Jersey Jazzman: The Biggest Lie In America Today

Jersey Jazzman: The Biggest Lie In America Today:

The Biggest Lie In America Today

They got together a bunch of elites here in Jersey to whine and complain that "we just don't have the money!"

In many ways, the New Jersey residents now know will disappear within five years because of yawning government budget gaps, a panel of top experts said Friday.

The bipartisan group of former officials and academics presented a dark view of the state’s future that included widespread government consolidation, worker layoffs, service cuts and tax increases. Experts said that future was nearly certain to come to pass, even with a rosy economic scenario.

Wow, sounds dire. Do you think maybe would should tax the people who have all the money '

Modern School: Where are the 99%? #ows

Modern School: Where are the 99%?:

Where are the 99%?

by Michael Dunn

Oakland Port protest November 2, (from Flickr, Brian Sims)

OWS attempted to shut down all of the West Coast ports from San Diego to Anchorage today. The OWS groups in all the major West Coast port cities agreed to join in the protest, as did Houston and even OWS groups in a few landlocked cities decided to participate by blockading Walmart stores.

While the action was ambitious, aggressive, and partially effective (several terminals in various cities were closed

Still full of life, 114-year-old Sheppard School faces its demise | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Still full of life, 114-year-old Sheppard School faces its demise | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

Still full of life, 114-year-old Sheppard School faces its demise

by Benjamin Herold

Text and audio production by Benjamin Herold
Photographs and slideshow production by Jessica Kourkounis
for the Notebook and WHYY/NewsWorks

Isaac A. Sheppard Elementary School, now 114 years old, could be living out its final days.

Popout

A tiny K-4 elementary school at Howard and Cambria in the heart of one Philadelphia's toughest neighborhoods,

Cutting the Higher Education Graduation Gap in Half - Education - GOOD

Cutting the Higher Education Graduation Gap in Half - Education - GOOD:

Cutting the Higher Education Graduation Gap in Half

by Jolene Koester

Figuring out how to say goodbye to our college students may seem counterintuitive when it’s only December, but with shrinking resources and a growing demand for graduates to fill high-skill jobs, colleges can no longer afford "super-seniors"—students with a surplus of credit hours in the wrong combination to graduate. And we can no longer afford students who drop out after their first year.

In my 11-plus years as president of California State University at Northridge, I've given a lot of thought to life transitions and tendencies to cling to what’s comfortable. Nudging super-seniors to finish and ensuring that

More on the D.C. Achievement Gap and Michelle Rhee's Legacy - Dana Goldstein

More on the D.C. Achievement Gap and Michelle Rhee's Legacy - Dana Goldstein:

More on the D.C. Achievement Gap and Michelle Rhee's Legacy

by Dana Goldstein

In response to my Nation piece on achievement gaps in Washington, D.C. district public schools, commenter E.B. wondered how things would look different if we measured student proficiency instead of raw NAEP scores. This is a great question, since proficiency--defined as "solid academic performance"--is the standard to which we should be holding most children.

As you can see from the chart I've whipped up below, things still look pretty abysmal when we measure proficiency instead of raw achievement. While D.C. public school students from every demographic group made modest gains over the past four years, just a small minority of black (12 percent), Hispanic (22 percent), and poor children (11 percent) in Washington perform at grade level in math. I've included scores from Charlotte,

RheeFirst! » A superintendent calls school reformers’ bluff

RheeFirst! » A superintendent calls school reformers’ bluff:

A superintendent calls school reformers’ bluff

by admin

Written by John Kuhn for Valerie Strauss’s The Answer Sheet. Read the entire post here.
“So I’m calling on reformers — Kress and Rhee included — to lend support for a new kind of reform, one that steps outside the schoolhouse and shares the onus for achievement with more than just teachers.

I’m calling for data-driven equality, modeled on Kress’s work, expanding it to force greater societal changes that will help teachers bridge the achievement gap.“

The most important speech on education in years

by admin

Written by TeacherKen for the DailyKos. Read the entire post here.
“So today we see Wall Street hedge funders and billionaires saying that they are leading the civil rights movement of our time. I have trouble imagining Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., walking arm in arm with billionaires in a crusade to privatize control of public education.“

Time to Throw Money at the Problem « InterACT

Time to Throw Money at the Problem « InterACT:

Time to Throw Money at the Problem

by David B. Cohen

It’s a well-worn phrase: you can’t just throw money at the problem. Well, what if the problem is a serious lack of money? Essentially, that’s the issue playing out in the Colorado court system. The most recent developments were reported by the Denver Post:

In a ruling that could have profound consequences for Colorado’s budget, a Denver judge Friday said the state’s school-funding system is not “thorough and uniform” as mandated by the state constitution.
The state’s school-funding system “is not rationally related to the mandate to establish and maintain a thorough and uniform system of free public schools,” District Judge Sheila Rappaport said in a 183-page ruling in which she called the system “unconscionable.”
“It is also apparent that increased funding will be required,” Rappaport wrote.
The case, Lobato vs. State of Colorado, was filed in 2005.

Though the case will be appealed before its outcome compels any action by the state of Colorado, Judge Rappaport’s ruling suggests that the plaintiffs made a powerful case at trial, proving that the underfunding of education denies Colorado’s students their constitutional rights. The government of Colorado is obligated to “provide for the establishment and maintenance of a thorough and uniform system of free public schools

Education Research Report: Study debunks myths about gender and math performance

Education Research Report: Study debunks myths about gender and math performance:

Study debunks myths about gender and math performance

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 hour ago

Ω A major study of recent international data on school mathematics performance casts doubt on some common assumptions about gender and math achievement — in particular, the idea that girls and women have less ability due to a difference in biology. "We tested some recently proposed hypotheses that try to explain a supposed gender gap in math performance and found they were not supported by the data," says Janet Mertz, senior author of the study and a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Instead, the Wisconsin researchers linked differences in math performan... more »

Autism researchers make exciting strides

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 hour ago

Ω Teaching young children with autism to imitate others may improve a broader range of social skills, according to a new study by a Michigan State University scholar. The findings come at a pivotal time in autism research. In the past several years, researchers have begun to detect behaviors and symptoms of autism that could make earlier diagnosis and even intervention like this possible, said Brooke Ingersoll, MSU assistant professor of psychology. “It’s pretty exciting,” Ingersoll said. “I think we, as a field, are getting a much better idea of what autism looks like in infants a... more »

Is it possible to learn high-performance tasks with little or no conscious effort?

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 hour ago

Ω New research published today in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It's the kind of thing seen in Hollywood's "Matrix" franchise. Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person's visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known targe... more »

Reading, Math Focus Crowding Out Other Core Academic Subjects

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 3 days ago

Ω New research reveals that two-thirds of educators in the nation's K-12 public schools believe that an overemphasis on English-language arts and mathematics has resulted in denying students a proper focus on other core academic subjects, such as social studies, science, foreign languages, and the arts. Conducted by the Farkas Duffett Research (FDR) Group on behalf of Common Core, the research is based on a survey of 1,001 third through 12th grade public school teachers that gathered data about teacher behavior and classroom practice. The research was funded by the Ford Foundation... more »

Supplemental reading programs work better when aligned with core curricula

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 4 days ago

Ω Students who struggle with reading get an extra benefit from a supplemental reading program when its content is aligned with the students' core reading curriculum, according to a study published in the December issue of the Elementary School Journal. The findings suggest that supplemental reading programs work best when they mirror core curricula in scope and sequence rather than simply being "layered on top," write the study's authors, Carla Wonder-McDowell, D. Ray Reutzel (Utah State University), and John A. Smith (University of Texas-Arlington). The study focused on 133 secon... more »

2,000,000+ in Charter Schools

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 4 days ago

Ω The number of students attending public charter schools across the nation has surpassed two million according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS). Over 500 new public charter schools opened their doors in the 2011-12 school year, an estimated increase of 200,000 students. This year marks the largest single–year increase ever recorded in terms of the number of additional students attending charters. There are now approximately 5,600 public charter schools enrolling what is estimated to be more than two million students nationwide. The numbers equate to a 13... more »

States Need to Improve the Middle Grades

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 4 days ago

Ω States across the South need to take steps now to improve student achievement in the middle grades — considered by many experts to be a critical weak point in public education — or else risk creating a generation of high school students ill-prepared for the 21st century and its changing work force demands, a major new report from the SREB Middle Grades Commission asserts. Although SREB states have made good progress in early grades achievement in recent years, "when students reach the middle grades, they start to lose momentum — especially in reading and also in math — and often ...more »

Middle-class elementary students ask for help more than working-class peers

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 5 days ago

Ω Middle-class children ask their teachers for help more often and more assertively than working-class children and, in doing so, receive more support and assistance from teachers according to a study from the University of Pennsylvania. The findings are reported in the December issue of the American Sociological Review in a paper entitled, "I Need Help!" Social Class and Children's Help-Seeking in Elementary School" by Jessica McCrory Calarco, a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology in Penn's School of Arts and Sciences. The paper is based on Calarco's dissertation research, a longitudinal... more »

STUDENT SCIENCE ACHIEVEMENT THREATENED BY ALARMING STATE VARIATIONS IN MEASURING LEARNING

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 5 days ago

Ω Lack of consistency across states creates patchwork of “proficiency” requirements and misleading information on how well students are being prepared for high school, college and careers U.S. students risk falling behind in science education due to radically inconsistent state definitions of proficiency. While teachers and parents are being told that students are meeting the standard for eighth-grade proficiency set by their state, they may actually be performing at levels substantially below their international counterparts and go on to struggle in high school, college and care... more »

Results From the 2011 NAEP Trial Urban District Assessments (TUDA) in Mathematics and Reading

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 5 days ago

Ω Data from the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that students from large cities nationally have made gains since 2009 at both grades 4 and 8 in mathematics and at grade 8 in reading. The Nation’s Report Card: Mathematics 2011 TUDA and The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2011 TUDA present results for public school students from 21 participating urban districts and from large cities nationally. District results are compared to results for all students attending public schools in the nation and large cities (i.e., cities with populations of 250,000 or more) ... more »

State laws mandating P.E., recess linked with increased in-school physical activity among children

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 6 days ago

Ω State and school district-level policies mandating minimum requirements for in-school physical education and recess time are associated with increased odds of schools in those states and districts meeting physical activity recommendations for students, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "Children spend the majority of their waking hours in school, thus schools are important locations to focus obesity prevention activities, such as increasing physical activity opportunities," the authors ... more »

Growing income and gender gaps in college graduation

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 6 days ago

Ω A new study shows that the gap in rates of college completion between students from high-and low-income families has grown significantly in the last 50 years. "We find growing advantages for students from high-income families," said University of Michigan economist Martha Bailey, who conducted the study with U-M economist Susan Dynarski. "And we also find that increases in educational inequality are largely driven by women." Bailey and Dynarski analyzed nearly 70 years of data on postsecondary education from the U.S. Census and the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth. Their f... more »

Health care, home, school differ for children with special health care needs

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 6 days ago

Ω The first federally funded report to compare children with special health care needs to children without reveals 14 percent to 19 percent of children in the United States have a special health care need and their insurance is inadequate to cover the greater scope of care they require for optimal health. The report, Children with Special Health Care Needs in Context: A Portrait of States and the Nation 2007, provides an enhanced view of children by illustrating their health, health care, home and family environments, and school and neighborhood environments compared with their pee... more »

Few Doctors Follow Sudden Cardiac Death Screening Guidelines for Athletes

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 6 days ago

Ω According to a state survey, fewer than 6 percent of doctors fully follow national guidelines for assessing sudden cardiac death risk during high school sports physicals, researchers said at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2011. The study was based on responses of 1,113 pediatricians and family doctors and 317 high school athletic directors in Washington state. Less than half of the doctors and only 6 percent of the athletic directors reported that they were even aware of the guidelines. None of the athletic directors said their schools required physicals to ... more »

Economic Impact of Virginia Beach City Public Schools

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 6 days ago

The Virginia Beach, Va., school district asked a university economist to calculate just what it brings both to the city and the Hampton Roads region in southeastern Virginia. Here is the Executive Summary of that report with slight edits: The Virginia Beach City Public School System (VBCPS) has large and significant economic impacts on the economy of the Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News Metropolitan Area. Every $1.00 spent and retained in the regional economy from the VBCPS operating budget results in total regional spending of $1.53, and every one direct VBCPS job is associate... more »

More Student Data Compiled, Access Still An Issue

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 6 days ago

Ω How can states allocate scarce resources AND improve student achievement without data? The answer is simple: They can’t. States cannot inform these critical policy conversations, or any others for that matter, without effective data use. This study, States Could Empower Stakeholders To Make Education Decisions with Data . . . but They Haven‘t Yet, by the Data Quality Campaign, points out that while states have built longitudinal data systems and established governance bodies, but these bodies have not yet tackled the full scope of turf, trust, technical and time issues.

Kindergarten Literacy Program: Impacts End 1st Grade

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 6 days ago

Ω Improving the ability of at-risk children to read and comprehend text has been a high priority in education policy over the last two decades. Low levels of reading achievement have been related to low academic performance. One critical factor in reading achievement is adequate vocabulary knowledge. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds often lack general and academic vocabulary to enable them to acquire knowledge and comprehend text when they learn to read. A study conducted by REL Southeast has found that the positive impacts of a kindergarten vocabulary intervention (PAVEd fo...more »

State Standards, the SAT, and Admission to the University of California

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 6 days ago

Ω A new PACE policy brief, by Michal Kurlaender, University of California Davis, Eric Grodsky, University of Minnesota, Samuel J. Agronow, Saint Mary’s College of California and Catherine L. Horn, University of Huston. Like most other universities in the country, the University of California (UC) requires that students submit scores from either the SAT or ACT exams as part of their application package. These tests have their origins in the efforts of a handful of elite colleges and universities to expand the socioeconomic diversity and enhance the academic promise of their admissio... more »

15,740 pupils in St. Louis would transfer to a County school district if given their choice

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 week ago

Ω A recent study completed on behalf of the Clayton, MO School District indicates that about 15,740 (27.8%) of K-12 pupils living in the City would transfer to a St. Louis County school district if given their choice and assuming there was no charge for tuition. The report was completed by Dr. Terry Jones, a noted political scientist and researcher on public policy from the University of Missouri - St. Louis. More than 3,500 of those students would list Clayton as their first choice on where to enroll. Additionally, more than 3,100 of 15,000+ who would transfer have IEPs and would... more »

New Report: State Oversight of For-Profit Schools Needs Major Improvement

Jonathan Kantrowitz at Education Research Report - 1 week ago

Ω As for-profit post-secondary schools have rapidly expanded throughout the United States, state government has frequently failed to challenge for-profit school abuses and fraud. One result? Increasingly, students are left buried under mountains of debt with no prospect for gainful employment. Yet most states have substantive legal recourse against fraud if they choose to step up to the plate to protect citizens. These are some of the major findings of State Inaction: Gaps in State Oversight of For-Profit Higher Education, a report issued today by the National Consumer Law Center'... more »