It’s painful to watch the behind-the-times-because-their-funding-
is-always-being-reduced public education system in this country convince the powers that be (politicians) to let them make some changes. The old system doesn’t work in these here modern times. School funding based on attendance rates only worked when there were no off-campus education options. The warping of the current system is starting to get out of hand.

Somebody let the educators fix it, already. It’s been my experience that they know more about the learning than the politicians do. Also, being underpaid and therefore not in the teaching game for the cash flow, they strike me as more devoted to the cause than the political types tend to be.

This is from an article illustrating the quagmire:

The bright-eyed high school junior taking calculus and Latin at the nearby community college is ahead of the pack. But according to the budget books, she’s not in class.

Due to a quirk in how schools keep attendance — and how the state pays them — California students who take multiple college classes or job training during school hours aren’t counted for attendance dollars, even though they’re earning credits in school-approved programs. In a time of dwindling budgets, the rule discourages California schools from freely recommending off-campus opportunities such as internships, college classes and career training to students.

The issue has also cropped up in other states. To retain money, Minnesota schools have found an alternative: Pay colleges a small fee to train high school teachers, empowering them to teach college-level courses. High schools keep their attendance dollars, and colleges develop a natural pool of university-ready students, ripe for recruitment.

Attendance has been criticized as a shaky basis for school funding, too volatile and too difficult to track as off-campus opportunities multiply. This year, the governor’s Committee on Education Excellence is expected to recommend a radical shift in school finance, allocating dollars per student enrolled, rather than by programs and attendance. Under the new system, needier students, such as English-language learners or low-income kids, would earn more dollars for their schools.

This school district newsletter explains exactly how the current attendance-based system functions, and how the schools have to work it in order to get funding.

Poway Unified is calling on parents to help increase state funding during these difficult times. “Here is an opportunity to be pro-active. It is the first bright light in a very dismal financial picture for California public schools. Our parents and students can help during this budget crisis,” said Don Phillips, Poway Unified School District Superintendent.

“Increasing attendance is a win-win for all. Our students are in school and learning, and for every day they are present, our district receives more funding from the state,” said Phillips.

For Poway Unified, a district of more than 32,000 students, if every child attended school just one more day during the year, funding would increase by almost $1 million dollars.

In addition, principals and district officials are reminding parents that the rules of attendance calculations have changed from years ago. There are no longer any “excused absences” as far as funding from the state is concerned. The only way a student can be considered not absent is to be physically at school on a given day.

Schools in Texas, in California, and in Chicago have been known to bribe students with computers, iPods, cars, trips, free rent and mortgage payments (I assume for their parents) if they show up to school every day. Which seems wrong on a few of the more important levels, but also justifiable if that’s the only way to get the system to work in the school’s favor. Putting some thought into changing the clearly tweaked system might be advisable.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Thanks to the Internet, we all have an infinite number of options for screwing over our future selves. This is probably the only exception to my general crankiness regarding the timing of my birth. Being born in the 70s means I am less inclined to be physically or emotionally attached to my MacBook than a tween, teen or twenty-something would be. Added to that, I’m probably more aware of the negative implications of the Net only because it’s more of a new and strange occurence in my life than it would be for someone born safely on this side of the Polyester Era. I notice it because for most of my life it wasn’t there at all. I typed my book reports on a damn typewriter. A manual one. You had to be a man (or a tomboy girl) to whang those keys hard enough. Too hard, and the periods would make their point right through the paper. I know. Old school minus any hint of the ‘cool’ connotation.

I had a Mac Classic II when I was a freshman in college. The one with the postcard-sized screen. Badass, I’m well aware. And, no, it was not hooked up to the Internet. I swear on all things sacred that I had never sent an e-mail by the time I hit the dorms. And yet, I’m here to tell the tale. Did you get that that was sarcasm? It’s hard to get sarcasm across on the Internet. I need a special Sarcasm Font or something.

But do you know what’s super easy to get out there into the world so’s everyone can take a gander? Drunken nakedness, foul language (the title I originally wrote for this article had a very bad (and much funnier) word) and overall stupidity can be recorded for posterity so easily and then sucked into the Net, easily retrievable by anyone who takes the time to search out the dirt on idiotic, drunken freshman you.

Once again, I reel with the closeness of that call. I’m thanking the fates and sheer dumb luck that my ungraceful moments came and went before they ended up on the Internet. Because now, being so mature and wise beyond my years I never act rashly and do things I might regret.

Anyway, if you’re young and foolish and tend to say or do things you later wish you hadn’t (or can only vaguely recall), please remember that you and everyone you know with a computer and a recording device will be capable of making you either infamous or incredibly uncomfortable someday when your parents/kids/voters/prospective boss/potential mate cyber-vet you into cringing oblivion. Yes, I was dumb. But no one recorded it, so only a teensy fraction of the population has to know. And they were less than sober, too, so their recall would be lacking.

More stuff to read about cyber-vetting:

The rights and wrongs of cyber-vetting

The world of work: how cyber-vetting catches job liars

Ever been cyber-vetted?

‘Cyber-vetting’ and your ‘net rep’

Your digital dirt can come back to haunt you

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Educational researcher Melissa Roderick from the University of Chicago is using her powers for good in order to study college attendance rates among graduates of Chicago public schools. Kids said they wanted to go to college, but didn’t actually end up attending. What was the glitch and when in the process was it occurring?

The assumption had been this was due to a lack of motivation on the part of the students and their parents. The research interviews brought to light that:

…student aspiration to attend four-year universities exists, but many young people don’t have access to the right guidance and tools to apply and enroll in schools.

In 2005, 72 percent of 12th-graders in Chicago’s public schools stated on a survey that they hoped to complete a bachelor’s degree or higher, while only 59 percent applied and only 41 percent actually enrolled in post-secondary education, Roderick said.

She said the lack of qualifications is the main obstacle for the Chicago students, who have low grade point averages and ACT entrance exam scores. The low scores are especially prevalent in black males, she said. Only 31 percent of black males in Chicago schools in 2005 graduated with qualifications to enter four-year colleges.

“Teachers make a huge difference in this,” she said, adding that teachers are often the ones providing recommendations and admission forms for their graduating students.

Fear of making the wrong college decisions and of the high costs of university tuition, as well as the sometimes-imposed pressure of picking out a career before enrolling in a school, scares students away from seeking enrollment at universities, Roderick said.

Meanwhile, one of her studies “dumbest findings,” Roderick said, was that some students who were accepted to four-year colleges didn’t enroll because they didn’t fill out their free application for federal student aid on time, leaving them without known financial aid.
“Schools must ensure that students are filling out financial aid applications,” Roderick said.

It’s an odd feeling for me to be having, but I can understand and sympathize with all parties and their points of view on this one. No empathy as I’ve been neither a teacher nor a student in a big city public school.

I don’t think it’s the responsibility of the teachers to corral or babysit their students to make sure all forms and applications are filled out correctly and turned in on time. The students have some responsibility as it is their own lives we’re talking about. Or writing about. Whatever.

I’m just hazarding a guess, but I would imagine that the teachers aren’t there for the money. Which tells me they must be devoted to the cause of lifting up young minds or they wouldn’t be killing themselves trying to cut through the red tape of the public school system. So it would be nice if, in their non-existent spare time, they helped out the kids who want to take the next step.

As far as the kids go, I get it that an unknown entity like college is probably terrifying. And an expensive terrifying thing can’t seem at all appealing. But at some point a person’s life is his/her own responsibility. Find out what has to be done and do it. Cross the t’s, dot the i’s. A lot of adults are cranky, burnt out and annoying, but there has to be one around who’s willing and able to help. Ask them and get it done.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

If one were to go solely by the involuntary facial twitching and general demeanor (crushed soul) of people writing grant proposals, one might conclude that grant writing sucks. Here are some resources to assist the grant writers among us through the excruciating process:

Technical Advice:

UC Davis: Writing Grant Proposals

Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Grant Proposal Writing Tips

Duke University: Research/Grant Proposals

(Very, Very Specific) Guidelines For Writing Grant Applications

Non-Technical Common Sense Advice:

What Do Winning Proposals Have In Common?

Lessons Learned

Different Glossaries With Similar Titles:

Glossary of Proposal Writing Terms

Grant Writing Glossary of Terms

Posted by Alexa Harrington

The Christian Science Monitor just had an interesting two-part article. It follows six high school students for a year—from October 2006 when they’re ensconced in the college application process until October 2007, when they’re a month into their freshman year at college. It’s worth reading for the view you get of a year in the life of a college-bound student.

Each fall, hundreds of thousands of high school seniors navigate an admissions process that begins with a list of colleges they think they might like and ends with a life-changing decision.
And although each application is but one of several million hitting admissions offices across the country, every student’s story is unique. We followed six Boston-area high school seniors from diverse backgrounds through an entire year of college preparation, from their first visit to a campus to their first month in college, checking in periodically to see how they were doing at each stage of the process.

Part 1: A Year Of Decision For Six High School Seniors

Part 2: College Bound: When Schools Reply, the Real Decision Looms

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Inside Higher Ed had an article recently about all the new technology being used by college students these days. The article explained the study Educause Center for Applied Research has done on the topic. The results of the research were certainly interesting, but the best parts of the article were the cranky comments that followed. Some people are pretty pissed off about technology in the classroom.

Surprisingly, I don’t seem to have as bad an attitude about it as I would have thought. I’m not a tech girl by any means. I don’t trust computers the way I trust the permanence of pens and paper and books. It freaks me out that my stuff can just disappear and I may or may not have done anything wrong. Yes yes yes, I know: having several backups will practically guarantee digital permanence. I also realize that paper isn’t indelible.

Maybe it’s the idea that weird s**t could conceivable occur in the bowels of my laptop which would suddenly render my stuff inaccessible to everyone except an incredibly well-paid tech guy who will no doubt charge me horrendous sums to scrape any preservable bits of my barely recognizable stuff from the inside of my now-corrupt piece of technologically advanced plastic. What I trust is the knowledge that come hell or high water my paper stuff will be okay. Excepting actual hell or high water, obviously.

Is it that fire and flooding make sense because I’d be able to see what destroyed my stuff? An unknowable, unpredictable glitch in the machine that I can’t see occurring just unnerves me no end. If there’s a fire, I lose all papers and books and words and thoughts. Whatever. I don’t like the idea of losing my paper-products to fire, but I would at least understand why my stuff was gone. Fire is bad but it makes sense. The laws of nature and chemistry are logical. Computers losing bits and pieces inexplicably through no fault of mine is upsetting on several levels, logic being one of the more important of those.

Despite my apparent distrust of computers, I’m still pro-technology. It’s the accessible information that I like. There are mounds and mounds of it. It’s everywhere and anyone can read it. I don’t know if colleges still do this, but when I was applying to schools, the catalogues always listed the number of titles the university library boasted. It was a selling point, right next to the perfect shots of the campus in fall and spring, the most impressive architecture on campus, and a description of the school’s geographical location (near the beach, near the mountains, in the heart of downtown Big City, etc.)

These days, who the hell cares how many hard copy books the library has? The library’s not necessarily where the students are getting their info. I’m a die-hard book person, so the fact that I even thought that last sentence, let alone wrote it, is making me itch to check whether hell has finally frozen over.

Yes, books are good. I don’t want to read books online. I love reading actual bound-paper books. But not all info comes from them these days. A huge amount of it is online. Technology makes that possible. I do agree with the crankmeisters who were upset about real lectures and teaching being replaced with PowerPoint presentations. I don’t want the technology wave to result in less human interaction, be that instructor-to-student or student-to-student. I don’t want books to become obsolete. But I’m all for the information part of this technological deluge.

Further Reading:

UCSF: Building Educational Facilities for the 21st Century

2008 Technology for Teaching Grants Open

Teacher’s Lessons Combine Scientists, Technology

Technology and the Internet Extend Reach of Classrooms at USI

Microsoft Hosts Educators Worldwide to Discuss 21st Century Learning Challenges

Posted by Alexa Harrington