Blog Juice for Educational Technology

BoardBuzz has a new look and a new home. Visit us at http://boardbuzz.nsba.org. We also have several improved RSS feeds to choose from:

Stay tuned.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction will soon have greater oversight and authority over private schools in Milwaukee’s voucher program, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. A state legislative committee paved the way for the changes this week.

Specifically, state officials will have more latitude in closing troubled schools; voucher schools will have to use an independent certified accounting firm to confirm how many students actually attend the school and submit those reports earlier in the school year; and, any leader of a school that is shut down will be prohibited from involvement in another school for seven years.

The heightened enforcement and requirements come after several voucher school scandals in the past year, like this one, this, this, this, this and this. (Yes, some of those links may require registration. Quit crying).

A new law gives New York’s school boards the power to decide who represents the student body on the policy making boards, instead of having to accept the pupil selected by other students, reports the Associated Press: “The law signed this month by Gov. George Pataki repeals a provision that required the elected student body president to represent student interests in the nonvoting roles created in at least two dozen school districts statewide.” New York State School Boards Association supports, others oppose.

The blame game begins in earnest in Texas as the second special session of the year nears its conclusion with no school funding solution advancing. Besides pointing fingers at each other, some politicians are casting blame on public school leaders and playing a familiar hand: “All they want is money,” House Speaker Tom Craddick said. “They are not interested in any reforms, any changes. They just want money, and they don’t want any changes in the system. You think the average Texan wants to keep putting money into the system that’s not making it?”

A Texas school board member has a different take on the situation here, and the Texas Association of School Boards has a bevy of facts and testimonials on the success of the state’s schools.

Fascinating Newsweek article here about current research into the cognitive and emotional sophistication of very young babies. Researchers hope that the more they learn, the more they can help make parents and caregivers aware of developmental mile-markers. Turns out that initial indicators of some potential developmental problems appear much earlier in life than scientists had realized. Worth a read.

…as told by a teacher who’s worked at both. Give this column a read in its entirety.

The rhetoric’s been raised a big notch in an ongoing dispute BoardBuzz mentioned over prayer at various school functions in a Louisiana district. Seems the local ACLU head Joe Cook doesn’t think much of the Tangipahoa Parish school board’s good faith in complying with a consent judgment over religious practices in its schools. But here’s how he chose to put it:

“They believe that they answer to a higher power, in my opinion. Which is the kind of thinking that you had with the people who flew the airplanes into the buildings in this country, and the people who did the kind of things in London.”

One would think there have been some lessons learned about injecting this kind of thing into discussions about our public schools. This is a mirror image of declarations from the other direction that those who serve our children are “Enemies of God.”

More details on the story here and here. The school district apparently is getting some of its legal advice from the Alliance Defense Fund, the same folks who brought us this debacle.

In a similar controversy in Delaware, things were allowed to get so out of hand that the Jewish family who objected to what they say were sectarian prayers at school functions ended up having to move away. In the 21st century. We’ve certainly come a long way in our public discourse.

The 2005 ACT college entrance exam scores are out today. Bottom line: Scores held steady at 20.9 on a 1 to 36 scale. More students, nearly 1.2 million (or 40 percent of all 2005 high school graduates) took the exam. Minority student participation is up dramatically, with the number of Hispanic students taking the exam up 40 percent in five years and African-American test-takers up 23 percent during that time.

Check out a summary and other helpful ACT links at the Center for Public Education, NSBA’s new and growing resource hub for public school facts, research, and examples of school districts making a difference for students.

Associated Press coverage of the new ACT scores is here.

A mob scene erupted in Richmond, Va. on Tuesday during a sale of notebook computers when the Henrico County School district sold off four-year-old Apple iBook notebook computers for $50 per. Some had been waiting since 1:30 a.m. for the sale to begin at 7:30 a.m.

From AP: One shopper reported that “one woman standing in front of her was so desperate to retain her place in line that she urinated on herself.” (From Wonkette.com: “And all that’s nothing compared to what these people are going to do when they’re on hold with the Apple Help line.”)

More on that school district’s laptop project itself: The district made big news when it switched from Apple to Dell in April. A poll conducted by the Henrico school board showed that the four-year project was making a positive impact on learning. Here is an intriguing piece by a student a week before the big sale. It turns out teenagers do not treat laptop computers with full respect. Who knew?

As if teachers don’t already have enough challenges. A survey by the National School Supplies and Equipment Association shows that teachers spend an average of $458 a year to stock their classrooms with items such as snacks, prizes, classroom décor, and enrichment materials. So, it’s not only parents and students who contribute to the back-to-school economic boost that BoardBuzz wrote about yesterday. Many teachers depend on the generosity of parents and community groups to donate supplies. One creative teacher sends her students home with a wish list before Christmas to get families thinking about alternatives to traditional holiday teacher gifts such as coffee mugs and soap. Good reads in The Salt Lake Tribune here and Washington Post here.

Higher academic standards are what nearly 72 percent of students in a recent survey want, according to the State of Our Nation’s Youth report by the Horatio Alger Association and Peter D. Hart Research Associates. AP story here. Download the entire report here. (Just 1,000 students age 13-19 were surveyed, which has us questioning how you can really call it The State of Our Nation’s Youth.) One more intriguing revelation: Nearly half of those teens surveyed said if forced to choose to sacrifice one among these three—cable TV, Internet, or phone—cable TV is the one to go. Down with the Idiot Box!

Kudos to Jennifer Toomer-Cook of the Deseret Morning News for this factoid-filled article of back-to-school figures. A few interesting points:

• You knew education was good for the economy but did you know it was this good? $6 billion is spent on back-to-school clothing and $2 billion at bookstores—figures rivaled only by the end-of-year holiday season.
• There are more than 54 million K-12 students, 3.3 million more than 1970 (the baby boom era). Remember that the next time someone complains about how we spend too much on schools today. (More than 48 million students—or more than 88 percent—of the total K-12 population attend public schools.)
• Forty percent of our students are ethnic minorities, up from 21 percent in 1970.
• Nearly one in five students speaks a language other than English at home.
• Sixty-five percent of kindergartners attend school all day compared to 20 percent 30 years ago.
• Sixty-four percent of 2003 high school graduates went directly to college, where enrollments have swelled from 12.1 million 25 years ago to 16.7 million this year.

Data junkies can get more from the Census Bureau, here (pdf).