Today’s Top Picks:

N.B.: ENR will be TDY in Chicago for the rest of the week. Don’t worry; the folks at CCSSO (is ENR getting enough acronyms in here?) were prescient enough to schedule the state communication conference while the Cubs were out of town so it’s somewhat likely that ENR will show up to part of the conference. Nothing — including his diet — will get between ENR and Harold’s Chicken Shack (http://goo.gl/WdECt [Yelp]) in the evening, however. If it’s really boring, he may still try to get some of the roundup out, but don’t necessarily expect it again until Monday.

Evil octopus, eh? ENR likes the premise.
http://goo.gl/ISyLR (KSL)

Ed Week looks at Mitt Romney’s education plans.
http://goo.gl/fVEQ3 (Ed Week)

Seaton Hall professor looks at Mitt Romney’s education team.
http://goo.gl/W3815 (HuffPo)

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TODAY’S HEADLINES
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UTAH

First-graders save undersea world in self-produced opera

Teen honored for efforts to encourage kids to stop smoking Soon-to-graduate senior wants to continue work in college, hopes to one day become a doctor.

Congressional candidate says ‘practical experience’ lacking in Congress

Wasatch Elementary teachers, students say emotional goodbyes to old building

Kids learn science of Angry Birds at USU camp

Juvenile will be charged with misdemeanors for Clearfield High smoke bomb

Utah school pulls picture book about lesbian parents from shelves

Register now for Davis School District language camps

Civics Central

OPINION & COMMENTARY

Banning books
Intolerance spurs witch hunt

Nothing to fear from In Our Mothers’ House

Listen up, Davis schools and Sen. Hatch: Courage is about doing what’s right

State can’t afford to take over federal land

‘Helicopter’ parents only keep their children from succeeding

Money can’t buy me . . . learning?

Allow teachers more of the ‘old-fashioned’ kind of authority

Teachers Unions Have a Popularity Problem Only 22% of Americans think unions have a positive effect on schools.

Reviving Teaching With ‘Professional Capital’

Mitt Romney and the Marketplace of Ideas

The Pearsonizing of the American Mind

The Greenfield School Revolution and School Choice

NATION

Romney Hones Pitch on Education Policy

High School Draws Chinese Students, Tuition Dollars

Unusual partnership offers students birth control L.A. Unified and Planned Parenthood collaborate on a clinic at Roosevelt High, which is in an area with a disproportionately high number of teenage mothers.

Melinda Gates on the Importance of Evaluations in Shaping Effective Teachers

College Board pulls plug on summer SAT for gifted students

High school grads heading to military get a salute

Q&A with Sana Nasser: How a principal helps teachers improve

Online Classes See Cheating Go High-Tech

Schools turn their noses up at ‘pink slime’

Oregon Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo to step down

Governor talks about obesity, teen pregnancy in Boys State address

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UTAH NEWS
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First-graders save undersea world in self-produced opera

SALT LAKE CITY — A new opera debuted in Salt Lake City this week. It’s a melodrama … about fish.
Teacher Rachel Lee’s first grade class wrote and performed “The Great Escape,” about an evil octopus that tries to take over the undersea world.
“This is the way I teach literacy,” Lee said. “You know, it’s not just about reading words. It’s not about decoding, but they realize once they know how to decode they have so many stories that are out there that they can read and also create on their own.”
http://goo.gl/ISyLR (KSL)

Teen honored for efforts to encourage kids to stop smoking Soon-to-graduate senior wants to continue work in college, hopes to one day become a doctor.

It started with cigarettes and ended with a heroin addiction that changed the happy childhood relationship Gabe Glissmeyer shared with his older sister.
Glissmeyer, a high school senior from South Jordan, remembers when his now 24-year-old sister began smoking cigarettes at age 13.
The habit led her to find new friends who encouraged her to try harder substances. Soon, the girl who Glissmeyer used to spend afternoons with at the park wasn’t someone he trusted anymore.
“We used to be the best of friends. She started smoking and our whole friendship and everything got destroyed,” said Glissmeyer. “What tobacco had done to her life, it led to her getting addicted to heroin. There were a lot of instances that she would choose to get high or smoke over hanging out with me.”
Glissmeyer’s sister recently marked two years living clean and sober. But the experience of her addiction inspired Glissmeyer to reach out to encourage other teenagers to avoid the addictive lure of tobacco.
He created “Out of the Smoke,” a Utah Pride Center program designed to help youth in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities quit smoking.
http://goo.gl/8v34q (SLT)

Congressional candidate says ‘practical experience’ lacking in Congress

While she’s never had any political experience, a Park City candidate for Utah’s 1st Congressional District has done just about everything else from military service to coaching high school volleyball.
Donna McAleer will go up against fellow Democratic candidate Ryan Combe on June 26 during the Utah Democratic primary election. If chosen, McAleer will try to unseat the Republican incumbent Rob Bishop – representative of the 1st Congressional District since 2003.
…
And looking at the situation even deeper, McAleer believes we need to be building a pipeline in our K-12 schooling system so that Utah’s children can go to these universities.
“Utah ranks 56th in terms of educational funding at the K-12 level. We are below Puerto Rico, D.C., Guam and the Marianas Islands,” McAleer exclaims. “We need to look at different ways to fund our education system.”
Another issue she’d like to address is how technology can be used in K-12 education.
“It’s been estimated that in the next 10 years, two-thirds of Utah jobs are going to come from STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields, so we need to make sure we are investing that kind of education in our young people.”
As a mother of an elementary school daughter, this is a particularly huge concern because Utah is struggling to educate and graduate girls in STEM fields.
http://goo.gl/0PkyZ (CVD)

Wasatch Elementary teachers, students say emotional goodbyes to old building

CLEARFIELD — Mere minutes after the final school bell rang at Wasatch Elementary School, demolition of the building began.
The dust hadn’t settled from the students’ last day of school before teachers were being ushered out by district officials and demolition crews. Teachers had until Monday evening to remove all of their classroom supplies; but even then, crews were tearing down ceiling tiles and coat racks and smashing holes into walls.
http://goo.gl/7AJpT (OSE)

Kids learn science of Angry Birds at USU camp

VERNAL — Boyd Edwards’ introduction to the relationship between energy and matter came at a very early age.
“I was spoon-fed physics by my father and I’m a chip off the old block,” said Edwards, who followed in his father’s footsteps to become a physics professor.
Now, as the dean and executive director of Utah State University’s Uintah Basin campus, Edwards is looking to pass his love for science on to kids who aren’t expected to see the inside of a college classroom for at least another four years.
He’s doing it by highlighting the connection between his field of expertise and one of the world’s most popular video games.
http://goo.gl/XLes1 (KSL)

http://goo.gl/mp2mg (KUSA)

Juvenile will be charged with misdemeanors for Clearfield High smoke bomb

FARMINGTON — A prosecutor with the 2nd District Juvenile Court said the 17-year-old who set off a smoke bomb at Clearfield High School will be charged with misdemeanors.
On Monday, Deputy Davis County Attorney Ryan Perkins said investigators believe the smoke bomb incident that injured five girls was nothing more than a prank that went bad.
But because five students received burns from the smoke bomb, the 17-year-old, who has not been named, will be charged with misdemeanors in juvenile court, Perkins said.
http://goo.gl/iuCEj (OSE)

Utah school pulls picture book about lesbian parents from shelves

A picture book aimed at pre-reading children has raised the ire of two dozen parents of students at a Utah elementary school who say that its subject matter is decidely adult: the story of a lesbian couple raising children.
The book, “In Our Mother’s House” by Patricia Polacco, was removed from the library shelves at Windridge Elementary School near Salt Lake City after parents raised objections about the suitability of the book’s social message.
The book is now kept behind the librarian’s counter and can only be checked out once a student presents a permission slip from a parent, said district spokesman Chris Williams.
http://goo.gl/MWf9l (LAT)

Register now for Davis School District language camps

FARMINGTON — The final push is under way for students to register for Summer Language Immersion Camps held by the Davis School District.
The Chinese Camp will be June 18-­22 at North Davis Junior High School.
According to a news release, students from a sister school in China will also be at the camp, so it will be especially beneficial and a great opportunity to share and learn.
http://goo.gl/SyhDW (OSE)

Civics Central

Utah County Commission • Will approve and authorize the chair to sign a contract with Alpine School District for funding and services provided by the public health nurses in public schools within the district from July 1 through June 30, 2013; Tuesday, June 5, 9 a.m., 100 E. Center St., Provo.
http://goo.gl/Pu50E (SLT)

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OPINION & COMMENTARY
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Banning books
Intolerance spurs witch hunt
Salt Lake Tribune editorial

Davis County has the dubious honor of having been held up — twice — as an embarrassing example of attempted book banning in local libraries.
In 1991, on the 200th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, observances included Banned Book Week, “intended as a reminder that American citizens have, and should practice, the right to free speech, free expression and free press,” according to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.
Two incidents in Davis County were cited as having violated that tenet. In 1978 Jeanne Layton, director of the Davis County Library in Bountiful, lost her job for refusing to remove Don DeLillo’s Americana from the library shelves.
And in 1991 parents complained to the Davis County School Board because John Gardner’s Grendel was required reading in the English curriculum at Viewmont High School. The book was removed as a class requirement.
The practice of banning certain books has a disturbing history during the 20th century that doesn’t bear revisiting here. But we had hoped the bigotry and provincialism that usually prompt such actions would dwindle with better education and understanding.
Apparently not.
http://goo.gl/NgqXg

Nothing to fear from In Our Mothers’ House Salt Lake Tribune commentary by columnist Peg McEntee

The bookseller nailed it.
“They’ll let their 10-year-olds read The Hunger Games,” she said Saturday. “But not this.”
This being In Our Mothers’ House, a beautifully written and illustrated story about a big brown house on Woolsey Street where Meema and Marmee raise their three children.
Meema and Marmee are women; their children were adopted. Meema’s Italian grandparents are frequent visitors and the family lives in an integrated neighborhood where communal treehouses are built and street fairs organized.
This book, though, has been pulled from the library shelves of a Davis County elementary school after a few parents complained. A school district panel deemed it out of alignment with curriculum standards and ordered it put “behind the counter.”
Apparently, like one character in the book, some parents don’t understand that a home with two moms or dads can be just as loving, safe and nurturing as those with more traditional parents.
http://goo.gl/Itynv

Listen up, Davis schools and Sen. Hatch: Courage is about doing what’s right
(Ogden) Standard-Examiner commentary by columnist Charles F. Trentelman

I note with dismay that the Davis School District removed a book about gay parenting — “In Our Mothers’ House,” by Patricia Polacco — from its elementary school library shelves after a group of parents complained.
It is not “banned.” A student who presents a signed permission slip from home can still read the book.
One wonders if that student will have to wear a sign warning kids without permission slips to stay away. Or perhaps the student will have to read it at the counter, with a guard to keep others away.
What an amazing image for a library, where ideas ought to be free for all.
More troubling is that, in addition to hiding this book, the district asked its librarians to report other books that contain gay themes. The district obviously hopes to head off any other complaints.
http://goo.gl/qjFyV

State can’t afford to take over federal land (St. George) Spectrum op-ed by Gardiner F. Dalley

The Spectrum has again made the choice to support the Utah Legislature’s attempt to take over the public lands in the state. And again, the justification cited is that the federal government, via the Utah Enabling Act, promised to turn over all of the federal lands to the state, but reneged on that commitment. No such thing.
I would suggest that people go online and read for themselves pertinent sections of the Enabling Act (Section 3, Second), as well as the Utah Constitution (Article 3, Second). Both are crystal clear as to the intended disposition of public lands. How does one see a way around such wording as “The people inhabiting this State do affirm and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries hereof …” (Constitution, drawn directly from the Act, with minor changes for the time of writing). The contention that other parts of the Sections – a very generic reference to extinguishing title – invalidate or supersede the initial statements is disingenuous, irresponsible and flat-out wrong.
http://goo.gl/MVkuV

‘Helicopter’ parents only keep their children from succeeding Deseret News op-ed by Juleyka Lantigua-Williams who teaches writing at Naugatuck Valley Community College

Here’s a little advice for parents of students who are graduating from high school in the next couple of weeks and heading on to college: Don’t become a “helicopter parent.”
The term refers to parents who hover over their kid’s every move and are overbearingly involved in their child’s education.
They fill out applications and write essays. They choose courses and instructors. They outline, draft and revise papers. They call professors about lackluster grades. They send emails with excuses for missed work. Some even impersonate their children to gain access to their records.
http://goo.gl/Hg0to

Money can’t buy me . . . learning?
Deseret News commentary by columnist Mary McConnell

I’ve long read the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal for its top-flight investigative reporting. The most recent issue includes an intriguing article, provocatively entitled “Better Schools, Fewer Dollars”, by University of Colorado education professor Marcus Winters.
Since Utah isn’t going to top any lists of education big-spenders, many of you will be irritated by his analysis. But he presents some numbers that, in my view at least, would-be education reformers need to take seriously.
http://goo.gl/Zr2Id

Allow teachers more of the ‘old-fashioned’ kind of authority (St. George) Spectrum letter from Ann J. Kearns

There is a growing trend in the Washington School District to turn the old-fashioned chain of authority upside down. Many readers of this paper will remember what happened if they got in trouble at school, as soon as their parents found out about their misbehavior, they were reprimanded at home. Rarely would parents question the action taken by the school.
At the top of chain of command was the teacher. Educators were reverenced. Their knowledge and wisdom was revered on a par with the deference shown physicians. School administrators were second in the chain, and stood up for teachers if their actions were questioned by parents. Third came parents. Their input was valued at school. Last was the student. He/she was expected to be respectful and give full attention to instruction.
Not so today. Students are king.
http://goo.gl/JeCG0

Teachers Unions Have a Popularity Problem Only 22% of Americans think unions have a positive effect on schools.
Wall Street Journal op-ed by PAUL E. PETERSON, WILLIAM HOWELL AND MARTIN WEST (Mr. Peterson is a professor of government at Harvard and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. Mr. Howell is a professor of government at the University of Chicago. Mr. West is a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.)

However Wisconsin’s recall election turns out on Tuesday, teachers unions already appear to be losing a larger political fight—in public opinion. In our latest annual national survey, we found that the share of the public with a positive view of union impact on local schools has dropped by seven percentage points in the past year. Among teachers, the decline was an even more remarkable 16 points.
On behalf of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance and the journal Education Next, we have asked the following question since 2009: “Some people say that teacher unions are a stumbling block to school reform. Others say that unions fight for better schools and better teachers. What do you think? Do you think teacher unions have a generally positive effect on schools, or do you think they have a generally negative effect?”
http://goo.gl/R0jfE

Reviving Teaching With ‘Professional Capital’
Education Week op-ed by Michael Fullan and Andy Hargreaves, co-authors of Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School

The results of the latest MetLife Survey of the American Teacher confirm what many of us are experiencing and seeing in the depressing descent of the teaching profession. In the past two years, the percentage of teachers surveyed who reported being very satisfied in their jobs has declined sharply, from 59 percent to 44 percent. The number who indicated they were thinking of leaving the profession has jumped from 17 percent to 29 percent. Imagine being a student knowing that every other teacher you encounter is becoming less and less satisfied, and close to one in three would rather be somewhere else.
Without a strong and relentless focus on what we call “professional capital,” U.S. policymakers will continue to miss lessons from other countries about how they produce teacher fulfillment and effectiveness, and to misread warning signs here at home as well. We have directly studied, worked with, and worked in other successful countries, and they do not adopt the strategies of rewarding or punishing individual teachers with measures like test-driven, performance-based pay, or concentrate their energies on the extremes of competence with gushing teacher-of-the-year ceremonies or gung-ho proposals to remove the bottom 5 percent of educators from classrooms.
The truth about the more successful countries, such as Finland, Singapore, and Canada, is that they develop the whole profession to the point where students encounter good teachers one after another. They attract and develop the professional capital of all their teachers, in all schools, day after day, year after year.
http://goo.gl/tBDz9

Mitt Romney and the Marketplace of Ideas Huffington Post commentary by Heath Brown, Assistant professor of political science, Seton Hall University

One way to think about a presidential campaign is to break it into two broad categories: political and policy. The people who work on a campaign in particular either come from the world of politics — working on Capitol Hill, in state government, or in political communications/lobbying — or from the world of policy — working in the academy, for a think tank, or research institute. Advising Governor Romney on education is a host of seasoned politicos, many having served President George W. Bush: Education Secretary Rod Paige, Nina S. Rees, Christina Culver, John Bailey, Emily Stover DeRocco, Carol D’Amico, Bill Hansen, Scott Fleming, and Tom Luna.
As intriguing is the seven of the remaining education advisers, those who fall on the policy-side of the campaign, who share a common affiliation: the Hoover Institution. Romney Education Co-Chair Martin West, Bill Evers, Paul Peterson, Herbert Walberg, Phillip Handy, Grover Whitehurst (who also was an appointee in the Bush Department of Education), and John E. Chubb (who later resigned from the campaign) all currently serve as fellows, on the Hoover Board, or on the think tank’s education journal, Education Next. Such a concentration of talent first begs the question of why one single university-affiliated think tank would provide so many policy ideas to a former governor from Massachusetts, home to an ample array of elite institutions of higher learning. And second, does it matter?
http://goo.gl/W3815

The Pearsonizing of the American Mind
Education Week commentary by Diane Ravitch, research professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development

People keep asking why states are spending more and more money on testing at the same time that states are cutting the school budget, laying off teachers, closing school libraries, eliminating the arts, and increasing class size. A good question.
Now that parents are feeling the effects of these decisions, as they see their children spending more time on tests and less time learning, they are getting involved in the movement to stop expensive, unnecessary, and punitive testing. Not many are opposed to testing per se; they are against the misuse of testing and the waste of instructional time for their children.
Members of more than half the school boards in Texas have now signed a resolution opposing it, as have a growing number of school districts in other states. The national resolution, modeled on the Texas resolution, has been endorsed by thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations. On Thursday, parent groups in New York City are planning a demonstration in front of the offices of Pearson, the testing giant that now controls testing in many of our largest states, including New York, Florida, and Texas. The parent groups call it “a field trip against field tests.” They are protesting the fact that another day of instruction will be lost so that Pearson can field test new test questions. Some parents have actually sent invoices to Pearson, demanding payment for the use of their children’s time.
http://goo.gl/HcJ3p

The Greenfield School Revolution and School Choice Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice analysis

The recent explosion of educational innovation has focused primarily on creating wholly new models of what a school can be. From KIPP to Carpe Diem, education is entering a revolutionary period driven by the reinvention of the entire school rather than by gradual programmatic reforms. Although some of these new models have been more successful than others, and the level of success for any given new model can be debated, there is a growing consensus that these new school models collectively represent a dramatic challenge to the status quo in education.
These “greenfield school models” do not just challenge our assumptions about schooling. They also challenge the assumption that one school model can provide the right education for every child. The public mind has been opened to the potential of educational options as never before.
http://goo.gl/Gd0yR

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NATIONAL NEWS
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Romney Hones Pitch on Education Policy
Education Week

As the governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007, Mitt Romney championed aggressive education policies later embraced by the Obama administration and by other states.
But for most of his second run at the Republican presidential nomination, voters have heard little about his education record in Massachusetts or initiatives that Mr. Romney was largely unable to sell to that state’s Democratic-controlled legislature.
Instead, in a high-profile May 23 speech on education, Mr. Romney spoke at length about school choice, pushing a bold—but administratively tricky—plan to let disadvantaged students and those in special education take their federal aid to any campus, including a private school.
Mr. Romney, who last week secured enough delegates to clinch the 2012 GOP nomination, is pushing hard to distinguish his education policies from those President Barack Obama espouses. The former business executive has floated market-based proposals that appeal to a conservative electorate, and leveled criticism of teachers’ union influence on school policy—and with the Obama administration.
At the same time, Mr. Romney continues to share some administration policy priorities, particularly Mr. Obama’s fondness for charter schools and insistence on tying teacher evaluation in part to students’ outcomes on standardized tests, both of which have rattled union leaders.
Mr. Romney’s decade-long evolution on education issues also has seen him move away from some of the most extreme positions taken by some in his party, including abolition of the U.S. Department of Education and repeal of the No Child Left Behind Act, which he nonetheless would like to overhaul.
http://goo.gl/fVEQ3

School Draws Chinese Students, Tuition Dollars NPR All Things Considered

Lake Shore High School in St. Clair Shores, Mich., is pretty typical as American high schools go. Walking the halls, you find the quiet kids, the jocks and the artsy crowd.
But a visitor will also see what sets Lake Shore apart: The school’s large number of exchange students from China. This year, more than 70 Chinese students are enrolled at Lake Shore, which has a total student population of 1,200.
The students are from the Beijing Haidian Foreign Language Experimental School, an elite, private K-12 boarding school in China’s capital.
Across the U.S., a record number of Chinese students are enrolling at American colleges and universities. Public institutions, in particular, are embracing these students, as many can afford to pay full out-of-state tuition.
http://goo.gl/n1RdZ

Unusual partnership offers students birth control L.A. Unified and Planned Parenthood collaborate on a clinic at Roosevelt High, which is in an area with a disproportionately high number of teenage mothers.
Los Angeles Times

The first time the 16-year-old student visited Roosevelt High School’s health clinic, she needed emergency contraception. This time, she wanted regular birth control.
“I don’t want to be pregnant,” she said while at the clinic. “I’m too young. I can’t take care of a baby.”
Throughout the school year, students visit the on-campus clinic to get birth control, pregnancy tests, counseling and screening for sexually transmitted diseases. The services, which are free and confidential, are offered through a unique collaboration between Planned Parenthood and the Los Angeles Unified School District designed to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies among teenagers at the Boyle Heights high school.
Although nonprofit groups frequently offer reproductive healthcare on school campuses around the nation, the partnership involving Planned Parenthood — long a target of antiabortion lawmakers in Washington — is the only one of its kind.
http://goo.gl/Lszvt

Melinda Gates on the Importance of Evaluations in Shaping Effective Teachers NewsHour

Part of the American Graduate project addressing the country’s high school dropout crisis, teachers across the nation have weighed in at town halls on what’s working and what’s not. Hari Sreenivasan and Melinda Gates discuss how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation hopes to best tackle education reform.
http://goo.gl/0UcHW

College Board pulls plug on summer SAT for gifted students USA Today

The College Board, citing concerns about access and equity in education, has pulled the plug on a plan to administer a specially arranged SAT college entrance exam this summer to a group of gifted students.
The Aug. 3 test date, which would have been the first time in decades that an SAT was administered during the summer, was to have been available to participants at the end of a three-week summer college-prep program sponsored by the National Society for the Gifted and Talented, an organization based in Stamford, Conn.
Part of the program, which was marketed in the USA and abroad, was to include instruction by the Princeton Review, a for-profit test-prep company. The College Board has long discouraged the use of expensive test-prep courses and cites research showing that such instruction has little impact on scores.
Tuesday, the College Board sent a letter to Barbara Swicord, president of the group’s Summer Institute for the Gifted, saying it cannot proceed with the program because it “does not serve our organization’s mission of expanding access and equity in education,” and “certain aspects of the (summer program) run counter to our mission as well as our beliefs about SAT preparation and performance.”
http://goo.gl/gdM8U

High school grads heading to military get a salute Associated Press

VOORHEES, N.J. — It struck Christine Zinser a year ago, as her son Philipp was finishing high school and heading into the Marine Corps: At all the season’s award banquets, while there were honors for those heading to military academies and college ROTC programs, the graduates who were enlisting were not recognized.
“I don’t think anyone ever thought about the perception or the difference,” Zinser said.
But she did.
And before long, the mother of four in Fairfax County, Va., found Ken Hartman, a former school board member in Cherry Hill, N.J., who had launched Our Community Salutes in 2009 after noticing something similar in his school district in a well-off Philadelphia suburb. The group holds ceremonies around the country to honor the high school graduates who are joining the military.
The efforts have expanded from a single ceremony in New Jersey in 2009 to 22 around the country this year – including one Zinser orchestrated for students in northern Virginia and others as far-flung as Portland, Ore., and Jackson, Miss.
http://goo.gl/JchOO

Q&A with Sana Nasser: How a principal helps teachers improve Hechinger Report

Accountability is ratcheting up for schools and teachers, as new teacher-evaluation systems go into effect in more states. But although advocates of the changes say their aim is to help struggling teachers get better, there’s been little attention to which kinds of on-the-job training for teachers work and which don’t. As part of an ongoing project looking at this training—known as professional development (P.D.)—The Hechinger Report spoke with Sana Nasser, principal of Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx, to find out how she helps her teachers improve their craft.
Nasser has been the principal at Truman for 14 years, and has worked in schools for three decades. Truman is one of the few large high schools still remaining in New York City, as many have been closed down for poor performance. The school’s students—a majority of whom are low-income and ethnic or racial minorities—do relatively well on state tests, however, and two-thirds of them graduate.
http://goo.gl/hNAC2

Online Classes See Cheating Go High-Tech Chronicle of Higher Education

Easy A’s may be even easier to score these days, with the growing popularity of online courses. Tech-savvy students are finding ways to cheat that let them ace online courses with minimal effort, in ways that are difficult to detect.
Take Bob Smith, a student at a public university in the United States. This past semester, he spent just 25 to 30 minutes each week on an online science course, the time it took him to take the weekly test. He never read the online materials for the course and never cracked open a textbook. He learned almost nothing. He got an A.
His secret was to cheat, and he’s proud of the method he came up with—though he asked that his real name and college not be used, because he doesn’t want to get caught. It involved four friends and a shared Google Doc, an online word-processing file that all five of them could read and add to at the same time during the test.
http://goo.gl/TCRhJ

Schools turn their noses up at ‘pink slime’
Associated Press

NEW YORK — The nation’s school districts are turning up their noses at “pink slime,” the beef product that caused a public uproar earlier this year.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the vast majority of states participating in its National School Lunch Program have opted to order ground beef that doesn’t contain the product known as lean finely textured beef.
Only three states – Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota – chose to order beef that may contain the filler.
http://goo.gl/6A1d0

Oregon Schools Superintendent Susan Castillo to step down
(Portland) Oregonian

Oregon School Superintendent Susan Castillo announced this morning she is leaving that elected position this month — 2 1/2 years before her term expires — to take a job with a national education nonprofit.
That opens the way for Gov. John Kitzhaber to appoint her successor. Under a law passed in 2011, Castillo is the state’s final elected school superintendent. From now on, the Oregon Department of Education and the state’s system of public schools will be overseen by a “deputy state superintendent of public instruction” who answers to the governor.
Castillo is the first Latina elected to statewide office in Oregon. One hallmark of her decade in office has been to advocate for minority and low-income students. She instituted an annual award program that highlights schools around the state that have the best track record of educating all students, including students of color.
http://goo.gl/P4m59

Governor talks about obesity, teen pregnancy in Boys State address Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger

HATTIESBURG — Gov. Phil Bryant spoke out in favor of prayer in public schools Tuesday during an appearance at American Legion Boys State here.
Bryant told more than 300 rising high school seniors at the University of Southern Mississippi that he fondly remembered praying when he was a school child.
“I don’t think it hurt us at all,” he said. “I think it built our character, and I think it is what we should continue to do.”
In remarks to the media after his speech, Bryant elaborated on his comments.
“I know it’s difficult when you start talking about denominations and different beliefs, but I think there is a way for us to have a non-denominational opening prayer when the opportunity is available to let people know there is a God,” he said. “Those children should know that He does care about them, particularly within their classroom.”
Bryant said he was not prepared to take any action to legalize school prayer in Mississippi, but he envisioned a time when school prayer would be common.
http://goo.gl/xBZUI

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