In China, Jocks Don't Rule School; But the Smart Kids, They're Cool

Unlike in American middle and high schools where typically brawn is held over brains, in the average Chinese school it's the geeks who rule, thanks in part to the fact that the most athletically inclined students have already been cherry-picked into state run sports programs. Sports companies like Nike and Adidas, however, are hoping to change that in order to sell more shoes in China's exploding economy.

College professors promoting open-source textbooks

While it appears that universities have gotten the message regarding out-of-control tuition prices and have responded by finally dipping into their endowments (see some of my previous posts on the arms race), textbook publishers have not been nearly so generous. Some individual courses can easily cost a student upwards of $200 or $300 in textbook requirements and a full semester can ring up a bill of $1000 or more. Caltech economics professor and coauthor of Freakonomics Preston McAfee hopes to change that by placing his open-source economics textbook online, free of charge. It's worth noting that MIT has already placed nearly its entire courseware online.

Ex-treasurer jailed in theft of $65,000 from West L.A. middle school groups

James Harold Marzullo, 44, is accused of taking money raised by students and parents for a booster club and Parent Teacher Student Assn. He was arrested at his daughter's fifth grade graduation after refusing to return calls or show up for scheduled police interviews. Not the greatest example for students to say the least.

Teens face felony charges over computer break-ins, grade changes at Tesoro High School

A kid with this kind of ability could have done well with or without an elite college degree... it's too bad he had to resort to this:

"A teenager faces felony charges and could spend decades in prison over allegations that he repeatedly broke into an acclaimed Orange County high school, hacked into computers to change his grades and stole tests -- all in hopes of improving his college admissions prospects, authorities said Tuesday.

Omar Khan, 18, should be graduating with his Tesoro High School classmates today; instead, he is being held in jail in lieu of $50,000 bail. Another student, Tanvir Singh, also 18, faces lesser charges and is expected to turn himself in to authorities this afternoon."

HR 3021, the 21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act passes the House, on to the Senate

I'm glad to hear that HR 3021 has passed the House. It's a bill aimed at modernizing school facilities with green standards. There's more to education than just providing teachers and textbooks; students need to be in environments that foster learning and are conducive to education. Many of our facilities are old and outdated, which leads to high maintenance costs, high energy costs, and to an extent, a lack of pride and interest in attending from its chief inhabitants, the students. From Sustainablebusiness.com:

"The U.S. House passed a bill authorizing $6.4 billion for grants and low-interest loans to be used for public school modernization, renovation, or repairs that meet energy efficient green building standards.

The 21st Century Green High-Performing Public School Facilities Act (H.R. 3021) was praised by the advocacy group Environment America for helping make America's communities more energy independent, while providing America's students with modern schools and cleaner learning environments.

Buildings, including school buildings, represent the biggest opportunity to save energy and reduce our fossil fuel use. The McKinsey Global Institute found that the U.S. could reduce annual energy consumption by 11% through simple building efficiency measures such as more efficient lighting, heating, and appliances.

The bill heas to the Senate next, where it's fate is uncertain. However, President Bush has indicated he will veto the bill on unspecified grounds."

Sometimes the highest GPA won't make you valedictorian...

A student, Anjali Datta, from Grapevine high school (near Dallas) has set the mark for the highest GPA in school history, nearly 5.9 (I have no idea how it can get so high). However, because she rocketed through high school in only 3 years she will not be named Valedictorian because of a rule that states that the Valedictorian must attend four years of high school. Anjali began taking high school classes in middle school and has all of the credits and requirements needed to graduate (and also scored a perfect on the ACT). I think it's pretty silly to be penalizing a person because did TOO well.

Roseville high schools raise their sights
An article in the Sacramento Bee about Roseville High Schools and their attempts to raise the bar and implement technology in the classroom. Mentioned are the use of Smartboards (which we are bringing) block schedule (which we once had and can consider bringing back) and IB. I especially like the use of internet based technology to streamline the educating process. For instance, the teacher records his comments about a students paper as an audio file which the student can listen to at home. This relieves time in the classroom for actual teaching.

District Puts All the World in Classrooms

An article in the nytimes about a district that has taken globalization to heart in its curriculum.

"The high-performing Herricks school district here in Nassau County, whose student body is more than half Asian, is taking globalization to the graduate level, integrating international studies into every aspect of its curriculum.

A partnership with the Foreign Policy Association has transformed a high-school basement into a place where students produce research papers on North Korea’s nuclear energy program or the Taliban’s role in the opium trade. English teachers have culled reading lists of what they call “dead white men” (think Hawthorne and Hemingway) to make space for Jhumpa Lahiri, Chang-rae Lee and Khaled Hosseini. Gifted fifth graders learn comparative economics by charting the multinational production of a pencil and representing countries in a mock G8 summit."