The Washington Post reports that some area schools are beefing up their proposed budgets in anticipation of rosier days. The focus of the article is on Fairfax County Schools. And why not? In this oppressive age of bare-bones budgets, its proposed school spending is an oasis.

The superintendent of that school system is proposing a 2.4 billion dollar budget for next year. Putting that in perspective, that’s a 9 percent increase over this year’s budget. As part of it, teachers in Fairfax County would get their largest pay increase since 2008, the year the great recession began. The doldrums may indeed be ending.

And it’s not just Fairfax County that seems to be recovering. Loudoun, which has not yet released its budget proposal, wants to increase its budget by 12 percent. With that would come a 3 percent raise for teachers and some schools would even get all-day kindergarten. Not sounding nearly as dire as it did during the lean years, is it?

Less optimistic, but still good news, is coming from other angles. Montgomery County in Maryland wants a 2 percent increase. Prince George’s County isn’t asking for any increase, but it’s not asking for a decrease either, so considering how tight things have been, we’ll take that as a win.

Complicating matters in many jurisdictions is the fact that enrollment continues to grow. Budget increases are necessary to keep pace with enrollment each year, and after stagnant and shrinking budgets for the past few years, it’s hard to tell whether schools will be able to bring their resource level up to match enrollment levels. Children may still be forced make do with less, though they will hopefully have more than they did before.

The most encouraging news to come out of all this isn’t the budget increases themselves. No doubt, the school systems will be happy for a little relief from the economic diet they’ve been forced to swallow, but the real significance of these proposed increases is symbolic: It’s the light at the end of the tunnel.

Comparisons to the Great Depression and other great economic calamities of the past have painted our current economic troubles in a depressing light. But with multiple jurisdictions eager for increases, we can see finally that the worst may be over.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we can let our guard down. Parents still need to remain involved in their students’ lives and stay abreast with the current school situation.  Although we still have a long road ahead to continue to improve our schools, this is progress.

Consider the variety of skills one can practice and learn in a high school setting. Sports can teach teamwork, the newspaper or yearbook can give students a basic understanding of publishing and getting a product made, and drama can allow students license to express themselves as human beings. All of these things are essential to learn before going out into the “real” world.

The benefits of extracurricular activities are real. Consider this somewhat old but still relevant article from Science Daily.

According to this article, high school students with good social skills and who participate in extracurricular activities do better 10 years out from school than classmates with similar test scores but fewer social skills and less participation in extracurriculars.

Part of this greater success comes because of a change in the economy. With the decline of manufacturing jobs, more service and information oriented skills are desired according to Christy Lleras, a professor of human and community development who is quoted in the article.

Unfortunately, a greater emphasis on testing in the wake of No Child Left Behind has decreased schools’ emphasis on extracurricular activities. Lleras is quoted in the article as saying the following:

“There’s this pervasive idea that if we just teach and test the basic skills, students are going to do much better in school and in life,” she said. “It would be great if we could just snap our fingers and tomorrow everyone could read, write and do math at grade-level. But an obsession with testing and routinized thinking doesn’t foster the non-cognitive soft skills that pay off as an adult.”

Parents, teachers and students have always known that there is more to life than just learning the facts. This is something we see played out every time a student tries to join extracurricular activities in an effort to boost his or her school resume for college applications. However, extracurricular activities are important not just for appearance but also for later success.

As parents and teachers, we have the opportunity to expose our children and students to more diverse activities so that they may become multifaceted human beings. Extracurricular activities are one avenue schools provide to do this.

For high schoolers, first time or otherwise, these days before the start of school are for mental preparation. It is hard to believe when you’re in the midst of it, but what you do in high school can have a significant impact on what happens in the rest of your life. It is time to start thinking about careers, interests, college and what kind of person you want to be. Parents, you can help kids by engaging them on these discussions and driving home to them the importance of these years in setting a foundation for the rest of their lives.

The high school years are also tumultuous ones. Students are nearly adults but not given the respect or responsibility accorded those 18 and over. In addition, there is a great deal of pressure to fit in and not do anything embarrassing. Incoming high school students should find someone who can teach them the ropes about high school. Perhaps an older sibling or a neighbor’s older kid. Information is the best preparation, so go to the source wherever possible. Perhaps this is too obvious a point to reiterate, but, basically nothing you see on television or in the movies about high school is true. Ignore them.

For more advice for the high schooler, check out this article.

If your child is a starting at a new school this year, there are some strategies that should be taken to ensure a less stressful start. For one, try to arrange a tour of the school. Additionally, if parents can arrange for a meeting with the student’s teacher(s) ahead of time, that can go a long way toward reducing stress. Check out the rules and regulations, dress code, etc, of the school. As a student, you don’t want to be reprimanded out of ignorance. As a parent, you certainly don’t want to see your child suffer over something that could have easily been avoided.

For other tips for students starting in a new school, go here.

Another thing to start thinking about ahead of time is homework. How well does your child do when it comes to homework? Are there areas where he or she typically needs a little help? How does he or she learn best? Visually? Verbally? Hands-on? Now is a good time to start thinking about where help for the student can be found. There are online resources that can provide some tutoring, then there are also in-school and out-of-school services that can help. Of course, we have a full range of tutoring available to help any struggling student.

Check out this article for more information.

Now that we have stressed some of the practical aspects of preparing for high school. There are some less concrete ideas that should be explored. Namely perception. This next bit is directed primarily at the student.

High school is a time for many when everything seems really important. That high school boyfriend or girlfriend, having the best GPA, your friends, your extra-curricular activities… you name it. It can seem as though what’s happening now is the most important thing ever. We did talk above about the importance of taking high school seriously, and that’s true, but it is also important to consider the transitory nature of these four years. Who you are in high school is not who you will be for the rest of your life. You will have different boyfriends or girlfriends, not being the best will fade in importance, your friends will change and you will grow passionate about new and possibly more interesting things. Life has only just begun. When you look back on your high school years, you may be nostalgic, you may be regretful, you may not feel anything at all. But regardless, you will, years from now, see high school in its proper perspective and place: as a brief time in your life. Many years lie ahead. Get excited. Great things are to come.

The school year is rapidly approaching. In these last few days of student freedom, it is necessary to think ahead. What can be done to prepare a student for what he or she will face? What questions need to be answered? What problems need to be addressed? What should a student expect? It is nearly too late to start thinking about this, but there is still a little time left. Start thinking about preparation, and all challenges can be faced.

People on the spectrum of autism disorders have trouble with social interaction and communication, which can be a liability when it comes to education. Of course, there are special education classes for such students, and there is a variety of help a family can get outside of school, but now, thanks to the wonders of the iPhone and other smart phones, there are special education apps as well.

Check out this  article in the Scranton Times-Tribune. In it, the writer talks about various apps for Apple-related smart devices that can be helpful when dealing with autistic youth.

One of them shows sign language signs so that the family can learn to better communicate with a non-verbal child who uses sign language. Another shows pictures of commonly desired objects or activities. It allows the user to pair one of those objects with the image of a person. Then the image can be made to say the words “I want.” This app would be used as a way of helping an autistic child learn to ask for what he or she needs.

There are, no doubt, many other apps out there. So, if you are looking for a little extra help with special education, the App Store of your smart phone may be a good place to go.

In other news on the technology front, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington recently purchased six robots for its Watson School of Education to study whether autistic students might better learn from and interact with them.

According to this article from StarNewsOnline.com, there is evidence that autistic children are able to develop good bonds with computers, something that it is difficult for them to do with other people. The hope is that using these robots, educators will be able to teach sign language, words, social interaction and more to autistic children.

If you want to learn more about autism, we also have five sites that may be helpful.  They were taken from this article from healthnews.com.

They are:

The National Autism Association

Autism Speaks

U.S. Autism and Asperger Association

Autism Society of America

Center for Autism and Related Disorders

Autism is a disorder that is becoming better recognized, and it is rare for anybody nowadays to not know somebody who has it or is affected by it in some way. Technology is offering new ways of dealing with autism, but it is also incumbent upon all of us to have a better understanding of what autism is and how to deal with it. You never know when it might be your turn to lend a helping hand.

This is a topic covered in this Education Week article

In the article, mostly anecdotal evidence and explanation is given one way or another. It does explain that some studies have linked technology and better grades, but it also makes the statement that any progress depends on the teacher.

One of those teachers talked about in the article is Sandra Simoneaux, a 3^rd and 4^th grade teacher at Parker Elementary School in Oakland, Calif. She said an interactive whiteboard can give her “immediate insight” into how well students are learning. If she asks a question, the whiteboard can actually track how long it takes for students to answer. If it’s taking a while for the students to understand the problem, then she instantly knows that she needs to spend some more time on that lesson.

She also likes how using an interactive whiteboard can help her to teach the lesson at her own pace. With students relying on her use of the whiteboard, rather than questions on a sheet or in a textbook, they can’t jump ahead. Instead, they must move the same speed at which the instructor teaches. This helps keep everybody on task and in the moment.

The article also talks about the Urban High School of San Francisco. They use interactive white boards there, and school officials talk about how helpful they are with visual learning. The teachers can set up lesson plans and visual tools ahead of time, saving them from having to spend class time setting up something like a graph or chart on the board. Also, the whiteboards have the ability to save work written on them by the teacher. That way, students can download the teacher’s visual class lesson later. This allows them to skip taking notes during the actual lecture and focus instead on taking the information in.

Professional development and repeated use are both emphasized in the article. Just adding an interactive whiteboard itself won’t make for a significant change. That fact is highlighted in this quote from the Education Week article:

“Some people think [the IWB] is a magic bullet that will solve everything,” said Patrick Ledesma, a school-based technology specialist and special education department chair at the 746-student Holmes Middle School, which is part of the Fairfax County public schools in Virginia. He is also a current teacher-ambassador fellow for the U.S. Department of Education. But once interactive whiteboards have been installed, “teachers will do what they’ve always done, unless there is training or support to do things differently,” he said.

It appears that technology can really make an impact in the classroom, but not without the guiding hands of a well-trained professional.

The ordinary nine-month school year is an antiquated idea. Two factors contributed to its inception. First, the percentage of families that had agricultural backgrounds was high when public schools were in their infancy. A summer break was needed so that those students who needed to help on the farm could do so. Also, air conditioning is a relatively modern invention. In the days prior to its existence, schools couldn’t provide a climate-controlled environment for the students. In the summer months, the heat could be too much for classroom instruction.

A lot has changed. Most families have no ties to agricultural work, and air conditioning is standard in every school. The reasons for the nine-month schedule have changed but the schedule remains. That can be a problem because studies show that students lose some of what they’ve learned when they take a prolonged break from school.

A meta-analysis of studies about summer learning loss showed that students can lose about one month of education instruction over the long break. The effect on math skills was particularly pronounced. Also, it appears that the learning loss in reading for low-income students is greater than it is for their better-off peers.

The effects of summer learning loss can be devastating. For instance, students from well off families may receive additional instruction over the summer while lower class students do not. This can leave lower income students at a disadvantage when the school year begins anew – a disadvantage that they may never recover from. Also, it is just a major setback for school systems when they essentially waste a month’s worth of instruction thanks to summer break.

Many school districts are taking steps to fix this problem. Year-round school has become more common, for one thing. Two other possible solutions are summer school and extended school years. But if you are a parent whose school system doesn’t provide any easy solutions, you may have to take it upon yourself to give your children extra education opportunities over the summer.

Check out this article from education.com to get more details about summer learning loss and the origin of our modern school calendar.

And go to education.com’s section on summer learning to find links to other helpful articles that can provide ideas and activities for summer education opportunities.

Refer to an earlier Tri-Ed blog to get some more ideas of how you can work learning into everyday activities.

There is a great deal of legitimate debate about whether adopting such standards is a good idea, but one state, Texas, has taken the debate a step further by actually adopting legislation to forbid “common core standards.” Read more here.

This may not be too surprising. According to the Education Week blog post, Texas has been one of the few holdouts thus far when it comes to participating in any way with these universal standards.

You can read the text of the legislation here, but the gist of it is that Texas is making sure that its school systems cannot follow along with the rest of the states when it comes to adopting common standards of learning.

Politicians have taken the decision out of the hands of educators, which is a somewhat dangerous precedent to set. Of course, with President Obama being up front on issues related to education and “common core standards,” it is difficult to say that education should remain non-political. But it is one thing for a politician to push for new ideas and structure in education, and it is something else all together to forbid others from participating freely.

Regardless, education has become politicized, whether you are Democrat or Republican. Everybody says they’re thinking of the children, and everybody thinks they have the best ideas when it comes to reforming education. But rhetoric and proof are two different things. Perhaps with Texas holding out, the state can become a control to test whether “common core standards” are actually useful.

If researchers can compare the performance of students in states that adopt the standards against the performance of Texas school systems, then perhaps there will actually be some data about their effectiveness.

Until then, the debate will continue.

Do we have an unusually criminal population? Are other countries too lenient? Or do we have an out-of-control system of punishment in this country that favors incarceration over education?

An article on CNN.com looks at the question and references a recent NAACP report, which shows that spending on prisons has taken some of the money that could have been spent on education.

The vast amount of money being spent on punishment in our country is a direct result of the War on Drugs and the resulting get-tough approach to handling drug crimes. Poor and minority communities suffer the most from such policies. Meanwhile, these policies haven’t been particularly effective in combating drug crime and have had a negative impact on education.

For example, the NAACP report states that the lowest performing schools in Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia are in areas with high rates of incarceration. The article points out that the cycle of “lowered expectations” that comes from high incarceration rates weakens the community fabric and stymies the future potential of its residents.

The CNN article says that treatment rather than incarceration, GED programs leading to early release and easier access to parole would all help alleviate the problem.

Many people hear the word NAACP and assume that whatever follows is liberal rhetoric, but the CNN article referencing the report and arguing for reforming the prison system is co-written by Rod Paige, the U.S. secretary of education from 2001 to 2005 under President George W. Bush — not exactly a liberal hero. The other author of the article is Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP.

Even Virginia’s Republican Gov. Robert McDonnell seems to be behind prison reform. The CNN article points out that he is trying to close eight prison facilities and use the money instead on higher education.

The CNN article also uses this quote that Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave in his 2010 State of the Union address:

“What does it say about any state that focuses more on prison uniforms than on caps and gowns?”

That seems like a fair question. What does it say when we have so many people falling behind in our school system, and yet our policy makers continue to try to appear “tough on crime” by supporting policies that imprison people sometimes to no discernible good?

None of which is to say that people who commit crimes shouldn’t go to prison. However, policy makers and their constituents must take a look at how and why we imprison people and determine whether what we’re doing is effective and what can be done differently. And, of course, we should spend at least as much time and money on education as we do on incarceration.

Byong Man Ahn, the former minister of education, science, and technology in South Korea, said that an emphasis on testing can be harmful. His views from his March 25 keynote address at the annual meeting of the Association for Education Finance and Policy were quoted in the following Education Week article.

“Although the pain of memorizing is unavoidable for young students to acquire new knowledge, they should also be motivated by the pleasure of creative expression,” Mr. Ahn told the audience. “However, we force the students to memorize so much that they experience pain rather than [the] pleasure [of] acquiring knowledge through the learning process.”

Ahn also talked about the damage that can come of parents who put too much pressure on their children. Parental involvement is, of course, essential to a child’s education, but it looks like too much can be a bad thing.

South Korea is a top performer in international assessments, and it’s a model admired by President Barack Obama. But Ahn said that the United States should be careful of giving South Korea too much credit. South Korean officials are trying to focus less on testing as they also reduce the number of required courses in their schools.  They want to give students more freedom to choose which classes they want to take.

Testing is an essential component of any properly functioning school system. There must be a way to measure student achievement, and sometimes grades aren’t enough. However, testing is just one tool that schools should be using, and it looks like overreliance can be counterproductive.

This is according to Education Week’s recent “Diplomas Count 2011: Beyond High School, Before Baccalaureate” report.

The rates come from 2008 data collected in the nation’s 50 largest school systems. Fairfax came in second with a graduation rate of 85.1 percent. Prince William County is a little further down, but still relatively high, at spot 17. It had a graduation rate of 68.4 percent.

Unfortunately, that is a fall in ranking for Prince William County. It was previously in 15^th place. Also, that puts Prince William County below the national graduation rate of 72 percent. But that percentage is unusually high. Not since the 1980s has the national average been this good.

That’s good news for a country eager for evidence of education improvement, according to one expert quoted in the Washington Examiner article about the report.

“Just as Americans have been following the stock market and employment reports for signs of an economic turnaround, education watchers have been on the lookout for improving graduation rates for the better part of a decade,” said Christopher Swanson, vice president of Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit that publishes Education Week. “It looks like we are finally seeing strong signs of a broad-based educational recovery, which we hope will gain further momentum.”

It may be premature to celebrate, however. The recession has led to deep cuts at many schools. It’s possible that graduation rates at some of the systems on the list have fallen since 2008. Plus the contrast between Prince William County and the national average show that there is a lot of work still to be done.

The challenge going forward is how to maintain and improve graduation rates with fewer resources. Though the recession is technically over, its effects still weigh heavily on school systems. It is unclear how long schools will be beleaguered by budget shortfalls or whether they will eventually rebound to previous levels of funding.

It’s possible that a long-term strategy for surviving on less is needed.

In the meantime, Fairfax County should be riding high on its ranking while taking steps to try and kick Montgomery County out of the top spot.

Check out this press release for more information about the Education Week rankings.