Number of Homeschoolers Growing Nationwide

This article was published in May but I believe is very relevant in Charles County today.

Education News
May 21, 2012
Julia Lawrence

Researchers are expecting a surge in the number of students educated at home by their parents over the next ten years as more families spurn public schools.
As the dissatisfaction with the U.S. education system among parents grows, so does the appeal of homeschooling. Since 1999, the number of children who are being homeschooled has increased by 75%. Although currently only 4% of all school children nationwide are educated at home, the number of primary school kids whose parents choose to forgo traditional education is growing seven times faster than the number of kids enrolling in K-12 every year.
Any concerns expressed about the quality of education offered to the kids by their parents can surely be put to rest by the consistently high placement of homeschooled kids on standardized assessment exams. Data shows that those who are independently educated typically score between 65th and 89th percentile on such exams, while those attending traditional schools average on the 50th percentile. Furthermore, the achievement gaps, long plaguing school systems around the country, aren’t present in homeschooling environment. There’s no difference in achievement between sexes, income levels or race/ethnicity.

Read more HERE

Board hopes to announce new superintendent by April

Charles County's Board of Education is starting its search for a new Superintendent of Schools to replace Superintendent James E. Richmond, who has announced he is leaving at the end of the 2012-13 school year.


Consultants from the Maryland Association of Boards of Education (MABE) met with Board members Tuesday evening to brief them on the search process and to begin developing a timeline. William Middleton, lead MABE consultant, said the search is a "patience-building process that will not happen overnight."

Middleton said MABE conducts a transparent, open and fair process for everyone involved. He said there is a confidentiality protocol used to maintain privacy of applicants unless the Board identifies them as a finalist. At that point, Middleton said, names of finalists are released and publicly vetted.

Part of the process involves public forums to gather input from staff, students and the community. The Board asked MABE to conduct five public forums in different areas of the county. MABE is planning to hold the forums, which are open to the general public, in October. MABE will solicit community input about Charles County Public Schools, what characteristics the public thinks the Board should look for in a superintendent and what challenges the public believes the new superintendent will face. Forums will be announced on the Charles County Public Schools website and in the local media, and sent to community groups.

MABE compiles the community input and provides it to Board members to help them develop the criteria and characteristics they want a new superintendent to possess. The information will be used to develop a brochure and advertisements soliciting superintendent candidates. The Board will nationally advertise the position beginning in November and MABE will start screening applications on Dec. 17. The Board hopes to make a final decision and offer by late April 2013.

"We are looking for a superintendent who will come here and stay here. We will look for someone who will meet your needs and stay for an extended period of time," Middleton said.

Maryland law requires Boards to award a four-year contract, and the new superintendent's term would begin July 1, 2013 and end June 30, 2017.

Tentative Timeline

August 2012

Board meets with MABE consultants to develop timeline and search process.

October 2012

Community residents, students and staff will have the opportunity to share input at five regional public forums. Ideas and opinions from these forums will be incorporated into the brochure and advertisements describing the job opening and used to develop the criteria and characteristics the Board will look for in a new superintendent.

November 2012

Position advertising begins. Brochure and application will be mailed out and posted on the Charles County Public Schools website. Position advertising will be on a local, state and national level.

December 2012

Application review by MABE begins on Dec. 17. Position remains open until filled.

March 2013

Board announces finalists. Candidates visit Charles County and are interviewed by stakeholder focus groups.

April 2013

Board expected to make announcement of final selection by end of month.

July 1, 2013

New superintendent begins.

Richmond notified the Board of Education in April that he does not plan to ask for renewal of his contract in 2013. The 17-year superintendent is a former Maryland Superintendent of the Year and took the top job in Charles County Public Schools in 1996 as interim superintendent. He was appointed to his first four-year term as superintendent in 1997, and he will complete his fourth term in June 2013.

The Board of Education in May voted to contract with MABE to assist with the search for a new superintendent.

Washington Supreme Court rules that school resource officer’s search of student’s locked backpack violated rights against unlawful search and seizure

State of Washington v. Meneese, No. 86203-6 (Wash. Aug. 2, 2012) (majority opinion); (dissenting opinion)


Abstract: In a 7-2 split, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington has ruled that a school resource officer (SRO), who is a member of a local police department, violated a student’s right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure under the federal and state constitutions when he searched the student’s locked backpack after arresting the student and handcuffing him. The court’s majority concluded that the “school search” exception did not apply to the SRO’s search.

The majority reversed the intermediate appellate court’s decision upholding the trial court’s denial of the motion to suppress the air pistol discovered during the search. The majority concluded that the “school search” exception to the requirement for a warrant did not apply, because at the time the SRO executed the backpack search, he was acting as a police officer, and not a school official.

Read more HERE

Notes from Board of Education Meeting, 8/14/12

The Board of Education Meeting on Tuesday, August 14 will be re-broadcast on Comcast Channel 96, Verizon FIOS Channel 12 and is available via webstream at http://www.ccboe.com/ . To view the full agenda and the various reports, please visit BoardDocs.

The below notes are my personal notes and are not intended to be all-inclusive or official minutes for the Board of Education meetings and are provided as a request from my supporters and the general public in a personal effort to be more transparent. Although I have diligently tried to make these notes as unbiased and accurate as possible, I am only human and do make mistakes.
Executive Session – 9 a.m.

Call to order – 11 a.m. - Pledge of Allegiance

Superintendent's update - See Report

Correspondence/Board member updates

• Wise - MABE committee member requests

Education Association of Charles County update - See Report

Student Board Member update - See Report

Opening of schools, athletics update - See Report

• Impact testing for athletes.  Computerized test at start of year gives a baseline.  Students will take the test again after an impact/injury.  Will tell doctors whether a students is fully recovered and if they can return to play.
• All coaches required to take a test and have an emergency plan in place
• Cook - impressed with information given on sports night for her son.

CIP update  - See report

• Richmond - why does it cost $200,000 to hook up three schools
• Wise - letter from the board

FY 2014 CIP state and local CIP program - See Report

Redistricting policies - See Report

• Wise - issue with 'desireability to limit the movement of a high school student after initial enrollment
• Abell - change 'limiting' to 'minimizing' in both sentences
• Cook - against having a board member select a person to the committee
• Abell - change wording back to original just with more explanantion about pool of applicants and random drawing

Change of gifted education policy - See Report (Policy 6411.1)

• recommended changes to align county policy with revised state (COMAR) policy

Staffing update

Recurring resolutions: American Education Week; American Freedom Week; African-American History Month; Career and Technical Education Month; National School Counseling Week; Read Across America; Women's History Month; Fine and Performing Arts Month; Month of the Young Child; National Student Leadership Week; Teacher Appreciation Week; Administrative Professionals Week; Child Nutrition Employee Appreciation Week; National Physical Education and Sport Week; Washington Post Distinguished Educational Leader; Washington Post Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher Award; Charles County Teacher of the Year; and Employees' Retirement

Unfinished business

• Pedersen - any follow-up on a date to meet with the commisioners
• Wise - new policy in place; we cannot call and request a meeting, have to log online and submit a request; process didn't work; printed and snail mailed.

New business - None

Future agenda items - None

• Wise - Study on high school start times; still working on it
• Bowie - Common core and the waiver and the affect on us; staff working on it
• Pedersen - Safety report form Sheriff Coffey; October meeting

Public Forum – 3:30 p.m. - None

Action items

• Minutes

Abell requests to hold the Exective Session Minutes

until the next meeting since we never received a copy.

Motion to accept the Minutes from 6/14/12 by Lukas; Second by Pedersen

Yes = All

Motion to accept the Minutes from 8/6/12 by Cook; Second by Bowie

Yes = Abell, Bowie, Cook, Lukas, Wade, Wise; Abstain = Pedersen



• Personnel

Motion to accept Personnel by Abell; Second by Pedersen

Yes = All

Adjournment

REMINDER: Board of Education Meeting, 8/14/12

The Board of Education's next monthly meeting is Tuesday, August 14, at the Jesse L. Starkey Administration Building on Radio Station Road in La Plata. The public portion of the meeting begins at 11 a.m. and Public Forum is at 3:30 p.m. All Board meetings are televised live on Comcast Channel 96 and Verizon FiOS Channel 12, and rebroadcast throughout the week. Schedules for Channel 96 are available on the Charles County Public Schools website at www2.ccboe.com/publicinfo/channel96/schedule.cfm.


Executive Session – 9 a.m.

Call to order – 11 a.m.

Pledge of Allegiance

Superintendent's update

Correspondence/Board member updates

Education Association of Charles County update

Student Board Member update

Opening of schools, athletics update

CIP update

FY 2014 CIP state and local CIP program

Redistricting policies

Change of gifted education policy

Staffing update

Recurring resolutions: American Education Week; American Freedom Week; African-American History Month; Career and Technical Education Month; National School Counseling Week; Read Across America; Women's History Month; Fine and Performing Arts Month; Month of the Young Child; National Student Leadership Week; Teacher Appreciation Week; Administrative Professionals Week; Child Nutrition Employee Appreciation Week; National Physical Education and Sport Week; Washington Post Distinguished Educational Leader; Washington Post Agnes Meyer Outstanding Teacher Award; Charles County Teacher of the Year; and Employees' Retirement

Unfinished business

New business

Future agenda items

Public Forum – 3:30 p.m.

Action items

• Minutes
• Personnel

Adjournment

School system sponsors bus hotline for parents

Charles County Public Schools (CCPS) is sponsoring a bus hotline for parents to call with questions about school bus routes. Call 301-932-6655 to access the hotline. The hotline is available Aug. 23-24 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Aug. 27-28 from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m.


Parents can access bus routes through the School Locator feature available on the CCPS website. School Locator is designed to allow the public to enter an address and see which three schools - elementary, middle and high - an address is zoned for. It also indicates if the address is eligible for bus transportation to a particular school, what the bus number is and where the closest bus stop to the address is located.

School Locator can be accessed at www2.ccboe.com/schoollocator/. Click on Launch Application (Public) to access the system. No password is needed. School Locator uses mapping data from the county and filters it by the system's current school zones.

Additionally, bus stops within established subdivisions are permanently placed at specific locations to ensure consistency and equity among riders and will not be changed. Buses may run later than normal during the first week of school to adjust for changes in routes and/or established stops.

For more information about bus routes, contact your child's school, or the transportation department at ccpstransportation@ccboe.com or 301-934-7262.

Notes from Board of Education Work Session, 8/6/12

The Board of Education Work Session on Monday, August 6 will be re-broadcast on Comcast Channel 96, Verizon FIOS Channel 12 and is available via webstream at http://www.ccboe.com/ . To view the full agenda and the various reports, please visit BoardDocs.
The below notes are my personal notes and are not intended to be all-inclusive or official minutes for the Board of Education meetings and are provided as a request from my supporters and the general public in a personal effort to be more transparent. Although I have diligently tried to make these notes as unbiased and accurate as possible, I am only human and do make mistakes.

Executive session – 5:30 p.m.

Call to order – 6 p.m. - Pledge of Allegiance / Public Forum

Work Session - Redistricting/New high school

• Subcommittee recommendation HERE - some discussion
• Staff presented 4 options on opening enrollment of St. Charles High School - HERE
• Questions?  email redistrict@ccboe.com

Adjournment

Give the Standards Back to the Teachers

Education Week
Published Online: August 2, 2012
Commentary

By John Ewing


A standard is a statement that can be used to judge the quality of a mathematics curriculum or methods of evaluation. Thus, standards are statements about what is valued.

—From 1989 standards released by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

When the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers commissioned a small body of scholars to create national standards for mathematics in spring 2009, it seemed astounding that anyone paid attention. We have been inundated with standards for more than 20 years. A Google search for the phrase “mathematics standards” produces about 300,000 results, many referring to the various NCTM standards; to multiple guides created by individual states, often in conflicting versions; to publishers and software companies; and so forth. Here was one more set of standards, and it was likely irrelevant, people could be forgiven for thinking. But when nearly all the states (at last count, 45 of them, plus the District of Columbia) agreed to adopt both the math and English/language arts standards, people paid attention. This gave those states, if not a common K-12 curriculum, a common foundation for a national curriculum. It was an unexpected opportunity.

Or was it? After two decades of standards, we still wring our hands about student declines, unfocused curricula, and dreadful textbooks. There is little evidence that previous standards substantially improved education, and the fact that we continually replace old standards with new does not suggest success.

Why have previous standards failed? I think the answer is simple and evident: Standards failed because everybody owns them—politicians, administrators, teacher-educators (not to mention policy experts, publishers, and others)—everybody except the people who actually have to implement them, who have to use them as guides for the real work of instruction, and who have to determine whether the standards really are “statements about what is valued.” Teachers have never owned standards.

READ MORE HERE

REMINDER: Board of Education Work Session, 8/6/12

CCPS Press Release
July 24, 2012

The Board of Education of Charles County is holding a work session at 6 p.m., Monday, Aug. 6, at the Jesse L. Starkey Administration Building in La Plata. The meeting will be aired live on Comcast Channel 96 and Verizon FiOS Channel 12, and streamed on the school system website at http://www2.ccboe.com/boe/live/. The agenda is as follows:

Executive session – 5:30 p.m.

Call to order – 6 p.m.

• Pledge of Allegiance

Public Forum

Work Session

• Redistricting/New high school

Adjournment