Education News from Washington Post

Fairfax County police officer Lou Munoz has been patrolling the hallways of Westfield High School — “the front lines,” as he calls them — for eight years. He oversees the safety and security of 2,800 students. On any given day, he might deal with a traffic accident in the student parking lot, break up a fight in a classroom or arrest a teenager for possession of marijuana.

KIPP, formerly known as the Knowledge Is Power Program, has had more success than any other large educational organization in raising the achievement of low-income students, both nationally and in the District. But many good educators, burned by hopeful stories in the past, have wondered whether KIPP was for real.

Here's a video about a Linden High School sophomore in California, who caught a teacher believed to be stealing money from student backpacks.

The video from from ABC News10 KXTV in Sacramento says that student Justine Betti recently became determined to find out what was happening after kids in her gym class began noticing money was missing from their backpacks.

Some people, not surprisingly, weren't thrilled with my post titled "Welfare for the rich? Private school tax credit programs expanding." Here Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, looks at the criticism and gives us a primer on private school tax credit programs, which he calls "neovouchers." He's the author of the 2008 book "NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling."

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and Stephen Hawking and will.i.am and Ashton Kutcher and Michael Bloomberg think that all students should learn basic computer code. That, at least, is what they say in this video at code.org, a new non-profit foundation dedicated to growing computer programming education.

In the you-can't-make-up-this-stuff category: Schools in a Pennsylvania county were put on lockdown after a receptionist misunderstood the words of the theme song to "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," which a student had as his cellphone greeting, and thought the teen was going to commit violence.

It's hard to look at this any other way: University of Virginia President Teresa Sullivan is being set up by the governing board to fail.

First, a little history. Last June, Helen Dragas, rector of the Board of Visitors, told Sullivan that she had to quit after less than two years on the job because the board wanted her gone. Nobody had told Sullivan about any big problems before then, and, as it turned, out, Sullivan had the support of the school community, which rose up and forced the board to reinstate her 18 days after telling her to leave.

How much does school reform really address what goes on in the classroom? In answer to that question, here's a piece from a teacher who will give you some of the bad news. It was written by Michele Kerr, a second-career teacher, credentialed in math, history, and English, with a master's in education from Stanford University, She teaches math -- everything from prep for the California High School Exit Examination to pre-calculus at Kennedy High School in Fremont, CA. This appeared on Larry Cuban's blog on School Reform and Classroom Practice.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — The University of Virginia’s president and governing board leader have, in public, maintained an air of united collegiality for the past eight months, hoping to move beyond the summer’s leadership crisis.

Here's the email that Wallace D. Loh, president of the University of Maryland, sent out to the school community about how federal budget cuts (forced by the sequester) will affect the school.

March 1, 2013

Dear University of Maryland community:

Today, the $85 billion across-the-board federal spending cuts to defense and discretionary domestic programs -- known as "sequestration" -- are expected to go into force amid the continuing fiscal impasse in Washington, D.C.

It will directly affect two critical areas of the University: financial aid and funded research. Although the full impact of the cuts may not be clear for a few months, we are prepared to redeploy our limited resources to help tide over, as best we can, those who are most vulnerable to the financial consequences of sequestration.

Reductions in federal work-study aid will affect over 200 of our undergraduates. The most at risk are in Maryland Pathways, a program that assists academically talented students from low-income backgrounds. To them, the University of Maryland offers this assurance: you will not have to leave the University in the coming year because of sequestration. We will find private funds to replace the lost aid, so that the current federal budget stalemate does not derail your education.

Sequestration will affect in different ways the approximately 1,500 graduate research assistants and 2,300 research faculty and staff whose salaries are supported partly or wholly by grants from over a dozen federal funding agencies. The University will work with colleges and research centers to help buffer, on a case-by-case basis, the varying impacts of cuts by different agencies. To our research assistants who are jeopardized by sequestration, the University will find ways to provide you with temporary bridge support. We want you to stay on track with your graduate education.

We do not yet know the full force of federal austerity on Maryland's economy, which is heavily dependent on federal and military spending. Therefore, we do not yet know the ripple effects on the state's budget for higher education next year. Meanwhile, we continue to work with our elected officials in Annapolis to keep the tuition increase low; to fund salary merit increases that we have not had in four years; and to support expanded enrollments in science and engineering.

I will keep you informed as sequestration and the state budget process unfold. We are a campus family. We must stand together to help each other through these difficult and uncertain times. I am confident that our nation, our state, and our university will come through this latest round of fiscal brinkmanship.

Sincerely,

Wallace D. Loh
President, University of Maryland

The Prince George’s County Board of Education on Friday began interviewing about 10 candidates who want to run the Washington region’s third-largest school system.

The board is trying to find a permanent replacement for former superintendent William R. Hite Jr., who left last summer to take the top job in Philadelphia.

The next D.C. teachers union contract will give principals and teachers greater flexibility to choose longer school days and a longer school year, Chancellor Kaya Henderson told the D.C. Council’s Education Committee on Friday.

The Prince George’s County Board of Education sent over a $1.7 billion budget to County Executive Rushern L. Baker III on Friday that sets aside money for raises for teachers and other staff members, provides more resources for principals to decide how money is spent in their schools and expands secondary school reform programs.

If you've been listening and/or reading at all about politics, you've surely heard folks (like Republican Joe Scarborough on "Morning Joe") talk about how the Republican Party is in big trouble. On the ropes, even, put there by a tough-talking and tough-acting President Obama on issue after issue.

The Fairfax County School Board approved a wide-ranging study of gifted education late Thursday as the school system mulls the future of its programs for the brightest students.

The study of the so-called advanced academic program will help the board ensure that it is “aligned with the best practices in K-12 gifted education.”

The chairman of University System of Maryland Board of Regents said Friday that he has “unequivocal, unconditional” regret over the board’s failure to follow the state’s open-meeting law during deliberations last fall over an athletic conference switch.

Milan Patel, a 17-year-old senior at Palm Harbor University High School in Palm Harbor, Fla., shared this poem that he sent in with his application to the University of Florida's honors program. It was written in response to this essay prompt: "Write a poem about your most embarrassing moment."

The District must be more urgent and creative about tackling its rampant truancy problem, D.C. Council members said Thursday, pointing out that its efforts thus far have reached only a fraction of chronically absent students.

Now that we know that the SAT is going to be redesigned, let's look at some of the common myths that still prevail about the college admissions test, despite volumes of research to the contrary.

These were written by Bob Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, or FairTest, a nonprofit organization dedicated to stopping the misuse of standardized tests.

Arlington County superintendent Patrick K. Murphy proposed a $520 million spending plan Thursday that would increase employee salaries while eliminating about 60 positions, including custodians, special education assistants, and employees working with teen parents.