Drawing the Line on Drug Testing

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/nyregion/new-jersey/23Rparent.html?ref=education

Drawing the Line on Drug Testing….A mother of three, in this article, explains to readers that her oldest daughter, last year, when she was a senior, came home after drinking heavilya few times, and explains that she talked to her daughter, “I made it clear this upset me,” Ms. Evelyn said. “ I didn’t expect this to be a regular thing.”

What she believes in is called “suspicion-based testing” — testing students if they appear to be impaired at school. “Kids shouldn’t go to school drunk or high,” she said. “It’s not just the school’s right to test, it’s the school’s responsibility.”

What she does too believe in is the schools limit on how far they should go with testing. “Last year officials at Ridge High here tested 23 students suspected of being impaired at school, with 15 testing positive for drugs or alcohol, according to Chad Gillikin, a school counselor. This year, seven have been tested, with three registering positive, he said. She states, “Any more testing is an invasion of privacy,”.

The co-chairman of a study commitee states that “Schools we’ve visited that do random drug testing, it’s very impressive,” said Mr. Gillikin. “They say it’s changed the youth culture in their communities.”

The parent believes that it is up to the parents, and not the school. “This is a parent’s responsibility, not the school’s. It shows an unwillingness to teach kids the real-life skills they need to resist drug and alchol abuse And it doesn’t even get at the bigger problem — which is alcohol, not drugs.”

The proposed random drug testing plan for Ridge High is similar to ones already in place at the 27 other New Jersey school districts. Any students wanting to play a sport, join a club or get a parking permit — about 80 percent of Ridge High’s 1,600 kids — would have to consent to random testing or would not be able to participate.

About seven kids a week would be selected by computer and called to the nurse’s office to urinate in a cup. Students testing positive would not miss school, nor would results appear on their transcripts. They would have to take part in counseling with their parents and miss two weeks from their team or club.

I think this issue is a sensitive one to talk about. If i oppose the issue i don’t want people to think that i am all for kids experimenting with drugs but if i support random testing, then i don’t want to be looked at as someone who is trying to punish children for thier experimental ways. I believe that its up to the parents to teach thier kids about drugs and the reasons why one shouldn’t do it. I also believe that being a professional athlete in school and getting certain privleges such as a parking permit would keep kids from staying away from the drugs. Im my school we had drug sniffing dogs come in randomly and bust people that had possession of drugs in thier lockers. What this system in the article states is that they would be randomly drawn into the office by a computer to take the drug test. I still don’t know where i stand with all of this. Like i said, it has its ups and downs. GRRR!!!

Letter Grades Look Simple

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/education/16cards.html?_r=1&ref=education

Letter Grades Look Simple, but Realities Are Complex is the article that i picked. It explains how the “A-through-F grading system for New York City schools is billed as a public information tool, helping people sort out which schools are teaching children and which schools are just moving them along. Instead of inscrutable education jargon and endless score charts, the letter grades act like billboards broadcasting achievements and failures.”

When parents shop for schools for thier children, they run into the dilema that they are determined largely by how much progress students make year to year rather than how well their skills stand up against objective standards.

“While the question of how effective teachers are at moving students forward is a critical one for their bosses, many parents are equally interested in which schools are most likely to, say, have students reading at grade level or ensure that sophomores are mastering algebra”.

One such man in the article explains that the problem “is that the public rarely looks beyond the letter grade even though the reports contain a variety of other guideposts. It is possible, for instance, to see what percentage of the weakest students improved by at least one grade level, and what percentage of higher-performing students improved on state tests from one year to the next”.

“The number of schools that received A’s increased significantly across the board this year, to 38 percent from 23 percent last year, but such progress masked the fact that many of these schools were filled with students who were struggling to do the basics”.

What this article shows is that beyond the letter grade, other factors are as important that the grade itself. It doesn’t matter that a child has an A, for all we know the child could have mastered cheating or may have gotten help from others. What matters the most is how a child improves throughout the years and is learning. People have forgotten why children go to school and the simple fact is, to learn.

Good Deeds: The Backlash

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/27/fashion/27service.html?_r=1&ref=education

In this article called, ‘Good Deeds: The Backlash’, it explains how high school students are “engaged in the relentless pursuit of community service hours”. The article coniues on explaining how five students from Horace Mann, a private school in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, are spackling and painting a half-gutted, partly bullet-riddled home on Porach Street so that a new family can move in. (Three hours.)

On the other side of town, students from Lincoln High School, a public school in Yonkers, are raucously demolishing the basement of a thrift store on Riverdale Avenue, to create space for storage. (Four hours.)

On ”East 27th Street in Manhattan, a hostess at the upscale barbecue restaurant Blue Smoke is turning away the fifth person who showed up a day early looking to make crafts for underprivileged children. The restaurant’s Web site had the right date, she insists, but students these days seem pretty desperate to volunteer. (Come back tomorrow; two hours.)”

All this volunteering, especially during the holidays are for the requirments that students have to meet for graduation. A lot of high schools are now cutting the requirments because they believe it is meaningless and that its “a form of forced altruism”.

Schools were finding that the fixation was more on hours and less for the service. What was begining to happen was wealthy families were knocking out the community service requirment all in one trip, such as a summer thing.

What has happened in one NY school is that “Ms. Swierczek abolished Riverdale’s requirement that students perform more than 100 hours of service before graduation. Instead, she decreed that all “naturally formed communities” at the school — sports teams, the school newspaper and adviser groups, to which all students belong — must tackle a community service project each year that is approved and supervised by her.”

“The result, she said, is a renewed focus on the charitable experience itself. “The message we want to teach our children is to live in a world bigger than their own,” she said. “It’s provided real camaraderie within the school community.”

I think the article is true. I think that students become so worried about the 100 hours and less worried about the good deed they are actually doing. In my student council in high school, we arranged a trip to the soup kitchen, not for graduation requirments, but for our own interests. I never felt so moved from my experience. It taught me a lot and made me realize, like stated in the article, that there is a world bigger than my own.

Schools See Pain Ahead if the State Cuts Aid

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/nyregion/13schools.html?ref=education

In this article, “Schools See Pain Ahead if the State Cuts Aid”, schools in New York staff reductions, larger class sizes, and fewer sports and extracurricular programs due to the governor’s proposed midyear reductions in state aid.

Under the proposal all of New York’s 697 districts would see a reduction in their expected aid from the state. The actual amount is based on a formula that takes into account each district’s wealth, the number of students receiving free and reduced-price lunches, and the portion of the district budget already covered by local taxes.

The New York City schools had been expecting a $705 million increase, but under the proposed 3.5 percent reduction would receive $450 million — or $255 million less, for a total of $8.1 billion.

Mayor Bloomberg said at a news conference that the city’s Education Department had already reduced spending by eliminating 350 positions, mainly in administration. “But at some point in time you have to have administration,” he said, “and we’re getting down to the point where it’s very difficult.”

“So you can see the wiggle room is small,” he said, adding that midyear cuts would most likely have to come from not filling vacant staff positions, and curtailing or deferring purchases of supplies, equipment and maintenance repairs.

Even districts that were in relatively good shape because of conservative budgeting expressed concern about what could be very lean years ahead.

With the tough economic times, and the need to reduce spending in all aspects of life, education is a tough pill to swallow. The problems that face with reducing the spending is the large classroom sizes which lead to poor learning on the students behalf, less administration which leads to more violence possibly and less class offerings and less school supplies which leads to poor education. Cutting costs in schools is an issue that is delicate because changes need to be done and the consequences are not always good.

Women Gain in Education but Not Power, Study Finds

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/world/13gender.html?ref=education

This article, “Women Gain in Education but Not Power, Study Finds”, starts off by stating, “Women still lag far behind men in top political and decision-making roles, though their access to education and health care is nearly equal”.

In its 2008 Global Gender Gap report, the forum, a Swiss research organization, ranked Norway, Finland and Sweden as the countries that have the most equality of the sexes, and Saudi Arabia, Chad and Yemen as having the least.

Using United Nations data, the report found that girls and women around the world had generally reached near-parity with their male peers in literacy, access to education and health and survival. But in terms of economics and politics, including relative access to executive government and corporate posts, the gap between the sexes remains large.

The United States ranked 27th, above Russia (42nd), China (57th), Brazil (73rd) and India (113th). But the United States was ranked below Germany (11th), Britain (13th), France (15th), Lesotho (16th), Trinidad and Tobago (19th), South Africa (22nd), Argentina (24th) and Cuba (25th).

“The world’s women are nearly as educated and as healthy as men, but are nowhere to be found in terms of decision-making,” said Saadia Zahidi of the World Economic Forum

The report said the inequalities in those countries were so large as to put them at an economic disadvantage.

What my favorite quote of the piece was “A nation’s competitiveness depends significantly on whether and how it educates and utilizes its female talent. To maximize its competitiveness and development potential, each country should strive for gender equality.” This gender equality is something that is still debated on today. The fact that women lag in the work force shows how this country, although moving forward, is taking its time in doing so. Seeing the rankings of the US (27), i believe it should be higher since our country is advanced, but apparently, not advanced enough.

Enrollment Surges in Quick Prep Courses

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/nyregion/connecticut/16RcollegesCT.html?ref=education

In this article called ‘Enrollment Surges in Quick Prep Courses’, the topic of prep colleges arises. With the story of Robin Griffen, readers are able to see ‘what brought her to the community college classes’. ‘It was not the usual quest for an associate’s degree. Instead, in August Ms. Griffin, 46, was promoted to an entry-level management position overseeing three departments and nine people, boosting her salary 25 percent. “Without the classes, I would have been held back from this job,”

The article shows that “students across the region, and the country, are swelling the rolls of community colleges, seeking a two-year associate’s degree as a bridge to a four-year university or as a way to retrain after a job loss. But in these shaky economic times, more students are skipping a degree and heading straight for the colleges’ noncredit training and certification programs — courses that end in months or weeks, designed to propel them swiftly into the job market or better their prospects at their companies.”

Although the classes meet in college buildings and are administered by the college, the teachers are paid through the noncredit class tuition and the programs are not subject to the same lengthy state accreditation process required for degree programs. As a result, courses are sometimes set up in weeks.

Courses in health care, high-skills manufacturing, management, hospitality and culinary arts, and — as always — computers are booming, regionally and nationally. But so are many other programs tailored to the needs of the surrounding community.

What i found interesting in this article was that we future teachers try hard to give students the proper college preparation throughout high school. What seems to be happening now is that students, due to the economic troubles and the need for a job, are opting out of college and getting their certificates in prep courses offered at the community colleges. The times are changing and so is the desire to go to college. If i knew years ago that i would be paying a tuition that was constently rising, i myself would have considered prep courses to help me go back to college years later after i have saved money from the job i recieved with my prep certificate.