The 2007 writing assessment from the National Assessment of Educational Progress was given January through March 2007 to 8^th- and 12^th-grade students across the country.

While we still have a ways to go, America’s students are getting better at writing, with higher scores for both 8^th-graders and high school seniors.

Overview of the 2007 Writing Assessment

About 140,000 8^th-grade students and about 28,000 12th graders participated in the assessment. The 8^th-grade sample is much larger because it provides results for the nation, for most states, and for 10 urban school districts. At the 12^th-grade, we have national results only. There was no 4^th-grade assessment.

Student writing was assessed for three different purposes—narrative, informative, and persuasive. In the scoring of student answers, it was recognized that these were essentially first drafts, not polished pieces of writing. Student responses could receive any of six ratings—from "Excellent" to "Unsatisfactory." But even an "Excellent" response could contain errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation, as long as they were few in number and did not interfere with a reader’s ability to understand the response. More errors were acceptable for ratings of "Skillful" and "Sufficient," again as long as they did not interfere with understanding. Examples of NAEP writing questions and student responses, along with scoring guides and performance data, are available on the NAEP web site (http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/itmrls).

At grade 8, there are results for 45 states and the Department of Defense schools, as well as for 10 large urban school districts. States and districts participate in the writing assessment on a voluntary basis.

NAEP reports student performance in two ways: scale scores and achievement levels. NAEP scale scores indicate what students know and what they can do. The writing assessment uses separate 0–300 scales for the eighth and twelfth grades.

Achievement levels were developed by the National Assessment Governing Board. They set standards for what students should know and be able to do. For each subject and for each grade, the Governing Board has established standards for Basic, Proficient, and Advanced performance. Today I will be reporting on the percentages of students who performed at or above Basic, those who performed at or above Proficient, and those who performed at the Advanced level. Ultimately, the goal is to have all students performing at or above the Proficient level.

2007 Writing Results

Grade 8

National Results

At grade 8 the average score in 2007 was higher than in either 1998 or 2002. In the first writing assessment in 1998, the average score was set at 150, and since then performance has increased by 6 points.

When comparing NAEP scale scores or achievement-level percentages, we must remember that NAEP results are based on samples and there is a margin of error associated with each score. When comparing scores and other NAEP results we only discuss differences that are larger than the margin of error—those that are statistically significant. In the data figures and tables, we place an asterisk on a score from a previous assessment when the difference from 2007 is statistically significant. Both the 6-point difference since 1998 and the 3-point difference since 2002 are significant.

Turning to achievement-level results, 88 percent of students performed at or above Basic in 2007. This was higher than the 85 percent who achieved at this level in the previous assessment in 2002 or the 84 percent who did so in 1998. The percentage at or above Proficient in 2007, 33 percent, was higher than the 27 percent who achieved this level in 1998. The percentage at Advanced, 2 percent, was also higher than in 1998. But neither percentage was significantly different from 2002.

National Results by Race/Ethnicity

Writing scores were higher in 2007 for White, Black, and Hispanic students than in either previous assessment. Both Black and Hispanic students increased their scores by 10 points compared to 1998.

Asian/Pacific Islander students’ performance increased compared with 2002, but the difference from 1998 was not statistically significant.

For American Indian/Alaska Native students, there was no significant change compared to either year.

I noted that both White and Black students had higher average scores in 2007 than in prior assessments. Black students made greater gains. As a result, the 23-point White-Black performance gap in 2007 was smaller than the gap in either prior assessment (25 points in 2002 and 26 points in 1998).

The gap between White and Hispanic students did not change. Scores for Hispanic students were higher in 2007 than in the two prior assessments, but scores for White students increased as well. The gap between these two groups was 22 points in 2007.

National Results by Gender

Average scores increased in 2007 for both male and female students, and female students continued to have higher scores than males. The average score for female 8^th-graders was 166, compared with 146 for males. Both groups’ average scores were 6 points higher than in 1998. The 20-point gap in 2007 between female and male performance in writing was about the same as in both previous assessments.

National Results by Family Income

NAEP reports student results according to their eligibility for the National School Lunch Program. We report on three groups, ranked according to family income level. Students coming from families near or below the poverty line are eligible for free lunches. If the family’s income is a little higher the student is eligible for reduced-price lunches. Students from families further above the poverty line are not eligible for the program. Because of changes in the availability of data, we cannot make comparisons to previous writing assessments.

The average score for students eligible for free lunch was 139; those eligible for reduced-priced lunch scored at 150; and students not eligible for the program averaged 164.

State Results

Trends in Average Scores of States

State participation in the NAEP writing assessment was voluntary. In 2007, 45 states participated, plus the Department of Defense Schools, for a total of 46 jurisdictions. For most of these jurisdictions, we can make comparisons with previous assessments.

At the state level, NAEP assesses the performance of public school students only.

Compared with 2002, scores increased in 20 out of the 39 jurisdictions for which a comparison can be made. Average scores decreased in one state, North Carolina. Comparing 2007 with 1998, there were increases in 29 out of 34 jurisdictions that participated in both years, and no declines.

Sixteen jurisdictions had higher scores in 2007 than in either previous assessment.

Trial Urban District Assessment

Since 2002, NAEP has conducted assessments in an increasing number of large urban school districts. The Trial Urban District Assessment, or TUDA, is a collaboration involving the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Assessment Governing Board, and the Council of the Great City Schools.

TUDA was designed to assess the performance of public school students at the district level. Because the assessments are the same for the nation, the states, and the urban districts, NAEP serves as a common yardstick for comparison.

Participation in TUDA is voluntary. In 2007, 10 districts were invited to participate in the writing assessment at grade 8, and all 10 agreed to do so. The District of Columbia is usually included in the TUDA results, but in 2007 we administered three assessments—reading, mathematics, and writing—and the District of Columbia only had enough students to participate in reading and mathematics.

The samples for the districts ranged from about 900 to 2,000 students. We can make comparisons with 2002 results for the four of these districts that also participated in that year. In three of these districts—Atlanta, Chicago, and Los Angeles—scores were higher in 2007. There was no significant change in Houston.

In addition to comparing the urban districts to the nation, we compare their performance to that of students in large central cities nationally. Large central cities are an appropriate comparison group for the TUDAs because their demographic makeup is closer to that of the districts. The large central city average is based on the performance of students in central cities with a population of at least 250,000. The average score for students in large central cities was higher in 2007 than in 2002.

In 2007, compared to both the national and large central city averages.

· Charlotte-Mecklenburg in North Carolina was the only district whose average score was above the large central city average.

· Seven districts—Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York City, and San Diego—had average scores that were not significantly different from the large central city average.

· The remaining two—Cleveland and Los Angeles—were below the large central city average.

· All the districts except Charlotte were below the national average.

We can compare score gains from 2002 to 2007 for Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Houston with the gains posted by the districts’ home states over the same period.

· In Georgia, Atlanta’s 15-point increase in 2007 was larger than the state’s 6-point gain.

· In California, the average score for Los Angeles in 2007 was 9 points higher than in 2002, while the statewide average did not change significantly.

· In Texas scores did not change significantly for either Houston or the state.

Turning to achievement levels, three districts had a percentage at or above Proficient that was higher than the large central city percentage—Charlotte, San Diego, and Austin. Five districts—New York City, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, and Houston—were comparable to the large central city percentage. Two districts—Los Angeles and Cleveland—were below the large central city percentage. The percentages at or above Proficient ranged from 31 percent in Charlotte to 9 percent in Cleveland.

Grade 12

Now I will describe the writing results for twelfth-graders nationally.

Overall Results

Scores were higher for twelfth-graders by 5 points since 2002, from 148 to 153; and by 3 points since 1998, when the average score was 150.

It should be kept in mind that eighth-grade and twelfth-grade performance are presented on separate 0-300 point scales. Each scale is constructed to reflect the difficulty of the work expected at the given grade. Thus, the twelfth-grade average of 153 in 2007 should not be interpreted as a "lower" score than the eighth-graders' average of 156.

For the most part, twelfth-grade achievement-level results improved in 2007. The percentage at or above Basic, 82 percent in 2007, was higher than in 2002, 74 percent, and in 1998, 78 percent. The percentage at or above Proficient, 24 percent, was higher than in 1998, when it was 22 percent. The percentage at Advanced declined since 2002 from 2 percent to 1 percent.

Results by Race/Ethnicity

Average scores for White students increased in 2007, compared to both prior assessments. Black and Asian/Pacific Islander students’ scores increased since 2002 only. For Hispanic and American Indian/Alaska Native students, scores did not change significantly compared to previous assessments.

At the twelfth grade, score gaps did not change significantly either between White and Black students (23 points in 2007) or between White and Hispanic students (20 points in 2007).

Results by Gender

In 2007, scores were higher for male students than in either 1998 or 2002, while scores for female students were higher than in 1998 only.

Female students continued to outperform male students. The gap in 2007, 18 points, was smaller than in 2002, but not significantly different from the gap in 1998.

For More Information

There is much more information in the Writing Report Card:

· extensive information on the performance of students in the nation, and in each state and trial urban district (http://nationsreportcard.gov);

· access to released assessment questions through NAEP’s enhanced Questions Center (http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/itmrls); and

the ability to analyze the data and create your own tables and charts through the NAEP Data Explorer (http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/nde).

Sate profiles are here:

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

Complete report:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008468

Center for Inquiry Raises Concerns over Civics Textbook

The Center for Inquiry (CFI) released a 25-page report detailing what it calls “egregious errors” sufficient enough to warrant “immediate correction,” in a widely used civics textbook found in many secondary schools around the country, including advanced placement courses. CFI believes that the textbook American Government: Institutions and Policies, 10th edition, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006) contains inaccurate and misleading statements, in particular in its analysis of global warming and certain constitutional law issues. In response, CFI’s legal experts have analyzed the textbook and prepared a critique that sets forth recommended changes.

Derek Araujo, a lawyer and executive director for CFI’s New York office, spearheaded the textbook review project. Araujo stated that he was “surprised and dismayed that a textbook used in advanced placement courses would contain clearly erroneous statements about significant issues, such as global warming and school prayer.” Araujo recruited leading scientists, including Stuart D. Jordan from NASA, to provide their assessment of the book’s treatment of global warming.

CFI’s critique focuses on six areas: the science of global warming; the legality of school prayer; the significance of the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas; the alleged influence of the religious concept of “original sin” on the structure of the Constitution; the meaning of the Establishment Clause; and the significance of the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear a case (what lawyers refer to as the denial of a writ of certiorari).

Ronald A. Lindsay, CFI’s general counsel, characterized the errors as “significant and inexcusable. For a civics textbook to state—as this book does—that the Supreme Court will not allow students to pray in schools betrays either a serious misunderstanding of the law or a willingness to have the textbook serve as a propaganda vehicle for the Religious Right.”

CFI maintains that it is very important for civics students to obtain accurate information about our Constitution, our legal system and public policy issues, and that instructional material should be objective and free of ideological bias.

Full report: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/CFI_Textbook_Critique.pdf

Keep Boys and Girls Together, Research Suggests

Boys and girls may learn differently, but American parents should think twice before moving their children to sex-segregated schools. A new Tel Aviv University study has found that girls improve boys’ grades markedly at school.

“Being with more girls is good for everybody,” says Prof. Analia Schlosser, an economist from the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University. “We find that both boys and girls do better when there are more girls in the class.” She investigated girls and boys in mixed classrooms in the elementary, middle, and high-school grades of the Israeli school system.

In an unpublished paper, Prof. Schlosser concluded that classes with more than 55 percent of girls resulted in better exam results and less violent outbursts overall. “It appears that this effect is due to the positive influence the girls are adding to the classroom environment,” says Prof. Schlosser. She carried out the study while on a post-doctoral fellowship at Princeton University, and will study the effects of gender in higher education lecture halls next.

This is one of few studies of its kind to use scientific data to address the question of gender effects in school.

The Report Card

Boys with more female peers in their classes show higher enrollment rates in both advanced math and science classes, but overall benefits were found in all grades for both sexes.

Prof. Schlosser found that primary-school classrooms with a female majority showed increased academic success for both boys and girls, along with a notable improvement in subjects like science and math. In the middle schools, girls were found to have better academic achievement in English, languages and math. And in high school, the classrooms which had the best academic achievements overall were consistently those that had a higher proportion of girls enrolled.

An Educated Guess

A higher percentage of girls lowers the amount of classroom disruption and fosters a better relationship between pupils and their teacher, a study of the data suggests. Teachers are less tired in classrooms with more girls, and pupils overall seem to be more satisfied when a high female-to-male ratio persists.

Prof. Schlosser was inspired to the study by a “renewed interest on the effects of classroom gender composition on students’ learning, since a new amendment to America’s Title IX regulations gives communities more flexibility in providing single-sex classes and schools.”

Prof. Schlosser concludes that American educators should reconsider the effects of the new trend of same-sex segregation on different sectors of society. Gains for girls from classroom gender segregation could be offset by the loss of boys.

Impairments in Language Development

Can Be Detected in Infants as Young as Three Months

Speech Problems Could Be Corrected Before Child Learns to Talk

Uncover how the brains of infants distinguish differences in sounds and it may become possible to correct language problems even before children start to speak, sparing them the difficulties that come from struggling with language.

New studies conducted by Professor of Neuroscience April Benasich and her Infancy Studies Laboratory at Rutgers University in Newark are revealing new and exciting clues about how infant brains begin to acquire language and paving the way for correcting language difficulties at a time when the brain is most able to change.

Benasich and her lab were the first to determine that how efficiently a baby processes differences between rapidly occurring sounds is the best predictor of future language problems. Using methods developed by Benasich and her lab, it can be determined as early as three to six months whether a baby will struggle with language development.

Benasich’s research is now focused on uncovering in specific detail how the developing brain processes and distinguishes acoustic differences that arrive in rapid succession. The ability to differentiate those sounds, such as the difference between “ba” and “da,” is critically important because decoding language requires us to process tiny auditory differences occurring as quickly as 40 milliseconds. During the first months of life, the baby’s developing brain also is involved in constructing an acoustic map of the sounds of his or her native language. That map allows the baby to efficiently acquire language. Apparently, however, in some infants the process seems to go awry.

About 5 to 10 percent of all children beginning school are estimated to have language-learning impairments (LLI) leading to reading, speaking and comprehension problems, according to Benasich. In families with a history of LLI, 40 to 50 percent of children are likely to have a similar problem. Many of these children go on to develop dyslexia.

Using several novel methods, including dense array EEG/ERP recordings, Benasich and her lab are able to analyze EEG, ERPs and the proportion of gamma power in infant brains. The dense sensor array allows the researchers to gently measure a full range of brain activity. Those measurements are obtained by placing a soft bonnet of sensors, resembling a hairnet with lots of little sponges, on a baby’s head and then having the infant listen to different series of rapid tone sequences.

“We are finding that children who have difficulty processing rapid auditory input are not just showing a simple maturational lag, but are actually processing incoming acoustic information differently,” says Benasich.

Specifically, the research shows that babies who struggle with rapid auditory processing appear to be using different brain areas (as shown by neural patterns) and perhaps different analysis strategies to accomplish that task than children who do not have such difficulties. Included among their initial findings, the researchers have found less left hemisphere activity in the brains of children who struggle with rapid auditory processing as compared with matched control children. By pinpointing the exact differences in how the brain handles incoming acoustic information, it may become possible to guide the brains of babies at risk of developing language problems to work more efficiently before the children even begin to speak.

“We can predict with about 90 percent accuracy what a baby’s language capabilities will be just by their response to tones,” says Benasich. “Our hope now is that we will be able to gently

guide the brains of infants who are at the highest risk for language learning impairments to be more efficient processors so they can avoid the difficulties that result from struggling with language.”

To shed additional light on how inefficiencies in rapid auditory processing might be corrected, Benasich and her team have developed a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) protocol for scanning naturally sleeping healthy babies. This technique will allow better localization of active brain areas. To solve the challenge of imaging the brains of young children who typically are unable to lie still for extended periods in a scanner, Benasich’s team conducts the scans in the evening and asks the parents to go through their child’s normal bedtime routine, such as reading their infant a story, nursing them, rocking and snuggling. Once the child is asleep, headphones providing a steady stream of lullabies and an acoustic foam bonnet are placed on the baby’s head to reduce the sound of the MRI.

“Our goal is not only to develop training techniques to correct rapid auditory processing problems, but to identify the period during infant development when the brain is most “plastic,” or most able to change through learning,” explains Benasich.

The lab’s work is funded by several sources, including grants from the Solomon Center for Neurodevelopmental Research, the Don and Linda Carter Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and a new $460,000 grant from the Ellison Medical Foundation.

For more information on the research being conducted by the Infancy Studies Laboratory at Rutgers University in Newark, please visit http://babylab.rutgers.edu.

State-Funded Preschool Enrollment Passes One Million Mark, Yet Most 3- and 4-Year-Olds are Denied Access to Public Preschool Programs

State-funded preschools served over one million children last year, yet public pre-K was unavailable for most 3- and 4-year-olds, according to the annual survey released by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER).

Funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, The State of Preschool 2007 ranks all 50 states on the percentage of children served and spending per child. It also compares the number of quality benchmarks each state meets for the 2006-2007 school year. The survey found that enrollment, quality and state spending per child increased.

Yet, 12 states offered no state-funded preschool education and others faltered in their commitment to the quality of their early education programs. The report showed that nationally less than half of all 4-year-olds were enrolled in government-supported preschool education programs and one quarter received no preschool. For 3-year-olds the situation was worse, with only 15 percent enrolled in public programs and 50 percent receiving no early education.

Children from wealthy families can attend expensive private preschools while the federal Head Start program and most state-funded preschool education is targeted at lower income families.

Research shows that high-quality preschool education for disadvantaged children improves later high school graduation rates and college attendance, employment opportunities and earnings, even marriage rates. It lessens future crime, delinquency and teenage pregnancy. In economic terms, high-quality preschool education returns to the individual and the public up to $17 for each $1 invested. New studies find educational benefits for middle-income children as well.

Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming have no state-funded programs. Serious problems also exist in four states – California, Texas, Florida, and Ohio – that are home to one-third of all American preschoolers."

On a more positive note, the yearbook reported that in 2006-2007:

• Average state spending per child was $3,642, halting a trend of declining per-child commitments that had persisted since at least the 2002-2003 school year.

• More than one million 3- and 4-year-old children attended state-funded preschool education programs.   • Thirty states increased enrollment. Nationally, enrollment was up by 80,000.

• Eight states met higher quality standards. Yet, some states still require preschool education teachers to have little more than a high school diploma.

• Of the 26 states that served 3-year-olds, enrollment increased in all but five states. Overall enrollment of 3-year-olds was up 10 percent, mostly due to increases in Illinois, which became the first state to commit to serving all 3-year-olds.

Pre-K funding could be attached to state funding formulas for K-12 education to ensure that funds increase proportionally with enrollment as it expands and that funding per child is more dependable the authors say. They also said the federal government could play a vital role by providing an inducement to states to expand enrollment, particularly at age 3, by offering matching funds.

The 2007 Yearbook pointed out that one-quarter of all 4-year-olds and half of all 3s had no access to preschool education. State and federal regular preschool education, special education and Head Start combined served 39 percent of the country's 4-year-olds, and some attend private programs, leaving one-quarter of 4-year-olds with no preschool program at all. At age 3, state and federal programs combined to serve only 15 percent. Even with some others attending private programs, 50 percent of 3-year-olds had no access to a preschool education.

Other key findings in the yearbook include:

Access:

• Enrollment increases in most states tended to be modest, but some states made large gains. Enrollment increased by 52 percent in Tennessee, 33 percent in Pennsylvania, and 17 percent in Illinois, Florida, and New York.

• State pre-K programs served 22 percent of 4-year-olds and 3 percent of 3-year-olds nationwide.

• Three states with "Pre-K for All" served more than half of their 4-year-olds: Oklahoma (68 percent), Florida (58 percent), and Georgia (53 percent). When Head Start and preschool special education enrollments are taken into account, Oklahoma served 90 percent of all 4-year-olds; Florida, 71 percent; and Georgia, 65 percent.

The State of Preschool 2007 is available at

http://nieer.org/yearbook/pdf/yearbook.pdf

State Profiles are available at:

http://nieer.org/yearbook/states/

PRESCHOOL KIDS DO BETTER ON TASKS WHEN THEY TALK TO THEMSELVES, RESEARCH SHOWS

Parents should not worry when their pre-schoolers talk to themselves; in fact, they should encourage it, says Adam Winsler, an associate professor of psychology at George Mason University. His recent study published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly showed that 5-year-olds do better on motor tasks when they talk to themselves out loud (either spontaneously or when told to do so by an adult) than when they are silent.

"Young children often talk to themselves as they go about their daily activities, and parents and teachers shouldn’t think of this as weird or bad," says Winsler. "On the contrary, they should listen to the private speech of kids. It's a fantastic window into the minds of children."

In the study, "'Should I let them talk?': Private speech and task performance among preschool children with and without behavior problems," 78 percent of the children performed either the same or better on the performance task when speaking to themselves than when they were silent.

The study also showed that children with behavioral problems (such as those diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD) tend to talk to themselves more often than children without signs of behavior problems.

"Given that kids with behavior concerns need more direction and control from adults, teachers may unnecessarily ask children to be quiet in classrooms out of fear that such speech coming from difficult-to-manage kids will lead to problem behavior," says Winsler. "Yet non-disruptive private speech would actually help these children as they develop. Therefore, teacher training and professional development efforts should suggest that teachers increase their tolerance level for this kind of private speech."

Winsler says that private speech is very common and perfectly normal among children between the ages of 2 and 5. As children begin talking to themselves, their communication skills with the outside world improve.

"This is when language comes inside," says Winsler. "As these two communication processes merge, children use private speech in the transition period. It's a critical period for children, and defines us as human beings."

Winsler also conducted the first-ever study looking at private speech in children with autism. He found that high-functioning autistic children talk to themselves often and in the same ways that non-autistic children do. Talking aloud also improved their performance on tasks.

"Children with autism have problems with their external social speech, so psychologists assumed that their private speech would also be impaired," says Winsler. "But this study shows that it is not the case—that autistic children use their private speech very effectively as a tool to help them with tasks."

The study, "Private Speech and Executive Functioning among High-Functioning Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders," was just published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disabilities.

STUDY FINDS MAJORITY OF MINNESOTA FIVE-YEAR-OLDS

PREPARED FOR KINDERGARTEN IN KEY DEVELOPMENTAL AREAS

The majority of Minnesota children are prepared for kindergarten, according to a study released today by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE). The Minnesota School Readiness Study found that between 90 percent and 97 percent of Minnesota five-year-olds were In Process or Proficient in five developmental areas necessary for success: physical development, the arts, personal and social development, language and literacy, and mathematical thinking.

The study involved 6,493 kindergarteners from 96 elementary schools and represents just over ten percent of students entering kindergarten in the fall of 2007. The study divides readiness ratings into three levels: Not Yet, In Process and Proficient. The number of students rated as Not Yet well prepared for kindergarten remains the same compared to previous years. For the fifth year in a row, ten percent of Minnesota five-year-olds entering kindergarten have not yet mastered skills, knowledge and abilities appropriate for four-year-olds in the key developmental domains of mathematical thinking and language and literacy.

This year’s report also examines how child and family characteristics may affect children’s ratings. For example, household income as indexed to the Federal Poverty Guidelines (FPG) and primary language spoken in the home were shown to be related to the level of readiness of a child. A student whose household income was in the category of 250 percent FPG and above was slightly more than three times as likely to be rated In Process or Proficient as compared to a student whose household income was in the category of 0-100 percent FPG in Mathematical Thinking. Speaking English as the primary home language was associated with nearly three times the odds of being rated In Process or Proficient in Language and Literacy as well as Mathematical Thinking.

The most recent report summarizes study findings from previous representative studies and presents findings from the assessment of school readiness of a random sample of children entering kindergarten in fall 2007.

The study brief of the report can be found at:

http://education.state.mn.us/mdeprod/groups/Communications/documents/Publication/034046.pdf.

Changing school environment curbs weight gain in children

Study finds school-based intervention reduces incidence of overweight by half

Small changes in schools lead to big results when it comes to preventing childhood obesity, according to a study published in the April issue of Pediatrics. The school-based intervention, which reduced the incidence of overweight by 50 percent, offers a potential means of preventing childhood weight gain and obesity on a large scale.

“The increasing prevalence and serious consequences of childhood obesity have pushed us to find solutions that go beyond the clinic and reach greater numbers of children,” said lead author Gary Foster, Ph.D., director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University. “We focused on school because children spend most of their lives there and eat at least one if not two meals there.”

The two-year study was conducted in 10 K-8 Philadelphia schools. Half the schools implemented a multi-faceted nutrition policy, including social marketing and family outreach, which was developed by The Food Trust, a non-profit organization committed to ensuring that everyone has access to affordable, nutritious food.

“We incorporated healthy eating into every part of the school day in order to have a greater impact on the students,” said Sandy Sherman, Ed.D., director of nutrition education at The Food Trust. “The intervention fundamentally changed the school environment.”

The other five schools served as a comparison. The study focused on 1,349 students in grades 4 through 6, and followed them for a two-year period, measuring weight, height and physical activity before and after.

The intervention, also called the School Nutrition Policy Initiative, included the following components: school self-assessment, nutrition education, nutrition policy, social marketing and parent outreach.

“Every member of the school community worked together to create a healthier environment,” said Sherman.

Nutrition policy

Soda was replaced with water, 100 percent fruit juice and low-fat milk. Snacks were capped at 7 grams of total fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 360 milligrams of sodium and 15 grams of sugar per serving. Candy was eliminated from the school premises.

Nutrition education

Teachers received 10 hours of training in teaching nutrition, and students received 50 hours of nutrition education over the course of the year.

Social marketing

Kids were rewarded for healthy snacking and encouraged to save their appetites for healthy meals. Nutritious snacks and drinks earned them raffle tickets to win prizes.

Family outreach

Nutrition educators encouraged parents and students to purchase healthy snacks. Students were challenged to be less sedentary and more physically active, and to eat more fruits and vegetables.

For details on the School Nutrition Policy Initiative, go to www.thefoodtrust.org/php/programs/comp.school.nutrition.php

Only 7.5 percent of children became overweight in intervention schools, compared with 15 percent of children who became overweight in comparison schools. The intervention was even more effective in African American students, who were less likely to be overweight than those in the comparison schools after two years.

The results are particularly interesting for urban schools, where rates of childhood obesity are disproportionately higher than in suburban areas and greatly affected by the surrounding environment.

“In some inner-city neighborhoods, it’s safer to stay inside after school than to go outside and play. When money is tight, it’s cheaper to feed your kids convenience foods, which are usually higher in fat and calories. Multiple environmental factors are responsible for the childhood obesity epidemic,” said Foster.

Despite the success of the interventions, the fact that 7.5 percent of children in School Nutrition Policy Initiative schools still gained weight over the two-year period suggests that stronger or additional interventions are needed, such as more time spent on physical education, more aggressive nutrition policies, and interventions that target the environment outside of schools.

The researchers also recommend that prevention programs begin even earlier than 4th grade, as the prevalence of overweight children (BMI above the 85th percentile) in grades 4 through 6 is already high at 41.7 percent.

Cities in Crisis

A new report released by America's Promise Alliance finds that America's largest cities are struggling to keep students in school.

This report concentrates on the performance of America’s largest cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas. The 50 most heavily populated cities in the nation were identified using 2006 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. With a population of 8.2 million, New York is by far the largest city in the country. Los Angeles and Chicago follow with 3.8 and 2.8 million residents respectively. Wichita rounds out the top 50. With a population of about 358,000, the leading city of Kansas is less than one-twentieth the size of New York City.

These urban centers are widely distributed across the nation, with top-50 cities scattered across 29 states and the District of Columbia. But we note especially heavy concentrations of these cities along the East Coast (with six major urban centers arrayed between Virginia and Boston), in Texas (with seven), and on the West Coast. California alone is home to eight of America’s most-populous cities.

The analysis finds that graduating from high school in the America’s largest cities amounts, essentially, to a coin toss. Only about one-half (52 percent) of students in the principal school systems of the 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma. That rate is well below the national graduation rate of 70 percent, and even falls short of the average for urban districts across the country (60 percent). Only six of these 50 principal districts reach or exceed the national average. In the most extreme cases (Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, and Indianapolis), fewer than 35 percent of students graduate with a diploma.

Further analysis demonstrates that the extremely low graduation rates for these large school systems contribute disproportionately to the nation’s graduation crisis. The principal school districts of America’s 50 largest cities collectively educate 1.7 million public high school students – one out of every eight in the country. However, these 50 education agencies account for nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of the 1.2 million students nationwide who fail to graduate with a diploma each year.

It should be noted that these findings capture the likelihood that the average student in the nation’s largest cities will successfully complete high school. Certain demographic groups graduate at rates much lower than the student population as a whole. Male students, on average, have graduation rates eight percentage points lower than females. The gaps between whites and historically disadvantaged minority groups can reach as high as 25 percentage points nationally. If those patterns hold for the nation’s largest cities, it is possible that graduation rates for certain subgroups in these communities may fall even lower than those presented in this report.

Full report:

http://www.americaspromise.org/uploadedFiles/AmericasPromiseAlliance/Dropout_Crisis/SWANSONCitiesInCrisis040108.pdf

Are teenage brains really different?

MRI studies show brain changes in the adolescent brain impact cognition, emotion and behavior

Many parents are convinced that the brains of their teenage offspring are different than those of children and adults. New data confirms that this is the case. An article by Jay N. Giedd, MD, of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), published in the April 2008 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health describes how brain changes in the adolescent brain impact cognition, emotion and behavior.

Dr. Giedd reviews the results from the NIMH Longitudinal Brain Imaging Project. This study and others indicate that gray matter increases in volume until approximately the early teens and then decreases until old age. Pinning down these differences in a rigorous way had been elusive until MRI was developed, offering the capacity to provide extremely accurate quantifications of brain anatomy and physiology without the use of ionizing radiation.

Writing in the article, Dr. Giedd comments, “Adolescence is a time of substantial neurobiological and behavioral change, but the teen brain is not a broken or defective adult brain. The adaptive potential of the overproduction/selective elimination process, increased connectivity and integration of disparate brain functions, changing reward systems and frontal/limbic balance, and the accompanying behaviors of separation from family of origin, increased risk taking, and increased sensation seeking have been highly adaptive in our past and may be so in our future. These changes and the enormous plasticity of the teen brain make adolescence a time of great risk and great opportunity.”

In an accompanying editorial, Elizabeth R. McAnarney MD, Department of Pediatrics, University of Rochester Medical Center, comments, “Finally neuroscientists are able to go under the ‘…leathery membrane, surrounded by a protective moat of fluid, and completely encased in bone…’ to provide new insights into brain development. Changes in the brain during childhood and adolescent development that are being documented through exquisite imaging by Giedd and others hold the promise for the development of hypotheses about the potential origins of behaviors that we have observed clinically for years….”

“Novelty seeking/sensation seeking and risk taking,” Dr. McAnarney continues, “is the basis for considerable growth during adolescence, as well as for the seemingly reckless behavior of some adolescents. Novelty seeking/sensation seeking and risk taking are topics of growing interest as adolescent brain development is defined better and as morbidity from adolescent risk taking mounts….The implication of our growing knowledge of brain–behavior mechanisms of adolescent conditions should provide insights into the risk of particular adolescents for morbidity and mortality. Preliminary data are promising so that as we begin to understand the complexity of and specificity of each of these conditions, we shall be able to diagnose and treat conditions earlier.”

The NIMH Longitudinal Brain Imaging Project began in 1989. Participants visit the NIMH at approximately two-year intervals for brain imaging, neuropsychological and behavioral assessment and collection of DNA. As of September 2007, approximately 5000 scans from 2000 subjects have been acquired. Of these, 387 subjects, aged 3 to 27 years, have remained free of any psychopathology and serve as the models for typical brain development.

Three themes have emerged from this and other studies in this new era of adolescent neuroscience. The first is functional and structural increases in connectivity and integrative processing as distributed brain modules become more and more integrated. Using a literary metaphor, maturation would not be the addition of new letters but rather of combining earlier formed letters into words, and then words into sentences and then sentences into paragraphs.

The second is a general pattern of childhood peaks of gray matter (frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe and occipital lobe) followed by adolescent declines. As parts of the brain are overdeveloped and then discarded, the structure of the brain becomes more refined.

The third theme is a changing balance between limbic/subcortical and frontal lobe functions that extends well into young adulthood as different cognitive and emotional systems mature at different rates. The cognitive and behavioral changes taking place during adolescence may be understood from the perspective of increased “executive” functioning, a term encompassing a broad array of abilities, including attention, response inhibition, regulation of emotion, organization and long-range planning.

The article is “The Teen Brain: Insights from Neuroimaging” by Jay N. Giedd, MD. The editorial is “Adolescent Brain Development: Forging New Links"” by Elizabeth R. McAnarney, MD. Both appear in the Journal of Adolescent Health, Volume 42, Issue 4 (April 2008)

Do we need alcohol prevention programs for 'tweens?'

This article examines a large study of six grade students across a metropolitan area, to see which factors distinguished young alcohol users from nonusers, including even their stated intentions regarding future alcohol use. Understanding that early alcohol use can affect development during a crucial time in life and can cause significant problems later, the researchers explored some current teen alcohol abuse prevention programs, concluding that even earlier intervention is imperative. The study looked at both positive and negative influences affecting early drinking, including such things as:

· Parental influences, including communication, monitoring, and expectations=

· Peer influences, peers’ actual alcohol use and kids’ perceptions of peer use

· The environment, access to alcohol, owning and wearing alcohol-related items

· Kids involvement in sports, religious and other extra-curricular activities

· Use of other substances, including tobacco and marijuana

“Early users of alcohol are already at very high risk and earlier intervention is critical to alter risk factors while students are in their tweens,” write the authors. “Although some research has been done in the primary prevention of developmental problems with tweens, the data suggests that a specific focus on particular alcohol-related risk factors is also needed to affect those at highest risk for teen alcohol use.”

The article, “Sixth Grade Students Who Use Alcohol: Do We Need Primary Prevention Programs for ‘Tweens’"” written by lead author Keryn E. Pasch, PhD, MPH, of the University of Minnesota, and colleagues Cheryl L. Perry, PhD, MA, Melissa H. Stigler, PhD, MPH, of the University of Texas and Kelli A. Komro, PhD, MPH of the University of Florida, has been made available at no charge by SAGE for a limited time at http://heb.sagepub.com/cgi/rapidpdf/1090198107308374v1.

NORTH CAROLINA YOUTH RISK BEHAVIOR SURVEY

North Carolina high school students have improved their health habits in some areas, but still need to focus on others, such as maintaining a healthy weight, according to the recently released 2007 North Carolina Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS).

Since 1993, fewer students have tried alcohol for the first time before age 13, have drunk alcohol and have driven or ridden in a car with a driver who had been drinking. In addition, fewer students say they've used tobacco, marijuana and other types of drugs, or carried a weapon, such as a gun, knife or club, or were threatened with one. There also has been a significant decline in the number of students who attempted suicide, were involved in a physical fight, or who had their first experience with sexual intercourse before age 13.

The prevalence of some health risk behaviors measured by the YRBS, however, remains high. Since 2005, an increased percentage of high school students appear to be at-risk for becoming overweight as measured by body mass index calculations. Use of cocaine and injected illegal drugs increased, as did the percentage of students who say they have avoided school due to safety concerns. There also was an increase in the percentage of students who say they feel alone in their life.

The 2007 YRBS was produced by the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess health risk behaviors that contribute to some of the leading causes of death and injury among children and adolescents. The NC Department of Public Instruction and the NC Department of Health and Human Services have administered the voluntary survey at the state level since 1993. Data is reported statewide and regionally in the aggregate and cannot be traced back to the school district or student. In 2007, the YRBS was completed by 3,506 high school students in 71 public high schools in North Carolina.

The 2007 YRBS data are available at www.nchealthyschools.org/data/yrbs

Stress May Lead Students to Stimulants

The performance pressures from end-of-semester exams and papers can take a toll on students, even leading them to turn to potentially harmful substances to keep them awake and alert.

Recent studies show that a growing number of high school and college students are turning to stimulants like ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) drugs and energy drinks to help them through their stress — particularly during exam time, says Jennifer Christner, M.D., an adolescent medicine specialist at the University of Michigan Health System.

“Studies have shown that anywhere from 5 to 35 percent of college students are misusing stimulants around stressful times with academics. There is also some evidence that high school students — anywhere from 8 to 10 percent — can misuse stimulants during these times,” she says.

Approximately 25 percent of high school and grade school children have been approached by friends to use their medication, Christner notes. This causes children to be more susceptible to misusing medications that are not prescribed to them, a decision that can be damaging to their health.

“It is never a good idea to use anyone else’s medication, whether it is a prescribed medication or over-the-counter,” she says. “Of course, if you have ADHD, then use your stimulant on a regular basis and not just when you really need it at crunch-time.”

Misuse of stimulants can lead to depression, irritability, stomachaches and headaches. Serious misuse or abuse of these drugs can lead to very serious side effects, including hypertension and stroke.

The growing popularity of energy drinks can also be harmful to a child’s health, Christner adds.

“There is harm when someone is taking more than one or two of these drinks a day,” she says. “The caffeine can lead to jitteriness, anxiety, increased heart rate and the more serious side effects of high blood pressure, hyperthermia and stroke.”

While Christner notes that drinking one energy drink during a demanding time is usually acceptable, there are ways that a person can maintain energy levels and avoid stimulants altogether. To help ease academic anxiety, she recommends that students do their work steadily, as opposed to saving it all for the last minute. She also suggests keeping up with regular exercise, eating a balanced diet and getting proper rest.

Concerned parents can also take steps toward preventing their children from overusing stimulants, Christner says. Parents can role play with their children and ask them what they would say and do if they were offered medications from their friends. Parents can also be conscientious during the time of their college-aged children’s exams simply by calling and asking if their son or daughter is doing okay.

Christner also advises family members to look out depression, irritability and other warning signs of stimulant abuse.

Researchers study why high school boys dodge 'Phys Ed'

As obesity and inactivity among youth becomes a growing concern for North American families, new research based at The University of Western Ontario is asking why some high school boys are reluctant to participate in Grade 9 health and physical education classes.

And while a majority of the research being publicly debated links the inactivity to television viewing and hours logged on the computer time, Michael Kehler, an associate professor at Western’s Faculty of Education, is examining the relationship between perceived masculinity, body image, and health.

In Ontario, all high school students are required to take at least one course in health and physical education. Most boys choose to take the mandatory course in Grade 9. Others postpone the ‘Phys Ed’ requirement until a later year when the topic is related to health issues and does not include activities in the gymnasium or on the playing field.

Kehler is speaking to young men from the London, Ontario region to better understand the degree body image in adolescent boys is a factor contributing to whether or not they continue pursuing physical activity.

“There appears to be a link between body image, masculinity, and long-term apathy toward physical activity and ultimately one’s quality of life,” Kehler said.

“So much research has been done examining girls and issues around body image but very little research has explored the relationship between boys, health and body image in secondary schools.

“If a boy is thinner or heavier than he would like to be, the stress and anxiety of participating in physical education may be prohibitive. That anxiety plays out in a number of ways from disinterest to genuine fear of being harassed.”

The study, in collaboration with Kevin Wamsley of Western’s Faculty of Health Sciences and Michael Atkinson of the University of Loughborough (U.K.), involves one-on-one interviews, as well as observations in physical education classes and weblogging.

“Often boys who don’t feel at ease are terrified to go to the locker room or class, fearing they will be mocked for their size, their lack of athletic prowess, or that they will fall victim to homophobia.”

Test Scores Go Up with Best Friends of Different Race

Having a best friend of a different race can make a big difference in the academic achievement of black and Hispanic high school students, according to a University of Arkansas study.

Researchers led by education professor Rebecca A. Newgent used the Educational Longitudinal Study from 2002, a nationally representative database of 13,134 high school students, to examine the effects of best friends on academic achievement of minority students. The results were published in a recent issue of Professional School Counselor.

The researchers suggested that school counselors “could create opportunities for students to interact with other students from different racial backgrounds in the hopes that they might develop friendships over time.” Peer mentoring programs could be one way to introduce struggling students from various racial groups to academically successful students of other racial groups.

Earlier education research has looked at the importance of friendship to a sense of belonging in school, to academic achievement and to expectations of going on to college. Newgent and colleagues Sang Min Lee and Ashley F. Daniel focused on interracial friendships and academic achievement, something few studies have addressed.

“Sometimes researchers have been reluctant to ask sensitive questions,” Newgent said. “We asked the hard questions because we thought it was important to know what the data says to know what to do about it.”

After dividing student data into two groups between those whose best friends were of the same race and those of a different race, the researchers used scores in standardized tests of math and reading to determine academic achievement. Overall, test scores improved when minority students had a best friend of another race.

Black and Hispanic students with best friends from other races had significantly higher math and reading test scores than did those with best friends of the same race. For Asians, having a best friend of a different race was associated with higher reading scores. Native Americans with a best friend of a different race had higher math test scores.

“Our research confirms the understanding that every culture has something to offer,” Newgent said. “You learn more from people who are different than from people who are the same as you and echo your ideas.”

More research is needed to better understand what specific school programs might be most useful. Newgent noted that while the database used is an excellent resource, there were limitations in what information could be gleaned from the questions asked. Future research, she suggested, could investigate how the race of a best friend relates to academic achievement and the effect of peer groups or close circles of friends rather than simply individual best friends.

Making a Difference?: The Effects of Teach for America in High School

Teach for America (TFA) selects and places graduates from the most competitive colleges as teachers in the lowest-performing schools in the country. This paper is the first study that examines TFA effects in high school. The authors use rich longitudinal data from North Carolina and estimate TFA effects through cross-subject student and school fixed effects models. The authors find that TFA teachers tend to have a positive effect on high school student test scores relative to non-TFA teachers, including those who are certified infield. Such effects exceed the impact of additional years of experience and are particularly strong in math and science.

Full paper: http://www.caldercenter.org/PDF/411642_Teach_America.pdf

Picture This: Explaining Science Through Drawings

Undergrads master scientific concepts by explaining them to high schoolers through drawings

If a picture is worth a thousand words, creating one can have as much value to the illustrator as to the intended audience. This is the case with "Picturing to Learn," a project in which college students create pencil drawings to explain scientific concepts to a typical high school student. The National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Undergraduate Education, provides support for this effort.

What sets this project apart is its emphasis on inviting students to draw in order to explain scientific concepts to others. The act of creating pencil drawings calls into play a different kind of thought process that forces students to break down larger concepts into their constitutive pieces. This helps clarify the underlying science--from Brownian motion (the movement of particles suspended in a liquid or gas and the impact of raising the temperature of the liquid), to chemical bonding, to the quantum behavior of a particle in a box. In the same assignment, students are asked to evaluate their own drawings, which helps them identify and appreciate critical components.

"Visually explaining concepts can be a powerful learning tool," says Felice Frankel, principal investigator at Harvard University. "The other important part of this is that the teacher immediately identifies student misconceptions."

The project brings together five institutions: Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Duke University, Roxbury Community College and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. The students involved are undergraduates studying physics, chemistry and biology.

Each drawing assignment asks students to explain a science concept or process. For example, in addressing the question of how to identify which of two compounds has the higher boiling point, students are encouraged to be creative and to consider a variety of formats, including cartoons and stick figures. Students are also told, "In your drawing, strive for clarity in visually representing the concepts of bond type and strength."

Many of the drawings bring scientific concepts to life in interesting and unexpected ways. They also bring any misconceptions immediately to light so that professors can address them with students.

"I've been surprised and very pleased about the enthusiasm and excitement we've seen in some very renowned science professors," says Rebecca Rosenberg, the project manager and a former secondary school science teacher. "They could have pooh-poohed this idea, but instead, they're seeing how it helps inform their teaching."

Four Harvard physics majors will take their work to the next level on April 12, when they travel to New York City for a workshop with design students at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). The idea is to engage design students in conversation with science students so that each can learn from the other. In a previous workshop which involved students from SVA and MIT, the participants created an anthropomorphic metaphor, where "little guys" representing particles interacted with each other. As the students drew out the metaphor, they ultimately realized that this model wouldn't work. They scrapped it and started over, in the process developing a better understanding of both the concept and how to communicate it to others.

An eventual goal of the project is to expand it to students in middle school, high school and graduate school. In parallel, this approach is of growing interest to educators.

"This project promotes widespread adoption of these methods through workshops and publications," says Hal Richtol, NSF program manager. "Clearly it offers a useful teaching tool to anyone teaching science at any level."

The students' work, and a description of the project, is accessible at http://www.picturingtolearn.org/.

School Segregation under Color-Blind Jurisprudence: The Case of North Carolina

This paper uses administrative data for the public K-12 schools of North Carolina to measure racial segregation in the public schools of North Carolina. Using data for the 2005/06 school year, the authors update previous calculations that measure segregation in terms of unevenness in racial enrollment patterns both between schools and within schools. They find that classroom segregation generally increased between 2000/01 and 2005/06, continuing, albeit at a slightly slower rate, the trend observed over the preceding six years. Segregation increased sharply in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, which introduced a new choice plan in 2002. Over the same period, racial and economic disparities in teacher quality widened in that district.

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/1001152_school_segregation.pdf

Public School Choice and Integration: Evidence from Durham, North Carolina

This paper uses evidence from Durham, North Carolina to examine the impact of school choice on racial and class-based segregation across schools. The findings suggest that school choice increases segregation. Furthermore, the effects of choice on segregation by class are larger than the effects on segregation by race. These results are consistent with the theoretical argument—developed in sociology and economics literature—that the segregating choices of students from advantaged backgrounds are likely to outweigh any integrating choices by disadvantaged students.

Full paper:

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/1001151_school_choice.pdf

Comparison Between NAEP and State Assessment Results

In late January through early March of 2003, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) grade 4 and 8 reading and mathematics assessments were administered to representative samples of students in approximately 100 public schools in each state. The results of these assessments were announced in November 2003. Each state also carried out its own reading and mathematics assessments in the 2002-2003 school year, most including grades 4 and 8. This report addresses the question of whether the results published by NAEP are comparable to the results published by individual state testing programs.

OBJECTIVES: Comparisons to address the following four questions are based purely on results of testing and do not compare the content of NAEP and state assessments. How do states’ achievement standards compare with each other and with NAEP? Are NAEP and state assessment results correlated across schools? Do NAEP and state assessments agree on achievement trends over time? Do NAEP and state assessments agree on achievement gaps between subgroups? How do states’ achievement standards compare with each other and with NAEP?

Both NAEP and State Education Agencies have set achievement, or performance, standards for reading and have identified test score criteria for determining the percentages of students who meet the standards. Most states have multiple performance standards, and these can be categorized into a primary standard, which, since the passage of No Child Left Behind, is generally the standard used for reporting adequate yearly progress (AYP), and standards that are above or below the primary standard. Most states refer to their primary standard as proficient or meets the standard. By matching percentages of students reported to be meeting state standards in schools participating in NAEP with the distribution of performance of students in those schools on NAEP, cutpoints on the NAEP scale can be identified that are equivalent to the scores required to meet a state’s standards.

Reading Report

http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008474

Math Report

http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008475

Characteristics of the 100 Largest Public Elementary and Secondary School Districts in the United States: 2004-05

This annual report provides basic information from the Common Core of Data about the nation’s largest public school districts in the 2004-05 school year. The data include such characteristics as the numbers of students and teachers, number of high school completers and the averaged freshman graduation rate, and revenues and expenditures.

Several findings were: These 100 largest districts enrolled 23 percent of all public school students, and employed 20 percent of all public school teachers, in 2004-05. The 100 largest districts produced 20 percent of all high school completers (both diploma and other completion credential recipients) in 2003-04.

Across these districts, the averaged freshman graduation rate was 70.2 percent. Four states -- California, Florida, Texas, and New York -- accounted for more than half of the 100 largest public school districts. Current per-pupil expenditures in fiscal year 2003 ranged from a low of $4,351 in the Puerto Rico School District to a high of $17,337 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Report:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008335

Interim Report on School Choice and Supplemental Education Services

Report is fourth in a series on implementation of No Child Left Behind

The U.S. Department of Education has released an interim report on the state and local implementation of No Child Left Behind's public school choice and supplemental educational services options during the 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years.

The report found that the number of students participating in both options, especially supplemental educational services, has increased substantially. However, only a small proportion of eligible students took advantage of the options available to them. In the 2004-05 school year, one percent of the nearly 6.2 million eligible students participated in the school choice option and 17 percent of the 1.8 million eligible students participated in the supplemental educational services option.

According to the report, notable issues contributing to the low participation were that choice options were not always made available, particularly at the middle and high school levels, as well as problems communicating with parents. A parent survey conducted in a subsample of eight large urban districts found that only 27 percent of eligible parents said they had been notified about the school choice option and only 53 percent said they knew their child was eligible for supplemental services.

The study found that the quality of parent notification materials varied: some were easy to understand and presented the options favorably, while others were confusing, used technical language, or discouraged use of the options. Almost half of the districts (49 percent) notified parents about the school choice option after the start of the school year - and districts that notified parents earlier had higher participation rates.

Other key findings from the report include:

· In a sample of nine large urban districts, students participating in the Title I school choice option had similar prior achievement, on average, as all eligible students, indicating that the program did not simply "cream" the most advantaged students. For supplemental services, participating students had lower prior achievement than eligible students who did not participate, indicating that the program is reaching a more disadvantaged population.

· In the nine urban districts, African-American students had the highest participation rates in supplemental educational services; limited English proficient students and students with disabilities also had above-average participation rates. For school choice, the highest participation rates were for white and African-American students. Students who participated in school choice transferred from schools with below average achievement levels to schools with higher-than-average achievement. Students of all races chose schools that were more racially balanced

· Most districts required to offer Title I school choice and supplemental services reported that they did offer these options to eligible students; however, districts were more likely to provide these options at the elementary level than at the middle and high school levels.

· Parents surveyed in eight of the large urban districts reported satisfaction with the school choice and supplemental services options.

· Parents who chose to enroll their child in school choice or supplemental services most commonly indicated that the reason was to provide better educational opportunities for their child. For school choice, the most common reason was that parents thought the quality of teaching at the new school was better. For supplemental services, the most common reason was that the tutoring was offered in subjects where the child needed extra help. In addition, over half chose supplemental services because their child's teacher thought the child needed the extra help.

An important goal of No Child Left Behind is to provide additional educational options to parents of students in low-performing Title I schools, specifically the opportunities to move their child to a higher-performing school or enroll their child in free tutoring services. The report is part of an effort to examine the effects of the No Child Left Behind Act, and draws on the findings of two federally funded studies, the "National Longitudinal Study of No Child Left Behind" and the "Study of State Implementation of Accountability of Teacher Quality Under No Child Left Behind."

State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, Volume IV - Title I School Choice and Supplemental Education Services: Interim Report, is available at www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html#title

Study Finds Curriculums and Training Programs Are Not Keeping Pace with Current Workforce Attitudes

An overwhelming majority of surveyed school superintendents who educate future workers and employers who hire them agree that creativity is increasingly important in U.S. workplaces, according to key findings from a report by The Conference Board and Americans for the Arts, in partnership with the American Association of School Administrators.

Ready to Innovate: Are Educators and Executives Aligned on the Creative Readiness of the U.S. Workforce? states that 99% of the 155 surveyed school superintendents and 97% of the 89 surveyed employers believe that arts training — and, to a lesser degree, communications studies — are crucial to developing creativity. Yet, there is a fundamental gap between understanding this truth and putting it into meaningful practice. Findings indicate that most high schools and employers provide such training and studies only on an elective or "as needed" basis.

"While creativity is recognized as a critical ingredient to success in the workplace, schools and businesses need to re-examine their curriculums and training programs to determine the most effective way to increase the emphasis on developing this skill. That's the only true way to effect change and turn out better qualified workers with more creative talents."

DEFINING CREATIVITY THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE

Both the superintendents and employers surveyed agree that the ability to identify new patterns of behavior or new combinations of actions and integration of knowledge across different disciplines are foremost in demonstrating creativity. Other responses received reveal a lack of alignment. For example, employers say problem identification and articulation are the most important talents indicating creativity. School superintendents rank this skill only 9th. While these superintendents rate problem-solving the highest, employers rank it 8th.

These discrepancies bolster the view that while schools teach students how to solve problems put before them, the business sector wants workers who can identify the problems in the first place.

In addition, 70% of superintendents presume employers seek out "creative thinkers" over "technically skilled" individuals. Employers, as a group, are evenly split (49/51 respectively).

HOW TO IDENTIFY CREATIVE WORKERS

Frustratingly, 85% of employers concerned with hiring creative people say they can't find the applicants they seek. These employers use job interviews as their primary tool for assessing creativity and they mostly look for spontaneity and creative responses to hypothetical scenarios.

Eighty-three percent of educators and 61% of employers responded that they feel responsible for fostering creativity. However, only three from a list of 12 creativity-promoting educational activities/experiences are part of the curriculum in half of the surveyed schools. And of a comparable list of eight employee activities/training options, less than one in ten employers surveyed said they provide seven of them to all their employees. In addition, only four of the eight options are offered even on an "as needed" basis by more than half the employers.

The situation isn't much better among those employers who cite creativity as a primary hiring criterion. In this group, 80% provide the three activities/training options that they say best develop creativity — working in departments other than their own, managerial coaching, and mentoring — only on an "as needed" basis.

In summary, this new research shows that both businesses and schools recognize the critical role of creativity as a workforce skill, and both groups accept the role they have in fostering it. Both also recognize that arts-training is a key way to foster creativity. Yet despite this recognition, most schools do not include arts training as a mandatory part of the curriculum, and most businesses provide creativity-fostering training only to very few employees. With this growing recognition of the role a creative workforce has on the global competitiveness of American business, both business and education leaders need to examine what changes can be made to more widely foster these skills in our current — and especially our future — workers.

Full report:

http://www.conference-board.org/publications/describe.cfm?id=1452

Findings from the Pilot Teacher Compensation Survey: School Year 2005-06

Description:

This brief publication contains summary data from the research and development effort to collect individual salary and demographic data on public school teachers. Seven states participated in this effort: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Data from full-time public school teachers who teach at only one school were included in the analysis. Median salaries and counts for different groupings by experience, age, race, and gender are presented.

Selected Findings: School Year 2005–06

• The mean base salaries1 of full-time public school teachers in the seven states participating in the Pilot Teacher Compensation Survey ranged from $34,631 in Oklahoma to $44, 777 per year in Colorado. The median base salaries of full-time public school teachers ranged between $33,516 in Oklahoma and $42,676 in Colorado (table 1). The median total salary for full-time teachers ranged from $34,973 in Oklahoma to $42,500 in Arkansas for school year 2005–06.

• The median level of teaching experience ranged from 8 years in Arizona to 15 years in Iowa. The median teacher age was between 43 and 45 in each of the states reporting these data.

• The number of teachers that held master’s degrees as their highest degree varied across the seven states. The percentage of teachers holding master’s degrees ranged from approximately 28 percent in Iowa and Oklahoma to almost 50 percent in Missouri. Over the seven states, the majority of teachers (58 percent) held a bachelor’s degree as their highest degree.

• Teachers holding master’s degrees earned more than teachers who held a bachelor’s degree. For example, the median base salary for teachers with a master’s degree was $51,077 per annum in Colorado, while the median base salary for teachers with a bachelor’s degree was $36,702.

• The proportion of teachers with one year of teaching experience (teachers hired at the beginning of the reported school year) ranged from 4.4 percent in Iowa to 10.9 percent in Arizona. The median base salary for teachers with one year of experience ranged from $27,864 in Iowa to $33,940 in Florida.

• Full-time teachers 66 years old or older comprised 1.0 percent of public school full-time teachers in Florida and 0.9 percent in Arkansas compared to 0.4 percent in Iowa and 0.5 percent in Colorado. In three of the five states reporting age data, the highest proportion of teachers were 51 to 55 years old; Florida had equal proportions of teachers (14 percent) in the 26-30 and 51-55 age groups. In the fifth state, Colorado, the second highest proportion occurred in the 51-55 age group.

• The majority of teachers in the seven reporting states were White, with the smallest percentage of White teachers (74 percent) reported for Florida.

• More than three quarters of the teachers across six of the seven reporting states were female, with the highest percentage of male teachers (27 percent) reported for Colorado. The largest difference between males and females was $1,027 in Arizona.

Full report:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2008/2008440.pdf

Additional Learning Opportunities in Rural Areas

The Center for American Progress has released a new report entitled “Additional Learning Opportunities in Rural Areas.” The report, by Roy Forbes, takes a look at an often-overlooked aspect of public education – the troubles of rural districts.

Rural, low-income students are more at risk of becoming high school dropouts than their city and suburban peers. This fact alone should be a sufficient reason to address the challenges facing rural schools that serve low-income areas, but the negative findings do not stop with that one statistic. Students eligible for free and reduced-price lunches do not score as well on assessments as other students, and students attending rural schools do not perform as well as students who attend suburban schools. Rural schools, especially those serving low-income areas, need the nation’s attention, but currently they are not receiving the attention they deserve.

If educational achievement gaps are to be closed in this country it is just as important to address challenges in rural areas as urban and some suburban areas. One promising strategy that should be considered by policymakers at every level as they respond to these challenges is the expansion of learning time for all students attending schools with large concentrations of low-income students. A comprehensive approach to school reform that adds time to school days, weeks, and/or years for all students can result in significant learning gains. These so called “expanded learning time,” or ELT programs, when appropriately implemented, have obvious demonstrable advantages over other programs that provide additional learning time services. The problem is, ELT programs have proven difficult to put into place in rural areas.

Rural schools in low-income areas are usually resource-poor—because of weak tax bases and in some states because of state education funding formulas that treat rural areas inequitably. Even the federal Title I educational program funding formula disadvantages many rural states, particularly in the South, Southwest, and West. This translates into serious funding challenges.

Rural schools also face additional challenges related to the availability of high quality instructional staff, access to professional development opportunities, expertise in fund development, and parental engagement. The upshot: Increasing the number of hours in the school day and/or the number of weeks in the school year is not currently feasible in rural areas without significant new investments by state and/or federal governments, no matter how desirable.

Fortunately, there are programs that are successfully providing additional learning services for rural students with the greatest challenges in a limited number of rural, low-income areas. Afterschool, beforeschool, intersession, weekend, holiday, and summer learning programs are being successfully operated in rural areas. Referred to throughout this paper in a variety of ways, these “extra” or “additional” learning opportunities or programs are academically focused and proving to be effective in serving the needs of students who require more than what is available through the regular school day.

Still, it must be acknowledged that these kinds of additional schooling options for low-income parents in rural areas are much rarer for them than their non-rural peers. There are exceptions (see box, page 2), but in most rural areas expanded learning time programs that lengthen the school day, week or year for all students in the school are virtually non-existent. Similarly, charter schools are scarce, the number of service providers for federally funded tutoring programs for low-income schools is limited, and the promise of virtual courses has not yet been realized in most rural places. What extra learning opportunities there are usually exist in afterschool programs serving relatively small proportions of students.

Although limited in rural areas, these voluntary programs can have a positive impact. The keys to success are similar to those of best practices in non-rural areas. They include:

· Strong, committed leadership and quality instructional staff

· Adult-to-student ratios at levels that are low enough to make realistic the development of supportive staff/student relationships

· Emphasis on making learning engaging and exciting by providing academic- based enrichment activities while assisting students in meeting achievement standards.

These learning opportunities provide a means of reaching students that regular during-school-time programs are not effectively serving and could be the basis for programs that lengthen the school day, week, or year for all students.

These additional learning opportunities in low-income, rural areas help many students and families. In the following pages, this paper will examine the essential characteristics of successful additional learning programs and then detail where the author saw those characteristics in action in select programs in school districts in the Carolinas and Iowa. The paper will then explore the possible federal, state, and private sources of funding to replicate these kinds of programs across rural America.

Before any discussion of the successes and challenges associated with such opportunities can begin, however, we must first start with an understanding of what is meant by rural. Rural is not an easy concept.

Download the report:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/pdf/rural_education.pdf

Girls in sports at record high, yet many not active enough, U of Minnesota report says

A report released to be released on April 14 by the University of Minnesota’s Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport shows that girls are participating in sports in record numbers, but their participation in physical activity outside of organized sports is declining, especially as they move from childhood into adolescence.

The report, Developing Physically Active Girls: An Evidence-based Multidisciplinary Approach, summarizes the most recent research pertaining to the physical, psychological, social and cultural benefits girls derive from participation in sport and physical activity, the barriers that prevent them from reaching their full potential and the kinds of environments in which girls learn how to develop and foster the best parts of themselves both on and off the playing fields.

“The research within the report confirms that many good things are happening when it comes to girls and physical activity. Girls are participating in organized sports more than ever and at all levels -- from organized youth sports, to interscholastic sports and up through Olympic competition,” said Nicole LaVoi, researcher and associate director of the Tucker Center and a report author.

The report outlines the benefits girls’ reap from physical activity such as:

· Regular physical activity can improve health and reduce girls’ risk of obesity and chronic diseases such as Type II diabetes, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease.

· Girls’ participation in physical activity can result in positive youth development, including social, psychological and motor skill benefits.

· Athletic girls perform better academically and have lower dropout rates than do their non-athletic counterparts.

· Girls participate not only for competitive reasons, but to get in shape, socialize with their peers, develop physical skills and to have fun.

However, despite the breadth of knowledge specific to girls’ physical activity and the variety of positive outcomes that can accrue through participation, many barriers, stereotypes and gender inequities are firmly in place that limit girls, according to the report.

“Poverty substantially limits many girls’ access to, and participation in, physical activity and sport, especially for girls of color who are overrepresented in lower socioeconomic groups. So while some girls are physically active, many girls fail to meet minimal standards of physical activity needed to accrue developmental and health benefits, or worse, they are completely sedentary. There remains a great deal of work left to be done,” LaVoi said.

The report also found:

· Girls’ participation rates in all types of physical activities consistently lag behind those of boys and girls’ dropout rates are higher.

· Girls’ experiences are shaped by the quality and expertise of the adults who make decisions, manage, govern, deliver and coach physical activity programming, many of whom have minimal -- if any -- formal training.

· Outdated, stereotypical standards of femininity and masculinity continue to influence the extent to which girls participate in or shun physical activity.

· Female athletes continue to be trivialized through the popular media’s widespread sexualization of women.

· Traditional models of physical education organized around competition, team sports, power, strength, aggression and which focuses on the “motor elite” rather than skill development, disadvantage girls (and boys) who are less skilled to begin with, which may contribute to a lack of enjoyment and a shunning of lifelong participation in physical activity.

What can be done to ensure that all girls have opportunities to increase physical activity?

“The United States as a whole -- from parents and coaches to school administrators and community leaders to policy makers -- needs to make a commitment to eliminating the barriers girls in this nation face when it comes to engaging in sports and physical activity,” said Mary Jo Kane, director of the Tucker Center. “Physical activity is not an ‘add-on’ but rather is a core value and principle for healthy and effective living.”

The Tucker Center report is designed to provide a road map that puts the nation on the path to ensuring that every girl has ample opportunity to fully engage in sport and physical activity. “Often, research done by sports scholars sits on the shelves and practitioners -- such as coaches, parks and recreation directors, and physical education teachers -- view the research as having no practical application,” said University of Minnesota Associate Professor Diane Wiese-Bjornstal, another of the report’s authors. “This report aims at bridging the gap between theory and practice by detailing the best sports and activity programs for girls and how to implement those programs.”

Full report:

http://cehd.umn.edu/tuckercenter/projects/TCRR/2007-Tucker-Center-Research-Report.pdf

Longitudinal Portrait of One NYC Public School Class

Fewer than four out of ten students had sequential grade promotion from first to eighth grade, report finds

The Institute for Education and Social Policy (IESP) at New York University this week released a report that suggests that, for the students who entered first grade in New York City public schools in the1995-96 school year, standard academic progress was the exception rather than the rule. The report, “From One to Eight: A Longitudinal Portrait of the First Grade Class of 1995-1996,” describes the academic pathways of more than 86,000 students during their first eight years in the New York City public school system. Using student-level data supplied by the New York City Department of Education, the researchers sought to answer such questions as: who stays and who leaves? Who is held back? And what are the outcomes for each of these groups?

Among the report’s findings are:

· Less than six of ten students who enrolled in first grade in 1995-96 and were not in full-time special education, were still attending NYC public schools eight years later.

· Fewer than four out of ten students had sequential grade promotion from first to eighth grade.

· Almost one in ten students had been retained at least once.

· Among exiting students, three out of ten had been retained or were enrolled one grade below their expected grade upon exit.

· The proportion of white and Asian students among those who made standard academic progress was higher than among other ethnic groups.

· Discontinuous enrollment and being retained was associated with poor academic outcomes, including lower attendance and lower test scores.

The report notes that the primary school years of almost two-thirds of children who begin first grade in NYC will include retention, participation in special education, and/or enrollment in private schools and/or schools in other school districts.

Second, given the limited number of the first grade cohort who were enrolled as eighth graders eight years later, the success or failure of policies and programs provided in the early grades and aimed at improving high school readiness cannot be measured by the performance of the eighth grade class as a whole.

“The study reveals the importance of inter-district mobility and, thus, the importance of state funding for early childhood interventions,” said Amy Ellen Schwartz, director of IESP and professor of public policy, economics, and education at NYU. “A substantial portion of eighth graders will have entered New York City schools after the first grade. Student attrition means that a significant amount of the impact of early grade programs will be felt in schools other than those in the NYC district where students are ultimately enrolled.”

Finally, while virtually all of the retained students are poor, highlighting the link between poverty and academic success, demographic differences between students who exit prior to high school and those who remain are, on average, relatively small. There are, however, consistent differences in their performance on standardized tests. Exiting students earn lower scores than those who stay; this disparity is larger at higher grades. Thus, the evidence does not support the conventional hypothesis that the “best” students leave.

Full report:

http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/uploads/001/402/IESPBrief_from%20one%20to%20eight.pdf

Educators Call for Major Overhaul of California's School Finance System; New Report Released by Berkeley Law's Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity

A new report calling for a major overhaul of the state's K-12 school finance system has been released by the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity (Warren Institute) at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Berkeley Law). The new report, "Getting Beyond the Facts: Reforming California School Finance," offers concrete suggestions for improving public education in California through a simplified, equitable, and transparent finance system.

The report, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, builds on studies conducted last year by Stanford University's Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice, which found the state's school finance system "fundamentally unfair."

"Getting Beyond the Facts" co-author Goodwin Liu, assistant law professor at Berkeley Law, says the finance system is "flawed" and fails to help students-and schools-reach performance goals set by the state. Low-income students in high-poverty areas don't get adequate resources, says Liu, and nearly all students "suffer from a system that fails to support academic achievement."

School districts receive revenues through complex formulas that, as a whole, don't take into account student needs or the regional differences in the cost of providing education. According to the report, the proliferation of about 80 different student aid programs generates costly compliance burdens, onerous paperwork, and regulatory overload that limit the ability of school officials to meet local needs.

In addition to Liu, "Getting Beyond the Facts" co-authors include Stanford Professor Emeritus Michael Kirst, former president of the California State Board of Education; and Alan Bersin, a former California Secretary of Education. The educators propose a new school funding framework based on four principles.

First, revenue allocations should be guided by student needs. Dollars should be allocated so that all students, including English learners, low-income students, and students with disabilities, can meet state standards for academic achievement.

Second, revenue allocations should be adjusted for regional cost differences. California is a large state with tremendous diversity. Education dollars need to have the same purchasing power from region to region, especially when it comes to hiring and retaining high-quality teachers.

Third, the system as a whole needs to be simple, transparent, and easily understood by legislators, school officials, and the public.

Fourth, reforms should apply to new money going forward, without reducing any district's current funding level.

"Our plan drastically revises how the state distributes money to local school districts," says co-author Michael Kirst. "It provides more resources and flexibility for schools to meet the accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act and state laws."

To implement the core principles, the co-authors propose a reformed finance system with these components:

- Base Funding: Each school district would receive a set amount of money to buy books, maintain facilities, and hire qualified teachers and staff.

- Special Education: The plan would seek to equalize special education aid across the state.

- Targeted Funding: A single funding program would direct greater resources to school districts with higher concentrations of disadvantaged low-income and non-English speaking students.

- Regional Cost Adjustment: All funds would be adjusted by a regional wage index to make sure that education dollars have the same purchasing power across the state.

- Hold Harmless Condition: Districts would not lose money under the reformed system; reforms would be phased in gradually as new money became available.

The state faces a 10 percent across-the-board education budget cut this year. But the report cites state projections showing that a decline in enrollment will make more money available per pupil over the next five years. "There will be new money in the system," says Liu, "so we have to reform the system now if we want that money to make a difference in the future."

Report co-author Alan Bersin says this proposal provides a timely backdrop for discussion of broader reform issues. "A lean budget gives lawmakers and the education coalition the chance to hammer out a school finance plan that's ready to go when new money fills the coffers," says Bersin.

The full report:

http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/ewi/ca_school_finance.html

WHO WILL SAVE AMERICA'S URBAN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS?

America's urban Catholic schools are in crisis. Over 1300 of them have shut down since 1990, mostly in our cities. As a result, some 300,000 students have been displaced--double the number affected by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. These children have been forced to attend other schools at an estimated cost to taxpayers of more than $20 billion.

Fordham's latest report, Who Will Save America's Urban Catholic Schools?, which includes a comprehensive survey of the attitudes of U.S. Catholics and the broader public toward inner-city Catholic schools, examines this crisis and offers several suggestions for arresting and perhaps reversing this trend in the interests of better education. By looking at seven case studies, the report shows that in a few cities, such as Wichita, urban Catholic education is making a comeback. However, in other cities like Milwaukee and Washington, D.C., despite public voucher programs, enrollment continues to decline and/or schools are being closed or converted into charters. In other words, the results are mixed--and the future is complicated.

The full report:

http://ce.edexcellence.net/dsp_emailhandler.cfm?eid=69418&uid=42295

Billions at Stake as Coalition of Educators and Administrators Shakes Up the 403(b) Retirement Marketplace

Other States Eye Model Plan as Deadline for Compliance with New IRS Regulations Nears

Billions of dollars may be at stake for the 90 or more investment companies that currently offer tax-sheltered 403(b) accounts to Florida educators, as a first-of-its-kind “preferred provider” program nears adoption in Florida’s 67 school districts.

The program is sending shockwaves through the investment marketplace, as school districts across the nation struggle to meet new IRS regulations that take effect next January 1. These new regulations not only require significantly greater oversight and monitoring by the districts, but invalidate all current plans not in compliance with the new regulations. The change potentially affects more than 1 million Florida educators and their families.

“It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Florida is the incubator for a change of this magnitude,” said Wayne Blanton, Executive Director of the Florida School Boards Association. “A plan of this caliber has been a long time coming for school employees. We’ve got the best vendors offering the best products at the best prices. In terms of shaking up the marketplace, on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rank this a much-needed 11.”

Dubbed the “Model Plan,” the five investment companies selected by the state’s “Big Four” education associations -- the Florida Education Association, the Florida School Boards Association, the Florida Association of District School Superintendents and the Florida Association of School Administrators – were vetted by two independent consulting firms, the association representatives and a group of school district risk managers.

The state’s K-12 teachers and education staff professionals (ESPs) currently contribute about $380 million annually to their 403(b) retirement accounts. The balance in these accounts is said to be in the billions of dollars in Florida alone. District employees will not be permitted to make any new contributions to unauthorized plans after the January 1 deadline.

“Educators, and the school districts themselves, are sometimes overwhelmed by the sheer number of investment plans they have available to them and may not necessarily have the time or resources to discern which offer the best value,” said Blanton. “The new IRS regulations present a golden opportunity for school districts to approach investment plans with a simpler, more cost-effective process that offers the highest quality investment plans.”

Florida’s education associations were among the first in the nation to recognize the impact of the pending regulations. Coming together under the umbrella of the Independent Benefits Council (IBC), the associations set an ambitious agenda:

· Development of a Model Plan that would meet the IRS requirements and decrease or eliminate the cost of compliance to local school boards.

· Begin with a clean slate and select a handful of “Best in Class” investment companies that would be authorized to offer products to local school districts.

· Negotiate favorable rates for teachers and ESPs, who have been paying markedly higher fees than other professionals.

· Ensure that the plans offered to teachers would offer a wide range of investment options.

The school boards in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties soon will be deciding whether to adopt the Model Plan, to amend and adopt the Model Plan, or to go it alone. A great deal is at stake for educators, as the Model Plan is predicted to put billions of dollars into their investment accounts over the next 20-30 years that otherwise would have been paid in vendor fees.

While some of the larger districts may have had the clout to negotiate lower rates than smaller districts, no existing plan in any of Florida’s 67 districts offers teachers and ESPs anything comparable to the Model Plan.

All five of the Best in Class vendors, which include AIG Retirement, AXA, PlanMember Financial Corporation, American Century Investments, and Waddell & Reed, have signed Letters of Commitment, which adopting school districts can rely on and reference in executing individual agreements with Model Plan vendors. Commitments include:

· Providing the best plan available in Florida K-12.

· Upgrading all existing contracts to newer, enhanced products.

· Selling only the products they bid under the Model Plan (no bait and switch).

· Reduced fees to all adopting school districts as statewide plan assets grow.

· Guaranteed rates for three years.

Additionally, the Best in Class vendors demonstrated the ability to provide superior performance in the following categories: plan conversion and implementation, administrative services, account administration services, investment options, participant services and expense charges. They also were evaluated on company experience. During the evaluation process, each of the Best in Class vendors provided full fee disclosure broken down by proposed investment and were scored on their average total expense ratios.

“This is the first time in the nation that a plan this comprehensive and with such outstanding terms will be offered to educators,” said Tom Herndon, IBC spokesperson and former Executive Director of the State Board of Administration. “More of educators’ dollars – perhaps billions more in Florida, alone – will be available to them when they retire.”

For additional information, visit the Model Plan Web site, www.themodelplan.com.