Entries for September 2008

Two researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville want to turn school buses into virtual mobile classrooms across Arkansas after a successful yearlong pilot program. The Aspirnaut Initiative, launched in April 2007 by Vanderbilt professors Billy and Julie Hudson, would equip more school buses in rural parts of the state with laptop computers and iPods and allow more students to take math and science courses online while commuting to and from school. U.S. News brought you the story in January. Now, state lawmakers are considering the researchers' request for additional funding to expand the program at a rate of 2,000 students per year, the Arkansas News Bureau reports. Many students attending rural schools have limited opportunities to take college-prep classes, especially in math and science, and the program's supporters see the Wi-Fi technology in school buses as a solution. Students in the pilot program completed 14 semesters of study during the course of their 90-minute daily commutes. One student even took an Advanced Placement biology course and earned a passing score of 4 on the AP test.

A recent study finds that many middle school students are thrust into algebra and other advanced math classes even though they have the skills of only a second grader. Among the lowest-performing eighth graders on a national math test, nearly 3 out of every 10 were in advanced math classes (Algebra I, Algebra II, and geometry), according to the study by the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. These findings don't bode well for California and Minnesota, two states that recently adopted policies requiring all students to take algebra by the eighth grade. "It's going to be a disaster," Tom Loveless, a Brookings fellow and author of the study, said of California's algebra mandate, which takes effect in 2011.

Since its release last week, Loveless's study has been the subject of much debate. The Washington Post's Jay Mathews, a supporter of getting kids to take algebra sooner, said in a column that he was having second thoughts after reading the study's "startling" results. University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Adam Gamoran, who has called for algebra classes to be offered to struggling high schoolers, told USA Today that "some mistakes have been made" but that these students still get more out of algebra than from general math classes.

Nicotine addicts can no longer light up anywhere on any of Pennsylvania's 14 state university campuses following the state higher education authority's decision to ban on-campus smoking, the Associated Press reported late last week.

Pennsylvania's State System of Higher Education notified students of the ban last Wednesday, the day before a statewide ban on smoking in most workplaces and public spaces took effect. Chancellor John Cavanaugh told the AP that the state law means a smoking ban on all campus grounds, not just academic buildings or residence halls, and that he put the campuswide bans in place accordingly.

Rudy Crew has been ousted as the superintendent of Miami-Dade Public Schools, the fourth-largest school district in the nation and a finalist this year for the prestigious Broad Prize for Urban Education. Alberto Carvalho, who was associate superintendent under Crew, has been named his successor, the Miami Herald reports.

Crew's departure follows months of wrangling with a sharply divided school board. Critics say Crew mismanaged the budget and neglected to build ties with communities, particularly the Cuban-American population. Those tensions often came to a boil during board meetings. Both sides agreed to end the feuding and reached a settlement in which the board voted to buy out Crew, who had two years left in his contract. Crew, who came to Miami with a reputation as a transformative school leader for his work in New York City and Sacramento, Calif., called the Miami-Dade school district "the single most politically driven system" he had ever worked in, according to the Herald.

Six high schools in Connecticut have agreed to be part of an unusual experiment to keep students from engaging in acts of academic dishonesty such as plagiarizing an essay or cheating on a test, the Hartford Courant reports. Jason Stephens, an assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut who is described in the Courant as "a rising star in the field of academic dishonesty," is conducting the three-year pilot study. He declined to identify the high schools. He would say only that two are in a wealthy suburb, two are in a middle-class neighborhood, and two are in an urban district. In each setting, one school will serve as a control group and the other will test his anticheating ideas.

A $350 million high school located in downtown Los Angeles is finally open for classes after serious environmental threats led to a decade of construction delays, the Associated Press reports.

The Edward R. Roybal Learning Center was originally touted as a solution to classroom overcrowding, an issue that plagued L.A.in the mid-90s. But when construction site issues including threats of toxic gas emissions and susceptibility to earthquake damage halted construction in 2000 and 2002, the once promising education venture quickly became a symbol of government failure and wasted taxpayer dollars. In 2003, District Attorney Steve Cooley defined the construction project as "a public works disaster of biblical proportions."

Thousands of students in Clayton County, Ga., could have trouble getting into some colleges and universities and even lose scholarship money because the county's public schools have lost their accreditation, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Families learned last week that Clayton County Public Schools, a 50,000-student district just south of Atlanta, lost its accreditation because of the school board's failure to meet eight of the nine mandates the regional accrediting agency required. Many parents have since withdrawn their kids from schools (1,800 students by the district's last count). District administrators, weary of losing students and state funding, are appealing the decision by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. They have promised that every senior who graduates in May will have a valid diploma. Not everyone is convinced. A high school senior who occupies the No. 1 rank in her class told a local reporter, "It's almost like a bad dream. You're just hoping to wake up and everything will be OK."

The district is the first in the nation to lose accreditation in 40 years. It must meet several improvement mandates by next September to regain accreditation, which would be retroactive and put the district back in good standing with colleges and universities. The state has already ousted four members of the district's board.

It's back to school for most of the country, with a notable exception for certain students in Chicago. Some 2,000 public school students there are expected to sit out the first day of classes at the request of a state senator who wants them to attempt to enroll in public schools in the wealthy suburbs instead. James Meeks, a Democratic senator from Chicago, organized the one-day boycott of the city's public schools to draw attention to inequities in school funding, the Chicago Tribune reports. Oddly enough, the boycott threatens to undermine the cause the senator is fighting for, his critics say. Attendance, which helps determine funding for schools, is crucial during the first week.

Despite pleas from school officials in Chicago to call off the boycott, Meeks didn't budge. Hundreds of buses are expected to ferry children from the House of Hope, a church in Chicago, to well-funded schools in the suburbs on the day of the boycott. Parents will travel with their children and attempt to register them. Suburban school officials braced for a crush of students and planned to accommodate them for the first day. But families won't be able to register their children at the new schools because they don't meet residency requirements. Meeks and his supporters hope the demonstration will force state lawmakers to address the traditional system of allocating funding based on local property taxes. He's asking for $120 million in additional funds to improve low-performing schools in Chicago.