Sunday, June 6, 2010

The Kansas City School District works to erase a tragic history - KansasCity.com

The Kansas City School District works to erase a tragic history

By RICK MONTGOMERY

The Kansas City Star

Shane Keyser

Superintendent John Covington’s conference room — the “war room,” his staff calls it — is ringed by 14 white boards, covered with grids, drawn in black marker, that track some 200 tasks under way in the school system’s transformation effort.

I t’s 1991 and Stanley Peeples II has entered a new world. Central High School — the core of Kansas City. He can’t believe this.

Stanley and his classmates are looking at a row of desks with robotic arms stretching out, able to pick up blocks. Downstairs there is an Olympic-size pool with underwater windows. It’s the first day at this $32 million school, Stanley can choose either the “Classical Greek” or “Computers Unlimited” track, and the front foyer alone — man, fresh! Marble floor and Greek columns.

Back in sixth grade, Stanley shivered in class for a month because the boiler broke. In junior high, Nancy Reagan made a visit to address the plight of drug-infested, gang-haunted schools.

But this place — yeah, tight!

It’s too bad, in this magnificent magnet school, that test scores and graduation rates will never climb out of the dumps.

•••

He is only 30, but Airick Leonard West knows the tragic history of the school district he wants to help save.

He knows the saga of the lawsuit that took flight before he was born. How it led to the most ambitious school-desegregation plan a court ever crafted. How $2 billion in taxes, imposed by a judge, produced lavish new buildings across the Kansas City School District, yet never turned around lowly achievement.

He knows, as we all do now, that money doesn’t teach

Board member defends controversial social studies curriculum | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Board member defends social studies curriculum

By MATT WOOLBRIGHT
HOUSTON CHRONICLE

June 5, 2010, 10:30PM

Jay Janner Austin American-Statesman

Ken Mercer, who serves on the State Board of Education, defends the changes made in school curriculum.

Ken Mercer is the vice-chair of the State Board of Education's instruction committee and played a significant role in the adopting of a new curriculum for Texas textbooks. A software engineer in San Antonio, Mercer served in the Texas House of Representatives and joined the Board of Education in 2006. The new social studies curriculum, championed by Mercer and the rest of the board's conservative majority, was the subject of tremendous national scrutiny and debate. Mercer discussed the controversial curriculum issue recently with Chronicle reporter Matt Woolbright.

Q: Why do you think the Texas textbook battle got so much national attention?

A: Texas has 4.8 million kids in public school. We have more kids in school than many states have in total population. So people know that oftentimes, the books that Texas publishes will become the books throughout much of the United States.

Wave of school closings is biggest since early 1980s | StarTribune.com

Wave of school closings is biggest since early 1980s

With enrollments down and funds tight, at least 20 Twin Cities schools won't reopen next fall. The shutdowns are due to demographic and economic forces, as well as a greater choice of schools.

By ALLIE SHAH and EMILY JOHNS, Star Tribune

Last update: June 5, 2010 - 10:01 PM

Not since the early 1980s has the end of the school year brought such a large wave of schools in the Twin Cities area that will not reopen next fall.

This week thousands of students and teachers in at least 20 schools are packing up their desks and their memories and heading to new buildings next fall. Two of the state's largest districts -- Anoka-Hennepin and St. Paul -- are experiencing their largest downsizing ever.
The shutdowns are due to a combination of demographic and economic forces, and a greater choice of schools.
Most acutely affected are those two big districts and Minneapolis, where fewer students have created "excess space" in some buildings. That slack, coupled with the bleakest education funding forecast in a generation, has left districts with little choice

Glenn Reynolds: Higher education's bubble is about to burst | Washington Examiner

Glenn Reynolds: Higher education's bubble is about to burst

SUNDAY REFLECTIONS CONTRIBUTOR — It's a story of an industry that may sound familiar.

The buyers think what they're buying will appreciate in value, making them rich in the future. The product grows more and more elaborate, and more and more expensive, but the expense is offset by cheap credit provided by sellers eager to encourage buyers to buy.

Buyers see that everyone else is taking on mounds of debt, and so are more comfortable when they do so themselves; besides, for a generation, the value of what they're buying has gone up steadily. What could go wrong? Everything continues smoothly until, at some point, it doesn't.

Yes, this sounds like the housing bubble, but I'm afraid it's also sounding a lot like a still-inflating higher education bubble. And despite (or because of) the fact that my day job involves higher education, I think it's better for us to face up to what's going on before the bubble bursts messily.

College has gotten a lot more expensive. A recent Money magazine report notes: "After adjusting for financial aid, the amount families pay for college has

NY passes students who get wrong answers on tests - NYPOST.com

NY passes students who get wrong answers on tests

By CARL CAMPANILE and SUSAN EDELMAN

Last Updated: 9:10 AM, June 6, 2010

Posted: 1:40 AM, June 6, 2010

Comments: 34

|More

EXCLUSIVE

When does 2 + 2 = 5?

When you're taking the state math test.

Despite promises that the exams -- which determine whether students advance to the next grade -- would not be dumbed down this year, students got "partial credit" for wrong answers after failing to correctly add, subtract, multiply and divide. Some got credit for no answer at all.

"They were giving credit for blatantly wrong things," said an outraged Brooklyn teacher who was among those hired to score the fourth-grade test.

State education officials had vowed to "strengthen" and "increase the rigor" of both the questions and the scoring when about 1.2 million kids in grades 3 to 8 -- including 450,000 in New York City -- took English exams in April and math exams last month.

CLOSE ENOUGH: New York City fourth-graders were able to get partial credit for blank or incorrect answers on state math tests. A concerned teacher blew the whistle on the practice.

But scoring guides obtained by The Post reveal that kids get half-credit or more for showing fragments of work related to the problem -- even if they screw up the calculations or leave the answer blank.

Examples in the fourth-grade scoring guide include:

* A kid who answers that a 2-foot-long skateboard is 48 inches long gets half-credit for adding 24 and 24 instead of the correct 12 plus 12.

* A miscalculation that 28 divided by 14 equals 4 instead of 2 is "partially correct" if the student uses the right method to verify the wrong answer.

* Setting up a division problem to find one-fifth of $400, but not solving the problem -- and leaving the answer blank -- gets half-credit.

* A kid who subtracts 57 cents from three quarters for the right change and comes up with 15 cents instead of 18 cents still gets half-credit.

* A student who figures the numbers of books in 35 boxes of 10 gets half-credit despite

The Answer Sheet - Consequences for playing 'Beat the Jew'

Consequences for playing 'Beat the Jew'

What should the consequences be for high school seniors who concoct a game called “Beat the Jew,” advertise it online, and then play it by dividing kids up into “Nazis” and "Jews," the latter group being subjected to "incineration" or "enslavement."

This game was actually played by students at La Quinta High Schoolnear Palm Springs, Calif., on a highway that runs through La Quinta, the Associated Press reported.

About 40 students joined a Facebook group dedicated to the game -- the page has since been taken down -- though fewer kids actually showed up to play, school officials said.

Exactly how the game was played is unclear. One description given involves the "Nazis" blindfolding "Jews" and then dropping them somewhere with the aim of having them find their way back to school. Another description has the "Nazis" chasing and trying to capture the "Jews." Losers were subject to "incineration" or "enslavement," a school administrator was quoted as saying.

Now, seven seniors are facing disciplinary measures for playing the game, which school officials were alerted to by another student who is reported to be afraid to return to school.

Initially, officials were concerned that they couldn’t discipline the kids because the game was played off-campus, but apparently discussions

EducationNews.org Schools failing to teach children the core beliefs of Christianity, says Ofsted

EducationNews.org

Schools failing to teach children the core beliefs of Christianity, says Ofsted

6.6.10 - Schools are neglecting to teach children the core beliefs of Christianity in religious education

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NY passes students who get wrong answers on school testsWhen does 2 + 2 = 5?

When does 2 + 2 = 5? When you're taking the state math test. Despite promises that the exams -- which determine whether students...

Full story

'Black flight' changing the makeup of Dallas schools

6.6.10 - Every morning Vivian King drives her granddaughter past her neighborhood Dallas ISD school on the five-mile route to her charter school. ...

Full story

Higher education's bubble is about to burst

6.6.10 - It's a story of an industry that may sound familiar. The buyers think what they're buying will appreciate in value, making them rich in the future. The product

Today’s Oil Spill Resources | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Today’s Oil Spill Resources Here are today’s additions to The Best Sites To Learn About The Gulf Oil Spill: Oil Reaches Florida Beaches is a Wall Street Journal slideshow. Point-au-Chien Indians fear devastation from gulf oil spill is a Washington Post slideshow. The Physics ...

World Cup Additions Here are the newest additions to The Best Sites For Learning About The World Cup: TIME Magazine has a special World Cup page. The Washington Post has a website filled with World Cup features.

“Heart Of Tota” Game Heart Of Tota is a new online “point and click” video game. English Language Learners can use it through reading its “walkthrough” and through reading the words describing the items they click on and “save.” You can learn more about how I use these ...

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Sunday, June 6, 2010