Moscow Education (Idaho)

Donald Boudreaux, George Mason University economics department chair, describes the economic behavior of public schools:

Government K-12 schools, as now run everywhere in the U.S., will never excel at educating students. The reason is that each school gets its students and its budget without having to compete for them.

Imagine if, say, supermarkets were run the same way we run schools. Everyone in my county would pay taxes to fund the county supermarket system; each one of us would then be assigned one specific county supermarket at which we are allowed to shop.

Of course, once in our assigned store, all the groceries that each of us gets are "free" -- meaning, we don't have to pay for them on the spot. If the products and services supplied by the supermarket are of poor quality, we're not allowed to switch to other county markets; we must, instead, complain to politicians.

The managers of the supermarkets will agree that their stores offer abysmal service and undesirable products; they will assert that this sad fact is caused by underfunding. We will be warned that only by paying higher taxes will we have any possibility of getting better supermarkets.

So our taxes will rise and funding for supermarkets will increase. But quality will remain poor -- and the excuses offered by the government-employed managers of the supermarkets will remain that they need yet more funding.

HT: Edspresso

Via Edspresso: 

• Fossella talks to bishop about NY tuition tax credits - In an effort to drum up support for federal legislation that would give parents of students in parochial and private schools a $4,500 tax credit to help pay for tuition, Rep. Vito Fossella reached out yesterday to the leader of the Brooklyn Diocese. (more)
• Lazy FL media focuses on wrong story - The Associated Press reports that the Democratic candidates for governor are unknown to the citizens of Florida. Not only is that a clipping to be filed in the "lazy story" pile, but it's also an indictment of a slumbering media. (more)
• Preschool benefits grossly exaggerated - A Rand Corporation study that claims universal preschool will deliver $2.62 in benefits for every dollar spent by California taxpayers has been thoroughly discredited ... (more)
• AP:Black, Hispanic pupils see school as tough - Black and Hispanic students see school as a more rowdy, disrespectful and dangerous place than their white classmates do, a poll says. (more)

From Free Republic:

The University of California at Merced's fall enrollment numbers might not be as high as the new university hoped. The year-old campus received 550 notices of intent to register from potential students -- down from its first-year notices, which numbered close to 1,000. Reasons vary, school officials said today, including the new university's limited number of majors and expanded recruitment efforts and admissions at other UC campuses.

Because the university has only received notices of intent to register and has not yet closed the door for fall admissions, it's not yet clear how many actually will enroll for the next term.

Read more at modbee.com

Here are the details:

Cost to construct first classroom on campus: $24 Million

Number of students who dropped during first year: 300

Number or students who are legal California residents: 17

Number of students who are legal U.S. Residents: 122

Top pay scale for UC Administrator: $887,000

Construction and Land costs to date: $150 Million

Additional costs for inflated union wages: $18 Million

Cost to pay faculty and staff full salaries for 6 years before first dirt was turned: $17 Million

Cost to mitigate effect of new campus on fairy shrimp habitat: $7 Million

Cost to pay severance and sabatical leave for Chancellor who left halfway through the first term: $1.5 Million (She needs time to write a book about the early history of UC Merced, 2005 to the Present)

Failure to enroll even 500 students for the second academic year: Priceless

HT: Dave G.

Two local high school students have earned scholarships to West Point, but when it comes to awards night at their school the military is not invited.

Some said it's a big disservice to those who are ready to serve their country.

Newscenter Five's Sean Kelly reported that the principal of King Phillip Regional High School in Wrentham, Mass., told the U.S. Army it would not be welcome at a scholarship banquet that will be held to honor two graduates who have received scholarships to West Point Military Academy.

The town has many memorials to military who have made the ultimate sacrifice while serving their country, but some say that kind of patriotism and respect is not reflected at the high school.

"I was disappointed because I thought everyone should really be educated on what West Point is about and how we're going to serve our country," student Jeff Chin said.

"It is a little bit of a disappointment to not have this kind of a special thing for Jeff and I not go on because we've been expecting it," Will Small said.

It is a West Point tradition to have Army officers representing the elite military school award incoming students their scholarships at their own high school banquets. But King Phillip has its own rules that bar such participation.

"I think they are being a little protective. I think they think if they let West Point or Annapolis in, then there will be recruiters that come next and they'll be trying to persuade these kids to join the military," Will's father, Alan, said.

More over at Michelle Malkin’s site

From EIA:

The Sequoia Union High School District in California is upset with the Summit Preparatory High School, a charter school seeking to operate under the district's jurisdiction. Why? In the school's current sophomore and junior classes, there are no students in the "far below basic" category in English on the state standardized test results.

"This was not the intent of the charter school law," said Sequoia Superintendent Pat Gemma.

Gemma wants Summit to recruit more failing students in its freshman classes. This shouldn't be difficult, since a district with such an institutional attitude probably has a lot of failing students.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

From Northwest Public Radio:

Much of the news around the University of Idaho’s two cloned mules this weekend will quite naturally focus on their first race in Winnemucca, Nevada, the first time cloned animals have competed against those bred naturally.

But the scientists at the UI who made the equine cloning breakthrough also want the public to remember the connection between their research and human disease. Dr. Gordon Woods says the cloning project provided evidence to support a new area of investigation into human diseases:

Woods: “In the production of these animals, we tested a hypothesis that the low calcium in horse cells is a cause of the low incidence of cancer mortality, the low incidence of diseases such as prostate cancer and breast cancer.”

Woods first discovered the difference in calcium levels between men and stallions after he became interested in the difference in cancer rates between the two. The change in calcium levels increased the success of the UI’s cloning efforts.

The following article ran in today's Lewiston Tribune.

The Potlatch School Board will hold a meeting tonight to discuss the failure of the recent supplemental levy and whether to run it a second time.

The meeting begins at 6 p.m. at the high school.

Darin French, chairman of the school board, said Tuesday he hopes the board will be able to set a levy amount and name a date for the election.

"But it depends on the conversation," French said, alluding to controversy that sank the original $780,000 proposal by 31 votes.

"It's very disappointing," French said. "We spent a lot of time on this budget and trying to design it in such a way that our patrons want."

French said a few community members, including former board member Ivan Rounds, circulated misinformation about the levy proposal that made people uncertain about what the money was being used for.

In a prepared statement circulated to local media, Rounds questioned the need for a levy increase, pointing out that the previous board, of which he had been a member, had not increased the supplemental amount for years.

Rounds said the increase is not justified because enrollment in the district has been on the decline.

There are about 497 students in the district, a drop of about 40 from a year ago.

Shades of Moscow! That sounds familiar — the number of students decrease and the school board wants to keep increasing spending.

The following article ran in today's Lewiston Tribune. 

A group of Idaho school districts is asking a Boise judge to set a trial date to hear testimony that the Legislature continues to dodge its responsibility to fund adequate school buildings.

Idaho Schools for Equal Education Opportunity claims the Legislature's actions this year -- including increasing the homeowners property tax exemption from $50,000 to $75,000 and passing House Bill 743 -- were not enough to take care of Idaho's school building needs.

"If you assume that we have somewhere between $600 million and a billion dollars in building needs in public schools in Idaho," Cottonwood Superintendent Stan R. Kress said Tuesday, "it will take more than 100 years to solve the problem at the rate they're putting money into it. And I don't see that as an adequate solution."

From Amherst Times:

It is a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland idea. If you do not finish high school, head straight for college.

But many colleges — public and private, two-year and four-year — will accept students who have not graduated from high school or earned equivalency degrees.

And in an era of stubbornly elevated high school dropout rates, the chance to enter college through the back door is attracting growing interest among students without high school diplomas.

That growth is fueling a debate over whether the students should be in college at all and whether state financial aid should pay their way. In New York, the issue flared in a budget battle this spring.

They are students like April Pointer, 23, of New City, N.Y., a part-time telemarketer who majors in psychology at Rockland Community College, whose main campus is in Suffern, N.Y. Ms. Pointer failed science her senior year of high school and did not finish summer school.

But to her father's amazement, last year she was accepted at Rockland, part of the State University of New York.

"He asked, 'Don't you have to have a high school diploma to go to college?' " she said. "I was like, 'No, not anymore.' "

There are nearly 400,000 students like Ms. Pointer nationwide, accounting for 2 percent of all college students, 3 percent at community colleges and 4 percent at commercial, or profit-making, colleges, according to a survey by the United States Education Department in 2003-4.

That is up from 1.4 percent of all college students four years earlier. The figures do not include home-schooled students.

What do you think of kids going to college without a high school diploma? Should state financial aid (i.e., our tax dollars) fund high school dropouts to attend college?

Via Edspresso:  

• Can't Complete High School? Go Right Along to College - It is a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland idea. If you do not finish high school, head straight for college. (more) 
• Unions' retirement advice is failing teachers - Some of the United States' largest teachers unions have joined forces with investment companies to steer members into retirement plans that frequently have high expenses and mediocre returns. (more)
• Why Supe Selection Is Like Judging a Dog Show - By the end of this column I will have selected the next superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Because I believe that the children, parents, teachers and citizens of Los Angeles are entitled to transparency in such deliberations, I invite you to join me as I work my way toward a decision. (more)
• School choice focus of forum - School choice — at least a version that would grant tax credits to some parents who enroll their children in private schools — revealed clear differences for viewers who watched Sunday’s televised debate featuring five Republicans running for South Carolina superintendent of education. (more)
• Parents Answer Cellphone Ban in N.Y. Schools - They say the crackdown is too strict and imperils children's safety. But the mayor holds the line. (more)
• GOP's missed chance: No choice for NH parents - Editorial: Republicans in the state House of Representatives might have missed their best chance to implement one of their platform planks. (more)
• It adds up: How teachers in Palm Beach County could earn six-figure salaries -  Looking for a job with eventual six-figure earning potential? You might consider teaching at a Palm Beach County school. (more)
• Will school closures do job? - As Seattle Public Schools prepares to shutter as many as a dozen school buildings, there's growing concern that closures won't save as much money as expected. (more)
• Mayor Faces School Skeptics - In an effort to shore up support for his quest to win control of the Los Angeles public schools, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will go to Sacramento today to lobby business and labor leaders, as legislators warn that the major initiative of his term could be in trouble. (more)
• A Mostly Easy Road for Chief of Schools - His wife's illness is the one issue overshadowing Jack O'Connell as he runs a less-than-stressful campaign for reelection as California's superintendent of public instruction. (more)
• Exit-exam shift not the best answer for high schoolers - Opinion: The California legislature should vote down an effort to weaken the state's high academic expectations. (more)
• Education earmark shows Los Angeles now in political power - A look at a $1 billion earmark for Los Angeles Unified School District--and what it means for the perpetual school finance battles in California. (more)
• CA initiative renews preschool debate - From coast to coast, states are pushing to get more 4-year-olds into classrooms like Cheryl Smith's thriving pre-kindergarten group at Cool Spring Elementary School in Adelphi. (more)
• Ohio EdChoice voucher participation - With the application deadline fast approaching, 561 students, 1.2% of those eligible, have signed up for the new statewide EdChoice school voucher program. Despite this slow start, there is good reason to believe that this voucher program can fulfill its promise of offering true education choice to those who need it most. (more)
• Wisconsin yanks school's voucher status - State officials ordered Sa'Rai and Zigler Upper Excellerated Academy out of Milwaukee's voucher program Friday, citing possible fraud in student applications. (more) 
• With more choice has come resegregation - A school-assignment system established in 2001 to give San Francisco parents more choice has resegregated many schools across San Francisco. (more)

The figure below shows the average eighth-grade science score and the percentage of students at each achievement level for all 44 states and the Department of Defense schools that volunteered to participate in the 2005 science assessment. The state results shown below are for public school students only.

NOTE: because of rounding, details may not sum to totals. The NAEP science scale ranges from 0 to 300.

Click here for more data

HT: Alpha & Omega

"People complain that the SAT is biased and that the bias explains why students don't do well. That's true – it is biased. It's biased against people who aren't well-educated. The test isn't causing people to have bad education, it's merely reflecting the reality. And if you don't like your reflection that doesn't mean that you should smash the mirror."

—SAT tutor David S. Kahn. (May 26 Wall Street Journal)

From EIA:

Readers regularly request NEA membership figures, and EIA can't do much better for you than this. Posted on the EIA web site are numbers current as of May 15, 2006, for every state affiliate, including every category in which NEA offers membership: active professional, education support, retired, student and life members. Additionally, the figures include the number of agency fee-payers in states where this arrangement is allowed by law.

 

There's a lot of analysis that could be done, but enjoy it now, because such membership numbers are becoming less and less useful for comparison purposes. With the merger in New York, NEA will begin counting a half-million NYSUT members as NEA members, which will increase NEA/AFT double-counting of members to almost 900,000. Additionally, in July, NEA delegates will vote to add an "associate" member category, which would open membership to anyone with a few bucks to waste.

 

NEA has 68,368 agency fee-payers, almost half of these in California alone, where fee-payers number more than 10 percent of the active membership of the California Teachers Association. But it's important to know the previous status of fee-payers. Having a growing number of fee-payers means nothing on its face. More fee-payers who used to be members indicate movement away from the union, but more fee-payers who used to be non-members, paying nothing to the union, indicate movement towards the union.

 

I'll be happy to answer "trend" questions from those with an interest, but I decided not to muddy up the table by including figures from previous years. Short version for national figures: active professionals up 1 percent, ESPs up 2.9 percent, retirees up 4.6 percent, students down 2.2 percent, life down 2.2 percent, total up 1.4 percent, fee-payers up 5.9 percent.

From The Education Intelligence Agency.

From Northwest Public Radio:

 Washington State University has won final approval to offer the nation's first college major in organic farming.

From Jennifer L. McFarland, Latah County Sheriff's Office Public Information Officer:

During a traffic stop this weekend, deputies found liquid methamphetamine. Read more here: http://www.latah.id.us/Dept/Sheriff_PressRelease_Liquid_%20Meth.pdf

Liquid meth is relatively “new” on the illicit drug market having first been presented at DEA’s Southwest Lab (in Vista, California) in 2005. Potency is contingent on several factors, but anecdotal reports from users indicate that since it is injected, the effects are more intense, longer lasting, and more immediate than crystal or rock forms of meth.

See if you can follow the logic of this argument below. See if it doesn’t sound like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. They are expecting a 17% decrease in secondary enrollment; so let’s move 6th graders to middle school and 9th graders to high school. Yea, that’ll fix the overall problem (decreasing enrollment)…

From today's Idaho Statesman:

Boise School District is contemplating moving ninth-graders into its high schools and sixth-graders into middle schools to head off a 17 percent decrease in secondary school enrollment projected over the next nine years.

If the district doesn't do something, junior highs and high schools could lose nearly 2,000 students by 2014. High schools alone could lose 1,100 students. That's more than the current enrollment at Timberline High School.

Moving sixth and ninth grades could leave both high schools and junior highs in 2014 slightly larger than they are now. But it also could affect nearly every part of district secondary schools from athletics to academics.

Update: keely mix responded to this post over on V2020.

Keeley Mix previously said that making capital expenditures out of current revenues was forbidden by state law, and that MSD had to float a bond levy. See:

• MSD Employees: Too Many, Too Much and
• The Dumbest Thing He Ever Heard.

Yet this post (Board approves new roof at high school ) shows that MSD can in fact do exactly what she said it couldn't do.

Jack Wenders notes:

This kind of O and M out of current revenues should have been going on over the past decade instead of being pissed up on employees/payroll. All of the expenditures in the bond levy currently being considered could have been handled in this way by good management in the past. Instead, MSD now finds itself spending about $4.5m per year in current costs—again mostly bloated payroll—compared to other districts in Idaho with comparable enrollment, so it has to come back with bond levies to do things that should have been done over the years.

I recently looked at one of EIA's tables and found the attached.

File Attachment: MSD Pay as Percent.htm (77 KB)

From today's Idaho Statesman:

Fourth- and eighth-graders in Idaho scored higher on a national science test than most of their counterparts nationwide, the state Department of Education announced Wednesday.

The test results may be deceptive, however. When the results are divided by ethnicity, the bulk of Idaho's fourth-grade students — white students — actually scored worse than white students in the rest of the nation. And though Idaho's Hispanic students scored better than their counterparts nationwide, they still lagged behind white fourth-graders' scores.

The 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered the best measure of how students perform over time and how one state stacks up against another. It compares state subgroups to subgroups in other states.

Because of the way the test results are tallied, it's not clear if Idaho's higher overall scores are because Hispanic students are performing that much better than others nationwide or simply because Idaho has fewer minority students than many other states.

From the Wall Street Journal.

How Low Can We Go?
By DAVID S. KAHN
May 26, 2006; Page W11

Colleges across the country are reporting a drop in SAT scores this year. I've been tutoring students in New York City for the SAT since 1989, and I have watched the numbers rise and fall. This year, though, the scores of my best students dropped about 50 points total in the math and verbal portions of the test (each on a scale of 200-800). Colleges and parents are wondering: Is there something wrong with the new test? Or are our children not being taught what they should know?
…
The explanation is much more straightforward. The average American receives a pretty mediocre education. The average SAT score drifted down from 1000 in the 1960s to 880 in 1993. Education activists attributed this plummet to cultural factors, a change in the testing pool and other matters. The blame was placed everywhere but on schools. That the quality of education in America declined from the 1960s to the 1990s was hardly noted in debates over the SAT.

And then the test was "re-centered." Thanks to the change in the SAT scale and the change in the kinds of questions that were asked on the test, scores went up and people were able to ignore the fact that most students are not well-educated. Indeed, parents compared their children's scores with their own and concluded that their children were brilliant. Now ETS has made it a little harder to get away with not knowing your three R's.

People complain that the SAT is biased and that the bias explains why students don't do well. That's true -- it is biased. It's biased against people who aren't well educated. The test isn't causing people to have bad educations, it's merely reflecting the reality. And if you don't like your reflection that doesn't mean that you should smash the mirror.

That the new SAT tests more reading comprehension than the old test did is a good thing. Colleges complain that their incoming students don't have sufficient skills to read and analyze the kind of material that their professors will assign them. I hope that the new SAT's emphasis will make students realize that you can't get much of an education if you can't read.

Maybe the decline in SAT scores will force people to notice that their children are not getting good educations. If your children don't read or do math, why would you think that they would do well on the SAT? I would love to get into a time machine and go back to 1960 and give this new SAT to high-school students back then. I suspect that they would do much better than today's students. If we want people to get good scores on the SAT, I have a suggestion. Stop complaining about how unfair the test is and do your homework.

HT: Jack Wenders

• Solve FCAT mystery of 10th-graders' scores - the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test is good at diagnosing problems. But as any doctor would tell you, diagnosis is not treatment or a cure. (more)
• States open wallets, tackle big agendas - years of belt-tightening in the first half of this decade have given way to modest tax cuts and extra spending, particularly on education... (more)
• CA students appeal exit ruling - Students who sued the state for discrimination after failing the high school exit exam asked a state appeals court Thursday to immediately hear their claim that the requirement should be suspended so they can graduate this year. (more)
• Ohio early school advocates say children unprepared - Success By 6 released two reports Thursday that contain dreary statistics about the literacy readiness of preschool children in Hamilton County and Cincinnati. It also has a plan to address their deficiencies. (more)
• Justices Restore Exit Exam - Thousands of struggling high school seniors are likely to be denied a diploma after the state Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated California's exit exam, a hotly debated gauge of competency in math and English. (more)
• Villaraigosa Supports Reinstatement Of Exit Exam - Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and school Superintendent Roy Romer praised Wednesday the state Supreme Court's decision reinstating the California High School Exit Exam as a graduation requirement for 2006. (more)
• Will Blagojevich's school reform plan work? - If Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich gets his way, the state lottery would be sold or leased to raise $10 billion for his school reform plan. (more)
• 'Great' educators not enough under law - Teachers, some with decades of teaching experience, have to prove their worth under federal guidelines that require 100 percent of teachers in core subjects be "highly qualified" by June 30. (more)
• 65 Percent Solution: Gimmick or Gold Mine? - A very lengthy article on the 65% solution.  (more)
• NYT: Test shows drip in science achievement for 12-graders - The first nationwide science test administered in five years shows that achievement among high school seniors has declined across the past decade... (more)
• School performance gap falls along racial, economic lines - Seventy-four percent of Wisconsin’s 10th-grade students were proficient or advanced in reading, while 70 percent of students were proficient or advanced in math. (more)
• S.C. Rep. Bill Cotty is against vouchers - ...tax credits or anything else that takes South Carolina’s resources and focus off of our central challenge — educating the kids who aren’t getting educated, who aren’t employable, who make our state less attractive to investors. (more)
• U.S. a failure at evaluating teachers - A group called the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards has come up with a process designed to recognize top-notch teachers.. (more)
• New York Post, Ryan Sager: Voice for Kids - Parents vs. special interests... (more)
• US DOE warns of fake e-mails about NCLB - Ed Week (subscription required) The U.S. Department of Education is seeking to debunk widely circulated e-mails that erroneously say the No Child Left Behind Act mandates that students who fail their 10th grade reading and math tests must accept an inferior high school completion certificate... (more)

Via Edspresso

The Dallas Morning News (free registration required) has an incredible article on why the government cannot tell who a good teacher is and who a bad teacher is — even though every student could tell you.

Katie Newmark Joshua Benton lists three examples:

• Federal officials announce that not one single state will meet a key requirement of the No Child Left Behind law: that all teachers in core academic subjects will be deemed "highly qualified" by this fall.
• A group called the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards has come up with a process designed to recognize top-notch teachers: a much-touted credential it calls National Board Certification. Hundreds of millions of public dollars have been spent promoting it.
  So the board hires a noted researcher to prove that National Board teachers really produce better results in their students.
  But the researcher finds the opposite: Kids whose teachers had National Board certification didn't score any higher than anyone else.
  The National Board, despite paying for the study and helping design it, declines to release the results publicly.
• The Washington Post reports that suburban kids, as an alternative to high-priced tutors, are hiring their homework helpers offshore. Companies are now hiring smart folks in India and elsewhere to offer one-on-one tutoring sessions to American teens over the Internet.
  But American teacher unions say they think those overseas tutors should have to meet detailed American teacher-certification requirements before getting their hands on a big pot of federal money.

And here’s the bottom line:

The problem is that teacher quality gets evaluated on credentials, not quality. How many hours of math classes you took in college. Whether you've filled out the paperwork for a certain certificate. Whether you've gone back to get a master's degree.

The federal "highly qualified" standard, for instance, is primarily about what hoops a teacher has jumped through, not how good of a teacher she is.

But there are awful certified teachers and terrific uncertified ones. There are amazing teachers with just a bachelor's degree and terrible ones with a doctorate. Plenty of research has shown that quality doesn't align neatly with credentials.

Differentiating good teachers from bad ones has always been a touchy subject. Take salary. Great running backs get paid more than benchwarmers. Great trial lawyers get paid more than mediocre ones. So shouldn't the best teachers get paid more than the worst?

In Dallas ISD, an amazingly talented 15-year veteran teacher makes $46,176. And a thoroughly mediocre 15-year veteran teacher makes...$46,176.

(There are a few ways those figures can budge by a couple thousand bucks. But they're tied to things like job titles and credentials – not individual performance.)

There have been a few stabs at "merit pay" proposals around the country, but most have flopped. Teachers, rightly, have complained that most such plans would reward teachers primarily on their students' test scores. That's not fair because teachers in Dallas get different kids to work with than teachers in Highland Park or Plano.

But why can't a teacher's quality be judged the way everyone else's is? Not on some mechanized system tied to test scores, but by their bosses' evaluation of their performance.

I really recommend reading the entire, excellent article that gets at the heart of the problem. You don’t see this often in the MSM.

HT: Edspresso

A quote from the past.

“So long as effective freedom of exchange is maintained, the central feature of the market organization of economic activity is that it prevents one person from interfering with another in respect of most of his activities. The consumer is protected from coercion by the seller because of the presence of other sellers with whom he can deal. The seller is protected from coercion by the consumer because of other consumers to whom he can sell. The employee is protected from coercion by the employer because of other employers for whom he can work, and so on. And the market does this impersonally and without centralized authority.”

“Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it does this task so well. It gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”

—Milton Friedman 1962

HT: National Review Online

The California Supreme Court issued a stay:

The California Supreme Court today reinstated the state's high school exit exam one week after a Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunction against the test that students need to pass to graduate.

The high court granted a request by the state education department to lift the injunction and referred the case to the state appellate court for further action.

With graduation ceremonies fast approaching at many schools, it is not immediately clear how the Supreme Court's decision today affects the thousands of high school seniors who have failed the exam and would have been prevented from receiving their diplomas.

There are people in California who are really ticked off about this. How dare the schools not issue a graduation diploma to children who cannot read at the 10th grade level and do math at the 8th grade level!

Alan Bonsteel has the details:

[T]he math portion is really an eighth-grade level test and thus better-suited as a middle-school exit exam.

Further, if the 30 percent of our kids who drop out of high school had been given that same exam, the vast majority of them likely would have failed also. We then might have seen as many as 38 percent of our high school seniors failing to achieve eighth-grade math proficiency.

This truly is outcome-based education.

HT Edspresso

The following article ran in today's Lewiston Tribune.

And he {Luna} said he opposes monitoring children whose parents say they are home schooling them. Many home-schooled children do very well academically, of course. But Lewiston Tribune readers recently saw a graphic example of the opposite extreme.

That was the April 27 sentencing of Orofino-area resident Robert Scott Lippert, who kept his daughters away from school and illiterate in the name of home schooling as he repeatedly beat and sexually abused them. The prosecutor said Lippert, who is now serving a sentenced of six to 15 years in prison, was able to fly under the radar for decades.

Would the kind of monitoring of home-schooled students that takes place in other states have exposed Lippert's crimes earlier? That seems reasonable. If it is not, let the supposedly new Tom Luna explain why.

First, this reasoning is ludicrous. There are truancy laws on the books that require children be schooled; and there are laws on the books that make it illegal to beat and sexually abuse children; and there are plenty of children that attend government schools that are physically and sexually abused — more than in the homeschool community.

Second, to call Lippert a “homeschool” is ludicrous. If he was keeping them illiterate, he clearly wasn’t schooling.

Finally, the fact that this happened in a “homeschool” family is tragic; but the fact that it is news is because it is both unique and infrequent. Jim Fisher would be better off trying to clean up where the problems really exist instead of trying to create one from and for the homeschool community.

Jim Fisher writes the following in today's Lewiston Tribune.

Four years ago, Luna talked as if the main problem the state's public schools faced was their teachers. He opposed increasing financial support for schools, even to the point of refusing to criticize legislators for cutting their appropriation for the first time in state history. And he proposed draining the appropriation further by siphoning off money for vouchers to parents of private school students.

"Attendance is mandatory, but learning is optional" served as his summation of public schools.

This year, Luna is speaking in less confrontational terms, enough so that he received the endorsement of the Idaho Statesman at Boise in the GOP primary. And he told the paper's columnist Dan Popkey that private school vouchers "won't work in Idaho."

"We'd have to change the constitution, and that's not going to happen," he explained.

That did not stop Luna, however, from telling sponsors of the Gem State Voter Guide -- a consortium of five right-wing interest groups -- that he supports tax credits for education, whatever that means. He also said he favors injecting some features of religious instruction into public schools, signaling support for teaching so-called intelligent design and the Bible "as literature and history" as well as for posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

I really have a hard time believing that Jim Fisher doesn’t understand what “tax credits for education” is.

I’m not happy with the “new Luna” either. He seems to have backed off of his educational reform positions of the past. While Jim Fisher may support the same-old same-old stuff, what we really need is educational reform in Idaho, not throwing more money down the same hole.

I think that Luna is right, though, that the Idaho Constitution would have to be changed to allow for vouchers/tax credits. So change it! Let’s work for educational reform that will give the parents the choice of sending their children to the best schooling option (government school, private school, homeschool, co-op, etc) for them.

From Edspresso:

• Appointees try to boost vouchers - The old rap on the Pentagon is that the generals keep wanting to refight the last war. You could say the same thing about Florida's Board of Education. (more)
• Dropout data raise questions on two fronts - Economist Larry Mishel was troubled by high school graduation statistics that contradicted what he thought was good research. That was particularly true of data used by many politicians and pundits to bemoan a 30 percent dropout rate in American high schools. (more)
• Parents should thank strict teachers - In conversations I've had with teachers, Scottsdale parents tend to involve themselves in their children's education - but not always in positive ways. (more)
• Feds' teacher rules strain rural Arizona areas - Veteran teachers have to prove they are highly qualified through a combination of years of experience, college course background and professional development. (more)
• Ed Week commentary: Bridging differences - (subscription required) A Dialogue Between Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch. (more)
• NAP science scores essentially flat except at 4th grade level - Ed Week (subscription required) At a time when educators, elected officials, and corporate leaders are fretting over American students’ weak science skills, new test results show that the nation’s middle schoolers made no progress in that subject over the past five years... (more)
• Choice, SES would flip under NCLB pilot plan - Ed Week (subscription required) Building on an initiative piloted this school year in Virginia, participating districts could offer students a choice of supplemental educational services, or SES, a year before having to provide the option of transferring to a higher-performing school. (more) 
• Education becoming top issue for DC - Homeowners, business leaders and newcomers with a financial stake in the District's economic revival are pushing the troubled D.C. school system to the top of the city's political agenda in a landmark election year when voters will choose a mayor and council chairman. (more)
• New Orleans schools try to work together - State officials fielded myriad questions Tuesday from parents and teachers curious and at times baffled about how public schools will operate in New Orleans this fall, now that the local district, the state Department of Education and independent charters have control over various campuses throughout the city. (more)
• LA Times opinion: Preschool: the best policy money can buy - Are public investments in preschool good for children's educations and for their well being? Do they make sense for society?After five decades of research, the answer is unequivocally yes. (more)
• A Christian group finds its way into public schools - On a recent sunny afternoon at Stuyvesant High School, the track team warmed up in the lobby. On the sixth floor, the school newspaper staff assembled to listen to a speaker. Outside, a cluster of students gathered to pray. (more)
• CA teachers union supports governor's school friendly budget - Leaders of the California Teachers Association took the unexpected step Tuesday of endorsing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budget and launching a lobbying effort to ensure its passage. (more)
• High School Exit Exam Reinstated - The California Supreme Court today reinstated the state's high school exit exam one week after a Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunction against the test that students need to pass to graduate. (more) 

As reported in today's edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News (subscription required):

The Moscow School Board on Tuesday approved a bid for the construction of a new roof for the north annex of Moscow High School.

“We won’t have any work until after school is out and people are out of the building,” said Sue Driskill, Moscow School District’s business manager.

The Moscow School Board approved the bid from Metalworks of Montana, Inc./Missoula Sheet Metal and Roofing. The company’s bid of $109,960 was the lowest of three received. The district will pay for the new roof with lottery money from this year’s budget.

The 1968 annex houses eight large rooms including the business lab and classrooms for social studies, English, and sports medicine.

Principal Bob Celebrezze said it’s important the roof get replaced. “We had waited for awhile. It’s actually overdue.”

The district initially had scheduled the project for the 2004-2005 academic year, but decided to postpone the work until after an attempted $29 million bond levy.

“We waited because, had the bond passed, that section would have been taken down and used for parking,” Driskill said. “We didn’t want to put money into it until we knew what would happen with that building.”

The levy failed and further delayed the project.

“We handled the leaks before with garbage cans in the middle of the floor in classrooms,” Celebrezze said.

Driskill said the district had tried patching the roof a few times but leaks persisted.

Celebrezze said part of the problem comes from the California-style design. “Anytime you have a flat roof you’re going to have some puddling, and over time the seals wear out and then you’re going to have leaking.”

Driskill said the project will be a total re-roof that should last 20 years.

From Edspresso:

• Hawaii Family Struggles With Racism, Failing Public Education System  - Hawaii families don't know about their options under NCLB. (more)
• Milwaukee's lessons on school vouchers - As one of the few programs in the country, Milwaukee offers a high-stakes test case for both camps. Yet researchers are only beginning to take a comprehensive look at how successful it's been. (more)
• Chicago restructuring 185 schools under No Child Left Behind - Nearly a third of the city's public schools will undergo "restructuring" because they've consistently failed to improve test scores under the No Child Left Behind Act, the district announced Monday. (more)
• California exit exam stymies trustees - You know the frustration caused by the legal battle over the school exit exam has reached a new high point when a prosecutor urges his colleagues to ignore the law. (more)
• Teachers seeking pay hike - With the threat of mayoral takeover hanging over Los Angeles Unified School District, the teachers union has opened contract negotiations with a demand for a 14 percent, one-year raise for its members. (more)
• When districts pull sweets from menus, schools lose bucks - While health advocates applaud the decision earlier this month by soft drink makers to voluntarily restrict the on-campus sale of full-calorie drinks nationwide, school administrators are bracing for belt-tightening. (more)
• It takes parents too to teach - With one year in Hillsborough County public schools behind him, 23-year-old Adam Wood is a rarity. (more)
• If you can't beat 'em, join 'em and change their tune - I have a suggestion for the public schoolteachers of Florida, but they probably aren't gonna like it. They should think about becoming Republicans. (more)
• Education Schools Inadequately Prepare Elementary Teachers How to Teach Reading - Ed Week (subscription required) Education Schools Inadequately Prepare Elementary Teachers How to Teach Reading. (more)
• Smaller Not Necessarily Better, School-Size Study Concludes - Ed Week (subscription required) When it comes to high school size, smaller might not be better, concludes a national study presented yesterday at a conference sponsored by the Washington-based Brookings Institution. (more)
• Heavy turnover in New York's principal ranks - More than half the principals in the New York City public school system have left their jobs over the past five years, opening the way for a remarkable influx of often younger newcomers, some in their 20's and 30's with impressive credentials but little teaching experience. (more)
• Half of Indiana's schools failing - About half of Indiana's schools and more than a quarter of the 293 school districts failed to meet federal expectations in math and reading in 2005, including a growing number of Marion County township schools. (more)
• USA Today: Teachers learn dated methods - Most U.S. undergraduate teacher-education programs give prospective teachers a poor foundation in reading instruction, according to a new study by a Washington-based non-profit group that is working to reform the nation's teacher-education system. (more)
• Former teachers union official sentenced - Former Washington Teachers' Union official Gwendolyn M. Hemphill was sentenced yesterday to 11 years in prison for helping embezzle more than $4 million from union coffers and using some of the money to buy lavish personal items. (more)

No kidding. There are students in Wisconsin that attend GET High.

OK, what were the administrators smoking when they came up with that acronym?

HT: Policy Guy

U.S. Children learning calculus from a Ph.D. in India.

Does it matter that he doesn’t hold a teaching degree from an American university? That he doesn’t belong to a teacher’s union? That he has a Ph.D. in economics and several years experience teaching at the high school and college levels?

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation explains.

Think about it: if homeschoolers and private schooler can teach at a higher level than state-certified teachers, why shouldn’t parents be able to out-source tutoring to PhD’s from India if they want to?

HT: Policy Guy