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School Districts Take a Fresh Look at Integration
In the wake of last year's 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that
racial-integration efforts by school districts in Seattle and
Louisville, Ky., were unconstitutional, districts and civil rights
advocates nationally have been examining new ways to ensure that
children of different backgrounds and ethnicities can be educated
together. Writing in the New York Times magazine, Emily Bazelon, a
senior editor at Slate, considers the ramifications of the court's
decision, which has been viewed in some quarters as running counter
to its landmark desegregation ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education
in 1954. In particular, Bazelon follows the efforts of the
Louisville schools to maintain what was already considered a
successfully integrated district without running afoul of the
court's latest determinations. An emerging approach involves a kind
of socioeconomic integration in which individual students could be
assigned to a school based on such measures as family, income,
assets, and parents' educational attainment. In the view of Justice
Anthony Kennedy, who provided a pivotal opinion in last year's case,
school districts could also be "race conscious" in drawing school
boundaries, choosing sites for new schools, and directing money to
particular programs. But in such situations, a district usually
would be limited to taking account of the racial composition of a
neighborhood rather than the race of individual students. Bazelon
cites research pointing to a powerful connection between a student
body’s socioeconomic makeup and academic achievement. Still,
socioeconomic integration appears to have limitations. Many large
urban communities, for example, face special hurdles because of
homogeneity in their student populations'.
Failing in School Called Tougher on Girls Than on Boys
Academic failure appears to trouble teenage girls more deeply than
it does boys, Reuters observes in reporting on a study by Carolyn
McCarty, a researcher and associate professor of pediatrics at the
University of Washington. Her findings, appearing in the Journal of
Adolescent Health, indicate that adolescent girls who are expelled
or suspended, or who drop out of high school before they graduate,
are more likely to have a serious bout of depression by age 21 than
boys with similar experiences. "For girls there are broader
implications of school failure," said McCarty. "We already know that
it leads to more poverty, higher rates of being on public
assistance, and lower rates of job stability. And now this study
shows it is having mental-health implications for girls." She
pointed, however, to a "gender paradox" in which failure in school
is "more atypical for girls … [but] appears to have more severe
consequences" for them when it does occur.
Georgia Pushing to Kill School-Finance Suit
The state of Georgia is making a final attempt to have the courts
dismiss a 2004 lawsuit by 50 rural school districts over education
funding, according to the Associated Press. The suit argues that
small, poor counties do not raise enough money from local taxes to
make up for more than $1 billion in cuts to state education spending
in recent years, and are thus at a disadvantage. The state's
attorneys say Georgia fulfills its constitutional obligations for
education funding, asserting that districts can raise local property
taxes or cut nonacademic programs if they need to. "It's a question
of priorities, of local control, and management," said attorney
Rocco Testani, who represents the state in the case. "These
districts spend money on things not required by state law." The
Georgia suit is one of about 20 ongoing school-finance cases in the
nation. Over the past two decades, most states have faced legal
challenges over how they spend tax dollars on education, according
to Michael A. Rebell, executive director of the National Access
Network at Columbia University. In 28 such cases that have been
ruled on by the courts, he said, the plaintiffs have won 70 percent
of the time.
Baltimore Students Show Unexpected Gains in Statewide Assessments
Maryland School Assessment test results for grades 3 through 8 have
shown strong improvements by students statewide, but nowhere greater
-- or more surprising -- than in Baltimore, according to the
Baltimore Sun. Students in the city, predominantly black and
low-income, posted generally large gains in math and reading,
sometimes amid major distractions. At Baltimore's Alexander Hamilton
Elementary School, for instance, one of the most improved schools in
the district, students registered major gains in a neighborhood so
challenged, the Sun reports, that the school was under lockdown for
three days because of nearby shootings. Citywide, reading scores
rose an average of 11 percentage points and math scores rose 8
points. Gains also were reported in Maryland's Prince George's
County, where two-thirds of the population is black, contributing to
a further narrowing of Maryland's so-called achievement gap. In
Baltimore, the school superintendent, Andres Alonso, attributed
test-score gains in part to investments in early childhood education
that preceded his tenure last year, as well as to "the extraordinary
sense of urgency that we have exhibited in the district this year,
with a great focus on accountability and expectations." Overall,
Maryland's test results rose statewide for the fifth year in a row.
L.A. Teens Discuss 'Racial Achievement Gap'
At the request of the Los Angeles Times, eight Latino and Asian
students from the city's diverse Lincoln High School gathered
recently to talk about what California State Superintendent Jack
O'Connell has called a "racial achievement gap" that separates Asian
and non-Latino white students on one hand from Latinos and blacks on
the other. The students agreed that Asian parents were more likely
to pressure their children to excel academically, the Times reports,
while Mexican-American parents were more likely to place work and
education on a par -- and, in some cases, to place more value on
work and the ability to earn money. With about 2,500 students,
Lincoln High draws from neighborhoods that are 15 percent Asian,
with the rest of the populations being predominantly working-class
Mexican-Americans. Yet Asians make up 50 percent of the school's
Advanced Placement classes. Although Latino and Asian families in
surrounding neighborhoods are essentially in the same socioeconomic
boat, Asian immigrants are more likely to have been comparatively
affluent and to have had better educational opportunities in their
native countries.
Election-Year Ads Seek Spotlight for Education Issues
In a 30-second television spot that is part of a recently launched
$5 million campaign dubbed "One Nation Left Behind," the Washington
Post relates, a blond-haired boy is seen raising the flags of
various countries -- including Finland, South Korea, and Japan --
onto one flagpole while ominous music plays in the background. In a
voiceover, the actress Jamie Lee Curtis says: "This boy's future
isn't looking so good. The schools in every one of these countries
are outperforming ours." The TV ad, seeking to capitalize on the
publicity and nationalism associated with the upcoming Olympic Games
in Beijing, is part of an effort by Strong American Schools, a
nonpartisan organization formed last year to draw attention to
education issues in the nation's presidential contest. Focusing
initially on seven battleground states for the November election,
the effort also is featuring ads on radio, in print, and on the
Internet. Strong American Schools has received financial support
from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among other
philanthropic groups.
U.S. Seen Lagging in Pursuit of More STEM Degrees
Updating a high-profile 2005 report, a business-sponsored campaign
called Tapping America's Potential has warned that the United States
is slipping further behind in efforts to satisfy the group's call
for the nations to double the number of bachelor's degrees awarded
in science, math, and engineering by 2015, according to eSchool
News. In 2005, a coalition of 15 prominent business groups said that
a lack of expert workers and teachers posed a threat to America's
competitive standing in the world, and that the nation would need
400,000 new graduates in the so-called STEM fields (science,
technology, engineering, and math) by 2015. But according to Susan
Traiman, director of education and workforce policy for the Business
Roundtable, an organization of corporate leaders, there's been
insufficient follow-through to finance programs that might increase
STEM graduates. She said other countries were doing more to shift
incentives toward science training. American CEOs are concerned, she
said, that "if we wait for a Sputnik-like event, it's very hard to
turn around and get moving on the kind of timeline we would need."
See the complete report at
http://www.tap2015.org
Schools Cutting Back on Nursing Staffs
Medical duties have become a part of the job for some teachers as
school districts have reduced their nursing staffs or required
nurses to work at multiple locations, reports the Associated Press.
The trend comes at a time when more students are dealing with
serious medical conditions such as severe allergies, asthma, and
diabetes. Federal guidelines call for having one nurse for every 750
students, but the national average is about one for every 1,150
students, according to the National Association of School Nurses. A
quarter of the nation's schools have no nurse at all. Meanwhile, the
workload of school nurses has increased since 1975, when the federal
government mandated that schools accommodate disabled students,
clearing the way for attendance by children with feeding tubes,
catheters, and other serious medical circumstances. "[People] think
the school nurse is a nice little job where you take care of
boo-boos," said Barbara Duddy, president of the Tennessee
Association of School Nurses. "School nurses work very hard to make
sure every child gets exactly what they need."
Promoting High Achievement for African-American Students
After reading "Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement
Among African-American Students" (2003), three essays by leading
thinkers in African-American education, Mary Tedrow writes in
Teacher Magazine, she realized that "the ideas and potential
solutions embedded in this book have gone on largely
unacknowledged." Tedrow, a white high school teacher in Virginia,
acknowledges that her "own experience with arguments for an inherent
bias in the system of schooling have been filtered through the
popular media, where issues like Ebonics, test and IQ bias, the
stigmatization of stereotyping, 'acting white,' and urban schooling
are treated superficially." She says the book by Theresa Perry,
Claude Steele, and the late Asa Hilliard III brought her to
considerations like the fact that, historically, education for black
Americans has had no predictable tie to economic advancement, no
matter what level of schooling a student achieves. "In order to
succeed," she maintains, "black Americans must answer for
themselves: Why sacrifice yourself to the pursuit of an education
when the color of your skin is likely to close as many doors as your
studies promise to open?" She recommends that "Young, Gifted, and
Black" be included in the professional libraries of teachers and
schools, and in the pre-service education of all teaching
professionals.
Weighing In on How to Improve Teacher Quality
Improving a school’s faculty should be easy -- hire good teachers,
get rid of bad ones, and provide new training to those who remain,
Ray Fisman, professor and research director of the Social Enterprise
Program at the Columbia Business School, writes in Slate. But it's
not easy: Once teachers become entrenched, it's hard to remove them
from union-protected jobs, and it's hard to predict who will be a
good teacher in the first place. According to researchers, nothing
on a prospective teacher's resume indicates how he or she will do in
the classroom. The only predictor of whether a teacher will boost
students' test scores in a given year is "the amount he raised test
scores in previous years." Most faculty hiring is done before
applicants have a teaching record, however, and few schools have the
ability to run complicated regression analyses on whether an
experienced teacher has had positive effects in the past. "While
it's not fair to park the problem of global inequities at the
doorstep of teachers unions," Fisman says, "the continued
floundering of public education in America is at least partly to
blame: Education is an awfully good predictor of future earnings,
and keeping bad teachers in classrooms filled with kids from poor
families certainly helps to reinforce the cycle of poverty."
Maryland Forced to Designate 5 Baltimore Schools Dangerous
Maryland's state school board recently labeled five Baltimore
schools "persistently dangerous," as required by the federal No
Child Left Behind Act, but the board acted under protest, the
Baltimore Sun reports. Dunbar Brooks, former chairman of the state
board, said he had personally told U.S. Deputy Secretary of
Education Raymond Simon that the board did not support the
designation and that its compliance "in no way means agreement."
Because Maryland has one of the strictest definitions of what
constitutes a dangerous school, board members have said the label is
unduly harsh for the few schools it is applied to. The designation
is based on whether the number of students suspended for physical
attacks, firearms, arson, drugs and sexual assault represent more
than 2.5 percent of the student body for three years in a row. Only
46 schools in eight states across the nation were designated
"persistently dangerous" in the 2006-07 school year. Six of those
are in Baltimore, according to the U.S. Department of Education. All
other states, including large states such as California and
Michigan, reported no persistently dangerous schools. No schools
outside Baltimore City received the "persistently dangerous"
designation in Maryland.
How State Education Agencies Can Bolster School Improvement
If state education agencies want to become more effective catalysts
for school improvement, they need to develop "a shared focus, a
common language, and greater coherence" among themselves, federal
policymakers, school-district leaders, local school boards, and
individual schools. That was one of the observations to emerge from
a symposium last summer under the auspices of the Education Alliance
and the Urban Education Policy program, both at Brown University.
Now, an 80-page report of the two-day event, which brought together
some 50 education leaders, has been made available online. Says the
report's introduction: "There is a growing body of research,
confirmed by our own practical experience working with states and
districts across the eastern seaboard, that the system of public
education is fragmented and lacks cohesiveness. There is no entity
to 'blame' for this fragmentation. The fact that the fragmentation
exists suggests that there is an opportunity to dramatically improve
the system of public education by fostering coherence and aligning
structures and processes within and across levels of the system."
Kansas City Equation: Good Schools = Good Business
Surprise! Good schools are good business. In addition to helping to
produce a local workforce, notes an article in the Kansas City
Business Journal, good schools help recruit businesses and
residents, and they foster research that generates revenue and new
business -- directly funneling money back into the economy through
building projects and tourism. "Education drives everything," said
Bob Regnier, president of an area bank. "Pretty much every level of
education has an impact. It's not unfair to say Johnson County
developed the way it did and was successful because it had an
unwavering support for K-12 education." When companies are searching
for prospective locales, they want facts, such as the percentage of
high school graduates, local SAT scores, the number of college
graduates, and the kinds of degrees they receive. Most businesses
looking to relocate associate education with the quality and
stability of an area's workforce, and good schools are a key
attraction for homeowners.
Status of U.S. Kids: A New Annual Report
The federal government's latest annual report on children and youth,
"America’s Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of
Well-Being," has been released by the Federal Interagency Forum on
Child and Family Statistics. Described as "an accessible compendium
of indicators drawn from the most reliable official statistics," the
report will be expanded in 2009. In addition to education, topics
include health and health care, family and social environment,
economic circumstances, physical environment and safety, and
behavior.
Brown vs. Board of Education: The Movie
Universal Studios is planning a dramatic film, "The Crusaders,"
about the celebrated 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court
case, reports Variety. The actor Tobey Maguire is slated to play
Jack Greenberg, an idealistic lawyer fresh out of law school who
joined with Thurgood Marshall, then head of the NAACP Legal Defense
Fund and a future Supreme Court justice, to prevail in the decision
that found school segregation unconstitutional.
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