News-Record.com

North Carolina pays millions each year for teachers trying to get National Board Certfication ($2,500 application fee) and for those who've earned the credentials (12 percent pay raise). Is it money well spent? Some critics say no, pointing to mixed (registration may be required) research on whether board certified teachers outperform non-certified peers.

There's a group compiling all the research now to see if they can answer that question. Meanwhile, teachers say they definitely are better at their jobs after going through the process, whether they earn the credentials or not.

Read more about National Boards at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

If you haven't already, check out today's follow-up story about GCS pursuing a certificate of participation for Eastern Guilford High School. Some commissioners, including Billy Yow, Linda Shaw and Carolyn Coleman, said they want leftover money from the loan or state insurance funds to go toward paying off the debt, not paying for other school projects.

Next week's meeting should be interesting. The board plans to again discuss Garth Hebert's proposal to allow students to opt out of a redistricting plan in High Point. The board should also be finalizing its project list for possible November bond referendum to take to the public. Plus, the board will hear another update on the middle school rescheduling and the federal magnet grant application, which could include creating an aviation academy at Andrews High.

Another 'til midnight meeting perhaps?

This just in from the Associated Press (national wire):

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration wants to loosen the rules so that many more disabled children can take tests that are simpler than those required by the president's signature No Child Left Behind law.

The changes would triple the number of those children who could take simplified tests.

Roughly 10 percent of special education students -- those with the most serious cognitive disabilities -- currently can take easier, alternative tests and have the results count toward a school's annual progress goals under the law. Under final rules the administration was to unveil Wednesday, about another 20 percent of children with disabilities would be allowed to take alternative tests."

I'll let you know more once I get more details.

Just wanted to let you know that around midnight the school board passed 6-4 Garth Hebert's proposal to let some HP parents opt out of the redistricting that took effect this school year. More on this later... when I've had some sleep.

Morgan was swamped last night so she didn't get to a couple of items on the board's agenda in today's story.

So we've got a couple of items lined up in Thursday's paper, including a look at the superintenden'ts proposed 2007-08 budget. This is a draft proposal and we've already been told that some numbers could change. In fact, some changed from Tuesday night to Wednesday afternoon when we got this version.

In a nutshell, GCS Superintendent Terry Grier crafted a budget around $602.9 million in local, state and federal funds.

Of that, $172.1 million is what he is seeking from the county. That represents a 9.88 percent increase or $15.5 million more than in this year's budget. (School districts have little say over what they get from the state and federal governments. But school officials can affect the local budget by persuading county commissioners to cough up more from their coffers.)

Read tomorrow's paper for a synopsis and some breakouts on what's in the budget. Or, read all 59 pages at the above link.

Just like American Idol, you get to vote on what you'd like to see in a proposed 2007 construction bond referendum. Sorry, you don't get to call or text in your votes. You have to show up in person at a public forum - which hasn't been set yet.

But you can look over the projects now and be ready to cast your vote later. (And just like in Idol, you may vote like crazy but Sanjaya still makes it to the next round and your favorite gets cut.)

Seriously, though, you'll get a chance to tell school board members what you think of their bond project list. Once we find out the dates for the public forums we'll post them.

In the meantime, here's the list the board approved Tuesday night (a copy will run in Thursday's paper, too):

You may be following news about the shooting at Virginia Tech today. Does anyone know of Guilford County residents who have family at the school?

FYI: We have updated the online guide to the bond referendum project list. We will continue to update it as the list is refined.

Update: Here are the free and reduced-price lunch percentages from February.

The Board of Education will meet Friday with school resource officers to talk about their role in district middle and high schools. Capt. Phil Byrd, who oversees Sheriff's deputies in county schools, said he doesn't expect the conversation to be heavy.

Amos Quick said he would be looking for consistency in how their duties are carried out while Anita Sharpe said she wanted a better idea of what SROs do. So maybe a story, maybe not, depending on what happens.

The board met today to discuss the budget. They did for about 20 minutes but most of the conversation was spent talking about the magnet grant application, which passed, and Title 1 schools. Look for a fuller story on that tomorrow.

ACT released this week a new study finding that a gap exists between what high schools are teaching in their core college preparatory courses and what postsecondary educators expect entering students to know in order for them to succeed in first-year courses. The report attributes the disconnect to unfocused state standards and state assessments that do not adequately measure what students need to know in college.

The survey found:
* What postsecondary instructors expect entering college students to know is far more targeted and specific than what high school teachers view as important.
* 42 percent of the surveyed high school teachers believe today's high school graduates are less well prepared for postsecondary education and work than graduates in previous years, while 51 percent of postsecondary instructors perceive no difference.

Some of the conclusions reached in this report are not surprising, given the pressure that high school teachers face help students pass several end-of-course exams. On top of that, future graduates must pass five exams to get their diploma. Why do you think this disconnect exists?

County commissioners want the school board to use money not yet spent on 2003 bond projects to help pay for rebuilding Eastern, which a fire destroyed in November 2006.

The school board is asking commissioners to approve certificates of participation, a kind of loan that doesn't need voter approval as a bond does and which typically carries a higher interest rate. The loan, for $53 million, would cover the cost of rebuilding the school and would be paid back in part by insurance money. (The district has already received $8 million in insurance money which is being used to prepare the site for both the temporary village of classrooms that will be used until the new school is built and the replacement school.)

But the insurance settlement hasn't been reached and commissioners want to know that number before proceeding with a loan.

One of our own, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, along with Sens. Jeff Bingaman and Edward Kennedy, introduced today the Graduation Promise Act, which seeks to improve high schools and reduce drop-out rates. Supporting the bill are the Alliance for Excellent Education, the Center for American Progress, Jobs for the Future, and the National Council of La Raza.

The Graduation Promise Act would authorize $2.5 billion in new funding to:

*Create a federal-state-local secondary school reform partnership focused on transforming the nation’s lowest performing high schools;
*Build capacity for high school improvement and provide resources to ensure high school educators and students facing the highest challenges receive the support they need to succeed;
*Strengthen state systems to identify, differentiate among, and target the level of reform and resources necessary to improve low performing high schools and ensure transparency and accountability for that process;
*Advance the research and development needed to ensure a robust supply of highly effective secondary school models for those most at risk of being left behind, and identify the most effective reforms;
*Support states to align their policies and systems to meet the goal of college and career-ready graduation for all students.

Any of this sound familiar? There is a measure of this already going on in various forms, including No Child Left Behind and local and state programs.

A report by the Economic Policy Institute says that national drop-out rates are overstated. Listen to a debate on this here.

Two things are clear about the drop-out debate:
1) The subject itself is easy for people to rally behind because few would argue for not improving graduation rates.
2) Graduation rates are not uniform and often contradictory. For example, North Carolina just started using a cohort graduation rate, which would prohibit any comparisons with pre-2006 rates. I've also seen inconsistent reports on the economic impact of dropping out.

What needs to be included in this discussion is the effect of the incarceration/detention of students before they graduate (one can go back and forth on whether early incarceration is a cause or result of a students' indifference toward school). Could incarceration as a whole have a larger and more negative economic impact than drop-outs who don't end up in the prison system?

Last, given that drop-outs can pursue a GED if they want and the mysterious skirt around the fact that capitalist societies depend on low-wage level work, should we be devoting this much energy and financial resources to making sure every student graduates within four years versus the three in 10 students who don't?

The school board will finally hear back on an audit of the Advanced Learner program that was requested in December, following the proposal to expand the Very Strong Needs program at Lincoln Academy.

Gongshu Zhang, executive research and accountability officer, said he was still revising the report but the findings/recommendations should be the same. His goal was to fulfill in the report Walter Child's following requests:

1. Scores and progress being made within the existing program
2. Comparisons regarding VSN versus AL at the home schools
3. Issues around race and socioeconomic breakdown in terms of participants within the program and any obstacles to entry into the program that may exist
4. Number of students tested in by a private testing service as opposed to testing in by their end-of-grade scores
5. Show how VSN students ultimately did in high school and post high school, that is following the progress or charting forward the progress of the participants in the VSN program
6. Chart the progress of the participants in the VSN program in high school and post high school

Zhang was able to do some of that, but he could only track a cohort of 6th-graders from 1999 to get their SAT scores. The report is a starting point.

Missing from the report are the actual numbers of the students being compared in 2005-06, so it's hard to do your own number crunching. You definitely need Zhang to decipher this report so I'm not sure how much public value it will have as a stand-alone.

I asked Zhang if he had compared the EOG performance of minority and low-income AL students to non-minority and middle-class non-AL students. He said he might look at doing that in the future. (One of the reasons I asked was because of his SAT score examination which found that black students from higher-income families still scored less than poor white students.)

What do you get from the report? Anything missing?

I wrote Tuesday about the school board's concern about class sizes in fourth and fifth grades. Superintendent Terry Grier sent out an e-mail today showing current class size averages.

The school board learned Thursday that the Advanced Learner department has been working over the past three years to increase the number of students -- particularly minority and/or low-income -- who are qualified to participate in the Advanced Learner program. For example, teachers in grades three through five are nurturing such students with special curriculum and in some high impact schools, students who score in the top 7 percent in each grade level are being taught concepts and high thinking skills before they are formally identified.

However, district officials believe they can do better. Superintendent Terry Grier said he believes all teachers of academically-gifted students should be AL-certified. Forty teachers are currently undergoing certification at High Point University.

Ann Barr, the retired AL director, said teachers should be prohibited from requiring gifted students to do both advanced and regular work, which is apparently causing some frustrated students to opt-out of the program.

One question that came up was about private tests vs. Guilford County Schools test to identify gifted students. Apparently, some students are scoring higher on private tests because they are untimed. Students who take the district's tests are timed. Grier said the school board could look at eliminating private testing to level the playing field.

The board took no action on the AL report.

Parents, students and charter school supporters are expected to March Wednesday one mile from Hope Elementary Charter School in Raleigh to the General Assembly in hopes of convincing lawmakers to lift a state cap on charter schools.

North Carolina has limited the number of charter schools in operation to 100 since 1996. Currently, 92 charters schools operate (3 in Guilford) with six more expected to open next school year. Charter school supporters argue the cap only shuts out thousands of applicants and protects the interests of the public school establishment.

In a media teleconference today, education policy analyst Terry Stoops said the John Locke Foundation will release Wednesday a report showing the benefits of charter schools. He said that previous reports showing charters schools as an academic wash were unfair because they lumped alternative schools together with charter schools in their comparison, but did not do so with district alternative and regular schools. Other advocates argued that charter schools cost less per student and benefit low-income students who can't afford private school.

State data shows Greensboro Academy made Adequate Yearly Progress in 2005-06. Guilford Prep Academy and Phoenix Academy made it through safe harbor or confidence interval provisions. The Imani Institute, which closed last year because of financial troubles, did not make AYP.

What do you think about the charter school debate? Do Guilford parents need more choice? Does the state cap really serve any purpose?

A Southeast High School teacher was hospitalized treated at Moses Cone Hospital after an incident at the school Friday, according to sheriff's reports.

The district reported 71 assaults on school personnel last year, according to a state report. Thirteen assaults at schools that year resulted in serious injury, the report showed.

In the 2004-05 school year, the district reported to the state 63 assaults on school personnel. And there were 29 assaults resulting in serious injury. That year three principals trying to break up fights were injured within a span of about a month.