Beware The BLOB - it looms in New York City, creeps in the District, lurks in Utah and more this Halloween…

Hello, India? I Need Help With My Math
New York Times, October 31, 2007
Kenneth Tham, a high school sophomore in Arcadia, Calif., strives to improve his grades and scores on standardized tests. Most afternoons, he is tutored remotely by an instructor speaking to him on a voice-over-Internet headset while he sits at his personal computer going over lessons on the screen.

If You Want Good High School Grades, Move to Texas
Washington Post, D.C., October 30, 2007
Self-appointed education pundits like me spend much of our time talking about the standardized tests that are the basis for rating of schools under the No Child Left Behind law. But those test scores arguably have little impact on student lives. The scores don’t count on their report cards.

Low-Income Students Are Public School Majority in South, Study Finds
Education Week, October 30, 2007
More than half of public schoolchildren in the U.S. South now come from low-income families, according to a new report, which predicts that the nation as a whole could reach the same demographic milestone within a decade if current trends persist.

Members Vote to Oppose Central Office Bill
Washington Post, D.C., October 31, 2007
Members of the Washington Teachers’ Union voted last night to oppose a move by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to fire central office employees "at will," an indication that rank-and-file teachers disagree with her first sweeping effort to overhaul city schools.

Lee charter schools may almost double next year
News Press, Florida, October 30, 2007
Fourteen charter schools in Lee County teach 7,761 children. By next year, the number of charter schools could nearly double to 26.

Voucher fight tab $8.4M
Salt Lake Tribune, Utah, October 31, 2007
The campaign clash over education vouchers has run up a tab that easily would fund Utah’s voucher program well into its second year.

Tests reveal performance gap as students age
D.C. Examiner, October 31, 2007
By the 11th grade, only a quarter of the far southern Illinois county’s students meet basic standards on achievement tests. The story is similar in all 102 Illinois counties: Students perform fairly well through eighth grade but see a dramatic decline in high school, an Associated Press analysis of new state data shows.

Education is about more than buildings
In-Forum, North Dakota, October 31, 2007
It seems to me, rather than debating whether the new school is named after a prehistoric lake or some famous person, we should be considering whether a new “traditional” school is what is needed at all.

Teachers’ Union Will Represent Child-Care Workers in N.Y.C.
Education Week, October 30, 2007
The union representing New York City’s public school teachers has won the right to represent 28,000 child-care providers there.

Expert gives business perspective on educational reform
WMU News, Michigan, October 30, 2007
An entrepreneur in the investment field, who helped found successful charter schools in Chicago, will offer a business perspective on educational reform on Wednesday, Nov. 7, in a presentation at Western Michigan University.

Charter Milestone
WCBD, South Carolina, October 30, 2007
After fighting to become a place for vulnerable children, a Charleston charter school is celebrating a milestone.

Surprise, Surprise, OK union boss fights merit pay proposal, Are "Dropout Factories" an emerging industry? And more in Morning Shots…

If Schools Are ‘Worse Than We Think,’ Let’s Get Busy on Repairs
Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2007
It is not a matter of inner-city or suburban schools, it is a matter of demanding excellence for what you pay for. The push for "educational choice" is not a legitimate alternative to repairing the damage inflicted on our public-school system through years of neglect by parents, government and communities.

1 in 10 Schools Are ‘Dropout Factories’
New York Times, October 30, 2007
It’s a nickname no principal could be proud of: ”Dropout Factory,” a high school where no more than 60 percent of the students who start as freshmen make it to their senior year. That dubious distinction applies to more than one in 10 high schools across America.

A juggling act on No Child Left Behind
Los Angeles Times, California, October 30, 2007
As chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Miller is sparring with Republicans who see his proposed changes as an unacceptable watering down of the law’s core standards. Teachers object to his proposal to link pay to performance.

Vouching for vouchers
The Atlantic Magazine, October 29, 2007
Forgive me–I’m about to get testy again–but this thread on 11D really does seem to me to showcase in stunning technocolor the moral bankruptcy of voucher opponents who have pulled their own kids out of failing inner city schools.

School districts must work with Tallahassee to regain control over charters
TC Palm, Florida, October 30, 2007
Responding to concerns that charter schools aren’t getting a fair shake, Florida has stripped local school districts of their control.

Ohio hopes to boost retention rates at struggling schools
D.C. Examiner, October 30, 2007
At 14 of the city’s 17 high schools, nearly 40 percent or more of the students who started as freshmen dropped out before graduation day.

Students can earn course credit by ‘attending’ virtual school
Crescent-News, Ohio, October 30, 2007
Students can earn actual course credit without being in a "bricks and mortar" school by "attending" a virtual school. Among popular "e-schools" is the Ohio Virtual Academy (OHVA), found on the Internet at www.ohva.org. It offers classes online for students in grades K-11 and is based locally in Maumee.

Many Catholic schools fight to survive
Los Angeles Times, California, October 30, 2007
Troubles at St. Anne Catholic School in Santa Monica were so dire at one point that Father Michael D. Gutierrez turned to his congregation for help.

Unionized Charter Schools Headed East
Education Week, October 29, 2007
On Friday, New York state officials approved Green Dot, a unionized charter school model from LA, to open in the South Bronx of New York City in partnership with the teachers union there.

Students, child advocates, leaders divided on high school exit exams
D.C. Examiner, October 30, 2007
Thousands of students statewide could be denied diplomas for failing the High School Assessments, depending on what state education officials decide this week.

Students are flocking to Madison charter schools
Wisconsin State Journal, October 29, 2007
In its fourth year, the Madison School District’s Spanish-English charter school is so popular that the parents who helped found the East Side school are having trouble getting their children in and there’s talk of expanding the program

OEA president says merit pay plan flawed
Ada Evening News, Oklahoma, October 29, 2007
Roy Bishop traveled to Ada Friday with a clear message: The push by House Speaker Lance Cargill and others to implement merit pay for teachers in Oklahoma is a flawed plan.

Families in California and across the country are struggling to pay for homes near what they think are “good” public schools. Many of these “house-poor” families, who spend more than 35 percent of their incomes on housing, are getting a lot less than they bargained for.

Their ranks have quadrupled in just one generation, and home prices for families with school-age children are also growing three times faster than other families. The problem is especially acute in the Golden State, whose cities litter the top-100 list of highest housing foreclosure rates. With seven high-foreclosure cities each on the list, Florida, New York, and Texas are a distant second to California’s dirty dozen, which includes top-ranked Stockton, Sacramento (#5), San Diego (#23), Los Angeles/Long Beach (#29), Orange (#45), and San Francisco (#78).

What drives many families to stretch their budgets to the breaking point is desperation to get their children into decent schools. Authors of The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Broke Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi explain that “when a family buys a house, it buys much more than shelter from the rain. It also buys a public-school system.”

Countless California families are moving to affluent suburbs so their children can attend public schools touted as outstanding by district superintendents, real-estate agents, local and state departments of education. But just how good are those schools? As a new PRI book puts it: Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice.

Many parents and their elected officials will be shocked to learn that there are hundreds of affluent, underperforming public schools throughout the Golden State in areas with median home prices exceeding $1 million.

In fact, at more than one in 10 affluent California public schools, a majority of students in at least one grade score below proficiency in English or math. These are schools where less than one third of students are poor, socioeconomically disadvantaged, and few students are English language learners or have disabilities. Most parents have an advanced education, and the overwhelming majority of teachers are certified.

Editorializing on the book, The Wall Street Journal explains, “Many of these schools were located in the Golden State’s toniest zip codes, places like Orange County, Silicon Valley and the beach communities of Los Angeles. In areas such as Newport Beach, Capistrano and Huntington Beach, where million-dollar houses are commonplace, researchers found more than a dozen schools where 50 to 80 percent of students weren’t proficient in math at their grade level. In one Silicon Valley community where the median home goes for $1.6 million, less than half of 10th and 11th graders scored at or above proficiency on the state English exam.”

But California isn’t alone. Nationwide, six out of 10 public school fourth and eighth graders who are not poor score below proficiency in math and reading.

For too long families in California and across the country have been led to believe that poor quality schools are an inner-city problem plaguing low-income parents who cannot afford to move near supposedly superior suburban schools. Given the current housing market, middle-income families may now find themselves similarly trapped in homes they can barely afford to keep and cannot afford to sell at a loss - all for schools that fail to deliver.

The cost of foreclosures on a single city block to local agencies and nearby property owners who suffer diminished property values and home equity is an estimated $250,000. The cost of a sub-standard education is incalculable. There is a remedy for both.

Legislators should end the current monopoly system of assigned public schooling and put all parents - regardless of income or address -in charge of their children’s education dollars. “In reality,” says the Wall Street Journal, “[middle-income] families would benefit from vouchers, tuition tax credits, charter schools and other educational options as surely as the inner-city single mom.”

Such programs would expand educational opportunities without putting parents - and states - in the poorhouse.

Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D., is Education Studies Senior Policy Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in Sacramento, and co-author with Lance T. Izumi and Rachel S. Chaney of Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice.

Teacher pay debate continues to dominate headlines, D.C. charters to fight for fiscal equity, and more in today’s Morning Shots.

Focus is on NYC charter schools
Muckety, New York, October 27, 2007
New York City’s ambitious charter school initiative gets a new director this month in Michael Thomas Duffy, fresh from a successful run in Roxbury, Mass.

Lessons from green roofs at St. Paul and Elk River schools
Twin City Daily Planet, Minnesota, October 26, 2007
The U.S. Department of Education and Center for Education Reform have recognized CPA as one of the nation’s outstanding charter public schools. The school has been cited for programs that teach character and "peace-making" - and the ability to get along with others.

Merit Pay Plan Raises Questions On How To Measure Performance
New York Sun, October 29, 2007
A new plan to base some teacher salaries on their performance leaves a crucial question up to each school: how to measure performance.

Disabilities Fight Grows as Taxes Pay for Tuition
New York Times, October 27, 2007
Cases like these have increasingly become a flash point in special education, pitting parents against school systems that say they cannot afford to pay to privately educate disabled children whose parents unilaterally reject their proposed placements.

Make ‘No Child’ honest
Los Angeles Times, California, October 28, 2007
The No Child Left Behind Act has made an admitted mishmash of public education. Yet, like nothing before, the law also has schools and the public paying serious attention to how little is learned by so many students, and how inferior conditions fester in schools that enroll large numbers of black, Latino and impoverished children.

Shortchanging charter schools
Washington Times, D.C., October 29, 2007
A supplemental budget request currently being floated by D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray on behalf of Mayor Adrian Fenty has the potential to harm the nearly 22,000 students enrolled in 55 charter schools by denying them millions of dollars in school funding.

Better schools, economy and neighborhoods
Indianapolis Star, Indiana, October 28, 2007
Perhaps the most profound changes we can make are in public education. We must make sure parents and students have the best options available within public school systems, including magnet and charter schools and other unique partnerships we can develop with parents, educators and local activists.

State education chief plans to push public school choice again
Journal Gazette, Indiana, October 27, 2007
The state schools chief says he plans to push another public school choice program in the Legislature next year, even though his efforts were defeated last year.

External Diploma Program
Washington Post, D.C., October 29, 2007
All students who can read, write and calculate at the high school level should have access to a diploma program in high school that allows them to demonstrate their competency. Our son was denied such access but by chance found another way.

Battling Ancient Bigotry
New York Post, October 28, 2007
A lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court last week could end up removing a stain from New York state’s Constitution - while simultaneously improving educational opportunities for thousands of New York schoolchildren.

By the Mississippi Delta, A Whole School Left Behind
Washington Post, D.C., October 28, 2007
Of all the nation’s elementary schools, the one serving this poor, rural crossroads is at the bottom of the heap. Its math and reading test scores ranked at the bottom in Mississippi last year, and Mississippi, in turn, ranked last among the states.

Parents are key to improving education
Commercial Appeal, Tennessee, October 28, 2007
"Undereducated children have no future." That unusually blunt assessment opens the recently released Urban Child Institute’s "The State of Children in Memphis and Shelby County Data Book: 2007." And it’s precisely why we believe that in addition to opening our pocketbooks to fix our schools, we must take the essential and more critical step of opening our minds to the need for drastic change.

Chapter 6: Administrator pay vs. teacher pay
Daily Herald, Illinois, October 27, 2007
Teachers get fewer apples from students these days, but their paychecks now more than compensate for the loss. Between 1998 and 2006, the average teacher pay in 94 suburban school districts grew from $46,883 to $59,986, an increase of 28 percent.

Colorado legislator is raising "Hell" again, church sues to open a charter in Harlem, debating the race card, and more…

Merit Pay for Teachers
New York Times, October 26, 2007
No question that good teaching should be rewarded. But offering bonuses to teachers who improve student scores on standardized tests is not the way to do it…

Use of Race a Concern for Magnet Schools
Education Week, October 25, 2007
Federal education officials were in the final stages of authorizing their latest round of grants for magnet schools when the U.S. Supreme Court in late June issued a major decision on whether school districts may consider race when assigning students to school.

Rep. Merrifield is raising Hell (literally) again
Pueblo Chieftain, Colorado, October 26, 2007
The last time you heard of Rep. Michael Merrifield was when he resigned his chairmanship of the Colorado House Education Committee in disgrace. That was after the public got a look at an indiscreet e-mail he sent to Sen. Sue Windels, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee.

Charter school proposal to get public airing
Access North Georgia, October 26, 2007
You’ll get a chance next Tuesday to comment on plans to convert Chestnut Mountain Elementary School into a World Languages Charter School next fall.

Education coalition criticizes conservative political contributor Rex Sinquefield
Kansas City Star, Missouri, October 25, 2007
A coalition of eight Missouri education groups this week blasted conservative political contributor Rex Sinquefield for "trying to buy public policy."

I Just Couldn’t Sacrifice My Son
Washington Post, D.C., October 21, 2007
When a high school friend told me several years ago that he and his wife were leaving Washington’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood for Montgomery County, I snickered and murmured something about white flight.

Can military schools succeed?
Chicago Tribune, Illinois, October 26, 2007
The city’s military schools operate much like regular public schools, with a certified, unionized teaching staff and all the same academic standards

School silence law kicks up a big fuss
Chicago Tribune, Illinois, October 26, 2007
Two weeks after a new law mandated a moment of silence in Illinois public schools, the debate is anything but quiet.

Church Sues for Right To Run Charter
New York Sun, October 26, 2007
A Harlem church is suing the state in an attempt to overturn a law that bars religious organizations from running charter schools even if the schools don’t teach religion, a move likely to prompt new debate about the separation between church and state.

‘School choice’ usually means ‘no choice’ in Pa.
Pocono Record, Pennsylvania, October 16, 2007
When No Child Left Behind became federal law in 2002, it offered an escape clause of sorts to students attending public schools that repeatedly failed to meet performance targets.

Options unveiled for proposed charter school
Santa Maria Times, California, October 26, 2007
Seven possible location plans for the proposed dual-campus Orcutt Academy Charter School were unveiled Thursday at a meeting of the Orcutt Union School District board of trustees.

Legislators seek changes in teacher hiring
Minnesota Daily, October 26, 2007
School administrators would be required to know the full licensing history of prospective teachers before they hire them, under changes to Minnesota law that several state lawmakers plan to propose next year.

Regents OK 2 more charters
Providence Journal, Rhode Island, October 26, 2007
Two new charter schools received preliminary approval yesterday by the state Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education, allowing them to continue planning, find building sites and seek final approval next spring.