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News Clips –
STATE Legislators deal with meaty issues / Pantagraph NATIONAL Education officials approve new plan for
longer instructional day
/ Boston Globe STATE Legislators deal with meaty issues 8 bills address food,
nutrition By Kurt Erickson, Pantagraph,
Nearly every effort
to legislate what people put in their stomachs fell by the wayside during
the spring session. A ban on soda and junk
food in schools? Stick a fork in it. An effort to force schools
to hire nutrition experts? Cooked. A bid to stop the state
from regulating potluck dinners? Getting cold. In fact, of at least
eight pieces of legislation targeting From potlucks to nursing One bill that found
success would allow nursing mothers to breast feed in public. Another
would limit the ability of people to sue restaurants for making them
obese. But lawmakers turned
up their noses at an initiative by Gov. Rod Blagojevich to ban junk
food and soft drinks from school vending machines. One bill, which would
have merely banned soda from schools, received a mere 28 votes in the
118-member House in March. Similar proposals stalled
early and were not called for formal votes. Blagojevich, nonetheless,
says he's not giving up. He said the ban could reverse an increase in
the number of obese children. "We're going to
continue to fight hard to get that done," Blagojevich said in a
recent interview. "Child nutrition is very important." The anti-soda effort
was bottled up when school districts complained that vending machines
are a lucrative source of income for local schools. In many cases, schools
have signed multiyear contracts with major soft drink companies in exchange
for millions of dollars, scoreboards and outdoor signs. The governor argues
that many of the big companies also produce healthy beverages, meaning
they could alter what's sold in schools without jeopardizing their contracts. "I'm on the side
of health and good personal habits for children," said Blagojevich. Meanwhile, state Sen.
Dan Rutherford's plan to stop the state from monitoring potluck dinners
has cooled in the Senate. The measure was prompted
by incidents in Senate Bill 2944 won
approval in both chambers, but last-minute tweaking left it sitting
in the Senate as lawmakers adjourned on May 31. The proposal could be
resurrected in the fall veto session. Statewide turnover creates Dist. 23 turnover By Kwame Patterson,
Daily Herald Staff Writer, The end of the school
year usually means no homework, staying up late and summer vacations. This summer, however,
means letters of resignations and filling jobs for Prospect Heights
Elementary District 23. District 23 is losing
three administrators and a board member because many administrators
are retiring elsewhere in the state. "This is something
very unusual to see this type of turnover," Superintendent Greg
Guarrine said. Last year, the district's
only administrative loss came when Ronald Bearwald retired as superintendent.
Guarrine, who was the assistant superintendent, quickly filled the position. Board member Jim Perkins
is leaving the district in July only because he is moving to Arlington
Heights Elementary District 25 and cannot sit on the board as an outside
resident. But the assistant superintendent
post will be vacant when Robert DiVirgilio leaves at the end of June
to take a superintendent position in Beach Park Elementary District
3 in "It's giving us
the opportunity to move on," DiVirgilio said of retiring administrators.
"And it gives younger people the opportunity to move up." Director of Technology
Brian Engle is leaving this year along with Assistant Principal Mike
Keeney. Both are leaving for different positions in other school districts. Keeney, a member of
the Illinois Principals Association, said there is a large educational
turnover in "Administrators
are in the twilight of their careers and they are often given incentives
to retire," he said. The report "Illinois
Principals: Instructional Leaders or Endangered Species?" says
that by 2005 approximately 40 percent of public school administrators
will be eligible to retire. By 2006 the state's
public schools system will have to fill more than 2,100 principal, assistant
principal and other administration positions. The October 2003 study
was conducted by the Institution of Government and Public Affairs under
the District 23 has filled
three out of the four positions left vacant. The hiring of a new assistant
superintendent, however, is in the application process. Tho we don't ofen speek
ov it anymor, for many years reeders ov the Tribune wuld regularly be
amused, enlitened, anoyed or simply befudled by the paper's campane
to promote logical, simplified spelings. Begining in 1934, the paper
dished out a series ov werds that it decreed wuld theretofor be speled
as they sounded, including "tho" for though, "thoro"
for thorough, "iland" for island, and many others, including
hocky, fantom, calk, burocrat, derth, yern, jaz. This was a crusade by
then-Tribune Publisher Robert R. McCormick, who even sined one ov his
colums Micormak--befor his wife reportedly put the kibosh on that simplification. The grand experiment
ended in 1975. The paper abandoned simplified speling with an editorial
headlined "Thru is Through and So is Though." By then, the
Tribune had absorbed its share ov ribing and had even ben acused ov
confusing children with its simplified spelings. All ov this was stirred
up recently by a bevy ov protesters at the 77th anual National Spelling
Bee in The protesters, members
ov the American Literacy Society, are part ov a grand simplified speling
movement in American society, reeching bak to the 1700s, and including
such luminaries as Ben Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Noah Webster,
H.G. Wells and Theodore Roosevelt. They al decried the absurdities ov
English speling. In an 1867 monograf, Tribune Editor Joseph Medill wrote:
"Lerning tu spel and red the Inglish langwaj is the grat elementary
task ov the pupol." With the advent ov the
modern computer spel-cheking program, many, but certenly not all, ov
those problems hav been vanquished. Stil, the programs don't recognize
sum words and don't no the difference between they're and their, for
instance, or defuse and diffuse or where and wear--al ov wich may be
speled correctly but obviously But the view here is
that watching those amazing speling bee contestants agonize thru words
like serpiginous, sumpsimus and sophrosyne is not a reminder ov the
tortur that the language exacts, but ov its brethtaking beauty. Yes,
English is perniciously litered with al sorts ov ilogical spelings,
from cough to yacht. But that's what makes it fun. English is fed by
scors ov tributaries ov wurld languages, living and ded. It's a rich
polyglot ov sounds and tangled leters, sometimes as dificult to decode
as the entwined duble helix ov the human DNA. May it always be so. And so, we promise,
tomoro it's bak to regulr speling. Risks to changing school funds system Letter by William McMahon
of Since the first installment
of our property taxes was due June 1, I recently have noted the annual
burst of letters to the editor saying the property tax approach to funding
schools is unfair. Many suggest an increase
in the Having lived through
this same scenario in 1. State sales taxes
are not deductible from your federal income tax while property taxes
are. Hence depending on the increase in sales tax vs. reduction in property
tax, this solution most likely will wind up costing you more in taxes
overall. 2. While state income
taxes are deductible from your federal income taxes, the trade-off between
property tax reduction and income increase needs to be carefully measured
as, once again, you could wind up paying more taxes overall. However, the overriding
issue is that the more money you let the state collect for the schools,
the more power you give away to the state on how to spend that money.
There is a reason the
schools in And the reputation of
the All one has to do is
look at the chaos in Perfect attendance: Is it an honor? / Bonnie Miller Rubin,
In "Why should kids
be rewarded for something they are expected to do?" asks Jim Conery,
spokesman for the Although everyone agrees
that making it 12 years without an absence is a rare feat, school districts
appear to be conflicted about how--or even if--the endeavor is worthy
of recognition. Some say pins, ribbons
and other prizes are back in vogue after falling out of favor. "The
pendulum has swung the other way," said Glenn "Max" McGee,
the former state superintendent of education who is now at the helm
in If that's so, part of
the credit goes to the sweeping No Child Left Behind law, which judges
schools on attendance as well as test scores. The federal law has propelled
some communities to recognize shorter unbroken streaks, such as a perfect
year. Educators also acknowledge
that encouraging kids to go to school can boost a district's bottom
line, as state funding is tied to daily attendance rates. Yet at other schools
a flawless attendance record barely elicits a nod at year-end ceremonies.
Among the reasons, administrators say, is concern that parents might
send sick kids to school when they should be in bed. Other things important,
too "In the desire
to have perfect attendance, you don't want to make bad choices or lose
sight of other things that are important," said Steve Griesbach,
assistant superintendent for the Burr Ridge Schools, which honor attendance
only at the middle-school level. "If you're sick you should be
at home. ... If a family member dies, you should be at the funeral." Others say they dislike
the "hair-splitting" with parents over what constitutes an
absence--or, like Conery, that honoring kids for just showing up misses
the point. However, Claudine Quinn
says such stamina is deserving of the spotlight. Her daughter Teyana
has never missed a day of school. Neither flu nor funerals, broken bones
nor blizzards, kept her from 12 straight years of perfect attendance. "If I did get sick,
it always seemed to happen during vacation," said the Although academic, arts
and athletic superstars walked off with scholarships at the school's
recent awards assembly, Teyana's rewards were relatively anemic, her
mother said: a $100 check from the parents' association, a certificate
and her name in the program. "And she only got
that because I fought for it," her mother said. A teacher's aide in
Markham, Quinn has waged an unapologetic battle not only on Teyana's
behalf, but also for her two other children: David, 26, who also never
missed a day, and DeSean, a junior who is on track to keep up the family
tradition. "It wasn't just
about my kids getting recognition--but [about] any child who makes the
effort, day in and day out, to be in school," she said. Officials at Homewood-Flossmoor,
who also cited two other seniors for four years of unblemished attendance,
did not return phone calls seeking comment. Last fall, "I want to recognize
and reward those kids who have shown a remarkable commitment to education,"
Joyce Kenner, principal
at "We're not going
to get all the kids with these kinds of programs--but we'll get some,"
But to That kind of attitude
is music to Even without the extra
revenue, stressing attendance is just good training for real life, "It's a no-brainer.
I'd take an employee with a good work ethic and commitment any day over
someone who is brilliant and lazy," he said. "It's a real
indicator for long-term success." In addition to Franklin
and Mui, Daaimah Muhammad-Wright of Morgan Park and Amelia Costello
of Said Muhammad-Wright:
"When my friends heard about the ceremony and the laptop, they
told me they wished they had done the same thing. It was hard ... but
now I'm glad that my parents pushed me." Weary administrators But rewarding such endurance
is not without controversy. In one Some administrators
say they have grown weary of endless negotiations with parents. Will
a doctor's visit count against a student's record? How about a college
visit? A family wedding? An academic or athletic competition? Said Stevenson's Conery:
"Sometimes, students miss school for very good reasons. In today's
litigious atmosphere, you could find yourself getting sued." For Principal Troy Hickey
of Robinson High School (enrollment: 550) in southern Hickey's approach is
two-pronged: procuring a grant to crack down on those with spotty records,
while boosting extras for kids "who are here, doing what they should
be doing" with gift certificates, special outings and a ceremony. "Parents were just
so appreciative," Hickey said. "The athletes and the honor
roll students get their names in the paper all the time, but for the
kid who may not get recognized for anything else, this is their one
shining moment to take center stage." Governor:
Budget would help schools Phil Weber, Herald-Whig,
Blagojevich and the
Democratic-controlled Legislature have been at odds on the state's fiscal
budget. Because no budget agreement was reached last month, any new
proposal will require a three-fifths majority. If lawmakers can't reach
an agreement by July 1, it could force state government to shut down.
Blagojevich said stalling on a budget compromise is a political tactic
to put pressure on him and that shutting down government offices remains
a distinct possibility because he will not yield on some issues. Blagojevich has been
crisscrossing the state for 10 days trying to sell his proposal, which
calls for a 2.25 percent across-the-board spending cut in all areas
except education and health care. This was the first of many compromises
that the governor says legislators need to make before the budget can
be finalized. His original budget proposal did not include the spending
cuts. "We've got to cut
spending in areas that don't hurt people," he said today. Blagojevich
said his own office would be affected, as would offices of other elected
state officials. "All of them should be prepared to lead by example,"
he said. The
governor and legislative leaders are deadlocked over how to fill a roughly
$2.3 billion hole in next year's budget. Blagojevich's $54 billion
proposal would increase spending by about $1 billion. He would pay for
this by taking money out of special-purpose funds, ending some tax breaks
for business, delaying some pension costs and trimming spending. Madigan said that plan
"rests on a shaky foundation" of revenues that can be used
only once. He has raised the possibility
of approving the current budget again, so that there would be no spending
increases. Madigan has also had the House consider a version that would
adopt many of the governor's education and health care increases while
ignoring proposed spending cuts. He said further legislative
action to close tax and business loopholes will bring his plan within
reach. State
has a strange way with words Tracy Dell'Angela, At 14, Ulises Gonzales
is the kind of writer who makes his English teacher sigh with appreciation.
His imagery is vivid, his style fluid and imaginative, his mechanics
flawless. Ulises' Burr Ridge teacher
believes he will be a published writer someday. She also suspects he
failed his 8th grade standardized writing test. The person who grades
that test will be a $10-an-hour temporary worker in a conference room
in All children in That, in turn, is reshaping
the way schools teach this essential skill--for the worse, critics say. But Ulises' essay illuminates
the difficulty of trying to evaluate the infinitely variable craft of
writing in an objective and mechanical way. Standardized writing
tests measure certain benchmarks of basic competence--complete sentences,
well-organized paragraphs, supporting details, correct pronouns. They penalize pupils
who struggle to finish in the prescribed 40 minutes, as Ulises did,
without necessarily crediting his unconventional uses of dialogue and
descriptive passages that have characters "yelling with a surprising
ferocity" and "detention slips clenched in tight fists." In the end, what these
tests evaluate is so formulaic that in Automated scoring "We didn't build
this system to evaluate the Hemingways and Shakespeares," said
Richard Swartz, an executive director at Educational Testing Services,
which designed Indiana's system and also uses computer programs to grade
essays for the GMAT, the business graduate school entrance exam. "The [artificial
intelligence] is not going to be able to separate creative approaches
from mundane approaches, but I would argue that doesn't happen with
human readers either," Swartz said. "We're evaluating the
kind of writing students are asked to produce, and 90 percent of that
writing is pretty mundane." The Children write more
and at younger ages than ever before, educators say. But too often,
their creativity is squelched by instruction that pushes formulaic writing
because formulaic essays are enough to pass the state test. "Writing is problematic
because of the time it takes to teach and evaluate," said Ken Hunter,
a "The test is supposed
to enhance instruction, but it really scares people," he said.
"I think what happens sometimes is the only writing that gets done
[in the classroom] is done for the test." Schools making change That is starting to
change, with an increasing number of schools looking to improve their
writing instruction by retraining teachers and beefing up assignments
in classrooms across all grades. College-educated readers
at four sites around the nation, employed by a Unlike other subjects,
the writing test proved easy to pass, even for low-performing schools,
but difficult to master, even at schools packed with the brightest pupils. Only about 3 percent
of elementary school pupils statewide exceed standards on the writing,
compared to about 20 percent who exceed standards in reading. More than
900 By contrast, at Drake
Elementary in Yet in a handful of
districts, student writers have been able to reach the highest level. Among 3rd graders in
River Forest District 90, 91 percent passed, with 30 percent exceeding
standards. The district invested money to train teachers in writing
instruction, and principals urge teachers to get their kids writing
every day, across all subjects, from math to art. Hunter said he's seen
"extraordinary improvement" in the last five years, when the
state changed its writing exam and sought to make its standards less
formulaic. Five-paragraph formula Yet he acknowledged
that many teachers still teach "the formula:" the five-paragraph,
three-topic essay with lots of repetition and tired paragraph transitions
that begin with "first," "second" and "in conclusion."
Hunter said this kind of staid essay is enough to pass the test, but
not enough to exceed standards, which is why so few pupils rise to the
top level. Writing isn't difficult
for Ulises, but he cares far more about the beauty of his prose than
passing the state test. Ulises is a soft-spoken
boy who sits in the middle of Elizabeth Wheeler's classroom and listens
with a shy smile. Before he writes, he thinks--sometimes for 20 minutes
before he will commit a single syllable to paper. But when he starts,
the words flow with a graceful ease. "I can't write
something just to get it down on paper. I try to make my writing fluid,
to vary the structure and the words I choose," said Ulises, who
wants to be a scientist. "I do care if I pass, but it's not a priority." Scores reflect on teacher Wheeler admires Ulises'
refusal to compromise his writing quality, but she also knows she will
be judged on the passing rate of her pupils. Her school is a diverse
one in a neighborhood of million-dollar homes, where parents expect
top-notch scores on state exams. She agonizes over how hard to push
pupils like Ulises when she's teaching her class how to write for the
ISAT, the state exam. "The test works
for the student who doesn't have any understanding about writing. It
gives them a starting point," said Wheeler. "But really great
writers don't write that way. They break the rules." Burr Ridge Principal
Debra LeBlanc said testing exacts a toll in all classrooms, but the
writing exam troubles her most because she believes it is too arbitrary
for a subject where mastery can take many forms. She sees so much sameness
in her pupils' writing that "even my thank-you notes read like
little ISAT tests. `I really liked having lunch with you. Here are three
reasons why.'" She also finds it incomprehensible
that the workers scoring her kids' essays can do a good job in two or
three minutes--Burr Ridge teachers spent hours evaluating the essays
of just one classroom of 5th graders. Sometimes a bad prompt
can doom even the best writers. One year the test asked
11-year-olds to explain driving a car to someone from a foreign country.
Another year it was about manatees, a sea mammal most Testing experts say
the problem is not with The test wasn't designed
to prepare kids to write beautiful prose, said Samuel Krug, president
of MetriTech, the company that develops the writing test for "Some might say
the writing is pedestrian," Krug said. "But one thing the
writing test does, even though it's only 40 minutes, is determine whether
kids can put together ideas coherently, if not elegantly." - - - The vagaries of scoring The two essays below
were completed by 5th graders at BELOW STANDARDS Length: 1 page Score: 20 (21 points needed to
meet standards) EXCEEDS STANDARDS Length: 2 1/2 pages Score: 28 (28 points needed to
exceed standards) THE GRADING CRITERIA - Focus: The subject
is clear and consistent with a logical opening and closing. Score range: 1 to 6 - Support: The statements
are specific, detailed and accurate. Range: 1 to 6 - Organization: There
is a clear structure with logical paragraphs and varying transitions. Range: 1 to 6 - Conventions: Only
minor errors in spelling, grammar and punctuation. Range: 1 to 2 - Integration: Judges
whether the essay is "fully developed" as a whole for the
grade level. Range: 2 to 12 Sources: 400 schools
taken from failure list State concedes flaws
in test data Diane Rado, About 400 public schools
labeled as failures last fall actually met federal standards in 2003,
state officials acknowledged Wednesday, after a six-month appeals process
that cost $300,000 and exposed widespread flaws in "I think it's been
a learning experience for everyone," said Illinois State Board
of Education spokeswoman Karen Craven. As the federal No Child
Left Behind Act put stringent new testing standards in place, the state
board reported in November that 1,718 of the state's 3,919 public schools--about
44 percent--had failed. But a Tribune analysis
showed that the board's data were deeply flawed, and local school officials
complained loudly. More than 800 schools eventually contested their
status, saying errors in testing data, rather than student performance,
caused them to fail. Wednesday's announcement
reduced the number of schools that did not meet federal standards to
roughly 1,300, about a third of the state's schools. If those schools
show a pattern of failing over several years, a variety of sanctions
begin to kick in. In some cases, students would be allowed to transfer
to better schools. Under the federal reforms,
schools are measured on everything from the percentage of students in
each minority group who pass state tests to the portion of students
who take them. A massive amount of data is collected, and even tiny
variances in numbers can influence how a school is judged. Most of the errors in
the 2003 testing data stemmed from incorrect identification of students'
racial backgrounds, Craven said, as well as mistakes in test participation
figures. As the months went by,
the state blamed districts for not turning in correct information, while
local school officials blamed the state for not giving them clear instructions
and not catching large inconsistencies. The error-riddled testing
data sparked criticism from Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who chastised the
state board in his State of the State address in January and used the
controversy as a reason for his attempt to dismantle it. The board went through
a complex data-verification process that took about six months and should
lead to greater vigilance about future data collection, Craven said. "We don't want
to repeat what happened in 2003," she said. The state board did
not identify the estimated 400 schools that will be removed from the
failing list, saying specific information on individual schools will
be released by the end of the month. In other revised figures
released Wednesday, the state board said 363 schools are on the 2003
academic watch list--up from an earlier figure of 335 released in March.
Schools make the watch list if they fail testing standards and other
criteria four years in a row. Only 49 schools were on the watch list
in 2002. However, revised calculations
allowed 38 schools to be removed from the state's academic early warning
list, for schools that fail standards for two consecutive years. Most
of the schools are in the The state lists use
federal standards as benchmarks but involve a separate system of sanctions. The key leaders still
can't agree on basic issues, such as how much the state should spend
and where to get that money, but they are not entirely alone in their
quest. The budget situation is being echoed in a handful of other states,
including In Unlike here in "It's kind of like
a snooze alarm," Senate President pro tem John Burton, D-San Francisco
told the Sacramento Bee this week. The Louisiana Legislature
is also still working on a budget for the year beginning July 1. Disagreements
in that state are mostly centered on spending for pet projects backed
by various members of the House and Senate, which make up a mere fraction
of Louisiana's nearly $17.5 billion budget. Late-night negotiations
in In Rhode Island House members
are preparing for a vote later this week on that state's spending plan
for the year beginning July 1, while "The likelihood
of some states going beyond (the start of the fiscal year) July 1 is
a very real possibility, given some of the difficulties some of these
states still face," Perez said. "Others will wrap it up and
go home." One state, "They are still
trying to hammer out a budget," said Perez, who noted that this
is the 20th year in a row In any given year, there
will be a few states that are unable for some reason to pass a budget
by the start of their fiscal year, but that number has been higher in
the last two or three years because of the depressed economy, Perez
said. Even here in A report from the General
Assembly's Legislative Research Unit shows sessions ending as late as
July 12 in 1994, July 13 in 1993, and July 19 in 1991. Adjournment in
late June and early July is quite common, according to the report. While there has been
some talk of a potential government shutdown if "That has never
been a major concern in the past," said Charles N. Wheeler, director
of the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the "Most of the time,
because this was fairly common, nobody panicked about it," Wheeler
said. In years when budget
negotiations stretched into July, there was always an agreement that
state employees would continue to get paid and state government would
continue to operate at existing levels for the few more weeks it took
to iron out a budget deal, he said. "Things just continue
on, and there are no increases, obviously, but things are kind of spent
just the way they were in the prior year," Wheeler said. This year, as happened
in 1993, The full General Assembly
will be called back when there is a budget package ready for them to
consider. The legislative leaders
and the governor, who last met as a group on Friday, were expected to
resume talks today. Meanwhile, the House
appropriations general services and appropriations public safety committees
were set to meet at The Economic and Fiscal
Commission is also meeting Thursday in Madigan,
Jones rift puts cloud on budget John Chase and Christi
Parsons, ChicagoTribune, Tribune staff reporter
Molly Parker contributed to this report With Democrats stalemated
and the clock ticking down toward the day when failure to adopt a state
budget could trigger the shutdown of some state services, the situation
became even more complicated Wednesday as Senate President Emil Jones
accused House Speaker Michael Madigan of "deception." Meanwhile, Gov. Rod
Blagojevich said he was "not philosophically opposed" to raising
the state's cigarette tax to help ease the fiscal crisis, though he
quickly dismissed that option as being politically unrealistic. Republican
negotiators confirmed that a 50-cents per pack cigarette tax, as well
as a tax on junk food, had been at least temporarily removed from the
table during a later meeting in Jones, who has aligned
himself with Blagojevich in the budget battle against fellow Chicago
Democrat Madigan and some Republicans, blasted the House speaker for
a recent letter that appeared in several newspapers, criticizing the
budget passed by the Senate and supported by the governor. Jones said
Madigan's contentions that the Senate fiscal plan is unbalanced are
inaccurate because he said Madigan excluded across the board cuts that
are part of the plan. "I read the speaker's
letter to the paper. It's wrong. We passed a balanced budget. I went
to Chicago Public Schools, I know how to count," Jones said in
a joint appearance with Blagojevich at the Chicago Public Schools' Franklin
Fine Arts Center in "All I can see
is deception," Jones added. "Just because one's been there
a long time doesn't mean that they are right." Madigan has been the
House speaker for nearly 20 years. But House Democrats
maintain their calculations do contain those across-the-board cuts. "He's factually
wrong in his interpretation," Madigan spokesman Steve Brown said.
"What more do I have to say? In reality, this ought to be a situation
where you say, `The president of the Senate, a wonderful man, is factually
wrong.'" Following the negotiation
session, Madigan was asked if the gap separating his plan from Jones'
was greater than the $200 million previously thought. "After tonight
it is," Madigan said tersely. Indeed, lawmakers are
starting to talk seriously about the possibility the impasse will continue
into July. As the state draws closer
to the new fiscal year, which begins July 1, House lawmakers began asking
the heads of state agencies to present "doomsday" spending
plans by Monday that would keep the agencies operating at reduced levels
even if the General Assembly does not pass a budget by the deadline. Blagojevich plans to
sit down with the leaders again Friday morning in Chicago, but he is
remaining optimistic. "We think we're
making progress," he said. "If they're sincere, we're very
close, we should be able to finish a budget in the next day or so. If
it's gamesmanship, we'll keep working hard." Included in the mix
is the possibility for the cigarette tax hike, which could pour about
$150 million into state coffers. "I'm not philosophically
opposed to that. I don't know that there's support for that, but I'm
not philosophically opposed to that," the governor said. "In
fact, I ran commercials when I ran for governor that talked about a
cigarette tax to pay for prescription drug coverage. So philosophically
I'm comfortable with it. But I don't know if there's support in that
room for it." Sources said other revenue
options on the table include increasing professional regulatory fees
by $27 million, avoiding the $50 million annual payment to the state's
Rainy Day Fund and using portions of profits created by last year's
pension obligation bond transaction, which would add $75 million. Good News for Illinois Schools by Britten Follett,
WTVO-Rockford, This helps schools balance
their budget before the end of the fiscal year and avoid borrowing large
sums of money. "This is a big
one. There's two sources, property tax dollars and general state aid,
and when you take one-twelfth of major funding sources, it's very helpful,"
says Regional Superintendent Richard Fairgrieves. "Clearly 1/12 means
it's several hundred thousand dollars for us," says Belvidere Superintendent
Donald Schlomann. But the money is coming
at a time when district's are already looking at next year. And since
the budget hasn't been approved in "The good news
is that the state is giving us the money they promised us last year.
The bad news is that there's no promise for next year," says Schlomann. "They just aren't
going to know their state funding for the following year, until such
time," says Fairgrieves. But the teachers who
were laid off still don't know what next school year will bring. On
June 25, the governor plans to transfer $277 million into the common
school fund. BY ROSALIND ROSSI, Sun-Times
Education Reporter, The number of public
schools on the state's academic watchlist has skyrocketed sevenfold,
to 363, with nearly three-quarters of them in The watchlist is based
on state tests taken in April 2003 that were plagued with technical
errors because of a tough new federal requirement that schools calculate
the scores and testing rates of "subgroups'' of students -- such
as special education or low-income -- in determining "adequate
yearly progress.'' The errors took six
extra months to iron out, but the laborious process was "the right
thing to do,'' said State Board of Education spokeswoman Karen Craven. The state released tentative
academic watch and warning lists in March, but omitted 69 schools for
possible technical errors. Of those, 53 made lists released Wednesday. The final data put 363
schools on academic watch -- up from 49 in 2002 -- for failing to make
adequate yearly progress for at least four years. Of those, 269 schools
were in In addition, 305 schools
are now on academic early warning, down solidly from 664 in 2002, for
failing to make adequate yearly progress for at least two years. Craven said the new
lists are critical to determining the 2004 lists. Plus, the state wants
to offer some support to listed schools. The final list of those
schools that missed adequate yearly progress for just one year is expected
to be released next month, Craven said. Education funding structure needs to be fixed Letter by Mary Fioretti
of Algonquin, Member of District 300 Board of Education, Courier News,
I appreciate the fact
that for an entire year, education funding has been on almost every
front page in the state of The budget solutions
to help schools vary from each of the three regions — downstate, suburbs
and This funding structure
is not working for any of our public entities, especially education.
For those districts that have taken the hard line on spending, cut teachers,
staff and administrators, taken the business approach to income and
expenses on the backs of students and teachers, there needs to be systemic
change at the state level in the way money is dispersed to education.
Property owners have said they will no longer bear the burden. Regionally, with lobbying
efforts, a skewed view of what area districts need most is based on
who opens the door to the four leaders and who has access to the press.
These efforts do not represent the true monetary needs of all school
districts. If every child received
the exact amount of money per student from the state, there wouldn't
be a need to have this discussion year after year. There wouldn't be
flat grants or the need for a foundation equation. The system of funding
education must be fixed. State school funding simply must be fixed Letter by Mary Fioretti
of Algonquin, Daily Herald, I appreciate the fact
that for an entire year, education funding has been on almost every
front page in the state of More importantly, the
reporting of the The budget solutions
to help schools vary from each of the three regions - downstate, suburbs
and Lobbying efforts on
the part of educational concerns has truly heated up because each region
will realize a different monetary benefit. This funding structure is
not working for any of our public entities, especially education. For those districts
that have taken the hard line on spending, cut teachers, staff and administrators,
taken the business approach to income and put expenses on the backs
of students and teachers, there needs to be systemic change at the state
level in the way money is dispersed to education. Property owners have
said they will no longer bear the burden. Regionally, with lobbying
efforts, a skewed view of what area districts need most is based on
who opens the door to the four leaders and who has access to the press. These efforts do not
represent the true monetary needs of all school districts. If every child received
the exact amount of money per student from the state, there wouldn't
be a need to have this discussion year after year. There wouldn't be flat
grants or the need for a foundation equation. The system of funding
education must be fixed. =========================================================================== NATIONAL Education officials approve new plan for longer instructional
day AP, Critics said the move
to require five and a half hours of instruction is an unfunded mandate
and is not proven to close the gaps in education. "I exhort you to
look at reducing class size and providing early childhood education,
where there is enormous research that shows these measures close the
gaps" between rich and poor students, said Marcia Reback, president
of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers. Under the new rules,
the amount of instruction time required at elementary schools would
be increased by 30 minutes, The Providence Journal reported. High schools are already
required to offer five and a half hours of actual school work. But under
the new regulations, at all grade levels, lunch, recess, study halls,
homeroom, student passing time and common planning time would not count
as instructional time. An earlier proposal
would have required all districts to move to a seven-hour school day
by the fall of 2007. Districts in need of improvement would have had
to get there a year sooner. That plan immediately
came under heavy fire from unions, individual teachers and school superintendents. Education Commissioner
Peter McWalters said the new rules accomplish the same goal, to ensure
that urban students get more classroom time while giving schools the
flexibility to figure out how to get there. The new plan has a big
impact on districts with a short school day such as The regents don't know
how many districts will have to lengthen their school day because currently
each district defines instructional time differently. In Under the plan, all
schools would have to offer five and a half hours of instructional time
by 2007-08 or whenever a new contract is adopted, whichever happens
first. However, districts that
have failed to meet their academic targets for more than three years
would have to get there by 2005-06. AP, A three-judge panel
of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Edgar ruled that the
Bible Education Ministry program in The 30-minute classes
were held weekly for about 800 students in kindergarten through fifth
grade at the county's three elementary schools. Parental consent was
not required and students were allowed to participate in alternative
activities if they objected to the classes. "I'm disappointed,
not surprised though," Porter said. The appeals judges ruled
that although school officials contended that the classes were value-driven,
teaching responsibility and positive morals, they were "also teaching
the Bible as religious truth." The county's city of
Dayton, about 35 miles northwest of Chattanooga, is where orator and
presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and the lawyer Clarence
Darrow squared off in the courtroom during the 1925 prosecution of teacher
John T. Scopes for teaching evolution in the public schools instead
of the biblical story of creation. Study Finds Senior Exams Are Too Basic By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO,
A study of high school
graduation exams, rites of passage for more than half the nation's secondary
school students, shows that they largely test material taught in the
9th and 10th grades. Such material, the study said, is often taught
at the middle school level in other industrialized countries. The study found that
the tests measured very basic material and skills, insufficient for
success in university courses or in jobs paying salaries higher than
the poverty level, currently about $18,000 for a family of four. The study, by Achieve
Inc., a nonprofit organization created by state governors and business
leaders, analyzed high school exit tests in mathematics and language
arts from six states, and writing tests from four of the states. The
states were Mike Cohen, president
of Achieve, said the report found that the tests were not "not
pegged at a very demanding level." He said states should gradually
improve instruction and raise the minimum standards for graduation. The exams have met with
opposition, and some states, like Matthew Gandal, the
executive vice president of the organization, noted that exit exams
were frequently attacked as unfair. "We think it's the opposite,"
he said. "It's unfair not to expect students to learn what's on
these tests. By the time they graduate, if they haven't learned what's
on these tests, they'll be really unprepared, and by then it's too late.
They won't be able to go to college or to get jobs with which they can
support a family." The study also compared
the material tested with benchmarks from the Third International Mathematics
and Science Study, concluding that in math, the skills tested on high
school exit exams in the Lisa Graham Keegan,
the former commissioner of education in "Obviously, the
biggest barrier is not politics, it's reality," said Ms. Keegan,
who now runs a conservative nonprofit organization called the Education
Leaders Council. "We don't teach this content well, and any barrier
exam you put up right now doesn't mean that kids are going to learn
that material." Ms. Keegan said that
before these exams could be fairly imposed on high school students,
schools needed to ensure that they were actually teaching the material,
an elementary step that she said surprisingly eluded many school systems.
She praised the report, however, for highlighting the quality of the
exams and grade-level standards. The report came under
attack from FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing,
which opposes what it calls "one size fits all" exit exams.
Bob Schaeffer, public education director for the organization, said
that Achieve's reports invariably called for raising the academic bar
for students. "It sounds like
the latest installment from the 'Chicken Little, the Sky is Falling'
crowd," Mr. Schaeffer said, adding that the group frequently tied
reports of poor academic performance to dire predictions for the American
work force and economy. "All judgments
about where to set the bar, where the cutoffs should be, and how much
students should learn at any grade level," he said, "are inherently
subjective and political." GAO: ‘No Child’ Law Is Not an ‘Unfunded Mandate’ By David J. Hoff, Education
Week, Department of Education
officials are lauding a federal report declaring that the No Child Left
Behind Act is not an "unfunded mandate." But the report from
the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, isn’t
the definitive answer in the debate over the true costs for states and
districts to carry out the federal school improvement law, state officials
say. The GAO report "confirms
something that we have said all along: No Child Left Behind is not an
unfunded mandate," Ronald J. Tomalis, a counselor to Secretary
of Education Rod Paige, said in a conference call with reporters late
last month. "It has put a nail in the coffin of that canard." State leaders say the
report analyzes the act under a narrow and technical federal definition
of an unfunded mandate and doesn’t take into account future costs of
the 2½-year-old measure. "Nobody can say
whether it is an unfunded mandate," said Patricia F. Sullivan,
the deputy director of advocacy and strategic alliances for the Council
of Chief State School Officers. "It’s too soon, and the expensive
part hasn’t come yet." Sen. George V. Voinovich,
R-Ohio, asked that the GAO examine several recent major federal enactments
in light of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act. That 1995 statute establishes
procedural barriers to federal bills and proposed regulations if congressional
researchers determine that they would cost state and local governments
more than the amount Congress appropriates for them. In a relatively brief
discussion in its 97-page analysis of the unfunded-mandates act’s impact,
the GAO says that the No Child Left Behind Act is not an unfunded mandate
because states and districts participate as a condition of receiving
federal aid, and that by definition, under the Unfunded Mandates Reform
Act, such programs are not considered to fit that label. But the report also
notes that the education law and other measures "appeared to have
potential financial impacts," even if they didn’t fit the 1995
law’s definition of an unfunded mandate. The Education Department
seized on the May 25 report as something that would put an end to the
debate over whether the school law was an unfunded mandate. "The chorus of
the ‘unfunded mandate’ has now been exposed for exactly what it is—a
red herring," Mr. Paige said in a statement late last month. "If
states do not want federal support, they are not required to take the
funds. It’s that simple." Also, increased federal
funding to implement the law is enough to cover the expenses of complying
with the No Child Left Behind Act, said Susan Aspey, a spokeswoman for
the department. Federal spending on
K-12 education has increased by 37.5 percent since the 2000-01 school
year, according to the Education Department. But even those increases
haven’t covered the new requirements facing schools, according to at
least one advocate for the states. In the past, federal
programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which the
No Child Left Behind Act reauthorized, had "very few rules or strings
attached," said David L. Shreve, the education committee director
of the National Conference of State Legislatures. "What has happened
is the rules have changed, and it has a lot more strings." Big Dollars? The debate over the
costs of the federal law was especially intense in recent state legislative
sessions. But Ms. Sullivan and
other state advocates said the ambitious school law’s final tab is still
unknown.When all of the law’s requirements kick in, states will have
a better idea of whether the federal government is covering all the
associated costs, she said. "We just don’t
know what it’s going to cost to restructure hundreds of schools,"
she said, "and to make sure all teachers are highly qualified."
Diplomas
should reflect level of achievement The issue: High school
graduation standards With a fresh batch of
high school graduates, it's worth wondering just what those diplomas
mean in terms of each graduate's future. The American Diploma
Project pointed out in February that 53 percent of high school graduates
who go on to college need at least one remedial course in college, an
indication of an alarming gap between what's expected by colleges and
what high schools produce. In Academic honors is easy
enough to figure out. Core 40 means the graduate has shown proficiency
in core classes. The regular diploma goes to everyone else who passes
the graduation qualifying exam. Even that exam is inadequate. The federal No Child
Left Behind Act sets the bar much higher. Perhaps too high. Earlier this month,
the Northwest Indiana Quality of Life Council discussed the federal
law, which mandates schools attain 100 percent achievement on the ISTEP-Plus
exam by 2014. That's impossible, of
course. Tweaking the No Child
Left Behind Act to account for special education as a special exception
is logical and necessary. And students with limited English proficiency
must be brought up to speed before they are promoted. Another logical step
is the development of a graduated system of diplomas to reflect different
achievement levels, much like grades on a report card. Graduated, ranked diplomas
would be helpful to employers and colleges as they determine which graduates
will meet their minimum standards. The Indiana Education
Roundtable, a group of educators and business leaders who debate public
policy, has already started to discuss this idea, although it hasn't
been framed in those exact words. It is now time for the entire state
to discuss Schools
achieving a dream: Near-universal Net access Greg Toppo, Eighty miles northeast
of The Internet connection
in every classroom comes compliments of the federal E-rate program,
says Steele Cooley, the district's technology director. And while it
can't be used for computers or TVs — just for the infrastructure necessary
to get schools wired to the Web — E-rate frees up "tens of thousands
of dollars each year," Cooley says, allowing schools to use tax
receipts for classroom gear. "It's been an ongoing, driving force
in our technology." Despite its problems
— including waste, fraud and mismanagement, according to federal investigators,
who plan a series of hearings on Capitol Hill next week — E-rate has
been a dazzling success in thousands of public schools and libraries
nationwide, advocates say. (Related item: Fraud, waste mar plan to wire
schools to Net) "It's helped us
to close the digital divide," says Anita Givens, The program, paid for
by a small fee on phone bills, has generated $12.9 billion since 1998.
Advocates say E-rate has helped schools and libraries, especially in
rural areas, accomplish what might seem an impossible goal: near-universal
Internet access. Between 1996 and 2002,
the percentage of Internet-wired schools rose from 65% to 99%, according
to federal statistics. The percentage of wired classrooms rose from
14% to 92%; likewise, the percentage of Internet-connected libraries,
from 28% to 95%. Educators say the Internet
is vital to help young people do homework, conduct research and compete
in a global economy. "Technology is
something you have to have, and poor school districts like us cannot
afford it," says Cameron Superintendent Maxie Morgan. The program helps schools
pay for all telecommunications, including ongoing phone expenses. By
reducing these costs, E-rate has allowed schools to upgrade their computer
systems and spend what little money they have on things they couldn't
otherwise afford. "The program, in
some respects, has been wildly successful," says Mary Kusler of
the American Association of School Administrators. Anita Wiseman, principal
of "We were always
in the red when it came to our phone bill," she says. It also has revitalized
public libraries, says Carrie Lowe of the American Library Association.
"Despite the challenges, E-rate has been a huge success for public
libraries." Libraries get only 5%
of E-rate funds, but she says more people use the facilities now because
of the free Internet access many now provide. But critics complain
that small communities are often at a disadvantage because they don't
have trained technology coordinators to write the detailed proposals
that E-rate requires. "Learning all of
the ins and outs of telecommunications and discounts, that's a steep
learning curve," says Givens, who adds that when E-rate debuted,
many officials in small districts "didn't know the difference between
what we call POTS and PANS: Plain Old Telephone Service and the Pretty
Awesome Neat Stuff." Others complain that
E-rate leaves middle-class districts behind, since they're "not
poor enough to get the help, but they're not rich enough to get it themselves,"
says Givens. Della Matthis, "It also means
that kids do not have to be hauled off to boarding schools to get advanced
education," she says. "We bring the education to them." E-rate also brought
Internet connections to villages themselves, she says. "Suddenly,
the demand for not just telephone lines, but for actual, honest-to-God
broadband connectivity, has gone up," she says. Critics say E-rate's
generous subsidies, which pay for as much as 90% of connectivity costs,
are too tempting to crooked technology companies, which sell schools
fancier equipment than they need. But while vendors in Congress in 2005 is
scheduled to reauthorize E-rate. A few opponents will likely propose
revamping it, but few observers think the accounting problems will sink
it altogether. "It needs changing,
it needs tightening," says Dennis Pierce, managing editor of eSchool
News. But he says even critics agree that it's a worthy program. Ultimately, he says,
E-rate "has provided so much benefit, and there would be such an
uproar, that the program is safe." Schools
graded a success by state, a flop by feds Some schools get an
A grade under one system and an F under the other. And the poor marks
open the doors for mass student transfers, a demand local districts
are ill prepared to meet. Ron Matus and Matthew
Waite, Under the state's grading
system, nearly half of the schools earned A's. Under the federal system,
nearly 80 percent were deemed in need of improvement. The oddity: Hundreds
of schools fell into both categories. The clash in standards
is likely to baffle many parents and shine a brighter political spotlight
on the No Child Left Behind Act, the sweeping federal law that anchors
President Bush's education agenda. Up to 1,000 schools
that didn't pass federal muster under No Child must now allow students
to transfer to other schools, an option that could leave authorities
scrambling to reassign thousands of students by the start of classes
in August - and then paying the transportation costs. Nobody is predicting
chaos, but school officials are wading into uncharted waters. "Everybody's kind
of learning their way around this," said Walt Bartlett, who oversees
federal programs in The big exception: In Tallahassee, Gov.
Jeb Bush touted the latest round of school grades, which are based on
the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Nearly 70 percent of schools
earned A's or B's this year, up from 21 percent in 1999, when FCAT testing
began. Bush said the grades
are proof that testing and higher standards are making "If you have high
expectations for every child . . . and you do not have tolerance for
mediocrity, you will get better results," Bush said at a news conference
in the Capitol. The picture isn't as
rosy through the federal lens. While both state and
federal standards are based on FCAT scores, the state formula puts great
emphasis on improvement. If a school helps struggling students score
better on the FCAT, its overall grade gets a boost. That's why five No Child is all about
performance. The federal law requires
schools to improve performance every year, overall and for a long list
of subgroups that include minorities, low-income children, students
with limited English skills and students with disabilities. If one group fails,
the entire school fails. This year, 77 percent
of Gov. Bush took that
as progress. He went out of his way to downplay discrepancies between
state and federal standards, calling them complementary. "They measure different
things," Bush said. "This will provide teachers and principals
and parents a useful tool to be able to say, "Look, my school is
doing well, we've had gains . . . but here are the sectors we need to
focus on.' " State Department of
Education spokeswoman Frances Marine offered this analogy: An All-Star
basketball player dunks, rebounds and nails 3-pointers with ease, but
his free throw shooting is poor. In the same way, an A school may need
to focus more attention on its students with limited English skills. Of the 1,200 schools
that earned A's this year, more than half did not make AYP. Not a single high school
in the And yet, 32 schools
that earned C's did make AYP. Critics say those kinds
of numbers can't be explained. "Parents have good
reason to be confused," said state Senate Minority Leader Ron Klein,
D-Boca Raton, a longtime FCAT critic. "If the students are progressing
as well as the governor claims, how is it possible that the overwhelming
majority of The results were particularly
painful for the hundreds of Under No Child, close
is not enough. The law's goal is for
100 percent of students to be up to snuff by 2014, as measured by each
state's standards. Every year a school falls short, new sanctions kick
in, including tutors, new administrators and, eventually, a takeover
by the state. The transfer option
is first. Schools that serve poor communities are supposed to allow
their students to transfer if the schools fail to meet the federal standard
two years in a row. This year, 959 schools statewide fit the bill, including
scores of them around the Practically, it's not
possible. With the vast majority
of And most parents don't
want to move their children anyway. A survey last year by
the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents most of the
country's largest urban school districts, found 1.2-million students
in 46 cities were eligible to transfer under No Child, but only 44,000
requested a transfer and only 17,000 actually moved. Surveys shows many parents
have broad worries about public education, "but their feelings
about their own school are, "It's a pretty good school,' "
said Jeff Simering, the group's legislative director. In In In Five of them earned
A's, six earned B's and one got a C. Said But there is no denying
No Child's political potency. A group tied to teachers unions formed
last month solely to slam it. Communities for Quality Education, a coalition
of teachers and parents, has been running critical television ads in
a handful of swing states, with a heavy emphasis on And it's not just teachers
and Democrats doing the sniping. Republicans in conservative
states such as Bureaucrats in Ironically, it was Gov.
Bush who decided how stringently No Child would be applied in The main reason: On Tuesday, Gov. Bush
said he doesn't regret that decision. "We're not going to lower
our standards so we can look good," he said. - Ron Matus can be reached
at 727 893-8873 or matus@sptimes.com Staff writers Joni James, Stephen
Hegarty, Letitia Stein and Jeffrey Solochek contributed to this report.
WHAT IS "NO CHILD
LEFT BEHIND'? he federal law is the
first to set strict performance targets, both for schools and specific
groups of students. Those groups include minorities, low-income students,
students with limited English skills and students with disabilities. If even one group fails,
the entire school fails. Schools with a high
percentage of poor children - called Title I schools - face sanctions
if they don't meet the federal targets. New sanctions kick in every
year. If schools fail two
years in a row, students could get the option of transferring to another
public school in the district. After three years in
a row, schools must provide tutors. After four years, districts
must step in and replace staff or change curriculum. After five years, the
school is identified for restructuring, which could include a state
takeover or conversion to a charter school. Chuck Haga, Star Tribune,
"It was largely
a map of progressively rising proficiency levels, ultimately reaching
100 percent," Akins said. "Another mother and I looked at
each other and laughed. She said, 'Does this mean that by the time my
daughter's 16 she'll never get anything wrong?' " School's out, but the
halls of The debate heated up
last month when state Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager issued an
opinion that There had been resistance
in other states. And in March the National
Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) formed a task force to recommend
changes. But Lautenschlager's opinion was the first such ruling in the
nation by a top state official. "We've heard from
a lot of people around the country," she said last week. "There's
a lot of concern out there." Her opinion, a response
to an inquiry from a Democratic state senator, holds that states "are
entitled to take Congress at its word that it did not intend to require
state and local governments to expend their own funds to comply"
with the federal mandates. In effect, she invited
school districts or the state to sue the federal government, which brought
cheers from the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC), the
state's largest teachers union, which believes the law is inflexible,
punitive and underfunded. The opinion also brought
a quick response from the Bush administration. Days after it was issued,
U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige was in Lautenschlager said
she was "amazed" by the negative response, which included
a statement by the Republican Party of Wisconsin that her analysis was
"an opinion by a Democrat motivated by politics instead of the
facts." Lautenschlager said
she has "strong opinions about the importance of education,"
but attorneys who researched the issue "were given no instructions
except to analyze." For the secretary of education to "come
to Stan Johnson, WEAC president,
wants a court challenge. "The attorney general's
opinion left the door open for some districts or the state to sue,"
he said. "I'd like to see some districts get together and do that. "Even if the law
was fully funded, it doesn't address what schools really need ... to
meet the ideals of the law." Shortly after the opinion
was issued, Johnson attended a meeting in But because it will
take time to calculate costs required but not covered by the law --
and because the issue has become entangled in politics -- Johnson said
he doubts any formal challenge will come until 2005. "I would not expect
anything before the election because it would be seen as the unions
and Democrats trying to get at Bush," he said. "But people
need to take a hard look at this law. It's going to sneak up on the
public as more and more districts are labeled as 'in need of improvement'
and face sanctions." Support, evidence The law requires testing
of all third- through eighth-graders in reading and math, with all students
to be performing at their grade level by 2014. It imposes sanctions
against schools that don't show improvement, including allowing parents
to transfer children from a school "in need of improvement"
to another school in the district -- with the weaker school paying the
costs. According to the NCSL,
more than 20 states have considered ways to end their participation
in No Child Left Behind, to seek full funding for participation or to
propose changes in the law. In "That's what the
"A lot of states
are considering what to do about it, but it may not be in their best
interest to challenge this right now," Young said. "Maybe
wait until states feel the full force of the federal requirements and
know the full costs." The bipartisan NCSL
task force, co-chaired by state Sens. Steve Kelley of The act has "laudatory
purposes," Saland said in an NCSL briefing paper earlier this year,
but there is widespread belief that it "imposes a number of unfunded
and underfunded mandates" and "some of its requirements are
unreasonably ... difficult to attain." Ken Cole, executive
director of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, said the association
cautioned districts against racing into court with an undocumented case
of distress. "Down the road,
with the hierarchy of sanctions that kick in, they may be required to
provide supplemental services to students," Cole said. If those
costs aren't supported, "we'd be interested then in looking into
[a challenge]. "The purpose of
the law, that every young person be given every opportunity and have
all kinds of effort expended to get them to grade level -- that's not
a bad concept. School board members and teachers understand that,"
he said. "The notion of
accountability may be rigorous, but that may be where the future's at.
The idea of 'You just give us the money and we'll just do our best'
-- that's losing momentum." Lautenschlager agreed
that districts may need more time to document costs. "I think that's
fair," she said. "But in the past few weeks, many organizations
have shown us statistics that make it clear [the] funding is inadequate." One study, by the Institute
for One student short Critics of the law also
argue that its testing requirements are inflexible and punitive. They
also come at a bad time, said Akins, the Cornucopia parent. "We're losing and
cutting programs and teachers, from art and music to French and gifted-and-talented,
while the students are subjected to an ever-greater battery of tests
that cost plenty but otherwise make no difference whatsoever,"
she said. "The emphasis is skewed. Kids can't be tested into perfection." The law requires that
95 percent of students in each of four ethnic subgroups take the tests.
LaFollette improved participation over last year, Principal Michael
Meissen said, but only 69 of 74 black students reported for the 2004
test -- 93 percent. "I think there
are [many] dimensions to determining the success of a school,"
Waste and Fraud Besiege By SAM DILLON, New York
Times, June 17, 2004 WASHINGTON, June 16
- When the El Paso school system wanted to upgrade its Internet connections
three years ago, it tapped into a federal program that offers assistance
for such projects. The program paid the
International Business Machines Corporation $35 million to build a network
powerful enough to serve a small city. But the network would be so sophisticated
that the 90-school district could not run it without help. Foreseeing the problem,
I.B.M. charged the district an additional $27 million, paid by the federal
program, to build a lavish maintenance call-in center to keep the network
running. The center operated for nine months. Then, with no more money
to support it, I.B.M. dismantled it and left town. The federal effort to
help poor schools connect to the Internet, the E-rate program, which
collects a fee from all American phone users to distribute $2.25 billion
a year to such schools and libraries, wasted enormous sums as El Paso
built its extravagant network in the 2001-2 school year, according to
documents and federal lawmakers. But the problems have
not been there alone. In Across the nation in
recent months - in On Thursday, Congress
is to open hearings on all that has gone wrong. The hearings will be
held by the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and
Investigations, whose chairman, Representative James C. Greenwood of
Mr. Greenwood said that
since schools often must pay only 10 percent of the cost of equipment
and services while E-rate picks up the rest, "contractors have
mastered the art of coming into these districts, recommending gold-plated
architecture, and school officials, buying at 10 cents on the dollar,
take everything they recommend.'' "You couldn't invent
a way to throw money down the drain that would work any better than
this," he added. The Universal Service
Administrative Company, a nonprofit government corporation overseen
by the communications commission and known to school administrators
as USAC (pronounced YOU- sack), is in charge of the E-rate program,
which has many enthusiastic backers. "Every mammoth
government program has problems," said Gregg Downey, editor of
eSchool News, a paper that covers educational technology. "The
sloth, the waste and the cases of outright fraud shouldn't be a reason
to get rid of a program that's doing a lot of good. This is a program
that helps schools serve students better through technology." Michael Balmoris, a
spokesman for the communications commission, said that E-rate was not
"waste- and fraud-free" but that abuses were not "endemic."
Narda M. Jones, an acting
chief in the F.C.C. division that oversees the program, said it was
designed to give schools "maximum flexibility" to build technology
systems that suited their needs. "But as the system
has grown, we've seen that that design has given people an opportunity
to push at the margins of the program," Ms. Jones said. In the last year, she
said, the commission has adopted rules that "significantly tighten"
the wiggle room for abuse. One such rule bars people found guilty of
crimes from participation, she said. But Thomas D. Bennett,
an assistant inspector general at the commission, remains concerned
about oversight. He pointed to evaluations of 122 E-rate beneficiaries
carried out or overseen by F.C.C. and USAC auditors in the last year
or so. The auditors characterized 62 beneficiaries as "compliant"
with E-rate rules, 21 as "generally compliant," and 39 - nearly
a third of the total - as "not compliant," Mr. Bennett said. "That doesn't give
us much comfort that beneficiaries are complying with our rules,"
he said. In the case of the $1
million server, installed for the Lee A. Berry, the Brevard
district's deputy superintendent, defended the purchase. "We violated no
rules," Mr. In Then The I.B.M.-El Paso plan
called for creation of a fiber-optic network with videoconferencing
capabilities, managed by top-of-the-line switches, routers and other
hardware. The project was so sophisticated, and so much money had to
be spent so fast, that the district's in-house technology staff was
quickly overwhelmed. After financing was
approved, I.B.M moved immediately to roll out the new network. But it
took until Hoping that "We informed the
district that we could no longer continue to provide these services
for free," he said, and in January of last year the company dismantled
the maintenance center and left Do the clothes make the student? Board trying to come
up with a uniform policy By Emily Richmond, If Clark County School
Board Vice President Larry Mason has his way Thursday, a pilot study
requiring students at five Mason will ask his fellow
School Board members to vote in favor of removing the word "mandatory"
from the district regulation that allowed schools to adopt the uniform
policies two years ago, a move that would essentially dissolve the study. Also at Thursday's meeting,
four additional "I'm not convinced
that uniforms have anything to do with how students learn," Mason
said following the last School Board vote. "Saying no bandannas
or hats or low-cut pants, that I can understand. But we already have
a district dress code that says all that without making uniforms something
mandatory." Each of the four elementary
schools met the survey requirements, with approval ratings ranging from
74 percent at Hummel to 81 percent at Mike Rolands, assistant
principal at "It's hard to create
a consistent school environment without all of your policies following
through," Rolands said. "At the start of the year we have
a great response, but then it falls off. Parents don't want to fight
that battle (over uniforms) at home when it's not backed up by the school's
expectations." Bobi Fuentes, whose
two sons attend Supporters of uniform
policies say the outfits are economical because students can mix and
match pieces without needing complete separate outfits. But Fuentes
said most kids like to change out of their uniforms after school. "I don't think
it saves money because you end up buying twice the wardrobe," Fuentes
said. However, Fuentes said,
school uniforms would probably improve the overall learning environment
and fewer children would be picked on for not keeping up with the latest
fashions and fads. Cathy Sodaro, who has
8-year-old twin girls attending "It definitely
doesn't restrict their individuality at all," Sodaro said. "They
(her daughters) are totally different." Board President Susan
Brager-Wellman said she voted against turning the pilot study into a
district-wide regulation because only schools in the southeast region
had expressed an interest in adopting mandatory uniform policies. She
encouraged proponents of the policy to look for supporters in other
regions or to come back to the board with a proposal limited to southeast
schools. While the School Board
hashes out its uniform policy, seven schools in the district's northeast
region plan to adopt "school wardrobe" policies for the 2004-05
academic year. "School wardrobe" policies place strict limits
on the colors, fabrics and styles of clothing that students may wear. Following the lead of
Regulations already
exist giving principals the authority to set such requirements without
first going to the School Board for approval, said Agustin Orci, deputy
superintendent of instruction for the district. Some parents have expressed
concern that they were not given a say in whether or not their children's
school would adopt wardrobe policies. Mary McDaniel, whose son will
attend the new "How can you say
this isn't a uniform when you're telling kids exactly what colors and
types of clothing they can wear?" McDaniel asked. "There should
have been community meetings about this, and parents should have some
say. This is still a public school district, isn't it?" The only difference
between a "school wardrobe" and a uniform is semantics, said
Gary Peck, executive director of the Nevada ACLU. The district should
be focusing on matters directly related to student achievement -- such
as test scores and curriculum -- rather than wasting time on unnecessary
dress codes, Peck said. Schools see cellphone cheating By Megan Tench, A high-tech trend has
put local school and state officials on high alert: students using cellphones
to cheat on tests. The digital industry's
latest features -- such as instant text messaging, email, and Internet
access -- have proven troublesome for teachers. Some educators say that
students have been using the features to look up and send test answers
to their friends or even take photographs of exams for future use. ''I can understand why
they would want to get rid of phones, but for some students, it's the
only way they can pass," April Gordon, a senior from Concern about high-tech
cheating has prompted state education officials to consider banning
the use of cellphones during the MCAS exam, a graduation requirement
for 10th graders. ''It's not a situation
that we've run into with MCAS, but we do know that nationally this has
become an issue," said Heidi Perlman, spokeswoman for the state
Department of Education. The department is considering
amending test guidelines to prohibit cellphones, she said. ''It's unclear if they
are going to be taken away or just turned off during testing,"
said Perlman, adding that the new measure would be in place before the
July retest. In ''We have not heard
a lot about cyber-cheating in our schools," said Palumbo. ''But
if the state does set a regulation, we will add that to our checklist
to make sure it's enforced." Cellphones and pagers
are also banned from Other ''We labeled them, and
we had students pick them up after the test," Burke said. During school, he added,
students must register their cellphones with school administrators and
they also must have permission from their parents to carry them. Cellphone cheating is
not just a problem in this country. In Still, ''Not everyone uses
their phones to cheat," Madison Park senior Jadirah Ortiz said
as she stuffed her credit card-sized cell in her pocket. ''Instead of
banning cellphones, they need to have better monitoring in class." ''We need them,"
added her classmate, Tanisha Brown. ''There could be an emergency. We've
got girls here who have kids. We got people here who take care of people
at home. For a lot of people, it's their parents who give them cellphones
in the first place." Paring Down By Caroline Hendrie,
Education Week, 6/16/04 As a strategy for reforming
secondary education in Prodded by an outpouring
of philanthropic and federal largess, school districts and even some
states are downsizing public high schools to combat high dropout rates
and low levels of student achievement, especially in big- city school
systems. For longtime proponents of small schools, the upswell in support
for their ideas is making for heady times. Despite the concept’s
unprecedented popularity, however, evidence is mounting that "scaling
up" scaled-down schooling is extraordinarily complex. A sometimes
confusing array of approaches is unfolding under the banner of small
high schools, contributing to concerns that much of the flurry of activity
may be destined for disappointing results. "It’s very, very
difficult to do this well," said Tom Vander Ark, who heads the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s mammoth initiative to create small
high schools. "Small is not a panacea. It’s a platform that helps
you do the things you need to do to help kids succeed." Whether that platform
becomes a springboard to higher student achievement on a broad scale
and for a sustained period remains an open question. Even in places
where small schools have won strong support, educators are being hard
pressed to take what has been essentially a succession of experiments
and move them to the mainstream. "Whenever you have
a reform that has been successful in some places and then it’s scaled
up quickly, with a lot of people who only understand it superficially,
there’s a lot of danger that some people will do it poorly and that
the idea will go down in flames," said Linda Darling-Hammond, a
professor of education at Stanford University who is an expert in small-school
design. ‘Culture Change' Well aware of that risk,
advocates of scaled-down schooling have been working overtime to put
supports in place for educators to combat a host of emerging challenges.
At the same time, they are scrambling to put their ideas into practice
before the interest and money run out. "We’re talking
about a culture change, not just an institution change," said Deborah
Meier, the progressive educator and author who has founded small public
schools in For the moment, that
interest is running high. During the past few
years, calls have intensified for reinventing what many education leaders
see as an outmoded institution: comprehensive high schools that do a
better job of sorting students into academic tracks than of educating
all students to the levels needed in today’s knowledge-driven economy.
Pressure to act on those
calls has mounted as new demands for higher graduation rates and test-score
gains have kicked in, thanks to the federal No Child Left Behind Act
and state accountability systems. School safety concerns, heightened
by the Against this backdrop,
more educators are buying into the notion that less may be more. Private
foundations and the federal government are offering aid to spur the
downsizing of public high schools. Across the country, educators are
taking the bait. In the 1.1 million-
student Statewide efforts are
taking root from Influx of Funding In some places, early
indications are that efforts to rapidly scale up smaller, more personalized
learning environments are meeting with success. In others, though, ambitions
for widespread change seem to be outstripping results. And that reality
has some small-school proponents asking themselves questions: Is the movement growing
too fast? Are people jumping on the small-schools bandwagon for the
wrong reasons? Was it wise to pour so many resources into scaling up
small schools before a consensus emerged on how to do it right? Two major funders, often
working with local and regional foundations, have been helping to spread
the small-schools approach over the past four years at the national
level: the federal government’s Smaller Learning Communities Program
and the Seattle-based Gates Foundation. Since 2000, the foundation
started by the Microsoft founder and his wife has pumped nearly $650
million into efforts to establish small high schools that embody a set
of attributes it believes are conducive to high achievement. (See chart
below.) The foundation stresses that small size is necessary, but not
sufficient, to create such schools, and that structural innovations
must be accompanied by instructional ones. To serve students well, foundation
officials say, small high schools must offer what they call the new
"three R’s": rigor, relevance, and relationships. Headed by Mr. Vander
By its calculations,
the foundation has so far helped support the start-up of more than 740
new small high schools— typically defined as no larger than 400 students—and
the redesign of 460 existing large high schools. "Our goal is not
to create more small schools, although that has certainly been an outcome
of our early grantmaking," said Mr. Vander Ark. "Our goal
is to help more students graduate with the skills they need for work
and citizenship." While the Gates initiative
has garnered widespread attention, the U.S. Department of Education
has been quietly running a Clinton-era program that the Bush administration
has consistently urged Congress to eliminate, so far without success.
With funding that climbed
from $45 million annually in fiscal 2000 to $174 million this fiscal
year, the Smaller Learning Communities Program has doled out 542 grants
worth nearly $275 million to hundreds of districts since 2000. The program
is now reviewing applications for its fourth grant cycle, which is expected
to yield another 140 one-year planning grants and 144 three-year awards
for implementation. The grants are targeted to high schools with at
least 1,000 students. Projects that qualify
for the federal grants can fall far short of breaking up large campuses
into independent or semiautonomous schools, usually the minimum degree
of restructuring that is required under the Gates Foundation’s grants
for existing schools. Opening career academies, assigning students to
advisory groups, and even revamping the schedule to allow for longer
class periods are among the changes that can qualify. Given the expansive
criteria, some critics see the federal program as contributing to a
fuzzy sense of just what the small-schools movement is or should be
about. Mr. Vander "Schools need very
clear guidance, quality outside assistance, sufficient multiyear resources,
and a support network to draw on," he said. "The federal Small
Learning Communities Program’s insufficient in all four of those areas." Still, the program has
defenders, including Michael Klonsky, a co-director of the Small Schools
Workshop at the "At least the [Department
of Education] grant is a public grant," he said. "It’s not
like 12 rich people sitting in a room and saying, ‘This is how we do
it in our business … and if anybody gets in our way, we’ll fire them.’
" Staying Power Questioned
Mr. Klonsky is among
a group of small-schools proponents who are concerned that the boom
in the approach’s popularity is driven primarily by the availability
of funding, particularly from the Gates Foundation. "You really have
to ask yourself whether these big districts would be doing this without
the Gates money coming in," said Jon Schroeder, the coordinator
of Education Evolving, a nonprofit organization based in Whatever the impetus,
it’s clear that policymakers are taking the small-schools idea seriously.
A recent report synthesizing the themes to emerge from seven national
conferences last fall on redesigning secondary education concludes that
"the concept of smaller, more personalized high school learning
environments has moved from the sidelines of high school reform to center
stage." But the report by the
National High School Alliance, a partnership of more than 40 national
organizations interested in high school redesign, also argues that education
leaders have yet to devote enough attention to the many practical problems
"of bringing innovation to scale." Among the most pressing
of those systemic challenges is finding enough principals and teachers
with a deep understanding of the complex features of successful small
schools. Researchers studying the Gates Foundation initiative have found,
for example, that many small schools are struggling to put into place
strong curricula and instructional practices, in part because their
"detracked" classrooms include youngsters of widely varying
skill levels. "To really use
this money wisely, we really need people who understand why small is
better," said Bill Klann, who teaches 11th grade humanities at
the 340-student Retrofitting old buildings
and securing new ones at a time of overcrowding and tight budgets pose
other serious roadblocks in many places. Altering district practices
to support small schools is a heavy lift. Ensuring that successful small
schools will thrive after their founders and funders move on is yet
another problem, particularly because of the hard time many small schools
have in making ends meet on per-pupil funding allocations in some states.
Beyond those and other
systemic challenges is the often-fierce resistance that arises from
teachers and administrators, and sometimes from students and parents,
when districts set out to convert big high schools into smaller units
or separate schools. Amid such difficulties,
a split has emerged between those who see value in creating smaller
learning communities within jumbo schools, and those who see such efforts
as largely pointless. "There’s a big
debate in the reform community on whether it’s even worth the effort
to try to convert large high schools as they are, or whether the only
useful strategy is to go to new, small, completely autonomous schools,"
Ms. Darling-Hammond said. "Those are very different approaches
to the change process that seem in many cases to be producing very different
results." To date, no one has
conducted a major comparative study on the benefits of converting existing
schools versus starting new ones, she said. Even anecdotally, examples
are scarce of large high schools that have seen dramatic learning gains
after restructuring into smaller learning communities or schools-within-schools,
Ms. Darling-Hammond said. That has led some veteran small-schools proponents
to conclude that the approach may be misguided. "Too many people
are saying, in Wizard of Oz fashion, to a bunch of teachers, ‘You are
now School A, you are School B,’ " said Ms. Meier. "The odds
are it won’t work. I think it’s a waste of energy." Bush administration
officials, for their part, regard the smaller-learning- communities
approach skeptically. When it comes to raising student achievement,
said Susan Sclafani, the Education Department’s assistant secretary
for vocational and adult education, whose office oversees the Smaller
Learning Communities Program, the technique of "taking a large
school and turning it into small learning communities … has almost no
research behind it." Yet other veterans see
breaking down big schools as a critical element in the scaling-up equation.
Questions about which approach is better are at best premature, some
say. "I don’t think
one way is easier or better. I think there are trade-offs," said
Joe Nathan, a University of Minnesota-Twin Cities professor who is helping
both to start new schools and restructure large ones under a grant from
the Gates Foundation. Although he’s seen efforts
to break up big schools go bad, Mr. Klonsky says they can succeed, provided
that the impulse for reform comes from those most affected. For that
reason, he regards much of the debate among elite observers over the
best way to downsize as beside the point. "I don’t think
all these great ideas about small schools, including my own, are sustainable
without community engagement," he said. "It’s got to be rooted
in people’s prior experience and concrete conditions." In "It has to start
at the school, and it has to involve the school community, because if
Superintendent Romer said, ‘OK everybody, we have to do this,’ it wouldn’t
work," said Rosa Maria Hernandez, the director for small learning
communities in Local District F, a subdistrict of the 775,000-student
school district. With help from a federal grant, the subdistrict is
planning the redesign of three large high schools, including one with
more than 5,000 students. As debate continues
over whether and how to scale up scaled-down schooling, Mr. Vander "What we’re doing
today is a disaster, particularly for low- income and minority kids,"
he said. "We need to come to grips with that."
Illinois State Board of Education |
