New school-lunch rules produce complaints, more trash, efforts to repeal them

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, the Obama administration's effort to mandate more fresh fruit, vegetables and whole grains into the diets of school children, has some uphill climbing to do and it's not just the kids who are complaining. Though, admittedly, they were the first. Sarah Gonzales of Agri-Pulse took a look at some rural school districts trying to implement the law in advance of the law's implementation deadline, to see how the new science-based standards were working in real lunchrooms. What she found were complaints from student athletes who thought they needed more calories and more options, and substantial increases of good food thrown in the garbage. They also got this parody of "The Hunger Games" from some ingenious Kansas kids:

Dawn Matthews, director of food service for the rural Camdenton school district in Missouri, serves 3,200 school lunches every school day to kids in every grade level from K-12. The new standards, drawn from recommendations from an independent panel of doctors, nutritionists and other experts, require better nutrition and allow schools to serve between 550-650 calories for students in K-5, 600-700 calories of students for 6th through 8th grades, and 750-850 for high school lunches. Agri-Pulse reporters explain that a daily lunch costs $2.10, but almost 60 percent of the meals are offered for free for a reduced price in this rural district. Matthews notes that participation in the program is dropping with the new menu in place.

Urban kids don't like the lunches, either, reports Vivian Yee of The New York Times. (NYT photo by Librado Romero: A Manhattan school where seventh-graders called vegetables "gross.") Even before the deadline for the act to be put into effect, Gonzales notes, Reps. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kans., and Steve King, R-Iowa, introduced the No Hungry Kids Act last month to repeal the new school guidelines. The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture also issued a recent policy statement saying the initial law was "well-intentioned, but falls short of providing a comprehensive policy for educating students in healthy living."

The results of the first few months of trial -- especially the waste -- have been "disheartening," said food director Matthews. It is also early. "I think it's going to evolve over time," said the chairman of Florida's Lake County School Board, Roseanne Brandeburg. "If you're in elementary school, and this is what you're going to be served, you're going to get used to it."

Agri-Pulse is subscription-only, but free trials are offered on its website.

Seminar will train journalists to analyze teacher readiness, registration ends Oct. 11

The National Education Writers Association is hosting an intensive day-long seminar to teach journalists how to analyze career readiness of teachers. The pressures of accountability increases the scrutiny faced by education colleges, and the seminar, "Ready to Teach: Rethinking Routes to the Classroom," will guide journalists through examination of "the growing efforts to revamp how aspiring educators are prepared for the classroom and how teacher-preparation programs are held accountable for results," NEWA says on its website.

The seminar will offer lessons on how to analyze federal education-school and teacher certification data, information about how schools are trying to reform and alternative programs designed to replace them, insights into the debate over new ways to evaluate teacher prep programs, perspectives from teachers about how ready they were for the classroom and tips from reporters who have successfully covered the topic.

The seminar will be Oct. 27 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the University of Minnesota's McNamara Alumni Center, and registration ends Oct.11. A tentative agenda can be found here. To RSVP, click here.

College graduates with no farm experience are turning to careers in agriculture

The number of farms in the U.S. increased by 4 percent from 2002 to 2007, according to the last Census of Agriculture, and recent college graduates seem to be fueling this trend by returning to the land, sometimes learning farming as they go, Natalie Kitroeff of The New York Times reports. Many don't have agriculture-related degrees, but became interested in farming through other means, including working in food service or supermarkets. Several work as farmhands, learning the trade through a workers' perspective.

Hearty Roots Community Farm, which raises vegetables in upstate New York, hired 10 farmhands this past season, none of whom had agriculture backgrounds, and all of whom are young, college graduates. Some such farmhands go on to establish their own farms. The newcomers to farming are helping increase the number of farms, which had been steadily declining since 1920. (NYT photo by Nathaniel Brooks: Hearty Roots farm crew manager Jordan Schmidt harvests beets)

Hiring college graduates with no experience can have drawbacks, Kitroeff reports. "Most of the people here who work for me are here for one season and then move on to other farms, and so that's actually the biggest challenge, Hearty Roots owner Ben Shute said. "Every year it's like training new people." But he added that having such an ambitious staff who want to own their own farms someday is a benefit because they are very willing to learn. (Read more)

Seven states with significant rural populations ask for No Child Left Behind waiver approval

Coast Guard Lt. Tom Pauser visits
a rural Alaskan classroom to give
safety training. (Coast Guard photo)

So far, the U.S. Department of Education has granted No Child Left Behind Act waivers to 33 states plus the District of Columbia. Seven additional states met the Sept. 6 deadline for the third round of exemptions from the law. Five of those states -- Alaska, Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota  and West Virginia -- are considered rural by the National Center for Education Statistics. Alabama and Hawaii have significant rural populations. This means, writes Education Week reporter Michele McNeil, that these applications ensure that the department's "experiment in awarding flexibility in exchange for certain education-improvement promises will play out in a diverse set of states with vastly different geographies and student populations."  This brings to 44 the number of states that have asked for flexibility in administering the law.

McNeil reports that those states hoping to win waiver approval have to agree to revamp "their teacher-evaluation systems, have to adopt college- and career-ready standards and tie state tests to them, and adopt a differentiated accountability system that focuses on 15 percent of their most troubled schools. In return, states will no longer have to face the 2014 deadline for bringing all students to proficiency in math and reading, and their schools will no longer face NCLB-law sanctions such as providing school choice. District officials also will have more freedom to move around federal Title I money for disadvantaged students." (Read more)

Lesser-educated white people, especially women, are living shorter lives, study finds

The life expectancy of white people without a high school diploma fell from 1990 to 2008, with women losing the most, an average of five years, according to a new University of Illinois at Chicago study. These demographics (older and less educated) are disproportionately rural.

The average life expectancy for white women without a high-school diploma was 73.5 years, compared to 83.9 for those with a four-year college degree or more. White men who did not fionish high school are living an average of 67.5 years, compared to 80.4 for those with a four-year degree or more.

"The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered possible explanations, including a spike in prescription-drug overdoses among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less-educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least-educated Americans who lack health insurance," reports Sabrina Tavernise of The New York Times.

"Some cautioned that the results could be overstated because Americans without a high school diploma — about 12 percent of the population, down from about 22 percent in 1990, according to the Census Bureau — were a shrinking group that was now more likely to be disadvantaged in ways besides education, compared with past generations," Tavernise reports.

The study was published last month in the journal Health Affairs, and the National Academy of Sciences is investigating the decline to better determine its cause. (Read more)

Rural homeschooling increasing, for varied reasons

Homeschooling in the U.S. is on the rise in rural areas, and parents' reasons for the shift are varied, including educational excellence, practical training and religion, author Pamela Price reports for the Daily Yonder. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, more than 1.5 million children were estimated to have been homeschooled in 2007, the most recent year for which data are available, and at least one researcher estimated that number to have grown to 2 million in 2010.

The primary reason for homeschooling most commonly cited by NCES in 2007 was "a desire by parents to provide religious or moral instruction in tandem with traditional subjects." Other prevalent reasons included safety concerns, dissatisfaction with academic achievement in public schools, and special health concerns.

Homeschool Legal Defense Association senior counsel Scott Woodruff told Price that homeschooling is a popular option because of an increasing awareness that public schools are underperforming. "Many parents are saying, 'I'm going to take this, the education of my children, on myself," he said, adding that technology now gives parents more options for homeschooling. (Read more)

Study: Stress of poverty hurts kids' learning ability

A new theory, based on studies matching stress-hormone levels to behavioral and school readiness among children living in poverty, holds that such children have impaired learning abilities partly because of the "stresses of poverty," including crowded conditions, financial worry and lack of adequate child care. The theory is discussed in the September/October issue of Scientific American Mind.

New York University researcher Clancy Blair found that high levels of stress hormones "influence the developing circuity of children's brains, inhibiting such higher cognitive functions such as planning, impulse and emotional control and attention." Those abilities are "important for academic success." Finding ways to reduce poverty stressors in home and school environments could improve children's well being and help them be more academically successful, Blair says in a press release issued by the National Institutes of Health, which funded the study.

Monsanto giving $2.3 million to rural school districts

Monsanto, leading international producer of genetically engineered and herbicide-resistant seeds, announced this week it will give $2.3 million to rural schools during the 2012-2013 year through its "America's Farmers Grow Rural Education" program. The company is giving 176 rural school districts in 35 states grants of $10,000 to $25,000, which must be used for projects related to math and science.

Local farmers nominated the districts, and district officials completed online applications, Greta Weiderman of the St. Louis Business Journal reports. Math and science teachers from ineligible districts chose finalists, and a group of 26 prominent farmers across the country selected winners. (Read more) Click here to see if your local school district made the cut.

Rural districts face hurdles in applying for $400 million in federal Race to the Top grants

A little over two months remain for school districts to apply for $400 million in Race to the Top federal education grants. Michele McNeil of Education Week doubts that many rural districts will apply. "Not only is the 116-page application complex and demanding," she writes, but more than half the nation's districts are not eligible to apply on their own because their enrollments are too small. To apply, a district or a group of districts must have at least 2,000 students. Thus does the department continue to maintain its reputation as heavily favoring large, urban districts like the one in Chicago that was run by Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

"The latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that 47 percent of the nation's school districts had fewer than 1,000 students in 2009-10, McNeil writes. "Another 24 percent had between 1,000 and 2,499 students. . . . More than half of the nation's schools have fewer than 2,000 kids. And so these districts already face big hurdles in applying for the money." (Read more)

Is your district applying? Why or why not?

UPDATE, Aug. 20: The Department of Education will hold a webinar for potential applicants from noon to 3 p.m. ET. Space is limited, registration is required, and preference is given to school districts. Perhaps your district would let you sit in. For more information, click here.

As the nation's population shifts, Midwest's schools shrink and communities suffer

As more Americans have left Midwestern communities in recent years, those places have lost the vitality and life of more than 2,100 public schools. As a result, Steve Rich of USA Today reports, school districts and whole communities have scrambled to survive. From 2006-07 and 2010-2011, according to a USA Today analysis of U.S. Department of Education data, the population gains were largely in California, Texas and Arizona, which added 1,133 schools.

The loss is not just physical. The mass closings, which often see students moved to other buildings in a district, can affect home prices and businesses and often take an emotional toll on residents. "It's like losing the soul of the community," said Terry Ryan, vice president for Ohio Programs & Policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a center focused on education.

Further analysis of the data, writes Rich, found much of the Midwest's school loss came in three states: Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio. The schools that closed during the five years studied had served nearly 1.5 million students. 
(Read more)

As schools prepare to follow new federal lunch rules, fruit and vegetable snack program up for debate

Bloomberg photo by Ian Waldie

As students and teachers return to school, food-service directors are working to implement the new federal school lunch regulations that take effect Oct. 1 -- a story for any local news outlet, since it affects almost every student.

Meanwhile, another school food program is up for debate. Congress is deciding whether frozen, canned and dried produce should be included in the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program. House Republicans say yes, to save money and make a wider range of options available year round. But the Senate is pushing to keep the program limited to fresh fruit and vegetables only. The argument — or food fight, as Dina ElBoghdady of The Washington Post calls it — has trade and other groups weighing in.

"If the goal is to expand and improve upon childhood nutrition, it doesn't make sense to limit the kinds of fruit and vegetables that schools serve," said Corey Henry, a spokesman for the American Frozen Food Institute. "Let the schools decide." But Sandi Kaur, acting director of nutrition services at the California Department of Education, disagrees, saying "it's the fresh that makes this program unique."

The program allows schools to distribute fresh fruit and vegetables as snacks to students and has "raised consumption in participating schools by a quarter-cup per day, or 15 percent," ElBoghdady reports. "The increase did not contribute to weight gain, suggesting that the fruit and vegetables replaced other foods." Last year, USDA spent $150 million to pay for the snacks for 3 million children. (Read more)

Kansas program forgives student loans for those who move to struggling rural communities

UPDATE, Sept. 4: Julianne Couch wrote a nice feature story for the Daily Yonder about the program.

Click on map to view larger version

Rural areas across the country could learn from Kansas about how to repopulate and revive economically struggling communities. The state started its Rural Opportunity Zones program last year in 50 rural counties: mostly poor, agricultural communities that had lost about 10 percent of their population since 2000. If college graduates move to some of those areas (with stars on map) for at least five years, $15,000 of their student loans are forgiven.

Hillsboro Development Corp. Executive Director Clint Seibel told Benjamin Reeves of International Business Times that rural Kansas needs more young people. "We've done a great job educating our young people in rural America and then we buy them a suitcase and send them to a major university and never see them again," Seibel said. The program draws about one new applicant per day. Almost 75 percent of applicants, aged 25 to 35, meet program requirements, and most are from Kansas, with a large portion coming from Nebraska, Oklahoma and Colorado. But others have come from California, New York and Florida.

Some in the region are opposed to the program, including the Jefferson City, Mo., News Tribune's editorial board, who said the program offers no direct financial incentives and worries it will use tax dollars to supplement loan repayments. It called the program "inequitable and elitist." Reeves reports many local residents in Kansas' Rural Opportunity Zones "resent the encroachment of those they perceive as overeducated outsiders." The opposition has led the state's lawmakers to cut the program's budget by $250,000. (Read more)

Physician group wants milk out of school lunches

A nonprofit group that promotes a vegan diet is calling on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to recommend that Congress remove milk from school lunches because it is contributing to childhood obesity. (Photo by Kathleen Flynn, Tampa Bay Times)

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine calls milk an "ineffective placebo" and says a large body of research shows that drinking dairy milk doesn't improve bone health or prevent fractures in children. The group also says milk is "the number one source of saturated fat in children's diets," Feedstuffs reports. "We are asking Congress and the USDA to put children's interests above the interests of the dairy industry," said Susan Levin, PCRM's nutrition education director. She said focusing on milk as the most important source of calcium in children's diets "distracts schools and parents from foods that can actually build bones, like beans and leafy greens."

National Milk Producers Federation President and CEO Jerry Kozak said in a statement, "Milk is the single largest contributor of nutrients in kids' diets," including calcium, potassium, phosphorus, protein and vitamins A, D and B12. (Read more)

Got marquee? This arts idea is downright poetic

Many a small town worth its salt has a movie theater marquee waiting for some terrific homebred poetry to entertain and enlighten the masses, and an arts alliance in need of a good community involvement idea. Thanks to some bright folks in Stevens Point, Wis., and to the marquee value of having a daily blog as well-read as the Daily Yonder, here it is: The Haiku Marquee Project, in which the state's student body -- from pre-school to high school -- has been asked to submit haikus for display at the town's Fox Theater this fall. (Yonder photo)

Reads the release in the Stevens Point Journal: "This is a cooperative venture between the Arts Alliance of Portage County, the Sanders family, which owns the Fox Theater, and the Woodrow Hall Jumpstart Award. The two haiku will be posted on the marquee each month, and 10 honorable-mention poems will be displayed in the Fox Theater show window. Haiku should consist of three lines and no more than 17 syllables. Poems must be the original work of the poet."

Qualified? Interested? Poets may submit no more than three haiku to: Haiku Marquee, Fox Theater, 1124 Main St., Stevens Point, WI 54481; or email them to jimpollock@charter.net. The deadline for submissions is Sept. 14. Include your name, address, phone number and, if you are a student, grade level.

Study: Rural schools employ more new teachers, who are usually less effective in the classroom

Schools in rural and poor areas, as well as those with a high number of minority students, employ a higher percentage of beginning teachers than schools without those characteristics, according to new research from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. (Boomer Highway blog photo)

The research shines a light on a conundrum known to most educators: The first years of one’s teaching career provide vast opportunities for professional growth, but new teachers have fewer experiences to draw on in plan­ning lessons, managing classrooms and creating assessment strategies.

Thus, authors Douglas Gagnon and Marybeth Mattingly write, "Beginning teachers are typically less effective than their more experienced colleagues, as mea­sured by student achievement gains. In addition, beginning teachers are more likely to leave the profession than those who have weathered at least a few years in the classroom. Thus, employing a large percentage of beginning teachers is costly both to a district and students."

The inescapable conclusion: The percentage of beginning teachers is an important dimension of school quality. Gagnon is a doctoral candidate in education at the University of New Hampshire and research assistant at the Carsey Institute, and Mattingly is director of research on vulnerable families at Carsey and research assistant professor of sociology at UNH.

3,000 agricultural groups warn Congress that looming 2013 budget cuts will 'devastate' sciences

About 3,000 agricultural, crop and soil-science organizations have joined forces to warn Congress that any automatic budget cuts set for January of 2013 will have devastating effects on what is called the "nondefense discretionary (NDD) community," especially research and education funding for food, agriculture, and environmental sciences, Agri-Pulse reports today.

The American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of Americ, and the Soil Science Society of America led the charge. In a letter sent to all members of Congress today, the groups' leaders urged lawmakers to adopt a “balanced approach to deficit reduction that does not include further cuts to NDD programs." NDD programs represent a small and shrinking share of the federal budget and of our overall economy, the groups wrote, equal to just 3.4 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product in 2011. For a copy of the letter, go here.

Weekly editors' group gives top awards to publisher from South Dakota, editor from Nova Scotia

The International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors concluded its annual conference last weekend at Western Washington University in Bellingham by giving one of its stalwarts the organization's top award and recognizing some of the best editorial writing in weeklies in 2011.

Tim Waltner, publisher of the Freeman Courier in South Dakota, won the Eugene Cervi Award, which honors an editor who has consistently acted in the conviction that good journalism begets good government, and for adhering to the highest standards of the craft. Waltner became editor of the Courier in 1977, and he bought it in 1984. His son Jeremy is now editor, and both of them have been president of ISWNE. "I strongly believe that aggressive but fair news reporting and bold opinion writing are at the heart of the mission of a community newspaper," he said in response to the award, named for the late editor of the old Rocky Mountain Journal. Waltner is on the advisory board of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, publisher of The Rural Blog.

The Summer 2012 edition of Grassroots Editor, the organization's quarterly, has six tributes to Waltner and copies of every award-winning editorial in its annual Golden Quill editorial contest, in which a winner and a Golden Dozen are honored. This year's Golden Quill went to Vernon Oickle of the Lunenberg County Progress Bulletin of Nova Scotia, who "spent months digging into why and how the local school board failed to inform the public about its review process on potential school closures and ignored its duty to engage the public in discussion about the issue," the citation says. "It took months to get the relevant emails and the board wanted to charge hundreds of dollars for the records. The paper prevailed and did not have to pay for the information because the emails were of vital public interest. The outcome of Oickle’s battle was that the board was fired by the Department of Education. Additionally, the provincial legislature created additional powers for the minister of education to review and remove school boards." The quarterly has a full account from Oickle.

The Golden Quill winners were Melissa Hale-Spencer of the Altamont Enterprise in New York; Paul MacNeill, publisher of the Eastern Graphic on Prince Edward Island; Missy Layfield of the Island Sand Paper in Fort Myers Beach, Fla.; Ross Connelly of The Hardwick Gazette in Vermont; Robert Trapp of the Rio Grande Sun in Española, N.M.; George Brown of the Ponoka News in Alberta; Peter Weinschenk of The Record-Review in Abbotsford, Wis.; Mo Mehlsak of The Forecaster in Falmouth, Maine; Jim Painter of the West Valley View in Avondale, Ariz.; Joan Plaxton of The Valleyview Valley News in Valleyview, Alberta; and David Giffey, former editor of the Home News in Spring Green, Wis.

School board, ACLU compromise on Commandments display by using history book page

In what could become a model for other rural school districts, a compromise has been made in Virginia concerning display of the Ten Commandments. Richard Simon of the Los Angeles Times reports a page from a history textbook which shows the commandment tablets and credits the religious text as playing a role in the "roots of democracy" will replace a framed copy of the commandments in a high school in Giles County (Wikipedia map).

The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia sued the school board, alleging violation of the separation of church and state, but applauded the compromise. The textbook page is titled "Roots of Democracy," shows the tablets and states: "The values found in the Bible, including the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus, inspired American ideas about government and morality." It also lists other influences on America, including Greek democracy and the Magna Carta.

Though the Liberty Counsel, which represented the school board, was also happy with the compromise, it must be approved by a federal judge. (Read more)

Rural principal, urban school executive set webinar on implementing new Common Core Standards

The principal of a rural high school in the middle of the country will be one of two presenters in a July 11 webinar on how local schools can implement the new Common Core Standards for education. Tracey Lamb, principal of Fulton County High School in Hickman, Ky., on the Mississippi River, will present along with Steve Gering, chief leadership officer of the Chicago Public Schools.

The webinar, from 2 to 3 p.m. EDT, is sponsored by Education Week and the Success for All Foundation, and is further underwritten by The Wallace Foundation. It will be moderated by Catherine Gewertz, assistant editor of Education Week. The webinar is free but registration is required. Fore more information and a link to registration, click here.

Five more states get No Child Left Behind waivers

Five additional states have received waivers from the federal government from key parts of the No Child Left Behind Act. They are Virginia, Arkansas, Missouri, South Dakota and Utah, making the total number of states with waivers 24, with 13 more states and Washington, D.C. waiting for approval.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said during a conference call today that "these states have joined in a nationwide movement toward state-led education reform," and that "their plans are the product of bold, forward-thinking state and local leaders who have moved beyond the tired old battle and partisan bickering to roll up their sleeves and start working together." He also said that the leadership displayed in these states has been "simply remarkable," and prove that more leaders are taking a "much more holistic and comprehensive view of college and career readiness" that is moving beyond a test-driven assessment system.