Colleges learning to manage ‘Velcro parents’
As the latest wave of superinvolved parents delivers its children to college, institutions are building into the day, normally one of high emotion, activities meant to punctuate and speed the separation. It is part of an increasingly complex process, in the age of Skype and twice-daily texts home, in which colleges are urging “Velcro parents” to back off so students can develop independence…
Formal “hit the road” departure ceremonies are unusual but growing in popularity, said Joyce Holl, head of the National Orientation Directors Association. A more common approach is for colleges to introduce blunt language into drop-off schedules specifying the hour for last hugs. As of 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 11, for example, the parents of Princeton freshmen learn from the move-in schedule, “subsequent orientation events are intended for students only…”
Some undergraduate officials see in parents’ separation anxieties evidence of the excesses of modern child-rearing. “A good deal of it has to do with the evolution of overinvolvement in our students’ lives,” said Mr. Dougharty of Grinnell. “These are the baby-on-board parents, highly invested in their students’ success. They do a lot of living vicariously, and this is one manifestation of that.”
States receive federal funds to pay teacher salaries – but decline to rehire teachers
The New York Times reports:
As schools handed out pink slips to teachers this spring, states made a beeline to Washington to plead for money for their ravaged education budgets. But now that the federal government has come through with $10 billion, some of the nation’s biggest school districts are balking at using their share of the money to hire teachers right away.
With the economic outlook weakening, [some districts and states] argue that big deficits are looming for the next academic year and that they need to preserve the funds to prevent future layoffs…
A $26 billion federal aid package, signed by President Obama on Aug. 10, allocates $10 billion for school districts to retain or rehire teachers, counselors, classroom aides, cafeteria workers, bus drivers and others — with the remainder of the money directed toward health care for the poor, emergency personnel and other state purposes.
The education measure requires states to distribute the money for the current school year, but allows school districts to spend it as late as September 2012. It also allows schools to roll back furlough days. The education department estimates it could salvage about 160,000 jobs.
A provocative new study has found that teens in committed relationships do no better or worse in school than those don’t have sex.The same isn’t true for teens who “hook up.” Researchers found that those who have casual flings get lower grades and have more school-related problems compared with those who abstain.
The findings, presented Sunday at a meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta, challenge to some extent assumptions that sexually active teens tend to do poorer in school.
College students transfer ineffective ‘paper-based’ study methods to computer-based materials, study finds
Despite the prevalence of technology on campuses, a new study indicates that computers alone can’t keep students from falling into their same weak study habits from their ink-and-paper days.”Our study showed that achievement really takes off when students are prompted to use more powerful strategies when studying computer materials,” said the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Ken Kiewra, an expert in study methods and one of the authors of the study.
The research, published this week in The Journal of Educational Psychology, found that students tend to study on computers as they would with traditional texts: They mindlessly over-copy long passages verbatim, take incomplete or linear notes, build lengthy outlines that make it difficult to connect related information, and rely on memory drills like re-reading text or recopying notes.
Meanwhile, undergraduates in the study scored 29 to 63 percentage points higher on tests when they used study techniques like recording complete notes, creating comparative charts, building associations, and crafting practice questions on their screens.
The article, by Jairam & Kiewra, is available here from the Journal of Educational Psychology (free preview of abstract; subscription required to read paper).
Community colleges are becoming lifesavers to students seeking a degree but unable to pay the skyrocketing costs of four-year colleges. Yet community colleges are struggling to cope with increased enrollment as their budgets are slashed by debt-laden states.
About 8 million students were enrolled in for-credit classes at the nation’s 1,173 community colleges last fall, up from about 5.5 million a decade earlier. Junior colleges have seen an influx of younger students looking for a way around skyrocketing tuition costs at four-year schools and older students looking to get retrained after a recession that has wiped out millions of jobs.
But there are signs that the system is being pushed to the breaking point.
Chicago’s teacher incentive pay program not improving student outcomes, new evaluation finds
Washington Post blogger Valerie Strauss reports:
Education Secretary Arne Duncan and all of his acolytes who are rushing to implement performance-based compensation for teachers might want to take a close look at the preliminary results from a Chicago program with this focus that was initially started when Duncan ran the city school system…
A study released today by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. shows no evidence that the Chicago Teacher Advancement Program improved student math and reading tests when compared with a group of similar schools that did not use the system, Education Week reported.
Chicago’s program is a version of the national Teacher Advancement Program, or TAP, which was first implemented in Chicago in 2007-08, when Duncan led the schools.
The analysis looked at the first two years of a four-year program, which has multiple steps, including increased teacher development, and an incentive payment scheme in which teachers are paid more when their students do better on standardized test scores…
Under the program in Chicago, payments to teachers under the program averaged $1,100 for those in schools in their first year of implementation, and $2,600 for those teachers in schools in their second year.
The comparison with similar schools that didn’t use the program revealed no real difference in student scores or in teacher-retention rates among those schools.
The report is available from Mathematica’s Web site here (PDF).
The Houston Chronicle reports:
School districts across Texas are paying tens of millions of taxpayer dollars for private tutoring that has a mixed track record of improving student test scores.
Even districts that want to stop footing the bill to ineffective providers are not allowed. The No Child Left Behind law guarantees free tutoring to low-income students who attend schools that repeatedly miss federal academic targets. Parents get to pick the tutoring provider from a state-approved list that has grown to more than 200 for-profit and nonprofit entities.
Since the law went into effect in 2002, Texas has never removed a provider from its list despite complaints from school districts and the state’s own evaluation that found seven of the eight tutoring companies studied had no significant impact on student achievement.
August 9 K-12 round-up
- More public schools are teaching boys and girls separately – what does this mean for the future of K-12? [Washington Post]
- One Los Angeles charter school is going to extraordinary lengths to get their troubled students to attend class – and it seems to be paying off. [AP via Ed Week]
- The Obama Administration is pouring billions of dollars into K-12 education and some observers are concerned that for-profit companies with little background in education or school reform are competing for some o that money. [New York Times]
August 9 higher ed round-up
- The USA once led the world in the number of adults with college degrees. Now, the country has fallen to 12th place among the top 36 industrialized nations. [NY Times]
- In light of this news, President Obama vowed today at a speech in Austin, Texas that the U.S. will renew its commitment to higher education but he offered no new policy initiatives. [Christian Science Monitor]
- In this article, USA Today looks at the pros and cons reported by professors and college students using iPads and e-book readers in higher ed settings.
- The dean of UC-Berkeley’s law school (in his role as chair of a university curriculum committee) has called for the U. of California to offer an all-online undergraduate degree, and many faculty and current students are concerned such a move would ‘cheapen’ the perceived value of a UC degree. [San Francisco Chronicle]
The Associate Press (via USA Today) reports:
The nationwide poll, also sponsored by The Nielsen Company and Stanford University, found the vast majority of Hispanics — 78% — had children enrolled in K-12 classes that were taught mostly in English, compared with 3% in Spanish.
Just 20% of mainly Spanish-speaking parents say they were able to communicate “extremely well” with their child’s school, compared with 35% of Hispanics who speak English fluently.
About 42% of the Spanish speakers said it was easy for them to help with their children’s schoolwork, compared with 59% of the Hispanics who speak English well.
