9/03/2020  哈佛大学校园。美联社 本学年哈佛本科新生报告出炉，受访者中亚裔占29.1%、非裔占15.8%皆创哈佛历史新高。新生中41.3%来自美国东北部地区，57.5%受访者接受学校经济援助；近30%家庭收入超过25万元，高于95%美国家庭。 根据哈佛学生校报这份新生民调，由于疫情，哈佛本科生院转为全远程授课，创纪录20%录取学生最终决定推迟入学。 哈佛今秋优选允许新生住校园宿舍，大部分已安顿下来，近小部分在家远程学习。约76%新生回复了哈佛学生校报的电子邮件问卷调查，即1420名2024届新生中，1083名接受了民调。 Join us on Telegram: https://t.me/cinfoshare 与往年一样，今年新生大多数是白人、来自郊区富裕家庭。不过学生族裔比例有所变化。29.1%受访者称自己为亚裔，比去年飙升超过6%；南亚学生占4.8%；非裔学生比去年增加5%至15.8%；白人学生占49.8%，拉丁裔为13.4%。 63.3%受访者来自郊区，29%来自城市，剩下7.7%来自农村；10.8%受访新生称居住在美国以外地方，比去年11.8%有所减少。 哈佛今年学费比去年上涨4%，不包含食宿和其他费用的学费定为4万9653元。 约12%受访学生为「传承生」，即父母至少一人曾在哈佛读本科，比去年16.8%下滑；这批学生中53%父母年收入超过25万元。亚裔学生中传承生占约10.8%。今年自己为家中第一位上大学者从去年17.3%增加到22.8%。 8/25/2020 Schools Use Empty Classes for Expensive Day Care, and Parents Are Charged Twice. This Needs to End. By Lindsey Burke Normally when a business shuts its doors, it doesn’t still get to charge its customers for a product they can no longer access. It certainly doesn’t get to charge its customers twice for the privilege. Yet, that’s exactly what we’re seeing from some public school districts. They refuse to open their doors for in-person learning—citing safety risks—but they are able to open these same school buildings to charge overworked and tired parents for day care. This is double-dipping into parents’ pocketbooks, and it likely runs afoul of state constitutions. Even though they are not offering in-person instruction, parents (and all taxpayers) are required to pay taxes to pay for district schools. As frustrating as that may be for parents, some districts—including Fairfax County, Virginia; Howard County, Maryland; Gilbert, Arizona; and Durham, North Carolina—have decided to open up classrooms to groups of children, basically providing day care. The kicker? Parents must pay the public school to participate in these custodial programs. Howard County’s program costs $325 per week, per student; Gilbert’s, $160 per week. Durham, which is reopening public schools as “learning centers,” is charging families $140 per child, per week.  Offering serious and challenging mathematics to intellectually gifted students  APLUS教学中心 | 一对一辅导服务中心 | 申请咨询顾问中心 Fairfax is finalizing what it plans to charge, but the local ABC affiliate reported that families would be charged on a sliding scale, up to $1,472 per child per month. School districts created this artificial demand by keeping schools closed, and now districts are providing a “solution” that costs Americans more money. Districts effectively are double-dipping, enjoying tax revenue (despite being closed) and forcing families to fork over hundreds of dollars per week for child care. That’s profiting off the backs of parents who have already paid for “free” public schools. It also begs the question: If unions and district officials say it’s not safe to open schools for learning, why is it safe to open them for custodial care of students? And it may run afoul of state law. For example, as the Reason Foundation’s Corey DeAngelis points out, the Virginia Constitution reads: “The General Assembly shall provide for a system of free public elementary and secondary schools for all children of school age throughout the Commonwealth.” Virginia isn’t an outlier. All states require free public schools in their state constitutions. Charging between $140 and $325 per child, per week—the equivalent of $5,000 to $11,700 for 36 weeks of schooling—is a far cry from “free,” particularly when it comes on top of what families already are paying for these schools in taxes. Not that public schools are actually free in nonpandemic times either; they are simply free at the point of delivery.  Mathematics Enrichment for Intellectually Curious Learners In Fairfax County, which largely has failed to provide students any meaningful instruction or content online during the COVID-19 pandemic, local revenue ($10,791) added to state revenue ($3,242) means parents are financing more than $14,000 in revenue per pupil, per year, not including federal funding. Now the Fairfax school district is asking upward of an additional$13,000 to look after students while refusing to provide academic instruction this year. Instead of creatively figuring out new ways to tax their residents, school districts actually should help parents navigate the disruption they are facing from the pandemic. At the same time, state lawmakers should free up existing education dollars to follow students instead of school buildings they can’t access unless they pay even more money.  Taxpayers spend more than $700 billion annually on K-12 public schools. States should free up their share of those existing education dollars to follow students to learning options of choice, including pandemic pods, which provide instruction, care, and socialization for students. States should immediately provide education savings accounts to all families funded with 90% of what the state would have spent on the child in the public school system. Families currently are unable to access the public school they rely on and that they fund as taxpayers. Rather than districts’ double-charging families for what are supposed to be “free” public schools, states immediately should make education dollars student-centered and portable in the form of education savings accounts. That would allow families to control existing funding, and direct it to learning options—in-person, hybrid, or virtual—that are the right fit for their children. And it would put an end to district double-dipping. Lindsey M. Burke researches and writes on federal and state education issues as the Will Skillman fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation. 8/14/2020 If you had any doubt that hard-left ideologues run government school systems in many (most?) places, take a look at Fairfax County, Virginia's most populous county, with over a million residents, one of the richest counties in the United States with an average household income well over one hundred thousand dollars. The educrats who run the Fairfax public schools have advised parents there not to hire tutors or organize informal homeschool "pods" to replace the shuttered schools because some parents cannot afford to do so, and that would be "unfair."  Fairfax County (map credit: Home By School). I am not making this up. Here is a link to a memo sent to parents on August 7, with some key excerpts below: Across the country, many parents are joining together to engage private tutors (who are often school teachers) to provide tutoring or home instruction for small groups of children. While there is no systematic way to track these private efforts, it's clear that a number of "pandemic pods" or tutoring pods are being established in Fairfax County. We are aware of these tutoring pods, as well as some accompanying community concerns. To be clear, these instructional efforts are not supported by or in any way controlled by FCPS…. (snip) While FCPS doesn't and can't control these private tutoring groups, we do have concerns that they may widen the gap in educational access and equity for all students. Many parents cannot afford private instruction. Many working families can't provide transportation to and from a tutoring pod, even if they could afford to pay for the service. We have received some requests from parents who would like to cluster groups or pods of students together with a specific teacher. From both a logistical perspective, and in the interest of educational equity, FCPS cannot accommodate such requests. [emphases added] In other words, parents who strive to educate their children are being unfair to parents who don't because their children will have an advantage. This is insanity. By the same logic, parents who remain married and raise their children in intact families are being unfair to children whose parents cannot maintain their marriage, because many studies show that children with a mother and father at home do better. Taking the logic even farther, parents who don't become drug addicts are being unfair to children whose parents enslave themselves to heroin, crack, methamphetamine, or even alcohol. Everyone must descend to the lowest common denominator in the interest of "equity." After all, responsible behavior leads to "gaps" with the children of the worst parents. I wonder of the parents of Fairfax County, who tend to be more highly educated as well as richer than the national average, understand the insanity of the bureaucrats who run their taxpayer-funded schools. According to the 2010 Census, there are almost twice as many Asian-heritage residents as blacks (17.53% versus 9.17%). Do the Asian-heritage families — group that generally highly values education — support this notion of dumbing down their kids so they won't outperform other ethnicities? Hat tip: LaCorte News. By Communications and Community Relations AUGUST 07, 2020 Across the country, many parents are joining together to engage private tutors (who are often school teachers) to provide tutoring or home instruction for small groups of children. While there is no systematic way to track these private efforts, it’s clear that a number of “pandemic pods” or tutoring pods are being established in Fairfax County. We are aware of these tutoring pods, as well as some accompanying community concerns. To be clear, these instructional efforts are not supported by or in any way controlled by FCPS—for several reasons: President, Principal Loan Consultant, Leader Funding, Inc.  • These are purely private initiatives on the part of parents and families. Families have an absolute right to work together and pool resources to provide instruction or tutoring—just as they do to pool resources and provide private daycare, music lessons, or recreational activities for their children—but tutoring pods are not part of the public school system. • Under the terms of their contracts, FCPS teachers are allowed to provide tutoring services for reimbursement, but only as long as they meet these conditions:
 While FCPS doesn’t and can’t control these private tutoring groups, we do have concerns that they may widen the gap in educational access and equity for all students. Many parents cannot afford private instruction. Many working families can’t provide transportation to and from a tutoring pod, even if they could afford to pay for the service. We have received some requests from parents who would like to cluster groups or pods of students together with a specific teacher. From both a logistical perspective, and in the interest of educational equity, FCPS cannot accommodate such requests. It is complicated and time-consuming to develop class schedules. Schools go to great pains to develop schedules that consider teacher and parent input and balance classes for gender, race, home language, academic strengths, learning goals, and special learning needs like special education, English language development, and enrichment. In the face of the many challenges arising from the Covid-19 pandemic, our schools do not have the capacity to accommodate specific class/teacher requests from families for the purpose of creating instructional pods. Our energy and focus must remain on providing the best educational experience and impact possible for all our students. |  ALL-IN-ONE ONLINE REGISTRATION SOFTWARE        Principal,  Tel: (301)906-6889; (240)912-6290 Licensed in MD, VA, DC, WV, PA, DE, NC, SC, FL WeChat ID: sunnychenyuqing NMLS # 1220187 President, Principal Loan Consultant, Leader Funding, Inc.  电话: (240) 784-6645 Rockville, MD Phone: 301-366-3497  |
