Entries for April 2009

The majority of teachers of Advanced Placement courses are satisfied with the college-prep program but worry that its quality could erode as more and more students—including those who are less prepared or who seek only to boost their college credentials—are allowed to participate in classes, according a new survey.

The survey, commissioned by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education research and advocacy organization in Washington, comes as more high schools across the country are adopting the AP curriculum and a record number of students are taking AP exams. In 2008, 1.6 million high school teens sat for 2.7 million AP exams, a 45 percent increase in students from 2004. (U.S. News uses AP achievement data as a component in its high school rankings.)

A new study released this week shows that graduation rates are on the rise in a majority of the nation's 50 largest cities. But staggering numbers of students still are not finishing high school. Fifty-three percent of high school students in the largest city districts don't earn a diploma, compared with 71 percent of students in the suburbs who do, according to the study by Collin Powell's America's Promise Alliance, a children's advocacy organization.

Among the cities that have seen the biggest improvement are Philadelphia, Tucson, Ariz., and Kansas City, Mo. These three cities saw their graduation rates jump by 20 percentage points or more. In contrast, Las Vegas, Wichita, Kan., and Omaha, Neb., experienced the steepest drops in graduates. The graduation rate in Las Vegas, for example, plunged 23 percentage points, to 44.5 percent.

Some of Chicago's public elementary school students better brace themselves for an all new kind of fun this summer: They will be spending it in school. And we're not talking about the summer school that students are sent to for remedial purposes.

The Chicago Board of Education recently voted to put more than a quarter of elementary school students in the nation's third-largest school district on a "year-round" schedule. The concept might sound like a grueling punishment, but proponents say the switch will lead to better student retention of knowledge and less time being spent playing catch-up in the fall, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

On the last day of this year's legislative session, Georgia lawmakers quietly voted to eliminate a four-year scholarship previously given to the state's valedictorians and other top students as incentives to attend college in state, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

Georgia began its Governor's Scholarship Program in the mid-1980s. At the height of its popularity a decade later, about 3,000 students received more than $4.5 million in scholarship money. Today, half that number of students receive just $1.3 million in awards—a shrunken figure that amounts to about $900 per student and has led some state officials to question whether the scholarships are sufficient to serve their purpose.

The outbreak of swine flu cases has prompted health officials in the United States to be on the lookout for students returning to classes this week who show symptoms of the virus, which has killed at least 20 and perhaps more than 100 people in Mexico, a number of them young, healthy adults.

In California, where at least seven people have tested positive for swine flu, a school in the northern part of the state remains closed while investigators test a group of seventh graders who may have been exposed by a classmate who recently returned from a vacation in Cancún, Mexico. California's health department said Sunday that it expects more cases to turn up in the coming days, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Pending federal legislation that would create a path to citizenship for an estimated 360,000 undocumented high school graduates is receiving the support of the College Board, the organization that administers the SATs and counts 5,000 schools as members.

James Montoya, vice president of the College Board, announced today that the board is backing the Dream Act so that more students can attend college. Each year, 65,000 undocumented students graduate from high school, and only 5 to 10 percent pursue a college degree, says a report released by the College Board. Many of these students don't attend college because federal law prevents them from working and receiving any aid for higher education.

Smiling. Scolding. Calling roll. If these are the primary job responsibilities for teaching a class of Japanese preteen students, then Hiroshi Kobayashi, Tokyo University of Science professor and creator of the robot named Saya, might really be on to something.

Saya, a female-looking robot complete with shoulder-length black hair, large eyes, thin eyelashes, and a youthful face, was originally designed to be used as a receptionist, as Japanese companies search for a solution to a growing labor shortage as the nation's population ages. But news reports came out last month when Saya was tested in a Tokyo classroom of fifth and sixth graders as a substitute teacher. It (she?) drew laughter from the students with its mechanical mannerisms and declarations of basic pre-programmed phrases such as "Thank you!" It is being called the world's "first robot teacher."

A new survey on student hazing suggests that high schools are not doing enough to combat the problem. The survey, which was conducted by two University of Maine researchers, finds that many college freshmen said they experienced hazing as high school students. According to the results, 47 percent of freshmen said they were hazed in high school, the Associated Press reports. That figure hasn't changed much from 2000, when 48 percent of high schoolers reported being hazed.

Elizabeth Allan and Mary Madden, professors at the University of Maine's College of Education and Human Development, are the authors of the most recent survey. They collected responses from 11,480 freshmen from 53 colleges and universities that participated in a previous survey on college hazing. Not surprisingly, the most incidents of hazing on high school campuses involved sports teams (47 percent). But hazing was also common in ROTC (46 percent) and the performing arts groups (34 percent).

The case of a 13-year-old girl who was stripped-searched at school because of suspicion that she was carrying and distributing prescription-strength ibuprofen heads to the U.S. Supreme Court next week. At issue is whether the school-ordered strip-search violated the girl's Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. Whatever the outcome, it is likely to influence how schools nationwide carry out student searches.

Lawyers for the Safford Unified School District in southeastern Arizona hope to persuade the nine justices to overturn a lower court's ruling that found the search violated the girl's privacy rights. Tuesday, they will argue that the search was justified and that, if the lower court's decision stands, it would "cause school officials to hesitate or do nothing at all, even when they in good faith believe that students are at risk."

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has said repeatedly that he wants to use the economic stimulus aid for education to accelerate improvement in schools. He has even volunteered some ideas that he knows are not very popular. Speaking to about 400 students at a public school in Denver this week, Duncan said that kids need more time in school. "Go ahead and boo me," he told the crowd of middle and high school students, the Associated Press reports. "I fundamentally think that our school day is too short, our school week is too short, and our school year is too short." He went on: "You're competing for jobs with kids from India and China. I think schools should be open six, seven days a week, 11, 12 months a year." Instead of boos, the AP reports, the students offered Duncan "bored stares."