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RSS Newsletter·2024 Referendum·Gell-Man Amnesia Effect

The School I’d Like: here is what you wanted


Dea Birkett:

What makes the ideal school? After entries from all over the country, Dea Birkett reveals the Children’s Manifesto of ideas, from comfy beanbags to soothing music and pets
In January we launched the School I’d Like, asking schoolchildren what would make their perfect school. Hundreds of young people let us know in emails, essays, poems and pictures. From these ideas, we’ve compiled the Children’s Manifesto for the school we’d like, overseen and edited by a panel of 10 children. Some of the ideas are blue-sky thinking: horses and sheep in playgrounds may never be the norm. But many are small and easy to implement. First-aid lessons, a choice of uniform and music instead of bells at break time involve little cost or effort.
Behind these specific, modest requests lie big ideas. The most important aspect of education children want changed is the timetable. They wanted their educational experience to be tailored to them. Sausage-machine schooling, with a one-size-fits-all schedule, is their biggest complaint. They don’t want to do less work (although Friday afternoons off was a popular request). They just want work that enthuses and means something to them.

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Sen. Vinehout Says Wisconsin “Can’t Afford” Expanded Voucher Program, Despite a Net Savings of $46.7m to the State in FY 2010

Christian D’Andrea:

Sen. Kathleen Vinehout suggests that we can’t afford expanded school choice in Wisconsin – but history shows that the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program has saved the state hundreds of millions of dollars, especially in areas like Vinehout’s hometown of Alma.
Vinehout’s recent op-ed in the La Crosse Tribune suggested several changes to the proposed 2011 Wisconsin State Budget in order to accommodate potential shifts in fiscal projections over the next two years. One of the Senator’s ideas is to cut any proposed expansions to charter school and MPCP. Her emphasis is clearly worded: “Get rid of the charter school expansion and new private school “choice” vouchers. We can’t afford them.”

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Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)

PARCC

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is a consortium of 25 states working together to develop a common set of K-12 assessments in English and math anchored in what it takes to be ready for college and careers. These new K-12 assessments will build a pathway to college and career readiness by the end of high school, mark students’ progress toward this goal from 3rd grade up, and provide teachers with timely information to inform instruction and provide student support. The PARCC assessments will be ready for states to administer during the 2014-15 school year.
PARCC received an $186 million grant through the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top assessment competition to support the development and design of the next-generation assessment system.

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Christie Picks Newark Schools Chief

Lisa Fleisher & Barbara Martinez:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has selected Cami Anderson, a top New York City schools official, to lead the state-run Newark Public School system, according to several people with knowledge of the selection.
Ms. Anderson, 39 years old, will attempt to reform the largest and one of the most troubled public school systems in the state, a district that is the focal point for Mr. Christie’s education policy. Newark has about 38,000 students, and only half of them graduate from high school in four years.

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An Oakland Unified School District survey on working conditions

Katy Murphy:

Oakland teachers, counselors, principals and other credentialed school-based staff: Friday is the deadline for completing an anonymous online survey about what it’s like to work at each school in the district.
How much time do you spend on various tasks during the school day? Outside of the regular school day? Are efforts made at your school to minimize interruptions, or routine paperwork? How much time do you have to collaborate with other teachers?
The results will be published online, by school, in June — that is, as long as the response rate is at least 50 percent for a given school. If not, those schools will be omitted from the results.So far, roughly one-third have responded, said Ash Solar, who is facilitating the Effective Teaching Task Force. The goal is at least 80 percent. (You can tell how many people from each school have responded by going here.)

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Idea for Discussion: Change the (Seattle School Board) Campaign

Charlie Mas

I’m thinking of making a web site called “Change the Board” in which I – and others – would advocate for the replacement of the school board majority elected in 2007. The site would have a general argument for replacing the board majority in general and would also have specific arguments for replacing each of the four individual board members.
The web site would be just one part of a whole campaign. There would be other parts than just the web site. It would include press efforts, rallies, truth-squads (to critically examine board campaign claims), online ads, and maybe even some yard signs. I’m thinking that we could promote “Change the Board” as an independent effort separate from each of the individual challenger campaigns. I’d like to try to build some momentum behind “Change the Board” that could support all challengers.
The costs on something like this could be pretty minimal.

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Being Upfront about Teacher pay

Michael Rice:

There has been much gnashing of teeth and consternation going on about teacher pay and a 3% pay cut teachers may be forced to swallow. What gets to me more than anything else is the vile comments that get posted afterward when an article is posted on teacher pay in the local newspapers. Given the comments, one would think that teachers were getting rich and not doing much to earn the vast sums of money they make. I have to say I look at that with bemusement. I guess it is time to put my cards on the table.
For regular readers of the SSS blog, you already know my story. However, many of you don’t. I switched careers in my mid 40’s to become a teacher. I am honored to teach math at Rainier Beach HS. I am in my 6th year. I love my job and I love teaching math to students. I think I have a great job. However, here are the facts of my situation.
I hold an undergrad in Accounting and a Masters in Finance. Before I decided to become a teacher, I worked for a bank in investment accounting. In 2003 (my last full year there), I made $75,000 (that included my bonus), had a defined benefit pension plan that my employer fully funded that would make it possible to retire comfortably after 25 years of service with basically with what I would be making in my last year of working, a 401k that the employer matched dollar for dollar up to 4% of my salary. On top of that, my health care was fully paid for and my wife was on the plan at no charge to me also. The plan was a top notch Blue Cross plan with no co-pays and a very, very large network of doctors, dentists, vision and mental health providers available to us. I also had 4 weeks vacation and every holiday off. I also was given a yearly bus pass, so I did not have to drive downtown.

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Why College Is Not A Bubble (Except For The University Of Phoenix)

Anya Kamenetz:

The college-is-a-bubble meme just keeps growing. Student-loan debt surpassed credit-card debt for the first time in history last year. Tuition is rising at three times the rate of inflation, and there are growing concerns about the quality of education offered at even our nation’s fanciest schools. Meanwhile, prominent venture capitalist Peter Thiel is paying young entrepreneurs to drop out of school. It’s become more fashionable than ever to equate higher education with homeownership: once a rock-solid piece of the American Dream, now a fool’s bet and a sad reminder of overinflated expectations.
But in reality, demand for an American-style college education, and the long-term value of said degree, is unlikely to decline any time soon. Here’s why:

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Public given look at Morristown budget

Matt McAllister:

The Board of Education’s budget proposal — which the district wouldn’t release to the public after discussing much of it in an illegal closed-door session in late March — has been outlined in a newsletter mailed last week to district taxpayers.
The Board of Education proposes an $8,637,708 budget with a 5 percent increase in the levy, or amount to be raised by taxes, for the 2011-12 school year. The budget calls for a levy of $3,247,066, up from $3,092,444.
At a meeting in late March, board members went into a 90-minute executive session, purportedly to discuss “personnel” issues. Instead, board members — returning from their closed session once members of the public had left — announced they had adopted the framework for a budget. The board said it would cap increases in the tax levy at 5 percent.
In discussing the budget in private, board members broke state law.

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The Shock Doctrine Case Study: Pennsylvania Public Schools

Timothy D. Slekar:

In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein pushes the concept of how the public can be manipulated during times of catastrophe or perceived crisis. Lately, it has been argued that the “financial crisis” is being used by market-driven reformers to undermine the public services sector. Specifically, if we look at public education, lawmakers are explicitly telling public schools that they will need to deal with less in the future because of state budget deficits. All of this is done with large support from the citizens because they are “shocked” and believe there is an economic crisis and that any publicly-supported service should be drastically cut to help bring back balanced budgets. Simultaneously, “the shockers” offer rewards in corporate tax cuts and in some cases implement new programs that end up costing the taxpayer more than the proposed cuts.
The citizenry is repeatedly told that the only way out of this budget crisis is to cut spending and that individual citizens (taxpayers) should not take on any of the burden. In fact, the propaganda leveled at the taxpayers also paints them as helpless victims that have been milked by greedy public-sector unions. In turn, the general public becomes very supportive of any promise to lift their burden and somewhat celebratory in watching their neighbors (public sector employees) lose, at a minimum, basic benefits.

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Whose school is it anyway? Under proposal, taxpayers could pay for experimental charter schools

Susan Troller

Kaleem Caire has spent much of the last year making a passionate, personal and controversial pitch for a publicly funded male-only charter school called Madison Preparatory that would operate independently of the Madison Metropolitan School District. It aims to serve primarily minority boys in grades six through 12 and their families.
Caire, a Madison native and the president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison, has mustered a great deal of community support by highlighting the struggles of and grim statistics surrounding black and Hispanic young boys and men in Dane County, and through telling his own powerful story of underachievement in Madison’s public schools.
“I learned about racism and lower expectations for minority kids when I arrived the first day at Cherokee Middle School, and all the black boys and a few other minorities sat at tables in the back. I was assigned to remedial math, and even when I showed the teacher I already knew how to do those worksheets, that’s where I was stuck,” Caire says.
With its emphasis on discipline, family involvement, preppy-looking uniforms and a non-negotiable stance on being a union-free school, Caire’s proposal for the boys-only middle and high school has won hundreds of enthusiastic supporters, including a number of prominent conservatives who, surprisingly, don’t seem particularly troubled by the school’s price tag.

Some might argue that certain programs within “traditional” public schools are experimental, such as Connected Math and Small Learning Communities among others.

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Delaware schools: Christina board rescinds vote on reform

Nichole Dobo:

It came down to one interview.
Christina School District teachers at two of the state’s lowest-achieving schools had 20 minutes to prove their worth.
Each was asked the same questions by a panel that included fellow teachers, district administrators and one state Department of Education official. Their answers were the only factors that determined whether each teacher would remain at Glasgow High School or Stubbs Elementary as part of the district’s Race to the Top reforms.
Nineteen were not asked to stay. They will get a job at another district school.

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Official: Mercedes-Benz USA launching its first teen driving school in Los Angeles

Noah Joseph:

Last month we brought you initial news of Mercedes-Benz’s plan to open a teen driving program in the United States, and with the annual California State PTA Convention kicking off in Long Beach, the German automaker’s American subsidiary has confirmed its plans and revealed a few details along the way.
The first such program will open in Los Angeles before similar initiatives are launched across the country. The Mercedes-Benz Driving Academy aims to make new drivers better drivers by integrating their advanced curriculum with the mandated state accreditation process to make for one, all-encompassing program that will take teens from theory through practice and on to their driver’s permit.
Other custom-tailored programs will be offered as well, and Mercedes is also teaming up with Impact Teen Drivers, unfortunately named though it is, to deliver free two-hour parent/teen workshops at 20 schools across the city beginning late this summer. MBUSA is in the process of recruiting the best driving instructors it can get its hands on with a plan to officially open the program this coming October. Details in the press release after the jump, with photos in the gallery below.

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Higher Education Bubble Updates

Mark Perry:

Updates on the higher education bubble (see chart above):
1. Wikipedia now has an entire entry dedicated to the “Higher Education Bubble.”
2. The Harvard Business Review blog has a new post on “The Business School Tuition Bubble.”
3. The Pope Center for Higher Education Policy has a new article on “The Cost of the College Bubble.”

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NEA Affiliates in California and Wisconsin Approach Lean Years Differently.

Mike Antonucci:

Falling enrollment, budget cuts and layoff have led to corresponding declines in membership for most National Education Association state affiliates. Without compensatory action, fewer members mean less dues revenue – a situation these unions have not had to face in recent memory.
As the numbers show quite clearly, even lean times do not mean NEA’s affiliates will become destitute. There is an awful lot of cash flowing through union headquarters around the country. But union officers and representatives are quick to find ways to spend it, particularly on their own employees. Adjusting budgets downwards is not their strong suit.
NEA itself had to revise its budget to account for membership loss and a smaller-than-planned increase in dues. It also froze the pay of its executive officers for the 2011-12 school year.
Two NEA state affiliates – California and Wisconsin – have different troubles to face in different political environments, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they are applying different measures to their fiscal problems.
The California Teachers Association sets its dues level by a formula that involves the average teacher salary over the last three years. With layoffs occurring almost exclusively at the bottom of the salary scale, it actually has the effect of driving up the state’s average teacher salary, and thus the dues level. With fewer members, CTA will raise its dues $8 next fall, to $647. This will mitigate the money lost, but not cover it entirely.
……
WEAC announced the cancellation of its fall convention, citing the uncertainty of whether it will be allowed to bargain the time off for its members. However, holding these events each year is also a budgetary drain, one that other NEA state affiliates have been forced to face.
Despite the serious state of financial affairs, WEAC is allocating up to $2 million for lobbying, legal action and internal communications in order to turn the political tide. It has, and will continue to receive, monetary and manpower assistance from NEA and other affiliates, including California.
These early signs indicate that the likely outcome of the collective bargaining battles in statehouses across the country is financially weaker teachers’ unions – but only relatively. Overall, there may be fewer members and fewer staffers. The unions may require special assessments or higher dues increases just to restore former revenues. But $1.5 billion annually is still an awful lot of money. We may see it applied in concentrated form on the unions’ existential issues, not diffused among feel-good projects.

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DFER and the Ultra-Conservative Money Behind the Voucher Movement

Christina Collins:

If you’ve been wondering what’s behind the recent resurgence of voucher bills in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, Wisconsin and other states, researcher Rachel Tabachnick has done a remarkable job following the money — some of which leads back to Democrats for Education Reform, a group familiar to those who follow school choice debates here in New York. According to her recent two-part series (which can be read here and here), much of the money and support for the voucher movement has come from groups linked to Betsy DeVos,

a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party; daughter of the late Edgar Prince and Elsa Prince-Broekhuizen; sister of Blackwater-founder Erik Prince; and wife of Dick DeVos (son of Richard and Helen DeVos). The Devos side of the family fortune comes from Amway/Alticor, the controversial, multi-tiered home products business. A Center for Public Integrity Report showed that the DeVos family and business interests were the fifth largest contributors in the 2003 -2004 election cycle, with 100% of the donations going to Republicans. Dick and Betsy DeVos have been credited with helping to finance the Citizens United case which allows Super PACs to raise unlimited funds and conceal the donors, meaning that we will no longer know who provides the millions of dollars for the big media campaigns, or reveal the information that I have in this article on the Pennsylvania campaign. The Prince and Devos families have also funded the Family Research Council, Focus on Family, and the ministries of the late D. James Kennedy, all warriors against separation of church and state.

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California Prison Academy: Better Than a Harvard Degree; Prison guards can retire at the age of 55 and earn 85% of their final year’s salary for the rest of their lives. They also continue to receive medical benefits.

Allysia Finley:

Roughly 2,000 students have to decide by Sunday whether to accept a spot at Harvard. Here’s some advice: Forget Harvard. If you want to earn big bucks and retire young, you’re better off becoming a California prison guard.
The job might not sound glamorous, but a brochure from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations boasts that it “has been called ‘the greatest entry-level job in California’–and for good reason. Our officers earn a great salary, and a retirement package you just can’t find in private industry. We even pay you to attend our academy.” That’s right–instead of paying more than $200,000 to attend Harvard, you could earn $3,050 a month at cadet academy.
It gets better.
Training only takes four months, and upon graduating you can look forward to a job with great health, dental and vision benefits and a starting base salary between $45,288 and $65,364. By comparison, Harvard grads can expect to earn $49,897 fresh out of college and $124,759 after 20 years.

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Combining exercise with school lessons could boost brain power

Jeannine Stein:

Physical education classes may be scarce in some schools, but an activity program combined with school lessons could boost academic performance, a study finds.
Research presented recently at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Denver looked at the effects of a 40-minute-a-day, five-day-a-week physical activity program on test scores of first- through sixth-graders at a public school. This program was a little different from most, since it incorporated academic lessons along with exercise.
For example, younger children hopped through ladders while naming colors found on each rung. Older children climbed on a rock wall outfitted with numbers that challenged their math skills. The students normally spent 40 minutes a week in PE class.

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Outsourcing an American Education

Sameer Pandya:

India is considering allowing Western universities to plant satellite campuses directly in the subcontinent’s fertile soil.
There is a bill currently making its way through the Indian parliament — The Foreign Educational Institutions Bill — that would open up for universities in the West, particularly in the U.S., a massive English-speaking market. Massive is the key word. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of Indian students reaching college age who are interested in an education that would allow them to better participate in a globalizing economy.
At first glance, the passage of the bill, which is being pushed ahead by Human Resources Minister Kapil Sibal and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, benefits Western universities by providing them with a growth opportunity and allowing access to a well-educated student population interested in an education whose brand is recognized across the world.

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Cory Doctorow Predicts the Future in Makers

Jonathan Liu:

Perry and Lester are two guys living in an abandoned mall outside of Miami. They’re the sort of guys who, to borrow a phrase from the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, can think up six impossible things before breakfast — and then build them in their workshop out of stuff they’ve found in the junkyard.
In short, they’re makers.
Cory Doctorow’s Makers: A Novel of the Whirlwind Changes to Come is jam-packed with cool ideas. In the book, a lot of these come from Perry and Lester, like a toast-making robot made of seashells or the Distributed Boogie Woogie Elmo Motor Vehicle Operation Cluster, which uses a gaggle of discarded toys to drive a Smart car via voice commands. Now these two examples are pretty silly — something you do just to prove you can, but there’s also some stuff that shows up later in the book that made me think, “Hey, I’d buy one of those!” Parts of the book read like a “Best of Kickstarter” highlights reel.

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State investigation finds problems with Madison talented and gifted program

Matthew DeFour:

The Madison School District is under added pressure to improve how it identifies and educates talented and gifted students after state officials found its program does not comply with state law.
In revealing shortcomings in the district’s offerings for talented and gifted (TAG) students, the Department of Public Instruction challenges the approach some schools, particularly West High School, have used in which all students learn together.
“The district is going to have to face (the question): ‘How do they reconcile their policy of inclusion with honors classes?’?” said Carole Trone, director of the Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth at UW-Madison. “If parents see the other districts are challenging their students more, they might send their students there.”
Developing a comprehensive system to identify TAG students — including testing and staff training — can be expensive, Trone said. Moreover, districts that don’t identify students from all socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds open themselves up to discrimination lawsuits, she said.
Superintendent Dan Nerad said it’s unclear how much such a revamped program will cost.

Much more on the talented & gifted complaint, here.

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Teachers Bring Science to Life, Sponsored by Rayovac

Science & Technology Institute, via a kind reader’s email:

Do you know a teacher who brings learning to life? Whether you’re a student, parent, teacher or school administrator, you can nominate your K-6 teacher for a chance to win an all-expense paid trip to Science in the Rockies, Steve Spangler’s three-day hands-on science teacher training in Denver.

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Good golly, our schools desperately need new leadership

Laurie Rogers, via email:

When our school administrators speak to the public, we often hear one or more of the following:

  • Blaming of others – Typical targets include teachers, parents, students, poverty, and a (fake) lack of money.

  • Deceitful presentation of student outcomes – They’ll speak glowingly of some stray statistic that supposedly shows them in a slightly more positive light, but which also depends on the public not knowing the entire truth of it.
  • Astonishing ignorance or accidental honesty. Sometimes the truth comes out of them – in shocking or comical ways.
  • Requests for more money, on the heels of low student achievement. As pass rates go down, the expense per student continues to increase.
  • New policy that will serve their ulterior purpose, but which will make life more difficult for students, parents and teachers.

And so it went, at two recent gatherings for Spokane Public Schools. Teachers were blamed. Administrators praised themselves. The superintendent’s comments caused a stir. And the school board voted to increase class sizes and cut 90 teachers.
…….
Increased expense for unproved programs
Taxpayers pay for scads of district and community programs devoted to reducing dropout rates and increasing on-time graduation rates. As district expenditures skyrocket, parents are still staring at students’ low pass rates, high dropout rates, high rates of college remediation, and low levels of basic skills.
Dr. Stowell praised the district for obtaining a multi-million-dollar grant for Rogers High School, which suffers from particularly low graduation rates. (Please note the illogic of awarding grants to failing programs because they are failing. Failure thus results in more money.) Dr. Stowell said the grant will pay for longer school days, extra teacher pay, a homework center, and – you knew it was coming – a pilot evaluation for teachers.

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Learning from Data on Ohio E-Schools

Bill Tucker:

Part I of a new blog series exploring data from Ohio e-schools. While online learning is still new to the vast majority of K-12 students and schools, Ohio has operated “e-schools,” public charter schools that operate entirely online and which students “attend” on a full-time basis, for a decade. As policy debates around online learning grow, what do we know about these schools-who do they enroll and how well do they perform-and what can we learn from Ohio’s e-school experience?
In 2001, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), Ohio’s first charter ‘e-school’, opened its doors. Soon there were 27 e-schools across the state. And, despite a moratorium that has prevented any new schools from opening since 2005, total e-school enrollment has skyrocketed to over 29,000 students.

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Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year

Mike Hughlett:

Katy Smith of Winona won Minnesota Teacher of the Year honors Sunday, the first time the 47-year-old award has been bestowed on a teacher who specializes in Early Childhood Family Education.
Smith, 51, a native of the Twin Cities’ western suburbs, has taught in the Winona school district since 1993 and works out of Goodview School. She has long specialized in Early Childhood Family Education, a program available in almost all Minnesota public school districts. The state is a leader nationally in the field, authorities say.
The program is based on the idea that the family provides a child’s first and most significant learning environment and parents are a child’s first and most important teachers, according to the Minnesota Department of Education’s website.
Parents and children from infancy to pre-kindergarten together attend childhood-family education classes.

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School Choice and Urban Diversity: Many more middle-class parents would live in big cities if they could pick the schools their kids attend.

John Norquist:

With several new GOP governors taking power, shock if not awe pervades the Midwest, particularly among those of us who are Democratic urban dwellers. Perhaps the wave of corporate tax breaks, service cuts to the needy, and transfer of school aid from poor to wealthy districts will be undone with the next swing of the political pendulum. Yet there is one GOP budget provision in Wisconsin that I hope survives.
For 20 years there’s been debate about parental school choice, but only a few places actually have it. Milwaukee has had choice since 1991. At first it was very limited–no religious schools, the program restricted to families with very low incomes, and a cap on total enrollment of 1,000. But parents are now able to choose religious schools, the income limit has been raised to 175% of the federal poverty line ($39,113), and the cap has increased to 22,500 students.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has proposed allowing any Milwaukee parent, regardless of income, to enroll their children in private and parochial schools. This will address two problems with the current choice program. One, the cap on total enrollment has forced parents onto waiting lists and into lotteries. Two, the income limit has the effect of isolating low-income students from other more affluent students.
Other jurisdictions, including Florida, Arizona and Cleveland, have choice programs. In Washington, D.C., choice was implemented under President George W. Bush and frozen under President Barack Obama. But Florida’s program requires a public school to fail, with failure measured by the state, not by parents. And all choice programs have limitations that undermine the desire of parents to have their children attend a school in which they have confidence. Yet if you think about it, America already has a school choice program in large metro areas. It’s a system that segregates the poor from the rich and works against Americans who want to live in cities. Here’s how it works.

Clusty Search: John Norquist.

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Macau private teachers demand more pay

Chloe Lai:

Hundreds of private school teachers marched in Macau yesterday to demand the same wages paid by the city’s handful of government schools.
They formed just part of Macau’s May Day protest. Other marchers included construction workers upset at the hiring of illegal workers because of the property boom.
Around 2,000 protesters took part in what has become an annual show of social discontent in the past few years. The 3,000 patacas cash handout announced by Macau Chief Executive Dr Fernando Chui Sai-on last month appeared to have little bearing on their complaints.
The protest yesterday marked the first time teachers took part as an organised group. There were about 500 and included students marching in support. Most complained about the wage differences between private and government schools – some 40 per cent less, teachers’ leader Choi Leong said.

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Corporations to give Minneapolis Public Schools $13.8 million

Brandt Williams:

Four major Minnesota-based corporations announced Monday they will give nearly $14 million to Minneapolis Public Schools.
Target, Cargill, Medtronic and General Mills have pledged to spend the money over the next three years to fund academic and personnel development programs.
Nearly half of the $13.8 million will be donated by Target. Target Foundation President Laysha Ward said the company will focus its contributions on early literacy programs.
“When a recent study at the Annie Casey Foundation shows that one in six students who do not read proficiently by the third grade do not graduate from high school on time, a rate four times greater when compared to proficient readers, we’re compelled to do more,” Ward said.

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A New Measure for Classroom Quality

P. Barker Bausell:

OF all the goals of the education reform movement, none is more elusive than developing an objective method to assess teachers. Studies show that over time, test scores do not provide a consistent means of separating good from bad instructors.
Test scores are an inadequate proxy for quality because too many factors outside of the teachers’ control can influence student performance from year to year — or even from classroom to classroom during the same year. Often, more than half of those teachers identified as the poorest performers one year will be judged average or above average the next, and the results are almost as bad for teachers with multiple classes during the same year.
Fortunately, there’s a far more direct approach: measuring the amount of time a teacher spends delivering relevant instruction — in other words, how much teaching a teacher actually gets done in a school day.

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San Francisco gives parents what they really want: school choice.

Bill Jackson:

GreatSchools is headquartered in San Francisco, home of the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). And it just so happens that San Francisco Unified is on the vanguard of school choice, allowing and encouraging all parents to make a proactive choice about which of the districts’ approximately 160 schools they would like their children to attend.
SFUSD recently completed the “first round” of its school selection process for the 2011-12 school year, and released some interesting information about the process.
Like most districts, SFUSD has the concept of an “attendance area” for elementary schools. Perhaps the most interesting piece of data is that only 23 percent of kindergarten applicants listed their attendance-area school as a first choice. The remainder: 24 percent listed a city-wide school, and 53 percent listed another attendance area school as their first choice.
Other findings:

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Ed Secretary encourages educators to challenge the status quo

Margaret Reist:

The U.S. Secretary of Education said Friday he was impressed with Nebraska’s P-16 initiative — a coalition of state education, business and government leaders — and a sense of cohesion and commitment to education.
“To see all these leaders from across the state come together to really challenge the status quo and drive the state to new heights actually is extraordinarily encouraging to me,” said Arne Duncan, who met Friday with state and local education leaders at the governor’s mansion.
In a short news conference after a closed-door meeting with education leaders, Duncan touched on the No Child Left Behind law and the cost of college education. He said the Obama administration will invest in community colleges and in early education.
“At the end of the day, my goal and (the) president’s goal is to again lead the world in college graduates,” he said.

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Wisconsin Public Hearing on Special Needs Scholarship

Brian Pleva Government Affairs Associate: American Federation for Children-Wisconsin, via a kind reader’s email:

Does contain the info you need?Good afternoon!
I am writing to you because you recently expressed an interest in the bipartisan Wisconsin Special Needs Scholarship Act (Assembly Bill 110).
As you may know, the bill would allow parents to enroll their special needs children in the public or private school of their choice with the education dollars following the child to the new school. The bill, introduced by Representatives Michelle Litjens, Jason Fields & Evan Wynn, and Senators Leah Vukmir & Terry Moulton, has impressive momentum:
-AB 110 has attracted Republican, Democrat, and Independent cosponsors
-32 members of the Assembly have signed on to AB 110, which is over one-third of that house’s current membership
-5 members of the Assembly Committee on Education have signed-on to AB 110, which is almost half of the 11-member committee
Fortunately, Assembly Education Committee Chair Rep. Steve Kestell decided today to schedule a Public Hearing on the Special Needs Scholarship Act for 10:00 am, next Tuesday, May 3rd.
This opportunity can pave the way toward making Special Needs Scholarships in Wisconsin a reality. It is crucial that as many affected families and school leaders as possible attend this public hearing and tell committee members, in their own words, what these scholarships would mean to them.
Please respond to this email and confirm whether you would be able to advocate for this legislation at the public hearing.
One parent wrote on our Facebook page, “It’s so important! Why doesn’t EVERYBODY get that???!!” It may be difficult to comprehend, but there are powerful, special interest groups that don’t get it and will be working to defeat this bipartisan legislation.
While an impressive list of parents who wish to testify is growing, we know that opponents of education reform are always represented at these hearings. Therefore, please forward this email to friends, family, and colleagues who you think will be supportive. The momentum is encouraging, but we must keep it up!
If you have any questions about the bill or public hearing, please feel free to contact me, and check out our website: http://www.specialneedsscholarshipswi.org/.
Thank you!
Brian Pleva
Government Affairs Associate
American Federation for Children-Wisconsin
(608) 279-9484
Assembly
PUBLIC HEARING
Committee on Education
The committee will hold a public hearing on the following items at the time specified below:
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
10:00 AM
417 North (GAR Hall)
State Capitol
Assembly Bill 110
Relating to: creating the Special Needs Scholarship Program for disabled pupils, granting rule-making authority, and making an appropriation.
By Representatives Litjens, Fields, Wynn, Knudson, Nass, Pridemore, Thiesfeldt, Vos, Kleefisch, LeMahieu, Nygren, Strachota, Bernier, Bies, Brooks, Endsley, Farrow, Honadel, Jacque, Knilans, Kooyenga, Kramer, Krug, Kuglitsch, T. Larson, Mursau, Petryk, Rivard, Severson, Spanbauer, Tiffany and Ziegelbauer; cosponsored by Senators Vukmir, Moulton, Galloway and Darling.
An Executive Session may be held on AB 71 at the conclusion of the public hearing.
Representative Steve Kestell
Chair

Wisconsin Special Needs Scholarship Assembly Bill 110 Summary (PDF).

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Parents need to learn cyberbullying is a real and serious threat to youngsters, not just some silly, minor issue

Ken Chan:

Members of the younger generation in today’s Hong Kong are different from their parents, who grew up watching only television. Technology, in the form of the internet, has given them a more interactive medium, with two-way communication and an ability to have a say in things and express opinions. However, this new environment that young people take completely for granted has hidden dangers in the form of bullying and intimidation.
Online, people can persecute or harass others behind a shield of anonymity. It is a world where the bullies may not see the impact of their work; they may think what they are doing is funny, or they may not realise the consequences of their behaviour. Incriminating or embarrassing words or pictures placed online by others may come back to haunt people later when they apply for college or a job.

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Berkeley struggles to keep guns out of schools

Jill Tucker:

On the morning of March 21, shortly after school began, a Berkeley High School student snuck into a bathroom stall with a gun to show it to a friend.
Suddenly the weapon fired, the bullet ripping through the bathroom’s thin outer wall and across a busy downtown street. Had the boys been facing the other direction, the bullet would have flown into a classroom full of students.
No one was injured, but it was the fifth gun discovered at the district’s two high schools since January, a cluster of incidents that has sent parents into a panic and district administrators scrambling to address the new and disturbing trend.
The presence of guns on campus is not just Berkeley’s problem.
According to state and national surveys, 6 percent of high school students say they have brought a gun to school at least once. That’s the equivalent of at least 210 guns at Berkeley High School with its enrollment of 3,500 students.

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What Computer Game Design can Teach us for Lesson Design

Kirsten Winkler:

One of the core features of computer games besides the graphics, sounds and story is something you don’t notice immediately. Some games do not do it very well but some became famous for it: Game Artificial Intelligence.
From the humble beginnings in games like Pacman to the great successes we know today like the Halo series, Game AI showed generations of kids that a computer can be pretty smart and sometimes even mean. Some of the better computer games adapt to the way the player reacts and then find new ways to compete. The aim is of course to keep the player interested in the game and engaged in the sense to make it just as difficult to challenge the player’s skills but on the other hand not to make it too frustrating or impossible to win.
Another part of good game design is that the controls are self explanatory and most gamers won’t be bothered with reading a manual before starting the game. If something is boring and thus means the player understood a strategy or principle of the game there needs to be a way to skip it and move on.

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The Michigan proposals and their prospects

Detroit Free Press:

The plan:
• School districts where students show an average of one year academic growth per year of instruction would get bonus money, on top of per-pupil state aid. Some individual schools might qualify. In the 2012-13 School Aid Fund, $300 million would be set aside for rewards.
• Some funding for all districts would be tied to achievement, not enrollment.
• Tougher standards for individual schools to ensure academic progress.
• Require all districts to develop online dashboard that shows funding and academic progress. Prohibit districts from paying more than 80% of employee health care; those that fail would lose some state per-pupil funding.

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Tennessee House Republicans clear way to end collective bargaining for teachers

Richard Locker:

House Republican leaders have backed away from an earlier stand that teachers be allowed to continue collective bargaining on base salaries and benefits, clearing the way for total repeal of bargaining between teachers and school boards.
The Tennessee Education Association, which represents 52,000 of the state’s 65,000 public classroom teachers, plans to continue lobbying House members before Tuesday’s key committee vote in hopes of a last-ditch compromise. But TEA spokesman Jerry Winters said teacher morale “is horrible” and warned that if the negotiations law is repealed, “we’re going to make sure that they go before these school boards and wear them out on some of these issues.”
The Senate will likely approve the repeal bill Monday, after deferring its planned vote Thursday to give members time to review another new amendment by the bill’s sponsor. Minutes later, House Speaker Beth Harwell endorsed the Senate version, which she said resulted from talks with House Republican leaders.

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Indiana Governor signs teacher quality bill, part of sweeping education reforms

wane.com:

Governor Mitch Daniels signed Senate Enrolled Act 1 Saturday, a key measure in his comprehensive education reform package that changes the way teachers are evaluated and paid.
According to the governor’s office, for the first time in Indiana, teacher effectiveness will be part of decisions for hiring, salary and promotions.
“Among all the things we can do to make more successful the children of this state, nothing comes close to a better teacher. We are so glad that Indiana has leaped to the forefront by saying to people of all backgrounds and all walks of life, ‘come and teach,'” Daniels said, surrounded by Hoosier teachers from such organizations as Stand for Children, Students First and Teach for America.
Sen. Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, was the author of the bill; Rep. Robert Behning, R-Indianapolis was the sponsor.
Among provisions, the measure:

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Seattle Schools confirms grade tampering at Ingraham

Brittany Wong:

Grade tampering suspected at three Seattle high schools has been confirmed only at Ingraham High School, according to Seattle Public Schools.
It’s the only school “that we’ve been able to verify that a grade has been changed so far,” spokeswoman Teresa Wippel said.
Earlier in the week, a school-district official said it was possible there had been grade tampering at Ballard and Chief Sealth high schools, too.

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New Jersey Gov. Christie calls NJEA a ‘political thuggery operation’ in speech at Harvard

Ginger Gibson:

Gov. Chris Christie took his fight with the state’s largest teacher’s union to Harvard on Friday, repeating his claims that the New Jersey Education Association is the source of most education problems and calling them a “political thuggery operation.”
The governor also acknowledged he has thought about the tough rhetoric he uses when describing the union, but said he would only stop if he is convinced the NJEA is willing to help change “the failed system.”
Speaking to about 250 students and professors at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, Christie said his battle with the NJEA “is the only fight worth having,” drawing applause.
“They’re there to protect the lowest performers, to protect a system of post-production compensation,” Christie said of the union. “For you to believe that’s for the kids, you have to believe that a child will learn better under the warm comforting knowledge that a teacher pays nothing for their health benefits.”

Richard Perez-Pena:

Conservatives may see Harvard as the heart of liberal darkness, but on Friday it gave a warm, even enthusiastic reception to Gov. Chris Christie and his ideas on education overhaul.
Speaking to almost 200 students and staff members at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the New Jersey governor drew rounds of applause with his talk of sharply limiting teacher tenure, rigorously evaluating teachers and administrators, curbing the power of teachers’ unions and pledging to appoint more-conservative justices to the State Supreme Court.
Mr. Christie’s first ovation came when he said, “The reason I’m engaging in this battle with the teachers’ union is because it’s the only fight worth having.”
he ground he covered would be familiar to anyone who has watched the town hall-style forums in New Jersey that have made Mr. Christie a YouTube star. There, at least a few detractors usually show up to question him, and his policies and pugnacious statements can make even some supporters uncomfortable.
But here, during Mr. Christie’s 40-minute opening talk and a question-and-answer session of the same length, the response was less equivocal.

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UW-Milwaukee holds its 12 charter schools accountable and is getting promising results

Alan Borsuk:

The doorbell wasn’t working when Bob Kattman visited a school recently. Kattman sent the principal an email afterward saying that he expected that wouldn’t be the case the next time he arrived.
Kattman isn’t particularly meddlesome or picky – in fact, his reputation is the opposite. But he has expectations for what he wants to see in a school. An orderly, functioning atmosphere where things like doorbells work is part of the recipe.
Other critical ingredients: strong school leadership, a united and energized staff, a clear academic program (although what the program is can vary widely), a focus on achievement, skillful use of data, an effective character education program for students and a climate in which everyone from the principal to the students is continuously asks how to do things better.
The success overall of the dozen schools in Milwaukee that Kattman oversees as head of the charter school office at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is one of the most important and promising developments on the education scene in Milwaukee and perhaps well beyond.

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Education in Turkey: Inspiring or insidious

Delphine Strauss:

In one corner of the courtyard, green-painted railings enclose the tomb of a saint. In another, a pair of 12-year-old boys in spotless white shirts and neatly pressed trousers politely answer visitors’ questions. In Diyarbakir, a city in Turkey’s Kurdish south-east where many children work on the streets or land in jail for throwing stones at security forces, these two have come to prepare for high school entrance exams. Asked what they want to do later, one says “doctor” and the other, grinning, declares “police”.
They are attending a study house run by supporters of Fethullah Gulen – a preacher who has inspired the creation of a vast network of schools and student dormitories that blend academic rigour, especially in the sciences, with a moral education based on Islamic principles.
“It’s not just explaining English or maths – it’s explaining what it means to be a good or bad person,” says the director of Diyarbakir’s 20 study houses. “In this system teachers come to school earlier, become friends with students and care about the relationship….In none of our schools do we teach religion. We tell them what’s right and wrong. We show them good and bad practice, and they decide.”
But in Turkey, opinion is sharply divided between those who see Mr Gulen as a force for social mobility and tolerance, and those who suspect he is insidiously undermining the country’s secular foundations. His followers have been described as “Islamic Jesuits” – and as Turkey’s equivalent of Opus Dei. Yet there is little doubt that the movement he inspires is now an important force shaping Turkish society, part of a broader evolution in which leaders emerging from a religious, business-minded middle class are gradually eclipsing older, fiercely secular, elites.

www.fethullahgulen.org.

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State looks at home schooling pay plan: Schools chief suggests districts pay bills directly – not reimburse

Jordan Schrader:

It’s not home schooling, but it’s not traditional school either: There is a range of arrangements parents can make to enroll kids in public schools while keeping them at home.
With help from the Internet and oversight by teachers, parents in many of the so-called Alternative Learning Experiences, or ALEs, have wide authority to chart their children’s course. But state officials are taking steps to rein in activities seen as inappropriate for taxpayers to fund.
A rule Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn’s office has developed would stop school districts from reimbursing parents of at-home enrolled students for what they buy. Instead, districts would pay directly for equipment and activities.
Reimbursements, also called stipends or parent accounts, can be used to pay for textbooks and basic supplies or for instruction in areas such as fine arts and physical education. A 2005 state audit found it was common for schools to pay for opportunities most students don’t have: private gym memberships; music or horseback-riding lessons; ski rentals, lessons and lift tickets.
“Stipends can give the impression that ALE programs are essentially publicly financed home schooling,” the superintendent’s office said in a February description of concerns about the present rules.

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KIPP criticizes its college graduation record

Jay Matthews:

Many people, including commenters on this blog, say the people running the KIPP charter school network—the best known and most successful in the country—don’t explain themselves enough. That may be, but KIPP provides more information about its efforts to raise student achievement than any other charter network, or most school districts for that matter.
One example is its report, just released, on how many KIPP graduates have so far graduated from college: “The Promise of College Completion: KIPP’s Early Successes and Challenges.”
The report is a bit of a stretch in terms of KIPP taking credit or blame, since the students surveyed left KIPP more than a decade ago at the end of eighth grade. But KIPP co-founders Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg made preparing kids for college their chief goal when they started the first KIPP middle schools in Houston and the South Bronx in 1995. That is still their main target. They say they are determined to report how that effort is going no matter what statistical qualms they may hear from people like me.

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Research Uncovers Raised Rate of Autism

Claudia Wallis:

An ambitious six-year effort to gauge the rate of childhood autism in a middle-class South Korean city has yielded a figure that stunned experts and is likely to influence the way the disorder’s prevalence is measured around the world, scientists reported on Monday.
The figure, 2.6 percent of all children aged 7 to 12 in the Ilsan district of the city of Goyang, is more than twice the rate usually reported in the developed world. Even that rate, about 1 percent, has been climbing rapidly in recent years — from 0.6 percent in the United States in 2007, for example.
But experts said the findings did not mean that the actual numbers of children with autism were rising, simply that the study was more comprehensive than previous ones.

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The Story of a Successful Non-Charter School in New York City

A thought-provoking article about a successful district middle school in the Bronx in a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine has led to some interesting public responses from charter advocates in New York. As the article notes, this school’s principal and teachers combine innovative teaching and learning (such as a dual-language immersion program for its high proportion of English Language Learners) with a firm commitment to serving all students who want to come — even if, unlike at charters, those students arrive in the middle of the year or as transfers in upper grades.
One of the most negative reactions to the piece has come from former Chancellor Joel Klein, who (in an email exchange with the reporter) responded defensively to the article’s implied criticism of his own administration’s support for charters:

A thought-provoking article about a successful district middle school in the Bronx in a recent issue of the New York Times Magazine has led to some interesting public responses from charter advocates in New York. As the article notes, this school’s principal and teachers combine innovative teaching and learning (such as a dual-language immersion program for its high proportion of English Language Learners) with a firm commitment to serving all students who want to come — even if, unlike at charters, those students arrive in the middle of the year or as transfers in upper grades.
One of the most negative reactions to the piece has come from former Chancellor Joel Klein, who (in an email exchange with the reporter) responded defensively to the article’s implied criticism of his own administration’s support for charters:

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The more things change: School finance edition

Steve Prestegard:

Several media outlets, including the Grant County Herald Independent in Lancaster (the first newspaper I worked for, back when Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush were president) and the Wisconsin State Journal, are reporting an unprecedented number of teacher retirements as the latest consequence of Gov. Scott Walker’s attempt to defang public employee unions.
The Herald Independent’s story (to which I can’t post since the Herald Independent is not online, so you’ll have to trust me) includes a number of teachers from not just my days at the Herald Independent, but from my wife’s days as a Lancaster High School student.
That is big news. It would be unprecedented big news if your memory includes only years that begin with the number 2. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s (and possibly before that), the state would occasionally encourage early retirements as, yes, a way to reduce spending on employee compensation, since the teachers in the classroom the longest were the highest paid given how teachers’ pay is set.
In those days, the “rule of 85” applied — if your age and years as a teacher (or other government employee, although I don’t recall covering other government employee retirements) totaled 85 (for instance, you were 55 years old and you had taught for 30 years), you could retire with full benefits. The “rule of 85” appears to have been replaced by “the rule of 30” — full retirement benefits kick in for anyone in the Wisconsin Retirement System with 30 years’ service, although retiring employees younger than 57 have reduced benefits until their 57th birthday.

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McDonnell’s Progressive Agenda: Teacher Performance-Pay

Krystal Ball:

This week Governor McDonnell announced, as part of his “Opportunity to Learn” education reform agenda, an initiative to institute performance-pay at Virginia schools that are designated as “hard to staff.”
While performance-pay is supported by President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, many Democrats side with teachers unions in opposing performance-pay. I have been critical of many aspects of Governor McDonnell’s education policy including his lack of adequate funding and partisan decision not to participate in Race to the Top. This latest initiative however, is worthy of support.

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Indiana OKs broadest private school voucher system in US, as governor mulls White House bid

Associated Press:

Indiana will create the nation’s broadest private school voucher system and enact other sweeping education changes, making the state a showcase of conservative ideas just as Gov. Mitch Daniels nears an announcement on whether he will make a 2012 presidential run.
The Republican-controlled state legislature handed Daniels a huge victory Wednesday when the House voted 55-43 to give final approval to a bill creating the voucher program that would allow even middle-class families to use taxpayer money to send their children to private schools.

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K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: T he Great Recession’s Impact on State Pension and Retiree Health Care Costs

Pew Center on the States:

In the midst of the Great Recession and severe investment declines, the gap between the promises states made for employees’ retirement benefits and the money they set aside to pay for them grew to at least $1.26 trillion in fiscal year 2009, resulting in a 26 percent increase in one year.
State pension plans represented slightly more than half of this shortfall, with $2.28 trillion stowed away to cover $2.94 trillion in long-term liabilities–leaving about a $660 billion gap, according to an analysis by the Pew Center on the States. Retiree health care and other benefits accounted for the remaining $604 billion, with assets totaling $31 billion to pay for $635 billion in liabilities. Pension funding shortfalls surpassed funding gaps for retiree health care and other benefits for the first time since states began reporting liabilities for the latter in fiscal year 2006.
Precipitous revenue declines in fiscal year 2009 severely depleted state coffers and constrained their ability to pay their annual retirement bills. States’ own actuaries recommended that they contribute nearly $115 billion to build up enough assets to fully fund their promises over the long term, but they contributed only $73 billion–or 64 percent of the total annual bill. This 2009 payment represents a three percentage point decline from the previous fiscal year’s contribution, when they set aside just under $72 billion toward a $108 billion requirement.

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Few hear how Sheboygan Area School District budget will be cut

Janet Ortegon:

If people are upset about the Sheboygan Area School District’s proposed $13.8 million in cuts to balance the 2011-12 budget, they didn’t come to Tuesday’s school board meeting to say so.
At the board’s regular meeting, Superintendent Joe Sheehan took the members through the proposed cuts quickly, fielded a few questions and didn’t elaborate at all on more than $73,000 in cuts in co-curricular activities.
The meeting was held at the North High School Commons, but the roughly 40-person crowd didn’t come close to filling it up. No one other than school officials or board members spoke about the cuts.

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Plagiarism and the Web: Myths and Realities

Turnitin.com:

The move to a digital culture is raising a new set of challenges for educators. This study examines the Internet sources that students commonly use and provides educators with ideas to help students develop better citation and writing skills.

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The pressure’s on for Texas, California teams at Academic Decathlon

Rick Rojas:

For weeks leading up to the national Academic Decathlon, two teams — from California and Texas — have been sizing each other up from afar, rekindling a rivalry nearly as old as the competition itself.
Each team has something to prove: Granada Hills Charter High School wants to maintain California’s winning streak for the ninth consecutive year; Dobie High School, on the outskirts of Houston, wants to show that Texas, dormant as a frontrunner since 2000, is ready to be a contender again.
On Friday, Dobie upped the ante when it narrowly beat Granada Hills in the Super Quiz, the only public portion of the intense, two-day competition. (They’ll find out who won overall here Saturday.)
The pressure has been on since the recent state-level competitions, when Dobie won in Texas with a score only 300 points lower than Granada Hills’ winning score in California. In a competition where good teams score more than 50,000 points, that kind of margin is akin to, according to one description, a football game with a score of 20 to 20.4.

Waukesha South High School scored 37,477.

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UW-Madison’s Average Family Income is $90,000?

Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab:

Based on the tweets from today’s student conversation with Chancellor Martin, there’s a big myth running around campus:
No, the average family income of UW-Madison students isn’t $90,000.
That number came from reports like these that were discontinued back in 2008. Why were they discontinued? Because the data they are based on is a train wreck. The information comes from students’ self-reporting of their parents’ income when they were in high school (reporting is done on the ACT questionnaire) and according to UW-Madison’s office of academic planning and analysis 30% of UW-Madison students left the question blank (and that percent has been rising over time).
Is it a high estimate? A low one? Well, what we know is that a study done by two La Follette professors using Census blocks to estimate income (better than student self-report most likely) finds that family income at UW-Madison for Wisconsin residents isn’t very out-of-whack with Wisconsin family incomes as a whole. For example, families of Wisconsin applicants to Madison have incomes that are 1.2 to 1.3% higher than the state average.

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Ohio Districts best able to afford local taxes face biggest cuts

Jim Siegel:

As legislators look for ways to take some of the sting out of Gov. John Kasich’s school-funding plan, a Dispatch analysis finds that the districts that would feel the deepest cuts are generally those where taxpayers are making the least effort to fund their schools.
Using Department of Education data that attempt to measure how much taxpayers give to their schools compared with their ability to pay, the computer analysis suggests that, on average, districts facing the biggest percentage cuts are also those where residents could most afford to pay more in local taxes.
Kasich’s school-funding plan, which would cut $852million from schools over two years, leaves no district unscathed. But it is designed to protect poorer districts that rely more heavily on state funding to run their schools.

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Seattle Schools Students Steal Teacher Passwords, Alter Grades

Riya Bhattacharjee:

We just received a tip that Seattle Public School students are using high-tech to steal teacher passwords, hack systems, and alter grades. I am waiting for SPS to confirm this.
According to an email sent by the district’s Chief Informational Officer Jim Ratchford at 11:15 a.m. today to SPS employees, including Interim Superintendent Susan Enfield, Department of Technology Services has determined that network log-in credentials “are being stolen and used to inappropriately access district systems.”
The email, whose subject line reads “Unauthorized Access Warning,” says that the incident “appears to have been going on for the last few weeks, possibly longer.” “At this point, we are aware of this happening at these schools: Ballard, Ingraham, and Sealth. However, all schools and teachers are at risk,” Ratchford says in his email.

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Two-thirds of Madison teachers joined protests, district says

Matthew DeFour:

Two-thirds of Madison teachers participated in at least one day of a coordinated four-day absence in February to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to curb collective bargaining, according to information released by the school district Friday.
According to the district, 1,769 out of 2,655 teachers took time off during the four days without a legitimate excuse. The records also show 84 teachers submitted fraudulent sick notes; 38 received suspensions for failing to rescind the notes by April 15, a deadline set by the district.
The exact number of teachers who caused school to shut down on Feb. 16-18 and 21 was unknown until now. The numbers “validate our decision to close our schools,” Superintendent Dan Nerad said in a statement.
“We realize the challenges that our students’ families experienced as a result of these school closings,” Nerad said. “So we appreciate that we have been able to return since then to normal school schedules and that students have returned to advancing their learning through the work of our excellent staff members.”
Madison Teachers Inc. Executive Director John Matthews acknowledged Feb. 15 that the union was encouraging members to call in sick to attend protests at the Capitol. It was the union’s first coordinated work stoppage since 1,900 out of 2,300 teachers called in sick to protest contract negotiations in September 1997.
On Friday, Matthews emphasized that teachers accepted the consequences of their actions by agreeing to docked pay for the days missed. He called the suspension letters “a badge of honor for standing up for workplace justice.”

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Gates to help schools adopt common core standards

Associated Press:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Wednesday it would be investing $20 million to bring new national education standards into the classroom using game-based learning, social-networking and other approaches to capture the imagination of bored or unmotivated students.
The Seattle-based foundation is partnering with the nonprofit arm of one of the largest textbook publishers in the United States to create the new learning tools and offer some of the materials for teachers and school districts to use for free. It is also working with education game developers and an online public school in Florida for this project.
Judy Codding, the Pearson Foundation executive leading the course development team, said during a news conference that her organization already planned to be involved in developing new ways to help teachers adopt the new national education standards that will replace local learning goals in more than 40 states.
The partnership with the Gates Foundation offers the philanthropic side of the textbook company the money it needs to really innovate and try out new ideas that catch kids’ attention, said Codding, former president and CEO of America’s Choice, an education reform company acquired last year by Pearson.

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Teachers and the future

Rachel Ida Buff:

On Easter weekend, I went to a wedding in Michigan. The occasion featured a radiant young couple who are expecting their first child in June, amidst a loving community of family and friends. As it happened, many of the people assembled were teachers. And so, on this April weekend, with the countryside greening around us and signs of new life everywhere, I found myself engaged in many conversations about teachers and schooling.
I was struck by the optimism and ambition of many of these young people embarking on careers in education. With their talent and accomplishments, they could select careers that are much more financially rewarding than teaching. But instead, they have chosen the classroom as a site to try to make the world better. They see education as a place to help train young minds and create engaged communities.
One young man, a second-generation teacher, told me that he thinks he affects many more lives as a teacher than he did in his prior work as a student leader and activist. Teaching seventh- and eighth-graders on the south side of Chicago, he explained, forces him to keep learning with his students, to keep their interest and to motivate them.

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High school physics teacher perfects the formula for inspiring students

Steve Chawkins:

It was lunch hour and hundreds of Dos Pueblos High School students surged onto the bleachers at the school’s outdoor Greek Theater. The crowd was cheering, the music was thumping and a student-built robot named Penguinbot IV was wheeling and pivoting, sucking up dozens of lightweight balls and shooting them at the young athletes who had ventured onstage.
From a console to one side, teenagers in black, NASA-style jumpsuits guided the 150-pound machine as it weaved and dodged. When the robot and star basketball player Jay Larinan began pelting each other, a girl in the stands screamed, “I believe in you, Jay!” The crowd went wild.
It was the kind of free-spirited scene that gladdens the heart of Amir Abo-Shaeer, the 39-year-old physics teacher who each year leads the school’s robotics team into a rigorous national competition that requires months of preparation and a season’s worth of intense face-offs.

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New evidence that IQ is not set in stone

Ed Yong:

Ever since there have been IQ tests, people have debated what they actually measure. Is it “intelligence”, is it an abstract combination of mental abilities, or is it, as Edwin Boring said, “the capacity to do well in an intelligence test”? Regardless of the answer, studies have repeatedly shown that people who achieve higher scores in IQ tests are more likely to do well in school, perform well in their jobs, earn more money, avoid criminal convictions, and even live longer. Say what you like about the tests, but they have predictive power.
However, Angela Lee Duckworth from the University of Pennsylvania has found that this power is overrated. The link between our IQs and our fates becomes muddier when we consider motivation – an aspect of test-taking that is often ignored. Simply put, some people try harder in IQ tests than others. If you take this into account, the association between your IQ and your success in life becomes considerably weaker. The tests are not measuring intelligence alone, but also the desire to prove it.

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Raymund Paredes: $10,000 Degrees “Entirely Feasible”

Reeve Hamilton:

At a board meeting of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board on Wednesday, Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes said that $10,000 bachelor’s degrees — books included — as proposed by Gov. Rick Perry are “entirely feasible.”
He hopes to have concrete proposals and coursework in place to meet the challenge before the start of the next legislative session in 2013.
A repeated theme in the board’s discussion about the governor’s cost-cutting proposal was that they were not seeking to replace existing degrees or artificially push the costs of those down, but were rather seeking to provide alternative options for low-income students. “We’re not talking about every field,” Paredes said. “We’re not talking about every baccalaureate degree. We’re not talking about every student.”

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Michigan Gov. Snyder targets teacher performance in sweeping plan

Paul Egan:

Gov. Rick Snyder said today he wants to retool Michigan’s school system so it demands and rewards performance in terms of student achievement.
He detailed changes to merit pay and the teacher tenure system; approval for more charter schools; a new state office devoted to early childhood education; tough anti-bullying measures; a greater emphasis on online education; and a more flexible system in which state funding would follow students wherever they go, rather than being assigned to a particular school district.
Further, the governor announced as many as 23 financially distressed school districts could be placed under emergency managers who have beefed-up powers to scrap collective bargaining agreements under controversial legislation he recently signed into law.
Snyder also expanded “Schools of Choice” plans and said residents of a local district will have the first opportunity to enroll there, but schools will no longer be able to refuse out-of-district students. And he called for consolidation and competitive bidding of school district business and administrative functions.

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LAUSD to remove chocolate, strawberry milk from schools, superintendent says

Howard Blume:

Los Angeles schools will remove high-sugar chocolate- and strawberry-flavored milk from their lunch and breakfast menus after food activists campaigned for the change, L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy announced this week.
Deasy revealed his intent, which will require approval by the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education, during an appearance with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Tuesday night.
The policy change is part of a carefully negotiated happy ending between the Los Angeles Unified School District and Oliver. The chef’s confrontations with the school system became a main theme in the current season of the TV reality show “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.”
The timing of the flavored-milk ban, which had been under consideration for some time, gave Oliver a positive outcome and allowed the nation’s second-largest school system to escape the villain’s role. Deasy quickly alerted the school board to the deal before going on television.

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Karen Lewis: Issues of Gender, Race & Class

Tim Furman, via a kind reader’s email:

Karen Lewis tells it like it is— there are the reasons for the way teachers are compensated, and all of the little faddish fixes that are trumpeted by the corporate reform crowd aren’t going to amount to a hill of beans. Unless, you make that hill of beans very small, very segregated, and ultimately very meaningless.

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Catching signs of autism early: The 1-year well-baby check-up approach

Science Codex:

A novel strategy developed by autism researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, called “The One-Year Well-Baby Check Up Approach,” shows promise as a simple way for physicians to detect cases of Autism Syndrome Disorder (ASD), language or developmental delays in babies at an early age.
Led by Karen Pierce, PhD, assistant professor in the UC San Diego Department of Neurosciences, researchers at the UC San Diego Autism Center of Excellence (ACE) assembled a network of 137 pediatricians in the San Diego region and initiated a systematic screen program for all infants at their one-year check up. Their study will be published in the April 28 online edition of the Journal of Pediatrics.
“There is extensive evidence that early therapy can have a positive impact on the developing brain,” said Pierce. “The opportunity to diagnose and thus begin treatment for autism around a child’s first birthday has enormous potential to change outcomes for children affected with the disorder.”

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“Transparency Central” National Review of Education Schools

The National Council on Teacher Qualty:

Higher education institutions, whether they are private or public, have an obligation to be transparent about the design and operations of their teacher preparation programs. After all, these institutions have all been publicly approved to prepare public school teachers.
Here at Transparency Central, you can keep track of whether colleges and universities are living up to their obligation to be open. Just click on a state to learn more about the transparency of individual institutions there.
NCTQ is asking institutions to provide documents that describe the fundamental aspects of their teacher preparation programs: the subject matter teachers are supposed to know, the real-world classroom practice they are supposed to get, the outcomes that they achieve once they enter the classroom. Taken together, the evidence we gathering will answer a key question: Are individual programs setting high expectations for what new teachers should know and be able to do for their students?
A number of institutions have let us know that they do not intend to cooperate with our review, some even before we formally asked them for documents. As a result, we have begun to make open records requests using state “sunshine” (or “freedom of information act”) laws.
We’ll be regularly updating our progress, so come back soon to learn more about our efforts to bring transparency to teacher prep.

Related:

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72% Say Taxpayers Not Getting Their Money’s Worth from Public Schools

Rasmussen Reports, via a kind reader’s email:

Voters overwhelmingly believe that taxpayers are not getting a good return on what they spend on public education, and just one-in-three voters think spending more will make a difference.
Nationally, the United States spends an average of about $9,000 per student per year. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 11% of voters think the taxpayers are getting a good return on that investment. Seventy-two percent (72%) disagree and say taxpayers are not getting their money’s worth. Sixteen percent (16%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Thirty-four percent (34%) voters believe student performance will improve if more money is spent on funding for schools and educations programs. A plurality (41%) disagrees and thinks that increased spending will not lead to improve student performance. Twenty-five percent (25%) aren’t sure.
The survey also found that voters tend to underestimate how much is spent on education. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say the average per student expenditure is less than $9,000 per year while only 12% think it’s higher than that. Nine percent (9%) estimate the right amount but a plurality of 40% is not sure. There is a wide range of expenditure on education depending upon the state and region.

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Wisconsin School districts’ health plans cost more than businesses’ plans

Rick Rommell:

School districts in southeastern Wisconsin pay significantly more for health insurance than do private businesses – as much as 76% more – and their employees bear much less of the overall cost, an analysis released Wednesday shows.
The relatively small contribution teachers in general make to their insurance coverage drew considerable attention during the superheated debate over Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill and his bid to sharply limit collective bargaining by most government employees.
Less discussed has been the cost of the insurance plans, which significantly outweigh those offered by private-sector employers, according to an analysis by HCTrends, which describes itself as “a market-oriented forum” on health care issues.
For single coverage, southeastern Wisconsin school districts paid 76% more than private businesses in 2009-’10, according to HCTrends.

MacIver Institute:

School districts in southeastern Wisconsin are paying twice as much for health insurance as private sector companies in Milwaukee, according to a new study by HCTrends. That’s just the beginning of what the group found in its study of school district health insurance expenses in 2010.
“Health plan costs for the region’s teachers are 63 percent higher, on average, than the plans offered at private-sector companies with some union representation, and 80 percent higher than the average single-coverage cost for all private-sector plans,” according to the study.
“This combination of above-average plan costs and below-average employee contributions significantly increases the school district’s health care costs. While the average teachers’ plan costs 80 percent more than the average private-sector plan, the per-employee cost borne by the school district is twice as much as the cost borne by the average employer.”

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Report calls for reform of Ph.D.s

Elizabeth Weise
Gannett :

The system of awarding science Ph.D.s needs to be reformed or shut down, given the tough competition for limited jobs in academia, a provocative series of pieces in one of the world’s pre-eminent scientific journals said this week.
According to the multipart series in the journal Nature, the world is awash in Ph.D.s, most of them being awarded to scholars who will never find work in academia, the traditional goal of those holding a doctorate.
“In some countries, including the United States and Japan, people who have trained at great length and expense to be researchers confront a dwindling number of academic jobs and an industrial sector unable to take up the slack,” the cover article said.
Of people who received Ph.D.s in the biological sciences five to six years ago, 13 percent have tenure-track positions leading to a professorship, said Paula Stephan, who studies the economics of science at Georgia State University in Atlanta. For the rest, 10 percent work part time or not at all; 33 percent are in academic positions that don’t lead to a professorship; 22 percent are in industry; and 20 percent are at community colleges or in government or non-profit jobs, she said.

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Out Front in the Fight on Fat

Betsy McKay:

How Portland, Maine Took a Stand Against Childhood Obesity. It Spent $3.7 Million to Rally Schools and Other Sites in the State. More Families Adopted 5-2-1-0 a Day: At Least 5 Servings of Fruits and Vegetables , 2 Hours or Less of Screen Time, at Least 1 Hour of Exercise, and 0 Sugary Drinks. After All That, the Childhood Overweight-and-Obesity Rate for Southern Maine Dipped 1.5 Percentage Points to 31.3%.
At first, it seems obvious: Recess and fruit keep kids trimmer and healthier than videogames and cookies. But there isn’t much that’s obvious about moving the needle on childhood obesity rates in the U.S.
Nine year-old Ayub Mohamud was gaining weight rapidly when he went to see his doctor at a pediatric clinic here in September. At home, Ayub and his four siblings snacked regularly on candy, chips and soda; a younger brother also was overweight. Ayub ate two breakfasts, one at home and one at school, and got little exercise during the long Maine winters. He had a dark skin coloring on the back of his neck called “acanthosis nigricans,” which can be a sign of being prediabetic.
By the end of January, after implementing some of Portland’s 5-2-1-0 principles, Ayub had lost three pounds. His mother stopped buying a lot of candy, soda, and chips, and Ayub started eating carrots and broccoli. He and his 7-year-old brother were competing to do push-ups and sit-ups or try new foods. “I like it,” Ayub says of his healthier new life.

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Philadelphia Deputy superintendent attended King High School private meeting

.com/philly/news/120557249.html”>Martha Woodall:

hiladelphia Deputy School Superintendent Leroy Nunery has found himself involved in a power struggle over control of Martin Luther King High School.
Nunery was at the closed-door meeting of State Rep. Dwight Evans, School Reform Commission Chairman Robert L. Archie Jr., and an official from Mosaica Turnaround Partners that prompted the Atlanta company to drop its plans to convert King into a charter school.
District spokeswoman Jamilah Fraser on Saturday confirmed information The Inquirer had obtained from sources inside and outside the district that Nunery was the unidentified “district representative” mentioned in a statement about the meeting March 16. The session took place right after the SRC voted, 3-0, to select Mosaica to run King in the fall.
The next day, Mosaica backed out of its plans to run the East Germantown school.
Nunery, Fraser said, did not speak at the private meeting and had no advance notice of it.

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Foundations Join to Offer Online Courses for Schools

Sam Dillon:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest philanthropy, and the foundation associated with Pearson, the giant textbook and school technology company, announced a partnership on Wednesday to create online reading and math courses aligned with the new academic standards that some 40 states have adopted in recent months.
The 24 new courses will use video, interactive software, games, social media and other digital materials to present math lessons for kindergarten through 10th grade and English lessons for kindergarten through 12th grade, Pearson and Gates officials said.
Widespread adoption of the new standards, known as the common core, has provoked a race among textbook publishers to revise their current classroom offerings so they align with the standards, and to produce new materials. The Gates-Pearson initiative appears to be the most ambitious such effort so far.

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The Whiff of Plagiarism Again Hits German Elite

Christopher Schuetze:

Weeks after Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany’s defense minister, was forced to resign in a plagiarism scandal, three German universities say they are investigating similar complaints about the academic work of three figures from the country’s political sphere.
The theses of all three have been posted for public scrutiny on VroniPlag , a site run by the same people who posted the Guttenberg work online.
Two of the three — Silvana Koch-Mehrin, a member of the European Parliament; and Veronica Sass, a daughter of former state leader — have declined to comment on the accusations that their theses are suspect. The third, Matthias Pröfrock, a new state lawmaker, conceded that he might have committed unintentional errors and has called on his university to recheck his thesis.

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Don’t Discount Charter School Model

Fresh Air:

The best schools — whether they’re charter schools, public schools or private schools — are intentional about everything they do, says educational analyst Andrew Rotherham.
“They are intentional about who is in the building, who is teaching, how they use data, what’s happening for students, the support for students, the curriculum, how progress is assessed,” he says. “Everything is intentional and nothing is left to chance.”
On Thursday’s Fresh Air, Rotherham explains why he supports strategies that will redesign American public education with the help of charter schools, public sector choices and teacher accountability.
Rotherham is a partner at Bellwether Education, a nonprofit organization working to improve educational outcomes for low-income students. Bellwether advises grant-making organizations like The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, educational nonprofits and charter school networks on their operational and public policy issues.
Rotherham, who served in the Clinton administration as a special assistant of domestic policy, now spends his days thinking about how to make public and charter schools work for more kids. The public school system worked for him, he says, but only because he grew up in a nice suburb outside Washington, D.C.

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Ravitch: Standardized Testing Undermines Teaching

Fresh Air:

Former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch was once an early advocate of No Child Left Behind, school vouchers and charter schools.
In 2005, she wrote, “We should thank President George W. Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act. … All this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents’ generation.”
But four years later, Ravitch changed her mind.
“I came to the conclusion … that No Child Left Behind has turned into a timetable for the destruction of American public education,” she tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “I had never imagined that the test would someday be turned into a blunt instrument to close schools — or to say whether teachers are good teachers or not — because I always knew children’s test scores are far more complicated than the way they’re being received today.”

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Many factors affect states’ ACT scores

Sunny Schubert:

The achievement gap between white and minority students has nothing to do with aptitude but correlates to socioeconomic factors such as poverty, racism and family structure. Still, it stands to reason that states with higher percentages of lower-performing students will perform lower in the aggregate than states with higher percentages of better performing students.
Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress test are broken down for ethnicity. The scores show white students in Texas consistently score higher than white students in Wisconsin, and black and Hispanic students in Texas also outscore their Wisconsin counterparts.
As for the writer’s statement that Texas licenses mere four-year college graduates rather than school of education graduates, I say “good for Texas!” It’s ironic that the most engaging teachers at our colleges and universities, such as UW-Madison’s famous chemistry professor Bassam Shakhashiri, would not be allowed to teach in a Wisconsin public school because most have no degrees in education.

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Don’t cry for teachers who choose early retirement

Chris Rickert:

One indication of how disingenuous the world of public education has become is the sympathy some of us apparently feel for veteran Madison teachers who feel compelled to retire early.
As this newspaper detailed Sunday, early retirements have spiked over concerns about what Gov. Scott Walker’s bid to curtail public sector collective bargaining rights will mean for teachers’ retirements.
It’s clear teachers beginning their careers today could be subjected to lots of things the private sector has had to endure for a long time (e.g., merit evaluations, higher health care costs). What puzzles me is what veteran teachers risk by working a few more years — especially given the love they express for the job.
Take, for example, teachers’ ability to parlay unused sick days into health insurance coverage or other benefits after they retire.
District spokesman Ken Syke said the district’s legal team has not produced an opinion on this. But teachers union president John Matthews was certain it was a benefit long-time teachers would retain.

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Madison Schools Found Non-Compliant on Wisconsin DPI Talented & Gifted Complaint

Madison School District 450K PDF and the DPI Preliminary Audit, via a kind reader’s email:

I. Introduction A.Title/topic-Talented and Gifted Compliance
B. Presenter/contact person -Sue Abplanalp, Jennifer Allen, Pam Nash and Dylan Pauly
Background information- On March 24,2011, MMSD received DPI’s initial findings in the matter ofthe TAG complaint. DPI found MMSD to be noncompliant on all four counts. The Board has forty-five days from the date of receipt ofthe initial findings to petition the state superintendent for a public hearing. If the Board does not request such a hearing, the findings will become final. Once the findings are final, regardless of whether a hearing is held, if there is a finding of noncompliance, the state superintendent may develop with the Board a plan for compliance. The plan must contain a time line for achievement of compliance that cannot exceed ninety days. An extension of the time period may be requested if extenuating or mitigating circumstances exist.
II. Summary of Current Information:
Current Status: Currently, DPI has made an initial finding of noncompliance against MMSD. While the Board is entitled to request a public hearing on the issue of compliance, the administration does not recommend this course of action. Consequently, at this time, the administration is working toward the development ofa response to DPI’s findings, which will focus on remedial steps to insure compliance.
Proposal: Staff are working on a response to the preliminary findings which we will present to the Board when completed. It is the administration’s hope that this response will serve as the foundation to the compliance plan that will be developed once the DPI findings are final. The response will include input from the TAG Advisory Committee, the District’s TAG professionals — our Coordinator and staff. A meeting to begin work one the proposed response is currently scheduled for April28, 2011 from 4:00 p.m.-5:00pm. Subsequent meetings will follow.

Much more on the Wisconsin DPI Parent Talented & Gifted complaint.
Watch Monday evening’s Madison School Board discussion of the DPI Talented & Gifted complaint, here (starts at 128:37). and here.

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Madison Schools: Alternative School Redesign (Hoyt, Whitehorse & Cherokee “Mental Health Hubs”) to Address Mental Health Concerns: Phase 1

80K PDF, via a kind reader’s email:

I. Introduction A. Title/topic -Alternative Redesign to Address Mental Health Concerns B. Presenter/contact person- Sue Abplanalp, John Harper, Pam Nash and Nancy Yoder
Background information -The Purpose of this Proposal: Research shows that half of all lifetime cases of mental illness begin by age 14.1 Scientists are discovering that changes in the body leading to mental illness may start much earlier, before any symptoms appear.
Helping young children and their parents manage difficulties early in life may prevent the development of disorders. Once mental illness develops, it becomes a regular part of a child’s behavior and more difficult to treat. Even though doctors know how to treat (though not yet cure) many disorders, a majority of children with mental illnesses are not getting treatment (National Institute of Mental Health).
II. Summary of Current Information: Success is defined as the achievement ofsomething desired and planned. As a steering committee, our desire and plan is to promote a strategic hub in three sites (Hoyt, Whitehorse and Cherokee) that connect, support and sustain students with mental health issues in a more inclusive environment with appropriate professionals, in order to maximize students’ success in middle school and help them achieve their aspirations in a setting that is appropriate for their needs. The new site will also offer mini clinics from a community provider
Current Status: Currently, there is one program housed at Hoyt that serves 28-30 students in self contained settings. There is currently a ratio of 1:4 with 4 staff and 4 special educational assistants assigned to the program. In addition, there is a Cluster Program housed at Sherman with 2 adults and 6-7 students in the program.
Proposal: This proposal leaves approximately half of the students and staff at the current Hoyt site (those students who pose more of a danger to self or others) and removes all of the students and staff from Sherman (no program at Sherman) to the new sites. Students will attend either Whitehorse or Cherokee Middle Schools with a program that provides ongoing professional help and is more inclusive as students will be assigned to homerooms and classes, with alternative settings in the school to support them when they need a more restrictive environment with support from a smaller student ratio and a psychologist or social worker that is assigned to the team.

This initiative was discussed during Monday evening’s Madison School Board meeting. Watch the discussion here (beginning at 180 minutes).

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The Limits of School Reform

Joe Nocera:

I find myself haunted by a 13-year-old boy named Saquan Townsend. It’s been more than two weeks since he was featured in The New York Times Magazine, yet I can’t get him out of my mind.
The article, by Jonathan Mahler, was about the heroic efforts of Ramón González, the principal of M.S. 223, a public middle school in the South Bronx, to make his school a place where his young charges can get a decent education and thus, perhaps, a better life. Surprisingly, though, González is not aligned with the public school reform movement, even though one of the movement’s leading lights, Joel Klein, was until fairly recently his boss as the head of the New York City school system.
Instead, González comes across as a skeptic, wary of the enthusiasm for, as the article puts it, “all of the educational experimentation” that took place on Klein’s watch. At its core, the reform movement believes that great teachers and improved teaching methods are all that’s required to improve student performance, so that’s all the reformers focus on. But it takes a lot more than that. Which is where Saquan comes in. His part of the story represents difficult truths that the reform movement has yet to face squarely — and needs to.

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Chicago Teacher’s Union Head Endorses Anti-Labor Bill: A Crisis for Teachers’ Union Reformers?

Lee Sustar:

Teachers’ union activists in Chicago are contending with their union president’s decision to back legislation that all but bans them from striking and makes major concessions to the corporate education “reform” agenda.
Reform groups that lead teachers unions are also having debates in Los Angeles, where the election for the union presidency was recently won by a challenger to the incumbent reform caucus, and in Washington, D.C., where a newly elected officers offered to take a pay freeze to save jobs.
But the biggest controversy is in Chicago, where Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis shocked members of the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), a reform group that was the backbone of her candidacy last year, by personally giving the union’s endorsement for sweeping legislation that, among other things, severely restricts teachers’ right to strike, undermines seniority protections for Illinois teachers outside Chicago, and increases the school day without a guaranteed increase in pay.
To make matters worse, Lewis, a founding member of CORE, failed to report that she had already signed off on the legislation when she spoke to union delegates in a videoconference April 13, the day after she agreed to the legislation.

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Amazon to launch library service for Kindle

Barney Jopson and David Gelles:

Amazon will let users of its Kindle e-reader borrow electronic books from two-thirds of US libraries as it seeks to broaden the device’s appeal in the face of competition from Apple’s iPad and rival tablets.
The world’s largest online retailer said that from later this year, customers would be able to borrow e-books from libraries and read – and annotate – them on a Kindle or any other device to which users have downloaded a Kindle app.
Amazon’s move intensifies questions about the commercial threat the growing popularity of e-readers poses to traditional book publishers, which have acknowledged a concern that e-book lending might cannibalise sales of books. US public libraries have spent several years building up their e-book collections, which have been accessible to users of Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Sony’s Reader device. But until now they have not worked with the Kindle.

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NY court upholds ruling in Connecticut school case

Associated Press:

Connecticut school officials cannot be held liable for their decision to discipline a student for an Internet posting she wrote off school grounds, a federal appeals court ruled Monday as it defended the leeway given school administrators who act reasonably when confronted with dilemmas that test the boundaries of what is Constitutionally protected.
The 2nd U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan sided with Burlington, Conn., school officials after they punished Avery Doninger by preventing her from serving as class secretary as a senior.
Doninger sued the administrators at Lewis B. Mills High School, saying her free speech and equal protection rights were violated after she distributed the 2007 posting criticizing administrators for canceling a popular school activity. A lower judge had twice ruled school officials were entitled to immunity.
A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit agreed.

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Must We Protect Our Schoolkids from Bunnies?

Sunny Schubert & Jack Craver:

It’s not that I don’t care about K-12 education in Wisconsin. I DO care, very much.
But I have a hard time getting my undies in a bundle over Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed education spending reductions because I have this fantasy that maybe if school administrators have less money, they’ll have less time to come up with dumb stuff in the name of political correctness.
Take the Seattle public school administrators who decided that the term “Easter egg” is culturally offensive,” and substituted the term “spring spheres” instead.
How much do I hate this? Let’s start with the fact that eggs – at least the ones used in conjunction with Easter — are NOT spheres: They’re ovoids. I learned that in eighth-grade geometry. I object most strenuously to people who should know better teaching children something that simply is not true.

Jack Craver has more.

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How to Blend Math

Tom Vander Ark

Most schools are looking for ways to boost achievement and save money. Blended learning is part of the solution. Blended learning is an intentional shift to an online environment for at least a portion of the student day to boost learning and operating productivity. Math is a great place for a school or district to introduce blended learning because it:
facilitates individualized progress
leverages great math teachers
takes advantage of quality math content (open & proprietary)
can be augmented by games and tutorials
School of One, a pilot middle grade math program in New York City, is a good example of multiple modes of instruction aligned with an assessment framework. An early example of a smart recommendation engine creates a unique schedule for each student every day. This important pilot project introduced the idea of a customized learning playlist, but it has not attempted to improve operating productivity.

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Bad Education: Student Debt

Malcolm Harris

The Project On Student Debt estimates that the average college senior in 2009 graduated with $24,000 in outstanding loans. Last August, student loans surpassed credit cards as the nation’s largest single largest source of debt, edging ever closer to $1 trillion. Yet for all the moralizing about American consumer debt by both parties, no one dares call higher education a bad investment. The nearly axiomatic good of a university degree in American society has allowed a higher education bubble to expand to the point of bursting.
Since 1978, the price of tuition at US colleges has increased over 900 percent, 650 points above inflation. To put that in number in perspective, housing prices, the bubble that nearly burst the US economy, then the global one, increased only fifty points above the Consumer Price Index during those years. But while college applicants’ faith in the value of higher education has only increased, employers’ has declined. According to Richard Rothstein at The Economic Policy Institute, wages for college-educated workers outside of the inflated finance industry have stagnated or diminished. Unemployment has hit recent graduates especially hard, nearly doubling in the post-2007 recession. The result is that the most indebted generation in history is without the dependable jobs it needs to escape debt.
What kind of incentives motivate lenders to continue awarding six-figure sums to teenagers facing both the worst youth unemployment rate in decades and an increasingly competitive global workforce?

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“Let’s Make A Deal on Bargaining” ShareThis (A Legislator’s Perspective – Pro Reform Does Not Mean Anti-Union)

Rep. Mary Ann Sullivan, D – Indianapolis, IN:

Indiana is on the verge of enacting major education reform legislation that will establish a new teacher evaluation system, will be tied to changes in teacher tenure, eliminate “Last in First Out (LIFO),” link teacher compensation to performance measures, and limit some aspects of what can be collectively bargained. Rep. Mary Ann Sullivan (D – Indianapolis) is the co-sponsor of the teacher evaluation bill as well as a companion bill containing the collective bargaining provisions (she is also the co-author of a bill to expand charter schools in Indiana). As a founding member of DFER-Indiana, she has faced incredible hostility from her Democrat colleagues in the House, along with being chastised by the unions especially for her votes and leadership on changing collective bargaining practices. In this post she shares some of her thoughts and beliefs on why she refuses to lose her focus on education reform, and why her commitment to those reforms does not make her anti-union:
For too many Democrats, being pro-labor has been an all or nothing proposition. As a pro-labor Democrat myself, I’ve been criticized when I mention the need for changes and limits to collective bargaining. Seeking change from unions, and teachers’ unions in particular, doesn’t mean I don’t believe in them. Nothing could be further from the truth. I firmly believe unions must step up to the plate and meet the public demand for changes or they run the risk of being left out of the process or worse yet, losing the right to collectively bargain at all. Our teachers need this powerful collective voice and unions must rise to meet the demand for change, one prescribed by many of their members.

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Creepy crawlies: The internet allows the malicious to menace their victims

The Economist:

LEANDRA RAMM (pictured) is a mezzo-soprano with more on her mind than music. Someone–a deranged Singaporean cyber-stalker, she claims–has posted around 4,000 internet messages in the past five years, depicting her as a talentless, sex-crazed swindler. He has also created a blog under her name and has left obscene messages on her own website.
Ms Ramm, who lives in New York, has had scant help from the American police, who say the offence is committed in Singapore. But she says the police in Singapore have shown no interest. Ms Ramm says her career, social life and emotional well-being have all suffered. Not only does she get daily death threats, but so do all those associated with her: friends, family, colleagues and boss. She says she feels “humiliated, helpless and abused”.

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Nevada Teachers skeptical of plan to end bonus for degree

Associated Press:

Among the drastic changes planned for Nevada’s K-12 education system — ranked at the bottom of the nation for high school graduation — few strike a nerve like a plan to stop paying higher salaries to teachers with advanced degrees and switch to a pay-for-performance model.
The bill reflects a growing nationwide movement toward performance pay; it’s based on research that shows an advanced degree seldom leads to increased student achievement at the elementary school level, and only sometimes increases it in high school classrooms.
“We’re 50th in the nation,” said Assemblyman Ira Hansen, R-Sparks. “We need radical surgery.”

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Test, Lies & Race to the Top

Shashi Parulekar:

Obama had his “Sputnik Moment,” when standardized test scores around the world pointed to the mediocrity of American students in reading, math and sciences. There is now a major mantra coming from Washington to all state capitals: the “race to the top” is on, and it doesn’t include a continuation of the downward spiral of test scores. The new modus operandi: Leave aside achievement throughout the years in high school, the stream of G.P.As., the difficulty of courses taken during the years in 9 to 12, and any creative projects done by students. Base everything on standardized tests.
When career prospects, prestige, and job security are connected to one and only one criteria — score on a standardized test — human nature is bound to creep in. Baseball players start taking steroids; Olympic athletes try every means to beat the system. Will it happen to dedicated teachers who are working hard to educate our next generation? Will temptation overtake honesty, integrity and ethical behavior?

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Drop tedious ICT lessons, says Intellect Time for education to grow up and start teaching kids the meaning of computing…

Natasha Lomas, via a James Dias email:

There have been fresh calls for schools to dump the dull ICT lessons that are turning kids off IT and failing to create the type of IT-savvy employees that UK businesses need.
Earlier this year, a discussion forum on digital skills heard from a BCS member and IT teacher that pupils and teachers are “bored rigid” by ICT lessons in their present form.
Intellect, the trade body for the UK’s tech sector, has now called on the government to drop ICT lessons in their current form from the national curriculum and replace them with ones that focus on higher-value computer science skills. The organisation was submitting its response to a Department of Education review of the National Curriculum in England, launched in January this year.
ICT should also be taught by embedding interactive and multimedia technology across every subject, according to Intellect – which believes technology businesses could play a role here to help teachers make the best use of relevant equipment by supporting training.
Intellect reckons the ICT curriculum is too focused on teaching pupils how to use a limited number of software packages and is therefore failing to inspire students to develop more advanced computer skills.

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The Future: Education Reform Version

Charlie Mas:

It seems to me that the goals of Education Reform are primarily to bring the increases in productivity (and cost reductions) seen in other industries to the education industry. The greatest obstacle to the effort to cut the cost of education is teacher salaries. The cost of education cannot be cut until the cost of teaching is cut. The Education Reform movement seeks paths to cutting the cost of teaching.
While technology has allowed for amazing radical increases in productivity in nearly every other industry, teaching is still, for the most part, done exactly as it was done in pre-industrial times: face-to-face with a personal relationship between a professional teacher and a limited number of students. For there to be any improvement in productivity (and reduction in cost), this model must be broken.
Education Reform is pursuing four paths to increase productivity (and thereby reduce costs).
1. The de-professionalization of teaching. Teachers are professionals. They are expected to work with minimal supervision and direction. They are expected to use their expertise, judgement, and talent to respond improvisationally to student needs. In the Education Reform model, however, teachers are expected to deliver standardized lessons prepared centrally. They can make some small prescribed variations within a prescribed range. The best model for this is how professional bankers have been replaced by non-professionals, sitting in cube farms, wearing headsets, and completing loan application forms by working through a script on a computer screen. The script includes what to say if the customer says this or if the customer says that. Based on this model it isn’t hard to imagine non-professionals in front of a classroom delivering a scripted lesson with scripted responses to expected student questions.

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Baltimore makes the grade with school incentives

Matt Kennard:

Nathan Carlberg, 27, is exactly the type of teacher Barack Obama, US president, wants to keep in the system. Fresh-faced and passionate, he troops around room 207 at Commodore John Rogers Elementary School in Baltimore dispensing superlatives to students who get the answers right to his spelling quiz.
“Bingo,” yelps one of the second-graders and jumps up with his paper. Mr Carlberg ambles over. “Let me check,” he says and the class is silent. “He got it right,” shouts Mr Carlberg. The kids erupt, eager to win the next round.
Even a year ago this scene would have been unthinkable at CJR. It ranked as one of the worst five elementary schools in Maryland in 2010 but has since managed to pull itself around. Last year it became a “turnaround school”, which meant every teacher had to reapply for his or her job. Only three were retained.
The turnaround process is one of the signature strategies of Mr Obama’s new school agenda and its flagship Race to the Top programme. It revolves around a simple but controversial notion: giving incentives for innovation. Race to the Top awards money to school districts that can prove they have new strategies for improving teaching and results.

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Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to call for overhaul of outdated public school system in speech Wednesday

Chris Christoff:

Michigan’s public schools need to more rigorously measure students’ academic growth, but with fewer state rules to make that happen, Gov. Rick Snyder said today.
That means more autonomy for individual schools and teachers, and a system to financially reward outstanding teachers who can mentor others.
Also, state schools superintendent Michael Flanagan called for a virtual deregulation of schools, such as eliminating minimum number of hours or days students must attend each year.
That’s a change Snyder hinted he’ll include in his special message on education Wednesday. He said the state should give teachers and schools and the state more flexibility to teach and to lift all students to higher academic standards.

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SMS education in Pakistan

Michael Trucano:

Two to three years ago, I found very little traction when trying to initiate discussions around the potential use of mobile phones in education with many counterparts in education ministries around the world. (And when this *was* discussed, talk usually centered on how to ban them from schools.)
This is now changing very quickly! Many factors appear to be behind this change — including, it is probably worth noting, the strong apparent interest by many companies to get in on the ground floor of what they feel will be very large markets related to ‘m-learning’ in developing countries in the coming years. (I now get so many cold calls from vendors every week wanting to share information about their ‘m-learning solutions’ that I let all phone calls ring into voicemail by default.)
With momentum building around 1-to-1 computing initiatives (where every student receives her own laptop) in many countries, many governments are embarking on large-scale roll outs of educational technologies as never before. However one feels about the potential relevance of mobile phones in education (and reasonable people can certainly disagree about this), it appears to me to be a topic that at a minimum merits some discussion in many education systems, given that small, connected computing devices known today as mobile phones are increasingly to be found in the pockets and pocketbook of teachers, and even students, at rates perhaps unimagined only a decade ago. It is worth noting that this large scale roll-out of computing devices in the hands of teachers and students has largely happened without any government subsidy at all. Given this fact, is it worthwhile for governments to consider taking some of the monies dedicated for the purchase of ICT hardware and use it instead for other purposes (more/better education content? more training? better connectivity? something not at all ICT-related?)? Even if you feel that mobile phones are not relevant to discussions of technology use in education, perhaps it is worth considering these sorts of questions before dismissing such use out of hand.

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Do We Really Need To Change Michigan Education? Absolutely!

Rod Meloni:

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget plan, a serious and shocking change to the status quo, so stoked the flames of union passion there’s a protest just about every other day in Lansing.
This may explain why the governor spread out his controversial announcements by a month or two. At noontime Wednesday, he will drop another bomb on the state: serious and shocking education system change. Expect more protest and outrage.
Now, the governor on Monday reminded the teachers and school administrators at the 16th annual Governor’s Education Summit that he ran on a platform of reinventing Michigan. He also admitted everyone agrees with change until it affects them. He fully expects the protest express to continue muddying the Capitol lawn.

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What a brush with death taught David Eagleman about the mysteries of time and the brain

Burkhard Bilger:

WWhen David Eagleman was eight years old, he fell off a roof and kept on falling. Or so it seemed at the time. His family was living outside Albuquerque, in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. There were only a few other houses around, scattered among the bunchgrass and the cholla cactus, and a new construction site was the Eagleman boys’ idea of a perfect playground. David and his older brother, Joel, had ridden their dirt bikes to a half-finished adobe house about a quarter of a mile away. When they’d explored the rooms below, David scrambled up a wooden ladder to the roof. He stood there for a few minutes taking in the view–west across desert and subdivision to the city rising in the distance–then walked over the newly laid tar paper to a ledge above the living room. “It looked stiff,” he told me recently. “So I stepped onto the edge of it.”
In the years since, Eagleman has collected hundreds of stories like his, and they almost all share the same quality: in life-threatening situations, time seems to slow down. He remembers the feeling clearly, he says. His body stumbles forward as the tar paper tears free at his feet. His hands stretch toward the ledge, but it’s out of reach. The brick floor floats upward–some shiny nails are scattered across it–as his body rotates weightlessly above the ground. It’s a moment of absolute calm and eerie mental acuity. But the thing he remembers best is the thought that struck him in midair: this must be how Alice felt when she was tumbling down the rabbit hole.

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A Trial Run for School Standards That Encourage Deeper Thought

Fernanda Santos:

Until this year, Ena Baxter, an English teacher at Hillcrest High School in Queens, would often have her 10th graders compose papers by summarizing a single piece of reading material.
Last month, for a paper on the influence of media on teenagers, she had them read a survey on the effects of cellphones and computers on young people’s lives, a newspaper column on the role of social media in the Tunisian uprising and a 4,200-word magazine article titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”
A math teacher, José Rios, used to take a day or two on probabilities, drawing bell-shaped curves on the blackboard to illustrate the pattern known as normal distribution. This year, he stretched the lesson by a day and had students work in groups to try to draw the same type of graphic using the heights of the 15 boys in the class.

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Massachusetts House votes to restrict unions; Measure would curb bargaining on health care

Michael Levenson:

House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly last night to strip police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees of most of their rights to bargain over health care, saying the change would save millions of dollars for financially strapped cities and towns.
The 111-to-42 vote followed tougher measures to broadly eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees in Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states. But unlike those efforts, the push in Massachusetts was led by Democrats who have traditionally stood with labor to oppose any reduction in workers’ rights.
Unions fought hard to stop the bill, launching a radio ad that assailed the plan and warning legislators that if they voted for the measure, they could lose their union backing in the next election. After the vote, labor leaders accused House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo and other Democrats of turning their backs on public employees.

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