From Washington Times - School budget cuts threaten gains

Little stimulus relief expected

By Andrea Billups

Marching bands are silenced. Sports programs, summer school and driver's education are being slashed. Schools are facing closure and consolidation.

Teachers, many now vacuuming their own classrooms, have been told to do away with space heaters and office refrigerators because they consume expensive electricity. Even the school year is being shortened as districts across the nation are making hard choices amid a worsening recession as they deal with budget woes.

"If school districts think it's bad now, it's likely to get worse in the next couple of years," said Michael Petrilli, vice president of programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in Washington, who paints a grim portrait of the economy's influence on education. He noted that as local revenues from property taxes continue to plummet, many districts likely will lose even more funding as foreclosures mount with increasing job losses.

Even as some hope that the economic stimulus will bring some relief, he said, children are the ones who ultimately lose as education bears a big hit from the downturn.

TWT RELATED STORY:Obama to build on Bush education plan

"I think the truth of this is that this crisis has taken the focus away from educational improvements and raising achievement and put the focus on simply battening down the hatches and trying to make it through," he said.

"I would be surprised to see the progress we've made in recent years continue, and I am not optimistic that this is a period where we will see strong gains in student achievement."

In Florida's Broward County, the school board, facing $160 million in budget cuts, this week debated killing several middle and high school sports programs, based on participation rates. In adjoining Dade County, two mothers outraged over state budget cuts went on a seven-day hunger strike, camping out across from Ronald Reagan Doral High School in January to protest that school system's loss of music and art programs and curbs on student elective courses.

Pontiac, Mich., school district employees could all face layoffs as early as April.

The struggling city must react to shrinking enrollment - from 20,000 to about 7,000 - and loss of state funding along with a citywide financial emergency declared by Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, a Democrat, amidst a $12 million deficit.

Read entire story here

Bleacher Report - Why High School Sports Need Parity

By Matt Gilmartin

Lately, when I've read the part of my local newspaper's sports section that's devoted to coverage of high school sports, I've seen nothing but overly lopsided basketball scores. The score of a game played between two teams from Dallas, TX was 100-0. A local high school girls team has lost all of its games by 20 points or more. It seems like every time I see the result of a high school basketball game, it's extremely one-sided.

The only time a game is ever close is when two similarly-ranked teams in the paper's Sweet 16 play each other. The other high school sport in which blowouts are common is football. My school's football team was good, and they won a lot of games this past season by 20 or 30 points, sometimes even more.

Sure, it's fun when your school's team—the team you might currently be playing on or may have played on in when you still went to school—wins all the time. Blowing every opponent out for a while is even more fun. But eventually winning every game by a significant margin gets old. You need competition, some excitement. Otherwise each game you win easily makes you feel like you're only playing to go through the motions and get another win, another notch on your playoff seeding belt. You miss the rush that a close game used to give you, back when you still played close games. But it's like a nightmare you can't wake up from when your team is the one going all season without winning a game—maybe not even close.

I speak from experience when I say that losing every game by 30 points doesn't help a student's already-shaky self esteem caused by teasing peers and personal insecurities. It takes the fun out of a sport because you're not getting to do what made the sport fun in the first place—make shots, force a couple turnovers, throw a touchdown pass, execute that perfect pancake block, whatever.

Not to mention the damaged relationships that constant lopsided losses can cause. Teammates, who are often friends, sometimes turn on each other. That happened to me personally. An old friend of mine is a perfect example of both of these situations. He and I used to play basketball together. Basketball was one of the things that defined our relationship. We both tried out for the school team one year, and we both made it.

But early into the season it was clear that the team was terrible, a laughing stock and mockery of what good school basketball is supposed to be. Despite our best efforts, we still couldn't come close to winning any games. Nobody was having any fun. Basketball was just a chore we all dreading doing. It didn't take along for my friend's frustration to boil over. As we headed down to the locker room during halftime of an early-season game, I thought out loud, "Well, we're doing better than we were." I wasn't being sarcastic, and it was true. We were only down by 25, as opposed to 35 or 40. But my friend took the comment the wrong way and lashed out at me, shouting at me to shut up! His jeer stung badly. I hadn't meant any harm by what I said; I had actually tried to lighten the mood and loosen the guys up by looking at the positive side of things. But my friend brutally shot me down. That didn't end our friendship, but it definitely hurt it and separated us quite a bit. Nobody benefits from losing every game by a wide margin. Nobody benefits from winning every game by a wide margin.

This is why every state should have a mercy rule for every applicable high school sport. A mercy rule would create some parity in high school sports, or at least enough to end blowouts early. And that's what high school sports need.

Scarborough Research - Teens Show Strong Optimism

According to a timely study from the Scarborough Kids Internet Panel, 75% of teens in the study said they are optimistic that the new administration will help solve current economic problems. African-American and Hispanic teens appear to be more optimistic than Asian and Caucasian teens, with 46% of African-American teens saying they are "very optimistic" about President Obama's ability to help the economy, along with 31% of Hispanic teens, 24% of Caucasian teens and 20% of Asian teens.

The vote of confidence is well-timed, as teens are feeling the impact of the crisis at home, says the report. 74% of teens surveyed said that they are worried about the economy, including 23% who are "very" worried and 51% who said that they are "somewhat worried." 20% are "not very worried" and 6% "aren't worried at all."

Eighty-six percent of teen respondents think their parents worry about economic conditions, and 70% have discussed the economy with their parents.

- 47% said that they would like to talk to their parents more about the issue
- 64% of teens stated that they were discussing the downturn with their teachers at school
- 81% percent of teens are also interested in understanding more about the causes of the current problems.

Many teens report that they have made adjustments in their household to accommodate changing financial situations and health related behaviors.

In order to save money:

- 15% of teens dropped out of a sport or recreational activity
- 13% missed doctors' appointments
- 11% stopped or cut back on taking vitamins
- 33% changed eating habits. (Most frequently eating out, particularly at quick service restaurants)
- 20% have cut back on eating organic food

Steve Seraita, Executive Vice President of Scarborough Research. "... Knowing the sentiments of kids, teens and their parents can help marketers tailor messages and new products to meet current needs... There is also a message... for government organizations and policy makers... to use some of the stimulus funding earmarked for youth education/health programs... "

From The WSJ - Niche Web Sites Buck Media Struggles

By Jessica E. Vascellaro and Elizabeth Holmes

While many media businesses are stalling, a small group of online publishers appears to be bucking the trend.

Several start-up Web sites such as SB Nation, Seeking Alpha Ltd. and HealthCentral Network Inc., which create and aggregate content about topics like sports, business and health, are recording sharp gains in visitors and -- in many cases -- revenue. They are outpacing other sites on similar topics through business models that allow them to create niche content with little financial investment. Many also are landing distribution partnerships with big media brands eager for cheap content during the recession.

Yahoo Music's homepage on Sunday featured this story from Musictoob, a start-up that serves up juicy tidbits from the music scene.

The number of visitors to sports Web site SB Nation, for instance, rose 15% from December to a total of 3.4 million in January, according to the company, even as unique visitors to the category of sports sites tracked by comScore Inc. fell 2%. (ComScore says SB Nation -- which is owned by SportsBlogs Inc. -- doesn't reach its public reporting thresholds.) SB Nation launched a partnership with Yahoo Inc.'s Yahoo Sports last week and has signed another deal with Gannett Co.'s USA Today.

The site is trying to offer content that larger sports destinations don't often generate on their own, such as team-specific blogs like "Gang Green Nation," dedicated to the New York Jets. SB Nation recruits the authors and pays them based in part on the popularity of their posts. It is a business model that SB Nation believes can keep its site afloat with less advertising than is required by traditional media companies, Chief Executive Jim Bankoff says.

"This model only works if you have a cost structure to enable it to work," he says. Mr. Bankoff says revenue is rising 25% a month, off a small base. He declined to disclose underlying numbers.

The small publishers face some serious challenges, including intense competition for eyeballs and advertisers. Moreover, the Web is flooded with niche-content sites, relatively few of which are likely to become profitable businesses.

But this new model of targeted content that can be assembled cheaply could become popular as advertising growth slows and consumers spend more time across multiple sites. "Consumer engagement is shifting toward niche-content experiences," says Andrew Braccia, a partner at venture-capital firm Accel Partners who sits on the board of SB Nation. "Three to five years from now, people will no longer be drawing a distinction between traditional forms of publishing and what we know as blogs today."

Some advertisers are buying in. The New England Sports Network, a regional cable network that doesn't advertise on large online sports portals, began buying ads on SB Nation's Boston Celtics blog in January to reach New England sports fans. "We're looking for the best targeted experience that we can get," says Michael Hall, director of new media for the company. He declined to say how much the company is spending on the ads.

Big media companies are paying closer attention, too. In February, Yahoo Music struck a deal with Musictoob, a start-up gossip Web site that launched at the start of the year and serves up juicy tidbits from the music scene.

The site, which boasts the slogan "The majesty of rock. The tragedy of roll," only started paying its two editors on Friday. The deal, which gives Yahoo content in exchange for traffic, came together in a matter of weeks, according to both parties.

Michael Spiegelman, head of Yahoo Music, says Musictoob's content filled a void in Yahoo Music's coverage. "We didn't have anyone really covering music gossip," he says. On Friday, Yahoo Music featured on its homepage a Musictoob post about pop star Lily Allen dressing in a duck costume.

Media companies are also more willing to experiment with different types of online brands. Hearst Corp. announced a partnership last week with Helium, an online writing site that fosters freelance journalism. The partnership will let Helium writers contribute in an as-yet-to-be-determined role to Hearst newspapers. Lincoln Millstein, senior vice president for digital media for Hearst Newspapers, says the company is looking to bolster its local-content offerings. "Helium plays in a niche that I don't really see that's out there," Mr. Millstein says. "It's intriguing enough where we can experiment with it."

Hearst is syndicating its targeted offerings, too. The Daily Green, Hearst's two-year-old online environmental brand, is now on Yahoo Green. Erin Carlson, director of Yahoo Green, says Yahoo looks to the Hearst site to cover specific green areas where Yahoo is absent, such as an environmental post regarding autos. In the first week into the partnership, Hearst saw nearly 40,000 referrals to TheDailyGreen.com from Yahoo, according to Hearst internal figures.

Some companies are trying to take the cheap niche model to the extreme. Whiskey Media, founded by the entrepreneur who co-founded CNET Networks, Shelby Bonnie, has built several sites, including videogame fan site Giant Bomb, on a single technology platform built by four developers. Giant Bomb hired two interns to fill out a database of videogame titles; much of the rest of the content, including game guides and images, has been submitted by users. Visits to the property have quadrupled since July to more than 80,000 a day, according to internal company metrics.