The Kansas Board of Regents had help in deciding to do the right thing and release the results of its audit of questionable financial transactions at Kansas State University. The release came after the Manhattan Mercury filed an open-records complaint with Attorney General Steve Six (in photo), whose office decided the audit should be public. “Shedding light on the transactions outlined in the audit helps to inform the public about the practices employed by the athletic department and will help Kansas State improve in the future,” Six’s spokeswoman, Ashley Anstaett, told the Kansas City Star. It shouldn’t take another open-records complaint to convince the regents to release the similar audits of the University of Kansas and Pittsburg State University under way.
Undocumented payments. A questionable $500,000 loan. A bank account unreviewed by the university controller that was used to make more than $1 million in payments a year. These and other revelations in the Kansas Board of Regents’ audit of Kansas State University suggest, at best, that oversight of KSU’s athletic department needed to be tighter in recent years. As our editorial today concludes: “Winning sports teams are important to the state universities, boosting fundraising and recruitment as well as school spirit. But if an athletic department behaves unethically or worse, the taint spreads across and beyond campus, and starts to erode public trust in what is a public institution.”
Most industrialized nations have longer school years than we do, and there is fairly strong evidence that more time in school means higher standardized test scores. The long summer break doesn’t even pretend to have a rational basis in educational policy. It’s a response to inadequate farming schedules, the mid-20th century’s lack of air conditioning, the mid-20th century’s fear of summertime disease transmission, and the no-doubt timeless desire to mimic the summertime vacation habits of the rich. One issue that doesn’t come up enough in discussions of extending the school year is that doing so is an issue of economic fairness. Wealthy parents can afford to give their children all sorts of edifying summer experiences that downscale parents cannot. As researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found, educational advancement across classes tends to be fairly even during the school year. But downscale students actually decline in educational achievement over the course of the summer, while upscale students remain relatively stable. — Conor Clarke, TheAtlantic.com
There’s more to life, and especially more to childhood, than test score achievement. I wouldn’t trade the summers of my youth for a better competitive edge today against the average Japanese worker. Kids in the worst schools aren’t going to benefit much by being cooped up there through the summer months. Of course, some kids would benefit. I haven’t any objection if they choose to attend summer school. When I have kids, however, summer is going to be a lovely reverie when I get to enjoy their company more than I do during the school year. Do I place a higher value on the math scores of my children, or the relationships they cultivate with their family and friends? The latter. Kids already spend enough time within a public education system that teaches conformity and deadens love of learning. — Conor Friedersdorf, TheAmericanScene.com
With the state’s university system facing a repair backlog and dollars limited, it seemed worth a try in 2007 for the Legislature to offer tax credits to those wishing to donate money for campus repairs. But in the tax credit’s first year, it generated $862,000 — nice but not enough to address a list of $825 million in projects. The problem is the economy, but it’s also the idea of contributing toward repairs. “It’s hard to make a tax credit for a boiler,” state Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, said at a recent meeting of the Joint Committee on State Building Construction. Other funding sources, including bonding, have enabled the universities to do $26.2 million in deferred maintenance, according to the Lawrence Journal-World.
The University of Kansas denied the father of Jason Wren, a freshman who died of alcohol poisoning in March, access to his son’s disciplinary records, claiming that the information was protected under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Many other universities are also misapplying FERPA to hide rule breaking by college athletes, coaches and boosters, according to a six-month investigation by the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch. FERPA is supposed to protect the privacy of students’ report cards and transcripts, but at many schools, any document containing a student’s name is considered an “education record.” As a result, schools such as the University of Nebraska refused to release any documents on NCAA violations. The Dispatch tried to obtain various records from the University of Kansas but was told that it would have pay $328, the eighth-highest amount of all the schools that the newspaper contacted, the Lawrence Journal-World reported.
The pride of Olathe, 13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar (in photo), recently became the seventh Indian-American to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee in the past 11 contests, noted James Maguire in the Wall Street Journal. The secret of the success of any bee winner isn’t ethnicity, he wrote. It’s a “fierce and unswerving dedication” to studying for the bee, and to exceptional educational achievement generally — which parents of Indian-American spellers consistently have told him is of “non-negotiable importance” in their families.
Maguire concluded: “The shelf full of trophies won by the children of immigrants throws a challenge back at America itself. Can the country as a whole keep pace with their educational attainment? Can we bootstrap ourselves as we have in the past, this time leading a global marketplace? Can we view education not as an expense but as a critical investment?”
“Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning,” Mark C. Taylor, the chairman of the religion department at Columbia University, wrote in a commentary in the New York Times. “Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).” Taylor recommends reforms such as restructuring the curriculum to make it more integrated, abolishing permanent departments and creating problem-focused programs, and imposing mandatory retirement and abolishing tenure.
“The excess consumer demand and jobs created by our credit and housing bubbles have masked not only our weaknesses in manufacturing and other economic fundamentals, but something worse: how far we have fallen behind in K-12 education and how much it is now costing us,” wrote columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman. Citing a new study titled “The Economic Impact of the Achievement Gap in America’s Schools,” Friedman warned: “In the 1950s and 1960s, the U.S. dominated the world in K-12 education. We also dominated economically. In the 1970s and 1980s, we still had a lead, albeit smaller, in educating our population through secondary school, and America continued to lead the world economically, albeit with other big economies, like China, closing in. Today, we have fallen behind in both per capita high school graduates and their quality. Consequences to follow.”
Fortunately for local school districts and taxpayers, the misguided proposal to eliminate state equalization aid for local school bond issue projects hit a snag last week when too few members of a House committee showed up to work the bill. Still, where there’s a will there’s a way at the Statehouse. So “it could pop up at any time,” threatened the committee chairman, state Rep. Joe McLeland, R-Wichita. His colleagues, including others who better represent the interests of the Wichita school district, should make sure that it doesn’t. A bill that would unfairly break a state promise to local districts and hike local taxes — and that couldn’t even generate enough interest to allow committee action — should go no further.
President Obama would extend the federal government’s meddling in local school decision-making. And the rollout of his education agenda Tuesday only deepened the impression that the president is trying to do way too much too fast. But the nation would benefit if at least some of Obama’s bipartisan ideas were implemented, such as pursuing more charter schools, investing in early childhood education and “rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay” — something usually opposed teachers’ unions. And it’s time the nation had a serious debate about whether kids need more hours or days in school than they get in our agrarian school calendar. As Obama said: “Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21st century economy.”
Both finalists for Wichita school superintendent did well at public meetings Saturday. Denise Wren, Wichita’s assistant superintendent for high schools, has a no-nonsense style and outgoing personality that helped her lead a remarkable turnaround when she was principal at Wichita North High School. “I’m a leader and I’m passionate about kids,” she said. John Allison, superintendent of Mount Lebanon school district in Pennsylvania, is thoughtful and has extensive administrative experience. One concern about Allison is that the districts he has worked in haven’t been as diverse as Wichita, though he made clear at the public meetings that he is committed to educating all children.
Both candidates think highly of USD 259 and want to help make it better. Allison considers Wichita “the flagship district of the state” and is impressed with the community support. “I would love to be here,” he said. Wren said simply: “I love this district.”
More than two candidates would have been preferable, but USD 259 appears to have two capable finalists for superintendent. Denise Wren (in photo) is Wichita’s assistant superintendent for high schools and was formerly principal at Wichita North. John Allison is superintendent of the Mt. Lebanon school system in Pennsylvania, though he spent much of his career in the Shawnee Mission school district.
Though the time frame is too short, it’s good that the Wichita school board is planning to announce the finalists for superintendent today and then to hold public meetings Saturday. District employees (8:30-10:45 a.m.), high school students and media (11 a.m. to noon), and parents and community members (1-4 p.m.) will be able to meet the candidates at Wichita North High School and ask them questions. As United Teachers of Wichita union president Paul Babich noted, there won’t be much time to research the candidates before the Saturday meetings. But at least there will be an opportunity for input. The board earlier had been unsure about whether it would announce finalists and had seemed to care mostly about not wanting to scare off candidates. But if a candidate can’t handle public meetings and some media scrutiny, he shouldn’t be hired.
There was plenty to ponder in the “10 to watch in 2009″ feature in the Sunday Eagle. Karl Peterjohn’s crossover from anti-tax activist to Sedgwick County commissioner will make the weekly commission meetings must-see TV. And 2009 will be a defining year, during difficult times, for incoming City Manager Robert Layton, Greater Wichita Economic Development Coalition president Vicki Pratt Gerbino and Intrust Bank Arena manager Chris Presson. One point jumped out of the stories, though: interim Wichita schools superintendent Martin Libhart’s suggestion that he might consider applying for the permanent job after all. “I really enjoy what I do in this role,” he told The Eagle. By all accounts, he is doing a fine job. But Libhart, an architect by training, lacks any education degree. And last April, the school board was unequivocal in saying that he wasn’t in the running to replace Winston Brooks permanently. Then-board president Connie Dietz said: “The board felt very strongly that this (interim) person not be a candidate.” Eight months later, have more minds than Libhart’s changed?
If the state’s public universities must raise their food and housing costs at this time, at least Wichita State University will do it less than the rest. Among the hikes approved last week by the Kansas Board of Regents, WSU’s 3.4 percent increase looked better than the others: 6.5 percent at Pittburg State University, 5.1 percent at the University of Kansas, 4.9 percent at Emporia State and Fort Hays universities, and 4.7 percent at Kansas State University. KU’s food and housing costs will remain the highest in the system, more than $6,800 a year. Back to that “if,” though. Many Kansans surely will agree with regent Gary Sherrer of Overland Park, who said in voting against the increases: “I think we’re doing business as usual in very unusual times.”
President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for education secretary, Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan, doesn’t look like a placeholder – especially not with Obama calling failing schools “morally unacceptable for our children” and Duncan calling education the “civil rights issue of this generation.” Duncan’s tricky mission will be to satisfy three passionate camps – reformers, teacher unions and No Child Left Behind critics. Good luck with that.
Kansas was inexplicably counted among things U.S. schoolchildren are taught to think of as bad in the “Ten Random, Politically Incorrect Thoughts” written by Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution. In his rambling thought No. 10, Hanson wrote that “the following things and people for some reason must be bad, or at least must in public company be said to be bad (in no particular order): Wal-Mart, cowboys, the Vietnam War, oil companies, coal plants, nuclear power, George Bush, chemicals, leather, guns, states like Utah and Kansas, Sarah Palin, vans and SUVs.”
Michelle Rhee (in photo), chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public schools, is making the Washington Teachers’ Union an offer that many of its 4,000 members may find hard to resist. With financing provided by private foundation, Rhee is offering raises of as much as $40,000 if teachers are willing to give up tenure. Rhea argues that tenure hurts children by making is hard to fire incompetent teachers, while the union contends that tenure protects teachers from arbitrary firings.
Nov. 4 was a good day for school bond issues throughout Kansas. Of at least 16 proposals that were on the ballot, 12 passed. In addition to Wichita’s $370 million bond issue, other bonds approved by voters were: Olathe, $68 million; DeSoto, $75 million; Baldwin City, $22.9 million; Anthony-Harper-Chaparral, $6.5 million (the larger of two bond issues on ballot); Sterling, $20.4 million; Manhattan, $97.5 million; Leavenworth, $57.8 million; Sabetha Wetmore, $8.3 million; Garden City, $97.5 million; Hugoton, $21 million; and Fowler, $2 million. Failed bond votes were Holton, $21.3 million; Marysville, $24 million; Herington, $29.9 million; and Anthony-Harper-Chaparral, $1.5 million. On a per-pupil basis, several of the approved bond issues were significantly larger than Wichita’s.
Every bit of dire economic news would seem to add to the challenge for proponents of Wichita’s $370 million school bond issue, which is on the Nov. 4 ballot. And sure enough, 37 percent of participants in a SurveyUSA poll last week for KWCH, Channel 12, said that gas prices and the economy would have a “major impact” on their bond issue vote, compared with 26 percent who said the impact would be minor. What does one make, though, of the 33 percent who said it would have no impact of all – unless they’d already decided to vote against it?
Some opponents of the USD 259 bond issue have argued that the district shouldn’t need more classroom space because its enrollment has been fairly flat since the 2000 bond issue. But that ignores the addition of all-day kindergarten throughout the district since 2000, increases in students who speak English as a second language, and the district’s push to lower class sizes — all of which requires more classrooms. The district’s latest enrollment numbers, which are up by 441 students, also show that the northeast and southeast areas of the district are experiencing rapid growth and school overcrowding. That’s where the district wants and needs to build new schools.
Barack Obama believes that top-down government regulation is strangling innovation inside schools. For him, Washington’s role should focus on setting good learning standards, tracking student progress and helping states recruit a stronger teaching force. Obama wisely proposes attacking structural constraints that keep highly qualified college graduates from pursuing careers as teachers and spurring a mixed market of diverse schools. Obama emphasizes the phrase “responsible charter schools” to underscore the fact that unregulated, fly-by-night charter schools in states like Arizona have failed and closed, leaving children and parents in the lurch. Obama has amplified his pitch to expand preschools that include working with parents to improve early literacy practices. He said that he would rely heavily on churches and other community groups to run new preschools in order to avoid sluggish school bureaucracies. — Bruce Fuller, University of California at Berkeley professor
Barack Obama’s proposals fall short of John McCain’s call for systemic change in the form of school-choice vouchers and greater competition between the public and private sectors for the delivery of education services. Take Obama’s proposal to better use technology in the classroom. Most people would probably say that technology in the classroom improves student learning and achievement. But the evidence is far from clear. Even Obama’s call for added charter-school funding is problematic. Charter schools are supposed to be local efforts free from bureaucratic red tape. More federal money and the ambiguous “accountability” strings that Obama has mentioned in his speeches could undercut charters’ raison d’etre. — Lance T. Izumi, Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy
Wichita elementary schools and teachers have done a mixed job of giving all kids recess time. Guidelines call for at least 20 minutes every day, but some teachers keep in their students from recess to cram in more instruction time or punish them.
Is it any wonder that kids get antsy and out of control? They need to run and play and burn off excess energy.
The same holds for middle school kids. So it’s encouraging that some Wichita middle school principals are bringing back recess.
“Even prisoners get yard time,” said Truesdell principal Jennifer Sinclair. She is reinstating lunchtime recess at the middle school this fall in the form of 20-minute breaks in which students walk laps or do other activities.
OK, it does sounds a lot like a prison recess, but at least kids are getting some fresh air and exercise. They need it to perform at their best.
Beloit College’s Mindset List for the class of 2012 has some mind-blowing revelations for those of a certain age. Among its 60 points about the life experience of this fall’s college freshmen: “Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.” “Films have never been X-rated, only NC-17.” “Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.” “IBM has never made typewriters.” “Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.” “‘The Tonight Show’ has always been hosted by Jay Leno.” And (my favorite) “Wayne Newton (in photo) has never had a mustache.” The college in Beloit, Wis., has released these lists for professors for the past 11 years, “a reminder of the rapidly changing frame of reference for this new generation.”
A small school district in Texas has become the first in the nation to approve teachers and staff carrying concealed firearms. Teachers with pistols — what a great learning environment for kids.
The policy change is intended to thwart school shootings, such as the one that occurred Thursday at a school in Tennessee.
But as a Dallas Morning News editorial argued, the district is courting disaster: “Injecting firearms into a school setting opens the door to tragic but avoidable accidents. And there are no certain safeguards to prevent an angry student — or teacher — from getting hold of a gun that was carried into the classroom.
“Parents depend on educators to provide a safe learning environment for their children. Allowing teachers to be armed and potentially dangerous is a frightening prospect.”
