Thursday, June 10, 2010

More New York City Students to Face Summer School - NYTimes.com

Scoring Low, More Pupils Face School This Summer

By JENNIFER MEDINA

Published: June 10, 2010

An estimated 21,000 elementary and middle school students scored at the lowest levels on state math and reading exams, New York City education officials said Thursday, meaning that twice as many students in those schools as last year will be required to enroll in summer school.

Under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s policy of ending so-called social promotion, students who score at the lowest levels of the state English and math tests must go to summer school or be held back. Official results from the tests, which are administered by the state, will not be released until the end of July, but with the end of the school year near, the city is using preliminary results to determine who should enroll in summer school.

Last year, the number of students passing the exams — meaning they achieved a Level 3, with Level 4 the highest — skyrocketed, and a relative few, less than 5 percent, scored at

Education Week: June 10, 2010

JUNE 10, 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOR THE MEDIA

Diplomas Count 2010 Press Release (PDF)

FROM PRINT

Executive Summary

This year's Diplomas Count explores the graduation-rate challenges facing many students and districts and looks at how schools are using data to help students finish high school and earn diplomas.

Data in Action

Schools collect more statistics now than ever before, and many are using data as they devise new strategies to help student graduate.

WEB EXTRAS

State Graduation Briefs

View reports for all 50 states and the District of Columbia featuring detailed, state-specific data on current graduation rates and trends over time, definitions of college readiness, high school exit exams, and state requirements for earning a high school diploma.

Graduation Rate Trends 1997-2007

This interactive map allows users to explore changes in state graduation rates for every state and the District of Columbia over the past decade.

EdWeek Maps

View this GIS-based website, which includes information on graduation rates and other indicators across the United States. Interactive mapping technology allows users to zoom in on their states and access detailed data for every school district in the nation.

Education Counts

The EPE Research Center's online database has more than 1,000 state-level K-12 education indictors spanning more than a decade and has the ability to build custom tables, charts, and maps using data from Diplomas Count 2010.

FROM PRINT

Guiding Students on Nontraditional Paths

District provides non-traditional programs for high school students in need of graduation help.

District Targets Dropout Figures

As the national drumbeat for college readiness grows louder, policymakers and scholars trumpet the potent role that a school's "college-going culture" can play.

Coaching for Success

South Carolina educators use federal stimulus dollars to work with students in danger of failing to earn diplomas.

From Analysis to Action

Fall River, Mass. uses well-informed action to transform atmosphere, expectations at once-troubled high school.

RESEARCH

Progress Postponed

For the second year in a row, the nation's graduation rate decreased.

Pinpointing District Performance

A closer look at graduation numbers reveals a concentrated dropout crisis in big-city districts, as well as odds-defying success in 21 urban systems.

Graduation in the United States

DATA TABLE Progress on Graduation Rate Stalls PDF

CHART Graduation Rates for 50 Largest Districts PDF

CHART Projected Number of 2009 Nongraduates by State PDF

MAP Epicenters of the Graduation Crisis PDF

CHART Charting Expectations for Big-City Graduation PDF

DATA TABLE Graduation Policies PDF

SOURCES, NOTES, & METHODOLOGY

Sources & Notes

Methodology

How Does the EPE Research Center Calculate Graduation Rates?

National study lists Dallas school district as 'dropout epicenter' | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Latest News

National study lists Dallas school district as 'dropout epicenter'

09:30 PM CDT on Thursday, June 10, 2010

By HOLLY K. HACKER / The Dallas Morning News
hhacker@dallasnews.com

Texas high school students are more likely to graduate than a decade ago, but more than a third of them still won't earn a diploma in four years, a new national study found.

Plus, the Dallas and Houston school districts are among the 25 "dropout epicenters" that produce one-fifth of all dropouts in the U.S.

"Diplomas Count," a study released Thursday by the Education Weeknewspaper, reported that 65 percent of Texas students in the Class of 2007 graduated on time, up from 59 percent in 1997. The national rate was 69 percent in 2007 compared with 66 percent in 1997.

Ways of calculating graduation rates vary widely. Education Weekused something called a "Cumulative Promotion Index," which measures how many students are promoted from ninth to 10th grade, then 10th to 11th grade, and so on.

Among the findings:

•In Texas and nationally, big gaps remain among demographic groups. Boys are less likely to graduate than girls, and blacks and Hispanics are less likely to graduate than whites and Asian-Americans.

•Just 43 percent of Dallas ISD students and 42 percent of Houston ISD

Maple Grove Elementary in rural Clackamas County closes after 123 years | OregonLive.com

Maple Grove Elementary in rural Clackamas County closes after 123 years

Maple Grove School Closes

MOLALLA – Claire Beyer Ferlan carries four generations of memories from Maple Grove Elementary.

Jamie Francis/The OregonianTeacher Mike Clarke receives a hug from Maple Grove fourth-grader Libby Byrne as she accepts a certificate for her classwork during the past year. Now that the school is closing, Clarke plans to retire.

"I remember so many things," said Ferlan, 52, a Maple Grove instructional aide who also attended the school in the 1960s. "There were always deer looking into the windows of the school, and one time a teacher fell asleep, so we all went for a two-hour hike around the woods."

Maple Grove has been a Ferlan family tradition for most of the past century. All nine of her brothers and sisters attended Maple Grove. So did her husband and all of their 10 children. So did her father-in-law, who also drove the school bus.

Maple Grove Elementary

Opened: 1887, as a one-room schoolhouse

Original heating: A woodstove that held 4-foot logs

First teacher: Miss Ida Goudy from Woodburn, who taught all eight grades

Second classroom added: 1927

First school bus: A GMC Suburban, purchased in 1953

Annual enrollment:
19 to 80

Sources: Community members, former students

That tradition ended Thursday, the last day of classes for Ferlan's granddaughter, Natalie Litchfield, a second-grader. Molalla River School District officials say they can no longer justify operating such a remote school that serves so few students – 18 in a combined first-second grade and 17 in a combined third through fifth grade.

The fifth-graders will move up to Molalla River Middle School, and the rest of Maple Grove's students will transfer to Rural Dell Elementary. The future of the schoolhouse is unclear, but the structure is somewhat protected by its listing on the Clackamas County Register of Historic Buildings.

Maple Grove opened as a one room schoolhouse in 1887. One of the school's first directors was a Civil War veteran, Capt. J.G. Blakeny.

School records tell of the days when the school could afford to keep students only a few months at a time. When more money came in, the school would reopen.

On Thursday, 123 years after the school opened, students gathered in the gym for a final awards ceremony. They filled just two short rows.

Teacher Peg Moore addressed her first- and second-graders. She told her students how special they were and handed each one a certificate of achievement and list of characteristics that made them unique. The gym filled with

Stone, Maddow, Noor and Frist on Maher's HBO Real Time - Monsters and Critics

Stone, Maddow, Noor and Frist on Maher's HBO Real Time

Queen Noor of Jordan attends the Vanity Fair Party to kick-off the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival in New York USA, 20 April 2010. EPA/PETER FOLEY

By April MacIntyre Jun 10, 2010, 5:26 GMT

"Real Time with Bill Maher" concludes the first half of its eighth season Friday, June 11 (10:00-11:00 p.m. live ET/tape-delayed PT), exclusively on HBO, with an instant replay at 11:00 p.m., following the live presentation.

Maher dishes his perspective on contemporary issues via an opening monologue, roundtable discussions with panelists, and interviews with in-studio and satellite guests.

The roundtable guests this week are former Tenn. Sen. Bill Frist, news anchor Rachel Maddow and journalist Jon Meacham; Queen Noor of Jordan, chairwoman of the King Hussein Foundation, and director Oliver Stone are interview guests.

Blog U.: Math Geek Mom: Summer School - Mama PhD - Inside Higher Ed

Math Geek Mom: Summer School
By Rosemarie Emanuele June 10, 2010 9:23 pm

In the center of Boston is the Boston Common, where there are several small statues of the ducklings made famous by the book “Make Way for Ducklings”. Long before I became a parent, I bought a painting from a local Boston artist that depicted the statues of the ducklings from that children's book. In a decision of radical faith in the future, and one that involved finding a few extra dollars that I, as a graduate student, didn’t really have at the time, I bought it and decided that if I was ever to have a child, I would hang it in their room. I know that someday my daughter will outgrow it, but for now, it hangs above her desk in her room. I hope to visit the Boston Commons with her some day and show her the original statues that depict the characters from the book which she, of course, has a copy of. If such a visit takes place some year, it will be after my summer school class has ended for the summer.
I know of many people who claim that that just don’t teach summer school. The pay is often not great, and it takes away from time that might be spent on research and course development. However, someone must teach summer classes, which reminds me of the question of the “tragedy of the commons.” Like the farmers who all brought their cows to
- iPhone 4: Don't Want, Will Buy
  By Joshua Kim June 10, 2010 9:37 pm
  3 Reasons Why I Don't Want an iPhone 4:
  1. Design: I love my Pantech Breeze, a phone that CNET describes as "ideal for the elderly as well as those with vision problems" (neither category that I've yet to enter). Seriously, I like a small clamshell phone that only does calling, with an occasional text message to my 12 or 13 year old.
  2. Attention: I am learning enough about the limits of my rational brain (please read Dan Ariely's amazing new book The Upside of Irrationality) to know that I'll be distracted by an iPhone. My kids will be trying to talk to me, and I'll be engrossed in FaceTime or playing