SCIENCE TODAY: Discovery of Modern-Day Neanderthals?

Published: September 14. 2006 3:00AM

Editorials

Board Puts Politics Ahead of Science

September 14, 2006

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The Michigan State Board of Education has done a disservice to science and to high school science teachers by delaying adoption of the science portion of Michigan's new requirements for high school graduation. The board voted 6-2 Tuesday in favor of a delay requested by state legislators who are pushing faith-based alternatives to the theory of evolution.

This is just another attempt to keep a door open to teaching creationism or intelligent design. The board should have closed it, as science teachers requested. Board members get elected to make decisions, not to defer to political pressure.

The delay was requested by the chairs of the House and Senate Education Committees to accommodate Republican state Reps. Jack Hoogendyk of Kalamazoo and John Moolenaar of Midland, who want a key wording change inserted into the policy. As it stands, the policy directs that teachers demonstrate how fossil records, comparative anatomy and other evidence "may" corroborate the theory of evolution. Hoogendyk and Moolenaar are pushing to have the words read "may or may not."

Sounds innocuous, but this is really about injecting faith and beliefs into science.

Michigan's new curriculum is supposed to set tough guidelines, not try to spoon-feed an ideology to students. Teachers who are allowed to, will, no doubt instruct students in the value of thinking about science broadly and asking critical questions.

By deferring even this much to the legislators, the state board has essentially given science teachers a vote of no confidence and deprived them of a chance to collaborate on classroom strategies. That's because the board won't vote until Oct. 10, and the science curriculum guidelines were supposed to be in place by an Oct. 3 statewide conference for teachers on Earth science, biology, chemistry and physics.

The conference will now use draft guidelines while the state board decides whether politics is going to figure in the final version.

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Find dates Neanderthals later

Gibraltar cave produces new evidence

BY MALCOLM RITTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS

September 14, 2006

NEW YORK -- Neanderthals survived for thousands of years longer than scientists thought, with small lingering bands finding refuge in a massive cave near the southern tip of Spain, new research suggests.

The work contends that Neanderthals were using a cave in Gibraltar at least 2,000 years later than their presence had been firmly documented anywhere before, researchers said.

"Maybe these are the last ones," said Clive Finlayson of the Gibraltar Museum, who reported the findings Wednesday with colleagues on the Web site of the journal Nature.

The paper says charcoal samples from fires that Neanderthals set in the cave are about 28,000 years old and maybe just 24,000 years old.

End of the Neanderthals

Neanderthals were stocky, muscular hunters in Europe and western Asia who appeared more than 200,000 years ago. They died out after anatomically modern humans arrived in Europe some 35,000 to 40,000 years ago and spread west into Neanderthal territory.

Scientists have long been fascinated by the last days of the Neanderthals. Were they doomed because they couldn't compete with the encroaching modern humans for resources, or because they caught new germs from the moderns, or because of climate change? Did the two groups have much contact, and what kind?

They didn't appear to encounter each other in Gibraltar at Gorham's Cave. More than 5,000 years separate the last traces of the Neanderthals from the earliest evidence of modern humans, Finlayson said. He believes the area near the cave contained small bands of Neanderthals and advancing moderns at the same time, but over a large and varied landscape. So it's not clear if the two groups ever met, he said.

The Neanderthals probably roamed a large area and used the cave periodically as a place to cook, eat and sleep, he said. The cave has yielded butchered bones of such animals as wild goat and deer, and remains of mussels and shellfish. At the time of the Neanderthals, the Mediterranean Sea was about three miles away; rising sea level has since brought the water to within a few dozen yards.

Experts said the region is a likely place to find the last vestiges of Neanderthals, because it's the tip of a geographic cul-de-sac that leads away from central Europe.

Heard this before

Eric Delson of Lehman College in the Bronx and the American Museum of Natural History, who did not participate in the research, said the paper's 28,000-year-old date seems secure, but that its case for Neanderthal presence after that is shaky.

Even the older date is the only clear evidence of Neanderthals anywhere after 30,000 years ago, he said. But there have been prior claims of "the last Neanderthal" that were eventually shot down, and whether this one will hold up remains to be seen, he said.

Neanderthal online: www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/neand.htm

Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.

Teachers Blog to Inform

Betsy Blumberg (left) and Melanie Sullivan began blogging last school year. (Dominic Chavez/ Globe Staff)

Teachers take bulletin boards online

Blogs reaching out to students, parents

By Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | September 7, 2006

One Needham teacher gushed about the time a student worried that Australia would fall off the planet -- and how that led to a lesson on gravity. A Brookline teacher banned the word ``stuff" from her fourth-graders' vocabulary. A young teacher, also from Needham, got personal, thanking parents for their support after her husband died.

Meet the newest group of bloggers drawing audiences online: teachers.

Teacher-generated blogs have been increasingly popping up from Needham to Martha's Vineyard, many in the past year. Teachers at all grade levels reveal glimpses of themselves as well as the magical moments -- and at times, difficult ones -- that can happen in a classroom. Parents, in turn, scour the blogs, post comments, or borrow snippets to use as dinner conversation with their children.

As students head back to school this week, teachers are again typing dispatches during breaks at school, or from home in their pajamas.

``I can whip out something in maybe five minutes and immediately post it," said Melanie Sullivan , a third-grade teacher in Needham, who started her first classroom blog last school year, when she taught first grade. ``Parents just want to know what's going on. The more they know, the more they understand where you're coming from and what you're trying to accomplish in your room, the less they get upset."

Nobody tracks how many Massachusetts teachers use blogs, which are Web logs of text and photos or other add-ons that can be posted anytime. But Will Richardson , a former teacher and author of a new book, ``Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms," estimates that, in the last five years, tens of thousands of teachers nationally have been blogging about everything from Harry Potter to writing essays, trying to capitalize on a medium now wildly popular among teenagers. Parents, often alerted by teachers, arrive at the blogs in a variety of ways, sometimes through the school's website or via a portal such as Blogger.com.

Sullivan and Betsy Blumberg , elementary school teachers at John Eliot School in Needham, started blogging last school year to involve busy parents online.

Both are avid bloggers away from school: Blumberg turned to blogs as a source of support last year, about 18 months after her young husband unexpectedly died from chicken pox. Blumberg said the blog let her express her feelings and allowed friends to check on her.

Then Sullivan, her best friend, followed suit. They branched out to the school after Sullivan read in a teacher magazine that others were trying it. So far they are the school's only bloggers.

The teachers try to avoid identifying students to protect their privacy. But they churn out dispatches, sometimes daily. Sullivan wrote when she did a cartwheel to reward a student's achievement or when the class bid farewell to the baby chicks they hatched. Blumberg used the blog to alert parents when children had trouble with word problems in math.

Parents soaked it in: The day Sullivan taught students to tell time, one mom wrote, ``So that's why Ari insisted during dinner last night that he borrow my watch! He gave us updates minute by minute."

Blumberg's blog turned into a chatty community. One student and her mother complained, half-joking, on the blog that the MCAS was on the same day as ``American Idol." Another student, sick at home for the day, pouted on the blog when she learned about her homework assignment to study Ohio. ``Darn!" the student blogged. ``I really wanted North Dakota."

Needham parent Daphne Davidson said the blog gave her something to talk about last school year with her son, then a first-grader. Normally he would shrug and say, ``the usual," when she asked about school.

``Instead of saying what did you learn today I would say, you know, I heard that your first-grade class got some chicks," said Davidson, referring to Sullivan's dispatches about the eggs they hatched. ``He would get so excited about the subject matter, he would start blabbering on."

Despite their enthusiasm for the blogs, many teachers are also cautious. Teachers and principals worry about online bullying. Congress, concerned about online predators, is considering restrictions on blog access in public schools and libraries.

Bill MacKenty , a former teacher at an Edgartown school on Martha's Vineyard who recently moved to a school in New York, loves the school blogs, but encountered some problems last year when he started blogs for Edgartown middle-schoolers. In one case, basketball players deleted a girl's entry when she criticized their coach. In another instance, a teen from a different school posted a comment saying the fifth-graders sounded ``stupid" for writing instant-message style, such as ``I hope u r very excited."

Such exchanges could explode online, if unsupervised, but MacKenty said he used the episodes to teach. He told the basketball players they should politely discuss the issue, not censor one another. And he said fifth-graders started writing more legibly.

`` This is new territory for us, man," MacKenty said. ``Fifteen years ago, we didn't know what teenagers were thinking. Now they vent online, and a million people read it."

Some schools block comments or make blogs available to members only to protect students' privacy. Driscoll School, an elementary school in Brookline, blocked comments from its blogs. Brookline High lets teachers restrict access to blogs by using passwords.

Winchester High's librarian Karen Miller warned students on her blog, begun last year, that she would screen all comments. Nobody commented, but she hopes more will weigh in this year -- politely. `` I don't want any area where anybody could be disrespected or anything that wouldn't be appropriate for school," she said.

Richardson, the author, urged teachers to do even more with blogs, such as inspiring students to write, critique one another's work, or invite guest speakers to visit the class electronically.

``That's the potential," he said. ``You can bring authors. You can bring scientists. This really opens up a way to make distance irrelevant and to bring people who know more than we do about the topics into our classroom. You'd be surprised by how willing people are to do that."

Still Another "Point of View" leans toward.........

September 04, 2006

Our Schools are Leaking!

In most schools, it has begun. We are forcing our children back into containers. For weeks, they have lived, played, learned, and worked without boxes -- through gadgets on their desks, on their laps, and in their pockets. Their schedule has been theirs -- often sleeping until 11:00, and playing and working until 3:00 and 4:00 the next morning. They have roamed a limitless realm of information with friends whose geography means absolutely nothing. Walls do not exist, because of the gadgets they carry.

And now, we are forcing them back into our containers -- container schedules, because they are back in learning containers (school and classroom), where they receive information from containers (textbooks and worksheets), tied to knowledge containers (standards) -- and we will seek to control their gadgets.

These gadgets are their links to information. They talk, text message, and google with their mobile phones, IM on their laptops, surf the world wide web, build and interact on MySpace, play Net-based video games and MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games). These gadgeted connections represent intellectual appendages to our children. They're like alien tentacles that grow from their bodies. We can't see them, but they are real. They are a part of how our children see and define themselves. These tentacles are the hands and feet that carry them where they want to go -- and as they enter our classrooms,

...we will cut those tentacles off.

The flow will continue. Their thoughts are still on the civilization they are building at home, the video they are producing with a friend from Norway, their new MySpace profile, or the song they're remixing for a boyfriend -- that is if they do not have their hands on a contraband mobile phone, text messaging another friend, with one thumb, under the surface of their desk.

Educators! Our classrooms are leaking!

Through their mobile phones, wireless handhelds, mobile game systems, their laptops, and a simple, yet pervasive sense of a broader world that ignores time and distance, our children’s attention is leaking out of our classrooms, our textbooks, and our state and national standards. The leaks have appeared and they will only expand and become more serious, the more we try to block, filter, and confiscate.

The question that confronts us today is...

Do we continue to container our children, amputating their intellectual appendages during “learning time?”

or

Do we try to integrate learning into the flow of their attention, taking advantage of the new porous nature of their lives, using these tentacles to connect children to the world that we are teaching them about?

This is a question that we can not put off another day, because our children are waiting. ..and it's answer is nothing less than the foundation of our future.

Maybe YES....Maybe NO!

Question of the Week Archive

September 5, 2006 - September 11, 2006

Good Enough without Technology?

Blogger David Jakes takes issue with the idea that in today's schools it is possible to be a good teacher without using technology. That's because David believes that teachers who don't use technology aren't doing their job, since a big part of today's teaching job is to help students understand how to use the tools of 21st Century technology. Read David's blog and then tell us what you think.

a) Yes, core literacy reading and math skills are what will make students successful.

14%

b) Maybe, but their students are missing out on learning about tools that enhances learning.

33%

c) No. Technology is a core element of literacy for the 21st century and students need to learn about it and use it consistently.

54%

Comment: The use of technology for techology's sake is wrong. In science, there are some things that technology cannot enhance. A pendulum will swing to and fro, illustrating the transformation of energy and Newton's laws. All of the technology in the world won't change its path or make it any more obvious to the student what the pendulum is doing. Comment: The world of technology and its use is advancing so quickly, and has advanced so quickly, that most current teachers have not been able to keep up, so many students today are being left "in the dust" so to speak, because they are not being exposed to the use of modern technology. Comment: What is increasingly self evident to me as a teacher in this brave new world, is that almost every and any profession that today's students will be a part of will require the ability to use technology. I submit that most of the students that I teach in chemistry and biology will likely find that learning various aspects of the use of technology to be more useful in their lives than much of the core curricular concepts I am required to teach. Its hard to argue with the fact that if I neglect to teach my curriculum within a context of the 21st century technological realm, I am doing my students a disservice. James Workman Downers Grove South High School Science Department Comment: At many companies, people applying for jobs are directed to a computer or online application. Comment: I think that if you don't realize how much students' thinking and learning styles have changed, then you are going to continue to see horrific decline. Technology is REALITY. Pedophiles are in Wal-Mart and on the street. Should we stop our kids from walking and from shopping, as well? Overreaction. Comment: unfortunately here in Australia there is not enough resourcing to allow the consistent use of good quality ICT tools Comment: Modern "technology" is just another tool for students to use. Why would you want your students to do without the experience of using the learning tools available? Comment: If students can't read critically, then the wealth of information available to them through the Internet will only drown them. I also believe that younger students desperately need concrete experiences BEFORE they start creating pictures with Kid Pix etc. So... it really depends how old the students are that the teachers are working with! Comment: Technology is just a tool, the use of which can be taught fairly easily and quickly - I am 59 and taught myself how to use computers back in the late 1970s when the company I worked for purchased a mini and later a PC system. The more difficult part of the equation is what to use the computer (or any tool) for. I have been successful not because I had computer skills but because I had the background and knowledge, acquired through a good education, to successfully apply the tools. Comment: (part of)Powerful literacy involves the student to research information and form an opinion. It also includes the ability to become a self learner, to keep up with all the information. In order to do this you need to use the tools of the 21st century. Comment: In todays world, we as educators are usually behind most of our students, tecnologically. We should be teaching them to think on all levels, not just with the current technology. Remember, it is a tool, not the end point of eduction. Comment: Although it may seem that most students are exposed to enough technology without the help of schools, educators can't assume that all students have this exposure. Besides, using technology for video gaming and instant messaging doesn't constitute knowing how to use technology in the workplace. Comment: Technology is a tool, but not the only tool. Not ALL teachers need to use ALL the tools available to be effective teachers. Comment: I think that in today's society, there's no way to escape technology. Students need to be educated about it to be successful in the other core areas: reading, writing, math, and science. Comment: I answered B but C applies as well -- most of our students will need the tools of technology in their first, second, and every job they ever have. Comment: In today's world we need to have a increased in what a Liberal Studies Program calls "well rounded education." As a non traditional student, my first plan was to become a computer programmer. After 3 years at a community college aquiring all the core classes I found that programming was not what I wanted. Now I am in a Liberal Studies program heading into a Individual Option Masters program to become a person who will work within online learning. This is the way the future is heading and I plan on being someone to aid teachers to use technology to increase the hireability of students after graduating college. Comment: It depends. What grade level? Learning to read, math fundalmentals, independent thinking, creative problem solving are not welded to technology. Thinking that we are teaching technology now that will still be around in 5-10 years is absurd. Things will most assuredly be different in 6 mos. and much different by the time the little ones get to the job market. There are two most important components in the classroom: students and good teachers. Everything else is a tool to use or not to use.

A Variation (and/or Validation) of OUR Theme!

Building the School of the Future

By Lindsay Oishi
URL: http://www.schoolcio.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192501205

Microsoft and the School District of Philadelphia have worked together for three years to create the School of the Future, an innovative model for incorporating technology into education that opens on September 7, 2006. Rob Stevens, the project’s architect for software solutions, and Mary Cullinane, group manager for Microsoft’s Partners in Learning program, spoke to School CIO about how IT leaders can learn from the School of the Future’s vision and approach.

Q. How much has the school cost so far?
A. The entire project is funded at $63 million, which is a traditional budget for the School District of Philadelphi. The money required toa operate a school is mostly spent on maintenance. But we’ve used LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification guidelines, so that the overall cost of maintenance will be less than the cost for schools that don’t follow these guidelines.

Q. What technologies are you providing students with?
A. Wherever these kids go, whenever there’s a learning opportunity, they have access to an infrastructure has been built to give them an appropriate environment. That means wireless throughout the school, experts from around the world coming in via streaming media, and infrastructure allowing them to communicate with teachers and parents. The collaborative environment will be very powerful. The other area that will be very powerful is the Virtual Teaching Assistant and Virtual Library. With these, we hope to foster a community of learning.

Q. Tell me more about the Virtual Teaching Assistant.
A. One of the principles of this school is to create an adaptive learning environment. When we went to school, every kid had to turn the page at the same time. With the Virtual Teaching Assistant, the class can have an individualized pace. As a teacher, you can put together a quiz, give it to your students, and immediately ascertain where your class is. The quiz comes up as a window on the students’ machines—they each have their own laptop computer. The results go back to the teacher right away, and if a student gets a certain pattern of questions wrong, the teacher can give them extra help in that area.

Q. How do you keep student data secure?
A. We’re relying entirely on credentialed access. Once you log into the operating system, we know who you are. You don’t have to remember multiple passwords. We have very secure passwords that allow, for example, parents to be identified only with their children, so parents will not be able to get information on another child. We’re not custodians of extremely sensitive information. But we do have the ability to protect it. It’s a well-bounded community of learners—people from the outside will have great difficulty getting information.

Q. Which technologies offer the highest return on investment?
A. First, the multimedia capabilities available through Windows Media services give students a wealth of resources that are visual and online. These are the most valuable in terms of the ultimate product, which is educational accomplishment. The Virtual Library, for example, is a repository for different types of digital media. It allows movies, documents, Web sites, and other content to be stored together. Second, we have automatic mechanisms for student enrollment. Whenever a student is added to the school, they automatically get a Windows account for school portals, e-mail, and a personal Web site. This translates into savings of time and administrative effort, which also reduces cost.

Q. How do school portals work?
A. The school has portals for students, the extended community, and faculty and staff. When you log in to your computer, you’re automatically logged in to your portal. If you’re a student, the portal knows what classes you have and shows you a picture of everyone in your classes. The extended community portals allow parents to be more familiar with their students’ teachers, and to find out what happened in the classroom. Faculty and staff can also use their private portal to communicate about students or even view pay stubs online.

Q. Do you have advice about making public-private partnerships work?
A. CIOs shouldn’t limit themselves to the most obvious asset a partner can bring to the table. When someone thinks about Microsoft, they think of software. But the School District of Philadelphia got to see how we hire people, motivate people, and create the culture of our organization. The other thing to remember is that money is great, but people are better. Individuals and their thinking are valuable resources. We’ve had over 45 people at Microsoft touch this project in various ways, and you can’t put a price tag on that.

Q. How can CIOs keep informed about the school?
A. Every step of the strategic planning has been documented on the Web site, for all schools that are interested in following a similar process. U.S. Partners in Learning will host quarterly briefings with schools across the country, and there is also an annual global forum where school leaders can get together and discuss the results of these innovations.

Lindsay Oishi is a graduate student in Learning Sciences and Technology Design at Stanford University.

© School CIO

	Posted on Fri, Sep. 08, 2006
	High-tech high Phila.’s School of the Future opens with laptops, smart cards, and almost no books. By Susan Snyder Inquirer Staff Writer Philadelphia's $63 million "School of the Future" - built under the guidance of Microsoft Corp. and hailed as a first-of-its-kind model for technologically advanced schools worldwide - opened to its first 170 freshmen yesterday in West Philadelphia, as hundreds of parents, dignitaries, and local and national reporters looked on. First announced three years ago, the new school and its technology left students in jaw-dropping awe: A laptop for every child. Lockers that open with the swipe of a smart card. A fully wireless building. Virtually no textbooks. Not even an encyclopedia in the library. Post Your Comment "It's going to be as close to a paperless school as we can manage," said Ellen Savitz, the district's chief development officer and manager of the project. Plasma screens, ceiling projectors, interactive white boards, and laptops abound, and classroom furniture is on wheels to allow for group work in varying configurations. "This is ours! This is ours! We have to set an example," Ryan Wheeler, 14, said as she passed under the School of the Future banner at the entrance. Just off Girard Avenue, near the Philadelphia Zoo, the Future school was one of four new high schools that opened in the district yesterday. The others were two schools done in partnership with the National Constitution Center and the Franklin Institute and an academic magnet patterned on Central High. As if its technology, attractive finish, and abundance of windows for natural light weren't enough to distinguish the three-story Microsoft school, get this: Students will be required to apply to at least one college, says principal Shirley Grover, a former Milan, Italy, private-school principal originally from Maine. No other high school in the city has such a requirement. "We're raising the bar," said Grover, who added that she would also propose that every student score proficient on state math and reading tests to graduate. "In looking at 21st-century skills, kids are not going to be successful unless they go to university. We just know that." Standing outside the entrance with students huddled before him, Street echoed Grover's call for higher standards at the Future school, which will incorporate technology in nearly every way - from having students swipe cards to eat in the cafeteria to art and music instruction to sports teams that will use electronic-play diagrams. "You won't be able to say, 'I didn't have the computers. I didn't have the technology. I didn't have the teachers. I didn't have mentors,' because the young people who go to this school will be in the premier educational environment in the entire country, maybe even in the entire world," Street said. "So the bar for you is raised." Shortly before Street's speech, Jeffrey Sessoms, 14, seemed to have already heard the message. He boldly told the mayor he wants his job. "It's something I can achieve," the teen said later. "I can be something in life." Sessoms, who like the rest of his classmates has been attending summer sessions at district headquarters to learn about the school, said he was impressed with the willingness of the district and Microsoft - "how they joined as one, with unity." "It made me feel wonderful," he said. "You can be in an environment that cares." The district broke ground on the construction 18 months ago and had to authorize an overtime crunch in the end to be ready for opening day. The performing-arts area wasn't finished, but Savitz said it should be ready within a month. District officials said the school cost slightly more per square foot than some others, such as Lincoln High, because of its land purchase and energy-efficient design. But the efficiency qualities should yield 20 percent operational savings, said Patrick Henwood, the district's director of capital programs. Photovoltaic panels in the windows and roof will convert sunlight into electricity. The building also will catch rainwater and convert it for non-potable uses, such as toilet and boiler water. Students are admitted by lottery. Seventy-five percent were from the neighborhood, the rest from the city at large. "We won the lottery. Big," said parent Carmen Thomas, whose son, Sekou Thomas-Bamba, is enrolled. She plans to volunteer at the school and learn the technology. "This is just absolutely amazing," she said, standing in the gym. "It's like a fresh start, new dreams, new adventure, hope. For him to walk in and be a part of the first graduating class is exciting." The school is Microsoft's biggest venture in a school to date. The company donated $100,000 to name an area in the building, but did not provide equipment or software or otherwise fund it. It instead gave personnel time, best practices, and access to its network of "international thought leaders." The company has a local office and will continue to assist, Grover said. Microsoft mogul Bill Gates greeted students in a video clip and said he, too, would visit. The school district already is spreading what it has learned from Microsoft. It has borrowed design features for other new schools being planned, said Paul Vallas, district chief executive. And it has modernized more than 1,000 classrooms with others in planning, he said. "I want people to say, 'I may not be in the building of the future, but I'm in the classroom of the future,' " Vallas said. The district's hope that a donor would step forward with $5 million for naming rights has not come to fruition, but officials say they haven't given up. Microsoft will not make the bid, said Microsoft's Mary J. Cullinane. "This is really about let's devote human capital and provide the district with access to our organization," she said. Several groups, in addition to Microsoft, have given money for naming rights of areas or classrooms within the building, including the Bowland foundation, a United Kingdom-based charity headed by a technology businessman. It will give the largest amount - $2 million, Savitz said. Vanguard agreed to fund a community outreach position for three years. The school also has established partnerships with local universities. Two University of Pennsylvania professors will teach classes - one in robotics, the other in urban design. Drexel University will provide staff and student resources. About 200 honor students from Villanova University will serve as online tutors. Teachers were hand-picked by the principal. The curriculum is traditional academic with a focus on projects and interdisciplinary learning. Even the bathrooms got rave reviews from students, used to attending a district where the average building is 71 years old and leaking toilets are plentiful. "They have those sinks that you just put your hands like that and the water comes out," said Sandra Nelson, 14. "Mirrors for girls," said Brittney Glass, 14. "Toilets flush by themselves. It's all just so nice," agreed Bianca Gibson, 14. "I want to give a shout out to Bill Gates and tell him, 'Thank you, so much.' " Contact staff writer Susan Snyder at 215-854-4693 or ssnyder@phillynews.com. What Makes It Different? Some unusual features at the high school: 1. No textbooks. Nearly all learning materials will be accessed by computer. 2. Technology aplenty. A laptop for every student. (They will be traded in for computerized tablets soon.) White boards. Plasma boards. Ceiling projectors. Smart cards that track student movement throughout the school. Virtual teaching assistants. Software that will allow parents to track students' progress from home. 3. A later start. School will begin at 9:15 a.m., acting on research that says teens think better a little later in the day. 4. Energy-efficient building design. Rainwater will be converted for toilet and boiler use. Solar power will be garnered. 5. Higher standards. To graduate, students must apply to at least one college and demonstrate 11 "adult competencies," including "managing relationships," "creativity," "valuing diversity," "dealing with ambiguity," and "taking courageous action." The school also proposes to require that students score "proficient" on standard reading and math tests. At a Glance: School of the Future Location: 4021 Parkside Ave. Number of students: 170 freshmen (will grow to 750 and grades nine to 12 over four years) Number of applications: More than 1,500 Racial breakdown of student body: 95 percent African American. Gender: 54 percent female, 46 percent male Economic background: 85 percent come from low-income families. Special-education population: 12 percent Entrance requirements: 75 percent of students are from the neighborhood and 25 percent from the rest of the city. Students currently in eighth grade must apply by Nov. 17 to the district for entrance in the 2007-08 school year. Enrollment is determined by lottery.

Gadzooks............RELEVANCE!

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Published: August 30, 2006

Commentary

Why Thinking ‘Outside the Box’ Is Not So Easy

(And Why Present Reform Efforts Will Fail)

By Marion Brady

In the fall of 1987, the Associated Press carried a story from Tacoma, Wash., about a boy “penned in a coffin-sized box for two years because his stepgrandmother feared he was brain-damaged.”

Two years in a box! Did the kid scream to get out? Feel abused? Unhappy? No. When he was let out, according to the news item, “he was amazed to learn not all children are shut up in the same way.”

The boy illustrated, literally, the difficulty of “thinking outside the box.”

We all share that difficulty. We’re bundles of unexamined beliefs about what’s proper and acceptable, and many of those unexamined beliefs relate to schooling. We cling to them not because research has shown them to be true or because they make good, common sense, but simply because lifelong immersion in the status quo makes it exceedingly difficult to imagine alternatives.

Of all the education-related unexamined assumptions, none is more deeply embedded than the belief that the main business of schooling is to teach the “core curriculum”—math, science, social studies, and language arts. Supporting that belief is another assumption: that these four fields of study are the only, or at least the optimum, organizers of general knowledge.

That last assumption is so powerful it shapes education worldwide. At all levels, from middle through graduate school, the four areas of study are the main institutional organizers. So taken for granted is it that they are the fundamental building blocks of education, that reform movements don’t question their centrality. Separate sets of “standards” reinforce them. “Measures of accountability” are keyed to them. Even those who know that knowledge is seamless, who know that the walls between fields of study are artificial and arbitrary, tend to assume that the four are the ultimate organizers of knowledge. They may call themselves “interdisciplinarians,” or may make use of projects, themes, problems, student needs, or other content organizers, but they don’t push the disciplines aside. They try instead to “bring them to bear.”

---

The traditional curriculum has given us much. We’ve created a way of life that makes specialized studies indispensable. But assuming that the “core” fields are pretty much the whole story has also cost us much, and the costs are escalating. School, finally, isn’t about disciplines and subjects, but about what they were originally meant to do—help the young make more sense of life, more sense of experience, more sense of an unknowable future. And in that sense-making effort, math, science, social studies, and language arts simply aren’t up to the challenge. They’ve given us a curriculum so deeply flawed it’s an affront to the young and a recipe for societal disaster.

TalkBack

Join the related discussion, “Thinking Outside the Box.”

Consider the problems listed below. Any one of them is serious enough to warrant calling a national conference, and the general curriculum in place in America’s schools and colleges suffers from all of them. It:

• Has no agreed-upon aim;

• Ignores the basic process by means of which knowledge expands;

• Disregards the holistic, systemic nature of knowledge;

• Neglects the brain’s need for order and organization;

• Fails to model the seamlessness of human perception;

• Has no criteria for determining the relative importance of what’s taught;

• Relates only tangentially to real-world experience;

• Disregards important fields of study;

• Doesn’t capitalize on the mutually supportive nature of knowledge;

• Uses short-term recall rather than logic to access memory;

• Has no built-in self-renewing capability;

• Is little concerned with moral and ethical issues;

• Lends itself to simplistic approaches to evaluation;

• Doesn’t move smoothly through ever-higher levels of intellectual complexity;

• Makes unreasonable demands on memory;

• Penalizes rather than capitalizes on student differences;

• Neglects higher-order thought processes;

• Doesn’t encourage novel, creative thought; and

• Vastly underestimates student intellectual potential.

These problems can be solved, and solved rather easily, but not by playing with course-distribution requirements, adding more math and science courses, or tightening the “rigor” screws. The solution lies “outside the box,” in raising students’ awareness of their thought processes. What they need but aren’t getting from school subjects is a “master system of mental organization.”

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The role played by mental organizers is easily demonstrated. Say to a student, “Name as many games as you can,” and, after a dozen or so, most will begin to stumble. But an occasional student will attack the problem differently, will think, “children’s games,” then, when he or she has exhausted that category, will move on to other categories—party games, games played with cards, dice, words, balls, computers, across nets, and so on. Performance will depend less on the quality of the student’s memory of games than on the quality of his or her “game categories” system. If it’s good, the names of a hundred games may be reeled off with little or no hesitation.

School isn’t about disciplines and subjects, but about what they were originally meant to do—help the young make more sense of life.

Math, science, social studies, and language arts are mental organizers. They give students elaborate category systems for thinking about certain kinds of things. But only certain kinds of things. This is especially true now, after a little over a century of “standardizing” via textbooks, legislation, and inattention. As the above list of problems should show, they’re not up to the challenge of comprehensive “sense making.” They don’t connect with each other, don’t adequately connect with or organize ordinary experience, don’t “stack” categories in order of importance, don’t include “open-ended” categories essential to novel, creative thought—don’t, in short, do the job that needs doing.

Ironically, every kid shows up for the first day of school already making sophisticated use of a “master” category system for organizing knowledge that can do the job that needs doing. There’ll be no major improvement in students’ intellectual performance until they’re helped to surface that system and put it deliberately to work.

Here’s where professional educators begin to balk. And the higher up the professional ladder they’ve climbed—the more rigid the box they’re in tends to be—the balkier they get. It’s unlikely most have ever given thought to the possibility of alternatives to the familiar disciplines, subjects, and courses as organizers of knowledge. That one of those alternatives might actually be superior seems too unlikely to take seriously. That that alternative is already known and used by everybody makes it either a threat to that which they’ve achieved or gets it labeled as too mundane to merit scholarly attention.

Notwithstanding obliviousness, lack of interest, skepticism, or other obstacles to acceptance of the idea, humans make sense of experience by weaving together, systemically, five main kinds of information:

TIME (the Ice Age, morning, during World War I, when the cap is removed, once upon a time, and so forth);

PLACE (ancient Egypt, the forest, on the five-yard line, Paradise, on the shelf);

ACTORS (Esau and Jacob, a crowd, the queen and court, me and Dad, or Goldilocks);

ACTION (sign the lease, attack the fort, pay a visit, check for clues); and

CAUSE (revenge, too much heat, loneliness, broken dam, impure water).

From the weaving together of these kinds of information, humans then draw SYSTEMIC RELATIONSHIPS (“One morning, Little Red Riding Hood asked her mother if she could go into the forest to visit her grandmother, as it had been a while since they’d seen each other.”)

There will be no significant improvement in student performance until educators begin to make use of the brain’s usual way of organizing knowledge.

Think of the five categories—time, place, actors, action, cause—as drawers in a file, each with a system of subcategories, sub-subcategories, and so on, encompassing not just the organizing systems of everything now taught, but all knowledge, everything cross-filed with everything else.

Now comes the hard part. Pointing out the most powerful mental organizer known to humankind is easy. Teaching it is also easy. In fact, it doesn’t have to be “taught” in the usual sense of the word, just raised into consciousness, elaborated, refined, and put to use as sense-maker. Students helped to see, early on, how their brains organize knowledge, before they’re pushed into the artificial confines of subject-matter boxes, will simply take it for granted that schooling deals primarily with the whole of human experience and only secondarily with certain useful but random parts of it.

Neither does use of the system mean trauma for traditionally trained teachers. No subject, no course, no favorite lesson need be discontinued, just put in larger perspective, rather like matching pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to the picture on the lid of the box.

The difficulties of acceptance of a supradisciplinary knowledge organizer lie where they always have, in policymakers unable to imagine alternatives to the status quo, in inertia, and in simplistic “reforms” like the No Child Left Behind Act,which aren’t reforms at all but simply attempts to pursue the status quo with greater diligence.

Education leaders came out of the 1960s aware of the instructional potential of systems theory and the centrality of conceptual frameworks. The institution was pointed in the right direction until the publication of the unduly alarmist A Nation at Risk in 1983 triggered the present reactionary trend. There will be no significant improvement in student performance until educators begin to make use of the brain’s usual way of organizing knowledge.

Marion Brady is a retired educator who writes a column on education for The Orlando Sentinel in Florida.

Rigor, Relevance and Relationships ON HOLD?

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DETROIT SCHOOLS SHOWDOWN: Teachers on strike

BY CHASTITY PRATT and KIM NORRIS
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

August 28, 2006

Where the sides disagree

The school year for Detroit students is supposed to start Sept. 5, a week from Tuesday. Under Michigan law, a strike by teachers is illegal, but the union and the school district remain far apart on key contract proposals. Length of Contract Teachers want a three-year contract. The district is proposing two years. Wages Teachers seek 5% raises in each contract year. The district proposes a freeze on increases and a 5.5% pay cut across the board. Health care The district wants teachers to pay 10% or 20% of their health insurance premium, depending on their hiring date. Currently, teachers hired after 1992 pay 10%; those hired before then pay 0%. Co-payments for prescription drugs would increase from $3 to $10 on generic drugs and from $15 to $20 on brand-name medications. the district ALSO wants: To eliminate one preparation period per week from kindergartens through middle schools. To eliminate bonuses for critical-shortage hiring, attendance and longevity. To cut wages, sick days and health benefits for long-term substitutes. The teachers also want: A 25-minute shorter day in high school. Time off to go to a doctor for head lice or ringworm and not have the time charged to their sick-day account. Students who threaten or assault teachers to be transferred and the right to appeal readmission of a transferred student.

How districts compare

Here's a snapshot of pay and other conditions at a range of metro Detroit school districts. ARMADA Average elementary class size: The target class size for kindergarten to first grade is 20 students per class and 25 students for second to fifth grades. No. of teachers: 175 Top teacher pay: $68,031 Total reported crimes: 70 BIRMINGHAM Average elementary class size: 22 No. of teachers: 612 Top teacher pay: $82,131 Total reported crimes: 3 BLOOMFIELD HILLS Average elementary class size: Not available, though the district has a target of 22 students for kindergarten to second grade and 25 students for third to fifth grades. No. of teachers: 502 Top teacher pay : $83,721 Total reported crimes: 175 DETROIT Average elementary class size: About 30 No. of teachers: 7,000 Top teacher pay: $72,918 Total reported crimes: 5,574 FARMINGTON Average elementary class size: About 24 No. of teachers: 903 Top teacher pay: $83,417 Total reported crimes: 94 GROSSE POINTE Average elementary class size: About 24 No. of teachers: 585 Top teacher pay: $83,768 Total reported crimes: 77 MT. CLEMENS Average elementary class size: Target is 19 in kindergarten through third grade, and 25 per class in fourth to sixth grades. Number of teachers: 175 Top teacher pay: $69,430, based on the 2005-06 school year Total reported crimes: 84 PONTIAC Average elementary class size: Maximum is 28 for kindergarten to third-grade classes; 34 for fourth- and fifth-grade classes. No. of teachers: 513 Top teacher pay: $73,561 Total reported crimes: 157 SOUTHFIELD Average elementary class size: Maximum is 22 for kindergarten; 24 for first to third grades; 27 for fifth and sixth grades. No. of teachers: 700 Top teacher pay: District is still negotiating a contract. In 2005-06, it was $80,766. Total reported crimes: 23 Note: Total number of teachers still isn't locked in for many districts for the upcoming school year, as many are still hiring. Top pay refers to a top-of-the-scale teacher with a master's degree. Figures provided by school districts. Crime statistics come from the state Center for Educational Performance and Information and reflect reports from the 2004-05 school year for such offenses as robberies, bomb threats, physical violence, sexual assault, gang activity, vandalism and having weapons on school grounds.

The Detroit Federation of Teachers voted Sunday against a two-year contract proposal that included pay and benefit cuts and agreed to a strike that will put teachers on the picket lines in front of schools starting today.

Many teachers said they would accept a pay freeze, but considering the amount of crime in schools and bureaucratic mismanagement they say they put up with, they would not entertain the 5.5% pay cut the school district proposed. The union wants a three-year contract with 5% pay increases each year.

Ronald Duncan, a Cooley High School teacher, stood in support of a strike, clapping. One of his hands was in a cast he says is the result of an incident where a student body-slammed him, tearing the ligaments in his right arm.

"We make a big sacrifice. I can't tell you how much we spend buying supplies, and they want us to take a cut? It's not fair," he said. "In fact, I say it should be illegal."

The teachers were due back to work today, but the union and district are far apart. The two sides have a week to come to an agreement before school starts for the district's 129,000 students on Sept. 5.

Contract negotiations are to resume at 1 p.m. today.

The school district, fearing the strike, plans to petition for a court order today to force the teachers back to work and fine those who strike.

Superintendent William F. Coleman III said that if teachers do strike, parents should send their children as planned for the first day of school.

Administrators, support staff and security will be on hand to accept students, he said, adding that the district does not have enough administrators to replace the 7,000 teachers.

He maintained that the district needs $88 million in concessions from the union. "A strike does not change our financial situation," he said.

School board president Jimmy Womack criticized the union, saying the strike would hurt the city and hurt schools. Most Detroit teachers do not send their own children because 60% of the teachers do not live in the city.

"They need to take their concessions like everyone else. They need to participate in this revolution to try to bring this district back in line," Womack said, referring to the district's $105-million projected budget deficit.

"And from my perspective, they're clearly a part of the problem and not of the solution right now," he said of the union.

Of the estimated 6,000 DFT members who met at Cobo Arena for the vote, only a handful stood up in the auditorium to support the idea of returning to work while negotiators continued to craft a new contract.

Detroiter Tom Wilson, a teacher in the district since 1997, most recently at McMichael Technological Academy, was one of the few who wanted to return to work today.

"Parents have been hearing the 'S' word and are sending their kids to charter schools and out of the district. If I'm a working parent, I can't take a chance there won't be school to send my kids to," he said.

His concerns were echoed by some parents, who worried not only about their own children, but the long-term future of the Detroit Public Schools, too.

"I think it's going to devastate the district because people will leave," said Mia Parker, who has children in three Detroit schools.

Janna Garrison, president of the DFT, never uttered the word "strike," but made it clear to the union that laws prohibit a work stoppage.

"Just because it's a law, doesn't make it right," she added. "We believe we are fighting for what's right."

Under Michigan law, teachers could be fined a day's pay for each full or partial day they do not report to work. The union could be fined up to $5,000 a day.

By many accounts, Detroit teachers have it tough when compared with their suburban counterparts.

Most spend their days in crowded classrooms in school buildings that are an average of 65 years old and deteriorating. They are routinely victimized by car thieves and, last year, by armed robbers, too.

Add to that the public perception that the education they provide often does not measure up, and many teachers say it's a thankless work environment where even office equipment isn't available.

"I want to be able to make copies when I need them. That's embarrassing to have to put that in the contract," said Theresa Williams, who will teach second grade this year at Murphy Elementary/Middle School.

Kia Hagens, 31, of Detroit taught on-and-off in the district for about eight years between getting a master's degree and a law degree. She went to teach in Farmington Public Schools after DPS laid her off in 2005. Her pay jumped $7,000 and she has the potential to earn a top pay of $83,417 in Farmington compared with $72,918 in Detroit.

She still remembers the day when a mouse jumped out of her cupboard in her sixth-grade class at Golightly Education Center.

"In Detroit, they do not take care of business. You never know if you're going to be paid on time or not. And they do not treat their teachers well. I would tell any teacher on the fifth step or below, 'Run! You deserve better,' " she said, referring to the salary scale.

In addition to a pay cut, the district wants teachers to pay up to 20% of their health care benefits premiums.

A Kaiser Foundation survey found that nationally, the average worker with single coverage contributes $558 to his or her annual premium.

Not so with many teachers.

School employee benefits are better than the health benefit plans for 90% of other workers, said Adam Reese, senior consultant for HayGroup, a Virginia-based company that completed a study of school employee benefits for the Michigan Legislative Council last year.

"Teachers have traditionally been provided with fairly rich benefits to ensure that their focus is on delivering care and education to students, not worrying about, 'I can't afford to go to the dentist or the doctor,' " Reese said.

Shaton Berry said the current economy is not going to help the teachers gain support from the community when so many parents are losing their jobs. She has custody of two brothers in the district.

"I pay $120 a pay period for health insurance plus dental and vision, so I don't have any sympathy when you're talking about health care," she said. "In the end, the students are the ones being hurt here. And if students leave, teachers are going to lose their jobs."

Detroit's teachers on Sunday were not amenable to cutting their pay or benefits.

Steve Conn, a math teacher at Cass Technical High who is credited with instigating the vote that led to a strike in 1999, also riled up the crowd with an emotional speech Sunday, chanting, "No contract, no work!" after which DFT member Michelle Gibson asked Garrison to call for the vote.

Contact CHASTITY PRATT at 313-223-4537 or cpratt@freepress.com.

Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.

The results of some "Hard Work"

Congratulations to Mr. Moody and TEAM Barbour!

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Once-failing Detroit school makes the grade

It also will have to improve next year to avoid sanctions

BY CHASTITY PRATT and LORI HIGGINS
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITERS

August 25, 2006

For years, Barbour Magnet Middle School on Detroit's east side was the catch-all building that took in busloads of students from overcrowded schools or those whose schools were closed for good.

It did not meet the federal guidelines for annual yearly progress and was considered failing by the government for six years.

Until June, the building was on schedule to be restructured under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The staff and students were preparing to be split up and sent to other schools, having been branded a bad school.

"I know that I put forth all the effort I could. I wanted for these children what I wanted for my own," said Randal Moody, the principal at Barbour for nearly 20 years.

But the staff learned something in June that became official Thursday -- for the first time in years, it had met its Annual Yearly Progress standards and no longer faces restructuring.

Moody said the secret to meeting the standards was in the planning.

He mandated that his teachers meet twice a week to go over state curriculum standards and expectations alongside the district's guidelines to make sure every class is on target. Students were signed up for after-school tutoring and enrolled in a two-week summer MEAP academy.

"Our focus was almost laser-like," Moody said.

Barbour is one of 92 schools in various phases of federal sanctions that made AYP for the first year. If these schools make AYP again next year, they will be removed from the sanctions list.

Some schools improved their status simply by getting more students to take the MEAP test, since federal law requires that schools test 95% of their students to meet the standards.

But in some cases, schools improved because they worked hard, said Sharif Shakrani, codirector of the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University.

Many of these schools didn't meet the academic goals because too few of their subpopulations of students -- including minorities, low-income students, special education students and those with limited English speaking skills -- scored well enough on the MEAP.

"What they most likely have done is attempted to emphasize instruction to these populations, especially in the area of mathematics, which seems to be a problem for these schools," Shakrani said.

But these schools can't rest easy now that they've managed to meet standards this year.

Last year, none of the three high schools in Plymouth-Canton Community Schools met the standards because of low scores among special education students. This year, those three schools made it off the list. Most of the students took the MEAP, while some took an alternate exam designed for special education students.

"The students worked very, very hard throughout the year. Obviously, when it came to the testing, they tried their very best," said Mike Bender, director of secondary education.

"This is something we have to do," Moody said. "If we don't, based on No Child Left Behind, we're going to suffer the consequences."

Contact CHASTITY PRATT at 313-223-4537 or cpratt@freepress.com.

Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.

Whoops!

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544 Michigan schools fail federal standards

BY PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI, LORI HIGGINS and CHASTITY PRATT
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITERS

August 25, 2006

Did your school make the grade?

For a complete report with statewide results, go to www.michigan.gov/mde .

How they're graded

Don't speak the language educators use to describe things like Adequate Yearly Progress? Here's a primer: • Adequate Yearly Progress tracks how well schools meet the state and federal requirements for continuous improvement. In Michigan, this improvement is measured by the state report cards. • Schools receive grades of A, B, C, D-alert or unaccredited. • Their overall grades are based on six factors, including: the latest MEAP scores; the change on the MEAP test from last year; amount of growth on the MEAP; "engagement" indicators such as parent involvement and attendance; teacher quality and development, and learning opportunities.

The 7 steps of discipline

Schools that don't make Adequate Yearly Progress for two or more consecutive years are placed on the sanctions list, as required by federal law. The sanctions get worse each year a school does not make AYP, ranging from having to provide transportation to another school to tutorial services to eventual school restructuring. They are: • Phase 0: Rating given to a school that did not meet Adequate Yearly Progress for the first time in a subject. Federal requirements don't start until it fails two straight years in the same subject. • Phase 1: A school that didn't meet the standards for two consecutive years must offer its children's families the choice of attending a better school and transportation to that new school. • Phase 2: This rating goes to a school with three consecutive years of failing, and requires continuting school improvement, including offering the ability to transfer to a better school, transportation to that school and supplemental services. • Phase 3: A school that has failed to meet standards for the fourth consecutive year must take corrective action and continue to offer the choice of another school, transportation, supplemental services and take further steps. • Phase 4: This applies to schools that have failed to meet standards for the fifth consecutive year and requires restructuring. The school must continue offering the choice of transferring to another school, transportation and supplemental services. It also must develop a plan to restructure the school. • Phase 5: Any school that fails to meet adequate yearly progress for six consecutive years must implement a restructuring plan and continue the choice, transportation and supplemental services. • Phase 6: A school that is listed as failing for seven consecutive years must undergo a comprehensive school audit by an external team. It also gets a mandatory assignment of a coach and faces other penalties. The school also must continue offering the school choice, transportation and supplemental services and continue to implement the restructuring plan.

Roughly 1 in every 7 schools in Michigan is struggling and fails to meet federal standards, according to report cards issued Thursday by the state Department of Education.

The number of Michigan schools that don't meet the goals prescribed by the No Child Left Behind Act grew from 436 last year to 544.

"This is a concern for us, as well as other districts across the state," said Tracy Van Peeren, executive director of curriculum for Lakeview Public Schools in St. Clair Shores.

Lakeview failed to make Annual Yearly Progress for the first time this year because not enough special education students took algebra and did not score high enough on the math portion of the MEAP.

Of the 544 Michigan schools that received failing grades, 103 were in Detroit, the state's largest school district with 225 schools.

Detroit Superintendent William F. Coleman III said the reason Detroit fared worse this year than last -- when 63 of its schools failed -- is largely because the state moved up the testing period for the MEAP test to October from February.

He said that change gave students and teachers less time to prepare for the test, which is among the things the government uses to assess schools.

"It wasn't just something that happened in Detroit," Coleman said.

Educators pointed to other reasons for the rising number of struggling schools, including rules that don't allow the scores of special education students on alternate tests to count in evaluating a school's progress and because alternative schools that serve dropouts were included for the first time this year.

No Child Left Behind has brought more oversight of U.S. public schools, but the law leaves it up to the states to decide which sanctions to levy on schools that repeatedly fail to improve.

The sanctions include requiring the district to allow students in failing schools to transfer to better performing schools and to provide transportation to them. It also requires restructuring and other oversight.

The report cards issued Thursday are being carefully scrutinized by educators across the state.

But there is some question about how heavily they weigh with parents.

Nancy Moore's daughter, Michelle, is a junior at Conner Creek Academy East in Roseville, which did not meet the state standards in math. But the Eastpointe mom said the report card doesn't matter to her, as long as her child is being well-served.

"I was more interested in a school that stressed the basics and maybe was a little bit smaller in size," Moore said.

Lottie Parker pulled her three children out of schools in the Pontiac school district this year because she, and her children, preferred the programs offered by the Pontiac Academy for Excellence.

That school, a public charter school, as well as six schools in the Pontiac district, were listed as needing improvement.

But for Parker, there's more to a school's quality than how it measures up to the federal standards.

"There are a lot more extracurriculars, after-school programs like dance and band and cheerleading and after-school tutoring," Parker said of the academy. "They just go above and beyond, more than I can say for the Pontiac school district."

Mary Fulton, a policy analyst with the Denver-based Education Commission of the States, said about 70% of the schools nationwide identified as failing and facing No Child Left Behind sanctions are in just seven states: Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Pennsylvania, California and Georgia.

Fulton's organization is a nonprofit group that researches education issues for states.

High schools made up the bulk of Michigan's schools in need of improvement -- 400 of the low-performing schools were high schools, said Sharif Shakrani, codirector of the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University. For many of those schools, low math and English language arts scores were a problem.

Michigan plans to implement tougher graduation requirements starting with the class of 2010.

The news isn't all bad for Michigan. While the number of schools identified as failing rose, the state also saw 92 come off the list this year.

"When we focus resources on these critical, high-priority schools, it has a positive impact on schools and can help students achieve at higher levels," said State Board of Education President Kathleen N. Straus. "We need to use these success strategies and replicate them with other struggling schools across the state."

Contact PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI at 586-469-4681 or pwalsh@freepress.com.

Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.

21st Century RELEVANCE? "YOU be the JUDGE!"

Back-to-Cool Tech
Students Hunt For Must-Haves

By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 13, 2006; F01

There are only two weeks standing between 16-year-old Marcus Kephart and the end of freedom -- a.k.a. summer vacation.

He is in no rush to get back to the classroom. He has bought no notebooks. No binders. No pencils, pens nor paper. Instead, he lingered recently in front of a rack of Xbox 360 video games at Best Buy in Germantown.

The gaming system tops his back-to-school wish list. The Madden NFL video game is second. His parents are willing to fund his more, um, traditional school supplies. But this one is coming out of his own pocket. He has $100 left to go.

"They're cool with it as long as I pay for it," said Marcus, who lives in West Virginia. "I need to get a job. Anywhere."

Students such as Marcus make retailers selling consumer electronics happy. The tech category is expected to be one of the best performers this back-to-school season, driven by notebook computers and a host of must-have gadgets of dubious educational value.

"Today, most electronic purchases are not discretionary purchases anymore," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for NPD Group, a consumer research firm. "They're things you have to have to live in the modern society."

NPD Group estimated that 36 percent of shoppers planned to buy electronics this back-to-school season, compared with 25 percent last year. The National Retail Federation predicted total tech spending would reach $3.82 billion in the period, up from $2.06 billion last year.

Hence, the slogan on Wal-Mart's Web site reads: "College Happens. Tech It Out." The first items listed are MP3 players, ranging from $49.62 to $648. The Best Buy school checklist includes a TV/DVD combo, a George Foreman Grill and an external hard drive. Many computer manufacturers, including Hewlett-Packard Co. and Apple Computer Inc., have released new models this summer to lure back-to-school spenders.

So many options can create a tug of war between parents focused on cost and functionality and kids focused on fun.

Juan Paniagua, of Germantown, was shopping at Best Buy for a new laser printer and blank CDs on a recent morning with his niece, 13-year-old Micaela Larsa. She will be a freshman at Clarksburg High School and has already visited Staples and Target to buy basic school supplies and clothes. But she still has her eye on a laptop with a screen that can be flipped over and used as a tablet.

Her mom said no.

"But Dad said for Christmas," Micaela added with hope. "Maybe."

She said her mom bought a new laptop a month ago for her to use. The problem with that one?

"I have to share it with my little sister," she said.

Micaela said the two do not get along. Her mom has to keep the laptop in a case in her bedroom, and it's first come, first served.

Kevin Park, 18, of Germantown bypassed his parents altogether when he bought his laptop, an HP Pavilion dv8000 that the company touts as providing "superior entertainment."

"I just knew not to ask them," he said.

The computer, which set him back about $1,500, has a 200-gigabyte hard drive and a powerful graphics card for playing his favorite computer games, such as Black & White. He guessed that he would drop another $1,000 of his own money outfitting his future dorm room at Pennsylvania State University with essential appliances, such as a mini fridge.

Colleges recommend that students work with their roommates to figure out who needs to bring what. But often, rooms end up stockpiled with two or more of everything: computer, fridge, stereo, television, DVD player. Julie Weber, executive director of housing and dining programs for American University, said there are no banned -- or required -- consumer electronics.

"We do strongly recommend a computer. It's hard to be a college student without one," she said. "But everything else, it's just what they bring."

For their part, parents say they are willing to buy technology that can help their kids perform better in school. But as consumer electronics serve an increasing number of functions, the line between education and entertainment is blurring.

Take cellphones. Parents buy them for kids to help them coordinate rides from late soccer practices or to encourage them to call home frequently. But kids can also use them to play games, listen to music and text-message their friends.

Now, take iPods. They were designed with entertainment in mind. But now kids can use them to download podcasts from NPR, listen to a book or even learn a new language.

Education or entertainment?

"I would posit that's part of the increasing importance of electronics in the overall society," Baker said. "These are people's entertainment devices. They're their communication devices. They're their school research devices. You can't be without those kinds of things."

Malti Sethi of Vienna stopped by the Sony Style store at Tysons Corner Center last week to look for an electronic book reader. The device, which stores digital books, is for her personal use, but Sethi said she would have no problem letting her 9-year-old daughter, Seema, use it.

Seema got a laptop last year -- albeit a hand-me-down -- and can make PowerPoint presentations that rival her mother's. Her only complaint is that the battery life for her laptop is too short.

"If it's not in the charger, you pull it out and it dies," she said.

Not all parents have embraced technology, however. Margaret Holland, of Germantown, was browsing for movies at Best Buy with her daughter, Melanie, 16. They had picked "V for Vendetta," along with a Nancy Drew video game. Melanie said she hadn't done any back-to-school shopping -- though she did buy a 30-gigabyte video iPod this summer.

"Funny how that iPod seems to always sneak in there," said Dave Smith, a personal shopper at Best Buy.

"How essential is it really?" asked Margaret Holland. "I'm still listening to the radio."

Laura Haverty of Vienna said she doesn't plan to buy anything with a power button for her three children this school year. But that doesn't stop the kids from dreaming.

"I need a computer," said Kate, 13.

"I need a cellphone," chimed in 10-year-old Abby. "I like cellphones, and I like to call people. And I like pink."

At minimum, students need three essential pieces of electronic equipment, said Corey Angleton, 19, who attends George Mason University. They are a laptop, an MP3 player and a cellphone -- specifically, a camera phone.

Last month, he and his buddies decided to take a road trip from Virginia Beach to New York . His friends decided to strip down to their boxers while riding in a Jeep over the Bay Bridge and pretend that they were going to jump into the water. Angleton captured it all on his camera phone.

"You never know when you're gonna need it," he said.

But for many students, choosing the right electronics might be the easiest part of back-to-school shopping. It's the other stuff that gets confusing. Like bedsheets for his dorm room, said Kevin Park.

"Supposedly, you're supposed to get an extra large, extra long bedsheet that I've never heard of," he said.

Now that's a tough one.

A.I.M. Here!

---

August 13, 2006

Bill Gates’s Charity Races to Spend Buffett Billions

By STEPHANIE STROM

Although it has long been the largest grant-making foundation in the nation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is facing an unparalleled challenge: how to give away more money — and do it much faster — than it ever has before.

Largely lost in the June announcement of Warren E. Buffett’s gift of $31 billion to the foundation were its terms. Mr. Buffet will make the contribution in annual increments. For tax reasons, starting in 2009, the foundation must give away every nickel that he contributed in the previous year.

At the current price of the Berkshire Hathaway stock Mr. Buffett will be donating, the foundation will have to distribute $3 billion annually, or a little more than twice what it distributed last year.

“It’s like having a second child,” said Dr. Helene D. Gayle, who left the foundation this year to become president of CARE USA, the international relief group. “It’s not just twice the amount of work; rather, things change in vastly different ways.”

In the next two years, the foundation plans to double its staff to about 600 people to handle the additional money, said Cheryl Scott, the foundation’s new chief operating officer, and it is building a new headquarters complex in Seattle. “We’re very thankful for the two years he gave us to ramp up,” Ms. Scott said. “I think he understands that you don’t just turn this kind of thing on and off.”

“I’ve been a manager for close to 30 years, and this is a well-run organization,” Ms. Scott added, “but if you put that kind of a load on the current process we have, it’s not going to carry it through.”

The foundation has said it intends to continue to focus its philanthropy on education and global health while adding a new area, global development, to help the poor in third world countries. Before Mr. Buffett’s donation, the Gates Foundation had assets of almost $30 billion.

Dr. Gayle said the foundation’s way of doing business had evolved from its early days, when it believed in giving out a few large grants, rather than many small grants, to avoid building a huge staff and becoming a big institution. Now, she said, it has a more formal, structured process. Increasingly, it creates horse races among potential recipients through requests for proposals, more like a business, Dr. Gayle said.

“That takes time and is very hard to do piece by piece, project by project when you’re trying to get that much money out the door,” Dr. Gayle said. “In addition to the traditional approach of requests for proposals for specific projects, they may need to look at ways of giving out money over longer terms and turning to institutions that have the capacity to spend large resources.”

Externally, the immensity of the amount the foundation will have to give away each year is reviving debate about its size and influence.

“One out of every 10 foundation dollars spent is going to have the Gates name on it, and that gives it influence that is impossible to calculate,” said Rick Cohen, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a research group.

“And as currently structured, just four people are deciding how to spend all that money,” Mr. Cohen said, referring to Mr. and Mrs. Gates; William Gates Sr., Mr. Gates’s father; and Patty Stonesifer, the foundation’s co-chairwoman and president.

Mr. Cohen and others said the large amount of money also allowed governments and other donors an excuse not to spend their money.

In its 2007 budget proposal, for example, the Bush administration eliminated a $93.5 million program to underwrite the development of smaller schools, specifically citing the increase in support for those schools from “nonfederal funds” from the Gates Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.

Then there is the issue of accountability. Foundations by and large police themselves because of the paucity of federal and state resources devoted to oversight of the nonprofit sector.

The Gates Foundation goes further than most in revealing its warts. Its Web site acknowledges various missteps and challenges, be they unexpected complications in starting its AIDS-related program in Botswana or problems with its efforts to develop small schools. Its new headquarters will have a visitors’ center, a first for a major foundation.

“There is skepticism about whether a foundation can be a responsible and effective steward of this kind of money,” Ms. Scott said. “For us, it’s a question of teeing up the issue squarely, because it is a real one, and telling the story as fully and openly as we can. We do not want to be a black box.”

Others say the critics’ concerns are overblown because influence can be achieved with even small amounts of money.

“It doesn’t take billions of dollars to influence public policy,” said James Allen Smith, a philanthropic historian at Georgetown University. “It can be done with tens of millions or even a strategically placed few hundred thousand.”

Dr. Smith said that although the Gates Foundation grants were typically many times the amount of an average foundation’s, its donations paled in comparison with spending by government-financed organizations like the National Institutes of Health, which has an annual budget of $29 billion.

Foundation officials make the same point. “It’s still, in absolute terms, a small amount of money, given the problems we’re working on,” said Raj Shah, who oversees the foundation’s new financial services for the poor and efforts to improve agricultural productivity. Mr. Shah said the foundation’s primary focus was on some 550 million households in the world that survive on less than $2 a day.

Mr. Shah’s responsibilities include a new global development program. It is concerned with making financial and agricultural advances, and water and sanitation improvements for the poor. In Malawi, the foundation has underwritten the purchase of thumbprint readers used in establishing savings accounts for the rural poor.

The new endeavors, which grew out of a 16-month review aimed at determining how to expand the foundation’s operations in ways that complement its work on global health issues, give it new opportunities to spend its money.

Dr. Gayle said the foundation’s work had been evolving in the past year to include broader goals. In reproductive health, for example, it has been moving beyond grants supporting the delivery of services to broader goals like reducing maternal mortality, increasing access to contraception and providing education to girls.

The foundation had begun working toward an expansion more than a year before the Buffett gift was announced. The Gateses have long said they intend to give much of their fortune, pegged at $51 billion by Forbes magazine, to the foundation, and Mr. Gates is ceding day-to-day control of Microsoft to devote himself to foundation work.