April 19, 2000
Education Week, Vol. 19, Issue 32
Student Well-Being
Prevention: Los Angeles Reaches Out To Students With Systemwide Approach
With the help of a district-run mental-health clinic, a city teeming with psychological clinics, and a $14 million annual investment from the district’s budget in mental-health services, the number of suicides in the district dropped from 35 in 1989 to 19 in 1997.
Student Well-Being
Homosexual Students: A Group Particularly Vulnerable to Suicide
When Manny was 14, he announced to his parents that he was gay. They promptly restricted his phone calls and locked him in his room, but when those actions didn’t "change" him, they threw him out of the house.
Equity & Diversity
First Words
Twelve-year-old Emilio Aranzana doesn’t say much of anything during his first day of school in the United States. Mostly, he nods.
Budget & Finance
Budget Battles: Mental-Health Care Seldom Comes Out Ahead
The high school needs a new roof. The teachers want a raise. Half the bus fleet needs a maintenance overhaul. Joey is depressed.
Which of these problems is a district most likely to tackle last?
Standards
Revised Mathematics Standards Provide More Guidance
Revised math standards released last week by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics show a greater emphasis on basic skills and content knowledge.
Student Well-Being
Nurturing Atmosphere: One School Strives To Be Kinder, Gentler
Squinting into the lunch-hour sunshine, Jackie Garcia scans the vast, blacktop playground for signs of altercations. Spotting a scuffle between a pair of 2nd graders playing kickball, Jackie, 11, bounds toward them, her bright-orange slicker, emblazoned with the title "Conflict Manager," flapping as she runs.
Equity & Diversity
Demographic Challenges Ahead For Schools, Study Warns
A report intended as an alert to education leaders says that in the next decade, the U.S. population of elderly and racial and ethnic minorities will grow rapidly, posing challenges of critical importance to schools.
School & District Management
New Superintendents Taking Helm In Big-City Districts
The fast-growing Clark County, Nev., school district has named a new superintendent, while leadership changes in several other big-city systems, including New York and Pittsburgh, continued to unfold last week.
Education
People in the News
The Klingenstein Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, has given Patrick F. Bassett its Year 2000 Leadership Award.
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Education Funding
Congress OKs More Money For Schools in Budget Plan
Congress last week approved a Republican spending blueprint for the coming fiscal year that promises more money for education, but substantially less than President Clinton has requested.
Education
Grants
From Federal Sources:
U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
810 7th St. N.W.
Washington, DC 20531
Nine states have been selected to share more than $6 million from a grant program, administered by the department's office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, that is designed to help children exposed to violence. The 66-month initiative, called Safe Start, will provide funding so that the selected communities can coordinate the efforts of law-enforcement agencies, mental-health professionals, and child-protective-service providers. The grantees are:
Special Education
Report Charts Growth In Special Education
More young children then ever are receiving special education services, and an increasing number with disabilities are earning high school diplomas, according to the Department of Education's latest annual report on such students. Includes the table "Enrollment Figures."
Education
Federal File
By any other means?
Nearly all the national education groups have been united in opposing Republican plans to convert federal aid into block grants, a device they see as undermining the ability to set national priorities. But a new proposal has them divided over what the phrase "block grant" really means.
Teaching Profession
Calif. Governor Backs New Effort To Ease Approval of School Bonds
The Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who helped finance a doomed, $23 million campaign to make it easier for California's districts to raise money for facilities are hitting the pavement for better school buildings again—this time with the help of Gov. Gray Davis.
Standards
Nebraska OKs Its First Statewide Test, While Making Standards Mandatory
Nebraska's enactment last week of a new plan of statewide academic standards and assessments leaves Iowa as the nation's lone holdout in the movement to embrace at least some variety of uniform state testing.
Science
News in Brief: A State Capitals Roundup
- Science Textbooks Would Acknowledge God
Under Measure Passed by Oklahoma House - Survey Predicts More Teacher Vacancies in New York
- State Chiefs' Group Gains New Texas Commissioner
- Arizona Enacts Law Aimed at Making Schools Safer
School Climate & Safety
New Mexico Retools Facilities Plan Overturned by Judge
Hoping to end a lawsuit over the way it distributes school construction money to districts, New Mexico has passed legislation that would make available $600 million over the next decade for capital-outlay projects and give preference to cash-poor communities.
School Climate & Safety
State Journal
Shifting the burden
Parents in Polk County, Fla., were surprised and more than a little angry when they learned that school uniform companies and other businesses could easily purchase information about their children from their local school system.
Teaching Profession
Education Groups Set Their Sights On Influencing Debate Over Guns
The National Education Association got tired of waiting for federal lawmakers to act on proposals to combat gun violence. So the union quickly assembled a coalition, bought advertising space, and sent a message to Congress.
Student Well-Being
Alone on the Range: S.D. Psychologist Covers Far-Flung Systems
Like a one-man emotional ER, Tim Harmon bolts into a classroom and conducts a 15-minute one-on-one counseling session with a student who threatened to hang himself last year. Then, satisfied that the boy is stabilized, he speeds off to his next case, at a school more than 100 miles east.
Equity & Diversity
Port of Entry
The student-intake center for the Fairfax County, Va., public schools is an educational Ellis Island. Includes: "First Words."
Student Well-Being
Memphis: A District Under Emotional Renovation
Architectural terminology glides easily off Barbara Jones' tongue. Metaphors of renovation come in handy, the associate superintendent of the Memphis public schools said last fall, when she began a campaign to systematically knock down the administrative barriers that stand between students and their emotional needs.
Special Education
Researchers Warn of Possible Pitfalls In Spec. Ed. Testing
Some types of alternative assessments and accommodations for special education students may present problems as states hurry to create new accountability systems, say researchers at the Council for Exceptional Children's recent annual conference.
Standards
Students Boycott Tests in Mass. To Protest Emphasis on Exams
In a protest against their state's embrace of high-stakes testing, hundreds of Massachusetts high school students and a handful of 4th and 8th graders refused last week to take part in tests that are a linchpin of the state's standards-based accountability system.
Teacher Preparation
AFT Urges New Tests, Expanded Training For Teachers
The nation's teaching force can be strengthened by improving screening methods for prospective educators and making teacher-preparation programs more meaningful, a report from the American Federation of Teachers says.
Student Achievement
Merit Pay Fight, Politics Alter N.Y.C. Summer Program
New York City's summer school program, a $170 million effort that had originally targeted up to 320,000 struggling students for academic aid this year, has become caught in a crossfire between some of the city's most powerful political forces and one of public education's most controversial issues.
Education
Science Teachers' Turnover, Dissatisfaction High, Survey Finds
Science teachers of just about every experience level aren't satisfied with their jobs and are thinking about leaving the profession, a national survey suggests.