Education chief favors longer school year

From CNN.com

Education chief favors longer school year

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Those lazy days of summer may become a thing of the past if the new secretary of education has his way.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan suggests giving incentives to teachers whose students perform well.

Arne Duncan, the Cabinet secretary charged with overhauling America's educational system, is studying programs that keep kids in school longer to boost their academic achievements.

"When I go out and talk about that, that doesn't always make me popular with students. They like the long summers," Duncan said in an interview Wednesday with CNN conducted in the Education Department's library.

But Duncan said American students are "at a competitive disadvantage" because the United States has shorter school years than other countries such as India and China.

"It doesn't matter how poor, how tough the family background, socioeconomic challenges," Duncan said. "Where students have longer days, longer weeks, longer years -- that's making a difference."

More time in school is one of several ideas under consideration as Duncan settles into his new role.

The lanky former college basketball player and father of two speaks quickly, with remarkable energy in the face of daunting challenges.

Thirty percent of high school students drop out before graduation, and another 50 percent won't finish college, according to Education Sector, a nonprofit think tank.

For Latino and African-American students, the numbers are more dramatic. About half of them will graduate from high school, the Washington-based group said.

As school administrators struggle with dropout rates, they also are confronting drastic budget cuts amid national economic uncertainty. Districts are slashing jobs and putting off plans to repair crumbling school buildings.

"What's going on, state after state, due to this tough economy, is devastating educationally. And we can't afford to get worse now. We have to get dramatically better," said Duncan, former chief of Chicago Public Schools.

President Obama and lawmakers have directed billions of dollars to the Department of Education through the stimulus package, and they propose to send more in the 2010 budget Obama announced Thursday.

Duncan said some of that money will provide schools with immediate relief to keep teachers.

"Thanks to the stimulus package, we have the chance to save literally hundreds of thousands of teacher positions. This is a huge, huge deal," he said, citing a University of Washington study that suggests 600,000 teachers could be lost this year without drastic intervention.

"We're going to be able to avert maybe not all of those cuts but a huge percentage of those, and that's very very important," he said.

But the new funds may be only enough to keep a crisis at bay, said Kevin Carey of Education Sector. State and local shortages are forcing schools to make do with much less.

"The economic situation is hurting school budgets," Carey said. "The stimulus package that just passed will help that somewhat, but there still isn't a whole lot of new money to pay teachers more, reduce class sizes, reduce high school dropout rates."

Duncan also suggested giving incentives to teachers whose students perform well, an unpopular idea with teachers' unions. And he said school systems may need to make tough decisions about teachers who don't perform at par.

"If teachers aren't making it, we want to support them and help them develop, but ultimately if it's not working, our children deserve the best," Duncan said. "They probably need to find something else to do."

Duncan also is pushing for new benchmarks that would use international standards to compare American students with those overseas.

He faults No Child Left Behind for standards that he said don't accurately monitor some children's progress.

"When you're told you're meeting those standards, you think you're doing OK. You're really not," Duncan said.

"Our children are not competing for jobs down the block or in the district or in the state -- they're competing against children in India or China, and they need to know how they stack up."

Carey said Duncan's efforts to meet Obama's education goals are an immensely complicated task.

"There are 50 states, there are 14,000 school districts, 90,000 schools, and Secretary Duncan is responsible for every one of them. But they all have their own ideas, their own funding sources, their own local leadership," Carey said.

Duncan said he feels "a real sense of urgency" to implement national education reform.

"Our children in this country have one chance at education. One chance. We can't wait. We can't wait seven or eight years. We'll lose a generation of kids," Duncan said. "And so we have to get better; we have to get better now."

"If you don't like it, get out,"

From the Intelligencer. It looks like Souderton is running down the same stretch of road as Morrisville. No money and fixed-income retirees combining with the requirement to provide an education to the local children.

Teachers predict 'brain drain' if they don't get pay raises
By LOU SESSINGER

The union is asking for an 8.2 percent increase. The district is offering 2.57 percent.

As they have for several months, Souderton Area School District teachers spoke at Thursday night's school board meeting to express their dismay at the contract impasse between the board and the Souderton Area Education Association, the teachers union.

Six teachers came to the podium during the public comment portion of the meeting. Their common theme was that they and their colleagues deserved pay raises that would put their salaries in line with those of other school districts in the area. If not, some of them warned, the district could suffer a "brain drain" of sorts as the best teachers leave to seek better pay elsewhere.

The members of the Souderton Area Education Association went on strike in early September, delaying the opening of school until Sept. 19. The teachers union and school board then entered non-binding arbitration, which is still going on.

Teachers are seeking a four-year contract with annual salary increases compounded at an average of 8.2 percent a year. The school board is offering a three-year contract with annual salary increases compounded at an average of 2.57 percent a year.

School board President Bernard S. Currie on Thursday night pointed out that an arbitration panel is still conducting closed-door hearings on the last best offers of the board and union, and so contract negotiations are at a standstill until the panel releases its recommendations, which are expected in the spring.

High school science teacher Kenneth Hamilton said he had experienced a "loss of faith" in the school board's willingness to seek a fair settlement.

High school learning support teacher Sandra Campagna said she hoped both sides would be willing to accept the arbitrators' recommendations they could "work on a settlement together."

Janet Smith, a fifth-grade teacher at Salford Hills Elementary, said she wanted to "dispel the myth" that it would be easy for the school district to rebuild the quality of its teaching staff if there were a "mass exodus of teachers" driven away by low pay.

"We are not dime-a-dozen teachers," she said. "We live next door and have close community ties. Shame on this board + we are dedicated teachers and not a dime a dozen."

But two members of the community who addressed the board rejected the teachers' arguments and supported the board's negotiating position.

Charl Wellener said she had lost faith with the teachers and thought their contract demands were not motivated by a desire for fairness but by greed.

If teachers were unhappy with their salaries, she said, they should seek employment elsewhere.

Hugh Donnelly agreed.

"If you don't like it, get out," he said, adding that 20 percent of the district's property taxpayers were age 60 and over.

"They don't have kids in school, but they have to pay taxes. Eight and a half percent (a year pay raise) is obscene."