|
Pre-K benefits noted in British study
Advocates of universal pre-kindergarten in the United States will
find fresh support for their views in a study by British scientists.
One finding, according to the Boston Globe: An average child who has
attended preschool will score 27 percent higher on a standard math
test than a comparable pupil without such early preparation. The
research covered data on more than 2,500 children who attended
preschool for 18 months on average and had five years of elementary
education by age 10. Unlike the United States, where the federal
government supports preschool programs only for children from
low-income families, the United Kingdom has been providing
government-backed preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds, regardless
of parental income, since 2004.
District gets tough with kids who skip class
School leaders in Prince George's County, MD, are taking a tough new
approach to confronting a perennial problem: the large number of
students who habitually cut classes. About 6,000 of the system's
130,000 students are in that category, reports the Washington Post,
so the school board is launching a print, radio, and TV ad campaign
that asks adults to report truants to the police and threatens
offending students with jail time. Most such students probably would
end up being taken to school, not jail, but board member Rosalind
Johnson says, "If we have to jail them, I want them jailed." Eighty
percent of Prince George's truants are in high school, but 300 are
in elementary school. Johnson calls that figure stunning and adds,
"If you have an out-of-control child, that is not a legally accepted
reason. You cannot turn your back on your parental responsibility."
In a nation of immigrants, pluses and minuses for their children
Amid the nation's often furious debate over immigration, a new study
sheds light on whether immigrants are assimilating as they have in
the past. According to National Public Radio, the answer is an
unequivocal "yes." In a report, "Inheriting the City: The Children
of Immigrants Come of Age," NPR sees more than the tendency of many
immigrant parents to push their children to succeed. While that's
long been the case, and while some immigrants are relatively
uneducated themselves, NPR also says they are often adept at
navigating the system to help their children get ahead. And because
it's considered acceptable for children to live with their parents
through their 20s, their families can benefit economically from
that. Nevertheless, the study shows, native-born minorities in the
United States continue to face difficulties, with the children of
illegal immigrants often encountering a punitive climate. NPR's
report includes the fact that, as of 2005, about one-fourth of all
Americans younger than 18 who were born in the U.S. had at least one
immigrant parent.
County district in Georgia loses accreditation
A Georgia school district near Atlanta has become the first one in
nearly four decades to lose its accreditation. The action came on
September 1, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, when the
Southern Association of Colleges and Schools ruled that the Clayton
County board of education had failed to meet a series of mandates
that the accrediting body issued last February. After the latest
decision was announced, Gov. Sonny Perdue, acting on the
recommendation of an administrative judge, ordered the removal of
four Clayton school board members for violating the state's Open
Meetings Act and the state code of ethics. According to the
newspaper, accreditation officials said governance issues in the
district had hampered everything from teaching and learning to
staffing and the allocation of resources. A permanent loss of
accreditation -- the board had 10 days to appeal -- could adversely
affect prospective college admissions and scholarships for county
high school students, as well as real estate values. The Clayton
district, with 50,000 students, would be the first in the nation to
lose its accreditation since 1969.
Chicago students join church-led boycott over funding disparities
Seeking to draw attention to disparities in public-school funding
between Chicago and its wealthier suburbs, an Illinois state senator
and 85 Chicago pastors organized a boycott on the first day of
school, ABC News reports. Instead of boarding regular school buses,
950 Chicago students got on buses provided by local churches and
bound for the wealthy enclave of Winnetka. There they tried to
register for the New Trier school system. The symbolic gesture was
designed to compare New Trier's expenditures of $17,500 per student
with Chicago's $11,300. (New Trier has 3,900 students; Chicago has
358,000.) As is generally the case nationwide, school funding in
both districts is tied to property taxes. "Illinois is trying to
attract the [2016] Olympics by saying we are a world-class city,"
said State Sen. James Meeks. "How can we have a world-class city and
not have world-class schools?" Rev. Ira Acree of Greater St. John
Church in Chicago, who helped organize the boycott, echoed that
sentiment, saying: "We're bringing these children to Winnetka today
because we have exhausted other methods. We want the governor and
the senate and legislators all across the state to hear our plea. We
want them to see the innocent children from Chicago who are victims
of apartheid-style education."
Henry Louis Gates working on 'ancestry-based' curriculum
In the wake of his highly acclaimed PBS series "African American
Lives," which traced the ancestry of 19 famous African Americans
using genealogical research and DNA science, Harvard professor Henry
Louis Gates, Jr., is working with other educators to create what he
calls an "ancestry-based" curriculum to teach history and science to
African-American students in grades K-12. In a conversation with
Learning First Alliance's Public School Insights blog, Gates notes
that half the African-American students in the United States are
failing to graduate from high school. To help them become more
engaged, he has been working on a six-week history unit in which
kids will interview parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and
great-great-grandparents -- collecting family stories along with
census information, tax records, and estate records. Gates says that
if you "went into an inner-city school and said, 'We're going to
drag you into historical archives about the Civil War,' or the Great
Depression, or the Great Migration, kids would say, 'Get out of
town.' But if we said, 'We're going to trace your family through
those periods and to those periods,' my goodness, who wouldn't be
interested in that?" When students reach the Civil War period, adds
Gates, they can be taught DNA analysis in a science class so they
can continue to trace genealogy after the paper trail ends.
A controversial first year for DC's school chancellor
A lengthy report in the Washington Post has reviewed Michelle A.
Rhee's first year as chancellor of the District of Columbia's
long-dysfunctional school system: Rhee, whom some regard as
dictatorial, has received both heated criticism and high praise for
actions such as closing 23 under-enrolled schools, finalizing
overhauls at 26 academically ailing schools; and firing 150 people
she considered to be poor performers. Her tenure so far has been
characterized by polarizing decisions that produced accusations of
racism, sexism, and ageism for the dismissal of nearly 50 principals
and assistant principals, most of them black women over 40. Rhee, a
Korean-American, also has been battling the teachers union over a
plan that offers teachers raises in return for relinquishing
seniority rights. Rhee says the steps were necessary to advance her
vision for the district -- to expand the use of math and literacy
coaches for students who need help, and to increase offerings in
science, technology, art, music, gifted education, and Advanced
Placement. The chancellor's moves have attracted close scrutiny by
other urban school superintendents.
Democrats at odds with teacher unions?
As the presidential campaign gets under way in earnest, USA Today
says the Democratic Party has "visibly split with teacher unions,
its longtime allies, on key issues." Merit pay is one example. The
idea has been gaining traction amid public education's continuing
problems. From Barack Obama on down, many Democratic politicians are
embracing the idea of paying bonuses to teachers for raising
students' test scores, teaching in underserved areas, or mentoring
new teachers. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation
of Teachers, has said she is willing to entertain the idea of merit
pay, the newspaper notes, but this is not typical among most
teacher-union leaders and rank-and-file members.
Denver schools, teachers in tentative pact on compensation
The Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers
Association reached a tentative contract agreement after protracted
deliberations over the provisions of the district's innovative
teacher compensation system, which is known as the Professional
Compensation System for Teachers, or ProComp. Developed jointly by
the district and the union, ProComp will double bonuses available
for early and mid-career teachers, rewarding those who choose
difficult-to-teach subjects, who work in hard-to-staff schools, and
whose students improve academically. In an editorial headlined
"Denver teacher contract pumps money into the right places," the
Rocky Mountain News says "students should clearly benefit."
For another view, see
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/09/procomp_denver.html
Findings support 'integrated student services'
A model for providing "integrated student services," advanced by
Communities In Schools, a nonprofit group devoted to dropout
prevention, has been shown to yield more positive educational
outcomes than services offered in an uncoordinated manner. The
conclusion comes from initial results at the midpoint of a five-year
longitudinal study by ICF International, a global consulting and
research firm. The Communities In Schools model includes services
such as tutoring, mentoring, after-school programs, career
development, financial literacy, community service, and life-skills
development -- all of which are coordinated through a single point
of contact at a school. The initial findings come from a comparative
analysis of more than 1,200 schools, half of which used the
integrated model and half of which did not.
PEN conference to highlight 25 years of local education funds
Public Education Network's 2008 annual conference, slated for
November 16-18 in San Francisco, will celebrate the 25th anniversary
of local education funds in the city where such groups began. In
addition to looking to the future, the conference will include
sessions about how public education has been affected over the past
quarter century by world events, school reform, community issues,
politics, the economy, and public opinion.
BRIEFLY NOTED
Giving lower-income kids a boost toward college
A UMass-Lowell College Prep program helps demystify the application process for high school students who are often the first in their families to go to college.
Education priorities for the next president
Ideas from Bob Wise, president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, former governor of West Virginia, and a PEN board member.
|
|
The PEN Weekly NewsBlast is a free e-mail newsletter featuring resources and
information about school reform and school fundraising. The NewsBlast is the
property of Public Education Network, a national association of 81 local
education funds working to improve public school quality in low-income
communities throughout the nation.
Please forward this e-mail to anyone who enjoys free updates on education
news and grant alerts. People wishing to subscribe to the NewsBlast should send
e-mail to PEN@publiceducation.org,
placing the word "subscribe" in the subject field, or they may visit
http://www.publiceducation.org/subscribe.asp.
Some links in the PEN Weekly NewsBlast may change or expire after their
initial publication here, and some links may require local website registration.
Your e-mail address is safe with the NewsBlast. It is our firm policy never
to rent, loan, or sell our subscriber list to any other organization, group, or
individual.
**UPDATE OR ADD A NEWSBLAST SUBSCRIPTION**
PEN wants you to get each weekly issue of the NewsBlast at your preferred e-mail
address. We also welcome new subscribers. Please notify us if your e-mail
address is about to change. Send your name and new e-mail address to
PEN@PublicEducation.org. Be sure to
let us know your old e-mail address so we can unsubscribe it. If you know anyone
who is interested in receiving the NewsBlast, please forward this e-mail to them
and ask them to e-mail us and put "subscribe" in the subject field or visit:
http://www.publiceducation.org/subscribe.asp
To view past issues of the PEN Weekly NewsBlast, visit:
http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_past.asp
To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit:
http://www.publiceducation.org/subscribe.asp
To read the NewsBlast submission policy, visit:
http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_submission_policy.htm
If you would like an article or news about your local education fund, public
school, or school reform organization featured in a future issue of PEN Weekly
NewsBlast, send a note to:
PEN@PublicEducation.org
Kate Guiney
Contributing Editor
PEN Weekly NewsBlast
Robert L. Jacobson
Senior Associate, Communications
Public Education Network
601 Thirteenth Street, NW
Suite 710 South
Washington, DC 20005-3808
PEN@PublicEducation.org
|
