Hotbutton Issue- Commercial Appeal Jan 15, 2010

Tell 'Hot Button' what you think about delaying funding for city schools
By Staff Reports
Friday, January 15, 2010
The Memphis City Council has voted 8-3 to delay paying $50 million it had promised to the Memphis City Schools system for the current school year until there is a "final resolution" to a lawsuit aimed at determining whether the city is legally bound to provide funding to the schools.
The day after that vote, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled against the city in the lawsuit, agreeing with a lower court that both the city and Shelby County "are required to fund the city schools." City Council chairman Harold Collins said the city intends to appeal that ruling to the state Supreme Court, leaving MCS officials facing the prospect of having to cut millions of dollars from the district's budget midway through the school year. Tell us:
Should the City Council seek a final ruling from the state Supreme Court on the school funding lawsuit before paying the $50 million that had been promised to Memphis City Schools for the current year? Why or why not?
E-mail your response to hotbutton@commercialappeal.com by Jan. 20. Keep it short (three or four sentences, if you can) and include your name, home address and daytime/evening telephone numbers where you can be reached. We'll publish comments on Jan. 24.

U.S. Lagging in Teacher Learning

from the Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook.

Putting a priority and a structure around teacher learning has served other countries well.
Linda Darling-Hammond has co-authored this report.

"Teachers in the United States are given significantly less time and support for high-quality professional learning than their counterparts in other developed nations, according to a new report published by the National Staff Development Council.

The report, co-authored by Stanford University Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, finds that U.S. teachers average 1,080 hours per year in classroom teaching time, leaving little time for non-classroom professional activities. By contrast, the average instruction time for teachers in other counties in the Organization of Economic Development is 803 hours per year for primary schools and 664 hours per year for secondary schools."

Read the full article here.

More than 300 schools closed

By Thomas H. Maugh II May 1, 2009

As new swine flu cases continued to be reported across the country Thursday -- most of them scattered outbreaks in new states -- school systems in Seattle and Huntsville, Ala., were closed after health officials discovered suspected cases in each.

A late afternoon tally by the U.S. Department of Education found that 298 schools around the country had shut down for a few days, triple the number that had been closed on Wednesday. The closings affected about 172,000 students, leaving parents scrambling to find alternative day care arrangements.

Read the full story here in the LA Times

Classroom Grades Better Reflection than SATs

Although more than three million high school seniors take standardized college admissions tests like the SAT, “it is well known by educational researchers that high-school grades are the best indicator of student readiness for college, and standardized admissions tests are useful primarily as a supplement to the high-school record,” according to Richard C. Atkinson in a speech to be presented April 15, 2009 at the American Educational Research Association’s 90th annual meeting in San Diego.

“We now have a much deeper appreciation of why assessment of achievement and curriculum mastery remains vital as a paradigm for admissions testing. Curriculum-based achievement tests are the fairest and most effective assessments for college admissions and have important incentive or “signaling “ effects for our K-12 schools as well: They help reinforce a rigorous academic curriculum and create better alignment of teaching, learning and assessment all along the pathway from high school to college,” according to Atkinson.

The College Board’s SAT admissions test sends a confusing message to students, teachers, and schools. It featured esoteric items, like verbal analogies and quantitative comparisons, rarely encountered in the classroom. Especially troubling, the perception of the SAT as a test of basic intellectual ability had an adverse effect on many students from low-performing schools, tending to diminish academic aspiration and self-esteem. Low scores on the SAT were too often interpreted as meaning that a student lacked the ability to attend UC, notwithstanding his or her record of accomplishment in high school.

Read the full article in Science Daily

Will Stimulus Money Make It To Classrooms and Students?

"A key goal of the stimulus law is to patch holes in state budgets and save and create jobs. Educators agree that $54 billion to be funneled to states will prevent thousands of teacher layoffs and drastic program cuts and that schools would be in dire straits without that bailout. An additional $25 billion will target aid to students who are disabled or in poverty, groups the federal government has long helped educate.

But President Obama has linked the funding to high expectations for schools. The administration wants school systems to consider lengthening the school day, expanding charter schools and experimenting with merit pay plans. Obama challenged the country to have the highest rate of college graduates in the world by 2020."

Read the full article in the Washington Post

Early Reading First Program - Grant offering

This program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, supports local efforts to enhance the oral language, cognitive, and early reading skills of preschool-aged children, especially those from low-income families, through strategies, materials, and professional development that are grounded in scientifically based reading research.

Contact Information
Contact Website:
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2009/E9-44...

Virtual Charter School: Innovative and Note-worthy

Learning at home in her pajamas before a computer screen, Emily Brown's youngest daughter is picking up things in 6th grade that her older daughter is attempting as a freshman at a Catholic school.

For the former teacher, that's evidence enough that Chicago Virtual Charter School is working.

"The curriculum is better here," Brown said. "It's a grade level higher."

The school, the city's only online program for kindergarten through high school, has become an alternative to traditional public schools for parents such as Brown who believe regular schools often don't challenge children enough or don't give slow learners the extra time they need.

Principal Bruce Law said last year the school, which opened in 2006, met the measure of "adequate yearly progress," mandated under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. More than 30 percent of Illinois schools did not qualify, many of them charter schools, according to the state board of education.

As U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan prepares to dole out federal aid for school reform, charter schools—especially those with an online component—stand to gain, experts say. Duncan, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, is a proponent of charter schools and an early backer of the Chicago Virtual School. He announced last week that the budget to reform the nation's schools was doubled to more than $100 billion.

"Arne Duncan wants to fund innovative learning methods and I can't think of anything more innovative than online learning," said John Watson, a consultant with Colorado-based Evergreen Consulting, which publishes an annual online school report "I think they should be funded through some of this stimulus money."

Read the full story in the Chicago Tribune.