5/17/05 -- In some states, rural schools are overlooked
• Larger, predominantly urban states often overlook their rural schools, reports a study issued May 11 by the Rural School and Community Trust.
“Even though rural students in these states face comparatively fewer challenges than rural students in other states, they suffer surprisingly weak student performance and get relatively little attention,” says Why Rural Matters 2005.
In other states, the report finds, “Rural schools are building upon their strengths, beating the odds, and overcoming significant socioeconomic challenges to produce high-performing students, even while threatened by a changing policy environment.”
House passes vocational education bill
• The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill May 4 to reauthorize the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998 through 2011. The Senate passed its version of the Perkins Act in March.
Both bills reject the Bush Administration proposal to eliminate the Perkins program and shift its funding to expand the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) to high schools.
In a letter sent to members of the House May 3, NSBA Associate Executive Director Michael A. Resnick says, “We are pleased with the focus on accountability and the achievement of students taking vocational and education courses.”
However, the letter expresses the following concerns with the bill:
• NSBA believes multiple measures should be used to determine success and sanctions for students in vocational and technical education, and these measures should not be tied to adequate yearly progress under NCLB.
• The use of a “model sequence of courses” should be an option, not a mandate. Local schools should make decisions about curricula, not the federal or state government.
• Career and technical education programs funded by the Perkins Act should not be expanded to private schools.
Private schools do not do a better job
• According to researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, public schools do a better job of educating their students than private schools.
Sarah Theule Lubienski and Christopher Lubienski reviewed the report from the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which found public school students in grades 4 and 8 scored lower in math on average than private school students.
They attributed the overall achievement advantage held by private schools to the stark differences in student body demographics and socioeconomic status between public and private schools. When accounting for those differences, public school students performed “significantly better” than students in private schools.
According to the report, most of the research that has led to the assumption that private schools are more effective at raising student achievement is at least three decades old. The report is published in the May issue of Phi Delta Kappan, www.pdkintl.org.
Bersin named Calif. education secretary
• California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed outgoing San Diego Superintendent Alan D. Bersin to the position of secretary of education, starting July 1. Bersin, a former U.S. attorney, replaces Richard Riordan.
Bowing to critics, Bersin agreed to end his contract with the school district a year early and announced in January that he would leave on June 30. Among his chief opponents were the California Teachers Association, which objected to his “top-down bureaucratic style.”
During his tenure with the school district, Bersin reassigned administrators and reorganized management structures, mandated professional development for principals and teachers, instituted a common curriculum focusing on literacy and math, and reshaped the district’s budget to support its reform initiative.
The California School Boards Association hopes Bersin’s appointment “will help foster the kind of working relationship between the governor’s office and the education community that is so vital to helping us close the achievement gap in our schools,” says CSBA President Kerry Clegg.
Chinese language studies promoted
• The National Security Education Program (NSEP) launched a new effort May 4 aimed at encouraging more students to learn Chinese. This effort, known as the Chinese K-16 Flagship, is part of the National Flagship Language Initiative (NFLI).
According to NSEP, the program “will for the first time focus on the development of an articulated K-16 student pipeline with the goal of graduating linguistically and culturally competent students.” Chinese was chosen as the prototype for this effort because it is considered “critical to the United States now and in the future.”
NFLI, funded by Congress, is a strategic partnership between the U.S. national security community and higher education to expand the number of people with expertise in languages critical to national security.
NSEP has issued a request for proposals to colleges and universities interested in working with public school systems to establish sequential Chinese language programs.