Archive for education
Zero Tolerance
Posted by: | CommentsMaybe you’ve seen the billboards, or read it in the newspaper. (Does anyone read newspapers anymore?)
By billboard, you’ll notice it by the three big, fat zeroes under the words Tuition, Room, and Board.
Eastern Michigan University, my haunts circa 1981-85, is doing something no Michigan university has done in some 25 years.
It’s holding its rates of tuition, room and board flat for the 2010-11 school year, from the current year.
They’re calling it the “Big, Fat Zero” campaign.
This after one of the smallest rate hikes in the state last year—just 3.82 percent.
“We recognize how desirable an affordable, quality college education is,” EMU President Sue Martin said. “I applaud the Board of Regents for taking this necessary risk.”
The “risk,” of course, is financial on EMU’s part. A zero percent increase means you can’t count on additional dollars in the budgeting process.
Not unless you increase enrollment.
See how that works?
What’s “Big, Fat Zero”? EMU students and staff “spell it out” for you
President Martin’s university is banking that a zero percent increase across the board, combined with a tiny increase last year, will make EMU more attractive to not only incoming freshmen, but current students as well, so that they’ll continue their education at Eastern.
As it stands now, an in-state student taking 30 credit hours for the school year will pay roughly $8,300 for tuition, room and board. That’s not too bad these days.
EMU is also making news with an aggressive fundraising campaign—no doubt encouraged by their “Big Fat Zero” initiative—that aims to raise $50 million.
It’s called “Invest, Inspire,” and here’s how they’re describing it on the university’s website:
EMU is seeking $50 million in philanthropic support from alumni and friends, businesses and foundations, parents and employees. This support will allow EMU to sustain its current excellence while also adding new resources, key capital projects and programs, through its endowment. In other words: In the face of shrinking resources and state funding, this support will endow EMU’s future.
So how does Eastern propose to raise $50 million?
Answer: they don’t have to—they’ve already raised over $34 million.
You heard me.
If you go to the campaign’s page on the EMU website, you’ll see an odometer-looking thing. The university is less than $16 million away from its goal.
And they just kicked off the campaign about a month ago—on April 19, 2010.
All this, of course, makes an old EMU alum like me pretty proud.
Now, about that football program…
Zero, you see, was also the EMU win total in football last year.
A Hard (School) Day’s Night
Posted by: | CommentsI’m willing to meet Mike Feinberg halfway, but I’m not so sure the feeling would be mutual.
Feinberg is co-founder of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), as well as being the superintendent of KIPP Houston. KIPP is a network of 82 high-performing public charter schools serving 21,000 children in 19 states.
Feinberg’s program is rooted in the premise that the school day is too short. And the school year, too.
But Feinberg takes it to another level. His KIPP schools’ classes run from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and the kids attend school two Saturdays a month, and they have three weeks of mandatory summer school.
Feinberg has a gob of stats that say his extended school days and years are the best thing since sliced bread. You can read that laundry list in his editorial for CNN.com.
I’m a parent, so I’m concerned about my child’s education as well. But I have different concerns than Feinberg, I think.
You see, I’m also a former child, as I’m pretty sure Feinberg is. But he seems to forget that kids need time to be, well, kids.
So here’s where I’m willing to meet Feinberg halfway.
I’d be open to consider the notion of longer school days—just consider it, mind you—if Feinberg and others who espouse it are willing to address my notion of, “Will it cut down on homework?”
If not, then it’s off the table, as far as I’m concerned.
Mike Feinberg
A longer school day should also mean more time to complete assignments—in class. That is, if Feinberg would argue that the massive amounts of homework are a bi-product of too-short days.
And what of after school activities? Where’s the time for those? And who wants to hang out after school after being there for nine-and-a-half hours and two Saturdays a month?
I have a full-time job with a nice salary and benefits and I’m not in the office as long as Feinberg’s kids attend school each day; they have me beat by an hour a day.
Do we want our kids in school longer than most moms and dads spend time at work?
“Take away time, take away learning,” Feinberg writes. “…there is no substitute for the hours a student spends with an effective and inspiring teacher,” he adds.
Ahh, those disclaiming words: “effective” and “inspiring.”
Not every teacher is those things, and Feinberg ought to know that.
I’m not trying to change Feinberg’s mind; I’m sure his success stories are genuine. I’m just not sold that we have to push our kids as far as he’d like us to.
“Students actually look forward to their weekend KIPP days, when they get extra academic help and participate in activities such as cooking, knitting, soccer or African drumming,” Feinberg argues.
Every student, Mike? Or just some?
He closes with references to China, and cites the Chinese’s longer school days/year.
“This means that American children may eventually compete with Chinese kids who have had thousands of more hours of learning time.”
I admit, it’s food for thought. But 7:30-5:00 is simply too damn long. It’s not necessary.
You can only be a kid once. Sadly.
No Day Like a Snow Day
Posted by: | CommentsAs a child/youngster/youth, if there was anything better than finding out school was canceled, then it was most likely something you’ll never own up to publicly.
There might be a “snow day” on Wednesday—and not just for the kids. Some of the big people might get the day off, too.
It’s nothing like what’s been going on along the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard, which has been pelted relentlessly since late last week, but the folks who should know are calling for anywhere between six and ten inches of the white stuff to cover us between Tuesday and Wednesday.
You remember the moment, I’m sure—the precise moment when you heard that school was called off for that day.
It was early, early morning—likely before 7:30—and you begrudgingly got ready for school despite the blizzardy conditions outside. Grumbling, you pulled on your clothes and trudged with a snarl to the kitchen for breakfast. Or, you were still in bed, stubbornly refusing to even consider going to school in such weather.
Then, the moment.
Maybe it came from mom, or a brother, or a sister. Or from the television, or the radio.
I recall watching anxiously as the news people flashed the names of the school districts who were cashiering the day’s learning thanks to the dicey roads.
Then I’d see it: Livonia Public Schools.
I tell you, there was nothing more exhilirating.
The tempting thing was to go back to bed, except that you were so jacked, so pumped, sleep was impossible. Sometimes mom and dad had to go to work anyway, leaving you behind. Being an only child, I got the house to myself because mom usually had to traipse to work.
The hardest decision was determining what to do, with an entire day ahead of you. TV, of course, was on the docket. Eating, too. But there was no Internet back then—we’re talking the 1970s, folks.
A snow day was something to be treasured, because normally there wasn’t more than one or two a year. The day itself was grand, but nothing could top the moment when you got the news.
You all know what I mean.
Pupil Haze
Posted by: | CommentsThe day after Labor Day. Time for those three little words.
Back to school.
Three words that inspire either angst or elation—or retail dollar signs, depending on your perspective.
Back to school.
Another school year has officially begun—some districts began before Labor Day—and with it comes nine more months of the unknown.
For the parents of a 16-year-old girl—that would include my wife and me—the next nine months are likely to be a roller coaster ride.
Driver’s ed somewhere out on the horizon. Boys. Teachers. Catty girls. Homework up the ying-yang (and if you’ve ever had homework up the ying-yang, you know how painful that can be).
Back to school.
The alarm clock gets set again for 6:00 a.m. Another nine months of trying to get the kids to eat breakfast—you’ll even settle for cold pizza from the fridge if that’s the ticket. Our daughter’s stomach doesn’t open for business in the wee hours, so we’re thinking about buying her an IV. (Just kidding, honey—probably).
Back to school.
The nest empties for seven hours a day now, almost a full work day. Better have some vittles ready at 2:30, because the kids come home starved!
About the homework. Mom and dad are steeling ourselves in our house, bracing for the onslaught. Kid girl gets the worst of it, of course, but us parents are hardly spared. There’s just so much of it, and the children need help just to keep up with the volume.
Back to school for my wife and me, too.
I’m glad that I already have my degree, because in this second go-round of high school academics, old dad isn’t faring too well.
I’ve been looked at cross-eyed more than once by our daughter when she comes home from school with news of a poor grade on a math assignment I helped her with. And I get the math homework because I’m supposedly good at math.
Yeah, sure—math that they taught circa the 1970s. And math that was actually taught in high school. The stuff they’re doling out new is best served on a campus in Cambridge, Mass.
I feel dumber and dumber every year that our daughter advances through the school system, climbing that ladder toward graduation. I think by her senior year she’ll be smarter than me.
Already I think she would tell you it’s pretty close.
Back to school.
The opposite of the Alice Cooper anthem.
Nine more months of teachers’ (and my daughter’s) dirty looks.
Maybe I’ll take some night school, to keep up.