Who’s Really Getting Ahead?

First the good news: the U.S. population has never been better educated. In fact, 85 percent of Americans 25 years and older have at least a high school diploma, while 27 percent have at least a bachelor’s degree—all-time highs on both counts, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But the news isn’t so rosy for the nation’s Hispanic population, which lags behind all racial groups in high school and college completion rates. Just 57 percent of Hispanics 25 years or older have a high school degree, while only 11 percent have a bachelor’s. The picture isn’t much better for the younger set: only 62 percent of Hispanic 25- to 29-year-olds have completed high school and only 10 percent have finished college.

Limited access to college aid information could be keeping many students off campus, according to The Tomás Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California.

Many Hispanic students don’t take the PSAT or SAT, which means their names aren’t submitted to financial aid and academic institutions, says Celina Torres, an education researcher with the institute. Others encounter obstacles enrolling in college preparation tracks in school, which further alienates them from useful resources, she adds.

Those who do attend college face an uphill battle. They are half as likely as their white classmates to graduate, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, partly because Hispanic

students attend less selective colleges and universities. Research shows students enrolled in more selective schools have a greater chance of earning degrees.    

Charter School Update

The results are in: Low-income and minority students score higher at regular public schools than they do at charter schools, according to results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a nationwide testing program. That interesting finding appeared very quietly on the U.S. Department of Education Web site nearly a year ago, buried under other statistics. Federal officials deny trying to hide anything. “I guess that was poor publicity on our part,” Robert Lerner, federal commissioner for education statistics, told The New York Times, which reported the finding in August. 

Capitol Report Voc-Ed Gets a Voice Funding for career and technical education (CTE) got plenty of attention over the summer. Congress began to reauthorize the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, which provides $1.3 billion annually to secondary and postsecondary schools for career-focused education. It’s the largest source of federal funding to high schools and a critical source of program support money to community colleges. Ninety-six percent of high school students take at least one CTE course. Although the reauthorization bills introduced by the House of Representatives and the Senate have their merits, they are not without flaws. Most notably, both bills contain provisions that ultimately could tie Perkins funding to students’ academic performance under the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB). The House and Senate are considering changes suggested by NEA to ensure that NCLB is not the only measure used to evaluate CTE programs. If changes are not made, however, schools failing to make adequate yearly progress under NCLB could lose their Perkins funding. The House and Senate were scheduled to continue work on their bills in September. Have a great idea? Send it by mail: NEA Today 1201 16th St., N.W. Washington, DC 20036 Send it by e-mail: neatoday@nea.org.

Pint-Size Politico

On a recent evening, Lily Thorpe rushes to prepare for a candidates debate in Grand Junction, Colorado. Still, she has time to talk about her own politics, just as soon as her mom finishes braiding her hair.

This is life when you’re the 10-year-old founder of Kids Campaign, a political action committee dedicated to raising awareness of children’s issues. You think about politics constantly—like why haven’t President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry responded to her questionnaires?

“I’ve written to both of them—twice!” says Lily, who runs a “non-partisan” campaign. “I just want to know what they’re going to do for kids!”

Lily first got hooked on politics while researching a history project at her school, Mesa View Elementary School, with 14-year-old encyclopedias. Since then, her political acumen has developed to include a reasoned analysis of the revised Elementary and Secondary Education Act (the so-called No Child Left Behind law)—”A good law, but when President Bush signed it, he didn’t put any money to the schools and that’s what is wrong.”

This combination of youth and political maturity has made Lily a sought-after guest at political events. But she’s still a kid too—”I think I’ll wear a pink shirt and a pink skirt with flowers on it,” she muses. “And my blue-flowered sneakers.”

Techno Teaching

Feel like that new teacher down the hall is leaving you in the chalk dust with her high-tech lessons? Think again. Turns out veteran teachers are just as tech savvy as their younger colleagues.

Nearly 90 percent of teachers believe technology plays an important role in their professional lives, contributing to richer lesson plans, more engaged learners, and more personalized instruction, according to a new survey conducted by the nonprofit education technology group NetDay in cooperation with NEA.

Yet, while teachers of all  experience levels strive to provide a technology-rich learning environment, they say lack of time and lack of computers present the greatest obstacles.

Nearly 40 percent of teachers also believe their preservice training did little to prepare them to teach with technology. (Although, among younger teachers, 90 percent found their college training at least somewhat useful.)

By contrast, 91 percent say their schools provide sufficient professional development.

Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?

How do you track 45,000 students coming and going each day? The answer could be at your fingertips.

Over the summer, school officials in Pinellas County, Florida, installed a new electronic fingerprint system to keep tabs on students who ride the district’s 750 school buses.

As students board the bus, they place their thumbs on a scanner that tells the driver whether the student is on the right bus. The system does not catalog a student’s exact fingerprint, says Terry Palmer, the district’s transportation director. Instead, it picks up unique characteristics of each print, encrypts them, and stores the file in a district database with the student’s identification number and transportation information. Parents can choose to keep their children out of the tracking system, Palmer adds.

“Obviously the more parents and kids who participate, the better off we’ll be,” says Palmer, since the program tracks only those students enrolled in the program.

The $2.3 million technology, which also includes a global positioning system to track the location of the buses, does not require students to use a badge or identification card either, which could be broken, lost, or left at home.

“Part of the attraction of this is kids are not going to forget their thumbs,” Palmer adds.

Smile for the Camera

It never fails: School picture day always arrives on the same day as a huge pimple or bad hairstyle. Despite it all, moms and dads shelled out, on average, $22.58 each for portrait packages last year, kicking the $1.6 billion school portrait industry into high gear after years of downward trends, according to Photo Marketing Association International. The increase in purchases could be linked to the emergence of new technology, including retouching and electronic options, and the wider range of portrait packages. Film still dominates the market, however—only 2.6 percent of school portraits have gone digital. Everyone say cheese!

—Emily Goodman

Global Takes Turning Oil Into Schools Recently, the African nation of Chad started pumping its own oil out of the ground, and the new revenue could mean good things for the nation’s schools, according to the Christian Science Monitor. To keep the new funds from being siphoned off through corruption, the country has created a committee with members from nonprofit groups and the government to allocate the income, which officials expect will boost national revenue 50 percent during the next 20 years. More importantly, the country plans to spend 80 percent of the money on schools, clinics, roads, and other basic needs. Building Character  Last month, 170,000 elementary and middle school students in the Chinese capital of Beijing began courses intended to teach them honesty. It’s the first time character building has been a formal part of the curriculum, reports the China Daily. “Youngsters are the future of China,” an official says in the report. “We hope we can bring them up as honest people.” The course’s three-volume textbook, which education officials began compiling in 2003, includes age-appropriate articles, discussion questions, and cartoon illustrations for younger students. Have a good story? Send it by mail: NEA Today 1201 16th St., N.W. Washington, DC 20036 Send it by e-mail: neatoday@nea.org.

This Is Just A Test—Again

It’s bad enough for students to suffer stomach butterflies and high-stakes test-taking anxiety once during their high school careers. Last year, some Arizona high schools asked juniors and seniors who already had performed well on the state test to grind it out once more. Read: take the same test over, because, well, you just may do better.

What’s up? Until 2003, the state’s school ranking formula included only the percentage of students who passed or failed the Arizona Instrument to Measure Standards. But last school year, state officials allowed schools to receive “extra credit” for students who placed at the top of the reading, writing, and math sections.

“We’re being guided by an assessment system rather than the other way around—it’s just absurd,’’ says John Wright, president-elect of the Arizona Education Association.

In the Phoenix Union High School District, for instance, principals threw pizza parties and held raffles for repeat test-takers. Other districts honored the very best scorers during graduation ceremonies.

If at first you succeed, try and try again, principals said—in the name of looking better on state rankings.

Getting Spooked!

An estimated 41 million “trick-or-treaters”—5- to 14-year-olds—will haunt neighborhoods nationwide later this month, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And they will have plenty of places to stock up on goodies. These little ghosts and goblins will have

106 million potential stops (the number of housing units occupied year-round) to visit during their Halloween outings, the Census Bureau reports.

Instilling A Sense of Pride

Students in Tucson, Arizona, have heard an awful lot about Davy Crockett and the Alamo over the years, but now they’re also learning about the U.S.-Mexican War, how Mayans developed the concept of zero, and the origins of soccer.

“When a curriculum is relevant to a student, they want to learn,” said Tomás Martínez, a specialist in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American/Raza Studies Department and an ESP board member of the Tucson Education Association.

Too many of Tucson’s Chicano students, who constitute more than half of its enrollment, have grim prospects for a diploma. But with a $5,000 NEA Urban Grant, Martínez and a team of union and district partners have worked to close the gap by offering students a glimpse into their own history.

Both teachers and ESPs can take a three-day course on Mexican-American issues that provides curriculum units and helps them develop lessons of their own. “It’s not going to be something that’s on the shelf, unlike a lot of in-services,” says Michael Gordy, a social studies teacher who took the course.

The Raza Studies department also teaches Chicano studies courses in secondary schools. “So far, students who take our courses are achieving at higher rates...and they’re graduating,” Martínez says. “We’re instilling pride in students who lacked it and we’re getting students interested in learning.”

[Book Focus]

A Battle with No End in Sight

The nearly century-long skirmish over the social studies reminds us just how contentious curriculum issues can be. And it’s not getting better.

In The Social Studies Wars: What Should We Teach the Children? (Teachers College Press, 2004) Ronald W. Evans, professor of education at San Diego State University, traces the embattled history of this hybrid field. From its nominal creation by a 1916 NEA commission to synthesize related disciplines, through the 1960s push to relate the subject to social issues of the time, to our current standards-driven narrowing of the field, social studies inevitably finds itself snagged in controversy.

In Evans’ view, social studies should be “about helping young people grow into effective human beings who care about their lives in the community.” So why the fuss?

Turns out, the concept of building a better citizen—whether to do it and how—is a matter of no small dispute. Social studies, in Evans’ account, finds itself embroiled in an ideological war over nothing less than the direction of society.

Can there be peace? Only in a “public forum shorn of...propaganda,” according to Evans. But it’s been a while since we’ve had one of those.

Two-Minute Tips One Day at a Time To keep my paperwork at a manageable level, I grade papers from just one class per day. In other words, I collect papers from first period on Monday, second period on Tuesday, and so forth. This keeps me up-to-date, and my students get almost immediate feedback. —Susan Dreyfus Memphis, Tennessee Clipboards for Lefties I discovered an easy way to use clipboards with left-handed note takers: Simply use the clipboard upside down! Take the papers out of the clip. Turn the board so the clip is at the bottom. And then clip the papers from the bottom. Lefties can write quite easily this way without the clip interfering. —Marcia Lee South Windsor, Connecticut Clapping for Attention When my class gets noisy, I make up clapping patterns to get my students’ attention. I clap a rhythm that the students must repeat. At other times, I clap a certain rhythm and students know to respond with a different rhythm I have taught them. I always get their full attention using this method. —Titus O. Peck Milwaukee, Wisconsin Have a good tip? Send it by mail: NEA Today 1201 16th St., N.W. Washington, DC 20036 Send it by e-mail: neatoday@nea.org.

Survival of the Fittest

One out of every two new teachers quits within five years, and replacing them costs this country about $2.6 billion annually—not including the price paid by students, according to the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national research and policy institute that acts on behalf of low-performing secondary students.

But the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance has a solution: Give new teachers more support so they can be successful and productive and, as a result, more satisfied in their jobs.

“About 1 percent of all new teachers get the kind of comprehensive induction we’re talking about,” says Susan Frost, senior advisor at the Alliance. And yet, after looking at programs in states like Connecticut and California, her researchers found a quality start cuts attrition in half.

This doesn’t mean a crash course in teaching, nor a few one-day workshops here and there. The Alliance recommends high-quality mentoring that involves classroom observations and assistance with lesson plans; common planning time; regular and ongoing seminars on classroom management tactics; and standards-based evaluations of new teachers.

The approach isn’t cheap—probably about $4,000 per teacher—but it ultimately saves money by avoiding new hiring and training costs. Every dollar spent creates a payoff of $1.37, says Frost, who calls for the federal government to put up some of the cash in “under-resourced” districts.

“It’s not some kind of out-there thing,” Frost adds. “It’s really about keeping our best new teachers in the classroom doing the work we want them to do.”

Bodies in Motion

Last year, NEA members sweated their way to better health in NEA’s Fitness Challenge. Now it’s time to get your students moving. This month, NEA’s Health Information Network will launch the SmartBody Fitness Info Center, an online community dedicated to helping kids, and their families, get active and get healthy. On the Web site, NEA members will find tips for creating engaging exercise programs, offering nutritional— and tasty—school lunches and snacks, and helping students reduce their stress. Teachers and ESPs also can exchange ideas and share their own school success stories.

Ready to start? Visit www.neahealthinfo.org and help your students get those smart bodies.