Saturday, May 29, 2010

The Answer Sheet - 1 in 6 U.S. students in high-poverty schools

The Answer Sheet- 1 in 6 U.S. students in high-poverty schools

1 in 6 U.S. students in high-poverty schools

A government analysis of U.S. schools shows that one in six public school students attend high poverty schools and that the percentage of high-poverty schools has significantly increased over the past decade.
It also confirms what we’ve long known: student achievement at high-poverty schools is lower than at other public schools.
The analysis of high-poverty schools was part of the 2010 Condition of Education, an annual report just released by the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics./a> The analysis looks at the latest available data on public schools.

Here are the conclusions from the analysis on high-poverty schools. High poverty is identified as those schools where 76 percent to 100 percent of the student enrollment is eligible for free or reduced-price meals. The data comes from 2007-08, the latest year for which nationwide information is available.
*One in six public school students attended a high-poverty school.
*Twenty percent of all public elementary schools and 9 percent of public secondary schools were considered high-poverty schools, compared with 15 percent and 5 percent respectively in 1999-2000.
*The overall percentage of high-poverty schools increased from 12 percent in 1999–2000 to 17 percent in 2007–08. There is some

Technology may help poor schools by starting with rich ones

For the first time I realized that the education reforms I write about, raising achievement in the inner city, are as Paul E. Peterson puts it turning standard marketing strategies upside down. Maybe they will work better, he suggests, if we let their 21st century promoters try them out in affluent schools, seeing what works best before moving to kids who really need something better than what they've got.

Nyankori a rare bird in DCPS wild


It was the bureaucratic equivalent of a Northern Spotted Owl sighting: a District of Columbia official apologizing for mistakes made.

"There have been mistakes. I'm ready to take the whip," Richard Nyankori, deputy chancellor for special education, said Wednesday evening at Randle-Highland Elementary School. And he took his whipping in a cafeteria filled with anxious parents who had been notified--virtually out of the blue, some contended--that the District wanted to end the private school placements they had secured because of the city's inability to meet their children's needs.
The city spends more than $280 million a year on private school tuition and transportation for about 2,700 students, more than a quarter of its total special ed population. Nyankori and Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee say that's way too many, and that some of them can have their needs met in less restrictive environments, as federal law requires. But the rollout of their "reintegration plan" ran into trouble when privately-

D.C. special education chief apologizes


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