Kindergarten, federal grants and fundraisers for Haiti

by Kalen Ponche

Good morning. Here are a few things that are happening in the education world today:

– Wentzville School District Superintendent Terry Adams is expected to make a recommendation to the board on whether to offer full-day kindergarten in the district, at least for the next two years tonight. The meeting will be at 7 p.m. in the district’s administrative center at One Campus Drive in Wentzville. The board of education will also get an update on the opinions of the 400 or more parents and community members who attended a meeting last week to talk about how the district can accomodate growing enrollment. To read more about that, check out my story here.

– Francis Howell’s Board of Education will meet at 7 p.m.

– Make plans to attend a meeting with Fort Zumwalt Superintendent Bernard DuBray at 7 p.m. Feb. 8 at West High School. If your students attend West High School, West Middle School, and Dardenne, Ostmann, Pheasant Point, Rock Creek, or Twin Chimneys Elementary School, you’re invited to sip coffee with district administrators and hear about the accomplishments of district schools.

– The state submitted it’s application for a piece of the $4 billion in federal grants that’s available through Race to the Top program this week. We should learn exactly what’s in the state’s application later this week. Even if the state doesn’t get the $743,451,964 it asked for, in a press release the Department of Education said it would use the application as a blueprint for both redesigning the department and “driving educational reform over the next decade.” According to an executive summary you can find here, those changes include adopting the common core standards for math, reading, speaking and writing, developing models for perfomance-based teacher assessment systems, and creating a system where teachers and leaders can have common planning and collaboration time.

– Tell us, what’s happening in your schools? Are people organizing efforts to help the people in Haiti?

Top 100 High Schools

U.S. News and World Report released its list of top 1oo high schools in the nation in December.  Just one school from Missouri made the list,

Midwest parents spend about $11,000 a year on infants

A study conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture shows that an average family of four in the midwest would pay in a year between $11,000 and $14,000 on their younger child, depending on his or her age. It costs more to rear a child in the urban northeast and west and the lowest amount in rural and southern areas, the study found.

From the study:

 

 

 

Much of the regional difference in expenses on a child was related to housing costs

and child care and education expenses. Total housing expenses on a child were highest in the

Urban West and Urban Northeast and lowest in rural areas. Child care and education expenses

were highest for families in the Urban Northeast. Child-rearing transportation expenses were

highest for families in the urban West and rural areas. This likely reflects the longer traveling

distances in these areas.

 

The largest amount of money went towards a child’s housing, with food, childcare and education following behind. Does this seem like a lot to you? What do you think?

 

 

 

Dental check ups at your school

Nurses in the St. Charles school district talked to me last week about the number of students they see that complain about tooth aches and have signs of decay on their teeth and gums.

Announcement

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on Wednesday released information on what steps the states will have to take to get the second round of stimulus funding dedicated to schools.

Included in this are big changes in the information reported to the federal government, including tracking teacher effectiveness through assessments

From the press release:  

Specifically, the law requires states to show:

 

Improvements in teacher effectiveness and commitments that all schools have highly qualified teachers;

Progress toward college and career-ready standards and rigorous assessments that will improve both teaching and learning;

Improvements in achievement in low-performing schools, by providing intensive support and effective interventions in those schools.

That they can gather information to improve student learning, teacher performance, and college and career-readiness through enhanced data systems that track progress.

In addition, states will have to report data about how teachers are rated and evaluated. All of the information that has to be given  to the state would also have to be provided to the public.

To learn more visit http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2009/04/04012009.html

I’ll be talking with local superintendents to find out what this means to how they currently report information about teachers and what this might mean for teacher evaluations in the coming weeks.

School leaders eye stimulus dollars

As the Missouri Legislature wades through the details of the $4.3 billion the state will receive from the federal stimulus act, local education leaders are looking at ways to spend the money.

Some of the funds will come directly to existing federal programs like special education or programs for lower-income students.

School administrators say while they would be glad to receive an infusion of money, figuring out what to spend it on is problematic.

“When we’re making decisions for how best to use that funding we also have to be cognizant that that money will not be there in two years,” said St. Charles School District superintendent Randy Charles. “We have to be very careful about committing those funds to recurring expenditures such as staffing or new programs because once that funding goes away, we’d have to find a way to fund a continuation.”

Read More

Teen sex myth busted

There’s a story in the New York Times that busts the myth that teenagers across the country are out of control having rampant sex. According to the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, that’s not the case.  A recent study shows that less than half  (47.1 percent) of high school students have had sex, which is less than the 51.8 percent in 1991.

From the story:

A less recent report suggests that teenagers are also waiting longer to have sex than they did in the past. A 2002 report from the Department of Health and Human Services found that 30 percent of 15- to 17-year-old girls had experienced sex, down from 38 percent in 1995. During the same period, the percentage of sexually experienced boys in that age group dropped to 31 percent from 43 percent.

The rates also went down among younger teenagers. In 1995, about 20 percent said they had had sex before age 15, but by 2002 those numbers had dropped to 13 percent of girls and 15 percent of boys.

“There’s no doubt that the public perception is that things are getting worse, and that kids are having sex younger and are much wilder than they ever were,” said Kathleen A. Bogle, an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice at La Salle University. “But when you look at the data, that’s not the case.”

Read the rest of the story here

Thoughts on this anyone? Do the perceived current teenage norms when it comes to sex differ from the norms that adults remember growing up? Students do you get the sense that adults think all kids are having sex?