More children are getting into school lunch lines without being able to pay, creating a financial burden for school districts.

Some schools are toughening their policies — limiting students to two or three unpaid meals, creating payment plans and using collection agencies.

It’s a growing problem that reflects families’ economic struggles nationally, says Dora Rivas, president of the School Nutrition Association.

“When we’re talking to parents, we’re hearing that they lost their jobs, their cars have broken down,” says Sheila Mason of Des Moines Public Schools.

About 4,500 students in Des Moines owed $133,000 for unpaid meals at the start of the year, most of it from previous years. That’s more than twice the amount a year earlier.

If a student can’t pay, school officials say they contact parents and urge them to apply for federally subsidized free and reduced-price lunch programs. About 19 million students received free and reduced-price lunches in May, according to the U.S. Food and Nutrition Service.

Des Moines schools bar high school students from getting a meal without paying and plan to limit middle-schoolers to two or three days. Some schools give a student who can’t pay an alternative meal such as a cheese sandwich and milk. Des Moines does not because it does not want those children to stand out, Mason says.

Almost half of school nutrition directors had an increase in unpaid meals last year, according to a survey by the nutrition association.

Amy Keiderling, president of the Des Moines City PTA, says she’s concerned about denying students meals.

“No child should have to worry economically about whether or not they can eat,” she says. “The school lunch may be the only meal that child receives that day.”

The Visalia, Calif., district stopped giving non-paying students cheese sandwiches because of the stigma, says nutrition director Lynnelle Grumbles. They get a regular meal.

Middle- and high-schoolers who don’t pay can’t get more than three meals. Since the policy changed last year, Visalia’s shortfall rose to about $24,000 from $5,000.

The school district is considering using a collection agency or going to small-claims court, says Robert Groeber, an assistant superintendent.

U.S. Department of Justice to Release Study on Children’s Exposure to Violence; U.S. Department of Education to Provide $500,000 Grant to Help Fenger Community

Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan today joined with Chicago city officials to call for a national conversation on values to address youth violence in the wake of the fatal beating of a Chicago high school student. The announcement followed meetings with City officials, community leaders, students, and parents.

“Youth violence isn’t a Chicago problem, any more than it is a black problem or a white problem. It’s something that affects communities big and small, and people of all races and colors. Today is the beginning of what will be a sustained, national effort on behalf of this entire administration to address youth violence and to make our streets safe for everyone,” Holder said.

“Chicago will not be defined by this incident but rather by our response to it – so we came here today to join with you and with communities all across America – to call for a national conversation on values. It’s a conversation that must happen every place in America where violence, intolerance, and discrimination exists,” Duncan said.

Today’s meeting continues President Obama’s and the Administration’s strong commitment to combating violence:

* In August, the Attorney General joined mayors from across the nation at a White House Gang Violence Prevention and Crime Control Conference.
* The Recovery Act provided $4 billion for state and local law enforcement assistance, crime prevention, victims of crime, and funding to address violence against women. Through the Recovery Act, the City of Chicago received over $13 million in funding from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) to hire 50 officers to help combat crime and violence.
* The President’s budget includes a request of $298 million in additional funding for hiring additional police officers to help meet the Administration’s commitment to hire 50,000 officers nationwide.
* The Administration requested $114 million within the Department of Justice to fund programs designed to reduce criminal recidivism and help end the revolving door from corrections to reoffending, as well as $115 million in reentry-related programs funded within the Department of Labor.
* The President’s budget requested $25 million to support successful community-based partnerships designed to end violent youth crime – partnerships like the successful model implemented by Operation Ceasefire in Chicago.

The Department of Justice will today release a study on children’s exposure to violence. Among other findings, the study shows that more than 60 percent of the children surveyed were exposed to violence in the past year, either directly or indirectly. Nearly half of children and adolescents were assaulted at least once, and more than one in 10 were injured as a result. Nearly one-quarter were the victims of robbery, vandalism or theft, and one in 16 were victimized sexually. The study can be found at www.ojjdp.ncjrs.gov after 2 p.m. ET.

“These numbers are astonishing, and they are unacceptable. We simply cannot stand for an epidemic of violence that robs our youth of their childhood and perpetuates a cycle in which today’s victims become tomorrow’s criminals,” Holder said.

Duncan announced that the Department of Education is working with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to award a $500,000 grant to help Fenger High School and the elementary and middle schools that feed into Fenger HS, restoring learning environments following the death of 16-year-old Derrion Albert. His fatal beating, outside a Roseland community center several blocks from the high school, was captured on a cell phone video. Funds for this grant are coming from a grant program entitled Project SERV – School Emergency Response to Violence. This program is designed to help restore the learning environment in school districts that have been impacted by a significant traumatic event. SERV grants also were provided to school districts in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York in 2009.

Duncan emphasized, however, “This is not about the money. Money alone will never solve this problem. It’s about our values. It’s about who we are as a society. And it’s about taking responsibility for our young people to teach them what they need to know to live side-by-side and deal with their differences without anger or violence.”

The grant from the Department of Education will enable CPS to facilitate safe passage for students to and from school, offer training to enable teachers to better manage their classrooms and engage students in learning, and it can be used to collaborate with community organizations to expand and increase student-centered support programs. The grant also can be used to strengthen the school support network with crisis response training for teachers, and to provide additional, extensive mental health services to students and the school community.

In 1991 we were fighting a war in Iraq, and still are; health care needed reforming, and still does. But before despairing that some things never change, consider how much has. In 1991 the world watched a black motorist named Rodney King be beaten by L.A. cops, all of whom were acquitted; a majority of whites still disapproved of interracial marriage. Ask yourself, Would the people we were then have voted for a mixed-race President and a black First Lady?

That year, apartheid was repealed, the Soviet Union collapsed, the Dow broke 3000. The next year, the first commercial text message was sent; now there are more transmitted every day than there are people on the planet. In the time it took for toddlers to turn into teenagers, we decoded the human genome and everyone got a cell phone, an iPod, a GPS and a DVR. As the head-spinning viral video “Did You Know” informs us, the top 10 jobs in demand in 2010 did not exist six years ago, so “we’re preparing kids for jobs that don’t yet exist using technologies we haven’t yet invented.”

We have managed, rather gracefully, far more change than we predicted would come; it turns out that our past’s vision of the future was not visionary enough. This is often the case: reality puts prophecy to shame. “Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote,” declared Grover Cleveland in 1905. Harry Truman, in his 1950 State of the Union address to mark the midcentury, predicted that “our total national production 50 years from now will be four times as much as it is today.” It turned out to be more than 33 times as large. “It will be gone by June,” promised Variety in 1955–talking about rock ‘n’ roll. “It will be years–not in my time–before a woman will become Prime Minister,” declared Margaret Thatcher in 1969.

Leaders rely on the future as a vaccine against the present. The Soviets have put a man in space? “I believe we should go to the moon,” President Kennedy announces. “I have a dream,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declares as the world around him burns. Maybe the promise is realized, even surpassed; maybe it keeps receding, pulling us along. “The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time,” Abraham Lincoln supposedly observed. Which is true for those in charge of creating it but maybe not for the rest of us. When we pause and look back, we get to see the past’s future, know how the story turned out. Did we rise to the occasion? Did we triumph? Did we blink?

The past’s power comes from experience, the lessons it dares us to dismiss on the grounds that maybe things will be different this time. The future’s power is born of experiment, and the endless grudge match between fear and hope. We are having a dozen simultaneous conversations right now about change: in our institutions, our culture, our treatment of the planet and of one another.

It’s tempting to just stand stock-still and squeeze your eyes shut and wait for the moment to pass, or else hoard canned goods and assume the worst. This has been an awfully ugly summer of argument, and you’d be forgiven for concluding that we’ve lost our will to face or fix anything. We’ll just dance with the devils we know, thank you. But if you look past Washington, past Wall Street, turn down the volume and go outside and walk around, you’ll find the parcels of grace, of ingenuity and enterprise–people riding change like a skateboard, speeding off a ramp, twisting, flipping, somehow landing with a rush of wind and wheels–and wonder that it somehow hasn’t killed us yet.

When members of the freshman class of 2027 look back at our future, what’s likely to surprise them most? Will they marvel that gays were once not allowed to marry–or that they ever were? That we waited while the planet warmed, or that we acted to save it? That we protected the poor, or empowered them, or ignored them? That we lived within our means, or beyond them? We’ll make our choices one day at a time, but our kids will judge our generation for what we generate, and what we leave undone.

Millions of pounds could be wiped off the collective value of research council grants that have already been awarded to academics.

The UK’s seven research councils may claw back money promised to grant holders in light of falling inflation.

Awards from the councils, which spend about £3 billion on research each year, normally have a sum added at the outset to take account of inflation.

This is calculated by taking the Government’s published “gross domestic product deflator” figures in the year of the award and applying them to its remaining time span.

New grants awarded in the 2008-09 financial year, for example, were increased to a cash limit calculated using an annual inflation rate of 2.7 per cent.

For the 2009-10 financial year, the inflation rate on new awards is 1.5 per cent to reflect the current figure.

But Times Higher Education has learnt that Research Councils UK has sought legal advice on whether it can retrospectively apply today’s indexation rates to ongoing grants.

For example, grants awarded in 2008-09 augmented by the 2.7 per cent rate would be recalculated using lower inflation figures for subsequent years.

It is understood that the legal advice states that it is possible to introduce the amendment from April 2010 if the terms and conditions of grants are adjusted now.

In March, the Government told the councils that they needed to deliver £106 million in savings from within the science budget.

They have never before applied indexation rates retrospectively, but if the policy is adopted, it is understood that it would apply to all grants, including studentships.

In a statement, RCUK says: “The inflation rate applied to new grants will continue to be reviewed annually … (But) in light of recent significant falls in inflation, RCUK is now exploring whether these changes should also be applied to existing grants.”

It states that a review will clarify “the position concerning changes to existing grants” and explore “the financial implications for both the councils and the research base of such a move”. A final decision will be announced this autumn.

RCUK gave no indication of the total savings the changes could deliver.

Researchers and administrators expressed concern about the move.

“It is disappointing that RCUK should consider shaving off small sums that may compromise carefully costed grants that are the bedrock of UK scientific advances,” said John Wood, a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council grant holder and professor of molecular neurobiology at University College London.

John Green, chief co-ordinating officer at Imperial College London, said that the inflation rates used by the research councils had never matched real inflation or national pay awards, which made a “mockery” of what they were trying to do now.

“If this is applied retrospectively, one has already budgeted on a research grant, one has already got the staff in place,” he said.

“We have come into a world of full economic costing but are slipping back from whence we came at every other opportunity … it is an incredible own goal.”

Ian Diamond, chair of RCUK, said the councils wanted to ensure that their investments “represent the best value for money for the taxpayer”. He said that all savings made as a result of changes to the inflation rate were “reinvested in research”.

A spokeswoman for Universities UK said the sector had to be able to plan “on the basis of reasonable assumptions about levels of income from the research councils”, and expressed concern that the change of policy could be “destabilising”.

She said: “We must remember that indexation is usually below pay awards and other cost pressures within the system.”

Yet data released Thursday show that more schools in the region and statewide are falling short of academic targets that rise steadily each year. Many educators are wondering how much more improvement is possible under a federal rating system that essentially demands perfect performance in the next five years.

“I’m definitely worried about that,” said Patricia I. Wright, state superintendent of public instruction. “That’s a question being raised all over the country, in terms of whether or not 100 percent proficiency by 2014 is a realistic statistical goal. All of us agree that’s an educational goal that we want to stand by.”

Said Fairfax County Superintendent Jack D. Dale: “We’ll all max out at something less than 100 percent.”

The data show that 525 Virginia schools, or 28 percent, failed to make adequate progress under federal education law in 2008-09. In the previous year, 479 schools, or 26 percent, fell short.

At the same time, data from the Virginia Department of Education show that the percentages of students who met or exceeded proficiency in reading and math rose. Eighty-nine percent passed the Standards of Learning reading tests, up from 87 percent in 2008. And 86 percent passed the math tests, up from 84 percent.

In Loudoun and Fairfax counties, 93 percent passed in reading and 90 percent in math. Those rates mirrored or slightly outpaced last year’s results. Trends were similar in other Northern Virginia school systems. In Prince William and Arlington counties, 90 percent passed in reading; the rates for math were 87 percent in Prince William and 86 percent in Arlington. In Alexandria, 85 percent passed in reading, 76 percent in math.

The share of Fairfax schools making adequate yearly progress rose from 74 to 81 percent. But elsewhere in the region, those ratings fell. Seventy percent of Arlington’s schools made adequate progress last year; this year, 57 percent. In Loudoun, 96 percent of schools made adequate progress last year; this year, 77 percent. Arlington and Loudoun officials said that some schools fell short based on the scores of a handful of students.

The disparity of rising student scores and the falling school ratings stems from a goal that many experts say is unattainable: universal student proficiency.

Under the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind law, public schools must give annual reading and math tests in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school. They must also show progress toward a goal of having all students pass those tests by 2014, with target passing rates rising steadily over time.

As a result, schools that make the grade one year might fall short the next even if they have identical or slightly better test results. Target passing rates in Virginia rose four points this year, to 81 percent in reading and 79 percent in math. Next year, the targets will rise four more points.

In an effort to close achievement gaps, the law also requires progress among students from racial and ethnic minorities, those with disabilities and those with limited English skills.

For school officials, the stakes are high. Failing to make adequate yearly progress is a public relations blow. And schools that receive federal poverty aid and fail to make adequate progress two or more years in a row face an escalating series of possible interventions, including allowing students to transfer and overhauling school management.

States are allowed to design tests and set passing scores, so standards vary widely.

Within the next year or two, Congress is expected to consider revisions to the federal law that would significantly reshape testing and school accountability rules. The Obama administration is calling for higher standards but more flexibility for states to achieve them. President Obama said last month in an interview with The Washington Post that many school districts “actually water down state standards in order to appear like they were meeting them.”

Test results in Northern Virginia show that black and Hispanic students, who have historically trailed white students in achievement, were closing those gaps. In Fairfax, gaps in test scores between black and white students shrank 3 percentage points in reading (to 13 points) and 4 percentage points in math (to 15 points). Black-white scoring disparities also narrowed slightly statewide.

Statewide, students with disabilities gained 6 percentage points in reading and math. In some Washington area school systems, the gains were larger. The passing rate in Prince William for students with disabilities rose by 13 percentage points in reading and 14 points in math. For Alexandria students with disabilities, the passing rate in math jumped 16 points; in reading, 23 points.

Amy Carlini, a spokeswoman for Alexandria schools, attributed the gains largely to the increasing number of special education students whose achievement was measured through a portfolio of work, known as the Virginia Grade Level Assessment, rather than the usual multiple-choice test.

At Patrick Henry Elementary School in Alexandria, the reading passing rate for students with disabilities rose from 21 percent in 2008 to 88 percent this year.

Using the portfolio “took the anxiety of the test away from the students,” Assistant Principal Nancy Veliz said.

State education spokesman Charles Pyle said that the use of such portfolios by special education students did not affect overall test results and that the portfolios are no less rigorous than regular tests.