Nearly all the news from the Statehouse during the past several months has concerned the proposed Constitutional Amendment regarding gay marriage. Lost in all this debate is the legislature's failure to get to work on the FY2005 budget. Rumor is that the shortfall will be somewhere between $1 billion and $1.5 billion. There are only two places where that kind of money can be cut: Education and local aid. And with the late start, this is all going to surface very quickly, leaving little time for parents and other advocates of school funding to get organized. On top of all this came today's announcement that the Bush Education Department has changed the formula for disbursing Title I money (state aid to school districts with students at or near the poverty level). Massachusetts will lose $25 million in Title I funding, more than any other state. Lowell's share of the reduction is not yet clear, but it certainly will be felt.

The New York City school system will end "social promotions" for third graders this year. This move has proven very controversial since the mayor's hand picked school advisory board voted against it. Wielding the dictatorial powers granted to him over school policy, Mayor Bloomberg fired three of the members of the board and replaced them with more "reasonable" representatives. Critics claim that the mayor is up for reelection next year and he's just trying to generate improved test scores next year (in NYC, 4th graders are given high stakes tests). This is a difficult issue. Educators in Lowell have long maintained that research has shown that retaining (a/k/a "keeping back") a child doesn't necessarily improve that child's academic performance. That may be true, but if a child cannot read, pushing him through the system, hoping that he catches on eventually, doesn't help anyone.

This is in the "just can't win" department. A week ago, the Lowell Sun wrote an editorial criticizing the Lowell School Department for the accommodations made for the accreditation team that will be visiting Lowell High School next September. The newspaper expressed outrage that rooms were reserved not at the downtown Doubletree Hotel but at the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel (which is near the Cross Point towers and certainly within the Lowell city limits). Tucked away in this Sunday's political column was the news that the school department actually put the request for hotel rooms out to bid. Courtyard was $3000 less than Doubletree, so the school department went with the low bidder. Of course, had the school department selected the Doubletree, you just know that a Sun editorial would have accused the responsible school department officials of being reckless spendthrifts for ignoring the bidding process and squandering precious tax dollars on lavish accommodations.

During the month of April, the Citywide Parent Council will explore the implementation of Question 2 - the 2002 Referendum that eliminated bilingual education. The regular CPC meeting on Monday, April 26 at 7 p.m. at the Robinson School, will be on English Language Learners. The April edition of Conversation With The Superintendent, shown on Lowell Educational Television channel 22 through the month, will feature an interview of Superintendent of Schools Karla Brooks Baehr who will review the changes that have been made as a result of Question 2 and will explain how the newest teaching strategies have improved instruction for both English language learners and native English speakers.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments today in the "Under God" case that arose when a father claimed that when his daughter said the Pledge of Allegiance at school, her recitation of the words "under God" were a violation of the First Amendment's prohibition on establishing a religion (he's an atheist). A Federal Appeals Court has already agreed with him which is how the case got to the Supreme Court. The Pledge of Allegiance started in the late 1890s when northern Civil War veterans groups waged a political campaign to get the pledge recited in all schools in the United States. They succeeded although the words "under God" were not part of the original pledge. Those words were not added until 1954 as a result of a campaign by the Knights of Columbus. Members of the media who were inside the court for arguments on the case got a sense that the majority of the justices will rule to uphold "under God."

Today's Globe ran a story in the Health/Science section analyzing the cost and benefit of universal preschool. House Speaker Tom Finneran has made this a goal for the state, and hearings on his proposal began today. Some estimate the cost of preschool for all children in Massachusetts to be about $1 billion. Like most other issues in education, ideology doesn't just creep into this debate, it plunges right into the middle of it. Conservative groups point to statistics that say preschool has no benefits and liberal groups cite similar studies that reach the exact opposite conclusion. It should really be self-evident that in an urban community, the quicker children get into school, the better they will do. That has certainly been the case in Lowell. Hopefully, this meritorious proposal to fully fund preschool will be implemented.

In a packed Lowell High School auditorium earlier this evening, the Wang Middle School won the 2004 Lowell Middle School Knowledge Bowl, scoring 260 points. The Daley finished second with 220 points and the City Magnet School third with 130. The Daley led after the first round, but the Wang pulled ahead in the second round. The final round was close, but the Wang maintained its lead and held on to win. Congratulations to the Wang team and to all the students that participated this year. The Lowell School Department deserves a lot of praise for the effort its employees put forth to make this competition happen each year. The final round will be rebroadcast on Channel 22 on Wednesday at 3 p.m., Friday at 7 p.m. and on Saturday at 8 p.m.

Governor Romney's MCAS scholarship plan is starting to seem as cynical as President Bush's No Child Left Behind act. Again, it's a lot of lofty-sounding rhetoric that doesn't really help the students who need it most. If all the eligible students took advantage of the scholarship and went to a Massachusetts public college or university, the program would cost more than $30 million. However, as the Lowell Sun pointed out yesterday, the governor has budgeted only $12.5 million for the plan. Clearly, the governor expects most of the students who do well on MCAS not to choose a public college and so not to take advantage of the money. At a time when the state has cut MCAS tutoring programs and aide to schools across the board, why does the governor want to throw money into such a half-hearted program? Couldn't that $12.5 million be put to better use? It all seems like a crude public relations scam.

Meanwhile, to see Lowell students shine, check out the Kathryn Stoklosa Middle School Knowledge Bowl TONIGHT at Lowell High. It starts at 7 p.m., or watch it live on Channel 22.

Today's Boston Globe has an editorial warning of the demise of the 20 page term paper from today's high school. Everyone's focus on MCAS means that scholastic writing is now geared almost exclusively towards the five-paragraph essay. This is good news when it comes to raising MCAS scores, but bad news when it comes to developing a generation of good writers. Class size and teaching loads have much to do with it, too. You can't expect a high school history teacher with five classes of thirty students each to scrutinize a 20 page paper from each - that's 3000 pages to correct and comment upon. Urban communities that struggle to reach their goals for standardized test results really have no choice but to train students to pass the test. The reality, however, is that even that lofty goal of MCAS success doesn't guarantee that students will be well educated.

Have you ever served on a School Site Council? You should consider it. Massachusetts law requires every school to have a School Site Council which consists of the principal, teachers, parents, and members of the community. The primary mission of the council is to give the principal advice on the operation of the school and to be advocates and supporters of the school, its students, parents, and staff. Each fall, schools are supposed to hold elections for the parent members of their councils. If you're not a parent and would like to serve on a council, contact a school principal and ask to become involved. The law requires community representatives, but few (if any) school site councils have them. And school site council meetings, of which there are several each year, are governed by the state's Open Meeting Law, so anyone can attend. For more information about the role of School Site Councils, check out the Citywide Parent Council website - there's an easy to follow link. And if your experience with your School Site Council differs from what we've described here, please let share your story either by leaving a comment or by sending an email.

The No Child Left Behind law has been a frequent target of criticism here on the blog. Rod Paige, the US Secretary of Education recently announced the relaxation of certain requirements of NCLB. We agree with this action, but also feel compelled to point out the utter hypocrisy of the Bush Administration's education policy. First, some context: when NCLB was enacted, it was done with bipartisan support. The best example of that was Ted Kennedy co-sponsoring the bill and standing at President Bush's shoulder when he signed it. The bill is essentially a good one. What's corrupt is the administration's implementation of the bill. As long as the stringent interpretation of the law plunged countless urban schools into probation or worse, there was no budging. But now, with Republican dominated legislatures in states such as Utah and Virginia revolting against the unfair results that flow from NCLB, the Bush administration suddenly capitulates and weakens the regs. As long as the casualties were urban schools and their Democratic leaning teachers' unions, fairness was not a consideration. But now that the bill harms schools without regard to political affiliation, compassion emerges.

Yesterday's Lowell Sun featured a prominent front page story on the reaccreditation process at Lowell High School. Another story appeared in tonight's paper and the city council supported a motion to get involved in the process (yes, the same city council that rebuffed the pleas of parents last spring to adequately fund the schools). Anyway, everyone seems to be realizing how critical this process is. If the high school fails this process and is placed on probation or loses its accreditation, it will be a huge black mark for the city, wiping out much of the effort spent rehabilitating the city's image regionally (not to mention the harm that will come to the city's students). Right now, the high school is performing its own self-study, but the official inspection team arrives in September, so there's no time to lose. Let everyone know how important this is.

Tonight's Citywide Parent Council resource fair was a big success. More than 30 vendors set up tables and were visited by well over 100 people interested in activities for kids. For those of you who couldn't make it, we'll put a list of all the organizations that participated on the Citywide Parent Council website with links to the homepages of the various organizations (and contact information for those without websites). If any of our readers belong to other organizations that provide programs for children, we'd be happy to create links to them, as well. Just send us an email with contact information.

Just a reminder that Monday, March 15 is the monthly CPC meeting. It's at the Lowell High School cafeteria. This month, the meeting is a resource fair. More than thirty organizations that have activities for kids will be present with information and available to answer your questions. This event runs from 6 pm to 8 pm. You can stop in at anytime and stay for as long as you want.

Today's Boston Globe carried news that the Boston Teachers Union is planning a one day strike for next Tuesday, March 23, because of a lack of progress in contract negotiations. According to the story, the teachers are demanding a reduced class sizes, a reduction in required training, and a 9.75% raise over three years. The Boston Public Schools are supposed to be offering a 7% raise over three years with no changes in class size or mandatory training time (which is 18 hours per years). Boston is not alone. Teachers in the town of Billerica and the Greater Lowell Vocational High School are without contracts and Lowell teachers are about to start negotiations since their current contract ends this summer. It's a tough situation: the state is still so short of money that many communities will only receive the same amount of state aid this year as they did last year. Yet according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, between now and 2012, teaching, computers and health care are the occupations that will require the most new employees. That means that competition for new teachers will be fierce. To attract the best new teachers, a system like Lowell must continue to pay a competitive salary.

Another state legislature has revolted against the No Child Left Behind law. This time it's Oklahoma where Democrats were proposing a bill that would ask Congress to overhaul the law, but at the last minute, a conservative Republican offered a substitute bill that demanded the outright repeal of NCLB. With Democrats joining conservative Republicans, the bill passed. Oklahoma now joins Utah, Virginia and the legislatures of nine other states in calling for the repeal or modification of this law.

There are more problems at the site of the future Stoklosa Middle School. Representatives from the Coalition for a Better Acre appeared before the city council tonight and expressed their concerns - supported by a consultant's report and a dozen letters sent to city officials over the past year - about contaminated soil that remains at the site. Apparently, the state's Department of Environmental Protection agrees. The city now faces an additional expense of $250000 to remove this soil. Several weeks ago we wrote that the contract for the site preparation work had a completion date of April 2003 and that the contractor failed to comply with that provision, but nothing was done to penalize the contractor for defaulting until earlier this year. Since so much of the future school-usage planning in Lowell is dependent on the opening of the Stoklosa School, any additional delays will be very harmful to the entire school system.

Tonight was the first of three semifinal rounds of the 2004 Kathryn Stoklosa Middle School Knowledge Bowl. In the Knowledge Bowl, teams of students from each of the city's middle schools answer all types of questions from math to mythology and geography to geometry. Three teams compete at a time, with four students per school on stage with fists tightly clenched around the buzzers that, if pressed first, will give them the chance to answer the question. The Daley came out on top this evening, overcoming last year's citywide victor, the Butler and the Robinson. The other preliminary rounds will be held tomorrow and Wednesday evening at 7 p.m. at the Butler School, and the Final Championship Round will be on Monday, March 22 at Lowell High School. That competition will be televised live on Lowell Educational TV channel 22. The taped replays of the semifinal rounds will be televised on channel 22 repeatedly during the coming two weeks.

Back on January 15 during his State of the State address, the governor first announced his "Adams Scholarship" program, which would provide free tuition to state colleges to any student who scores in the top 25% on MCAS statewide. Since schools in wealthy suburbs do much better on MCAS than those in urban communities, it's been apparent from the beginning that more wealthy, suburban students would probably benefit from this program than would urban residents who (statistically, at least) don't do as well on MCAS. Today's Boston Globe published a lengthy story that used statistics to back up this easily reached conclusion. For example, while 68% of the students from Dover-Sherborn would qualify, only 3% from Lawrence would (Lowell is not mentioned, but its MCAS scores are just a little bit better than those in Lawrence). Asked for the article whether a program that provided free college tuition to many of the state's wealthiest residents, Romney's response was astounding: he essentially said that wealthy families wouldn't send their kids to colleges like UMass, even if it was free so they wouldn't be using the program. Sounds like the governor thinks our state colleges are good for folks who can't afford to send their kids to someplace better. Wow.

The topic of the February Citywide Parent Council meeting was transportation and safety. One issue that came up was seat belts on school buses. Parents who insist that their children buckle up every time they enter a car cannot understand why the same children remain unbelted in school buses. It turns out that there's a good reason. The National Transportation Safety Board and other similar agencies have long recommended against seat belts on school buses. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that the size and weight of the bus makes it far safer in a crash. The interior design of the school bus follows a concept called "compartmentalization" in which the seating area is a protected, padded compartment created by closely spaced seats with high backs, padded on both front and back and strongly anchored to the floor. In a crash, the child is protected by the padding of this compartment, much like an egg within an egg crate. While their are few fatal accidents involving school buses, the majority of them occur in the bus's "loading zone" - the area the child moves through when getting on and off the bus. Safety experts recommend that the money that would be spent installing seat belts would be better spent making getting on and off the bus safer.

A great source of information for anyone interested in education is the website of the Massachusetts Department of Education. The best way to discover the many resources on the site is to just log on and explore for a while. Make sure you check out the section on school profiles. Every school in Lowell is listed; just click on the name of the school and the website displays an impressive amount of information about that school. Just CLICK HERE to see the Lowell school links.

With his nation-wide victories and Super Tuesday, John Kerry has pretty much become the presidential nominee of the Democratic party even though the election is still eight months away. That's a long time for a campaign. Hopefully, this long election season will dilute the impact of the hundreds of millions of dollars of negative advertising that both sides will run to try to shape our attitudes towards the two candidates. We urge all who are interested in public education to pay close attention to the pronouncements of both candidates on education issues. We will.

The next Citywide Parent Council meeting (Monday, March 15 from 6 pm to 8 pm at the Lowell High School cafeteria) will be the annual Parent Resource Fair. Many different organizations that provide things to do for families and kids will attend to provide information and answer any of your questions. Each organization will have its own table and parents can roam around the room, checking out those that interest them. There is no formal start to the meeting, so if you can't make it at 6 pm, come whenever you can.

Tonight's Sun had a strong editorial endorsing increased spending on guidance counselors at Lowell High School. Repeating the very disturbing information from last week's article that 39% of the seniors at Lowell High - many of whom have already passed the MCAS test - have insufficient credits to graduate, the editorial points out that 10 guidance counselors for 3700 students is grossly insufficient and that many students are falling through the cracks. During last spring's budget fight, several city councilors claimed that the school department had an "army of administrators" that could be trimmed with no effect on the students. This situation with guidance counselors is further evidence of how ill-informed and misleading such statements were. If the newspaper continues to take such reasonable stands on education issues, perhaps this spring's budget debate will be more productive.