Are Schools the Right Place for Social Services?

Are schools the right place for social services and mental health services? That’s one possible reaction to a news story and editorial in the Lawrence Journal World about a mental health/counseling program known as WRAP.

Want to Understand School Finance? Become a Magician

If knowledge is power, school administrators have a lot of it. Given the complexity of school finance, it’s hard for the concerned citizen to understand what’s going on.

Mike Hall, a reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal, wrote some articles on the finances of the local district. It’s fair to say that the experience gave him some headaches.

I have come to the conclusion that those who understand school finance in Kansas constitute a brotherhood and sisterhood equivalent to the alchemists of the middle ages. They speak to each other in a language that outsiders can only describe as “magic.”

School finance not easy as pi , Topeka Capital-Journal, July 29.

Kansas Leads Nation–in Federal Education Dollars

More and more, states are depending on the federal government for their education money, as federal funding went up 60 percent between 1999 and 2005. Blame (or credit) No Child Left Behind, says the Tax Foundation’s report “K-12 Spending More Reliant on Federal Government Since No Child Left Behind Act.”

In Kansas, the percentage of school revenue coming from federal sources went from 6.26 percent to 10.16 percent. Per-pupil funding went from $ 452 to $ 968, an increase of 88.02 percent–highest in the nation. Second-place Nebraska was far behind, at 68.44 percent.

Virtual School Tours Hays

The Hays Daily News reports on a virtual school making a tour in the area. Along the way, it points out the varied audience for such schools.

Those who have benefited elsewhere, however, are previously home-schooled students, athletes and students busy with other school commitments, students with special needs and ones seeking advanced placement courses or courses not available in their local school district.

The state of Wisconsin is beginning its fourth year with the program and has more than 800 students enrolled, and Kansas and Arizona are launching new programs this year.

Online high school set to take students in Kansas, July 27

Address Teacher Shortage by Allowing Double-Dipping

One superintendent thinks that a way to address the shortage of teachers is to change the rules of retirement:

“As 38 percent of the USD 418 certified staff and 53 percent of administrative staff becomes eligible for retirement in the next five years, according to Superintendent Randy Watson, the district faces the challenge of finding enough new teachers fast enough to fill the need.

Ironically, Watson said the best, most-qualified source to fill those positions are those who are retiring. But many retirees are deterred from re-entering the education field because of laws governing the state’s retirement system KPERS.”

[snip]
“The biggest pool of candidates the state has to offset the shortage, we’re turning our back to because we don’t want them to double-dip,” Watson said.

“The penalty currently if someone takes retirement into KPERS, which for the majority of people is around the age of 54 or 55, and they decide to move to another school district, that district is penalized 15.47 percent each year,” Watson said. “If that person decided to stay in the district where they retired, they are limited to earning $20,000 a year.”

Watson and other officials propose a plan that allows teachers who collect a pension to keep teaching without such a financial penalty. In brief, a teacher can work, receive a pension, and pay 12 percent (6 percent employee, 6 percent employer) into KPERS. The teacher does not get any of that money back.

(Superintendent Watson testifies on KPERS issue, McPherson Sentinel,  July 26)

The Reading Wars

Charlotte Allen writes a lengthy treatment of the reading wars for the Weekly Standard. One takeaway from the piece is that it’s a pity that the curriculum that a student receives is in some measure a political question, based on the whims of what is popular at the time–and what happens to hold sway in the particular district a child must attend. (“Read it and Weep,” July 16, 2007).

Money is No Guarantee

No surprise here, but yet another review has shown there is little correlation between cost and performance in schools.

Writing for Forbes magazine on July 7, Christina Settimi compared cost and performance. (The story, which was temporarily available on Yahoo, is called “Best and Worst School Districts for the Buck.”)

Settimi compared used ACT and SAT scores, exam participation rates, and graduation rates to measure student performance–and then compare that with per-pupil spending amounts.

The winner was Marin County, California. Marin County is famous for being the home to the rich and famous, so this ranking might seem to validate the argument that success depends on money. But not quite.

“Marin County, Calif., provides the best bang for the buck. In 2004 Marin spent an average of $9,356 ($6,579 adjusted for the cost of living relative to other metro areas in the U.S.) per pupil, among the lowest education expenditures in the country. But in return Marin delivered results above the national average: 96.8% of its seniors graduated, and 60.4% of them took the SAT college entrance exam and scored a mean 1133 (out of 1600).”

The highest cost school was in Alexandria City, Virginia. It spent $13,730 ($11,404 adjusted) per pupil, In return, it had a graduation rate of 73% graduation rate, and the 65.0% of its seniors who took the SAT scored 963, on average.

The methodology behind the story is interesting in itself. It applies only to counties and not individual school districts. And only a small portion of the nation’s schools were taken into consideration. The first cut was to take only the counties with a population of greater than 65,000. The second cut was take the 775 of those that had the highest average property taxes. The third cut was to look at counties in which more than half of all spending came from property taxes. That left 97 counties.

When that sample was obtained, the next step was to apply a cost-of-living adjustment to the expenditures, to reflect regional variations.

The analysis put twice as much emphasis on performance as weight, an arbitrary decision.

One very interesting and troubling feature was the fact that data is still hard to come by, despite the reams of data that are cranked out by the education establishment each year: “Just getting the raw data is no small task; in many counties you have to call dozens of high schools one at a time to find out how many kids drop out, how many take the SATs and how they do on the exams. Since no standard method to calculate a graduation rate is enforced nationally, and the college entrance exam boards will only release data below a state level directly to the schools, not the public, we were left to trust county, district and school officials to honestly and accurately report their results.”

School officials, by the way, were not above gaming the system to their advantage: “During this process it was interesting to hear about the amount of effort and the number of creative ways that schools take to report the best possible results. For instance, high school guidance counselors can encourage poor-performing students to take the ACT exam over the SAT exam, so that their SAT score remains high. Graduation rates can be calculated based on the number of seniors still enrolled in school on the date of graduation, compared with looking at a cohort that began freshman year four years earlier or even looking at the number of seniors enrolled at the beginning of the year. If only as much effort went into improving performance as it did into fixing performance measures.”

The conclusion: money’s not as important as you think. “The caveats to our methodology notwithstanding, our study shows that there are big differences in the quality of education relative to spending among counties and is further proof that money is not the only–or perhaps even the most important–factor when it comes to the quality of education.”

The full story has since gone behind a paid firewall, but you may still be able to view a slideshow of the top 10 counties. Following Marin County are Collin County, Texas (Plano); Hamilton County, Ind. (suburban Indianapolis); Norfolk County, Mass (suburban Boston); Montgomery County, Md. (suburban Washington, D.C.). In total, 3 of the top 10 are in Texas (outside Austin and Houston).

Competition Prompts Service Enhancements

Virtual schooling is one of the latest innovations in education. It’s being prompted by competition among schools. That’s one point you can take home from an article in the Emporia Gazette about the iQ Academy Kansas. Though based out of USD 384 Manhattan-Ogden, it is open to students throughout the state.

That’s putting the pressure on other districts, which lose some state money for each student who leaves for the Academy. The prospect is causing more schools–or at least the Emporia district–to look at offering virtual schooling.

“There’s several schools out there that are doing the same kind of thing [as iQ Academy Kansas] and, honestly, we do, too,” Emporia Superintendent John Heim said. “It’s just a little more competition.”

Heim said that the Lawrence school district set up a similar academy several years ago, “and it kind of prompted us to set ours up.”

Evidently, competition among service providers has benefits in education after all!

Online school recruits Tuesday in Emporia, Emporia Gazette, July 23

Why We Need to Improve Teacher Recruitment

It’s fairly well established that teacher quality is a vital component to student achievement. But what is the academic record of those who pursue advanced degrees in the field of education? The record is not so encouraging.

That’s the point made by Tom Shuford, who writes a letter in today’s Wall Street Journal (link for subscribers) (emphases added). He writes in part:

Applicants for graduate study in education administration — tested between July 1, 2001, and June 30, 2004 — had a combined mean total GRE (Graduate Record Examination) score of 950 (Verbal, 427; Math, 523). That is sixth from the bottom of 51 fields of graduate study tabulated by the Educational Testing Service.

The mean total GRE score across all fields was 1066. Which applicants had still lower total GRE scores than applicants in education administration? Social work, 896; early childhood, 913; student counseling, 928; home economics, 933; special education, 934 — education fields all. Other fields with mean GRE scores on the far left side of the GRE bell curve? Seventh, eighth, ninth and 10th from the left tip of the curve, respectively: public administration (“practices and roles of public bureaucracies”), 965; other education, 968; elementary education, 970; education evaluation and research, 985; other social science, 993.

Note the pattern: Eighty-plus percent on the far-left-side-of-the-GRE-bell-curve are headed for — or, more likely, already employed by — public education systems. Ninety-plus percent are headed for some form of government employment. This GRE snapshot of the capabilities of the people who run government schooling monopolies is not unrelievedly bleak: There is one education “outlier,” secondary education, that has a mean score of 1063, in the middle of the bell curve distribution.

—————

Doubtless, some people in schools do a good job. But clearly, people with higher abilities, at least as measured by the GRE, aren’t heading for or staying in education. The “stay the course” recommendation would be to raise the pay for those in schools. But an across-the-board pay scale, which is surely what would result, would also make the field more attractive to the relative underachievers.

Working out the details of some merit pay system is difficult. But it should be done.

(Dismal GRE Statistics for Education Fields, Wall Street Journal, July 25)

Resources for Selecting Virtual Schools

If you came to Kansas Education looking for information on virtual schools, we have two resources for you.

The first is the Virtual Schools page. It lists virtual schools and online school programs in the state and offers some comments on the scope and services of the programs. The information was taken from the Division of Legislative Post Audit as well as Flint Hills Center research.

The second resource is a collection of blog entries on this site about virtual schools. This will take you to excerpts of newspaper articles or reports on virtual schools, as well as commentary on those accounts.

Wichita Budget Going Up

Wichita school teachers will get a 4 percent raise under a new contract. It also looks like they don’t currently pay anything for health insurance. Says TV-12 news on the contract, “Under the plan, the school board will pay $552 a month for employee health insurance. Teachers have the option of paying an extra $165 a month for premium health insurance.”

The Wichita Eagle (“Teachers, district agree on a contract,” July 25), gives more details.

• A 4 percent salary increase for all teachers. The starting salary would be $36,927, up nearly $1,400 from last year.

• Raises for additional education and years of experience.

• The district would pay $552 a month per employee for health insurance. Teachers could pay an additional $165 a month for a premium health insurance package.

• Spouses of district employees who have health insurance available from their employer but who opt to enroll in the district’s plan would pay a $100 monthly surcharge.

• The health care plan would introduce a $30 co-pay for office visits and reduce the cost of generic prescriptions from $15 to $10.

In a related story (“Schools move ahead with planned hike in tax rate,” Wichita Eagle, July 24), the district “moved forward in a budgeting process that could see the school district raise its tax rate by 2 mills.”

How large is the state’s largest district? Over a half billion dollars. “The board voted to publish a proposed $516 million budget for the 2007-08 school year that would require raising its local option budget from 27 percent to 30 percent of its general fund.”

The story has an interesting point about how budgets are reported:

“Chief financial officer Linda Jones said the published figures will differ from the numbers in the district’s budget-at-a-glance book. State law requires the district to include grant money in its totals. The state also asks that funds for the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System be listed.

‘They wire the funds into our bank account and wire them out the same day, but they want them shown on our books,’ she said.

These requirements mean that the published budget will be about $577 million, Jones said.”

It may appear that the higher number is bogus, simply the result of an arbitrary requirement from Topeka. Yet if you’re going to analyze the cost and performance of a school, you’ve got to look at the total amount spent, regardless of who is paying the funds.

“Before the board voted, superintendent Winston Brooks reiterated the position he laid out at an earlier budget workshop: The tax-rate increase is needed to give district teachers and staff a 4 percent raise, which he said is in line with the salary increases approved for city, county and state employees this year.”

Anyone know the average pay raise for private sector workers? Leave a comment if you have a source (e.g., Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Reserve Bank). Kansas or at least Midwest regional data preferred.

Virtual Schools Questioned

It had to happen sooner or later: an innovation in education starts gaining ground, and then the questions arise. Some of these are captured in the Kansas City Star:

“When the virtual school bell rings Aug. 16, leaders of iQ Academy Kansas hope high school students from Garden City to Overland Park will be logging in for class.

Leaders of the academy, which is an expansion of the virtual school operated by the Manhattan-Ogden School District, have scheduled more than two dozen open houses around Kansas this month to recruit students for the online high school.

More Kansas schools are offering students the anytime, anyplace convenience of taking classes on the Internet. Six new virtual schools are expected to open this fall, bringing the state’s total to 34.

Comment: to see a list of some of those schools, please visit the virtual school page on Kansas Education. You can also find some information at the web site of the KSDE.

But the virtual schools also are being watched more closely by lawmakers in the wake of a spring audit that criticized the Kansas Department of Education’s oversight of the programs and questioned how they were funded.

Comment: Earlier press coverage on the report, plus a link to the report, is available on Kansas Education.

The state doesn’t have a prototypical virtual school. Some serve just high school students, others offer classes for kindergarten through high school. Some target home-schooled students, others students at risk of dropping out. Some restrict their enrollment to students within the school district boundaries, others recruit across the state.

Comment: This is similar to the case with charter schools. There is no “one” charter school. In general, our method of running schools should recognize the different needs of students.

The note about recruiting reminds us of some news stories that ran in the fall a couple of years ago. The Lawrence Virtual School was conducting outreach meetings in various cities of the state. Some school officials elsewhere objected.

Lawrence’s two virtual schools had a combined enrollment of 643 students last year, about 44 percent of whom lived more than 30 miles from the school.

Like the Manhattan school, the Lawrence school recruits students at open houses, though principal Gary Lewis said word of mouth has been the best recruiting tool.

He said there’s plenty of room in the marketplace for more virtual schools, though he cautioned that the state needs to make sure that the schools are providing quality education.

Comment: There is some role for state oversight, but the best check on the quality of schools is an informed population, particularly that segment which has children of school age. The state of Kansas has produced several products that let parents look at the performance and budget of school districts. Such products should be made widely available and improved continually.

“The key is to make sure they’re focused on kids, not on being a profitable business,” he said.

Comment: In the long run, a profitable business is one that satisfies the needs and wants of its customers. If children are free to enter and leave schools, and the fiscal and academic performance of those schools is known, quality will take care of itself. There need not be a conflict between someone making money and students learning. After all, traditional teachers and district employees, as well as those who produce textbooks and other materials used by schools, earn their living by teaching. So Besides, in Kansas, virtual schools are all overseen by school districts, not businesses.

Rep. Pat Colloton, the Leawood Republican who asked for the state audit, said she’s particularly concerned about funding. The audit found that schools receive the state’s full per-pupil funding for full-time students, though the per-student cost to operate the virtual schools in many cases may be less.

“That opens the question of whether schools are trying to make money off the virtual school,” Colloton said. “One of my questions is how the formula should be set up to reflect the actual costs of operating a virtual school.”

Comment: The costs of running a virtual school may be less. They may be the nearly the same, but different. It all depends on the schools in question.

Until this year, the Manhattan-Ogden virtual school targeted at-risk students, said Brooke Blanck, the academy’s program director. The district wanted to add average and more advanced students to the virtual mix, she said, and began researching programs that offered a more rigorous curriculum.

The district contracted with iQ Academy, a Portland, Ore.-based company. This fall, iQ Academy is entering its fourth year of a virtual partnership with a Wisconsin school district.

Lisa McClure, director of iQ Academy, said full-time students who enroll in the Kansas academy will receive a laptop computer and photo-quality inkjet printer at no charge, as well as a small stipend to offset the cost of Internet access.

There’s no tuition for the school. Funding comes through the state’s school-funding formula for public schools, which in 2007-08 is $4,374 per student. McClure said a portion of the funding will stay with the district to cover its virtual school costs and the rest will go to iQ Academy.

About two dozen people attended an open house for the academy on Wednesday in Overland Park.

Peggy Collison of Shawnee, a home schooling parent, said she is considering enrolling her daughter part time in the iQ Academy to pick up a couple of classes not available elsewhere and to see whether virtual learning is a good fit.

She liked the secure online environment the school provides. And enrolling full time to get the free laptop loaded with software is an enticement.

“It would be easier with the laptop,” she said.

Comment: Virtual schools aren’t for everyone, but they can be useful for some. Let’s not try to force them into the mold of traditional bricks-and-mortar schools, or use fear that “somebody’s going to make a profit” from benefiting students.

Source: As new virtual schools open in Kansas, questions remain, Kansas City Star, July 22)

New Report on Virtual Schools

The Flint Hills Center for Public Policy has released a new report (PDF) on virtual schools.

Here’s the press release:

Make Virtual Schools a Real Option for Students

Legislative report shouldn’t deter development of innovation in education

(WICHITA) – “Legislators should not let a recent report from the Legislative Post Audit Committee suffocate virtual schools,” cautions John R. LaPlante, education policy fellow with the Wichita-based Flint Hills Center for Public Policy. “These schools revolutionize education for some students,” he said. “Students across the achievement spectrum can benefit.”

Through Internet technology, students in virtual schools can take advanced or unique courses. “Virtual Schools: For Some, the Future of Education,” a new report from the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy, offers several principles for governing online education.

Allow students to enroll in any qualified virtual school. By its nature, virtual schooling need not be confined to a specific location.

Make students secure the approval of the receiving, not the sending school. They should not have to petition their home school district to receive an appropriate education.

Don’t cap the number of virtual schools. Such a measure would harm student education.

Encourage competition and specialization by letting virtual schools accept and recruit students from across Kansas. When online learning flourishes, so do students.

In short, Kansas should not expect virtual schools to be governed in a traditional way.

# # #

The Flint Hills Center for Public Policy is an independent voice for sound public policy in Kansas. As a non-profit, nonpartisan think tank, the Center provides critical information about policy options to legislators and citizens. For more information, please visit our web site at www.flinthills.org or contact us at (316) 634-0218 or information@flinthills.org.

On the Bus from Michigan

To deal with a shortage of teachers, one school district thought of sending a bus to Michigan to bring teachers for a visit. It didn’t work out, but it pointed to the need for something to fill positions.

The state’s 296 school districts had more than 1,100 teaching vacancies as of June. Dale Dennis, deputy state education commissioner, said shortages are most acute in special education, math, science, vocational education, foreign language and music. A shortage of counselors also is an issue, he said.

As of last week, Garden City still had 22 teaching vacancies, including in special education, high school English and math and middle school math. If it can’t fill all the jobs, it will start the school year next month with long-term substitutes, its officials told The Hutchinson News.

But bigger problems appear to be looming. According to a recent state audit, one in four current teachers will be eligible for retirement within the next five years. The state has about 35,600 full-time teachers.

In Wichita, the state’s largest district, 730 teachers, counselors, social workers, librarians and nurses will be eligible to retire within the next five years. They include 48 English and 35 social studies teachers, where schools now have relatively few vacancies.

“It just continues to get worse,” said Sen. Jean Schodorf, R-Wichita, the committee’s chairwoman. “People aren’t going into teaching.”

You’ll hear low pay as one reason for the shortage. Certainly pay is one factor that people consider when choosing a profession. But there are other factors that should be considered.

Has Kansas done anything to make the certification process less onerous? Perhaps we should have a discussion of whether certification is even useful in guaranteeing good teachers. After all, if you’re a mid-career professional who always had a desire to enter teaching, would you really want to take a bunch of education classes that might appear to be of questionable value?

How about moving away from the union rule, where everyone is treated the same, regardless of performance?

Teacher Shortage, the Hays Daily News, July 23.

See also: Schools Chief Wants Proof, Topeka Capital-Journal, July 29

One thing everyone agrees on is there aren’t enough teachers in Kansas. [Alexa] Posny said 50 percent of the state’s teachers can retire in the next five years, and more than 30 percent of first-year teachers will leave the system within the first three years. On that note, she applauds the recent board decision to lower the grade-point average requirement for teachers coming from out of state.

“If a teacher has been teaching for 18 or 20 years very successfully, and possibly 20 years ago their grade-point average wasn’t quite up to snuff, is that enough to say that a person is not qualified as a teacher?” she asked.

All-Day K in Lawrence

More all-day K programs are coming to Lawrence.

Says the Journal-World,

Thanks to about $600,000 in funding from the state, district leaders targeted eight schools based on needs demonstrated by assessment test scores and populations of students who receive free and reduced-price lunches. Administrators have indicated they hope to eventually expand it to all schools.

So they’re targeting the funds. Good move. But notice the plans to expand the enrollment. Does that mean all students as well?

It seems that some of the move is based, in part, on the fact that expanding to an all-day program is easier on the schedules for parents.  Said the district’s chief academic officer, “For parents, some of the positives for many of them is they are not going to have to make those arrangements about having to get children picked up in the middle of a workday and get them transported somewhere else.”

Given the relative performance of elementary versus middle and high schools, the money would probably be better used later in a student’s school career.

Schools have high hopes for ‘all-day K’, Lawrence Journal World,  July 22

No Bus for You

Here’s a fact you may not know about schooling: in USD 501 Topeka, high school students are responsible for getting to school on their own. Bus service is limited to elementary and middle-school students.

District officials are talking about subsidizing student passes on the local transit system. That’s smart: why incur the overhead of starting their own system?

Official: Busing should leave no child behind, Topeka Capital-Journal, July 19

Gifted Students Need Help, Too

Though this is an old story, it’s one that points to the limits of one-sized-fits-all education. Another reason why competition and choice rather than top-down approaches will benefit all students.

Ginger Lewman, a teacher of the talented and gifted, told the Emporia Gazette:

“We know classroom teachers are currently overworked with the constraints of NCLB (No Child left Behind) and meeting the needs of so many diverse learners, that often high-ability students are left to make it on their own. Gifted students require challenge to reach their full potential just as any student deserves, but the rigor and depth is not always provided in the very classrooms where they spend the huge majority of their time.”

Another teacher commented that the talented and gifted, once ignored, sometimes”decide to go underground or hide, never reaching their full potentials.”

When children are not challenged to meet their full potential–and helped along that way–we all lose.

Wonder why some kids are bored? Back to Lewman:

“Research tells us that many gifted students enter the school year knowing up to one-third of the content (to be) covered. So then in an optimal situation, students would be learning new information daily.”

But when they’re not, nothing good happens.

Said Marcia Law, another teacher: “We need to begin to look at children based on their skills where they are, and stop tracking by perhaps the least-appropriate method–age.”

Lawman and Law are members of the Kansas Association of the Gifted and Talented and Creative.

They point out that new technologies may help:

The women want high-achieving students to have academic opportunities to take advanced-placement classes, subject and grade acceleration, distance and virtual learning and possibly international baccalaureate classes, among other goals.

“One of the beauties of new technology is that we can bring these programs to any child, regardless of school location.Source: Emporians press for support of gifted children, Emporia Gazette, January 31, 2007.

Pro Athletes Going Back to School

Normally we keep a pretty tight focus here, limiting the blog to something that has an obvious connection to Kansas. But this next item is of interest to anyone (and that would be a lot of us) who is a fan of professional sports.

The Houston Chronicle (“Back to College,” July 19) tells a few tales of professional athletes, retired and active, who are going back to finish the college programs they interrupted by entering the big leagues.

Obviously, these individuals don’t need a four-year degree for financial reasons; the ones mentioned in the article are or should soon be financially set for life, as long as they don’t blow all their money. Some cite the need to speak honestly to youth on the need to pursue a good education, others sense the need to achieve, still others seek the tools to enter a new profession.

Said an associate director of athletics at the University of Houston: “No matter how much money they’ve made, they always want that degree. There’s always that door that was never closed.”

Virtual Schools’ Benefits: In the Words of Students

In the words of the Tucson Citizen, “Virtual school isn’t the stuff of science fiction.”

The paper reports that last year, over 170 virtual schools operated in the U.S., serving 92,000 students. In Arizona, virtual schools are evenly split between programs within traditional school districts (7), and charter schools (7). In Arizona, charter schools are not by design or fact creates of the local school district, to the distinction is one with a difference. The single largest virtual school in the state had over 3,000 students in its k-12 program.

The independence of charter schools is prompting school districts to make sure they are in the fray: “School districts such as Tucson Unified, already losing enrollment to charter schools, are looking to begin or expand their distance learning programs as well.”

Students in the story offered several reasons why virtual schools are useful:

* “I won’t have the distractions of other people in class who don’t want to do their work and who are trying to get me to join them.”

* “The flexible schedule is great and a lot less stressful.”

* “I’d like to finish high school in three years, so the virtual classes are great. This summer I was able to do what I wanted during the day and do my classes at night.”

The article mentions IQ Academy Kansas, which is operated by Manhattan-Ogden USD 383. (On the home page of the district, look under the “Programs” tab.) Students in that program earn a diploma from USD 383.

Source: Local parents ponder virtual high schools, Tuscon Citizen, July 17.

Wichita Schools: We Need More Money

Despite the recent additions to the state aid budget, the Wichita school board says it needs more money from local taxpayers:

If Wichita school employees are to get more than a 1 percent raise this year, the district will have to increase the mill levy by 2 mills, school board members were told tonight.

In a workshop meeting, the board took an initial look at the district’s proposed $516 million budget for the 2007-08 school year. The new budget represents a 6.4 percent increase over last year’s $485 million.

With a $31million budget increase overall, Wichita schools would be able to provide about a 4 percent salary increase and keep up with the rising cost of health insurance for district employees, according to a plan presented to board members.

[snip]

The district will receive $18.4 million in new state revenue for 2007-08, part of a three-year, statewide school-finance plan. Nearly 67 percent of the district budget is state money. Last year’s total state funding was about $258.1 million.

District administrators plan to use the state money for scheduled salary increases and new staff including eight bilingual program staffers, 10 middle-school counselors, 22 high-school teachers, 25 elementary-school staff and 49 special-education positions

Source: Wichita School District Proposes Tax Increase, Wichita Eagle, July 16

Less Class Time, More Planning Time?

The Lawrence (USD 497) teacher union wants more time away from classes and more time teaching. It was a topic in recent negotiations, but it will now wait until next year. So will a proposal to curtail the use of early retirement.

Source: Teacher planning time issue on hold, LJ-World, July 14. Make sure to read the public comments in this article for a lively discussion.

Confusion in School Budgets

Why aren’t school budgets easier to understand? That’s what Mike Hall asks:

Hall found out that USD 501 Topeka wants to increase the mill rate, and that set him to trying to figure out the district’s budget. That hasn’t been easy.

“I’ve spent four days now collecting information from Hixon, from Shawnee County Clerk Cynthia Beck, from the Kansas State Department of Education and from the school district’s Web site. I spent 45 minutes with Jones in his office and exchanged e-mailed questions and answers with him. I still can’t figure out school district budgeting.”

Source: I’m not giving up on this project, Topeka Capital-Journal, July 15

Discipline and Mainstreaming

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story (When Discipline Starts a Fight) on the perils of mainstreaming, and what it can do to discipline in the classroom.

Excerpts below:

As public schools come under pressure to teach more children with behavioral disabilities, the use of restraint and seclusion has become a contentious issue. Faced with laws that make it more difficult to expel or suspend misbehaving special-education students, educators say they need to use harsh tactics sometimes to protect other children and teachers.

The danger comes when schools turn methods designed for extraordinary circumstances into routine disciplinary tools. The result can be a vicious cycle of punishment and rebellion, hurting the very children who were supposed to benefit from attending a mainstream school.

[snip]

Decades ago, schools often denied enrollment to students with serious behavioral disorders or assigned them to segregated facilities. Conflicts over disciplinary methods often played out far from public view. Then came the 1975 federal law now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It requires schools to provide disabled students with individualized education plans and put them in the least-restrictive appropriate setting — which often means a regular public school. The idea is that children with disabilities will mature and learn more if they have contact with peers in regular schools.

In 2005, 472,000 children were receiving special-education services for emotional disturbances. Of them, 35% were going to school in “fully inclusive” settings — spending 80% or more of their day in regular classrooms — up from 17% in 1990.

[snip]

The story also talks about parents who are increasingly dissatisfied with the options to them by their children’s schools.

 

 

What Kind of School Sends 80 Percent of Students to College?

KIPP Endeavor opened its doors in KCMO on July 9, marking a new era in education in the Midwest. It’s the first charter school, in either Kansas or Missouri, run by KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program), one of the leading charter school operators in the nation.

KIPP Endeavor is sponsored by the Metropolitan Community College-Business and Technology. That highlights an important difference between the charter school laws of Missouri and Kansas. In Kansas, charter schools are sponsored (authorized) only by school districts. In Missouri, several other entities, including universities, can sponsor a charter school. (On the other hand, Missouri law is more restrictive geographically; charter schools are limited to Kansas City and Saint Louis.)

The school, which is partially supported by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, is part of something special. According to an account in the Kansas City Star, “Most of the 12,000 pupils in KIPP schools are African-American or Hispanic. KIPP reports that 80 percent of its graduates go to college.”

80 percent!

KIPP Endeavor Academy hopes to put children on track for college, Kansas City Star, July 9.

Ni Hao, Kansas

This is interesting.

“The Galena district was one of two in Kansas receiving language instruction grants recently from the U.S. Department of Education, under a program to train more Americans in languages critical to national security and commerce.

Galena will receive $171,684 in the first year of the three-year grant to support its Chinese language initiative. The Emporia district, which is focusing on Spanish, was awarded $161,865 in the first year of a three-year grant.”

Funds come from the National Security Language Initiative.

Why Galena? The article doesn’t say (Galena schools to teach Chinese, Wichita Eagle, July , except to note that the district’s superintendent visited China in 2006.