Monday, April 26, 2010

Letters: Cut sports at Capo Unified to balance budget - Opinion - The Orange County Register

Letters: Update on Capo Unified: Cut sports to balance budget

THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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So the teachers and the administrators of Capistrano Unified School District cannot agree on the cuts needed to balance their budget ["More CSUD picketing expected," Local, April 26]. I think a new option needs to be put on the table and openly discussed: After years of cuts to music and art programs, it's time the athletic teams are cut – entirely. Where in the mission and priorities of a public school district are the football, basketball, volleyball, etc. teams positioned? They certainly don't add to academic excellence, and may in fact lower scores when players miss classes for practice and away games.

If parents and players want to have a team, let them raise the money and fund it separately from the district. The time has come for schools to put education ahead of athletics.

About two dozen picketers gather in front of Arroyo Vista to protest Capistrano Unified's failure to make a "clear, unambiguous offer" to settle a pay cut dispute, according to the teachers union.

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Opher Banarie

Laguna Niguel

The 'abandonment' issue

Not everyone is supporting the teachers' decision to strike. Under normal circumstances, my children (ages 7 and 9) feel safe and secure at their school. The principal assured parents they would provide a "safe environment" during the strike. I don't doubt that my children would be physically safe, but rather am concerned about emotional safety. They may feel abandoned by their teachers who are standing at the entrance to the school, and uneasy at seeing the virtual ghost town that the interior of the school became last week.

My children have not attended school since April 22. I have sympathy for the parents who don't have the option of keeping their kids home. Parents who work outside the home and don't have babysitting available are being forced to put their kids in the middle of a bad situation. Daily routines that take place during a regular school day give young children a sense of security. Sending them to school during this time would not be a "positive learning experience" as the School Board suggested.

I understand that the teachers want a guarantee that pay cuts are not permanent. I hope that the Board concedes to put that verbiage in the contract.

But I hope the teachers keep in mind that nearly every hard-working citizen I know has taken a pay cut compared to previous years, and there are no guarantees for any of us that our earnings will be restored.

To the Teachers: I urge you to go back to work. The children need you in the classrooms. You are the only

Education Research Report: Multistate Review of Professional Teaching Standards

Multistate Review of Professional Teaching Standards

States update their teaching standards on an ongoing basis and can learn from other states' efforts. For example the "Updated multistate review of professional teaching standards" adds to their previous 2009 review of teaching standards by offering options for broad consideration that include — structure and target groups of teachers, as well as ways of addressing special populations and use of technology — from six of the largest states in the nation. This review of teaching standards in six states—California, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas—focuses on the structure, target audience, and selected content of the standards.

ED.gov Blog Early Learning Tour Kicks Off in Washington, DC

ED.gov Blog

Early Learning Tour Kicks Off in Washington, DC

On Friday, the U.S. Departments of Education (ED) and Health and Human Services (HHS) held the first Listening and Learning about Early Learning meeting at ED’s Headquarters in Washington, DC.
Senior Advisor for Early Learning Jacqueline Jones (ED) and Deputy Assistant Secretary and Inter-Departmental Liaison for Early Childhood Development Joan Lombardi (HHS) hosted a panel of experts from diverse segments of the educational community. While Dr. Jones reiterated the two departments’ focus on birth through third grade, the goal of this session was to better understand preschool through grade three (P-3) structures. The audience was made up of members of the public, federal staff, early learning stakeholders, and two hundred webinar participants.
President of the Foundation for Child Development Ruby Takanishi shared her foundation’s role in the conceptualization of district P-3 systems and their use as a successful strategy in school reform models to close the achievement gap. Dr. Takanishi cited the Montgomery County Public Schools as an example of a system that has successfully built bridges from prekindergarten through third grade by aligning standards, curricula, instruction, and assessments both within and across the early grades.
Montgomery County Superintendent Jerry Weast, documented the effectiveness of high-quality preschool through third grade programs in leading to better outcomes for children through grade 12.
Metropolitan State College of Denver Professor of Psychology Deborah Leong described a curriculum method that focuses on enhancing executive functioning in which preschool and Kindergarten children master self-regulation skills as well as early learning standards.
Gail Connelly, Executive Director of National Association of Elementary School Principals, described her organization’s interest in high quality P-3 programs. She noted, as had other panelists, that key components of successful P-3 models include joint professional development and articulation between

Elk Grove schools honored for fighting asthma - Sacramento Living - Sacramento Food and Wine, Home, Health | Sacramento Bee

Elk Grove schools honored for fighting asthma

by nlofing@sacbee.com (Niesha Lofing)

Two Elk Grove schools are being honored today by the state Department of Public Health for their efforts to reduce student asthma attacks on their campuses.
Elliot Ranch Elementary and David Reese Elementary are among 15 schools receiving Achievements in Respiratory Health Awards.
Schools had to institute air quality improvement plans addressing asthma-causing cleaning supplies, classroom pets, pesticide use and maintenance problems to be eligible for the award, a public health department news release states.
Schools also had to show that they were enforcing state regulations to reduce bus idling near campuses and smoking bans on school grounds.
"Each and every student deserves a healthy and safe environment in which to learn," Dr. Mark Horton, director of the state department, stated in the news release.
David Reese Elementary, along with Hamilton and Washington elementary schools in the Hanford Elementary School District, received the highest ratings and a "distinguished achievement" award.

NCSE's Scott receives Public Welfare Medal | NCSE

NCSE's Scott receives Public Welfare Medal

April 26th, 2010

NCSE
2010

NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott received the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences in a ceremony on April 25, 2010, in Washington DC. According to a January 11, 2010, press release, "the medal is presented annually to honor extraordinary use of science for the public good"; Scott was chosen "for championing the teaching of evolution in the United States and for providing leadership to the National Center for Science Education."

Accepting the medal, Scott said, "That an organization comprised of the finest scientists in the nation would bestow this award on a small, underfunded, understaffed, nonprofit laboring to defend the teaching of evolution is both humbling and inspiring. On behalf of all the people who have worked at NCSE over the last 22 years to make it an effective organization, I thank you from the bottom of my heart." (A transcript of her remarks follows.)

Previous recipients include Neal Lane, Norman Borlaug, Maxine F. Singer, C. Everett Koop, and Carl Sagan. The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter

South Philly High: The District's alternate reality | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

South Philly High: The District's alternate reality

by Helen Gym on Apr 26 2010

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A few weeks back I wrote a post about Lin De Liu, a 16-year-old boy who enrolled at South Philadelphia High School post-December 3 and who was assaulted last month in a bathroom stall.

Monday’s Inquirer story gives an update on Lin De’s condition:

The incident lasted only seconds, but for Liu, a 16-year-old immigrant from China, the consequences have been profound.

His vision frequently turns blurry, to where he can't count fingers held in front of his face. He forgets conversations that occurred moments earlier, and sometimes struggles to identify everyday objects, like the chicken on his dinner plate. He gets sudden nose bleeds. . .

Liu was examined at Chinatown Medical Services on March 25, where the doctor wrote he had blurred vision and should be seen at a hospital. The next day, Liu underwent a CT scan of the head. A week later, a sudden loss of vision sent him to the emergency room for a second CT scan. More tests are pending.

Liu worries that his condition is permanent - and that he could be hurt even worse at school.

"I have this great fear that someone will attack me again," he said.

The family has amassed thousands of dollars in medical bills but that pales in comparison to the family’s stress.

"I'm so upset," Liu's mother, Hui Qin Chen, said through a translator as she wiped tears from her eyes. "I don't know what to do."

The medical records and at least one eyewitness statement make clear what happened: a kid kicked in a bathroom stall door that smacked Lin De’s head against the wall.

But for the School District an entirely different story has cropped up a month after the attack – and delivered only to the media. No one from the School District, for the record, has formally contacted the family to explain what they found, clarify discrepancies, or even reach out and help the family deal with their son’s injuries.

According to the District:

The incident was apparently a "careless" accident, not an assault. Funny though that kicking in doors isn’t exactly a passive act, and an eyewitness’ account that the boys were cracking up at Lin De’s pain doesn’t exactly indicate insouciance. The District bases this assessment on apparently no

AOL News Op-ed: Debate: We Only Want to Make Sure Schools Deliver Results – ED.gov Blog

AOL News Op-ed: Debate: We Only Want to Make Sure Schools Deliver Results

The following op-ed by Secretary Arne Duncan appeared on the AOL News website.

(April 21) — Today, more federal student aid is available than ever before for students to pursue a college or vocational education. Last year, the U.S. Department of Education provided more than $115 billion in federal student aid to over 13 million students and families attending more than 6,000 colleges, universities and career schools.

Better yet, two new laws — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act — make significant investments in higher education so that college will be even more accessible and affordable for millions of Americans.

long with greater access, however, comes a renewed need to ensure that taxpayer funds are used appropriately, and that consumers receive a quality education and training worthy of this unprecedented federal investment.

The U.S. Department of Education has been working with the higher education community to strengthen a number of federal rules on the use of federal financial aid under the Higher Education Act. One of these rules states that vocational or career programs must “prepare students for gainful employment in a recognized occupation” to be eligible for federal grants and loans.

Over the past year, the department sought input from students, schools, vocational programs and the public about whether vocational and career programs were effectively preparing students for gainful employment. Many former students said they were well served by the institutions they attended and the federal aid they received. The programs delivered what they expected — and the training helped them to prepare for a better job.

However, many former students of vocational programs have reported that they were enticed into programs that did not deliver. They reported that their programs fell far short of providing the education and training needed to be gainfully employed. A number of recent media accounts have painted similar pictures of students who received a shoddy education at vocational schools, are now unable to find jobs and are saddled with huge student debts.

These problems afflict only a small minority of vocational and career programs. But they will fester unless steps are taken to protect students and taxpayers. To do otherwise would place taxpayer funds at risk and discourage disadvantaged youths and adults from continuing their pursuit of education and training.

In the past, the department has done little to ensure that programs meet the “gainful employment” requirement. After hearing from the public, the department began discussions or negotiations on language for revising the gainful employment rule. We met with representatives of career schools, traditional colleges and universities, education groups and others affected by these provisions.

We put on the table for discussion a number of suggestions, including re-examining the relationships between student debt and potential earnings in the occupation students are being trained for, the rates of students completing a program and getting jobs, and the rates of students repaying federal loans.

Unfortunately, the negotiators did not reach complete agreement on a proposal. Indeed, the representatives of those schools most affected by the gainful employment rule declined to negotiate on these proposals.

Since the conclusion of the formal discussion sessions, we have received suggestions from a variety of individuals and organizations about these and other possible approaches. While these suggestions are welcome, it is important that we get input from the broader community. For this reason, we will publish a proposed rule later this spring in order to receive and consider additional public comment.

Let me be clear that we will not publish a final rule until I am convinced that it will address the problems that I have described and that we heard so much about during our public hearing process. We will take all measures necessary to ensure that a new rule does not have significant negative unintended consequences.

Opening the door to opportunity is the bedrock purpose of the financial aid programs — and nothing we have suggested would affect an individual’s eligibility for financial aid. The aim of the department’s rule-making this spring is rather to ensure that the wide array of programs available to students deliver the quality results they deserve — benefiting not just individual students in the job market but the nation’s economy and future prosperity.

This entry was written by jjohnson, posted on April 26, 2010 at 1:31 pm, filed under Headlines. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.

Autism Awareness Month: Raising Awareness with Special Education Teacher Kathy Berkowitz — Citrus Heights Herald

Autism Awareness Month: Raising Awareness with Special Education Teacher Kathy Berkowitz

by EMILY CARDIFF on APRIL 26, 2010 · 0 COMMENTS

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Post image for Autism Awareness Month: Raising Awareness with Special Education Teacher Kathy Berkowitz

In the 1970s, a movement was started to spread the importance of public understanding about the need for concern about autism. Public awareness of this form of developmental disability was not widely known or understood during this time and even today is still being researched. Autism affects a person’s communication abilities and can make socialization a great challenge. Classified as a spectrum disorder, autism can affect individuals in different ways and on different levels. April is National Autism Awareness Month teacher with a credential acknowledging her as Severely Handicapped Specialist.

For the past 20 years, Kathy Berkowitz has been an Independent Living Skills (ILS) teacher in the Special Education department at New San Juan High School in Citrus Heights. Kathy had known her whole life that she wanted to teach, but it

Teachers moving toward education for liberation | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Teachers moving toward education for liberation

by Guest blogger on Apr 26 2010 Posted in Community voices

This week's blog post comes from Teacher Action Group members Sulaiha Schwartz and Anissa Weinraub.

It’s a Monday evening and 15 teachers from the School District of Philadelphia are sitting around a table. They’re engaged in a lively conversation about the outside influences that impact the types of curricular decisions they get to make daily.

“It all bears down on us from the outside,” one teacher points out. “The push for ‘accountability’ at the federal level funnels all the way down through the state, the District, and the school levels, ending up at the classroom. It’s like we’re a target.”

“The pressures of No Child Left Behind and making AYP loom over my school. It feels like all we’re expected to do is prep our students for tests,” comments another, in frustration. “There’s no space for me to really teach or do the projects that I know my students would benefit from. I feel powerless.”

These teachers, members of the Teacher Action Group (TAG), are interested in exploring the larger picture – the web of federal policy, state, and local pressures to “perform”, and the way money moves – in order to better understand the limits placed on their teaching practice.

These individuals are not alone. Teachers across the city are expressing similar frustrations on a daily basis. However, this group is not willing to solely sit around and complain about the state of education today. Instead, the Teacher Action

Markham Becomes Flashpoint for Teacher Seniority Reform Debate � The Quick and the Ed

Markham Becomes Flashpoint for Teacher Seniority Reform Debate

by Rob Manwaring

We recently highlighted Markham middle school, a low performing schools in Los Angeles, in a report on low performing school improvement. Now Markham has become the flashpoint of the debate in California to overhaul teacher seniority policies. Governor Schwarzenegger recently visited Markham to highlight the problems at this school which unfortunately became a victim of seniority staffing policies (See related story). As part of a fresh start restructuring of the school, a non-profit organization established by the Mayor let all of the teachers at Markham go, rehired some of them, but mainly hired new young teachers to staff the school. The goals was to model the school after successful charter schools in the district like Green Dot. Unfortunately the school was still subject to the district’s collective bargaining agreement. So when the LA Unified faced a budget problem, it laid off over half of the staff at Markham in the summer of 2009, and has yet to be able to backfill those positions. The school is also part of a lawsuit by the ACLU to stop LAUSD from doing further harm at Markham and school like it.
Earlier this spring, the a task force created by LA’s superintendent, Ramon Cortines and chaired by Ted Mitchell, CEO of New Schools and chair of the State Board of Education (and my old boss), developed a set of recommendations to overhaul the district’s teacher and administrator policies including evaluation, seniority, tenure, differentiated compensation and career pathways. The report is worth a look. But, part of what this group determined was that there needed to be several changes in state law to allow them to implement the changes proposed.
Earlier this month, the Governor finally proposed legislation on teacher reforms that were referenced when he proposed his budget in January, but no details had followed. This reform bill takes on seniority placement

Education Week American Education News Site of Record

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States Expect Revenue Rise, Though Recovery Pace Slow

It could be years before most state budgets return to prerecession health, fiscal experts warn. (April 26, 2010)

Tensions Flare in Race to Top's Second Round

States and teachers' unions clash over policy changes aimed at securing some of the $3.4 billion in stimulus grants still left.

• Scramble Begins for $650 Million in 'i3' Funding
• Complete coverage: Schools and the Stimulus

(April 23, 2010) | Comments (3)

Pre-K Rules for ELLs Would Break Ground Nationally

Proposed regulations in Illinois would require that districts offer English-learners in preschool the same support as in K-12. (April 23, 2010) | Comments (5)

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