Then Again, What Do They Know?

Zip Zilch Nada (what students know about preparing for college) posters and student brochure by KnowHow2Go , a national college access campaign supported by Lumina Foundation* and American Council on Education.

*so is Education Sector

Hispanic Students Are Smarter

Miami Herald reports that Latino students are more likely to choose colleges based on sticker price and convenience, according to a study by Excelencia in Education. They care a lot about how they're going to pay for college, they want to stay closer to home and avoid debt. OK, I added the smarter part but seriously that just seems smarter.

Dual Immersion in Texas

English language learner (ELL) students are not doing well. Last month a federal judge ruled that Texas's bilingual education programs are not to blame. Indeed, there are plenty of other reasons for ELLs' poor performance but in fairness to LULAC, MALDEF and the GI Forum who argued that ELL education is not being well monitored or evaluated, our education programs for ELLs need a lot of work.

The judge's ruling has prompted a renewed debate over what type of programming is best for ELLs. For educators of ELLS, this is a fair debate. It's hard to figure out the best way to teach these kids, mostly because there isn't one best way (ELLs are a diverse group-a recent immigrant with few years of formal schooling is very different from a U.S.-born student who is struggling with English). But there are some things we do know. For instance, there's ample evidence from research that shows that language-minority students who are instructed in both languages (native and English) perform better on average in English reading proficiency than those taught in English-only, for early grades and secondary school levels, as was reported by The National Literacy Panel in their study of language-minority children last year.

There are many philosophical and political arguments for why we support English-only instruction and remove all native language from U.S. public school curricula, but none is supported by research. So it's promising to read that Texas educators are looking into dual immersion.

Rest in Peace, Dr. Hilliard

Very sad to report that Asa G. Hilliard died earlier this week while traveling on a study tour in Egypt. Dr. Hilliard was the Fuller E. Calloway Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University, with joint appointments in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and the Department of Educational Psychology/Special Education. Prior to that, he taught psychology, math and history in the Denver Public Schools, worked as a superintendent of schools and school psychologist in Monrovia, Liberia, and served as a professor and then dean of education at San Francisco State University.

More recently, Dr. Hilliard has been speaking out with other scholars about the problems facing black male youth. He has openly questioned the promise of single sex schools to improve the education of black male students. Single sex schools, he argued, can be high-performing or low-performing just like any other schools.

Folks in Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, North Carolina, pay attention. You too, USDOE. If you're really interested in helping the kids who need it the most, single sex is a distraction not an answer.

Tonight! PBS Merrow Report #2

Airing tonight on the NewsHour, the second in a series of reports on NCLB. This one takes us to San Diego, where two schools- Keiller and Gompers Middle Schools-broke off from the school system and converted to charters. How'd they do it? Did it work?

At the same site, you can also get podcasts featuring school leader Patricia Ladd, parent Michelle Evans and former S.D. Superintendent Alan Bersin (disc: Bersin chairs ES board) to learn more details. And see our 2006 ES report , "Extreme Makeover", for more analysis and lessons on Gompers and Keiller.

The Hottest Schools

Jay Mathews profiles the "25 Hottest Schools" in Newsweek. Some picks seem related to learning: Hottest for Science and Engineering (Cal Inst of Tech), Hottest for Liberal Arts (Princeton U), Hottest for Business (Babson), Hottest for International Studies (Univ of Richmond). Some are mostly about demographics and special pops: Hottest Mega University (UCLA), Hottest for First Gen Students (Queens College, also alma mater of Ugly Betty, which no doubt gives it extra points on the hot scale), and Hottest Women's College (chance to take a cheap shot at the gender imbalance in college-going rates by picking any college but stuck to the spirit and picked Smith College).

Some are ridiculous: Hottest Liberal Arts School You Never Heard Of (Centenary College of Louisiana). How can it be hot if we've never heard of it? or Hottest for Sports Fans (UFlorida- too obvious, Ohio State would be better- get the sparks flying again) or Hottest for Loving the Great Outdoors (St. Mary's College of MD- the sailing/crabbing/fishing/beach thing, sure, but otherwise, Maryland? I was outside more in my eight years in NM and CA than the rest of my life here in MD but hey, shout out for Maryland can't be a bad thing).

Others are just downright scary- Hottest in the War on Terror (New Mex Tech).

And my favorite? Drumroll.....
Hottest Catholic School. Can a Catholic school be hot? Fortunately my family doesn't read this blog so they won't see me referencing "hot" and "Catholic" together. But I guess Fordham's got something good going on there b/c it wins this prize.

PBS Merrow Report on NCLB

Last night, PBS aired the first of three special reports on NCLB. John Merrow interviewed Education Secretary Spellings, Chester Finn of Fordham and ES's own Kevin Carey on how some school districts are getting around NCLB requirements. Read the transcript or download audio file here. More from Kevin on this in his Hot Air report.

School Time Update

Massachusetts is still leading the way with extended school time plans. Governor Patrick recently doubled funding for Massachusetts' Expanded Learning Time (ELT) Initiative in the state budget. And Mass2020 and the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy have created a joint national venture to support extending learning time in schools across the country. They're also looking for someone excellent to help lead this effort as their National Network Director- contact if you're interested.

Oklahoma State Superintendent Sandy Garrett just called for a longer Oklahoma school year in her State of Education speech. The Sooner state only has 175 days a year of public schooling,five days less than the 180 national average so they really are playing catch up in this case. Still, it's enough to spark debate. There are folks who can't stand the idea of school in the summertime (i'm guessing they either had really great times at Camp White Pine or really bad times in summer school). So despite moves to extend learning, there are still plenty of legislative moves to "save summer".

Dare To Compare

I was on the NCES website recently and found myself lured away from the "what's new" research links to the bright colorful bubbly font of the NCES Kids Zone. It's full of educational games and graph-making capabilities that I'm pretty sure no kids are actually using. Are they? Let me know if you know kids or classrooms that are using this site.

Anyway, there's a "dare to compare" tab that lets you try out questions from international tests to see if you really are smarter than 4th graders. You can try out NAEP questions, CivEd questions, or TIMSS- trends in math and science study- questions, the latter of which I find funny since getting kids to try out the TIMSS questions in the Kids Zone is the closest we'll get this time around to actually participating in the next TIMSS. Evidently, participation is expensive (and all the other cool countries aren't doing it either) so we dropped out this time. I find that amusing too- in a depressing sort of way- since we don't have a problem with testing and are otherwise so committed to Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science.

Don't get me wrong- I really enjoyed "daring to compare" in the Kids Zone. But if competing is so important now, as it was then and then, we should spend more time collecting and analyzing comparative data.