Bad Advice from KDE lands Superintendent in Hot Water

Frankfort Independent Schools Superintendent Dianne Cobb broke laws in the process of hiring a new high school principal but did so under authorization of the Kentucky Department of Education, according to a state investigation. As a result, she has been ordered to attend training on how to work with school councils.

The ruling stems from complaints sent to the Office of Education Accountability following Cobb's hiring of Rita Rector as Frankfort High School principal.

In a memo sent to Cobb and Kentucky Department of Education Commissioner Jon Draud several weeks ago, investigators examine[d] the realignment of the school district to create a new school at FHS by moving middle school grades, whether Cobb impeded the SBDM council process for council elections and staff hiring, whether Cobb violated statues by failing to post a FHS principal vacancy and/or violated Kentucky law by selecting Rita Rector as FHS principal.

The OEA investigation found,

* Hiring of a new principal was not justified because the Frankfort Independent Board of Education did not create a new high school when it added seventh- and eighth-grade students to FHS.

* Cobb prevented the election of parent and teacher council members for terms beginning July 1, 2007, even though she knew a pool of candidates as early as February 2007.

* Cobb violated state statutes by failing to post the open FHS principal position for 30 days, when the position became vacant in February 2007 and instead posted the vacancy June 26.

While Cobb's actions were direct violations, the report states they were taken on advice and approval of the KDE's Division of Leadership and Instructional Support.

Cobb, whose contract with FIS ends June 30, said the investigation stems from a misunderstanding. She says she acted under the advice of KDE when making decisions and when she found out decisions did not meet regulations she immediately corrected them.

This from the State-Journal.

Illinois District Refusing to Test Kids Still Learning English

A DuPage County school district could be the first in Illinois -- and perhaps the nation -- to refuse to administer mandatory state exams to students who haven't yet mastered English.

The boycott by Carol Stream Elementary District 93 would be an act of civil disobedience against the state's decision to force English learners to take the same tests as their fluent peers.

Nearly 10 percent of the district's 4,300 students were categorized as having limited English skills in 2007.

The federal No Child Left Behind law requires that all public schools annually test all students in select grades.

District 93 officials say they're willing to break the law this spring to shield students from the frustration and humiliation of taking an exam not designed for them.

"The board believes it's appropriate to do that," District 93 Superintendent Henry Gmitro said. "While there may be consequences for the adults in the organization, we shouldn't ask kids to be tested on things they haven't been taught." ...

This from the Daily Herald.

Growing an Achievement Gap

Some thoughts from Gerald Bracey in the Huffington Post, a while back.

The Bush administration has claimed lately that rising test scores and a narrowing black-white test score gap reflect the success of No Child Left Behind. Even if this is true -- and it is not at all clear that it is--the achievement gap, broadly conceived, is growing. Let me explain.

I recently visited an elementary school in Fairfax County, Virginia. Although Fairfax is generally affluent, the homes in this neighborhood are modest. The parents are workers -- in food, in dry cleaning, in construction, in lawn care. The school contains students from 40 nations and its ethnic makeup is 39 percent Hispanic, 32 percent Asian, 6 percent black, 18 percent white, 5 percent other. More than half don't speak English well, half qualify for free or reduced price meals and the mobility rate is double that of the district as a whole.

Yet, because it manages decent scores on the Virginia Standards of Learning Tests, the school is fully state accredited and has met the No Child Left Behind law's requirements for Adequate Yearly Progress.

But all the above doesn't really give you a feel for how the school operates or its successes.

The school burbles. It's a sound that emanates from kids who are content to be where they are. Student artwork covers the hall walls. Classrooms walls are richly decorated. Some students are painting a huge cafeteria mural showing the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids at Giza and other wonders of the world. In a hall, I meet a group returning from "butterfly release day." They had watched as caterpillars transformed themselves into butterflies and had just gone outside to set them free. Science from the real world not from a book. Students sometimes worked in small groups, sometimes alone and sometimes listened to the teacher talk to the whole class. Questions were plentiful.

It's as if the school lives under a shield. As if being part of an affluent district, though not affluent itself, offers cover, a Strategic Defense Initiative, from state and federal dictates.

Unfortunately, in many impoverished districts, no such armor protects the children or the teachers. In such districts children endure an endless diet of math and reading test-prep worksheets. Bubble-kids -- those perceived to be on the threshold of passing the test -- get extra time in reading and math, sometimes in gym class. "Sure things" and "hopeless cases" get identified and ignored. Science, if it happens at all, will happen in the two dimensions of a book.

Thinking about those butterflies, I was reminded of a California superintendent's retort on being asked why her district wouldn't be making any more whale watching field trips: "Kids are not tested on whale watching, so they're not going whale watching." Music? Art? Social studies? Plays? Chess club?

In some such schools today, principals patrol the halls listening to make sure that the teachers are all following the exact sequence laid out by the scripted reading programs. One teacher who gave a creative answer to a question while using the highly programmed Open Court reading series was severely reprimanded by her principal. "But it was a teachable moment," she said. To which he replied "There are no teachable moments in Open Court!" Some principals have contracts specifying that test scores must show a certain increment each year. They administer copious "formative evaluations" which are merely mini-tests to see if the kids are making progress towards the big tests at the end of the year.

The outcome of this gun-barrel focus is the gap I mentioned at the outset. It was described well recently by the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, Chester Finn, a longtime public school critic, and initially a supporter of No Child Left Behind. "It's increasingly clear that making schools and teachers focus narrowly on test results, especially in basic skills, squeezes a lot of the juice out of the curriculum and out of the educational experience itself...America's true competitive edge doesn't come from producing more engineers than India. It arises from the creativity, rebelliousness, and drive that result from a broad liberal education and the values and convictions that accompany such teaching and learning."

Kids facing an infinite series of phonics exercises are not enjoying that broad liberal education. They're not growing butterflies or watching whales. If the reading and math scores in the drilled schools rise, some people will claim success. Others will say, "At least they're getting more of an education than they used to." Somehow, I don't think so.

Bill to strengthen child sexual abuse law clears first hurdle

House panel approves measure to toughen child sexual abuse laws

FRANKFORT, Ky. --A measure that would hold teachers, priests and others in positions of authority more accountable for child sexual abuse has cleared its first legislative hurdle.

The House Judiciary Committee approved legislation on Wednesday, sending it to the full House for consideration.

Louisville Democratic state Rep. Jim Wayne said the measure is crucial if Kentucky children are to be protected from sexual abuse.

"This problem is of epidemic proportions in our society," Wayne said. "What we're trying to do is say, this is not just clergy; this is not just camp counselors; this is not just teachers. We're talking about relatives, we're talking about parents who abuse their children sexually, aunts, uncles, siblings."

People in positions of authority over children could be charged with first-degree sexual abuse, a felony, for having sexual contact of any nature with anyone under 18 years old.

Under current law in Kentucky, teachers break no criminal laws by having sex with students, as long as the students are at least 16 years old and willing participants. That would change under Wayne's proposal.

Among other provisions, the bill also would increase the statute of limitations to five years after an abuse victim's 18th birthday, and ups the penalty for not reporting abuse to authorities...

This from H-L.

School districts worry about safety budget cuts following recent Shootings

FRANKFORT, Ky. -- After five school shootings across the country in the past two weeks, Kentucky officials are grimacing at the prospect of a 58 percent cut in funding for school safety in the governor's proposed two-year budget.

"I don't want to play Chicken Little," said Jon Akers, director of the Kentucky Center for School Safety. "But … if we start pulling back our services in how we work with kids, we might be having some more problems here."

Gov. Steve Beshear's budget calls for $4.3 million for the safe-schools program each year, down from $10.4 million this year.

Akers said the cut in Beshear's proposed budget would virtually undo the work done by the center, which was established by the General Assembly in 1998 after a 14-year-old killed three students and injured five others at Heath High School in Paducah....

This fronm C-J.

Schools to start using text messaging to notify parents in emergencies

This from Toni Konz at the Courier-Journal:

Two Jefferson County high schools have begun using instant messaging to provide quick and accurate information to parents during a crisis.

Officials hope it can dispel misinformation during tense situations such as Wednesday's four-hour lockdown at Fern Creek Traditional High School, when a flurry of text messages between frightened students and parents spurred rumors that caused some panic.

Louisville Male High School has already implemented the Dynamic Emergency Alert Network, called DEAN, and duPont Manual High School will start using it next week.

The network, developed by two Jefferson County Public School graduates, lets parents register their cell phone number and e-mail address so they can receive important messages from the school within seconds. The schools pay about $1,000 annually to subscribe to the system.

The only cost to parents is the charge from their cell-phone provider for receiving a text message, said Jenny Edelen, an assistant principal at Male. She noted that for those families who don't have unlimited text messaging the cost can range from 2 cents to 15 cents a message...

RELATED VIDEO:

Fern Creek parents, students react

Fern Creek High School locked down

Tense time at Fern Creek High School

Recent Court Rulings on Sexual Orientation

This from C-J:

...On Jan. 31, two court decisions and one lawsuit in three states made an already hot fight over sexual orientation in public schools even hotter.

In a Massachusetts case, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by parents who wanted school officials to notify them whenever same-sex couples were mentioned in their children's elementary classrooms.

According to the court, exposure to gay marriage (e.g., reading to second-graders a story about two princes who fall in love) does not constitute "indoctrination" or a discussion of human sexuality, as the parents contended, but rather an age-appropriate acknowledgement of the existence of same-sex couples in a state where gay marriage is legal.

On the same day, a lower court in Maryland rejected a challenge by conservative groups to a new sex-education curriculum in Montgomery County that includes teaching "respect for differences in human sexuality."

Opponents charged that the curriculum promotes homosexuality. Proponents argued that the curriculum gives students information about sexual orientation in a way that is nonjudgmental and fair.

Meanwhile in the Florida Panhandle, the culture-war shoe is on the other foot: The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit, also on Jan. 31, against a high school that reportedly bans all student expression of support for gay rights, extending even to such things as rainbow stickers.

After this dizzying one-day legal whirlwind, school officials may be forgiven for being
more anxious than ever about how to handle issues related to sexual orientation without calling a lawyer. One thing is clear: As public acceptance of
differences in sexual and gender identity grows, pressure on schools to address
these issues will continue to rise....

And from the School Law Blog:

Schools May Restrict Anti-Gay Speech, Judge Rules

Public school officials may restrict speech disparaging homosexuality, a federal district judge has ruled.

The Feb. 12 decision is the latest in a long-running case stemming from an incident in which a California high school student wore a T-shirt with hand-lettered messages that said, “Homosexuality is shameful. Romans 1:21,” and “Be ashamed."

"In this court’s view, a school’s interest in protecting homosexual students from harassment is a legitimate pedagogical concern that allows a school to restrict speech expressing damaging statements about sexual orientation and limiting students to expressing their views in a positive manner," said the ruling by U.S. District Judge John A. Houston in Harper v. Poway Unified School District.

"There is no doubt in this court’s mind that the phrase “Homosexuality is shameful” is disparaging of, and emotionally and psychologically damaging to, homosexual students and students in the midst of developing their sexual orientation in a 9th through 12th grade, public school setting," the judge added....

...Judge Houston rejected free speech arguments made on behalf of the Harpers, and he said the Supreme Court's decision last year in Morse v. Frederick "affirms that school officials have a duty to protect students, as young as 14 and 15 years of age, from degrading acts or expressions that promote injury to the student’s physical, emotional or psychological well-being and development which, in turn, adversely impacts the school’s mission to educate them." ...

C-J attacks Senate Bill 1

This from the Courier-Journal:

Education reform attacked

It has been state Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly's long-term mission to sabotage the nationally praised education reform program that emerged from the 1990 General Assembly and remains one of the state legislature's historic achievements.

The last great assault came in 1998, and it was beaten back only with furious counterattack and a few tactical concessions.

This year Mr. Kelly is joined by Senate President David Williams in attempting to blunt the thrust of the Kentucky Education Reform Act, by passing Senate Bill 1.

It is difficult to overstate the damage this bill would inflict. Most important, it would undo the accountability that's based on the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System. CATS would be replaced with national tests that are not based on the Kentucky curriculum, would not test higher learning skills, would defy the KERA precept that every student can become proficient and would place Kentucky athwart the No Child Left Behind Act.

Most devastating would be the effective removal of portfolios from the accountability system, because writing is the capstone skill with which students demonstrate their ability to gather, interpret and communicate information and ideas. To ensure that writing gets less emphasis in classrooms across Kentucky would be a real travesty...

...Some of those appearing to join the Kelly-Williams attack should remember that there are political consequences, because many Kentuckians are proud of KERA's successes, and proud of the progress Kentucky students have made. Voters will take note of those like Sen. Tim Shaughnessy, D-Louisville, who embolden the anti-KERA offensive by insisting "there's nothing wrong with revisiting, revising and updating the accountability system." Shame on Mr. Shaughnessy. He knows full well the intent is to subvert.

Education Commissioner Jon Draud can't let SB 1 go unchallenged. Mr. Draud's defenders, at the time of his controversial rushed appointment, said he is a school man, first and foremost. If so, he can't sit on his hands now. A shroud of neutrality won't cover his culpability if he refuses to stand up to SB 1. He's a former superintendent. He knows it was wrong, as Marion County Superintendent Roger Marcum points out, to push "a major change in where we're going without consulting educators."

Sen. Williams, presumably with a straight face, calls the proposed SB1 sabotage of KERA a "natural progression." That must mean be thinks all good things must come to an end.

NKU students blitz on cuts

Legislators lobbied to oppose trims

HIGHLAND HEIGHTS - With higher education budget cuts looming, Northern Kentucky University's Student Government Association took to the streets during homecoming this month.

In an initiative called iCare, the association urged students to contact the state legislature to voice their concern.

The association set up three laptops in the University Center from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. during homecoming week, Feb. 1-9, for students to e-mail Frankfort. The senators also passed out index cards advocating students call Frankfort. Several students called on the spot using their cell phones.

"We have been told by Legislative Research Council staff members in Frankfort that NKU has made over 500 calls," said Kelly Sirk, the student association's vice president of public relations.
"Students were giving their personal story. Most were letting the legislators know that they were concerned about the 15 percent budget cut and the value of their quality education being at risk. As SGA, we gave them a sheet of facts about the situation for their own knowledge."...

This from the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Lawmakers and education leaders will discuss student testing on KET

State lawmakers and education officials will join host Bill Goodman to discuss student testing on the Feb. 25 show of “Kentucky Tonight” on the Kentucky Educational Television network.
Scheduled guests are Senate Majority Leader Dan Kelly, R-Springfield; House budget chairman Harry Moberly Jr., D-Richmond; state Education Secretary Helen Mountjoy; and John Williamson, superintendent of Fort Thomas Independent Schools.

The show will begin at 8 p.m. ET on KET1.

Viewers with questions and comments may participate in the live broadcast by telephone at 1-800-494-7605.

From PolWatchers.

In Senate Bill 1 Williams seeks to ignore the constitution and throw the baby out with the bath water

According to the Kentucky Supreme Court opinion in Rose v Council for Better Education, the state Constitution requires the legislature to maintain an efficient system of schools. To do so, the legislature must nurture the system with adequate funding while maintaining certain academic goals.

Instead, largely under the leadership of Senate President David Williams, the legislature has preferred to ignore its obligations, overspend the budget on pork-barrel projects, and use the resulting revenue short-fall as an argument for not fulfilling their duty to the children of Kentucky.

For the "Bully from Burkesville," this is nothing more than business as usual. The Constitution is apparently important to him only when it grants the legislature (him) greater autonomy. At all other times - screw it.

Former KERA supporter Williams, now wants to drive a stake through the heart of the landmark legislation, with Senate Bill 1 by eliminating many of the Constitutionally required elements from the state assessment.

• The Supreme Court says the legislature must have as its goal that each and every Kentucky child will obtain "sufficient oral and written communication skills to enable students to function in a complex and rapidly changing civilization." But Williams wants to drop the requirement for open-response questions on the CATS assessment. He wants to use multiple-choice items to check for writing mechanics and editing - evaluating the writing of students who have not written.
• The Supreme Court says the legislature must provide students with "sufficient knowledge of economic, social, and political systems to enable the student to make informed choices." But Williams wants to eliminate the practical living and vocational testing from the program.
• The Supreme Court says the legislature must provide students with sufficient grounding in the arts to enable each student to appreciate his or her cultural and historical heritage. But Williams wants to eliminate arts and humanities testing.

Now, one can argue the relative merits and demerits of any part of an assessment system. Different parts have different roles to play. But Williams wants to toss the whole thing out while shifting responsibility to the local school districts and Councils. This, is unconstitutional.

As the Court stated, shifting responsibility "may not be used by the General Assembly as a substitute for providing an adequate, equal and substantially uniform educational system throughout this state." But that's exactly what Williams wants. He wants to pose, while the CATS assessment dies a thousand deaths.

Whatever its detractors may say, CATS - with its ambitious goals and multiple problems over time (recently made even more difficult by NCLB) - it was squarely focused on satisfying the constitutional mandate, even if some legislators are not.

I have criticized CATS myself on numerous occasions. From the early 90s when I complained to the state board that there was no real curriculum underlying the assessment and that annual changes to the test unfairly required schools to hit a moving target; to the dual scoring system of the new CATS; to this week's farce where KDE and Measured Progress are apparently pressuring teachers to admit that they didn't hear from Measured Progress what they surely heard - my goal has been the improvement of the system. Others have criticized CATS in order to gin up antipathy toward the entire effort, preferring normative measures that favor top students while maintaining a class of bottom students for comparison.

I think the right solution for Kentucky is much more complex. We collect a lot of information about our schools. I'd like to see the state use all of it in a stable, value-added system that collects metrics according to a standard set of well-understood definitions, and that doesn't change much - and never without getting better.

Williams just wants to dump it all for an off-the-shelf normative test where the curriculum Kentucky teachers teach is not the same as the curriculum tested.

This is not exactly an unpopular idea.

From the earliest days of KERA, next to the multi-aged Primary Program, the hardest thing for many up-scale parents to accept was the new assessment which focused on how well the school performed. That's not what most folks wanted. Parents generally want to know, "How's my kid doing compared to others?" Normative tests provide that kind of data.

But in the brokering that led to KERA's passage the business community, appropriately, insisted on accountability in order to support the new law. The larger community, beyond parents, wanted to know how the schools were performing, so that became the focus of the new assessment system.

In a perfect world, one would begin with the curriculum, write assessments according to what students were expected to learn, and the accountability metrics would be layered on last. In Kentucky's case, it came first; exactly backwards and the implementation was long and ugly.

The "performance-based" test was continually and frustratingly reinvented. Performance events came and went. Portfolios came and went. The number of Open Response items was decreased. Multiple choice items increased. Teachers have had to work extra hard. If one ignores the Constitution, William's SB 1 can be seen as just the next step in a long progression. It sure is easier.

I always thought the test should have a normative component, but that that would be the minor player in the overall accountability scheme. Normative tests are not very diagnostic, and their usefulness for improving instruction is very limited - even if results were returned to teachers the next day. But it is good to have an annual snapshot to let parents know where their children stand. The best part of SB 1 is its call for "individual reports to parents on the achievement of their children compared to school, state, and national results."

But throwing the whole thing out in favor of a CTBS-like test surrenders the curriculum to someone else - this, after years of Kentucky teachers helping build a core content based on what is actually being taught in Kentucky schools; as it should be.

But as Kentucky drifts further away from a performance-based assessment, and closer to some national curriculum that Kentucky teachers didn't write and don't understand - we do a disservice to our students. Teaching to the test becomes a real problem. Further restricting Kentucky's assessment to a narrow set of subjects is a problem. And we shouldn't do that just to make some adults feel better about their kid beating some other kid. Winning teams love scorekeepers. Everybody else understands our history, and how important it is to reward growth.

A normative test will apply the old bell curve and only serve to reinforce preexisting stereotypes about who is worth teaching.

At a time when the bachelor's degree needs to become the new baseline requirement for entry into productive work, the exclusive use of the ACT and other normative tests will discourage far too many Kentuckians from seeking higher education. And we will all pay the costs.

Senate Bill 1 should die. If not in the Senate - then, in the House. If not in the House - then on the governor's desk.

Photo from C-J's Politics in Kentucky blog, and a tip of the hat to KyVotes.org.

Dinkel tossed from sex offender program

I figured this story was pretty much over - but No - Jeni Lee Dinkel was kicked out of her court ordered sex offender program on Valentines Day because she failed to accept responsibility for her crime and refused to take a polygraph. If she doesn't get that a cougar trolling her son's friend was illegal and wrong, then its hard to have any sympathy for her.

But, she was apparently struggling as the only woman among a dozen-ish men in group therapy. Imagine that for a second, and ask yourself: Is it therapeutically efficacious to combine a male and female sex offenders in the same program? ...in the same room. ...with male offenders reflecting on their prior crimes. ...talking about their exploitation. ...their feelings about women. ...with Dinkel in the circle? ...12:1.

I'm not sure how that is appropriate therapy for her.

This from the Cincinnati Enquirer: (Backstory from Enquirer Special Section)

Dinkel out of jail on bond
Charged with violating probation terms

VILLA HILLS - Registered sex offender Jeni Lee Dinkel posted bond Tuesday after spending a night in jail on charges she violated probation.

Kenton Circuit Judge Gregory Bartlett allowed the 52-year-old mother to post 10 percent of a $5,000 bond.

Dinkel pleaded guilty in May to one count of third-degree rape for having sex with a 15-year-old friend of her son. She was ordered to serve 60 days in jail, be placed on probation for five years and register as a sex offender for 20 years....

..."Short of absconding or committing a new offense, failure to complete sex offender treatment is one of the next most important conditions of probation," Commonwealth's Attorney Rob Sanders said.

He said Dinkel could be placed back on probation or ordered to serve up to five years in jail if found in violation of her probation. A hearing is Monday...

...Dinkel's husband, former Bengals linebacker Tom Dinkel, said he had been
concerned about the part of the probation that required his wife to participate
in the Kentucky Sex Offender Treatment Program.

He said the treatment consisted of group therapy with his wife
being the only female in the class. He said the 10 to 15 other class members
were men who had sexually exploited women...

Other states are investing in higher education

In his state of the Commonwealth address on January 14th, after lamenting the budget mess given him by the legislature, we heard Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear tell the state:

Ironically, the revenue situation I inherited becomes a golden opportunity to change the way we do business in Kentucky. It is an opportunity to make every state agency leaner, more efficient and more responsive. It is an opportunity to begin preparing Kentucky to compete in the new economy. It is a way to focus on economic development that will create a stronger economy with jobs of the future rather than those of the past.

I smiled thinking to myself, "He's really going to do it. He's going to realign the state tax structure."

Shifting emphasis away from less productive sectors of the economy and more toward the most productive sectors - which as far as I can tell, would benefit the greatest number of tax-paying citizens, if not the truly elite - sounds like the right idea to me. It is the way to take care of the broadest cross section of Kentuckians while investing in the future. I want to save some America for my grandkids.

But anytime one butts heads with the big dogs, one should expect to be bitten.

Now, I have no insight here. I don't know if the governor shied away, or chose to reduced his effort to rhetoric, or is waiting for something else to happen first. Perhaps he has to prove he has fiscally conservative bona fides before gaining the confidence required to move so many political boulders. (Although, I don't know why. The spend-thrift conservative majority at the federal and state levels have gotten us here; and they had some help.)

The governor was right. This is an opportunity. One that requires competence and lots of leadership. I hope to hear more about this soon.

Meanwhile, we get this from Stateline.org, reprinted in C-J:

Faced with increasing global competition in the marketplace in a down-spiraling economy, many governors are asking their legislatures to make a significant investment in higher education.

That's the lead to a story that outlines efforts in several states where the value of investing in education is being kept in the governors' focus, despite a slumping national economy; the same economic conditions facing Kentucky.

Raymond Scheppach, executive director of the National Governors Association said, "A lot more governors now realize that their systems of higher education are really their major economic strategy for the future … that (companies) go to where you have highly skilled workers.

"It's been easy in the past to cut colleges' and universities' budgets. I think that more and more there's a greater awareness that doing so would put states at their own peril," said Dan Hurley, state director of the Association of State Colleges and Universities.

• Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland wants to pay for students to spend their final year of high school on a college campus for free.
• Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano proposed a compact with the state's eighth-graders: Stay out of trouble and get Bs in high school, and we'll give you a college education.
• Several governors also are proposing to put big money into research and development at their colleges -- particularly in science, math and technology -- to capitalize on the business benefits states could accrue.
• Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell proposed sending 70 counselors to middle and high schools to help students get into college.
• Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle is calling for a tax deduction of up to $20,000 for parents saving money for their children to go to college.
• Delaware's Ruth Ann Minner said she wants to extend the state's two-year scholarship program to cover those seeking four-year degrees.
• Idaho's C.L. "Butch" Otter proposed in his address Jan. 7 spending $50 million for scholarships for low-income students.
• Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius wants $3 million for grants to students.
• Missouri's Matt Blunt asked for $100 million for Access Missouri scholarships, a sum that would quadruple the state's investment in need-based grants.
• South Dakota's Mike Rounds and Tennessee's Phil Bredesen want to expand the number of students eligible for grants by lowering eligibility requirements.
• Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm wants to expand a pilot program that gives students an associate college degree after a five-year high school program and reward colleges that manage to graduate students, as opposed to just enrolling them.
• New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer is proposing a first-in-the-nation plan to lease the New York State Lottery to private investors as a way to fund a higher education endowment.
• Virginia's Tim Kaine proposed a $1.6 billion bond package to develop new technologies and turn them into commercial successes.
• West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin III wants $50 million for the "Bucks for Brains" initiative to recruit faculty and build infrastructure with the goal of finding success in fields that could result in profits.

In a tough budget year, though, several governors have proposed cuts to higher education...

Such is the case in Kentucky, where yesterday, Governor Steve Beshear addressed a rally of college students from across the state. Mark Hebert tells the story.

Beshear also stood by the podium in an uncomfortable position for a few minutes as UK student leader Ryan Quarles rattled off information about the skyrocketing cost of tuition and how budget cuts to higher education will hurt Kentucky in the long run. And before turning the microphone over to the governor, Quarles told the governor the only thing students want is for him to promise that if there's new revenue in the picture, higher education will be the top priority for the new money.

Beshear wouldn't make that promise but did say higher education "will be among the highest priorities" if lawmakers find more cash for the state budget. He encouraged students to force their legislators to say where they plan to come up with more money. Beshear says his plan is legalizing casinos and he encouraged the kids to push their lawmakers in that direction. But he also said that any new revenue would be fine and students should simply push their legislators to take a stand.

KDE goes to the Cable, Web TV

KENTUCKY EDUCATION ISSUES AVAILABLE ON WEB

(FRANKFORT, Ky.) – Kentucky Education Issues, a television program hosted by Education Commissioner Jon E. Draud, is now available on the Kentucky Department of Education’s Web site.

To access the program, visit the KDE Web site at http://www.education.ky.gov and click on the link under “Headlines.”

The half-hour program features lively discussion with leading educators and policy makers concerning topics important to students, teachers and taxpayers. Plans are to produce two programs each month.

Program #1 features interviews with KDE Associate Commissioner Robin Kinney and Division Director Petie Day. The show’s theme is the state budget.

Kentucky Education Issues is produced by KDE’s Virtual Learning Branch primarily for Insight Cable in northern Kentucky and its affiliates throughout the state. The program also will air on the Kentucky Channel (KET3).

Check local listings for specific times and availabilities.

KY School Districts Got Recalled Beef

The Kentucky Department of Agriculture has notified Kentucky school districts that 143 million pounds of fresh and frozen beef products from the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company of Chino, Calif., have been recalled.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the recall on Sunday. USDA officials said about 37 million pounds of the recalled beef went to the National School Lunch Program and other domestic nutrition programs nationwide. A small portion of that beef was distributed to at least 17 school districts in Kentucky...

This from MSNBC:

Kentucky Teams with Nortel to Enrich K-12 Learning Experience

This from CNNMoney.com

Education Solution Includes Applications,

Managed Services, Security Services

The first state to bring broadband Internet access into every public school is further enriching the K-12 learning experience with intelligent classrooms and online tools for collaboration and assessment based on an education network solution from Nortel(1) (TSX: NT)(NYSE: NT).
The State of Kentucky is implementing a complete Nortel Education Solution - including infrastructure, applications, managed services and security services - under its 2007-2012 Education Technology Master Plan(2).

This solution, delivered through Nortel channel partner Pomeroy IT Solutions(2), provides web-based access to educational resources from both schools and homes. It is designed to help achieve the plan's goal of providing equal opportunities for roughly 650,000 K-12 students in 174 school districts to become productive and contributing citizens.

"Nortel has a very clear understanding of the K-12 environment," said David Couch, associate commissioner, Office of Education Technology, Kentucky Department of Education(2).

"Typically a vendor will come in thinking K-12 is like a corporate environment and that a corporate solution will work in this environment. But it's radically different because of the concept of local control and autonomy."

"You essentially have 174 corporations that you're trying to move in the same direction, with similar objectives but with each having their own ideas on how to get there," Couch said. "Nortel has people on the ground who understand that, and they've helped us select from their suite of products the best set for this environment." ...

KDE says ORQ information attributed to Measured Progress is in error.

Last week KSN&C heard complaints from teachers that the process for scoring Open Response Questions (ORQ) was changing in midstream....and just weeks before administration of the CATS test.

Teachers claimed there was a disconnect between the instructions received from the Kentucky Department of Education and those from its testing vendor, Measured Progress.

Now, KDE says it's all a mistake and that they are tracking down and correcting the problem.

Apparently, some Grant County teachers recently went to a Measured Progress conference and brought back (or perhaps created?) a PowerPoint slide show titled "Measured_Progress_Conference[1].ppt." The slide show indicated that following KDE's instructions would actually be counter-productive to students scoring well - an obvious problem. That PowerPoint was distributed to teachers widely.

KDE Communications Director Lisa Gross told KSN&C today,

"We heard about this last week and began to look into it. Measured Progress says that its staff did not create the PowerPoint and doesn't know where it originated. The information in the PowerPoint file is incorrect and false."

On the final slide, the PowerPoint listed the following resources:

Julia Payne –Lewis, Measured Progress jlewis@measuredprogress.org

Marcia Tibbetts, Program Manager Measured Progress Mtibbetts@measuredprogress.org

But, it is not clear that they produced the slides. Gross went on to say,

"We and Measured Progress are trying to track down the source of the document. If we're able to do that, we'll work with the author(s) to correct the misinformation and discuss with the author(s) the mis-citing of sources that weren't involved in its creation."

KDE has agreed to keep KSN&C informed whenever the situation is resolved.

So whatever the situation...

...bad info from Measured Progress
...bad note-taking from conference attendees
...or something else

Teachers complaining about the issue seems to have had the beneficial effect of getting KDE and Measured Progress on the same page...and clarifying for all specifically how students will be scored on ORQs. Further KDE has indicated it will send new guidance to all district testing coordinators to resolve any misunderstandings.

At Harvard, a Proposal to Publish Free on Web

Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide on Tuesday is whether to publish — on the Web, at least — free.

Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs.

Although the outcome of Tuesday’s vote would apply only to Harvard’s arts and sciences faculty, the impact, given the university’s prestige, could be significant for the open-access movement, which seeks to make scientific and scholarly research available to as many people as possible at no cost.

“In place of a closed, privileged and costly system, it will help open up the world of learning to everyone who wants to learn,” said Robert Darnton, director of the university library. “It will be a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available on our own university repository.” ...

This from the New York Times.

No Child Outside the Classroom

This from Newswseek:

When No Child Left Behind became law in 2002, teachers suspected there'd be some casualties—they just didn't think field trips would be one of them.

Since the federal government's landmark overhaul of U.S. schools, class trips have plummeted at some of the country's traditional hot spots for brown-bag learning. The new emphasis on standardized testing has resulted in "a reluctance to take kids out of the classroom," says Natalie Bortoli, head of the visual-arts program at the Chicago Children's Museum, which has lost more than a tenth of its field-trip business since 2005.

At Mystic Seaport, a maritime museum on the Connecticut coast, school traffic has slowed more than a quarter since 2005, while Boston's New England Aquarium has lost nearly the same amount since 2003. Even NASA's Johnson Space Center has started to see its figures stagnate, says marketing director Roger Bornstein, "and stability is not our goal."

Teachers blame the bear market in part on No Child Left Behind, which requires schools to get students up to state targets in reading and math by 2014 or face sanctions that could result in school takeovers or closings. "Curriculums are so much tighter than they used to be," says Susan Lewis, an elementary-school teacher in San Antonio, Texas. Add in rising transportation costs, and field trips are fast becoming history.

Compton Avenue Elementary School in Los Angeles has halved its trips in the past three years. "They were all academically based," says principal Claudia Ross, but they no longer fit a budget focused on test scores, not general enrichment.

Museums are coming up with new strategies to lure schools back. The Chicago Children's Museum sends teachers a checklist that highlights how the museum can help them meet Illinois state standards, while representatives from the New England Aquarium visit schools in Massachusetts to explain how its programs can give kids a boost.

Many museums have also started giving their young visitors clipboards, worksheets, science journals and the chance to quiz a resident historian or scientist. "We know it's directly linking into the standards," Bortoli says. "But I don't think the kids notice." They're happy as long as they don't get left behind.

Garrison Keillor smacks fellow Democrats for wholesale opposition to flawed Republican NCLB

Garrison Keillor invokes the assistance of Saint Michael the Archangel, patron of mariners, to raise reading scores for struggling 4th graders ...who are "at sea" ...I guess.

Keillor accurately points out that NCLB, which is looking doomed these days, need not be trashed when it can be fixed. The assessment system is a problem for its bad design and resulting tendency to undermine the very growth it hopes to support. The Reading First scandal showed the Republican administration's willingness to subordinate a noble purpose to specific commercial interests, but is still a worthy effort - and one of the few places NCLB actually put some money toward improving conditions for kids.

Keillor keeps the focus where is ought to be - on the kids, and off of partisan politics.

We're failing our kids

No Child Left Behind has plenty of flaws,

but throwing it out because it's a Republican plan

is morally disgusting.

By Garrison Keillor at Salon.com.

...Reading is the key to everything. Teaching children to read is a fundamental moral obligation of the society. That 27 percent are at serious risk of crippling illiteracy is an outrageous scandal.

This is a bleak picture for an old Democrat. Face it, the schools are not run by Republican oligarchs in top hats and spats but by perfectly nice, caring, sharing people, with a smattering of yoga/raga/tofu/mojo/mantra folks like my old confreres. Nice people are failing these kids, but when they are called on it, they get very huffy. When the grand poobah Ph.D.s of education stand up and blow, they speak with great confidence about heories of teaching, and considering the test results, the bums ought to be thrown out.

There is much evidence that teaching phonics really works, specially with kids with learning disabilities, a growing constituency. But because phonics is associated with behaviorism and with conservatives, and because the Current Occupant has spoken on the subject, my fellow liberals are opposed.

Liberal dogma says that each child is inherently gifted and will read if only he is read to. This was true of my grandson; it is demonstrably not true of many kids, including my sandy-haired, gap-toothed daughter. The No Child Left Behind initiative has plenty of flaws, but the Democrats who are trashing it should take another look at the Reading First program. It is morally disgusting if Democrats throw out Republican programs that are good for children. Life is not a scrimmage. Grown-ups who stick with dogma even though it condemns children to second-class lives should be put on buses and sent to North Dakota to hoe wheat for a year.

St. Michael, I beg you to send angels to watch over fourth-graders who are struggling to read, because the righteous among us are not doing the job.