Education News in Alabama
June 19 , 2007 (archive)
By Sallie Owen
NEW EDUCATION BUDGET MAKES MANY KEY INVESTMENTS IN TEACHING, LEARNING
Legislators steered money to many key investments in the Education Trust Fund budget for the next fiscal year. For public schools, lawmakers increased spending on important items such as core operating expenses and transportation, and they supported a number of strategic priorities to strengthen teaching and learning.
Some highlights of the state's $4.5 billion in K-12 spending:
- 7 percent pay raise for all education employees. Starting pay for new teachers will top $36,000.
- An increase for high-quality prekindergarten.
- First-time funding for two recommendations from the Congress on School Leadership aimed at strengthening school principals
- Support for two recommendations from the Governor's Commission on Quality Teaching: a new statewide mentoring program for new teachers, plus scholarships and other efforts to recruit teachers.
- $5 million to reward schools showing major gains in student learning.
- Increases for distance learning in high schools and Advanced Placement programs.
- First-ever state funding for gifted education.
- Increases for the Alabama Reading Initiative and the Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative.
- More money to make detailed data more easily available to schools.
- Additional state funding for special education, physical education, math and science teachers in middle schools.
- Support for a dropout prevention pilot.
Find "The Top 10 for 2007: Investments in Teaching and Learning" at www.aplusala.org to learn how many of these investments are expected to make a difference.
STATE TO BORROW $ FOR SCHOOL FACILITIES
Alabama's K-12 schools are slated to get $691 million from a $1.071 bond issue. The money will help meet $4.3 billion in facilities needs.
RESEARCH FINDING: DIPLOMAS COUNT 2007
Challenging news: A new report from Education Week finds that today's high school graduates will need at least some college to gain access to decent-paying jobs.
The report looks at graduation rates across the nation too, and Alabama's showing is predictably poor. Alabama's children are far less likely to graduate from high school on time than their peers around the country (though Native American boys are more likely to graduate here than anywhere else).
Bottom line, America is struggling to improve both graduation rates and work readiness, and states in the South and states with lots of poor children have the most work to do. More than half of Alabama's schoolchildren qualify for federal meal subsidies.
New and useful: Researchers have analyzed job and education data to gain an understanding of how much education is generally needed to attain a desired standard of living. Most people in job zone three (median $36,000 nationally) have at least some college.
Plus there are revealing maps and mapping tools online. One shows concentrations of higher-paying jobs, indicating that higher-paying jobs are harder to find in six counties along the Alabama-Mississippi line (from Franklin County south to Sumter County) than in much of the rest of the state, even other Black Belt counties.
What's being done: Because of inadequate data and non-standard definitions, it is nearly impossible to know the true graduation rate for a school, school system or state. But Alabama and many other states will be using the same methods by 2009. The state is investing in things that will help boost the graduation rate -- such as prekindergarten; the Alabama Reading Initiative; the Alabama Math, Science & Technology Initiative; and help for students who don't pass all parts of the graduation exam right away.
http://snipr.com/diplomascount07
FREE ACCESS TO DIPLOMAS COUNT
It's open house time at http://www.edweek.org , the source of Diplomas Count and much more about public education. Free access lasts through June 25.
WORTH REPEATING
"Alabama is now more competitive than ever with neighboring states for teacher salaries. Alabama moves ahead of Florida and Tennessee for average teacher salaries, and markedly closes the gap with Georgia."
-- June 18 issue of the Alabama School Journal, the official publication of the Alabama Education Association
STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION UPDATE:
SPECIAL ED & VENDING MACHINES
The Alabama State Board of Education met June 14. All members except the governor were present.
The board unanimously approved new rules for special education services, and members urged officials to resolve uneven compliance with a rule giving parents access to their children's records. The board adopted several commendations (see Examples of Excellence), and members voted in tougher standards for school vending machines. ("High-calorie drinks banned from schools," http://www.tiny.cc/softdrinks)
A teacher education program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham was approved, and the state superintendent briefed the board on next year's budget, recently approved by the Legislature.
WHERE IS EDUCATION IN THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS?
America is falling behind in preparing students for jobs, for college and for life, and the country's presidential candidates need to pay attention, according to http://www.edin08.com . Strong American Schools, an organization backed by Bill and Melinda Gates among others, says Americans need to focus on three priorities: strong education standards, effective teachers in every classroom, and more time and support for learning.
EXAMPLES OF EXCELLENCE
- Call him "Most Likely to Get Hired" – Sosthenes Sealy graduated this year from R.E. Lee High School in Montgomery with perfect attendance since preschool, which comes to more than 2,000 days of school in a row. He's headed to Alabama A&M to study business and marketing.
- 'Unprecedented success' – Anna F. Booth Elementary in Bayou La Batre (Mobile County Schools) won a prestigious National School Change Award, which recognizes underperforming schools that have become exemplary schools. Only six schools are recognized each year. Principal Lisa Williams credits the funding from the federal Reading First program and support from state education officials for Booth's "unprecedented success."
Read more about Booth Elementary (formerly named Alba Elementary) in this publication from the Alabama Best Practices Center. http://snipr.com/1ndrc (PDF, 364 KB)
- * Helping teens make good decisions – SADD's new National Student of the Year is Sasha Willingham, a senior at Russellville High School in northwest Alabama. She will spend the next year as the group's national student spokesperson. SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions, http://www.sadd.org ) is a school-based peer-to-peer education and prevention organization. It was originally Students Against Driving Drunk.
- Businessman praises Moonbuggy teams – Kary J. Warren, owner of Industrial Fabrication Co. Inc. in Huntsville, praised the skills and initiative of students at Huntsville Center for Technology. "We're taking kids right out of school and putting them to work," said Warren, who helped sponsor the school's entries in The Great Moonbuggy Race. The Huntsville teams placed first and second in the contest to design, build and race a model vehicle over a simulated lunar landscape. Learn more from http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov.
- The contest is an example of project-based learning, considered a top instructional strategy. To learn more, visit http://snipr.com/projectbasedlearning.
GOOD READ
In "Long Reviled, Merit Pay Gains Among Teachers," The New York Times tells of the growing momentum for merit or performance pay for public school teachers. The story also tells the typical obstacles, and how some communities have gotten around them.
Find the story at http://snipr.com/nytmeritpay.
WHAT'S UP @ A+
Cathy Gassenheimer, managing director of A+ and president of the Alabama Best Practices Center, is quoted in the current issue of JSD, the journal of the National Staff Development Council. Here's an excerpt: "The most effective and powerful professional learning often occurs when teachers work together to examine student work in ways that help them to plan and improve instruction. That only happens when teachers accept responsibility for the learning of all students, stop working in isolation, and are given time during the school day to collaborate."
The Alabama Best Practices Center is mentioned along with other Microsoft Corp. grantees in the article "Lessons Learned from Studying How Innovations Can Achieve Scale" from the spring issue of Threshold Magazine. (http://www.ciconline.org/thresholdspring07 )
Alabama's kindergarten teachers support high-quality prekindergarten, according to a recently released survey by Voices for Alabama's Children and the Alabama State Department of Education. Voices and A+ are two of the founding partners of the Alabama School Readiness Alliance, which promotes the expansion of voluntary, high-quality prekindergarten. For more on the survey, visit http://www.alavoices.org .
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The A+ Education Foundation, based in Montgomery, publishes Education News in Alabama twice a month. A+ is a nonprofit organization that advances policies, programs and initiatives in Alabama's K-12 education system that result in high achievement by every child.
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