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According to The Chicago Tribune, school administrators are asking parents to trust their children’s school when it comes to creating class lists. It’s not uncommon for parents to make phone calls, write letters, and schedule meetings in hopes of persuading administrators to place their child in a specific classroom. Some Chicago school officials, however, are discouraging parents from making such requests, emphasizing it’s not a popularity contest.

“I’m bright enough to realize parents talk at soccer fields and baseball fields, but you have to realize your experience with Teacher A may be very different from someone else’s [experience with] Teacher A,” Northbrook Junior High School principal Scott Meeks said.

Parents who try to guess which teacher is “best” often find themselves regretting their decision, Mark Friedman, Libertyville Elementary School District 7 superintendent, said.

Not all parents are buying this. After watching her son struggle with a laid-back teacher for a year, parent Tomi Hall now sees the merit in making teacher requests, even for kindergarten. “A teacher can make or break you,” she said.

Parent Denita Ricci disagrees. “I think [children] need to learn to deal with people who are different than them, just like an employer.”

Posted by Vicki Kriz at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Are cell phones, video games, and other technology gadgets to blame for students’ poor critical thinking skills? Educators in Texas think so, because fewer than half of North Texas students pass the short-response section of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), The Dallas Morning News reports.

Most of the TAKS consist of multiple choice questions, asking students only to fill in a bubble—a task they seem to ace. But students from low-performing districts to high-achieving ones stumble on the short-response section.

Some educators and testing experts say the low scores reveal a lack of critical thinking and communication skills. They also point to students’ shorter attention spans, on which they blame cell phones, video games, and less recreational reading. And teachers are frustrated because they feel pressured to teach skills most emphasized on the tests but an even bigger undertaking is how to engage uninterested students. “They can read but they can’t think critically about what they’ve read and apply it to the world around them,” says Sue Warriner, a 7th grade English teacher. The biggest challenge is “making it relevant,” she adds.

Posted by Rachel Gang at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Watch out Pearl Jam! Three Seattle elementary school teachers who make up the hot “kindie” rock band Recess Monkey are hitting the national music scene to promote their new album, “Tabby Road,” The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports.

Guitarist Drew Holloway, drummer Daron Henry, and bassist Jack Forman, who met while teaching at the University Child Development School in Seattle’s University District, have found a way to combine two things they love most—music and teaching. They weave music into their lessons, run a music camp, and incorporate contributions from their students on their recordings.

The trio’s biggest fans are their students, who hang outside the band’s rehearsals at UCDS, but it’s also “all-age music,” says 11-year-old Stella Jensen-Roberts. “It’s about kids stuff, but parents like it, too,” she adds. The band’s “Tabby Road” album is reportedly difficult to categorize but shows a stylistic dept similar to The Beatles, the trio’s main influence.

Recess Monkey kicked off its national tour last Saturday at Seattle’s ACT Theatre and will play in 16 different cites over the next couple of weeks. Then they have to get back to school.

Posted by Rachel Gang at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In order to enter kindergarten this fall in Needville, Texas, a 5-year-old boy will need a haircut. Parents Kenny Arocha and Michelle Betenbaugh are outraged that the school board in Fort Bend County, which has a strict policy against long hair, denied their son’s admittance into school, reports The Houston Chronicle.

Native Americans, Arocha and Bentenbaugh appealed to the school board, citing that the shoulder length locks are for religious reasons and are a well known practice in Native American culture.

At the school board meeting, Superintendent Curtis Rhoades called the issue “premature” and said the boy is not technically a student in the district. The family, however, is in the process of moving to the Needville district and plans to take the matter to court if necessary.

Posted by Rachel Gang at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

With the number of special education students in public schools higher than ever, totaling 600,000 students in New York City alone, many parents worry that school staff members may not be properly trained to handle behavior problems, reports The New York Times. Dr. John Miller, father of a 12 year-old boy who has Asperger’s syndrome, said that teachers restrained his son for 20 minutes on at least one occasion, and the boy often refused to go to school because “he thought the school was trying to kill him.” In response to the alleged mishandled restraint, the Millers are suing the district for the cost of therapy.

The Millers’ case points to a general concern for teachers and parents of children with developmental and psychiatric problems over when and under what circumstances should physical restraint and seclusion be used. Carrying out the appropriate course of discipline can be quite the challenge for the classroom teacher, who is responsible for the safety of all 30 children, says Patti Ralabate, a special education expert at the National Education Association.

While federal law requires that schools develop individual behavioral plans for each student, no standards exist to decide when physical restraint and seclusion is appropriate. Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, recently adopted tighter restraining standards, while California, Iowa, and New York are in the process of doing the same.

Posted by Rachel Gang at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

A Saudi-funded school in Virginia is facing harsh criticism for using textbooks containing inflammatory material about religious martyrdom and comparing Jews and Christians to apes and pigs, according to a Washington Post review of the books.

The pre-K-12 Islamic Saudi Academy, which serves Washington-area students from Muslim communities, including the children of Saudi diplomats, has used the controversial textbooks since the mid-1990’s, but said they ordered revisions in 2006. Administrators whited out words, cut paragraphs, and created makeshift books but admit they may have missed inappropriate content. They promised to have a new line of books for the coming academic year.

Meanwhile, the State Department is now involved after the city of Fairfax questioned whether the county should continue leasing property to the school. Last month, a U.S. religion commission also called on the State Department to close the school, criticizing it for advocating violence and teaching religious intolerance.

The State Department has not yet responded to the county’s request. “We will wait to see what changes have been made,” said department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos.

Posted by Danielle Woods at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A performing arts charter school in Hawthorne, Calif., that many struggling students saw as a saving grace may be closing as a result of a bureaucratic snafu, reports The Los Angeles Times.

Media Arts Academy Charter School, also known as “Hip Hop High,” received notice July 1 from the Centinela Valley Union High School district that its charter had expired and had not been renewed. Principal Jennifer Murphy says she thought charter ran through 2009 and suspects the district intentionally neglected to warn her about the expiration. "They literally have been lying in wait to do this," she said at a district school board meeting

Many of the students at Hip Hop High had failed out of other schools but were inspired by the charter’s music-based curriculum and supportive environment. “You’re shutting our dreams down,” one student stated at the board meeting. "This is the only place we can be ourselves and express ourselves," said another.

The district’s superintendent insists that the closing was not part of an agenda against the school but simply a matter of regulations. "Their application expired. They basically ran the clock out," he said. Media Arts’ staff is exploring legal options, but may have to apply for a new charter.

Posted by Rachel Gang at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Separate incidents at two schools in Westchester County, New York, question the appropriateness of school discipline as parents and educators debate whose responsibility it is to discipline students. An Ardsley school board member and parent of a 14-year-old special education student resigned her post after other parents complained that school officials were too tolerant of her son’s repeated bullying and threats of a massacre and bombing, according to The New York Times.

The middle school boy received one-day suspensions on four different occasions, a lax consequence that parents of other middle schoolers said were given because of the mother’s board position. Maryanne Reda, parent and volunteer cafeteria monitor, witnessed the boy call another aid a “Nazi,” and says that he received special treatment. “The child’s behavior was quite disruptive, but it appeared there were no consequences,” she said.

Another parent is defending her son David Turano for exposing his backside at a June graduation ceremony from Briarcliff High School in Briarcliff Manor, New York, because she claims the school treated her son unfairly over the years. The school responded to Turano’s exposure by revoking his diploma but later returned it. Although Turano pleaded not guilty, his hearing is scheduled for July 24.

Posted by Rachel Gang at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (23)

Would you voluntarily give up your teaching seniority and tenure rights for some extra green? D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee hopes teachers in the nation’s capitol will. She has proposed a contract that would arrange such a swap, giving mid-level teachers who earn $62,000 annually the opportunity to earn over $100,000, two anonymous union members told The Washington Post. Such a pay raise would make D.C. teachers among the highest-paid in the nation.

The proposal would establish a color-coded two-tiered pay system in which teachers in the red tier would receive traditional raises and remain eligible for tenure, while teachers who voluntarily enter the green tier would lose tenure rights in favor of potentially hefty raises and bonuses possibly funded by foundations, including Broad, Dell, and Gates. “Green” teachers would be evaluated yearly and would only be allowed to continue teaching if they passed their review and raised student test scores.

Rhee hopes the plan will be seen as a way to ensure District teachers are “the most highly compensated and competent” in the country. Union members, however, expressed doubts that teachers would agree to such a trade. “You may be trading off your future, your tenure, your job security,” a union member said. “When you trade that, it seems to me you’re not getting much.”

Posted by Vicki Kriz at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Although they may gripe about their annual photo when yearbooks come out, all students really care about is their place in it, first and last name, forever to be remembered if only within its pages. Students of the Black Student Union at Charter Oak High School in Covina, Calif., whose black population is less than 5 percent, will not be accurately remembered in this year’s yearbook; names that labeled their group photo were not their own, but rather ones that could be considered racially offensive, reported The Los Angeles Times.

School officials say they have spoken to the student believed to be responsible for labeling the photo with filler names such as “Tay Tay Shaniqua” and “Crisphy Nanos” and left the page uncorrected. Other names on the student groups page were made up, however according to the school’s principal, “the BSU ones were what I would consider the most offensive.”

The school printed stickers of the correct names for students to use to cover the fake ones; however, with school already out, students have to go back to the school to receive them. School board President Joseph Probst is unsure of how to clear up what he says is an “isolated incident.” “It’s not bringing a weapon, not bringing a gun. Does it rise to a hate crime? That’s going to take some looking into before we do that,” he said. And one nagging question remains, what adult was on duty?

Posted by Vicki Kriz at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)