Education News: December 23 & December 30, 2005

Following are some of the top headlines from the world of education for the week ending December 23 & December 30, 2005.

Absence makes the school go ponder
(Source: Los Angeles Times, 12/29/05) California students are increasingly being begged, bribed and badgered to go to class, not only to improve their education but to boost the coffers of cash-strapped school districts that rely on state funding largely determined by daily attendance. Californian school districts that are feeling the pressure to increase student attendance are raffling a car, vacations to Disneyland, iPods, and are even opening up nurseries for teen moms, and asking parents who pull their children out of school for vacation to pay them back. It is estimated that absenteeism costs schools approximately $30-40 per student per day, which can quickly become millions of dollars a year for large districts. Hilary McLean, spokeswoman for the state superintendent of public instruction, says that “it’s putting a lot of pressure on schools to look for every available dollar, to look for creative ways to squeeze every cent they’re entitled to out of the system.”

Private preschools a booming business
(Source: The Miami Herald, 12/28/05) Private preschools are expanding in South Florida and nationwide to cater to a growing demand. The number of early-childhood programs accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, particularly preschools and child-care facilities, has more than doubled in the past 10 years, jumping from 4,500 in 1995 to 11,178 in 2005. The increase of private preschools is a result of the advanced curriculum, cost incentives, and convenient locations that are offered, encouraging parents to jump-start their children’s education at the age of four or even earlier.

School textbooks tiptoe around Clinton scandal
(Source: USA Today, 12/28/05) The impeachment of Bill Clinton is a gray area of history, too long ago to be a current event, too recent to be judged in perspective. Yet history is already judging Clinton in the place where millions of students get information about him: textbooks. Absent are the details that were constantly on television or commentated on the radio. Rather, the milestone of Clinton’s impeachment is in the textbooks for its significance to our recent history, and for the oldest high school students that were only 10 or 11 years old at the height of the scandal, it is only history.

Advertisers catch the school bus
(Source: USA Today, 12/27/05) School districts desperate to plug budget holes are turning their buses into billboards for soft drinks, credit unions and car dealerships. Advertisements have been seen on buses in Arizona, Massachusetts, and new ones will be seen in Michigan, Colorado, and even perhaps in districts from Florida to Pennsylvania. So much money becomes available to districts as a result of allowing advertisement on buses, that it can be believed that this will spread across the US. Some parents and consumer groups are alarmed since children are already being bombarded with ads, but many school districts in a financial crisis see advertising on school buses as a way out.

Congress approves $1.6 billion in hurricane aid for schools, colleges
(Source: CNN, 12/23/05) Congress on Thursday approved $1.6 billion in hurricane relief for schools and colleges, including private-school aid that critics assailed as a national voucher experiment. Approximately $750 million will be geared toward helping the Gulf Coast public and private schools reopen as a result of the disaster hurricanes Katrina and Rita created. $645 million will help pay public and private schools that are hosting an estimated 372,000 displaced students, to cover costs for additional teaching, transportation and supplies. Under the one-year deal that Congress approved, schools that enroll displaced students can be reimbursed up to $6,000 per student, or $7,500 for each student with disabilities. $200 million has been set aside for college aid, mainly for the recovery of Louisiana and Mississippi campuses, and for colleges outside these two states that have taken in evacuated students. The final $5 million is for the education of homeless children.

New Jersey plans broad steroid testing for school sports
(Source: New York Times, 12/21/05) New Jersey's acting governor signed an executive order Tuesday that requires random steroid testing for athletes on high school teams that qualify for postseason play. The order makes the state the first to test high school students in all sports for performance-enhancing drugs. The testing of students in tournaments is scheduled to begin with the 2006-7 school year and will be overseen by the state’s interscholastic athletic association. The group now has to determine possible penalties for students that test positive; among the proposals is to exclude the player but not the team from the competition. Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey said he felt compelled to issue the order, as the state’s Division of Health Services found that steroid use among NJ high school students had increased from 3% in 1995 to about 5% in 2001, and believes that figures could be currently as high as 8%.

Kentucky grannies lead fight against illiteracy
(Source: Boston Globe, 12/20/05) Under a program sponsored by Save the Children, schools in several counties of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, among the poorest in the nation, have recruited over 80 grandparents to work in the schools helping children learn how to read. All but three of the grandparents are women and most are well into their seventies.  The tutors spend several hours a day working one-on-one with those children that have difficulty reading in hopes that they will encounter better opportunities in life as a result.

Drug survey of students finds picture very mixed
(Source: The New York Times, 12/20/05) Alcohol use and cigarette smoking among teenagers are at historic lows, but the number of high school students abusing prescription drugs like Oxycontin is rising, and sedative abuse is at its highest in 26 years, according to an annual national study released yesterday. 14 percent of high school seniors, 11 percent of 10th graders, and 7 percent of 8th graders said yes, when asked whether they had used tranquilizers, barbiturates or sedatives for nonmedical use in the last year, according to the Monitoring the Future study, which the federal government considers the best benchmark of teenage drug use. Officials in charge of conducting the survey noted that the prescription drugs were much more widely available than illegal drugs, and spoke of a cultural shift. Teenagers have grown up in a world where it is routine to reach for a prescription bottle to enhance performance, to focus better in school or to stay awake or calm down.

Do brighter walls make students brighter?
(Source: CNN.com, 12/19/05) New York City has been implementing a program called Publicolor, which allows students to paint over the dull industrial colors in their schools. Students claim that the old colors can make them feel down, while the newly painted bright colored walls make them enjoy being in school. The program, Publicolor has been credited by school officials with decreasing drop out rates, lowering discipline problems, and increasing attendance. The program was created as a result of the high drop out rates in schools in the early 1990s.  The program’s founder, having studied the psychological effects of color, believes that bright colors can be encouraging in learning environments. Alan Cohen, principal of a Bronx school in New York City, believes that the program is one of New York City’s best kept secrets, positively affecting education, because his school is experiencing the effect.