Education

Five of Juneau’s 14 schools made Adequate Yearly Progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act last year, down from six in 2009-2010.

Auke Bay and Glacier Valley elementary schools, Juneau Douglas High School, the Community Charter School and Johnson Youth Center achieved academic targets in each of 31 different categories to meet AYP. Three schools – Yaakoosge Daakahidi Alternative High School, Mendenhall River Community School, and Gastineau Elementary – missed in just one category. And three more schools missed only two. Thunder Mountain High School missed three categories in its third year in operation.

For the first time in three years academic and graduation standards increased under No Child Left Behind, but Juneau School District Superintendent Glen Gelbrich says test scores show more students meeting the law’s targets.

“District-wide we met 95 percent of those standards. That’s up from last year, which was 94, and up from the year before, which was 93. So, even with the higher bar, we’re meeting more of the individual requirements than we were before. When you aggregate it all into the AYP formula it doesn’t add up,” Gelbrich says.

The standards will go up again this year. The goal of No Child Left Behind is to have 100 percent of students proficient in language arts and math testing by the 2013-2014 school year.

The law breaks students into nine different subgroups, including ethnic and socioeconomic status as well as students with disabilities. Gelbrich says that aspect promotes targeted improvements.

“It encourages you and you really need to do the drilling down in order to address what some of that criteria is,” says Gelbrich. “I would argue that, I’m not sure we need the law in order to do that. We want to know about each student, where is he or she in relation to where we want them to be.”

The district will host its second annual “School Summit” on Thursday August 25th at Thunder Mountain to share the AYP results with the community.

The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development released statewide results Friday. About 46 percent of Alaska schools met adequate yearly progress last year, a 14 percent decline from the previous year.

The Obama administration recently announced it would allow states to opt out of the Bush-era law’s requirements starting this fall. State officials say they’ll review the waiver requirements when they’re announced, and decide whether Alaska will opt out.

What makes dough rise? How do you preserve milk? Twenty-seven young chefs are learning the answers to those questions and more this week at a Juneau Economic Development Council summer camp designed to teach kids the science of cooking. Casey Kelly has more.

Its day three of the Kitchen Chemistry camp and students are making mozzarella cheese in the culinary classroom at Thunder Mountain High School. Working in groups of four or five, they start by warming a gallon of milk and just over a teaspoon of lime juice – a substitute for citric acid – in a large pot on the stove. But most of the kids are a little unsure about the next step.

“After I think we cook it, we just gotta wait awhile or bake it or something,” says Hunter Hill, a fifth grader at Gastineau Elementary School. He says he signed up for the camp because he really likes cooking at home – mostly desserts.

“I like making crepes for my family that I get from a library book. And yeah, other than that, I like making cookies, brownies and cake, stuff like that,” Hill says.

JEDC Education Specialist Bob Vieth says the purpose of the cheese making exercise is to teach kids one way to preserve milk. During the week they also learn how to preserve cucumbers by pickling them, about leavening agents by making pizza dough, and about sweeteners by making fudge.

“And along the way we’ve been trying to emphasize the science aspects and the chemistry aspects of the various cooking techniques that they’re using,” says Vieth.

Simon Smith learned what happens when you use baking soda instead of baking powder to make scones.

“The whole class tasted them and wasn’t so good,” Smith says.

Vieth admits there have been a fair number of failures. All the kids are going into either fourth or fifth grade, but he says some of them are pretty good chefs already, and they’re learning advanced science years before they would in school.

“They’re learning concepts and vocabulary terms here that they normally wouldn’t be exposed to until high school chemistry,” Vieth says. “So when they do get them in chemistry, they’ll say ‘Oh yeah, I remember that from the cooking class.'”

Sophia Harvey says there’s another benefit of going to a cooking summer camp.

“I like eating the stuff after,” Harvey says.

Kitchen Chemistry is the last of this year’s JEDC Summer Camps. Previous camps include building underwater gliders, rocketry, and LEGO robotics. All the camps are part of JEDC’s STEM education program, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. In Juneau, I’m Casey Kelly.

Like most Juneau tourists, shopping, the Mendenhall Glacier, and whales were the highlights of a recent visit for 18 middle-school students from northern Japan. Amanda Compton tagged along for part of their 3-day trip.