Public Education Network Weekly NewsBlast

PEN Weekly NewsBlast for May 18, 2007

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WHAT’S NEXT FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION?
As the National Education Association (NEA) celebrates its 150th anniversary, they asked educators and experts what they see in the years ahead. It may seem that our schools still all too often "model 1950s architecture, use 1990s technology, and deliver 1960s curriculum." So admits educator and architect Jeffery A. Lackney, but behind the bricks and mortar that make up our public schools, a groundswell is rising. Technology promises to transform our classrooms. A global economy and a changing society force us to revisit long-held assumptions of who our students are -- and who they might become. In this online feature, NEA asked leaders from many walks of life what they think the future holds for public education -- a future they believe is bright. As author and educator Jonathan Kozol writes, "…I believe that a rebirth of public education -- of the joy that teachers take in it and the benefits it brings to children -- is ahead of us. I'm meeting tens of thousands of the best and brightest students in our universities and colleges who are determined to come in and work with us in public schools, not voucher schools, not boutique schools, not semi-private charter schools run by the business sector. They represent a burst of idealistic energy, a love for children, and a thirst for justice, which will reinforce the passions of those in the classroom now. The tide of discontent with punitive, test-driven, and fear-driven methods of instruction is rising to the point at which I am convinced that we will see, within the next five years, a militant revival of enlightened opposition to these practices among our rank-and-file teachers. These teachers know they are in a battle for the soul of public education. Many feel intimidated by the sword of threats and sanctions under which they are obliged to teach today. But, sooner or later, these teachers will rise up and make their voices heard."

PUBLIC RHETORIC, PUBLIC RESPONSIBILITY & THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS
There are vital relationships between public rhetoric and public policy in a democratic society, and education historian, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, commenting in Education Week, outlines several reasons why current rhetoric emphasizes school failure without giving equal emphasis to the social failures that often surround the public schools. She thinks the true story is not that our schools have failed us. It is rather that we, as a society, have failed our schools. We have failed our schools because we have asked them to do impossible things. What might happen if we paid less attention to outcomes, as measured by test scores, and more attention to how children learn, which is one of the most important processes of education? This could force us to attend more sensibly to schooling within the social and cultural contexts in which it occurs. Studying the processes of education could make us think more about relationships between education in families and neighborhoods, on the one hand, and in schools, on the other. Studying the ways in which children learn could help us focus on cultural differences between and among the children who sit in the same classroom, and on how those cultural differences might be used to empower learning rather than to stand in its way. The imbalance between what we expect of public schools and offer them by way of support is not different from what we have asked the U.S. military to do in Iraq. We seem more inclined these days to delegate responsibility to others than to assume it ourselves. Outside contractors are playing increasing roles in both our military and educational pursuits, and in a truly democratic society neither function should be contracted out.

SENIORITIS: RAMPANT, REAL, NO KNOWN CURE
Educators and policy makers are searching for a cure for a common malady that's highly contagious this time of year. Senior-itis -- the tendency of seniors to slack off during their final year of high school -- is a uniquely American rite of passage, reports Scott Stephens for the Plain Dealer (Cleveland). By the time spring rolls around, many seniors have been accepted to college, have a job lined up, plan to travel overseas or are simply bored with school. Research confirms that senior-itis, if not epidemic, is at least a real concern. Recent data from the U.S. Department of Education's High School Transcript Study found that high school seniors in 2005 earned slightly better grades, but fewer credits, than they did in grades 9 to 11. The credit difference equated to 48 fewer hours of classroom instruction. Researchers theorize that many students complete difficult math and science credits before their senior year, leaving themselves with easier electives to fill their schedule. Many believe that the trend of early college acceptance -- a practice that lets students pick a college early in their final year of high school -- has made the senior slump worse.

WHAT IS BEING SAID ABOUT NCLB
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), signed into law in 2002, is scheduled for congressional re-authorization this year. Exactly when Congress and the president will sign on the dotted line is uncertain, reports Susan Black in American School Board Journal, and some officials speculate a vote on NCLB will be postponed until after the 2008 elections. But that uncertainty hasn't slowed a storm of reports, hearings, and intense lobbying seeking to modify the five-year-old law. Public Education Network says students, parents, and community residents are affected by NCLB, but they're often left out of the policy debate. PEN’s hearings revealed that students, parents, and community members agree on a number of issues pertaining to NCLB:

Fixing schools is supposed to be about kids, as pointed out by Washington Post reporter/columnist Jay Mathews. His point? Stop fiddling with the law, and instead spend federal funds to find low-income schools that work, figure out how and why they work, and use those lessons to help others improve.

SHOULD KIDS SERVE TIME FOR SKIPPING SCHOOL?
Fifteen-year-old Tam Chau is just one of hundreds of King County (Seattle) students who have been jailed for missing school; since 1997, the county has jailed truant youths 974 times. Public outcry led to the creation of a set of laws designed to assist parents with uncontrollable children. Before the new laws took effect, reports Huan Hsu for Seattle Weekly, each school district enforced truancy differently -- which is to say that they often didn't. If after a court referral the student fails to follow the court's instructions, the court can find him in contempt and send him to detention for up to seven days. Guidance counselor Marion Howard says her attempts to get kids back in school run the gamut. She conducts home visits, holds parent-teacher conferences, changes schedules, and connects students with counseling, mentoring, and tutoring. She's even gone to students' houses and set up alarm clocks. "You name it, we do it," says Howard. "Sending them downtown is not the first thing we do: It's months and months of trying. The one thing we can't do is take these kids home, parent them, and bring them back to school the next day." One of the best ideas researchers have seen is what California, Florida, Rhode Island, and Maryland do with truants: They delay driver's license eligibility.

$6 MILLION FUND BACKS EDUCATION REFORM ORGANIZING EFFORTS
Communities for Public Education Reform (CPER), a coalition of grassroots education organizing groups backed by 40 local and national funders, seeks to improve education for students by giving community residents a stronger voice in shaping the policies that affect their public schools. Local groups in Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia and New Jersey are receiving $2.3 million in support through a series of new grants and technical assistance announced yesterday. CPER partners include: two Denver groups working on education organizing; two Chicago coalitions working to reduce high-school drop out rates and pioneer new strategies for developing and supporting teachers in high-poverty schools; six New Jersey organizing and partner advocacy groups; and, eight Philadelphia organizing and allied groups that collaborate through the city’s Cross-City Campaign for School Reform. In New Jersey, the Paterson Education Fund, a local education fund, will serve as the managing partner on the grant and host the program's coordinating staff. For more information on this effort, contact: Julie K. Kohler, Ph.D., Program Manager & Director of Evaluation, Public Interest Projects, (212) 764-1508, ext. 231, or email her at the above link.

GOVERNMENT BY BAKE SALE: DONATIONS HELP PAY FOR BASIC SERVICES
What's wrong with wealthy families in La Canada Flintridge, San Marino and other communities holding constant fundraisers to pay for the unfunded needs of their local public schools -- drama societies and marching bands and that sort of thing? Or with parents having to go out and purchase body armor on their own so that their sons are protected in Iraq? What's so wrong, asks Ezra Klein in the Los Angeles Times, with hollowing out the public sector and replacing it with a pay-as-you-go society? It is the natural endpoint, after all, of the privatization craze, of the gospel of tax cuts and of the smaller-government-is-better-government mentality that has been on the ascendancy in the U.S. for nearly 25 years. How has this come to pass? As the old adage goes, when the gods want to punish you, they give you what you want. Conservatives talk a lot about government failure, but over the last few years, it's really we who have failed government, depriving it of the revenue, the conscientious management and the attention needed for it to succeed. A new Pew Research Center poll finds that public support for a societal safety net and for government protections is at its highest levels in more than a decade -- which suggests that Americans don't think bake sales are the way to fund their schools or that corporations are really who they want subsidizing law enforcement. And in recent elections, the once popular "Taxpayer's Bill of Rights" amendments that seemed so unstoppable a decade ago are being rejected and, in Colorado, repealed, as voters finally tire of paying the costs in broken infrastructure and insufficient public services.

CAN DEAF & HARD OF HEARING STUDENTS SUCCEED IN MAINSTREAM CLASSROOMS?
The purpose of this commentary by Shirin Antia in Teachers College Record is to discuss the issues surrounding the educational placement of deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) students and puncture the myth that DHH students in general education classrooms are doomed to academic failure. Presently, about 63 percent of DHH students attend general education classes for all or part of their school day. Despite their difficulties in accessing classroom communication, they have higher achievement scores than students attending special schools. Although one reason for the increased achievement may be the difference in degree of hearing loss, other contributors of increased achievement include access to the general curriculum, high expectations for achievement, and the availability of quality support services. Finally, it is likely that a combination of facilitators, rather than a single "magic bullet" accounts for the success of DHH students placed in general education classrooms.

EDUCATING NEWCOMERS: ENSURING THAT IMMIGRANTS SUCCEED IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Over the past two years, a national debate on immigration has once again heated up. But for the more than eight million immigrants and children of immigrants in U.S. schools, and for the educators and community leaders who work with them every day, the issue is not rhetorical -- it is very real. What is the best way to educate newcomers? And how can schools employ the assets that newcomers bring to schools? The latest issue of Voices in Urban Education from the Annenberg Institute for School Reform offers five perspectives on these questions and suggests ways that schools can ensure that immigrant students succeed.

GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT PLAY AS A LEARNING TOOL IN CLASSROOMS
For Georgianne Walsh, of New Jersey, a beloved raccoon puppet known as Chester acts as the official greeter for her kindergarten students every morning. Amy Wallace, who teaches in New York City, created a puppet named Maya about whom her first graders became so concerned that Wallace purchased a tent for her to sleep in at night. In Las Cruces, N.M. Toni Gross's preschoolers are endlessly intrigued by a mouth-shaped puppet named Besos she uses to demonstrate oral movement when teaching speech and language. These puppets, simple hinged paper devices, were all inspired by an innovative website called Puppetools.com. Brainchild of a boundary-busting educator named Jeffrey Peyton, Puppetools provides a wide array of resources designed to introduce teachers and students to a stimulating world of educational play centered on puppetry. "When play enters the classroom, it transforms everything," says Peyton. "And when the play involves puppets, the power opens up and moves into the hands of the students." This is a man who is serious about play. Peyton feels that the whole concept has been marginalized in public education, mostly because so many teachers are intimidated by it, writes Burr Snider in Edutopia magazine. "The idea of communicating playfully using a device like a puppet is just too far out for most adults, and I think that speaks volumes about the classroom environment," Peyton says. "Lots of teachers strive for standardized behavior, and I think children sense this deeply and suffer from it, from prekindergarten on into high school."

THE STING OF THE SPELLING BEE
Spelling bees are hot. Broadway plays host to one nearly every night with an award-winning musical about six overachieving spellers in "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee." Hollywood has embraced them too: "Akeelah" would be nothing without her "Bee," not to mention "Bee Season." And the Scripps National Spelling Bee, set for May 30 and 31, is popular enough for the finals to be televised in prime time for a second year. As popular as spelling bees have become, academic researchers say many schools are giving spelling short shrift. That, they say, is because some teachers don't believe great spelling is necessary to pass the high-stakes standardized tests that drive public education. And because many don't know how to teach it. Some wind up substituting spelling competitions for real instruction and insist that students memorize lists of words for a weekly test, reports Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post. That is no way to help students understand what words mean, experts say.

THE ORIGINS OF TODAY’S STUDENT LOAN CONTROVERSY
The student loan industry has been beset in recent months by revelations of unethical marketing tactics and questionable ties between lenders and both college administrators and government officials. In a new report, Education Sector Policy Analyst Erin Dillon explains how a small, government-sponsored program has evolved over four decades into a vast, aggressive, and highly lucrative industry. No company has been more ambitious than Sallie Mae, the industry's dominant player, and the story of Sallie Mae's rise from a government-regulated niche enterprise to a fully private, multi-billion-dollar corporation goes a long way toward explaining how and why the student loan industry has landed at the center of controversy today. Dillon chronicles Sallie Mae's rise in the wake of skyrocketing college costs and escalating student borrowing, explaining how the company's relentless expansion has combined with aggressive marketing, less-than-rigorous federal oversight, and the industry's increasing complexity to create a climate that's ripe for the sort of industry wrongdoing that has emerged in recent months.

DO STATE EDUCATION AGENCIES HAVE THE TOOLS NECESSARY TO IMPLEMENT NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND?
The Center on Education Policy (CEP) has released a new report on the capacity of state educational agencies to carry out the No Child Left Behind Act. The report, "Educational Architects: Do State Education Agencies Have the Tools Necessary to Implement NCLB?" is the second report in a series of CEP publications on the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act that will be issued this year. An analysis of survey data from all 50 states and interview data of 15 high-ranking state education officials from 11 states revealed four major capacity challenges:

IS YOUR SCHOOL GIVING OUT PERSONAL INFORMATION?
As parents, we are given the responsibility and right to protect our children’s privacy. Parents retain the right to expect schools to keep students’ records, addresses, and personal information confidential. It is the law. Most administrators, faculty, and staff adhere to the law. Our children’s rights are protected. We feel secure. It may surprise and shock you to know how unprotected your child can be, writes Kristen Houghton for BellaOnline. In Ventura County, Calif., a mother of elementary age children was shocked to know that their names, addresses, phone numbers, and any other contact information, were taken from student emergency cards and published in a school directory booklet put out by the local PTA. The booklet also listed the names of siblings and other family members. Added to this information was a complete classroom roster, including classroom numbers, and teachers’ names. You could easily find out not only where each child lived but what classroom they are in and their grade level. In today’s world, where we are more aware of child predators than ever before, writes Houghton, this seems unconscionable. If the administration and those parents who see nothing wrong with this practice truly believe that the information never could get into the hands of a child molester, they are either naive or just plain brain-dead.

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"Grants to Spread Literacy & Love of Learning"
Ezra Jack Keats Minigrant Program for Public Schools and Public Libraries supports educators, parents and children in their efforts to spread literacy and love of learning. Maximum Award: $500. Eligibility: public schools and libraries anywhere in the United States and its protectorates. Deadline: September 15, 2007.

"Grants for Students & Teachers Working to Protect & Preserve the Environment"
2008 SeaWorld/Busch Gardens/Fujifilm Environmental Excellence Awards recognize the outstanding efforts of students and teachers across the country who are working at the grassroots level to protect and preserve the environment. Maximum Award: $10,000. Eligibility: All schools (grades K-12) and community groups. Deadline: November 30, 2007.

"Involving Actuaries in Teaching Mathematics"
The Actuarial Foundation Advancing Student Achievement Mentoring Program awards grants to schools and groups so that they develop a viable mentoring program involving actuaries in the teaching of mathematics to children in private and public schools. Collaboration among school systems, local actuarial clubs, corporations and other stakeholders in education is encouraged in order to enhance the chances of success, particularly on a long-term basis. Maximum Award: $30,000. Eligibility: any local group or organization. Deadline: N/A.

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

QUOTES OF THE WEEK
"To really change the world, values must change. Consider the civil rights movement. Racial discrimination was once openly accepted in the United States. Today it is unacceptable to our mainstream culture. Very few of us are civil rights activists, but we let our values speak in our work places, our schools and to our elected officials. Today, we live in a world that tolerates extreme poverty much like racism was tolerated fifty-plus years ago. We can all become people determined to do something to change the world. We can speak up, we can volunteer and we can give. Ending extreme poverty will take money, political and moral will, and a shift in our value system. When enough ordinary people embrace these issues, things will begin to change. ...Hands, hearts, and checkbooks are all vital. If we all just did a little -- our part -- we could change the world."

 - Richard Stearns (president, World Vision)
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/05/ten_or_so_quest.html

"Lots of people think they're charitable if they give away their old clothes and things they don't want. It isn't charity to give away things you want to get rid of and it isn't a sacrifice to do things you don't mind doing."

 - Myrtle Reed (author)

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