April 5, 2006
Education Week, Vol. 25, Issue 30
Federal
Rule Interprets Law on Boy Scouts’ Access to Schools
The Department of Education has issued final rules underscoring that school districts must accommodate the Boy Scouts of America and certain other youth groups that ask to use schools for meetings and recruitment.
School Climate & Safety
Education Said to Trail Most Other Gauges of Child Welfare
A new report concludes that, judging by most indicators of well-being, life has improved over the past 10 years for the nation’s children—except when it comes to their education and health.
College & Workforce Readiness
Minority Report
For one freshman from a virtually all-white town, enrolling in a historically black university has been a lesson in diversity and self-discovery.
Ed-Tech Policy
Educators Experiment With Student-Written ‘Wikis’
Wikis are still flying under most schools’ radar screens. And educators who use them must also deal with some privacy and security concerns. Still, education technology experts say wikis show promise for K-12 educators.
Teaching Profession
Report: NCLB Law Hasn’t Superseded Contracts
The possibility that the No Child Left Behind Act could trump provisions of collective bargaining agreements with teachers has hung in the air as an open question since before the measure became law in 2002. But it shouldn’t anymore, says a report released last week asserting that the teachers’ contracts have the winning hand.
Equity & Diversity
Students Express Concerns in Public Square, Classrooms
About 1,000 Northern Virginia high school students skipped classes for at least half a day last week to march from a public plaza to the Arlington County Courthouse here, symbolically uniting with peers from across the country to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants.
Equity & Diversity
Students Sound Off on Immigration
As waves of students staged walkouts and joined protests last week over proposed punitive changes to federal immigration law, school administrators sought a balance between allowing students to demonstrate peacefully and setting clear expectations that they should return to class soon.
School & District Management
Site Aims to Help Rural Gay Youths
Being gay as a young person in rural areas and small towns can’t be easy.
Education
Report Roundup
Brain Research
Very smart children don’t have any more brain matter than children with more-average intellectual abilities do, but their brains develop in different ways, concludes a report published March 30 in the journal Nature.
Education
Report Roundup
21st-Century Skills
High schools should broaden their traditional measures of success beyond such factors as attendance, graduation, and college-going rates to include knowledge and skills that will better prepare students for success in the 21st century, concludes a report.
School & District Management
Report Roundup
To Aid High Schools, Mix of Efforts Is Key
High school reform is most successful when leaders use a combination of techniques to improve schools, a report suggests.
Education
Dearborn: Modern Standard Arabic Instruction
A roundup of the Arabic language instruction offered in the Dearborn, Mich., school district.
Equity & Diversity
‘Heritage Speakers’: Loss of a Treasure?
If the United States is going to take advantage of the linguistic skills of millions of children in this country who speak languages other than English at home, policy has to change at the district, state, and national levels, experts in the field say. Includes accompanying audio and video.
Education
A Washington Roundup
Ed. Dept. Backs Surveys for Title IX Compliance
The Department of Education has reiterated its support for a controversial clarification of rules relating to how colleges can comply with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
Education
A Washington Roundup
High Court Declines Preschool IDEA Case
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review an appeal over what services a 3-year-old with disabilities should receive during a dispute between her family and a public education agency over the child’s individualized education program.
Federal
New Guidance Addresses Title I Schoolwide Plans
The Department of Education has issued new guidance for school districts on how to devise schoolwide plans for Title I money aimed at raising the achievement of disadvantaged students.
Federal
House OKs Higher Ed. Act Reauthorization
The House of Representatives approved a measure to reauthorize the Higher Education Act last week that would establish or bolster several programs aimed at improving K-12 education, including the creation of a corps of “adjunct teachers” to lead classes in math, science, and critical foreign languages.
Education
Events
3—English: Censorship and Selection in Middle and High School Classrooms, sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for secondary-level educators, librarians, curriculum developers, and administrators, at the Pyle Center in Madison, Wis. Contact: Sue Schroeder, 1050 University Ave., Madison, WI 53706; (608) 263-0951; fax: (608) 265-4309; e-mail: sueschroeder@education.wisc.edu.
States
Florida Lawmakers Float New Voucher Plans
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and fellow Republicans in the state legislature are working on several fronts to respond to a recent court decision that struck down a statewide voucher program.
Education
Opinion
Chat Wrap-Up: Willing and Disabled
On March 23, readers questioned Norma Jean Taylor, a veteran English and drama teacher in Kansas City, Mo., about the effects of her disability—spinocerebellar degenerative syndrome—on her teaching, her students, and her relationships with other staff members at the small, Christian school where she teaches.
Teaching Profession
Opinion
Teacher Pay for Performance:
James W. Guthrie and Matthew G. Springer state that pay-for-performance programs might just be another item on the list of once fashionable but now faded education innovations.
Education
Letter to the Editor
Deficiencies Go Beyond Math and Science Skills
I read "Talk of U.S. Crisis in Math, Science Is Largely Misplaced, Skeptics Say" (March 22, 2006) hoping to find something different from recent articles on the need to boost U.S. math and science education. But instead I found merely a critique of one way of defending math and science education, and an endorsement of another.
Education
Letter to the Editor
Balancing State Budgets With Teachers’ Pensions?
In your recent profile of gubernatorial agendas and results (Special Report: Executive Agendas, March 22, 2006), you failed to mention a burning issue in the state of Illinois: teacher pensions.
Education
Letter to the Editor
Plea for Policy Input Shows Reform’s Impact
Sheryl Boris-Schacter’s March 15, 2006, Commentary amazed me ("Why Aren’t Teachers Weighing In on Educational Policymaking?").
Education
Letter to the Editor
Tenure Attacks: ‘Last Refuge of Educationist Scoundrels’?
To someone who has taught for 40 years, Marc F. Bernstein’s cry for extending the time it takes teachers to earn tenure ("Is Tenure an Anachronism?,"Commentary, March 22, 2006) is an ironic indication of one of the real problems of our public schools: leadership that has no answers to the palpable decline in academic standards other than to rail against teacher tenure and union contracts.
Education
Letter to the Editor
Illinois Pre-K Plan Omits Administrators’ Training
Regarding your article on Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich’s proposed Preschool for All program, which would provide access to prekindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-olds in Illinois ("Illinois Governor’s Plan for 3-Year-Olds Drawing Attention," March 15, 2006):
Education
Letter to the Editor
On Dropout Rates, Methods Should Not Obscure Needs
One unfortunate implication of Lawrence Mishel’s March 8, 2006, Commentary is that it is OK to put our heads back in the sand about the need to improve our nation’s high schools ("The Exaggerated Dropout Crisis").
School & District Management
Opinion
Taking Stock
The authors of an independent study of the Boston public school system and its leadership claim that a similar method of study and investigation can help save other districts undergoing leadership changes a lot of time, money, and despair.
School Climate & Safety
Opinion
Cyberbullying
The executive director of the nonprofit Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use gives educators the heads-up on becoming more involved in the online lives of young people.