March 16, 2005
Education Week, Vol. 24, Issue 27
Education
Report Roundup
NCLB Guidance
Districts that don’t make “adequate yearly progress” for two years in a row must take a number of actions under the No Child Left Behind Act. The report from the Washington-based Center on Education Policy, for instance, spells out how those districts must devise improvement plans and explains that they may not provide tutoring services to their students. If districts don’t improve, they ultimately may be restructured or taken over by their states.
School Choice & Charters
A State Capitals Roundup
California Schools Chief Launches Charter Audit
California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell has requested an audit of how the state’s largest network of charter schools spends more than $40 million this year in state funding.
Federal
A State Capitals Roundup
Utah GOP Caucus Writes Bush on Law
After delaying a vote on a measure aimed at softening the impact of the federal No Child Left Behind Act on Utah schools, the state Senate’s Republican caucus sent President Bush a letter asserting its willingness to pass the measure later this year.
Education
Report Roundup
Youth Programs
The first of those telephone polls commissioned by the Forum for Youth Investment, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, found that 45 percent of adults surveyed nationally said that youth-oriented programs such as after-school and community-service initiatives and job training are a high priority, and that money should be made available to pay for them. Sixty-six percent of those polled said they favored tax increases on high-income taxpayers to finance youth programs.
Education
A State Capitals Roundup
Vouchers in Utah
Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah signed into law the Carson Smith Special Needs Scholarship bill on March 10.
Education
A State Capitals Roundup
Michigan Scholarship on Chopping Block
Some of Michigan’s high school graduates could be out up to $500 each in state scholarship aid that they were promised for doing well on state exams in middle school.
Education
A State Capitals Roundup
Healthy Meals in Kentucky
One of the last actions by Kentucky lawmakers before ending their 2005 session on March 8 was a compromise on new school nutrition and exercise standards to combat child obesity.
Federal
Federal File
Conference Call
First lady Laura Bush will convene a White House Conference on Helping America’s Youth this coming fall, as part of her effort to focus attention on the needs of young people, especially boys.
Law & Courts
A Washington Roundup
Religious School Role for AmeriCorps OK’d
A federal appeals court last week upheld the use of AmeriCorps volunteers in religious schools in a ruling that cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in favor of Ohio’s school voucher program in Cleveland.
Education
A Washington Roundup
Senate Panel Approves Boost in Child-Care Aid
The Senate Finance Committee approved a welfare bill last week that would authorize increasing federal aid for child care by $6 billion over five years.
Education
A National Roundup
Media-Use Study Finds Youths Increasingly Multi-Tasking
Young people are spending more time “multi-tasking” with various forms of media, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation reported last week.
Education
Letter to the Editor
Substituting Stun Guns for Opportunity to Learn
Your March 2, 2005, article “Officers’ Stun Guns Raising Serious Concerns” highlights a disturbing feature of the ongoing assault on the right to educational opportunity: the criminalization of the student population and scapegoating of students in the place of genuine school improvement.
Education
Letter to the Editor
Teenagers Are Bored? So What Else Is New?
I read your front-page article "Calls for Revamping High Schools Intensify" (Jan. 26, 2005) and found myself once again appalled by the unchallenged generalizations of journalists and the myopia of qualitative researchers.
Education
Letter to the Editor
Is More Rigor the Answer For U.S. High Schools?
I read with interest your front-page article “States Take Steps to Put More Rigor Into High Schools” (March 2, 2005). My current job involves tutoring college applicants who have failed a placement test, and this gives me a vantage point that many in public education may not have.
Federal
Finnish Students Are at the Top of the World Class
In Finland, a long-standing legal tradition known as the “everyman’s right” guarantees the public broad access to the country’s vast, picturesque forests, in most cases regardless of who owns the land. As a result, a prized national asset is shared throughout society, rather than hoarded by a few. For years, a similar principle has applied to education.
Education
Letter to the Editor
It’s Not Just a Bad Law, It’s Unconstitutional
Nel Noddings claims that the No Child Left Behind Act is a “bad law” and that it will not be made better through full funding (“Rethinking a Bad Law,” Commentary, Feb. 23, 2005). Cogent as her essay may be, Ms. Noddings has missed the main point: The law is not just bad, it is unconstitutional.
Education
Letter to the Editor
Voucher Plan Disregards Wishes of D.C. Voters
Sally Sacher’s letter defending the District of Columbia school voucher plan (“Key Facts Overlooked in Voucher-Program Report,” Letters, March 2, 2005) overlooked an important fact: The plan was imposed on the District of Columbia by Congress against the wishes of the majority of Washington residents.
Education
Letter to the Editor
Catholic Schools’ Success Is Built on Commitment
Having just finished your article on the Gesu School in Philadelphia (Feb. 23, 2005), I felt a flood of recognition and warmth from my experiences in Roman Catholic schools.
Education
Letter to the Editor
First Lady’s New Program Has Telling Adjectives
It was gratifying to learn that Laura Bush is throwing her weight behind a program for at-risk students (“First Lady Embraces Cause of Youths at Risk,” Feb. 23, 2005).
School & District Management
Study Blasts Leadership Preparation
A far-reaching study set for release this week offers a damning assessment of the programs that prepare most of the nation’s principals and superintendents.
Federal
NCLB Choice Option Going Untapped, But Tutoring Picking Up
Districts are paying scant attention to the provision of federal education law that allows students in low-performing schools to transfer elsewhere, though more are providing children with the supplemental services to which they are entitled.
College & Workforce Readiness
Community Colleges Are Serving More Younger Adults, Report Says
As the number of younger students at community colleges grows, a federal report suggests that colleges, lawmakers, and researchers need to view them differently from older students to ensure their academic success.
Federal
AIDS Infects Education Systems in Africa
The AIDS pandemic raging across sub-Saharan Africa doesn’t stop with personal carnage. It also threatens whole systems, including what is arguably the most critical for the region’s future—education.
Federal
Social Studies Losing Out to Reading, Math
Johnny may be learning more about reading and mathematics, but he may have little time to study the discoveries of Columbus, the tenets of the U.S. Constitution, or the social and political causes of the Civil War.
School & District Management
Commission Backs Call for More Accountability in Higher Education
Fewer than 20 percent of high school juniors go on to finish college on time, and a national commission is calling for a fresh approach to accountability to counter what it termed a “crisis.”
School & District Management
Schwarzenegger Takes School Plans to Voters
In a move that has incensed California teachers’ unions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing to qualify several major proposals on his legislative agenda for the statewide ballot, including measures that would revamp teacher tenure and public employees’ pensions.
Law & Courts
Full Senate, House Panel OK Perkins Reauthorization
The full Senate and the House education committee approved separate bills last week to reauthorize the federal career and technical education program, showing no apparent appetite for President Bush’s proposal to eliminate its funding.
Federal
Spellings Defends President’s Spending Plan for Education
In round two of Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’ efforts to sell Capitol Hill on President Bush’s proposed $56 billion education budget for fiscal 2006, lawmakers last week grilled her on cuts to popular programs.