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My co-author, Dr. Tony Thacker and I will be presenting material from our two books, From At-Risk to Academic Excellence: What Successful Leaders Do and Creating School Cultures That Embrace Learning: What Successful Leaders Do at Alabama State University’s Southern Normal Campus at Brewton, Alabama. The theme of the conference is The Art of Leadership.

Dr. Thacker works for the Alabama Department of Education and is on the Alabama Governor’s Committee on High Quality Teaching.

If you are in the neighborhood of Brewton, come and say hello.

In the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment tests Examination given by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Finland consistently does well. In fact, in math, science, problem solving and reading comprehension, Finland’s 15-year-olds came out at or near the top in international tests given in 2000, 2003 and 2006. Finland beat the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, France, Germany, Russia and the United States. How has this small nation been able to do that and what can we learn from them? Let’s look at some of the data:

By the time Finland’s children complete the ninth grade, they speak three languages. They have studied algebra, geometry and statistics since the first grade. And they beat the pants off students from just about everywhere else in the world.

Even the least among Finnish students ““ the lowest 10 percent ““ beat their peers everywhere else.

What has enabled Finland to succeed?

“¢They established a single, national curriculum for all schools. No matter where you live in this small county, you get the same quality education.

“¢They expect good results from all students and providing extra teaching resources to get those results. Finland emphasizes creative problem-solving skills. Once students are familiar with the concepts of math, for example, they are expected to solve problems in front of the rest of the class. The goal of math education, in fact, is to equip students with both skills and logic so they can take responsibility for lifetime learning. Students having problems with the studies get special attention from tutors and remedial educators from the first until the last day of their education. Educators spend the most time and money on students in the seventh through ninth grades, because that’s where they see students having the most trouble with keeping academics a priority.

“¢They give well-trained teachers respect and freedom to teach. All of Finland’s teachers must have master’s degrees. Only one in 10 applicants seeking to major in education are accepted at Finland’s universities.

Finland has a much smaller and much more homogenous school population. Finland is also absorbing more immigrants. The Finns also realize that a decline in living standards is based on a poorly educated population. Even in the worst economic times, Finland has maintained spending for education in order to enhance its economic future. The system has critics, many of whom complain that Finland doesn’t do enough in the early years for its brightest students. And once they graduate from comprehensive school at the age of 15 or 16, some 14 percent of the boys drop out before completing upper secondary school ““ the 10th through 12th grades. Universities conduct tough entrance examinations, and nearly 70 percent of university students are female.

Reformers were convinced that Finland needed to stop putting students into different career tracks so early. By the end of the sixth grade, students and parents had to decide whether to take classes aimed at attending a university or a vocational school. The vocational track offered much easier math and science courses. The tracking system was changed in 1985. Students still choose whether to go into university or vocational prep schools, but not until they have completed ninth grade.

Source: Dallas newspaper, February 10, 2009

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a report in January, 2009 that showed that more than half (26) of the states had seen an increase in the teenage birthrate. The data is based on 2006 statistics, the most recent year of statistics. The states with the highest birthrates are in the South and Southwest. The states with the lowest birthrates are in the Northeast.

I believe we need to ask why do some states (Mississippi, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia (the 10 states with the highest birthrate) have over double or triple the birthrate of the lowest states? The state with the lowest rate is New Hampshire and then going from 50 to 40th are Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Maine, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Wisconsin.

Source: www.cdc.gov

The New York Times reported (2/1/2009) that the words used by 12 governors in the State of the State addresses had dramatically changed:

2007                2008

Economy                  297                  505

Budget                      285                  389

Jobs                          243                  351

Revenue                   78                    134

Recession                 2                     68

Schools                    443                 332

Education               389                 310

Children                  216                 187

Students                 233                 183

As you can see from the above data, education has moved to a back burner on state agendas. Since states fund 93-94% of the school budgets, it is important to take note that we are up to our necks in alligators. Now is the time to notify our local representatives that we are concerned that education does not fall by the wayside in these critical times.

A new federal study finds that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA “” about one in seven “” have such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to read anything more challenging than a children’s picture book or to understand a medication’s side effects listed on a pill bottle.

Though many communities are making strides to tackle the problem, it’s worsening elsewhere “” in some cases significantly.

Overall, the study finds, the nation hasn’t made a dent in its adult-literacy problem: From 1992 to 2003, it shows, the USA added about 23 million adults to its population; in that period, an estimated 3.6 million more joined the ranks of adults with low literacy skills. How low? For man it would be a challenge to read this newspaper article.
“They really cannot read “¦ paragraphs (or) sentences that are connected,” says Sheida White, a researcher at the U.S. Education Department.

The findings come from the department’s National Assessment of Adult Literacy, a survey of more than 19,000 Americans ages 16 and older. The 2003 survey is a follow-up to a similar one in 1992 and for the first time lets the public see literacy rates as far down as county levels.

In many cases, some states made sizable gains. In Mississippi, the percentage of adults with low skills dropped 9 percentage points, from 25% to 16%. In every one of its 82 counties, low-skill rates dropped “” in a few cases by 20 percentage points or more. Minneapolis and Seattle are two cities with the highest literacy rates.

By contrast, in several large states “” California, New York, Florida and Nevada, for instance “” the number of adults with low skills rose.

David Harvey, president and CEO of ProLiteracy, an adult-literacy organization, says Mississippi “invested more in education “¦ and they have done innovative programming. We need much more of that.”

The findings are published online at nces.ed.gov/naal/estimates/index.aspx.

Three-quarters of the jobs of the future will require some post-secondary education, but less than half of today’s workforce has the skills and education to fill the jobs. While post-secondary education is a goal for many students,
college is becoming financially out of reach for many families. With increase layoffs, high unemployment, and the increased costs of college (which have grown faster than inflation), higher education needs to review their priorities.

In Pennsylvania about 265,000 people of college age ““ 18 to 21 ““ live in families with annual income less than $41,000 for a family of four. Lower income families must dedicate a higher percentage of their annual income to pay for
school than moderate and higher income families.

Loans are a necessity for many college students to attend college, but they can be a financial burden. In 2007, 71 percent of college students in Pennsylvania graduated with an average loan debt of nearly $24,000.

With the increased demands for better and higher trained people entering the workforce, the Obama Administration and the business community need to come up with some answers as well.

Carol Bartz, the new CEO of Yahoo stated that meeting face to face is more efficient than sending an email or an instant message, because to be a “great reader of people” you need to see them.

Technology too often isolates us instead of connecting us. It is one of the problems I have with people who believe that computers are the end-all, be-all for solving education’s problems. While technology supplies a valuable resource and tool and helps save time, children lose the ability to converse and interact with others.

The New York Times reported that the Roman Catholic school system is in decline. In Brooklyn, NY the Diocese of Brooklyn has closed 14 schools this year. The projection is that the Diocese of Brooklyn last week proposed closing 14 more elementary schools. Enrollment in the nation’s Catholic schools has steadily dropped by more than half from its peak of five million 40 years ago.

Parochial schools provide a valuable service to many of our nation’s youngsters. In recent years, they have attracted poor and minority students “” including non-Catholics “” seeking havens of safety and order from troubled public schools. Roughly 20 percent of parochial school students are not Catholic, according to experts.

The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. was so desperate to save seven struggling parochial schools last year that it took down the crucifixes, hauled away the statues of the Virgin Mary, and “” in its own word “” “converted” the schools in the nation’s capital into city charter schools.

The Washington choice seemed an extreme measure to deal with the predicament facing Catholic education: How to maintain a Catholic school tradition of no-frills educational rigor, religious teaching and character-building “” a system that has helped shape generations of America’s striving classes since the turn of the last century “” when Catholics are no longer signing up their children.

Roughly 2,000 parochial schools have been since 1990, a majority in just the last eight years.

At its peak in 1965, the church’s network of parochial schools numbered more than 12,000 in the United States. The bulk of those were built starting at the turn of the century, when Catholic bishops commanded every parish to build one, largely from concern that waves of Catholic immigrants then arriving from Ireland and Italy would be lost in a public school system that was openly hostile to their beliefs.

By 1965, roughly half of all Catholic children in America attended Catholic elementary schools, according to the National Catholic Educational Association. Among Latinos, the fastest-growing church group “” soon to comprise a majority of Catholics in the United States “” it is only 3 percent.

What has caused this trend? There are a number of factors including a shortage of nuns and priests who once ran the schools at no extra cost and have been replaced by lay staff with pension benefits. Another factor is the rising cost of tuition