Farewell, Stacey!
If you are a frequent visitor to this blog, you may have noticed that a new voice joined our group of writers in early February. In hindsight, I probably should’ve formally introduced our spring intern, Stacey Hollenbeck. But the lapse wasn’t entirely my fault.
Efficient and unassuming, Stacey was a self-contained dynamo from her very first day--- no doubt a product of the education she is getting from the University of Maryland, where she is a senior and a journalism major, and her prior reporting experience, which included stints at a wire service and various university publications.
Stacey was the kind of intern every supervisor dreams of getting (I’m sure I’m going to embarrass her here): energetic and self-directed, she knew when to ask for help, but rarely did because could usually find the answer on her own. Creative and tech-savvy, she even showed a few of us “old-timers” a few cool tricks we didn’t know.
In an era of concern over how American education is falling behind other nations, Stacey (wow, I should get paid for this ringing endorsement) proves public education (she went to public schools and a state college) continues to produce quality students who possess those critical 21st century skills. We will miss her and her contributions, but wish her well in her next assignment with the Editorial Projects in Education.
Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor
Don't wait for the press -- look into your finances now
If you’re a school board member looking to protect taxpayer dollars, you can learn a few lessons from the Dallas Morning News about school district spending.
Speaking at the Education Writers Association’s annual conference in Chicago last month, reporter Kent Fischer shared some eye-opening tips about how his newspaper uncovered millions of dollars of questionable spending within the Dallas Independent School District (DISD)—just by looking at records available to the public.
Imagine what you could do with the records available to you as a board member.
You could start by examining what’s being purchased with district credit cards. After looking at more than 150,000 credit card transactions over two years, Fischer and his colleagues uncovered millions of dollars in purchases that the newspaper claimed “violated state procurement laws or district policy.”
All of these purchases had been buried and lost in vast amounts of paperwork. But, citing Texas’ open records law, the newspaper requested electronic records on purchase orders, written checks, credit card bills, payrolls, and other financial data, including budget program codes and purchase order numbers.
By cross-referencing data, Fischer said lots of interesting transactions popped up, including purchases of blanket and pillow sets, Star Trek DVDs, iPods, and a subscription to an online dating service. One former district employee already has been sent to prison.
Another fertile area for scrutiny is employee stipends, Fischer said. The newspaper discovered that the school district had, as one article last fall reported, “doled out millions of dollars a year in stipends and extra pay not included in the district’s compensation manual.”
“Look beyond the ‘average teacher’s salary’ and look at stipend and supplemental pay,” he said. “Get overtime itemized.”
One story cited a high school band director who “collected nearly $40,000 between 2003 and 2006 for long hours on band trips that should not have qualified for extra pay.” Meanwhile, school police ran up $2.5 million in overtime for three years straight—yet kept budgeting only $250,000 for overtime.
Questions also might arise about employee travel stipends, he said. Thousands of employees were receiving such stipends, including those whose job descriptions didn’t demand travel. One secretary received a $1,200-a-year car allowance, and she didn’t have a driver’s license.
Fischer said it also pays to look closer at contract language. One multimillion-dollar computer contract was written so strictly—demanding a specific internal processor, for example—that only one product could meet the bid specifications. In another contract, school administrators arranged free entry into a major golf tournament.
When exposed on the front page of the local newspaper, such discoveries are a public relations nightmare for a school board. Indeed, DISD leaders spent much of last year modifying their financial processes in response to headline after headline of bad news.
But why leave it to your local paper? You represent your community. Why not look for such improprieties yourself? Through their example, the Dallas Mornings News and Kent Fischer perhaps have done you a favor.
Just follow this last admonishment that Fischer shared with his fellow journalists: “Follow the money—what is spent, not [just] what’s budgeted.”
Del Stover, Senior Editor
Experiments in urban reform
The guy gave the worst convocation speech I’ve ever heard. Granted, I haven’t heard that many, but in 1980, when Boston University’s pugnacious President John Silber addressed the student body at one of New England’s major research universities, he certainly wasn’t aiming for eloquence. Instead, he rambled on condescendingly, reminding the students to be sure to clean the hair from the shower drains and -- in a most unfortunate choice of words -- to “not commit suicide” by inadvertently walking in front of one of the Commonwealth Avenue trolleys.
It was tough love, Silber style.
I thought about Silber’s speech this week after reading an article in Bostonia, the university’s alumni magazine, about the 20th anniversary of BU’s unprecedented -- and, so far, unrepeated -- management agreement with the Chelsea public schools.
Say what you will about Silber’s negatives, he had the imagination and chutzpa to take on the project after Harvard refused. The man I so loathed as a BU grad student put the university’s reputation on the line for a small urban school system with a host of problems -- crumbling infrastructure; a highly transient, immigrant population; high poverty; and abysmal test scores. And if, early on, Silber and the district’s new management team were criticized for their “czarist tendencies,” well, maybe the place needed a little tough love.
Did it work? As the Chelsea School Committee prepares to take control again after two decades, Bostonia makes the case that it largely did. BU revamped the schools’ curriculum. It consolidated and improved early childhood programs. It provided student teachers though the university’s education school, opened a health clinic at Chelsea High School, and provided free dental screenings through its School of Dental Medicine. BU also created a foundation that has raised $12 million for the schools, and perhaps most importantly, used its influence to help secure $116 million for school construction, most of it state money.
Test scores are climbing. The proportion of 10th graders passing the math section of Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System Tests (MCAS) rose from 10 percent in 1998 to 37 percent in last year; in English, the passing rate rose from 19 percent to 42 percent. Yet in many subject tests, Chelsea schools still rank near the bottom of the state’s urban districts.
The Chelsea School Committee could have ended the partnership years ago; instead it voted twice to extend the original 10-year agreement. The BU experiment illustrates both the successes and the continuing challenges of urban school reform. And while the university isn’t going away -- it will maintain some ties with the district -- building on its reforms will now be the responsibility of the local school committee.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
Playing the race card with NCLB
A principal at a low-performing school in Sacramento, Calif., changed the racial designation of four of his students—students who were classified as black but whose parents had actually marked “mixed race” or no race on their enrollment forms. By doing so, the principal avoided having his school dinged by No Child Left Behind sanctions because there were not enough students in the low-performing “black” category to count.
Obviously, this principal was gaming the system (apparently with the permission of the parents who were responsible for reporting their child’s race). But his actions raise a lot of questions about the use of race in school data and whether we should rely on strict categorizations or even use race as a factor when overwhelming evidence shows family income level and early childhood development has more bearing on a student’s success.
NCLB was designed in large part to expose the discrepancies between the academic performance of white and Asian students and their black and Hispanic peers. And it has done so. At the same time, we are seeing increasing numbers of mixed-race students enter our schools with no universal guidelines on how to categorize them.
A Sacramento Bee analysis showed the impact a few tweaks can make when using data to analyze a school’s performance. Two years of test data for some 6,000 California schools showed that 80 of those initially fell short of their annual NCLB benchmarks but met them after making “demographic corrections.” Of those, 12 schools had changed students’ racial classification, 50 had reclassified English language learners, and 11 had changed student demographics so that an entire group was rendered statistically insignificant.
Several years ago, when NCLB was first taking hold, I asked an elementary principal how she verified the race of her students. She said she didn’t—she couldn’t—because it was all self-reported by parents or guardians. Then she mentioned that even though she was white and her husband had both white and Hispanic ancestry, they classified their high-achieving children as Hispanic to help their schools meet NCLB requirements. It was just another example of how so many children do not fit neatly into racial categories—or in some cases, our assumptions.
We need to find better ways to focus on the truly disadvantaged students who are struggling -- regardless of their race.
Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor
Volunteering to be principal
Larry Feldman is a devoted educator, a respected community leader, and—if he gets his way—he could be poorest principal in the country.
Feldman loves his job at Miami’s Devon Aire K-8 school so much that he’s willing to do it for a yearly salary of only $1.
Feldman, 58, is in his last year of Florida’s Deferred Retirement Option Program (DROP), which allows retiring educators to keep their jobs for up to five years while accumulating retirement benefits.
But budget cuts have forced officials in Miami-Dade County to reduce the number of principals and teachers returning to schools through DROP, reports the Miami Herald.
The district could save $13.9 million by no longer having to pay current salaries, says the Herald.
Miami-Dade offered to pay Feldman $120,000, but then withdrew their proposal after cutting DROP candidates. So Feldman made a surprising counteroffer.
The career principal told the district he would return for the cost of a Double Cheeseburger at McDonald’s.
“Do I know it’s going to end at one point? Of course, I do,” Feldman told the Herald. “But new life has been thrust into this old body. With one more year, I could take these kids to the next level.”
Although appealing, school board members and Miami-Dade’s superintendent turned down Feldman’s offer, saying they would never be able to hire another employee for $1 if Feldman ever left. The principal and a gaggle of mobilized parents hope the district will reconsider.
Although administrators like Feldman are few and far between, there are plenty of people in any community who want to help local schools by volunteering their time. Volunteers can assist teachers, help with school activities, and give students personalized attention.
Money-starved districts should take a look at the ways they are attracting and, more importantly, retaining volunteers.
Stacey Hollenbeck, Spring Intern
Schooling Parents Can Help Kids in School
Even the brightest students can’t maintain good grades if their parents aren’t helping them with homework, making sure they stay on schedule, and—perhaps most importantly—providing them with a healthy home environment. That’s why many schools and districts have developed classes for Moms and Dads to help them learn valuable parenting skills.
Sandra Jimenez, principal of Langley Park-McCormick Elementary School in Langley Park, Md., has put similar classes in place for the mostly Spanish-speaking and low-income families in her neighborhood.
I spoke with Jimenez recently for an upcoming issue of ASBJ dealing with diversity.
The principal and community leader says instructing parents can help them be more organized, on schedule, and involved. In the near future, she hopes to help struggling families with another course on relationships.
Cultivating more adept parents could be a plus for students—especially poor performers—but are public schools the right places to put forth such efforts?
Stacey Camp, a mother from Plano, Texas, says “no.” She told The Dallas Morning News that she didn’t want her “hard-earned taxes” spent on the classes, which are also popping up in North Texas schools.
“I'm being penalized for working harder when others might not be working as hard as they need to,” she added.
The programs can be expensive. Plano will spend $250,000 on developing and implementing the lessons next year, says the Morning News.
The new Connecting Parents to Educational Opportunities program in Minneapolis, an initiative that has attracted over 400 families, comes with another added cost. Parents who participate can earn their child a future scholarship that would cover tuition at one of two Minnesota colleges, says the Star Tribune.
Despite controversy and costs, schools who see a need for coaching parents should consider such programs.
Without reinforcements at home, students can’t reach their full potential. But if parents align their goals with those of the school, both parties will benefit.
Stacey Hollenbeck, spring intern
War stories from the District of Columbia schools
Educators and journalists love a good "war story," and Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, did not disappoint. She spoke with reporters and writers at the annual conference of the Education Writers Association in Chicago last week.
One war story involved the all-too-common failure of the D.C. schools to put textbooks in the hands of students at the beginning of the school year. Last fall, Rhee made headlines by touring the school system’s book warehouse with D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and finding pallet after pallet of untouched textbooks waiting for delivery.
Highlighting the problem didn’t prevent some foul-ups last fall in getting books to kids, and Rhee shared one shared one little-known incident.
A parent complained by e-mail that high school textbooks had ended up at a nearby middle school. That was bad enough, of course, but making it worse was that the central office had rejected the offer of parents to load up the books in their cars and personally deliver them to where they belonged.
The reasoning of bureaucrats? District rules insist that the textbooks be delivered by the school system. So the textbooks had to sit at the middle school until district personnel picked them up. Then they’d be sent back to the warehouse, processed, and eventually delivered to the right school.
That mentality, Rhee said, revealed the dysfunction within the district bureaucracy. She told the parents "to go ahead, so that kids had their books on the first day of school."
The 38-year-old chancellor, who had never served as a school administrator before now, also shared a war story about one of her biggest political fights—closing 23 underutilized schools.
Rhee wasn’t surprised that school closings would be controversial. Nor did she doubt that the decision was correct. With nearly one-third of the city’s school-aged children in charter schools, the D.C. system had many schools filled to only half capacity—and they were wasting vast sums in salaries, energy costs, and security and maintenance resources.
What was interesting, though, was how strongly neighborhoods identified with their schools—without regard to their academic performance, she said.
During one school visit, Rhee said, she stopped to talk to residents on the street, and they all begged her to save their school building from closure. They loved the school, she said. They thought it was a great school.
The only problem, she noted, was that it was anything but a great school. "Only 9 percent of the kids were testing proficient." That compared to a charter school only a few blocks away—serving students from the same neighborhood—that boasted that 90 percent of its students were scoring proficient.
For all the controversy involved, closing those schools was an early success for Rhee. So much money will be saved that each city school next year will have an art teacher, a music teacher, and a physical education teacher.
That might not seem all that remarkable for educators in more affluent communities, she added, but in D.C., such staffing is "almost unheard of."
Finally, Rhee spoke a little about the City Council granting her unprecedented authority to terminate district employees, which she promptly used to cut 100 jobs in the central office. As it turned out, it wasn’t all that difficult to decide who should stay—and who should go.
For example, she recalled, she found a staff of nine serving teen mothers at a cost of $1 million annually. But the program only served about seven students each day, and it turned out that $700,000 of the program was spent on salaries.
That just didn’t cut it in Rhee’s judgment. "How do we make sure dollars actually have an impact on kids in the classrooms?" she asked. "We have to look at every program. Even if the people are nice people, if the program is not having a dollar-for-dollar real impact on kids, it has to be seriously looked at."
These are only a few of Rhee’s stories. But they all emphasize how the new chancellor is fighting "the good fight" on behalf of D.C. schoolchildren. Such a fight ensures that we can expect Rhee to share even more war stories to share in the years ahead.
Del Stover, Senior Editor
Better training for principals
Here’s an interesting statistic: Only about 20 to 30 percent of people who enter principal preparation programs intend to become K-12 school principals, according to the Wallace Foundation.
That’s troubling on many fronts, most obviously because of the looming shortage of school leaders and the importance of strong leadership to turn around struggling schools. And, “that’s a lot of wasted money,” says Jody Spiro, a senior program officer at Wallace.
The foundation is looking for innovative ways to not only ensure that most people who enter these higher education programs actually want to become K-12 principals, but also to find ways to better prepare those candidates. Currently, too many programs focus on managing budgets and administrative tasks, when principals really should be instructional leaders who spend much of their time in classrooms.
Wallace hosted a luncheon for state legislators at the National Conference for State Legislature’s annual federal relations meeting last week in Washington, D.C. Some of the best practices discussed included six-month principal internships, where a principal candidate not only shadowed an experienced principal but also was allowed to oversee programs and make decisions, as well as multi-year mentorships for new principals.
Several principal training programs, including one through Stanford University, have dramatically increased the numbers of graduates who become K-12 principals by more narrowly focusing their programs. Kentucky also has focused its principal training by creating other specialized programs for people who want additional training but don’t want to be principals, such as teacher leadership programs, according to one panelist.
So why do people enter principal training programs when they don’t want to be principals? Many of them want to go into different types of school administration or are merely looking for salary increases, Spiro says.
Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor
Black-white achievement gap widens after elementary school
I learned the phrase “24-seven” from a gifted African American student in Prince Georges County, Md. It was 10 years ago, and I was there to do a story on the restructuring of Benjamin Stoddert Middle School, an underperforming school in one of the nation’s largest majority-black counties.
I wonder where he is now, especially after reading a disturbing -- but not altogether surprising -- article in Education Week saying research shows that the greatest widening of the black-white achievement gap occurs not among the general population, but among higher-performing students as they move from elementary school into middle and high school.
In truth, I can’t tell you for sure that he was gifted, just that he was obviously very, very bright. Yet the sad truth was that students like him in Stoddert’s gifted and talented classes would be merely performing on grade level if they moved across the Potomac River to the more affluent areas of Arlington or Fairfax County. That’s what happens, researchers note in the article, if the general population is doing poorly: Teachers tend to teach to the middle, and the middle at Stoddert, located near the distressed neighborhoods that border Washington, D.C., was lower.
After several years of being taught at a level lower than students at more affluent schools, it’s no wonder that the achievement gap tends to widen most noticeably at the top.
There are other possible reasons for this trend. Just as there can be disadvantages in attending a majority black school, some African Americans may feel out of place in an overwhelmingly white one -- and determined not to “act white” and do their best. Out-of-school disparities among families can exacerbate the achievement gap as well: think of the academic advantages provided by computer camps, piano lessons, and private tutoring.
Finally, add the influence of NCLB and its single-minded focus on raising the achievement of students who test below state standards. It’s a worthy goal, of course, but there are fewer of these students in the more affluent schools, and that encourages the teachers in these schools to adopt a more enriching curriculum across the board.
The high-end achievement gap is a serious challenge for board members, teachers, and administrators. But it’s not insurmountable. And educators, who tend to be optimists by nature, know that. The more we learn about the reasons for the achievement gap, the more effectively we can begin to reduce it and move toward a public education system that offers all students the chance to reach their potential. Education is not the only tool in the struggle for equal opportunity and social justice, but it is indispensible.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
No Missing Report Cards, Technology Keeps Parents Connected
Kids love the Internet.
It’s where they upload photos on Facebook, befriend people on MySpace, and illegally download music. But now, their favorite medium could soon become their worst enemy.
This week, the Schenectady City School District joined many districts across the country by giving parents online access to their student’s report cards, says the Times Union in Albany, N.Y.
The district went even further, giving parents the option of viewing discipline records and daily updates on classroom attendance.
Earlier this month, some Florida districts allowed online parental access to grades, attendance, and homework assignments, says
>TCPalm. In Minnesota, districts that don’t have “parent portals” have fallen behind, says the Star Tribune.
Posting grades online not only keeps interested parents in the loop, it also saves teachers valuable time. Thanks to the Web, they no longer have to add up grades by hand or field calls from curious parents.
And knowing Mom and Dad are only a click away from seeing his or her D in chemistry could keep students from slacking.
Parents who feel like they need they need a crowbar to pry information from their kids will find the program most useful—and possibly thrilling.
Secretly glimpsing at grades could be just as exciting as downloading music for free.
Although some schools have experienced low registration numbers—at Albany High, only one-fourth of parents signed up to glance at students’ grades—the option promises make otherwise info-starved parents more involved in their child’s education.
Stacey Hollenbeck, spring intern
Budget tips in tough times
I stopped dining at fancy restaurants last year. I haven’t seen my hair stylist in months. I’ve nixed my occasional visits to the coffee shop. And the only trips I’ll be taking in the near future are for business. Ah, the sacrifices we make when money is tight.
No one knows this more than school districts, which are used to doing more with less--- though they’ll have to be even more ingenious and penny-wise in today’s faltering economy. For the May edition of American School Board Journal, I explored the strategies and approaches that school districts take under financial duress.
“Any cut means someone is losing something,” Luz Cazares, the chief financial officer for Alameda Unified School District, said bluntly. The California district is one of many in the state that were blindsided by Gov. Schwarzenegger’s proposal of 10 percent across-the-board cuts to fill a $14.5 billion deficit.
Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget would mean a $4.8 billion reduction in education funding across the state; for Alameda it would mean $4.5 million in cuts for next year’s budget.
“The Governor has put us in a position to cut half of what it took us seven years to do,” Cazares said of the $7.7 million the district had to trim soon after student enrollment began to decline in 2000. “We were blindsided.”
As are parents and children, some of whom stood in trash cans during a recent visit by Schwarzenegger. "Our students/teachers/coaches are too valuable to throw away,” read signs each held.
“There’s nothing like showing up when the governor’s there and sticking read kids and real teachers in trash cans and saying, ‘You know what? This is what you’re doing,” Brook Briggance, a member of the Alameda Education Foundation, told the Los Angeles Times.
Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor
Will school technology spending survive tough budget times?
Any school board member will tell you that they view technology as an important priority for their school system. But when money gets tight, do their actions match their rhetoric?
That’s a question I’d like to see answered. And it’s one of many that I’m asking school board members and technology directors as I research a future American School Board Journal article on smart practices for purchasing technology—particularly in a slowing economy.
So far, people are saying the right things. School leaders are aware that technology is an important component in teaching students 21st century skills. They say they want to see technology expand and enrich classroom learning.
They also voice an understanding of the dangers of deferring maintenance and trimming funds designated to replace older machines. They understand that aging technology will raise maintenance costs, and that cutting staff training adds to the risk that expensive technology will sit unused in the corner of the classroom.
I also was heartened by a news article reporting that the Massachusetts’ Dover-Sherborn Regional School Committee recognizes the dangers—and recently expressed concern when it received a budget recommendation for a modest cut in the technology budget.
“Some of [the budget] is not staying up with our five-year replacement plan,” one committee member commented. “To me, we could be putting ourselves on a slippery slope.”
The rest of the committee agreed, reported the Dover-Sherborn Press, adding that committee members feared “that if the towns get off-track with technology advancements now, it could lead to a disastrous snowballing effect a few years down the road.”
Smart policymakers, I think. But, as the economy sours and school revenues are trimmed, can this school committee—or any school board—hold the line? Will it matter that, in the long run, it’s a fiscally sound, efficient policy to protect staff development, maintenance, and replacement budgets?
These are questions that too many school boards might have to answer—and answer in ways they won’t like. Sue Helms, president of the Madison City Schools and Alabama Association of School Boards, is a big proponent of classroom technology, but even she is well aware that getting kids to school and putting a teacher in front of the classroom are higher priorities than any high-tech gadget.
“If a school system is trying to decide between a new school bus or computers in the classroom,” she notes, “that’s a no-brainer.”
Del Stover, Senior Editor
Silence can battle bullying of gay students
How do you honor a 15-year-old boy who was killed because of his sexual orientation?
GLSEN -- the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network -- says silence.
GLSEN is holding its 12th annual “day of silence” on Friday in remembrance of Lawrence King, who was shot by a 14-year-old classmate in a computer lab at his Oxnard, Calif., high school in February. King, who lived in a group home, was constantly harassed because he was openly gay and had begun wearing makeup to school, according to media reports. His killer reportedly came from a troubled home and is being charged as an adult for the crime.
They’ve asked students to take a vow of silence for all or part of the day to remember King and bring attention to the harassment of gay, lesbian, and transgendered students. GLSEN estimates that more than 500,000 students at schools and universities have taken part in such events.
Students participating in the event are asked to distribute cards to their teachers and classmates that read, in part: “Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. This year's DOS is held in memory of Lawrence King, a 15 year-old student who was killed in school because of his sexual orientation and gender expression. I believe that ending the silence is the first step toward building awareness. Think about the voices you are not hearing today.”
More information on the event is available at www.dayofsilence.org. GLSEN offers a wealth of information on preventing bullying and harassment of gay students, and May’s ASBJ features an interview with filmmaker Debra Chasnoff, who produced “It’s Elementary: Talking about Gay Issues in School.” The video is being re-released with a new, 140-page guide for schools.
Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor
Dealing with 'The Media'
I can’t even remember what the controversy was all about, just what it felt like to be covering a story for the local paper and see a hostile crowd fix its gaze on me: The Media.
It was back in the early 1980s in Petersburg, Va., where I got my first full-time reporting job. I had been covering some highly charged city council dispute and one night found myself in a hotel ballroom where one side’s supporters were being entertained by a small vocal group.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, the lead singer stared at me and announced to the crowd, amid derisive laughter: “This next song … is for the reporter!” He did not mean it in a nice way.
What did I do? I thought.
No sympathy for me? I can understand. No doubt you, on the other side of the media divide, have felt the same way when you were slammed by your local newspaper or TV station.
I thought about that night in Petersburg recently when I read a report in School Board News on What We Think: Parental Perceptions of Urban School Climate, which was recently published by NSBA’s Council of Urban Boards of Education. According to the survey, parents who rely on newspapers for their information have more negative views of their schools than those who get their information from their child or their own experiences with the district itself.
For example, 76.1 percent of responders agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “My child’s school is a safe place,” when their information came from “self-experience.” When it came from TV, it dropped slightly to 73.8 percent; and when their information came from the newspaper it fell all the way to 61.5 percent.
I can’t explain the reasons for these discrepancies, but I can guess. Much news follows a conflict model; that is, conflicts or controversies make news. This generally works OK when you’re covering, say, the war in Iraq or the latest outburst from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But it’s less useful in conveying the myriad events that occur in a school district. How, for example, do you describe that critical yet elusive process we call learning?
I could go on, but that would take more than the space I have here. Let me just say that the media -- never monolithic -- are getting more diverse every day. On the one side are responsible newspaper reporters (me? biased?) who try earnestly to just “get it right.” They can be a very collaborative group. For example, the Education Writers Association has a listserv on which reporters from around the country help each other sort through the many complex issues that come up in school districts.
There’s also, to be sure, poor and sensationalized reporting out there as well. And as news gathering expands into the ever-burgeoning blogosphere, there will no doubt be more of this as well.
Finally, let me put in a plug for ASBJ’s Communications columnist Nora Carr, the chief communications officer for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools. As a former newspaper reporter, I thought I knew everything about communications, but reading, and at times editing, her excellent columns over the past several month has taught me a tremendous amount about how school districts can “tell their story.” Her April column deals with much of what I’ve been discussing today: It’s called “Setting the Record Straight.”
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
Magna: The source for best practices
I ran a roundtable session for National Affiliate members at NSBA's annual conference in Orlando at the end of March. One new board member who attended had a story that will sound familiar to many of you.
He was having a problem with another board member. Whenever this member wanted to stonewall an idea, she asked, "is it best practice?"
The gentleman at my session asked, half-jokingly, if a "best practices" manual existed somewhere.
We at ASBJ hope that our Magna Awards program can serve as a starting point toward finding those best practices. For 14 years, we have been recognizing excellence in board and district programs on nearly any topic you can come up with.
Want to know how a district is dealing with dropouts? Magna has it. Want to find out how to engage Spanish-speaking parents with the schools? Magna has it.
Each year, we ask an independent panel of judges to evaluate the 300 or so entries we receive each year and find the standout programs. The entries are in three enrollment categories: under 5,000, 5,000 to 20,000, and over 20,000. This way, districts are competing against other districts of the same size.
We honored the 2008 Magna Award winners at the School Leaders' Luncheon at NSBA's annual conference in Orlando. The three grand prize winners took home checks of $3,500 each; all of the winners are featured in a supplement to ASBJ that ran in April.
Look online at the 2008 winners; then browse through the past winners. You'll find the contact names and e-mails of the district contacts so you can get more details about their wining programs.
While you're on the site, consider applying for a 2009 Magna Award, so you can add your programs to our growing "best practices" list.
Kathleen Vail, Managing Editor
Economy Impacts State Tests, More Trouble Ahead
The slowing economy has forced homeowners to foreclose on their property, companies to layoff employees and consumers to hold on to their money. Now it has forced education officials in Florida to pull back on some of its state assessment tests.
Eric Smith, the state’s education commissioner, proposed holding off on making the writing section of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) a graduation requirement. He also recommended nixing an updated multiple-choice portion of the writing exam administered to fourth, eighth and 10th-grade.
All told, the changes--- which state board members have agreed to--- would save Florida an estimated $2.5 million. It’s not chump change, but it won’t be enough to stem a tidal wave of financial problems the state has coming its way.
The white-hot housing market has cooled significantly in Florida, with property values plummeting, home sales stagnating and foreclosures rising. To make matters worse for the school districts--- which depend on property taxes for their local revenue--- voters in January approved an increase in the state’s homestead exemption, which opponents (including educators) say would offer scant tax relief but cripple public agencies. Florida certainly has a rough economic road ahead.
Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor
Paying teens to read
I’m a hypocrite.
I recently read that students who pass next year’s Advanced Placement tests at Wilby High School in Waterbury, Conn., will be getting $100 rewards. And I was offended by the idea.
You know the arguments against such payments. Students need to value learning for its own sake. Learning is an investment in the future of students, and they darned well ought to recognize that.
So, why do I say I’m a hypocrite? Because Wilby High has inspired me. Now I’m thinking of paying my son to read a history book.
I hate to do it. I’m a big history buff and a lover of books of all kinds. I think a kid should read a book simply because it’s within arm’s reach.
But my son doesn’t agree. Foolishly, I overlooked the insidious effect of television and video games on my child’s early development. Today, he is yet another sad statistic: a teenager whose life revolves around the plasma TV, PlayStation 3, MySpace, and his iPod.
For him, a book is something you read when forced to by adults.
I have failed him.
They say desperate times require desperate measures. So I have been plotting. My son is receiving a quite solid background in history and civics in the public schools of Fairfax County, Va., so I know he has a brain. Sometimes he even uses it.
So, not long ago, I introduced him to the HBO television miniseries “Band of Brothers,” which focuses on the story of a group of soldiers in the 101st Airborne Division during World War II.
Some battle scenes were not exactly appropriate for a 14-year-old. But I overlooked this inconvenience in the hopes that the true-to-life story would catch his imagination. And it did.
Now I intend to offer a bribe. The miniseries was based on the acclaimed book by historian Stephen Ambrose, and my son will get a payout if he reads it.
This could get costly. I’m not sure what my son will consider the market rate for reading a history book. I do know he’ll count the pages, judge his pain threshold, and check the Apple website to determine the price of upgrading his iPod.
But, as long as I don’t need to mortgage the house, I think I’ll pay his price. I know he’ll love the book. And, while he’s not a reader today, perhaps the experience will spark a greater appreciation of the entertainment (and educational) value of books. (I can dream, can’t I?)
And perhaps I can compensate somewhat for failing to observe that, as a child, my son’s brain was turning to mush in front of the TV.
I wonder if someone offers a grant for this kind of project? At Wilby High, the cash rewards for students are being paid out of money awarded by the National Math and Science Initiative.
It’s still a shameful thing that Wilby High is doing. But now I understand a little better. Educators want so much for their kids. And so does every parent.
Del Stover, Senior Editor
Tax reforms would help California schools
By now, just about everyone knows something is really wrong with California’s school funding formula.
California is the first place we call for heart-wrenching, firsthand stories of how budget cuts are affecting school programs, teachers, and students. California schools have seen student enrollments and schools’ needs rise as the state education budget from which they receive the bulk of their funding has pretty much stagnated.
It’s now become a spring ritual to hand out layoff notices to every eligible teacher and administrator. Several years ago I visited a school principal who was moved to tears as she told of having to hand the notices to some of her most prized and talented recruits.
So when I wrote about how state budget fluctuations have a lot of school administrators on edge for May’s ASBJ, I knew that California school officials would be wondering how much they would have to cut from their budgets. I was wrong. They’re already cutting classroom programs. And while the layoff notices used to be a formality -- most teachers knew they would be rehired once the education budget was hashed out -- now, thousands of teachers are certain they won’t have their jobs next year, even as some class sizes rise to 40 or more students.
What we don’t hear much talk about are solid solutions to this ever-present crisis, which would mean dramatic tax reform. Some 40 percent of the state budget goes to education, but the budget has been hamstrung by two voter-approved ballot initiatives, Proposition 98, which guarantees a minimum level of funding for schools except in periods of financial hardship (ie, now), and Proposition 13, which capped property taxes in 1978. When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger launched an expensive campaign to overhaul Proposition 98 three years ago, he got clobbered.
What Schwarzenegger and other politicians won’t dare discuss is how to overhaul Proposition 13, as financial guru Warren Buffett has recommended. Prop 13’s formula uses the purchase price of a home -- no matter whether that home was purchased in the 1940s, 1970s, or 2005 -- as the basis and limits how much that tax can be increased each year. Designed to help elderly homeowners afford their tax bills, it’s created vast inequities, for both local governments and residents.
And as a result, school districts are beholden to the state economy and the whims of the state legislature far more than property taxes – which, despite the current national housing slump, are still one of the most stable revenues for schools.
How long it will take -- or how dire the schools’ crisis will get -- for lawmakers to address this issue?
Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor
Reading by 19?
The light bulb went on for me about 10 years ago, when I was tutoring a middle school student in Northern Virginia.
It wasn’t a great experience. The program wasn’t well run. I had little contact with the classroom teachers. The student was uncommunicative (even by middle school standards) and at times seemed downright hostile. For all I knew, he hated school.
Oh, and did I mention? He couldn’t read.
It’s true, he could mouth the words of his American history text, and he could sort of “read” the sentences. But there was barely a spark of comprehension. It was then that I realized that there is an alarming adolescent reading crisis in this country.
If that sounds overwrought, consider this boy’s future: My tutoring did absolutely no good; what he needed -- if he was to ever learn to read well enough to “read to learn” -- was intensive remediation, and even that might not be enough..
One state that is facing up to this crisis is Alabama, which launched a state reading initiative in the late 1990s. While focused originally on early elementary school, the program is now expanding into middle schools, said Sherrill W. Parris, the assistant state superintendent for reading, who spoke at a Washington D.C. forum last week.
Fourteen schools throughout the state -- “the Fabulous Fourteen” -- were chosen to pilot the adolescent program. To be accepted, the school’s principal had to promise to attend training sessions, and at least 85 percent of the faculty had to commit to ongoing, “job-embedded” professional development. Each school has a literacy coach and a leadership team that meets frequently to assess the program’s success.
Alabama has made remarkable gains in elementary reading, but no measurable progress at eighth grade -- so far. Parris hopes the fledgling adolescent reading program will change that; and it looks, to me at least, like her state is on the right track.
Click here to read more about Alabama’s reading program. And here is the Reading Next report upon which much of that program is derived from.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
Reece’s? For Breakfast?
When General Mills debuted Reece’s Puffs, the idea of eating candy for breakfast was both appalling and exciting. Today, it’s not such a crazy concept.
Although research shows that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, students all over the country start class with tummies filled with Hot Fudge Sundae Pop-Tarts, Sausage McGriddles, or worse—nothing.
That’s why more schools are implementing universal breakfast programs that offer all students a free breakfast.
Schools in Gary, Ind., began their district-funded Universal Breakfast Program this fall. The program has been so successful that officials are looking for ways to institute universal lunch, the Post-Tribune reports.
School officials from Springfield, Ohio, are partly attributing their universal breakfast program, which began in 2005, to improved academic performance among students, says the Springfield News-Sun.
Both districts provide breakfasts using money allocated to pay for the meals of students who receive free or reduced lunch. But just because a program is there, doesn’t mean it’s wholesome.
“I remember when we first started looking at our menu I saw kids standing in line and they had a Mountain Dew and a Honey Bun,” said Springfield’s supervisor of food and nutrition. “That's not breakfast. Now, we offer a more balanced menu that students like.”
The Sun-News invited readers to comment on the issue. While some thought the program was a great way to assist children who don’t get an adequate breakfast, others saw it as a way of teaching students to be dependent on the government for support.
I recently spoke to Chef Ann Cooper, the “renegade lunch lady” who revamped unhealthy school lunch programs in multiple districts. A copy of her interview will appear in an upcoming issue of ASBJ.
Chef Ann is an advocate of universal breakfast. “It’s a social justice issue,” she said. “Children can’t think and they can’t learn if they’re not well nourished.”
Offering universal breakfast blurs the line between raising children and educating them. But districts that pride themselves on creating a healthy learning environment shouldn’t allow students to go unfed.
School meals? For breakfast? It’s not such a crazy concept.
Stacey Hollenbeck, spring intern
21st birthday sparks binge drinking among college students
I recently celebrated a birthday and while it was not a momentous one in my opinion, my friends apparently thought different. At the end of a string of late nights, I thought, I’m too old for this.
I wasn’t half wrong. According to a new study, my revelry was tame stuff compared to what 21-year-olds consider a rite of passage these days. University of Missouri researchers surveyed roughly 2,500 college students about the “21 at 21” or “power hour” drinking ritual, where the 21-year-olds head to a bar at midnight and drink 21 shots as fast as possible.
Researchers followed the students for four years, the length of their college stay, and found 34 percent of men and 24 percent of women consumed 21 or more drinks when they turned 21. Extrapolating from that data, researchers determined half of the men and more than a third of women who imbibed, held blood alcohol levels of 0.26 or higher, the amount where choking on vomit and serious injury can occur.
Rhode Island, North Dakota, Michigan, Texas, California, and New Mexico have reported deaths from these alcohol benders in the last five years. Lawmakers in Texas and North Dakota have proposed regulating when 21-year-olds can begin drinking.
One promising study of 316 students showed the group who received information about how alcohol affected blood alcohols and the rest of the body had blood alcohol level that were 25 percent than those who didn’t receive the Web-based interactive tool.
Naomi Dillon, Senior Editor
Englishg language learners need our attention
Linda Ríos es muy amigable. Sonríe todo el tiempo. Es alta y bonita.
So who is this Linda, you ask?
Linda, a 16-year-old student in San Antonio, Texas, is the main character in El sueño de Linda, a book written by Tiffany Haney for first-year learners of Spanish. The book is published by Teacher’s Discovery.
And I’m trying to read the darned thing.
I’m not sure how much Spanish I’m learning with this exercise. But I am discovering just how hard it is to master another language.
I’m also gaining a greater appreciation for the immense challenges facing millions of English language learners (ELLs) struggling in our nation’s schools.
These are challenges that school boards ignore at our nation’s peril. In 2000, there were 2 million ELL students; today, there are 5 million. By 2025, one in four students will come from homes where English is not the primary language.
How well will our schools be prepared to educate them? That’s hard to say. Today, the nation’s public schools are doing great things in teaching these students English and raising their academic performance. Yet, the challenges are huge, so the achievement gap of these students remains disturbing—as does their dropout rate.
I wish I had some brilliant advice to give the nation’s school boards. I know they must deal with limited resources, shortages of bilingual teachers, and a host of mandates that also demand their attention.
But I also know that schools are struggling today to serve ELL students—and that doesn’t bode well for their ability to handle greater numbers in the years ahead.
Yet, they must. If America’s schools fall short, our nation will have a growing population that’s linguistically, culturally, and politically isolated. And that’s not a healthy situation for a robust democracy.
So all I can do is offer a reminder that the issue needs your attention. School boards need to look harder at the needs of ELL students. And state and federal lawmakers need to pony up the resources to help local schools meet these needs.
In short, using my modest understanding of Spanish: El futuro está viniendo.
Del Stover, Senior Editor
Schools CAN help reduce student obesity
There’s some new evidence that all the efforts to cajole kids into trading chips and candy for carrot sticks and yogurt really do work.
A widely publicized new study shows that school-based nutrition programs in Philadelphia helped many of their students avoid obesity and make better food choices.
The schools that implemented a broad-based plan to cut back on high-sugar and high-fat foods, coupled with nutrition education, found that fewer students became overweight. In the end, about 7 percent of students who’d taken part in the program had significant weight problems, compared to about 15 percent of students at the schools in the control group.
The study’s lead author, Gary D. Foster, called the findings “a dramatic effect,” although he acknowledged that there were still too many overweight children. The study was published this week in the April edition of Pediatrics. The researchers followed about 1,400 students, grades four through six, in 10 Philadelphia schools for two years. More than half the students were eligible for free or reduced-priced lunches.
First, the schools replaced sodas with milk, juice, or water, and eliminated candy. Strict limits were set on the fat and sugar content of foods, and snack portions were downsized. The students were given rewards, such as raffle tickets for prizes, for choosing healthy options and were encouraged to exercise. And students and teachers spent many hours learning about nutrition and better habits.
While this report highlights the obesity problem and need for school-based interventions, any school dietician will attest to another looming problem: Food is getting more expensive, particularly the fresh fruits and veggies and whole grains that are staples of a nutrition program.
If your district is looking to increase its nutritional offerings or just better manage its food services division, stay tuned for ASBJ’s June issue, which will examine these and other issues facing school cafeterias.
Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor
Dropouts start as 'Children at Risk'
What a game! In the closing minutes of the NCAA Men’s Basketball finals, Stanford edged Davidson College while thousands cheered and….
Not the game you watched last night? Well, it might have been if you were rating the teams’ graduation rates, not their basketball prowess. The analysis of the 64 tournament teams was done by Education Sector and noted recently in a Washington Post opinion piece by Ted Mitchell and Jonathan Schorr, chief executive and partner, respectively, for NewSchools Venture Fund.
Every year we do something like this: We lament the dismal graduation rates of big-time college athletes (and African-American athletes, in particular) then sit back and shamelessly enjoy the game. That’s bad enough. But, as Mitchell and Schorr note in their column, it’s not just athletes who are having trouble graduating, and the problem doesn’t start in college.
According to a study by America’s Promise Alliance, just 53 percent of African-American students are even completing high school. Look the overall gradation rates in some urban school systems -- Cleveland, 34 percent; Detroit, 25 percent -- and the statistics are even more alarming.
We know that dropping out of school is a process, an accumulation of failures that begins long before a student decides to leave school. And while the problem may be most acute in the urban areas mentioned above, no district -- urban, rural, or suburban -- is exempt.
At NSBA’s 68th National Conference in Orlando last week, I facilitated a roundtable discussion about this very issue, how to help those whom ASBJ has called “Children at Risk.” We had representatives from large and small districts, from places like Broward County, Fla., Seattle Wash., Dubuque, Iowa, and Rochester, N.Y. In future blogs I’ll share their concerns and some of the solutions we discussed to perhaps the biggest problem facing education today.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
Teaching Grade Schoolers Appropriate Behavior May Be More Productive than Punishment
Are no-tolerance sexual harassment policies for elementary students acceptable?
Ask the mother of Randy Castro, a first-grade student at a school in Woodbridge, Va., who has a disciplinary record that includes sexual harassment. She’ll tell you, “No.”
That’s because her son’s principal called the police after the six-year-old spanked a female classmate at recess, The Washington Post reported last week.
Castro’s mother said the incident did not warrant such drastic measures and contacted The Post to share her son’s story and draw attention to her district’s harsh policies. She fears her son’s record has already affected the way he is being disciplined.
“Kids can be exploratory in behavior, they can mimic what they see on TV,” Ted Feinberg, assistant director of the National Association of School Psychologists told The Post.
But when does “exploratory behavior” among peers merit more than a stern talking-to?
The Post did some investigating and discovered that Virginia suspended 255 elementary school students last year for “offensive sexual touching or ‘improper physical contact against a student.’”
Experts recommend teaching students the difference between “good touch” and “bad touch” and only severely reprimanding students when their actions reflect other inappropriate behavior.
How strict are your district’s sexual harassment policies? How many students under 12 in your district are being disciplined for something that could be part of their development? And, what are your policies regarding police intervention?
Exploring these questions could not only prevent your schools from the embarrassment of an unflattering story in a national newspaper, but also keep them from unfairly punishing kids for simply being kids.
Stacey Hollenbeck, spring intern
Athletics on the Cutting Block, as Economy Squeezes Budgets
When people ask me if I played sports in high school, I usually ask, “Is yearbooking a sport?” Uncoordinated and non-competitive, I preferred scoring A's to scoring goals.
But although I never made it on the field, I always appreciated sports in schools. Athletes are often the most motivated and well-rounded students, having learned valuable teamwork and time-management skills.
Sports can also be a great way to foster parental involvement and develop community partnerships. Unfortunately, tight budgets have some schools shutting off their Friday night lights.
School districts across the country are considering reducing or eliminating funding for extra-curricular activities, including sports, to make up for devastating budget cuts.
Earlier this month, hundreds of angry students from Alameda, Calif., walked out of class to protest a $265,000 cut in athletic funding, reports The Mercury News.
Officials in Orange County, Fla., say cuts there could lead to the dismissal of district coaches, says the Orlando Sentinel.
Parents and students have been vocal about the negative effects of such maneuvers. Cuts in athletic programs could prevent students from earning college scholarships and staying out of trouble after school.
Reducing or eliminating sports would also diminish community involvement and prevent generations of students from learning the value of discipline.
Many schools have used ticket sales and concessions as a way to raise money for athletic programs. Unfortunately, not even hot dogs can stop the nation’s economy from curbing some schools’ sports budgets.
Stacey Hollenbeck, spring intern
Finding Common Ground Across the Bargaining Table
More than a few school board members offer the opinion that teacher contracts are a major impediment to school reform.
But is that true? Union leaders argue just the opposite in “State of the Unions,” the April cover story of American School Board Journal.
Indeed, National Education Association President Reg Weaver puts it quite colorfully when responding to complaints that teacher contracts add unnecessary costs to school budgets and create bureaucratic obstacles to reform.
“That’s crap,” he says.
The truth, as usual, is much more nuanced.
Take tenure rules. Yes, some contracts make it incredibly time-consuming and expensive to fire a bad teacher.
Then again, I’m still waiting for school board members to explain why their school system gives tenure to these poor-performing teachers in the first place.
School board members also are correct that seniority rules make it too difficult to transfer the best teachers to where they’re needed.
But union leaders are equally correct in arguing that assigning teachers where they may be resentful or unhappy is no formula for success. It isn’t going to help teacher retention rates, either.
Finally, it’s also true that collective bargaining agreements hinder innovation and creative solutions by restricting administrators’ leeway on such things as scheduling after-hours training, for example.
But union officials have a point when they argue that contract agreements sometimes save school boards from making hasty and costly policy mistakes, and that such agreements help avoid the policy churn that might follow with the rapid turnover of board members.
So what’s my point? It’s a bit simplistic to put too much blame on collective bargaining and teacher contracts.
It’s also pointless. Collective bargaining is here to stay.
So here are some questions for school boards: How often do you meet with your union’s leadership to talk about common goals? Do you seek solutions to problems as they arise? Or do you wait until the pressures of contract talks before addressing an issue?
And how good a horse trader are you? If you want something in the contract changed, do you offer a tangible benefit for a serious concession? Do you lay out the data to prove that change is good for students—and, thus, for teachers?
Maybe your school board is hampered by contract language. Maybe your union leadership is militant and difficult to work with. I won’t say you’re wrong.
But, then again, it might be worth rethinking how you go about working with your union. There may be more opportunities there than you imagine.
Del Stover, Senior Editor
A Day to Promote Better Understanding of Confounding Disorder
Autism is now the fastest growing developmental disability in the world. And one of the most remarkable features of autism is that there is no particular pattern in its affliction of young children--- the disorder presents itself equally among different races and ethnicities, socioeconomic levels, national origins, and about every other identifying factor, except for sex. It affects many more boys than girls.
“I call autism the most nondiscriminating, equal opportunity condition,” said Lee Grossman, head of the Autism Society of America. Research, he added, has shown a large rise in autism in other countries parallel to the rise in the U.S., and many of those children do not have access to the treatments they need.
With that in mind, and the general need to promote the urgency of awareness and treatment, autism groups around the world have dubbed today, April 2, the first annual “World Autism Day.” The United Nations passed a resolution, sponsored by Qatar, last year to mark the occasion.
“Autism knows no geographic boundaries – it affects individuals and families on every continent and in every country,” said Suzanne Wright, co-founder of Autism Speaks, an advocacy group that promotes awareness of the disorder. “The celebration of World Autism Awareness Day is an important way to help the world better understand the scope of this health crisis and the need for compassion and acceptance for those living with autism.”
Most importantly, advocates say, an early diagnosis and early interventions are essential to helping a child lead a fulfilling life. While there is no cure on the horizon, and may not be for many years, early treatments can make a vast difference in the prognosis. More than 20 countries, representing every continent, have planned events for today to publicize the cause.
More information on events and resources can be found at www.worldautismawarenessday.org, and my recent American School Board Journal story on how some schools in the U.S. are grappling with treatments and intervention is available online.
Joetta Sack-Min, Associate Editor
States Careful About Asking for Federal Involvement
It was a modest proposal, really. The resolution before NSBA’s Delegate Assembly in Orlando last Friday would have supported states that wanted to collaborate in creating voluntary regional standards and to seek federal funds for those efforts.
No big deal, right? Especially since something similar was on the books from last year’s meeting in San Francisco.
Wrong. And to see why, just focus on one word: federal. To many in NSBA’s legislature, “federal” suggests intrusion into state and local prerogatives, and in this case, perhaps, a slippery slope to national standards.
Talk about paranoid! You’d think the federal government was -- let’s see -- requiring every school in the country to raise the achievement of every student to a miraculous level of “proficiency” in six years. Or vowing to pay 40 percent of the cost of educating special education students without anteing up the money. Or requiring states and districts to set up vast testing infrastructures without helping to fund them. Or demanding that all teachers, from Altoona to Albuquerque, be “highly qualified “by ….
Oh.
Maybe they’re not so paranoid after all. Because, after flying home to chilly Reagan National last night after four days at NSBA’s National Conference, I had the distinct impression that -- its marvelous cherry trees notwithstanding -- Washington’s not too popular with school board members right now.
The good news is that changes will surely be made to NCLB’s rigid accountability system and to other aspects of the law once it is reauthorized. The bad news: With all the tumult of the presidential elections, that might not happen until 2009 or even 2010.
In the meantime, many districts are finding themselves in what one Florida board member dubbed a “perfect storm” of dwindling local and state funds, burgeoning numbers of low-income and ELL students, and increasingly stringent federal demands.
Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor
Suggested Course Reading: The Bible?
Literary characters familiar to high school students—like Huckleberry Finn, Holden Caulfield, and Anna Karenina—may have to make room for Cain and Abel.
Next year, some public school students in Texas will learn about the Bible and its history through a new statewide elective course.
The course itself, already a reality in dozens of Texas schools, is not a point of contention for concerned parents and education officials. Instead, they argue that the class’s curriculum could be too broad.
Although the bill that allowed for the elective course also called for a specific curriculum, the State Board of Education voted on Friday to apply standard English and social studies guidelines, says the Houston Chronicle.
This lack of regulation drew skepticism from those who feel Texas may be blurring the line between church and state.
The Houston Chronicle story on the subject has generated 125 comments since Friday, some of which advocate for an objective course that encompasses education about many different religions.
When it comes to the Bible, there’s a thin line between studying a text and endorsing a religion. And not crossing that line requires intense oversight.
Stacey Hollenbeck, spring intern
