Chance Educational and Support Services, Inc.

August 31, 2010

Texas schools that cut bureaucratic costs by sharing services -- from accounting to transportation -- would get grants worth 10 percent of their savings under a plan Governor Rick Perry proposed on Tuesday.

Texas is expected to have to slash spending in its next two-year budget because its deficit is estimated at as high as $18 billion. The Republican governor said his proposal would increase how much money can be devoted to the classroom.

Furthermore, "These shared services create the economies of scale that benefit larger districts, while maintaining the individual attention available in smaller districts," Parry said in a statement.

The governor, who narrowly leads his Democratic rival, Houston's former mayor Bill White, in the polls, has decided to seek $830 million in federal education aid, according to local newspapers, including the Star-Telegram of Fort Worth.

That is how much Texas stood to receive from the $10 billion Congress enacted to help save 161,000 teaching jobs around the nation.

A Perry spokeswoman had no immediate comment.

Perry had at first spurned the funds because Texas was the only state that would be required to spend the same amount on its schools for three years in row. This obligation was crafted by a Texas Congressman who wanted to ensure the money would not be used for other purposes.

(Reporting by Joan Gralla; editing by Todd Eastham)

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March 13, 2010

President Barack Obama is promising parents and their kids that with his administration's help they will have better teachers in improved schools so U.S. students can make up for academic ground lost against youngsters in other countries.

A proposed overhaul of the education law championed by President George W. Bush will put the impetus for change on states, school districts and schools, Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. "We set a high bar, but we also provide educators the flexibility to reach it," he said.

At issue is the rewrite he intends to send Congress on Monday of the No Child Left Behind law that Bush signed in 2002. That law focused on accountability in the classroom, but has fallen short of its original goals.

The announcement's timing suggests Obama is looking beyond the health care debate in Congress, which caused him to delay a trip to Asia next week and threatens his party's electoral prospects in November.

February 7, 2010

By Dr. Kevin Fenton

EXCLUSIVE: INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR OF CDC ON HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC IN OUR COMMUNITY.

My nephew turns 16 this year. As a young American man, he faces a future that can hold promises of education, prosperity and success. As a young African American man, however, he and his peers face among the highest HIV risks in the nation.

Today, African Americans continue to have the highest rates of HIV in the United States.  Young African American men and women are severely affected, accounting for half of all new infections among those aged 13 to 29. Of these infections, more than half (55%) occur among young Black gay and bisexual men.

The reasons for these staggering statistics are many and complex. High prevalence of HIV and other sexually transmitted disease in Black communities as well as a range of economic and social factors including poverty, limited access to health care and discrimination, all combine to make young Black men and women more vulnerable to HIV...

January 10, 2010, 5:07AM

By Sarah Carr, The Times-Picayune

"In New Orleans schools, we now have multiple superintendents; we have multiple decision-makers; we have a highly decentralized landscape," said Andre Perry, CEO of the University of New Orleans' charter-school network. "Who is going to be the arbitrator? Who is going to be the convener? The mayor is a proxy for who the people trust. And in education we need a person we trust to make hard decisions right now."

The Times-Picayune interviewed all six of the remaining major candidates on education over the last week, and all speak in generally favorable terms about the direction of the schools. Each envisions an eventual return to a more local form of control. But only Nadine Ramsey said she wants at least some of the state-run schools returned within the next year. None favors a mayoral takeover of the schools -- at least not anytime soon.

Historically, New Orleans schools "have tended to thrive when the mayor has a greater presence, and tended to decline in the absence of that," Miron said. He added that there "is no institutional or political reason why schools and city governance should be so separate."

Much will depend on the disposition of the next mayor....

January 6, 2010

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama announced a $250 million initiative Wednesday to train math and science teachers and help meet his goal of pushing America's students from the middle to the top of the pack in those subjects in the next decade.

Obama also gave awards for excellence in teaching and mentoring to more than 100 educators — and joked about putting them to work.

"I believe so strongly in the work that you do," Obama said at a ceremony in the White House East Room. "And as I mentioned to some of you, because I've got two girls upstairs with math tests coming up, I figure that a little extra help from the best of the best couldn't hurt.

"So you're going to have assignments after this," he said. The audience laughed. "These awards were not free," he added.

Obama said teacher quality is the most important single factor that influences whether students succeed or fail in the "STEM" fields of science, technology, engineering and math. But, he said, U.S. students trail their peers around the world.

May 20, 2009

-David Parker Jr

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaches, the New Orleans public school system was devastated. A major U.S. city vanished beneath oil-slick waters, and nearly the entire population was carted away in buses, trucks, helicopters, cars, trains and whatever else could roll toward Houston, Atlanta or Little Rock. By the time the city reemerged, the State of Louisiana and its governing educational committees had vanquished the New Orleans Public School (NOPS) education system, fired all teachers and staff, and reorganized around the idea of charter schools.

But when the time came to open the doors, it quickly became apparent that there were not enough charter schools to accommodate all the students who were returning to the city. The state developed Plan B--creating a Recovery School District (RSD) to run alongside the charter schools. Taking control of 107 public schools that had already been deemed "failing" before Katrina, the state hustled to get campuses open as fast as students arrived....