School Science News for Kids

Our friends at the Fordham Institute issued a new report this week that is critical of Ohio’s United States’ History content standards. Lacking in both clarity and rigor, Ohio scored a 3 of a possible 10, earning a less than acceptable grade of D.
Ohio’s standards claim to outline the “essential knowledge” that students should acquire through the social studies curriculum. Unfortunately, the state does not seem to consider substantive historical content to be “essential,” since very little is included.
In the elementary grades, Ohio’s standards place little emphasis on U.S. history. Early grades’ guiding themes include such general concepts—typical of the “expanding environments” approach to social studies—as “The Classroom Community” (preKindergarten), “A Child’s Place in Time and Space” (Kindergarten), “Families Now and Long Ago, Near and Far” (first grade), “People Working Together” (second grade), and “Communities: Past and Present, Near and Far” (third grade). The history strand in these grades is divided between “historical thinking and skills” and “heritage” topics. A small number of very general content statements touch on basic concepts such as change.
Ohio’s Social Studies Content Standards have been focus of concern for the last year. As recently as last Monday, members of the State Board’s Achievement Committee failed to support the model curriculum based on the content standards. Action on the model curriculum was moved to the March meeting.

The State Board of Education elected new officers at its monthly meeting held this week.  Peter Herschend, Branson, was elected president; and Rev. Stan Archie, Kansas City, was elected vice president.  Their leadership terms will be in effect through December 2012.

Herschend succeeds David Liechti, St. Joseph, who has served as on the State Board since October 2003 and as president since May 2009.  Although his eight-year term expired in July 2010, Liechti has continued to serve until a new appointment could be made.  Last week, Gov. Jay Nixon appointed Michael Jones, St. Louis, to succeed Liechti on the State Board.

Herschend is founder and co-owner of Herschend Family Entertainment, which owns Silver Dollar City and other entertainment properties.  He has been a member of the State Board since 1991.  This is his third election to the board president post, previously serving from 1994-96 and 2005-07.  Before this week’s election, he had been serving as vice president.  Herschend also served 12 years on the Branson Board of Education.

Archie is senior pastor of the Christian Fellowship Baptist Church.  He has served on the State Board since December 2006.  He also serves on the board of directors of the National Association of State Boards of Education and numerous civic and community organizations.

Visit the Ross Shep Photo/Archives SmugMug website for a sneek peek of our hallways as they looked if you were to have arrived early on Monday, February 14th.  You would have immediately noticed the walls of the hallways and lockers were plastered with over 2000 pink Valentine Hearts!  Each had the name of one of our students or staff. Hundreds of excited groups were roaming the halls during noon and the breaks searching for their “share (of) the love”.   Those who wore red/pink that day we given some treats. (Thank you to the organizers! Keep up that school spirit!  Good job!)

Ross Shep Valentine’s Day 2010

Shiver me timbers! Pirates have been a source of fascination for children for generations. There are many childhood stories, films and books about pirates and there’s something about them that really catches a child’s imagination. Of course, recent films like Pirates of the Caribbean have fuelled this popularity but there’s nothing quite like playing with a wooden toys pirate ships and making those captured enemies walk the plank into shark infested waters or raising the Jolly Roger and setting sail into the sunset to search for that legendary buried treasure. Toy pirate ships truly are timeless and although pirates are a long and distant memory their spirit lives on in our children’s imaginations as they just love playing pirates! Oooh aargh me hearties!

A statewide grand jury investigating the Broward School District issued a scathing final report Friday evening, saying there was evidence of such widespread “malfeasance, misfeasance and nonfeasance” by school board members and senior managers alike that only “corruption of our officials by contractors, vendors and their lobbyists” could explain it.

Leadership in the district is so lacking, the jurors said, they would move to abolish the whole School Board if only the state constitution would allow it.

The panel met in secret for a year, reviewed hundreds of documents and took widespread testimony reaching from past and current School Board members to school principals and secretaries. The conclusion: The district suffers from “gross mismanagement and apparent ineptitude” on a grand scale.

The report paints a portrait of a board that has no far-reaching vision but meddles in day-to-day affairs, interfering with personnel decisions, “directing contracts to friends and acquaintances for consulting work,” “pushing unnecessary building projects,” and even “manipulating the process to get the children of friends and family into specific schools.”

Superintendent Jim Notter comes into sharp criticism, too, for allowing the “meddling and interference to continue” and for not having the intestinal fortitude to challenge the board’s conduct.

“Broward County in particular needs a strong Superintendent to stand up to the Board and remind them where the line is that separates the functions and responsibilities of the Board and Superintendent,” the report states.

School Board Chairman Benjamin Williams said Friday night that he had not seen the report and didn’t wish to comment until he had.

“I’m sure the grand jury expressed its reasons for reaching its conclusions and we will review them,” Williams told the Sun Sentinel.

Notter said: “We take this report seriously and will expeditiously review the report and the recommendations, and take the necessary corrective actions.”

Despite its searing condemnation of the district and its officials, the grand jury, which ended its work Feb. 11, issued no indictments. A statewide grand jury can indict people only for actions stretching across more than one county.

The report states that though “regular citizens” would view certain of the board’s activities as corrupt, “deficiencies and weaknesses in state law,” prevent criminal punishment.

“Whether prosecutable or not, we find this sort of corruption has a longstanding foothold at the Board,” the report states.

It was hardly the first alarm to sound regarding Broward Schools. In September 2009, the FBI nabbed board member Beverly Gallagher in an undercover operation. She is serving a three-year term for accepting bribes. Another former board member, Stephanie Kraft, is awaiting trial, also on bribery charges. She has pleaded not guilty.

Two previous grand jury investigations of the school district in 1997 and 2003 also criticized it for waste and mismanagement.

The statewide panel focused its inquiry on the district’s massive building boom in recent years which the report says “saddled Broward taxpayers with $2 billion in long-term debt,” and resulted in thousands of empty seats and underenrolled schools in the eastern part of the county, without addressing critically overcrowded schools in the western half.

“We find that the current situation is a direct result of the Board’s lack of vision, foresight, planning and leadership as well as a deliberate attempt to withhold information in order to keep building unnecessary space,” the report states.

The litany of problems reviewed in the 51-page report include: newly built schools opened with unresolved safety issues and without proper occupancy permits, shoddy record keeping, infighting among district building inspectors and project managers and untrained inspectors.

The report describes chummy relationships between board members, contractors and others seeking to do business with the district. One section of the report, titled “voting conflicts,” describes a possible “inappropriate relationship,” between an unidentified board member and a vendor, including embarrassing e-mails.

Benson High School in Portland is one of many public schools in Oregon that could be affected by state budget problems.Eighty-three percent of Oregon third-graders met state reading benchmarks in 2009-10. Should the other 17 percent of kids — about 7,000 statewide — be required to repeat the third grade to master reading skills?

Fourteen percent of Oregon students in the class of 2010 passed an Advanced Placement exam with a score likely to earn them college credit. Should those students’ teachers receive a cash bonus?

Rep. Matt Wingard says yes. Nearly 10 years ago, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush led similar reforms in Florida. The changes are credited with raising reading scores. Wingard says Oregon should follow suit.

“Public education is not sharp because our system doesn’t feel pressure to make changes,” says Wingard, co-chair of the House Education Committee. “It’s clear that the answers are out there. … If Florida can do it, why can’t we?”

Legislation for Florida’s 2.7 million students banned social promotion for third-graders, gave bonuses to teachers whose kids passed AP exams, and gave schools letter grades. If a school receives an F two years in a row, it must hand over a portion of its state money and allow its students to attend any other public school in the state.

Wingard, R-Wilsonville, has proposed six bills that mimic the Florida plan. The Oregon House Education Committee is expected to spend a week discussing the bills later this month.

The bills would fundamentally change Oregon’s education system, giving more leeway to teacher licensure, providing scholarships to kids with disabilities and forcing a wholesale redesign of report cards. Education advocates are skeptical, but aren’t rejecting the bills entirely. And some who don’t agree with the content praise the attention on education reform.

“These ideas spark a conversation about what we expect from our schools, how we judge whether those expectations are being met and what we do with what we find,” says Dana Hepper of Stand for Children. “I think these bills are asking the right questions. I don’t know if they have the right answers.”

One of the most controversial ideas is social promotion. Nationally, as schools have pushed for tougher standards and school accountability, some districts and states are moving toward test-based promotion policies like the one in Florida.

Several studies suggest that forcing kids to repeat the same grade doesn’t lead to big increases in achievement and can create self-esteem problems and lead more students to drop out of school.

But a 2009 study on the New York City Department of Education’s social promotion policy — which includes test-based promotion for third-, fifth-, seventh- and eighth-graders — found that helping kids who were at risk of repeating a grade had a positive impact on student achievement.

New York City and Florida identify at-risk students early in the year and provide more instructional time and tutoring. If students don’t pass spring assessments, they can use summer school to catch up and move ahead with their peers.

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s report card, Florida fourth-graders were eight points below the national average in reading in 1998 but six points ahead of the national average in 2009.

Oregon’s fourth-graders scored at the national average in 1998 and about two points below the national average in 2009.

Alan Richard, communications director for the Southern Regional Education Board, a nonpartisan group that works with 16 states including Florida to improve education, said additional training for teachers and increased support for students have had the greatest impact on Florida’s rising reading scores.

Alabama has seen even larger gains, Richard said, after launching an early reading program that includes teacher training, more instructional time and partnerships with teacher preparation programs.

Oregon’s bills would create similar provisions for supporting students and teachers, but Becca Uherbelau, spokeswoman for the Oregon Education Association, said her organization wouldn’t support bills with more emphasis on testing.

Equally troubling, Uherbelau said, is the idea of using state dollars for scholarships to students in low performing schools.

Florida’s controversial voucher programs provide scholarships to students with disabilities and students from low-income backgrounds. The scholarships for students attending low performing schools are not widely used. The Florida Supreme Court declared the provision allowing students to use the scholarships at private schools unconstitutional.

Oregon’s House Bill 2289 would allow students to use state-funded scholarships at both private and public schools. And House Bill 2290 would create scholarships for special education students.

“It’s always the time to talk about what we can and should do better in our schools,” Uherbelau said. “But we do not support diverting precious resources away from our public schools. There hasn’t been any link between vouchers and gains in student achievement. If we’re looking at providing opportunities for all kids to learn and succeed, this isn’t it.”

Getting support for these bills is likely to be a tough task in Oregon. Republican Jeb Bush passed many of the Florida reforms with the support of a Republican-dominated Legislature and over the strident objections of teacher unions. And if training and summer school are key components of the policies’ success, that also could spell problems for Oregon, where money-strapped districts have abandoned summer school and are skimping on teacher training.

Wingard, who is a consultant for the public online charter school Oregon Connections Academy, isn’t the only legislator or education group hoping to get big education reforms started in the 2011 Legislature. Lawmakers also will consider other bills that take on testing, education governance, education service districts, charter school access, special education funding and teacher performance.

Wingard insists that while he likes the Florida bills as a way to bring reform to the state, he’s most interested in seeing change in Oregon schools.

“My values are choice, accountability and innovation,” he said. “Look around the country and tell me what you do like. This is a starting point in getting Oregon to join in reform. Right now, we’re doing nothing.”