Summers are no longer a vacation for many teens

The LA Times reports:

Teens [who forgo] such summer rituals as hitting the beach in favor of hitting the books — appear to be growing in number, according to high school and college administrators.

Students’ specific goals vary: improving SAT scores, gilding college applications or just freeing up class schedules so they can fit in yet another Advanced Placement course or internship.

But their motivations are much the same: boosting their chances of getting into top colleges at a time that may be the toughest ever, thanks to a population peak of high school seniors, greater rates of college attendance and a stagnant number of college slots.

Public schools fees on the rise

Besides the rising cost of outfitting public school students (see my prior post), the Washington Post reports on schools in the DC area that also ask parents to pay fees for various student activities.

Parents feeling squeezed by ever-growing ‘back to school’ supply lists

The NY Times reports on how some parents are rebelling against the ever-increasing demand for school supplies from teaches and schools who, facing budget constraints, make fewer supplies available to students.

Minority studens more likely to be paddled than whites, study finds

The AP reports (via Yahoo! News) on a new study by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union (using US Department of Education data) which finds that, while corporal punishment is less common in US schools than it once was,

• African American students are more than twice as likely to be paddled than whites
• Native Americans were more than twice as likely to be paddled than whites
• In states where paddling is most common, black girls were paddled more than twice as often as white girls
• Boys are three times as likely to be paddled as girls
• Special education kids were more likely to be paddled than students not in special ed

More information about the report is available from the Human Rights Watch Web site.

Controversy ensues as Texas school okays concealed carry of firearms by teachers

The NY Times reports:

The school board in [Harrold, Texas] has drawn national attention with its decision to let some teachers carry concealed weapons, a track no other school in the country has followed. The idea is to ward off a massacre along the lines of what happened at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.

“Our people just don’t want their children to be fish in a bowl,” said David Thweatt, the schools superintendent and driving force behind the policy. “Country people are take-care-of-yourself people. They are not under the illusion that the police are there to protect them.”

Even in Texas, with its tradition of lenient gun laws and frontier justice, the idea of teachers’ taking guns to class has rattled some people and sparked a fiery debate.

Gun-control advocates are wringing their hands, while pro-gun groups are gleeful. Leaders of the state’s major teachers unions have expressed stunned outrage, while the conservative Republican governor, Rick Perry, has endorsed the idea.

E-textbooks may not help keep down textbook costs, study claims

The Open Textbook Campaign, which describes itself as “”, has released a report which argues that a move to e-textbooks may not result in a cost savings to college students.

The report is also discussed in this LA Times article.

Mid-year enrollment grows at top colleges

The LA Times reports on the growing trend of colleges offering some freshmen the opportunity to start their school year in the spring rather than in the fall.

San Antonio, Texas to track chronically truant students via GPS ankle monitors

The AP reports:

Court authorities [in San Antonio, Texas] will be able to track students with a history of skipping school under a new program requiring them to wear ankle bracelets with [GPS satellite] monitoring….

Linda Penn, a Bexar County [Texas] justice of the peace, said she anticipates that about 50 students from four San Antonio-area school districts — likely to be mostly high schoolers — will wear the anklets during the six-month pilot program announced Friday. She said the time the students wear the anklets will be decided on a case-by-case basis.

“We are at a critical point in our time where we can either educate or incarcerate,” Penn said, linking truancy with juvenile delinquency and later criminal activity. “We can teach them now or run the risk of possible incarceration later on in life. I don’t want to see the latter.”

Keeping college students in school through graduation

USA Today reports that only 40% of college students have graduated after four years, while:

the proportion of students who earn a bachelor’s degree within five years has stagnated at about 52%, down from 55% in 1988, says a report due this fall by the College Board, owner of the SAT. Some of those left behind eventually graduate, while others drop out.

Federal and state policymakers increasingly use graduation rates as one measure of a school’s effectiveness. Governors of several states, including Arizona, Ohio and Michigan, are vowing to produce more graduates to meet future workforce demands.

Colleges also are responding to families’ concerns that high tuition prices may not translate into a college degree, says Jerome Lucido, vice provost of enrollment at the University of Southern California. “We have to make sure that access to college is not an empty promise,” he says.

2008 SAT scores unchanged from 2007

USA Today reports:

Average national SAT scores for the high school class of 2008 were the same as last year, even as a larger, more diverse group took the test, a College Board report released Tuesday says.

A record 1.52 million students took the SAT, an increase of 1.6% from last year. Scores on math and critical reading had declined in recent years, and average scores dip as the pool of test takers increases, “so we’re encouraged by the stability” of this year’s scores, said Gaston Caperton, president of the non-profit College Board, the SAT’s owner.

Even so, average scores for blacks, Hispanics and some other minorities dropped while those of white and Asian students rose. Hispanics and blacks account for less than 25% of all test takers, but their participation rates increased fastest last year.