Weekend Education News

I found lots of interesting stories in the Washington Post this weekend. First was Calls Grow for a Broader Yardstick for Schools: A look at potential No Child LeftBehind Act revisions that would look beyond Reading and Math to other subjects, and even physical education.

Advocates for "multiple measures" say that learning is too complex to be judged by annual tests and argue that spontaneity and creativity in classrooms are being lost to test preparation and drills.

On the other hand:

"Proponents of multiple measures say it will give a richer, fuller view of a school, but this isn't about a rich view of a school. It's about failures in fundamental gate-keeping subject areas."

To see what your School Board said about the issue, see the resolution passed this fall.

Next, in the Loudoun Section, is a piece on next month's vote to get seatbelts on all new school buses. Sugarland Representative Joe Guzman has pushed this issue for years but finally got traction this fall when the US Department of Transportation completed a study and issued new guidelines for the use of seatbelts on buses. There was also an interesting column by the Post's Warren Brown on the subject in November, and I wrote my own piece on School Bus Seat Belts back in August. The School Board will vote on the issue in January, so if you have a strong opinion about the subject, now is the time to make it known.

On the ever-controversial subject of sex education, the Post reports today that Abstinence Programs Face Rejection in states across the country. It does reference Governor Kaine's cuts in his proposed budget, a story I commented on back in November making the same point that is in the opening lines of the story:

The number of states refusing federal money for "abstinence-only" sex education programs jumped sharply in the past year as evidence mounted that the approach is ineffective.

The most interesting aspect of this trend is that these states aren't just opting for more comprehensive sex education, or cutting sex education from their curriculums. They are effectively saying "you couldn't pay me to teach this stuff." Some folks will say that the liberal educational establishment actually wants kids to go out and have lots of sex. This just isn't true. I'll say it again and again: Studies show that just telling kids to be abstinent isn't the best way to actually get them to be abstinent. Further, it makes them more vulnerable to pregnancy, disease, rape, abuse and other complications of sex if they do not choose abstinence or are assaulted. This is a very inconvenient fact because these same conservative critics of public schools are often the ones decrying educational programs that haven't been proven effective.

"Why would we spend tax dollars on something that doesn't work?" asked Ned Calonge of the Colorado Department of Health and Environment. "That doesn't make sense to me. Philosophically, I am opposed to spending government dollars on something that's ineffective. That's just irresponsible."

Note that the quote is from Colorado... hardly a bastion of liberalism. Ohio is, interestingly, trying to have it both ways...

"The governor supports abstinence education," Keith Daily, a spokesman for Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D). "What he does not support is abstinence- only education. We are asking to put the money toward abstinence in the context of a comprehensive age-appropriate curriculum."

Of course, while pro-abstinence-education groups say of their programs: "They are holistic. They include relationship-building skills and medically accurate discussions of sexually transmitted diseases and contraception," Ohio has made itself ineligible for the funds by taking this approach, showing that "abstinence plus" just ain't so. The relationship building skills are focused entirely on maintaining virginity and the medically accurate information is entirely about scaring these kids. Other medically accurate information is not included in these programs.

Another way to think of it is that just as with science and civics, we're teaching children not just knowledge that they need now, but knowledge they need for a lifetime. By focusing on Abstinence education we do nothing to prepare them for the lives they will actually lead, in which most of them will be normal people who will have sex lives just as surely as they will have careers and families. We don't send them into the workforce without a clue, why would we send them into their bedrooms that way?

Finally in my list, on Friday the Post reported on the revenue shortfalls faced by the new Board of Supervisors, and tries to portray the issue as a point of contention between our two boards. I would comment that since the School Board hasn't even yet voted on the budget, it is premature to suggest that we're bickering with the Supervisors over it. We all understand that this is going to be a tough year, and we're all going to do our best to work out the best possible budget for the kids and the county.

Belts on Buses

Last night's Health, Safety & Wellness meeting focused on the topic of seat belts on buses. Committee chairman Joe Guzman has been pushing for seat belts and stressing school bus safety for quite a while now, and I also believe that seat belts makes sense. After actually sitting in a seat belt-equipped bus however, I may need to rethink my position.

First though, some stats:

• A school bus is just about the safest place for a kid to be. Safer than teens driving themselves, safer than parents driving their kids, safer than kids who walk to school.
• The insurance cost on a school bus is less than for a car, even though a school bus is carrying dozens of people.
  
• The national school bus accident rate is 0.02 per 100 million miles traveled, compared to 0.94 for cars
  
• The National Transportation Safety Board is currently reviewing possible school bus seat belt recommendations and will release standards (or choose not to) this fall
  
• Our insurance carrier is pro-seatbelt but prefers we not do anything until NTSA makes recommendations
• 200 LCPS buses already have some sort of restraint system for use with Special Education students
• LCPS is on a 12-year cycle to replace school buses. We place orders every year for about 50-60 new buses. We are waiting until January to order next year’s buses to give the NTSA time to issue its findings.
  
• It will cost an additional $12-15K each to install new seats with 3-point anchors in each bus.
  
• Once seat belts are in place, 100% Enforcement is not really possible. Usage goes down with age... kindergarteners are better at following directions than High School seniors.

So how is it that school buses are so safe, without seatbelts? In two words: size and compartmentalization. First, a school bus is a very big, very heavy vehicle. In the words of Transportation Director Mike Lunsford, "in a collision with a school bus, a car or a pickup will lose every time. The danger comes from dump trucks and tractor-trailers." The second concept, "compartmentalization," means that the seats are tall, padded and placed close together. The result is that in a collision a child may be thrown, but will not have far to fly and will have a large, soft surface on which the force of impact is dispersed. Buses are designed well for front & rear impact, not so well for side impacts or roll-overs.

So after learning all of these facts and discussing the implications for an hour, we went outside and toured a brand new school bus with seat belts loaned to us by a manufacturer. I sat down in a seat and buckled in, just barely. I'll tell you this much: if we're going to insist on our kids sitting in these seats together, we'd better solve the childhood obesity problem FAST. I'm not an especially wide guy, but my butt had seat belt buckles poking me on both sides. The seats are designed to fit three across, but once these kids hit adolescence that's just not going to work.

No decision has been made, but my prediction is that unless the NTSB says it's safer to forgo the seat belts, you'll start seeing them on our buses for the 2008-2009 school year. Get ready kids.

Upcoming Committee Topics

With the arrival of August, we're back into committee meetings again after taking a short break. This is the ground floor of policy, if you want to influence how things are done, this is the place to be. By the time it gets to the full School Board meetings there isn't much chance of making major changes.

On Monday the Health, Safety & Wellness committee gets a deeper look at seat belts on school buses and on Tuesday the Curriculum & Instruction committee reviews No Child Left Behind. Most committee meetings are held at the Administration building in Ashburn, see the LCPS website for details.

School Bus Drivers & Drugs

Last night at the School Board’s Personnel Committee meeting, we discussed policies relating to random drug testing of our School Bus drivers. Most of our policies are derived directly from Federal law which applies to all holders of Commercial Drivers Licenses. I found out some interesting facts during the meeting, I thought I’d share them with you.

• Loudoun has about 550 bus drivers
• 10% of drivers are randomly tested for on-the-job alcohol use each year. This number is low because of our extremely low incidence of positive results.
• 50% of drivers are randomly tested for drug usage each year
• Mike Lunsford, Director of Transportation, estimates that on average we have only one positive result per year, typically for marijuana use
• Most employees who have tested positive have immediately resigned their positions. When LCPS is notified that an employee has tested positive, that person is immediately terminated from their position as a bus driver if they have not already resigned.
• In 15 years of testing, only one employee has ever challenged a termination as the result of a positive drug test. The appeal was not successful.

Committee members were joined by school board members Priscilla Godfrey and Robert DuPree, who are not on the committee but attended anyway as is common practice among many members. We spent about an hour learning the details of the testing procedures and about what happens after an employee has tested positive. The questions expressed concerns not only about doing everything we can to ensure the safety of our students but also about the needs of school employees, even as we are terminating them for use of illegal drugs.

No action was taken.

It was just an average Wednesday evening on the School Board.