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National Education Standards

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:53:04 GMT

by OnlineLassiterSysAdmin.

"Less than two months after the nation’s governors and state school chiefs released their final recommendations for national education standards, 27 states have adopted them and about a dozen more are expected to do so in the next two weeks." [Emphasis added]

This New York Times article makes it pretty clear that new standards are coming.

Is this likely to make a difference?

What do you think?

(Find the standards themselves here: http://www.corestandards.org/)

Cobb schools might have to push classroom size to 40

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 12:08:31 GMT

by OnlineLassiterSysAdmin.

By Mary Lou Pickel

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

7:11 p.m. Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Cobb County might have to raise classroom sizes to 40 students, cut hundreds of teachers, cut bus routes and use prisoners to maintain school grounds to slash its budget next year.

At a hastily called Wednesday meeting, the Cobb County School Board discussed all of these possibilities, foremost how to handle raising class sizes to the maximum, in order to address an expected $137.7 million deficit in the coming year's budget.

Board members also talked about making children walk to school if they lived within 1.5 miles of the school. That could cut 200 buses and about $5.6 million, Cobb County School Superintendent Fred Sanderson said.

"If it's between cutting a teacher in the classroom and cutting a bus route, Cobb County kids are going to walk," school board member John Abraham said.

With some reservation, board members spoke about using prisoners to maintain school grounds, though not violent felons or child molesters.

"Guys, you have to think outside of the box," school board member Alison Bartlett said as Abraham quietly left the room while the discussion unfolded.

School board chairwoman Lynnda Crowder-Eagle suggested using people who need to perform community service.

It was determined the biggest savings would come from increasing average class size. That could mean cutting hundreds of teaching positions, Sanderson pointed out.

"Let's go to the big gorilla in the room," school board member John Crooks said, referring to the classroom issue.

Raising classroom sizes on average to the maximum allowed by the state would save about $53 million, Sanderson said.

Bartlett cautioned that the numbers the school district has released on the student-teacher ratios are overly optimistic because they represent averages. While the school district said the maximum high school classroom size would be one teacher for every 32 pupils, Bartlett argued that's not really the case.

"By gosh, they need to understand that it's an average," Bartlett said. "For English, science, math and social studies classes, we're looking at putting 40-plus students in there."

That would reduce the teacher to a disciplinarian, she said, adding, "I may have 45 kids in a classroom. That is awful."

"If we could find another way to cut $53 million, we're all ears," Abraham said.

Many Nations Passing U.S. in Education, Expert Says

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:01:05 GMT

by OnlineLassiterSysAdmin.

From today's New York Times:

"One of the world’s foremost experts on comparing national school systems told lawmakers on Tuesday that many other countries were surpassing the United States in educational attainment, including Canada, where he said 15-year-old students were, on average, more than one school year ahead of American 15-year-olds."

...

The blame for America’s sagging academic achievement does not lie solely with public schools, Mr. Butt said, but also with dysfunctional families and a culture that undervalues education. “Schools are inheriting an overentertained, distracted student,” he said.

...

He said Finland had the world’s “best performing education system,” partly because of its highly effective way of recruiting, training and supporting teachers. [Emphasis added.]

South Korea, he said, which was in economic ruin after World War II, today is an economic dynamo partly because of its educational attainment, which, among other measures, has achieved a 96 percent high school graduation rate, the world’s highest.

Read the entire article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/education/10educ.html?ref=education