DC's Impact on Education

The first article I found this week was "Does Money Lead to Real Reforms? This article focused on what Arne Duncan has stated in the past about stimulus money going to individual states and how he hopes it will be spent. It repeated the fact that Duncan wants to use the economic stimulus aid for education to accelerate improvement in schools. The article was quoted as stating:

To keep states that want more federal funds on the school reform path, Duncan attached some conditions to the stimulus money released earlier this month. He even asked governors for data that could potentially embarrass them.

Duncan wants governors to pass over information that could show that few schools districts in the country use student achievement to evaluate teacher performance and that most teachers, even the least effective, are given great evaluations. Hopefully this information will all for better reform in school districts if they are held accountable by the federal government. The article even mentioned that Duncan could use the information to shame states with poor records into actual reform. However, there were others quoted within the article as believing that Duncan and the Education Department would have to demand more and more from the states in order for them not to manipulate the system by changing their data.

I believe that Duncan is doing a lot to ensure that the states spend the money that they receive from the stimulus package wisely. I hope that he can make sure that the schools that receive extra benefits, such as the $5 billion special fund for reform, do actually deserve this money more than other schools in our nation. However, I believe that with his background, that he will be smart with his decisions and has the opportunity to bring about a lot of change.

In an article entitled, "Unemployed Seek Training for 'Green Collar' Jobs", describes the story of many community college students enrolling in courses which offer training for jobs for "green-collar" jobs. This large surge of students are learning how to install solar panels, repair wind turbines, produce bio fuels and do other work related to renewable energy. To meet the growing demand of courses in this line of work, two-year colleges are expanding or launching green job training with money from the federal stimulus package. The stimulus package set aside tens of billions of dollars to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency. According to the article, this will also create thousands of jobs retrofitting government buildings and public housing to make them more energy-efficient. Although the green energy industry has not been able to avoid cutting back during this recession, there is hope that once the economy rebounds there will be a strong demand for green-collar workers.

Personally, I hope that this will allow Obama's campaign for alternative energy to create millions of jobs that do not require a four-year degree. This could be great for our future economy and for the millions who cannot afford to attend a four-year university in our current economic situation.

The last article that I found about Washington's impact on schools was about D.C. schools in particular. In "White House Reaches Out to DC's Troubled Schools", the article lists the many things that the White House and especially First Lady Michelle Obama have done in order to make the White House more public to students within Washington. The article states that not only did the First Lady invite dozens of high-achieving local girls to the White House for a pep talk from herself and 21 other accomplished women, but that since Obama took the presidency on January 20, DC students have been invited to break ground for a new vegetable garden, celebrate Black History month, and received tickets to the Easter Egg Roll.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the White House is reaching out to support the efforts of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and schools superintendent Michelle Rhee, who are taking aggressive steps to turn around Washington's struggling schools.

This article was intriguing to me because having visited some DC schools and hearing about the rest, I was astounded that a city's school system located within our nation's capitol which works so hard for educational reform, could produce such low student achievement. I am very happy to see that the President and his wife are working towards supporting the work of the new superintendent and the mayor who worked hard to be able to fire the old superintendent. This district is an example of won of the worst in the nation and it is uplifting to see the government take notice of the reform that is occurring there.

Week of April 9th

This week in schools remained to be another one for interesting stories. The first that I came across was entitled "The Profile Police". This article was found in the Washington Post.

As high school students flock to social networking sites, campus police are scanning their Facebook and MySpace pages for tips to help break up fights, monitor gangs and thwart crime in what amounts to a new cyberbeat.

The article is basically stating that it is not beyond students' first amendment rights for police to check their online public profiles in order to keep students safe at school. Although many students are arguing that this should not be legal, I feel as though the campus police are not infringing on any rights if these students are checking these profiles through the school's internet connection. These checks are allowing police to do everything from preventing fights from happening at school, helping find students who have run away from home, and even allow students who are having arguments online to come into an office and speak to a counselor.

The fact that these checks are aiding so much in one of the largest schools in Virginia, Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax County, proves that these checks could be useful in other high schools as well. Although I would not have enjoyed campus police checking over my profile while in high school, I can now see the benefits that this would provide to a school system. I feel as though students who set their profiles to private could block access to these police, but that with so many students leaving their profiles public, the police could still find information to keep other students safe at school. I feel as though this should be enacted in schools across the country.

Secondly, I found an article entitled "Kindergarten Tests and the Importance of Play". This article discussed the fact that kindergartners are now being tested more than any other generation. With principals and superintendents pushing reading and math curriculum into earlier grades to improve the odds that students will pass later standardized tests that gauge school performance, teachers are testing students at younger and younger ages.

Pushing children to perform at a level they aren't old enough to handle increases behavior problems and failure rates and takes away from a focus on the importance of play, which is what 5-year-olds really should be doing. Playing is the best way to learn social skills and self-control--which just might result in kids deciding that they really like going to school.

This article enforces the fact that testing students in kindergarten is counterproductive. Students who are tested under the age of 8 can only provide unreliable test results. I have learned in my college education courses, that students brains and academic ability to do not fully begin to develop until the age of 7. I have always agreed that testing students at young ages can do nothing but further students' hatred and or fear of standardized tests. Are our younger generations going to be so stressed by third grade that even showing them a bubble sheets throws them into a fit? I completely agree with this article that all students deserve time to play. Without play time, they have little time to develop social relationships with other students and therefore their own personalities.

The third article that I came across this week and found interesting was another one about something the education secretary, our favorite guy Arne Duncan said this past week. Entitled "US schools chief says kids need more class time,"the article discussed Duncan's speech to about 400 middle and high school students in Denver, Colorado on Tuesday. He stated that American schoolchildren need to be spending much more time in school, attending nearly 6 days a week and at least 11 or 12 months a year. He thinks this should be enacted in order for students to be able to compete with students abroad.

"You're competing for jobs with kids from India and China. I think schools should be open six, seven days a week; eleven, twelve months a year," he said.

I agree that students should be in class for longer periods of time, however, this class time should be spent wisely, or there would be no point in sending students to longer classes or an extra day of classes. I also do not think this could happen without teachers being reimbursed. I loved that Duncan praised Denver's pay-for-performance system for educators. This allows teachers to be paid based on their performance in order to receive raises. I think rewarding better teachers allows for good teachers to remain in the education system, instead of leaving to make better money. This is something more school systems should try and pass for their educators. I feel that this is the only way that teachers would ever actually stay longer to help students even if they wanted to.

The other part of this article that I found to be very interesting was the fact that Duncan is opposing many of the policies that the Democrats been siding. He has publically stated that he thinks poor students who receive vouchers in the system in the District of Columbia should be allowed to stay. This placed the Obama administration at odds with the Democrats who have been vying to get rid of school choice. It will be interesting to see if Duncan further places the Obama administration at odds with the Democratic party throughout the rest of this adminstration's time in Washington.

Money, money, money!

To begin with, I read one of the most exciting articles about the stimulus plan in reference to education that I have in a while today. Found in the Associated Press, the article is called "Schools to begin receiving economic stimulus money." As if the title doesn't give away why my excitement level rose when I read this article, there is even more to be excited about.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Wednesday released the first $44 billion in economic stimulus money directed to schools, but said strings will be attached to the next round of aid. The Obama administration views the stimulus as a chance not only to save thousands of teachers' jobs but to overhaul the nation's failing schools.

I am very happy that the Obama administration is viewing this opportunity with such an optimistic eye. The fact that my future employment will also be safe is a selfish pleasure. The amount of education reform that can occur from this money, I believe will help the country's education system tremendously. Today, the administration made available half of the dollars for federal programs that pay for kindergarten through 12th grade and special education. Duncan is also going to providing applications for states to get even more money from the special fund that I mentioned in a blog a couple of weeks ago. I just hope that the plans to use this money can actually be used to create and fix schools that are struggling. At this point, all we can do is hope.

The second article that I found to be most interesting this week was entitled "School chief: Mayors need control of urban schools." This article was also about Arne Duncan. This article, published on Tuesday discusses the fact that Duncan believes that mayors should take control of big-city school districts where academic performance is suffering.

Mayors run the schools in fewer than a dozen big cities; only seven have full control over management and operations. That includes Chicago, where Duncan headed the school system until joining the Obama administration.

With superintendents changing so frequently, especially in larger cities, it does make much more sense for the mayor to have full control of a school system. I agree with this, especially for the fact that the mayors are elected by the public and therefore should be involved in their cities school system. The fact that so many are not, does make their involvement look limited to a point. With larger cities containing so many struggling schools, it would appear that having an overall controller could only aid in the process of reforming these schools. Especially with all of the money that the larger cities in states could be receiving, it is time for these cities to take action in reform. The use of this money is going to be crucial and if someone overlooking an entire city can help, then I believe that they should.

Finally, the third article that caught my interest was entitled "7 students punished at Winfrey's school for girls". This article was interesting, not only because it was Oprah's school where these students were punished for trying to force students into relationships and to engage in sexual contact, but because this is not the first time that Oprah has been disappointed in the way that things were being run at the school since it opened. I have loved the fact that Oprah opened this school in South Africa, since I first heard of it in 2007. She spent over $40 million in building the 28-building campus at which each girl that attends lives in a two-bedroom suite.

It's the fulfillment of a promise she made to former South African President Nelson Mandela and aims to give poor girls a quality education and prepare them for leadership positions in a country where schools are struggling to overcome the legacy of white-minority rule.

I can only hope that this promise can continually be fulfilled for years, and that events just like this one do not cause the school any harm. Spreading quality education to places that often lack it for all of their children is something that I am a strong believer in. I think more Americans should look abroad to focus their interests in helping out the rest of the world. I believe that the world would be a better place if this occurred.