Teachers and school district officials are bracing for what could be a bruising year of negotiations over new contracts for about 3,000 teachers.
Both sides say the weak economy and increasing financial pressures on schools will likely make contract talks more challenging in 2010-11 than in years past.
“It will be very difficult,” said Paul Gottlieb, a negotiator for the Pennsylvania State Education Association. “The economic situation puts pressure on everybody on both sides.”
Gottlieb is the PSEA representative for Octorara School District, one of four districts — along with Warwick, Penn Manor and School District of Lancaster — that soon will begin negotiations to replace or extend teacher contracts that expire at the end of the school year.
Teachers with Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 and Lancaster County Career & Technology Center also are working under contracts that expire June 30, 2011.
Two other school districts — Manheim Central and Solanco — have been negotiating since last school year to replace or extend contracts that expired over the summer.
All posts by Jim Zellmer
Houston School Board to vote on tighter conflict of interest rules
The Houston school board plans to vote Thursday on a stricter conflict of interest policy that would apply to all employees, rather than just higher-paid administrative staff. The proposal would forbid all employees from accepting any “gift, favor, loan, service, entertainment or anything of more than token value” from any HISD vendor or someone seeking to do business with the district. Allowed are coffee mugs, key chains, caps and other “trinkets.”
Employees also are prohibited from accepting meals exceeding $100 in a year from any vendor or prospective vendor. Employees must report meals that exceed $50 per year. In addition, employees must report to the district any personal financial or business interests that “in any way creates a substantial conflict with the proper discharge of assigned duties and responsibilities or that creates a conflict with the best of the District.”
HISD’s current conflict of interest policy is similar except that it applies only to administrative employees above pay grade 14. (I’m checking with the district on that salary amount.) Ann Best, the district’s chief human resources officer, told the school board Monday that the change was designed to ensure “that we’re holding every single person accountable to the same standard.”
Digital books engage students during test drive
The drudgery of solving for X flew out the door of a Presidio Middle School classroom Friday as the giddy students traded in their back-breaking algebra textbooks for an iPad touch screen filled with integers and equations that came to life with the flick of a finger.
The San Francisco eighth-graders are among 400 California middle school students participating in a pilot study funded by textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on the use of digital textbooks. The results will help determine whether the high-tech version educates schoolchildren as well or better than its wood-pulp predecessors.
While it’s not hard to imagine classrooms full of such devices in the not-so-distant future, the novelty was not lost on many of the adults in the classroom Friday.
Remember this day, district officials told the students.
California Online School Seeks Students, Tax Dollars
A school district near Sacramento, Calif., is looking outside the box for new revenue sources in these harsh budget times. Elk Grove Unified has opened up its own Virtual Academy offering complete online curricula for grades kindergarten through 12.
Officials hope to attract home-school students and children from other districts, plus the state tax dollars that come with them. But this kind of online education is also raising some red flags.
The New Virtual Academy
Managing Expectations of Costly Kids
At 10, Grace Morgan is a young fashionista and takes pains to dress in the latest styles. But her mom, Amy, works part-time and her husband was recently laid off, leaving little room in the family budget for designer-brand clothes.
So Grace didn’t ask her mom to open her wallet this fall to buy clothes. Instead, she sold a stack of her own old jeans and shirts at a rummage sale and paired the proceeds with discount coupons to get the stylish jeggings and tops she wanted for school, says her mother, of Lake in the Hills, Ill. Grace is learning “we have to make choices with our money,” she says.
The cost of raising kids is continuing to rise. A middle-income family can expect to shell out nearly a quarter of a million dollars, or $222,360, to raise a baby born in 2009 to age 18, according to the Department of Agriculture. That is up about 1.4% from 2007, before the recession began–and it doesn’t include college costs.
A Mixed Welcome For Chinese-Americans, a long road to acceptance–even to public schooling.
In the 1960s, when she was in her 90s, Mamie Tape Lowe liked to tell her great-grandchildren the story of her first day of school in San Francisco in 1884. On a warm day in September, Mamie’s mother dressed her in a checkered pinafore, tied a ribbon in her hair and took her to the Spring Valley Primary School on Union Street. When they arrived, the principal, Jennie Hurley, refused to let her in. In Mamie’s telling, “they said all the ‘pigtails’ would be coming” if they admitted Mamie. But her father “fought like heck” and sued the board of education. Mamie’s great-grandchildren, who were fifth- generation Americans, marveled that there was a time when Chinese-American children were denied an education or had to attend a separate school for “Orientals.”
The lawsuit filed by her father on Mamie’s behalf–eventually decided by the California Supreme Court a year later–is a little-known landmark in the history of Chinese in America, but it is at the center of the most interesting chapter in “The Lucky Ones” by Columbia University historian Mae Ngai. “The Lucky Ones” follows three generations of the Tape family, from the 1860s, when Mamie’s parents arrived in San Francisco from China, to 1943, when the exclusion laws were lifted and Chinese in America achieved full democratic rights. Ms. Ngai uses the Tape family’s history as a vehicle to describe the emergence of a Chinese-American middle class in an era when the vast majority of Chinese immigrants were illiterate male “coolies.”
Politics Lesson for D.C. Schools Chief?
Vincent Gray’s victory in Washington, D.C.’s mayoral contest means an uncertain future the highest-profile figure in District politics: schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who became a national symbol of school reform.
Rhee was appointed by the current mayor, Adrian Fenty, and her overhaul of the education system became a main issue in the Fenty-Gray race. Last night’s victory means that Gray, who faces no Republican opposition in heavily Democratic Washington, has a virtual lock on the November election.
She campaigned for Fenty, telling voters that a vote for him was a vote for her staying in her job. During the campaign, Gray said that if he won, he would talk to Rhee and consider whether they can work together, and early today promised to move forward with school reform. “Make no mistake: school reform will move forward in a Gray administration,” Gray said.
Mitch Henck Discusses Madison’s Attempts to Restrict Open Enrollment
15.8MB mp3 audio file, via a kind reader.
Related:
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: US military chief warns on Federal spending
The Pentagon needs to take prompt action to bring its spending under control to stave off the kind of “drastic” defence cuts afflicting Britain and Germany, according to Mike Mullen, the most senior US military official.
Referring to the 20 per cent or more cuts recently announced by America’s key European allies, Admiral Mullen said the Pentagon only had a limited time in which to act before similar changes would be imposed upon the country, given the sharply rising level of US national debt.
“If we do not figure out how to manage ourselves inside this growing challenge [of fiscal austerity] then I do worry that it won’t be too long before those kinds of cuts will be part of our future as well, and that would be very dangerous,” Admiral Mullen said in a View from DC video interview with the Financial Times.
The Pentagon raising a flag on debt and spending is rather remarkable. Related: State and company officials should heed message from Harley vote.
The Bubble: Higher Education’s Precarious Hold on Consumer Confidence
Is American higher education caught in the 21st century equivalent of the Dutch tulip mania? On February 3, 1636, the contract price of tulip bulbs traded in Haarlem collapsed. The prices for the fancier multi-colored varieties had been driven up to crazy heights by futures speculators. The reckoning that followed has, of course, become everyone’s favorite metaphor for subsequent “bubbles”–those aberrations of the market in which people vastly overvalue a good because they believe its price will only continue to soar. We have had in recent memory a tech bubble and a real estate bubble, both on a scale to make seventeenth century Dutch tulips blush for shame.
Could American higher education be in the same fix? In the last few years an increasing number of observers speaking from distinct perspectives have converged on this idea. The outlines are simple. The price of attaining a college degree has skyrocketed while the rewards of attaining a college degree have slumped. Sooner or later, people will notice that they are being asked to spend a great deal of money for a meager result. If enough people notice this and consequently decide not to spend at comparable levels and to seek lower priced alternatives–daisies instead of tulips–the bubble will burst.
Defenders of the current system point to reasons why this won’t happen. My own view is that we are indeed facing a bubble, but before turning to that prognosis, it helps to start with the counter-arguments. There are many in higher ed who see no bubble and who read the tulip leaves differently.
Heed lesson on education reform from Massachusetts
Wisconsin has showed little muscle when it comes to motivating students, teachers or schools to achieve ambitious academic goals.
Massachusetts provides a particularly striking comparison to Wisconsin. Just 15 to 20 years ago, Massachusetts and Wisconsin were fairly even. Since then, Massachusetts has moved forward substantially. The state has led the nation in reading and math scores in the National Assessment of Educational Progress in recent years. A recent New York Times article said, “Many regard (Massachusetts) as having the nation’s best education system.” And Boston is widely regarded as a leader in tackling urban school issues.
So what explains the successes in Massachusetts and Boston?
There is nearly universal agreement that the key is “the grand bargain” struck in the Bay State’s legislature in 1993. At heart, it was a simple deal: Give schools more money and demand better results.
A multibillion-dollar infusion of state aid to schools righted inequities between have- and have-not school districts. But along with the money came one of the nation’s most rigorous sets of standards for what children were expected to learn, and a demanding state testing system, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS).
Interest in Texas school contests fired up Curriculum disputes raise board’s profile
Cesar Chavez is not on the fall election ballot. Neither is Thomas Jefferson. And Texans will not actually get a say in the teaching of evolution in public schools or how to handle sex education.
Voters, however, will help shape the State Board of Education. And nearly everyone agrees that Texans are paying closer attention to the once low-profile board after the 15 members attracted state and national attention for their controversial pursuit of new science and social studies curriculum standards.
Two key contested races in the Nov. 2 general election will determine whether Texans prefer traditional values as seen by supporters of Republican incumbent Ken Mercer, of San Antonio, and candidate Marsha Farney, of Georgetown. Democrats in those races are looking for voters to reject what they call the politicization of education for nearly 5 million public school children.
The board in recent years has been divided largely among seven Republican social conservatives voting as a bloc, five Democrats and three Republicans often considered swing votes.
Despite Rhee’s missteps, her egalitarian vision for schools inspires
From its birth in 1790, the District has inspired grand visions of a more perfect union among diverse peoples. Even the landscape has been infused with our common striving; a design by French architect Pierre L’Enfant intended “principally to connect each part of the city,” as he put it, “by making the real distance less from place to place.”
On the eve of Tuesday’s Democratic primary in the District, I’d like to revisit one of the more compelling visions of what a city of knitted souls might look like. The question for voters: How do we get there?
From a commentary by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee that appeared in the Feb. 8 issue of Spotlight on Poverty and Education:
Battle Over Class Room As a $578 Million City School Opens in Los Angeles, Charters Press For More Space
The scruffy rooftop basketball court of the Larchmont School, a small charter school packed into one floor of an 83-year-old building, offers a breathtaking view of the city’s priciest new gem: the $578 million Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said Larchmont’s executive director Brian Johnson, gazing at the gleaming green rectangular structure surrounded by pristine athletic fields and rows of stately palm trees.
The new public-school complex has drawn criticism for its cost at a time when Los Angeles city schools have laid off thousands of teachers to help plug its $640 million budget gap.
New teacher applauds Michelle Rhee’s quick response to problem
Anthony Priest is one of those personnel office surprises — a 44-year-old just starting as a teacher. He has two degrees in engineering from Georgia Tech and a master’s in business administration. He does marathons and triathlons. In 2008, he was project manager for the redevelopment of a 300,000-square-foot D.C. office building.
But he decided it would be more interesting to teach math, so he accepted an assignment at one of the most chaotic public schools in the region, Spingarn High in Northeast Washington. Since then, he says, he has had many adventures, including a first-hand look at the inspiring and results-oriented (at least to him) management practices of D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee.
His first contact with Rhee concerned the broken lock on his classroom door. Spingarn has hall walkers, students and non-students who stroll its long corridors and rarely go to class. Every day they would open the door to Priest’s classroom, walk in, and yell at his students or him. There were threats, thefts, even assaults. The school’s security guards were ineffective. He asked the principal several times to have the door fixed so he that could control his students better.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Public workers’ generous benefits come at a price State law makes it difficult to make any changes in health benefits without approval of the unions
The rich health benefits enjoyed by workers in the public sector are becoming an increasingly inviting target as cities, counties and school districts struggle with continual budget deficits.
The numbers explain why:
The Milwaukee Public Schools district spends as much as $26,846 a year to provide family coverage for a teacher. The City of Milwaukee spends a bit less than $21,000, and Milwaukee County spends $17,800 to $19,400. The state’s cost is slightly less than $20,000 a year for employees in the Milwaukee area.
That’s after subtracting the employee’s share of the premium, which can range from nothing to $2,160 a year.
In contrast, family coverage from private and public employers costs $13,770 on average nationally and workers on average pay nearly $4,000 of that.
Several forces contribute to the gap between public and private sectors. For one, state law prohibits many public employees from striking and that prohibition comes at a price of ensuring fairness for those employees. In addition, many public workers accept lower salaries in exchange for generous health care benefits.
Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, the Democratic candidate, each have proposals to lower health benefit costs.
Oscar Winner Guggenheim Fights Malaise in “Superman”
Guggenheim at moments became emotional, choking up as he spoke about one of the girls, Daisy, he profiles in his latest film, “Waiting for Superman,” which exposes the breakdown in American education.
“I’ve watched this movie 40 times and I watch Daisy in East Los Angeles and she’s motivated, smart and her father works as a truck driver, while her mother cleans hospital rooms. She wants to be a doctor and her parents have hope. They believe that if they do their part that America will do its part.”
At the core of “Superman” is whether America has the will and courage to face up to its spiraling public education system. While it has been generally accepted that education in America has faced a frightening decline, with statistics to back up that fear, Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) hopes that the film will motivate people to believe that a crisis that may appear intractable can be reformed and improved despite the perception that it is a system stymied by entrenched paralysis.
“They have the power, but I don’t think anyone has looked at this. So [once again], I’m the angry black man.”
ibmadison.com interviews Kaleem Caire about the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy, via a kind reader:
In Caire’s mind, kids can’t wait. Consider the data he cites from the ACT District Profile Report for the Madison Metropolitan School District’s 2010 graduating class:
Of students taking the ACT, average test scores differed significantly between African Americans and white students:
English Math Reading Science Composite African Americans 16.3 18.0 17.1 18.4 17.6 Caucasian/White 25.1 25.6 25.8 24.8 25.4 The percent of students meeting ACT College Readiness Benchmark Scores, broken out by ethnicity, for the 2010 graduating class seems more alarming:
Total Tested English (18) Math (22) Reading (21) Science (24) All Students 1,122 81% 68% 71% 51% African Americans 76 38% 24% 25% 9% Caucasian/White 733 90% 77% 79% 60% Hispanic 71 59% 39% 45% 18% Asian/Pacific Isl. 119 67% 65% 61% 45% Numbers like these fuel Caire’s fire, and his vision for The Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men. “I’m amazed that [the primarily white leadership in the city] hasn’t looked at this data and said, ‘wow!’ They have the power, but I don’t think anyone has looked at this. So [once again], I’m the angry black man.”
Caire understands the challenges that lie ahead. By November, he needs to formally propose the idea to the School Board, after which he will seek a planning grant from the Department of Public Instruction. He anticipates other hurdles along the way. Among them, a misconstrued conception. “Madison believes it’s creative, but the reality is, it’s not innovative.” Will the community accept this idea, or sit back and wait, he wonders.
Second: The resources to do it. “We can survive largely on what the school system can give us [once we’re up and running], but there’s seed money you need to get to that point.”
Third: The teacher’s union response. “No one knows what that will be,” Caire said. “The school board and district are so influenced by the teacher’s union, which represents teachers. We represent kids. To me, it’s not, ‘teachers at all costs,’ it’s ‘kids first.’ We’ll see where our philosophies line up.” He added that the Urban League and those behind the Charter School idea are not at all opposed to the teacher’s union, but the Prep School’s design includes, for example, a school day longer than the teacher’s contract allows. “This isn’t about compensation,” he said of the contract, “it’s about commitment. We don’t want red tape caught up in this, and we want to guarantee long-term success.”
Related: “They’re all rich, white kids and they’ll do just fine” — NOT! and outbound open enrollment.
Time for a FREEZE! Janesville teacher contract.
Time for a FREEZE! Janesville teacher contract.
ONE ALSO OUGHT TO READ VERY CAREFULLY the report on COMPENSATION settlement negotiated! First and foremost, even a FREEZE on salary would NOT BE A TRUE FREEZE on compensation! While a freeze would impact an across the board increase in the salary schedule, it would NOT impact two other factors which INCREASE teacher compensation year-by-year.
First, the “seniority” or “experience” move on the salary schedule and second, the pay provided when “they hit continuing-education milestones.” The Gazette article reports that about 57% of the teachers would get the longevity increase. There is no data cited on “continuing-education milestone” increases.
Where is the data about the significant increase in FRINGE BENEFITS for teachers with the increase in HEALTH INSURANCE COSTS for the District? The District is self-insured. The shocking announcement of $2 million in UNexpected costs with $1 million coming from the teacher COMPENSATION package in the new contract and $1 million coming from increase in costs for health insurance. Is this $1 million NOT an increase in TOTAL COMPENSATION for teachers? WHY is it NOT reported in the Gazette article? WHY has it NOT been clarified by the district? How much compensation increase is that for each teacher?
Teacher turnover is a disadvantaged school problem, not a charter school problem
Betheny Gross, Michael DeArmond, via a Deb Britt email:
Recent research and media reports have raised serious concerns about teacher turnover rates in charter schools. But it isn’t exactly clear why teacher turnover rates might be high in charter schools: is it a consequence of their less regulated labor market, or is it the types of students and neighborhoods where they tend to operate?
This study tracked the careers of 956 newly hired charter school teachers and 19,695 newly hired traditional public school teachers in Wisconsin between 1998 and 2006. Although not representative of the charter school sector overall, the study’s analysis of Wisconsin’s charter school sector provides some important clues about the nature of teacher turnover in charter schools: (1) high teacher turnover rates in Wisconsin’s charter schools are mostly a function of teacher characteristics (young and inexperienced) and school contexts (poor and urban), rather than a “charter effect,” and (2) teachers in Wisconsin’s urban charter schools are less likely to leave their schools than similar teachers in urban traditional public schools.
To better understand teachers’ motivations for leaving and staying, researchers turned to national data from the U.S. Department of Education’s 1999-00 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and 2000-01 Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS). The SASS-TFS asked traditional public school teachers and charter school teachers who left their schools why they left. In response, teachers in both sectors pointed to a lack of administrative support, poor working conditions, and low salaries. However, compared to traditional public school teachers, charter school teachers were more likely to say that they left because of a lack of job security and the expansive nature of their work.
Model preschool program emphasizes inclusion for children with disabilities
It is 8:30 on a crisp September morning, the start of a busy day for preschoolers at the Waisman Center’s Early Childhood Program, a nationally renowned laboratory school.
At a piano in the gym, a teacher holds a 4-year-old named Michael in her lap and helps him tap out “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” She speaks to him using both sign language and a singsong voice. Several other boys driving toy cars swerve around another teacher doing duty as traffic cop. A student teacher is coloring at a table with students. In a corner of the gym, two girls are playing house. “This is your bed, Baby Kitty. Go to sleep right NOW!” one of them says. A tiny child with big brown eyes, named Caroline, curls up on a mat and pretends to sleep.
Michael, distracted by the noisy traffic behind him, wriggles out of Kerri Lynch’s lap and runs up to the boys in cars, making guttural sounds. The boys ignore him and continue to whiz past. Lynch waves down an especially energetic driver in a red T-shirt who has snagged the school’s popular police car. “Michael is talking to you,” she says, holding Michael, who is clearly becoming frustrated. She puts Michael’s face between her hands gently so that he makes eye contact with the other child and encourages him to try to speak again. The other boy listens carefully as the teacher translates: “Michael is wondering when he can have a turn?”
City schools’ trust problem
The recent news that the Philadelphia School District has seen its number of “persistently dangerous” schools drop by 20 percent should be cause for optimism. Disciplinary policy changes that I advocated while I was the state safe schools advocate, which were implemented with the strong support of Mayor Nutter and Superintendent Arlene Ackerman in 2008, may be having the hoped-for effect.
With most matters in the school district, however, every step forward is accompanied by at least one step backward. While the superintendent once stood up to members of the School Reform Commission who had long abetted the violence, she has since failed to back up her antiviolence policies with concrete action.
Ackerman’s ham-handed reaction to the victimization of Asian students at South Philadelphia High School is only the most obvious example. Continued cuts in alternative education programs for disruptive students are equally disappointing, as was the elimination of order-enforcing “climate managers” in neighborhood schools that need more capable adults, not fewer.
It’s hard for longtime observers of the district to believe the data and trust that it’s turned the corner on violence, partly because we’ve been lied to before. The district has supposedly had a “zero tolerance” policy on violence since 2002, but it failed to expel anyone for any offense between 2005 and 2009. The district reported school violence was on the decline from 2001 to 2006, but The Inquirer found that it had vastly underreported the data.
Testing, the Chinese Way
When my children were 6 and 8, taking tests was as much a part of the rhythm of their school day as tag at recess or listening to stories at circle time. There were the “mad minute” math quizzes twice each week, with the results elaborately graphed. There were regular spelling quizzes. Even today I have my daughter’s minutely graded third-grade science exams, with grades like 23/25 or A minus.
We were living in China, where their school blended a mostly Western elementary school curriculum with the emphasis on discipline and testing that typifies Asian educational styles. In Asia, such a march of tests for young children was regarded as normal, and not evil or particularly anxiety provoking. That made for some interesting culture clashes. I remember nearly constant tension between the Asian parents, who wanted still more tests and homework, and the Western parents, who were more concerned with whether their kids were having fun — and wanted less.
I still have occasional nightmares about a miserable summer vacation spent force-feeding flash cards into the brain of my 5-year-old son — who was clearly not “ready” to read, but through herculean effort and tears, learned anyway. Reading was simply a requirement for progressing from kindergarten to first grade. How could he take tests and do worksheets if he couldn’t read the questions?
Companies Favor Big State Schools With One-Stop Shopping for Graduates With Necessary Skills
State universities have become the favorite of companies recruiting new hires because their big student populations and focus on teaching practical skills gives the companies more bang for their recruiting buck.
Under pressure to cut costs and streamline their hiring efforts, recruiting managers find it’s more efficient to focus on fewer large schools and forge deeper relationships with them, according to a Wall Street Journal survey of top corporate recruiters whose companies last year hired 43,000 new graduates. Big state schools Pennsylvania State University, Texas A&M University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were the top three picks among recruiters surveyed.
Recruiters say graduates of top public universities are often among the most prepared and well-rounded academically, and companies have found they fit well into their corporate cultures and over time have the best track record in their firms.
Employers also like schools where they can form partnerships that allow them to work with professors and their students, giving them an inside track when it comes time to make offers for internships and jobs.
RTTT Scoring is Distorted by Politics
No one should be shocked that the “peer-review” process for Race to the Top is distorted by political considerations, especially since we at JPGB (among others) have been warning about it for months. But it is nice to see someone actually document the existence and magnitude of the distortion.
One of my students at the University of Arkansas, Dan Bowen, conducted an analysis that was featured in AEI’s Education Stimulus Watch. It predicted each state’s RTTT “peer-review” score based on independent ratings of state reform efforts by Education Week’s Quality Counts and others. It then also considered whether political considerations were systematically related to a state doing significantly better or worse in the “peer-review” process than would be predicted by those independent ratings. Dan found that states with hotly contested Senate or gubernatorial contests received significantly higher scores:
Handwriting program worth writing home about
The handwriting workshop at Meriter Hospital is much more than penmanship drills.
The 8-week program for elementary students focuses on areas such as upper body strength and stability and eye-hand coordination. Some students took the hour-long class, which was held once a week, in the summer to be more prepared for school this fall. Two more evening workshops for students grades second through fifth will start Sept. 28.
“Handwriting is really important,” said Noah Walker, 7, a second grader at Cottage Grove Elementary School. “It won’t be all scribbly.”
At a recent session, Noah practiced throwing animal-shaped bean bags against the wall. Later he practiced writing with a vibrating pen to work on grip strength and to make the task more enjoyable.
D.C. schools unveil teacher-pay bonus plan
D.C. schools officials detailed for the first time Friday how teachers can qualify for the performance-based pay increases that could vault them into the ranks of the country’s best-paid public school educators.
The increases, which come in two forms, are targeted toward teachers who receive the best evaluations. The programs are voluntary, and teachers who participate give up certain job protections.
Those ranked highly effective may be eligible for as much as $25,000 in one-time bonuses, with the amount determined by student performance and other factors. Those ranked highly effective for two years in a row could see their base pay rise by as much as $26,000 a year.
Black Male Grad Rates: Despair, And A Ray Of Hope
NPR:
In the past few weeks, more than 400,000 young black men entered American high schools as freshmen. Four years from now, fewer than half of them will get diplomas.
That’s according to a new study from the Schott Foundation for Public Education. It found that only 47 percent of black male students entering high school in 2003 graduated in 2008. For white males, the graduation rate was 78 percent.
Dr. John Jackson, the foundation’s president and CEO, tells NPR’s Guy Raz that those numbers are dismal largely because of the lack of resources in schools with high black populations. He says that when young black men are given opportunities to learn in schools with more resources, they perform well.
Not Necessarily Black And White
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Next Wisconsin governor faces big deficit Candidates promise tax cuts amid $2.7 billion shortfall
The state faces a looming $2.7 billion budget shortfall, but that hasn’t kept candidates for governor from piling on with what are likely to be hundreds of millions of dollars in new commitments to cut taxes or increase spending.
All the major candidates have put forward plans to rein in spending, but by making added pledges like tax cuts, the candidates are adding to the challenge they’ll face as the state’s top executive.
The most aggressive are the two Republican candidates, former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann and Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker who, without specific figures, are promising hefty tax cuts in their first budget as governor and some possible increases in spending on roads and bridges.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, a Democrat, has made more modest pledges totaling at least tens of millions of dollars in the form of targeted tax cuts and spending to create jobs. So far, he has offered the most detailed plans about his proposed spending cuts, although serious questions have been raised about some of that proposed saving.
Asian-American Students Show Gains on SAT
High-school students’ performance last year on the SAT college-entrance exam remained generally unchanged from the previous year, except for Asian-American students who continue to post notable gains and outperform all other students.
Overall, the average scores for the class of 2010 in critical reading remained at 501, in math it climbed from 515 to 516, in writing it dropped from 493 to 492. The combined scores match last year’s tally, which was the lowest total since the writing exam was added to the SAT in 2006.
The only bright spot was the performance of the nation’s Asian-American students. They posted a three-point gain in reading, four-point jump in math and six-point gain in writing over their 2009 scores.
The SAT news comes a few weeks after the results of the other college entrance exam, the ACT, revealed that only one-quarter of the nation’s high-school students possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level college courses. Taken together, the test scores suggest a continued stagnation of high-school performance and highlight the challenge the Obama administration faces in its efforts to boost the nation’s college-graduation total.
Shaking Up Higher Ed
Is it time to remake American higher education? Columbia University’s Mark Taylor says it’s time to end tenure and bring on a revolution. He joins us.
American higher education – with its vigorous colleges and universities – has long been the pride of the nation, the engine of the economy, the envy of the world.
Now, it’s got issues. Soaring costs, structural questions, competition abroad. We had a Wall Street bubble and bust. A housing bubble and bust.
9/14/2010 City of Madison + Madison School Board Committee Meeting
City of Madison PDF, via a kind reader’s email:
Update: Gang-Related Issues
Update: Safe Routes to School Discussion:
Easement Around Chavez Elementary School
Hong Kong pupils shine in top Asian maths contest
Two primary school pupils from Hong Kong won the top awards in one of Asia’s most prestigious maths competitions.
It’s the first time that any Hong Kong pupil has won a grand champion award at the International Mathematics Contest which was held in Singapore last month. About 1,000 pupils competed in the event which sees teams from the mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand battling it out in algebra, geometry, statistics and measurements.
Nine-year-old boy Li Ka-wing scored the highest marks in the Primary Three category and 11-year-old girl Lam Ho-yan was the best pupil for the Primary Five exams.
They both train at the Hong Kong Mathematical Olympiad School in Kowloon which offers intensive maths coaching.
“Each year, there are good results. However this year, it was very special,” the school’s principal, Pinky Lam Sui-ping, said. Every year, thousands of Hong Kong pupils applied to compete in the event by sitting online tests, she said.
America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution
As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors’ “toxic assets” was the only alternative to the U.S. economy’s “systemic collapse.” In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment of some 10 trillion nonexistent dollars in ways unprecedented in America. They explained neither the difference between the assets’ nominal and real values, nor precisely why letting the market find the latter would collapse America. The public objected immediately, by margins of three or four to one.
When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.
Bill Gates Stirs Up the Education Debate in Toronto
Mild-mannered, soft-spoken, and beaming broadly, the Microsoft chairman Bill Gates looked every bit the benevolent businessman as he took the stage at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday evening, to help plug the education-reform documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman.'” Mr. Gates appears in the film, and, with his wife Melinda, heads a foundation that has invested heavily in improvements to education. But his aw-shucks manner couldn’t hide the fact that some of the proposals he tossed off on stage at the Winter Garden theater here were volatile stuff. “We’re investing in building these evaluation systems,” Mr. Gates said. He was referring to systems that would evaluate the performance of public school teachers, with an eye toward ending the current tenure system under which many teachers now work, and providing a way to weed out the worst teachers, while, perhaps, rewarding the best. He also mentioned, at least twice, changes to teacher pension systems.
Changing schools from the bottom up, and top down
I was never into the 1970s British TV series “Upstairs, Downstairs,” where the big shots lived upstairs, the servants lived downstairs, and there was all this dramatic interaction. (I preferred the “Sesame Street” version, where one of the Muppets ran up and down the stairs, loudly proclaiming what he was doing.)
But it sure does seem like we’re having vivid episodes of “Upstairs, Downstairs” when it comes to education now. An increasing and huge amount of the action is occurring upstairs, on the federal and state levels, while local control of schools by folks downstairs, like school board members, counts for less and less. The vitality of local control, a Wisconsin tradition for decades, is seeping away. And the staff downstairs – teachers, in other words – are feeling more than a bit put upon.
A few years ago, you would not have expected what is going on now. In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan came close to succeeding in eliminating the U.S. Department of Education on the grounds that the federal government shouldn’t have much role in that area. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton suggested national tests in reading and math so children across the country were measured by the same standards. The idea went nowhere.
New Superintendent: Taking on Milwaukee Public Schools
He’s got their attention, but only for a few minutes. A few precious minutes to teach in a position that is otherwise layers removed from teaching. Right now, these are his students.
The adults in the room are also intrigued. The new superintendent is an outsider leading a district where staff morale and student achievement are at an all-time low. He arrived on the heels of a fierce debate about mayoral control that polarized the city. His predecessors – including the last superintendent of eight years – have found little success. He’s inherited reports that show the district’s financial operations and human resource practices need serious improvement.
In addition, there’s a $55 million hole in the budget, hundreds of teachers on layoff, 40,000 empty seats in mothballed buildings and a union committed to health care benefits the district can’t afford. Teachers are working under a contract that expired in 2009.
And then there are the children. At Starms, all of them on the floor are black, like Thornton, and they are facing tremendous odds. The achievement gap in Wisconsin between white and black students is one of the highest in the nation. African-American fourth-graders in MPS have lower reading scores than their peers anywhere else in the country, even lower than kids in rural Mississippi or Alabama.
Candidates for governor debate what ails education
Mike Kaszuba & Corey Mitchell:
Debating education for the first time, Minnesota’s three major candidates for governor on Friday differed significantly over how to repair what they described as an ailing system.
Republican Tom Emmer, using the occasion to disclose more of his overall budget plan, said he would hold education spending to existing levels and move funds used for child care programs to those that would prepare children for kindergarten. Emmer said he would delay repaying $1.4 billion owed to the state’s public schools until 2014.
DFL candidate Mark Dayton, in contrast, pledged to increase education money every year as governor and repay the funds owed, while the Independence Party’s Tom Horner stressed the need for innovation.
Colleges: Where the money goes
Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus
At Pomona College, a top-flight liberal arts school, this year’s sticker price for tuition and fees is a hefty $38,394 (not including room and board). Even after adjusting for inflation, that comes to 2.9 times what Pomona was charging a generation ago, in 1980.
This kind of massive tuition increase is the norm. In New England, Williams College charges $41,434, or an inflation-adjusted 3.2 times what it did 30 years ago. USC’s current tab of $41,022 is a 3.6 multiple of its 1980 bill.
Tuition at public universities, in a time of ailing state budgets, has risen at an even faster rate. The University of Illinois’ current $13,658 is six times its 1980 rate after adjusting for inflation. San Jose State’s $6,250 is a whopping 11 times more.
Lucky breaks as juvenile kept Latin Kings leader free Barragan, a homicide suspect on the lam, was convicted in Children’s Court but sentence was stayed
When it came to violent crime, Armando Barragan started young, shooting up a van of rival gang members at age 14 and, eight months later, attacking a Milwaukee police officer, trying to grab his gun.
The crimes landed Barragan in the juvenile justice system, but he got breaks that kept him on the street, where he committed new crimes, according to Children’s Court records and police reports reviewed by the Journal Sentinel.
Barragan quickly rose to become a leader of the Latin Kings and was charged with ordering the execution of a man who tried to stop a fight outside a Cudahy gas station in 2003 – one of six homicides or attempted homicides he was investigated for by the time he was 18.
The Journal Sentinel reported in July that miscommunication between federal and state authorities resulted in missing a chance to arrest Barragan in a courtroom before he fled to Mexico and became one of the U.S. Marshals Service’s most wanted fugitives.
Court documents show Barragan could have – and probably should have – been behind bars in April 2003, when Kevin Hirschfield was shot to death outside the gas station. He was free because of breaks he received, first from a judge and later from police, according to court records and interviews.
Bay View students bringing history to life
In days gone by, before Milwaukee Public Schools undertook the busing of its students to promote racial integration, just about everybody in Bay View went to Bay View High School.
Today, the school has students from all over town, and so for area old-timers, it’s lost its identity with their neighborhood.
“People who fondly remember Bay View High School have been in mourning that their school no longer exists,” says Kathy Mulvey, president of the Bay View Historical Society.
That’s why she is so enthusiastic about a special course at the high school, created by staff from Discovery World science museum – a program that has four students this weekend collecting stories and artifacts from old Bay View at the Beulah Brinton House, the historical society’s headquarters.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Urban Plight: Vanishing Upward Mobility
Boosters still maintain that big cities remain unique centers for social uplift, but evidence suggests this is increasingly no longer the case.
Since the beginnings of civilization, cities have been crucibles of progress both for societies and individuals. A great city, wrote Rene Descartes in the seventeenth century, represented “an inventory of the possible,” a place where people could create their own futures and lift up their families.
What characterized great cities such as Amsterdam–and, later, places such as London, New York , Chicago, and Tokyo–was the size of their property-owning middle class. This was a class whose roots, for the most part, lay in the peasantry or artisan class, and later among industrial workers. Their ascension into the ranks of the bourgeoisie, petit or haute, epitomized the opportunities for social advancement created uniquely by cities.
In the twenty-first century–the first in which the majority of people will live in cities–this unique link between urbanism and upward mobility is under threat. Urban boosters still maintain that big cities remain unique centers for social uplift, but evidence suggests this is increasingly no longer the case.
It’s Time To Listen To Teachers On Issues Of Education
Why is it that the last people listened to regarding problems in public education are the ones who deal with it on the front line day after day?
Chicago’s Renaissance 2010 education plan came onto the charts back in 2004. Immediately, classroom teachers pointed out its many flaws. Were they listened to? Of course not. Instead, Mayor Richard M. Daley and now U.S. Secretary of Education — then Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer — Arne Duncan pushed ahead with a program that had come not from the educational community, but rather from the business community.
Lest anyone forget, that’s the same business community that has demonstrated questionable wisdom in the world of finance, ultimately leading the United States into its current economic crisis.
Some say bypassing a higher education is smarter than paying for a degree
Across the region and around the country, parents are kissing their college-bound kids — and potentially up to $200,000 in tuition, room and board — goodbye.
Especially in the supremely well-educated Washington area, this is expected. It’s a rite of passage, part of an orderly progression toward success.
Or is it . . . herd mentality?
Hear this, high achievers: If you crunch the numbers, some experts say, college is a bad investment.
“You’ve been fooled into thinking there’s no other way for my kid to get a job . . . or learn critical thinking or make social connections,” hedge fund manager James Altucher says.
Altucher, president of Formula Capital, says he sees people making bad investment decisions all the time — and one of them is paying for college.
2 Sides on Charter Schools Add Cash to New York Races
Mark H. Pollard was a little-known candidate for New York State Senate in Brooklyn facing the herculean feat of ousting a 26-year incumbent. But then he got an unexpected telephone call saying that a group of wealthy investors who supported charter schools wanted to meet with him.
So in June, Mr. Pollard, a Democrat, found himself in Manhattan, sipping wine on a Park Avenue patio with people whose names he can no longer recall. Then “the checks started rolling in,” he said, and by July he had received more than $100,000.
“They made my campaign viable,” said Mr. Pollard, a lawyer who supports the charter school movement. The windfall has made him a legitimate contender, allowing him to hire a veteran campaign manager and print thousands of pamphlets.
Misguided use of microchip technology
Officials with Contra Costa County’s Head Start program were frustrated. In order to meet federal requirements, they had to take attendance every hour.
These and other administrative tasks were taking up a lot of teachers’ time – between one and three hours a day per teacher – and using up a lot of the program’s limited funds.
We sympathize with their pain. An hourly attendance requirement is indeed burdensome, and it’s a useless distraction from the very important work that Head Start does – preparing low-income preschoolers for school. But we can’t support what those officials did next, which was to implement a microchip tracking program for those very young children.
Where do graduates end up doing unskilled work? And earning most?
ACADEMIC qualifications’ value in the workplace is a big issue for students, policymakers and taxpayers, especially as the rising numbers of students in higher education make them less distinctive. In the latest annual report on education by the OECD, a rich-country think-tank, the answer is clear: the pay-off from tertiary education is still good, both for the individual and the economy. Most graduates take jobs fitting their qualifications, earn more than non-graduates, and thus tend to pay more in taxes.
The workforce is smartening up. In the OECD 35% of the 25- to 34-year-old workforce has completed tertiary education, compared with 20% of the cohort approaching retirement. Countries such as Japan and South Korea have invested so heavily in educating their young that more than half now hold post-school qualifications. Norway, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands are close behind. Andreas Schleicher, the OECD’s chief of education research, reckons that these countries may well become more competitive as a result.
Korean Education chief vows fair opportunities
Minister of Education, Science and Technology Lee Ju-ho said Friday he will give top priority to creating a fairer education environment for the second half of the Lee Myung-bak government.
“I believe every student should have an equal opportunity to learn. I am not talking about uniform equal society. I mean children from poor families also should have the chance to receive quality education,” Lee said.
Mentioning the college admission system, the lawmaker-turned-minister said he plans to order an investigation into universities to confirm whether children of professors or school staff have been given special treatment in the process.
“In order to fix a holistic admission system at colleges, we need three important values: trust, fairness and the specialty of admissions officers. On top of this, we will seek student diversity,” he said.
San Ramon Valley Unified School District Candidate Q&A: Rachel Hurd
What is the primary reason you are running for this office?
Education is the most important thing a community provides for its youth to ensure that they grow up to be productive members of society. I am running for re-election because I want to continue to help shape and influence the quality of the educational experience of students in our schools. I want all children in our schools to graduate prepared to be productive, engaged and fulfilled citizens with viable options for their futures.
What will be your single most important priority if you get elected?
My most important priority is to ensure that we provide a quality educational experience for each of our students by continuing to improve student learning and engagement, within the constraint of maintaining our fiscal solvency. There may be different opinions about how to improve student learning and engagement, especially with limited resources. It’s important that the values and concerns of all stakeholders-students, parents, staff (at all levels and in all functions), and community members-be considered as the district sets direction and aligns initiatives. We also need to acknowledge and work positively with the natural tension between district direction and site-based initiative.
Yikes! Kids to judge healthy food options
The REAP Food Group will stage what sounds like a pretty daunting culinary challenge that should be fun to watch at its Food for Thought Festival at the end of September. On Saturday, Sept. 24, three local chefs will join three local school principals as kitchen collaborators, working together to plan and prepare a healthy, nutritious, child-friendly meal that will be judged by the harshest critics around: school age kids themselves.
And that’s not all. The intrepid cooks must do it all on a budget, under a deadline and in front of an audience. School cooks would say it’s almost as hard as what they face daily in the lunchroom.
“I know they will be hard on us,” chef Steve Eriksen says of the young judges. Eriksen is one of the contestants and associate team leader for the kitchen at Madison’s Whole Foods grocery store. “What you get out of children’s mouths is brutal honesty.”
But Eriksen says he has a secret weapon as he prepares for the competition: his 3-year-old daughter, Ella, who is a picky eater. “If we can make something that I think Ella will eat, any kid will like it,” he says with a grin.
Learning the right lessons There’s nothing wrong with profiting from education
“UNTIL recently, I thought that there would never again be an opportunity to be involved with an industry as socially destructive as the subprime mortgage industry,” said Steve Eisman, a hedge-fund manager who made a lot of money during the financial crisis by shorting bank shares, to Congress in June. “I was wrong. The for-profit education industry has proven equal to the task.”
America’s for-profit colleges are under fire (see article), and the Obama administration is preparing tough new regulations for them. Although recent scandals suggest higher education needs to be better regulated, discriminating against the for-profit sector could do wider damage.
ACLU sues California for allowing school districts to charge fees
The suit alleges that more than 30 districts require students and their families to pay for books and other basic supplies that are supposed to be provided at no cost.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the state of California on Friday for allowing school districts to charge students for books, uniforms, classes and other basic supplies.
The suit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges that more than 30 districts require students and their families to pay for basic supplies that are supposed to be provided at no cost. Districts cited in the lawsuit include Beverly Hills, Burbank and Long Beach.
The Los Angeles Unified School District was not named in the suit, although “we have heard anecdotal reports about Los Angeles,” Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel for the ACLU of Southern California, said at a morning news conference.
Wisconsin State Journal Removes This Story
The Madison School District’s Ken Syke via email:
Jim,
I’ve been made aware of the entry on the School Info Systems site about La Follette student taking gun to school. That story has been retracted by madison.com and thus the story excerpt on the the SIS site is not supported any longer. It’s our understanding that this madison.com story will remain retracted.
Thus we request that the story excerpt be pulled from the School Info Systems site.
Thank you.
I phoned (608) 252-6120 the Wisconsin State Journal (part of Capital Newspapers, which owns madison.com) and spoke with Jason (I did not ask his last name) today at about 2:20p.m. I asked about the status of this story [Dane County Case Number: 2010CF001460, Police call data via Crime Reports COMMUNITY POLICING 03 Sep 2010 1 BLOCK ASH ST Distance: 0 miles Identifier: 201000252977 Suspicious Vehicle Agency: City of Madison]. He spoke with another person, returned to the phone and said that a police officer phoned the reporter, Sandy Cullen and said the report she mentioned was incorrect. They then took the article down. I asked him to email me this summary, which I will post upon receipt.
Links from the original post:
Related:
- La Follette student charged in gang-related gun incident.
- Madison West High gang incident raises specter of retaliation.
- Much more on gangs & school violence; forum audio / video.
- Dane County Case #2010CF001460 Count #2: “Possess Firearm in School Zone”.
- Wisconsin State Journal Twitter link: http://twitter.com/WiStateJournal/status/24158645996
Racial Disparity on Education in Wisconsin: Wisconsin is “Getting Taken to School on Reading Results by SEC States”
Brian Schimming interviews Dr. Matthew Ladner via a kind reader: 28mbp mp3 file.
The biggest opportunity we have is to “get more bang for our buck”. The mp3 file includes an interesting discussion on Florida’s approach to public information on school performance. Ladner also mentioned teacher certification reform, particularly in math & science.
New education report card grades student success:
Today the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) released a new book that provides a simple, direct way of comparing the effectiveness of public education in every state. I co-authored the Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress and Reform with Goldwater Institute Senior Fellow Dan Lips and school choice expert Andrew LeFevre. ALEC is distributing the book to state lawmakers across the country.
For the Report Card, we rank all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on student test scores and learning gains on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). We focused in particular on the scores of low-income students who were not in special education programs from 2003 to 2009, the years in which all jurisdictions took the tests used by NAEP.
Our rankings give the same weight to overall performance (which states had the highest test scores) and overall gains (which states made the most progress over time). The table below shows the rankings:
Clusty Search: Matthew Ladner
Union challenges proposed Florida class-size amendment
A proposed ballot amendment to ease Florida’s class-size requirements was challenged in court Wednesday by the state’s largest teachers union, but the judge made no decision.
The Florida Education Association argued the summary that will appear on the November ballot doesn’t fully explain Amendment 8’s effect. It tells voters that the class-size caps will change, the union’s lawyer said, but it doesn’t explain how that change likely will reduce money to schools.
“That change inescapably changes the funding,” said Ron Meyer, a lawyer for the union.
“The voter doesn’t see that. The voter doesn’t know that. The voter shouldn’t guess at that.”
A lawyer for the state attorney general’s office, which is defending the amendment, said it is clear to voters that the new caps would save money.
Facing heavy-handed government regulation, America’s for-profit colleges are reforming themselves
“EGREGIOUS, outrageous, violated everything we stand for”: Don Graham’s denunciation of recent activities by some employees of his own firm is stark. On August 4th a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found evidence of deceptive recruitment tactics by 15 of America’s leading for-profit colleges, including one operated by Kaplan, which accounts for the bulk of the profits of Mr Graham’s Washington Post Company. Some of the colleges, which also included the giant University of Phoenix, insisted that the incidents–which ranged from misleading potential students about tuition costs and likely post-graduation salaries to encouraging them to file fraudulent loan applications–were isolated. But the mood is turning against them.
For-profit colleges, which range from beauty schools to institutions that resemble traditional universities, were already under attack. In June Steve Eisman, a hedge-fund manager who made a lot of money during the financial crisis by shorting bank shares, told Congress that the for-profit education business was as destructive as the subprime mortgage industry. Congress already seems eager to add to regulations that the government plans to introduce in November.
The markets sense weakness in the industry. Shares in Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, are worth half what they were at the start of 2009. The Washington Post Company has lost nearly one-third of its value since April. Shares in Corinthian Colleges have fallen 70% in the same spell.
Public Schools Face Lawsuit Over Fees
Public schools across the nation, many facing budget shortfalls, have been charging students fees to use textbooks or to take required tests or courses.
Now a civil liberties group is suing California over those proliferating fees, arguing that the state has failed to protect the right to a free public education. Experts said it was the first case of its kind, and could tempt parents in other states to file similar suits.
In the suit, to be filed in a state court in Los Angeles on Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California names 35 school districts across California that list on their Web sites the fees their schools charge for courses including art, home economics and music, for Advanced Placement tests and for materials including gym uniforms.
Narcisse outlines his Iowa education goals
Jonathan Narcisse, the Iowa Party candidate for governor, said Wednesday that parents and teachers, not the federal government, are the key to making Iowa schools great again.
Federal involvement in schools “has diminished the excellence of education in our state in general and placed in peril urban education in Iowa,” Narcisse said.
His speech at Culture Inc., a Des Moines nonprofit youth program that emphasizes the arts, came less than a week after a state report showed a quarter of Iowa schools were labeled “in need of assistance,” or failing, based on math and reading test scores under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
Narcisse, 46, a former Des Moines school board member, blamed the federal law for a culture in which fearful teachers “teach to the test” and students are deprived of a “real education.”
Madison School District’s Attempt to Limit Outbound Open Enrollment, via a WASB Policy Recommendation
Fascinating: I don’t think this will help. The Madison School District 55K PDF:
WASB Policy Modifications Related to Open Enrollment Recommended changes to the current WASB resolution on open enrollment (Policy 3.77):
Current f.: The options for the districts to limit the number of students leaving the school district under the open enrollment program, if the school board believes that number is large enough to threaten the viability of the district.
Proposed f.: The option for the districts to limit the number of students leaving the school district under the open enrollment program, if the school board believes the fiscal stability of the district is threatened.
Rationale – As school districts are confronted by a combination of revenue limits and declining state aid, fiscal issues are overriding attention paid to the educational programs offered to our children. The law originally limited open enrollment transfers to 3% of a district’s total enrollment and was designed to provide parents with enrollment options for their students.
Now, districts lack the flexibility or capacity to adjust to large scale student population shifts. Districts already fiscally weakened by nearly two decades of revenue limits, and more recently, cuts to general state aids – particularly in small, rural districts – are left with the options of dissolving the district, or Draconian cuts to the educational program.
**********
Current i.: The WASB supports a clarification in state statutes to limit the number of students enrolling in nonreSident school districts to 10 percent of the resident district membership.
Proposed i.: The WASB supports limiting the number of students enrolling in nonresident school districts to 3 percent of the resident district membership.
Rationale – The law originally capped open enrollment to 3% of a district’s total enrollment. This change returns control of open enrollment transfers to locally elected school board members. If districts choose to limit open enrollment transfers to less than 3%, correspondingly, a district would have to use the same method/policy for accepting students through open enrollment. **********
Proposed i: The WASB supports a fiscally neutral exchange of state dollars in open enrollment transfers.
Rationale – Current law requires that a sending district pay the receiving school district approximately $6,500. The $6,500 payment is the estimated statewide cost of educating a student; however, in practice this amount doesn’t really reflect the costs of educating a student in the receiving district, or takes into account the loss of revenue to the sending district.
The law could be changed by lowering the dollar amount to $5,000, or the amount of state aid per pupil received by the sending district in the prior year, whichever is less.
While the WASB supports public school open enrollment, participation in the program should not be a fiscal hardship. The current state/nation fiscal climate and local economic circumstances confronted by school districts, has dramatically changed the fiscal equation and requires modifications to the state’s open enrollment law.
Approved by the School Board of: Madison Metropolitan School District Date: 9/13/10
kt:4tf,s;:.C~ Signed: (Board President)
Related: Madison School Board Discussion: Private/Parochial, Open Enrollment Leave, Open Enrollment Enter, Home Based Parent Surveys.
The essential question: do these proposed open enrollment changes benefit students, or adult employment?
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Federal Bailout for Schools Could Hurt More Than Help
Wisconsin State Senator Mike Ellis:
Recently, school districts across the state learned they were set to receive millions of dollars in federal funds to retain, rehire or hire new educational support staff. While this infusion of cash may seem appealing to districts that have had to lay off employees, the requirements on how this money can be used contain a potential trap that can ensnare district budgets in lingering deficits for years to come.
Specifically, the federal guidelines state that these one-time funds must be used to cover on-going expenditures – they can only be used for compensation, benefits and related expenses for school employees. That’s exactly how structural deficits are built. To understand the potential pitfalls for schools, just look at the state’s recent budget history.
A History of Deficits
State government has been mired in bad budgets for a decade now. It is a bipartisan problem that has been practiced by Democratic and Republican governors and legislatures alike.
Throughout the 1990s, the economy was strong and revenues consistently grew faster than had been projected when the budgets were put together. Budget surpluses were a regular occurrence. Politicians got complacent, creating costly new programs, confident that revenues would grow enough to cover their excess. There were always a few legislators, however, who warned that the day would come when the revenues stopped flowing as wildly as they were and the surpluses would vanish. The surpluses were one-time revenues that should never be used to pay for ongoing expenditures.
….
School Districts Beware
Now school districts across Wisconsin could fall into the same trap if they’re not careful. Those federal dollars look promising now, but don’t count on them being there again next year. Every employee that is rehired, every new employee hired with these federal dollars, faces the very real prospect of losing that job next year when the money runs out.
The state is broke. In our current budget, state support of schools was cut by more than $300 million and we still face a $1.2 billion deficit in 2011, so don’t look for state government to fill the hole. The only other recourse is the property tax and in this economy when people all over Wisconsin are struggling to stay in their homes, that would be folly.
The history of state budgeting in the last decade should be a valuable history lesson for school boards and administrators all across Wisconsin – one-time money can never sustain ongoing spending. It will only lead to digging an ever-increasing hole of deficit year after year. It’s time for government – and that includes school districts – to do what hard-working families across the state have already done. Face the facts. Make do with less.
Locally, the Madison School District’s 2010-2011 budget will raise property taxes by about 10%.
Related: K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Wisconsin State and Local Debt Rose Faster Than Federal Debt During 1990-2009 Average Annual Increase in State Debt, 7.8%; Local Debt, 7.3%.
New Program Provides Basic Health Care For Madison School District Students
The year-round program covers annual physical exams, primary care office visits at the assigned clinic, including visits when the child is sick, as well as some prescription medicines.
“It’s a new program so I think I signed up 12 families probably in a couple weeks time at the end of school last year,” she said.
The program starts with the school nurse in every school in the district. The nurse identifies students based on two main criteria: they don’t have any health insurance and do not qualify for any state programs like Badger Care.
The nurse then forwards an application for the program to the health care provider that has been paired up with the school. The health care provider then contacts the student’s parents.
The program is available to undocumented students. MMSD Superintendent Dan Nerad defends this decision by citing the U.S. Supreme Court case that requires schools to educate all children regardless of immigration status.
“These are children that have needs and we have an obligation to educate them both legally and ethically and morally but underscoring it’s a legal obligation first and foremost for us,” he said. “And when kids aren’t well they need to be taken care of.”
Gates Foundation Acknowledges Flaws in Report
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has taken another step toward increased transparency, acknowledging in its annual report that the world’s largest charitable foundation is too secretive and hard to work with.
The report, posted online Tuesday, includes the usual financial information and a look at the foundation’s plans. But it also offers a glimpse of the organization’s attempts to be more open.
CEO Jeff Raikes draws attention in the report to a grantee survey that gave the foundation poor marks for communicating its goals and strategies, and for confusing people with its complicated grant-making process.
Mr. Raikes originally released the survey results in June–a day before Bill Gates made headlines for launching a campaign with investor Warren Buffett to get other American billionaires to give at least half their wealth to charity.
Free Online School Curriculum Draws $11 Million in Funding
or public schools looking to improve their curricula, it’s hard to argue with a free product.
That has proved to be a good thing for Web-based education company Everfi, which has raised $11 million in Series A financing from New Enterprise Associates and Eric Schmidt’s TomorrowVentures, as well as angels including Michael Chasen, chief executive of Blackboard, which sells a learning management system.
Everfi provides Web-based learning programs for students, particularly in public schools, focusing on subjects that are not covered in traditional courses, such as nutrition and wellness, personal finance and student loan management.
The company’s curriculum is different from the traditional textbook model because it includes 3-D animated gaming-oriented applications. For example, for a lesson about stocks, students virtually visit the New York Stock Exchange and learn how to make a trade, while for a section about student loans, students virtually go to a college campus and learn how to fill out forms and the like.
Dear alma mater: I can’t pay
At New York’s colleges and universities, the arrival of a new school year brings anticipation tinged with anxiety. For many students, the second emotion is prompted by one nagging question: How am I going to pay for this?
Many of them won’t be able to find an answer. The Higher Education Services Corp., which services and collects federally backed college loans in New York, has almost $2 billion worth of defaulted debt on its hands.
As of July 1, HESC listed 145,437 accounts with $1,983,922,931 in college loans that had gone into default. That’s up from last year, when there were 144,216 borrowers for a total of $1,895,211,727 by the end of July.
In 1991, the defaulted sum was just $230 million.
Visualizing the U.S. Higher Education Bubble
Is there really a bubble in US higher education?
Today, one way or another, we’re going to find out! First, let’s define just what a bubble is:An economic bubble exists whenever the price of an asset that may be freely exchanged in a well-established market first soars then plummets over a sustained period of time at rates that are decoupled from the rate of growth of the income that might be realized from either owning or holding the asset.
Here, we’ll consider the asset to be one year of college education at a four-year institution, whose price is given by the cost of tuition and any required fees for attendance.
Desk Arrest Stirs Protest
In February, 12-year-old Alexa Gonzalez doodled on her desk in social studies class at her junior high school in Forest Hills: “Lexi was here 2/1/10” and “I Love my babis, Abby & Faith.”
Ms. Gonzalez was escorted to the dean’s office where school safety officers had her empty her backpack, take off her shoes and sweater and then searched her pockets. The New York Police Department was then called and four officers arrived, arrested her then walked her out of the school with her wrists handcuffed behind her back as classmates looked on. Her mother was told she would have to report to family court on vandalism charges.
The severity of authorities’ reaction has turned Ms. Gonzalez, who was using an erasable marker, into the poster child for a student rights movement that wants more transparency on the suspensions, expulsions and arrests in each school. A protest rally, sponsored by the New York Civil Liberties Union and student rights groups, was held at the Board of Education building behind City Hall on Tuesday calling on law makers to pass the so-called Student Safety Act. It would provide detailed data of disciplinary action taken by the School Safety Division, which is part of the NYPD, by race, sex, age, disability and socioeconomic status.
Both the city’s Department of Education and NYPD have conceded their officers overreacted in Ms. Gonzalez’s case and didn’t act within their guidelines.
Top 10 Colleges Where the Pursuit of Knowledge Goes Beyond the Classroom
For most college students, there’s a differentiation between life inside the classroom and out; there’s a time to be cerebral and then there’s the other 22 hours of the day. But these aren’t most college students. We looked for schools that cater to students who happily spend all their waking hours in pursuit of intellectual stimulation, questioning life, challenging the status quo, and letting their curiosity run wild. 30,000 student votes later, we’ve identified the Top 10 Schools where being a “nerd” (as they often, and lovingly, refer to themselves) is truly the norm.
On Superintendent Ealuations
It is shocking to hear that almost no one in Seattle Public Schools had a job description, had regular performance reviews, or even had any set criteria for a performance review. That represents a grosteque failure of management at just about every level of District management, but primarily at the top. I don’t know why people think that Raj Manhas was in any way capable, because the CACIEE final report was basically a catalog of his utter failure to fulfill any part of his responsibilities. Joseph Olchefske was no better, and John Stanford started the whole thing by failing/refusing to take on a quality assurance role when he de-centralized decision-making. I certainly appluad the Superintendent for introducing management to Seattle Public Schools. But the REAL focus of her Performance Management effort is schools. Not teachers and principals so much as schools taken a whole.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Transparency
We’ve taken data from other federal reporting systems and compared it with the data found in USASpending.gov across three categories: Consistency, Completeness and Timeliness. How close are the reported dollar amounts to the yearly estimates? How many of the required fields are filled out in each record? And how long did it take the agency to report the money once it was allocated to a project?
The inability to keep track and report on public expenditures does not inspire confidence. Related: Madison district got $23M from taxpayers for aging schools; where did it go?. More here. I’ve not seen any additional information on the potential audit of Madison’s most recent maintenance referendum.
The College Station School District publishes all annual expenditures via their check registers.
Notre Dame launches eReader study, creates first paperless course
“This has become known as the iPad class,” Corey Angst, assistant professor of management at the University of Notre Dame, told his students on their first day of class Aug. 24. “It’s actually not…it’s ‘Project Management.'”
A member of Notre Dame’s ePublishing Working Group, Angst is debuting the University’s first and only class taught using Apple’s new wireless tablet computer to replace traditional textbooks. The course is part of a unique, year-long Notre Dame study of eReaders, and Angst is conducting the first phase using iPads, which just went on sale to the public in April.
“One unique thing we are doing is conducting research on the iPad,” Angst says. “We want to know whether students feel the iPads are useful and how they plan to use them. I want them to tell me, ‘I found this great app that does such and such. I want this to be organic…We have an online Wiki discussion group where students can share their ideas.”
The working group participants are from a broad array of colleges and departments, including the Mendoza College of Business, Notre Dame Law School, College of Arts and Letters, First Year of Studies, Hesburgh Libraries, Office of Information Technologies, Hammes Notre Dame Bookstore, Office of Sustainability, Notre Dame Press and Office of Institutional Equity.
Japan fattens textbooks to reverse sliding rank
When Mio Honzawa starts fifth grade next April, her textbooks will be thicker.
Alarmed that its children are falling behind those in rivals such as South Korea and Hong Kong, Japan is adding about 1,200 pages to elementary school textbooks. The textbooks across all subjects for six years of elementary school now total about 4,900 pages, and will go up to nearly 6,100.
In a move that has divided educators and experts, Japan is going back to basics after a 10-year experiment in “pressure-free education,” which encouraged more application of knowledge and less rote memorization.
“I think it’s a good move. Compared to the education I got, I’m kind of shocked at the level my children are receiving,” said Keiko Honzawa, a Tokyo resident and mother of Mio and her seventh-grade brother.
Mass. should be pioneering online learning, not restricting it
Marty Walz & Will Browsnberger:
THIS WEEK marks the start of the school year. Unfortunately, Massachusetts students are returning to classrooms that haven’t changed much since their parents and grandparents attended. Meanwhile, students in other states are taking advantage of a learning opportunity that students here are denied — online education.
Massachusetts should be in the forefront of using computers and the Internet to change where, when, and how students learn. We have the expertise to lead in virtual education, but the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has restricted school district efforts to introduce virtual schools.
The education reform act approved by the Legislature in January makes it easy for districts to create virtual schools. Of course, we don’t envision a future in which online learning replaces brick-and-mortar public schools. Face-to-face peer contact and personal teacher mentoring will always be an important part of learning, especially at the lower grades. However, an increasing portion of learning can occur online with the support of peers and with less direct supervision by teachers. In the long run, this may be the only way to significantly expand learning time within the state’s economic constraints.
Why 17-year-olds’ scores have stalled since the ’70s
Robert J. Samuelson, the Newsweek and Washington Post economics columnist, edited my first news story. We were both college sophomores. I was trying out for the student newspaper. He was already a seasoned reporter and editor on the staff. He tossed the typewritten sheets back to me and said to try again.
I did as I was told. I learned much from him during that first encounter, as I have continued to do during our long friendship. He enlightens me even on topics in my specialty, such as his latest column in the Post, “The failure of school reform.”
Plenty of university graduates are working in low-skilled jobs
Young people often worry whether the qualification for which they are studying will stand them in good stead in the workplace. According to the OECD, college and university leavers are better placed in the labour market than their less educated peers, but this advantage is not even in all countries. Young graduates living in Spain are particularly likely to end up taking low-skilled work, while those in Luxembourg rarely take anything other than a graduate job. American and British students appear to have the biggest incentive to study: British graduates aged 25-34 earn $57,000 on average. Their Swedish peers earn $37,400.
“Digital Maoism”; Jaron Lanier, a pioneer of virtual-reality technology, has more recently become an outspoken critic of online social media
FROM “Wikinomics” to “Cognitive Surplus” to “Crowdsourcing”, there is no shortage of books lauding the “Web 2.0” era and celebrating the online collaboration, interaction and sharing that it makes possible. Today anyone can publish a blog or put a video on YouTube, and thousands of online volunteers can collectively produce an operating system like Linux or an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. Isn’t that great?
No, says Jaron Lanier, a technologist, musician and polymath who is best known for his pioneering work in the field of virtual reality. His book, “You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto”, published earlier this year, is a provocative attack on many of the internet’s sacred cows. Mr Lanier lays into the Web 2.0 culture, arguing that what passes for creativity today is really just endlessly rehashed content and that the “fake friendship” of social networks “is just bait laid by the lords of the clouds to lure hypothetical advertisers”. For Mr Lanier there is no wisdom of crowds, only a cruel mob. “Anonymous blog comments, vapid video pranks and lightweight mash-ups may seem trivial and harmless,” he writes, “but as a whole, this widespread practice of fragmentary, impersonal communication has demeaned personal interaction.”
If this criticism of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia had come from an outsider–a dyed-in-the-wool technophobe–then nobody would have paid much attention. But Mr Lanier’s denunciation of internet groupthink as “digital Maoism” carries more weight because of his career at technology’s cutting edge.
Who’s That Texting Your Kids in Class 66% of the Time? Parents
The days of getting caught talking in class are over–and so aren’t the days of even getting caught.
According to a new survey by app developer textPlus, which surveyed more than 600 of its users aged 13 to 17, texting is more rampant than ever in the classroom. A whopping 42.5% of teens admit to texting during class, and more than half of those say they text sometimes or constantly. What’s more, nearly 80% of students say they’ve never gotten in trouble for texting during class, suggesting the eyes-down, cell-under-the-desk method is slipping past even your most yard-stick taunting school teachers.
With more than 42% of teens admitting to bringing a cell phone or iPod Touch to class, isn’t it time schools start cracking down? And if technology is to become more a part of education, how will teachers ever track students who are already able to pull off using these devices when they’re not supposed to? As more and more gadgets enter the classroom, won’t it just make it easier to find distractions?
Six candidates eye three open Berryessa school board seats
With three seats open in this November’s election for the Berryessa Union School District Board of Trustees, twice that number are vying to fill those spots.
The candidates, two of whom are incumbents, have a diverse range of experience with various accomplishments.
David Cohen
Cohen, 42, is a Berryessa school board member and has been since 2006. He is one of the candidates running as an incumbent this year.
With a second-grade daughter and 4-year-old son who will be entering the district next year, Cohen said he brings two valuable perspectives: that of a parent and previous school board member.
“The little bit of a difference is I’ve been on the board … I’ve seen the pressure on people to make decisions,” he said. But also Cohen’s “children will be affected by the decisions made.”
When Cohen joined the district four years ago he campaigned under a platform to make sure music, art and counselors were maintained since not all students learn the same way.
La Follette student charged in gang-related gun incident
A La Follette High School student who police say was involved in a gang-related, armed altercation Friday outside West High School was charged Wednesday with felony possession of a firearm in a school zone.
Uriel Duran-Martinez, 18, also was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct and cited for possession of marijuana, according to online Dane County Circuit Court records.
Court Commissioner W. Scott McAndrew ordered Duran-Martinez released from Dane County Jail on a signature bond.
According to Madison police:
Much more, here.
Madison West High gang incident raises specter of retaliation
An armed altercation Friday outside West High School involving known and suspected members of two street gangs involved in an April homicide heightened concerns of possible retaliation, police and school officials said Tuesday.
Sgt. Amy Schwartz, who leads the Madison Police Department’s Crime Prevention Gang Unit, said it is not known if members of the South Side Carnales gang went to the high school looking for members of the rival Clanton 14, or C-14 gang.
But staff at West and the city’s three other main high schools and two middle schools were told Tuesday to determine if safety plans are needed for any students who might be at risk, said Luis Yudice, security coordinator for the Madison School District.
Police have not notified the School District of a specific threat against any student, Yudice said.
But authorities have been concerned about possible retaliation since the April 28 shooting death of Antonio Perez, 19, who police say founded Madison’s C-14 gang several years ago while he was a high school student. Five people, who police say are associated with the South Side Carnales and MS-13 gangs, are charged in Perez’s slaying. Two of them remain at large.
Related: Gangs & School Violence Forum audio / video.
A kind reader noted this quote from the article:
“But authorities have been concerned about possible retaliation since the April 28 shooting death of Antonio Perez, 19, who police say founded Madison’s C-14 gang several years ago while he was a high school student.”
Much more here.
Debunking “Learning & Teaching Styles”
For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single thing.
“We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn them by trial and error,” said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.”
Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are auditory; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded.
Ditto for teaching styles, researchers say. Some excellent instructors caper in front of the blackboard like summer-theater Falstaffs; others are reserved to the point of shyness. “We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere,” said Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Why Don’t Students Like School?”
Newark public schools need revolutionary reform
Yet in Newark’s public schools, as in many other urban districts, our children’s endless talent meets headfirst with a stultifying bureaucracy that too often extinguishes rather than ignites their genius. It is beset with rules that ignore the individual talents of school leaders and teachers.
Its primary features — tenure, lockstep pay, and seniority — deny the complexity and creativity of effective teaching and learning, implying that teachers and principals are little more than interchangeable assemblyline workers. These practices instill performance-blindness into the fabric of our schools, dishonoring the talent, commitment and effort of our many good teachers and principals, whose excellence is systematically unrecognized and thus underappreciated. This both disrespects the notion of education as a sophisticated profession and produces a system in which student achievement is peripheral to the day-to-day operations of schools.
Simply put, our children have no limits; our schools have too many.
The future for our children depends on revolutionary school reform, executed relentlessly. Our children can no longer afford tinkering around the edges. This reform must include at least four elements:
•Reform of tenure and collective bargaining, including eliminating tenure for principals and significantly restricting it for teachers.
Clusty Search: Shavar Jeffries.
Paying Third-Graders for Better Test Scores
Efforts to improve education in the U.S. has included financial incentives for high-performing teachers and programs have targeted middle- and high-school students, but a recent study found success in giving money to kids as young as third grade who scored well on standardized tests.
In a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research titled “Paying to Learn: The Effect of Financial Incentives on Elementary School Test Scores” Eric P. Bettinger of the Stanford School of Education looks at a program in the poor, Appalachian community of Coshocton, Ohio.
The pay-for-performance plan targeted third through sixth graders who took standardized tests in math, reading, writing, science, and social studies. The students could earn up to $100 — $20 per score of Advanced in each test. Students who scored proficient were awarded $15 per test. In order to make sure the proceeds went directly to the students, payment was made in “Coshocton Children’s Bucks,” which could only be redeemed by kids for children’s items. Participation in the program was randomized based on a lottery as specified by Robert Simpson, a local factory owner, who financed the effort.
The program showed generally positive results, with the biggest gains coming in math. Students who were eligible for the payments improved about 0.15 standard deviations, a statistically significant result. Though there were small improvements shown for other subject areas, the difference wasn’t statistically significant.
Writer and financier get go-ahead for new UK schools
Fears that the Government’s “free” schools programme will be dominated by faith groups and create more segregation between religions were re-ignited yesterday. Five of the first 16 schools announced by Education Secretary Michael Gove will be faith-orientated – two Jewish, one Hindu, one Sikh and one Christian.
In two other cases, organisers say there will be a strong Christian influence but the school will not officially be a faith school. Two of the projects are proposed by the education charity ARK, which was set up by the hedge fund millionaire Arpad Busson. The author Toby Young was also given the green light for his proposal for a secondary school in Acton, west London, which will concentrate on the classics – every child will be expected to learn Latin at least up to GCSE level.
Under the Government’s plans, parents, teachers, charities and faith groups are being encouraged to put in bids to run their own schools with state financial support. They will be able to determine their own curriculum and be free of local authority controls, but the British Humanist Association warned yesterday that they would also be free to promote religious intolerance.
Thinking about Seattle School Board Elections
I’ve been giving thought to the School Board elections next year. I might run. I say that not for anyone to comment on but because I’m musing out loud on it. There are many reasons NOT to run but I have one main reason TO run.
Accountability.
To this day, I am mystified over the number of people who run for office that don’t believe they have to explain anything to voters AFTER they are elected. And I’m talking here about people whose work is not done with a vote (like the Mayor) but people who have to work in a group (City Council, School Board).
I truly doubt that these people get challenged on every single vote but I’m sure people ask on some. Why would they not respond? If asked, what data or information did you use to make this decision, why can’t they answer in specific? Why wouldn’t you be accountable to explain how you came to your decision?
Locally, the April, 2011 school board election features two seats, currently occupied by Ed Hughes and Marj Passman.
Keeping Track of the Kids
This is an era in which many devices are watching us. We carry about wireless phones that tell our service providers exactly where we are. Surveillance cameras blink down from corners and storefronts. Advertisers follow us effortlessly around the Internet. Still, plans in Contra Costa County, Calif., to tag preschoolers with radio frequency identification chips to keep track of their whereabouts at school seem to go too far.
The concern that school officials would use the ID chips to keep tabs on children’s behavior — and tag them perhaps as hyperactive or excessively passive — seems overwrought. County officials point out that the tags will save money and allow teachers to devote less time to attendance paperwork and more time to their students. And the chips, which will be randomly assigned to different children every day, according to a county representative, will not carry personal information that could be intercepted by others.
Where are the activists outraged over city’s failing schools?
When the Michigan Department of Education classified 41 schools in the Detroit Public Schools system as “failing” last month, I braced myself for a thunderous public outcry.
After all, it was only a few weeks ago that a very energized group descended on the Detroit City Council to loudly and angrily express themselves about education in Detroit. Surely these concerned citizens, having just voiced such a strong concern about education, would leap to action to demand that something be done to fix these “failing” schools now.
But that hasn’t happened. The silence, as the old cliché goes, has been deafening.
Why would people who were so passionate and loud so recently remain silent about a report that shows our children are being severely shortchanged? Why would members of the school board who fought to preserve the status quo remain equally silent about such a devastating report?
After all, nothing is as important to our children’s future as education. And nothing is more important to our future as a city than our young people.
Has college sendoff always been so tough?
The hour when Ariana Kramer will begin her college career is fast approaching — and her parents are in an office supply store, disagreeing about hanging files, of all things.
“She’ll need them,” her mother says.
“I don’t think so,” her dad counters.
Ariana, meanwhile, walks dreamily through the store, offering no opinion on this particular decision. She is, in fact, confident that she will have what she needs when she starts her freshman year at the University of Iowa.
She has mom, the family organizer, with her, and dad, the calm encourager. And they have “the list,” which mom printed from one of those “what-you’ll-need-at-college” websites.
New laptop. Check.
UCLA business school to end public funding
A leading business school in the University of California system is preparing to forgo public funding amid increasing uncertainty about the state’s economic health and California’s ability to pay for higher education.
The UCLA Anderson School of Management plans to fill the funding gap with money from private donors, bolstering a roster that includes business figures such as Larry Fink, the founder of BlackRock, and Bill Gross, the founder of Pimco.
Its decision to opt out, which is awaiting the approval of Mark Yudof, president of the UC system, is a clear indication of the broad changes that lie ahead for the network, which was established in the 1960s with a public mandate to provide world-class education to deserving students regardless of their ability to pay.
The system, which includes colleges in Berkeley and San Diego, is seen as one of California’s jewels yet has struggled in recent years as the state has grappled with the recession and plunging tax revenues.
California faces a budget deficit of more than $19bn while the UC system itself has a funding shortfall of $800m, forcing schools and colleges in the network to cut classes and raise tuition fees. This has prompted a wave of protests on campuses across the state.
School Voucher Breakout A bipartisan endorsement in Pennsylvania.
This is an encouraging season for education reform, and the latest development is a bipartisan political breakout on vouchers in the unlikely state of Pennsylvania.
Last month, and to widespread surprise, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato came out in support of school vouchers for underprivileged kids. Mr. Onorato said that education “grants”–he avoided the term vouchers–“would give low-income families in academically distressed communities direct choices about which schools their children should attend.”
Mr. Onorato’s Republican opponent, state Attorney General Tom Corbett, is also a strong backer of education choice, which means that come November Pennsylvania voters will get to choose between two candidates who are on record in support of a statewide school voucher program.
Mr. Onorato, the Allegheny County Executive, adopted his new position at the urging of state lawmaker Tony Williams, a voucher proponent whom he defeated in a May primary. The speculation is that Mr. Onorato, who trails Mr. Corbett in the polls, is looking to attract financial support from pro-voucher businessmen who backed Mr. Williams in the primary.
The New Black Migration: The Suburbs or Bust
Steven Snead, via a kind reader
Recall now the biblical phrase, “from whence comes my help?” It mentions looking up to the hills and Detroiters are doing just that.
They are looking to the Hills of Bloomfield, Auburn Hills, and Rochester Hills. They are looking to the rich green lawns of Troy, Sterling Heights, Farmington, and Gross Pointe. And yes, they are looking to their excellent schools too.
I have no doubt that this mother’s prayers have been duplicated by thousands of Detroit parents. The results of the 2010 census will no doubt show that minority populations have increased in suburban cities and overall population in Detroit will yet again hit an all time low. So while they desperately scramble to enroll their children in charter schools and suburban schools of choice, parents still have their compass set due north. Way north.
This is the New Black Migration. And if school leaders cannot devise a way to make the city schools a viable option for parents who want the best for their children, it will be a migration whose tide will know no end.
Clusty Search: Steven Snead.
Related: Madison Preparatory Academy.
Private vs Public Education
The lawn is meticulously manicured, as if the groundskeeper’s tools include a cuticle scissors. Classic brick buildings, a bell tolling the hour and concrete lion statues almost convince me that I’m at an East Coast college. But this is Lakeside School in Northeast Seattle.
This is where super-achievers went to school – Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Craig McCaw to name a few. Many of Seattle’s affluent families send their kids here for a challenging private education. With an acceptance rate of 24 percent, Lakeside is the most elite private high school in the Northwest. This photo of Bliss Hall was taken before the current renovation project started.
So what was I doing there? Just wandering, and wondering if my children would have a better start in life if they went to private schools.
“As someone who has experienced both public schooling and private schooling, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind: sending your child to a private school is one of the best decisions you can make for him or her,” says Peter Rasmussen, a recent Lakeside alumnus. “In retrospect, if my parents made me pay my tuition all by myself, I would have. That’s how valuable a Lakeside education is.”
Educate the public on teacher performance
The Los Angeles Times last week did what few, if any, school districts are willing to do — analyze teacher performance over multiple years with the intent of making the results of that analysis available to teachers and parents, alike. Teacher union representatives have been quick to condemn the newspaper’s plans to post this information online in a searchable database. But U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and no few teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District saw merit in the project, as do we.
Public education can benefit from more transparency. The disclosure of data on student achievement and teacher effectiveness can be a good thing — for teachers, parents and American education.
“Too often our systems keep all of our teachers in the dark about the quality of their own work,” Duncan told an audience in Little Rock, Ark. “In other fields, we talk about success constantly, with statistics and other measures to prove it. Why, in education, are we scared to talk about what success looks like?”
It seems a great many teachers have no such fear. Duncan noted that more than 2,000 Los Angeles teachers had called the Times last week to ask for their scores.
The concern has always been that achievement tests are not a reliable or complete measure of teacher eectiveness. It’s a valid concern. Certainly, test scores are not a complete measure, and should never be used as such in decisions on hiring, firing or career advancement. Whether or not test scores can be a reliable, or fair, measure depends on how thorough and careful the analysis.
Parents use ‘digital’ grounding as a 21st century disciplinary tool
Not so long ago, teenagers in trouble got grounded. They lost their evenings out, maybe the keys to the family car. But lately the art of family discipline has begun to reflect our digital age.
Now parents seize cellphones, shut down Facebook pages, pull the plug on PlayStation.
That’s how it went in Silver Spring last school year, when Iantha Carley’s high-schooler got a midterm grade report that contained letters of the alphabet that were not A, B or C.
Carley decreed there would be no more Facebook until he delivered a report card with better grades. The result: six weeks offline. “He lived,” Carley reports, “with no lasting damage.”
Her approach has become increasingly common as technology has changed so much about growing up, including what teenagers value most. For the digital generation, the priority isn’t always going out with friends. It’s being with them – in text, online.
Educational Gaps Limit Brazil’s Reach
When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in as Brazil’s president in early 2003, he emotionally declared that he had finally earned his “first diploma” by becoming president of the country.
One of Brazil’s least educated presidents — Mr. da Silva completed only the fourth grade — soon became one of its most beloved, lifting millions out of extreme poverty, stabilizing Brazil’s economy and earning near-legendary status both at home and abroad.
But while Mr. da Silva has overcome his humble beginnings, his country is still grappling with its own. Perhaps more than any other challenge facing Brazil today, education is a stumbling block in its bid to accelerate its economy and establish itself as one of the world’s most powerful nations, exposing a major weakness in its newfound armor.
“Unfortunately, in an era of global competition, the current state of education in Brazil means it is likely to fall behind other developing economies in the search for new investment and economic growth opportunities,” the World Bank concluded in a 2008 report.
An analysis of Tennessee School Performance
Education Consumers Foundation:
Tennessee schools are measured on two things: achievement, seen in standardized assessment and ACT results; and growth, reported through the state’s value-added assessment system. For the first time, parents and other Tennessee citizens can plot the performance of their child’s school and others across the district or state through the ECF’s interactive Growth vs. Achievement Charts.
To view charts for each major grade level grouping, visit the following links:
In a New Role, Teachers Move to Run Schools
Shortly after landing at Malcolm X Shabazz High School as a Teach for America recruit, Dominique D. Lee grew disgusted with a system that produced ninth graders who could not name the seven continents or the governor of their state. He started wondering: What if I were in charge?
Three years later, Mr. Lee, at just 25, is getting a chance to find out. Today, Mr. Lee and five other teachers — all veterans of Teach for America, a corps of college graduates who undergo five weeks of training and make a two-year commitment to teaching — are running a public school here with 650 children from kindergarten through eighth grade.
As the doors opened on Thursday at Brick Avon Academy, they welcomed students not as novice teachers following orders from the central office, but as “teacher-leaders.”
“This is a fantasy,” Mr. Lee said. “It’s six passionate people who came together and said: ‘Enough is enough.’ We’re just tired of seeing failure.”
Camp trains students in classical theater acting
A group of high school thespians sharpened their skills this summer at a camp where they worked with professional actors by day and then watched them perform at American Players Theatre at night.
The 27 students ages 13 to 17 attended Acting for Classical Theatre, an American Players Theatre residential camp. The annual six-day camp was based at Bethel Horizons Camp and Retreat Center in Dodgeville where the campers received their training and lodging.
On four nights, they traveled to the nearby American Players Theatre in Spring Green to watch Shakespearean plays. On another night, they received a backstage tour. When they got back to camp, they played theater games — despite the late hour.
On the last day, parents and American Players Theatre employees were invited to watch the youth perform a shortened, 60-minute version of Hamlet on the American Players Theatre stage.
States Test Out New Math Changes to Education Laws Kick In as School Year Begins; Makeover in Chicago
When Marshall High School opens for the new school year Tuesday, it will have an almost entirely new teaching staff, a revamped curriculum and a $2 million infusion of federal money.
The students and teachers at Marshall–a hulking three-story building on the city’s violent West Side known as much for its powerhouse basketball teams as its abysmal test scores–are among millions nationwide who will see changes this fall as part of President Barack Obama’s push to overhaul K-12 public schools.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has used much of his $100 billion budget–almost twice what his recent predecessors had–to lure states into reshaping schools through programs such as Race to the Top and school transformations like the one Marshall is undergoing.
“Mainly, this is a year to lay a foundation for the long-term reforms that will get all students college-ready,” said Gene Wilhoit, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, a nonpartisan group of state school chiefs.
Teaching for a Shared Future: American Educators Need to Think Globally
Esther Wojcicki & Michael Levine, via a Kris Olds email:
American students’ lack of knowledge about the world is unsettling.
According to surveys by National Geographic and Asia Society, young Americans are next to last in their knowledge of geography and current affairs compared to peers in eight other countries, and the overwhelming majority of college-bound seniors cannot find Afghanistan, Iraq or Israel on a world map.
Less than one half of today’s high school students study a foreign language, and while a million study French, a language spoken by some 80 million worldwide, less than 75,000 study Chinese, a language spoken by some 1.3 billion. Minority students especially have little access to global topics taught in “higher performing” schools, ranging from languages and economics to exchanges, arts and cultural activities.
The typical teacher or supervisor is not prepared to address this gap: most educators have not taken any international courses and comparatively few participate in study abroad programs.
Schools: The Disaster Movie A debate has been raging over why our education system is failing. A new documentary by the director of An Inconvenient Truth throws fuel on the fire.
The Harlem-based educator and activist Geoffrey Canada first met the filmmaker Davis Guggenheim in 2008, when Canada was in Los Angeles raising money for the Children’s Defense Fund, which he chairs. Guggenheim told Canada that he was making a documentary about the crisis in America’s schools and implored him to be in it. Canada had heard this pitch before, more times than he could count, from a stream of camera-toting do-gooders whose movies were destined to be seen by audiences smaller than the crowd on a rainy night at a Brooklyn Cyclones game. Canada replied to Guggenheim as he had to all the others: with a smile, a nod, and a distracted “Call my office,” which translated to “Buzz off.”
Then Guggenheim mentioned another film he’d made–An Inconvenient Truth–and Canada snapped to attention. “I had absolutely seen it,” Canada recalls, “and I was stunned because it was so powerful that my wife told me we couldn’t burn incandescent bulbs anymore. She didn’t become a zealot; she just realized that [climate change] was serious and we have to do something.” Canada agreed to be interviewed by Guggenheim, but still had his doubts. “I honestly didn’t think you could make a movie to get people to care about the kids who are most at risk.”
Two years later, Guggenheim’s new film, Waiting for “Superman,” is set to open in New York and Los Angeles on September 24, with a national release soon to follow. It arrives after a triumphal debut at Sundance and months of buzz-building screenings around the country, all designed to foster the impression that Guggenheim has uncorked a kind of sequel: the Inconvenient Truth of education, an eye-opening, debate-defining, socially catalytic cultural artifact.
Related: An increased emphasis on adult employment – Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s recent speech to the Madison Rotary Club and growing expenditures on adult to adult “professional development“.
Everyone should see this film; Waiting for Superman. Madison’s new Urban League President, Kaleem Caire hosted a screening of The Lottery last spring. (Thanks to Chan Stroman for correcting me on the movie name!)
Caire is driving the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy International Baccalaureate charter school initiative.