Happy Monday blog readers! The first two weeks of the school year are usually jam-packed with news, and this weekend was no exception.

 

Local

The Bellevue teacher strike is over—A week and a half after the start of school, the Bellevue Education Association finally settled their contract agreement yesterday afternoon. Teachers will receive a 5 percent increase in pay over the three-year contract and on top of state cost-of-living increases.

 

A lingering sticking point had been the district's use of a common curriculum, which prescribes what is taught in core classes and at what pace. District officials said Friday they had accepted the teachers' request for flexibility to change daily lesson plans without prior approval.

 

New Market Skills Center might expand to neighboring counties—This powerhouse of the Washington Career and Technical Education world may extend its forces into Grays, Lewis and Pacific counties.

 

The skills center has received a $60,000 grant from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to look into providing programs in those counties and is scheduled to deliver a report on the potential expansion by June.

 

National
No Child Left Behind Act reports gains in elementary and middle school, but high schoolers and college students are out of luck—Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling recently announced that, as a country, we’ve done a relatively good job raising test scores for elementary and middle school students. Recent high school graduates and college students, however, continue to need remedial coursework before they can pursue their degrees.

In fact, a new study calculates, one-third of American college students have to enroll in remedial classes. The bill to colleges and taxpayers for trying to bring them up to speed on material they were supposed to learn in high school comes to between $2.3 billion and $2.9 billion annually!

 

Teacher shortages are so bad, some states are hiring foreigners—Thought the U.S. couldn’t outsource teaching talent? Think again. The Gulf Coast (and many other parts of the country) is currently hiring Filipino teachers to fill their high shortage teaching positions. Interestingly, the Dept. of Ed doesn’t monitor how many foreigners are working in American classrooms.

 

BUT! As far back as five years ago, the National Education Association estimated that up to 10,000 foreigners already were teaching U.S. students in primary and secondary schools, mainly to fill vacancies in math, science, foreign languages and special education. Surprised? So was I!