Fast Report
Students more Internet savvy than their teachers
• U.S. students increasingly rely on the Internet to help them do their schoolwork, but most of their research and other online educational activities are taking place outside of school, reports a study by the American Institutes for Research for the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
According to The Digital Disconnect: The Widening Gap Between Internet-Savvy Students and their Schools, students don't think they are given enough opportunities to use the Internet at school. Among the obstacles cited: the reluctance of some teachers to assign Internet-based work, insufficient access, restrictive policies, and censorship.
Schools are becoming more segregated
• While the 2000 Census reports that the nation as a whole has become more racially and ethnically diverse than ever before, a new study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University finds that schools in the nation's largest school districts are becoming more segregated. Among the study's key findings:
• Many of the districts experiencing the highest black-white resegregation are also experiencing Latino-white resegregation.
• Districts that show the least resegregation in black-white exposure are mostly in the South. This is due to the existence of desegregation plans.
• Blacks are the most isolated from whites in districts with either no desegregation plans or where the courts rejected a city-suburban desegregation plan.
• The most integrated districts for black students are in districts with city-suburban plans, even though all of these districts have since been declared unitary and show a trend toward resegregating.
Walking to school promotes health
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says schools can promote healthier lifestyles among children by encouraging more of them to walk or ride bikes to school.
Even when children live less than a mile from school, only 31 percent of trips are made by walking, reports the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Aug. 16. And when children live two miles or less from school, only 2 percent of trips are made by biking.
This year's Walk to School Day is Oct. 2.
Exit exams could hurt at-risk students
• The growth of high school exit examinations will have a disproportionate impact on poor and minority students, concludes a study issued this month by the Center on Education Policy.
Within the next six years, at least 24 states will require students to pass an exam to get a high school diploma. These include some of the most populous states and those with higher than average minority enrollments, the report finds. These states also tend to have higher poverty and lower per-pupil spending than the national average.
In addition, the center reports, African American and Hispanic students are much less likely to pass an exit exam the first time they take it, and that could lead to a higher dropout rate for these students.
Support after-school programs Oct. 12
• School districts and other sponsors of after-school programs are urged to host open houses and other events on Oct. 12.
The initiative, "Lights On Afterschool!" is sponsored by the Afterschool Alliance, a coalition of public, private, and nonprofit organizations committed to the goal of ensuring all children have access to after-school programs by 2010. The NSBA Board of Directors has endorsed the effort.
District agrees to end anti-gay harassment
• The Visalia (Calif.) Unified School District has agreed to carry out a series of actions to prevent the harassment of gay students as part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed against the district by the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) Network, the American Civil Liberties Union, and student George Loomis.
The settlement, announced Aug. 13, calls for the district to:
• provide mandatory harassment prevention training for all school staff and high school students;
• adopt policies forbidding harassment and discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation;
• name "compliance coordinators" to help parents, students, and teachers when there are incidents of discrimination or harassment; and
• establish a community advisory group to help address discrimination and assess how the settlement is working.
"No student should have to go through the kind of harassment I did," says Loomis, who was a senior at Golden West High School in 2001 when the suit was filed. A teacher's persistent anti-gay comments led to severe harassment by other students, he says. When Loomis complained, he was transferred to an off-campus independent study program.