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According to a new report, minorities accounted for almost 49% of U.S. births in the year ending July 1,2009, a record high. Minorities now make up more than half the population in four states (California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Texas) and the District of Columbia. The level of diversity varies widely from region to region “” from as high as 79 in Hawaii and 68 in California to as low as 10 in Maine and Vermont and 13 in West Virginia.

Much of the rapid growth in diversity is driven by an influx of young Hispanic immigrants, whose birthrates are higher than those of non-Hispanic whites, creating a race and ethnic chasm and a widening age gap. Record levels of births among minorities in the past decade are moving the USA a step closer to a demographic milestone in which no group commands a majority, new Census estimates show. There are more than 500 counties that have a majority of minority children. The population is changing to minority from the bottom up.  Nationwide, 48.3% of kids under age 5 are minorities, while 19.9% of people 65 and older are.

In Gwinnett County, Ga., near Atlanta, one of seven counties where minorities became the majority last year, 88% of the under-20 population was non-Hispanic white in 1990.

As our country becomes more ethnically diverse, schools are the ones being first affected.  There is a need for schools across the country to do early identification, plan to hire more bi-lingual teachers and establish more ESL classes.

Using data from the Census Bureau, researchers from the Pew Hispanic Center found that fewer Hispanic students earn a GED credential than white or black dropouts. The report found that one in 10 Hispanic students who drop out of high school go on to earn a General Equivalency Development degree.  Black students earned a GED at a rate of two in 10. For white students, the rate is three in 10.

The research organization says the lower rate among Hispanics is notable because they also have higher dropout rates: 41 percent of Latinos ages 20 or older do not have a regular high school degree, compared to 23 percent of blacks and 14 percent of whites.

According to the report, the longer foreign-born Latinos without a high school degree are in the United States, the more likely they are to earn a GED.  But Hispanics born in the United States who drop out of high school are also unlikely to have a GED. The report found that only 21 percent earn the credential.

The report notes that a GED is a crucial step forward: Four in 10 students with a GED pursue additional education, compared to only 1 in 10 of those without an alternative degree. Students with a GED are also able to apply and enroll in degree-granting colleges and universities.

In a report issued by the American Association of School Administrators, school district reductions for the year 2010-2011 will result in the elimination of 275,000 employees.  The data was supplied from a survey of almost 1,500 superintendents from 49 states.  The cuts will eliminate an estimated 145,750 teachers if carried out.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees education spending, is sponsoring legislation to provide $23 billion in additional aid to states to help thwart a significant cut in education jobs.  A bill containing similar language was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives late last year.

On May 11, 2010 the Houston Chronicle reported that more than 22,620 Texas secondary students who stopped showing up for class in 2008 were excluded from the state’s dropout statistics because administrators said they were being home-schooled, according to Texas Education Agency figures.

Are students who are leaving schools being disguising as thousands of middle and high school dropouts ?

While home-schooling’s popularity has increased, the rate of growth concentrated in Texas’ high school population has nearly tripled in the last decade, including a 24 percent jump in a single year.

In some states, parents are required to file sworn affidavits when they withdraw their children. Many states also require families to submit curriculum, attendance records or test scores when they opt to home-school.

In Texas, the Texas Education Agency requires a “signed statement from a parent/guardian or qualified student” or “documentation of an oral statement by the parent/guardian or qualified student made within 10 days of the time the student quits attending school in the district, signed and dated by an authorized representative of the district” noting that they intend to attend home-school.

A 2008 audit of one of the Houston-area districts with the highest number of home-schooled high schoolers “” Clear Creek ISD “” concluded that only 167 of the 276 students had sufficient documentation from parents to meet the state’s definition. Information was lacking in the other 109 cases.

The U.S. Department of Education found that roughly 77 percent of home-schoolers are Anglo. Most are also the children of college educated, middle class parents. More than one-third of parents cited providing “religious or moral instruction” as the primary reason for their decision to home-school.

The Texas Home School Coalition estimates that more than 300,000 Texas children are home-schooled, with an annual growth rate around 7 percent since the mid-1990s. Leaders also estimate that between 2 and 3 percent of all Texas students are educated at home.

Once families withdraw from public school, there is no follow-up.

Some advocates complain that Spanish-speaking and special-needs student are especially vulnerable to being pushed out of public schools.

Home schooling provides an alternative path for students to graduate and as such I am in favor of it.  However, if it is being used to disguise students who dropout than that is an entirely different matter.

Where are the screams?

I fail to understand why politicians of both parties, the media, policy makers and the business community are not screaming about the following information which appeared on May, 6th in the Washington Post written by Harold Meyerson.  The above named people are supposedly most concerned about the inability of schools to produce a globally competitive workforce yet how do schools do this if teachers, are fired and schools are operating on a 4 day week.  I am not saying that money is the solution to all of education’s problems, but the dire predictions just make the journey more perilous.
One of the precious few points of consensus in our polarized land is that we need to do a better job educating our kids.  The worst recession since the 1930s is clobbering the nation’s schools.

In Indiana and Arizona, the legislatures have eliminated free all-day kindergarten. In Kansas, some school districts have gone to four-day weeks. In New Jersey, 60 percent of school districts are reducing their course offerings. In Albuquerque, the number of school district employees is down 10 percent. In the D.C. suburbs, Maryland’s Prince George’s and Virginia’s Prince William counties have increased their class sizes.

A recent American Association of School Administrators survey of 453 school districts in 45 states shows how bad things are. One-third of the districts are looking at eliminating summer school this year. Fourteen percent are considering going to four-day weeks (last year, just 2 percent did). Fully 62 percent anticipate increasing class size next year, up from 26 percent in the current school year. The teacher-to-pupil ratio, the AASA says, will rise from 15 to 1 to 17 to 1.

Nationwide, estimates of teacher layoffs range from 100,000 to 300,000, with some experts pegging the most likely number nearer the high end. Layoffs are likely to be hardest on the youngest teachers — “probably the most tech-savvy teachers we have,” says Rep. George Miller, the California Democrat who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee. Nor do many talented, young people elect to enter the profession, he adds, when the profession is shrinking.

“You can’t just push the pause button on kids’ education and say, ‘Wait a while,’ ” says Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, who chairs the Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Yet there is little willingness in Congress to craft another broad stimulus package even though education provisions plainly enhance the nation’s ability to create a globally competitive workforce.

There is also little support for finding offsetting cuts or tax hikes to pay for such a bill. Accordingly, Miller and Harkin have introduced legislation in their respective houses narrowly targeted to saving the schools. Each has authored a provision to allot $23 billion to education for the coming fiscal year, with the hope of including it in the next supplemental appropriation bill that contains emergency appropriations that don’t have to be offset by cuts or tax hikes. (Miller’s provision also includes an additional $2 billion to help local governments avoid laying off police officers and firefighters.)  Their bills protect America’s future — and that future is now.

Take a few minutes and write to your state and federal representatives.  Write to your business community, chamber of commerce and have your parents write as well.

Remember, it is not our children who are at-risk, it is our future that is at-risk.

The following article has been posted on my publisher’s (Eye on Education) website, https://blog.eyeoneducation.com/2010/04/08/should-cell-phones-be-allowed-in-schools.aspx?utm_source=bronto&utm_medium=email&utm_term

As the percentage of students in high school, middle school, and even elementary school who own cell phones continues to grow, the debate over whether they should be allowed to use them in school becomes more heated.

The Pros

The chief argument in favor of allowing cell phones at school is safety. Students can contact their parents or another authority figure in case of an emergency, and vice versa. Furthermore, parents can reach their children at any time and learn their whereabouts. Cell phones provide an extra measure of security, and they’re convenient.

And students will use them anyway. According to MSNBC, CommonSense Media conducted a poll that revealed that 63 percent of students still use cell phones at schools with cell phone bans.

In his blog post “I lost something very important to me“ on “Weblogg-ed,” a Web site dedicated to technological resources in the classroom, Will Richardson wondered about the messages cell phone bans send. He wrote, “What does [confiscating cell phones] teach those kids? First, it teaches them that they don’t deserve to be empowered with technology the same way adults are. Second, that the tools that adults use all the time in their everyday lives to communicate are not relevant to their own communication needs.”

The Cons

But they’re distracting. Even if their phones are on silent, students can text and go online during class. Educators opposed to allowing cell phones in schools also cite cyber-bullying, the use of phones and other technology to harass peers, as a reason to leave them at home.

Cell phones can also facilitate cheating. CommonSense Media found that two-thirds of students surveyed claimed that their classmates used cell phones to cheat on coursework, while one-third said they themselves had done so. Armed with high-tech phones, students can browse the Internet and ask their friends for answers to test questions, or store information to give their friends later on.

“When students have cell phones in their possession during school hours, many disciplinary problems stem from [cell phone] abuse,” Jon Akers, executive director of the Kentucky Center for School Safety, wrote in his article, “Student Cell Phones Should Be Prohibited in K-12 Schools.” (This article is available for download on the Kentucky Center for School Safety website.)

He adds, “The current barrage of illegal and immoral acts committed daily (on cell phones by students during the school day) far outweigh the parent’s right to talk (and in some cases, interfere) with their children during a school emergency.”

For me, the real question is how do schools learn how to incorporate the use of technology instead of banning it?

The Wall Street Journal published an article entitled Teacher Absences Plague Schools on April 28th.  According to the Journal’s analysis, one-fifth of New York City’s teachers were absent for more than two weeks last school year.  Absenteeism was highest in some of the poorest schools, where students and teachers face the greatest challenges.

The article failed to mention, that many of these highly at-risk students bring their problems to school because their parents do not speak to them.  Many come from single parent homes, or two working parents.  For some of these students, teachers provide the only adult they see during their waking hours.  The increasing problems of recession, unemployment and foreclosures mean that in addition to teaching, educators have become surrogate parents, and enforcers of school and community rules – things parents used to do.

Teachers are also exposed to childhood illnesses that children bring to school.  Many parents send sick children to school in  order not to hire baby sitters or so that they (the parents) will not have to miss work.

None of this is meant to excuse excessive absences.  But as a former teacher, I know how frequently upon my return to the classroom, I had to address the issue of substitutes who failed to provide adequate instruction during my illness.  Has anyone thought of paying teachers a bonus (of 10%) if they did not take a day off?  This would save school districts money.  (They wouldn’t have to pay a substitute in addition to paying for an absent teacher’s salary.)  It would also provide for continuing instruction and schools wouldn’t have to scramble to find substitutes.