...dedicated to...hmmm, we're still figuring that one out...
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State Cuts + No Child Left Behind Underfunding = Education Funding Disaster A USA Today editorial, Cash shortages in states threaten education fixes, while not absolving states of financial responsibility, concludes "the federal government is holding states responsible for education reforms they haven't received money to fund." The New York Times Sam Dillon writes in Schools Ending Year Early to Cut Costs that "Thousands of America's districts are grappling with extraordinary midyear budget cuts as state governments face deficits that stem from falling tax revenues." He goes on to relate a number of funding induced education horror stories:
The Los Angeles Times' Edward Chen in Education Reform, One Year Later, notes that while President Bush continues to congratulate himself over No Child Left Behind, liberals such as Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Representative George Miller who helped craft and supported NCLB say Bush is gutting funding for the law.
What's That?
Misuse of E-rate Funds John Schwartz writes in Schools' Internet Subsidies Are Called Fraud-Riddled in The New York Times that the "E-Rate program has helped connect thousands of schools and libraries to the Internet, but it may also be enriching unscrupulous contractors, according to a report" by the Center for Public Integrity. About the Washington Teachers' Union Scandal Washington Post staff writers Valerie Strauss and Justin Blum relate how the Washington Teachers' Union scandal occurred in Apathy and Secrecy Filled Teachers Union, Many Say. They write, "Those who might have raised red flags did not speak out until the money had vanished: the union's parent, the American Federation of Teachers; the union's own three-member board of trustees; its 21-member executive board; its membership; and U.S. Labor Department regulators." Massachusetts Charter News While definitely not a major news story of the day, School-farm plan faulted in Waltham caught my eye, as I was once a part-time farmer and used to joke with another teacher-farmer about starting such a farm school as this story relates. The article relates the plan of Alyssa Whitehead-Bust to start a grade 6-12 charter school "that would blend a college-preparatory mission with the hands-on, practical experience of running a farm." Students would tend the farm, sell the crops, and care for animals along with activities all linked to academics. Boston Globe staff writer Anand Vaishnav notes that "City and school leaders in the Boston suburb denounce it as a fiscal drain and an unwelcome guest." Sad...it sounds like fun. Another Vaishnav column, Charter schools face backlash around state, tells of fierce infighting over the possible approval of new charter schools in Massachusetts. "State Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll, who said many school chiefs view charter schools as ''piranhas. It's become very, very negative.''' Shari Rudavsky of the Globe shares how charters and public schools are working together in Charter, district teachers take pages from each others' books. Rudavsky writes of the Project for School Innovation in which teachers share best practices with one another. PBS Series: A History of US As noted here last Monday, the PBS series Freedom: A History of US begins soon -- tonight on many public television stations around the country. Mac writer and educator Mark Marcantonio writes of the ten book Joy Hakim series, "These are the best books written for kids on American history. I use them as my primary teaching material, although the budget wouldn't allow me to buy the series for each student." The PBS site has full descriptions of the series, along with teaching guides, games and activities, and each of the sixteen episodes in an online webisode version. Digital Photography and Megahertz A column last week by Rob Galbraith, In pro digital photography, megahertz matters, concludes, "What's there to say but the obvious: The fastest dual processor Mac has been soundly thumped by one of the fastest single processor PCs. If this report had included a dual processor PC, the PC's margin of victory could have been even greater." Testing Solution A column in the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian, The Science of Learning, tells of the Linscott Charter School buying into Scantron's Performance Series Assessment online testing. The column lists the price tag for both a cart of 14 iBooks and the software at $16,000. Devotion for January 12-18, 2003 Zach Wood's weekly devotional for this week is Our Misunderstanding of Holy. Zach also maintains an archive of previous devotionals. If you have suggestions, news ideas, etc., please . |
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Number of Children Medicated Increases An Associated Press posting by Lindsey Tanner, Psychiatric Drug Use Surges for Children, relates a recent review of research data indicates a tremendous increase in the "number of U.S. children and adolescents on Ritalin, antidepressants or other psychiatric drugs surged between 1987 and 1996." No Child Left Behind The Minneapolis Star Tribune's Norman Draper continues the flood of recent columns reporting concerns of many school officials due to the No Child Left Behind legislation. In Federal law poses costly education questions, Draper writes that "many states are in financial straits and fear No Child Left Behind represents another costly federal program they'll have to pay for. They also fear that the law could unfairly tag many schools as failures." The Boston Globe's Michele Kurtz in Law could label half Mass. schools deficient tells that "In Massachusetts and other states, officials are expressing concern that the federal law may oblige districts to spend more on new programs than the Bush administration is willing to provide, leaving states, cities, and towns to pay the rest." Kurtz relates that John Jennings, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Education Policy, said that states "generally said that they expect 30 percent to 80 percent of their schools to be labeled needing improvement." School Lunch Emily Gersema relates in the Associated Press posting, Don't blame school lunches for child overweight kids, says agriculture secretary, that Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said in an interview last Friday, "We cannot blame obesity on child nutrition programs in this country." While the "Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine argues that school lunch is partly to blame for young people being overweight," Veneman stated, "The bulk of the eating decisions, or the buying, is done by the parents." The physician's committee alleges that school meals reflect government support for farm programs, rather than healthy eating choices for children. Elizabeth Becker and Marian Burros tell that school officials in Opelika, Alabama and a few other communities "decided that nutritious school lunches were non-negotiable" years ago. While providing more fruits and vegetables and reducing fat costs more, "parents backed them up, consistently voting for increased financing." In Eat Your Vegetables? Only at a Few Schools, Becker and Burros relate that the Opelika-like situations are unique, as most school meals feature prepared foods over healthier and more expensive "home cooked" alternatives. School Violence Greg Toppo relates in USA Today School violence hits lower grades. The subhead of Toppo's column relates "Experts who see violent behavior in younger kids blame parents, prenatal medical problems and an angry society; educators search for ways to cope." The column is a good read, as Toppo columns usually are. It's good to see Greg's byline appearing online again after a period of absence when he apparently moved from the Associated Press to USA Today. New from SchwabLearning.org New on the SchwabLearning.org site this week is Inattentive AD/HD: Overlooked and Undertreated? Adobe Photoshop Elements 2
My copy of Elements 2 came in Monday, but I just got around to installing it and giving it a quick test drive Tuesday evening. I only tested a couple of features, but I wasn't disappointed. Adobe has improved the browser considerably. While the previous browser felt rather slow and clunky running under either Mac OS 9 or in the Classic box of OS X, this time around it's fairly quick. Images quickly display as thumbnails before being resized to a slightly larger view. I found Element's browser still to be slightly slower than the one incorporated in Thorsten Lemke's GraphicConverter, but definitely usable now. Elements web optimization is good, but no better or worse
than that of GraphicConverter. One nice feature of the
browser, however, is that the Elements' browser does not
undo the web optimization of photos whereas GraphicConverter
returns pictures to their full size when viewed in its
browser.
Adobe also heralds their new "quick fix" feature. I found the quick fix to be more selective and specific than the old "Instant Fix" in Adobe PhotoDeluxe. I'd played a bit with the picture below last weekend and did another round with Elements 2 last evening. I first selected a small portion of the photo on which to concentrate. After cropping, I used Quick Fix to first sharpen the focus, adjust the contrast and backlighting, and finally did a color correction that may not have really helped. Anyway, the photos below show that the Quick Fix feature can clean up a fairly badly botched photo.
The "hook" for me on buying the new version of Elements,
even though I already have the 1.0 version, was the
combination of it running natively under OS X and a great
price. The base price was $84.99 with two Amazon rebates
that totaled $50. I thought a net price of $34.99 was pretty
good, but then I found an Adobe $30 upgrade rebate offer in
the box! I'm not sure if the Adobe offer duplicates one of
the Amazon rebates, but for a net price of $4.99, I'm going
to risk a stamp on it. If you missed the Amazon offer and
are a school employee, you can still get a good deal on
Elements at the Academic
Superstore I was still using version 4.4 of GraphicConverter for the work above, as I hadn't yet upgraded the excellent shareware to the new 4.5.x version. Even with a shiny new version of Photoshop Elements 2, I still consider GraphicConverter to be an essential tool on my Mac. When I checked prices Tuesday evening, I was pleasantly surprised to find the upgrade is just $15. Full single user licenses are now $30 (previously $35).  Lots of Ideas Jeff Adkins wins the prize today for the longest column title for his current Mac Lab Report, More on Apple Education, Disk Images, Cloning Systems for the Classroom, a Low-Cost Education Mac, and OS X Server. Jeff tidies things up from several past columns with this one, but it also serves as a good index or pointer to his other columns on making disk images for classroom use, Xserve, and cloning iBook hard drives, if you missed some of them. STS-107 Aloft
Another View of No Child Left Behind The Washington Post's Jay Mathews does a perspective piece in this week's Class Struggle column, Federal Law's Effect: Raised Expectations. Jay sees some long-term positives coming from No Child Left Behind. Has the Teacher Shortage Really Eased? While several columns have appeared recently that report that the long-standing teacher shortage that afflicts many big city school systems has eased or ended, the Chicago Tribune article Teacher demand dips with economy may be more accurate. The Trib says teaching vacancies in Illinois dropped this year for the first time in five years. Trib staff reporters Stephanie Banchero and Barbara Sherlock write that " State education officials said the change could be partly attributed to a shrinking employment market that helped persuade teachers to stick with their current jobs." They add that state education officials "say the dip in vacancies may also be connected to budget constraints that have forced local school districts to eliminate open positions or avoid adding new ones." Bush Takes Stand Against Affirmative Action President Bush took a stand against affirmative action in a speech Wednesday where he urged the Supreme Court to hold the University of Michigan's affirmative action policy unconstitutional. In President Faults Race Preferences as Admission Tool, the New York Times' Neil A. Lewis writes that "The president's decision to intervene in the case was significant because the Bush administration was not legally involved and did not have to take a position" in the UMich case. Beyond the PowerBooks: Items for Education at Macworld (at atttractive discounts) While the new PowerBooks introduced at last week's Macworld Expo have deservedly garnered the lion's share of attention from the press, a number of other announcements and introductions took place that may be relevant to the education market. Apple Education's PR Manager, Josh Morgan, was kind enought to put together the product descriptions below and send them along.
Faster Wireless As While I had been less than pleased with the software available for OS X and how some products ran in X's Classic box, a couple of developments may allow us to begin using OS X 10.2.3 as our default boot system soon. Bob Keller of Don Johnston Inc. asked me to check out a possible upgrade of Co:Writer 4000 recently. The beta I tested seemed to take care of some of the vexing problems of Co:Writer dropping the connection to its companion word processor under Mac OS 9.2.2. The tested version does not run natively under OS X, but I found it now runs reliably in the Classic box of OS X when paired with Microsoft Word 2001. It also worked well with AppleWorks 6, if AppleWorks was running in the Classic box. If not, Co:Writer appeared unable to cross the clipboard bridge between OS 9 and X. The iBook I was using this week for the test also had Craig Marciniak's SpellTools set as a system startup item. When I booted the Classic box of OS X, SpellTools appeared, where previously under OS X 10.1 (and 10.2?), it failed to function. While I can't find an equivalent to Word 98's Word Speak in Word 2001, SpellTools adds the critical readback function to the newer version. Having "gotten lucky" with SpellTools, I quickly launched Roger Clary's Spell Tutor in the Classic box. I'd had good luck running Spell Tutor under the OS X public beta and the 10.0 release, but it broke somewhere along the line in 10.1. I found that Spell Tutor once again works under the latest update to OS X (10.2.3)! With Co:Writer, SpellTools, and Spell Tutor now functioning acceptably under OS X, my list of "essential applications" that have to run on our computers got a good bit shorter. I'm still trying to figure out how to get the OS 9 Launcher to run when using a restricted student account (multiple users under OS X). My kids are used to using the Launcher and I find it fairly easy to set up and replicate across our iBooks using Mike Bombich's excellent Carbon Copy Cloner. I'm also just starting to see if the scripts I've written to mount CD disk images and then launch the appropriate application still work under X's classic box. I may need to rewrite them in X.
I'm also looking forward in the next few weeks at getting a look at Riverdeep's new Destination Reading and Destination Math software, which is included with the language and math carts. Have a great weekend!
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we continue to work with our wireless iBooks at school, I find that AirPort Extreme, or the 802.11g standard, is truly droolworthy. It seems that no matter how fast the network may be on a given day, and it varies greatly with use, I'm always tapping my toe or drumming my fingers waiting for a connection or for directories and such to load. A recent upgrade of my classroom Power Mac 8550/200 MacServer to AppleShare 6.3 has given us a speed boost, but Apple's move in adopting the 802.11g standard will definitely pay benefits for educators buying new systems. While we can't afford to retrofit our iBooks or all of our wireless receivers, the upgrade has permitted me to switch our installation of 
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