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EDUCATION & EQUITY NEWS |
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Week
of May 21, 2001
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EDUCATION & EQUITY NEWS |
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Week
of May 21, 2001
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School
Voucher Backers Take Fight to House Floor Conservative Republicans took their fight for private school vouchers and other controversial education proposals to the House floor yesterday, forcing GOP leaders to schedule a series of votes next week that will test the bipartisan consensus undergirding President Bush's education program.
A Senate proposal that would have given schools billions of dollars in new money for special education was defeated.
According to a survey by the American Federation of Teachers --one of the nation's largest teacher unions -- the average salary increase for teachers last year was up slightly from the previous year, but it was still among the lowest in four decades and failed to keep pace with inflation.
U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Mission Hills, CA) plans to introduce legislation to offer legal status to illegal-immigrant students who want to attend college.
Under a 1998 law that is being implemented fully for the first time, thousands of current and future college students who have been convicted of drug-related offenses - and admit it - are ineligible for federal tuition aid for at least one year.
An overview of the nation's efforts to put technology into the hands of those who are least likely to have access to it—and to help them learn to use it in productive ways. (See also: Schools Post Internet Access Gains, Education Week, May 15, 2001)
Time Magazine profiles its "Schools of the Year," which are not the nation's best as measured by test scores but are schools judged to be using the most promising approaches to the most pressing challenges in education: using wisely the freedom granted to charter schools; educating low-income children; consolidating schools in rural areas; making effective use of technology in teaching; and getting parents and communities involved in the education of their children.
In recent efforts to expand into new school districts, Edison -- a private, for-profit company that runs public schools nationwide -- has been forced to acknowledge that its schools cost districts considerably more to operate than do other district schools.
An examination of recent mistakes and interviews with more than 120 people involved in the business of standardized testing suggest that the industry cannot guarantee the kind of error-free, high-speed testing that parents, educators and politicians seem to take for granted.
In 1999, CTB/McGraw-Hill, a major test publisher, erred in computing the standardized test scores of thousands of students -- causing 9,000 students in New York City to be sent to summer school mistakenly. The incident brought to light the following problem: School districts lack the ability to uncover serious testing errors on their own, and must rely on the testing companies to do so voluntarily. Also, because the testing industry has succeeded in fending off various proposals for federal oversight, the companies themselves decide what they will disclose and when.
Two recent books -- Love in Two Languages by Bonnie Ohye and Why Boys Don't Talk and Why We Care by Susan Morris Shaffer and Linda Perlman Gordon emphasize the importance of paying attention to nonverbal cues in understanding one's children.
Profile
of Delaware's Efforts to Close
Baltimore
County Schools Chief Since taking over as Baltimore County Schools Superintendent in July, Joe A. Hairston has instituted a number of major changes in short time.
According to the 2001 Kids Count Data Book, released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, declines in school dropout rates, teen suicides and accidental deaths in Maryland have boosted the state's standing for the third year in a row. This improvement is muted by the fact that although Maryland has the highest median household income of any state in the country, approximately one-third of the children in Baltimore City live in poverty.
Baltimore County's Even Start Family Literacy Program integrates education for young children and their parents.
Silver Spring parents accused Montgomery County School Superintendent Jerry D. Weast and his staff yesterday of being overly harsh and arrogant in their handling of a middle-school testing scandal and urged the county school board to investigate their actions.
Governor Parris Glendening vetoed a bill that would have made Maryland the first state to require public schools to teach gun safety from kindergarten through 12th grade. The governor said he would have signed the bill if lawmakers had not added provisions allowing educators to take middle-school and high school students to gun ranges and to work with organizations such as the National Rifle Association to develop the courses.
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Judge:
School Districts Must Pay A Pennsylvania judge has ruled that the state’s school districts must pay cyberschools their share of per-pupil state funding for students who enroll in online classes from their jurisdictions -- rejecting a Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA) request to prevent the state from withholding funding for districts that refuse to pay invoices from the cyberschools.
A story about the Pittsburgh city schools' growing awareness that it is human factors, as much as hardware and software improvements, that will enhance the use of technology for all students.
A World of Difference, a diversity education program sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, was begun at Pennsauken High School and two other schools in the country in 1998. Since then, the popular program has found its way into other Philadelphia-area schools. The Anti-Defamation League is planning to take the program to even more in the fall.
Most
Virginians Polled Say SOLs Help According to a poll released yesterday by the Commonwealth Educational Policy Institute of Virginia Commonwealth University, a majority of Virginians say the Standards of Learning have improved the quality of public schools at least a little bit, but almost a third say the program hasn't helped at all.
The author, who has written a history of Arlington desegregation, calls for an official historical marker on Lee Highway at the site of the first white public school in Virginia that admitted black students. He argues that marker would help dispel the myth that Arlington schools were desegregated under the leadership of progressive whites when in fact it was first and foremost a black-led movement.
D.C.
Summer School Aimed at 30,000 D.C. school officials plan to hold summer classes for as many as 30,000 students, which would be far more than the 22,000 who attended last year.
Profile
of West Virginia's Efforts to Close
Annual
Survey Results of the Current Closing the
Gap One School at a Time Differences
in the Gender Gap: Comparisons Across Disparities
in the Identification, Funding Holding
Schools Accountable Toolkit Interpreting
Trends in the Performance The
Other Gap: Poor Students Quality
Education Is a Civil Rights Issue Rethinking
Special Education for a New Century
Anti-Defamation League An organization which combats
The ConnectNet website provides youth with access to an easily searchable database of more than 20,000 technology sites nationwide. Its goal is to reach low-income and minority youth with a PSA that catches their attention and motivates them to connect with technology through the database. A second, Spanish-language PSA is being provided separately to Univision.
A project funded by the Benton Foundation which examines the digital divide from many perspectives.
Provides national leadership in designing and building educational assessments and accountability systems that appropriately monitor educational results for all students, including students with disabilities.
An education policy and management consulting firm that focuses on improving public elementary and secondary schools.
Supports research, publications, and action projects
of national significance in elementary/secondary education reform. It
has assumed the work of the Educational Excellence Network and is affiliated
with the Manhattan Institute
for Policy Research.
For newsletters from previous weeks, visit the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium's News Archives page. To subscribe to listservs on education and equity issues, please visit our Equity Listservs and Forums page. |
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The Mid-Atlantic Equity Center is one of ten Equity Assistance Centers funded by the U.S. Department of Education under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It provides technical assistance and training services free of charge to school districts in Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. |
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