Recession Swells School Class Sizes

Classrooms across the country will be more crowded when school starts in the fall as falling state budgets force districts to lay off schools, pushing class sizes higher, the Associated Press reports.

Even as the Obama administration’s stimulus package pumps billions of dollars into schools, 44% of school districts expect to increase class size, according to a survey this year by the American Association of School Administrators.

There is no official data on class sizes for the upcoming year; many states and districts have not finalized their budgets.

Educators and parents worry the larger classes will keep kids from learning. “The issue is how this affects kids and what price this generation is going to have to pay,” said John White, principal of Mulholland Middle School in Los Angeles, where the district has laid off more than 2,000 teachers.

Cash-for-Grades Gains Traction

A New York City program that offers students up to $1,000 for passing Advanced Placement exams has shown some success, with more students at 31 city high schools earning passing scores, according to officials in charge of the effort.

The program, called Reach, or Rewarding Achievement, involves students at 26 public and 5 Catholic schools with large minority enrollments, the New York Times reports.

The number of students passing A.P. exams at those schools rose this year to 1,240 from 1,161. The number of tests taken at those schools — many students take tests in multiple subjects — increased by more than 800, to 5,436, and the number of passing grades by 302, to 1,774. The passing rate edged up slightly, to 33 percent from 32.

The program is one of several local and national experiments using financial incentives to raise student achievement. Another New York City program that pays students for doing well on standardized tests has been underway for two years, but the city has not announced any results.

L.A. Tries to Glean Gang Proclivity

What prompts some kids to join gangs and their neighbors not to join is a question that has long baffled experts. Los Angeles officials, who have made little headway denting the ranks of street gangs, now think they’ll find the answer through a multiple-choice test, according to the Associated Press.

“If you could identify who those at-risk kids were, then you could microtarget them with resources,” said Jeff Carr, director of the mayor’s office on gang reduction and youth development. Only about 15 percent of kids in a given neighborhood join gangs, according to University of Southern California social psychologist Malcolm Klein and others. Klein found 10 factors that channel children into gangs, including poor parenting, justifying delinquent behavior and traumatic events.

Researchers at USC’s Center for Research into Crime used those findings to develop the 74-question survey called the Youth Services Eligibility Test. A youth with at least five factors is deemed “at risk” and offered programs such as counseling, anger management, and tutoring.

Teach For America Grows, to Unions’ Chagrin

Despite a lingering recession, state budget crises and widespread teacher hiring slowdowns, Teach For America (TFA) has grown steadily, according to USA Today, expanding to new cities and building a formidable alumni base of young people willing to teach for two years in some of the nation’s toughest public schools.

Nationwide, about 7,300 young people are expected to teach under TFA’s banner, up from 6,200 last year. TFA is expanding from 29 regions to 35, including Dallas, Boston and Minneapolis-St. Paul. This year it had 35,000 applicants, including 11% of seniors at Ivy League schools.

John Wilson, executive director of the National Education Association, the USA’s largest teachers union, said in May that union leaders were “beginning to see school systems lay off teachers and then hire TFA college grads . . . .”

In Boston, TFA corps members replaced 20 pink-slipped teachers, says Boston Teachers Union President Richard Stutman. “I don’t think you’ll find a city that isn’t laying off people to accommodate Teach For America,” he says.

School Sued Over Facebook Peek

In a case testing whether school officials can legally look at students’ private social-networking accounts without justifiable cause, a high school cheerleader has filed a $100 million lawsuit against her school and former coach for what she claims is a violation of her rights to privacy and free speech.

E-School News reports that Mandi Jackson, a cheerleader, and the other members of the cheering squad at Pearl High School in Pearl, Miss., were asked by cheerleading coach Tommie Hill to give her their Facebook login passwords. According to reports, Hill wanted the passwords to check and make sure none of the squad members was drinking or participating in any illegal behavior.

Hill reportedly looked through Jackson’s profile and found a conversation between Jackson and another squad member that used profanity. Jackson was subequently barred from cheering at games, according to the suit, and Hill sent Jackson’s private Facebook information to school administrators and other cheerleading coaches.

School officials filed a motion saying Jackson and all cheerleaders were told their coaches would monitor social-networking web sites. The motion asks the judge to dismiss the case.

Charter Schools Get Mixed Reception

Amid a strong push by the Obama administration to encourage charter schools a number of legislatures this year debated measures on how many charters to allow, or whether to have such schools at all. But the outcomes have proved decidedly mixed, Education Week reports.

At least four states took steps to permit more charter schools. Illinois and Tennessee raised their charter caps. Louisiana eliminated its ceiling altogether. Delaware allowed a moratorium on new charters to lapse.

But in Maine, one of 10 states that still don�t allow the publicly financed but largely independent schools, an attempt to enact a charter law failed again, voted down in the state Senate. Legislation to raise the charter cap in Texas and make other changes to charter law was defeated on a point of order in the state House, after winning unanimous Senate approval. In New Hampshire, a moratorium on opening more state-authorized charters was extended. And Oregon imposed new restrictions on the growth of cyber charter schools.

Lawmakers Help Screen Students in NASA Program

Bright, advanced Idaho high school juniors can now compete to get into a new online science and math course offered in partnership with NASA � in part by impressing a local state legislator, according to the Spokesman-Review in Spokane.

�Legislators would be involved in the review of applications and helping to select the students. � They�d have a big role in choosing which student goes,� said Idaho Department of Education spokeswoman Melissa McGrath. Idaho is the third state to launch a Science and Aerospace Scholars Program.

Students who are successful in the rigorous online course, which is aligned to state education standards, could earn an expense-paid trip to a weeklong NASA academy in California next summer.

U.S. Speeds Release of Stimulus Funds

The U.S. Department of Education is releasing $11.37 billion to states about a month earlier than planned, with funds targeting Title I, IDEA, and Vocational Rehabilitation, according to an announcement reported by T.H.E. Journal.

The funds represent the remaining 50 percent of Title I, IDEA, and Vocational Rehabilitation funds allocated through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the first half of which began rolling out back in April.

The funding was originally expected to be made available Sept. 30; instead, it will now be available Sept. 1. It includes $5 billion in Title I funding, $6.1 billion in IDEA funding, and $270 million in Vocational Rehabilitation funding.

Evidence Sparse on School Turnarounds

Rigorous research on how to engineer the kind of dramatic transformation in schools advocated by Education Secretary Arne Duncan is a scarce commodity, according to many scholars cited by Education Week.

�There is both a lack of turnarounds in education and a lack of research about turnarounds,� said Bryan C. Hassel, a co-director of Public Impact, a Chapel Hill, N.C., consulting firm that has studied turnarounds in education and other fields. �And the research base for turnarounds outside of education isn�t any kind of �gold standard� research base, either.�

Computer Science Courses Reported Dwindling

Computer science is on the decline in American high schools, T.H.E. Journal reports. According to new research from the Computer Science Teachers Association, not only have the number of students enrolled in computer science has droppedsignificantly in the last four years and so have the number of Advanced Placement computer science courses offered at high schools.

The survey, the 2009 CSTA National Secondary Computer Science Survey, collected responses from some 1,100 high school computer science teachers conducted in spring 2009. Of those, only 65 percent reported that their schools offer introductory or pre-AP computer science classes. This compares with 73 percent in 2007 and 78 percent in 2005.

Only 27 percent reported that their schools offer AP computer science. This compares with 32 percent in 2007 and 40 percent in 2005.

Request for Teacher Incentive Pay Trimmed

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee trimmed the Obama administration’s request, largely backed by the House, to increase funding for the Teacher Incentive Fund as part of the Department of Education fiscal 2010 spending bill, according to Education Week.

The Obama administration had asked for $487 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund in its fiscal 2010 budget request, and the U.S. House of Representatives approved $445 million for the program. The Senate panel included $300 million for the TIF, a teacher-performance-pay program that is currently funded at $97 million.

The spending measure approved 29-1 by the Senate committee would provide $63.45 billion for the Education Department, up $800 million over fiscal 2009. The department received an extra, unprecedented boost of up to $100 billion over two years in the federal economic-stimulus package.

Filed under: K-12 Education News