Education News: August 13, 2009

Following are some of the top headlines from the world of education for the week ending August 13, 2009.

New Official Guidelines on Swine Flu Suggest Schools Remain Open
(Washington Post, August 8, 2009)  On Friday, federal officials released a new set of guidelines on how to handle swine flu cases when schools reopen this fall.  Schools are advised to send sick children home with masks but to remain open unless they serve many students with certain medical conditions.  Additionally, state and local officials should plan for temporary home schooling in case the flu worsens.  Initially, schools were advised to close down at the first sign of the H1N1 virus.  Top Obama health, education and homeland security officials now say that the disruption caused by mass closures outweighs any potential benefits.  The guidelines have been issued for public and private K-12 schools, and officials say that guidelines for pre-kindergarten and early learning centers should be out within days, by Aug. 23 for colleges and universities, and later for U.S employers.  Health officials add that the key is to stay home for at least twenty-four hours after your fever has ended.  More government recommendations are online at flu.gov.
New York Times Article on New Swine Flu Guidelines

Nurse Shortage Adds to Swine Flu Fears
(USA Today, August 10, 2009)  Nationwide, the ratio of nurses to students falls short of recommended standards.  Many fear that the shortage will undermine efforts to control swine flu when schools open their doors in the fall.  USA Today analyzed U.S. Census data from 2005 to 2007, and found that each school nurse cares for 971 students on average, and for more than 2,000 in thirteen states.  The National Association of School Nurses found the ratio was 1,151 students per nurse in a 2007 survey of its own.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, recommend that each nurse should care for only 750 students.  Data from the Department of Education shows that workloads for elementary school nurses has remained constant since 1999, but middle school nurses have seen their workload rise by 14%.  Additionally, an estimated 25% of schools across the nation do not have either a full- or part-time nurse on staff.

Massachusetts Charter Schools Enroll Few of Neediest Students
(Boston Globe, August 12, 2009)  Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s recent proposal to expand the use of charter schools across the state included a claim that the schools would go a long way in helping students who need it most.  Specifically, students who face language barriers and those with disabilities.  An analysis by the Boston Globe, however, shows that that few of those students tend to enroll in charter schools in cities that the proposal targets.  This raises questions regarding how much expertise the schools can offer as well as their ability to recruit such students.  In Boston, which hosts one fourth of the state’s charter schools, English language learners make up one fifth of all students but only 4% of students in all but one charter school.  The findings highlight the oft revisited debate about whether charter schools achieve high MCAS scores due to innovative teaching or because they enroll fewer disadvantaged students.  While superintendents, school committees, and teachers unions have often accused charter schools of dodging their duty to teach special education students, charter schools claim that districts refuse to provide mailing lists of district students.  Some claim this is done out of fear that charter school recruiters will instead go after the most gifted students.  Governor Patrick has urged new charter schools to create student bodies that reflect the makeup of the area where a school is located.  State Secretary of Education Paul Reville emphasized in an interview that the legislation would only replicate schools that had a strong track record of dealing with disadvantaged students.  Additionally, Dominic Slowey, spokesman for the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, a significant number of special education students thrive at charter schools and eventually shed the designation.

Study Finds Disabled Students Receive Physical Punishment More Often
(New York Times, August 10, 2009)  A new study claims that a disproportionate number of the over 223,190 schoolchildren who are subjected to physical punishment each year are disabled students.  According to federal Department of Education data, disabled students, who make up 14% of the student population, received 19% of paddlings during the 2006-7 school year.  Currently, twenty states do not prohibit corporal punishment in public schools.  The report was a collaboration between two watchdog groups: Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union.  The two groups are urging federal and state lawmakers to ban physical punishment nationwide, and also to enact an immediate moratorium on physical punishment of students with disabilities.

NYC Mayor Plans to Hold Back Low-Performing Fourth and Sixth Graders
(New York Times, August 10, 2009)  On Monday, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he plans to make it harder for fourth and sixth graders who perform poorly on standardized tests to move on to the next grade.  The requirements will be that students who perform at the lowest level on state tests in English and math will have to repeat the grade, unless they can master the material in summer school.  Similar rules are already in place for grades three, five, seven and eight.  Previously, students were allowed to pass with low scores under the belief that they were more likely to drop out if held back.  Even with tougher promotion requirements, fewer students in the city are being held back.  Education officials attribute the improvement to an overall rise in test scores.  As Bloomberg seeks re-election for a third term, he is heralding the end of social promotion as one of the major factors behind city’s large gains in test scores and graduation rates.  It is difficult, however, to actually prove the connection.  When asked about evidence of the relationship, the mayor responded “If you don’t believe ending social promotion is one of the real keys to doing this, I don’t know quite how to answer the question.”  A longitudinal study conducted by the RAND Corporation on third- and fifth-grade policies is expected to be released this fall.

Large Number of Colorado Students Lag Behind in Three R’s
(Denver Post, August 8, 2009)  According to state test results released on Friday, many students in Colorado public schools are not on pace to become proficient in reading, writing or math over the next three years.  The findings come as part of last Friday’s release by the Colorado Department of Education of 2009 Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) data and the Colorado Growth Model.  The new growth model is able to calculate whether students who score below proficient on assessment tests will reach proficiency in reading, writing or math within three years, or by the time they are in 10th grade.  Analysis by the Denver Post shows that 74,264 students will not achieve proficiency in reading, 116,115 students in writing, and 134,503 in math.  Gov. Bill Ritter has made it a goal to cut the dropout rate and the achievement gap between incomes and races by half.  CSAP results showed that schools made small gains in writing and math this year across the state.

Free Online Math and Science Textbooks in California
(San Francisco Chronicle, August 11, 2009)  When California teachers return for the new school year, there will be ten free online textbooks available to them.  The books give educators a high-tech, low-cost tool in today’s economy.  Of the sixteen to twenty books that were submitted, four met all state standards and six came close.  The California Learning Resource Network, which evaluates all state textbooks, evaluated the online books as well.  Because the books are offered for free, they were not required to go through the state's entire textbook adoption process.  This includes review for discriminatory content or compliance with equal representation standards (such as all doctors not being depicted as male).  School districts are being encouraged to conduct their own reviews.  The books have actually been available online for years, but educators often questioned their legitimacy because they hadn’t been evaluated by the state.  While Governor Schwarzenegger claims the textbooks could help shave hundreds of millions of dollars from the state's education budget, education officials worry about the lack of technology in many schools.  If technology is an issue, however, the books can be printed as a whole or by chapter, or individual pages can be projected on a screen during class.