Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Race to the Top (Update)
September 28, 2009
Editorial
Mr. Duncan and That $4.3 Billion
With sound ideas and a commitment to rigorously monitor the states’ progress, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has revitalized the school-reform effort that had lost most of its momentum by the closing days of the Bush administration.
His power to press for reforms was dramatically enhanced earlier this year when Congress gave him control of $4.3 billion in grant money — the Race to the Top fund — that is to be disbursed to the states on a competitive basis. Mr. Duncan will need to resist political pressure and special pleadings and reward only the states that are committed to effective and clearly measurable reform.
Mr. Duncan’s exhortations, and the promise of so much cash, have already persuaded eight states to adopt measures favorable to charter schools, which Mr. Duncan rightly sees as crucial in the fight to turn around failing schools.
To be eligible for the money, every state must also show how student performance will be factored into their systems for evaluating teachers. And Mr. Duncan has asked the states to come up with plausible plans to turn around failing schools — so-called dropout factories — and to better serve minority students.
He has also made clear in preliminary guidelines released earlier this year that his system for evaluating the states’ reform efforts will be rigorous — and that financing can be revoked if states renege on their promises. Even the National Education Association, the aggressively hidebound teachers’ union, seems to understand that the time for defending the status quo has passed.
For all that, the difficult part is yet to come. Mr. Duncan must be prepared to reject grant applications that do not meet the eligibility requirements, but he also must be willing to encourage states to innovate.
As he decides which applications to accept and which to reject, Mr. Duncan can expect a lot of outside pressure from politicians demanding that he finance all of their states’ programs and from community purists demanding that he reject projects that don’t comply with their views.
He will need to resist those pressures and choose substantive, innovative proposals that stand the best chance of improving the schools. For that, he will need courage, stamina and cover from the White House.
Editorial
Mr. Duncan and That $4.3 Billion
With sound ideas and a commitment to rigorously monitor the states’ progress, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has revitalized the school-reform effort that had lost most of its momentum by the closing days of the Bush administration.
His power to press for reforms was dramatically enhanced earlier this year when Congress gave him control of $4.3 billion in grant money — the Race to the Top fund — that is to be disbursed to the states on a competitive basis. Mr. Duncan will need to resist political pressure and special pleadings and reward only the states that are committed to effective and clearly measurable reform.
Mr. Duncan’s exhortations, and the promise of so much cash, have already persuaded eight states to adopt measures favorable to charter schools, which Mr. Duncan rightly sees as crucial in the fight to turn around failing schools.
To be eligible for the money, every state must also show how student performance will be factored into their systems for evaluating teachers. And Mr. Duncan has asked the states to come up with plausible plans to turn around failing schools — so-called dropout factories — and to better serve minority students.
He has also made clear in preliminary guidelines released earlier this year that his system for evaluating the states’ reform efforts will be rigorous — and that financing can be revoked if states renege on their promises. Even the National Education Association, the aggressively hidebound teachers’ union, seems to understand that the time for defending the status quo has passed.
For all that, the difficult part is yet to come. Mr. Duncan must be prepared to reject grant applications that do not meet the eligibility requirements, but he also must be willing to encourage states to innovate.
As he decides which applications to accept and which to reject, Mr. Duncan can expect a lot of outside pressure from politicians demanding that he finance all of their states’ programs and from community purists demanding that he reject projects that don’t comply with their views.
He will need to resist those pressures and choose substantive, innovative proposals that stand the best chance of improving the schools. For that, he will need courage, stamina and cover from the White House.
Superintendent Bland invitied to visit Timbuktu (Sean Johnson)
Not sure WHAT Brooke has in mind for the Superintendent to witness. Will contact Brooke to inquire regarding same. L.M. 9-28-2009 10:00AM
Sunday, September 27, 2009
From Michigan's Transition to TRANSFORMATION!
Michigan’s Transition; Entrepreneurs lead the way as the state reinvents its economy
Sunday, September 27, 2009
By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN
Of The Associated Press
FLINT — Sometime next year, Michigan will lose its 1 millionth job since the state’s economy began its downward slide in mid-2000.
With a frenzy born of desperation, the state is trying to rekindle the entrepreneurial spirit that made Dow, Kellogg and Ford household names.
That trio founded the state’s famous chemical, cereal and auto companies a century ago. These days, the state is doing what it can to foster a new generation of innovation.
At universities and community colleges, in downtown office spaces and 15 “SmartZone” technology centers designed to spark collaborations between universities and industry, Michigan is working to encourage the creation of new industries to provide the middle-class jobs that made the state a mecca for generations of workers.
There’s lots of room for improvement. The state ranked just 27th nationally in the 2008 Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, lagging behind most western states and national leader Georgia in the survey’s measure of adults creating businesses each month.
To boost its standing, the state has awarded millions of dollars to high-tech firms through its 21st Century Jobs Fund, and companies are sponsoring contests that reward new “green” technology ideas. Business incubators are sprouting up from the urban streets of Detroit to the snowy streets of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
“You had Henry Ford, you had (Charles Stewart) Mott, you had Herbert Dow, you had W.K. Kellogg — all entrepreneurs with new ideas that created a new economy for Michigan that lasted us pretty much the last century,” said William Rustem of Public Sector Consultants, a Lansing think tank. “Now, we’ve got the same situation. We need that entrepreneurial spirit.”
Here are some young entrepreneurs who may help make this happen:
Making lemonade
Paul Knific started an arcade business when he was 18, but shut it down to focus on an Internet service provider and software development company he and his then-18-year-old brother, Eric, launched last year in their parents’ basement in Flushing.
Now 23, Knific and his brother, who’s still a student, run Epic Technology Solutions out of a converted bank building in downtown Flint that’s the site of LAUNCH, a program for student and community entrepreneurs run by the University of Michigan-Flint. Epic serves 50 customers in the United States and abroad with 150 servers in Flint, Southfield and Atlanta, Ga.
“The cost of labor is so cheap. The cost of living is less, too,” Paul Knific said of his decision to base the company in Flint. “We’re growing faster than expected.”
That doesn’t mean there haven’t been hurdles. Outstate Michigan doesn’t have the fiber optics infrastructure found in Chicago, Los Angeles or even Detroit, and Eric Knific said the two are having to upgrade in a city that “has the infrastructure of the 1950s.”
But that hasn’t stopped Epic from attracting customers throughout the United States, Europe and Australia, in part because the cost of Epic’s services are “half the price of the U.K. (United Kingdom) and Chicago,” Paul Knific said.
Local spirits
The Grand Traverse Distillery in Traverse City uses rye grown in northern Michigan to produce True North Vodka in handcrafted batches, and taps the area’s cherry crop to make flavored vodka. It also just began selling a wheat-based vodka and has 45 barrels of whiskey aging.
Owner Kent Rabish buys hundreds of pounds of Michigan-grown grain for the micro distillery he opened in 2007, and his vodka won two gold medals last year in blind taste test competitions against hundreds of domestic and foreign brands.
His latest advertising campaign is aimed at getting buyers to pick up his $29.99-a-bottle premium vodka rather than pricey imports: “End your dependence on foreign alcohol.”
“You don’t necessarily have to buy something from France, Poland or Russia,” he said. “We can do world-class distillation right here in Michigan … and support Michigan agriculture.”
Rabish, 52, hasn’t quit his day job as a representative for French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis SA. But he hopes to eventually make the distillery his full-time job as he gradually ramps up his annual production from 2,000 cases of vodka to 10,000.
He’s the only commercial distiller in Michigan distilling grain-based spirits — others are making fruit-based brandies in small batches — but he thinks the state could support many more micro distilleries. He’s already is looking for a bigger building where he can expand and add a space for customers to sample his vodka and whiskey.
“This is what’s going to put the Michigan economy over ... manufacturing something rather than passing things through,” Rabish said.
Creative thinking
Goeff Horst was out on Lake Erie collecting algae with his father for some biofuels research when they began kicking around the idea of using the fast-spreading aquatic plants to suck up nutrients at wastewater treatment plants.
Now Horst, a 30-year-old doctoral student at Michigan State University, has joined with three current and former University of Michigan graduate students to try and commercialize the process at the company they founded, Algal Scientific Corp.
The company is growing algae and doing research at a lab in a former Pfizer Inc. pharmaceutical plant in Plymouth. Horst hopes to use the plant to soak up nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients from wastewater instead of sending the water into lakes and rivers, where the nutrients lead to environmentally damaging algae blooms.
“Our objective is to reduce the amount of pollution that’s going into the waterways,” said Horst, who envisions using the algae twice — once to soak up the nutrients, and then to produce fertilizer or biofuels.
This spring, the fledgling company won the $65,000 Clean Energy Prize awarded by Detroit-based DTE Energy Co. to encourage the commercialization of clean energy technologies.
“Wastewater treatment is a huge market in the U.S., several billion dollars a year, and it’s probably going to become a bigger market in the future,” said Horst. Being an entrepreneur “is a little scary, really. But it’s … so much more exciting than the typical job.”
Diamond in the rough
When Donyale Walton launched her first edition of Liv Lux Mag on Flint’s entertainment and fashion scene in 2007, the teenager found herself writing copy, laying out pages, even selling ads. It was an intense experience for the Mott Community College business management student, and she soon switched publication to the Web.
These days Walton and University of Michigan-Flint student Corey Stokes are publishing from an office provided by the LAUNCH program. The magazine’s Web site is hosted by another company at LAUNCH, the Knific brothers’ Epic Technology Solutions, while another LAUNCH entrepreneur helps with photos and graphics, building his business while aiding theirs. Walton, now 21, likes the collegiality she finds at the student business hatchery.
“It’s much better to walk down the hall and talk to someone than to call customer service,” said Walton, who hopes to soon turn her online magazine into a printed one that comes out every other month before expanding to other cities, such as Pontiac and Detroit.
The magazine, which is aimed at 18- to 25-year-old college students and gets about 300 new hits a day and 400 return visitors, is updated daily with help from a beauty writer in Los Angeles and a music writer in North Carolina.
But Stokes and Walton plan to concentrate most their efforts in Flint, a city struggling with shuttered auto plants, foreclosed homes and a seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate of 28.9 percent.
“I think it will give Flint a boost of confidence to know we can develop something of quality here that can be sold nationally. ... We want people to think differently about our hometown,” Walton said. “One of our main goals is to stay in Michigan.”
Tapping technology
MasTech Manufacturing in Manistee primarily made materials handling equipment for auto factories until it hooked up with Nevada-based Mariah Power to build the Windspire, a vertical wind turbine that can generate an average of 2,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year.
The two companies recently installed a 30-foot Windspire on the grounds of the governor’s residence in Lansing. Over the next two years, MasTech plans to add about 120 jobs — for a total of 500 — as it ramps up production from 1,800 turbines annually to 12,000.
Although the company went to China to compare prices, John Holcomb of MasTech Wind said it ended up tapping around 40 other Michigan companies for 90 percent of the turbine’s components.
“We can do it just as cheap or cheaper right here in Michigan, and we have a better product,” Holcomb said.
The 56-year-old has spent nearly his entire career catering to the huge auto industry that in 2000 accounted for more than 350,000 manufacturing jobs in the state. But as 250,000 of those jobs have disappeared, Holcomb sees other possibilities for manufacturers.
“This is where the technology base is, and we really just have to learn to leverage that technology base into new products other than automotive,” he said.
The company just unveiled a new hydraulic fruit cart that helps Michigan growers get their fruit to the ground without damage after it has been picked.
Much of Michigan’s fruit used to be grown primarily for juice, so appearance didn’t matter. But foreign competitors have undercut U.S. growers with juice concentrates, so Michigan growers are switching to selling their fruit whole in grocery stores and farmers markets.
“This fruit cart works for apples and pears and peaches and plums and apricots and grapes,” Holcomb said. He added the potential for Michigan manufacturers to get back on their feet with new products is good since “there is no greater technology storehouse in the United States than there is in Michigan.”
Moving on
When Rolf Kletzien and Jerry Colca walked out of Pfizer’s St. Louis operations for good in 2005, the two scientists decided it was time to head back to Kalamazoo to start their own company.
Pharmaceuticals and Kalamazoo have been synonymous since 1886, when physician W. E. Upjohn and his brothers began making easily digestible pills after founding The Upjohn Co. Both Kletzien and Colca worked for Upjohn and the companies it later became, including Pfizer, eventually moving from the southwestern Michigan city to Pfizer’s St. Louis labs.
When Colca lost his job as a senior research scientist and Kletzien stepped down as vice president of genomics and biotechnology, heading back to Kalamazoo to pursue their own diabetes research seemed like a no-brainer. Pooling about $250,000 in severance payments, they started Metabolic Solutions Development Co. in 2006 in the spare bedroom in Colca’s downtown Kalamazoo condominium.
“We did have two conference rooms — they both were in Irving’s Deli,” joked Kletzien, 63, who still had a home in nearby Richland.
In 2007, the pair opened a business office and later a lab in downtown Kalamazoo. They’re also among the former Pfizer and Pharmacia employees involved in the more than two dozen life-sciences businesses at the Southwest Michigan Innovation Center, a business incubator at Western Michigan University’s Bioscience Research and Technology Park.
Colca and Kletzien are working on a drug they think will treat Type 2 diabetes without the side effects of some existing diabetes drugs. They hope the compound eventually could be used to also treat metabolic syndrome, so that people with the syndrome don’t develop diabetes in the first place.
The pair have fueled their research with the help of $22 million from investors such as Hopen Therapeutics, a private investment and management firm in Grand Rapids, and the state of Michigan, which gave the company $2.4 million through its 21st Century Jobs Fund.
They’re now rounding up $20 million to begin a new phase of patient testing with the goal of selling their product in four to five years.
The two men say they’re thriving in the life sciences research corridor that runs through Michigan from Grand Rapids to Kalamazoo, East Lansing and Ann Arbor. Colca, 59, wouldn’t be anywhere else.
“Within this area of the world there is more concentration of the expertise you need to take a small molecule from the bench to being a drug than anywhere else in the world,” he said. “Whether you came from a pharma company or whether you’re sitting in a university some place, if you have an idea and you believe you can turn it into a drug, our message is, ‘This is the place to be.”’
Sunday, September 27, 2009
By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN
Of The Associated Press
FLINT — Sometime next year, Michigan will lose its 1 millionth job since the state’s economy began its downward slide in mid-2000.
With a frenzy born of desperation, the state is trying to rekindle the entrepreneurial spirit that made Dow, Kellogg and Ford household names.
That trio founded the state’s famous chemical, cereal and auto companies a century ago. These days, the state is doing what it can to foster a new generation of innovation.
At universities and community colleges, in downtown office spaces and 15 “SmartZone” technology centers designed to spark collaborations between universities and industry, Michigan is working to encourage the creation of new industries to provide the middle-class jobs that made the state a mecca for generations of workers.
There’s lots of room for improvement. The state ranked just 27th nationally in the 2008 Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, lagging behind most western states and national leader Georgia in the survey’s measure of adults creating businesses each month.
To boost its standing, the state has awarded millions of dollars to high-tech firms through its 21st Century Jobs Fund, and companies are sponsoring contests that reward new “green” technology ideas. Business incubators are sprouting up from the urban streets of Detroit to the snowy streets of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
“You had Henry Ford, you had (Charles Stewart) Mott, you had Herbert Dow, you had W.K. Kellogg — all entrepreneurs with new ideas that created a new economy for Michigan that lasted us pretty much the last century,” said William Rustem of Public Sector Consultants, a Lansing think tank. “Now, we’ve got the same situation. We need that entrepreneurial spirit.”
Here are some young entrepreneurs who may help make this happen:
Making lemonade
Paul Knific started an arcade business when he was 18, but shut it down to focus on an Internet service provider and software development company he and his then-18-year-old brother, Eric, launched last year in their parents’ basement in Flushing.
Now 23, Knific and his brother, who’s still a student, run Epic Technology Solutions out of a converted bank building in downtown Flint that’s the site of LAUNCH, a program for student and community entrepreneurs run by the University of Michigan-Flint. Epic serves 50 customers in the United States and abroad with 150 servers in Flint, Southfield and Atlanta, Ga.
“The cost of labor is so cheap. The cost of living is less, too,” Paul Knific said of his decision to base the company in Flint. “We’re growing faster than expected.”
That doesn’t mean there haven’t been hurdles. Outstate Michigan doesn’t have the fiber optics infrastructure found in Chicago, Los Angeles or even Detroit, and Eric Knific said the two are having to upgrade in a city that “has the infrastructure of the 1950s.”
But that hasn’t stopped Epic from attracting customers throughout the United States, Europe and Australia, in part because the cost of Epic’s services are “half the price of the U.K. (United Kingdom) and Chicago,” Paul Knific said.
Local spirits
The Grand Traverse Distillery in Traverse City uses rye grown in northern Michigan to produce True North Vodka in handcrafted batches, and taps the area’s cherry crop to make flavored vodka. It also just began selling a wheat-based vodka and has 45 barrels of whiskey aging.
Owner Kent Rabish buys hundreds of pounds of Michigan-grown grain for the micro distillery he opened in 2007, and his vodka won two gold medals last year in blind taste test competitions against hundreds of domestic and foreign brands.
His latest advertising campaign is aimed at getting buyers to pick up his $29.99-a-bottle premium vodka rather than pricey imports: “End your dependence on foreign alcohol.”
“You don’t necessarily have to buy something from France, Poland or Russia,” he said. “We can do world-class distillation right here in Michigan … and support Michigan agriculture.”
Rabish, 52, hasn’t quit his day job as a representative for French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-Aventis SA. But he hopes to eventually make the distillery his full-time job as he gradually ramps up his annual production from 2,000 cases of vodka to 10,000.
He’s the only commercial distiller in Michigan distilling grain-based spirits — others are making fruit-based brandies in small batches — but he thinks the state could support many more micro distilleries. He’s already is looking for a bigger building where he can expand and add a space for customers to sample his vodka and whiskey.
“This is what’s going to put the Michigan economy over ... manufacturing something rather than passing things through,” Rabish said.
Creative thinking
Goeff Horst was out on Lake Erie collecting algae with his father for some biofuels research when they began kicking around the idea of using the fast-spreading aquatic plants to suck up nutrients at wastewater treatment plants.
Now Horst, a 30-year-old doctoral student at Michigan State University, has joined with three current and former University of Michigan graduate students to try and commercialize the process at the company they founded, Algal Scientific Corp.
The company is growing algae and doing research at a lab in a former Pfizer Inc. pharmaceutical plant in Plymouth. Horst hopes to use the plant to soak up nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients from wastewater instead of sending the water into lakes and rivers, where the nutrients lead to environmentally damaging algae blooms.
“Our objective is to reduce the amount of pollution that’s going into the waterways,” said Horst, who envisions using the algae twice — once to soak up the nutrients, and then to produce fertilizer or biofuels.
This spring, the fledgling company won the $65,000 Clean Energy Prize awarded by Detroit-based DTE Energy Co. to encourage the commercialization of clean energy technologies.
“Wastewater treatment is a huge market in the U.S., several billion dollars a year, and it’s probably going to become a bigger market in the future,” said Horst. Being an entrepreneur “is a little scary, really. But it’s … so much more exciting than the typical job.”
Diamond in the rough
When Donyale Walton launched her first edition of Liv Lux Mag on Flint’s entertainment and fashion scene in 2007, the teenager found herself writing copy, laying out pages, even selling ads. It was an intense experience for the Mott Community College business management student, and she soon switched publication to the Web.
These days Walton and University of Michigan-Flint student Corey Stokes are publishing from an office provided by the LAUNCH program. The magazine’s Web site is hosted by another company at LAUNCH, the Knific brothers’ Epic Technology Solutions, while another LAUNCH entrepreneur helps with photos and graphics, building his business while aiding theirs. Walton, now 21, likes the collegiality she finds at the student business hatchery.
“It’s much better to walk down the hall and talk to someone than to call customer service,” said Walton, who hopes to soon turn her online magazine into a printed one that comes out every other month before expanding to other cities, such as Pontiac and Detroit.
The magazine, which is aimed at 18- to 25-year-old college students and gets about 300 new hits a day and 400 return visitors, is updated daily with help from a beauty writer in Los Angeles and a music writer in North Carolina.
But Stokes and Walton plan to concentrate most their efforts in Flint, a city struggling with shuttered auto plants, foreclosed homes and a seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate of 28.9 percent.
“I think it will give Flint a boost of confidence to know we can develop something of quality here that can be sold nationally. ... We want people to think differently about our hometown,” Walton said. “One of our main goals is to stay in Michigan.”
Tapping technology
MasTech Manufacturing in Manistee primarily made materials handling equipment for auto factories until it hooked up with Nevada-based Mariah Power to build the Windspire, a vertical wind turbine that can generate an average of 2,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year.
The two companies recently installed a 30-foot Windspire on the grounds of the governor’s residence in Lansing. Over the next two years, MasTech plans to add about 120 jobs — for a total of 500 — as it ramps up production from 1,800 turbines annually to 12,000.
Although the company went to China to compare prices, John Holcomb of MasTech Wind said it ended up tapping around 40 other Michigan companies for 90 percent of the turbine’s components.
“We can do it just as cheap or cheaper right here in Michigan, and we have a better product,” Holcomb said.
The 56-year-old has spent nearly his entire career catering to the huge auto industry that in 2000 accounted for more than 350,000 manufacturing jobs in the state. But as 250,000 of those jobs have disappeared, Holcomb sees other possibilities for manufacturers.
“This is where the technology base is, and we really just have to learn to leverage that technology base into new products other than automotive,” he said.
The company just unveiled a new hydraulic fruit cart that helps Michigan growers get their fruit to the ground without damage after it has been picked.
Much of Michigan’s fruit used to be grown primarily for juice, so appearance didn’t matter. But foreign competitors have undercut U.S. growers with juice concentrates, so Michigan growers are switching to selling their fruit whole in grocery stores and farmers markets.
“This fruit cart works for apples and pears and peaches and plums and apricots and grapes,” Holcomb said. He added the potential for Michigan manufacturers to get back on their feet with new products is good since “there is no greater technology storehouse in the United States than there is in Michigan.”
Moving on
When Rolf Kletzien and Jerry Colca walked out of Pfizer’s St. Louis operations for good in 2005, the two scientists decided it was time to head back to Kalamazoo to start their own company.
Pharmaceuticals and Kalamazoo have been synonymous since 1886, when physician W. E. Upjohn and his brothers began making easily digestible pills after founding The Upjohn Co. Both Kletzien and Colca worked for Upjohn and the companies it later became, including Pfizer, eventually moving from the southwestern Michigan city to Pfizer’s St. Louis labs.
When Colca lost his job as a senior research scientist and Kletzien stepped down as vice president of genomics and biotechnology, heading back to Kalamazoo to pursue their own diabetes research seemed like a no-brainer. Pooling about $250,000 in severance payments, they started Metabolic Solutions Development Co. in 2006 in the spare bedroom in Colca’s downtown Kalamazoo condominium.
“We did have two conference rooms — they both were in Irving’s Deli,” joked Kletzien, 63, who still had a home in nearby Richland.
In 2007, the pair opened a business office and later a lab in downtown Kalamazoo. They’re also among the former Pfizer and Pharmacia employees involved in the more than two dozen life-sciences businesses at the Southwest Michigan Innovation Center, a business incubator at Western Michigan University’s Bioscience Research and Technology Park.
Colca and Kletzien are working on a drug they think will treat Type 2 diabetes without the side effects of some existing diabetes drugs. They hope the compound eventually could be used to also treat metabolic syndrome, so that people with the syndrome don’t develop diabetes in the first place.
The pair have fueled their research with the help of $22 million from investors such as Hopen Therapeutics, a private investment and management firm in Grand Rapids, and the state of Michigan, which gave the company $2.4 million through its 21st Century Jobs Fund.
They’re now rounding up $20 million to begin a new phase of patient testing with the goal of selling their product in four to five years.
The two men say they’re thriving in the life sciences research corridor that runs through Michigan from Grand Rapids to Kalamazoo, East Lansing and Ann Arbor. Colca, 59, wouldn’t be anywhere else.
“Within this area of the world there is more concentration of the expertise you need to take a small molecule from the bench to being a drug than anywhere else in the world,” he said. “Whether you came from a pharma company or whether you’re sitting in a university some place, if you have an idea and you believe you can turn it into a drug, our message is, ‘This is the place to be.”’
Saturday, September 26, 2009
VOICES United!
For Release:
1:00 pm
September 24, 2008Contact:
Gary G. Naeyaert
517-281-2690
2,500 ADVOCATES HOLD EDUCATION REFORM RALLY AT STATE CAPITOL
Change agents urge legislature to pass bills to close the achievement gap and secure “Race to the Top” funds
Lansing, MI – More than 2,500 students, parents, teachers and education activists held a rally on the lawn of State Capitol Building this morning.
Education reform priorities pushed during the rally included the need to fix failing schools, provide alternative routes to teacher certification, and expand quality public school options, especially in underperforming areas.
“It is a moral imperative that we close the academic achievement gap in Michigan,” said Michael Tenbusch, Vice President for Education Preparedness at the United Way of Southeastern Michigan.
“These reforms are not only the right approach for our students – they could bring millions in federal education funds to the state,” he continued.
Most observers believe passing these types of bills are necessary before Michigan will be competitive in $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” federal incentive program.
“Each and every American citizen is entitled to have equal access to a high quality education,” said Kevin Chavous, one of the nation’s leading education reform activists, during his stirring keynote address at the rally.
Students released over 1,000 “Kids Need Great Schools” balloons after Chavous’ remarks, and each balloon represented hundreds of minority and at-risk students behind grade level and stuck in failing schools.
“Every child can learn, and all kids deserve great schools. The status quo isn’t getting it done, so we need to work together and find new ways to help kids achieve,” said Rachele Downs, Vice President, CB Richard Ellis Detroit and member of the Leadership Detroit Education Support Committee.
“We agree with President Obama that students must take responsibility for their own education, and empowering parents as true partners in public education should be a much higher priority,” said Sharlonda Buckman, Executive Director of the Detroit Parent Network.
1:00 pm
September 24, 2008Contact:
Gary G. Naeyaert
517-281-2690
2,500 ADVOCATES HOLD EDUCATION REFORM RALLY AT STATE CAPITOL
Change agents urge legislature to pass bills to close the achievement gap and secure “Race to the Top” funds
Lansing, MI – More than 2,500 students, parents, teachers and education activists held a rally on the lawn of State Capitol Building this morning.
Education reform priorities pushed during the rally included the need to fix failing schools, provide alternative routes to teacher certification, and expand quality public school options, especially in underperforming areas.
“It is a moral imperative that we close the academic achievement gap in Michigan,” said Michael Tenbusch, Vice President for Education Preparedness at the United Way of Southeastern Michigan.
“These reforms are not only the right approach for our students – they could bring millions in federal education funds to the state,” he continued.
Most observers believe passing these types of bills are necessary before Michigan will be competitive in $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” federal incentive program.
“Each and every American citizen is entitled to have equal access to a high quality education,” said Kevin Chavous, one of the nation’s leading education reform activists, during his stirring keynote address at the rally.
Students released over 1,000 “Kids Need Great Schools” balloons after Chavous’ remarks, and each balloon represented hundreds of minority and at-risk students behind grade level and stuck in failing schools.
“Every child can learn, and all kids deserve great schools. The status quo isn’t getting it done, so we need to work together and find new ways to help kids achieve,” said Rachele Downs, Vice President, CB Richard Ellis Detroit and member of the Leadership Detroit Education Support Committee.
“We agree with President Obama that students must take responsibility for their own education, and empowering parents as true partners in public education should be a much higher priority,” said Sharlonda Buckman, Executive Director of the Detroit Parent Network.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
EARLY Childhood Learning (Dollars-But WHAT does it Look Like?)
September 20, 2009
Initiative Focuses on Early Learning Programs
By SAM DILLON
Tucked away in an $87 billion higher education bill that passed the House last week was a broad new federal initiative aimed not at benefiting college students, but at raising quality in the early learning and care programs that serve children from birth through age 5.
The initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Fund, would channel $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers.
The Senate is expected to pass similar legislation this fall, giving President Obama, who proposed the Challenge Fund during the presidential campaign, a bill to sign in December.
Experts describe the current array of programs serving young children and their families nationwide as a hodgepodge of efforts with little coordination or coherence. Financing comes from a shifting mix of private, local, state and federal money. Programs are run out of storefronts and churches, homes and Head Start centers, public schools and other facilities. Quality is uneven, with some offering stimulating activities, play and instruction but others providing little more than a room and a television.
Oversight varies by state, but most lack any early childhood structure analogous to the state and local boards of education that govern public schools. A result is that poor children, even many who have access to government-financed early care or learning programs, tend to enter kindergarten less prepared for school than those with wealthier parents.
To qualify for grants, states would have to demonstrate that they have established or improved what the bill calls a “governance structure” for their networks of child care centers and prekindergarten programs.
The structure would include quality standards; a curriculum of sorts, appropriate for young children; a mechanism for reviewing programs and assigning quality ratings; minimum training requirements for providers; a plan for reaching out to parents; and a system for collecting data on children and families. The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services would jointly administer the Challenge Fund.
Sharon Lynn Kagan, a professor at Teachers College who has traced the history of American child care programs back to the early 19th century, wrote a paper last year advocating federal aid to states in building a more coherent and robust early-childhood infrastructure.
“No one bill can solve everything,” Professor Kagan said, “but this will move us more than any other piece of legislation toward higher quality in early education, not just more spaces for children.”
Since the campaign, Mr. Obama has raised expectations among early learning advocates with his endorsements of public investments in the careful nurturing of young children, especially the disadvantaged. In the economic stimulus bill, Congress last spring appropriated more than $4 billion in new financing for child care and education efforts, including Head Start, the federal program that serves about 900,000 preschoolers.
Still, not all early learning advocates are satisfied that the administration is doing all it could to integrate early learning efforts into the nation’s broader public education system.
The Department of Education is already administering a separate $4.3 billion competition among states to reward and encourage improvements to elementary and secondary schools. In August, scores of early learning groups and advocates wrote letters to the department criticizing proposed rules for that competition, known as Race to the Top, as largely ignoring early childhood education.
“We don’t see how our country can race to the top when all kids are not at the same starting line” when they reach kindergarten, said Marcy Young, project director for the Pre-K Now program at the Pew Center on the States, one group that criticized the rules.
One reason the administration focused on elementary and secondary schools in the Race to the Top competition and early childhood in the Challenge Fund is that the two are at contrasting levels of development, administration officials said, with the public schools needing initiatives to improve teacher effectiveness, for instance, and early childhood needing basic structures of governance.
Sara Mead, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, said, “I haven’t talked with anybody who isn’t excited about the prospects for this Early Learning Challenge Fund.”
“But there is disappointment in some parts of the early childhood community that it’s not more focused on adding slots,” Ms. Mead said.
One reason advocates are especially concerned about slots for children is that after a decade in which states had taken the lead in expanding access nationwide, several with deep budget troubles have recently eliminated or reduced services for tens of thousands of children.
Illinois, for instance, cut the budget for its Pre-K for All program to $305 million this fiscal year from $338 million last year, eliminating slots for about 9,500 children, according to statistics provided by Albert Wat, a project manager at Pre-K Now.
In Ohio, lawmakers did away with a program known as the Early Learning Initiative, the budget for which last year was $125 million, Mr. Wat said. The action eliminated access for 12,000 children, he said.
“In some states, we’re seeing a disaster,” said Steve Barnett, co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.
But despite the tightest budgets in decades, nearly 30 states have chosen to protect or increase financing for early learning programs.
Initiative Focuses on Early Learning Programs
By SAM DILLON
Tucked away in an $87 billion higher education bill that passed the House last week was a broad new federal initiative aimed not at benefiting college students, but at raising quality in the early learning and care programs that serve children from birth through age 5.
The initiative, the Early Learning Challenge Fund, would channel $8 billion over eight years to states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers.
The Senate is expected to pass similar legislation this fall, giving President Obama, who proposed the Challenge Fund during the presidential campaign, a bill to sign in December.
Experts describe the current array of programs serving young children and their families nationwide as a hodgepodge of efforts with little coordination or coherence. Financing comes from a shifting mix of private, local, state and federal money. Programs are run out of storefronts and churches, homes and Head Start centers, public schools and other facilities. Quality is uneven, with some offering stimulating activities, play and instruction but others providing little more than a room and a television.
Oversight varies by state, but most lack any early childhood structure analogous to the state and local boards of education that govern public schools. A result is that poor children, even many who have access to government-financed early care or learning programs, tend to enter kindergarten less prepared for school than those with wealthier parents.
To qualify for grants, states would have to demonstrate that they have established or improved what the bill calls a “governance structure” for their networks of child care centers and prekindergarten programs.
The structure would include quality standards; a curriculum of sorts, appropriate for young children; a mechanism for reviewing programs and assigning quality ratings; minimum training requirements for providers; a plan for reaching out to parents; and a system for collecting data on children and families. The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services would jointly administer the Challenge Fund.
Sharon Lynn Kagan, a professor at Teachers College who has traced the history of American child care programs back to the early 19th century, wrote a paper last year advocating federal aid to states in building a more coherent and robust early-childhood infrastructure.
“No one bill can solve everything,” Professor Kagan said, “but this will move us more than any other piece of legislation toward higher quality in early education, not just more spaces for children.”
Since the campaign, Mr. Obama has raised expectations among early learning advocates with his endorsements of public investments in the careful nurturing of young children, especially the disadvantaged. In the economic stimulus bill, Congress last spring appropriated more than $4 billion in new financing for child care and education efforts, including Head Start, the federal program that serves about 900,000 preschoolers.
Still, not all early learning advocates are satisfied that the administration is doing all it could to integrate early learning efforts into the nation’s broader public education system.
The Department of Education is already administering a separate $4.3 billion competition among states to reward and encourage improvements to elementary and secondary schools. In August, scores of early learning groups and advocates wrote letters to the department criticizing proposed rules for that competition, known as Race to the Top, as largely ignoring early childhood education.
“We don’t see how our country can race to the top when all kids are not at the same starting line” when they reach kindergarten, said Marcy Young, project director for the Pre-K Now program at the Pew Center on the States, one group that criticized the rules.
One reason the administration focused on elementary and secondary schools in the Race to the Top competition and early childhood in the Challenge Fund is that the two are at contrasting levels of development, administration officials said, with the public schools needing initiatives to improve teacher effectiveness, for instance, and early childhood needing basic structures of governance.
Sara Mead, a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation, said, “I haven’t talked with anybody who isn’t excited about the prospects for this Early Learning Challenge Fund.”
“But there is disappointment in some parts of the early childhood community that it’s not more focused on adding slots,” Ms. Mead said.
One reason advocates are especially concerned about slots for children is that after a decade in which states had taken the lead in expanding access nationwide, several with deep budget troubles have recently eliminated or reduced services for tens of thousands of children.
Illinois, for instance, cut the budget for its Pre-K for All program to $305 million this fiscal year from $338 million last year, eliminating slots for about 9,500 children, according to statistics provided by Albert Wat, a project manager at Pre-K Now.
In Ohio, lawmakers did away with a program known as the Early Learning Initiative, the budget for which last year was $125 million, Mr. Wat said. The action eliminated access for 12,000 children, he said.
“In some states, we’re seeing a disaster,” said Steve Barnett, co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University.
But despite the tightest budgets in decades, nearly 30 states have chosen to protect or increase financing for early learning programs.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
President Obama Weighs-In!
The following is the prepared text of Mr. Obama's speech to students to be delivered in Arlington, Va., on Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2009, which was posted in advance on the White House Web site.
The President: Hello everyone - how's everybody doing today? I'm here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we've got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I'm glad you all could join us today.
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it's your first day in a new school, so it's understandable if you're a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you're in, some of you are probably wishing it were still Summer, and you could've stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.
I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday - at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I wasn't too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I'd fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I'd complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I'm here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education and what's expected of all of you in this new school year.
Now I've given a lot of speeches about education. And I've talked a lot about responsibility.
I've talked about your teachers' responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.
I've talked about your parents' responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don't spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.
I've talked a lot about your government's responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren't working where students aren't getting the opportunities they deserve.
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world - and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
And that's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.
Maybe you could be a good writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor - maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine - but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.
And no matter what you want to do with your life - I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that - if you quit on school - you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.
Now I know it's not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
I get it. I know what that's like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn't fit in.
So I wasn't always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I'm not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.
But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn't have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.
Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there's not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren't right.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life - what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home - that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying.
Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
That's what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn't speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.
I'm thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who's fought brain cancer since he was three. He's endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer - hundreds of extra hours - to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he's headed to college this fall.
And then there's Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she's on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.
Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren't any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.
That's why today, I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education - and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things.
But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject you study. You won't click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
That's OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures. JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
These people succeeded because they understand that you can't let your failures define you - you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn't mean you're a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.
No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You're not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don't hit every note the first time you sing a song. You've got to practice. It's the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it's good enough to hand in.
Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust - a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor - and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you - don't ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.
The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.
It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.
So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?
Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you've got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don't let us down - don't let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
The President: Hello everyone - how's everybody doing today? I'm here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we've got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I'm glad you all could join us today.
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it's your first day in a new school, so it's understandable if you're a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you're in, some of you are probably wishing it were still Summer, and you could've stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.
I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday - at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I wasn't too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I'd fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I'd complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I'm here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I'm here because I want to talk with you about your education and what's expected of all of you in this new school year.
Now I've given a lot of speeches about education. And I've talked a lot about responsibility.
I've talked about your teachers' responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.
I've talked about your parents' responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don't spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.
I've talked a lot about your government's responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren't working where students aren't getting the opportunities they deserve.
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world - and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
And that's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.
Maybe you could be a good writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor - maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine - but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.
And no matter what you want to do with your life - I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that - if you quit on school - you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.
Now I know it's not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
I get it. I know what that's like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn't always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn't fit in.
So I wasn't always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I'm not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.
But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn't have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.
Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there's not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren't right.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life - what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home - that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying.
Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
That's what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn't speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.
I'm thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who's fought brain cancer since he was three. He's endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer - hundreds of extra hours - to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he's headed to college this fall.
And then there's Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she's on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.
Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren't any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.
That's why today, I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education - and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things.
But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject you study. You won't click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
That's OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures. JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
These people succeeded because they understand that you can't let your failures define you - you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn't mean you're a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.
No one's born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You're not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don't hit every note the first time you sing a song. You've got to practice. It's the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it's good enough to hand in.
Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, it's a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don't know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust - a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor - and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
And even when you're struggling, even when you're discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you - don't ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.
The story of America isn't about people who quit when things got tough. It's about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.
It's the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.
So today, I want to ask you, what's your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?
Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you've got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don't let us down - don't let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
RING! Consequences of the PERFECT STORM!
September 8, 2009
Schools Aided by Stimulus Money Still Facing Cuts
By SAM DILLON
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Children are returning to classrooms across the nation during one of the most tumultuous periods in American education, in which many thousands of teachers and other school workers — no one yet knows how many — were laid off in dozens of states because of plummeting state and local revenue. Many were hired back, thanks in part to $100 billion in federal stimulus money.
How much the federal money has succeeded in stabilizing schools depends on the state. In those where budget deficits have been manageable, stimulus money largely replaced plunging taxpayer revenues for schools. But in Arizona, California, Georgia and a dozen other states with overwhelming deficits, the federal money has failed to prevent the most extensive school layoffs in several decades, experts said.
When Lori Smallwood welcomed her third-grade students back to school here, it was a new beginning after a searing summer in which she lost her job, agonized over bills, got rehired and, along with all school employees here, saw her salary cut.
“I’m just glad to be teaching,” Ms. Smallwood said. “After the misery of losing your job, a pay cut is a piece of cake.”
In the hard-hit states, the shuffling of teachers out of their previous classrooms and into new ones, often in new districts or at unfamiliar grade levels — or onto unemployment — continues to disrupt instruction at thousands of schools. Experts said that seniority and dysfunctional teacher evaluation systems were forcing many districts to trim strong teachers rather than the least effective.
And in some places, teacher layoffs have pushed up class sizes. In Arizona, which is suffering one of the nation’s worst fiscal crises, some classrooms were jammed with nearly 50 students when schools reopened last month, and the norm for Los Angeles high schools this fall is 42.5 students per teacher.
“I’ve been in public education north of three decades, and these are the most sweeping cutbacks I’ve seen,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. “But it would have been worse without the stimulus.”
Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest district, sent layoff notices to 8,850 teachers, counselors and administrators last spring. Bolstered by stimulus money, it recently rehired some 6,700 of them, leaving about 2,150 demoted to substitute teaching or out of work. Hundreds of districts across California laid off a total of more than 20,000 teachers, according to the California Teachers Association.
In Michigan, the Detroit schools’ emergency financial manager closed 29 schools and laid off 1,700 employees, including 1,000 teachers. Arizona school districts laid off 7,000 teachers in the spring, but stimulus money helped them rehire several thousand. Tucson Unified, for instance, laid off 560 teachers, but rehired 400.
Florida’s second-largest system, Broward County Schools, laid off 400 teachers, but aided by stimulus money, rehired more than 100. In Washington State, many districts let employees go; Seattle laid off about 50 teachers.
Lauren Stokes, who taught high school English last year in North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, was laid off with about 650 of her colleagues. She sought other jobs, but stimulus money sent to the state helped her district hire her and many others back. One disappointment: her classroom this year is a portable trailer.
“But I’m rehired, thank goodness,” said Ms. Stokes, who is 23. “I’m looking forward to trying new things out on this year’s batch of students.”
Catherine Vidal, a language teacher laid off in May from a high school in Moorpark, Calif., is still out of work. Fifty-nine years old, Ms. Vidal has given up her apartment and is living, for now, on a friend’s boat. Teaching has become too iffy, and she will change professions, she said.
Not only school staff members are feeling the pain, of course.
“I struggled this year getting my three boys everything they needed,” said Mary Lou Johnson, an unemployed office worker who went back-to-school shopping last month at a Wal-Mart in Chamblee, Ga. “Buying their backpacks, sneakers, all the stuff for their classes — it nearly cleaned me out.”
In Ohio, students in the South-Western City district south of Columbus returned to schools with no sports, cheerleading or band, all cut after residents voted down a property tax increase. Stimulus money allowed the district to expand services for disabled students, but it could not save extracurricular programs, said Hugh Garside, the district’s treasurer.
Driving the layoffs was a precipitous decline in tax revenues that left states with a cumulative budget shortfall of $165 billion for this fiscal year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research institute. About half of the 160 school superintendents from 37 states surveyed by the American Association of School Administrators said that despite receiving stimulus money, they were forced to cut teachers in core subjects. Eight out of 10 said they had cut librarians, nurses, cooks and bus drivers.
Districts unable to avoid layoffs should seek to do minimum damage by retaining outstanding teachers and culling ineffective ones, said Timothy Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit group. But most districts are simply dismissing teachers hired most recently, because union contracts or state laws protect tenured teachers in most states and because few districts have systems to accurately evaluate teacher performance, he said.
“Districts tend to make their problems worse by laying off good teachers and keeping bad ones,” Mr. Daly said.
The Hall County district northeast of Atlanta, which has 35 schools, dismissed 100 of its 2,000 teachers, said William Schofield, the superintendent. John Stape, who taught high school Spanish, and his wife, Janie, who taught third grade, were among them.
Ms. Stape, 50, is still out of work. Mr. Stape, who is 65 and has a Ph.D., found a job teaching this school year, for less pay, in a rural high school southeast of Atlanta. He said that no administrator had ever observed his teaching before the day he was laid off.
“They didn’t know whether I was a good teacher or not,” Mr. Stape said. Mr. Schofield said the district used student achievement data and professional judgment to identify mediocre teachers for dismissal, but he acknowledged that Hall County had to cut so many teachers that strong ones were let go, too.
“We downsized about 50 pretty good folks,” Mr. Schofield said. The district also trimmed salaries of all district employees by 2.4 percent. Mr. Schofield said he cut his own by 3.4 percent, bringing it to $183,000 this year, and relinquished $23,000 in bonuses.
The Hall County schools received more than $18 million in stimulus money, and without it, “those 100 layoffs could easily have gone to 150,” he said.
Among the Hall County educators helped by the stimulus was Ms. Smallwood, who is 25. After she lost her job teaching kindergarten, she went to her mother’s home to cry, then regained her composure and circulated her résumé. A principal eventually hired her to teach third grade.
“I feel like I’m starting over again,” she said.
Schools Aided by Stimulus Money Still Facing Cuts
By SAM DILLON
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Children are returning to classrooms across the nation during one of the most tumultuous periods in American education, in which many thousands of teachers and other school workers — no one yet knows how many — were laid off in dozens of states because of plummeting state and local revenue. Many were hired back, thanks in part to $100 billion in federal stimulus money.
How much the federal money has succeeded in stabilizing schools depends on the state. In those where budget deficits have been manageable, stimulus money largely replaced plunging taxpayer revenues for schools. But in Arizona, California, Georgia and a dozen other states with overwhelming deficits, the federal money has failed to prevent the most extensive school layoffs in several decades, experts said.
When Lori Smallwood welcomed her third-grade students back to school here, it was a new beginning after a searing summer in which she lost her job, agonized over bills, got rehired and, along with all school employees here, saw her salary cut.
“I’m just glad to be teaching,” Ms. Smallwood said. “After the misery of losing your job, a pay cut is a piece of cake.”
In the hard-hit states, the shuffling of teachers out of their previous classrooms and into new ones, often in new districts or at unfamiliar grade levels — or onto unemployment — continues to disrupt instruction at thousands of schools. Experts said that seniority and dysfunctional teacher evaluation systems were forcing many districts to trim strong teachers rather than the least effective.
And in some places, teacher layoffs have pushed up class sizes. In Arizona, which is suffering one of the nation’s worst fiscal crises, some classrooms were jammed with nearly 50 students when schools reopened last month, and the norm for Los Angeles high schools this fall is 42.5 students per teacher.
“I’ve been in public education north of three decades, and these are the most sweeping cutbacks I’ve seen,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. “But it would have been worse without the stimulus.”
Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest district, sent layoff notices to 8,850 teachers, counselors and administrators last spring. Bolstered by stimulus money, it recently rehired some 6,700 of them, leaving about 2,150 demoted to substitute teaching or out of work. Hundreds of districts across California laid off a total of more than 20,000 teachers, according to the California Teachers Association.
In Michigan, the Detroit schools’ emergency financial manager closed 29 schools and laid off 1,700 employees, including 1,000 teachers. Arizona school districts laid off 7,000 teachers in the spring, but stimulus money helped them rehire several thousand. Tucson Unified, for instance, laid off 560 teachers, but rehired 400.
Florida’s second-largest system, Broward County Schools, laid off 400 teachers, but aided by stimulus money, rehired more than 100. In Washington State, many districts let employees go; Seattle laid off about 50 teachers.
Lauren Stokes, who taught high school English last year in North Carolina’s Charlotte-Mecklenburg district, was laid off with about 650 of her colleagues. She sought other jobs, but stimulus money sent to the state helped her district hire her and many others back. One disappointment: her classroom this year is a portable trailer.
“But I’m rehired, thank goodness,” said Ms. Stokes, who is 23. “I’m looking forward to trying new things out on this year’s batch of students.”
Catherine Vidal, a language teacher laid off in May from a high school in Moorpark, Calif., is still out of work. Fifty-nine years old, Ms. Vidal has given up her apartment and is living, for now, on a friend’s boat. Teaching has become too iffy, and she will change professions, she said.
Not only school staff members are feeling the pain, of course.
“I struggled this year getting my three boys everything they needed,” said Mary Lou Johnson, an unemployed office worker who went back-to-school shopping last month at a Wal-Mart in Chamblee, Ga. “Buying their backpacks, sneakers, all the stuff for their classes — it nearly cleaned me out.”
In Ohio, students in the South-Western City district south of Columbus returned to schools with no sports, cheerleading or band, all cut after residents voted down a property tax increase. Stimulus money allowed the district to expand services for disabled students, but it could not save extracurricular programs, said Hugh Garside, the district’s treasurer.
Driving the layoffs was a precipitous decline in tax revenues that left states with a cumulative budget shortfall of $165 billion for this fiscal year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research institute. About half of the 160 school superintendents from 37 states surveyed by the American Association of School Administrators said that despite receiving stimulus money, they were forced to cut teachers in core subjects. Eight out of 10 said they had cut librarians, nurses, cooks and bus drivers.
Districts unable to avoid layoffs should seek to do minimum damage by retaining outstanding teachers and culling ineffective ones, said Timothy Daly, president of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit group. But most districts are simply dismissing teachers hired most recently, because union contracts or state laws protect tenured teachers in most states and because few districts have systems to accurately evaluate teacher performance, he said.
“Districts tend to make their problems worse by laying off good teachers and keeping bad ones,” Mr. Daly said.
The Hall County district northeast of Atlanta, which has 35 schools, dismissed 100 of its 2,000 teachers, said William Schofield, the superintendent. John Stape, who taught high school Spanish, and his wife, Janie, who taught third grade, were among them.
Ms. Stape, 50, is still out of work. Mr. Stape, who is 65 and has a Ph.D., found a job teaching this school year, for less pay, in a rural high school southeast of Atlanta. He said that no administrator had ever observed his teaching before the day he was laid off.
“They didn’t know whether I was a good teacher or not,” Mr. Stape said. Mr. Schofield said the district used student achievement data and professional judgment to identify mediocre teachers for dismissal, but he acknowledged that Hall County had to cut so many teachers that strong ones were let go, too.
“We downsized about 50 pretty good folks,” Mr. Schofield said. The district also trimmed salaries of all district employees by 2.4 percent. Mr. Schofield said he cut his own by 3.4 percent, bringing it to $183,000 this year, and relinquished $23,000 in bonuses.
The Hall County schools received more than $18 million in stimulus money, and without it, “those 100 layoffs could easily have gone to 150,” he said.
Among the Hall County educators helped by the stimulus was Ms. Smallwood, who is 25. After she lost her job teaching kindergarten, she went to her mother’s home to cry, then regained her composure and circulated her résumé. A principal eventually hired her to teach third grade.
“I feel like I’m starting over again,” she said.
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