Residents in the Bonita Shores neighborhood of Bonita Springs, Florida have convenient access to the stunning beaches on the Gulf of Mexico and other amenities that make this a great place to call home. Bonita Springs is known as a

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NEW YORK — Do public school teachers get tenure just by breathing? It’s a claim made by a charter school leader in the education documentary Waiting for Superman , which places much of the blame for bad schools nationwide on union rules that protect incompetent teachers. Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on national television last week that he would overhaul the way city teachers are granted tenure, linking their advancement to improving student test scores. “Just as we are raising the bar for our students through higher standards, we must also raise the bar for our teachers and principals — and we are,” Bloomberg said. But city teachers say that if bad teachers have won tenure protection it’s the fault of the administrators who gave it to them. “We don’t make that decision. Whoever the principal is makes that decision,” said LezAnne Edmond, a Manhattan high school teacher with 15 years of experience. Teacher tenure has its roots in academic tenure, which was intended to protect academic freedom; once granted, professors are rarely fired. Tenure rules for K-12 teachers vary from state to state, with some operating more like universities and others that offer no stronger protection than job security laws that prevent people from being fired without cause. States including California, Florida and Colorado have passed or proposed legislation to change tenure laws in hopes of securing education funding under President Barack Obama ‘s ” Race to the Top ” program. New York City teachers can win tenure after three years. Once they are granted tenure they cannot be fired without an administrative hearing. What the teachers union calls due process, Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein call a system that has protected incompetence. The issue gained prominence with the Sept. 24 release of “Waiting for ‘Superman,’” opening to wider release on Friday. The documentary from ” An Inconvenient Truth ” director Davis Guggenheim suggests that kids receive a superior education in charter schools without unions. NBC ‘s Sept. 27-28 education summit covered much of the same ground. Bloomberg used a 15-minute MSNBC segment to announce a tenure crackdown. “We’ll do more to support teachers and reward great teaching, and that includes ending tenure as we know it,” he said. Bloomberg said principals must start denying tenure unless their students have made two years of progress on state tests. Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers , responded that principals can already deny tenure “for any reason” and that teachers “would welcome an objective tenure-granting process based on agreed-upon standards.” But the union has opposed using state test scores — the city’s preferred benchmark — to measure teacher performance. City Department of Education spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz said the union is being disingenuous. “On one hand, they seem to be blaming principals for too many teachers getting tenure,” she said in an e-mail. “On the other hand, they don’t want principals to take into account student performance when making tenure decisions.” This year, 3.7% of teachers who reached the end of their three-year probationary period were denied tenure, up from 2.3% the year before. Another 7.2% saw their probation extended by a year. Ernest Logan, president of the union representing New York City principals, said his members take student achievement into account. “I don’t think people are just granting people tenure because they’ve been there three years,” Logan said. Veteran city teachers say they need tenure for job security and to protect the First Amendment rights it was designed to safeguard. “I need tenure to speak out,” said Arthur Goldstein, a union chapter leader at Francis Lewis High School in Queens. Goldstein said he has complained publicly about overcrowding and other issues. “I’m standing up for the kids of Francis Lewis High School and I absolutely need tenure,” he said. Katharine Dawson, who retired last summer after 12 years as a city schoolteacher, said tenure “protects you from favoritism, it protects you from all kinds of things.” Asked about tenure protecting bad teachers, she said, “Maybe there’s two bad teachers per school. Is it worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater?” One teacher whom Bloomberg would like to throw out is Melissa Petro, whose essay about using Craigslist to sell herself as a prostitute was published in the Huffington Post on Sept. 7, the same day she was awarded tenure by the principal of her Bronx elementary school. Bloomberg demanded that Petro be pulled from the classroom, but she has tenure and cannot be fired without due process. She has been assigned to an office job pending an investigation. A phone number for Petro could not be found. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

BUFFALO, Mo. — Suzanne Feldman realizes she’s an anomaly: a soon-to-be college graduate who wants to return to the languid rhythms of rural life rather than flee. The aspiring high school math teacher is a member of the inaugural class of the Ozarks Teacher Corps, a group of southwest Missouri teachers in training who receive $4,000 annual scholarships in exchange for a three-year commitment to work in rural school districts after graduation. Having grown up in a town with fewer than 3,000 residents, a place where your homeroom instructor is just as likely to be sitting in the same church pew come Sunday, the 21-year-old newlywed knows that small-town teachers are not just educators but also neighbors and role models. “The community’s expectations are higher,” said Feldman, a senior at Drury University in Springfield, Mo. “When it’s a small community, everybody knows everybody — and expects a whole lot more.” Faced with chronic teacher shortages and unable to compete with the higher salaries and greater social opportunities found in big cities and suburban districts, a growing number of rural school systems are turning to familiar faces to teach their students. They know teachers with rural backgrounds are more likely to stick around and not leave after a year or two. They can be pretty sure that the absence of late-night clubs or art-house movie theaters won’t drive away otherwise idealistic young teachers. And they can count on those teachers being more in touch with their students’ home lives, whether their parents are Indiana farmers, Mississippi factory workers or Northern California grape pickers. “Small, rural communities are grounded in tradition and have deep roots,” said Catherine Kearney, president of the California Teacher Corps. “Someone who understands those traditions makes a huge difference.” The California effort consists of more than 70 programs aimed at luring professionals with non-teaching experience into the classroom. Last year, the teacher corps shifted its emphasis to rural school districts in a state with 300,000 students from rural areas. Half of those students are minorities, and 25% come from homes where English is not the native language. That makes for a different approach to teacher recruitment than programs based in other parts of the country. Esther Soto, 43, started out two decades ago as parent volunteer in the rural Mendocino County town of Boonville, located 120 miles north of San Francisco. She spent 18 years as a teacher’s assistant before returning to school for her teacher’s certification. Soto now teaches kindergarten in the Anderson Valley school district. When the high school found itself in need of a Spanish teacher, the native of Mexico took on that role as well. “I know the families,” she said. “I’m more likely to make a connection. I’ve seen some of these kids since kindergarten. They can’t escape from me.” Roughly 10.5 million students in this country — nearly 20% of the school-age population — attend rural schools, according to the Rural School and Community Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group based in northern Virginia. The group’s research shows that the 900 poorest rural school districts have higher poverty rates than school systems in Baltimore, Chicago, Philadelphia and other urban areas typically considered as the toughest places to teach, and learn. It’s those sort of eye-opening comparisons that rural education advocates say demands a new, national approach to closing the gap. The Rural School and Community Trust found that 12 states graduate fewer than 60% of students from their poorest rural districts: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota and South Dakota. “As a society, we focus our attention on inner-city kids, and blighted urban school districts,” said Randy Shaver, schools superintendent in Tupelo, Miss. Shaver was one of nine rural superintendents from across the country who met with Education Secretary Arne Duncan late last year to discuss reform proposals. His idea: a national rural teaching corps that would build upon the regional efforts found in places such as Missouri, California and Indiana, where Purdue and two other universities are training math and science professionals to return to the classroom. “We need something that’s far more intensive and far broader,” Shaver said. Many of the newer efforts to foster homegrown teaching talent aim to train not just capable educators but to also inspire those rural teachers to become community leaders. Gary Funk, president of the Community Foundation of the Ozarks, which parlayed a $1.7 million private donation to create the Missouri program, hopes that Feldman and her contemporaries develop into “rural activists.” To that end, Ozarks Teacher Corps participants immerse themselves in the study of rural economies, local history and other matters beyond their chosen specialties. They meet regularly for feedback and support and are assigned mentors to guide them through the early years in the classroom, when challenges and frustration can be at their highest. “In traditional teacher training, we don’t focus so much on the context of community,” Funk said. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The University of Florida is considering a proposal that would give incoming students the option of taking classes during the spring and summer terms only, bypassing the fall semester, to ease the strain on its crowded facilities. Though most on campus seem to be in favor of providing an opportunity for nontraditional scheduling, a state law must be altered for the university to move ahead with the plan. Joseph Glover, the university’s provost, pitched the idea at a Florida Board of Governors meeting last week; he described it as a productive, efficient way to admit more students to a university for which there is high-demand. “U.F. is a large institution and, basically, in the fall semester the Gainesville campus is full to capacity,” Glover said. “We do have extra capacity in spring, after winter graduation, and lots of capacity in the summer. So the thought came to us, what’s so sacred about fall-spring? What if we offered our students the ability to be spring-summer? We see more and more students who are opting for innovative programs. I think there would be a market for students who would be interested in doing this for a variety of reasons.” ON THE WEB: In the midnight hour MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: School’s (NOT) out for the summer The idea is still in its nascent stages, but Glover imagines that the university would give applicants the option of stating their preference for fall-spring only, spring-summer only, or either up front. Students in spring-summer format would not be blocked from taking fall classes altogether, just courses in residence. In other words, students on this alternative schedule could do things like study abroad or enroll in distance education courses. This limitation would apply for the entire time these student spend at the university — and thus differs significantly from the way many colleges admit some first-year students for the spring semester, but those students are from then on enrolled on a standard schedule. This year, the university has nearly 6,400 first-time freshmen, and Glover notes that the incoming class size has remained relatively static for the past three years. If the spring-summer option is offered, he said the university would expand its incoming class by about 250 students who would take advantage of it, while maintaining the average 6,400 students in the traditional fall-spring model. Glover added, however, that the university is considering yet another option: limiting the spring-summer scheduling option to incoming transfer students only. In either case, student leaders on campus seem to appreciate the administration’s move to give them more control over their own scheduling. “I think it’s a great initiative to maintain enrollment from our students in these semesters where there seems to be a drop,” wrote Virlany Taboada, senior and treasurer of the Student Government, in an e-mail. “I’ve been a student that has gone to school fall, spring, and summer for my four years here and I can definitely say that taking classes in the summer has helped not only my [grade point average] but it’s a more relaxed environment that I think has contributed to my academic success. My hope would be that by having students not take classes in the fall we’ll see an increase in grade point average and perhaps a decrease in stress and anxiety levels.” Faculty leaders are also open to the idea. “It’s an innovative idea,” said Mary Ann Ferguson, chair of the Faculty Senate and professor in the university’s College of Journalism and Communications. “I’m glad to see the university is trying to better utilize our resources. I have some concerns about how that it’ll work with programs where students take an intro class in the fall and a more advanced class in the spring. Otherwise, I don’t see any serious downsides. I’m sure we’ll work through those issues.” As most university faculty members are nine-month employees, some would have to be encouraged to teach summer classes to help boost offerings for these students. Still, they would be paid on a supplemental contract for their extra work. “I suppose if faculty felt pressure to teach during the summer, there would be issues,” Ferguson said. “But I haven’t heard any strong resistance. We’re always able to find those willing to teach during the summer.” In order for the university to make this offer, however, it will have to ask the state legislature to change a statute. Current state law bars public institutions from requiring students who bring in at least nine credits of college credit upon entry — such as those from Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes — to attend at least one summer term. At the University of Florida, “virtually all” freshmen bring at least nine credits with them. Without revoking this exemption, the university, technically, would not be able to require students who voluntarily select the spring-summer enrollment option to take summer courses. “We need to speed student progress toward graduation and maximize use of our facilities,” said Glover, who noted that officials from other state institutions at the board meeting noted their support for institutional control over their own summer term policies. “This change would enable us to create this program.” Kelly Layman, board spokeswoman, confirmed the board’s support of this push for legislative change. She said this, in addition to a rewording of board policy, would ensure that Florida students that have Bright Futures Scholarships — the state’s lottery-funded merit-based scholarship — would still receive funds if they took advantage of the spring-summer scheduling. Currently, those receiving these scholarships are not eligible for funds if they enroll in summer courses. “We need higher baccalaureate attainment in Florida,” Layman said. “If this helps increase that, then the Board of Governors is for it.”

PUEBLO, Colo. — At 8:28 a.m., the cafeteria ladies of Centennial High School take up positions in the second-floor hallway, just outside closed classroom doors. Each woman is pushing a cart loaded with milk, juice, whole-wheat doughnuts and individual packages of Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms cereal. When science teacher Sue Aronofsky opens the door of her classroom, kids stream into the hallway. “You go around, you get your stuff, and you tell the lady thank you,” she says. Students eat at their desks as announcements drone from the public-address system. After a brief pause to pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag and toss empty milk cartons, Aronofsky’s freshmen turn to examining pill bugs under magnifying glasses. Time: 8:45 a.m. The same scene occurs all over the 1,034-student school. Last year, when Centennial served free breakfast in the cafeteria each morning before the start of classes, fewer than 100 students showed up to eat daily. On this morning four days into the new year, with breakfast delivered to classrooms, 864 students have been fed. That many children eating school breakfast is rare. Although the number of hungry children in the U.S. is rising, fewer than half of the kids who could be eating a free or low-cost breakfast at school are getting one. TRAFFIC: Cities opt for creative commuter options COACHING: Qualified students aim higher ‘DROPOUT FACTORIES’: Program fights truancy at young age BACKYARD COTTAGES: Extra income in Seattle In Pueblo, school officials take a counterintuitive approach: They offer free breakfast to all children regardless of income, so no one is embarrassed to be eating it. In most schools here, breakfast is served right in the classrooms. As a result, 76% of Pueblo’s needy kids eat school breakfast. That’s more than any state and almost every big city, according to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), which tracks participation in school meal programs. Now, states such as Colorado and Florida, anti-hunger groups and congressional lawmakers from both parties are pushing schools to follow programs such as Centennial’s — an effort not only to improve students’ performance in school but to combat rising hunger in tough economic times. The number of U.S. households that can’t consistently put food on the table rose to 17 million, or 14.6%, in 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture , the highest level in a decade. The use of food stamps is at an all-time high, and so is the percentage of children receiving free or reduced-price school meals, which rose from 59.3% in 2007 to 62.5% in 2009. DELINQUENTS: For D.C., hope in treating young offenders SOLAR CITY: Toledo reinvents itself as a solar-power innovator STAYING FREE: Unlikely mentors give felons hope The low number of needy kids eating breakfast at school “is a tremendous concern,” says Gary Davis, founder of the Got Breakfast? Foundation, which gives schools grants to increase breakfast participation. “It’s a message that really has to be heard: that there’s just a simple way that we can improve our society.” The cost of school breakfast for needy kids, such as the cost of their lunches, is eligible for federal reimbursement. Most U.S. schools — 86% — offer it. But of the nearly 19 million children who eat a free or reduced-price lunch at school, only 8.8 million also come for breakfast, according to FRAC. Efforts to change this are underway: •In Colorado, where only 39% of needy kids eat a school breakfast, Democratic Gov. Bob Ritter launched an effort in July to get school districts to increase participation in breakfast with the help of Share Our Strength, a national advocacy group that fights childhood hunger. •In Florida, a new law this year requires free breakfast in all schools where 80% of the students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals. •In Congress, renewal of the Child Nutrition Act would allow start-up grants for universal free breakfast programs. The bill also would make it easier for high-need schools to serve universal meals by allowing more ways for schools to make kids eligible for free and low-cost meals. The renewal, postponed from 2009, passed the Senate in August with $4.5 billion in increased funding. A version with $8 billion in additional funding awaits action in the House. The current law expires Sept. 30. “There are just a lot of kids whose families are not going to be able to supply all their meals for them,” says Bill Shore, co-founder of Share Our Strength. “The impact (on hunger) of adding 50,000 kids to the school breakfast program dwarfs anything else we could do.” ‘It’s the right thing to do’ In Pueblo — a city of 103,000 that is 104 miles south of Denver — 72% of schoolchildren qualify for free and reduced-price meals. Under U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, a family of four with an annual income of less than $40,793 can receive school meals at a reduced price of no more than 30 cents. A family of four with income less than $28,665 is eligible for free school meals. But in Pueblo, breakfast is served free to everyone in all 38 schools. In 24 schools, children are served breakfast in the classroom or, if the food carts can’t be hauled upstairs, kids grab breakfast at the front door on their way to class. Jill Kidd, Pueblo’s nutrition services director, started serving breakfast in class in 1998 in four of the district’s poorest schools, and she has been expanding the classroom breakfast program ever since. “It’s simple,” she says. “And it’s the right thing to do for kids.” Pueblo serves a burrito, French toast or other hot breakfast four times a week, and offers cereal every day, including an unsweetened variety such as Cheerios. (Centennial students got only sweet cereals the first week this school year because adding the school to the in-class breakfast program initially stretched district supplies, Kidd says.) Cheyenne Roque, 15, a freshman at Centennial, grabbed the high-fiber doughnut from the breakfast cart. Her mother works at a craft supply store and her dad at a discount store. The family includes three kids, her grandmother and uncle. Food stamps help the family make it through the month, but school breakfast and lunch make the groceries at home go further. “That’s why we have more food at home, because we eat breakfast and lunch at school,” she says. Removing the stigma Getting more kids to eat breakfast at school is key to achieving President Obama’s campaign pledge to end childhood hunger by 2015, according to groups such as Share Our Strength and Feeding America, a food bank network. The best way to do so, they say, is with a program like Centennial’s that feeds rich and poor kids alike. In a 2001 U.S. Department of Agriculture pilot program in 79 schools, offering free breakfast to all kids in the cafeteria increased the number of students who ate breakfast in school from 19% to 28%. At schools that served free breakfast in the classroom, participation rose to 65%. Feeding free breakfast to students who can afford to pay avoids the stigma for students who can’t but don’t want everyone to know. Serving breakfast in class means kids don’t have to get there early to be fed, Kidd and other school nutrition directors say. Bus schedules, parents’ work schedules, and, for high school students, the desire to sleep as late as possible make getting to school early for breakfast difficult. Andrea Ayala, 28, an unemployed single mom of four, grew up in Pueblo eating breakfast at school when it was for poor kids only. She and her four siblings “always had to go to the cafeteria and be there before school. … My mom made us,” Ayala says. Now her four kids eat breakfast at school along with everyone else, she says: “They see everybody else getting what they’re getting.” Feeding more children breakfast is an easy pitch to budget-squeezed school districts because if enough of their kids are eligible for low- or no-cost meals, federal reimbursement can cover the cost of the entire program. The more breakfasts they serve, the more federal reimbursement they get and the greater economy of scale they enjoy. The USDA spent $12.7 billion on school breakfast and lunch last year. Reimbursement to schools for breakfast range from 26 cents for a child who pays full price to $1.74 for a free breakfast in a high-poverty school. More than half of all students in Pueblo eat breakfast at school. The program pays for itself and doesn’t require any money from the district, Kidd says. “We aren’t asking taxpayers to feed every kid a free breakfast at school,” says Courtney Smith, director of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry program. “We are saying that in very high-need areas, a way to effectively provide breakfast at school is through a universal breakfast program.” Part of an education In Pueblo, Kidd has converted schools to free in-class breakfast one principal at a time. Administrative reluctance is typically the biggest obstacle to classroom breakfast, its proponents say. Since the federal No Child Left Behind law made performance on state tests critical to schools, the pressure to maximize class time is intense. “As a principal, you have to guard instruction time,” says Tharyn Mulberry, Centennial’s principal. When he first mentioned classroom breakfast, his faculty “did not like it,” he says. “They did not want the disruption of it.” First, Kidd arranged to serve breakfast in class last year on the days when Centennial students took the all-important state assessment tests. Then she told Mulberry, “If it’s good for test days, it’s good for every day.” Studies indicate that children learn better when they aren’t hungry. Kids who eat breakfast right before taking tests score higher than kids who ate hours before. Results of pilot programs in the city of Milwaukee, statewide in Maryland and elsewhere show that serving breakfast in class results in less tardiness, less disruptive behavior and fewer visits to the nurse. “We’re a little obsessive about it at this point,” Kidd says. She has pitched one principal on the idea of in-class breakfast so many times — without success — “if I mention it again, he’s going to kill me.” At Park View Elementary, on Pueblo’s east side, where all 418 students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, breakfast is served only in the cafeteria, not the classroom. “I don’t feel that that truly is the best use of the instruction part of the day,” Principal Shiela Perez says. “By the time that it’s been delivered, by the time they’ve been given the opportunity to eat and everything’s been cleared up, that can drag out … into 45 minutes of the day.” Instead, children must arrive by 7:40 a.m. to eat, 20 minutes before class begins. A little more than one-third of the students — 37% — eat breakfast at school. “If they walk in at 7:55 they’re not going to get turned away,” Perez says. “We’re just trying to encourage them to get here.” Like it or not, making sure children get fed has become central to schools’ mission. Feeding hungry kids “is a given. We’re in many cases the biggest social support for our children,” says Stephanie Garcia, president of the Pueblo school board. “This is a necessary part of the educational process.” For Kidd, the next step in helping hungry children is to move beyond the school day. Like other schools, Pueblo has a program that sends bags of food home with needy kids on Friday to get them through the weekend. Kidd would like to add an after-school supper program, and start farmers markets at schools located in “food deserts,” neighborhoods without food stores. She is also now in charge of the 10% of Pueblo students who are homeless. It’s a job Kidd feels highlights the difference a school can make in a kid’s life, especially if it comes with decent meals. “We’re the safe time in their day. We’re the good time in their day,” she says. “If we can feed them and love them, maybe we can make the other 16 hours more tolerable.”

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Cancer has ravaged several of Ann Aberson’s relatives, so she doesn’t have a problem with her two teenage daughters wearing bracelets to raise awareness of breast cancer. But their school principal does. This week, Baltic High School, just north of here, became one of the latest across the USA to ban the rubber bracelets that has a message some say is in poor taste: “I love boobies.” The bracelets have caused controversy in schools in states including California, Colorado, Idaho, Florida and Wisconsin. Some districts allow students to wear them inside-out, and others ban them. “When we had an assembly the first day of school, I basically told the students we are not insensitive to the cause,” Baltic High Principal Jim Aisenbrey says. “I think everybody in the gym, including myself, has had a family member or relative or friend who has dealt with the issue. I do think there are more proper ways to bring this plight to the attention of people, and I don’t think this is a proper way.” “I guess I never thought of them as offensive,” Aberson says. Her grandmother and five of her grandmother’s sisters battled breast cancer. The bracelets, which sell for about $4 in stores, were created by Keep A Breast Foundation, a Carlsbad, Calif., non-profit group that seeks to increase breast cancer awareness among young people. Proceeds from sales support the foundation’s programs, founder Shaney Jo Darden says. She says the bracelets are meant to spark discussions. “That’s the whole idea, it’s getting people to talk about breast cancer, it’s getting people to share their feelings about how this disease has impacted their life,” she says. “The bracelet is doing what it’s meant to do — it’s making people talk.” “Schools banning it? That’s crazy,” says Julie Hubbell of Lewisville, Texas. Hubbell helped organize an auction and barbeque named “Boobie Q” to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which fights breast cancer. In the Fresno, Calif., area, students in the Clovis Unified School District were told not to wear the bracelets in class — or to turn them inside out so the message is not visible, spokeswoman Kelly Avants says. The district’s dress code outlaws jewelry with sexually suggestive language or images, she says.

Two years of cuts in state support saddled the Natomas Unified School District in Sacramento this spring with what school board president B. Teri Burns calls “horribly painful” choices: fewer teachers and larger classes, or keeping teachers but cutting athletics, counseling and after-school programs. Like many districts across the nation, Natomas chose to lay off teachers. So for every three classes of 20 students each that the schools had last year, this year they’ll put 30 students in two classes. The teaching staff in this 10,000-student district will be cut by 100 to 340 next fall. No one’s happy, Burns says: “We have to make choices, and none of them are good.” Conventional wisdom says the smaller the classes, the better the education, because teachers can pay more attention to each child. But while smaller classes are popular, decades of research has found that the relationship between class size and student outcomes is murky. LAYOFFS: Federal funding won’t save many teacher jobs “The research doesn’t show that you get significantly different student outcomes when you go from a class of 25 to a class of 30,” Burns says. With state and local budgets still in flux, it’s hard to know exactly how many teachers will lose jobs this year. But even with $10 billion in additional federal money, part of the $26 billion bill President Obama signed recently, the struggling economy is expected to reverse a decades-long trend toward smaller classes. Education statistics show that school personnel were hired at twice the rate that student enrollment grew from 1999 to 2007. An experiment drives change In the early 1990s, when many states were flush with cash, policymakers championed the findings of a 1985 experiment in Tennessee. The Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) project compared academic achievement in small classes of 13 to 17 low-income students with that of students in classes that had 22 to 25 students. The experiment found modest but lasting gains for impoverished African-American students in the much smaller classes in kindergarten and first grade. States extrapolated from those findings to justify spending billions to make relatively modest cuts in class size in all schools, not just in those serving the poor. About three dozen states now fund either voluntary or required class-size reduction programs. In 1996, California launched the first and largest such effort, eventually providing incentives for school districts to lower class size to 20 in kindergarten through third grade at a cost of $20 billion. In 2002, Florida voters approved an amendment to the state constitution that reduced class size over time in all grades. The state estimates that it will cost an additional $353 million this year, on top of the $16 billion the state has spent so far, to meet the requirements. In November, Florida voters will be asked to loosen those requirements to avoid massive spending cuts. A study released in May by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University found that the Florida program had no effect on student achievement. Research on California’s program also showed no gains in achievement attributable to smaller classes. Michael Kirst, an emeritus professor at Stanford University , says excitement over the program resulted in school districts hiring “all sorts of teachers just off the street” who lacked any formal training. Space shortages forced schools to hold the newly created classes in hallways and closets and on auditorium stages. Nonetheless, Kirst says, the program was popular. “One lesson from California is that with parents, smaller class size is overwhelmingly favorable, and they don’t give a fig about the research that says this is not going to help their kids,” he says. “They intuitively believe that small class sizes will allow more individual attention.” Slippery slope? Dan Goldhaber of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington-Bothell says that “the effects of class-size reduction are pretty marginal,” except in the early grades for disadvantaged students. With rampant teacher layoffs, Goldhaber says, “it probably makes sense … to focus not so much on class sizes but on making sure that the teachers you are keeping are really effective.” But Kirst says school districts are facing “a very dangerous period. We are increasing class size to extremely high levels. “I don’t worry about going from 20 to 25 students that much, or 15 to 20,” he says. “But when you go from 20 to 35 in a year or two, I don’t think we don’t know the effects of that.” Contributing: Susan Sawyers of Hechinger

ATLANTA (AP) — The University of Georgia won a national title this year — top party school. The Princeton Review announced Monday that Georgia is the No. 1 party school on its now infamous annual ranking. The school of about 30,000 students has been on the list 10 times since the ranking was created in 1992, but this is the first time the university has taken the top spot. For the campus — surrounded by nearly 100 bars in tiny downtown Athens — parties are just part of life from August to May each year. Many students gear up for the weekend on Thursdays and sometimes don’t rest until Monday morning. “That’s what people look forward to starting Thursday — Thursday night is the new Friday night,” said junior Andrew Chappell, 20. “The party atmosphere is such a big part of Georgia.” University of Georgia spokesman Tom Jackson said the list is not one the school wants to lead. He said he’d rather emphasize that the school made Princeton Review’s top 50 “Best Values” list or the “Green Honor Roll” of the most environmentally conscious campuses. BEST VALUE COLLEGES: Top 100 for 2010 PRINCETON REVIEW: 286 greenest colleges BEYOND RANKINGS: Scores on student engagement Georgia beat out Pennsylvania State University, West Virginia University and University of Florida — which were the top party schools over the last three years. Those three made the top 10 this year, while Ohio University ranked second. The ranking comes after several years of work by University of Georgia administrators to curb drinking on campus and tone down the party atmosphere. Since 2006 — when a student died of an overdose of alcohol, cocaine and heroin in his dorm room — university police have been hauling underage drinkers to jail rather than simply giving them a ticket. School administrators call parents on the first offense and suspend a student for two semesters after the second alcohol violation. “The University of Georgia takes student alcohol education programs very seriously and will continue to do so,” Jackson said. Those efforts weren’t helped when athletic director Damon Evans stepped down last month after being charged with drunken driving. Evans had appeared in a video message played before home football games urging Georgia fans not to drink and drive. The ranking is based on e-mail surveys of 122,000 students at more than 370 colleges across the country. It combines responses on alcohol and drug use on campus, hours spent studying outside class and the popularity of fraternities and sororities. The surveys are filled out voluntarily by students, and on average about 325 students from each campus respond, said Rob Franek, author of the 800-page book put out by Princeton Review each year with nearly 60 categories of rankings. Other rankings include best campus food, least accessible professors and most religious students. “I want to make sure we’re giving any college-bound student a very clear example of what life could be for them at any of the 373 schools in the book,” he said. Colleges dismiss the rankings as unscientific and complain that they glorify dangerous behavior. In advance of Monday’s announcement, University of Colorado President Bruce Benson sent a letter to the Boulder, Colo., Daily Camera newspaper criticizing Princeton Review and the rankings. “What I get really upset about is this is headline-grabbing, and it’s extremely unscientific,” Benson told the newspaper. His school ranked 16th on the party list this year and No. 1 in 2003. This year, Brigham Young University topped the list of “Stone-Cold Sober Schools” for the 13th straight year. The Princeton Review is a Massachusetts-based company known for its test preparation courses, educational services and books. It’s not affiliated with Princeton University. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

ATLANTA (AP) — Eighteen states and the District of Columbia were named finalists Tuesday in the second round of the federal “Race to the Top” school reform grant competition, giving them a chance to receive a share of $3 billion. Education Department officials provided The Associated Press with a list of the finalists ahead of a speech by Education Secretary Arne Duncan . The states are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia , Hawaii , Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland , Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina. Duncan was expected to officially announce the finalists at a speech at the National Press Club. The competition rewards ambitious reforms aimed at improving struggling schools and closing the achievement gap. Applications were screened by a panel of peer reviewers, and finalists will travel to Washington in coming weeks to present their proposals. In all, 35 states and the District of Columbia applied for the second round of the application. The 19 finalists have asked for $6.2 billion, though only $3.4 billion is available. Dozens of states passed new education policies to make themselves more attractive to the judges. New York, which was a finalist in the first round but did not win money, lifted its cap on the number of charter schools that can open annually from 200 to 460. Colorado passed laws that would pay teachers based on student performance and can strip tenure from low performing instructors. Two states, Tennessee and Delaware, were awarded a total of $600 million in the first round. Their applications were praised for merit pay policies that link teacher pay to student performance and for garnering the support of teachers’ unions. Tennessee and Delaware also have laws that are welcoming to charter schools. In the first round of the race, some stakeholders were reluctant to support applications tying teacher evaluations to student test scores. Armario reported from Miami. AP Writer Michael Gormley in Albany, N.Y., contributed to this report. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

To get a sense of the job market new college graduates face, consider the latest crop of nurses from Santa Rosa Junior College . Just eight of the 55 students are leaving with job offers — and that’s considered good news. Last year, no graduates of the California community college’s associate degree nursing program had a job in hand. “We’re excited that finally something is happening,” said Sharon Johnson, the program director. This year’s slightly better performance is one of many signs around the country that 2010 is a better year than 2009 for landing that first job out of college — but not by much. New nurses are looking for something — anything — as the down economy has slowed retirements in their otherwise promising field. Teachers also face intense competition for positions that in their case have been made scarce by state and local budget cuts. Even graduates with sought-after degrees had less than sizzling prospects. Fewer than half of U.S. accounting majors could boast job offers this spring, one study found. There are signs of life. Employers plan to hire 5% more new college graduates this year than they did a year ago, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which also polled the future accountants. The road to recovery appears long, however. In 2007, about two-thirds of soon-to-be graduates in the association’s student survey reported having job offers in hand that spring. Just three years later, about 40% could say that. “It’s been a little depressing,” said Lauren Wiygul, who will earn a master’s degree in secondary English education from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, this summer. She applied to more than a dozen private schools and every public district in the Atlanta area. After someone in human resources for the system in Georgia’s Gwinnett County mentioned a possible language arts opening, she took a day off work, traveled to Atlanta and personally delivered her resume to 13 middle and high schools, hoping to introduce herself to principals. She met a lot of sympathetic secretaries but not one principal. She has yet to get an interview. “One principal, she wasn’t rude, but she just e-mailed back, ‘Positions are posted on our website,’” Wiygul said. “I have worked really hard to be able to teach. I just feel stuck.” Education majors have it toughest of the 2010 grads surveyed by the association of colleges and employers. Fewer than one in four had received job offers this spring. The list of least sought-after majors included the physical sciences (such as chemistry and physics), languages, English, history or political science and journalism. Along with perennially popular accounting, the most attractive majors to employers were business administration, computer science, engineering and mathematics. The private sector outlook didn’t improve last week when the Labor Department announced U.S. businesses added just 41,000 jobs in May, an indication employers are not yet ramping up hiring despite other signs of economic recovery. The department offered better news Tuesday, saying job openings rose in April to their highest level since December 2008. Some college career counselors report encouraging signs. Trudy Steinfeld, executive director of New York University’s Wasserman Center for Career Development, said banks and consulting firms that were invisible a year ago are “staffing up like crazy.” But at the University of Texas at Arlington, associate director of career services Cheri Butler is advising students shut out of bank jobs to seek finance department positions in government, health care and education. Wayne Wallace, director of the University of Florida’s Career Resource Center, said that regardless of the field, the watchwords for new graduates are patience, flexibility and short-term sacrifice for long-term gain. “Graduates, if they are willing to be geographically mobile and reasonably flexible about what they’re willing to do to start out, tremendously increase their odds for success,” he said. Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business devised a plan to improve the chances for graduates in its residential master’s in business administration program. It included a dean’s letter to 26,000 alumni, an electronic booklet featuring students’ resumes and a job bank run by students with jobs for those still searching. That last effort was dubbed “The Lonely Hearts Job Search Club.” “A simple plan, delivered to the right people with a clear objective, can go a long way in helping students during a challenging economy get to where they want to be,” said Erik Medina, the school’s director of graduate career services. Last month, 74% of students had job offers at graduation, compared with 66% last year, he said. For nurses, the long-term forecast is excellent. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 22% job growth for registered nurses by 2018 as baby boomers age and nurses emerge as cheaper primary care alternatives to doctors. But for now, jobs for new nurses are relatively scarce. More experienced nurses are putting off retirement or working extra hours, some because their spouses have been laid off, nursing school officials say. “I look at this like an air pocket,” said Marla Salmon, dean of the University of Washington School of Nursing. “The fact is we’re still climbing in terms of the number of nurses needed. But the recession has definitely slowed hiring.” Salmon said she is encouraging graduates to think creatively. That could mean residencies — part of a doctor’s career path but a relatively new development in nursing — and mentored job-sharing arrangements. The tough market has caused some nursing graduates to lower their expectations, accepting jobs in long-term care and community health centers rather than top research hospitals. Corey Fry, who will graduate this week with a master’s degree from the highly regarded University of California , San Francisco School of Nursing, cast his search for nurse practitioner jobs nationwide. He’s joined professional organizations and honed his networking skills. After reading an article by a University of Maryland nurse practitioner, he sent the author an appreciative e-mail and attached his resume. He has a phone interview there this week, and leads in St. Louis and Oregon. “We’ve talked as classmates and we all agree our first job might not be our perfect job, but we need to get that first job,” Fry said. “Then you can move beyond that if you need to.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.