<<On the Blackboard>>
Don’t Miss EWA’s Tightening the Belt, Expanding the Reach Seminar
This two-day regional higher ed seminar will be held Feb. 27-28 at the San Francisco Chronicle. Topics include: higher education policy in tough economic times, the effects of declining state appropriations on access, the challenges for Asian students as the "model minority," and the success and failure of transfers from community colleges to 4-year institutions. Scholarships, as always, are available to reporters. This seminar is for reporters only and space is limited. You can contact Raven Hill.
Reality Check --"Where is Education Heading?"
From preschool to K-12 schools, from dropouts to millennials, from teacher pay to student aid—and much more— the Education Writers Association's annual conference will address how the education trends and policies we cover are actually playing out in the real world. Practical sessions also will look at FERPA and FOIA, next steps in blogging and social networking, the future of education reporting and alternate career paths. The EWA 62nd annual National Seminar will be held in Washington, D.C. April 30-May 2. Scholarships are available for reporters. Find out how you can participate in this year's meeting here. See you this spring in the nation's capital!
Small schools, big opportunity
by Linda Perlstein, EWA’s Public Editor
Much of the $2 billion the Gates Foundation gave toward improving high schools over the last decade went to making them smaller. In an open letter published this month, Bill Gates wrote, “Many of the small schools that we invested in did not improve students’ achievement in any significant way.”
When Gates and other foundations—Carnegie Corporation, the Open Society Institute and others—started pumping money into small schools, the media produced plenty of stories about the new trend. Journalists wrote about the hope, and in some cases the reality, that students would feel more connected to adults when the staff-to-student ratio declined. They wrote about the ways career academies—the outcome of many restructurings—could better engage students and prepare them for post-graduate life. They occasionally covered logistical complications and the difficulties of staffing more schools with excellent principals and properly credentialed teachers.
But not enough of the stories I have read over the last few years have gone into depth about what really has, or hasn’t, changed at these schools. There are so many questions I have wanted to see asked and answered. What actually differs in the daily lives of students? Have there been changes in teacher quality and curriculum and assessment, stuff we know really matters? (Gates said in his letter that the small schools where students did improve made other radical changes besides their size.) Are staff members truly more able to connect with students in a personal, meaningful way?
At career academies, are students really required to follow a new course of study, and if so, are they more engaged? Are some small schools in the same buildings separate in name only?
Eduwonkette Jennifer Jennings has often pointed out that the small schools in New York City enroll fewer at-risk kids than the schools they replaced. So what happened to the students who didn’t make the cut for the small schools? Did they wind up at schools even more crowded and impersonal?
And, of course, the question that is bringing the topic to the fore right now: Are small schools financially sustainable?
I am not saying that small schools are a bad idea (personally, I like the premise) or that they are failures (some are, some aren’t, and most can’t be easily categorized one way or the other). But I worry that too often we journalists get caught up in the spin of a trend—a well-funded trend, it’s worth noting—and are so eager to portray reforms as promising that we fail to anticipate complications or look critically at their implementation.
It’s not too late. Now that money troubles and lack of enthusiasm from the Gates Foundation are putting the small schools movement at risk, we are reading about them again. Some of these stories are good. But they still don’t cover all the points we need to consider. A closer look at what these schools really look like, at what they do and don’t accomplish, can help readers, and policymakers, decide if they are worth saving.
Public editor Linda Perlstein is available to help you. Contact her at 410-539-2464 or lperlstein@ewa.org.
Media Notes
Desperate Times, Desperate Measures
The journalism industry still hasn’t found a cure to heal its financial woes. January brings more bad news for Gannett Company employees. The nation’s largest newspaper publisher said it would require most of its employees to take a week off without pay.
Gannett also announced it will close the Tucson Citizen in Arizona unless a buyer comes forth to purchase the newspaper. Employees of the Seattle Post Intelligencer find themselves in the same predicament. Hearst told 170 workers if no one buys the newspaper that all union and nonunion positions would be terminated.
And next month, all Landmark Publishing Newspapers will require full and part time employees to take five unpaid days off during the year. The Virginian-Pilot, Roanoke Times, and Greensboro News & Record are some of the largest papers in the chain. If you aren’t already reading Romanesko at the Poynter Institute web site, it’s a good way to keep up with these announcements.
In other areas, in a recent column for Poynter, Rick Edmonds, business analyst, has looked at the changes sweeping the industry. The American Journalism Review questions if social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can save the mainstream media.
And another Poynter columnist - Colleen Eddy - advises reporters who are job hunting to protect themselves from web-based frauds.
Reports: Schools, Race, Recession, Freshmen Studies and can Journalism be Saved?
Schools and the Stimulus Package
Congress is moving to approve the more than $800 billion stimulus package expected to provide funds for education in many different ways. The House passed its version and the Senate is expected to take up the measure the first week of February.
For reporters who want to get ahead of the story and didn’t see the Public Editor’s (Linda Perlstein) posting on the listservWednesday, here are some stories links that provide program-by-program and state-by-state break-outs of the figures, as well as background.
Education in the Stimulus, New America Foundation
Estimating of Funding by School District, Committee on Education and Labor
Sorting Out the Stimulus, Inside Higher Ed
Stimulus Bill Would Make Millions of Students Newly Eligible for Tuition Tax Credit,
Chronicle of Higher Education(subscription required)
Anticipating Stimulus Money for Campus Projects, Colleges Get 'Shovel Ready', Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required)
Stimulus Bill Includes Billions of Dollars in Help for Students and Colleges, Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required)
Subsidy-Rate Proposal in Bill Could Aid Lenders, Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required)
Free Chronicle subscriptions are available to reporters by emailing press@chronicle.com.
The Freshmen Chronicles
First-year college students are concerned about politics, finances and their studies. They also support environmental causes. The Higher Education Research Institute gives a snapshot of what college freshmen are thinking. The survey finds students are more politically engaged. Almost 90 percent of students reported they talked about politics in the past year. Also more college freshmen are less likely to attend their first choice for school because of financial reasons. In 2008, 17.1 percent survey respondents reported they attended their second or third school choice. You can read the rest of the study here.
College Spending: Where Does Tuition Go?
The Delta Project on Post Secondary Costs, Productivity and Accountability released its second report analyzing trends in higher ed spending. The report finds public funding continues to decrease for higher ed institutions with colleges making up the difference from tuition, fees, private gifts, grants and contracts. The report finds most new money that the institutions receive is restricted and does not support core educational programs. Meanwhile students are getting the short end of the stick, paying more for college tuition today.
Fixing Public Schools
The Center for Education Reform is making its case to President Barack Obama’s administration to address the challenges in public education. Mandate for Change spotlights five key issues in American education for state and federal lawmakers.
They are federal accountability, charter schools, school choice and teacher quality. EWA’s board president Richard Whitmire writes the teacher quality essay.
Race and Schools
Almost 55 years after the Supreme Court’s historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling, a new study finds black and Latino students are more segregated than ever in American public schools. The Civil Rights Project released “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge” this month. The ‘resegregating’ of students stems from a “systematic neglect of civil rights policy and educational and community reforms,” writes Gary Orfield, a professor and co-founder of the Civil Rights Project. Nearly half of public school children are non-white. The report finds white students remain the most isolated population.
Humanities Research at Your Fingertips
A consortium of humanities organizations have collaborated on a new online resource to provide a broader analysis of what’s happening in the field. The Humanities Indicators.org provides empirical data and information for researchers and policymakers, universities, foundations, museums, libraries, humanities councils, etc.
Literacy, Reading & Communication
The start of the new year brings some good news about national reading habits.
The National Endowment for the Arts finds more American adults are reading literature. In the first time in 25 years, NEA says fiction readers are rising, with a swell of new readers aged 18 to 24. You can read the report “Reading on the Rise” here.
The National Institute for Literacy also released a report identifying how preschoolers can develop skills that will make them successful readers. The Institute funded a panel to review the research on language, literacy and communication of young children. This report is a synthesis of past published research. The panel points out the obvious that young children who have strong cognitive and linguistic abilities do well in the primary grades, and sustain skills. Researchers identified early skills relevant to later literacy development and searched for scientific studies that could provide evidence showing the relationship between early skill attainment in literacy growth in reading, comprehension and spelling.
EWA Notes
Senior Communications Officer Larry Meyer, a national leader in strategic communications for U.S. foundations, will retire Feb. 1 after 14 years as a communications executive and officer with the Miami-based John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Washington Post reporter and EWA member Jay Mathews has a new book called “Work Hard. Be Nice.” exploring the KIPP program. Education Sector, a Washington, D.C. based think tank hosted a forum featuring Mathews and KIPP chief executive Richard Barth discussing the program and the politics of education reform. Mathew’s book was mentioned by Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates in his annual Gates letter calling it an inspiring look at how KIPP has accomplished amazing results and the barriers they faced."
Awards, Ed Meetings and Communication Positions
The National Council on Teacher Quality is seeking to fill a new 10 to 15 hour a week position drafting letters on teacher policy issues to state and local policymakers. The pay is $40 an hour. Work can be done from off-site and entails collaboration by phone and email with staff members. The position requires someone familiar with research and teacher policy issues. If interested, send cv and cover letter to Pat Giles, pgiles@nctq.org.
The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) is searching for a new Director of Research and Evaluation. Send resumes to drre@ihep.org.
The Bart Richards Awards for Media Criticism, an award coordinated by the College of Communications at Penn State is accepting contest entries until Jan. 31. The winner will receive a $1,000 prize and attend an awards ceremony at the National Press Club.
The Livingston Awards Young Journalists is accepting contest entries until Feb. 1.
The American Council on Education will hold its 91st annual meeting in Washington, D.C., Feb. 7-10. Go here to register.
The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) annual meeting starts Feb. 1- 4. The meeting will be held at the Hyatt Regency in Washington, D.C. on Capitol Hill.
The National Staff Development council is searching for a director of communication. The person is responsible for managing the organization’s publications, electronic communications, marketing and more. See job description here. Applications will be considered until February 7.
From the Beat
II Doesn't Always = II
by Michael Alison Chandler
The Washington Post
From Northwest Washington to the suburbs of Fairfax and Prince George's counties, advanced algebra often appears the same from class to class: Students are expected to learn dozens of skills, including factoring trinomials, solving rational equations and graphing quadratic functions. But it doesn't always work that way.
Ed Blogger Alexander Russo Interviews the New Secretary of Education
by Alexander Russo
Scholastic.com
At the tender age of 36, he stepped into the shoes of legendary Chicago schools chief Paul Vallas. He plays pickup basketball with President-elect Barack Obama, his longtime neighbor on the South Side. His district approves new schools and closes low-performing ones every spring. Announced as Obama’s pick for education secretary, Arne Duncan is ready to make his mark on school reform on a national level.
Schools take aim at paddling culture
by Carlos Sadovi
The Chicago Tribune
Akeem Nathaniel still remembers what would happen to Marshall High School basketball players who misbehaved in class, disrespected teachers or failed to do homework: Coaches, brandishing a heavy wooden paddle, would take seven or eight full shots.
As a sophomore, Nathaniel felt the sting of the swings and the burning on his backside and witnessed the welts raised by the old-school discipline.
Elementary school hopes music boosts test scores
by Greta Cuyler
York Daily Record
At Lisa Sharer's command, 18 kindergartners hold violins in place and raise their bows in the ready position. The children listen, then join in. All 130 kindergarten students at Schuylkill Valley Elementary School are receiving classroom instruction on the violin this school year. But the goal is more than just teaching them to play the instrument. The district is initiating a four-year study to examine if violin lessons boost performance on standardized tests.
For Catholic Schools, Crisis and Catharsis
by Paul Vitello and Winnie Hu
The New York Times
After years of what frustrated parents describe as inertia in the church hierarchy, a sense of urgency seems to be gripping many Catholics who suddenly see in the shrinking enrollment a once unimaginable prospect: a country without Catholic schools. From the ranks of national church leaders to the faithful in the pews, there are dozens of local efforts to forge a new future for parochial education by rescuing the remaining schools or, if need be, reinventing them.
To some, ice skating class gives too warm a welcome
by Steve Esack
Of The Morning Call
On the banks of the Lehigh River in south Bethlehem is a public school classroom that may be unlike any other in America. It is on ice. Every weekday at the Steel Ice Center, students from the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Performing Arts in Pa. spend two hours working on turns, jumps and spins as music pumps through the speakers.Now a growing number of people, including a former skater and her father and former board members, are questioning whether the skating program is the best use of the $135,536 the school gets from the skaters' home school districts.
Colleges scramble to help cash-strapped students
by Stacy Teicher Khadaroo
The Christian Science Monitor
It's crunch time for college students. No, this isn't about exams. It's about tuition bills. Facing job losses, dwindling college-investment accounts, and a tight credit market, students and parents have been streaming into financial-aid offices, asking for adjustments to their aid packages. Colleges are trying to help, but as the second semester starts up, some students have had no choice but to drop out or scale back the number of classes they're taking.
Please send your best stories and member news to Mesha Williams at publications@ewa.org.
**About us**
The Education Writers Association is the national professional organization of education reporters dedicated to improving education reporting to the public. Contact us by email at ewa@ewa.org, by phone at (202) 452-9830, by fax at (202) 452-9837 or by mail at 2122 P Street NW, Suite 201, Washington, DC, 20037.Our officers include: Richard Whitmire of USA Today, president; Kent Fischer, education reporter at the Dallas Morning News, vice president/actives; Marie Groark, senior policy officer and spokeswoman for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, vice president/associates; Kathy Baron, morning host/education reporter at northern California's KQED-FM (on leave), secretary; Linda Lenz, publisher of Catalyst, immediate past president. Our board members include Dale Mezzacappa, former reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and now a Philadelphia-based freelance writer, Tanya Schevitz, higher education reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle; John Merrow of Learning Matters Inc.; Rodney Ferguson, executive vice president of Lipman Hearne Inc. Find contact information at our Web site, http://www.ewa.org.
