Fast Report
9/23/03 -- California voters to consider racial data
• While the recall of California Gov. Gray Davis is getting the most attention, another issue on the state ballot could have an impact on K-12 education.
Proposition 54 would ban the state government from classifying people according to race, ethnicity, color, or national origin. The so-called "Racial Privacy Initiative" was proposed by Ward Connerly, a Sacramento businessman and University of California regent.
State Superintendent Jack O'Connell says passage of Proposition 54 would have a "devastating effect on California's education system. It would "destroy accountability and undermine our ability to track achievement gaps."
The measure exempts federal requirements, so if it passes, it won't let districts off the hook in terms of tracking student achievement among racial groups as required by the No Child Left Behind Act.
Report: Ed Department neglects teacher quality
• The Education Trust released a report Sept. 3 criticizing the U.S. Education Department for failing to make adequate progress in implementing the teacher-quality provisions of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.
"The teacher-quality provisions of NCLB have been at various times ignored, misinterpreted, and misunderstood," the report says. "There is too little focus on these important issues and widespread confusion about what they mean. As a result, NCLB is seen by many as an attempt to arbitrarily punish experienced teachers," instead of embracing "the central importance of those teachers in helping students learn."
According to the Education Trust, Education Secretary Rod Paige's team has, for the past two years, "acted as if it believed that better accountability, alone, will bring about better achievement."
Parents can use Web to track NCLB data
• President Bush announced an initiative Sept. 9 to help parents measure how their children's schools are performing.
The initiative, a partnership between the U.S. Education Department and the Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation, will enable parents to look on the Internet and see how their schools are doing with regard to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, in comparison with other schools in their state.
According to the Broad Foundation, the Web site will transform disaggregated student achievement data into easy-to-use information for decision making. It will operate for two years.
Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Service and a group called Just For The Kids will provide the basic data analysis.
The Web site will allow parents, educators, policymakers, and business and community leaders to:
• identify trends in test results at the school, district, and state levels;
• compare a state or district's data against meaningful benchmarks;
• view student test results disaggregated by every student sub-group and every grade level mandated by NCLB; and
• compare schools and districts within a state to identify consistently high and low performers.
The project also calls for Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Service to expand to all 50 states. This service, now being used in Michigan and Pennsylvania, provides an analysis of student achievement and spending that takes into account a district's learning environment, demographics, and finances.
The federal government is contributing $4.7 million to this project, and private organizations are contributing $50.9 million.
Investment in school facilities urged
• A progress report on the state of the nation's infrastructure by the American Society of Civil Engineers gives schools a grade of D+. According to the report, it would cost more than $127 billion to remedy the situation.
"Due to either aging, outdated facilities, severe overcrowding, or new mandated class sizes, 75 percent of our nation's school buildings remain inadequate to meet the needs of schoolchildren," the report states.
The average cost of capital investment needed is $3,800 per student, it says, which is more than half the average cost to educate a student for one year.
The report recommends that Congress enact legislation, America's Better Classroom Act of 2003 (H.R.930 and S.856), which would allow states and localities to use tax credits to pay the interest on school modernization bonds.
Florida leads nation in K-12 growth
• Florida is leading the nation with the largest increase in school-age population, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Sept. 18. Between 2000 and 2002, Florida gained 147,000 children ages 5-17, for a total of 2.8 million school-age children.
Other states with big increases in school-age children were California (145,000) and Texas (122,000). Seven of the 10 states with the largest numerical growth in school-age populations are in the Sun Belt.
Overall, 15 states saw the number of school-age children increase, and 36 states experienced a decrease.
Among people of all ages, minorities now constitute a majority in Hawaii (77 percent), New Mexico (65 percent), California (54 percent), and the District of Columbia (72 percent).