Education Program
This Week in Education
February 7 - February 13, 2008
Highlighted Bills of the Week
(Powered by State Net)
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Oklahoma HB 2574 (Second Reading referred to Education)
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relates to physical education program requirements; expanding physical education or exercise program instruction requirement to the sixth grade. This bill increase the required minimum number of minutes per week to 100 minutes. Requires public schools to provide a minimum number of minutes per week of physical education or exercise program instruction. |
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Virginia SB 276 (Passed Senate) SB 276
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would allow adults to commit minors to emergency mental health care regardless of their objections. The changes are a way to legalize grey areas of mental health treatment. This bill increases from 72 hours to 96 hours the length of time to hold a hearing for the involuntary commitment of a minor or the emergency admission of a minor for inpatient treatment, and that a minor may be admitted by his parents to a facility over his objections. The bill also provides that the time to hold the involuntary commitment hearing runs from the filing of the petition for such hearing. The bill provides further that a petition for judicial approval of the admission of a minor by his parents over his objections shall be filed no sooner than 24 hours and no later than 96 hours after his admission. |
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This Week in Education
February 7 - February 13, 2008
K-12
Immigrant tuition repeal removed from bill
A proposed repeal of in-state tuition for undocumented students may have been removed from an omnibus immigration bill under consideration in the Senate, but the proposal remains alive as a stand-alone measure. HB231 would repeal a 2002 law that allows undocumented immigrants pay the lower in-state tuition rate if they attend a Utah high school for three years and graduate.
Schools ruled lax in aid to homeless
Hawaii public schools welcome a federal judge's order to improve how they enroll, track and transport homeless children, a Department of Education official said yesterday.
School officials expecting cuts due to downturn in economy
School budgets have seemed to defy gravity in recent years – going up steadily without ever coming down. But school board members from across the country say that's likely to change soon, and they're bracing for leaner times forced by the nation's economic downturn.
The Knowledge Gap (EdWeek)
When Chip Kimball took over as the chief technology officer in Washington state’s Lake Washington school district more than a decade ago, he quickly realized that his boss, the superintendent, knew little about technology.
Sleepless After Seattle? There’s still hope for equal educational opportunity
Brown v. Board of Education , the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in 1954, accomplished both less and more than the desegregation of American public schools. Less, in that after the initial wave of school desegregation in the South in the late 1960s, subsequent court rulings exempted segregated schooling caused by housing patterns rather than explicit state policies (“de facto” segregation), and banned most urban-suburban desegregation remedies. The result: Since 1970, American schools have actually been re-segregating. But it accomplished more, in that what Brown also did, beyond setting desegregation in motion, was to usher in a new era in American jurisprudence in which courts would play a major role in formulating and implementing public policy.
Leadership
Managers Help Principals Balance Time
A national project aimed at improving school leaders’ effectiveness is seeking to change that situation by supporting the hiring of “school administration managers” in schools. Such administrators take over the managerial tasks that are important to a smooth-running school but have little to do directly with learning.
Principal flight on the rise in the age of accountability
School districts nationwide are finding it harder to hold on to principals as standards get tougher and the list of demands from the state and federal governments gets longer.
Education Commissioner calls for revamping Vermont schools (EdWeek)
Vermont's school system isn't meeting the needs of almost half of its students and should be revamped, state Education Commissioner Richard Cate said. Despite years of efforts, underperforming students aren't doing better and above-average students are bored, and overall results have been flat, he said in releasing the results of the annual New England Common Assessment Program exams.
Bredesen names education commissioner
Gov. Phil Bredesen has named Tim Webb as acting commissioner of the state Education Department.
School Choice
A Reversal on School Vouchers, Then a Tempest
From his perch at the Manhattan Institute, the right-leaning research group, Mr. Stern, 72, has reveled as the city’s cantankerous provocateur against liberal education policies, criticizing reading curriculums that de-emphasize phonics as well as public schools that focus on social justice.
Ed. board rejects plan for charter school in NE Ark.
Arkansas education officials rejected a proposal by six northeast Arkansas school districts and a community college to operate a charter school in Blytheville.
City students to get magnet-school dibs
A divided Baltimore school board approved a policy change last night that gives qualified city students preference over suburban residents in applying to prestigious public high schools.
STEM
A School That's Too High on Gizmos
What's wrong with the teachers at T.C. Williams High School? The problem is what a former Alexandria school superintendent calls "technolust" -- a disorder affecting publicity-obsessed school administrators nationwide that manifests itself in an insatiable need to acquire the latest, fastest, most exotic computer gadgets, whether teachers and students need them or want them. Technolust is in its advanced stages at T.C., where our administrators have made such a fetish of technology that some of my colleagues are referring to us as "Gizmo High."
Tests of Tech Literacy Still Not Widespread Despite NCLB Goals (EdWeek)
Any educator who’s ever had to ask a pupil to fix a computer might be surprised to learn that not all students are technologically proficient—or at least not savvy enough to be considered “technologically literate.”
Teacher
Teacher-pay bills advance from committees
Bills to raise teacher pay passed committees in each house Tuesday, but even sponsors said the actions signaled a desire to keep people talking rather than a belief that either the House or Senate had hit on the perfect solution.
New Study of Texas’s 50 Largest School Districts Finds Significant Teacher Quality Gaps Throughout The State
According to a report released today by The Education Trust, low-income students, Hispanic students and African-American students in the 50 largest school districts in Texas are less likely to be assigned to fully certified teachers, less likely to be assigned to experienced teachers, and less likely to attend a school with a stable teaching force than are other students educated in those very same districts.
Post-Secondary Education
Lawmakers Weigh Parental Notification Changes
After last spring's shooting at Virginia Tech, the extent of the confusion over federal privacy laws at college campuses became obvious. Can schools contact parents with concerns about their adult children? Should they? What can they say? State lawmakers are considering several proposals that would require officials at Virginia's public colleges and universities to notify a parent if a student is deemed a danger to himself or others
Bill would give tuition waivers to some veterans' families
Family members of disabled or deceased veterans would get college tuition waivers under a bill that won approval Tuesday from the Senate Education Committee.
Call for Equity for Community Colleges
American higher education “is not sustainable,” and risks a growing detachment from reality if it does not come to grips with the needs of community colleges and the way higher education and government consistently mistreat the sector.
Education Finance
Schools Revived by Special Aid in New Jersey Brace for New
The Perth Amboy schools were once so impoverished that the teachers used yellowing textbooks, class sizes crept up to 35 students, and makeshift gyms were fashioned out of hallways and basements. All that changed in the mid-1990s after the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in a landmark school equity case, Abbott v. Burke, that poor urban districts were entitled to spend as much on their students as wealthier suburban ones. The ruling triggered an influx of state aid to these so-called Abbott districts that in turn brought teaching assistants, computers and new textbooks by the crateful into bare-bones classrooms.
Leaders OK $112M boost in school spending
The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a $112.6 million increase in state spending on basic aid to local elementary and secondary schools.
Students in affluent areas test best again
Newly released high school test scores once again fell along socioeconomic lines.
School funding vote may come next week
The New Hampshire Senate could vote on a school funding constitutional amendment as soon as next week, after a bipartisan proposal passed committee review on a 3-2 vote. Gov. John Lynch, members of both parties and several spokesmen for business told the Senate Judiciary Committee that an amendment sponsored by Senate leaders is the right move for education funding.
School funding changes would be prudent, lawmaker says
A key lawmaker says it's time for the Legislature to rein in its spending on state aid to schools. State Sen. Ron Raikes, the Education Committee chairman, testified Monday in favor of Legislative Bill 988, a bill he considers a significant rewrite of the school finance formula.
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