The New Hampshire Superior Court ruled this week that the state’s new education tax credit program is unconstitutional, writes John DiStaso in the New Hampshire Union Leader.

In an opinion that ruled for the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the organizations that filed the lawsuits, Judge John M. Lewis said that the state constitution expressly forbids any government funding for religious education — even if it is in the form of tax credits for donations to scholarship organizations.

The law attracted a legal challenge almost as soon as it was passed by New Hampshire’s Republican legislature last year. The bill won enough support to overcome the veto of John Lynch, New Hampshire’s former Democratic governor.

His successor Maggie Hassan, also a Democrat, expressed support for the ruling, calling it a victory for public education.

During an April hearing, Alex Luchenitser, associate legal director of Americans United For Separation of Church and State, argued, “This program uses the tax system to deliver funding for the program. If there was no business profits tax, this program could not exist. The only way we can run this program is if a business owes the tax and chooses to divert some of the tax to this program.”

Richard Head of the Attorney General’s Office countered that because the tax is retained by the business and never paid to the state, it should not be considered public money.

In a statement praising the outcome, Hassan said that the tax credit program would divert millions of dollars in public education funding to institutions that would use it for religious teachings. She called it a “wrong policy” that violated New Hampshire’s commitment to the separation of church and state.

Rep. Bill O’Brien, R-Mont Vernon, championed the bill as House Speaker last year. Also an attorney, he represents seven former and current legislators who sponsored the bill and filed a brief supporting it.

O’Brien said the ruling “does not address why it is permissible for the state to allow tax breaks for religious organizations through college scholarships, but it is not permissible when it’s a tax credit of this nature.”

The program allows up to $3.4 million in tax credits to be claimed in its first year and up to $5.1 million in the second. It provides for additional increases in tax credits for subsequent years.

The argument that the decision to donate to the organizations was solely in the hands of the companies involved didn’t convince Judge Lewis that tax credits did not constitute public money. Proponents of the tax credit program are expected to appeal the decision.

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Tutoring programs offering additional out-of-school instruction to students are drawing a growing number of clients in the US as parents continue to be concerned about the quality of their children’s schools. The Denver Post reports that the number of franchises of companies like the Sylvan Learning Center, KidzArt and others is on the rise due to the $5-$7 billion spent annually on supplemental instruction nationwide.

The Education Industry Association, which published the findings, attributes the growth to increased competition for college admissions and merit scholarship dollars. With college tuition growing faster than inflation, many families likely consider investment in tutoring today to be more than offset by lower tuition bills down the road.

With the fees ranging between $25 and $75 per hour for tutoring sessions, the typical clients tend to be middle- and upper-class families with discretionary income. According to the owner of a Denver-area Sylvan Learning Center, targeting that demographic has helped her business ride out the recession.

“Even through a tough economy, the need is still there,” she said. “I think there would have been a greater decline if the schools weren’t having to make the cutbacks they had to make.”

Area some schools have had to cut back in are art and music. Through partnerships with the school, franchises such as KidzArt and School of Rock have been able to grow.

“We like to spend more time delving into concepts and challenging the kids than schools can,” said Amy Klein, owner of the Denver KidzArt that teaches mostly elementary-age kids art in recreation centers, classrooms and after school-programs.

As Tim Reece, the assistant general manager of Aurora’s School of Rock explained to the Post’s Adrian D. Garcia, tutoring companies are filling a need and offering services that parents feel schools are no longer able to provide. In additional to academic assistance, the companies also offer enrichment activities that public schools have had to sacrifice to meet tighter budget constraints.

The outlook for the private tutoring sector is positive, and the industry’s growth potential could be even greater if they formed tighter relationships with local school districts.

The Sylvan Learning Center’s vice president of franchise development, Scott Hurlock, expects the industry to continue to grow and emphasizes the need for strong partnerships between schools and education-supplement companies.

“When it becomes more apparent to the school systems that it’s OK to reach the alternative solution, this industry will explode exponentially,” Hurlock said.

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Microsoft is looking to take a bite out of Apple’s controlling share of the education technology market by offering schools a tempting discount on its Windows RT line of tablets, John Paczkowski of AllThingsD reports. What started as a giveaway of 10,000 tablets has now expanded to a sustained plan to offer the company’s digital Surface devices, which run the Windows RT mobile operating system and pack 32GB of memory, for $199.

That represents a 50% discount over the retail price and the sale will run until August 31st.

The discount will also apply to other models, with the $599 Surface with an attached Touch Cover soft keyboard selling for $249 and the more rugged Type Cover, typically selling for $629 will be available for sale to K-12 schools, colleges and universities for just $289.

The particular attraction of the offer lies in the fact that Microsoft is not attaching a minimum purchase requirement to the sale — a nod to school districts all over the country that are working with tighter technology budgets. The price is available to schools not just in America but worldwide.

According to Microsoft, the rationale for the discount is its “long tradition of offering special pricing to education customers,” and a “mission in education … to help schools, students and educators realize their full potential.”

But more practically it’s an easy way to juice sales and whittle down inventory of a tablet that has been slow to gain traction in the consumer market. According to research firm IDC, Microsoft shipped about 900,000 Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets in the first quarter of this year.

Getting the tablet into more hands could also help the company down the road especially as it continues to compete in the sector long-dominated by Apple. Sources claim that production numbers were easily triple this amount, which could leave Microsoft with plenty of unsold stock to offer at more attractive pricing.

If Microsoft’s new education promotion works as intended, we’ll see more Surface units in the wild. And that’s important. Because it’s hard to accept Surface as an alternative to the iPad or Galaxy Tab if you don’t see other people using it. Microsoft’s new Surface ads poking fun at Siri and the iPad are great. But they’re sticks and rags in a world in which you board a flight from San Francisco to New York and there are dozens of passengers with their faces obscured by iPads and Kindles, and nary a Surface in site.

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Even after Hong Kong reverted from British to Chinese control in 1999, in many ways it retained its independence as Chinese authorities seemed reluctant to tinker with the formula driving the territory’s economic success. However, recent moves by the mainland government have signaled that Chinese authorities are much less willing to tolerate the region’s openness going forward, which could diminish Hong Kong’s attractiveness to foreigners, Philip Browning explains at AsiaSentinel.

The recent decision to cut off funding for the English Schools Foundation is one indication of China’s shifting policy. The ESF provided subsidized education to English speakers residing in Hong Kong and was at one time provided with a similar level of funding to independently-run local schools. However, while other education organizations saw their subsidies grow in line with inflation, ESF received less in real funds until the the government cut it off completely.

While the subsidy paid to independent Chinese schools has remained stable in real terms, that for the ESF has been gradually reduced and is now to be abolished. The grounds for this is that the ESF, following a curriculum different from that of local schools, is somehow a colonial relic of no relevance to Hong Kong today.

But this hides two prejudices ingrained in an upper-level, highly paid bureaucracy which itself is rich enough to send its children to any schools it wants. One is simply racial. The attack on the ESF is primarily aimed at those (mostly Asian) residents for whom English, not Chinese, is a first or second language.

The English-language learning environment wasn’t only serving foreign families. Local residents also frequently took advantage of schools run by ESF because they were less steeped in Communist party propaganda. Although the government recently walked back the requirement that learning party philosophy be made mandatory in Hong Kong schools, the pressure on local education institutions to get in step with their mainland counterparts in that regard has been increasingly felt.

None of this will make much difference to the rich, or foreign bankers with generous education allowances, who either or already send their children to very expensive international schools or to ones overseas. But the huge hikes in ESF fees will be a major blow to middle-class people local and foreign, a real deterrent to foreigners setting up small business in Hong Kong, or large businesses which like to have international staffs to run regional or global businesses.

As it is, ESF schools are overrun with applications, a sad commentary on the education on offer from local schools. Indeed, such is the demand for non-local education that most all the expensive international schools – or at least those without a nationality qualification – have a surfeit of applicants.

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Scott Waldman of Albany’s TimesUnion.com reports that one year of more rigorous academic standards has yet to produce marked improvements in academic outcomes for New York State’s students. According to new data, the high school graduation rates in the state remained steady at 74%, and there were persistent disparities in achievement between students of different income levels and racial groups.

In a statement to coincide with the annual release of academic statistics, Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch bemoaned the fact that there remain a high number of low-income, minority students in the state who leave high school without graduating, reducing their future economic options substantially. This is reflected by the wide disparity in graduation rates between school districts with a high proportion of “in need” students where 65% of high schoolers earn a diploma compared to districts with wealthier student population in which nearly 95% of high school students graduate.

The Albany school district’s graduation rate of 49.2 percent was among the worst in the Capital Region.

Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard, who started her job last fall after these results were compiled, said the rates don’t reflect the expectations of the community or the district. She said she was hired to change the graduation rate and is working to do that beginning in the elementary grades.

“If I fully prepare them for the next grade level, I expect graduation rates to improve,” she said.

The data included students who enrolled in high school four years ago and graduated this spring, excluding those who might have taken longer to earn a diploma or left school and subsequently earned a GED. When longer completion times were taken into account, the graduation rate showed a small increase in some districts.

In prior years districts could grant a diploma to students who failed to pass the required Regents exams. The “local diploma” was phased out this year and now students are required to pass five exams with at least 65% to graduate.

In her prepared remarks, Tisch took a swipe at the teachers union and others who have criticized the state’s increasing reliance on standardized exams and other methods it believes will measure student learning.

“Despite all the naysayers, raising standards was the right thing to do,” Tisch said. “Our teachers and students rose to the challenge. Now it’s time to rise to the next challenge.”

Some of the worst completion rates were in large urban districts like New York City, Syracuse and Buffalo. According to Education Commissioner John King, in some cities fewer than 10% of students felt they were college-ready upon leaving high school.

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To emphasize the focus of its new campaign, the United Negro College Fund has somewhat altered its famous tagline. The mind is no longer just a terrible thing to waste, it is also a wonderful thing to invest in. The public service ads advertising the new slogan are coming along to bring attention to the new campaign to increase investment in college education of young African-Americans, reports Diverse Issues in Higher Education.

The campaign – which was created by Y&R in partnership with the Ad Council – was announced by UNCF President Dr. Michael Lomax. The room was packed with education luminaries including U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Chancellor of D.C. Public Schools Kaya Henderson and former UNCF executive director Vernon Jordan.

To promote its message, UNCF will air 5 new 30-second PSAs that will star real students from around the country recounting their experience and calling for others to commit to UNCF’s mission.

Another video, for example, showed a student named David, who grew up in the housing projects of Cleveland.

“Education for me has been a way to get away from the idea of what was a normal life,” he said. “I want to be able to impact the community. Not just look back on where I came from, but to reach back to where I came from and pull some people up with me. My name is David, and I am your dividend.”

Lomax explained the PSAs were designed with the intention to not only raise money, but to inspire other children to go to and through college.

“Our young people need not only financial support and rigorous academics, they need us to foster a college-going culture …,” Lomax said.

Although the past decade has seen progress on African-American high school graduation and college enrollment rates, according to Duncan, there is much left to do. Raising college enrollment rates will involve breaking down financial and other socioeconomic barriers, he noted, and a failure to do so will result in the country losing out on a generation of leaders, thinkers and job creators who would all have played a role in America’s economic future.

According to Lomax, UNCF’s investment in African-American education after nearly 70 years has totaled more than $100 million a year in scholarships for more than 10,000 students at more than 900 colleges across the country. He added that UNCF African American scholarship student recipients have a 70 percent six-year graduation rate, 13 points higher than the national average for all students and 32 points higher than the national average for all African-Americans.

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The last 12 months have not been kind to K12, Inc., the nation’s most widely-recognized virtual school provider. A rash of scandals in Florida and elsewhere however have put a damper on the company’s future, as demonstrated by a recent decision by the Colorado Virtual Academy’s school board to forgo using the company’s school management services beginning with in 2014-15 academic year.

Board members are looking for a new approach as COVA struggles to come to grips with a number of issues including an appallingly low graduation rate. The school graduated fewer than a quarter of its students during the 2011-12 academic year.

Although K12 will no longer run the day-to-day operations at COVA, the school might continue to use the company’s curriculum and lesson plans. COVA school board president Brian Bissell confirmed the decision earlier this week.

Colorado Virtual Academy was one of the first online schools managed by K12 Inc. On Wednesday they will seek approval for a new multidistrict online school named College Prep Online Academy. According to a May 22 letter from Colorado Department of Education officials, the school would have a projected enrollment of 2,500, making it one of Colorado’s larger online schools.

Bissell says he has concerns about K12’s new school based on his experiences working with them. For example, Bissell said there was a “trove” of data that showed a steady decline in both parent and teacher satisfaction with COVA, but says that the board did not see the surveys until September 2012.

Bissell, who is a K12 shareholder and has three children enrolled in the school, expressed concerns that the proposed school would be too much like COVA and therefore would not bring any additional benefits to the state.

Meanwhile, COVA is undertaking a number of major changes in the fall including appointing a new senior executive who reports directly to the board members and allowing board members more control over the school marketing campaign.

Colorado Virtual Academy was one of the first online schools managed by K12 Inc. On Wednesday they will seek approval for a new multidistrict online school named College Prep Online Academy. According to a May 22 letter from Colorado Department of Education officials, the school would have a projected enrollment of 2,500, making it one of Colorado’s larger online schools.

Bissell says he has concerns about K12’s new school based on his experiences working with them. For example, Bissell said there was a “trove” of data that showed a steady decline in both parent and teacher satisfaction with COVA, but says that the board did not see the surveys until September 2012.

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This week the superintendent of the Verona school district in Wisconsin pledged to automatically notify parents via texts or emails about any emergency situation going on in or around their children’s schools. The pledge was in response to an FBI manhunt on May 2nd that locked down the local schools but left parents in the dark about what was going on.

WisconsinWatch.org hopes that Verona is the just the first of many. While school districts around the state use a number of methods to provide real-time information to parents, from email to phone calls, almost none take advantage of the most straight-forward and simplest way of all: text messaging. Parents can sign up for an emergency text alert system that will signal them when something’s amiss in their area, but of the ten largest school districts in the state, none enroll the parents automatically.

Relying on parents to discover and sign up for the system has been a challenge. In Milwaukee, where more than 78,000 students attend school, only 4,300 cell phones are signed up for the emergency text message alert system.

With parents increasingly plugged in with smartphones and laptops, schools are under pressure to use new technology to stay in touch with parents.

When something bad happens at school, news travels fast. Cell phone pictures, texts and tweets emanate from the site and find their way to parents.

“With students and parents texting, information and misinformation gets out very rapidly,” said Ken Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a Cleveland-based consulting firm. “Rumors that used to take hours and days to get out take seconds and minutes.”

Trump says that keeping parents in the loop would help emergency services as well by keeping phone lines, roads and parking lots free of panicked parents. The technology is there, Trump explains, and the schools need to learn to exploit it without delay.

Some districts are already taking steps to improve communications. Linnane reports that the Racine Unified School District recently included area-wide text messaging capabilities to its emergency notification system.

The reason behind the change? According to the district spokesperson Stacy Tapp, text messaging makes it much simpler to reach parents and guardians quicker in an emergency.

Besides texts, many school districts also use recorded voice calls, emails, website postings and social media to get out messages. Experts say the key is redundancy — the more channels, the more likely someone will get the message.

“If you want to get an emergency message out, you better use all available means,” said Ellen Miller, a former television journalist who now works as a consultant with National School Safety and Security Services.

“Parents hate hearing something from the media that their own school failed to tell them about,” Miller said.

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School choice is a growing movement in Wisconsin as parents increasingly take advantage of opportunities offered by the raft of recently passed laws that provide better education options for kids. In Oshkosh alone, 180 students left their local public school to either enroll in a school outside their district or take classes through one of the two virtual public charters operating in the state.

In total, more than 44,000 Wisconsin students took advantage of the state’s choice program that allows students to enroll in a public school outside their assigned home district. To school choice advocates, the numbers prove that parents have long been starved for options when it comes to choosing the best educational setting for their kids — and they’re embracing the opportunity to choose a school that fits best for their child.

But public school teachers and administrators are doing all they can to stop the choice movement from going in that direction. They say it crosses a line by mixing public dollars with private and for-profit education.

A measure in the proposed state biennial budget to expand private school vouchers, which currently only exist in the Milwaukee and Racine areas, has become one of the most controversial pieces of the bill. It would allow up to 500 lower-income students from anywhere in the state to receive tax dollars to help pay for private school tuition.

The concerns of anti-choice advocates are not new. Many fear and argue that public schools will degrade in quality if their funding is allowed to be siphoned off to other institutions via vouchers and tax breaks. In Oshkosh, members of the school board are already sounding an alarm by approving an emergency resolution in opposition to the voucher program expansion.

Yet stopping school choice in its track – especially in Wisconsin – would be like trying to get the horse back in the barn. Jim Bender, president of School Choice Wisconsin, explained that the state has been moving in this direction since it approved open enrollment policies for its public schools in 1998.

The number of families taking advantage of the program has been steadily rising every year since then.

Voucher opponents say the growing use of open enrollment doesn’t necessarily mean there’s demand for public funding to attend private schools.

State Rep. Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh, said he has heard from more constituents opposed to private school vouchers than from people who support them.

“There are talks going on all over the country and world on the future of public education regarding innovation, reform, the role of technology, teacher accountability. But, no one is talking about vouchers,” he said. “What Wisconsin is doing is an ideological experiment not grounded in research or evidence. It’s grounded in politics.”

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According to data collected from Ohio’s new value-added teacher ratings, there appears to be little correlation between how much value an instructor brings to each student and how much that instructor is paid. The Cleveland Plain Dealer came to this conclusion after running an analysis jointly with StateImpact Ohio.

If anything, the data showed that teachers with low value-added scores were actually paid better on average than their peers with the highest grades. For example, teachers in Cleveland schools who had been found ineffective were paid about $3,000 per year more than those who had been found to be most effective. The same was true in over 100 school districts across Ohio.

In some ways, these results are no surprise: The way Ohio schools determine teachers’ salaries has nothing to do with how well they teach. It has everything to do with how long they’ve been teaching and whether they have a master’s degree.

But the StateImpact/Plain Dealer analysis quantifies the relationship between value-added and Ohio teachers’ pay. It also shows that older teachers in Ohio are paid significantly more than their younger colleagues but did not outperform them in the 2011-12 school year on value-added.

This inverse relationship between pay and teaching performance has been found in other studies from states such as Florida and New York that have experimented with similar value-added teacher assessment formulas. The University of Washington’s Dan Goldhaber says that beyond the first few years, there’s “just not much of a relationship.”

The StateImpact/Plain Dealer analysis is based on the new assessment scheme that uses standardized test scores to determine how much teachers contribute to each individual student’s success. The approach seeks to give a more objective answer to the question “What makes a teacher good?”

Value-added is one part of a new teacher evaluation system that schools must implement for the upcoming school year. That system is supposed to do a better job of distinguishing between great teachers and those in serious need of improvement. It will rely on value-added and other test-based measures as well as principals’ observations of teachers in the classroom.

Right now, Ohio calculates value-added scores only for reading and math teachers in fourth through eighth grades. The state translates each teacher’s value-added score into one of five labels, ranging from Most Effective (the top rating) to Least Effective (the bottom one).

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