New on the education beat

Long time, no post, but it’s been a busy couple of weeks with the new school year starting.

Monday was the first day for the largest school district around here. Not a whole lot happened, so that’s a plus compared to some districts in the country.

Earlier this week, the Illinois Auditor General released the audit for the Knox County Regional Office of Education. Not a whole lot was wrong with their financial reporting, which is a plus. The Henderson-Mercer-Warren Regional Office, however, had quite a few more issues, some dating back to 2003.

It’s troubling to me that the offices which are responsible for overseeing the education of children can go relatively under the radar, whereas local districts are constantly held up to severe scrutiny.

Here’s a piece I wrote on those two audits.

The full audits can be found (for Illinois only) at www.auditor.illinois.gov.

Illinois screws up the ISATs … again

Well, leave it to Illinois. Somehow, those scoring the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) this spring royally messed up the scoring.

Some schools showed massive increases toward Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), others showed significant decreases. Many of these changes were in the double digits.

Schools were even notified of their AYP status — whether the school passed AYP or failed — based on these flawed test scores.

This is just another example, as one area administrator told me, of the federal government forcing standards on states but not giving them the guidance or adequate funding in order to put those standards into action.

There’s no official word yet as to whether schools will be given new AYP designations once the new scores are calculated — which will take several weeks and is meanwhile handicapping districts trying to get ready for the school year — but I was told they will be.

For a more full description of the problem, click here.

Addition: Two years ago, report cards were released incredibly late by the state. Koch promises this won’t happen, but if it’s going to take several weeks just to re-score more than 1 million exams, it stands to reason that report cards aren’t going to be ready to release on Oct. 31.

A reminder about school exams

Just a reminder to all you parents out there that school is set to begin in a matter of weeks, so get your kids in for those before-school exams!

Illinois’ recently changed its rules to require all students either entering kindergarten or beginning an Illinois school to have an eye exam. Those entering kindergarten and second and sixth grades must also have a dental exam.

If you have any questions, check with your local school district.

Education spared … for now

Even though Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is announcing a $1.4 billion hack job of budget cuts for the fiscal year 2009 budget, K-12 education has, mercifully, been spared from the list.

I can’t even begin to enumerate the things on the chopping block, which includes funding to programs for neglected children, entirely cutting funding to at least one state park and slashing funds to rape centers from about $5 million to just $500,000.

Sad. Just, plain sad. I can’t imagine what the cuts would look like if education were included, though. What more would our schools have to take away from our children?

Arts programs are all but gone. So are vocational programs. What’s next? Will parents have to pay much more in rental fees for books? How many teachers would we lose?

Too bad the pet projects of the governor weren’t subject to much of the same fiscal scrutiny.

Illinois named NCLB pilot program

Last week, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings named Illinois one of six pilot programs under No Child Left Behind.

Basically, what it means is that the big-wigs at the Illinois State Board of Education (most of whom haven’t been at the head of a classroom in years, if at all) get to make up some fancy new rules for holding schools accountable.

One state has decided to focus more on principal training. Others are developing their own programs.

Illinois, on the other hand, is relying on tutoring. Under the current federal NCLB rules, schools which fail Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for two years in a row have to offer their students school choice. After three years, schools have to offer tutoring.

This is pretty backwards, because it would stand to reason that tutoring should come BEFORE letting families jump ship. In Illinois, tutoring will now (if a school decides) be available after two years. After three years failing AYP, both school choice and tutoring have to be offered.

While it’s a step forward toward not making NCLB a cookie-cutter approach to education, I wish that the Illinois administrators would take a more proactive and creative approach. Instead of waiting until a school has failed for two years, for example, step into ALL schools and require tutoring based upon certain standards.

For me, it’s too little too late in the dying program that is NCLB. Either it needs to be nixed completely, or it needs some major overhauls.

Summer lunch program

The State of Illinois passed a law in February saying that all school districts hosting a summer school program and who have at least half their students qualifying for free or reduced lunches must provide free lunches for all community members under the age of 18. Here in the local district, summer school started today and so did the program.

Back when the program was announced, administrators around here had several concerns. One was, obviously — and especially in a state which can’t pay its bills on time — funding of the program. In talking to the assistant superintendent for finance on Friday, he said that the intent of the program was to be fully-funded, especially if the district sticks with a fairly modest cold lunch, so that’s looking as if it was settled.

Another concern was logistics in feeding both the students at summer school (which serves kids from first through fifth grades who are in danger of not meeting grade equivalency) and members of the general community. Administrators worried about mixing the younger students (and the younger members of the general public) with the older kids, who could get rowdy. So, the solution was to give the summer school students their lunches in the classroom (making it a working lunch so as not to lose instruction time) and give the general public the multi-purpose room. I’ll check up on how this is going in a week or so, once people settle into a routine.

I believe in this program, because kids shouldn’t have to suffer if their parents can’t provide, and anything is better than the McDonald’s processed food they can pick up within walking distance of almost any home in this city. But, I also think it puts an unfair burden on our schools to provide extra services on their already strapped budgets. Luckily, it’s looking as if this will be fully-funded, but that has yet to be seen.

I just hope this can remain under the control of state funding and the state doesn’t dump any more of its financial problems on the districts.

Moment of silence banned

I’m about a week late on this one, but graduation season keeps this education reporter hopping. That, and preparing for all the extra stories I’m trying to bank for summer when schools aren’t in session.

Last Thursday, a federal judge declared Illinois’ mandatory moment of silence unconstitutional. That means schools no longer have to have a moment of silent reflection.

The legislation has been really controversial since it was passed last spring and implemented in April. It was brought before the courts by an atheist radio announcer in Buffalo Grove. Not only was it challenged in court, but it’s also gone through several revisions, including striking the word “prayer” from the language.

I really have no opinion either way on this issue. I can see both sides. Those who are pro-religion in schools think it’s nice to have the time to allow kids to reflect on their day. Those who are anti-religion in schools think the silent reflection time opens up a religious can of worms.

It’s probably best that it’s no longer mandatory. That way, there’s less possibility for a teacher to be accused of pushing religion on kids.

Illinois to release payments to schools

The long weekend has made news slow (if that can happen in this business), but I found out that Gov. Blagojevich has decided to release the nearly $400 million owed to Illinois public schools in June instead of July.
Schools were worried that the 23rd and 24th state aid payments wouldn’t come through until July, after the end of the fiscal year. This practice, which took place last year — according to my sources, regardless of what the governor’s office says — causes many schools which would otherwise be in good financial shape to take a spot on the financial watch list.
This can screw up lots of things for the schools, including applications for grants and the permanent financial record of the school.
But, since the state is going to (in theory) release the payments on time, schools should be OK this year. Problem is, as anyone living in Illinois knows, promises are all well and good in theory, but it’s the practice that can kill you. I’m cautiously optimistic that things will turn out alright, but until the payments are received, we won’t know.
I’m currently working on comments from Rep. Don Moffitt and school districts in my circulation area, but I’ll try to update this.
And, I don’t have a link for you to one of the stories on the decision because, for some reason, I can’t embed links here. Weird. If you really want to check it out, visit the Springfield State Journal-Register’s website. They broke the story.

Books banned in Washington

Leave it to the Midwest to do something like this. However, knowing the area where this news comes from, I’m slightly surprised about it.

Basically, a parent freaked out that her daughter was reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ “Middlesex.” Now, I’ve not yet read the novel, but Amazon says:

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.” And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the “roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time.” The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory.Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides’s command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie’s shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor:

Emotions, in my experience aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” … I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” … I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever.

When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you’ll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it–putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight–just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end. –Brad Thomas Parsons

While I have read that this book has some pretty graphic passages, I would imagine they’re not extraneous passages. They likely serve a purpose in the story.

This is just another in a series of parents being scared of the all-powerful gift of knowledge. Sure, things written in books and shown on TV and the like can be graphic and many serve no purpose (Have you watched prime time TV lately?), but if a parent has raised a child right and that child knows to think for, in this case, herself, the book should not influence her life in any major way.

Books are not so insidious that teenagers, after reading them, will go right out and start raping and pillaging because a character in a book did so. If a kid does that, he or she has some serious social disorder which must be treated by professionals and is not going to be cured by mommy dearest protecting the little one from the big, bad books. It’s a similar argument used with the “influence” of music, TV, movies and video games.

Censorship requests have gone by the wayside in recent years after reaching some pretty frightening peaks in the 1950s-1970s. Bonfires where copies of “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Catcher in the Rye” no longer take place, but people are still terrified of the potential effect literature can have on kids.

In my mind, that is the power of literature. It has the ability to change the way people think and view the world, but it’s not going to cause a kid to take any immediate action.

Parents should be embracing the fact that their children are reading, even if it is just for school, and use the “smutty” books as an excuse to have a conversation. But, of course, it’s easier just to complain to the school board and the newspaper than to talk to your own children.

And, on another note, I’m kind of disappointed in the school board for putting this new “policy” into effect. If the district doesn’t trust its teachers enough to choose their own material, sounds as if they have a personnel problem, not a policy problem.

They should have the courage to stand up to this woman and tell her that the teacher knows the literary value of the book and that’s that.

Moffitt calls for release of funding

Rep. Don Moffitt, R-Galesburg, sent out a press release this morning calling for the release of the 23rd and 24th payments of general state aid to school districts across the state.

He says:

“Schools are feeling the affects [sic] of the slowing economy too,” said Moffitt. “Increases in utility bills and gas prices are creating more costs, so issuing the last two state aid payments in June will help schools to deal with these additional expenditures.”

According to Moffitt, the last two payments can be made after the state’s new fiscal year begins on July 1, but by issuing them before that date, schools will receive the state assistance they need to balance their budgets which is required by state law. Moffitt said so far, Governor Blagojevich has not called for the release of the last two payments of state aid for schools for the current fiscal year, but there is still time.

“When the state delays payments to school districts, it creates a cash-flow problem for our schools,” said Moffitt. “Schools still have bills coming in, yet there is not enough revenue to cover them without the GSA from the state. I strongly encourage the advanced release of these last two payments so our schools can close their books at the end of the year in the black.”

So, if it’s the law that schools have their budgets balanced for a given fiscal year (July 1-June 30), how is it allowable for the state legislature to hang onto the money it owes the schools until the following fiscal year? This sounds as if it’s something which needs to be changed fully in the legislature to avoid the overuse of power by any given government agent.

If recent events and budget crises in this state are any indication of what we can expect through the remainder of Blagojevich’s tenure, I would think constituents should be crying out for their representatives and senators to push something through to the governor’s desk saying state aid payments must be made to school districts before the end of the fiscal year, not on the whim of the lawmakers.

On a side note, I just talked to one of the superintendents in my coverage are who said he’s “tired of being jerked around by the legislature.”

Update: I just spoke with Moffitt, and he said he would support the state borrowing on a short-term basis in order to give the money to school districts. We’re talking approximately $400 million statewide, a pretty hefty chunk of change and that money can do a whole lot of good for schoolkids.