School Culture
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A New Diverse Majority: Students of Color in the South’s Public Schools
The Southern Education Foundation (SEF) finds that the South’s public schools have a majority of students of color for the first time in history. SEF, Jan. 7, 2010
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The State of the Kid
Want to know what's on the minds of kids? Then read Highlights Magazine first ever State of the Kid report. Sept. 30, 2009
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Impairing Education
Students with disabilities face corporal punishment in public schools at disproportionately high rates, says a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch. August 11, 2009
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Taking Results Seriously for Vulnerable Children and Families: The 20th annual KIDS COUNT Data Book profiles the well-being of America’s children on a state-by-state basis and ranks states on 10 key measures of child well-being. July 29, 2009
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The Disaster Decade: Lessons Unlearned for the United States
This report released by Save the Children U.S. says the government is unprepared to protect children in case of natural disaster in preschool, elementary and high schools. June 15, 2009
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The Condition of Education 2009 is an integrated collection of the indicators and analyses and is produced by the National Center for Education Statistics. 6/2/2009
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Severing a Lifeline: The Neglect of Citizen Children in America’s Immigration Enforcement Policy
The Urban Institute finds about 1.3 million citizen children have one or both parents who are counted as undocumented in the U.S.and says Congress could do more by passing the DREAM Act which would give illegal alien children who graduate from an American high school, and have no criminal background an opportunity to attend college or serve in the military to earn legal status. 3/26/2009
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Public School Practices for Violence Prevention and Reduction: 2003-04 pdf
This report analyzes data reported by school principals during 2003-2004 about the practices in place to prevent violence and crime.
National Center for Education Statistics/U.S. Department of Education - Susan Jekielek,Brett Brown,Pilar Marin,Laura Lippman,, 9/19/2007
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Open to the Public: How Communities, Parents and Students Assess the Impact of the No Child Left Behind Act 2004 - 2007 The Realities Left Behind pdf
This report summarizes the opinions that the Public Education Network culled from students, parents and community leaders who participated in 25 public hearings, forums, focus groups and online surveys on NCLB held over three years across the country. Their view was that NCLB must have a more compelling vision, strong policies to support it, and greater public engagement.
Public Education Network - Anne Lewis, 7/30/2007
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Pathways to Prevention:The Latino Male Droput Crisis
Institutional barriers within schools, such as tracking, along with cultural factors, create significant obstacles in the pathways to success for Latino males, according to this report. Its conclusion is that by dropping out, these young men are greatly affecting their futures, their future families, and their community in ways that someone so young cannot readily understand.
Arizona State University Center for Community Development and Civil Rights, 7/13/2007
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The Condition of Education 2007
High school students in the United States are taking more courses in mathematics and science, as well as social studies, the arts, and foreign languages, according to an analysis of high school student coursework that is highlighted in this government report. Statistics on student achievement, school environment and a wide range of other topics related to early childhood education through postsecondary education are also included.
by National Center for Education Statistics, 5/1/2007
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The Autonomy Gap
Public school principals encounter a sizable gap between the autonomy they believe they need to be effective and the autonomy that they actually have in practice, especially when it comes to hiring, firing, and transferring teachers. That's a key finding of this report from the Fordham Institute and the American Institutes for Research, which is based on a series of interviews with a small sample of district and charter-school principals.
by Steven Adamowski, 4/11/2007
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Tough Choices or Tough Times
A bi-partisan commission, comprised of former Cabinet secretaries, governors, college presidents and business, civic and labor leaders, is calling for a total shakeup in how America educates its people. Its findings include ending high school at 10th grade, revamping and reducing pension systems, collective bargaining at the state -- instead of local -- level.
by The New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce , 12/15/2006
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How Well Are American Students Learning?
The report looks at the "happiness factor" in education, analyzing international data to see whether students' self-confidence and enjoyment of math and the relevance of lessons that students experience in classrooms are correlated with higher math achievement. Do nations with happier students score higher on math tests than nations in which students are not quite as happy?
Brookings Institution - Tom Loveless, 10/18/2006
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The Condition of Education 2006
The 2006 Condition on Education summarizes important trends and developments in education. The report includes 50 indicators in five main areas: (1) participation in education; (2) learner outcomes; (3) student effort and educational progress; (4) the contexts of elementary and secondary education; and (5) the contexts of postsecondary education.
National Center for Education Statistics - Patrick Rooney, William Hussar and Michael Planty, 6/1/2006
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School Culture Assessment pdf
A manual for assessing and transforming classroom culture. It encourages educators to focus on a holistic view of their school and the relationships among the people who work, learn and relate there.
by Christopher Wagner and Penelope Masden-Copas, 11/30/2005
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The Respectful School: How Educators and Students Can Conquer Hate and Harassment
A book about bias, prejudice, harassment and violence in schools. It also recommends solutions for what educators and students can do to create and to maintain a climate of respect and civility in the classroom.
by Stephen L. Wessler and William Preble
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School Context: Bridge or Barrier to Change
A paper that examines the literature regarding factors that may help or hinder efforts to improve schools and their effectiveness for all students. It also focuses on a variety of factors that may affect school culture and how that determines a school's liklihood to succeed.
Southwest Educational Development Laboratory
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Despite states' efforts, measures to protect students from predators sometimes fail
For nearly three decades, Kevin Ricks exploited gaps in a system that is supposed to keep sexual predators out of the classroom.He landed teaching jobs at one school after another -- public and private, urban and rural, domestic and foreign -- despite mounting evidence of his troubling personal relationships with male students. Michael Alison Chandler, Washington Post, July 26, 2010
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Nashville Schools See Racial Disparities In Suspensions
According to a Department of Education report, some 40 percent of students who received out of school suspensions are black. In Tennessee, the racial disparity in suspensions is even more profound. There, black students are four times more likely to be suspended than other students.Michel Martin, host of Tell Me More from NPR News, July 14, 2010
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The Examined Life, Age 8
A few times each month, second graders at a charter school in Springfield, Mass., take time from math and reading to engage in philosophical debate. There is no mention of Hegel or Descartes, no study of syllogism or solipsism. Instead, Prof. Thomas E. Wartenberg and his undergraduate students from nearby Mount Holyoke College use classic children’s books to raise philosophical questions, which the young students then dissect with the vigor of the ancient Greeks.Abby Goodnough, The New York Times, April 18, 2010
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How VIPs lobbied schools
While many Chicago parents took formal routes to land their children in the best schools, the well-connected also sought help through a shadowy appeals system created in recent years under former schools chief Arne Duncan. Whispers have long swirled that some children get spots in the city's premier schools based on whom their parents know. But a list maintained over several years in Duncan's office and obtained by the Chicago Tribune lends further evidence to those charges. Azam Ahmed, Chicago Tribune, March 23, 2010
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Texting, Facebook can give teachers struggles with virtual boundaries
Educators are crossing a new social-media minefield that can explode with one wrong text message or Facebook entry. Denise-Marie Balona, Orlando Sentinel, March 2, 2010
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For school districts on the edge, busing halt considered
Parents in Royal Oak soon will be adding chauffeur to the growing list of roles they have in their children's schools. They soon will be responsible for driving students now that the district has taken the desperate measure of ending busing for about 1,800 general-education students. Lori Higgins, The Detroit Free Press
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Homeless in high school
The number of high school students who become homeless after turning 18 has increased dramatically in recent years, far outpacing the few housing assistance programs available to them, say advocates for the homeless. Some youths leave home voluntarily to escape abusive situations, and others are forced out by parents or relatives. Brian R. Ballou, The Boston Globe, Feb. 16, 2010
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Study: Students more stressed now than during Depression?
A new study has found that five times as many high school and college students are dealing with anxiety and other mental health issues as youth of the same age who were studied in the Great Depression era. The Associated Press via USA Today, Jan. 13, 2010
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'At hope' children better than 'at risk'?
Decades ago, poor children became known as "disadvantaged" to soften the stigma of poverty. Then they were "at-risk." Now, a Washington lawmaker wants to replace those euphemisms with a new one, "at hope." Democratic State Sen. Rosa Franklin says negative labels are hurting kids' chances for success and she's not a bit concerned that people will be confused by her proposed rewrite of the 54 places in where words like "at risk" and "disadvantaged" are used. The bill has gotten a warm welcome among fellow lawmakers, state officials and advocacy groups. Associated Press via MSNBC, Jan. 13, 2010
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Number of homeless students soars
The numbers alone are heartbreaking: 248 students in Greenville County Schools living in emergency shelters for the homeless. Another 318 living with relatives or friends because their families couldn’t afford a place of their own.Forty-eight staying in hotels or motels; five in homes with no utilities or with other substandard conditions; and four surviving in a caror a campground.Six hundred and twenty three students with no place to call home. And that was last year.As of September this year, the total is up to 703. Ron Barnett, The Greenville News, December 15, 2009
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School cancels Taliban debate
A principal in Arlington County announced that she will call off an assignment that asked students to represent the views of the Taliban during a mock United Nations after some parents called it inappropriate.Michael Alison Chandler, The Washington Post, December 15, 2009
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Nearly 60,000 spankings in Miss. schools last year
As kids, Mike Kent and John Jordan said they each got their share of whacks with a paddle. As superintendent of Oxford public schools in 1994, Jordan worked with the school board to end corporal punishment in the district. Kent's district, like many districts statewide, practices corporal punishment. Mississippi has one of the nation's highest rates of corporal punishment. Marquita Brown, The Clarion Ledger, Oct. 19, 2009
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Fenger kids tell why they fight
The Chicago Tribune begins an in-depth look at youth violence, examining its complex causes and uncovering possible solutions. Azam Ahmed, Kristen Mack and Annie Sweeney, The Chicago Tribune, Oct. 6, 2009
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Schools reviving physical education classes
Physical education gets a lesser share of the school day than it used to, but North Georgia schools try to keep students thinking about fitness and sometimes even breaking a sweat. Ben Benton, Chatanooga Times Free Press, Sept. 25, 2009
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Classroom Bullies
Teachers are supposed to prevent harassment of students. But in a controversial case, they were allegedly the harassers. Tony Dokoupil, Newsweek, Sept. 24, 2009
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Parenting between classes
It's lunch time at Lee High School, and several young girls — some with their boyfriends — bring their sandwiches to a classroom loaded with rocking chairs, cribs, books and toys.The teenage parents use these minutes between classes to play with their babies in the school's nursery. The Houston campus opened the free day care on site a few years ago to encourage young parents to keep coming to school. Erika Mellon, The Houston Chronicle, Sept. 8, 2009
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Does Paying For Good Grades Cheapen Education?
As a new academic year begins, hundreds of schools around the country are experimenting with programs that offer students pay for performance. But critics say school administrators should not be turning the schoolhouse into a workplace. Rather than motivate students, they charge, the reward programs cheapen the educational experience by using "bribes" to win temporary obedience. Marilyn Geewax, National Public Radio. Sept. 1, 2009
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All Alabama high schools this year have state distance learning program
Students in all 371 high schools in Alabama now have the opportunity to take courses not offered at their schools. This year, for the first time, all high schools in the state have the Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators and Students Statewide distance learning program. ACCESS uses online and interactive video conferencing technology to link classrooms and offer coursework, including Advanced Placement and foreign languages, to students in schools where those courses may not be available. Marie Leech, The Birmingham News, August 14, 2009
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Cheerleading Is Leading Cause Of Catastrophic Injury In Young Women
As a bright, young cheerleader trying out for the high school varsity squad, 14-year-old Laura Jackson had everything going for her. But when a back flip went wrong during a try-out without a trained spotter on hand, Laura landed on her head fracturing her neck and damaging her spinal cord. Laura is now paralyzed and breathes with the help of a ventilator. Science Daily, August 11, 2009
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Ohio high school tightens computer security after cheating scandal
More than half of the seniors at a top Ohio high school who took world studies tests last spring were involved in a cheating scheme that prompted school officials to cancel graduation ceremonies, according to the district's review of the matter. Andrew Welsh-Huggins, Associated Press/Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 7, 2009
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Can a PTA Bake Sale Save a Teacher's Job?
How many bake sales does it take to save a teacher's job? For decades, public-school parents have organized such fundraising events to cover the costs of field trips, sports equipment and other frills that enrich their children's education. Yet now, as recession clouds hang ever lower and state budgets tighten, schools and districts are increasingly asking adults to help pay for essentials. Parents are under pressure to bring in big bucks for supplies, technology and even, in some cases, staff salaries. That's a lot of sugar cookies. Gilbert Cruz, Time Magazine, August 6, 2009
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D.C. to offer STD testing at all high schools
D.C. school officials are planning to offer tests for sexually transmitted diseases to all high school students in the coming school year, expanding a pilot program that uncovered a significant number of infected children. Darryl Fears and Nelson Hernandez, Washington Post, August 5, 2009
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Wilson County to revisit God's place in schools
In 2006, Wilson County school administrators found themselves in legal trouble for allowing too much religion in school. This year, administrators will again revisit what can and can't be said about God in schools. This time, they are compelled to do so by families who say the system unfairly censored expressions of faith. Wilson school officials will throw out a policy that prohibited phrases like "come pray with us" and "In God We Trust" on student posters. The change comes as part of a tentative legal agreement reached Monday with five families who had sued the district. Clay Carey, The Tennessean, August 5, 2009
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Harlem Children's Zone Breaks Poverty Pattern
For many thousands of inner-city poor, many of them African-American, poverty is handed down from generation to generation. With parents unable to provide for them, children quickly fall behind their grade level, drop out of school, and end up in jail. As the president of a nonprofit for children in Harlem, Geoffrey Canada saw this pattern first hand. He transformed his organization into a project to attack the roots of poverty and change the lives of thousands of children. Today, the Harlem Children's Zone provides social and medical services, offers parenting workshops, and runs charter schools for the children of its community. National Public Radio, August 4, 2009
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Students Without Borders
A team of very smart teenagers has set out to discover ways that maggots might make the world a better place. Two are from Loudoun County. Two live more than 9,000 miles away in Singapore. Maria Glod,
Washington Post, June 24, 2009
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Free lunch?
A week rarely went by last school year without a plea for help from another newly poor family in South-Western schools. Two months into the school year, half the district's students had signed up for financial assistance on school meals, compared with 35 percent two years earlier. Districts across the state have experienced the same trend. Simone Sebastian, The Columbus Dispatch, July 5, 2009
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Multiracial Pupils to Be Counted in A New Way
Washington region and elsewhere are abandoning their check-one-box approach to gathering information about race and ethnicity in an effort to develop a more accurate portrait of classrooms transformed by immigration and interracial marriage. Next year, they will begin a separate count of students who are of more than one race. Michael Alison Chandler and Maria Glod, The Washington Post, 3/23/2009
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Report Cards Give Up A's and B's for 4s and 3s
Instead of letter grades in English or math, schoolchildren in one New York suburb now get report cardsled with numbers indicating how they are faring on dozens of specific skills like “decoding strategies” and “number sense and operations.” By Winnie Hu, The New York Times, 3/24/2009
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The Local List: Challenge Index 2008 Well-Connected Parents Take On School Boards
For a new generation of well-wired activists in the Washington region, it's not enough to speak at Parent-Teacher Association or late-night school board meetings. They are going head-to-head with superintendents through e-mail blitzes, social networking Web sites, online petitions, partnerships with business and student groups, and research that mines a mountain of electronic data on school performance.
The Washington Post - Michael Alison Chandler, 1/30/2009
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Elementary school hopes music boosts test scores
by Greta Cuyler
At Lisa Sharer's command, 18 kindergartners hold violins in place and raise their bows in the ready position. All 130 kindergarten students at Schuylkill Valley Elementary School in York, Pa., are receiving classroom instruction on the violin this school year. The district is initiating a four-year study to examine if violin lessons boost performance on standardized tests.
York Daily Record, 1/18/2009
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For Catholic Schools, Crisis and Catharsis
by Paul Vitello and Winnie Hu
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.
The New York Times, 1/17/2009
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Principal challenges transient students
by Alexis Stevens
Osborne High School junior Charlie Santiago has moved so many times since kindergarten, it gets hard to explain. Students come and go throughout the school year at Osborne, as migratory families move often in search of work. The school's transient rate is about 64 percent. But principal Steven Miletto doesn't believe in making excuses. And his mission of uniting a school with a less than stellar reputation is paying off.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 1/5/2009
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In Detroit, a lesson in same-sex schools
Detroit has been at the forefront of a growing but controversial movement that aims to boost student achievement by splitting the sexes into different schools. Now Boston officials are fighting to open the state's first single-gender public schools in more than a generation.
Boston Globe - James Vaznis, 1/2/2009
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Facebook face-off: Student, suspended for blog rant, sues
by Jennifer Mooney Piedra
It was a Friday night, and Katherine Evans, a senior at Pembroke Pines Charter High, was fed up with her English teacher. To vent her frustrations, she logged onto Facebook and started typing. Two months later, Evans -- an honors student with no disciplinary problems -- was suspended for three days for cyberbullying and disruptive behavior, pulled out of her Advanced Placement classes and ''forced into lesser-weighted honors classes,'' according to a federal lawsuit filed on her behalf this week by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Miamia Herald, 12/10/2008
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The Smokestack Effect- Toxic Air and America's Schools
by Blake Morrison and Brad Heath
Read USA Today's special report examining industrial pollution and toxic chemicals and their effect on public schools.
USA Today, 12/8/2008
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Giving Students Cash for Grades
While growing up in Daytona Beach, Fla., Roland Fryer understood the benefits of becoming the best basketball player or the fastest track athlete in the school. But what Fryer did not understand at the time were the benefits of becoming a good student, and he suspects many other students in cities across the nation now are just as unaware as he was then. To help these largely poor, minority students comprehend the value of working hard in class, Fryer has partnered with administrators in three urban school districts to offer students money in return for their classroom achievement.
U.S. News and World Report - Jessica Calefati, 11/28/2008
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Special report: The dangers of adolescents playing football with concussions
by Tom Wyrwich
Ben Zipp's memories return in flashes. He lives with headaches that never go away and a fog in his mind that makes studying nearly impossible. And he lives with questions of what he could have done to avoid it. Concussions in high-school football, like Zipp's, are nothing unusual. Studies estimate that as many as 47 percent of high-school football players have suffered a concussion, and 35 percent have suffered at least two.
The Seattle Times, 11/4/2008
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Online Grading Systems Mean No More Changing D's to B's
by Daniel de Vise
Parents and students in a growing number of Washington area schools can track fluctuations in a grade-point average from the nearest computer in real time, a ritual that can become as addictive as watching political polls or a stock-market index.
The Washington Post, 11/3/2008
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Kids in poorer districts tend to eat healthier
by Jennifer Sinco Kelleher
It's a little known paradox on Long Island: Students in school districts with more youngsters who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch tend to eat healthier in the cafeteria. Government reimbursements to make lunches affordable ease financial stress on poorer districts, which don't have to rely as heavily on snack sales as their wealthier counterparts.
Newsday, 10/26/2008
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The Lightning Rod
Michelle Rhee charged in as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools wielding BlackBerrys and data-and a giant axe. She has made a city with possibly the country's worst public schools ground zero for education reform, and attracted a cadre of young zealots some critics call ?Rhee-bots.? Now the changes that she insists schoolchildren need are colliding head-on with the political wants of adults.
The Atlantic Monthly - Clay Risen, 10/17/2008
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Middle school for boys part of a trend toward single-sex education
by Liz Bowie
The boys in the seventh-grade classroom wave their hands wildly and squirm in their seats, unable to contain their joy in a competition involving singular and plural nouns. In a struggling East Baltimore neighborhood, the middle-schoolers have begun their second year at an all-boys charter school whose creation marks a distinct shift in thinking about single-sex education in the public schools.
The Baltimore Sun, 10/12/2008
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Becoming a Bully Magnet: Why some kids grow up to be targets
by Claudia Kalb
Every parent wants to know the secret to school happiness: why is one kid well liked while another gets picked on? There's no recipe for social success among first graders. But a new study published this week in the Archives of General Psychiatry reveals some intriguing clues about why certain children land in the dreaded world of what science calls "peer victimization."
Newsweek, 10/7/2008
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A Boy's Booster: All-male special classes try to equalize learning
by Lisa Boone-Wood
In teacher Stephanie Lee's barracks, boys are taught in a way that is tailored to their learning styles and based on research of single-gender classrooms. There are nine boys in the class at a time. That allows Lee and the volunteers who help her give the boys more one-on-one time for reading, writing and computer games.
The Winston Salem Journal, 10/6/2008
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Review suggests more teacher misconduct at poorer schools in Pinellas and Hillsborough
by Ron Matus
When Stephanie Ragusa allegedly began having sex with a student, she was teaching in a school where half the students were low-income. When Debra Lafave was arrested for the same thing, she was teaching in a school where more than 60 percent were low-income. Coincidence? Maybe. But Pinellas and Hillsborough teachers punished by the state for serious misconduct appear more likely to have been working in high-poverty schools, a St. Petersburg Times review shows.
St. Petersburg Times, 9/29/2008
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Districts prepare full-time online K-12 schools under new state law
by Laura Green
Next school year, the first generation of Florida students can begin to earn a diploma from local public schools entirely online, without ever setting foot in a classroom from kindergarten through 12th grade. A new state law requires districts to create their own full-time virtual schools, collaborate with other districts or contract with providers approved by the state. The law is believed to be the most wide-ranging virtual mandate in the nation.
Palm Beach Post, 9/28/2008
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Oregon PE classes shift from running laps to learning skills
by Kimberly Melton
The next time you watch your kid's gym class, you may not see students doing laps and playing dodgeball. Try juggling and geocaching instead. As the state moves to teach fitness and nutrition to a new generation, hallowed physical education traditions are morphing into a more rigorous curriculum that emphasizes specific skills, building self-esteem and reducing alarming obesity rates. All that and textbooks, too. That means dodgeball is out. Hiking and geocaching are in.
The Oregonian, 9/28/2008
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Schools Sour on Giving Students Sweet Rewards
by Daniel de Vise
Schools around the Washington, D.C., region are quietly removing Jolly Ranchers and Tootsie Pops from the teacher's desk, ending a long tradition of rewarding classroom obeisance with candy.
The Washington Post, 9/21/2008
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Principal turns urban school around
by John Norton
Read this story about principal Andre Cowling and his quest to turn around Harvard Elementary school in Chicago, based on a visit by participants of EWA's recent regional seminar. Cowling fired all but two of the entire staff of the school and started from scratch.
The Pueblo Chieftain, 9/21/2008
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