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September 5, 2008 |
Click here to read printable version |
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| Pre-K benefits noted in British study |
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Advocates of universal pre-kindergarten in the United States will find fresh support for their views in a study by British scientists. One finding, according to the Boston Globe: An average child who has attended preschool will score 27 percent higher on a standard math test than a comparable pupil without such early preparation. The research covered data on more than 2,500 children who attended preschool for 18 months on average and had five years of elementary education by age 10. Unlike the United States, where the federal government supports preschool programs only for children from low-income families, the United Kingdom has been providing government-backed preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds, regardless of parental income, since 2004.
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| District gets tough with kids who skip class |
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School leaders in Prince George's County, MD, are taking a tough new approach to confronting a perennial problem: the large number of students who habitually cut classes. About 6,000 of the system's 130,000 students are in that category, reports the Washington Post, so the school board is launching a print, radio, and TV ad campaign that asks adults to report truants to the police and threatens offending students with jail time. Most such students probably would end up being taken to school, not jail, but board member Rosalind Johnson says, "If we have to jail them, I want them jailed." Eighty percent of Prince George's truants are in high school, but 300 are in elementary school. Johnson calls that figure stunning and adds, "If you have an out-of-control child, that is not a legally accepted reason. You cannot turn your back on your parental responsibility."
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| In a nation of immigrants, pluses and minuses for their children |
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Amid the nation's often furious debate over immigration, a new study sheds light on whether immigrants are assimilating as they have in the past. According to National Public Radio, the answer is an unequivocal "yes." In a report, "Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age," NPR sees more than the tendency of many immigrant parents to push their children to succeed. While that's long been the case, and while some immigrants are relatively uneducated themselves, NPR also says they are often adept at navigating the system to help their children get ahead. And because it's considered acceptable for children to live with their parents through their 20s, their families can benefit economically from that. Nevertheless, the study shows, native-born minorities in the United States continue to face difficulties, with the children of illegal immigrants often encountering a punitive climate. NPR's report includes the fact that, as of 2005, about one-fourth of all Americans younger than 18 who were born in the U.S. had at least one immigrant parent.
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| County district in Georgia loses accreditation |
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A Georgia school district near Atlanta has become the first one in nearly four decades to lose its accreditation. The action came on September 1, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools ruled that the Clayton County board of education had failed to meet a series of mandates that the accrediting body issued last February. After the latest decision was announced, Gov. Sonny Perdue, acting on the recommendation of an administrative judge, ordered the removal of four Clayton school board members for violating the state's Open Meetings Act and the state code of ethics. According to the newspaper, accreditation officials said governance issues in the district had hampered everything from teaching and learning to staffing and the allocation of resources. A permanent loss of accreditation -- the board had 10 days to appeal -- could adversely affect prospective college admissions and scholarships for county high school students, as well as real estate values. The Clayton district, with 50,000 students, would be the first in the nation to lose its accreditation since 1969.
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| Chicago students join church-led boycott over funding disparities |
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Seeking to draw attention to disparities in public-school funding between Chicago and its wealthier suburbs, an Illinois state senator and 85 Chicago pastors organized a boycott on the first day of school, ABC News reports. Instead of boarding regular school buses, 950 Chicago students got on buses provided by local churches and bound for the wealthy enclave of Winnetka. There they tried to register for the New Trier school system. The symbolic gesture was designed to compare New Trier's expenditures of $17,500 per student with Chicago's $11,300. (New Trier has 3,900 students; Chicago has 358,000.) As is generally the case nationwide, school funding in both districts is tied to property taxes. "Illinois is trying to attract the [2016] Olympics by saying we are a world-class city," said State Sen. James Meeks. "How can we have a world-class city and not have world-class schools?" Rev. Ira Acree of Greater St. John Church in Chicago, who helped organize the boycott, echoed that sentiment, saying: "We're bringing these children to Winnetka today because we have exhausted other methods. We want the governor and the senate and legislators all across the state to hear our plea. We want them to see the innocent children from Chicago who are victims of apartheid-style education."
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| Henry Louis Gates working on 'ancestry-based' curriculum |
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In the wake of his highly acclaimed PBS series "African American Lives," which traced the ancestry of 19 famous African Americans using genealogical research and DNA science, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is working with other educators to create what he calls an "ancestry-based" curriculum to teach history and science to African-American students in grades K-12. In a conversation with Learning First Alliance's Public School Insights blog, Gates notes that half the African-American students in the United States are failing to graduate from high school. To help them become more engaged, he has been working on a six-week history unit in which kids will interview parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents -- collecting family stories along with census information, tax records, and estate records. Gates says that if you "went into an inner-city school and said, 'We're going to drag you into historical archives about the Civil War,' or the Great Depression, or the Great Migration, kids would say, 'Get out of town.' But if we said, 'We're going to trace your family through those periods and to those periods,' my goodness, who wouldn't be interested in that?" When students reach the Civil War period, adds Gates, they can be taught DNA analysis in a science class so they can continue to trace genealogy after the paper trail ends.
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| A controversial first year for DC's school chancellor |
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A lengthy report in the Washington Post has reviewed Michelle A. Rhee's first year as chancellor of the District of Columbia's long-dysfunctional school system: Rhee, whom some regard as dictatorial, has received both heated criticism and high praise for actions such as closing 23 under-enrolled schools, finalizing overhauls at 26 academically ailing schools; and firing 150 people she considered to be poor performers. Her tenure so far has been characterized by polarizing decisions that produced accusations of racism, sexism, and ageism for the dismissal of nearly 50 principals and assistant principals, most of them black women over 40. Rhee, a Korean-American, also has been battling the teachers union over a plan that offers teachers raises in return for relinquishing seniority rights. Rhee says the steps were necessary to advance her vision for the district -- to expand the use of math and literacy coaches for students who need help, and to increase offerings in science, technology, art, music, gifted education, and Advanced Placement. The chancellor's moves have attracted close scrutiny by other urban school superintendents.
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| Democrats at odds with teacher unions? |
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As the presidential campaign gets under way in earnest, USA Today says the Democratic Party has "visibly split with teacher unions, its longtime allies, on key issues." Merit pay is one example. The idea has been gaining traction amid public education's continuing problems. From Barack Obama on down, many Democratic politicians are embracing the idea of paying bonuses to teachers for raising students' test scores, teaching in underserved areas, or mentoring new teachers. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has said she is willing to entertain the idea of merit pay, the newspaper notes, but this is not typical among most teacher-union leaders and rank-and-file members.
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| Denver schools, teachers in tentative pact on compensation |
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The Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association reached a tentative contract agreement after protracted deliberations over the provisions of the district's innovative teacher compensation system, which is known as the Professional Compensation System for Teachers, or ProComp. Developed jointly by the district and the union, ProComp will double bonuses available for early and mid-career teachers, rewarding those who choose difficult-to-teach subjects, who work in hard-to-staff schools, and whose students improve academically. In an editorial headlined "Denver teacher contract pumps money into the right places," the Rocky Mountain News says "students should clearly benefit."
Read more | Additional perspective | Back to top
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| Findings support 'integrated student services' |
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A model for providing "integrated student services," advanced by Communities In Schools, a nonprofit group devoted to dropout prevention, has been shown to yield more positive educational outcomes than services offered in an uncoordinated manner. The conclusion comes from initial results at the midpoint of a five-year longitudinal study by ICF International, a global consulting and research firm. The Communities In Schools model includes services such as tutoring, mentoring, after-school programs, career development, financial literacy, community service, and life-skills development -- all of which are coordinated through a single point of contact at a school. The initial findings come from a comparative analysis of more than 1,200 schools, half of which used the integrated model and half of which did not.
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| PEN conference to highlight 25 years of local education funds |
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Public Education Network's 2008 annual conference, slated for November 16-18 in San Francisco, will celebrate the 25th anniversary of local education funds in the city where such groups began. In addition to looking to the future, the conference will include sessions about how public education has been affected over the past quarter century by world events, school reform, community issues, politics, the economy, and public opinion.
Preliminary agenda | Back to top
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Giving lower-income kids a boost toward college
A UMass-Lowell College Prep program helps demystify the application process for high school students who are often the first in their families to go to college.
Education priorities for the next president
Ideas from Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, former governor of West Virginia, and a PEN board member. |
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| NEW GRANT AND FUNDING INFORMATION |
Foundation for Technology Education: Professional Development
The Foundation for Technology Education Greer/FTE Grant encourages professional development of classroom teachers and supervisors in technology education. Maximum award: $1,000 to offset the expenses of attending an International Technology Education Association Conference. Eligibility: technology education teachers or supervisors for grades 6-12 who are members of the International Technology Education Association. Deadline: Dec. 1, 2008.
Foundation for Technology Education: Quality Teaching
The Pitsco/Hearlihy Foundation for Technology Education Grant recognizes and encourages the integration of a quality technology education program within the school curriculum. Maximum award: $2,000. Eligibility: K-12 teachers who are members of the International Technology Education Association. Deadline: Dec. 1, 2008.
Reader's Digest Foundation: 'Make It Matter' Grants
Reader's Digest Foundation "Make It Matter" Grants will identify people whose stories of giving back inspire others. The foundation will donate funds to a nonprofit organization that is associated either with a particular story or cause. Selected stories will appear every month in a new "Make It Matter" column in Reader's Digest and at www.rd.com, beginning in April 2009. Maximum award: $100,000. Eligibility: Anyone can submit a story; grant recipients must be 501(c)(3) organizations. Deadline: Jan. 1, 2009.
Thomson Gale: TEAMS Award
The Fifth Annual Thomson Gale TEAMS Award recognizes and encourages collaboration between teachers and media specialists to promote learning and increase student achievement. Maximum award: $2,500, Gale products (approximate value: $500), a one-year subscription to Library Media Connection, and Educator's Professional Bookshelf (approximate value: $500), from Linworth Publishing. Eligibility: K-12 public and private schools in the United States and Canada. Deadline: June 15, 2009.
To view more grants, visit: http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_grants.asp
"No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure."
-- Emma Goldman (1869-1940), political activist
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Kate Guiney
Contributing Editor
PEN Weekly NewsBlast
Robert L. Jacobson
Senior Associate, Communications
Public Education Network
601 Thirteenth Street, NW
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PEN@PublicEducation.org |
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