Zorg

Inside Higher Ed (1/22, Lederman) reports on a study from the New England Consortium on Assessment and Student Learning that offers "greatly varying portraits of how students 'engage' with their academic work and what happens to them as a result." The researchers said that the findings "suggest the need for a far more nuanced understanding of the 'student engagement' theory of learning than has sometimes been the case." The research also "suggests a 'complex,' and unclear, relationship between engagement and student grades, the researchers say," noting that in some cases, "there appeared to be little or no connection between how enmeshed [students] felt in their work and their grades in those courses."

The Los Angeles Times (1/21, Blume) reported that California youth "found no escape from harder times last year whether at school, where they endured larger classes, unfamiliar teachers and scarce supplies -- or at home, where they faced family stresses from emptier refrigerators, job losses and more frequent dislocation." This "grim compilation comes in a report," based on an anonymous poll of principals, from UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access and the University of California All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity. According to the Times, some principals "reported collecting money to help families and told of teachers who bought food and clothes for students, and, in a few cases, took students into their homes."

The Miami Herald (1/22, McGrory) reports that eight schools in Miami-Dade County, FL, are hosting student mentors from City Year corps. The mentors are recruited "from across the country to serve...in high-need public schools. They "are recent high-school and college graduates who commit to serve full time for at least 10 months" and they "receive a stipend to help cover living expenses and basic health insurance during their time in the program." Corps members are instantly recognizable in their red bomber jacket uniforms." The mentors "work with students in small groups" during class "to help build their reading skills." The Miami Herald notes that City Year "is part of AmeriCorps."

New Jersey's Today's Sunbeam (1/22, Davis) reports, "Every year, schools across the country are required to meet [AYP] standards set forth by" NCLB. However, "according to officials, it doesn't paint a completely accurate picture to just say whether a school passed or failed." According to Today's Sunbeam, "If a school misses just one of the 41 indicators," the New Jersey Department of Education "considers the school to have failed meeting AYP standards. While officials agree with the purpose of the AYP, to show how schools are progressing each year, some officials disagree with the way the criteria is calculated."

Education Week (1/21, Sawchuk) reported, "Most experts in the testing community have presumed that the $350 million promised by the US Department of Education to support common assessments would promote those that made greater use of open-ended items capable of measuring higher-order critical-thinking skills." However, as "measurement experts consider the multitude of possibilities for an assessment system based more heavily on such questions, they also are beginning to reflect on practical obstacles to doing so." According to Education Week, "The issues now on the table include the added expense of those items, as well as sensitive questions about who should be charged with the task of scoring them and whether they will prove reliable enough for high-stakes decisions."

The Fairfax County Times (1/21, Schumitz) reported that Owlin Burke's consumer sciences class at Longfellow Middle School in Falls Church, VA, is sewing "child-sized quilts" that the class will donate "to children in Fairfax County's foster care program." Students in Longfellow's geometry classes "design quilt patterns, and then students in each eighth-grade family and consumer sciences class pick a design with which they want to work. Each student makes a quilt square for a graded project. Students then volunteer their time after school to help assemble the quilts."

Forbes (1/21, Dolan) ran a Q&A with Sally Ride, the first female astronaut from the U.S. Ride "retired from NASA and saw a great need to improve the science curriculum for elementary and middle school students. She started a company, Sally Ride Science, which develops programs for students and teachers." Ride addressed the need to boost STEM education in the U.S. and is quoted saying, "In the days just following Sputnik, it was cool to be a scientist. It was nationally important that we have scientists and engineers. It was recognized that this was something we needed for the future of our country." However, according to Ride, "In the last 20 years or so, we've lost that focus. Our culture doesn't put a premium on science and technology. So the kids naturally go into other fields."

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (1/21, David) reported, "When the merger of Center Area and Monaca school districts was being debated from 2005 until 2008, educators insisted that the consolidation would improve education." Now, according to Mike Thomas, former Superintendent of Monaca and current superintendent of merger affairs, the school curriculum has broadened and has increased in depth. High school students now have the option of taking "two levels of British literature, speech and 'Classics and Film,'" as well as "advanced placement calculus and statistics, finite math, logistics and a hands-on problem-solving track that includes forensics" and robotics. For middle schools, "the district is adopting a team-teaching approach that blends the nurturing environment of elementary school with the variety and challenges of high school."

The Seattle Times (1/22) editorializes, "Bravo to the principal at McClure Middle School in Seattle who suspended 28 students for bullying a classmate on the Internet. ... The state Legislature has pondered anti-cyber bullying laws in the past. Online misdeeds from sex texting to harassing students via text messaging underscore the challenges of technology's growing acceptance and use in and out of school." According to the Times, "A legislative effort to require districts to collect data on these incidents could be useful in making informed policy down the road."

The Des Moines (IA) Register (1/22) reports that on Thursday, Iowa Gov. Chet Culver (D) was in Washington, DC, where he "told a Senate appropriations subcommittee...that Congress should extend federal unemployment benefits and provide additional aid to states for education, health care and other needs." In addition, Culver asked the Department of Education "to waive rules in the 2009 stimulus bill that were designed to prevent states from slashing their budgets and filling the gap with federal stimulus money." The rule prevents Iowa from qualifying "for $120 million in additional stimulus funding unless the state restores $35 million in cuts recently made to education."

        Culver Signs Law Forcing Schools To Tap Reserves. The AP (1/21) reported that Iowa schools "must dip into their cash reserves before turning to property taxpayers for additional funding under legislation signed into law Wednesday." Gov. Chet Culver (D) "also signed a measure delaying a decision on basic state funding for local schools, hoping the economy will strengthen and allow for a bigger increase next year." Culver "ordered a 10 percent across-the-board cut in state spending last month, and has pushed lawmakers to dip into cash reserves to wipe out a projected state budget shortfall. He said it was only fair to expect schools to do the same."

The AP (1/21, Lieb) reported, "Missouri's public schools may be forced to freeze salaries, expand classes, cut extracurricular activities or seek local tax increases to cope with a funding shortfall, education advocates warned Thursday. K-12 schools - though spared from cuts in their basic state aid - still might have to scale back because of Gov. Jay Nixon's [D] plan to provide barely one-sixth of the funding increase needed to meet the state's financing formula, said Brent Ghan, a spokesman for the Missouri School Boards' Association." According to the AP, "Until now, Missouri's 523 public school districts have weathered the state budget woes remarkably well." However, Nixon's "budget office confirmed Wednesday that schools would not get the $43 million midyear increase called for under the school funding formula for the 2009-2010 academic year."

USA Today (1/22, Morrison, Heath) reports that on Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would "'use all the tools at our disposal' to reduce high levels of a toxic chemical that continues to permeate the air outside an elementary school in Marietta, Ohio." The EPA will "release data today that show high levels of manganese outside a cluster of schools in and near Marietta." In October, the air samples taken from the schools showed "manganese levels that were" between five and 23 "times above what the EPA considers safe for long-term exposure." The EPA will also "investigate the source of the manganese in Marietta. According to data" already collected by the agency, "several companies in Marietta reported releasing manganese into the air in 2008, the most recent year for which complete records were available."

Mississippi's Jackson Clarion Ledger (1/21, Fritscher) reported, "The high school shootings of the late 1990s...created the era of tighter security on campuses nationwide. The Mississippi Department of Education created a school safety division." Also, schools "added safety personnel, and trained teachers about dealing with bullies and disruptive behavior, said Pete Smith, spokesperson for the Education Department." However, numerous "factors play a role in whether a child will express violence at school, said Kevin Williams, a Mississippi State University assistant professor specializing in media and violence. Williams said parental attitudes are the No. 1 indicator of a potentially violent child"

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