Rural Matters

A rule proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will reduce schools’ ability to access federal help to serve low-income students who receive special education services at school. More information is below. You can read the proposed changes and comment on them at the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. (Rule CMS-2287-P) Deadline is tomorrow!

Under the proposed rule, schools would not be able to receive payments for “administrative” services or for most transportation provided to students in special education whose families are eligible for Medicaid.

In addition to cutting reimbursements for transportation to and from school, to school activities, and to outside therapeutic providers, the cuts would also affect administrative services such as outreach to families, referrals, or training for staff who work with these students. In addition, districts would not be able to use these funds for expanded physical, occupational and speech therapy programs for students, services which many students would not otherwise receive.

The changes are intended to meet the President’s budget goals and would cut $3.6 billion over five years. The reduction would force districts to reduce services to low-income students and/or pay for the services from the district’s general funds, which many districts find are increasingly strapped by other demands and requirements.

It is important to note that the rule change would not affect payments for direct medical services provided in schools to children who qualify through Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)

Apart from the proposed cuts to Medicaid reimbursements for schools, however, the President’s budget also proposes additional cuts in federal funding for schools through IDEA. IDEA is the primary federal funding mechanism for supporting students who receive special education services at school. IDEA was authorized to provide 40% of funding for students with special needs in public schools. The Act has never been funded at that level, and the proposed Medicaid cuts would put IDEA funding at only 16%.

The Medicaid cuts are being carried out through an administrative process called a rule change. The public is allowed to comment on such rule changes, but the deadline is nearly here – it is November 6. To read the proposed rule, visit www.cms.hhs.gov/eRulemaking. You can also submit your comments electronically at the site -- scroll down to CMA-2287-P for this particular rule. Comments do not have to be formally composed.

You can read more about the proposed changes at:

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/392837.html

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/10/21/news/top_stories/19_30_6110_20_07.txt

Posted by Robin Lambert at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes it seems to me that we live in a time with a prevailing ethic of I’ve-got-mine-you-take-care-of-your-own. Maybe it’s always been this way.

I was reflecting on this several weeks ago while I listened to yet another radio report of a wounded volunteer soldier back from Iraq whose family is losing almost everything as a result of his (in this case) service in the military. Do we have any sense of what we owe each other, I wondered, any sense of how we benefit from each other?

Later that day I began making calls to people in rural Arkansas for a story for Rural Policy Matters about ACRE, Advocates for Community and Rural Education. I talked to about eight people, mostly parents and community residents, including people who do not have kids in school but who nonetheless care.

I opened with a pretty general set of questions: tell me about ACRE and why you are a part of it.

The responses were a powerful antidote to what I heard on the radio.

Continue reading "Sharing Responsibility for Our Kids and Our Communities" »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 09:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Commentary on School Choice in South Carolina

This article also appeared in The Times and Democrat,
in Orangeburg, South Carolina on August 30, 2007.

Resting in their heavenly repose, South Carolina's civil rights pioneers of the 1930s and 1940s must be scratching their heads. A prominent African-American state senator, also a Democrat and minister, says many of his generational peers are longing for the days of racially segregated schools. Another minister says most African-American children "fared better when we were segregated."

These leaders are understandably frustrated. Too many children are not reaping the academic gains that African-Americans hoped would follow public school desegregation. On last year's state achievement test, more than 40,000 African-American students in grades three through eight scored "Below Basic" in English/Language Arts. An average of 60 percent of all African-American students in third through eighth grade performed at the Below Basic level in science.

There is some good news. Thousands of African-American students are performing well, scoring at the highest levels, "Proficient" or "Advanced," on the state test. However, thousands more have the unrealized potential to do so.

Proposals to solve students' academic problems abound, but many are simplistic. South Carolina has long favored such approaches in public policy. Human bondage would fuel economic development. Secession would free South Carolina of the federal yoke. Racial oppression and segregation would preserve "our way of life." Low taxes would attract industry. Providing a "minimally adequate education" will secure the state's future.

Now comes school choice...

Continue reading "GUEST AUTHOR: Hayes Mizell" »

Posted by GUEST AUTHOR at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Status of Education in Rural America, a new report from the National Center on Education Statistics (NCES) has some pretty interesting information about rural schools.

For example, rural students face more challenges related to college access and participation than students in any other locale. High-poverty rural schools spend LESS per pupil than high-poverty urban schools and less than most other rural schools.

And, "remote" rural schools -- those that are more than 35 miles from a city and more than 10 miles from a town -- have higher rates of poverty than many urban schools. In fact, African American and American Indian/Native Alaskan students who attend remote rural schools are more likely to attend a high poverty school than are their peers in cities.

Despite these challenges, remote rural schools have higher averaged freshman graduation rates than all other locales except suburbs, which they equal.

But you wouldn’t learn this information from most news reports. Those tend to focus on how rural is "in the middle," doing better on most indicators than cities and not as well as suburbs.

That's because news coverage has focused mainly on the rural "averages" highlighted in the report's own summary.

The reality, however, is that “rural” is highly variable. Rural places differ from one another more dramatically and on more dimensions than most suburbs or cities.

Some rural schools in affluent communities have plenty of resources, long histories of public support, and lots of opportunity. In short, they skew up the rural averages.

On the other hand, there are hundreds of struggling rural districts that face poverty rates as high or higher than most of the nation’s poorest urban districts (see "The 'Rural 800' Districts"), and many have long-standing histories of political and social struggle. Yet these poor rural districts have even fewer financial and municipal resources than districts in most large cities, and they get less attention.

When indicators for the best-resourced rural schools are averaged with those for the most challenged schools, the result reveals little about either school setting. And the averages divert attention from real needs. And from real possibilities in rural schools, including struggling ones.

So what does the report have to say about rural schools that is revealing and important?

Continue reading "Rural Schools—Not So Much—In the Middle" »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 02:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We wanted to know more about the rural school districts that serve high poverty communities so first we statistically rounded up the 7604 districts nationwide that have over half their students in a school that is physically located in a rural community. Then we identified the 800 – about 10 percent -- that have the highest rate of eligibility for the federal Title I program. That is the program providing funds for disadvantaged students. We’ll call these 800 high-poverty rural districts the "rural 800."

Continue reading to find out more about these districts and to see a chart of the 16 states where most Rural 800 districts are located.

Continue reading "The "Rural 800" Districts" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ever wonder what makes a place rural?

Ever get in a "discussion" about it?

I once argued with a friend that her town—population somewhere around 1,800—wasn’t rural, couldn’t be, I said, because it was the county seat in a southern state. And the largest town for miles around, to boot.

My rationale was that towns—even those with fewer than 2,500 people, the census definition of rural—which control the economic and political resources of a county should not be considered rural. I beefed up my argument by pointing out that these towns often pull in more resources from surrounding rural areas than they return to those areas. And, I added, towns generally have some taxing authority and, therefore, more avenues through which to generate revenue than unincorporated areas usually do.

Maybe I’m a purist on this matter—most people don’t argue with the census definition.

But a lot of people don’t know it either.

Ever heard a tv or radio journalist describe a town you know has 17,000 people as “tiny,” or, worse in my book, a small city as “this rural" community?

I have. And it bugs me. Not out of any sense of cultural righteousness. I hate to see an opening for driving any of the tiny portion of public resources our country reserves for rural places toward influential regional “towns” instead of the surrounding areas that often need the resources (and/or a fairer return for their contributions)--and really are rural.

Which brings us back to the original question: what is rural?

Continue reading "What's Rural?" »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The oldest African American school known to still be standing in Virginia is being restored thanks to Frank Agnew, resident of Fieldale in Henry County.

Rock Run School was built in the 1880s by local African American residents; it educated students until the mid-1950s.

Agnew owns the building and plans to make it available to community residents for local functions. He spends about 20-25 hours each week on the preservation effort and has raised more than $30,000 in donated labor and materials from the community in addition to a $10,000 grant from the Henry County Preservation Fund.

Agnew’s work, and especially the care he has taken to restore the building’s beauty, has been praised by local residents and public officials alike. Many local residents are also thrilled that this important community landmark will again be a functional gathering place.

The building serves as an important landmark beyond the community as well. Thousands of similar schools were built by African Americans after the Civil War. (It’s a myth that most such schools were established by white missionaries or philanthropists; in truth, missionaries generally arrived to find that African American residents had already established schools in their communities, and philanthropists usually supplemented community-based efforts.)

Many of these schools were left to crumble in the 1950s and 1960s when most Southern counties built new, usually consolidated, schools for African Americans in an attempt to demonstrate that they provided equal educational opportunities in segregated schools. These efforts also tended to centralize authority and strip communities of much of their influence over schools.

Rock Run School is also recognized as an important architectural landmark. At several different times the community built additions to the original building in order to accommodate expanding functions and additional grades. Each addition has been recognized as example of best construction practices of its historical period.

You can see a photo and read more about Frank Agnew and the Rock Run School in the Martinsville Bulletin.

Posted by Robin Lambert at 09:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Rachel Tompkins

The U.S. Supreme Court decided last week that schools could not choose to end racial segregation by assigning children to schools based on racial characteristics. The court suggested that was just as bad as the century’s long practice of using race to exclude children from school.

It’s an Alice in Wonderland type of reasoning that, as one commentator said, doesn’t pass the kindergarten test of “which of these things is alike and which is different.” Other commentators, some of whom at one time supported or even benefited from school desegregation, weighed in support of the decision.

Juan Williams, journalist and biographer of Justice Thurgood Marshall, wrote an op ed in the New York Times arguing that the decision was correct. He thinks it is time to end the era of forced integration and just focus on making all schools good whatever their racial composition.

I can understand that reasoning even if I don’t agree with it. It reminds me of a meeting I attended in a church basement in Cleveland, Ohio, in the 1970’s at which an elderly African-American gentleman talked about his long struggle for school desegregation in that city. He said: “ I have spent my life trying to get our kids into their schools thinking they would be better. I have come to find out that most of their schools aren’t so good either. Now we’ve got to work to make all the schools better.”

But will it ever happen if the children are sorted into racially separate schools?

On this point, Williams cites an interview with Marshall who says that he didn’t fight for school desegregation because he thought there was magic in having black children and white children sit next to each other. He said he did it because white folks would have to provide resources for all children if they were together in the same school.

Thurgood Marshall was right then and he is right today. It’s about the money and what the money can buy.

Continue reading "Thurgood Marshall Was Right" »

Posted by Rachel Tompkins at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Check out yesterday's post on the Daily Yonder for an interesting comparison of the effects of flooding and the combination of low funding and high stakes testing demands on schools in many rural communities.

The author, Richard Oswald, lives in Atchison County, Missouri, where the Missouri River flooded earlier this summer. He's also a former school superintendent. So, he's got some first-hand references that draw a vivid picture of what's happening to many rural schools, especially those located in communities with "quick stop" economies.

While at DailyYonder, take a look at "Saving Greensburg..." Governor Kathleen Sibelius has said that re-opening the high school is key to saving this small Kansas town that was destroyed by a tornado in May.

Posted by Robin Lambert at 08:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Vermont Department of Education recently released results of a public opinion survey testing the popularity of Commissioner Richard Cate’s proposal to consolidate school districts.

The survey methodology met the primary test for a political opinion poll – it produced results favorable to the position of those who commissioned it.

The results were enthusiastically announced by the Department because they were decidedly different from the results of 30 public meetings around the state, also sponsored by the Department. People at these meetings, the department admits, favor keeping the current system over the Commissioners proposal to centralize.

Continue reading "Vermont Education Commissioner Pushes Consolidation " »

Posted by Marty Strange at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Marty Strange, Policy Director, Rural School and Community Trust

“No, not us,” said the Nebraska Supreme Court when asked by rural students, parents, and school districts if Nebraska’s miserly school funding system does enough to educate her youth.

The Nebraska Constitution requires “free instruction in the common schools” of the state. The plaintiffs wanted to know if those words have any meaning in a court of law, or are they just so much constitutional blather?

The Court said the meaning of those words is a “political question” for the legislature and the governor, not the courts, to decide. The court found for blather.

Political question? Don’t kid yourself. Courts decide the questions they want to decide. The ones they don’t want to decide they label “political.”

While it is true that courts should not legislate, it is also true that words have meaning, and it is the Court’s duty to interpret their meaning, especially when those words are part of the Constitution.

But according to the Nebraska Supreme Court, the words “free instruction in the common schools of this state” can mean a coloring book, a crayon, and a tree stump for a desk if the politicians say so.

Then the judges suggested the plaintiffs were merely angry and sullen sinners who could go to hell for daring to ask these Wizards of Oz to come out from behind their curtain and perform their public duty to interpret the Nebraska Constitution.

Mind you, the Supreme Courts in over a dozen states have had no trouble ruling that their state’s school funding system is inadequate without ducking behind the “political question” curtain for cover.

Continue reading "Searching for Justice in the Stygian Swamp" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 03:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Most states are trying to restrict educational costs by placing limits on school expenditures or on taxes levied to support schools. These taxing and spending limits can make it very difficult for schools to improve or expand programs, boost teacher salaries, or even maintain existing offerings.

Laws in many states, however, provide local communities a way around the limitations of taxing or spending caps through the “override” process. In such cases, local voters can choose to spend more than the law permits, or tax themselves at a rate higher than the state tax lid, if 50% or more of voters approve the override.

But some states require a so-called supermajority, in which the override depends on 60% of voters, sometimes even higher margins, to approve the override. This requirement compounds the problems that poor communities face in raising revenues for their schools.

The Problem of Supermajorities

Supermajority overrides in effect make some people’s vote worth more than others. They create “premium” voters and “discount” voters. Say for example, that 60% approval is required to override a lid. That means six votes are needed to achieve the same effect that five would have in a simple majority election. The votes of those who support the override are effectively discounted by one-sixth, or about 17%. On the other hand, the votes of those who oppose the override are inflated by one-fourth—four votes have the same power as five would have in a simple majority election, a 25% premium.

Continue reading "Supermajorities Make the Votes of Some Worth More than the Votes of Others" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In an earlier post , we asked a question about how rural schools have addressed housing needs as a way to recruit and retain teachers. Here’s the original question:

Our school has teacher retention problems due to many things, including lack of housing near the school. We are thinking about buying a house that we could rent out to new teachers and are wondering if this has been tried before and if it was successful.

We’ve received several examples of specific ideas that rural schools are using as well as additional ideas for addressing this vexing problem.

We thought these ideas deserved their own post, so we’ve listed them below (some are also in the comment section of the original post).

If you would like to contact the person who sent the idea, please email Rural Matters editor and we will help put you in contact with the person who submitted the idea.

Thanks to everyone who shared their knowledge. Please feel free to add to the discussion by adding a comment below.

SOLUTIONS TO RURAL TEACHER HOUSING DILEMMAS

NEW! September 4, 2007 FROM CALIFORNIA: There are schools that provide teacherages here in northern California. Kashia, a school of 14 students, has a teacherage. I believe the teacher pays a small amount of rent for it each month. There are other examples of this in isolated rural areas. In Zenia, CA there were two houses on the school property; one for the teacher and the other for the bus driver/maintenance person.

FROM MONTANA: In rural Eastern Montana small schools often have a “teacherage”, a small house near the school, or even on school property, that they offer as free housing in order to keep teachers. These rural schools are sometimes 50 miles from the nearest small town, so providing free housing is essential.

******************************

FROM NEW MEXICO: In New Mexico, a rural school (Tatum Municipal Schools) established building construction classes for high school students, bought materials and had them build housing (for teachers, I think) owned by the district. They report good success with this.... Another New Mexico school who has been doing this for some time is Santa Fe High School...although not necessarily a rural school.

Continue reading "Solutions for Rural Teacher Housing Question" »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Rural Matters is asking readers to share what they know about an inquiry the blog received from a school in rural South Carolina. Here's the question:

Our school has teacher retention problems due to many things, including lack of housing near the school. We are thinking about buying a house that we could rent out to new teachers and are wondering if this has been tried before and if it was successful.

If you have knowledge of innovative ways in which rural communities have tried to address housing shortages for new teachers, please share your information here on Rural Matters by clicking "Comment" below and following the instructions. Your information will be included in the comment section of this post.

If you prefer, you can send your information as an email directly to the editor and it will be passed along to the South Carolina school.

We'll keep this post and any comments on Rural Matters, of course, and will feature unusual or particularly interesting ideas on the main page of the blog.

For more background on the problem of housing for rural teachers and some solutions that schools have tried historically, continue reading...

Continue reading "Housing Shortages for New Teachers--A Question for Readers" »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

We ran across some interesting—though admittedly confusing—figures about the numbers and percentages of students who receive special education in primary school in different school locales.

It seems that a higher percentage of students are in special education in the primary grades in small town/rural schools than in urban fringe/large town schools or in central city schools.

We would like to hear what you think these numbers mean and invite you to share your opinions by posting a comment (click on the "Comment" button below).

We got the information from a March 2007 Issue Brief from the National Center for Education Statistics entitled, “Timing and Duration of Student Participation in Special Education in the Primary Grades.”

The report found that 15.3% of students in small town/rural schools receive special education services in at least one year during kindergarten, first, or third grade (the report does not address second grade). The rate for urban fringe/large town schools is 12.4%, and it is 9.9% for central city schools. You can see a chart of these figures in the May 2007 issue of Rural Policy Matters-Online.

The report also found that small town/rural schools identify a higher percentage of students in kindergarten than in third grade, compared to other school locales, (mostly because schools in the more urban locales serve a higher percentage of students for the first time in 3rd grade). Small town/rural schools are also more likely to serve students only in kindergarten.

Continue reading "More Students in Special Ed in Small Town/Rural Primary Schools" »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It's no surprise to people who work in rural schools that they receive fewer supports in the form of funding, partnerships, and volunteers than other types of schools. Most rural schools simply don't have the resources in or near their communities that larger towns and cities have.

But the amount of the difference might surprise. And the fact that rural schools seem to be much less likely to get support from post-secondary institutions and regional and national foundations helps explain some of the challenges these schools face. It also points up a glaring inequity.

Continue reading "Rural Schools Have Fewer External Supports" »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 03:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Maine’s Governor John Baldacci has presented a plan to do away with the state’s 290 school districts (they share 152 superintendents) and replace them with 26 districts, each with its own superintendent. Each district would also have a regionally elected board.

There is not much detail about how the elimination of governance units will improve education. Maine’s schools do very well by national standards. But, Baldacci claims his proposal will even out spending between districts and save taxpayers $250m over the next three years--mostly by reducing administrative costs. Those projected savings do not, however, include offsetting costs of consolidation--things like transition expenses, new facilities for headquarters for the mega-districts, and contract buy-outs. There’s more information in newspaper reports here and here. You can read the plan here and find a lot of additional information here.

Baldacci’s proposal is not particularly surprising to most people in Maine. Several years ago the state changed the funding formula in ways that are particularly detrimental to small districts. Baldacci’s proposal is not the only consolidation proposal on the table, but it is the most extensive. Susan Gendron, the State’s Education Commission says she supports Baldacci’s plan.

What is surprising is the apparent willingness of some national think tank types to endorse the idea. Check out this January 28th article by Beth Quimby in the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram In it, Jack Jennings of the Center for Education Policy is quoted saying, “This is a very substantial reform in education. This is a courageous thing for a politician to do.” And Kathy Christie at the Education Commission of the States is quoted as saying: “It takes nerves and you know you are going to be blasted.”

Since politicians, think tanks, and journalists tend to recommend all kinds of ways to improve teaching and the running of schools, it seems fair to apply some of these recommended approaches to the proposal in Maine. We’ll take one “education improvement” imperative from current fad, one from NCLB, one from critics of NCLB, and one from progressive educators and apply each to Baldacci’s proposal.

Continue reading "Applying Educational Imperatives to a Wholesale State “Reform”" »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few years ago reformers in a number of big American cities began calling for a return to the K-8 school. Such schools were once the norm in many rural and urban communities. But in the middle of the 20th century they began to be replaced by junior high schools, and later in many places by middle schools.

But K-8 schools continued to exist in many rural communities, where the financial and educational practicality of keeping more kids under one roof sometimes managed to trump ideological ascendancy. A few neighborhoods in some cities held on to the K-8 school as well.

As the battle between middle school and junior high advocates heated up, researchers began to look at the school structures (read here grade configurations) in which middle grade kids did best. What tended to come up in such investigations was that middle grade kids in K-8 schools were better off academically and socially than their peers in pre-teen-only schools—whether organized under the middle school “concept” or as junior highs.

Many rural educators weren’t surprised at the rationales for the better performance of young adolescents in K-8 schools: more academic continuity, more personal attention from teachers and other adults in the school who were better able to know the child over a longer period of time, generally smaller schools, less clique-ishness and social pressure, fewer disruptive transitions, and greater parental involvement.

Continue reading "The K-8 Bandwagon " »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Voters in Alabama passed "Amendment 2" on Tuesday (59% /41%), requiring each school system (district) in the state to contribute 10 mills of property tax toward the school system's budget.

Prior to the passage of Amendment 2, local school systems were required to contribute the equivalent of 10 mills toward the state school funding formula for their system. Thirty of the state's 101 school systems collected less than 10 mills of property tax and made up the difference, usually through local sales taxes. A mill of property tax is $1 dollar tax for each $1,000 of assessed valuation.

Property taxes in Alabama remain the lowest in the nation, but the constitutional amendment will shift some of the local tax requirment for schools from sales taxes, which are more subject to economic variation and fall more heavily on low and middle income people who spend a higher share of their income on necessities, to property taxes, which are more stable and predictible and tend to fall more heavily on people who own more valuable homes and land.

Although the shift from 10-mill equivalent to 10 actual mills is viewed in some ways as a tax fairness measure, it is widely expected to generate more income for local schools. Most school systems will continue to collect all or part of their local sales tax for schools, which will now supply additional income above the 10 mill requirement.

Posted by Robin Lambert at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Beware! There are some new and very serious pathological syndromes going around our country. This outbreak is being spread by illogical belief systems, catchy terminology, and unidentified political agendas. And unfortunately these disorders are quite contagious.

I'm referring the latest new "cures" being proposed to solve our (perceived) national problems of low achievement and funding inequities, namely The 65% Solution and The 100% Solution.

In case you missed the headlines, the 65% Solution is supposed to cure low academic achievement by mandating that at least 65% of educational expenditures go directly into the classroom. By contrast, the 100% Solution proposes to attack funding inequities by attaching money to each child based on the achievement challenges that child brings with him or her – poverty, special needs, poor English speaking -- and letting this funding follow the child to any school of choice.

Both treatments are characterized by faulty diagnostic categories, anemic data, ineffective cures and irrational theories of causality. Sounds ominous? You bet.

Here are a few of the menacing warning signs:

Continue reading "Miracle Cure or Snake Oil?...Or How the 65% and 100% Solutions Lack Potency for Rural Schools" »

Posted by Lorna Jimerson at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As voters across the country go to the polls next week, many will be asked to cast a ballot on one or more tax initiatives--or on measures to limit government's taxing authority or its spending. Many of those initiatives could have far-reaching implications for schools. One initiative that has received little national attention is in Alabama.

In that state a measure known as Amendment 2 would require all school systems in the state to contribute 10 mills of local property tax toward the support of local schools. That's just $1 in taxes on each $1000 in valuation, or $100 a year for a $100,000 house. Hard to believe, but true.

Part of the reason the measure has gotten so little attention is that it's a somewhat embarrassing situation, even for the most strident anti-tax advocates. Less than $100 a year on a $100,000 house is very little to ask citizens to provide toward the support of local schools.

Another reason that the measure has gotten relatively little attention outside the state is that it will apply primarily to rural counties. The most powerful advocates for low property taxes in Alabama have traditionally been large corporations and individuals that hold huge tracts of "unimproved" (mainly forest) acreage-- acreage that is mainly in rural places.

Continue reading "Minimum--very minimum--School Support on Ballot in Alabama" »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Low-wealth school districts, especially those that are also small, often have Sophie’s choices forced upon them. They’re required to sacrifice educationally some of their students as the price for supposedly buying opportunities for others.

To be sure, lots of students fall through the cracks in all kinds of schools. And in some schools those cracks are widened into chasms by poverty, abuse, and the low expectations, disregard, and hostility that accompany the various –isms. Even as thousands of educators and parents and communities and students struggle daily against the circumstance and bad policy that opened the chasms, we haven’t summoned the collective will or wisdom to address the underlying causes.

This is a challenging mix for schools. Add to it insufficient funding, prescriptive curriculum requirements, and policies like minimum school or district enrollment and small, low-wealth districts are forced to make deliberate choices that harm kids.

Here’s how it tends to work; districts are increasingly required to offer a range of classes, usually advanced ones, so those kids who want to go to college have the “advantages” of kids in wealthy districts with lots of curriculum options. When small under-funded districts don’t have the resources to offer all those classes, the “solution” forced on them is to close them and send their students long distances to larger schools in other communities.

One of the problems with this fix is that it in order to see that a few kids get calculus or a third year of foreign language or journalism, for example, a few more kids don’t go to school any more at all, and a few more don’t take any challenging classes. A so-called solution for some kids is a disaster for others.

Continue reading "College Board Could Help or Harm Rural Students" »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nebraska doesn’t produce many heretics. Certainly not in the field of education.

There was of course, William Jennings Bryan, the populist Democrat who shaped a progressive political agenda around monetary policy, trust-busting, and peace, as a three-time candidate for President. That was before he succumbed to the darker angels in his soul and fought the teaching of evolution in the Scopes monkey trial that ended just days before his death. Let’s thank him for the progressive income tax and our anti-trust laws and forget his views on education.

No, when it comes to famous educators, Nebraska settles for a few prominent, but entirely conventional, college administrators, like Roscoe Pound who served as dean of the law schools at Nebraska and Harvard, or Ford Foundation president Henry Heald, and lots of major university presidents. Mostly, it seems, you have to leave Nebraska to be a leader in education.

Of course, there was Frank Cyr, a Nebraskan who ushered in the school bus safety movement, and is remembered (seriously) as

Continue reading "The Heretic from Nebraska" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 05:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When small rural communities close (or lose) their school it’s equivalent to a major employer shutting down, AND it redirects local tax money to another town.

Those are major points in an interesting comment posted yesterday on the Consolidation/Small Schools Resource Page here on Rural Matters. You can read the comment here by scrolling down the page.

The fate of the community is one of the most common concerns of rural people when the school is threatened. And with good reason. Schools are often the only public institution in rural communities, the largest employer, and the single organization that touches almost everyone. The community’s tax dollars support it, and if it’s in its own district, the community governs it.

Continue reading "When Fighting for A Rural Community is Fighting For Rural Kids" »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 09:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning, 450,000 schools buses, many running double routes, rounded up 25 million kids – over half of all public school students – and hauled them off to school, covering about 22 million miles along the way. That was today. And it will be the same tomorrow.

Over the course of the school year, these busses will travel a stunning 4 billion miles and eat up over $15 billion of public education dollars, about 8 percent of total current expenditures for K-12 schools.

Continue reading "What We Know and Don’t About Busing" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 03:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Seems there are ever more kinds of small schools every day. In recent days we have noted schools that are “necessarily small,” “small by default,” “small by choice,” “small by design,” part of “small learning communities,” and “naturally small.”

It is worth noting that the proliferation of terms to describe schools that are not big parallels a growth in awareness that, in education, small works. Make no mistake, all these terms carry the political baggage of school finance battles in which various interests are trying to win a bigger piece of the pie, or keep others from getting a bigger piece of the pie, or making sure their kind of smallness and not someone else’s kind of smallness gets a bigger piece of the pie.

It’s time we had a glossary to sort out the political nuances of these terms. Here’s my offering. What’s yours?

Continue reading "The Many Meanings of “Small”" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The state of Arkansas has for the last several years—and especially since the Supreme Court found the state school finance system unconstitutional—pursued aggressive policies to consolidate rural districts, and subsequently close small schools. Those policies are the subject of much contention in Arkansas. In the summer of 2006, the fight of the rural community of Paron to save its high school from closure became a flashpoint in the Arkansas debate over rural education.

But no matter where you live, if you care about honest reporting or rural kids or good education, it’s worth paying attention to what happened to Paron, especially in the press. That’s because what happened to Paron is a not just a travesty of justice, but an object lesson in the ways an irresponsible press does real harm to rural kids and their communities.

Continue reading "Why What Happened to Paron Matters, Even if You're Not From Arkansas" »

Posted by Robin Lambert at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Slapping kids around to keep them in order is a lot less unusual in schools than you might think. Corporal punishment – using physical force on kids to maintain discipline or enforce school rules – has been condemned by common sense and all kinds of scholarly research.

But it happens. A lot.

Take Florida, for example, one state that keeps score and posts the results on its website. It’s not a pretty picture, especially in small rural districts.

Continue reading "Corporal Punishment -- Still Legal in 22 States" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Paul Greenberg’s been getting some mail. And he doesn’t like it.

The editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette said in a Sunday editorial (September 24, 2006) that he had been sent about a “zillion” copies of an article appearing on this Blog (“Facts are stubborn things, Mr. Greenberg,” posted September 8, 2006).

The article chided Greenberg for not leveling with Arkansans about the facts surrounding the closing of Paron High School. Paron High was forced to close after it was annexed by neighboring Bryant School District. The excuse Bryant gave for the closure was that Paron allegedly was unable to teach all of the 38 courses Arkansas high schools are required to teach each year.

Our article recited a pile of facts about the good performance of Paron students and about the circumstances surrounding the school’s efforts to teach journalism, one of the 38 required courses. Those facts were repeated by many writers who sent letters to the editor as well as emails to the Democrat-Gazette editorial page.

And Mr. Greenberg feels beleaguered and besieged by all this email. I doubt he got a zillion, but any number might have been a bit much for him.

He’s not used to seeing in print opinions he doesn’t agree with, unless he approves publishing them. As editorial

Continue reading "Paron and the Propagandist " »

Posted by Marty Strange at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"We are going to be able to take professional development where teachers are rather than simply asking them to come where we are. It also means we are using the latest tools and technology to give teachers the best tools of teaching an educational capacity."

Those are the words of Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in announcing a new on-line program offered by the state Department of Education so teachers can take a required 60 hours of professional development courses annually through distance learning programs.

That’s the same Department of Education that requires that all high schools actually teach 38 required courses every year, with a certified teacher on site, whether students sign up for the course or not.

Nope, courses taught by distance learning cannot meet this requirement. Even if the course comes from the high school’s home district. Or from the state’s virtual high school. Kids can take distance learning courses, but that won’t relieve their high school of having to teach the 38 required courses.

Continue reading "Goose and Gosling" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“Facts are stubborn things,” John Adams said, arguing for the Redcoat defendants in the Boston Massacre trial. He won their acquittal. It won’t be as easy for the people trying to get the facts in public view on the matter of the Arkansas Press Corps v. Paron High School.

That’s not a court case. That’s just a caption for the relentless diatribe against small schools, Paron in particular lately, spewing from the pundits who write columns, editorials, and cartons for the state’s editorial pages.

It’s a diatribe far more embarrassing than those pundits claim the state’s small schools are.

Continue reading "Facts Are Stubborn Things, Mr. Greenberg" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 08:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

United States Department of Education-approved assessment systems apparently don’t help, if the purpose is to boost achievement scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the so-called nation’s report card.

That’s the best sense you can make out of comparing the NAEP scores of the four states whose assessment systems have received USDE’s full seal of approval with the scores of the 10 states whose systems are so wretched, according to USDE, that it is withholding federal funds from the state education agency. USDE passes judgment on state assessment systems under the authority of No Child Left Behind, a bumbling federal law well-recognized for its consistently perverse effects.

Continue reading "No, No, Doug, USDE Approval Counts, Learning Doesn’t" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 08:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The most ideological liberal and conservative advocates of standards based reform share a tenuous relationship. Both swear allegiance to the litany of “standards, aligned curricula, assessment, and accountability.” Their differences are reveled mainly over the matter of money. Liberals think schools should get more before they are held accountable, and conservatives think they don’t need more, unless it’s in the form of modest rewards after they improve performance. Both kneel at the altar of standardized test scores to justify reward or punishment. Both earnestly assert that all children can learn to the same high standards, though you can’t help but think the liberals actually believe it while the conservatives chant this mantra mainly to set schools up for failure.

Continue reading "If They Can Learn, Why Can't They Govern?" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 07:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Education Triangle

There is a kind of education triangle, a three-way love affair we have had with the competing values we place on excellence, equity, and community (which more often parades around in disguise as its ugly sibling, “local control”).

We love excellence, the argument goes, because we want each to be the best that she or he can be, equity because we cherish justice and equal opportunity, and community because we fear putting power into remote authorities, and loath lock-step conformity.

Continue reading "The Education Triangle" »

Posted by Marty Strange at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)