Home Stretch?

It’s taken two-and-a-half years, but a reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is in sight. The Senate finally approved a bill reauthorizing the landmark 1975 act, which guarantees educational services to more than 6 million children with disabilities. That means it’s on to a House-Senate conference committee, which will reconcile the differences between the House and Senate proposals and draft legislation to present to the full Congress. (The House approved a bill reauthorizing IDEA last year.)

So how did we fare? On the upside, the bill protects services for transient students, implements a 15-state paperwork reduction project, provides for enhanced professional development, and calls for a study on how environmental factors impact children’s developmental disabilities.

But the Senate bill is not without flaws. Most notably, the Senate failed to pass an amendment to fully fund IDEA over the next six years. Currently, Congress covers roughly 20 percent of the costs to educate special needs students, just half of the 40 percent committed in the original law. That shortfall has cost local schools and taxpayers more than $300 million during the past 29 years. (To see the impact on your state, visit www.nea.org/lac/idea/fy05ideafunding.html.) Much work still remains on clarifying the definition of a “highly qualified” special education teacher as well.

Want more? Join NEA’s activist list by e-mailing pralabate@nea.org. You also can keep up with the

latest developments and contact your congressional reps by visiting www.nea.org/lac/idea.

Weighty Matters

The percentage of overweight children and teens in the United States has more than doubled during the past three decades, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. More than 15 percent of children ages 6–11 are overweight, compared with just 6.5 percent in the late 1970s. Meanwhile, 15.5 percent of 12- to 19-year-olds are overweight, compared with just 5 percent 30 years ago.

Get That Party Started!

How can you build grassroots power for the public schools and have a fabulous time doing it? Easy—You can host, or just attend, one of the thousands of house parties that NEA and several other pro-public education groups are organizing on September 22.

You’ll get to know fellow supporters of public education—educators, parents, and other good people from the neighborhood. Will there be good food, frolic, and fellowship? Definitely!

And by the end, your community will have a new group of activists ready and able to make themselves heard by local, state, and national leaders whenever they take up key issues around public education. Politicians do listen to people—when there are enough of them. 

The groups launching this effort with NEA include MoveOn.org, ACORN, and the Campaign for America’s Future. Go to www.greatpublicschools.org to find a house party in your community or how to host one (and the resources available to get your party jumpin’).

See you there!

Two Tickets, Please

Sherrell Ingram just wanted to go to the prom with her best friend, a female student from another school. But, when Ingram, a student at Lago Vista High School in Texas, tried to buy a couples ticket, she found out about a new rule: Your date must be the opposite sex. It wasn’t even a district rule, just the whim of the principal. That’s when her mom, Ginger White, decided to take a stand.

“You can’t teach your children to fight for what you believe in if you don’t do it yourself,” says White, who sought counsel with the People for the American Way Foundation. PFAWF contacted the principal and asked her to rescind the discriminatory policy to avoid legal action. The school ultimately complied, but White remains on alert. “I’m afraid they’ll go to the school board and make it a school rule. But I’m watching the news every day. Watching and reading.”

Free Speech On Campus!

The “Policies and Procedures on Demonstrations” for Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) warmly embrace the “free expression of ideas.” But apparently, that free expression applies only to university administrators and not to NEA members.

Members of the SIUE Professional Staff Association planned to express themselves last winter by picketing a university trustee board meeting, an accepted bargaining tactic since 1998. But SIUE Human Resources Director A.G. Monaco denied permission stating the local Association was not a “University-sponsored organization.” The Illinois Education Association-NEA (IEA-NEA) immediately sought legal relief from the ban. On the day before the planned union action, a federal district court judge upheld the right of the union members to picket outside the meeting.

The next frigid day, IEA-NEA members picketed without incident and even addressed trustees about their top concern: a 2 percent pay increase granted to non-union SIUE employees but denied to them. At press time, IEA-NEA still was pushing for that raise.

“Everything takes longer in university bargaining,” says UniServ Director Mike Cook, “but at least certain administrators now know they can’t take every opportunity to intimidate employees.”

You’ve Got College

For generations, expectant high school seniors have dashed to their mailboxes looking for “the envelope,” bulky with promise or despairingly thin, that traditionally signaled acceptance (or rejection) to college. But today’s teens may be better off sticking close to their computers for the big news.

Perhaps as many as one-third of colleges and universities currently notify prospective students of their status by e-mail or through secure Web sites, estimates Barmak Nassirian, an official with the Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admission Officers, who describes the trend as “becoming increasingly ubiquitous.”

Still, privacy concerns and the high cost of implementing a secure system have caused many schools to resist the trend. Others simply find the approach too impersonal for communicating information of such consequence.

But the students don’t seem to mind. “It’s been well received,” observes John Reider of the National Association of College Admission Counselors. “And believe me, if it wasn’t, colleges who are very customer sensitive wouldn’t do it.

More Than a Test Score

By now, you’ve probably seen whether your school made Adequate Yearly Progress last year under the revised Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) (or you’ll find out soon). And, if you work at one of the many schools that missed the mark, take heart. The mark isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Judging schools solely on the percentage of students who pass a single test each year does not accurately reflect a school’s performance—something NEA has claimed all along. But now the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a nonprofit assessment group, and the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest) are sounding the call in two reports released recently.

By expecting all schools to meet the same standard in the same time frame, ESEA does not recognize student progress along the way, which, NWEA claims, better indicates whether a school “is maximizing student potential, or merely maintaining the status quo.” Instead, accountability systems should evaluate student learning in multiple ways that give students feedback about their performance, according to FairTest.

Fortunately, Congress has taken note, introducing 20 NEA-supported bills to address concerns about funding, sanctions, student transfers, and teacher quality, among other topics, under ESEA. And 170 members of the House and Senate have co-sponsored these efforts. Is your member of Congress among them? Check out the list of bills at ww.nea.org/lac/esea/ 03nclb.html and find out.

Cha-Ching
There Goes Your Salary

Monday’s lesson on juicy words may have cost $20—but it was a hit: the kids devoured those gummy worms. Wednesday’s crystal gardens took another $10 out of your pocketbook, even if parents did donate the aluminum pie plates. Then ice cream on Friday for the darlings who sat in their seats, politely raised their hands, and kept their feet to themselves added up to (a very well-spent) $15.

If only that was it! But you couldn’t help but order a $30 denim beanbag chair for the reading corner. And how could you NOT buy the on-sale $22 winter jacket when you know there are at least three kids in your class who shiver on their walk to school?

But it adds up, doesn’t it? When you look at your bank account, you find yourself looking twice at the help-wanted sign at Barnes & Noble.

So what do you spend on classroom supplies and goodies? Participate in NEA Today’s online survey at www.nea.org/neatodayextra and let us know by September 15.

Driving Forces

When bus driver Julie Ely started working for East Allen, Indiana, County Schools more than 10 years ago, the words ESPs and professional development rarely made it into the same sentence.

Photo by Tom Strickland Photography

“I was basically taught how to drive the bus,” she says.

But Ely and fellow driver Mark Smith wanted something better for the drivers who followed in their footsteps. So, three years ago they started a mentoring program to connect new and substitute drivers with their more experienced colleagues.

In addition to weekly or biweekly conversations with their mentors, new drivers attend four sessions during the school year on child development and behavior. The workshops arm drivers with techniques, similar to those used in the classroom, to manage their students. Since the program’s inception, formal discipline referrals have decreased 15 percent and fewer drivers have left the district, Smith says. Most importantly, drivers now have a venue where they can ask questions and get advice.

“The mentor program is about building relationships,” says Ely. “The drivers feel like they have backing in what they do now. It’s a support system.”

Why Good Girls Go Bad

The image of women as catty and vicious is age old and continues to turn up—even in television characters. These images concerned Lyn Mikel Brown, a women’s studies professor at Colby College in Maine, so she decided to find out why girls act the way they do.

Brown analyzed interviews and focus groups with 421 girls in grades 1–12. The study led to her book, Girlfighting: Betrayal and Rejection Among Girls (New York University Press, 2003). Brown found that in today’s still-sexist climate, “it is simply easier and safer and ultimately more profitable for girls to take out their fears and anxieties on other girls rather than on boys or on a culture that denigrates, idealizes, or eroticizes qualities associated with being feminine.”

During her research, Brown discovered three key areas where adolescent girls project their anxieties and pain onto others: sexuality (too much or too little), attitude (too “full of themselves”), and appearance/body image (fitting the media’s ideals and gaining the attention of boys). 

What to do? Schools should encourage various ways for girls to demonstrate positive attributes, such as through sports, social activism, and in “safe places” for sharing ideas and feelings. “We’re going to have to help girls figure out how to negotiate their power,” says Brown

No More Test Stress

Aspiring teachers in Virginia can breathe a little easier now that they have an alternative to taking Praxis I, the basic skills test necessary for entering many teacher education programs. Students who score at least an 1100 on their SAT (and at least 530 on both the math and verbal sections) can bypass the test. That’s good news for new teachers, since Virginia requires the highest Praxis passing score in the nation. “We think this is a very good thing,” says Betty Lambdin, director of instruction and professional development for the Virginia Education Association. Connecticut, Delaware, and Georgia have similar policies, she added. Students still must pass Praxis II, though, to receive a state teaching license. Thirty-five states use the Praxis Series tests to license teachers

SH!
Little Voices

Teaching the alphabet to preschoolers is rewarding and sometimes surprising. During a field trip to a local outdoor mall, I reminded my four-year-old students to stay together and to talk in quiet voices. One of my preschoolers turned to the other children and said, in a pitch every teacher would appreciate, “Yes, talk in a lower-case voice!”

—Evie Safran
Preschool Teacher
Charlottesville, Virginia

Have a funny school story you’d like to share? Send it to neatoday@nea.org.