Friday, April 05, 2019




Pledging $15m, Boston Mayor calls universal pre-K a ‘game-changer’

All the studies show that pre-K teaching has no educational benefit. See here. Finland does not start kids at school until age 7 and they have famously good results. Early starts are just expensive child-minding.  But it gives mothers a break so there are votes in it

Boston will fully fund prekindergarten for 4-year-olds within five years, fulfilling a 2013 campaign promise by Mayor Martin J. Walsh to provide quality early education for some of the city’s youngest residents.

“This is a game-changer for the young people of our city,” Walsh said Tuesday, surrounded by school administrators and representatives from community groups set to partner with the city to extend pre-K programming.

If completed, the long-awaited initiative would put Boston on par with other major cities in the Northeast that offer educational programs to all of their 4-year-olds.

Walsh said the city will direct $15 million from next year’s budget, which begins July 1, into a “Quality Pre-K Fund” that will be used over the next five years to pay for high-quality seats at city schools and community groups that have partnered with the city.

High-quality pre-K programming is led by teachers who have degrees in early childhood education and earn the same starting salary whether they work for the public school system or community groups; the programming must be accredited and follow national curriculum models, with appropriate teacher-to-student ratios.

The city and community groups already provide high-quality pre-K programming to almost 3,200 children. Officials have identified the need for the additional 750 high-quality seats — a deficit that has narrowed by half under Walsh — to ensure that all 4-year-olds have access to the same level of programming.

“Boston will make sure we don’t forget and don’t leave behind our 4-year-olds in their education,” the mayor said. “It’s about ensuring every pre-K seat we offer is a high-quality one.”

Laura Perille, the interim schools superintendent, said Tuesday that the funds will expand public schools’ partnership with community groups and ensure parents have options for their children closer to home with the same quality education students receive elsewhere in the city.

“It is this mixed delivery model that allows us to meet all of our families with what they need,” she said at the announcement at ABCD Walnut Grove Head Start, which offers high-quality preschool in Dorchester.

High-quality pre-K programming was a staple in Walsh’s 2013 campaign for mayor. In the years since, though, securing funding for the initiative has proven to be more difficult than projected. Walsh first floated the idea of selling City Hall to pay for programming, though that idea never took root. Later, Walsh’s request for state approval to use surplus funds derived from Boston tourism tax revenue went nowhere.

Boston fell behind cities such as Philadelphia, which imposed a tax on sugary drinks to pay for early education in 2017. New York City’s prekindergarten program, which started in 2014, now enrolls 70,000 youngsters, and that city’s mayor is seeking to expand early childhood education to 3-year-olds.

Boston wasn’t far off: A report the mayor commissioned found in 2016 that 90 percent of the city’s 6,000 4-year-olds in any given year attend pre-K, either through the public system or at private schools. But not all of them receive high-quality programming.

The $15 million in funding will close that gap over the next five years, setting up classrooms with properly trained and compensated staff in schools and community organizations across the city.

Walsh said he would then sustain funding for the programming under the yearly public schools budget, which is projected to top $1.3 billion next year.

“Universal pre-kindergarten is going to happen,” the mayor said. “We couldn’t wait any longer, we had to do this.”

John J. Drew, the president of ABCD, who has been advocating for early education for 50 years, welcomed the announcement, saying, “We have all been striving . . . to bring together the elements that will allow us together to close the gap.”

Those who attended the announcement and spoke of the need for the programming included Chaokee Calderon, who said she and her husband work full time, and found it difficult to help their 4-year-old daughter, Khailee, with the “little things” to improve her education. So she took her to the ABCD Head Start Walnut Grove in Dorchester, a city partner, where she has excelled over the last seven months, Calderon said.

“It has helped my daughter get ready for school; it’s also helped my daughter and me become full partners in her education,” she said. “In just seven months, it has helped this shy child turn into a little social butterfly.”

SOURCE 






What Is the Biggest College Scandal of All?

The seething anger Americans feel over the college admission scandal with wealthy and well-connected families using money, influence and cheating to bump their kids up in line so they get accepted into elite schools is well justified. Yet this scheme is small potatoes compared to the real scandal on college campuses from coast to coast. That scam is how much universities are charging families once they do get in.

College tuition, room-and-board costs can now exceed $50,000 to $70,000 a year. This is a massive financial hardship for the families that actually pay out of pocket the $200,000 to $300,000 tab for a four-year degree and for those who get loans. The debt for a 22-year-old graduate can easily exceed $100,000. Meanwhile, the size of the student loan debt nationwide has reached some $1.5 trillion.

As one solution, leading voices in the Democratic Party — ranging from Sens. Bernie Sanders to Kamala Harris to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — are touting "free college" or even more guaranteed student loans for families. The worst idea of all is student loan forgiveness of up to $1 trillion. This would only shift the costs of expensive colleges onto the back of taxpayers — many of whom never even went to college.

There are two glaring problems with free college.

First, instituting free college tuition does nothing to incentivize college administrators to lower costs. Instead, it simply transfers the burden of paying for higher education from kids whose families have relatively high incomes to general taxpayers, many of whom didn't go to college at all. As education economist Richard Vedder of Ohio University has pointed out, free college would be one of the most regressive public policies of modern times.

Second, we know from other industries, such as health care, that the bigger the government role, the more costs escalate.

There is a much more equitable and practical solution to lowering the high cost of universities — especially at the most expensive and elite schools. The federal government could incentivize colleges with high tuitions to lower its costs by tapping into its tax-deductible massive endowments.

It turns out that endowments have exactly the opposite effects on tuition that one might expect: The higher the endowment, the higher the tuition.

The feds have the leverage to reverse this.

The forthcoming 2019 oversight report of the U.S. Department of Education, conducted by nonprofit OpenTheBooks.com, discovered that "the 25 colleges and universities with the largest endowments in the country reaped $6.9 billion in Department of Education (ED) funding despite holding a quarter-trillion in existing assets, collectively."

The University of Notre Dame, Princeton, Yale, Harvard and other elite schools such as Duke and the University of Southern California can't make a plausible case for the need for billions of dollars annually in federal subsidies when these schools' bank accounts hold hundreds of millions — and in many cases billions — of dollars of funds.

Without any new gifts, most if not all Ivy League endowments could fund full-ride scholarships for all financially needy undergraduate students for the next half-century. With continued gifts to universities, tuition could practically be free to students forever without the endowments running dry.

The way to cut tuitions, starting with the most expensive colleges, is to require these schools to lower its tuition each year by 5-10 percent and make up the difference by either cutting costs (that's easy) or using endowments to subsidize the out-of-pocket costs paid by students and/or taxpayers.

We are not fans of price controls. But if universities are going to rely on taxpayers to subsidize its exorbitant costs, it makes sense for the public to hold these schools to the high standards it says it holds its students to. If the institution doesn't take federal money, it can do as it wishes.

Lower college tuitions are easily achievable for every family in America, and unlike our failed multi-billion-dollar student loan programs or populist slogans such as "free college tuition," this strategy won't cost taxpayers a dime.

SOURCE 






Principals at some of Australia's most exclusive private schools are paid MORE than the prime minister - with some earning well over half a million dollars a year

The lucrative salaries of principals at Australia's elite private schools have been revealed - with some earning more than the prime minister.

Financial reports of eight top Queensland schools were tabled in the state parliament on Monday, showing parents were paying tens of millions of dollars in fees for their children.

Toowoomba Grammar School headmaster Peter Hauser topped the list in Queensland, making $537,000 in 2018 - a pay rise of $34,000 compared to the previous year.

Mr Hauser's salary pales in comparison to that of some principals in other states.

Former Kambala Girls High School principal Debra Kelliher was earning $650,000 per year before she resigned in 2017, the ABC reported. The school, at Rose Bay in Sydney's affluent eastern suburbs, charges up to $35,000 per year for each student's tuition.

Brisbane Grammar School headmaster Anthony Micallef's pay dropped from 2017 but he still pulled in $513,000, while Brisbane Girls Grammar School principal Jacinda Euler made $509,326 in 2018.

The school leaders each make more than Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk's annual salary of $399,955, and they are just behind Prime Minister Scott Morrison's yearly remuneration of $538,000. 

State school principals with the highest salaries make about $171,000 per year.

According to the report tabled in parliament, Toowoomba Grammar School had a decline in enrolments in 2018. The shrinking roll meant income from fees dropped from $22.6million in 2017 to $22.3million in 2018.

The school was first opened more than 150 years ago and has 1180 students.

Brisbane Grammar School's 1700 students brought in $45million in school fees in 2018, while Brisbane Girls Grammar School had 1360 students paying $32million in contributions.

SOURCE  



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