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Barack Obama is not the first U.S. president to address school students. George Bush did it in 1991. However, it is the first time that the Department of Education has attempted to turn a presidential speech into the centerpiece of a nationwide lesson plan.

The speech is scheduled for Tuesday at noon Eastern time. A live broadcast will be aired on C-SPAN and via the Internet at the White House web site.

The way the Department of Education has presented the speech to educators is raising eyebrows. Rather than simply inform schools that the speech is being offered, the department has published a proposed lesson at its web site. Among the proposed points of discussion for teachers are the suggestions that students discuss “how will he inspire us” and “how will he challenge us.”

Predictably, there is now a political uproar; Republican politicians are calling for boycotts. The Republican party chairman in Florida claims it is an attempt to “spread President Obama’s socialist ideology.”

There is nothing political in the lesson plan and the speech is supposed to be only an inspirational talk encouraging students to work hard and develop their potential. However, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is a political appointee and by encouraging the nation’s teachers to turn the president’s speech into a lesson plan, he has changed the event into something controversial.

Duncan should know that especially in the first few days of the school year, teachers have plenty of plans already in place. And putting schools in the center of the current over-heated political climate is not helping anyone other than the president’s political opponents. Unfortunately, schools too often become the center of political debates where students’ needs are ignored.

It’s hard to read this as anything other than a sad state of affairs for education in America.

The City College of San Francisco is offering to sell sponsorships of cancelled classes for $6,000. These are classes that had been offered in the past but were cut due to dramatic cuts by the state of California. (See California University System Shows Strain of Budget Cuts)

The college may cut as many as 800 classes this year. The sponsorships are being offered for $6,000. According to the school’s chancellor, Don Griffin, the school would not make a profit; the fee would cover the schools cost to pay the teacher.

At first, the school considered a plan would have allowed corporations to have their names appear on the class. Fortunately, the school’s boards raised their voices against this part of the plan. The school is now selling the classes anonymously. So far, eight sponsors have stepped up.

The results are in for the high school senior class of 2009 and they’re basically “flat.”

Math scores stayed the same from the year before, with an average score of 515 (on a scale of 200 to 800).

In reading, there was a slight decline of just one point in critical reading (from 502 lat year to 501 this year) and in writing (from 494 to 493).

The only area where the SAT test showed any growth was in the number of students taking the test and the percent who were minorities. More than 1.5 million students (1,530,128) took the SAT, the highest total ever.

The percent who are classified as minorities was also up, to a total of 40 percent of all test takers. And the number of students who report English is not their first language was 25 percent; ten years ago, only 18 percent of the students could make that claim.

For more statistics, see the College Board’s announcement.

The latest ACT test scores were just revealed and for the most part, the scores show students did about the same as last year. Unfortunately, that’s not very good, especially in the sciences and math.

Only 28 percent of the ACT scores were at the level considered acceptable to begin college-level biology. For math, only 42 percent made the grade. The scores were better for English composition, with a 67 percent passing grade. and in reading with 53 percent.

The composite scores — combining English, mathematics, reading, and science — showed a slight improvement this year, with 23 percent achieving college-readiness. That’s up one percent from the class of 2008. This article in Education Week explains that the test-score cutoffs used to predict college-readiness predict a 75 percent chance of a student’s likelihood of earning a C or better.

The report from does help answer one question facing high schoolers, who need to choose between the ACT and SAT. The ACT test continues to gain in popularity; 1.48 million high school seniors took the test in 2009, which is about equal to the number taking the SAT. The ACT has been gaining in popularity, up 25 percent over four years.

If your child’s school is at the forefront of new technology, you have — or soon will — see a smart board in the classroom. These large screens can replace the traditional chalk board with a computer controlled display that is interactive. Teachers can display lessons they created on a PC. And students can touch on the screen to select an answer. No chalk and no chalk dust. But, a pretty sizable bill.

Smart boards cost about $5,000 each and require training sessions for teachers. Perhaps more important, they change the type of learning in the classroom to put a computer based lesson at the center of teaching.

Is this the best use of your school’s budget? Here’s an interesting article from a parent who has seen his school district spend $172,000 on the technology and is not happy with what he’s seen. The Stupid Board Needs A Dunce Cap

Until recently, new ebook initiatives have been focused on popular reading material. Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s eReader are used mainly for reading best sellers and other popular books.

Now, the spotlight is starting to focus on digital textbooks. One reason is an initiative from CK-12 Foundation, a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to jump starting the distribution of textbooks in electronic formats. The organization has commissioned textbooks on a variety of subjects and is now offering them for free download at its website.

The downloadable textbooks are designed in a way that allows teachers to customize the material to match the school’s curriculum — that’s why they’re being called FlexbBooks. To make this possible, the CK-12 Foundation is offering the books without the normal copyright restrictions that limit distribution of traditional textbooks.

The FlexBooks are being offered under a Creative Commons License, which is an alternative to traditional copyright licensing. It allows users to have free use of the material. It does prohibit anyone from re-selling the material without permission. But it also allows those who want to expand on the material to do so without charge. The intention is to allow teachers, students and parents to get more involved in how books are used in schools.

At the CK-12 website, you can download FlexBooks on just a few subjects. Right now, they have works on physics, chemistry, math and engineering. You can also begin using software from the foundation to create your own FlexBooks.

It is not clear if this is truly an altruistic endeavor. Perhaps the founders — who come from the Silicon Valley technology world — are giving away books in order to sell software at a later date. But for now, it is an experiment that could help bring down the cost of textbooks. And we’re going to keep an eye on it.

Try one out. It’s free.

Children with disabilities are more likely to receive corporal punishment than the general school population, according to a new study.

The report from the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch found that students with disabilities made up 18.8 percent of students who suffered corporal punishment at school during the 2006-2007 school year, although they constituted just 13.7 percent of the total nationwide student population.

Thirty states ban physical punishment, but twenty do not.

At least 41,972 students with disabilities were subjected to corporal punishment in US schools during that school year. The reports’ authors believe that their findings undercount the actual rate of physical discipline, since not all instances are reported or recorded.

For many years, the California public university system has been at the top-tier of public universities. With first-rate programs and tuitions that were lower than public colleges, even for out-of-state residents, the system has attracted the best and the brightest from around the world. That may be changing.

Budget cuts are forcing reductions in class offerings throughout the system at the same time that tuition and fees are rising. The cost of tuition and board for an out-of-state student is now on par with the most expensive private universities: over $49,000.

The reason is simple: the system will be receiving 17 percent less from the state of California this year than just 2 years ago.

Students are experiencing first-hand the impact of those cuts. Course offerings will be reduced by 10% in the coming fall term and the size of the average class will grow to about 60 students, which is 20% higher than it was just three years ago.

Some programs are being cut completely. UC Davis will stop offering a program that trained veterinarians to become professors. Some students find classes they need for their major are full and no alternative is available. Smaller cuts are being made across the board, such as reduced library hours. Faculty and staff are being required to take unpaid furlough days.

The LA Times web site has a lengthy story about the situation.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that the second round of stimulus funding for Title I, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and the Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program, totaling $11.37 billion, will be on its way to schools by Sept. 1. This schedule is about a month earlier than expected.

The first half was made available to states beginning April 1. So far, schools have been slow to spend those funds. According to eSchoolNews, as of July 24 only 21.8 percent of available funding had been spent.

Officials of several states have reported that the stimulus money saved the jobs of thousands of teachers. In Florida, it was estimated about 26,000 K-12 teaching jobs were saved; in Alabama, 2,600 education jobs were saved.

You can read the full story on eSchoolNews

After a pilot program found an alarming rate of STD (sexually transmitted disease) infection, officials in the Washington D.C. school system have decided to bring testing to all high schools in the upcoming school year.

Students will be brought to a mandatory 45-minute lecture and then given the option of providing urine samples for the tests. They will have the right to refuse. No parental consent is needed for the tests (it is legal for minors to have STD tests without parental notification throughout the U.S.).

During the pilot program, 3,000 students were tested and thirteen percent were found to have an infection. Out of the students offered the test in the pilot program, 68 pecent took the test and the rest opted out.

For more on this story, see The Washington Post

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