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More than 2,000 students were bussed to a rally for Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain on Thursday morning in Defiance, Ohio, according to The Crescent-News. In a letter sent home with students asking for parental permission to attend the rally, Defiance City Schools Superintendent Mike Struble said the rally offered a historic opportunity in a town not known for being in the national spotlight.

“Putting party affiliation aside, I believe that this is a once in a lifetime educational opportunity for our students to see a presidential candidate in person,” Struble wrote. “It is a unique occasion to see the U.S. political process as it actually unfolds.”

Dave Bagley, superintendent of Central Local School District, said that the field trip was a learning tool, not a political endorsement from the district.

Campaign rallies may be a learning tool, but the McCain campaign has had its share of controversy colliding with the public schools. A McCain rally at a Fairfax, Va., school was moved following outcry from parents and school board members, who said that the event would violate a district ban on using school grounds for campaign activities during school hours.

Posted by Jeff Lambert at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A California ballot measure, Proposition 8, seeks to overturn same-sex marriage in the state, which has been legal since May 15 of this year. The California Teachers Association has donated $1 million to the No on Proposition 8 Campaign to help defeat the initiative, reports the Union Tribune.

In a statement on their Web site, the teachers’ union said, “California’s constitution should guarantee the same freedoms and rights to everyone – no one group should be singled out and have their rights taken away.”

Not all members of the union are happy with the $1 million donation. California teacher Randy Peart was quoted by ABC News10 saying, "It bothers me to spend my money on something I'm morally opposed to. Why not put that money into classrooms, into making a better place for these kids?"

Proposition 8 supporters claim that because schools are currently required to teach “respect” for marriage, they may be forced to teach respect for same-sex marriage.

Fourth-grade teacher Randy Schimpf said in the Union Tribune that if same-sex marriage continues in California, “there will be a time when we, as teachers, will be asked to teach that gay and lesbian marriages are normal.”

In a commercial opposing Proposition 8, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell refutes this claim.

“Proposition 8 has nothing to do with schools or kids,” O’Connell said. “Our schools aren't required to teach anything about marriage, and using kids to lie about that is shameful.”

Posted by Josh Cohen at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Dallas schools Superintendent Michael Hinojosa apologized to 375 teachers for recent layoffs to help offset an $84 million budget deficit, reports The Dallas Morning News. Critics say that the announcement came too late, and to the wrong audience—a group of business, community, and education leaders at an event sponsored by the Dallas Bar Association.

Hinojosa told the group that he wanted “to apologize to all the teachers that left and the teachers that stayed. Everyone was affected." Dale Kaiser, president of the NEA-Dallas employees association, said the apology should’ve been delivered directly to the teachers, parents, and students affected by the layoffs. Teachers have criticized Hinojosa for not making a public apology in recent weeks.

"Unfortunately, it's little solace to us because it's an afterthought," said Simone Rodgers, who was laid off last week from Weiss Elementary School after teaching for 13 years in the district. "It's like stepping on someone's foot and waiting a week later to say you're sorry."

Hinojosa also announced that almost none of the teachers who were laid off were bilingual educators, in an effort to continue serve students with limited English proficiency—now almost 34 percent of the district’s total enrollment. Not having resources for those students would be “academic malpractice,” Hinojosa said.

Posted by Jeff Lambert at 4:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

On Oct. 21, edweek.org provided a live Webcast of a debate at Teachers College in New York between the top education advisers to the presidential candidates—Stanford University education professor Linda Darling-Hammond for Sen. Barack Obama and former Arizona schools superintendent Lisa Graham Keegan for Sen. John McCain. The event provided one of the most detailed examinations to date of the candidates' education initiatives and philosophies. Perhaps not surpisingly, some of sharpest exchanges centered on issues related to teachers and, more specifically, boosting teacher quality. (Indeed, "teachers" and "teaching," along with "kids," were the most oft-uttered words in the discussion.) Here are the pertinent clips:

On teacher preparation and bringing the best and brightest into teaching:

On performance pay and career development:

On the role of Teach For America:

Edweek's Teacher Beat blog has some good additional analysis.

Watch the full archived Webcast of the debate here. Read the transcript here.

Bonus feature: How well do you think you know the candidates' positions on education? Try this nifty online game.

Posted by Anthony Rebora, teachermagazine.org at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Teacher pay for performance is no longer just a theoretical idea. USA Today reports that at least eight states, and dozens of districts, are experimenting with basing teacher salary increases and bonuses on student test performance. Some districts are using higher wages to attract teachers to hard-to-staff schools and teaching positions.

In Chicago, for example, teachers in select schools can earn as much as $8,000 in annual bonuses for improvements in students’ test results; while in Nashville, an incentive of up to $15,000 is being used to target middle school math teachers.

More dramatically, teachers in Washington, D.C. could potentially earn over $100,000 a year if a proposed “pay realignment” plan goes through. The catch is that teachers would have to give up tenure protections and work under a year long probationary period before earning big salaries.

Some preliminary research on performance pay has shown promising results. But, the idea has received mixed reactions from teachers, with a survey in January finding that “88% support bonuses for those who agree to work in hard-to-staff schools” but only “35% support them for improved test scores,” according to USA Today. The American Federation of Teachers supports pay raises for an entire teaching staff if test scores improve and for individuals if they get advanced degrees.

Posted by Josh Cohen at 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The Community School, a tiny school in Decatur, Ga., with a student body of ten, all of whom have autism spectrum disorder or related disorders, is achieving breakthrough results through use of a relatively new teaching method known as D.I.R./Floortime, according to a recent New York Times Magazine article.

D.I.R./Floortime –D.I.R stands for developmental, individual differences, relationship-based approach—was developed by professors of child psychology and behavioral science at George Washington University. The basis of the method is individualized development: Teachers and parents aim to build on an individual student’s interests instead of pushing them towards a particular set of goals or ideas. “The essence of Floortime,” the article explains, “is that a person learns best when self-motivated, when an inner drive sparks the acquisition of skills and knowledge.”

D.I.R is a departure from Applied Behavior Analysis, the approach employed by the majority of U.S. programs for autistic students. That method dictates that teachers and therapists use, “well-established techniques of reward and punishment to shape a student’s actions towards goals like toilet training, learning vocabulary or completing a puzzle.”

At The Community School, by contrast, “classes can look like debates between equals; school days can include board games, sports, plays, science experiments, music, art, ropes courses or rafting trips in which all students and teachers playfully compete, contribute and perform.”

“The idea is to harness a student’s energy and desire to learn,” the Times article notes. “As a student interacts with peers and teachers, solves problems and expresses his ideas, his behavior should naturally begin to lose its rough edges.”

According to the school’s director Dave Nelson, the students are making remarkable gains under the D.I.R. method. He says student attendance rates are higher, their emotional regulation is better, and their “suicidal ideation” isn’t happening at T.C.S. Parents corroborate Mr. Nelson’s reports of success.

Posted by Josh Cohen at 11:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Faced with the extinction of their language, the Northern Arapaho have opened a language immersion school, reports The New York Times. Only about 200 of the almost 9000-member Wyoming Native American tribe are fluent speakers of their language and none is younger than 55.

The Arapaho Language Lodge, now serving 22 students in pre-kindergarten through 1st grade, plans to add classes annually as students graduate. The school's sponsors hope it will help generate interest in Northern Arapaho traditions. The tribe's low fluency is influenced by more than a century of U.S. Native American policy that attempted to “Americanize” native tribes by devaluing their languages and cultures.

Tribal officials hope the school will improve life on Wind River Indian Reservation, enhance cultural pride, and community participation. Currently, the tribe is combating a 78 percent unemployment rate among household heads and a 52 percent dropout rate among students.

The idea of an immersion school was spurred by Helen Cedar Tree, the tribe's oldest living member at 96, who criticized the council of elders for not promoting the Arapaho language among younger members. “She said, ‘Look at all of you guys talking English, and you know your own language. It’s like the white man has conquered us,’” Gerald Redman Sr., chairman of the council of elders, told the Times. “It was a wake-up call.”

Posted by Jeff Lambert at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The election can be a touchy subject to broach in the classroom. In Wisconsin, however, teachers are making an effort to discuss the election with their students, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. A recent workshop at the University of Wisconsin exploring how to engage students in healthy political debate drew 180 classroom and student teachers from 30 school districts across the state.

David Ross, a government teacher at Madison High School, has his students talking about campaign issues that are not for the faint of heart, including same-sex marriage, abortion, and health care. His students are required to research the positions before taking a stand on them. “Some of it gets a little rough,” said Ross. “But on the other hand, there’s a lot of learning and growth that can happen if they don’t feel attacked personally.”

His students are mostly supporting Obama and the school’s Young Democrats club is thriving. Ross has had no luck reviving the Young Republicans club, which was active last year.

Meanwhile, USA Today reports that in 15 of the last 17 presidential elections students have predicted the outcome. Who appears to be the winner this year? According to Scholastic’s straw poll, taken once every four years, 57% of the 250,000 students who voted chose Senator Barack Obama and 39% chose Senator John McCain.

Posted by Elizabeth Rich at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A Miami-Dade County charter school is reaching out to students in unique ways, from hostage simulations to military-style fitness drills, reports The Miami Herald. Hialeah Educational Academy preps students for careers in law enforcement and fire rescue, one of dozens of public vocational academies cropping up across Florida.

“Career academies give students a niche,” said Gene Bottoms, vice president of the Southern Regional Education Board. “They connect them to a group of teachers, to a career focus. It’s very beneficial for the students who have not been able to find a place for themselves in high school.”

The students at Hialeah—made up of 98 freshmen, split evenly between girls and boys—get a mixed curriculum of public service work and traditional high school classes. But even in math class, students’ word problems use crime scenes and arson investigations as examples.

''In a way, we're growing our own police officers,'' said Hialeah Police Chief Mark Overton, who sits on the school's academic committee. "We're mentoring them.''

Posted by Jeff Lambert at 5:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A group of San Francisco 1st graders took a field trip to City Hall with a twist: They went to surprise their lesbian teacher on her wedding day, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The students blew bubbles and tossed rose petals outside the main doors, and then crowded their teacher with hugs as she and her new wife exited the ceremony.

The field trip occurred less than a month before voters in California will make a decision on Proposition 8, which aims to outlaw gay marriage and prevent students from learning about same-sex marriage in school.

Interim director of Creative Arts Charter School, Liz Jaroflow, condoned the parent-proposed excursion, calling it a “teachable moment” and stating, “it's certainly an issue I would be willing to put my job on the line for." The 18 students who attended had parental permission. Two students whose families chose to opt out were placed in another first grade classroom for the 90-minute duration.

Still, proponents of Prop. 8 lambasted the activity. "It's just utterly unreasonable that a public school field trip would be to a same-sex wedding," Chip White, press secretary for the Yes on 8 campaign, said. "This is overt indoctrination of children who are too young to have an understanding of its purpose."

Parents at Creative Arts who supported the trip are planning to make a video with the children describing what marriage means to them. One attending six-year-old said simply, “it’s people falling in love. You stay with someone the rest of your life.”

Posted by Liana Heitin at 4:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)

A new study has found that the U.S. is not effectively developing strong math skills in boys or girls, reports The New York Times. “We’re living in a culture . . . that’s telling everybody that only Asians and nerds do math,” said Janet Mertz, the study’s lead author.

Rather than looking at standardized test scores, the study, which will be published in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, relied on data from prestigious math competitions, such as the International Mathematical Olympiads. The results show that the majority of U.S. participants are immigrants or children of immigrants from countries that prize mathematical talent. Zuming Feng, who grew up in China and is now the leader of the United States Olympiad team, says that “in China math is regarded as an essential skill that everyone should try to develop at some level. Parents in China view math as parents in the United States do baseball, hockey, and soccer.”

Girls with exceptional math aptitude are even more rarely identified in the U.S. than boys. Since 1974, when the U.S. began participating in the International Olympiad, only three American girls have participated. Bulgaria has had nine girl participants and Soviet Union/Russia has had 13.

Melanie Wood, a former Olympiad, states that being a math whiz is more challenging socially for girls. “There’s that image of what it is to be a nerdy boy in mathematics. It’s still in some way socially unacceptable for boys, but at least it’s a position and it’s clearly defined.”

Posted by Liana Heitin at 3:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Teachers at various points across the country have come under fire recently for showing their support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The Virginia Education Association sent out an e-mail encouraging its members to wear “Obama blue” last week, prompting outrage among state Republicans about political influence in schools. In New York City, meanwhile, the Department of Education has clamped down on a United Federation of Teachers plan to have teachers wear pro-Obama buttons in their classrooms. And a group of teachers at Soquel High School in Santa Cruz, CA chose to wear “Educators for Obama” buttons in school. These events have re-raised issues of a teacher’s rights to free speech and the place of politics in the classroom.

John Hadley, a pro-McCain parent whose daughter attends Soquel, was angered by the button-wearing teachers, saying, "[They] lose their free-speech rights when they go into a classroom. They are allowed to stick to the curriculum, not political views.”

According to the San Jose Mercury News, under California law, limits on teachers political activities at school are set by districts. In general, legal decisions in the state the have held that teaches are permitted to wear political buttons to school but not during class time. At this point, the Soquel teachers have decided not to wear theirs.

In defense of their in-school Obama support, several New York City teachers cited a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The ruling, which focused on political protest in school, stated that as long as the actions weren’t “disruptive and did not impinge upon the rights of others … [the activity was] within the protection of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth.”

The NY DOE responded to the button handouts by saying, "Schools are not a place for politics and not a place for staff to wear political buttons … We don't want a school or school staff advocating for any political position or candidate to students and we don't want students feeling intimidated because they might hold a different belief or support a different candidate than their teachers.”

Update 10/13/08: Teachers Union Sues Over Political Button Ban

Posted by Josh Cohen at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Dallas teachers can expect to hear as early as this week whether they are among the nearly 1,100 layoffs approved by the city’s school board on October 2, according to The Dallas Morning News. Teachers will account for half of the layoffs, as the district tries to fill an $84 million shortfall in this year’s budget.

Many teachers told the newspaper they felt frustrated by district administrators’ handling of the crisis.“They don’t care about us,” said elementary school educator Kimberly Stephens. “If they did, they would have found another way to help clean up this mess.”

“I’ve always been proud to be a Dallas Independent School District alum, but today I am ashamed,” said Richard Goodwin, a geography teacher and 31-year veteran of the school district. “If district Superintendent Michael Hinojosa were the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, he would be cut.”

The layoffs, which the school board passed in a 5-2 vote with one abstention, are expected to save the district about $30 million, according to The Houston Chronicle. But even combined with $38 million from other budget cuts, they still leave the district $15 million short.

Posted by Jeff Lambert at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This Friday marks the end of the 27th annual Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read, sponsored by the American Library Association. Having had a week to consider the implications of banning books, it’s worth asking: Why do books come off the shelves in the first place? What are the underlying factors perpetuating censorship?

In an NPR story about book banning, Judith Krug of the ALA suggests it’s a matter of fear, and that people who want to ban books are “not afraid of the book; they're afraid of the ideas. The materials that are challenged and banned say something about the human condition."

For Krug, this is nowhere more evident than in the case of John Steinbeck’s "The Grapes of Wrath," which was banned and burned in 1939 in Kern County, Calif., where the end of the story takes place. Officials there thought Steinbeck unfairly portrayed the county’s treatment of migrant workers, and denounced the book as “libel and lie.”

This censorship may have been an attempt to protect the people of Kern County—or to control them—though as Kern County librarian Gretchen Knief wrote at the time, “Ideas don't die because a book is forbidden reading." The book ban was relinquished after a year and a half in Kern County, but "The Grapes of Wrath" has faced opposition in schools until as recently as 1993.

Posted by Liana Heitin at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)