Budget/Financing – Page 51 – School Information System

School district consolidation should be just the beginning

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

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

Nick Britten:

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

Zuma’s goal is universal basic education

Richard Lapper:

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

Atlanta schools cheating probe faces scrutiny

Alan Judd & Heather Vogell:

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

Evaluation of the Madison School District Superintendent

Madison School Board. The Board of Education will evaluate Superintendent Dan Nerad Monday evening, during a closed session according to the online agenda.
Dan was hired in 2008, after a long tenure as Superintendent of the Green Bay public schools.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: LeBron’s Tax Holiday

The Wall Street Journal:

We come not to praise or bury LeBron James, but only to note that by moving to Miami he’s going to save a bundle on taxes. We’ll take the King of ESPN’s word that he’s jumping to the Miami Heat from the Cleveland Cavaliers mainly for basketball reasons, but it is also true that Florida has no income tax. The rate in Akron, Ohio is a little over 7%
Mr. James figures to earn close to $100 million in salary over five seasons in Miami. According to an analysis by Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University, Mr. James’s net present value tax savings on his salary are between $6 million and $8 million by living in Miami versus his home town of Akron. Professional athletes do have to pay other state taxes for the dates they play in visiting team arenas, but most of Mr. James’s considerable endorsement income would be taxed at Florida rates.
The tax comparisons looked even worse for two other teams in the LeBron bidding, the New York Knicks and New Jersey Nets. The New York Post estimated that New York City and state taxes of 12.85% on high income earners would have taken more than $12 million from Mr. James. New Jersey’s rate is nearly 9%. Both of those teams are lousy, but it can’t help their free-agent sales pitch to start out $9 billion to $12 billion in the after-tax hole.

Report dissects Indiana School districts’ spending

Niki Kelly:

Two Allen County school districts rank above the state average in the percentage of their budgets spent on classroom expenses, according to a report released Friday by the Indiana Office of Management and Budget.
The annual report – which includes revisions to the formula used to categorize spending – shows that statewide schools spent 57.8 percent of their funding on student instructional expenditures in the 2008-09 school year.
This is also known as the percentage of dollars going to the classroom.
“I encourage school board members, administrators, teachers and citizens across the state to closely examine the way dollars are currently allocated and evaluate whether their budgets truly put students first,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett said. “I will only be satisfied once we have driven every possible dollar toward increasing student achievement and success.”

Complete 5.6MB PDF report.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Wisconsin deficit for next two-year budget swells to $2.5 billion

Jason Stein:

The state’s yawning budget hole has swelled to $2.5 billion, underscoring the massive challenge that awaits the next governor and Legislature, a new report shows.
The projections by the Legislature’s non-partisan budget office show the expected shortfall for the 2011-2013 budget has grown by $462 million from the just over $2 billion that was expected a year ago.

The Madison School District released a memorandum on expected redistributed state tax dollars last week 119K PDF. Superintendent Dan Nerad:

As you can see over the past five years, equalization aid for MMSD has been slightly erratic, increasing for two years and then decreasing drastically over the past 2 years as the State of Wisconsin removed $147 million of funding from the equalization aid formula.
The 2009-10 school year was the first time over the last 10 years that MMSD saw a maximum decrease in funding from the State of Wisconsin, which statutorily is set at 15%, For MMSD this was a decrease in the State’s connnitment to public education in Madison of over $9.2 million when compared with funds received in 2008-09.
When planning for the 20I0-11 school year budget, Administration openly planned for another reduction in equalization aid funding of 15% or approximately $7.8 million. The early aid estimate that was released on July I, 2010 shows MMSD in a better situation than was first projected through the budget process for one reason. The breakdown ofequalization aid for MMSD in 2010-11 as projected by the DPI is as follows:

John Schmid: Study says state is a ‘C’ student

Share of College Spending for Recreation Is Rising

Sam Dillon:

American colleges are spending a declining share of their budgets on instruction and more on administration and recreational facilities for students, according to a study of college costs released Friday.
The report, based on government data, documents a growing stratification of wealth across America’s system of higher education.
At the top of the pyramid are private colleges and universities, which educate a small portion of the nation’s students, while public universities and community colleges, where tuitions are rising most rapidly, serve greater numbers and have fewer resources.
The study of revenues and spending trends of American institutions of higher education from 1998 through 2008 traces how the patterns at elite private institutions like Harvard and Amherst differed from sprawling public universities like Ohio State and community colleges like Alabama Southern.

Madison School District Administration: Central office Transformation for Teaching and Learning Improvement

Superintendent Dan Nerad 45K PDF.:

This is a project whereby the University of Washington’s Center for Educational leadership (CEl) will support the District in its central office transformation by:
a. developing a theory of action to guide how central office leaders and principals work together to improve instructional leadership and to provide support to schools.
b. designing and implementing school cluster support teams with a focus on developing a common understanding of quality instruction and in developing stronger relationships between central office leaders and principals that are focused on growing principal instructional leadership.
The involved services draw from the research published by Dr. Meredith I. Honig and Michael A Copland

Another Madison Maintenance Referendum? District Administration Facility Assessment Report and Database

Erik Kass, Assistant Superintendent for Business Services 6.5mb pdf:

This project began when the Board of Education approved the contract with Durrant Engineering in April of2009. Durrant was hired to provide a full condition assessment of all school district buildings to identify long and short-term repair needs.
The vision of this project was to deliver to the school district a living database that would aid in the budgeting and planning process into the future.
The study focused primarily on all engineering systems and equipment, but also included an in-depth study of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) issues our school district faces. The study didn’t include roofing projects, as that work has already been completed and is continually updated on an annual basis. For the assessment, trained professional engineers visited every site within the school district, evaluating systems and conditions, while also taking actual photographs to integrate into the report. This work transitioned into a grading system that has become part of the database delivered to the school district for future planning.
All of the information gathered and organized into the database format provides a lot of functionality for the school district moving forward.
Each item has actual digital photos attached for reference, cost ranges are summarized for each item, and the ability to sort the information in various ways are examples o f the functionality of the database.
Four individuals from Durrant Engineering will be present to provide a more in-depth review of the work that was completed. This presentation will also include a demonstration ofthe database that was created to show the functionality provided to the district with this tool.
D. Describe the action requested of the BOE – Administration is looking for the Board of Education to accept the maintenance project study with the database which is the planning tool to be used for future maintenance projects.
……
Next Steps – It is the intent of Administration to work toward creating a multi-year project plan, along with projected funds necessary to implement this plan each year. This work will begin upon approval by the Board ofthe information and data within the database, and will become important work of the new Director for the division of Building Services. Our goal is to return to the Board in May/June 2011 to present this multi-year plan with projected sources of funding.

Bold added.
The District has apparently been unable to account for $23,000,000 spent via the 2005 “maintenance referendum”. Additional commentary here. Notes and links on the 2005 maintenance referendum (two out of three MMSD questions failed).

Madison School District Fund 80 Community Organization Spending Report

Superintendent Dan Nerad 1.9MB PDF:

Attached is the report summarizing progress after the first year from the community organizations receiving funding from the Madison Metropolitan School District. Also attached are the full end-of-year status reports from each organization, except the Urban League; their report will be provided in August. MMSD funding is now ended for . / African-American Ethnic Academy, Inc. . / Kajsiab House ./ Urban League of Greater Madison: Project Bootstrap 21st Century Careers Program
Funding, at this point, will continue for one more year for the other nine community organizations.

“Fund 80” taxes (and spending) may increase beyond State of Wisconsin school district limits. Fund 80 spending growth has long been a source of controversy.

Parsing the New Jersey AHSA Results

New Jersey Left Behind:

The Star-Ledger reports that 2,900 NJ high school seniors failed the Alternative High School Assessment, the replacement for the long-discredited Special Review Assessment, which almost no one failed. The AHSA, which replaced the SRA just this year, is administered to students who failed the traditional assessment (the HSPA) three times.
The reason for the change in passage rate – 96% for the SRA and now about 36% for the AHSA (8,000 kids took it) is due to the change in scoring. The SRA was scored by the teachers within the child’s district who administered the test. The AHSA is scored by Measurement, Inc., an outside vendor.

A Textbook Case for Low-Cost Books

David Lewis:

It is clear to anyone who looks at the state of textbooks today that the system is broken. It does not work well for anyone, but it is especially hard on students, who typically pay $1,000 a year or more for textbooks.
Everyone with a financial stake in the textbook business is looking for a new model. That is especially true for publishers, but also for bookstores and authors. Macmillan’s recent announcement of its DynamicBooks program, which provides a high degree of customization with electronic and print-on-demand capabilities, is typical. Most major textbook publishers have or are planning something similar.
Several textbook-rental companies, including Chegg.com, CollegeBookRenter.com, and BookRenter.com, have made inroads into college campuses, and major college-bookstore operators are exploring rental programs as well. Start-ups like Flat World Knowledge offer their textbooks free on the Web and sell a variety of versions of the text (print-on-demand books, printable PDF’s of chapters, and MP3 files) and support materials. Connexions and numerous other groups provide platforms for a growing number of open textbooks.

Plymouth-Canton minority-teacher push stirs controversy

Shawn D. Lewis:

Efforts by one of Metro Detroit’s largest suburban school districts to recruit more minority teachers and administrators have renewed debate over the use of race in hiring decisions.
A recent directive in the Plymouth-Canton Community Schools urges administrators to scan resumes for “cues” that applicants are from a minority racial group. Tip-offs can include job-seekers’ residence, college attendance, fraternity or church membership and employment history.
Nearly a quarter of Plymouth-Canton’s nearly 19,000 students are minorities, compared with less than 3 percent of its educational staff. District officials say they want to close that gap while hiring the most-qualified candidates.

Everett makes kids walk to school to save money

Associated Press:

Children in Everett will be walking up to a mile to get to school next year. The budget saving plan has some parents worried about traffic and safety.
The school board says the plan will save the district more than $400,000.

Katrina’s Silver Lining: The School Choice Revolution in New Orleans

ReasonTV:

Before hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005, New Orleans had one of the worst performing public school districts in the nation. Katrina forced nearly a million people to leave their homes and caused almost $100 billion in damages. To an already failing public school system, the storm seemed to provide the final deathblow. But then something amazing happened. In the wake of Katrina, education reformers decided to seize the opportunity and start fresh with a system based on choice.

Failing schools chase reform dollars

Erin Richards:

As far as failing schools are concerned, Custer High School has been on the watch list for years.
The north side Milwaukee institution on Sherman Blvd. has one of the highest populations of special education students in the district, mostly for behavioral problems. Since 2002, no more than 20% of its 10th-graders have tested proficient or higher in either reading or in math on state tests. Student enrollment has been in a freefall.
As part of President Barack Obama’s push to turn around the worst performing 5% of schools in the country, Custer is in the crosshairs. The government ordered states to identify their lowest performers through a new formula earlier this year and then increased the pot of improvement grant money available to them, provided those schools implement federally approved reforms such as contracting with management companies or replacing principals.
But will those be enough to improve Custer and the other turnaround schools, where previous reform efforts have failed?
Milwaukee Public Schools – where all of Wisconsin’s lowest-performing schools are located – is on its way to finding out. Last week it applied for $45 million in school improvement grants that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction is authorized to distribute. The application asked for grants worth from $50,000 to $2 million for 47 schools, and the district expects to hear by the end of this week if its plans are approved, Marcia Staum, MPS director of school improvement, said Tuesday.

Tenure, RIP: What the Vanishing Status Means for the Future of Education

Robin Wilson:

Some time this fall, the U.S. Education Department will publish a report that documents the death of tenure.
Innocuously titled “Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2009,” the report won’t say it’s about the demise of tenure. But that’s what it will show.
Over just three decades, the proportion of college instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track plummeted: from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007. The new report is expected to show that that proportion fell even further in 2009. If you add graduate teaching assistants to the mix, those with some kind of tenure status represent a mere quarter of all instructors.

Andy Grove: How America Can Create Jobs The former Intel chief says “job-centric” leadership and incentives are needed to expand U.S. domestic employment again

Andy Grove:

Friedman is wrong. Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.
The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.

There has been quite a bit of commentary on Grove’s Bloomberg article online: Bing, Clusty, Google and Yahoo.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Most Americans Not Willing To Pay Higher Taxes For Public Employees, Entitlement Programs; California Pension Changes

Rasmussen Poll:

Most Americans would not pay higher taxes for specific public services in their states, but they are more supportive of paying for education and staffing law enforcement than supporting state employees and entitlement programs.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Adults shows that only 19% would be willing to pay higher taxes to avoid layoffs of state employees. Sixty-nine percent (69%) say they would not be willing to pay more in taxes for this reason. Another 11% are undecided.
Adults feel similarly when it comes to funding entitlement programs. Twenty-two percent (22%) would pay higher taxes to prevent cuts in entitlement programs for low-income Americans. Sixty-three percent (63%) say they would not pay more to keep these programs afloat. Another 15% are undecided.

The Economist:

This is because it would begin the undoing of a policy disaster dating back to 1999. That was when the Democratic legislature and the then governor, Gray Davis, a Democrat elected with union support, thanked the unions by giving state workers pension increases of between 20% and 50%. Many highway-patrol officers, for example, were allowed to retire at 50 with 90% of their final salary. All told, California now has probably the most generous public-sector benefits in the country.
That, however, is not what outrages Mr Schwarzenegger, a Republican, or his brainy economic adviser David Crane, a Democrat. Rather, it is that the pension plans–above all the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest such scheme in America–pretended that this generosity would not cost anything. In 1999 the dotcom bubble was still inflating, and the plans’ actuaries predicted that their retirement funds would gain enough value to pay the increased pensions. By implication, they assumed that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would reach 25,000 in 2009 and 28m in 2099. It is currently at around 10,300.

Indian Community School losing its financial crutch

Amy Hetzner:

Millions of dollars annually from Potawatomi Bingo Casino proceeds will end this month as the school prepares to lean on its endowment and investments
When casino money started flowing 20 years ago, the first changes at Indian Community School of Milwaukee were relatively modest: Grades that had been cut because of budget concerns were restored. The school started paying employees’ health and dental insurance. Staffing was increased.
Later came building repairs and salary increases.
Today, the school has moved to 177 acres in this southwestern suburb, in an architecturally stunning building that honors the environment but has at least six computers, a Smart Board display and an audio system in every classroom.
The big question: Can it be sustained?

Next Georgia governor faces shaping up schools

Laura Diamond:

The governor will be expected to reverse the financial tsunami that forced local school districts to lay off teachers, shorten the school year and eliminate academic programs. He or she will play a major role in updating the popular HOPE scholarship, as falling revenues jeopardize its future. The governor will also help decide hot-button issues, such as whether illegal immigrants should be allowed to attend the state’s public colleges.
While education leaders — such as the state superintendent, State Board of Education and State Board of Regents — set policies and make decisions that affect the state’s public schools and colleges, the governor wields enormous power and influence over the quality of education in Georgia.
The gubernatorial candidates agreed education was either the No. 1 issue or just behind jobs and economic development.

The education debacle of the decade

Bob Ewing:

Dr. Patrick Wolf spoke to a packed audience in the Capitol Visitors Center last Monday.
The seats were full and people stood all along the edges of the room, even spilling out into the hallway. We all came to hear him explain his latest research on the tiny education program that has caused a national uproar–arousing so much passion that African-American leaders from around the country recently gathered downtown to engage in an act of civil disobedience.
The Department of Education commissioned Wolf to conduct a series of detailed studies on the results of the Washington DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). Established in 2004 as a five-year pilot program, OSP is among the most heavily researched federal education programs in history.
OSP targeted about 2,000 of the poorest kids in DC who were stuck in some of the worst schools in the country. It gave their parents a $7,500 scholarship to attend a private school of their choice.
The response was immediate. Four applications were filled out for every slot available. Parents loved the program, considering it a lifeline for their children, a way to escape failing schools and enter safe, functional schools.

A National Report Card on Teacher Layoffs

Tom Ashbrook:

As state and local budgets collapse around the country, the axe is coming down on teachers. One, two, three hundred thousands layoffs in schools from coast to coast.
The axe is falling first on younger teachers who would be – should be – the next generation of American educators. And of course, fewer teachers means bigger classes alongside less of much else: band, sports, languages, labs … you name it.

Living in a Post-NCLB World, Part II

Kevin Carey:

A couple of weeks ago, in the course a long post about how we came to live in a post-NCLB world, I wrote:

Why did this happen? First, because NCLB didn’t work very well. The federal government is good at distributing money. It can fund research, provide information, and set standards. It has a significant if limited capacity to prohibit people from doing bad things. But it is very difficult for the federal government to make state and local governments do good things they don’t want to do. And that’s where NCLB fell down. You cannot create a regulatory apparatus that mandates, via adherence to enforceable rules, the transformation of bad schools into good ones.

I’ve been thinking about this some more and thought it would be worth elaborating.
Brown v. Board was a case of the federal government prohibiting people from doing bad things. It hasn’t been easy-the civil rights division of the Justice Department is still overseeing and litigating numerous related cases today-but it worked, in large part because both the problem and the solution were easy to identify. If a small, angry man is standing in the entrance of the local high school swearing eternal fealty to segregation, it’s not hard to figure out what needs to change. The remedy is also straightforward: send in the national guard to remove the segregationist and unchain the high school doors.
After Brown, the next big judicial push for educational justice came in school funding. Because the Rodriguez case closed off the federal courts, this battle was fought state by state. Again, it wasn’t easy. There were numerous losses, some cases dragged out for decades, and recalcitrant legislatures reneged on their constitutional obligations to poor children. But there were also many victories, in large part because, again, the problems and solutions were straightforward. Money is easy to count. If poor districts get much less of it than rich districts, there’s only so much states can do to defend themselves. If subsequent counting shows persistent financial disparities, you get hauled back into court.

Meet the Principal of Berkeley’s First Charter School

Rachel Gross:

Since the small schools movement in the ’90s, the Bay Area has been something of a petri dish for alternative academics in K-12 education. Oakland, for example, boasts 34 charter schools of various themes and sizes (as well as graduation rates), the first of which was founded in 1993. But until now, Berkeley hasn’t joined the experiment.
Now, to the outcry of some community members and the cheers of others, Berkeley will open its first charter schools, after a proposal for the schools was approved by the Board of Education last month. With a starting budget of just over $3 million, the Revolutionary Education and Learning Movement middle and high schools will open in the fall of 2011. REALM seeks to integrate alternative ways of learning into its curricula, including computer programming, game design and other technology-based projects.

Fewer Low-Income Students Going to College

Emmeline Zhao:

Fewer low- and moderate-income high school graduates are attending college in America, and fewer are graduating.
Enrollment in four-year colleges was 40% in 2004 for low-income students, down from 54% in 1992, and 53% in 2004 for moderate-income students, down from 59% over the same period, according to a report recently submitted to Congress by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance.
If that trend has continued, low- and moderate-income students who don’t move on to college face an even darker outlook. The unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year olds averaged 17% in 2004, the jobless rate for people over age 25 with just a high school diploma averaged 5% the same year. So far this year, those figures have jumped to 25.8% and 10.6%, respectively.

Why I’m skeptical about school finance ‘reforms’

Jo Egelhoff:

Something’s not right about this school funding reform stuff. State Superintendent Tony Evers last month introduced “Fair Funding for Our Future,” which is supposed to “make it fairer for districts [and] provide them with more financial stability”

… so that every Wisconsin child can graduate ready to succeed in further education and the workplace….Fair, sustainable, and transparent funding also requires education leaders at all levels to commit to investing taxpayer dollars in programs that show results.

Evers – and many others – seem to be honing in on the bucks when it’s much more critically important to hone in on that “showing results” part.
Heritage does great work on countering the “Education Spending Fallacy,” i.e., that more money means better performance. The latest piece countered Paul Krugman’s plea to throw more money at the system.

Special Ed Segregation

New Jersey Left Behind:

Today’s Star-Ledger looks at the increasing cost of educating children with special needs in out-of-district placements, and districts’ efforts to create in-district classrooms. Fact from the article: Bedminster’s Somerset Hills Learning Institute for autistic children costs more than $116,000 per student this year.
Here’s another fact (not from the article): New Jersey classifies children as eligible for special education services at a higher rate than any other state in the country. In fact 18%, almost 1 in 5, of our children are diagnosed with either learning disabilities or other handicaps. To round out the picture, we classify minority children at a much higher rate than white kids. From a 2007 report from the Harvard School of Education:

Chicago school officials pin hopes on extreme makeover at Marshall High School

Azam Ahmed:

It was final exam day in Anthony Skokna’s classroom, and his students scanned textbooks and old exams for inspiration as they scribbled answers.
Such assistance was standard practice in Skokna’s economics class, but on this June day it was not enough. Halfway through the period, one student asked the teacher outright for the answer to a true/false question. Skokna complied, and a flood of questions and answers ensued like some twisted game show.
“Skok, you might get your job back,” yelled one excited student. “It look like we’re learning.”

50 Open Source Tools that Replace Ed Apps

Douglas Crets:

Here is the opening paragraph, which includes a pretty big number, but I don’t know what this writer means by “the educational community”, or what he means by “support and services for open source software by 2012″:

The educational community has discovered open source tools in a big way. Analysts predict that schools will spend up to $489.9 million on support and services for open source software by 2012, and that only includes charges related to operating systems and learning management systems. Teachers, professors and home schoolers are using open source applications as part of their educational curriculum for a wide variety of subjects.

There is no link to the number or to the analysts, so I don’t know from where the information comes. I’d like to say right away that I don’t like that the writer of this blog post is saying that these open source tools “replace” existing tools or software. I don’t think there is any way for one person to measure that. I think it is helpful, though, to say that these open source tools may work well in cooperation with existing software, or as accents for software that already exists.

Michael Gove: wasteful UK school building programme to be axed

Rosa Prince:

Announcing the move, Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, described the Building Schools for the Future programme as bureaucratic and wasteful, saying that in some cases schools had taken longer to build than an airport in Hong Kong.
He accused the last Labour government of failing to fund the £55 billion scheme, which was due to see new classrooms and other buildings constructed at more than 700 schools.
The announcement came as Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, announced a further £1.5 billion in cuts, including £1 billion from the Department of Education.
Labour had been relying on “unrealistic” end of year underspending to fund projects including the school building programme, creating a “black hole” which Mr Gove said the new Coalition Government would not allow to continue.

‘Truth’ Oscar winner takes on public schools

Jill Tucker:

The last time documentary film director Davis Guggenheim was in the San Francisco Ritz-Carlton, he was asking Al Gore to be in his new movie about global warming.
“An Inconvenient Truth” won Guggenheim an Academy Award and put Gore on the fast track for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Guggenheim, 46, now had the Hollywood clout to pursue any project he wanted. He chose to take on the country’s public school system.
Back at the Ritz-Carlton, the director was just starting the promotional tour of his new film, “Waiting for Superman,” a documentary that follows five families who reject the assigned path into an inferior public school and embark on a quest to gain admission into quality public schools – all public charter schools, including Summit Preparatory Charter High School in Redwood City.
Guggenheim, who sends his own children to private school, takes on the teachers unions, bureaucracy and a status quo that denies children the opportunity a public education is supposed to give them.

Watch the trailer here.

Fewer superintendents heading more school districts

Tom Weber:

One way rural school districts in Minnesota try to save money is by sharing superintendents, usually with one person becoming the leader of two districts.
But a man in southern Minnesota is getting ready to become the superintendent of three districts, and officials say he probably won’t be the last to take on so many districts.
Jerry Reshetar has been the superintendent of the Lyle School District since 1999. The town sits right on the Minnesota-Iowa border and its school has about 230 or so students. The district had already been working on sharing resources with two nearby districts, Glenville-Emmons and Grand Meadow.

College Grad Sues Father to Recoup Tuition Costs

Christian Nolan:

Breach of contract action focuses on written contract requiring divorced father to cover daughter’s school costs until age 25
It’s not news that some children, especially as they hit their teenage and college years, don’t get along with their parents. But even experienced attorneys say it’s rare when the disagreements grow to a point where litigation is required.
So consider the odd case of Dana Soderberg, who went to court to force her father to live up to a deal to pay her tuition at Southern Connecticut State University. Hamden family lawyer Renee C. Berman handled the lawsuit for Soderberg.

Scholastic makes inroads into Arabic children’s book market

Geraldine Baum:

Sensing a business and cultural opportunity, Scholastic carefully translates English-language books like “Heidi” and “The Magic School Bus” to be used at schools in several Arab-speaking countries.
The publisher was on a rare and delicate mission to translate and mass-market books from America for a part of the world that often rails against American values.
Carol Sakoian, a vice president of Scholastic Inc., brought a small group of Arab officials into a conference room to screen a stack of stories. They read and read, about caterpillars, volcanoes, Amelia Earhart, and a big red dog named Clifford.

What the Seattle Superintendent wants to talk about

Charlie Mas:

In a recent Seattle Times interview, Dr. Maria Goodloe-Johnson said:

“We don’t have charter schools. So let’s put that over there, and let’s talk about something else. How about kids being successful, how about kids being challenged? How about providing interventions to close the achievement gap?”

Okay. Let’s talk about those things.
How about kids being successful and challenged? Under Dr. Goodloe-Johnson’s administration, what changes have we seen? On the good side we have seen more AP classes in the high schools that didn’t have many before. We have certainly seen more students taking AP classes. That’s in the high schools. What have we seen in K-8? More schools have been designated as ALOs, but there is no quality assurance so we don’t know if there is anything there beyond the official designation. That’s particularly true with Spectrum programs.

Is outsourcing community college education serving students?

Michael Hiltzik:

It’s not unusual for government agencies with budget problems to start outsourcing services to private industry.
Computer maintenance, prison management, landscaping — all are among the services that state or local bureaucrats have handed off to private firms over the years.
What about college education? It turns out that California is trying to outsource our public higher education system to the for-profit college industry. What is surprising is that this is happening without any evidence that the affected students would be well served.

To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery

Trip Gabriel:

The frontier in the battle to defeat student cheating may be here at the testing center of the University of Central Florida.
No gum is allowed during an exam: chewing could disguise a student’s speaking into a hands-free cellphone to an accomplice outside.
The 228 computers that students use are recessed into desk tops so that anyone trying to photograph the screen — using, say, a pen with a hidden camera, in order to help a friend who will take the test later — is easy to spot.
Scratch paper is allowed — but it is stamped with the date and must be turned in later.
When a proctor sees something suspicious, he records the student’s real-time work at the computer and directs an overhead camera to zoom in, and both sets of images are burned onto a CD for evidence.

How they teach math in MMSD middle school

via a kind reader. Related: Connected Math, Math Forum audio/video, the successful Seattle Discovery Math lawsuit and the Madison School District Math Task Force (SIS links).

Frustration fuels march to charter schools

Delaware Online:

However, a new study of what parents from the nation’s sixth largest metropolitan area want for their children’s education tilts favorably to a growing national preference for private and charter schools.
And charter schools win the horse race for school choice, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia Research Initiative.
“This trend has developed in the face of evidence that many charters perform no better than district schools and of a constant drumbeat of news reports and investigations regarding alleged and proven improprieties in the way charters operate,” the report’s authors say.
So why are an estimated 420 million students on waiting lists for charter schools?
Frustration with the struggling direction and results of traditional public schools is a leading cause.

Pew Trusts:

A comprehensive new study from The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Philadelphia Research Initiative finds that K-12 education in Philadelphia is undergoing a sweeping transformation that has given parents a new array of choices about where to send their children to school but has left families thinking they still do not have enough quality options.
The study, “Philadelphia’s Changing Schools and What Parents Want from Them,” finds that the three largest educational systems in the city–traditional public schools, charter schools and Catholic schools–have changed dramatically in size and composition during the past decade. Only one of them, the charter schools, has been growing. Indeed, charters, which have been in existence for only 13 years, now have more students than the Catholic school system.

School hero not taking job loss quietly

Karen Heller:

At South Philadelphia High School on Dec. 3, when the school dissolved in racial violence, the community-relations liaison not once, but twice, put herself in harm’s way protecting Asian American students from being pummeled by rampaging mobs.
Seven students were hospitalized, though not one of the charges Sutton-Lawson so vigorously defended.
Citizens sent her thank-you cards. Elected officials offered commendations. Business leaders presented gift certificates.
The Philadelphia School District, she says, did virtually nothing.
Two weeks ago, Sutton-Lawson received the ultimate indignity. She was laid off.
“I was totally shocked. I felt like I was trying to make a difference in that school,” says Sutton-Lawson, 58, who worked with students who were pregnant and new mothers. “I got nervous. I got sick inside. I got scared about losing my health insurance.”

Whatever Happened to No Child Left Behind?

Kevin Carey:

Earlier this week I hopped on the Red Line in the middle of the afternoon to attend a screening of the education reform documentary Waiting for Superman at the Gallery Place movie theater downtown. It’s a resonant, skillfully made film, a pitch-perfect representation of education reform in 2010. And arguably the most striking aspect was the near-total absence of No Child Left Behind, which is mentioned only in passing as one more failed federal plan.
This reinforced an idea that’s been nagging me for a while now: Some time in the last two or three years, we moved into the post-NCLB era of education reform.
It didn’t used to be that way. When I began working on education policy full-time in the early 2000’s, the center of gravity in education reform sat with the coalition of civil rights advocates, business leaders, and reform-minded governors of both parties who pushed NCLB through Congress in 2001. To find that same hum of ideas and influence today, you’d head straight for the annual New Schools Venture Fund Summit and its confluence of charter school operators, TFA alumni, urban reformers, philanthropies, and various related “edupreneurs.” It’s a different world with a different mindset, and this has real implications for public schools.

Forget grade levels, KC schools try something new

Heather Hollingsworth:

Forget about students spending one year in each grade, with the entire class learning the same skills at the same time. Districts from Alaska to Maine are taking a different route.
Instead of simply moving kids from one grade to the next as they get older, schools are grouping students by ability. Once they master a subject, they move up a level. This practice has been around for decades, but was generally used on a smaller scale, in individual grades, subjects or schools.
Now, in the latest effort to transform the bedraggled Kansas City, Mo. schools, the district is about to become what reform experts say is the largest one to try the approach. Starting this fall officials will begin switching 17,000 students to the new system to turnaround trailing schools and increase abysmal tests scores.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: America is sinking under Obama’s towering debt

Nile Gardiner:

I hope the White House is paying attention to the latest annual Congressional Budget Office Long-Term Budget Outlook, which offers a truly frightening picture of the scale of America’s national debt, with huge implications for the country’s future prosperity. According to the non-partisan CBO, “the federal government has been recording the largest budget deficits, as a share of the economy, since the end of World War II”:
As a result of those deficits, the amount of federal debt held by the public has surged. At the end of 2008, that debt equaled 40 percent of the nation’s annual economic output (as measured by gross domestic product, or GDP), a little above the 40 year average of 36 percent. Since then, large budget deficits have caused debt held by the public to shoot upward; the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that federal debt will reach 62 percent of GDP by the end of this year–the highest percentage since shortly after World War II.
In its report, the CBO also offers two alternative long-term scenarios. The first long-term budget scenario, the more conservative extended baseline scenario, is worrying enough:

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: What do banking crises have to do with consumption?

Michael Pettis:

Just three days after returning to Beijing from New York, I had to leave again, this time to a series of conferences in Torino, Italy, so it is hard to do much writing for my blog, especially since I won’t spend my free time in the hotel when there is so damned much food out here that urgently needs sampling. Still, I did want to write a hurried note about a topic of conversation that came up a lot while I was in the US and even more here in Italy.
For the next several years, as Keynes reminded us in the 1930s, savings is not going to be a virtue for the world economy. It is more likely to be a vice. In order to regain growth the world desperately needs less savings and more private consumption, but I think it is not going to get nearly enough to generate growth. Why? Because in all the major economies the banking systems are largely insolvent, or about to become so, and desperately need to rebuild capital. For reasons I discuss below, this will have a large adverse impact on private consumption.
Let’s go through the major banking systems. First, the crisis started in the US and, perhaps as a consequence, US banks have already identified a lot of their problem loans and have been the most diligent about rebuilding their capital bases. They nonetheless still have a long ways to go, even though a large part of the bad loan problem was directly or indirectly transferred to the US government. By the way, transferring bad loans to the government may be good for the banks but will have the same adverse impact on consumption. I try to explain why below.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Wisconsin State and Local Debt Rose Faster Than Federal Debt During 1990-2009 Average Annual Increase in State Debt, 7.8%; Local Debt, 7.3%

WISTAX:

State and local debt in Wisconsin grew faster than federal debt over the last 19 years. State debt rose 316%, an average of 7.8% per year, from $2.71 billion in 1990 to $11.25 billion in 2009. Local general obligation debt was up 284%, a 7.3% average, from $3.41 billion in 1989 to $13.1 billion in 2008. Federal debt held by the public averaged annual increases of 6.2% per year for a total increase of 212.8% from 1990 through 2009. The figures come from a new study from the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance (WISTAX), a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization dedicated to citizen education.
Governments borrow for many reasons, including buildings, roads, sewers, and environmental cleanup. However, WISTAX researchers found that about 40% of the state increase was due to $1.6 billion of tobacco bonds issued in fiscal 2002 that were funded by a stream of payments from tobacco companies, as well as $1.8 billion in appropriation bonds issued in fiscal 2004 to pay unfunded state pension and sick-leave liabilities. The tobacco bonds were issued to help balance the 2001-03 state budget. The bonds were refinanced in fiscal 2009, generating an additional $300 million that was used to balance the 2008-09 general fund. Originally expected to be paid off in 2018, the refinanced bonds will not be paid off until 2029.

Reality check on school accountability movement

Dave Russell:

t is time to end the childhood obesity epidemic once and for all.
Obesity decreases a child’s quality of life and longevity. It contributes to a host of medical conditions and costs our country millions each year. Childhood obesity is preventable and our country should take responsibility for helping all children achieve a healthy weight.
My proposal will guarantee that no child will be obese by the time they graduate from high school. This will be accomplished by simply holding schools as well as health and physical education teachers accountable for insuring that all students reach or maintain a healthy weight before graduating high school.
Before I begin, let’s address all the naysayers whose excuses will be endless.

Dane County African American Community Forum on Thursday, July 8

via a Kaleem Caire email:

Greetings.
We want to remind you that the Urban League of Greater Madison is hosting a forum with members of Dane County’s African American community on Thursday, July 8, 2010 from 5:30pm – 7:30pm CST at our new headquarters (2222 South Park Street, Madison 53713) to discuss ways the Urban League can support the education and employment needs and aspirations of African American children, youth, and adults in greater Madison. We would like to hear the African American community’s opinions and ideas about strategies the Urban League can pursue to dramatically:
· Increase the academic achievement, high school graduation, and college goings rates of African American children and youth;
· decrease poverty rates and increase the number of African American adults who are employed and moving into the middle class; and
· increase the number of African Americans who are serving and employed in leadership roles in Dane County’s public and private sector.
If you have not already RSVP’d, please contact Ms. Isheena Murphy of the Urban League at 608-729-1200 or via email at imurphy@ulgm.org. We will serve light refreshments and begin promptly at 5:30pm CST.
We look forward to listening, learning, and helping to manifest opportunity for all in Dane County.
________________________________________
Kaleem Caire
President & CEO
Urban League of Greater Madison
2222 South Park Street, Suite 200
Madison, WI 53713
Main: 608-729-1200
Assistant: 608-729-1249
Fax: 608-729-1205
Email: kcaire@ulgm.org
Internet: www.ulgm.org
Facebook:

Related: Poverty and Education Forum.

Alameda School Tax Referendum “Measure E” Fails

Jill Tucker:

For decades, parents have shelled out a real estate premium to take advantage of Alameda public schools, spending more money for rent or a mortgage for the peace of mind that comes with solid standardized test scores and a seat at the school down the block.
That’s what Heather Genschmer did.
She wanted her son Myles, 3, to have the public school experience she had as a child, one filled with art, music, gifted programs, field trips, sports and high-quality academics.

Related: “Measure E, What Went Wrong” and “No on Measure E“. More here. The Alameda School District’s website.
Alameda’s enrollment was 9,612 in 2009/2010. Spending was 92,010,693 in 2009/2010 = $9,572 per student. Locally, Madison spent $15,241 per student, based on the 2009/2010 Citizen’s budget ($370,287,471 expenditures for 24,295 students), 37% more than Alameda.

Only 18 UK teachers have been struck off for incompetence in the past 40 years

BBC:

This is despite ex-chief inspector of UK schools, Chris Woodhead, estimating some 15,000 are not up to the job.
Some bad teachers are moved between schools, rather than having their competency challenged, it has emerged.
Teaching unions dispute the claims. The General Teaching Council for England, which investigates complaints, says the number of poor teachers is “not clear”.
However, the GTC admits the suggestion that the 18 struck off represented the total number of incompetent teachers in the system is not credible.
Two years ago, its chief executive Keith Bartley said there could be as many as 17,000 “substandard” teachers among the 500,000 registered teachers in the UK.

Bill Cosby on education, responsibility at Essence

Chevel Johnson:

Bill Cosby used his trademark humor and storytelling style to chide hundreds gathered Saturday at the Essence Music Festival’s empowerment seminars into talking to their children about real life and, in the process, keeping it simple.
“We’ve got to lay it out for them,” Cosby said when asked about how to help cut the rate of teen pregnancies in America. “Let’s tell them about life. You’re 14 and having sex. OK. So, what kind of job do you have?”
Cosby, who received a standing ovation when he walked on stage, said the African-American community must get involved if change is going to occur in any area.

Understanding Milwaukee’s teacher layoffs

Wisconsin Taxpayer’s Alliance:

According to a front-page story in the local daily, the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) could lay off as many as 482 teachers, mostly young staff, “while other large districts are predicting far fewer cuts.” Rhetorical explanations for why this is happening abound. But published statistics point to concrete reasons for the pending actions.
Rhetorical reasons
Key political players in the controversy offered quick explanations for the layoffs. The MPS school board president cited union reluctance to switch to lower-cost health insurance. Union leaders blamed inadequate state and federal funding. And young teachers complained they were laid off “because of experience, and not performance.” Most union contracts have seniority provisions requiring that the last teacher hired–often a young teacher–is the first fired.

NEA Convention 2010: Up for Debate

Mike Antonucci:

NBI 6 – “NEA shall seek a cease and desist agreement from AFT instructing its local Affiliates in Alabama to stop their attempted raids each year.”
NBI 20 – “NEA requests Arne Duncan and the Department of Education to immediately implement the decade old recommendation that the ‘achievement levels’ of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) not be published this year.

Fascinating….
Related, by Sam Dillon: Teachers’ Union Shuns Obama Aides at Convention

Schools with many AP tests but lousy scores

Jay Matthews:

We education watchers are gradually waking up to the fact that a very small but growing number of educators are using Advanced Placement, originally designed for only the best high schools, as a shock treatment to improve instruction at some of our worst high schools.
This is not, to say the least, a well-understood trend. Some of the smartest AP people in the country do not like it. Others do. I think it has great potential benefits, but it is too soon to draw solid conclusions. So I have appointed myself the unofficial scorekeeper for such schools, and have created a special category for them — what I call the Catching Up schools — in my annual Challenge Index ratings. This includes my ranked list of all public high schools in the Washington area, published in The Washington Post, and a separate list of schools nationally that have the highest AP test participation rates, best known as America’s Best High Schools in Newsweek.com.
I am giving this such attention because when I have looked at schools using this wild approach, it seems to be working for them. Students and parents like the challenge and don’t care if they are unlikely to pass many of the tests. The teachers are energized. The fears of critics that using AP with low-performing students will create false expectations and low self esteem seem unfounded.

School Turnaround Group

http://www.massinsight.org/stg/:

STG Overview
School Turnaround is a dramatic intervention in a low-performing school that both produces significant achievement gains within two years and prepares the school for long-term transformation into a high-performance organization.
The School Turnaround Group (STG) believes that the problem of chronically failing schools is massive, and therefore cannot be addressed by either incremental change within districts, or by completely abandoning the existing school system. Instead, we advocate a hybrid approach, creating carve-out “Partnership Zones” of low-performing schools that remain within the district but offer more flexible operating conditions.

Wisconsin education policy, like kudzu, is overgrown: Standards Based Accountability in Wisconsin

Alan Borsuk:

Kudzu? Who dares compare Wisconsin’s education policies to kudzu?
Christopher Brown, a professor in curriculum and instruction at the University of Texas at Austin, that’s who.
Kudzu is a plant that originated in Asia. Agriculture officials in the U.S. encouraged its use, starting in the 1930s, as a low cost way to stem soil erosion. But, especially in the South, it spread rapidly and far beyond intended areas. It became regarded as a weed.
Hmm. Launched with good intentions, appealing as an easy option, it grew rapidly and accomplished little. That sums up Brown’s analysis of Wisconsin education policy from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. In his observations there lie major lessons for those who want to raise the expectations of students in Wisconsin and see more students meet those expectations.
Someone recently pointed me to Brown’s analysis, which started as a doctoral dissertation while he was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison a few years ago. Just the title of the version published in 2008 in the academic journal Educational Policy made me laugh – and wince:

Clusty Search: Christopher P. Brown.

Promoting Madison’s Midvale Elementary’s Dual Language Immersion Program

Midvale Elementary School Madison WI 7/4/2010 by Jim Zellmer Promoting Dual Language Immersion

I did not immediately see any reference to the dual language program on Midvale/Lincoln’s website. This Madison School District search offers a bit more information.

President Obama’s school-reform programs are falling victim to the teachers’ unions.

Jonathan Alter:

For more than 40 years, Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, the third-ranking member of the House, has been a fiery and highly effective legislator. Any history of how the country avoided another depression must include Obey, who shepherded the $787 billion Recovery Act through Congress last year with great skill (and no earmarks). He has been an inspiring antiwar liberal dating back to Vietnam and a rare man of conscience in Washington.
But Obey, who is retiring at the end of the year, is in danger of going out as a water carrier for the teachers’ unions–the man who gutted President Obama’s signature program on education, Race to the Top.
At issue is a $10 billion bill (down from $23 billion) to help states prevent devastating teacher layoffs. (The House approved the bill after this column was written on Thursday.) Without the money, we’ll see larger class size, four-day school weeks in more areas, and about 100,000 lost jobs, which in turn will strain services and harm the economy. As if the politics weren’t byzantine enough, the anti-layoff money has been attached to a bill funding the war in Afghanistan. This was meant to make it easier to win the support of war supporters, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now has to deal with House liberals who like the money for teachers, but not for the war.

K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Illinois Stops Paying Bills

Michael Powell:

“We are a fiscal poster child for what not to do,” said Ralph Martire of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a liberal-leaning policy group in Illinois. “We make California look as if it’s run by penurious accountants who sit in rooms trying to put together an honest budget all day.”
The state pension system is a money sinkhole and the most immediate threat. The governor and legislature have shortchanged the pensions since the mid-1990s, taking payment “holidays” with alarming regularity.
The state’s last elected governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, is on trial for racketeering and extortion. But in 2003, he persuaded the legislature to let him float $10 billion in 30-year bonds and use the proceeds for two years of pension payments.
That gamble backfired and wound up costing the state many billions of dollars. Illinois reports that it has $62.4 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, although many experts place that liability tens of billions of dollars higher.

Sara Lenz:

Some Illinois districts give up middle school ideals

Somerset Board of Education hopes to not increase taxes

Dave Newman:

The preliminary budget for the 2010-11 school year was passed without any discussion by the Somerset Board of Education at its June 21 meeting.
In a discussion with District Administrator Randy Rosburg following the meeting, he said the board has good intentions with its next budget.
The preliminary budget that was passed included a tax levy that would increase from $8.049 million to $8.097 million, an increase of six-tenths of a percent. Rosburg said it is the board’s intent to keep working on the budget.
“We should be able to go forward and maintain the same mil rate and same budget,” Rosburg said.
There are several variables that have not been set yet that make it impossible for the board and administration to be more firm with their numbers.
The first of those unknowns is enrollment. State funding is based on each school district’s enrollment on the third Friday in September.

Parents Angry Detroit Public Schools’ Deficit Growing

Robin Schwartz:

Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb says he has a balanced budget for next year, but many parents are angry that the district’s deficit is growing.
Detroit public school students are enjoying summer vacation. Their thoughts are likely far from the classroom, but when they return in the fall, there will be budget related changes such as school closings, teacher layoffs and larger class sizes — up to 38 students for grades six through twelve.
“That’s based on cuts across the administrative areas, a great deal of sacrifice on the part of our employees, our bargaining units, our teachers,” said DPS spokesperson Steve Wasko.

In Blow to Bloomberg, City Must Keep 19 Failing Schools Open

Jennifer Medina:

A state appellate court ruled unanimously on Thursday that New York City must keep open 19 schools it wanted to close for poor performance, blocking one of the Bloomberg administration’s signature efforts to improve the educational system.
The ruling, by the Appellate Division, First Department, in Manhattan, upheld a lower court finding that the city’s Education Department did not comply with the 2009 state law on mayoral control of the city schools because it failed to adequately notify the public about the ramifications of the closings.
Because many eighth graders assumed the schools would be closed and the Education Department discouraged them from attending the schools, few applied. Some of the schools could begin September with just a few dozen freshmen. School officials said they expected enrollment to grow with students who move into the city, but the number will still likely be far smaller than in past years.

Stamford School board extends superintendent’s contract by one year

Magdalene Perez:

In a close vote Thursday night, the Board of Education approved a one-year contract extension for schools Superintendent Joshua Starr.
The agreement increases the remaining two years on Starr’s current contract to three, and provides no salary increase in the current year, with pay bumps to $220,000 in 2011-12 and $225,000 in 2012-13, Board of Education President Jackie Heftman said. Starr currently earns a base salary of $215,000.
In addition, the contact calls for the Board of Education to reimburse Starr on a portion of his retirement contributions and eliminates his use of a city vehicle in favor of a $600 monthly transportation stipend. It also allows the board to terminate Starr’s employment at any time upon a majority vote.
Starr, who had pushed for the extension, said he was pleased with the outcome. He has said he will move his family from Brooklyn, N.Y. and enroll his two children in Stamford schools if the contract was granted.

Education Reform Stalls? Do Not (David) Obey

Jonathan Chait:

The recession is forcing states to raise taxes and cut budgets, including education budgets, which is a wildly stupid national policy both on short-term economic grounds and in terms of investing in future human capital. The responses to this crisis have been maddeningly short-sighted. On the right, and even the center, you have self-styled deficit hawks cheering state-level Hooverism. (The Washington Post editorial page opposes any federal aid to cushion education firings unless states first overhaul their hiring practices, which is of course impossible in that time frame.)
Now on the left you’re seeing an equally maddening response. House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey proposes to fund money for saving teachers by cutting back funding for the Obama administration’s wildly effective “Race to the Top” program, which provides incentives to states that reform their education policy. Obey’s spokesman explains:

“Mr. Obey has said, ‘When a ship is sinking, you don’t worry about redesigning a room, you worry about keeping it afloat,’ ” Brachman said. “He is not opposed to education reform. But he believes that keeping teachers on the job is an important step.”

Diane Marrero has more along with Valerie Strauss.

Needed – a way to finance the schooling we demand

Scott Plotkin:

California’s school finance system is broken, and our students are paying the consequences. As a result of this irrational finance system, students are being denied the opportunity to master the educational program the state requires.
Now, 60 students and parents, nine school districts, the California School Boards Association, the Association of California School Administrators and the California State PTA have filed a lawsuit, Robles-Wong vs. California, which argues that the California Constitution requires the state to provide a school finance system that supports the educational program students are entitled to receive.

Charters, teachers vie to take over L.A. Unified schools

Howard Blume:

The district is inviting bidders to run poorly performing and new campuses with 35,000 students. More than 80 groups submitted letters of intent for new or low-achieving schools for fall 2011.
The nation’s second-largest school system is once again inviting bidders to take over poorly performing and new campuses, in a school-control process that is, once again, pitting teachers and their union against independently operated charter schools, most of which are nonunion.
Teachers working for the Los Angeles Unified School District put in bids for every school. And charters are vying for all but one.
At stake is the education of more than 35,000 students who will attend those schools.

Louisiana School waiver plan, now law, challenged by teacher union

Bill Barrow & Ed Anderson:

Trying to put the finishing touches on a series of education policy victories in the recently concluded legislative session, Gov. Bobby Jindal has signed into law a hotly debated plan to let local schools seek waivers from a range of state rules and regulations.
But as soon as the ink was dry on House Bill 1368, one of the state’s major teachers unions delivered on its promise to challenge the act as unconstitutional.
The teachers group wants a Baton Rouge district court to rule that the Legislature cannot abdicate its law-making authority by effectively allowing the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to pick and choose which laws local schools have to follow.
The new program topped Jindal’s K-12 education agenda for the session that ended June 21. The governor pitched waivers as a way to give schools more flexibility, much like public charter schools that have proliferated in New Orleans and elsewhere since Hurricane Katrina.

International Program Catches On in U.S. Schools

Tamar Lewin:

The alphabet soup of college admissions is getting more complicated as the International Baccalaureate, or I.B., grows in popularity as an alternative to the better-known Advanced Placement program.
The College Board’s A.P. program, which offers a long menu of single-subject courses, is still by far the most common option for giving students a head start on college work, and a potential edge in admissions.
The lesser-known I.B., a two-year curriculum developed in the 1960s at an international school in Switzerland, first took hold in the United States in private schools. But it is now offered in more than 700 American high schools — more than 90 percent of them public schools — and almost 200 more have begun the long certification process.

The Madison Country Day School has been recently accredited as an IB World School.
Rick Kiley emailed this link: The Truth about IB

Did Jamie Oliver’s School Lunch Program Make Kids Eat Junk Food?

Megan Friedman:

What happens when you force kids to eat healthy food at school? They find a way to down junk food anyway. That’s what the U.K.’s health minister is accusing celebrity chef Jamie Oliver of causing with his attempt to rid cafeterias of unhealthy lunches. (via Wellness)
Oliver is best known in the U.S. for his show Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, in which he attempted to get a West Virginia town to eat more healthfully. He had previously started a program in the U.K. called School Dinners, with a similar goal. Unfortunately, the result may not have worked out as planned. Wellness sums it up:

Gray outlines his agenda for education in Washington, DC

Bill Turque & Nikita Stewart:

Calling the Fenty administration’s approach to education reform “shortsighted, narrow and sometimes secretive,” D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray unveiled a blueprint Thursday to guide education policy if he is elected mayor.
The plan promises more transparency, funding equity for public charter schools, tax credits for early-childhood programs and greater support for the city’s neighborhood high schools.
Educators, students and supporters filled the library at Thurgood Marshall Academy, a public charter high school in Southeast, where Gray outlined an ambitious plan and tried to further distinguish himself from Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who has made public schools one of his priorities.
Gray, who is challenging Fenty for the Democratic nomination for mayor, said he gives “tremendous credit” to Fenty for calling attention to the need for education reform. But “what we’ve learned over the past three years is that it’s not enough to have mayoral control. What we need, ladies and gentlemen, is mayoral leadership,” he said to hearty applause.

Obama Dealt a Blow Over Education Initiatives

Stephanie Banchero:

President Barack Obama’s education-overhaul agenda was dealt its first major setback after the U.S. House of Representatives diverted money from charter schools, teacher merit pay and the Race to the Top competition to help fund a jobs bill that would stave off teacher layoffs.
Even a last-minute veto threat by Mr. Obama late Thursday couldn’t prevent the diversion of $800 million, including a $500 million cut from Race to the Top, the president’s showcase initiative that rewards states for adopting innovative education redesigns.
Officials with the U.S. Department of Education vowed Friday to keep the president’s education agenda intact and find other places to make budget trims.
“We’re grateful they passed a jobs bills but not at the expense of the reform efforts we need for our long-term economic interests,” said Peter Cunningham, spokesman for the Education Department.

TJ Mertz offers a number of comments, notes and links on congressional efforts to reduce “Race to the Top” funding and increase federal redistributed tax dollar assistance for teacher salaries.
It is difficult to see the governance and spending approaches of the past addressing the curricular, teacher and student challenges of today, much less tomorrow.

Students Know

Douglas Crets:

Does online learning help you with your strengths and weaknesses? Rick says, “I needed help with writing, and it works very well.”
What makes people choose one school over another? Or, choose to go to virtual school? Sydney, “As a general statement, when anyone esee the world laptop, they say ‘I want to go to that school.’ Besides that, I like it because it’s a new school. We were going into a new setting, nobody knew each other.”
How do laptops help you learn? Sydney: “It’s obvious that laptops and textbooks are two different things. Time is evoloving and so is technology. You can look up so much more. You can see more than what you are already given.”
Aaron, “We are able to check our grades 24/7. I can see what I scored immediately.”

Leading the charge: Kaleem Caire returns to south side to head Urban League

Kaleem Caire & Maya Cole 2010 by Jim Zellmer at the Madison Screening of the Lottery

Pat Schneider:

Things have changed since Caire was raised by an aunt across the street from Penn Park at a time when adults didn’t hesitate to scold neighborhood kids who got out of line, and parents took on second jobs to make ends meet. Today, there is more “hard core” poverty, more crime, and much less sense of place, says Caire, who still can recite which families lived up Fisher Street and down Taft.
The supportive community of his boyhood began disappearing in the 1980s, as young parents moved in from Chicago to escape poverty and could not find the training and jobs they needed, Caire says. People started to lose their way. In a speech this month to the Madison Downtown Rotary, Caire said he has counted 56 black males he knew growing up that ended up incarcerated. “Most of ’em, you would never have seen it coming.”
Caire, once a consultant on minority education for the state and advocate for voucher schools, left Madison a decade ago and worked with such national nonprofit organizations as the Black Alliance for Educational Options and Fight for Children. Later he worked for discount retailer Target Corp., where he was a fast-rising executive, he says, until he realized his heart wasn’t in capitalism, despite the excellent managerial mentoring he received.
The sense of community that nurtured his youth has disappeared in cities across the country, Caire remarks. So he’s not trying to recreate the South Madison of the past, but rather to build connections that will ground people from throughout Madison in the community and inform the Urban League’s programs.

Caire recently attended the Madison Premiere of “The Lottery“, a film which highlights the battle between bureaucratic school districts, teacher unions and students (and parents).

Charter Schools Don’t Do Miracles

Alan Singer:

Charter schools are not the magic bullet that will transform urban minority public schools. As you peel away layers of the charter onion, the inevitable problems come to the surface.
Locke High School in Los Angeles has been touted as a charter school miracle. I wish it were true, but it’s not. In 2008, Locke was notorious as one of the worst failing schools in the United States. It had a high crime rate and a low graduate rate, the opposite of what schools should be. At one point a race riot involving 600 students made the national news.
According to The New York Times, two years after a charter school group named Green Dot, which also operates a charter school in the Bronx, took over management of the school, gang violence was down, attendance was improved, and performance on standardized tests was inching up. The school has become one of the number one stops on the charter school reform bandwagon tour, as corporate and government “education reformers,” including federal Department of Education bigwigs, get photo-ops in its newly tree lined courtyard and issue pronouncements about how wonderful everything has become.

TakePart: Participant Media – Waiting For ‘Superman’ – Infographic

Jr. Canest, via a Kris Olds email:

This animation is for a startling documentary called, “Waiting For ‘Superman'” that highlights some very serious issues in America today and it made us feel good to make it.

Wisconsin Democrat Representative Tammy Baldwin votes with David Obey to Reduce Race to the Top Funding and Support Teacher Union Request to Avoid Layoffs

HR 4899 roll, via Democrats for Education Reform.
Sam Dillon:

The education measure provoked fierce debate, especially because it would reduce by $500 million the award money available to three dozen states that have submitted proposals in Round 2 of the Obama initiative, the Race to the Top competition.
To become law, the legislation needs Senate approval. The White House said in a statement that if the final bill included cuts to education reforms, Mr. Obama would most likely veto it.
“It would be short-sighted to weaken funding for these reforms,” the White House said.
Using stimulus money voted on last year, the Department of Education awarded $500 million to Tennessee and $100 million to Delaware in March, and has promised to distribute the $3.4 billion that remains among additional winning states this year. The House bill would reduce the money available to $2.9 billion.
Teachers’ unions lobbied for weeks for federal money to avert what the administration estimates could be hundreds of thousands of teacher layoffs.
Several dozen charter school and other advocacy groups lobbied fiercely against cutting Race to the Top, which rewards states promising to overhaul teacher evaluation systems and shake up school systems in other ways.

Is 2010 the year of the education documentary?

Greg Toppo:

In 2006, An Inconvenient Truth shined a light on global warming, bringing images of collapsing ice sheets and drowning polar bears to multiplexes nationwide.
Could 2010 be the year moviegoers get the angry urban parent with a hand-drawn placard, demanding more high-quality charter schools and an end to teacher tenure?
This summer, no fewer than four new documentaries, most of them independently produced, tackle essentially the same question: Why do so many urban public schools do such a bad job — and what can be done to help kids trapped in them?
Among the new films:

Mandatory School Board “Professional Development”? Yes, in New Jersey. “They Need to be Educated”

Tom Mooney:

School committee members across the state will now also have to attend six hours of training each year on how to perform their community responsibilities.
Bill sponsor Sen. Hanna M. Gallo, D-Cranston, said the legislation’s genesis came from “a lot of people expressing concern that not all school committee members are aware of all the [educational] issues they should.”
Issues, such as how schools are financed, labor relations, teacher-performance evaluations, strategic planning and opening meetings laws that require members do their business in public, will be addressed.
“They need to be educated,” said Gallo. “It’s a big responsibility being on the school committee. It’s our children, our students and our future, and we have to make sure we do the job to the best of our ability.”
The school committee members will attend a program at Rhode Island College offered by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary education in cooperation with the Rhode Island Association of School Committees.

An obvious next step, given the growing “adult to adult” expenditures of our K-12 public schools, while, simultaneously, reducing “adult to child” time. Wow.
Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Small High Schools still in flux

Kristen Graham:

For a time in the mid-2000s, small schools were booming. They were supposed to transform the large, failing American high school, to engage students and boost their achievement to ready them for college.
But the results have been mixed, national and local research shows. Students at small high schools were more likely to graduate, have positive relationships with their teachers, and feel safer. Still, they did no better on standardized tests than did their peers at big schools.
In Philadelphia, where 26 of the 32 small high schools have been opened or made smaller in the last seven years, some schools have thrived. Their presence has transformed the high school mix.
Among the district’s current 63 high schools, the 32 small schools enroll roughly a quarter of the 48,000 total enrollment. The rest attend large neighborhood high schools.

High School of the Future and Science Leadership Academy, four-year-old Phila. high schools just graduated their first classes. Their experiences differ greatly..
Related: Small Learning Communities and English 10.

Seattle Discovery Math Lawsuit Update

Martha McLaren:

On Monday, June 21st, we filed our “Brief of Respondent” in the School District appeal of Judge Spector’s decision. (Sorry to be late in posting it to this blog; our attorney left town after sending me hard copy, but neglected to email an electronic version of the document we filed.) A link to the brief can be found in the left-hand column, below, under “Legal Documents in Textbook Appeal.”
There’s no new information, either in the District’s brief or our response. You might notice that, rather than acknowledge the catalog of unrelated miscellany in the Seattle Public School District’s brief, our attorney, Keith Scully, chose to essentially restate our original case, upon which Judge Spector ruled favorably. He did emphasize certain statements which pertained to claims in the District’s brief.
I think Keith has, once again, done a masterful job.

5.4MB PDF file.

Charter group will run one of Boston’s struggling schools

James Vaznis:

School Superintendent Carol R. Johnson will tap a charter school management organization to run one of the district’s low-achieving middle schools, a first for the state, under a plan she will present tonight to the Boston School Committee.
Johnson has not decided which middle school would be overseen by Unlocking Potential Inc., a new Boston nonprofit management organization founded by a former charter school principal.
A key part of the proposal calls for converting the middle school into an in-district charter school, which would enable the management organization to operate under greater freedom from the teacher union’s contract as it overhauls programs, dismisses teachers, and makes other changes.

Tempering Tuition Hikes

Jack Stripling:

Private, nonprofit colleges will hike tuition and fees by an average of 4.5 percent in the coming academic year, outpacing inflation while still holding close to last year’s nearly 40-year low increase rate, according to a survey released Tuesday by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
The 4.5 percent increase for 2010-11 follows a 4.3 percent increase for 2009-10, which was the smallest increase since 1972-73.
“I think it’s a pretty fundamental adjustment that we’re seeing here,” said David L. Warren, NAICU president. “What we’ve got is a recession, which has indefinite future to it, and recognition all around that colleges want to hold their expenses as low as they can, and that includes of course the tuition they’re charging.”

Detroit Schools in Fiscal Rut Despite Cutbacks

Alex Kellogg:

Detroit’s ailing public schools suffered an unexpected setback Thursday when the district announced its budget deficit would balloon in the fiscal year beginning Thursday.
The news comes despite deep cut backs by an emergency financial manager hired by the Michigan governor last year to repair the system’s finances.
The district, which serves about 84,000 students–half the population of 10 years ago–is projecting the deficit to rise 66% to $363 million from the fiscal year that ended Wednesday.
The district also has lost per-pupil state funding as its student population dwindles. And the state budget, pressured by Michigan’s economic woes, also cut funding by several hundred dollars per pupil in the past year.

US Census Bureau Public Finance Report: Madison’s per student spending is greater than all large Wisconsin Districts, but for Milwaukee

The illustration above is from page 124 and includes data on Wisconsin’s largest school districts.

2.8MB PDF, via a kind reader.
Per student spending numbers are always interesting and never consistent. Madison spends $15,241 per student, based on the 2009-2010 budget of $370,287,471 (24,295 students)

Bill Gates touts charter schools, accountability

Caryn Rousseau:

Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates said Tuesday that charter schools can revolutionize education, but that the charter school movement also must hold itself accountable for low-performing schools.
“We need breakthroughs,” Gates said at the National Charter Schools Conference in Chicago. “And your charters are showing that breakthroughs are possible.”
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been a big player in the school reform movement, spending about $200 million a year on grants to elementary and secondary education. Gates said charter schools and their ability to innovate are a key part of the foundation’s education strategy.
“I really think that charters have the potential to revolutionize the way students are educated,” Gates said.
Charter schools receive taxpayer money but have more freedom than traditional public schools to map out how they’ll meet federal education benchmarks.

The Trouble With Charter Schools

Clarence Page:

Charter schools receive a lot of well-deserved attention this time of year when they appear to be performing miracles. But what about the ones that don’t?
The Obama administration believes, as did the Bush administration, in taking harsh action against “failing” schools, such as firing staff, closing the school or turning over control to the state or private charters.
Much of the news has been encouraging, especially in schools where graduates outnumber dropouts for a change.
It was exciting to hear that Urban Prep Academies, a charter school on Chicago’s South Side, is sending 100 percent of this year’s 107 graduates to college. That’s particularly impressive for a school where only 4 percent of its original 150 students were reading at or above grade level when it opened four years ago.

School Vouchers in DC Produce Gains in Both Test Scores and Graduation Rates

Paul Peterson:

One should not under-estimate the impact of the DC school voucher program on student achievement. According to the official announcement and the executive summary of the report, school vouchers lifted high school graduation rates but it could not be conclusively determined that it had a positive impact on student achievement.
Something about those findings sounds like a bell striking thirteen. Not only is the clock wrong, but the mechanism seems out of whack. How can more students graduate from private schools if they weren’t learning more? Are expectations so low in the private sector that any one can graduate?
Peering beneath the press release and the executive summary into the bowels of the study itself one can get some, if not all the answers, to these questions.
Let’s begin with the most important–and perfectly uncontested–result: If one uses a voucher to go to school, the impact on the percentage of students with a high school diploma increases by 21 percentage points (Table 3-5), an effect size of no less than 0.46 standard deviations. Seventy percent of those who were not offered a school voucher made it through high school. That is close to the national average in high school graduation rates among those entering 9th grade four years earlier. As compared to that 70 percent rate among those who wanted a voucher but didn’t get one, 91 percent of those who used vouchers to go to private school eventually received a high school diploma.

Branchburg, NJ School District in turmoil

Amanda Peterka:

After five rounds of meetings, the Branchburg teachers union and the board of education have declared an impasse, saying they could not come to an agreement on a salary freeze and a switch to the state’s public health insurance plan.
A state moderator will now preside over negotiations. If an agreement cannot be reached over both, the school board will have to come up with those savings elsewhere because the school board budgeted the salary freeze already, and the Township Committee included the health insurance plan in its recommendations when it decided the school board needs to cut $1.5 million from its budget.
Tensions over these negotiations bubbled over on Thursday, June 24, at the same time that the school board approved new cuts that bring the number of laid-off school employees to approximately 55.

More California School Districts on the Financial Brink

Howard Blume:

An increasing number of California school districts are edging closer to financial insolvency, state officials reported Tuesday.
One immediate effect has been the layoff of teachers — probably in the thousands, although neither state officials nor the California Teachers Assn. has final numbers.
Since the beginning of 2010, the number of school systems that may be “unable to meet future financial obligations” has increased by 38%, according to the state Department of Education.
“Schools on this list are now forced to make terrible decisions to cut programs and services that students need or face bankruptcy,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell.

Retired, then rehired: How college workers use loophole to boost pay

Nick Perry & Justin Mayo:

Greg Royer ranks among the state’s top-paid employees, with a salary of $304,000. But that’s just part of his income. For nearly seven years, he’s also collected an annual pension of $105,000.
Royer, the vice president for business and finance at Washington State University, tops a long list of college administrative staff members who’ve been able to boost their incomes by up to 60 percent by exploiting a loophole in state retirement laws.
A Seattle Times investigation has found that at least 40 university or community-college employees retired and were rehired within weeks, often returning to the same job without the position ever being advertised. That has allowed them to double dip by collecting both a salary and a pension.
The pattern of quickie retirements has continued despite the Legislature’s efforts to crack down.

Madison Teachers’ Harlem trip’s aim is to aid ‘culturally relevant’ teaching

Susan Troller:

Lanyon, Grams, and fellow Hawthorne teachers Julie Olsen and Abby Miller received a grant from the national nonprofit Fund for Teachers that allowed them to travel to Harlem to learn about the art, music, poetry, literary history and drama of this hub of African-American life. They all agree that they now have a new appreciation for the richness of black culture and its profound impact on American life and culture as a whole.
For these four, plus a dozen more local educators whose travel was covered by a couple of additional grants, the experience was part of a wider effort to help them better teach in what’s known as a culturally relevant way.
“Culturally relevant practice” is a relatively new movement in education that recognizes that learning, for all of us, is related to our cultural background and what we know from our daily living. Research shows that effectively bridging the gaps between a teacher’s background and student’s experience can improve academic performance.
Andreal Davis is one of two district administrators in charge of helping to create culturally relevant practices in local classrooms. A former elementary school teacher at Lincoln, Davis, who is black, now helps colleagues recognize that different groups of children bring their different backgrounds, expectations and even communication styles to the classroom.
She says teachers sometimes need help learning to translate different ways their students learn, or what kind of interactions make sense to different groups of children.
“Communication styles for all of us can vary a great deal. It can be like the difference between listening to conventional music, or listening to jazz, where the narrative doesn’t just go in a straight line,” she explains. “If that flow is what you’re used to, it’s what you know how to follow in a conversation, or in a class.”
Given Hawthorne’s demographics — 70 percent of the students are poor, with a diverse population that includes 18 percent Hispanic, 20 percent Asian, 32 percent black and 28 percent white — the school has respectable, rising test scores.

People who saw the recent Madison screening of The Lottery saw another part of the Harlem world: the battle between the traditional public school system and charters, specifically the Harlem Success Academy.

New York Tops Nation in Per-Pupil School Spending, Says U.S. Census Bureau

Cara Matthews:

New York spent $17,173 per student for public education in 2007-08, more than any other state and 67 percent higher than the national average, according to Census Bureau statistics released Monday (lots of data here).
The $10,259 average nationally was a 6.1 percent increase over 2006-07, the Census Bureau said. New York’s spending went up 7.4 percent over the two years. Public education is the single largest category of all state and local spending.
New York’s per-student spending was highest in 2006-07 too at $15,981 per student, compared to an average of $9,666 across the country.
Eighteen states and the District of Columbia spent more than $10,259 and 32 spent less in the 2007-08 school year. States that came close to New York that year included New Jersey ($16,491 per student) and Alaska ($14,630). At the other end of the spectrum were Utah ($5,765), Idaho ($6,931) and Arizona ($7,608).

Madison spends $15,241 per student.

The National Study of Charter Management Organization (CMO) Effectiveness: Report on Interim Findings

Robin Lake, Brianna Dusseault, Melissa Bowen, Allison Demeritt, Paul Hill, via a Deb Britt email:

Charter management organizations (CMOs), nonprofit entities that directly manage public charter schools, are a significant force in today’s public K-12 charter school landscape.
CMOs were developed to solve serious problems limiting the numbers and quality of charter schools. The CMO model is meant to meld the benefits of school districts–including economies of scale, collaboration among similar schools, and support structures–with the autonomies and entrepreneurial drive of the charter sector.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the major philanthropies funding charter schools invested heavily in CMOs and similar organizations, spending an estimated total of $500 million between 1999 and 2009. Ultimately, those who invest in CMOs want to achieve a significantly higher number of high-quality schools in the charter school sector. Their investments in CMO growth have been targeted to specific urban school districts that have been considered difficult, if not impossible, to reform.

Quality, not seniority, of teachers should be considered

Alan Borsuk:

I’m going to turn 60 soon and my job title at Marquette Law School these days is “senior fellow,” so I have a disposition to respect seniority. Especially when other things are equal, you should earn some standing by dint of long service.
But do you think Trevor Hoffman should be sent out to pitch the ninth inning for the Brewers just because he has seniority over everyone else on the team? Of course not. Put in the best pitcher.
I may be in a minority, but I regard baseball as a game, as entertainment.
Education is not a game. It’s as crucial a matter as any facing Milwaukee.
So why don’t schools follow this simple lesson from sports: You stand your best chance of winning when you field your best players?
Milwaukee is well on its way this summer to a vivid lesson in seniority in action. Milwaukee Public Schools administrators have given layoff notices to 482 teachers, as well as 816 other employees.

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Summer school is a great tool, if only more students would use it

Jay Matthews:

This Wednesday from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Brent Elementary School at 301 North Carolina Ave. SE, the D.C. public schools will hold a chancellor’s forum on how to add useful learning to your child’s summer. Several groups, such as the D.C. Public Library, the University of the District of Columbia Science and Engineering Center, and even Madame Tussaud’s, will have booths about their summer programs.
But the District, like other urban districts, will have a summer school that includes only about a fifth of its students. Many people laugh that off: Who in their right mind wants to go to summer school? Give the poor kids a break.

Is New Hampshire’s Anti-Tax Stance Hurting Schools? A Quick Look at NAEP Scores Does Not Indicate that Spending is a Problem

Jim Zarroli:

State and local tax burdens vary greatly from state to state. New Hampshire, for instance, has no income or sales tax — but its neighbor Vermont has both. Fiscal conservatives say New Hampshire’s long history of low taxes has forced the state to keep spending in line. But New Hampshire residents say that tradition of fiscal austerity has exacted a price on the state’s schools.

NAEP 4th grade average math scale score: New Hampshire: 251; Wisconsin 244; Vermont 248, Massachusetts 252, Minnesota 249, Iowa 243. Low income: New Hampshire: 237; Wisconsin 229; Vermont 235, Massachusetts 237, Minnesota 234, Iowa 232.
NAEP 4th grade average reading scale score (national average is 220): New Hampshire: 229; Wisconsin 220; Vermont 229, Massachusetts 234, Minnesota 223, Iowa 221. Low income (national average is 206): New Hampshire: 213; Wisconsin 202; Vermont 215, Massachusetts 215, Minnesota 203, Iowa 208.
NAEP 8th grade average reading scale score (national average is 262): New Hampshire: 271; Wisconsin 266; Vermont 272, Massachusetts 274, Minnesota 271, Iowa 265. Low income (national average is 249): New Hampshire: 257; Wisconsin 249; Vermont 260, Massachusetts 254, Minnesota 252, Iowa 253.
NAEP 2005 Science Assessment is here

W.Va. education spending audit may prove daunting

The Associated Press:

A proposed audit of West Virginia’s education spending enjoys widespread support, but that may not make its undertaking any less tricky.
Officials have yet to decide who would conduct the in-depth review, or even how to authorize it. Then there’s the scope. An estimated 14 cents of every dollar spent by the state goes to public education, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
The American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia included an audit in its wish list for next month’s special legislative session focused on education.
“We are not aware of any recent or ongoing investigation regarding the spending practices by governmental departments, agencies and boards of education funded with public education dollars and whether the funds are being used for the intended purpose,” the group said in its outline of the proposal, one of eight it wants lawmakers to consider.

KIPP Considers Purchase of an Abandoned Gary, Indiana School

Chelsea Schneider Kirk & Christin Nancy Lazerus:

The windows to Beckman Middle School are boarded and the grass has turned into weeds, but Taiwane Payne sees potential for the school that the Gary Community School Corp. closed and is now selling.
Payne came to an open house at the shuttered school on Thursday eager to see if it would be an ideal building for his not-for-profit venture. Payne wants to revitalize a Gary school into a technical center that would teach the unemployed green technology.
But that’s as long as the price is right.
“It’s up to the city of Gary and the school corporation not to try to get as much money out of them as possible,” Payne said. “It would be great to see the building being used and not abandoned.”
From the outside, Payne surmised Beckman, which closed in 2004, would need some work.
“I need to get in and find out exactly what needs to be done,” Payne said pulling on his work gloves and carrying an industrial flashlight.
Gary Community Schools is in the process of selling 11 of its vacant school buildings, but Gov. Mitch Daniels thinks some of the structures should be given to charter schools.