SAN JOSE, Calif. — Students graduating from high school this spring may be collecting their diplomas just in time, leaving institutions that are being badly weakened by the nation’s economic downturn. Across the country, mass layoffs of teachers, counselors and other staff members — caused in part by the drying up of federal stimulus dollars — are leading to larger classes and reductions in everything that is not a core subject, including music, art, clubs, sports and other after-school activities. VIDEO: More deep cuts looming for public schools VIDEO: Hard times for even richest districts Educators and others worry the cuts could lead to higher dropout rates and lower college attendance as students receive less guidance and become less engaged in school. They fear a generation of young people could be left behind. “It’s going to be harder for everybody to get an opportunity to get into college,” said Chelsea Braza, a 16-year-old sophomore at Silver Creek High School in San Jose . “People wouldn’t be as motivated to do anything in school because there’s no activities and there’s no involvement.” The library at Silver Creek High is open for only an hour a day. The career center is closed. There is no more summer school. And student athletes must pay $200 each. State budget cuts will make things even worse next year. The school will probably have five fewer classroom days and lose three of its four guidance counselors and three of its four custodians, as well as its health aide, mental health coordinator and student activities director. The future of student government, clubs, pep rallies, homecoming and prom is in doubt. The federal government’s $787 billion economic stimulus package saved an estimated 300,000 education jobs for this year, but many of those positions are once again in jeopardy as that money dries up. “Literally tens of millions of students will experience these budget cuts in one way or another,” said Education Secretary Arne Duncan , who is urging Congress to provide another round of emergency funding for schools. “If we do not help avert this state and local budget crisis, we could impede reform and fail another generation of children.” Sen. Tom Harkin , D-Iowa, has introduced legislation that would create a $23 billion fund to help schools retain teachers, principals and other staff members. The fate of the bill is uncertain. The American Association of School Administrators estimates that 275,000 education jobs will be cut in the coming school year, based on an April survey. Other AASA surveys found that 52% of administrators plan to cut extracurricular activities, and 51% are reducing elective courses not required for graduation. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system in North Carolina, which cut $90 million last school year, plans to slice off an additional $78 million and eliminate more than 1,000 positions, including almost 650 teachers. The district will cut its middle school sports teams next year, and schools are cutting electives such as German and creative writing, Superintendent Peter Gorman said. “I’m very concerned when we can’t offer those courses which hook an individual student to pursue their passion, or what could be their life’s vocation,” Gorman said. In the Tupper Lake Central Schools in New York , the rural district in the Adirondacks will lose 25% of its instructional staff in the upcoming school year, which will probably result in bigger classes and the elimination of electives such as photography, modern art and ceramics, said Superintendent Seth McGowan. “It seriously compromises the depth of the education our students will be receiving,” he said. In Illinois, more than 20,000 jobs in schools — including an estimated 12,600 teachers and administrators — will be lost next school year, said Brent Clark, executive director of the Illinois Association of School Administrators. South Florida’s Broward County, the nation’s sixth-largest school district, could lay off 800 to 1,000 teachers because of a $130 million budget shortfall. Officials are trying to figure out how to save sports and electives, considering options like sharing an art teacher between schools. California’s relentless budget crisis is taking its toll on schools like Silver Creek High, part of San Jose’s East Side Union High School District, which is seeking to slash an additional 10% from its $200 million budget. Over the past two years, the district, which has 12 campuses and 25,000 students, has eliminated more than 450 full-time positions, including nearly 200 teachers and certified staff, said Assistant Superintendent Cathy Giammona. Class sizes have swelled to an average of 35 students, with more than 40 crammed into AP Calculus sections. And schools in the district won’t offer any courses unless they are fully enrolled, leading to cuts in electives such as photography, business, woodworking and Japanese. Silver Creek High senior Anthony Chavez, who credits his counselors with helping him win a scholarship to the University of California at Berkeley, said he worries that students won’t get the same opportunities with just one counselor for more than 2,400 students. “Through my four years here my counselors helped me with everything. I’m the first generation in my family to go to college,” he said. “I didn’t even know what SATs were.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — A first-of-its-kind law bars public high schools in Maryland from automatically sending student scores on a widely used military aptitude test to recruiters, a practice that critics say was giving the armed forces backdoor access to young people without their parents’ consent. School districts around the country have the choice of whether to administer the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery exam, and ones that offer it typically pass the scores and students’ contact information directly to the military. Topics on the test range from math and reading to knowledge of electronics and automobiles. The Maryland law, the first in the nation after similar California legislation was vetoed, was signed last month and bars schools from automatically releasing the information to military recruiters. Instead, students, and their parents if they are under 18, will have to decide whether to give the information to the military. The law takes effect in July. One other state, Hawaii , has a similar policy for its schools, but not a law. Roughly 650,000 U.S. high school students took the exam in the 2008-2009 school year, and the Department of Defense says scores for 92% of them were automatically sent to military recruiters. In the fiscal year that ended in September, 7.6% of those who enlisted in the military used scores from the test as part of their applications. Nancy Grasmick , Maryland Superintendent of Schools, said in a letter to lawmakers that the test and score analysis are “free services that public schools often utilize as part of their ongoing career development and exploration programs.” Grasmick took no position on the legislation in her letter and did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. Defense Department spokeswoman Eileen Lainez said the data is used both to screen students’ enlistment eligibility and to determine their interests and skills for nonmilitary careers. Asked about criticism that the military is going around parents, Lainez said in an e-mail that “parents and other influencers are in the best position to help advise students of various career opportunities, and the pros and cons associated with each of the choices.” PROTESTS: Military-backed public schools on the rise HIGHER ED: Military academies, few others tuition-free JUNIOR ROTC: ‘More than a class’ to students Members of the Maryland Coalition to Protect Student Privacy, which pushed for the legislation, argued the military isn’t upfront about the test’s real purpose. Coalition member and high school teacher Pat Elder said he became involved in the issue after volunteering on a phone hot line for troubled soldiers. Many told him they hadn’t considered the military until a recruiter who’d seen their scores contacted them. “I’ve spoken to ‘C’ or ‘D’ students who are called by a recruiter and told ‘Dude, you’re really good at this kind of stuff,’ and that’s what it takes for them to join,” said Elder, who teaches at the Muslim Community School in Potomac, Md. “There is an insidious, psychological element to these tests.” While Maryland is the first state to pass a law prohibiting the automatic release of scores to military recruiters, some individual school districts elsewhere, including the Los Angeles school system, have policies to the same effect. Hawaii’s Department of Education implemented its statewide policy last year. Four Maryland counties — Howard, Frederick, Montgomery and Prince George’s — also blocked the direct release of scores to recruiters before the state law was passed. State legislators in California passed a similar measure in 2008, but it was vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger . School districts in Maryland have had different policies for when and how they administer the roughly 3.5 hour multiple-choice exam. Some school districts, like rural Allegany County, only offer the test to students at a technical high school, while individual schools in the Baltimore City district can choose whether to administer the exam. Maryland state senator Jamie Raskin, D-Montgomery, said he sponsored the bill partly because school districts’ approaches varied. He said constituents also told him they didn’t think local school districts knew their options. “They thought they had to turn over information to recruiters,” Raskin said. Some argued that the measure was antimilitary. Baltimore County Republican Sen. Andy Harris said the legislation gives students the impression that they should be skeptical of military careers. “I think sending any message while we’re at war overseas that the military in any way is not an honorable profession is the wrong message to send,” Harris said. Del. Sheila Hixson, D-Montgomery, sponsored the bill in the House, bristled at that argument. “For me, it wasn’t the military piece, it was the parental permission,” Hixson said. “Parents didn’t know what was going on and children didn’t realize what was going on.” Toria Latnie, who now lives in Michigan, said a counselor at her son’s Florida charter high school told seniors in late 2008 that the military aptitude test was a requirement for graduation. Latnie researched the exam online and refused to allow her son to take the test. “I was angry, very angry,” said Latnie, a mother of five. “I felt lied to, deceived, like people were trying to go behind my back and give my child’s private information to the military.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

DAVIE, Fla. (AP) — Professor Derron Bowen teaches high school math to college students, patiently chalking equations on the board on basic arithmetic topics such as the speed of a driver on a 20-hour trip. Bowen’s class at Broward College in South Florida is for students who didn’t score high enough on an entrance test to get into college-level math. In all, about two-thirds of students entering the community college need to take at least one remedial course in math, English or reading. Nationwide, about a third of first-year students in 2007-08 had taken at least one remedial course, according to the U.S. Department of Education . At public two-year colleges, that number rises to about 42%. Education observers worry that the vast numbers of students coming to college unprepared will pose a major roadblock to President Barack Obama ‘s goal for the United States to once again lead the world in college degrees. COMMUNITY COLLEGES: 6 states aim to reform remedial programs “We don’t get there from here,” said Bob Wise , president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia . In October, the Education Department reported that many states declare students to have grade-level mastery of reading and math when they do not. In a 2007 ACT National Curriculum Survey of college professors, 65% said their states poorly prepare students for college-level coursework. The survey found that professors want students with stronger skills in specific areas, while high schools typically impart a less comprehensive understanding of a broad range of topics. In his remedial math class in Florida, Bowen sees students who haven’t been in school for a decade or more, but some haven’t even had time to hang up their high school diplomas. “How were they allowed to go through?” Bowen said. “I’m thinking, ‘If I could have been teaching you back when you were 6, 7, you would be a powerhouse today.’” The Obama administration is pushing states to adopt tougher standards, and governors and education leaders across the country are working together to propose a uniform set of common standards. A first draft was released in March, and a final proposal could come this summer. For others, the problem points to the need to develop alternative forms of job training for people who aren’t academically inclined and are unlikely to finish college. “We’re telling kids you’ll be a third-class citizen if you don’t go to college,” said Marty Nemko, an education policy consultant and author. “And colleges are taking kids who in previous generations would not have gone to college.” Nemko favors an apprenticeship program similar to those offered in Finland , Japan and Germany. That’s a point that Daniel Paz, a student in Bowen’s class, says he can relate to. “College is not for me,” said Paz, who graduated from high school last year and is considering a career in criminal justice. “It’s something I have to do, but if there was another way, than I’d be doing something else.” Some students in remedial courses are older workers trying to jump-start a new career. But a sizable amount are recent graduates who performed well in high school: A 2008 study by the nonprofit Strong American Schools found that nearly four out of five remedial students had a high school GPA of 3.0 or higher. The price of providing remedial training is costly. The Alliance for Excellent Education estimates the nation loses $3.7 billion a year because students are not learning basic needed skills, including $1.4 billion to provide remedial education for students who have recently completed high school. “From taxpayers’ standpoint, remediation is paying for the same education twice,” Wise said. Students who need remedial classes are also more likely to drop out: Those taking any remedial reading, for example, had a 17% chance of completing a bachelor’s degree, according to 2004 Education Department data. At the recent annual American Association of Community Colleges conference, Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, called improving or reducing remediation the best way to improve completion rates at community colleges, which hover at around 25%. “Right away, your dreams of going to college are deferred, because technically you’re not in college,” she said. “If you start in a remedial class, the odds are that you will never finish a credit-bearing course in that subject.” She pointed to positive models: El Paso Community College, which gives prospective students placement tests while still in high school, and Mountain Empire Community College in Virginia, where there are new lesson plans and textbooks to move students through remedial education faster. The Gates Foundation is spending $100 million to develop new models for remedial education. Advocates say the need for reform is urgent, pointing to studies that show more jobs in the future will require more education, and that people with less education have been hit with higher levels of unemployment during the recession. Nemko doubts the notion that most workers will need a higher level degree. “In every corporation or government agency, there needs to be a small number of people coming out with the great new ideas,” he said. “But for everyone one of those, they need 20 to 50 worker bees who are there to provide the product.” At Broward College, there are signs of improvement: The percentage needing remedial education has dropped, from 85% of first-time college students to 74% in the 2009 incoming class. “I don’t remember learning any of this stuff in high school,” said CaSonya Fulmore, 40, who was laid off from her job as a customer service supervisor with American Express Co. last year. Fulmore is taking a preparatory math class and studying for a degree in social science, with hopes of becoming a counselor. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

By MARTIN MERZER The Associated Press TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — They showed up earlier, observed strength in numbers but shared a sense of futility, their legislative battle pretty much assuredly dropped even ahead of they awakened Monday. But many hundreds Florida

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