Thursday, July 15, 2010

Rise & Shine: Misbehavior and punishment in four boroughs | GothamSchools

Rise & Shine: Misbehavior and punishment in four boroughs

by Philissa Cramer

The city and union agreed to a plan for housing new schools. (GothamSchools, Daily News, NY1, Times)
A state court rejected the city’s plea to fire a Staten Island teacher who flirted with a student. (Post, AP)
The city punished those who ran Nicole Suriel’s field trip. (GothamSchools, Times, NY1, Post, DN, WSJ)
News of fiscal wrongdoing at Kennedy HS are part of a long history of trouble there. (Riverdale Press)
The former principal of IS 141 in Queens says he was forced out on false charges. (Queens Gazette)
Chancellor Klein and his Ed Equality Project co-chairs oppose potential Race to the Top cuts. (WSJ)
Parents at PS 41 created a community service program for their children. (The Villager)
Civil rights groups quit working with Boston schools over community engagement efforts. (Boston Globe)
Changes to teacher evaluation laws mean teachers in many states will face a new reality this year. (NPR)

Culver City Patch, CA - School Enrollment Capped, Permits Limited

School Enrollment Capped, Permits Limited

Despite severe budget cuts, the Board of Education has decided to curtail their permit policy for the upcoming school year.

By Meghan Stettler | Email the author | July 14, 2010

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The Board of Education approved an enrollment cap Tuesday night that limits the number of incoming permit students, taking a step to curbCulver City Unified School District's swelling numbers at the secondary schools and decrease the district's dependence on permit student revenue.

The new policy, which was approved at the Board of Education meeting and is effective for the 2010-2011 year, states that students on permit at the schools can continue their Culver City education, but prospective students who need permits will not receive them if a 500-student cap is reached for the applicant's particular grade.

The new rule is not applicable for Culver City residents, whose children will be admitted regardless of the number of enrolled students.

"This is not our goal, this is a cap," said Scott Zeidman, Board of Education vice president. "We don't want to shove 500 people in a class. As economic times get better, we will continue to lower and lower that down to a point where we can survive and get our schools back to a manageable level."

During the meeting, board members wrestled over the implications of the enrollment cap. Parent

Education is 'civil-rights issue of our generation,' Cabinet official tells NAACP - KansasCity.com

Education is 'civil-rights issue of our generation,' Cabinet official tells NAACP

By MARÁ ROSE WILLIAMS

The Kansas City Star

Seth Wenig

Duncan.

“The only way to achieve equality in society is to achieve it in the classroom,” Duncan told NAACP delegates meeting in Kansas City for the group’s annual convention.

“This is not just a moral obligation; it is our economic imperative,” he said. “Everyone has a responsibility. Everyone can step up. Education is our national mission. Education is our best hope.”

He said community leaders “must be at the table when decisions are made about how to improve struggling schools.”

The Obama administration is making $4 billion available to improve the worst-performing 5 percent of schools in the country, Duncan said.

“But what our resources cannot buy is courage,” he said.

Rudy Crew, professor of clinical education at the University of Southern California and president of Global Partnership Schools, said struggling schools can’t be corrected with money alone.

“If people don’t know what to do with the money they already have, I don’t know what they are going to do with the money they are going to get,” said Crew, who

Your family 'type' can affect your kids at school - USATODAY.com

Your family 'type' can affect your kids at school

Updated 11h 28m ago | Comments 28 | Recommend

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Enlarge	NBC

The Huxtable family from the 1980s-era TV sitcom 'The Cosby Show' would be an example of a cohesive (happy) family marked by warm and emotionally close relationships with individual autonomy.


Enlarge	CBS

The Barone family from the sitcom 'Everybody Loves Raymond,' which ran until 2005, would be an example of an enmeshed family marked by conflict and emotion,w ith modest amounts of warmth, high levels of hostility, destructive meddling and a limited sense of family as a team.


Enlarge	Paramount Pictures

The family in the 1980 Oscar-winning movie 'Ordinary People,' where the parents retreat emotionally after the death of their oldest son, would be an example of a disengaged (unhappy) family marked by rigid, cold, controlling and emotionally withdrawn relationships.

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By Sharon Jayson, USA TODAY

The way your family interacts at home can affect how your kids do in school, a study suggests today in the journal Child Development.

Researchers at the University of Rochesterin New York and the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Ind., spent three years looking at the relationship patterns in 234 families with 6-year-olds and found a distinct family-school connection, with certain family types predicting problems in school.

Researchers evaluated each family annually, in two visits of two to three hours each. "We have a marital assessment, a parent-child assessment for moms and dads separately, and we have the whole family together," says lead author Melissa Sturge-Apple, assistant professor of psychology at Rochester. "It gave us a much broader look at the family system per se."

The team found data that support the theory of three distinct psychological types of families:

Young adults with Asperger's syndrome struggle to find jobs | The Columbus Dispatch

Young adults with Asperger's syndrome struggle to find jobs

Employment help often lacking for applicants facing difficulties with interviews, workplace interactions

Monday, July 12, 2010 02:50 AM

BY RITA PRICE

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

COURTNEY HERGESHEIMER | DISPATCH

Chelsea Ridenour, 23, an honors college grad, reads before a Franklin University accounting class. She has struggled to find and keep a job.

COURTNEY HERGESHEIMER | DISPATCH

Chelsea Ridenour had to leave one promising job because she was required to work on the help desk. As her father, Rick, said, she is "phone-phobic."

Her resume attracted plenty of attention.

Hospitals, technology companies and a major research organization indicated that Chelsea Ridenour - computer and math whiz, summa cum laude graduate of Capital University - looked good on paper. Some called for interviews.

And then, suddenly, it didn't seem to matter that she is intelligent and dependable and tenacious. Ridenour can communicate with a computer in six languages, but she can't chat her way through a face-to-face meeting with a stranger.

"People try to be nice. They're not deliberately not nice," the Hilliard resident said. "They just don't understand."

Ridenour is among a rising population of young adults whose coming-of-age stories are at best complicated and oftentimes heartbreaking. They are grown-ups with Asperger's syndrome and other autism disorders, conditions that society seems to handle best when boys and girls are young and in school.

But Ridenour is 23. What she needs is a job.

"My pitch always has been, 'There's a buyer for every house. Why don't we find the buyers for these kids who want to work?'" said Tom Fish of the Ohio State University Nisonger Center, a support and research institute for people with developmental disabilities.

"The challenge with people on the (autism) spectrum, of course, is social interaction," he said. "People look at these kids and say, 'Be more social.' Well, they can't."

Many young people with Asperger's syndrome, or "high-functioning" forms of autism, emerge from years of struggle, bullying and isolation in high school only to find that the adult world can be even more difficult. According to the Ohio Center for Autism and Low Incidence, national studies have found that only 6 percent to 14 percent of adults with autism are competitively employed.

Yet many possess normal - and in a lot of cases, superior - intellectual abilities.

The surge in autism diagnoses - the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the incidence at one in 110

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