Posted by Birmingham News – Clinton leading Obama in new state poll; Giuliani, Thompson tied for GOP nomination.
Birmingham News – State finance director Jim Main says he will seek seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Harold See.
Birmingham News – Projected liability for health care for current and future education retirees drops.
Birmingham News – The Birmingham News characterizes the state’s GOP congressional delegation members as “voting against the interests of the state’s poor children” by refusing to support last week’s reauthorization of SCHIP.
Mobile Press-Register – State Health Department considers tracking staph.
Mobile Press-Register – Press-Register contends that reports of a widening income disparity between the wealthiest Americans and low- and middle-income families are “bogus.”
Cullman Times – Dueling KKK organizations plan opposing demonstrations for Cullman.
Gadsden Times – Harper Lee to receive Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Decatur Daily – Group wants to increase allowable alcohol content for beer.
Decatur Daily – The Decatur Daily calls for Democrats and Republicans to seek common ground and pass reauthorization of SCHIP.
Tuscaloosa News – Incoming president of American Bar Association and Attorney General Troy King spar over report that found Alabama’s death penalty processes “deeply flawed.”
Tuscaloosa News – 42 state high schools classified as “dropout factories.”
FROM TODAY’S ANNISTON STAR:
Poor children now the majority in public schools in the South
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — For the first time in more than 40 years, the majority of children in public schools in the South are poor, according to a report released Tuesday.
In 11 Southern states, including Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida, a significant increase in the number of poor children attending public school has sent district officials scurrying for solutions on how to best educate kids who are coming from economically disadvantaged homes.
“The future of the South’s ability to have an educated population is going to depend on how well we can improve these students’ education,” said Steve Suitts, a program coordinator with the Atlanta-based Southern Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization that focuses on Southern educational issues and conducted the study.
In places like Memphis, where roughly 80 percent of students come from low-income homes, that has meant adopting models that address teaching children in poverty. In Florida’s Miami-Dade County, where 61 percent of students are on free or reduced-price lunch, that has meant strengthening efforts to improve all students’ math and reading scores and curb dropout rates.
“The reason this presents a profound challenge for us is that low-income students as a group begin school least ready,” Suitts said. “They are the students most likely to drop out of school. They perform at the lowest levels on tests that decide graduation and advancement. They have the least access to college.”
Twenty years ago, Mississippi was the only state in the country with such a high percentage of poor public school students. However, as textile mills shut down in the Carolinas, Appalachian coal mines cut workers and a recession swept the nation, families in the South were especially hard hit, the Southern Education Foundation report found.
Also hitting the South disproportionately were federal cutbacks in anti-poverty programs, the region’s higher rates of underemployment and the increased birthrates of Hispanic and African-American children — who are statistically more likely than their white peers to be born into poverty.
Now, a majority of public school students are considered low-income in a total of 13 states, including 11 in the South. The South shows tremendous variability, with 84 percent of students considered low-income in Louisiana, 75 percent in Mississippi, 62 percent in Florida, 49 percent in North Carolina, but only 33 percent in Virginia.
According to the report, public schools in the West may face similar problems in the next five to seven years. Already 51 percent of public school children in California and 62 percent of those in New Mexico are considered low-income.
All told, the report said, 54 percent of students in Southern states are judged to be poor, a significant increase from the 37 percent so classified in the late 1980s. Nationally, 46 percent of public school students are low-income.
According to 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores, lower-income fourth and eighth graders lagged 20 to 30 points behind their peers on math and reading tests. Poor, Southern students who make up the majority of their states’ student populations also have lower college attendance rates than their peers, the Southern Education Foundation report found.
Further complicating matters is the fact that, as a region, the South spends less per pupil on education than do other parts of the country.
In 2000, Mississippi’s highest per pupil expenditures were $5,631. Connecticut’s lowest per pupil expenditure for the same year was $8,030.
“The South historically was just a poorer part of the country and didn’t have the focus on education that other parts of the country had,” said Jeff Kuhner, a spokesman for the Fordham Foundation, an education think tank in Washington. “Part of its strategy for the past 25 to 30 years has been cheap, undereducated labor, they don’t have labor unions. But human capital is just as important as investment capital.”
One Southern strategy gaining momentum is strengthening early-childhood education. In at least 12 Southern states, including Georgia, Kentucky and Mississippi, the number of 4-year-olds enrolled in state pre-K programs or Head Start is greater than the number of 4-year-olds in poverty, according to the Southern Regional Education Board.
Proponents hope that early childhood education will help all students, regardless of income level, succeed.
Legislative Dispatch
Purple Dot Connection
2010 Big List
2010 Senate Elections
2010 House Elections
Press Releases
“AG, ABA square off over death penalty”:
“The ABA has taken no position on the death penalty,” said Wells [ed - president-elect of the American Bar Association].
“The ABA’s Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project…”
Yeah, right.
[...] (205) 325-2478 wrote an interesting post today on Tuesday 10/30/2007 DAILY NEWS DIGESTHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
“Poor children now the majority in public schools in the South”:
“In 2000, Mississippi’s highest per pupil expenditures were $5,631. Connecticut’s lowest per pupil expenditure for the same year was $8,030.”
Compare cost of living (note the CNN costs aren’t from year 2000, but good enough for a blog comment):
“Salary in Jackson MS:
$50,000
Comparable salary in Hartford CT:
$64,365.12″
Cost of Living multiplier = 1.29
MS = $5631 x 1.29 = $7264
Now compare the MS adjusted $7264 to CT $8030. Still about 10% less, but not that newsworthy anymore… Maybe that sky’s not falling…
http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.html?step=result¤t_salary=50000&fromStateMenu=MS&from_city=Jackson+MS&toStateMenu=CT&to_city=Hartford+CT&x=43&y=13
Just waiting to see the train wreck when dueling Kluckers converge on Cullman.
I’m curious to see where Alabama stands with regards to impoverished students. I personally think this report is a bunch of hooey.
I saw first hand where individuals made false claims with regards to income levels. Free lunch, but better clothes, $6-8 on snacks each day, where I might afford a pack of crackers. The level of accountability is rather lax, and reports of this nature do little to help the situation.
This reminds me of a commercial that was on the tele a few years back. You had several mid-evil scholars conspiring around a table, deciding the best course of action to turn back invaders. The solution was to hurl large sacks of gold coins at them. “Are you suggesting we throw money at the problem?” How will the solution to this crisis be any different.
I just read in today’s Mobile Press Register that the 9 of the 14 Mobile County’s high schools are listed as drop out
factories, which means only 60% of the 9th graders go on to graduate from the school. Alabama fudges the graduation figures to make us look smarter than we are (wow, what an understatement) by listing graduation figures, but the fact remains that senior classes are 30% smaller than 9th grade classes. Or as I like to tell people like Reactionary,
“future fodder for our glorious red state”.
Willie – my comment was meant to illustrate that teacher pay increases are not a panacea for what ails schools.
If I knew how to fix broken schools I’d run for Governor. What I do know is that in this ‘red state’, Democrats run the legislature and schools – helping to create the mess in which we find ourselves.
I am not sure you can blame dropout rates on legislators nor teachers. I think our Alabama family values and a low
emphasis on education has more to do with it than anything else. Remember, we voted down an initiative that would
have given high schoolers with a B average a free college education. What states in the US have the highest divorce rates and which have the lowest?
Willie – I don’t know much about Mobile. Can you provide some information about the values of the families of the students who are zoned for those failing Mobile County schools?
I primarily blame the dropout rates on ignorant and apathetic “parents.” The parents are usually immature, unskilled teeneagers who end up dumping “junior” on Grandmama to raise. The cycle repeats itself 14-15 years later, provided grandmama isn’t a crackwhore. I blame the status quo on the AEA, trial lawyers, politicos who use education as if they were playing foosball and moronic Liberals.
If we are going to reverse dropout rates and actually educate our children we need a RADICAL overhaul of the public school system—top to bottom.
Discipline needs to be re-instituted, parents need to be held accountable and failure must not be tolerated. Oh, and we run the teachers’ union and their jackals in the legal profession out of state.
What I see here in south Mobile County crosses racial lines. Disfunctional families breed disfunction. Low wages across the board create situations where even if children have two parents, both have to work in jobs that are not family friendly which adds to the problems of parenting. No matter how you spin it, huge numbers of young people are leaving public schools for a tough future. The sad fact is in today’s world too many young people are not doing better, educationally nor financially, than their parents and grandparents.
Willie, most of those dropouts in places like inner-city Mobile & Birmingham ain’t exactly becoming Republicans. But many of them do vote – whether they know it or not.
Utahns Can Vote for School Choice Tuesday
By John Stossel
“Next Tuesday, Utah voters go to the polls to decide if their state will become the first in the nation to offer school vouchers statewide. Referendum 1 would make all public-school kids eligible for vouchers worth from $500 to $3,000 a year, depending on family income. Parents could then use the vouchers to send their children to private schools.
What a great idea. Finally, parents will have choices that wealthy parents have always had. The resulting competition would create better private schools and even improve the government schools.
But wait. Arrayed against the vouchers are the usual opponents. They call themselves Utahns for Public Schools. They include, predictably, the Utah Education Association (the teachers union), Utah School Boards Association, Utah School Employees Union, Utah School Superintendents Association, the elementary and secondary school principals associations, and the PTA. No to vouchers! they protest. Trust us. We know what’s best for your kids.
They say they’re all for improving education but not by introducing choice. “When it comes to providing every Utah child with a quality education, we believe, as do most Americans, that our greatest hope for success is investing in research-proven reforms. These include the things parents and teachers know will make a difference in the classroom, such as smaller class sizes and investment in teacher development programs. Focusing on this type of reform will bring far greater success than diverting tax dollars to an alternative education system.”
Please. I’ve heard that song for years. Government schools in America fail while spending on average more than $11,000 per student. Utah spends $7,500.”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/10/utahns_can_vote_for_school_cho.html
IIRC, Utah was the only state that did not have any ‘dropout factories’.