Andrew Rotherham:

But that’s down the road…in terms of this new Congress, George Miller taking over the education committee in the House will probably surface a misunderstood dynamic around national education politics. Namely, while a lot of people think that the No Child Left Behind debate is Republican v. Democrat, in fact it’s really intra-party. Miller is a stronger accountability hawk than President Bush’s Administration is. He’s for teaching to standards in that debate…Senator Kennedy (who seems likely to again chair the education committee in the Senate) has moved to a pro-accountability position over the past decade (and his key staffer on education is a former civil rights attorney so she gets these issues from that lens which is the Ed Trust, CCCR, etc…lens).

The Doyle Report:

State virtual schools are among the fastest growing programs in K–12 public education. Twenty-eight states now have virtual school programs that enroll students statewide, up from four such programs in 1997. Last year, some 139,000 students enrolled in at least one course through a state virtual school. Two of the oldest and largest state on-line programs, in Utah and Florida, have both expanded by more than 50 percent over the past five years. If trends continue—if states continue to create virtual schools and recently created programs grow at even half the rate of the programs in Florida and Utah—we can expect a half-million students to enroll in state virtual schools in just a few years.

Jay Matthews:

It is election day — a good day, I think, to thank God for our freedoms and for finally relieving us of the pain of listening to all those annoying campaign commercials.
I watch and listen to them anyway, even the worst of them. I am a political news junkie and always find them interesting, if exasperating. But as an education reporter, it bothers me that the politicians and campaign consultants who do these commercials promote the same myths about schools, election after election after election. Their messages distort our thinking about education and make it harder to raise student achievement.
…….
We have yet to elect any president, senator or member of Congress who has had a marked positive (or negative) impact on student achievement. Candidates for those offices will say they plan to rescue the education system because their polls say voters think this is important, but their promises are meaningless. Governors, as well as school board members, do have the power to make schools better, but very few have ever done so. Usually the best work is done by aggressive teachers and principals who know what they want and work very hard to get it, without ever asking anyone to vote for them.

Erin Richards:

The success story that Alliance for Attendance members will hear about comes from Racine, which cut its truancy rate from 21.7% to 9% in two years.
The proposal comes from Ald. Tony Zielinski, who wants to change the way citations are issued to truant students. Currently, students have to be caught “red-handed” by police to receive a truancy ticket.
MPS’ habitual truancy rate, which was more than 50% in 2001-’02, hasn’t dropped below 45% in the intervening years. That translates to about 40,000 MPS students each year who had five or more unexcused absences during a semester, said Dan Wiltrout, a consultant for compulsory attendance from the state Department of Public Instruction.
“That’s a big job,” Wiltrout said.

Wall Street Journal Editorial:

For example, the Education Department has granted a waiver to Chicago’s public schools, even though that system has been identified repeatedly as “in need of improvement” under NCLB and therefore not allowed to provide after-school tutoring. There is no shortage of private providers — from Newton Learning to Sylvan to the Princeton Review — willing to step in and serve the 200,000 or so students in the Windy City eligible for free tutoring.
But under pressure from teachers unions and public education bureaucrats like the Council of the Great City Schools, Ms. Spellings is allowing the Chicago system to offer its own tutoring. And with predictable results. After assuring the secretary that it would not limit student access to private tutoring, Chicago is doing exactly that. Principals have been directed to give preference to the district’s service and limit parent and student access to alternatives. Teachers have handed out registration forms for the district’s tutoring program at events where outside providers were banned. A full third of all students enrolled in tutoring are enrolled in the public district’s program.

Stanford’s Terry Moe:

The Department of Education recently announced its first grants in a new $94-million program to fund incentive-pay plans for teachers. The money itself is a drop in the bucket for a public school industry that spends more than $400 billion annually. And only a small portion of the nation’s school districts will be chosen to participate. But the idea — that a teacher’s pay should depend in part on how much his students actually learn — is revolutionary. It is also common sense.
The current system makes no sense at all. Beyond a brief probationary period, teachers have lifetime job security (tenure) and are virtually impossible to dismiss even if their students learn absolutely nothing year after year. Their pay, moreover, is based entirely on a salary schedule defined by seniority and credentials, and takes no account of whether their students are learning anything. All teachers, good and bad, are rewarded equally — a truly dumb idea. With this kind of reward structure, teachers are not given strong incentives to promote student learning to the fullest, because nothing happens to them one way or the other. Good teachers do not gain from their successes; mediocre teachers suffer no consequences for their failures. So why strive extra hard to get students to achieve? Taking it easy yields the same rewards.
To make matters worse, teachers who are especially talented, skilled and effective — qualities that employers throughout the economy are looking for — are well aware that their superior value will only be rewarded if they leave teaching for another career, which many of them do. Mediocre teachers, meantime, have the same lifetime security and pay as the good teachers. And people of low quality have especially strong reason to seek out these jobs and remain in the system until retirement, because almost nowhere else (outside government) would their poor performance be tolerated — indeed, rewarded. The disconnect between pay and performance, then, inevitably affects the quality and motivational character of the entire pool of people who wind up in the classroom.

Recent comments on merit pay. More on Terry Moe.

Jay Matthews:

This should be a shining moment for education schools. Never has the nation paid so much attention to improving the quality of teaching. Yet the institutions that produce teachers have never faced so much criticism.
“Teacher education is the Dodge City of the education world,” said Arthur Levine, former president of Columbia University’s Teachers College. “Like the fabled Wild West town, it is unruly and chaotic.”
Stanford University educational historian David F. Labaree wrote in a recent book: “Institutionally, the ed school is the Rodney Dangerfield of higher education; it don’t get no respect. The ed school is the butt of jokes in the university, where professors portray it as an intellectual wasteland.”
The attacks have become so frequent and intense that some educators say they have gone too far. But a growing number of educators say ed schools fail to give teachers enough background in their subject matter, fail to prepare them for the difficulties of urban schools and fail to recruit the best students.

Naush Boghossian:

LAUSD has 103 of the independent public schools, the most of any district in the nation. It has opened 40 charters since 2005.
Young projects that the LAUSD will continue to add 20 to 30 charters a year. Statewide, more than 300 charter schools are in development.
District officials, as well as the president of the teachers union, bristle at assertions by the Charter Schools Association that middle and high school charters are significantly outperforming their district counterparts.
A fairer comparison would be with the district’s magnet schools, which outperform charters, school board member Jon Lauritzen said.
“I think it’s basically unfair to compare an entity that is able to take their entire budget and focus it entirely on their own schools,” he said. “They have some real advantages over our schools in the flexibility of actually providing the type of education that a particular community wants, whereas we are trying to provide a curriculum that works for everyone all across the school district.”
Earlier this year, Lauritzen was unsuccessful in his bid to place a moratorium on approving additional charters.

Deborah Schoch:

But while some black leaders and educators have condemned his criticisms, he was greeted with sustained applause Saturday when he took on the black educational system in front of hundreds of Los Angeles area parents, teachers and students at Maranatha Community Church in the Crenshaw district.
Cosby was the keynote speaker at a forum titled “Education Is a Civil Right,” organized by local black educators to help forge an African American education agenda.
No subject was sacred.
Cosby chastised those black parents who he said fail to involve themselves in their children’s education, know what subjects they’re studying, visit their schools or meet the teachers. Some fail to monitor their children’s habits, he said.
“We’ve got parents who won’t check the bedrooms of their children to see if there’s a gun,” he said.
He chided teachers for not explaining clearly to students who ask, “Why do I need to know this?” that their algebra and English classes can help them obtain higher-paying jobs.

Eugene Hickok:

Even if Secretary Spellings were right that NCLB is 99.9% pure, it still would not be the formula for what ails American education.
The current debate over NCLB overlooks a critical problem: Nothing the administration does under NCLB will ensure the law’s promise that every child will be proficient in reading and math by 2014. For reasons unrelated to the law’s merit, NCLB is simply not up to the task. Something far more profound and transformative must happen for American education to offer every child the opportunity to succeed.
The deeper problem is the existing institutional architecture of American public education. No Child Left Behind erects an accountability system atop the status quo and requires states to provide families with options when schools fail. But public education governance, structure, finance, management and politics remain intact.
Here is the heart of the problem: American public education — because of the way it is structured, administered, funded and understood by parents, teachers, administrators and taxpayers — is incapable of delivering on the promises of NCLB. The root of the problem isn’t in the law; it’s in the American education system. It can’t get there from here.

Debra Viadero:

Since 2001, the American Institutes for Research, based in Washington, and SRI International, of Menlo Park, Calif., have been evaluating progress in a sample of Gates-funded schools in four districts. But foundation officials told the two research groups last year that they planned to pull the plug on that study. The foundation intends instead to forge a new study plan centered around building a database to monitor educational performance in every school it supports.
The studies conducted to date have not found dramatic gains in student achievement in the experimental schools. But Tom Vander Ark, the executive director for education initiatives at the Seattle-based philanthropy, said that Gates was not altering its evaluation strategy to “paint a rosier picture” of the results.

Diana Jean Schemo:

The Bush administration is giving public school districts broad new latitude to expand the number of single-sex classes, and even schools, in what is widely considered the most significant policy change on the issue since a landmark federal law barring sex discrimination in education more than 30 years ago.
Two years in the making, the new rules, announced Tuesday by the Education Department, will allow districts to create single-sex schools and classes as long as enrollment is voluntary. School districts that go that route must also make coeducational schools and classes of “substantially equal” quality available for members of the excluded sex.
The federal action is likely to accelerate efforts by public school systems to experiment with single-sex education, particularly among charter schools. Across the nation, the number of public schools exclusively for boys or girls has risen from 3 in 1995 to 241 today, said Leonard Sax, executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. That is a tiny fraction of the approximately 93,000 public schools across the country.

Andrew Rotherham notes that Hilary Clinton has long supported single sex education.

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

That is why Madison School Superintendent Art Rainwater was right last week when he said a recent flurry of violence in Madison schools merited attention by families and the community, as well as educators.
School violence is not just a school problem. It is a community problem.
Rainwater also said something that was wrong, however: “Our schools are absolutely safe.”
To be sure, Madison schools deserve high marks for safety. But the evidence shows that safety is far from absolute.

Learning Matters:

The Broad Foundation awards $1 million to the top urban school district in the nation. But what is the measure of success? And what are the ways that urban superintendents can lead their schools toward success in the long-term? John Merrow moderates a symposium with the five finalists. Superintendents from Boston; Bridgeport, CT; Jersey City, N.J.; Miami-Dade County; and New York City joined last year’s winner from Norfolk, VA to discuss and debate the best practices of urban education.
Reforming our urban educational systems is a daunting task and a national necessity, particularly as America’s urban centers become more diverse. The lively exchanges among these experienced superintendents about everything from union negotiation and parental expectations to state-takeovers and the merits and short-comings of the controversial No Child Left Behind legislation are sure to inform–and entertain–you.

audio

Peter Whoriskey:

This election season may be the first in which the growing use of high-stakes school testing, embodied in the No Child Left Behind legislation, has reached this level of political prominence.
A similar exam revolt has become a key issue in the race for governor in Texas, another state in the vanguard of the testing movement, and the issue has roiled the Ohio gubernatorial contest as well.
High-stakes testing — using standardized test scores to impose consequences affecting teachers and students — has been embraced widely in recent years as a way to hold educators and students accountable for their performance. Experts say the movement is one of the most significant shifts in U.S. education in decades.

Mike Antonucci has more.

I’ve been very impressed with the way that Madison School District staff have communicated with parents during several recent unfortunate events and incidents.

Reader Steven Ralser emails this article by Wendy Cole:

Twenty pairs of eyes eagerly converge on Jennifer Larcey as the afternoon science lesson gets under way at Bassett Elementary in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. Sure, the transfixed first-graders are salivating at the prospect of examining–and tasting–the physical properties of peanuts, raisins and M&Ms. But something else is riveting the kids, even as Larcey stands to the side of the room issuing directions: the breathtaking clarity of her voice. “Feel the peanuts, and try to describe the texture,” she instructs.
Larcey is one of seven teachers at Bassett who are, in effect, wired for sound. Nearly every word to her students is amplified through speakers wirelessly linked to a small blue transmitter dangling from her neck. Because she began using the technology three years ago, Larcey barely notices the device, except for the rare instances when she forgets to switch it on. “It’s obvious. The kids just don’t pay attention in the same way,” she says. Bassett has joined the growing ranks of schools embracing a deceptively simple technology at a time when federal No Child Left Behind accountability standards are compelling districts to find new ways to boost academic performance. Although amplification systems have long been used to help hearing-impaired students, recent research has shown that enhanced audio benefits all students by helping a teacher’s voice get through loud and clear, even at the back of the classroom.

Tom Hester, Jr.:

New Jersey voters would decide whether the state should create 21 county school districts under a plan considered Wednesday by legislators looking to cut the nation’s highest property taxes.
A referendum question would ask voters to approve the shift next year, a massive undertaking for a state with 616 school districts spread across 566 municipalities.

Madison’s East and West High Schools were locked down Monday. The Daily Page linked to the two police reports:

• Fifteen-year-old detained following threats and lockdown at East High
• Two men arrested after shooting scare in front of West High

Channel3000 has more here and here.

Shavar Jeffries:

This Article challenges the failure of courts and advocates considering remedies in school cases to assess whether public schools, as currently constituted, are institutionally aligned with stigmatized minorities’ particular educational needs. Numerous legal scholars have written about the longstanding failure of public schools to effectively educate racial minorities; but they have overlooked the relationship of public schools’ institutional context to the educational consequences of racial stigma. This Article does so, claiming that because stigma attacks the very capacities enabling education, services must specifically account for stigma’s noxious effects on racial minorities’ educability. Stigma distinctively affects minorities’ educational fortunes both categorically and individually. As a class, the ontological challenge posed by stigma, obviously, affects only the stigmatized; individually, children have different levels of access to resources contradicting stigma and also cope variably with stigma. Schools therefore need flexibility to respond not only to the unique class-wide harms engendered by stigma but also its specific manifestations in individual children.
Despite this need for flexibility, traditional public schools are highly bureaucratic and rule-bound, preempting the flexibility stigmatized minorities require. This disposition toward uniformity, moreover, is not coincidental but is central to political accountability, especially in urban districts disproportionately serving racial minorities. Finally, because they are minorities, relatively poor, and stigmatized, stigmatized minorities cannot politically realize bureaucratic rules consistently responsive to their educational needs.

Jay Matthews:

In many ways, parents are the most important teachers children will ever have. But drawing them into schools is often difficult. So is forging a constructive parent-school relationship. Teachers complain about parents who meddle too much and those who can’t be found. Parents say that educators claim to want more involvement but that they belittle their suggestions.
Here are 10 recommendations for better relations from educators and school-savvy parents.

Andy Hall:

tudents, parents, police and educators throughout Madison were rattled Monday but no significant injuries were reported in three unrelated incidents that included a lockdown at East High School, a pellet gun attack outside West High School and a car crash triggered by two O’Keeffe Middle School students.
Tensions were high because of recent violence and threats in schools in Wisconsin, Colorado and Pennsylvania, officials acknowledged. Monday’s chaos ended peacefully, they said, because of an unnamed community tipster, good security planning and quick police work.
Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater said about 1,800 students at East High School were restricted to their third-period classrooms, except for a quick trip to the cafeteria and bathroom breaks, from 11 a.m. until classes were dismissed at 3:30 p.m. because of a “credible threat” against a student.

Jeff Carlton:

Youngsters in a suburban Fort Worth school district are being taught not to sit there like good boys and girls with their hands folded if a gunman invades the classroom, but to rush him and hit him with everything they got – books, pencils, legs and arms.
“Getting under desks and praying for rescue from professionals is not a recipe for success,” said Robin Browne, a major in the British Army reserve and an instructor for Response Options, the company providing the training to the Burleson schools.
That kind of fight-back advice is all but unheard of among schools, and some fear it will get children killed.
But school officials in Burleson said they are drawing on the lessons learned from a string of disasters such as Columbine in 1999 and the Amish schoolhouse attack in Pennsylvania last week.

via Joanne.

Marie Gryphon:

Good teachers matter. This may seem obvious to anyone who has a child in school or, for that matter, to anyone who has been a child in school. For a long time, though, researchers couldn’t actually prove that teaching talent was important. But new research finally shows that teacher quality is a close cousin to student achievement: A great teacher can cram one-and-a-half grades’ worth of learning into a single year, while laggards are lucky to accomplish half that much. Parents and kids, it seems, have been right all along to care whether they were assigned to Mrs. Smith or Mr. Brown.
Yet, while we know now that better teachers are critical, flaws in the way that administrators select and retain them mean that schools don’t always hire the best.
Many ingredients of good teaching are difficult to ascertain in advance–charisma and diligence come to mind–but research shows a teacher’s own ability on standardized tests reliably predicts good performance in the classroom. You would think, then, that top-scoring teachers would be swimming in job offers, right? Not so, says Vanderbilt University professor Dale Ballou. High-scoring teaching applicants “do not fare better than others in the job market,” he writes. “Indeed, remarkably, they do somewhat worse.”
Even more surprising, given the national shortage of highly skilled math and science teachers, school administrators are more keen to hire education majors than applicants who have math or science degrees.

(more…)

William J. Mathis [16.1MB PDF]:

Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is the key element of the accountability system mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This report reveals that AYP in its 2006 form as the prime indicator of academic achievement is not supported by reliable evidence. Expecting all children to reach mastery level on their state’s standardized tests by 2014, the fundamental requirement of AYP, is unrealistic. The growth model and other improvement proposals now on the table do not have sufficient power to resolve the underlying problems of the system. In addition, the program, whether conceived as implementation costs or remedial costs, is significantly underfunded in a way that will disproportionately penalize schools attended by the neediest children. Further, the curriculum is being narrowed to focus on tested areas at the cost of other vital educational purposes.

Channel3000:

One year after LaFollette students complained of having to drop out of extra-curricular activities becasue of busing problems, the situation is fixed. More buses are running and WISC-TV went back to see if it has made a difference.