Friday, June 18, 2010

Oklahoma State regents OK $1B budget, tuition hike - Boston.com

Oklahoma State regents OK $1B budget, tuition hike

By Jeff Latzke

Associated Press Writer / June 18, 2010

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OKLAHOMA CITY—The $1 billion budget approved Friday for Oklahoma State University's next fiscal year includes tuition hikes, no raises and money for a new pilot program that will provide 125 students with free iPads to test out as a classroom tool.

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The university will pay slightly less than the $499 retail value to provide Apple Inc.'s new tablet computer to students in five communications and business courses at the Stillwater and Tulsa campuses beginning this fall.

"You'll see this all over America in higher education," university president Burns Hargis said. "(The University of Oklahoma's) going to be doing these kinds of

The Washington Teacher: Letter From A Second Year DCPS Teacher

Letter From A Second Year DCPS Teacher

by The Wash. Teacher

Having grown up in a family with much older grandparents, I always valued the opinions and words of wisdom from my elders. Even though I prided myself in having a mind of my own, I learned early on that wisdom and life experience bring much needed insight. I think some people often refer to it as going to the school of 'hard knocks'.

Several years ago I ran into several younger teachers who overwhelmingly supported WTU's infamous red and green contract proposal for DC teachers mainly due to the hefty salary increases. I couldn't help but realize they didn't even know the half of what they were embarking upon. Little did I think that I would ever be able to convince them about what was happening on our educational landscape. This very blog was born out of my desire to offer another view point to union members like them about how this red and green proposal would strip all of us of long earned tenure and seniority protections and almost always lead to termination. Needless to say, due to elevating this issue, the red and green proposal soon became history.

Much to my surprise I received an email from one of these teachers who is now a second year teacher. Several years ago, she along with her cohorts chastised me on blogs and in person for not supporting Rhee's reform model and the WTU red and green tiered proposal. This teacher's recent correspondence gives new meaning to the colloquialism 'listen to your elders.'

NorthJersey.com: Catholic Church and Paterson discuss converting parochial school into public academy

Catholic Church and Paterson discuss converting parochial school into public academy

Friday, June 18, 2010

BY PATRICIA ALEX

THE RECORD

STAFF WRITER

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Church and Paterson school officials are collaborating on a deal that could transform Paterson Catholic High School into a public charter school.
The deal, confirmed by participants on Friday, could ease the space crunch in the public schools, provide lease money to the debt-burdened Roman Catholic Diocese of Paterson and allow for many of PC’s students to stay put.
But because it calls for a measure of church involvement in what would be a tax-supported school, city educators said they were still reviewing whether the arrangement would fit under constitutional separation of church and state.
“There are some positives for us to consider,” said Paterson schools Superintendent Donnie Evans. “But there are long-term, short-term and church-state issues to consider.”
The charter plan was outlined in an announcement posted on the diocesan website.

Alternative high school grads head to college with scholarship help and a chance at their dreams | OregonLive.com

Alternative high school grads head to college with scholarship help and a chance at their dreams

Published: Friday, June 18, 2010, 6:50 PM Updated: Friday, June 18, 2010, 7:04 PM

Carolina Hidalgo, The Oregonian
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Benjamin Brink/The OregonianEgbevado Ananouko (from left), Cristian Munoz-Campos, Abby Parker, Patricia Orduna-Torres and Jalena McCleary celebrate their graduation last week from Open Meadow High School. All are recipients of a scholarship aimed at helping students who overcame obstacles such as language barriers, being a parent and spending time in foster care -- and who face challenges in attending college.

Thirty miles.

That's the distance Egbevado Ananouko remembers walking at age 8 to get from his village in Togo, in West Africa, to a refugee camp in neighboring Benin.

He spent three years in the camp, with no schooling and little food, followed by news of a sponsor and a flight to the United States.

At 11, Ananouko touched down in Portland, where the language was strange and the weather felt like being in a refrigerator. He quickly turned to violence to deal with taunts he couldn't understand.

"I went through a lot of hard times trying to connect with people," Ananouko, 20, said last week at North Portland's Open Meadow High School, a school for at-risk youths. "I kind of used anger to solve my problems because I didn't understand English."

But now, Ananouko is one of a dozen new graduates set to start college in the fall with a scholarship specifically for students who overcame hardships to finish high school and who face further obstacles in attending college.

"It really recognizes students who've struggled along the way but have succeeded and show the potential to continue," said Simone Rede, who works with students at alternative high schools

Schools Matter: One in Five American Children Living in Poverty

One in Five American Children Living in Poverty

by Jim Horn

And how do these numbers affect federal education policy? None, not even mentioned. More testing to identify the poor, and more parrot learning now pushed into pre-K and kindergarten, where children learn to respond, rather than understand and think. From USA Today:

The rate of children living in poverty this year will climb to nearly 22%, the highest rate in two decades, according to an analysis by the non-profit Foundation for Child Development. Nearly 17% of children were living in poverty in 2006, before the recession began.

The foundation's Child and Youth Well-Being Index tracks 28 key statistics about children, such as health insurance coverage, parents' employment, infant mortality and preschool enrollment.

The report projects that the percentage of children living in families with an "insecure" source of

The Answer Sheet - Detroit school board head quits after complaint alleging inappropriate behavior

Detroit school board head quits after complaint alleging inappropriate behavior

In the you-can’t-make-up-this-stuff category:

Otis Mathis, the president of the Detroit Board of Education, was accused of fondling himself for 20 minutes in a meeting with the system’s superintendent and quit right after the incident, but now is seeking to take back his resignation, the Detroit Free Press reports.

In this article, the newspaper says that board Vice President Anthony Adams plans to move ahead and post the vacancy.

Superintendent Teresa N. Gueyser filed a detailed complaint addressed to Adams about Mathis, saying he used a handkerchief while masturbating in front of her the entire time she was speaking.

Her complaint says that she has witnessed other unacceptable acts by Mathis and that she had informed him some time ago to have no physical contact with her, including handshaking.

Some board members told the Free Press that they did not want Mathis to return, but one member, the Rev. David Murray, said he would be happy for Mathis to return and that Mathis took responsibility for his bad behavior toward Gueyser.

“He’s a young man; maybe he didn’t know it was offensive to her,”

Alan Singer: Charter Schools are the Wrong Answer

Alan Singer

Social studies educator at Hofstra University

Posted: June 18, 2010 03:36 PM

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Charter Schools are the Wrong Answer

As promised, I will respond directly to people who objected to my earlier posts critiquing the charter school movement.

On June 14, The New York Times ran a front-page article about kindergarten children at the Clara E. Coleman Elementary School from Glen Rock, New Jersey who are learning about the principles of engineering through hands-on activities before they even know how to read. Their task was to design housing that would protect the three little pigs from the big, bad, wolf.

This was a wonderful project, in a wonderful classroom, with an excellent teacher, in an affluent suburban school district. Pictures that accompanied the article showed that the children in this class and school are almost all white. According to real estate estimates and the 2000 census report, in the borough of Glen Rock, about twenty miles from New York City, the medium household income was over $100,000 a year, about 60% of adults are college graduates, houses sell for about $500,000, and the population was 90% White, 6% Asian, 3% Latino, and 2% African American. For the High School graduating classes of 2004 through 2006, over 95% of students indicated that they would move on to a two-year or four-year college.

The New York Times article also highlighted a program in Manassas, Va., which has a thriving biotech industry, where the local school district has spent $300,000 on a children's engineering program since 2008 for projects like "making musical instruments from odds and ends, building bridges with uncooked spaghetti and launching hot-air balloons made from trash bags and cups." There is also a science technology program at the Midway Elementary School of Science and Engineering in Anderson, S.C., where kindergarten children "celebrated Groundhog Day by stringing together a pulley system to lift a paper groundhog off the floor."

In fact, these are all wonderful projects, in wonderful classrooms, with excellent teachers, in affluent white suburban school districts. My point is that public education and teacher preparation in the United States are not failing the American people. What is failing is education in inner-city minority communities and it is failing not because of minority parents, their children, or teachers and their union, but because government on every level, corporations, and white suburban taxpayers, do not want to pay what it will cost to rebuild inner city communities and create decent

HISD names new chief of special education | School Zone | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Only 15 percent of HISD freshmen graduate college -- UPDATED | Main

June 18, 2010

HISD names new chief of special education

Houston ISD today named Sowmya Kumar as director of the office of special education services, which serves about 21,000 children with special needs and disabilities. Kumar, who has been a special education specialist at the Region 4 Education Service Center for 13 years, replaces Carolyn Guess, who is retiring after 43 years with the district.

Kumar takes over as HISD Superintendent Terry Grier has ordered an audit of the special education department.

"Ms. Kumar's nearly 30 years of expertise and hands-on experience serving children with special needs make her the ideal candidate for the job," Grier said in a statement. "We are currently about to embark on an independent audit of our Special Education Department and Ms. Kumar will be instrumental in determining what needs to be done to better serve our parents and students."

Kumar, who was a director of special education services in New Jersey for 13 years as well as a teacher and education diagnostician for students with severe disabilities, earned a bachelor's degree in secondary science education at Queens College of the City University o

This Week In Education: Detroit: Board President Resigns Over Superintendent Allegations

Detroit: Board President Resigns Over Superintendent Allegations

by Alexander Russo

Detroit Board president Otis Mathis (above left) resigned -- and then attempted to rescind his resignation -- over allegations from the district superintendent Teresa Gueyser (above right) that he fondled himself (among other things) during their meetings. Detroit

College Students Don’t Work All That Hard � The Quick and the Ed

College Students Don’t Work All That Hard

by Chad Aldeman

The title of this post isn’t meant to be incendiary or to imply that this generation works less than the previous one or anything of that sort. It’s simply a true statement: College students just don’t work that hard. The Department of Education appears woefully ignorant of this fact in proposing two definitions for a “credit hour.”
The definitions are supposed to help in cases like those of American InterContinental University (AIU). AIU’s accrediting agency caught the institution awarding nine credits for a three-hour class. The accreditor called the practice “egregious,” but renewed AIU’s accreditation anyway. With the new definitions, the Department is hoping to have more leverage over accrediting bodies in future situations like this.
The Department has sought a way to protect financial aid expenditures from abuse by explicitly defining what constitutes a “credit hour.” It has created two definitions, and the first one is all about time, defining a credit hour as, “one hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours of out of class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks for one semester or trimester hour of credit,” or equivalent amounts of time through other schedules. This is called the “Carnegie unit,” and it’s a commonly repeated maxim letting students know about how much they should work for each class.
The problem is that very few students actually put in this amount of effort. Every year, the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE, prounced “nessie”) asks college students about their perceptions of their college

Does Compulsion Still Work? | Lefty Parent

Does Compulsion Still Work?

by Cooper Zale

I am convinced that we are in an historic transition in our society and our entire world from patriarchy to partnership. From a model of organizing society’s institutions around hierarchy, top-down control and “power-over” towards a very different model where the “world is flat” and decisions are made collectively in a “power-with” arrangement. Like all profound transformations, besides the visible changes in how our institutions are organized, how we lead our lives and interact with each other, there are internal realignments in what we value and how we frame the world and our participation in it.

I see that more subtle side of this transition when I see a dad get down on his knees to be at eye level with and listen to his five-year-old complain about being bored. Or when I see a female teenager laugh heartily and put her hand on her boyfriend’s shoulder. The dynamics of adult-child and male-female relationships are changing, from those based on a superior-inferior to more of an egalitarian model, in line with the historic transition of much of

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Friday, June 18, 2010