The New York Times | American Federation of Teachers New Jersey, AFL-CIO

How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life

January 23, 2012

[...] There is nothing recreational about Division I football today, points out Dr. Sack, who played for Notre Dame in the 1960s. Since then, athletic departments have kicked the roof off their budgets, looking more like independent franchises than university departments.

It is that point — “this commercial thing” in the middle of academia, as Charles T. Clotfelter, a public policy professor at Duke, put it — that some believe has thrown the system out of kilter. In his recent book “Big-Time Sports in American Universities,” Dr. Clotfelter notes that between 1985 and 2010, average salaries at public universities rose 32 percent for full professors, 90 percent for presidents and 650 percent for football coaches.

The same trend is apparent in a 2010 Knight Commission report that found the 10 highest-spending athletic departments spent a median of $98 million in 2009, compared with $69 million just four years earlier. Spending on high-profile sports grew at double to triple the pace of that on academics. For example, Big Ten colleges, including Penn State, spent a median of $111,620 per athlete on athletics and $18,406 per student on academics.

Division I football and basketball, of course, bring in millions of dollars a year in ticket sales, booster donations and cable deals. Penn State football is a money-maker: 2010 Department of Education figures show the team spending $19.5 million and bringing in almost $73 million, which helps support 29 varsity sports. Still, only about half of big-time programs end up in the black; many others have to draw from student fees or the general fund to cover expenses. And the gap between top programs and wannabes is only growing with colleges locked into an arms race to attract the best coaches and build the most luxurious venues in hopes of luring top athletes, and donations from happy alumni.

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Students of Online Schools Are Lagging

January 09, 2012

By JENNY ANDERSON

The number of students in virtual schools run by educational management organizations rose sharply last year, according to a new report being published Friday, and far fewer of them are proving proficient on standardized tests compared with their peers in other privately managed charter schools and in traditional public schools.
Schoolbook

About 116,000 students were educated in 93 virtual schools — those where instruction is entirely or mainly provided over the Internet — run by private management companies in the 2010-11 school year, up 43 percent from the previous year, according to the report being published by the National Education Policy Center, a research center at the University of Colorado. About 27 percent of these schools achieved “adequate yearly progress,” the key federal standard set forth under the No Child Left Behind act to measure academic progress. By comparison, nearly 52 percent of all privately managed brick-and-mortar schools reached that goal, a figure comparable to all public schools nationally.

“There’s a pretty large gap between virtual and brick-and-mortar,” said Gary Miron, a professor of evaluation, measurement and research at Western Michigan University and a co-author of the study.

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Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools

December 14, 2011

Lance Murphey for The New York Times

Nearly 60 percent of its students are behind grade level in math. Nearly 50 percent trail in reading. A third do not graduate on time. And hundreds of children, from kindergartners to seniors, withdraw within months after they enroll.

By Wall Street standards, though, Agora is a remarkable success that has helped enrich K12 Inc., the publicly traded company that manages the school. And the entire enterprise is paid for by taxpayers.

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Growing Push in Newark to Retake School Reins

December 12, 2011

By WINNIE HU

NEWARK — For a generation of Newark students, every education decision, including choices on curriculum, spending and superintendent, has been made by state officials in Trenton.
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Aaron Houston for The New York Times

Parents of children in Newark schools sign a petition to wrest control from the state and give the school board a more active role.

That level of state involvement has made the 39,000-student district an attractive laboratory for Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican seen as a national leader on education reform, and for prominent donors, including Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, who have pledged $148 million to remake this city’s failing schools.

But the influx of money, and the attendant national spotlight, has galvanized a growing movement of parents, educators and elected officials who want the schools returned to local control 16 years after they were taken over amid low test scores, crumbling buildings and charges of mismanagement.

These critics say that the state has unilaterally imposed a controversial agenda — replacing principals, opening new schools, placing charter schools inside district buildings — dreamed up by outsiders and consultants who do not understand the needs of their children, and that there is not enough opportunity for input by parents and community-based advocates.

“It just seems like a hostile takeover because our voices are not being heard,” said Leah Owens, 29, the founder of Teachers as Leaders in Newark, which has helped collect hundreds of signatures in support of local control. “There are so many new things happening, it’s like the idea is just throw it all against a wall and see what sticks.”

Newark’s school board, which is elected but serves an advisory role, petitioned a state appellate court in August to give it the reins of most day-to-day operations, and a coalition of community organizations and residents represented by the Education Law Center, an advocacy group, followed with a similar lawsuit. This fall, the coalition has lobbied for local control at community meetings, started petition drives at schools, unleashed e-mail campaigns on state officials, and staged a rally that united even political adversaries.

“What we have in Newark is taxation without representation,” said State Senator Ronald L. Rice, one of nearly 300 people who attended the rally last month.

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Pain in the Public Sector

December 05, 2011

Buried in the relatively positive numbers contained in the November jobs report was some very bad news for those who work in the public sector. There were 20,000 government workers laid off last month, by far the largest drop for any sector of the economy, mostly from states, counties and cities.

That continues a troubling trend that’s been building for years, one that has had a particularly harsh effect on black workers. While the private sector has been adding jobs since the end of 2009, more than half a million government positions have been lost since the recession.

In most cases, states and cities had to lay off workers because of declining tax revenues, or reduced federal aid because of Washington’s inexplicable decision to focus more on the deficit in the near term than on jobs.

Those layoffs mean a lower quality of life when there are fewer teachers, pothole repair crews and nurses.

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Plan to Close or Restructure 21 Chicago Schools Draws Quick Reaction

December 05, 2011

By REBECCA VEVEA

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s education team made its first attempt at improving struggling schools last week, and the negative reviews came quickly. State legislators and community leaders called the proposed closing or restructuring of 21 schools “very troubling” and said administrators were violating the intent of a new state law.

Chicago Public Schools designated 10 schools for turnaround — a controversial process in which existing staff members are fired and changes are made in the school’s curriculum and learning climate. Four elementary schools will be closed, two high schools will be phased out, and six schools, one of which will also begin phasing out, will share buildings.

About 7,800 students will be affected by the proposed changes, and more than 600 teachers and other employees could lose their jobs. All the designated schools are on the city’s South and West Sides.

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U.S. Urges Creativity by Colleges to Gain Diversity

December 05, 2011

By SAM DILLON

The Obama administration on Friday urged colleges and universities to get creative in improving racial diversity at their campuses, throwing out a Bush-era interpretation of recent Supreme Court rulings that limited affirmative action in admissions.

The new guidelines issued by the Departments of Justice and Education replaced a 2008 document that essentially warned colleges and universities against considering race at all. Instead, the guidelines focus on the wiggle room in the court decisions involving the University of Michigan, suggesting that institutions use other criteria — students’ socioeconomic profiles, residential instability, the hardships they have overcome — that are often proxies for race. Schools could even grant preferences to students from certain schools selected for, among other things, their racial composition, the new document says.

“Post-secondary institutions can voluntarily consider race to further the compelling interest of achieving diversity,” reads the 10-page guide sent to thousands of college admissions officials on Friday afternoon. In some cases, it says, “race can be outcome determinative.”

The administration issued a parallel 14-page outline on Friday for the nation’s 17,000 public school districts, explaining what government lawyers consider to be acceptable ways that educators can seek to reduce racial segregation, which has been increasing nationwide.

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Districts Pay Less in Poor Schools, Report Says

December 01, 2011

By SAM DILLON

Education experts have long argued that a basic inequity in American schooling is that students in poor neighborhoods are frequently taught by low-paid rookie teachers who move on as they gain experience and rise up the salary scale.
Schoolbook

Until now, however, researchers lacked nationwide data to prove it. That changed Wednesday when the Department of Education released a 78-page report.

Its conclusion: Tens of thousands of schools serving low-income students are being shortchanged because districts spend fewer state and local dollars on teacher salaries in those schools than on salaries in schools serving higher-income students.

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