'Simpsons' premiere bid gets boost. The 'ville's Abramson aids Springfield, Ky.

If a couple of six-packs of Duff, a skateboard and a Louisville Slugger are enough loot to bribe Matt Groening into bringing the premiere of "The Simpsons Movie" to Springfield, Ky., the town of 3,000 is in.

And if it isn't enough, add more than a million votes from people in the Louisville area and the smallest of 14 Springfields across America competing for the right to serve as host of the premiere just might have a chance.

Louisville Metro Mayor Jerry Abramson held a press conference with Springfield Mayor Joe Quimby -- d'oh!, make that Springfield, Ky., Mayor John Cecconi -- yesterday to urge everyone in the area to vote for Kentucky's Springfield.

People can vote through 3 a.m. Tuesday on the USA Today Web site, where each Springfield -- from Massachusetts to Oregon, Michigan to Florida -- has produced a video explaining why it is the "real" fictional home of "The Simpsons."

The city with the most votes will be the host of the premiere later this month.

"Springfield, Mo., has 150,000 people. Springfield, Mass., has 150,000 people," Abramson said. "So to even the score, I'm calling on all 1.4 million Louisville residents to cast a vote."

The "gifts" were all produced locally. Bluegrass Brewing Co. made the Duff beer (complete with a label that said, in small print, "mmm, beer"); Home Skate Shop temporarily changed its name to Homer Skate Shop while making the board; and the baseball bat was emblazoned with the message, "Springfield, Kentucky is a real Homer."

This from the Courier-Journal.

Former S.C. teacher sentenced to 10 years for sex with student

LAURENS, S.C. (AP) — A former elementary school teacher pleaded guilty Friday to having sex with an 11-year-old student and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, a prosecutor said.

Wendie Ann Schweikert, 37, was arrested in May 2006 and charged with criminal sexual conduct with a minor and committing a lewd act on a minor. The case inflamed racial tensions because the student is black, and some black residents had argued that the teacher was getting lenient treatment by the courts.

This from USA Today.

Schoolteachers, professors differ on what students should know

By Mary Beth Marklein of USA TODAY reports:

State learning standards may help high school teachers focus their coursework, but college faculty say they're focusing on the wrong things, says a report that finds a "significant gap" between what high school instructors teach and what college faculty think entering freshmen ought to know.

Multibillion dollar textbook scandal reaches Congress

This from Greg Toppo at USA TODAY:

A slow-motion scandal surrounding a federal multibillion-dollar reading program has its first congressional hearing this week, but it remains to be seen whether the scrutiny will shed any new light on a complex, contradictory tale of textbooks, tests and allegations of federal arm-twisting.

A key part of President Bush's efforts to remake public education, Reading First was launched in 2002, giving schools $1 billion a year to improve reading in early elementary grades. Five years later, early evidence suggests that it may be helping. But investigators say a handful of advisers have railroaded schools into buying textbooks and other materials that they and associates developed.

The result: a conflict-of-interest case that took two years to jell as investigators in the Education Department connected the dots. To date, no criminal charges have been filed, but Democrats, now in control of Congress, promise to give the case a full airing.

Job Opportunities in the sunny south

New Orleans is looking for a few good Principals

A non-profit group retained to recruit 40 new principals for New Orleans Public Schools is using an unusual lure: A year-long, intensive training residency before candidates even take over schools — plus bonuses that could add up to nearly $40,000 if President Bush approves them.
Under pending legislation, principals in high-performing New Orleans schools could earn up to $14,500 a year in bonuses. They'd also qualify for up to $2,500 in relocation costs, monthly $500 housing subsidies and student loan forgiveness of up to $7,000 a year.

Veteran principals who agree to lead a school and mentor younger principals could earn as much as $27,000 in bonuses.

This from USA Today.

Deadbeats' faces slapped on pizza boxes

Customers at some suburban pizza parlors are getting something extra with their pepperoni and mushrooms — wanted posters for parents accused of failing to pay child support.

The idea came to Cynthia Brown, executive director of the Butler County Child Enforcement Agency, while she was ordering pizza.

"It suddenly dawned on me that most people running from the law don't eat out, they order pizza," said Brown, whose county is north of Cincinnati.

This from USAToday.

Mom allegedly pimped 7-year-old daughter

A woman's five children were in protective custody after she was charged with offering to let an undercover investigator have sex with her 7-year-old daughter.

The 33-year-old woman, from the Detroit suburb of Taylor, was arrested Friday night after bringing the girl to a hotel in Romulus, near Detroit Metropolitan Airport, where she had agreed to meet the investigator, the Wayne County Sheriff's Department said.

The woman was prepared to offer her daughter "for pornographic photos and anything else that was available if the price was right," Sheriff Warren Evans said. "She had indicated very clearly that that child would do whatever it was that the person who was going to meet the child wanted to do, and that she would see that the child complied.

"It's a very, very disgusting case."

This from USA Today.

Older parents may be risk factor for autism

USA Today reports:

The longer men and women wait before having children, the more likely they may have a child with autism, a study of almost 133,000 children reported Monday.

"We found that both the mother's age and father's age affects the risk of having a child with autism," says lead author Lisa Croen, an epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research in Oakland. Study findings are reported in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, which dedicates its April issue to autism spectrum disorders.

Study gives teachers low grade in classroom

USA Today reports:

The typical child in the USA stands only a one-in-14 chance of having a consistently rich, supportive elementary school experience, say researchers who looked at what happens daily in thousands of classrooms.

The findings, published today in the weekly magazine Science, take teachers to task for spending too much time on basic reading and math skills and not enough on problem-solving, reasoning, science and social studies. They also suggest that U.S. education focuses too much on teacher qualifications and not enough on teachers being engaging and supportive.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health, educational researchers spent thousands of hours in more than 2,500 first-, third- and fifth-grade classrooms, tracking kids through elementary school. It is among the largest studies done of U.S. classrooms, producing a detailed look at the typical kid's day.

The researchers found a few bright spots — kids use time well, for one. But they found just as many signs that classrooms can be dull, bleak places where kids don't get a lot of teacher feedback or face time.

Among the findings on what teachers and students did and how they interacted:

• Fifth-graders spent 91.2% of class time in their seats listening to a teacher or working alone, and only 7% working in small groups, which foster social skills and critical thinking. Findings were similar in first and third grades.

• In fifth grade, 62% of instructional time was in literacy or math; only 24% was devoted to social studies or science.

• About one in seven (14%) kids had a consistently high-quality "instructional climate" all three years studied. Most classrooms had a fairly healthy "emotional climate," but only 7% of students consistently had classrooms high in both. There was no difference between public and private schools.

Although all teachers surveyed had bachelor's degrees — and 44% had a master's — it didn't mean that their classrooms were productive. The typical teacher scored only 3.6 out of seven points for "richness of instructional methods," and 3.4 for providing "evaluative feedback" to students on their work.

Whether a teacher was highly qualified, had many years of experience or earned more mattered little, says lead researcher Robert Pianta of the University of Virginia.

Of the standard measures studied, "none of them makes a noticeable difference," he said.
Prior research has shown that highly skilled, engaging teachers can eliminate achievement gaps between rich and poor kids. Pianta says his new findings support that conclusion and suggest policymakers should focus more on how individual teachers can improve on these measures.
Kathy Schultz, director of teacher education at the University of Pennsylvania's graduate school of education, says studying how teachers teach is helpful, but ignores the reality of larger mandates such as the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Teachers, she says, are under enormous pressure to increase basic skills.

Action, direction sought at higher education summit

USA Today reports:
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings will convene a summit Thursday aimed at building consensus among higher education stakeholders as they chart a road map for reform.

More than 300 people, including college presidents, corporate CEOs and congressional representatives, will be asked to share views on how to move forward on 25 items identified by the department as having the greatest potential to improve higher education.

The list grew out of recommendations by a controversial Spellings-appointed commission last year that concluded, among other things, that college tuition is too high, graduation rates are too low, poor and non-traditional students are not being well served by the higher education system, and nobody really knows what college students actually learn.

In an effort to make the college search process more user-friendly, Spellings will announce Thursday a pilot project in which three states (Kentucky, Florida and Minnesota), each supported by $100,000 in federal money, will create or upgrade websites so different types of students (returning adults, say, or community college transfers) can compare institutions.

Related USA Today stories: Thursday Education Secretary Spellings Margaret Spellings Universities

More mayors move to take over schools

An article from Martha T. Moore, of USA TODAY:

Even with students on split schedules to limit crowding, the central court of Cibola High School between classes is a chaotic, noisy swirl of adolescence. The school on Albuquerque's fast-growing West Side was built in 1974 for 1,600 students; now it has 3,200.

Just one of the city's 12 high schools made "adequate yearly progress" last year under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, and it wasn't Cibola. Of Albuquerque's 128 public schools, only 47 met the standard, according to the state Public Education Department.

The overflowing classrooms and sagging test scores have convinced Mayor Martin Chavez that the city's schools are failing. So he wants to follow the example of mayors in Boston, Chicago, New York and several other cities: Take over the schools himself.

If Chavez can get the New Mexico Legislature to agree to his plan — he hasn't so far — Albuquerque would become part of a movement that began 15 years ago, when Boston switched control of its school system from an elected board to one appointed by the mayor.

The push for mayoral control reflects rising frustration and desperation over poor student achievement, crumbling buildings, bureaucratic wrangling among school officials and revolving-door superintendents.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Chicago Boston Albuquerque Richard Daley Thomas Menino Michael Kirst

Affair between student, married teacher leads to fatal shooting in Knoxville, Tenn.

USA Today reports: "In a tragic twist to a familiar story, a teenager who had sex with his married 30-year-old teacher was fatally shot outside the woman's home, and authorities have charged the woman's husband."

Kentucky Swamped with Unwanted Horses

Kentucky, the horse capital of the world, famous for its sleek thoroughbreds, is being overrun with thousands of horses no one wants — some of them perfectly healthy, but many of them starving, broken-down nags. Other parts of the country are overwhelmed, too.

The reason: growing opposition in the U.S. to the slaughter of horses for human consumption overseas.

This surprising item from USA Today.

Schools failing Free Speech 101 ?

A recent OpEd in USA Today cites examples of principals censoring student publications. Are some schools stifling the free exchange of ideas and failing to prepare students for life in a democracy?