NEW GRANT AND FUNDING INFORMATION
"Back-to-School Grants"
Dollar General Back-to-School Grants provide funding to assist schools in meeting some of the financial challenges they face in implementing new programs or purchasing new equipment, materials or software for their school library or literacy program. Maximum Award: varies. Eligibility: public and private schools within Dollar General’s 35-state market area; public school libraries recovering from major disasters. Deadline: June 15, 2008.

"Grants for Education on Forest Stewardship"
The Save-the-Redwoods League, a nonprofit organization that works to protect the ancient redwood forest from destruction, will grant funds to schools, interpretive associations, and other qualified nonprofits engaged in quality redwood education. Grants are designed to foster and encourage public awareness of redwoods, redwood ecology, and forest stewardship. Maximum Award: $5000. Eligibility: schools and 501(c)3 organizations. Deadline: June 30, 2008.

"Grants for the Welfare of American Children"
American Legion Child Welfare Foundation Grants to Help Children fund proposals that aim to contribute to the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual welfare of children of America through innovative organizations and/or their programs designed to benefit youth. Maximum Award: $70,000. Eligibility: 501(c)3 organizations. Deadline: July 1, 2008.

"Award for Design and Educational Excellence in Schools"
KnowledgeWorks Foundation and the American Architectural Foundation seek submissions for the Richard Riley Award, which recognizes design and educational excellence in "schools as centers of community" — schools that serve as centers of community and provide an array of social, civic, recreational, and artistic opportunities to the broader community and to students, often clustering educational and municipal buildings together. Maximum Award: $10,000. Eligibility: all existing elementary and secondary public schools. Deadline: July 25, 2008.

"Grants to Aid Children with Disabilities"
The CVS Caremark Charitable Trust focuses on supporting charitable organizations that are making a difference in the lives of children with disabilities. Resources are also allocated to help support organizations focused on providing healthcare to the uninsured. These two areas represent opportunities for the trust to create positive outcomes for diverse populations of people in communities across the country. Eligibility: programs that serve children with disabilities under the age of 21 that address accessibility to physical activity; early intervention; health and rehabilitative services. Maximum Award: Varies. Deadline: June 15, 2008.


"Grants for School Leaders"
The MetLife Foundation and the National Association of Elementary School Principals "Sharing the Dream" grant enables principals to test ideas on how to involve and engage their communities to build greater ownership for the work of the school by sharing leadership and decision-making, keeping all stakeholders informed about all school news, and creating a school climate that fosters open communication, safety and security, and respect for every individual. Maximum Award: $3,000. Eligibility: K-8 (elementary and middle-school) public school principals. Deadline: June 20, 2008.


"Grants for Organizations that Serve Disadvantaged Communities"
The Public Welfare Foundation supports organizations that address human needs in disadvantaged communities, with strong emphasis on organizations that include service, advocacy and empowerment in their approach: service that remedies specific problems; advocacy that addresses those problems in a systemic way through changes in public policy; and strategies to empower people in need to play leading roles in achieving those policy changes and in remedying specific problems. The Foundation provides both general support and project-specific grants. Maximum Award: $50,000. Eligibility: public and private entities, including nonprofit organizations and for-profit organizations. The foundation is currently focusing on three program areas: criminal and juvenile justice, health reform and workers' rights. Deadline: August 1, 2008.


"Ronald McDonald House Grants for Children's Health and Well-Being"
Ronald McDonald House Charities Grants support programs that help children read, provide nutritious after-school meals, offer life-changing surgeries, or help prevent life-threatening disease. Ronald McDonald House Charities Board of Trustees is most interested in national and/or international organizations that have a specific program related to children's health and well-being. Maximum Award: varies. Eligibility: 501(c)(3) organizations. Deadline: September 8, 2008.


"Access for Educators to C-SPAN Archival Footage"
The C-SPAN Archives Grants awardees are granted the videotapes of their choice from the extensive collection in the C-SPAN Archives for creative proposals for using the network's programming in the classroom or in research projects. Eligibility: middle and high school teachers, college/university professors. Maximum Award: N/A. Deadline: N/A.




HOW A FAILING GRADE BECOMES A PASSING GRADE
In districts across the country, schools and teachers are grappling with grading reform as a means to help failing students catch up, writes Steve Friess of USA TODAY. In some places, such as at Las Vegas High, administrators issued a policy that said that students should receive no score less than 50 for a failing grade, a policy known as minimum-F. Their reasoning: intervals between all other letter grades are ten points. If an F is anything from zero to 59, a student whose average is 30 faces an almost insurmountable task to get out of a failing grade, even if he raises his average by 25 points. In the instance of Las Vegas High, uproar from teachers led to a revision in policy, but elsewhere, the minimum-F notion persists. The minimum-F policy is part of a larger debate nationwide about grade inflation on the one hand, where students are arriving to college with As and Bs but still unprepared, and a crisis in the dropout rate, where students stop trying to succeed at all. Even supporters of the policy acknowledge that it should only be one of a many-pronged approach to motivate low-achieving students. Many schools include other measures, such as insisting that students who don't complete class or homework aren't flunked, but made to take their lunch period or stay after school to finish their work. However, some educators say the minimum-F policy simply doesn't work at all. Read Article

ZELMA HENDERSON, LAST SURVIVING COMPLAINANT OF BROWN VS. BOARD, DIES
The last complainant of the landmark desegregation suit Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka died at 88 of pancreatic cancer on May 20, writes Margalit Fox in the New York Times. Zelma Henderson was a beautician who had lived in Topeka all her adult life but had been educated in integrated schools in rural Kansas. She was one of 13 black parents who joined with the Topeka chapter of the NAACP to bring the suit before the U.S. District Court in Kansas, where the court ruled against them, citing the 1896 Supreme Court opinion that "separate but equal" accommodations for blacks and whites was constitutional. The plaintiffs then joined similar cases from Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia on appeal before the Supreme Court. On May 17, 1954, the high court found unanimously for the plaintiffs, with Chief Justice Earl Warren writing that "in the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place." Read Henderson Article

RACISM RAMPANT AT ALABAMA SCHOOL
A south Alabama town that was the inspiration for the setting in Harper Lee's book "To Kill a Mockingbird" is finding itself as the backdrop for a real-life legal case involving allegations of racism at school. The parents of several black junior high school students have filed a discrimination lawsuit claiming their children are subject to racial slurs and punished more harshly than white students at Monroeville Junior High School. The lawsuit says black students at the county's only public junior high have been called slurs such as the "N-word," "filthy trash" and "black monkey." Their parents also say classes are segregated, with most black students being kept out of advanced placement and honors courses. The action, originally filed in August, was revived this week by the American Civil Liberties Union in U.S. Southern District Court on behalf of nine students. "I just feel like every student should have the right to a decent education regardless of race, creed or color," Catherine Kim, an attorney for the ACLU's Racial Justice Project, added, "There are policies and practices that serve to criminalize youth and push them out of classes -- primarily children of color," Read Black Voices

REMNANTS OF FEDERAL BOARDING SCHOOLS FOR INDIAN CHILDREN STILL REMAIN These days, most American Indian children go to public schools. But remnants still exist of the boarding-school system the federal government set up for Indian children in the late 1800s. Some people, such as U.S. officials at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, question whether the government should continue to be in the boarding-school business. Charla Bear reports for NPR that many students at these schools say they are a necessary escape from the poverty and addiction that plague many reservations. Until the 1960s, the government schools tried to expel Indian culture among students. They were severely punished if they practiced Indian ways. That isn't the case anymore. Teachers are working to revive American Indian customs. A recent federal budget change is cutting each boarding school's funding by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Officials at the Bureau of Indian Affairs say they know these schools are in financial trouble. But they disagree over whether the federal government should even be running Indian schools in the 21st century. Read Article


A NATION AT RISK, YET AGAIN
With one in three American children overweight, the future health and productivity of the country is at risk, write Susan Levin and Rob Stein of the Washington Post. Doctors and scientists are just beginning to comprehend the devastating risks associated with childhood obesity, in which extra pounds gained early are far more harmful than those added in adulthood. Every major organ is at risk, and the damage is likely irreversible. The surge in childhood obesity in the past 25 years is expected to add billions of dollars to U.S. health-care costs, since treatment for overweight children is three times as expensive as that for an average-weight child, according to a study cited by the article. A large portion of these costs go to emergency room admissions. Researchers have found that fat cells emit hormones and other chemicals that can permanently affect bodies that are still maturing. "A child is not just a little adult," said David S. Ludwig, an obesity expert at Children’s Hospital in Boston. "Their systems are still in a process of maturing and being fine-tuned. Being excessively heavy could distort this natural process of growth and development in ways that irreversibly affect biological pathways."   Read Article

ENDEMIC DEMORALIZATION AT D.C.’S MOST FAILING SCHOOLS
"Quality School Review" reports commissioned by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee were a significant factor in her decisions about how to restructure the city’s 27 worst-performing schools, writes Bill Turque of the Washington Post. Forced by NCLB to make major changes at the schools, Chancellor Rhee sought to find out why they had failed in reading and math five years in a row. She dispatched teams of parents, students and educators from outside the district to observe classes, review lesson plans, and hold focus groups with teachers and students from the struggling schools. The reports painted a broad picture of demoralization, inertia, and apathy. Teams elicited such comments as: "They [teachers] let us struggle. They let you know you are failing, but then let you go on struggling and then send you to summer school." The most common student theme was frustration that they were not being academically challenged, and that their instructors greeted them with indifference and low expectations. In one high school, none of the randomly selected students said they felt their schooling was preparing them for college. "Teachers don't teach us a thing throughout the entire period. When visitors come, they start working." Read Article

CRITICAL NINTH GRADE YEAR GETS LEAST EXPERIENCED TEACHERS
In "The Linchpin Year" in May 2008’s Education Leadership, Billie Donegal questions current practices surrounding the teaching of the ninth grade in public high schools. More students fail in ninth grade than any other year, discipline referrals are at their highest, and drop out rates are greatest between the ninth and tenth grade. Despite this, novice teachers are routinely assigned ninth grade classes, student to teacher ratios are highest, and the most qualified teachers are reserved for honors classes and seniors. "In the medical field," writes Donegal, "the mark of a top professional is the ability to problem-solve the top cases. So why do so many top teachers wind up working with only the top students, avoiding the hard cases altogether?" Donegal suggests a number of measures that will begin to remedy the problem, including a change in staffing practices; effective, high-impact freshman classes with the top teachers, including remedial classes; and interdisciplinary teacher teams to work with the same group of ninth graders and provide support.   Read Article

WHAT TEACHERS REALLY WANT In an effort to inform the national dialogue about what teachers in the national public education system think and want, Education Sector and the FDR group surveyed 1,010 K-12 public school teachers about the teaching profession, teachers unions, and reforms aimed at improving teacher quality. The survey also tracked trends by asking some questions identical to a 2003 survey of K-12 public school teachers and comparing the responses. The survey found that, among other things, 76 percent of teachers feel that too many burned-out veteran teachers stay because they don't want to walk away from benefits and service time accrued. 55 percent said it was difficult to remove teachers who shouldn't be in the classroom, only 26 percent said their most recent evaluation was helpful, and 79 percent support strengthening the formal evaluation of probationary teachers. Teachers are more likely now than in 2003 to say that unions are essential, and would support their union’s taking an active role in improving teacher evaluation, mentoring teachers, guiding ineffective teachers out of the profession, and negotiating new and differentiated roles for teachers. Read Waiting To Be Won Over

SATURATE BEFORE SOAK: EARLY LEARNERS CAN HANDLE BIG WORDS
Researchers now believe that students in primary grades can acquire more advanced words earlier than previously thought, reports Laura Pappano in her article "Small Kids, Big Words: Research-Based Strategies for Building Vocabulary from Pre-K to Grade 3" in Harvard Education Letter. It is now felt that the mechanism for learning new vocabulary isn't the same as that for learning new math skills, where easier concepts are the building blocks for more complicated skills. "Words are not related hierarchically," said Isabel Beck of the University of Pittsburgh. "You can learn ‘saturated’ before you learn ‘soak’." What’s more, children seem to enjoy it. More advanced words also enrich conceptual understanding and enhance reading ability as a student progresses. It’s especially important in closing the achievement gap for students who arrive to early grades with a limited vocabulary, and for English Language Learners. Read Big Words Article

LATINO PARENTS FIND COLLEGE PREP MAIN PURPOSE OF SCHOOLING
A recent poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that Latino parents are significantly more likely than white or black parents to see college preparation as the main purpose of public schooling, reports Carolyn Goossen of New American Media. A majority of Latino parents responded this way to the survey, versus 30 percent of blacks and Asians, and 20 percent of whites. This was also the response of 53 percent of foreign-born parents, versus 27 percent of American-born parents. Schools aren't meeting Latino parents’ hopes, however. "It’s great they have these high expectations," said John Affeldt, staff attorney with Public Advocates, a non-profit law firm that litigates on educational equity issues. "But the schools aren't preparing [these] kids to graduate and go to college. Only ten percent of Latinos are graduating and going on to college, so the system is clearly not meeting their expectations." Still, the advent of Latinos as a powerful voting bloc in California may lead to public schools’ receiving desperately needed funding. Goossen states that over the years, the largely white electorate in the state had voted for diminished financial support for public schools, which they saw as tasked with educating "other people’s children." The Public Policy Institute survey found that 80 percent of Latinos would support local bond measures to pay for school construction projects, and some feel these numbers imply that Latinos would be similarly willing to revise California’s Proposition 13, which 15 years ago reduced property taxes in California and cut heavily into funds supporting public schools. Read Article

NO "BOYS’ CRISIS": GENDER GAP NOT AS IMPORTANT AS RACE OR INCOME
The American Association of University Women (AAUW) has issued a report that corresponds to research by the American Council on Education and other groups detailing that while girls have been graduating from high school and college at higher rate than boys, there is no "boy’s crisis," writes Tamar Lewin of the New York Times. The more significant disparities in educational achievement, the report says, are between different races, ethnicities, and income levels. The AAUW’s report is a follow-up to their widely discussed 1992 report that described how boys in the classroom were educated at the expense of girls, and is also a response to the notion put out recently by conservative commentators that boys are in turn being shortchanged. "Many people remain uncomfortable with the educational and professional advances of girls and women, especially when they threaten to outdistance their male peers," the report states, but "The most compelling evidence against the existence of a boys’ crisis is that men continue to out earn women in the workplace."   Read Article