2006 Legislative Survey from Delegate Bill Howell

Saturday's mail has brought me Delegate Bill Howell's newsletter which announced that the General Assembly will convene on January 11th. The newsletter included a survey for feedback from the 28th District on issues ranging from education, taxes, and government responsibilities. It also asks if you want to be a part of Howell's advisory committee. While I don't know if I will be accepted, I think this would be great opportunity to get involved at the state level and influence the policymakers that I hear about in with my Educational Leadership, Policy, and Planning program at the College of William and Mary.

On the survey the following educational items are asked:

* Should Virginia require all elementary and secondary school teachers to pass periodic competency test to ensure they are current and knowledgeable in the subject matter they are teaching our children? Y or N

* Currently, Virginia serves 100% of the 24,000 at-risk four year old pre-kindergartners. Do you support expanding these programs to non-at-risk children, including those from middle- and upper income- families, at a cost to Virginia taxpayers of over $400 million a year? Y or N

* In an effort to further focus funding on educational instruction, should Virginia require schools to make sure at least 65% of state education money is spent directly on our children in the classroom? Y or N

I don't know if we should require additional testing for teachers. Is there other states that require periodic testing or other professions? Keep in mind that Virginia's recertification program requires teachers to earn 180 professional points or 2 college classes renewal period. Maybe what needs to be done is that the recertification program should be changed to just college courses rather than inhouse professional development. What are the projected costs to implement these tests?

As for expanding the early education programs to non-at-risk students, how many more teachers and classrooms would that entail? Is there a need for it? Do these families want it? Would the at-risk populations be short changed in anyway? Again what would be the costs involved in expanding the program?

As for funding on educational instruction, what is the percentage now? Why 65%? Is there a cost analysis vs. acheivement outcomes that can be used to judge effectiveness of money spent?

I obviously need more answers to these questions. Virginia Education Association did have have a legislative update but I am sure in the next couple of days they will have opinions on all of these questions; however, the VEA did have agenda for the February 6th Lobby Day:

VEA Will Initiate:

1. Bring Virginia’s Teacher Salary to the National Average

A. National Average — Policy of Commonwealth — Virginia’s teachers are paid at a rate $2,057, or 4.31 percent, below the national average, despite the fact that the per capita personal income of Virginians exceeds the national average by $2,192, or 6.97 percent. The VEA shall initiate legislation that will establish meeting or exceeding the national average teacher salary as the policy of this wealthy state.

B. Language Requiring Progress — The General Assembly increased K-12 education funding by $1.28 billion in the 2004-06 biennium. The increase in state per-pupil funding far exceeded increases in teacher salaries. The VEA shall initiate the introduction of budget amendments to include language requiring localities to use the appropriated funds for salaries.

C. 4.5% Budget Amendment — It is time for the General Assembly to step up to the plate and appropriate the state share of a salary increase that will track Virginia towards a national competitive teacher salary. A 4.5% increase for two years will bring Virginia’s average teacher salary to the national average, and VEA shall initiate action to amend the budget for this purpose.

2. Retiree Health Care Credit — The VEA shall initiate legislation which will:

A. Increase the monthly health insurance credit for retired school employees from $2.50 per year of service to $4 per year of service in order to mirror the health care credit given retired state employees. If state employees move from $4 to $6 in the 2006 session, school employees should receive the same increased benefit.

B. Remove the 30-year cap on health insurance credit.

C. Expand the availability of this health insurance credit benefit to education support professionals.

3. Phased Increase in the Virginia Retirement System (VRS) Multiplier from 1.7 to 2.0 Over Six Years (0.05 percent per year), and increase the retirement benefit of current retirees by 1 percent for each of the next six years.

The provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act requiring a fully qualified teacher for every classroom and the anticipated retirement of 40% of teachers in the next five years add urgency to the commonwealth’s need to retain qualified teachers in the current era of shortages.The VRS is among the best-managed public employee retirement funds in the nation; however, the retirement benefits provided to school employees lag behind those offered in many other states and behind the benefits offered to other categories of personnel in VRS-administered defined benefit retirement plans (LEORS, SPORS, VaLORS and JRS).The VEA phased-in increase in the formula would offer a strong incentive to teachers near retirement age to remain in the classroom, reducing the teacher shortage and offering well deserved retirement security to retired educators.

4. Bus Speed LimitThe VEA shall seek legislation to have speed limits for school buses in Virginia amended. In this amendment, the limit of 35 miles per hour, on roadways where the speed limit is 55 miles per hour, will be increased to the maximum speed limit allowed of 45 miles per hour, and completely eliminated on roadways where the speed limit exceeds 55 miles per hour.

5. Realistic Rebenchmarking of the Standards of Quality (SOQ) Rebenchmarking is the routine (biennial) assessment of the cost of funding the SOQ. Article VIII, Section 2 of the Virginia Constitution states, "Standards of Quality for the several school divisions shall be determined and prescribed from time to time by the Board of Education, subject to revision only by the General Assembly.” The Board makes its request, which reflects the cost of maintaining the commonwealth’s minimum foundation program. The variables of staffing ratios, number of students, salaries, fringe benefits, prevailing support costs and inflation factors are included in this calculation. Approximately 90% of the Direct Aid to public education is SOQ funding. The VEA supports full funding of the SOQ.

6. Virginia Pre-School Initiative (VPI) A. Requiring ALL publicly funded preschool teachers – not just those employed by public schools – to hold a bachelor’s degree and have specialized training in early childhood.

B. Increasing per pupil funding for VPI to account for inflation, adequately compensate teachers, assist localities with costs of facilities, and create parity with Head Start.

7. VEA Will Oppose Defined Contribution VRS OptionAs long as VRS is a defined benefit plan, recipients can depend on their promised benefit plus cost of living adjustments (C.O.L.A.) regardless of market performance. Educators are better off in a defined benefit (DB) plan than in a defined contribution (DC) plan for the following reasons: DB plan benefits do not decrease when the market falls.Many DC plan participants have seen 40% - 60% reductions in their account balances and therefore in their benefits. A DB plan offers a guaranteed benefit and a disability benefit program but a DC plan does not. At career’s end, educators deserve the security of a predictable and secure benefit.

8. Tuition Tax Credits/VouchersThe VEA shall oppose legislation that directs public funds to be spent for private schools. The strongest argument against vouchers and tuition tax credits (TTC) is that they remove much needed dollars from the public school system. In states where TTC are in place, independent analysis indicates that students from wealthier families and wealthier donors are the primary beneficiaries, rather than low-income students and families. Public school choice is allowed under current law.

iPods Used with College Students but Reward Temecula K-12 Students who Skip School

This just in ....Dr. Miller at University of Connecticut is using iPods as a study aid for his students. His students love this application to help review for Dr. Miller's exams. Duke University is also experimenting with iPods and no longer worries about attendance; students are still coming to class.

While not stated in the article, the podcasts that are on the web could be utilized as selling tools/recruitement aids for colleges and universitites. Institutes of higher learning just like public schools are hurting for money. Would not showcasing your faculty talent be one way to attract future students?

So what's in this technology for me as a math/science teacher in a public school? While some of my students miss lab days, if a lesson was taped for a podcast, at least my students could watch it or use it as a review. Dr. Miller also mentioned that students that did not have iPods could still access the material using their computer. Also podcasts of K-12 teachers could be use by departments of human resources to recruite new teachers to the district.

Would podcasting help schools struggling with funding and finding teachers save money with the podcast resource?

In California, Temecula School District is struggling with school attendance so the district is raffling a car, iPods, and Disneyland tickets. Temecula is big wine country with several immigrants; my guess is that many students have to stay home to watch younger ones. Rather than giving away cars and trips, why not podcast classes that students could watch at home while using the MIT $100 laptops.

Senator Bill Frist's Smart Grant

Senator Frist is the first public official that I know that has just recently announced the threat from China and India. Senator Frist's Smart Grant provides incentive funds for undergraduates to pursue degrees in science, math, technology, and foreign languages:

"China and India are generating scientists and engineers at a furious pace while America lags dangerously behind," said Frist. "These SMART Grants and Academic Competitiveness Grants help close America's competitiveness gap and prepare American students for the high-paying, high-skill jobs that drive the 21st century economy. I fought hard to pass this worthy program, and I'm proud we were able to boost funding levels to provide low-income students real incentives to pursue time-intensive math and science degrees. This legislation is a critical national security tool that will also sustain America's global legacy as a land of innovation, imagination, and initiative."

I think this is a great gesture on behalf of Frist but what about the middle class students. I feel that they are worthy to be invested in as well as the low income students. Don't we want to graduate students faster instead of later? I hear from undergraduates all the time that they have to work so they are on the 5 or 6 year plan to get their undergraduate to degree. These students are very motivated and I feel that if there is money to be awarded, they should be considered too.

In today's Free Lance-Star there was an excellent and motivating story about a single parent at 17 who earned her PhD in biochemistry at 27. If it was not for the help of Kylene Hall's family, she would have never made it.

John Battelle on the Future of Online Search

John Battelle who recently released a new book, Search and was recently interviewed on CNN in which he had the following concerns:

JB: This is in the case of some of the tools now that Google and others give you, called the tool bar, which watches everywhere you go. And why they do that is that so they know everywhere you've been on the Internet so they can give you better search. "Oh, I see, he's been to this site before, so perhaps I should make that site higher in the results." That's called personalized search.

It seems like a service to you, right? But all the information about where you've been doesn't live with you, nor do you control it nor can you control who has access to it because of course the government or Google itself -- or it doesn't necessarily have to be Google, it could be Microsoft or Yahoo or anyone else -- could do whatever they like with it without telling you. In fact, it's part of their privacy policy that they will not sell this, they will not give it to third parties unless the laws of that country require them to.

Now we've seen the laws of various countries and the law of China is very different from the law of Britain and very different from the law of the United States. In fact, the law of the United States is a lot more like China. It turns out that after 9/11 we've passed a law called the Patriot Act which
gives the government right to riffle through all of our stuff on line without our knowledge, which frankly as a journalist terrifies me. Not that I don't think we should have tools to combat terrorism -- I do. I just think we need a little sunlight.

We are creating these vast records of everything we do. It's very difficult to pull those records together and make sense of them but that's exactly what Google's job is. That's why they are in business. Are they doing the work of a potentially corrupt or abusive government? Yes, you can't deny that they are. The question is will they make a stand against it at some point and/or will they make it transparent to me so I can see what they know about me and I can edit it or decide that I wish to become anonymous.

Feeling a little nervous about the potential Google and government partnership? Google can already control what advertisements that I see through tags with my searches which is so flawless that most consumers are not even aware that they are being herded in cyberspace. My question if they can do it with advertising, what is stopping them from doing this with searches that prevent me from seeing information that may prove helpful to my research or my autistic son. Will Google herd me to somewhere else that may be related to my search but not where I ultimately may want to go?

Battelle makes some interesting predictions for 2006. Battelle feels that there will be some major lawsuits involving the protection of data files on the private citizens as well as the Web 2.0 will be a major focus.

Furious with ABCNews

Today there is an article about how the reading of Harry Potter books actually keeps children out of the emergency wards. When kids are reading, of course, they are not going to be engaging in dangerous activities. Duh!! This was not the revealing part of the article that made me so fired up; it was the following quote from trauma surgeon Stephan Gwilym:

The only downside to this hypothesis [reading Harry Potter books] is turning active kids into bookworms. Potential problems could include "an unpredictable increase in childhood obesity, rickets, and loss of cardiovascular fitness," he said.

I can only say that from the real world trenches of middle school that the bookworms tend to be underweight while the low achieveing students are more likely to be overweight. I guess we can blame the schools for all the reading that we make students do because it is causing obesity; perhaps, we need to change the curriculum to only Playstation during first period followed by XBox; maybe reading needs to be cut out all together. Honestly, I cannot believe an educated person, let alone a doctor, would even suggest that turning children into bookworms might lead to obesity.

I wonder if the good doctor has ever looked at the nutritional value of school lunches or diets in general among children. The National Research Council has a book online entitled Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children which goes into some of the reasons that children may be overweight. Then again maybe its the microwave cooking that is causing the weight problem among children.

Minorities Not Taking as Many Advanced Classes or Exams

The Boston Globe reports that there has been a dramatic decline in the number of miniority students taking accelerated classes and AP exams.

Prior to 1999, black students filled about half of the seats in the advanced classes. Now, all students are admitted to the classes based only on their score on a national standardized test. School district leaders feared lawsuits if they kept racial quotas for the program; a 1998 federal court ruling banned racial quotas in exam school admissions. Since then, black and Hispanic enrollment at Boston Latin, the most competitive exam school, has declined.

Rachel Skerritt, 27, who is black, went through advanced-work classes in Boston Public Schools, got into Boston Latin, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. Now a published author and an English teacher at Boston Latin, Skerritt sees only a handful of black students in her classes.''If I hadn't been in advanced work I definitely wouldn't have gotten into Latin," she said. ''I feel like my whole educational career was made when I was 7."

So how do you solve the problem of getting more minority students to take advanced courses? Use multiple criteria for pupil selection to these advance classes or offer them to all. My concern is that advanced courses are quality education and everyone should be asking for it; however, many families are not aware of the courses or if they are what type of committment is needed to take such classes. I have always felt that all families need to be aware of the advantages of taking these courses. Families of high economic status already know why these type of classes are important just like Rachel's family did. Knowledge and information is power.

The Touchy Subject - Segregation

Rocky Mountain News today touches upon public education's controversial topic: school segregation aka white flight. Under Colorado law, parents have many options when selecting among schools within a district including out of district for their children. In Boulder, Columbine, and Lafayette new enrollment patterns are emerging creating large hispanic populations at particular schools. While Superintendent George Garcia of the Boulder district cannot do anything to change the state's open enrollment law, a citizen task force has suggested several strategies to disperse the district's students more equitably. These suggestions included enrollment targets for minorities and economically disadvantaged students which would include enrollment caps and preferences for free meals only available at mostly middle- or upper-income schools. Another option would be to provide transportation to low income families so they can take advantage of open enrollment. School board President Helayne Jones acknowledges that the discussions will be politically sensitive.

"For a liberal community, we aren't looking so liberal in the white flight we've experienced from some schools in the last 10 years," says Phillips, who was barred by term limits from seeking a third term on the school board. Jared Polis, a member of the Colorado Board of Education and a Boulder native, says the school district should stop blaming open enrollment for school segregation and do more to attract Anglo families back to schools like Columbine.

"My feeling is the problem is racism," Richard Garcia, board member of the Colorado Commission of Higher Education, says. "I think people are leaving Columbine because they don't like to be with brown kids. I know I'm going to get killed because I said that, but I'm going to call it as I
see it."

"Merely claiming racism can be an excuse not to take action, and sometimes that's what it becomes," Polis says. "I think that parents of all colors care most about the quality of the school and achievement," Polis says. "If there's a school where their kids are getting a good education, and the teachers are good and the program is good and their child is happy, I don't
think they care what color the child that sits next to them is."

No doubt school districts will be watching Colorado to see how this pans out when schools resume in January.

Just when I feel comfortable with all the technology, I read Lowell Monke's article, "The Overdominance of Computers" in Educational Leadership (Dec. 2005). Monke says:

Schools need to prepare young people for a high-tech society. Does it automatically follow that children of all ages should use high-tech tools? Most people assume that it does, and that's the end of the argument. But we don't prepare children for an automobile-dependent society by finding ways for 10-year-olds to drive cars, or prepare people to use alcohol responsibly by teaching them how to drink when they are 6. My point is that preparation does not necessarily warrant early participation. Indeed, preparing young people quite often involves strengthening their inner resources—like self-discipline, moral judgment, and empathy—before giving them the opportunity to participate.

I agree with Monke that students need the ethics piece in their education especially now when we have students on the web. He comments that he realizes that his high schools students could cause a lot of pain without seeing the tears that it would cause. Speaking with another teacher today at school, I asked how are we going to teach ethics to students. The teacher said we were not because it was not in the Standards of Learning or should be the parents' responsibility.

To quote Monke again:

Anyone who has spent time in schools knows that what is keeping today's youth from succeeding academically has nothing to do with a lack of technical skills or access to computers. Rather, it is the lack of qualities like hope, compassion, trust, respect, a sense of belonging, moral judgment, stability, community support, parental care, and teacher competence and enthusiasm that keeps so many students imprisoned in ignorance.

Schools Feel Pinch Of Rising Utility Bills

The Washington Post reports on the skyrocketing costs of heating bills that schools across the Virginia, Maryland, and DC are facing right now. Will programs have to be cut? Montgomery Public Schools do not think so; however, winter does not actually start until next week.

The article makes wonder if schools actually use data from outside sources to project their costs. When I was in property management, we would use the Farmer's Almanac to predict heating costs. Sounds old-fashion and low tech but we were able to budget funds and avoid having to make difficult choices like the schools are going to have to do if we continue to have a harsh winter as some are predicting.

Can public schools remain free? I have a lot thoughts on this one but I will have to post about it later.

National Standards Are Being Discussed Again

Education Week has raised the issue of having our public schools embrace national standards. When I first started teaching over 11 years ago, I asked then when Virginia was just getting everyone to use the Standards of Learning, why we were not moving to a national curriculum. Virginia's SOLs for science, mathematics, and language arts/reading are based on national standards advocated by the various associations that advance these individual topics. The case against national standards is the history; many fear that local/state history would be jeopardized by endorsing a national curriculum framework.

In a Nov. 7 opinion piece in The New York Times, the education historian Diane Ravitch argued that the current strategy of “50 states, 50 standards, 50 tests” has not improved student achievement, based on the most recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Ravitch is correct that by not adopting national standards we are left with a patchwork quilt education. Viewing the current framework, it looks good but when we examine the fine stitching that is holding the squares together, we have our four subgroups of NCLB struggling, an achievement gap that is still not closed, and frustrated teachers who are struggling to see all children succeed.

Over the summer, I had a chance to hear our nation's governors speak about the future of education in the US. Gov. Warner hosted this summit where the author, Thomas Friedman, spoke about his book, The World is Flat, and a gave a plea that our American education system had to change. Rightly or wrongly, the US wired the world and we have invited our competition, China and India, into the game. Friedman stated at this summit that America's A/B students were going to have a much tougher time in securing employment than their parents because of this global network.

“I’ve been watching very, very closely the educational progress in Asia—China, India, Vietnam, Singapore, and several others,” said Robert L. Wehling, a retired global-marketing officer for the Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co., “and I’m telling you, they’re making rapid progress, whereas we’re making minuscule progress. And I don’t think the average American understands the impact of this for our future, because they’re going to have the bulk of the intellectual and creative talent in the world, and that has devastating consequences for us.” Given that global situation, the United States needs to define a common set of standards, “especially in subjects like math and science and related courses,” said former Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. of North Carolina, a Democrat, who also has been speaking out this year on the need for national standards.

I know as a teacher and a future administrator that having national standards and a common curriculum framework makes sense; for example, this week I have had two new students added to my roster. These students were not doing what I was doing in science. One student was doing biology while another was doing electricity; neither of these topics are in my sixth grade SOLs. While these students will not be taking a sixth grade science SOL, I recognize that these students will have gaps in their instruction and they are not the only ones. This lack of a national curriculum frustrates teachers and if the policymakers ask the teachers who are in the trenches, they would quickly move to have adoptions made. However, why take a teacher's word - just read The World is Flat.

Quick let's do a study on literacy and computers!

Wired News via Intel reports that the poor do not want the hand-cranked $100 laptops because they will be unsatisfied with them. Personally, I think it is too early to tell; the United Nations has praised MIT's project because these lime green computers will be going to places that do not have electricity and will be able to create a wireless network. I guess Intel is not inside these computers.

The article also mentioned that Sri Lanka, just one of the places that the computers are going, has a 90 percent literacy rate. Wow!! Let us compare that statistic with our urban schools that do have computer access. I would love to see a study that measures the literacy rates of the Sri Lanka school children as they use their new lime green computers. Will the literacy rate increase? Will it drop? I think this is a great opportunity for a research group to get some useful data. I know that Marc Prensky says the Net Generation has a different brain but I am not convince that it is a better brain. If a study could be done on Sri Lanka's school children or any of the other countries that are getting these $100 laptops, I would enjoy seeing if computers are indeed the great equalizer.

Blogs and School Discipline

Chicago Tribune reports today the school officials walk a thin line when it comes to blogs with questionable material. While two teachers were not disciplined over the contents of their blogs because there was no mention a specific school or names of students, three students from Taft High School of Chicago were disciplined over graphic descriptions from their blogs. While the Chicago incident is not a unique situation facing schools, it should be a wake-up call to school administrators that blogging responsibly should be addressed by education. I see this as no different from driver's education: We know that there will students that will drink and drive so we show the consequences of such action and hope that it will not happen. Irresponsible blogging can lead to serious consequences which students need to be aware. I applaud Taft High School in calling a forum with parents to discuss the issue:

Both legal precedent and district policy make it clear that both students
and staff can be disciplined for off-campus actions, including any "offensive
language" that affects "the safety, environment and learning" at a school, said district spokesman Mike Vaughn. The discipline code also prohibits students and staff from using a computer to "stalk, harass or otherwise intimidate others."

Wikipedia and the Classroom Lesson

As many of you know Wikipedia is now going to be changing how articles are submitted because of the recent case brought about by John Seigenthaler. An entry appearing in Wikipedia had very misleading information about Seignethaler. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, hopes that the new rules will also curb the number of entries in Wikipedia that occur on a daily basis for the online encylopedia.

I plan on sharing the article with my students for several reasons. My middle schoolers are very naive and take everything they read at face value; they do not distinguish from fact and opinion very well nor do they have the knowledge and experiences that would cue them to something is wrong with an entry from Wikipedia. With many wonderful things Wikipedia has going for it, there is the potential of abuse from anonymous people. Students need to be made aware that there are good sources and better sources; they need to know that some sources are more scholarly than others. Students need to know that when an article is by Anonymous, they should be advised to avoid it or not use it all. To quote the founder of Wikipedia:

"In many cases the types of things we see going on are impulse vandalism."

Students need to be made aware of the consequences that when posting erroneous items, they can be legally punished.

Is More Flexiblity on the Horizon for NCLB?

This just in...

Senators Olympia J. Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have introduced
the NCLB Flexibility and Improvement Act to give states, school districts, and
schools greater control in meeting the requirements of NCLB. The bill addresses
several aspects of teacher quality, such as giving more flexibility for middle
and high school teachers who teach multiple subjects. In addition to teacher
quality, it also addresses accountability, funding, and provisions for assessing
special education and limited-English-proficient students.

For more information about this bill click here.

JSB's Digital Divide and the Blogosphere with Mezirow

From the HSB newsletter JSB makes the following observations about digital generation gap:

There is a new kind of digital divide now and it is the divide between
faculty and students. Faculty, stuck in yesterday's analog world, are confronted
with students who arrive nicely fluent in digital technology and the virtues of
hyperspeed. Students already have a handle on how to convey their emotional
states electronically. It's up to adults to learn that vernacular, he said.
Educators who create programs for adult learning and distance learning need to
apply the vernacular and deepen and strengthen these new means of communication.

When I saw this article, it made me think of Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnshon and the reluctance of my colleagues at my middle school to start blogging with me. I am disappointed they have not caught blogitis. It also made me think of Digital Immigrants, Digital Natives by Marc Prensky.

My professor and two of his blogmates have been discussing their classes and why students are not blogging more with engaging reflections. I can only offer Jack Mezirow's Transformation Theory of Adult Learning as a possible explanation. Mezirow noted that for real learning to take place then one's perspective has to have changed. According to Mezirow, there are three kinds of critical reflections: content reflection, process reflection, and premise reflection. It is very obvious to me that the professors engage in premise reflections because they take a real hard look at biases, beliefs, and values while the students (myself included) are still at content reflection and process reflection in their adult development.

P.S. I know that Marc Prensky stated several times that kids' brains are different now. I can accept that their brains are wired different due to experiences. So if brains are wired differently, could maturity development be different too because of expanded lifespans? Should middle age timespans be changed from 30s/40s to 50s/60s?