Franklin Schargel’s Blog

It is possible that some students and some schools deemed to be failing in one state would get passing grades in another under the No Child Left Behind law, a national study found.

The study underscores wide variation in academic standards from state to state. It was to be issued today by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which conducted the study with the Kingsbury Center at the Northwest Evaluation Association.

We need to have a uniform graduation standard. If we look at the countries which do well on international tests like the PISA or TIMSS examinations, we see that they have uniform national standards while in America we have state standards which vary from place to place.

Every state, Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education stated, needs standards that make kids college- and career-ready and are benchmarked against international standards.

The Fordham study found the schools failed to meet yearly progress goals in states with more rigorous standards, such as Massachusetts. But they met yearly progress goals in states with lower standards, such as Arizona and Wisconsin. Under No Child Left Behind, states have a patchwork of rules that vary from state to state, the study said.

It is unlikely the Obama administration or Congress will try to force states to adopt the same standards.

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers, wrote an op-ed piece in The Washington Post arguing for national standards.

“Every other industrialized nation has national standards,” Weingarten said in an interview. “When you start thinking about how are we going to create a school system throughout the United States that helps enable kids to be prepared for college, prepared for life and prepared for work, you have to start with common standards,” she said.

I find the data released by the US Treasury Department very interesting. These were the top ten countries holding US debt as of June 2007, according to a report released on April 30, 2008.

#1. Japan $1,197, 000,000,000 That’s 1.197 TRILLION dollars
#2 China $922 ,000,000,000 That’s 922 BILLION dollars
#3 UK $921,000,000,000
#4 Cayman Islands $740,000,000,000
#5 Luxembourg $703,000,000,000
#6 Canada $475,000,000,000
#7 Belgium $396,000,000,000
#8 Ireland $342,000,000,000
#9 Switzerland $329,000,000,000
#10 Netherlands $321,000,000,000

Oil Exporters came in #11, Russia at #17, and besides the Cayman Islands, there were also Bermuda at #13 ($238b) and the British Virgin Islands at #22($108b).

Source: Table 2. Foreign holdings of U.S. securities, by country and type of security, for the major investing countries into the U.S., as of June 30, 2007

https://www.treas.gov/press/releases/hp947.htm

My readings from the US press led me to believe that China was the prime holder. Now the information above may be out of date, but I have not read about our indebtedness to Japan. Or to the United Kingdom, or the Cayman Islands.

A new study in California finds that 1 in 3 middle-school algebra teachers is unqualified to teach the subject.

Those instructors, who lack math credentials, are also more likely to be teaching in the lowest-scoring schools, according to “California’s Teaching Force 2008,” released by the Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning, a Santa Cruz think tank.

Gaston said it’s not just the state’s responsibility. Universities need to do a better job preparing and recruiting math majors for teaching careers, she said.

The new study doesn’t say which schools have the unqualified algebra teachers. But it shows that schools doing best on algebra tests also have the highest percentage of qualified algebra teachers.

The report found that of the 3,757 instructors teaching middle-school algebra in public schools across the state, one-third – 1,277 – lack a full teaching credential with a math authorization.

Nearly a quarter of the algebra teachers, 868, had a full teaching credential but were not authorized to teach math. Another 308 algebra teachers had no credential at all, and 100 had a partial credential.

In an attempt to raise academic achievement requirements, states have failed to provide teachers who are certified in mathematics, science and special education. Raising requirements does not mean anything unless you have certified people who can teach. Unfortunately, politicians have instant solutions to highly complex problems. With a number of organizations demanding that America become more globally competitive and pay more attention to preparing students in math and science, few of them seem to realize the difficulty of doing so without adequate tools like prepared math and science teachers.

After much hard work by my webmaster, we were able to put online the presentation FAILURE. Those of you who have attended my workshops have asked how you can obtain it. Well, it is now available through the store at the top of this homepage.

For a limited time, the price has been reduced to $20 to those of you who waited so patiently. Because the video is downloaded there isn’t a charge for postage and handling.

According to a new Child Trends research brief, Children in Poverty: Trends, Consequences, and Policy Options, using 2007 Census data to present a statistical portrait of children in poverty in the U.S., updating similar briefs Child Trends produced in 1999 and 2002.

Nearly one out of five children in the United States was living in poverty in 2007, and this percentage has been increasing since 2000.

Among the trends:
The poverty rate for children younger than 18 increased from 17.4 percent in 2006 to 18 percent in 2007, the highest rate since 1998. This 18 percent translates into 13.3 million children living in poverty in the U.S., an increase of 497,000 children between 2006 and 2007.

Children are almost twice as likely to be poor as older adults. In 2007, the poverty rate was 9.7 percent for people 65 and older, compared with 18 percent for children younger than 18.

Substantial racial disparities persist: black and Hispanic children were more than twice as likely to live in poverty in 2007 as non-Hispanic white and Asian children. 34.5 percent of black children and 28.6 percent of Hispanic children lived in poverty in 2007, compared with 10.1 percent of non-Hispanic white children and 12.5 percent of Asian children.
A large body of research exists which links poverty with lower levels of child well-being. Poor children are more likely than children from more affluent families to have low academic achievement, to drop out of school, and to have health, behavioral, and emotional problems.

It is interesting to note that this data was reported prior to the economic decline in the country.

According to the Detroit News, Detroit Public Schools’ emergency financial manager on Wednesday said he plans to send layoff notices to 600 teachers and close 22 other schools in the fall because of plummeting enrollment and a mounting deficit.

Robert Bobb, the manager, also announced plans to plow more than $200 million into existing buildings by enhancing security and making structural and other improvements.

Bobb said the closings and layoffs are necessary to stave off a $306 million deficit, which will force the transfer of 7,500 students.

The 600 teachers who receive layoff notices — make up about 11.3 percent of the total.

Bobb said he is notifying the community and working with city planners to ensure the shuttered schools won’t add blight to neighborhoods already impacted by dozens of shuttered Detroit schools dotting the landscape.

Bobb plans to spend $25 million to enhance security at several schools, by replacing doors, adding security cameras and creating a new video monitoring system for the district’s Department of Public Safety.

Parents have been crying out for enhanced security, and the school system has been plagued by violent intruders. Just last week, a school social worker tackled a boy who allegedly entered a school with a sawed-off shotgun. At Central High School earlier this school year, several intruders engaged in a gun fight in the school halls. Officials have long said securing aging structures with dozens of doors is nearly impossible.

Bobb is asking the state to use federal stimulus funding for the majority of the building projects, which include other infrastructure improvements like lighting, roofs and new boilers.

Another $20 million from a 1994 bond issue will be used to repair and renovate schools that will be receiving new students, with an additional $6 million from allocated, unspent funds to improve several schools where students transferred as part of the last closure plan where 33 schools were shuttered.

Bobb also will review which shuttered buildings — including 56 already vacant structures — would be targeted for demolition, redevelopment or sale to charter schools. He acknowledged that closings must be strategic to avoid a greater loss of students. The district, which has about 96,000 students, has been losing about 10,000 students a year most years since 2001. But the community in the past has staged protests and railed against closures, which some say are contributing to the dismantling of the school system.

Former superintendent Connie Calloway this school year opted not to close schools after the district found the 33 school closings the previous year cost the system millions of dollars. An internal report compiled by a committee of academic and non-academic “stakeholders” and authored by Calloway said the district lost $11.3 million because students left the district following the closures.

“It’s sad. That school is a neighborhood school, so it’s very convenient for a lot of kids to walk back and forth,” she said. “Closing the schools where people are working and the community is helping out — that’s not the solution.”

There are several things that I do not get. One, if there is a need to close buildings, which obviously there are, why haven’t the buildings closed since 1994, been torn down? Why not create smaller class sizes in a city, which according to Education Week, has a 24 percent graduation rate? Wouldn’t a process to improve schools stop people from fleeing the city? How would closing schools and having students walk longer distances encourage parents to stay?

I just don’t get it.

I have just returned from Oklahoma City where I delivered a number of presentations. One of the sessions was entitled, Building Oklahoma’s Global Competitiveness: From The Schoolhouse to The Workplace. They had an artist who captured some of the essence of my presentation. If you would like to see it, visit https://www.speedofcreativity.org/category/leadership/