The Obama administration is launching a national competition called Race to the Top. States will compete for more than four billion dollars in grants to support the best plans for improving schools.

President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced the details last week.
 
BARACK OBAMA: “This competition will not be based on politics or ideology or the preferences of a particular interest group. Instead, it will be based on a simple principle: whether a state is ready to do what works. We will use the best evidence available to determine whether a state can meet a few key benchmarks for reform. And states that outperform the rest will be rewarded with a grant.”

The president wants the United States to regain the world’s highest college graduation rates, especially in math and science. His target is two thousand twenty. But he says the education system is “falling short” and “countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow.”

The United States is one of thirty countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD has the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA. Every three years PISA measures the performance of fifteen-year-olds.

In two thousand six, the United States had lower scores in mathematics than twenty-three of the other twenty-nine OECD countries. Sixteen countries did better in science.

The Race to the Top competition will look for states and local school systems with effective reforms in four areas. One area is meeting international standards for preparing students for college and jobs. Another is developing better ways to hire, keep and reward effective teachers and school leaders.

A third area is building data systems that not only measure student success, but also inform teachers how to improve.

President Obama supports linking teacher pay to student performance. Teachers unions have resisted that idea. States that want to take part in the Race to the Top cannot have rules that bar performance-based pay for teachers. That requirement could make it difficult for several states to receive money from the fund. Among them are California and New York.

Finally, to win grants, states must show they are improving the lowest performing schools.

The Education Department will award the first grants early next year. States will get two chances to win. Also, the department plans to award almost six billion dollars through other federal programs in the coming months to support reform efforts.

Too much eating. Too many unhealthy foods. Too many advertisements for food. Too little activity.

Different explanations are offered for America’s weight problem — a problem increasingly shared by other countries. Almost one-fifth of American children and teenagers are overweight.

Schools have been urged to increase physical education, an important tool for public health. And many have. Yet now comes a study showing an increase in the number of injuries in “phys ed” class. Injuries increased one hundred fifty percent between nineteen ninety-seven and two thousand seven.

The study involved injuries treated in hospital emergency departments. Only two percent were serious.

The researchers did not try to identify the causes of the increase, but they have some theories.

Lara McKenzie from Ohio State University was the lead researcher. She says one possibility is a decrease in the number of school nurses during the period they studied. For example, a two thousand four study showed that the number of school nurses nationally failed to meet federal guidelines.

Schools without a nurse on duty may be more likely to send an injured child to a hospital.

Another possible reason for more injuries is a change in the traditional idea of physical education. This “New P.E.” expands the kinds of sports that are taught. But activities that some schools offer now, like rock climbing walls and skateboarding, can also expand the risks, says Cheryl Richardson. She is with the National Association for Sport and Physical Education.

Also, she says not all states require P.E. teachers to be specially trained. Untrained teachers could be less likely to recognize unsafe conditions.

Cheryl Richardson also points to one of the study’s findings — that injuries are often the result of contact with a person or a structure. This tells her that the teachers were not giving each student enough space to move around safely.

Six activities produced seventy percent of all injuries: running, basketball, football, volleyball, soccer and gymnastics.

The study appeared online this week in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The researchers say larger class sizes are another possible reason for the increase in injuries. Larger classes can mean less supervision. The National Association for Sport and Physical Education says twenty to thirty students in a P.E. class should be the limit.