Public Education Network Weekly NewsBlast "Public Involvement. Public Education. Public Benefit."

July 25, 2008

School Districts Take a Fresh Look at Integration
In the wake of last year's 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision that racial-integration efforts by school districts in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., were unconstitutional, districts and civil rights advocates nationally have been examining new ways to ensure that children of different backgrounds and ethnicities can be educated together. Writing in the New York Times magazine, Emily Bazelon, a senior editor at Slate, considers the ramifications of the court's decision, which has been viewed in some quarters as running counter to its landmark desegregation ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954. In particular, Bazelon follows the efforts of the Louisville schools to maintain what was already considered a successfully integrated district without running afoul of the court's latest determinations. An emerging approach involves a kind of socioeconomic integration in which individual students could be assigned to a school based on such measures as family, income, assets, and parents' educational attainment. In the view of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who provided a pivotal opinion in last year's case, school districts could also be "race conscious" in drawing school boundaries, choosing sites for new schools, and directing money to particular programs. But in such situations, a district usually would be limited to taking account of the racial composition of a neighborhood rather than the race of individual students. Bazelon cites research pointing to a powerful connection between a student body’s socioeconomic makeup and academic achievement. Still, socioeconomic integration appears to have limitations. Many large urban communities, for example, face special hurdles because of homogeneity in their student populations'.
Read the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/magazine/20integration-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=education

Failing in School Called Tougher on Girls Than on Boys
Academic failure appears to trouble teenage girls more deeply than it does boys, Reuters observes in reporting on a study by Carolyn McCarty, a researcher and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington. Her findings, appearing in the Journal of Adolescent Health, indicate that adolescent girls who are expelled or suspended, or who drop out of high school before they graduate, are more likely to have a serious bout of depression by age 21 than boys with similar experiences. "For girls there are broader implications of school failure," said McCarty. "We already know that it leads to more poverty, higher rates of being on public assistance, and lower rates of job stability. And now this study shows it is having mental-health implications for girls." She pointed, however, to a "gender paradox" in which failure in school is "more atypical for girls … [but] appears to have more severe consequences" for them when it does occur.
Read more at http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN2240317220080722

Georgia Pushing to Kill School-Finance Suit
The state of Georgia is making a final attempt to have the courts dismiss a 2004 lawsuit by 50 rural school districts over education funding, according to the Associated Press. The suit argues that small, poor counties do not raise enough money from local taxes to make up for more than $1 billion in cuts to state education spending in recent years, and are thus at a disadvantage. The state's attorneys say Georgia fulfills its constitutional obligations for education funding, asserting that districts can raise local property taxes or cut nonacademic programs if they need to. "It's a question of priorities, of local control, and management," said attorney Rocco Testani, who represents the state in the case. "These districts spend money on things not required by state law." The Georgia suit is one of about 20 ongoing school-finance cases in the nation. Over the past two decades, most states have faced legal challenges over how they spend tax dollars on education, according to Michael A. Rebell, executive director of the National Access Network at Columbia University. In 28 such cases that have been ruled on by the courts, he said, the plaintiffs have won 70 percent of the time.
Read more at http://www.macon.com/220/story/410779.html

Baltimore Students Show Unexpected Gains in Statewide Assessments
Maryland School Assessment test results for grades 3 through 8 have shown strong improvements by students statewide, but nowhere greater -- or more surprising -- than in Baltimore, according to the Baltimore Sun. Students in the city, predominantly black and low-income, posted generally large gains in math and reading, sometimes amid major distractions. At Baltimore's Alexander Hamilton Elementary School, for instance, one of the most improved schools in the district, students registered major gains in a neighborhood so challenged, the Sun reports, that the school was under lockdown for three days because of nearby shootings. Citywide, reading scores rose an average of 11 percentage points and math scores rose 8 points. Gains also were reported in Maryland's Prince George's County, where two-thirds of the population is black, contributing to a further narrowing of Maryland's so-called achievement gap. In Baltimore, the school superintendent, Andres Alonso, attributed test-score gains in part to investments in early childhood education that preceded his tenure last year, as well as to "the extraordinary sense of urgency that we have exhibited in the district this year, with a great focus on accountability and expectations." Overall, Maryland's test results rose statewide for the fifth year in a row.
Read more at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/k12/bal-te.md.scores16jul16,0,1791575.story

L.A. Teens Discuss 'Racial Achievement Gap'
At the request of the Los Angeles Times, eight Latino and Asian students from the city's diverse Lincoln High School gathered recently to talk about what California State Superintendent Jack O'Connell has called a "racial achievement gap" that separates Asian and non-Latino white students on one hand from Latinos and blacks on the other. The students agreed that Asian parents were more likely to pressure their children to excel academically, the Times reports, while Mexican-American parents were more likely to place work and education on a par -- and, in some cases, to place more value on work and the ability to earn money. With about 2,500 students, Lincoln High draws from neighborhoods that are 15 percent Asian, with the rest of the populations being predominantly working-class Mexican-Americans. Yet Asians make up 50 percent of the school's Advanced Placement classes. Although Latino and Asian families in surrounding neighborhoods are essentially in the same socioeconomic boat, Asian immigrants are more likely to have been comparatively affluent and to have had better educational opportunities in their native countries.
Read more at http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-me-lincoln16-2008jul16,0,3130880.story

Election-Year Ads Seek Spotlight for Education Issues
In a 30-second television spot that is part of a recently launched $5 million campaign dubbed "One Nation Left Behind," the Washington Post relates, a blond-haired boy is seen raising the flags of various countries -- including Finland, South Korea, and Japan -- onto one flagpole while ominous music plays in the background. In a voiceover, the actress Jamie Lee Curtis says: "This boy's future isn't looking so good. The schools in every one of these countries are outperforming ours." The TV ad, seeking to capitalize on the publicity and nationalism associated with the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing, is part of an effort by Strong American Schools, a nonpartisan organization formed last year to draw attention to education issues in the nation's presidential contest. Focusing initially on seven battleground states for the November election, the effort also is featuring ads on radio, in print, and on the Internet. Strong American Schools has received financial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among other philanthropic groups.
Read more at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/12/AR2008071201761.html

U.S. Seen Lagging in Pursuit of More STEM Degrees
Updating a high-profile 2005 report, a business-sponsored campaign called Tapping America's Potential has warned that the United States is slipping further behind in efforts to satisfy the group's call for the nations to double the number of bachelor's degrees awarded in science, math, and engineering by 2015, according to eSchool News. In 2005, a coalition of 15 prominent business groups said that a lack of expert workers and teachers posed a threat to America's competitive standing in the world, and that the nation would need 400,000 new graduates in the so-called STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) by 2015. But according to Susan Traiman, director of education and workforce policy for the Business Roundtable, an organization of corporate leaders, there's been insufficient follow-through to finance programs that might increase STEM graduates. She said other countries were doing more to shift incentives toward science training. American CEOs are concerned, she said, that "if we wait for a Sputnik-like event, it's very hard to turn around and get moving on the kind of timeline we would need."
Read more at http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=54607
See the complete report at http://www.tap2015.org

Schools Cutting Back on Nursing Staffs
Medical duties have become a part of the job for some teachers as school districts have reduced their nursing staffs or required nurses to work at multiple locations, reports the Associated Press. The trend comes at a time when more students are dealing with serious medical conditions such as severe allergies, asthma, and diabetes. Federal guidelines call for having one nurse for every 750 students, but the national average is about one for every 1,150 students, according to the National Association of School Nurses. A quarter of the nation's schools have no nurse at all. Meanwhile, the workload of school nurses has increased since 1975, when the federal government mandated that schools accommodate disabled students, clearing the way for attendance by children with feeding tubes, catheters, and other serious medical circumstances. "[People] think the school nurse is a nice little job where you take care of boo-boos," said Barbara Duddy, president of the Tennessee Association of School Nurses. "School nurses work very hard to make sure every child gets exactly what they need."
Read more at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080715/ap_on_he_me/school_nurse_squeeze;_ylt=AuJLg1XNEwmOzO6DDKAKZknVJRIF

Promoting High Achievement for African-American Students
After reading "Young, Gifted, and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African-American Students" (2003), three essays by leading thinkers in African-American education, Mary Tedrow writes in Teacher Magazine, she realized that "the ideas and potential solutions embedded in this book have gone on largely unacknowledged." Tedrow, a white high school teacher in Virginia, acknowledges that her "own experience with arguments for an inherent bias in the system of schooling have been filtered through the popular media, where issues like Ebonics, test and IQ bias, the stigmatization of stereotyping, 'acting white,' and urban schooling are treated superficially." She says the book by Theresa Perry, Claude Steele, and the late Asa Hilliard III brought her to considerations like the fact that, historically, education for black Americans has had no predictable tie to economic advancement, no matter what level of schooling a student achieves. "In order to succeed," she maintains, "black Americans must answer for themselves: Why sacrifice yourself to the pursuit of an education when the color of your skin is likely to close as many doors as your studies promise to open?" She recommends that "Young, Gifted, and Black" be included in the professional libraries of teachers and schools, and in the pre-service education of all teaching professionals.
Read more at http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2008/07/16/41tln_tedrow.h19.html

Weighing In on How to Improve Teacher Quality
Improving a school’s faculty should be easy -- hire good teachers, get rid of bad ones, and provide new training to those who remain, Ray Fisman, professor and research director of the Social Enterprise Program at the Columbia Business School, writes in Slate. But it's not easy: Once teachers become entrenched, it's hard to remove them from union-protected jobs, and it's hard to predict who will be a good teacher in the first place. According to researchers, nothing on a prospective teacher's resume indicates how he or she will do in the classroom. The only predictor of whether a teacher will boost students' test scores in a given year is "the amount he raised test scores in previous years." Most faculty hiring is done before applicants have a teaching record, however, and few schools have the ability to run complicated regression analyses on whether an experienced teacher has had positive effects in the past. "While it's not fair to park the problem of global inequities at the doorstep of teachers unions," Fisman says, "the continued floundering of public education in America is at least partly to blame: Education is an awfully good predictor of future earnings, and keeping bad teachers in classrooms filled with kids from poor families certainly helps to reinforce the cycle of poverty."
Read more at http://www.slate.com/id/2195147/?GT1=38001

Maryland Forced to Designate 5 Baltimore Schools Dangerous
Maryland's state school board recently labeled five Baltimore schools "persistently dangerous," as required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act, but the board acted under protest, the Baltimore Sun reports. Dunbar Brooks, former chairman of the state board, said he had personally told U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Raymond Simon that the board did not support the designation and that its compliance "in no way means agreement." Because Maryland has one of the strictest definitions of what constitutes a dangerous school, board members have said the label is unduly harsh for the few schools it is applied to. The designation is based on whether the number of students suspended for physical attacks, firearms, arson, drugs and sexual assault represent more than 2.5 percent of the student body for three years in a row. Only 46 schools in eight states across the nation were designated "persistently dangerous" in the 2006-07 school year. Six of those are in Baltimore, according to the U.S. Department of Education. All other states, including large states such as California and Michigan, reported no persistently dangerous schools. No schools outside Baltimore City received the "persistently dangerous" designation in Maryland.
Read more at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/education/bal-md.dangerous16jul16%2C0%2C5966376.story3337

How State Education Agencies Can Bolster School Improvement
If state education agencies want to become more effective catalysts for school improvement, they need to develop "a shared focus, a common language, and greater coherence" among themselves, federal policymakers, school-district leaders, local school boards, and individual schools. That was one of the observations to emerge from a symposium last summer under the auspices of the Education Alliance and the Urban Education Policy program, both at Brown University. Now, an 80-page report of the two-day event, which brought together some 50 education leaders, has been made available online. Says the report's introduction: "There is a growing body of research, confirmed by our own practical experience working with states and districts across the eastern seaboard, that the system of public education is fragmented and lacks cohesiveness. There is no entity to 'blame' for this fragmentation. The fact that the fragmentation exists suggests that there is an opportunity to dramatically improve the system of public education by fostering coherence and aligning structures and processes within and across levels of the system."
Read the report at http://www.alliance.brown.edu/pubs/csrqi/symposium.pdf

Kansas City Equation: Good Schools = Good Business
Surprise! Good schools are good business. In addition to helping to produce a local workforce, notes an article in the Kansas City Business Journal, good schools help recruit businesses and residents, and they foster research that generates revenue and new business -- directly funneling money back into the economy through building projects and tourism. "Education drives everything," said Bob Regnier, president of an area bank. "Pretty much every level of education has an impact. It's not unfair to say Johnson County developed the way it did and was successful because it had an unwavering support for K-12 education." When companies are searching for prospective locales, they want facts, such as the percentage of high school graduates, local SAT scores, the number of college graduates, and the kinds of degrees they receive. Most businesses looking to relocate associate education with the quality and stability of an area's workforce, and good schools are a key attraction for homeowners.
Read more at http://kansascity.bizjournals.com/kansascity/stories/2008/07/14/focus1.html?b=1216008000%5E1665773

Status of U.S. Kids: A New Annual Report
The federal government's latest annual report on children and youth, "America’s Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being," has been released by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Described as "an accessible compendium of indicators drawn from the most reliable official statistics," the report will be expanded in 2009. In addition to education, topics include health and health care, family and social environment, economic circumstances, physical environment and safety, and behavior.
See the report at http://www.childstats.gov/pdf/ac2008/ac_08.pdf

Brown vs. Board of Education: The Movie
Universal Studios is planning a dramatic film, "The Crusaders," about the celebrated 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case, reports Variety. The actor Tobey Maguire is slated to play Jack Greenberg, an idealistic lawyer fresh out of law school who joined with Thurgood Marshall, then head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and a future Supreme Court justice, to prevail in the decision that found school segregation unconstitutional.
Read more at http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117989240.html?categoryid=13&cs=1


NEW GRANT AND FUNDING INFORMATION

Mockingbird Foundation: Grants for Music Education
The Mockingbird Foundation awards grants to schools and nonprofit organizations to improve music education for children (see website for specific requirements). Mockingbird is interested in targeting children 18 years or younger, but it will consider projects that benefit college students, teachers, instructors, or adult students. Maximum award: $5,000. Eligibility: public schools K-12, 501(c)(3) organizations. Deadline: Aug. 1, 2008.
For more information: http://www.mockingbirdfoundation.org/funding/guidelines.html

Kids In Need Foundation: Teacher Grants
Kids In Need Foundation (formerly SHOPA) Teacher Grants provide funds for classroom teachers who have innovative ideas but lack the budget to bring them to life. Projects may qualify for funding if they make creative use of common teaching aids, approach the curriculum from an imaginative angle, or tie nontraditional concepts together for the purpose of illustrating commonalities. Innovation and merit account for 40 percent of the evaluation. Maximum award: $500. Eligibility: K-12 teachers. Deadline: Sept. 30, 2008.
For more information: http://www.kidsinneed.net/grants/grant_applications.php

International Reading Association: Teacher Recognition Award
The International Reading Association's Regie Routman Teacher Recognition Award honors an outstanding elementary-school teacher of reading and language arts who is dedicated to improving teaching and learning through reflective writing about his or her teaching and learning process. Maximum award: $2,500. Eligibility: regular classroom teachers of reading and language arts in grades K-6; must be IRA members. Deadline: Oct. 28, 2008.
For more information: http://www.reading.org/association/awards/teachers_routman.html

AMA and Leader to Leader Institute: Scholarship Program
The American Management Association (AMA) and Leader to Leader Institute scholarship program seeks to assist social-sector nonprofit organizations in developing strong leadership. The AMA Scholarship is designed to provide nonprofit leaders with an opportunity to step out of the day-to-day, interact with peers across sectors, and develop practical skills they can apply immediately within their organizations. Maximum award: one-year scholarship. Eligibility: employees of 501(c)(3) organizations with a minimum of three years of work experience in the social sector. Deadline: Dec. 15, 2008.
For more information: http://leadertoleader.org/collaboration/ama/index.html

Fourier Systems: Matching Grants for Science Tools
The Fourier Systems Computing Science Exploration Grant Program provides an opportunity for teachers to receive science-focused tools for their classrooms to increase student learning in math and science. Maximum award: 20-30 Nova5000 machines, equipping an entire science and math computing classroom or laboratory. Half the machines will be given to the winner, while the other half must be sold at retail cost. Eligibility: legal U.S. residents 18 years of age and older and employed as teachers in accredited U.S. middle schools or high schools, grades 5 through 12. Deadline: Jan. 1, 2009.
For more information: http://www.nova1to1.com/science-grant/index.php


QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"I've learned you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back."
-- Maya Angelou, American poet and activist

Vacation notice: The next issue of the NewsBlast will appear on August 22. Have a good summer.

The PEN Weekly NewsBlast is a free e-mail newsletter featuring resources and information about school reform and school fundraising. The NewsBlast is the property of Public Education Network, a national association of 81 local education funds working to improve public school quality in low-income communities throughout the nation.

Please forward this e-mail to anyone who enjoys free updates on education news and grant alerts. People wishing to subscribe to the NewsBlast should send e-mail to PEN@publiceducation.org, placing the word "subscribe" in the subject field, or they may visit http://www.publiceducation.org/subscribe.asp.

Some links in the PEN Weekly NewsBlast may change or expire after their initial publication here, and some links may require local website registration.

Your e-mail address is safe with the NewsBlast. It is our firm policy never to rent, loan, or sell our subscriber list to any other organization, group, or individual.

*** UPDATE OR ADD A NEWSBLAST SUBSCRIPTION ***
PEN wants you to receive each weekly issue of the NewsBlast at your preferred e-mail address. We also welcome new subscribers. Please notify us if your e-mail address is about to change. Send your name and new e-mail address to PEN@PublicEducation.org and be sure to include your old e-mail address so we can remove it from our list of subscribers.

If you use spam filters to protect your inbox, you may wish to take a moment right now to add PEN@publiceducation.org to your e-mail address book, spam-software whitelist, or mail-system whitelist. Adding the address will help ensure that you receive the NewsBlast and that your e-mail software displays HTML and images properly.

To view past issues of the PEN Weekly NewsBlast, visit http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_past.asp.

To subscribe or unsubscribe, go to http://www.publiceducation.org/subscribe.asp.

If you would like to submit a proposed article or news item about your local education fund, public school, or school-reform organization for a future issue of the NewsBlast, please send a note to PEN@PublicEducation.org. For the NewsBlast's submission policy, see http://www.publiceducation.org/newsblast_submission_policy.htm.

Kate Guiney
Contributing Editor
PEN Weekly NewsBlast

Robert L. Jacobson
Senior Associate, Communications

Public Education Network
601 Thirteenth Street, NW
Suite 710 South
Washington, DC 20005-3808
PEN@PublicEducation.org