List of Race to the Top Contenders Continues to Grow - Politics K-12 - Education Week

List of Race to the Top Contenders Continues to Grow - Politics K-12 - Education Week

List of Race to the Top Contenders Continues to Grow

By Michele McNeil on December 15, 2009 2:34 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Education released a list of 36 states that plan to apply for Race to the Top Fund grants in Round 1. I blogged about this, making clear that the department's list wasn't necessarily the final word on Round 1 applicants for the economic-stimulus money.

And, indeed, it's becoming clear that several states that did not file their letters of intent do plan on applying in Round 1. Thanks to those who left comments, or called me, to fill me in on their states' plans. Informally, it seems that North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Michigan also plan to apply. Michigan, which isworking furiously in the legislature this week to change its laws to be more competitive in Race to the Top, tried to submit its letter of intent online, but ran into technical difficulties, a state education department official told me today.

(UPDATE: I've also heard Texas is planning to apply, even despite some strong words from its education commissioner. It's worth noting that the Lone Star State tends to hold its cards close to the vest. For example, it turned in its State Fiscal Stabilization Fund application dead last, just 18 minutes before the deadline back in July.)

However, a couple of states definitely are not applying. Maine, for example, is waiting until Round 2 so it can make legislative changes to improve the link between student and teacher data.

100 rally to support S. Phila. High's Asian students | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/14/2009

100 rally to support S. Phila. High's Asian students | Philadelphia Inquirer | 12/14/2009:

"More than 100 people rallied yesterday in support of Asian students beaten at South Philadelphia High School earlier this month.

Students and community members of all races gathered at the Arch Street United Methodist Church to tell the roughly 30 Asian students attacked during and after school that they applauded their bravery.

The event was held by Asian Americans United to 'show the students they are not alone and that there is a broad community of people who care about them and all of the students at the school,' according to organizers."

Ending Child Abuse At School | Teaching Tolerance

Ending Child Abuse At School | Teaching Tolerance:

"As a kid, I remember listening wide-eyed to my grandmother tell me about the “Dummy Room.” The Dummy Room was one of her first assignments as a young teacher in small-town Iowa in the 1930s. Like other Dummy Rooms across the country, it was the dumping ground for the school district’s hard cases.

The Dummy Room was supposed to be just for the “retards,” as they were widely called back then. But as Grandma quickly found out, many of the kids she’d been handed had no mental disabilities at all. Some just needed glasses. Others needed hearing aids. Many improved immediately after a few regular meals and proper grooming.

The road to the Dummy Room left scars on some of those kids. Frustrated (or sadistic) teachers had yelled at them or simply ignored them. Some of the kids had endured corporal punishment when they failed to respond to normal teaching methods. Thank goodness, I’ve often thought, that such treatment is a thing of the past. We now have special education and highly trained teachers. Ours is a more enlightened age."

CPR Reader Poll: Vote for Legislators of the Year | California Progress Report

CPR Reader Poll: Vote for Legislators of the Year | California Progress Report

PR Reader Poll: Vote for Legislators of the Year

Posted on 14 December 2009

Link here to take survey. Select your Lawmakers of the Year from a list of all state legislators who achieved a combined score of 65% or higher on 2009 legislative scorecards issued by four progressive advocacy groups before this poll started. Voting will close on December 31, 2009. Link here to vote.

Education Week: Congress OKs Budget With Increase for Education

Education Week: Congress OKs Budget With Increase for Education:

"Congress last week approved a fiscal year 2010 spending measure that would provide level funding for key education programs, even as lawmakers and the Obama administration weighed the prospect of a jobs package that could include new education aid for cash-strapped states and localities.

A House-Senate conference committee Dec. 8 agreed to a bill that would finance programs in the U.S. Department of Education at about $63.7 billion, a 2 percent increase over fiscal 2009, but a 0.7 percent decrease over the president’s request of $64.2 billion.

The House of Representatives voted 221-202 on Dec. 9 to pass the bill. The Senate approved the measure on Dec. 13, 57-35"

Education Research Report: Reading Recovery� Research Evaluation

Education Research Report: Reading Recovery Research Evaluation: "No studies of Reading Recovery that fall within the scope of the English Language Learners (ELL) review protocol meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. The lack of studies meeting WWC evidence standards means that, at this time, the WWC is unable to draw any conclusions based on research about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Reading Recovery on ELL.


Reading Recovery is a short-term tutoring intervention designed to serve the lowest-achieving (bottom 20%) first-grade students. The goals of Reading Recovery include: promoting literacy skills; reducing the number of first-grade students who are struggling to read; and preventing long-term reading difficulties. Reading Recovery supplements classroom teaching with one-to-one tutoring sessions, generally conducted as pull-out sessions during the school day. The tutoring, which is conducted by trained Reading Recovery teachers, takes place for 30 minutes a day over a period of 12 to 20 weeks."

The Educated Reporter: ISO: More reporting on for-profit colleges.

The Educated Reporter: ISO: More reporting on for-profit colleges.

ISO: More reporting on for-profit colleges.

Justin Pope at the Associated Press has been doing terrific work on for-profit colleges. On the face of it, it looks like they have an incentive to take lots of low-income students (and their associated aid) even if they have little chance of succeeding. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your perspective.

I love the Washington Post Company, I owe it my career and my social life, Don Graham is wonderful in many ways, and we can thank Kaplan for helping to subsidize the publication of a great (though thinning, grrrrr) newspaper. However, a 23 percent three-year default rate at Kaplan University? Default rates aren’t everything, and they are going to be high when you enroll the neediest students, but there is a lot to plumb here. We need more in-depth stories, with real people. Who is attending these schools, why are they expensive, what makes it hard to finish and pay back loans?

Oakland’s adult ed programs take a big hit under superintendent’s budget proposal | The Education Report

Oakland’s adult ed programs take a big hit under superintendent’s budget proposal | The Education Report

Oakland’s adult education programs would be slashed by nearly 40 percent in 2010-11 ($4.5 million of the $11.5 million they currently receive in state funding), ifpreliminary budget recommendations made by Superintendent Tony Smith are approved by the school board in January.

The recommendations, to be discussed at Wednesday’s school board meetingand voted on Jan. 27, contain few specifics, such as which services (aside from adult ed) would be cut and by how much. But the presentation does give us an idea of how the pain of a $28 million cut – Oakland Unified’s projected deficit for the 2010-11 school year — might be shared across the district.

K-12 schools would absorb $9.3 million of the $28 million reduction, which means the budgets of individual schools would shrink by less than 5 percent in 2010-11.

The remaining $18.5 percent cut needed to balance the 2010-11 budget would be made to central office services, facilities upkeep and adult education programs. According to the proposal, central services would be cut by about $10 million, adult education by $7.5 million (see explanation below) and facilities upkeep by $1 million.

Adult education includes diploma and GED programs, English as a Second Language, parent education and career tech classes, among others.

800,000 Doses Of Kids' Flu Vaccine Recalled - Sacramento News Story - KCRA Sacramento

800,000 Doses Of Kids' Flu Vaccine Recalled - Sacramento News Story - KCRA Sacramento

800,000 Doses Of Kids' Flu Vaccine Recalled

Tests Show Vaccine May Not Be Strong Enough To Protect Against Virus

ATLANTA -- Health officials are recalling hundreds of thousands of doses of swine flu vaccine after tests indicated they may not be potent enough to protect against the virus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified doctors about the recall Tuesday. The recall involves about 800,000 doses made by Sanofi Pasteur. The doses are pre-filled syringes intended for young children, ages 6 months to almost three years.

Health officials recommend children those ages get two doses, spaced about a month apart.

Health officials say it's not clear how many doses have already been given, but they don't think children need to be re-vaccinated. The lots passed potency tests when they were first shipped, but tests ind

Controlling a classroom isn't as easy as ABC -- latimes.com

Controlling a classroom isn't as easy as ABC -- latimes.com:

"Students filed into Chris Cox's dim classroom at Daniel Webster Middle School in Los Angeles' Sawtelle neighborhood, took their seats and immediately began working on a language arts warmup exercise.

While Cox took roll, the eighth-graders silently worked. When they went over the answers, students raised their hands and waited to be called on.

Down the corridor, seventh-graders streamed into Brent Walmsley's classroom and took over. Some sat on table tops; others wandered around the room, pausing to grab foamy handfuls of hand sanitizer that sloshed on the floo"

The Answer Sheet - A major reading program that gives more points to 'Breaking Dawn' than 'The Grapes of Wrath'

The Answer Sheet- A major reading program that gives more points to 'Breaking Dawn' than 'The Grapes of Wrath':

"On one hand you have the book “Breaking Dawn,” the fourth book in the “Twilight Saga” by Stephenie Meyer. On the other, you have John Steinbeck’s classic “The Grapes of Wrath.”

If you were going to assign points to each work--points that students would amass by reading each one and then passing a quiz on it--which book would get the most?

I’m guessing that most of you (myself included) would put Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize winning stunner on top."

Class Struggle - Why I have no use for the achievement gap

Class Struggle- Why I have no use for the achievement gap:

"I don't mean this as a criticism of my talented colleague Bill Turque. He was reporting the news, as usual. But I did not like the focus of his otherwise irreproachable Sunday story on the achievement gap not narrowing in the D.C. schools.

Turque was letting us know that despite the growth in D.C. math scores, the gap between black and white students had gotten larger for fourth-graders. This was an important topic in education circles, so he had to report it.

But I think the achievement gap is useless as a measure of school improvement, and we would be much better writing about how much each ethnic group, each school, each child is improving, or not improving. Our gap fixation puts us in a very awkward position."

EducationNews.org - A Leading Global News Source - In the push for gender equity, turnabout is not fair play

EducationNews.org - A Leading Global News Source - In the push for gender equity, turnabout is not fair play:

"So, ladies, it appears that big boulder we've pushed uphill is rolling back down after all.

After decades of grinding it out in classrooms, working to get into college and expand our universe of career choices beyond teacher, nurse, secretary or well-educated wife, we've apparently done too well.

For the past few years, college admissions offices have been seeing far fewer Y chromosomes, and they've been flummoxed about how to the treat the new male minority.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has launched an investigation to determine whether universities have met this quandary by discriminating against qualified young women and lowering admissions standards for less-qualified male applicants.

All of this all sounds outrageous -- skewing admissions practices to create some kind of artificial, boy-girl-boy-girl hoedown formation on campuses and the idea that women are seen as a majority that needs its leash yanked before we take over."

School folks in space war - NYPOST.com

School folks in space war - NYPOST.com:

"Parents at a Lower East Side charter school are slamming the city for pitting a slew of public-school parents against them in a battle over scarce building space.

Parents of kids at the Girls Prep charter elementary school are set to rally at City Hall today over what they say is their unfair image as the 'bad guys' as a result of Department of Education space-sharing proposals.

The high-performing charter school is looking to expand into the middle grades.

But the three proposals outlined last month for allowing Girls Prep to do so have stirred resentment because they call for carving classrooms out of a number of successful nearby schools -- including the highly regarded Shuang Wen elementary school."

Jamaica HS students, alumni band together to keep school open

Jamaica HS students, alumni band together to keep school open:

"If it's a fight the city is after, supporters of Jamaica High School are going to give it to them.

Staff, students and alumni are doing everything they can to keep the 117-year-old institution open after the city announced its proposal to shutter the school - where famous alumni like director Francis Ford Coppola and former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell once walked through the halls.

'We're going to fight the closure of Jamaica High School with every ounce of strength we have,' said social studies teacher and union representative James Eterno. 'We're going to mobilize and organize the Jamaica community, the students, the parents and any other friend of this school.'"

Federal grants change charter school equation -- Page 2 -- Times Union - Albany NY

Federal grants change charter school equation -- Page 2 -- Times Union - Albany NY:

"Politics as much as policy may determine how much money New York gets from Race to the Top, noted Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, a national group that supports reforms such as charter schools and pay-for-performance.

Allen contends that the scoring requirements have already been watered down due to political pressure. She believes the Obama administration would be hard-pressed to completely exclude a large, heavily Democratic state like New York from the grant program.

'What state you are in and how it factors into a political race has just as much to do as whether or not you're following a program's guidelines,' Allen said. 'That's the cynical part of my attitude. The purist says (Duncan) will really hold their feet to the fire.'"

School Districts Scramble After Paterson Delays State Aid - NYTimes.com

School Districts Scramble After Paterson Delays State Aid - NYTimes.com:

"ALBANY — The Mount Vernon School District has largely stopped ordering supplies and equipment for its schools. The Saugerties Central School District has warned 36 teachers that they could face layoffs. The Albany School District is switching to a cheaper food service company starting next month.

On Monday, superintendents across the state — and particularly in smaller and poorer districts — were recalibrating their budgets after Gov. David A. Paterson announced that he would temporarily withhold $146 million in school aid payments due on Tuesday and an additional $436 million in property tax reimbursements due to be paid to districts later this month."

Education chief copes with shortfall in state aid : Home: The Buffalo News

Education chief copes with shortfall in state aid : Home: The Buffalo News:

"The state's education chief faced a dilemma Monday that dramatically illustrates the fiscal dangers that lie ahead for local public schools.

State Education Commissioner David M. Steiner called for a series of controversial reforms — including lifting a cap on charter schools — that are designed in large measure to enhance the state's chances of being awarded from $500 million to $700 million in highly competi tive federal grant money.

At the same time, both Steiner and school officials across the state were trying to figure out how to cope with a delay — and possible loss — of $582 million in state financial aid announced Sunday by Gov. David A. Paterson."

Center for Urban Education Marks 10-Year Anniversary - USC News

Center for Urban Education Marks 10-Year Anniversary - USC News:

"The USC Center for Urban Education celebrated a “Decade of Making a Difference” at the California African American Museum on Dec. 8. The gathering served as a holiday party and celebration of the center’s 10-year anniversary.

The event honored provost emeritus Lloyd Armstrong Jr. and professor Michael A. Diamond, former executive vice provost, for their contributions to the founding of the center, which was part of the university’s original Urban Initiative"

UC Davis News & Information :: Tears, Pride as Honorary Degrees Conferred

UC Davis News & Information :: Tears, Pride as Honorary Degrees Conferred: "Editor's note: Photos of the ceremony and recipients are available.

'Talk about Kleenex. My daddy getting his degree, it just makes you want to cry.'

Christine Pooley swelled with emotion after a University of California honorary degree was conferred on her late father, who had been forced from his studies at what is now UC Davis during World War II. 'This is like closure,' she said.

Pooley's father, Henry Satoru Marubashi, was one of 47 former Japanese American students honored amid the pomp and circumstance of a graduation ceremony at UC Davis on Dec. 12."