Education
Who gets punished for the education planners' "mistakes"?
Bozeman Braces for Another School Bond VoteHere we go again. Cantankerous Bozeman seems poised to leap into another battle as mail ballots go out this week for a bond issue to supplement funds already voted to build a new Chief Joseph Middle School.
Or maybe not. When you listen to the explanations of the need and look at the designs, it seems a slam dunk. If we don’t approve this bond issue, education for our sixth, seventh, and eighth graders will take a giant step backward and Bozeman will no longer lead the state of Montana in educational standards and accomplishments.
But here’s what’s likely to set the talk radio crowd to jabbering: we just passed a $55 million bond issue in 2005. That was to renovate the high school, buy land for a future second high school, and buy land and build a new middle school (the current Chief Joseph Middle School.) Now the schools are coming back to the well because of mistakes made in that earlier bond issue. And some folks are grumbling about punishing someone for those mistakes.
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Opportunities/Challenges Abound
Energy Money A Concern To UW & LegislatureThe nexus of energy money, higher education and the state's coffers dominate Wyoming news today.
Conservationists have cautioned University of Wyoming leaders about the potential strings that energy companies might attach to donations or research grants for the new School of Energy Resources, just as donations hit the $12 million mark.
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NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND TURNS 5
As President Touts Education Law, Another Federal Official Say’s It’s FlawedTo celebrate his landmark education law’s fifth anniversary, President Bush gathered a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers to discuss renewal of the No Child Left Behind law. After the White House meeting, Bush said there was strong interest in making some changes to the law but denied any interest in weakening it.
The New York Times reports that Democratic leaders in Congress have vowed to overhaul the law to make it less punitive for under-performing schools and to increase funding for impoverished schools singled out by poor scores on the law’s mandated tests.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who did not attend the meeting at the White House, said he wants states to have more flexibility in how they meet the federal standards.
Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, who now chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he’s in favor of states adopting a uniform academic standard that would help prepare students for the rigors of college and or workforce demands. Kennedy is also championing the expansion of social programs for low-income students and for the federal government to assume a role in school construction and renovation.
Just as President Bush was urgng lawmakers to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind law, a former Education official who helped promote the law during the past five years, said the legislation was fundamentally flawed from the get-go and said the legislation should be dumped.
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QUALITY COUNTS 2007
Annual Education Report Tracks Students from Cradle to AdulthoodEducation Weekly’s Annual Quality Counts report historically tracks states’ efforts in key areas of education. This year, the report takes a much more sweeping look at those key policies and analyzes how they connect with other socio-economic factors within the states, such as early childhood education, teacher preparation, postsecondary education, and economic and workforce development.
This year the report looks at how well states’ policies ease the transition from early childhood to elementary education and from high school to secondary school and into the workforce.
On Thursday, an Associated Press article in the Santa Fe New Mexican painted a pretty dismal picture of New Mexico’s ability to prepare its children for life after formal education.
The state ranked 47th in the nation for academic performance of its students and 39th in its ability in to align education systems to carry students from preschool to the workforce.
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They Really, Really Like Us
Forbes: Boulder is ‘America’s Smartest City’Cross-posted from Osman Parvaz's Boulder Real Estate blog.
From Forbes:
"Boulder, Colo. may seem like a surprising winner, but it’s no ordinary university town. The University of Colorado’s students and staff account for about 38,000 of the city population of 282,200. Boulder, though, is also sticky enough to keep many of its own graduates around--and attract others."
The magazine provides some numbers that prove this:
-- Percentage with a bachelor’s degree or higher: 52.9
-- Percentage of population 25 and older whose highest educational attainment is a bachelor’s degree: 31.55
-- Percentage whose highest degree is a master’s degree: 14.20
-- Percentage whose highest degree is a professional degree, such as a degree from law or medical school: 3.13
-- Percentage whose highest degree is a Ph.D.: 4.01
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ROCKY EDUCATION
Funding Skeptic + Surplus = Frustrating Equation For Montana School Officials
Montana school officials’ wish lists to lawmakers are generally just that – hopeful thinking in times of limited funding. But going into this legislative session, Montana lawmakers have a projected $1 billion in surplus funds to divvy up.
The Missoulian reports today that at a meeting in Ravalli County, 60 people representing 40 schools and social services agencies showed up to meet with Sen. Rick Laible, R-Darby, Rep. Ron Stoker, R-Darby, and Rep. Bob Lake, R-Hamilton, to request lawmakers take advantage of the surplus to pump up funding for schools and other programs that benefit children.
School officials pressed their need for funding Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s proposal for all-day kindergarten, a program many officials said their schools simply did not have the space to provide.
But the three lawmakers cautioned that the $1 billion surplus was one-time money and would not be able to support long-term programs.
And a story in today’s Billings Gazette indicated that school officials may face another difficulty during the upcoming legislative season.
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Wyoming Media Grok
Teachers Complain About No Child Left Behind ActWyoming teachers have finally stated the obvious: the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act doesn't and cannot work.
To raise ALL students to proficiency simply disregards the facts -- all children (and their parents) are not created equal, and some students are so far behind the eight ball (poverty, illness, genetic deficiencies, inept parenting) that no amount of effort by schools and teachers can make them proficient. And the greatest absurdity is that the schools that struggle most are punished, not helped.
NCLB sounds idealistic, but in reality there's not nearly enough resources allocated to make a substantial difference. Some critics have even stated that NCLB was designed to fail, a hard-right effort to discredit public education in general and public education teachers (and their unions) in particular.
Left unaddressed by NCLB is the 16 hours of a day when students are out of school -- an environment where they may be exposed to physical, drug, alcohol, emotional and sexual abuse; hunger (even though the USDA has defined that out of existence); a chaotic home life where meals aren't regular, clothes aren't laundered and sleeping arrangements are catch-as-catch can; and homes that contain no books, but have 200-channel televisions blaring 24/7 or the latest and most violent video games.
With NCLB's endless, relentless emphasis on testing, actual learning is cheated daily. With the focus on college-prep math and language skills, the arts, history, vocational and home economic classes are withering away, even though lots of students never go on to careers where math and language skills are paramount, but the arts and work and life skills are desperately needed.
Elsewhere in the news,
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Ah, the Smell of Eau d'Eucalyptus
Snow and Ice, University Scandals, and I Married a Vicks-enAll around Moscow, the short days and dark nights have been morphing into short tempers and dark grudges. Thanksgiving wasn't all turkey and gravy. In fact, it felt more like a scene from The Shining. When the news broke that University Place villain and former University of Idaho Financical Vice President Jerry Wallace had received three years probation for his part in bringing the school to its knees, mashed potatoes turned to ashes in quite a few mouths. The University of Idaho has been hamstrung by the University Place disaster. Wallace was accused of misusing public funds, and he was investigated by state and federal prosecutors. On November 23rd, Wallace entered an "Alford plea" in Latah County's Second District Court, meaning he denied any criminal intent but admitted that he had created a university account and authorized spending from it without securing the necessary approval of the Idaho Board of Education. That unapproved university account, which never had more that $600,000 in it, recorded total expenditures of more than $8 million. The money tossed down a rathole by a couple of rats, and the University of Idaho has been struggling to regain its footing ever since. [more]
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
Utah Proposes Funding Fix for Federal Education LawThe goal of the federal No Child Left Behind Act is to have every public school student in the nation performing at grade level by 2014. That Act is up for reauthorization for funding this year, and Utah officials are hoping the state’s federal lawmakers can tweak the law to make it more amenable to Utah and other western states.
Meeting the goals of the federal education law is particularly onerous for rural schools, where teachers often have to teach multiple subjects, and where budgets are often smaller because federal lands, which cannot be taxed, account for huge swaths of land in Western counties. Last week, Montana educators laid out the changes they’d like to see made in the federal law, including amendments on how special needs students’ progress is charted and also some flexibility for the state’s rural schools.
Now Utah educators are calling for some changes to the federal law as well, and one change is particular could have a profound effect on some Western school districts.
The Deseret News reports that Utah legislators have come up with a list of changes they’d like to see made to the federal legislation, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Patti Harrington has submitted the list to U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop and the rest of Utah’s congressional delegation.
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NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
Montana Educators Optimistic About Congressional ChangesSince Tuesday’s election, news sites and blogs have been astir with speculation about just what the results of the election means, and what a Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate and U.S. House will do — or not do.
Many editorial writers have suggested it’s put up or shut up time for Democratic leaders: Now that the campaigning is over, it’s time for the federal lawmakers to get something done.
Most of the articles talk about what the future holds with regard to earmarks, the war in Iraq, immigration reform, health care and even what might happen should Congress try to raise the federal minimum wage.
But another federal program that has created its share of controversy in the West is coming up for reauthorization in 2007, and Montana educators are hoping that the new leadership in Congress will give them some flexibility with the No Child Left Behind Act.
The Great Falls Tribune writes that Linda McCullough, the state superintendent for the Office of Public Instruction in Montana, hopes that when No Child comes up for reauthorization, federal lawmakers will take a hard look at the broad education mandate and make some changes.
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