Maryland Schools: Prince George's Unique Approach to School Management

School districts across the country are grappling with less funding to go around, but one of the largest districts in Florida and the country may have found a solution to its financial woes. The Orange County Public Schools district has launched an aggressive and comprehensive fundraising effort to pump more money into its cash-strapped schools. From Fuel My School to 5K runs, this school district is finding ways to pay for the type of learning experience it wants for its students.

In Search of Money

Orange County Public Schools recently announced ambitious fundraising efforts with a goal of $26 million in sight. According to the Orlando Sentinel, in addition to the fundraising plan, the district has an idea of how they want to spend the money they raise, citing a number of priorities where they would focus funding. Those areas included:

• Addition of a staff nurse to every Orange County school
• Affordable computers for low-income students with their sights set on college
• Tutors for every child who had the lowest scores on standardized state tests
• All-day pre-kindergarten programs for more effective early childhood education
• Literacy programs, including reading clubs for students
• Addition of more STEM opportunities at every grade level
• Additional centers for students requiring a daily location during suspensions
• Expansion of the City Year “Near Peer” mentoring program

While $26 million is the estimate to fully fund all of these programs, district officials are expecting to introduce the funding – and the new and expanded programs –

Chicago schools are in for some major changes, thanks to the introduction of Common Core Standards coming to many of the schools in the city. Drafted by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the Common Core Standards are an effort to make education standards more consistent from state to state. However, the rigors of the standards are also forcing school districts across the country devise to instructional strategies to bring students to the next level of learning. Chicago schools will be no exception in this endeavor, but the success of Common Core Standards in at least one of the city’s schools fuels efforts to improve education throughout Chicago Public Schools.

What are Common Core Standards?

The Common Core Standards were developed in response to the need for consistent educational standards that could effectively span state lines to impact schools throughout the country. The standards offer benchmarks that help ensure students are gaining the knowledge, experience, and education they need to succeed in college and the workplace. Common Core Standards are also designed to allow schools, districts, and states to share information and success stories to help other schools and districts find similar success for their students.

The Common Core Standards were not created to tell teachers how to teach, but those who have begun working with the standards explain that their curriculum and teaching style has been modified according to the new standards. Leslie Roach, a fifth-grade teacher in Chicago,

Nearly 20,000 students across the United States are about to see their classroom time get significantly longer. Five states are participating in a new project to improve the state of education in the U.S. At the core of the project is 300 additional hours of school time each year, which will be designed to improve learning outcomes and provide students with a wealth of supplemental learning opportunities. While many are hopeful the additional class time will bring U.S. students up to par with students across the globe, others are skeptical that simply extending the time students spend in school will really bring the quality of instruction and learning to the next level.

About the Time Collaborative

The new program, dubbed the “Time Collaborative,” is indeed a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Education, the Ford Foundation and the National Center for Time and Learning. According to CNN, the three-year initiative will involve 40 schools in the states of Colorado, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Tennessee. Each school will be responsible for adding the additional 300 hours in daily classroom time and number of days on the school calendar. For a school on a typical 180-day calendar, 300 hours breaks down to around 90 minutes of additional classroom time daily.

Reuters reports that funding for the new project will come from a variety of sources, including federal and state government. The National Center on Time and Learning and the Ford Foundation have also pledged around $3 million in

As more interested parties weigh in on ways to raise the bar on the standard of public education in the United States, a notable equal-rights organization has now found its voice. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has recently issued a report that focuses on four primary areas of improvement that should be addressed by the public education system today. The recommendations focus primarily on what it will take for the students of today to succeed in the global marketplace of the 21^st century.

This video reports on one of the NAACP's initiatives to reform public education.

About “Finding Our Way Back to First”

The NAACP report, titled, “Finding Our Way Back to First: Reclaiming World Leadership by Educating All America’s Children,” identifies some of the solutions necessary for providing high-quality education to all children in the United States. The report was drafted in response to concerns that the U.S. is losing its competitive edge in the education spectrum on a global scale.

“If America is going to lead the world in this century the way we did the last, we must lead the world again in education,” the website for the NAACP states.

The Miami Herald lists four basic areas of focus outlined in the NAACP report, including:

• Improving kindergarten preparedness through effective preschool programs
• Improving teacher training for more effective classroom instruction
• Longer school