which children’s share of the budget has declined 23% since 1960.

* As a nation we spend only 10 cents of every discretionary dollar on children.

For further information, access the full report.

 Some Baltimore County students are losing the option to transfer out of failing neighborhood schools—the result of the system's decision to stop giving its middle schools federal money aimed at concentrations of low-income students.

By choosing to spend all its federal Title I funds in the county's elementary schools starting next month, the school system will no longer be obligated under the federal No Child Left Behind law to provide transfers to students in its six failing middle schools. Middle school students who have already transferred under No Child Left Behind can remain at their new schools, but no new transfers will be permitted. Nearly 300 middle-schoolers transferred this year, compared with about 70 two years ago.

Officials said the change is intended to increase programs and services for more of the system's youngest children, and not to skirt the requirements of No Child Left Behind. Read more in The Baltimore Sun online.

 Much criticism swirls around the educational reform act No Child Left Behind, from its underfunded mandates to its heavy emphasis on testing. Less examined is a structural development detrimental to our children's education: how teachers' salaries have been left behind.

The disturbing numbers can be found in a recent study by the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute. The Teacher Penalty shows that teachers in Oregon and across the U.S. earn considerably less than other college graduates.

Their earnings are also well below those of other professionals with similar educational and skill levels, such as accountants, reporters, registered nurses, computer programmers, members of the clergy and personnel officers. Read more of this commentary by Juan Carlos Ordóñez, communications director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy, at Salem-News.com.

State Board of Education members, casting aside months of work by English teachers across the state, tentatively approved new curriculum standards Thursday for English and reading classes that will be used in Texas schools for the next decade, reports Terrence Stutz in The Dallas Morning News.

Led by its social conservative bloc, the board rejected a curriculum proposal written and backed by several teacher associations--including those representing English teachers--and instead adopted a Washington, D.C.-based consultant's plan that changes the way grammar is taught.

The teacher-backed proposal was rejected on a 9-6 vote, before board members approved their consultant's plan by the same 9-6 split. Key differences in the two plans centered on how grammar should be covered and the best methods for teaching reading comprehension.

A majority of the board wanted grammar taught by itself, while teachers wanted it taught in writing classes as is currently done in most schools. The board majority also discarded widely used teaching strategies for reading that were favored by teacher groups.

For further information, read the full article.

The budget-writing Joint Finance Committee (JFC) in Delaware voted Wednesday (May 21, 2008) to pare about $29 million from the public education budget for the coming fiscal year, keeping a pledge to avoid layoffs but cutting money for everything from bus replacement funds to the Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP).

The cuts, which still need approval by the General Assembly once the final budget bill is written, were approved unanimously after three days of closed-door negotiation by the JFC. The panel is trying to erase a projected $217.3 million shortfall for the budget year that begins July 1.

Cuts to the DSTP total $2.7 million and would be achieved by eliminating the writing portion of the test for the third, fourth, sixth, seventh and ninth grades, as well as by reusing old test forms. Cutting the reading portion of the test would still leave Delaware in compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind law, JFC members said. Read more in The News Journal online.

 More than 20 states have procrastinated in meeting the No Child Left Behind law's requirement that all students reach grade-level proficiency by 2014 and will be hard-pressed to make needed improvements before the deadline, a report released today (May 20, 2008) shows.

The Center on Education Policy (CEP) issued its report at the midway point of the 2002 NCLB law, which requires states to bring all students to grade-level proficiency in reading and math by 2014 and allows each state to set up its own track to get there.

The report—titled "Many States Have Taken a 'Backloaded' Approach to No Child Left Behind Goal of All Students Scoring 'Proficient' "—found that 23 states structured their systems so the bulk of the progress would be made in the final years leading up to the 2014 deadline. Read more in The Washington Times online.

Since its inception almost three years ago, the Reading First program for kindergarten through third grade in Crookston, Minnesota's public schools has pretty much received universal praise. The teachers who have altered their instructional strategies to meet the needs of individual students whether they struggle mightily to read or excel beyond their grade level have said repeatedly that Reading First's impact is clear.

At this week's Crookston School Board meeting, the impact of the program was spelled out clearly in numbers, as in a drastically reduced number of children at the lowest reading skill level, and a dramatically increased number of kids at the highest reading level. Read more in The Crookston Times online.

 Critics of the federal No Child Left Behind law, including Democratic presidential candidates vowing to overhaul or end it, have often accused it of being too harsh. It punishes weak schools instead of supporting them, as Senator Barack Obama puts it.

But when it comes to the worst-performing schools, the 2001 law hasn't shown much bite. The more-radical restructuring remedies put forth by the law have rarely been adopted by these schools, many of which aren't doing much to address their problems, according to a federal study last year.

The troubles in the restructuring arena reflect broader questions about whether NCLB is a strong enough tool to bring about the overhaul of American education. Read more in The Wall Street Journal online.

A children’s story about a family of penguins with two fathers once again tops the list of library books the American public objects to the most.

“And Tango Makes Three,” released in 2005 and co-written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, was the most “challenged” book in U.S. public schools and libraries for the second straight year, according to the American Library Association.

“The complaints are that young children will believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle that is acceptable. The people complaining, of course, don’t agree with that,” Judith Krug, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. Read more about the controversy in the AP article in the International Herald Tribune online.

Created under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, the Reading First program provides assistance to states and districts in using research-based reading programs and instructional materials for students in kindergarten through third grade and in introducing related professional development and assessments. The program's purpose is to ensure that increased proportions of students read at or above grade level and master the essential components of early reading.

The law requires that an independent, rigorous evaluation of the program be conducted to determine if the program influences teaching practices, mastery of early reading components, and student reading comprehension. A new interim report by the Institute of Education Sciences presents the impacts of Reading First on classroom reading instruction and student reading comprehension during the 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 school years.

The evaluation found that Reading First did have positive, statistically significant impacts on the total class time spent on the five essential components of reading instruction promoted by the program. The study also found that, on average across the 18 study sites, Reading First did not have statistically significant impacts on student reading comprehension test scores in grades 1-3.

A final report on the impacts from 2004-2007 (three school years with Reading First funding) and on the relationships between changes in instructional practice and student reading comprehension is expected in late 2008.

To browse the Executive Summary of the interim report and to view, download, and print the report as a PDF file, please visit the following page on the IES website.

If it seems no U.S. politician ever makes a speech today without insisting that education is his or her top priority, a quick glance back exactly 20 years may explain why that is. On April 26, 1983, a blue-ribbon commission appointed by the Reagan administration released A Nation at Risk —a report chock-full of strong language and disturbing findings on the state of education in the United States.

“Our Nation is at risk,” the report stated. “The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.” Test scores were falling, schools were asking less and less of their students, and U.S. schools increasingly were failing to stack up against their overseas counterparts, the report asserted.

A state of emergency was declared. The federal government couldn’t afford to leave education to state and local governments. In 1989, then-President George Bush convened a governors’ conference on education, directly inspired by the report, and 13 years later his son signed the No Child Left Behind legislation into law. Because of A Nation at Risk, the federal government has an unprecedented and probably irreversible role in education. Read more in The Christian Science Monitor online.

Twenty-five years ago this week, Americans awoke to a forceful little report that, depending on your point of view, either ruined public education or saved it.

On April 26, 1983, in a White House ceremony, Ronald Reagan took possession of “A Nation at Risk.” The product of nearly two years’ work by a blue-ribbon commission, it found poor academic performance at nearly every level and warned that the education system was “being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity.” It kick-started decades of tough talk about public schools and reforms that culminated in 2002's No Child Left Behind, the Bush administration law that pushes schools to improve students’ basic skills or face ever-tougher sanctions.

Twenty-five years later, the sole teacher on the 1983 panel says the tough talk was just what the doctor ordered. Read more in USA Today online.

 The Bush administration proposed major changes Tuesday, April 22, 2008, in enforcement of the No Child Left Behind law, including some regulations meant to tighten oversight of public schools, as efforts to revamp the landmark education act have stalled in Congress.

In the most significant shift, all states would be required by 2013 to use the same formula to calculate the high school graduation rate, an effort to shine a light on the nation’s dropout problem and force schools to take steps to ensure that more students earn diplomas.

The proposed rules also would require officials at low-performing schools to better inform parents about a key requirement of the law—that certain children be given access to government-funded tutoring or the chance to transfer to a school with better test scores. Read more in The Washington Post online.

  A combination of poverty and a high number of special needs students often leads to schools that fail to meet guidelines of the federal No Child Left Behind law, Indiana and regional officials say. If a Title 1 school misses AYP for two consecutive years, corrective action can include replacing school staff and implementing new curriculum. Special education remains the most commonly missed target among schools that fall short of making AYP in a single area.

Lake Station Superintendent Dan DeHaven said it is very difficult for special education students to pass the tests, placing schools with larger populations of special needs students at a disadvantage. Of the 1,489 students in Lake Station, DeHaven said 15% are in special education. Read more in The Times online.

 Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is looking at the bright side where she can find it in the last year of the Bush administration. A Bush loyalist to the end, she’s planning to stay on until January, she said in an interview with Newsweek. But she worries about the future of No Child Left Behind, the administration’s signature education initiative.

“The loopholes will get larger,” Spellings predicts. “States will game the system as best they can in order to get out of doing what they should do to close the achievement gap. No Child Left Behind turned up the heat. And not everyone is comfortable with that.” Read more in Newseek online.

State sources accounted for the largest percentage of more than $520 billion in revenue distributed to public elementary and secondary school systems in the United States in 2005-2006, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau. State sources accounted for 46.6% of funding, local sources accounted for 44.4%, and federal sources accounted for 9.0%.

For further information, read the full Public Education Finances 2006 report.

While most of her class was working on assignments related to the letter Z, Stacy Niebel sat cross-legged on a brightly colored carpet, reading a story about the weather with five of her kindergartners. She was less than an hour into a required 90-minute block of time teachers at William Ford Elementary School in Dearborn are required to devote daily to reading and writing. It is part of Reading First, a federal initiative aimed at getting kids to read by the end of third grade.

The program serves about 38,600 students in 158 Michigan schools. And while it has been credited with improving literacy at this school and thousands of others across the United States, Reading First is facing a precarious future because Congress has slashed 61% of the program’s funding for the 2008-09 school year. The loss threatens to shatter the gains made by the neediest students, which helped prepare them for high-stakes testing important to them and the schools. Read more in The Detroit Free Press online.

 The Arizona state Senate panel failed to pass a bill Wednesday, April 2, 2008, that would have the state opt out of the federal No Child Left Behind program, but the measure will likely be revived on a vote next week. On a tie vote, the Senate’s Education Committee rejected the opt-out bill. If a bill does not get a majority of votes, it fails.

But the committee chair, Senator Karen Johnson, R-Mesa, said she will have the panel reconsider House Bill 2392 next Wednesday. Three of the panel’s nine members were absent today and backers are confident they have enough votes to pass the measure. However, the state’s withdrawal would be contingent on the Arizona Legislature backfilling whatever money the state would lose from not participating in the federal program.

Arizona receives about $600 million a year from the program. Senator Linda Gray, R-Glendale, said she doubted the Legislature would ever replace that amount of money, making the bill meaningless. Read more in The Arizona Republic online.

According to a release from the Wikimedia Foundation, the official article count for all Wikipedias combined reached 10 million on Thursday, March 27. The ten millionth article was a short biography of 16th century English goldsmith and painter Nicholas Hilliard, created in the Hungarian Wikipedia by user Pataki Marta.

Wikipedia now boasts articles in more than 250 languages. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation, had this to say about the historic posting: "It's incredible to think that we've grown from one Wikipedia in English to over 250 language Wikipedias. Ten million articles is something we could never have imagined happening so fast when we embarked on Wikipedia in 2001."

To read any of Wikipedia's 10 million articles, visit Wikipedia.

 The frustration over No Child Left Behind, the federal law that dictates student achievement in public schools, is on record in the Virginia General Assembly. But state lawmakers should think twice before bailing out of the program, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said Wednesday, March 26, 2008. No. 1, the problems are fixable, and No. 2, the state stands to lose millions of dollars if it pulls the plug, she said.

This year, state lawmakers passed a bill that signals their growing discomfort. If Congress renews No Child Left Behind—but doesn’t allow Virginia’s own accountability standards to “substantially meet the requirements of the federal law”—the Board of Education must recommend whether to withdraw from the federal program. Read more in the Newport News, Virginia, Daily Press.

 Accountability is not free, according to educators in California’s Napa Valley Unified School District. It costs about $2 million a year. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools and districts can be required to comply with state- and federal-mandated programs that cost up to millions of dollars. But with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed $14.8 billion cut to public education, educators say they’re in a lose-lose situation: accountability on one hand, reality on the other. Read about their plight in The Napa Valley Register online.

 Flanked by state Republican leaders in St. Paul, Minnesota, the nation’s top education official said increased flexibility for a select group of states under the No Child Left Behind law would help struggling students. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said up to 10 states will be able to dispense different sanctions to schools based on the degree to which they miss annual progress goals. She said the new method would give those states and their schools more power to target money to students having the most trouble keeping up. The announcement Tuesday, March 18, 2008, was the latest attempt to quell complaints about the law, which is up for renewal in Congress. So far, lawmakers trying to advance it haven’t gained much traction. Read the article by The Associated Press online.

The new president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) in the United Kingdom will warn of an impending Orwellian education system at the first day of the union’s annual conference in Torquay today (March 18, 2008). Targets, testing, league tables, inspections, and increasing use of camera surveillance in classrooms could lead to “Big Brother watching over schools in the next five years,” Julia Neal will tell delegates.

“Teachers will talk about surveillance cameras in classrooms, over-zealous observation of their teaching,” Neal will say. “We will hear about teachers delivering a prescriptive curriculum and teaching to the tests in order to secure a good place in the league tables for their schools.

“It’s time for a rethink by the government on what constitutes real success for pupils before the push for better results, increased monitoring, and more measurements means young people can only function in a society which has been so spoon-fed that it cannot think for itself and cannot challenge and grow in the future.” Read more in The Guardian online.

A clearer—and more ominous—picture emerged Monday of California school districts’ struggles to balance their budgets in preparation for a potential $4.8 billion state funding shortfall.

Districts around the state met two deadlines Monday (March 17, 2008): They were required to notify employees of possible layoffs and they had to report their financial data to county offices of education.

The California Department of Education estimated that nearly 20,000 employees received early termination notices, with at least one district— Placentia Yorba-Linda Unified—offering a $1,000 bonus to employees who retire or resign by April 1. At least 14 Los Angeles-area school districts reported that they might not be able to avoid running a deficit over the next two years. Read about the dire budget situation in The Los Angeles Times online.

 The Bush administration is trying to address one of the most common complaints about the No Child Left Behind education law: It treats schools the same, regardless of whether they fail to meet annual benchmarks by a little or a lot.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plans to announce today (March 18, 2008) that she wants states to submit proposals for assigning different consequences to schools based on the degree to which they miss annual progress goals. Read more of this Associated Press article online.

 As Missouri students prepare to take the state’s standardized test later this month and into next, some of their educators hope this will be the year that will move them off the state school improvement list. However, the odds are stacked against them.

Scott, New Madrid, and Mississippi counties have school districts—and individual buildings—that have failed to meet the state’s annual progress goals in math and reading on Missouri Assessment Program test for two or more years in a row. The federal No Child Left Behind law requires all children to be proficient in math and reading by 2014.

Missouri children take the most difficult state reading and math tests in the nation, according to research conducted by Time Magazine. The magazine’s findings, which were published in May 2007, were determined by comparing each state’s test to standardized tests given nationally. Should all states have similar standards? Read more in The Standard Democrat online.

At a time of national debate over ways to improve the performance of America's schools, a new report from the Economic Policy Institute reveals a trend that undermines chances of reaching that goal: a large and growing pay penalty for those who choose to become public school teachers. Over the last decade that teacher pay gap increased from 4.3% to 15.1%.

The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground by Sylvia Allegretto, Sean Corcoran, and Lawrence Mishel compares teachers' weekly pay to that of a core group of occupations with similar educational and skills requirements: accountants, reporters, registered nurses, computer programmers, clergy, and personnel officers. For further information, visit the Economic Policy Institute website.

After 60 years of delivering holiday joy to millions of children, the Toys for Tots Foundation has announced its first year-round initiative, the Toys for Tots Literacy Program. The new initiative will provide free books to disadvantaged children across the United States.

The national network of The UPS Store and Mail Boxes Etc. franchisees will serve as exclusive sponsors of the initiative. Throughout March, participating The UPS Store and Mail Boxes Etc. locations will collect $1 donations for its Buck a Book program, where every dollar donated will place a book into the hands of a economically disadvantaged child in that local community. Stores will continue additional fundraising activities throughout the year. To kick-off the program, MBE, franchisor of The UPS Store and Mail Boxes Etc. brands, is donating $125,000, which will distribute 125,000 books to children in need.

To help support this initiative, Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books, will offer a selection of children’s titles to the Toys for Tots Literacy Program at a special, discounted nonprofit rate. As a long-standing partner of Toys for Tots, Scholastic will help the Toys for Tots Literacy Program select age-appropriate books that will not only teach a child how to read but instill a passion for learning.

For further information, visit the Toys for Tots website.

Many parents in Canada find their children's homework is a hassle, according to a recently released study titled Homework Realities: A Canadian Study of Parental Opinions and Attitudes by Linda Cameron and Lee Bartel of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Many parents believe that expectations are too high for what the child can accomplish and that the amount of homework is too high. They also believe that too much homework reduces family time and creates stress in family relationships. In addition, many parents seem unsure about whether homework has a positive effect on achievement.

Interestingly, both children and parents start out in the early grades with a positive attitude toward homework. That attitude changes by grade 4. There is a strong positive relationship between parental attitude toward homework and the child's attitude.

For further information, read the full report.

Almost half of all new teachers in Australia are planning to leave the profession within 10 years, a national survey has found. The survey of 1,732 public school teachers with one to three years’ experience found that 47.9% expected to leave the profession within a decade. The survey adds to concerns about a looming teacher shortage, with half the permanent teachers in NSW due to retire by 2016. Read more in The Sydney Morning Herald online.

The British government should increase primary school budgets to match those in secondary schools to pay for specialist teachers to tackle illiteracy, experts say. The multibillion pound investment in education since 1997 has been undermined by a failure to teach pupils the basics by the time they are 11, according to the biggest review of primary education in 40 years.

The Cambridge University-led Primary Review today (February 29, 2008) publishes a series of papers which report that higher test results have been at the expense of the quality of primary education, with a 20% funding gap between primary and secondary schools. Teacher-pupil relationships have been eroded by a focus on whole-class teaching and preparation for “high stakes” national tests, it claims. Read more about the reports in The Guardian online.

Throughout the presidential campaign, the leading Democrats have been speaking from a similar script on education—until this month, when U.S. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois suggested he could be persuaded to support private school vouchers.

“If there was any argument for vouchers, it was ‘Let’s see if the experiment works,’ ” Sen. Obama told the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Feb. 13. “And if it does, whatever my preconception, you do what’s best for kids.”

U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York rejected any private-school-choice proposals in her interview with the same editors the next day. Although Obama’s campaign has since downplayed his voucher comments, the exchange suggests that the two have subtle but important differences in their approaches to federal education policy, whether the topic is expanding school choice, rewriting the No Child Left Behind Act, or experimenting with new forms of teacher pay. Read the article in Education Week online.

 California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Februrary 27, 2008, recommended severe or moderate sanctions for nearly half the 97 California school districts that have persistently failed to make progress under the No Child Left Behind Act. Those districts, responsible for educating nearly one-third of California’s public school students, face sanctions for the first time under the federal law because they have failed to meet achievement goals for four years.

Schwarzenegger has vowed to make California the first state in the nation to embrace the penalty aspect of the law. By intervening, the state can receive up to $45 million in federal money to help turn the districts around, the governor’s office said. Read more in The San Diego Union-Tribune online.

Just over an hour into a discussion about whether Vermont should change the way the Education Department is overseen, the testimony turned heated last week. “I think that the state Board of Education is totally and completely out of touch with what’s going on in education today,” contended Sen. Harold Giard, D-Addison.

“I do not think that we are sitting in some sort of a circumstance under the mushroom and not paying any attention to anybody else,” state Board of Education Chairman Tom James of Essex said in defense. The Senate Education Committee is debating legislation that would do away with the 10-member Board of Education and put the department under the control of a Cabinet-level secretary appointed by the governor.

The education commissioner is one of very few state department heads who does not work directly for the governor. Education Commissioner Richard Cate was appointed by the state board, whose members are appointed by the governor, and Cate answers to the board. Read about the debate in The Burlington Free Press online.

With four or five pupils to a desk, the average class size at Moto primary school, in the western town of Molo, Kenya, has jumped from 40 in the last term of 2007 to 80 this year since post-election violence hit the country.

“Look at the children, some are even sitting on stones in the lower classes; we have tried to sit at least three to a desk in the upper classes because the pupils are bigger but this has been difficult; we continue to receive more pupils every day,” Beatrice Nyabuti, the deputy head teacher at Moto primary school, told IRIN.

By contrast, several schools in Kuresoi, a largely rural area which forms one of four divisions that make up Molo District, are silent. No pupils have reported to school this year because of displacement and continuing insecurity. Read about how the civil disorder has affected children’s education in Kenya at IRIN News.

 A study by Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin shows that the public school accountability system in Texas, the model for the national No Child Left Behind Act, directly contributes to lower graduation rates, according to an article in the Austin Business Journal. For further information, read the full article.

The majority of young people in the United Kingdom (58%) enjoy reading either very much or quite a lot and rate themselves as proficient readers, according to results of a survey of more than 1,600 pupils published by the National Literacy Trust. Most young people read on at least a weekly basis, either every day or once/twice a week.

According to "Young People's Self-Perceptions as Readers: An Investigation Including Family, Peer, and School Influences," a great majority (71%) of young people defined themselves as readers. More girls than boys saw themselves as readers, and more girls reported that they enjoyed reading than boys.

For further information, read the full report.

The number of students in elementary classes throughout Seattle varies from 14 to 32, and some of the largest class sizes can be found at some of the district's most sought-after elementary schools. Given that, does class size really matter? An article by Jessica Blanchard in the February 11 issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer examines this issue.

Many parents take class size into account as they shop around for public schools, and the Washington Education Association has made lobbying for lower class sizes its top priority for this legislative session. Still, Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson maintains that "the bottom line is quality of teaching in the classroom."

Blanchard quotes several teachers and gives an example of how one school in Seattle uses PTA fundraisers to keep class sizes low. For further information, read the full article.

First lady Laura Bush read Goodnight Moon by video hookup at last year’s awards gala for Reading Is Fundamental, a $25 million federal program that distributes books to low-income children. Five months later, President Bush wants to say good night to the program.

Since 1966, the program has distributed 325 million new books to more than 30 million mostly low-income children. Testimonials have come from entertainers and sports figures, such as Houston Rockets basketball star Juwan Howard, who was given books as a child. More than 140 publishers participate.

The White House doesn’t quarrel with the program’s goals. But it says the funds should be awarded under a competitive, merit-based process rather than automatically given to one non-profit group. Read more in USA Today online.

Each year, the National Education Association (NEA) and Youth Service America (YSA) join forces to award Youth Leaders for Literacy grants to encourage community service through innovative, youth-designed programs that benefit others in their communities. This year, 30 grants of $500 were awarded.

The winning programs exhibit a variety of interesting and innovative ways of promoting reading. The initiatives are launched on NEA's Read Across America Day, celebrated this year on March 3, and culminate during Global Youth Service Days, scheduled for April 25-27, 2008.

For further information, visit either the Read Across America section of the NEA website or the YSA website.

President Bush’s proposed budget calling for the elimination of Reading Is Fundamental’s (RIF) Inexpensive Book Distribution program would be devastating to the 4.6 million children and their families who receive free books and reading encouragement from RIF programs at nearly 20,000 locations throughout the United States, according to Carol H. Rasco, president and chief executive officer of RIF.

“Unless Congress reinstates $25.5 million in funding for this program, RIF would not be able to distribute 16 million books annually to the nation’s youngest and most at-risk children. RIF programs in schools, childcare centers, migrant programs, military bases, and other locations serve children from low-income families, children with disabilities, foster and homeless children, and children without access to libraries,” Rasco said in news release today (February 7, 2008).

The Inexpensive Book Distribution program is authorized under the Elementary & Secondary Education Act (SEC.5451 Inexpensive Book Distribution Program for Reading Motivation) and is not funded through earmarks. It has been funded by Congress and six Administrations without interruption since 1975.”

Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are objecting to a new program President Bush proposed in his State of the Union address as another attempt to secure federal funding for private school vouchers. The program, dubbed “Pell Grants for Kids,” would provide grants on a competitive basis to states, school districts, cities, and nonprofit organizations to create scholarship programs for low-income students in schools that have missed their achievement targets under the No Child Left Behind Act, and in high schools in which graduation rates are lower than 60%.

“We have seen how Pell Grants help low-income students realize their full potential,” Mr. Bush said, referring to the popular federal aid program for higher education. “Now let’s apply that same spirit to help liberate poor children trapped in failing public schools.”

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, D-MA, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, dismissed the president’s proposal last week. “Yet again, American families heard empty rhetoric about improving our schools. But the president didn’t commit the resources to expand educational opportunity,” Kennedy said in a statement. Read about the proposed voucher program in Education Week online.

A homeschooling father and mother from Germany have fled to Iran with their son in search of educational freedom and apparently are being sought by authorities for child kidnapping, according to World Net Daily sources. Meanwhile, a new campaign has been launched by German lawmakers to approve a provision that would allow authorities to simply take legal custody of children whose parents are trying to avoid problems associated with the public school system. The two situations are the latest developments as parental rights in Germany are under attack, especially regarding the right to direct the education of their own children, homeschool advocates say. Read more at World Net Daily.

In his annual State of Education address, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell laid out an ambitious proposal for a series of new programs aimed at closing the gap in test scores between black and Hispanics students and their white and Asian peers. O'Connell said the new programs would not cost taxpayers any more money, an important point at a time when California faces a large budget deficit.

For further information, read the full article by Associated Press writer Juliet Williams, appearing on SFGate.com.

Roughly 16 percent of Ohio's public school students are classified as gifted, but only 26 percent of those students received services during the last school year, according to an article by Jennifer Gonzalez in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. While federal law mandates that children with disabilities receive special education services, no such mandate covers gifted students. Only 31 states require districts to provide services to gifted students, and Ohio is not among them.

"These are the kids that are going to make our country competitive," said Kimberly Allen, gifted program coordinator for the Euclid School District. "We should be spending money on them." For further information, read the full article.

New York City public school students have taken English tests for years. Math tests, too. This year, 10 “diagnostic” tests have been added to the menu in the hope that they will improve results on the real thing. But when parents at two Manhattan elementary schools discovered that their children had been selected to participate in “field tests,” or tests to help the state’s testing company try out questions for future tests, they decided to draw the line.

At a news conference in front of City Hall on Tuesday, January 22, the parents said they were organizing a boycott of the field tests to be given at their children’s schools—Public Schools 40 and 116—later this week. Because of requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind Law coupled with the City Education Department’s decision to raise the number of diagnostic tests given to third through eighth graders—last year there as many as six—New York City’s public school students are taking more standardized tests than ever. And so the boycotters seized on the field tests, saying the testing company should figure out another way to conduct its research. Read about the controversy in The New York Times online.

Helen Eldridge never thought she’d be able to afford a house—at least not in Palm Beach County, Florida. Like many beginning educators, the Highland Elementary teacher makes less than $40,000, not enough money to save for a down payment on a house. But Eldridge soon will move into a new one-bedroom condo minutes from the beach with a mortgage that is several hundred dollars less than her current rent.

That’s because of a new program that provides teachers and other middle-income workers with reduced-price homes in the MerryPlace development. Eldridge also is getting $10,000 for a down payment from the Palm Beach County School District because she teaches at a low-income school and has promised to stay there for five years. Read more about the program in The Palm Beach Post online.

 Check out the positions of presidential primary candidates on No Child Left Behind as reported in the Arkansas newspaper, The Baxter Bulletin.

The Australian Education Union (AEU) has commissioned an independent company to survey its members and develop a set of standards as a basis for assessing teachers and paying more to those who excel. The move is a significant softening in the union’s opposition to the introduction of paying teachers based on merit.

AEU national president-elect Angelo Gavrielatos yesterday told The Australian the union had commissioned the University of NSW-owned company Education Assessment Australia to identify a set of standards as the basis of a new salary structure.

“The first part of what we describe as a professional pay program to further reward teachers through recognizing teaching skills, knowledge and practice is establishing valid standards of measurement and assessment,” Gavrielatos said. “There’s work being done nationally in various jurisdictions in this area, and it’s incumbent upon us to explore this area.” Read the article in The Australian online.

The reading coaches, professional-development programs, and instructional materials that are the cornerstones of the Reading First program and are credited with improving instruction in struggling schools may be threatened by a deep cut included in the 2008 federal budget, officials and observers say.

The reduction of more than 60 percent—from nearly $1 billion each year since the program was rolled out in 2002 to $393 million for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1—will likely inhibit further improvements and test the sustainability of the changes Reading First has fostered over the past six years. The cut is part of an omnibus spending bill President Bush signed into law last month.

“A 60 percent cut—this is huge,” said Joni Gillis, who oversees Oregon Reading First. Her state is expecting its funding to drop this fiscal year from nearly $10 million to less than $4 million. Read more about the cuts in Education Week.

 Christina Meeks remembers wanting to be a teacher ever since she was a little girl, despite efforts by her family and mentors to persuade her to pursue another field. She received two master’s degrees in teaching, earning extra credentials in special education, teaching foreign-language speakers who are learning English, and early childhood education.

Now in her 10th year of teaching, the special education resource room teacher at Ridgeview Elementary School in Yakima, Washington, wonders whether she wants to stick it out in an educational environment increasingly focused on students meeting test-based performance standards.

Meeks and many other local educators blame the federal No Child Left Behind Act for causing powerful discontent and demoralization among teachers. She said she never thought the politics of public education would affect her job so much. And she never thought she would consider leaving her beloved profession. Read about her quandary in The Yakima Herald online.

It's the National Year of Reading, reports Denise Winterman for the BBC News, but one in four adults say they haven't read a book in at least a year. With so many ways to get information in today's world, are books still needed?

While some people say they don't need books to be well informed, others, such as Honor Wilson-Fletcher, project director for the National Year of Reading, say that book reading remains a critical part of society. And Professor John Sutherland notes that book sales in the UK are on the rise and that Britain produces more titles per person than any other country.

To learn more, read the full article.

Quality Counts 2008, this year's edition of Education Week's annual report on the status of public education in the United States, grades states on both performance outcomes and their efforts to better align policies across the various levels of education. This year's report also introduced a revised set of indicators on the teaching profession that looks more broadly at state efforts to attract, develop, and deploy talent in education, including some new indicators related to school principals.

To see how your state fares according to Quality Counts 2008, visit the Education Week website.

In the mock primary held on the eve of the official January 8, 2008, New Hampshire Primary, 10,791 students in 85 New Hampshire schools chose Barack Obama and Mitt Romney as their presidential candidates. Two in three (64%) voted the Democratic Party ballot and 34% the Republican Party ballot.

•For the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama led with 57% of the votes; Hillary Clinton had 26%, and John Edwards 10%.
•For the Republican nomination, Mitt Romney led with 35% of the votes followed by John McCain, 20%; Rudy Giuliani, 15%; Ron Paul, 13%; Mike Huckabee, 11%.

Prior to voting, students had time to study curriculum materials that reviewed the qualifications not only of all current candidates but also of all our past presidents. For more about the mock election visit the website of National Student/Parent Mock Election.

A classroom of first-graders at Hamilton Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona, lost its teacher shortly after she was hired. So the principal called in a substitute. Then she called another. And still another. “I’d guess that we've had 10-12 substitutes in there,” Principal Mishay Tribble said.

Arizona’s teacher shortage is threatening the education of hundreds of children. In many schools, children spend a semester or an entire school year trying to learn from a string of substitute teachers, each with different rules and different skills. Children fail to create a relationship with one teacher or a community with their classmates. Kids can lose interest in going to school, and their learning can stagnate or slide backward, educators warn. Read more about the problem in The Arizona Republic online.

The mood was buoyant just a few months ago as some of California’s best minds in education gathered to debate what school reforms to make in 2008, a year Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had anointed California’s “Year of Education.” Since then, much of the enthusiasm has fizzled as the state’s fiscal outlook has deteriorated.

Schwarzenegger will release his proposed budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year this week, providing the first detailed look at how he plans to close a deficit estimated at $14 billion over the next year-and-a-half.

Even before the deficit emerged, some education leaders were playing down expectations for the “Year of Education.” They cautioned that it would be impossible to overhaul a system that governs nearly 10,000 schools and 6.3 million students in just one year. Schwarzenegger told education advocates in November that his “Year of Education” is essentially off. Read more in The San Jose Mercury News online.

For decades, the nation’ teachers could count on at least one constant—the longer they served, the more they’d earn. But now, that’s changing, thanks to relentless pressure to improve student achievement. In a growing number of schools, teachers’ future earnings now depend on how well they teach.

Denver has become a pioneer when it comes to performance pay. In 2005, the voters of Denver were asked to approve a $25 million funding boost in teacher pay. They said yes, but they wanted something in return, according to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. “Teachers are underpaid, I don’t think anyone argues that. But given the sentiment of the public, if they want to have taxpayers vote more taxes, they’re going to have to give some dramatic change in the way they go about teaching,” Hickenlooper said. Read more at National Public Radio ’s website.

Minneapolis ranks as the most literate city in the United States, according to a survey compiled by John Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University. Since 2003, Miller's survey has ranked the 69 largest American cities (population 250,000 and above) on six key indicators of literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources.

Other cities in the top 10 are Seattle, St. Paul, Denver, Washington, St. Louis, San Francisco, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, and Boston. For further information, visit the America's Most Literate Cities webpage.

Bill Gates is spending $30 million on the Unted States’ presidential campaign for a cause, not a candidate. The world’s richest man plans to make education the No. 1 domestic priority with voters. The 52-year-old Microsoft Corp. chairman has poured $3.4 billion into school improvements and scholarships since 2000 through his Seattle-based Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, according to the foundation’s records. Now the charity says it is providing half the money for Strong American Schools, a bipartisan group with a $60 million effort called “Ed in '08.”

The Washington-based organization, led by former Democratic Governor Roy Romer of Colorado, wants the next president to rally support for learning standards, increased pay and training for teachers, and longer class days and school years. It says those ideas would improve access to high-quality education, boost economic vitality and reduce the number of U.S. high school dropouts from 1.2 million a year. Read the Bloomberg news article.

When Congress decided to appropriate $2 million in fall 2001 to help Washington, DC, kindergartners and first-graders learn to read, city school officials were told the money could be spent only on the Voyager Expanded Learning literacy program, a new product with virtually no track record. They had just picked a different reading curriculum, and “we didn’t want to be guinea pigs,” recalled Mary Gill, then the system’s chief academic officer.

School leaders did not know that the $2 million was an earmark that had been guided into law by Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) just after she had received more than $30,000 in campaign contributions at a fundraiser held by Voyager’s founder and chairman. Landrieu, as the ranking Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate’s DC appropriations subcommittee until early this year, was a pivotal figure in school spending and policy issues. With the Voyager earmark, she intruded on a curriculum decision normally made by teachers, principals, administrators and educational advisers. Read more in The Washington Post.

 Sometime next year, West Middle School in Vernal, Utah, will become the first school in the state shuttered for failing to meet the federal education standards established under No Child Left Behind. The path to this ignominious fate is littered with frequent administration changes; a student exodus to better-performing schools; seemingly unsolvable attendance and behavior problems; and claims of racism on a campus that serves mostly Native American students. The Uintah School Board voted in November to close West after it failed to make adequate yearly progress for the seventh straight year. Read about the downward spiral in The Desert Morning News online.

After several years of planning and a series of false starts, a new federal venture to review reading research has hit another bureaucratic hurdle—one that could keep it from ever getting off the ground. A planned announcement last week of the membership of the Commission on Reading Research was put on hold by the National Institute for Literacy while officials sought final approval from the U.S. Department of Education and other federal agencies that the institute reports to.

“The National Institute for Literacy Interagency Group has not made a formal decision about the formation of a commission to look into reading research,” Samara Yudof, the department’s press secretary, wrote in an e-mail. If such a group is formed, she added, it will have to be screened under the department’s new ethics-review procedures.

That news surprised some observers who have followed plans for the panel over the past several years. “This commission had been developed in a transparent manner; the members had been solicited in a transparent manner,” said Richard Long, the government-relations director for the Newark, Del.-based International Reading Association, which recommended several nominees for the panel. “A lot of progress had been made, and it’s unfortunate that things are once again being slowed down.” Read more in Education Week online.