Katharine Birbalsingh, 37, was ordered not to come into school on Thursday or Friday after making critical remarks before a speech by Education Secretary Michael Gove at the party conference in Birmingham on Tuesday.
Addressing the audience as a guest speaker, she gave a damning account of standards in schools, saying education had been “so dumbed down that even the children know it.”
The board of governors at St Michael and All Angels Church of England Academy in Camberwell, south London, told Miss Birbalsingh to stay away from the school while they considered her position.
But the French teacher and deputy head has been told that she would be allowed to return to the classroom on Monday after parents voiced their support.
In her speech on Tuesday, Miss Birbalsingh told delegates of a “broken” system which “keeps poor children poor”.
More teachers are learning how to teach online
Teaching without being able to see a student’s puzzled face or immediately answer a question can be a challenge even for a veteran of the education profession.
And, when that environment is a virtual school, tackling the technological proficiency requirements can be a hurdle, as well.
“You have to be very creative with the technology and your lesson presentation,” said Trina Michalsen, who teaches language arts and math to middle schoolers at the Northern Ozaukee School District’s Wisconsin Virtual Learning school.
As virtual classes with all of the instruction taking place over computers have become more popular in Wisconsin, training teachers on how to employ new online instructional techniques also has become more prevalent.
The effort has been helped by a new state law that required teachers to get 30 hours of professional development by July 1 to teach fully online courses to students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
Schools and colleges have responded by offering in-house training programs, complete certificates and graduate school credits.
Charter schools deserve even playing field
Gov. Chris Christie has said he strongly supports charter schools and recently spoke of his plans to ease the way for their expansion. That’s great, but what’s still missing is the money.
And it’s all about the money. Without their fair share of state funding, charter schools will continue to struggle. They’re public schools, but only get a portion of what a local district spends per student — and, even worse, no public funding for facilities at all.
Charter schools allow for innovation and give parents a choice. Some are failing and should be shut down. But many are succeeding wildly and drawing huge waiting lists.
Money is their biggest handicap. Charter schools end up with less because they get none of the so-called “adjustment aid” the state gives out to districts. The disparity is greatest in places like Camden, Paterson or Jersey City, where district schools get the most adjustment aid.
On the Gifted & Talented Complaint Against the Madison School District
A group of West High parents have filed a complaint concerning the perceived lack of sufficient gifted and talented programming as mandated by state statute.
A group of 50 parents in the West High School attendance area has asked state education officials to investigate whether the Madison School District is violating state law by denying high-achieving students access to the “talented and gifted” programming parents say they deserve.
In a Sept. 20 complaint to the state Department of Public Instruction made public Tuesday, the parent group argued that freshmen and sophomores at West have limited opportunities for advanced English, biology and social studies classesI have heard similar complaints expressed by MG parents. (Some of which are addressed by recent changes to the high school science curriculum for freshman and sophomores. )
Few study power of school boards
James Salzer and Nancy Badertscher
A small group of people you’ve probably never heard of spend $8 billion of your tax money each year, employ more than 90,000 people and set policies that affect 800,000 area schoolchildren.
Dr. Ricky A. Welkis is one of the few audience members at the sparsely attended Cobb county school board meeting in Marietta recently. Welkis is a school board candidate for post-6 in the upcoming election.
They are elected, but in some cases with fewer than 20 percent of voters casting ballots.
They are your school board members.
Metro Atlanta has some of the best and some of the worst.
There are patterns discernible in their bios: Most have college degrees; most get annual training; but a surprising 40 percent have had financial problems — bankruptcies or liens — even as they control multimillion-dollar and even billion-dollar budgets.
Recently, several metro Atlanta boards have presided over school systems in crisis. Often, those that do are accused of meddling at the schoolhouse.
School Board governance vs. administrative intransigence is a topic worth exploring, per Madison School Board member Lucy Mathiak’s recent blog post. It appears, to this observer, that some board members prefer to go along with the status quo while a few others are trying to drive change.
In tune with the have-nots @ Beethovenfest
I didn’t expect that going to hear the Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra of Venezuela rehearse and play at the Beethovenfest in Bonn would give me a new perspective, not just on Beethoven but also on wealth and poverty and the divide between the haves and have-nots. Many of the teenagers in this orchestra (a younger version of the better-known Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela) come from the poor barrios of Caracas: what we would call slums, lacking basic amenities and privacy.
No wonder the kids I spoke to were so impressed by what they called the “beautiful” city of Bonn, where the Porsches and Mercedes glide through wide and well-ordered avenues, but where, from the deathly silence that reigns on the streets, you might think an invisible plague had killed the inhabitants.
But these kids obviously have something. In fact, what they have impressed the respectable burghers of Bonn so much that 1,600 of them rose to their feet after a concert consisting of the Fifth Symphonies of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and then gave themselves up to delirious and quite un-middle-aged clapping and swaying as the orchestra launched into six encores.
Singapore Math Is “Our Dirty Little Secret”
Barry Garelick, via email:
The New York Times ran a story on September 30 about Singapore Math being used in some schools in the New York City area. Like many newspaper stories about Singapore Math, this one was no different. It described a program that strangely sounded like the math programs being promoted by reformers of math education, relying on the cherished staples of reform: manipulatives, open-ended problems, and classroom discussion of problems. The only thing the article didn’t mention was that the students worked in small groups.
Those of us familiar with Singapore Math from having used it with our children are wondering just what program the article was describing. Spending a week on the numbers 1 and 2 in Kindergarten? Spending an entire 4th grade classroom period discussing the place value ramifications of the number 82,566? Well, maybe that did happen, but not because the Singapore Math books are structured that way. In fact, the books are noticeably short on explicit narrative instruction. The books provide pictures and worked out examples and excellent problems; the topics are ordered in a logical sequence so that material mastered in the various lessons builds upon itself and is used to advance to more complex applications. But what is assumed in Singapore is that teachers know how to teach the material–the teacher’s manuals contain very little guidance. Thus, the decision to spend a week on the numbers 1 and 2 in kindergarten, or a whole class period discussing a single number is coming from the teachers, not the books.
The mistaken idea that gets repeated in many such articles is that Singapore Math differs from other programs by requiring or imparting a “deep understanding” and that such understanding comes about through a) manipulatives, b) pictures, and c) open-ended discussions. In fact, what the articles represent is what the schools are telling the reporters. What newspapers frequently do not realize when reporting on Singapore Math, is that when a school takes on such a program, it means going against what many teachers believe math education to be about; it is definitely not how they are trained in ed schools. The success of Singapore’s programs relies in many ways on more traditional approaches to math education, such as explicit instruction and giving students many problems to solve, in some ways its very success represented a slap in the face to American math reformers, many of whom have worked hard to eliminate such techniques being used.
Simple vs. Complex In Improving Education
It’s neat to see my son, a first grader, get off his Chicago Public Schools bus when it drops him back home. It also reminds me of what’s wrong with our education system.
Mayoral candidates should join me as the bus arrives about 2:45 p.m. That means he has been in school for, at most, five and a half hours. Chicago has the shortest school day of the 50 largest districts in the United States.
Ron Huberman, head of Chicago Public Schools, confirmed to me once that our school year is about seven weeks shorter than New York’s.
The length of the school day is one of many topics being faced as education experiences another paroxysm of interest. It’s partly due to “Waiting for Superman,” a documentary about our flagging schools. Oprah Winfrey did two shows inspired by the movie, while NBC and MSNBC gave the subject a week of serious attention
Students and teachers photograph the best–and worst–places in their schools.
While designers are busy creating the classroom of the future, many students are stuck in not merely unimaginative school buildings but actually disgusting ones. The 21st Century School Fund and Healthy Schools Campaign, which work for improvements in education facilities, and Critical Exposure, which uses student photography as an advocacy tool, believe that no one can show what is and isn’t working in school buildings better than the people inside them. Each year, they ask students and teachers to shoot the best and worst of their surroundings. The “Through Your Lens” exhibit features an awful lot of peeling paint and broken windows–the kind of environment you wouldn’t want your kid in for an hour, much less a childhood. But the photographers also highlight examples of spaces that work, flashes of color and sunlight and order in otherwise chaotic surroundings.
Why low standards for education are good
No education scholar in America throws an analytical knuckleball as well as David F. Labaree of Stanford University. You are reading along, enjoying the clarity of his prose and the depth of his research, thinking his argument is going one way when–whoops!–it breaks in another direction altogether.
It is dizzying, but in a fun way, like an intricate rollercoaster. In a recent book, for instance, Labaree showed that education schools like the one that employs him teach theories that have little to do with how schools work but–here comes the twist–that’s okay because education school graduates ignore those courses once they start teaching.
He is at it again in his new book, “Someone Has To Fail: The Zero-Sum Game of Public Schooling.” The book is only 280 pages long, but so rich in contrarian assaults on cherished American assumptions I cannot adequately summarize it. I will describe pieces of it instead, like the thrilling part where Labaree disembowels the argument for higher U.S. school standards made by Bob Compton, the high-tech entrepreneur who produced the film “Two Million Minutes” and completely skewered me once on cable TV.
Annapolis Police Change School Notification Policy
Annapolis police are changing the way they share information with schools after it was revealed that a high school senior charged this week with assaulting of a fellow student faced similar charges months ago.
The 17 year old from Annapolis was charged Wednesday with attempted second-degree rape and related counts in a Sept. 29 sexual assault involving a 14-year-old girl outside Annapolis High School. He is awaiting trial on charges he raped another teenager in May.
Anne Arundel County Public Schools officials say police never told them about the earlier allegations.
Tulsa School Districts Defend Special Education Decision
Officials with several suburban school districts responded to their critics Thursday, claiming that they have no choice but to disobey a new law that calls for public schools to fund private school scholarships for special education students.
“We have taken this very courageous stand to try to get this law reviewed, not because we want to be sued or because we want to violate the law,” Union Superintendent Cathy Burden said. “We have no way of getting it to the court system without drawing a line in the sand.”
Burden will ask the Union school board on Monday to join the Broken Arrow and Jenks boards in approving measures that state that they do not intend to pay any parent who requests a Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship.
Madison’s Planned Dual Language Immersion Program
We propose Chavez Elementary as the DLI site for the Memorial attendance area. Of all the elementary schools in this attendance area, Chavez student enrollment of Spanish-speaking English-language learners remained most consistent. This proposal reconunends that Chavez Elementary begin the 2011-2012 school year with two DLI classrooms, similar to Sandburg’s DLI program which opened this school year with two DLI classrooms.
In addition, opening a DLI program at Cesar Chavez Elementary acknowledges the school’s name sake, a Latino civil rights activist. The goals of DLI progrannning to develop cross-cultural understanding and bilingualism support Cesar Chavez’ vision, and the MMSD strategic plan.
An Update on Madison’s Proposed 4K Program Financing: Federal Stimulus Tax Dollars Replace Local Funds, District Proposes Increased Spending on Maintenance & Technology
As part of the Education Job Funds recommendation, we are recommending using approximately $4.2 million for funding the shortfall created by beginning this new program in 2011-12. This plan for funding 4-k will continue to have the assumption that property taxes will have to be used to support approximately $3.7 million of the start up costs for this program in 2011-12 as well. The use of these Education Job Funds if approved, creates an opportunity to utilize funds originally targeted for 4-k start up in a different way.
During the process of re-financing the district’s Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS) unfunded pension liability, the Board of Education approved a financing plan that prepared for the use of borrowed funds to support the 4-K start up (See next page). This structure effectively created budget capacity of approximately $4.2 million over the next three years. These funds were targeted originally to pay for a borrowed amount equal to $4.2 million to support the first year of 4-K, but the Federal Education Job Funds created an opportunity for MMSD to re-evaluate this decision.
Administration would propose the concept of utilizing these budget funds, originally meant to re-pay a 4-K borrow of approximately $4.2 million, to support Maintenance and Technology needs over the next two years. Under this idea, MMSD would move forward with borrowing funds as planned, but rather than using these funds to support 4-K, shift the purpose to meet technology and maintenance needs. Itwould be our intent to split these funds equally between these two areas, and work with the Board over the next 6 to 9 months to prioritize needs within these two areas.
Who Will Rescue America’s Schools
Letters to the New York Times:
Kudos to Gail Collins for highlighting the disastrous consequences of children’s having to attend lotteries to learn whether they won a coveted spot in a charter school that might save them from becoming a statistical casualty of our ailing public school system.
“Waiting for Superman” is not the first film to give life to this issue, nor will it be the last. But Ms. Collins’s anger is misplaced when she tells the charters to stop holding theatrical lottery drawings. Federal and state laws require charters to conduct lotteries. And if they were not public, can you imagine the phone calls from angry parents of rejected students demanding to see proof?
Families want to be able to exercise choice rather than be confined to the schools that we might have to wait another 30 years for a Superman to fix. Thanks to the charter idea, students are better served.
Milwaukee Public Schools tries to find long-term change among the fads
I thought the hula hoop was a fad when I was a kid, which is to say, I thought it would be gone in about a month. A half century later, hula hoops are still around.
I thought decentralization of decision making and budgeting for Milwaukee Public Schools a decade ago was a trend, which is to say, it was an important, lasting change in the educational landscape. Now, it’s effectively gone. Just a fad.
Education history is filled with hot subjects of the moment – new ways to teach reading, new ways to handle misbehaving students, new ways to organize the school day. Teachers should stand in the front of the room. Teachers should stand in the back of the room. Teachers should wander around the room.
Most of these ideas leave the stage after a little while. You can make a lot of teachers roll their eyes just by mentioning some of them. Come back next year and we’ll be doing things differently, they say.
I was once at a seminar for reporters and editors on fads, trends, and how to tell the difference. Everyone agreed fads go away quickly, trends stay, and you usually can’t tell which is which until you wait them out. (I’m beginning to think this Internet thing is a trend, for example.)
So what about Michelle Rhee? The new Milwaukee Public Schools’ reading program? The increasing and potent role of the federal government in shaping local education? “Waiting for Superman”? Response to Intervention?
Virtual charter schools growing throughout Wisconsin
Early each school day morning, 10-year-old twins Galyn and Grace Hartung and their 8-year-old brother Henry bound out of the house and run to the school bus stop to play with friends from their Cross Plains neighborhood. But when the school bus pulls up to the curb some 20 minutes later, only the friends get on board.
The Hartung kids, virtual school students, head back home to a brightly painted basement room where many assignments are digital, the teachers are heard through a laptop and the study hall monitor is mom.
“It just feels like a normal way to do school,” said Grace.
Galyn, Grace and Henry are among some 3,955 students enrolled this fall in 12 virtual charter schools statewide. That’s up from 3,829 students in 2009-10 and 2,983 in 2008-09.
Why science careers, and courses, aren’t so popular
I know how high school course choices affect college chances, but I know much less about how they affect lives. For that kind of advice, I rely on some experienced career specialists, such as Ann Emerson of Stafford County public schools.
She sent me a refreshingly cool appraisal of the red hot national campaign to expand math and science education. She explains why we are having such trouble persuading students to pursue careers in chemistry, psychometrics, physics, biotechnology and related pursuits.
The full term for this most fashionable of all 21st-century education trends is STEM, short for science, technology, engineering and math. STEM advocates want to put more emphasis on these subjects in school. They want to train more teachers in these disciplines and produce more professionals in these fields.
13 Houston schools get envelopes with white powder
At least 13 schools in Houston ISD received suspicious envelopes on Friday with a white powdery substance that initial inspectors have determined is cornstarch.
The Houston Independent School District has sent the substance to the city health department for follow-up testing to make sure it is the basic cooking material and is not, in fact, hazardous, HISD spokeswoman Sarah Greer Osborne said.
The schools that got the envelopes were Almeda, Alcott, Anderson, Ashford, Barrick, Bastian, Blackshear, Briarmeadow and Browning elementaries. Attucks, Black and Fonville middle schools and Bellaire High School also received the envelopes.
“Some of them were opened when the kids were in school, but it wasn’t done when any kids were present,” Greer Osborne said.
Dead Tree Alert: School’s In
In my TIME print-edition column this week (not yet available online), I take a look at pop culture and the public school crisis. Besides Davis Guggenheim’s excellent documentary Waiting for “Superman,” the column covers two Friday reality shows that take very different approaches to public school ills: NBC’s School Pride, which debuts in a week, and A&E’s Teach: Tony Danza, which continues airing tonight. After the jump, a little more about them:
School Pride is a curious show to debut so close to “Superman,” even though the show has very similar concerns–namely, how public schools can better serve kids, especially those in poorer neighborhoods. The movie highlights inequities in schooling, but also makes a point of stressing that increases in per-pupil spending since the ’70s have shown no increase in performance. School Pride, on the other hand, is expressly focused on trying to help kids by materially improving their schools.
In essence, it’s an earnest, moving Extreme Makeover: Home Edition for schools, in which the show’s team, community members and corporate sponsors come together to rebuild and create new school facilities; in the first episode, they take on a middle school in Compton, infested with mice and roaches, lacking in equipment and blighted with broken floorboards and cracked asphalt. Its assumption, repeated frequently, is that kids working in a well-kept school with new equipment, labs, &c. will feel better, take pride in their school (hence the title) and learn better.
Madison School District 2010-2011 Enrollment Report, Including Outbound Open Enrollment (3.11%)
136K PDF
A few numbers:
Total District Enrollment 24,796 (The Wisconsin DPI enrollment number for Madison is 25,395).
Open Enrollment Leavers: 772
Open Enrollment Enterers: 175
Much more on outbound open enrollment here.
Tax & spending authority are largely based on enrollment.
The most recent 2010-2011 budget document indicates total planned spending of $373,157,148, which yields $15049.08 per student.
If Schools Were Like ‘American Idol’ . . . Unless we measure success by how children perform, we’ll have higher standards for pop stars than public schools.
Over the past few years, I have often complained about a hidebound culture that prevents many newspapers from responding to the challenges of new technology. There is, however, another hidebound American institution that is also finding it difficult to respond to new challenges: our big-city schools.
Today, for example, the United States is home to more than 2,000 dysfunctional high schools. They represent less than 15% of American high schools yet account for about half of our dropouts. When you break this down, you find that these institutions produce 81% of all Native American dropouts, 73% of all African-American dropouts, and 66% of all Hispanic dropouts.
At our grade schools, two-thirds of all eighth-graders score below proficient in math and reading. The average African-American or Latino 9-year-old is three grades behind in these subjects. Behind the grim statistics is the real story: lost opportunities, crushed dreams, and shattered lives. In plain English, we trap the children who need an education most in failure factories.
N.C. education policy focused on social promotion ends
A policy approved more than a decade ago designed to ensure kids were prepared for the next grade by passing a standardized test was eliminated Thursday by the State Board of Education because it contained exceptions and didn’t appear to be effective.
The board agreed to end the requirement that students in third-, fifth- and eighth- grades pass end-of-grade tests to be promoted or end-of-course tests in five high school subjects to graduate. It was removed as the board agreed to approve five broad standards by which schools and teachers will be judged in coming years for student performance.
The testing requirement, which initially took effect in late 1999, was supposed to reduce “social promotion” — students moving on to the next grade even if they hadn’t mastered their grade-level subjects. Critics of the change at the time argued it would hurt minority students the most and the state lacked funding to give the students remedial help.
Charter Education Expanding In Chicago
From a windowless basement office on Chicago’s West Side, Greg White is trying to answer public education’s $2 million-dollar question: What is the top priority for a school in Chicago’s cash-strapped district?
The answer for Mr. White, chief executive of the LEARN Charter School Network — which received two $1 million grants from Oprah Winfrey’s Angel Network and the United States Department of Education last month — is to open a fifth charter school in the network next fall. It is one of 10 charter schools in Chicago that Mr. White said he wanted to open in as many years, which would allow him to hire dozens of out-of-work teachers.
A month ago, those ambitious plans were in jeopardy. Chicago Public Schools approved a budget that cut district financing to charter schools by 6 percent, which could remove more than $400,000 from the network’s budget this year. The two grants will cover the cost of opening the fifth school, Mr. White said.
LA schools seek layoffs system opposed by union
A proposed agreement that would change how teachers are laid off in the nation’s second-largest school district is being hailed as a landmark that could pave the way for changes in urban districts across the nation, but the city’s teachers union said Wednesday that it had “serious concerns.”
The settlement, which must be approved by a judge, would shield up to 45 underperforming schools from teacher layoffs for budget reasons. It also stipulates that vacancies be filled as quickly as possible, and contains a commitment to explore incentives, such as bonuses, to recruit and retain teachers and principals at poorly performing schools, with additional incentives if the school’s academic performance improves.
The agreement stems from a lawsuit by American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California over teacher layoffs at three inner-city schools. The group had filed a class-action suit against the Los Angeles Unified School District in February, saying that mandated seniority-driven layoffs led to the three schools shedding some two-thirds of their teachers, which left students largely in the hands of substitutes.
The ACLU said students were being denied their state constitutional right to a fair and adequate education. It won a temporary injunction in May that prevented more layoffs of first- and second-year teachers who form the bulk of faculties at these schools in improverished areas, which more experienced teachers tend to avoid.
Ruling Limits State’s Power in School Suspensions
In a ruling that puts new restraints on get-tough “zero tolerance” discipline, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled Friday that schools must provide strong reasons for denying alternative schooling or tutoring to students after they are suspended for misbehavior.
The case was brought on behalf of two girls who were suspended for five months in 2008 after a brief fistfight at their high school in Beaufort County that involved no weapons or injuries. The suit did not question the district’s right to suspend them, but protested the additional, harsher step the district took, denying them access to the county’s alternative school for troubled students or help with study at home.
Legal experts said the decision, in a case that had drawn national attention from civil rights groups, children’s advocates and school leaders, was likely to be cited as a precedent as other states confront similar issues. The ruling affects one aspect of the zero-tolerance discipline policies that spread throughout the country over the last two decades, a policy originally intended to weed out dangerous children but one that critics say is used too readily for lesser infractions, derailing the lives of black children in particular.
Baffling
Baffling. That’s one way to describe the back-to-back speeches last week by Education Secretary Duncan and President Obama at the centennial celebration of the National Urban League.
Both Obama and Duncan decried the status quo in education, offered some expensive and untried proposals for improvement, but failed to embrace an obvious and economical reform: school choice.
Too many low-income children are sentenced to chronically underperforming schools and nearly 50 percent of African-American and Latino students drop out of high school, putting themselves and the nation at risk, said the secretary. But while acknowledging some pockets of educational excellence that exist across the country, he and his boss overlooked the amazing work being done by religious and independent schools to combat the drop-out rate and close the achievement gap.
The most recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that black eighth-grade students in private schools score roughly two full grade levels higher in reading than their counterparts in public schools. According to other government reports, private high school students take tougher courses, score much better on the SATs and ACTs, and go to college at significantly higher rates than their public school peers. If getting more students ready for college is the administration’s primary educational goal, then helping more parents choose private schools for their children should be at the front of reform efforts.
Lessons from SEED, a National Demonstration of Child Development Accounts
A nationwide system of Child Development Accounts (CDAs) established as early as birth can lead to lifelong savings, raise college expectations and affordability, and serve as a basis for more stable and productive financial lives for American families, according to a new report.
The report, “Lessons from SEED, a National Demonstration of Child Development Accounts,” is based on the experience of more than 1,171 children of all ages and their families who participated in pioneering CDA pilot programs in 12 states and communities. This pilot demonstration showed that, given the opportunity, families in some of the poorest communities in our country, would save for their child’s college education and future. The programs tested CDAs, savings or investing accounts that begin as early as birth and allow parents and children to accumulate savings for college, homeownership or business initiatives.
The Saving for Education, Entrepreneurship, and Downpayment Initiative, or SEED, is a 10-year, multi-million dollar national policy, practice and research endeavor to develop, test and promote matched savings accounts and financial education for children and youth. SEED was designed to set the stage for universal, progressive American policy for asset building among children, youth and families. It was funded by 12 national foundations, including the Ford and Citi Foundations.
Philadelphia School Partnership Launches
Today marks the official launch of the Philadelphia School Partnership– a collaboration of business leaders, foundations, city leaders and educators from the School District of Philadelphia, public charter and parochial schools. The goal of the Philadelphia School Partnership is to make Philadelphia the highest performing city in the country in terms of educational achievement by 2015. The Philadelphia School Partnership will do this by increasing the pace of education reform in Philadelphia and by financially supporting great schools that can serve additional students within the charter, District and parochial school systems.
The Philadelphia School Partnership has established a five-year goal to raise $100 million and to strategically invest the funds in initiatives that will directly increase student performance across Philadelphia. To date, the Philadelphia School Partnership board and anonymous donors have seeded this fund with $16 million.
“The Philadelphia School Partnership speaks, acts and stands for quality education for the children of Philadelphia, wherever they attend school,” said Mike O’Neill, Chair of the Philadelphia School Partnership Board of Directors. “This organization is a public recognition that we share more educational goals than differences and that now, more than ever, Philadelphia has to pull together to support this common agenda.”
Madison West High School student is arrested for possessing a handgun
A 15-year-old student at West High School was arrested Friday for possession of a handgun, according to the Madison Police Department.
A letter sent to parents from principal Ed Holmes said a staff member received information that the student might be in possession of a gun, and contacted the Educational Resource Officer in the building. Police were called at about 11:45 a.m., and with their assistance, the officer located the student on Ash Street with the loaded .22 caliber handgun in his pocket and arrested him.
Search 53726 on crimereports.com.
September, 2010 message from West High School’s principal.
An Update on Madison Preparatory Academy: A Proposed International Baccalaureate Charter School
Kaleem Caire, via email:
October 8, 2010
Greetings Madison Prep.
It was so wonderful to have those of you who were able to join us for the information session Tuesday night (Oct 5) here at the Urban League. We appreciate you dedicating part of your evening to learning about Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men and we look forward to working with you on this very important project. You are receiving this email because you volunteered to join the team that is going to put Madison Prep on the map!
There are a few things we want to accomplish with this email:
1. Share information about the project management website that we’ve established to organize our communications and planning with regard to developing the school
2. Secure dates and times that you’re are available to attend the first of your selected Design Team meeting(s)
3. Provide, as promised, background information on Madison Prep along with hyperlinks that will help you educate yourself on charter schools and components of the Madison Prep school design
Please SAVE this email as it contains a number of information resources that you will want to refer back to as we engage in planning Madison Prep. There is a lot of information here and we DO NOT expect you to read everything or learn it all at once. Take your time and enjoy the reading and learning. We will guide you through the process. J
PROJECT MANAGEMENT WEBSITE
Today, you will receive an email with a subject line that reads, “You’re invited to join our project management and collaboration system.” Please open this email. It will contain the information you need to sign up to access the Madison Prep Project Management Site. You will need to select a username and password. FYI, Basecamp is used by millions of people and companies to manage projects. You can learn more about basecamp by clicking here. Once in the site, you can click on the “help” button at the top, if necessary, to get a tutorial on how to use the site. It is fairly easy to figure out without the tutorial. If you have spam controls on your computer, please be sure to check your spam or junk mail box to look for emails and posting that we might make through Basecamp. Occasionally, postings will end up there. Please approve us as an email “sender” to you.
We have already posted the business plan for the original school (NextGen Prep) that is the same model as Madison Prep. We’ve also posted other important documents and have set a deadline of Friday, October 15, 2010 for you to review certain documents that have been posted. The calendar shown in Basecamp will include these assignments. Please email me or Ed Lee (elee@ulgm.org) if you have questions about using this site.
DATES FOR DESIGN TEAM MEETINGS
At the Interest Meeting we held on Tuesday (or in other conversation with us), you indicated a preference for getting involved in one of the following design teams. Please click on the name of the team below. You will be taken to www.doodle.com to identify your availability for these meetings. Please share your availability by Monday, October 11 at 12pm so that we can send out meeting notices that afternoon. We will address the dates and times of future meetings at the first meeting of each team. Please note, you do not need to be a “charter school” expert to be involved with this. You will have a lot of fun working towards developing a “high quality public charter school” and will learn in the process.
· Curriculum & Instruction Team. This design team will develop a thorough understanding of the IB curriculum and define the curriculum of the school, including the core and non-core curriculum. At least for the first meeting of this design team, Instructional strategies will be addressed as well. The Instruction team will develop a thorough understanding of the Harkness teaching method, outline instructional best practices, and address teacher expectations and evaluation. Both teams will address special education and English Language Learners (ELL). Additional details will be shared at the first meeting.
· Governance, Leadership & Operation Team. This design team will help develop the school’s operations plan, define the governing structure, and address the characteristics and expectations of the schools Head of School. The Head of School will be the instructional leader and therefore, there will be some overlapping conversations that need to occur with the team that addresses instruction and quality teaching.
· Facility Team. This team will be responsible for identify, planning, and securing a suitable facility for Madison Prep.
· Budget, Finance & Fundraising Team. This team will be involved with developing Madison Prep’s budget and fundraising plans, and will explore financing options for start-up, implementation, and the first four years of the school’s operation.”
· Community Engagement & Support Team. This team will develop strategies and work to establish broad community support for Madison Prep, develop criteria for partnering with others, and establish partnerships that support teaching, learning, leadership, and community engagement.
BACKGROUND ON MADISON PREPARATORY ACADEMY AND CHARTER SCHOOLS
There is a lot of good support and buzz growing around Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men (charter school). To ensure you have the opportunity to familiarize yourself with charter schools and single gendered school models, we have listed internet resources below that you can visit and review. Just click on the hyperlinks.
Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men will be an all-male charter school that we intend to open in the Madison area in the fall of 2012. It will serve as a high quality school option for parents as well as a demonstration school for secondary education reform and improvement in Dane County. We want local teachers and schools to learn from Madison Prep, and will take steps
We have attached the two page executive summary again for your review along with a business plan for the school (that will be modified to fit Madison). Madison Prep was originally to be launched as a charter school in Washington, DC and Prince Georges County, Maryland in 2011 and 2013 under Next Generation, an organization I founded in Maryland with my wife and other partners in 2006.
ABOUT CHARTER SCHOOLS
In 2009, there were 5,043 charter schools in the United States compared to 33,740 private schools and 98,916 traditional public schools. Nationally, charter schools enrolled 1,536,079 students in 2009. According to the Wisconsin Charter School Association, there are more than 223 charter schools in Wisconsin serving more than 37,432 students. There are presently just two charter schools in Madison: James C. Wright Middle School on Madison’s South side, founded in 1997 (originally as Madison Middle School 2000).
Until recently, other school districts in Wisconsin have been more open to charter schools. Appleton (14), Janesville (5), Kenosha (6), LaCrosse (4) and Milwaukee (66), Oshkosh (6), Sheboygan (7), Sparta (4), Stevens Point (7), and Waukesha (6) have authorized a significant number of public charter schools when considering the size of their total school district enrollments. However, recent enthusiasm around the formation of Badger Rock School is a sign that Madison area school districts could be more receptive to innovative charter school models that serve a specific community need and purpose. With your support and that of many others, we intend to make a very strong case for Madison Prep and why it’s so desperately needed in our community.
DESIGNING MADISON PREP
In Maryland, our team spent three years researching and designing the school and the curriculum. Members of the founding team were involved in the establishment and/or leadership of Bishop John T. Walker School for Boys , Septima Clark Public Charter School , The SEED Foundation and Public Charter Schools, Sidwell Friends School (where President Obama’s children attend), and Hyde Leadership Public Charter School . We had an expert on international baccalaureate education lead our curriculum design. We also worked closely with the leadership and faculty of other private and charter schools as we developed the business plan, curriculum and education program, including Washington Jesuit Academy , the St. Paul’s School in Baltimore, and Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. The school will utilize the highly regarded college-preparatory International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum and the teaching methodology will be rooted in Harkness instruction. St. Paul’s also has a school for girls – the St. Paul School for Girls.
Prior to being hired as President & CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison (ULGM), I shared with our ULGM board that I would look to establish charter schools as a strategy to address the persistent underperformance and failure of our children attending Madison area schools. As we have engaged our community, listened to leaders, researched the issues, and evaluated the data, it is clear that Madison Prep is not only needed, but absolutely necessary.
SINGLE GENDERED PUBLIC SCHOOLS
As of June 2010, there were 540 public schools in the U.S. offering a single-gendered option, with 92 schools having an all-male or all-female enrollment and the rest operating single gendered classes or programs. There were 12 public schools in Wisconsin offering single gendered classes or classrooms (6 middle schools, 5 high schools, and one elementary school).
There are several single gendered charter schools for young men that have garnered a lot of attention of late, including Urban Prep Academies in Chicago – which sent 100% of its first graduating class to college, The Eagle Academy Foundation in New York City, Boys Latin of Philadelphia, and Brighter Choice Charter School for Boys and Green Tech High School in
Albany, NY, Bluford Drew Jemison Academy in Baltimore.
MORE ABOUT CHARTER SCHOOLS
To learn more about charter schools, visit the following websites:
US Charter Schools
Information Website
Starting a Charter School
National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, Washington, DC
National Association of Charter School Authorizers, Chicago, IL
District of Columbia Public Charter School Board, Washington, DC (one of the best authorizers of charter schools; the local school board will authorize our school)
Center for Education Reform, Washington,
Wisconsin Charter School Association
Madison, WI
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (Charter Schools), Madison ,WI
Green Charter Schools Network, Madison, WI
National Council of LaRaza Charter School Development, Phoenix, AZ
Coalition of Schools Educating Boys of Color (COSEBC), Lynn, MA
National Association for Single Sex Public Education Exton, PA
The Gurian Institute,
Colorado Springs, CO
Some of the more highly recognized and notable “networks” of charter
schools:
Green Dot Public Schools, Los Angeles, California
KIPP Schools, San Francisco, CA
Aspire Public Schools, Oakland, CA
Achievement First Schools, New Haven, CT
Uncommon Schools, New York, NY
Other Programs of interest:
America’s Top Charter Schools, U.S. News & World Report (2009)
New Leaders for New Schools, New York,
NY
Teach for America, New
York, NY
Teacher U, New York, NY
Early College High Schools
Charter School Financing (excluding banks):
State of Wisconsin Charter School Planning and Implementation Grants (planning, start-up, and implementation)
Walton Family Foundation, Bentonville, AR (planning, start-up, and implementation; however, only focus in Milwaukee right now but we can talk with them)
Partners for Developing Futures, Los Angeles, CA (planning, start-up, and implementation)
IFF, Chicago, IL (facilities)
Building Hope, Washington, DC (facilities)
Charter School Development Center, Hanover, MD (facilities)
Local Initiatives Support Corporation, New York, NY (facilities)
NCB Capital Impact, Arlington, VA (facilities)
Raza Development Fund, Phoenix, AZ (facilities)
We look forward to getting Madison Prep off the ground with you! WE CAN DO THIS!!
Whatever it Takes.
Onward!
_____________________________________________
Kaleem Caire
President & CEO
Urban League of Greater Madison
2222 South Park Street, Suite 200
Madison, WI 53713
Main: 608-729-1200
Assistant: 608-729-1249
Mobile: 202-997-3198
Fax: 608-729-1205
Email: kcaire@ulgm.org
Internet: www.ulgm.org
Facebook: Click Here
Next Generation Preparatory Academy for Young Men Empowering Young Men for Life 1.5MB PDF and Madison Preparatory Academy Overview 150K PDF.
Related: Kaleem Caire video interview.
Does School Kill Writing?
In 1936 the University of Iowa became the first school in the United States to offer a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in creative writing. Forty years later there were only a dozen such programs in the world. Today, according to an article in the current issue of Poets & Writers magazine entitled “The MFA Revolution,” there are nearly 200 creative writing MFA programs worldwide, and at least 4,000 aspiring writers apply to these programs each year in the U.S. alone. “What is clear,” the article concludes, “is that the burgeoning network of fully funded MFA programs is rapidly becoming the nation’s largest-ever patronage system for young artists.”
Whenever the words “patronage” and “artists” appear in the same sentence, questions must be asked. Is this mass patronage system a boon for American fiction, or is it a poison pill? Do creative writing programs nurture genuine talent, or are they spawning a torrent of technically accomplished books that are devoid of felt life? And more broadly: Just what good does schooling of any kind do for a writer?
In The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing, Mark McGurl points out the “seemingly banal” fact that virtually all contemporary American fiction writers have attended college. “In previous generations this would not likely have been the case,” McGurl writes, “both because fewer individuals of any kind went to college before the postwar advent of mass higher education and because a college education was not yet perceived as an obvious…starting point for a career as a novelist. Rather, as the un-credentialled, or rather press-credentialled, example of the high school graduate Hemingway makes clear, the key supplementary institution for the novel until mid-century was journalism.”
Fight over illegals’ tuition reaches high court
The issue of benefits for illegal immigrants landed at the state Supreme Court on Tuesday, as out-of-state students challenged a law allowing anyone who has graduated from a California high school to pay in-state tuition at a public university, regardless of immigration status.
The 2002 law, intended to encourage youngsters to attend college, enables undocumented students to pay the same lower fees as other state residents – at the University of California, $11,300 instead of $34,000 a year.
A lawyer for 42 non-Californians who pay the higher fees at UC, state university and community college campuses argued that the statute is discriminatory and violates federal immigration law.
“One of the privileges of U.S. citizenship is not being treated worse than an illegal alien,” attorney Kris Kobach told the court at a hearing in Fresno.
Evaluating Newark’s School Staffing and Performance
Speaking of Newark Public Schools, this past December the well-regarded organization called The New Teacher Project (of Widget Effect fame) partnered with Newark to evaluate the “impact of the school district’s policies and practices…to build and maintain strong instructional teams.” Here’s the results:
1. Newark Public Schools sabotages its ability to hire high-quality teachers by not responding promptly to early applicants, especially in high-need subject areas. According to the report, teachers hired before June 1 for the coming school year are more likely to receive a “distinguished” evaluation rating, yet Newark waits until August and September to make most of its job offers. 73% of principals “have lost a desirable candidate because they could not make a timely offer.”
2. While both teachers and administrators vastly prefer to have interviews before being moved from one school to another, “more than half of all administrators have been forced to accept a less desirable teacher candidate ‘force-placed’ by the Human Resources Department. “85% of principals have had a teacher placed into their school without an interview.”
Could ‘Superman’ change Milwaukee’s education discussion?
Everyone knows there are major problems with America’s public schools and that many children are not even receiving a passable education. Even President Barack Obama admits that his daughters could not get the high quality education they’re currently receiving at a private school in a Washington D.C. public school.
That is why Waiting for ‘Superman’ has hit such a nerve with the public and the education establishment. Teacher’s unions claim the film is an attack on teachers and in the weeks leading up to its premiere, a Facebook page was created in opposition to the movie. Meanwhile school reformers say ‘Superman’ is a wake up call, saying that the film comments on the failures in public schools and possible solutions.
Both sides came together following the film’s Milwaukee screening at an educational forum. Local education leaders — Terry Falk of the Milwaukee School Board; Dr. Howard Fuller, former MPS Superintendent and Director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University; Mike Langyel,President of the Milwaukee Teacher’s Education Association; Cherise Easley, Campus Director, Milwaukee College Preparatory-Lindsey Heights; and Garrett Buck, Milwaukee director of Teach for America — discussed the film and more importantly the pros and cons of our current educational system.
Teach For America – You Might Want to Pay Attention
m still doing research on Teach for America. I’m going to try to do a two-part thread on it and somewhat in reverse because of the urgency I feel about the situation. I’ll do the facts and stats later but I want to try to get to the meat of the issue now. But first…
What is the problem that TFA is trying to solve?
You go to their website and they talk about the lack “educational equity” for low-income students. This is true and most would not dispute it. Okay, but why create a teaching corps?
What is TFA’s “approach?”
Teach For America provides a critical source of well-trained teachers who are helping break the cycle of educational inequity. These teachers, called corps members, commit to teach for two years in one of 39 urban and rural regions across the country, going above and beyond traditional expectations to help their students to achieve at high levels.
Under History, they state:
Mesa school board candidates face questions about district’s finances, future
With school closings, declining enrollment and financial struggles putting Mesa Unified School District at a crossroads, parents packed a meeting this week to hear from the four candidates running for two seats on the governing board.
Close to 90 people attended the first Mesa Parent Advocates for Quality Schools (MPAQS) meeting of the school year on Tuesday. The two incumbents and two newcomers seeking seats on the board in the Nov. 2 election presented brief statements and answered audience questions.
Based on September enrollment figures, the district saw a 2,400-student decline from last school year. Five years ago, the start of the 2005 school year, there were 74,000 students in the district. Today, there are 64,817.
In January the current board voted to close a junior high school and moved smaller programs to that campus to free up other buildings for lease or sale.
Pa. Auditor General Calls For Moratorium On New Charter Schools
Pennsylvania’s auditor general said the state’s charter school funding formula is seriously flawed.
Jack Wagner is now calling for a moratorium on new charter schools until the Rendell administration makes some changes.
It may cost $15,000 a year to educate each student in one public school and $10,000 in another, depending on taxes.
But any child from any district can go to a charter school. And that’s where the charter school funding formula gets a little tricky.
“It becomes an equal playing field in terms of what the child can get,” said Diane LaBelle, executive director, Lehigh Valley Charter High School for Performing Arts.
It may be an equal playing field for the kids, but…
Obama’s biased bashing of career schools
President Obama’s Education secretary, Arne Duncan, deserves credit for breaking the ice on a touchy topic in Washington: making sure schools of higher education that rely on tax dollars or their tax-free status are held accountable for their results.
Certainly, the nation’s desire to reduce unemployment requires that graduates be fit for jobs and not overly burdened by student loans. One federal study found joblessness would drop by one-third if workers’ skills matched the jobs that employers are currently offering.
Unfortunately, Mr. Duncan is being too timid.
His department is oddly focused on making sure that only career colleges, or the for-profit sector of higher ed, are graduating students into “gainful employment” and with lower debt. Duncan must also aim his sights on state-run universities and the private, nonprofit schools that likewise gulp up education subsidies.
Those schools, too, often overpromise, underperform, and leave graduates short on career prospects and deep in red ink. Just ask many recent law graduates or anyone with a new bachelor’s degree in, say, sociology.
The Problem With New Orleans’s Charter Schools
A legal complaint alleges that the Big Easy’s schools discriminate against children with disabilities. What good is the charter revolution if it doesn’t reach the students who are most in need?
New Orleans, where more than 70 percent of public schools will be independently chartered after this school year, has been placed on a pedestal as a shining model by education reformers. The new documentary Waiting for “Superman”, which hopes to serve as a call to arms for education reform, devotes a page of its Web site to touting New Orleans’s new citywide school-choice system.
Charter-school advocates such as Caroline Roemer Shirley, executive director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools (LAPCS), are boasting of the success they’ve had in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when much of the population of New Orleans that might have opposed those policies was displaced from the city. “I don’t think we need to wait for Superman,” says Shirley. “It is happening today.” National media outlets have similarly gushed over New Orleans, some going so far as to suggest that Katrina saved the public-education system in the city.
Just How Much Are America’s Teachers Getting Paid?
Teachers also have a pretty good deal in Illinois. They are 100% unionized. The rent seeking teachers’ union curries favor with the Democrats. Democrats at every level of government do whatever the union wants.
The average teacher in the state of Illinois makes $61,402. Illinois teachers work around 176 days, 300 minutes, or 5 hours, per day. That’s just over 35 weeks per year. On average, they make $348.88 per day, $1.16 per minute, or $69.60 per hour guaranteed. Teachers in Illinois work an average of 12 years. They can retire at age 55.
In order to find out what they really make though, you should take their pension benefits, net present value them and amortize them over their career. As of 2010, the average pension for an Illinois teacher is $43,164. It compounds annually for life at 3% per year.
Now it’s time to do some math and make some assumptions. Assume that the lifespan of the teacher is no different than the average American, 78 years. If they start teaching at age 22, on average they will quit at 34. This means they will wait 21 years to collect their pension. The discount rate for the cash flows is a conservative 5%.
When you crunch all the numbers, the net present value of that pension is $290,756. Amortizing that over a twelve year career adds $24,229.64 to their average salary, making their actual salary before health benefits are added in a tidy $85,631.67, or $97.31 per hour.
If you compare and extrapolate that number to the private sector, it is interesting. Assume that you work an 8 hour day, 50 weeks a year. $194,620 bucks a year is what you would make! Most private sector jobs at that level work a lot more than an 8 hour day. Recently, private sector employment has not been as lucrative as public sector employment. For the first time in American history, it pays to be in the public sector.
Waiting for Super Principals
Gail Collins: David, the White House has named this an education week. It’s actually been a kind of education year, what with all the controversy over the new documentary “Waiting for Superman,” and Obama’s big Race to the Top initiative.
The bad thing about the current education hysteria is that too much attention is focusing on more charter schools and getting rid of teachers unions, or at least teacher tenure.
The great thing about the current education hysteria is that it has everybody geared up to do something. The bad thing, as I see it, is that almost all the attention is focusing on A.) more charter schools and B.) getting rid of teachers unions, or at least teacher tenure.
David Brooks: I confess I don’t think either charters or teacher unions are the primary issue here. If I had to summarize the progress we’ve made in education over the last decade, it’s that we’ve move beyond the illusion that we could restructure our way to a good education system and we’ve finally begun to focus on the core issue: the nature of the relationship between the teacher and the student.
People learn from people they love. Anything that enriches the space between a student and a teacher is good. Anything that makes it more frigid is bad. This doesn’t mean we have to get all huggy and mushy. It means rigorous instruction has to flow on threads of trust and affection.
Who’s attending CA’s elite public schools?
I finally got around to sorting state-level test score data, something I’ve been meaning to do since the Academic Performance Index release last month. (Boy, is it harder than it should be. Those mismatched column headers…)
Five of Oakland’s schools are up in the top 100 — roughly 1 percent of all public schools in California — when sorted by API: the three American Indian Model charter schools, Montclair and Hillcrest.
The American Indian Public Charter School in East Oakland’s Laurel District was the highest-performing middle school in the state, with an API of 988. (Not including schools with K-8 or 6-12 grade configurations, whose middle school scores aren’t broken out here.)
An Oakland voter’s guide, courtesy of GO Public Schools
Want to hear what Oakland’s mayoral, city council and school board hopefuls have to say about public education in the city, and how they would support it? Or read what they say they would do to “attract and retain great teachers in every Oakland public school,” advocate for students, and get Tony Smith’s strategic plan off the ground?
Great Oakland Public Schools videotaped statements from 10 mayoral candidates and posted questionnaire answers from school board candidates. The organization also asked city council candidates questions about “a to g” requirements, the district’s School Options policy, independently run charter schools, the November school parcel tax, and the role they’d play to help the city win federal grants, among others. The guide is set up so you can easily compare their answers.
How AmericA SAveS for college Sallie Mae’s National Study of Parents with Children under 18
American families have felt first-hand the significant impact of the economic crisis. The job market continues to show weakness, homes have lost value, and families are concerned about their economic future. Many studies have found that families are making tough choices in limiting their discretionary spending. It is in the context of this crisis that Sallie Mae has commissioned Gallup to conduct the second annual study of How America Saves for College, a national survey of families with children under 18. This year’s survey shows that, despite the on-going economic uncertainty, most families have not lessened their commitment to saving for a college education nor have they lowered their expectations for higher education attainment for their children. However, this challenging environment has illuminated the need for an increased commitment to savings that can soften these short-term economic impacts and the need for families to make smarter choices about their spending and saving.
Dump the Wake County assignment plan, start over
T. Keung Hui & Thomas Goldmsith
The Wake County school board has just thrown out its controversial, community-based assignment plan on a motion by vice chairwoman Debra Goldman.
A directive passed out by Keith Sutton, a member of the former board minority, calls for the following action:
“Any and all efforts to create a zone-based assignment model will cease effective immediately.”
The motion underwent brief discussion by the board in a meeting that has already lasted for nearly five hours.
Goldman made the motion and Sutton, formerly part of an opposing faction on the board, seconded it.
It passed on a 5-3 vote, with Goldman joining her four former opponents on the board.
Keep lid on Dane County tax hike
Supervisors of all political stripes need to work together this budget cycle to give and take in ways that don’t push up the property tax burden even higher than it’s already heading.
The city is considering hiking its tax burden by close to $100 on the average Madison home. The Madison school district plans to hike its average bill by more than $200.
The Madison Area Technical College wants to up its average Madison bill by about $30 – plus the college is seeking additional dollars for a building referendum.
It all adds up to several hundred dollars of additional tax burden on ordinary people when they can least afford it. As Falk notes in her budget memo to county supervisors, more than 5,000 Dane County properties are already behind on their payments.
Madison schools’ property taxes are set to increase 9+% this winter.
Waiting Long Enough for Superman
Watching Waiting for Superman last week left me exhausted. For too many years, education reformers have fought hard against the very injustices in the education system portrayed in the film. The good news, however, is that this newest declaration against the intolerable conditions of a broken public education system could finally call enough attention to the persistent problems to change things for the children whom we care so deeply about.
Geoffrey Canada, CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, is interviewed throughout the film. Canada talks about his childhood and how disappointed he was to learn that there was no real Superman who would save him from the hardships of his own difficult childhood. His anecdote inspired the title of the movie.
The movie shows over and over again why ineffective teachers should be replaced with successful ones and how important that is to children’s academic progress. Fighting against such commonsense ideas are the teachers unions, which oppose the teacher evaluation, merit pay, and firing of poor teachers.
In Favor of Madison’s Planned 4K Program
For a hopeful pessimist like me, it’s always nice when the real world belies your general sense of doom.
After all, the ranks of the poor are expanding, the national debt is skyrocketing, Wall Street bankers are again collecting exorbitant bonuses and no one really cares much about the shrinking polar ice caps. Throw in the mere existence of “Jersey Shore” and you’ve got a real social apocalypse on your hands.
There are a few rays of light amid the darkness, though, including plans by the Madison School District to institute a 4-year-old kindergarten program next year.
I’ve been surprised at the relative lack of controversy over this. You’d think that adding what is basically another grade to the public K-12 education system — at a cost to taxpayers of about $12 million in its first year — would bring out more school-choicers and teachers-union haters to decry the program as too expensive and another unwanted intrusion by government into the private sector.
But it hasn’t, and this is probably partly due to Wisconsin’s long history of supporting early education. The state was home to the first private kindergarten in the United States, opened in Watertown in 1856, and may well be the only state to include a commitment to 4-year-old education in its original constitution, according to The Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.
Today, 335 of the state’s 415 eligible districts already offer some form of free, professionally delivered 4-year-old kindergarten, and well over half of the state’s 4-year-olds are covered. A 2009 study by The National Institute for Early Education Research ranks Wisconsin sixth among 38 states in terms of access to 4-year-old preschool. (Twelve states have no formal preschool program.)
State honors 78 middle schools, including 2 in Madison
In the fourth year of a program recognizing student achievement, 78 middle schools in the state — including 2 in Madison — earned Exemplary Middle School honors, the DPI announced Wednesday.
Hamilton Middle School and Spring Harbor Middle School in Madison were recognized in the program, sponsored by the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators and the Department of Public Instruction. The Exemplary Middle School program reviewed academic achievement records for 334 eligible schools based on grade-level configuration. Schools earn recognition for high three-year growth in reading or math scores, reading or math scores in the top 10 percent in the past year or high growth in reading or math scores for schools with a high poverty population.
Madison School District’s State Reported Enrollment up 1.5%
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction: Madison Metropolitan:
Adjusted Count Sept 2010: 25,395
Last Year Sept 2009: 25,017.
However, the Madison School District’s website reports total 2009-2010 enrollment of 24,295.
Becky Vevea on Milwaukee’s enrollment.
Kaleem Caire Interview
Kaleem recently returned to Madison as President and CEO of the Urban League. One of Kaleem’s signature initiatives is the launch of Madison Preparatory Academy, a proposed International Baccalaureate Charter school.
I spoke with Kaleem about Madison Prep, the local school climate and his goals.
What brand is your Madison High School?
I inadvertently kicked up a firestorm earlier this year in a profile I wrote about Judd Schemmel, Edgewood High School’s energetic new president. The story’s focus was the venerable Catholic institution’s increased enrollment, its growing reputation for academic excellence and its improving finances.
Sounds like a positive take on this 130-year-old Madison institution, right?
Many Edgewood partisans didn’t see it that way. In an offhand way, I mentioned that Edgewood had not, traditionally, had a reputation as an “academic powerhouse.” I was not only thinking of the perceptions surrounding Edgewood when I attended high school in Madison in the late 1960s, but also the formidable reputations of public high schools West and Memorial when it comes to producing National Merit Scholar semifinalists, as well as perfect scores on the ACT and SAT college entrance examinations. And, I confess, I was also influenced by the aura surrounding Edgewood cast by its most famous graduate, the late “Saturday Night Live” comedian/wild man Chris Farley. Brilliant, yes. Academic? Not so much.
It turns out I had uttered fighting words, subject to heated interpretation in the story’s comment section regarding just what was necessary to be known as an “academic powerhouse.”
Some readers loyal to West High were angry, too. They were skeptical (to put it politely) about claims that Edgewood seniors were being accepted at elite universities, including Harvard and Yale, Princeton and Stanford.
Clearly, the facts were beside the point. When I walked into the “academic powerhouse” buzz saw, it was all about the reputations — the brands — of Madison’s high schools.
Yes, high schools have brands, just like cars or beer or blue jeans. High school brands are based not on advertising, but on their histories, demographics (specifically, class, race and money), curricula and cultures. Their brands contain stereotypes, of course, but they also include nuggets of truth. Analyzing perceptions of school culture this way can reveal an institution’s real strengths and weaknesses. Understanding the emotional truth underneath the brand can help encourage and guide growth in a positive way, while mitigating some of the problems.
It’s also fun — but first you need to understand what the brand actually is.
Stars Align for Major Education Reforms
Education reform is breaking out from coast to coast. Rarely have the stars been so well-aligned for change. The policy challenges and the potential solutions could not be clearer. The political climate for change has never been more favorable, as people across the ideological spectrum seek reform. And the advocacy infrastructure, which is stronger than ever before, is growing stronger and more successful every day.
Back-to-school time typically means an onslaught of education reporting. But last month saw arguably more national media attention paid not just to education but to education reform than in any September in recent memory: the official premiere of the eye-opening film “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” the weeklong NBC News series “Education Nation,” a Time magazine cover story on “great schools” and “great teachers,” and two Oprah specials, the second of which featured Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of a $100 million donation to Newark Public Schools.
This heightened national awareness follows a year and a half of ground-breaking action in states and districts across the country. Fueled by President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top initiative and stepped-up advocacy efforts at the state and local level, dozens of states passed laws and implemented new policies designed to raise standards, develop better tests, improve teaching and turn around the lowest-performing schools. Hundreds of local collaborative efforts were launched around smaller initiatives, such as the Investing in Innovation fund.
66th NACAC Conference, St. Louis, Missouri, October 1, 2010
Panelists: Christopher Burkmar, Associate Dean of Admissions at Princeton;
Will Fitzhugh, Founder, The Concord Review; Jonathan Reider, Director of College Counseling, San Francisco University High School
Will Fitzhugh, The Concord Review
I propose a thought experiment for what it may be worth.
What if we change the name of our organization from the National Association of College Admissions Counselors to:
The National Association of College Completion Counselors?
Note that the new name is more comprehensive, as Completion presupposes Admission, but, as is all too obvious these days, Admission cannot assume Completion.
You are all at least as aware as I am of the numbers about the need for academic remediation in Higher Education and the numbers of dropouts from college, but I will review a couple of them. Tony Wagner of Harvard reports that in general, including community colleges, half of college freshman do not return for a second year, and a huge percentage of our HS graduates take six years or more to complete a Bachelor’s degree, and four years or more to complete an Associate’s degree.
Students who need remediation in basic academic skills are more likely to drop out, and the more remedial courses they have to take, the more likely they are to drop out.
The California State College System reported at a conference last Fall that 47% of their Freshman students are in remedial reading courses.
We may assume that these students have had 12 years of reading in school already, but they still can’t read well enough to do college work, at least by California standards.
Reading is not calculus or chemistry, it is just a basic academic skill in which we expect that the schools have offered practice for 12 years.
Now, a youngster can start to play Pop Warner football at age 6. By graduation from HS, he could have had 12 years of practice at the basic skills of football. Imagine athletes reporting for a college football team, only to be told that they need a year of remedial blocking and tackling practice before they can be allowed to play. It seems unlikely that they would not have learned basic blocking and tackling skills in their previous 12 years of playing football.
I am not just talking about improvement here. Of course, students in college can learn to read more difficult material in new academic subjects. And of course college athletes can get better at all the skills needed for success in their sports.
But we are talking about basic, entry-level academic skills. 47% of freshmen in the California State College System don’t have them in reading, after 12 years of practice in school.
When I went into the Army in 1960, I had never fired a rifle before, but in a week or two on the range in Basic Training, I was able to meet the standard for “Sharpshooter.” I missed “Expert” by one target.
I am convinced that if I had had 12 years of practice with my M-1 Garand, I really could have scored “Expert”–perhaps even by the higher standards of the U.S. Marine Corps.
I have to confess I am stunned that so many of our high school students, having been awarded one of our high school diplomas, and having been accepted at one of our colleges, are found to be unable to read well enough to do college work.
The Diploma to Nowhere report of the Strong American Schools project said that more than one million of our high school graduates are now in remedial courses when they get to college.
It also notes that these students, having satisfied our requirements for the high school diploma, and graduated–having applied to college and been accepted–are told when they get there, that they can’t make the grade without perhaps an additional year of work on their academic fundamentals. Naturally this experience is surprising to them, given that they satisfied our requirements for graduation and admission to college, and embarrassing, humiliating and depressing, as well.
As you may know, my particular interest since 1987 has been in student history research papers at the high school level. I have published 912 essays by secondary students from 44 states and 38 other countries over the last 23 years.
Some of the students who wrote the required Extended Essays for the IB Diploma and were published in The Concord Review, and some of our other authors as well, have told me that in their freshman dorms they are often mobbed by their peers who are facing a serious term paper for the first time and have no idea how to do one.
It is absurd to contemplate, but imagine a well-prepared college basketball player being mobbed for help by his peers who had never been taught to dribble, pass, or shoot in high school.
If even colleges like Harvard and Stanford require all their Freshmen to take a year of expository writing, that may not exactly be remedial writing, but I would argue that a student who has completed an Extended Essay for the International Baccalaureate Diploma, and a student who has published a 12,000-word paper on Irish Nationalism or a 15,000-word paper on the Soviet-Afghan War for The Concord Review, should perhaps be allowed to skip that year of remedial writing. The author of the Soviet-Afghan War paper, from Georgia, is now at Christ Church College, Oxford, where I believe he did not have to spend a year in an expository writing course, and the author of the Irish Nationalism paper is at Princeton, where she may very well have been asked to spend a year in such a course.
If so many of our students need to learn how to do academic writing (not to mention how to read), what are they spending time on in high school?
I believe that writing is the most dumbed-down activity we now have in our schools. The AP program includes no research paper, only responses to document-based questions, and most high school Social Studies departments leave academic writing tasks to the English Department.
Now, in general, English Departments favor personal and creative writing and the five-paragraph essay, but college admission requirements have given them an additional task on which they are working with students. Teaching writing takes time, not only in preparing and monitoring students, but more especially in reading what students have written and offering corrections and advice. Time for one kind of writing necessarily means less time for another kind.
Personal and creative writing and the five-paragraph essay have already taken a lot of the time of English teachers and their students, but as college admissions officers ask for the 500-word personal essay, time has to be given to teaching for that.
While high school English departments work with their students on the 500-word personal essay, they do not have the time to give to serious term papers, so they don’t do them, and I believe that is why so many students arrive in our colleges in need of a one-year course on the expository writing they didn’t get a chance to do in school.
Lots of the public high school students whose work I publish simply do their papers as independent studies, as there is no place for serious academic writing like that in the curriculum.
I would suggest that if college admissions officers would ask instead for an academic research paper from applicants in place of the short little personal essay, while it would be more work for them, it would make it more likely that students they accept would arrive ready for college work, perhaps even ready enough to allow them to skip that year of expository writing they now have to sit through, and they could take an actual academic course in its place.
Making sure that our high school students arrive in college able to manage college-level nonfiction reading and academic expository writing might really help us earn our new credential as professionals who work not just to help students get accepted at college, but to help them complete college as well.
==============
“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
www.tcr.org/blog
No MBA Left Behind: Kravis Pledges $100M To Columbia Business School
Henry Kravis has become the latest private equity titan to show support for his alma mater in the form of a hefty check with a $100 million donation to the Columbia Business School.
The donation, the largest in the business school’s history, will go to support the construction of new facilities as part of Columbia’s new Manhattanville campus, according to a press release issued by the school. Kravis graduated from Columbia Business School in 1969.
Although no strangers to philanthropy, private equity professionals have become increasingly visible with their charitable activities in recent years, both as their wealth increased and as the industry’s public image suffered.
Kravis is one of a string of private equity professionals that have written hefty checks to their alma maters in recent years. In the past 12 months, David Rubenstein, co-founder of Carlyle Group, has announced a $10 million pledge to the University of Chicago Law School and a $5.75 million donation to Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. Meanwhile, Mark Yukso, founder of Morgan Creek Capital Management, and his wife, Stacey Miller Yusko, pledged $35 million to their alma mater, the University of Notre Dame.
Play-Doh? Calculus? At the Manhattan Free School, Anything Goes
The Manhattan Free School in East Harlem is not free, but the principal there practically is. Now in her third year, Pat Werner, a 57-year-old former literacy coach who logged 18 years in New York City public schools, accepted all of $3,000 in salary last year.
Few go into education for the money, but Ms. Werner’s dedication to opening young people’s minds might better be described as utopian than idealistic — which is only appropriate at a private school where students do not receive grades, take tests or have to do anything, really, that they do not feel like doing.
For parents exhausted by New York’s numbers-oriented, lottery-driven public school system or its hierarchical, hypercompetitive private schools, the Manhattan Free School represents another way to go: equally wacky, but at the opposite extreme.
A school like this, where a comic-book-making class is now offered but calculus is not, is not likely to drain applicants from Dalton. Operating on a $100,000 budget, the school, at Good Neighbor Presbyterian Church on East 106th Street, now has 23 students ages 5 to 18.
Speak Up on D.C. Schools, Mr. President The president remains silent about the fate of Michelle Rhee, the successful chancellor of public schools in the nation’s capital.
That deafening roar you hear–that’s the sound of Barack Obama’s silence on the future of school reform in the District of Columbia. And if he doesn’t break it soon, he may become the first president in two decades to have left Washington’s children with fewer chances for a good school than when he started.
This week President Obama will be out campaigning on the differences between the Republicans and Democrats on education. The primary thrust of his argument–which he repeated yesterday–is that Republicans want to cut education spending. Which may be a harder sell coming on the heels of his admission last week on NBC’s “Today” show that “the fact is that our per-pupil spending has gone up during the last couple of decades even as results have gone down.”
This debate over education is now coming to a head in Washington. In the first months after he took office, Mr. Obama kept quiet when Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) killed off a popular voucher program that allowed low-income D.C. moms and dads to send their kids to the same kind of schools where the president sends his own daughters (Sidwell Friends). This was followed by the president’s silence last month during the D.C. Democratic primary, in which the mayor who appointed the district’s reform-minded schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, went down to defeat.
South Carolina Education superintendent race comes back to vouchers
When the dust settled on the 2006 statewide election, private school voucher opponents claimed victory — after all, a Democrat won the race for Education Superintendent. During the campaign, Republican candidate Karen Floyd, now the state Republican Party chairwoman, was understandably cagey about her support for vouchers or tax credits for private school tuitions. But thousands of dollars poured into her campaign from voucher supporters outside of the state, while her opponent, Jim Rex, ran largely on his opposition to the proposal.
Four years later, tax credits are back at the forefront of the superintendent’s race. This time, Democrat Frank Holleman is facing an electorate much more skeptical of Dems, while Republican Mick Zais isn’t shy about his support for private school tax credits.
Hating ‘Superman’: Teachers unions are on the moral defensive
The new film “Waiting for ‘Superman'” is getting good reviews for its portrayal of children seeking alternatives to dreadful public schools, and to judge by the film’s opponents it is having an impact.
Witness the scene on a recent Friday night in front of a Loews multiplex in New York City, where some 50 protestors blasted the film as propaganda for charter schools. “Klein, Rhee and Duncan better switch us jobs, so we can put an end to those hedge fund hogs,” went one of their anti-charter cheers, referring to school reform chancellors Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The odd complaint is that donors to charter schools include some hedge fund managers.
Or maybe not so odd. Teachers unions and the public school monopoly have long benefitted from wielding a moral trump card. They claimed to care for children, and caring was defined solely by how much taxpayers spent on schools.
Taking Your Kids Out of School to Travel? There Are Some Great Travel Deals During Back-to-School Time
The debate over whether or not to take your kids out of school to travel is certainly controversial. As a parent, an advocate of family travel, the editor of a family vacation site, Family Vacation Critic, and an early childhood educator earlier in my career, I am often asked for my opinion on the subject. To me, taking the kids out of school isn’t so cut and dry.
For some parents, especially those with young kids, the back-to-school steals offered for vacation spots are too good to pass up.
Monona Grove’s September, 2010 Budget Document
Monona Grove School District (PDF): $34,401,927.28
Enrollment report (PDF): 3101 (January, 2010)
Per student spending = $11,093.82 Madison’s 2009/2010 was $15,241.
Peter Sobol has more.
Russia’s Answer to Harvard Business School: A Break With Tradition
A business school created by Russia’s leading oligarchs presented diplomas to its first graduates and inaugurated a $250 million high-tech campus complex in a suburb of Moscow last month, seeking to stake out a role as the Harvard Business School equivalent for students focused on the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China).
“The whole focus of the program is to develop what we call entrepreneurial leaders for emerging markets and difficult environments, where a typical business school graduate would see all of the problems and none of the opportunities,” Wilfried Vanhonacker, dean of the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management, said in an interview. “We want them to see the opportunities, recognize the problems, but grab these opportunities, run with them and do something with them.”
After the graduation ceremonies — which were for 21 executive M.B.A. students — students and visitors scurried around the mazelike, light-filled corridors to classes by professors like Pierre Casse, a former World Bank official and dean emeritus at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. The starkly geometric building, by the Tanzanian-born British architect David Adjaye, has skylights and walls of glass and was inspired by Kazimir Malevich, as a way to connect Russia’s artistic avant-garde with economic innovation, the school said.
Complaint Filed Against Madison Schools
greatmadisonschools.org, via a kind reader’s email:
News Release, Complaint attached
Fifty Madison School District parents filed a formal complaint on September 20, 2010, with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (“DPI”) against the Madison School District for violating State statutes for gifted education. The complaint targets Madison West High School‘s refusal to provide appropriate programs for students identified as academically gifted.
State statutes mandate that “each school board shall provide access to an appropriate program for pupils identified as gifted and talented.” The DPI stipulates that this programming must be systematic and continuous, from kindergarten through grade 12. Madison schools have been out of compliance with these standards since 1990, the last time the DPI formally audited the District’s gifted educational services.
“Despair over the lack of TAG services has driven Madison families out of the district,” said Lorie Raihala, a parent in the group. “Hundreds have left through open enrollment, and many have cited the desire for better opportunities for gifted students as the reason for moving their children.”
Recognizing this concern, Superintendent Dan Nerad has stated that “while some Madison schools serve gifted students effectively, there needs to be more consistency across the district.”
“At the secondary level, the inconsistencies are glaring,” said Raihala. “There are broad disparities among Madison’s public high schools with regard to the number of honors, advanced/accelerated, and AP courses each one offers. Also, each school imposes different requirements and restrictions on students seeking advanced courses. Surprisingly, Madison’s much touted West High School offers the fewest advanced course options for ninth and tenth graders. While the other schools offer various levels of English, science, and social science, Madison West requires all students to follow a standardized program of academic courses, regardless of their ability. This means that students with SAT/ACT scores already exceeding those of most West seniors (obtained via participation in the Northwestern University Midwest Area Talent Search program) must sit through the same courses as students working at basic and emerging proficiency levels.”
Related:
- Outbound Open Enrollment
- English 10
- Small Learning Communities
- “They’re all rich, white kids and they’ll do just fine” — NOT!
- Google News Search
- Are Honors Classes Racist?
- Bruce King’s evaluation of the Small Learning Community Project at Madison West High School
- Examining the data from Small Learning Community Grants, more here and here.
- Madison School Board member Marj Passman, briefly discusses curriculum, perception and school climate on WTDY radio yesterday (mp3 audio): “We must keep our talented and gifted in the District”. The interviewer mentions “the tripling in transfers out of the district, even as the District posts higher college placement scores than other districts in the area”. Marj responds: “and that’s why I don’t understand the perception people have that their children are not being challenged in the Madison schools”. I will post the rest of the interview if someone finds it.
Gayle Worland:Parents file complaint over ‘talented and gifted’ school programming.
When the Lights Come Up on Waiting for Superman, Here’s What Teachers Need
SEED, a tuition-free college-prep, five-day-a-week boarding school, located in Southeast D.C., is an outstanding example of what charter schools are meant for; it’s an innovative alternative to a traditional public school and a place for responsibly experimenting with new models of wrap-around services. It currently serves around 325 students in Washington, D.C. and there’s a new SEED School in Baltimore that is several years away from growing to its full scale.
I love my job teaching English at SEED, and I receive the space and support to excel at it. So what makes it work? Many of the most important parts are replicable en masse in the public system:
Teachers are accountable without feeling terrorized.
My principal, assistant principal, and instructional coach observe my class, both formally and informally, multiple times throughout the year. They read my lesson plans every week. They monitor trends on my interim assessment data. They talk to my students and my students’ families. They are engaging, highly competent people with high expectations and backgrounds in the classroom. No SEED teacher ever feels that there is one test or one data point that could potentially destroy our careers.
Teachers feel ownership over our teaching.
If I can justify what the standards-based educational value of what I’m planning, my principal trusts me to do it. No scripted lesson plans. Order class sets of contemporary novels for literature units? Done. Help me set up partnerships with external organizations? Done with enthusiasm. (Through the PEN/Faulkner Writers in Schools program, visiting authors come to my classes. Through the Shakespeare Theatre Company, my students study and perform a Shakespeare play under the tutelage of pros.) The opportunity to conceive and then actually follow through on bringing exciting ideas to life energizes me throughout the long haul of the school year.
The school helps us to become better teachers each year.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate:
Corn syrup, milk chocolate, sugar, cocoa butter, coconut, almond, soy lecithin… any consumer can read these ingredients and their nutritional value on every package of a 75-cent Almond Joy. What is provided to a taxpayer with a $5,400 tax bill? Nothing. For many Americans, the amount they pay in taxes is larger than any purchase they make during the year, but studies show they know almost nothing about where that money goes to. This contributes to ridiculous beliefs, like the view that 20% of government spending goes to foreign aid, for example. An electorate unschooled in basic budget facts is a major obstacle to controlling the nation’s deficit, not to mention addressing a host of economic and social problems. We suggest that everyone who files a tax return receive a “taxpayer receipt.” This receipt would tell them to the penny what their taxes paid for based on the amount they paid in federal income taxes and FICA. …
This is a good idea for all tax based institutions, including schools.
Rethinking Teacher Development Days: New ideas for better teachers and schools
Contrary to what you’d think, teacher development days don’t help teachers that much. So, schools and school districts are employing new tactics to improve teachers and attract new talent to schools.
This is education week for the Obama Administration. The president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board met this morning. They were talking about private partnerships with community colleges. There’s a big community college summit at the White House tomorrow afternoon.
But a lot of the attention paid to education recently has been K through 12. Specifically, whether using kids’ test scores is a fair way to grade teachers. There’s some research out there that says test scores can be used with a bunch of other measurements to help find the most effective and least effective teachers in a given school. The problem is figuring out how to help the broad middle group be better teachers.
A group of schools in Tennessee has proven that can be done, as Emily Hanford of American RadioWorks reports.
Will USC be next to join the Common Application?
One by one, the nation’s elite independent universities have joined the Common Application. A student now can apply to the top 20 national universities on the U.S. News rankings with a single application — well, two, if you count MIT.
The one-click application is a fundamental change in college admissions, one that took hold over the past decade as selective independent universities came to view their “signature” applications as roadblocks.
There are still a few exceptions. One is Georgetown University, whose 38-year admissions dean hews to a signature application as a way to frustrate the noncommittal applicant. Another is MIT, a school that presumably will draw the top math-science applicants even if it makes them submit their papers in person.
Traffic Picks Up in World Education
To the insistent strains of a romantic guitar rising on the soundtrack, a young Asian couple exchange passionate kisses in a hot tub. The camera pulls back, revealing a decidedly disapproving older man and woman scowling amid the bubbles, followed by the punch line to this viral Internet video sensation aimed at students considering overseas study: “Get further away from your parents. Study in New Zealand.”
Welcome to the great education race, a scramble for students, professors, prestige and prosperity that is changing the face of university education around the world.
For decades the United States attracted more than a quarter of all foreign students in college or graduate education. Recently that has begun to change. While the continuing boom in study overseas — an explosion largely unaffected by the economic downturn — means that the number of foreign students going to the United States has continued to grow, the U.S. share of the foreign student market has fallen to just 18.7 percent, according to the most recent report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Meanwhile countries like Australia, Russia and New Zealand have all seen their share of the market rise sharply.
CU tuition plan: 9.5% hike next year, up to 9% for four more years Read more: CU tuition plan: 9.5% hike next year, up to 9% for four more years
The University of Colorado filed a formal request with the state Friday seeking to increase its in-state tuition by up to 9.5 percent next year, and outlined plans for four more years of hikes as high as 9 percent.
A 9.5 percent increase, which CU is requesting as the ceiling for next year’s increase, would add $667 to undergraduate tuition in the College of Arts and Sciences, which enrolls most students. That would bring the annual bill to $7,685.
But CU officials say it’s too early to draft specific tuition proposals, and rates are typically set in June and depend heavily on state funding. Friday’s request, if approved by state officials, reserves the option for CU to raise next year’s tuition beyond 9 percent.
“This increase is necessary to continue operations with a reduced level of state support,” according to the plan that CU filed with the Colorado Department of Higher Education.
The plan says CU expects to receive $158.5 million in state support, and may face a revenue gap of $77 million in fiscal year 2011-12.
If in-state tuition were to increase at the maximum rate outlined in CU’s five-year plan, it would reach about $10,850 by the 2015-16 school year. That’s 55 percent more than tuition now.
Wow.
Breaking down the Eau Claire Area School District budget
While property values have decreased in Eau Claire, school district employees say property tax rates are going up about 4 percent this year.
While Eau Claire’s superintendent Dr. Ron Heilmann notes that the economic times are still tough for many, he says the increase this year will likely be about half of last year’s increase which was right around 7 percent.
The paintbrushes fly in Kriss Webert’s seventh grade art room. And these kids can thank $2.5 million in federal stimulus money for keeping their art classes.
But Superintendent Heilmann paints a much grimmer picture if that money had not been around this year.
“Larger class sizes, we would have seen larger class sizes at the elementary level, and we actually added back some staffing at the middle and high school level. Those dollars have helped mitigate the direct cost to taxpayers in the addition of staff,” he says.
But, the $2.5 million federal jobs dollars are just a piece of the very complex puzzle that makes up the Eau Claire Area School District budget.
Eau Claire’s proposed 2010-2011 budget is $147,973,616 for 10,700 students ($13,829 per student). Madison spent $15,241 per student during the 2009/2010 budget year.
Charters out in the cold
It’s apparent that there is something wrong with the picture of Memphis charter schools provided by Commercial Appeal reporter Jane Roberts in today’s Viewpoint.
Some charter school leaders were reluctant to talk at length about their relationship with Memphis City Schools, whose board decides whether to approve charter school applications in Memphis and whose administration funds them.
One who did, Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering’s Steve Bares, accuses MCS officials of withholding money and threatening operators who complain.
Philadelphia district keeping charter schools from flexing their muscle
Is president of Philadelphia Charters for Excellence
Davis Guggenheim, director of An Inconvenient Truth, showed how the simple act of changing a light bulb could change the world. Now, he asks in his film Waiting for “Superman,” which opened Friday, why can’t we change public education?
We can. We are.
Philadelphia charter schools are succeeding where traditional schools fail. More than 70 percent of the city’s charters met the state’s Adequate Yearly Progress standard, but that is not the only measure to which we hold ourselves accountable. Nearly 100 percent of Philadelphia charter students go to school every day, excited to learn, excited about the possibilities their futures hold. In most of our high schools, 95 percent or more are graduating and going on to college.
Are Honors Classes Racist?
High Expectations For All Students is the Way to Beat the Achievement Gaps
Simpson Street Free Press editorial
Chantal Van Ginkel, age 18
Historically, Madison West High School has not had a spotless regard regarding race relations. Before and during the 1990’s, the school was accused by some of segregation. Most white students had their lockers on the second floor, while most minority students used lockers on the ground floor.
To the school’s credit, changes in policies have greatly improved a once hostile environment. Some of these changes include getting rid of remedial classes, and implementing SLC’s or Small Learning Communities.
A more recent change, however, has sparked controversy and heated debate. Madison West High School plans to largely eliminate honors classes. This is part of an attempt to provide equal opportunity for all students by homogenizing their classroom experience.
At one time, this might have been a good step toward desegregation of West’s student body. It is not a good idea now.
To some extent, enrollment in honors courses of all Madison high schools is racially segregated. Affluent students and white students take advanced courses much more frequently than other students.
But in my opinion, the lack of more rigorous courses is a problem. It is a problem for all students at West. Many parents, students and some faculty share this sentiment.
Recently, a petition signed by over a hundred West attendance area parents requested that 9th and 10th grade honors classes be reinstated. When Superintendent Nerad took steps to make this, some members of the West High teaching staff spoke up. They asserted that honors classes are racist. The project to reinstate advanced course offerings for West’s freshmen and sophomores was then abandoned.
Honors classes, in and of themselves, are not inherently racist. Rather, the expectation that only certain students will take these classes is the problem. The fact that too many minority students end up in remedial courses is racist, but eliminating rigorous courses is not the answer.
As writers for this newspaper have said many times, the real racism is the cancer of low expectations. High expectations for all of our students is how we will beat the achievement gaps in local schools. Low expectations will only make our problem worse.
Note: Madison West High School has not had honors classes in 9th and 10th grade for several years. (The only exception to that is the historically lone section of Accelerated Biology, which some West teachers have repeatedly tried to get rid of.) Not only that, but Madison West High School is the only Madison high school that does not have any honors/advanced/accelerated classes in English and Social Studies in 9th and 10th grade. All West 9th and 10th grade students are expected to take regular English 9 and 10 and regular Social Studies 9 and 10, in completely heterogeneous (by ability) classes.
Note: The petition mentioned by the author — the one requesting honors classes in English and Social Studies in 9th and 10th grade — has now been signed by almost 200 current, past and future West community members.
Madison School Board Wants To Challenge Gifted Kids
Channel3000, via a kind reader:
Madison Metropolitan School District’s Board of Education members are trying to fight a perception that the school district doesn’t pay enough attention to the city’s brightest students.
School Board member Marj Passman told WTDY Radio that the perception of ignoring gifted students needs, along with the changing demographics of the district, have resulted in a tripling of the number of students transferring out of the district in the past five years.
Passman said despite budget cuts, the board will still strive to launch new partnerships and initiatives this year to push students further, and retain more of them.
Related: Madison School District Talented & Gifted Plan, English 10 and the recent Madison School Board discussion and vote on outbound open enrollment.
A reader mentioned that the Madison School Board meets this evening, but that Talented and Gifted is not on the agenda.
Finally, two Madison School Board seats will be on the April, 2011 spring ballot. They are currently occupied by Ed Hughes and Marj Passman.
Proposed Madison School District Performance Measures
59 yrs. later, it’s thanks for education
Fifty-nine years after a U.S. Air Force soldier underwrote his college education, South Korean Han Jung-soo finally tracked down his benefactor here to thank him.
In the winter of 1951, Han, then 19 and a university freshman, asked anybody who would listen at Suwon Air Base south of Seoul if he could work as a houseboy.
Air Force Lt. Gerald D. Winger, then 26 and a squadron adjutant, accepted and underwrote most of Han’s tuition.
Han finished his education, served in the South Korean army, and later served 25 years as a senior officer in the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.
Last week, Han, now 79, arrived in the United States to reconnect with Winger, 85.
Delaware officials paint troubling picture of state takeover of high school sports
Matthew Stanmyre and Jackie Friedman
Now that a scathing investigation and a fanatical state legislator have taken significant steps toward leveling New Jersey’s governing body for high school sports, it’s not hard to see the future for New Jersey’s 270,000 athletes.
Just go to Delaware.
New Jersey’s neighbor to the south is the only state to have its independent athletic association dissolved and then placed under state control. Eight other states have been investigated, but each avoided the type of death penalty the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association seems destined for now that Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D-Gloucester) has introduced legislation to move control to the New Jersey School Boards Association.
In interviews last week and throughout the summer, key players in Delaware who now work for the Department of Education say the move was a mistake.
“It’s hard to be responsive,” Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association executive director Kevin Charles said. “There are several layers of bureaucracy above you, and you have to go through those layers to get things accomplished. In a government setting, that is not necessarily a bad thing. But in a business setting, it can slow things down.”
There’s no need to “wait” for Superman
“Waiting for Superman” is a new documentary about our public education system that is already stimulating a lot of discussion about how to fix our ailing public schools.
But there’s no need to “wait.” Hundreds, if not thousands, of schools around the nation — such as the Durham Nativity School in Durham, North Carolina — have already been fixed.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to see how children can blossom and perform at their highest level in a manufactured box of a high school with 3,000+ students when most experts believe that the optimum size for a high school is around 1,200 students.
Kids get lost in such large populations and fall by the wayside because they cannot connect with their teachers. The dropout rate is 50% for African-American males in American today, which means that only one out of every two African-American males who start 9th grade finish12th grade. Something must be wrong.
The Huge Dishonest Attack on Teachers
An interview from Truthout, via a Den Dempsey email:
“… We’re living in the darkest times for teachers that I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s hard to fully understand how the conversation about what makes a robust, vital education for citizens in a democracy has degraded to the point where the frame of the whole discussion is that teachers are the problem. It’s true that good schools are places where good teachers gather, but there’s another piece to that: Good teachers need to be protected to teach, supported to teach, put into relationships with one another – and with the families of the kids – so that they can teach. The attack on teachers is a classic example of what [cognitive linguist George] Lakoff calls “framing.” We’re hearing from every politician and editorial board in the land – including The New York Times and The Washington Post and The New Yorker – that we need to get the lazy, incompetent teachers out of the classroom. …
In the past five years, that attack on public education has ratcheted up to dimensions that were unthinkable 30 years ago. And so people talk about the public schools in a way that is disingenuous and dishonest – and also frightening in its characterization: they say the schools are run by a group of self-interested, selfish, undertrained, undercommitted teachers, who have a union that protects them.”
Wisconsin’s SAGE: Schools adjust to the effects – positive and negative – of dropping the class-size reduction program
ne of the first lessons that Burdick School teacher Vilma Bivens taught her third-graders this year was to not ask her permission for bathroom or water breaks.
Such requests would only take away from time to provide individual attention to her 31 students for daily reading instruction – time made more precious after her school lost funding for class-size reduction efforts.
“The workload is harder,” Bivens said of losing the extra teaching help she used to get during reading time. “It’s not so hard to teach. It’s just hard to plan and make sure I’m meeting all the kids’ needs.”
Teachers like Bivens aren’t the only ones adjusting to changes in the state-funded Student Achievement Guarantee in Education program, or SAGE, this school year.
After years of seeing schools like Burdick drop SAGE because they couldn’t afford subsidizing it any more, either because of demographic changes or because of stagnant per-pupil reimbursement rates, the state Legislature revamped some major aspects of the popular program this year.
Instead of being required to maintain class sizes of 15 or lower, now qualifying schools can enroll as many as 18 students in classes serving kindergarten through third grade. In addition, for the first time in years, new districts have been permitted to receive SAGE funds in 2010-’11.
The state Department of Public Instruction also cannot enter into any new waiver agreements with participating schools that want to get out of the 18-to-1 or 30-to-2 student-teacher ratio.
School dances: Another baby boomer failure
With the new school year in full swing, school dances have begun in earnest. This can’t be what Patrick Swayze had in mind in “Dirty Dancing.”
For those of you fortunate enough not to have had experience with this yet, here’s what kids do today at many school dances (as well as at parties, formal and otherwise): They provocatively grind their pelvises into each other on the dance floor, sometimes standing face to face, sometimes with the boy behind the girl. It’s called grinding.
Sexually suggestive dancing was hardly invented by today’s kids. Young people say it is harmless fun, and sometimes it is.
But sometimes there is something more troubling going on: Boys often walk up to girls who don’t already have a boy thrusting his genitals at them and just start right up, no permission sought. Many girls, who even in the 21st century will do nearly anything to win a boy’s attention, allow them to go ahead without a word. Of course, there are some girls who initiate it themselves. That’s no better.
What this points to is the failure of many baby boomers to teach their daughters to respect themselves and their bodies and make their own choices, and to teach their sons to view women and girls as something other than sex objects.
Way of the Future: Khan Academy
So a 33 year old hedge fund analyst has created a Youtube site to put up hundreds of discrete lessons in Math, Science, Finance and History. Khan Academy gives these lessons away for free, and there are online tests available on the site.
Here is a PBS Newshour story on Khan Academy:
Harvard, Cisco, BBN bring high-speed Internet to Cambridge Rindge and Latin
Harvard University recently announced a new partnership with Boston and Cambridge designed to bring the world to students faster and clearer than ever.
Harvard will share its access to the super high-speed Internet2 Network connection with Boston and Cambridge schools, granting all 148 public schools in the two cities use of the most advanced networking consortium in the world.
In addition, Cisco is contributing Cisco TelePresence equipment to the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science and Cambridge Rindge and Latin School enabling the students and teachers to connect with people around the globe. This interactive collaboration tool will reportedly put them at the forefront of teaching and learning. Raytheon BBN Technologies, an advanced networking research company, has donated the networking equipment that provides connectivity to Cambridge.
“Technology is exciting but it isn’t a goal in and of itself,” said Cambridge Superintendent Jeffrey Young. “Making it easier for students and teachers to access and participate in the world of ideas as players not just observers is what matters. These resources can break down the walls of the classroom and extend teaching and learning to every corner
of the globe.”
US Property Tax Data: Wisconsin #9
Here are the Top 10 and Bottom 10 States in Median Real Estate Taxes Paid in 2009 — all 10 states with the highest property taxes voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 election, and 9 of the 10 states with the lowest property taxes voted for John McCain:
Merging Career Tech & College Prep
In this series, Schools That Work, Edutopia takes a deep look at what school successes are made of. How principals and teachers, parents and students, and schools and school districts collaborate to change the futures of their young people.
We share with you the blueprints that the change makers used — the contracts, lesson plans, and teacher-training tools that could be relevant to your school and your path to change.
Then we do one more thing: We put you together with the change makers themselves. You will meet the teachers and administrators of Schools that Work in our groups and discussions. You will hear about the hurdles they overcame. You will discover how reform comes to life, and how it succeeds.
Four Steps to Promote Savings in School (town) Spending
Dr. Armand A Fusco, via email
There is one harsh and undeniable fact that must be accepted with school (and town) spending: There is no strong incentive to save dollars. Unlike schools, the business world’s incentive to save is driven by the “bottom line.” Unfortunately, there is no “bottom line” in school operations because, with rare exception, there is always more money provided every year regardless of productivity or results. Yet, even though the business world has a strong incentive, the American Productivity and Quality Center, estimates that there is still 20%-30% waste in time and money.
Waste is defined as “Anything that adds cost without adding value.” This, of course, is assessed more easily in business organizations; however, it is rarely a consideration in schools. For example, in job descriptions it would be unusual to find any mention that an employee is responsible for controlling and cutting costs; in addition, it is not part of any evaluation process or even as a policy statement. An exception was found in Ann Arbor, MI, and if all superintendents’ job descriptions followed this example, it would have a powerful and meaningful impact on fiscal accountability.
Step One: Job Description
The Superintendent (1) shall diligently identify opportunities to reduce costs and improve operating efficiency in all areas of district operations (2) is charged with the responsibility of seeking ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency while maintaining the organization’s mission and performance (3) will provide guidelines to support constant and continual improvement in the organization (4) will ensure that promoting savings will be a part of every employees’ and department’s yearly evaluation (5) shall regularly inform new and current employees that finding more efficient and economical ways to accomplish the district’s educational mission and that it is an implied component of every job description (6) may call on any employee to assist in a formal investigation to identify more efficient operations and/or cost-reduction opportunities (7) will establish a program through which employees may make suggestions relating to more efficient operations and/or cost-reduction opportunities, and be recognized for such efforts (8) will ensure that department heads shall continually monitor their areas to identify any potential cost reduction and/or efficiency improvement and will report quarterly on specific efforts made to promote savings through controlling or cutting costs, as well as, the process or procedure that was used to determine the savings calculation and (9) shall present such findings to the Board and community on a quarterly basis.
Step Two: Policy Adoption
However, the job description and evaluation process is not enough. The BOE must adopt a policy that will clearly establish a culture of fiscal accountability. The following example is edited from Greenwich, CT:
1. The District shall not engage in the mismanagement of financial, physical and human resources and Shall not fail to act as a good fiduciary for all taxpayer assets.
2. Taxpayer assets, including but not limited to, all facilities, equipment, materials, tax dollars, and all other sources of funds may not be inadequately maintained, unnecessarily risked, wasted, or allowed to deteriorate
3. The District shall not fail to maintain procedures and systems to control management of resources, including, at a minimum, accounting; budgeting; data management; purchasing; ordering goods and services; inventories of equipment and supplies, and record retention.
Step Three: A Pledge
All officials, upon election or appointment, shall pledge verbally and in writing the following:
“It is my sworn duty and obligation to manage all physical, human, and financial resources in the most effective, efficient, economical and ethical manner. Furthermore, I will support the establishment of a Citizen’s Performance and Review Audit Committee (CPRAC) to provide independent and objective oversight to ensure that the commitments made for fiscal responsibility will be followed in spirit and action. I will demonstrate my support to the CPRAC by providing all requested public documents and information at no cost and without FOI requirements.”
Step Four: The CPRAC
The committee will consist of local volunteers who will be trained in best financial and management practices and will be self governing. The author of this op-ed piece, a retired school superintendent, will provide the orientation, materials and training at no cost: fusco.a@comcast.net. Such committees have already been established in several communities.
These simple steps only require action on the part of a BOE (the town can do the same) and will have no budgetary implications.
Why would any official refuse to implement such a simple process?
Dr. Armand A. Fusco, 1563 Durham Rd, Guilford, CT
Name Dr. Armand A. fusco
E-mail: fusco.a@comcast.net
Telephone 203-453-1301
Submit Submit
Ed school professors resist teaching practical skills
Amid the chatter about the Obama administration’s Race to the Top funds, NBC’s Education Nation programs and the release of the film “Waiting For ‘Superman'” (warning: I am in it), I am not hearing much about how education schools fit into this new ‘saving our schools’ ferment. A new survey of education school professors reveals traditional teacher training institutes are trying, sort of, to adjust, but still resist giving top priority to the hottest topic among young teachers, learning how to manage the kids.
When researchers Steve Farkas and Ann Duffett asked 716 randomly selected teacher educators at four-year colleges and universities about major challenges for new teachers these days, they did not seem that excited about them.
Only 24 percent said it was “absolutely essential” to produce “teachers who understand how to work with the state’s standards, tests and accountability systems.”
Only 37 percent gave the highest priority to developing “teachers who maintain discipline and order in the classroom.” Only 39 percent said the same about creating “teachers who are trained to address the challenges of high-needs students in urban districts.”
Not so shallow after all …
The cohort of young people just going to university, which includes many of my friends’ children and my eldest nephew, is, as usual, the target of accusations of degeneracy and warnings about dumbing-down.
In the past, such jeremiads generally concentrated on the moral aspect of things: in one of his rare moments of intemperance, the Roman poet Horace berated the young women of Rome for learning Greek dances (the provocative young minxes), the inevitable prelude to a later career of adultery. He was writing at a time when the Emperor Augustus had instigated one of those doomed back-to-basics campaigns promoting a return to “traditional values”, only to find that his own daughter had been involved in a string of adulterous affairs.
When it comes to the current generation, the accusations centre less on moral looseness and more on an inability to concentrate, brought about by an addiction to computer games and the internet. The direst of the warnings has been issued by Nicholas Carr in The Shallows, buttressed by research carried out by Gary Small, director of the Memory and Aging Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Dr Small argues that the very structure of people’s brains has been changed by new media – to the extent, as Carr puts it, that “our ability to learn suffers and our understanding remains shallow”.
The class ceiling
Thirty years ago, at another moment of recession and national malaise in the United States, Lisa Birnbach, then 23, edited and co-wrote The Official Preppy Handbook, a guide on how to dress and behave like old money, ie those who went to prep schools (the US term for public schools), and then on to Ivy League colleges.
The hangover of the 1970s was coming to an end, Ronald Reagan was about to enter the White House, and small “c” conservatism of the sexually restrained, personal comportment variety was about to enjoy a resurgence every bit as strong as Milton Friedman. Lacoste was back, the collars were turned up and, after 20 years in the fashion wilderness, the establishment had found its groove again. It was hip to be square, or at least to dress that way. Birnbach’s book spent 38 weeks at the top of The New York Times bestseller list in 1980, helping to launch a remarkably enduring trend in US culture: the commodity fetishisation of that etiolated species, the American White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (Wasp).
For most of the nation’s history, male Wasps more or less ran the place, occupying virtually every position of political and financial power in the US. This is no longer the case. There could be no clearer signal of this than the composition of the Supreme Court, the institution traditionally requiring the greatest educational pedigree. It is made up of three Jews and six Catholics, and is one third female. There is a Latina and an African-American but not a single Protestant.
Strangely enough, it was just around the time when this class hegemony began to fade for good in the late 1970s and early 1980s that people became so enamoured of the clothing worn by Wasps, particularly when on summer holiday. From Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger to the revival of Abercrombie & Fitch, the fading old Wasp clothier, via Bruce Weber’s photographs of shirtless young Aryans playing touch football on vast and perfect lawns, mainstream US fashion has for years now been peddling the fantasy of life as an endless Nantucket house party.
An Art College President’s Compensation Reached Nearly $2-Million in 2008
Paula S. Wallace co-founded the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1978 with her parents and her then-husband, taking out a $200,000 loan to buy the college’s first building. Since then it has grown into one of the nation’s largest art schools, and Ms. Wallace’s pay has swelled: In 2008 her total compensation as president was $1,946,730, according to newly released tax documents.
That amount tops the compensation of all but a handful of college chiefs. But SCAD, a relatively pricey and prosperous art school, is smaller than universities that pay in that range.
Ms. Wallace, who is in her early 60s, became SCAD’s president in 2000. Her total compensation package grew by about $1.5-million between 2008 and the previous reporting period, which was the 2007-8 fiscal year. College officials said $900,000 of that growth was related to an adjustment to the deferred compensation that SCAD set aside for the president’s retirement pay.
Teachers Unions Still Powerful Election Force
Between the success of President Obama’s education reform initiative Race to the Top and the adulation being poured on the pro-education reform documentary Waiting for “Superman” – including appearances on “Oprah” and “Good Morning America,” as well as fawning articles in magazines and newspapers across the country – one would be forgiven for thinking that teachers unions have lost their political clout.
Anyone harboring such suspicions is in for a rude awakening.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) reminded us just how much power teachers unions still have by pouring more than a million dollars into the Washington, D.C., mayoral campaign. Spent on organizing efforts and advertising campaigns, this money was crucial in turning the race around for a candidate who is far friendlier to the teachers unions, far more antagonistic to school chancellor and darling of the reform set Michelle Rhee, and far less likely to pursue reforms than his predecessor.
Quashing this Rhee-volution is just the first item on the agenda for the teachers unions.
You can expect to see more of the same in Chicago’s mayoral primary in 2011, where Karen Lewis, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union, has said that she was ready “to throw the weight of 30,000 members and their families and students and teachers [into the Democratic primary]. I mean, we’re looking at 800,000 people we could affect on some level.” Lewis has worked hard to stymie the reforms implemented by outgoing Mayor Daley; she’s gearing up for a fight to elect someone more amenable to protecting poor teachers at the expense of their students.
Waiting for Superman and the Education Debate
The Changing Landscape of Teaching
Now that anyone can learn anything and learning professionals can work anywhere, a learning ecosystem is being created around the formal public delivery system–sometimes supporting, sometimes competing, sometimes infiltrating.
Online learning is full and part time option for millions of students. Massive foundation and government programs are pushing data driven-instruction and teacher evaluation. The combination of direct intervention and the surrounding web of opportunity means a slow decline in traditional education employment and strong growth in non-traditional roles.
As schools adopt formats that blend online and onsite learning, there will be an increase of tiered staffing models with well paid master teachers in school leadership roles, new teachers in training, paraprofessionals and volunteers. Teachers with proven abilities will have the opportunity to influence the outcomes of several hundred students.
Teachers delivering all or most of their instruction online will grow from about 25,000 to more than 10 percent of the total by the end of the decade with higher penetration in high school, particularly Advanced Placement, science, math, and speech therapy. Most teachers will work in schools that use online and computer based instruction.
During the last decade, funded by new money foundations, we’ve seen an explosion of school developers, managed school networks, technical assistance providers, and advocacy organizations. Teach for America helped to make education cool as a career. A long recession and federal stimulus made it as it an easier choice. Many TFA alum become edupreneurs.
Virginia High school graduation, dropout rates for 2010
The Virginia Department of Education publishes annual reports that detail outcomes for students who entered the ninth grade for the first time together (“cohorts”) and were scheduled to graduate four years later (“on time”). Percentages account for students who transfer, are held back or are promoted.
All public high schools for the seven major Hampton Roads cities are listed here. Choose a school and click “Search” for details on that school.
Schools’ problem is government: Schools No Longer Focus on Teaching & Learning
President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee jump-started the week on national television by discussing public education. They all pushed for more reform, but none of them went on the offensive and mentioned what surely is a huge stumbling block to effective teaching and learning in public schools: federal government interference.
The broadening of federal education policy has tied our local public systems in knots. Local and state school authorities cannot make a single policy move without first making sure they are adhering to laws and regulations established by Washington bureaucrats.
That fact lies at the very heart of several questions posed by a reader of my column from last Friday.
“Do you think that the school system attempts to take on so much responsibility — in addition to education — that the outcome does not change?” the reader asked in an e-mail.
Ding, ding, ding. Our public school “systems” no longer focus on teaching and learning.
School Reform Rainmakers
It was a banner September for education philanthropy. Last week Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show to announce his $100 million donation to Newark, New Jersey, public schools. And this Wednesday the Charter School Growth Fund launched a new $160 million fund that will finance the expansion of high-performing charter networks across the U.S.
Since 1970, average per-pupil expenditures after inflation have more than doubled, yet test scores have remained flat. Today the Newark public school system spends some $22,000 per student, or more than twice the U.S. average, and the high school graduation rate is only 50%. Adding private money to this system would be a dreadful waste. So what excites us about these new donations is not the money per se but the reform agenda to which the dollars are tethered.
Mr. Zuckerberg is entrusting his donation to Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a strong advocate of vouchers and school choice, as is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. The Newark teachers contract expired over the summer, and Mr. Booker has spoken favorably of the recently negotiated teacher contract in Washington, D.C., where schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee used private donations as leverage to enact reforms that tie teacher pay to student progress.
Milwaukee’s New Teacher Union Contract
A pay freeze, which retroactively applies to the 2009-’10 school year when teachers were working under the old contract, saves the district from roughly $13.5 million in raises it likely would have paid if the previous contract were renewed. Teachers will be in line for a 3% raise for this school year and 2.5% for 2011-’12. Another 3% raise is set for the 2012-’13 school year. The freeze does not apply to those teachers who were eligible for a step increase, which gives teachers with a certain amount of experience an automatic jump to a higher salary level, union officials said. The average salary of an MPS teacher is $56,000 per year, slightly lower than in districts in outlying areas.
“We didn’t get where we wanted to get, but it’s a step in the right direction,” Superintendent Greg Thornton said, adding that the agreement is still “monumental.”
The contract is the first four-year contract negotiated between the district and MTEA. The previous contract expired July 1, 2009, and teachers had been working under the terms of the expired contract since that time.
The Wisconsin Association of School Boards has recommended that its members not enter into contracts that last for more than two years because of the fiscal uncertainty with the state budget. But Thornton said the longer contract will allow both parties more time to work on reforms in the district.
Contract negotiations stalled repeatedly under the previous administration of Superintendent William Andrekopoulos, with the major sticking point being revisions to the teachers’ health care benefits.
Under the old contract, MPS offered two health care plans – an HMO plan that costs $16,440 a year for a family, offered by United Health Care, and a PPO plan through Aetna that allows a broader range of choices in doctors and costs $23,820 a year for a family.
In May, the district said that unless various unions agreed to take a lower cost health care plan, it would move forward with layoffs. The district laid off more than 400 teachers in June, though about half of them have since been recalled.
The new agreement maintains the choice of PPO and HMO plans, but both will be provided by United Health Care and will have lower premiums than the Aetna plan did. Under both options, teachers will for the first time contribute a portion of their salary – 1% for single coverage, 2% for family coverage – to their health care package starting in August 2011. The specific costs of the two options are unknown.
In Study, Children Cite Appeal of Digital Reading
Many children want to read books on digital devices and would read for fun more frequently if they could obtain e-books. But even if they had that access, two-thirds of them would not want to give up their traditional print books.
These are a few of the findings in a study being released on Wednesday by Scholastic, the American publisher of the Harry Potter books and the “Hunger Games” trilogy.
The report set out to explore the attitudes and behaviors of parents and children toward reading books for fun in a digital age. Scholastic surveyed more than 2,000 children ages 6 to 17, and their parents, in the spring.
GM’s Reuss: We’ll help boost Detroit education
General Motors is working with the United Way to explore how best the automaker can contribute to improving K-12 education in Detroit, Mark Reuss, president of North America said today.
In a passionate speech, Reuss said education in Detroit is in a state of emergency.
“We are exploring an idea to take five Detroit schools and essentially divide each school into four academies to train our children to have marketable skills in the city off Detroit,” Reuss during a speech during the 11th Annual Rainbow Push Global Automotive Summit in Detroit.
Reuss said General Motors is working with Detroit Public Schools, the United Way for Southeastern Michigan, charter schools and several other organizations.