Spending more money in the same old way won’t improve New York City schools, writes education economist Eric Hanushek in the New York Sun. The courts have settled the “adequacy” lawsuit for $1.93 billion, an extra $1,800 per student.
Extensive evidence indicates that falling back on the old standbys of smaller classes and higher pay for teachers will not, by themselves, yield significant improvements in student outcomes.
New York City already spends more per students than three-quarters of states.
In Boston, middle-class parents are adopting elementary schools, raising money for improvements and enrolling their children, reports the Boston Globe.
(Hurley Elementary) parents raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to subsidize arts and science education. They pushed the School Department to convert makeshift offices back into a gym, and last month, they dedicated the new library, with Swedish-designed furniture donated by IKEA.
Similar transformations are occurring in about a dozen other of the city’s 78 elementary schools. Savvy, often well-connected, middle-class parents are joining forces and adopting undesirable schools, infusing them with new life, resources, and expansive extracurricular offerings.
Naturally, there are naysayers.
But even as the city heralds the new engagement, it has set off worries and debate about diversity and empowerment. Some fear that the efforts of the overwhelmingly white parents might leave black and Hispanic parents feeling excluded or, worse, alienated. In addition, the schools chosen by the parents for improvement have undergone changes in their racial composition, as word of mouth spreads and other white parents decide to send their children there.
The alternative to letting parents improve some schools is letting all schools remain equally bad. Equality isn’t controversial.
The Carnival of Education: Week 95 at A History Teacher, which includes an incredible Education Wonks’ post about an art student expelled for questioning a classmate’s belief in the existence of leprechauns. Bob Averill, an atheist, was a student at the Art Institute of Portland.
In the classroom that day, Averill says one young woman was talking about her belief in energy layers and astral beings.
“I jokingly asked her if she believed in leprechauns. It turns out, she does. They live on another energy layer,” Averill wrote in notes to himself later that day. “In the interest of bringing my own view to the discussion, I began to ask her how she knew these things. Again I know all too well that people can be sensitive about their spiritual beliefs, so I was pretty much walking on glass as I did so.”
Averill says he wasn’t trying to disprove the other student’s religious beliefs, but “to convince her not to insist that they were scientifically proven.”
The other student complained to the teacher. Averill was suspended; he says he was told it was for discussing religion in school. When he tried to get an associate dean to listen to another student who’d witnessed the conversation, he was accused of “rude and belligerent behavior. After a hearing, he was expelled.
According to an emailed letter from (Dean of Student Affairs Ron) Engeldinger, Averill had violated the student conduct policy. The decision to dismiss Averill was “not the result of a single action on your part, but a series of actions. I believe that, in several instances, your actions have been aggressive, demeaning, and threatening and that this demonstrates a pattern of inappropriate and unacceptable behavior,” Engeldinger wrote.
Averill was offered readmission if he agreed to a psychiatric evaluation. He’s contacted the ACLU.
The Art Institute president says there is no policy against discussing religion.
Of 100 ninth-graders, only 18 will go on to college and complete a degree in six years, a new study reports.
“Colleges have to take seriously the responsibility for graduating the kids they admit,” says Thomas Mortenson, an analyst with the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. “And if they don’t, maybe they ought to pick up the student loan burden of the people who don’t finish.”
College costs, which are rising much faster than inflation, and poor preparation are to blame, says the report. Some states are trying to motivate students to start preparing early for college.
Indiana is striking a bargain with its poor and lower-middle-class eighth graders: Maintain at least a 2.0 grade point average through high school, stay out of drugs and alcohol, and take the right set of classes, and we’ll pay your in-state college tuition.
I like the idea of getting students focused on college prep in middle school, but a C average isn’t very high in these days of grade inflation. Indiana is just now studying whether the program is affecting college completion rates.
In Texas, bilingual teachers may not be literate in Spanish, reports the Dallas News.
Thousands of children take the TAKS tests in Spanish each year in reading, math and science.
But what does the state do to make sure the bilingual teachers who instruct them can read and write in Spanish? Nothing.
Texas tests only speaking ability. Teachers answer 15 questions into a tape recorder to become certified in bilingual education. The questions are written in English. The answers are spoken in Spanish. Other states with bilingual programs require extensive testing of literacy and listening skills in Spanish.
Many bilingual teachers grew up in families speaking “Tex-Mex” slang or Spanglish and didn’t learn to read or write standard Spanish in their bilingual classes. They weren’t required to take Spanish in college because they were proficient orally. They can’t teach students to be biliterate — the goal of bilingual education — because they’re not biliterate themselves.
Texas law requires schools to provide bilingual classes through fifth grade if there are 20 or more students who share the same language. But there aren’t enough qualified teachers, even with very low standards, so there’s resistance to raising standards.
Bill Pulte, director of Southern Methodist University’s teacher training programs in bilingual education, said college-level literacy skills in Spanish aren’t essential to be good bilingual teachers.
“People who say they need to be perfect in Spanish literacy to teach in kindergarten – that’s not true,” he said. “They should be very strong orally in Spanish … The extent to which teachers have to write in Spanish is not that great.”
Texas districts are recruiting teachers from overseas but some aren’t proficient in English.
This week’s Carnival of Homeschooling, hosted by the Common Room, features delightful art.
At a San Jose alternative school, students are learning math by playing fantasy football.
Like many high schoolers, John Hagen’s algebra students worry about passing.
But they also worry about rushing. And receiving. And scoring.
They’ve become miniature NFL coaches, tracking the performance of key players in their own fantasy football league. In the process, Hagen’s previously math-resistant students have joined a growing number of kids who get a kick out of multiplying and dividing points and yards so they can see whose team came out on top.
A former math teacher named Dan Flockhart has written a series of books on teaching math through fantasy sports teams.
Ten years after California voters banned racial preferences in university admissions, the percentage of Asian-American students attending University of California campuses has soared, making them the single largest ethnic group. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports:
Asian-Americans – 14.1 percent of California’s 2005 high school graduating class – make up 41.8 percent of the freshman class at UC campuses, up from 36 percent a decade ago.
Meanwhile, blacks at 3 percent and whites at 32.2 percent make up smaller shares of UC’s freshman class than they did previously. Latinos account for 16.3 percent of UC freshmen, up from 13 percent a decade ago, but still less than half their 36.5 percentage of state high school graduates.
Asian-American students are far more likely than others to earn A’s and B’s in college-prep classes; they’re somewhat more likely than non-Asian high achievers to choose UC over private colleges.
Apparently, academic excellence makes students of Vietnamese, Chinese, Indian, Korean and Hmong ancestry un-diverse.
“In the narrow view, some Asians are beneficiaries, and Latinos and blacks are losers; but really, everyone’s a loser,†said Gary Orfield, an education and social policy professor at Harvard. “There may be enough minorities to have one or two kids in a classroom, but not enough to have a rich relationship.â€
In addition to earning high grades and test scores, students can become UC eligible by graduating in the top 4 percent of their high school class. The move was designed to help students from high-poverty, high-minority schools. Who are the top students at these schools? Poor whites and kids from low-income Vietnamese and Hmong families.
I’ll talk about my charter school book, Our School, at a lunch in Raleigh on Nov. 29 at noon at a special event sponsored by the John Locke Foundation, 200 W. Morgan St. Lunch is free for charter school people, $10 for others. You can sign up online at John Locke’s site or RSVP to lkakadelis@johnlocke.org.
I’ll also talk about charter schools Nov. 29 at 6 pm — an hour earlier than previously scheduled — on the Duke campus as a guest of the Duke Conservative Union. I think we’ll be in the Social Sciences building.
If you’re not in North Carolina but want an autographed copy of Our School at a discount price, e-mail me at joanne at joannejacobs dot com or go here to buy from me via Amazon.
Tweens are the new teens, say child development experts. .
. . physical and behavioral changes that would have been typical of teenagers decades ago are now common among “tweens” _ kids ages 8 to 12.
Some of them are going on “dates” and talking on their own cell phones. They listen to sexually charged pop music, play mature-rated video games and spend time gossiping on MySpace. And more girls are wearing makeup and clothing that some consider beyond their years.
Improved nutrition — and obesity –are causing more girls to start menstruating in elementary school. Technology gives children more access to “adult” images.
Sex, violence and foul language that used to be relegated to late-night viewing and R-rated movies are expected fixtures in everyday TV.
And some parents fail to set limits for their children.
Recent Comments