Archive for January 13, 2008 - January 19, 2008

When it comes to school funding, too many states still provide the least to school districts serving students with the greatest needs, according to a report released January 17, 2008, by The Education Trust, an independent nonprofit organization whose mission is to make schools and colleges work for all young people they serve.

The seventh in a series of annual reports, “The Funding Gap” includes state-by-state analyses of funding trends from 1999 to 2005, comparing the resources available to school districts serving the highest percentages of low-income students and students of color to the resources available to districts serving the lowest percentages of such students.

For the first time, the report also compares funding available to school districts serving the high percentages of English language learners (ELL) to that available to districts serving the lowest percentages of ELL. Using data for the eight states with the highest percentages of English learners, the report finds that high-ELL districts generally receive less financial support than do districts with few or no ELL students. Read more about the report in a news release on The Education Trust website, where there is a link to the report in English and Spanish.

The profile of teacher evaluation—in many school districts almost a pro forma exercise—is getting a boost. A new report will warn that schools risk stalling the campaign to raise teacher quality if they do not take evaluation seriously.

“The troubled state of teacher evaluation is a glaring, and largely ignored, problem in public education,” argued Thomas Toch, a co-director of the think tank Education Sector. “It’s a lever of teacher and school improvement that’s being squandered.”

Toch is the author, along with Robert Rothman, of a report on the subject due out later this month. Toch decried the single classroom visit made by school administrators, checklist in hand, that too often constitutes teacher evaluation today. Because teachers are overwhelmingly paid on the basis of their years of experience and education, and rarely encounter any consequences from the evaluations, the evaluations have largely deteriorated into, in Toch’s words, “superficial, capricious, and often meaningless” exercises. Read more in Education Week online.

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

New York City Mayor Bloomberg has put the city’s middle-schoolers on notice: Remember to study or forget about high school.

In a move that could affect nearly a quarter of all city eighth-graders, Bloomberg used his annual State of the City address Thursday, January 17, 2008, to announce drastic changes to middle school graduation requirements. Starting next year, eighth-graders who bomb standardized math or reading tests or fail one of four courses will not be allowed to advance to high school.

The new eighth-grade policy is the latest by a mayor who vowed to end “social promotion,” the practice of advancing kids because of age, not ability. Read about it in The New York Daily News online.

Tens of thousands of Pennsylvania high school seniors who failed state math and reading tests got “empty diplomas” last year because they had not learned basic skills, Pennsylvania Education Secretary Gerald Zahorchak says. Statewide, 45% of the 127,000 seniors failed the tests, leading Zahorchak to lament that diplomas were awarded to many who “show up and shut up.”

Zahorchak used that statistic to push for rules that would require most of this year’s sixth graders to pass either the PSSA—Pennsylvania’s No Child Left Behind benchmark test—or a new set of state tests before they could graduate in 2014.

The proposed regulations are scheduled for an initial vote today, January 17, 2008, by the state Board of Education. Read more iin The Philadelphia Inquirer online.

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of standardized tests in public schools today. Grade advancement, high school diplomas, teacher bonuses, principals’ jobs and school reputations can all hinge on whether a student picks the right answer. So who creates the tests that carry so much weight?

Much of the work is done by five giants: CTB/McGraw-Hill, Educational Testing Service, Harcourt Assessment, Pearson Educational Measurement, and Riverside Publishing. Together, the companies own about 90% of the state-testing business, which has become a $1.1 billion industry since passage of the federal No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. Working with state educators, the big five—or big four, once Pearson’s planned acquisition of Harcourt takes place— create and score the tests. But the explosion of testing and changes in the types of tests states administer have left the companies scrambling to keep up.

Also, differences in state standards that are used to create the tests and the reluctance of some states to spend money for high-quality, challenging tests have caused a great disparity in testing from state to state. Read more at stateline.org.

 The National Education Association (NEA) suggested this week that school districts need not use their own money to pay for obligations under the No Child Left Behind Act, in the wake of a federal appeals court ruling that revived the union’s lawsuit challenging the law as an unfunded federal mandate. The Jan. 7 ruling means that “as a condition of participation in the No Child Left Behind Act, a school district or state cannot be compelled to use its own resources to carry out that mandate,” Robert H. Chanin, the general counsel of the NEA and the architect of the lawsuit, argued in an interview.

But other supporters of the lawsuit were more cautious, and the defendant in the case—U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings—suggested that the decision was far from the last word on the subject. “No Child Left Behind is strong and on the books, and will be abided by by the states and the federal government,” Spellings said after a speech at the National Press Club in Washington. Read more about the brewing controversy in Education Week online.

Largely lost in the debate about last year’s budget reconciliation legislation that increased the maximum Pell Grant and financed that and other new spending by slashing federal payments to student loan providers was a new program that seeks to encourage students to enter the teaching profession.

The Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education Grant Program (TEACH) provides up to $4,000 a year in grant aid to college students who plan to become teachers, as well as current teachers who pursue graduate degrees. Grant recipients agree to serve as a full-time teacher in a “high need” school and teach a “high need” subject for at least four academic years within eight years of finishing the program for which the person received the aid.

Legislators have long searched for ways to increase the number of qualified teachers and prolong their stay in the profession, and the TEACH program, set to be funded at $325 million over five years starting this summer, is a move in that direction. Read more in Inside Higher Ed online.

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.

For 17-year-old Sydney Key, using her cell phone to text is faster than using it to talk. “When you get fast at it, it’s just easier than calling somebody,” said the junior at Palmer High School in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “Plus, you can end a conversation by not texting back.” Key said she often texts without looking at the phone. “That’s why it’s easy in class. You can just sneak it under the desk and send a text," she said.

Some schools are beginning to embrace the technology teens are using—including cell phones and texting. At Doherty High School in Colorado Springs, teachers decide whether cell phones can be on, or used, in class. Principal Jill Martin said students are not allowed to use phones to text or call their friends; phones are only allowed for educational purposes. But even that is a change from last school year, when phones had to be turned off.

And English teacher Eric Beard incorporated the language of text messaging into a lesson on Shakespeare. Read more in The Gazette 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.

School districts across the state will soon be ordered to stop providing special education services to home-schooled students, according to state Education Department officials who say the change is mandated by federal law. “Some parents are going to be very concerned about it,” Deputy Education Commissioner Rebecca Cort said January 14, 2008, after explaining the changes to the state Board of Regents. Because of revisions in 2004 to the federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, public schools aren’t supposed to pay for services to students with disabilities whose parents choose to home-school them, according to an Education Department memo. The memo also says officials will soon notify districts of the change. Read more in The Times Union online.

Research libraries have long been the proud curators of historic print collections and regarded as places of quiet study. But with the explosion of the Internet and electronic publishing, users are increasingly turning their backs on libraries as a physical space, using them as virtual, digital environments instead. Libraries’ role in warehousing large book collections is rapidly becoming redundant, according to a study to be published January 16, 2008. The study warns that libraries must move with the digital times or risk becoming irrelevant.

One interesting finding is that contrary to popular belief, young people’s ability to search for and evaluate information on the Web has not improved with the widening access to technology, the study says. Young people tend to use search engines such as Google and Yahoo as their first, and often only, port of call in searching for information. They have a poor understanding of their information needs and find it difficult to develop effective search strategies. They also spend little time evaluating information for relevance, accuracy or authority, it says. Read more in the Guardian Unlimited.

The American Library Association (ALA) today announced the winners of the John Newbery Medal and the Randolph Caldecott Medal, along with other award winners, at its midwinter meeting in Philadelphia. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, written by Laura Amy Schlitz and published by Candlewick, won the Newbery Medal, which honors the year's most outstanding contribution to children's literature. The Invention of Hugo Cabret, illustrated by Brian Selznick and published by Scholastic, won the Caldecott Medal as the year's most distinguished American picture book for children.

For further information and a full list of winners and honor books, read the ALA press release.

 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.

Tests for seven and 11-year-olds should be reintroduced in Wales, a leading United Kingdom education expert has told the Western Mail. Bringing back the controversial tests would drive up standards and GCSE results, he said. The widely loathed tests, which are still used in England, were ditched by the Welsh Assembly Government in one of its first acts to create a revolutionary new education system. Teachers, who pressed for the change, strongly oppose testing which they said stressed pupils at too young and age and had no educational benefit.

But the expert, David Hopkins, a professor of education at London University’s Institute of Education in London and chairman of the International Networking for Educational Transformation Network, said testing at seven and 11 helped provide a framework for high standards. He said that Welsh teenagers’ poor results in international tests last year were directly related to a lack of tests and targets earlier on in school. Read more about the controversy at icWales.co.uk.

The Financial Indusry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Investor Education Foundation and the American Library Association (ALA) have announced 13 grants, totaling more than $853,000, to public libraries and library networks across the United States, giving millions of library patrons and their families greater access to unbiased investing information and resources. The grants are awarded as part of a new program, "Smart Investing @ your library."

To learn more, read the FINRA press release.

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.