NEW YORK (AP) — The City University of New York and IBM will open a unique school that merges high school with two years of college, allowing students to earn an associate’s degree, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday in announcing a series of ambitious educational initiatives. Those students will be “first in line for a job at IBM,” Bloomberg said in his announcement. The mayor also renewed a proposal to do away with automatic teacher tenure and instead ensure it’s linked to classroom performance. He also said the city would work with the state to end “seat time” — requiring students to spend a certain number of hours in desks learning every subject — and would try to change a state law that requires schools to buy printed textbooks rather than use digital content. “That may be good for the business textbook industry but it’s really a bad deal for our students in this day and age,” Bloomberg said. The mayor also said the city will use a $36 million federal grant to enlist highly skilled teachers to work in low-performing schools and mentor fellow instructors. ” New York City is … laying the foundation to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start college or a career,” Bloomberg said. The mayor said the city wants to use a four-tier rating system to determine whether a teacher gets tenure, and said that beginning this year, only teachers rated “effective” or “highly effective” will be awarded lifetime job protection. Tenure would be awarded only if a teacher has made an impact on student achievement, he said. “Just as we are raising the bar for our students through higher standards, we must also raise the bar for our teaches and principals — and we are,” the mayor said. Bloomberg has proposed ending automatic teacher tenure in recent years. The state Legislature amended the law earlier this year to add student test scores and performance as criteria in evaluating teachers. Tenured teachers can be dismissed for incompetence or insubordination under the law but have due process rights. “If the mayor wants to change seniority he will need to talk to the Legislature,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers , the city teachers’ union. Mulgrew said that tenure decisions are arbitrary. “Most teachers would welcome an objective tenure-granting process based on agreed-upon standards,” he said. The partnership with IBM for a high school-college hybrid will build on work that the company is already doing in community colleges, said Stan Litow, vice president of corporate affairs for IBM. “We have every confidence that large numbers of those kids would be able to assume entry-level jobs at IBM and other IT companies,” Litow said. Earlier Monday, Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker said about $40 million has been raised so far to match the $100 million donation to the city’s school system from Facebook ‘s founder Mark Zuckerberg . Booker appeared in Manhattan with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Zuckerberg at NBC News’ “Education Nation” Summit. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Average national SAT scores for the high school class of 2010 fluctuated slightly by section compared with last year, but remained unchanged overall, a report says. Asian students continue to post the greatest average increases among racial and ethnic groups, and average scores for students from wealthy families were highest of all. The report also highlights a gap in average scores between students who completed a core academic curriculum, and who took honors or college-level coursework, and those who didn’t. “This report confirms that there are no tricks and there are no shortcuts to college readiness,” says Gaston Caperton , president of the non-profit College Board , which released the report today. “Students who take more rigorous courses in high school are more prepared to succeed in college and beyond.” Test takers averaged 1,509 points out of a possible 2,400 in three sections, the same as last year. Nearly 1.6 million 2010 high school graduates took the test, a record. The report says SAT performance remained “stable” this year even as a larger and increasingly diverse number of students took the test. Typically, average scores drop as more students, and a more diverse range of students, take the test. Since 2000, math scores have climbed 2 points while critical reading scores have declined 4 points. Over 20 years, critical reading scores have increased 1 point and math scores 15 points. But critics of standardized testing say aggregate scores of both the SAT and ACT over the last several years suggest that the federal No Child Left Behind law has failed to reform education. The law, which went into effect in the 2003-04 academic year, requires states that want to receive federal funding for schools to develop assessments in basic skills to be given to all students in certain grades. SAT scores released Monday show a steady decline in average reading scores since 2004, from 508 to 501, and a 2-point drop in that time in average math scores, from 518 to 516. Writing scores have dropped 5 points since that section was added in 2006. Average composite scores on the ACT college entrance exam have fluctuated between 20.9 and 21.2 (out of 36) since 2003-04; this year’s scores, released last month, averaged 21.0. At the same time, gaps in SAT and ACT scores by racial and ethnic groups are widening or, at best, remaining steady. Those data “contradict the claim that more high-stakes testing improves educational quality and equity,”says Robert Schaeffer, spokesman for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, a critic of standardized tests. “We keep adding more and more high-stakes tests (but) have left more children further behind.”

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

Average scores on the ACT college entrance exam inched downward this year, yet slightly more students who took the test proved to be prepared for college, according to a report released Wednesday. The findings sound contradictory. But the exam’s authors point to a growing and more diverse group of test-takers — many are likely scoring lower overall, but more are also meeting benchmarks used to measure college readiness. Last spring’s high-school seniors averaged a composite score of 21.0 on the test’s scale of 1 to 36, down slightly from 21.1 last year and the lowest score of the last five years. At the same time, 24% of ACT-tested students met or surpassed all four of the test’s benchmarks measuring their preparedness for college English, reading, math and science. That is up from 23% last year and 21% in 2006. Although that still shows three in four test-takers will likely need remedial help in at least one subject to succeed in college, ACT officials are encouraged to see improvement as ever-larger numbers of students take the exam. “It’s slow progress,” said Cynthia Schmeiser, president and chief operating officer of ACT’s education division. “We are headed in the right direction.” Schmeiser highlighted slight gains in math and science readiness, traditional weak spots for U.S. students. The number of students prepared for college-level biology, for example, has risen from 21% to 24% in five years. On the not-so-encouraging front, ACT-takers prepared for college English have dropped from 69% to 66% in that span. Still, English remains a strong suit for ACT test-takers compared to other subjects. To measure whether students are ready for college, the ACT sets minimum scores in a subject area test to indicate a 50% chance of getting a B or higher or about a 75 chance of getting a C or higher in a first-year college credit course. The courses include English composition, algebra, biology and introductory social science courses like Psychology 101. The ACT report found a combined total of 43% of test-takers met either none (28 percent) or only one (15 percent) of the four college readiness benchmarks. A record 1.57 million students, or 47% of this year’s high school graduates, took the ACT. That’s a 30% increase from five years ago. The SAT remains the most common college entrance exam, though the rival ACT has nearly caught up in popularity. Most colleges accept either, and a growing minority no longer requires either one. SAT results are due out Sept. 13. The ACT is growing as more states require it for all high school seniors, meaning test-takers are not just the college-bound. Schmeiser noted that the ACT’s test-taking population “now includes virtually all students in eight states, many of whom might not have considered taking a college and career readiness assessment years ago.” The ACT says another three states — Arkansas, Texas and Utah — either have been or soon will make state-financed ACTs available to all districts. One result: a more diverse pool. Ethnic and racial minorities this year made up 29% of all ACT test-takers, up from 23% in 2006. Most significant was a near doubling of Hispanic graduates tested, to almost 158,000 students. The average composite scores for Hispanics dipped slightly to 18.6 this year after holding steady at 18.7 the previous three years. Because some states mandate ACTS but others don’t, state-to-state score comparisons can be misleading. States requiring all students to take the ACT typically see average scores go down, at least initially. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

ATLANTA (AP) — States are cutting hundreds of millions from their prekindergarten budgets, undermining years of working to help young children — particularly poor kids — get ready for school. States are slashing nearly $350 million from their pre-K programs by next year and more cuts are likely on the horizon once federal stimulus money dries up, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University. The reductions mean fewer slots for children, teacher layoffs and even fewer services for needy families who can’t afford high-quality private preschool programs. HEAD START: Some workers commit fraud so kids qualify RECESSION: Fuels shift from private to public schools One state — Arizona — has proposed eliminating its 5,500-child program entirely. Illinois cut $32 million from last fiscal year’s pre-k budget and plans to slash another $48 million this year. “The overall impact is less access to a quality education in the early years at a time when parents have reduced capability to purchase that on their own,” said Steve Barnett, co-director of the Rutgers institute. “Families are getting hit from both sides.” Wealthier parents can afford to send their kids to private preschools, but children from poorer families will likely languish in lower-quality childcare that doesn’t prepare them for kindergarten, experts said. On a recent morning at Walden Early Childhood Center in Atlanta, a pre-K class worked on shape and color identification by making flowers out of glue and construction paper. Afterward, the 4-year-olds broke into stations where they put on puppet shows, read books by themselves and played at a basin filled with water and toys. “It is important to really give kids that foundation before they go to school,” said Michael Morrier, project director for the center’s grant with the state. “It really closes the gap between the middle class kids and the lower-income kids.” Thirty-eight states had pre-k programs serving more than 1.2 million 3- and 4-year-olds as of last year, the latest data available. Barnett said just four states had made cuts by last year, but that number jumped to 14 this year and likely will be another 14 next year. The cuts come at a time when the demand for quality prekindergarten is at an all-time high as states struggle to improve test scores in early grades and give more students a better chance of getting a high school diploma. In Washington state, for example, lawmakers passed a bill that would expand the state’s pre-k program for needy children from 8,000 to more than 45,000 by 2018. At the same time, the legislature cut $1.6 million from the program last fiscal year and $10.4 million this year. Arizona voters will decide in November whether to eliminate the state’s fledgling First Things First prekindergarten program — created by voters in 2006 and paid for with tobacco tax money — and use the money to balance the state’s bleeding budget. Ohio cut its $23 million program to $11 million last fiscal year, which ended June 30, meaning 12,000 poor children no longer had access to prekindergarten. Massachusetts cut $9 million last fiscal year, and New York cut more than $36 million. For Georgia’s program — among the largest in the country — a $9 million budget cut this year meant eliminating half of the 500 workers who help the poorest families navigate speech therapy, kindergarten applications and dental appointments so that the number of classrooms could grow from 82,000 to 84,000 children. Marci Young, director of the Pew Center on the States’ Pre-K Now program, said prekindergarten is the key to helping the Obama administration achieve one of its main goals — improving persistently failing schools. “When you’re thinking about turning around low performing schools or making sure you’re helping close the achievement gap … you’ve got to start in the early years,” said Young. She pointed to studies that show states see a $7 return for every $1 they invest in early education because children who attend prekindergarten are more likely to not need remedial education, to graduate from high school, to go to college and to have higher-paying jobs that produce more taxes. The key, said Jacqueline Jones with the U.S. Department of Education ‘s early learning office, is making states believe that pre-k is part of the education package rather than something they do only during flush times. “If you see preschool as a warm and fuzzy thing you do for children or as baby-sitting, then it’s easy to cut,” she said. “But if we can meet the educational needs before kindergarten, we can save a tremendous amount of money in special education and remediation.” Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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.

Cam Holmes graduated from Tulsa Community College on Friday – and she says that, but for a program created three years ago, she never would have done so. In 2007, the year she graduated from high school, Tulsa Community College created Tulsa Achieves , which waives tuition for many local residents. That year, Holmes was among 1,357 first-time freshmen from local high schools who participated. Overall, first-time freshmen enrollment at the college rose by nearly 400 students from the year prior. College officials attribute this steep enrollment growth to the program, arguing that it has attracted many students to the college who otherwise would not have considered it an option for them. TUITION-FREE: Military, engineering, specialty colleges stand ground against costs BEST VALUE COLLEGES: Top 100 for 2010 “I didn’t know where I wanted to go to college or even if I could have gone to college,” said Holmes, 21. “My G.P.A. wasn’t that high, and I just didn’t apply myself in the way that I do now.” Holmes credits Tulsa Achieves with giving her direction – she plans to transfer to Oklahoma State University in the fall, and to major in broadcast journalism – as well as the finances to afford her first two years of college. She already qualified for Pell Grants, but Tulsa Achieves took care of the remainder of her costs. She said that the program has changed some of her neighbors’ mindsets about attending college. “Some of them feel a different attitude about college and importance of it,” Holmes said. “I know I’ve talked to some people who are new to the program, and they kind of had the same situation I had – people came out of high school not knowing what they want to do.” At a time when community colleges are being urged to attract and to graduate more students, Tulsa Achieves suggests that price matters — even with relatively low-cost institutions. But it also shows that community colleges may be able to waive tuition for many students without breaking the bank. Through a mixture of financial aid, private donations and state support, college officials say they have found a way to make up for the tuition these students would have paid, all while providing access for hundreds more students, boosting retention rates and further diversifying their campus. While tuition at the college – about $1,100 for a full-time semester of four courses – is relatively low, the effort suggests not only that there may be a critical mass of students for whom any tuition may be a hindrance but also that these students can succeed. ON THE WEB: Honors programs booming at 2-year colleges INSIDE HIGHER ED: Community colleges offer classes in ‘graveyard shift’ The college is the largest two-year institution in Oklahoma, serving about 27,000 students per semester. After state and federal financial aid is applied, the “gap-funding program” pays any remaining tuition balance for up to 63 credit hours for eligible students. Only Tulsa residents who graduate from a public or private high school or home school with a 2.0 grade point average qualify. To maintain Tulsa Achieves funding, students must retain county residency, take an orientation class within their first year, complete 40 hours of volunteer service each academic year and stay in “good academic standing.” They must earn at least a 1.7 GPA when they have 30 credit hours or less and at least a 2.0 GPA when they have 31 credit hours or more. Furthermore, they must complete at least three credit hours each semester and complete at least 70% of all of their attempted coursework. The requirements reflect a number of the hot ideas in the discussion about community colleges’ “completion agenda”: that many students need to be taught to study, that efforts to connect students to the college in multiple ways are key to retention, and that avoiding missed semesters is key. Localized programs that help high school students cover the cost of college tuition, like Tulsa Achieves, are not new. For example, Kalamazoo Promise , a program in Michigan that is funded by a small group of anonymous donors, has helped more than 1,100 of the city’s public school graduates pay their tuition at any institution in the state since it began in 2005. Despite the success of such privately funded ventures, it is often hard for public entities such as local governments or colleges to establish and maintain similar tuition-waiver programs. Voters in Davenport, Iowa, for instance, rejected a program last year that would have given each of the city’s high school graduates a lump sum of $20,000 for use at any college or university of their choosing. Tulsa Community College officials said, however, that they have found such an effort affordable. To help maximize federal and state aid awards before institutional funds are used to pay for tuition, Tulsa Achieves students are required to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Aside from this aid, the cost of Tulsa Achieves is kept down by students who qualify for Oklahoma’s Promise , a statewide program that waives public college tuition for those who come from families that earn less than $50,000 a year. The effort led to an immediate gain in Pell Grant funds, which increased by 50% in the program’s first year, to $450,000 — as more students enrolled and more applied for aid. Overall, the college is only paying full tuition for about 37% of those who enroll through the program. “The projections were on target,” said Tom McKeon, college president. “One of the primary reasons we’ve been able to do this is we’re one of only three community colleges in Oklahoma that receive local money. … And our tax base is large; we have 14 independent school districts. Local funding makes up a third of our operating budget. … That gave us a lot of flexibility. We feel we’re giving back to a county that’s been supporting us for 35 years.” This year, McKeon noted, Tulsa Achieves cost the college $4.6 million, less than 6% of its operational budget. He said that this is “considerably less” than other community colleges in his state offer in scholarships. The local community has embraced Tulsa Achieves to such a degree, McKeon noted, that local residents and business owners have helped the college raise nearly $1.2 million for a “textbook trust.” In this way, deserving students can also have their textbooks paid for without having to dip any further into institutional funds. McKeon believes the college’s financial planning for the program will keep it around for a long time. “We’re committed to our promise,” McKeon said. “It’s not created a financial hardship for our institution, even in the midst of this recession; we’ve had to cut our budgets just like everyone else. But we’re seeing improvement out there; house prices are steady and unemployment is going down.” Matt Short, college financial aid director, sees other benefits. For example, he noted that the college’s annual loan volume decreased by nearly 1,000 loans when it launched Tulsa Achieves and that “is almost certainly correlated very closely to the 1,300 odd freshmen that did not have loans packaged on their awards that year for the first time.” Lauren Brookey, college spokeswoman, noted that, since the program started, its 4,342 participating students have completed more than 92,000 hours in community service. She added that the Tulsa Achieves has also helped the college reach out to minority and other “underserved” students. “We call this the ‘no excuses scholarship,’ ” Brookey said. “It helps spread the word and get more people to go to college. The simplicity of the program, we think, makes it easy for us to tell students that they have no reason not to go to college.” Tracey Medina, for example, is the first in her family to go to college, and she credits Tulsa Achieves with getting her there. “My parents told me that they would help me as much as they could, but they didn’t think it was going to be possible to pay for college,” the 19-year-old said. “Now that I’m here, they are very proud of me because I’m a first-generation college student and I’m helping other students enroll at the school. The rest of my family, especially my nieces and nephews, really look up to me now and always ask me all about college.” Tulsa Achieves has already influenced the creation of another program in Knoxville, Tennessee called knoxAchieves , which will give 500 Knox County public high school graduates up to $3,000 annually for community college tuition. McKeon also said that he has heard from some elected officials in his state of Oklahoma, who have ambitions of creating a statewide program.