The New York Times reports this week that only 1 in 8 of New York’s public high school has a student newspaper; and many of those are published just a few times a year. A few more are online, which can leave out poorer schools.

The national figures are a little higher. But as Rebecca Dwarka, an 18 year old senior in the Bronx who works for her student paper, the Dewitt Clinton News, told the Times, “Facebook is the new way of finding out what happened. Nobody wants to actually sit down and read a whole article about it,” which makes a “whole article” sound a little like a long sentence in solitary confinement.

I am not nostalgic about high school student newspapers, and never worked for mine. I put out what was then called an underground magazine with a group of friends because we wanted to write about peace, war, and rock n’ roll without school officials admonishing us not to make jokes about the local alderman.

But we learned. Trying to convince a local druggist to buy an ad in your slender rag can be humbling, and make you determined to turn out a paper he’s proud to have his name in, too.

Hearing that school newspapers are in decline because students now “find out what happened” in social media bites is a little discouraging because it confirms that for millions of Americans, journalism is becoming a do-it-yourself enterprise.

When a tornado strikes, or a bomb goes off, we look for social media messages as soon as they flash, too. Facebook posts and Tweets have become the means by which politicians, celebrities, citizens, and reporters, for that matter, can confirm, deny, pass on stories and register opinion without the press challenging, probing, pre-supposing, slowing or straining the message. That’s just how we talk to each other in these times.

Matt Drudge, who runs his own controversial website, says, “We have entered an era vibrating with the din of small voices. Every citizen can be a reporter.”

But truly good journalism is a craft, not just a blog post. It requires not only seeing something close-up, but reporting it with perspective. It uses an eye for detail to help illuminate a larger view. And even journalism that conveys an opinion strives to be fair. If school newspapers begin to disappear, I hope there are other ways for students to learn that. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

Before they voted yes on the sweeping school closure plan, school board members faced a torrent of criticism Wednesday.

Protesters tried to conduct a sit-in at the front of the boardroom but security officers escorted them out.

Sonya Williams, a parent who had come to testify in defense of her school, said she understood the passion and the outbursts.

“It’s just like going to a long funeral and no one is closing the casket yet,” she said. “The fate of your position, the fate of your job, the fate of your children are up in the air. They are based on a few people making a decision.”

This was the last time before the vote that people could make their pitch to keep schools open.

Chicago Alderman Bob Fioretti was among them: “Substantial research shows that closing schools and moving students increases the drop-out rate and the incidence of street violence.”

The arguments did not deter Chicago Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who along with Mayor Emanuel, had argued Chicago has to “right-size” the city’s school district. They have said demographic shifts in mostly black neighborhoods left schools under utilized — plus the district faces a budget deficit of a billion dollars.

Byrd-Bennett said the district held marathon hearings, and now it was time to do what’s right.

“Like it or not, this system does have to change. By addressing our school utilization crisis, we have an opportunity to redirect limited resources to make investments in what matters,” Byrd-Bennett said.

Investments that she said would allow the schools that students shift to, to have computer labs, libraries, art classes and air conditioning.

In a nearly unanimous vote, the board approved shutting 49 elementary schools and one high school program.

Okema Lewis, a parent who’s kept track of the school board for a decade, called it a sad day.

“Underutilized, what does that mean? You had the option to put other things in the building if you want to utilize the building. Not even children. You got communities. You got people need GED classes. All kind of services could have been used in the building. Half of the building would have been a school, half would have been used for the community,” Lewis said.

Hearing officers had recommended the school board take more than a dozen schools off the chopping block. In the end, the school board voted to save four.

Outside school board headquarters, Jesse Sharkey with the Chicago Teachers Union said that wasn’t progress.

“There’s an old expression which is, don’t up a knife into my back six inches and pull it out a couple and say you’re doing a favor. This move is irreversible. Deeply harmful for the people in the schools and they have no evidence that it’s going to work.”

With the decision, Chicago becomes the first district in the nation to close so many schools at once.

Timothy Knowles, head of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago, says this effort will be closely watched.

“The true test is really going to be is whether children perform better over time and whether the city makes good on its promise of safe passage,” he says.

That is putting enough adults on the streets to help children get to and from school safely. The fight over school closings is part of a political showdown that began earlier in the school year when teachers went on strike for the first time in 25 years.

This week, Mayor Emanuel said he was standing firm on the school closings: “I will absorb the political consequence so our children have a better future.”

The Chicago Teachers Union backs lawsuits filed by parents to block the closings — arguing they disproportionately affect African-American students and harm special education students.

The school board in Chicago is appointed by the mayor.

Teachers union President Karen Lewis says the fight must eventually move to the ballot box.

“Our next plan is to have to change the governance of CPS (Chicago Public Schools). Clearly this kind of cowboy mentality, mayoral control is out of control. We’re starting our deputy registration and we will be registering voters across the city,” Lewis says.

With a goal of pushing the mayor and others who backed the school closings out of office, and to gather support for an elected school board. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is urging the FDA to reject the petition, which we first told you about in March.

“The Academy’s recommendation to deny the petition is not based on the safety of artificial sweeteners,” writes Ethan Bergman, the group’s president, in a release explaining its opposition.

So what’s the academy’s rationale? Well, as we previously reported, the petition is aimed at boosting consumption in schools, where many kids have decided that milk is not their drink of choice. Given the options of water, juice or milk, milk is losing out.

Studies show that offering flavored milk such as chocolate or strawberry turns more kids onto milk, but critics have pointed to the extra sugar as a drawback.

In an effort to get around the sugar problem, the dairy industry has petitioned to change what’s known as the “standard of identity” of milk, which is basically the definition of milk, allowing aspartame or alternatives such as stevia to be used to sweeten the milk.

So what’s the academy’s beef with the petition? Well, it goes back to the assertion that the dairy industry makes in its petition that the change (allowing no or low-calories sweeteners in milk) could promote healthful eating and help reduce childhood obesity.

Not necessarily, says the academy.

“Flavored milk is not a major source of added sugar in children’s diets,” says Bergman.

The academy points to studies, including this one, that show that school-age kids who drink flavored (chocolate and strawberry) milk meet more of their nutrient needs, and don’t consume more added sugar, fat or calories. These kids are also “similar in weight compared to non-milk drinkers,” according to a statement released by the academy. In other words, there’s no need to try to cut sugar and calories with artificial sweeteners.

And there’s criticism among consumers, too.

A petition by the group Sum Of Us, which says the goal of the dairy industry petition is to “turn the wholesome drink (milk) into another artificial flavor-laden sweet snack,” has received about 117,000 signatures. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

Seven in 10 Latino high school graduates in the class of 2012 went to college, according to a recent report by the Pew Hispanic Center.

That’s a record-high college enrollment rate for Latinos, and it’s the first time Latinos have surpassed white and black students, even as they lag behind Asian Americans. The Latino high school dropout rate has fallen by half over the past decade — from 28 percent in 2000 to 14 percent in 2011.

The Pew report did not get into exactly why more Latino students are enrolling in college. But its co-authors Richard Fry and Paul Taylor note that the recession may have spurred more young Latinos to stay in school and delay entering the job market.

A more compelling theory may be a generational shift within the Latino population, says Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Suárez-Orozco, who studies immigration and education issues, sees the increase of Latinos entering college as part of a natural cycle of the American immigration story.

“I think the story here is really the story of the maturing of the second generation,” he says. “These are U.S.-born kids, and these are kids who have higher ambitions. They want to do better than their parents. And they’re connecting with colleges.”

Dreaming Beyond High School

Jackeline Lizama, 18, is planning to connect with a local community college near her home in Silver Spring, Md. Lizama, who was born in the U.S. to parents originally from El Salvador, will graduate from high school in a few weeks.

“I’m happy to get out of the daily routine and move on to something bigger and better,” she says.

Bigger and better for Lizama will be first, two years of community college, followed by a transfer to a state university and eventually, she hopes, a career in law enforcement. Lizama says not all of her Latino classmates feel that they can afford a similar financial investment.

“They want to get a better education, but they’re thinking about the money,” she explains. “They’re thinking, ‘Oh, my parents can barely do it now. How am I going to pay off a loan if I get a loan? How am I going to do it?’ “

Lizama’s college-funding plan includes working after school at a Maryland branch of the Latin American Youth Center, a nonprofit that offers classes and training programs mainly for young Latinos. Her supervisor Sandra Martinez, 30, is also a working student, studying for a degree in social work. Between hitting the books and raising her teenage daughter, Martinez works at the community center, encouraging Latino youth to set a college degree in their sights earlier than she did.

“I think most of us Latinos think that [college is] not for us,” Martinez says. “For me, when I was younger growing up, that was never mentioned. There was no higher dream after high school. And I think that now, with the generation improving or the kids becoming more Americanized and what not, it’s helping.”

Remaining Gaps

The Pew Hispanic Center’s report also includes stark reminders of how Latino students fall behind once they’re in college. A little under half of Latino students are enrolled in community colleges. For those who do go on to four-year colleges, they’re more likely to drop out than other students.

Fry, who co-wrote the report, says of students in today’s competitive, global economy, “We’ve ratcheted [our expectations for educational completion] up as the rest of the world’s youth has ratcheted up as well.”

Professor Suárez-Orozco of UCLA says a more important sign of Latino student success would be an increase in the college completion rate, currently at 11 percent. (The overall rate is 21 percent for 22- to 24-years-olds.)

He’s troubled by the remaining college achievement gaps faced by young Latinos.

“They are the future of our country,” he says. “This is not a narrow demographic question pertinent to only one group in the American mosaic. This is fundamental to all of us.” [Copyright 2013 NPR]

“Oh yes, we had a lot of problems with it. We only had about two sites that didn’t have problems with it. All the rest of them did.”

Glenda Choate is District Testing Coordinator at Edmond Public Schools. She saw how the testing outages affected students, and started to worry herself.

“Not having enough hardware, not having enough computers to be able to do that, and then not having the infrastructure within our system.”

By spring 2015, Oklahoma public schools will be in the middle of an overhaul of testing. The state is part of a group known as PARCC…ready? The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. It’s a group of states, 21, plus DC, working together to develop questions, testing procedures, and more based on Common Core.

We’ve been doing the transition for multiple years, but next year will be the most crucial year because it’s the last year of the old standards.

Assistant State Superintendent for Accountability and Assessment in Oklahoma, Maridyth McBee is also the K through 12 point person for PARCC.

“But they’ll be packets for everybody so that they’ll be prepared to begin that transition. Which is especially important in math, there are a few topics that change grade levels.”

But perhaps the biggest change will be in time. Compared to this year, third graders will be in tests for at least twice as long. 9 different sessions, spread over two different testing periods – one in late February, early March, another toward the end of the school year. And that goes for most grades, up through juniors in high school.

___________________________________________________________

As Stillwater Middle School lets out for the day, parents line up in their trucks, SUVs, vans, and some cars. And the opinions were just as varied as the vehicle choice. Deanna Henry has kids in 6^th and 9^th grade.

“Already we are seeing that teachers are teaching to the test. And so more and more time is taken away in the classroom to teach to the test, and so that’s my biggest concern.”

Or there’s Ashley Smith, with four kids scattered through the schools.

“I would be on board because we need to see where the kids are. All the studies you hear on the news, America is behind. So if that’s what we need to do to get the kids learning what they need to learn, I think that’s okay.”

Whatever thoughts there are on testing, there’s agreement all of it will put pressure on schools – not only on the teaching side, but with logistics. Class schedules may be shuffled, students pulled out of class to take a test, and more. Maridyth McBee recognizes its far from ideal.

“In the short run, it will definitely be a challenge for schools. As we move closer to having one device for each student or at least one for every two, then I think testing will be able to be scheduled within the class schedule without the major disruption that it sometimes causes now.”

Device – there’s one more key change. While students are more familiar with technology than ever, typing may be a different story. And those as young as fourth graders may have to type out a page long answer in a session. Back to Glenda Choate in Edmond.

“So we are already looking at how we can push keyboarding skills that type of curriculum farther down into our elementary grades.”

As to why parents may not have heard about this yet, Perri Applegate with Tulsa Public Schools has an answer.

“I actually have been concerned about talking to parents till I really knew what the blueprint was like for PARCC.”

With less than 24 months to go, things are far from settled. Florida is essentially acting as treasurer for PARCC – again, that’s the coalition of states putting the tests together – yet late last month their Education Commissioner indicated things aren’t a done deal. John O’Connor is a reporter with State Impact Florida.

“Has a lot of weight here, a lot of clout and so the fact that the Education Commissioner is saying ‘We’re going to consider other tests’ is kinda a warning shot to the folks in the consortium to get their act together, get these things moving.”

The state Department of Education says it has plans in place in case the coalition falls apart, and school administrators I talked to say they’re also watching developments around the country. Alabama dropped out of PARCC back in February, but since then, only rumblings of any more changes. So preparation goes on in Edmond and school districts across the state, as much as it can.

“We are doing as much. There’s a whole lot more we would like to do, we have lots of plans in place, but until the finances are available to be able to do that, it will make it very difficult.”

Up Interstate 44, Tulsa voters will decide if they want to authorize a 38 million dollar bond issue next Tuesday, with some of the money going to more computers – computers that would be used to take the PARCC tests.

Over a 160,000 students signed up. About half that many, he explains, participated in some way through to the end. And 20,000 finished the course.

This is an astonishing example of the way MOOCs — massively open online courses — may be able to transform education as we know it, changing it from the privilege of an elite into a shared commons that is open and free to everyone.

There are grounds for concern, though. Some of these came to the fore this week in an open letter from the San Jose State University philosophy department to Michael Sandel, a Harvard professor who offers a MOOC version of his famous class on justice. The letter, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, raises important issues about the use of MOOCs within traditional university settings. Part of the problem, they write, is the danger:

… that two classes of universities will be created: one, well-funded colleges and universities in which privileged students get their own real professor; the other, financially stressed private and public universities in which students watch a bunch of videotaped lectures and interact, if indeed any interaction is available on their home campuses, with a professor that this model of education has turned into a glorified teaching assistant.

And they notice that:

The thought of the exact same social justice course being taught in various philosophy departments across the country is downright scary — something out of a dystopian novel.

I agree. Colleges and universities are communities with their own local cultures, values and ways of doing things. In the face of budgetary pressure, how will these communities withstand the temptation to give up the hard work of making knowledge and, instead, just subscribe to courses being produced and packaged elsewhere?

One might object that MOOCs are no different from textbooks. What is a textbook, really, but a programmed course template, a whole course in a box? Have popular textbooks destroyed local learning communities and entrenched established hierarchies? No.

This is an important point and it brings out how complicated the issues are. So often with new technology we simply reenact old battles.

But maybe the comparison with textbooks breaks down. Textbooks are limited in ambition. They don’t replace the whole curriculum; they give it a grounding. Good teachers use textbooks.

Will they come to use MOOCs the same way?

Or will administrators appeal to the existence of MOOCs as justification to make some of those good teachers redundant?

You can keep up with more of what Alva Noë is thinking on Facebook and on Twitter: @alvanoe [Copyright 2013 NPR]

Beginning this year, contestants in the early rounds will not only have to know how to spell, say, “flocculent,” but also know whether it’s:

A) an intestinal disorder among sheep

B) the stuffing inside a sofa pillow

C) a clump of wool

It’s C, by the way.

Paige Kimble, executive director of the Spelling Bee, says the change was made to reinforce that the purpose of the whole national contest isn’t just to produce a newsclip of brainy and endearing youngsters in bottle-thick glasses spelling “borborygmus” — which is a rumbling in the intestines, by the way — but to encourage students to strengthen their powers of communication.

And she says good student spellers are apparently not like Major League Baseball pitchers, who might throw a ball 100 miles an hour, but can’t hit one with a surfboard.

“What we know with the championship-level spellers,” says Ms. Kimble, “is that they think of … spelling and vocabulary being two sides of the same coin.”

Linda Holmes wrote on NPR’s Monkey See blog this week that “the Bee at its best is not rote memorization of the largest number of words, divorced from their context and floating outside of sentences.”

But it’s interesting to review the words that have been correctly spelled to win the Spelling Bee since it began. “Luxuriance” was the word in 1927, “promiscuous” in 1937, “psychiatry” in 1948, “eczema” in 1965, “croissant” in 1970, and “psoriasis” in 1982.

All those words may have been a little tricky to spell, with X’s, Z’s, silent P’s or inexplicable double S’s. But they were familiar. The fact that they were spoken in everyday conversation made it humbling and instructive when we were uncertain how to spell them.

But as the National Spelling Bee has grown more popular and publicized, the words youngsters spell to win the championship have grown increasingly unfamiliar — corkers to stump a contestant, not to leave anyone with a new word they can’t wait to use.

In 2011 the word that won the contest was “cymotrichous,” which is to possess wavy hair, though I doubt Taylor Swift or Matthew McConaughey describe themselves that way. Last year, it was “guetapens,” which is a kind of trap. Especially if you try to pronounce it.

Maybe putting the meaning back into words will remind us that most of the students we see in spelling bees aren’t spelling out words that will win a contest, but knowing them may help make them wiser through that real contest called life. [Copyright 2013 NPR]

The recommendations come just a few months after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut.

The five recommendations from the commission include setting up the Oklahoma School Security Institute, establishing a mental health first aid pilot program, requiring intruder drills in all schools, reporting firearms to local law enforcement and creating a school security hotline.

Commission Chairman Lieutenant Governor Todd Lamb says Oklahoma is one of the first states to form a citizen commission on school security and issue recommendations.

“Our hope is that these recommendations will set the standard, set the standard and serve as an Oklahoma model that states across the nation can and will follow.”

The recommendations will be included this year in four pieces of legislation authored by Senate President Pro Tem Brian Bingman and House Speaker T.W. Shannon.

Lamb says preliminary cost estimates show the set up for the Oklahoma School Security Institute will be about $500,000.

But, it’s not just extra appropriations for the next fiscal year.

State Superintendent Janet Barresi says she wants lawmakers to give her agency an extra $37 million as a supplemental for this fiscal year.

She says the money is essential to shore up funding which fell short last year.

“Everything from increase in insurance costs that districts are having to incur to needs for districts to teach reading to students and reach students that are struggling the most in reading.”

For the next fiscal year starting July 1^st, Doctor Barresi is asking for additional funding of $289 million.

She says if Oklahoma wants to continue to be competitive in today’s economy, it must produce a workforce which is ready to meet 21^st century needs.

The request comes at a time when lawmakers want to end all funding for OETA.

OETA Executive Director Dan Schiedel formerly with Rogers State Public Television spoke to lawmakers who might be taking up legislation this year to end funding for the station.

Schiedel says he hopes to move the conversation away from just gutting the network altogether.

“I think it’s how do we do a better job at supporting OETA for future, but again looking at reducing if not doing away with state support for the network.”

OETA officials say they want more money for a statewide satellite distribution, more legislative coverage and increased employee benefits.

One House bill this year would eliminate funding for OETA while a Senate bill would move the agency under Higher Education.