K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: The Crisis in Public Sector Pension Plans

Eileen Norcross:

New Jersey’s defined benefit pension systems are underfunded by more than $170 billion, an amount equivalent to 44 percent of gross state product (GSP) and 328 percent of the state’s explicit government debt. Depending on market conditions, the state will begin to run out of money to pay benefits between 2013 and 2019. The state’s five defined benefit pension plans cover over 770,000 workers, and more than a quarter million retirees depend on state pensions paying out almost $6 billion per year in benefits. Nationwide, state pensions are underfunded by as much as $3 trillion, approximately 20 percent of America’s annual output.
This path is not sustainable. In order to avert a fiscal crisis and ensure that future state employees have dependable retirement savings, New Jersey should follow the lead of the federal government and the private sector and move from defined benefit pensions to defined contribution pensions. While significant liabilities will remain, the first step to addressing the pension crisis is capping existing liabilities and providing new employees with more sustainable retirement options.

Wisconsin’s Education Superintendent on the National “Common Core” Academic Standards

Alan Borsuk:

But signing Wisconsin on to the nationwide standards campaign may trump all of those. Wisconsin’s current standards for what children should learn have been criticized in several national analyses as weak, compared with what other states have. The common core is regarded as more specific and more focused on what students really should master.
Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the generally conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, is a big backer of the new standards. “There is no doubt whatsoever in Wisconsin’s case that the state would be better off with the common core standards than what it has today,” he said in a phone interview.
But standards are one thing. Making them mean something is another. Evers said that will be a major focus for him ahead.
“How are we going to make this happen in the classrooms of Wisconsin?” he asked.
The answer hinges on making the coming state testing system a meaningful way of measuring whether students have learned what they are supposed to learn. And that means teaching them the skills and abilities in the standards.
Does that mean Wisconsin will, despite its history, end up with statewide curricula in reading and math? Probably not, if you mean something the state orders local schools to do. But probably yes in terms of making recommendations that many schools are likely to accept.
“We will have a model curriculum, no question,” Evers said. He said more school districts are looking to DPI already for answers because, with the financial crunches they are in, they don’t have the capacity to research good curriculum choices.

Debate over school data in wealthy counties

Jay Matthews:

Educational statistics expert Joseph Hawkins, one of my guides to the mysteries of test assessment, is impatient with the way the Montgomery County Public School system, as he puts it, “is always telling the world how better it is than everyone else.” He finds flaws in its latest celebration of college success by county graduates, particularly minorities.
As a senior study director with the Rockville-based research firm Westat, Hawkins’ critique has regional and national importance because it deals with the National Student Clearinghouse. This little-known information source may become the way school raters like me decide which school families and taxpayers are getting their money’s worth and which aren’t.
The clearinghouse has a database of more than 93 million students in more than 3,300 colleges and universities. It originally specialized in verifying student enrollment for loan companies. Now it tells high schools how their alums are doing.
Yeah, sure, says Hawkins, but “data from the Clearinghouse is not completely accurate, especially if social security numbers for students are not obtained.” Also, he says, some of the numbers Montgomery County brags about don’t look so good when compared to others.

On UC’s Risky Venture Into Online Education Mortarboards without the bricks

San Francisco Chronicle:

A handful of administrators at the University of California are spearheading an effort to create an ambitious online educational program for undergraduates. The idea is that UC could become the first top-tier American university to offer a bachelor’s degree over the Internet. It’s a thought-provoking, fascinating and innovative concept. It’s also a highly risky experiment.
Online education has a place – even in the university system. For students, it’s impossible to beat the convenience and the accessibility of online learning. For workers, it can be a great way to expand their knowledge base without having to leave their jobs. Corporations, small businesses, even traffic schools – all of these institutions have shown that there’s a positive place for online education in our society.
But that doesn’t mean that the UC should jump into the fray.

In Search of EduProductivity

Tom Vander Ark:

Almost every state has been slashing budgets trying to balance expenses with shrinking revenues. A few governors have asked for creative ways to stretch education funding while improving learning and operating productivity. Here’s a few ideas:
Promote blended learning
Require all students to take at least one online course each year of high school and negotiate a 10-20% discount with multiple online providers and give students/schools options.
Provide statewide access to multiple online learning providers and reimburse at 80% of traditional schools (with performance incentives for serving challenging populations).
Encourage K-8 schools to adopt a Rocketship-style schedule with 25% of student time in a computer learning lab and a tiered staffing model that makes long day/year affordable. A loan program to upgrade to a 1:3 computer ratio would support adoption of a blended model could be repaid out of savings.
Acceleration

Hard to Find: Discovery and the Science of Science

Mesofacts:

have an article in this Sunday’s Ideas section of the Boston Globe entitled Hard to find: Why it’s increasingly difficult to make discoveries – and other insights from the science of science. It discusses a scientific paper of mine published recently in Scientometrics, which is the journal of the “science of science”. The journal article entitled Quantifying the Ease of Scientific Discovery (also freely available on the arXiv), discusses how to think mathematically about how scientific discovery becomes more difficult over time.

NO to Mayor control. YES to Community.

Shea Howell:

The debate over control of Detroit Public Schools is intensifying. Last week three important events happened.
First, the elected school board selected community activist Elena Herrada to join them. Herrada brings vision and passion to the board and a long history of working on behalf of the community.
Second, citizens under the name of We the People testified before the Detroit City Council, objecting to the very idea of mayoral control of the schools.
Finally, Council President Charles Pugh, who appears to be at least willing to listen to new thinking, indicated to Rochelle Riley that he is not necessarily in favor of mayoral control.
The Mayor’s effort to seize control of public schools is wrongheaded and dangerous. It is part of a larger scheme, backed by corporate interests, to destroy the democratic responsibilities of public education and to make money off the bodies of our children while limiting their minds.

Flexibility for higher ed, and maybe some help

David Sarasohn:

This is a life’s work,” says Jay Kenton, the Oregon University System’s vice chancellor for finance and administration. “I’ve been working to change this for 30 years.”Flexibility for higher ed.
“This” is not Oregonians’ understanding of the importance of a national-class higher education system, why some states regard their universities as economic engines, why it’s a problem to be among the lowest higher-ed-funding states in the country. Changing that could be more than a life’s work; it could take at least until Oregon State wins a Rose Bowl.
Kenton’s goal, expressed in a proposal from the State Board of Higher Education earlier this month, is to loosen the Legislature’s control over the state universities’ budgets, control that has not lightened an ounce while the state’s fiscal contribution has become almost weightless.

How to keep a handle on college costs

Kathy Kristof:

The expenses can be daunting even to parents who’ve saved since their child was little. Here are some things you can do before freshman year and beyond.
About 19 million kids head to college next month, which is likely to have their parents in a mild panic about how to pay the bills. Even if you saved religiously from the time your child was a toddler, the stock market has worked against you over the last decade, leaving many families short.
Worse, college isn’t a one-time expense. One of my friends likens it to buying a luxury car, then driving it off a cliff. “Repeat that four times,” he said. “Then you can imagine what it’s like to pay for college.”
Of course, the hope is that college will pay off in increased earnings for your child. But that’s only if your child goes to the right school and manages to graduate and get a job. What can you and your child do to boost that chance and reduce out-of-pocket costs in the meantime?

Economy’s impact on public schools

Megan:

I was contacted by a reporter working on a story for Gannett News Service about the economy and its impact on public schools. At my kids’ former school (AS#1) we got hit with the triple whammies of the budget cuts, drop in enrollment, and a decline in parent involvement, so I feel that my experience isn’t exactly typical. I thought this blog would be a great place to get a broad response. Here is a modified version of the email the reporter sent me (edited to fit a public forum). If you’d rather contact the reporter directly to give a quotable account of your experience, you can email me at megan_mcblog@yahoo.com.
Here’s the story overview:

Seattle Community Blog Commentary

Melissa Westbrook:

So I like to check in regularly with other blogs. I look at LEV’s blog, the Alliance’s blog and Harium’s blog. One interesting thing I’ve noticed is that, when challenged or asked about information on their threads, you can rarely get an answer. Charlie asks a lot of pertinent questions in a respectful, albeit blunt, manner and rarely gets an answer. Harium does occasionally but most of his replies are that he supports the staff. I noticed that when Charlie started asking questions at LEV, there stopped being replies.
So what are these people afraid of? I can get Harium being busy and not able to reply to everything (but then, why have a blog?). But LEV and the Alliance say they want to engage and talk and yet there’s silence. I think there are two issues.

When Will Montgomery County Learn to Embrace Charter Schools?

Jeanne Allen:

When I arrived at the Crossways Community in Kensington, I felt as if I had discovered a little-known gem.
Nestled on several acres behind an older neighborhood is an integrated learning environment that spans generations. It’s a place families can go to become healthy, single mothers can go to reshape their lives and become effective parents, children from all backgrounds can join in a diverse Montessori community and school, and people of all races and ethnicities can advance their education, language skills and more.
It is a place where one woman’s enrollment in the family education program while her daughter attended the early education program yielded her child a full ride to the private Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart and later a Posse Scholarship to Grinnell College in Iowa.
“When they see their children really improving, they start seeing a future for themselves,” Crossways President Kathleen Guinan told me.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: IRS Expansion via Obamacare

Wall Street Journal:

If it seems as if the tax code was conceived by graphic artist M.C. Escher, wait until you meet the new and not improved Internal Revenue Service created by ObamaCare. What, you’re not already on a first-name basis with your local IRS agent?
National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, who operates inside the IRS, highlighted the agency’s new mission in her annual report to Congress last week. Look out below. She notes that the IRS is already “greatly taxed”–pun intended?–“by the additional role it is playing in delivering social benefits and programs to the American public,” like tax credits for first-time homebuyers or purchasing electric cars. Yet with ObamaCare, the agency is now responsible for “the most extensive social benefit program the IRS has been asked to implement in recent history.” And without “sufficient funding” it won’t be able to discharge these new duties.
That wouldn’t be tragic, given that those new duties include audits to determine who has the insurance “as required by law” and collecting penalties from Americans who don’t. Companies that don’t sponsor health plans will also be punished. This crackdown will “involve nearly every division and function of the IRS,” Ms. Olson reports.

Oklahoma’s lowest performing schools split $36.9M in federal grants

Megan Rolland:

The grants were approved during a special meeting Wednesday so schools could implement sweeping reforms this summer, state schools Superintendent Sandy Garrett said.
“This could really be transformative for urban districts,” Garrett said.
Oklahoma City Public Schools received $12.1 million for three schools: U.S. Grant High School, Douglass Middle School and F.D. Moon Elementary School.
Tulsa Public Schools received $22.6 million for six schools: Clinton and Gilcrease middle schools, and Central, East Central, Nathan Hale and Will Rogers high schools.
And Crutcho Elementary School in northeast Oklahoma County will receive $2.24 million.

Bedside Table: Words, Words, Words

The Economist:

Robert Lane Greene is an international correspondent for The Economist, currently covering American politics and foreign policy online. His book on the politics of language around the world, “You Are What You Speak”, will be published by Bantam (Random House) in the spring of 2011.
Monitors of language-usage are often seen as either scolds or geeks. Which book do you recommend to convey what is fascinating about language?
After years of reading about language for pleasure and then researching for my own book, I’d still refer anyone who asks back to the book that lit a fire for me a decade or so ago: Steven Pinker’s “The Language Instinct” (written about by The Economist here). You can take or leave Mr Pinker’s case that all human languages share a few common features, and that those features are wired into our grey matter (rather than, say, an extension of our general intelligence). But whatever your views on this subject, it’s hard to read the book and then happily go back to seeing language as a set of iron-bound rules that are constantly being broken by the morons around you. Instead, you start seeing this human behaviour as something to be enjoyed in its fascinating variability.

On national standards, the Gates Foundation gets what it pays for

Jim Stergios:

This week, State House News broke a story on the “cozy relationship” between Health Care for All and the Patrick Administration. HCFA is an effective organization, but when an HCFA official writes to the state’s Insurance Commissioner: “If you expect to do anything ‘newsworthy’ [on insurance premium caps], can we be helpful with our blog or media at all?” well, then you have to take their positions with a brimming cup of salt.
Surrogate relationships are very much a fact of life in a state where one party is dominant, like Massachusetts. Next up to bat in this age-old game, Education Commissioner Mitch Chester and Secretary Paul Reville. In anticipation of the important debate over whether to adopt weaker K-12 national standards, they have to all appearances lined up their surrogates.
Via two trade organizations, the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the Obama Administration and the Gates Foundation have decided to get all states to “voluntarily” adopt national standards. They are working closely with longtime national standards advocates, such as Achieve, Inc., and are funded with tens of millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation. As Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution notes in an article by Nick Anderson of the Washington Post:

Many doctors don’t feel obliged to report incompetence

Tiffany O’Callaghan:

More than one in three American physicians say that they do not always feel a responsibility to report colleagues who are impaired or incompetent, according to a new report from researchers at the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital. The findings, published in the July 14 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, are based on the survey responses of 1,900 physicians throughout the U.S. specializing in internal medicine, pediatrics, cardiology, general surgery, family medicine, psychiatry and anesthesia. Of those who responded, only 64% said that it was their professional obligation to report any colleagues who were significantly impaired — due to substance abuse or mental illness — or incompetent.
The findings suggest that self-regulation in the medical profession may not be enough to ensure that ill-equipped physicians aren’t potentially harming patients, the researchers say. For example, of the doctors who responded to the poll, 17% said they knew of physicians who were practicing despite impairment or incompetence in the previous three years, yet of those who witnessed sub-par performance, only two thirds said they had taken steps to report it.

Study sheds light on how psychiatric risk gene disrupts brain development

Physorg:

A research group led by Dr. Li-Huei Tsai from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had recently discovered that the psychiatric risk gene, Disrupted in Schizophrenia-1 (DISC1), is an essential regulator of the proliferation of early brain cells (known as neural progenitor cells) via inhibition of a molecule called GSK3? and modulation of the Wnt signaling pathway. Disruptions in the Wnt pathway, which is critical for embryonic development, have previously been linked with developmental defects and with various human diseases.
“Our recent finding was particularly interesting because one of the actions of lithium, the most common mood disorder drug, is to inhibit GSK3?.” explains Dr. Tsai. “Although DISC1 was one of the first psychiatric illness risk genes to be identified and we know that it plays a key role in brain development, the mechanisms by which DISC1 is regulated remain unknown.” In this study, Dr. Tsai and colleagues built on earlier work and investigated how DISC1 is regulated during cortical development by looking for novel DISC1-interacting proteins.

Gates’ latest mission: fixing America’s schools

MSNBC:

It’s been two years since Bill Gates left his day-to-day role at Microsoft to concentrate on supervising the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation–and his new enterprise is booming. Headquartered in a converted check-processing center in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood, the 10-year-old foundation plans to move into a 900,000-square-foot campus and visitors’ center near the city’s Space Needle next spring. The Gates Foundation opened a London office this year; it also has offices in Washington, Delhi, and Beijing, and 830 employees around the world, up from about 500 in 2008. With assets of $33.9 billion as of Dec. 31, 2009, and America’s two richest people–Gates and Warren Buffett–as trustees, the foundation plans to spend $3 billion in the next five to seven years on education. If there’s such a thing as a charity behemoth, the Gates Foundation is it.

Crowd Science Reaches New Heights

Jeffrey Young:

Alexander S. Szalay is a well-regarded astronomer, but he hasn’t peered through a telescope in nearly a decade. Instead, the professor of physics and astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University learned how to write software code, build computer servers, and stitch millions of digital telescope images into a sweeping panorama of the universe.
Along the way, thanks to a friendship with a prominent computer scientist, he helped reinvent the way astronomy is studied, guiding it from a largely solo pursuit to a discipline in which sharing is the norm.
One of the most difficult tasks has been changing attitudes to encourage large-scale collaborations. Not every astronomer has been happy to give up those solo telescope sessions. “To be alone with the universe is a very dramatic thing to do,” admits Mr. Szalay, who spent years selling the idea of pooling telescope images online to his colleagues.

Bill Gates’ School Crusade The Microsoft founder’s foundation is betting billions that a business approach can work wonders in the classroom

Daniel Golden:

It’s been two years since Bill Gates left his day-to-day role at Microsoft (MSFT) to concentrate on supervising the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation–and his new enterprise is booming. Headquartered in a converted check-processing center in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood, the 10-year-old foundation plans to move into a 900,000-square-foot campus and visitors’ center near the city’s Space Needle next spring. The Gates Foundation opened a London office this year; it also has offices in Washington, Delhi, and Beijing, and 830 employees around the world, up from about 500 in 2008. With assets of $33.9 billion as of Dec. 31, 2009, and America’s two richest people–Gates and Warren Buffett–as trustees, the foundation plans to spend $3 billion in the next five to seven years on education. If there’s such a thing as a charity behemoth, the Gates Foundation is it.
While its efforts in global health are widely applauded, its record in America’s schools has been more controversial. Starting in 2000, the Gates Foundation spent hundreds of millions of dollars on its first big project, trying to revitalize U.S. high schools by making them smaller, only to discover that student body size has little effect on achievement.

Related: Small Learning Communities and English 10.

Arne Duncan’s $800 million fight

Joel Wendland:

he total federal budget for 2010 came in at just a hair under $3.6 trillion. In some weird sort of perspective that means $800 million equals less than three hundredths of one percent (.00022 percent) of the total amount. So why is Education Secretary Arne Duncan fighting so hard to keep it?
According to media reports, the $800 million comes out of his “Race to the Top” and other education reform programs to help offset a $10 billion package to protect education jobs in the House supplemental appropriations bill, which includes $33 billion for the wars.
Leading House Democrats proposed the offset in response to public school teachers who oppose some of the provisions of the “Race to the Top” program.
While they appreciate the administration’s commitment to educate, teachers say the “Race to the Top” reforms specifically emphasize testing and school privatization over a needed bigger commitment to professional development and financial support for ailing schools. Under the reform, teachers argue, schools are forced to teach to tests or face closure and mass firings of school personnel.

School’s Out for Summer but Education Reform Talk is In

Alberta Darling:

School may be out for the summer, but the topic of education reform has certainly not gone on vacation. Both nationwide and right here at home there are several different ideas on the table that, if implemented, could go a long way tdsoward improving educational outcomes for our students.
Under the guidance of Governor Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin was once a nationwide leader in educational innovation. Unfortunately, bold, reform-minded leadership has been absent from the Governor’s office for the last eight years. The most recent failures of Governor Jim Doyle and legislative Democrats were their unsuccessful efforts to grab federal Race to the Top dollars and their blundering attempt at a mayoral takeover of the Milwaukee Public Schools.
Usually we look to our nation’s capital for examples of how not to do business, but the new collective bargaining agreement Washington D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee struck with her teachers’ union is just the sort of thing we need here in Milwaukee. The contract includes teacher pay for performance, lessens the weight of seniority if layoffs become necessary and ends “job for life” tenure for ineffective teachers.
Another reform MPS sorely needs is the elimination of the teacher residency requirement, a completely arbitrary barrier that discourages quality educators from teaching at MPS. Only two of the nation’s fifty largest school systems, Milwaukee and Chicago, still require its teachers to live within the city limits. No other school district in Wisconsin has a residency requirement.
As always, there will be some who maintain the cure for all that ails K-12 public education is just to keep throwing more money at it. There are some holes in that logic. First, one need look no further than MPS for an example of high spending and low results. Second, aid to public schools is already the biggest chunk of the state budget by far and spending per pupil is over $11,000. Even if simply putting a lot more money into the system were the answer, the state doesn’t have it and taxpayers are already stretched to the limit.

Clusty search: Alberta Darling.

Why Morning People Rule the World Morning people are more proactive – and therefore more successful in their professional lives — according to new research.

Courtney Rubin:

To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the morning people are different from you and me – or so says new research.
Early birds are more proactive than evening people – and so they do well in business, says Christoph Randler, a biology professor at the University of Education in Heidelberg, Germany.
“When it comes to business success, morning people hold the important cards,” Randler told the Harvard Business Review of his research, some of which originally appeared in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology. “[T]hey tend to get better grades in school, which gets them into better colleges, which then leads to better job opportunities. Morning people also anticipate problems and try to minimize them. They’re proactive.” (Not that evening people are life’s losers: They’re smarter and more creative, and have a better sense of humor, other studies have shown.)

Sometimes, Good Parents Produce Bad Kids

Neil Conan:

When kids act out, it’s often the parents who get the blame.
Whether they’re getting in trouble in school or misbehaving with family, many parents worry they’re doing something wrong. But that may not always be the case.
Guests:
Dr. Richard Friedman, professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York
Po Bronson, author of NurtureShock

Teacher Fired, School Disciplined For Student’s Drowning

Jen Chung:

A Department of Education investigation into the drowning of sixth grader Nicole Suriel during a class trip to Long Beach slammed Columbia Secondary School for poor planning that led to the tragedy. The beach had numerous signs noting there were no lifeguards on duty; there were three adults supervising the 24 students. The DOE fired first-year teacher Erin Bailey and disciplined assistant principal Andrew Stillman and Principal Jose Maldonado-Rivera.
The Daily News runs down some of the findings, including how “Assistant Principal Andrew Stillman decided at the last minute not to go, staying behind to do administrative work. Bailey’s boyfriend – former teacher Joseph Garnevicus, 28 – went in Stillman’s place, but couldn’t swim.” Also, “There weren’t specific permission slips, just ‘blanket’ slips from the start of the year that didn’t include swimming.” The “blanket slips” were only for trips in Manhattan; instead of issuing a permission slip to parents, Stillman simply emailed them, “We’re headed to the beach tomorrow.”

U.S. education secretary calls on NAACP to focus on schools

Mara Rose Williams:

Calling education “the civil rights issue of our generation,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Wednesday issued a national challenge for whole communities to get involved in improving public education.
“The only way to achieve equality in society is to achieve it in the classroom,” Duncan told NAACP delegates meeting in Kansas City for the group’s annual convention.
“This is not just a moral obligation; it is our economic imperative,” he said. “Everyone has a responsibility. Every one can step up. Education is our national mission. Education is our best hope.”
He said community leaders “must be at the table when decisions are made about how to improve struggling schools.”
The Obama administration is making $4 billion available to improve the 5 percent worst-performing schools in the country, Duncan said.

House bill would make school lunches healthier

Mary Clare Jalonick:

House Democrats are moving forward on first lady Michelle Obama’s vision for healthier school lunches, propelling legislation that calls for tougher standards governing food in school and more meals for hungry children.
A bill approved by the House Education and Labor Committee Thursday would allow the Agriculture Department to create new standards for all food in schools, including vending machine items. The legislation would spend about $8 billion more over 10 years on nutrition programs.
“This important legislation will combat hunger and provide millions of schoolchildren with access to healthier meals, a critical step in the battle against childhood obesity,” Mrs. Obama said in a statement after committee passage.
Some Republicans on the committee expressed concern about how the bill would be paid for, but three of them ended up voting for it. The legislation was approved on a 32-13 vote.

Hong Kong Schools warned to toe line or else on Dwindling Student Numbers

Beatrice Siu:

Secretary for Education Michael Suen Ming-yeung has warned schools hit by dwindling student numbers to accept the government’s options “or face the consequences.”
The Education Bureau has urged secondary schools facing closure due to under-enrollment to adopt relief measures, including the voluntary reduction of Secondary One classes from five to four.
Suen admitted at a tea gathering that secondary schools were not very responsive to the scheme.
The bureau issued a circular on June 30, calling on schools to either operate three Secondary One classes, merge with other schools, or launch specialized schools.
When asked what the government will do if schools resisted, Suen said they would have to “accept it or face the consequence” of closure.

High school drug testing shows no long-term effect on use

Greg Toppo:

New research paints a decidedly mixed picture when it comes to mandatory drug testing for high school students trying out for sports or other extracurricular activities: While testing seems to reduce self-reported drug use in the short term, it has virtually no effect on teens’ plans to use drugs in the future.
A U.S. Department of Education study, out today, surveyed students at 36 high schools that got federal grants to do drug testing. Half of the schools had already begun testing for marijuana, amphetamines and other drugs; the other half had not.

We Are What We Choose

Jeff Bezos:


As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of our Lives.” My grandparents belonged to a Caravan Club, a group of Airstream trailer owners who travel together around the U.S. and Canada. And every few summers, we’d join the caravan. We’d hitch up the Airstream trailer to my grandfather’s car, and off we’d go, in a line with 300 other Airstream adventurers. I loved and worshipped my grandparents and I really looked forward to these trips. On one particular trip, I was about 10 years old. I was rolling around in the big bench seat in the back of the car. My grandfather was driving. And my grandmother had the passenger seat. She smoked throughout these trips, and I hated the smell.

New Jersey’s Christie Seeks Superintendent Pay Cap

Bloomberg:

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie proposed salary caps on public school superintendents to help rein in the highest property taxes in the U.S., a move he said may slice pay for 70 percent of the top district administrators.
Christie, 47, announced the limit today as part of a package to control rising real estate tax bills. The proposal would cut salaries for 366 school superintendents when their current contracts expire, the governor’s office said in a statement.
More than 50 school administrators had base salaries of $200,000 or more last year, the state Education Department reported last month. The governor’s salary is $175,000.

Notes and links via New Jersey Left Behind and the Associated Press.

The origins of literacy: Reading may involve unlearning an older skill

The Economist:

LEONARDO DA VINCI had many talents, including the ability to read (and write) mirror-writing fluently. Most adults find this extremely difficult, but new evidence suggests that recognising mirror images comes naturally to children. The 7th Forum of European Neuroscience, held in Amsterdam this week, heard that learning to read requires the brain’s visual system to undergo profound changes, including unlearning the ancient ability to recognise an object and its mirror image as identical.
Stanislas Dehaene, a cognitive neuroscientist at the French medical-research agency, INSERM, believes that skills acquired relatively recently in people’s evolutionary past must have piggybacked on regions in the brain that originally evolved for other purposes, since there has not been time for dedicated neural systems to develop from scratch..

Accepting That Good Parents May Plant Bad Seeds

Richard Freidman:

“I don’t know what I’ve done wrong,” the patient told me.
She was an intelligent and articulate woman in her early 40s who came to see me for depression and anxiety. In discussing the stresses she faced, it was clear that her teenage son had been front and center for many years.
When he was growing up, she explained, he fought frequently with other children, had few close friends, and had a reputation for being mean. She always hoped he would change, but now that he was almost 17, she had a sinking feeling.
I asked her what she meant by mean. “I hate to admit it, but he is unkind and unsympathetic to people,” she said, as I recall. He was rude and defiant at home, and often verbally abusive to family members.

Behavior problems in school linked to 2 types of families

R & D Magazine:

Contrary to Leo Tolstoy’s famous observation that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” a new psychology study confirms that unhappy families, in fact, are unhappy in two distinct ways. And these dual patterns of unhealthy family relationships lead to a host of specific difficulties for children during their early school years.
“Families can be a support and resource for children as they enter school, or they can be a source of stress, distraction, and maladaptive behavior,” says Melissa Sturge-Apple, the lead researcher on the paper and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Rochester.
“This study shows that cold and controlling family environments are linked to a growing cascade of difficulties for children in their first three years of school, from aggressive and disruptive behavior to depression and alienation,” Sturge-Apple explains. “The study also finds that children from families marked by high levels of conflict and intrusive parenting increasingly struggle with anxiety and social withdrawal as they navigate their early school years.”
The three-year study, published July 15 in Child Development, examines relationship patterns in 234 families with six-year-old children. The research team identified three distinct family profiles: one happy, termed cohesive, and two unhappy, termed disengaged and enmeshed.

Graduate tax and private colleges at heart of UK higher education blueprint

Jessica Shepherd and Jeevan Vasagar:

The government signalled the biggest shakeup of Britain’s universities in a generation today, with a blueprint for higher education in which the highest-earning graduates would pay extra taxes to fund degrees, private universities would flourish and struggling institutions would be allowed to fail.
Vince Cable, the cabinet minister responsible for higher education, also raised the prospect of quotas to ensure state school pupils were guaranteed places at Britain’s best universities, breaking the private school stranglehold on Oxbridge.
Comparing the existing system of tuition fees to a “poll tax” that graduates paid regardless of their income, the skills secretary argued it was fairer for people to pay according to their earning power.
He said: “It surely can’t be right that a teacher or care worker or research scientist is expected to pay the same graduate contribution as a top commercial lawyer or surgeon or City analyst whose graduate premium is so much bigger.”

Obama’s School Reforms Are a Priority

JOEL I. KLEIN, MICHAEL LOMAX AND JANET MURGUÍA:

In the days following his inauguration, President Obama included a package of educational reforms in his stimulus bill that offered states financial incentives to make dramatic improvements in their education systems. About 10% of the $100 billion allocated for education was used to create competitive grants. States could only win them by drafting comprehensive and aggressive plans to, for example, adopt higher academic standards, turn around chronically low-performing schools, and redesign teacher evaluation and compensation systems.
Although it has received much less attention than health care and financial regulatory reform, this measure may ultimately be one of Mr. Obama’s most profound and lasting achievements. In just one year, we’ve already seen more reforms proposed and enacted around the country than in the preceding decade.
Yet on July 1, with little warning, the House of Representatives watered down these reform efforts by approving an amendment to the emergency supplemental appropriations bill, proposed by Rep. David Obey (D., Wis.). It takes away $800 million that has already been committed to three critical parts of the president’s education reform package–Race to the Top, the Teacher Incentive Fund, and the Charter Schools Program. This breaks a promise to the states, districts and schools that are doing the most important work in America. The funds are to be redirected to a $10 billion “Edujobs” bill to prevent teacher layoffs.

“Common core standards”: education reform that makes sen

Los Angeles Times:

In many third-grade classrooms in California, students are taught — briefly — about obtuse and acute angles. They have no way to comprehend this lesson fully. Their math training so far hasn’t taught them the concepts involved. They haven’t learned what a degree is or that a circle has 360 of them. They haven’t learned division, so they can’t divide 360 by 4 to determine that a right angle is 90 degrees, and thus understand that an acute angle is less than 90 degrees and an obtuse angle more.
It makes no pedagogical sense, but California’s academic standards call for third-graders to at least be exposed to the subject, and because angles might be on the standardized state test at the end of the year, exposed they are.
Now, that might change. In June, a yearlong joint initiative by 48 states produced a set of uniform but voluntary educational standards in English and math. Urged on by the Obama administration, the initiative’s main purpose was to encourage states with low academic standards to bring their expectations into line with those of other states. Twenty states have already adopted the standards; 28 more, including California, are considering them. Texas and Alaska are the only states that declined to participate in the project.

Clusty Search: Common Core Standards.

Advocates: Private Reform Aid Slights Rural Schools

Mary Schulken:

Rural schools are being left out of pivotal policy changes being tried out in the nation’s education system, say some rural advocates, and that goes for reform experiments bankrolled with private dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“The [Gates] Foundation funded work around smaller schools in mostly urban places–a sort of ironic phenomenon, given the consolidation of rural schools. And they funded some early-college initiatives in places like rural Appalachian Ohio,” said Caitlin Howley, senior manager, education and research, for ICF International in Charleston, W.Va., an educational research firm. “But I don’t think rural is part of what they’ve been thinking about.”
A Washington Post report this week tracked the influence of some $650 million the Gates Foundation has pledged for key reforms in the nation’s schools in the past two and one-half years. The story also noted the close relationship between the Gates Foundation and the Obama administration (a number of Gates Foundation employees have assumed key roles in the administration) as well as similarities in the educational priorities pushed by Gates and the Obama White House.

Teaching: The Passion and the Profession

Room for Debate:

A Times article this week described the stiff competition among graduates from top colleges for jobs with Teach for America. “Teach for America has become an elite brand that will help build a résumé, whether or not the person stays in teaching,” writes Michael Winerip, the On Education columnist for The Times.
But, Mr. Winerip noted, the 20-year-old program has gotten mixed reviews from education experts, who complain that the recruits do not stay long enough to gain the experience to make them effective teachers. T.F.A.’s proponents point out that the poorest schools don’t attract the top career teachers to begin with. Does Teach for America’s popularity among top students raise the status of the teaching profession? Or is there a risk that it makes teaching seem more like a personal steppingstone, rather than a lifetime career?

Long papers in high school? Many college freshmen say they never had to do one.

Jay Matthews:

Kate Simpson is a full-time English professor at the Middletown, Va., campus of Lord Fairfax Community College. She saw my column about Prince George’s County history teacher Doris Burton lamenting the decline of research skills in high school, as changing state and local course requirements and grading difficulties made required long essays a thing of the past.
So Simpson gave her freshman English students a writing assignment.
Simpson noted my complaint that few American high-schoolers, except those in International Baccalaureate programs, were ever asked to do a research project as long as 4,000 words. Was I right or wrong? Did her students feel prepared for college writing? The timing was good because her classes had just finished a three-week research writing project in which they had to cite sources, do outlines, write and revise drafts.
She said she discovered that 40 percent of her 115 students thought that their high schools had not prepared them for college-level writing. Only 23 percent thought they had those writing skills. Other responses were mixed.

Will Fitzhugh has been discussing this issue for decades….

UC online degree proposal rattles academics

Nanette Asimov:

Taking online college courses is, to many, like eating at McDonald’s: convenient, fast and filling. You may not get filet mignon, but afterward you’re just as full.
Now the University of California wants to jump into online education for undergraduates, hoping to become the nation’s first top-tier research institution to offer a bachelor’s degree over the Internet comparable in quality to its prestigious campus program.
“We want to do a highly selective, fully online, credit-bearing program on a large scale – and that has not been done,” said UC Berkeley law school Dean Christopher Edley, who is leading the effort.

Matthew Ladner has more.

The Slippery Slope Toward National Science Standards

Lindsey Burke:

The Obama Administration is successfully orchestrating one of the largest federal overreaches into education policy since the Great Society programs of the mid-1960s. If this news is coming as a surprise, it’s because the Administration is maneuvering outside of normal legislative procedure, by way of Trojan-horse programs such as Race to the Top and the suggestive power of their “blueprint” to reauthorize No Child Left Behind.
The Administration’s push for national standards and tests, which is moving quickly, is an historic federal overreach. By August 2, 2010, states must submit “evidence of having adopted common standards” in order to increase their chances of winning a Race to the Top grant. For states not enticed by the $4.35 billion grant competition, the Administration has already laid the groundwork in their blueprint for tying the $14.5 billion in Title I funding for low-income districts to the adoption of national standards–a deal that states will likely be unable to turn down.

Are we witnessing the denationalization of the higher education media?

Kris Olds:

The denationalization of higher education – the process whereby developmental logics, frames, and practices, are increasingly associated with what is happening at a larger (beyond the nation) scale continues apace. As alluded to in my last two substantive entries:
‘Bibliometrics, global rankings, and transparency’
‘The temporal rhythm of academic life in a globalizing era’
this process is being shaped by new actors, new networks, new rationalities, new technologies, and new temporal rhythms. Needless to say, this development process is also generating a myriad of impacts and outcomes, some welcome, and some not.
While the denationalization process is a phenomenon that is of much interest to policy-making institutions (e.g., the OECD), foundations and funding councils, scholarly research networks, financial analysts, universities, and the like, I would argue that it is only now, at a relatively late stage in the game, that the higher education media is starting to take more systematic note of the contours of denationalization.

Trials on drug testing in Hong Kong schools are prudent given the threat to young people

Lai Tung-kwok:

The objectives of the drug-testing trial scheme in Tai Po schools were made abundantly clear at the outset. It was meant to strengthen the resolve of students to stay away from drugs. With the support of their parents, more than 12,400 students have joined the scheme voluntarily to make that pledge. Now they are in a better position to say “no” to their peers when tempted to try drugs.
The scheme is also meant to assist students troubled by drugs and to motivate them to seek help. Since the scheme was announced last summer, the Counselling Centres for Psychotropic Substances Abusers serving Tai Po have received some 80 self-referral cases involving youngsters, more than double the number over the same period in the previous year.

What is the Education Revolution really all about?

Charlie Mas:

The League of Education Voters is trying to co-opt dissent by creating a campaign called Education Revolution and using a lot of incendiary language and images, but not taking any action.
It got me thinking about what the Revolution really is or should be. Help me clarify my thinking on this.
I think that the Revolution is about re-defining and re-purposing the District’s central functions and responsibilities. The change will come when the role of the central administration is defined. What do we want the District’s central administration to do? And what DON’T we want them to do?
Ideally, the District’s headquarters will take responsibility for everything that isn’t better decided at the school building level. They should relieve the school staff of those duties. They should:
1) Provide centralized services when those services are commodities and can achieve economies of scale. For example, HR functions, facilities maintenance, data warehousing, contracting, food service, procurement, accounting, and transportation.

Well worth reading.

Helena school board gets earful on sex ed proposal

Matt Gouras:

A proposed sex education program that teaches fifth graders the different ways people have intercourse and first graders about gay love has infuriated parents and forced the school board to take a closer look at the issue.
Helena school trustees were swamped Tuesday night at a hearing that left many of the hundreds of parents in attendance standing outside a packed board room. They urged the school board in this city nestled in the Rocky Mountains to take the sex education program back to the drawing board.
The proposed 62-page document covers a broad health and nutrition education program and took two years to draft. But it is the small portion dealing with sexual education that has drawn the ire of many in the community who feel it is being pushed forward despite its obvious controversial nature.

California’s school funding system and report of an ACT inequity

Katy Murphy:

Most people I’ve spoken with about California’s school finance system, regardless of their political views, seem to think it’s a mess. The researchers on the Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence described it as “the most complex in the country, lacking an underlying rationale and transparency.”
Mike Kirst, the Stanford University education Professor Emeritus I interviewed today, said he wouldn’t even call it a system. He called it “an accretion of incremental actions that don’t fit together and that make no sense.”
Will the courts finally force the deadlocked state Legislature to overhaul the formulas and regulations that dictate how California allocates money to its schools (and how much)? The nonprofit Public Advocates law firm hopes so. It filed suit today in Alameda Superior Court on behalf of a coalition of advocacy groups, students and parents, saying the status quo denies students the right to a meaningful education.

College presidents taste life outside their offices

Jenna Johnson & Daniel de Vise:

In his three years as president of George Washington University, Steven Knapp has tried nearly everything to bond with undergraduates.
He moved onto campus, right across the street from a freshman dorm known for its party culture. He hired a graduate student to tell him which events to attend. He helped students haul their stuff into the dorms, created a Facebook account, danced at parties, judged a pie-eating contest and drummed with a basketball player.
Still, many students thought he was boring and out of touch.

When Did Cheating Become an Epidemic?

Room for Debate:

For as long as exams and term papers have existed, cheating has been a temptation. But with Web technology, it’s never been easier. College professors and high school teachers are engaged in an escalating war with students over cutting and pasting articles from the Internet, sharing answers on homework assignments and even texting answers during exams. The arms race is now joined between Web sites offering free papers to download and sophisticated software that can detect plagiarism instantly

How Bellevue’s Superintendent Works

Melissa Westbrook:

Interesting article in last week’s Times about the Superintendent over in Bellevue. First, she’s never been a superintendent before; Bellevue got to her come from her consulting business in California. Two, she says she’s doing this one gig and then going back to consulting. (She was allowed to still keep that job as president something that seems to bother some. The State Auditor found no issue with her hiring of a colleague to work as an education consultant.)
What makes her most interesting is this:

The first-time superintendent is engaged in a bold move to change the teaching culture in a district that has already gained a reputation for excellence, with all five of its high schools regularly winning national acclaim.
But it’s that very reputation, the school board believes, that has masked an important failure: reaching students at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in a district that’s far more diverse than many may realize.
Cudeiro believes a philosophy she honed over eight years of consulting work could close the divide.

Does He Want It? Does the Mayor of Detroit Want to Control the City’s Schools?

Darrel Dawsey:

There’s a scene from the legendary HBO show The Wire that I think about when I consider this increasingly divisive issue of mayoral control of Detroit Public Schools: In the scene (which I decided against posting here because it’s graphic), young drug runner Namond is urged by his friend and fellow dealer Michael to confront a kid who has run off with Namond’s drugs. When Namond and Michael find the young thief, the kid starts to insult the obviously intimidated Namond. Michael steps in and beats the kid bloody.
“Take ya pack,” Michael then says to Namond, motioning for him to retrieve his stolen drugs from boy. But Namond, who never wanted to be a dealer in the first place, recoils and rushes off into the night, leaving Michael and the drugs behind. “I don’t want it,” he sobs as he scurries away.
If DPS is the coveted “pack,” Bing reminds me of Namond. Everyone else may think this is worth battling over and some may be egging him on to take over the troubled Detroit school district. But it seems that deep down, the mayor doesn’t want it.

Over 5,000 anti-school bookmarks found in books at libraries in Dover, Portsmouth, Durham

Leslie Modica:

Local libraries were recently the subject of a deliberate and calculating attack — of the bookmark variety.
Volunteers and staff at the Dover Public Library spent 30 hours in May collecting more than 5,000 bookmarks secretly placed inside books at the library sometime before May.
The bookmarks contained information about the beliefs of two organizations, the School Sucks Project and Freedomain Radio.
The School Sucks Project is focused on a call to end publicly funded education because of what the group calls an attempt to stifle creativity and a valuing of order and obedience over all else in the school system, according to the group’s website.

On Facebook, Telling Teachers How Much They Meant

Susan Feinstein:

Darci Hemleb Thompson had been on the lookout for Alice D’Addario for many years. From her home in Hampton, Va., Ms. Thompson, 49, who is married and has a 12-year-old daughter, was determined to find Ms. D’Addario on the Internet. She tried every search engine and networking site she could find.
About 18 months ago she hit the jackpot.
“Nice to see one of the greatest teachers of all time on Facebook!” Ms. Thompson wrote on Ms. D’Addario’s wall. “I love to go to your page just to see your smiling face. Even your eyes still smile. You are an amazing person!”
Ms. D’Addario was Ms. Thompson’s Advanced Placement history teacher at Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station, on Long Island, in 1977.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: More Americans’ credit scores sink to new lows

Eileen Aj Connelly:

The credit scores of millions more Americans are sinking to new lows.
Figures provided by FICO Inc. show that 25.5 percent of consumers — nearly 43.4 million people — now have a credit score of 599 or below, marking them as poor risks for lenders. It’s unlikely they will be able to get credit cards, auto loans or mortgages under the tighter lending standards banks now use.
Because consumers relied so heavily on debt to fuel their spending in recent years, their restricted access to credit is one reason for the slow economic recovery.
“I don’t get paid for loan applications, I get paid for closings,” said Ritch Workman, a Melbourne, Fla., mortgage broker. “I have plenty of business, but I’m struggling to stay open.”

Milwaukee’s School Experiment Shows Promise

Patrick Wolf:

On a rainy May morning in 2008, my research team assembled at the Italian Community Center in downtown Milwaukee for focus-group sessions with the parents of students enrolled in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.
After a long morning of listening to parents vent about the aspects of their children’s schools that disappointed them, the tone of the meeting suddenly changed when we concluded with an “open mike” session.
“We may complain a lot about our children’s schools,” one of the parents told us, “but please, please, please don’t take our school choice away.”
Parents like this concerned mother have played a starring role in the long-running policy debate over the school-choice program, which enables parents to select a school for their child other than the assigned neighborhood public school. Charter schools, for example, offer choices within the public school system. School-choice programs like Milwaukee’s notably include private schools and are often called voucher programs.

A Fresh Take on Urban Schooling

Sunny Schubert:

It is just minutes before the bell rings to end Tom Schalmo’s eighth-grade reading class at Milwaukee’s Burbank Elementary School, and the first-year teacher is trying hard to keep the 29 kids in his room focused.
He is reviewing the answers to a test on the book Holes by Louis Sachar. But a warm breeze floats through the window, carrying the sounds of kids on the playground three stories below. Schalmo’s students are restless, and he has to tell them to “Sit down” repeatedly. He does it firmly, without saying “Please,” and without raising his voice.
A tall, gangly kid in the second row keeps getting to his feet and edging toward the door. In the third row, another boy and a girl poke and slap at each other. Schalmo holds his hand up and says in a flat, warning tone, “Five, four, three…” The kids settle.
“These grades are important to you,” he says, holding a handful of test papers aloft.
“I have recorded them. Now pay attention.”
The students take turns answering the questions aloud, until Schalmo asks what offense Kissin’ Kate Barlow had committed that caused her to be cursed. The answer: “She kissed a Negro.” This causes about half the class — the black kids — to burst into giggles.

Curing Baumol’s Disease: In Search of Productivity Gains in K-12 Schooling

Paul Hill & Marguerite Roza, via a Deb Britt email:

Public schools in most areas of the U.S. are caught in the vise of declining revenues and rising costs.
Policymakers talk about innovating to do more with less, but to date no one knows what that looks like in education. The truth is that dramatically more productive schooling models simply have not emerged in the last two decades, even amidst cost pressures that drove spending up faster than inflation or GDP.
While education differs in important ways from other service sectors, improvement in productivity in other economic sectors may hold important lessons for understanding how the education system can become more efficient and effective.
This paper first explores the past and future outlook for education absent productivity gains. The authors then discuss several areas in which labor-intensive businesses have improved productivity: information technology, deregulation, redefinition of the product, increased efficiency in the supply chain, investments by key beneficiaries, production process innovations, carefully defined workforce policies, and organizational change. They conclude with a five-step agenda for finding the cure for Baumol’s* disease in public education.
*In the 1960s, economist William Baumol observed that productivity (defined as the quantity of product per dollar expended) in the labor-intensive services sector lagged behind manufacturing. Because labor-intensive services must compete with other parts of the economy for workers, yet cannot cut staffing without reducing output, costs rise constantly. This phenomenon, of rising costs without commensurate increases in output, has been labeled Baumol’s cost disease.

420K PDF Report.

Fighting the Dropout Crisis

Richard Lee Colvin:

In his first address to Congress in February 2009, when the nation teetered on the brink of economic collapse, President Obama declared that “dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country–and this country needs and values the talents of every American.” Since then, the administration has made a major commitment to increasing America’s high school graduation rate, which was once the highest in the developed world and is now among the lowest. Leading researchers now agree that 25 to 30 percent of students who enroll in American high schools fail to graduate. In many of the country’s largest urban school districts, such as Detroit, Cleveland, and Indianapolis, the dropout rate is as high as 60 percent, and rates are similarly high in many rural areas. A generation ago, high school dropouts could still join the military, or get work on assembly lines, and had a fair chance of finding their way in the world. President Obama does not exaggerate when he implies that today’s America has little use for dropouts and cannot expect to flourish so long as their numbers remain so high.
The administration has proposed nearly $1 billion in its latest budget specifically for the dropout problem. And it has already put $7.4 billion on the table, including its famous Race to the Top grants, which states and districts can get only if they agree to overhaul their worst-performing high schools. These are the 2,000 or so high schools that Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan refer to as “dropout factories”–schools that graduate fewer than 60 percent of their students and account for more than half the nation’s dropouts.
This level of financial commitment to fixing America’s underperforming high schools is unprecedented. The 1983 Nation at Risk report, which marked the start of the modern era of education reform, did not so much as mention the dropout problem even as it called for higher graduation requirements. Between 1988 and 1995, only eighty-nine school districts won federal grants for dropout prevention programs. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 applied mostly to grades three through eight. While it nominally required states to hold high schools accountable for dropout rates, it ended up allowing them to lowball the problem. Generally, the thought among educational reformers has been to concentrate on preschool and grade school education, and hope that success there would result in better student performance in high school.

What Canada can teach the U.S. about education

Lance Izumi, Jason Clemens And Lingxiao Ou, via a Kris Olds email:

Canadians, particularly those of conservative persuasion, love to compare Canada with the United States, which has a lot to learn in the key area of K-12 education. As the United States struggles with mounting deficits and debt, Americans would be well served to look north if they want to raise student performance while saving money. Canadians would be equally well served to understand their own success and expand it.
Little known to most Canadians is how well the country’s students perform on international tests, particularly when compared to the United States. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an internationally standardized test administered by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Every three years PISA tests 15-year-olds in reading; mathematical and scientific literacy; and general competencies — that is, how well students apply the knowledge and skills they have learned at school to real-life problems.

No More Cuts To Public Education – The Case for The Parcel Tax

Doug Porter:

The San Diego Unified District Board of Education will be voting Tuesday, July 13th, at 5pm in the evening to place a temporary parcel tax up for voter approval on the November ballot. While this move on the surface is a response to the “funding cliff” that public education systems state-wide are facing as Federal stimulus dollars expire next year, the reality is that much larger stakes are in play here.
The school district is facing the prospect of $127 million in projected cuts for the school year beginning in September 2011 after cutting more than $370 million from its budget over the last four years. They have tentatively proposed a long list of budget reductions, from eliminating librarians and counselors to halving the school day for kindergartners. More than 1,400 employees – ten per cent of school district employees – will be facing layoffs if those cuts become reality.

New Jersey Teacher Union Politics & Budget

New Jersey Left Behind:

Here’s NJEA President Barbara Keshishian on yesterday’s Assembly approval of legislation to cap property tax increases at 2%:

This is a devastating day for children and public education in New Jersey. On the heels of more than $1.3 billion in cuts to public education, the Legislature and the governor have put an ill-conceived and shortsighted policy in place that will prevent our public schools from ever climbing out of the hole that has been dug for them by the state.

An understandable reaction, if a bit histrionic. The hole we’re in doesn’t have a lot to do with any sort of property tax cap, but to an expensive, inefficient, and unsustainable public school system.

The Twins Who Test Better

Jeremy Singer-Vine:

Female twins who shared the womb with a brother are better at visualizing shapes being rotated than those who shared the womb with a sister, according to a study in Psychological Science. Sex differences in mental rotation tasks–in which participants try matching rotated versions of 3-D block figures–have been linked to testosterone levels, with males outperforming females from an early age. Previous studies have reported that female twins from opposite-sex pairs are exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the womb than those from same-sex pairs. That degree of testosterone exposure appears to masculinize certain physiological features, such as finger-length ratios. In the present study, 804 twins, the average age of which was 22 years old, performed a mental rotation test in which they matched figures that were identical but rotated. Out of a maximum score of 24, females with a twin sister scored 9.01 on average, while females with a twin brother scored 10.26–a statistically significant difference after the researchers factored in age, birthweight and other variables. Male twins from same-sex pairs scored 12.87, while those from opposite-sex pairs averaged 13.74, but the difference between the two groups wasn’t statistically significant.
Caveat: Environmental differences between same-sex and opposite-sex twins might have influenced rotation test scores.

School’s out, but education reform talk is in

Alberta Darling:

School may be out for the summer, but the topic of education reform certainly has not gone on vacation. Both nationwide and here at home, there are several different ideas on the table that, if implemented, could go a long way toward improving educational outcomes for our students.
Under the guidance of Gov. Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin was once a nationwide leader in educational innovation. Unfortunately, bold, reform-minded leadership has been absent from the governor’s office for the past eight years. The most recent failures of Gov. Jim Doyle and legislative Democrats were their unsuccessful efforts to grab federal Race to the Top dollars and their blundering attempt at a mayoral takeover of the Milwaukee Public Schools.
Usually, we look to our nation’s capital for examples of how not to do business, but the new collective bargaining agreement Washington, D.C., School Chancellor Michelle Rhee struck with her teachers union is just the sort of thing we need in Milwaukee. The contract includes pay for performance, lessens the weight of seniority if layoffs become necessary and ends “job for life” tenure for ineffective teachers.
Another reform MPS sorely needs is the elimination of the teacher residency requirement, an arbitrary barrier that discourages some quality educators from teaching at MPS. Only two of the nation’s 50 largest school systems, Milwaukee and Chicago, still require its teachers to live within the city limits. No other school district in Wisconsin has a residency requirement.

Parents’ Real Estate Strategy: Schools Come First

Christine Haughney:

When Ann and Jonathan Binstock started shopping for an apartment in Manhattan in 2007, their first call was not to a real estate broker. Instead, they hired an educational consultant, to show them where the best schools for their daughter, Ellen, were. After the consultant suggested the most desirable zones , they chose a two-bedroom apartment near Public School 87 on the Upper West Side. Public records show it cost $1.975 million.
Ms. Binstock said the family’s apartment “was a stretch financially.”
“We ended up buying the apartment that we live in now based on the schools,” she added. “All of our money is in our little two-bedroom apartment.”
Now Ellen is entering second grade, and the Binstocks are finding that plenty of other parents shared their real estate strategy: P.S. 87 has become so overcrowded with students that, in first grade, Ellen had no gym class, and her lunch started before 11 a.m. It has a waiting list. The Binstocks heard that a neighboring school, P.S. 199, was also crowded, with its own waiting list.

Opposing view on early education: ‘Significant dividends’

Yasmina Vinci:

At-risk children who depend on Head Start should not have their futures jeopardized by a study that leaves many questions unanswered or by decision-makers who seem to be ignoring the study’s very first conclusion: Head Start children outperformed the control group “on every measure of children’s preschool experiences.”
Head Start’s value has been affirmed by people who experience the outcomes. Just ask police chiefs who know that people who began in Head Start commit fewer crimes and go to jail less often. Just ask school administrators. For example, Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland recently found that kindergarteners with special needs who had been in Head Start needed 3.7 hours of special education per week on average, versus 9.8 hours for non-Head Start children — a huge financial saving.

Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis by (Insert Name)

Brent Staples, via a kind reader’s email:

A friend who teaches at a well-known eastern university told me recently that plagiarism was turning him into a cop. He begins the semester collecting evidence, in the form of an in-class essay that gives him a sense of how well students think and write. He looks back at the samples later when students turn in papers that feature their own, less-than-perfect prose alongside expertly written passages lifted verbatim from the Web.
“I have to assume that in every class, someone will do it,” he said. “It doesn’t stop them if you say, ‘This is plagiarism. I won’t accept it.’ I have to tell them that it is a failing offense and could lead me to file a complaint with the university, which could lead to them being put on probation or being asked to leave.”
Not everyone who gets caught knows enough about what they did to be remorseful. Recently, for example, a student who plagiarized a sizable chunk of a paper essentially told my friend to keep his shirt on, that what he’d done was no big deal. Beyond that, the student said, he would be ashamed to go home to the family with an F.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Debt commission chiefs give gloomy fiscal outlook

Dan Balz:

The co-chairs of President Obama’s debt and deficit commission offered an ominous assessment of the nation’s fiscal future here Sunday, calling current budgetary trends a cancer “that will destroy the country from within” unless checked by tough action in Washington.
The two leaders — former Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff under former President Bill Clinton — sought to build support for the work of the commission, whose recommendations due later this year are likely to spark a fierce political debate in Congress.
“There are many who hope we fail,” Simpson said at the closing session of the National Governors Association meeting. He called the 18-member commission “good people with deep, deep differences” who know the odds of success “are rather harrowing.”

A Case Study in Teacher Bailouts: Milwaukee shows that unions will keep resisting concessions if Washington rides to the rescue.

Stephen Moore:

The Obama administration is pressuring Congress to spend $23 billion to rehire the more than 100,000 teachers who have been laid off across the country. Before Congress succumbs, it should know about the unfolding fiasco in Milwaukee. Wisconsin is a microcosm of the union intransigence that’s fueling the school funding crisis in so many cities and states and leading to so many pink slips. It also shows why a federal bailout is a mistake.
Because of declining tax collections and falling enrollment, Milwaukee’s school board announced in June that 428 teachers were losing their jobs–including Megan Sampson, who was just awarded a teacher-of-the-year prize. Yet the teachers union, the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, had it within its power to avert almost all of the layoffs.
The average pay for a Milwaukee school teacher is $56,000, which is hardly excessive. Benefits are another matter. According to a new study by the MacIver Institute, a state think tank, the cost of health and pension benefits now exceeds $40,000 a year per teacher–bringing total compensation to $100,500.

Stanford genotype class asks: What’s your type?

Kathryn Roethel:

When Stanford University School of Medicine became the first medical school in the nation this summer to offer a course to teach students how to interpret genetic tests, the 50 people who signed up to take it were asked to make a controversial choice: whether to study their own genotypes.
The course has proved popular. It has a waiting list for admission – unheard of for a summer class – but it took a yearlong debate before it was introduced.
Its originator, a grad student, said the course was conceived to fill a growing discipline in the field of medicine.

How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others

Russell K. Nieli:

When college presidents and academic administrators pay their usual obeisance to “diversity” you know they are talking first and foremost about race. More specifically, they are talking about blacks. A diverse college campus is understood as one that has a student body that — at a minimum — is 5 to 7 percent black (i.e., equivalent to roughly half the proportion of blacks in the general population). A college or university that is only one, two, or three percent black would not be considered “diverse” by college administrators regardless of how demographically diverse its student body might be in other ways. The blacks in question need not be African Americans — indeed at many of the most competitive colleges today, including many Ivy League schools, an estimated 40-50 percent of those categorized as black are Afro-Caribbean or African immigrants, or the children of such immigrants.
As a secondary meaning “diversity” can also encompass Hispanics, who together with blacks are often subsumed by college administrators and admissions officers under the single race category “underrepresented minorities.” Most colleges and universities seeking “diversity” seek a similar proportion of Hispanics in their student body as blacks (since blacks and Hispanics are about equal in number in the general population), though meeting the black diversity goal usually has a much higher priority than meeting the Hispanic one.
Asians, unlike blacks and Hispanics, receive no boost in admissions. Indeed, the opposite is often the case, as the quota-like mentality that leads college administrators to conclude they may have “too many” Asians. Despite the much lower number of Asians in the general high-school population, high-achieving Asian students — those, for instance, with SAT scores in the high 700s — are much more numerous than comparably high-achieving blacks and Hispanics, often by a factor of ten or more. Thinking as they do in racial balancing and racial quota terms, college admissions officers at the most competitive institutions almost always set the bar for admitting Asians far above that for Hispanics and even farther above that for admitting blacks.

Islamic Schools in US Raise Hopes, Fears

Mohamed Elshinnawi:

As the population of Muslims in the United States continues to grow, so too does the number of Islamic schools serving Muslim families across the nation.
American Muslims see these schools as a way to provide their children with a combination of good, mainstream education and training in the essentials of their faith. But critics fear some of these schools might expose Muslim children to radical Islamist views.
Religious education
Education has always been very important to the Muslim community in the United States. And like many other families, Muslim parents have educational options. They can send their children to secular, county-administered public schools or private academies while providing religious training at home or on weekends.

A School Closing That Some See as Fiscal Responsibility, Others Racism

Robbie Brown:

It still looks like a happy, thriving school: child-size chairs in the cafeteria, yellow buses in the parking lot, a marquee sign that declares “Tomorrow’s Leaders Begin Here.”
But unless things change before next month, this city is going to close its top-ranked school, Nichols Elementary, to save about $400,000 a year — less than 1 percent of the school district’s $50 million budget. Worse than that, say residents of the poor and largely black east side of Biloxi, the neighborhood is losing one of its chief sources of pride and cohesion.
The question of whether closing the school is an act of fiscal prudence or discrimination has become an explosive subject in Biloxi, reopening age-old racial divides. Nearly 90 percent of the school’s students are black or Asian, while the four School Board members who voted in April for the closing are white.

New state-wide district can aid Detroit Public Schools kids

Rochelle Riley:

The corruption and mismanagement storm that hit Detroit Public Schools has been likened, on occasion, to Hurricane Katrina and its impact on New Orleans’ schools.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that Michigan Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan has been meeting with New Orleans education officials as he plans to open a new statewide school district in 2011 for Michigan’s poorest performing schools.
But what Flanagan discovered while analyzing schools was that an academic hurricane had hit more than Detroit.
Over at least the next year, the state will distribute about $119 million in federal funds to schools across the state, not just in Detroit, to improve academic performance.

Interesting approach to the governance problem.

Dumping K-8 schools bucks a trend (and not in a good way)

Scott Elliott:

In today’s paper, Margo Rutledge Kissell writes that Dayton Public Schools is moving toward 7-12 high schools with K-6 elementary schools. The editorial page also weighed in on this issue, cautioning Superintendent Lori Ward not to get distracted by issues that won’t have a deep impact on academics.
The core question for those who want the district to improve should always be the same — will this help kids learn better? Unfortunately, the evidence says the answer to that question is most likely “no” when it comes to moving away from K-8 schools.
Let’s start with a quick history lesson.

Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality

Randall Stross:

MIDDLE SCHOOL students are champion time-wasters. And the personal computer may be the ultimate time-wasting appliance. Put the two together at home, without hovering supervision, and logic suggests that you won’t witness a miraculous educational transformation.
Still, wherever there is a low-income household unboxing the family’s very first personal computer, there is an automatic inclination to think of the machine in its most idealized form, as the Great Equalizer. In developing countries, computers are outfitted with grand educational hopes, like those that animate the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which was examined in this space in April. The same is true of computers that go to poor households in the United States.
Economists are trying to measure a home computer’s educational impact on schoolchildren in low-income households. Taking widely varying routes, they are arriving at similar conclusions: little or no educational benefit is found. Worse, computers seem to have further separated children in low-income households, whose test scores often decline after the machine arrives, from their more privileged counterparts.

Students, Meet Your New Teacher, Mr. Robot

Benedict Carey & John Markoff:

The boy, a dark-haired 6-year-old, is playing with a new companion.
The two hit it off quickly — unusual for the 6-year-old, who has autism — and the boy is imitating his playmate’s every move, now nodding his head, now raising his arms.
“Like Simon Says,” says the autistic boy’s mother, seated next to him on the floor.
Yet soon he begins to withdraw; in a video of the session, he covers his ears and slumps against the wall.
But the companion, a three-foot-tall robot being tested at the University of Southern California, maintains eye contact and performs another move, raising one arm up high.

Our battery farm schools failed… guess who’ll pay if we go free-range

Suzanne Moore:

We don’t need no edukashon – so you will be pleased to know that I am thinking about opening my own school.
After all, I only need to write 500 words (shorter than this piece) to apply to do so.
My school will have its own ‘special’ ethos. We can do it in one of those fashionable ‘pop-up’ shops or really any old unused building.
And we won’t have to bother with that dreary old national curriculum.
As I haven’t the time or the inclination to bother with employment law, management, recruiting teachers, CRB checks, admin or training anyone, I will probably have to get some kind of firm to sort it all out and pay them a fee.
Still, sounds great, doesn’t it? My free school.

Travel Club Returns To Pick Up New Generation

Kyle Norris:

An idea from the 1930’s is being used to inspire 21st century girls to stay in school. The original idea of a children’s travel club belonged to Merze Tate, a woman from rural Michigan, who was the first African-American to graduate from Oxford University. Today, another Michigan woman has revived that travel club concept to widen the world of sixth-grade girls.

Despite cost-cutting, most Phila.-area districts are planning tax increases for the coming school year.

Dan Hardy:

In nine districts, taxes went up by more than double the state inflation rate, and in three – Upper Dublin, Southeast Delco, and Bristol Borough – they went up by more than 10 percent. The 2010-11 property-tax increase for all 63 suburban districts averaged slightly more than 4 percent, up from 2.9 percent in 2009-10, even though the education inflation rate for this year was higher, at 4.1 percent.
In Bucks County’s Bristol Borough district, one of the smallest in the area with an enrollment of about 1,225, taxes are going up 15 percent. School Board President Ralph DiGuiseppe III, who was elected in November, said almost the entire increase is because of a 2009-10 deficit, when the board did not raise taxes.
To keep from going even higher, DiGuiseppe said, the board has cut some teaching jobs, and will reduce administrative pay by having the superintendent double as high school principal for part of the coming school year. Another administrator will teach part time. Three sports teams also were eliminated.

Locally, the 2010-2011 Madison School District budget will increase property taxes by about 10%. The increase is due to spending growth, a reduction in redistributed state tax dollars and a decline in property values (assessments).

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: New Jersey Governor Defies Political Expectations

Richard Perez-Pena:

From the start, the governor served notice that he saw the public employees’ unions as a central part of the state’s problems, and that he meant to take them on. His first day in office, he signed an executive order, later struck down in court, to limit their ability to finance campaigns. The first bills he signed limited spending on pensions and benefits. He relished months of verbal sparring with the teachers’ union, and analysts say he got the upper hand.
Mr. Christie said there was no plan to put the unions front and center, though some of his aides say privately that it was quite intentional.
But on controlling local government spending and taxes, he acknowledged that “yes, absolutely,” there was a political strategy to doing things in a particular order. The governor’s budget reduced school aid, leading to predictions that districts would raise property taxes. He blamed the teachers’ union for any increases and proposed capping property tax increases. Now he is using that cap as leverage for a package of bills, which has met union opposition, to help towns and school districts control spending.

A Chosen Few Are Teaching for America

Michael Winerip, via a Rick Kiley email:

Alneada Biggers, Harvard class of 2010, was amazed this past year when she discovered that getting into the nation’s top law schools and grad programs could be easier than being accepted for a starting teaching job with Teach for America.
Ms. Biggers says that of 15 to 20 Harvard friends who applied to Teach for America, only three or four got in. “This wasn’t last minute — a lot applied in August 2009, they’d been student leaders and volunteered,” Ms. Biggers said. She says one of her closest friends wanted to do Teach for America, but was rejected and had to “settle” for University of Virginia Law School.
Will Cullen, Villanova ’10, had a friend who was rejected and instead will be a Fulbright scholar. Julianne Carlson, a new graduate of Yale — where a record 18 percent of seniors applied to Teach for America — says she knows a half dozen “amazing” classmates who were rejected, although the number is probably higher. “People are reluctant to tell you because of the stigma of not getting in,” Ms. Carlson said.

Gates Foundation playing pivotal role in changes for education system

Nick Anderson:

Across the country, public education is in the midst of a quiet revolution. States are embracing voluntary national standards for English and math, while schools are paying teachers based on student performance.
It’s an agenda propelled in part by a flood of money from a billionaire prep-school graduate best known for his software empire: Bill Gates.
In the past 2 1/2 years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged more than $650 million to schools, public agencies and other groups that buy into its main education priorities.
The largest awards are powering experiments in teacher evaluation and performance pay. The Pittsburgh school district landed $40 million, Los Angeles charter schools $60 million and the Memphis schools $90 million. The Hillsborough County district, which includes Tampa, won the biggest grant: $100 million. That has set the nation’s eighth-largest school system on a quest to reshape its 15,000-member teaching corps by rewarding student achievement instead of seniority.

The Gates Foundation funded a Small Learning Community initiative at Madison West High School

Sixteen Madison Area students garner National Merit Scholarships

The Wisconsin State Journal:

The National Merit Scholarship Corp. announced 16 more local recipients of its college-sponsored Merit Scholarships on Monday.
This announcement revealed the second half of this year’s college-sponsored scholarship recipient group, with the first wave being released in late May. These winners will receive between $500 and $2,000 per year for up to four years to study at the university or college granting the scholarship.
Approximately 4,900 high school students nationwide received the college-sponsored scholarships from 201 higher education institutions this year.
Winners from Memorial High School in Madison are Brendan Caldwell (University of Minnesota), Yang Liu (Northwestern University), Sarah Percival (Rice University) and Andrea Rummel (University of Chicago).
From Madison West High School, Anya Vanecek (Grinnell College) and Aileen Lee (Northwestern) are scholarship recipients, as are Eric Anderson (New York University) and Amy Oetzel (Wheaton College) of Middleton High School.
Monona Grove’s two recipients are Olivia Finster (Grinnell College) and Madeline Stebbins (University of Oklahoma).
Other area winners are Emily Busam (Lawrence University) of Beloit Memorial High School, Nicolas Heisig (University of Houston) of Madison Country Day High School, and David Bacsik (New College of Florida) of Cambridge High School.
Jesse Vogeler-Wunsch (Marquette University) of Oregon High School, Eric Biggers (Macalester College) of Verona Area High School and Kari Edington(Michigan State) of Sun Prairie are also scholarship winners.

Congratulations!

Governance, or Potted Plant? Seattle School Board To Become More Involved In District Operations and a view from Madison

Phyllis Fletcher:

The Washington State Auditor told the district this week it has problems managing its money. They’re the same problems he’s told them about before. The school board oversees the district. And auditors for the state say it’s time for board members to get more involved.
Carr: “To the State Auditors’ point, we have work to do. And they’re right: we do.”
Sherry Carr chairs the audit and finance committee of the Seattle School Board. She says the board needs to do more to make sure problems that are found in audits don’t pop up again.
Carr: “We haven’t always had the check in prior to the start of the next audit. So, I think that’s the key.”

Washington State Auditor’s Office:

The Washington State Auditor’s Office released an audit report this week about the Seattle School District’s accountability with public resources, laws and regulations.
We found the School Board and the District’s executive management:
* Must improve oversight of District operations.
* Are not as familiar with state and federal law as the public would expect.
We identified instances of misappropriation and areas that are susceptible to misappropriation. We also found the School Board delegated authority to the Superintendent to create specific procedures to govern day-to-day District operations.
The Board does not evaluate these procedures to determine if they are effective and appropriate. Consequently, we identified 12 findings in this report and in our federal single audit and financial statement report.

Documents:

  • Complete Report: 700K PDF
  • Complete Report: 700K PDF
  • Washington State Auditor’s Office Accountability Audit Report 190K PDF
  • The Seattle School District’s response 37K PDF:

    Seattle Public Schools establishes rigorous process for addressing financial year 2008-09 audit findings.
    As part of the Washington State Auditor’s Office annual audit process, an Accountability Audit of Seattle Public Schools was issued on July 6, 2010. The audit’s emphasis on the need for continued improvement of internal controls and District policies for accountability is consistent with multi-year efforts under way at Seattle Public Schools to strengthen financial management.
    “Because we are deeply committed to being good stewards of the public’s resources, we take the information in this audit very seriously,” said Superintendent Maria L. Goodloe-Johnson, Ph.D. “We acknowledge the need to take specific corrective actions noted in the report. It is a key priority to implement appropriate control and accountability measures, with specific consequences, for situations in which policies are not followed.”
    The School Board will work closely with the Superintendent to ensure corrections are made. “We understand and accept the State Auditor’s findings,” said School Board Director Sherry Carr, chair of the Board’s Audit and Finance Committee. “We accept responsibility to ensure needed internal controls are established to improve accountability in Seattle Public Schools, and we will hold ourselves accountable to the public as the work progresses.”

Much more on the Seattle School Board.
After reading this item, I sent this email to Madison Board of Education members a few days ago:

I hope this message finds you well.
The Seattle School Board is going to become more involved in District operations due to “problems managing its money”.
http://kuow.org/program.php?id=20741
I’m going to post something on this in the next few days.
I recall a BOE discussion where Ed argued that there are things that should be left to the Administration (inferring limits on the BOE’s oversight and ability to ask questions). I am writing to obtain your thoughts on this, particularly in light of:
a) ongoing budget and accounting issues (how many years has this been discussed?), and
b) the lack of substantive program review to date (is 6 years really appropriate, given reading and math requirements of many Madison students?).
I’d like to post your responses, particularly in light of the proposed Administrative re-org and how that may or may not address these and other matters.

I received the following from Lucy Mathiak:

A GENERAL NOTE: There is a cottage industry ginning up books and articles on board “best practices.” The current wisdom, mostly generated by retired superintendents, is that boards should not trouble themselves with little things like financial management, human resources, or operations. Rather, they should focus on “student achievement.” But what that means, and the assumption that financial, HR, and other decisions have NO impact on achievement, remain highly problematical.
At the end of the day, much of the “best practices” looks a lot like the role proposed for the Milwaukee School Board when the state proposed mayoral control last year. Under that scenario, the board would focus on public relations and, a distant second, expulsions. But that would be a violation of state statute on the roles and responsibilities of boards of education.
There are some resources that have interesting info on national trends in school board training here:
http://www.asbj.com/MainMenuCategory/Archive/2010/July/The-Importance-of-School-Board-Training.aspx
I tend to take my guidance from board policy, which refers back to state statute without providing details; I am a detail person so went back to the full text. When we are sworn into office, we swear to uphold these policies and statutes:
Board policy:
“The BOARD shall have the possession, care, control, and management of the property and affairs of the school district with the responsibilities and duties as detailed in Wisconsin Statutes 118.001, 120.12, 120.13, 120.14, 120.15, 120.16, 120.17, 120.18, 120.21, 120.40, 120.41, 120.42, 120.43, and 120.44.”
Because board policy does not elaborate what is IN those statutes, the details can be lost unless one takes a look at “the rules.” Here are some of the more interesting (to me) sections from WI Statute 120:
120.12 School board duties.
The school board of a common or union high school district shall:
(1)MANAGEMENT OF SCHOOL DISTRICT.
Subject to the authority vested in the annual meeting and to the authority and possession specifically given to other school district officers, have thepossession, care, control and management of the property andaffairs of the school district, except for property of the school dis-trict used for public library purposes under s. 43.52.
(2)GENERAL SUPERVISION. Visit and examine the schools ofthe school district, advise the school teachers and administrative staff regarding the instruction, government and progress of the pupils and exercise general supervision over such schools.
(3)TAX FOR OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE.
(a) On or before November 1, determine the amount necessary to be raised to operate and maintain the schools of the school district and public library facilities operated by the school district under s. 43.52, if the annual meeting has not voted a tax sufficient for such purposes for the school year.
(5)REPAIR OF SCHOOL BUILDINGS.
Keep the school buildings and grounds in good repair, suitably equipped and in safe and sanitary condition at all times. The school board shall establish an annual building maintenance schedule.
(14)COURSE OF STUDY.
Determine the school course of study.
(17)UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN SYSTEM TUITION.
Pay the tuition of any pupil enrolled in the school district and attending an institution within the University of Wisconsin System if the pupil is not participating in the program under s. 118.55, the course the pupil is attending at the university is not offered in the school district and the pupil will receive high school credit for the course.

Ed Hughes:

Thanks for contacting us. Can you be a bit more specific about what you are looking for? A general statement about the appropriate line between administration and Board responsibilities? Something more specific about budgeting and accounting, or specific program reviews? And if so, what? I confess that I haven’t followed whatever is going on with the Seatte school board.

My followup:

I am looking for your views on BOE responsibilities vis a vis the Administration, staff and the community.
Two timely specifics, certainly are:
a) ongoing budget problems, such as the maintenance referendum spending, and
b) curricular matters such as reading programs, which, despite decades of annual multi-million dollar expenditures have failed to “move the needle”.
The Seattle District’s “problems managing its money” matter apparently prompted more Board involvement.
Finally, I do recall a BOE discussion where you argued in favor of limits on Administrative oversight. Does my memory serve?
Best wishes,
Jim

Marj Passman:

Here is the answer to your question on Evaluation which also touches on the Board’s ultimate role as the final arbiter on District Policy.
Part of the Strategic Plan, and, one of the Superintendants goals that he gave the Board last year, was the need to develop a “District Evaluation Protocol”. The Board actually initiated this by asking for a Study of our Reading Program last February. This protocol was sent to the Board this week and seems to be a timely and much needed document.
Each curricular area would rotate through a seven year cycle of examination. In addition, the Board of Education would review annually a list of proposed evaluations. There will be routine reports and updates to the Board while the process continues and, of course, a final report. At any time the Board can make suggestions as to what should be evaluated and can make changes in the process as they see fit. In other words, the Board will certainly be working within its powers as Overseer of MMSD.
This Protocol should be on the MMSD web site and I recommend reading it in
depth.
I am particularly pleased with the inclusion of “perception” – interviews, surveys with parents and teachers. I have been leery of just masses of data analysis predetermining the success or failure of children. Our children must not be reduced to dots on a chart. Tests must be given but many of our students are succeeding in spite of their test scores.
I have a problem with a 7 year cycle and would prefer a shorter one. We need to know sooner rather than later if a program is working or failing. I will bring this up at Monday’s Board meeting.
I will be voting for this Protocol but will spend more time this weekend studying it before my final vote.
Marj

Bill Gates wins teachers’ applause

Lynn Thompson:

Rowdy delegates to a national teachers convention Saturday gave several standing ovations to Bill Gates, whose billions in foundation grants for experimental-education-overhaul efforts over more than a decade have sparked widespread controversy and debate.
There were scattered boos and hisses among the 3,400 attendees at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention in Seattle, and a small group of dissident teachers walked out on Gates’ speech, but many at the Washington State Convention Center seemed to welcome the Microsoft co-founder’s message that teachers must be partners in any efforts to improve student achievement.
“If reforms aren’t shaped by teachers’ knowledge and experience, they’re not going to succeed,” Gates told the delegates.
Randi Weingarten, AFT president, said she welcomed the dialogue with Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has led efforts to improve education, including charter schools, which while public are largely nonunion and run by autonomous management organizations.

The most dangerous man in America

Leonie Haimson:

Bill Gates sure is a popular guy. He is appearing this afternoon at the national conference of the American Federation of Teachers in Seattle, after having recently been the keynote speaker at the annual National Charter School convention.
Just this week, Warren Buffett announced he was giving an additional $1.6 billion to the Gates Foundation, which already had a $35 billion endowment; by far the largest in the nation.
In the past eight years, the foundation has spent nearly $4 billion promoting his personal education agenda; at first providing subsidies to districts that would agree to close down large neighborhood high schools and start small schools in their place; and now encouraging the rapid and widespread proliferation of charter schools. Gates also is aggressively promoting efforts to create programs that link teacher evaluation and compensation to standardized test scores.

Is there room for both teachers unions and new policies?

Alan Borsuk:

By four years from now, either the teachers unions or the pack of education policies that are hot these days is going to be a lot less relevant. The American education world doesn’t seem big enough for both of them.
Frankly, I don’t know if I’m right about that, but it is certainly an interesting prediction to consider, given what is happening nationally and locally.
It would seem smart to bet on the teachers unions – they’re still pretty strong, they’re politically powerful, and their bargaining rights are established by law. Education fads come and go, but unions stay on.
But there are some reasons to bet the other way.
The overall economic troubles of the nation, the rapidly escalating financial problems facing school systems, and the popularity of ideas union leaders generally hate, such as factoring student performance into teachers’ pay, are putting unions on the defensive in ways similar to what has happened in other sectors of the economy.
Whatever the future, the collision between teachers unions and the forces of change is pretty amazing. For one thing, it pits Democrats against Democrats in a battle that may have major repercussions on the 2012 presidential race.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Today’s Pithy, Cautionary Note on Economic Trends

Bharat Balasubramanian, via Jim Fallows:

“I will state that there will be a polarization of society here in the United States. People who are using their brains are moving up. Then you have another part of society that is doing services. These services will not be paid well. But you would need services. You would need restaurants, you would need cooks, you would need drivers et cetera. You will be losing your middle class.
“This I would not see in the same fashion in Europe, because the manufacturing base there today can compete anywhere, anytime with China or India. Because their productivity and skill sets more than offset their higher costs. You don’t see this everywhere, but it’s Germany, it’s France, it’s Sweden, it’s Austria, it’s Switzerland…. So I feel Europe still will have a middle level of people. They also have people who are very rich, they also have people doing services. But there is a balance. I don’t see the balance here in the US.”

School district consolidation should be just the beginning

Larry N. Gerston:

The recommendation by the Santa Clara County civil grand jury to consolidate school districts is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking long overdue in this county. The report suggests that aligning K-8 districts with high school districts would improve education and produce savings in the neighborhood of 7 percent, or $51 million annually. That’s a lot of teachers and specialists at a time when cutbacks are threatening irreparable harm to our students.
The recommendations are a good start for schools, but the same thing needs to be done in other service areas in the Bay Area. For example, Santa Clara County has 11 local police departments plus the Sheriff’s Office, and seven fire departments plus the Santa Clara County Fire Department. Why, in a mostly urban, compact environment, must we endure such duplication? The answer is we shouldn’t.
Reasons offered for school consolidation are equally valid for police and fire departments. To quote the grand jury report, “The current organization [of school districts] is an outgrowth of the county’s origins. Until the 1960s, the county was largely a collection of agricultural communities separated by miles of open space. “… The communities have become small cities, San Jose has become a large city, and the open land has disappeared.

David Cameron is ‘terrified’ about finding a good London state school for his children

Nick Britten:

David Cameron has admitted that he is “terrified” by the prospect of trying to find a good state secondary school for his children in London.
Mr Cameron said that, living in central London, he sympathised with parents in areas across Britain where there was no choice of decent schools.
“I’ve got a six-year-old and a four-year-old and I’m terrified living in central London,” he said in an interview with a Sunday newspaper. “Am I going to find a good secondary school for my children? I feel it as a parent, let alone as a politician.”
Mr Cameron, who was educated at Eton, said he remained determined to send his children to state schools despite rejecting 15 primary schools for his six-year-old daughter Nancy, before sending her to St Mary Abbots, Church of England primary in Kensington.

Zuma’s goal is universal basic education

Richard Lapper:

Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s president, urged fresh efforts to bring millions of children in the developing world into the school system at a summit of African leaders held on Sunday before the World Cup final.
“We convened this summit because of our strongly held view that the first soccer World Cup tournament on African soil should have a lasting legacy,” Mr Zuma said at the meeting in Pretoria, which was also attended by UN and international sporting officials.

Atlanta schools cheating probe faces scrutiny

Alan Judd & Heather Vogell:

The head of Atlanta Public Schools promised an impartial inquiry into reports of cheating on state achievement tests. Recusing herself, Superintendent Beverly Hall declared the investigation would be conducted by “a respected outside organization.”
Five months later, the investigation remains incomplete, and questions have emerged that challenge its independence.
The “blue-ribbon” commission appointed to oversee the investigation is populated with business executives and others who have done business with the school district or who have other civic or social ties to the district or to Hall.
One of the firms chosen to run the inquiry also is a school district vendor, having collected $1.7 million for other work performed as recently as 2008.

Madison Urban League Job Openings – Deadline July 21, 2010 at 5pm

Kaleem Caire, via email:

The Urban League of Greater Madison’s Learning Department, which oversees Schools of Hope and other educational initiatives for middle and high school youth, is currently seeking dedicated, energetic and qualified candidates for various positions. Please click the position titles below or visit www.ulgm.org for a detailed job description and instructions on how to apply. Deadline for application is July 21, 2010 at 5:00pm.
Manager, Learning
Manager, Learning (Bilingual English/Spanish)
Volunteer Coordinator, Community Partnerships
Tutor and Youth Recource Center Coordinators
AmeriCorp Tutor Coordinators

En-visioning Madison: Join the Urban League in a Community-Wide Outreach Campaign

Andrew Schilcher
Volunteer Coordinator
Urban League of Greater Madison
, via email:

Good Morning,
I am contacting you today because our President & CEO, Kaleem Caire, our Board of Directors, and our team would like to extend an invitation to you and your agency to get involved with the Urban League of Greater Madison’s Community Outreach Campaign. The campaign is aimed at gathering information about the current needs of its residents and the vision of its residents for the future of Madison. Madison’s Mayor Dave Cieslewicz has pledged to work in partnership with the Urban League on establishing a vision for the city that includes ideals, interests, needs, and values of all residents. The campaign is just the beginning of this process.
The outreach campaign will enable us to go much deeper and further than telephone or electronic polling of registered voters offers. Instead, this boots-on-the-ground campaign will involve volunteers discussing with residents, business owners, and passers-by issues and topics that define the community’s outlook on the present and future. Organizations and individuals who participate in the campaign will have the benefit of getting out into communities to talk with residents and build a sense of community. All individual and agency volunteers will receive a full report on what we learned at the end of the campaign.
By participating in this campaign, you will not only actively help to develop a deep understanding of our Greater Madison community, but also shape the future of our community as well. To support this effort, volunteers are needed to do the door-to-door and business outreach in targeted neighborhoods and commercial districts. Training and a t-shirt will be provided free of charge, and volunteers are only needed to commit to one (3 hour) shift every week for as many weeks as you can participate. This campaign is scheduled to run from the middle of July through the end of September 2010.
I hope that you and your agency will be able to join us in our efforts to enhance the sense of community, inclusion, and common understanding of our city’s value and purpose among all who live and work in the capital of the Badger State, and improve the quality of life and for all of our city’s children and families.
Please forward this call for volunteers to any service committees or engaged employees or patrons of your agency. We need all the support we can get to help shape Madison into a welcoming, supportive, and prosperous place for all people who make this their home.
If you, or any member of your agency have any questions, or wish to get involved, please contact me at aschilcher@ulgm.org or 608.729.1225.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Andrew Schilcher
Volunteer Coordinator
Urban League of Greater Madison
2222 South Park Street, Suite 200
Madison, WI 53713
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What They’re Doing After Harvard: Teach for America now attracts 12% of all Ivy League seniors. The program’s founder explains why it beats working on Wall Street.

Naomi Schaefer Riley, via a Rick Kiley email:

In the spring of 1989 Wendy Kopp was a senior at Princeton University who had her sights set on being a New York City school teacher. But without a graduate degree in education or a traditional teacher certification, it was nearly impossible to break into the system. So she applied for a job at Morgan Stanley instead.
Thinking back to the bureaucratic hurdles of getting a job in a public school, Ms. Kopp tells me it “seemed more intimidating than starting Teach for America.” Which is exactly what she did as soon as she graduated.
What began as a senior thesis paper has since grown into a $180 million organization that this fall will send 4,500 of the best college graduates in the country to 100 of the lowest-performing urban and rural school districts. A few months ago, Teach for America (TFA) received an applicant pool that Morgan Stanley recruiters would drool over. Their 46,000 applicants included 12% of all Ivy League seniors, 7% of the graduating class of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and 6% from U.C. Berkeley. A quarter of all black seniors at Ivy League schools and a fifth of Latinos applied to be teachers in the 2010 corps. It is, I’m told by some recent grads, one of the coolest things you can do after college.

Chinese outsourcer seeks U.S. workers with IQ of 125 and up

Patrick Thibodeau:

A Chinese IT outsourcing company that has started hiring new U.S. computer science graduates to work in Shanghai requires prospective job candidates to demonstrate an IQ of 125 or above on a test it administers to sort out job applicants.
In doing so, Bleum Inc. is following a hiring practice it applies to college recruits in China. But a new Chinese college graduate must score an IQ of 140 on the company’s test.
An IQ test is the first screen for any U.S. or Chinese applicant.
The lower IQ threshold for new U.S. graduates reflects the fact that the pool of U.S. talent available to the company is smaller than the pool of Chinese talent, Bleum said.
In China, Bleum receives thousands of applications weekly, said CEO Eric Rongley. Rongley is a U.S. citizen who founded Bleum in 2001; his career prior to that included stints working in offshore development in India and later in China.

8 Theories on Why College Kids Are Studying Less

Max Fisher:

College students today are spending less time studying than they did in the past, according to a recent report. The University of California study finds that the average student at a four-year college in 1961 studied about 24 hours a week. Today’s average student hits the books for just 14 hours. That downward trend has been consistent across all kinds of schools, majors, and students. But why is this happening? Here are a few thoughts and theories, many of them courtesy of the very thoughtful commenters at Mother Jones, where blogger Kevin Drum asked “professors and current students” to suggest explanations.

  • Study Leaders Cite Professor Apathy The Boston Globe’s Keith O’Brien writes, “when it comes to ‘why,’ the answers are less clear. … What might be causing it, they suggest, is the growing power of students and professors’ unwillingness to challenge them.”
  • Modern Technology Not to Blame The Boston Globe’s Keith O’Brien says the study leaders don’t think so. “The easy culprits — the allure of the Internet (Facebook!), the advent of new technologies (dude, what’s a card catalog?), and the changing demographics of college campuses — don’t appear to be driving the change, Babcock and Marks found.” Why so sure? “According to their research, the greatest decline in student studying took place before computers swept through colleges: Between 1961 and 1981, study times fell from 24.4 to 16.8 hours per week (and then, ultimately, to 14).”

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