No Child Left Behind – Past Superintendent John Cary on NPR

The following is a full airing of St. Louis on the Air from KWMU.  It is a discussion of No Child Left Behind.  Past Superintendent John Cary was one of the participants.

Click here to listen with Windows Media Player.

Oakville resident proud, impressed with school district’s new turf fields – The Call

Oakville resident proud, impressed with school district’s new turf fields
September 26, 2007 – Just a few informative words for the “Doubting Thomases” in the Mehlville-Oakville school district. At 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 6, I went to Oakville High to watch my grandson at soccer practice.

The controversial turf field was completely covered with young athletes. The football team was at one end, the junior varsity soccer team was in the middle and the freshman team was at the other end.

Shortly after 4 p.m., these teams completed practice and the varsity soccer team came on the field for practice.

Turf fields to come in $15,000 under budget

Turf fields to come in $15,000 under budget
Mehlville school board discusses turf fields’ benefits
MIKE ANTHONY
Executive Editor
September 26, 2007 – The final cost of the installation of synthetic-turf fields at the Mehlville School District’s two high schools is expected to be roughly $15,000 under budget, according to Deputy Superintendent Eric Knost.

Installation of synthetic turf to replace the grass athletic fields at Mehlville and Oakville senior high schools began in late May and was completed by early August. The Northstar Management Co. served as owner/manager for the synthetic-turf projects at the two high schools. Click here to read on…

Saturday Morning Cafe in the Call

Bill Milligan photo

Mehlville Board of Education members and Superintendent Terry Noble met with district residents Saturday morning at the St. Louis Bread Co. near the South County mall during the second of a series of Saturday Morning Café sessions. The sessions provide an opportunity for residents to meet with school-board members and the superintendent in an informal setting. Pictured, from left, are: board member Venki Palamand, Anna Moser of Lemay, board Vice President Karl Frank Jr. and Noble.

School Board Morning Cafe is Saturday

I will be there with Mr. Palamand and Superintendent Terry Noble.  Hope to see you there!

STLtoday – News – St. Louis City / County
School Board Morning Cafe is Saturday

09/21/2007

The Mehlville School Board will have its next Saturday Morning Cafe from 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday at the St. Louis Bread Co. in South County Center.

District officials say the goal of the sessions is for the public to meet with board members and Superintendent Terry Noble. The first meeting took place last month. Several more are planned in the coming months.

“I like this method of communicating because it meets the goal of two-way communication without creating a captive audience for those who are seeking a political platform to promote nondistrict issues,” Noble said.

Forbes.com – The Best Places with the Best Education

According to Forbes Magazine, St. Louis, MO is the sixth best metro area for public education.  Why is this a Forbes article?  Because according to Forbes and a “January 2003 National Bureau of Economic Research paper, co-authors Lisa Barrow and Cecilia Rouse found that for every $1 increase in state aid spending per pupil, property values increased $20 in aggregate per pupil housing.“

Forbes.com – Magazine Article
Rank Metro Area Score
1 Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, N.C. 100.00
2 Boston, Mass.-N.H. 99.71
3 Albany-Schenectady-Troy, N.Y. 99.43
4 St. Louis, Mo.-Ill. 99.15
5 Chicago, Ill. 98.86
6 Rochester, N.Y. 98.58
7 Austin-San Marcos, Tex. 98.30
8 San Francisco, Calif. 98.01
9 Washington, D.C. 97.73
10 Dayton-Springfield, Ohio 96.88

To read the rest of this fascinating article, click here.

Sept. 10 COMPASS meeting to be an educational experience – Call Newspapers

i.call
Sept. 10 COMPASS meeting to be an educational experience
TOM DIEHL

Tom Diehl

September 05, 2007 – Want to take a peek at the future? Want to see what the 21st century classroom will look like?

This coming Monday, Sept. 10, COMPASS — Charting the Oakville-Mehlville Path to Advance Successful Schools — will sponsor a technology fair in addition to its public engagement program at Bernard Middle School, 1054 Forder Road.

Both private and public schools are adopting new technologies aimed at improving instructional delivery in the classroom. Go into any electronics store or watch kids hanging out at the mall and you will see that today’s generation is comfortable with and attracted to technology.

 Click here to read on…

Mehlville School District tax rate drops by 37.12 cents for 2007-’08 School Year – Call Newspapers

i.call
Mehlville School District tax rate drops by 37.12 cents for 2007-’08 school year
District will still collect $2.7 million increase in tax revenue
September 05, 2007 – While the Mehlville Board of Education reduced the district’s tax rate for the 2007-2008 school year, Mehlville will rake in more than $2.7 million in new revenue from those taxes.

The Board of Education voted 5-0 last week to reduce the district’s “blended” tax rate to $3.2731 per $100 of assessed valuation for the 2007-2008 school year from $3.6443 per $100 of assessed valuation for the previous school year, a decrease of 37.12 cents.

Board of Education Secretary Michael Ocello and board member Ken Leach were absent from the Aug. 30 meeting.

Because of an increase in the school district’s total assessed valuation, the Board of Education was required to roll back the tax rate.

Click here to read on…

Teacher Credentials Matter – Economic Study

More economic evidence that teacher credentials matter for student achievement.

Click here for the full study…

In the meantime, here is the abstract…

“Education researchers and policymakers agree that teachers differ in terms of quality and that quality matters for student achievement. Despite prodigious amounts of research, however, debate still persists about the causal relationship between specific teacher credentials and student achievement. In this paper, we use a rich administrative data set from North Carolina to explore a range of questions related to the relationship etween teacher characteristics and credentials on the one hand and student achievement on the other. Though the basic questions underlying this research are not new — and, indeed, have been explored in many papers over the years within the rubric of the “education production function” — the availability of data on all teachers and students in North Carolina over a ten-year period allows us to explore them in more detail and with far more confidence than has been possible in previous studies. We conclude that a teacher’s experience, test scores and regular licensure all have positive effects on student achievement, with larger effects for math than for reading. Taken together the various teacher credentials exhibit quite large effects on math achievement, whether compared to he effects of changes in class size or to the socio-economics characteristics of students, as measured, for example, by the education level of their parents.”

NCLB – No Child Left Behind – Presentation Documents

This link was broken when I transferred my hosting from Windows to Linux hosting.  To view the No Child Left Behind documents provided by Superintendent Noble, click here.

Question posed to Miss America contestant was not true…

FINALReport2006GeogLitsurvey.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Pinpointing North America on a Map Is a Breeze
Nearly all (94%) young Americans can find the United States on the world map, and Canada
(92%) and Mexico (88%) are nearly as familiar. Wide majorities can find bordering bodies of
water including the Pacific Ocean (79%) and the Gulf of Mexico (75%). Trends from 2002
suggest that more young adults can pick out Canada and Mexico (with few signs of change for
other countries). However, it is concerning that one in ten of those with up to a high school
education cannot identify the U.S., and one in five cannot find the Pacific Ocean.

Click here to see the survey in its entirety.

1st Grade Curriculum As Promised…

..click here to view the 1st Grade Curriculum for the Mehlville School District.

Are you smarter than a 1st grader?

I often hear about how education was “so much better” in the 1950s than now. It appears to me, that most people are completely out of touch with what our children are learning today. (Or as President Bush would say, “Is our children learning?”) They also have no idea how strenuous the curriculum actually is. Unfortunately, the federal legislation called “No Child Left Behind” is taking us several steps backward. Since certain subjects are not tested, they are less likely to be taught as well and efficiently as otherwise possible. Topics such as Social Studies/History, Science, Health, Geography, Art, Physical Education, and others are put on the back-burner. What ends up happening is that instead of having well-rounded, capable, critical thinkers, you get people who cannot find the United States on a world map.  (Actually, that is not true, click here to find out more.)

That being said, our teachers are doing the best they can, even with the handicaps of the unfunded federal mandates.

For instance, here is a typical day in the life of a first grader in Ms. Barton’s class at Blades Elementary…

“We are now beginning the fourth week of school…halfway through the first grading period. The first graders are gradually learning the rules and procedures of our classroom. Here is our routine. After the opening, our morning is filled with language arts activities…printing, phonics, listening lessons, word wall activities, and shared reading. Next, we have guided reading groups and literacy centers. All the students are reading books at their own level. Following centers, we fill out our planner and then do our writing lesson. Every student has a writer’s journal, in which to write stories. After lunch, students have social studies or science activities, followed by math. Next are special classes, such as music, PE, art, and library. We end our day by tying up loose ends and finishing anything we missed.”

I guess most people think our kids just sit in class and twiddle their thumbs all day. Obviously, that is not the case.

Typically a copy of the 1st grade curriculum is on Mehlville’s web site, but it currently is not. I have inquired about this and will post again when it is available. In the meantime, you may want to click here to see if it is there yet.

Thanks,

Karl

Stonebraker’s letter makes it clear he really, really hates paying taxes – Call Newspapers

i.call
Stonebraker’s letter makes it clear he ‘really, really hates paying taxes’
August 29, 2007 – Whew — that Jim Stonebraker sure had a lot to say about Micheal Ocello and the Mehlville Board of Education in his recent letter to the Call.

I’m glad he got that all off his chest. I can only imagine how powerful his letter would have been if it had made any sense.

He begins by noting that Mr. Ocello has asked that public-input forums for the school district not be politicized by people who want to attack the board; then he ominously lists the times Mr. Ocello has participated in politics. I’m sorry, when did volunteering to serve on a public board mean that one gave up one’s right to participate in politics elsewhere? Click here to read the rest….

STLtoday – News – Education

What a joke.  Education at Mehlville has never been better.  Never.  And that includes the 1950s.  No Child Left Behind is an unfunded federal intrusion in to local government, as well as a major waste of taxpayer money.  The current U.S. Department of Education is a prime example of government bureaucracy in action.  For more information on NCLB, click here and here.

STLtoday – News – Education
Missouri lets schools slide, U.S. report says
By David Hunn, Paul Hampeland Steve Giegerich
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
09/04/2007

Missouri has demanded too little of its schools and reprimanded their shortcomings too slowly, according to a new federal report.

A team from the U.S. Department of Education has found dozens of problems with the states supervision of its schools, from simple differences in terminology to major violations of the federal law known as No Child Left Behind.  Click here to read the rest of this trash…

STLtoday – MEHLVILLE SCHOOLS: District seeks volunteers to join advisory panel

STLtoday – News – Education

News > Education > Story
MEHLVILLE SCHOOLS: District seeks volunteers to join advisory panel

09/03/2007

The Mehlville School District is looking for volunteers to serve on a Community Advisory Council. The council will meet quarterly to review district issues and offer advice to the superintendent and School Board.

Interested community members should submit their name and phone number to Sharon Peiffer in the superintendents office, 314-467-5002, or peiffers@mehlville.k12.mo.us.

The first meeting is set for 6 p.m. Oct. 2 in the Central Office boardroom, 3120 Lemay Ferry Road.

Dave Riegel: The Problem with Merit Pay – Politics on The Huffington Post

Dave Riegel: The Problem with Merit Pay – Politics on The Huffington Post
I was surprised to hear that Barack Obama was sticking his big toe into the merit pay waters at the NEA convention and again at the most recent Democratic presidential debate. While Obama has not to my knowledge advocated “merit pay” by name or outlined a specific proposal, his apparent openness to the concept has excited advocates of pay for perfomance who are anxious to see a major figure on the left like Obama defy the prevailing Democratic wisdom and counter the NEA’s opposition to the concept.

Click here to read on…