and video about the Million Father March. In the March parents wind up going to the kids school on the first day of classes.

six schools in the local area that are loosing after school money. Around 450 kids are going to affected by this.

Center for Teaching Quality out with a report looking at teacher residencies. The report looks at urban teacher residencies.

Cities they look at are Chicago and Boston. They both have a separate program.

Over half of the people in this program are minorities, but the amount of people in the two programs looked at is small.

Students in the program work with a mentor for one year then they get to teach a classroom for one full year while still getting mentoring. Way longer than the Teacher For America program that I do like, but this is a better program.

After three years in the program at least 90% of students in the program still teach. That is what we want to see in program.

They do include details of the key elements of each program which is great.

This is certainly a program that more schools districts and colleges are going to have join together in creating so we can improve quality of teachers.

The report starts off with an interesting chart right from the start. It shows that Lawyers and Doctors top off in salary way faster than a teacher does. The teacher does not peak until almost retirement age. It is a problem that is going to have to be fixed.

What the author of the report Jacob Vigdor wants to see is higher pay up front with smaller raises as the years go on. I want that too, but you also need a tough firing policy to get rid of the bad teachers though.

The report gets into detail on just the state of North Carolina. Under Jacob and his plan a teacher would earn at least 7 grand more per year to teach for a first year teacher. Under his plan a teacher over 30 years would make 682,000 vrs 620,000 under current North Carolina pay rules.

Imo his salary increases over time are just too small and need to be increased.

I am not so sure that his plan would fully work, but it is something to look at.

looking at the state of Texas and the APIP program they had that paid out cash for high test scores. The program started out in 1996 in Dallas with 10 schools and then moved onto 40 schools in the state.

Students in this program could wind up getting 100-500 bucks for a passing score of three or better on an AP exam. Private donors pay 65-75% of the total cost of this program.

They include a bar chart looking at just the schools in Dallas. A massive jump in AP exams taken and passed occurred 1996. Then through the rest of the years looked at, through 2006, showed a long term trend of more AP exams taken and passed.

In another bar chart they showed a good increase in the amount of students getting over 1100 points on the SAT exam after three years of the program adoption.

The person behind the report does say that students in APIP schools do not have graduation rates better than schools that are not in this program though.

I do agree with the author that a more long term look at long term effects of this program is in order. Do students at these school that have taken AP exams go to college and graduate faster than students in schools that do not have this program.

on teacher jobs in the cross hairs due to the slumping economy.