Forced diversity not the solution to equal education

Forced segregation is not, nor has it ever been, the same thing as desegregation. This may not be something those opposed to the recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding two desegregation plans would like to admit, but it is true nonetheless.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines desegregation as "opening (a school or workplace, for example) to members of all races or ethnic groups, especially by force of law." This definition in no way includes diversity quotas which lead to the ejection of students based on the color of their skin, but such events have resulted from the racial balancing plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., school systems, according to an article in Friday's St. Petersburg Times. Chief Justice John Roberts, when defending his decision to end such plans, said, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

This decision has sparked concern for local school officials, who are struggling to establish policies that will encourage diversity. Current plans call for students to be assigned to schools close to home, which leads to several schools becoming heavily weighted to a single race.

School officials may want to consider, however, that such racial balancing is not the true issue facing today's students. The root of the problem is the financial imbalance of educational facilities as many parents struggle to enroll their children in "good" schools.

Resolving that issue is simple but not easy: Ensure that all schools are good. To do so would require arranging equality of funding throughout state education systems. Instead of financing being based on locale, each school would be allotted a set amount of funding for each enrolled student.

National Coalition of Organizations Urges Higher Education Reform

A national coalition of organizations including the United States Student Association, U.S. PIRG, the AFL-CIO and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities today sent a letter to all members of Congress urging them to address critical priorities in American higher education. The letter focused on four key points:

• Increase need-based grant aid by raising the maximum Pell Grant award.
  
  
• Make student loans more affordable by lowering interest rates, limiting the percentage of income students spend repaying loans and expanding loan forgiveness programs for critical public service careers.
  
  
• Cut waste in the student loan programs by reducing taxpayer subsidies and redirecting those funds to increase student aid and limit debt burden.
  
  
• Make student loans more fair by passing regulations that limit conflicts of interest, make the relationships between colleges and lenders more transparent, and require schools and lenders to inform students of their right to shop around for the best deal.

On Wednesday, June 13th the House Education and Labor Committee is scheduled to discuss and vote on legislation that address student grant and loan programs.

Spitzer creates Higher Education Commission

Gov. Eliot Spitzer wants to expand college programs to mirror regional economic development objectives and expand campus research centers to make the state University of New York more competitive with other states.

Spitzer created a new Higher Education Commission that is charged with making recommendations to improve the SUNY system by upgrading academic research centers and easing the transition for junior college students who are moving to four-year schools or into the workforce.

"The state's network of outstanding public and private colleges and universities are essential to producing the highly skilled workforce that will be a major driver of New York's upstate economy," Spitzer said this week.

Composed of college presidents, administrators, lawyers and higher education organizations, the commission will also search for new funding streams and methods for colleges to attract "the best and the brightest students and faculty," Spitzer said.

Commission member William Scheuerman, president of United University Professions, said identifying reliable funding streams for higher education is critical toward improving the state education system.

"Addressing that issue will preserve the quality of our public colleges and universities as they struggle to cope with growing enrollment and the need to hire more full-time faculty," Scheuerman said in a prepared statement.

United University Professions represents 33,000 faculty on 29 New York state-run campuses.

Hedge Fund Guru: Math Education Critical

James Simons knows a thing or two about the laws of supply and demand. He has been running the successful Renaissance Technologies investment firm for more than 20 years. And from what he's seen in his own children's schooling and his firm's workforce, Simons says some basic rules of economics need to be applied to U.S. education: Those who are good at math should have an incentive to teach.

In 2004, Simons founded Math for America, a program in New York City that gives stipends to people with a math background who are interested in a teaching career. The program became the model behind the national education program proposed in April as part of Congress' America Competes bill.

Simons, one of America's richest hedge fund billionaires, probably would have become a mathematician no matter what - he says as a pre-schooler he contemplated math problems. Still, he stresses the importance of federal education programs. He was the first student to receive a fellowship to study math through the National Defense Education Act, which the government began in 1958 to compete in the Space Race. It successfully boosted the number of U.S. math and science experts.

The numbers have dwindled again, though, and the problem appears to be starting in grade school. About 40 percent of U.S. high school seniors fail to perform at the basic level in math, according to a recent federal study.

As Americans fall behind, employers across all industries struggle to find workers elsewhere. The government provides 65,000 H1-B visas for foreign professionals every budget year; the quota for fiscal year 2007 was reached well before the year started on Oct. 1, 2006.

Simons recently spoke to the AP about math education's importance on America's competitiveness in the job market.

What does the workforce at Renaissance say about Americans' skill sets?

Simons: The workforce at Renaissance reflects the paucity of trained Americans ... They're Chinese, they're Japanese, they're French, they're German, they're Icelandic, they're Russian, they're Polish - I think have 20 countries represented.

Once in a while an American walks through the door, and we grab him if he's good, but fewer and fewer such folks are coming through the door.

We have, as a nation, been saved by H1 visas to bring people in ... and by sending out work to be done in India that had previously been done here. And India's not the only one capitalizing on our lack of trained people in America.

That can only go on for so long. India will get more wealthy ... and there will be jobs for those people back at home. Our supply is going to diminish and we'll be stuck.

I'm a big believer in immigration, but we shouldn't be dependent on immigration in our most sensitive, highly leveraged areas.

So it's a similar situation at other firms?

Simons: Everyone's hollering about H1 visas needing to be more plentiful ... Everyone's in the same boat - everyone who hires.

When did you start noticing the math lag in the U.S.?

Simons: When my son was in middle school - that would've been maybe 15, 16 years ago - I began being concerned about how much math his teachers knew, and expressed that concern to the headmaster. He said, "Well, our math teachers are just wonderful, why don't you just go and ask?" So I did.

I started in the first grade - I figured I might as well start in the first grade and work my way up - and the response that I got when I talked to a first-grade teacher about math was interesting. She ... would typically giggle and say, "Well, math is not my favorite subject." Now, can you imagine talking to a first-grade teacher who giggles and says, "I really don't like reading?"

It's not that I think, oh, math is more important than reading - it isn't. But on the other hand, it's pretty important, right? Reading, Writing and 'Rithmetic.

More hours, better education?

S chool principal Robin Harris used to see the clock on her office wall as the enemy, its steady ticking a reminder that time was not on her side.

But these days Harris smiles when the clock hits 1:55 p.m. There are still two more hours in the school day - two more hours to teach math and reading, art and drama.

Harris runs Fletcher-Maynard Academy, a combined public elementary and middle school in Cambridge, Mass., that is experimenting with an extended, eight-hour school day.

"It has sort of loosened up the pace," Harris said. "It's not as rushed and frenzied."

The school, which serves mostly poor, minority students, is one of 10 in the state experimenting with a longer day as part of a $6.5 million program.

U.S. lagging behind

While Massachusetts is leading in putting in place the longer-day model, lawmakers in Minnesota, New Mexico, New York and Washington, D.C., also have debated whether to lengthen the school day or year.

In addition, individual districts such as Miami-Dade in Florida are experimenting with added hours in some schools.

On average, U.S. students go to school 6.5 hours a day, 180 days a year, fewer than in many other industrialized countries, according to a report by the Education Sector, a Washington-based think tank.

One model that traditional public schools are looking to is the Knowledge is Power Program, which oversees public charter schools nationwide.

Those schools typically serve low-income middle-school students, and their test scores show success. Students generally go from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week and for a few hours every other Saturday. They also go to school for several weeks in the summer.

That amounts to at least 50 percent more instructional time for students in such programs than in traditional public schools, according to the report.

The extended-day schedule costs on average about $1,200 extra per student, program spokesman Stephen Mancini said.

Massachusetts is spending about $1,300 per student extra on its extended-day effort.

Most of the extra cost goes into added pay for teachers. At Fletcher-Maynard, senior teachers can make up to $20,000 more per year for the extended hours, Harris said. Not all of the school's teachers have opted to work longer hours.

Meeting benchmarks

An important impetus for the debate around extending school hours is the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The five-year-old law requires annual testing in reading and math for grades three through eight, and again in high school. All students are expected to be working on grade level by 2014.

Schools that fail to meet annual benchmarks are labeled as needing improvement and have to take steps to address the problem.

Up against such a tough requirement, extending the day makes sense, Harris said. "If you want kids to read, and you want to teach them how to read, they have to have time reading," she said.

Kathy Christie, a policy analyst at the Denver-based Education Commission of the States, said that law "has put enough pressure on more people to realize that the traditional school day is not enough to catch kids up."

Schools that are experimenting with longer days are adding more down time and enrichment courses, as well as reading and math.

Creative enrichment

At Edwards Middle School, an extended-day school in Boston, students are staging musicals, designing book covers for favorite novels and coming up with cheers to boost school spirit - an activity favored by 13-year-old Janice Tang.

"This is a class where I can express myself, be active," Tang said one afternoon after she pumped her arms in the air during a girls-only class that incorporates cheering with topics such as sex education and discouraging smoking. "It's very cool, and I have fun a lot."

Massachusetts's education commissioner, David Driscoll, said the classes get kids excited about a longer day.

"Once they're engaged, they'll learn other lessons," Driscoll said. "I think the big mistake that everybody makes is they think that education is all about the academics."

The No Child Left Behind law is due to be updated this year, and the lawmakers involved are eyeing the Massachusetts model.

U.S. Rep. George Miller, the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said he likes the way schools in Massachusetts have invited community organizations to help with some enrichment courses.

"If you're just extending the day to bore the hell out of the child, why don't we all just all go home and save the overtime. You've got to rethink these models," said Miller, a Democrat from California.

U.S. Sen. Democrat Edward Kennedy, chairman of the Senate committee overseeing education, is considering allowing schools that fail to meet annual progress goals to extend their day as a possible solution.

Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, also is considering putting AmeriCorps volunteers - recent college graduates who can help teach - into schools that adopt a longer day.

Extending the day has not been tackled extensively in high schools where many students have after-school jobs or play sports.

The idea is not always applauded by parents, at least initially.

Dawn Oliver was so apprehensive about a plan this year to expand the day at her daughter's middle school in Fall River, Mass., that she considered pulling 11-year-old Brittany out.

"We all had the same thought in our head, which was, 'Oh my God, these kids are going to have their head in a book for the same amount of time as working a full-time job,' " Oliver said.

She said her fears began to fade, however, when she saw the list of electives the kids could take in the afternoon, including cooking and forensics. Those reinforce core lessons, Oliver said.

"They're making a magazine. She's an advice columnist," she said of Brittany. "The kids get so involved in these things because it's not all book work."

Oliver said the real benefits showed up on Brittany's report card, which improved from straight C's to B's.

"I did not foresee honor roll," Oliver said, brimming with pride.

Governor losing on education-reform delay

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ambitious agenda this year ignored perhaps California's biggest problem — and now it's haunting him and, in particular, kids in four Bay Area school districts.

The governor is wading through a legislative sea of 2007 priorities, including health care woes, prison crowding, political reform and global warming.

The work yielded him a favorable job performance rating this week in a statewide poll. But that survey also showed the public has grown gloomy about schools and gave him a poor rating on education.

Amid building pressure, Schwarzenegger's Education Secretary David Long issued a statement Thursday that acknowledged the state has "a broken system" as it relates to school funding and governance.

Long said ongoing studies by the Governor's Committee on Education Excellence will identify "necessary changes" without just pouring in more money.

Critics dismissed the comments as a stalling technique, saying there already are enough reports and recommendations to fill a library.

Long's comments echoed the governor, who saw summaries of existing reports last month that concluded the "system is fundamentally flawed."

Schwarzenegger then declared an overhaul of school funding and governance his No. 1 priority for 2008, the "Year of Education Reform."

Advocates of changing the overly complex and uneven funding system more swiftly, at least for the bankrupt districts in Oakland and elsewhere, were disappointed.

Advocates of change include virtually the entire education community — the California School Boards Association, the California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Teachers, civil rights groups, business leaders and a coalition of parents groups.

State schools chief Jack O'Connell said the bottom line, when funding and governance issues are hammered out, will be the need to spend more money on schools. "Today we spend on average of 30 percent less than the rest of the nation," he said.

With a $66 billion price tag already — and growing — that may be a tough move for a deficit-ridden state.

But the governor, who wants to make education finance reform his issue, has leaned on Democratic majority leaders in the Legislature to stop some Democrats from moving ahead this week with their school funding remedies.

Schwarzenegger did not want to have to make potentially embarrassing vetoes, analysts said.

The Assembly Education Committee forced Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, to shelve her AB1601 bailout bill for seven school districts, including Oakland and Vallejo.

The troubled school districts have been taken over by the state. Oakland remains under state control.

Despite the setback with AB1601, "we're still trying to find ways to help them," said Hancock aide Rebecca Baumann.

In Oakland's case, a separate bill is advancing to restore operational — not fiscal — control to local officials.

Hancock's bill would have changed the base for the funding of those seven districts from the longtime average daily attendance system, to average monthly enrollment.

AME is a better workload indicator, provides more stable and predictable funding and requires less paperwork, experts said.

The Assembly Education Committee this week also postponed consideration of another similar, but wider-reaching reform bill by Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, D-Compton.

In the Senate this week, the education committee advanced SB 146 by Sen. Jack Scott, D-Pasadena, to the Senate Appropriations Committee, where it is expected to stay until next year. SB 146 would have applied AME statewide.

"Many school districts have been frustrated by an antiquated school funding formula that is based on how many kids are in class on any given day," Scott told the committee.

"This bill would streamline the attendance process by cutting down on the amount of paperwork and consequently saving school districts money and effort," he said.

Last year, state Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata co-authored a similar bill with Scott, which the governor vetoed, citing studies in progress. This week, Perata spokesman Alicia Trost said, "Sen. Perata has no plans for an AME bill."

Assemblyman Gene Mullin's education reform bill last year also was vetoed, with a similar explanation from the governor.

Where Radical Politics And Education Intersect

It came as no surprise to Sol Stern of the Manhattan Institute that a class of New York City public high school pupils took a spring break jaunt to communist Cuba. "Sure, they do it every year," Mr. Stern told me. He sees this as part of something much larger, a cadre of leftists and others caught in a time warp, promoting a 1960s type of radicalism. The problem is, according to Mr. Stern, that they are doing it in the public schools.

Although the city's education department has rules about nearly everything that goes on in our schools, when it comes to the manipulation of young minds for political ends, not only does there appear to be no effort to stop such practices, but the mayor and chancellor have become unwitting co-conspirators in promoting them.

The New York Post reported Monday that perhaps a dozen students from the selective Beacon School, a public high school on Manhattan's West Side, made the trip to the imprisoned island accompanied by their history teacher, Nathan Turner. Such a trip violates American law, and the participants face warnings or fines that could be as much as $65,000 each.

Mr. Turner is reported to have decorated his classroom with posters of such Cuban luminaries as the island's ailing dictator, Fidel Castro, and the Marxist Che Guevara.

Although Beacon's principal, Ruth Lacey, maintained that this year's trip was not school-sanctioned, it was promoted, according to the Post, on the school's Web site. And Ms. Lacey acknowledged that previous trips to Cuba in 2004 and 2005 had been approved. Travel restrictions have been in place since 1962 and were tightened in 2003, before the school's first trip there. Therefore, it is clear that the administration of the school cooperated in breaking the law in previous years even if the 2007 trip lacked official school approval.

Last year, the school trip was to Venezuela, presumably a show of solidarity with its anti-American president, Hugo Chavez.

It isn't just on the foreign policy front that radical activists have gained a foothold. Mr. Stern notes that the leadership of the Department of Education has accelerated the creation of schools with so-called social justice themes. Many of these schools were created using funds provided by Microsoft's founder, William Gates, the world's richest man. Mr. Stern believes there are at least 15 such new schools, almost all created during the current administration. Some of these are affiliated with left-wing groups such as Acorn and the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition.

Even after the New York City Police Department charged that the latter group "coached" students to falsely accuse police, at a City Council hearing, of maintaining order at Walton High School in the Bronx by setting off stink bombs, the education department approved the linkage between the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition and the newly created Leadership Institute high school. Solicitations for new teachers in that school have been routinely filtered through the Northwest Bronx group, presumably for political appropriateness.

Beginning April 27, a national conference centered on the New York City public schools, titled "Math Education and Social Justice," will take place. The conference will be held at El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice in Brooklyn, the first of Gotham's "social justice" public schools, described by Heather MacDonald in her article "An F for Hip-Hop 101," which appeared in the summer 1998 issue of City Journal.

How is math education radicalized? A typical "formula" might "prove" that the devastation to New Orleans resulted not from the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina but came as result of racism is America.

Among the "expert" speakers at this event will be Cathy Wilkerson, an adjunct professor at the Bank Street College of Education. If the name sounds familiar to those of us of a certain age, it is because Ms. Wilkerson was a member of the Weather Underground who gained national prominence in 1970 after she escaped from a Greenwich Village townhouse that was destroyed when a terrorist bomb that was being manufactured there prematurely detonated. After resurfacing and serving a prison term, she became a high school math teacher.

The New York Collective on Radical Education is listed as a co-sponsor of the math conference. No fewer than eight hands-on demonstrations are planned as part of the three-day event at New York City public schools, using teachers paid by the Department of Education and New York City public school children as props. The conference has been brought to the attention of top officials of the Department of Education, who have refused to address the appropriateness of such a conference or the use of city personnel, facilities, and students.

The intersection of radical politics and education is not limited to simply the traditional political left and right. The Department of Education recently announced that it was permitting the creation of the Khalil Gibran International Academy for the study of Arab language and culture. This school will occupy the upper floors of P.S. 252 in Park Slope, much to the chagrin of parents there.

The public schools should not be used to advance the politics of any individual or group, whether it is the pro-Castro teacher at the Beacon School who is still fighting the Cold War, the math teachers looking to change societal priorities to something more to their liking, or Islamists who see the potential of a mini-madrassa in Park Slope.

My guess is that Mr. Klein understands that the Cuba trip shouldn't have happened. He's a former federal lawman, after all. Mr. Klein once told Mr. Stern: "Giving schools ‘leadership' or ‘social justice' themes is fine with me, as long as the teachers and principals do not bring politics and ideologies into our classrooms." The time has come for the chancellor to stand and deliver before the situation spins further out of control.

Lawmakers: Change No Child Left Behind

President Bush's signature No Child Left Behind education law is headed for fundamental changes as Congress rewrites it this year, including a likely softening of do-or-die deadlines.School administrators long have complained about the annual deadlines, which punish schools that do not make adequate progress toward having all children perform at their grade levels.School officials also have rebelled at requirements that students with limited English ability or with learning disabilities perform as well as their grade-level peers.Now, those complaints are being taken up by lawmakers spanning the political spectrum.Key Democrats who control the federal purse strings are demanding changes. Moderate Republicans say the law must be more flexible. On Thursday, they were joined by dozens of GOP conservatives who want an even more radical overhaul.Lawmakers say a major flaw is that schools that miss achievement targets by a little are treated the same way as schools that miss those goals by a lot. Schools then are labeled as needing improvement and face the same penalties."We can't have one-size-fits-all," Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Michigan, said Thursday. He led a group of House and Senate lawmakers in introducing legislation that would let states opt out of No Child Left Behind requirements without losing federal education money.Currently, any state that does not adhere to the requirements of the $23 billion program cannot get the federal dollars that come with it. The requirements include annual testing in math and reading in grades three through eight, and once in high school. The tests must show steady yearly progress toward a goal of getting students working on grade level by the year 2014.House Republican Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri is supporting the conservatives' bill, even though he voted for the law in 2001."The overriding intrusion in No Child Left Behind is too large to deal with unless you fundamentally change the legislation," Blunt said.A former education secretary, GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, said, "That's a visceral reaction to too much federal involvement in local schools."Alexander is not backing Hoekstra and Blunt in their effort but said their concerns must be taken into account when the law is rewritten.Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has testified on Capitol Hill this week, hearing from Republicans and Democrats who want changes.Rep. James Walsh, a senior member of the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees education spending, wants the law loosened for schools that are failing due to the performance of immigrant students who do not speak English fluently.The government exempts students who are just learning English for less than a year from taking reading tests. After that time, those students have to be tested and schools are held accountable for their scores."We've gotta find a better way to test the progress of these kids," said Walsh, R-New York, who expressed the popular view that a year is not long enough.When groups of children, such as those learning English or special education students, fail to meet the law's achievement goals, entire schools can be labeled as failing and could face consequences such as having to fire their staffs -- which lawmakers say is unfair.Rep. Betty McCollum, D-Minnesota, also on the committee that oversees education spending, told Spellings she was upset that some states have lowered the requirements for what students must be able to do on reading and math tests to avoid the law's penalties. That creates a situation where some states look like they are performing well when they may not be."We look like we're doing a poor job when compared to states that set the bar low," McCollum said.The issue has led some lawmakers to call for national educational standards to be included in the law when it is rewritten.Spellings heard criticism from Wisconsin Democratic Rep. David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, who heads the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees education spending. Both said they were upset about the law's $1 billion reading program called Reading First.An Education Department inspector general's investigation found that people in charge of running the program and reviewing grants had conflicts of interest and steered money toward certain publishers of reading curricula.Spellings expressed concern that the program might be in jeopardy, saying, "I hope we don't throw the baby out with the bath water."Rep. George Miller, D-California, and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, who lead the committees in charge of rewriting the education law, have indicated they support the reading program but intend to make changes to it.

Share and share alike under new Labor education policy

PUBLIC and private schools would share facilities such as science laboratories and sports fields under a federal Labor government.

The Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, said yesterday he would set aside $62.5 million to run 25 pilot programs in rapidly growing areas.

"Whether public, private, independent, religious or secular, all schools need a library, all schools benefit from having playing fields and ovals, as well as access to science and language laboratories and up-to-date information technology and computer equipment," Labor's latest education policy discussion paper says.

The Minister for Education, Julie Bishop, dismissed the announcement as nothing new, saying it was similar to a part of the Opposition's policy under former leader Mark Latham. Mr Rudd was earlier keen to stress his break with the so-called hit list schools policy, another feature of the Latham leadership, which wanted to give more government funding to public schools rather than private schools.

But Mr Rudd was coy about the details of how schools would all be assessed on the same basis for their funding.

Although he has promised that both private and public schools would be treated equally, Mr Rudd did not elaborate on the funding model that would be used.

Ms Bishop said it was difficult to see how more money would be available for schools.

"Kevin Rudd has merely repeated last year's pledge by former Labor leader Kim Beazley that no Catholic or independent school will be worse off. However, he has not committed to maintaining the current rate of increases to schools," she said.

"Labor is trying to hoodwink parents by imposing a freeze that will slowly strangle funding to Catholic and independent schools, rather than the sudden cuts of the hit-list policy."

The Australian Education Union said if Mr Rudd's funding model was based solely on need, the lion's share of funding would go to public schools.

Education policies 'should be simplified'

The government should limit the number of education policies under implementation at any one time, education workers have claimed.

According to the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), ministers should remove an existing policy whenever they seek to implement a new one.

General secretary Dr John Dunford believes that ministers and civil servants should set out a framework for education policy rather than attempting to "describe every detail".

"The role of education policy is not to micromanage, but to create a climate in which leaders and teachers can thrive," he told attendees at the association's annual conference today.

"No policy should be introduced without a reality check on implementation. No policy should be introduced without examining its effect on other policies. And no policy should be introduced unless another one is removed," he told the conference.

Leaders are also concerned about the new 14-19 specialised diplomas, which the general secretary said were too complex and "an expensive option".

In order for them to be a success, the ASCL believes they must be offered by both maintained and independent schools and recognised by all universities.

The new diplomas are part of a massive overhaul of England's exam system, but education secretary Alan Johnson has warned the ASCL conference that the reform could go "horribly wrong" unless the diplomas are seen to have the same status as GSCEs and A-levels.

Chamber downgrades Maryland education

WASHINGTON - Maryland is falling down on the job when it comes to producing students ready to enter the work force, a new U.S. Chamber of Commerce study says, but the state countered that the grading system is unfair because Maryland doesn't even use a key test considered in the report.

And, the Maryland State Department of Education said, it is working on a program that should rectify the state's one "F" grade.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce joined the education reform effort last year, citing concerns that today's schoolchildren may not be able to fill the 35 million jobs the Department of Labor estimates will be available by 2012, and compete in the global economy.

"This is a matter of critical national urgency," said Thomas J. Donohue, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, at a news conference last week.

"For far too long, the business community has been willing to leave education to politicians and educators without comments, standing aside and contending themselves with offers of money and support and goodwill."

Despite decades of reform efforts and trillions of dollars, Mr. Donohue said, U.S. schools are not equipping the nation's children with skills and education they need.

At stake, he said, is the continued success and competitiveness of the American economy and the viability of the American dream.

The chamber's new Institute for a Competitive Workforce, as well as the Center for American Progress, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and other affiliates, assembled a team of experts last year.

The team spent a year analyzing and aggregating existing education data and used new measures, including evaluating the relationship between spending and student achievement, to grade education performance state-by-state and produce a nationwide business plan to restructure and improve the education system.

Graded on the study's nine new measures for educational effectiveness, Maryland received two As, for "postsecondary and workforce readiness" and teaching force quality and two Bs, for academic achievement by low-income and minority students and management and policy flexibility.

The state also received four Cs and an F.

The Cs came for academic achievement, "truth in advertising about student proficiency," "return on investment," and "rigor of standards."

"I don't know where they get that," said Bill Reinhard, spokesman for the Maryland State Board of Education, upon hearing some of the study's results.

Mr. Reinhard had not yet seen the study, but reacted when he heard it used National Assessment of Educational Progress tests as a source for three categories in which the state scored a C.

"We comply with 'No Child Left Behind.' They're entirely different tests," Mr. Reinhard said. "Maryland takes seriously the federal law, which tests students in grades three through eight and 10, as required."

NAEP tests, national tests on subjects ranging from reading to mathematics, are delivered to fourth- and eighth-grade students in select communities, Mr. Reinhard said.

Grades for "rigor of standards," the other category earning Maryland a C, were based on a formula that contemplates whether the state "aligned" its standards with college and workplace expectations and whether they adopted sufficiently rigorous exit exams.

Maryland is phasing in a high school graduation exam that will be required statewide in 2009, but it is not one of the eight states that fully aligned its standards with businesses and college expectations.

Mr. Reinhard said he was shocked at first to hear Maryland earned an F for "data quality." Maryland has been collecting and reporting data for 20 years, he said, and was one of first school systems to do so.

Then he learned grades were based on criteria, including whether a state uses a unique statewide student identifier, whether it can match student test scores from year to year, and whether it can match data on teachers with students' academic results, and other measures the study defined as benchmark metrics.

The state does not have such a system, but last year it decided to implement an identifier system, in which each public school student would be assigned a number and tracked throughout his or her education, Mr. Reinhard said. The program should roll out over the next few years.

Educational travel growing

Rhoda Flaxman had grown tired of beach vacations and became intrigued when she heard about a trip co-sponsored by her alma mater, Bryn Mawr College.

It promised a thorough learn­ing experience about the lives and experiences of women in Jordan, including meetings with a human rights attorney, a liter­ature professor and Jordan's first female ambassador to the United Nations.

Flaxman, an English profes­sor at Brown University, isn't normally one for group travel but is reconsidering given the strong educational focus of her Jordan trip.

"We felt as though we were really getting a very good view of the country," she said.

Universities and museums have organized learning-orient­ed trips in the past, but the trend has been booming in recent years and now is becoming part of the mainstream business of the travel industry, experts say.

For universities, alumni trav­el programs offer another meth­od of fundraising and a means of tightening bonds with their alumni and encouraging future donations. For travel companies, extra features like lectures from scholars help sign up customers for group travel, especially so­phisticated baby boomers and people who have ever more op­tions for booking discounted flights and hotels online.

Boutique tour operators have been rolling out more education­al trips to exotic lands, and large well-heeled operators like Aber­crombie & Kent say they have seen a surge in interest in that kind of travel.

Abercrombie & Kent runs ed­ucational tours for Harvard and other universities, but also has seen growth in non-university sponsored tours that it markets directly to the public. It recently announced a series of education­al trips done in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy.

The trips aren't necessarily for those on a budget: Abercrom­bie's 13-day trip to Brazil with The Nature Conservancy costs $7,840, and an 11-day trip to Ec­uador and the Galapagos costs $9,350.

Companies that traditionally operated basic package tours also are finding their way into offering more value-added serv­ices like educational trips, says David Cogswell, a senior editor at Travel Weekly, an industry publication.

First Choice, a large package holiday company based in Brit­ain, found profits under pres­sure as more people book cheap flights and hotel rooms on their own. That led it to purchase more than 10 operators of more hands-on, "experiential" travel, Cogswell said.

Janet Moore, whose Long Beach, Calif.-based travel compa­ny Distant Horizons organized the Jordan trip and others to Iran and Afghanistan, says she's seen enormous growth in inter­est in educational travel over the past five years.

Moore, who sits on an advi­sory committee for a national conference on educational trav­el, said the sheer growth in at­tendance speaks to the surging interest in the area.

When the Educational Travel Conference started 18 years ago, only 15 to 20 institutions came looking to arrange educational trips. Last year there were 140 and more than 200 are coming to this year's meeting, which began Tuesday and runs through Fri­day in Baltimore.

"This is a booming area," Moore said. Many of her clients are 55-plus, right at the cusp of the baby boomer generation that is heading into retirement with more time and money to spend.

A survey of U.S. travelers tak­en last year by the Travel Indus­try Association found that 56 percent said they were interest­ed in taking an educational trip and 22 percent said they were more interested now compared with five years ago.

Travel programs are still a growth area for universities. Karen Anthony, director of alumni travel at the University of Notre Dame for the past 23 years, said it's only been in more recent years that schools use the trips to showcase the expertise of their faculty. Now, about half of the trips sponsored by Notre Dame have faculty who come along and give talks, she said.

AHI International Corp., which runs alumni travel pro­grams for more than 200 schools, has seen increasing interest in more exotic locales, said Liz Harrison, spokeswoman for the Rosemont, Ill.-based company. AHI has added trips to Bhutan, Ukraine, South Africa and Chile, all in the past three years, she said.

Even among the most sea­soned organizers of expedition travel, there are signs that trav­elers are becoming more sophis­ticated and curious about the destinations they go to.

Sven-Olof Lindblad, whose fa­ther Lars-Eric organized the first commercial tours to Antarc­tica, the Galapagos and Easter Island with a company he found­ed in 1958, Lindblad Travel, says the discussions on his tours have increasingly focused on en­vironmental topics such as glob­al warming.

So much so, in fact, that a new trip that his company Lindblad Expeditions is an­nouncing this week will bring people to the Arctic with three of the top scientists studying cli­mate change today. That 10-day trip will cost about $5,000.

"People are finding it more valuable to learn something while they travel and to have that experience when they come home," Lindblad said.

Others come to educational travel for their kids. Or in the case of Barbara Collins, a retiree living in Leland, Mich., for her eight grandkids.

When each grandkid turns 13 he or she gets a letter promising a trip with the grandparents to any country in the world -- "as long as it's politically stable," adds Collins -- and so long as they find something to learn on the trip and write in a journal about what they learned there.

Their last trip, to the Galapa­gos islands, was "quite a mind-blowing experience," Collins said. "We hope that this will en­courage travel for the children and learning outside the class­room situation."

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