Public Education Network Weekly NewsBlast

PEN Weekly NewsBlast for March 23, 2007

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WHY I BELIEVE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION
In 1832, Alexis de Tocqueville came to America to assess the notion that our democracy was a beacon for the world. His astute observations remain a classic guide to America’s success. American prosperity, he concluded, was founded on several conditions unique to this society. We did not let class determine a person’s stature. A ruffian with a good idea and a work ethic could exchange places with a son of wealth who felt innovative thought and labor were beneath a gentleman’s dignity. Our system of public education, raucous as it was, provided the skills and knowledge that our citizens could employ to take advantage of a classless and mobile society. Unlike old Europe, we did not fear an educated proletariat. Despite our flawed application of these principles, opportunity, mobility and education remain the pillars supporting American democracy, and education makes the others worthwhile. In the truest sense, we do not pay taxes to support the education of our individual children -- writes Jon Samuels, board member of Public Education Partners in Aiken, S.C., a local education fund -- we pay taxes to support the role public education plays in civilizing and enriching our society. Writing today, de Tocqueville might note the erosion of our public schools and the roles played in that by racism, failed discipline, missing parents, rote teaching and testing gone berserk. But, he would be confident in our defense of public education. He would argue that it was not within the American character to shrink in the face of challenge. He would expect that we would tax ourselves sufficiently to provide for the common educational good. Public education is one of the bedrock guarantees that America will continue down freedom’s road.

SOCIAL JUSTICE & LANGUAGE ARTS
High school can be a time of extreme complexity and anxiety for students. It is a time of tremendous academic, social, physical and emotional change. It is also the time when young people are developing a moral compass and falling in love with new ideas. At this point in their lives, teens are truly starting to think for themselves and to expand their radius of inquiry beyond home and school to social and environmental issues in the wider world. Problems with clean water and air, human rights, animal protection, world hunger, racism, sexism, and homophobia will not find resolution unless our youth are educated and empowered toward that end. If we avoid examining and investigating these topics in high school in the belief that our students will be introduced to them in college or later in life, we are being naive and irresponsible. In the new issue of Green Teacher magazine, Christopher Greenslate explains that the language arts curriculum offers unlimited opportunities -- in fiction, poetry, and expository writing -- for teachers and students to make connections with current social and global issues. A work of literature can validate a part of us we never knew existed, and a powerful speech can motivate us to make change. Poetry can bring new realities into being, and reading a well-developed research paper can change the way we eat or where we shop. If you teach English and choose to stay focused on the surface level of forms, themes, and historical context, you are robbing your students of a chance to make their own education more meaningful.

TWO AMERICAS, TWO EDUCATIONS
Paul F. Cummins staunchly believes that America cannot survive, let alone thrive, as a free and just society until and unless it takes the job of educating its young people seriously and in a manner commensurate with its immense wealth. It doesn't take an education expert to see that this has not happened, writes Erin Aubry Kaplan in the Los Angeles Times. It's also clear that the inequities in public schools are so long-standing as to now be conventional wisdom: urban schools are by definition poor, colored and failing, while suburban schools are affluent, white and successful. Not even the current school-reform fervor, with its loud pledges to uphold standards and excellence, does much to disturb this fact. In his book, "Two Americas, Two Educations: Funding Quality Schools for All Students," Cummins seeks to shock us out of our complacency by showing us the money. Most people assume that there is simply not enough money to fund schools adequately, let alone well; Cummins says that's bunk. He says the real culprit is a gross, carefully maintained imbalance of money that, like the poor state of education, we've come to accept. Cummins argues that such a status quo is not only bad for underfunded schools, it's bad for the health of democracy itself. Yet Cummins doesn't want to force the bitter medicine of reality down our throats so much as he wants us to get well. With an impressive array of facts and figures, plus sobering quips from writers and thinkers as varied as Thomas Friedman, J. Pierpont Morgan and Bill Moyers, he lays bare a tax system and pattern of government policies skewed so heavily in favor of big corporations and the rich that it's a wonder public services function as well as they do. Cummins feels that too many people are not contributing their fair share of taxes, that too much of that burden falls on the poor, and that the dollars we do collect are not properly prioritized.

THE NEW ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN AMERICA
It seems odd to accuse the schools of anti-intellectualism when they are engaged in a relentless drive for higher test scores, and students are required to take more difficult academic courses. Passing rates on some state and local tests show small increases, but there has been little if any improvement on well-established national tests. The small gains we've seen may be the result of concentrated instruction on narrowly defined objectives, writes Nel Noddings in Education Week. But we are not promoting intellectual habits of mind. Indeed, we may be reducing intellectual life to mental labor. What are the signs that this is happening? According to Noddings, curricular rigor and pedagogical fraud can co-exist. Many intellectually exciting and socially significant lessons conducted by creative teachers are designed to induce awareness, not specific learning. It is a shame to sacrifice such sessions in our zeal to achieve a pre-specified learning objective for every lesson, every day. To support intellectual life and the joy of learning, we should expand the possibilities, not narrow them. Part of our job as educators is to offer opportunities, to open the door to a world of intellectual possibilities. Another part is to encourage our students to think and to take responsibility for their own expanded learning. It is important, therefore, to consider intellectual inputs as well as pre-specified student outcomes. Students do not come to us as standard raw material, and we should not expect to produce standard academic products. Intellectual life is challenging, enormously diverse, and rewarding. It requires initiative and independent thinking, not the tedious following of orders. It should not be reduced to mental drudgery.

COUNSELORS DEBATE THE NEED TO DECLARE A MAJOR IN HIGH SCHOOL
To a growing number of educational advocates, getting students to make an early career decision may be just the ticket to focusing the wandering teen mind and keeping kids involved in school. West Virginia, and now Florida, have decided kids need a major in high school. A dozen other states encourage students to focus their vocational training early by funneling them into special charter schools or providing certificates that allow them to work in certain occupations right out of high school. These moves are designed to help students focus on the skills that industry needs and that, in turn, give them a sense of purpose. This strategy, proponents say, will cut high school dropout rates, raise test scores and, ultimately, increase graduates usefulness to employers. "Studies have shown that if students have a goal or dream, they are more likely to be successful academically," Barbara Blackburn, a counselor at George Washington High School, in Charleston, W.Va. says. To others, it's folly. "Most students will have seven careers before they are through," says Richard Wong, executive director of the American School Counselor Association, in Alexandria, Va. "A majority of college grads don't even work in their major field." He further notes that most high schoolers will just cherry-pick a number of electives. Skeptics say strong career counseling is the most useful approach to help teenagers choose their professional path. "It's good for students to see their future and think about their financial future," says Carolyn Stone, professor of counselor education at the University of North Florida, in Jacksonville. "But I fear the students may be reduced to a quick look at a series of different majors. How informed are they going to be?"

SAVING THE LAST DANCE
Annie Lindsay has been teaching at Ramsay High School in Birmingham, Ala., since 1970. She could have retired long ago, but every day she drives 30 miles to school -- leaving behind a husband who is ill -- because she’s afraid her departure will mean the end of her public school dance program. She has good reason for concern, says Larry Contri, the district’s information technology officer and a former Ramsay principal. Birmingham’s decades-long enrollment slide means the school system loses millions in state funding each year. District officials plan to reduce staff and close schools in the fall, and when that happens, core academics -- not fine arts -- will have to take precedence. Former students have gone on to dance on Broadway and with the renowned Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, reports Gigi Douban in Teacher Magazine. Maintaining the dance program has become a personal mission for Lindsay.

FROM ARISTOTLE TO ANGELOU: BEST PRACTICES IN CHARACTER EDUCATION
The modern character education movement emerged in the 1980s as a consequence of growing parental and public concern for moral drift. Two decades later, it is time to ask, What are the successes of the character education movement? What do best practices look like? This essay by Paul J. Dovre in Education Next explores these questions through the study of character education in six schools. His conclusion: So far, character education programs that are carefully designed and implemented appear to be succeeding. Undeterred by philosophical disputes on the one hand and the preoccupation with academic achievement on the other, character education finds its strength at the grass roots, in those individual schools and communities where teachers, administrators, and citizens initiate programs designed to improve civility and citizenship -- legitimate goals in their own right. If research continues to show that comprehensive character education has positive effects on student achievement as well, then the movement may in time gain more robust political and financial support from education policymakers.

REAL SUPPORT FOR REALLY STRUGGLING SCHOOLS
Children from low-income homes are academically behind when they enter kindergarten, and they fall a little further behind each summer. To reach the same achievement level as their better-off peers, they will need to learn much more -- and they will need to learn it faster. As Antonia Cortese argues in the Spring 2007 issue of American Educator, we can help them meet that challenge by taking the following five steps:

Most schools don't have the capacity to take all these steps on their own; they need strong district-level support. Also included in American Educator are articles on the lack of alignment between state standards and tests, how Wal-Mart’s drive to cut costs is reshaping the global economy, students’ photos of their decaying school facilities and a report demonstrating that such problems are widespread, and a plea from teacher Tom Moore for Hollywood to stop trivializing the hard work and expertise that teaching requires.

MANY SCHOOL CAFETERIAS DON'T GET ANNUAL INSPECTIONS
Millions of children eat in school cafeterias that don't get the twice-yearly health inspections required by Congress to help prevent food poisoning. Schools are supposed to get two visits from health inspectors every year. But one in 10 schools didn't get inspected at all last year, according to Agriculture Department data obtained by the Associated Press. Thirty percent were visited only once. Inspections are meant to ensure cafeteria workers wash their hands properly and that they keep lunchtime staples such as pizza hot or milk cold to prevent germs from growing. Common violations in cafeterias involve wrong temperatures, failing to keep hot food hot enough or cold food cold enough, or things such as having an open Dumpster outside the cafeteria. Recent outbreaks of food poisoning in kid favorites such as peanut butter, and not-so-favorite spinach, have renewed the focus on safety. In school cafeterias, the news is not all bad: Sixty-one percent of schools got two or more inspections in the 2005-06 school year. That was the first year Congress required two inspections; the old requirement was one inspection per year, reports Libby Quaid for the Associated Press. The inspection rules apply to all schools that participate in the federal school lunch program, which provides free and reduced-price meals to low-income children.

SCHOOLS SAY THEY CANNOT PAY FOR DETENTION FOR BADLY BEHAVED STUDENTS
Nevada legislators were told Monday that Las Vegas-area schools are too understaffed to even punish the most badly behaved students with detention -- so their parents should be hit with fines. Sens. Dennis Nolan, R-Las Vegas, and Joyce Woodhouse, D-Henderson, told the Senate Human Resources and Education committee their SB245 would reduce the number of students needing detention. Woodhouse added that the amount of the fines hasn't been finalized, but $20 per student per offense wouldn't be excessive, reports Joe Mullin for the Associated Press. Nolan expressed hope that after two or three fines, the parents of such students would convince their children to change their poor behavior. Parents of problem students often come into parent-teacher conferences with a hostile attitude, he added. "They don't appreciate being summoned, and don't appreciate the magnitude of the problem," said Nolan. "Maybe we get their parents' attention, if by no other way, then by hitting them in the pocketbook." According to Nolan, most schools in the Las Vegas area don't have detention anymore because they can't afford it. The district is short almost 400 teachers, and has asked the Legislature for $7 million over a two-year period to staff detentions, he said. In-class detention is far superior to removing repeat offenders from school, said Woodhouse, a career educator. A lobbyist for the ACLU opposed the bill, saying that education is a fundamental right and imposing fines was the wrong approach. Sen. Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, also criticized the bill, saying that often detention or "in-house suspension" is imposed for relatively minor infractions.

A REPORT ON THE STATUS OF HISPANICS IN EDUCATION: OVERCOMING A HISTORY OF NEGLECT
The story of Hispanics in the U.S. is not a simple one. It is a rich, complex, and dynamic history. Hispanics are not one nationality or one culture or one race. They are a very diverse group. Some Hispanics are recent immigrants, but many others have lived here for generations. The educational achievement of Hispanic students is among the poorest of the three major ethnic-racial groups, regardless of grade level, writes Richard Verdugo for the National Education Association. The extant literature suggests that five teaching strategies have been effective in educating Hispanic students:

Historically, Hispanic schools or schools in which a significant proportion of the student body was Hispanic have been seriously underfunded in comparison to Anglo schools. Research is also clear about the benefits of sustained high-quality professional development and early childhood programs. Chapter four of this report outlines a serious of specific recommendations for school personnel, classroom teachers, parents, policymakers, Hispanic organizations, community members, and researchers.

SCHOOLED BY "AMERICAN IDOL"
Fox TV's "American Idol" recently kicked off its sixth season, and despite its longevity, it's more popular than ever. Perhaps it's worth pausing as educators to think about some of the pedagogical significance of this remarkable reality show. American Idol is an old-fashioned talent show, reinvigorated with contemporary technology to include audience voting. What lessons about popular attitudes toward grading and evaluation emerge from American Idol's auditions? First, a belief in genuine standards: We may at times disagree about whether a performance is good or bad, but extreme examples remind us that those differences in taste exist within that shared context of what counts as "in tune," an agreement about what ultimately is a credible performance. Second, the show reveals a respect for expertise. Third, writes Christopher Ames in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the auditions reveal that individuals are often not good judges of their own ability.

STANDARDIZED TEST FOR PRESCHOOLERS MAY BE SUSPENDED
Congress is moving to end a standardized test backed by the Bush administration and given to hundreds of thousands of preschool children in Head Start programs each year, amid complaints from early childhood experts that the exam is developmentally inappropriate and poorly designed. The National Reporting System, a set of mini-tests said to measure verbal and math skills, has been given in Head Start programs each fall and spring since 2003. Bush administration officials say the test is necessary to help determine how well the nearly 2,700 Head Start programs in the country are progressing. Before the national test was introduced, each Head Start program used its own assessments to monitor student progress, reports Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post. Critics question whether the test accurately measures how much a child learns and cite a 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, that raised concerns about the way the test has been implemented. The controversy over the assessment underscores a key but often ignored component in the national debate about standardized testing: How is it determined whether a test measures what it is intended to measure? Experts say that one way is to do extensive field testing before an assessment is implemented, which was not done for the National Reporting System. Another concern of early childhood experts is the practicality of testing young children. Samuel J. Meisels, president of the Erikson Institute, said that young children are generally poor test takers because of their limited abilities to stay focused and comprehend assessment cues.

ADVOCACY & POLICY CHANGE
Advocacy that influences or informs public policy has the potential to achieve large-scale results for individuals, families, and communities. Consequently, there is much interest in understanding how to make advocacy and policy change efforts more effective. While previously relegated as "too hard to measure," advocacy evaluation has become a burgeoning field. This 32-page issue of Harvard Family Research Project’s "The Evaluation Exchange" helps to build this new field by defining the developments that are shaping it and showing how enterprising evaluators, nonprofits, and funders are tackling the advocacy evaluation challenge.

CHILDREN BECOMING LESS OF A FEDERAL PRIORITY
This report tracks federal spending on children from 1960 to 2006 and makes projections up to 2017 based on current policy. Children will see their share of federal domestic spending decline from 15.4 percent in 2006 to 13.1 percent in 2017. As a piece of the gross domestic product, spending on children will slide from 2.6 percent in 2006 to 2.1 percent in 2017, report Adam Carasso, Eugene Steuerle, and Gillian Reynolds for the Urban Institute. Their study reports on historical trends in federal spending on children, looking across over 100 major federal programs, including tax credits and exemptions. Children's spending increasingly shifted from broad-based programs to programs targeting low-income or special needs children over the period examined. Thirteen major programs enacted between 1960 and 2006, which include Medicaid, the earned income tax credit, and Food Stamps, comprised 65 percent of federal spending on children in 2006. Overall, federal children's spending increased in real terms from $53 billion in 1960 to $333 billion in 2006, or from 1.9 to 2.6 percent of GDP. Yet as a share of federal domestic spending, children's spending declined from 20.1 to 15.4 percent. Meanwhile, spending on the automatically growing, non-child portions of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, nearly quadrupled from 2.0 to 7.6 percent of GDP ($58 billion to $993 billion) over the same time period. Over the next ten years, children's programs are scheduled to decline both as a share of GDP and domestic spending, because they do not compete on a level playing field with these rapidly growing entitlement programs.

FREE INTERACTIVE EDUCATION CHANGE TOOLKIT FROM IBM
Demonstrating its commitment to provide education leaders with access to proven-effective tools to improve school management, IBM is offering its Reinventing Education Change Toolkit free of charge to all interested educators and school leaders. The Change Toolkit serves as a one-stop portal to help implement measurable school reform. It provides online diagnostic tools that are easy to follow, contains the interactive support to help move change projects forward, and offers vignettes and real stories that illustrate how the tools were used in real-life situations to accomplish specific objectives. It was customized and developed in partnership with the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and the National Association of Elementary School Principals.

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"Financial Literacy Awards Program"
The Planet Orange Financial Literacy Awards Program challenges educators to advance children’s knowledge of personal finance and money management. Maximum Award: $1,000. Eligibility: teachers K-8. Deadline: April 20, 2007.

"Empowering People to Turn Off Their Televisions"
New York State, Kentucky and Oklahoma are all planning statewide Turnoff Weeks (TV-Turnoff) for April 23-29, 2007. The states see this as both a first and essential step in the fight against obesity, a chance to increase standardized test scores, lower bullying and violence and to encourage children and their families to get involved in their communities. In addition, starting in September, The Center for Screen-Time Awareness (the international nonprofit that produces Turnoff Week) will introduce "Universal Screen-Time Reduction." This new effort empowers people by providing them with healthier lifestyles in functional families in vibrant communities. For more information: 202-333-9220 or visit the above link.

"Community College Encore Career Grants"
The MetLife Foundation/Civic Ventures Community College Encore Career Grants explore how community colleges can help those in the second half of life pursue new careers in education, health care, social services, and similar fields. Maximum Award: $25,000. Eligibility: community colleges. Deadline: May 1, 2007.

"Increasing Access to the Game of Golf"
United States Golf Association supports organizations that introduce the game to young people, minorities, girls, the economically disadvantaged, individuals with disabilities and others with limited access to the game of golf, through instructional programming and golf facility construction projects, as well as caddie and other work-based programs. Maximum Award: varies. Eligibility: 501(c)3 organization. Deadline: July 6, 2007.

For a detailed listing of EXISTING GRANT OPPORTUNITIES (updated each week), visit:
http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_grants.asp

QUOTES OF THE WEEK
"This is an extraordinary and demanding time for our nation's schools and I ask all Americans to pitch in. Our nation is prosperous and working hard for peace. Surely this is the right time to be optimistic, to roll up our sleeves and get serious about winning America's war on ignorance. At the same time, we have to contend with a narrow strain in American thinking that casually seeks to dismiss public education as a value from another time. Instead of seeking solutions, these people see only problems. Instead of seeing opportunity, they see only failure. My friends, if ever there was a time to rally around our nation's schools, it is now.’"

 - The Honorable Richard W. Riley (former Governor of South Carolina and U.S. Secretary of Education)

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