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SOUTHERN EDUCATION NOTES |
August 28-September 3, 2010 |
A service of the Southern Legislative Conference | The Southern Office of The Council of State Governments |
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Headlines |
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PRE K-12 (FL) More Central Florida public schools adopt school uniforms for students (US) Returning to Classrooms, and to Severe Headaches (AR) Panel backs off of school funding recommendation (US) School teachers in charge? Why some schools are forgoing principals. (US) Schools ban bracelets promoting cancer awareness (TN) Teacher scores get more exposure (AL) Alabama education revenue down but improving (TX) High number of home-schooled students leads to state audit REPORTS &
PUBLICATIONS |
HIGHER EDUCATION (US) Community College Training for Managing Green Jobs (US) As Colleges Compete, Money Flows to Minor Sports (SC) Record-size first year class creates woes at USC (US) Students face new textbook picks: Rent vs. buy, print vs. e-book (TN) TN lottery scholarship program prepares for cuts FEDERAL ISSUES (FL) Race to the Top: A first look at Florida’s “scope of work” for districts OPINION: Race to the Top itself needs some reform OUTSIDE THE REGION (MD) Maryland schools battle with limited funding and space as enrollment grows (NJ) Schools have little choice but to cut back on courtesy busing |
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Statistic of the Week |
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Source: L.G. Knapp, J.E. Kelly-Reid, J.E., and S.A. Ginder, Postsecondary Institutions and Price of Attendance in the United States: Fall 2009, Degrees and Other Awards Conferred: 2008–09, and 12-Month Enrollment: 2008–09, U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Washington, D.C., August 2010. Most colleges and universities in the United States have just begun their 2010-2011 academic year. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2009-2010, there were 6,896 institutions of higher education in the United States (2,853 four-year institutions, 2,259 two-year institutions, and 1,784 less-than-two-year institutions). These institutions served a total of 16.5 million students, including 10.9 million at four-year institutions, 5 million at two-year institutions and nearly 600,000 at less-than-two-year institutions. During 2009-10, 4-year public institutions reported average tuition and required fees7 of approximately $6,400 for in-state students and about $15,100 for out-of-state students. Four-year private not-for-profit institutions8 reported charging approximately $21,100, on average, and private for-profit institutions reported charging an average of about $15,700. Between 2000-01 and 2009-10, 4-year public institutions reported a 46 percent increase in average inflation-adjusted in-state tuition and required fees and a 34 percent increase in average inflation-adjusted out-of-state tuition and required fees. Over the same 10-year period, 4-year private not-for-profit institutions reported a 31 percent increase and private for-profit institutions reported a 20 percent increase in average inflation-adjusted tuition and required fees. |
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States Awarded Grants to Improve Achievement Tests The New York Times The Department of Education on Thursday awarded $330 million to two groups of states to design new standardized tests to replace the end-of-year reading and math exams used over the past decade to measure achievement under the federal No Child Left Behind law. The new tests, which are to be aligned with the common academic standards that nearly 40 states have adopted in recent months, are to be ready for the 2014-15 school year, the department said. One group has 25 states and the District of Columbia and is led by Florida; it includes several other large states, including California, Illinois and New York. Known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, the group was awarded $170 million. The other group has 31 states and is led by Washington; it includes other Western states like Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah, as well as some in the East, like Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Calling itself the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, the group won $160 million. (US) Formula to Grade Teachers’ Skill Gains in Use, and Critics The New York Times A growing number of school districts have adopted a system called value-added modeling to answer that question, provoking battles from Washington to Los Angeles — with some saying it is an effective method for increasing teacher accountability, and others arguing that it can give an inaccurate picture of teachers’ work. The system calculates the value teachers add to their students’ achievement, based on changes in test scores from year to year and how the students perform compared with others in their grade. People who analyze the data, making a few statistical assumptions, can produce a list ranking teachers from best to worst. |
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(FL) More Central Florida public schools adopt school uniforms for students The Orlando Sentinel Rosemont Principal Patty Harrelson, who took over last month, had success with uniforms at her previous school, Lake Gem Elementary in Orlando. She is sure that with incentives and praise, Rosemont students, too, will embrace being a "uniform school." Nationally, uniforms in public schools have gained popularity since the mid-1990s when a California district touted their benefits and President Bill Clinton then plugged them in his 1996 State of the Union speech. Since then, the percentage of public schools requiring uniforms has climbed from 3 to 18 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In Florida, uniform-clad public-school students are growing more common, too. Polk County adopted a mandatory uniform policy for elementary and middle schools a decade ago, and in 2008 Osceola required all students to dress in sync. Osceola administrators say the policy has cut down on discipline problems. (US) Returning to Classrooms, and to Severe Headaches The New York Times For kids around the country it’s back-to-school time. But for many of them, it’s also the return of headache season. Doctors say frequent headaches and migraines are among the most common childhood health complaints, yet the problem gets surprisingly little attention from the medical community. Many pediatricians and parents view migraines as an adult condition. And because many children complain of headaches more often during the school year than the summer, parents often think a child is exaggerating symptoms to get out of schoolwork. Often the real issue, say doctors, is that changes in a child’s sleep schedule, including getting up early for school and staying up late to study, as well as skipping breakfast, not drinking enough water and weather changes can all trigger migraines when the school year starts. (AR) Panel backs off of school funding recommendation Arkansas News Bureau The legislative Joint Adequacy Evaluation Oversight Subcommittee today backed off of its recommendation to increase per-student school funding by $69 million next year. Last week, the panel voted to recommend inflationary increases in per-student funding of 2.5 percent next year and 2.9 percent the year after to the House and Senate public education committees. The recommendations were based on inflationary indicators from two financial analysis services, Moody’s and Global Insight. Today, the subcommittee agreed to expunge the previous vote. Several members expressed concern the panel was moving too fast and said they wanted more information before settling on a recommendation. (US) School teachers in charge? Why some schools are forgoing principals. The Christian Science Monitor A school without a principal? It's becoming more common as innovative teacher-led public schools crop up in the United States. The idea has gained currency as debates rage over the best ways to ensure that teachers can bring up student achievement. The drumbeat of "teacher accountability" is getting louder – with everyone from President Obama to district leaders calling for teachers to meet high standards or risk being removed. In response, more teachers are standing up to say, "Fine. Hold us accountable. But let us do it our way." (US) Schools ban bracelets promoting cancer awareness USA Today Cancer has ravaged several of Ann Aberson's relatives, so she doesn't have a problem with her two teenage daughters wearing bracelets to raise awareness of breast cancer. But their school principal does. This week, Baltic High School, just north of here, became one of the latest across the USA to ban the rubber bracelet, which has a message some say is in poor taste: "I love boobies." The bracelets have caused controversy in schools in states including California, Colorado, Idaho, Florida and Wisconsin. Some districts allow students to wear them inside-out, and others ban them. (TN) Teacher scores get more exposure The Tennessean Each fall, thousands of Tennessee teachers receive a confidential report showing how much last year's students learned from them. Until now, there wasn't much reason for them to read it. It carried little or no impact on their job security or salary. Parents couldn't see the report, so there was no chance of a flurry of calls asking for a new teacher. But at least some of that's about to change. Starting next year, annual teacher evaluations will be partly based on student learning gains. Tenure will be at stake for new teachers, and in some cities, school districts are developing ways to link pay to that measure. (AL) Alabama education revenue down but improving The Birmingham News Tax collections for the state Education Trust Fund were down 1.8 percent in the first 11 months of this fiscal year compared to the same period a year earlier, the state finance department reported Wednesday. The trust fund, the main source of state tax dollars for public schools and colleges, collected $4.739 billion in October through August, a drop of $85.9 million compared to the same period a year earlier. But year-to-date tax collections for the trust fund have shown improvement for two months in a row. They were down 6 percent for October through June and down 3.9 percent for October through July, compared to the same periods a year earlier. (TX) High number of home-schooled students leads to state audit The Houston Chronicle In an attempt to ensure that public school districts aren’t disguising high school dropouts, the Texas Education Agency is conducting an audit of students who withdrew under the auspice of home schooling. TEA officials wouldn’t reveal details of the audit — other than to say that the state is contacting a random sampling of families to validate that they intended to home-school when they left middle or high school. More than 22,620 Texas secondary students were listed as withdrawing to home-school in 2008 — raising a red flag among some experts and educators who worry that Texas’ lax regulations are encouraging abuse in the hands-off home-schooling category. The 2008 figures reflect a 24 percent jump from the prior year and roughly triple the number of high school home-schooling withdrawals from a decade ago. |
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(US) Community College Training for Managing Green Jobs The New York Times BEYOND “green-collar” jobs, like retrofitting a home to conserve energy or helping build a wind farm, an energy-conscious economy will need a new generation of environmentally smart managers, and that’s where community colleges are stepping up with new courses and degree programs. The federal government is pouring $500 million into training for green jobs, and the sector devoted to energy efficiency is estimated to grow as much as fourfold in the next decade, to some 1.3 million people, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Its March 2010 report was financed by the Energy Department. (US) As Colleges Compete, Money Flows to Minor Sports The New York Times Something has changed on many college campuses across America. Universities are investing in once obscure sports that do not come close to paying for themselves, even in the face of dire budget cuts. Winning in all sports is what matters now, and the message is driven home from the highest levels of the university. Some university officials and even athletic directors worry about whether the emphasis on athletics is worth the significant sums that universities invest in them. (SC) Record-size first year class creates woes at USC The (Columbia, South Carolina) State With the fall term under way, the University of South Carolina’s Columbia campus — which took in another record-size freshman class this year — is jam-packed, forcing the university to try to find solutions to handling that influx and forcing students to plan better, leave for classes earlier and prepare for a time in the not-too-distant future when they won’t be able to live in on-campus housing. Some mentors in USC’s residence halls, who have had a room of their own in exchange for helping their fellow students, now are sharing a room with a freshman. Finding a place to park at the university’s downtown Columbia campus, always tough, now is much tougher. And getting into some classes is tougher, too. (US) Students face new textbook picks: Rent vs. buy, print vs. e-book USA Today With another summer ending, the time has come to ask the perennial question: Could this be the year higher education finally embraces the e-book? Some think that developments since the last buying cycle, particularly the arrival of Apple's iPad computing tablet, might foreshadow an especially good year for electronic texts. CourseSmart, an e-textbook consortium comprising five major publishers, says it has sold four times more e-textbooks in 2009-10 than it did the previous year (although it would not provide the number of copies). CourseSmart would not disclose how e-book sales are going so far this season, saying it was too early, but that it is optimistic. "We expect triple-digit growth to continue," says Heather Shelstad, director of the consortium. (TN) TN lottery scholarship program prepares for cuts The Tennessean The bad news is, Tennessee's lottery scholarship program is losing tens of millions of dollars a year. The good news is, at least it's not losing hundreds of millions of dollars, as originally feared. Even so, the state is preparing for painful cutbacks in the popular merit-based college scholarship program, which offsets the cost of tuition at Tennessee colleges and universities for an estimated 100,000 students a year. Tennessee college tuition goes up every year, and the prospect of losing any part of the lottery scholarship alarms parents such as Kim Lewis, a Nashville mother of three whose 15-year-old twins are rapidly approaching college age. |
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(FL) Race to the Top: A first look at Florida’s “scope of work” for districts The Orlando Sentinel The Florida Department of Education has posted a draft template of what participating school districts must include in their Race to the Top plans. You can find it here. Also listed is a timeline that, as we reported yesterday, gives districts about 7 weeks to turn in their first-draft plans. Their final work is due Nov. 8, and DOE plans to send it to their federal counterparts by Nov. 22. The good thing, from teachers union folks’ point of view, is that districts and their unions do not need to come to agreement on all the details of these plans (which eventually are to include merit-pay based in part on student performance) right now. OPINION: Race to the Top itself needs some reform The Washington Post WITH RACE TO THE TOP money now awarded, it is clear that some states that lost out were more deserving than some that won the much-coveted grants. Yet, overall, the program has been a success in driving school reform. When Congress allocated an enormous pot of dollars for K-12 education in the stimulus bill last year, the Obama administration sequestered about one-twentieth of it to distribute on merit rather than use the usual automatic formulas. Education Secretary Arne Duncan made clear that in this case "merit" would mean commitment to reform. This spurred states to make important changes in K-12 education, such as moving toward paying teachers based on their ability to raise student achievement. In the event, the competition was not staged perfectly. But it helped transform the national discussion on education. |
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Study Links Tech to Algebra Achievement Education Week A summary of findings from a four-year study released Thursday concludes that Algebra I teachers who were trained in and used a program that allowed them to monitor students' progress on graphing calculators led to significantly improved achievement by their students on a researcher-designed test. The study, part of Ohio State's Classroom Connectivity in Mathematics and Science research project, illustrates a direct link between the implementation of classroom technology and professional development with academic achievement, say the summary's authors. The research, conducted from 2005 to 2009, was funded by the Institute of Education Sciences and the U.S. Department of Education. Texas Instruments supplied classes with the TI-Navigator program, which allows instructors to view students' work in real time and offer feedback. Senate Report Hints at a Definition for What Works Education Week Language buried in a report on a Senate appropriations bill may provide a glimpse of the bar Congress will set for judging the effectiveness of school improvement interventions in the next iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Yet education watchers worry Congress won’t back up its call for rigor with the cash to pay for the research. In its report on the education budget for the 2011 fiscal year, the Senate Appropriations Committee calls on the U.S. Department of Education to “encourage and support” states and districts to use their Title I school improvement grants only for interventions that would meet the evidence required for the two most stringent evidence standards in the federal Investing in Innovation, or i3, research grants—the “validation” and “scale-up” categories. |
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(MD) Maryland schools battle with limited funding and space as enrollment grows The Washington Post More than 200,000 Maryland students streamed back to crowded classrooms Monday as school systems dealt with growth but little money to hire more teachers. In Montgomery County, the state's largest school system, parents said they were anxious about increased class sizes but sanguine about the schools' future under a successor to Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, who is retiring in June. Enrollment swelled by 2,200 students -- 1.5 percent -- this year, hundreds more than forecast. Howard and Charles counties also returned to school Monday. (NJ) Schools have little choice but to cut back on courtesy busing The Newark (New Jersey) Star-Ledger Public school education in New Jersey used to be an all-you-can-eat buffet. The school taxes would be siphoned from the mortgage payment, and just about everything was covered, including the four R’s — readin’, ’ritin’, ’rithmetic … and ridin’ (on the big yellow school bus). Heck, sports, wood shop, the chess club, even driver’s education (jittery instructor and all) were covered, too. That’s not automatic anymore. We live in an à la carte world now. So that checked baggage is going to cost extra. Carry-on luggage, too. A funeral can run several thousand dollars, but if you want to be buried in New Jersey, it’s another five bucks for the state. User fees are the new business model. |
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Much More EdNotes Headlines |
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PreK-12 (AL) Schools may face deeper budget cuts (TX)
Texas students not doing well on first end-of-course exams (AL) Alabama's poor Race to the Top showing reflects problems deeper than a lack of charter schools (FL) McDonnell seeks abstinence-only education funds (MO) Missouri's public schools show mediocre national assessment scores (MO) Vision plan aims for better schools (NC) Guidelines encourage minorities in math (OK) Thirteen private schools will take part in Oklahoma special needs program (WV) State requests bids for education spending audit Higher Education (AR) More scholarship awards possible, state determines (MO) Higher education cuts loom next year (MS) Ed chief: Faculty cuts not a trend Federal Activities
& Issues (TX) Texas will seek $830M in federal education aid A Celebratory Road Trip for Education Secretary Outside the Region |
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