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Jun. 28, 2013

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Study: US education spending tops global list
CBS News
The United States spends more than other developed nations on its students' education each year, with parents and private foundations picking up more of the costs, an international survey released Tuesday found. Despite the spending, U.S. students still trail their rivals on international tests. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — which groups the world's most developed countries — writes in its annual report that brand-new and experienced teachers alike in the United States out-earn most of their counterparts around the globe. But U.S. salaries have not risen at the same pace as other nations.

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Junk food getting canned in schools
USA Today
Good-bye doughnuts, candy bars, high-fat chips, full-calorie soft drinks and chocolate sandwich cookies. Those kinds of foods and beverages will no longer be allowed to be sold in school a la carte lines, vending machines and snack bars during the school day, beginning in the 2014-2015 school year. Hello granola bars, peanuts, fruit cups, light popcorn, low-fat chips and no-calorie flavored water. Those types of foods will be offered.

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Achievement gap narrows on long-term NAEP
Education Week
Achievement gaps for black and Hispanic youths have declined by substantial margins in reading and math since the early 1970s, according to new federal data. The gaps with their white peers, while still in evidence, have narrowed across all three age levels tested as part of a national assessment of long-term trends that offers a look at test data spanning some 40 years.

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Common Core not 'too coercive' for states to resist, group argues
Education Week
A new report from a conservative policy group in Virginia says that states have not been improperly coerced into adopting them through financial incentives from Washington, and still have the power to make their own decisions about the standards, contrary to arguments some make against the standards. The policy brief from Glen Allen, Va.-based State Budget Solutions is titled, "Financial Incentives Are the 'Core' Of New Education Standards: Are Common Core's Uncommon Incentives Too Good For States To Pass Up?" although the first part of that title seems to belie the crucial argument from authors Bob Williams and Joe Luppino-Esposito.

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More education in computer programming will put students on path to success, advocates say
The Tennessean
Children stare at computer screens, their faces tight with concentration, typing numbers, letters and symbols on their keyboards in a seemingly nonsensical pattern. A string of entries, the press of a key, and one smiles as an animated dog moves across the screen. Across the room, another wears a T-shirt that reads, "I do mass quantities of code," his eyes darting quickly as he types.

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Language intervention levels playing field for English language learners
Vanderbilt University via Science Daily
A new approach to teaching pre-kindergarten could take a bite out of the achievement gap and level the playing field for America's growing population of English language learners, according to a recently published study by researchers at Vanderbilt's Peabody College of education and human development.

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English language learners: Public school's forgotten kids
Take Part
High school graduation rates across the country are at a 40-year high, with 75 percent of students making it to the finish line. Between 2000 and 2010, 46 states saw substantial gains. And the upswing in graduates also spans minority students, even as the nation's schools become more diverse. More Latino and African-American students are taking hold of high school diplomas, shrinking the achievement gap (however slightly) with their white cohorts.

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Forget ROI, here's the 5-step tech investment plan districts should be using
THE Journal
Stop me if you've heard this one before. "Show me the ROI of technology in education, and then I will support your budget," says the chair of your school board. "Businesses show the return on investment for technology — why can't our district?" This has become an increasingly common question in today's challenging fiscal environment, where the "new normal" makes for tight budgets. In fact, the Consortium for School Networking's 2013 IT Leadership Survey found that 80 percent of school district IT leaders predict flat or declining IT budgets for the upcoming year.

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America's testing culture: How did we get here?
TakePart (commentary)
For the last three decades, our schools have been shaped by so-called accountability measures. Standardized tests were meant to make sure students were learning, and schools and teachers were held responsible if kids did not meet the standards. But lately, criticism of the accountability movement and its consequences, intended and otherwise, has reached a crescendo. Parents are pushing back against the testing culture (too much time spent on preparation, testing, and test analysis and not enough on deeper learning).

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Charter school performance study finds small gains
The Huffington Post
Charter school students on average slightly outpace comparable public school kids in reading and tie them in math, according to a large study of academic performance that shows slow but steady charter school improvement in some states since 2009.

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Seize the summer: Keep kids active and engaged in learning
ED.gov Blog
Students can experience learning loss when they do not engage in educational activities during the summer months. On average, students lose the equivalent of two months of math and reading skills during the summer months. More than half of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income youth can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities.

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Report: BYOD has the potential to expand greatly in 5 years
eSchool News
Results from a new survey presented during ISTE 2013 indicate that U.S. schools and universities still strive to expand their technology use, and postsecondary institutions often lead the way in technology integration. On June 26, the Software & Information Industry Association released the full report from its "2013 Vision K-20 Survey," the sixth annual national survey to measure U.S. educational institutions' self-reported progress toward building a framework that embraces ed-tech and eLearning.

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Are you ready to be a school principal?
eSchool News
Modeling excellence, building a team of dedicated educators and instilling a sense of pride throughout the school community are all essential when it comes to establishing and maintaining a successful school culture, according to effective school principals.

Is the Common Core initiative in trouble?
The Washington Post
Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently met with Chamber of Commerce leaders and urged them to be more vocal and forceful in defending the Common Core State Standards. Why?

Among conservatives, concerns grow over new school standards
NPR
"Common Core" is one of the biggest phrases in education today. To many educators and policymakers, it's a big, exciting idea that will ensure that America's students have the tools to succeed after graduation. But a growing number of conservatives see things differently. For years, states used their own, state-specific standards to lay out what K-12 students should be learning, for everything from punctuation to algebra. But those standards varied wildly, so the Common Core replaces them with one set of national standards for math and English language arts.

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States urged by Duncan to take lead in early education push
Education Week
State leaders and business executives are making the right move to spend more resources on and pay more attention to early-childhood education, even as Congress twiddles its thumbs, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a speech at the Education Commission of the States' National Policy Forum. Sharing the state with U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, Duncan highlighted President Barack Obama's plan to provide $75 billion on a voluntary basis to interested states to improve their early-education programs and provide more slots for children, through an increase in the federal tobacco tax. At the same time, he acknowledged that Washington seemed unlikely to act on any such proposal.

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Minnesota pumps money into early education to close achievement gap
Minnesota Public Radio
In a little over a year, many of Minnesota's youngest students will be spending more time in the classroom. State lawmakers this spring approved $40 million in funding for all-day kindergarten and more money for pre-kindergarten scholarships for children from low-income families aiming to close the gap in standardized test scores between white students and students of color. That's enough money to provide scholarships to about 10,000 children from low-income families in each of the next two years.

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Brown to sign budget that reshapes K-12 spending
The Associated Press via San Francisco Chronicle
Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to sign California's $96.3 billion budget for the coming fiscal year on Thursday, a spending plan that ends years of deficits, channels more money to school districts with disadvantaged students and restores millions of dollars to social service programs cut during the recession. The budget also adopts an optional provision of the federal Affordable Care Act by expanding Medicaid to 1.4 million low-income Californians. The move will be funded entirely by the federal government for the first few years but could saddle the state with extra health care costs in the future.

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Fed up teachers refuse to teach summer school in Texas
TakePart
Summer school in Dallas is lacking one critical component. On Tuesday, classes began in the Dallas Independent School District with about 6,000 students, and a very limited amount of teachers. "We've never had a shortage for summer school, never. And I've been in DISD for about 12 years," Angela Davis, president of the National Education Association, a teachers group, told a Dallas television station. So, what's the problem? Teachers blame Superintendent Mike Miles, a leader who they claim has a very heavy hand when it comes to management. Davis told the television station that teachers were very stressed during the school year.

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