joannejacobs.com

"Hooking up" -- a no-strings sexual encounter that may range from kissing to oral sex to intercourse -- is more common than dating for affluent suburban teen-agers, according to a New York Times Magazine story. Girls in eighth or ninth grade perform oral sex on boys. Kids don't like commitment. Some go to online sites where they can "post profiles, exchange e-mail and arrange to hook up" with strangers.

The trend toward ''hooking up'' and ''friends with benefits'' (basically, friends you hook up with regularly) has trickled down from campuses into high schools and junior highs -- and not just in large urban centers. Cellphones and the Internet, which offer teenagers an unparalleled level of privacy, make hooking up that much easier, whether they live in New York City or Boise.

. . . It's not that teenagers have given up on love altogether. Most of the high-school students I spent time with said they expected to meet the right person, fall in love and marry -- eventually. It's just that high school, many insist, isn't the place to worry about that. High school is about keeping your options open. Relationships are about closing them. As these teenagers see it, marriage and monogamy will seamlessly replace their youthful hookup careers sometime in their mid- to late 20's -- or, as one high-school boy from Rhode Island told me online, when ''we turn 30 and no one hot wants us anymore.''

Brian, a 16-year-old friend of Jesse's, put it this way: ''Being in a real relationship just complicates everything. You feel obligated to be all, like, couply. And that gets really boring after a while. When you're friends with benefits, you go over, hook up, then play video games or something. It rocks.''

According to a National Institute of Child Health and Development survey, "more suburban 12th graders than urban ones have had sex outside of a romantic relationship (43 percent, compared with 39 percent)."

Fewer teens are having sexual intercourse, but more are having oral sex, says the story. Which they don't consider "sex."

The story ends with a funny discussion of the base system:

The two got to only first base (kissing), which is about the only base that anyone can agree on anymore. ''I don't understand the base system at all,'' Jesse said, lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling. ''If making out is first base, what's second base?''

''We need to establish an international base system,'' Brian said. ''Because right now, frankly, no one knows what's up with the bases. And that's a problem.''

Jesse nodded in agreement. ''First base is obviously kissing,'' Brian said.

''Obviously,'' Jesse said.

''But here's the twist,'' Brian said. ''Historically, second base was breasts. But I don't think second base is breasts anymore. I think that's just a given part of first base. I mean, how can you make out without copping a feel?''

''True,'' Jesse said. ''And if third base is oral, what's second base?''

''How does this work for girls?'' asked Ashley, the 17-year-old junior. ''I mean, are the bases what's been done to you, or what you've done?''

''If it's what base you've gone to with a girl, you go by whoever had more done,'' Jesse told her.

''But we're girls,'' Ashley said. ''So we've got on bases with guys?''

''Right, but it doesn't matter,'' Jesse said. ''It's not what base you've had done to you, it's what bases you get to.''

Kate shook her head. ''I'm totally lost.''

No kidding.

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Talk about it

Click the link to participate in an online discussion of charter schools June 7 - 10.

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Free 50

In some New York districts, students get 50 points out of 100 on their report cards just for being enrolled. It's supposed to be a motivator, giving poor students a chance to pass with a little effort. But some students use it to minimize their effort. From New York Teacher:

Thirty miles west of Syracuse, Auburn teachers are challenging a newly imposed district policy that gives students a minimum grade of 50 regardless of their attendance, test scores, class participation or lack thereof. Auburn, with some 5,200 students, joins the ranks of Syracuse and Niagara Falls — other districts that this year have implemented policies that guarantee students minimum grades.

. . . "We know the rationale behind the district advancing this policy, but it literally destroys the trust between the student and teacher of honest assessment," said Sally Jo Widmer, president of the 670- member Auburn Teachers Association. Some educators worry the 50-point minimum granted to every student in grades 7-12 gives kids an excuse not to work.

And teachers in several districts with minimum grading policies say they've witnessed students "coasting" on the gift 50.

"At the end of the first marking period, we had dozens of students who received a grade of 50 who had never turned in any homework, never taken a test or been present for a class, and could not have been accurately assessed by the teacher," Widmer said. And "we have students who have successfully completed the first three marking periods and they are, with pen and pencil, calculating how little work they can do and still receive a passing grade."

Anti-union readers should note that the teachers' union is protesting the policy, saying it violates the "contract provision giving teachers responsibility for setting grading standards."

Via Education Gadfly.

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Low-grade fat

Arkansas schoolchildren now receive report cards grading them on reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic -- and rotundness. The weight rankings come with health tips for parents on nutrition and exercise.

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June 04, 2004

Who makes it

Only 70 percent of California ninth graders graduate from a public high school in four years, says an Education Trust-West report. The graduation rate ranges from 57 percent of Latinos and 59 percent of blacks to 81 percent of whites and 89 percent of Asian-Americans. Only 23 percent of incoming high school students will fulfill the requirements for the public university system, which requires a C or better in college-prep classes. Asians (50 percent) are much more likely than whites (31 percent), blacks (14 percent) and Latinos (12 percent) to qualify for college.

In Oakland, only half of ninth graders graduate in four years. San Jose Unified (which doesn't include all of the city) has the best record for urban districts in the Bay Area, reports the SF Chronicle.

In San Jose, 73 percent of ninth-graders go on to graduate in four years, including 55 percent of Latinos, 89 percent of white students and 100 percent of Asians.

Note that many Asians in the district, though not all, are Vietnamese kids from low-income, immigrant families.

San Jose Unified requires all students to take the college-prep sequence required by the state's public universities: 47 percent graduate in four years with a C or better in the required courses. That includes 25 percent of Latino students, 64 percent of whites and 88 percent of Asians. In other words, most students don't qualify, but the district has doubled the percentage who do by making everyone try.

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Union blues

The National Education Association is losing clout, argues a New York Post columnist. Increasingly, urban black voters want school vouchers. Democratic politicians who back the status quo risk eroding their political base.

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Speling B

"Autochthonous" won the National Spelling Bee for 14-year-old David Tidmarsh of South Bend, Indiana. It means indigenous. He'd previously spelled "arete," "sophrosyne," "sumpsimus," and "serpiginous."

Akshay Buddiga, a 13-year-old from Colorado Springs, collapsed on stage, then got up and nailed "alopecoid." That means like a fox. He came in second.

This year's bee was picketed. Seven members of the American Literacy Society carried signs reading: "I'm thru with through," "Spelling shuud be lojical," and "Spell different difrent."

The protesters' complaint: English spelling is illogical. And the national spelling bee only reinforces the crazy spellings that lead to dyslexia, high illiteracy, and harder lives for immigrants.

As Matt Rosenberg says: "Thay hv uh guh poyn. Aftral, solongzwe kenunstan chutha, s'probm?"

Update: Corsair the Rational Pirate links to a sad story about Ashley White, the black girl from Washington, D.C. who was one of the spelling bee contestants featured in the wonderful movie Spellbound. An unwed mother, White had given up her college plans until Pam Jones, a woman who saw the movie, helped her apply to Howard University.

Like her grandmother, mother and several aunts and cousins before her, White was a teenage mother. And despite her love for her daughter, Dashayla, then about 2 months old, she was deeply disappointed in herself.

"I was always someone who wanted to be different -- who wanted to work harder, who wanted to achieve more, who wanted to succeed," she said. Instead, "I was basically repeating my family history of teenaged pregnancy. I felt like a failure because everyone had such high expectations for me and thought that I would be the one who would break the cycle."

. . . (White) watched "Spellbound" again and was struck, she said, by the determined girl she had been. "I was strong. I had a lot of self-confidence. I was hungry for education and to be victorious," she said. "From that instant, I changed. . . . I realized that the me being discouraged -- that wasn't me."

She took six courses at Howard last semester and made the dean's list with a 3.8 average -- studying for finals in the homeless shelter while caring for Dashayla and waging a telephone campaign to find housing. With a few pieces of furniture donated by SOME (So Others Might Eat), White moved into her one-bedroom apartment in Southeast last week.

She has already assumed $6,000 in student loans and expects to have tens of thousands of dollars in debt before she graduates -- which she fully intends to do despite formidable odds. According to a 1996 study, 1.5 percent of teenage mothers receive their college degrees by the time they are 30.

"In order to achieve something, you have to have the commitment. You have to say, 'I'm going to take the time and focus on this one thing and I'm going to get something out of it,' " she said.

Perhaps it's not a sad story, after all.

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Other people's children

White voters, with their own children in private or suburban schools, have written off schools for other people's children, concludes The Economist's review of education in California.

Back in the 1960s, California had the fifth-highest spending-per-pupil rate in the country. Now it ranks 30th and spends $7,240 — around $600 below the national average and $4,300 below the level in New York. Yet its education challenges are greater than those of any other state. Not only are so many of its pupils learning English as a second language, but many of them are poor and their parents move around a lot. In many urban high schools, fewer than one in 20 students of an entry class will graduate from the same school.

The results are depressing. Californian students score below average on every national test; only around half California's students are proficient in the basics. In 2002, California ranked 43rd in verbal SAT scores and 32nd in mathematics. One in five Californians aged 25 and over lacks a high-school diploma—the ninth-worst figure nationally and hardly a good omen for the knowledge economy.

. . . Education epitomizes the state’s problem with government. There is the wide gap between public and the private systems; a public-sector union adamantly protecting its turf; an incoherent administrative map; and a lunatic funding system.

Via Lloyd Billingsley of the Pacific Research Institute, who focuses on the establishment's hostility to school choice.

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Achievers

Downtown College Prep will graduate its first class of students on June 19. Fifty-five of 59 seniors have been accepted at four-year colleges; several will come back as fifth-year seniors.

My former colleague Joe Rodriguez has a nice column on DCP's struggle to turn underachievers into college-ready students.

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Training high-tech mechanics

While New York City is junking auto shop, Minnesota is expanding opportunities for students to train as auto mechanics. The Star-Tribune reports:

While the St. Paul High School Automotive Service Center at Monroe Community School has been around in some form for about 30 years, this year the newly accredited center will start churning out certified young mechanics. The center is open to all St. Paul high school students. It joins seven other Minnesota high school programs transforming their auto shop classes into professional training programs

It's all part of a push by the auto industry, school districts and technical colleges to pull more promising students into an increasingly high-tech career, educators say.

Some college-bound students take the classes, along with students who want to move quickly into the workforce. Students can earn certificates in brake repair, steering and suspension, electrical systems and engine performance. They also can earn college and trade-school credits. And they get help finding summer jobs at garages and dealerships.

Update: Why are there so many Hmong students in the program? Brian Hoffman sent me a link to a "rice boy" page. He also notes that 30 percent of St. Paul students are Hmong. You wouldn't think Southeast Asians would be a natural in Minnesota, but Lutheran charities there sponsored a number of early Hmong refugees, who were joined by relatives.

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June 03, 2004

Bill and the bloggers

On National Review Online, Matt Rosenberg of Rosenblog credits bloggers for keeping alive the story of Bill Cosby's criticism of underclass black parenting styles. He analyzes the belated response by newspaper columnists to Cosby's candor, singling out Gregory Clay's column, which praises Cosby for "breaking the code" of silence. Clay, a Knight-Ridder News Service editor, wrote:

Cosby, in what appeared to be a veiled reference to the dangers of the hip-hop culture, moved on to poor English spoken by many black folk, saying some American-born black people are immigrants in their own country because of this.

He switched to the high prison rates among black males, admonishing black parents who don't properly raise their children. Cosby presented scenarios of young black males dressed in orange jumpsuits in jails and courtrooms with their only salvation being their parents asking, ``Jesus, please save my son.''

But Cosby used this forum to ask, ``Where were the parents when he was 2 years old, when he was 12 years old, 18 years old?''

. . . The audience initially sat silently as people ostensibly were genuinely surprised by the direction of Cosby's comments. But as Cosby got deeper into his sermon, he received intermittent amen-like applause. Suffice to say, Cosby woke up some folk.

Without bloggers, the story might have died quickly, Rosenberg writes.

I now have 108 comments on my Cosby post, and they're still coming in. I'm pretty sure that's a record.

Cathy Seipp was criticized for organizing a bloggers' panel that didn't include left-wing, lesbian, academically credentialed bloggers of color. She favors bloggers with lots of links and readers.

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. But, at conferences, they notice.

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Pink power

This girl will be running for president some day.

Grand Junction - Colorado's newest political force wears pink sneakers and, at times, hops around her office in them. She makes a smiley face out of push pins on a bulletin board next to a letter she received from a senator. And she wrinkles her nose and tosses her braid when she feels the need to explain that the flag hanging behind her desk is "like the one that Betsy Ross made, but it's not the actual real one."

Lily Thorpe, 10, might be a pint-sized political activist, but since she registered with the Colorado secretary of state's office in February and officially created Colorado's first political action committee headed by a grade-schooler, she has become a political player in the big world of caucuses and endorsements.

. . . At the top of Lily's list of causes is funding for education.

Lily levels her blues eyes across the top of the table she can barely see over as she explains how the encyclopedias at her school are about 14 years old.

"How are kids supposed to learn about 9/11 with that?" she asks, referring to the terrorist attacks against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

She talks about pages falling out of her teacher's books, broken hula hoops on the playground, kids who can't read and have no tutors to help - problems she listed during a recent speech before the Mesa County Valley School District board.

Betsy says schools shouldn't buy new encyclopedias: Use the Internet.

Is it a little weird that the Denver Post felt the need to explain 9/11?

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June 02, 2004

Suppress your personality

Here's a recipe for disaster: Tell high school seniors to "express your personality" in your yearbook photo. A boy at a Milwaukee-area school posed with his shotgun and a Confederate flag. Problems ensued.

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The conversation gap

Differences in how parents talk to young children account for most of the black-white gap in school performance, argues George Farkas, a Penn State professor of sociology, demography and education in an American Sociological Association Contexts article, "The Black-White Test Score Gap."

"Research has shown that greater verbal interaction between parents and young children improves students' performance on standardized tests," Farkas says. "By the age of three, professional parents had spoken an estimated 35 million words to their children, working- and middle-class had spoken about 20 million words, and lower-class parents had only spoken about 10 million words."

These families differed not only in the total number of words spoken, but also in the number of different vocabulary words used in these conversations. These differences had strong effects on the vocabulary knowledge developed by the children in these families.

"By 18 to 20 months, the vocabulary growth trajectories of the children of professional parents had already accelerated beyond those of other children," Farkas adds. According to his research, there seems to be both a social class, and controlling for class, a Black-White difference in children's oral vocabulary growth from infancy to adolescence. Preschool vocabulary knowledge is a strong predictor of reading performance in early elementary school, and early elementary reading performance is a strong predictor of later school performance generally.

The black-white test gap narrowed by 40 percent from 1970 to 1990 as blacks made economic and social gains. Since 1990, the gap has remained the same.

Farkas says early intervention programs can help, but only parents can make a significant difference.

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Junking auto shop

Auto tech classes motivate students at a huge New York City school and prepare them for skilled jobs, writes Samuel Freedman in the New York Times. But the program is about to be junked.

On the ground floor of Kennedy, tucked between the football field and the weight room, a teacher named Manny Martinez runs an automotive technology program. In the combined garage and classroom, amid tool cabinets and hydraulic lifts and service bays, about 170 pupils a year study a '97 Grand Am and '96 Cavalier the way medical school students study cadavers, as a means of learning anatomy and organ function.

For many of Mr. Martinez's charges, auto shop offers the one place and time where they experience the utility of an education. The vocational program keeps them coming to school. It has led a number of alumni into skilled jobs with dealerships and service centers, jobs that pay decent wages and benefits, jobs that boast a career ladder.

At a time in New York public education when specialized minischools are being uncritically embraced, one could plausibly say that the Kennedy auto tech program provides many of the same attributes: a focused curriculum, a motivated student body, the application of classroom knowledge in the real world. Which makes it nothing short of astonishing that within two weeks, if plans hold, the whole program will be shut down. The auto shop will be gutted, the students and teachers left directionless, several hundred thousand dollars' worth of equipment hauled away.

Kennedy High needs to make space for three mini-schools specializing in theater, international studies and law and finance. Another Bronx high school also closed its auto tech program to make space for mini-schools. Why is there no space anywhere for a small school focused on automotive technology? The jobs are there.

Freedman is doing consistently excellent work for the Times, by the way.

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Unacceptable

Rep. Tom Lantos won't be honored at City College of San Francisco's commencement, reports the SF Chronicle. A few instructors and students had threatened to stage a protest. Lantos didn't want to spoil the ceremony for the graduates.

The litany of complaints against Democrat Lantos included everything from his unwavering Iraq war stance to his support for the Patriot Act to his "one- sided'' backing of Israel, including his recent handshake with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

A Hungarian refugee, Lantos is a liberal Democrat on most issues, but as a survivor of Hitler and Stalin he's hawkish on fighting fascists. And he's Jewish.

At San Francisco State, alum Chris Larsen, co-founder and CEO of E-Loan, was the speaker. He told the audience:

"You don't have to be like Ralph Nader to change things.

"Not that there's anything wrong with being a delusional egomaniac that's responsible for all this deep s -- that we're in right now.

"That guy was such a hero when I was growing up," Larsen continued. "And he's such a (rhymes with hick). What's up with that?"

The university president said Larsen's comments were in the SF State tradition.

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June 01, 2004

World War II without war

American students learn how World War II affected Japanese-Americans, blacks and women, but not much about the actual war, writes Jay Mathews in the Washington Post. Students tend to learn social history but not military history.

Tiffany Charles got a B in history last year at her Montgomery County high school, but she is not sure what year World War II ended. She cannot name a single general or battle, or the man who was president during the most dramatic hours of the 20th century.
Yet the 16-year-old does remember in some detail that many Japanese American families on the West Coast were sent to internment camps. "We talked a lot about those concentration camps," she said.

. . . Among 76 teenagers interviewed near their high schools this week in Maryland, Virginia and the District, recognition of the internment camps, a standard part of every area history curriculum, was high -- two-thirds gave the right answer when asked what happened to Japanese Americans during the war. But only one-third could name even one World War II general, and about half could name a World War II battle.

Rosie the Riveter has trumped Patton.

When I was in school, there was a lot less history, of course. Vietnam was current events. After we "did" World War I, we'd have three days for the Depression, World War II and reviewing for the final. I think once we devoted five minutes to the McCarthy Era.

Update: Betsy describes how she teaches history and gives valuable advice on how to ace the AP U.S. history exam.

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Too tall to teach

In Teaching on Poverty Rock, Joby McGowan makes fun of demanding parents who plagued his first year of teaching second graders on the decidedly unpoor Mercer Island, Washington. Susan Paynter of the Seattle Post Intelligencer writes:

One parent accused Joby McGowan of causing a tumor in her second-grader's brain by using a timer in class.

Another told the newly arrived West Mercer (Island) Elementary school teacher that, at 6 feet 6 inches, he was "too tall" to teach little kids.

More ordinary e-mailed outrage rained, too, on the lofty head of the transplanted Iowan during his first year among the motivated moms and dads of "Poverty Rock." That's the nickname for "this sceptered isle, this other Eden" east of Seattle, supposedly long on folding green and high on aspirations for its heirs.

"Mr. McGowan" was unpatriotic because he forgot to say the Pledge of Allegiance the first week of school.

He scheduled snacks too early or too late. He gave too little homework or the wrong kind. And, in the gold standard of all complaints by edu-consumers, he failed to challenge their children.

The teacher's second year turned out much better, writes Paynter.

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The e-rate boondoggle

The federal e-rate, which comes from a surtax on phone service, pays to wire schools, closing the "digital divide" between the rich and the poor. Overpays, writes techno-skeptic Todd Oppenheimer in The Nation. The e-rate is a huge boondoggle that ultimately widens the educational divide.

There are three bitter paradoxes in this. First, it won't be long before the Internet goes wireless, which will make much of the schools' investment in wired computing -- at a cost of roughly $80 billion over the past decade -- obsolete. Second, yesteryear's frenzy to wire the schools occurred during very flush times. Today, states are struggling with budget cuts -- and the damage these cuts are doing to fundamental school needs such as building repairs, teacher salaries and purchases of books, science supplies and other classroom necessities.

And the benefits of technology are mostly hype.

. . . when business leaders talk about what they need from new recruits, they hardly mention computer skills, which they find they can teach employees relatively easily on their own. Most employers say their priority is what are sometimes called "soft" skills: a deep knowledge base; the ability to listen and communicate; to think critically and imaginatively; to read, write and figure; and many other capabilities that schools are increasingly neglecting. A report from the Information Technology Association of America, which represents a range of companies that use technology, put it this way: "Want to get a job using information technology to solve problems? Know something about the problems that need to be solved."

Poor schools have almost as many computers as rich schools, according to the Education Department. But students aren't learning any more -- especially if their teachers are wasting time trying to get the computers running.

When the computers do work, fancy software programs automate design and math functions so beautifully that students don't have to think through much of their work anymore. School papers throughout the country are so dominated by computer graphics these days that students often spend only a fraction of their time on the intellectual content of the assignment.

Via Eduwonk.

Update: A division of NEC has admitted defrauding San Francisco and other school districts on e-rate contracts.

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May 31, 2004

Catching up

More of the same would mean more failure at James Lick High School in East San Jose. The school ranks in the bottom 10 percent in the state, even when it's compared to schools with similar demographics: Most students are low-income Hispanics; one third aren't fluent in English. Some 300 students have taken advantage of the No Child Left Behind Act to transfer to a neighboring school with a much better record.

So the superintendent replaced the management team at the school, which faces state and federal sanctions for its failure to improve. The new team of three co-principals has tightened discipline, added time for teacher collaboration, offered classes to help students pass the state graduation exam and decided to teach nothing but English and math to new students who are too far behind to do high school work. From the San Jose Mercury News:

More than half of incoming freshmen and 10th graders will take English and math -- and little else. That's three periods of English and two of math for a projected 60 percent of students who test two or more years behind grade level. If the budget permits an extended day, they'll also get gym and an elective.

This unprecedented, seismic shift in students' lives reflects the demand of the state Department of Education to reverse Lick's abysmal test scores.

Math and English teachers will get more training. Incoming students will be tested to determine what classes they should take, instead of dumping everyone in algebra and ninth grade English.

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May 30, 2004

Prosperous cheaters

A "good" school in a wealthy suburb of San Jose is plagued by cheating.

Update: Kimberly posts on a British plagiarist who plans to sue the university for not catching him right away.

A student who admits down-loading material from the internet for his degree plans to sue his university for negligence.

Michael Gunn, an English major at the University of Kent at Canterbury, claims he wasn't warned not to plagiarise and "never dreamt it was a problem."

"If they had pulled me up with my first essay at the beginning and warned me of the problems and consequences, it would be fair enough.

"But all my essays were handed back with good marks and no one spotted it."

Gunn's plagiarism was caught just before he was due to receive his degree. That does sound negligent.

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Ed school tilt

Writing in the New York Sun, education professor David Steiner says his study of courses required for new teachers found bias toward progressive-constructivist ideas and hostility to high-stakes testing.

Given the divide between "back to basics" and the "constructivist-progressive" models, one would expect education schools to expose students to both points of view. Our research (which covered 165 syllabi of required courses in the foundations of education, the teaching of reading, and teaching methodology) strongly suggested, however, that at many of our highest ranked schools of education, the constructivist-progressivist arguments are being taught to the almost complete exclusion of the other, direct instruction model.

Few incoming teachers are well-prepared to teach math and science content. According to a new U.S. Education Department report, 3.5 percent of future teachers majored in math; 4 percent majored in life science. Some "80 percent of future teachers attended non-selective undergraduate institutions," observes the National Council on Teacher Quality Bulletin.

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May 29, 2004

Math without math teachers

Philadelphia students told a congressman what happens when inner-city schools can't hire qualified teachers.

Instead of learning math, Yusef Perry said, he and his ninth-grade classmates at Sayre High School played basketball. Latoya Andrews and other biology students at Simon Gratz High endured weeks of being split up among other classes.

Kenneth Ramos, who attends Kensington High, had no geometry teacher for four weeks this year.

"We have more long-term subs than regular teachers at Kensington," he said. "Some of them don't know what they're doing. Sometimes I wake up and sit on the side of my bed and wonder what I'm going to school for."

The teachers' contract lets teachers choose their assignments based on seniority. As teachers gain experience, they can transfer to easier jobs, leaving behind low-income, high-minority schools.

Philadelphia is now offering bonuses for those who take difficult teaching assignments, and is trying to renegotiate the contract to ensure that all schools get their share of qualified teachers.

Chicago has improved teacher quality -- and recruited a lot more math teachers -- by streamlining alternative certification, says the Chicago Tribune.

Often they are people in mid-career who simply decide they would rather serve as teachers. Many are bankers, accountants, engineers, saleswomen, lawyers and scientists. They have life experience and they've developed an expertise in their field. Now they want to teach.

. . . "They're a different caliber of people: smarter, more mature, more committed and more in it for the long haul," said Chicago Public Schools Chief Arne Duncan.

Eduwonk has some other links to teacher quality stories, and points out that No Child Left Behind's insistence that "poor kids get good teachers" is not as horrible as progressives seem to think.

Update: Here's a "tipping point" plan to attract good teachers to difficult schools:

Lower class sizes, clean and safe schools, up-to-date materials, and state of the art technology are among the incentives some districts are using to lure personnel to their hard-to-staff schools. While these are important, the single most important incentive for principals and teachers — the one that has the greatest chance of convincing them that they can make a difference in these highly demanding schools — is the promise of membership on a competent and committed team of teachers and administrators. The Tipping Point plan is designed to lead dysfunctional schools to the point where they “tip” — a point where teachers and administrators come and stay because together, as a team, they are able to create successful learning experiences for their students.

This makes a lot of sense to me.

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Once an SJ Mercury News columnist, I'm now writing School Work: How Two Grumpy Optimists Built a Successful Charter School. Read the blog, click the links below for my free-lance writing and support this site by donating through PayPal or Amazon or by using my book links to buy Amazon stuff.

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