Peer teaching for my kids? No thanks

Peer teaching has serious downsides.

Peer teaching* has become increasingly popular over the last 30-40 years, in conjunction with the rise of mixed ability grouping in K-12 public schools.  Typically involving a slower learner receiving instruction from an advanced student, this practice has significant downsides for both parties.

Students Act as Teachers sums ups the story of frustrated teachers in Manhattan who created a buddy program, enlisting older students to help teach struggling readers.  Part of the goal was to have the older students “get a dose of their own medicine by seeing how difficult it can be to teach”. How did it turn out?

The results, they said, were mixed.

This mirrors my observations, even though I’ve had at least one teacher insist there was abundant research strongly supporting the use of peer teaching.  That’s what she learned in graduate school.  As in many other aspects of “innovative” pedagogy, research of questionable quality is used to support instructional practices that are often implemented in a haphazard manner.  In one case I know, a student struggling in geometry was asked to tutor another student who was struggling in algebra.  The teacher insisted both would benefit, but as it turned out  the struggling geometry student received no help in her area of weakness.  Based on other conversations with this teacher, it was clear that the intended benefit was to strengthen social connections, promoting compassion and self-esteem that would ultimately pay off in improved geometry skills.  Spare me.

Not supported by research

The 2008 National Mathematics Advisory Panel reviewed “instruction in which students are primarily doing the teaching”, finding “only eight studies that met our standards for quality”.  Additionally, the Panel found 20 high-quality studies of cooperative and collaborative learning.   The only definitive benefit to students shown by any of these studies was an improvement in computation skills.  I’m imagining a scenario where one student is helping another in drilling math facts.  I can buy that.  Otherwise, peer teaching seems to be a waste of precious classroom time.  Here is how the Panel puts it.

There is suggestive evidence that peer tutoring improves computation skills in the elementary grades. However, additional research is needed.

Are most kids good at teaching?

Some math kids like to tutor and are probably good at it, but I tend to think of teaching as a separate gift. I know many people who are masters at what they do but can’t explain it worth a darn.

I want expert teachers, not other students, teaching my kids.

Unfortunately, I have many anecdotes about the downsides of peer teaching.  A bright fifth-grader I know decided it was best to clam up after being derided as a know-it-all in his collaborative learning group.  So much for learning compassion and self-esteem.

* Peer teaching is included as part of various “cooperative”, “student-centered” learning strategies, with names like Team Assisted Individualization, Student Teams-Achievement Division, and peer-to-peer learning.

Related:  Proficiency grouping makes more sense than differentiated instruction (Cost of College)

Quick Links – Public pension problems round-up

IN NEW YORK, PENSION COSTS ARE OVERPOWERING THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS’ ABILITY TO MAINTAIN STUDENT SERVICES.

Our local public schools must cut student services to pay soaring pension costs.

The budget numbers tell the story:

• Total school costs will increase 3.3% over last year.
• Cost of teacher pensions alone will increase 42%.
• Pension costs account for at least 75% of the total budget increase.*
• To pay for the 42% increase in teacher pension costs, the school will cut teaching staff and increase class sizes.

Public schools throughout the state are in a similar situation.   “Retirement and insurance costs continue their relentless climb”, causing a nearby district to cut 30 jobs.  Another local school administrator explains their pension costs:

Almost 80 percent of the hike comes from a $3.5 million rise in state-mandated retirement expenses, Purvis said.

* Total employee benefits costs account for 96% of the total budget increase.

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A SPECIAL EXEMPTION ALLOWS TAX INCREASES THAT EXCEED TAX CAP LIMITS AS LONG AS THOSE PAYMENTS ARE USED TO PAY FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYEE PENSIONS.

The New York property tax cap introduced two years ago includes a carve-out created to allow tax increases that pay for teacher pensions to be exempted from the cap.  As it turns out, this exemption has been the main reason for the average tax increase more than doubling above the 2% statutory base cap up to 4.6% .

The additional increase is driven entirely by a provision of the 2011 tax cap law that excludes a portion of increased employee pension costs from the limit on tax levy increases. Without the pension-related increase, the 2013-14 levy limit statewide would average 2.7 percent, including all other district-specific exclusions and allowances for voter-approved capital expenses and physical additions to the local tax base, along with factors such as growth in the tax base and net changes in the value of payment in lieu of tax (PILOT) agreements.

The pension exclusion hurts poor school districts the most because the calculation method especially affects communities with lower property values.

… the pension exclusion in the tax cap law effectively makes it easier for school districts to raise taxes on property owners who can least afford it.

… The pension provision—added at the insistence of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver—diminishes the protection the law was supposed to provide for some of the state’s poorest taxpayers.

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NEW YORK’S ‘STOPGAP’ SOLUTION TO PENSION CRISIS CARRIES ‘LONG-TERM RISKS’.

A “pension-smoothing” provision was recently introduced in New York, allowing school districts to postpone full funding of pension liabilities.

Moody’s does not look favorably on this plan to kick the can down the road.

Moody’s Investors Services warned Monday that the state’s new pension-smoothing plan is “a stopgap with long-term risks” that could endanger the state’s pension fund and the credit of local governments.

The plan, part of the state budget approved last month, allows for local governments and schools to essentially pay a flat rate for pension costs over 12 years, avoiding the steep cost increases that the municipalities have faced.

Opening the door to future underfunding of pension liabilities

Moody’s says that the concern is the flat-rate payments could underfund the state’s roughly $150 billion pension fund, which provides benefits to 1 million retirees and current local and state workers. That could lead to higher costs for municipalities and schools in future years, the credit agency said.

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PUBLIC PENSION HORROR STORIES FROM ILLINOIS AND FROM CALIFORNIA CONJURE UP TROUBLING IMAGES.

 

 In Illinois, public pensions already gobbling up education funding

… Education funding is being strangled by the same python that is strangling the rest of state government’s finances: pension obligations….

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…

 “The pension costs really are the Pacman that’s eating our budget,” Shirey said.

Even after recent reform, New York teacher pension costs will rise 37%

A history of New York State public school pension reform:

Recent reform that saw the creation of Tier 6 is unlikely to offer taxpayers any relief for at least a decade.

Over time, lawmakers have passed legislation to reduce the cost of pensions to state and local governments and school districts. The avenue they have used to do this is to create additional “tiers”—levels of membership that carry different benefits and requirements. After the passage of Tier 5 in 2009, calls for pension reform persisted, and a new Tier 6 was enacted this year.

Gov. Cuomo has said that the recently enacted pension reform will save the state more than $80 billion over the next 30 years. However, according to the NYS Comptroller’s Office, the creation of Tier 6 will not significantly lower pension costs for schools in the immediate future to prevent the kinds of program cuts many districts face in the next few years.

This is because the new pension tier applies only to new employees hired after April 1, 2012. With school districts struggling to balance their budgets in this difficult economy, most are laying off staff rather than hiring new employees who would fall into the new tier.

Pension costs have continued to surge out of control, as I wrote last year.

… skyrocketing public pension costs are “the single biggest threat” to local schools’ ability to deliver educational  services for New York children.  In our local district, pension costs have risen more than 50% over the last two years and now account for 7.2% of the total budget, up from 5.1% in 2010-11.  This has meant ongoing cuts in student services as taxes are diverted to pay for pensions.  The trend is up, and by 2015 pension costs are expected to eat up 35 percent of property tax collections.

There is no relief in sight.  Teacher pension costs for the 2013-14 school year will rise 37%.

Related:

•  A primer on New York State public school pensions (Cost of College)
• Despite increased education spending, surging pension costs only allow New York schools to ‘tread water’ (Cost of College)

Despite increased education spending, surging pension costs only allow New York schools to ‘tread water’

The 4.4% increase in school spending proposed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is not enough according to some education advocates.

Cuomo’s budget plan for the fiscal year that starts April 1 includes a 3 percent increase — about $610 million — in education aid plus $203 million to offset high pension contribution costs. An additional $75 million would go toward initiatives highlighted in his State of the State address.

Proposed funding barely allows schools to “tread water”.

“The year-to-year costs in education just to tread water are more than the amount of money in the proposed budget,” said Billy Easton, executive director of the labor-backed advocacy group Alliance for Quality Education. “If we actually want to improve the schools — that’s not even addressed here.”

Governor Cuomo argues that the 8.6% increase in education funding over the last two years has been double the inflation rate.

“That is double the rate of inflation,” Cuomo said in Tuesday’s address. “That is four or five times the increase in home values during the same period of time and it’s during a period of time where student enrollment has gone down.”

Schools across the state report that steep rises in pension costs more than cancel out any increases in proposed funding.

New Paltz Superintendent Maria Rice said teachers’ retirement costs alone at the Ulster County district are growing by about $900,000, so the $333,500 increase won’t come close.

The district would get about $12.4 million, a 2.8 percent increase from last year, when including building aid. The county’s average is 2 percent.

Based on the aid, Rice projects the district will have to cut between $800,000 and $1 million to balance the budget, which is “luckily” less than last year’s gap, she said.

The district cut its pre-K program and increased class sizes this year. Next year, she said she’ll debate whether to cut Advanced Placement courses or eliminate an elementary foreign language program which she said has been successful.

Some schools are considering taking advantage of a new “pension-financing plan”.

The pension stabilization option would give local governments and school districts a lower, more predictable employer contribution rate over a period of 25 years or more, rather than high bills now and presumably lower ones later.

Not everyone believes this new scheme will work, with some calling it a “threat to pension solvency”.

The state’s largest public union is right. Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to “smooth” pensions for local governments and school districts is “a bait-and-switch scheme … that will allow public employers to underfund their pension obligations,” as the Civil Service Employees Association described it last week.

Kicking the can down the road
Instead of providing real mandate relief to remedy the unsustainable rise in pension costs, the governor is promoting a quick fix that will temporarily hide the problem until a few years down the road when it will resurface.  This has become a typical scenario among our politicians.

Related:

• Under New York 2% tax cap, protected pensions will cause even more cuts to student services (Cost of College)
• Unrealistic assumptions will continue to cause New York teacher pension costs to rise (Cost of College)

Quick Links – Union membership keeps falling; 4.4% increase in proposed spending for education in New York; our educational mess

◊◊◊  ’Union membership falls to 70-year low’ (The Detroit News)

Washington — The nation’s unions lost 400,000 members in 2012 as the percentage of U.S. workers represented by a labor union fell to 11.3 percent, its lowest level since the 1930s – declining by 0.5 percent over the last year.

Michigan accounted for about 10 percent of the nation’s loss of unionized workers as the Wolverine State fell to the seventh most-unionized state, from fifth in 2011.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said the biggest hit was in public sector unions, where many states and cities have cut back on their unionized workforce.

Sharp difference between higher rate of union membership in the public sector and lower rate among private workers

Among public sector workers, 35.9 percent are in a union – down from 37.0 percent in 2011, as the public sector shed nearly 250,000 union workers.

The public sector union rate is more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers. In the private sector, 6.6 percent are unionized, down from 6.9 percent in 2011.

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◊◊◊  New York State proposed budget increases funding for most local public schools

All Westchester County school districts except for three will received increased state funding under Governor Cuomo’s proposed 2013-14 budget.  Increases range from 17.5% (Hendrick Hudson) to 0.3% (Scarsdale).  Our local district will see its state funding increase by 5.8%.

The statewide average increase in proposed education aid is 4.4%, with “no broad-based tax increases”.

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◊◊◊  David Solway schools us on the Educational Mess We’re In

David Solway describes the content-free, guide-on-the-side culture of today’s classroom using language that had me reaching for a dictionary a few times.  In the comments, he’s criticized for stringing “ten dollar words into sentences one has to read twice to understand”.  I would have to agree, but it was fun to read this twice!

This paradigm is instantly recognizable by the contents and procedures that dominate our public school classrooms: films galore, computer simulations, audio-visual devices, “testable competencies,” PowerPoint presentations, concept maps, information transfer, virtual whiteboards, expurgated texts, true-or-false exams demanding little in the way of written formulation of ideas, and so on. Teachers are trained to emphasize method, to prepare “instructional designs,” to focus on “techniques” of transmission, to valorize process instead of matter, to generate “lesson plans” rather than lessons — “That’s the reason they’re called lessons,” remarked the Gryphon in Alice in Wonderland, “because they lessen from day to day.” Meanwhile, since they are expected to be communicators rather than preceptors, teachers are regularly shunted around the curriculum and required to teach outside their disciplines — which, be it said, they have often failed to master owing to the institutional stress placed on tactics and delivery rather than on grist and corpus. Thus the poor geography teacher becomes a worse gym instructor.

Doubtlessly, the penchant for instrumental modes of teaching has been with us since time immemorial, but in the current climate it has been exalted into a hypothetically remedial ideology and institutionalized as a pervasive method of committee-backed instruction. It is high time we became aware, then, that despite all the media hype and the inundation of formulaic pamphlets, primers, and manuals which experts, specialists, and many public school teachers have unfathomably welcomed, and the misguided policy to hire 100,000 more ill-equipped teachers, the techniques that have become so popular these days do not work. As I wrote in Education Lost: Reflections on Contemporary Pedagogical Practice, “the fundamental premise at the bottom of modern educational theory, namely that teaching is a science whose operative concepts are those of storage, dissemination and skill-replication…is faltering badly, especially in those disciplines which are not data-based.”

At the very least, I learned a new synonym for “teacher”:  preceptor.  I wonder how long it’ll be before I figure out how to slip that word into my writing.

Teachers should harness technology to find gaps in student knowledge

So do we all agree with edX president Anant Agarwal that technology might be the “single biggest innovation in education” in the last 200 years?  It certainly seems possible.

Technology ’will topple many ideas about how we teach’.

Because education is economically important yet appears inefficient and static with respect to technology, it’s often cited (along with health care) as the next industry ripe for a major “disruption.” This belief has been promoted by Clayton Christensen, the influential Harvard Business School professor who coined the term “disruptive technology.” In two books on education, he laid a blueprint for online learning: it will continue to spread and get better, and eventually it will topple many ideas about how we teach—and possibly some institutions as well.

My observation as a parent is that technology is unlikely to make human teachers obsolete any time soon, but the opportunity for schools to use data more efficiently screams out as a way to improve human teachers.

Technology will define where online education goes next. All those millions of students clicking online can have their progress tracked, logged, studied, and probably influenced, too. Talk to Khan or anyone behind the MOOCs (which largely sprang from university departments interested in computer intelligence) and they’ll all say their eventual goal isn’t to stream videos but to perfect education through the scientific use of data. Just imagine, they say, software that maps an individual’s knowledge and offers a lesson plan unique to him or her. Will they succeed and create something truly different? If they do, we’ll have the answer to our question: online learning will be the most important innovation in education in the last 200 years.

Teachers should harness technology to find gaps in student knowledge.

I recently heard a local high school teacher claim he did not have time to conduct formative assessments*.  Part of the school’s explanation for this was that excessive mandatory testing requirements left no time for teachers to find student’s gaps in knowledge.  I’m not buying this, because Khan Academy and other sources offer “software that maps an individual’s knowledge”.  I’ve had a brief glimpse of education software used in our public schools that also does this, generating data similar to that provided by KA.

Personalized data like this would enable a teacher to use his time more efficiently, even making differentiated instruction more feasible.  But instead, a school that claims it is teaching 21st century skills is letting its instructors rely on clunky data-gathering methods that shortchange its students.  Unfortunately, it’s going to take a little while for technology to disrupt this school’s hold on teaching methods.

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* Formative assessment or diagnostic testing is a range of formal and informal assessment procedures employed by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment.[1] It typically involves qualitative feedback (rather than scores) for both student and teacher that focuses on the details of content and performance.[2] It is commonly contrasted with summative assessment, which seeks to monitor educational outcomes, often for purposes of external accountability.[3]

K-12 online learning may be unproven, but it is on the rise

After suffering bigger class sizes as the result of laying off about 95 teachers due to budget cuts, the Manchester New Hampshire school district is looking to add online classes.  Although the benefits are unclear, this is part of a trend that appears unstoppable.

Officials, seeking an overhaul, began to wonder if a 21st-century technology might help allay their struggles: having some students take courses online during the school day, without a teacher physically present.

But a plan to institute “blended learning labs,” which allow students to do just that, is stoking concern among parents and teachers. Some doubt the efficacy of online learning. Others say the proposed solution barely scratches the surface of systemic problems here.

Virtual labs and remote classrooms

The plan, which Superintendent Thomas J. Brennan Jr. presented to the district’s school board last month, would expand the district’s current use of New Hampshire’s online charter school, the Virtual Learning Academy, by putting a virtual learning lab in each of the district’s three high schools, allowing students to take courses there during the school day under the supervision of a “facilitator” who would be present in the lab. It would also add a remote classroom to each high school, where students in undersubscribed courses could participate in classes taught at one of the other schools via an interactive monitor, and expand the school’s collaboration with the University of New Hampshire at Manchester.

Online learning for high school students is on the rise.

Nearly 620,000 students took an online course during the 2011-2012 school year, up 16 percent from the previous year, according to an annual reportreleased this week by the Evergreen Education Group, which works with schools to implement online and blended learning programs.

A number of states and districts actually require students to take online classes as a condition of graduation.  One rationale is that this requirement helps prepare students for a future where online learning will be a standard part of higher education and employment.  While it appears inevitable that online education will move forward at all levels of education, conclusive evidence of how it’s working remains elusive.

At this point in the maturation of virtual education, the importance of high-quality, objective research is greater than ever. Education leaders need it to make informed decisions about how to use virtual education programs. But therein lies the problem: Very little high-quality, objective research on the subject is available.

K-12 online learning is a done deal.  As a practical matter, schools have “moved past” questioning whether it is better for students.

“Researchers and practitioners have moved past the question of ‘we need more research into whether this works,’ but I’m not sure the policymakers and legislators and the general media have,” he says.

What now needs answering, Watson says, are questions on how best to implement online learning and to determine which factors contribute to success. But that type of investigation can pose problems. With so many variations on how online learning is implemented—in hybrid forms, full-time virtual schools, supplemental online courses, courses with online instructors and without, and varying degrees of face-to-face support—it’s hard to do comparisons, Watson says.

“When you talk about research, people have an idea that you have a group of students with an online class, a control group, a random sample. …You really can’t do that” with online learning, he says. “There are far too many permutations, implementations, and instructional models.”

In my neighborhood
With continuing budget pressures arising from steeply rising pension costs, I predict online learning will soon be introduced in our local schools.  In a nearby district, low-income high schools will soon get access to ‘online and blended” AP courses.

Related:

• Does hybrid learning hold the most promise? (Cost of College)
• Quick Links – gift registry for college tuition; School of One; focus on short term for your career (Cost of College)

A round-up of scary public pension stories

This collection of stories about the public pension problem should get the attention of taxpayers and government employees relying on future pension payouts.  (Of course, these two groups are not mutually exclusive.)

Next School Crisis for Chicago: Pension Fund Is Running Dry (New York Times)

Illinois on the hook for $670 million more in teacher pensions for next budget (Chicago Tribune)

‘Exploding pension costs are the single biggest threat to local government’s ability to deliver needed services’ (Cost of College)

From the No Pension Bailout website:

State pension systems across the nation are dramatically underfunded.  Reasons vary, but in most cases state governments have failed to allocate sufficient money to their retirement systems. additionally states granted overly generous benefits to workers without proper regard for the cost of these benefits.

Recent calculations estimate unfunded pension liabilities to total roughly $2.5 trillion – creating state budget crises nationwide.  States are being forced to slash budgets for education, healthcare, and public safety to make room for the spiraling costs of pensions.  Some states are working to fix the problem, but others are not, instead content to wait for federal bailout of state pensions.  A bailout would force states with the resolve to fix their problems to subsidize those that prefer handouts – destroying state’s fiscal sovereignty and creating one of the largest transfers of wealth in the history of our country.

A problem with accounting methods used by state governments

State pension systems across the country are in a state of crisis. According to the Pew Center on the States, states estimated their unfunded pension liabilities at $757 billion in 2010.  Most pension experts, however, take issue with the standard actuarial methods used by most public pension plans, which lets state governments hide billions of dollars in pension debt. Under more reasonable accounting standards, states’ pension debt grows to more than $2.5 trillion.

Inflated discount rates hide true taxpayer liability

Economists Robert Novy-Marx and Joshua Rauh, for example, challenge the unrealistic investment targets and discount rates used by public pension systems to adjust their liabilities into today’s dollars. They found that the median discount rate used by the largest pension systems in the U.S. was 8 percent. This means that the pension funds anticipate earning 8 percent annual investment returns. Pension experts believe high discount rates encourage states to invest their pension funds in riskier assets in order to justify using inappropriately high discount rates.  In effect, using high discount rates allows government pension plans to hide hundreds of billions of dollars in pension debt from taxpayers.

These inflated discount rates have become so unreasonable that both the Governmental Accounting Standards Board and Moody’s Investors Service issued new rules in 2012 that require state governments to use more realistic assumptions. These new rules require governments to use discount rates closer to the yields from corporate and municipal bonds, which will provide a clearer look of pension finances. In Illinois, the new reporting rules will more than double the state’s officially-reported pension debt.

In the private sector, a guaranteed benefit must use risk-free returns in calculating future liability.  But for public pensions, the taxpayers are expected to meet the huge gap between overly optimistic promises and the reality of low investment returns.

As most experts explain, public pension funds should use lower discount rates to reduce the investment risk to taxpayers. This typically means that the discount rate should be based on risk-free returns, such as Treasurys. These discount rates would reveal that between half and three-quarters of all public pension debt is hidden by accounting gimmicks. If government pension plans were subject to the same reporting rules as private pension plans, their reported pension debt would nearly triple.

Do the math:
Median discount rate used by largest public pension funds - 8%
Current 10-year US Treasuries rate – 1.6%

Progressives Sour on Chicago Teachers (Via Meadia)

…[T]he city of Chicago most certainly can run out of money. Things like extra money for music and art teachers could be great ideas or could be bad ones depending on where it comes from. But it’s not as if Chicago Public Schools is sitting on some giant pile of money that administrations have just been refusing to use. On the contrary, it’s actually sitting on a large unfunded pension obligation. . .

In our local school district, pension costs are soaring to make up for unreasonably optimistic pension promises.

… pension costs have risen more than 50% over the last two years and now account for 7.2% of the total budget, up from 5.1% in 2010-11.  This has meant ongoing cuts in student services as taxes are diverted to pay for pensions.  The trend is up, and by 2015 pension costs are expected to eat up 35 percent of property tax collections.

New York school district gets ‘creative’ by tracking students for reading instruction

Everything old is new again.  A Westchester County school district is trying a “new approach” of tracking students for reading instruction.

PORT CHESTER — After cutting a staff of reading specialists from the budget, the schools are starting a new approach for children who need extra help in literacy.

All four elementary schools will dedicate one period a day to specialized literacy instruction, based on students’ needs. That replaces a practice of pulling particular children out of classes for reading assistance.

“It’s pretty creative,” said Carlos Sanchez, director of curriculum, instruction and assessment for the district. Those with the greatest needs will be grouped accordingly, and those performing above grade level will take part in enrichment programs.

Tracking, or separating students into instructional groups based on their proficiency levels, begin to fall out of favor in the 1960s because it was considered inconsistent with “equality of opportunity”.  I remember hearing one local school administrator tell parents that grouping students by ability before 8th grade would permanently scar them.  But since it’s now portrayed as a “creative” method of “specialized literacy instruction”, it may have found new acceptance by the PC police.

The fact is that meta-analysis supports ability grouping.

The academic benefits are clearest for those in the higher ability groups, but students in the lower groups are not harmed academically by grouping and they gain academic ground in some grouping programs.

Today’s proponents of ability grouping stress that it should be based on proficiency levels and should offer flexibility so students can move between groups when appropriate.  Instead of “tracking”, a more descriptive term is “flexible proficiency grouping”.

Pull-outs and differentiated instruction are problematic

To replace grouping, schools have tried pulling students out of class for additional services and offering differentiated instruction within the classroom.  But there are problems with these alternatives.

“In a pullout program, kids miss something to get something,” Sanchez said.

“In this type of set-up, everybody gets what they need. Nobody’s falling behind because they miss a half-hour of curriculum,” Sanchez said.

Differentiation places an unreasonable demand on teachers, with a recent survey finding that 83% of them find differentiation difficult to implement in practice.  No surprise there, with many classrooms including students three or more grades levels apart in academic skills.

Lumping all students together is not the best option, and could be a factor in the growing achievement gap.

This approach stunts later achievement levels for many students of varying ability levels.  But it’s the students on the lower end of the distribution curve who probably suffer the most, with fewer resources to make up for an inadequate educational process.

Cutting costs while improving student achievement
The Port Chester schools turned to proficiency grouping after budget cuts forced staff reductions.  A silver lining to the new era of controlling public education costs may be that more schools begin to try new “creative” approaches.  Over the years, heterogeneous grouping fueled the need for smaller class sizes and bigger staffs, so an unexpected outcome of “new” instructional methods could be improved academic outcomes at lower costs.

Related:

• Increase class size while improving student achievement – it can be done (Education Quick Takes)
• The Efficient Use of Teachers by Steven F. Wilson

Quick takes – July 4, 2012

In Westchester County, school union workers agree to modest raises and increased contributions to health insurance premiums. 

A group of 265 custodians, teacher’s aides and office workers employed by the Bedford school district has agreed to a 5-year deal that will pay raises of between 1 and 1.5 percent while requiring members to pay more of their health insurance costs.

Members of the support staff represented by the Civil Service Employees Association will earn raises of 1 percent this year and in 2013, and raises of 1.5 percent in 2014 and 2015. In the last year of the contract, which calls for a pay raise of 1 percent, the school district agreed to reopen the negotiations to account for changes in the economy.

“In the fifth year we have that option because we are hoping for a booming economy that will allow us to get a bigger raise,” says Mary Lou Cavaliere, the president of CSEA Local 860. “None of us have a crystal ball, but we hope the economy will improve.”

Teachers and administrators are covered under separate contracts and are not part of the deal.

The austere times that started with the recession in 2008 has forced Bedford and districts across the metropolitan region to struggle to balance budgets. Earlier this year, Bedford laid off three dozen bus drivers and outsourced their routes in a cost-cutting move.

Those bus drivers used to be represented by the CSEA.

The new five-year contract, which was approved by the Board of Education on Wednesday, also calls for CSEA employees to increase their contribution to health care costs over the next five years to 12 percent.

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Some top high school graduates in Westchester County are staying close to home for college.

Tuckahoe High School valedictorian will attend Fordham (probably with a merit scholarship), salutatorian will be at Iona College with Dean’s Scholarship, and another top scholar will attend  Stonybrookʼs Honors College.  Related to this story:  Families in New York’s Lower Hudson Valley adjust to rising college costs

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Americans not convinced college is as valuable as it was 20 years ago

A new poll of 1,000 adults — released by Widmeyer Communications — has mixed results for those in higher education. About 60 percent of the 1,000 adults surveyed said they believed college was a good investment, with only 12 percent disagreeing, and the rest saying they didn’t know. But the poll found Americans split on whether college is as valuable today as it was 20 years ago, with 46 percent agreeing, and 41 percent disagreeing — despite countless statements from educators that college is more necessary today than at previous points in American history.

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I gave at the office
Finally, I wonder if colleges get much money when they solicit donations from parents who are currently paying $50,000+ per year for their kids to attend those same colleges.