REACH day Wednesday; Pay Your Teachers Well; NO MORE 'SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER'; comment; A New School Leader in New York; Dollars for Schools; A DC Schools Awakening; Bronx Principal's Tough Love Gets Results; TFA Young Professionals event

1) A final reminder to please join me (Wednesday) at the REACH Awards Day from 10-12:30 at the Chase branch on 39th and Broadway (see full invite at the end of this email).

REACH (Rewarding Achievement; www.reachnyc.org) is a pay-for-performance initiative that aims to improve the college readiness of low-income students at 31 inner-city high schools in New York by rewarding them with up to $1,000 for each Advanced Placement exam they pass. I founded it, with funding from the Pershing Square Foundation and support from the Council of Urban Professionals.

This past year was the first full year of the program and I'm delighted to report very substantial gains in the overall number of students passing AP exams at the 31 schools, and an even bigger gain among African-American and Latino students (exact numbers will be released at the event). As a result, more than 1,200 student have earned nearly $1 MILLION in REACH Scholar Awards! (An additional $500,000 or so is going to their schools and educators.) Tomorrow the students will come to pick up their checks, Joel Klein will be the highlight of the press conference at 11am, and there will be a ton of media. I hope to see you there! You can RSVP to REACH@nycup.org.

2) A spot-on editorial in yesterday's WSJ, which underscores the point I've been making for a long time: one shouldn't get angry with unions for advancing the interests of their members -- that's what they're supposed to do! -- but it's critical to understand that their interests and what's best for children are often FAR apart... Pay Your Teachers Well Their children's hell will slowly go by.

The conflicting interests of teachers unions and students is an underreported education story, so we thought we'd highlight two recent stories in Baltimore and New York City that illustrate the problem.
The Ujima Village Academy is one of the best public schools in Baltimore and all of Maryland. Students at the charter middle school are primarily low-income minorities; 98% are black and 84% qualify for free or reduced-price school meals. Yet Ujima Village students regularly outperform the top-flight suburban schools on state tests. In 2006, 2007 and 2008, Ujima Village students earned the highest eighth-grade math scores in Maryland. Started in 2002, the school has met or exceeded state academic standards every year--a rarity in a city that boasts one of the lowest-performing school districts in the country.

Ujima Village is part of the KIPP network of charter schools, which now extends to 19 states and Washington, D.C. KIPP excels at raising academic achievement among disadvantaged children who often arrive two or three grade-levels behind in reading and math. KIPP educators cite longer school days and a longer school year as crucial to their success. At KIPP schools, kids start as early as 7:30 a.m., stay as late as 5 p.m., and attend school every other Saturday and three weeks in the summer.

However, Maryland's charter law requires teachers to be part of the union. And the Baltimore Teachers Union is demanding that the charter school pay its teachers 33% more than other city teachers, an amount that the school says it can't afford. Ujima Village teachers are already paid 18% above the union salary scale, reflecting the extra hours they work. To meet the union demands, the school recently told the Baltimore Sun that it has staggered staff starting times, shortened the school day, canceled Saturday classes and laid off staffers who worked with struggling students. For teachers unions, this outcome is a victory; how it affects the quality of public education in Baltimore is beside the point.

Meanwhile, in New York City, some public schools have raised money from parents to hire teaching assistants. Last year, the United Federation of Teachers filed a grievance about the hiring, and city education officials recently ordered an end to the practice. "It's hurting our union members," said a UFT spokesman, even though it's helping kids and saving taxpayers money. The aides typically earned from $12 to $15 an hour. Their unionized equivalents cost as much as $23 an hour, plus benefits.

"School administrators said that hiring union members not only would cost more, but would also probably bring in people with less experience," reported the New York Times. Many of the teaching assistants hired directly by schools had graduate degrees in education and state teaching licenses, while the typical unionized aide lacks a four-year degree.

The actions of the teachers unions in both Baltimore and New York make sense from their perspective. Unions exist to advance the interests of their members. The problem is that unions present themselves as student advocates while pushing education policies that work for their members even if they leave kids worse off. Until school choice puts more money and power in the hands of parents, public education will continue to put teachers ahead of students.

3) Tom Carroll with a good article in today's NY Post on the importance of extended school years/year-round schooling, esp. for disadvantaged kids:

What is often ignored, however, is that long summer breaks don't affect all students equally. Almost two-thirds of households now include either two working parents or are headed by a single custodial parent who works -- meaning that most children home during summer days aren't in the care of their parents.

For middle- and upper-income families, students are often enrolled in educationally enriching summer camps and programs and have access to books and libraries, computers and trips to museums and concerts.

For less advantaged students, unsupervised settings with little or no academic content are more common -- with predictable setbacks in their academic progress.
Public-charter schools offer a glimpse of the potential impact of lengthening the school year. High-performing urban charter schools almost uniformly offer longer school years to the disadvantaged students they serve, much to their benefit. These schools often post proficiency rates of 90 percent or more in mathematics, science and English.

By the way, this is the professor Malcolm Gladwell quoted in Outliers -- and his "findings" are obvious nonsense:

According to Karl Alexander, the John Dewey professor of sociology at John Hopkins University, "About two-thirds of the ninth-grade academic achievement gap between disadvantaged youngsters and their more advantaged peers can be explained by what happens over the summer during the elementary-school years."

Of course disadvantaged kids are falling behind during the summer, but there's no way this accounts for 2/3 of the achievement gap (if it's more than 25%, I'd be surprised). If anyone knows of any other research in this area, please send it to me.

4) A comment from a friend:

When I taught in the Elizabeth, NJ public schools in the early 1990s, I was blacklisted and isolated by the tenured teachers becasue I stayed after and tutored kids for no extra $. It must have been bad, because they drove me to Wall Street equity research.

5) A great and well-deserved NYT editorial about David Steiner's appointment (too bad it doesn't mention that Teacher U is a collaboration among KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools):

The New York State Board of Regents, which oversees state education policy, moved New York to the forefront of the national reform movement during the 1990's, when it toughened graduation requirements, strengthened the curriculum and instituted tests to make sure that students were making progress along the way.

The regents took another exciting step this week when they named David Steiner, a noted teacher-training reformer and dean of education at Hunter College in New York City, to the recently vacated post of education commissioner. Mr. Steiner became nationally known earlier in the decade when he bluntly pointed out that traditional schools of education were often hidebound and ill equipped to provide graduates who perform at a high level in the classroom.

He didn't just leave it there. After becoming dean at Hunter in 2005, he helped create a rigorous, highly regarded program known as Teacher U, a certification program for graduates seeking master's degrees. The students teach full time and spend Saturdays on campus being instructed by a faculty that includes teachers, principals and superintendents from high-performing schools.

6) A spot-on Washington Post editorial about Race to the Top:Dollars for Schools
In giving out the money, the administration should hold firm in its commitment to education reform.
Washington Post editorial, Thursday, July 30, 2009

PRESIDENT OBAMA is unabashed in his demand that any state wanting extra educational dollars share in his administration's reform agenda. That means tougher standards, more charter schools and holding teachers accountable. It's encouraging that even before a penny has been doled out, this aggressive stance is forcing states to rethink traditional approaches to education.

Proposed guidelines for the more than $4 billion in the Race to the Top Fund were unveiled last week, with the president and Education Secretary Arne Duncan making clear they don't want more of the same, failed policies -- or politics -- of the past. Armed with the largest amount ever of discretionary funding for K-12 school reform, the administration promises to eschew politics, ideology and the preferences of interest groups for "what works." Criteria for the grants range from how charter schools are funded to whether teacher pay is linked to student achievement. Any doubt that the administration means business is dispelled by its decision to disqualify any state that bars linking student data to teacher evaluations.

The tough requirements -- preceded by equally blunt warnings from Mr. Duncan about what would happen to states that resist change -- seem to be hitting home. Some legislatures, such as those in Rhode Island and Tennessee, have already acted to make their states more hospitable to charter schools. In California, which could lose out because of its regressive policy limiting the use of student data, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has vowed to make the necessary changes to the law so that his state can compete for the grants.

No doubt, though, there will be pushback. There is a review period before the regulations are finalized, and the two largest teachers unions, with their Democratic allies in Congress, have expressed unease. Some states are looking for loopholes to get around the rules. And there are those who think the federal government is overstepping its role and sticking its nose into state business by setting conditions. Congress cannot overrule the administration on how this money -- part of the $100 billion in education aid included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- is awarded, but the worry is that an administration in search of votes to reform health care could compromise education reform. Mr. Duncan, with the president's backing, has shown great resolve in taking his message for change across the country. We trust that neither he nor the president will waver now.

7) A long and interesting article in the Washington Post about the enormous challenges in DC (and elsewhere) of turning around failing high schools:

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan calls it "the toughest work in urban education today" -- fixing neighborhood high schools filled with students who have languished in failing elementary and middle schools.

Ten of the District's 15 high schools are in some form of federally mandated restructuring under the No Child Left Behind Act because of persistent failure to meet annual achievement benchmarks on standardized tests. Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee is looking to outside organizations for help in turning them around.

This summer, Friends of Bedford, which operates a Brooklyn public high school that has become New York City's most successful, has taken control of Coolidge and Dunbar senior high schools. Friendship Public Charter Schools, which serves about 4,000 students on six D.C. campuses, is running Anacostia Senior High School.

Rhee has also started discussions with Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot Schools, which operates Locke Senior High School in Los Angeles, one of the city's largest and most troubled schools, about working in the District. Barr recently toured Eastern High School on Capitol Hill, although District officials said discussions are in an extremely preliminary stage.

Anacostia, Coolidge and Dunbar are all stark examples of the challenge Duncan describes, places where scholarship and discipline flicker weakly at best. Fewer than a third of students read and write proficiently, according to citywide tests. A 2008 review of Dunbar by District officials said, "Evidence of effective teaching and learning was limited to a few individual teachers." On a single day in November, 19 girls were arrested for fighting.

This line troubled me, as it's very hard for me to see how much improvement can be made unless the people leading the turnaround have the power, at least when they take over if not permanently, to remove any/all of the people at the school:

Friendship and Friends of Bedford will face that challenge at Anacostia, Dunbar and Coolidge. Although they have autonomy on matters of curriculum, instruction and teacher professional development, the schools' staff members will remain school system employees, subject to District laws and union rules.

8) A really nice article about a great principal, Edward Tom, at a new magnet high school in the South Bronx that just graduated 84% of its first class, 77% of whom are going to college (the 3-min video is great):

On Friday, President Obama announced a new $5 billion initiative to improve local schools called "Race to the Top." The idea is to encourage more innovation and better teaching.

But in New York's South Bronx one principal has already given his students a head start as CBS News correspondent Russ Mitchell reports.

When the kids change periods at the Bronx Center for Science and Math, principal Edward Tom is waiting in the hall. He's on the sidewalk to greet them every morning. And when school's over he's out there again, often asking students to fix their uniforms.

Tom describes his approach as "tough love."

"I'm not always going to make the decisions that are popular," he said. "But it will be the decision that I feel in my heart would be beneficial to the children and their growth and development."

9) This looks like a fun event (tickets are $75):

Teach For America's New York region is excited to announce their second annual event for young professionals. "An Evening of Cocktails and Live Music" will be held at The Broad Street Ballroom on Thursday, September 24th from 8 p.m. until midnight. The event will benefit Teach For America - New York and is being hosted by a group of young professionals throughout the city. The Café Wha? Band will provide entertainment throughout the evening and all guests will be able to enjoy the open bar and passed hors d'oeuvres. There will also be many great raffles and a few surprises throughout the evening!

Tickets can be purchased here: www.teachforamerica.org/NYYP

Teach For America Contact: Lauren Stout
Phone: 212.279.2666 x277
Email: lauren.stout@teachforamerica.org

Posted by Whitney Tilson at August 5, 2009 5:44 AM
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