Texas teachers are leaping through a loophole to boost retirement pay: A teacher who works for one day as a janitor, or in another school job covered by Social Security, becomes eligible for spousal benefits equal to half the spouse’s Social Security check. AP reports:

Thousands of Texas teachers have rushed to retire before a lucrative loophole in Social Security law closes, but there’s one catch: They must first spend a day washing windows or scrubbing floors.

Most Texas teachers do not pay into Social Security and instead participate in a state pension fund. But the loophole allows them to receive Social Security benefits if their last day of work before retirement is in a job covered by Social Security.

School districts around the state helped teachers by hiring them to work janitorial or maintenance jobs for just a day. The loophole ends today.

In the future, it will take five years of covered work to be eligible for Social Security spousal benefits.

The Washington Post profiles a graduate of SEED, the charter boarding school in Washington, D.C. that’s sending its first class to college.

A CBS producer also praises the school, which provides an alternative to low-income black students.

It’s expensive, as I’ve written before. And nearly half the students who started in middle school left before graduation, though some of that was due to the start-up problems of a brand-new school.

Eduwonk says SEED is working to show that the model can be replicated. Boarding schools never will be common, but could prove to be a cost-effective choice for kids from families that can’t provide structure and guidance.

One in 10 students are targets of sexual misconduct by school employees, according to a report for Congress by Charol Shakeshaft, a Hofstra education professor. But Shakeshaft’s definition includes everything from rape to inappropriate jokes.

Misconduct is defined in the report as physical, verbal or visual behavior, from sexually related jokes or pictures of sex to fondling of breasts and forced sex. Shakeshaft did not limit her review to sexual abuse because, she says, that would exclude other unacceptable adult behaviors that can drive kids from school and harm them for years.

No national study has collected reliable data on sexual abuse or misconduct in schools. Shakeshaft is guessing about the extent of a problem defined so broadly as to be meaningless.

Precinct 333 worries about a witch hunt targeting teachers.

Education reform can’t just fiddle with the status quo, writes Frederick Hess in Common Sense School Reform.

Good organizations, in schooling and elsewhere, are characterized by clear goals, careful measurement of performance, rewards based on outcomes, the elimination of unproductive employees, operational flexibility, the ready availability of detailed and useful information, personnel systems that recruit and promote talent, and attention to training and professional growth. This describes few of today’s public schools.

Hess doesn’t think schools are terrible. He thinks we keep spending more and more money to remain mediocre.

From Go-Quiz.com

Education is the top issue for Hispanic voters, according to a Zogby poll conducted for National Council of La Raza.

Education Trust has launched a web site in English and Spanish aimed at Latino parents. Among the depressing statistics in the report: Only 11 percent of Latino children will go on to earn bachelor’s degrees if current trends continue.

John Kerry is stressing college in speeches to minority groups. He’s set to speak in Phoenix to La Raza. In Chicago, he promised a mostly black audience a million more college graduates in his first five years in office. “In the tradition of the famously long-winded Clinton, he spoke for nearly an hour” to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, reports Fox. Black voters liked Clinton — but surely not for his tendency to go on forever.

The cost of college isn’t the real barrier. The problem is that many students — especially low-income blacks and Hispanics — don’t have the reading and math skills needed to pass college classes. If Kerry weakens the accountability provisions of No Child Left Behind, he’ll lower the number of college graduates, no matter how much he boosts scholarships or tutoring at the college level.

College professors in Baghdad fear that giving F’s could be fatal, says the Globe and Mail. Recently, a professor was murdered; students believe he was shot in retaliation for a bad grade.

Death-threat letters have become commonplace this exam season, and there have been at least two other recent attempts on the lives of university officials.

In a wooden cabinet in Prof. Taleb’s office, he keeps all the threatening letters sent to lecturers in his college. The pile is high and a number of them have bullets taped to them.

Students complain they miss class when they’re held up at roadblocks and can’t study because the electricity is erratic. And the dog ate their homework. So professors should pass everyone — or the final really will be final.

A professor calls for hanging homicidal students.

Poliblogger is publicizing a book drive for Baghdad University’s library, which especially needs math, science and medical texts. Books or checks payable to Books for Baghdad may be sent to Dr. Safaa Al-Hamdani, Department of Biology, Jacksonville State University, 700 Pelham Road North, Jacksonville, AL 36265.

Teaching social norms makes it possible for poor black students to do well in school, writes Abigail Thernstrom.

(Successful inner-city) schools combat what Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson has called “the greatest problem now facing African Americans.” And that is “their isolation from the tacit norms of the dominant culture.” His statement is really the academic version of Bill Cosby’s recent remarks in which he talked about black parents who are not parenting and about kids who can’t speak standard English and who will be shut out of the world of economic success.

This is how the best inner-city schools I know address that “isolation from the tacit norms of the dominant culture.” In addition to an academically superb program, they demand that their students learn how to speak standard English. They also insist that kids show up on time, properly dressed; that they sit up straight at their desks, chairs pulled in, workbooks organized; that they never waste a minute in which they could be learning and always finish their homework; that they look at people to whom they are talking, listen to teachers with respect, treat classmates with equal civility, and shake hands with visitors to the school.

These are skills as essential as basic math. Without them, disadvantaged children cannot climb the ladder of economic opportunity.

This only works if parents and students have chosen the school, Thernstrom writes.

New York City’s math tests produce fuzzy results, writes Andrew Wolf in the New York Sun.  For example, two thirds of last year’s fourth graders were on grade level in math, yet only 38.6 percent tested at grade level as fifth graders. What’s going on?

Wolf offers a story problem: There are 84 questions on the Math A regents exam; the passing grade is 55 percent. How many questions must a student answer correctly to pass?

You say 47? Wrong.

The state education department has decreed that answering just 28 questions correctly earns you a 55 and a passing grade, even though that is only a real score of 33.3% . . .

Sixty of the questions on the test are multiple choice. Merely making random guesses will earn the average student 15 of the 28 correct answers needed to pass. Another 13 right answers and it’s on to Math B. Basically,a student who is able to correctly answer 13 questions, just 15% of the test, and making random guesses on the balance, can pass the test.

Wolf suggests letting an independent board test students and determine the passing grade, taking the job away from the city and state education departments.

College tuition at public universities costs students less, reports USA Today.

What students pay on average for tuition at public universities has fallen by nearly one-third since 1998, thanks to new federal tax breaks and a massive increase in state and federal grants to most students and their families.

Financial aid increased by 80 percent, with most of the benefits reaching middle-class families earning $40,000 to $100,000 a year.

While public university tuition increased by 18 percent since 1998, few students pay the listed tuition price, USA Today points out.

In 2003, students paid an average of just 27% of the official tuition price at four-year public universities when grants and tax breaks are counted. Students at private universities paid an average of 57%.

About three quarters of college students attend public universities.

Colleges play a “shell game” with tuition prices, says King Alexander, president of Murray State University in Kentucky.

1. The university raises its official tuition price.

2. The higher tuition qualifies many students for bigger federal and state grants, which are passed on to the school.

3. The university writes a “scholarship” to cover the rest of the tuition hike, so many students don’t actually pay more.

Legislators earn more brownie points with middle-class voters by subsidizing college students directly, rather than increasing funding to public universities.