Boys’ and girls’ brains are different–but not always in the ways you might think.
A common stereotype is that boys develop more slowly than girls, putting them at a disadvantage in school where pressure to perform is starting ever younger. Another notion is that puberty is a time when boys’ and girls’ brains grow more dissimilar, accounting for some of the perceived disparities between the sexes.
Now, some scientists are debunking such thinking. Although boys’ and girls’ brains show differences around age 10, during puberty key parts of their brains become more similar, according to recent government research. And, rather than growing more slowly, boys’ brains instead are simply developing differently.
Monthly Archives: March 2011
Georgia charter school ruling to reverberate across nation
A state Supreme Court opinion that will decide who has the power to fund and open public charter schools is expected by March 31, ending a constitutional challenge that threatens to derail the education of thousands of students.
The two-year legal battle launched by seven local districts over power, money and the exclusive right to open neighborhood schools has threatened Georgia’s reputation as a national leader in education reform.
The feud began in 2009 when the Georgia Charter Schools Commission, a state board, got into the business of approving and funding neighborhood schools such as Cherokee Charter Academy.
The school, which plans to open in the fall as Cherokee County’s first charter campus, received more than 1,300 applications for about 700 spots. It was denied twice by the Cherokee Board of Education.
Capitol Smackdown: Teacher Union vs. Teacher Union
Don’t let anyone tell you that things aren’t changing. AFT Connecticut is supporting a reform package that would accelerate creation of better teacher evaluation standards. The Connecticut Education Association is opposing it.
The idea is to speed-up efforts already underway so that school districts have clear measures over what makes a good teacher. Instead of, say, how many years a teacher has been on the job — which is the seniority standard that dominates in school districts.
The rival Connecticut Education Association will have none of this. John Yrkchik, in testimony prepared for delivery at tomorrow’s public hearing by the education committee, says:
Bill Gates Seeks Formula for Better Teachers
Bill Gates shook up the battle against AIDS in Africa by applying results-oriented business metrics to the effort. Now, he is trying to do the same in the tricky world of evaluating and compensating teachers.
The Microsoft Corp. co-founder has moved on from a $2 billion bet on high school reform–much of it spent on breaking up big, failing high schools and replacing them with smaller ones.
Now, he is venturing that improving teacher effectiveness is the key to fixing broken schools. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded $290 million to school districts in Memphis, Tenn.; Hillsborough, Fla.; and Pittsburgh, and a charter consortium in California to build new personnel systems Mr. Gates hopes will be models for the country.
Next US education reform: Higher teacher quality
Christian Science Monitor
Compared with more than 70 economies worldwide, America’s high school students continue to rank only average in reading and science, and below average in math. But this sorry record for a wealthy nation can be broken if the US focuses on recruiting and keeping first-rate teachers.
That’s the conclusion of a new paper that looks at the latest achievement tests of 15-year-olds in the 34 developed countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as well as many other nations.
America has been trying to raise its academic standards for more than two decades, an effort that cannot be abandoned in tough times. But it can learn more from other countries about the difficult task of teacher training, selection, and compensation – even as cash-strapped states take on teacher unions.
The government-union wrangling would be less if both sides focused on quality investments in better teachers. The goal is not debatable. Studies show that matching quality teachers with disadvantaged students is an effective way to close the black-white achievement gap. Good teachers are more effective than small class sizes, for instance.
For starters, the United States needs to increase its pool of quality teachers. Almost half of its K-12 teachers come from the bottom third of college classes. Classroom leaders such as Singapore, South Korea, and Finland select from the top ranks. In Finland, only 1 in 10 applicants is accepted into teacher training.
Part of the hurdle in the US is compensation. Teaching offers job security but not great pay compared with other professions that top college graduates might choose. As states tussle over budgets, one solution might be to lower teacher benefits and end tenure while bulking up salaries.
And yet pay isn’t the only consideration. Last year, 11 percent of graduates from US elite colleges applied to the federally funded Teach for America program. Participants teach in low-achieving rural and urban districts for two years.
In Finland, teachers earn only about what their American counterparts do (US teacher pay starts, on average, at $39,000). The difference is that in Finland, teaching is a high-status, well-respected job, right up there with doctoring and lawyering.
Another US hurdle is teacher training. Many states require a master’s degree in education in order to be certified to teach. This automatically locks out a talented population such as second-career experts in a field who don’t want to invest the time or money in a graduate degree that’s often short on classroom skills and long on pedagogy.
President Obama’s “Race to the Top” fund encourages states through competitive grants to open up alternative, effective routes to teacher certification. Hopefully, that fund will survive budget cutting (same for Teach for America).
Public schools won’t be able to attract and keep high quality teachers if they don’t reward and develop them once they get into the classroom.
That’s next to impossible given the standard operating procedure of teacher unions. As the nation is witnessing, a rigid rule such as last-hired, first-fired lops off enthusiastic newcomers in favor of those with seniority. Experience is important in education, but it does not always add up to quality. Performance must be the determiner.
Unions need to accept that the main goal is high teacher performance and student outcomes, not job preservation. That’s what the teacher union did in Ontario, Canada, according to the paper based on the OECD findings.
Teachers in Ontario are heavily organized. Yet, in 2003, the union and the premier of Ontario reached a grand bargain based on the need to elevate student achievement.
“The educators, through their union, agreed to accept responsibility for their own learning and the learning of their students; the government agreed to supply all of the necessary support,” according to the report.
The paper, called “What the U.S. Can Learn from the World’s Most Successful Education Reform Efforts,” says that Ontario students subsequently shot up from the bottom to the top of test scores.
Investing in high quality teaching is necessary to boost US economic competitiveness. The study argues that the US also needs to elevate the teaching profession to one of high status and respect. But respect doesn’t come overnight. Government and educators will have to earn it by working together to improve teacher quality.
Republican bill calls for a board of political appointees to authorize charter schools
Under a Republican-sponsored bill, nine political appointees would get to authorize public charter schools while local school districts foot the bill. The creation of this state-wide charter school authorizing board — with members appointed by the governor and the leaders of the state Senate and Assembly — is a key provision of legislation authored by Sen. Alberta Darling of River Hills that will get a hearing on Wednesday at 10 a.m. at the Capitol before the Senate Education Committee.
Senate Bill 22 not only de-emphasizes local control, but also creates changes in how teachers are certified and removes caps from the numbers of students who may enroll in virtual schools. A companion bill is also pending in the state Assembly.
Opponents say the proposed changes would not only eliminate local control in favor of a new, politically motivated bureaucracy but would also siphon general aid away from all of Wisconsin’s 424 public school districts in favor of charters. But backers say it will remove current barriers that prevent charter schools from realizing their full potential.
“This bill would get rid of the charter school lite culture we currently have in Wisconsin and allow these schools’ full potential for autonomy, flexibility and innovation to be fully realized,” says John Gee, executive director of the Wisconsin Association for Charter Schools.
Related:
School Choice Wisconsin: Milwaukee residents favor school choice expansion
Seattle School Board Policy: Criticize Privately, Praise Publicly
At the recent School Board Retreat, the Board discussed a Governance and Oversight Policy that would define the Board’s job.
On page 18 of this 21 page document, is a section titled “Board-Superintendent Communications”. Under this section is this set of guidelines for communication between the Board and the superintendent:
Communications between the Board and the Superintendent will be governed by the following practices:a. Exercise honesty in all written and interpersonal interaction, avoiding misleading information
b. Demonstrate respect for the opinions and comments of each other
c. Focus on issues rather than on personalities
d. Maintain focus on common goals
e. Communicate with each other in a timely manner to avoid surprises
f. Criticize privately, praise publicly
g. Maintain appropriate confidentiality
h. Openly share personal concerns, information knowledge and agendas
i. Make every reasonable effort to protect the integrity and promote the positive image of the district and each other
j. Respond in a timely manner to request and inquired from each other.
Parent organizing meeting set in Dane County
TJ Mertz, via email:
Parents in Dane County have scheduled an event to update the public on Governor Scott Walkers’ devastating cuts to their children’s educational opportunities and to plan what they can do, together, to form advocacy groups and work for a better way. The event follows closely on the heels of a similar meeting in Greenfield, March 5, that saw over 400 people come together to plan the next step.
March 27, members of the Dane County School Board Consortium and WAES (http://www.excellentschools.org) will host a community meeting — “The Future of Public Education and A Call to Action” — at the Monona Grove High School Commons (http://www.mononagrove.org/mghs/), 4400 Monona Drive, Monona. The hoped-for outcomes of the event, which runs from 3 to 4:40 p.m., include an increased understanding of school funding in Wisconsin, alternatives to cuts in funding, and formation of community advocacy groups. For more information, call 608-217-5938 or go to http://www.excellentschools.org/events/2011/budget/dane_county_flier.pdf.
Teacher Tenure Reform: Applying Lessons from the Civil Service and Higher Education
Research continues to confirm what intuition has told many of us for years: Teacher quality has a bigger impact on student learning than any other factor in a school. Nationwide, this finding has increasingly motivated policymakers and the public to focus reforms on dramatically improving teacher quality. National, state, and local leaders have initiated reforms designed to better prepare teachers for the classroom, more accurately identify and reward top teachers, support teachers’ development, and equip education leaders to identify and remove the very least-effective teachers.
Discussions of teacher quality often lead to questions about which teachers are retained and dismissed in K-12 public schools, and thus to questions about tenure. Teacher tenure was designed in the early 1900s as a set of procedural protections against unfair and arbitrary dismissals.1 But today, concerns about the effect on student outcomes — along with budgetary constraints — dominate education reform discussions.
As a result, leaders in a handful of states and districts have begun making changes to align their tenure systems with their goal of increasing student learning. Common changes include streamlining tenure protections and increasing the rigor of the tenure-granting process.2 Parallel efforts to improve the quality, accuracy, and rigor of educator evaluations have strengthened the basis for personnel decisions based on performance, and have fueled increased interest in tenure reform
The Search for a New Way to Test Schoolkids
Excerpt from Greg Toppo’s article:
“…In other places, educators are experimenting with different ways to test what kids learn. Bill Tucker, a managing director at Education Sector, a Washington, D.C., think tank, says states like Oregon have led the way with so-called adaptive tests, computerized assessments that actually change as students answer questions right or wrong. Such tests satisfy the requirements of the No Child Left Behind law. Students sit for these tests any time they’re ready, from October on, and the tests allow schools to find out more about how much kids have learned. And since each test is essentially different from the last, they’re “harder to game,” Tucker says.
In a bid to look beyond bedrock skills such as reading and math, a few states are also looking at other measures, such as how many of their high school graduates had to take remedial classes in college, Tucker says. Federal Race to the Top funding, part of the Obama administration’s education stimulus plan, is pushing states to develop databases that would allow states to track graduates.
The federal government has also invested in two separate efforts by the states to overhaul tests; 45 states are participating. One project is aimed at developing so-called “through testing,” which would sample every few months how much students learn, then combine those scores with the score on an end-of-year test. The other project focuses on computer-adaptive tests, like those used in Oregon, to be given at year’s end.
Atlanta Mayor Reed wants to appoint some school board members
Ernie Suggs and Kristina Torres:
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed for the first time Monday raised the possibility he might try to seek special power to appoint city school board members, as he seeks to speed reforms mandated by the city system’s accrediting agency.
His comments, however, were met cautiously, and are fraught with political and legal implications.
“Full reform may not be able to be passed during this legislative session, but I do believe something can be done,” Reed said, adding that he would ask Gov. Nathan Deal to address the issue during a special reapportionment session in late summer. “If we continue to see the kinds of failures we are seeing now, he should consider adding this as a priority agenda item.”
Reed said that he would ask for the temporary ability to appoint members to the school board, to help “break the logjam that exists around governance and a search for a new superintendent that is transparent.”
Charter school changes would hurt quality
On Wednesday morning at the state Capitol, the Senate Committee on Education will hold a public hearing on several bills: SB 20, SB 22 and SB 34. Senate Bill 22, which deals with public charter schools, is the bill with the most statewide effects. (The others focus solely on Milwaukee Public Schools.)
Two dimensions of SB 22 should give pause to citizens across the political spectrum because as written, the bill would make it less likely for charter schools to serve the common good. The effect will be to reduce the professionalism of the faculty and the level of local accountability for charter schools.
Clearly, the quality of education that occurs across sectors – public to private, preschool to postsecondary – is in the public interest. We all benefit when our schools educate children not only academically but in numerous other manners as well. Society is strengthened to the degree that children learn reflection, compassion, creativity and generosity. Schools can foster cross-cultural relationships and nurture respect amongst a populace that is growing increasingly pluralistic. While all schools serve the common good when they promote such learning, these characteristics define our expectations of public schools.
Why Do We Let Them Dress Like That?
In the pale-turquoise ladies’ room, they congregate in front of the mirror, re-applying mascara and lip gloss, brushing their hair, straightening panty hose and gossiping: This one is “skanky,” that one is “really cute,” and so forth. Dressed in minidresses, perilously high heels, and glittery, dangling earrings, their eyes heavily shadowed in black-pearl and jade, they look like a flock of tropical birds. A few minutes later, they return to the dance floor, where they shake everything they’ve got under the party lights.
But for the most part, there isn’t all that much to shake. This particular group of party-goers consists of 12- and 13-year-old girls. Along with their male counterparts, they are celebrating the bat mitzvah of a classmate in a cushy East Coast suburb.
What the Department of Education’s “82 Percent of Schools Are Failing” Statistic Really Tells Us
According to the Obama Administration, the majority of the nation’s schools could be failing.
In a statement to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce just over a week ago, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that under the current No Child Left Behind law, 82 percent of the nation’s schools may not be sufficiently educating students. But this is debatable.
It is true that far too many schools in the United States are not providing students with a good, or even remedial, education. Children in the U.S. continue to fall behind their peers internationally, and too few students are able to reach proficient levels in crucial areas like reading and math. This spells tragedy for the future of our nation.
Levy doubling taxes for Seattle education advances
The City Council on Monday moved forward an expanded Families and Education Levy that Seattleites will likely see on the ballot this fall – one that would nearly double the amount of taxes people are paying.
The measure is part of a city push to increase children’s school readiness and performance, but it also comes at a time when the school district is reeling from a money management scandal that led to the superintendent being dismissed. The Council’s Special Committee on Educational Achievement for Seattle Schoolchildren voted unanimously to send the levy to the full Council, which will consider it March 28.
One issue Councilmembers were alerted to was the fact that there would be a “bow wave” effect for this seven-year levy in which, beginning in 2016, the proposed spending wouldn’t keep up with proposed revenues. By 2019 that gap would be about $8 million a year – a situation that future policy makers would have to deal with.
NEA Plan of Attack
“We Are at War” – NEA’s Plan of Attack. With the situation in Wisconsin stabilized, if not settled, there is time to examine the National Education Association’s strategy for its short-term future. Though reasonable arguments can be made that the collective bargaining measures in Wisconsin, Ohio and Idaho aren’t significantly different from the status quo in other states, there should be no mistake about it – NEA sees them as a threat to its very existence.
The reasons are not hard to understand. NEA has enjoyed substantial membership and revenue growth during the decades-long decline of the labor movement. It is now the largest union in America and by far the largest single political campaign spender in the 50 states.
But after some 27 years of increases, NEA membership is down in 43 states. The union faces a $14 million budget shortfall, and the demand for funds from its Ballot Measure/Legislative Crises Fund is certain to exceed its supply. Even the national UniServ grants, which help pay for NEA state affiliate employees, will be reduced this year.
In the past, NEA has routinely faced challenges to its political agenda, mostly in the form of vouchers, charters and tax limitations. But the state legislative and gubernatorial results in the 2010 mid-term elections emboldened Republicans for the first time to systematically target the sources of NEA’s power, which have little to do with education and everything to do with the provisions of each state’s public sector collective bargaining laws.
Education reform: the problem with helping everyone reach ‘average’
Ann Robinson
The alarm clock is sounding on American education. While China’s emergence as an educational powerhouse is relatively new, the continued poor performance by US students – though improved, still 31st place in math on the most recent international test – is not. Today, Shanghai tops the charts, but yesterday, it was other nations. Even a casual observer of education news knows the US long ago ceded its place as world leader in student performance. It’s an unsettling state of affairs.
West loses edge to Asia in education: Top five OECD findings
But what’s more unsettling is how prominent education leaders like Education Secretary Arne Duncan have called America’s sorry standing a “wakeup call.” President Obama has called for a new “Sputnik moment” to reignite the nation’s commitment to science education. But the wakeup alarm didn’t just start going off. It sounded decades ago; the US has just repeatedly hit the snooze button.
The crisis in American education includes both our overall poor national performance and the miniscule numbers of US students achieving at the highest levels. Even our best students are less competitive. The problem with previous education reform efforts is that they have poured time, money, and resources into bringing all students up to proficiency – at the expense of our most gifted students. If we want the best educational performance, we have to target our brightest students, not ignore them in the fight to help everyone reach “average.”
Moving from paper to practice
We’ve been inundated with reams of reports, studies, and expert panels advising us how to fix this problem. During one week last fall, two government-convened panels released reports full of prescriptions for what the nation must due to reclaim its position as a leading innovator.
The reports by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and the National Science Board offer a plethora of recommendations including better teacher training, creating 1,000 new STEM-focused (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) schools, and holding schools accountable for the performance of high-achieving students.
Continue reading Education reform: the problem with helping everyone reach ‘average’
Teaching to the Text Message
I’VE been teaching college freshmen to write the five-paragraph essay and its bully of a cousin, the research paper, for years. But these forms invite font-size manipulation, plagiarism and clichés. We need to set our sights not lower, but shorter.
I don’t expect all my graduates to go on to Twitter-based careers, but learning how to write concisely, to express one key detail succinctly and eloquently, is an incredibly useful skill, and more in tune with most students’ daily chatter, as well as the world’s conversation. The photo caption has never been more vital.
So a few years ago, I started slipping my classes short writing assignments alongside the required papers. Once, I asked them, “Come up with two lines of copy to sell something you’re wearing now on eBay.” The mix of commerce and fashion stirred interest, and despite having 30 students in each class, I could give everyone serious individual attention. For another project, I asked them to describe the essence of the chalkboard in one or two sentences. One student wrote, “A chalkboard is a lot like memory: often jumbled, unorganized and sloppy. Even after it’s erased, there are traces of everything that’s been written on it.”
It’s School Admissions Season in New York City: Does your 18-month-old have what it takes?
When T.S. Eliot wrote about the cruelest month “mixing memory and desire”, he might also have had in mind that this is the season of school admissions in New York City. So as the sooty piles of snow melt into gray puddles, parents obsess over the letters they will and won’t receive from the school that will or won’t confer on their radiant progeny the blessing of its approval. It seems to be a challenge in this season for even the more sensible parents among us, even those who really have better things to do, not to fall prey to the prevailing fantasy that if your child is rejected from one of these desirable and enlightened places, he or she will be destined for a life of drug addiction, grand theft auto, or general exile.
My 18-month-old recently had his first school interview. Apparently he sailed through it, though how is somewhat mysterious to me. Especially since he calls all fruits “apples” and sentences such as “Mommy. Moon. Get it” are not necessarily indicative of a huge understanding of the workings of the universe. However, no one is too young for the system, and a small obstacle like language cannot be permitted to get in the way of the judging and selecting and general Darwinian sorting to which it is never too soon to accustom yourself in this city. I have been asked to write recommendations for other one-and-a-half-year-olds for this same lovely school, and have thought of, but did not actually write, “He knows a lot about trucks.”
Private school funding draws ire
James Salzer and Laura Diamond:
Lawmakers are cutting state appropriations and HOPE scholarship money for public college students at the same time they are maintaining relatively stable funding for private colleges.
For weeks, students at Georgia State, Kennesaw State and other public universities have been the face of protest as legislators reduced the benefits of the nationally lauded HOPE scholarship program.
But inside the Statehouse, a strong lobbying effort led by politically active private college presidents has worked to persuade lawmakers to maintain about $110 million in state funding for their colleges.
MPS schools $11.2 million in debt: Decentralized Budgeting Leads to Deficits
Years of overspending in a system that gives principals autonomy over their buildings’ budgets has put more than 80 Milwaukee schools into significant debt, to a district total of almost $11.2 million.
The most recent budget documents show Bradley Tech High School with the highest accumulated deficit of more than $750,000, and the Marshall High School building with a deficit of more than $557,000. Even elementary schools that are cheaper to operate have run up debt, such as Brown Street Academy, which had a fiscal deficit of more than $350,000.
The concept of giving Milwaukee Public Schools principals more autonomy over their individual budgets, initiated during Howard Fuller’s term as superintendent and moved into place around the 1996-’97 school year, was intended to free principals from the slow-moving bureaucracy at the central office and give them more discretion over how their money was spent.
Education reforms must include parent responsibility
It appears Gov. Bill Haslam got an earful from Jackson-Madison County educators on his recent visit to talk to them about school reforms in Tennessee. The governor asked for candor, and he got it. We believe that is a step in the right direction. Any meaningful dialogue about public education must deal with reality, not just education theory. Education reforms that don’t take into consideration the realities of the classroom and in the home are just wishful thinking.
We support the education reform ideas put forth by former Gov. Phil Bredesen and largely adopted by Haslam. Higher standards, more students going to college, more charter schools, teacher evaluations tied in-part to test results and changes to teacher tenure rules are education reforms whose times have come in Tennessee.
Obama’s War on Schools
Over the past year, I have traveled the nation speaking to nearly 100,000 educators, parents, and school-board members. No matter the city, state, or region, those who know schools best are frightened for the future of public education. They see no one in a position of leadership who understands the damage being done to their schools by federal policies.
They feel keenly betrayed by President Obama. Most voted for him, hoping he would reverse the ruinous No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation of George W. Bush. But Obama has not sought to turn back NCLB. His own approach, called Race to the Top, is even more punitive than NCLB. And though over the past week the president has repeatedly called on Congress to amend the law, his proposed reforms are largely cosmetic and would leave the worst aspects of NCLB intact.
Better education takes team work
Suzanne Fields writes in her March 5 column that teachers should put pupils first. I am appalled that teachers are being blamed for the state of education and the economy.
I have been a teacher in the Capital Region for 25 years and have had the privilege of working with highly qualified, dedicated, hardworking professionals. Yes, we consider ourselves professionals. The union has fought to improve salaries and working conditions, and protect workers from favoritism.
U.S. schools lag behind those in other countries because of America’s culture. There has been a decline in discipline, self-discipline and structure in the home, as well as a host of other social problems. Teachers should be respected by their students and the families they serve; instead, they are unfairly under attack. Students in other countries work harder; their culture is one of respect for education and teachers.
Minnesota House GOP releases sweeping K-12 finance bill
Republicans in the Minnesota House offered a K-12 Finance bill that would dramatically alter the how the state’s schools are funded, change teacher seniority rules and would allow public money to be spent for low-income students to attend private schools.
The bill, released Saturday afternoon, makes a slight reduction in expected growth for K12 schools, but increases the amount of money in the state’s per pupil formula.
“The debate in education this year isn’t going to be about how much we spend,” said Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington as he compared his bill to Gov. Mark Dayton’s budget plan. “The debate instead will be what we fund and what reforms we make to the system.”
Garofalo finds the extra funding in the per pupil formula by cutting the state aid schools rely on for integration. It also caps state special education funding at current levels, leading many Democrats to allege that it would force local school districts to raise property taxes to meet federal requirements. Garofalo says he plans to offer a bill later this session that would free up state requirements on schools with special ed students. He says that would save schools money.
Legislation may chart new course for Wisconsin charter schools
I wrote several weeks ago (not in the newspaper) that education in Wisconsin was entering “unchartered” waters.
Oops. For one thing, I meant “uncharted” waters. A mental slip.
More important, the waters are, in reality, about to become increasingly chartered. Charter schools are in for major boosts, both in Milwaukee and statewide, if Republican proposals in the Legislature become law. In fact, a big step in that direction may come Wednesday when the state Senate Education Committee takes up three education bills.
But as more charter boats get launched, expectations rise for successful sailing. Will the resulting schools be piloted well? Will they set sail with enough skill and power to carry more kids to success?
“If we’re going to maintain our credibility and maintain legislative support, we’ve got to show that we’re not simply producing large numbers, we’re producing quality schools,” said Dennis Conta, who heads a coalition known as the Milwaukee Charter School Advocates.
Nationwide, the verdict is out on whether charter schools are a worthy innovation. The good ones offer important contributions to school improvement efforts. But, overall, those star schools are far outnumbered by charter schools where things aren’t more successful than nearby conventional schools. Sometimes they’re worse. There is no convincing case that charter schools overall have made things better.
A Teachers Education
I can’t get that electrician out of my mind. He was so incensed at last week’s School Board meeting.
Shameful, he said, that South Milwaukee teachers, on average, make more than the average income of South Milwaukeeans. Shameful that the School Board had signed a new contract with teachers.
I don’t remember all the stats he reeled off, backed up with proof, he said, as he waved a sheaf of papers of god knows what along with his assertions. But the upshot was that the School District was paying its teachers way too much in relation to other school districts in the the state. Nevermind that South Milwaukee students’ high achievement rates reflect the high quality of teachers the district hires. Or maybe the electrician puts no value on high-achieving students. Warehousing kids to keep them out of parents’ hair during the day is OK?
Now, I really, really respect the work electricians do. They and plumbers and roofers do stuff I could and would never, never do or be able to do.
Neither would I be able to do what a teacher does. Even a kindergarten teacher. Or make that, most especially a kindergarten teacher. I’ve spend time in a kindergarten classroom–as a visitor. Believe me, I would last about 10 minutes if I had to be in charge of just wrangling a classroom of those children–adorable as they are–let alone actually have to teach them something.
Milton School District reaches labor deal
Under the new contract, union members would have to pay 12.6 percent of the district’s costs for health insurance coverage and half of the district’s cost for pension benefits.
That could save as much as $1.1 million in 2011-12, according to district estimates.
The deal also eliminates contract language for class size, and makes job performance the first criteria in layoffs and non-renewals, putting seniority second.
It also allows teachers union members who retire by April 30 to leave retaining the health insurance benefits they had prior to Friday’s contract extension.
The contract was drawn up in a draft proposal this week by Superintendent Bernie Nikolay and teachers union President Michael Dorn.
MEA letter asks teachers about striking over school funding cuts
Michigan’s largest teachers union is stirring up possible teacher strikes — perhaps a statewide strike — to protest what the union calls attacks by Gov. Rick Snyder and the Republican-led Legislature on unions, school funding and middle-class taxpayers.
A letter by MichiganEducation Association President Iris Salters to 1,100 locals asks them whether the union should authorize “job action,” up to and including illegal strikes, to “increase pressure on our legislators.”
The union and other education advocates have criticized Snyder’s proposal to cut funding to schools by $470 per pupil as excessive.
The College Board Honors 4 Districts with Advanced Placement District of the Year Awards:
Districts in Chicago; Tampa, Fla.; Hudson County, N.J.; and San Bernadino, Calif. to Be Recognized at the AP® Annual Conference in July
AP Achievement List of 388 school districts that have had similar successes.
“These districts are defying expectations by expanding access while improving scores,” said College Board President Gaston Caperton. “They are experimenting with initiatives and strategies that have driven increases in average exam scores when making AP available to a much broader and more diverse student population. Over the next two months we will work closely with each of the AP District of the Year winners to document what they are doing so we can share their best practices with all members of the AP community.”
Wisconsin Districts that achieved recognition:
Appleton Area School District
Columbus School District
D C Everest Area School District
Diocese of Madison Education Office
Germantown School District
Green Bay Area Public Schools
Kimberly Area School District
Marshfield School District
Menomonie Area School District
Middleton-Cross Plains Schools
Monroe School District
Mt Horeb Area School District
Mukwonago Area School District
School District of Hudson
School District of Rhinelander
Stevens Point Area Public School District
Trevor-Wilmot Consolidated School District
Watertown Unified School District
Wauwatosa School District
West Bend School District
As Thomas Jefferson High School adds help for poor English skills, some Va. parents fume
As Northern Virginia became home to more immigrant families in recent decades, Fairfax County officials say they started programs to teach English as a second language at every school – about 200 of them. Except one.
The holdout was the region’s hallowed magnet school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, where many assumed that steep admissions standards rendered such a program for English language learners unnecessary.
But next year, at the behest of the school’s teachers, Thomas Jefferson – often called TJ – plans to hire its first instructor to cater to a growing number of students who thrive in math and science classes but sometimes struggle with English.
The decision to hire the half-time teacher has reinvigorated a debate about TJ’s mission – namely, how heavily the school’s admissions policy should favor math and science standouts over well-rounded applicants with superior reading and writing abilities.
School administrative costs, public information practices draw backlash from Baltimore County lawmakers
County hired deputy superintendent at salary of $214,000 even as it cuts teaching positions
Members of the Baltimore County delegation are demanding an explanation for the school system’s spending on top-level administration and its policy of requiring written requests for salary information.
In a letter dated Friday, Sen. Kathy Klausmeier and Del. John Olszewski Jr. criticized the school system’s recent hiring of a deputy superintendent at an annual salary of $214,000 even as the proposed budget calls for cutting 196 teaching positions at middle and high schools.
“Leaving 200 teaching positions vacant will no doubt mean larger class sizes and it may also mean that many important and valuable educational programs will either be understaffed or non-existent,” they said in the letter to school Superintendent Joe A. Hairston.
They also called the salary of Renee Foose, who will begin her job as the county’s deputy superintendent next month, “appalling to many Baltimore County residents.”
If education is really a priority, fund it
Many of us are still trying to get over the shock of Gov. Rick Snyder’s recent budget proposal and the devastating impact it will have on school districts. We knew there would be sacrifices from all sectors of the state, but we didn’t expect such a disinvestment in public education. Snyder is proposing in his 2011-12 budget a $300 per pupil cut on top of the current $170 cut. Adding to the damage is an expected increase in retirement costs that could equate to an additional $230 per pupil. Add the numbers together and districts could be facing a $700 per pupil reduction.
Michigan districts have been reducing their budgets for the past 10 years. They’ve been forced to think creatively to provide quality education despite years of shrinking resources and one-time budget fixes. At the same time, the expectations for school reform and increased student achievement are at an all-time high, negative attacks on education are unprecedented. The result has been a focus on short-term fixes that offer temporary relief to schools with no assurance of long-term funding stability. Districts have been forced to plan from year-to-year as opposed to long-term planning which we know is more conducive to spawning true reform.
Kathy Hayes is executive director of the Michigan Association of School Boards.
Wisconsin Kids caught in the middle of stalemate between Walker, teachers union
Meanwhile, American kids, when compared with those in other countries, are in the middle of the pack or worse when it comes to reading, math and science proficiency, according to a study released last week. And locally, Madison schools struggle with rising numbers of low-income students and poor minority graduation rates.
These are not problems that can be solved by killing teachers unions, nor with teachers unions unwilling to participate in real reform.
But I suppose that as long as Walker and the unions remain in fight mode, solutions will have to wait.
Are “charter universities” the future of state-funded higher ed?
On the face of it, the budget proposal that Ohio Governor John Kasich released this week looks like terrible news for state universities. Not only would Kasich’s plan slash higher education spending by 10.5 percent but it also would cap tuition increases at 3.5 percent a year.
So it might come as a surprise that some university presidents received the plan warmly. Within hours, Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee released a statement praising the governor for “understanding that higher education and our state’s long-term strength are inextricably linked.”
Gee’s optimism rests on another aspect of the governor’s budget. In exchange for the budget cuts, Kasich would give state universities more autonomy in running their day-to-day affairs. Long-term, that could save schools money. “We at Ohio State continue to move aggressively in both advocating for regulatory freedom and reconfiguring and reinventing our institution,” Gee said.
Upstate N.Y. schools anguish over aid cuts
Upstate school district leaders and education groups are concerned that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed budget sharply reduces their state aid while sparing their downstate counterparts.
“I think it’s completely immoral,” said Bloomfield Central School District Superintendent Michael Midey in Ontario County. “Why is it that my students take a hit? I just don’t understand it.”
Among school districts facing the largest cuts per pupil, 97 percent are in upstate communities while 75 percent of those facing the smallest cuts are in downstate suburban communities, according to the Alliance for a Quality Education, an Albany-based union-backed advocacy group.
At issue is a proposed $1.5 billion cut to education aid in Cuomo’s 2011-12 state budget plan, dropping local funding from $20.9 billion to $19.4 billion.
The search for a new way to test schoolkids
By all accounts, George Washington Elementary School is the very model of a modern urban public school.
Tucked into an up-and-coming neighborhood west of downtown, the school has produced impressive results on annual Maryland School Assessment (MSA) math and reading tests over the past several years. By 2007, scores had improved so steadily that the U.S. Department of Education made it a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence. First lady Laura Bush came to town to hand out the award.
But in October 2008, a parent came forward with a troubling complaint: Someone was tampering with answer bubble sheets at Washington Elementary.
Soon, Baltimore Schools CEO Andres A. Alonso showed up at a PTA meeting at Washington and found “very poor” parent turnout and “an absence of student or staff enthusiasm,” according to city records.
Newark School Board Talks Benefits or No Benefits for Board Members
NUSD board members have medical, dental and vision coverage for themselves and their families that is paid for by the district. Possible changes sparked disagreements at budget workshop.
Debates surfaced among school board members on whether they should receive health benefits, a topic that was brought up during a budget workshop held on Tuesday night.
Disagreements began when board member Nancy Thomas presented the idea that board members should no longer participate in health benefits provided by Newark Unified School District.
Can Anyone Change No Child Left Behind?
The Obama Administration is doubling down on its push to overhaul the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Last Wednesday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan testified before Congress and aggressively urged action to revise the landmark and contentious education law that was passed in 2001. The President began this week with a speech at a northern Virginia middle school urging Congress to act and then spent part of Tuesday cutting several radio interviews prodding Capitol Hill even more.
This isn’t the first time the Administration has implored Congress to change this law: it’s been a constant drumbeat since 2009 (the law was due to be “reauthorized,” Washingtonspeak for tuned up, in 2007 but Congress couldn’t agree on how to do it) and even during the 2008 campaign. Now, frustrated with the lack of action, Obama and Duncan are trying a new approach: scaring Congress into acting. Both Obama and Duncan are highlighting Department of Education estimates that more than 80% of schools will not meet performance targets this year if the law isn’t changed. One wag dubbed the new strategy a “fail wail.”
Evaluating teachers is a delicate conversation
They met on an icy afternoon, Clay Harris, an elementary math teacher at the end of a hectic day, and Eric Bethel, one of the city’s new master educators, there to render a verdict on Harris’s teaching that could determine whether he kept his job.
In polite, awkward silence, they walked to Harris’s empty classroom at Beers Elementary School in Southeast Washington and settled in kid-size chairs at a low, yellow table.
Bethel set up his laptop. Harris took out a piece of paper for notes and began tapping his pencil on it.
“I didn’t do everything perfectly,” he said almost apologetically.
Bethel smiled. “No one does,” he said.
New York Democrat governor hits school districts, defends education cut
Claiming local school districts are playing “political games,” New York’s governor on Thursday defended his $1.5 billion cut to education spending.
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposed cut in state aid to schools — the largest in history — is aimed at closing a $10 billion budget gap for the next fiscal year.
Cuomo told reporters on Thursday that his cuts average 2.7 percent per school district, and could be offset by rooting out inefficiencies, using reserve funds and lowering the salaries of superintendents.
“I know there is waste and abuse in the school districts; 2.7 percent in waste and abuse,” Cuomo said after a private meeting with legislative leaders. “Districts say ‘we don’t have any.’ I don’t believe it.”
Teachers’ unions and school officials have attacked Cuomo’s plan, saying that they’ve already made steep cuts in recent years, and that unfunded state mandates are driving up costs. Aid was cut by $1.4 billion in 2010 after being frozen in 2009. School districts have also assailed the governor’s proposal to cap property tax increases.
Education and the boiled frog
Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011-’13 budget proposal includes cuts to Wisconsin’s public schools of more than $834 million. This represents the largest cut to education in our state’s history. It would be impossible to implement cuts this size without significant cuts to educational programs and services for Wisconsin’s children.
The proposal is drastic – and that is just part of the problem. You have likely heard the old adage that a frog placed in a pot of hot water will immediately jump out to avoid harm, while a frog placed in cool water will not notice if the heat is turned up and will unwittingly allow itself to be boiled alive. Similarly, the proposed cuts are placed on top of smaller cuts the schools have taken steadily over the past two decades.
In Wisconsin, school districts have been under strict limits on their revenues and spending. These limits have not kept pace with the natural increases in the costs of everyday things like supplies, energy and fuel. So every year, local school board members and administrators have had to cut their budgets to comply with their budget limits.
Educational Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship
I have spent the last 25 years studying and working with governments and private groups to improve the education available to marginalized youth, in the United States and around the world. Most of that work was based in the belief that change at scale could result from the decisions made by governments, and that research could enlighten those choices. When I joined the Harvard faculty 13 years ago I set out to educate a next generation of leaders who would go on to advise policy makers or to become policy makers themselves, and designed a masters program largely responsive to that vision. During those years I continued to write for those audiences.
Over time, however, I have become aware that traditional approaches can’t improve education at a scale and depth sufficient to ready the next generation of students for the challenges they will face. I have also become more skeptical of the assumed linear relationship between conventional research and educational change. I now believe the needed educational revitalization requires design and invention, as much as linear extrapolation from the study of the status quo — that is, of the past. It also requires systemic interventions — changes in multiple conditions and at multiple levels, inside the school and out. And it requires a departure from the conventional study into how much we can expect a given intervention or additional resource to change one educational outcome measure — typically a skill as measured on a test or access to an education level, or transition to the next.
Unions Intimidating Gist
The tension which exists between Education Commissioner Deborah Gist and the leadership of the teachers’ unions is simmering at a hotter level than usual this week as the Commissioner faces down an unfair labor practice complaint filed against her. But the complaint brings forth an important question of just who is intimidating whom when teachers and educational professionals are thrust into the midst of political battles.
The tireless and ever steely Gist was due for a complaint hearing before the union-sympathizing state Labor Relations Board (LRB) Tuesday which was prompted by an unfair labor practice charge filed against her by the union representing workers at her own RI Department of Education (RIDE).
The core of the complaint was that Gist violated state labor laws when she sent an e-mail out last February, at the height of the Central Falls teacher firing tempest, which basically advised her own employees that it would not be a great idea to physically partake in a protest rally which was designed to denigrate RIDE’s own school transformation policy effort at the failing high school.
Embattled principal to leave Madison for Puerto Rico school
The Glendale Elementary School principal who was accused by some teachers of being a bully while praised by others as a visionary is leaving at the end of the year to take a principal job in Puerto Rico.
In a statement, Mickey Buhl said he knew sometime last school year that this would be his last year at Glendale. “The stage we are at makes it a wise time for a change for the school and for me,” he wrote to parents last week.
Superintendent Dan Nerad praised Buhl as an “innovative instructional leader who has played a key role in improving the educational results for Glendale students.”
During Buhl’s six years, test scores among Glendale’s low-income and minority students have improved as changes were made to foster more collaboration between teachers. But Buhl’s aggressive management style rubbed some teachers the wrong way, prompting a district investigation last fall.
British University Leaders: Pay for Performance
Vice chancellors of British universities (the equivalent of university presidents) could lose up to 10 percent of their salaries if they fail to do their job properly under new plans to establish fair pay in the public sector in Britain.
Under the proposals, set out today by journalist and economist Will Hutton, rank-and-file academics would also play a role in setting the salary of their vice chancellor. Hutton, executive vice-chair of the Work Foundation think tank, was commissioned by the British government last year to lead a review of fair pay in the public sector.
An interim report published in December revealed that universities had the highest pay differential between the top and bottom earners across the entire public sector, with vice chancellors earning on average 15.35 times the salary of those at the bottom of the pay spine such as porters and cleaners. For Russell Group universities (leading research universities), the ratio rose to 19:1.
Report: Teacher quality crucial: Meeting targets best practices for nation’s educators
Countries that outpace the U.S. in education employ many different strategies to help their students excel. They do, however, share one: They set high requirements to become a teacher, hold those who become one in high esteem and offer the instructors plenty of support.
On Wednesday and today, education leaders, including U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the nation’s largest teacher unions, and officials from the highest scoring countries, are meeting in New York to identify the best teaching practices.
The meeting comes after the recently released results of the Programme for International Student Assessment exam of 15-year-olds alarmed U.S. educators. Out of 34 countries, it ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math.
“On the one hand, the United States has a very expensive education system in international standards,” said Andreas Schleicher, who directs the exam. “On the other hand, it’s one of the systems where teachers get the lowest salaries.
“Then you ask yourself, how do you square those things?”
Some 16 countries’ teachers union leaders and education ministers say the U.S. must “raise the status of the teaching profession”– meaning spend more money. We’ve wasted enough. Let’s reduce unions’ power.
Defenders of government control of education will believe any and every explanation for failure — except government control.
Andreas Schleicher, the head of the division of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that conducts evaluations of the scholastic performance of different countries’ 15-year-old pupils every three years, complains in a new report about the image of educators in America.
“The teaching profession in the U.S. does not have the same high status as it once did,” he says, “nor does it compare with the status teachers enjoy in the world’s best-performing economies.”
An interview with Henna Virkkunen, Finland’s Minister of Education
The Hechinger Report: It’s well-known that Finland’s teachers are an elite bunch, with only top students offered the chance to become teachers. It’s also no secret that they are well-trained. But take us inside that training for a moment – what does it look like, specifically? How does teacher training in Finland differ from teacher training in other countries?
Virkkunen: It’s a difficult question. Our teachers are really good. One of the main reasons they are so good is because the teaching profession is one of the most famous careers in Finland, so young people want to become teachers. In Finland, we think that teachers are key for the future and it’s a very important profession–and that’s why all of the young, talented people want to become teachers. All of the teacher-training is run by universities in Finland, and all students do a five-year master’s degree. Because they are studying at the university, teacher education is research-based. Students have a lot of supervised teacher-training during their studies. We have something called “training schools”–normally next to universities–where the student teaches and gets feedback from a trained supervisor.
Teachers in Finland can choose their own teaching methods and materials. They are experts of their own work, and they test their own pupils. I think this is also one of the reasons why teaching is such an attractive profession in Finland because teachers are working like academic experts with their own pupils in schools.
Madison School District could reduce property taxes next year
The Madison School District is positioned to reduce property taxes next year because of proposed reductions in state funding and concessions from its employee unions, a district official said Tuesday.
Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal calls for a 5.5 percent reduction in district revenues, which the Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated Tuesday would reduce district funding statewide by $465 million.
Madison estimates its revenues — a combination of property taxes and state aid — would drop $15 million under the governor’s proposal, assistant superintendent for business services Erik Kass said.
The district’s property taxes would be $243 million next year, or $2 million less than this year, Kass said, because of an increase in enrollment, a proposed $5 million reduction in state aid and a 2008 referendum that allows the district to exceed its revenue limit set by the state.
U.S. Is Urged to Raise Teachers’ Status
Sam Dillon via a Kris Olds’ email:
To improve its public schools, the United States should raise the status of the teaching profession by recruiting more qualified candidates, training them better and paying them more, according to a new report on comparative educational systems.
Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the international achievement test known by its acronym Pisa, says in his report that top-scoring countries like Korea, Singapore and Finland recruit only high-performing college graduates for teaching positions, support them with mentoring and other help in the classroom, and take steps to raise respect for the profession.
“Teaching in the U.S. is unfortunately no longer a high-status occupation,” Mr. Schleicher says in the report, prepared in advance of an educational conference that opens in New York on Wednesday. “Despite the characterization of some that teaching is an easy job, with short hours and summers off, the fact is that successful, dedicated teachers in the U.S. work long hours for little pay and, in many cases, insufficient support from their leadership.”
Superman & Teacher Evaluation
There’s been a lot of negative media lately, particularly surrounding education and teachers’ unions in Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida.
My children attend a Florida public high school that is ranked as one of the top five best schools in the state for academics, and consistently ranked number one in football and volleyball. They have an extensive Advanced Placement course program that is so popular that my kids cannot get into all of the AP courses that they want. The courses are large and overenrolled, but at least they are challenging.
From my perspective as a parent and a college educator, most of my kids’ high school teachers have been excellent. A few, however, have been inferior — a situation that does not really surprise me. As a former department chair and evaluator of faculty performance at the college level, I understand how flawed and difficult the evaluation process can be. I also understand how faculty have different strengths and weaknesses. The weaker scholar with the higher student GPA average may be the person who provides after-hours counsel to students in trouble. The faculty with the lower student evaluations and course G.P.A.’s may be the most intellectually challenging faculty in the classroom — the one who students learn to appreciate after they graduate. And then there are a few faculty who should probably leave education entirely, but will not go and cannot be fired without difficulty, if they have tenure. All of these issues–teacher evaluation, compensation, tenure–are on the political table right now for public schools. Florida is one of the states that is pushing a bill to link secondary student performance to better teacher retention and merit pay. New Florida Governor (and Tea Party favorite) Rick Scott supports a bill in which teacher evaluations are no longer subject to the collective bargaining process, only pay and benefits are negotiated. Teachers’ unions are unhappy about the methods (and the rhetoric) that many politicians are using for evaluating them and their classrooms. It’s unfortunate how this clash between workers and management is playing out in the classroom.
Education Pioneers are creating new ways to promote learning
“Life is difficult.” I read the first line in The Road Less Traveled on my first day off after my first year as a superintendent and thought to myself, “M. Scott Peck should try being a school superintendent.” Peck describes love as, “extending yourself to benefit another.” At that point, I turned the book sideways and wrote “teaching” in big letters in the margin. Helping another person learn is the greatest gift a person can give. Becoming a school teacher is still the best way to give the gift of learning, but there is an expanding array of learning professions where skill and passion can unite to make a difference.
Jay Kimmelman is a serial edupreneur. After graduating from Harvard in 1999, Jay founded Edusoft to bring simple scanning technology to education assessment. The simple step automated data collection at a time when nearly every state was planning to implement standards and assessments. By 2003, EduSoft had achieved revenues of $20 million and Jay sold the company to Houghton Mifflin. That launched a worldwide journey to study the obstacles faced by people living in poverty. Jay spent 18 months studying subsistence farming in a remote Chinese village. In 2007, Jay moved to Kenya and launched Bridge International Academies, an affordable network of schools serving families in the slums of Nairobi for less than $40 per year. Jay built a scalable “school in a box’ model by relentlessly driving down the cost of each component and pushing up the quality. Jay was not trained as an educator, but may do more to improve access to quality education in Africa than anyone in history.
The Best of Times and the Worst of Times?
Years from now, lets hope ed reformers looking back on 2011 and gauging the Republican “position” don’t liken it to the opening of Charles Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities, with it having been among “the best of times and the worst of times” for education reform. Of course, at first blush this scenario would appear to be highly unlikely – an exaggeration at best -but sadly such a pronouncement seems less farfetched with each passing day of the new 112th Congress and with the emerging priorities of at least some self-proclaimed education reform governors.
Huh? Wasn’t 2011-12 supposed to be a ‘banner year’ for all things education reform?
Compromise would limit collective bargaining for Tennessee teachers
House Republicans today advanced a compromise on the bill that would originally have halted collective bargaining by Tennessee teachers — allowing bargaining to continue but with new limits on what can be negotiated.
The House Education Subcommittee approved, on a party-line vote, the amendment that would strip out the bill’s ban on collective bargaining and instead allow negotiations to continue between local teacher associations and school boards on base salaries, benefits and a few other issues.
It would prohibit negotiations on differential and merit pay, giving school boards full authority to enact merit pay plans. It would limit bargaining on “working conditions” — currently a broad topic — to matters affecting employees financially or their relationship with the school board.
Write About Why You are an Educator and a Proud Union Member
Those of you who are excellent teachers and who stand in solidarity with our unions are probably no stranger to the question, “Well, why are you involved with the union if you’re a good teacher?” It’s time for educators to stand up and answer that question loudly and clearly.
EDUSolidarity, a group of progressive educators, encourages you to explain how being a union member supports and enables you to be the kind of teacher that you are. Include personal stories if possible. Focus not only on your rights, but also on what it takes to be a great teacher for students and how unions support that.
FAQ’s on Madison’s Latest Collective Bargaining Agreement
Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
After a marathon bargaining session that lasted from Friday morning into early Saturday morning, the school district and MTI, our teachers union, settled on the terms of a two-year collective bargaining agreement for our teachers and four other bargaining units that will take effect on July 1. As is true for most negotiations, the terms of the final agreement varied considerably from the parties’ initial offers (discussed in my previous post). The school board ratified the agreement on Saturday and MTI membership voted to approve the pacts today, Sunday.
Here are some frequently asked questions about the agreement along with my responses.
What is your reaction to the settlement?
I wonder if any provisions were included that address the District’s “infinite campus” implementation challenges?
Pop Quiz: Rhee & Weingarten
Two Cornellians on opposite sides of the education debate–controversial former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee ’92 and teachers’ union leader Randi Weingarten ’80–sat down with CAM to talk about school reform. (But not together.)
They are the two strong-willed women at the heart of the nation’s debate on school reform. Both were featured in last year’s education documentary Waiting for Superman–one as a hero, the other as a heavy. They have offices seven blocks from each other in Washington, D.C., but are miles apart philosophically. And, yes, reform advocate Michelle Rhee ’92 and union leader Randi Weingarten ’80 are both Cornellians, a connection they’ve never discussed.
Rhee, forty-one, catapulted to national prominence–including appearances on Oprah and the covers of Time and Newsweek–as a result of her tumultuous three years as schools chancellor in the District of Columbia. Appointed in 2007 by Mayor Adrian Fenty to overhaul the troubled D.C. system, she fired hundreds of teachers and principals, closed schools, and reorganized the bureaucracy. Test scores rose and enrollment stabilized, but her steamroller style made enemies, not the least of them the Weingarten-led American Federation of Teachers. AFT poured money into the mayoral campaign of Vincent Gray, who defeated Fenty in last September’s Democratic primary. Rhee, calling the outcome “devastating,” resigned soon after. She has since started a new organization, Students First, to promote school reform. A native of Toledo and the divorced mother of two daughters, Rhee is engaged to former NBA star Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento.
The Inevitable Wisconsin
In the words of Young Frankenstein’s Inspector Kemp, “A riot iss an ogly think.” So is the Wisconsin shootout; ugly – but inevitable.
The unions had to be expecting a tough time with their new Governor Walker. No doubt they anticipated a difficult negotiation – “hard bargaining”, as the governor cut labor costs to balance the budget. Instead, they found themselves facing political forces who actually intend to put an end to them.
Unions have always decried every effort to rollback labor costs or union power as “union-busting.” Now their past rhetorical excesses have caught up with them, as they confront the real thing. (Cf “Wolf, the Boy who Cried…”)
At first it looked as if Walker was indeed bargaining hard. Rolling back pensions, increasing employee contributions, and making labor accept it as a compromise by agreeing not to end collective bargaining outright. And there would be the peace, as Don Barzini would say.
Well, gentlemen may cry “peace, peace,” but there is no peace. Before it could be seen if Walker was a “let’s make a deal” type, Democrats abandoned the state and the unions seized the Capitol to bully the governor and Republicans. They in turn found a parliamentary bypass and passed the bill to strip bargaining rights. The budget, with its real benefit reductions and budget cuts is still pending. But the unions appear to have used up most of their ammo, so their hopes cannot be high.
College Degree Fails to Promote Active Civic Engagement Beyond Voting
Intercollegiate Studies Institute:
nlightened Citizenship: How Civic Knowledge Trumps a College Degree in Promoting Active Civic Engagement is the fifth report to the nation issued by ISI’s National Civic Literacy Board. While each past study has had a different point of emphasis, all share a common thread of examining the relationships that exist between higher education, civic knowledge, and citizenship.
Unfortunately, the results of ISI’s past civic literacy research does not inspire confidence that our institutions of higher learning are living up to their educative and civic responsibilities, responsibilities that almost all American colleges recognize as critical to their overall public missions.
In 2006 and 2007, ISI administered a sixty-question multiple-choice exam on knowledge of American history and institutions to over 28,000 college freshmen and seniors from over eighty schools. In both years, the average freshman and senior failed the exam.
In 2008, ISI tested 2,508 adults of all ages and educational backgrounds, and once again the results were discouraging. Seventy-one percent of Americans failed the exam, with high school graduates scoring 44% and college graduates also failing at 57%.
On Creative Writing
Creative writing is an academic discipline. I draw a distinction between writing, which is what writers do, and creative writing. I think most people in the UK who teach creative writing have come to it via writing – they are bona fide writers who publish poems and novels and play scripts and the like, and they have found some way of supporting that vocation through having a career in academia. So in teaching aspirant writers how to write they are drawing upon their own experience of working in that medium. They are drawing upon their knowledge of what the problems are and how those problems might be tackled. It’s a practice-based form of learning and teaching.
But because it is in academia there is all this paraphernalia that has to go with it. So you get credits for attending classes. You have to do supporting modules; you have to be assessed. If you are doing an undergraduate degree you have to follow a particular curriculum and only about a quarter of that will be creative writing and the rest will be in the canon of English literature. If you are doing a PhD you have to support whatever the creative element is with a critical element. So there are these ways in which academia disciplines writing and I think of that as Creative Writing with a capital C and a capital W. All of us who teach creative writing are doing it, in a sense, to support our writing, but it is also often at the expense of our writing. We give up quite a lot of time and mental energy and also, I think, imaginative and creative energy to teach.
Let Kids Rule the School
IN a speech last week, President Obama said it was unacceptable that “as many as a quarter of American students are not finishing high school.” But our current educational approach doesn’t just fail to prepare teenagers for graduation or for college academics; it fails to prepare them, in a profound way, for adult life.
We want young people to become independent and capable, yet we structure their days to the minute and give them few opportunities to do anything but answer multiple-choice questions, follow instructions and memorize information. We cast social interaction as an impediment to learning, yet all evidence points to the huge role it plays in their psychological development.
That’s why we need to rethink the very nature of high school itself.
Teachers will move forward
Wisconsin’s public school teachers and support staff are reeling after a week in which our state leaders put political ambitions before their constituents.
When the governor signed into law his unprecedented attack on workers’ rights, he did so amidst plummeting approval ratings and an intense and growing base of Wisconsinites who are outraged by the actions he is taking to destroy our great state.
Make no mistake, this disregard for public opinion and workplace rights will have a broad and lasting negative impact on our state’s future. From schools to hospitals to public services – and ultimately, to middle-class families across this state, the damage these actions set into place will be deep and wide.
On behalf of educators across our state, I remind you that weeks ago we accepted the financial concessions the governor asked for to help solve our state’s budget crisis. But we have consistently said that silencing the voices of workers by eliminating their collective bargaining rights goes too far.
Mary Bell is a Wisconsin Rapids junior high teacher with 33 years experience in the classroom. She is serving as president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council.
Teachers must be evaluated by what students learn
Students in California public schools are not achieving at the levels they should. Too many students are unprepared for jobs or have to take remedial courses when they start college. In California, we judge student achievement through student scores on statewide tests. These tests assess how much students know about subject-matter content that is specified in an official set of state academic-content standards. Research has long shown that effective teachers are among the best ways to bring up student achievement. But in order to improve teaching effectiveness, it is helpful to know where the challenges are.
We’ve heard a lot in California recently about the move to factor student test scores from statewide standards-based tests into teacher evaluations. Yet did you know that for more than a decade, it has been the law in California to do just that?
St. James School wins $10K in energy contest
St. James School, a small Catholic school tucked away off South Mills Street, — made a big splash when a group of eighth-graders won $10,000 in a national renewable energy contest.
Two teams in teacher Gina Pignotti’s eighth-grade science class entered projects in the Lexus Eco Challenge competition. One of the teams, which is raising $7,000 to install a solar panel on the school, received the award and the chance to compete with other winners for a $30,000 grand prize in the Final Challenge. The students will submit their entry Thursday and will learn next month if they won.
For the Final Challenge, the students are required to educate others. So they worked with Tim Tynan, a teaching assistant at UW-Madison who has helped students produce videos, to create a short documentary about renewable energy, their experiences with the project and a challenge to others to learn about the issue and do something about it.
Quality in the classroom Layoffs by seniority are not in the best interests of students
With Republican governors across the nation looking for new ways to demean and disparage public school teachers, it was refreshing to see Gov. Andrew Cuomo take a different tack. He proposed legislation to expedite an agreed-upon evaluation system that could be used as early as next school year to elevate the quality and professionalism of New York’s teaching work force.
While Cuomo’s bill will have a positive impact on the state’s education system years down the road, it doesn’t address a major threat to teacher quality this year: seniority-based layoffs.
It is time for Cuomo to lead on the issue by eliminating the state law that requires layoffs to be based on seniority rather than effectiveness.
Lieutenant governor favors Iowa high school graduation test
Iowa Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds said Monday that she may support requiring students to pass a competency test before graduating from high school.
Reynolds was asked about her views on required competency tests for high school students during a news conference to announce details of an education summit that Gov. Terry Branstad plans for July.
“I think it’s something we need to take a look at,” Reynolds said. “That’s been very effective in Massachusetts, as has been indicated by the test scoring.”
She said requiring such competency tests could help determine how effective schools are in bolstering student achievement.
Charter school’s $125K experiment
Katie Couric reports on an experimental New York City charter school founded on the idea of hiring the best teachers by paying them $125,000, while denying them tenure.
School Climate
New York High School Investigating Alleged SAT Cheating Ring
A group of students at a prestigious New York high school was being eyed in a college test cheating ring, the New York Post reported Monday.
The teens, seniors at John L. Miller Great Neck North High School on Long Island, allegedly tried to improve their college prospects by hiring a third party to take their SAT exams, sources said.
A school board source confirmed that the district was investigating the alleged cheaters.
Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau Releases Redistributed Tax Dollar & Property Tax Growth Limitation Change Memos for School Districts
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau this afternoon released a host of memos analyzing Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011-13 budget and its impact on local government aids.
The memos outline the budget’s impact on county and municipal aid, general transportation aid to counties and municipalities, state aid and levy information for technical college districts, and potential savings to local governments due to increase employee contributions to the Wisconsin Retirement System.
According to the LFB, the bill would reduce total funding for calendar year 2012 payments by $96 million, $59.5 million for towns, villages and cities, and $36.5 million for counties.
More Wisconsin districts now could drop insurance arm of teachers union
In freeing school boards from bargaining with employees over anything but inflation-capped wage increases, Wisconsin lawmakers might have opened the floodgates for districts seeking to drop coverage by the state’s dominant – and highly controversial – health insurance provider for teachers.
WEA Trust, the nonprofit company started 40 years ago by the state’s largest teachers union, currently insures employees in about two-thirds of Wisconsin school districts. The company’s market dominance has dropped in recent years, although not as much as some school officials who complain about the company’s costs would like.
After switching the district’s nonunion employees to a different health insurance carrier, Cedarburg School Board President Kevin Kennedy said his school system is likely to look at cost savings by doing the same for its unionized teachers after unsuccessful attempts in previous years.
“It’s such a large-ticket item; it’s such low-hanging fruit,” he said. “You can lay off an aide or increase your student fees, but that doesn’t make up such a magnitude of saving as insurance does.”
Obama takes Budget Debate to School
President Barack Obama called on Congress Monday to overhaul the No Child Left Behind education law, the third time this month he has focused on education in a bid to gain advantage in the federal budget battle.
The effort to change the law, George W. Bush’s signature domestic achievement, is expected to be largely bipartisan. Mr. Obama asked lawmakers to send him a new version before school opens this fall.
At the same time, White House officials see an opportunity in education to win support in the budget debate, which Republicans have focused on cutting federal spending. On Monday, Mr. Obama paired some largely bipartisan ideas about policy with a partisan attack on GOP budget priorities. “Let me make it plain: We cannot cut education,” said Mr. Obama at a middle school in Arlington, Va., part of what the White House labels “education month.”
The White House’s goal, beyond reauthorizing No Child, is to turn the spending debate from a general push for cuts toward a discussion of the implications for favored programs.
Madison School Board Tension over Spending/Taxes & Compensation
Gov. Scott Walker says the changes he has rammed through the Legislature will give school districts and local governments “the tools” they need to withstand the severe cuts in state aid his budget will deliver. What he doesn’t get into is how the tensions caused by his agenda will divide the members of these bodies, as they have the state as a whole.
One example of this is the Madison school board, where disagreements over the impact of Walker’s actions have spurned an ugly exchange, in which school board member Lucy Mathiak lobbed an F-bomb at a fellow board member, Marj Passman.
The exchange happened yesterday, March 14. Passman was contacted by a Madison school teacher who felt Mathiak had been dismissive of the teacher’s concerns, urging her to “get over yourself.” Passman, who allows that board members have been deluged with angry emails, says she expressed to Mathiak that she agreed this response was a little harsh.
Somewhat related: Jason Shepherd: Going to the mat for WPS
School board yields to pressure to keep costlier insurance option
Suzanne Fatupaito, a nurse’s assistant in Madison schools, is fed up with Wisconsin Physicians Service, the preferred health insurance provider of Madison Teachers Inc.
“MTI uses scare tactics” to maintain teacher support for WPS, Fatupaito recently wrote to the school board. “If members knew that another insurance [plan] would offer similar services to WPS and was less expensive – it would be a no-brainer.”
WPS, with a monthly price tag of $1,720 for family coverage, is one of two health coverage options available to the district’s teachers. The other is Group Health Cooperative, costing $920 monthly for a family plan.
During the past year, the Madison school board has reached agreements with other employee groups to switch from WPS to HMO plans, with most of the savings going to boost pay.
In December, the board held a secret vote in closed session to give up its right to seek health insurance changes should negotiations on the 2007-09 teachers contract go into binding arbitration. (The board can seek voluntary insurance changes during negotations.)
Lucy has been a long time friend and I have long appreciated her activism on behalf of students, the schools and our community.
1 Billion Customers for Education
The sixteenth century universalist poet Kabir captures the high Indian regard for education:
गुरु गोबिंद दोऊ खडे, काके लागूं पाये
बलिहारी गुरु आप की, गोबिंद दियो मिलाये
To whom should I bow, my Guru or the Lord?
I bow to thee, O Guru, for you have shown me God
A host to universities since before the time of Christ, India has long revered learning, which, along with spirituality have been the pillars of the Indian notion of civilization (Sankriti). Despite the history, at the time of independence in 1947, only one in five citizens was literate. In independent India, equitable access to education was considered of first importance, hence the sector came under the purview of the government.
Until economic liberalization in 1991, India’s best tertiary institutions were exclusively public funded. These included the well-known Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). The first private university was recognized in 1995 – today, India has 77. Most private universities are run on unabashedly profit-oriented lines. While the better ones compete with the top public institutions, most do not. Philanthropic support of college and universities is weak, even as the ranks of the wealthy grows in strength.
Guido Sarducci and the Purposes of Higher Education
Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson:
The way college courses generally work is that a teacher presents a group of students with some subject matter, then attempts through tests and papers to determine how well the students have mastered the subject matter. Those judgments are summarized in a letter grade. A list of those subject matters and grades constitutes the transcript that describes what the student has learned and what the student’s performance was overall.
The students and the teacher are focused on the subject matter, and the implied view is that the learning in college is captured in the exercises that inform those grades. The limitations of this “subject matter recall” model of higher education are hilariously captured in Don Novello’s comic performance on Saturday Night Live as Father Guido Sarducci, who marketed the “Five Minute University”: http://youtu.be/kO8x8eoU3L4
Teacher says debate has ignored a crucial issue: parents
Evan Camp’s frustration had built up to the point where he couldn’t shed it even by feverishly cleaning his house.
To him, all the talk about education reform seemed to be about punishing teachers, especially the part about tying teacher pay to test scores.
So Camp, a middle school science teacher in Greenwood, started jotting down thoughts as he cleaned one Saturday afternoon. Soon, he had enough material to write a tome for beleaguered teachers that would become an open letter to Gov. Mitch Daniels and state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett.
Idaho lawmakers want to give kids computers and require some online courses. Idaho Virtual Academy has done it for 9 years
Based in a Meridian business park and powered by the K12 education company, the Idaho Virtual Academy is the state’s oldest and largest online charter school, with 3,000 students from 43 counties.
State Superintendent Tom Luna’s education reform would give students computers and require some online classes. His proposals, stuck in the Senate Education Committee for the past two weeks, would not affect the Virtual Academy, but the current debate has fostered numerous misconceptions about virtual education, according to academy staff and students.
“The biggest misconception is that the computer replaces the teacher,” academy Head of School Desiree Laughlin said. More than 80 certified teachers who live and work in Idaho teach the classes, and learning coaches, generally parents, oversee the home study.
Higher Property Taxes, Teacher Cuts and Blame
There will be blood. It’s undeniable, especially when the governor goes out of his way to say that he doesn’t have any on his hands.
Rick Perry, watching over a legislative session that threatens (at this point) to cut $9.3 billion or more from state spending on public education, said this week that it would not be the state’s fault if any public school teachers lost their jobs. “The lieutenant governor, the speaker and their colleagues aren’t going to hire or fire one teacher, as best I can tell,” he said. “That is a local decision that will be made at the local districts.”
House Speaker Joe Straus, Republican of San Antonio, said a day later that the governor was “technically correct,” in that the teachers don’t work directly for the state and the state won’t be doing the firing. They may be cutting off the food supply to the kitchen, but it’s the cooks who decide which diners will be fed.
Alaska legislative task force releases tentative education report
The Legislature should attend to policies impacting distance education, teacher training and student counseling, a task force has said.
The tentative report serves as early recommendations from the group, which formed almost a year ago under a legislative directive.
Policy makers will ultimately look to its final recommendations for guidance when setting education policy. The group spent two days last week combing, as a co-chairman put it, through a “kitchen sink” of 63 ideas. Roughly half remained when it wrapped up work Friday afternoon.
The list — still tentative — places emphasis on turning to technology-supported distance education in a vast state with relatively few residents. The group suggested state education and workforce development departments should team with university leaders to assess broadband infrastructure. The list would also nudge lawmakers further by asking them to consider encouraging school districts to start requiring some online coursework before a student can graduate.
Vouchers advance in Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.
The U.S. is enjoying a new spring of education reform, with challenges to teacher tenure and “parent-trigger” for charter schools. So it’s natural that the mother of all school choice reforms–vouchers–is also making a comeback.
Last week a House committee voted to restore Washington, D.C.’s opportunity scholarship program, which lets kids in persistently failing schools attend a private school of the family’s choosing. Joe Lieberman is pushing similar legislation in the Senate, where it enjoys bipartisan support. The White House and teachers unions killed the program in 2009, despite clear evidence of academic gains.
Meanwhile, more states are realizing that true educational choice extends beyond charter schools. The most promising development is occurring in Pennsylvania, where a state-wide voucher bill supported by new Governor Tom Corbett is moving through the Republican-controlled legislature.
The Classroom vs. the Workshop
When I was a child there was a truism that anyone could make something (a rabbit hutch, say) or mend something (a bicycle) if they had a classical education. It was felt that using intellectual tools–parsing a bit of Latin history, constructing an argument–was training enough for taking on the material world. Learning gave you a steady approach to the tricksiness of the world of things. Lurking behind this belief was an attitude of de haut en bas; condescension towards those working with their hands.
This annoyed me. Partly because I could only stumble through my Latin lessons but mostly because my afternoons were spent in a pottery workshop learning to throw pots. It was clear to me–a white apron over my school uniform as I kneaded the clay to take out the air bubbles and give it the right consistency, pulled the long twisted wire made from rabbit snares, divided it into 4-ounce balls and sat at my kick wheel in the corner readying myself for my hours of practice–that this was different from classroom learning.
Demonize data on teaching at our state’s (California) peril
The facts are hard.
A generation ago, California had what was considered the best education system on the planet.
Today, our daughters and sons attend one of the worst-performing education systems in the industrialized world.
We are failing on the rock-bottom basics. California students’ ability to read is ranked 49th in the country by the U.S. Department of Education. Our kids’ ability to do math is ranked 47th and we are second to worst in science. Compared globally, the situation darkens further. Of the top 35 nations, the United States is ranked 29th in science and 35th in math. Your neighborhood school might be good by California standards, but that is a very low bar indeed. Our education crisis is a human tragedy and a looming economic disaster.
The Bay Area Council resolutely refuses to accept this crisis as our state’s fate. Let’s get past the political gridlock and get down to the real business of dramatically improving California schools. We know, as every honest study has shown, that it will take a combination of real dollars and major changes in the way we deliver education.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Outgoing Democrat Representative Dave Obey’s Midnight Bonuses
Retired Rep. Dave Obey, the Wausau Democrat who was known for running a lean congressional office, left office after giving a nice taxpayer-funded gift to his staff in the form of an 84 percent salary bonus. Obey ranked eighth among all 435 members of the House of Representatives in his fourth quarter generosity to staff.
The practice of jacking up fourth quarter salaries for staffers is something that several members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation – led by Republican representatives Thomas Petri (Wisconsin’s 6th District), F. James Sensenbrenner (5th Dist) and Democrat Gwen Moore (4th Dist.) – have engaged in over the last decade.
DAVE OBEY
The “4th Quarter Bonus,” as it has been called by Capitol insiders, is now documented thanks to the researchers at LegiStorm, an organization that catalogues and categorizes Congressional financial data. Congressional salary data is reported quarterly and was released March 1. In every year, there is a pronounced spike in fourth-quarter staff salaries that averages 20 per cent among members of the House of Representatives.
In the fourth quarter of 2010, fueled by bonuses that were largely fed by departing members – mostly retiring or defeated Democrats like Obey – congressional staff salary expenditures exceeded $200 million for the first time, totaling $201.7 million. LegiStorm reported that bonuses were nearly twice as large for staffs of departing House members as they were for continuing members.
Related: US debt clock: The outstanding public debt as of 3/13/2011 @ 8:01:46p.m. is $14,175,382,249,980.58 which is $45,698.37 per citizen.
Kansas Moving $50,000,000 from Education to Health & Human Services
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is cutting $50 million from schools and will ask the Legislature to transfer nearly that much to cover increased costs in health and human services caseloads.
The school funding reduction makes up the lion’s share of $56.5 million in total cuts announced late Friday.
Brownback, a Republican, said the reductions are necessary to meet the constitutional requirement that the state budget be in balance when the fiscal year ends in June.
“I wish we didn’t have to do this,” he said. “It’s been difficult, but it’s something we need to do.”
The cut in base state aid to education will reduce the state’s annual school spending per pupil by $22, from $4,012 to $3,990, according to Sherriene Jones-Sontag, the governor’s spokeswoman.
Much more on increased adult to adult spending, here.
In Virginia assault case, anxious parents recognize ‘dark side of autism’
When a Stafford County jury this month found an autistic teenager guilty of assaulting a law enforcement officer and recommended that he spend 101/2 years in prison, a woman in the second row sobbed.
It wasn’t the defendant’s mother. She wouldn’t cry until she reached her car. It was Teresa Champion.
Champion had sat through the trial for days and couldn’t help drawing parallels between the defendant, Reginald “Neli” Latson, 19, and her son James, a 17-year-old with autism.
Randi Weingarten scolds KIPP
Yesterday afternoon I got a call from Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. She was responding to my request for her union’s view of the charge that union rules might force KIPP to close its high-performing schools in Baltimore.
Weingarten was not happy. She unloaded the harshest assessment of KIPP, the nation’s best-known charter school network, and its dealings with her and her union I have ever heard from her.
She said KIPP is playing by its own set of rules. She said the network, with 99 schools in 20 states and the District, has undermined her repeated attempts to establish a relationship that would allow them to work together for the greater good of children and public schools.
Making students smarter AND better
One of the great failures of high schools, my favorite subject, is the lack of effective training in productive behaviors and attitudes, such as cooperating, being on time, making eye contact, speaking persuasively, offering suggestions and focusing on tasks.
Many educators are trying to develop programs that teach these traits. Some call this character education, which has been around for decades. A few schools and school systems have made progress. Most have not.
Now a study offers renewed hope. An approach called social and emotional learning (SEL), which trains students to think and act in positive ways, can make a significance difference in school achievement, according to this research. The next step will be to see if it has the same effect on life and work after graduation.
Education Budget Battle in Alabama
Gov. Robert Bentley’s proposed education budget would so severely underfund Alabama school systems that at least 49 of the 132 districts would be unable to operate, according to state Superintendent Joe Morton.
Bentley’s budget, which he presented March 1, protects all state-funded teachers but underfunds transportation, utilities, operations and support workers such as secretaries, maintenance workers, cafeteria workers and janitors, Morton said.
“If the governor’s budget is enacted into law without changes, we estimate at the end of fiscal 2012 that 89 school systems will have less than a one-month operating balance and 49 of the 89 will actually have a deficit budget,” Morton said. “Alabama cannot operate public education with 37 percent of its school systems insolvent.”
Teachers shouldn’t be judged by test scores alone
There are those who think the best way to determine teacher effectiveness is by looking only at students’ test scores. The simplicity of this approach can be seductive, but it is inherently flawed. This approach only makes sense if you assume all children come to school with the same abilities, have the same educational resources and opportunities and return home to the same support systems. As a kindergarten teacher for more than 30 years, I can confirm what you already know to be true: Every child is different.
The fact of the matter is student achievement and teacher effectiveness aren’t simple to measure, and the results of one test are not going to offer a complete assessment of either. Many different measures must be used in order to determine true effectiveness.
So how do you define teacher effectiveness? How to evaluate it? How to reward it? These are all good questions. Most research will tell you an effective teacher is one of the most important factors in a student’s education, and I would agree. Research will also tell you that many other factors can and do influence student success: poverty, hunger, homelessness, language skills, parental involvement and education, the learning environment, hormones and personal motivation.
UNLV’s Music Center
Proposed budget makes all-male charter school in Madison less likely
The chances the Madison School Board will approve an Urban League proposal for an all-male charter school geared toward low-income minorities are dwindling.
Madison Preparatory Academy would cost the district $1.1 million in 2012-13, its first year of operation. That would increase to $2.8 million by its fifth year, Superintendent Dan Nerad told the board last week.
“For each of these years, (the district) would be obligated to reduce programs and services to our existing schools to transfer this amount of money to Madison Prep,” Nerad wrote in a memo.
Some school board members said last week that Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal makes it less likely they will be able to support cutting other programs to find money for Madison Prep.
Who has plan to lift teachers’ gloom?
So much tumult lately. It’s hard to focus on just one thing. So here are four short columns instead of one long one.
Column 1
Forget the Viagra. The teachers I’ve been in touch with lately need Prozac.
Somewhere in the chaos of last week, the Milwaukee teachers union confirmed that it had given up the fight for its members’ rights to have drugs for sexual dysfunction covered by their insurance (a stand that, whatever its merits, belongs in the Hall of Fame of public relations blunders).
But depression among teachers – now that’s a serious subject. Maybe not genuine, clinical depression. Rather, bad-morale, pessimistic, stressed-out, I-think-it’s-only-going-to-get-worse depression.
Maybe the unhappiness will blow over. Daily routines tend to win out in our minds. Or maybe you think ill will is just a necessary by-product of the mother of all comeuppances that teachers deserved and got at the hands of Gov. Scott Walker and the legislative Republicans.
But marking the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War by staging a new one in Wisconsin will have long-term consequences on teachers and teaching. Some maybe on the upside. Some will have lasting effects as downers. Who goes into teaching, who stays, what the work is like – there will be big issues to sort out.
I sincerely hope that Wisconsin political, education and civic leaders take the lead on new education opportunities, rather than follow. Minnesota Democrat Governor Mark Dayton just signed an alternative teacher licensing law days ago. Janet Mertz advocated for a similar model for math & science teachers via this 2009 email. Education model, curricular and financial changes are certainly well underway.
Life Beyond Autism
It’s been 81 years since Virginia Wolff published her famous essay, more than 20 since I read it, and even more before I followed her advice that “a woman must have a room of her own, if she is to write.”
When my mother was my age, she considered the best part of her life as behind her. When my grandmother was this age, considered herself “old.” And my great-grandmother most certainly was. But that was then, and this is the era of longevity, vitality and change. We’ve rewritten all the rules. But maybe rules are only scaffolds we construct to contain what we can’t control. Which is just about everything.
My dreams and expectations changed radically when my child was diagnosed with Autism. From that moment, and for the next decade, every thought in my head, urge in my heart and pulse in my body was redirected to helping him. When your child is diagnosed as on the Spectrum, you’re told that much can improve, but most profoundly before the age of 5. My son was already three. So the clock was ticking, the meter was running, and I had a choice to make; pursue my needs, or save his life. So I put away the screenplay I was writing, abandoned the film collective I was trying to form, and forgot any notion of going back to a traditional job. In their place, I organized a line of behavioral therapists, occupational therapists, auditory training technologies, and casein-free diets. And thanked God each day that I had the resources so I could.
It’s Breakfast Time, and Education Will Pay
If Terry Mazany, the interim chief of Chicago Public Schools, is no longer chief upon the arrival of a new mayor, he can at least claim to have performed the impossible: shortening the school day.
In a Chicago Tribune homage to Mr. Mazany upon the “milestone” of his 100th day in office, various achievements were claimed as he threw his predecessor, Ron Huberman, under a school bus. (“The system was in free fall,” Mr. Mazany said.)
Nowhere in a multimedia outreach by Mr. Mazany was there mention of a policy change that makes about as much sense as Gov. Scott Walker’s joining the Wisconsin state employees union. You didn’t think it could happen, but Chicago’s pitifully short school day is getting even shorter.
Pay Teachers More
Until a few decades ago, employment discrimination perversely strengthened our teaching force. Brilliant women became elementary school teachers, because better jobs weren’t open to them. It was profoundly unfair, but the discrimination did benefit America’s children.
These days, brilliant women become surgeons and investment bankers — and 47 percent of America’s kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers come from the bottom one-third of their college classes (as measured by SAT scores). The figure is from a study by McKinsey & Company, “Closing the Talent Gap.”
Changes in relative pay have reinforced the problem. In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher, the McKinsey study found.
We all understand intuitively the difference a great teacher makes. I think of Juanita Trantina, who left my fifth-grade class intoxicated with excitement for learning and fascinated by the current events she spoke about. You probably have a Miss Trantina in your own past.
One Los Angeles study found that having a teacher from the 25 percent most effective group of teachers for four years in a row would be enough to eliminate the black-white achievement gap.
Detroit Considers Turning 41 Schools Into Charters
The emergency financial manager of the Detroit Public Schools presented a plan Saturday to turn nearly one in every three schools into charter schools as part of a bid to save the district millions of dollars and prevent massive school closings.
The 41 schools selected for independent control currently enroll about 16,000 of the district’s 73,000 students and would operate as public school academies starting as soon as this fall. The district expects to release a list of the schools this week and solicit proposals for their transfer.
Recently the district led by a state-appointed manager overseeing a total of 142 schools has explored modeling Detroit on post-Katrina New Orleans, where a shrunken district was remade with mostly charter schools.
Robert Bobb, the emergency financial manager, said in a news release Saturday that the charter-school plan would reduce operating costs by $75 million to $99 million, but did not say over what period of time any cost savings would be realized.
Salman Khan: Let’s use video to reinvent education
Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises, and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script — give students video lectures to watch at home, and do “homework” in the classroom with the teacher available to help.
Khan discusses moving away from the “one size fits all” approach to education. However, he does advocate “peer to peer tutoring”…….
What the school reform debate misses about teachers
As the debate rages over public unions and, in particular, over their role in school reform, an unfortunate dichotomy about America’s teachers has emerged. On one side, unions and many teachers say that teachers are unfairly vilified, that they work incredibly hard under difficult circumstances and that they are underpaid. Critics, meanwhile, say that our education system is broken and that to fix it we need better teachers. They say that teachers today have protections and benefits not seen in the private sector – such as life tenure, lifetime pension and health benefits, and short workdays and workyears.
Both sides are right.
Teaching is incredibly hard, especially when dealing with children in high-poverty communities who come to school with enormous challenges. Many teachers work long hours, staying at school past 6 p.m., and then working at home grading papers and preparing lessons. Some teachers get outstanding results, even with our most challenged students. These are America’s heroes, and they should be recognized as such. Sadly, they aren’t.
Just say no to voucher expansion
Memo to all Wisconsin legislators. There is an easy way to prove you care about public education in Wisconsin. And it won’t cost a penny.
Just say no to Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed expansion of the Milwaukee voucher program providing tax dollars to private schools.
This may seem merely like a Milwaukee issue. It’s not. Voucher advocates have made clear for more than 20 years that their goal is to replace public education with a system of universal vouchers that includes private and religious schools.
The heartbreaking drama currently playing in Milwaukee – millions of dollars cut from the public schools while vouchers are expanded so wealthy families can attend private schools in the suburbs – may be coming soon to a school district near you.
Madison School District reaches tentative contract agreement with teachers’ union
The Madison School District has reached a tentative agreement with all of its unions for an extension of their collective bargaining agreement through mid-2013.
Superintendent Dan Nerad said the agreement includes a 50 percent employee contribution to the pension plan. It also includes a five percentage point increase in employees’ health insurance premiums, and the elimination of a more expensive health insurance option in the second year.
Salaries would be frozen at current levels, though employees could still receive raises for longevity and educational credits.
The district said the deal results in savings of about $23 million for the district over the two-year contract.
The agreement includes no amnesty or pay for teachers who missed four days last month protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to strip public employee collective bargaining rights. Walker’s signing of the bill Friday prompted the district and MTI to reach an agreement quickly
A two-year tentative contract agreement has been reached between the Madison Metropolitan School District and the Madison Teachers Union for five bargaining units: teachers, substitute teachers, educational and special educational assistants, supportive educational employees and school security assistants.
District administrators, with the guidance of the Board of Education, and Madison Teacher Inc. reps negotiated from 9 a.m. Friday until 3 a.m. Saturday when the tentative agreements were completed.
Under details of the contract, workers would contribute 50 percent of the total money that’s being contribution to pension plans. That figure according to district officials, is believed to be very close to the 12 percent overall contribution that the budget repair bill was calling for. The overall savings to the district would be $11 million.
I present Blaska’s Red Badge of Courage award to the Madison Area Technical College Board. Its part-time teachers union would rather sue than settle until Gov. Scott Walker acted. Then it withdrew the lawsuit and asked the board for terms. No dice. “Times have changed,” said MATC’s attorney.
The Madison school board showed a rudimentary backbone when it settled a contract, rather hastily, with a newly nervous Madison teachers union.
The school board got $23 million of concessions over the next two years. Wages are frozen at current levels. Of course, the automatic pay track system remains, which rewards longevity.
The Madison Metropolitan School District and Madison Teachers, Inc. have reached tentative contract agreements for five bargaining units: teachers, substitute teachers, educational and special educational assistants, supportive educational employees, and school security assistants.
District administrators, with the guidance of the Board of Education, and MTI reps negotiated from 9:00 a.m. Friday until 3:00 a.m. Saturday when the tentative agreements were completed.
The Board of Education held a Special Meeting today at 2:00 p.m. and ratified the five collective bargaining agreements. The five MTI units must also ratify before the contracts take effect.
Summary of the agreements: